OKAY HERE WE GO PEEPS GUNNA WRITE A SCRIPT NOW OR SOMETHING

Thinking last night about how perfectly constructed James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is, I’m like how he do that? Practice probably? And I can’t write anything save I’m given a lot of time, have to construct it perfectly, leave wide open gaps until pieces come to me that would be perfect, years after beginning the project and putting it on the backburner. In real life there are deadlines, and you have to construct your whatever under time constraint. So I made it a goal to outline, at least, a whole script of some kind of 45-minute-length dramatic work. That’s the only constraint. I am of course also going to build constraints for myself otherwise I’m just paralyzed with option.

• It’s going to be an episode of some sort of Other//half show.
• There’s going to be something juggled around in it, the way that Baby Groot gets juggled around and interacts with everyone throughout the movie.
• There’s going to be a rough three-act structure, and each of the acts is going to be based off of one of Georges Polti’s 36 dramatic situations. I’ve created an excel file that should randomize them for me. Maybe one day I’ll balance between the situations and the sub-situations (the way I’ve got it set up now is this: it chooses one of the 36 situations and then it chooses a subcategory of that situation, and then maybe a subsubsection if there are more than one. Perhaps it should choose from the subsubsections directly? No matter.) Here’s what popped out:
• Act 1: SELF-Sacrificing For An Ideal: 20D, The Ideal of 'Honor' Sacrificed to the Ideal of 'Faith' (Elements: the Hero; the Ideal; the 'Creditor' or the Person or Thing Sacrificed);
• Act 2: FALLING PREY To Cruelty Or Misfortune : 7A, The Innocent Made the Victim of Ambitious Intrigue (Elements: an Unfortunate; a Master or a Misfortune);
• Act 3: DISCOVERY Of The Dishonor Of A Loved One 27A(1), Discovery of a Mother’s Shame (Elements: the Discoverer; the Guilty One). Such situations end in situation 36, remorse (Elements: the Culprit; the Victim or the Sin; the Interrogator)

Going off of, what a three-act structure is, get a character up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him out of the tree, I’m not sure if each act corresponding to a dramatic situation would work, like, at all, but here’s how I’d imagine it would happen: honor is sacrificed for faith, which sets things in motion. Complications arise, ensue, are overcome when the innocent party (the protagonist, at the wrong end of “honor” which is being sacrificed) is made the victim of ambition in the intrigue. Resolution of plot when the protag discovers why they’re being targeted, because of the mother’s shame?? It’s coming out like a conspiracy thriller, so let’s structure it that way: it’s halfway through wherein the protagonist discovers the plot and commences to protag.

Maybe sacrificing honor would be what the mother figure does, obviously, which leaves the child to discover it. The drama would come from irony rather than suspense. She gives up honor in order to serve faith- that reminds me of the sci-fi standby of man’s hubris. The day is saved by giving into faith, after man’s reason overstretched. She gives up her honor by admitting her hubris, but the public’s opinion is against her- they think she’s turned radical for suddenly renouncing her position. Somehow that leads to her child getting targeted? Heck, let’s throw that juggle target in here. Track down, what’s the deal with the macguffin?, or no let’s not have that be the ball, I don’t know, but heck this isn’t really working.

What do the characters want? As long as the characters are believable none of this will seem too formulaic. Even though this is being based entirely off of formula.

Actually none of the elements are sacred, it’s all just a springboard. As intriguing it would be to have a story fit this formula exactly...

That Arrow Song Thing

I don't like being negative, but I can't be the only one to think this, right? HiSHE has been going kind of downhill ever since, a few years ago-ish, relying too much on running gags (especially whenever they lean so heavily on the Superhero Café bit) and fairly obvious jokes, but, the GotG2 one is actually really good. Not perfect or anything (like some of the comedic timing could be better) but quality-of-joke-wise it provides a pitch-perfect balance between the running gags and the situation-based humor. So yeah it was worth embedding into the 19th's post, turning that one all spacey.

The Yondu's Arrow song sucks though. 

It was tolerable with the, cute, maraca-playing Abelisk over it, but they released a full music video of, that song, a couple of days ago...! I've never in all my life "disliked" a YouTube video, and I don't think I've any right to do that here now either, since, who knows, maybe it gets really good in the second third of the way through; I didn't watch that far. They rhyme "one" with "one" and it's like they don't even notice it and it's like, heck do they even care...? So frig man I don't know.

And now that's off my chest.

Plans & Waiting &c

So things don't always go the way you plan them, and that's good sometimes and bad sometimes but interesting all the times. I don't think (and it stands to reason that, and so for all I know the objective reality is) that I'm bad at planning. Or, rather, that I can't plan. Backup plans... euum, not so much.

Because it's hardly like I need a backup plan, right? It's sort of a chess game, or a whatever it was in ID4 with the nonsensical chess game analogue. I've made my move and put my pieces into place. And then feel as though the universe owes me to make its move in return... which is never the case.

I've been keenly cognizant of how much of my life has been spent waiting, ever since at least high school and possibly before that. But it's never occurred to me till the writing of these words that maybe I could put more pieces into play as long as the universe is being too stupid to get back to me with its countermoves immediately.

Though of course, a lot of the times the waiting I do, is until I'm ready.

Star System?

Today was spent doing many things shallowly rather than few things deeply. Doing many things does make the day seem more productive, and heck it probably means the day WAS more productive, small steps being giant leaps with great journeys beginning thus and all, but it leaves me at a loss for, which eventful thing(s) to write about. 

There should be some sort of system in place, like a five-star system, regarding how important the blogpost for the day is: most posts would be three stars, of average importance; posts I think particularly deep or important would be five stars; unimportant filler posts wherein I post just to have one in for the day (such as yesterday's) would be one star. And two and four stars in between them.* 


And on a day like this, where I could go into, (one, two, three maybe sure why not, heck four 'cause of that one thing though that really ties into number two and happened the same time as three, five 'cause of that, and 6 I guess that would also be part of five because it ties into that but as long as that's part of five that might as well be both part of number one...) two, different, major trains of thought (1, 5 and 6; 2, 3 and 4) I'm left with a decision wherein, I could make this a five-star post day or, probably a two-star post, if I left it right here. Maybe it'd bump up to a three-star by dint of my explanation of the star system in the first place... actually I think the explanation of the star system makes it a four-star post, like, two two-stars combined.

I am very tired right now. Four stars is good enough for me.

To Poke One's Nose

My nose has been runny all evening, in varying degrees of viscosity. But nobody wants to hear about that. Something that everyone wants, though? More'a this:

Jackrabbit Flash

Alright well I'm not sure if I've got like anything more spacey to say anymore. Nothing that wouldn't be arbitrary anyway. So moving onto something completely different then? Oh boy.

In my nap this afternoon I dreamt I was the Flash, and man it was cool. I think my new superpower that I want, if I could have any superpower, would be superspeed. I know that, you know, super empowerment isn't something that really happens in real life, but it feels somehow like it's something that's actually going to happen to me. I've got just this gut feeling that I'm going to be caught in a freak accident, that gives me super speed and reflexes, and I guess also turns me into an anthropomorphic hare, and my superhero name will be Jackrabbit Flash? It's a very odd, highly specific hunch, and, it'd be nice if it turns out true.

I guess that is all.

Eclipse Photography

Shakespeare in Space

A few video essays by the wonderful Kyle Kallgren, of Brows Held High. Every summer his reviews shift their focus from arthouse fare specifically toward all the myriad ways Shakespeare's been adapted over the years, in film and otherwise. And it is glorious. (The Lion King, he argues, isn't based off of Hamlet, but Henry IV, pts 1 and 2!)

The topics covered in the videos embedded here, all happening to do with space opera, run the gamut- we talk about poetic meter, psychology, literary criticism and film theory, and go surprisingly in-depth about linguistics... y'know, Shakespearian stuff!

I thought to host some BHH because Mr Kallgren came out with a new video today on how Buckaroo Banzai is basically a shared-universe superhero film, minus the shared universe, leaving us with only puzzling references to an alleged wider world; the video is fascinating and awesome but a) neither spacey nor Shakespearian, and b) has a couple instances of strong language in the first half, so I'm only linking to it instead of embedding it. I say check it out nonetheless, but you don't have to, 'cause, once again, not really about space, but, man it's a good video, I mean, I did bring it up as unrelated as it is. Anyway.

These ones embedded here though, they're kept PG-rated. A couple mild s-bombs in the Star Wars one, the strongest it gets. Love it when they keep things clean.

Voting Opens Today Closes 29th

list of semifinalists here
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/message/

Scholastic Math and Three "Killer" Music Videos

I did the math, and if I take 2 courses, 5 credits total, and get a 4.0 GPA average (straight A) I'll have a 3.0 grade average in time for a full semester, which will allow me to receive next year's Pell Grant money in time. If I take 6 credits and get straight A's there then my GPA will be slightly above 3.0, something like 3.013. 

The more credits I take the not-as-good I have to do in my classes to peak 3.0; 5 credits with a $167-per-credit hour tuition is, half of $1,670, which is, $835. Or let's say I'm taking four credits, that's, 2, carry the one onto the three makes four plus 6 is zero but carry the one, $1,002. 

Oh, that makes sense, because like 167 is like 1.6666... which is a sixth of ten.

So this music video dropped about an hour ago as of this writing. What's the 8/28 date on the tape? Is that when Wonderful, Wonderful is being released...? I recall (?) it being slated for September sometime, but... (EDIT: upon a rewatch, fine, fah, it says 7/28...)



This was playing on the radio at a buffet I went to today while my vlog was compiling, which fact made me very, very happy (who can say if it seems too good to be true it probably is, when the Killers are in the world?):



And finally, this song suddenly popped into my head just now:


Well sweet Brandon, thanks for letting me keep my space-themed streak going. I'd originally going to try to shoehorn in a different astronauty music video by an entirely different band, but this works too.

At Least They've Got Stars on Them (PretzelsVlog no 6)

Indian Blue Dogs

I guess we're all going to bed early tonight! The total eclipse is during the 11:00s here, so nobody wants to sleep in too hard, 'specially since the action begins well before that.

I've got a question, though-- like is the sun brighter during the eclipse or what, or why shouldn't we be looking directly at it? I've spent probably hours, in total, staring into the sun in my life, and the only thing wrong with my eyesight was caused from reading too much. But here we are with survivors of previous eclipses who, like, caught two seconds of a partially eclipsed sun out of the corner of their eye and now have corneas or something? It's weird. And I just now realized what "cornea" means, so, like, by that I mean they damaged them or something.

Brown eyes. Loads of melanin. Not very sensitive. Ha.

I don't even plan on looking that way, though- digital camera screens an' stuff. The real interesting part'll be with the rest of the sky. The apartment is next door to this- I mean apparently they were British scientists the whole time, staying there, which we found out petitioning the nearby places to see who all wanted curry, and they wanted some but were busy at the moment but showed up later, but anyway- they said that you definitely want a good view of the horizon during the eclipse, so interesting things are going to be happening there.

The total time of the totality is, IIRC, 2 min 17 seconds, which is just about exactly how long it takes to sing "Beyond the Evening Star." I ain't even looking at the eclipse, the whole thing. Instead, I'll be making a real-time music video! Singing into the camera and all that, with the eclipse behind me.

Also... blue-dyed dogs found in India? The tinting is not, disappointingly, due to India ink.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/blue-dye-dogs-india-mumbai-video-spd/

Curry Sturry

I've got a second friend from India too now. See if you can work this out: Indian curry today, $7 per plate, made by Catherine (said friend); I'm the first customer, and we (Catherine and Jeffrey (another friend) and I) wrangle up some more customers. This guy says sure, but asks if there's change for a 20, and I say I have it. I take back my $7 I'd already paid, hand Catherine $14 for both of us, and the guy hands me a 20.

And then the $14 went missing. 

What had happened?

It took a while to figure it out. He took it, the guy did. I owed him for the 20, and he took the $14 thinking I was paying him back. $14 is one more than 13. Thus I am owed a dollar, which Jeffrey gives to me, and now he is owed a dollar from the guy. The $14 out of the way, I hand Catherine a 20.

Is that right?

Catherine must owe me $6. Haha...

boy do I feel like an idiot.

Uuuummm... SPACE!

Twilights and Rogue Planets and SCRAMBLING THE FAIRIES

The commonality of occurrences of the names of Twilight books? Twilight happens once a day, as does breaking dawn. Noo Moons happen about once a month. Eclipses, eclipses happen less frequently.

Alternative way of thinking about it though: depending where you are on the planet or in space, each of those things is always going on. Woo.

People are beginning to, um, swarm basically. Anyway. Come out of the woodwork, except not? The jets are scrambling...? The flock to eclipse viewing destinations has begun, is what I mean. So, folks are beginning to turn up. Will I be leaving the house for days? There's church on Sunday, but meanwhile hopefully we're stacked with what we need for now, and won't have to shop for anything...

I got interested in astronomy (but it's always been churning in the back of my mind, what would make a good, scientifically accurate astronaut flick) with these posters on the wall at the library, all on astronomical junk what with the eclipse coming up. There's an exoplanet, whose name I've memorized let's see if we've got it right, PSU J318.5-22 (looked it up quickly, dang I'm one letter off, it's PSO J318.5-22) that doesn't have a star attached, not part of any solar system, just discovered by accident looking at something else and it happened to be floating right there by complete cosmic coincidence. You figure that such a coincidence is bound to happen eventually, especially when you figure that they figure that there are billions of rogue planets in our galaxy alone (and by they I mean Neil DeGrasse Tyson.)

From my research of rogue planets and stuff, I was looking into the Alpha Centauri/Proxima Centauri star system (it's a binary system!) which is less than 5 light years away which is holy crap amazingly close in the astronomical scheme of things, and then I started wondering about the Oort cloud and researched how far Voyagers 1 and 2 are into space from there, and all that.

Mother Nature, Father Time

Probably won't have space-related material to extend till Monday, but the well's not dry quite yet- though it is growing increasingly abstract.



There's a Brook Benton R&B song from, 1963 I think it was, that encapsulates the themes in that, hypothetical sci-fi film from a few days back, perfectly. It's called Mother Nature, Father Time, by Brook Benton (no relation to Mother Nature and Father Time by Nat King Cole. Or, Mother Earth and Father Time from the 1973 Charlotte's Web film. Both are also great songs with similar themes and melancholy mood, but none of them have anything to do with any of the others.)

" "

Trying to keep up with this astronomy theme, but I really can't think of anything. Guess I'm, spacing out! Oooooohhhhhh!

Voyager Messages and Two Toon Pilots

Took awhile to perfect my composition for #MessageToVoyager. Wanna go through revision history? Let's!

At first I was thinking about Voyager, brainstorming off of that, this idea of this pebble we fling into the grand canyon, how vast space is. Carl Sagan, in talking about Voyager 1, used the metaphor of sending a message in a bottle out from this island earth; that's the kind of thing I wanted to go for. Maybe something about how time moves fast down here but slow up there, how bright and loud it is down here but quiet and dim up there. The idea is to have the message be uplifting, so, what's the thread that connects us and Voyager, in spite of these differences? Hope. Why was it in Pandora's vessel in the first place? Maybe explore that.

But these ideas were all far too complex to fit into the character limit, so I tried a different tack:

Space: a place of mystery. We voyage far and far into an undiscovered land, to discover that land. We look into space and see blackness… of stars!

Still too many characters, and cutting back on it is impossible- it would just throw everything off; I think each part of this is essential. I didn't write it; it was a roommate on my mission, who just sort of, made it up on the spot, and I thought it was so good I wrote the whole thing down. It's supposed to be a Star Trek opening monologue-type deal. I think I'm the only one who gets quite as much a kick out of it as I do, but each detail about it is pitch-perfect and slays me. Calling space a "land," the darkness being of stars somehow... it just opens up like an onion of riot.

Couldn't go with that one, anyway, so I decided to focus my effort on something I wrote for something else, which I realized was poetic enough to go where I wanted, while also focusing on the dichotomy of earth and space:

From the dreamy half-light, to the sleepless darkness, this world of light, wakefulness and sleeping in between.

A metaphor for, life and the world or whatever, but just focusing on the first part I could iterate it into something fitting the stingy character count, while also meaning roughly"voyager."

Our dreamy half-light, into the sleepless darkness.

"Our" to make it clear it's the earth, it's us, I don't know. Into the sleepless darkness. Launching forth. Launching what? Hope.

Hope from the dreamy half-light to the sleepless darkness.

Or not. Weaky. I started carving the sound of the words, eliminating "ness" from "dark" and arranging the words to fit an iambic form. Sticking Voyager at the end after the natural pause of the colon: perfect number of characters, and adding in that note of hope.

From the dreamy half-light, into the sleepless dark: Voyager

Tried also Voyager: from the dreamy half-light, into the sleepless dark, sticking the word at the front, but that distracted from the meter, so I went with the first. Few words, but deep they are. The metaphor of half-light and science, dreaminess and creativity, standing in for the world, the sleepless dark signifying the ultimate unknown while also reflecting the color of space. Hopefully others will see the depth of it???

Anyway. Also got a couple of cartoon pilots to share! The first is the DuckTales new thing, whose first two episodes were put up on YouTube (legally!) yesterday, on Disney XD's channel. It is amazing and hilarious and I squeed nonstop during the themesong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP0Neif7Y4E

Olan Rogers's FINAL SPACE, meanwhile, is also great, and far shorter (in case you only have time to watch one of these.) The full show is coming to TBS this winter.

Plus it's still about space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yco11ZQ0UE

Surely the Earth

Space continues to be way rad. And I continue to post on it apparently.

I was studying the Book of Mormon the other day and there's this part in Helaman 12 I came across that's kind of always niggled me. It's in verse 15, part of this section where he's talking about the power of God, and how God could make the sun stand still in the sky Joshua 10-style. But of course he frames it that, it's the earth going back and not the sun- "for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun." It's his going out of the way to explain the astronomy that kills me. 

But I've got it figured out. He needs to make the public service announcement about it, because it was totally a political issue in his time whether the earth revolved around the sun or not. We saw it in the old world, too, where the anti-sciencers were all, naah, God wouldn't do that, He'd build Earth in the center, invoking religion (religious assumption at least) into an area where the scriptures were actually mum, just on their idea of how special God would make the earth. 'Parently the same thing happened with the Nephites too, is what I reckon, and Mormon was on the side of, guys shut up about it already, God never said that, look at the science. 

#MessageToVoyager

I mentioned yesterday that Voyager 1 is almost 40 years old. Learned about this doing research on it: Tuesday, August 15th (which also happens to be India's Independence Day, on an unrelated note) 11:59 pm is the deadline to submit on social media, a short message that will be beamed to Voyager itself, using the abovementioned hashtag. Learn more about it here!:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/message/

AUs

The quality of a space movie is proportional to how astronomically accurate it is. Space is huge though, so... there's a lot of incentive to spice things up. We've got to resist that though.

I had this idea in the car, on the way back up here, about a movie about this astronaut hurtling through interstellar space all alone, who's been on his way for hundreds of years but taking pills that make him effectively immortal and also strip away his emotional drives. Maybe he experiments eventually with not taking selective pills, to gain some sensation again, but at the risk of unbalancing the cocktail keeping him alive. I don't think it would require much of a budget to shoot at all... there's like, what, one set in total, and one actor?

Alright, there'd probably be more to the story than that, but...

We don't even know if the Oort cloud is real, you know that? Voyager 1 just passed the edge of the heliosphere, into interstellar space, just 5 years ago, 35 years into its mission- which means that it's about a tenth of the way there until the Oort cloud would begin, about a lightyear away from the sun. Given that Voyager'll have enough power to continue reporting back to us for only about 8 more years, well...

Yeah, space is big. Why don't we make that a part of the drama, instead of trying to ignore it?

Studying Designs

I think I know how to do good graphic design work now. Or, polished-looking, at least; there's just so much basic, layout stuff I'm also pretty bad at, but just use a grid and remember negative space, right? But comparing your work against a professional's, that's something they have us do, but I think it's entirely too late in the process. We do do image source inspiration searching, but we don't go deep enough. 

App and website design, man look at it. Try to recreate it. 

Just going onto YouTube and looking at the way the graphical elements were handled, it geared me to a much better design in the app project I did for interaction design class. 

Look at this interface. The word processor program I'm typing this into, on Blogger, or Google Docs. It's actually super simple; I'd be able to design it in Illustrator.

But then I see the orange elements, and how they knew to put those highlights in there, the publish button and the blogger logo and the post settings section header, and how that's got type hierarchy and everything, and now I'm thinking, no, I don't think I'd be able to design this.

I'm Teaching Myself Devanagari as Well, BTW

Watched My Name is Khan yesterday (well actually ereyesterday now since I wrote this for yesterday's post, or actually some parts the day before that as well.) My Name is Khan, anyway (the "Kh" is aspirated, "from the epiglottis!") Actually, bought a copy (!) that was fortuitously in the Family Crisis Center thrift store (been hitting DVD places lately looking for the cinematic oeuvre of Park Chan Wook, whom I've known about but only recently discovered) (but finding Bollywood films is also nice, you know?). It stars Shah Rukh Khan as Revzin Khan, an Indian Muslim with Asperger's Syndrome who moves to the United States, finds a wife for himself, and (to make a long story short) is mistaken for a terrorist in the wake of 9/11, going on this big long road trip to try to meet the president. Not my most favoritest Bollywood film, but one of my favorite of SRK's.

Yesterday, had this information been in that post, I would have used it to somehow segue into this stuff, and then tied it thematically with a bow at the end. Right now though there's neither segue nor bow needed, but here's the punchline:

Our new roommate is from India. Thought he was probably French African when I met him yesterday, but learned this morning (*two days ago and *yesterday morning, sorry)(**three days ago and **ereyesterday morning, sorry again) that he's actually Indian? And it was just a few days ago that I was fantasizing about meeting one of those and instantly pelting them with questions about various Hindi grammar things and certain words in the names of certain Bollywood films, and who their favorite actor is and what the worst movie they've ever seen is and everything, and specifics about the differences between Hindi and Urdu, and just the night before last wondering, how do Indians feel about Mother Theresa?, I should ask a few, but... I haven't done those things. The meeting, it didn't fall into how it went in my head, you know? Meeting someone and it being clear they're Indian, Hindi-speaking Indian, with a knowledge of modern Bollywood films... Now it's been a couple of days and it feels like it would be a shoehorn or something. 

I've heard him listening to Bollywood movies, but from the song style and audio quality they sound like classics, Raj Kapoor-era 20th-Century stuff, and I don't know what's up with that, why he never plays anything I recognize. Thus there's probably a lot to learn from him, lots in common, but man next to that... the earliest Bollywood movie I've ever seen is from the year 2000. (Still technically the 20th century, but like I said, it's a decade on its own, so...)

Grade Tanks

I wasn't sure how long I'd be without wifi after the family reunion in Utah (turns out zero days; place did have it) so I prescheduled a bunch of posts in a row, and yesterday's post went up like 2:09 am because I forgot to specify the time to be 11:30 pm when I prescheduled it so it defaulted to the time of day at which I prescheduled it, and so this stuff I have to say today as a follow-up to the train of thought I've been poking down, would be even better yesterday as part (or even replacement to) that post (which was mostly repetitive of earlier sentiment anyway, mostly scrapped material written for an earlier post.) But looking at it, the main thrust of what I want to say wasn't as cohesive as I'd thought, so it looks like continuing episodicity is for the best.

Uncle Gary was talking day before yesterday about undermotivated students- or, bad students actually, students who didn't care about their grades. The average student right now (in, high school?) is failing at least one class. Even when we set expectations so low that there's no possible way the students can fail... Hence my calling them undermotivated? Makes sense.

I used to be such a good student. We've been over this. It's now on my to-do to look back through my grade reports to math out the precise slip from semester to semester; my first college credit I got an A for the semester, and last semester resulted in a C-abouts. Not my lowest grades ever, so, like I said, I'd have to math it out.

I've mentioned before about GPA and I always thought that the lower the GPA was the better, so we really could have seen this coming; I even explicitly said that 3.0 was a C, I guess nobody bothered to correct me. C was what I aimed for as the average in my classes, and I'm not sure if I did my best because I'm never sure of that, but it felt that way, but I should have aimed for B? Should have done my best, but with whatever degree of anxiety I experience in the face of homework, it was like I had a limited reserve of, homeworkicality, I had to mete out, time to be able to work, yes motivation, and... no matter how I try to put it into words it just feels like an excuse.

Gotta get on some form of medication, but there's a lot I've "got to" do. 

Schoolwork as a Metaphor for Creativity or Vice Versa

My first semester was fine. Things gradually slipped downhill. I was wondering if my classes were just getting harder and harder, like, the level of difficulty ascends in relation to the number of workshop classes I'm taking, or what, and there might be a correlation in terms of how poorly I do in those classes, with workshop classes taking so much precedence and having so much weight that I stress over those? 

But no, I think even then the problem dealt more directly with- I'd have to analyze it more thoroughly, but I think though there's correlation of course with progress in school and advancedness of courses, there are plenty of other factors in play. 

Like, maybe I was already dissatisfied with graphic design and so I didn't do my best work, or only did the minimum expected of me? But I realized today, doing just the minimum expected of you is how things like Pirates of the Caribbean 5 happen...! 

I enjoyed it ish while I was watching it, and the first half or so actually really is worth watching, but getting distance on it, well I was underwhelmed even in theater. And the Mummy, I mean I still like it, but that climax really could have been more, I was disappointed in it while I was watching it. Same with Dead Men Tell No Tales. Climax was lackluster. 

Franchises only run on fumes when the creators are tired; nothing needs to be hackneyed. Let's say, playing it safe: creators don't need to be tired, but in playing it safe, returns guaranteed, just for the money and probably not for the art but who am I to say, that's when you're doing the minimum required of you. 

Geographical Positioning of Summer Jobs

Need a job. Money would be nice. Something to do would be nice. Money would be essential, actually.

Dad offered, Thursday morning I think it was, maybe a Summer job at the movie theater in Fallon, if I wasn't doing anything up in Rexburg. I told him I already have a job in mind in Rexburg, though I'm right now debating the cost of that- staying in Rexburg means paying rent, and of the job in question I've had better entry-level payment in the past. I love the theater and would love to work there.

But. Rent's already paid for the summer. Contract's already signed to be staying there. The big eclipse is taking place literally right above my house, with the precise center a 15-second walk away from the apartment. And when I way I've had better payment for entry-level work, I'm not sure that that's really true. We're going back anyway, so... I don't know why I'm double-guessing all of a sudden. Gives me something to post about I guess.

Last Semester's Grades are In...

So I don't really know.

My grade needs to be 3.0 at least, cumulative, in order to hold onto scholarship. That's a C average. Last semester, I had two Cs, one B+, one B-, and a D (monotype/monoprint class accepted no late work... so all things considered that's a grade quite a bit higher than what I probably deserved.) My total GPA from last semester is thus 2.186...

I'm actually beginning to suspect that 3.0 is actually a B average?

SHOOT I HAD IT WRONG THE WHOLE TIME.

My total cumulative GPA is now 2.93. And I'm juggling in my head whether it's cost effective to pay a grunch of money in tuitions to take a summer class or two, see if I can bring that up in time for Winter semester, or if it would be about the same or less just to bring it up during said winter block...

Netflix Shows I'd Said I'd See

Series of Unfortunate Events was, well it wasn't way good, but I think it's solidly worth a rewatch, which is saying something. I've grown less enamored of the medium of television, ever since some of the shows that were supposed to be really good and groundbreaking, by the time I got to them, turned out to be... just television. (Litmus, which doesn't always occur but when it does you know for sure: if you get interrupted in the middle of something, is it worth it picking it back up again?)

Stranger Things I got maybe 10 minutes into. Not impressed. Of course, I started on the season finale accidentally, not invested in any of the characters or anything, due to the Netflix "start from the beginning" button after the finished eighth episode it started me out on, starting me from the beginning of that episode instead of from the beginning of the whole show (oops,) and, well starting from the season finale is what ruined day 5 of 24 for me. Some things are a lot more enjoyable in context, but... bad acting is bad acting. Maybe I'll try again at some future date.

Shoot, never got around to Buddy Thunderstruck like I'd meant to.

So the My Little Pony movie's getting a PG rating off of a Y-rated TV show; "some mild violence" what's up with that...

ARTiculation of Reality

Documenting life seems to make reality more, something, whatever the word is- real, maybe. In words, proving that some things you have to approximate, lie maybe, to tell the truth quickly; or documentation, in some other real way, going around with a camera, photo or video, living one stream of reality while recording and going back to another stream and watching what was recorded there, and maybe it's different from how you remember, slightly, but either way it's definitive proof in some real way you can't articulate, that the past is real.

But the camera has narrow focus, and limited frame, while in real life, things are so expansive.

Some Common Khans

So having Netflix here has seriously allowed me to catch up on my Bollywood quota. Still a few flicks from the creators of some of my favorites, which aren't offered via Netflix so I may have to track down renting over some, streaming rental service or other:

Need to watch Main Hoon Nah- written and directed by Farah Khan, the same woman who did Om Shanti Om and Happy New Year. Also starring Shah Rukh Khan like those other two. Yay.

Also need to watch the Munna Bhai films- written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, same dude who did PK and 3 Idiots. Not starring Aamir Khan like those other two (sad, I love that guy.) But which are supposed to be really good anyway (both are in the top 100 Indian films of all time list on IMDb.)

I'd also like to catch Kal Ho Naa Ho at some point ever, since the only Saif Ali Khan movies I've seen are none of them, except he does voice Romeo in Roadside Romeo so there's that I guess that counts, and he also cameoed in the Deewangi Deewangi number in Om Shanti Om, alongside like everyone. That one's supposed to be way good. Plus it's also got SRK. Mmm, King Khan...

(...I mention 4 different Khans up there: though Bollywood does have some dynasties, I'm like 85% sure none of these Khans are related even indirectly. Some names are just surprisingly common.)

A Post

It's been a full month since Mom's posted on her blog. But Andrew posted just this morning. And I have no time to post now.

https://agamedesignersblog.blogspot.com/2017/08/3-videos.html

I'm Trying to Tell You the Truth About Myself (PretzelsVlog no 5)

I just realized that it isn't much anything I haven't already discussed on Pretzelize Me, Cap'n, but... I dunno. There'd been more I was going to put in there, but you have to know when to kill your darlings... (maybe at some point I'm going to have a bunch of those showcased for the first time, and the title will be, "Have a Good Day, My Darlings...")

I shot this all fourish days ago, but only have everything together now. Took a while to edit. It's probably the best editing work I've ever done... not the best writing or delivery, but you can't win 'em all, and I guess I'd say I'm pretty proud of this one.