Welcome to Hyperbole

Can I get a Fuck Yeah?

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:45:17 GMT

Did you know that I have been working out? Because I have. It is fun and it makes me feel good! I like that. As a direct result of the working out, I can now stand on my head for up to 30 seconds. I can also do three sets of ten pushups with no problem, when only a month or so ago I could barely do two pushups without falling down. It's really nice to work at something with such obvious and easily quantifiable achievements. It's not like art, where you're like, "Am I getting better? What the fuck is even going on?" It's just: I ran farther, faster. I used more weight. I did more reps.

We're looking for a roommate. Our current roommate has been here a little more than two weeks and is leaving in less than a week. Thursday, in fact! He told us he was going to have a job for at least two months, but then it ended up being three weeks, so I don't know what that's about. But he bought us a parting gift from Bed Bath and Beyond, so that's all that matters, right? Right?

Right, guys? Bed, Bath, and Beyond?

DigiPen lab poo leads to passive agression on my part.

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:46:28 GMT

I'm trying to work up the courage to say something to the people in the row in front of me.

I keep thinking, okay, next time they say something offensive, I'll call them out on it. But then, when they do, I am momentarily shocked, and then I think, "Now it's too late. I'll just seem like some kind of weirdo if I call them out on something they said five minutes ago."

I'm just getting really sick of hearing bitch this, ho that, and faggy what-have-you. Yes, you're joking. I realize that. You're female, and could conceivably believe yourself to be reclaiming "bitch" and "ho." But as Melissa McEwan explained so much more eloquently than I ever could, "reclaiming 'cunt' [or bitch, or fag, or whatever] is about a woman [or whoever is usually the target of the slur in question] wearing it herself and wielding it ironically, which is necessarily as a compliment, not an insult. If I call my girlfriend 'a beautiful cunt' for expertly handling a sexist wanker, that's got reappropriative power. If I call her 'a dumb cunt' because she does something foolish, not so much."

Come on, I'm willing to put up with your inane nonsense noises and cartoon squirrel impressions. I'm more willing than most to put up with your screams and expletives while playing TF2. Could you please just refrain from tossing around misogynist and homophobic slurs while I'm trying to work?

Maybe I'll just write them a note.

Pieces of brain-stuff.

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 04:01:09 GMT

So, I'm catching up with LJ for the first time in a long time, and I am awestruck by how intelligent and insightful my friends are. I'm seeing all these really excellent, long, personal posts that seem to give me a direct line to their souls, and I remember when I used to write really open, vulnerable things about my feelings and the events of my life. I feel I may have lost something in the cessation of those postings. So here's what's going on in my life:

I am finally about to graduate, after six years at DigiPen, eight years in college, and 21 years in school (if you count preschool, which I do). This is exciting, but also unnerving. I think my current state can best be described as "freaking out". I'm going to have to find a job soon! And not just a summer job, but a permanent job where I'm not getting paid by the hour. Will I be able to cut it? Will I even be able to find work in this economic climate? Much of last year's batch of DigiPen BFA seniors is unemployed, or employed but not doing art for a living. Needless to say, this scares me. My business cards are on their way, though, so that's good.

I've also suddenly woken up and remembered that I'm a feminist. It's astounding how much bullshit I see out there in the world when I take off the DigiPen-colored glasses. Wow wow wow. When you spend so much time in a male-dominated environment where there's disincentive to be "politically correct," there's an amazing amount of stuff that just slides right off of you. Rape jokes, spousal abuse jokes, invitations to suck the cock of someone who disagrees with something you've said, everything being described as gay. It all seems so innocuous until you actually think about the meaning of the words. I'm sick of it. Luckily, I'm out of here soon, although I can't imagine it's too much better in the industry. It can't possibly be worse.

Bah. Anyway, yeah. It seems I'm not as full of insight as I'd hoped. I wanted to take up lots and lots of space with really deep introspective shit. Apparently not going to happen. Oh, hey, did you guys hear about the e-mail the mayor of Los Alamitos, California sent out? It was appalling, and I was appalled. Here's a video about it. He claims he had no idea that "black people like watermelon" was a stereotype. I almost want to believe him, because I spent 20 years not knowing this myself, but the thing is, without that, there's no joke, and therefore no point in forwarding the e-mail on. Can anyone think of some possible non-racist explanation?

Okay, I'm going to go paint or do something productive like that. I've been in some kind of weird funk all day. Probably because I had a "fig" with my husband last night. We've started recording on a calendar when we have a fight (we've shortened fight to fig, because the calendar is right by the door and I don't want any curious UPS guys or whatever to know all about our marital disputes), in the hopes of a)fighting less, and b)realizing that we don't, in fact, fight all the time. We've both been so stressed out lately, it really seems like we do. I keep telling myself DigiPen will be over soon and then, perhaps, we won't be so stressed. We'll have the time and energy to clean. We sort of only have time either to cook or to clean right now, and having homemade meals is more important to both of us than being able to see the floor. Anyway, painting time!

Hello, people on LiveJournal!!

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:35:45 GMT

I am a person. I live in an empty poptart box. It is very small and cramped.

That was a lie.

I actually live in a spacious two-bedroom two-bathroom apartment with my husband, Dan. We do things together. I did some paintings of a pepper last night. A red bell pepper.

That is all.

Unproductive

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:53:08 GMT

I have a lot to do this weekend, and yesterday I got nothing done. In the morning I used an 18-gallon tupperware bin to collect the water from my shower (I just stood in the bin while showering), then cut off the water supply to the toilet. Since then I've been flushing the toilet with my shower water using a bucket. You know you can just dump about a gallon directly into the bowl and it'll flush. At 9:30 I went to the Seattle Art Museum to see the Impressionists exhibit. There was a painting of windmills that had a wonderfully chunky quality I really enjoyed. Dan couldn't go because he had to go over to the FishBeat house and work, so I went with Matt O. and Kevin, some guys from school. Afterwords we went to the Grill from Ipanema.

At two we went to DigiPen's main campus for the Big Fish company day. I was impressed (for the second time) by how laid back casual games seems in comparison to other areas of the industry. The Big Fish people talked about always being home for dinner, spending time with their kids, etc. It seems like they're mostly looking for illustrators.

Immediately following that, I went to help interview one of the candidates for a Student Services position that just opened up. She was sweet, and I related to her a lot because she was at UW for six years before she graduated, but everyone else said the woman from the morning interview was a million times better. Another candidate interviews on Tuesday, so we'll see what happens.

The interview transitioned smoothly into the Student Association meeting, which in turn flowed into the Art Council meeting. Around 6PM I got a ride back to the Art Campus with Josh, one of the Junior reps, and we got there just in time to catch Dan entering the building. He wanted to go to Tres Hermanos for dinner, so we called Mike and Audrey, and we all went out.

After dinner, I was feeling sick (I ate restaurant food two times in one day), so we went to the Food wHole to pick up some kombucha while Audrey was getting snacks for her game night. Then we went to game night, which was really quite excellent. We played Apples to Apples, and a game I learned from my boss at the Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center. She called it "drawlly," but it's pretty much like telephone on paper. Everyone gets a piece of paper. You sit in a circle. You write a sentence on your piece of paper and pass it to the person on your left. Now you have a sentence from the person on your right. You draw a picture illustrating that sentence, then fold the paper back so the sentence isn't visible, and pass it to the person on your left. Then you write a sentence describing the picture you just got, fold and pass, then you draw a picture...and so on until the paper you started out with gets back to you. Then you look back over all the humorous ways in which it was warped.

I laughed so hard I cried.

So that's why I didn't get anything done yesterday. Today I need to make 20-or-so iconic representations of gameplay elements (like those little icons at the beginning of Portal levels) for Narctopus (the game I'm working on). I also need to make concept paintings for five of the eight levels of our game, and color comps of the main character and her stupid boyfriend with an octopus on his head. I need to get this done today so that tomorrow I can focus on my Concept Art homework and my Post-Production homework. I haven't even started thinking about Porfolio or Sound Design yet. Argh!

In my dream last night, Dan's mom was giving some kind of lecture in my bedroom at home in Oklahoma. I tiptoed in to retrieve something from my closet, but when I got there one of the metal bowls I use for cooking all the time was lying in a plastic tub, all warped and melty. I picked it up and my fingers started melting. I wondered why the plastic tub was unaffected, while my fingers and the metal bowl were burned. My fingers crusted over with a rough, green, plasticky covering. I came out and told everyone I had hurt myself, but that it was fine: it was just hydrochloric acid. I washed my fingers off in the sink, but that just made some more of my finger fall off. When I came back, my bedroom had turned into the living room of some unidentifiable trailer home, and I could see out the window that it was snowing heavily. I laid down on the floor under an afghan.

In case there's anyone out there who hasn't heard, Dan won second prize in the Redmond Digital Arts Festival! I am very proud of him. <3<3<3

A quote from this kid at school.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:24:31 GMT

"I love being right. It's like a million cups of soup."

-Talon

It's that one right there in front!

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 06:06:04 GMT

Hey, there's a picture of my car on the DigiPen website!

I WENT TO VALVE!!!!!

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:08:03 GMT

It was so awesome I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement!!!! That's how awesome it was!!!

Also, our student aid came in and we are no longer broke. And now I have to go to class.

But seriously, Valve is a magical place where I met Karen Prell (Red Fraggle) and Bay Raitt and Gabe Newell!!! And Robin Walker. They were all really awesome and everything was really cool and the stuff I can't talk about REALLY BLEW MY MIND. It was so awesome!!! And now I have to go to class. Bye.

<3,

Chelsea

Semesterade.

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:05:16 GMT

I'm still alive.

Dan and I cleaned our apartment, so it's much less...impossible to find seating. :) I'm working on a TOP SECRET PROJECT with some people that I'd really love to talk about, but can't.

I'm also working on a game with some programmers and Dan and Elijah. We had a 3-hour-long meeting yesterday, which was tiring. I feel like this is going to be a good learning experience.

We still haven't gotten our loan/grant/scholarship money for this semester, and we're getting really sick of rice and beans. We committed (last semester) to going to the Opera this Wednesday, and I have no idea how we're going to pay for gas to get there, or parking. We owe several people money. I am the sad. We e-mailed the people in charge of such things, so it is to be hoped that soon our funds will arrive. Yes, we filled out a reimbursement form. Weeks ago.

Let's see here, what else? I'm getting really sick of Eli's crap being on our porch. It blocks the light coming through the sliding glass door. There's also a trash can full of water on the porch. I really need to do something about that, but it's just so appalling, I can't even approach it. Kthxbye.

Nothing Productive!

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:14:54 GMT

Dear Internet People,

Greetings from my couch! It has been a most remarkable two days since we last spoke. Friday, I attended my projects final, which went swimmingly. Everyone likes my story and I later discovered that it earned me a B in the class. After class, Dan and I journeyed to the center of the earth, which happens to resemble the Blockbuster at Crossroads. There we obtained Ratatouille, which was absolutely amazing and wonderful in every respect, 28 weeks later, which we both found to be lacking in the emotional depth, storytelling, and cinematographic brilliance of 28 days later, but definitely was not lacking in the zombies being slashed apart by helicopter blades department, Hudson Hawk, which was utterly bizarre and lovely (and can best be summed up by the line, "If Da Vinci were alive today he'd be eating microwave sushi naked in the back of a Cadillac with us."), and Adam and Steve, which was a sweet romantic comedy + poop. We vegged out watching movies until bedtime. Someone knocked on the door during the zombie flick, but it wasn't a zombie, fortunately(?).

Yesterday, we went to the Grill from Ipanema with Mike and Audrey, two DigiPen Alumni of whom we are very fond. We all stuffed ourselves with meat (and insane Brazilian television), then meandered down to Pike's Place market, where we gorged on comic books. Dan and I purchased Y the Last Man volumes 7, 8, and 9, American Virgin volumes 1 and 2, and Jellyfist, a new book from Jhonen Vasquez and Jenny Goldberg. There is commentary in the margins, in which JV mercilessly abuses JG. Definitely good for a few laughs, a few sighs, and a few "Shit, I could do that. Why am I not doing that?" moments.

After the comic book shoppe, Audrey had to mount a ferry, so Dan, Mike, and I retired to Tully's, where we spent the remaining daylight hours (and one of the nightlight ones) reading comics and watching a group of early-thirties professional dorks playing customizable card games. We took a brief break to move a sad, shivering dog out of the rain. His owner was pissed, "He's been cold before, he plays in the snow all the time." but there's a difference between being outside running around in the snow and being tied to a post, immobile, in the rain, for an hour and a half. An old lady who had been looking for the dog owner yelled at her, which I thought was taking it a bit far, but I guess when you're old you don't worry as much about anger management and nonviolent communication. I felt good about having moved the dog so he was at least not getting rained on.

Today I slept in until almost noon! It was exhilarating! I had a crazy dream that I had given a classmate of mine my rat to take care of, and we had a disagreement over the kind of care the rat should receive. Said classmate got very angry and left me this insane scavenger hunt to complete, at the end of which was a note with very conflicting messages (you're wonderful, you're a jerk, let's be best friends, I hate you). I hunted classmate down, gave classmate a hug, and we worked out a compromise over the care of the rat. The end. I left out some of the more insane parts involving microwaves and a mysterious handsome clean-cut all-American type guy. I also had this other dream where I was on some kind of fake safari on a raft with a bunch of children. Not a clue, champ.

In a while I'm going to go over to Rochelle's and give her some 3DSMax advice, and hang out. I hope I can remember how to get to her house. She is living with her mom again now, and I haven't been to that house in...a year and a half, probably? Jesus, can't believe it's been that long. Why, it seems like only yesterday that blah blah blah blah blah...

I'm sorry, was I saying something? I forgot. Anyway, Tuesday me and Dan are going to an improv workshop in North Bend, which sounds like a lot of fun to me! Also, I'm trying to do a self-portrait for every day of the break, which I probably shouldn't have mentioned because now people will want to see them or some crap. Poop on that, man. Poop on it. All right, that's enough of this.

Keep on keepin' on, internet.

Love,

Chelsea

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:33:05 GMT

Well, I'm done with all my work for this semester now, but I have one more final to sit through. It's just the presentation of the 3D animatic, so no test involved, but I really just want to get out of here and relax. I'm all nervous about presenting and stuff.

Dan and I are going to go get some sashimi from the grocery store because we have an hour before the FINAL.

I'll be in Oklahoma in a week.

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:02:24 GMT

All right, Dad, I'm posting. You can stop jumping up and down flailing your arms now.

This semester has been particularly brutal. The only reason I have a spare 15 minutes right now is that our roaming profiles are unavailable, so I can't save anything. Otherwise I'd be working on one of the several billion assignments I need to get done this week. Dan and I got a Tandem bicycle about a month ago (give or take 2 weeks...time is funny here), but we haven't ridden it much because we're just up at school all the damn time. The ride there is super-easy, but the ride back is super-steep uphill almost all the way. Not a ride I want to take at 10 o'clock at night, which is when we usually leave school. We rode to Daniel Smith yesterday, though. It was a beautiful day! Times a million! We bought gouache and paper and brushes, then we did some paintings. Dan's is pretty good, but mine is totally crap. In fact, I threw the one I did in gouache away and did one in acrylic, which is also bad, but not quite as bad. I think it was partially the paper I used. It's this crazy plastic paper I thought was neat.

My brain is addled.

I'm thinking about being Harley Quinn for Halloween. This place in Bellevue has a costume for rent for like 35 dollars. I would make my own, but THERE IS NO TIME.

K, gotta go bye.

Summer Stuff.

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:27:10 GMT

Right, so it's summer again, and I'm working again. Got a crappy little job at Michael's, and then a better job (not better paying, but more fun) with Pacific Science Center. I have canoe training this weekend. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm going to keep working at Michael's one day a week while I'm doing the summer camp thing. Dan's working at Jo-Ann Fabrics. He's really unhappy about it. He's applied for like a billion different jobs, and every day he looks for something new. Money is...very tight right now, despite my parents having loaned us (or given us, or something) a thousand dollars. We just waited too long into the summer to get jobs, exacerbated by the fact that Dan's grandpa just died and we need to go to Minnesota for the funeral. We wanted to visit there for 2 weeks at the end of the summer, and now we're trying to see if we can pull two weeks in the middle of the summer. We think Dan's parents are going to buy us plane tickets out there, but even so, that's two weeks we won't be working. :(

As a result of all this I'm looking into doing a little freelance modeling (like for photographers), writing, maybe even some painting. For MONEY. Rochelle gave me a link to a big list of magazines that publish writing and art, so yeah. And then there are postings on Craigslist for female models all the time (and some of them don't require nudity!).

In other news, it's pretty lame working at Michael's. I have a coworker who reminds me of Micha, except that she's a bitch. David (DigiPen Programmer David. Hi, David)'s girlfriend, Bunny, works there. She is just really cute. There's also a lesbian named Ellie who told everyone that I'm a lesbian, and then when they told her that I was married, she was like, "No way! There's something not right there. She is totally a lesbian!" She also apparently thinks I'm very pretty, and begged several people to take a picture of my eyes. I know it sounds kind of creepy, but honestly, I'm just flattered. She's exactly the kind of girl I'd go for, if I wasn't, you know, totally in love with Dan and married. Then there's this guy who works in the frame shop with me, Justin, who is really grumpy and verbally abusive all the time, so naturally I have no trouble relating to him.

Every day some customer comes in crying or irate about his or her custom framing order. Here's how I feel about it: who the hell gets custom framing done at Michael's?? If you're going to drop that amount of money on something, I strongly feel you should go to a place that actually specializes in the task at hand. I mean, some of the people in there have been doing it for a long time, but...well...I think for trades like that we need to bring back the whole apprenticeship system, know what I'm saying? When I was little, I had a friend named Melissa whose father was what I would call a Master Framer. I had the opportunity to watch him work on several occasions, and he was like a sculptor with an exacto knife. There is no one like that at Michael's. And then there are people like me, who just started two weeks ago and whose training has mostly consisted of, "Okay, here's what it needs to look like, so do it like that." Granted, most of what I do is at the back of the frame, and won't even be seen once the piece is hung, but still.

A surprising number of Japanese people come into the store, and sometimes I try to speak a little Japanese to them, but sometimes I just wuss out. It's not like I know much, anyway. This couple came in last night with the most adorable, chubby baby I've ever seen in my life. He just had the puffiest cheeks and the most calm eyes and a good, full head of hair. He was so radiantly healthy-looking. When I told the parents how cute he was, the dad looked at him and said, "Is he? Really?" like he hadn't noticed he had the most adorable baby on the face of the planet. I didn't actually speak any Japanese to them until they were leaving, and even then I just said "Arigato gozaimasu."

All right, I should go do something more productive than blathering about mundanities. Hope everyone's doing well.

Barbara, I simply MUST know where you got that clutch!

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:11:10 GMT

It's finals week. I'm so close to done with this semester! Last week I had an outbreak of the old face herpes. My lips still don't quite feel like part of me, and when I walked down the hall yesterday everything smelled like I was in a hospital. The air felt like that, too, but then later I was looking in the mirror and it was like being at a water park, somehow.

What I have left is, I have to rig and animate this 3D rat, and Dan and I need to put the sound and end credits into our movie. That's it! Can you believe it? Soon I won't have to worry about this semester ever again.

I guess the Pacific Science Center has some kind of a summer day camp at Mercer Slough, and I'm going to apply to work there. You know how I like to work with kids, and I figure science camp kids gotta be more respectful than Boys & Girls Club monsters.

End.

I did a bad thing.

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:26:51 GMT

So, I'm under a lot of stress right now at school, and yesterday was my one day off. So Dan and I went to Redmond Town Center to see TMNT. The character designs were pretty lame. The film was really cheesy. I enjoyed parts of it, didn't enjoy other parts. But that's not really what I want to talk about. When we were walking home, some young rich boys driving past honked and screamed at us. One of these kids stood up out of the sunroof and screamed something totally incomprehensible at us. Well, I was really startled, and that probably would have been the end of it, but they got stopped at a red light like ten feet in front of us. Now, here I'll reiterate that I've been under a lot of stress. But that doesn't actually excuse what I did next. I got up beside their car, leaving Dan a couple steps behind me. I waved to get their attention, and they were all, "What?" I then walked out into the street and asked them, in rather impolite terms, what they said to me. The passenger guy yelled, "That's not a fashion!" I was totally dumbfounded. I had no clue what he was talking about, and told him that. He seemed rather confused at this point, too. I then screamed at him "Don't DO that!" repeatedly, smacked his window, and walked away. The light changed and they drove off. Dan steered me into a side street and then severely reprimanded me (he's under a lot of stress, too). I did some mixture of vehemently defending my motives and admitting that I definitely shouldn't have done that. I said that perhaps in the future a better thing to do would be to take down their license plate number and report them to the authorities. I recently got a big thing in the mail about littering because someone saw Eli throw a cigarette out of my car (I wasn't in the car at the time) and reported it. I hope they have a similar thing for teenagers who joyride and harrass pedestrians. Anyway, I've been pretty mortified about the whole thing, and I don't need any more lectures, but I did want to get it out there and off my chest, if you know what I mean.

Student Government is Fun!

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 02:32:30 GMT

So I went to the Student Association Open Forum, and it was really a lot of fun. I am now thinking about possibly running for office. I guess I have to get 10 people to back me on a piece of paper, so if you want to support my run for office, you should be ready to sign a piece of paper and put your student ID number on it, maybe. But I don't know whether I'll actually do it yet. What do you think?

Spring Break and Stuff.

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 20:42:19 GMT

Dear Diary,

I went camping over spring break. It was very fun. I saw an eagle with intestines hanging out of its mouth. I also saw a bunch of sea creatures and hiked a lot. It made my legs hurt and I was happy. I built a really big fire. I didn't get killed by the darkness. It was really amazingly awesome.

I also saw that 300 movie with Dan and John. It was very manly. It was so manly, it cut its own head off with a chainsaw and jacked off with sandpaper. I enjoyed it.

Prior to that, I went to Rochelle's housewarming party. Her house is cool. I ate a lot of ham and brought some homemade ice cream. I don't think I put enough maple syrup in the ice cream, though. It wasn't as good as previous times I've made it. Usually I put carob and bananas in it, but this time I put berries in it, without carob or bananas. I will not make that mistake again. I also may not have left it in the ice cream maker long enough, but I was worried about being late to the party.

There was a bunch of drama on the DPLJ. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, but I joined the new art community, because I think it's probably a good idea. Honestly, I think a lot of the guys on DPLJ are very funny, and I wish I knew who they were so I could talk to them in real life. I think I'm going to go to the open forum today, but I will probably not stay long because I have Things to Do. Apparently most of the artists who actually got involved with the drama won't be able to attend, because they have a class while it's happening.

Apparently Disney is starting a line of wedding gowns, and maybe this makes me a huge dork, but I think it's neat! Apparently you can get married in a beautiful designer gown modeled after the gowns of any of the Disney princesses. I'd love to have that blue (pink, blue, pink, blue) dress from Sleeping Beauty (even if it didn't magically change colors). Unfortunately, the gowns are like 1,100-3,000 dollars. I can't afford that. Plus, we already got married. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool, and I feel guilty about that.

Okay, that's enough stuff I'm telling you about.

I'm,

Chelsea

Everybody's doin' it!

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:49:13 GMT

1.YOUR SPY NAME (Middle name and current street name): Leigh 148
2.YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME (Grandfather/mother on your dad's side and your favorite candy): Betty Cream
3.YOUR RAP NAME (First initial of first name and first three or four letters of your last name): C-Thu
4.YOUR GAMER TAG (A favourite colour, and a favourite animal): Green Rat
5.YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME (Middle name, and city you were born in): Leigh Oklahoma
6.YOUR STAR WARS NAME (First three letters of your last name, last three letters of mother's maiden name, and first three letters of your pet's name): Thuoodmol
7.JEDI NAME (Middle name spelled backwards, and your grandmother's name spelled backwards): Hgiel Eignav
8.PORN STAR NAME (First pet's name, and the street you grew up on): Tom Arlington
9.SUPERHERO NAME: ("The", your favourite colour and the automobile your dad drives): The Green Beetle
10.YOUR ACTION HERO NAME (First name of the main character in the last film you watched, last food you ate): Lilo Stuffed Cabbage

Haha, all my names are silly. I kind of like The Green Beetle, though.

No, seriously, this is fun. You want to do it.

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:16:35 GMT

Create your own Friend Test here

It's me.

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 06:51:59 GMT

Here I am. I finished my 3D homework about an hour before I expected to, so I guess I'll write a little something for anyone who maybe wants to know what's going on in my head/life/world. It seems to me that dealing with people is more complicated than it ought to be. Plus I spend way too much time under fluorescent lights and surrounded by computers. Trying to work up the courage to say what needs to be said, and work out the best way to say it, is a little bit tricky. School is going really well, as in I haven't turned in an assignment late all semester, and I'm still getting 8 hours of sleep a night (give or take an hour, I guess). Johnny's been talking about moving up here. I told him he could stay with us for a while, until he found a place. I told him he can't bring alcohol into our house and that it really needs to be just a temporary thing. He's planning to save up something like 6,000 dollars before he comes, which should be a decent amount to last him until he finds some source of income. I'm a little nervous, and as much as I like having people around up here, it also seems weird to me that so many people are uprooting themselves and coming to Washington. I don't think people realize how lonely they're going to be once they've cut themselves off from their family, their base of friends and acquaintances, all their familiar stores and restaurants. It's too bright in here. This artificial day is messing with my internal clock. Walking home for dinner at 6 o'clock makes me cough every evening. Too many cars all piled up on top of each other. Ride the bus, people! It's quicker during rush hour, it's not that expensive, and I bet some of you have free bus passes from wherever you work, anyway! Geez.

knitten2

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 02:03:57 GMT

I tried adding whiskers to it, but they were a bit much. I might mess around with it more this evening, depending on how much of my other crap I get done. The background is just a fottergraph I found on the intarweb, vectorized and with the colors changed a bit. The lighting was fortuitously similar to the scheme I already had going, and the hearts in the porch railing add a little something, don't you agree? Also added: shadows.

jocme6y32jm

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 02:31:55 GMT

Finished my 3D homework about five minutes before school closed yesterday, so that was pretty much totally sweet. I have an assignment for Character Design class to design three props on one of the following themes:

1) Lava-proof SCUBA gear
2) Surgical tools for operating on Leprechauns
3) Neanderthal Paintball
4) Livery items for the frog cavalry
5) Sputnik! A Soviet-era board game
6) Vampire toiletries
7) Kitty chemotherapy clinic
8) Prithee Bumpkin! A Medieval game show
9) Ninja baboon training facility
10) The Vatican gift shop on Mars

I'm kind of leaning towards vampire toiletries, just because it begs the question of how a vampire shaves his face, brushes his/her hair, puts on lipstick, et cetera, without being able to see his/her reflection. What does a vampire have in place of a vanity? A tombstone ringed with candles? Of course, kitty chemotherapy clinic could also be interesting. Maybe when all the kitty's fur falls out it wears a fur suit in the same way that people wear wigs. Or people donate knit kitty clothes or something. The only other two that really piqued my interest were 3 and 9. Dan's doing 1. I'm pretty sure his designs are going to be amazing, because he's really good at designing funny suits. I think our section is a week behind because of snow days. This makes me sad. I'll probably live, though. Okay, bye.

FLASH Assignment.

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 16:20:03 GMT

The assignment was to design a character in flash, so here's what I did. I also need to put in a background and an overlay, but it's not due until Tuesday and I have other things to do (3D homework). Speaking of its not being due until Tuesday, I welcome critique.

I definitely need to add a shadow on her belly under the knitting. Other issues I may not be aware of?

This is about my life!

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 18:09:54 GMT

There is a new kitty at my apartment. She is Eli's kitty and she is blind. Her name is Braille. She is cute and soft, and likes to sit on people.

We went to The Animation Show last night. It was neat. I was surprised by how much of it I'd seen before. There was a short about a fat lady at a wedding with a camcorder and it was AMAZING. The way it was animated was very very good. The drawing style was amazing, the line quality was amazing, WTF incredible. Don Hertzfeldt's new film was also very good. More serious than previous projects of his have been. He talked after the show. Charming fellow.

People were shouting out questions, and Dan raised his hand, and my stupid brain didn't like that and I told him no one else was doing any hand-raising, everyone else was just shouting out questions, and then Dan never got his question in and he was mad at me. I felt really bad. I need to stop listening when my brain tells me something terrible will happen if people don't do things the "right" way. But that really is how I feel. Like I need to press on the world with my foot to hold it down. Like my ears have water stuck in them and I need to shake my head to get it out. Like my breath is too much to fit in my chest, but not enough to prevent me from suffocating. It's the same way when words are wrong. When I hear someone misuse a word, or when I do, it makes the world shift a little, become a little less real, and I feel like if I don't correct it the world will shatter and I'll be left in some shadowy unreality, with monsters. Obviously it's not always quite that severe, and obviously I deal with it, because I don't spend all my time trying to control everything or counting the number of different colors in the carpet or anything...but geez. Does anyone else feel this way or am I just totally insane? Is it just a matter of shutting it off?

Once I read a book called How to Fall Out of Love, and the author's advice on a similar matter was the following: When you think of the person you want to fall out of love with, say "No!" (or maybe it was "Stop!") out loud, and immediately replace the thought with a "happy thought" from a list of such thoughts you've already composed and practiced thinking. The problem with this kind of behavior modification therapy is that it's so overt, and it makes you look a little crazy to anyone who might be watching. Maybe I'll try it anyway, since a lot of people probably already think I'm crazy.

You don't have to read my boring rant.

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:53:12 GMT

Sometimes I really wish I had just stayed at OCU. I mean, I enjoy my current program of study, and I'm definitely glad I met Dan. But I miss Oklahoma so so so much. I miss my Oklahoma friends. I miss being near my parents. I miss not having to worry so much about financial crap. The cost of living here is insane.

I guess what this is about more than anything is my friends. The only people I stay in touch with on a really regular basis are Johnny and...yeah, that's basically it. I talk to Johnny more than I talk to anyone else from Oklahoma (other than my parents). When I was visiting home, I failed to see about half of the people I really wanted to see - people I miss and think about all the time. Two of them have never even met Dan. I know there will be other visits and everything, but what I'm really afraid of is that I've irrevocably lost something that was really nice. There are no animation jobs in Oklahoma, so it seems I'm going to be far away forever, and if I'm just not good at long-distance friendship, where does that leave me? Completely cut off from some of the people who have been the most influential in my development. So what am I going to do about it? I guess I should start updating here more, since most of you are here, and pay more attention to facebook. Maybe I'll start e-mailing people. I actually check my e-mail. I'm wanting to do a letter-writing thing, too, so I guess I'll start calling people and getting addresses.

Blah. Now I'm frustrated and I don't even want to post this. But then I wouldn't be doing anything at all, and that's no good. So I guess I'll just have to post it at the risk of sounding really publicly emo. Poop. Whatever, Rawr.