jeweled platypus

sunday, july 22, 2007

Little creatures on my shelves

a big green elephant, a small brown elephant, and a tiny orange turtle

a toy monkey sitting on wooden beads in a green bowl

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thursday, july 19, 2007

Between the end and the beginning of a year

My second year of college is over and I’m waiting at home for a couple weeks until I escape to intern at del.icio.us again. On my birthday, a week and a half ago, I usually list things learned in the past year (see 19, 18, 17, 16), so here is what I’ve learned this year: CCS Literature is a nice way to get a degree, and I might want to go to a library/information science graduate school, but I like my self-assigned website stuff most. I’d rather do all these classes later, when I’m tired of working. On my birthday I also usually post twelve of my best pictures from that year.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote from September to June:

An essay about language use (foreigner English, native English, and non-English) in Maus II.
A handful of little autobiographical comics.
A long essay discussing the use of various mediums in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13 (it’s good; buy it).
A mini-essay about “Fantomina” and Moll Flanders.
A list of the pages on the website of the Nonprofit Support Center of Santa Barbara, which was trickier than it sounds.
The outline of an essay about taxonomies of memory in philosophy and neuroscience.
A rant about “Remix and Remixability” by Lev Manovich and another about “The Futures of Literacy” by Gunther Kress.
Long theoretical explications of an ugly collage and an interactive map.
Several pages of wandering thoughts about stories by Jorge Luis Borges.
A formal essay about fears of cloning as portrayed by a play, book, and movie.
A blog post and accompanying analysis about my jeweled platypus.
An edited compilation of my diary entries about a couple boys.
A description and history of the CCS Computer Science Lab.
A list of the best things I’ve eaten in Santa Barbara.

This may be less substantial than last year’s list; next year’s list needs to be better. Also, compare that post’s picture to this one:

yet more clutter

Soon I’ll post a picture of my as-yet-unknown summer room in San Francisco, and it’ll look pretty much the same.

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thursday, july 12, 2007

Dense and mixed, tense and unequal, mostly yummy

These are tiny impressions of some places within walking distance that I’ve visited in the past couple weeks:

Little Otsu: I liked browsing through their quirky notecards, vegan wallets, handmade books, and arty branded t-shirts, but I didn’t have a reason to buy anything. That might have crossed the line into too much hipster anyway.
Therapy: This cutesy gifts/clothes/useless junk/etc. store lacked the moleskine that I wanted but has a sizeable selection of greeting and note cards, one of which will be mailed to my sister in the Peace Corps in Mongolia when I figure out the right postage.
Taqueria La Cumbre, Pancho Villa Taqueria, Taqueria Can-Cun: Tasty burrito with grilled vegetables, a lovely sauce, and cashews. Dry veggie burrito with stringy broccoli. Delicious soft veggie burrito with hot salsa. To be continued.
Pork Store Cafe: I’m vegetarian and Doug is omnivorous with an emphasis on meat, so when he visited last weekend I couldn’t resist taking him here. It was nice and neighborhood-y on a Saturday afternoon, and our veggie scrambles (plus bacon for him) were greasy and good.
Tartine Bakery: This French bakery’s reputation means a long line and endless debates over whether it’s worth the wait. I don’t know; I ate a couple of their cookies and liked them.
City Art Gallery: This is friendly, accessible art and some of it is nice: understated urban photo prints, modernish feminist watercolors, wacky thick oil paintings, art glass, linocut prints, chunky jewelry, etc. Like all college students, someday I will move up from grabbing promotional postcards to buying stuff.
New College: I haven’t been inside here, but I got curious about the bright green buildings and found out that the college has a rather interesting history of scandal and dissent. It’s even on probation for its accreditation.
Bombay Ice Creamery: My rose and cardamom ice cream insisted a little too much on the rose flavoring, but I’ll be back for the plain cardamom ice cream. I adore cardamom. I like rose too, but I don’t need to taste like perfume. With ginger ice cream and more, this place might satisfy my taste for weird sweets like Sheng Kee Bakery did last summer.