but I'm 8 post short....so...you know

So my girlfriend got D.E.B.S for us on Netflix, in that, "hey come on, I know it will be bad, but it could be fun, right?" sort of way and I was completely like "Oh my god, we can not watch this, like, fo'reals" but she prevailed, as often happens and we watched the movie.

And you know what? It wasn't actually horrible.
I mean it is in no way a "good movie"
It's a piece of crap, the sound quality is bad and the plot is laughable.

Only two things save it:
1) It doesn't take itself seriously and you can tell,
which is all important for bad movies. If they know they're bad and revel in their badness you can kinda be like "ok, I'll go there with you"
2) No one got reclaimed as a heterosexual,
which has got to be probably my biggest pet peeve with any movie that even flirts with queer content

For anyone who thinks they might actually see the movie *snort* and doesn't want me to ruin it, stop reading, for those who are as morbidly fascinated as I was, read on.

I've always felt that the US war on drugs was grievous waste of time and money. Furthermore, I deplore the way in which we've exported our Puritanical beliefes and policy (as well as our hypocritical glorification of parts of drug culture) on the matter to the rest of the world. Anyone who hasn't seen the documentary Grass absolutely should, it's really interesting.

Anyway, here's an interstesting article on US involvement in Afghan opium production

Turns out this has been a record year. Afghanistan produces a vast amount of the world's opium and therefore is responsible for the majority of the heroine in circulation. Although it was one of the US's explicit goals to decrease opium production in Afghanistan, it would seem that it's been expanding rapidly. While certian goverment officials would like to blame this on the Taliban, it seems that unseating the Taliban directly contributed to the increase. Where opium production was outlawed under the Taliban governement, and the ban was fairly well enforced (mind you I don't support the Taliban, I'm just saying that it's clear that they aren't responsible for the opuim production) the production has nearly doubled since Hamad Karzai took office. Furthermore, nearly a third of the country's GDP is dependent on opium production and large scale destruction of the crops could result in severe destabilization for the already troubled country.

It's a really intersting article. You should read it.

I'm currently taking Advanced Webprojects at Scripps, it's basically a Flash class, and our final project assignment was to create an extended animation or an interactive website. I decided to persue the later, using my thesis as my focus.
Here's the result, please poke around, not time consuming, it will be a nice study break, I promise! (click on "ART 144" then "Final Animation)"
It's a work in progress and I intend to continue adding to it. I plan to use it in my thesis presentation, provided I get approval to persue an Honors thesis (fingers crossed).

So I'd really like feedback. On the interface, on the content, whatever comes to mind. I'd also love suggestions for other public artworks to include.

I recently recieved RIZE in my Netflix, which I never have time to watch anymore, and I watched it the other night instead of sleeping, cuz, you know.

The editing is a little heavy handed in spots but the dancing is absolutely amazing and it's really intersting look at subculture specific to L.A. If you haven't seen it you really should. It'll blow your mind.

I'm still trying to get ahold of Clowns in the Hood and KRUMP, no luck yet, if anyone has them I'd love to borrow them.

So I'm dealing with public art in my thesis and if anyone has the time to answer the following questions that'd be great. If not, hey I understand, it's that time of year.

> What does "public art" mean to you?
> How would you define "public"?
> How would you define "in public"?
> How would you define "the public"?
> What is your favorite piece of public art and why?
> Is there such thing as public artist or just artist who work in public (elaborate)?

Feel free to answer any or all of them.

Back to thesis with me.

I hadn't been on LJ since the 19th either. Basically since then I've been busting my balls to get all my finals stuff done. Flash project, Physics labgroup that totally flaked out on me and left me with all the work, papers, midterms...oh yeah and that chapter of our thesis, which I'm still not close enough to done with for my taste.

I really don't have much to say. My brain is fried and I just desperately need to post so that I won't force the big KF to give me a lower grade then I know she wants to *most charming smile*

So my chapter....coming along. Like halfway there...ish.
The problem is that i haven't had the time to do as much of my research this semester as I'd wanted.

Last night, as I was dilligently working away on thesis related stuff, a friend of mine decided that I needed a break. So she came over and brought her fiance and his friend. We were mostly playing video games and carrying on three conversations at once when my friend spotted my girlfriend's cell phone. It's one of those sleak, new "music phones". My friend immediately began to exclaim over the phone's cuteness and coolness, etc. She asked if my girlfriend had downloaded any music, which she hadn't because she didn't know how. So my friend brought out her phone to show her. My friend's phone, which she was given by a well-off friend who trades her's in every few months, was one of those cell/camera/mp3 player phones that flips open to reveal a larger screen, speakers, and a full qwerty keyboard. My girlfriend and I excalimed over the "sick"ness of her phone and she proceeded to extoll it's failings. Next thing I know everyone in the room had their phones out. Martinez (friend of fiance) was attempting to bluetooth his Razr to my friend's Sidekick to give her his ringtones, my friend was demonstrating to my girlfriend how to download media onto her phone, and fiance and I were comiserating about the realitve lameness of our phones.

Not to be predictable, but Melting Pot wasn't really my favorite movie. It did make me uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong, I do believe there is great value in being disturbed. I just sometimes wonder how effective things like that are. I mean I feel like I'm pretty sensitive to racial stuff and pretty aware of white hegemonies and stuff like that. In my case he's kinda preaching to the choir, and making me uncomfortable in the process, so not so effective on that level. And then what about the people who aren't already in the proverbial choir? How likely are they to watch a film called Melting Pot or RACE? I'm just not sure what the goal of that film was.

Having realized just how little downtime I'd been giving myself and the fact that I'd been neglecting my girlfriend horribly, I decided to do something I hadn't done in a long time, watch a movie.

We got Imagine Me & You through Netflix, and I was skeptical. The Netflix description said:

In this delightful romantic comedy that gives new meaning to the term cold feet , bride-to-be Rachel (Piper Perabo) is love-struck ... but not with her groom. Instead, as she's marching down the aisle with her longtime sweetheart, Heck (Matthew Goode), Rachel is immediately bewitched by a beautiful guest (Lena Headey). Now, the newlywed must choose between the safety of a familiar relationship and her heart's true desire.

Not a lot in the description and I wasn't sure if it was going to be bad or really bad, but the girlfriend had put it on the queue so I figured we'd watch it.

It turned out to be pretty good, considering it was a romantic comedy (a genre I do not have the highest esteem for). It managed to avoid most, if not all, of the major pitfalls of any movie focused around a lesbian relationship. (warning spoilers below, if you actually think you'll ever watch the movie and don't want me to spoil the ending, stop reading now!)

Within the context of this class and this blog, it seems that the real time, face to face interaction of in-class discussion is best for the development of a collaborative discourse on the readings, whereas this blog, by virtue of it's participants and the constraints placed upon it, seems to priveledge or atleast reward insubstantial and incomplete musings on unrelated or only tangentially related topics.

Therefore, I will herein discuss, not the salient points of the reading, but a stylistic element that stuck out to me, namely Manovich's use of "she" as the generic pronoun. I am not sure if Manovich is a man/woman/other/unspecified, I had the impression that Lev was a male name, but I'm not totally sure, but I find the unmarked use of "she" as the generic to be an interesting one.