so as not to lose it completely

I'm going to take some time and write some happy thoughts. Or I'll vent.

Last night my professor changed our assignment. The one thats due today. I already had it completed the first way, so I hurried up and changed it to match the second set of criteria I had been unaware it was supposed to fill.

I sent it to myself this morning so that I could go over it at work. Apparently I sent myself a really old version. I have my laptop with me, but it cannot connect to the internet, so I cannot resend the correct version, or, for that matter, hand in the paper, as it has to be submitted electronically.

Fun times. Awesome. Love it.

Damn you digital content!

i spent all this time compiling a spreadsheet and *someone* tried to migrate and it totally messed with all the data and ruined it. i almost got yelled at until *someone* realized that it had nothing to do with my ineptitude.

damn you technology!

on a brighter note, i had a great day o' referencing. no one can stump me!

Someone please take my credit card

I've been doing something really terrible today that I have one and one way only of rationalizing.

I've spent the morning at work finding rare photo types on E-Bay and bidding on them. Its bad. Really bad.

There is one silver lining. Its the most interested I've been in a particular type of archives since school began. So maybe thats the kind of thing I should look for when I get back on the application horse. Which I can pretty much guarantee will not be any time soon. But still. Its nice to find something specific that I really dig.

It does bother me that some people selling these things have no idea what they're selling and label them as three completely different types. I hate to break it to you, but one picture is not a daguerreotype, ambrotype AND tintype. I am officially logging out for the day. I want to have some beer money for the summer and if I keep going....

Really?!?!?!?!

"Nitrate is turning out to be a historically durable medium that, if stored properly, rivals paper -- and well-made paper -- as a storage medium for image and sound,"

so says the motion-picture curator at the Eastman in this article.

It then goes on to explain some of the best features about nitrate films, like its uncanny ability to burst into flames, burning at the rate of 16,000-17,000 per SECOND.

"It has that disturbing quality of producing its own oxygen, so you can't put it out with water."

Sounds totally durable to me....

ooooo pretty colors!!!

Why is it always that something looks so interesting and cool the first time you see it, but a couple of months down the road if you have to read and article on it you want to gouge out your eyes?

I'm writing a paper on theft and repatriation of cultural objects. Its an incredibly interesting and controversial topic and I'm fascinated by the reasoning and rationalization that people and institutions use to justify their actions regarding it.

I know that by the time I turn in the paper I will think it is the most tedious subject I've ever come across. I hate that.

I also have issues spelling repatriation. It doesn't roll off the fingers so smoothly.

Rules

So the other day I was going through some invitations and found one sent to AW inviting him to join a commune. The invitation listed several rules that must be followed including (and I quote):

1. no drugs
2. no alcohol
3. no balling chicks under 18 years old.

now far be it from me to criticize, but whats the point of having a commune with rules like that?!?!

ARGH: categorical categorizing for categorization

Its a tongue twister and mind screw all at the same time.

I sometimes wake up dreading my internship. I really love what I do, but I know that by the end of the day (a day where lunch is really early, making the afternoon interminable), I will be a pile of mush. After a nice nap and a shower, I'm ready to explain why.

Take a box full of...stuff. This stuff could be anything. Literally. Now place everything in the box into a specific category. Not so specific that it'll be on its own, but not so vague as to be difficult to find later. Easy enough? Freaking no.

Our software allows for a finite number of categories and subcategories, and given the terms of the grant, each individual item must be accessioned and categorized.

Say you have about 20 large categories with each of them averaging 3 subcategories. While some items you come across are so weird that they can only go one place, and some are so common that they're easy to deal with, the majority of the material could fit into at least 2-3 larger categories and any number of subs. If the same person were doing the project by themselves, no worries. But there are about 15 people, each with a different idea of what category is best for what item.

So today I had a mind-numbing (I'd say blowing but once I tell you what the items were, it'd seem like such a bad joke) conversation about where a number of postcards fit. There is a correspondence postcard category. There is also a printed material postcard category, and an exhibition postcard category. Faced with a group of postcards written by one man to AW, I thought it was an easy correspondence postcard fit. Yes? No.

Why? Because the postcards each contained business information. Business information in this case meant that the author wrote a number of postcards stating that he was a 22 year-old virgin and wanted to be part of an orgy scene that AW was known for filming. According to my boss, this was a business proposition.... But it only had one sentence and the man didn't seem to want reimbursing beyond the sensational loss of his virginity.

Anyhow. That was just one. The box had hundreds and hundreds of things in it, mostly letters. To be able to see where they fit, you have to read every one. Sometimes I feel like a peeping tom cause I'm reading someone's mail. There was one that also went into the business pile where a man wrote that he needed to be filmed soon cause his body was starting to sag.... Its amazing what people will send on a postcard!

I also am wondering why dirty magazines offer no table of contents to the articles. I thought there was a huge part of the population who only read them for the intellectual content. Thats what I was doing! I did, however, get to learn what a Spanish Fly Swindle was, so I guess my two hours of looking at people doing it wasn't completely for naught....

Anyhow, it was an interesting day. My brain is mush and really all I can see when I close my eyes is pictures of naked people...