I wrote this yesterday, but Blogger wouldn't publish anything. So here it is again:

Lamp

I am having a self-critical day. I just deleted the last post because I decided it was stupid and off-topic. I want this site to be about futuristic stuff I like and projects I'm working on, and only occasionally about my life.

So back on the topic of futuristic stuff I like. I have a lamp by this dude named Tord Boontje in my living room. I got it last year. Even though it cost more than I would normally spend on a lamp, it required assembly. (It also required help from a friend, although it didn't say that in the instructions.)

When you buy the lamp, you get a light bulb on a long cord, and a flat piece of flowery silver stuff that looks like this:




As the lamp-buyer, it is your job to fold and bend and shape that flat thing around the light bulb until it starts to look all arty, and makes ice-crystal shadows on the wall:


I like this light is because it's kind of futuristic, but at the same time, it's also kind of white-trashy (since you can still see the bare bulb). Kinda futuristic, kinda white-trashy. Just like me...

Batman inspires me to make some changes in my life

I went to see Batman Begins tonight and realized what I love about superheroes. In both this movie and the first Spider-Man one, you get to see the hero make his own costume. That's hot! It's like, not only does this guy have impressive fighting abilities, he is willing to get crafty. That's my dream boy. He'd always keep me safe, and on quiet nights we could sit home and knit. (I'd work on my knitted skirt, and he could knit a new costume.)

Although actually, while watching the movie, I wasn't so much thinking that I wanted to date a superhero. I'd rather be one. I mean, I already know how to knit and sew. I have a hot glue gun, all kinds of supplies, and lots of paint. Now all I need are some battle skills. During the extended training sequences at the start of Batman Begins, I kept getting distracted. Instead of concentrating on Bruce Wayne's character development, I was sitting there thinking, "I wonder if the martial arts place on Lankershim is any good... I wonder how much lessons are." This movie is like a giant ad for anything ninja-related.

SUPERHERO CHECKLIST:

Come up with a name. Bruce Wayne seems to think I should embrace my fears. "Dying Alone Girl"? No, that's way too Bridget-Jonesy. And it doesn't have a good symbol. Maybe something environmental? The "Climate Change Lady"? No, that's lame. Lonely Girl! That kinda makes me laugh. I could help people who spend too much time alone in their apartments.

Learn some martial arts. I know this is key, but I'm not really sure how it'll come into play if I'm only helping lonely people. Maybe I will have to also keep them safe. In any case, I need to be prepared.

Make a costume. Once I'm done with my knitted skirt, this will be next on the list. Or maybe the knitted skirt could be part of the costume, so I'll already have a head start. I need to come up with a symbol to wear on my chest. And I should find some bulletproof yarn, just in case.

Get a car. Lonely Girl probably won't be able to fly. Flying seems kind of lonely anyway... all that time up in the sky by yourself. She needs a car though. (There's no way a superhero is going to stand on the corner waiting for a bus that only comes once an hour.) Maybe traffic is her one weakness. She knows she should hate it, but secretly, she likes being around all those other people.

I probably won't ever mention this checklist again, since it's about my secret identity. But if you ever get lonely, just shine my symbol on a cloud. (Dammit, I've got to figure out a symbol!)

Creature



I painted him a while ago. I can't remember why he has a plant on his head.

The power of blog

I don't even know this kid Tony. We both live in LA and we both take the bus, but we have never met. But today he said "go buy this cd" (i'm paraphrasing slightly) and so I did. Unquestioningly. I went to their website and ordered a CD from a band I don't know at all, only because he told me to. That freaks me out a little.

Dear Tony,
Please don't ask me to do anything violent or scary. I'm not sure I could resist.

Also, please don't start a cult. Unless it's a friendly cult of bus-riders, which is maybe just what L.A. needs.

Love,
Lisa

I hope this band is good.

beck rocks my socks
I'm listening to Beck's Guero cd. I love when I put a cd on and I don't have to skip around, because all the songs are good. I also like the little bat on his homepage.

I saw him in person at an art opening last year and he looked little and regular. But when he performs, he's such a rock star.

I just found out that Le Tigre are opening for him at the show I'm going to in July. That's gonna be fun. I love love live music in the summer. No, I love live music anytime.

Sometimes I just don't get America

I just read this article on Yahoo News about the House approving a flag-burning amendment. WTF? I am having trouble believing that 286 representatives honestly believe someone should be arrested, jailed, or god knows what for burning a flag. This is insane.

At least I'm not the only one who thinks so:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said, "If the flag needs protection at all, it needs protection from members of Congress who value the symbol more than the freedoms that the flag represents."

Seriously, though. How can a country call itself "the land of the free" and pull crap like this? It's a good thing I don't have any flags (or a lighter) in my apartment, because right now I think our government sucks.

How I look from the outside

Justin left me a comment, so I checked out his blog, where he describes me like this:

first off, she introduced me to "Say Hi to your Mom". she wishes she lived on a far away planet populated only with robots, finger puppets and (im only guessing here), trees that grow free cups of starbucks coffee.

I guess that's pretty accurate. I'm still listening to Say Hi To Your Mom a lot. The song "Yeah, I'm in Love With An Android" gets stuck in my head (download it free here). But the truth is, I'm pretty happy on this planet, because we have robots and finger puppets here. And as for the Starbucks tree, I'd prefer a non-corporate, organic kind, but I'll take what I can get. Justin came up with the coffee thing on his own, but I have been on a caffeine kick lately. Maybe my writing sounds caffeinated?

Everything's in mono

I haven't heard anything with my left ear since Wednesday before I went swimming, and it is making me insane. At first, I didn't think it was worth going to a doctor, but I really can't go on like this, so I made an appointment for tomorrow morning.

Last week, I thought paying a $40 co-pay to fix my ear was a stupid idea. But now I think that's totally cheap considering how much it could improve my life. Tomorrow is the first day of summer, and I'd really like to hear it with both ears.

Dear audio gods,
I promise I'll never take my surround-sound life for granted again. I just want my left ear back. I'll take better care of it from now on, I swear. I even bought new ear plugs to use in the pool. From now on I'll always treat both of my ears like the treasures that they are.

Love,
Lisa

UPDATE, 6/21: I CAN HEAR! My typing, and the little noises my computer makes, and traffic in the distance!! Life is awesome.

No more blank walls

Today, as part of a video project some of my friends are working on, I finally put some stuff on my living room wall. I've been living in my apartment just over a year, so it's about time I put something up.

I don't have any money to buy real art so I made some of my own. I know painting on records sounds like a really hipster thing to do, but I wanted the paintings to look like portholes on a spaceship. Using records meant that they could be flush with the wall instead of sticking out like a canvas would.

Basically, I wanted it to feel like the living room is a spaceship, and these are the little windows looking out. Here's how they turned out:

Space Panda



A robot comes over to investigate



Planet with only two inhabitants




And here's a closer look at the little creatures in the last one. All they have on their planet is tufts of grass. One creature is so bored he is wearing some grass as a hat.



All the space creatures seem really happy that I'm floating through their galaxy. Maybe now I'll never feel lonely!

Sidebar news
I made a blogroll! It doesn't have many links at the moment, and mostly I just stole them from the blogging.la list, but still.

My bread is missing.

That sounds like bad slang, but I'm talking about actual bread. I ordered groceries from Vons/Safeway on Wednesday, and they got delivered yesterday afternoon. Lots of bags of stuff like laundry detergent and orange juice and cereal. And I swear I remember seeing a loaf of bread in one of the bags, but now I can't find it. It's on the receipt, so I definitely paid for it, but I can't seem to prove one way or another whether it actually arrived.

My apartment isn't that big, and it's not like I would intentionally hide the bread from myself but this is making me crazy. I should probably call and let them know that they charged me for bread that I didn't get, but I can't get past this weird feeling that I did get it, and I just put it somewhere dumb.

My left ear is still clogged with water from when I went swimming the other day (I swear I have deformed ear canals -- this happens way too often), and being half-deaf is bad enough. But now I am half-deaf and breadless. I don't know how to deal.

Update: I just emailed the Vons customer service people and told them I didn't get my bread. I've checked everywhere in my apartment that a bread-sized object would fit, so I guess my memory of the bread arriving is just wrong. This is the second time in 24 hours that I've "remembered" something happening and then been forced to accept that it didn't actually happen. I'm starting to scare myself.

Blogs, human and otherwise
A few days ago, I made a new Blogger blog for random life-stuff that I don't feel like putting here. (Having a "secret" blog makes me feel kind of lame -- it's a daily reminder that I'm not self-confident enough to post everything publicly. But whatever.) Futuristicky doesn't have the Blogger toolbar at the top, but since I created the new one under a different Blogger id, it does. I kind of think the toolbar is ugly, but I've been using the "next blog" button to randomly click through to stranger's blogs, one after another.

I think it's so fascinating to click from one to another, because I get to peek into different people's lives (unless they're in a language I don't know). A random Texas teenager writing in IM-speak, or a woman from Indiana writing about how happy she is being fat. I get sucked in. But I'm amazed at how many of the blogs consist entirely of spam. They're called things like "flooring info" and "1st vacuum" and "FreeGiftWarehouse" and every post and every comment on the page is spam. Random words and a bunch of links. No real content at all. I guess these blogs must be created by computer programs, and something about that is so strange. And they're probably read by other computer programs that figure out things like search-engine rankings. Blogging feels fundamentally human to me, but maybe the machines don't need us at all...

Are they time-traveling pants?
I went to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants tonight, and yes, I cried, because that's what girls are supposed to do at this kind of movie. But one thing about the story kind of bugged me: the complete lack of cell phones. When one of them leaves another one a message, it's on an answering machine! The book was written in 2001, so maybe that sort of explains it, but would it be so hard to make a few little updates?

In the movie, it's supposed to seem totally crazy that a magic pair of pants can fit four different-sized girls. I think it's a bigger fantasy to imagine that you could find a group of four middle-class teenage girls without a cell phone among them. Instead of a "friends and family" plan, the girls in the movie communicate through emotional letters that accompany the pants they're mailing around. Letters and shared pants are nice, but if I'm experiencing a personal crisis like the ones in the script, I'll take cell phones and email any day.

8 Reasons I should buy a Roomba Pink Ribbon Edition:

-I need a better vacuum.
-I like the idea of my apartment being able to clean itself while I am busy with other things.
-It is pink, and would coordinate nicely with all the pink hairs on my carpet.
-It might actually pick up those hairs, unlike my current vacuum.
-It has pop culture appeal, having appeared as product placement on Gilmore Girls.
-I once made some fan art for the president of the company, which seems sort of silly considering that I still don't own any of their products.
-The little neighbor girl who sometimes peeks in my window would finally have something to look at.
-I could name it and treat it like a pet, but I wouldn't have to buy it special food or empty its litter box (although I guess I would have to empty the filter).