Allons-y!

Collo 2017-18

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Final Post °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

Another long post, but I keep forgetting to do these, soooo...   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First: Project Update

I actually ended up undoing everything I had up til this point to try learning some other types of crocheting that were harder, so my goal of a blanket/scarf won’t be completed, but I’m still satisfied with just learning how to do basic crocheting. I haven’t been as successful with some of the other types I’ve tried, but I’m going to hopefully keep working on them over the summer and get better at them.

Second: Campus Event 1 -  Summit Awards with Speech and Debate Team

On April 24, I was able to go with the Speech and Debate Team to this year’s Summit Awards to celebrate the different clubs and organizations activities and achievements this year, with the team being nominated for about 4 or 5 different awards. We ended up celebrating our adviser Laughton Messmer, who won an award for being the best adviser in the category Speech and Debate falls into. It was a really fun event to attend, celebrating the year with my team and seeing how much the school cares about it’s students’ clubs and organizations achievements, while also being a nice relaxer in the beginning of dead week.

Third: Campus Event 2 - Culp Silent Disco

On the trend of relaxing events at the end of the year, the Saturday before Dead Week ™ I got to take a break from project preparation, rough draft writing, and studying everything ever at the Silent Disco put on at the Culp. Just a ballroom full of people dancing in silence to music on headphones, partying the stress away and having fun. It was a really great night, and I hope that they do it again next year if they are able to (curse you culp renovation! *shakes fist at sky*) because it was honestly just what I needed before Dead Week ™ began.

So that’s basically it. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

[action]

This Saturday, March 24, we March For Our Lives

If you stand with the students and activists of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the 30,000 people killed by guns every year, we’re asking you to turn out for the March For Our Lives. It’s time we say #NeverAgain and end gun violence. 

There are 828 sibling marches planned in conjunction with the main march in Washington DC. This is global, and chances are there is one near you. 

We understand that not everyone can attend a march, so we want to make it easy for everyone to participate. Your voice matters, even if you can’t be there in person. That’s why we’re creating a virtual space with optional ways for everyone to participate:

Join us this Saturday as we livestream the March For Our Lives starting at 12 p.m. EST. The livestream will be at the top of every dashboard on every phone, computer, and tablet that uses Tumblr that day.

There’s going to be an @action-packed dashboard takeover with original art sourced from the Tumblr community and @creatrs.

Sign the petition and make your voice heard.

Donate to March For Our Lives, if you can.

You can show your support that day by posting your illustrations, your poems, your promises—anyway you want to express yourself. We even have stickers to add to your photos, if you want. They’re a collaboration between Tumblr Creatrs (@creatrs) and our friends at Kanvas. 

They’re in your app now. Make sure to tag your posts with #NeverAgain so everyone can see your support.

This is it, Tumblr. This is how change happens.  When people ask #WhatWillYouDo, you can point them to Saturday, March 24; To the march you participated in, the money you donated, or the messages you spread across the globe with social media.

Good luck and stay safe.

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Everyone who has the opportunity to attend one of these marches, make sure to stay safe and know your rights as a peaceful protester!!

[trashcannie]

if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in the midwest, this is it. 

[jasperzilla]

You missed some of the best ones

[dragonastra]

the best part about it is that the art installation isn’t actually called the Bean. It’s called Cloud Gate, and artist Anish Kapoor (yes, THAT Anish Kapoor) hates that we call it the Bean.

But i mean, look at it. It’s a bean.

[vashthestampedee]

How could you forget this one though

[akamine-chan]

I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA THAT THE BEAN WAS CREATED BY ANISH KAPOOR.

[solongstarbird]

someone help me why is anish kapoor important what did he do?

[gay-jesus-probably]

Alright sit down for some Art World Drama bcause this is what I live for.

So, sometime last year (?) science invented Vantablack, which is the darkest possible shade of black. Art world got incredibly excited. But as it needs to be very carefully made in a lab, it’s hard to get a hold of, and is extremely expensive. Enter Anish Kapoor, aka FuckFace McGee. Anish Kapoor buys the rights to Vantablack. He is the only human being on the planet that can legally use it, and he’s kind of a prick about it.

Art world is not thrilled with that.

Enter Stuart Semple.

Stuart Semple is an artist, and also makes pigments to sell in his free time. Stuart Semple is astoundingly pissed about this Vantablack nonsense, and Anish Kapoor’s dickery. Stuart Semple makes a new pigment, the brightest shade of pink ever, called Pinkest Pink, and puts it for sale on the internet. To be bought by everybody except Anish Kapoor. Literally, to purchase, you need to confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, do not associate with him, and will not sell or give the pigment to Anish Kapoor or his associates. Art world has a good laugh, everyone buys Pinkest Pink because it’s awesome, and damn it we deserve something.

Anish Kapoor however is a penis, and will not take this lying down, because HOW DARE he not have literally everything.

Anish Kapoor gets his London associates to buy him a thing of Pinkest Pink, and being such a classy human being, posts a picture to instagram of him with his middle finger covered in Pinkest Pink, captioned with “Up yours. #pink”

Everyone flips shit, because. Y’know. Fuck that guy. Especially Stuart Semple. For context here, Anish Kapoor is one of the richest artists on the planet, and has repeatedly been referred to as everything wrong with the art world, and the epitome of the art worlds elitism problem. He’s a giant douchebag. Meanwhile Stuart Semple makes pigments just to get them out there. He turns 0 profit from his now enourmously popular pigments.

Stuart Semple launches an investigation as to who the fuck leaked Pinkest Pink, and plans to strike back. He does so by releasing two new products. First is Diamond Dust, which is a glitter made from glass, so that a painting is still visible after it’s applied, but glitters like a mofo. It’s the most reflective glitter out there, and is available to everyone who isn’t Anish Kapoor. And it being made of glass, if you stick your finger in there, it’s going to hurt quite a bit, so that was Stuart Semple’s way of saying “shove your middle finger in this, asshole, see what happens”. Except without saying that, because he can get an insult across while still being fucking classy.

He also releases Black 2.0, created with the help of over a thousand artists worldwide.

Black 2.0 is the answer to Vantablack. Black 2.0 is a slightly less black black, but looks functionally the same to the human eye. It’s completely safe, smells like cherries, and costs four pounds. Vantablack is highly toxic, potentially explosive, needs to be applied in a special laboratory and sealed properly, can’t be moved across borders, can reach 300 degrees celsius if you’re not extremely careful, and costs thousands of dollars. Anish Kapoor is the only human being who can use Vantablack. He is the only human being who cannot use Black 2.0.

So I think we can guess who got the better deal.

And thus the feud ends, Kapoor defeated.

…But not quite.

Kapoor, in this entire afair, has made exactly two comments to the public. The first being his charming message about aquiring Pinkest Pink, the second being claiming to Buzzfeed that he and his small army of lawyers will be suing Semple, an extremely poor artist who cannot afford a lawyer.

No lawsuit has been made yet, fyi.

The point is, Kapoor is a prick, and doesn’t like talking to the lower classes. So one day in July 2017, he decides he needs another floor on his London studio apartment, and starts making arrangements to have it built. His neighbors are fucking pissed, because this will ruin the light of their apartments. They call to Semple to save them, or at the very least piss Kapoor off some more.

Semple answers to the call, and releases two new paints, Phaze and Shift, as always, banned to Kapoor. They change colours, Phaze with temperature, and Shift is just iridescent. Shift needs to be painted over Black 2.0 to work, and Phaze just works on its own.

So that’s been the art world for the last two years.

Basically, get fucked Anish Kapoor your bean sucks and so does your vantablack.

[todayiwrotenothing]

Stuart Semple is organising a bean-kissing event for Anish Kapoor’s birthday.

[secretsfromwholecloth]

Reblogging for “By attending this event you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated with Anish Kapoor, you are not attending on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information, and belief this event will not be attended by Anish Kapoor.”

[queen-of-heck]

ALSO HE JUST POSTED THIS!!!!!! LIGHTEST LIGHT!

[extremedistressorstellarblowjob]

I know this isn’t my art blog but this entire post gives me life

[spiderinthecupboard-deactivated]

Stuart Semple creates good paint and the best insults AND I AM HERE FOR IT

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

This combines all my favs: art drama, pettiness, and an overall sense of Fuck You Asshole! It is truly a wonderful time to be alive :)

[andromedid-deactivated20150720]

“Are you ticklish” is such a loaded question. If you say no they’ll test it. If you say yes they’ll test it. Just tickle me. Get it over with. Subject me to this horror soon so that I may begin my healing process. 

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

WOW, It’s been a while!

Ok, it’s been forever since I blogged for collo and I forgot to post about what my goal/project is for the semester, so this is going to be part project proposal, part project update, and part a post about the volunteer work I did over Spring Break.

So to start, I’ve decided to learn how to crochet for my project, with the hopes of completing a blanket by the end of the semester. It’s harder than I thought it would be. To begin, I learned how to do rows and stuff, but I kept messing up and having to start over after it reached about 5 to 6 rows. Additionally, the blanket was probably a bit too ambitious for a starting project, so I’m going to turn what I have done (still about 5 or 6 rows since I can’t seem to get passed that and have it look good) into a scarf instead. It’s been fun to learn how to crochet, but it’s not as an effective form of stress relief as I thought it would be, since I just end up doing it as a method of procrastination. I’m going to work on making it something I do when I’m done with homework for the day, but honestly by that point I just want to lay in bed and play on my phone, so we’ll see what happens

On to the volunteer section, over Spring Break I went back to my high school to help with the set for their spring musical, Hairspray. I worked for about 7 hours painting and doing supply runs to help get the set done, and I’m honestly happy to have been able to help with a set again. It was one of my favorite extracurriculars in high school, so to see all my old classmates and help them get ready for their show was really fun!

[staff]

🚨 The FCC plans to kill net neutrality on December 14 🚨

It’s real simple: ISP lobbyists are pushing the FCC to kill net neutrality so phone and cable companies can block apps, slow down websites, and charge fees to control what you see and do online.

Our only chance is congressional pressure and legislative action. But we need grassroots support. Tell your representatives that you support “Title 2” rules and ask for their help protecting a free and open internet.

Go to Battle For The Net to be connected to your congresspeople. 

[thatsthat24]

A Winter’s Tale as Old as Time ❄️

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Same.

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Where am I going?

Since most of what we talked about was pretty vague and personal, I’m not quite sure how to best go about this, but I’ll try my best. (Please excuse any bad grammar, my brain is still fried from the hell that was the Quest final paper)

I guess to start, I should talk about what I think the “good” life is like. For me, living a good life would entail being happy with my career, family life, and overall existence.

I want to be a traveling journalist (or a politician. or an archaeologist. or an English teacher abroad. or a college professor.... This is why we have academic and career advisers ladies and gents). So a happy and successful career would entail traveling the world, learning about different people and cultures, and writing about my experiences in a way that affects other’s opinions and views. Additionally, to make sure my parents don’t worry too much, my career would need to be able to supply for my basic monetary needs.

As for family, I don’t particularly want children, so ideally I would find someone who doesn’t want any and would be happy with either long distance or traveling with me. I won’t sacrifice my career for companionship, so if I don’t find anyone like that, then I’ll be fine. The most important thing would be to remain in good contact with my family and be able to visit often. (My sister wants kids, and I am ready to fulfill my role as the Cool Aunt™ and tell awesome stories and bring the best gifts for holidays.)

As far as “overall existence” goes, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly that entails. I know I want to live somewhere nice no matter what country I’m in and to have enough time and money that I can enjoy the traveling I do for my work and to basically have enough that I’m not living in poverty and can enjoy life. Because at the end of the day, if you’re not enjoying your life, what are you doing with it?

As far as three things that I can do to achieve the life I want, I suppose I need to focus on time management, planning, and relationships. For time management, I need to stop procrastinating work and start my assignments right away so I’ll have more time to focus on my family and getting ahead for my career. On planning, I need to seriously look into the various careers I’m interested in and the majors they require, so I can finally decide what exactly I want to do and have a plan on how to achieve it. Finally, for relationship, I need to start calling my family and friends more, no matter how busy I am, and make sure I let them know how much they mean to me.

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

The Pillowman

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of seeing “The Pillowman”, directed by a graduate student that I know from the Speech and Debate Team. The show itself was, in my opinion, well done considering the small stage and minimal prop use. It’s a fairly simple story: an author and his brother live in a futuristic, totalitarian state and are arrested by the police for the murders of three children. However, the author is innocent of the crime, and doesn’t know that it was his gruesome fictional stories that inspired his mentally challenged brother to murder the children. By the end of the play, the author has murdered his brother to save him from execution and has pleaded guilty to the crimes he did not commit, on the condition that, for a truthful confession, his stories will not be burned. However, the investigators discover that he is innocent after the third child that was supposedly murdered is found alive and unharmed. Since he did not give a truthful confession, he is told that his stories will be burned and is then executed. The play ends on a slightly uplifting note, when it is revealed that one of the investigators felt pity for the author and did not burn the stories, instead leaving them in the file to be released in fifty years.

My only complaint with the show was how predictable it became. By the second half, it was nearly obvious how the story would end: the author is innocent, is killed anyway, but the stories are saved. It made it hard to pay attention and dull, which was a shame considering that it had started on such an interesting note. 

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Sets count as Community Service, right?

I’m a bit late recording this, but I’m going to blame it on the stress of approaching finals (I haven’t taken final exams since  sophomore year of high school, it’s a bit more stressful than I remember!). 

Over Thanksgiving break, I got a text from my friend L and the art teacher and art club manager (We’re friends since I never had her class) asking if I could take a day to help with the set for the show they were working on. For context, in high school I was in art club and we worked on the sets for the theater department’s productions. I love working on sets and have really missed it since I went to college, so I said yes and went over on Friday while my parents went shopping and my sister went to work. 

While they still had about a week before opening night, the hell week before a show always goes by really quickly so they needed to get as much work done as possible. So we spent the day painting different scenes, hunting down the director for decisions that needed to be made, and drinking copious amounts of caffeine. Miraculously, a fair majority of the set was done in about 6 or 7 hours, and we all went home as the actors started rehearsal. I had to leave before they finished the entire set, but from what I heard it got finished in time and the show went really well for everyone involved.

[brittany-murphy]

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Me, immediately after Thanksgiving. 

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Debate and IE

I’m not quite sure if this counts or not for my non-class based academic club requirement, but I will consider it to because it is technically a club and has had some of the most impact on my life thus far this semester. With that our of the way, for the past few months I have been going to Speech and Debate Team meetings. We just got back from our first tournament that had both Debate and Individual Events, so I thought I’d reflect on my overall team experience as well as the tournament itself.

As far as the team goes, being a member has completely affected my semester and my life goals. It is because of the team that I’ve discovered my love of writing also extends to the delivery of the piece and that I enjoy being forced to think quickly and effectively to refute another’s argument. It’s exhilarating and difficult and fun and I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. In fact, it is partially because of being on the team that I have decided for my second major to be Communication Studies, to further my capabilities and experience when speaking, writing, and analyzing others.

As for the tournament itself, it was amazing to see how far I’ve come in debate after only a few short months. At our first tournament, I was stumbling and pausing throughout debates to get my thoughts in order and forgetting vital points that needed to be covered. Now, my delivery is more fluid and confident and I am able to not only bring up all the necessary points but also refute the other team by pointing out their dropped points or inconsistencies. My team ended up winning 2 out of the 4 debates we did, and I was ranked the number 1 speaker out of the four debaters in 3 of the matches. I’m also proud of how my IE event developed over the weekend. I began on Friday with an un-memorized, badly organized persuasive speech and ended on Sunday with a mostly memorized, clearly organized speech. It was a dramatic improvement, and after watching other speakers I can adapt and better my piece to do even better at the next tournament in February.

Overall, I believe that being a member of the club and participating in these events has been enormously beneficial to not only my speaking and thinking ability but also the development of my interests and plans for the future.

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Program of Study

I’m not sure if I have to blog about this, but I’m feeling accomplished and want to sooooo:

 I figured out my life!!!!! (For like the fifth time this semester.) I still have to meet with the advisers for my second major and minors though, and that will probably screw up my Plan ™. It took me forever to get it right too, I only have to take like 19 credit hours max each semester until I graduate! (If I mathed right.....) And that’s balancing a double major in Journalism and Anthropology with a double minor in Communication Studies and Political Science! It’s freaking impressive!!! I’m proud of me.  That’s all I’ve got, so Goodnight Everybody!

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Values

When we were in class, narrowing down our top 8 values to only 2 core values, I had one thought: This is really freaking hard. And why wouldn’t it be? If you truly value something, then it should be hard to cross it off the list from your top 2 values. Going from 8 values down to only Determination and Happiness was like hacking away at your inner most self to find what makes you, you and then only getting two words to describe it. That being said, I think I’m largely satisfied with what determination and happiness say about me and the life I hope to lead. 

Now, when I say “determination” and “happiness”, many probably assume that I mean their vague or fleeting emotional feelings that we all experience at one point or another. But that’s not really it. By determination, I mean the lasting drive to succeed in fulfilling your goals, no matter how big or small. This drive plays into many of my other values, such as my drive to succeed in school and learn as mush as possible and my dream of traveling the world. Both require determination and drive to make them happen, so I value the part those qualities play in my life. Additionally, when I say “happiness” I don’t mean the fleeting feeling we tend to associate it with. I am instead talking about the happiness that comes from being content and satisfied with life. So whether its looking back on a day, a week, a month, a year, or even a lifetime, I want to think about how I lived that time and be satisfied with my decisions and life. This leads into the things that make me happy, like my family, friends, and achieving my goals. 

So, I guess both of my values are kinda intertwined: Determination leads to me being happy, and happiness is my drive to maintain my determination.

Now that I’ve established my core values, I suppose its time to turn those values into a mission statement for my time in college. It’s hard to do so since I’m of the opinion that we are supposed to grow and change in our time here, so putting a clear label on my experience and what my goals are seems a bit naive to me. I’m not even the same person I was when I graduated high school in May, so I know I will definitely not be the same type of individual when I finish college. Therefore, I am purposefully leaving my mission statement a little vague, so I can use it even as I grow and change. And with that, here is my mission statement:

As a student, I will use my time in a way that reflects my values of determination and happiness. I will dedicate myself to fulfilling my goals, whatever they may change to be, and I will strive to live my life in a manner that I will look back on with happiness and satisfaction when I graduate. 

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Deadly Medicine

This past Monday, I had the opportunity to see the Deadly Medicine exhibit at the Reece Museum before it went back to Washington, DC as preparation for a future lecture in my Honors Quest class. In short, it was interesting. At length, it was saddening, infuriating, informative, and thought provoking.

It didn’t merely state that Nazis were monstrous humans who committed grave atrocities against human kind, though no one can deny that they were and did. It went deep into the history eugenics and the concept that through careful planning and selection, we could create the ideal human being and society by getting rid of the genetic diseases that caused physical and mental deformities and lifelong disease in children and consequently adults. It showed that this concept was not unique to Nazi Germany, but was in fact present across the world, including in the United States.

It detailed how what began as the scientific study of humans and our various features developed into the frenzied discrimination and decimation of any groups deemed “hereditarily ‘less valuable’ or ‘racially foreign’”, from the mentally ill and handicapped to the Jewish population. How it started with study, moved to forced sterilization, and finally shifted into the “Final Solutions” in which institutionalized Germans and ordinary Jews were systematically slaughtered.

It even payed tribute to the more than 5,000 children killed between 1939 and 1945 to due to mental or physical illness,whose parents were told that they had died of other causes, by displaying a few of their pictures and names, taken in what I personally presume to be some of their last days. The photos ranged from, if I remember correctly, an infant only a few months old to a young child of around 4 to 5 years old.

All in all, I found the exhibit to be, for a lack of better words, delightfully different. It didn’t simply paint Nazi ideology with the brush of horror to never be understood. It explained, in detail, how these ideas formed, flourished, and escalated. After all, the ideology that results in thousands of sterilizations and millions of murders doesn’t just suddenly appear out of the blue one day; it has to be cultivated in the minds of citizens, rationalized by the pursuit of a better human and society so that by the time horrifying infringements on human rights occur, the populous either doesn’t notice the wrongs being committed or the system is so deeply entrenched that they can do nothing to stop it without inviting those atrocities upon themselves. 

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Hallo, wie gehts?

I finally decided on my goal for collo!!

A bit of backstory first, so that this makes a bit more sense. I got a Duolingo account during my senior year (thanks Joe, for making the rest of us feel unaccomplished with your mutliple-language-learning during school), but I ended up stopping my progress as the end of the school year got closer and my stress levels skyrocketed. Then I just never got started again, and that has been bugging me for a while now. 

I mean, if I have an easy to use, free system to learn another language, why not use it?

So I’ve decided to continue my progress in German on Duolingo, and hopefully I’ll finish the entire set of lessons by the end of the semester! I spent time yesterday getting back to where I was before, and I’m honestly suprised at how much I remember.(Hence the title of this post; it says “Hello, how are you?”) I think it’ll be fun to finish learning German, even if I’m not completely fluent after completing the Duoling lessons.

[thechroniclerofdiagon]

Who I Am

When I was packing for college, I did so with the knowledge that my new living space would be in one word: small. 

In another: shared. 

A small, shared space with a girl I had never met in person about 5 to 6 hours away from home. Alone, with only a few half-remembered names and faces from orientation... In April. 

Knowing this, I had to be selective. I love my many, varied knick-knacks and souvenirs that I’ve collected over the years, but they would all have to stay behind. Same with all my posters and pieces of art. The most heartbreaking thing was though, that I couldn’t bring my, in my sister’s words, massive book collection with me.

I love books; I have since I was a little kid. Therefore, I have a huge collection of them. I love the ability books have to draw you somewhere else, to introduce you to new people, places, and adventures. Not only that, but the sheer presence of books is somehow extremely comforting. Pages seem to grasp onto  feelings and memories and places when we read them, and to have that history taking up space in my room has always been a comfort. 

Therefore, there was no question that some of my books would be coming with me. The question was which ones. Should I take my favorite series(s)? A book that I haven’t read in forever? Only new books, so I can finally finish reading all of my books? In the end, I decided that a combination would be best. I probably went through my books at least five times to make sure I had the best selection possible, but I finally ended up with five books that I had read before and five that I hadn’t. 

I feel like the selection says something about me as an individual. That I am comforted by the past and the known, but also excited and constantly anticipating the next adventure, whether in my books or in my life.