Gintah Tran, a creator from Siren, discusses the book at APE. Also, a glowing review!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_02G4abTXk

Siren totally sold out both days! I'll have to write a longer post about how awesome it was, but now I'm cleaning so that will just have to wait. But people seemed to like it, and I definitely had an awesome time exhibiting, wandering, and chilling out with some fabulous people.

Also, I love Kseniya. Everyone should know that! She came along, and was fun and supportive and I'm lucky to have her as my friend!

I'm going to APE (Alternative Press Expo) comic convention in San Francisco with Ms. Kseniya next weekend!  I'm super excited, my short story is finally in print form!  I kind of want to give all my friends a copy (is that vanity?), but at this point I'd have to buy them myself and they're $30 each... if anyone wants to buy one, you can right here: www.sirencomic.com It is worth it if you're into comic books, I think.  It's 200 pages of gorgeous art in a very beautiful, large edition.  Definitely a coffee table kind of book! 

It is the very first time I wrote some fiction and it got published, so I'm really excited!  I feel like when Pinocchio got turned into a real boy.  I am real now!  A piece of me exists in the world, somehow part of me and independent of me at the same time!

Paper: done.

Thesis status:  Umm, I know what a thesis is?

I did start writing La Disputa again.  Though once I'm in the belly of the thesis-beast, that might be pretty on and off again...

School is cool.  Work is alright.

Saw 500 Days of Summer, which was ok.  My favorite hipster love story is still Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is adorable but I personally would not date a guy in a cardigan.  How can I ever take him seriously?  Ikea dates and Smiths and dreams about flying are a little old in 2009.  This movie should have come out 3 and a half years ago.

Peace-fingers,
V

By the way!

Ksen wrote this awesome article about Comic-Con's unveiling of Dollhouse!  Everyone should check it out!
Btw, I'm Riley's Only Fan.  True story.

Apparently I wrote this in my planner in 11th grade:
"Got a 780 on my Verbal SAT.  Guess that means I can read.  What a relief."


Been cleaning my room for the past era.  Or two days.  But feels like forever, and it's not much cleaner.  I did get a cute little table though, so that is happy. 

Tim did get me A Song of Ice and Fire for Hanukkah!!  4 books plus two prequel comic books, all by George R. R. Martin.  I'm in the middle of A Clash of Kings at this exact moment!  Now I have to go, because we're going shopping for my favorite piece of furniture- bookcases!  And boy, do I need them.

It is SO GOOD to finally have a President that we can feel proud of.


I really really really hope this continues.

Today at work, I suddenly noticed how tan the other girls are.... meanwhile, I look like the inside of a radish.  Half the summer is over, and I haven't even been to the beach or the pool.  I've been working (somehow between my 2 hour commute each way, my workday ends up being 12 hours), plus I've been trying to get ready for school (I learned how to take a loan out this past weekend) and been attempting to keep up with my blog.  I'm also trying to keep up with the indie music scene for Tim's radio station, and trying to write more.  This is the first time in my life that I didn't notice the summer come.  I graduated college and it seems that the seasons change, but the days stay the same...


In other news Death Cab for Cutie never sounded so emo...

There are awfully many July 5ths in my life. 

Anyways, I hope everyone had a great 4th!  I got caught in the rain, not on purpose this time!  There was beer during the rainstorm, a very fuel-full fire afterwards and the messiest looking s'mores I've ever seen made by my boyfriend. 

Today is a good day to read all day.

This weekend saw me turn into a dusty, grass-stained, pink sangria-sipping girl in a scarf dress.  My pants were eaten by a miniature potbellied piggy, all my food was cooked on a $10 Walmart grill, my feet and arms were bug-bitten and sunburnt.  My hair turned into one giant curl of sun-reddened frizz and fallen leaves.  I saw two large horses throw themselves into the sky and at each other.  I saw a bunny that looked more like an owl and a baby sheep that looked like a Ferrero Rocher chocolate.  Every morning began with one cackling duck answering a flock of fat roosters.  Every night ended with bullfrogs foghorning throughout a rainstorm, while we enjoyed a burning fireplace and Nutella on our fingers.  A giant puma-cat thing launched itself into the pond full of lichen and jesus-bugs, only to later nuzzle me with a muzzle the size of my fist.  The wife (and her adorable little daughter) of a well-known artist hosted my city-mouse stay at their countryside estate.  I can't write in the order anything happened.  The whole thing was one delicious mess of senses!

MoCCA Festival is probably the most awesome convention I've ever been to.  Seriously. 

This is the second time I went, and I'm blown away about how talented everyone is- and yet how nice everyone is.  I walked around at one point, just talking to random people and trying to not be shy... and EVERYONE had something nice to say to me.  From the founder, Lawrence Klein, to the volunteers to the awesome artists and writers at the tables.  I hung out with Lawrence's dad, Bill, and he knows every artist so he was pointing famous people out for me.  Art Speigleman and Michel Gondry were there and that was amazing - imagine, respiring in the same room!

After the festival, Tim and I met up with my friend Ethan and his friend Yousaf, who was wacky but adorable.  We hung out and then went to the lovely Jazzy's birthday party!  All my favorite people were there, dressed up in beautiful dresses and I was, of course, wearing my MoCCA t-shirt.  Take one in the name of fashion!

The day was awesome, and I had a good time with people I just met and people I knew for a long time.  Which is just how it should be.

For my birthday, my friends Ren and Alex took me to a Regina Spektor concert in Atlantic City this weekend, and I was in a most ridiculous state of happiness the whole time.... 

We drove there, singing Dresden Dolls lyrics through the roads of I-276, and eating way too much sugar and junk food.  By the time we got to our hotel, we were pretty damn heady in love with our own voyage.  Clearly, we needed to calm down and we did that - with a couple of whiskey sours.  We got to the concert in time to get in line behind three dorky guys who were only too excited to help us upgrade our mosh-pit standing room to lovely balcony armchairs, right above Regina's head.   Only Son opened and all was well.  Drinks were brought to us continually, along with a plush fish given to me by one of the boys we just met... When Regina came on stage, waddling a little bit (did she hurt her foot?), the place went silent.  She opened her mouth and it was very much like magic.  As wonderful as she is recorded, she is way way better as a performer.  She played around with music like it was clay, made random sounds with her mouth and feet and hands, titillated her audience with humble self-awareness ("in the next room, someone is fucking to one of MY songs"), was charismatic and absolutely endearing.  I was in love, and I don't think I was the only one. 

After the concert, we hung out, lost exactly 1 dollar in the gambling machines (the machine broke after we put the dollar in and we took it as a bad omen), and went merrily on our way.  Morning was spent hanging out on the boardwalk and by the time we left, we were absolutely ready for 2 hours with the brit-pop band Arctic Monkeys singing along with us from the Acura stereo.  Then, we went our separate ways to our mothers, whose day it was this Sunday. 

Happy Mother's Day to all of you, I am really glad you all exist!

Synchronized Mating Dance of the Flamingos.  Watch this with the music on. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUb0evFZbNM&eurl

For Valentine's Day, my boyfriend bought me comic books.



Girls, I hit the jackpot.

One of the perks in dating a computer nerd is that they can resurrect something that has died, decomposed, and lost its soul to some sort of hardware afterlife.

Case in point; my mp3 player.  Now a long time ago, when I was an innocent sophomore in college and wanted nothing more than an iPod, my father gave me an iRiver.  Which was, of course, not at all the same thing.  It was obese (even for its era), it was slow (took forever to turn on), in short - it would have been picked last for dodge-ball teams. 

However, it did have one feature other kids didn't, and that's including the glamorous iPod.  Its file based software wasn't "smart".  Which sounds like I'm insulting my dear iRiver, but really meaning that it did not put music in folders it invented for me (the Beatles; Beatles; and Beatles, the; did not all become separate folders- hallelujah!), but allowed me to make my own and organize in the most comfortable way for me.  (To this day, no other mp3 player does that unless you rename files or what have you - and I don't know why).

After a few years of perfect service, I finally dropped it one time too many, and it gave out.   It froze and turned off, and I couldn't turn it on no matter what.  I went online to see how much iRivers go for these days- and discovered they were discontinued.  The company lost the race to Apple and that was that.

I was disconsolate.

For a year and a half, I tried different mp3 players (turns out I did not like the iPod once I got to know it), while my forlorn iRiver hung out brokenly in a bag, lost to mankind forever.  I had resigned to a life of slow mp3 player-atrophy, when two days ago my personal one-man geek squad piped up;

"I can fix it!"

And in true geekdom form, he not only fixed it, he pimped it.  My iRiver is smarter, faster, and cooler than it was the first day I saw it.  He could have given me a zombie, an undead version of my beloved machine, but instead he gave me a vampire.  A vampire that plays FM radio, and has video games!  While rocking out to the Misfits, I can now play Doom!  I can change the skin to Super Mario chilling out or two puff creatures dancing.  It has a dictionary and can probably cure the Ebola Virus. 

VampiRiver has come home.

A crow takes care of a kitten.  The way it's presented is wayyyyyy cheesy, but the content is really fantastic and adorable.  Watch it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JiJzqXxgxo

Whatever you do to celebrate, enjoy yourself!

My l'il bro's home, all different and grown, and now we're all going to do the family thing!  I also made pumpkin pie for Tim, but he doesn't know that yet. 

Albeit a bit odd, there's something sort of adorable about the mating dance of the Waved Albatross.

See for yourself:
http://www.ironicsans.com/2007/07/60_seconds_in_the_life_of_the_1.html


I'm back from Maine. Turns out boogie boarding is my secret talent. Now if only I could take advantage of this financially...


Hehe, peace out!