Photography Magic from The Impossible Project!

Fun Fact: The "I Got a New Camera" song sounds suspiciously similar to the "I've Got a Dollar" song.

Just in case you were wondering.

So, I could tell you a long drawn out story about how I won this delightful new camera you're about to hear me brag about, but the camera isn't really the important part. Neither is the film I got for it, which is a photography thing I've been lusting after for the last 4 years.

The important part, really, is that this film exists at all.

Some of us might remember, back in the long long ago, when analog roamed the earth, that there was a thing called print photography. But humans, being the impatient, insatiable beasts that they are, decided that printing your own photos, by hand, was too long and arduous a process. They wanted vacation snapshots nownownow.

And, lo, a company called Polaroid was called forth from out of the void, and gave unto us INSTANT FILM. Pictures that were developed AS YOU WATCHED. With all the chemical doohickeys locked in the image itself! It was the stuff of magic. Magic and endless snapshots of your dog, and your feet, and anything else you could imagine.

The colors in Polaroid instamatic film weren't as clear as the colors in regular ole film. The edges were never quite as sharp. But who cares. (I never did.) They were PRETTY and they were FAST and, if you were the creative sort, there were all sorts of neat modification-widgety things you could do to your film.

Then digital happened. And, let's face it, digital killed the analog star. Polaroid film couldn't compete with this new wave of cheap, instant photography. The company folded their film production division in 2008. SAD TIMES.

Enter: THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT.

Shortly after Polaroid broke all of our instant photograph-loving hearts, several intrepid ex-Polaroid employees came together to save the world. Or maybe just start making instant film again. With their 500 years (combined) of accumulated knowledge and experience with Polaroid film, cameras and production, production machinery purchased from Polaroid, and even the space of an old Polaroid production plant, our heroes swore Nay! We shall not let analog instant photography shrivel in the sun of new technology! We shall invent anew, and give rise to a new, better, instant analog film type! And we will save the 300,000,000 already existing Polaroid instant cameras from living sad lives on peoples shelves, and in closets, and in landfills!

Then, with a mighty roar, and some explosions, and a Tesla coil or three, they made it happen.

(Ok, I made most of that up. The details, anyway. The facts are still true.)

I followed the story of The Impossible Project from the second it was announced, waiting, anxiously, for them to give me new film to feed my Polaroid I-Zone.

(This is a Polaroid I-Zone, a last-ditch effort from Polaroid in 1999 to drum up interest in analog instant photography. Targeted at the Teen/Tweenager market, it took postage stamp sized pictures with an astounding lack of clarity or depth. It sucked. I loved it. There is no way in hell The Impossible Project, or anyone else in their right mind, will ever make film for it ever again.)

In 2010, TIP began production of its new films, PX 100 and PX 600, made for use in Polaroid's most common instamatics, SX-70s and 600s. (And some others, like the Spectra. You have an internet, you can Google these things.) Like many specialty products, it was priced just beyond my price point for fun things. So I gazed longingly at the website, and dreamed of a day when I would have the disposable income to play with my Polaroid cameras again.

Fast forward to the other week, when I mindlessly (but excitedly) entered a contest on Jeff Hamada's most excellent blog, BOOOOOOOOM, to win a camera and two shiny new packs of Impossible Project film. IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT FILM, I thought. HOT DAMN YES PLEASE.

Sometimes I forget that Boom (sorry, Jeff, I can't keep counting those O's) is a super popular blog with a brajillion readers - so I was a little surprised when my inbox was suddenly flooded with the thousands of responses the contest generated. Since I was a tiny speck in an infinite sea of awesome entries, I mostly forgot about it.

Til last week, when Jeff emailed me to tell me that I'd won.

Wait, what?

HOT DAMN.

So here we are now. I opened the door today to find this (and this is where I spare you the boring pictures of things like a standard size USPS shipping box sitting on my doorstep):

please enjoy this cameo appearance from everyone's favourite vibrant, healthy, long-lived cactus.

A new (to me) Polaroid Sun660, and two packs of Impossible Project film - 1 of their new PX-70 Color Shade PUSH, and 1 of the PX 600 Silver Shade.

While I am COMPLETELY aware of the irony in using myNikon CoolPix digital to take pictures of my NEW POLAROID CAMERA AND FILM, I just couldn't justify using such wonderful, anticipated new product on a shot of - well, itself.

I have grand plans for these 16 shots. Some Rock Paper Scissors Championship action, to be followed up by a road trip to Montana/Idaho with @woodardj, destination: IronMan.

In the meantime, I'm going to go back to grinning at my new film, figuring out how to make Instant Film Transparencies, and singing the I've Got A Camera song. (It's pretty terrible. Not as terrible as the I-zone. But I love it all the same.)

Guess what, Buttercup

I'm pretty sure when I started ReVerb-ing, the intention wasn't to shift the entire concept of my life, and begin to rejigger the construct of my universe. Oh well. There it is.

I've spent a lot of time this year thinking about what makes me happy. Not my parents, not my teachers, not my old boss... me. Working towards that lofty, ethereal idea -- I mean, it's not only hokey, but straightup, it scares the pants off of me.

Oh, M'ris! Hooray! You're doing things that scare you!

Seriously, shut UP, brain, internet, did I ask you? No I did not.

See, I've been hardwired to believe that my worth is in what I do. Not just the act of doing things, but the things themselves, those were assigned a societal value, and that value was my value.

Without those things, I'm not quite sure where I stand.

See, I took a semester off from grad school this term. In all likelyhood, this semester will turn into two, likely into forever. And with that, I'll be flushing (x) number of years down the tubes, not completing a degree, disappointing my parents, the admission committee that gave me my scholarship, and, y'know, the whole damn universe. At least, that's how it feels, when I step back and think about it.

There's a very good reason for not finishing my program, though. It's so simple: I hate it. I'm not learning the things I want to learn there, the skills I want to have. And, y'know, it makes me miserable. Showing up every day to participate in a dialogue I don't agree with (structurally, ideologically, ethically - yes. Just yes.) is, was, has been, killing me. Eating the little pieces of my soul where I had my wishes and my values and my concepts of success. Showing up every day and effectively being told "No. That thing you want to learn? You're in the wrong place for it. We can't (won't, don't want to) help you. Here, learn all these other things that you hated in undergrad and still dislike now!"

It was eating me alive. But I was so wrapped up in the end goal, in the finishing for the sake of finishing. In the making other people happy, making other people proud of me, that I couldn't see it. This semester allowed me to take a step back and realize why I was still in the program - and it wasn't for me.

The second I realized that, that I was putting myself through hell just to make someone else happy... that's when I realized that something was seriously fucked up. I didn't realize I had to quit school - that came much later. But there was a teeny, tiny part of me that realized, for maybe the first time, that it's my life.

There's a lot of backstory and therapy to the weight of that realization, that I'm the one driving this hovercraft, that I won't get in to here.

I live my own life. The decisions I make are my own. They make my own path. I can choose things that I want, I can choose things I don't want. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? I mean, I choose what I eat every day. That's easy. (Pasta yes, eggs no. See? Simple!) But on a larger scale, somehow, that was just all lost to me. I was wrapped up with pleasing my parents, pleasing my professors, hell, even pleasing my teachers from High School. Every person who ever exclaimed how much "potential!" I had, or how "intelligent!" I am, or "what a good writer!" I could be, if only I applied myself. Those messages got stuck in the cogs, wheeling around and around until I didn't even realize that their messages, their hopes and dreams for me - they weren't mine.

There's so much I want to expound on there - concepts of self, idealistic interpretations of "intelligence" (there's probably a conversation about "the greater good" in there, somewhere), constructs of worth, societal expectations of your garden-variety antisocial nerdling.

But the point of this entry is simply this: I quit grad school. I've never been happier. And I'm ready to move the fuck on to the next part of my life. The part that I choose, that isn't chosen for me. The part that makes me happy, even if it makes everyone else scratch their head.

I'm not quitting learning, and I'm certainly not quitting trying. I'm just exiting out of a structure that wasn't right for me, in the hopes of finding something that is.

About A Dog

My friend's dog passed away unexpectedly last night. He was bitten by another dog in the neighborhood, infection set in, and he passed.

I am basically a wreck.

Smokey belonged to my teammates, Baconshark and Tits McGee. Baconshark had brought Smokey home back in 2007, with the money he'd won at that year's RPS championship. I wasn't in the picture at that point, but Smokey was clearly the Victory Dog.

The next year, I tripped into the arms of a rowdy gang of jackasses more affectionately known as David Bowie's Package. After on-purposely getting drunk and accidentally winning the 2008 championship, Baconshark kindly drove me back to his house in Jersey, where I met Smokey. As I laid down on the sofa to pass out, PJ laid my giant check up against the seat, and I curled up. Hours later, I awoke to a large, skinny, furry blanket draped over me - Smokey was unwilling to share his sofa, and was sleeping on top of me like an adorable blanket. There's a picture of this, somewhere. I wish I could find it.

That was the beginning, they say, of a beautiful friendship. I moved out to Colorado shortly after the season ended, and only really got to see Smokes a few times a year. He was never, of course, my dog, but in my head, he was always the team's dog, the unsung, most adorable member of The Package. Trips to Jersey almost inevitably would end up with me at the Williams-Mercer Zoo, adults ("adults") in the kitchen/dining room doing adult things (talking/yelling about loud music), while Smokes and I would curl up on the floor and make googly eyes at each other. Maybe I just made the googly eyes. He just wondered where this extra human came from, and why there were so many snuggles.

I would badger Karen for stories about her adventures with the pup, jealous that I never got to spend as much time with either of them as I ever wanted to. And she'd humor me, telling me about the songs she would make up for him while they were taking walks together, or mundane things around the neighborhood that made him skittish. I'd sit around and wonder how so much dog could fit into such a tiny frame. (Seriously, where does the dog go on greyhounds??) And Smokey would grin, and writhe around on his back, and get loved on. Because this dog loved his people, and all the people loved this dog.

And so I'm sitting here at 4am, still crying, after sobbing on Jon for an hour after I heard, for this pup that I only tangentially knew, and for his people, who loved him so much. For Kevin and Karen, who are now down a best friend, and for their little one, who will never get to meet his big furry brother.

There are things I want to tell you about Smokes, about his giant, kind eyes, and his adorable greyhound grin, and his endless patience for the humans (me. Others.) who insisted on his post-racing career as a pillow. But instead, I'll tell you this: David Bowie's Package rules. And so do you, Smokey. <3.

People for a Panda-Neutral Society - Ignite Boulder 14

I mentioned that I had submitted a spark for Ignite Boulder 14.

Though my spark wasn't voted in by the people of Boulder, one of the organizers decided to include it anyway. After stressing out about it for weeks, attending several practice sessions with the other presenters, and frantically finishing up the slides seconds before the deadline crunched down on our heads (my boyfriend and I were both presenting, there was some serious work-couch going on that night), I was slotted to be the first speaker at Ignite Boulder 14. Take THAT, voters!

Here's how things turned out:



It's something like 3 weeks later, and I'm still getting stopped in the street by strangers who need to compliment me on my talk. Item 1, I'm no good at compliments - not receiving them, anyway - so this is a pretty excellent exercise in how to be a real human, in that regard.

Item 2, I'm really, really proud of how this turned out. I researched the crap out of it (and half of what I learned didn't even make it in - there could almost be a Part 2.) and spent forever rehearsing it, so I'm glad it went over well.

Item 3, this was my first time being intentionally funny in a public setting. I was terrified. What if I wasn't, y'know, any good? If my idea of funny wasn't anyone else's idea of funny? I'm so relieved that people liked it.

More than that, I'm thrilled that people got it, that they get my sense of humor. That sense of accomplishment (and of acceptance) is huge. I've never felt anything like it before - and I'm not gonna lie, I like it. I want to keep feeling it.

I have no idea what the next step is in any of it, or where to go from here, but I'm moving forward, looking forward to finding out.

Following Through

Looking back on last month's brilliant (brilliant?) ideas for the new year, here's how things are progressing:

I bought my derby gear! Tried out for the Denver Roller Dolls soon after, and gobbled asphalt. Lesson learned: learn how to skate BEFORE trying out for a league. Luckily, there's no short supply of derby in Colorado, and I was able to find quite a few places that look pretty good. For now, I'm going to be practicing with the Wreckin' Rebel Rollers, a pickup league down in Denver. I like the women and the atmosphere - it's very laid back and focused on building skills, not competition. Once I get comfortable there/on skates, I'll start looking in to tryouts for leagues and such.

Here's the bruise I gave myself last week: Basically, I'm terrified of stopping. Falling down is way easier. Stopping results in falling down WITHOUT control.

Despite coming back bruised, sore, and wondering what I'd gotten myself in to, I am super super excited to being going back weekly (possibly twice a week, if I can stand to put my body through that sort of torture.)

BIFF volunteer orientation is tomorrow night! I'm excited to get my schedule locked down, and to meet the other volunteers.

Vacation semester: I gave myself a month to fuck around, and now that's over. I'm slowly getting back in to the grind of doing work, which stinks, but going at my own pace is nice. Working with my therapist, I've emailed my professors about how last term ended, and am working on getting myself on solid academic footing re: vacation semester. (So I'm actually on a hiatus instead of accidentally dropping out.)

Don't think I mentioned it on here, but I've been bandying about the idea of submitting a spark for Ignite Boulder for more than a few months. Ignite is a community speech event, where each presenter has 5 minutes (and an automatically advancing powerpoint presentation) to speak to the crowd about whatever they think is important. My spark, People for a Panda-Neutral Society, is currently up for vote at the Ignite website. I'm actually more terrified of the voting process than I am of speaking. And yes, this speech would effectively be a scientifically accurate version of my "Why I Hate Pandas" rant. I did some actual research on my usual sticking points the other day, and it tuns out that pandas are EVEN MORE USELESS than I'd originally thought. Hopefully, PETA-loving Boulder will be interested enough in this spark to let me actually talk. (If you'd like to vote and help convince them, that would be swell.)

Books: haven't actually been back to the library yet, mostly been catching up on books I have lying around the house. With a truly excellent used bookstore not a mile from my apartment, the stack of unread novels has grown near-Hoarders high over the last year. It's nice to start making a dent in it. Here's the damage so far:

1. Spider Robinson - Night Watch
2. Bentley Little - Dispatch
3. Frank Beddor - The Looking Glass Wars
4. Shreve Stockton - The Daily Coyote
5. Orson Scott Card - Treason
6. Robert Thurston - Robot Jox
7. Orson Scott Card - Ender in Exile

It's New Hoth City cold out there right now (the temp in Boulder fell 110 degrees (counting windchill) overnight the other night. Seriously. Right now it's -6. Ick.), so tonite seems like a good night to do some laundry, clean, watch movies under the covers, etc.

Oh, except I also decided that since derby practice is canceled (the warehouse we practice in isn't heated, so being there would've been pretty bad news bears all around), I'd join one of my twitter friends' Mah Jongg group for the night. I've never played before, but it's the first step towards becoming a proper old jewish lady. Excited!

Going In With a Bang

2011 is only a week old, and here's the list of dumb shit (awesome stuff) that I've already committed to:

- Signed up for the Colorado Warrior Dash on August 20th. Fuzzy viking helmets and fire pits at ~10,000 feet? I'm gonna die.
- Resolved to write at least 1 piece of handwritten correspondence every week. (Want to be the lucky recipient? Comment.)
- Read 50 books. Given how I've started off this year, I suspect that I'll win this one before the end of the semester.
- Related, make friends with the local library again.
- Also related, keep a running tally of those books here at this blog.
- Also related, actually document the number of times I read Treason in a year. I'm prepared to be mortified.
- Also related, read more short stories from internet-only (or mostly) publications. Clarkesworld, I look forward to being friends with you.
- While I'm at it, hell, let's keep a movie list, too. Netflix isn't particularly good at keep tabs on what I've watched. Maybe if I watch Mindwarp enough times, it'll magically appear on DVD.
- Create it Forward -- I'm going to send something handmade to the first 5 people who comment on this statement. I guess it was supposed to be a Facebook thing, but it's here now, too, so we'll see what happens w/ that.
- Submitted my volunteer registration for the Boulder International Film Festival this February.

Now I just need to keep up this momentum.

New Year, New Plan.

Welp, Reverb 2010 is over, and while I might still plug in a few entries from the prompts, I think it's time to face the cold hard reality that ReadAGoddamnBook cannot exist on Reverb prompts alone.

It's time to refocus, and figure out what the hell this blog is going to be all about. I don't want to turn it into a journaling space (lord knows that Livejournal sees more than enough of that from me), but I don't want to hide behind a stringent concept. Reverb has shown me that there's something... freeing in being publicly honest about how my brain functions, and I don't want to lose that in this space. But I'd like to hone it in.

So let's start with this:

I finally admitted to myself that I'm burnt out on grad school. To that end, I've committed to taking a vacation term next semester.

Now, when I tell people that this is a thing that's happening, the first question that gets asked tends to be "Well, what are you going to do instead?" There's no answer that makes them all happy. People want me to have a gameplan, a long-term goal. The truth of it is, the thing that's driven me to this vacation term is the fact that I don't. I've been on this path for so long, that I've lost track of what it is that I want. So long term plan? No fucking clue. It's not on the table. That's not what this is about.

I want to take this term to figure things out. Try new things, fail at a couple of jobs that I'm not totally in love with. Volunteer. Teach. Maybe even write. Do things that terrify me. Date. Address some issues and concepts that I've toyed with, but never faced headon. Talk to strangers. Not default to obscure minutia and snark as conversation points. Catch up on schoolwork. Proofread a paper. Recalibrate. Readjust.

I'm not sure how it's all going to pan out, but I'm pretty stoked to try.