405. The Debut Printfection T-shirt Printing Experiment: "Peace, Love, and Frogs" Etcetera on www.printfection.com/questionreality

Please visit http://www.printfection.com/questionreality!


Sample Printfection Question Reality store for Peace, Love, and Frogs


"Peace, Love, and Frogs" Collage

Peace, Love, and Frogs go hand-in-hand! A t-shirt specially requested and designed for my sister, Jenny. Also my first experiment with designing and printing t-shirts at www.printfection.­com/questionreality. In addition, I did this because I started to panic about the likelihood of TAing next year, and that I will have to overhaul my wardrobe. I will only be happy wearing "fashionable" clothes that I designed myself. Not the works of any other mass corporate entityt. Otherwise I make no aesthetic effort: I-am-a-baggy-plain-­t-shirt-and-shorts-­girl.


Question Reality Collage

Why now? Why did I start this t-shirt gig now when I had this idea in my head for over three years? When I was being an accredited t-shirt designer starting age 12? Well, why not? Let's see here. I wanted to start a website and a blog back in 2005. I cannot blame myself that the internet niche space has been rapidly shifting, but now there are companies that hold a level of stability I feel safe to experiment with. I was waiting... until innovation stabilized into Guaranteed Quality.

I think I need to snap out of the "why" question and beckon myself to "Just Do It."

I have a NEWS update--a writing class that might save my xss this quarter! A "writing about the environment" CCS course with Dr. Susan Keller, fresh out of the English Department (strange Ph.D. dissertation on make-up in English Literature). Well, what can I say? This might be my ultimate backup this quarter given that I cannot stay in Barry's course. Boohoo. But in a positive note, this class is right on the money in terms of my current needs. There is a lot of openness and suggestion as to where the class is going, but there is also structure and work ethic. We reviewed the syllabus today, in addition to critiquing two poems, which were quite a maze to me. There were a few words I did not understand. Apparently the two poets corresponded with each other competitively and collaboratively. They both painted portraits of "urban nature" back in the 1960s, organisms immersed within a human society. I enjoyed both poems. There were some original phrases I found inspirational--as an armadillo roles into a rolly polly ball or a clenched fist. Most significantly, I noticed that you can project "your inner mood" onto the description / perception of the outer environment. As Dr. Keller said, "This is not about writing about you, this is about writing about your perception of the world around you." Yep, yep, yep. I'm loving the class already....

266. Formatting the Question Reality Manuscript via Lulu: Loose Ends with Title Pages

"The thing that sucks" is that I created these "titles" for each chapter that I thought I was going to incorporate into the Question Reality manuscript, but I never ended up using them. Boohoo! So much for some hard work in simplistic photoshop formatting! I ended up using these files for my IQR question reality website, but that will soon be taken down to Google Sites. *Sigh.*

256. Formatting the Question Reality Manuscript via Lulu: Sample Copyright Page

Here is the pdf of the above image: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/copyrightpage1.pdf.

I also included the image "Terra's Dreams" on the copyright page. I was largely influenced by Robin Amber Kilgore's copyright page in her book, In her Bathrobe She Blogged. Robin included a little image of a "martini" on the copyright page, so I decided to include an image as well.

I have more detailed instructions on the copyright page on the ChemLab Protocol to Book Publishing on blog post #251. For example, I have some pointers on how to get an ISBN code, as well as discussing the process of copyrighting your work through the United States government and the lengthy process of acquiring a Library of Congress number.

In the fall of 2007, I remember completing the above image "Terra's Dreams," which make up of two separate images: Terra sleeping happily in bed and the fractal collage of images inspired from geologic and biological drawings. I vividly recall being along in my room, crying, bawling my eyes out, upon completing the above image. Terra and Buz were fighting to survive as a creative, abstract concept in my mind that was surrounded by an oppressive environment. My situation with graduate school was unstable and uncertain. I ended up writing in my IQRquestion reality website: "Sometimes, dreaming is a matter of survival. Please help Terra keep dreaming!"

Man, was I bawling my eyes out. I think I gained a lot of weight those months of October and November. The whole-what-in-the-hxll-am-I-doing-with-my-life type of syndrome. And who knows whether I was going to make it into grad school at UCSB--let alone which department. Fortunately the drama ended happily. I am back at UC Santa Barbara, through the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.

As I have said time-and-time again, "Life is a bxtch to go through, and a kick to reflect upon." I should make a t-shirt, eh?

118. Scrap Drawings and Documents for Designing the IQR Question Reality Website, Round 1

In fall of 2007, as a form of confidence boosting and stress relief, I worked very diligently on a website: http://IQRquestionreality.googlepages.com. I did this instead of working too much in the class Films of the Natural and Human Environment. I also needed a website to inform the faculty at UC Santa Barbara who I was and what I am trying to do.

Though I am using photoshop to process images, I try to make my work as personable as possible. Which usually involves my use of paper and pencil, then imported and modified in photoshop. Above are some sketches, which are now much more elaborated concepts: Terra's dreams, Alternative Addictions, a poem and letter to Dr. Armand Kuris, and variations of my mass-produced credit card signatures. More final products can be viewed in the website mentioned above.

A website like "IQR Question Reality is Space Webbed on a Thin Slice of Time.

A blog is time-organized, within a streamline travel of change of space. Well, time is change of space after all. So, to accomodate my brain, I need both elements. I need a time-organized blog, and I need a space-organized website for much larger projects. Larger space-webbed projects are derived from time-streamlined blogs. Your mind is a closet/library and a dresser drawer. You need to be selective what you want to put in the closet/library. Things that you for sure want to keep forever, for they are the nuts and bolts that allow you to stand and build.