This Big Weekend, Thursday Morning through Sunday Night

Thursday- morning. There was a phonecall due in Business for the Professional Artist class- contact someone using your phone and your mouth, offer your artistic services, either net yourself a job or get shot down, win-win. The call was due by Tuesday, but for those of us who hadn't gotten it by then, we were offered one extra class period. I... still hadn't made the call by then (this weekend, I said, we're texting, and it's scheduled for this weekend (which is only technically inaccurate, on every level, but not really a lie,)) and was told, perhaps jokingly but who the heck would take the chance, that Tuesday was the last chance or else I FAIL THE CLASS.

After class I'd scheduled getting myself an ice cream cone. Freshens is this place in the MC, next to this bagel place in this corner, both just sitting there for some reason. They do frozen yogurt, even in cones, so I'm all, I'll go there, but I also need to hit the frozen custard place Nielsen's; Freddie's is the new place which has alright frozen custard (but awesome burgers and really thin fries,) but it's Nielsen's I need to hit again. But Freshens is the most pressing on my circuit of ice cream cone hitting, so I check that out. Think I'll get a... yeah, vanilla-chocolate swirl with, maybe strawberries on top. Only... the vanilla machine needs to freeze its vanilla. Should be ready within 10 minutes, and meanwhile checking the Walmart shuttle app there should be enough time for both- until a large line magically forms, and well I guess I should get the Walmart stuff first, otherwise wait 45 minutes for the bus's circuit to repeat.

I rush out to the bus stop- there's a Walmart employee there, waiting for the bus so he can start his shift. I decide to go up next to him and ask him, wasa, b? The buses, he says, have been on time lately. So the bus should be here in three minutes.

We wait much longer than three minutes. Another guy comes up to wait for the bus with us. He has the shuttle app (I just used the website,) and while I scout ahead for the bus the app reports that the bus should be there. When I get back, the employee is using the guy's phone to call in a ride for himself. Alright. Maybe the bus is just... actually late today?

I go back to Freshens to check on the vanilla. The vanilla button is glowing red, unlike the healthy green button of the chocolate side. The employee resets the machine. Guess I'll go back to the bus stop?

There's a girl there. She reports that she called in, and the phone reports that the bus is operating normally. The bus does not come. It may have been here, that I spot a box blowing across the street in the paths of cars (it is very windy and blowing sand to boot, and the weather here is an important fact for later.) I run into the road, nab the box, what the heck am I supposed to do with this? I cross into the Snow building and tuck the box (which is an empty apple box labeled on several sides SPELL BOOKS) into a corner by the fridge in a green room. The world, I reflect, is truly a magical place. Maybe I'll blog that.

The vanilla should have reset by now. I go back across campus to Freshens, and... it's still a pimply red color. Heck it all to heck; I'm going to Nielsen's. I meet Blaine the Roommate as I exit the MC- how's your day, he asks, and my reply is noncommital. I think everyone's day's been like that, he replies. We talk for a few more sentences, not terribly long, but like everyone in his class this morning was super sick as well, like in mine, and, yeah, just not a winning day for anyone.

I head left through campus, beelining for Nielsen's, which I of course know the exact location of, because really their frocust is el primo stuff, and their diner staples are also pretty good as well. I have on my cardigan, with its shallow pockets- just enough room to fit in a cell phone, as long as it's turned sideways. I ponder my cell phone- is the data on? Do I have "data?" I've got wifi and everything, but isn't there this "data" thing as well? Does it use that if I have the wifi switched off? On? Paranoid, I decide to power down the phone until I can look into the situation further, setting it securely into the shallow pocket where it can be buddies with my debit card on the left side there.

I pass by the track, where there's a guy running. I have a song about music, maybe it's who performs "Come On, Eileen," but I can't specify the details anymore. I don't ask him, either way. Wait for the car to pull out of the parking lot as I'm about to cross in front of it.

I can feel the Nielsen's getting closer. Past the track, across the street (next to a construction area,) across from the Willows now. The Willows has this car out front, which has a sign saying, you could win this car. Wow, I say, as I see that. Win that car. As opposed to that car, or that car, or that car. (It's the city. There are many cars. Some parked, some being driven. But those aren't the ones available to win.) All my hopes and dreams lie on the other side of the street, I say aloud at the stoplight waiting for the pedestrian signal. Well, two hopes and dreams, at least. The signal signals, we cross (there's me and there's this girl also there crossing.) Turn left, past the car, some red, mini Fiat I think.

There's the strip mall place across from the construction zone. This hot dog cart at the froyo place. I sing some song to myself. Motown or something- I am beginning to think I've got magical powers over the radio, what I sing will be soon played at some point. Past the mall, the Deseret Book on the corner, as a guy or two make(s) a break for it across the street corner toward the park on the other side of the street, red light but no pedestrian signal. But I turn right, staying on the sidewalk. There's the Nielsen's right there, nearer to the other side of the block but still in view, with its ice cream cone in neon.

I get a Rexburger, make it a meal, and the custard of the day- cheesecake, with cheesecake cubes ordered special on top. I've got my phone, I've got my cards, I've got my camera. The frocust arrives, in a cup instead of a cone. Hadn't I ordered it in a cone? I could just explain the mistake but that would lead to a perfectly good glob of custard to get thrown away. I can always order another cone later.

There's a family, three generational, in the corner booth. Could I get some photos of their custard, which is in cones? Or is taking photos of strangers' children just creepy? I don't risk it. I lie down on the bench, fatigued, for a bit. My burger arrives- I set the frocust out of the sunlight, which is streaming in quite hot from the window behind me. I eat a few fries, bite into the burger. The cheese strings out of my mouth as I pull the burger away from my lips and set it down. It's pretty good. Not mind blowing or anything, but pretty good. I can get in maybe a bite or two; I guess the custard was rich and filling enough. Get myself a clamshell, throw away my two napkins into the trash bin behind the counter- they part as they twist through the air, but they both make it in nothing but net. The dude standing in the kitchen complements me as he observes this.

My meal in a clamshell and my frocust in its cup inside the larger cup of my drink, filled with ice so as to keep the ice cream cool, it's now onto the second of my two hopes/dreams- I also have my thumb drive with me, and across from the Jimmy John's next to the Nielsen's is AlphaGraphics. Finally time to print off and mount that project for Information Design which was due a month or so ago.

It's around 2:00 at this point- I remember because I tried to get my thing printed off when it was first due, but they'd said then that the foamcore guys go home at 2:00 and I was inquiring past 2:00. But this time there seemed no problem, no guys to be going home in the first place or anything, why would the time of day matter. Interesting. I also inquire about the cardstocks they've got- CS5 I think is what they've got that most closely matches what I want, some playing card-ish textile. It's for my mailer for Business for the Professional Artist, another thing that was due a week or so ago. Aside from the two prints-and-mounts I order, I order two sheets of that.

It takes a while. Not sure how long, an hour or so. Other students arrive, with printout jobs to be completed so they can have their stuff in on time. On time. What a quaint notion. The size that I need the project printed out at turns out to bump up the cost, now paying by the square inch or something- but I'd misheard the total cost as being seventy something dollars before I requested a couple C5Ss get thrown in there (18x24s; I'd calculated out, on the clamshell, the size I'd needed to print two eight-inch-squared mailers with margins,) so when the price turned out to be only thirty something for the two prints and the $.50 each papers, I was okay with it.

It's still quite blustery out there, and holding these big broad printouts is no picnic in this weather. The lid of my cup blows off, into the parking lot of the church across from AlphaGraphics, and is soon out of sight. How do I grip these printouts? I don't want to damage my papers... I cross the street and consider asking that girl there if she could- no wait she's gone, I can still call after her no that's okay.

I'd asked at the print place on campus about playing card-style paper (I'd asked after class, still in the Romney building (Business for the Professional Artist is in the campus science building for some reason) and one of the people there said their spouse worked at the print shop and there was some there) but it wasn't what I needed, and heading here by this strip mall there's Zippy Ship and Copy, I could head in there and see what they've got, though I already have some. At least it'd get me out of the wind.

Out of the wind (and there was a woman coming the other way out who graciously held the door open for me, with all the stuff I was holding) I could re-consolidate my stack, ask about the paper (the same stuff that the campus had I think) and dig around in my pockets for loose change to donate to the animal shelter (none, though I think I still had everything in my pockets at this time, maybe?)

Out in the wind again, leaning against the strip mall sign, I braced myself for the walk up ahead, back to the apartments- zip my camera under my cardigan, secure my papers. Only to be undone by two friendly girls offering to help- we re-consolidate the material among ourselves, ready to get going- only to be undone again by a friendly lady offering a ride to us. But it's just me who needs it. I take back my camera, take back my printouts, get into the car.

She's the wife of, someone who works at the school, whether as a teacher or employee or something is ambiguous as I didn't ask. I buckle my seatbelt finally, as we turn the corner by the Snow building. She's got long black hair, olivish skin. The sedan is black I think. She drops me off. I take out the food first, setting the cup of frocust on the ground and nudging it out of the way as I pull the rest of my stuff out too. Say thanks again, and she pulls off. I grab my stuff, head up the stairs into the apartment.

Place down the printouts onto the loveseat, the clamshell into the fridge and the cup into the freezer door. It's while I'm unloading my stuff that I discover that my cellphone is no longer on me.

It could have dropped out at any point along my route- if at campus it would be turned in to lost and found, so immediately I turn my focus on retracing my steps to everywhere else. Nielsen's. AlphaGraphics. Was it not in my pocket as I rifled for change por las mascotas at the Quick Ship? Was it in my pocket as I reached across my belly putting on my seatbelt in the car? I know too much about memory to be able to trust anything, and much of the rest of the day is spent in search for it. Of course I'd turned it off before losing it; it's something of a hobby of mine by this point.

I swing by the Snow green room and meet a couple of familiar-looking faces from plays I've seen, who are hanging out back there. Tom from The Glass Menagerie, and, shoot in retrospect that was Laura wasn't it? Because, you know, maybe I'm misremembering the order of events, and maybe I'd lost my phone at that time. But it's not there.

At first Austin (the actor's name) thinks I might be there to cover Big Fish, seeing my camera, but that's not what that's for. I head to Porter's, and use photographic reference to match colors for stamps, for my mailer for Burrbiz class. I work on that for a bit, back at the apartment.

I'd meant to get on my Concentration class coursework early, too, starting it Thursday instead of last-minute Saturday the day it's due. But the most pressing homework to do is getting on making a guide sheet for the Mesoamerican art test for Friday morning, the next day, not to mention the reviews of the two movies I'd watched on Tuesday...

Whatever. I can do that in the morning. Early bedtime, tonight. I write up my Tzolk'in thing, at least, and hit the sack.

Friday morning. 4:15. Wake up. Fully awake by 4:30. Have the rest of the burger for breakfast. Write everything, print it off by 9:00, when the test starts. Do pretty well on the test, but I've reported the one boner I made.

Plasma donation scheduled for 10:00, which is usually when class is getting out, but it being a test day I knew it'd get out thirty or forty minutes early. Wait for an hour, should have brought something to read, all there is to watch is an Adam Sandler comedy I've already seen too many times, played on the internal TV system. My protein levels are too low, and I'm deferred for the day. Saturday's still good for me, so it isn't that bad, but there goes my entire morning.

11:00 to 1:00 is spent re-retracing my steps. My memories are snowballing new details, but the lost and found office still hasn't received anything, nor any of the establishments I'd spent time in had anything found. Try back at 5:00, when we close, says the lost and found office. Maybe somebody will have found it by then. We don't open again till Monday morning after that.

So 5:00 is when everything's going to go down.
I head home, collapse on Ryan's bunk, the bottom one: nap starting at 1:00. At 1:50, there's a knock on the door. I'm alert, immediately knowing what it is. The UPS man. My package has arrived.

Make that, my nine packages, split over two cart trips. It's the four-color, two-station entry-level-but-top-of-the-line serigraphic press I ordered, three and a half thousand dollars' worth of business expense. I take photos. The UPS man lugs them up the stairs, and I sign and drag them into my room.

Ah, yes, my room. Ryan's cool with having the press in there, if the rest of the room is clear and clean. So I've got some organizing to do.  I take the next available Walmart shuttle (it's running today,) help out a lady with the stuff under her seat as it's time for her and her small son to get off at the stop across from the flower store. The bus continues on. I realize out loud that I'm now a small businessman, converse with the green-garbed girl on the seat in front of me and on the other side of the aisle (I'm heading to Walmart for the same stuff I'd been trying to get yesterday, a laundry basket and some plastic drawers so I can actually have stuff organized instead of just miscellaneously thrown into boxes; she's just heading to get milk, but hers is still a good story because she's lactose intolerant only to when she drinks milk, and so she's getting three kinds, two of them almond, for different purposes.)

Walmart. I space the laundry basket, but find about what I'm looking for plastic-drawers-wise, and a beanie, and discount Walmart exclusive comic books, three in a bag for like just a dollar I think. The new Great Lakes Avengers book is awesome, and as I grow older the world gets happier yet sadder at the same time, because I realize more and more that Zac Gorman and Will Robson and everyone, they're all just mortals trying to move ahead in the world, like everyone else.

Home. Realize about the laundry basket, check the shuttle times- I'd have to wait half an hour, and take a potentially 45-minute detour, just for that. I make my own laundry basket, then, out of a cardboard box, taping the lids up as an extension of the sides.

I spend the next while organizing everything in the room. Missing the 5:00 close of the lost and found, which I am aware of, but what I'm really focused on right now is having the room clean for when Ryan gets home. Pizza also arrives, meanwhile; I've got cash in my pocket after cashback at Walmart, but am too busy wrists deep in hot glue (a secondary project in cleaning the room) to arrive promptly when Jonathan wonders aloud about cash, so the delivery guy goes tipless I guess, me arriving too late.

6:00 is a D&D session planned at the apartment across from ours, though up a completely different flight of stairs- the bedroom is clean by this time, save the monolithic boxes taking up much space in it. Ryan's not in, and we can't start until he gets here, so I've got the Winter '99 Critique magazine that I discovered in my room cleaning up, which I accidentally took from one of the graphic design studios once and need to return- it's just in the Spori, so they give me permission to return it. But I spot Ryan, and follow him up the stairs into the apartment, instead. I want to see his reaction when he goes into our room.

The room is clean, and full of boxes, but still clearer than it'd be otherwise, so he's cool with it as long as I keep everything in good condition. He gets a call inviting him, and me, to dinner at the girls' place- I am basically starving by this point, plus I really really don't think I've got time for D&D because after all I didn't get any of the stuff I'd meant to start yesterday and due tomorrow done at all yet, so I accept. In telling Jonathan (who's DMing,) though, we feel too bad to let him down, so we D&D instead, and there's pizza and chips and pop there I guess (you know, health food.)

My character is a gnome barbarian named Mongar Ymsdweller. My Intelligence is very low, while my Wisdom is very high. Go figure.

Once our characters are generated, we peel out (Blaine, having his rock band he practices with in the lounge (I'm pretty sure he's literally a member of Jimmy Eat World,) can leave to do that when it's not his character being generated.)

I'd mentioned 5:00 being when everything goes down- I'm in correspondence with Ellen Natalie, of Furry Experience, and she'd gotten to me around 5:00 when she'd done so Wednesday. She doesn't get back to me here, but that's okay I guess, unless... unless oh gosh I screwed it up, I said too much she blocked me oh man I'm such a moroooon...

(It's totally chill though, she just doesn't always have access to Facebook, and the interview is 100% going forward now.)(Though it looks like it can't be over phone, not only for, phone reasons but also on her end, so I'll have to switch to plan C.5 as far as phoning someone for Burrbiz class goes.)

That's how Friday ends. I write:

I am way too fatigued right now to really report on anything of the day, or of yesterday- if the situation ever resolves itself, I'll report what it was, but I'll just say for now, I meant to get on doing homework this weekend, meant to get anything done yesterday, but I didn't. Today things resolved themselves more, but there is one outstanding concern from yesterday that I'm absolutely helpless to allay. I mean, at least today I resolved the fact that I'm helpless to allay that outstanding concern, so it wasn't a total bust.
In fact, today was a good day. It's just that one thing, really; other than that everything actually went my way, even when it didn't seem like it at first. Forgot to buy a new laundry basket while I was at the store? It's okay, I'll just tool one myself made out of a cardboard box.

 I was also going to mention how even messing it up in Mesoamerican art class was somehow going my way, but it really wasn't, plus that was way too good an idea with all the writing I'd already done for that class that day, just have that and post that as my blog post.

Saturday. I sleep in a full hour, till 7:30. It's glorious. Saturday morning is a ward social, closing thing. Burritos. Breakfast enough to power me with protein for plasmapheresis, and that goes smoothly- I've got reading material this time, though I'd meant to bring my laptop and finally get started on Concentration class finals. Ryan, disassembling his old computer and having spare RAM chips, had offered to soup me up though, and I didn't have time to argue by this point- sure, why not?

There's no room in 2.0 to put in an extra 2 gigs of memory, but opening her up at least we find out why she's had the blue meanies- the chip there wasn't fully attached for some reason, just a-floppin' in the breeze. Ryan attached that securely this time, and (though I haven't handled her roughly, and it's only been a day since then) she hasn't crashed or anything, so, yeah maybe that was the issue?

I unpack boxes, piles of styrofoam and bubble wrap and newspaper and steel stacking up everywhere, while alternating doing the readings for Concentration class. We get in a couple of hours of campaigning, as well, from 5:00-7:00. Jonathan's got a campaign planned out, but it was all improv this time, as there was an unexpected detour camping out the first night (our halfling ranger sleephunts, apparently, and so wasn't there when it was time for him to take over my watch... and that was when the wolf attacked...)

While it's still light out, I decide to head out maybe search for my phone one more time, I could probably go till 9:00 and do the last of the assignments (due at 11:00) then, but it darkens quickly and Big Fish the musical is going on so I can't double-check the green room at the Snow just in case I AM remembering the order of events incorrectly and maybe I did lose my phone at that time, so I watch the senior projects get put up onto the walls. I know these people, whose projects they are. They're members of the Spori basement computer lab gang.

Doing the last few things for Concentration class, my gloodness, I didn't think I'd be able to make it. Emailed the professor to maybe get an extension; I reported how that went yesterday. There was a PowerPoint I had to make, AND give, including a video in there, and then receive a review from everyone I'd given the presentation to. And there was a test that someone else had to administer, seeing if I could remember the answers to the questions in my Cornell notes. And there was a test on top of that as well, going over the material. But I did it all in time. Just didn't have time to do makeup work for the stuff I didn't get done earlier in the class- a cautionary tale for what might happen in other classes of mine.

Sunday. I'd gotten up fast and testimony meeting a week ago, sat up at the stand, but never gave my testimony then, so they allowed me to do something this week.

I said sorry I don't have a tie on; I was busy looking for my cell phone and when I realized I had no tie it was too late to go back and get one. I said, anyway, I'm not so good at receiving promptings. (Which might be, after having been prompted to go up to the stands last week, but receiving no impression after that, why I was up there. All the stuff I told you a week ago, minus the idea that maybe I need to give something back, because I'd been introduced to a different idea in that time.) And so, after my badness-at-receiving-promptings last week, I was offered another chance to bear testimony this week. I'm bad at receiving promptings; I'm not even good at finding something that's lost, praying for it- it's supposed to work, but I receive no impressions over that.It may work for other people- so please, if my prayer doesn't work, maybe yours will, in finding my cell phone- but not for me.  Only, in religion class this week, there'd been a Richard G Scott talk, Using the Supernal Gift of Prayer, from Conference 10 years ago now, where he said that that's a sign that God trusts you. Which is funny, because I hardly trust myself. So God answers prayer, but sometimes his answer is "...". But with faith you can move mountains... I've got, at least a little faith, and so that's my little testimony.

One of the promptings I mentioned in the testimony was to have Ryan call my phone because maybe magically it got turned on. He called it after sacrament meeting, but checking Google's device manager for my account, it was last synced, not Thursday around noon when I turned it off, but at 10:07 this morning, which was, around the time I received the prompting for Ryan to call the phone? So it looks like someone may have found it (which is good, because I'd hate for it to be lost outside; it's wet out there right now) and had it turned on this morning? 10:47ish when Ryan called, the phone was off, so. I've since activated this notice that locks the phone and tells you that the phone's missing, with the only option being to call Ryan's phone, so we'll see if that does anything/goes anywhere.

I guess that brings us to the present. We cleaned up all the styrofoam and everything, now. The empty boxes are neatly in a corner. Still got a couple of misces I guess:

I did the math, and it'll take 25 points worth of papers, turned in by the end of the day tomorrow, for me to receive a C- in Mesoamerica class. I'm not sure the exact number, maybe I've got a C- already, because of the early bird special at the beginning of the semester awarding extra credit for work turned in early, but adding up the credits I've received so far and expect to receive, that's what it's looking like. Maybe I would have been able to get in a couple of papers tonight, on whatever subject, if I hadn't spent time writing this.

There's no religion class this week. But there's still the scripture readings. Still, two fewer hours of class means two more hours of doing homework that once more I should have been doing this weekend.

We played Somerset today. Breakdown of the final scores, hope this is the kind of thing you're looking for Andrew:

Player	Coins at end	Points from buildings	Points from tiles	Points from spellbook	total points
Eric	0	12	21	8	41
Elijah	8	4	23	2	37
Ryan	9	8	13	4	34
Emmalynn	5	16	7	12	40

All told it came pretty close. I went first; players are listed in clockwise order. Elijah took the first player marker just a turn or two after the start and had it for the rest of the game. Emmalynn (sp?) ended the game by purchasing her fourth building during building phase; I then built my third building and that was game.

The spell that allows you to take the action of a tile a wizard is on or next to is awesome. There was confusion again over the numbers in the upper left corners of Camelot tiles, thinking maybe that meant how many points it was worth for building next to, though this thinking was quickly set straight, and I wouldn't have brought it up if it weren't for the stuff from Board Game Design. I wonder what Somerset would look like with squares instead of hexes?

C oncentreaitton Final

i an just modding off here, i ran .5 miles in under 10 minutes so i could complete my itbiit goals across rhe board. by the end of 6he day. at 11:0=50.

it was the last day of concentration class; this online class in the second half of the semester that i took to flesh out my course load to 14 credits so i'd be eligible for scholarship. i did all this week's assignments today; it meant to start THrusdy but REASK S wnich I'll yr;; upi sbpiy yp,ottpe/ (reaosns which Ip;ff tell you ab out tomorrow._)

...ope, nope, not sleeping now, finishing this. !!! i was all, please can I havw an extension, and e was all, you don't need your phone for this ssignment, qnd so i completed the three things that I needed to do still, in two hours.

it was prety intense.

ANd nwort that I;'ve told you about that I guess I'm fone, and cane get under teh covres now and sleep finaaly

More Papers I Wrote for Mesoamerican Art Class

There was also a test in that class today (Mesoamerican Art;) I bluffed calling something being from El Tajin being from Monte Alban, to hopefully squeeze in more points if I got it right, but I looked it up and of course I totally got it wrong. It even had the typical El Tajin double-edged scroll design; I'm such a dunce sometimes...

So! You know that order I talked about a week ago, saying it'd take from one to two weeks to get here? It took one week. I spent a lot of time cleaning my room today, and now the room is uncluttered, but still with its space very much taken up. I hate being vague about this, but it still doesn't feel the time yet to make the announcement. Maybe tomorrow.

Tarzan and the Valley of Gold isn’t awful, but it’s one of those ones that are really easy to make fun of. I actually liked the groovy 1966-ness of it all; the title sequence with all the colors and everything was pretty awesome. Having the character of Tarzan existing in the 1960s instead of the 1910s/1920s isn’t really that strange; it’s no more strange than having James Bond movies set in the present day, for example. David Yeats’s The Legend of Tarzan released last year had the character in or past his prime, set the year that he was born in the books; we’ve got at least two Sherlock Holmeses going on set in the present day right now, so why not with Tarzan?

The poster depicts Tarzan taking down a helicopter with a bolo with live grenades tied on; that was a pretty good way to kill a helicopter I guess but I don’t know why the poster artist thinks that that’s the iconic kill in the movie when there’s an assassin who’s taken out with an eighteen-foot bottle of Coca-Cola. I think I’ve seen that somewhere before, or maybe it was just that obvious what was about to happen next, because as soon as I saw all the pieces set up I was all, yup, that’s what they’re going to do. I also enjoyed the scene where Tarzan killed all those dudes with the Styrofoam stalactites. Or the scene where the villain dies slowly in quicksand made of gold dust, that was a good death.

Was I supposed to be talking about the Mesoamerican aspects of the film? Because I just can’t get over how weird yet strangely boring this movie is. The treks through the jungle, Tarzan swings, Binky (I think was the chimp’s name) swings, it’s the kind of scene that you put into a movie because you took all that time to shoot it (Tarzan doesn’t swing on vines, in the original books.) Like how the watch explodes, that whole scene how we watch the whole thing with them going outside and setting the watch down and everything, better filmmakers only need to imply that kind of thing; oh we’re outside, we must have gone outside. They did have good filmmaking techniques back then, I’ve seen it, but this film is just a home video with a slightly bigger budget and marginally marginally marginally better acting. Or what’s the deal with the tiny dog? Did they just want to show how heinous the bad guy is, willing to explode a teacup poodle? And Nancy Kovac was probably supposed to be a love interest, but she and Tarzan hardly spend two scenes together… so I’m assuming Jane’s still around somewhere, and she’s just for the audience.

Mesoamerican-wise, anyway, the lost hidden city in the mountains is Teotihuacan, playing the part of the lost city, whatever its name was; the central plaza of the city is depicted by the Plaza of the Moon. There were two chac mools, one out of stone, one out of gold, both based off of the same real-life chac mool, one from Tlaxcala if my research is accurate. There are some Aztec-inspired interior sets we see, lots of nice skulls and things, albeit with the occasional ridiculous Mayan-style glyph (I noticed a numeral, two bars with five(!) dots, so that was pretty entertaining.) But the solid gold door is still, clearly, just spray painted gold. I mean, the gold in this movie is pretty fake: it’s apparently very light there, they can move it so easily to put it into a big pile like that, and it hardly weighs down the transporters at all. I mean, cheesy special effects, we get it, and I really don’t hate this movie, but, light Hollywood gold is a pet peeve of mine.

 

So I watched Kings of the Sun- and I really liked this movie. I have no idea how realistic the situation it depicts is, though I don’t much doubt that it’s made up. Metal swords, it’s a neat idea but I doubt it, even for post-classical Maya (where would they mine? Where would they get the idea to mine? How would they get a hot enough heat to smelt ore? Etc); I think we’d know if there really were a Maya settlement in mainland North America as depicted in the movie. And the fact that the two tribes happen to both speak English, that was weird; they didn’t even try to explain that, the way that they explained how the Teotihuacan-ites spoke English in the Tarzan and the Valley of Gold movie. But other than that, I enjoyed it a lot.

The drama is dramatic, and the cinematography is just gorgeous. The blacks get really rich. There’s this one scene where Black Eagle is in his cell, and his shadow is cast long and dramatic one way, then he moves to another wall and his shadow is silhouetted against the other wall; I’ve got no idea how they did that lighting. I noticed how they did the lighting in one of the early scenes, where they’re making their way through the interior of the pyramid (because Maya pyramids are now all about interior space and hidden back doors, apparently,) where they move from one chamber to another and the light “comes on” in the next room they go to.

Yul Brynner’s basically reprising his King and I role here: he folds his arms the same, he squats down forcing everyone else to squat down with him the same, he even dies at the end the same. George Chakiris was apparently in West Side Story, and now that I know that he does look familiar.

The pyramid isn’t as big in the movie as it is in the poster, and the final battle, though it makes sense, the fact that they fight on the pyramid just seems like something they put in to make the trailers look awesome. The costuming is pretty good, though not as good as we’d have today- it’s more like a homemade fan costume that you see at sci-fi conventions, but the costuming was probably killer for its time.

Mesoamerican culture-wise- they blow on conch shells a lot; that’s something I see enough that I’m going to start assuming that’s something they actually did. There are shields made of wood, and also the rich people (I’m assuming is how it breaks down) get special shields woven from reeds. The materials make sense, since even in this movie the only metal they’ve got is those fancy swords; wood would have mostly rotten by now so I’d imagine that the designs painted on the shields are fanciful, though I did notice one had a rabbit head and I have seen that as a military emblem, so there must be some base in reality. George Chakiris’s character Balam is against human sacrifice, which seems kind of modern-day-sensibility and un-Maya-ish of him, but by now the civilization’s so collapsed that his character motivations for that kind of thing make sense, and there were probably at least a few kooks like him back then.

As far as the representation of Mesoamerican art goes. There’s a stela carved in the film, a big squarish one with the picture on the front and the writings on the sides, which is like the 3D stelae from Copan. I noticed one of the guy’s headdresses was one of the Remojadas sculptures, the dancer face with three eyes and two noses, probably depicting movement. 

Yeah, I Got In a Round or Two of Avalon

I was the assassin, the guy to my right was Mordred. I was King first, the chooser of quest makeups, which position advances clockwise. To my left was a string of four loyal Arthurians, before it circled around to Mordred again.

The next four kings would have all been good guys- so I had to send Mordred, or myself in retrospect, to get in a sabotage the first quest. Which means that everyone would know one of the two on the first mission is bad, but I'm basically forced into that situation. I as the assassin can still hope to take Merlin out, even if we fail in sabotaging the quests. I send Mordred, and the guy to his right, and realize my mistake too late- nobody would have any suspicions of us if I choose good guys, who would then choose us bad guys in their turns as king, is one of many other ways I could have played it. But like I said, it'd be good guys picking the questing teams for the next four rounds, so I have to choose Mordred to go out, and hope he realizes not to actually sabotage the mission, which he won't, because he has no choice.

First quests are seldom rejected, so it goes through, and Mordred does the only thing he can do by putting in a fail. The other guy in the quest knows who the bad guy is- and from the way he says it, makes me suspect that he's Merlin, now discovered the identity of Mordred. The rest of the quests proceed, and they now know to avoid those two, at least, in a six-player game. Which leaves the identity of the final baddie up in the air- the good guy in the middle, of the group of three to my left before it's "Merlin" and Mordred again, singles me out hypothetically as the bad guy- if this quest of three fails, we know that the other one who didn't go on it must be the good guy. Say it's us three, and he's the bad guy, indicating me. From this Mordred suspects that that one in the middle of the three is Merlin, because he knows I'm a bad guy.

The quests succeed, evil fails but I as the assassin can still take Merlin out and have our team win- I announce "Merlin" as Merlin, but Mordred tells me he thinks differently. I bow to his dark will... and turns out I was right, and my suspicions were correct. So, Avalon metagame moral: if you're evil, never send Mordred on the first quest.

Somerset Party Notes

I was sent into the heart of game design workshop, to snatch the fabled Jewel of Playtest. My mission was, partly successful. We never actually made it to the end. Which is where all the data I was supposed to collect is located, who won why, with how many points, and what strategies people used. Now that everyone knows how to play the game, we should get further than halfway through by the end, next week. Still, unless the group over there still going through round after round of playing Avalon wants to play a real real real real real quick game of Somerset, (I'm still at the board game night, though it's officially ended as of an hour 15 minutes ago,) I won't be able to do what I actually intended to do tonight.

I blame myself for the quest's failure; I waited till workshop's start to start making the needed adjustments to the cards and tiles (correcting item costs after the tiles were retooled,) figuring I guess that I'd receive some help in doing so and that it would go quickly- turns out that I'd receive no help, and that board gamers are introverted weenies, WHO THE AITCH KNEW. I also didn't really explain the scoring at the end, so my playtesters didn't know what to work toward- I'd deliberately left the endgame vague so that they'd make their way to it with unmetagamed strategy, but in retrospect this was a bonehead move because the players didn't have much of an idea what they were even doing, or how awesome spells are, or anything.

AND THE AVALON GROUP IS BEGINNING ANOTHER ROUND; DANGIT I THOUGHT THEY WERE WINDING DOWN. Maybe sometime at the beginning I would have had time to teach the rules to them and have them play a complete game, but it's too late for that now I guess. Oh well.

Playing what little game I did get in with board game designers as I did, I at least received notes questioning the mechanical reasoning behind a bunch of stuff. So I guess I have that to cough up, instead of the data that was really wanted. There are still some interesting points here, on the bright side, but if some of these were implemented, there's going to be a lot more playtesting even still, on the, dark side.

• First some questions on the artwork/tile layout:
• The government track- the colors are the same colors as the player markers. That's just misleading. Maybe make the government track black and white or something, they say.
• The image used to indicate casting a spell is a bit unclear; they had to work out that it's a pair of hands magicking. Maybe make the image a swirly magic thing, or a spell circle, or just improve the value contrast on the image, they say.
• The number of players (3+ etc) on the upper left corners of Camelot tiles is misleading. Camelot tiles have no cost. Maybe move the number of players being indicated to the back of the tile, they say.
• Why are we being incentivized to build our own country tiles next to other people's country tiles, anyway? It probably has something to do with wanting to expand out in a non-random direction, so that the board isn't laid out pell-mell in the end, but it's kind of a funny thing, they say.
• Is there any real incentive for building your spellbook early on? Why the heck would you want to buy a spell to put in your spellbook if you can't use it yet, especially if you can buy as many spells as you want in the building round anyway, they say.
• The movement rule is restrictive, they say. A knight "must" move two should be, like, the knight "may" move two "max," they say.
• (Here it should be pointed out that neither of the other two players knew that worker placement was its own genre, and the fact that there is such a thing was news to them.)
• What's the deal with roads? Why have them? Maybe it would make sense if there were more than one road missing from some/all tiles, making roadbuilding more necessary, but as it stands that rule doesn't even need to be in place, they say.

AND THE AVALON GROUP IS STARTING YET ANOTHER DANG GAME DANGIT.

Screw it, I'm going over there and chatting them up.

...

Dang, they are engrossed in that game. None of the games I've ever played of Avalon before are as hardcore as these guys are treating it.

Yeah, I guess I won't be getting in another round today. I... I could still join those Avalon guys for a round, but I really should be getting home and prepping for the morrow. For some reason I remember tomorrow's schedule being packed, but I can't really think of a single reason beyond homework that would make it so... I mean, there is a Mesoamerican quiz on Friday, classical and terminal classical non-Maya peoples (Teotihuacan et al,) but that wouldn't really take up the whole day doing... so I must look into that.

Oh, I guess I still have a point or two about Somerset.

• The first couple of rounds you can't build anything! It's not quite what the guy said, but I interpret the fix for that as being, start out with a resource or two of your choosing? I'm not sure how far off that would throw the balance of the rest of the game; I think the start was just slow because the rules were still being explained. But it is a thought.

Tzolk'in and That Jazz

Didn't really think I was all that stressed until I was tossed a (still partly frozen, cherry) fruit pie (being declared, "happy pie day!" of course,) ate it, and felt stress melt away in alarming quantity.

Realized with, not making my business loan official, it's not really official, so here it is in writing, some draft of contract: 100% of all monies received from my business are going to my parents, until such time as my debts are paid off. I think I can handle food for myself and everything in the meantime.

Okay, so. Today I spent a lot of time doing stuff (read: watching movies) for Mesoamerica class (Kings of the Sun is a pretty good movie; I've mentioned before how Yul Brynner is basically God, right?) and so my post I've got for you today is my review of Tzolk'in for Professor Raish. It's still not an official game we can play for points in the class, but I mentioned it to him and he told me to print out some information on it. So I wrote this, and will deliver it to him (along with a helpful diagram of the board) tomorrow morning. And maybe that'll get me points somehow!

The game of Tzolk'in revolves around a revolving gear, symbolizing the advancing of time. This gear is connected to smaller gears around the edge of the board (the board is pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle, each piece having a gear on it which all fit together,) each gear representing a famous site whereat you can on your turn either place workers or pick them up. As you turn the large gear in the center counterclockwise, once per round, the smaller gears advance clockwise, which means that the little workers you place down in slots on the gears at the sites can afford better stuff for that round, or even better things the round after if you leave them on. You can only either put on one or more workers or take them off, so you have to be judicious not only where you place your worker but when.
The locations around the board are Chichen Itza, Yaxchilán, Uxmal, Tikal and Palenque. At Yaxchilan you can gain resources (wood, stone, gold, and even crystal skulls.) Chichen Itza is where you spend your crystal skulls, which allows you to move up along one of three temple tracks and earning you points. You can also harvest wood at Palenque, but it's mostly used to get corn, the currency and point system in the game (the further along the gear you get the more corn or wood you earn, of course- but you also have to use slash-and-burn agriculture to get at the corn, so if you haven't harvested wood first at the higher-up spaces, you displease the gods and must move back a space on one of the temple tracks.) At Uxmal, you can put your corn to work, trading it with resources or paying it to do things such as moving up temple tracks. At Tikal, you can build buildings if you have the resources for it, or you can increase your engineering capabilities, giving you bonuses that can be used elsewhere (for example, better farming capability, giving you more corn per harvest.)
There are quite a few ways to achieve points in the game- you can advance up along temples, which can also get you resources; you can build buildings or monuments, which can earn you points by themselves or give you special powers; you can place crystal skulls at Chichen Itza, which give you points, allow you to move up on a temple track, and can sometimes even give you resources (and remember, the further around the gear you are, the better.)
All told, it's a pretty complicated game, even without getting into the Tribes and Prophecies expansion which allows you to take on the roles of historical figures and/or have prophecies laid out for you at the beginning of the game which you must fulfill (though the expansion doesn't really make it that much more complicated.) If people in this class think that Tikal is a difficult game to learn, they'll be wise to steer far clear of this game; there's a lot that I haven't even mentioned about it, like how you need to feed your workers corn when it's scoring season, or how who the first player in a round is can change with a worker being placed at a certain non-gear space, and I'm certain there's more that I haven't thought of that I'm forgetting. But those are the basics.

Boy it was a picnic boiling down all the rules like that, let me tell you, but I think I did a pretty good job all told. If only I could remember the part I know I'm forgetting...

March Hare

Hares are creepy. Just, in general, like some kind of uncanny valley version of a bunny. There's folklore connecting them with witchcraft and all kind of good stuff. Hares, furthermore, behave erratically during mating season- hence the phrase, Mad as a March hare. They're even more terrifying, jumping around, straight up off the ground for no reason, among other things.

March meanwhile is when daylight savings time begins, and as such, one of the worst times of the year to watch horror movies- you're already not going to get much sleep tonight as it is, it being one hour shorter, but by the way do you want to watch this terrifying new feature guaranteed to make you lose sleep?

So I'm detecting a definite untapped market here...

Weed Experience

Alright, so first of all, shameless plug for Furry Experience, this new webcomic I discovered, yesterday evening (well it's been going on biweeklish since 2009 (though it's been two weeks since the last update as of this writing, oh noes!) but it's new to me.) If I had only three minutes to make a post last night, this may have been why? 

I spent a lot of today making my way through the whole thing, from the beginning, (gave me something to do to pass the time until I could eat something, it being fast sunday here after stake conference last week,) and now I'm caught up with all 500+ pages. Woo.

http://furryexperience.smackjeeves.com/comics/1801963/page-296/

Furry Experience is, like the name suggests, a slice-of-life furry webcomic, set at, it's like UVU but everyone's an anthro for reasons never explained? So there's this culture thing going on, which is great. Catherine "Cat" Feline up there's a Mormon; her roommates and friends have varying degrees of comfortability with the church and/or the culture around the church but they're all attending school in fetchin' Utah so they've all got some familiarity with its teachings and culture, though the jargon and baseline assumptions can be kind of alien/alienating sometimes (as well as vice-versa, as we often see. Like, I'm not sure if anyone really doesn't know what a weed brownie is, but that's a wonderful joke, there; though well yeah I can see Cat not knowing about that kind of thing... we see her clueless as to the ways of the world quite often. I mean, like, there is a lot that she does not know. A lot. That one, though, that one up there, it makes me laugh every time...)

So yeah. I am a fan of this, as I am a fan of all wonderful things. It's sweet and fun and funny and flowing with the milk of human kindness and the, honey of, a lion's carcass I guess, yeah that makes sense*; if I had any money (in the budget that is) I just love it so much I'd become a $100-a-month patron on Patreon. (And also get a Nintendo Switch.**) But you can't always get what you want! As such, I'll just have to settle on, some, lower pledge. As soon as I remember my Patreon password.

Experience. Weed more of it, please.

Getting down to brants, anyway (brass ants; I'm stopping, I swear), getting to the subject of this post, I'm plucking out my right eye! By which I mean, I'm watching no more TV or movies or videos at all for the rest of the month, maybe even the rest of the semester, except those required by any classes of course. It's been a super time waster, a crazy distraction, from study and homework and sleeping and everything, and though I've studied and learned a lot about filmmaking, the greatest inspiration for any art is living life itself. Otherwise you just become super derivative and all, God's Honest Truth, I seen it, and heard it said.

So this may be unconnected, but, another thought.

I take and take and take and take and I don't really ever give anything back, and I've known this, but I'm always architecting instead of gardening, plotting instead of pantsing, and that which I have that can be given back is never ready to be given, and so, I keep on taking in the meantime. Meanwhile, I guess God's been giving, but not in the way that people speak of the way he gives: I have air to breathe and food to eat and things work out in the long run, but I don't get promptings to help people or bear my testimony or anything, the way others speak of it, and my prayers are never answered like when I've lost something and am looking for it. So it occurred to me during fast and testimony meeting (fasting testimony meeting?) with all those who go on about promptings, which I don't get, maybe God's just doing the same thing to me, as I do. Taking and taking and taking and taking, whatever that means, and getting ready to give as soon as I give.

Heart Stops Beating

I may have, taken out a business loan, from my parents, retroactively, that used to be my tuition money but now my tuition money's actually come in so that tuition money became the tuition money and the money lent me by my parents may have been put into, business expenses, for business. I've still got money if it need be repaid now, but, I realized yesterday that I still haven't formally received permission.

Another thing I realized yesterday, with the Machine of Death-inspired thing going on with the posts, each post looking like a Machine of Death slip it looks like any given post title is how you're gonna die.

When You Want to Stay a Long Time

Caught this one, the day it came out on Vimeo, or the morning of the day after. I'm sharing it with you now, three days after it's come out, because, the English subtitles are finally up (hit the CC button; there's not much dialogue, but when there is it's in Swedish.)


Bath House from Niki Lindroth von Bahr on Vimeo.

There's an interview about it here if you're curious about what went into it and where the ideas behind it come from. And if you liked that, you may be interested in Niki's first project Tord and Tord, or her latest project The Burden, which are both talked about a little in the interview. I've helpfully provided the trailer for the latter below (you're welcome.)


The Burden (Min Börda) - trailer from Niki Lindroth von Bahr on Vimeo.

Oh gosh. You're not sure whether to laugh or cry, that just breaks your heart...

Alright, so two games from Andrew arrived in the mail today: Contagion, and Somerset. I've read through the rules on both, and though I had questions at first I don't think there are any that linger after a rules reread and components consideration. Except maybe for in Contagion, where, like, it's impossible to kill the zombies, right? And there are only 8 zeeples (zombie meeples?) so that means that there can "only" be 8 zombies on the board, right?

Also I suppose I have a question about Somerset- I'm taking it to the Game Design Workshop on Wednesday for playtest help; are there any number of players specifically that need to be playtested with, like, there aren't many opportunities you've had so far to playtest with 5 people, so you'd like to see how it plays that way, or is it just more of, a tweaks, kind of thing?

Now all I'm expecting in the mail (UPS at least; that counts, right?) is for the, business, stuff, in one or two business weeks.

Something Having to Do with a Carrot

So I made another $10 in coupon for the food court today. (The first $10, of course, being from the acorn trophy thing.) There was some, test, I was selected to take. 'T's called the CLA+, Collegiate Learning Assessment, and it measures, exactly that. I'd been selected for my school and/or major, presumably randomly, out of other students, though I'm inclined to believe that I wasn't the only one selected thus, because mine was not the sole $10 coupon they're awarding for CLA+ participation.

byui.edu/outcomes-and-assessment-old/university-level-oanda/cla

I'd known about it for a while, but couldn't find time in any days up until today to take the test- there's an hour-long writing section and a half-hour multiple choice, both requiring critical reading and thinking and, such. By taking the test I agreed that the test materials were copyright them, and I think proprietary, so I won't go into it much more than that.

Anyway, Brian Kershisnik! Guest lecture artist at the seminar was Brian Kershisnik. And there's a workshop with him tomorrow morning! I've been a huge fan of his ever since I discovered him on my mission, and, now I know what he looks like. Yeah.

http://kershisnik.com

Eev Tuba La

I iz dead now. I make this quick.

All About Eve. TCM movie for this month. Nothing to do with Three Faces of Eve. Apparently. 14 Academy Award nominations. Walked away with 6 wins (double-booked in some categories, like two nominations for best actress.) Dang. They don't make movies like that anymore.

Two refills of popcorn and pop. No restroom breaks, no need to even, though usually I'm bursting 3/4ths of the way through, with all the soda. Diet soda; I've mentioned my preferred mixture in my post about the Planet of the Apes showing. It's a pretty long movie, too, All About Eve (speaking again of the lack of need for restroom breaks), so I'm really not sure how that happened.

TCM tickets always pretty expensive, for Paramount 5 at least, but there's no movies to watch for a month until Spark: a Space Tail comes out in April, so I'm still spending less on tickets this month than I'm used to. I go to the theater a lot. Should start inviting along girls. (Still need to see La La Land too of course. Coming to Paramount 5... any week now...)

I... shoot, I guess I need to go scan that stuff; won't be able to hit the hay directly after all. Oh well. I've been dead or mostly dead most of the day anyway. Just make my rest all the sweeter.

So I Guess I May Have (Something of) a Job Now?

...Beyond, of course, the mysterious, loan-needing'd business I'm starting per my Business for the Professional Artist class (though other fruits from that class were borne today as well, which could lead somewhere, but that's for another time (maybe tomorrow.))

I took, like I said, almost 1,000 pictures total of Fandomonium this semester, on Saturday. People thought I was the official event photog, which wasn't true, but heck maybe I was, I don't know. Two photographers arrived later, one with a press badge, but they weren't around for the full too-many hours (I think it lasted 6 hours this semester, which is nuts.) Those whom I bothered setting straight said, hey man, you should totally get in touch with the events guys, they'd love your photos.

So today, in wait for the, aforementioned Business for the Professional Artist fruits, I went down to the events guys, the secretary desk there, and they pointed me further in, to social activities, and I told social activities, and... they like/need proactive people such as I, just taking photos for fun and all that, and so I was made an admin on the Facebook page (!) so that I could create an album of the photos I took, and was given a t-shirt (!!), and a card, and a booklet, and heck I don't know if you get paid for being a photographer for Social Activities, or anything, but if you do then that'd be triple exclamation points (!!!).

It'd at least make that $2 entry fee worth it.

I selected 67 of the best ~1000 photos, and chose 38 of those to go onto the album (the photos I posted onto Saturday's post were among the 29 left over, which I still liked but weren't as good for one reason or other (of the ones I selected to be on the blog, the reason had to do more with representation than quality: I'd already had portraits similar represented in the album.)) The album is here:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/byuisocial/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1234233563297602

I wonder how it stacks up to the other photographers' photography. We'll see, once those come in, I suppose.

Of the, 900ish that I didn't select to go up anywhere, and the 24 of the 29 of the 67 best that also didn't go anywhere, there are still a few that I really really like but had to cull mercilessly, so if you're curious, I don't know, there are more, if you really need to see them for some reason.

Felix Fixes It

Alright, so with the project 4 going on in information design class meaning that we're dictating our own schedules from here on out (more or less), today wasn't really all that crazy, as far as Mondays go. That's not an excuse to slack or anything, but it is good news. Or bad news, insofar as I have to remind myself that it's not an excuse to slack or anything.

My cell phone's up and phone-ing now, thanks to Felix at customer support. I should make the calls I should make, now that I actually can. That'd be good.

Tomorrow is a pretty big day too. Bigger than this one; I'll actually have things to report, rather than just furtively try to hide the bigger of the big stuff that I hinted at yesterday (is it the Nintendo Switch? It's the Nintendo Switch, isn't it? You're getting Breath of the Wild, I hear you saying. To which I reply, my goodness, I wish. It's, um, bigger. There may be- and I'm just saying, for right now, may be- a reason I haven't paid my parents back for tuition yet, even though my grant money's come in. If it's essential that they need be paid back sooner than later, I'm on it like butter on toast, because next semester's money and then some has also already come in, but for now I'm requesting a retroactive business loan, consisting of the money already given me...)

The stuff going down tomorrow isn't so cloak-and-dagger though; it's exciting, but not anything whose reportage can't wait until tomorrow when it's already done.

Vagueness is Coming; Thanksgiving

Whew. Big things are afoot. Finally advancing in, well I'll leave that to be a surprise, but, expect a lot over the next few days, if I'm able to keep up with everything. I'm excited, though I'm swamped; by all accounts I should be panicking, but, it's not so much that I work well under pressure as much as under pressure is the only place I work. That would explain a lot, wouldn't it?

So right now I'm feeling extremely grateful, extremely humble. My family are all the best. My brothers are all geniuses, my sister might be a genius I don't know (she does have a cushy situation set up for herself, and is going well-paying places, so I'd say that's pretty smart so she's at least a genius of competency; other than that, she hasn't really blogged in, years, and I don't really have many/any avenues to keep up with her as much.) My parents, of course being parents, know everything, so there's that too...!

I love my sister-in-law and my nephew is the cutest kid in the world, probably. Turing two in a little more than a month; that's something. (also geniuses.) I love my future wife, and I know she's got to be a genius 'cause she'll, you know, me.

Tomorrow's going to be nuts, maybe (probably, I mean, well it is a Monday); I think I'll tuck in early so as to get a head start on it early early in the morning.

Fandomonium[!] IV; Zootopia Anniversary

Woo boy. First of all, it's the one year anniversary of Zootopia's release. Happy birthday. (I've got some, Zootopia-themed birthday cards from Hallmark, which I could very well give the film right now. Ha.)

Anyway, and secondly, this afternoon held Fandomonium IV. I've got hundreds of photos; won't be posting them all up, but. I'm bushed beyond all reason or measure right now, and it's late; I'll, uh, I'll get a few of the choicest ones up later (after having reviewed the photos and selected the best, of course) and when I do, they'll be posted here:

I Get Robin Williams Mixed Up with Woody Allen Mixed Up with Tim Allen, but That Doesn't Have to Do with Anything

Wanted to have my announcement of my new phone arriving today as a, you know, call, but I'm having trouble transferring my old phone number to the new phone, so right now the only thing my phone's serving as is a, not-phone, because it has no calling-ness. It wants me to have a service plan, and I've got one of those attached to the missing phone (did I ever even say on this blog, my phone went missing over Christmas) but it wants to know the PIN of that particular order, and pshaw man I don't know; I do have a receipt of added airtime but there's no PIN anywhere on it, so either the PIN is on the original and not the extension, or the e-receipt came out incomplete, which is what happened with the e-receipt of the new phone ordered in the first place. I could just order a new data thing, but it's giving me an error message and/or telling me to call the help desk_, everytime I try to go ahead and place an order.

My Pell grant stuff's gotten through and I've got my money, anyway, meanwhile, as long as I'm um bringing stuff that I should probably have mentioned earlier, up. I should calibrate how this (...calibrate? is that the right...? calculate, by any means) fits in and see my school money income-to-expense is now.

And alright, so I guess the time to sign up for next semester's classes has arrived, but I've got zillion hold, so I can't sign up, and some of them are really bizarre exotic species of hold I've never seen before, even in the wild much less in the captivity of my own student account or anything. I think I know how one of them, it's this credit allowance thing or whatever, works; there was this email sent to me telling me that I had taken so many credits already and with that many credits it would be time to be thinking about graduation or something, but then there was this email sent me later telling me no wait never mind our bad we're retracting that statement, but there was this hold placed on my account in the middle there meanwhile, which probably has to do with that, and which was never retracted. And the hold says there'd be information emailed me regarding how to remove it (the hold), but that didn't happen because the hold placed on my account and the emailing of such block removals were not concurrent, so I've just got no idea how to take this thing off of my account. I was going to call in yesterday (assuming my phone would arrive yesterday, which it didn't, so, as soon as my phone arrived and I got it to work anyway) but I can't call obviously so maybe I'll just have to go up to the student office personally to see about getting that hold removed.

Meanwhile there are other holds too, the removal of most of which would be facilitated by if not mandating the use of a phone. So, *sigh...*

I Get Clive Owen Mixed Up with Owen Wilson Mixed Up with Woody Harrelson, So I Guess That Makes Sense

If the Assassin's Creed movie is basically just a cross between The Source Code and the Prince of Persia movie, does that make Michael Fassbender the new Jake Gyllenhaal? Found out today that Woody Harrelson's dad was an assassin (for real!), so maybe that movie would have turned out a lot more interesting, at least subtext-wise, if they'd gotten him to do it instead...

Woody Harrelson: action star! Well, maybe...

Today was uneventful. There was an Indexing party from 7:00-9:00 pm, I guess, but without it maybe I would have actually done some of the homework I was planning on getting done today. I spent a bunch on eating out (well not a bunch but you know what I mean) so there's that- opening the mailbox there were coupons and nothing else, and, one of the deals looked good... things escalated from there.

They Kiss with Their Feelings

Finally finished Life, Animated today. Been meaning to see it ever since Owen Suskind himself appeared as a special guest at the Annies; I'm not sure when I managed to track it down and start watching (it's on Amazon Prime which I get for free for 6 months as a college student) but I only finished it this afternoon. That kind of thing always hits way too close to home to watch in a single sitting, and this one especially.

I'm not sure what else to say.

*Lion* and Lyft

In the morn I've got a test; I'll make this quick so I can rest.

Trying to rhyme isn't really helping my cause out. It just, I mean you really have to spend a lot of time, thinking about not just the ideas but the words as well... so, moving on.

Saw Lion today. What a story. Got no idea at all why it's PG-13; if the ratings system were up to me I'd hand it a G, but, like I've said before I have no clue what's good for kids or not. Great, beautiful message and everything. What the heck, show the kids, I don't know. Didn't even know why it's called Lion, until the end, when it was all- alright, it's not even a twist, but I daren't spoil it. Suffice it to say, it's one of those titles that make the movie better for it. Not like Brave, or Fried Green Tomatoes, where they just sort of shoehorn it in there- more like The Good Dinosaur, where the title actually gives you something deep and insightful about the characters. (Arlo is, just, objectively good. Objectively. The title of the film even agrees!)

I guess I could go over a basic plot- young Indian boy gets separated from his family and lost, picked up by an orphanage 1,200 km from home, adopted by an Australian couple, and twenty-odd years later finds home again using Google Earth. It's based on a true story, so we allow the use of product, to an extent, but the film's acceptance, 6 Oscar nominations and all, shows how much we're becoming willing to not dismiss something off the bat for using specific, branded technologies. These brands are our lives, so that's a good thing. We're not unaffected by these; they're pervasive, and they connect us in ways that can be deeper than we first think. Kneejerk we're suspicious of anything featuring product, but we have common social media apps we need specific technology to access, and don't bat eyes. Technology is marching swiftly, so being really specific with the way we showcase it dates our works, but we still need to have it, in order to be truthful to life. It's interesting.

This short animated film, June, shown to us in motion design class yesterday, is about a little old lady who connects to people using Lyft. And it's beautiful.

So it's like that.

Things I am and am Not Toast In

Meant to do a post about the TASK afterparty, where we made goop and it was good, while meanwhile I worked on my business plan as well, but, I got cut off by midnight again soon enough, but after I'd posted up three photos, enough, to say, I'll just probably add that stuff to yesterday's post. Meanwhile, though, guess I'll do a post at all here today, though I made a significant in Pretzelize Me Cap'n! which you should read, not only because it's important backstory but also because I think it's wrote pretty good. I am a krutaking wordsmith, I am.

Tl;dr is, I just started on project three in information design class, and like turns out that it was actually due this week. The whole thing.

You really should go read that post; it's good. And I'm assuming from now on that you have.

So Prof Frohn got back to me after I emailed him, and I'm not totally sunk, he says, because project 4 is just that huge, that it's worth so many stinking points, that my grade even after all this is totally salvageable. And I know that word's got some pretty specific maritime usage which doesn't mean at all what we use the word "salvage" to mean, but bleeuh.

It's just, better to have all the previous projects under belt, to use the skills gained there in this project, is all.

So turns out I'm not totally hosed in that class. Which is bad, actually, because being hosed over, that's what I'd been throwing my lifesaver behind; I mean, I've got stuff due in other classes, too, but I've been kind of neglecting that going nuts on information design. Wanna walk through them with me?

• Motion design- big project. Final project of the semester, I think. Due next week. Not sure how that works. I've, vaguely started on it?

• Business for the Professional Artist class- one of Dan Burr's off-the-cuff assignments, have 100 social media followers on your art account, and posting regularly using 25 (!) hashtags regularly, is due tomorrow. Haven't, um, well I've made sort of swishing motions with my arms, in the general direction of that.

• Mesoamerican art class- second quiz on Wednesday. I think I've got this; I had the first quiz handily, after all. But meanwhile in that class we're supposed to be writing papers and stuff. I haven't gotten any done since those first three, which I didn't even do the best on (the paragraphing was really weird, because I was trying to fit everything into one page apiece, is part of it.) You don't get penalized for a bad grade or anything, credit is additive in that class, but, alright I started a bunch of fiction books to do a report on maybe one of them, but none of them held my interest for that long.

• Other classes (Foundations of the Restoration; Art Seminar; Concentration (online class worth .5 credits I'm taking this half of the semester, so that I learn how to concentrate better and also because I needed .5 more credits for scholarship purposes))- I'm fine. So, there's those at least.

But I kind of, I don't know. I like the feeling of sinking; scrambling in Info Design kind of gave me an excuse to drag down those other classes too, but now that I know that the hole in the dinghy isn't really that bad, it's, eh. Now I have to somehow find 100 followers within the next 9 hours, when I should be sleeping. I mean, I should have somehow done that anyway, a couple of weeks ago. (Sound familiar?)

Whatever; I'll just sleep. Did that a lot today, in 2 out of 3 classes conking out. Another great thing about having so much stuff gradually piling on top of me in a Hollywood quicksand mire of taskage, is that it really forced me to be frugal with my time.

The Task Party Chronicles, pt IV

First off, I've been starting these usually with tangents about movies, so here's my avenue to say, the Oscars thing happened! Yay winning! Lion King was what I think inspired them to come out with Best Animated Film in the first place, wasn't it, so it never got that because it wasn't around yet, but it did win the 1994 Annie Award for best picture, as did Zootopia this year.

Anyway I guess I can think of no reason not to get to the TASK party itself by now. Thursdays hold Art Business in the mornings, and nothing else unless there's an Art Seminar in the evening which there was this time. There weren't clean checks last Thursday for some reason. There were this time, once again, so, in between homework (working on the business plan) there was also cleaning the apartment, and not much else I guess. That takes us through to the Art Seminar, where the guest lecturer was actually a museum curator talking about that; the seminar was apparently at the same time as the art gallery exhibit open house, Robert Daughters silkscreen prints, this time. The open house looked over by the time I swung by to catch any refreshments that may have been; it did mean there was no line but it also meant that the only food to speak of still left was the remnants of salsa and tortilla chips, with the less popular of the veggie platter offerings still up as well. Why am I telling you all this; I don't know. Moving on to the party now. I've got pictures.

What is it about foxes? The two or three examples of foxiness going on in the above photograph are all unrelated, and this photo still leaves out the other person who'd been bestowed fox ears (the woman here I also gave a tail; making her that outfit was the first task I was given. (That shiny tin in the foreground is where the slips with the tasks on are located.)) It also leaves out the Fantastic Mr Fox drawing that was auctioned off; Brother Keller won, though I bid $5, by bidding a $2 bill, which are apparently worth like $10 each nowadays. It wasn't until later that I had a Brazilian 10 centavo piece in my pocket...

The Task Party Chronicles, pt III: I almost get around to the actual party part

So I recently revisited all the major releases that are coming out this year, and I guess there's more than two movies still to come out I'm looking forward to? On average there's no single month with more than one film being released I'm anticipating, which is a major departure from last year of course where basically the only movie that didn't interest me was that Fantastic Beasts thing. I guess each month this year will be defined by one movie. Like the way years work in Infinite Jest, but different, because I said so.

1. January Monster Trucks
2. February Rock Dog
3. March Spider-Man 3 (yeah, nothing's coming out next month, but Spider-Man 3's an awesome movie)
4. April Spark
5. May Dead Men Tell No Tales
6. June The Mummy
7. July Spider-Man: Homecoming
8. August Spider-Man: Homecoming some more (I mean the first Nut Job was okay...)
9. September Ninjago I guess, just because WAG's track record is 3-for-3 in my eyes
10. October My Little Pony; also maybe the Cloverfield movie that's coming out just on principle
11. November actually has a few interesting-looking ones coming out, including Pixar's new thing Coco, a Kenneth Branagh-helmed Murder on the Orient Express film (!) and yeah speaking of Kenneth Branagh Thor Ragnarok which if I had to choose one film for November it'd be that (Kenneth Branagh directed the first Thor, of course, which is where I got that segue; this one's being directed by Taika Waititi (!), though to be honest I can't remember who directed the second one)
12. December The Last Jedi, probably. I have a deep-seated apathy toward it as of now, but that's how I felt about The Force Awakens till I saw that in theaters, so, yeah.

So, as you can see from my list, yes. Between the first two films on this list that have already come out, the Spider-Man 3 thing, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, we can already tell: the new DC movies are going to be awesome, the new Marvel films are all going to be terrible (except for Guardians 2 by dint of not being on my list), and the new Star Wars movie is going to be a disappointment. (Apparently my taste in movies is bad. If you need me to explain the joke.) (There, must've been, a memo, sent out telling everyone to dislike Monster Trucks?, which I'm pretty sure must've been sent out on opposite day or something, because, MONSTER TRUCKS how can you not think that's cool!?)

Can I just gush about Monster Trucks for a bit? It's, just, a great great masterpiece of celluloid. 100% pure awesome. It doesn't care how so many people think it's dumb. It's just all, shut up I'm Monster Trucks. Monster Trucks does what Monster Trucks wants. Because it's Monster Trucks. It knows it's cool. Not very many other films have that much self-confidence. Not very many other films are about underground sea monsters who have hive intelligence, bioluminescence, tentacles and cute whale faces, who've evolved to metabolise crude oil. I'm shortlisting it on my already short list of this year's films, to be one of the best of this year's films. I, just, I just love that movie. Greatest movie of the year, so far, and it won't be unthroned very easily. Godspeed you, Monster Trucks. Godspeed you.

And Spider-Man 3, can I gush about that now too? Not that it's as great a movie as Monster Trucks, of course, and maybe the critics actually have a point or two this time, like, maybe they could have saved Venom for Spider-Man 4, because three villains crammed in there is pretty bloated, but, the alien symbiote stuff, black suit Spider-Man, superfly Peter Parker jamming through the street high on self-confidence, that was way cool. Spider-Man 3 is way cool. Sam Raimi is a way cool way underrated, genius auteur.

...dang it, if the movies on my list are going to be bad, does that mean that the Transformers movie this year is actually going to be good? Despicable Me 3? How about the Emoji movie? Or maybe every movie this year is going to be terrible, and not being on my list won't spare you...

Anyway, I guess I'm continuing my story about Thursday now. Thursday was pretty crazy; there were like 5 things going on all at the same time.

1. The business plan due in Business for the Professional Artist class
2. Thursday apartment clean checks
3. Art seminar
4. Open house for the new Spori Gallery art exhibit
5. now, this thing, this Task Party.

All at the same time. Or, well, the Task Party, definitely scheduled after the art seminar, it being an, art thing, but other than that, all at the same time. The idea of checking out a Thursday preview for Rock Dog crossed my mind only briefly. 

Um, to be continued again I guess; I seem to have run out of time again. Get to the party next time, I promise. Meanwhile, know what's a good song? This:

The Task Party Chronicles, pt II: This is actually a review of Rock Dog, go see it

Rock Dog isn't a masterpiece or anything, but it might be as good as Sing, though in different areas. Both have their flaws, but both have areas of pure unfettered creativity as well, and music that's only occasionally mediocre, and is generally pretty good or great. The song "Glorious" was awesome. The score was really good. I can't remember any of the score for Sing, though I know there was one. Films about the power of good music kind of need to have good music, and, well maybe the songs I didn't like will grow on me upon relistens? The rock n' roll in this film is actually genuinely rock n' roll instead of just rock without the roll, which is, I mean, there's a character who's a robot but it's still tough to pin down the time period this film's supposed to take place in, you know?

It felt like, especially with some of the cornier gags like the sheep forgetting everything ('cause sheep are dumb) (conveniently allowing exposition to be delivered, with a stern "I've told you a thousand times, we've been over this" from J.K. Simmons,) it felt like a funny animal comic out of the '40s and '50s. It is based off of a comic, Tibetan Rock Dog, which I think I've heard of before but never actually read or anything of course, so maybe that comic was/is deliberately trying to channel that, and some of that made it to film? I don't know.

The wolves were great, especially in character design. Loved that. Solid character/creature designs all around, more consistent than Sing's, but the wolves were... well, it's not like I haven't seen wolf designs that look like that before, Robin Hood and Kung Fu Panda do similar things off the top of my head, but Rock Dog managed to make the triangle-head-wolf-with-pointy-nosey-overbite fresh somehow. Kenan voices one of them; Kel doesn't voice the other, unfortunately, otherwise we'd have a nice thing going on with those-two-bad-guys wolf voice actors played by comedy duos, between this and Storks with Key and Peele. I'm not sure how good the terms they're on with each other anymore; I think it's warmed up I mean they did do that Jimmy Fallon thing together...

Zootopia's still totally winning the recent spate of animal-city movies of course, but the other contenders are pretty strong.

Um so Task Party. Brother Keller gave me the address, Sister Jimison's house, and tried to describe what one is, but failed, and said, there's videos on YouTube explaining it, just look at that.

So I did.

The Task Party Chronicles, pt I: I would've had this all as one post if time didn't run out on me writing it halfway through, but There Are No Bugs, Only Features

I hate it when YouTube videos and webcomics and stuff (maybe hate is a strong word) apologize for a schedule slip, because I'm always reading/viewing those years after their first upload, so it doesn't really matter to me, but... haven't posted at all this week, up till now, so now you future blogreaders know, you future blogreaders, you. Has it been crazy, trying to catch up on late work and hopefully now be on the same level as everyone else in the class? Well, it probably should have been more crazy, I mean, there's always room for time usage to be more efficient, but, yeah, sure, crazy enough.

Now that I'm done-ish with (most of) the big stuff that was due this week, mostly the business plan that was due in the Business for the Professional Artist class (and I've shifted my art-business focus from graphic design for board games, to the serigraphy thing, which means that all that time tracking down the contact info for 100 different board game companies to have them in a potential client list was time spent in vain) I guess I can post here again for a bit but hey guess what: on a whim, Bro Burr gives us ANOTHER crazy assignment to have completed off the top of his head, track down and use, what was it, 25, 50 hashtags, to use in each art post, to attract more eyes to our stuff? See what works for others, and start using those. So yeah. Maybe I should be doing that instead of this.

But you want to know another thing I maybe should have been doing homework instead of doing (I actually got the business plan due by midnight, so it turned out to be okay)?

Heading home after BftPA class, cutting through the I-can-never-remember-which-dead-white-guy-this-one's-named-after building like I do sometimes (weather's been crazy today; snowed all night and though there was barely a trace of snow left on the ground yesterday today the whole planet seems thick with slippery powder) I found myself outside of Kody Keller's office, and, maybe I should flashback to something I realize I never told you about in the first place, though I have mentioned it in passing-ish on Facebook.

There was a design-an-acorn contest, acorn sculpture 3''x3'' to act as a sort of trophy of some faculty award, for students to compete in, this semester. 1st prize $100, so, yeah sure I like money, no skin off my nose if I fail. It'd been coming up for a few months, so I'd designed mine over Christmas, in my head, and sketched out some ideas in the car on the way back to school. Built it, got it turned in at the 11th hour (it's like I can't not operate like that; like the mighty koi fish, I expand to fit my temporal container. I'm a time koi, in other words. I'd had this analogy before, but the realization of how true that is was really codified in my mind this week, yesterday morning, when I had readings to do for religion class, and it looked like I had a solid half-hour more than I needed to turn it in, maybe I'll even get it in early this time, but the final very few verses of reading took me 20 minutes to complete somehow. I turned in the assignment at 8:59, with a 10:00 deadline, which seems like I did get it in early, until you realize that that left me only 1 minute to put on pants and shoes and get to my Mesoamerican art class at 9:00. So I missed the tip of the nose of that one; I'm not sure how that class did begin. And just now, turning in my business plan due on Thursday, it took until midnight local time (so, now Friday) to actually have the "send" button hit on the email. I'm like a koi that expands to fit its temporal container, true, but in a truer sense I actually expand just beyond my temporal container, sloshing out a bit, maybe even breaking the bowl. (And did I mention that the idea of having the business plan in on Thursday was to turn in a printout in class this morning, but emailing to him while still Thursday would still be technically acceptable?))

But! The acorn sculpture wasn't turned in that much at the 11th hour! There were still a solid 20 minutes left, to turn the acorn in to (and definitely not "into") Brother Keller. Brother Keller, I've mentioned before in passing, is the ceramics teacher who replaced the retired Brother Geddes. I had art readings class from Brother Keller, his first semester, and he's a rad dude. So, turning in my acorn, there were still 20 minutes where Brother Keller was still contractually obligated to stay in his office in case any students had their acorn to turn in, because the contest deadline said, turn your submission in to him in his office by this time and no later. Looks like my submission was the last one, but he still had to stick around, so he invited me to stick with him, and we chatted.

So passing by his room this morning, I had to stop in, not only to pick up my acorn now that the contest is over (they liked our stuff so much everybody won, $10 at least to everyone who submitted but that still doesn't answer whose design was chosen to be the acorn trophy) but to shoot the breeze.

And that's when he mentioned the Task Party going on after the art seminar, this evening...

(to be continued!)

2017 Backlog 15/15: Feeling Romantic

This is what's playing right now as I type. Last backlog. I'm feeling, relieved, like completing a marathon. Woot, woot.

2017 Backlog 14/15: New Year's Eve

Less than ten minutes till the new year now. We've just been, not doing much special. I guess we are staying up. Alex and I will be playing video games as soon as it's Monday, but it's just been a quiet Sabbath. Went to church. Read our patriarchal blessings. Played some games (first real boardgames at all, this vacation- we're home, but we haven't been playing board games that much for some reason. Probably video game related.) We'd thought that Overwatch and League couldn't be played at the same time, with the wifi here, but we did that yesterday a couple of times.

2017 Backlog 13/15: 2/20, and Ten Till Midnight

This is actually an interesting experiment, what's going on here with these backlogs. I uh don't have time to write this one though.

2017 Backlog 12/15-- The Four Page Zone

Just sitting here, posting, Hannah and us all watching Studio C playlists, waiting for that Snapchat video thing to finish compiling. Woo. These posts don't need to be long; Stacy just asked "Are you satisfied?" in the video, and, yes I guess I am.

Missing: Dino

Trying (but not very hard right now because there's other stuff to be doing) to make this blog look more professional, by adding some margin space between the edges of the post frame and the post body. I stumbled across my own blog almost as a stranger a couple of days ago, and so with fresh eyes I was able to see what's keeping this blog's design from being comfortable to read. Needs better margins. Feels kinda skeevy, at its current level of tightness. I'm sure I could find out what to adjust in the source code of the blog's appearance itself, but I haven't really found a place to change the margin width in any tools or settings easily available, not that I've tried terribly hard, or at all.

(20 Minute Later EDIT: okay, I found it, HTML line 376. See if that feels better, or if I need to adjust it further.)

Old latest layout of blog.

Anyway.

If you are not down with Sir Peter Ustinov in yellowface then you have no soul.

Pretzadvice Wanted, pt Deux

Pretzels Prints is, man I don't want to call it either perfect or pretty [anything] (but pretty good especially) because excessive alliteration is devilcraft I'm pretty sure, but those are the words that are lending themselves to me right now: Pretzels Prints is perfect, or barring that, Pretzels Prints is pretty good. My logo is already a paw print, with a pretzel I mean look at the visual pun there, so even if I don't do prints (another one of my very favorite passions I never have time or resources to do) I think the name still holds up. Though it's totally pointing me in the direction of prints as my artistic output, and so there's an excuse to serigraph right there.

A couple of concerns though still: Prints when put that way comes across as a last name, which is fine but "Pretzels Prints" wouldn't in that case roll off the tongue as easily as maybe "Pretzel Prints" would, with the singular Pretzel?, which 1) strays back into the territory of that one guy, and anyway 2) it's (Pretzels's name's) definitely plural, and the other dude (Pretzel singular) removes the reason-that-wasn't-there-in-the-first-place to change it.

But there's an idea in that, in "Pretzel Prints." It, above "Pretzels Prints," makes me sound like the prince of pretzel, or something, while it just sounds possessive I guess the other way, removing ambiguity and thus covering up the presence of the delicious pun. Maybe swap the order of that, which makes retaining the plural still sound good: Prints Pretzels- which might work, but I'm not sure if it sounds like a name more than a title. Retaining some connection either way to my original, I mean real, I mean my name*: Eric spelled backwards is Cire, so, you know, "prince" there I guess. It's also already a practical near-anagram, Eric/Prince, outside of the meaning there behind the word sire.** Regardless of the placement of the word Prints, whether positionally or post-positionally to the word Pretzels, I like it being there, for, those three reasons I outlined.***

I thank everyone who didn't give me advice, because it probably maybe might have been bad. But, maybe I still need some. Also, this should (probably) have been completed yesterday, so. I just need one nudge one way or the other. If none come, I think I've got it either way.