Recent Photos
Jun/090
I’m planning to go on a series of photo adventures this summer (i.e. convince someone to go with me all over town for the purpose of taking pictures while still looking socially adjusted), but here are a few of my latest taken around the house / in the yard.
As always, you can find my Flickr by clicking on them.
SPF 50
Jun/090
“Writing effects peoples brains,” said Mr. Pennebaker, who is a professor at the University of Texas. “After people write, there are changes in their brain waves. It’s related to emotions.” To his audience’s stunned delight, he added, “duh.” source
I’m on summer break now, which would usually give me enough impetus within itself to continue writing and to focus on my other creative pursuits. But the weather is warm, the blankets are soft, and my mother’s Tivo records all of my favorite shows… summer bumming is what I’m referring to of course. Unfortunately, the end of my freshman year at university hasn’t ceased the onslaught of stress dreams I persistently have about school. No, the ordinarily pleasant, lazy season still allows for nerve-wracking dimensions to exist in my head. Thanks a lot, mind!
Anyway, I have managed to squeeze in a few things between sleeping and watching Bizarre Food with Andrew Zimmern. The day I came back from school, I went with Troy to see IAMX perform at the El Rey theatre. The crowd was full of 90s mall goths who looked as though they had just returned from a Tim Burton convention, but I enjoyed the show nonetheless. I also saw Up which was predictably cute but surprisingly depressing! Pixar isn’t allowed to deal with adult themes, it’s just too sad! (Funny how I seem to cry more easily at fiction than at real life… oh well, moving on.) Last night, I went to the Mark Taper Forum to see Oleanna with Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles. It’s rare that I go to a play and even rarer that I see one with performers I recognize, so I enjoyed the experience. David Mamet plays aren’t for everyone, however… A lot of interrupted dialogue can be a tad annoying ;) All in all, I suppose I have been up to more than I’d like to believe. I’ve spent far too long reading Less Than Zero and should really learn how to use those acrylic paints that my father purchased for me, but why should I be hard on myself now when I have all of the school year to do that?
As for my job situation, I don’t think I need to tell you how difficult it is right now.
C-c-c-c-c-cocaine
Apr/090
I spend an unhealthy amount of time making playlists. I won’t even burn them onto CDs or listen to them in their entirety after I’ve finished them, but my playlists are serious business. Perhaps I just get a kick out of absurd themes.
For the last few months, I’ve been compiling tracks for my “songs that make me feel like a recovering drug addict” playlist. Unfortunately, iTunes’ Genius feature does not exactly aid me in this endeavor, so I tend to add to the list once I come across music that would work during casual listening. It got a little complicated when I made the decision to include songs that have lyrics that do not necessarily refer to addiction or drugs.
Cute as a Button
Mar/090
It’s spring break again, which means I am back in Los Angeles and will probably neglect to meet up with the old friends I talked to about hanging out.
I saw Coraline in 3D yesterday, but I wasn’t aware that it was in 3D until the theater charged me $13.00 for a ticket. I read the book when I was fourteen years old and promptly forgot everything about it. I suppose it made the film that much more exciting, however, I wish that I was conscious of any plot changes they made. Anyway, I thought it was extremely aesthetically pleasing and would highly recommend it to any Tim Burton / Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) fans. I don’t think the 3D aspect made a lot of difference, but it was fun watching acrobats pop out of the screen.
Ch-ch-changes
Mar/091
I was talking to my boyfriend, Troy, today about how I’m glad that I have a space on the internet that chronicles my progression into adulthood (hahaha, but what a joke that term is in describing my maturity level!) and thought that it would probably be a good idea to make a post highlighting how I think I’ve changed as a person since entering my first year of college.
First and foremost, I never thought I would get sick of studying gender theory. I’ve taken two courses here at UCSC so far that explore gender/sex binaries: Gender in Technology and Feminisms of/and the Global South. The former is a film class that examines the relationship between gender and technology (mostly through cheesy 80s cinema) while the latter is a class that focuses on feminist issues in the global south (a more politically correct term for the “third world”). Although I enjoyed both courses, I can’t help feeling that academia needs to let go of its attachment to analysis of the abstract. In Feminisms of/and the Global South, we spent the majority of our time unpacking different definitions of words which left me wondering if it’s possible to assert anything of importance or originality without getting caught up in polysemy.
Bleh! I’m not going to pretend that schoolwork has been the only thing I’ve been concerned with though, haha. My interest in music has exponentially increased, as has the size of my iTunes library. (I think I had around 52GB when I first got here, now my collection boasts a ridiculous 81GB.) Lately, I’ve been really into Venetian Snares, The Residents, They Shoot Horses Don’t They, The Birthday Party, and several other bands. I went through a phase where I thought anything experimental or electronic was cool, but now I’m returning to my love of music that sounds like music.
In keeping with my admiration for weird things, however, I recently discovered the genius filmmaker that is David Lynch thanks to a few Lynchophiles I met in my building. For Christmas, I received an Amazon gift certificate which allowed me to buy the entire 2 seasons of Twin Peaks (1990), a serial drama about a small-town murder mystery produced by David Lynch and Mark Frost. So far, I’ve seen four of Lynch’s films (Eraserhead, Inland Empire, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway), but I have the rest of his work in my Netflix queue ;) I thoroughly enjoyed watching all of Twin Peaks, but I thought Fire Walk With Me (a feature-length prequel to the series made two years later) was gravely disappointing.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been drawing, reading books for leisure, or taking pictures nearly as much as I want to. You can see a few of my latest photographs on my Flickr account, but I’m hoping to remedy all of this soon as my spring break is March 20th – 27th.
As for stuff that isn’t terribly superficial, I think the greatest lesson I’ve learned of late is how to be my own best friend. High school drama certainly carries over to college, only it’s intensified by the fact that you live with all of your friends and some of them are having sex with each other. I’m just glad that I have been able to find people here who don’t put up with bullshit and willingly listen to my misanthropic rants :)
Yourfonts.com
Feb/090
I’ve always wanted to make my own font but didn’t want to deal with complicated (and often expensive) programs. Which is why I LOVE THIS WEBSITE. After I scanned in a template, it created my own personalized font based on my handwriting. Nifty!
I only have OCD on the Internet
Jan/090
I had it in mind to completely revamp my website or to replace it with a Tumblr blog… or to turn it into a porfolio, but this layout carries so much nostalgia with it that I can’t bear to start over again. Even my profile seems ancient now, despite the fact that it’s only a year or two old. I was so excited when I figured out how to incorporate my Wordpress blog into the layout I had worked so painstakingly long on… why throw that all away?
So, don’t expect anything new or exciting on Not Kelsey, save for my infrequent blogging and perhaps a few articles. I’m taking a trip down memory lane~*~
As for school? I have a pile of homework that keeps getting bigger the longer I ignore it, but telling the Internet about my procrastination habits is like telling Angelina Jolie that her lips are retardedly huge.
Things that I won’t miss about dorm life, but will probably look back on with nostalgia
Oct/081
- Having a co-ed bathroom. It’s not that bad until you learn that some guys prefer not to close the stall door when they take a piss.
- Showers that alternate between hot and cold water. At first I thought there was a pattern to it, no doubt the water gets cold when someone flushes the toilet or uses the sink, but I soon learned that there is a phantom in the A4 North bathroom.
- Crappy lighting. This really isn’t a problem anymore since my roommate’s parents bought us a standing lamp, but it’s kind of annoying turning on three lights to read something comfortably.
- Paper thin walls. I usually get to bed a lot later than I hope to because people like to have loud conversations as they pass by our room. I also have to make sure that our TV isn’t too loud, bleh.
- Living right next to the RA. It’s not like I’ve partaken in any wild debauchery (yet), however, living next to big brother can be a tad uncomfortable.
Straight sluggin’
Sep/083
Welllllll, I moved into my dorm room at UCSC a couple days ago and couldn’t be happier.
Of course, things have since shifted because we’re still figuring out how to arrange the furniture. My roommate’s parents were nice enough to give me a fifty-foot ethernet cable so that we wouldn’t have to trip over the one pictured. Yesterday, as I left the building in the morning, I was greeted by three deer outside. I’m not used to friendly deer! (Or aggressive raccoons…)
Hide genre column in iTunes 8 browser
Sep/081
I was so excited to download the newest update of iTunes because of the Genius playlist. However, I was angry to discover that they removed the option to hide the genre column in the browser! How annoying! I mean, who in their right mind browses by genre?! Who even tags their albums with a genre?
Anyway, I found a solution (Mac only):
1. Open terminal
2. Enter the following command and hit enter:
defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE
3. Close and reopen iTunes
To reverse changes, enter this command:
defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool TRUE
Other observations:
- Apple can’t seem to make up their mind about whether bands starting with numbers or symbols should appear first or last in the alphabetical artist’s list.
- I haven’t met a single person with more than 10GB of music who browses their library by album artwork.
- The Genius playlist looks awesome (I haven’t tried it out yet), but a sidebar? Really? As if the left sidebar doesn’t take up enough room as it is…