Made of Carbon

Hi. Please find me at my new blog: Made of Carbon.

Things I love Sundays - January 4

This video makes me want to go into animation as a career.

LITERARY TATTOOS: There is something about having a quote from your favorite book typed across your skin that just makes me smile. Maybe "birds. birds ate my face." (Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters) or a semi-colon on my wrist.

NEW MUSIC: I got an iTunes gift card for a birthday present and found Papercuts, a neo-hippie band that I now adore, and the Feathers song "Old Black Hat With a Dandelion Flower". On my iPod, I found Caribou's "Hello Hammerheads" and Rock City's Obama version of "Paper Planes".

JANOWRIMO: 50K words in a month. Stories about road trips and love and dogs pissing out windows. It's good fun and keeps me focused on writing every day.

MIRROR'S EDGE: The EA Games new video game, Mirror's Edge, completely blows me away. The graphics, the heart-exploding pace, the running, jumping, leap-of-Faith-ing. Amazing. I could play it forever.

DISNEY RETRO PINUPS: By Amy Mebberson.


BRAILLE "TATTOOS": They are "implants creating embossed text in braille placed under skin, can be read by touch / stroke by blind people." Really cool stuff on that website, if you search around. 

down and out - on - murder mile

I really liked fucked-up books. Suicides, drug addictions, rape, death. Tragedies. Things too terrible to see in the light of day. That's why I love this book.

I was originally draw to this book because it is yellow. But, as I flipped through the pages, I was thrown into the story of a heroin addict and his junkie wife with a narrator's voice like this sound of the city. It's raw. Scary. Real. Honest. Beautiful. It discusses addiction, love, hate, beauty, fear, the façade of real life. 

It's a fast read.

Read it. 

iTunes - Tunes of i - senuTi

Something I learned today.

Preface: My iPod has been screwed up for about six months - after it's been fully charged, it loses power in about thirty seconds.

To fix my iPod, I've decided to restore it to the original settings. This means that I'll have to lose all of my songs, most of which are not on my computer, and all of my settings. However, as I valiantly tried to copy all of my media to iTunes, it simply wouldn't work.

But, I have figured it out. To copy your music from your iPod to iTunes, open up your iPod folder from My Computer. It should have a hidden folder called iPod_Control, which has all of your settings, music, cover art, etc. Right-click the folder and chose Properties, then un-check the Hidden box under Attributes. Click Okay.  Now, you are free to File, Add New Folder to Library in iTunes.

El fin.

Edited to add: Restoring my iPod did fix the battery problem, but not all of my music was stored, though I copied it to iTunes. Weird, but worth it.

sinfest - fest of sin - tsefnis

Sinfest has become one of my favorite comics ever. It covers just about everything - love, religion, good, evil, sex, rejection, indulgence, porn - with clever dialog and beautiful lineart. Multiple sets of stories (Slick and Monique, God and Devil, Pooch and Percy) flow together to create a comic that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you say, "What the fuck did I just read."

Highly recommended. Brilliant.

wordstock 3 - wordstock three - wordstock tres

I know I'm the second-worst blogger ever (thanks for being first, Laura.)

However, I feel obligated to share this and this and this with you for my own bragging benefit. I am now officially published!

I now have eight copies of my book in my possession. I bought them at the Wordstock festival in Portland on the weekend of my birthday at the Franklin, Beedle & Associates Publishing booth. When my mom and I went to the cashier (Jim Leisy, who originally started the Short Fiction Competition) to buy our copies, he remarked, "Wow, you sure are buying a lot of these."

My mom replied, "Well, my daughter is a finalist."

The entire booth erupted. "This is Danya?!" "Danya, we think you have so much potential!" "I loved your story!"A judge from the competition was there and he told me that he received my story because another judge had put it through to him as the winner of ten stories he had read.

It was amazing, it was incredible, it was what I want to do for the rest of my life.

juno - juno - juno

i think that it's just about time to do a post about the movie "juno". obviously, the movie is entirely founded on clever dialouge ("that ain't no etch-a-sketch; this is one doodle that can't be undid, homeskillet.", "i figured you could never have enough of your favorite one-calorie breath mint.", etc.) and witty, random characters, but is overall a fucking awesome movie. this is my favorite scene and i think it gives you a pretty much solid look at what "juno"'s all about:

also, the soundtrack is a fantastic array of indie-rock. it's awesome.