I am art at the DEAD academy

Yesterday a sub group of my writer's group that loves movies did our movie night at the DEAD academy which is an art studio / training place for artists. Last Friday we did it in Mike's basement...it's my second movie night. I got invited back because I was able to name 10 movies that no one in the group had heard of (thanks to my friend Neil!!!!)

We were supposed to go to Mike's (my writing mentor) basement again for movie night but Thursday night he remembered he had promised to go to the DEAD academy to promote this year's digifest. I was sad because this week it was my turn to pick movies to watch. So Mike said "don't worry, we'll just do movie night at the DEAD academy."

Yesterday was first friday (DEAD is in the art district) and Sante Fe street was packed. DEAD was even more crowded and packed with people.

I realized when I got there that we (the movie night people) were one of the art installations. Unexpected but fun. I got to pretend to be a movie expert, said a bunch of insane shit that sounded academic about movies in general, and then I sat on the floor while everyone else sat on chairs. We watched demonlover. The artist who arranged us was enthralled with my TENS (best thing I've ever bought EVER - if you have joint pain GET ONE) so we decided to put it on Mike's knee instead of mine and then he was supposed to shake his leg like he was being electrocuted, which he did very realistically.

Mike's dirty from sitting on the floor with me. DEAD is, um, rustic? Industrial? actually it's dirty and half built...

When people came over to talk to us he said I was in the CIA and was torturing him. I was supposed to point out the technical flaws in the movie (e.g. the pillow smothering scene was so fake) and when there was a gun on screen a guy named Trinity had to say "Oh, a .45" and then I had to yell "that's a FUCKING 9 mil!" For our participation we all got 6 bottles of Oogave soda to take home, as much fat tire as we wanted (don't drink beer usually but that's okay), and pizza (I didn't eat it because it was from a chain).

DEAD doesn't have any heat and I am still freezing.

We were the most viewed installation. Fun!

Our installation...it was late so most of the movie people had left...Mike is sitting on the floor pretending to be me.

a free pizza isn't worth dying for

Last night I ate an entire pizza by myself (it took 3 hours but I did it). There’s a restaurant next to my hotel that serves the best brick oven pizza.

Then last night I had a dream that I was on the subway in DC with two women that were in their 20s. I was their mentor at work. We got off the metro and went to a shiny glass skyscraper that said “CIA/FBI HEADQUARTERS” on the side in silver letters.

I was like “You know what we should do? We should climb to the top of this skyscraper. There’s an antenna up there that you pull on and then you get a coupon for a free pizza. And when you get your free pizza it comes with a coupon for another free pizza. We’ll never have to pay for pizza again.” The women were like “COOL!” So we started free climbing. I had a climbing rope over my left arm and figured we could use that to rappel down after we got to the top.

The wind was blowing as we were climbing and it was even worse when I got to the top. I grabbed the antenna, pulled it towards me, and it started quivering. Then the pizza coupon came out of the base of the antenna. I put it in my pocket and then went back to the side of the building to see how close the two women were to the top.

I realized they were both in trouble because they couldn’t climb over this scaffolding thing that was just under the roof. So I climbed down and pulled the first woman over the scaffolding. Then it started raining so I lowered the climbing rope and pulled up the second woman because I was afraid she would slip and fall.

Then I looked out over the city and realized we had free climbed 100 stories up and that there was nothing on the roof to anchor the climbing rope on so we could rappel down. Then the wind started blowing really hard and the sky scraper started swaying violently. I almost fell off the building. I thought to myself “come on, you better start acting professional” because I didn’t want to scare the two women with me who were relying on me to be the expert climber.

We had to crawl around on the roof so we wouldn’t fall off the building. I had assumed that there would be a low wall around the edge of the roof so we wouldn’t fall off but there wasn’t. Then I realized the scaffolding was up because they (who ever “they” were) had been taking the wall down. The women were crying and holding on to other antennas on the roof. They kept asking how we were going to get down. Then it started lightning. All the antennas were buzzing from the electrical charge and we couldn’t hold on to them anymore because they were giving us shocks.

I thought “we are so fucked and my free pizza coupon is disintegrating in the rain.”

Then I woke up.

it's not a penis, it's a FUCKING VEGETABLE

SO ANNOYED!

My office has a cafeteria so I always go down there at lunch to get a salad (don't ever have time for a real lunch hour, just end up carrying my salad from meeting to meeting and it usually takes me 2 hours to finish it). Anyway, there's a TOTALLY ANNOYING little asian woman who works at the caf and she is always in my way at the salad bar. Like I'm trying to get some spinach and she starts fluffing the arugala in the bowl next to the spinach with her little tongs so I have to wait. Then I decide to get some tomatoes and she walks right next to me, reaches in front of me, and starts fluffing the shredded carrots so I can't get any tomatoes because her arm is in the way. She fluffs the cucumbers when I'm trying to get the red peppers. Etc.

Then I try to get some salad dressing and she starts re-arranging the salt and pepper packets that are above the salad dressing. It happens EVERY FUCKING TIME I go down there. I usually only have about 5 minutes to grab something to eat, which is a reasonable amount of time, except for the asian fluffer who causes huge delays. I've tried tricking her by building my salads in reverse order so she doesn't know which vegetable I'm going to get. Didn't work. I've tried faking her out by suddenly going to the sandwich bar but she just waits until I go back to the salad bar to continue her infernal fluffing.

I want to stomp on her glasses and set her hairnet on fire. I was late to a meeting today because of her.

Speaking of meetings, I had to leave our staff meeting today because the colleague I was with when the farting incident occurred sat across from me and was trying to make me laugh (it's the first time I've seen him face to face since the fart) but I was ignoring him. So he sent me an IM that said "what's up, fartner in crime?" I choked on my tea and pretended that's why I had to leave for a minute. I was coughing and laughing at the same time which hurt.

And also, I forgot to mention, they took the beets off the salad bar. I'm like "why don't we have any beets?" and they said "I don't know." I was like "are you going to order some more so we have beets?" and they were like "I don't know." So here's a question you might be able to answer fuck wits - how am I supposed to make a spinach and beet salad with no beets? Annoyed, part 2.

Other than that the day is going well.

if only peace were so easy in egypt

Althea has stopped attacking Otis. At least during nap time.

keep your friends close and your enemies closer

first dark matter discovery - Venus and Uranus

I know that sounds like the start to a sex or fart joke but it isn't. I swear.

So I'm almost done with my dark matter class and we're learning about quintessence which hurts even my creative head. Then Dr. Carroll told a story about the first dark matter discovery.

Back in 1618 Johannes Kepler came up with the third law of planetary motion (has to do with how planets orbit the sun and calculating their orbits). His calculations worked really well until he got to Uranus. Something was off with the orbit. So he surmised that there was another planet that couldn't be seen (i.e. dark matter - that's all dark matter is, something we know is there but can't see) with the telescope technology of the time that was fucking up Uranus' orbit. Not only was he right, he even was able to precisely (well, as precise as space can be) predict where it was.

Cool story and interesting when thinking about dark matter!

BTW, astronomy and astrology were not separate disciplines at that time so Kepler was called on to provide astrological advice to the emperor of Prague. And Kepler's mother, Katarina, was accused of being a witch after a dispute with Kepler's brother and some stupid cunt over money (cunt said Katarina made her sick with a witch's brew). Katarina was imprisoned for 14 months even though there was no evidence against her. During that time Kepler was working on his "harmonic theory", which explains the harmonic shape of things in our universe in terms of music. He thought the uniformity in nature was caused by musical tones of objects in space as they interacted with human souls. But that's how he discovered the third law of planetary motion, so maybe creative people aren't so insane.

Kepler died in 1630. He wrote his own epitaph:

Mensus eram coelos, nunc terrae metior umbras

Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra iacet.

I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure

Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests

rocky mountain paint fumes high

My friend Camile and I painted her bathroom today. She's having it redone by the same contractor who did my kitchen (in fact, she's the one who introduced me to him).

The day started off with Camile's cat Althea (I bet I spelled that wrong) attacking my feet. She's the cutest kitten and cries to be picked up and when you pick her up she purrs loudly. She also loves to attack Otis, Cam's other cat, and to hide under plastic drop cloths, particularly the one over the bathtub (Cam kept checking to make sure Althea wasn't suffocating).

Camile, her daughter Kayla (who gave her Althea), and Althea. Look at Althea. She's obviously contemplating her next attack.

Otis, the Burmese cat that Althea attacks. He's like "why me god????"

The cats together. Althea is like "born to kill bitches! attack!!!!" Otis is like "for real dudes? get me the fuck out of here! need catnip like yesterday!"

We got the bathroom primed and then went to get the wall paint. On the way back to our little project we stopped at a furniture store called ModLivin. Very cool stuff! I saw a few things I liked but of course they were expensive...

Then we ate lebanese food.

Then we ran out of things to do instead of painting so we went back to Cam's house and finished painting. I think I'm a bit high from the paint fumes. In fact, when Cam took a pic of me painting I didn't realize it was out of focus until I just looked at it a minute ago.

Seriously, I am the best edger ever. I did the ceiling edging with no tape. I heart Purdy brushes!

Camile and I. I look stoned in this picture but I'm actually looking at my blackberry trying to figure out if I've pressed the take picture button or not.