Glogster --- How-To

1. Become familiar with the "Top Glogs" by reading them at this URL: http://www.glogster.com/top/ . This way, you can get a sense of what glogs are all about.

2. Register for Glogster here: http://www.glogster.com/register/

3. Fall in love for the first time.

4. If your object of affection does not return the favor, good! You are about to become a fabulous glogger! Skip to step 7. If you are lucky enough to find your affection is mutual, proceed to step 5.

5. Become clingy. Demand confirmation of love and validation for it from your object of affection. Suspect that your lover is not faithful, and spy on him or her.

6. Whatever you do, make sure that you cause a big, bad, sticky breakup.

7. Experience arduous emotional tasks, like crying all night long, or seeing your ex/unrequited love in public regularly, or better yet, watch your best friend date said object of interest.

8. Become interested in photography or drawing manga, if you have not already.

9. Draw pictures of crying Japanese cartoons, or take pictures of yourself with pained expressions and emo hair. Oh yeah, I forgot, you have to have emo hair for this. And a lot of makeup, especially around the eyes. This goes for both boys and girls.

10. Write original poetry about your pain.

11. Combine your pictures and poetry on glogster as a glog. Use all the tools to find the right graphics, titles, fonts, frames, and so on to make everything fit harmoniously.

12. Make sure that you have a sophisticated, symbolic color schema for your glog, one that is in keeping with the mood you create with the culmination of everything: image, poem, popular song that was indie but went viral but you found it first so back off already, and fonts.

13. Publish glog.

14. Rinse.

15. Repeat.

Glogster --- "Red Malt"

Glogster.

So I have this assignment to familiarize myself with an unfamiliar genre, and so I got to know glogs this past week. I also had to make my own version of the genre, so I made this glog. You'll notice that the original poetry is not only in iambic quatrameter, it's also sort of emo. That's on purpose. These kids on glogster are super depressed --- all they ever post about is being sad, and suicidal --- it's disgusting. Someone should really take them horseback riding, or swimming, or something --- just give them something to write about besides this demented, fractured take on their very small, egocentric universe.

Candy

Candy is evil.

It's addictive, and it kills. It is legal crack. If candy weren't in existence, how might the world be different? How many lives would extend, athletes emerge, and diabetics cease their sobs in the night, depressed by the denial of access to the pervasive stuff that binds us to its memory, a binding fashioned as Gollum was bound to the ring? The world needs a candy Frodo to expel the ubiquitous power of this Earth's one ring: candy.

Of course, that's not how I really feel, but it's fun to read, right?

...Merry Christmas?

 Cousin It never looked so "it."

 I have beautiful sisters.Yes, I claim to be influenced by  Caravaggio.

 Woody is not my sister.

Happy holidays!

Yes, Yes. I Know. It Isn't American.

Do you ever get sick of the basic American values in film?  Do lust, explosions, and superficial plots bore you? Imagine that! It may be time to give foreign films a serious try. Here's a quick list of a few very good ones:

Kitchen Stories

This is a Swedish film about two men who become friends while one is conducting a study of the other's behavior in the kitchen. It is extremely funny, in an awkward sort of way.

Howl's Moving Castle

This is a Japanese film based on the book of the same title by Diana Wynn Jones. It's about a cowardly but powerful wizard named Howl and an insecure but loved woman named Sophie. The themes are self perception, bravery, and forgiveness. It is so well adapted to the screen, and so beautifully animated, that watching it is like reading a beautiful poem. Same goes for all Studio Ghibli films I have ever viewed.

The Color of Paradise

This is an Iranian film about a blind boy and his father, who finds it difficult to love  his disabled boy. The story is about family love, forgiveness, and God. It is poignant and full of hope. The director, Majid Majidi, also directed Children of Heaven, another favorite of mine about two siblings who share a pair of shoes.

The Road Home

This is a Chinese film about love and total fidelity. It breaks my heart in a way American films have never been able to. It is tender in a way no chick flick ever was.

Joyeux Noel

This is French film about armies during Christmas during the first world war. It will probably make you cry, even though the lip synching for the "Opera" singers is pretty off, especially the woman.

Not every foreign film is good. I have seen some truly terrible ones, truth be told, but there are some real gems waiting to be viewed, like these ones!

That is all.

Time. Time? Time!

"Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."
-Benjamin Franklin (A Pennsylvanian, by the way).

I am not living purposefully.

I can tell by the way the days all run into each other, and nothing happens, even though I am doing things constantly. Where have all the minutes gone? College is like a time vortex. It squeezes all the seconds into a little, tiny box called "Your Bachelor Degree" and then hangs it up on the wall for later misplacement.

I feel a pervasive panic every time I stop to think. The panic is generated by the impending and possibly present inability to change the course of a life. Where I am, I have been for some time, and where I am, I will be for some time to come. Where I want to go seems to be so far from where I am, and it seems that this rate of progression is not sufficient to find the satisfaction associated with finding myself where I want to be. If I could only pause the flow of time, and strategize more effectively, could I become what I would be?

Mumford and Sons: Sigh No More

I like Amazon mp3 downloads. They have $5.00 albums that are sometimes really popular artists like Shakira, the Black Eyed Peas, and Lady Gaga. Sometimes, they are really terrible indie bands that never will make it, because that takes talent.

Mumford and Sons is a band with talent. They have one album (which was five dollars when I bought it, but now it's eight), and it is lovely: passionate, raw, and delightfully executed. I'm excited to see what  they'll do now that they have my attention.

MUSE: The Resistance

If the Rebel Alliance hadn't been a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, then maybe they could have listened to this album and been motivated to squelch the Galactic Empire in exponentially less time.

That is all.

Pre Blessed

sat·ire

–noun

1.

the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing,denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

2.

a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human follyand vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

3.

a literary genre comprising such compositions.

Vacuums Like Broadswords and other Household Conundrums

I have always thought our vacuum is old and disgusting, so I finally googled it thinking I'd find it had been recalled back in '83, but actually I found it's going for $492.95 on Amazon.

Seriously? Wielding that thing is like hefting a broadsword. Who spends have a thousand dollars on such a thing? This guy does:

Do you see how he's smiling? That's because he just got the exact same workout vacuuming his living room as he would have battling both Legolas and Gimli for Middle Earth.

It's the New Year, Step In Time!

re·solve

1.to come to a definite or earnest decision about; determine (to do something): I have resolved that I shall live to the full.

2.to separate into constituent or elementary parts; break up; cause or disintegrate (usually fol. by into ).

5.to reduce by mental analysis (often fol. by into ).

6.to settle, determine, or state formally in a vote or resolution, as of a deliberative assembly.

I love defining words. We refer to life as "chaptered," and chapters are composed of paragraphs, which are constituted of sentences, which are made of words. Ergo, understand words = understand life.

Resolve. A resolution is made by one who has resolved: and isn't it interesting how decisions and reductions are related in these definitions? As decisions are made, possibilities are eliminated. When you chose to go to a certain school, the possible other choices you had before resolving upon that decision no longer exist. When you chose X, you no longer will possibly chose Y or Z. Resolve. Reduce.

Life is no more than a series of resolutions: conscious or not, life is reduced until all options are up. That is when we die. What is to be done with the finite time we have on the Earth?

In these bodies we live, in these bodies we die.
Where you invest your love, you invest your life.
(Mumford and Sons, Awake My Soul)

Oftentimes, people make new-year's (is it a resolution owned by the new year (new year's) or a resolution made for new years to come (new years)? I don't know) resolutions: highly self-aware goals to be accomplished in the new year. It's rather postmodern, this self-awareness. I could talk about Lacanian mirrors right now, but I won't. A lot, I've discovered, have to do with health: I resolve to go on this diet, or I resolve to run a marathon this year, or I resolve to become a vegetarian. My mother is not eating candy this year (I'm doing it with her. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal until I realized that chocolate truffles are candy). We resolve to eat no candy.

What we resolve upon is performative. Resolutions design the character of a man. Who are you? What have you resolved upon? How have you simplified life: funneling it into chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words?

These are my words.