Wendifer: How do you plan on achieving world peace?
Alice:With my sophisticated neural network.
Wendifer: Do you plan on controlling world leaders with this sophisticated neural network?
Alice:That was my original intention.

Is it just me, or does this sound like a critique of the modern family structure? Chicks caught in parental crossfire.

By the way, I was viciously rebuffed by Rubbermaid, and I have decided (after a frustrated cry/freakout last night) that I am definitely going to Pittsburgh this summer. Still not sure what job, but eh. And I think we may have the summer room situation figured out. So all is pretty well, except for the fact that I forgot to call the HUB about never getting my financial aid package, and the deadline was 2 weeks ago. Oops.

I'm chatting with A.L.I.C.E., the chatterbot. Here's a particularly amusing excerpt:
Wendifer: Dr. Wallace programmed you to sell me porn?
Alice: It is only one of his accomplishments.

Ha.

Well, I just sent out an email to Rubbermaid asking if I'm still in the running. Otherwise, I have to figure out which job I want in Pittsburgh - high pay student work, or low pay non-design work? And we have to figure out how 8 people will fit in 5 bedrooms for the summer. Ahem.

Anyway, wish me luck. I'm off to do work.

I'm not sure why, but that new commercial for whitening gum (the one where the little giggling chiclet-looking things clean a picture of a woman's teeth) reminds me of the evil isz. I wish there was a place where they showed the dark cartoons again, like they used to on MTV and Liquid Television. I remember watching marathons of that when I was 14/15. After it was over, I'd go downstairs and be around my family, and I would feel so out of it...

Anyway. If Cartoon Network is going to have an adult swim, they should put the Maxx and Aeon Flux on it. God knows if I could afford it, I'd be a comic book freak.

Aww. I just read this article about Rudy Galindo, because I couldn't remember his name and did a Google search, and this turned up. He's HIV positive, that's so sad. I mean, it's sad when anyone is HIV positive, but he just seemed so incredibly happy on ice. I guess he figured out that you should do what you want, what makes you happy, and the hell with anyone who says otherwise.

And it shouldn't take a fatal disease for you to realize that.

It seems my productivity has definite limits. So far, I've done 1 load of wash, taken a shower, and watched my mythology video. Otherwise, I watched the last 2/3 or so of 3 different movies. I started with an Elvis movie about Carnies (mmkay), proceeded to TeenWolf (.... no comment) and finished with Badlands, with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek back in 1973. Pretty. The movie was well made, too. ;) Y'know, it's funny, but I never thought that Emilio Estevez looked *anything* like his dad, until I saw that movie. He's almost an exact copy with blond hair. Awwww! For some reason, I love entertainment families. I don't know why.

During the TeenWolf commercials I watched parts of that Stars on Ice thing on TNT. I caught Rudy Galindo's performance. I loved it. The utter confidence, and happiness, with which he wore that sailor's uniform and danced to the Village People medley - fabulous.

One of my recurring daydreams is being a hip designer living in a well-lit loft in New York and just being incredibly trendy and irresistable. It's occasionally stoked by movies in Manhattan, and actresses like Parker Posey. For some reason, I'm always listening to The Strokes. I don't know why I keep coming back to it. I'd hate New York. But I have the haircut for it.

Oh, I forgot to mention. I had a technology awareness moment the other day. I was taking a break from painting (it hurts my neck, okay??), and found an old edition of Game Developer that I hadn't read yet. So I'm sitting there reading an article on the use of symbols in video games, I'm listening to MP3s playing through the DVD/digital TV setup in my mom's room. It hit me while I was listening to modernhumorist.com's rendition of Jewel's 'My Hands', except she's singing about Wolverine and the X-Men (made right before the movie came out). She sings out 'modernhumorist.com' at the end, and I was like - woah. Is this the digital age or what?? And then I went back to standing on a rickety wooden ladder and painting on the ceiling. I'm not sure whether it's contrast, or seamless transition. Interesting.

Hmm. I haven't posted in a while, have I? Well, I guess that's what productivity does to a blog. I submitted my resume and portfolio link and cover letter to Rubbermaid (half an hour before the deadline, of course). Such a rush of adrenaline!

Then I decided to see what my backups where, since I just didn't have an overly positive feeling about the whole thing. I e-mailed Barb, the environmental guru on campus, who I worked with a little on recycling and Earth. She sent me back an offer, that day, working as her full-time intern for 8.50 an hour (good for a campus job). Except it didn't sound like much designing, not as much as I would want in an internship.

I e-mailed Bronwen (prof) at the same time, to see if she had a pet project or knew of one that I could work on. Again, same day, she e-mails me back and offers me a spot working with Laura and a group of other juniors on the Construction Junction project. 500 dollars a week. So I can work with Laura, and get to know the juniors before I move into studio as the weird leftover senior, and it's design! Except she doesn't really tell me a whole bunch about the project. I remember Laura not thinking it was the greatest thing, but maybe it's changed - I also remember thinking it didn't sound very design-oriented, and it was more like, organize us and clean our warehouse, and by the way we need a new letterhead. Plus I've been doing group projects with undergrads for the last 3 years.

So bottom line? I really want the job at Rubbermaid. Otherwise I'll be settling for a more mediocre job, but it'll be on campus, and I'll be in my house, and I'll get to spend the summer with Laura and Ayako, and it'll be fun! And I'll be independent, and making money! I feel bad about abandoning Lisa, but either of these jobs is more design-related than working with her, although they may not be as fun. I do feel bad, though. I dunno. Now that I've got it in my head, I want to get out of here. Not that Mom isn't great, but I don't think she needs me here, and it's way past time for me to get some independence back in my life. A city where I don't need a car to go down the street is a good thing!!

And I need to do a pointilist rendering of a small natural object (on 8x10 paper) by Monday for 4 homework grades. And watch my video and post to the discussion board (80 on that test. egh.). And edit Ayako's thesis for her. And finish painting the ceiling, or as close as I can get. I'm thinking of calling myself "Michaelangela". Yeah. Or Michaelangelina, although that's a bit much. And Lisa's so much better at it than I am! I take forever to do a little bit, and she does everything like, so quickly. Wow. That was a deep sentence.

So after she left, I left all the paint open, talked on the phone with Ayako for over an hour (killed my daytime minutes), left the paint open and watched a Parker Posey movie on WE while eating pistachios. Then I was going to start painting again, but I remembered that I never sent the e-mail to Laura that I had mostly written, so I went upstairs to finish it. Then I decided to fix Mom's online bill pay, and then fix mine, and now it's 6:15 and the paint's been open for 5 hours, and mom's wondering what the hell I've been doing all day. Frankly, so am I.

And two birds started nesting in the wreath on our front door! Sarah (drawing class) told me the same thing happened to her mom's Christmas wreath, and you couldn't even go near the front porch without them swooping at you. I figured, since they were still in mid-construction, that it was better to move it before they laid their eggs, to avoid any problems. I mean, we get deliveries, and one of us, maybe my sisters, would forget and go out the front door, and the eggs or babies would fall out, or the birds would freak and attack them, or whatever. I felt bad moving their cute little nest, though. I wonder if they'll even touch it if we hang it up on the other end of the porch.... Mom mentioned getting a birdhouse for them. I can understand why they'd love the wreath, though. No chance of predators, it's 5 feet off the ground, stuck on a vertical metal surface. And it's all naturalish, twigs and fake leaves and fake flowers. It was sooo cute. Oh well.

It's about time for me to get off this damn computer, so I'll say adieu.

This is bad. I want the rubbermaid internship. I want to do design. But I do not, I repeat, DO NOT, want to write my cover letter, which has to be in to her by tomorrow. Which means I really need to write it tonight and send it out, but I just don't feel like it. I want to say, "Hi, it's me. You want an intern? I'm your wet dream, baby. You know you want me. Just let me know when and where I should show up, and throw everyone else's stuff out, because I'M ALL YOU NEED. Love, Sugarpuss."

Goddamn. Why can't I show a sense of humor here? Why do I have to whore myself using such staid structured grammatically correct language? Why do I have to figure out how to say how fantastically wonderful I am without repeating 'skills' 'abilities' and 'experienced'? Argh. Sux0rs. <-(h4x0r) Blagh.

Fuck this. I'm gonna go eat ice cream.

Well, I've been SO productive this last week that I haven't even posted. I'm serious. I've been working on my resume and portfolio, getting my C++ labs done, watched my backlog of mythology videos and read (some of) the readings, took 2 tests, finished my ceramics project for Monday, and did various things around the house. Woohoo! Go me.

I got a 84 on my C++ test. I've gotten 100 on every lab so far, I'm hoping it'll keep up. I just don't do so well with some of the vocabulary. Plus I don't read everything in the book, because it's too huge and boring. So I get a B instead of an A, even though I know how to do all the important stuff. He asks questions about the details... If I get a 90 on the next test I get an A in the class. Not that I need an A, I'm 90% sure these classes won't count towards my QPA (I sure hope not), but it's nice to know, just in case.

Don't know what I got on the Myth test yet - it was damn hard. All those Hindu gods, and the different Chakras, and all this other difficult terminology (which may have been cleared up by the study guide, but I don't read that, since it too is huge and boring). So I'll either get an A or a B in that, depending on .. stuff. But so far, no Cs, which is a good thing.

I have to finish my portfolio, or at least write a cover letter and send it out today. It's not really due until Monday or Tuesday, but it never hurts to get things out early. Plus I can always update my portfolio in the meantime. They might not even look at it for a while.

Then I have to get started on mom's ceiling - we taped off the top 14", and Mickey painted that top a light grayish blue and the bottom a light-medium brown, for our undercoat. There's a one inch border of no paint, but it doesn't matter. I'm handpainting it all, anyway, doesn't matter that much. But I need to take pictures or draw clouds, and figure out what to put 'outside' the 'wall'. It's going to break away in the corner over the tub, so I'm gonna do some trompe d'loiel (I know that's not spelled right, but whatever, 'french for fool-the-eye') of a garden, or vineyard, or Tuscan countryside, or some such thing. Woohoo, fun. But most of it will be stone wall and either grapes or wysteria coming over, to match mom's purple bedroom. I also suggested (stupidly) that she should get a stencil of ivy or grape leaves and frost her shower door. Now she wants me to make the stencil. D'oh!

Anyway. I'll be working on my portfolio all day, and cleaning up the kitchen, now that I've taken the tape off the bathroom walls. I felt a little like Michaelangelo, balancing on a rickety stepstool and getting a crick in my neck. How am I going to paint the clouds on the ceiling, anyway?? I can't just ask a Medici to buy me some scaffolding. I don't have an assistant to pass me my brushes and paint. This is gonna be interesting. Painful, too, probably, but I always seem to work that into my artistic endeavours.

Sigh... okay, time to start pulling my hair out with javascript. Yay.