on not sleeping

I want to write about sleep a little bit. while I haven't slept in 32 hours. after writing about it I think I'm going to go to sleep.

well. During my first year at Parsons I would constantly do this. I would constantly not sleep. either I stayed up all night because I had so much homework to do, or I willingly stayed up after finishing my homework to go to a party, or just make out with someone attractive all night. I'd take a 1 - 2 hour nap before school, or not. consequentially I would frequently fall asleep during class. my teachers complained about this. I did okay anyway. not great. semi great.

I remember when I started sleeping. I started sleeping around the time when I moved into eric's apartment for a few weeks. It was an interesting time to start sleeping at night because a) for the first time I only had school 2 days a week and b) a didn't really have a bed to sleep in. although I did have a couch and 2 beds in other locations that I took turns sleeping in.

last night I stayed up totally and completely all night doing homework for the first time since that time when I was superhuman and never slept. It was like this: at 7 AM I am finishing what I considered "the most important homework". Turns out later it wasn't even that important. Anyway, I finish it and it's 7 am and I think "Oh my god. this means I can't go to sleep at all. I have to get ready for school now. I am going to die." I look in the mirror and see a scary dead zombie hag looking back at me. Not sleeping/ eating a lot of greasy food for a couple of days has made my skin break out. I think "okay. okay. I will take a shower. I will take a shower and put on makeup and try to look slightly better and then I'll be more likely to make it through my first 6 hours of classes. I'll skip the last 3 hours. I'll go home and sleep. ben katchor won't care." I almost fall asleep in the shower. I make breakfast. I almost fall asleep in my breakfast. I fall asleep in my breakfast for 5 minutes. I think "okay shit I have to go. I'm going to die." After the shower I look slightly better but still completely living-dead. That's okay. I miserably get the hugest cup of coffee before I get on the train. I look miserable with my coffee on the train. I get to class, finish my coffee, feel better. feel better through the 6 hours. decide to go to ben katchors class because i feel better. ben has a slow voice and it's dark. I get sleepy. ben is saying dumb things about my picture story. I decide to be mad at him and send him mean thoughts. I hope he notices. I decide to stop being mean and take a nap in the middle of the classroom. there's 3 of us lying down in the middle. ben doesnt care. he just talks slowly through the 3 hours. I buy a lamp on my way home. a cozy bedside reading lamp. the guy in the lamp store is really nice. he is going to give andrew and I a big discount on a lamp for the living room.

I come home and write this. I feel like I accomplished something today. I will take a nap now and then i will wake up to have a beer and maybe dinner and watch project runway with nice people and then i will sleep for a long time.

monkeys

I feel shitty. Winter makes me feel shitty. Too much schoolwork makes me feel shitty.

Monkeys make me feel less shitty. I drew some monkeys yesterday:

space traveler monkey:



octopus monkey:



popsicle monkey:



I need to pick one and make a finished drawing. you should tell me which one to pick.

---

I watched the oscars this weekend. It was pretty fun. the ceremony wasn't that fun. I liked the fact that a lady screenwriter got an award because that is not common. I liked the fact that all the acting performance awards went to europeans because I am european. No one from Iceland got an oscar. BUT! Jar City (Mýrin) is opening at IFC this weekend. It was our oscar contribution I think although it didn't get shortlisted. But everyone in New York should go see it. Go see iceland. Go see an icelandic murder mystery. there is no trailer online so you just have to take my word for it.

---

so there is a website called doingfine.org which is all about people who are doing just fine. I like that. I like it when people take a break from complaining and being miserable. I don't think I like very happy people but people who are doing fine are good. I am often doing fine. It is a good subject to dedicate a website too. Anyway, they contacted me and asked me to put up a button for them and maybe I would get something instead. They made an ugly button but I don't really care, I like their concept. so I have temporarily stuck it on the bottom of the sidebar. I thought their request was kind of funny anyway. I don't know. maybe I am the postergirl for "doing fine." A lot of shit happens to me but somehow I always manage to stay pretty "fine". Yes. I have decided this is the truth.

confused ant

Tonight I went to a dinner party and then I fell asleep on my former roommate annie's bed maybe because I'm kind of sick and had an 8 hour schoolday of manual labor (silkscreening).

Then Andrew woke me up and took me home and then he left and now it's 4 am and i'm lonely and awake.

there is a confused ant that lives inside my computer. sometimes when i open it he comes out and walks around on the keyboard and looks confused.

I have too much shit to do in life. I hope i can do something fun tomorrow.

I made this page cream, maybe because I have liked cream paper so much lately. knowing html (something I've known for a long time) and CSS (which I learnt last semester) is nice, it makes me feel smart.

the following is possibly one of the best songs ever written for an icelandic childrens' musical.

those of you who are familiar with Lazytown: this is the original.

the chorus goes:

Good CD drive
good hard drive
without those things I am neither bird nor fish (=I am nothing)
I act up if I need some megabytes.



Jói recently mentioned how I was blunt in the way I word things that I write down here. Maybe because I use bad words sometimes. He called me "tough". I like the idea of being "tough". I hope you like my "toughness". My silkscreening teacher told everybody that I was strong today. She said it like "ooh guess what guys, she is STRONG!" I like the idea of being secretly strong. I'm going to listen to the radio now and be strong and tough by myself in bed.

He has killed a lot of animals in his lifetime but mostly lizards

I need to tell you about one of my classes. It is one of my favorite classes; a writing and drawing class called picture-story workshop. One of the great things about this class is Ben Katchor. He is the teacher. Another great thing is this AMAZING little korean girl who has not failed to bring all the best stories so far. What makes them so good is that they're sort of unintentionally amazing. She just sort of hangs out in the corners all shy and polite and quiet and cute and then she opens her mouth and amazing things come out with her polite and quiet voice.

example 1:

we had to interview a subject of our choice and she interviewed her male friend. When she was a few seconds into her account of the interview I manically started writing down some excerpts from it (this girl does not actually look like the freak of nature child-humans that i like to draw during class)



I will elaborate for you:

"He was bragging about his digestive system and how it is so good. He has great control over his digestive system and can relieve himself whenever he likes or hold it in for days. He has killed a lot of animals in his lifetime but mostly lizards and other cold blooded animals. He fears lizards and other cold blooded animals. He was in the Korean army and there he killed many lizards and snakes. A dream he remembers is him dreaming of himself dreaming."

And then the dude drew a picture of A CRUCIFIED MACBOOK AIR WITH A MACBOOK PRO LOOKING AT IT SAYING "MACBOOK AIR SUCKS!"

I want nothing more now than for this young man to be my friend. he can brag about his digestive system all he wants and kill me some lizards.

example 2:

we had to write a story about our "life of crime." I wrote a really boring story about dairy products because I am too much of a wuss to write about anything interesting/ too innocent to have committed any serious crimes. failure.

but SHE starts talking and it goes something like "well I had a boyfriend here but then I went to Korea and had... an encounter with a very nice boy there..."

snap.

so that wasn't too outrageous. but next we had to draw pictures of the crime scene. and this girls picture was possibly the greatest crime scene picture I have ever seen. She didn't give it to me but I tried my best to reproduce her drawing for your viewing pleasure.



and it gets better with the explanations:

Ben Katchor: wait... your hair is completely straight. Why is there an afro in this picture?
awesome girl: oh, this is just to show all the confusion in my mind.
Ben Katchor: so there was striped wallpaper in his room?
awesome girl: no, this is to show how it was like a prison.

I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE... OH NO WHO DO I LOVE! OH NO I HAVE AN AFRO AND I'M GIVING A BLOWJOB IN PRISON.

I will try to be her friend as soon as possible.

CAR FACE

Last night Andrew and I had a good party. Before that Jói and I went to the opening of this Michel Gondry show at Deitch Projects. On display were the sets from his upcoming movie which I am now even more excited to see because now I've been in it. It's about people who have a video store but all their TAPES go blank so they have to act out and record all the movies themselves. here's michel gondry pretending that the trailer went blank and acting it out himself.



later lots of other people came over and we played games. game night works like this: jews give points to jews, icelandic people give points to icelandic people, gays give points to their boyfriends, and despite giving each other points icelandic people loose anyway because they're foreign. everyone has fun anyway because they're drunk.

we also watched this,



Possibly my all time favorite kids' film; All dogs go to heaven (1989) is the reason why I grew up to like a) good films b) really fucked up films. All dogs go to heaven is a really fucked up kids' film about gangsters, violence, murder, intoxication, gambling, heaven, hell, poor people, and other fucked up things. But everyone is a dog. There is a Burt Reynolds dog and a jewish dog and a dog named car face. but there is also a giant homosexual singing alligator who eats people and there is a little orphan girl. Jói kept saying that the little girl had sexy legs. the little girl is supposed to be like 6 years old.

the actress who voiced the part of the little girl was 10 years old when the movie was made. she was also 10 years old when she was shot and killed by her fucked up father. this was her final film and that makes the film even more sad and fucked up.

I don't know why I'm awake at 9 the morning after I get drunk and stay up late. I think I was too thirsty to sleep. Now I'm going to wait for the other people in the world to wake up.

lonely upstream salmon

I would say that 75% of the time I am entirely embarrassed for myself. the other 25% of the time I am entirely proud of myself. there is no in-between stage, no happy medium. I'm just too proud or too embarrassed all the time.

I had a rough week. strangers were mean to me for no reason. this made me embarrassed and sad.

in america people want to kiss you on the cheek all the time, even if they don't like you. (I always imagine that everyone doesn't like me. maybe because of strangers who are mean to me for no reason). Models want to kiss you on both cheeks. I never know which cheek to go for and always end up awkwardly mashing faces with the other person or shaking my head from left to right too many times. "what's that supposed to be, an impression of an upstream salmon?"

my apartment is empty and completely quiet. I have nothing to do so I'll go to bed. I am so glad I have a radio next to my bed. Listening to it makes me feel better.

it is my tradition to write very long stories on february 15th

Today is Valentines day. Actually, it stopped 2 hours ago.

this day had the reoccurring event of people being awkward/weird/rude with me because I'm foreign. this usually doesn't happen that often. today it happened 3 times. it made me really upset so i couldn't go do this thing I was excited to go do (read funny love letter written to me by crazy teenage drug addict that i barely knew. I was going to read it in a room full of bitter feminists).

instead Rachael and I made vegetable-themed miniature valentines day cards for mama's food shop (small enough so you can roll them up inside a dollar bill without it being noticeable), got a huge pile of banana cream pie, snuck the card into their tip jar and drank beer while reading aloud to each other from a funny book.

there is actually just one person I would make out with at mama's food shop and he wasn't even there that night. he was somewhere else, living the mystery that is his life outside of his job, wearing black, smoking cigarettes, walking like he was born on a horse.

---

here is what happened since I wrote that last part:
(Andrew's boyfriend is having a valentines day party. I told them I wasn't coming because I was going to sleep)
Andrew called and said: there is such an attractive straight boy here. come over right now.
I got there in literally one second.
I did not find the boy attractive at all,
still, I would describe him as pretty.
He did not look like a cat.
He looked more like a koala bear.





A year ago I wrote a big angry essay on valentines day. I sort of still feel the same so I will show you some excerpts.

"I had a boyfriend once (can you imagine, that must have been like in the stone age)."

"I used to hate [...] flowers and advised everyone to rather try to impress the objects of their desire with potted plants, or cake."

"The mice under my bed sound like they are the size of cats."

---

Rachael and I did not get any valentine's day cards, or poems. So we decided to go through Rachael's cell phone and look for text messages that could pass as poems. Here's what we got:

Lonely pilot on valentines day

i took the hovercraft for a spin at the park
i was the only person there with a hovercraft
everyone had like a dog
or some shit animal.

-joni


nina simone

nina simone
also shot her neighbor's son
because he was laughing
when she was concentrating
on piano.

-singer

where should I go during my trip to Israel?

choose googoo for gaza!
you will go to the gaza strip
with an american flag covered tour bus.

-joni

siríus

A boy and a girl are driving in the middle of nowhere. The girl is Icelandic and the boy is American, although he has lived in Iceland for a good amount of time.

boy: mmm I really want some Siríus chocolate.
girl: ...you want some serious chocolate?
boy: no, I want some SIRÍUS chocolate.
girl: yes... you just said that. serious chocolate?
boy: no, I'm talking about, you know, SIRÍUS chocolate!
girl: what do you mean you want serious chocolate! what kind of chocolate is serious chocolate?!
boy: not serious, SIRÍUS!! you know, our favorite!
girl: ...
....
..
.......oh... oh! you mean siRíus!


boy: yes! I'm sorry. I can't roll my Rs.

kisa/dying

This is me seeing how it will look if I post pictures on this blog.



This is my favorite picture that I drew last semester. It portrays a cat who is happy because it is his birthday, while simultaneously remembering that he is constantly getting older and one day he will die. I drew this in a class called intro to design and visuality or cultural studies or something serious like that, the class was mostly really boring but sometimes awesome (like when I said "porn" in front of a few hundred people, this ended up being the only word I ever said in front of my whole class). I had this class with Eric. Now I have no classes with Eric. Eric is a really gay jewish person with a filthy mouth and I used to live on his bright orange couch. I drew this picture for Eric. I miss him.

serious

This is my new, serious blog. I previously posted in Icelandic and film photographs on http://juliet-capulet.blogspot.com/ from May 2004 - June 2007, and in all sorts of fun languages and images (moving and still) on http://blog.myspace.com/juliaher from June 2004 - eternity.

This is my attempt to be more serious and efficient (myspace is not so current anymore) and also put to use this URL that i got for my web design class last semester. I didn't make anything cool in the web design class because I was really unhappy all the time but I got an okay grade anyway because my teacher was really nice. He is dutch and he spent most of our in-class time talking enthusiastically about politics, philosophy or anything else you could get him to be enthusiastic about (which was very easy), or showing us videos of his amazing musical son Taiyo who makes up songs and lyrics and plays the guitar. Here he is.

This is the first post and I will probably not show this to anyone for a while, or maybe just one person.