My movie I’ve been waiting all day to watch is scratched and won’t play. Evil optical media. I feel like this is an omen. *scowl*

> Cut Copy - Future, A Dream [and every song on the album]

I’m in love with these new bands I downloaded, Cut Copy and Chromeo. I like Cut Copy a lot more, it sounds amazing… eighties pop made perfect because it’s recorded on modern equipment. I love “Time Stands Still, ” because they use a Human League sample. Chromeo is sort of electropop with some Franz Ferdinand thrown in. “Needy Girl” and “Rage” have some catchy samples.

After work I went over to Ben Franklin and bought another canvas. I had another idea for a painting. I painted half of it tonight. I diluted the paints a lot more than I usually do so they weren’t so matte, and it helped me a lot. When I was slowly building the painting up from barely any pigment, I had a lot more control over what the finished product look like, and as I was halfway done with the work that I was doing, I realized where I wanted to go with it and was very pleased that I didn’t just rush through with a half-baked idea. I’m letting my first painting dry so that I can put some differently colored layers on it, but I think that one will be really cool once I finish it. I’m going to have to get an incredibly small brush to do the waveform in the middle, but by the time it dries I will have money again.

I did math basically all day long since I got home, so after my night class, I took great pleasure in painting and watching The Daily Show and such. I’ve been wanting to watch this movie called The Dreamers ever since I got it from Netflix, so I think that’s what I’m going to do before it gets too late.

I just finished watching The Red Violin. It was incredible. I loved it.

> Portishead - Only You
> String Tribute to Nine Inch Nails
> Lacquer - X
> Weezer - Island in the Sun
> Propellerheads - Winning Style
> Robots in Disguise - Boys, Diy

I can’t believe I’ve gone three days without writing. I’ve been in this really strange mood. I’ve been wondering if maybe Crescent City has won, and I’ve given in to the dark side. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been getting enough sleep. I’m pleased with how today turned out though.

Last night me, Misty, and Katelyn watched Rosemary’s Baby. It wasn’t as scary as usual, probably because we were struggling to stay awake towards the end. And the lights were on. I got maybe five hours sleep, but it wasn’t so bad because I had gotten a lot earlier in the week. I was so exhausted today that I passed out as soon as I got home and just woke up maybe 30 minutes ago.

I checked my e-mail, and to my delight, Joe e-mailed me back! I had even been thinking to myself today about how depressing it was that he hadn’t gotten back to me, and he did! w00t. I will have to read it again because when I read it I was half asleep, but it was a very long one. I really love waking up in the middle of the night, it makes me feel like I’m recapturing some of my lost teenage years. I used to stay up all night all the time. I also watched some Daria as I made some oatmeal, which got me even more into nostalgia mode. Well, so much for that.

I restarted my Netflix membership because I was bored out of my mind with my existence. That and I want to rent and copy the entire Star Trek: the Next Generation series. I can’t really afford it, but I don’t care. I need some escape from this pathetic existence.

I’ve also been working on my chain mail. Even though was incredibly tedious, I was able to weave the 0.375 in. diameter rings. It’s the tightest weave I’ve ever done. I would post pictures, but I’m too tired.

Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. Every time I listen to the song “X,” I love this one lyric and I always wanted to post it.

“I go spinning in circles in the nothingness of my heart”

I love that image. Anyway, it’s 1:50 AM and I have to do to sections of math today or I will get even more behind. But on the bright side, my boss is out until the end of the week so I shouldn’t have anyone chewing me out arbitrarily until Monday, at the earliest.

I just started downloading a bunch of new music (Mount Sims - Wild Light, Chromeo - She’s In Control, Cut Copy - Bright Like Neon Love). It’s 2:16 a.m. It should be done by the morning. I’m so tired. I should finish Neuromancer. For all of its now-hackneyed thematic elements, it’s actually very entertaining. I was always very disappointed at the ending of the Matrix trilogy since I loved the first one so much, so now I feel like I’m reading the real ending before those hacks (the Wachowski brothers) turned the novel into the movie.

I’ve been feeling really strange this week, like I’m a flat character in someone else’s novel. Perhaps I should get back to writing, but I can’t shake that feeling that I have nothing original to say. Well, that was like my feeling that I could never do better photography than Kelly’s. It’s not like I’m competing with her, and she obviously has the advantage in that she has an entire city full of people and things to take pictures of. So I have been trying to get back in the habit of taking photos and posting them to Flickr. Even if they’re stupid, I will eventually have some good ones. I just have to get thinking about what I really want to say with my photos. The first step towards creating something is doing something, so at least I’m halfway there.

Misty has been unintentionally getting me interested in starting painting again. It’s not like I think that she is a bad artist (she’s very good), I just feel that there are enough paintings of fairies and flowers to last us all until the end of time.

I had an idea today: I could paint the waveform of my favorite song. Wouldn’t that be postmodern? I’m sure it’s been done before, but the fact that I have to reconcile myself with is that I’m not original. I am a product in a consumer society controlled by corporations. I am not an individual. So I do not need to be embarrassed in the least about my crappy amateur art.

There was this really funny song on the self-titled Robots in Disguise album I downloaded this week called “Diy” about how they feel when somebody makes fun of their art. The lyrics are a bit tongue-in-cheek, “don’t make fun of my cut-and-paste art,” but I can see where they’re coming from, although no one really has said anything bad about my art. Misty loved my collage and the photos I took of her for her MySpace, Ben was all complements about my Photoshop abilities, and Josh had one of my photos as his desktop background for months.

Okay, precis: my banal art would excite me a hundred times more than Misty’s.

In Neuromancer, the characters tell their computers to compile precis on all sorts of things, and then the computer will give them a little presentation about whatever they need to be informed of. More than ever I’m realizing that without the classes I took from Molly, I would be helpless in the world of literature.

I really should go and finish that novel. My mom e-mailed me some pictures (she is so tech savvy now!) of her trip to South Jersey and of the christening of my new cousin Nicholas. I sort of wish I was there with her, but I don’t have any friends there (not that I have many here), and I would have to live with my grandparents who are the exact opposite of me in many ways. And I wouldn’t have the great teachers at SWOCC to help me with my math.

Well, I should probably get back to living. I have the nausea again. It’s not really the nausea though, it’s just boredom. Antoine Roquentin is revolted by existence, but I can’t reach that. I feel more like I’m watching the decisions and actions of my life through the eyes of someone else, like some sort of an incompetent, lazy homunculus. I look back through my memories on my blog and although I feel a very strong kinship with the person that wrote everything, the author isn’t me. Me six months ago isn’t me now. And I feel like the more books I read the more I’m distancing myself from people (including the old me). But that’s because I live here. If I was living in an area with intellectuals, I would feel like I could relate to people more when I had read more novels.

I find myself reevaluating everything: should I keep dyeing my hair and doing all this stuff to keep up the person that I was when I was a teenager? I hate my natural hair color, and it would really depress me to dress in colors, but I’m torn about one thing: painting my nails. I told myself that I would never stop painting my nails and that’s what would make me unique in this world. But nobody is unique. And I’m sure even though he wouldn’t say anything, my boss wouldn’t approve. So that’s how it ends. I compromise the person I am to make money. But I guess that’s not anything new. Everybody sells out. Everyone is homogenized. And the multinational corporations of the world win again. Eh, that’s that Liberty News show talking. I shouldn’t watch it.

Well, I should get going. I want to watch The Red Violin tonight in addition to the bunch of homework I have to do.

Click the picture to see the new rings I got, and little descriptions of them.

DSCN4345

Originally uploaded by Darius Capulet.