Tuesday, February 28, 2012

I've always been interested in photography, but never pursued it. I think all the technical jibbits* involved scare the crap out of me. Also, photographers seem to be very opinionated people. Their zeal for their choice of camera (and by god, your choice of camera) borders on the religious. There's nothing more tiresome than having to have, and argue, an opinion all the time. I want to focus on the beauty, not 10,000 technical details.

So perhaps I'll be a secret photographer with my disposable camera, avoiding the pedantic 'model 3647585-Z is superior to model 346475755-bzzrpt because' lectures altogether. If I can make one of those suckers capture the beauty, now that's an accomplishment. And if not, well, it was 6 bucks and a fun experience. :)

Hopefully I will have any pictures at all from my upcoming hopeful-adventure!

*serious technical word

Monday, February 27, 2012

As I feel a twinge of envy looking at what will from now on be called Maypole Photos, I must remind myself I feel most content and whole on my own, be it exploring, listening to music, internetting, or whatever. So I'll probably never show up in someone's happy facebook photo, but I'm okay. Every year I care less and less that the world isn't geared for introverts, buoyed by my desire to just do my own thing. The world is big enough for me to be myself, whether it's "popular" or not.

It would be kinda cool to have a facebook for introverts though. All the photos would be solitary people walking with their ipods, or quietly writing amidst a big cup of coffee and a cat.

Introverts are really just human cats, I think.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Okay I am officially bummed out by people's facebook pictures. They're always doing fun things, on grass. (Err... I mean the green stuff you walk on, but they might be high too. ;p) They're often standing in circles, laughing. They are one petticoat and a couple centuries off from dancing around a maypole. In short, they are clearly having tremendous amounts of fun while I am... doing this. I NEED TO GET OUT AND HAVE SOME GRASSY FUN.

Of course, it only takes one time posting a Maypole photo for it to look like that's what you do all the time. Nobody posts pictures of themselves watching tv and writing on blogger in their pajamas. You could be burying a body in your basement and you'd still be "girl who does fun things, on grass."

Friday, February 24, 2012

What I meant to do last night: watch a few videos on youtube, finish my graphic requests, go to bed

What I actually did: read sites about abandoned malls and theme parks til 5AM. Damn you, internet, for being so interesting!

It started as a simple search for my beloved Old Towne Mall dark ride, which I do periodically to see if anything popped up. I wonder if that mall was still around, unchanged, would it mean as much to me or would I just take it for granted? (You don't know what you've got til it's gone, etc.) I think it would, because I never got tired of going there as a child, and I'm even more of a kid now than I was when I was a kid. :D I love to visit the few places from my childhood that are still around as much as I ever did. So it's not just the nostalgia, it's something truly special and unique that's been lost to all but memories. There aren't even any pictures of the ride, at least not online or in my mom's huge collection.

I realize nostalgia is kind of a fluid thing - no matter when you grew up, you'll feel nostalgic for what was around at the time. People who grew up in the 50s or 60s probably find 80s nostalgia about as ridiculous as I'd find nostalgia for the sad state of today. But the 80s were my era, and it was still a simpler time. Bad things were afoot, like greed, drugs and rap music, but most of the music still sounded like music, the clothes were wonderfully naive in their attempt to be cool (and I loved the colors!), and we had movies like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future and Pretty in Pink. The 80s were fun. I look back and see them in amusement park lights and colors.

So I wonder, what would be nostalgic now? Will the kids of today one day be pining for the homogenous target-best-buy-wal-mart-old-navy-home-depot strip malls? Maybe they will, if that's all they know. But that's kind of sad. Even true nostalgia is being bought out. I mean...



which one of these is more interesting? Which one is more likely to capture a child's memories forever? Or an adult's, for that matter? Will kids today have the chance to dream of magical carousels and hazy, low budget dark rides? Or will all their memories be of video games? The world is... shrinking. And not in a fun way like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I read that the beautiful carousel still exists somewhere in the country, so that's something. But it should be in CA! That's its HOME, dammit.

Something cool I found that made me smile: http://irodephantasmagoria.blogspot.com/
This was another dark ride from my childhood. I remember this one much better because I was older when I rode it. We probably went to Bell's in Tulsa about three times, and I rode this ride twice every time. It had a big yellow school bus that would pop out and honk at you (AHHHH IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!!! every single time!) Bell's also had an awesome wooden roller coaster, called the Cyclone I think. So... I too rode Phantasmagoria! I never knew how to pronounce it. I still don't. But damn, what a cool ride.

Finding things like this is like finding little pieces of my childhood on the internet, pieces that other people I don't even know share. It's pretty awesome. But damn, 5AM comes too soon.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Here's something I like.



Tom Waits is the PERFECT music to describe abandoned houses. Abandoned things tend to evoke tom-waits-type feelings in me even without the musical accompaniment so... wow. His music is like late at night when you don't really want to go to bed but you turn out the light and it's dark and you're alone but you're smiling a little at a memory. It's always there, it always speaks to you, it's always right. It's not hip or unhip, it just IS, like a river or a shot of whiskey. His music is what the absence of artifice sounds like.

I could go on and on but... yeah. I really like this video and how sad and happy it makes me feel. One of those youtube gems that makes me feel less alone in this crazy world of action.
I have decided that dubstep was invented solely to make everyone over 25 feel old. It clearly serves no other purpose. It exists to make me think things like, "I want to like this, because my mother would hate it and by hating it I have become my mother."* Damn you, dubstep. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy some doilies and knickknacks. Lots of 'em. :/

*my mother is awesome. She's just, y'know, a bit older than me, being my mother and all.

A long time ago, old people thought Elvis and the Beatles were "noise," because it sounded different from anything they had heard. But... but... that music had a melody and lyrics and verses and a chorus and real instruments played by real humans, not robots from the planet Zsyrxbrrpft.* This is why I am not old. I just like my music to sound like music, not like 20,000 cans of baked beans being forced down a garbage disposal then through an incinerator then flattened by a garbage truck. And that's just in the first minute! These... pieces go on for like 10 minutes! (I didn't say pieces of what.)

*that is what dubstep sounds like to me, zsyrxbrrpft over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and-

So thank God for three-minute verse-and-chorus country songs that clearly originate on planet Earth, or at least Texas. I like being uncool these days. It feels comfortable, like a warm blanket or a hug. Hipness is so aggressive. Like seriously, get out of my face.
Also: in every abandoned building there is always a musty, decrepit piano like out of a scooby doo cartoon. Don't ask me why this is. Well, other than the obvious pianos are big heavy suckers and not exactly the first thing you're gonna grab on your way out. But still! So many pianos! In weird places like abandoned factories! Why would you put a piano in a factory? This brings to mind so many wonderful images, all of them involving burly workers spontaneously bursting into numbers from Oklahoma on their lunch breaks. This happened. Yes, I have decided that this happened.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

I do not understand people who are obsessed with japanese boys who sort of look like girls. Which seems to be... everyone on the internet but me. I seem to have missed a something... everything. I am an atypical internet user, methinks. I don't watch porn, or japanese boys, or japanese boy porn. I play games (NOT WoW), make sparkly shit, talk to my sweetie while he is far far away, and watch videos of abandoned houses and cry at their beauty. I cry for what's there, and what's gone.

I am weird for the internet. In a roomful of very weird people, I am somehow still weird. Or maybe... I'm the most normal person on the internet?

Naaaaah. I just want to return to a simpler time, when men were men, women were women, and japanese girls were japanese girls instead of 20-year old japanese men. Who fangirls drool over. And don't even get me started on the whole gay man fangirl thing. Tolerance of gay, lesbian, transgender people is a wonderful thing. But straight girls drooling over very sparkly boys like they're boyfriend potential just squicks me out. Usually I like people who live in their own little worlds, but that's just too deluded and weird even for me. They're GAY, there's no place for you to fit in that puzzle sweetie, my god get off the internet!

Also, get off my lawn. :( /old



Nooooope not gonna happen. How about looking up and noticing there are real boys around who might wanna, I dunno, take you on a real date outside the Hello Kitty Happy Funboy Rainbow Palace in your mind? No, I have no idea why this makes me angry lol. IT JUST DOES OK. There's something sort of plastic about the whole thing. I don't like plastic, especially plastic rainbows. I've never liked "pretty boys." (Shirtless photo posted to confirm male status. No boobage: check.)

But what I hate the most is straight guys wearing makeup and girl's clothes and girls thinking it's hot. AETDGHGFYHFH. This is not some rick-santorum-guys-having-sex-with-dogs imagined horror, THIS IS A REAL THING. I suppose I find it somewhat as horrifying as he finds women... doing anything. But I digress. Seriously, there is a line between "progressive" and "icky" and this is it. Don't make fundies right by being gross, people! Oh! And girls who call boys they like "pretty." I HAVE HEARD THIS. Seriously, every time a female calls a male she wants to sleep with "pretty," Rick Santorum masturbates on a kitten. Wait, um... just don't do it okay!

haha that ended up being a rant. Oh well. I'm a little cranky today. I need to watch some cool youtube videos. Also! I might be doing a little urban exploration soon! I only have a cheapo disposable camera but we'll see... if I can even get in. Trespassing with my mom in tow may not happen lol. But oh... I so desperately want to get in!!

Friday, February 17, 2012

Sometimes I want to leave amusingly spectacular feedback on ebay like, "this transaction made choirs of angels weep rainbow tears of joy!" ... or something. But I don't.

I really should.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Today's wacky headline:

Underwear bomber: 'Proud to kill in the Name of God'

Now let's play, three words that don't belong together in a sentence!

"Um, what are proud, underwear, and God?"

Ding ding ding! You win a shiny new... Batmobile. Or whatever they give away on Jeopardy.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Monday, February 06, 2012

My microwave is haunted! o_0

Sunday, February 05, 2012

A cool video of a guy exploring a "lost city," who says pretty much everything I feel about the past, present and future.

Thursday, February 02, 2012

It's sad when the places in your memories are places that no longer exist. It would be even sadder not to have the memories though. This is what I tuck my brain in with at night when I'm feeling like the world has turned and left me here. Our memories help shape who we are through our whole lives, so as long as we're alive those things are still alive too. I guess you have to look at it like that, or go crazy when another Consumer Depot blocks out your sun.

My theory is that everything that needs to be said in life, ever, has been said in a country song.

"Sit in that six-lane backed up traffic
Horns are honking, I've about had it
I'm looking for an exit sign
Gotta get out of here, get it all off my mind
And like a memory from your grandpa's attic
A song comes slippin' through the radio static
Changing my mood
A little George Strait 1982

And it makes me wanna take a back road
Makes me wanna take the long way home
Put a little gravel in my travel
Unwind, unravel all night long
Makes me wanna grab my honey
Tear down some two-lane country
Who knows
Get lost and get right with my soul
Makes me wanna take
Makes me wanna take a back road." ~ Rodney Atkins

"Get lost and get right with my soul" = new blog title! Though I will miss being "the endangered blue butterfly."

There was something else I wanted to write, I think. But for now...

"But it's not the world that I am changing
I do this so this world will know
That it will not change me." ~ Garth Brooks

I listen to country music after a bad day. I listen to country music after a good day. It's one of the things that keeps me sane in this crazy world of action!!

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

PLAN: Spend hours making graphics! Sparkly ones! Make people happy!

REALITY: Spend hours on derp.com. Never get them back. :(

Curse you internet! *shakes fist*