The good thing about climbing uphill is that you know you will go downhill. *

Just wanted to share some new 'nonsense-machine mechanical drawings' I made (I don't know what else to call them).

Sorry for the blue ink rather than the customary black (which looks better); but I started making this in Vietnam, and I only had this blue pen I nicked from the hotel room (my own pen stopped working; because of the moisture?).

I wanted to give this to our guide, Kim, who was this American guy who had spent his childhood in India (Bombay/Mumbai). So it was so nice to talk to him about things. So I drew it in inspiration from him.

Unfortunately I didn't get to finish it on time, since he had an earlier flight than us. So I just left it at that, and just finished it recently. I feel like I should post it to him, or at least email it, but is it too late to bother? I would need to go to someone in Student Affairs to get his address...

Click for larger version

This is another one I made after coming back from Vietnam; over the summer. I thought I was going to make it larger, but I just left it how it is now.

It's a bit cropped, because I have this horrible OCD obsession of pasting any mechanical drawings into my art notebook. So since it wouldn't fit, I decided to crop it around the edges :'O
I hate myself for doing that, but what to do, the OCD compulsions are too overpowering.



*Kim, our awesome guide in Vietnam. We were so flosshed going uphill, so he would tell us this to encourage us.

Ewrghh *

You get the picture.


*Welsh for "Ergh"

Joey

I think this blog is soon going to degrade to the level of Animals Do the Cutest Things.

But just look at this Koala cuddling to the tree; it's so f-ing cute, I can't help but feel love from these deep dark recesses of my mind:

And Dingo puppies:

And finally, Exotic Shorthair kittens:

 

Oh god, what's wrong with me? Someone slap me :O

Ils aiment manger des grenouilles, mais il est certain qu'ils ne faire des films cool.

Yay, yay, yay, yay, yay! First French online film festival! Thanks to Movie On for the heads up. I'm not sure if it's the world's first online film festival, since I have never heard of such a thing before; but it sure is awesome.

It's called My French Online Film Festival; and it will be worldwide, from 14 January to 29 January 2010.  Here is a direct link to the website. I really wish it was happening over these holidays, since by January 14 my uni will start.

Here is the official promotional trailer for the festival (watch it, it's HILARIOUS):




They also put up these promotional posters, which are also just plain hilarious:

Again, thanks to Movie On for the images.


And now for something completely different.

Found this wonderful artist Holley Maher via the Modcloth blog. They used her pretty song, Just Right, for one of their promotional videos. Give it a listen; I think it sounds magical:


A Dream in the Making from ModCloth on Vimeo.

You can find Holley's blog here, worth a look to find some more sneak peeks of her beautifully sweet music.

Links Ahoy! (6) - Special Flippy Edition

More Links Ahoy! This time, sorted into little Oreo-sized categories for you. 

Blogs

Into the Abyss [link]

A nice little blog by indie filmmaker Todd Miro. He's really more into horror film-making, and has a recent indie horror film out (Enter the Dark). But I love his little articles on movie-making techniques and visual presentation of films. It's nice to know about these things, especially form the perspective of someone who probably has to work on a hamstring budget (makes film-making seem more real; away from the buzz of the mass-slaughterhouse-like mess of mainstream Hollywood).

His berating against the constant use of the orange-and-teal colour combination in almost every single movie is especially enlightening.



McSweeny's Internet Tendencies [link]

A wonderful humour blog. I especially love the short, imagined monologues. I found this blog via this hilarious monologue by Comic Sans (the font): I'm Comic Sans, Asshole; which is exactly what it sounds like. Although, I will have to disagree with him here - if your final high school marksheets and leaving certificate were published in Comic Sans, and you had to personally convince every university you applied to that they are, indeed, not forged, you would hate Comic Sans for the rest of your life too.



Old Hollywood [link]

Worth browsing through just for the elegant layout alone: graceful black-and-white photographs from old Hollywood movies, juxtapositioned with intricate text (either a quote or an interesting fact).

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Music

Lost Idol - Brave the Elements [link]

OMG you guys, this album is awesome, awesome, awesome. I have fallen in love with Lightwerk (first track) - it's like an ear-orgasm, because you are just left breathless from start to finish. Aside from the first track, Peace for Joseph is another great gem to listen to.

All tracks are throughly enjoyable. Go give all the tracks a listen on Bandcamp (you can listen to all the tracks on the album for free).

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Art

Philippe Ramette photography [link]

Philippe Ramette's main focus in his photographs is surrealism, which he achieve's by simply tilting his camera to a certain angle - and voila! Really freaky photos which make you want to tilt your laptop onto it's side.

Check out his underwater photographs as well, they are just so hilarious, in that, it's a man sitting so matter-of-factly under the sea, in a suit and all.

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Miscellaneous 

We Feel Fine [link]

We Feel Fine is an awesome project by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, which creates a visual display of emotions across the blogosphere. Meaning that, they crawl blogs hosted by the major blog hosting sites (Blogger, Tumblr, etc) , and look for the phrase "I am feeling" (or one of it's variants) and compare the text around it for words which express a feeling (like sad, fine, angry, curious, etc).

Then they get links to the user's profile, as well as the user's age, sex, location, etc (if these are publicly available on their profile). These are used to create a visual representation of the feeling people write about, and anyone can navigate these using one of the many options available (just go the the link above and click on "Open We Feel Fine"). By clicking on the feelings, you will first be shown the sentence out of which it was taken, and then clicking on that will take you to the blog post out of which the sentence was taken.

My personal favourite is the "Madness" mode. It's so beautiful to see all the chaos of the myriads of feelings that people put down.  I love the randomness of it all; imagine how you can just get to any odd blog by chance. This is how I knew about this website; because I saw in my stats that a visitor to my blog had arrived to my blog from this site; I just thought it was such an eccentric coincidence.



Cyberpunk poetry by Edwin McRae [link]

If you know me, you will know how I love healthy doses of poetry about robots and the cyberpunk genre. So when I found this fantastic poem by Edwin McRae, I just had to share it:

in the neuroverse

plug in my
brain pan
fried
in a white noise source
with seizure salad
my eyes are flying windows
scream saver
brain waves with both hands
going bye byte
digitally rendered limb from limb
in the neuroverse

It's simple, but I love it.

When I asked for the blog owner's permission to quote his poem (I hope I did ask him), he told me to link to his new blog instead. So here is that promised link; it's a pretty good blog, and you will see that I already follow it (I linked it under "Blogs I Stalk", if you scroll down and look in the sidebar).

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Random Photos I Like

via Vintage Clothing Blog

via Vintage Clothing Blog

Still from the 1935 movie Dante's Inferno; via Old Hollywood

OMFG this thing is so freaking cute:

This is a Honduran White Bat, and OMG it's so freaking cute, someone get me one now (I know I don't usually act like this, but this thing is way too cute, and I have been watching David Attenborough nature docs all day, so I am in hyper-wildlife mode):

Shan's House of Brand New Emo Emoticons!

 So, like, when I am chatting online with friends, I tend to use random emoticons like ':K', the meaning of which only I know.

Since a friend recently pointed out to me that she has no idea what the fuck am I on about, I decided to make a list of the emoticons I use, so that they can be clear about my creepy tendencies.

But then I got carried away and decided to make my own brand new emoticon for every alphabet; in QWERTY keyboard order. As per tradition, they all have a creepy serial-killer-like meaning to all of them.

Enjoy :M

Shan's House of Brand New Emo Emoticons!


Here is a link to the full screen version of this, in-case your eyesight is as bad as mine.

Poetry: from the perspective of a man about to be devoured by a robot

And when it rains,
I notice not the blue change to black,
Or the heavy droplets of joy,
But I pray for the water to wash away it's cogs,
Rust them to bits,
So all black oil coagulates,
And it cannot move,
Cannot rotate it's menacing arm,
To slice and strangle me,
Till my body is ripped to shreds,
And red blood pours out in threads.

Darren Aronofksy: Black Swan

One more Aronofsky movie coming up, and I WANT to watch it so bad, looks so good:

And, yes, the music is composed by the awesome Clint Mansell. If you ever want to watch a Aronofsky movie for no other reason, watch it for Mansell's music alone. He gives the perfect atmosphere to everything. It will make you fall in love with every single scene.

Stop acting like a bitch

So, like, since it's finals week soon, I thought to give a fucking 2 minute rant on bitches who annoy me, because finals week is the seasonal bitchy week; where tempers run high and the inner prima donna within everyone emerges.

Don't tell me what to do.
I mean it: don't fucking tell me what to do. Unless you are somehow responsible for me, or an elder to me (in which case, I will respect you, unless you mightily pissed me off somehow), don't come up to me and whine and tell me to make random decisions. I don't exist to listen to your stupid whiny voice, and you have no right over me.
I didn't even ever let my parents have any right over me, let alone you. So, in the eternal words of Axl Rose, back off bitch. 

Arrogance is hate beyond hate for me. You are nothing special, so stop acting like you are. Arrogance makes people turn into rotten seaweed from the inside.

Don't ask for someone's opinion, and then spend the next 10 minutes vehemently arguing with them on how dare they give their opinion. Seriously, someone like you deserves to have their mouth sealed shut by those Brazilian snapper ants.

Don't be nice to me on my face and then go an backbite about me. I'd rather you called me a "stoopid biiitch!" to my face, rather than be nice in front of me, and then go and say bad things about me behind my back. Trust me, I WILL find out, and I WILL hunt you done. Sucker.

Anyways, that's all the rants I can think of for now. If I find more, I shall post them here, with the royal discretion of not mentioning specific names of the people who piss me off.

Stop puking around town. And get The Cure.

Some more music.

Two of my favourite tracks by The Cure:

Cut Here

The song's rhythm and sound is so upbeat, yet the lyrics are so tragic.

Lullaby

Ultimate goth.