achey

I've had a headache for 3 days.

Maybe it's because I look at the computer too much.

Maybe it's because I look at the computer too much without ever "getting things done on the internet".

Last night Holly and I sat down and updated our band's Myspace page together for a while. That was fun. Surfing the internet as a partner activity.

Put up this "controversial" photo:



and some more photos. and a new song. and a flier for our next show.

And a link to a video of us performing part of the first and only song I ever wrote all by my lonesome, Batman. Recorded by the lovely Valeria Picerno.

I think today is supposed to be the official american first day of summer. A lot of people have been blogging their summer goals so I think I am going to copy them and do that;

This summer I would like to:
-chill out
-figure out dishes to cook with all the odd ingredients that have accumulated in my cupboards
-organize my belongings
-figure out how to enjoy drawing again
-think of some ideas for a senior thesis
-write more
-take more pictures
-get my keyboard fixed and organize the files on my hard drives.

good luck me.

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.

MUMMIES

Baby demon mummy at Rakanji Temple


Shinnyokai-Shonin “living mummy” at Dainichibo Temple

Monster Mummies of Japan via Pink Tentacle

Speaking of mummies; my hard drive crashed recently -> I lost all of my music (there was quite a lot of it). I felt it was logical to look around for files in my Gmail account, since various people have sent me various songs that way over the years.

The disadvantage is: this made me re-read old e-mails which would've been better kept forgotten... in the context of what happened since such messages mostly make me think thoughts like "aww, fuck." or "fuck you you misleading coward" or "I should have gotten back to this person 3 years ago I suck."

speaking of music: there is a new song up on the Feather and Folly Myspace page. It is called Holiday and we recorded it last Sunday in a public ladies' bathroom at school in the dark. Some of the lyrics are by Richard Brautigan, I think they are my favorite lyrics.

We recorded music all day. Good people recorded it for us. I am excited to hear it when it is ready. I hope you are too.

I made a wordle for this blog

http://wordle.net makes nice images from the words that are commonly used on a blog (click on the thumbnail to view):

DO WHAT I SAY

Play both of the following two youtube videos at once,

BUT! this is important: mute the first one (by clicking on the volume button or turning the volume all the way down) and listen to the soundtrack of the second one while looking at the first one. I guarantee greatness.







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I've been lousy at updating recently. That is because I've been trying to be a real person with a normal life. It's going okay, I'm still failing at some fundamental things though.

I had this conversation the other day at a "party":

dude: "Hi Júlía"

me: "hi...?"

dude: "do you recognize me?"

me: "no I'm so sorry! I suck at recognizing people. who are you?"

dude: "my name is ______, we used to be friends on myspace, I came to your video store sometimes..."

me: "Oh I do remember you! I'm sorry, I don't even use myspace anymore. My account more or less stopped working. I'm actually pretty upset... having been a registered user since early 2004 I felt like they owed me something and this was just betrayal"

dude: "I think myspace just sensed that you needed to get off the computer and out of the house. you had spent too much time on it and it said "stop, no more myspace for you, get out of the house, go to a party, get a life". that's why this conversation is happening"

me: "that is completely true! now I understand everything."

smell report

At the end of a semester such as this one, when I am generally freaking out about own failure at life and too busy distracting myself/paralyzed with worry to take showers, I move around in an aroma-cloud of baby powder, tea-tree oil, sugary lime juice and "stinky soap" (someone used this to refer to Dove as in the brand of my deodorant).

I'm not sure if I would rather smell like girly sweat or stinky soap. The other aromas are all pretty fun and addictive to me.

Just in case you were wondering.

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In other news, it is almost time for the 10 year anniversary of the oldest (known) documentation of my presence on the internet. I just came across this while googling myself looking for something else. What I am referring to is my signature in the Lion King Guestbook in 1998 (I was 11). I only wrote my name and where I was from. Because that was all you usually wrote in old school, tangible guestbooks as a kid. Somewhere in the middle of this page, May 20th 1998. I like the fact that the person who wrote after me is named Sami and is from Nokia, Finland.





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this has been me trying to distract myself. I am now going to switch over to J.D.Salinger as a method of distraction.

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.

this is sort of "nothing".

No, Jonathan Lethem did not find me and kill me. I have merely been very busy / very tired / very unmotivated. But it's not too bad. I am in a state of nothingness right now. I feel like "nothing". I am not happy, or sad, or excited, or depressed, I don't think I'm going to ace this semester but I also doubt that I will fail it, I sort of want to stay in new york this summer but I also want to go home. I don't really care. I really like eating and sleeping at the moment. This is an entirely boring state of mind to be in, this "nothingness". I hope something happens soon to fix it.

Now that we're all very informed on my current feelings, I can tell you what has happened.

Vera, Björg & Pétur came to stay with me over spring break. We were drunk for a week. well they were drunk for a week, i tried to keep up but couldn't really while doing homework and going to bed embarrassingly early every night. We ate delicious bagels every morning. We watched the entire season 3 of Felicity, the utterly terrible TV series that Mona left with me when we stopped living together in the dorm and i never watched it and I TRIED to return it to her but no. Of course we ended up watching the entire damned thing.



since they left I have been up to no good.

I'm trying to make a real website. you know I have this whole domain, juliahermanns.com, it's not just for this blog. this blog is just supposed to be a bonus. my friend gave me Dreamweaver CS3 claiming it was sooo easy to use, and even if I know html and css just writing out the code would be a bitch. But Dreamweaver is looking like the most complicated, time consuming shit right now. I really need to put up some things that are semi serious. Because I never do. I need someone to come sit with me and walk me through this. I just want a simple normal 2 column page. I will make them limeade and rice pudding. I make really good limeade by the way. help. me.