~ time to get ready for the convention at www.d2kla.org

~ are you looking for the photos of the new home for the southern california institute of architecture? in seven weeks, this building (*link removed) will be converted into the most intense, ‘avant garde’ graduate and under-graduate architectural school in downtown l.a., if not the world….

~ it might be late for a countdown, but there are now less than four hours until the first showing, at midnight, of ‘x-men’ in los angeles.

~ the mazda 323 still lies dead in the road.

~ as if there wasn’t enough nonsense at sci-arc [w] these days, someone has decided to repeatedly post someone else’s private emails to the school news folder, using my name as an alias. i didn’t see the posts, as they were posted while i was at work [w] and they were removed by the administrator, but i have been told that the return address was my name @hotmail.com. i am insulted not because someone tried to hurt me or embarrass me with such a childish and thoughtless attack; rather, i am insulted that the best this perpetrator could do was create a hotmail account. hotmail? surely, i warrant some greater degree of creativity, like, star94mail.com or welcometohell.com or blowjob.com. hotmail? clearly we are dealing with an amateur; i would hope that i have mustered a higher quality of enemy. i suppose not. i wonder if it ever crossed their minds to realize that someone who owns a domain, such as www.angryredplanet.org, does not need to go to hotmail for an account, especially an ‘anonymous’ account with my name all over it.

~ it seems to me that only two people have access to the emails which i supposedly forwarded. one of them has no stake in passing along the mail, let alone wasting time bringing me into it, while the other one has proven – publicly and repeatedly – himself to be deranged and untrustworthy. most people i have spoken with seem to have some pretty good theories on how this came about. i need to talk to some folks in the morning, especially one of the parties whose email is concerned; until then, know that if it is not from angryredplanet.org, it can not be trusted.

~ in happier news, i am already leaving – by plane – for atlanta in about 30 hours; the plan is to spend one week there, and then drive to los angeles. i tell my boss this, and she asks if i want to go to new york and pick up her truck. i explain that new york is not on the route from georgia to southern california, and that the extra time driving means extra time away from phobos. however, after hours of negotiations, i leave the office with plans to bring phobos to her studio tomorrow morning, so that i may fly to new york the day after i arrive from atlanta.

~ not much is happening in sci-arc; it is the final day of the rotondi studio final reviews. i have taken the opportunity to add a few more photos to the angry red planet image log, some of which can be seen no where else on the site…

~ if you are one of the two visitors who got here looking for a blog *and* you are interested in the so cal lifestyle, take a look at ellie’s site [w], as there is mention of the getty center this week…

~ ‘a week beyond reason’ is how i have described the past few days to an out-of-town acquaintance. there is pandemonium at school, with childish letters from instructors to students, knee-jerk reactions to rightfully posted concerns, and petty goading from vindictive pissants who can’t get anyone to give them the time of day. some fellow thesis researchers come across a proposal which is only two pages long; as we were all in the 30-50 page range, with me admittedly on the light side of the scale, tidal waves of rage immediately engulfed us. to this is added a note from an instructor who is ‘concerned’ with my performance during a presentation. this is how the stage is set as i walk into the hall for my final studio review and see that the jury is my personal sci-arc rogue’s gallery; my instructor seems to have made a point to invite everyone with whom i have a history. when they see me, they are already ready to go to it; nothing i say has any effect on the belittlement which immediately rains upon me and my mediocre project after i finish my little opening speech. i have never been a practitioner of the philosophy that a good night’s sleep and the accompanying lucidity is more important than staying up all night for that one final model and its accompanying groggy confusion.
so, when i am propped up against the wall and what could be my greatest antagonists (at least, those who are still allowed in the building), i am without defense immediately fall to the ground and am kicked repeatedly from all sides. my loving instructor attempted to prod a few responses that he knew were lurking inside me, but i was still trying to pick my broken teeth and glasses from the floor. after the blood ends, i have a date to see ‘hi fidelity’, but due to some confusion with the newspaper, we arrive too late for john cusack, and i am suckered into something which i would rather not mention…or even consider remembering…

~ at least i don’t have to drive to the freaking valley today.

~ i just woke up on the couch in the studio, because the ‘playground design’ class rudely began two feet away from me. without acknowledging any of them, i get up and walk to my desk, where i find that someone has left a sign that says ‘this is revolting’ on the roof of one of my models. i know that who the culprit must be, because i saw someone put the same sign on her crap last night. she is the biggest waste of space and resources in the studio, and she has decided to also be the most annoying by bringing a freaking german shepherd into class everyday – everyday that she actually shows up – for the past week. it lies on a drenched sheet of cardboard and slobbers into a huge bowl of cottage cheese that has been lying unrefrigerated for days. i couldn’t take looking at it anymore, so i pushed all of the dog’s crap back under her desk and covered it with the cardboard. i don’t know what possessed her to think that i wrote the sign, but i am intrigued as to whether she actually approaches me about it.
   it is revolting.

~ three more days before i can start enjoying los angeles again.

~ i did not attend today’s thesis research presentations, as their organization was both absurd and insulting.

~ i come in at 09h30 to present my ‘west hollywood living’ project – a fiasco – and i check my email, and i see a note from my thesis advisor stating that we have a presentation the next morning. twenty-four hours before the presentation, the advisor informs us of it. why this advisor could not tell us two weeks earlier or one week earlier or even one day earlier is beyond me. surely, this advisor knew his one plans for leaving town before this morning and could have told us the schedule. then i remember that this the same i have given this advisor three copies of my thesis proposal, and i have had zero of them returned. this is the advisor who has met with the group six times in a fifteen week semester; this is the advisor who told me that i was to wait in the hall to see if there was time to meet me, though i had an appointment a half hour earlier. this is the advisor who sent an email at 8am to cancel a 10am meeting, which was the first in two weeks.

   so, my thesis research course at sci-arc has been a sore disappointment. i don’t think that this is always the case; some people consider themselves very fortunate to have the advice of their instructors. i suppose it is just my bad luck and bad planning to become involved with someone who either is more concerned with getting his or her face on a poster than with answering students’ questions. perhaps, though, this advisor really wants to help, but just does not know enough to be of any benefit to anyone; perhaps, then, this advisor, through, ignorance, believes that a great deal of successful advising is going on. however, this does not explain the advisor’s arrogance and antagonism when concerns about the class are voiced; perhaps, then, this advisor does know of his own shortcomings and is trying to hide them behind his snide comments. no, this advisor is not an educator; this advisor is an architect. this advisor’s work is as ‘brilliant’ as the instructing is lackluster.
   at least i will have the chance to spend this summer writing my proposal again, after i fail this semester…

~ a woman from the studio accused me of ripping off vir2l [w], because we – vir2l and i – both use cubes and squares on a line; we looked at the sites, and i tried to explain that they are organic, fluid, and sentient, while i am mechanical, clumsy, and naive. all the while, i felt i was ripping off ziggen [w]…

~ i was waiting for hermann hertzberger to lecture at sci-arc [w] for weeks, excited to hear from the man with the greatest understanding that folks are going to have to live in ‘our’ building. shocked at how close some of his words came to the words that i had just written for my thesis advisor to ignore, i go back to studio to mull over his lecture, wondering if i could use a transcript or a video of it for my thesis research bibliography. i walk into the lecture hall to see that he has already gotten out, and the crowd has dispersed. i see a former instructor of mine fumbling with an accordion of paper.
   me: have you seen that old man who just gave that lecture?
   him: i don’t know; he wants me to have dinner with him for some reason.
   i see them at the end of the hallway.
   me: there he is. i see that he’s already been mobbed.
   him: well, if you want to talk to him, this will probably be your only chance.
   this will be my only chance not only tonight, but for the rest of my life. i follow the instructor over to the dinner party; he begins speaking with the other guests, leaving hermann free. i push between hermann and an old woman, and i ask for permission to ask a few questions. he smiles and lets me begin. i gush and fumble, trying to focus on the words that will interest him the most. when my awkward performance ends, he answers.
   hermann: yes, i have two books for you.
   i grab something on which i can take notes, as he rattles off the titles of the two books which he himself has written. he is carried away by the mob; i stand in the hall scratching my chin.
   i wonder what else i could have expected from someone who looks at slides of his own work and says ‘nice’.
   nice.

~ lest the angry red planet suffers more accusations of thievery, i have sought my own photo of angelyne. she is located on highland, in the middle of my very long friday drive from west los angeles to the freaking valley.

~ i’m about to fail thesis prep, flat depth has me seeing red, and i haven’t worked on studio all weekend; i’m burning at both ends to get some degree of useful freaking work done. the most appropriate response to a predicament like this is a redesign of the angry red planet. take a look at version 4(*link removed), but please remember that it is very much in progress, from hour to hour, between the 864 freaking marks i am making to find the value of erasure… expect some pieces to still be closed at this point, but if you find a broken link or image, why not tell us?

~ judging from experience, i would say that i have only two minutes of a connection to the internet before the network server at my school [w] crashes again. in the meantime, please don’t tell anyone i live like this.