one last thing.

Joe Ostraff had this idea to get 3 different professors from 3 different schools to collect raw video footage and make 6 students from each school edit it into something. Mary Wollenzein taught me the basics of final cut and here are the results. I'm a little embarrassed about posting this, (no laughing Mike) but I've never been able to post a movie I've made before, so here goes:

jealous.

(in my inbox this morning)
Wish you were here!
Love, mimCarl, Hilary, Miriam, and Jude are all in Mexico. Imagine the Spanish I could be learning...

final draft.

The pic on the home page is of one of Jared's sculptures.
First draft.

stop motion.

JJ forwarded me this link and I had to share. So clever. So cute.

finished.

thanks dylan.

(in my inbox yesterday)
Hey Laura,
I've been watching this video a lot lately. The platinum blonde wig always reminds me of you. Hope you like this ultra-hipster video from a Brooklyn group called Telepathe.Dylan took this pic of me back in the day.

new idealist.

I have reached one more conclusion about dating.

I think I have always liked boys. Rumor has it that I even had a boyfriend in kindergarten. We supposedly sat on the hill during recess and held hands.
I definitely remember having a boyfriend in first grade. His name was Patrick and I still remember what he looked like.
I guess I feel like I was pretty young when I started considering the nature of romantic relationships and daydreaming about what it was I wanted. As a preteen I swooned over Brad Pitt in "Meet Joe Black" and dubbed "Sabrina" as my favorite film.

But somewhere along the way, I turned cynical. I'm not completely certain about why or how this happened, but I concluded that all of my dreams about romance were immature and overly idealistic. I convinced myself that all of my hopes about romance could be reduced to the daydreaming of a silly preteen girl. When things went wrong with romance, I would tell myself that nobody was perfect, relationships were difficult, and that I needed to learn to accept it.

In speaking with a dear friend about some of my past dating experiences she exclaimed, "Laura, you used to cry all the time."
It's something I was surprised by and had chosen to forget.

I guess it's strange, but all of my preteen ideals about romance have resurfaced. I'm sure that they're more grounded in reality than they were back then, but I've adopted their elements into my new dating criteria.

I am absolutely convinced that I can find and have everything that I've been looking for my whole life in one significant other. In the event that I don't, I'd rather stay single.

24.

I have never seen even one episode of "24", but the rest of my family loves it.
I don't intentionally resist it; there's just always a pattern of watching "24" that naturally discludes me.
My dad is the greatest enthusiast. It's like clockwork. The tv lights up at 7:55p or 7:58p and always blasting (because my dad is a little hard of hearing.) I arrive home around this time and start talking with my mom, who is also sitting on the couch, ready for the next action-packed installment.
We start speaking loudly over the tv volume and it's okay until the opening credits are through. At this point, my mom and I are pretty engaged in whatever we're speaking about as my dad is on the edge of his seat about the promising interest of the unfolding episode.

He turns and shouts, "If you guys are gonna talk, you could go into the other room!"

This is the only time I ever hear my father raise his voice these days.

I leave my mom and dad to watch in peace because I know I can't actually keep quiet after being quiet at school all day.

Miriam added a beautiful element this week by dispelling the phony tv science. During the precluding "what happened last week" segment she exclaims, "but prions aren't virulent!" When I ask her what that means, she enthusiastically starts explaining. Then Mom pipes in. "Shhh. Dad will get mad. He'll ask to move to a different room if you want to talk."

life in the lab.

There is a small group of students brave enough to major in graphic design without owning a computer. We meet everyday in the same labs and there's an almost instant comraderie among us as we have so much in common. Of course we share advice, food, & critiques. I've also been picked up on and burped in front of. For all of you who haven't heard from me lately, that's where I've been.

I will post the fruits of my labor in their present entirety.
(Who know if I'll edit again? I probably will.) It feels almost a little embarrassing to post because I've spent so long, but here goes. I'm up for any feedback-- if something doesn't look quite right, please let me know. I've stared at it for so long that my perspective is dramatically skewed.







Thanks to luke. Yes, I stole many things from your blog for this project. Thanks for having such cool posts to reap from.

Readers, stay tuned for the final versions of my website, poster, and dvd designs because they are all due this week.

Oh, and I made my first $100 from my adsense ad. Thanks for clicking! Keep it up!

women should design their own bathrooms.

Ever notice how tampon boxes hang at face level? I hate it.

creepy.

I ran in the frosty dark this morning. It was so dark that aside from the stars I could only see about 10 feet in front of me. I think I ran faster than usual because I didn't want to stay in one spot for too long, searching for dark shapes and movement.
When I was driving to school this morning as the sun rose, I saw evidences of carnage that I'd unknowingly closely encountered. I could've almost tripped on these:


Three rotting deer carcasses.
Jared said the whole experience sounded frigidly magical, like the white witch from Narnia had drawn near.
Good thing I was so fast.

clothes.

(a model wearing my wig, boots, and a dress I designed.)My mother always let me get away with wearing whatever I wanted.
There were of course the wigs, particularly the black, pulp-fiction-style one I wore everyday during the last 3 months of high school. There were my velvety bell-bottoms, the fur coats, and the bright pink $6 second-hand dress I wore to prom. There were my initial experimental sewing disasters; things so ugly I should've never walked out the door.
But if my mom were here, reading this post over my shoulder as I typed, she would say:

"But you always seemed to be expressing yourself. If you would've been trying to dress immodestly or fit in with a certain crowd, I would've worried."

Ah, the numerous blessings of a culturally unconventional mother. (I can't imagine the repercussions on my life if I'd been born to someone concerned with maintaining and upholding status-quo.)

I've developed a habit of dressing meticulously. I dress according to weather, mood, event, who I'll be seeing that day, and how I feel around them. I typically change something about what I'm wearing every morning at least once as I give it more thought.
It's about more than appearing to be "cool" or even presentable. It's become a way of navigating through life, an outward identity to which I've given a lot of thought and effort; a mix of aesthetic design, utility, and expression.

Maybe it's my immersion into the BYU art department, but I've been feeling somewhat exposed in terms of my dressing habits in front of all these people who pay attention to visual detail as much as I do. Not a day goes by that someone doesn't comment on something I'm wearing. And it's not always something like, "I love your scarf." These people are perceptive. They read me. I feel like they know why I chose the black leg warmers or the yellow shoes. Everyone wanted to know the "real" reason I shaved my head when I did it.

It's not like I'm going to change; I don't even know if I'm capable of changing. But it admittedly throws one more factor in the equation when I'm dressing myself in the mornings.