Mr. Knapton’s Wayward Semeiotic

Lets, um, muse?

So, it’s been apparent to me that I need to blog more, and seeing as I’m moving out of my house in a few weeks, and the school semester ending, I’ll have time to do that. So, let’s give this a shot (shall we?) — I’m going to blog more about the progress of stuff I’ve been up to. “What stuff?”, you might ask. Well, here’s a taste:

To Do:

• Record Music: I’ve been toying with this for the past month or so, and I think I’m going to try to record two demos of material. I’ve got about 12 or so songs that I’d really like to put out there, 6 listenable to the general public, 6 listenable to people with bad taste in music (i.e. myself). The first 6 are under the working title of “A Forgotten Flight” and sort of fuse post-rock with some kind of folk. I’d call it post-folk but my friend Chad beat me to the chase, apparently.
• Unveil my super top-secret new TimKnapton.com: It’s been under the radar for months now. I’ve poured everything I could into sketchpads that will never see real sunshine. Everything designwise I’ve picked up in the past year is going to get applied, it’s gonna get a whole lot of new content (including my much-neglected portfolio), it’s going to tie seamlessly into numerous webapps, and it’s going to be killer. Just you wait. That’s all I can say. Get stoked, me.
• Photoblog enhancements: Nothing huge, but a lot of under-the-hood changes need to be made to my photoblogging platform. I’m also working on making it shinier and ajax-powered (by option of course in the administration). Also, I have about 3000 photos from last summer that I never sifted through. I’m sure there’s some good ones in there that I can put up as content too…
• Complete 3 movies: I got an idea for a movie that would be really easy to shoot. All I would need would be me and my tripod, a few friends to act, and time to edit. It’s that last one that I haven’t had in awhile now. The other two movies are longboarding ones, so I figure I need a skating friend at some point, but before even that I need to perfect some of my sweet moves. =P
• Get back into client work: I just want to design something fresh. Everything in my portfolio is from like 2006, and everything worthwhile I did after that doesn’t exactly belong to me, so I could use some fresh clients. If you need a site done, I might be nice and do it for free if you give me enough creative freedom =)
• Get in shape: For someone who skates every single day, I’ve got nothing to show for it except burly leg muscles haha. Maybe I’ll start doing crunches or something.

That’s about it. Those are my non-obligation obligations. Cheers to self-improvement.

Peace out, girl scout.

So, I really love my new place here at PSU, but I drafted this a long time ago and figured I’d remember some of the good old days of living in my last apartment. Here’s a few highlights.

• The Volcano and Banana Floaters Tea: As a housewarming event, Steve and Alex stole a volcano-aquarium thing from the girls upstairs (which was kept proudly in my room). During this process they did other stuff to their place, including putting a banana into the teapot. A few days later we were talking with Grace, who was drinking a cup of tea. “Why does this taste like bananas?” she said. As we held in our laughter she exclaimed that there were “banana floaters” in her teapot.
• Count Beerula’s Lair: Our kitchen had a giant cardboard cutout of a beer bottle wearing a dracula costume. You could put your head through the “face” and everything. This was Count Beerula. He lived in a closet in our kitchen, a closet that actually went up to the second floor, boarded off behind the wall of our housemate’s closet. On rare occaisions we’d go into the lair and beat on the wall screaming her name and making spooky noises.
• “I’m a responsible individual!”: For Steve’s sake, I won’t put this up here.
• The Cake rule: Our first meal in the place, we found a box of cake mix and sprinkles left over by the previous residents. We made it and someone said “There should be cake every weekend. And there was. Often we’d bet away our cake-baking duty, and arguments could be won or lost simply by retorting about the quality of that person’s cake that weekend. “Dude I really just don’t think he’d be a good candidate for president.” “Oh?! Well your cake this weekend is terrible!”
• The HPTI Problem Solving: I have a post about this elsewhere. I’m too lazy to link it.
• Balloons: After the HPTI Problem-Solving competition, I hid the balloons steve put in my room away. For about 3 weeks, every time he would leave, I would take out a balloon and draw a happy, toothy, grinning face on one of them. Then I would place it somewhere in Steve’s bedroom, usually wearing one of his hats, or peering out from under a pile of clothes or something. Every time he found it, he would pop it on a nail in my door. After awhile, Steve started losing it, and refering to the balloon as “Him”. “I don’t want to see ‘him’ again. ‘He’ shouldn’t be smiling so much. Balloons don’t even have teeth!”
• Valentines Day Brownies: Once I made brownies (as a substitution for cake which I was quite sick of) but sadly they got burnt. Oh well, I iced them anyways but nobody in the apartment would touch them. A week later, for Valentine’s day, we took the stale old brownies and wrapped them up on a plate with a Valentine, leaving them at the door of the girls above us. They actually ate them. Upon finding out, we all almost died of laughter.
• The night of the eclipse: The first day I moved in, I took Steve’s horrible old microwave (circa 1888) and put it under the counter since the one I brought was so much better. One night, an eclipse drove Steve mad and he told me that it hurt him that I did that to his microwave. Then, he ordered me as the director of the teaching-intern program (which i was a part of) to switch them again. Instead, I put the microwave in his room and started microwaving some easy-mac in it. Steve again was upset, and ordered me to move it back, which I did not do. Then he faked an e-mail to my boss about my insubordination and went off to tell me that if we microwaved the punxsatawney phil beanie-baby, that all would be forgiven. Phil caught on fire, and was put on display with the fine china (read: budweiser plastic cups) in the china cupboard.
• Juice!: Steve, who was an avid fan of Arrested Development, would often bounce about the house exclaiming “Juice!” similar to the show’s character Buster Bluth. In the show, the character Buster would get high off of high-fructose corn syrup. In real life, Steve got crazy sugar rushes off of my homemade sweet-tea (admittedly it is just like rocket fuel). Steve often had times where he’d ween himself off of it, or go on binges where the pitcher would be empty in like 2 days, screaming “Juice!” (ala buster) with every cup.
• Beggle: Steve hated the way that some people pronounce the word Bagel. So we determined that “beggle” was a whole different word. Definition: To jollily implore goods or services from another party. Usage: Molly beggled six-hundred pounds of buffalo meat from the zoo.
• The Holiday Inn Guys: Go on youtube and search for the holiday inn commercials with the business guys. There was a week where we quoted it more than we actually talked to eachother.
• Tea for Grace: As a present for our upstairs housemate Grace, we made her some tea out of tea, cloves, ketchup, peanut m&ms, some stuff I forget. She didn’t drink any.
• Trombone language: Once Steve came into my room and refused to speak in any language other than Trombone. He just made trombone noises in my doorway for like 10 minutes.
• “Downtown!”: Steve put on a hoodie and paraded around the apartment with the hood up singing the song “Downtown” by Petula Clark. After stalking me and Alex, singing the song, making food and singing the song, bursting out of doors and singing, etc., he would run into his room, take off the hoodie, and pretend nothing happened, only to don it again and start up again.
• Steve’s hammer smash: Steve took out his frustrations on a dvd player. With a hammer.

that is the equivalent of sticking a dolphin into a toilet instead of the ocean.

Decided to take a break from the screaming children tonight. Some people say that here has some bad areas, being out alone at night in a place like this could have consequences. Maybe I stick to the right areas, maybe those people exaggerate. Doesn’t matter. Short sleeves, short pants, short socks, long board.

It’s been awhile. I rolled my ankle the last time I was out, and have been dealing with murmurings of a shin-splint on my pushing leg. Doesn’t matter. I’m ground-floor.

The ipod’s been broken for weeks. Abstract art from freed(!) liquid crystals. Doesn’t matter. I know how to feel it out, at least enough to get it to shuffle. Tonight’s shuffle was beautiful and appropriate for my first night boarding in awhile. Fate can be fun like that, in the way that presents you with slow solitary piano, delicious post-rock and the illest of hip hop at just the right moment.

It feels good to be on the streets, I’m not planning a big ride (haha I never do but they happen often) and I know the smoothest pavement near my place. Shaking the dust off of these creaky bones happens faster than I expect. It didn’t matter.

The streets are mostly empty, and the sky is perfect. Palm trees and powerlines silhouetted against the gradient of a subduing sky and the light pollution (and I do me pollution) of the bustle that surrounds these neighborhoods. I guess that doesn’t matter much, either. Blacker still is the asphalt, and I’m happy

It’s fun to feel like a kid in your twenties. Slaloming the paint on the street, taking big corners down low, hitting the banks, attempting (and failing) tricks. If this place had hills I wouldn’t be home yet. Everything’s smooth and quiet, these streets belong to me. This is my place in the world.

Cruising at about 15, I stretch as tall as I can go. Sometimes it’s upsetting to think that I’ll be moving away from everything I grew up with. Sometimes it’s upsetting to think the opposite. But there’s a lot of roads out there, and I’m not going to be on this planet nearly as long as I’d like to be. But this sense of movement, of freedom, of fresh new experiences, that’s a constant I can live with. I’ve made it this far, I want to keep going. These are the things I think about when carving the concrete at night, as the rest of the world doesn’t matter for a bit.

I was informed yesterday that we’re stopping to see Mt. Rushmore after Omaha. =D

Also I’m going to try to blog from the road, and expect my youtube account to finally host something other than a video of my roommate stealing a plastic dolphin and the outtakes from our hit high-school commercial, “Trout Yogurt”. I hope my little point-and-shoot will be enough to make a documentary if I upload videos after each night.

HOORAY.

Monday: Woke up early to print out programs for the IST night of honors. Failed at that, skipped a class, got them printed, found out that there was a mistake on them, had to print another batch (wasted money due to me hooray), worked on an award for the dean. Skipped another class due to the print-shop’s closing time, ran out to get a frame, put on suit, went to event, pitched in a little afterwards, got home, attempted to watch Lost, passed out.

Monday’s Perk: Sheer exhaustion forcing me to bed early.

Tusday: Woke up wonderfully refreshed, class, home at 1, 1 - 4 spent cleaning apartment (mine) and washing dishes (not mine), tried to grab a shower, late to class. 1 hour break of attempting to accomplish work on prototyping, more class til 745, baked casserole (ingredients were going bad), more correspondence, gave up and went out at midnight to try and unwind (nothing crazy, have some faith, folks.)

Tuesday’s perk: Casserole.

Wednesday: Woke up for 7am phone session with people in india. Attempted to get more sleep, went to class, did the TI thing, set up shop in IST for working on stuff until 3, helped the FutureForum committee, got home from IST around 6, went to SOMA meeting. Won presidency, got home and worked on German. Went to bed early with hopes of working on German in the morning.

Wednesday’s Perk: SOMA presidency, Good news concerning my startup.

Thursday (so far): Woke up. Bombed German presentation. Came home, further self-loathing,
Thursday (now): Just enough time to do a homework assignment and blog this between classes, nothing else.
Thursday (projected): Helping futureforum crew at 3:30 to 4:15. 4:15 class. Break from 5:30 to 6:30 where I frantically scrape more prototypes together. 6:30 class, quiz which I am not prepared for, 7:45 group meeting for a semester project that I don’t have time to work on by myself that my group hasn’t done things on, 9pm game thing for IST that i’m contemplating skipping.

Thursdays Perk: None. I give up.

Friday (projected): Early wakeup for 7am Futureforum setup. Event all day. Reception afterwards. Home at maybe 7 or 8. Freedom, provided I haven’t found a good bus to throw myself in front of or a nice toaster to take a bath with.

Friday’s Perk: Free food since I’m out at home.

People I am neglecting as of late: two web-development clients, my partner in business, myself.

Things I wish I had time to do: Shop for food, do laundry, finish the cleaning i started on tuesday, read the book i’m supposed to read for class, read a book I started in February and haven’t been able to get anywhere in, do development work for my neglected clientele, update my personal portfolio, continue photoblog development, put more time into SOMA, the list goes on.

it’s all just puzzle pieces. I wonder where my soul went. I’m sorry everybody.

So glad to be leaving this for awhile.