Art, mostly

We have this totally awesome paper monster face taped on our front door from Halloween. We put it there just before Halloween as a hopeful invitation to trick-or-treaters to knock on our door. Unfortunately, there is a Real Neighborhood with Real Houses right next to our shoddy apartment complex, and all of the kids went over there.

Perfect transcription of neighbor's comments directly outside our door from Just Now:

"And like, check out our neighbor's door. It's like, what's the point."

Whatever, ladies. Just wait until we have our construction paper hand-turkeys out there, then you'll see.

... ... ...

In any case.

I had this silly idea for an easy artistic/writing meme today. Character Post Secret. Write/draw out secrets from your characters in a Post Secret style. It doesn't really matter if it entirely touches the heart at whatever they're feeling, you can't get the whole story with a real Post Secret message, either. Just, y'know, make it as though they'd made it.

( and you don't have to feel bad because they're not real secrets! )

... ... ...

( also, I drew a thing today. )

... ... ...

And to further implicate me of SHAMING NERDLYNESS, Ananth recently picked up the first volume of Tezuka's Black Jack and I'm hooked. The guy was House before House was House and probably a good majority of the inspiration for Ginko from Mushishi. I've been spending my evenings trying to find episodes of the many animes that were based on the books. If you like really silly medical dramas about badass dudes who can't dress themselves properly, this may be the series for you.

On Sunday, Brian and I decided to take a drive down a road we'd never explored before and we found a pretty neat little downtown with a pizza parlor and a diner and an antique store and really-nothing-else. There was a bridge going over a river and we walked over it and poked at the local fauna and I found an apple tree in the middle of a public courtyard and ate an apple from off the ground. That was a good day.

On Tuesday I dragged Brian to a graveyard that I found last year some time but never got to explore. It was built on these two hills split by a 90-degree drop into a valley; it had a really beautiful aesthetic to it. We fawned over the old gravestones and neat last names and tittered over the fact that the House grave plot was directly next to the Wilson grave plot. There were two chestnut trees that were just dropping clusters of nuts everywhere, so I geeked out a bit because I'd never actually seen a chestnut tree before and we filled our pockets. Turns out the trees were horse-chestnut trees and the fruit is totally inedible unless you're a deer. Still, a pretty good day.

Yesterday, I got locked out of the apartment, lost my coat, and sliced right through the fleshy part of my dominant thumb because I'm a dumbass. :/ So for the next week-plus, it's going to be a chore to do things like write and draw and open bottles and doors. Augh, I'm an idiot. (it'll probably scar up nice n' pretty, though.) A kinda bad day. Also, I'd better start lookin' for a new coat.

Hey, at least I was in today's Genrezvous Point!

Hey-o, everyone! I'm totally home! For another 12 hours or so.

In any case... I'm headed to Anime Boston tomorrow. I'm not going to have a table or anything, and I'm probably not going to be especially accessible if you want to meet me... but if you really do, there's a good chance I'll be hanging by Mookie's table, and if not that, he might know where I am at any given time.

In case you needed a reference, this is what I look like. If you can actually catch me (and give me paper or something), I'll definitely draw something for you. But you gotta ask. And I can't be on my way to, y'know, the bathroom or something.

By the by... Anime Boston's the first convention that City Limits is going to be sold at, so be sure to take a look at that if you're headed in that direction. There're a few errors that I noticed when I got my prints, especially pertaining to the book not quite knowing what to call me, but ehwhatever. c'mon you call me either by my pen name or my full name it is not that hard

Sorry if I'm being a bit smarmy at the moment, I just saw X3. If you click the cut, you'll get my 99% unspoilery single-sentence response to the movie.

( The 1% is just for cautionary error )

I'm not really great at talking about the bad, unpleasant and/or unfortunate things that happen to me. Privately, occasionally, but the things that make me look like a real dumbass that I can only blame myself for... well. I should probably mention that I go to school to major in animation. I hate it. I'm a decent draftsman, a decent designer, decently talented, decent at layout, a decent storyteller, I love drawing, I love gesture, I love movement, I love watching animation. I hate animating. Having done comics for somewhere over a half-decade, I'd figure that comics would relate well to storyboards, and what's animation but hojillion storyboards. Death, apparently.

( Ohh, it only gets worse. )

( ... and then I geeked out over my boyfriend. )

... and that's how I managed to not fail out of school. Again.

Now, if you need me, I'll be ignoring my research paper and staying in bed with Brian all day to watch Scrubs.

So both of my and Brian's one pinup are up at Dominic Deegan. Just a heads up, if you wanted to check them out.

As a side-note, remind me to never ever check the forums for the comics I do guestwork for. EVER. EVER EVER EVER. Holy mother of god, those people are both vicious and intent on making me hate myself.

And on the subject of hating myself, AAAUUGH FINALS

...that's all I got.

Because I personally despise talking about my own problems, in a public forum or otherwise, I'm going to be intentionally vague about this. The purpose of this post is not to gripe about how my life sucks, it's just a big heads up for everyone's benefit.

I've had to deal with a lot of troubles piling up over the past several months. I try to make a lot of excuses for myself, and I'm usually very good at dismissing everything with my over-abundant supply of apathy, but it hasn't been working all that well as of late. As a result, I've been intentionally been avoiding contact with people. I haven't been on AIM, not even in a period of down-time like this vacation. I haven't updated my livejournal or DA gallery. I've been too scared to check my e-mail, in weeks-- I'm absolutely horrified of checking my e-mail. I've also been avoiding projects. I can't force myself to work on any one of my several comic projects. (And believe me, I have a lot right now.) I haven't even done any art lately.

It all comes down to the fact that everything will be climaxing very soon, I'm not going to be able to handle all the stress on me. I can already feel myself cracking a little. Please don't worry, I'll be fine... it's just that I'm not doing so hot in the meantime.

I'm not looking for pity, I'm not even looking for support. I don't mean to sound like it. I'm just hoping to tell people what's going on with me right now, and if you're expecting something from me (because I know a lot of people are), I'm really hoping for a little understanding.

Sorry to be such a downer. Don't worry, I'll be back to not-taking-myself-seriously in no time.

'Nother all-nighter for papers.

I. Am never. Taking another quarter. Without a production class. Ever. Ever. Again.

I'm good with projects. Papers downright make me cry. And this whole quarter's been nothing but papers.

Tonight's flavor is Russian Film History. I'm trying to take a lot of stuff from the textbook, but apparently there isn't a single reliable online source that talks about Soyuzkino. Y'know, that's in English.

Thinking about all the things I have to do this week and next makes me stress out even more. Another paper for History class, which is just a reaction paper, and is fine, if I could just find the time in between passing out and stressing to finish the book. I have a birthday package for Stacy that's been sitting on my floor for 2+ weeks that I haven't sent out because I never ever leave my apartment. People have been harassing me left and right about my comic and why I haven't been able to ship out t-shirts yet. I have a 15-something page comic to write and draw for an anthology I'm a part of. Final exams are next week. I gotta totally rawk on my sociology exam, or I'm pretty sure my grade's FJOOM goin' through the floor.

I'm about halfway through my first film paper, when I wanted to be done with both of them by 7am. It is currently 6:30.

WOA! This suddenly turned into a wangst entry, that was totally not supposed to happen.

Er. The thick and thin of it? I'm busy. Finals are coming up. Sorry about the shirts. I totally suck. No, I did not steal your money. Going to bed at 8 or 9am and waking up at 3 or 4 pm every day really screws with your internal clock. I'm sure my roommates are certain that I've become a vampire.

I can feel the melanin draining from my face.

I will soon be wearing black lipstick and heavy eyeliner and mascara all day, every day. And fishnets.

If my hair wasn't already black, I'd dye that as well.

HISS! DAY-WALKERS!

*scurryscurry*

edit. I should probably note that I have currently been working on the current essay for more than 7 hours. It is supposed to be 4 pages long. It is now barely over 2. Sometimes, I think I've gotten significantly dumber since highschool. And saying sometimes is an understatement.

I originally wasn't going to write this down, but I figure I should have something posted on New Years.

So I'm going to burden you all with my tale of woe of what happened on my New Year's of 2005.

*ahem*

Every year around this time, my dad makes a traditional New Year's feast. Some kind of Japanese thing, he always makes stuff like grilled red snapper and mackrel, pickled lotus root, sweet red beans and mochi, some kind of soup with gumbo and daikon and salmon, pickled seaweed, pickled daikon, some kinda stuff with bamboo and fishcake in broth, sweet rice with red beans, something with those little minnow fish that still have their heads that I still haven't been able to bring myself to eat...

It's all wonderful, it's the only holiday that my family really "does," and it might just be my favorite. I usually feel left out when people talk about their families and how they get together and do family-stuff for Independence Day or Thanksgiving or Christmas or birthdays, we really aren't a family in those respects. On those days, we might eat dinner together. Which is special I guess, because we never eat dinner together.

But, yah. New Years is special to me. Because it's the only time that my family gets together and acts like a family.

But that isn't the purpose of my story.

After dinner yesterday, I went over to Megan's, as per usual, to hang out with her and Becky and watch something dumb on TV and watch the ball drop and drink sparkling apple cider. Because that's what we do every year. Originally we were planning on marathoning FarScape for a bit, but having recently finished up FireFly, it was decided scifi would be too heart-wrenching and SeaLab 2021 was watched instead. It was around this time that I realized that it was really painful for me to laugh. I'd exhale too deeply or lean over too far and I'd get this sharp pain in my left lung.

Long story short, I got back home safely (after being trailed by a police car) and puttered around on the internet until around 3 or 4am, at which point it was decided by both myself and my mom, who had just woken up, that it was probably time for me to sleep. The pain was still irritating me, I was finding it difficult to breathe deeply or talk without gasping a little. I figured it'd go away after I'd slept.

But then I got into bed and laid down and POW, it was like someone had shot me in the chest. I was suffocating. I couldn't breathe and could barely move. After about a half hour of whimpering and trying various sleeping positions, I forced myself up and went crying to mommy. She almost forced me to go to the emergency room twice, but I insisted that it was fine and it'd be gone by morning. She let me take two tylenol instead and I went and tried to sleep.

But not very successfully.

I think I got into REM sleep eventually, and woke up somewhere between 11 and noon. My chest still hurt. My left arm was numb. It was awesome. Also, my family had eaten New Year's breakfast without me. Also awesome.

Somewhere around 2, it was unanimously decided that it would be a really good idea to go to the emergency room. So I did.

After a lot of sitting around the ER a a little of reading American Gods, some x-rays were taken and it was decided that I had Costochondritis, a fancy word that means I bruised or stretched something cartilage-like in my ribcage and it was inflamed and unhappy. Says here in this information packet, "most often it seems to develop for no apparent reason." It's probably that I have really awful posture.

So now I'm on muscle relaxants and my writing is going downhill because it's making me sleepy and not-writing-very well.

I'm sorry, that was kinda anticlimactic.

And that's how I spent my New Year's. Hoo-ray!

.... I also have to be up at 7am to drive back to school tomorrow. Also hoo-ray!