merry.

Happy Christmas. have fun.

warm your own chestnuts, cook your own books. In case you were wondering what the first picture said

images from the

best ad campaign, gap holiday 2008

if I were a guy I would become a sailor; I would become a deck hand and just drift out to sea. Off the map, floating away. I just view it as potentially poetic situation. Thats what I want to do, just disappear for a while, become a neo-luddite and communicate with people via postal mail. I am not interested in becoming an expatriate or never talking to people again, but just have a few years just me and a suitcase. (I realize how ironic it is that I am blogging about this. I aknowledge I am turning myself into a hypocritical aspiring-neo-luddite.)

I had a conversation about Jimmi Hendrix tonight, and think that you (my audience of 7) should enjoy him.

"...danger has become so rare in modern life."

-Oscar Wilde

yes please and thank you.

Two Fresh. Know them, love them.
flash forward to 1:25.....or you should just watch the entirety of it


totally saw them last night. jealousy is overcoming you. I am sorry, they made a song about pina coladas sound like something i would like to listen to on repeat. that has to be indicative of greatness, I actually think it is.

still gets me every time.

And it is time to move on.

Fayetteville, AR: A Place of Many Shocking Things.
If you are one of the privileged that reside in Fayetteville, then these will not phase you, as we have all come to the realization that we go to school with some of the world's oddest creatures. Here are some things that have recently taken place that I feel like I need to share:
1. I saw a guy pop a wheelie on his motorized vehicle. This would have been extremely less annoying if his motorized vehicle was not a low-powered moped, he was not in all polo gear, and he was not driving in circles around his frat house.
2. Someone told me they liked my hair. I responded with a polite, "thank you." To which they responded, "don't thank me thank God," and walked away as if I were extremely ungrateful to God.
3. The bank next to my house got held up the other day? Is this 1922? Who even holds up banks anymore? Is the money not all on computers? Did you think that would work out for you? The questions could keep coming and I could continue to make fun of those old school robbers for a few hours, but I am sure that you see the point.
4. This 40-year-old in my drawing class has nicknames for everyone and brings the teacher coffee every day.
5. As I was walking through the music building the other morning (by "the other morning" I mean that it was around halloween) and there was a large box in the middle of the hallway. A girl sitting in a chair says, "heeeyyyy yyooouu." Then, another girl (you could refer to her as girl #1's ToTaLLy AwESoMe partner in crime) jumps out of the box in attempts to scare me. If failed as she didn't come out of the box as smoothly as she probably hoped. I laughed in her face, not in a "hey that was a really good attempt! bahaha! what if i had fallen for that?!?!" kind of way, but in a you-are-an-idiot kind of way. I hope that wasn't rude. Well I don't care, we are not on the film set of "Jackass," let me walk to class in peace.

Oh, Fayetteville. I will miss you, but I need to get out of here.

"I'm not a dark person and I don't consider myself dark."

TIM BURTON

I love him and cannot wait until 3.5.1o when Alice in Wonderland comes to theaters.

Until then I will have to wish I was in NY so I could go to the MoMA and obsess over his retrospective.

The website is great, you should check it out. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/timburton/

"I`ve always loved the idea of fairy tales, but somehow I never managed to completely connect with them. What interests me is taking those classic images and themes and trying to contemporize them a bit. I believe folk tales and fairy tales have some sort of psychological foundation that makes that possible."

All of these things are great. Enjoy.

one of my favorite contemporary artists. Bob Dylan would agree.

The Knife covering Jose Gonzalez.

I love.

I love Annie Leibovitz's work. Sometimes, when she is photographing cool people doing awesome things. Not when she is shooting Miley Cyrus half-naked for the cover of Vanity Fair, thats just dumb.

Like Johnny Cash

Roma

The White Stripes.

or Tina Fey.

For my contemporary art class we have to write an obituary for a living artist. My professor told us to get creative and "figure a way to kill them off." It is the most assinine and insensitive project. Perhaps a few years ago I would have not seen the blatant crassness of this paper, but now it is painful to write, my whole body hurts.

"It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things."

— Lemony Snicket Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

So, I don't update, ever, but procrastination at it's finest has led me here. I have literally done everything else there is to do.

One thing I am learning more and more everyday is racism and sexism are

a battle that in no way is over for many people. It is easy to ignore, but that does not negate the fact that it still happens.

People are people and bothers me that some excuse this argument by presenting evidence counter-racism or reverse sexism, or just denying that it is happening.

Kehinde Wiley, a relatively new up-and-comer in the art world is taking traditional European portraiture and replacing the subjects with non-white males. They are usually guys he finds on the street of no speakable prestige. I love it, because the original subjects were all assholes. And the backgrounds are intriguing. www.kehindewylie.com, it is rare to find such a skilled painter these days.

A portrait in the style of David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps

A Commission for VH1's 2005 Hip hop Honors, Biggie Smalls

A poster from the Guerrilla Girls, a group of female artists who often protest galleries and museums, because of

the shocking under-representation of females and minority groups.

I am not attempting to be extremist.....but honestly?

I just got these from my siblings. I have had my eye on them for months; in short, my siblings are cooler than yours.

nike airtroupe mid swt= amazing.

Florence + the Machine.

There's a drumming noise inside my head

It starts when your around

I swear that you could hear it

It makes such an all mighty sound.

Louder than sirens

Louder than bells

Sweeter than heaven

and hotter than hell.

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

-Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mistique, 1963

These two are getting me through summer school.

Zack de la Rocha, you may be a facist, but I love it. Serj, I would enjoy spending time with you; I feel like we could be friends...

And then I came home

Updating was not a priority while we were over there, but with the recent trend in blogging among my peers I have decided to be cool and revive the blog. (Shout out to my one and only reader, Martha Fitz) For those of you that know me, you know that I am desperately trying to find a way to get back to Europe. Right now, more so England. And here is why.

Beth Ditto (she is American but lives in London, so I would have to go over there to befriend her. She is the lead singer of the Gossip, certified awesome.) Could she be Calcutta's ticket to stardom? You never know.

Beth Ditto is not a strong nor legit opening argument so I will move on. Reason number two: The Arctic Monkeys. I do not need to elaborate you all know why, and yes you all agree with me. Number three: Although it is an island and not technically a part of Europe, Ryan air flies to and from there, making eruo travel cheap and easy. Number four, and possibly only the real one, is the Global Citizenship, Identities and Humans Rights Masters from the University of Nottingham.

Oh, and the accents and snobbery that come with England are "pro"s and make me want to go there all the more. I like snobby people, and so do you. Everyone does.

You all need to be aware of Uffie. She is French, she raps, and now she is your new favorite.

Watch this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG-brC_NGNU

So, as you know I am wasting away in class this summer. Thus, I spend all my free time at home, studying. The only upside is I get to hang out with this kiddo all the time.

You should all read Folsom's The Mad Ones. It is about the Gallo brothers, and quite a fun read.

After I finished it, I resolved that if I had a time machine and a desire to get married, then I would go back c. 1955 and he would be it. Too bad.

I was going through a crate in my dad's closet full of his old cameras. He usually wasn't taking pictures, but when he remembered to bring his camera along, it was almost comical how many pictures he would take. At a pi phi dad's day with Elise, he was mistaken for the party pics guy; we have a pile of pictures of random people lying around somewhere in my house. While most of the cameras are probably not worth much, there are two that I am very exited about. The first is a Polariod with 2 packs film in the case. (As you are probably aware, polariod stopped making their film.) The second is a Minolta SRT 101. (c.1960-70, I am not sure on its exact age.) I want to learn how to use it and trash my digital camera in favor of taking real pictures.

I think I will go put in Fight Club for the third time this week and do some paper writing. It is thrilling, really, and I know you are waiting with bated breath for the next post, I promise to tell you all about my physics lab.

that was out of control

okay, we will start on thursday:

  The start of a three day weekend and the four of us held in our posession tickets to a Young Joc/Lloyd concert. Don't knock it, it was awesome. Pretty sure half of the people there were from africa and the rest were really cool italian people. Minus the fact that Valerie's purse broke and the contents were taken, it was a beautiful night. We were showered with champagne, danced the night away to amazing rap music, and did not leave until the club shut down and the staff scooted us out of the door.

Friday: 

We woke up and obviously after a long night had to eat at big momma's house. For those of you who dont know, that is code for McDonalds. DONT JUDGE. We literally have had pizza and pasta and wine for every meal and once in a blue moon you have to go for an order of fries and a diet coke. Here are two facts that we recite to ourselves to soothe our guilt. ONE: there are only locals eating there. Thus, rendering it a local hangout, hergo, we are eating where the locals go. TWO: we eat curly fries, unique to Italian McDonalds. Can you get that in America? NO. We made our way to Termini Station and bought the cheapest train ticket out of town. PISA. We knew there was a tower there so off we went. After a four hour train ride that smelled a little bit like overflown toilet and hobos we had no idea what we were in for.

We got to Pisa with only a change of clothes and our toiletries shoved into backpacks. We glanced at a map posted at the bus stop and ventured into town. As we walked down the street we saw the lights to every eatery shut off as the clock struck eleven. We saw blinking lights down an alley and ventured to the source. We found ourselves in a kebab place run by a man from Turkey, and it was then and there we decided that Turkey is our spring break destination. Somewhat full, and very tired we threw our bags over our shoulders and went to look for a hostile.

Of course we stumbled onto the club scene. It was awkward, everyone was staring at us and we had no idea where we were. All we knew was that the river leads to the ocean and if we followed that we would eventually find the mediterrain sea. We discovered the following things in our wondering: Pisa is tiny, and we walked the length in about 10 min, life is more peaceful without traffic sounds, and we were living the dream.

We found ourselves in a hotel that suffered from a classic case of over decoration. A man with jet black hair and about 2 inches of grey roots convinced us to stay for twenty-five euros each including breakfast. We resolved that if we got breakfast we were going to "pack that shit" and stash food for lunch and snack time later.   

We said goodnight and fell asleep to the dragon-like growl of a barely functioning heater.

Saturday:

We woke up to Pisa. A town that between the rustic houses and quiet streets looked like it was out of a cheesy movie, it was almost to perfect. We crossed the river and walked to the leaning tower. We watched and made fun of all the people who took pictures to make it look like they were holding up the tower; after a few laughs we figured how to do it, and we did.  We went inside to buy tickets to get into the tower and decided that we would rather keep our life savings than go in. Whatever, we already got pictures holding it up. Then, we started what we like to call our "decent into hoboism". So the readers can follow along, I will number the steps as they happen. 1. We followed a tourist group for a short while to get into the baptistry for free and to learn about it without paying for a tour guide. Shaina led the way, and the rest of followed as we strolled past the ticket woman and into the baptistry. (amount of money saved: 8 euro).

We were done with all of the touristy things and had walked across town twice and it was barely passed noon. We saw a sign that read "mara," and decided the beach was perfect. We followed the river and walked along it for a while. We stomped through mud puddles, sat and watched the river, kept walking, kept walking, and kept walking. 2. We were walking on the entrance ramp of a highway. We were smart enough to realize that it was probably not a good idea to stroll along the highway, so we decided to buy some wine and ask for directions. 3. We resolved that when in doubt get a bottle of wine and take in your surroundings.

We went to a bus stop, divvied up some chardonnay and waited for the bus in the rain. A little while after we ad set up camp, we saw the bus crest the hill and come twords us, then we saw the bus drive past us. So we marched a few hundred meters down the road and waited in the pouring rain for half an hour in hopes that another would come (keep in mind that we had no clue where we were, we were just following the river.) Another bus came and we rode it until we spotted the ocean and then we hopped off. We strolled into a pizza place in hopes of finding a bathroom, and ended up sitting down to an overpriced pizza as we watched the afternoon rain slowly fall unto the streets of the small streets. 

We spent the later afternoon sprawled out the cold marble rocks on the beach watching the agitated waves splash over the white marble (we think) that created the barrier between land and sea. After a few hours, we found a beachside hotel and powernapped as the sun sunk over the somewhat-abandoned-because-it-was-out-of-season ocean village. We capped off our night standing on the white rocks in the moonlight. We each grabbed a pebble, made a wish, and launched it into the sea. We looked at the stars that were peeking out from behind the clouds, sang at the top of our lungs (it was a very "Garden State" moment), and had a night that words cannot do justice, so I won't even try.

Sunday:

Our trip was coming to an end, so we hopped on a bus to get back to the Pisa train station. NOTE: Pisa is a state in addition to a city, so the bus we thought was going to Pisa the city was going around Pisa the state. Our 2 hours we had allotted for travel had dwindeled to 45 minutes and we were in a place unfimilar, so  we hopped off to ask for directions. We were on the correct bus. So, we 4. stuck out our thumbs, put smiles on our face, told Shaina to get out the mace. People acted like they didn't see us, some laughed, one turned around, and another slowed down then sped up. We stuck our thumbs in our pockets an began to walk, we didn't know what else to do.

An old man pulled up and opened his door. "I saw you earlier and I was on my bike, so I peddled home as fast as I could, sorry if I smell bad." 5. We hopped in and told him that we were going to the train station. 

"I speak English because I thought you were from Ireland, well not her." He obviously pointed to Shaina. We told him we were from America, and then he thought it was necessary to point out everything between where we were and the train station that the Americans bombed during the war.....oooppsss......

We made it onto the train with five minutes to spare, dirty, exausted, hungry, and never more happy with a trip. 6. We snuck onto first class and plopped into seats laughing and in shock of what had happened over the previous span of 72 hours. It was perfect. And we resolved that next time we get into a car with a strange man we are saying we are from Australia......

Bella, Bella, Bella

 I (Emily) realize it has been three weeks to the day since our last post, so buckle in as I list the revelations of the past 21 days.

1. We live with the coolest people. Let me profile them briefly so you know who is whom.

• Valerie: a 22 yr year old architecture studies major, she is by far the coolest one of all. The definition of classy, Valerie keeps us oh-so-euro and makes sure pride and dignity are maintained at all times. 
• Shaina:(Pronounced Shy-you-naaa by all the locals) Oh my, Shaina is the mother of the crew. She makes sure that we always know where the nearest gelatteria is located, makes sure we will always make the tram (we are never allowed to stay out past 12 or we will miss it,) asks for directions, gets everyone out of the house so we make it to school on timeish, and makes sure the food is edible. P.S. she is one of the funnier humans to ever grace this earth
• Katie: The funny one who meets everyone, Katie makes sure that we have made friends with every breathing human within a fifteen foot radius. This is including but not limited to bartenders, hobos, gipsies, etc. But please dont let that fool you she will "chop-gulp" any creepy man hitting on one of her friends, she is the muscle of the crew.
• Emily: the one who has zero street smarts. At any given moment, one of the above people will be attempting to locate Emily, who is probably just bopping around in her red superman boots. She is as Shaina would say "stuck up in a good way," but we take it as a positive thing because she is really good at making fun of things.

2.  Transportation

• the tram: smells odd, and according to a man we were talking to is only for the poor. His exact words were "ummm, we have SCOOTERS." Did we offend him by asking him about the tram stop? Perhaps, but us poor students love the monochramatic, urine-scented tram. Sometimes, you will witness the tangible embodiment of poetry while riding the tram. A man gets on with an old violin that is beat up around the edges (like a piece of worn furniture that is chipped around the feet), and will play with a slight smile on his face. It is magical.
• cabs: Only to be taken if and when the tram has stopped operating, cab drivers are the scum of the earth. You may think this is harsh, but they will drive you in circles to rack up your fare. Dirtbags, we know your game. (By we, I mean Valerie, who will always speak up.)
• walking: it is awesome, and poetic things can always be found. (A Fortunado Depero mural on the way to class, a Bernini sculpture, or maybe you could stumble upon the Vatacan, it happens.)

3. Food

• It is delish, but beware of meats saturated in salt and cut paper thin. When in doubt, order a bacon dish: it is thick and delighful
• We found a pizza place on the way to school called Roscoli. It is not technically a pizza place, but a huge bread shop where you buy pizza that is priced by the weight, and we have yet to see another American in there. Lunch for under five euro, yes please.
• Never eat near tourist attractions. Mistake made, note taken: thank you for the reheated food here is my life savings.
• Drinking in public is accepted. Peroni is the new sonic. Hard day looking at monuments and bopping around europe? Grab a peroni to drink on your way home.
• The grocery store is scary, they know we never have exact change and hate us for it. (We try, but how are you supposed to always have the proper amount of change? We are still baffled by this and really are trying to find the solution.)

4. School

• Teachers are amazing. Davide- director, always wears black, very architectish. Emilio- Emily is in love. Always red jacket, orange pants, red shoes, and a bucket hat. The art history teacher, Emilio may or not be the quirckiest human ever to roam this earth. Francesco- aka "the dad" everything he does is so dad-like it is comical. (He winked at Emily, she burst into laughter. He is just a precious father.)
• School= learning awesome things, going to museums, following architects around, researching Michelangelo, and taking creeper photos of the teachers. Yes please
• School is held in a 500 year old apt building that is in the heart of town. We could walk to the wedding cake or the colossum, capitol hill, the pantheon, or (insert other cool sight here.)

5. Italians

• here is where it gets tricky. The men are not very manly, and will do anything to get with American girls, or any girls, or anything. They stare without shame, will lie about their age (all say they are 29, but I am sorry, where is your hair? Why is that small child calling your grandpa? is that a wedding band? I think I misunderstood you, did you just admit to living with your mom?)
  
• We live in a neighborhood with all old people. You should be jealous, because they are just as one would imagine: weathered, wise, well-dressed, helpful, and I just want to sit and listen to one tell me all the stories that they have aquired from years of living.
• There are tons of American students here, it is annoying. They are boisterous, disrespectful, and idiots. 
• When you tell someone that you are American, they will jabber on for ten or so min about how much they hate America. You have to tune them out for a while, and whenever they pause say "yep, our healthcare is backwards," or "I am sorry you don't agree with social security," or "I know, Americans are so dumb. I hate them all." And when they are done with their rant, they will say something along the lines of "You are so nice, and not smashed dancing on the table, I like Arkansas Americans," and then you will be friends. 

6. Other

• We are extremely blessed. This is the coolest opportunity, and we are loving every second of it
• They play Beyonce and techno, so you (our friends) should keep us informed about the music. HOWEVER, we are going to go see loyd? does that make us somewhat cool? probably not....p.s. word reached this side of the pond that Ben Rector sold out House of Blues, congrats. If you dont listen to ben, you should.
• no driers over here. It is romantic that we hang our clothes out to dry, but now they are crunchy and too big
• wine is good and strong, so beware
• we miss you all very much
• we will update more, promise

The beginning of a beautiful thing.

Okay, we are here, sitting in our Roma apartment, in awe of how amazing it is. We boarded the plane at 3pm yesterday, and watched the sunrise over the city as we were about to land. It was poetic in every way. After waiting literally 2 hours for our luggage, a tall gangly man who resembled a cartoon character shuttled us to our new home. He talked to the radio and let us barrow his phone, it was the new blackberry (it is a beautiful phone, but I digress.) Our eyes grew and we kept getting so excited that we couldn't form words. After almost a year and a half of planning, we arrived.
Our apartment has great hardwood floors, two story ceilings, and a view to die for. The city smells like good food, and the air is crisp. We walked around our neighborhood, tried to figure out the train/ bus, but got so tired that walking became a difficult task. We decided to come home and unpack, settle, and sleep. We can conquer Roma in the morning.