(not being a) Ex-phil major

Well it's the last day of the year. I'm thinking very abstract thoughts these days, and not in that intelligent ex-phil major with too much time on their hands kind of a way, but the kind of thinking that seems to go nowhere. Just leading you around in circles.

Anyway, I found a link off that Happiness Project blog that I'm strangely fond of these days. Strange because it doesn't seem totally up my alley... But anyway. So it's an article about how to be interesting, in case that is something you need to do. So happy New Year, if you are inclined to celebrate. (Can you guess that I'm not very?)

Pix n' Linx

Websites I've visited recently and liked:

• The Happiness Project blog.
  
• Planet SARK
• Adbusters' accounts of Buy Nothing Day events
• One of two spin-offs of Nano, DrawMo
• Woolgathering: nice artist's blog of daily drawings
• Gaswaternothing: same idea.
• Hyper Death Babies: very cool web comic which uses retro cartoons
• Ink Finger: another artist's blog...
  

photo on left: the exhibition from outside.

Observing SketchCrawl

Some drawings I did of my family members on Saturday SketchCrawl day... As promised. I like drawing people a lot more than other things... Mom, grandma('s hand), and Uncle (with fake sunflower partially obscuring his face).

Late Night Tahyees

Hey... It seems this month people are getting married right left and center. Crazy. Not crazy to get married exactly but just crazy the rate at which it seems to be taking place in my vicinity this month.

(Please bear in mind that I am not one of those people).

In other news... there isn't much. I finally sketched a little today, well actually drew, more (or further) than my plebeian sketching. I think Saturday's SketchCrawl helped unblock a little (I did a few sketches on Saturday). And today I broke out of my journal, which was definitely good. Nothing fancy, just plain white A4, but still a bit more liberating than my small black spiral-bound notebook.

Well I would share a few photos of all this stuff, and I will, but my camera was ... what, swallowed by the dog then kidnapped with a ransom of 10 million Big Macs which I refuse to buy because I don't want to support an obnoxious American corporation? Something like that. We compromised on 10 thousand Veggie burgers though (still from the big M).

Ah late night tahyees.

You already know the deal with Friday, if you don't, scroll down a little, your mouse won't bite (it shouldn't if you speak gently and make no sudden movements).

Anyway if you are reading this I will probably SMS you with relevant details.

Cheers all.

About SkethCrawl

• SketchCrawl: "a world wide sketching marathon event."* According to the website:

  The basic idea: to record nonstop everything I could around me with my pencil and watercolors. A drawn journal filled with details ranging from the all the coffee I drank to the different buses I took.

Upcoming on Saturday December 9... again you can let me know if you're interested in such a thing. You can also check out the Sketchcrawl blog. So every three months roughly a day is chosen when we all come together and sketch. Holding hands optional. I've never taken part before. *The founder of Sketchcrawl Enrico Casarosa describes it as such on his personal blog...

• The films I've seen so far at the film festival have been great. Finally the first year when I was free to go (in previous years exams prevented me).
  
• Finally this was something I felt a strange compulsion to make. I actually made it two weeks ago so it is Old, and it's kind of boring to post Old things on my blog, but I haven't been taking pictures, and I haven't really been drawing either (bad!), but oh well. So there you go, Old Stuff. Maybe the SketchCrawl + Open exhibition will change all that, or at least be some kind of catalyst for change/ interesting diversion.
  

Films, Book, Nano update

• Things I am trying to do: Go to the film festival and go to the newly discovered independent film festival (not the same). Unfortunately can't find a link to the latter right now. But will keep you posted. Clicking on the Conference Schedules tab will link you to the when what where of the movies.
  
• This is a really good article I read a long time ago about agribusiness... potatoes, genetic engineering, McDonalds. Okay, so this article inspired a woman called Ruth Ozeki to write a really good book called All Over Creation, which is a novel that deals with these same themes (plus has a good plot). The article is Playing God in the Garden and it's by Michael Pollan and it was published originally in the New York Times Sunday Magazine back in 1998, but you can now read it online for free. To educate you about what's up with GM food. Incidentally, Ozeki also has a blog that is worth checking out but sadly it seems like it's been ages since she last posted.
• I just wanted to add the thing I forgot in the last post: that I finished nano. I wrote 50,000 words (+) in November by hook or by crook. And I will start editing in January I think (I need a little break before I look back). I think it will probably successfully whittle down to a twenty-page story or so.
  

Where I want to go

Hi kids.

This is where I want to go, really badly: Charleston, where the Bloomsbury Group used to go to chill out... (Virginia Woolf was one of the most famous members of the group). Unfortunately Charleston is in Sussex, England. So yeah the cool thing about this house is that Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant painted the furniture and walls... I have a small pamphlet with a few photos and it does look really nice.

If you want to live in the trees, this article at Supernaturale could help.

There was one more thing but it's gone. Flew out of my head.

Till later then.

The Locusts

Okay. December 15, the one you've all been eagerly anticipating, (no not "the Egyptian Woodstock" aka SOS again) but the 2nd Open Independent Art Exhibition in which you can participate by submitting your artistic pieces in any medium. You can contact me directly at ninethprotostar@yahoo.com if you need more information.

Further: I recently re-read this list to boost your creativity at getcrafty.com.

Finally: the following is an excerpt from an old nano that I did that is pretty unrelated to the rest of the story (i.e. should be enjoyed as a standalone piece).

I was in Cairo when the locusts came.

I went to the roof of the library, not that high, but still, you could see them up close there. They were so confused, you could tell. What had brought them here? They crawled around on the floor, seeking something familiar. Something to eat I guess. I knew there were the same locusts who brought famine to African villages. But here they were, and they seemed vulnerable, confused, lost.

They were large, exotic-looking. They weren’t’ your regular garden-variety brand locusts. They were reddish. Flying, you’d think them to be dragon flies.

I wondered, could they attack me? It seemed so classically Us versus Them, yet here they were, fi halhom. Ignoring me pretty much.

A man came by, crushing a locust with his foot on purpose, then took it with him into the building, carrying it in his hand. Is this when, how the enmity would begin? Would the other locusts see and vow revenge on that man, his family, his kind?

I wanted to tell him not to do it, it seemed so mean, but even though I flinched when he did it, I said nothing. I chose to remain silent, and so what did that mean?

A girl came on the roof, not really wanting to be there, you could tell.

They were quietly, silently threatening. I thought of something my boyfriend had told me about the other day: the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I was sure in fact that very soon I would hear people talking about how this was a sign of the end of days.

They were little aliens. Maybe they weren’t lost and confused. Maybe they were surveying the landscape, playing out their next move in their heads. Maybe they understood FOL. If x then y. If and only if z, q.

It walked towards me, its face incapable of ever expressing any emotions I would be able to interpret. Its antennas were poised; did it need them to fight, to attack, to charge?

What were they doing, what did they want?

Could a sudden movement on my part trigger a response? A sneeze, perhaps?

The walking are, walking in circles on the tiled floor. It tried to flap its wings, presumably in order to fly, but it remained on the ground. Maybe it didn’t want to fly though. Maybe it was testing, it had an elaborate complex formula in its head, computing how wind resistance would impact its flying speed.

Individually, they looked almost pretty, fluttering around endearingly, like an innocuous butterfly.

In the sky, they could be mistaken for a new manifestation of pollution enveloping the Caironese atmosphere. Little black moving specks. But no, closer observation revealed the specks to be alive, enabled me to observe they were in fact a swarm of locusts.

The same man, an impromptu, perhaps self-appointed groundskeeper came back, still bent on eradaicating every locust wandering about in the vicinity of the roof. Now he was armed with a broom, using it to attack locusts with the brush side then sweeping them into a corner.

It raised so many questions.

Of course, I wanted a relevant expert to explain this phenomenon. My driver said he estimated it’d been approximately twenty or so years since they’d last graced the skies of Egypt with their presence. So it had happened before.

A chill came over, a cold wind, could this too be attributed to them?

And maybe there was nothing sinister. They had their ends, we ours. Was I supposed to side with “my kind,” the farmers and fellahin who would most likely come to great harm as a result of the locusts eating their crops?

The man had succeeded in eliminating the locusts accessible to him for the time being.

I returned to my plebian task of reading Heidegger, wondering slightly what he would make of such a situation.

Long Distance Tripping

Hey kids.

So. Now, yes, this is a common long-distance traveling sight. But don't treat it as such. Think what it might be, instead of just another communication tower. Look at it aesthetically, like someone created it with artistic intent. I kept tripping out on them on my long-distance ride back yesterday.

New interesting links courtesy of 52 Projects:

• AEzine/Life Artist Newsletter. I skimmed through the first issue and it looks promising.
  
• JPG Magazine: Upload your photos, send them in under certain titles like "Intimacy" or "Loneliness" and possibly get them published. Plus vote on other people's pictures (and maybe help them get published).

Still Nanoing but that's not going too great.

Souk el Gom3a Treasure

High Speed Car Chase

I forgot to add yesterday that I found the knuckle tattoos website featured at 52 projects. You can read more about the project here. Nathan Black, who created the project, explains why he started it.

And this is old news, but this article at BBC finally gave me a proper explanation of what happened downtown in Eid.

Reading: I am actually reading again. The reading fast is over, thank God. It was very beneficial (and so recommended) but also highly irritating. So I'm reading officially now The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell (a novel). Pretty nice so far but haven't gotten very far.

I was going to say I wish I had more exciting things to say, but I realize I do: I witnessed briefly a real high speed car chase while driving home tonight that looked really really dangerous. Very don't try this at home, kids. Who knows what was going on, but this guy was driving like a maniac (not stopping at all while driving at a very high speed through an intersection), followed by another car backing up quickly, stopping to pick up a passenger, then driving back down super fast. It sounds boring but it was exciting I swear! Oh well you had to be there; I was in awe.

f(x)=1/x

Check it out: A site that collects photos of knuckle tattoos with accompanying stories. I love it. This is my favorite tattoo so far.

keri smith asks: Who would you be if you stopped trying so hard? I think there's a lot of fear associated with both trying and not trying.

Nano is going well (well it is going, which is my intention for it, not necessarily for it to go well. So in that it is going it is going well).

Oh and if anyone is keeping track (or not) I did eventually find both my glasses and the dog. Both were fine.

Art Journaling Pix

Hey. It's day 3 of Nano if you are keeping track and/or participating.

I am participating like I said I would and so far it is going not bad at all.

Ok kids. Please note the first one with the pencil features embroidered red thread, the second is my altered journal cover (crocheted circles), and then finally just stamps flowers and rope. Easy.

Take care kids. Tell your mother you love them if you feel so inclined. Just thought I should tell you that. In case you needed me to tell you which would be kind of odd.

Drawings w/ commentary

Lost: my glasses. Vision impairment is not fun.

Fasting from: Reading. Also not fun but presumably not beneficial. The two events are exclusive but I guess not finding your glasses is a little more bearable if you're not reading.

Drawing commentary: I like the checkered one and the semi-sun with head one. The third is I guess a bit cheesy and the balloons don't really look as I wanted them to. But I think the person looks alright.

Tomorrow: November 1st, the first day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which I mentioned before. I think I will start since I have so much time on my hands.

Also missing: Mony the dog. Does not bode well.

Sokhna images

More pictures, not much to say. The first is Y.A. at Sokhna. The other ink is Nems. The colored pencil one is just a feeling thing. And the fourth is quite self-explanatory I think. Hopefully set to become part of a larger series. Click to enlarge if you feel so inclined.

Dog Outta Control

Some new photos of Daboor, trained dog extraordinaire (can't you tell from the photos?). Check out that photo of him where he looks rabid. And the last shot is an art piece: nails hammered into wood with black thread.

Ok, links time:

• If you're looking for a new religion, why not become a pastafarian? It's all about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Thanks for the link M.)
• Article on Radiohead and carbon dioxide. (Thanks Y.A.)
• Finally, if you need to know all about world hunger and obesity, quiz yourself. (Thanks S.) Click for quiz on obesity.

Well happy eid to all where applicable. Enjoy your food.

Dancing M&Ms

NaNoWriMo. Wanna write a novel? In a month? Next month? Sign up with NaNoWriMo, write 2000 words a day and you're golden. Oh and by the way it stands for National Novel Writing Month.

On My Desk. Pictures of the creative spaces of creative people. That is, if you believe in the myth of "creative people." Pretty cool actually.

Shari3 Faisal Bling

Check out the bling due to a store opening in my neighborhood... Not bad huh? Not only that but there are flashing colored lights going all the way down the street. But thankfully no loud bass-heavy music pumping out because it's Ramadan.

Some quotes

"Drawing is about reaching for pure being. Not making pretty pictures to put in
frames and on websites. The world doesn't need more pictures. It needs peace
and connection. It needs people who can accept reality and don't feel compelled
to control their environments."
- Danny Gregory
Nice site about creativity and art, with a big emphasis on drawing and sketching.

"I'm just a guy with a graphite pencil and a spiral notebook trying to maintain
some of the small chunks of cerebral tissue still floating in my head."
- Jim Bumgarner on his blog Sketches & Stuff. "A compilation of bad sketches, good sketches and bunch of who knows what."


"some people
do not feel compelled
to push their heart onto a stick
and roast it over someone's fire.
well those people suck, i said.
what kind of passionless monsters
live their lives like that?"

excerpt from the poem "Advice for the Lovelorn" by Michelle Tea, in her book The Beautiful. Link takes you to fan site which includes some of her writings and interviews with her. Her book 3amatan is great.

Middle Eastern Super Heros, Fighting the Man, & More

- "First Middle Eastern Super Heros" - apparently some of the creators are AUC alum. An interview with them if you follow the link.

- "Independent Bloggers" - You too can start your own blog. Plus you can type in Arabic. And rate people's posts.

- A great article! How to fight The Man - strategies to resist corporate control. "25 Simple Things You Can Do To Keep Your Money From The Corporations." By Jeffrey Yamaguchi, who also runs the 52 Projects website.

and... Zinebook.com. Lots of stuff about zines. Including what they are & how to make your own. Check out the interviews with zine editors (I love interviews).

I guess that's it for now. Take care everyone in blog world.

Origami Ouroboros Collection

Ok, those paper things you see are ouroboroses. An ouroborses is basically a mythical creature (usually a snake) which devours itself. It's supposed to represent the cylical nature of things... oh fine it's supposed to represent more or less everything, The Universe Itself, etc, death, life, rebirth & beyond. You know...

Oh, the ouroboroses are origami. I made 10, and my (self-assigned) task was to make them all from different sheets of paper. (Boring for you, a bit more exciting for me).

The other picture is the view from my bedroom, part of a variation of one of the projects from the 52 Projects book.

Finally, some links:

Just in case you thought I never read or follow news (you're right):

• An article on lesbians in Palestine.
  
• And an article on the best place to give birth (Sweden) and the worst (Niger), with details of what both are like.

This isn't news, but a blog: Strangers Among Us. "A living collection of photographs focused on people that inhabit our world or other worlds we visit." A group of people take pictures of people they don't know. And, Blogger's Blogs of Note has an archive, which I looked for, and found, today.

Cheers.

Dog Drag

Look what the dog dragged in. No, really.

Reading: Miss Wyoming by Coupland.

Researching: graduate schools .. ekh

Gido sketch

• Goats.com: interesting webcomic. Start at the beginning. (It started in 1997).
• Draw Daily. I'm not the only one (far from it).
• Collection de l'Art Brut. As recommended by Thom Yorke, no less (via Radiohead's blog, see the August 14 entry).

the Cultural Blackspot

Old photos from my trip on the left.

The cultural blackspot one is a reference to something that Adbusters injected into the cultural landscape. Adbusters, by the way, is a (or the) journal of the mental environment. They have launched such interesting campaigns as Buy Nothing Day and TV Turn-off Week. They also have a Blackspot Sneaker... The whole idea of the blackspot is anti-logo, anti-brand... The ideasAdbusters presents are very (to me) interesting alternatives to mainstream corporate culture that sucks your soul.

Ok. If you haven't checked out the Post Secret website out yet, you really should.

Wish I was Special

Drawings: mine, last night. The text on them in marker (in case you don't know) is from the Radiohead song Creep.


*********************


In other news... I think my IQ is dwindling now that I'm out of college. I'm reading a (non-fiction) book, and non-fiction books sometimes make me feel smart - Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, by Ariel Levy. It's cool in that the thesis of the book is complex enough that you don't feel you know everything you want to know about the book by just reading the blurb. It talks about how your everyday woman is turning herself into a sexual commodity with the idea that this is an empowering thing to do. As you can guess, the author thinks otherwise...

Link of the day: A2A. An anti-art reproduction site (doesn't that sound funny? I mean, art prints or photocopies of art) that endorses giving art away for free... by leaving it around randomly for someone to pick up (also referred to sometimes as guerilla art, see keri smith's article about it).

Okay then. Take care all.

Fill this town

Artistically blocked again these days I guess. So more old new photos to post. Today I read another great "graphic novel": Three Incestuous Sisters, which is nowhere near as risque as it sounds (but not sadly since it's wonderful anyway). By Audrey Niffenegger, who incidentally refers to her book as a 'visual novel.' The illustrations are amazing.

Young Daboor

That's young Daboor over there on the left. He stuck himself under the car today and was squealing for all he was worth, but emerged unscathed.

In other news, if you want to see cool cartoons, head on over to allenec's livejournal thingie.

Today I read this really great graphic novel called I Never Liked You: A Comic-Strip Narrative by Chester Brown. I guess graphic novels are not that easy to come by, but this was great, and I think in general graphic novels are great. I finished reading it in half an hour! So then I read it again immediately.
Also, if you're interested in independent media (and you should be), check out Meat Magazine, which is a self-billed "arts magazine," but it also has writing. I got the print version, which is intended to be the best of it's online stuff. You can also contribute to it if so inclined.

Finally, if you checked out Chris' blog today, you will know that 1) he is contemplating killing his blog, and 2) that he made an interesting remark about prison systems sucking. I commented on the post, and would just like to take the opportunity here to link to the blog I was unable to link to there: Jim Gilligan's blog post "Are prisons immoral? ... or is it just Americans?". The gyst of it is that in some nations, e.g. Finland, the penal system is approached quite differently. It's only a paragraph, so you might as well follow the link and see what the guy has to say.

Take care then.

Heads

Hello out there in blog world. As you may or may not know, I'm in a transition phase of life, which is kind of rough at the moment. I also just returned from a trip to London, hence the two week absence. I came back to find a small dog who may or may not be my savior. His name is Daboor. I will not be releasing his pictures to the public at present (much like Suri Cruise). In fact I haven't pictured young Suri - sorry, Daboor, yet.

I just finished reading JPod by Douglas Coupland, the semi-sequel to Microserfs. There's actually an official website for the book which is worth checking out, you can also read an excerpt there. Plus an interview with Mr. Coupland about the book, but I think you should read that after you finish the book.

Interesting thing I found on the back of the stall of a toilet in the Tate:

It certainly was not what I was expecting
I had never eaten glue before today.
I just took a bite of a pritt stick. I felt this best. It is stuck in my teeth now.
I wasn't expecting that

Take care. Til later.

Marker-on-cardboard thing

I'm into the marker-on cardboard thing right now. Maybe it's something about making my mark on the world, so the thick dark marker black appeals as it meets this ... requirement.

If you're bored, like me, you too can visit the US' "Postal store" and check out different stamps they issue.

Or. go to afore-mentioned No Media Kings site and read Jim Munroe's interesting idea about selling out to the mainstream after being "indy" (as in, independent). He says cool stuff about hypocrisy. Quote:

Nowadays, consistency seems to have replaced virtue... If someone kills children because he hates them, and is wholly dedicated to eliminating the toddler set from the earth, this person is somehow less contemptible than a vegetarian who wears leather shoes.


My advice, kind of in-line with what Mr. Munroe says, is to get over this obsession, or phobia, of hypocrisy.

Dino Comics; il kobry

Good news: I have a great link for today! Rejoice, comic lovers and also comic not-minders. It is Dinosaur Comics. It predictably features dinosaurs, and I found it featured on the good Jim Munroe's website, No Media Kings. So double link then, because both sites are worth checking out, dudes.

Featured in the photos: On the left, a sign that says Obeying Traffic Lights is a Civilized Behavior, and below, a lovely view of the billboards on a certain bridge we all know and love. (Guess which?).

Til later, cheers.

P.S. The creator of Dinosaur Comics, Ryan North, appears to have a pretty cool livejournal thingie that should also be checked out, especially the third post that now appears there.

Speaking of that post (check out the post already so you get what I'm about to say), a word to the wise, using Google as a divining source, especially Google image search, doesn't really work out that well. Still, it's a fun exercise. To try: insert relevant phrase into the google image search and interpret the picture that appears. If you try it with the names of your friends, you'll see what I mean. You could always try Bible dipping, as outlined by Augusten Burroughs in Running with Scissors, his most excellent memoirs. (Bible dipping involves asking a question, flipping through the Bible [feel free I guess to replace with holy text of choice], flipping pages and stabbing your finger at a random word for the answer).

Free hint from me: If you're trying to be a writer sometimes, you can modify the Bible dipping for a cool writing exercise in which you use any book to stab a word then write about it for a certain amount of time (timed writing). It's great.

a collage

Reading: Some of Kafka's short short stories (one paragraph to two pages long) from Kafka's
Metamorphosis and Other Stories.
Definitely worth checking out, especially if you're in a summer reading slump and have a short attention span right now as a result (like me), particularly for literary endeavors. These short short stories are stuck under a category entitled "Meditations," and incidentally, this collection of stories is the only one that Kafka chose to publish in his lifetime. All the other stuff (The Trial, most notably) he told his good buddy Max to destroy but Max kubar and decided to publish them anyway after Franz died. In case anyone is inspired to read some Kafka now, my favorite "Meditation" so far is "The Rejection."

The photo: another collage, put together two days ago like the last one.

Yoga collage

Well my main incentive for posting right now is to get rid of that worm picture... My worm fascination is certainly over, for the time being. They are so last week...

Anyway, on the left, inspired by Keri Smith's 'morning collages' is one I made yesterday... Annoyingly enough, despite a good two years or so of solid ownership, I still don't really know how to use my digital camera, and I think it shows in my pictures. Ma3lish. By the way, I highly suggest checking out her collages, website, and accompanying blog.

the worms

It's initially shocking, but also really interesting.

Today I happened to glance at a bowl of dog food left neglected for a few days.

I saw little bits of pasta in the bowl along with other food.

I did a double-take when I saw the little bits of pasta moving around.

Worms... They look really cool actually. Like a scene from an animated movie.

The bowl was in the garage, away from soil, so how did the worms get there? And why on a specific day? I mean the food has been there for a while... so do the worms arrive at a certain stage of decomposing? Aren't they part of the decomposing process? Maybe it's a kind of worm party... they have to be fashionably late. They look pretty interesting the way they move... And some looked like they were getting it on, but who knows? Maybe they're just fighting to eat.

Closer inspection revealed the worms to be even more interesting than just the initial glance allowed. They seem to be segmented, and despite looking for eyes and not being able to tell, this site tells me they have none.

So yeah, in the picture the worms are the things that look like pasta, like I said. I really wish I had some video stuff to show, but limited resources prevent me from doing so.

Joys of Cardboard (links)

Interesting link on a site I like (Supernaturale) about the joys of cardboard. I like design things that re-use waste material... you know, save the earth. Poor victim earth in need of your saving. There, don't you feel special now? So anyway especially cool in this article is this cardboard chair that you use to build into your lawn and have grass grow over... Well go over and check it out so you can see a photo of it and get what I'm trying to explain.

Reading: Poetry by Emily Dickinson. I tried reading Emily's poetry before but didn't really like it, prefering mostly the poets Nikki Giovanni and Kenneth Patchen instead, but I think since I started writing more I was able to connect more with Emily's poetry.

Some things that stay there be,-
Grief, hills, eternity:
Nor this behooveth me.
(excerpt from Some things that fly there be)

and also reading: Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers.

I'm not usually into the self-help thing, but you've got to be open minded, right? Experimental? Anyway I'm about half the way through and it's not bad at all. I'm just worried if I turn into a healthy person I'll be boring. I won't have anything to write and I won't be able to paint. How's that for a fear huh?

First post

Who owns the internet? It occurred to me today that I don't know, but somebody must somehow, because you pay rent on websites you operate. And there are companies that buy domain names then sell them to you, but who do they pay? I'm sure someone smarter than me knows. But why is the internet a capitalist commodity anyway?