Fall 2009

Things are going very well since the start of the school year. I ended up dropping my ceramics course, because I was not enjoying working with clay. However, I love painting with oil, and I plan to continue painting with them for a long while.

My grandmother loved oil painting, and she had tons of paintings that she had done over her lifetime in her house, some of which I now own. She was a very good painter too. Unfortunately, I didn’t get involved with art until just after she died. I wish I could have connected with her through art, and understood what some of the stories and reasoning’s were behind the paintings that I now own. I find it interesting that we both loved the same medium, but were completely isolated from really sharing it due to the generational gap.

I have been working as a ResNet Computer Consultant (or RCC) at my school, as well as my old job working at my college’s helpdesk. I really love working as an RCC, as I get hands on experience with troubleshooting computer problems. All of the people I work with and for are fantastic, and they are also a great resource when I need troubleshooting with my own problems.

Things with my boyfriend are going very well. We have gone past the seven-month mark of our relationship, and we are still loving every minute we get to spend together. He has made himself an account on deviantart (longstreetus.deviantart.com), and has been enjoying playing with his new SLR.

Jeff and I purchased a 120 gallon aquarium, and are now housing Blizzard and Gringo along with 11 corydoras, 7 of the original, and 4 albinos that came with the aquarium. With the purchase of the 120, we adopted the fish from the previous owner. We now have two red parrotfish (a species I would not normally buy or recommend buying because it was man-made), two neon tetras, a danio, and an angelfish living in our 20H. Tar is now living alone in the 55 gallon, because he has proven multiple times that he cannot play nice with any other fish. He ate one of the original 8 corys, and ate a common pleco that we put in last week. So much for algae control. We also have four female bettas in with the baby bristlenose plecos, to control some infestations with the tank. Last week, we bought 12 young corys to put in 120, along with 2 chocolate albino plecos. Unfortunately, the corys were too young and too small to be in the same tank with the oscars, and we now have only 8 left (munch munch). We moved the survivors to the tank with the bettas, where they now are living a life without fear.

Summer 09

This summer I've been working at the University of Notre Dame's library. I'm what is called a Tantur Student; I compare records between ND, the Library of Congress, and a library in Tantur, Jerusalem, and mark paperwork accordingly.

Besides working full time, I have my art and my boyfriend to keep me busy.

I've been working on ink paintings of flowers I come across, and getting good practice with the medium. I also have been working on a vexil in Photoshop, of which I hope to have finished eventually. (The file became corrupted, so I'm back tracking a little bit right now.)

For those of you who aren't aware, I broke up with Jon, and am currently dating his ex-landlord Jeff. I don't regret this decision at all, and I'm happier than I've ever been. At one point Jeff was worried that he wouldn't be able to support my art hobby like Jon was able to, but he's been doing an amazing job so far.

Jeff has also completely embraced my fish hobby that has been lying mostly dormant for the past couple of years. We currently have 3 of my aquariums set up; a 55 with two young oscars, both albino, named Blizzard (see picture in my gallery) and Gringo, eight corydoras, and a lace catfish; a 20H with a young tiger oscar named Tar; and a 10 with eight baby bristlenose plecostomus that we plan to distribute when they grow bigger. (We're currently worried that they would be gobbled up too easily by the oscars.) We're currently looking for a 90 to 120 gallon to move Bliz and Gringo into, and then Tar will go into the 55. When we adopted Tar and Gringo from the local Petco, we put them in with Blizzard to see how they would get along. After a month of switching around, we found that Bliz and Gringo got along nearly perfectly, and always are hanging out next to each other. Me and Jeff believe that they might be a mating pair, which would be interesting if it turns out to be true.

Last weekend I was in the Chicago area for 4th of July festivities. I was able to visit with a lot of Jeff's family, a lot of whom I had met at one of Jeff's cousin's graduation party a few weeks earlier. They all seem to like me a lot, and I'm really glad about that.

On Friday I will be traveling the 12 hour drive to Minnesota for a little longer than a week, where I will be with Jeff's parents, sister, one of his aunts and her daughter. It will be the second longest road trip that I have been on (New York City being the first), but the first longest that wasn't school related.

I have my art classes planned out for the upcoming semester at Saint Mary's College. I found with last year's courses that I really enjoyed having a balance of a 2d art form class and a 3d art form class, so I recreated a similar combination to the Drawing/2d-3d design classes from the previous semesters. I will be taking Ceramics and Oil painting, as well as an Art History class. I'll also be taking choir again, which was one of the highlights of last year. (We toured the Midwest, going to Ft Wayne, Toledo, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Guelph, and Toronto.)

I miss my friends that I made last year, and I'm dearly looking forward to going back to school.

Murphy's Law/Signs of an Art Student

Today I was hit by a large dose of Murphy’s Law. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it means if anything can go wrong, it will.

I was working on a personal art project while waiting for Jeff, my boyfriend to arrive with dinner. It was of a flower, and I was using ink (black and various colors) to draw it. I had just gotten some clothes in the mail that day from an online sale, so I was dressed in a nice brand new white top.

I will outline the key points here, just for emphasis:
-new clothes
-white shirt
-ink

It’s a recipe for disaster. And it was.

While I was testing out some colors to achieve the exact mixture of purple I wanted, I accidentally knocked over the blue container of ink onto the table, myself, my chair, and the floor.

The true sign I am an art student: I did not care first that my clothes were ruined or about the mess I had made, my first concern was that the piece of art I was working on was still OK and undamaged. And, thankfully, it was completely untouched.

I ran to take my shirt off after checking that my drawing was ok, and started soaking it in a sink. Seeing that some had hit my jeans as well, I took those off as well. Fully in my underwear, I hear my mom get home, asking “What happened?!” I tell her that I spilled ink and that I was in my underwear. Thankfully, I am fully comfortable being in my underwear in front of her. After all, she has seen me naked before.

Untouched as my art piece was, I am now stained blue on nearly every part of my body, so much that it invites a list.

Parts that have blue on me:
-both hands
-two large areas on my right arm, one on my fore arm and one on my upper arm
-my upper chest
-my belly
-my crotch
-my upper right leg
-both feet

The shirt that I was wearing is pretty much trashed. I’m planning to keep it around though, in case I need it for other art projects. I am also hoping that I may be able to find another one at the store I bought it from, because I looked really good in it.

As for everything else that the ink touched, they’re fine. The floor was an easy clean, as was the table. My mom had some strong cleaner that took care of the chair and any parts of the carpet that I walked on, so they look fine.

So, moral of the story: Do not wear new white clothes while working on art.
Just don’t do it.

I miss rock and roll.

Tonight I went to the Hip Hop night at a local restaurant slash club, Legends, at Notre Dame. It was an interesting experience, of which I’m not planning on repeating.

Prior to the club scene starting, there was an improvisation group from Chicago performing, of which I enjoyed more than the actual dancing. Elizabeth and I were sitting in the front row, and I got to yell out words to inspire them, such as “Pie” and “Taquito”. Elizabeth got to use one of the guys as a puppet…it was a riot. Because we were accepted into the prior event, we didn’t have to wait the overbearing line that formed around the snow set building; rather, we had the opportunity to wait and watch as the place filled up. Once it did, things got…interesting, I suppose.

Most of the girls were wearing something slightly skimpy; Elizabeth had told me to wear the sluttiest thing that I had, to fit in. (The worst (best) I had was a halter top, it worked out). The girls were dressed in shirts that varied from long sleeve tshirts, to a white dress that barely covered the girls ass.

It ended up as mostly a chaotic grind-fest, with quite a few people making out. A long while ago I figured out that the basics of a lot of forms of dancing is based off of sexual themes…these people were basically fucking with their clothes on. I danced as I saw fit, attempted to converse with some guys of whom I have never seen before (and probably wont meet again), and watched people get drunk off their asses.

While dancing with Elizabeth and Marlon, one of Elizabeth’s friends notified us that Jimmy Clausen (the ND quaterback) was up on the stage, not dancing. Not dancing, but still moving, with a margarita in his hand. He also mentioned that Clausen was a douche.

After much dancing, wandering, and yelling, Elizabeth and I said goodbye to Marlon and went back to our dorms. The best part of this all happened after we got back; Elizabeth’s roommates reported that they saw Clausen getting arrested; we doubt he did, rather we figured he was removed from the vicinity. Either way, we can say we were there that night.

Counterfeit Games

I recently bought a copy of Pokemon LeafGreen on Amazon for about $20, because most used copies (or new copies, for that matter) are around $30, and saving money is nice. It arrive on time (yay!) and I wasted no time in starting to play. Three days later, the game decided to delete the file without my prompting (or induced physical damage), and I wanted to figure out why.

I read some reports (on forums, no less) that newer games such as FireRed and LeafGreen that showed the message “Your save file is ok.” or “Your save file has been deleted” upon booting up the game were actually bootleg copies. So, disgruntled, I looked up information on counterfeit Pokemon games, and I found the following information that pertained to my situation.



Every game cartridge will have a ©Nintendo in text on the inside of the game, on the end that connects into the game boy. If there isn’t one, it’s a fake.

If a game cartridge looks like this:



it is a fake. No Pokemon games come in black cartridges, they are always colored according to the game name.

In my case, the people were tricky.



They took the case from Pokemon Emerald, and because it was green (and I don’t currently own Emerald) I couldn’t tell that something was amiss.

The game should look as in this picture:


Note the more matte lime green color, and holographic sticker, compared to the picture I took.


These were the things that affected me, however there are other things that can apply to a counterfeit game.

I recommend, if you’re curious, looking on this page and reading up on the subject, so you too can recognize counterfeit games.

Click me!

Note: Some of the pictures used here were taken off this page.


As for how my case turned out in the end, the seller who sold it to me off of Amazon had nothing to do with the making of the fake game, and gladly gave me an instant refund, as he did not know it was fake either.

Come and kill us, we will never give up our freedoms.

On the September 19th episode of the HBO series Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill makes a remarkable point. He shows us two pictures, one a wrecked train, and the other damage from hurricane Ike.

“If those two pictures that you saw had been the result of terrorist attacks, instead of a train wreck and because of a hurricane, this country would have completely lost it’s collective ****, we would have invaded Yemen, suspended the constitution, and done all manner of crazy stuff. Isn’t there something to be said for understanding that terrorism, as bad as it is, should not control our lives?”

The panel he had on the show agreed with him.

Andrew Sullivan, one of the guests, had this to say:
“The President’s oath of office is to defend the constitution, our liberties, not to defend the security of the country. And sometimes, there will be a trade off, and there will be a trade off. I grew up in a place in England where bombs went off all the time, and the British attitude was ‘carry on, ignore these people, do your work, be stoic, fight through it, retain your freedoms’. Do things you need to do, like you do need to tighten security, and you do need to do some practical things. But to throw our constitution out of the window, for the phony idea of security, is crazy. Give me liberty, or give me death, ok? The first Americans would say to Al Qaeda, ‘Come and kill us, we will never give up our freedoms. Never.’ That’s why we came here, and these people throw away our freedoms for the sake of a phony security which we can’t even secure permanently anyway.”

This comes to show, me at least, that we as a nation and the politicians aren’t focused completely on how things should be, instead of what they have become.

View the original clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmCC_jasq0E

Post Mid-Ohio Con Report

First of all, I'd like to say I had a ton of fun doing this, however the down side is me and Jon didn't even get close to making our table money back. I believe only a few people in the creators common did, which sucks. But otherwise, it rocked. I loved meeting all the different people (except the retarded guy and his ADHD kid, and I'm not the only one). The turn out wasn't too bad, and the vendors were ok. There wasn't too much vendor wise that I hadn't seen at Wizard World Chicago, but that's ok. And it's always amusing to see the 501st Legion at these things.

I left my dorm about 4 to go over to Jon's house, and we packed up his truck and headed over to his friend Steve's place. We repacked Steve's H3, as Jon didn't want to take his truck on the long ride. We then went over into Elkhart to wait for Jamie and Al, fellow con-ers, because we would be following them the way to Columbus. We ended up hanging out with our other friend Andy for a little while while we were waiting for Jamie to get back to his house. We drove for about two hours until we got to a town called Decatur, IN, and ate dinner at this very retro restaurant. It was 60's themed, and had pretty good food. We then drove another 3 hours until we got to Columbus, it was about 12 or 1 in the morning. Jon and I were going to stay with Al and Jamie on Friday, and we had our own room for Saturday night. Me and Jon slept on a mattress thingy Friday, while Al and Jamie slept on beds. Jamie fell asleep instantly...which was unfortunate to us, as he is the ungodliest loudest snorer ever. So, me Jon and Al were all up till 4 in the morning and later. I remember at one point in the night Al ran over to Jamie's bed and farted on it. We were all groggy in the morning, minus Jamie, to say the least.

On Saturday, we got up, some of us grabbed breakfast (yay for free breakfast at the Red Roof Inn), and headed over to the convention center to move boxes to our tables. At ten, everything opened, and went till 6 PM. After we closed up shop, me and Jon went and checked into our hotel, and hung out there for a little while until we heard from our friend Nik for plans for dinner. We ended up eating at a place in the hotel, with Nik (till he went to bed), Nik's model for his comic book, and Mike. Afterwards, we hung out at a different place of the hotel, where they had free food and drinks for people who were attending the comic con. The stormtroopers of the 501st were being security for the party, which looked absolutely hilarious. Around 9:30 me and Jon went back to our room and passed out.

We woke up about 8, and went and grabbed breakfast as we checked out of our room. We went back to our table, and set up shop again. That day came the retard and son as previously mentioned. This guy, who looks almost like the stereotypical nerd had this kid of whom he could not control to save his life. The kid, who, in my opinion, was worse than the guy, touched freakin everything he could. And not respectfully. I wanted to strangle him. The guy wasn't a whole lot better, however at least he didn't rearrange everything. Argh. The good news for me at least was, was that he visited a bunch of my friend's table's as well. That way we could all hate them together.

After packing up everything, we moved everything back to the H3, and took off. We stopped at the same diner that we had on Friday for dinner, and we got back around 11 or so.

I think in the end I sold (maybe) two books, but I gave a few away to folks who rocked. I did sell prints pretty decently (comparatively), so that was a nice thing, as well as getting more Too Cute pics drawn out in prep.

Folks that rock and have tables:

Jon and I's table. See that chair? That's where I would be sitting.

Jay Brant, our lovely neighbor, and creator of the Heads Up line of art. (I'm sure he made at least one of his table money's back.)

Al Schell, one of the guys we stayed with on Friday night.

Casey and Kelly Heying, and kids. They're the owners of our local comic book store.

Terry Huddleston, along with his wife.


Mike Indovina, one of the guys we hung out with on Saturday night.

Nik Havert and his wife at their table.

Mid-Ohio Con

This Saturday and Sunday, me and my boyfriend will be having a table at Mid-Ohio Con, in Columbus, Ohio. If any of you are around that area and/or are planning on attending the area, feel free to stop by our table! (If I knew what table it actually was, I'd tell you. However, I don't, so you're going to have to look for us on your own. I'm the one with the red hair and cat ears.) I'll be selling both prints and Quim books there, and Jon'll be selling his Wicket and Imp books as well as his own prints.

And, just as a social experiment on my case, if anyone mentions this blog posting to me, they get an awesome discount on either a print or a Quim book ($1 for Quim, rather than $3, and $3 for prints, rather than $5). I don't honestly expect anyone who's reading this (except the folks I already know that are coming in my local area) to be going, so it should be interesting in that sense.

Stay tuned for the post-con report.

Wal-Mart

My boyfriend and I went to Wal-Mart today to look for a specific movie on DVD, and we did our usual ‘department store’ rounds: Toys, electronics, and anything else.

We ended up having to spend about ten minutes or so in a checkout lane, with our one can of shaving cream we were purchasing. Jon doesn’t like to use the ‘self service whatever’ lines, which I can understand at some points, because human interaction is a good thing. The trouble is, that there were about four checkout lanes with people manning them, (out of at least twenty,) and about ten total self service lines. The lines with human interaction features each had about three or four people in line each, while the self serve ones only had one person at most on them. So, as I stood waiting for the pregnant woman and toddler in front of me to get on with their own lives, Jon browsing a National Enquirer magazine, I pondered the situation.

Is human interaction always worth it, even when it could save time otherwise? I know for a fact that if it were my can of shaving cream, and not Jon’s, I would be in that self serve line and out of the Wal-Mart before you could say “hillbilly hick”, for two reasons. One, its damn faster; two, I hate dealing with people. Perhaps the common hatred of interaction with people is what partly fuels the ever-becoming use of the self scanning, along with the fact one doesn’t have to pay the machine to scan items.

I also got to enjoy the stereotypical-ness that Wal-Mart is, and that I loathe. The pregnant woman in front of me buying a toy car for the toddler because he held it up in front of her face; A cop and his buddy standing in line behind me, who both had checked me out while I was in the electronics department; Mexicans everywhere in the electronics department.

Is it right to hate Wal-Mart for having cheap shit at cheap prices? No, it’s called business strategy.

Do I hate it anyways? Yes.

Call me one of those hippies who are against ‘the man’ and all that shit, I do have my reasons.

For starters, my origin of dislike began a few years ago when I was very much into keeping fish. Wal-Mart is known for its cheapness, and that goes into its pet department as well. The fish tanks were not kept well at all, and the bettas (of which I kept mainly) were kept in little plastic cups that you would normally drink out of, and not changed except in a fortnight.

My second reason is for the jobs. Being young and out of high school, I have many friends in lower management jobs, be it at the movie theater, Wal-Mart, Meijer, whatever. Because of the machines (that even I will admit liking using), people are losing job opportunities where they are needed. High school students aren’t the only ones who take advantage of these jobs, it’s other people as well: teachers who need pay during the summer; the elderly who need money because social security has fallen through.

The third reason is the buying out of smaller, locally owned companies, like the mom and pop stores that were once so common. Granted, they were never common in my memory, but they were to your grandparents. Because of the cheaper prices, they easily beat the price of local stores. As mentioned before, one can view it as a market strategy. But are there many non-Wal-Mart-esque stores to care about these days? No.

And now for something completely different:

Retro

Back in the day, I was lame. Huge surprise, right? Ha.

I found friends by doing things I liked. Again, surprise? Not really.

There was this guy, named Blake, (whose whereabouts I have no idea of at this point), who was somewhat my friend in grade school. Of course, it wasn’t cool to be friends with girls, so he generally didn’t talk to me. One day, he gave me a card, a Pokemon card. Kabuto. I still treasure it as my first one. I ended up, through different methods, collecting more and more of the cards, because it was a fun game to play, and it was a nice way to talk to different people and friendly competition. We would play outside under the picnic roof during recess, trading, sharing. It was nice. Then, as they would yo-yos, beanie babies, and many other things, they banned them. That was life, so we did it off of school time.


I found a local store that hosted weekly tournaments and games, Media Play, and my parents took me there any time they had it going. I made good friends with the guy in charge, as well as many other acquaintance-friends. Three binderfulls later, I had a killer deck and strategy that revolved mostly around luck and knowledge. And then, they stopped having tournaments. A fellow ginger, Jason, who went to my school as well, told me of a different place that held get-togethers like these. I went one or two times, but it was farther away. My mom implemented a rule afterwards, if I could get a perfect on my weekly vocabulary test, I would be able to go. I got one or two here and there, but rarely 100%. It was a stupid request, while it had good intentions, it further alienated me from possible friends as I got older and into middle school.

The fad, as many others did, died out. It still survived in many areas and places, but none that I could have access to with a friendly smile. I played the Pokemon GBC games on the bus ride to and from school, as often times there was up to an hours wait in there; I got ridiculed for it. We were allowed to decorate our seats, my friend Cassie and I decorated ours with Pokemon printouts; we were harassed. It got to the point where I was dreading the busses, not to mention actual school every day. I continued liking Pokemon because I liked it, I could care less whether or anyone else liked it, and I always would.

My active interest waned eventually, through high school and life. It always stayed in my heart though.

Today I was at the art store, picking up supplies for my next project. The cashier saw that I had quite a few pencils to purchase.
“What are you drawing?”
I hesitated, in fear of the memory of the busses.
“...Pokemon.”
“Oh! Awesome! Which one?”
“Raichu,” I said, relieved.
“Sweet. I like Pikachu better myself.”
“Well I’m probably doing him afterwards, so everybody wins.”
“Yeah…this one time my little brother had to do an art project, and he chose to draw this Pokemon…Snorlax I think it was called.”
“Ah, love him.”
“Yeah, we spent an eternity looking for the right colored blue paper.”

For some reason, it’s not lame anymore to like Pokemon. I still get criticism from some people, but I still don’t really care. I’ve always been the person to do what I liked, not based on what other people care about. And so, I have two art pieces done of Pokemon, and more coming, and I pass the time when I need to with my GBA and my Pokemon Game.

Thank goodness for things becoming retro.