Procrastination is the root of all evil.

So is apathy, angry dreams and fluffy kittens.

I’ve been meaning to blog/draw more recently but so many other things have gotten in the way it’s been a bit hard to find the time…so this will be a rather epic, long blog post.

I was actually going to post this last week but wrote a draft and forgot about it, so now it is here in its full technicolour glory, awaiting to be read by you, the reader.

I sometimes feel like….things are slipping away. And I’m just standing by watching it all happen.

I don’t even know if that really makes any sense to me. But …yeah.

It’s nearly the end of the year with only… what-? 2-3 months to go…and its kinda scary. I’d really like to have a proper fulltime job soon, and that issue ALWAYS seems to crop up whenever I talk about my life these days, but seriously, a job which I actually enjoy would be really quite nice. Deciding what you want to do for the rest of your life is hard, and its so easy to just think ‘…you know what, I’m really not that good at anything so what’s the point?’ but I guess you also have to realize a lot of things are also practice, dedication and a whole lot of bullshit. I’m actually seriously thinking about doing a tafe course next year in web/graphic design but we’ll see I suppose. Oh and that reminds me, something that really pisses me off: Job interviewers who don’t let interviewees know about the job after saying they will. Seriously…it’s so disrespectful, especially if they ask for an interview and can’t even be bothered calling/emailing back after. It’s just like….where’s the professionalism?! ugh.

I had this really odd dream last night too(this would have been last week now), which is pretty weird to recall because it involved a poem and Sylvia Plath. I was in some timber house with my friend Cindy, when she starts talking to me about a depressed manic and I realize she’s talking about Sylvia. We then lock ourselves in the toilet while we read her poem, and outside we can hear her banging down the doors looking for us. It’s all a bit scary and it was like we were being haunted by a crazy depressive spirit. I don’t really know what the hell I was thinking last night but it was all kinds of weird. Random huh?

Another random, nostalgic thought of the day: I used to read a lot of books when I was younger. Like….a lot. I used to visit the library at least once every few weeks and get as many books as I could. And I really wish I still did that.

I try to, and I read the occasional one every now and then. But god …. it feels like years since I’ve actually wanted to just get lost in a book and not surf the internet every few chapters. I think I stopped reading so much around the time I started going to uni, and since then I’ve just…never really gotten back into it. Perhaps it was just the goddamn readings we had to do in uni that put me off reading altogether. Or perhaps having my laptop in my room isn’t the best idea, because it’s just there and it’s instant gratification. With books, you have to get into characters, and into storylines, and…it’s hard to connect to something when there’s so many distractions around. But the thing is, I can’t even watch a full movie now without getting distracted. It’s kinda…I dunno. It’s like my brain’s numb from everything. Or I’ve just lost something that I was interested in before. I’ve just felt really … restless lately, like….I need to do something. Some. thing. Productive.

It’s funny coz I coincidentally was reading this comic earlier on Brave New World vs. 1984, and it describes pretty much the entire prospect of distractions, irrelevance, trivial preoccupations and general apathy in an ocean of information and misinformation today:

In the world I live in, I guess Brave New World kind of has a point. But then again, I think I’d definitely rather decide for myself what’s right and wrong through the information that is freely available to me, rather than living in a censored police state with no individual thought or reason. Which also reminds me, I really need to read A Clockwork Orange sometime soon. I may even go to the library tomorrow before work so I can get it out! I think I’m more excited than anything to just read a good book again.

It is also my birthday next week, on the 19th! I turn 21, and people say it’s a huge thing and a milestone in life…so I suppose in a way it already is. I don’t know if I’ve accomplished all that I’ve wanted to achieve but hey…every day’s a new day. It’s not that big of a deal for me anyhow, but it’s definitely put things into perspective a bit.

And right now, a thousand different things are running through my head: spring, summer, new beginnings, nostalgic memories, freefalling, sunshine, rain, flies, waterlilies, lightning, thunderclouds, anger, yellow umbrellas, aliens, grape slushies, frustration, sunsets over lakes, crickets chirping, anxiety, fear, carnivals, stress, buses, cities, mountains, clouds, indifference, deserts, cacti, suburbia etc. etc. etc.

I’m weird sometimes.

In other cool, non introspective news, Cam taught me how to solve a 3×3 rubiks cube the other week! He’s pretty amazing. I think it’s amazing in itself someone actually got through to me how to solve one of those things. It’s actually pretty fun! It was in my bag when I went to work and my manager saw it and went ‘wow…now that’s a blast from the past!

And in other non real life news, I stumbled upon these rather funny images which depict the backstories of famous paintings:

 

I thought they were pretty funny, especially the Scream one.

I love reading house design/architecture blogs, and I just had to share these with you all:

Seriously, how amazing are they?! I want the paintbucket light!!! I had this cool idea before to get like a custom made desk lamp in the shape of the batman logo….hey it could be pretty neat!

I also came across these funny artworks by a former artist who doesn’t make anymore macabre comics/drawings due to ‘religious reasons’:

Seriously…its a shame he doesn’t draw anymore coz his art’s pretty awesome(and funny!).

And now I’ve run out of things to say and don’t really know where else I’m going with this.

I will leave this post with this supercute photo of a puffin…And one of my fave fake science images:

Plus a random recipe for Irish Stew!

I thought it’d go well with today’s random blog post.

Also, did you know there exists a cloud alt symbol?! I was going to post it on here, but it doesn’t work and I’m too lazy to fix it. It is pretty amazing though.

Plus, this amazing digital painting I stumbled on a few minutes ago!

PS. Drew this a few days ago. I started it last week but didn’t really finish it til yesterday. I don’t really know what else to do with it. :/

It’s kind of annoying, because ever since Inception came out everyone’s kinda been into the whole science of dreams thing.

I looked up dreams inside dreams before and all I got was Inception references!

Anyway I had a most interesting dream last night. I should really start a dream diary of some sort because it was weird..

I woke up at around 8am but dozed off again, and I was all of a sudden sitting in a huge lecture theatre but the seats were like movie theatre seats. It was like sitting in the Octagon theatre at UWA or something. There were loads of people and I was surrounded by people talking to each other that I didn’t know.

I started talking to some random people and joking around like I’d known them for ages, and it was like we were waiting for a lecturer to come in for our class or something. A door is at the bottom and white light is shining through the door.

I say something to a girl about how we should escape before the teacher comes in. She’s like yeah ok! And this other guy joins us. But just as we’re about to exit, the room changes and becomes like a third world bunker of some sort filled with crying kids and dishevelled faces. Everything gradually changes- not like a cross dissolve but slowly, the ground turns to brown sand, and the seats become dirt, and it’s getting darker and people begin to cry. We’re in like a setting kinda like Egypt or the Middle East or something.

Outside I can hear gunfire and bombs going off. It all gets a bit scary and I look around again and there’s all of a sudden soldiers around us with machine guns. I ask the nearest guy what’s happening, and he says it’s all to do with some movie called ‘Hi-5′. Yeah. I wasn’t thinking of the kids band but maybe JJ Abrams Super 8???? Either way, as soon as he said the name of the movie, myself in the dream had flashbacks to another dream I had ages ago, which I may or may not have written down.

It was the one where it was all creepy and dark and like I was in a horror movie, and I was walking around a post apocalyptic city, and walking through derelict buildings and being followed by shadows. It sounds silly but it was actually quite creepy and although I don’t remember the specifics of the dream, it was very weird. Hmm…maybe I didn’t write it all down. Maybe I forgot all about it and it was just my subconscious recollecting it all this morning in my dream.

Anyhow, I had flashbacks to that dream, and myself in the dream considered it to be fact- something that had happened in the past, and somehow linked to the gunfire going on outside.

I walk a few steps to my left, and all of a sudden sunlight shines through, and I see a metal fence where hundreds of armoured US soldiers and activists are standing in front of us with HUGE guns. It’s like I’m stuck in a fenced off area with these people, surrounded by soldiers for a crime we didn’t commit. I’m suddenly scared for my life and I see people around me that I know from the lecture theatre.

The US soldiers start shooting at us through the metal fence, and other people inside with me start shooting back. I realize I am in direct line of fire, and I begin running back right into the shelter. I wonder what’s going on and attempt to hide behind some people. And I’m running and I feel something heavy hit the side of my head and I’m like ‘oh I’ve been shot’. For about 2 minutes. Then I’m like ‘oh wait…I should be dead’. And I wake up.

And the weird thing is, when I woke up, I could feel the side of my head throbbing. Not hurting exactly..but yeah. It was weird.

I have weird dreams…

On a site related note, I found some super old stuff on the PC the other day.

Including the website I made for Hero with 2 other people in first year!! Haha. Those were the days… And not just that! But high school stuff too!!! Stuff which I’d thought I’d lost forever!!! All down to year 12 timetables…home ec projects…ancient history stuff….random stories I’d started writing…yeah. It’s pretty amazing.

Also found a lot of old neopets screenies which are hell funny. I used to play neopets a lot with my friends back in the day, and looking at them now and looking at the site today its just like…..woah. I thought these were funny:

…And now I feel like the biggest nerd ever. I guess you wouldn’t really find these funny unless you knew what playing neopets was like! Hah.

I ALSO found this old tutorial I wrote when years and years ago on my old geocities site, because I didn’t want to forget how to do it:

Realistic Cloudy Effect

1.Open up a picture, 300×300( you can change if u want)

2.Pick two colours you want your clouds to be, i chose blue and white to look more real. Now go to filter>render>clouds.

3. You should have a cloudy bg now. To make it look more real go to filter>brush strokes>spatter. Leave the settings as is. This makes the clouds look…more even i guess.

4.Now go to filter>stylize>wind>Blast.

5. Now go to Blur>Gaussian Blur. Set radius to 2.0 pixels but keep pressing ctrl-F until you have the effect you want. I ended up with this:

i figured this out while i was messing around in ps. i dunno how useful this is…but i hope it helped! i reckon it looks more real than the original filtered one anyway. It’ll look better in a bigger picture, this one loox crap becoz i had to make it smaller

Lol….yeah. Isn’t it the most amusing thing ever? I’m sure there are more efficient ways of making realistic clouds in Photoshop these days…but I was using Photoshop 5.5 and Frontpage at the time!

This was on my old geocities site, and I even had an about me page. This is embarassing but this was the music I was listening to back in 2001:

Music

Evanescence::Bring me to Life

Linkin Park::Somewhere i Belong

Linkin Park::In the End

Christina Aguilera::Dirrty

Good Charlotte::The Anthem

Good Charlotte::Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Good Charlotte::Girls and Boys

Good Charlotte::Little Things

Ashanti & Ja Rule::Whats Luv

Ja Rule::Livin it Up

Dj Sammy::Heaven

Michelle Branch::Everywhere

YEAH. I KNOW.

Though you have to keep in mind, these were the days when I had a walkman, and taped everything from radio. In fact, I think I still have my tapes somewhere. The first thing I ever heard about getting music off the internet was on Napster. Then Kazaa. And then I realized: radio pretty much brainwashed everyone, including kids, and we really just didn’t know any better. Or I just didn’t know any better. Thank GOD for the internet! I’m sure without it I’d still be listening to crap like Rihanna and Lady Gaga today.

I also had a site description about my Geocities site….my gawd it’s embarassing. We all used 2 type lyk diz. No joke. What was I thinking?!?!?! Seriously?!!?!?

Here’s an excerpt:

History

This site was always called Psychadelic Swirl. I thought the name sounded really kool after seeing austin powers in goldmember. lolz. i gess i got struck wif inspiration. i’ve forgotten when this site started but it was AGES ago. like….1 1/2 yrs ago. newayz this site used to be a blinkie site. Mainly a site where u could request free blinkies and stuff. I made the time to make free blinkies for ppl and also help ppl wth starting sum of their own. yep i was very generous. heh. but then ppl kept bugging me to make blinkies when i was really busy and that annoyed me. i mean i think ud b pretty lucky if u got a blinkie for free. seriously. i remember i requested one and i didnt even get it:/ So wat im saying is i kept the site going for a while, from requesting blinkies to the full course in frames….like premade ones and stuff….i even rote tutorials! heh. which takes AGES to do. then i changed the layout to an air one and decided the nto go on a long hiatus. ppl couldnt really access my site after that but now…..a yr later…hehe….im back….noooo….nah. im still gunnab doin blinkie request just….dont bug me k?? i hav sum new rules too. u have to tag or sign the gbook. not that hard. well yeah. thats the life history of this site:P pretty long if u ask me but o well. lol. I’m glad u finished reading this^^

LOL. This was back when Geocities was popular, and when making animated gifs was like producing flashy ajax scripts today. Animated gifs were like the best thing EVER. I used to have a whole collection of them, because I used to make them for other people, and swap them with other Geocities people, and save really cool ones….

…then there were the animated cursors, and animated backgrounds, and animated dividers….heh.

What else did I find? Old photoshop brushes, fonts, buttons, psds, more screenies, layouts, patterns, psds, banners, psp files…its AMAZING.

This was the first ever thing I made in photoshop. I was using some free windows photo managing program to edit stuff, and then paint shop pro, but as soon as I started using photoshop I was like OMG!!! BEVELS!!! TRANSPARENCIES!!!! OUTLINES!!! OUTER GLOWS!!!!

I used it for a layout on my old blog.

But yeah. Aren’t digital files incredible? I find it funny they’ve just been stuck on my computer for years, and only now are opened up again in their pristine ancientness.

Before I forget- my weird dream from last night.

I don’t know if you’d classify it as a lucid dream, but it was another one of those where I could hear things going on outside my room, and I could taste the dryness in my mouth while I was dreaming.

Anyway.

What happened was, I woke up in the morning, and immediately curled up in a ball and nodded off again. At the time I woke up, my mouth was really dry and scratchy like I needed a glass of water or something but I couldn’t be bothered getting out of bed. This must’ve transferred to the dream, because I was suddenly in a giant shopping mall with my friend Pam, who I haven’t seen for AGES, and her friend who I don’t know the name of.

We are wandering around in the shops, and for some they’re all gated up-like yellow and green garage doors over all the entrances except a huge woolworths which had no one in it. It was eeriely creepy and for some reason I keep having these creepy dreams. Anyway, I ask out loud ‘why is innaloo so dead now?’ because I somehow knew we were walking around in the innaloo shops. And Pam replies: ‘i don’t know, I think it’s because they closed all the entrances except for over there’ and points to a MASSIVE entrance where white light is shining and groceries are stacked on shelves miles high, and it just looks amazingly consumertastic, only there’s no one in there but a few cashiers looking bored. We walk past the shop and past a few food court type shops who have no customers. It’s all very dank and there’s dodgy fluorescent lighting everywhere, and I’m thinking ‘GOD I’M THIRSTY’.

So we walk outside, and by now WHILE I’m dreaming I’m thinking to myself, ‘god my throat is REALLY dry. I need a drink but I can’t be bothered getting out of bed. Can I just dream some more?’ And this part was weird. Because in the dream we are walking on a gravel road to the street; kind of like in a backalley; but as soon as I think I want to continue the dream, Pam exclaims something along the lines of ‘omg let’s try this new drink place! It’s korean and has bubble tea’ and walks backwards down the street and kind of ‘into’ the  brick wall perpendicular to us, which magically now has a bamboo reed partition. I follow and so does her friend, and we find ourselves a glass door, leading into a rather swanky bar/drinks place like utopia, except it’s all made of dark wood like mahogany or something. Like, EVERYTHING. Chairs, seats, tables, benchtops.

We order our drinks but the line is massive. It’s obviously very popular. As we’re waiting we wander out the other door on the other side into the sun, and find ourselves in a grassy field. It’s kind of like a camp like area- maybe like the housing style in Lost where the Others lived, because there are various buildings dotted around everywhere. We walk through the field, and we seem to interrupt 3 teams of men in red yellow and blue colours. You know those people who pretend they’re in a fake english army and pretend to fight each other? Like in the war with Napoleon Bonaparte or something? It was like that. These men were pretending to fight each other in their different teams, and they had fake old style shotguns. They angrily ask us to move out of the way and we quickly get off the field, and we bump into a bunch of other people, who look like they’re from the hippie era.

I’m next to a blonde girl with a daisy chain in her hair and a white dress on, and she’s very ethereal like. She’s really cheerful and we start talking. We’re gravitating towards a big building now near the fake armies fighting, and she’s telling me about the war. I feel like I’ve been transported to another time, in the olden days if you will, and then we reach some stairs to go into the building. There’s only 3, and a ledge to cross but she suddenly says she’s pregnant and needs help. So I help her up and hold open the door for her.

Inside the building is a huge disco. Like the one I had at my year 8 camp. It’s very dark and dank and musty and gross, and all of a sudden the girl who looked like an angel is now belly dancing in a white indian sari type thing. I’m like ‘wtf?’. Pam and her friend have disappeared and my mouth is still really dry so I look for the drinks table. At this point I decide I can’t stand having a dry mouth for any longer, and wake up and get a drink of water!

Yeah. A really weird dream. It actually felt like it went on for AGES because so much happened but when I woke up and looked at the clock, I’d only slept for another hour. Which was..weird because it felt like I’d slept for years. Needless to say, my throat’s still sore and dry and it’ll take me days to recover from this dream!

I had a most amazing dream last night, which I thought I’d share with you all…because I think it could be classified as a lucid dream.

I actually woke up several times during it, and quickly fell back asleep because I was in a state of half awakeness/half sleep. I don’t know if you’d call it exactly lucid dreaming…but I made sure the protagonist didn’t die and at the end I knew that everything was going to be ok because I would wake up…but it made me feel so many things at once I tried to write it all down and I COULDN’T. I usually have my phone on my bedside table, and this is what I wrote AS SOON AS I GOT UP:

Csn covtr time and space- parent tterap Luke but show abs friends make copies of thrmselves. H
They get sentences to self execution but she swings the flowerr swing put of the way into the rock wall, smashing it.
Super saiyan mode- logs tumbling down; labd fives way and now they’re floating, turtles dace them and titled are floating as they’re faking, qrtiting next to bushes.

Yeah. I know. I gave up soon after I wrote that.

My iphone can be pretty annying sometimes because it autocorrects stuff, but basically the whole dream centred around this girl who was kind of Promethea like. She also reminded me of Zena the warrior princess. Anyway, there are two separate storylines happening at once.

I’m with a few coworkers from work in one part- probably because I stayed up a good part of the night editing some clips for the annual catalogue party. We come across an old abandoned building and I feel really creeped out. Keith, one of the chefs, opens the door and peers inside. We all kind of walk around inside and its dusty and light shines through cracks in the windows. There’s another door, and we open that. And we step inside, and then there’s another door, and another door. It was like an inifinite amount of doors like when you look at yourself in two mirrors at the same time. It was kinda trippy and I felt more and more creeped out as more doors kept appearing out of nowhere. It was like I was trapped in an infinite amount of doors and I desperately craved to be outside in some greenery.

Then all of a sudden we’re in the middle of a forest and I’m standing there, watching an execution of a mighty female warrior by a native tribe of some sort. Maybe American indian. Only she’s lying with her face towards the sky, and the guillotine is actually a wooden plank adorned with colourful flowers. When the first attempt doesn’t harm her, they make her stand up and they swing the plank at her neck. At this point I’m kind of awake, and kind of asleep so I could feel myself getting really angry because- they were killing the flowers, they were killing her, and I got the idea they were just barbarians. So I “made her” push the plank away though the force of her psychic powers, and the huge plank flies into a clifface. The cliff breaks into hundreds of wooden logs and they start raining down upon everyone and I feel happy. The land gives way under our feet, and I can feel myself falling into nothing. Purple and blues and stars whiz by as I fall further and further.

Time then kinda slows down and it feels like I’m falling down a rabbit hole like in Alice in Wonderland. I pass by a lot of greenery and shrubs which I know the warrior princess saved, and there’s suddenly a lot of turtles, who have grey long beards. These turtles are writing on long manuscripts next to the shrubbery and as I’m falling I wonder what they’re writing about. I’m kind of in a state of…god knows what…because I can hear stuff going on outside my room but I’m still dreaming of falling and scholarly turtles and it didn’t really faze me at all. Then….I’m forced to wake up because I have to go to work.

It was a pretty epic dream. There was more, but I forgot a lot as soon as I woke up :/ Oh well…

The image of the wise turtle sounds familiar though. I can’t quite remember where I’ve seen it but I know I’ve seen the image somewhere before. It was really cool though!

Anyway I won’t dwell too much on it- got a whole load of IKEA shizz to do tonight. I have to edit a video for the party as I said earlier, and it’s looking pretty….uh….eclectic.

I may even post it here once I’m done! I won’t be at the party to see it played so I won’t know until next week if we’ve won (it’s for an inter-departmental prize thing). We totally have a great chance. Especially with my mad editing skills. Heh.

Yeah. Still working on that photography stuff for the site and other things I need to add. I’ve been pretty busy lately but I’ll have some free time reallly really soon!!! Yay!

© Jaclyn Tan 2009-2012