my thoughts on the ipad

ok first off the name is just really really tragic.

secondly…. ok too much to type so i did a youtube video

and it cut off. for the rest of it i talked also about how i wish there was a camera to take stills and a web cam with it.

it also really annoyed me how many games were announced with it. there’s such a business use for this but they’re making into a hand held entertainment center, which is good but if that’s all people see it used for it’s not going to sell cause people do far more business than pleasure.

but gotta say LOVE  the new york times app and i think ALL news agencies should do this and website/ eink on this device. i know it would cut out 30 minutes of my morning at home if i could check BBC on the crosstown bus.

dreams always run faster than the technology, i mean that is what science fiction was birthed from but i feel we’re at a point where a lot of this can and will be available in the next few years or months (even better!). i think for now though i’m going to hold out on getting the ipad because as with any apple product the first gen always has problems…

but bravo Steve on making something which has sparked my imagination and i hope that what i want will come true in the near future.

~Lauran

bright spots

been having a hard stressful time of it. it’s days, oh hell, weeks! like this that make me take a closer look at the world around me and find something wonderful.

Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing. -Cormac McCarthy

oh no!

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Koalas ‘could face extinction’.

 

Koalas have chlamydia??? guess it’s true the cute ones are always the dirty whores.

 

in other news sorry been absent

been sick/busy/stressed/roommate’s moving out/ money shit/ blah

have kept me away from posting anything

don’t really want to do bitchy ranting posts, don’t want to make this “that” kind of blog

though happy thoughts cause JONATHAN’S COMING IN 11 DAYS!!!

very excited if you hadn’t guessed already.

 

hope you’re all well

~Lauran

whoa…

my mind is blown, completely blown away by this BBC news article. This new instrument is crazy all the different sounds it can do. Looks like it would be fun to play with and easy to fiddle around on and create music. First there was the synth keyboard in the 80’s that sounded like shit. more recently there was the Tenori-on made famous by the fabulous Little Boots. But this thing just blows all of that out of the water. I’m sure music geeks across the world just got a hard on watch the video for this thing. Though the one things I really didn’t like is watching the 3 guys jam you’re not really sure where the sound is coming from. I don’t know but it just seems to strip too much from what it is to really play an instrument. I’m not sure but it doesn’t seem to follow any of the sort of rules that apply to traditional musical instruments. whatever happened to cords and scales?

we’ll see if it actually catches on, that things looks wicked expensive.

I’ll be interested to see who the first nutter who buys one is and what they’ll do with it.

sincerely

~Lauran

Boots, Bones, and Spurs

like the title? yea me too

ok so we’re going to go in reverse order of the title so first Spurs, as in Tottenham hotspurs. Big win this weekend against Portsmouth. In the league standings not that big but when you take into account that the manager, Harry Redknapp, and three players Defoe, Crouch, and Niko  all used to be with Portsmouth, for the club it was a big win. It was a brutal game though Defoe got the red card which i thought was bogus. Being a man up Pompy really started to play dirty, I was very happy when Brown finally got the red card and was sent off.

Bones: This weekend I went with a group of my Anthro club babies to see the Lucy’s Legacy exhibit at Discovery times square. The exhibit was amazing. there were real acheulian hand axes which are actually massive! tons of really cool casts of different skulls. They had the real Ida plaque B which was amazing. Half the exhibit was a “yay go Ethiopia” sort of thing promoting the religious history of the country. But the bit that I was really looking forward to was in the last room where lain out in a glass case was Lucy herself. The real 3.4 million year old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton of Lucy! She was so gorgeous I cried. Seeing her was one of the 100 things want to do before I die. Yay checked another one off! The best thing though was the security guard who was guarding over Lucy was so cool. We were chatting with him and mentioned that we were anthropology students to which he said “hang out here til it clears out a bit, i always do right by the anthro kids” He actually let us take pictures!!!! I’ll post the pictures on my flickr later and then share them here.

And finally Boots as in Little Boots as in a totally awesome chick from the UK who through self promotion on youtube was named UK’s sound of 2009. She started out about a year and a half ago writing songs and posting videos of her performing these song in her bed with a keyboard and her awesome Tenori-on. She’s fabulous and is my fashion crush.

Stuck on Repeat

Meddle

Remedy

Earthquake

Watch her, listen to her, lover her. I command it.

Also go with books I got 2 new books from amazon this weekend. The Archaeology of Disease and The Archaeology of Death and Burial. I need stop buy more books cause I’m going to need to ship them to the UK when I move next summer! Applying to grad schools is fun. I’m going to study Osteology/ Bioarchaerology for my master’s, applying to University College London, Birbeck University, and University of Sheffield. Sheffield has a really awesome funerary archaeology program but I think I’d rather do my PhD there cause I’m really tired of having a long distance relationship and I really want to move in with Jonathan. Sheffield is my last choice cause I don’t really want to go all the way up to Sheffield and Jonathan said he didn’t want me there either.

that’s all for now.

~Lauran

oddities

this is a journal of oddities from all over. i enjoy oddities, they’re the little things in life that make you look twice and go wait what?

my first oddity comes from the BBC and an article last week about zebras in the Gaza zoo

recently i’ve gotten really into photographing street graffiti, some of it is really amazing. People like Banksy have made it popular and even fashionable to do. There’ a Banksy down on Canal st that i have to go photograph, saw it when driving past in a cab last spring…hope it’s still there. But people like Banksy have made it into a global art project to leave marks on cities world wide. This is interesting to me cause I live in New York and the have been spending a lot of time in London. This summer I wandered around London finding all sorts of interesting niches. One which i found was this

Pacman mosaic on the side of a building on Brick lane in the Shoreditch area of London.

when i got back to New York I then found this

Pacman mosaic found on the side of curb on W 23rd st in the Chelsea area of New York city.

I guess I like it because it’s a link between where I am and where I want to be.

Political graffiti is also on the rise in the US. During the last election we saw one guy’s graffiti art became the central image of a presidential campaign. I found this one in SoHo.
If you can’t read that it says “Laser guided democracy”.

Now I may post images which speak out against conditions in the US and they may call of a rise to revolution i just want to state now that in this blog i will not state if I do or don’t agree with made statements, I’m just the anthropologist reporting interesting findings. I do like the come back of graffiti which makes a political statement, we seemed to lose that here with the implementation of Reaganism.

~Lauran

fashion’s night in

with my sort of personal style i often get asked where i shop. the answer is all over the place. the answer is there is no one place i shop. i keep a running score of what i own and what i might need to add in my head. i am the essential hunter gatherer of fashion.  so i’ve done this journal to act as a visual representation of this fact

look 1: boots: ebay; socks: century 21; tighs: H&M; shorts: BCBG; t-shirt: vintage shop in Santa Barbara, CA; yellow jumper: Urban outfitters; blazer: free people; scarf: thrift store in Lincoln, UK

look 2: Boots: modcloth.com; Socks: uhhhh scottish highland festival?; trousers: Tripp jeans from Trash and Vaudeville; jumper: JCpenny?; Jacket: Urban Outfitters; Scarf: thrift store in Lincoln, UK; head bands: Forever 21

look 3: Boots: ebay; Tighs: American Apparel; Trench coat: Joy, London, UK; sweater dress (under trench): Forever 21; Belt: Spitalfield Market, London, UK; Scarf: vintage shop, London, UK

Look 4: Boots: ebay; Tights: H&M; Jumper: rescued from my dad’s closet when my mom tried to throw it out; Belt: Spitalfield Market, London, UK; Scarf: thrift store, Lincoln, UK

so there’s your answer. plus finding great accessories brings a whole news aspect to an outfit, they can take you from just jeans and a tank top to a wow factor.

hop this was informative

ttyl

~Lauran

a lot can change in a week

blah so this week has been crazy but actually really good crazy.

started off sunday night having a breakdown while looking up work visa application stuff for next year. ok so that part wasn’t so good but i ended up tweeting this “whenever i look at the UK visa info i get really down and think i’ll never be able to get one. was having a good night and now i’m depressed” and this “crying myself to sleep. oh UK why must you be so stingy and heartbreaking with you visa permits? give a girl in love/with a dream a break” which lead my former professor/ friend/ guru to tweet this “@kittienthecity Tea is called for. This week, I promise. Even if you have to come to my house and have it. I’ll make you beans on toast.”

next day we had tea between classes and she was screw getting a work visa you’re going to grad school, she says we’ll find funding and get amazing recommendation letters and i’ll get in, do part time cause it costs less, get a student visa, then apply for a work visa so i can work to help pay for my school costs and with the fact that i’ve already worked in the UK it should give me a stronger footing. so ok now there’s just the little thing of  ‘ahhh i’m applying for grad school!’

so what’s my dream program you might ask UCL Skeletal and Dental Bioarchaeology what’s my back up Birbeck University of London Archaeology masters. so yea wish me luck. to fund both of those i need about $5000 up front….still hoping that my great uncle who just died left me some money.

so having the fact of going to grad school sped up to 3 years sooner than i expected i’m not going to have as much field experience to carry me into the program. but i do have field experience already, and lab, and i’m going to try to work in the field again this summer, though there’s a lot of shit going on this coming summer already like moving and 2 possible trips of Greece and a road trip in the US.

with having to rely more on my grades i’ve been emailing those 3 professors which i have FINs for. heard back from one of them and i just have to do 2 papers for him and we’re square. another professor i owe a paper. and the third one i’ll probably have to trek to the English department to find cause i’ve lost his email address.

but yea everything’s working out! once i get these 3 classes sorted out i’ll a) have more credits and b) my GPA will go up a lot! (FINs factor in as F’s so yea not looking to hot right now in the GPA department but all 3 i shouldn’t get less than a B in)

so i am busy as now but really really happy.  and still finding time to find things like

the Paranthropus boisei ancestor of Fu Man Chu

gotta keep things light hearted. ok back to work. tons of papers you know

tata

~Laurna

random things on the internet

ok so too much work to do to blog properly so enjoy these random little internet gems

bigfoot

this is from one of my professors actually we have an assignment due where we have to read an article ‘proving’ the existence of bigfoot and then say if the article went through all the proper anthropological criteria. should be well interesting.

and the next one falls under the category of are you an idiot?

ok well that’s all for now. doing homework and making lasagna. if i fail at the lasagna i’ll post a fail blog about it.

tata

sincerely

~Lauran

warning semi-angsty post

blah… yea that pretty much sums it up. i’m not even going to post really there’s no point. i know what’s wrong i’m just stressed, i’m too busy doing what i have to, what i’m supposed to and what people want me to that i’m losing myself. there are so many things i want to do to find myself but i haven’t got the cash. the thinness of my wallet just adds to the stress. i want to do something for myself and something more than just sit and watch tv. i’m really leaning to getting a fucking tattoo. stars. not sure where though, might do the shooting star up the side of my tit, but then again no money. if any one wants to fund my delinquency please let me know.

today i splurged and had a lunch with friends that was really good but way more than i wanted to spend. then i went to barnes & noble and got 4 books. 1 it turns out was the wrong book and i already have a copy of it so it’s getting returned, it was also the more expensive so i feel a little less bad about buying it since i’m going to return it. so the titles are “written in bones” (to be returned), “The bog people: iron-age man preserved”, “human sacrifice: an expose of ritual killings worldwide”, and “the buried soul: how humans invented death”. the last 2 i’m really excited about. the buried souls one has a chapter on funeral feasts (what sold me on the book), which is just a nice way of saying cannibalism. no clue why i like this and human sacrifices but i do. my mum says i’m morbid and has told me i’m not allowed to do my PhD on either of these subjects because she’ll not be able to tell people about what i do. but i like it an it makes me happy so whatever.