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.