Final Portfolio

Because print is such a dead media, I uploaded my portfolio to my personal site and included a download link here.

Download My Final Portfolio

Second workshop piece that didn't get workshopped. :|

            Because no one has been able to successfully rant this year, I thought I would give it a go. I’m from Boston, Massachusetts and in every way possible it is superior to Chicago. Whether it is the sports teams, the historical importance, tax rates or having a beach with an ocean as opposed to a giant body of fresh water, you can be sure Boston is going to top every list without even trying. It’s no secret, Boston offers more to your average person that Chicago can, even though Chicago has more people.

            I’ll start with the education. Boston is home to the most prestigious institution in the world, Harvard University. Zuckerberg went there, Bill Gates went there, 8 US presidents went there, more than 20 Supreme Court justices went there,  any number of foreign dignitaries went there, actors, directors, you name someone famous or important, chances are that person went to Harvard or another of the top universities in Boston. So what can Chicago offer to fight that? University of Chicago, other than not being able to produce an Alumni page on Wikipedia, the UChicago website was a joke. Some of the people made the list as “notable alumni” include Roger Ebert, Edwin Hubble, Carl Sagan and a few Nobel Prize winners.  As much as I enjoy two guys staring at the sky and a movie critic, the two institutions can’t even be compared. Fearing that if I really got into numbers and hard data, this would become a blood bath, I’m going to move on.

            Public transportation, while it is true the Red Line and the Blue Line run 24 hours a day, it is usually faster to walk wherever it is you’re going than waiting for a train after 10PM. While the trains stop running at three in the morning in Boston, the city is safe enough to walk around in at all hours. This isn’t just the Financial district or a few select neighborhoods, You could walk from East Boston to Cambridge without breaking a sweat or feeling unsafe. Truth be told it is not a bright idea to go wandering into south Boston, these rough neighborhoods are so out of the way they don’t pose any problem whatsoever. Not to mention Prevention Magazine ranked Cambridge, Massachusetts the best place to live as a pedestrian. The same Cambridge that boasts Harvard and a rich history that goes back to the Revolution. Coming in 6^th place is Boston itself, granted there is hardly a difference between Cambridge and Boston; the two are separated by the Charles River. Finally, coming in at number 8 is Chicago. Boston 2 Chicago 0

            May as well cover sports while we’re at it. Let’s start with baseball. While Boston only has room for one baseball team but it hardly matters. The Red Sox have more World Series titles than the Cubs and the White Sox combined. Then there’s hockey, the Boston Bruins have more Stanley Cups than the Blackhawks. The New England Patriots have more Super Bowl Championships than the Bears, The Boston Celtics have 17 championships to the Bulls’ 6. And Boston wins again.

            It’s easy to be a pompous asshat when you’re writing. It’s even easier when you deliver low blows the entire time. This is a rant.

So I messed up the punctuation

This month, the evening skies are ablaze! with planets: Venus, Mars, and Saturn are all shining brightly. Jupiter is also present, but dropping rapidly behind the sun.

This concentration of: planets in the evening, sky leaves, little to see in the morning sky. But wait—here comes Mercury.

Although Mercury is almost as bright as the other naked-eye planets, it is an elusive target for skywatchers. This is because it never strays very far from the apron strings of the sun. Most people have never seen Mercury.

This April is a good opportunity to catch a glimpse of Mercury as it rises in the east just above the sun. This will be a better opportunity for observers in the Southern Hemisphere, though northerners also will get a chance around mid-month.

[Related: Apollo 11 engines found on sea floor]

The two sky maps of Mercury accompanying this skywatching guide show where to look to see Mercury in the eastern sky at dawn.

The first sky map shows the view from Melbourne, Australia, on the morning of April 19. This is an auspicious day to observe Mercury because it will be at its greatest distance from the sun, placing it highest in the sky, and it will be close to a slender waning crescent moon. [Latest Mercury photos from NASA]

Mercury will still be well placed on this date as seen from the Northern Hemisphere (in the second map), but will be much lower in the sky, and harder to see if you look much earlier or later in the month.

Seen on the same morning from Tokyo, Japan, 5000 miles (8000 km.) due north of Melbourne, Mercury is much less favorably! placed, almost directly below the moon, which! is also? lower in the sky. The view will be similar from most! other locations in the, northern hemisphere.

These differences between north and south are caused by the angle which the ecliptic makes with the horizon. The ecliptic is the path across. the sky: taken by the sun, moon, and planets.

In March: and April at dawn the ecliptic is almost vertical in the Southern Hemisphere, but almost parallel to the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere. TheseA angles are reversed in evening twilight, which is why Venus and Jupiter are putting on such a fine show in the northern hemisphere evening twilight.

The situation, is reversed in September and October, with the ecliptic being vertical in the northern dawn and horizontal in the southern dawn. For most of the planets this makes little difference, but it affects Mercury strongly because of its proximity to the sun, and makes for strikingly different apparitions at different times of the year in northern and southern hemispheres.

So, southerners, enjoy nearly a month of fine views of Mercury; northerners rise to the challenge of spotting it briefly at mid-month.

Mercury is best observed with binoculars because its tiny speck of light is often hard to spot with the naked eye. When viewed in a telescope, it is a tiny almost featureless "half moon."

Note that Uranus is also close to Mercury at mid-month, though it is too faint to be seen in the morning's twilight sky.

Just because you can say fuck, doesn't mean you should.

Alright, this "Seeing Red" woman (Su Freiedrich) seriously needs to calm down. First there's the issue of her roommates not picking up a piece of paper or getting the mail, my roommates don't clean up dishes after days or weeks of letting them sit on the stove. I'm not making a video essay where I bitch them out for it, now am I? The actual video component of this essay only keeps me from going postal on this woman because it spaces out her whines and bitching. Alright, so in between the numerous f bombs, and the melodramatic responses to the situations and people around her, there really isn't any substance to this. Just because you can publicize your journal, doesn't mean you should.

When she's layered all of her complaints into a solid few minutes of talking, it's even more frustrating. I didn't enjoy your complaining the first time around, I'm not going to enjoy all of it on top of itself. That's just obnoxious.

Go back to your therapist and stay there.

So I guess we're scrapping departments.

I read an interesting article about Fiction Writing department at Columbia earlier this morning. Like tuition, this is just one of the dozens of issues facing this college as we move to the end of the year. As for tuition, I don't want to pay more next year, but considering there is a 3.6% decrease in income. We're also not moving at the same rate inflation is moving. Then there's the president's salary. I understand that the head of an institution that deals with the 12,000 students here, there is going to be a high income. But the fact that President Carter is making as much as President Obama ($400,000), is pretty ridiculous. Not to mention in 2009, he received a $45,000 bonus. This doesn't take into account some of the other people in the higher administration positions here. If we're looking for a place to take money from to pay for faculty to continue to teach, it should be pretty easy to figure out how to do that.

Walking through the city of Rome

Walking down the streets of Rome, there is a familiar yet foreign smell of freshly baked goods. I can smell the sweet fragrance of bread that is not yet an hour old. The ancient cobblestones beneath my feet create a sound similar to that of a horse’s hooves as I amble on. The sights of centuries old buildings overtake the horizon and stretch out for miles. The peeling paint on plaster makes everything feel as old as the city that has existed for more than a millennia.  The red tiled roofs above each building creates a sense of uniformity seen throughout the city. The sound of the old Italian men shouting their wares is not brash against my ears, but calming as I feel like I’ve been transported into the ancient city at the time of its height long ago. I wish to actually visit this city, now that I have this image in my head.

I'm sick and everything sucks

So I've been extremely ill this week and to make matters worse, apparently my loop mail doesn't work to actually send email to any of my professors. (I sent three emails this week and so far, I have received no responses. I asked two of my professors and neither of them said they received anything). Although, I guess I can look on the bright side because I'm not the only one who is sick. Three of my dear friends have all had similar ailments; fever, vertigo, nausea and dizziness coupled with insomnia. It's fantastic really.

The best part about this week has to be taking an exam with a fever. Honestly though, nothing is more enjoyable than trying to use my brain when it feels like someone is driving a nail in the small gap between my eyes. On the bright side, we graded them in class and it looks like I did really well.

However, to make matters even better, one of my dear friends is coming in this weekend and she wants to see me. Problem is I have a ton of work to do this weekend including studying for two exams in classes I'm already lost in.

It does get better though, my de facto roommate is bringing a few friends from where he's friend in this weekend so I'll probably lose my spot on the couch I have so dearly called my home for the past while. This means sleeping in my real room which now reeks of pot because my asshole of a roommate decided it'd be a good idea to blatantly smoke pot in my room now that I'm gone most of the time. Clearly my "don't smoke that shit in here or around me" speech I gave him has done wonders. He had the nerve to ask me if he could get rid of my bed last week. I do believe I am turning into a text book case of someone who has gone insane via art school. Eh, I guess I broke the golden rule of "no personal drama". Oh well, I consider this acceptable because he or one of his friends stole my iPod recently.

Good news for me though. I've booked my spring break flight home as well as another flight for Easter weekend. I do hope some quality time at home will work wonders for me.

I just finished re-reading the Communist Manifesto as well as Antichrist, probably the only benefit from being sick for the past week and lacking the ability to sleep. The reading for class has inspired me to actually crack open the second and third book of the Hunger Games series, as I've purchased them in hard copy but have neglected to actually read them. Hopefully that will be this weekend's source of entertainment if I am still too ill to attend any sort of social gathering.

I've been listening to a bunch of "new" music recently. I put new in quotes because most of the music I've downloaded as of late is music I used to listen to. So far it's been mostly crust/thrash punk from the 80s and 90s. The nice part about this music is that most of it can be downloaded for free directly from the artist, something that is pretty rare with music today.

I also discovered a Bon Iver piano/low key session between Justin Vernon and his drummer Sean Carey. I also discovered Sean Carey has a solo album and it is quite remarkable. Worth checking out in my opinion. (Bon Iver Video)

I met another musician who actually wants to make music which is pretty sweet. I guess the whole "make your creative posse" thing is actually working.

I certainly hope this, for all intensive purposes, is a sufficient blog post.

I recently picked up Disambiguation on vinyl. This is the band Underøath's seventh studio album and the second in my collection of their records. The record itself is rather unique as it is a picture disk on one side with some of the abstract art featured in the booklet that accompanied the album with the other being a white disk with the production information printed on it. None of my roommates, (a loose term as I don't officially live with them) had ever seen anything like it. This is hardly a surprise for the band as they constantly push the envelope with their vinyl releases. One of their older records was literally cut into the shape of a saw, jagged teeth and all.

Merely a test.. As clicking on my blog from Matt's blog led to a dead page.. Hmm