That’s right! We are on the megawebs, courtesy of Steven Ross. Here’s the link at guyandbarry.blip.tv, whatever that is, ask Steven Guy&Barry! Anyways, I am super pumped. My esteemed colleague in all matters titular (Morgan Wajda-Levie) is currently abroad in Russia and unable to access an internet connection with enough bandwidth to view P to the B!. Thus I am totally unmotivated to film a new entry to the titular head film festival at Grinnell. So I think I will probably do a re-edit of petbusters and trim a solid 30 seconds to a minute from it and submit that. Then I will go all out my senior year. But sometimes I worry that Petbusters is too weird for Grinnell, and I am a little afraid of being booed. So, what do you think, should I submit?

EDIT PS- Act Like You Know, You Can’t Stop the Signal, and as Hasta Lasagna, Don’t Get Any On Ya. (or ALYK, YCStS, and HLDGAOY).

Okay. So it isn’t cognitive science that isn’t any fun. It is Francisco Varela. I have read a lot of his work and it seems to me that he has a stick up his ass because he thinks all cognitive scientists are computationalists and therefore everything he writes he emphasizes innerconnectivity and ‘synergy’ and talks about having a second renaissance that will be greater than the first by incorporating Tibetian Buddhism into Western thought. ANYWAYS enough about how much is dislike my teacher’s favorite guy. I am writing a 4-6 paper on color perception from a cognitive (both enactive and computational) and philosophical point of view. I had only really gotten to from a philosophical point of view at first of color theory, and it was incredibly dull. I really find philosophy to be quibbling over words and language. I bet if/when we can speak telepathically a major portion of philosophy will no longer be relevant.

But the computational and psychological/cultural views of color are extremely interesting. Things that are currently blowing my mind right now:

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Petbusters didn’t get into Cedar Rapids Film Festival. In the words of Sam, “At least we will always have Cannes.”

As you may know (or have acted like you know) we will hear back from Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival tomorrow! HOLY CRAP! Rest assured I will let you know how it goes. But something much more important happened. I just got my first letter back from a college about research, and guess what?! I got it! I might be doing research at Penn State this summer for 4000 boom boom dollars (with an additional 500 added for travel expenses)! The only problem is that i have to get back to them before March 15 a lot of people applied. Which means I might not have heard back from some/most of my other schools by then. Luckily, the schools that I will hear from last are in Michigan which is a totally lame AWESOME state that has onlyone MANY cool things, not the least of which is Shambot’s very own Bill, Lindsey and Emma! As well as other things that Michigan natives have decided to post in the comments. Hooray for learning! Boop Boop!

Man. My film Studies class turned into a philosophy class of cognition, a really hard philosophy class (at least a lot harder than the intro i took). I know what you’re thinking, “But I really want to read a Post-modernist view on the implications of the embodiment of the mind.” or, “I want to read a Post-structuralist’s critique of that the framing of Cartesian doubt unnecessarily separates the mind and the body thereby predetermining his conclusion that he is a thinking thing.” Trust me. You don’t. And I still have like 70 pages of this crap for tomorrow. AND we have a biweekly 6-8 page paper due. WAH BA DOOP BA DOOP! I thought this class would just be a fun film studies class but it has turned into the class that is eating the most of my time! What the eff, you are 200 level and have art history as your only prerequisite. Don’t make me have a total background in Philosophy. By the way, one kid in the class is a senior philosophy major and he is breezing in the class and owning us all in discussion.

Omgz this is far too much fun. I can’t believe you beer makers want other people to do this for you! We should have these contests more often. Anyways we will scan these images later and send them to Peter. Until then here are pictures of the labels that look kindof crappy:

Entry 1&2: Lizard Lager & Sea Otter Stout

(We already colored in that part that wasn’t colored in the picture. And we’ll clean them up a little bit digitally when we scan them, like remove the lines and stuff. Whoops!)

Again Suggestion/comments are welcome. Do you think the sea otter one is better with or without the tip?

We were wondering why there weren’t any cute beers, but then we realized the kids would wants them. We could always make sodas? I dunno. Also expect Entry #3 later this week, it’s Super Secret! I’ll give you a clue, it is the only marsupial in North America (or maybe there is another one I can’t remember). Regardless it has a Beady Eye Factor to the max!

We were bored tonight so we drew a concept sketch for our entry in the Beer Label competition. We know we will face incredible art majors so we had to use something dastardly to level the playing field. A SEA OTTER WEARING A HAT!! Also I should give most of the credit to deedee as she did draw the whole thing, I just helped with the idea and found a picture to base it off of. Behold Sea Otter Stout.

On the side it will say “Tips! Sea Otter Stout is best enjoyed while lying on your back using your belly as a table.”

We hope to digitize, color, and whatnot later this week or this weekend, when we have more free time and one of us learns how to use photoshop. No Stealing! Critiques/Suggestions would be helpful!

P.S. While we were thinking of ideas we also sketched Manatee Malt Liquor and Lizard Lager. Combined with Sea Otter Stout they all are part of our new Micro Brew Company: Beady-Eyed Brews. I know this was supposed to be just for fun, but I can’t tell you how much I want to make a brewery where every beer is based off a Beady-Eyed Animal. Think About It!

I am sure you guys (who are way more in on technology happenins) know about google zeitgeist. If you don’t know what it is it tracks and graphs all the queries in google to get a general idea of the feelings of the world (i.e. zeitgeist). Anyways I was looking at the Year-end zeitgeist and I found somethings pretty amusing. Paris Hilton was the most searched news category. The number one searched for ticket was for the Cheetah Girls. Idiocracy was looked up the most for showtimes, even though the studios didn’t even make an ad campaign for it. Number one looked up most word was promiscuous (from the nelly furtado song). And the the most looked up “what is” was Hezbollah, followed by 8 prescription drugs that you can by from the internet. Google says this reflects our desire to study modern medicine, like hydrocodon and vicodin….Right.

We’ll find out about Petbusters! on Thursday. I will post the results on Shambot right away! Keep your fingers crossed

After an entire weekend of deliberating where i should go this summer i have narrowed it down to 6 schools. I am not going to bother telling you what their research is about in some of the schools mainly because I don’t fully know yet and I am too lazy to find out to write this post. I will know more after I actually apply (which is my goal for this week!). Anyways it was a major pain in the butt because a lot of deadlines already passed or they only want women and minorities. ANYWAYS, I really had a hard time picking 6 schools because a lot of research nowadays is in bio for some reason or another. I wanted to do CompSci research a little but i guess knowing scheme and java just doesn’t cut it! Anyways I feel like i have to get accepted to a least 1 of these. Otherwise it is HELLO SUSHI HOUSE!

Coe College – Back in CR. I am using this as my safety and my 2nd choice. I am on relatively good terms with the person selecting and I think I could probably send the physics prof an email who is running it, my dad knows him. Plus I guess he is the world leader on glass or something.
Huh. Upsides: hometown means good times. Downsides: it’s effing glass.

U Minn- You best belize that if I get this i will be hanging out with the shambotians every day. I MEAN EVERYDAY. Actually more like every week or so. Maybe? Anyways, having friendly faces in a city is always a huge plus. Upsides: It is in Minneapolis, Downsides I have no idea what the research is.
Michigan State and Penn State- my advisor told me to do these. So… I am.
John Hopkins- Nano technology and self-assembly, Plus it is by where deedee (my gf) will be getting her internship this summer. actually this is a joint thing and there is 1/2 chance john hopkins 1/2 chance brown. Upsides: Nanotechnology is the future and I will harness it, and John Hopkins is an elite med school so I can play Dr. House! Downsides: a nanobot virus i accidentally release could kill everyone.
And my number 1 choice?

University of Alaska Fairbanks- Honestly I don’t know if this is my actual number one. But i guess you shoot rockets up into the ionosphere and take measurements. Sounds cool, right? It also combines my favorite fields of mathematical analysis, computer programming, and classical physics. Upsides: It’s in Alaska, and we shoot rockets. Downsides: It is in Alaska, and i don’t actually know if I personally get to shoot the rockets (and they pay the least, still a decent 3k but they don’t reimburse travel).
I will let you know if I get into any of these programs, I imagine i will at least get into a few. You guys should tell me if there is any place that you think i should go to, because right now they are pretty much the same to me.

Okay after the spending the past semester in the spending the entire time posting about my self important musing about Tokyo, I have decided to kick it up a notch and post something even more self-indulgent, let’s talk about my CLASSES! I will try to make it better by inviting anyone else to do the same.

Thermodynamics: No frills level 300 physics class. Book was under 50 boom boom dollars which is crazy for a physics text and the first problem set was an easy introduction back to physics problem sets and was actually kindof refreshing. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Computer Science 2: We are programming in Java, and let me say, for being famous for bad hygiene and social awkwardness I think computer programmers are really cute. Or at least their puns in Java are. The condensed version is called Espresso, there is another thing called java.beans and I hope to find more!

Film Studies special topic: Body Culture Technology: Do you know what that title means? I sure don’t. When we went around in class we had to say why we picked that class to study. I really had no idea what the class what about (it switched topics while i was in japan). So I said, “The things this course covers seems interesting to me.” As far as I can tell the class is a post-modern look at how technology changes the way we view the distinctions between body mind and space, and using films as texts to see how the common man views this distinction. The interesting thing about it is because we are interested in that we are actually watching what I would consider pretty bad movies, like Hackers. I dunno I am terrified because to me post-modernism basically means I can’t understand it. I looked at a reasonable sample of the 20 or so books we will be using this term and all of them on Amazon have reviews saying that they were incredibly hard reads! YAY! I kindof like the dichotomy of reading incredibly elitist books and watching base movies. I hope I can keep up.

Japanese Literature and Film: Wow… It really frustrates me to have just completed a 3.5 month homestay and trying to seriously study Japanese culture and rid myself of those simple monolithic statements about Japan, to sit in a class filled with Japanophile people mapping how they feel about Japan. It sucks that in a class that is supposed to be a serious study of japanese feminist writers a group wrote that Japan had “Cute Girlz!”. Or the group that spent the whole period making Ninja jokes. Ugh. I know i didn’t make friends when I told someone they were probably better off for not knowing J-Pop. The teacher and I bonded because she lived off the same train line I lived off of in Tokyo. Chuo-sen for lyfe! RESPEK!
Well, I hope someone else does a class thingy!