UMB, MPG

Pet peeve. When I was between four and five feet tall I’d go to the grocery store with my father every Sunday. I enjoyed walking across the parking lot, observing the birds nesting in the letters on the side of the store. “UMB Bank”. Just like I thought the airline was literally pronounced “twah,” I believed the bank to be “uhmmb”. Imagine my concern when I learned the adult world was calling something the “United Missouri Bank Bank”.

Today a radio personality enthused about cars with “25, 30, 35 MPGS! MPGS you wouldn’t believe!” You know, the minivan I drove in highschool ran at 36 MPGS. Miles Per GallonS. Two gallons, to be precise.

Anyhow. Drummer continues to be the most wonderful creature. I can’t imagine being without him. And I picked out classes for next semester.

Really?

I still have hope for the world because of Craigslist’s Missed Connection and Free sections. Craigslist came into my life a bit less than a year ago, and has brought me:

- dates, good and bad, which became fodder for a documentary

- subjects to interview for the documentary

- Drummer

- an apartment and roommate which do not suck

- various furniture

- fodder for other art endeavors

- a 250GB USB2.0 external hard drive

- knowledge that a fainting goat can be obtained for $40, and that some males believe declaring their need for a BJ entitles them to one.

For anyone who does not think Freud is total crap, I would recommend the book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, by Carol Clover. My own enjoyment is hampered by the provisional statement in the first sentence, but it is still fascinating.

I have devised a simple system for shooting first-person POV anaglyphic 3D video. If you have access to power tools, the whole rig is very affordable.

I turn 21 on October 8th, and have no classes until two the next day. Excellent.

drop of/f the world

School started last Monday. I am getting my mind kicked back into shape, though it is not a pleasant process. I feel high-strung, nervous, and grouchish. I am putting two pieces in a 6-person show for the 13th. This is short notice. One piece is not complete. I do not know when I will find time.

Drummer has a new job. It was getting very dire there for a bit before he got severance pay from the last. This new one starts tomorrow. I think he is excited.

Blah. Political hypocrasy is rampant, that’s all I’ll say on that front.

workteeth

The work I’m currently doing is often frustrating. I shoot and edit for a wee start-up of dubious organization. I see myself bailing sometime during the coming semester and finding an internship for the spring– although for the moment it’s enough to cover rent, touch Final Cut Pro, and work with friends.

The company is going to fail because our project manager is leaving for a prestigious grad school. Everything will dissolve into chaos and the boss– who knows little of our day-to-day workings– will micro-manage us ineptly. Today the project manager was caring for his sick daughter and working from home. He gave me instructions for the day’s tasks by phone. An hour later the boss said we had enough of the type of clip I was creating. This is blatantly untrue, as 30-50 of those unique clips are needed for every project, and any excess clips I created could be applied to the next. He had never even seen any kind of catalog of the number of clips already created, so his statement was mind-bogglingly ignorant.

Also there was a used q-tip in the restroom that stuck to the bottom of my foot. Retch-worthy!

There are still upsides to the job. I work with friends, I’m within biking distance of my apartment, and there is a kitchen (not clean) downstairs. Also, on Friday I had my wisdom teeth (all 3) removed, and all concerned have been very kind. I didn’t go in at all yesterday and only half a day today. The pills to kill the pain make me nauseous, and it’s hard to endure without them.

Drummer is a prize boy. He took a half-day yesterday to take care of me. Both times I’ve woken because the pain-killers wore off he comforted me until the new pills let me sleep. In a few hours I’ll be hugging him again– and enjoying marinated artichoke hearts he’s bringing!

Rant, rant, anxiety.

Rant: While perusing the Facebook, tanned female crotch caught my eye on an old friend’s profile. The cause? A “What kind of lingerie are you?” quiz. Okay, _______ is a g-string. How fascinating. Only it wasn’t a g-string, it was labeled as a “v-string”. Ready to lol at the clueless code-monkey who made the typo, I googled the term. Victoria’s Secret is trying to deny that if it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck… Meh.

Rant: When did Threadless.com become so high-end? My first purchases from them were made at $10/shirt. Now they’re touting $25 sales. Good for them, but bad for those of us likely to blow $50 on five shirts a year or $0 on a potential two shirts. Damn hipsters.

Anxiety: Flatmate. Heard through the reputable side of the grapevine that he may have done some physically invasive things to at least one female while drunk, while having a girlfriend of his own. No good. May be considering locks on main and bathroom doors, just in case. I trust him not to be creepy while sober, which is 90% of the time, and I feel fairly safe as Drummer has been over (or I at his apartment) most nights of the week. He has been a solid flatmate so far and has shown no signs of ever disrespecting my space. There is also a chance that the flatmate has been confused with his former flatmate, who really was an alcoholic skeeze. I am hoping this is the case, and am gathering information to confirm that more reassuring hypothesis.

Passing On

I remember the earthy, dense smell of my mother’s menses in the old bathroom. By the time I was twelve the smell was gone. An addition to our house added two bathrooms, and she ended her fertile years just as I hit mine.

I remember wondering if she was aware of the strange odor that came from her a few days a month. I doubt she was, because now I am unable to detect my own period-scent.

Excellence.

The semester is over, and even without seeing my final grades, I am certainly a junior. Tomorrow I’ll be watching a few friends get their diplomas.

Tonight I am beginning to move to my new apartment. The futureroommate, as I’ve been calling him in my mind, seems like a good dude. His friends? We’ll see. I am about to go over there armed with air freshener, paper towels, endust, and murphy’s wood oil soap. I love murphy’s, probably because of memories of my mother washing and re-waxing the floors every other year when I was a kid.

And tonight? Greek food, my favorite boy, and my currentroommate’s performance art piece in conjunction with her boy. Excellent.

But while we’re on the subject of soap, I have some advice for vagina-owning readers and anyone involved with vaginas. Never, ever put anything down there as lubricant that is not explicitly marketed as such. Ever. Not even stuff you’ve put there before for other reasons, or stuff that you put on the rest of your body. NEVER. This is shit they need to teach us in high school.

And on that note, would the searchers for “suckmy cock” and “suck mycock” go back to remedial typing class? Thanks.

eaten life

School and my scanty social scene have eaten my life– I have had few thoughts worth sharing and even less time to share them. Expect a comeback in the next week or two.

disjoint

Today is Drummer’s birthday, making him 125% of my age. Happy birthday to him! In honor of the day, a real conversation, paraphrased:

Drummer: “You’ll meet my friend tomorrow and we’re basically the same person– sometimes we go off on nerd tangents.”
unlegion: “Technological singularity nerd tangents or video game nerd tangents?”
Drummer: “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be able to follow our conversation.”
unlegion: “No, I mean, I’ll be able to contribute to the singularity. Video games, I’ll be completely lost.”

Perhaps that seems funnier to me than it possibly could to anyone else.

sousveillance

I’m intrigued by the idea of sousveillance. Firefox apparently doesn’t even recognize it as a word. Surveillance for the watching from above; equiveillance for mutual watching; sousveillance for watching from below. I’d like to structure some art pieces around this, and the ways people submit to watching when it’s done from a position of authority (traffic cams, etc.) but rebel when equiveilled (a college brat on the street with a video camera). There’s something pithy there.

On the topic of traffic cams, the last time I was back in my home town I witnessed for the first time the cameras that flash and take a picture when someone goes through a red light. As far as I could perceive, it misfired three times while I waited at the light– right turn reds in my state are legal unless otherwise posted. A number of studies show that these highly distracting flashes actually increased the number of crashes or had no effect on driving safety at all. Bah humbug, and what a waste of money.

I have obtained the first light sunburn of the year, and tomorrow I’ll be seeing Drummer again, if only for a few minutes. It’s official– he’s my boyfriendperson. This is an excellent turn of events, and I look forward to living closer to him, as the current commute is harsh on my finals-approaching eighteen-credit self. This summer may be fabulous.