computer number 3

good news my club, i have a new computer once again!!! it is a macbook pro from 2016 and it has half peeled stickers on it of sea creatures and ghosts. i will not be removing them. i hope to not have anymore laptops after this one for at least 6 months. however no one talks about the complicated transition to a new computer. i have done it too many times recently. to be honest i miss my laptop from middle school. it had puffy stickers on every inch of the keyboard. it was heavy as hell and my dad would have to use it in public sometimes.

now i am transitioning to this smooth macbook (my first ever mac, might i add) from my slow dell laptop. but my slow dell laptop has all my things. all my passwords and videos and my softwares. but this computer is slick and was gifted to me by someone i love! and it blogs so quick.

one resolution of mine is to blog weekly again. it was very freeing. i love you blog. today i will talk about my recent trip to belize. actually i am kind of sleepy and its almost 11 pm. so i will show my scrapbook scans and be gone for a minute.

in other news, i am really into writing letters. maybe that's why i haven't been online: i am analog now?! no i will never be analog and we all know this. in fact i am more obsessed with robots than ever before.

i also went to the library and borrowed some dvds to watch

i love dvds.

reviews are soon to come

amtrak to boston

i write this on my phone because my laptop is once again so broken. i need the robots to come in and repair it. but for now i have an hour left to boston as i sit with my two sleeping best friends. we all woke up too early.

i feel like i need to embrace writing again. i need my life to slow down. i need to be creative. that’s why i brought my travel scrapbook with me to boston so i can stitch together these moments and enjoy them too. i’ve been reading We by Yevgeny Zaymatin and writing more music and watching a lot of movies. albeit bad movies but they just make you appreciate the good ones more. my favorite movie i've seen in the year of our lord 2025 so far is Twelve Angry Men. i am the thirteenth angry man because i was really hoping it was not that good and it’s just pretentious people praising it, but it was really good unfortunately. it makes me want to go to the theatre and watch a play. maybe even write a play one day, but i need to write a movie first.

i am on a break from school, and i intended to start writing my short film but instead i’m going to boston. a lot of great films take place in boston, so maybe inspiration is nigh. i think my film will be about microscopes because i have 5 of them and i think they could be utilized. maybe it’s a drama about a boy who wants to live life at the microscopic level. maybe it’s a psychological thriller about an obsessed lover who must observe every millimeter of their girlfriend. maybe it’s a low budget sci-fi about a rapidly multiplying alien cell, so rapid that 5 microscopes are needed to look at it. i am not sure yet but i have ideas.

i went to the metropolitan museum of art in december and took lots of reference images, but this one sticks with me. i want to replicate this, maybe not in the microscope film, but another. or maybe all of the microscopes assume the positions around jesus and the mad scientist lays in the middle. i am not sure.

i took a lot of pictures in the met anyways, mostly of reflections and windows. there’s too many to dump here so take 3.

maybe the rest will be revealed later.

this post was to express my hope for the future and my creative endeavors. a lot is happening in my life now but also nothing at all? are things closing up or opening i don’t know. i will find out soon enough. maybe the answer is in boston written in the harbor with tea leaves. maybe the answer is from my pair of friends. maybe my answer is asleep at home. 

boston vlog coming soon? 2025 is the year of youtube. only 3 months until the blogaversary

senior year start

i am five days into senior year. i am enjoying myself so far. i am not stressed yet.

at school classes are still easy so I have just been taking videos on my camcorder and doodling. I love doing these doodle dumps so here is one now. Except i am trying to format them better this time because Blogger sucks with sort of stuff. I only have something to say about like 5 of them so...

this one is a short comic i made based on the story of Dido and Iarbus i learned in Latin class where Iarbus told Dido he would give her all the land she could cover with a bulls hide, so she cuts it into strips and outlines what would become Carthage. i love comics. I also drew my characters from the other comics that I made over the summer.

here they are except I gave the boy a tan and a different outfit and I forgot the robot's main body design and also what his eyes looked like. it's fine because designs change. I don't think i ever gave the boy an actual name. i think Androkles stuck with me though. Andro for short? and then its like man and robot wowwww right. one day a comic about them will actually be made.

these are the last doodles by the way.. as you can tell I like to label my drawings. I will make more comics in between classes. 

other things going on..... the photoshoot! i learned a lot about taking photos. for one, i know what ISO is but I don't know how to change it on my camera. one of my struggles was shooting in the day and the night. one of my models (friends) woke up at 2pm and the shoot was delayed to 6:30. so half of the pics are a totally different vibe than the other. let me just show the pics.

this is my example. i also experimented with editing but i just can't get them in the same ballpark (pun intended). 

I am really tired so i will write more on the shoot later. i loved it though.

comic relief

I actually have something robot related today for you, my club!

today I was bored. the end of summer is almost here and i feel like nothing has happened because of days like today. because nothing was happening. I bought pizza. I played Everything Stays (from adventure time) on bass and Misses (by dominic fike) on guitar. and I thought about the comic strips I drew as a child. 

this idea has been marinating in my brain for like 2 days right now. the vision was a boy and a robot. the boy was burning ants with a magnifying glass. then the robot zaps the ants with his laser eyes. and then the boy looks back to the robot and says something like "show off  >:/"

you see, i was just going to draw the comic strip and be done there. but i started to get excited. and i started to think about the story and the characters and their origins and how i could not only have one of my favorite things (robots) with one of my other favorite things (the classical world)!!! and how beautiful the blend of ultramodern technology and classical technology could be!!! and so i began...

The Robot: MDM03/Tris

the robot is was made in a lab in the year 2506 AD as a weapon for war but he refused to be a killing machine and he escaped through a secret government prototype time machine and ended up in Hellenistic Syracuse! his model name was MDM03 (Mass Destruction Mechanoid 03) but the boy who finds him calls him Tris (τρῐ́ς) because of the 3. 

The Greek Boy: ???

he is from Syracuse circa Hellenistic period and he is an engineer. he was born without only one whole arm, so even though he's 15 years old he is not training to be a warrior. instead, he is training to be a protégé of Archimedes, the great Syracusan engineer!! if only he could get his attention.. when he finds Tris he has to choose between greatness and a true friend?? 

the Boy has no name yet. and also his relationship with Tris has not been fully fleshed out. I don't know if I want the Boy to be like, protecting Tris from Hiero or Hieronymus (tyrants of Syracuse), or like plotting to use Tris so he can stand out to his idol Archimedes. Do i want the Boy to have this internal battle or just be morally gray or be a total sweetheart or what!!! the storyline has not been filled out bc i wasn't planning on writing a graphic novel or anything. i guess i know why people make these OCs (original characters) and give them backstories and whatnot. i will write the actual comic in a couple days i swear. but i really like this.

I listed the names in the image but the main contenders are Hylas, Nikomachus, and Androkles. I want something very Greek but also cute. i will decide as the days come. my working title for the comic strip is Archimedes' Screw just because it sounds cool but something like Hylas and the Robot or Bots in Syracuse is fun. i could write a lot more about my ideas but they are all in the pictures so why restate it all.

as a child I had a ton of comic series. my favorite followed 2 alien blobs named Evan and Kylo who got into all kinds of trouble. another was about an octuplet of 8 eggs, the Eggtuplets, named after all the different ways to serve an egg (Omelet, Poachy, Sunny, Scrambles, FryFry, Yolker, Deviled, and Benny). i even wrote a comic about my own family on a treasure hunt for canola oil because we always used it to make brownies and the grocery store ran out of it. i think we all should be making comics casually in this way. i will start doing this very soon, i say as i write an entire plotline and universe for a Syracusan boy and a robot from the future.

i love robots and I love classical history. this may be my new passion project.

о̄hara museum in kurashiki

trying to be brief for once. here are paintings i loved in the Ōhara museum in Kurashiki, Okayama. i got int trouble for taking a picture of one of the paintings so most of these i had to remember by taking a picture of the placard or writing it down in my notes app. i present you:

Hector and Andromache by Giorgio de Chirico

(the illiad plus mechanical metaphysical elements? this painting was basically made for me)

The Woodcutter by Ferdinand Hodler

(this guy basically only paints lumberjacks for some reason)

Scene in the Deep Sea by Harue Koga

From Now On by Mizuno Rina

Before the Ball by Tsuguhara Foujita

??? by Paul Serusier

??? by Koide Narashige (i think)

Clayey Animal from the Later Han Dynasty

there was a painting called The Day My Son Yo Died in English that I adored but i didn't take a picture of it or note the artists name. I can't find it anywhere online. one day i will find it. all this shit took me like 45 minutes to put together because the о̄hara museum has no website!!!!! and all the english names are different than the actual names so i had to do a lot of reverse image searching via pinterest. i dont even know the names of 2 of these paintings. my favorite by far was Hector and Andromache though. i love mythological art. 

in conclusion what a hidden gem of a museum that deserves more attention. this museum had a ton of picassos and monets as well, all hidden away in the okayama prefecture. a good place to spend your birthday ;]

notebook

hi club!

I think today is the last day I will be posting on schedule. i try to post every monday but I think it's making me less creative. I want to post freely and consistently, but not strictly. sometimes I get on this site and my mind flows but i know it could flow more without this monday schedule stuff. just saying it right now.

anyways here's what I've been doing. i went to the park two days ago with my notebook and pastels and doodled a little while listening to Pure Heroine by Lorde and Nocturne by Wild Nothing. Not sure if those albums are influential in these drawings tho. i definetly want to do this again. I had so much fun. tomorrow I go to the beach and im thinking I draw on the way there. either that or read Stardust by Neil Gaiman.

I drew on that little half scrap first as practice. I want to use this notebook up to the fullest. this was starting at the back of it because the first half was drawings from when i was in elementary school. none of them were remarkable. My favorite thing, though, was this list I wrote:

I've known Brodie since I was 3. she was my ride or die in elementary school. She still is. but I don't still write lists of things to talk about on facetime because I want to make the best of the time I have with my mom's phone. I wish i still loved someone this much. I wonder if anyone will make a list like that for me. I wonder if, back in the day, Brodie made a list like this for me too.

the other cute thing I found was a poem I wrote. My favorite poem used to be This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams:

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

I wrote my own version apparently:

I loved aliens as a kid. this poem doesn't entirely accurately mimic the original, but maybe next blog post will be a revised version. i love how it says "If you have feet" like the alien is not familiar with the anatomy of the human species, but is with slippers. the second stanza just says "thunderously into/your bedroom/window" without a verb. You fill in the blank I suppose.

this was all very sweet to find. My birthday is coming up and I can't help but feel so old, especially reading these back. but maybe putting new entries into these notebooks is my way of coming back to my youth, especially doodling with this crayonesque style. I love being teenaged and i am not ready to be over with it so I am trying to go back to the start I suppose.

in fact I've been watching raunchy old movies about american teenagehood, specifically Wet Hot American Summer (2001) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). i originally watched Wet Hot American Summer because it was during the NY/NJ heatwave and i was like yeah, my summer is wet and hot and american right now. then I watched Fast Times because it's classic and I literally got it at the library as a DVD, in the way it was meant to be consumed. i liked it a lot. bring this shit back please.

the best I've got are my flicks from this week, when i went to the beach with my teenaged friends.

I love them. I love brodie still.

doodle appreciation

 

I drew this in literature class today and I felt like sharing

More to come to this post but i am not in the headspace for it right now. Take these for now

Ok I'm right now. Here are more doodles from my schoolwork <3

It's always the tests I do bad on that have the dumbest doodles. I wonder if there is some correlation there. Instead of drawing this bug I should have been looking over my Greek paper.

Should I get into painting? What if I painted this doodle?

I love drawing snakes I realized. I like to label them as snakes as well. I like how the middle snake says Snake Is Observed. The top snake probably ate a cardboard box and that's why it's shaped like that. The bottom snake looks like it's part of a political campaign.

Would it be robotics club without a robot? This summer I plan to build a robot. For now I will just draw them on my math homework.

cupid and psyche

Cupid and Psyche, plaster sculpture

Antonio Canova, 1794

I saw this at the Metropolitan Museum of Art today. I wish I took a picture of it myself, but I was with someone and I was a little bashful of my interest in this sculpture. It also felt too intimate to stick my iPhone into. Here is a close-up of the prime version in the Lourve, made of marble (the Met has the second model):

I read the story of Cupid and Psyche after seeing this. It mostly comes from the Metamorphoses by  Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (or Platonicus) from the 2nd century AD, but has a lot of different interpretations. The story basically goes like this:

Psyche was a beautiful princess who was often compared to Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology). Aphrodite was displeased and sent her son Cupid (also known as Eros/Amor) to make her fall in love with something ugly. Instead, he pricks himself on his arrows and instantly falls in love with Psyche.

Psyche's father suspects that he has displeased the gods because Psyche is still unmarried. The oracle of Apollo tells him that she must be sacrificed to a monster as a wife. When she is awaiting the monster, a wind god Zephyr brings her to a lavish palace where Cupid takes care of her. However, Cupid doesn't allow Psyche to see him, as his godly form may harm her. He only visits her in the darkness and she accepts this lifestyle. 

Psyche's jealous sisters come to visit her and are struck with jealousy when they see her luxurious home. They drive distrust into Psyche, urging her to find out her husband's true form and seeing if he is a terrifying monster. One night, Psyche brings a lamp and a dagger to Cupid in the dark in an attempt to see his form and kill him. Instead, she sees the beautiful god that he is and basically freaks out. He freaks out too and flies away, dropping her off by by a river.

Psyche wanders from temple to temple looking for divine help, but realizes she can only be helped by Aphrodite herself. Aphrodite puts her through torturous trials. First, Psyche is expected to sort an abundance various grains and seeds into piles, but she is helped by a colony of ants. Second, Psyche is sent to cross a river to collect golden wool from sheep belonging to Helios (god of the Sun). She intends to drown herself, but receives godly advice to collect the wool snagged on nearby bushes. Third, she is sent to gather water from the Styx and Colchis rivers but falls into despair. Luckily, Zeus (or Jupiter) takes pity and sends an eagle to get the water for her.

The final trial is traveling to the Underworld and capturing the beauty of Proserpina (queen of the Underworld/Persephone) in a box. Psyche is overwhelmed by despair again and tries to throw herself off a tower, but suddenly the tower begins to give her advice in travelling to the Underworld. Essentially, the tower says to not make eye contact with anyone and pay the ferryman of the Styx fairly. 

She follows the instructions and Proserpina grants her this gift. However, when Psyche reaches the land of the living, she can not help but open the box. When she does, she falls into a deep sleep. Cupid finds her asleep and sends her to Aphrodite with the box. Meanwhile, he argues to Zeus that Aphrodite is being unjust with these trials and the other gods agree. They all invite Psyche up to Olympus and give her ambrosia, which grants immortality. Cupid and Psyche have a daughter named Voluptas (the goddess of pleasure) and live happily together forever.

I actually love that story. After reading and translating Vergil's Orpheus and Eurydice story (the Georgics), I can almost see it as a happier version. Psyche and Orpheus are incredibly similar. Both travel to the Underworld for their lover. Both can not resist looking at what they aren't supposed to, whether it be a box or Eurydice in the Underworld or Cupid in the dark. Both are shown pity by divine beings. Psyche got lucky with Zeus' verdict and got to live a happily ever after. Orpheus did not.

There's also the obvious parallel to Heracles, as he was also put through trials and tribulations by a goddess. However Psyche is not portrayed as a mighty warrior or wise hero. Instead, she gets a lot of divine assistance and tries to kill herself three times. 

I also liked the charm of this story. How does Psyche just accept not knowing what her spouse looks like? Why does a colony of ants help her with her task? Why is there a talking tower? Why does it know so much about the Underworld? After Psyche becomes immortal, she is known as the goddess of the soul, which is so sweet. I would like to be a symbol of the soul. 

When looking for other depictions of them, I noticed a lot of the artwork showed Cupid as a winged baby and Psyche as a pregnant woman, which is not entirely comfortable to the modern eye. However, these other pieces do not, and are so beautiful that I must share them too:

^Amore e Psiche by Giuseppe Crespi (1707–09)

^Cupid and Psyche by William Page (1843)

^Cupid and Psyche by Edvard Munch (1907) 

TLDR: I fell down the rabbit hole of Cupid and Psyche. I stayed up way too late on this.