My Final Project

Hey Joe, just in case my disc I drop off to you on Monday has any problems, here is my final project for your viewing pleasure :)

Finally My Sounds Are Posted!

Sorry for the delay! Its Blogger's fault, I swear!!

Sounds of my everyday

(Although my sound clip has failed to load yet...Technical difficulties) I made this sound mix at my job, where I spend most of my days. I am a barista and the sounds of my work are both loud and extremely annoying. High pitched sounds coming from the milk steaming and the loud grinding sounds of the coffee grinder have most likely affected my hearing capabilities over the past several years. These sounds may sound unfamiliar to many, but to me the sounds of the milk steamer and coffee grinder are so familar that they seem to even show up in my dreams. Enjoy!

p.s. Sound clip soon to come, as soon as Blogger.com gets with it!

Impossible? project

This could be you!!

When I was in Austria I visited this cemetery in the tiny town of Halstatt. This room of skulls is in a little shed in the middle of the grounds and if a person of the town wishes to be put into this room when he or she dies, they state it in their will. The family members of the dead paint intricate pictures and designs on the skulls of their loved ones. This is totally open to the public and there are candles lit 24 hours a day. What is so interesting to me about this is that to us it seems almost creepy and disgusting, but the culture over there accepts death differently and much more honestly. This picture looks creepy, but after being there I think it's beautiful! Would you want your skull to be there some day??

A California man was sentenced to life in prison for shooting to death his Alcoholics Anonymous Sponsor at a meeting. Sadly the man's anonymity can no longer survive. (Associated Press, November 2008)

Cat Scratch Fever

Authorities in Grant County say a dispute over a dead kitten led to the beating death of a man, after follwing a trail of hairballs, the suspect was found licking his own wounds.

Animal House

A couple in New Mexico face animal cruelty charges after police found 118 animals in their home. Authorities found 102 cats, a pair of goats, a peacock, and an entirely new meaning to the term "crazy cat lady." (NBC)

Obama For Change??

OHIO: After being fired for pulling a KKK costume prank the day before Martin Luther King Jr. day, two troopers have won back their jobs...but probably not their presidential choice for year's election.(Associated Press- 11/5/2008)

Why D.A.R.E. doesn't work

When their children returned from Halloween trick-or-treating, a Ramsey couple found suspected methamphetamine, worth up to $200 on the street, and $85 in cash among their 7-year-old son's Snickers bars and Skittles. Sugar highs will no longer suffice for today's children.

Andy's Thoughts...or Something Like Them

I find the retro candy gift boxes amusing. What will be in the future’s retro candy gift box?
People call “There Will be Blood” the best movie of the year. Frankly I don’t see any movie with blood very great or beautiful.
If there is anything that everyone should have on their birthday it is a fudge birthday cake. I don’t see how anyone couldn’t find the fun in that.
Why would anybody buy cheese off the internet?
If there is anything a pet owner shouldn’t do to their pet it is making them wear silly costumes. Aren’t animals silly enough as it is?
If I had a child, which I never will of course, I would dress them up as Pooh Bear. Hell I will dress myself up as Pooh Bear. Nobody can say they don’t love Pooh.
It surprises me that anybody still wears a watch in this day and age. Are watches necessary? They definitely aren’t fashionable, no matter what color they come in.
This society sure is obsessed with candy. But I say, why not!?
Sometimes I wonder if books will someday be nonexistent. Why would people ever want to read books from a handheld computer? I suppose it’s just a matter of time before everything we know now goes digital. Such exciting times we live in!
Any woman in a costume looks beautiful. Beautiful is being ok with being somebody else sometimes.
There are so many exercise products with the word “perfect” in the name. Not everyone who exercises is perfect and just because you don’t exercise doesn’t’ mean you can’t be perfect. Everyone has potential for perfection and everyone should strive for it. Why else would you be here if you weren’t meant for perfection.
Perfect pull-up. Perfect Push-up. Perfect I don’t do much of anything and I am fabulous.

What Fun Cultural Music and Dance Can Be for a Tourist!

Why is it that in other countries besdies the US there are traditional music groups that both entertain the tourists and represent the country's heritage and culture? I can't help but become consumed with happiness and glee when I come across groups like these in other countries. Is it that we in America simply do not have a traditional music/dance that has the means to entertain foreigners, or do we just choose to not display it in parks, retaurants etc. Here I am in these pictures with examples of this form of art and tourist entertainment. Me with Polka dancers and players in Krakow, Poland. And also me with a traditional Mexican mariachi band in Puerto Vallarta. If only we Americans were proud enough to entertain streetwalkers and visitors to our nation with such a fun and historical form of art! I give a big BOO HOO to the seriousness of America's tourist entertainment.

Girls night goes surreal

So every Wednesday night my best girlfriend and I have what we like to call "Adventure Wednesday." Last Wednesday, there weren't many adventures going on, so we decided to lay low at my place. Before we knew it she, my husband, and myself had downed two bottles of wine and were loopy in the kitchen. And then it struck me and I exclaimed, "You guys I HAVE to show you what we watched in class this week!" I put down the Doritos, pulled out my laptop and searched "Un Chien Andalou" on youtube. If there was anytime to watch this film I thought, it was a time when one is under the influence of something. We watched all fifteen minutes or so of the film in silence. And when it was over we all just sat there staring at each other. I must admit I was pretty proud of myself for bringing that little piece of splendor to the table that night. We all love the film, although most of it makes no sense to us, but I would say I definetely added some adventure to our not-so-adventurous Wednesday this week.

Using Words is Everyday Life

FYI! I'm not a perv! I just google image searched the word scrabble and this came up! Ha! Sorry in advance if I offend anyone, but this picture is priceless!

Words. How would we live without them? Would it be possible to change the way we all communicate and eliminate words from our life? Words are such an overlooked aspect of our everyday, that even I, an english and literature nerd, failed to recognize the overlooked importance of words until I played Scrabble last night. If there is any game that relates to everyday life, it is Scrabble. No matter one's vocabulary skills and strengths, anybody who knows how to read can play Scrabble. Although it is to the player's advantage if they have an extensive vocabulary, the game process of placing the wooden letters on the board to form words is possible for a first grader, or a college grad.
I have a friend who I play the game with quite frequently. Sometimes we make up our own rules to allow slang, foreign language, or sometimes we play "dirty word" scrabble. Any way you play the game, whether you are following the directions to a tee, or making up your own rules, you are still playing a game that relates to our everyday life. It cannot be argued that words are a significant part of our life, and my favorite game, Scrabble, displays one of the most important aspects of the everyday.

The possible creations that will arise from this economic disaster

In Ross's essay, French Quotidian , there is a short quote that not only caught my attention during the lengthy read, but also seems to sum up what we are learning in this class. Ross writes, "Certainly the everyday consisted of that which is taken for granted: the sequence of regular, unvarying repetition. But in that very triviality and baseness lay its seriousness, in the poverty and tedium of the routine lay the potential for creative energy." (p.43-44). To me, this means that the everyday to us may seem tedious, routine, and somewhat bland, but one must look to the most ordinary aspects of life to create extroardinary works of art and ideas.
With the words "seriousness" and "poverty" in this passage, our current economic situation comes to mind. The fall of our economy and the stock market has been in the media for months and it has become a part of our everyday life. It seems as if we Americans are so involved in the financial crisis that it has become a routine part of our lives. With the situation being as depressing as it is, it is still possible for us to channel creative energy toward this aspect of our everyday life and create fantastical pieces of art, literature, and music. I predict that this indeed will happen. I predict that there will be songs about the stock market crashing and murals and sketches depicting the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Ross notes that in France, during and postwar, people used both serious and uplifting aspects of everyday life to create art. As the French did in the 1940's and 50's, we too will create works of art inspired by this hugely popular aspect of our everyday life.

Mapquest

The Sad Truth

Oh how witty we Seattleites can be!

Two Legs are Better than Four

This dog is so amazing! A pet like this seems so extraordinary to us, but so ordinary to its loyal owners. So Sweet!

Frustration in doing nothing

To begin this project I set out to find the room in my house with the least going on. I recently just moved into a new house and there is an almost empty room upstairs that has yet to be turned into a guest room. I went to the "guestroom" and closed the door. I sat next to the matressless bed frame and started my 20 minutes of nothing. This task was anything but easy for me. As an adult with attention defecit disorder, this period of doing nothing was like taking a bullet. Four minutes into it I stated to fidgit and by the seven minute marker I had already changed positions three times. "Does this still count as doing nothing?" I thought. Technically I was doing something because I was moving. But of course I was breathing too. And my heart was beating. And my stomach digesting my breakfast...
So these are the thoughts that began to distract my busy mind into letting me finish out my twenty minutes of nothing without any interruptions. I really thought about the idea of doing "nothing" and discovered that there is no way to be a living being and do nothing at the same time. We are all thinking, breathing, digesting, energy producing and depleting beings and there is no way to control our biological actions. So what I found during my twenty minutes of boredom in the guestroom is that there is no possible way to do nothing, so instead of wasting our time trying, next time we should all be doing something productive with our active bodies and minds!