crash and BURN.

final crit was today....ummm, sometimes its just not worth it to stay up the whole nights trying to finish. when you've lost so much sleep that your immune system has gone on strike and are so delirious that you don't know when to laugh or cry, presenting to 4 people you never met before who don't care how long you stayed up, or how hard it was no matter what the circumstances...is just not the best idea. i presented my building with about as much enthusiasm as a lima bean. and they reacted accordingly. strangely enough they thought my hand drawn elevations were beautiful and my cad drawn plans and sections should have been drawn by hand! geez, here i go trying to be more accurate and apparently end up still missing the mark in other ways. anyway, its over and i guess thats the best thing. our prof. gave us the pep talk at the end about how the intellectual rigor of the design matters more than what the drawings look like and how he was impressed with both but, still it sucks when you know you could do better. oh well, there's next quarter. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

i forgot

how much i love get crafty described as the founder as a web zine devoted to radical craftiness—a feminist home economics site if you will (more). i went back to liz' feltcafe site, and first saw that she has now made some scarves which i love, they look all organic and deconstructed...love it. then i noticed that she now has a links page, which though i had seen many of them before got me all excited b/c it reminded me about them and how many DIY projects i have had ideas for over the years that all i have to do is DO something..anything with. after all the D in do it yourself is for DO. geez analysis paralysis is a mutha. kinda like the mound of frickin product packaging that i've been saving over the past year under my kitchen sink to make something out of. 2005 i'm busting out my cards made out of recycled packaging. its so simple and i love making mundane things extraordinary. why not, its worth a shot. i'll never forget the immortal wisdom of pedefile, r.smelly err...kelly, who said he makes like 20 songs a day. a DAY. and its like every 500th song that he gets an "i believe i can fly". i know, i can't believe i just quoted r.kelly. we'll address that later. more importantly, the point is that you can't just think about it, you have to produce. you have to be prolific even to get some good shit out of all that production.

cinque hicks

ran across his blog today influxhouse he even has a little writing on afro futurism as a critical perspective...hmmm interesting. this kinda reminds me i was trying get to a point where i actually had a collection of writing and visual work with this thing...oh well, thats what resolutions are for i suppose.

in other news

my laptop has become an animal. it is actually yelping now when i turn it on. if it weren't a computer, i would actually think it was...ummmm, cute. as a matter of fact when i opened it up at school everyone looked around with this smile on their faces like, "aww, where's the puppy". however, i am quite disturbed as my 1 yr. warranty ran out like 2 months ago. i'll have to take her in tomorrow. is this a sign that i don't need to be trying to transition to CAD??? grrrrrrrreat.

elevation time

i am reminded of my former classmate brad who used to burst into song singing "elevation time" to the tune of... kool and the gang's "cel-ebra-tion time, c'mon!" toward the end of the quarter when it was time to really commit to what the hell your building was going to look like from the outside on the street. while conceiving and drawing building elevations make the building seem all the more real...the process is the BANE of my existence...maybe its the committment phobe in me. i am trying to use the st.louis contemporary art museum as a source of material inspiration which is working for me...kinda. the whole mysterious transparency thing...i'm there but the whole blank wall in the city thing....not so much. i mean, i've already had several dreams about jane jacobs shaking the shit out of me. how do i resolve these issues of "good urbanism" making a gestures toward the street etc. with the conceptual underpinnings of the design. maybe if my prof weren't in singapore he could help me with this...actually not, he's the one who suggested the whole facade be jade. ummmm, yeah, what am i supposed to do with that. please tell me. no, seriously.

neglect

my neglect of this blog is going to become even more profound in the next few weeks. however, over my 2 week break i'll be diligently posting. i realize nobody besides my loving cousins reads this thing...which is good in times like these. but subjects forthcoming. ..

-sketchy draft thesis abstracts
-afrofuturism ideas
-thoughts on book: Gender Space Architecture: An interdisciplinary introduction
-end of the year/beginning of the year reflections and what not.

until then, in the next 10 days i have: a 10 page paper, group presentation, individual presentation on a subject i've been learning about all quarter yet know NOTHING about (heating, ventilation and air conditioning, plumbing, human conveyance aka elevators etc.) and where this subject matter is placed in my building, a take home exam on a quarter's worth of reading that i have pretty much skimmed at best, AND a final presentation (insane amount of drawing to do) of my building which has taken every ounce of the time i have paid to academics while juggling this commuter marriage parenting thing which the commuter part of will thankfully be over also in 2 weeks. oh did i mention that my studio prof has been in singapore for the past 2 weeks and will not be back until the final review?!!? and somewhere in all this stuff, i have to fit in an installation on the edge/facade of this abandoned building in the international district here for my independent study. oh did i also mention that someone hit and ran me last week, (that doesn't sound right, but i'm talking about a car here) 1300. worth of damage! and that my dear child got a stomach virus unfortunately during the second to most critical time. next weekend being the absolute most critical time with review on 13th.

eyes on the prize: traveling to d.c and philly for holidays, and cant wait for my little sidebar pre new years getaway in NY. seeing family and friends.