Photo Blog!!

Hey everybody! I started a photo blog!!!! Ya'll should follow it, and give me some feedback on my photos ;)

http://makaelavictoriaphoto.blogspot.com/

Goals, yeah I've actually got some

So I've come up with some new goals for my life. Some might seem far-fetched, but they would be awesome to achieve!

1) Learn Spanish, Arabic, and Korean. In the spring semester, I plan on attending Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea, which will give me the perfect opportunity to expand on my Korean skills. But who knows where I'll learn Spanish and Arabic... One day.

2) I'm gonna take up Kayaking. It has always looked so fun, and it would be such a thrill.

3) Seriously, my life has become a huge party. I don't remember many of my nights for the past few months. I'm taking a breather, taking a break from partying, and spending the rest of the summer relaxing and doing healthy things for myself. I plan on waking up early around 5:30, going to some spinning classes, and eating healthy. Maybe I'll take up rock climbing, and yoga-- I've got put my mat to use.

4) Hate is such a terrible thing. So are grudges. I'm erasing all that. I can't hate anybody. Nobody has seriously done anything to terrible to me. Life is life, so why should I spend it caught up in drama and being negative?

5) Time to start saving my money, well at least a good 15% of my paychecks.

6) I need to love everybody, and everything.

7) I need to be nicer. I need to be like my friend Van. He has unconditional love for everybody and does the sweetest things. Van is awesome.

8) Visit my family more. I can't live without them :)

9) I'm going to eventually start my own magazine. An outdoor travel magazine to be exact... I'd like to travel to a place for a month or so, and completely get to know the culture and the fun things to do--like kayaking (yeah, I might have a bit of an obsession)... It'd also be cool to work for Outdoor Magazine. Way awesome.

--Note to self: stop talking in my sleep-- I think I say some pretty inappropriate things...

10) I've kinda given up on trying to go to Yale for my Masters in Art History--don't quite think it
s for me.... (yeah, pretty sure this wasn't a goal. I just had to get it out there).

and Elizabeth Gilbert has pretty much inspired most of these goals, so I'd like to thank her and her novels.


Amen.

i <3 my Lalas!

Best friends are so great, so much fun, and so dependable. Lala, which is Chinese slang for lesbian, is what we call one-another, even though none of us are true lesbians. Maybe some people think we are ;) cuz we're always together. There's four of us altogether, me, Allison, Courtney, and Xuli (pronounced shoolee).

Xuli is from Beijing, and she is just the cutest little thing. She's so beautiful and ladylike. Funny girl.

Allison... oh Allison... I met her in Beto's. Yeah. That pretty much explains a lot.... Beto's. She's crazy.

Courtney, oh how I miss Courtney. She just moved to California not even a week ago. She was my roommate, and the one who always get picked on :p

I just wanted to so say that I absolutely LOVE these girls!!!

It's been about a year now.

I started this blog nearly a year ago. It was finals week my Freshman year of college, and now I'm nearing the end of this wonderful Sophomore year. It's been tough but exciting and I love all the new people who've passed my way.
It doesn't seem like this semester is almost over. I had my very last class today, and now all I have left is finals.
In 10 days, I will be catching a flight to Korea to study abroad for a week. So excited. So scared.

Huffing or Photographing?

Sunday night, my friends and I decided to do a nude photo shoot. It was pretty spontaneous but being the art and photography freaks that we were, we went with it. Jeff spray painted words onto my back and Courtney's back, and we showed it off. Ben photographed digitally to enhance his portfolio, and Jeff was the monkey (the one who does all the dirty work the photographer can't). After we finished the shoot, Courtney took a shower to get rid of the paint and I was sitting in my room wrapped in a towel, waiting to get in the shower. I got a knock on my door, opened it, and saw 3 police officers. I was so shocked and had no idea what I did wrong. But apparently my roommates and other people in the building had smelled the paint and thought we were in my room huffing it. They didn't knock on the door, didn't call, didn't say a word to me or tell me how they were feeling. Instead, they had called the police. Luckily, the police thought this was just funny and didn't press any charges. They all just laughed and checked our I.D.s.
I apologized to my roommates, but didn't get a very positive response. I guess I really screwed up on this one.

L.H.O.O.Q.

"It appears not to be a stretch to say that this is "Duchamp's most famous ready-made" (Ramirez 46). Many people, including those outside of academia, recognize this now infamous image as inextricably attached to Marcel Duchamp.

This cheap reproduction of the famous ideal of beauty that is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has been adorned with a comical moustache and goatee, thus deserving its alternate title Joconde aux Moustaches. L.H.O.O.Q. is two-dimensional, like only several other Readymades including Apolinere Enameled, Pharmacy, and French Military Paper.

The title is essentially a phonetic game. As Duchamp himself noted in a 1966 interview, "I really like this kind of game, because I find that you can do a lot of them. By simply reading the letters in French, even in any language, some astonishing things happen" (Cabanne 63). When read quickly in French, the title L.H.O.O.Q. sounds like a sentence translating to "She has a hot bum/ass." This is the most commonly sited meaning of the phrase, but many other ideas also surround this intriguing group of letters. Duchamp gave a "loose" translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" in a late interview (Schwarz 203). Steefel points out that, when spoken in English, L.H.O.O.Q. sounds like "LOOK" (50). Thus the piece could have a further function as a commentary on the relationship between artist and viewer, which Duchamp was admittedly very interested in. Kuspit supports a much more overtly sexual interpretation, explaining, "It is a multilayered pun: the letters become words which become a devaluing male comment on the beautiful, dignified woman - she's just another slut. She's smiling because she's thinking of being fucked - more probably, of masturbating, that is, fucking herself" ("Laugh" 111).

The viewer should be wary of reading too far into something that is really only grounded in speculation. Could the artist have not intended such a reading? We may never know for sure, but Philip Larson argues an interesting point (although without citing a source for this fact, his assertion seems just as ungrounded as the speculations he argues against): "Not found in most writings about Duchamp is the faintly amusing fact that Duchamp intended us to read the inscription as a series of enunciated French letters, like O.U.R.A.Q.T. in English. The Duchamp blurb comes out as something more unforgivable than 'She has a hot ass'" (213).

Finally, Duchamp's choice of the Mona Lisa may not have been as arbitrary as often assumed. There may be a more personal reason why Duchamp focused on this particular example of ideal aesthetic beauty. Duchamp's friend Guillaume Apollinaire was falsely detained in connection with the theft of the Mona Lisa and some small sculptures from the Louvre several years prior to Duchamp's creation of this Readymade. This may be Duchamp's way of indirectly referencing his friend Apollinaire."

http://arthist.binghamton.edu/duchamp/LHOOQ.html

SPRING!!!!

Spring is finally here!!! It's so warm outside!! No more jackets, snow boots, or ear muffs. Time to pull out the sandals, dresses, and bikinis!!

=]

<3 spring