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February 27, 2004
Preparing For Fear...
Tonight is movie night... we rented Ju-on I and II, Kairo, Ringu 2, and some Korean movie which I can't read the title but it's something like "the twin sisters"... I'm gonna have to bring a security blanket and an extra pair of underwear I think. Man I'm so psyched to be scared out of my wits again.
Posted by dminky at 04:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 26, 2004
Let It Be
Ok, that's not a creative title or anything, but I don't have much to say so I just called it the name of the song that I am currently singing. See, I'm at work now in the Academic Resource Center, and iTunes is my best friend. So much better than the radio. I get to listen to muppets, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Mary Poppins, whatever my heart desires.
So yeah, I'm just sitting in here singing while security guards pop in every now and then to see whom is making the racket. And I'm checking the rsadgame.com forums every 5 minutes to answer the 30 posts that have been added since I last checked. Seriously there have been more posts in the past 2 weeks than there have been in the history of the RSAD Gaming Club. We're planning what horror movies to watch tomorrow night. I can't wait to be scared shitless again.
I'm also sketching dwarf heads, bodies, clothes, and accessories for my concept work for Computer Illustration. I really need to plan my video project, since I need to shoot video tomorrow afternoon. Hmm... must not forget to plan what I'm gonna shoot...
I'll post again when something interesting happens. In the meantime just masterbate or something to keep yourselves busy.
Posted by dminky at 08:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 24, 2004
Who's Going To Die First?
I should also mention that following the horror movies, there's been a really funny forum discussion about who is more scared, and who is going to die first in the horror movie that is our real lives. You can find the discussion mixed among all of the forums at this site.
Posted by dminky at 01:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Japan Better Not Be Like That...
Well it's been a little while since my last update, and a decent amount has happened, so I'l try to sum it up and then write an extended entry. This weekend was pretty fun -- watched a bunch of horror movies and played D&D and DDR as usual. I've got a lot of work building up, but I wish I had more... Ringling just seems too easy. Even this semester with 8 projects due I feel like we should be doing 16. I wish I had the motivation to do that myself, but unfortunately I am motivated by deadlines; I will always just meet my deadline no matter how near or or far away it is. I've kind of been in a bad mood recently because of this. I want to be pushed a lot harder, but I don't have the discipline to force myself to work harder on my own. It's rather sad, actually. It is something I need to work on in the rest of the semester.
As you know, we have a Game & Movie Night every Friday here in the labs. Well, my DDR pads were royally screwed last semester from overuse, and we decided it was time to fix them, as they really were unusable. So we went to Home Depot and bought carpetting, tape, and platic floor matting. We ended up completely remaking those pads (and doing a pretty good job of it, I must say). They are now much much better than they were, but sadly still sub-par. It wouldn't be so bad to use both of my broken pads at once, but we can't use one of them with the metal pad or a new cloth pad. Oh well... I just don't want to spend any more money on DDR pads.
Man, Friday was the first time this entire semester that I've exerted myself physically. I've been kind of lazy on DDR nights this semester and not getting the full workout that I got most Friday nights last semester. So last Friday was really hard on me -- my back is still sore. See, not only had I not excercized since before Christmas break, but I had never really played this hard before, period. We ended up playing Magic Dance mode, which is like a battle mode where you can do attacks against the other player, and we ended up really battling hard. We did this one song that was just way too damn hard, and if I didn't nearly pass out I would have won just because I got my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th winds during that one song. I ended up in the hallway outside, panting as hard as I ever have in my life, and feeling like one more move would make me throw up.
So as I said, we watched horror movies afterwards, and I'm sure that the fact that we were completely worn out from DDR has put us in the most vulnerable state possible for watching movies, because we all got pretty damn scared. We watched Ringu 0 first, which is the prequel to the Japanese version of The Ring. This one is much scarier than Ringu, as the special effects are not cheesey like thy are in Ringu, and it still keeps the same sense of creepiness throughout the movie. Afterwards we watched Ju-on, which may have been a mistake, seeing as Ringu 0 had us pretty damn scared already. Ju-on was... well... Ju-on was a brainfuck. We were so scared we had to take a few breaks during the movie, and eventually at 5:30 we were so tired that we had to quit.
We finished Ju-on the next day before D&D (we only had 10 minutes left, it turns out), but not before playing a good old fashioned gag on one of the players who had watched the movie with us. Angel and I hid in the pitch black room and waited for Nick to come and turn on the lights. As soon as he came in, we started making the noises of the ghosts in the movie. This scared Nick so much that he went back outside and waited for someone else to come. An interesting side effect is that waiting in the pitch black room scared both me and Angel so much that we eventually had to leave too.
We played D&D, which went really well. The party, which last week had successfully infiltrated the royal palace in the City of Abiding Hunger, the capital city of the sea devils, successfully defeated the Royal High Priestess. With the aid of a sahuagin prince they were able to depose the old king and place said prince into power, as well as put a new Royal High Priestess in place (the same priestess who had earlier helped them escape from jail). So they managed to overthrow one evil and put a new evil in its place. But at least the sahuagin are back to worshipping Sekolah, the shark god, instead of Anguileusis, the eel god. Unfortunately, the Stone Which Abides, the mysterious artifact that they had been trying to steal back from the sahuagin, was not within the Throne of Teeth. It turns out the old sahuagin king had sent it into the Great Void, a huge chasm in the middle of the ocean. The party swam to the Great Void to see what could be done, when they met an Anguillian, basically a sahuagin that looks like an eel instead of a shark and lives at depths of 3,000 feet and lower, instead of 2,000 feet and higher. Much more dangerous. So it looks like next week the party will have to race into the Great Void to destroy the Stone Which Abides before the mysterious "Deep Mother" is able to give birth to the dead god Anguileusis. Fun.
After D&D, we watched Ju-on again (hehe). It was still fucking scary in the same parts. We also watched The House on Haunted Hill (I think that's what it's called anyway). That movie sucked. What is with Hollywood making such shitty horror movies? Some of the effects were actually very scary, but most were too stupid and predictably cheesey. Especially in the CG department. The acting was awful and the characters were all cookie-cutter Hollywood characters too. It just pissed me off so much that all these big-budget studios can't come out with a good horror movie because everyone in Hollywood has their head stuck so far up their asses that they have no idea what is successful or not.
On the plus side, it sort of reignited my desire to become a good filmmaker -- it would not be hard to top the shit that is produced by most studios.
Anyway, after watching both of those scary movies and with plans to watch even more scary foreign films this week, I just know that my host family in Japan will have a house that is an exact replica of the one in Ju-on. And I'll be put in the room next to the stairs with the attic entrace in it. And I'll wake up to see a corpse leaning over my head from my wall. And there will be dead hands on my neck in the shower. And the family will have a young son named Toshio who has horse eyes and meows like a cat. Aghgh!
Well... at least I know that if I contract the Ju-on curse in Japan, every one of you reading my site will catch it too. >:-D
Posted by dminky at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2004
I Really Hate The Post Office
Plain and simple, the title says it all.
Let me start by saying that our school has no mail service whatsoever, so we can't send letters, let alone packages from campus. So I drive to the Post Office. Through downtown Sarasota. Sarasota is one of the few places on Earth that has worse driving conditions than, say, New York, Los Angeles, or the surface of the Sun.
Not only are the roads more crowded than a Chinese sweatshop, but everyone on the road is either really really young and stupid, or really really old and stupid. There seems to be an average IQ equal to the speed limit, so on open highways you have to deal with drooling morons, but on city streets and in parking lots you've got to deal with people who fight with their dogs over who gets to lick their own shit off of the lawn.
Not only are the people operating on the same brain wavelegth as bread, but whoever designed the city did so as a cruel joke. He must have moved on to invent great mazes for lab rats. Sarasota as 3-way, 5-way, and even 6-way intersections, but only a handful of 4-way (i.e. logical) intersections. Street names change at random, and then show up again somewhere else. One-way streets rule the road. There are traffic lights on every corner except the ones where you desperately need them, and their sole purpose is to annoy people, because they frequently break, holding on red for 15 minutes while the other street goes from green to yellow, and back to green. The ones that actually do work create such awful traffic problems that you can end up sitting through multiple green lights in a row, just because the intersections get so jammed. What's worse is that there's no police anywhere except on the highways, so many people in the city will drive over medians, run red lights, and even drive on the wrong side of the road with impunity. Combine all of this with the normal Florida road rules which allow U-Turns anytime, anywhere and specifically state that to drive in Florida you must be the product of a brother-sister coupling and you will easily see how much of a pain in the ass I am talking about here.
So the other day I get to the PO, five miles from my house, after a gruelling one-hour drive through twisting, stinking, hot, confusing streets and face all of the aforementioned problems and more. When I finally do arrive, the line for the mail is out the door. There are always this many people at any Post Office, except that Sarasota's PO is about 100 feet long. They should have hired 2 extra workers instead of funding a longer building to hold the longer lines. Incidentally, there are 6 or 7 teller windows, but never more than 3 workers (sometimes only two). There is no express line either, nor is there an "IQ-higher-than-your-age" line. So I had to get into the back of this sickeningly long queue.
Half an hour later and halfway through the line, I notice the man in the separate teller area reserved specifically for selling stamps is doing postage as well. There is a very stupid lump of silk and perfume (also known as a female Florida citizen) mailing a bunch of packages and being slow about it. I think and I ponder, "Should I get into that line and sacrifice my spot in this line?" It was much shorter and I'd have been done much faster, however with my luck the guy there would turn me back for some dumb reason. After seeing a number of other people carrying single packages, like I was, move up the the line and have their items mailed. So I quickly transfered myself to that line. The previoulsly mentioned fat lady was there, right in front of me, making me nauseous from her smell. I could literally see distortion of light waves in about a 3-inch radius from her body. She kept all of her money in a plastic ziploc bag. She dropped some, so I figured I'd be a gentleman and help her pick it up. In the meantime, 2 people butt in front of me. So finally, I get to the teller. He looks at me, lo and behold, and sends me back to the other line because I'm only mailing the same exact thing as EVERYONE ELSE IN THIS LINE!
So I go back to the original queue, wait for another hour to get to the front of the line. There are only 2 tellers now, and I am counting the seconds, making bets with myself and figuring out the mathematical probability of getting either teller. At the first teller is a blind woman who needed special service, so I figured I'd probably end up going to the other teller -- a man who as far as I knew had both eyes (a major asset down here in Heaven's Waiting Room). However, the man proceeds to pull out an enormous box full of envelopes and asks for separate receipts for each and every one. So the teller is going through at least fifty envelopes, ripping off tags and stamping each one. My head is now spinning.
Just then, the man from the stamp line comes over to tell me that he can take me now. I could tell by the way that he stumbled halfway through his sentence that he did recognize me from over an hour ago. So I went back to that line, got my $2.33 postage on my single package, and left, only to drive through Sarasota once again, this time at Rush Hour.
I really, really, REALLY hate the Post Office.
Posted by dminky at 07:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 17, 2004
Tempus Fugit
I guess that means I'm having fun. I can't believe we're 1/3 through the semester, and in a couple weeks it will be Spring Break. That's just insane. I'm not ready to be a college graduate yet, but it's creepinng up on me really fast.
On a side note, it's pretty interesting how my school celebrates Black History Month. Outside this room there are 2 black people and 2 white people bouncing around to some loud hip-hop music (which we all know is the most important cultural contribution by and most culturally representative aspect of African Americans) under a big Black History Month poster. Nowhere are there any facts about Martin Luther King, or George Washington Carver, Rosa Parks, or Langston Hughes. Nowhere is there a list of famous accomplishments made by blacks. Nothing educational, nothing factual. Just loud hip-hop music.
Anyway, back to the topic. There is so much that I want to accomplish and so little time to do it in. I still have a year of school left after this one, so it's not such a big deal, but I'm amazed that I got this far without even realizing it. Time just seems to move more quickly the longer you live. I wonder if senior citizens see life all in fast motion... Since fast motion always makes things look funny, the old equation of time flying equalling fun seems to ring true. Old people must be the happiest people on Earth.
...Reading over this post, it is clear to me that I didn't get enough sleep last night...
Posted by dminky at 12:51 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 15, 2004
The Only Thing We Serve Here Is Tongue
This is just a quick update so that I can post my Mama Fratelli picture.
Posted by dminky at 09:22 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 11, 2004
Just Another Wednesday
Today was a pretty nice day. I usually do not look forward to Wendesday, since I have 3 classes in a row, but today was nice. Classes were laid back and easy, the weather was very nice, and I got out of my last class since the teacher is up in New Hampshire or Vermont or one of those hippy states. Unfortunately since I didn't do any video work tonight, that means I will have to do a bit more over the weekend. Not too bad as long as I space out my other work appropriately.
Remember how I told you my Illustration teacher didn't like my idea anymore? Well today he changed his mind again, so things are all go again. Weird? Yes, but I'm not going to complain. My Mama Fratelli portrait is nearly done, and I'm getting happier with it, it just needs a few touches on Friday. And since I didn't have Digital Video tonight, I got to finish my master copy earlier than I expected. That painting... woah boy... I was an idiot when I chose it. I mean, what was I thinking?! It has seven figures! That's just plain stupid. I bit off way more than I wanted to chew, and it shows. The piece looks okay as a stand alone piece, and I am pleased with it in that aspect, but unfortunately it is not as close a copy as I really would have wanted. It looks nice, just not a very clean reproduction. But thats okay, I know that my painting skills need work, and I did learn a lot from doing this piece. Next time I will choose a less difficult piece, which will give me more time to get the exact details down. I'm just really glad to have one big project down, and some others getting closed to finished.
This weekend I do have a lot of work to do on my advertisement and my video project. If I can knock them out early, I may have time to start a side-project before the next wave of projects hits. I'm really surprised at the ammount of work I have this semester. Not unhappy, just surprised. I planned all these extra projects and am now realizing that I have no hope of actually completing them. I am rambling, I must have said this all before... I guess that means there's not much more to post. Goodnight!
Posted by dminky at 09:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 10, 2004
That's The Way You Do It
Well, it's not quite money for nothing and chicks for free... but I've been selling my old, out-dated D&D books on eBay and making a decent amount off of them -- about half the price I payed for them, which is not bad for something so old. And with the money I make from selling them, I can buy used video games and DVDs really cheap from eBay, so I can spend my paycheck on more important things, like food. *insert Kool-Aid guy "Oh Yeah!" here*
So today I've got a lot of work to do, despite it being my "day off." I need to run to the bank to deposit my paycheck, withdraw some quarters so I can do my laundry, do my laundry, go the the post office and mail some previously mentioned eBay items, buy some groceries, take my car to the mechanics to fix however many bizarre problems it has right now, and then get home and start my homework. I need to finish my N.C. Wyeth master copy, which I haven't worked on much since I last mentioned it. That'll take almost all of the day. When I'm finished, however, I have more work to do... see, yesterday my teacher changed his mind and decided that he didn't like my idea. He said I can still do it, but how can I be motivated to do an idea that I know the person responsible for my grade doesn't like? So I'm still going to do it, but I've been desperately trying to come up with another idea, so I can have 2 pieces to turn in. Hopefull he'll like one of them. Also, I should be filming for Digital Video today, since it is my free day, but I really don't have the time. So I'm going to have to plan some things to film and do them on Thursday before work, and then go to the labs some time this weekend and insert the film into my project. I can't spend too long on it, though, because my illustrations are due Monday. No due date has been given to the Mama Fratelli portrait, so I think I'm good on that one for now...
I've decided to go to Japan this summer, with a little bit of convincing from a friend. I think she just kind of sped up the process, since I probably would've ended up deciding to go there anyway. The thing is that I've wanted to go to for a really long time, and like I said earlier, college really is the best time to go. If I missed out on it, I don't think I'd be beating myself up about it later, but it would be a missed opportunity. And I really could use a big and expensive adventure before I head into the life of poverty that is the professional art world.
I thought about tagging something about picking up foreign women and getting "chicks for free" to that last paragraph to tie back into the "money for nothing" in the first post and the title, but that's just kind of creepy. Not all posts need to tie back to the title, right?
Posted by dminky at 12:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 08, 2004
A'maze'ing
Last night's game was so awesome. Not only did we get further than I had hoped we would (which has never happened before), but the party managed to successfully navigate a maze dictated by me to them with only minor mistakes. The entire maze! I thought it would at least take this week's and part of next week's game... One night, though. Wow. Not only that, it's the first time someone has gained 3 levels in one night, and decently high levels at that (8, 9, and 10). By 5:30 everyone still had energy because it went so well. Gladiatorial combat, completing a large prison maze, everyone getting at least one level, rescuing a lot of prisoners, finding everyone's confiscated equipment, and fighting sahuagin on even terms really makes for a great game.
So now here I sit, exhausted as I am every Sunday, in the labs, sort of working on my Mama Fratelli portrait. I don't like the way it's going, but I think that's mostly because of the colors I chose (which are easily changeable). I've got a decent amount of work to complete today, but it should be manageable as long as I don't cheat and play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night again. Now that is also a good game.
Keep on reading for more...
I've been thinking about the summer too. What do I want to do? I have a lot of options... I could go to Japan on one of multiple programs, which would be really cool. I've been invited to Singapore as well. I could stay down here, find a summer job, and work all summer on art and whatever my job may be, or I could go back home and work at Creek Run Day Camp again, which gives me almost 2 months of free time to do whatever I want. All of these options are appealing to me, and each one is more appealing to me at different times. Right now I'm leaning towards going home, but it seems to change week-to-week. The reason I want to go home now is to build a sort of gaming/social area in my basement that serves the same purpose as my living room does all summer, only we don't have to worry about guests coming, or cleaning it up every night, or waking my parents up. Of course, most of my "summer projects" never come to fruition, so it's hard to say if this will actually happen. Though it sounds so fun... Going overseas is such an exciting idea, especially because I would really be a fish out of water, not speaking the language or knowing the culture. That's really a kind of adventure that I've always wanted and I know that this sort of opportunity won't come very often once I'm out of college and need to support myself on my own. At the same time I'm not sure if it would really be a useful expenditure of my time; I don't really need a big vacation, and the huge cost just stuns me, even though my parents would pay for it. Stay here would be the least fun, since I would be alone all summer. On the other hand it would theoretically be the best way to be productive, plus I wouldn't have to go through the incredible hassle of finding storage, packing up, moving out, and then driving all the way back to New Jersey. (Wow, this post got long. It just occurred to me that a lot of my posts, this one not excluded, start on one topic and end on a completely different one, thus making the title somewhat irrelevant. Let's see if I can't steer it back on course...) So many choices, and not one of them is clearly the right or the wrong path. Why, it's almost like I am in a "maze" of my own, with no clear map of where I need to go. Well, at least I have more than a single night to find the path. (How'd that sound?)
Posted by dminky at 04:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 05, 2004
Ah, So *That's* How It Works...
It seems that TrackBack put a link to the Saskatchewan post into Eric's post about Mateo. Now people who read his post will be able to see links to the post in which I referenced it. Interesting... though it seems to me that it would make sense to reference it both ways instead of one.
Posted by dminky at 07:48 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Send Someone to Fetch Us, We're in Saskatchewan
Still listening to the muppets... god I love the muppets. I wish they actually had decent DVDs of the Muppet Show, not those dumb "Best of the Muppet Show" ones. Oh well... I went to the bird store today and just had a great time as usual... of course that means I didn't get any work done today. I've really got to get some more work done. Not that I'm in a bad place with school work right now, but if I'm not careful, I could be. And then there are the side projects that I wanted to do that I am currently not doing because I am doing other things... oh well. I will moniter my activity and make sure I work more and waste less time.
In case you haven't noticed, I posted the final Weasel picture below. It's got some minor changes, nothing big. But it looks better. I've also started to plan my next two projects. One is a digital portrait of Mama Fratelli. The other is an advertisement for a product in which the product is not visible. I will either do that one as an ad for high speed internet, or computers. I'll post sketches soon.
You'll notice my posts now have a "TrackBack" link. I'm trying out this feature of Moveable Type... basically it's a way to network posts that have to do with eachother. I'm setting a TrackBack link between this site and a post on which I commented at EricChapman.net about the stupidity of one person at Ringling who has made things difficult more many people. Let's see how this works...
Posted by dminky at 07:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 03, 2004
Movin' Right Along
I have a sudden urge to see the Muppet Movie. Maybe it's because I've been listening to a CD of Muppet Show stuff... or maybe it's because it's one of the greatest movies of all time.
Jim Henson is one of my biggest heroes. That guy really had things going. Seriously, I consider him a genius. Look at everything that he touched; it's all excellent. Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Star Wars, The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Muppet Babies, just to name a few. This is not just quality programming, this is platinum stuff. I just love everything he did. Not only that, but he really networked well. He worked with George Lucas and Steven Spielburg back before when they were making good stuff. Look at the muppets before he died... who can say anything bad about them? I dunno, I just think that he must have had the most fun doing what he did... a mixture of raw 80 proof imagination, spiced up with humor, and then captured in whatever media it happened to be. Anyway I've always liked Henson, but now that I am really looking to move in that direction professionally, he gets on a whole new level of admiration from me.
This post has been brought to you by the letter R and the number Pi.
P.S. My weasel critique didn't go bad at all. It was a good critique for the whole class actually. When I am finished making changes to the picture, I will post an announcement here and update the link below.
Posted by dminky at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 02, 2004
Groundhog Day
So it seems the groundhog has seen his shadow. Does that mean 6 more weeks of incredibly awesome weather down here while the North freezes their pants off? Let's hope so... I'm not looking forward to the cookfest of summer in Florida.
I've finished the girlweasel. I'm going to turn her in for critique today... let's hope all goes well, eh? My teacher is known for his very harsh critiques; he's even made many people cry.
I'm glad this weekend is over... I had projects in all of my classes but one, so I was really busy. And I was up almost all night last night trying to get my stupid weasel to print, with no luck. Morning class was cancelled since the model has bronchitis, so I was able to print my weasel then, but I would have really liked to get the sleep that I missed.
Game went well... sorta... Continue reading to hear more about that (I'll post it in the extended entry so all you non-geeks don't have to read it).
The players managed to capture Mordechai and turn him over to his brother, only to later discover that his brother is a sick and twisted fuck with some important people in his brigg. So after capturing Mordechai, they rescued him (along with Shaw and Laurish Samprey) and proceeded to the City of Abiding Hunger.
Quoise led the party plus Laurish Samprey and Marlee down to the bottom of the ocean where the city lay in the calderra of an extinct volcano. Only after they got in to the city did Quoise betray that he was, in fact, a malenti, and the party was, in fact, screwed. So they were captured, robbed of their possessions, and thrown into sahuagin prison (not eaten?). It turns out that the City of Abiding Hunger is the center for sahuagin bourgeousie, and they prefer to watch victims die in horrible ways in the gladiatorial arena rather before they feast on their flesh.
It was past 5 am by then, so the game ended on a cliffhanger: all of the players being taken from their cells, unconscious, in little airtight sacks, to the underwater area... *dramatic musical score*
Posted by dminky at 11:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack