folie des grandeurs

ATTENTION ALL

2007-10-19T06:37:04Z

I have moved to robincamille.livejournal.com. I'll be posting more art.

I know, I hate it when people move their blogs, too. Anyway, please add me as your friend.

1950s films

2007-10-16T05:16:23Z

I watched Rear Window today for my Modern Culture & Media class. I hadn't watched it in years and I'd forgotten how well-made (and suspenseful) it is! And as a girl, can I just say... Grace Kelly's dresses and pearls are absolutely gorgeous. I'm going to wear pearls tomorrow. With, um... A t-shirt, probably.

Question: what sort of accent do characters in 1950s films (and 40s and 30s...) have? Is it just the way people spoke then? It's somehow smooth and a little yowl-y at times. Grace Kelly in particular has a very beautiful but peculiar manner of speaking. It just SOUNDS rich and beautiful. You know?

I know that if I tried to emulate her, I'd (A) sound stupid and (B) sound pretentious. Oh, well. When you're Grace Kelly, nothing sounds pretentious, since you are after all the freaking Princess of Monaco.

I just read the wiki page on her life. Apparently she had an abortion? I had no idea about the scandals attached to her name. Unavoidable, maybe.

Imagine living the high life - gorgeous, talented, sought-after, wealthy, well-traveled... It's examples like Grace Kelly that make me want to stop dressing like a 2-year-old, stop fooling around, and grow up and be sophisticated and respected. But then I read Jack Kerouac and think of how free I could be.

It's a weird internal debate I've been having lately. Not much will come of it, probably. I tried to articulate it to Deven and figured out that it's probably the old I-want-to-stay-young vs. I-want-to-grow-up thing. It's so surreal to be older. To transition out of teenagerness. To have a job and to be thinking seriously about careers and things. I love it and I hate it. It's thrilling and it's exasperating.

I'll put it out of my head. In the meantime, where are those fake pearls I bought at the county fair?...

Book arts

2007-10-09T15:07:07Z

Here's what my book arts class decided to print on our proofing press:

Then we found an old Coca-Cola ad plate from 1944:

antarestar @ 2007-10-08T17:20:00

2007-10-08T21:23:06Z

Another thing I didn't know until recently:

Yuppie is derived from the phrase Young Urban Professional. That said, vaguely funny article. Would have been funnier if I'd read it in 1991.

Which was sixteen years ago. I feel old.

Letters I wish I could write

2007-10-05T03:05:02Z

Dear study center patrons,

I'd like to point out the "00 DECIBELS" sign hanging from the ceiling. That means this area is an absolute quiet zone. Why are you talking? Why are you high-fiving? The rest of us are composing essays and we need the silence to study. The sound of human breathing is about 10 decibels. You're in a 0 decibel area. STOP BREATHING.

Love, Robin

__________

Dear athletes down my hall,

For the love of GOD and all that is holy buy some Febreeze!!!!

Love, Robin (and your other neighbors, probably)

__________

Dear Walter Benjamin,

I have a feeling that if you wrote in English, I'd understand you a lot more. You have some interesting ideas. Too bad I can't fully comprehend them. Either you need to write in English or hire a better translator, or God needs to give me a better brain.

Love, Robin

__________

Dear God,

Need brain. Pls send ASAP. V. important!!

Love, Robin

antarestar @ 2007-09-25T22:33:00

2007-09-26T02:33:47Z

why are people such IDIOTS sometimes?

40 page CV

2007-09-24T18:12:40Z

So I'm designing a poster for an on-campus lecture next month by this guy from Harvard, Jorge Domínguez, who's going to talk about "Race, Nation, Revolution, and Communist Rule in Cuba." I checked out his website and he has a freaking FORTY PAGE CV.

Wow. I wish I were that prolific. Books, TV, films, lectures, testimonies before the US court, book reviews... This guy is kind of amazing. I think I'll go to his lecture.

whizgiggled

2007-08-30T19:13:42Z

I'm actually impressed with spammers' language skills. Never have I seen so many synonyms for girls, laughed, boys, and bathroom in the subject lines of emails. Here is but a taste:

Dames always guffawed at me and even fellows did in the john...
Ladies always chuckled at me and even blokes in the commode...
Virgins always whooped at me and even gars did in the free bathroom...
Babes always whizgiggled at me and even lads did in the public latrine...

To which I ask only this: ...whizgiggled? ...Is that you, Willy Wonka? I told you to stay out of my inbox!

0_0

2007-08-19T09:16:27Z

Am I dumb? I just realized the genius of the FedEx logo. The white space between the E and the x is an arrow.

Go Google Image it. Be amazed.

in praise of garbage trucks

2007-08-15T18:02:27Z

This is just a post to say how cool garbage trucks are.

Yes, really. I watched as one stopped in front of my driveway. Those robotic arms slid out, clasped the trash can in a viselike grip, lifted it up, emptied it out, and put it back where it came from. How cool. What design. It reminded me of a spaceship, the way those arms came out and did their thing.

Next thing you know, there will be no need for a driver. The garbage truck will just drive itself around. Robotically. Like a spaceship.

IN OTHER NEWS, I am:

looking for jobs on campus; I've already applied to be a computer help desk consultant and also a graphic designer

working on two websites: my own and a campus group's, for which I'm getting paid (yay)

working at Ann Taylor Loft

working on editing my Cynic's Creed story so I can bind it (using Blurb) and shop it around agents and publishers (big talk for a girl who has no idea what she is doing)

getting restless. I actually WANT to go back to school!!

So essentially, I'm working!

Summer

2007-06-14T18:45:57Z

I'm at home. It's summer vacation.
I'm still in my pajamas. It's almost noon.
Work doesn't start until next week.
I feel so lazy and uninspired.
Art projects only take so much time
and I don't feel like reading.

Can I just fast-forward to July 20?
Or even the 19th. Or 18th.
Can I just skip a month or so?

Can I at least skip jury duty?

Dear Time: You are dumb. Love, Robin.

That's what I like to see!

2007-04-22T12:36:09Z

SUNSHINE
After months of cold and rain and snow and slush, weather.com finally tells me

Weather today in Providence, RI:
Sunny. High 68* F. Precip 10%. Abundant sunshine.

FLAMING LIPS & YO LA TENGO
...came to Brown University yesterday. Oh em gee. Such a fun concert. I'll scan the pictures from my disposable camera once the film is developed. Let's just say that I was on my boyfriend's shoulders mere feet from the hamster ball.

The only downside to that concert was abundant pot. Honestly, it was everywhere. Gag. I now see how the marijuana industry is so vast. Granted, it was the day after 4/20, and we were at a psychedelic-y concert, and, after all, it's BROWN, but still! Eww.

GAMELAN
Regardless, it was amazing. And after the concert, my gamelan class performed its final - a 6 piece long concert in a recital hall. We had a singer and some guest peoples... It was really cool. I played the saron. (Yes, like Sauron.) Gamelan's so much fun. If it weren't a three-hour class on Tuesday nights (have you any idea how many fun things I had to cancel), I'd love to do it next year.

Okay! I woke up strangely early! Time to read!

College things

2007-04-10T17:33:33Z

NEW DEVELOPMENTS
I'm considering majoring in Art/Semiotics. This would satisfy my leaning toward graphic design. It would also entail me living in a shoebox for the rest of my life.

Or possibly a double in Art/Semiotics and Literary Arts with Honors in Creative Writing, which would cement my shoebox destiny.

PHYSICS IS PHUN
An article about the 50th anniversary of the BCS Theory of Superconductivity. The C in BCS stands for Cooper, or rather Leon Cooper, who co-teaches my physics/art class on Mondays. Excerpt!

“It was all the time,” Cooper says. “There was absolutely nothing else in my head. I remember making breakthroughs at concerts.”

Here’s the big one: Cooper Pairs. At very low temperatures, seeming against logic, electrons that previously resisted each other become attracted to each other.

“In BCS theory, electrons pair together and dance together like partners,” says Gang Xiao, a physics professor at Brown, the other symposium organizer. “And they’re dancing in a very crowded space without colliding with each other.”

“It was a major coup for American science,” Jevicki says. “It was a big, big success.

BCS theory had scientific, social and political import. The Cold War was occurring. The practical relevance is everywhere today. Every computer and every instrument we use was driven by BCS.”

The most notable instrument is magnetic resonance imaging, which has revolutionized medicine.

FUNK
I was in a three-day funk last week - a culmination of several things that had been bothering me slash depressing me. But I solved it! With a nap. After a nice, three-hour nap in a dark room, I felt so much better. Listen up, future depressed self! Go have a siesta.

HARVEY PEKAR
...author of American Splendor, is speaking at Friday at Brown. But guess who has playwriting class at that time... C'est moi... I can't skip, either. I've already missed two classes. This angers me.

Tee, hee

2007-04-01T19:54:21Z

Facebook news feed is funny on April Fools Day:

"Introducing LivePoke™! 10:31am
Facebook will dispatch a real live person today to poke a friend of your choice.*
*offer good for only the first 100 pokers in each network."

"Meredith and McDreamy have changed their relationship status to "It's Complicated" ... oh wait ... "In a Relationship" ... oh wait ... "It's Complicated" again. 9:47am"

"Bracket Buster: Ohio State and Florida have mutually agreed on a tie and will not play the championship game. 8:56am"

"Two of your oxen drowned when you tried to ford the river. 7:24am"

"Harry and Voldemort have set their relationship status to "Mortal Enemies." 5:44am"

"You are on Facebook, reading your News Feed. 3:47am"

"a Robin Davis production
Facebook © 2007"

Mark Zuckerberg, I love you. So silly!

Also, the Seventeen magazine "best new music" compilation is scarily good...

Laziness rays

2007-03-29T06:30:22Z

I think maybe my house emits laziness rays. No, really. And I'm the only one (besides Dusty, my terrier) who is susceptible to them.

My sensibility: Hey, Robin, you should really get to work on that thing, you know...
Me: I'll do it later. It's sunny outside.
My conscience: You told your mom you would...
Me: Look, I made a taco! Let's eat it outside, read a book, and tan.
My schedule: You have to be somewhere right now!
Me: No, I don't. (stretches out in bikini)
My job prospects for summertime: We don't exist!
Me: Whatevs!

I also watched Memento today, finally. I have a feeling I'll have to watch it again tomorrow. I pride myself on being able to follow complex plotlines, but maybe I'm just fooling myself... F-f-foolin'!!

a mood change

2007-03-20T07:03:18Z

fun fact! the background image on wikipedia is the spine of an open book! go look, i dare you

additionally, i am half-sentient, wearin' sweatpants, and eatin' coco-puffs. life is swell.

also, at this time tomorrow night, i will be HOME!! and then at this time in two nights, i will be in hawaii!... you're jealous at first, until i tell you that every time i go to hawaii, it's because someone in my family is dead or dying.

coco-puffs can't make that feel any better.

it's probably time to go to sleep.

Things

2007-03-11T18:29:21Z

Life is wonderful.

Life is strange... & wonderful.

Every time I worry that I'll never be as happy as I've been before, something new & beautiful appears. Of course, it comes with its own little black spots, little bits of worry & change. But - & I keep saying this, but it's true - things will work out. If there's anything I've learned in the past couple of years, it's that things will work out.

Though sometimes I fear the rug will be pulled out from under me & I'll be left floating & nebulous. It's happened before. I find my footing, but there's always that little vacuum of irrational dread in me.

But what makes life wonderful is that I can forget that vacuum & just be happy with what I've been given. I don't deserve it, but it's given anyway, & what can I do but be thankful & make the most with it?

So thank you. & have a nice day.

A reflection, of sorts

2007-03-04T19:22:49Z

EXPLODING
So, ah... Who knew that William the Conqueror exploded at his funeral? To those who didn't: now you do!!

SINGING
I forgot how much I loved the "Dream a Little Dream of Me" song, as sung by Mama Cass. Takes me back to the days when I replayed that Mamas & the Papas cassette over and over again.

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me

FEELING
I know that an epoch has passed when I can think of that time and feel a certain... feeling. Like déjà vu. I think of senior year and I feel carefree, loose, sunwarmed. Driving fast on the 101. A shiver of uncertainty, a longing to make the minutes stretch for hours, a desperation, a security...

AGING
It's a shock to think back to myself a year ago. It's a shock because a year no longer seems like an eternity. I'm not that different than I was last year. Shorter hair, I suppose. Certainly some personal growth. A different boy. More friends. I guess what really scares me is that I'm not that different, but everything else is. My high school friends and my family are scattered across the continent. My daily routine now is so radically dissimilar from last year. At seventeen, I could not have imagined what life would be like now, I could not even have come close to guessing. At all. And yet here I am.

Such is life, no? Static & dynamic, things change, things change back, things arise and disappear so subtlely that I cannot detect them. Who would have thought, who would have ever even guessed...

12 angry... hens?

2007-02-23T17:28:32Z

1. My friends here have trouble recognizing me when I wear a headband. Weird?

2. Pet peeve: people telling me things I already know.

3. I went to bed at sunrise.

4. Civil Disobedience is the name of a bear in a short play I'm writing.

5. Bears are funny. Why?

6. I have three songs running through my head in a loop: "Eyes of Green, Green, Green" by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci; "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" by Kenny Rankin; & "The Two of Us" by 'NSync, not the Beatles (unfortunately).

7. I've been using ampersands a lot lately. They're just so awesome.

8. A new habit of pluralizing has overtaken me. Hoorays! Oh nos! I blame Dinosaur Comics.

9. I'm reading Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet & it's amazing.

10. I need alone time. I wish I had a single dorm room. Or at least a car to drive around in.

11. I feel like Pangloss sometimes.

12. Patience... Patience.

aim slush

2007-02-15T03:19:14Z

So, my AIM buddy list. I have around 90 buddies. Four of them are available, and FIFTEEN of them have away messages on.

What is the point of logging into AIM if you're going to be quote/unquote unavailable? That's just silly. If you're afraid people will IM you, don't log in at all.

Must I continually state the obvious?

_______

So today I discovered how disgusting slush is. And also how ice can trap water into tall puddles (maybe deep is a better adjective than tall). And also that my LLBean boots work. Double hooray!

_______

I still have "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" stuck in my head. It's a specific version of it, too. Curse you, Christmas music!

There's a guy playing bagpipes outside

2007-02-13T18:04:18Z

RUMINATION STATION
I'm pretty sure my love for Brown doubles each day I'm here, or maybe every weekend. At the end of summertime, I had this dread that I'd never be that happy again - nights at Pannikin, hikes with Tyler, bonfires at Moonlight Beach (nostalgia!). I knew that I was wrong, that college would be freakin' amazing, but who wasn't petrified before their first semester at college? I hope that everybody else has proved themselves as wrong as I have.

SO WHAT'S SO COOL ABOUT YOUR WEEKENDS, ROBIN
My SD friends are a little jealous, I think, of the goings-on in Perkins Hall. Let's just say messy art projects have transpired, one of which included chucking water balloons filled with paint at a giant canvas. Yeah. You're jealous. Shout-out to Deven & Jeanine, my partners in crime, who are probably reading this! Our trial separation will be painful but probably necessary. Maybe. At the very least, it will be cleaner.

THINGS I HAVE TO DO

apply for the 93459 cool summer internships I found over break

write an essay for Greek mythology

send birthday packages to two of my favorite people

mail back the ugly size 11 boots LLBean inexplicably sent me [wrong order, grr]

find something cool to do with my website

Regarding the last one, I feel so lame. I get maybe 600 hits a day on my site for Photoshop brushes, but I feel like it could be so much more. I tried making a webcomic but that got kind of old. I told Carlos today I was slightly considering a Visual Arts concentration (only slightly) or at least some kind of modern media slash graphic design thing, since I love it so...

Any suggestions for toastsnatcher dot com?

La la la la time to shower and get the smell of spray paint outta my hairs.

images from science

2007-01-30T03:21:10Z

Well, I'm back at Brown. And it's cold. But I am in love with my classes. Except maybe French, because I'm not really a natural at languages, at least not at Brown, where they fly through everything at light speed.

My favorite class thus far is Images From Science, Images For Science, co-taught by Leon Cooper and Richard Fishman. It's half lecture on fundamental physics concepts and half studio art time. SO COOL.

Thus far, we've discussed "our place in the universe" - that is, the history leading up to the model of our solar system / galaxy / universe that we have today. One thing that's struck me so far is Professor Cooper's insistence that we not consider the scientists of the past primitive or dumb, because they were as smart as if not smarter than we are today. They used the knowledge of the time to come up with the best answer possible to answer their questions.

So often we laugh or smirk at past ideas, like geocentricity (is that even a word?) or the belief in spontaneous generation - maggots coming from meat, et cetera. But in 500 years, they'll be laughing at us, too.

_______

PS... this is what the alphabet would look like without Q and R.*

_______

* cool points: who said this?!

Pen 'n' ink

2007-01-18T09:05:08Z

Do you ever get the urge to just shave off your eyebrows totally?

...No? 'Kay, cool.

-------------

So I bought a Speedball Crow Quill Pen & Ink set. Like a REAL pen, with a nib and everything, that you have to dip in an inkwell. Still getting the hang of drawing/writing with it. Any hints/tips are welcome!

-------------

I have recently begun fostering a great love for Futurama.

That's all I have to say. Now, I go eat.

Rant on "amazing"

2007-01-15T20:38:23Z

I'm currently using 37% of the space Gmail gives me. At first it was 38%, but I went and deleted all my LJ comment notifications and Facebook emails and Brown Morning Mails... Somewhere around 2500 emails or so, totally gone, and that was still only 1%.

The space is probably taken up by all my picture attachments, but those have been lifesavers for when I'd thought I'd lost some photos forever.

La la la la. I finished Brave New World two days ago. It was way better than I'd expected. It was just...

Well, I'd say amazing, but that word is so frigging overused. "How was your breakfast today, Robin?" "Oh, amazing." I strongly suspect that the things we say are amazing are significantly less than amazing. If we were truly amazed, our minds would be totally blown. We'd make Life Decisions. We'd remember the moment until we died or else became senile. The majority of breakfasts, self, are not amazing.

Things that are legitimately classifiable as "amazing":
symphonies

extremely well-written books

skydiving or trips to outer space

your own wedding

prophetic visions

surviving a terrible storm out at sea

finding out your real parents were CIA agents and they left you a treasure chest in their will for when you turned 18

being clinically dead for 5 minutes before being revived

Nothing else - NOTHING ELSE - is "amazing". They could be "fabulous", "glorious", or "severely interesting", but NOT "amazing".

Shoes & music (aka my entire life)

2007-01-12T01:45:18Z

Today my grandpa told me I was wearing "sexy shoes"!! Direct quote. They're silver sneakers with pink laces. It would probably be funnier to you if you actually knew my grandpa, who is a small, fairly quiet Asian man with no hair. He says things like "Don't lift that, Remy [my grandpa]! - Your eyeball will fall out." Leaving me going "???"

Things I have got a lot of over break thus far: books & music.

My friend Christine gave me about 600 songs (we had a sharing sesh). Also, At The Drive-In finally has their Relationship of Command album on iTunes, so I bought that (after checking with my friends to see if anybody else had it).

I steal music.

Four or so years ago, when the dawn of the sharing-music era first arose, I'd decided to be upright & moral & etc and refuse any offers of illegally trading music. Those days are long gone. Whateves, I still buy music, and the people I share with buy their music too. Sometimes.

I'm reading Huxley's Brave New World and loving it. Loving it! I kind of wish I'd bought it used & cheap somewhere, because I'm reading a library copy. Pretty much I want to own every book I ever read. Especially really good ones like BNW. Was there ever a movie?

Also, I keep discovering more new webcomics. Therefore I keep wasting more time. Soon I will have no time to spare at all. Oh, well, at least I'll be entertained.

PS... On the whole, my LiveJournal moods are all between "accomplished" and "cold". It's a shame I will never be ecstatic or optimistic or relaxed.