it's called torticollis
and, according to my school's health center, it's stress-related.
o good. one more thing to stress about.
escaping on waves of muscle relaxants,
stephanie
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
so there was cause for concern
it's called torticollis
and, according to my school's health center, it's stress-related.
o good. one more thing to stress about.
escaping on waves of muscle relaxants,
stephanie
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
cinematic rain
well, it's happened.
i knew taking all these film classes would finally catch up to me at some point. but rather than ruining the experience of watching films, which is what i was warned against first, i've been thinking of everything in super cinematic terms.
for instance, i was walking home yesterday after class, and it was raining, and i was holding my now-broken umbrella over my head and listening to the pitter-patter of the rain as it fell on my head. and a song, "the owls go" by architecture in helsinki came on my ipod and it was just perfect. there are all these little claps and salt shakers and bubbly effervences in the song and it made me think of how perfect it would be for a film score.
and then i started thinking of how i would use the music, and how this would translate into a shoot of the opening sequence for a movie.
and this translated into little stylistic considerations, ideas for images to pair with each new sound on the song, the type of character it would focus on, his characteristics, his job, the events of his day.
this soon developed into a focus on a nameless man on an average friday morning of his life, and shots of the routine moments that would otherwise seem mundane: alarm off. bathroom. brushing teeth. faucet drip. coffeemaker b-bb-br-brr-bl-blupp-ing. egg on skillet. breakfast. chewing. walking to work. rain.
it was weird, but suddenly, this 3 1/2 minute song had inspired a whole story and a character and an aesthetic for a potential film. i knew exactly how i wanted to set up each shot, and which shots i wanted to edit together. i knew the color of the bathroom tiles (light green and yellow), the placement of the toothbrush and soap on the edge of the sink, the kind of eggs he would eat and how yellow the yolk would be. and i knew how all these images would pair with the changes in the music and how utterly fantastic it could be!
and as i was thinking on this and walking home in the rain, i thought about how wonderful it might be, to see all these umbrellas from the view of a raindrop, just endless circles of color moving in all different directions. and then i thought of how neat it would be to film from an overhead wide angle, all these moving colors in the rain. and then, if you had one person without an umbrella, your nameless protagonist on his way to work, looking up to the sky and anticipating rain, and if you could capture the indifferent look on his face in the midst of all these umbrellas, how great of a shot that would be.
...
it was the most fabulous walk home in the rain i have ever had. and then i sat in my room for an hour just sketching all of this out.
that post forthcoming...
-stephanie
i knew taking all these film classes would finally catch up to me at some point. but rather than ruining the experience of watching films, which is what i was warned against first, i've been thinking of everything in super cinematic terms.
for instance, i was walking home yesterday after class, and it was raining, and i was holding my now-broken umbrella over my head and listening to the pitter-patter of the rain as it fell on my head. and a song, "the owls go" by architecture in helsinki came on my ipod and it was just perfect. there are all these little claps and salt shakers and bubbly effervences in the song and it made me think of how perfect it would be for a film score.
and then i started thinking of how i would use the music, and how this would translate into a shoot of the opening sequence for a movie.
and this translated into little stylistic considerations, ideas for images to pair with each new sound on the song, the type of character it would focus on, his characteristics, his job, the events of his day.
this soon developed into a focus on a nameless man on an average friday morning of his life, and shots of the routine moments that would otherwise seem mundane: alarm off. bathroom. brushing teeth. faucet drip. coffeemaker b-bb-br-brr-bl-blupp-ing. egg on skillet. breakfast. chewing. walking to work. rain.
it was weird, but suddenly, this 3 1/2 minute song had inspired a whole story and a character and an aesthetic for a potential film. i knew exactly how i wanted to set up each shot, and which shots i wanted to edit together. i knew the color of the bathroom tiles (light green and yellow), the placement of the toothbrush and soap on the edge of the sink, the kind of eggs he would eat and how yellow the yolk would be. and i knew how all these images would pair with the changes in the music and how utterly fantastic it could be!
and as i was thinking on this and walking home in the rain, i thought about how wonderful it might be, to see all these umbrellas from the view of a raindrop, just endless circles of color moving in all different directions. and then i thought of how neat it would be to film from an overhead wide angle, all these moving colors in the rain. and then, if you had one person without an umbrella, your nameless protagonist on his way to work, looking up to the sky and anticipating rain, and if you could capture the indifferent look on his face in the midst of all these umbrellas, how great of a shot that would be.
...
it was the most fabulous walk home in the rain i have ever had. and then i sat in my room for an hour just sketching all of this out.
that post forthcoming...
-stephanie
Monday, September 18, 2006
Sunday, September 17, 2006
horace fletcher, the inventor of fletcherism
[a touching story, courtesy of u b u w e b]
soundtrack: "Gekaut!! (Bis es von alleine herunterlaeuft)"
horace fletcher was a german man who suffered from such terrible indigestion that he became morbidly obese and immobilized. to remedy his situation, he invented fletcherism, which aided in the proper mastication of food, an invention that helped belgium soldiers during WWI to get the most nourishment from their meager meals.
from u b u:
Fletcher was reported to be one of the best natured and least fanatical of reformers; he enjoyed the good things of life and was publicly seen taking second helpings of turkey.
"Gekaut!! (Bis es von alleine herunterlaeuft)" tells the story of Fletcher in a lost lingo called "Kauderwelsch" which has some resemblances to the tongue of "The Katzenjammer Kids" in their early days, some teeth chattering and a rising up inbetween forming nice little paragraphs.
:-)
i can hear the pleasant sound of chewing... the pleasant sounds of fletcherism in axn.
chew before swallowing munch munch munch
-stephanie
soundtrack: "Gekaut!! (Bis es von alleine herunterlaeuft)"
horace fletcher was a german man who suffered from such terrible indigestion that he became morbidly obese and immobilized. to remedy his situation, he invented fletcherism, which aided in the proper mastication of food, an invention that helped belgium soldiers during WWI to get the most nourishment from their meager meals.
from u b u:
Fletcher was reported to be one of the best natured and least fanatical of reformers; he enjoyed the good things of life and was publicly seen taking second helpings of turkey.
"Gekaut!! (Bis es von alleine herunterlaeuft)" tells the story of Fletcher in a lost lingo called "Kauderwelsch" which has some resemblances to the tongue of "The Katzenjammer Kids" in their early days, some teeth chattering and a rising up inbetween forming nice little paragraphs.
:-)
i can hear the pleasant sound of chewing... the pleasant sounds of fletcherism in axn.
chew before swallowing munch munch munch
-stephanie
Saturday, September 16, 2006
marlborough galveston
...is a man of no more than average ability and intellect.
his life consists of an endless series of mundane saturdays, stacked one on top of the other, and has been this way ever since the last saturday.
he is a brown paper bag of a man. and he eats a lot of starches.
he's not particularly interesting. he doesn't read much, or have much to say. he doesn't care about politics. he doesn't drink. or smoke. he doesn't even ride a bike.
but man, he sure can dance. i mean, that man can cut a rug. with his feet. his soles bring fire to the darkest corners of my heart.
and i love him.
*this "piece" was inspired by a spam email i received from, no other than one "marlborough galveston." i will not proliferate the email here, but suffice it to say that the utter poetry of its prose was enough to generate this post.
his life consists of an endless series of mundane saturdays, stacked one on top of the other, and has been this way ever since the last saturday.
he is a brown paper bag of a man. and he eats a lot of starches.
he's not particularly interesting. he doesn't read much, or have much to say. he doesn't care about politics. he doesn't drink. or smoke. he doesn't even ride a bike.
but man, he sure can dance. i mean, that man can cut a rug. with his feet. his soles bring fire to the darkest corners of my heart.
and i love him.
*this "piece" was inspired by a spam email i received from, no other than one "marlborough galveston." i will not proliferate the email here, but suffice it to say that the utter poetry of its prose was enough to generate this post.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
seeping in the airwaves
hello readers.
i'm stuck at the radio station tonight doing the MAMA JAZZ show on my local npr station, so i thot i would do a post. but that turned out to be a bad idea because i really should be monitoring the airwaves, so instead, i invite you to listen in and see how i'm doing. my bosses are doing air checks anytime now and i need some feedback before the big dudes get serious about air quality.
in other news, i had class until 10 pm as is my usual wednesday night, but this time around, i also had a major paper to write for one of my film classes. unfortunately, i didn't start it like i usually do and had to write all of it last night, which meant no more than 30 minutes of sleep for me (and that was only because i was silly enough to think lying in bed with a warm laptop on my stomach would be a productive thing to do...)
so, suffice it to say, i am totally fried today, haven't eaten much because lack of sleep always messes up my appetite, and have been zombying around all day.
hope it doesn't come through on the air!
from oxford, ohio, this is stephanie lee.
i'm stuck at the radio station tonight doing the MAMA JAZZ show on my local npr station, so i thot i would do a post. but that turned out to be a bad idea because i really should be monitoring the airwaves, so instead, i invite you to listen in and see how i'm doing. my bosses are doing air checks anytime now and i need some feedback before the big dudes get serious about air quality.
in other news, i had class until 10 pm as is my usual wednesday night, but this time around, i also had a major paper to write for one of my film classes. unfortunately, i didn't start it like i usually do and had to write all of it last night, which meant no more than 30 minutes of sleep for me (and that was only because i was silly enough to think lying in bed with a warm laptop on my stomach would be a productive thing to do...)
so, suffice it to say, i am totally fried today, haven't eaten much because lack of sleep always messes up my appetite, and have been zombying around all day.
hope it doesn't come through on the air!
from oxford, ohio, this is stephanie lee.
Monday, September 11, 2006
shake that shrug off!
i've found that with the termination of my educational program, i'm losing my motivation to confront the cruel miami environment. i know it's such a silly thing, but i can't bear seeing all these other kids so happy to be here, all this youthful energy and enthusiasm i know i used to have, so content in their delightfully convenient ignorance, while i am suffering so inconsolably from the events of the last year.
i know i shouldn't be bitter and resentful towards these strangers for wrongs done to me by Old Mother Miami, but i can't help but feel they're part of the problem. it's because MU doesn't care if they get masses of mindless putty. you can build empires out of that stuff. they're worried about the free-thinking individuals, the ones who pledge their lives to changing the world rather than settling for it.
i consider MU's actions to be nothing more than an existential bitch-slap to my dreams and ideals. and that i'm continuing to go here, well, i'm fundamentally sickened to my core every day, when i wake up and realize that nothing has changed.
i sat in my "socio-cultural studies in education" honors class the other day and listened to kids making up excuses for disney, after we had just watched a documentary based on a critical content analysis of disney films and the disney monopoly written by Henry A. Giroux, a media analyst. some even went so far as to say that:
"it's ok for disney to [make films that distort reality, affirm sexist beliefs, project racist stereotypes, rewrite history to reaffirm colonialist ideology, teach young girls that their bodies aren't good enough and their only worth is in the home or as the object of male desire, etc.] it's ok for disney to do that because they are a business and their only goal should be to make money [yeah. nevermind civic responsibility to their consumers/customers. fill their own pocketbooks, that's all they should be concerned about.]"
oh, and my favorite part:
"it's really the parents' fault. they shouldn't be allowing their kids to watch it. or they should be responsible to teach their kids it's wrong."
yeah! who doesn't love a little displaced responsibility! i loves me some scapegoating! mm-mm!
and of course, when i raised questions of corporate ethics and responsibility, or raised the issue of the media's duty to the public and to informational accuracy, they just shrugged their shoulders. gave me the intellectual frown. droopy apathy... what could be worse?
as an activist, as someone who has learned to listen to my great unshakable bouts of intellectual discomfort and stir myself into action, as a student, as an academic, as an individual, i get greatly offended by others' easy susceptibility to complacency and apathy.
shake those blues! shake those shrugs from your physical vocabulary!
hit the streets with a dream and a voice! get off the sidewalk! walk the line! explode your passions outwardly.
it's the only way to survive.
-stephanie
p.s. a great song i listened to as i wrote this, i highly recommend born ruffians' "this sentence will ruin/save your life." [mp3, will be taken off soon so grab it while you can!]
i know i shouldn't be bitter and resentful towards these strangers for wrongs done to me by Old Mother Miami, but i can't help but feel they're part of the problem. it's because MU doesn't care if they get masses of mindless putty. you can build empires out of that stuff. they're worried about the free-thinking individuals, the ones who pledge their lives to changing the world rather than settling for it.
i consider MU's actions to be nothing more than an existential bitch-slap to my dreams and ideals. and that i'm continuing to go here, well, i'm fundamentally sickened to my core every day, when i wake up and realize that nothing has changed.
i sat in my "socio-cultural studies in education" honors class the other day and listened to kids making up excuses for disney, after we had just watched a documentary based on a critical content analysis of disney films and the disney monopoly written by Henry A. Giroux, a media analyst. some even went so far as to say that:
"it's ok for disney to [make films that distort reality, affirm sexist beliefs, project racist stereotypes, rewrite history to reaffirm colonialist ideology, teach young girls that their bodies aren't good enough and their only worth is in the home or as the object of male desire, etc.] it's ok for disney to do that because they are a business and their only goal should be to make money [yeah. nevermind civic responsibility to their consumers/customers. fill their own pocketbooks, that's all they should be concerned about.]"
oh, and my favorite part:
"it's really the parents' fault. they shouldn't be allowing their kids to watch it. or they should be responsible to teach their kids it's wrong."
yeah! who doesn't love a little displaced responsibility! i loves me some scapegoating! mm-mm!
and of course, when i raised questions of corporate ethics and responsibility, or raised the issue of the media's duty to the public and to informational accuracy, they just shrugged their shoulders. gave me the intellectual frown. droopy apathy... what could be worse?
as an activist, as someone who has learned to listen to my great unshakable bouts of intellectual discomfort and stir myself into action, as a student, as an academic, as an individual, i get greatly offended by others' easy susceptibility to complacency and apathy.
shake those blues! shake those shrugs from your physical vocabulary!
hit the streets with a dream and a voice! get off the sidewalk! walk the line! explode your passions outwardly.
it's the only way to survive.
-stephanie
p.s. a great song i listened to as i wrote this, i highly recommend born ruffians' "this sentence will ruin/save your life." [mp3, will be taken off soon so grab it while you can!]
Friday, September 08, 2006
sophomore slump symptoms
haha, another funny:
one of the visitors to my sight has been a harvard student looking for "sophomore slump symptoms."
oh dear sweet child, i know what that's like. o believe me, i know. and sorry to break it to you, but junior year is no better.
i am seriously depressed, despite my guises.
-stephanie
one of the visitors to my sight has been a harvard student looking for "sophomore slump symptoms."
oh dear sweet child, i know what that's like. o believe me, i know. and sorry to break it to you, but junior year is no better.
i am seriously depressed, despite my guises.
-stephanie
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
search and ye will find...
here's another funny thing:
someone from the united kingdom searched for "do kittens cry with tears" and got my post on little jannik (who's doing well by the way. my parents decided to keep him around upon my father's insistence. he wanted a little kitty around to help keep the chipmunks and yard rodents at bay. i hear jannik is becoming quite the garden companion...)
so that makes two for me. what are some of the weirdest searches people have used to find you? and what are some of the most exotic places you've been found from?
i've gotten visitors from all over, thailand, new zealand, india, hong kong, and the british isles a plenty. but my favorites are always from sweden...
let's hear your stories!
-steph
someone from the united kingdom searched for "do kittens cry with tears" and got my post on little jannik (who's doing well by the way. my parents decided to keep him around upon my father's insistence. he wanted a little kitty around to help keep the chipmunks and yard rodents at bay. i hear jannik is becoming quite the garden companion...)
so that makes two for me. what are some of the weirdest searches people have used to find you? and what are some of the most exotic places you've been found from?
i've gotten visitors from all over, thailand, new zealand, india, hong kong, and the british isles a plenty. but my favorites are always from sweden...
let's hear your stories!
-steph
infinity tunnel making
just something that made me smile:
i was looking at my site visit details today when i realized someone from dronten, flevoland had done a google search for "infinity tunnel making" and had gotten my site blOgbuefi.
that makes me pleased. the idea of people in the netherlands and their infinity tunnel making...
and that i might have been a part of such wonderful magic. ~~~<3
-steph
i was looking at my site visit details today when i realized someone from dronten, flevoland had done a google search for "infinity tunnel making" and had gotten my site blOgbuefi.
that makes me pleased. the idea of people in the netherlands and their infinity tunnel making...
and that i might have been a part of such wonderful magic. ~~~<3
-steph
Monday, September 04, 2006
hedgehog activism
so... we can't all pull our energies together and organize ourselves well enough to impeach bush, but a hedgehog can make fast-food monster mcdonald's change their mcflurry??!?
wtf.
(ok ok, so i guess if you've ever seen a hedgehog, you'd agree, they're pretty durn cute. but cute enough to win a litigious fight against a corporate giant?... now that's just plain amazing.)
-steph
Sunday, September 03, 2006
jag vilja att veta svenska
[literal translation: i wish to know swedish]
hej!
sorry for the lack of posts but i'm back at school now and am already struggling to keep up with my insane schedule: i'm in class 9-9 practically every day. on wednesdays, until 10. thursdays, due to work, i don't get home until 11:30. i miss having a social life. :-(
when i'm not studying or applying for scholarships or programs or doing living wage work, i'm learning swedish.
why? you might ask. b/c it's so much fun! (lots of glossolalial tricks that don't exist in english! and the mere challenge of reproducing such a foreign sound is cognitively distancing. i see a swedish word and have no idea how to find the root or interpret its function, have no idea how to read it without a pronunciation guide, have no idea how to take this phrase and combine it with this other phrase to make a sentence, don't know how to conjugate verbs, how to use conjunctions, how to separate verb parts from their indirect object pronouns... it's terrifying, it's dizzying, it's so completely foreign and nonderivative... it's FANTASTIC!!)
i have been terrifyingly sick of oxford lately, and to maintain my loose grip on sanity, i've been opting for any kind of escape possible. before it would have been film, but since i am taking two film classes this semester, i've been kinda tired of the cine.
one of my ill-conceived plans for getting out of this slump is to take a semester off and travel to europe. of course, this could work out in the form of a study abroad venture, but given the poor choice of classes, and my verging proximity to the daunting senior project, i'm thinking that is not going to be a possibility any more.
but i think a semester abroad/away is exactly what i need. i need a change of scenery. some new faces. new strangers. a new kind of anonymity. maybe some time off to quit my worrying and simply live.
you can call it hedonistic if you want, but i think i'm just trying to survive. my advocacy is burning a whole in my heart and my search for truth has dead-ended me here in oxford.
so i've been doing research on sweden and i must say, it seems a magical place. healthcare-communism and a democratic monarchy (which is probly more democratic than our current system anyway... i'll take a monarch over a despot any day). plus, the swedes have been gradually lessening their dependence on petroleum and nuclear power, relying instead on hydro- and solar power. seems like a perfect fit to me...
anyway, sweden is bouying my spirits. as we all zombie around this campus in our respective existential comas, i am dreaming of sweden and mumbling jag vilja's ["i wish"es] with each breath.
jag vilja...
-stephanie
p.s. stephanie is such a non-swedish name that whenever i say "jag heter stephanie" i feel foolish. will someone suggest a swedish name alternative? the one i like best might get a prize!!
hej!
sorry for the lack of posts but i'm back at school now and am already struggling to keep up with my insane schedule: i'm in class 9-9 practically every day. on wednesdays, until 10. thursdays, due to work, i don't get home until 11:30. i miss having a social life. :-(
when i'm not studying or applying for scholarships or programs or doing living wage work, i'm learning swedish.
why? you might ask. b/c it's so much fun! (lots of glossolalial tricks that don't exist in english! and the mere challenge of reproducing such a foreign sound is cognitively distancing. i see a swedish word and have no idea how to find the root or interpret its function, have no idea how to read it without a pronunciation guide, have no idea how to take this phrase and combine it with this other phrase to make a sentence, don't know how to conjugate verbs, how to use conjunctions, how to separate verb parts from their indirect object pronouns... it's terrifying, it's dizzying, it's so completely foreign and nonderivative... it's FANTASTIC!!)
i have been terrifyingly sick of oxford lately, and to maintain my loose grip on sanity, i've been opting for any kind of escape possible. before it would have been film, but since i am taking two film classes this semester, i've been kinda tired of the cine.
one of my ill-conceived plans for getting out of this slump is to take a semester off and travel to europe. of course, this could work out in the form of a study abroad venture, but given the poor choice of classes, and my verging proximity to the daunting senior project, i'm thinking that is not going to be a possibility any more.
but i think a semester abroad/away is exactly what i need. i need a change of scenery. some new faces. new strangers. a new kind of anonymity. maybe some time off to quit my worrying and simply live.
you can call it hedonistic if you want, but i think i'm just trying to survive. my advocacy is burning a whole in my heart and my search for truth has dead-ended me here in oxford.
so i've been doing research on sweden and i must say, it seems a magical place. healthcare-communism and a democratic monarchy (which is probly more democratic than our current system anyway... i'll take a monarch over a despot any day). plus, the swedes have been gradually lessening their dependence on petroleum and nuclear power, relying instead on hydro- and solar power. seems like a perfect fit to me...
anyway, sweden is bouying my spirits. as we all zombie around this campus in our respective existential comas, i am dreaming of sweden and mumbling jag vilja's ["i wish"es] with each breath.
jag vilja...
-stephanie
p.s. stephanie is such a non-swedish name that whenever i say "jag heter stephanie" i feel foolish. will someone suggest a swedish name alternative? the one i like best might get a prize!!
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