Films

During my visit to my mom over Christmas I decided to go through a couple of boxes in her garage. Even though she moved into her house several years ago, she hasn't gone through all the stuff we initially piled in during the move. I thought I would help her out by taking a box or two and organizing it. 

I mostly focused on boxes from my grandparent's house because they were the most interesting. They contained things I had never seen before. I never met my grandparents before they passed away (I met my grandmother, who married my grandfather after my maternal grandmother passed away) and so what they left is really all I have to know them by. In the box I found that day there were several smaller boxes of jewelry. They were my grandmother's. I had a friend who collects antique and costume jewelry look them over and she was surprised to find so many pieces in good condition. 

Another box contained my grandpa's pins from WWII. He was a medic stationed in the Aleutian Islands for a while and the brass pins had images of the snake and staff as well as two flags my friend thought might be Masonic symbols. 

The most intriguing item was a white roll of 8mm film. My mom's name was written on it, but that was it. A year or so ago I had bought a projector that could play the film, but when I had turned it on the light bulb hadn't worked. Last night I decided to play around with the projector just to see how the film would fit. To my surprise, when I pushed the switch to turn the bulb on, it actually turned on. I needed to have it in a certain position. It took Joey and me a while to figure out how to put the film in. It's funny to think that this procedure would have been commonplace at one time but is so rare now that few people can do it. We finally threaded the film through the projector and turned the machine on. We dimmed the lights and focused the image on a white piece of paper. 

The film showed my mom running around with a chihuahua at the house she grew up in in Sugarhouse. I could see the small trees in the front lawn that would be tall by the time I visited my grandmother. There were also scenes of my grandfather and the grandmother I knew. He looked exactly like his pictures. He had on a suit and tie and she had on a white dress with buttons. They were walking around the front lawn. The projector would only work in slow motion so their movements were slow and gradual. This was the first time I had seen my grandfather actually moving. Because I had only seen him in photographs I thought of him as being quite static. When I saw him on the film for the first time moving and smiling, it seemed really natural to me. Even though I never met him in person I know I would recognize him in anything. 

I really enjoyed watching it. I hope I can find more films of my grandparents because I feel like I know them better just by watching the films. 

New Ghost Cake episode: Grocery Field Recording

Another amazing ghostcake episode. I've decided to take out the space between those two words, but I'll probably regret it later. In this episode I make a field recording of my trip to the grocery store. I'd like to do more field recordings in the future, ones in stranger places. 

Leave any questions or comments here. 

In other news, my apartment is warm again after being bitterly cold for several days. The boiler was on the fritz. The cold immobilized me. I'd like to get out more, but with work being so crazy for the end of the year and the cold, short days I haven't had much luck. 

I'm also thinking that I should write more in here. With any luck I'll have more time to.

Ghost Cake on Wikipedia

I want to create a page for Ghost Cake on Wikipedia. Does anybody know how to do that? It looks easy but I want the page to look awesome. 

Thank you!

Thanks George Putnam!

I fully support this video.

This is Where the Blah Sets In

I think I'm getting a little depressed. I don't feel like doing much when I have the free time. I have no ambition. I feel like lying around, staring at the walls. It might be because I've been so busy these last few months. School has been doubly hard because of my final Anthropology class. It is interesting but I have twice as much reading for that class as my others and it is all scientific papers about evolutionary ecology. I enjoy the material but it still takes so much of my time to get through. I'm probably feeling gloomy about having to work crazy hours in December too. I might have to work 60+ hours every week. I'm going to try to get two days off per week, but they might get bitchy and deny it. Even though it's only for a few weeks it feels like it's so much worse. My only substantial break between the semesters and I have to work my ass off during it. 

I'm really getting tired of my daily routine. I need to break free somehow. The trouble is, I have to  work to survive and I don't want to leave school when I've got so little left before graduation. I keep looking toward spring for hope but the time until then seems so vast. Maybe I'll shake up my schedule as much as I can. I'll try to find a time machine or something. 

I know this feeling will pass, but in the mean time it is god awful. 

Gimme Gimme New Guinea!

I just got done reading this article about this study done in New Guinea. The researchers were looking to see when agriculture first came to New Guinea, and they discovered that bananas were likely domesticated first here in 5000 BC (or 6950 BP, if you can translate that). For me, that number is amazing because it is difficult to imagine how you would transform a plant from a wild variety to a domesticated one without any modern technology. It would take several generations of people to get it all done too. It is also interesting that domestication occurred at all because the site that this was done at, Kuk, was not a dense montane forest like the surrounding area but a swampland and grassy area. What are the chances humans would go there and then domesticate something? Okay, they probably were attracted there for the variety of food they could get at that location. But imagine if bananas were never domesticated. What would you put on your cereal?

Actually, some prehistoric groups domesticated plants that are now either extinct or not in wide use. The group of people living in eastern United States 3000 years ago domesticated some plants, like chenopods and sumpweed, that aren't eaten much today. I don't even know what they would taste like. This group did, however, domesticate sunflowers. Probably. There still seems to be a little confusion over that. 

Learning where foods were first domesticated makes me think about how amazing humans are. It is our ability to adapt to new environments and new situations that makes us such a dominant species. At the same time, the antiquity of domestication kind of debunks the push for "natural" foods. If you really wanted your food to be untouched by human hands, it would be nearly impossible. You'd have to give up all the foods you eat now and try to go out into the wilderness and collect wild specimens. Good luck with that. 

Sita Sings the Blues

Here's a trailer for an amazing looking movie.



It's already gone to several film festivals. I hope it comes here to Utah. Seeing this makes me want to be an animator. You can find more information about the film here.