Or, “I don’t have OCD” (Just kidding. I really, really do)

I was cleaning my house today, so I decided to make a pile of all the lists I’ve made this term. This led naturally to the counting and classification of the aforementioned lists, and the results were a little scary—even to the List Queen herself. Let me share the breakdown:

First, I should tell you that there are three different kinds of lists that occur in nature three different places. Macro to micro, if you will.

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The Category I list is the one we know and love from Making Lists The Amelia Way. These are legal-sized weekly lists, with an overview of what’s due for the next week.

They are often very general, and opposing colors of Prismacolor markers are absolutely integral to the success of the list.

This term I made 36 Category I lists.

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The next level of list is Category II, naturally. These lists take place in my school notebook, which anyone who has a class with me has seen schlepped around for the last three terms.

These lists are often written during lulls in my class participation / interest / attention span, and are usually made two or three times a week. They consist of every part of every project due the following week, with length and complexity based on what I know of the week’s assignments so far.

Category II lists will usually just have classwork, in no particular order, and school related errands.

This term I made 42 Category II lists.

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Category III lists have the highest level of detail and occur in a small Moleskine notebook that I have with me at all times.

(Full Moleskines from the last three years)

These lists are the final frontier of list making, and tend to include everything from task management by-the-minute, to sub categories and sub sub sub categories. I will often make multiple Category III lists a day, usually consisting of the same exact content, multiple times, in different classifications and hierarchy breakdowns (for instance, one list may just be about getting each task on paper by class, while one is about breaking down the days in which each thing needs to be completed, and yet another includes the order in which each should occur).

This term I made 83 Category III lists, using up two and a half Moleskines.

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That’s 161 lists in total.

(Maybe it’s time to see a doctor)

(Do they have list doctors?)

(Am I the list doctor?)

FINALLY FINISHED!!!

Okay, almost. Jeez.

Click to make it bigger–more when I finish finish, and when it’s not 3:45am.

For this weary traveler (metaphoric, of course–I haven’t left this area code for weeks), happiness is a homemade grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup (although ph’o has come in as a close second on the comfort food list lately). After a long day in the saddle and a wonderful 3×3 lecture, I came home and made myself the ultimate treat.

Extra sharp cheddar cheese, sour rye bread, pure delight.

For my Editorial (magazine design) class, I’m working on a magazine I named “Covet”. Covet is about obsessions and addictions in a variety of flavors. Articles will range from The Severed Head as a Fetish Object (below), to OCD and hoarding and world domination and consumerism and gambling and drug addictions and and and and…

I was originally going to do a horse magazine, because I thought I had paid my dues with other topics and it was finally time to do a pony project. My very first creative exploits consisted of drawings horses–all told I think I probably made 1000s of them–but at some point in highschool I was told to give the equines a rest, and I did. For a good…plenty of years. Horses would be a fun and easy magazine topic. I would be able to take my own photography and practice the photo retouching skills I’m learning in another class.

But alas, it was not to be. I was bored to tears almost instantly. The thing I forgot–or maybe just didn’t realize in my horse-crazed teenage years–is that magazine about horses are more than a little dry. Not to mention poorly written. When Nik (our department chair) sat down with me for lunch in the cafeteria last week and asked what I was working on this term, “Trot” was not sounding particularly promising, even to me. We tried (rather unsuccessfully) to figure out how to bring this rather unpromising magazine to life, but it turned out I was just beating a dead horse (ahem), as it were. You can lead a boring project to water, but you can’t beat it to death once you get there.

Starting over week 5 (more than 1/4 through the term) is always fun. My first attempt at the feature article about decapitation is below. Yummy. (Click to make them bigger, and please don’t talk about my widows–I haven’t worked on the type yet.)

For my cover I’m going to have a flap of paper covering the main image, to be lifted off for a reveal of the (very understated) masthead/logo. I’ve been playing with some fun imagery to hide, and I’m excited to mock it up.

One of my new favorite things is taking pictures with my Zumi, a teeny tiny Japanese digital camera. I found it on Photojojo, a fun photography blog / resource that proclaims to have “the best photo tips, DIY projects, and gear in the whole wide world.” Their sense of humor is my favorite part. Just read their description of this little bundle of (camera) joy:

Missed connection: you and your creativity

It’s time you realize that there are other cameras in the sea — like the Zumi Digital. True, she’s no megapixel marvel. She has no interest in aperture or telephoto zoom. She doesn’t even have a legitimate viewfinder …

But if you were to take the Zumi on a date to the movies, she’d pick a documentary over a romcom. Then she’d bring her own snacks, laugh at your dumb jokes, and make all the first moves.

You see, the Zumi has been carefully crafted to take digital images and videos that have the look and feel of vintage film (lens flare, vignetting and all). Her “perfectly flawed” processing chip combined with a macro setting makes digital 8MM magic — so your everyday life look like an art house flick.

The Zumi is unusual, unpredictable, oh-so inspiring and fits in the palm of your hand. So it’s probably about time you and your DSLR had a “talk”.

You’ve seen my Zumi pictures whether you know it or not. Many of my photo-a-day shots (also on flickr here) can be attributed to my “spy camera” (as many of my friends call it), which comes everywhere with me. With my big/fancy DSLR I can get perfect high-res pictures whenever I feel like lugging around a giant piece of metal (more on that later), so it’s extra fun to have this tiny pocket pal for when I just want snapshots with a little pizazz.

After such great Zumi luck, I decided to follow Photojojo’s advice again, when they advertised a new SLR adapter for the Diana+ lenses by lomography:

You’ve got libraries full of flawless, uber professional, kick-ass magazine worthy photographs.

But despite the hundreds of dollars spent on whotzits and whatzits galore you’ve hit an artistic dead end.

Don’t fret photo friend! Even Thomas Kinkade gets tired of glowy lamp posts and elfish villages. You’re in a rut! And unlike Kinkade, you’ve got no mass produced art revenue to fall back on.

You do, however, have something far more reputable, The Dreamy Diana lens!

It’s a lovely plastic lens that transforms your beloved hunk of metal and glass into a digital toy camera. Yesiree you can now get that lovable Lo-fi “technology” on your digi cam from Lomography’s series of Diana plastic cameras.

Dianas are known for their low saturation, soft surreal blurs, and unpredictable colors.

Simply attach the plastic lens and its adapter directly onto your SLR’s body (Nikon or Canon) and shoot away. With one part Diana camera (old school lo-fi plastic) and one part modern DSLR you’ve got yourself one mighty fine recipe for unconventionally amazing photographs.

Finally! A way re-invent your style while kicking it digital with the hip kids and their plastic cams. (And for future reference, Thomas Kinkade = not hip).

But alas, my pictures look NOTHING like the examples they have on their site (below). I guess I’ve got a lot of experimenting to do.

*this is not my desktop, it belongs to the library

This Identity Systems project has been eating my RAM

It’s safe to say I’ve traveled from Washington to California along I-5 at least 100 times. With family in Santa Cruz, it was not unusual to make the drive two or three times a year growing up. Now that I live in Los Angeles and have a fuel efficient car, I’ve been driving myself home often, taking pictures of my journey.

I’m making a book called House to Home, and I’m in the process of sorting through 1,700 photos. Here are a few of my favorites so far:

See the rest of my current edits on flickr (follow the link or click on any of the pictures).

Always one to bite off more than I can chew, I’ve assigned myself the task of posting up-coming events to our ACCD/AIGA Blog weekly. Weakly. The good news is that it only involves copying and pasting, the bad news is that it still takes time.

The other thing that took up a good portion of my weekend was completely unnecessary. I’m in a class called Ocean Science, which is kind of like Advanced Environmental Science from the West Sound days…without the learning. We talk about whales and tidepools and commercial fishing.

One of the requirements of this class is going on various field trips to…wait for it…the ocean. After each field trip we’re supposed to write a summary of what “stuck with us.” Now, there’s a lot of people in the class that didn’t grow up anywhere near the ocean, and therefore reflecting on tidepools might be interesting. I might as well have grown up IN the ocean, comparatively. Sailing, rowing, kayaking and various other nautical activities have always been a major part of my life. I don’t think I’ve lived more than five miles from a body of saltwater until I moved to Pasadena. Heck, I lived ON a boat for two years.

Where am I going with this, you ask? Summaries about tidepools bore me. I played along for our first trip (to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Longbeach), talking about my time on the Adventuress, etc. etc. Well, this time we went to Newport Beach, and I just couldn’t muster up the willpower to write about it. SO, instead I made a book of the pictures I took. In my head it sounded really quick and simple: “Writing essays is boring, maybe I’ll make a book.” Wow. the entire weekend later, I have a (very tiny) book of pictures and snotty words about how I don’t like to write essays and summaries. I’ll include the copy for your entertainment:

Dear Bob,
You asked us to write a brief summary of what we learned on our field trip to the estuary and tide pools in Newport Beach–what “stuck with us.” But, I decided not to. I know how to write, don’t get me wrong. I do it a lot, in fact (Like, right now for instance). But what I really love to do is take photographs and design things. So I’m choosing to make you a book of pictures instead, because that’s what I’m learning how to do at Art Center (if we’re being candid. Which I think we are). I could write a long synopsis of our day in the hot sun, sure, but it would probably be pretty boring.  Besides, if a picture is worth a thousand words (which it is), I just wrote a 52,000 word essay.
(I’ll still write a summary though, if I have to)

Warmest regards,
Amelia

Yay for the inspiration to make spontaneous designs just for the hell of it, boo on how long that actually takes (especially when compared with how long it takes to actually write an essay).