Here is how my Time is being Wasted

Welcome to using classtime to learn the nucances of a hideous program that is now hopelessly obsolete. The assignment? Create an image in Freehand from scratch based on a Frank Lloyd Wright sketch. Doesn't it look like glorified asshole clipart? I want to punch myself.

UPDATE:

Goddamnit, it looks even worse when it's printed.

Yes I Will Extol Big Gulps Thank You (You're Welcome)!

This evening I attended a concert, more specifically a hip-hop show. While the experience on the whole was enjoyable, it was also a remarkably taxing and extremely fatiguing endeavor, as is the case anytime one stands up for four hours straight in a room packed wall to wall with people determined to either get themselves kicked out by security or to constantly have one arm raised in order to contribute on a gesticular basis to a musical display that really doesn’t lend itself to live performances as well as guitar-based complaining does. Nevertheless, there I was, sweating about as much as you’d expect (an appropriate amount) while being forced to endure the close proximity of more armpits than I’d like to remember. When the concert was finally over I needed something to restore my life to the kind of bad-but-not-3-hours-of-armpits-and-swelter-bad that* I’m accustomed to. 7-11 was open. 7-11 has Big Gulps.

Maybe you do not know this, but Big Gulps are one of the most remarkable things that exist in the world of commercially available fountain soda containers. You can walk into a 7-11 and fill up a plastic cup capable of transporting 44 oz. of liquid. You can get any main kind of soda in that cup. You can put any combination of three additional flavors (lemon, cherry, vanilla) into that soda by pressing a button on the dispensing machine. If you are in Japan you can probably also buy a time machine and a TV that fits between your eyelid and your cornea as well. You will pay 99 cents before tax for this, (the drink, not the Japan-only electronics) and if you live in a state where food products are not taxed (Taxachusetts is not such a state). Sometimes the 7-11 clerk will let the tax slide, because it only comes to $1.04 where I am. This was one of those nights. And thank God, you know?

Listen: think about it. 99 cents for 44 oz is remarkable. That is 2.25 cents per oz. Imagine if this rate held constant for all soda purchases. A 12 oz can would cost 27 cents, and a 20 oz bottle would only set you back forty-five cents. Sometimes it is possible to get soda for this cheap inside of containers made of aluminum or equipped with screw-on caps, but these opportunities necessitate that one travel all the way to countries where people get kidnapped every five seconds and dying of dysentery is considered a foregone conclusion instead of an unlikely achievement the way it is in America. Look: before you tell me how little it costs soda manufactures to produce their carbonated wares, and the economic, environmental, and cultural atrocities these major corporations wreak on developing countries (is this term no longer PC? Whatever), and how even at two-and-a-quarter cents per oz I am still being gouged and lining the pockets of blah blah blah please remember to shut the fuck up, because – statistically speaking – if you are talking to me and I am awake enough to listen to you I am probably consuming soda.


*This is sometimes simply referred to as "Going-to-Alabama-Bad"

Here is Some Advice #2

Many months have passed since the most recent (and initial) time I offered advice here. That advice was about not repeating certain mistakes I had made in regards to sleeping during the afternoon in a lonely house, with the ultimate goal being to keep other people from experiencing unpleasantness in their brains. Sometimes, though, you cannot avoid unpleasantness, or maybe you’re already in the neighborhood and it’s hard to not make a stop on Unpleasant Street. Tonight I will describe the best way to get away from that street if you are me, right now, at this second. It is chocolate milk.

Just now I am drinking chocolate milk. I can’t tell you the last time I have consumed this beverage before this evening – my best estimate is approximately one year and two months ago, but that is a foggy speculation at best. What’s relevant is the fact that it has been quite some time since I’ve imbibed the liquid in question. I will tell you that it helps Things. some people do not know how to make chocolate milk correctly, though – they wind up making chocolaty milk instead, which is incorrect. It’s important to remember to put enough chocolate syrup/powder (I prefer syrup) into the (ideally skim) milk that resulting solution is nearly identical in color to the original chocolate additive. Once you’ve reached this point it’s wise to throw in additional flavoring just to be safe. Chocolate milk should be so strong that instead of alleviating any thirst you might have it exacerbates it, necessitating a glass of cold water after all is said and done. That is where I am right now, and it is the right place.

If the house you’re in is empty you can turn some music on at medium volume and sing along to it between sips, also. Everything will be alright as long as the gallon jug in the refrigerator holds out. After that though, who knows.

News From my Absence

It is true that I have been away from information for an undue amount of time, and for that I apologize, but there are reasons, the most pertinent of which I will enumerate presently

1) I have been busy absorbing information through regular meetings with distinguished individuals charged with educating non-distinguished individuals like myself, or, I have been having school.
2) I have other places that require me to provide information
3) The weather changed so I had to watch this movie
4) I got pretty upset one afternoon after drinking too much soda and seeing scenes from Nosferatu while simultaneously having worries.
5) So on.


The good news is that in the past week there hasn’t been a particularly compelling amount of Items to Report. What little there was will be summarized presently:

1) There are probably approximately three people who are angry with me, in degrees ranging from a little to somewhat.
2) Next week promises to be one of Largesse
3) I fell in love on Thursday
4) ………………………
5) Anyway.

Hopefully such neglect for this space of the internet will not occur, at least not on my part. I offer no guarantees though, because the truth of the matter is that very little is at stake.

Also

I Can't Tell you About That Conversation

The one that is currently wafting into earshot from the proximal open window. Part of me wishes that I could tell you, while a more rational part of me knows that by not doing so I am acting ethically and mercifully, and universally so. I wish that I weren't listening to it, but I can't bring myself to turn music on, or to close the window, or to kill myself. The conversation I am hearing is like a video of a mid-air collision at an airshow, the kind of video CNN puts next to the airshow disaster story. The kind of video that depicts at least one person losing their life, but doing so anonymously in front of people who never expected to pay admission to witness a fiery death. One can't help but press "play," and I can't help but listen. I was trying to read this seemingly-interesting article when It started, but it would appear that all hope of doing so has evaporated.

I could try to explain myself and this situation more thoroughly, doing so in a sidelong, roundabout, and excessively vague manner (a manner to which I am no stranger) but doing so would only serve to muddle information as opposed to providing it. It would also force me to deal with the information I have received in a direct, head-on matter in order to re-encode it into a form suitable for public consumption. I will simply say that This is Terrible and that I am Sorry.

Soon: drawings of robots, information about typewriters, and possibly a chapter of a book.

What is the Weather doing Right Now #4

It is sixty-three degrees and raining steadily, but fortunately I now own a raincoat for the first time in my life.

So that's what the weather is doing right now.

Also it's 9-11

Here is What I Did in Art Class Today

Or, more accurately, Graphic Design Class. Maybe you are wondering why I am taking a graphic design class, so here is why: despite my best efforts I continue to enjoy looking at and choosing fonts, and also using fonts. I am learning that proper people call them "typefaces" so I am trying to be better about that. I like entertaining the notion that someday in my life a person will give me money to move letters and perhaps also images around in an area in order to prepare that area for people's viewing. This will probably not happen, but just in case it does it is important that I learn how to draw the idea of text doing silly things, like a lowercase g in Freight acting like a balloon while an uppercase Copperplate T anchors it. So, here you are.



In unrelated news, Here was the thing that was the best part of today.

Here is Some Information about That Record Player

Just over half an hour ago I received a transmission from my good friend regarding the existence and location of an Electric Phonograph on the sidewalk in front of a house on a street less than thirty yards from The Place. I took the initiative and went on a salvage mission, returning with the piece of equipment. Here:



There are two things that I find particularly interesting about this record player/am/fm radio. The first is that all of the cords coming out from the player (both speaker channels and the power cord) have been cut, obviously by scissors that can deal with fairly serious quantities of wire. What's strange is the fact that the amputated sections of the player's wiring, including the plug of the power cord, were in the box along with the item itself. It's as though someone deliberately maimed the machine before setting it out for pedestrians of the area.

The second detail I'm particularly enthralled with is the fact that the warning on the back of the record player seems to feature the epitaph for Stephin Merrit's heart.



Now you know

Here is That Piece of a Note I Found

Inside of an empty box, which itself was in the lobby of a building in which no one ever seems particularly interested in spending any of their time.



It is unclear who Janet is or where the rest of the information intended for her on the note can be found. I will hope for the best.

Here are 657 Words About Who Knows What

You might find that this information deviates from the fare normally found here in this needless and needlessly vague and scattered blog. That is because this is a season finale, and as is typical for such affairs all the stops have been summarily pulled out and set aside for later use. Tomorrow I am expected to be conscious and appropriately dressed in a stuffy room at no later than 9 a.m. so that the finer points (and likely most other points) of socialization can be explained to me over the course of two-and-a-half hours every week, in a format that remains – this point – undisclosed. All the beach balls and sparkling cold drinks are being packed away to make room for the thick sweaters and bottles of antidepressants whose respective warmths are sure to be imminently necessary. So.

Here is that reflection on this year’s summer you requested.

Maybe this will not be the information you want at all. Nevertheless, I will present it to you in the form of paragraphs with diction and sentence structure the likes of which nobody ever needs expose themselves to. We here at The Place started the summer sleeping on bare mattresses in hatefully stifling rooms, living like ghosts, occasionally waking up with stomachs full of blood. When we were finally admitted to our proper residence it was unclear whether or not things actually planned on improving. Boxes and garbage bags heavy with personal effects sat on bare floors waiting for furniture and organization to take their rightful places in the Place. There was nowhere to sit, to sleep, to eat, to launder clothes. I spent time in a computer lab being re-taught the basic to intermediate-basics of the monster named statistics. I woke up with ants on me sometimes. I went swimming just once, and indoors. I failed to visit the most proximal ocean. Then that was over with, time passed, I started offering information here, and the days continued.

There were times of progress: the addition and immediate failure of laundry facilities, the possession of a bed, a desk, two typewriters (that I promise to give you information about someday, honest), new shoes, carbonated beverages and at least one airplane safety card. As near as I can tell personal growth was slim to none, and financial growth was of an inverted nature. At some point it seems like everyone got much quieter, and there was talk of serious matters in strained voices heard through walls and satellites. No easily pegged or overarching theme of the season made itself apparent, and despite living like some kind of almost-grown-up for the first time in Ever, very little about my information has changed, making this the summer of the status quo. I did not make any new lasting friends, but no bridges were incinerated throughout the season’s course. Things weren’t stagnant, their pace was simply glacial, their net gains and dividends as yet invisible from such a short distance.

Now it seems like things are happening every day. The reappearance of people I missed more than I was probably even aware of, the disappearance of people whose absences were unforeseen and more unsettling than expected. A conversation that did a little new good to a lot of vintage bad, and the annexation of necessary furniture and an unnecessary but hopefully functional fog machine. I promise to let you know about the fog machine. Looks like we made it.
Now though, it is time to go to sleep in preparation for the rude awakening of academic responsibilities the complete disappearance of the nauseating sentimentality with which this information you’ve just read is so uncharacteristically imbued. Everyone should write down a goal they hope to accomplish in the coming season. Write it down on notebook paper, fold it into quarters, and label it like this:



Don’t sign or date it. Leave it somewhere that it will be found by someone who couldn’t possibly know you.

Here is that Promo for That New Bad Show

Maybe you know me well enough to already have information about Six Months, a project that is probably only second on the list of most drawn-out, bile-rising, miserable failures of my career as a person capable of failing miserably. If you don't, feel free to learn more here and here. Meanwhile, my across-the-living-room-neighbor and I are concocting something much, much worse for the world. Here is a preview for that concoction. More information about The Lousy Hour can be found Here.

What is the Weather Doing Now?

It's sunny outside, and the temperature is a perfect 72 degrees. It is unclear whether or not summer is actually over as far as the environment's concerned, as it could easily warm up without cause or warning.

So that's what the weather's up to just now.