TGIF

that's right folks
this blog post doesn't even get an "on" in front of its name
because its purely TGIF.

let me tell you about my thursday

7am wakey wakey pan-a-cake-e
8am go for a run in not my running shoes. its a BEAUTIFUL morning...alas i wind up with a blister from the shoes
9am walking for fitness class, awesome walk, still Great weather
10am begin studio...in sweaty, stinky clothes.
11:15am Karen gets HUNGRY....so I sneakk out of class and conveniently enough I live across the street...sooo I chow a bowl of cereal, grab an apple and a diet cherry pepsi...
11:30am back in class
1:30pm class is over, but I realize I only did 2 pages of sketches in those 3 hours......errrr this logo thing is a struggle
1:35 go cash money order for bike that I sold over the summer
1:45 write rent check, eat a sandwich, go to work
2pm work work work...is this day done YET? I'm tired.
4pm Amy says that If I wanted to go get a bean picture where the open bean is higher in the picture, that would be fine. She tells me to take an x-acto to cut it open. I say ...I'll just use my thumb. She says, Okay, do what you want.
6pm decide to leave work because i need more bean pictures. I take amy's advice with the xacto.
drive south of where I work onto a gravel road. There's an odd man walking out there...who walks alone on a gravel road? He must have been headed for the football game.........I eventually park where I need to be and lock my car because of this creepy man.
6:05pm in a beanfield, I procede to set up tripod and cut open bean....miss bean, cut open finger
6:15pm finger still bleeding, I give up on waiting for it to quit and continue taking pictures.


6:30pm quit with the picture taking, head back to my car......which my keys are locked in.
6:31pm big sigh.
6:33pm another big sigh.
6:35pm put hand up to try to wave cars down

its dusty.
6:40pm people are too interested to get to the game....so they don't stop, rather I am dust covered.
6:45pm man driving south stops and asks if i need help. Yes please.
7pm get to my apartment that the man drove me to. Extend my gratitude.
7:02pm get bandaid for my finger that's Still bleeding. apparently my blood sucks.

7:05pm Maria and I call everyone we can find phone numbers to, to get Kym's phone number who has my spare key. Kym has left for rome. We then call Butch's who has the power of unlocking cars for one ugly price.


7:15pm Maria and I drive out to my car to meet the Butch's guy. we see lots of pretty things and take pictures of them!!! Then decide we should drive around taking pictures together more often. :)




7:45pm drop work camera off at work, pack up my bags from work head back to OE land
8pm eat chinese
8:08pm fall asleep Next to my chinese
8:30pm woken up.....its stbn YO! The ketchup of GLORY arrives in my arms. I am happy and complete.
9pm?? get down to the great MADRID. to bj's bar of some sorts...
by sometime: i've consumed a massive quantity of the bud light. gross.
but there was good music and Great company and.....deeeeeerunk me.
then... I stumbled myself into bed. :)

TGIF.

----------

my mom called AND texted AND e-mailed me because she was worried
i'm not one to call home much
but it must have been a Really long time or something..........
*shrugs* I called her this morning.
I think maybe she just misses me. :)
But she's happy to hear I'm alive. haha.

On Time

i don't have time to post.
maybe tomorrow.
...or later today....

for your pleasure:

Our friend Lohan got caught for doing drugs
and doin' some dude in rehab...

....Lohan's probably singin:
"try to make me go to rehab
and i say yah yeah yeah!"
....

On a Logo Project

There was a time when white,
middle-class professional women
were beginning to speak up.
Within the pages of Betty Freedan's
"A Feminine Mystique"
she writes:
"just what was the problem
that has no name?
What were the words a woman would
use when trying to express it?
Sometimes a woman would say
'i feel empty somehow, incomplete'
or she would say
'i feel as if i don't exist, sometimes a tired feeling'"
Freedan wrote out of her experience
as a middle class house wife
but what she spoke about touched
something inside all women.
The problem lay burried, unspoken in the minds
of many women.
That strange stirring, sense of dissatisfaction...
And each suburban wife struggled with it alone.
She was afraid to ask, even of herself... the silent question
"is this all?"
But in a group of 4...quietly outside of New York...
it was finally said, in a tone of desparation,
the problem.
and the others knew, without words
that she was not talking about a problem with her husband
or her children or her home....
suddenly they all realized the shared the same problem
the problem that has no name.
(yeah, you should probably reed that book, btw)
They began to talk about it.

The only way for a woman to find herself
is by creative work of her own (not her husband...her children...)

Today I redefined a logo project that I will be working on
it is currently titled "A Misogynistic Record company"
whether or not misogynistic is even a word is far from relevant...
(is it a word?) This company's goal is to overtly
inject minds with the idea that women are vengeful,
hate-filled, materialistic, manipulating ....whores.
Maybe not to that extent. But the record company's objective
will be to produce only albums of this anti-woman theme.
The reason I can do it....is because there are things out there
that are close enough to this truth. Yet it is
absurd enough that...it is supposedly original.

The issue isn't that there are companies who produce this material...
the issue is that the material (music) is derived, likely,
from real life situations that are happening.
People will buy in to it.
And when that 3 year old son of your starts singing the catchy
phrase within one of these 'misogyny rocks' songs...
you will laugh at him, finding it cute. ...unknowningly encouraging it...
But soon...all too soon...
that problem, the problem that has no name
will rise in us again.
And we might find ourselves smiling at each other
when we realize that we're Not alone in finding
many of today's songs — and many of the expectations
that are within the songs
degrading.

On a process

GAH madeline is HOTT
can you imagine ANY other bicycle sitting in
our retro dining room?????? Me either, I think she fits in
perfectly.


in other news....


With school a full week in ...things are about to get serious.



Pages and pages of notes are starting to fill the unorganized air
(actually, I just papercilpped the loose stuff together yesterday...
via paperclips)
I don't like having papers in their respective binders...because
that means ....well....carrying around that many extra binders a day
when I could really just stick all of the loose paper into a sketchbook.


---------------------

Meanwhile...
our kitchen is freakin sweet, I don't care what anyone else says



Lately I've been hanging out more and more at home.
Its so Great
I Love my roomate...she wears moo-moo's....(not really..)
but she's a work-a-holic and its kinda funny because
....i believe it makes her a little crazy...
She'll be a Great influence on me, I believe.



-------------------

In my photography class....
we have to take pictures that have dominant color to them

On Judicial Systems

In 1969 there were 502 convictions for tax fraud
a white collar crime, usually crimes of people with good deals of monies...
of those convicted 20% ended up in jail
the fraud averaged $190,000 per case
sentences averaged 7months
That same year for burglary and auto theft, crimes of the poor
60% ended up in prison
the auto thefts averaged $992 the setences ...18months
for burglary...the crimes averaged $321 and the sentences averaged ...33months

In 2006, there were 1,092 Convictions of tax fraud

The IRS has a posted list of "examples of General Tax Fraud Investigations"
The sentences have been lengthened, but again, only
35% actually served jail time (despite the IRS page displaying a much higher
percentage in their "examples" ....scare factor?
Meanwhile

66% of defendants in cases concluded in US district courts were
imprisoned for their crimes.......


It isn't the plain percentage that bothers me...its the inconsistency.
Its the idea that
corporations who hide away Billions of $$ get away with
a little bit of nothing. An argument COULD be made that
this isn't about the money, its the idea that burglary and theft
impact and victimize more.........
Tell that to someone who is two years away from retirement
who has to start over because they lost their pension
once the multi billion dollar corporation was found out.
Or the Thousands of people who die because of work related
accidents....and by related, I mean work Caused accidents
because companies are too cheap to abide by regulations set in place.


What brought this topic to hand
was the whole celebrity 'turning-self-in' scheme
that seems to be happening.
"Lohan's stay was only 45 minutes long. She posted a $30,000 bond and was released, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Web site.

The actress is scheduled to be back in the Beverly Hills Courthouse on August 24 to face charges stemming from the May 25 incident in which she lost control of her 2005 Mercedes Benz convertible and struck a curb. She received treatment for minor injuries at Century City Doctors hospital, where police cited and arrested her. She was later released with only misdemeanor charges."

As an excuse:
......"Lohan's attorney, Blair Berk, issued the following statement Tuesday: "Addiction is a terrible and vicious disease.'"

You're right.
Absolutely right. It is.
And it is TOTALLY irrelevant.
Everyone else seems to have to do the time.


Dear Brittney, whats-her-nuts, Lindsey Blowhan, and others...
take a lesson from Lil Kim

Remember Lil Kim???

"On March 17, 2005, Kim was found guilty of conspiracy and perjury for lying to a grand jury about her friends' involvement in a 2001 shooting outside the Hot 97 studios in Manhattan.
....Throughout her entire jail sentence, Kim's representatives declared that she was busy working; she wrote over 200 songs while in prison."

A: if you're going to commit a crime
do something worth-while.... cocaine??? PLEASE

B: do your time and do it well.



I won't even get into the racial issues that I believe this also presents....
because i have homework to do.


Later.

"[Bicycling] has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood."

On the Impact of Graphic Design

well guys
its time again...
yep. Time for class.

Back to the 3 hour long studios
(2 back to back, this semester, yuck)
And as anxious as I'm making myself,
I'm sure it will work out Just fine.
Time management, kim.

Then again...y'know........
I don't have to reach for keeping my 3.5 gpa
for any scholarship....
the only purpose for good grades this time is...
graduating 'with distinction' (blah) and the idea
that I paid shit tons of money, so I should do my
best to get Everything out of these classes....
But of course...the intrinsic parts, too.
Because I Love it.

Alas, I need to step back and think a moment...
about the impact of graphic design.
Taking a graphic design history course that spread itself
out over an entire year certainly proved that
Yes...graphic design can, rather easily, contort society.
scary.
I'm a year away from entering into ...a career in which
it is MY job to be part of a fleet that will BE history.
My views....WILL be implimented into people's head
whether they like it or not.
ESPECIALLY if I ever work for a large corporation......

which I wont...we all know I'd like to live in a river shanty...
but,
let me elaborate....

Think Nike
Think McDonalds
Target
Disney....
Virgin Records...


The true product is not the product.
Disney for example, reached brand nirvana...
proof of this = Celebration, Florida


where there are NO franchizes, rather
a disney town, where everything bought, sold, looked at....
controlled by Disney. Cozy as it sounds
and to a point...really nice and utopian seeming,
its Disney getting away with having a complete monopoly...
and why?
Because they've branded a family lifestyle.
There, CHOICE is seen as the enemy...which is why
there are no other 'brands' in the town.

With this, we have fewer and fewer places to be seen
as non-consumers (citizens...). In Celebration...every aspect
of those people's lives has been manipulated by an ideal.
(the disney ideal...they are all FULL CIRCLE consumers of Disney)

In our 'regular' society we're seeing this, too.
Public Libraries are looking more and more like
Barnes & Noble..... are they not?


And Barnes & Noble stores are looking more like libraries.
(Think of our very own Parks Library and the implimentation
of BookEnds Cafe.............)


What could happen with that (and hopefully
this won't be considered begging the question
though I'm pretty sure it is....)
is the same thing that happening with Wal Mart

whose ability to not sell albums with 'mature content'
can be seen as harmless, afterall 'its their right'.....
but as much as it is their right...it is leaving record
companies with NO choice but to make separate albums
with dulled down content.........because 30% of their sales
would be Lost if wal-mart didn't carry their product.
This is simply smothering out any idea of there being a 'choice'
for the record companies....
All so they can sell their brand image of........family.

If you draw the connection of wal-mart to libraries...
you could maybe come up with a similar concept: banned books.
Even a library needs to generate an audience
...needs to market itself....
Can we only hope that they don't begin reaching
for this similar brand-nirvana.....
A Library (state/government funded, yes?) selling its
WASP family ideals....within its branding....???
And forcing publishers to change book content...
or banning books all together?
Scary.

I can only hope
(as I drink my diet coke
post this via my Macintosh computer

retie my Adida's shoes
readjust my North Face shorts
while rechecking the time on my Timex watch
before grabbing a granola bar out of my Timbuk2 bag
and craaaaving a McDonalds cheeseburger)
That what I end up designing....
makes a statement
an impact
shares an ideal
......and Everyone becomes fun-to-hang-around-smart-cute-Cyclists.

On Rejuvenating

I believe my good K friend and I did a great thing today
and i Know we made someone
eXtremely happy.


Mickey

aaaand
Myself.

For so long, I've trashed my body
over and over
and over and over
again and again
day in
day out
through the cold
the heat the humidity
the snow and wind

for no.real.purpose
Sure there were certainly times
where it was for training...big race days...

but it was always
always always
because i enjoyed it.
pain/pleasure.pain/pleasure.pain/pleasure
And when i don't enjoy it,
I take a week or a month off and
pick up my good 'ol running shoes.

Recently...I've been reaching for those
shoes a Lot...4 and 5 times a week, in fact.

But I think today I was maybe a bit
....rejuvenated.
Maybe not enough to the point where I burst
off into my 60mile hill climbing loop
but I think that's because....I don't Need to be
slaughtering myself out there.
There hasn't been a time,
in a Long time,
that I've had a 'better' ride
than I had today.
My average = 12mph...for 10miles.
Something I could/would come close to doubling
on any other day...
But I would not have had it any other way.
there is something to be said for having 'good company'
and even more can be said when
.....seeing someone fall in love
.....when you see the light bulb go on because, in regards to shifting, she Finally 'gets it'
.....when she lets go of the fear, and accepts that she
doesn't Have to brake going down the hill....
....when she doesn't even second guess herself climbing
hills 3x longer than she's ever thought she would be
ready to attempt....and she reaches the top.

its SO about the wholeness that you feel...
that invincibility
its that Susan B. Anthony quote
"[Bicycling] has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood."


That's what it is.
Its remember the first thing that motivated you to ride
Beyond riding around the country as a kid
I can distinctly remember my first sense of
'dedication' to cycling in that....
....all I wanted to do was to be able to
go on a ride with my sister, Amie,

and not
have to stop. And not have to have her wait for me
but to just ride with her, and finish.

And partially, that's why ....I have No desire to
ever do another bike race (okay, maybe a roller races or two...)

I have No need to prove myself. Because I already have.
and most importantly, I've proven it to me.
I could have all the medals/trophies in the world...
but they are Absolutely Nothing compared to riding
next to Amie as she [awfully out-of-tune] sings
Queen's Bicycling song

Yet, as important as that end goal was, I believe that that 'goal'
left my mind rather quickly.
Once I started riding, It didn't become about the goal
Nah, it became that view that was there when I crossed
Freeport road and climbed that [now] little hill
that peeked over a pasture filled with sheep
and just off to the right side
where the sun was always just about to set.
It was about that winding road that dipped down
and ran right over Sugar creek into a standing-room-only
climb up over by the cemetary. ...


But don't get me wrong. My goal still lingers.
When I go home to Sterling, one of the things I look
forward to the most is going and riding with Amie and Mat

and seeing all of the scenery that brought me to where
I am today

Maybe what I'm trying to get at is that I believe
in setting goals ....but not think about them on our way towards

Frankly, maybe for a moment this summer I was tired of bikes
I was tired of being seen as the biker girl
tired of people pressuring me to race
tired of training alone
tired of when i did ride with other people, of them feeling like we
had to hammer, because I'm Kim Topp, I'm supposed to be fast
...well haven't you ever heard of a 'recovery' day? let me just spin, dammit! :)
tired of it feeling like a religion that I could tell everyone about
but was struggling to believe in myself.

But......
I still believe.

And today.
I believe more than ever.
My depth perception must have been off again
because this runs deeper than I thought it did.

I think tomorrow I'll do the 60mile ledges loop...
its got the scenery...

and for old times sake...I'll sing the Bicycle song.

On old videos

:)
Thanks Nettie
remember .....remember
when we had to go back and pick
up your friend, the bicycle?
Lets go out, again.

ahhhh Sparkle Motion
we prevailed again
I left a bit early to work
on homework sort of stuff...



but they survived...
even with a PERFECT music round...
impressive.

We'll be ordering shirts, soon


Now don't get me wrong,
I like winning

....a Lot.
but maybe there's a point
where...winning just makes everyone else
feel a little awful, and feel a bit like...
like they deserve a turn.
Then again....naaaaah
They should train harder.

On Stupid weather.com

Well folks
its a rainy one,
and has been for a while
but this morning,
I checked the weather.com
and whaddya know...
at 8am it said only 20% chance of rain

Its at least upgraded to 30%

however....if i had a
picture of it pouring outside
you might find this more ironic
than the little pictures i just posted...
but SERIOUSLY...with a giant big-ass green
fucking cloud just passing over us on the radar
That low of percentage???
And i couldn't BEGIN to tell you the times
its said
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING!!!!
when......there's not a single
speckle within 50 miles of us....

Just one more news source
and one more reason
to.not.trust.media
....unless it was designed by me...
errrr haha kidding.

On Saying 'later'

My good 'ol
coworker Abby

is finally at her last day of work.
And though Amy said she could come back
in the spring

when she comes back from Rome...
it still sort of breaks my heart.
I mean, who else will pretend to take
senior pictures
when we're out 'working' and ....supposed
to be taking pictures of wind turbines?

Who else will tell me about how much
she hates Deb (one of the studio instructors)
or how anxious she is about........everything.
Or who will walk to the g-station with me at 11am
every morning??


I suppose i'll survive.
It'll just be a bit more quiet.

But it does make me Really think about
how well 'opposites' can work together...
and work Well.

Farewell Abby
it was fun
and i'm STOKED for the spring
when we can work together again.
:)

Song of the week - "Paradise" by John Prine

I decided a while ago that it would be pretty neat
to pick a song a week and do a post revolving around it.
The songs....well, the plan is to simply turn my iPod/iTunes onto
shuffle, and take the first song i deem worthy.

The very honorable First song is one by an old time fav...
John Prine.
ahhhhh John Prine. How i Love thee.

---------------

"Paradise"

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.

Chorus:
And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

Repeat Chorus:

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

---------------


Its a pretty highly political song, when you dig into it a bit
and Really think about the impact that Peabody's has had on our nation
A quick Wikipedia search and we find that
"Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU), previously Peabody Coal Company, is the largest coal mining company in the world, mining 240 million tons of coal annually, providing 10% of US energy and 3% of world energy."

The Wiki information goes on and on,
and addresses this same John Prine song,
but that's it. it addresses it. and moves in defending Peabody's.

Never does it mention that
in the late 1960s.
Peabody's Coal company began strip mining on their Navajo and Hopi land.
A ruthless excavation.

The company pointed to a some contract, signed by some navajos
...as their way saying "hey, its OKAY that we do this..."
but in the spring of 1969...150 navajo's met to declare that the strip mining would
pollute the water and the air, destroy the grazen land for livestock,
use up their scarce water resources.
But of course Peabody's put out a public relations pamphlet put out by Peabody's
showing fishing lakes, grassland, trees...
The Hopi tribe was also in outrage, they wrote Nixon, to no avail,
and exclaimed the destruction and injustice that was happening.

Even if you are to look up
"Black Mesa Peabody Coal debate"
on Wikipedia....It
1. has a "this article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards"
because 2. It is a completely biased sect of information.

But who cares. Wiki's not trustworthy anyway, and we all know that.
BUT it is what high schoolers are using as 'resources' for their English papers
its what people jump to as a quick reference.
Gross.

the song isn't just about one small County being taken over by
a coal company, and its lands turning into a ...not-as-great vacation spot...
its Not.
The hidden piece is that Kentucky wasn't the only place destroyed.
From Muhlenburg KY all the way to New Mexico
Its that the essence of the land has been changed.
It is not land for the sake of being land,
it is land for the sake of creating energy and profit.
*read Heidegger
for more depth on that of 'essence'
he uses a river and a dam as an example...
Its like when a river is ...beautiful and grand because it is a river...
but we put a dam up and no longer is it beautiful and grand for its own sake
but because there's a massive dam there.... its no longer seen as....a river, its a power source.*
grrrrr.
And even beyond that....
this compnay, peabody's, REMAINS on the fortune 500....
a company that........gets the government behind it, and literally...
shoves people off of their land....and moves along....

I'll let you relate this to today's economy on your own...
i have homework to do.