confusion is super rampant

Well, I finished my Oxford essay today, sent in the application, and now I just gotta wait and see. Andrew was telling me the other day, though, that they take everyone who applies (unless they're real slacker-faces) and that there are always some empty spots in the program. So that's super exciting. I might have a shot after all. = )

I slept through bioethics this morning, so that means I got eight hours of sleep, which is also very exciting.

The play is opening tonight. Exciting.

The first senior show opens tomorrow night. And I know one of the people in it. Exciting.

And I refuse to think of all the other non-exciting things I have to do this weekend. Refuse, do you hear?

"LHOOQ...

which is very Dada, not only because it's a readymade - I mean, he bought this postcard outside the Louvre and then scribbled on it - but because of the intellectual play going on, and the wordplay. The title, for instance: if you say it out loud in French, it resembles a vulgar phrase, something along the lines of 'she has a hot ass.' "

Yes, that's what we've been learning about in art history. I have to say, modern art is a lot more entertaining than that stuffy ol' Renaissance stuff. Of course, aesthetically I'm attracted to very little of it, but I guess you can't win 'em all. At least it's intellectually stimulating.

I got six hours of sleep last night, which is not bad I guess. I should have gotten a lot less, but about 2 a. m. I just decided I couldn't stand being conscious anymore. I'm definitely on a downward swing after the euphoria of discovering I really could be an art major. And also the suspense is killing me (I still haven't gotten the promised summer letter from sophomore review).

But the worst was getting ready for today. Eventually I'm going to get more sleep and be done with all these silly research papers and applications and essays.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow night and seeing Noises Off, and I'm also looking forward to Friday in painting when a professor-artist-friend of Daniel Finch's is coming to give a presentation and talk to us about being an artist. So that's super-cool. I already have a ton of questions I'd like to ask.

Which brings me to the other exciting news from today: Daniel Finch is going to have a baby boy! (Well, I guess technically his wife is.) They saw the first ultrasounds this morning. He could barely keep his mind on the critique today in class. = ) It really is super exciting though. He really lights up when his daughter comes to visit him at work, so I can imagine he's totally excited for another one. He says they're stopping at two. I dunno, though. Babies have a way of convincing people they need more babies. (I can practically hear Abbi in my head... "Oh, Babies!") = D

personhood is more than a technical achievement, how ever impressive it may be

Says one of the theoreticians I've been reading on behalf of my bioethics research paper. It's on artificial intelligence. The sad thing is, I've gone 700 words (OK, 710) over the minimum requirement, and I know that I've barely scratched the surface. I'm just hoping I scratched the surface in a coherent, articulate way so that I'll get an amazingly great grade. The paper is worth almost one quarter of the entire semester's grade.

Tomorrow: Bioethics paper due. Pick up certification form and mail off the rest of my Oxford application, make sure to send electronic portion after verifying the courses I want. Visit the internship center if at all possible.
Wednesday: deadline day at the newspaper, photography critique, painting critique, and visual analysis due.
Thursday: create a display for the newspaper booth at the organization fair on Friday. Also go see Noises Off, Messiah College theatre department's latest rendition.
Friday: Whatever the flipping heck I want to do. (Only in actuality, it will probably involve more research for my art history term paper, the bioethics debate on eugenics, the next photo project, and lots of reading homework.)

No, this list is not just so I can be whiny. It's there so I don't forget. The next few days are tight, and I figure the entire internet is less likely to crash than I am to lose a list.

Today I had a very nice conversation with Daniel Finch in painting about Sophomore Review. He said I almost made him cry when I started talking about my photo, and told me a story about this artist's talk he gave once where he got all emotional (even less socially acceptable for a guy to cry in public than a girl), and reassured me that being a good render-er does not necessarily make you an artist. He said that emotional honesty and concepts from real life went a lot further towards making you a good artist than does being able to paint perfectly realistically. I felt a lot better. I like him lots. Unfortunately, the fact that I like him lots makes me work a lot harder for his class. Which means I get less sleep than maybe I should.

Alright, enough time wasting. I'm still alive, and still pretty happy. Actually, I'm really happy, which is absurd when you consider the work this week involves.

he's so totally ninja

Today, I saw an episode of Marti Stauffer's Wild America on TV. It made me really happy. That was teh coolest nature show ever when we were little. I just thought I would let everyone know.

And also, part of my camera fell off. Does anyone know if you can order just a film rewinder knob all by itself?

Update: Artificial Intelligence is driving me batty. Too much information.

...and, vaster, some realms i owned, two rivers....

Well, layout got done at about 12:30 last night, so that was totally amazing and much sooner than I thought it would be. Thank heaven. So I actually got about 5 or 5 1/2 hours of sleep last night. Normally that little sleep would result in me falling asleep in bioethics, but I was so nervous about sophomore review that I stayed awake the whole time (and even participated!). Kudos to Sharon for relating natural selection to the idea of self-diagnosing and self-prescribing healthcare.

Also kudos to everyone I've been dumping on about how nervous I was about sophomore review, and about photo class yesterday. Kudos to you!

Sophomore review actually went really well, I think. I'm not confident that I really covered all the relevant information about each project, but I tried. And everyone seemed really affirming about trying to combine art and english more. And they were super nice. Even Ted Prescott, who I didn't know at all (he actually had some of the most intelligent questions about the english major, which would make sense, because he also writes books and things). People also seemed interested in my career goals, which was kind of cool too. I have to admit, I got a little bit emotional when I started talking about that photograph again (I brought it in because it's one of the few pieces I've made that really had meaning beyond the aesthetics), but they were also super nice about that.

So I'm still kind of anxious about the written comments I'll get back, but I feel much much better, and I do feel that it went well. I now feel really super relaxed. Almost langourous ("A dreamy, lazy mood or quality," according to dictionary.com).

Also, in the process of getting my pieces ready for sophomore review, I realized how many of my favorite pieces involved photography or manipulation of photographs in some way. So that's sort of made me think I should head toward photography for my senior show. And it fits with my skills, I think: average rendering, but good design. I think that's pretty much what everyone agreed on, is that I was good at design and have made lots of improvement since I came. And that I should definitely keep on trying to integrate english and art.

I think I've now said that three times. So, dear peoples, farewell. I'm off to complete my assignment for poetry class in an hour. = )

every psychopath has his own magazine these days

Or, in my case, a blog!

I had the dress-up dream again last night.

I walk into my old room on Ash Drive and open the closet to get dressed for church (although I'm pretty sure it's not a Sunday in my dream). Every piece of dress-up clothing I've ever owned (and some that I'm pretty sure I just made up) is hanging in the closet, but I can't find anything to wear to church. I start going through the closet and trying on every single piece of clothing, sometimes four or five at a time, hoping that if I put them and think hard enough they'll turn into what I want to wear to church, or that if I layer enough of them they'll suddenly start looking super cool.

This repeats until I wake up, sometimes interlaced with hunting for a mirror or the bathroom, neither of which I ever find. I think it surfaced again because of sophomore review tomorrow. I mean, it's definitely an anxiety dream, and I've been pretty fixated on deciding what I'm going to wear tomorrow, so put the two together and there you go....

Today was a rough day. I mean, Wednesdays are always long, but today's been super long. I cried in photo class, which is just not a socially acceptable thing to do. I didn't even realize I was going to get all emotional until I started talking about one of my photos. I mean, I knew it was pretty important, and I knew that it had emotional meaning, but I didn't know it was that much of a tear-jerker. And also I cried on and off all afternoon after that because I'm just really stressed out and I can't handle feeling like a social misfit on top of everything else I've got to do. But at least it's better to cry because I made art that's important to me than to cry because my boyfriend broke up with me or something silly like that...right? (Not that crying when your boyfriend breaks up with you is silly per se, it's just not the sort of thing you ought to cry in class about. If you're that distraught about it, don't go to class.)

And on top of everything else, I had to go to a study-abroad orientation meeting tonight. Right. in. the. middle. of. deadline. night. (d'you like how the extra periods give preternatural weight to every word? Good device: will be used later.) So that practically guarantees that I'll be up until 2 or 3 a.m. In order to cope with sophomore review, I'd like more than just a few hours' sleep. I would also not like to have to go to bioethics, as well as be able to skip chapel (but no, it's one required for the honors congress, dangit). Yes, I'm being totally whiny and completely breaking my Lenten vows. I'll be better next week.

well, i guess that means i'm going back to school

Estimated arrival time 7:00 p.m. Which means we leave here at 5:00 a.m. Yeah. I know, it's crazy early.

So, peoples who are in bioethics class with me: did you hear about the drug trials in England that left six people in critical condition with multiple organ failure? They're all still alive, and two of them are now receiving less organ support, but two of them are in critical condition and still unconscious. They weren't even sick and could have received no benefit from the test even if it went well. Oh, but wait, they were paid $3,000 to participate in the trial. There's now talk that the antibody/protein the drug is supposed to stimulate occurs only in humans, so the fact that the animal trials were safe means squat. Can you imagine being responsible for such a fiasco?

OK, now that I've totally been grim for a whole paragraph (I could be grim about upcoming sophomore review, papers not done yet, and the bioethics paper which is almost 1/4 of our grade, or the bioethics debate which is coming up ridiculously soon, not to mention work, the upcoming photo crit, my oxford application, painting, and the fact that Persphone's broken... but really, who wants to hear about all that? =)

I totally lost my train of thought. Ummm.... Oh yeah. Now that I've been grim for a bit, here's a sample of the fun and games Avery and I have been having with stick figures over break. Bask in our infinite amazingness:

Yeah, fool. Take that. For those of you who can't read my handwriting, it says: "Look out! It's Happy Bob! He's crushing New York with his supersonic laugh!"

it's the ides of march!

Et tu Brute?

Ah yes, the day when every bibliophile remembers Julies Caesar. And those of us who took some form of latin savor the correct pronunciation of Caesar... kiesar. And then we proclaim that we shall go, and see, and conquer whatever remains in the rest of this month.

I think I've got my sophomore review pieces lined up, and now I just have to work on matting some of them, cleaning and repairing a few other pieces, and oh yeah, write those papers.... Grandma got me this totally cute skirt though, and I think I'm going to wear it to sophomore review. So, now that the vital issue of "what to wear" has been decided, it's going to be a complete breeze. Thanks for all your support. If you like what you've seen here today, give us a call, at reader-supported MZB (stands for MackenZie's Blog).....

Yes, I've been watching too much PBS. And also cartoons. People laugh at me, but I like cartoons. Not a ton of them all at once or anything, but I like them. They're predictable, and don't approximate real life in any way shape or form. And also they have lots of bright colors, and flattened forms which are modernist... I wonder what a postmodern cartoon would look like? Random, I know, but I'm curious. Would we see a return to chiaroscuro?

And since this has now degenerated into the fact that I simply don't know what to say, au revoir!

i have so totally arrived home

And on the way home, I thought of this great idea to explore for my senior show. Maybe. Anyway, I'd like to explore it and possibly use it for senior show. 'Cause that would be cool. If, that is, I can figure out what medium I want to use.... I need to start deciding that stuff pretty soon, because I'll have to take a 2 level course of whatever medium it is. Like, first semester I get back from abroad.

And yeah, I'm home. Gots to do ma homework eventually, too.

fred hatched!

That's our moth. Meredith's moth, rather. He came out of his coccoon today. And we got to see him. And his name is Fred. He's apparently a polyphemous moth (gosh I hope I spelled that right). I have soooo much work to do before spring break, but I'm excited that it's almost here.

For instance, sophomore review is soon after we get back from break. Thursday the 22 to be exact. My appointment is for 11 a.m. I am so scared. That means I need to get a move on and select, mat, and repair any pieces that need it.

And right now, I need to get back to work, and in the in-betweens, I need to finish writing out my art history flashcards and memorize the crap out of them. And also finish my painting. And pack. And do dishes. And do a load of laundry. And write a poem.

I did arrange for all my references for oxford, so that's good. And also I critiqued the whole poetry packet, did bioethics responses and reading, and many other things.

So, goodbye. For another little while.

and so goes the story

Well! I have now officially attended my first bridal shower. And also my first lingerie party. Pret-ty funny. = ) Nah, it was fun. I enjoyed it. Lots and lots of chinese food and snacks, and games, and stories, and laughing.

I've also attended my first rave, although I'm not sure it actually counts as a rave if there was no drug use involved. I'm told there were a couple people running around in their bras though, at one point (and by people I mean girls). Dumb hippies.

I counted the rave as practice being comfortable in my own skin, I guess. I mean, if you can't learn to dance idiotically in college, when can you? And also I took a lot of motion photos there, despite a malfunctioning camera, and a few of them are even decent looking, so that's totally exciting.

And I spent about five hours in the studio tonight and five hours in the darkroom.... yeah, it's been a long day. Brain is not functioning so well. So I'm going to go to sleep.

it's the weekend! woohoo!

So, I'd like to post one of my poems on my lenten thoughts, but I'm getting paranoid again about the perils of the internet and intellectual property. So... I guess that's right out.

Spring break is coming up soon. Really soon.

This is not helping my motivational issues.

Nor is Abhorsen. Although I think I might have to crash at Liz, Lucy, & Sharon's tonight. All this talk of the Dead is creeping me out.

Although I really hope Garth Nix is a prolific writer.

"Abraham Lincoln once said, 'do you ever find yourself speaking with the dead?' "

go see this, right now

Click here.

woohoo! let's party!

We finished layout today at 12:30! It's a new record! And on top of an extra hour's sleep, I don't have to go to chapel tomorrow morning. Also, I've read two pleasure books in the past two days. It's been great. And on top of that, spring break officially starts in only nine days. And I get to see my mommy even before that. And also, I love cookies.

It's sort of funny that I'm so excited we got done with layout early that I'm hyper and probably won't be able to sleep.

Katie, my editor, says that she keeps hearing about last semester, and how Meghan and Jackie were there every Wednesday night until 3 a.m. I didn't think we were particularly efficient, but now I think we must be. Of course, Jackie and Meghan never cut off the ends of any articles....

"and one slow, swan-walking figure."
- Me.

Ah, Manet, thank you for showing us the way to quote our own artwork, and not just that of antiquity.