Modules 4-7... And Also 1-3

It turns out that there's a project due on Monday for Information Design class; a project on which we've been working for weeks but which I've only technically started on.

Meanwhile I need to finish off project 1 for that class.

Good thing I don't have classes on Friday or Saturday. Or Thursday afternoon past 1:45. Even then, for that class we're doing midterm critiques this week, so I'm not even sure if class'll extend that long.

There's 4 modules to complete for the project; the idea is to take a full week per module- but if I get done one per day, and squeeze in the other thing, I could have both projects completed by Monday. Phew. 

I looked up how many credits I need left to graduate; if by some miracle I actually manage to pass Information Design this time, and keep up my at-least-passing grade in Interaction Design, I'd just need one class's worth of credits to have all my required credits for my current emphasis. Not counting the internship which is also needed.

I can't imagine taking a whole semester just for one class, so... maybe there'll be something eligible this Summer for me to take? I've still got enough money to pay for a Summer tuition, I think; my GPA is slipping far enough that I'm not sure if I'll be eligible for any scholarships beyond that... but if my GPA does slip that far, it'll be because I failed these classes that I'm required to pass to put me in the position of only needing one class in the first place, so! Next few days' work, very very important, is what I'm stabbing at.

Ikthys

It's a miracle I got it compiled in time for class; I did notice the mistake in time but not in time to compile a new video. There should be a title at first, something along the lines of they expected him to be a conqueror. But (and I think I know the reason) that didn't make it into the final video. It'd take half an hour in editing and compiling time, max, in order to fix it, but then I'd have to upload a new video and decide what to do with this old one...

Based it off of Mark which ends abruptly, or at least not all the earliest manuscripts have 16:9-20. So I suppose it's fitting that it begins abruptly? Aargh I don't know; this was supposed to be a triumph but it's just another screwup. Which are fun but it must be nice to succeed once in a while...

Reconsideration of Reason of "Underwhelmed Scholastics"

I think my problem is I try too hard rather than not hard enough. And my ambitions are being punished with plummeting grade. It'd probably be helpful if I didn't procrastinate and be ambitious at the same time, of course- that's what's really being punished. Though that may be part of the ambition, letting things percolate. When I do begin projects they get done pretty quickly, and I wish I could find a jazzier way to say that, but then I lack motivation to get the project out of the way so soon because it's a featherweight. I wait till the last moment, fall behind, all my classes act like they're the only class, and ere long I get smothered under feathers. Yay.

I blame the punctual. They're the cause of all life's woes. Without punctuality, nobody would care whether things get done when they're due.

Source of problem located. Solution for interception: ???

Three Things About the Three-Day Weekend

With Memorial Day weekend here, three days no school on Monday, it's a good thing. That sentence was ill-composed but I'm keeping it. As a lesson.

No school on Monday. That means, or so it would seem, no classes. Pretty sure that logic works out. Which means there's time to get work done instead of having to go to class, by which I mean homework. But for two it also means both of the other apartment mates are apparently out of town because they can be, which means that I've got room to work on printmaking stuff- have some screens emulsing in the bathroom without fear of someone walking in on them and turning on the lights.

There's still class on Tuesday, which means that this project due on Tuesday is actually due on Tuesday and not Thursday like I'd thought. I'd... I'd prefer Thursday.

We Already Got CARRIED AWAY

Remember how I was looking for a microphone? I ordered one from the internet and it came this morning, at the same time as a certain new game console came in the mail as well. In order to I-don't-know-what-it-seemed-a-good-idea-at-the-time, with the new mic I decided to film a reaction video, to all the reaction videos I could track down, to the teaser trailer for the My Little Pony movie. Like I said, it seemed a good idea at the time.

There are almost 40 of them. I never want to see, as of now, another reaction video for the rest of my life. Never been much into reaction videos, but they really broke the mold with this one, whatever that means. Listen, I'd had something perfect to say re: me and reaction videos, but I'm not sure what it is or anything. I keep on dozing off. There is no rest, there is no sleep, there are only ponies. It's like Paprika, but with ponies, and not like Paprika at all; see what did I tell you I'm nodding off, saying things I think make sense but which apparently don't. But if they don't make sense, how did Harley Quinn beat up those dudes on the elevator in the LEGO Batman movie? Thus we know it must make sense. Nelson Malone Meets the Man from Mush-Nut. The wacky adventures of Wally McDoogle. Homer Price? Something about the Queen, seeing you and thus not assassinating you maybe having to do with Quantum, uncertainty stuff, but maybe only metaphorically? It appears that while I've been doing this, it was a secret audition with Robert Downey, Jr, and congratulations I'm a superstar. But for real though the x-acto blades that come in packs, that must be a virus because the number of blades in a pack multiplies, I mean there's more and more every year, and I forget the rest. This is just like 5 years ago, Marvel can't decide their new direction and so they just hand the whole thing off to a raccoon and that's where Rocket comes from and IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN.

Twist ending: I should sleep.

Om Shanti Om

More Bollywood! Foreign film night tonight ensured so. This week's offering was Om Shanti Om. It's 1977. Shah Rukh Khan (!) plays a minor actor (or "junior artist," as they're apparently called) named Om, who has a crush from afar on a megastar actress named Shanti. Om manages to score a night out with her, but later overhears a conversation between her and the producer of her next film, whom we'll call Mike, because that's what everyone will call him in Hollywood once he goes Hollywood, though his real name is Mukesh. So Mike, yeah? 

Turns out that Mukesh and Shanti are actually married secretly, which makes his wanting to marry the daughter of some other studio exec (and inheriting the studio for himself) kind of a big deal. This is all a big twist. Further turns out Shanti is pregnant. This is also a big twist. But we're not even halfway through the movie yet, so the spoilers ain't bad, because I haven't even gotten to the real plot yet. (Here I should mention that the film getting produced, in this film Om Shanti Om, is itself called Om Shanti Om.) Shanti wants a public wedding ceremony so that they don't have to hide the marriage anymore, and a few days later (which Om spends moping around after the news) Mike takes her to the set of Om Shanti Om, a huge ballroom constructed just for the movie which hasn't begun filming yet. We'll get married in here, underneath this chandelier, he says, but nope he's actually lying and brought her there just so he could catch the place on fire with her trapped inside. Om tries to rescue her, but is beat up by Mike's dudes, burnt badly, exploded out the window, and hit by a car rushing to the maternity ward of the hospital. Taken to the hospital himself, he dies there at the same time the baby boy is born, and is thus reincarnated as the child, who is also named Om, also played by Shah Rukh Khan, and who grows up to become a famous actor, living the dream that Om I envisioned for himself.

It's now 2007, and Om "OK" Kapoor is turning 30. He's extremely pyrophobic after his encounters in his previous life, and meanwhile receiving other mysterious flashes of his previous life, especially when they visit the burned-down studio from 30 years ago as a filming location. Also there's this crazy lady who claims to be his mother, (which is actually true because she's the mother of his previous incarnation)? His memories of his past life come to a head during the star-studded afterparty of the award ceremony he won, when he encounters Mike (back in India after spending the past 25 years in Hollywood) for the first time, and remembers all that happened and how his beloved Shanti died. Mukesh came back to India for one reason: to produce an OK movie, that is, a film starring Om Kapoor. OK agrees on one condition: the film they produce is to be a revival of the planned Om Shanti Om from 30 years ago...

From here, the plan is simple: OK Cinderellas a Shanti lookalike as his costar, so that he can Pygmalion and Vertigo her in order to Gaslamp Mike in order to Hamlet him, Something in the Air-style (or Phantom of the Opera-style, really, which they don't even try to hide.) 

Sounds like a good idea to me.

They Grabbed Him by the Drinking Fountain

See if you can make heads or tails of this Calvin and Hobbes strip I'm recreating from memory here (go on, give the old mental archives a whirl. There's probably hundreds of Calvin and Hobbes comics that you can remember without realizing it.)

CALVIN: a couple of kids got filthy rich this morning

HOBBES: really? How?

CALVIN: they grabbed him by the drinking fountain.

I'd always assumed that the kid was named Filthy for some reason and he got rich from suing them after they'd assaulted him. But I guess I've been giving it more thought- our they thought crossed my mind at least that maybe that wasn't the way it was intended. The manner of assault was bothering me- the punchline I remember very clearly. Grabbing him. So, what if his name is Filthy Rich and they "got" him by grabbing him at the drinking fountain? Got as in kidnapped or jumped or absconded with or possessed? Or maybe the two kids made money off of some song by some band, vis They Grabbed Him, by The Drinking Fountain. I just don't know. Anyone else got any theories? Maybe it's a pun based off of some regional accent I wouldn't understand; I don't know.

2017 Backlog 11/15: Boring Backlogging Details

For the first few of these, I put the time of when I was getting these up up front, but now it's just, the time it is today, right now, that defaults and I just do the date, whatever I need. I compiled the days I didn't have already, and like I'm not doing these in any particular order. Just have the date as part of the post title, made a post for each date I saw needed a backlog post, and sometimes I delete the date from the post accidentally and I have to go back and research what date it was, and... I'd be able to get in more that this much in five minutes of writing if it weren't for that. Eh.

Vlog Up

Readings on web typography in my interaction design class seem to indicate that large type is dope, and needn't feel clunky or overwhelming so long as it's laid out properly. This is the size I usually type at. Isn't this much better? Come to think of it, here it is in Arial, which is the typeface I used to use, at the same size, which makes it the same font I used to use. Font is the typeface combined with its style: for example, right now I'm using like a 16 point Arial font (picas and points are another dang thing; just fancy typographers' measurements, is what you need to know.) Right now I'm using a 16-point oblique Helvetica font. Et cetera. 

Anyway I haven't blogged in a couple of days, as of this writing, because my computer's been slow as of late- may have had something to do with compiling the latest vlog. That took up a lot of processing power. And I had to do it like three times, because the headphones I used to mix the sound with were super loud, so I mixed the sound way too quiet the first couple of times. Turning up the volume, from the previously compiled file with the too-soft sound, resulted in a lot of background hissing, so the whole thing was one big mess, but at least you can hear anything and as far as things go I suppose I'm not terribly ashamed of the final outcome. 

2017 Backlog 10/15: What I'm Doing While Doing These

I've got half an hour to make, 6, 6 posts? Which means that each post would need... 30 minutes, divided by 6, 5 minutes per post? It's exactly 11:30 right now, and I'll just be writing straight for five minutes. 

Trying to help my sister make a YouTube video compiling her Snapchats for the year (she's a great and hilarious Snapchatter, and making a best-of. Cool. Needed my expertise to attach the introductory clip, and we've been having export trouble but I've got it now I think.)

Post Time!

Apparently it's almost midterms already?, which I know for a fact must be impossible. Evidence number 1: there's just no way, man. Evidence number 2: I haven't even finished any of the first projects in my classes this semester. There's a huge difference between that and, we haven't finished any of the first projects in my classes this semester, of course, but...

I think the reason I wasn't behind in my classes the first semester is because I was doing more besides classes- extracurricular stuff. That somehow made my use of time more efficient...?

The Second Tiny Abe

Filmed stuff for a new vlog today. I'm not sure who Tiny Abe is, or even the first one; I'm nodding off here and weird sitcoms are coming into my head. But I filmed stuff for a new vlog today. It's probably going to take a while to put together though.

Ghost Rider is the best! (also unrelated, continuing to nod off.)

I've got the opening greeting for the video; do you think the executives will like it?

Hello snackers... For he who clicks the "sub" to me this day shall be my snacker, be he ne'er so vile, this vid shall gentle his condition. And pretzels' pretzel shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember'd, we few, we twisted few, we pack of snackers... that's all I got... Pretzels here. I can see into your soul.

'Tubing

I've mentioned disturbing "you know, for kids!" YouTube videos in passing before; yesterday Saberspark released a video launching a probe into the matter. It's... it's not for the weak of belly.

You can wash your eyes off with my latest wonderful-thing obsession, No Evil (playlist linked,) which according to my browsing history I stumbled upon Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. It is marvelous. It's about... well, it's kind of hard to sum up, and the entire plot isn't fully explained in the videos themselves- helpfully, Crowne Prince of Scribble Kibble explains the whole backstory here, plus why come it's so awesome and why you should watch it.

If you don't subscribe to any of the other YouTube channels I link to here, at least subscribe to Betsy Warlord of Noodles Lee's.

Lois Lane Girl Reporter?

It's been years, and I wasn't even looking for it, but doing an archive trawl through Hark! A Vagrant, I found this linked in one of the, what are they called, rants? It's about Lois Lane, Girl Reporter, which was at one point to be a series of illustrated YA novels not unlike the Secret Hero Society: Study Hall of Justice book, except revolving around Lois Lane, Girl Reporter ("All previous instances of its use now rendered callbacks rather than sexist. BONUS.")

http://deantrippe.tumblr.com/post/4021523420/lois-lane-girl-reporter

Like Cailin said when I showed it to her the first time, back when it came out (!), and I'm paraphrasing because this was 6 or 7 friggin' years ago, but something along the lines of, any project that opens up including the phrase "with considerable brainstorming help from my pal John Campbell" makes it fine by me.

Three Stories, or One

If there's a single verse of scripture at the core of all others, my nomination for it would be Matthew 26:41: Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak. Christ has come to his disciples while in the Garden of Gethsemane, and they've fallen asleep. 

I had homework due this evening, the readings for New Testament class tomorrow being Matthew 26-28; I got nothing completed, at least not in time. With little time to complete anything, I focused on the most possible of all my assignments due to complete, which was the reading assignment. There were a couple of chapters of commentary to read, and I nodded off in the midst of them.

Gilgamesh approaches Utnapishtim wanting to know the secret of eternal life, and Utnapishtim agrees to give it to him if he can go I think it was three days without sleep. But Gilgamesh can't- and so how is he supposed to be able to stay alive forever, if he can't even go without sleep?

I completed the reading in time, and even potentially the response, but the assignment is closed by the time I'm able to access it, so I can't submit anything. So that's the end of that story. If you'll excuse me now, I'm going to bed.

Mayhem and RiPPs

I figured out how to download my copy of the PDF- the issue I'd been having was, you need to be logged into DriveThruRPG.com before you click on the discount link, in order for the discounted (meaning free, because it's already been purchased from the preorder) zip file to show up in your cart.

The other bundle's still up for grabs if anyone wants it; maybe I'll auction it off, I expect it to be a hot commodity. Or maybe I'll just let you have it. It comes with the rulebook, and a blank character sheet, and the GC screen, and a PDF file of all 108 Mayhem cards which you can print out and paste to normal playing cards to have your own Mayhem deck. So, everything you need to start playing except for the dice- I myself ordered special Planet Mercenary dice, 4 sets of the 3D6 you need, but any dice work for it as long as you've got a way to distinguish the Mayhem die from the other two. 

The way those work is this: after you roll, if your roll succeeds, if the Mayhem die shows a higher result than each of the other two dice, that triggers a "Mayhem flip," which means that you flip over the top card of the Mayhem deck and interesting stuff ensues. Maybe you actually failed. Maybe you succeeded more spectacularly than you'd thought. Maybe you need to reload the next time you try to shoot something. It could be anything. If it's something you don't like, you can spend one of your RiPPs to negate that card.

Other ways RiPPs can be spent are rerolling your dice, and throwing "ablative meat" in front of you to prevent otherwise fatal injury- you toss one of your grunts in front of you and that takes the hit for you instead. Maybe they survive that, maybe they don't. (If your PC is ever killed off for real, you can keep roleplaying as one of your grunts from then on- and the more times they've survived being an ablative meat shield, the more powerful that character is...) Don't expect to emerge from a session unscathed- being a galactic mercenary is dangerous business, and the idea of a successful round of play in this game is if everyone had fun, not necessarily if everyone did well, or even survived, or not.

I Talk About PM:RPG a Bit More

When I first mentioned Planet Mercenary I was under the impression that it had already come out, because the Kickstarter campaign had certain dates estimated for completion and delivery- only there was this massive holdup as they wanted to perfect everything, so everything's only beginning to roll out now (even though a lot of the parts were already manufactured like a year ago apparently.) The rule book only started printing today, apparently, and, I'm still waiting for the PDF, but, any day now...

Also I mentioned how ingenious the roleplay system was, like an actual story is being told; I mentioned that as something the GM (or Game Chief as they're known in the PM:RPG) did but that's not accurate as much, I was going based off of what I could recall at the time. And it's true that the game chief does have a mechanic similar I guess to handing out XP, where they're called RiPP (role-playing points; the extra "i" comes from the one that's not in "team"), which you can spend to not die among other things, which is fun and relatively uniquely implemented, but, the unique fun story-telly part about it has more to do with the entire approach.

Which maybe I'll tell you about tomorrow; I wanted to get to sleep tonight.

Great Segue

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth a mothering nation... (Mad Libs reference.) I've got the entire Mad Libs sessions from my mission on my thumb drive from my mission, though I have no idea where that is. Somewhere at home? But it's very small, and has been lost for years.

Also, my current flashdrive is also missing somewhere in the apartment last I saw. From a mother's day reference to news that I'm behind on an assignment that I'd had on my flashdrive, an assignment that was due a week ago. Greet segue.

Secondary segue, swinging it back around and segueing the other direction: I love films, and I love making films, and during my mother's day call (seriously is that where you put the apostrophe? isn't it about all mothers though?) I received sage parental advice about, not trying to upgrade to a BFA just because I can, when I don't enjoy it, and, maybe talk to some elective/occupational counselor, because the idea of education is to be educated, which means to, be educated, and somehow education connects with jobs?, I don't know, the logic was a little fuzzy. But Brother Keller already has mad connects with film industry dudes which he'll spread re: me once I graduate and am ready to be hooked up, and the class in my elective focus which I've enjoyed the most has been motion design (though, having taken it last semester where I don't think I got anything higher than a B, I didn't do too well at.) Logic follows, I need to film more, vlog more, do something, to make my wheelhouse rollier and homier, and emphasize in that as a specialty.

Only I can't find the battery charger either, to power my camera...

Arthur's Nothing Problems

So turns out that a PDF copy comes alongside the physical copy of Planet Mercenary already; if anybody wants the link to the PDF copy of the Planet Mercenary RPG rulebook that I won't be using, let me know, and it's for free I guess; MAN I've just got TOO MUCH MONEY as it is, it's the worst.

I've been dreaming almost entirely in heists lately. I was only mildly psyched for King Arthur, but with the Guy Ritchie and all, and my dreams lately (seriously the plot of every single one of my dreams lately has taken the form of a caper) I knew I had to go see King Arthur: Legend of the Sword in theaters; it's okay I guess? There were a few heisty type elements as far as that goes, but overall in terms of movie quality... I can usually pretty easily "script doctor" the precise problem a story has that keeps it from being good*, but this one's got me baffled. Guy Ritchie movies tend to do that to me... 

I mean, for sure the whole Lady in the Lake thing is easy to pinpoint as something that could have been pushed better, but that's near the end and the film clearly was already from the beginning not all it could have been. Character investment, for one, but it's not the characters' fault as much as the structure of the narrative the characters are seen in. Needing to throw up text at us in the beginning explaining some crucial such-and-such, as this film does, is generally a pretty bad sign. So does Star Wars, so there's not really a problem with the text intrinsically so much as what the text means: Star Wars, after the opening crawl, launches straight into action, and deftly gets us to care about the characters we encounter in the early scenes; bad opening-narrative-text movies start off with telling us exposition... followed immediately by showing us more exposition. Like the expositions couldn't have been consolidated for some reason. And we the audience, still not knowing the things we need to know to appreciate the situation at hand because there's still crucial information being explained, don't have time to invest in... anything. So we don't.

From nothing comes a king, is the film's tagline, right, so the problem in the movie would have to be... nothing. Nothing. The nothing bits, those are the issue. The stuff that leads up to the- oh, you know what I meant, it's obvious enough. Maybe it's the directorial style, or something, but I have a hard time getting rooted in Guy Ritchie films generally, like in general have investment problems at the beginning, and the more abstract he gets the bigger the problem is. His heist stuff, set present day or whatever, is easy enough to latch onto early on; Sherlock Holmes movies, a bit further removed, and so it's harder to seep ourselves into**; King Arthur, meanwhile, is, set in a fantasy version of medieval England where one of the very very very first things we encounter are war elephants the size of castles. So.

Planet Mercenary Preorders and T-Shirts Past the 70th T-Score

Planet Mercenary goes to print on Monday, and it should be hitting retailers by July. But I'm pretty sure the PDFs (for those who prefer their RPG guides in PDF format) will be available before then? Anyway, I for one am totally preordering that junk. Tomorrow! Which is actually today!, since it's past midnight here.

I've emulsed another screen, in all that's fit news of print, but that's boring; the good stuff is the ideas I've come up with meanwhile. What got me into serigraphy is the fine arts angle, with t-shirts being an afterthought, but right now I've got one or two (...or one) ideas of which I'm pretty proud in the t-shirt realm, definitely matching the Prince Pretzels standard of being past the second standard deviation of "cleverness." It's a good word- intelligence and creativity, summarized punchily. Out of all the ideas in the world, surpassing the 97.7th percentile of creativity and smarts isn't easy, but I think we've hurdled at least that bar with this stuff. Hoo boy.

Wish I could tell you more, but you'll have to see for yourself... once I get around...

404ing at Life

Sleep is good because my dreams have been chock
alock
full of gambits for Finn Michael Moone to pull, recently. I'm writing those still! 100% I'm writing those still. I mean, I'm majoring with a design in emphasis graphic, and I'm businessing with a work in screenprinting, and all work I've been motivated lately to do is filmmaking which is the art I love to make most but which has zero correspondence to any classes this semester, and it's another art night and this time we made buttons and like nobody shew up, at least compared with last week.

But
maybe it's the problems with school I've been having this year generally, like maybe it has to do with my latest At-a-Glance not matching my At-a-Glancing style even remotely which causes me to be inefficient or whatever, or maybe it's just me realizing these last few semesters how much I truly do stink at my major proffered me and chosen by self, but
man I don't know if graphic design is even a good fit for me or whatever, but maybe I'm too far down this path to really change it, so I've got no choice to either get good or just abjectly fail?

But it's something I find pretty interesting
but I continually fail to grasp (or at least apply) basic concepts
but there's a whole summer and autumn to practice and maybe get good then before my next semester after this one. I'm not sure when to hold them or fold them and I generally don't like folding them in the first place
I mean it's not like other majors don't have classwork or anything, so not switching my major or emphasis would be the more efficient of the other options, but would it be the best?
so.

My plan all along was to switch majors in a sense; would it be switching majors then not to switch majors? I'm referring to my plan to apply for the BFA program. Would I be upgrading to a BFA just because I can? It's increasingly feeling like that. You have to be y'know good at what you do to do that, and so there's a patina of prestige to it as well, but why would I get more intensive in something I'm not currently good at (no excuse) but also am not enjoying that much because of it?

I'd totally stay in school for years and years until I get it right but I don't have that luxury, especially here they're so bent on getting you out of school so that other people can attend
like I guess it's a housing issue but this semester our apartment complex has got loads of apartments with nobody staying in 'em, just totally empty. there's an eclipse coming up and there are apartments renting out room for eclipse watchers, there's gonna be such an influx of folk so maybe that'll happen then
but man I don't know, in the real world I've just gotta get good quick or fold 'em. Why is so much of our grade in graphic design based on our skill of graphic design? Sounds obvious, I mean, but can't there be room in like a graphic design studio for a dude who sux at designing but has awesome ideas? Graphic design is like 90% coming up with divergent presentations of ideas; the design part itself is just a contest of spitpolish. 
I'm always as always way too ambitious in my projects
why do they have us choose what to do for these projects; I betcha other majors they just tell you what to do (what do people even do in non-art classes do they even have projects or do they just sit around and learn that way? well maybe.)

Why would I care about what graphic design studios even do or have room for if that's not even what I want to do? I already do what I want to do. That's all anyone does, is what they've got the motivation to do. Lately all I've been motivated to do is curl up in some corner somewhere and rock back and forth. I don't even stim; man maybe it'd be a good idea to, you're autistic, d'astit, act like it. I mean, I've, flicked my pinkie finger, but not really as a stim as such. Wacking my hand against my chest repeatedly, retard-style, that feels good, but I never got into the hobby of it. Is getting limpwristed, abjectly effeminate, is that a form of stimming? Or does it just mean, other things? But curling up in a ball, anyway- I've lacked much motivation lately: I'm such a screwup. Can't remember the last time I've been competent at anything. My special talent is sucking at everything I try my hand at. Fun stuff. I guess everybody compares their worst against others' bests; a lot of the best screenwriters in the world are actually bad at screenwriting which is what makes them so good. Everyone screws up all the time.

But I'm the only one who takes it personally.

I Just Spent the Last Hour Doing Nothing But Browsing iTunes; Here's a Stream of My Favorite Album of All Time

"I got a friend who's a genius/ nobody listens to him/ I got some friends that got famous/ la la lala la la lala."

Fourth Wall-Breaking Interview-Style George Clooney Monologue from Alternate Universe Ocean's 12 of My Dreams

(It was almost a full five years ago where this post was posted. http://dielikeadisneyvillain.blogspot.com/2012/05/things-from-my-dream-nonlinear-heists.html If I'd waited two days on this, it would have been exact. Oh well. I can't time my dreams; I can only recognize when they've got crazycreative caper plot ideas.)

OCEAN: Who would have thought it. Where do they pull that from? I mean it’s just so logical yet so creative at the same time. Where do they even get that? Save the bomb, don’t blow it up immediately like would be your first thought, but use it on the escape at the bottleneck to block anyone from following their route of escape behind them. Wow. Good for them.

I mean, on one hand good for them, but on the other hand I’m left slightly lost, you know? And it’s maddening.

It’s like watching all my friends blasting off to the moon in a rocket they constructed themselves made out of bubble wrap and creepy dolls’ heads and powered by universal human understanding, while I’m stuck back on earth craning my neck back looking up at them leaving me and I’ve got one of those little bubbles of wet fart forming stuck between my cheeks and it’s driving me up the wall.

So hm.

...what does this town have, does this place have anything in the way of whipped caffeinated beverages?

I Yell About Naps

Mondays continue to be INSANE HOMEWORK DAYS for me even this semester, apparently. There was a big project due in my Information Design class- and this semester, there's only three such projects instead of four. So I count it a blessing that my thumby-drive on which I have most of the relevant project is temporarily misplaced; it means that I didn't have to turn anything in, and could work on my other projects, like taking inordinate amounts of nap. My FitBit tells the story:

I get a little under 6 and a half hours during the week, but make up for it on the weekend with NINE HOURS OF SLEEP A DAY including naps. (This post includes A LOT OF YELLING apparently.) Today, with my stuff due in Information Design class that I hadn't done, I'd been TOTALLY GOING to get on it and not procrastinate, and in a sense I didn't! But I also napped. I'd meant to wake up at three... but then when I tried that it was no fun... and I only woke up for real at 4:30 because some guy was calling me back. Wrong number.

I'm sleeping on the couch recently; my bed just makes such a convenient storage area I'd hate to break it up...

First Seeking

Seek ye first the kingdom of God; where your treasure is there will your heart be also. I guess we define ourselves most by that which we keep closest to the chest, and that by what hands we don't want to play, parts of ourselves we don't want to reveal and thus double back on. Feeling accepted keeps me safe, but the corollary is that I wrap myself in that- I speak of being a furry, which still takes me aback. I go into detail in a post I haven't yet posted, but have as part of a backlog thing for one of the... well, when do I have that planned for, I don't know. One of the days I missed, as part of this larger thing. And I guess this actually has nothing to do with being a furry; never mind! (I realized today that I have Asperger's; I'd forgotten about that. That was surprising.)

Well, it kind of does, but everything pertinent is already explained- in that other post.

But here I wanted to go into, seek ye first the kingdom of God- Matt 6:33, Luke 12:31. I quote these scriptures, it seems oh so pious, but with everything I'm only seeking those things because I'm seeking the things of the world first. There was a lesson on avoiding bad media, but I was all, but I gotta learn these media, the more media the better, because I'm a storyteller and I need stories to tell. But that showed what I was seeking first. So I don't know. I don't even know what the kingdom of God would be, that I'd seek it. That anything would be added unto me, much less "all these things," well I guess there's just faith needed to accept that.

Oh, Zabivaka!

Been on a James Bond kick again- it happens. It happens even when I should be doing homework. Even when I've got huge projects due on Monday that I haven't been working on at all, it happens...

OHMSS is certainly something. That ending, man... Followed up by Diamonds Are Forever, a personal favorite of mine (because I have no shame, and seriously how could anyone top a moon rover car chase?), with Connery back in the saddle for one last canonical outing, which means that Lazenby's only Bond in, like, just the one I think? 

Hailing from the 1990s as I do (and I never thought that that would make me feel old but it does,) my Bond will always be Brosnan, but, that actually has nothing to do with anything and anyway...

I always think that the weekends will be a great place to catch up on homework, but then I get really fatigued and nap in the middle of the day, from 1:00-3:00, and still go around drowsy as if two straight hours wasn't enough- or maybe too much.

This is what I woke up from:

I dreamt that Zabivaka was a 00-style secret agent, getting caught up in ski chases and going through women like his personal supply of tissue paper and everything. Only the SPECTRE-like organization has developed a technology that eavesdrops on people mating, and so can tell when women are calling out the equivalent of "oh, James...!" but with Zabivaka's name instead, of course, and then boom they've got him dead to rights I guess, they'd know exactly where he is and can assassinate him Numbers 25:8 style. And soo so so soo Zabivaka enacts a complex gambit, becoming the 2018 Russia FIFA World Cup mascot, which causes a bunch of erotic fanart to be made of him and turning him into a memetic sex god, and then the SPECTREy people can't tell whether the myriad people calling out Zabivaka's name in the throes of passion are actually with Zabivaka at the time or just fantasizing that they are.

Or at least, that's reading between the lines. The dream itself lasted maybe all of 5 seconds. But I extrapolated the gambits from there.

(Background for the uninitiated. Mild yiff ahoy. Natch.)

MPQ Rocket and Groot

I'd been going to illustrate this with GIFs I'd been going to make, but Adobe AfterEffects does not seem to be working anywhere, even on the school's computers and certainly not mine, so all I can do is throw my hands up and go, [makes hands-throw-up-in-air-motion.]

Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 is out, and I have seen it and there aren't any Spider-Man: Homecoming spoilers which is good, but what I really want to focus on is the new Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 tie-in Rocket and Groot character in Marvel Puzzle Quest, how awesome that is. I guess I could dedicate a little time to the film, if only to say that now that Marvel Studios know that they're going to hit it out of the park with every film they make and can afford to be a little bolder in their filmmaking choices, the choice that they choose to make recently is to make their films, just, super wise, for some reason, and that just bends my mind. But MPQ anyway.


(I've already shown that video, but it serves as an excellent refresher.)

Each character in Marvel Puzzle Quest has its own set of moves they can make- each character has three special abilities, powered by AP of a certain color: my most powerful character, 5-Star Jean Grey (Phoenix,) for example, has a Psychic Flames ability which costs 9 red AP to use, a From the Ashes ability that's passive (costing 0 green AP to use) but which can become a Phoenix Force that costs 9 green AP to use, and a Psychic Rapport ability that would cost 7 purple AP to use were I actually in possession of that power (you need comic book covers to upgrade your powers, and I only have 2 Jean Grey covers, one for her green power and one for her red.) These powers can be of any of the existing colors, like how 3-Star Black Panther (T'Challa) has yellow, blue, and black powers; I'm just using Jean Grey as an example.

Now, each power in the game is unique, there may be others like them, other powers similar, but only that version of that character has that exactly particular ability. So it's got to be pretty tough coming up with a unique powerset, right, and then balancing the powers out so that the game doesn't break. There's probably a dude, or a whole team of dudes, in charge of just coming up with those.

When a power is activated, there's usually a little animation that swoops in, that illustrates the character putting their power into play so that it makes as much sense as it can, thematically, representing this superhero battle with match-3 gems- sorry, power orbs, thanks, Blake Anderson. Little bits of motion design, anyway. There's probably, they probs need just one person to do that for them, but they do a good job.

Which brings me back to the new 4-star legendary character, Rocket & Groot (Awesome Mix Volume 2,) as showcased in the current run of the recurring Meet Rocket & Groot story arc (long story short, Mystique steals a sprig of Groot's to build a Groot army, so you have to travel to Latveria to steal it back/destroy it.) This time, they're using the art from the new 4-star version of the character (usually they use the art from the 3-star version, Rocket & Groot (Most Wanted), is basically what makes this one special. (This time, Groot's riding Rocket's shoulder, instead of vice-versa!)) Rocket & Groot (Awesome Mix Volume 2) is great. The art's great, as per frickin' usual, but what I wanted to focus on was the power set and the motion design on the character.

Would be a lot better if AfterEffects were available, so you could actually see what I'm talking about; I mean, I've got the footage, just no way to edit it really...

EDIT: ha, I just said "edit." But this is real; I've got it, anyway.

There's also sound design to accompany the motion, nice "boom boom boom"s with each footstep Baby Groot makes during "I Aaaaaam Groooooot!" that kind of thing, but still you can really see the school of thought and some of the techniques behind the motion design they use in MPQ- probably took the art, took it into Adobe AfterEffects, set some keyframes for the position and the scale- it's ridiculously easy and it looks great, especially if you're practiced in some of the principles of animation and the easy ease tool. They also apparently use drag frames, I think they're called, quite a bit- it's the little fadey lag of motion blur after movement here.

Let's talk about the power set for a bit. They managed to get pretty clever and thematic with this set- there's a 12-cost blue power called Rocket's Pack, ostensibly based off of the Aero Rig concept seen in the new movie- it creates a blue countdown tile that deals damage and creates a black attack tile (pummeling the enemy at the end of your turn,) as though Rocket's zipping around the battlefield. Pretty clever, I suppose, and incredibly powerful if you have it advanced enough. There's a passive yellow power, Welcome to the Team, which at the beginning of the battle creates strike tiles (increasing the damage you deal with each match,) but makes the strike tile more powerful if there's another character on your team with the affiliation of Guardians of the Galaxy- that's pretty clever here; you don't see team affiliations used very much outside of the odd Team Cap/Team Iron Man based power, and even then I can't think of more than one or two powers that use those. This power also ties into the movie with the whole "welcome to the frickin' Guardians of the Galaxy" bit.

The power that I really find especially clever and thematic, though, is this two-fer I've added GIFs of here: "Don't Push This Button," a 10-cost green power, which when activated places down a special "Atomic Bomb" 3-turn countdown tile and becomes "I Aaaaaam Groooooot!"

What's clever about the Atomic Bomb tile is that if it is allowed to count all the way down to the end it deals damage to the enemy team- but if it's matched before then, it deals damage to the enemy team but also deals some to your team. Meanwhile, as long as the atomic bomb tile is on the board, the passive I Aaaaaam Groooooot! power makes a match for you using the same AI that the game uses for the enemy team's turns- so it could be really good for you, but there's also a chance that Baby Groot there's gunna match your Atomic Bomb tile and everyone's gonna get sprayed. It's fun and clever and perfectly fits the climax of Volume 2. That's just way good.

So yeah. Rocket & Groot (Awesome Mix Volume 2) is just an all-around well-done character, y'all.

Art Night

Art nights at Carla's are Thursdays; the next task party night is the 18th. Without tasks to complete things are more relaxed, but art night is getting bigger (had to help being in a second table). It's my first non-task-party art night, but they're every week, art nights. Feels safe there. 

And I'm worn out right now, but I've got more to say potentially.. 

- - - - -

I felt safe. I wasn’t sure how I liked it. 

There was a, man I forget what it’s called, it’s like Mexican tarot, or something, only there’s a whole lot more trump suits and it has nothing to do with tarot and the fact that there’s even a “the world” card is sheer coincidence- 52 cards, I think, but in sequence and each is themed, like the tarot suit in that regard. And the art night had recreated that, card by card, with imaginative reimagining and recreation of the cards, with the original posted up next to it, on the wall, 3rd floor of the Spori where art is posted up.

This time we’re working on a flip-face book, like the amazing faces book that’s split up into slats and you can flip and change the character’s nose, or eyes, or neck, or hair, in any combination resulting in some really unique and interesting faces. I work on mine. My guy’s got three noses, a unicycle for an eye, city for hair. There’s a couple of guys talking about DeviantArt.

- What’s that trend called, [the one guy says, the one more leftish to where I'm over my drawing,] I’ve been seeing a lot recently, where it’s like human/dog hybrids for some reason?

- It’s called “being a furry.”

That is 100% the real quote. The other guy doesn't seem to have ever heard of that. In some corner of myself, I thought, and here comes the mocking. But it didn’t come. He just… explained it further. 

-The animals themselves are called -- and he stumbled over the word “anthropomorphized.”

His sister draws that kind of thing, and does so well and adorably. So no mocking. Bad Sonic fanart was brought up, looked at, laughed at, but even then it was just the bad stuff, the good stuff was genuinely respected. When I missed all those posts, the 23rd 24th 25th, I was watching porn late into the night. Not necessarily porn, maybe Indiana Jones movies or something, but the narrative’s “cleaner” this way if I say it was porn (quotation marks because irony.) I’d gone for two weeks without, saying I could allow myself porn later, I’m going to masturbate again but it’s going to be exclusively furry stuff- trying to wean myself off. And it worked. I went without pornography and masturbation for two weeks, until the weekend of the first week of school, which was my scheduled time for it. I don’t even think furry porn is hot- I mean, it’s hot, but I don’t find it arousing, and I’ve only ever masturbated to it to say that I did, and later on wishing that I could say that I didn’t. So you’d figure it’d be perfect to wean me off. So I did that. And after this, I said, it’s going to be three weeks, and I’m going to allow human stuff. But after allowing myself to masturbate once, after those two weeks were up, for a day- and it was a vaguely defined period of time, or at least I made the excuse that it was- I just kept doing it. There’s this 1975 French erotic fantasy film called The Beast, I’m not going to say it was the first mainstream furry porn because even the Fritz the Cat sequel had come out by this point (9 Lives of Fritz the Cat, which reportedly both Bakshi and Crumb hated; I haven’t actually seen that one yet…) but it’s way hot, and I definitely consider it yiff because the climax is literally werewolf(-with-horse-penis!) rape, and there’s gobs of cum, and it’s consensual by the end of course (at which point there’s even more cum, like seriously, there’s so much cum in that movie, and she’s rubbing it all over her chest and he keeps on spooging it on her and it’s sooo hot.) Ryan out of town again, I stayed up all night, pulling an all-nighter in my room masturbating to girly stuff on YouTube- I’d long ago, by this time, dropped the stipulation that the pornography need be furry. I didn’t orgasm, then, because that’s no fun; it just kind of wound down but I nabbed maybe 15 minutes of sleep after the sun’d already come up, and woke up, and jerked all the way off, just in bed there. And was overcome with tremendous guilt, and a realization of how far I’d sunk. I still should go see the bishop, but after my purging shower I deleted all my files of human stuff, including the The Beast stuff since face it most of the hotness from that is human, but I kept all my real yiff; there’s a very good reason that that’s still acceptable which I’m going to explain hereafter, so yeah I kept that (somewhere along the line the first image in my yiff file folder got set as my desktop background, and I’m rolling with it; cutsily, I clothe her in desktop icons.) And instead of feeling sorry for myself all day, I went to go to Big Jud’s, and I’ve already told the rest of the story. But keeping the yiff- I’d already drawn some softcore yiff in my brand new sketchbook, in commemoration of my then-upcoming goal to keep it furry from then on, and I drew a bunch of hardcore stuff here now during the still-furry part of the, autoorgy, masturbathon, fapfest, whatever. Wankapalooza. And it cooled my jets a bit, like looking at the cats instead of the breasts when you masturbate to kittiesntitties.tumblr.org. You could spend hours and hours there, on that site, because whenever things get too hot you can just look at the kitties instead. It was like that. Only, different, as well. On my mission, I drew this horse, anthropomorphic horse, huge penis, like, huge, huge penis, large enough to fit a couple of anthros in his peehole themselves having sex with each other in there. It was based off this dream, this idea of this horse from this dream, “feral” but still as well-endowed to put that image of possibility into my head, and I’m like, hmm, good idea, and I drew it in the sketchpad that I had then. And I should have felt guilty, I thought, but instead I felt the spirit, which confused me, and was the subject of much prayer, pondering and journalwriting. And I still feel the holy ghost when I look at furry porn- that’s not possible to fake, right?- and I think it must have something to do with a spiritual witness of how sacred procreation is, even if I’m watching it being depicted done with a bunch of male huskies climaxing all over each other, or anything else that would be in itself considered outside of the bounds set by the Lord. So even after the masturbation, and by after I mean even without masturbation, I’ve got yiff to replace it, something I can do, drawing that instead of twerking my turkey jerky. It's good, but is it right? I can't see any other option. It's some kind of sublimation for those thoughts, and celebration of furriness allows me to feel accepted, avoid addictive behaviors.

He shows us some of his sister's stuff on his phone- like I said, she's well and adorable. One of the reasons I showed up to art night, so intrigued, is some of the card art from the Mexican thing, the first card's a rooster if that helps any, that pinged my furdar. There's a girl who comes here, I've seen her around, who'd done that; she speaks in a Greek (?) accent which I'd forgotten about. She's briefly mentioned in the conversation as a potential furry artist present, as I guess the convo winds down or switches to other things, other strange fan art on the internet after the Sonic stuff.

Safety. Acceptance. And I don't want to feel safe because too much feels like enabling instead of acceptance, it feels like you shouldn't be accepting this. I find the Star Wars cosplayers freaks, I wouldn't dress up like that, wear normal clothes act normal acts do normal behavior, but, I'd wear a fursuit; don't let me feel safe. I'm no great fan of whimsy and yet I love this; don't enable me. I stand against tattooing and piercing like what's wrong with your body it's fine unmodified, yet I picture myself with a fluffy tail and pointy furry ears as I walk to class. It's our own form of worship, our own God, don't let us worship at these idolatrous altars, just force us to fit in like everyone else; there's no great difference between something righteous and something sinful, and you can't tell it and I can't tell it. All ethics is is playing by the rules and you're telling us to stand out from the crowd; it doesn't matter if you can't see a square inch of skin on us it's the ultimate immodesty. Everything about it feels hypocritical and wrong and I feel safe here, where there's creativity and instruments and assorted cheeses and well-read books; why is it that the educated ones are the most creative and artistic, does that make sense?

It's like there's a paradox there.

A Problem Defined, Yet with No Solution in Sight

Doing immensely ambitious and extremely creative projects for my classes isn't magically going to make me not suck at graphic design the way I do. I act like it will, nonetheless. 

I had scheduled it out for this summer to be the time when I finally start working on getting the basics down and get good, but I've got design classes this semester, before summer, so I... I don't know. It's a bit late (but never too late!) to get started. I was on the ball of things my first semester, my second semester too I think; it wasn't until I finished the prereq classes and, taking the more advanced classes, realized how bad I am, did I get worse, through being overly ambitious and getting far later behind than mere procrastination can account for. 

That's my working model, at least. 

Moral of the story: ambition is evil.

I can't get a BFA without applying for one and getting selected- I won't get selected without an impressive resume- I can't have an impressive resume without being good- I can't be good if I don't practice- and I can't practice with all this homework assigned me, and I won't practice unless it's homework assigned me, because I can't practice with all this homework assigned me. But if it's homework I'm only going to get ambitious about it. So it's like a catch-22 made out of stupid.

After After the Film

More untold history from Friday: after the movie, after the after-movie discussion, I went into the computer lab to, do something computery I think- I recall not really needing one of those computers, but a computer, and being too lazy/in a hurry to go home to use my laptop; I think I needed to check a schedule thing. 

People were in there, discussing Moana: the woman who brings it up feels that there's no character development or conflict in the character of Moana: as a child she wanted to go to sea, as she grew up she accepted her responsibility as protector of the island, and now --how convenient-- she needs to go to sea in order to protect the island, tra-la-la. 

Having just gotten out of a discussion of a film, where people had picked up on like themes or whatever which I had completely missed in my own personal viewing, I was intrigued by the what-the-heck-ness of it all: are we as a society so used to analyzing storytelling techniques that we do it as part of our enjoyment process of a story, we do it just secondhand without thinking, or what? 

And then she said something about how she still likes Harry Potter even though it's mainstream now, and I realize, oh, these aren't normies, this isn't a normie conversation. Normies talk about relationships and stuff when they talk to each other; I've seen it firsthand that's what they do. Which means that this non-normie conversation, about non-normie things... doesn't count, or something.

Disappointing.

2017 Blues

What's the matter with me this year? Last semester I'm not sure if I got a single A, and this semester though I feel more on top of things, I keep on realizing there's essential school materials I lack, and like turns out that the module due in interaction design was heftier than I'd thought? I got it done and turned in on time, but that doesn't mean that I'm up to speed in my information design class... again... and now look at me. Just barely turning in a post for the day. Disgraceful.