Boo You Whore

You know what pisses me off? I mean, besides math, bigotry, aggressive veagans, the 80's, chick flicks, labels on highlighters, sociopathic liars, sickeningly epic speeches, and the way I always slice my fingertips open on pop-tabs...

It pisses me off when research groups actually spend good time and money to determine really obvious things. Prime example: I was looking through news articles on Yahoo! this afternoon, and some nameless international group has just completed a study that shows that using tanning beds increases the risk of skin cancer. Especially if the tanning is done frequently. Especially if it's done by people under the age of 35.

Now this is the point where you have to stop and ask yourself: What about any of that was not really obvious? It's like, "Gasp! You spend hours of every week of every year being blasted with ultraviolet light until you glow an unnatural orange? That sounds like it might increase your risk of skin cancer! But let's spend a lot of time and money just to make sure!" It's as if there is actually a Captain Obvious out there who sits at a ridiculously wide desk in the top of some ridiculously tall office building and sends out the orders for all his little lab minions to confirm all of his very obvious suspicions. That's gotta be it. Who else would be responsible for such gems as "Combining Drugs and Alcohol is a Bad Idea" and "Faraway Objects are Hard to See" and "Swallowing Multiple Magnets is Not Good for You"?

Perhaps instead of putting so much funding and effort into confirming that tanning beds increase the risk of skin cancer, why not put that time and money toward a more noble cause? Like, I don't know, finding a cure for skin cancer? Or feeding the world's hungry? Or finding a way to make pop-tabs less hazardous?

Whatever.

In other news, somebody just left an uprooted weed at my doorstep. They wrote on the dry-erase board: "Bellami - U SO PURDY I GIV U FLOWER SLASH WEED THINGY LAWL".

That kind of makes my day. Thank you, Anonymous Human.

-Bell
"I love you so big it's like a hippo."

"Y'ARGH!"

... says the pirate. The cow goes "moo". The pig says "oink".

I miss those things... See & Says. You know, those delightfully round, colorful plastic things with the knob on the side that you could pull to the picture of the animal, and it would tell you what it was and what sound it made. Classic. Can't get enough of those.

So I filmed my first video project last night. Now I have to start editing. Getting the action on tape is only half the battle, sadly. But it was great fun. I really feel like I'm majoring in "Playing" instead of RTF. But I suppose that's good. I should probably enjoy my major. What I like about it is that yeah, I have to learn all the crazy technical stuff... and being about as tech-savvy as a bowl of soup, this is quite a challenge for me... but it's FUN technical stuff. Like, "Hey. Here's a light kit. Set 'em up." And then you get to open this big, exciting box and take out all the lights and put them up on these tall metal poles with lots of knobs, and they glow so hot you have to use gloves to adjust them or your skin bursts into flames and just the danger factor there is kick-ass and... I digress. (And exaggerate slightly.) But anyway, what I was getting to was that such a huge part of this major is just taking in the world around you and thinking and wondering and questioning and saying "What can I show to tell this character's story?" Which is exactly what I did in Creative Writing for three years. Which is what I love to do.

It's good to be in college. I'm never leaving. I'll be like that kid in Rushmore and just flunk everything so I can stay in school forever. That's a great idea. What a smart kid. He's my new Jesus.

Yeah, so that's all from me. I need to read things. Wondrous things. Full of... wonder.

-Bell
"WHORE!"

A Molecular Free-For-All in the Prebiotic Soup of Organic Molecules

That was how my Biology professor explained the origins of life. I loves me some Biology. It's about the only science I can stand. Geometry is about the only math I can stand. You can just stuff me full of English and History, though, and I'll be like, "Oh yeah! YES! YYYYEEEESSS! Mmmm! Oh YEAH, baby! Give it to me! Harder! HARDER!!!"

...Or maybe that's something else. You really can't be too sure anymore.

We just got back from Ikea. I finally bought a Woman blanket to go with the Man blanket I've had for about a year now. Jeff says I should keep them separated. Or else they'll mate. And I'll wake up in the morning with swatches all over my bed. Personally, I'm rather partial to that idea.

I've been acquiring a lot of blankets lately. Even though it's getting back up into the 60's outside. That makes me happy. No more of this Winter thing. The groundhog DID predict that we're supposed to have an early Spring, after all. (Wonderful how now, in the 21st Century, our most exciting means of predicting the upcoming weather is still a tunnel-digging rodent. God bless America.)

Michele and I rented The Virgin Suicides yesterday. I actually really enjoyed it. It's Sofia Coppola, so it was of course visually gorgeous. But besides that, the story was just haunting. And I have a real appreciation for things that have the ability to haunt me... seeing as how I normally don't pay attention to anything. I have a feeling the book is probably better. It's by Jeffrey Eugenides, who also wrote Middlesex, which I'm currently reading and which is also just amaz-uh-zing. I'm bothered by the fact that I have very little time for pleasure reading anymore. Or writing. I feel so... stagnant. *angsty face*

Well, I'm gonna go continue to eat chocolate and grow fat. G'bye, lovelies.

-Bell
"But now we just treat leprosy with antibiotics, so we don't have to have leper colonies where people go in and their fingers fall off."

Buh-Buh-Buh-Bloggage!

So we just got back from Pluckers. For those of you who don't know the glory that is Pluckers, it's an awesome little hot wing bar pretty close to campus. Jon and Michele and Ben and Becky and I all met there for dinner. (It was the first time I'd seen Becky without a bunny in tow in a few months. And we've been to the movies a couple times in there.) Jon finally made it onto the Wall of Flame. You have to eat 25 of Pluckers hottest wings to get your picture up for that. So while I'm quite proud of my lover and his iron stomach, unfortunately I will not be able to kiss him for a few weeks, lest my lips should burst into flames. Exciting!

In other news, classes have started. I'm taking four, but the breakdown of my effort is something like this:

Biology: 11%
Philosophy: 12%
Narrative Strategies: 26%
Image and Sound: 51%

And thus RTF is responsible for 77% of my labors. Which is as it should be, I suppose. I'm not complaining - it's pretty damn fun - things just seem all unbalanced.

Wait. I'm an art major. Why the figgedy-f*ck am I doing math? Never mind. I turn in my first project for Image and Sound on Friday. We had to take a series of 12-15 black and white photographs on an old SLR. And those photographs have to tell a simple story. I did three shoots before I finally got usable images; all the others kept coming back horribly underexposed. Which made little sense considering the conditions. So I've spent like $100 on film and processing for this project. I blame the camera. And Jesus.

I wish I had known that Spring Semester would be exponentially more expensive than the Fall. It's just now February and I'm almost out of money. I'm gonna have to start whoring myself out on the weekends. But I guess that's what I get for picking a major I enjoy. *le sigh*

Yeah, so I've still got buckets of reading to do (yes, readings are now being measured in buckets), but I just wanted to check in. And tell you kids how much I love you. *lick* What?

-Bell
"Hey! Look! It's that girl whose face I hate!"

And Then There Was Ice...

...EVERYWHERE! We got this crazy cold-snap here in Austin, and it's been all icy for the past few days. It actually snowed a little yesterday. We climbed to the top level of the parking garage and slid down the ramps on cardboard boxes. That was great fun. And we made teeny little snowmen and threw snowballs at each other and stabbed each other with icicles and stole lunch trays from the cafeteria to use as sleds and just generally acted like seven-year-olds because we didn't have to go to class. We were supposed to start on Tuesday morning, but they closed the campus Monday evening and it's not going to re-open until tomorrow at 11 a.m. So we got an extra two and a half days of winter break. Score.

I'm really looking forward to my classes this semester. I'm taking a Bio class that should be very similar to Environmental Sciences, which is the only science class I've ever truly enjoyed. Philosophy looks interesting, but as far as whether I'll actually like it or not is probably going to depend on the professor. Then I have my two film production classes. I've already looked over the textbooks and the syllabus for one and I'm freaking out with anticipation. TEACH ME THE MAKING OF THE MOVIES!!! Looks like they'll both be pretty challenging, but I drool all over myself just thinking about what I'll be learning, so I don't think motivation will be an issue.

I am such a dork.

Umm... other news? I got a new phone. It's terribly confusing. My old one just made phone calls. This one can like, launch missiles and stuff. And I can't for the life of me figure out how to lock the keys, so I'll stick it in my bag and pull it out a few minutes later to find that it's accessing the Internet or authorizing the colonization of the moon or something. To be honest, it really scares me. I'm pretty sure it's gonna turn into a liquid and slip into my brain while I'm sleeping. On the bright side, it's all pretty and purple!

Speaking of phones and ear-seepage, Jon and Michele had this great conversation over dinner. They decided that there should be a movie about a super-intelligent volcano that lives at the center of the earth and kills people by calling their cell phones and shooting boiling lava into their brains when they answer. Because apparently the people it kills actually belong to another dimension in which this volcano is some kind of god. But they don't know that they belong to that dimension because there was some catastrophe that launched them into our dimension and erased their memories. So the volcano has come to retrieve them. And nobody knows what's going on. So it's scary. Or something.

I hereby promise to never make a movie like that.

Well, I'm off. Hopefully I'll actually get to go to class tomorrow. Only time will tell...

-Bell
"They're so predictable. They're like COWS."

So...

...turns out it wasn't my car's battery after all. It was the fuel pump. So now pretty much every major part that could have failed, has. Joy.

Ah well. At least it's fixed so I can trot about the globe as I wish. All my stuff's packed now, and I think I'll finally be heading back early tomorrow morning. To be honest, I'm kind of freaking out right now. Like, what the hell am I gonna do in LJ? I made it out - why do I have to go back? *clings to dorm bed* YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!!!

I was actually supposed to have left as soon as I was done with finals... which was over a week ago. But I hang around like a bad smell.

You know, there's nothing like moving to show you how much useless crap you own. There was a whole lot of stuff that I brought to college, thinking maybe I'd find a use for it here, only to now come to terms with the fact that it's actually useless and should be promptly removed from my dorm and disposed of. Then I started looking at all my stuff and thought, "How much of this do I actually need? The clothes?" Then I started feeling all enlightened like Buddha and considered selling all my earthly possessions and donating the money to charity and then meditating under a tree for the next fifteen years. And then I remembered that I'm a spoiled American child and maybe getting rid of all my stuff won't actually solve any spiritual crisis I may have.

So I'm hungry. *wanders toward cafeteria*

-Bell
"Well THAT was exciting..."

And Then There Were Four...

...days of school left for me, that is. Damn, this semester just kind of flew by, didn't it? I mean, technically there are still like two weeks of finals left, but all of mine are this week, so after Friday I'm done. I'll probably be hanging around Austin for a bit, though. Matt's coming next week to help me move stuff back to LJ. Fun fun. It'll be good to see everyone again. It will NOT be good to be back in LJ. But I can't wait to see you kids. I'm gonna miss my Jon.

In other news, my car battery died. That's exciting. I think I might have a charger thing in my trunk. But I need to figure out how to use it. IF it exists. If not, I think UT has some cool little guys that ride around in those tiny trucks with jumper cables and rescue damsels in automotive distress. God bless the University of Texas.

In other other news, I got my hair did...


I have bangs again for the first time in like twelve years...


And that curling thing on the side is kind of exciting...


It's not actually short, it's just pulled back. As it should be. Crazy varmint.

Well, you kids have LOADS of fun. And for god's sake, CALL me when you get back in town. I need to see you all.

-Bell
"Woah there, Mr. Testosterone!"