PNCA participated in Focus the Nation, so I attended a couple of presentations on sustainability and global warming, then went to illustration class and made a shitty comic, which was cool. Also, they fed us free pizza for lunch. The most delicious pizza Portland has to offer (as far as I know, anyways): Hot Lips. Mmmmm. After class I slogged home to watch Ren & Stimpy, eat spinach dip, and view the interweb. THEN I remembered that I should go meet people at the evening focus the nation event, which I did: walkin' around in the dark alone, with mace. So, we had a presentation from a gentleman who had spent some years researching the military's fuel usage, which apparently is obscenely difficult-to-obtain information. Did you know that a tank gets 0.2 miles to the gallon? I can't remember the exact figures, but the military accounts for an unbelievably huge percentage of our green house gas emissions and uses up more resources than Thailand or the Netherlands. This was not a happy presentation. Then a guy presented who had spent about 4 months in Iraq before and after the invasion in 2003, photographing the people, the soldiers, the devastation. He had some really interesting things to say; I'm REALLY glad I went even if I feel kind of despondent now.
Then came the grand finale, aka the lure to bring in the students (though a large number of us actually did come for the lecture): James Mercer of the Shins played an acoustic set for about 50 PNCA students and staff. It was absolutely amazing. It was like all of the very best things about listening to the Shins' music, distilled into it's purest form. He ran away once he finished, which was sad, because we were all very excited to have him there and how cool would it have been to meet him? Olivia and Tana decided this was a perfect PNCA moment.
On a different note, there are a lot of seagulls in the city here. Yesterday, there was a huge circling, crying mass of them overhead of the streetcar stop. CRAY.
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