I adore this quote.

"I don't think suicide is so terrible. Some rainy winter Sundays when there's a little boredom, you should always carry a gun. Not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that you're always making a choice." -Lina Wertmuller

The Meaning of Life

is an impulse buy.

No, really. A while ago in an independent bookstore I saw, next to the checkout desk, a small shelf of small brightly-colored books. They were short introductions to such varied topics as communism and calculus and beat literature. And the topic of one was The Meaning of Life. I am not making this up. I couldn't. It's one of those things that's stranger than fiction. I wish I had taken a picture to prove it to you. Or better yet, I should have bought it- I mean, who couldn't use a short introduction to the meaning of life? I'm quite curious as to what that book says it is.

I should just shave my head

I've grown my hair out some lately. It was a bob; now it's just to my shoulders, and looks kind of awkward, because it's too long to still be a bob. It's outgrown itself. I could embrace the awkward, disheveled look, or I could get a new haircut. Right now it's looking like I may have to embrace it.

I am looking at hairdos, and I am ready to pull my hair out. Seriously. It looks like there may be no haircut on Earth, indeed in the universe, that will meet my constraints. They are:
1. NO SIDE BANGS. Seriously. I like seeing.
2. It should be low-maintenance. For a while I had hair that was past my butt, and I would have to get up an hour earlier just to have time to brush it all out, let alone style it. In that period I think I used up my lifetime ration of patience with my own hair. Now I can't stand to touch it besides brushing and washing. It can do as it pleases.

Not only are all of the hairdos I've found on models with bizarre clothing in avant-garde lighting, but some of the hairdos themselves fail far too epically to be ignored.
This woman looks like she got in a fight with a rogue curling iron. And lost.

If this 'do was supposed to make the afro cool again, it's not working.

Next we have the indecisive cut- To side bang or not to side bang? Meh, screw it, both!

Well, either it's indecisive or the hairstylist passed out midway through cutting the bangs. I'm not sure.

And finally we have this "very sexy" and "incredibly clean" style:

Hang on. That looks an awful lot like a mullet. Business in the front, party in the back!

Did someone say random quote?

“No! The other right! As in the other left!”

As usual, this is from a story. The reason for the seemingly superfluous quotation marks is that somebody said it.

(yes, I am posting a lot to make up for my one-week dry spell.)
(and, dontcha just love MS Word? I actually had to go into Edit Html and clean out all the code the quote somehow introduced simply by being from MS Word before I could post...)


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Now playing: Cat Stevens - Rubylove
via FoxyTunes

Something to ponder

Am I the only one who thinks/says "I want to go home," even if I already am home, whenever I'm uncomfortable? Where do you think we're referring to? A happier place? The place we were before we were born? Heaven? Unconsciousness? Dreamland? It's a good thing to wonder about whenever you think that modern life has everything figured out.

60's Surf Pop + 90's Grunge = Awesome!

My Slightly Creepy Obsession

Seeing as I'm too tired to write much today, I am instead going to share with you my obsession: this site. It's full of beautiful, haunting pictures taken in abandoned buildings in New England. There are more in the Flikr, too. Enjoy!

The world...

...is flat?
...ends with you?
...is too much with us?
...cruise ship?
...is not enough?
...according to Garp?
...should be ruled by The Avant Garden?

No, silly!
The world... as told by Google!

Seriously, the search suggestions from Google can be the source of much hilarity. (By the way, the top result for putting the "hilarity" into the Google search box is "hilarity ensues." Way to go, Google!) I mean, it's oodles of fun just putting random things in and seeing what the data accumulated from the searches of the world adds to them.

For example. I put in "we have." I get, among other things, "we have always lived in the castle" (WTF?) and "we have the technology." But "we have" is a fairly standard thing. What about Bloop?

Some results were "bloop bloop," "bloopwatch" (like Baywatch, only in Insanityville?), "blood pressure" (um, hello Google? Sometimes bloop is just bloop), and "blood creature" (I am trying very hard not to think about this too much). Just out of curiosity, after this I put in "bloop bloop," to see if it would do what I thought. Sure enough, it did- "bloop bloop bloop." It also returned "bloop bloop went the little green frog," which sound interesting, in a bizarre way- I mean, if it was "ribbit ribbit" it would be innocent enough, but in whose universe do frogs go "bloop bloop?" The logical conclusion is that whoever created "bloop bloop went the little green frog" is either delusional or tripping, either of which would lead to something I really want to see.

How about "random and?" I got "random and systematic errors," "random and useless facts" (w00t!), "random and funny," and "random and odd" (this is my new favorite phrase).

Now to get politically charged- "revolution!!!!" Some followup words I got were lyrics, myspace (so even revolution has a myspace now- wow, I'm really behind the times), prep (¡Viva la Revolución!), 9, tea, and (most worryingly) "for cats" and "for dogs." Now, I just had to click on that, and the result was anticlimactic- it's an anti-parasite product.

Then, I decided to get even more political and put in "revolution of." I got various dates which might be good for a history lesson, "the mask," and "the earth."

Now for the really fun part- click on the results that intrigue you, and see what they're really about. Prepare to waste the rest of your day.

I love me.

So I was just going through my files on my computer, innocent as can be. I come across an HTML document titled "lalala." (The fact that random files like these are common on my computer should tell you something about me. Recently I've been trying to clean them up.) When I clicked on it, what should open but a web page with this embedded in it and underneath it, the words "hahahaha you just got rickrolled, sucker! Love, Chris."

So I effectively just rickrolled myself. I didn't even think that was possible.

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Now playing: Interpol - Evil
via FoxyTunes

Sometimes when this place gets kind of empty...

Hello, Avant Garden! Oh, how I have missed you. *twirls around*

I swear. Blogging is like an addiction. Think about it. When you try to quit, you continue to see things and think "oh, that would make a great post!" and randomly wonder about the nonexistent comments on your nonexistent posts. Or at least, that's what happened to me.

Now I bet you're all going to go all ninja-tastic on me for daring to quit. Why did I even bother? Well, I would like to say I just forgot my password again like the last time I abandoned this blog. But that wouldn't be the truth. This time, the blame for the abandonment falls squarely on me, not on my poor malfunctioning memory.

After several nights of sitting up late working on that ever-present scourge of the student, Homework, and thinking, "damn, I should really post something on my blog!" I decided enough was enough, and that I was giving up on my blog. Yes, giving up. During the school year I would (and will) never, ever, ever be able to produce enough free time to give this blog the attention it so badly deserves. So, from now on, the Avant Garden is a summer-only blog. This does not mean there will be no posts during the school year. At some point I may be compelled to post, or simply pull enough time out of a hat to allow for a brief statement of "I'm alive!" or something to that effect. But, don't hold your breath for it. That could end badly.

Now, the picky among you will point out that the last time I posted was in July, long before the school year could have started. The truth is, I really have no reason for stopping posting then. The best excuse I have is a bad case of terminal laziness. I just kept putting posts off and putting posts off and the next thing I knew, it was September. Yeah. I probably shouldn't let that happen again.

But for now... Look out world, the Avant Garden is once more open for business! Now society can once again get their fix of random crap they really didn't need! Rejoice!

Save The Internet

Quick favor? check out my new linky. More info is coming tomorrow.

Way To Miss The Boat!

I always wanted to something really special and awesome for my 100th post. Well, I guess I won't- that last post was my 100th post. Well, there's always the 200th post...

Since this is the 101st post, I feel as if I must include the 101 Dalmatians in this somehow.

Deep Funky Quote

I believe we are long overdue for a nice random quote from one of my writings. Don't you think?

The better they are, the shorter their lives. It is a tragedy, of course, but it is the law.

To make up for how, well, bad the last post was, I went pretty deep with this quote.

Dale a tu cuerpo alegria, Macarena

Remember Howard, the stick... thing I made with Pivot Stickfigure Animator? Well, I was at it again, and this time I was slightly more ambitious- I made a stick figure dance the Macarena (well, as close to the Macarena as a stick figure can do). See what you think!

Is it anywhere close to this? (major earworm alert, it's the official Macarena music video)

I think it is!



PS: check out my new, improved, shmancy, huge donkey-blogroll over on the left!

Not just for the few!

This is a hilarious 70s PSA. Not only is the song a hell of an earworm, it makes VD (more commonly known today as STDs) sound like something everyone wants- I mean, it's for everyone, and the people in the pictures are all happy and doing well. And the picture of the baby puzzled me- it could be a veiled reference that sex gives you a VD, or implying (as I took it as at first glance) that you can even get this terrible (or, as most would take from the context, wonderful) VD thing from a baby. Huh?

BY THE WAY: It's officially summertime! Guess what that means- more blogging! I know I haven't posted for a long long time, but now that it's summer I'm not busy! Yay!

Do you know what day it is?

Why, it's World Tapir Day! (But you knew that, right?)

Do you know what World Tapir day is?

Neither do I. But you can find out all about it at this link. In a nutshell, I think it's basically to raise awareness about preserving tapir habitat and keeping these little critters with huge noses from going extinct.

Interesting Topic of the Day: Polaroid Manipulation

Today's interesting topic is Polaroid Manipulation.

Polaroid Manipulation is, in short, a sort of old-school, analog Photoshop. You know those old-style Polaroids that come out wet, start black and then develop into color, and that you apparently aren't supposed to shake to dry? Well, if you do shake it while it's still drying, you'll come out with a surreal, wavy, wiggly, painting-like picture, that looks almost like a reflection in water. Shaking it different ways results in different patterns of waviness. People have turned shaking the little pictures into a sort of art, telling how you have to shake just the right way to achieve just the desired effect.

The fall picture is a good example of a photo that was truly "shaken like a Polaroid peec-tchah!"



Another way people can manipulate Polaroids is with a toothpick or something of the sort, scraping the dye off in places to achieve another kind-of painting effect. They can outline things, shade things, make things look like snow, make random borders... This way of manipulating Polaroids requires slightly less practice and slightly more creativity and drawing talent. Even though it may at first sound inferior to the wiggly-wobbly picture produced by shaking a Polaroid, you can do some really awesome stuff to your photos that way, too. A good example of a scraped Polaroid is the picture of the lamp.




(photos from here and here, if you check out the Flikr pools they're in, you can find some other really cool manipulated Polaroids, too)

Observe the radish in its natural habitat...

I know you've all been wondering one simple question- what do radishes dream about?

They dream about their native Radlandia which they were so cruelly captured from, of course. (the name Radish means from Radlandia, just like French mean from France)

Just look at this rare photo of radishes in the wild- if you were from there, wouldn't you want to be back too?(photo source)

Rrrrrrrrrandom quote!

"Harmony is out of the question."

I'll let you guess where this was found.








Okay, got your guess?








It was really from some random article about earless, singing frogs I was reading. Bet that wasn't your guess! Ppppthbbbt.

But it's been done, I bet.

I have always wanted to start a band called Natch, and then put out an album called Natch Rally. Geddit?