Yeah We Killed It, We Killed It All Night

This christmas, I have a rather unique gift request. It is something I very, very much want. Trust me, there is nothing you could give that could mean more.

I want you to describe me.

Clarifications:

I want at least one page.
You are describing me, not how I make you feel or how you feel about me.
I want faults/flaws/and blatant wrongs.
I'd also like my best features too if you could manage.
If you could, the more pages the better.
And another thing. Give at least a bit of thought as to how I see myself. Write about that if it seems worth including, since that's a pretty big part of me.

Please put a lot of thought into this.
I will appreciate it deeply.

-Out

I Miss You And No One Will Do But You

If you don't buy the new Say Anything CD it is incontrovertible proof that you hate happiness, America, and love, in addition to yourself. This is not hyperbole, it is a statement of fact. Doubt and be dubbed a pinko-commie.

So the truly mind boggling number of votes on the novel poll is overwhelming. I had no idea you all cared so much. Yes, I am a sarcastic little bastard.

My life has been thrown completely off by the loss of my car. I'm still trying to get on track.

Bah, back to schoolwork.

-Chow

You Will Take The Driver's Seat, And I Will Take The Captain's Chair

Happy Birthday (belated on the blog) to Zach. He is now 20. I'm sure he feels completely the same after this utterly arbitrary bookmark in his life, but he's one year closer to the willful debauchery I now know as 21.

Recently I have had an epiphany. I know what you're saying: "Mike, you have a new epiphany every g*dd*amn week" And you would be right, but this does nothing to lesson the impact these profundities have upon my consciousness!

Experience is the fundamental building block of the self. Our ability to draw upon our unique experiences is what makes us both sentient and individual. It is at the core of our closest ties and the vast gulfs between us.

I have very few experiences.

No wonder no one remembers me! No wonder I am so "normal!" I have little more than the most base experiences shared by most 21 year old over-intelligent young men! Nothing to make me individual! Nothing to make me stand out! I am little more than 21 years of avoiding developing a personality! My experience-poverty is what made me so miserable for so long! Lets use another exclamation point! More still!!!!!

But all enthusiasm aside, this is a huge realization. The reason I am changing so rapidly now is that I am gathering experiences. Ever since I met Kam and realized the source of her happiness was the way she lived life with open eyes, I've been experiencing like I never did before. Each moment is something I want to be rich, and full, and add to who I am. The side effect is that the human being I am is changing at an incredible pace. It's hard to reconcile with my core self... the identity I've held for so long. The foundation on which I'm built. I do not have skills to process change at this rate... and it's difficult.

And I'm only scratching the surface. I do here by declare I will experience more still. Life is not an elegant narrative. It is an act. You do not observe it, you live it. Living is a conscious effort. A decision is made. I will live. No more being scared of all that could go wrong. Because failure is an experience too... and experience is good.

-Chow

Eh?

She's Not Mobile She Just Watches Me

First: Might I Give "In Rainbows" the new album from Radiohead a hearty recommendation. "Reckoner" is a personal favorite.

Furthermore Big Team Battle on XBL with Halo 3 is fantastic.

I am a motha-frickin' grill master. I don't know if I could grill something not delicious even if I wanted to. Jokes.

November rapidly approaches... time to start laying out a plot for my book.

I'll let you all choose which plot... so yes... NEW POLL!

-Out

A Sample of My New Video Skills

I have been using this program less than 24 hours.

This is what the original looked like...

I Have To Do This For Myself

So I have a confession. It's an ugly one.

This makes sense.

That's a very uncomfortable fact.

In other news, there is a desperate need to understand why "Hard Sun" by Sir Eddie Vedder* is so endearing to me. But I freaking love it.

Now work at Best Buy.

More later?

-Chow

Was His Demise So Carefully Constructed

As a student of design, there are a few things that are drilled into you from the beginning. The first and foremost being that you are not an artists. You do not make art. Design and art are inexplicably seperated by the vasty seas of wanting to seem more professional than all the other wankers in the Art School.

At Herron, so pervasive is the cock-jockying that it is the Herron School of Art and Design. I am still an art student... everyone calls me an art major. Now I just sound pathetic trying to make the stupid distinction between the two. There is a definite distinction, and if you know anything about the two it will jump out and bite you in the face. (Designers are soulless corporate cum-dumpsters while Artists are self-important wastes of otherwise marketable water and carbon). But to the layman, that's like trying to explain the largely superfluous differences between AMD and Intel. The reply is always "Who gives a shit?"

So it is a hilarious irony that has us always describing things as compositions and pieces. I have to turn in 50 pieces by Friday or whatever. I could be in Drawing 35 for all I know. Except that my pieces are inane bullshit about balancing the use of light and dark and not about anything anyone else would give a shit about. An Art Student can take his Painting 2 shit home and mom and dad say, "Gee son, that's a beautiful bowl of fruit." I take my VC 1 stuff home, and everyone wonders why they are paying $20K a year for their son to arrange like... 15 colorful squares on a blank field.

Another problem is that even more so than art, non-designers don't know how we shit, let alone how we work. (and there is a very special designer shitting ritual.*) If I draw a dude, you can at least judge it based on whether it looks like a gremlin with down syndrome or a person. If you look at my page layout you don't really see the difference. If you can fucking read it, you call me a success and move on... which is like telling you that your food doesn't have botulism, there for you are a good cook. It's a nice feeling, but you clearly don't have a goddamn clue. (not that you should, this is the most esoteric , worthless field in creation, basically histories greatest con job, after philosophers).

Which takes me to the next problem: Designers like artists are a bunch of self-important, arrogant twats that want nothing so much as to have sex with themselves. That translates to dick in commradre and support for you fellow designer. If I get excited about my new design for my lead page of an art-book (for my not art), the only people who could even begin to understand why I have a boner will only tell me my dick is too small. Talking about design theory to designers is like talking about politics to guitar majors, they are quite sure you're an idiot and that you're just conforming to some one's stupid notion, when it's obvious the only reasonable thing is to conform to their stupid notion.

So this gives us a frustrated, twitchy Mike, who has a whole bunch of praise from people who love him dearly but don't know what he's doing, and a whole bunch of shit from holier-than-thou fellow design students quite sure they have solved the problems of the world with their newest san-serif font. All the while, I'm plugging away in various Adobe programs struggling to last through college and get to the other side where he can have the freedom to work from home away from all the assholes masturbating in front of their mirror.

-Chow

*there is no shitting ritual, I lied.

I Don't Know Why You Say Goodbye I Say Hello

For hilarity I give you:

Goodbye Beautiful Day

Topic for today's rant: Seasons

More specifically, Fall. It may be the worst season possible. I know, right, you're thinking "Mike, it's beautiful, it's wonderful weather, and it has halloween."

You are so very wrong.

I bring this up because the calendar is rapidly spiraling down into the abyss of winter, the last tatters of summer falling like autumn leaves on the trees. And there is the kicker. Fall sometimes pretends to be summer. But it lies. Oh does it ever lie. Because the next day it will be a hajillion degrees below too-f*cking cold. And that is unacceptable.

I wake up in the morning and I put on clothes. These clothes are chosen, primarily, on the weather of the preceding day. 75 degrees on Monday, I'll be wearing shorts Tuesday. 90 degrees Tuesday, I'll be wearing boxers and staying indoors with the air conditioning Wednesday. There is a progression here. But in Autumn, oh no... you see, in Autumn... Wednesday would be like... 55 degrees. And now I have hypothermia. It's not right! Damned be the temperate zones!

Another problem with Fall is the weather. It can't make up it's mind. One minute, sun. Next minute, Noah's Flood. And it's not the romantic kiss-in-me warm rain of spring and summer. Oh no... it's the icy daggers of want to be snow. And it lacerates my body temperature like I desire to do to so many Mac designer's tires.

Finally: halloween. Most vile of Autumn's sins. You know why?

I'm too old to do it without looking like a pedophile or a jerk-wad.

So all told, Autumn is good for pictures and little more. Give me summer!

Please?

~Chow