Chapter XXVII: So That's What It Feels Like

Image of the Day: Me, Myself, and I (cheap camera + Photoshop)

Imagine getting out of bed to go downstairs and pour a cup of water. When you reach the top of the stairs and look down, there are a bunch of lions at the bottom of the staircase! And they are messily devouring your older brother.

Now, imagine being chased along a dark beach by a serial killer, and suddenly he shows up five feet in front of you. He holds up what looks like a mass of raggedly cut, semi-translucent silk. It is the skin of your brother, whom the serial killer flayed alive before coming after you.

What would you be thinking right then? If you're one smart cookie, you might think to yourself, 'My older brother was devoured by lions at the bottom of the staircase and they picked him clean to the bone. There is no way that could be his flayed skin.' However, I'm an idiot when I am dreaming, so I was scared shitless.

It's funny, since I get along perfectly well with my brother that his gory death figures so prominently in my nightmares. In all, I can remember five nightmares in which my brother dies.

For some reason, I didn't dream very much after 6th grade until I entered college.

Earlier this year, I had an extremely convoluted and disturbing dream which ended with my mother, in the guise of a giant red ant, trying to seduce me in what used to be my sister's bedroom. I am not kidding. Until thirty seconds ago, I wasn't going to tell that to anyone, EVER, but it seemed germane.

Anyways, all that was background for the totally awesome dream I had last night. It began in my campus bookstore and Dr. Octavius* was impaling people with his arms. I can still see a metal tentacle coming at me through a bloody hole in a man's chest.

Somehow I survived, and the next scene took place in Walmart, which was inexplicably located where the Ralph's supermarket is supposed to be. King Kong was roaming through the aisles and everyone was trying to hide. I realized it was the perfect time to steal something, so I grabbed a VCR and ran out the door and about halfway up the hill to get home.

I heard King Kong behind me so I hid in a bush, but he found me and picked me up and said, 'Even I think you're stupid!' Apparently he was disappointed that I had stolen something and it was telling that the big dumb ape was calling me stupid. Then, he grasped my head with two of his giant fingers and beegan squeezing, clearly intending to kill me for my sin.

When I realized I was about to die, my heart fluttered for half a second, but then I became completely calm, and, in fact, a little curious. I wasn't entertaining any thoughts of an afterlife, but rather what it would feel like to have no sensation at all (oxymoronic though that may be).

And then...I woke up. So that's what it feels like to be on the verge of death. It's very empowering to know that it isn't that scary after all.

Dying in a dream** has been one of the coolest experiences of my life.

*Dr. Octavius is a character in the Spiderman universe, and has six steel tentacles. I don't know why he doesn't have eight.
**'Dying in a dream' has a nice rhythm to it. If I ever start a band, that'd be a good name. Or perhaps, 'A Bloodstained Orgasm.' I thought of 'A Bloody Orgasm' first, but that just sounded like something an excited British woman would say. Like "When Harold told me he wanted a divorce, I almost had a bloody orgasm I was so happy. Lord knows it would be the first one in fifteen years."

Chapter XXVI: I Don't Remember What I Was Trying To Forget (That's Good, Right?)

Up until yesterday morning, the most disgusting experience I'd ever had was crapping my pants on a warm summer day and feeling the poop squish around for 20 minutes while I walked home from school.

But...

Waking up naked and discovering that my pillow and half my face is covered in vomit certainly takes the cake as far as disgusting experiences go.

It's ironic that I made fun of my roommate's 'predilection for alcohol induced vomitting fests' a couple posts back. At least Brian had the presence of mind to get to a toilet.

Apparently he was of some assistance to me in my moment of self-destruction, or so I hear (having no recollection of anything after shot number fourteen).

I am disappointed with myself.

Chapter XXV: St. Valentine's Day

Image of the Day: Scan Of Valentine I Made For Roommate Named Quinn.


















I'm actually quite proud of this design, because it is can be read on several levels. Most obviously, the red hearts connote Valentine's Day, which is the inspiration for this exercise.

There is also an element of humor in that the design takes advantage of the multiple definitions of the word 'card.' It is both a Valentine's Day card, and the Ace of Hearts, a playing card.

This second meaning of 'card' personalizes the design to Quinn because he plays poker online.

Chapter XXIV: PhotoEssay: January

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I guess my Philosophy 230 professor didn't get the memo; she inexplicably gave me an F for turning in a picture of scrambled eggs instead of an 500 word essay about Descarte's Evil Genius Hypothesis. Maybe her reasoning is that I turned in 500 words too many?

Anyway, it's been almost exactly a month now that I've had a digital camera (actually the first camera of any type that I've ever owned) and it didn't come with a manual or anything, so I had to figure it out intuitively, sort of like if you give a gorilla a fog horn. He sort of pokes at it and tries to eat it and then it lets out an earsplitting noise and he drops it and grunts at it menacingly and then tries to eat it again. That was basically me with the camera.

The following is an abbreviated documentary of my first month interacting with the strange beast known as Sony Cybersot 3.2 Megapixels.


This was the very first picture I took, during a slow moment in my evening. I wasn't aiming at anything, but appear to have captured the corner of my monitor.


For my second photographic tour de force, I turned on the lights. Two face down playing cards in the foreground lend an air of mystery. What rank and suit are those cards, you wonder to yourself.



The title of this work is Instant Trevi, Just Add Nymphs. For some reason, the pile of unwashed dishes reminded me on the Trevi Fountain, where nymphs frolic on a gigantic travertine base (65 feet long), carved to look like natural rock.



Stuffed bear. Blogger does wierd things when you upload .png files and usually I would try this again, but I think the creepy eyes are more interesting than the original photograph.


My state provided illumination device. It works by sucking in the darkness when you turn it on.












Tree #1.










If I'm not at home, I'm probably here, the Architecture Building. That sounds like it should be funny for some reason. The Architecture...Building. Besides exemplifying the New Brutalist movement in architecture, the prolific use of concrete steps and austere metal railings inadvertently created a skateboard Mecca. Security cameras were installed to ward off delinquent highschoolers who sneak in on the weekends.



A triptych of bulletin boards.










Cerro Vista (my apartment complex) in the late afternoon. That blue column near the center has a giant button on which you are supposed to run to and press if you are being chased up the steps by a rapist. There would probably be about 120 people watching from the windows, but none of them are going to call the cops. Remember Kitty Genovese.



Much like Cristo and Jeanne Claude's The Gates in Central Park, all that remains of Darron's inflatable chair magnum opus is photographic evidence. They began peeling off the wall about three hours after they were installed. Plan B is to wait for a rainy day and use them to slide down a muddy hill.



Tree #2.









Quinn and Brian, fresh from Wal-Mart and installed in their spacious new home. Yes, those are poker chips on the bottom; I wasn't going to pay $6.99 for a bag of pebbles.


Darron attempts to terrorize Quinn, but Quinn, busy looking for food, is unaffected.





Darron attempts to terrorize Quinn, but Quinn, busy looking for food, is unaffected.




Boy With Glasses and Protruding Tongue. Alternatively known as Self Portrait #1.








The new fish abode, complete with filter, air pump, and pebbles. The fishbowl is visible in the bottom left for comparison.



Quinn the human.











Quinn the fish. Note the startlingly similar expressions
exhibited by each Quinn upon being photographed.



Brian the human, who has a similar coloration as Brian the fish. However, Brian the fish does not share his namesake's predilection for alcohol-induced vomitting fests, the aftermath of which we are witnessing here.



Origami is not appreciated in this apartment.











This was my second time ever making scrambled eggs. They don't look so good close up.





Brian, on a better day.













Darron, after being fed.











Quinn and Brian visit Paris. Afterwards, Quinn gets lost in the cup for about half an hour.






Concept model of an abstract corner construction consisting of cardboard rectangles suspended by straws, suspended by strings, suspended by brads in the sides. Red ink is used to add a splash of color.

The real thing will use wood, PVC pipe, steel rope, bolts, and liquid latex.

The end! Each of the photographs above stands for about 50 photographs of the same thing. I guess it's a little late to say this, but there won't be any goat porn in this chapter. Sorry to dissappoint you all.

In other news, there won't be an Image of the Day today.