Circus and Politics

Circus and Politics: This is the topic of my current illustration project. Combine these two themes into one image that portrays elements of both. The two go hand in hand naturally; coming up with visual imagery isn't hard. While sitting in the library the other day I had my moment of inspiration. I'm not sure where it came from or what spawned it. I love those moments, and I wish I could recreate them more often. Nevertheless, I have my idea off and running. I will post it once it's in its more finalized state.
My question is this. Is there a way to combine these two topics and have a positive result? Ninety-nine percent of all the ideas I came up with have been portraying politicians in a negative way or incorporating donkeys and elephants in some sort of freak show or parade.
Is this even possible given the comical and whimsical nature of circuses and the dislike, or confusion in our government?

Steelers

The Steelers lost yesterday. This has upset the city of Pittsburgh. About 90% of the people here are in a bad mood today based solely on the fact that the Steelers didn't win.
I watched the game in a bar yesterday; while near the end of the quarter our table was approached by a drunk Eagles fan. He was loud, obnoxious and trying to bet Brian $100 against the Steelers. While waving around the fist-full of 20's he dropped one at my feet, unbeknownst to him. So despite the loss, we made $20 off of him, and bought our dinner for 4 with it.
So thank you belligerent drunk Eagle fan.

The Vampires At The Blood Bank

I tried donating blood the other day. Its for a good cause, I have plenty of blood, and there are always free drinks and cookies. I've been very low on iron, and have been taking lots of vitamins.

I was strapped in the chair, asked to state my full name about 3 times, and hold out my left arm. They then abrasively swabbing my inner elbow with iodine, and subsequently removing a layer of skin. Needle went in and didn't feel too good. I got a good look at it before they stabbed me, and maybe that's what did it. I got very lightheaded and nauseous. Nurses and ice packs swarmed me. They pulled the needle and reclined me. After about 10 minutes I felt much better. I had a few cans of Gatorade and a pack of cookies.

I think it was the mental aspect of knowing I had a harpoon in my arm. The lady that injected me didn’t seem to gentle. When they pulled the needle, I had quite a bit of bruising. There was a good-sized bubble under my skin where a significant amount of blood collected. Needles to say, I'm still quite purple.

It doesn’t look nearly as bad as the addicts arm in "Requiem for a Dream"
See the movie if you haven't

Europe

I'm going to slowly post some pics that I took while in Europe this fall. I can't put them all up, but I'll slowly toss around some of the more interesting ones.

The Berlin Wall:
There are scattered remnants of the wall all over Berlin. Some were left in their original position, untouched by the swarms or people penetrating the concrete. This particular section was removed and then placed back along the original path of the wall. It is in an area called Potsdamer platz. This area was a literal wasteland when the wall was built. It was a dead area, in the heart of the city. When the wall came down, there was a huge reconstruction; today it is a thriving square complete with modern sky scrapers and an IMAX theater


The wall was actually 2 walls with a corridor in the middle. Escapees trying to cross the border were lucky to make it over one, you were stuck in the middle, most certainly met with an immediate and unpleasant death.

sheep what?

In my "Design and Technology" class this morning, I made a discovery browsing the web. While looking for environmentally friendly companys, I found this one:


http://www.creativepaperwales.co.uk/

With a 3:1 sheep to person ratio, it's not too suprising that Welsh came up with this idea. I'm waiting for the Kiwis to catch on.

my mac

I am now the proud owner of a mac book pro. I have been deliberating about this purchase for a long time. Increased freelance work, and the need for a portable work station brought me to the realm of the mac. I enjoy it better than my pc- it's much more "user friendly". On the contrary, have only been using it for a few days have already: crashed OS X and been zapped by some electrical shock. Despite these few random occurences, I feel that it is a much more durable machine than my pc. For example: the pc won't restart- it must be unpluged and repluged in order for it to turn on again, has horrific internet connection, and has about a gig of space left. Not to mention the rapid 256k of ram.

returning once again

It's been a very long time since I've written anything. Far too long. So I'll recount what has happened in the past few months:

July: I went hiking in MD with the family. Adam was in attendance. Fun was had by all.
August: My cousin got married. All of my cousins got drunk, one tried to hook up with the dj.
September: I went to Europe- 2 weeks with Rob, Rachele, and Lisa.

A few weeks ago I ran in the pretty good race sponsored by CMU. I had a very good time, and placed 20somethingth. I was excited, and am searching for some more races. Rachele and Tomasz are my running partners and between Racheles GPS pedometer, and Tomasz's internal clock, I get some pretty good runs in. Hopefully the skiing and snowboarding won't interfere too much with the running schedule. However this is one conflict that I don't mind having.