ÖPPDEIT

I sat in the school computer lab from around 11 PM to 4.30 AM going through my semi-disorganized archive of film photographs that survived my hard-drive crash and picking out pretty much every picture I ever liked to put up in the "work" section on my website. I grouped them in a way that I thought semi-fit.

This one didn't make the cut:



because there is no group for pictures that are trying to be postcards.

There is a group of nice things, things that make me feel uneasy, nature things, city things, vertical portraits, pictures which strongly remind me of feeling certain feelings and pictures that make me think of the colors white, green and pink.

I don't know.

I did this because I thought I was supposed to have a proper looking, functioning website for my web-design class today. Now I am in class and think I might have been mistaken, as in I am not being asked to be ready for anything right now.

Oh well.


Oh! My work got chosen for the Tribute part of the American Illustration Annual. I am still not sure exactly what this means but it sounds somewhat fancy. This is what got me "fame", it's the first spread of my mini-comic Bearkiller and also words from a dream I had:



I am just writing some words. I feel boring. I guess I'll show you more pictures. Holly and I had a fancy photo shoot for Feather & Folly. I think it was because an Australian woman is writing an article about Brooklyn girl-bands. I never lived in Brooklyn but I've played there a lot so I guess that counts. Here's one picture:



There are more on our myspace page.

Have a nice day and night.

hairy priest in exile

hi.

it's 2009. have you noticed also?

I did a pretty good job of finishing up my semester and getting good grades, all things considered. I also managed to play 2 shows with feather and folly and drink a lot of fancy beer.

here's a picture from the underwater-birthdayparty-midfinals-featherandfolly show:



it was a happy place. people lost their minds and danced and asked for an encore. not quietly.

I made a picture story book that I like. It's called bearkiller. It's sort of about the film grizzly man by Werner Herzog (a favorite), but not really. It's mostly just me being a jerk.

here's the cover and the last 2 spreads (out of 5)







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I'm pretty sure I didn't name him hairy priest. I swear. brother hairy priest. magnificent.

So now I've done Jólin (holiday of lights, heathens, etc.) and new years eve (holiday of blowing shit up and me always getting drunker than I intended to). My family is nice, my down-slippers are warm.

I look forward to coming back to new york and seeing friendly faces and walking around every day and drinking fancy beer in front of a bartender dressed as a monk sometimes. Maybe I can go to DC and visit charlie. maybe I can be a normal person. 2008 was a fucked up year. 2009 needs to not be. maybe i can have a job.

anyway, I'm also content here. I am content, listless, unsure and fine.

I don't know


I think we could all learn a thing or two from Amadeus the traveling dog.



When I was a little kid I was pretty damn sure that I would spend my life with three (brother) huskies. I was gonna name one Wolfgang, one Amadeus and one Mozart.



i want you.

listen and learn

Episode 2 of Sex, Lies & Radiowaves is finally out. This episode is bigger and better and now includes strategically placed musical interludes. It's a fun time. Incedibly dorky but very fun to make. I talk about smegma and Andrew delivers a monologue about threesomes while I judge him.

Go listen at the WNSR New School Radio Website.

You can also listen to our first episode in the NewTalk section on the website.

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Uh. This semester is coming to an end. It is scary and I have way too much work to do. I've just come down with a massively sore throat and nasty cold. great. I'll try to make it work. I'm trying to keep myself distracted in order to not go overboard with anxiety. Wish me luck. And then I get to go home to winter-wonderland and lounge and see my family. can. not. wait.

It's Andrew's birthday today, happy birthday Andrew. He had a big party over the weekend which was an excellent fun time. A young lady peed out the window into our courtyard and Alex Fitzgerald threw up in a pastry box. This clearly means that it was an epic party.

I am meeting nice people. People are nice to me. Things are looking up maybe. I hope.

Feather & Folly are playing 2 shows in december. check it out. I hope my throat gets better so I'll actually be able to sing.

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I don't remember if I posted this before. I wish my sex-advice show was exactly like this.

DONT MESS

...this is sort of incorrectly labeled as procrastination because I already did my homework which was actually quick and funny for the first time in the history of mankind ever. quick and funny is how all things should be. except for the TV show Gossip Girl, I prefer that to be long, drawn out and over-dramatized. Tonight I sort of snuck out of class early (my teacher literally kind of encouraged me to leave) to go home and watch gossip girl. it was very satisfying. I literally squealed with delight. while I watched I ate a Burrito with rice and veggies and guacamole and cheese and I drank coka cola with maybe half a lime in it. I am only allowed coca cola when I eat chipotle (BECAUSE THEY HAVE LIMES!) and watch movies (BECAUSE THEY HAVE POPCORN!)

okay here is a sample of my homework, inspired by rachael london:





(this was the assignment)

yes. I am getting a BFA by doing this. life is incredible.

Hey, does anyone want to live with me in the LES in New York? Andrew will be studying abroad from Jan. 1st to May 1st and is desperately looking for someone to sublet his (very nice) room in our (very nice) apartment. He's trying to find someone who can commit to it before the end of this month and I am freaking out because I don't actually have a room in the apt so if I don't get along with this potential roommate who potentially will be a stranger I am potentially screwed for all of next semester. there isnt a door on the room (although there is a staircase up to it so its not like one can see into it) so the roommate would have to be comfortable with me being able to hear them when I am awake. But it's pretty easy to be comfortable with me because I am a very laid back calm person all the time and sometimes I'm funny and I make great Limeade and I can sleep/work through pretty much any kind of disturbance so you wouldnt have to tiptoe around me because I am laid back and calm like that. The price he is asking is very reasonable, so email me (there's a link for that on the right) if you want further details.

And while I'm announcing stuff, we could always use more questions for the radio show, I made a panda sex flyer for it even:



http://newschoolradio.org
send questions here

winner time.

I got an e-mail the other day:

Dear Julia,

Congratulations! On behalf of the jury members of the Vera List University Art Collection Writing Award, I am pleased to announce that your submission "The Butcher" to the 2007/2008 writing competition was awarded the first place in the category of creative response, with a prize of $400.

This means I wrote a story and sent it into a competition and won. The competition is for all the schools within the new school university. This means that a lot of people take part. this means that a lot of them are americans and native english-speakers. this means that some of them are writing majors at eugene-lang.

I still won. The Icelandic girl who never took a creative writing class in her life won. The Icelandic girl who just recently started writing secret stories when she was angry at people and/or had interesting dreams and/or real or imaginary conversations.

AMERICANS = PWND

This makes me happy.

Now you can all say "hey I started reading what Júlía wrote before she won an award and became famous."

joke.

I have one problem that I want to talk about. I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with real people other than myself. I guess I am interested in myself too but I am more interested in people who I know or know of. I am not interested in imaginary people. I never ask these real people permission to draw them or write about them because that would be weird. They would think I was in love with them or something. That is not the case. I am never in love with people. So I just go ahead and draw them and write about them, telling myself I'll just never show anyone. Like when I wrote The Butcher. Of course I change names and details when I write because that's easier than changing people's faces when I draw. But I still thought "I will never tell anyone I wrote this. I will not win anything in this competition because I am foreign and this story will never be published and no one will read it."

Well I was wrong.

The story is about being foreign too, in part. It's about me and being foreign and angry and tired. It's funny. The jury used the word "Irreverence" about something in my story. I had to look the word up in the dictionary because I am foreign.

Okay. this might make me seem productive. I am not. I never make anything serious. except this story and another story that I illustrated for my lithography class. I am happy with these 2 things. Even if I get bad grades, which will probably happen, I will be happy that I accomplished two things that I like this semester. Here is a picture of the book I made:



I don't want to post the inside because I wrote and drew a real person in it and I didn't ask them permission and I'm scared they will not like it. But if you want to buy one of these they might be for sale. You should ask me.

I want to now apologize to everyone I might ever draw or write about without their permission. I'm sorry.

I should do my homework. Instead I always spend all of my time making very unserious things. Like this unserious thing I made today for Alex Fitzgerald. I like Alex Fitzgerald because he makes me smile and he likes the internet more than I do which is rare. Before I knew him I thought he was a lame internet person. Then I got to know him as an awesome real person. Now we talk to each other regularly both with our real faces and with our internets. So today's conversation resulted in this:



I am going to leave it up to you to read into this piece. Here is a clue: "Irreverence."

I am going to drink my tea now, it has probably gone cold. then I will draw tesla coils. good night.

life plan and things you need in order to acquire eternal happiness:

I think I am trying to fix my state of "nothingness", by sleeping less for example. And doing some other things. I feel less like "nothing" right now. Maybe it's just because I went to mama's food shop though. Here is my new life plan: I will seduce someone who works at mama's. He will in turn bring me food all the time because I practically live next door anyway. very convenient. He will like horror movies and videogames and our lives will be perfect.

Now I just need someone who can teach me mad seduction skills.


joke.

Hey. I am really happy that people like to read this even though I'm writing about "nothing". And that icelandic people read this even though I'm writing in english = betraying the motherland. ACTUAL FACT = most icelandic people read english, but most foreign people do not read icelandic. It's a twisted world, I know.

Now I will talk about fun things.

Fun thing number one: Playing chess. I really want a nice chess set now. Rachael London has one and sometimes we play chess and drink tea or red wine and that makes for a very "happy sophisticated lady"-time. I'm probably better at checkers though. I will somehow acquire one of those double time sets. Then I will seduce people to play chess with me and we will drink limeade and look like this:



Fun thing number two: Limeade. Here are some reactions to my limeade:
Rachael: "Oh my god you are so incredibly good at this!"
I think that's it. Nobody else has tried it.



Fun thing number three: The brothers Quay are coming to present their films at my school on Friday! That is very exciting! If you are not familiar with them, they are basically a set of IDENTICAL twins who want to be Jan Svankmajer. If you are not familiar with Jan Svankmajer, you should be. They are almost 60. They looked like this when they were younger:



They pretty much are pretentious for a living. There latest film is called The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, possibly the most pretentious name of a film ever. At least their pretentious shit is really good. I tried hard to find a clip on youtube that wasn't 10 minutes and incredibly pretentious but this was almost impossible. But here's one from the Institute Benjamenta, which I watched several times during my video store days.



(Parts of the beginning reminds me of Vera. She will know why.)

If you don't have patience for that, here's a short scene they did in the film Frida, probably seen by more people than all of their own films combined.



nice, yes?

Well, one can only take so many fun things in one night. I think I need to stop now.

p.s. here are some titles I considered for this post: "The Piano Tuner of Pretentious Wannabes" and "Limeade Seduction". Neither one qualified.

p.p.s. I am enjoying this book very much now, both as reading material and a headrest for when I wall asleep in class:

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.