forethought

when packing to come down this weekend i tried to be as compact as possible. only bringing the things i would really need and then leaving most of my 'stuff' back at the apartment in boston.

i did bring both of my cameras, but only one memory card in each and no cords to connect them up and download my shots.

now i've been wandering around south texas for three days and i have tons of cool stuff on my cameras, and yet- no way to get it off the tiny camera screen and onto my comp and the internet. dang it.

i really would like to get a better view of how all these shots turned out, the mini camera screen really does not cut it. and cameraphone to flickr shots are kinda poopy.

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i was bored tonight and my mom was asleep and my dad was watching something boring so i wandered off and was watching tele alone. i landed on mtv and it was the last ep of the real world sydney. these people are so stupid. seriously, wtf. out of the eps this season i did watch, my favorite person was the shaved head guy who took lsd and saw imaginary birds. the rest of the people were shite.

interesting part tho was the commercials. since mtv is now targeting like 14-20 year olds or something, i guess they have more leverage to play around with new types of marketing and advertising. and since i'm a huge marketing nerd, i have to watch from time to time and analyze what's going on. i like to check out what the latest ad agencies are throwing at those impressionable young markets.

(of course, if i actually had one of my dream jobs, i would be the one involved in leading these marketing changes - instead of playing monday morning quarterback and trying to figure them out once they've already hit the air. anyways.)

so yeah. earlier in the week while watching rob & big (LOVE that show.) i noticed the massive kate nashyness of commercials. like beyond just little peeks at her music videos, she was actually part of mtv commercials for other mtv shows... and stuff. it was confusing. like, why is kate advertising a real world show? is she like a vj now or something...

then today, during stupid RW, there was another kate commercial where she was singing in central park or something, and then it flashed into a cloverfield trailer, and then the screen sort of tiled off and half the tiles were kate singing in the park and half were people screaming and buildings burning from cloverfield. ok, that might have been a bad description, but basically there were two commercials playing at once - one for the girly brit singer and one for a totally unrelated horror film.

then, during a later commercial break (cos i sat watching stupid RW for multiple commercial breaks without moving) i saw another double commercial. this time they combined a trailer for that jumper movie along with one of those HP commercials feat. serena williams. it started out as a jumper commercial, then the jumper dude was overlaid into the standard HP commercial, then it went back to being a jumper commercial. kinda interesting...

so this whole combined marketing thing. two seemingly dissimilar products/artists being sold simultaneously and yet separately. interesting, mr.mtv, very interesting...

i wonder if this is going on in other places as well... and i just haven't noticed... it may be that i haven't been watching enough tele lately...

hmm... sometimes i'd be really cool to work for the man. or at least do cool stuff like that... i need to change my job to fit my interests... i think.
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so. i'm supposed to go back to boston tomorrow but there is going to be a blizzard or something so that may not be happening. so maybe i wont get back to boston until tuesday. i hope its not a horrid airport adventure, whichever day it is...

remember the alamo

my favorite
Originally uploaded by florajasmine

i like wandering around my city in the dark of the early morning, shooting things. even if it is a little chilly. good times until i came home and crashed at 830am and did NOT want to get back out of bed to save my life.

p.s. speaking of 'remember the alamo!' the other day i saw a car with one of those magnetic ribbon things stuck on the trunk that was red, white and blue and said 'remember the alamo'. breast cancer, the troops and the alamo? all available in magnets for your car. wtf? seriously? ok.

i really hope that person meant it sarcastically, but somehow i doubt it.

nyc graffiti and flickr and moving

i went to nyc this past weekend to hang with my girlies, maria and kel, and just wander around manhattan. and we went to the bronx and astoria. lots of traveling. walked a lot, did some minor shopping, and mostly just hung with the girls. we were all kind of tired and poopy but just laying around maria's place petting sphinx is fun. almost like the mod... only not.

anyways. during my wanderings i took some pictures of nice graf in soho. and now they're on flickr...


i've been digging graffiti for a quite a while and my interest has increased significantly in the past few years. i now constantly scope the streets for new pieces and point them out to my family and friends.

walking down a city street (and even driving down a country road) can always be interesting and art filled. for me graffiti is a great modern art form. i'm sure people have been tagging up walls for ages, scratching their names in trees and under desks. since the 1980s tagging and wall art has flourished across the US, both legally and illegally.

i appreciate it every day. each morning on my drive to work through allston, ma i'm able to graffiti-spot for a couple of blocks before i get on the highway. on trips away i spend time wandering around neighborhoods just looking for something different. graf is totally public art in its rawest form.

when i find these interesting pieces and i take pictures of them. i have gigs worth of pictures of street art. pasteups, tags and stencils. if i see it, i like it and my camera's handy i like to catch a pic before it gets painted over or washed away. another great thing about street art is it's limited lifespan. because these pieces are thrown up on walls allover the cities, they come and go at the will of the people. so communal. even if the community police try to wipe them out... all part of the circle. by taking a picture i have that piece captured on my hard drive even if someone else eventually/inevitably paints over it.

so anyways.

i take a lot of pictures and i like to show them to people. so i've turned to flickr as my website of choice for sharing my pictures with people i know and people i don't. opening up my graffiti archives for the world wide web to see.

flickr is a great place for tagging and searching pictures. through this foto-friendly community i've found pages of some of my favorite artists. the fact that i can take photos of these seemingly anonymous pieces, put them up on the site, and then have artists wander around and claim them as their own is fantastic. another benefit is that i'm able to wander around the collections of my fellow graf-lovers and see where they've been and what has caught their eyes.

it's like a team effort to photo and id all these artist around the world. a giant easter egg hunt, if you will, on the streets and on the sites. surprises around every corner, and yet sometimes, nothing interesting at all.

now i'm rambling.

whoops.

anyways. i love graffiti. flickr is a great site for fotos. and my new camera add-on's are in the mail. yay! new filters and a hood by the weekend - woohoo! i'll be back on the streets and snapping away asap.

right after i pack up my house. my tons and tons of crap.

our move date is 3 weeks away and my room/house is a dirty disaster. i need to get my booty in gear and packing. really. cos i'm moving. out of this house on aug 31. and to texas... sometime... semi-homeless for that middle part but no worries. no worries, no worries, it'll be ok.

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i packed 3 boxes worth of books today. actually, rach packed one for me and cracked the whip to make me pack the other two. dang. 3 boxes of books packed up and still SO much stuff to go. this sucks.

the fan is really loud

i'm back in boston after my quick visit south of the border.

i really do like mexico city. my last night there i wandered around zona rosa doing some shopping, taking in the sights, and being overwhelmed and eventually lost for a bit.

no worries. i found my way home with the help of my pops who gave directions over the phone. from texas. yeah...

i REALLY want to go back there for vacay and when its not the rainy season. for sure.

back in the bean. it's been toasty warm and i bought a new camera. so taking pictures outside is now even more fun. love it. its big and has super zoom and image stabilization. fun. not really for 'party pics'. more for graffiti and flowers. cos i'm in to that.

after being in mexico for a week and then enjoying a 3 day vacation i am SO not in the mood to return to work tomorrow. like, at all. ugh. work is so blahhh after hanging out for 3 days straight doing nothing. oh well. gotta make the $$ to pay off my credit cards from all this shopping. eek!

spurs playing game 3. 2-1 series. eek! go spurs go!!!

by the way

i uploaded all my pictures from my trip.

you can find the abridged version in facebook.

a few more in flickr, where i've added ge0-tags and such: http://flickr.com/photos/florajasmine

and a full set is up on my picasa albums: http://picasaweb.google.com/florarj/UKSpringBreak2007

i spend too much time on the internet. yes.

also, music i found over there due to store soundtracks, museum lists and magazine reviews: klaxons, little man tate, and paolo nutini. recently discovered they're playing paolo on us mtv cos i just saw him the other morning before work. i downloaded all those guys and b/c i couldnt find my new teenyboppermusic, gym class heroes, anywhere i went out and bought a cd at the store! after a first listen, i decided, me gusta.