You can bash yourself all you want, but keep me out of it!

I found out today that Boise State students who graduate in the summer or fall semester "aren't invited" to walk in the spring graduation ceremony because, as the graduation coordinator so eloquently phrased it, "the spring graduation ceremony is just so ginormous." This really pissed me off for a few minutes, because I and several people I know who are graduating fall semester had planned to walk in the spring.

I don't want to walk in the winter ceremony because, frankly, my parents are basically hermits and won't come to the ceremony. I doubt anyone else I know would come out just to watch me walk, either, because it's tedious and on a Saturday morning right before Christmas. Then I realized I don't really want to go down there and sit around with a bunch of people I don't know for hours and hours to walk across the stage when I already have my diploma anyway.
So, I realized that I don't really care that much about walking, but I probably would have had I been a more traditional student and graduated in four years and had a group of friends who were graduating with me. I was fine.

Then one of my other friends who's graduating in the fall but has a scheduling conflict and planned to also walk in the spring ceremony left this lovely message for me publicly on Facebook: "Sorry you can't walk...I'm already over it, and I don't graduate for another month. Boise State blows."

The above comment pisses me off on many levels: firstly (and I'll ignore any snarky smugness and--ahem-- insincerity), because I don't think BSU sucks as bad as everyone likes to make out. Certainly it has annoying administrative policies--but I'm sure every school has some annoying policies in place in differing areas. Certainly BSU leaves several somethings to desire, and yes, the football team gets more attention than the academics. But the football team brings in money and national recognition which will benefit the school academically in the long run (a very slow process, maybe, but it is happening, even though this Statesman article omits any mention of football money or recognition). Also, Boise State contributes a lot to the community in terms of jobs, cultural events, promotion of higher education, revenue, etc.

Sometimes, citizens, one must make a deal with the devil to get what one wants.

What I don't understand is if you've spent your time, energy, and money to get a degree from a school, why would you go around bashing it all the time? I did this in my nihilistic early-twenties I'm-too-jaded-to-care-about-anything phase, but looking back on that...it was so stupid and ultimately the only one who got hurt by my acting like a too-cool-for-school little bitch was me, not Boise State. If you put so much into something yet you hate it at the same time, to me it's sort of like poisoning yourself. Things are what you make of them.

BSU does have some good programs and professors (MFA Writing, Nursing, Engineering), even if it isn't a huge research institute, even if it isn't world famous, even if it doesn't have the most diverse selection of degrees available. I've never heard of anybody who couldn't get into a masters program or transfer to another undergrad program because they went to BSU.

I got my degree from BSU; regardless of how it's ranked, when you bash it you bash me.

It came from my cell phone

I recently noticed that my cell phone has photos I've been saving for over a year. I don't know what I intended to do with them; some were taken to send to other people and some I took to amuse myself. I now share them with you, gentle readers:

1. These signs grace the interior of the newest parking garage at BSU. They were the first thing I noticed when the garage opened last fall. Can you spot the glaring typo? It really adds to the perception that BSU is not a very good school. The signs were fixed by spring semester; someone stuck a piece of white tape over the "D" on all of the signs. Go BSU!

2. I saw this public art the first day of spring semester '08. It stayed there for months. The Conservative Arts building may be the most decrepit building on campus, but I have many wonderful memories of taking classes there. Ah.

3. I don't know if this is the work of the same clever grafitti artist as the last one or not, but I found this on the outside of the geology labs. I'm not sure if it's an order, a suggestion, a comment on the busy-ness of grad life, or a description of the genderlessness of the Math and Geosciences building itself. Perhaps some meanie was making fun of the supposed lack of sex in the lives of math nerds...

4. The way this is abbreviated makes it look like it says "JC's lord." In that case, I guess it would mean that this car belongs to a lord and the person driving it is JC, who is a serf on said lord's manor. Or that JC worships his or her car, making the car itself JC's lord. Really, of course, what the license plate is saying is that Jemaine Clement is Lord.

5. When I first saw this at my friend's house, I thought it was a tube of acrylic paint. Not so! Even better, it's "a lubricant for the elimination and prevention of hair balls." And in tasty tuna flavor, at that! I love the fact that there is a comb next to it. I wondered if you comb it into kitty's hair, but that is not so according to the Laxatone website. Too bad; it's a funny image.

6. Notice the figure on the right of the window. I think it's supposed to be a ghost, but to me it really looks like a condom. The fact that he seems to be saying "Ooo!" rather than "Boo!" doesn't help.

7. This picture comes from a baby changing table in the restroom at Flying Pie Pizza. As my friend Ryan said, you know those damn babies: leave 'em alone for a second and they fall right on their heads. This baby appears to have a spring on his or her head, so hopefully he or she wasn't injured in this fall. On a slightly unrelated note, Ryan and I experienced a weird sort of synchronous coincidence. We watched an old episode of Star Trek at Ryan's before heading out to Flying Pie (a hilarious episode involving an evil woman/cat in which the redshirt actually didn't die and made it back onto the Enterprise). When we got to Flying Pie, their sign read "Pizza from a chain? Spock, are you out of your Vulcan mind?" Spooky.

On Graduating

Wednesday was my last class of college ever. I don't really feel like I've graduated from anything. I had predicted that I'd feel sad and start to cry as I walked from class, got in my car and drove away, but it wasn't as exciting as all that. I exchanged phone numbers with a girl I'd had several classes with throughout the year and made plans to go to coffee, then got in my car and drove away. I did not feel verklempt in any way.

I did have a bunch of homework to email to my professor by Thursday, so I did one assignment Wednesday night (in which I had to revise an academic article to make it sound cleaner and clearer. It was fun. I got to feel like I was really sticking it to this Cambridge professor whose style of writing includes too much metadiscourse such as "What we have here is" and "Very well, let us have another look at" that just makes me cringe). On Thursday I had to email one more essay to my professor and that was it. It was all pretty anticlimactic.

I did learn some things this year that weren't taught in class:

• Getting straight As at BSU is not difficult. There's really no reason I didn't have a better GPA for my college career than utter laziness.
• Course loads are supposedly easier and more manageable there than at more "difficult" schools. I think this is probably a crock, but seriously, three papers and a presentation is not too much for one class.
• Professors love me. Except for one I had several years ago; but I was very lazy in that class and she is notoriously difficult.
• If you can never hang out because you always have homework, some friends might lose interest in you.
• I saw this happen a few years ago to someone else, and I was one of the scoffers who couldn't understand the idea of having too much homework even to hang out on weekends. But it does happen, especially when you have to read 30 books in one semester. I apologize for any former scoffing I may have done to people about this.
  
• One night of socialness during Spring Break may be all the socialness you can manage in a semester. And at that point, you may just have a few drinks and talk everyone's ears off about the 20 or so books you've read so far in the semester. Especially The Master and Margarita.
  
• I also discovered I can't hang out on weeknights. Not when I have to go to work at 7am. No way. Not even when I have to go to work at 8am. It really sucks when all social events take place on weeknights.
• I don't like be out all weekend, and I can't stay awake past 11 when I do go out. I used to go out every weekend night when I was younger, and the idea of a night home made me ridiculously depressed. Now I only like to go out on Friday or Saturday, but not both, and I don't really like to do much on Sundays other than have breakfast with someone. My condo is pretty and I like to be here.
• I will probably never find another book that I love as much as The Master and Margarita.
• I think reading it was one of the things I had to accomplish before I die. I don't mean that everyone needs to specifically read The Master and Margarita before they die (though they should), but I do think everyone probably has at least one work of art that they need to come into contact with to make their life complete in some way. That's really vague, but I think I will save this for a later blog entry.
• M&M has introduced me to a whole new genre of literature and period of history to be obsessed with (writers oppressed by Stalin/Stalinist Russia).
• Don't publish things to your blog and then think nobody reads it. They do.

To celebrate my graduation, I invited some people to join me at the Modern Thursday night and the plan was to end up at the Neurolux later. I got to the Modern at 6 and met some friends and started drinking gin and sodas in the hot, hot sun. Gin and sodas in very large glasses. Round about 10:30, I felt sick and threw up in the trash can around the corner from the Modern's patio, right next to the ice machine. I had to call a cab and go home. My friends went on to the Neurolux where there were other people whom I wanted to see. I got home and started sending them embarrassing text messages about someone who was there with them and whom I have a crush on. In short, I behaved much more like a 20-year-old than a 30-year-old. Then I was sick all day Friday, which was my body reminding me that I am 30 and not 20.

I learned some things from this as well:

• It is not a good idea to drink a bottle-plus of gin in 4 hours. Especially when you hardly ever drink otherwise.
• Don't eat browned-butter and mizithra pasta before you go out drinking.
• Expensive drinks exist for a reason: to keep you from overdoing it by not allowing you to afford very many of them. In other words, drink expensive drinks.
• 9 pm is a much better time to start drinking than 6 pm.
  
• Foreign guys love me.
• If you celebrate something important to you like graduation and some of your friends are really enthusiastic for you while others can't be bothered to respond to your invitation, then you should probably focus on building friendships with the people who are happy for you.
• Mad Men is really good and makes for good hangover watching.
  

So, maybe I will feel more like I've graduated when I actually get my diploma in the mail. Or if I decide to walk in December. Anyway, woo-hoo graduation!

T-shirt back

T-shirt front

You Don't Have to Be a Dunce

I chose a very simple concept for my t-shirt. On the front of the shirt I have placed a crying face wearing a dunce cap and under it the caption, “Stupid?” The back of the shirt contains a smiling face holding a book and a solution to the problem posed in the first picture, “Try reading.”
Part of the reason I chose such a simple concept is because I can’t draw—even stick figures stretch the limits of my drawing ability. More importantly, though, is the message conveyed by the words I have chosen, and I didn’t want any complex picture drawing attention away from the message I’m trying to convey. The message is a simple one which I wanted to be accessible to as many people as possible, and since it is a sort of immature statement, I thought it perfect to be accompanied by drawings that look like they were rendered by a child. I’m not trying to make fun of illiterate people, but rather, people like my ex-boyfriend. He likes to sit around and talk about how smart he is and how much he knows about every subject under the sun, but if a person ever mentions a book, he’ll say, “I don’t read, hon.” No, because he’d rather be playing video games. I think not reading is the stupidest thing to be proud of, and I know many people who share this sentiment toward books. Frankly, I don’t get it. It’s a childish way to be, in my opinion, and doesn’t make a person sound very intelligent. So I guess I am responding to this juvenile attitude with my own juvenile sentiment.
I wanted a very simple picture that would be easily identifiable as a symbol for stupidity, so I chose a person wearing a dunce cap. The dunce cap also recalls elementary school, which fits in with my whole theme of childishness. For the back picture I could have just as easily shown the smiling figure reading a newspaper, but a newspaper is harder to draw, and would have complicated my elementary theme, as I think children would probably be more likely to read books than newspapers.
I used HP Iron-on Transfer Paper for colored fabrics and a green t-shirt simply because I like the color. The shirt cost $5 at Wal-Mart and the iron-on paper is $10 for a pack of 6. The reason I chose to use the front and back of the shirt was because I couldn’t make both pictures and all the words fit in a pleasing way onto the front of the shirt. Showing only half of the message on the front makes an observer think more and wonder what point the shirt is trying to make. Also, I find it amusing to see only the word “Stupid?” and the dunce-cap picture on the front of the shirt. I will definitely wear this shirt in the future.

Bookmaking Jenny

I had the most sensitive moment today. Belle & Sebastian's "Judy and the Dream of Horses" played through my entire walk from the Hemingway center to my car, which happened at twilight after I spent an hour cutting interesting words and pictures out of cardboard boxes for class. The only way it could have been more sensitive is if I'd been heading across campus on a vintage cruiser with a basket on the front, heading to my home/job at the local church. Now I'm farting around on Myspace and "867-5309 Jenny" just came on.
Today in class we visisted the Reserved books, and got to see the oldest books in the library's collection. One of them has given me an idea for a classroom edition project, (this is the thing where I have to make a copy of the book for everyone in class, in case you couldn't tell.) It's called The Anatomy of Melancholy and it offers, satirically,
"THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, WHAT IT IS, WITH ALL THE KINDS, CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, PROGNOSTICS, AND SEVERAL CURES OF IT."
So what I need to do is come up with a more modern "condition" which can be humorously represented, like angst, existential dread, road rage, or similar and its causes and effects. Any suggestions would be welcome. This will be hilarious!
OMG I just had to add that I just saw a funny sketch on Chappelle's Show where they showed what the internet would be like if it were a place. It was gross and dirty and funny!

Ethiopian Protective Scroll

Questions Are the Bane of My Existence, or, Anyone Who Tells You That “There Are No Stupid Questions” is Either A Liar, An Idiot, or Selling Something

This scroll was created protect me from stupid, rude, prying, inappropriate and otherwise annoying questions. Perhaps I am a bit immature, but it’s not just silly, pointless, or redundant questions that get on my nerves; it drives me bonkers to be asked any question at all. It would not, however, be practical to have a scroll that protects me from all questions, so I made it to guard against unnecessary and annoying ones.
The reason I hate being asked questions probably has to do with the fact that I work at a call center for a shipping company and my job is to answer questions all day long—usually the same idiotic questions over and over again such as: “This sticker says ‘peel backing from other side’—how do I do that?” and, “Do you need to know that I’m sending a urine specimen?” and my personal favorite, “What phone number did I just call?” It could also be the result of a lifetime of in-your-face parenting I’ve received as an only child. For some reason, being an only child means that about 90% of your conversations with your parents consist of them asking you annoying questions—often the same ones over and over again, like, “Since when don’t you drink cream and sugar in your coffee?” and, “What do you mean, you don’t like cauliflower?” and, “Have I told you how much weight I’ve lost since Christmas?”
The tedium of being forced to endure these pointless and endless questions is enough to make a person scratch their eyes out—or worse. This feeling is represented by the image at the top of my scroll, that of a child in a pose much like the figure in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” The boy is pulling the skin of his own face in an expression of pure exasperation while multitudes of question marks dance around his head and eventually make their way into his ear. The long, thin scroll was the perfect format for elongating and stretching this image to get even more of a resemblance to “The Scream,” I also stretched the bottom image to mirror this effect.
The question marks all around the boy’s head appear to have him hemmed in, trapped; he will never get away from questions unless he becomes a recluse or dies. His face is pulled and distorted in anguish because he knows he must endure so many tedious inquiries while traipsing the halls of life. The symbol in the scroll’s center is very simple: a question mark with the international sign for “no” over it. I chose this symbol because it is easily recognizable and sums up the concept of this scroll without using any words. Stretched as it is, the question mark almost begins to resemble a face with its mouth open, like the boy in the top photo.
The lower picture shows two men in the poses of Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil, pulled long to accommodate both the format of the scroll and to mimic the image at the top. The concept of hear no evil and speak no evil completes this scroll. Speak no evil to me in the form of idiotic questions so that I will hear no evil and you will see no evil perpetrated by me upon your person. Just above it is a list giving examples of the type of queries banned by the scroll, ending in the most ironic of all stupid questions, “Can I ask a stupid question?” which answers itself because yes, obviously you can ask a stupid question. You just did.
I chose the back of a jersey fabric flocked with black velvet designs for the verso side of my scroll. This was done purely for aesthetic reasons so that the design side would be scroll’s recto side and would be interesting to look at as well. The photo and text areas were printed using Microsoft Word and were placed on the scroll using iron-on transfer printer paper.