opheliaswims

My mother bought this bedroom set from somewhere, I have no idea where; it became mine, plunked into my room like a pair of old shoes. It was old made from dark mahogany with curling bed posts that ended in sharp peaks like church steeples, it had to be over 60 years old. I was in high school, and not too concerned about how my room looked, I only slept in there.

One night, I woke up and looked at the foot of my bed. There was an old white haired woman dressed in a white dress, like a night gown. She was shaking the bed. There was no sound coming from her, but I got the gist of what she was so mad about, I was in her bed.

I laid there staring at her, I finally slammed my eyelids shut. When I opened them, she was gone. She never came back, and next week I will be back in Toronto sleeping in that same bed. My parents have since moved from where we lived when I was in high school, where we lived then was next to a cemetery, which I could see from my bedroom window….now she is too far away to haunt the bed….

Image: Ophelia Chong

I know more than most about computers and the internet. Not because I set out to, but because I had to. When I got my first Mac, I installed my own ram, I could take the whole thing apart and put it back together. It wasn’t easy, but back then Macs weren’t so “push to play”. My first IICi had 8 mgs of ram and a 500 mg hard drive. Now I am zooming along on 2 gigs of ram and more external hard drives than shoes.

Which brings me to this part of the story. On twitter today there was a tweet from @dungeekin “I’m sorry – who in the name of ARSE installs Win 2k3 server without installing SNMP? Knobend-installer FAIL.”

……..?……

There is only so much information you can keep in your head. That was a completely foreign language. I could parse it out by researching, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it at first blush. It brought to mind this favorite of mine from Gary Larson of the Far Side.

Your site is in Beta and you need users to test the site, so how do you get the audience into your “tent”? You need the True Believer. MORE>

Collage Gifts going out to friends, now up on Flickr.

“She’s entitled to say and not say what she wants”

“Paper glue blades and a cup of tea.” Some crispy collage work by Ophelia Chong. When talented people like Ophelia drop links like this in my inbox it really makes my life easy. Really beautiful stuff right here!”

Thank you Jeff Hamada! Jeff Hamada is a designer living up in the wilds of Canada in a city called…Vancouver and the brains behind booooooom.com. He breaks his site up into six areas of interest: Film, Photo, Design, Music, Projects, and Junk. His taste is eclectic and he has more energy than a cage full of hamsters on Red Bull. Check him out, he’s crazy good.

Yesterday a comment was posted to my blog. It referred to the work I have been doing at Art Center College of Design as an Alumni (of which I have volunteered at the college since 1999). Last May, a student Nathan Cooke posted on his blog about the hypocrisy at ACCD. ACCD just presented two conferences;  Systems, Cities & Sustainable Mobility and the other Serious Play. The school talked about being Green, yet they don’t recycle and they use styrofoam in the student cafeteria (due to the high cost of recyclable plates). This blog started a firestorm. And at the Serious Play conference, Nate Young’s resignation was leaked, Nate is an alumni and was the Executive VP and CAO at Art Center College of Design, resigned because of his vision of where ACCD should be was at opposition to President Richard Koshalek’s. All the frustration and anger at the administration flowed into Nathan’s blog, the power of the internet broke through the walls and into the ivory tower. A petition was started by concerned students and alumni. “Education First” was presented to the Board of Trustees with over fifteen hundred signatures. Throughout this time, I supported the students by posting on Nathan’s blog, and I was one of the very very few that used their real name. I would say it was a percentage of 5% that used their names, 95% used Anonymous. Anonymous was for the school, they were against the school, they were well spoken to outright slanderous. This was on both sides.

During this time, President, Richard Kolshalek was campaigning  for another five year contract. His administration already had budgetary, faculty, administrative problems; we saw no benefit in his continuing at ACCD. After protests by the students, the chairman of the Board John Puerner agreed to meet with the President of the Student Government John Henry Baliton. There were concerns already that the Board was aware of  that was discussed during their June meeting. The Board renewed his contract for only eighteen months. However, he left the school after only three months. As the dust settled, the Board brought in Dr. Ellsworth as the interim President.

I thought the water was calm, until yesterday when I received this comment on my personal blog. This person is angry, and has been angry with me for a long time. And they feel only comfortable by attacking me from afar. That’s fine with me, I might have already met them. They just never wanted to confront me face to face.

As a fellow biped, the next time we are in the same room, come up and shake this Dumb Fuck’s hand.

Future of Art Center Blog

Nathan Cooke’s Blog

Art Center College of Design Open Forum

LA Weekly – Controversy Surrounds Yet Another Frank Gehry Project

I debated on whether to publish the letter, but what the hell, they posted it in a public forum and did not send it directly to me via email; so they wanted it public. Here it is in it’s entirety:

the irony in your life astounds me:
Dear Ophelia aka DUMB FUCK:
Everytime you post to that evil blog your statements reveal just how moronic you are. Babbling about shit to which you have no facts or do no investigating on.

Do you even understand what kind of conservative forces you and your stupid friends unleashed at our school!? You just sent Art Center into the stone ages not the future. And you helped hang good people who were on your side and doing great stuff for us. This whole thing has been distrubing to watch. All the lies you help spread and the destruction you participated in. You shouldn’t be proud of yourself.

Now we have no positive leadership. We have an interim asshole who is firing a lot of good people on the staff. People that were on your side. You MASSIVE IDIOT. Everytime I bother to look at the evil blog and see some stupid ass comment you made I just cringe.

Now we have a conservative board of accountants running the school. There not putting education first there putting the bottom line first. Slashed will be anything for students-all the cool programs we had in place, the new housing,and its going to be even tougher to get scholarship money now. This new interim leadership, combined with the economy, and drop in enrollment-this board is going to raise our tuition even more now. I promise you’ll see that. And are they even letting a student rep at the board meetings yet? not going to happen. Koshalek would of allowed us to be there because he was our ally not our foe. You and your stupid fuck friends just stabbed him in the back bc of the mistruths spread by dumbass board members like Michael Reese-who has now resigned bc he couldn’t get Nate Young back as President which was the agenda of the entire political game you got suckered into. I feel sorry for you -you are pitiful.

Clearly as evident in your comments online have no concept of how a school should be run. What arrogance would ever make you think that you did in the first place. Something as complex as this institution. The Presidents job isn’t about just education-there are larger ideas at play. If you had a problem with education -your problem was with Nate Yound who as Cheif of Education ran us into the ground. You think finding money for maintenence, programs, and scholarships was hard before- wait until you see the next few years. We students, faculty, and alumni are going to SUFFER big time because of what you did. Some on this board donate less money to the school than I paid in tuition! But that doesn’t seem to be the crime to you guys. Their lavish retreat this week to the Huntington Hotel don’t seem to fluster you. Nate Young wasting one million of our money doesn’t even enter you small pea-brained mind. Why? because these verified truths and the facts don’t fit into the agenda of
destruction issued from that bs group Education First. (funny its just like McCain’s Country First slogan hm?) this wasn’t a student revolt. you didn’t represent me! this was a conservative take-over and you were its fool. The facts, and the big picture, and the lives and careers of others that you screwed, don’t matter to you.

No you seem only concerned with chasing ghosts, chasing lies, talking to anonymous online trolls on Cooke’s evil blog, being their sucker, sending Art Center decades back in time, and destroying innocent people. 3 times they audited Koshalek’s expenses and they found nothing! you know why bitch bc there was nothing to find!

I’d like them to audit Nate Young’s expenses. I dare you to demand that. See if they even listen to you or any of us students anymore! You will find a guy that wasted over 1 million of our money, and then hijacked alumni and student contact information so that he and his buddies like Board member Michael Reese could play a political game against Koshalek’s leadership. I received these anonymous letters of absolutes lies and hate and so did my friends-and we were smart enough to see them for the political bullshit games that they were. This was a campaign and a game to you to hurt others. They played with your weak minds and fed you false information and used us students as their pawns. YOU DUMB FUCK!

Get your fucking facts straight. See the fucking light! And while your at it -write a formal apology to Koshalek and his staff for your participation in their hanging. The hanging of innocent people while everyone just sat back an watched it happen. Every day now they are going to fire people. These good people are going to lose their jobs because of YOU. This is devasting. You screwed us BITCH! and while youre at it apologize to all their families too-who spent time promoting and supporting Art Center and who have endured this injustice.

Thanks a lot OPHELIA CHONG from Art Center for fucking us-

( the IP address of the comment came from Johnson Fain)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:63.207.179.18 the IP is owned by Johnson Fain

NOTE: all comments are now moderated because of the Flamer, so it might be a lag in time before you see them.;O)

Dear Ben  A. Holley aka Author : Ben (IP: 63.207.179.18 , 63-207-179-18.ded.pacbell.net)

I deleted your comment.Addendum: Your comment/letter is now published in full on this page.

I forwarded your comment to the school.

1. you are not a student

2. you know more about the administration than a grad would

3. you use paragraphs and Upper Case ( that way you made sure I could get to all of your points) Most students write in short hand and I haven’t met one yet that uses EM spaces.

4. you can pick on me, but don’t even think of going after any of the students who were part of the Education First Petition.

5. Your IP is also the same as the one on Wikipedia, as tagged as someone who tried to hack the official ACCD page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FisherQueen/Archive22

Art Center College of Design

The user making legal threats on Wikipedia appears to have ignored your offer to retract his statement and has readded the threat. The user also appears to be operating under two different IPs, User:63.207.179.18 and User:64.183.113.210, as you will notice in the article edit history. Best, epicAdam (talk) 23:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:63.207.179.18 the IP is owned by Johnson Fain

Johnson Fain Partners SBC06320717901628040601135137 (NET-63-207-179-16-1)
                                  63.207.179.16 - 63.207.179.31

If you have a problem talk to the administration of the school.

Sincerely,

Ophelia

I was at the post office today up in La Canada Flintridge, a bastion of Republicans with a smattering of Democrats. In the parking lot was the H3 Hummer with the McCain/Palin bumper sticker. The whole reason we are in this mess stood before me, a hulking monster with a curb weight of 6400 lb with an average MPG of 8.

I fought the urge to stick an Obama sticker on it. I didn’t because it would only give them ammunition that the Democrats are vandals and crazy. I watched the lone driver get into the beast. The sooner we use up all the gas, the sooner these things will be in the trash heap.

Image from F*ck You and Your Hummer

As I cautiously pilot the roadways of Los Angeles, I make it a habit to observe the people that cross my path, not only out of curiosity but for the safety of my living breathing physical being. When the “Hands Free” law went into effect July 1st, California motorists were required to use a hands-free device to talk on a cellphone, I thought it was safe to venture out again without the fear of being side swiped by another multi-tasking driver. Yet to my dismay, people are still driving Hands Bound. While dodging Driving While Distracted drivers, I made a list of the most common infractions and texted it to myself while I was idling at the light…MORE>