fireworks in the neighborhoods 

this is a view of much of the athelitic area on campus, including the baseball field closest in view, and also with the football stadium and arena in view. On left with the lit sunroof is the newly redone student center. Many things are still under construction, as 2 cranes are visible, but a lot of things on campus are close to being done, so maybe my 5th year here everything might actually be done...although there is new construction that will begin at the area just right off the top of campus which should be nice when it is done (as that is some of the seedier side of campus) but they havent broke ground yet, so it will still be quite some time. 

so we came back early from the party after the neighbor yelled at us and we stopped using fire works, and then the my housemate wanted to study and go to bed early due to a test early tomorrow, so I decided to try to see if I could watch some fireworks from the top of the garage on campus, which didnt work out too well because there were still a few buildings and trees in the way, and most of the fireworks were a few miles off in other neighborhoods, but there were some nice views of campus and many locals were firing off their own illegal fireworks, so that was kind of fun...until people fire them near my house when I am trying to sleep, which happens about every night for the past week and a half. At least this is one of the few times of the year where I am pretty sure that loud sounds are not actually gunshots. Yay cincinnati. I also found out that not all Ohio cities are as crazy shady as Cincinnati. Columbus actually has a lot of decent areas around downtown, and you could walk a few miles and not cross awful areas like in Cincinnati. from Campus, its almost impossible to get downtown without going through at least some mildly seedy areas...which is quie a feat since downtown is probably a mile and a half away if you go straight downtown. 

more firey spinning....perhaps I shouldnt be standing so close 

yay spinny fireworks 

Armed with bottle rockets, we managed to piss off the neighbor who annually calls the police on the guy who lives here 

Today I went to a cookout and it turned out there were also many fireworks left over from previous festivities 

Happy Birthday USA...hopefully this next year will bring more wisdom with age....probably not though 

Sparkler patterns 

fun with sparklers and long exposure 

Sarah and I with sparklers aquired at Kroger in her home town of Pickerington, OH 

fireworks at red white and boom...that O.C. hat is ridiculous by the way. The woman wearing it was middleaged and overweight and felt it necessary to get "the O.C." airbrushed onto her hat 

Red White and Boom in Columbus on the 1st of July 

Sherwood Forest AKA english foods. If you looked up from the underside of the tree there was a ridiculous looking treasure hoard 

alphabetically arranged hotsauce section...thats a lot of sauce 

Kyle as the the little dutch boy in the random dutch food section 

Kyle (my housemate) with about 1/2 the honey section 

One side of the olive bar...they had another side with lots more olives 

the big cheese if you will 

large cheese section at Jungle Jim's 

This is the entrance area to Jungle Jim's...a nearby food store that has gigantic amounts of gourmet and foreign foods, as well as all other normal groceries and produce 

so I cut my hair shortly after coming back from california, because it is way too hot in cincinnati for longer hair, so now it looks quite ridiculous and moderately frat-boyish, but at least it feels better on blazingly hot runs. comprae the length with the picture of me and my brother at graduation 

so my housemate Tyler went to Guatemala and he brough this beer back. Not too bad, but he looked for it in America and found that its named Famosa here... both kyle and I have taken spanish, and we figured they must have changed it since Gallo Cerveza could translate to Cock Beer... probably not the best thing, but since its still in spanish and there is clearly a rooster on there, I don't know what the deal is 

Race day

This Shit is Bananas, B A N A N A S. Thank you gwen stefani for teaching the nation how to spell bananas and thank you pharell for producing yet another hit song with classic neptunes fading beep sounds. I wish my shit was bananas...anyways, I ran a race today in Cincinnati, it sucked ass. It showed me how out of shape I am, although I knew running a 4 mile race wasnt exactly something I was ready for. I at least kept it under 7 minute miles, despite a 20 second walk break at the top of a nasty hill post mile 3. I'm not quite sure what happened...probably went out too fast, and my training as of late has been pretty spotty. I'm thinking I may register for a race late in Summer soon so that I have motivation to actually train well for a while to get in decent race shape again. I'm thinking maybe I can get away with running Abe's Amble in Springfield, but that will probably be the end of my school quarter, which means project time and not a whole lot of free time on the weekend. Definitely the largest race I've been in so far, with around 2,000 people. I was hoping maybe I could be in the top 50, but I realized that might be pretty tough when I saw the competition. I was hoping maybe my age group would suck, because it is often under represented in road races, but all of the 20-24 year old age group winners finished in 20 minutes and some change. Thats 1,2,3 all running around 5 minute miles for 4 miles. Ridiculous, dare I say that shit is bananas. The winner ran 18 something....one eight, for four miles. He wasnt even kenyan. Averaging 4:30 for 4 miles is crazy talk. Fastest I have ever ran a mile was 5:10 ish and this guy is running each one 40 seconds less than that, 4 times in a row. I hate good people. I will never ever be that fast, even if the only thing I did was train to run.

Food was seriously lacking for such a large race...there were some tasty things from the local bread shop, but the bagels were hard, and every single one of the hundreds of bananas looked good, but were warm, bruised, and oddly flavored. Can't complain too much though. The race shirt was decent, and so was the goody bag, which included probably one of the nicest pairs of running socks that I now own. All in all, I would say this morning was good, because it got me racing again and now I have motivation and some goals, as well as random free stuff from Procter and Gamble. Allright, thats enough writing for me. By the way, Ryan Seacrest is the biggest douche bag in the world, why does he have any career?

Here is there modified CRV front....this was coincidentally found in a random hallway in Stanford and taken as a joke, until it was realized it was the perfect addition to a road trip car 

My brother and Emily in San Francisco pre-cross country travel 

A New Day

Today was markedly better than most in the past week. I am still suffering on my ability to do work during the day, but I am getting better, and remembering more things, like to make lunch for myself so that I can stay at school past 1 pm when my classes are over. I at least was doing research today after classes were over, and while class started out quite horribly, and my teacher said that he would be okay with me changing my project because he could see me spinning gears...I really couldn't think of anything else to do besides this women's electric razor idea, since the vacuum coffee maker is out. Honestly, I want to do the women's electric shaver because there is a lot of room for improvement in the market, but the idea is a bit out of my range of knowledge, so there is a lot of research involved. At least it will improve my empathy....or something. I want to make an aesthetically pleasing feminine form without being offensive and flowery and stupidly girly. I dont just want to make a flower with pinks and purples and have it shave your legs. I want it to be a product that people would actually like and feel is a viable option. Its tough, because women want something that looks like a women's product, not just a man's product in silly girly colors, but I feel like I can't go too far in the other direction, especially since I start out on thin ice as a man designing a woman's product. I don't want to seem arrogant, like I know everything there is to know about women because I am the coolest man in the world....because I really don't, although I may be the coolest man in the world. Also of note is many a complaint that men's razors work better than womens. Surely at least in the case of the electrics this is as much a case of market share, as men have a million different kinds of razors and sell electrics 10 times better than women either because of it, or there are more because men buy more shavers...not sure what the case is, but it is still true that norelco doesn't make those circular bladed shavers for women, nor does any other brand...also they dont have that feature that oozes shaving lotion, although it might be hard to accomodate enough lotion to shave the large skin surface area of the legs. I have heard/read many a story about women stealing boyfriends/partner's razors and shavers because they believe they work much better....I dont know if this is truly the case or not. I don't believe that there are a lot of studies about it, but I feel like this is a very common belief. I also don't know what factors are involved, so it is hard to say if it is true...I mean, there is less that men shave regularly, so they may in general replace blades less often...meaning sharper blades and perhaps better perceived shave if a man's razor is stolen intermittently by the female whose razor is already dull. Also, it is possible that women's shavers are really less powerful as well, beacuse most women's shavers are at fairly low price points, presumably because of really low sales so maybe lower sales mean lower buy in prices, and thus less powerful shavers....I dont know. This is all speculation really. Perhaps women's shavers do really suck. In that case, thats great for me, because its more for me to fix to make mine look better. Just have to find a way to convey "powerful enough for a man, designed for a woman" without being to cliche or condescending. Oh the complexities of design and gender...I can see why my teacher was thinking that I might want to switch, but I dont give up that easily. So yeah, anyways, my drawings were allright today, but relatively uninspired (as we are in the ideating phase right now, inspiration is everything) so my professor suggested just putting out some forms that evoked what I was going for stylisticly, so I listened to some music and just sketched feminine forms of various kinds...some more literal forms representative of the female body, and some just sculptural smooth line drawings with some semblence of form, and already the forms were much more innovative and interesting than anything I had been doing in the past few days, so if I can just keep doing some of them tonight and tomorrow and port them over to shavers, it could definitely produce some interesting results.
Also in non-design news, I ran on the track today with the Running Club at 9pm (still hot and hazy out unfortunately). I came late to a ladder work out and only caugh the way down, which included 600m, 400m, and 200m with 200m walk rest in between each one....so I ran them pretty hard, since I was fresh and wanted to run hard while there were still people there to challenge me. I pushed a little harder than they were ready for, since they had already run more than twice of what was left in the ladder, so I felt kind of bad pushing the pace, but it did feel good to run with other people. I realized I went too hard when I tried running 2x400m after some rest and I ran them not so well. But I ran a cool down and watched the foreign students just start ariving at 10pm to play some late night futbol. After I got home, my endorphins were keeping me quite happy, and I proceeded to quote awful Dave Chappelle skits for half an hour. All in all, I was generally in a better mood than I had been since I have been back in Cincinnati, except for when my girlfriend visits, because really you can't beat that....although I usually hit a low on sundays when she leaves because I realize that she is gone and I have a crapload of work to do that I have put off all weekend while she is here. Anywho, I leave today feeling decently well, and tomorrow may have something to look forward to: Jungle Jim's (awesomely large food store with many foreign foods) which I have not been to yet and possibly War of the Worlds (which I am not really as excited about...I kind of want to see it, but I'm pretty unsure of seeing it in theaters, although my roomate really wants to. personally I think Batman Begins on Imax or Mr. and Mrs. Smith are higher on my list of things to see right now....but I dont think either of those are options). So I said I wasnt going to post as often, but I guess I was wrong.

By the way, if you, the reader have any insight on women's shaving, or razors feel free to leave me a comment with any tips, suggestions, or any general shaving info you just feel is important.

Deep thoughts, by Matt Anthony

on a side note brought on by my need for procrastination, I find myself increasingly annoyed by people who do no think in a similar manner that I do. I used to think of myself as pretty easy to get along with, and I guess I may be able to get along and be polite, I just feel like I'm getting very particular in what I like and don't like. In any case, I sometimes feel like more of a snob and a douchebag every day that passes. Perhaps I should try harder to keep my mind open...

Lack of posting

Allright, so school is on, and I am now busy napping and doing design projects and procrastinating by looking at other websites, so blogging has went down in my rank of things to do. Perhaps I will just start photo blogging more because its easier since I am always taking pictures. So sorry if anyone actually reads this crap, but my posting is going to be rather random. Also, it has been brough to my attention that calling yourself a dork is now in fashion, mostly after I saw an entire page devoted to young actresses calling themselves dorks in the past few years in some really awful market end fashion crap magazines, so I now I feel salty about my title (which was inspired by my girlfriend calling me a dork....which I suppose I am, but I can't call myself that now for risk of doing it because apparently its the cool thing to do. I hate you media).