i am an amateur, there is no doubt about it. as usual, i stopped short after the first stanza, or rather i did not stop, i fled as fast as my feet could carry me.

bang.

if there's a monument that's gonna make my night, it's this. emblematic of the physicality and dynamism of sport and competition, designed for the 2002 commonwealth games, b of the bang. manchester, uk. heatherwick studio.

http://www.heatherwick.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=33

f'biconditionals

it's 1am and i'm completely awake. sure it could be the chai i drank at 8pm. then again it could be the ephemeral, potent high i get from data entry. or it could be the ridiculous, painful amount of stress destroying my soul and keeping me awake under silly notions of productivity. i'm ready to be done with school. i'm saying this while in the process of applying to doctoral programs and i'm increasingly aware that this in conjunction with wanting to walk is precarious. i enjoy what i'm doing, but it comes down to this: i can't see myself purposefully staying academia without a specific purpose. yeah, i get that most people come to that. and as a counterargument, i've always approached a phd as an end in itself. but that's not enough, the debt isn't enough and the theory isn't good enough, robust enough, applicable enough. i'm stuck in a doloop (which sas ends with end[i]) of theory. so, maybe this is to personal for this venue, but i'm considering taking off a year, removing myself, and hopefully putting all this in context and actually experiencing it in practice. i'm not sure what this feels like because i've never been open to it. and i am, at least now, depending on what happens re: said applications...

talking like a teen.

i'm trying to go out more because i'm convinced that going out will make me feel a little bit better about still being in los angeles for, as of two months ago, seven years. and i pretty much see my temporary acceptance translating directly into going to shows. consequently, i've gone to two shows (bishop allen and the mountain goats) in the past week, neither of which i had time for, but felt were justified given the above. surprisingly, of the two, bishop allen won my heart which almost certainly means that there's part of me that's really not wanting to grow up. and, for now, i guess i'm ok with that if it makes me feel like la is just a little bit smaller.

fall.

after a not so brief hiatus i'm making a go of this whole blog thing again. i've added new items to dita lab (http://www.etsy.com/shop/ditalab) - you should definitely check it out, especially if you're looking for a winter coat. as always, let me know if you have any suggestions, thoughts, questions, etc.

outside of pretending to maintain my online shop, i'm preparing for the next three weeks of papers, exams, and presentations and then a much needed winter break during which i'll commit to a research question, devise a theoretical framework and create an analysis plan to submit in the form of a prospectus to my thesis committee. i've developed a new appreciation for coffee this term. any type of coffee. this includes, and at times is limited too, the bounty of flavored coffees offered in our chs student store. who can pass up $.50 for a cup?

friday is irish cream and with enough milk it tastes just like childhood.

donna...

dogs are fleshly material-semiotic presences in the body of technoscience.

....haraway.

what happens if seagulls eat our sin?

We went to a mountain after throwing bread.

And we watched the sunset.

And in thinking about where we are we complained of feeling so little for this city. But this, what we were seeing, was actually really beautiful.
And in a small, silent sort of way it started to get under us.