Short, Pointless School Day

I've been home since 11:20, and that only due to wondering if I should stick around or not and the train being inconvenient. . . .

So I've been bad at blogging recently. Let me think. . . I skipped out on the party because I realized that Saturday is Christmas Eve and we weren't done filming and I probably needed to be there because I don't trust Piff to realize there is a car parked in the back of his shot, or a person standing there in modern clothes, or whatever. So we froze to death filming the final, written-on-the-fly-to-explain-why-Mary-disappears-in-half-of-the-movie scene in the snow, a scene meant to be in the same place as the scene we filmed two weeks ago in the rain. We have given up on continuity entirely. Then it was editing fun time. . . we also got a song recorded for the credits. . . edited until about 10:15 or so Sunday night, and Maya is super-slow about rendering all the CGI for the UFOs and getting the CGI and the audio synched up was terrible because of course Anja and Phillip just guessed how long the lines would take to say and pretty much always left waaaay too little space (in perfect irony, the final UFO scene, which Phillip finished and sent today, the space for the lines was waaaay too long. . . we are not pleased). Eventually, we (Anja) figured out to slow the clips down a bit and things work now, but that was pretty annoying for a while. Eventually, we went to bed Sunday, Anja staying here in Phillip's room (Phillip having gone back to Munich, and me being in Anja's room), meaning she spent Monday morning editing, too, while Piff and I were at school. Apparently, in the course of the night, the video decided to shuffle all the scenes because that would be more fun. Anja got it all sorted out and we got things nearly done last night- there's one CGI scene that's still not rendered (well, it might be by now, I haven't checked in), and there are a few typos we caught later that we have to fix, and a couple audio issues (there will always be audio issues). We got it exported to Quicktime and onto Anja's laptop and stole Basti's speakers to drive up to church to see if we could get laptop, beamer (projector), and speakers all hooked up and working, because we know it won't work the first time, and this way we have until Saturday to troubleshoot. Well, the beamer wouldn't pick up the laptop at all and there were phone calls to Phillip and attempted downloads of drivers that were going to take over an hour, and at some point we gave up and unplugged everything and wrapped it all back up and came home, where Casablanca was on to save my evening.

Then today- I didn't want to get out of bed, and it really wasn't worth going to school- I had about 59 free periods and so I came home- got home at 11:20, which is pretty nice (also way before Piff, which is always a triumph), but I also did nothing in school (my only classes being German and math) so I feel that I could have stayed in bed, which is not a nice feeling. I've got music, though, and it makes things better. My iPod has apparently fallen in love with Frontalittle Squad's "Jalopy," as it has played it about 4 times today, but it is the most ultimate nerdcore song ever, so I don't mind. I am starting to play with rating songs and I like that it uses my ratings to pick certain songs more often- I just wish I had a greater scale than 1-5 stars, because I have trouble committing to a 3 or a 4 on certain songs.

I have decided to call my iPod Lexi, unless you have a better idea. It was just terrible that she didn't have a name, and Emily just reminded me of this.

The Google Blog gives me a new reason to love them pretty much every time they update. If I were technologically inclined, I would be looking into a career. As it is, I look to Google as a sort of prophet, ushering in an age of true democracy, in which every voice literally has a chance to fight against all the other voices. You know, the way the internet already works. The Top 10 searches of 2005 should teach me better, but I am still a stark Internet Idealist.

I hate to be turning this into a link list, but I have no homework and gmail has rss feeders now. With my head so wrapped in the Christmas story at the moment, I am fascinated by Time's The Art of Joseph (I can no longer pronounce this like an American-it is Yosef) photo essay. . . considering what a marginal role Joseph plays historically, our film can be considered rather progressive- it is pretty much a Joseph-fest, with Mary getting left outside the city gates while Joseph goes off to find a room, and then Mary showing back up in the stall to hold the baby and smile while Joseph does all the talking. Before you complain that this is totally anti-feminist, keep in mind that our Joseph is a girl with a beard and a wig, and that these decisions came more from our Mary actresses's schedule than anything else. In addition, I consider a nice attempt to be fair after centuries of Joseph being pushed aside to focus on Madonna and child, which is nicely captured in the photo essay. Bibical accuracy, like just about every other accuracy, is somewhat low on our list of concerns.