Hair!

I've been feeling down lately for various reasons, mostly because of the delay to start AM (instead of January, now I have to wait till April). So yesterday as part of a program to combat this state, I went in to get my hair cut. My hair was long and crazy and out of control, plus I like having it cut. It is relaxing for me. So it was gonna be a nice relaxing feel good time.

I tried to get an appointment with the girl who did it last time because she was very good. But the only opening she had was at 6 am. Because yeah, I wanna get up that early on my day off. So I decided to take an appointment yesterday afternoon instead with somebody else. I've been going to this place for over a year and I've had a different stylist each time and I've never yet been disappointed. Well there was one who didn't cut anything short enough but that wasn't a big deal. The point is I wasn't worried about a new person because everybody there is good.

Or so I thought.

I got there actually about 5 minutes late and I felt really bad about it. But that guilt kind of evaporated after 15, then 20 minutes went by and I had yet to see my stylist. There were two receptionists, one who just ignored me and another who didn't talk to me but I could hear fussing with the other girls about the fact that I wasn't being taken care of. Finally she comes and introduces herself and tells me that my stylist is a little behind so just to get things moving, she's going to do my shampoo.

I go ahead and assume that she is actually a stylist in addition to the receptionist and let her shampoo me. She mentioned sort of offhand that she was going to give me a free chemical treatment of some kind since I'd had to wait so long. She didn't actually tell me what it was or what it did, but it did necessitate my sitting with my cold wet hair back in the sink for 5 minutes, so that was...a bonus?

Then I finally get to my stylist who does apologize and then I assume she's going to blow dry my hair since it is completely wet and I have never seen her before so she has no idea what it is like. She doesn't blow dry it. She doesn't even ask me about my hair. She just says, "It looks like you've had it in an a-line bob before?"

I told her that was correct, that I wanted it like that again, very short. Just long enough in front to tuck behind my ears.

She says, "As short as you're describing it it doesn't really sound like a bob anymore." I just shrugged because I didn't want to argue semantics. So I take off my glasses (without which I am close to blind) and close my eyes. When I open them again I can see from the blob in the mirror that she has taken off way to much hair. The shape is completely wrong. What she has done is more along the lines of a pixie cut.

It's not a poorly executed haircut, but it is completely not what I asked for, and no offense to any old ladies in my readership, it's a haircut appropriate for someone a couple decades older than me. To top it all off, the cut was about $10 more than usual. I didn't bother to ask why. Even the obligatory compliment by the receptionists when I left was pretty lackluster.

The whole thing was really disappointing, and now I don't know if I ever want to go back there.

I went home and tried to figure out what to do about it. I'm not really fussy about my hair, but it was pretty bad when I went in, and it wasn't a whole lot better coming out again. I didn't get the confidence boost that I needed at all. Plus the haircut sucked and I didn't want to pay somebody else to do it again. So I decided, "Fuck it." I've thought about shaving my head before, and I've always wanted to crazy colors.

Space Cases anyone?

So I decided to dye it. Then I figured I could alter the cut as needed.

Today I went and got some bleach and some Manic Panic in Atomic Turquoise and Red Passion (which is totally pink), and I went to town.





This is what I started with. Bleh right? Yeah.


Here I am after the first round of bleach. I look like that guy form the Food Network. Guy Frizzeti? Something like that. There were a couple spots I missed, plus it was a little orange still in the back. So I went in under again for 40 more minutes. Then I thought to take that picture of my stylish bleach cap there.

Here it is all frosty and I really liked it actually. It came out really well. No chemical burns or anything. I debated for a bit about whether I should wait a few days to let my hair "rest" as the stylists say. I decided not to because I am impatient.

Then followed some agonizing and calling and texting various people to get opinions on the proper ratio and distribution of Atomic Turquoise to Red Passion (which is totally pink and has the lamest name of all the Manic Panic colors). I also didn't have vaseline to put around my ears and hairline to prevent stains, and I contemplated going to the store but again, I am impatient plus I'd already spent enough on supplies even without counting the initial cost of the crappy haircut. So I headed back into the bathroom and figured I'd wing it.

Tada!

The pink goes all the way around the back and sides, then there's the streak that starts at the bangs. There are still a few places with blond sticking out, and a couple spots where the colors bled. Fortunately Atomic Turquoise and Red Passion blend into a lovely purple. I'm rather pleased with it, although this might get old fast. Next thing on my list is to dye the poodle. Just a little. And just pink.

Viva!

So this is a bit late but I wanted to share all the awesome stuff I did in Las Vegas...last month. So here is verbatim an email I sent to a friend at the time.

I'm on a family vacation in Fabulous Las Vegas and it's lots of fun except that everyone smokes everywhere. I went to a nightclub last night and all my clothes reek and I had to wash my hair three times. Now my throat is really sore. Of course my throat was a little sore all day yesterday after we spent that afternoon the pool playing volleyball with some random French dudes. At first we thought they were really good, but then we realized the setting sun was in our eyes and we made them switch sides and some middle school kids and their mom came and they kicked pretty much everyone's ass. So it turns out the French dudes weren't that good, just better than us. Of course I'd have done better but my bikini is slightly too big and had to be adjusted after every lunge for fear it would join the other team. So anyway, I hope that my current sore throat is just from smoke and not an illness I collected down at the petri dish pool despite the fact that it's about a 1:1 ratio of chlorine to water. I have seen several shows, some of which were pretty good. I got some free tickets to one that I'll probably go to today for being on a focus group for a TV show. And man, it was a really awful TV show. I found the little rating tool did not let me fully express my hatred for it. Oh well, that's what the essay portion was for. At least that's what I used it for. Anyway, a fun time so far, even though the Erotic Heritage Museum appears to be closed despite its posted hours sign and its website. But oh! I saw Bodies at the Luxor! Do you know Bodies? It is super cool. There are a whole bunch of preserved corpses and they've done varying medical dissections on them and posed them in actiony poses and you can see how the muscles work together and stretch, and it's seriously cool. They had different rooms for different systems of organs. I took my sketch book and did a billion sketches of the shoulder, neck and facial muscles. Like I said, super cool. And at the Bellagio, in the fine art gallery they have an exhibit called "Figuratively Speaking" that is full of works of the human figure. There were Degas ballerinas! And a couple Renoirs and bunch of Picassos. And Hockney and Cornell and some other people whose work was amazing but whose names I forget.

I did a lot of drawings of the zygomatic arch. Fun art times were had in the Sin City. Still kind of disappointed in the Erotic Heritage Museum though. I've wanted to go for like two years, since the last trip to Las Vegas.

10,000 Hours

Oh hey! The first installment of my webcomic is up. The second is written and thumbnailed and whatnot. I may be experimenting with markers this time around. I'd like to color it in photoshop, but I so hate my current desktop set-up that I know it won't get done. I've been making much more progress going to coffee shops to get work done. I can't get any work done in this house. But soon I will be moving... somewhere. Anyway.

So 10,000 hours! Have you heard this? 10,000 hours is the time it takes to master a skill. You don't have to have any particular talent, you just have to do your thing for 10,000 hours. There are a whole bunch of famous examples if you care to google it. The one that sticks best in my mind is the Beatles. Bands practice maybe a couple hours a day if they're really dedicated, they play a gig that's 2-3 hours? So these blokes from Liverpool are poking around doing their thing but then they get a job at (I'm pretty sure, but can't be arsed to double check) a strip club in Germany. Maybe just a club, but I'm pretty sure it was a strip club. They were doing background music for the whole time the club was open, so now they're doing 40 plus hours a week of nothing but music and they start wracking up the hours. Right around 10,000 is when suddenly they make it big and are hailed as gods.

Right when you reach 10,000 it suddenly becomes that moment in the Matrix where Neo becomes The One and suddenly the world isn't just in slow motion, he can stop time. (Or alternately, and what I actually picture, that moment in that episode of Futurama where Fry finally drinks his 100th cup of coffee, which is of course a parody of the Matrix scene but much closer to the sensation I'm imagining since I don't want to murder anyone).

I think a lot about logging 10,000 art hours. So I did some math.

Let's suppose that I averaged 1 hour of drawing time per week every year of my life for my first 18 years of life. Even considering that for probably my first 3 or so years I did not do much art I feel like this is a low ball estimate. 1 hour per week x 52 weeks per year x 18 years=936 hours.

Like I said though, I think it's way low ball, so lets say 2 hours per week until I was 18, but lets throw out the first 3 years where I was still developing the fine motor skills required to handle a crayon. So 2 hours per week x 52 weeks per year x 15 years=1560 hours. That's better. Still maybe a little low, but my recollection of before I was 10 is not good enough for me to guess accurately, and while I regularly spent well over 2 hours at a stretch, I'm sure there were also week long stretches where I spent less. I feel comfortable sticking with the 2 hours per week.

Then I went to college and got an art degree. I always took at least two studio art classes at a time and doodled consistently through my non-art classes (It helps me process. I actually have a hard time paying attention to lectures if I can't doodle. Weird). Then of course there's the old college estimate that for every hour you spend in class you're doing...oh god, like 12 or something out of class. It's total bullshit of course. I did the math in college and figured that counting the hours of the week I spent actually in class, as well as sleeping a regular amount and throwing in 2 hours a day for eating and bathing and walking back and forth to class, that there wasn't actually enough time in the week to spend on all that theoretical homework. But still I spent easily 1.5 to 2 hours outside of class on homework for the art classes (not the others).

So for the first two years of school that's two art classes a week, each an hour long and meeting three times a week (10 months a year counting winter and summer break)= 480 hours. If we add double that time in homework we get=960. My last two years of school were at least 3 art classes a semester with some insane over time in the ceramics and sculpture buildings. But I don't want to get crazy and over estimate here, so let's stick with the two hours of homework for every one of class. I'm happy with that formula. So 3 classes 3 times a week is 9 hours of class time per week times 2 years=720 hours. Plus the homework is 1,440 hours.

In my four year college career that's 480+960+720+1440=3,600 hours. Add 1,560 for the entire rest of my life and we come to 5,160.

Holy crap! That's half way there! Now I'm afraid I've over estimated but I really do think I'm low balling it. So then I spent my year at AIS. There I took 4 classes a quarter. They were all art classes but there was consistently one that was a giant worthless time sucking money pit. So three good classes a week each of which was 4 hours per week. So 12 hours of art per week times 11 weeks per quarter times 4 quarters= 528 hours. Home work here is tricky because some of the classes were so so good and some were so so bad. But I think the two hours of homework per class is probably still accurate. So that's 1,056 hours of homework plus the 528 of class= 1,584 hours in that one year.

So my grand total is now 6,744. That is less then 4000 hours left!! Because I am once again worried about over estimating, I'm not even going to try an tally the averages for the two year period from my graduation to my time at AIS and then from AIS to now. Some of that time was really productive and some of it was really not. So I'm gonna call it a wash and say I averaged zero for the whole time.

Still, 3,256 hours left. If I could buckle down to AIS levels of work that's just two years. Three years tops. Of course these figures count sculpture time as well as drawing time.

It's funny how you sort of reach milestones with art. Because you work and work and work and sometimes you just hate it all and feel like you're barely treading water and then sometimes stuff clicks and it's like you've jumped miles forward overnight. Lately I've found that for the first time I can make my drawing do mostly whatever I want. If it tapers off then I need to do a master copy or some life sketches or some other exercise and it snaps back.

Sensitivity

So, I've been reading Penny Arcade for a long time. Not since the very beginning, but I've been following it off and on for years.

And then there was this comic. Warning, if you click that link you will find a rape joke.

Frankly it's blue humor in the same vein as lots of stuff they've done before. I thought it was funny. I still do, though now I feel guilty about it. Apparently a lot of people found it really offensive and wrote in to complain. The PA guys were less than sympathetic because, as they pointed out in a blog post, this isn't new humor to their strip. Then they did a follow up strip here.

That second one did actually bother me. I didn't think it was funny. But even though it offended me, I didn't dwell on it particularly.

But then today I stumbled on this blog post, at a site called Shakesville that is pretty cool. The thing is, the author is correct about our culture, about the fact that this one rape joke does not exist in a vacuum, etc (just read her post, it's good and I'm not gonna rehash it here). Also thinking about it, how do justify defending yourself for making an offensive joke by mentioning that you've made lots of similar jokes?

I've never really subscribed to that weird theory that stuff like South Park is somehow not offensive because they strive to offend everyone equally. Less is more, but more is never less.

But here's my real dilemma. I consider myself to be conscientious about various civil and human rights issues. But I also like Penny Arcade, at least most of the time. And it's not just PA. I have watched and enjoyed Family Guy, South Park, Drawn Together and plenty of other really reprehensible and entirely offensive shows. Now there are some episodes of all of those that I won't watch because they are too gross, violent, or offensive (usually a combination of all three) but I still watch the new ones. Maybe it's because with their scattershot approach to humor and that striving to be as offensive as possible, the odds are about 50/50 that I'll agree with whatever tack they've taken today. Making fun of organized religion? It's pretty likely I'm gonna laugh at that shit. Non-stop diarrhea and vomit? Yeah, I'm probably gonna change the channel as soon as it becomes apparent that this is a running gag. So I keep watching.

But here's the thing, I watch these shows and I know that what I'm seeing, even as I'm laughing at it, is offensive. It's racist, it's homophobic, it's sexist, these are jokes that I would never ever make. But I have this little brother. He's a teenager. Actually he's almost not a teenager anymore. He's going off to college this fall. And he makes repeats the shit he hears on South Park. The last time we were in Vegas he had just seen the episode of South Park where Cartman gets HIV and whenever he's asked a question he answers along the lines of, "Am I sure? I'm HIV positive."

So we're in Las Vegas at...the Mirage, standing in line to see a drag show (because my family loves drag), and he keeps repeating this joke. I am hissing at him trying frantically to get him to shut the hell up. I said, "Look I don't have the time to fully explain to you why that joke is particularly inappropriate at this venue, you just need to take my word for it and stop." Didn't do much good.

He and his teenage friends are constantly making racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes all the time, and god forbid I should take offense. To be fair, they are teenagers. Teenagers are stupid. Also I'm the big sister, and he knows this shit bugs me, and it's in his genes to bug me as much as possible. But I worry that he really doesn't get it. Maybe he really doesn't understand how damaging this kind of humor is, and maybe it's my fault. I watch this stuff and laugh and he watches it with me. There's a caveat in my brain that says that outside the context of this show this stuff is wrong. If someone came up to me on the street and made a comment anything like the average gag line in an episode of South Park I would let them have it. But in the comfort of my own home I laugh.

Do I have a moral obligation to stop watching these shows, stop reading this comic, stop consuming stuff that is only funny because it is self-admittedly as offensive as possible? I've occasionally referred to these shows as a "guilty pleasure." But today it's too guilty.

Ergonomics

Somebody at the AM forum asked a question about setting up their workspace so as not to give themselves carpal tunnel. This post is a copy of the reply I'm posting there. It's largely an excuse to post the stick figure illustration I made to help people figure out my back stretch directions.

At my last school I had an instructor who insisted that we get up and stretch every 15 minutes. Keep your back straight, both feet flat on the floor. Make sure your monitor is at eye level so you don't have to hunch or bend your head. Mine isn't adjustable so its propped up on a stack of books. Keep your wrists straight while you're typing and mousing.

I don't know if anybody else does this, it might be just me, but when I'm using a tablet I tend to tighten my grip on the pen until my knuckles go white. Every now and then I need to give myself a shake and make myself relax.

I know a really good back stretch which I shall try to describe. You stand up straight with your shoulders back. Extend your arms back and flex your wrists at a 90 degree angle, palms down. Press back behind you with the heel of your hand (you're not actually pressing on anything, I just mean that to be illustrative of the gesture). Then twist your arms so your elbows face in, then out. Then roll your head on your neck in each direction.

This stretch flexes all the muscles in your hands, arms, back and neck and it feels really good. Fair warning, it occasionally makes me go light headed. I was worried my description would be confusing so I I did a stick figure of it which I have attached here.

Goldfish Shoals and Q&A of Awesome

So here, after a ridiculous delay is the scratch piece I did for that Humane Society Auction back in April. It was a little hard to let this go actually since I spent hours and hours on it. I took white scratchboard, laid down several layers of color with oil pastels, and then scratched out these fish and all their ridiculous scaly details. Then I went back in with water color pens (ok, crayola washable markers, but real water color pens are like $3 each!) to get the washed effects on the fish.

This image came from a song lyric from the Red Dwarf theme song (which is an awesome show, btw), "I long to lie far away from here, drinking fresh mango juice, goldfish shoals nibbling on my toes, fun fun fun in the sun sun sun." Ok, it definately loses something in the translation to text but I love the line about goldfish shoals.

I have two more pieces of scratchboard (actually 3 if I want to dig that one out of the garage) and I want to come up with some equally great projects for them. Maybe a portrait of my chickens...

Actually that's not bad. One of the other pieces I submitted to the auction was an ink drawing of a pair of my roosters. One of them is my mother's favorite but I'm getting rid of him because he's a little jerk, and she is endlessly complaining that I gave that drawing away. And her birthday is next month. So that's one project down.

Oh right, I was going to mention the Q&A for Animation Mentor (which is frankly not a very good name for a school, but I get what they were going for). Anyway the Q&A was really great. It was a web conference session where we were all chatting and the people who were asking questions got pulled up on webcam so we could meet them. Only a few people in our group asked questions (including me!) but everyone was really cool. I made numerous snarky asides in the chat part, and I hope I didn't come off as an attention whore. But it was all the sort of obnoxious (hopefully) witty shit I would have said to whoever I was sitting next to if the whole thing were happening in an auditorium.

If you hate people talking during movies/presentations, never sit next to me. But I was paying attention the whole time!

Futurama: Proposition Infinity

"You wouldn't know perversion if it put clamps on your testicles."

Best quote ever.

Also George Takei. "I'm hugging him in spirit. Now he's hugging me back! Oh my."

George Takei is made of awesome.

So anyway, I just finished watching this week's NEW EPISODE OF FUTURAMA!!!1!!

And it was all about Pride! and to a lesser extent, Canada Day!

I was sad at the beginning when SPOILER!!


Kiff and Amy break up for no reason. Which made me sad. But then SPOILER!! They get back together at the end after a hilarious pro gay marriage commentary. I love when Bender goes to a camp run by the robot preacher to learn not to be robosexual anymore. Then he and Amy go to Gearwich Village Pride to campaign for equality in marriage legislation. Hedonism Bot is there in bondage gear. And it's amazing. Just like real Pride, which I was actually able to go to this year.

Seattle Pride was great (even though the parade was like 3 hours long). We saw a bunch of Dykes on Bikes and a lot of scantily clad people in body glitter shaking it on floats, and at the end a giant Flying Spaghetti Monster float with an entourage of sexy sexy pirates.

The most awesome thing by far was the group of baby Loggers (Loggers being the mascot of my Alma Mater, ALL MY LIFE I WANNA BE A LOGGER! HACK HACK! CHOP CHOP! Yes that's our school chant, and yes it's kind of disturbing, especially with the slashing hand gestures). But when I was at UPS we always had a tiny group of like six people marching. There were plenty of queer people at the school who would have marched, it's just that Pride takes place after the end of the school year and almost nobody was around because they were home for summer. This year the baby Loggers (as I somewhat patronizingly call them) actually dressed up like loggers in plaid shirts, suspenders, short shorts, and stompy boots. When they came near our little cluster of alumni and heard us HACK HACK, CHOP CHOP back at them they gestured for us to come march with them. I was sooo close to taking off and skipping the rest of the parade but I didn't want to ditch the friends I was watching the parade with. Alas, maybe next year.

Anyway, Pride and Futurama: two good things that go great together!

Pride and

Toy Story 3 was Awesome, also chickens and other miscellany

So I am opening up my student profile on the Animation Mentor website. This blog is listed as my website. So I need to post something that makes me sound cool. Oh no! Too late!

But Toy Story 3 was pretty awesome. I especially liked the part towards the end. If you've seen it, you know the part. If you haven't I won't spoil it. Except to say that to children of the right (wrong?) age it is potentially as traumatizing as Bambi. It was quite upsetting.

Was not actually super crazy about the very end, because I know a little something about being a college student who is over attached to childhood toys, but even I thought Andy was acting a little weird. But it's ok, because I was super crazy about pretty much the entire rest of the film. Sadly, I missed the first half of Night and Day (we thought the show was a 4:45 but it was at 4:35, we were actually trying to get there early, damnation) which makes me a little sad, but it's not like I can't see it again.

In other chicken related news, Captain Falcon is (well was) sitting again this time on a nest of her own beautiful blue eggs! I am letting her hatch them (but seriously, no more chicks this year!) because I love her blue eggs and want more hens laying them. With my luck all the chicks will be roos. But since she was only sitting for a couple days when another hen decided to go broody and instead of sharing the clutch (like the last pair of hens I had who went broody, which was super cute) she just kicked Captain Falcon off the nest. I am actually fine with this because this hen (nameless I'm afraid) is ind of more of a badass that the good Captain and I think she'll be a better momma.

But the babies! Captain Falcon's babies ended up being named Captain Planet, Spock, and Yum Yum (Yum Yum is my gorgeous favorite and I'm 98% she's a girl. If she's not I will be devastated). There are three new babies (the ones with two mommies) and they don't have names. Probably won't until their gender becomes more apparent. But I know Captain Kirk is their dad, so something to keep in mind. But anyway, Captain Falcon's babies! I need more Falcon names. Obviously the first one that leaped to mind was Millennium because I am a nerd. The second was Peregrine. That's probably enough names for now. Once again, mustn't count them before they hatch and all that.

In other news, I really want to get a new job and think "I could waitress or whatever," then I remember that the reason I got this job was because it comes with health insurance. Curse you American health care system! But I had an eye appointment last week and ordered some new glasses which I am very excited about. My current glasses are several years old and the frames are scratched to hell and back. These new ones will be made of delicate filaments of TITANIUM, which obviously is awesome. And even though I am paying kind of a lot for them I would be paying twice as much without in-sewer-ants.

And really, seriously, truly, Intrepid Space Heroes installment 1 is nearly here.

Basil of Baker Street

So I applied and was accepted to Animation Mentor. So, cool.

I've been reading a lot of Sherlock Holmes lately, and thinking about character animation. I was thinking all day at work about The Great Mouse Detective. For those of you who missed out, it's Sherlock Holmes, but with mice, basically. Also there are robots.

And of course Basil didn't have a cocaine addiction. Although I believe that he did smoke a pipe.

Basil of Baker Street had to be so much fun to animate. He's such a kinetic, over the top character. Expressive and hyper, and he does crazy things like blast throw pillows with his pistol and then gasp in despair when he fails to gain evidence against the Eeeville Professor Rattigan.

I did love that movie as a child. Especially the Big Ben scene with all the CGI gears that threaten to crush the main characters.

Manifesto

I am tired. Once again I feel like I am treading water. I'm working hard on my artwork in my spare time. I got some great anatomical reference material and I've been practicing figure drawing and working on Intrepid Space Heroes. I've finally got the first comic written, inked, and half painted in photoshop.

I'm not sure what to do about work though. I've spent the last few months working and getting certified as a CNA. I don't know that I've mentioned it explicitly before. Thing is, if I write about it a lot I'm sure I will commit a HIPA violation and that's not cool.

It's better than my previous jobs in that it's easy to be invested in the work even though I know it's not something that I want to do for the rest of my life. The people I work with are great (by which I mean the residents, not necessarily my coworkers), and most of the time I enjoy it.

But the coworkers.... Most of them are nice enough, and do a good job. But some of them are mean, just phoning it in, super bitchy complainers, or just otherwise make the workplace as unpleasant as possible.

Lately there has been a big political shitstorm around the place. The administration is newish and has been rather at odds with the small town mentality. Last year for instance they brought the hospital into compliance with a state law that forbids smoking on the hospital campus. People continue to complain. I continue not to have any sympathy for those people whatsoever.

But this new administration just fired the wrong person. An individual who is just generally unfit for their job (due largely to substance abuse issues, just who you want working at a hospital right?) but someone who somehow has the loyalty of the small town mentality behind them. So now the administration that was brought in to pull the district into compliance with the law (it was way out of compliance on several points, and there was some embezzling) is under fire, and my boss has been forced to resign.

The thing is, if the hospital board is seriously going to side against my boss and the administration she represents in favor of scumbag drug dealers (seriously) I don't think that it's a place that I want to continue to work.

So now I'm contemplating yet another job search. I am tired of this town. There are almost no people here my age, and I have nothing in common with those few. I am finding it increasingly frustrating to not be out. I'm not really in fear of negative repercussions or anything, the town isn't super homophobic, but I know that my work life is easier while I'm not out. And I don't feel any particular urge to share anything of myself with any of my coworkers. I feel very isolated.

I know I would be happier anywhere larger. Walla Walla would be an improvement. But I have loans to pay off from my time at the Art Institute, and if I quit the hospital I will have to pay them back for my CNA training. I actually have enough saved to do that now but it would encompass all my savings, and the thought of saving up two or three times that amount so that I could put down a deposit on an apartment is daunting.

At the same time, like I said, I feel like I am treading water. All my family is happy about my CNA certification because it is a "real job." And of course my 5 years of various art school have proved to be largely a waste of time. Not to knock my classic liberal arts education. I learned a lot of important things and that knowledge has value. I learned how to write and how to think analytically and I did get a lot of practice with actual art. If I did it again, I don't think I'd do that differently. But the fact remains that after those four years of school I was no more qualified for a career than I was before.

And even the Art Institute wasn't a complete waste. Some of my classes there were excellent. It was just that some of them were a waste of time. I'm a good enough student that I know when I'm learning and when I'm not. And the AI was charging tuition on par with a not quite Ivy League school. And the classes just weren't on par. At all.

I really loved the good parts of my classes at the Art Institute. The work never felt like work. All my assignments were fun and I was always excited about them. I can't even say that about my beloved liberal arts school. I was so sure that animation was where I wanted to be.

Quitting the AI was really hard to do. I felt like I was giving up on my dream even though I told myself I was just putting it on hold. Now, because of this shakedown at the hospital I am at another crossroads. My plan was to work there the requisite two years, save money, pay off my debts and then enroll in the online animation school Animation Mentor. The buzz when I was at AI was that it was a better school, where your teachers were all working in the industry at places like Pixar and Dreamworks. The tuition was low and it was completely online and that it had an excellent reputation in the industry.

Well that school is still there. I spent most of this afternoon looking at the website and it looks enormously appealing. It's an 18 month program and the tuition for the entire time is less than the one year I spent at the AI. You only take one class at a time and you have constant contact with your mentors and with the other students.

And I think, what am I waiting for? My debts aren't enormous, but making $9 an hour it's already going to take me years to pay them off. I could save up a bunch and move back to Portland, or I could stay here and hope that the work and the community that the school boasts that it fosters will be enough to make me content to stay where I am for 18 months. But 18 months is a doable time frame. It's better than the amorphous time frame it will take me to pay off my loans.

So I think what I will do now is look for a job with steady hours. I'm tired of being jerked around at my current place of employment. We are short staffed and since I'm not married and don't have kids they figure that it isn't important for me to have any kind of regular sleep schedule.

Besides, it's an online school. I can do it anywhere. I could apply right now and start with the winter classes.

The things I want are; a job that isn't too stressful, my own living space, the puppy that I'm already on the waiting list for, and this school. If I stay here I can have all these things. Hell I could apply at the school today and have until classes start to work out my job situation. I mean, I already have a full time job that pays reasonably well, it's just that the current climate sucks. It might get better. I'm not betting on it, but it might. I'm a little shy of this school turning out to be like the AI all over again, but they charge you as you go. So I wouldn't be out the full cost of the program if I decided not to keep going. And if I am still desperate to get away, I can still save up the extra to move.

So we will see.

Dreamworks Dragon Review

Another movie review! But I will have actual art news probably tomorrow. I just don't have time to upload the images tonight and it's silly to talk about them without having them on hand to, ya know, look at.

Anyway. How To Train Your Dragon was really really good. The visuals were stunning. The ads all claimed the 3D was more breathtaking than Avatar and it totally was. Of course there was almost nothing to Avatar besides the pretty phosphorescent veneer.

This movie was visually a lot of fun and the story was sweet. One of the reviews I read on Rotten Tomatoes praised it for being a film that advocated learning rather than violence.

I loved this movie right up until the end. But then... the end. It was the only problem I had with the whole movie and the more I think about it, the bigger it gets.

Fair warning, there will be Massive Spoilers Ahead!

See, the main character is a plucky little viking named Hiccup. Like all young vikings he aspires to be a great Dragon Killer. Until he actually has the opportunity to kill one and finds that he doesn't want to. Through the friendship he strikes up he learns that everything the vikings think they know about dragons is wrong. He learns how to handle them in a completely non violent way and uses that knowledge to do well in his dragon fighting class. As he does better in the class though, he gets more concerned that he'll be "rewarded" by being the first in the class to get to murder a dragon.

At the finale of the second act he tries to show everyone that the killing isn't necessary and that they have nothing to fear from the dragons. This goes predictably wrong and it all builds up to Hiccup showing his friends what he has learned about dragons so that they can save all the dragons and all the vikings.

All well and good, until, as I say, the end. The entire movie thus far has dedicated itself to showing us that dragons are intelligent and if treated properly, peaceful creatures. Not killing dragons is the entire thrust of the film. Hiccup has twice refused to kill dragons when presented with the opportunity and has tried to prevent others from killing them as well. In the end they have to fight a really really big dragon. Like, way bigger than all the other ones put together. And Hiccup uses his special skills that he has learned by being open minded and non violent to...kill it. The whole movie is about not killing dragons, but I guess that one has to die because it's too big? It's different from the other dragons? What?

You tell me Dreamworks. It was just so disappointing. I really enjoyed the entire film up to that moment. The message was so appropriate and timely. Except the end of the movie completely undoes that message.

It's still a good movie. It merits a second viewing even, and the 3D was gorgeous. I cannot emphasize that enough. But you'll walk away with a much more satisfying impression if you skip the last 10 minutes or so.

Captain Falcon!

So the adorable chicks I got last August? Captain Falcon is their Queen. As a baby she was the drabbest, but had a gutsy personality. She actually looked like a tiny bird of prey actually. And she was always the first one to jump onto the box, onto the stick, onto the edge of the box, out onto the floor. I estimated that she was at least a day or so older than the others because they were always just trying out the thing she'd mastered yesterday.

My little brother, assuming that she was a rooster because she was so tough and awesome, named her after this guy. He is a vaguely obscure video game character from the good people at Nintendo.

However, as the chicks developed and 7 out of 10 began to crow (to my lasting dismay), Captain Falcon failed to develop any masculine tendencies. She is a bantam Easter Egger, and she was the first of my flock to begin laying. Her eggs are tiny and blue. They look like robin eggs except slightly too large. I was delighted. Now she has gone broody. Just over two weeks ago I realized that she was trying to hatch one egg that did not belong to her (still not positive who laid it actually) and two golf balls that I put in the nesting box to show the hens where to lay.

I gave her some other assorted eggs (including one of her own, though I don't have high hopes for it as it spent a day in the fridge). They should, with any luck, hatch next week sometime.

Now to hopefully prevent the same karmic disaster that gave me 7 roosters last time, I need some macho names for the babies.

Two of them will be Captain Hammer and Dr. Horrible. If the one from the fridge, "Fridgey" as I currently call it, hatches I will name it Oracle.

I went to my brother for additional suggestions and he came up with Duke Nukem and Rooster Cogburn. I'll skip the last one because fully half the roosters in this country (the half not already called "Foghorn Leghorn" are already named Rooster Cogburn).

I may name one Spock, because I have been on a Star Trek kick lately. More than that I'm afraid to speculate on. She's sitting on nine eggs. It would have been ten, but I broke one while I was checking to make sure she wasn't sitting on extras stolen from other hens. She wasn't. Oops. But 9 eggs of various origins, and at least a few of them should hatch just in time for the Japanese exchange students we're having for two weeks. It is cool. My chickens are awesome.

Alice in Wonderland

I just saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was interesting. Going into it I was expecting it to be a bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where he was making a movie of a well known story that was already a well known film, but not doing a remake of the film. If that run-on sentence makes sense.

This wasn't quite Burton's take on a classic tale though. It was more like a sequel.

Oh, this post will be full of spoilers BTW.

I expected it to be dark. Tim Burton is dark and Alice in Wonderland is pretty twisted subject matter. And it does make you wince. Quite a few creatures get stabbed in the eye, and at one point Alice has to enter the Red Queen's castle. A tiny Alice must cross the moat by jumping across the gray and bloated severed heads of the Queen's victims. But for all that there's nothing really subversive about the film. It's hard for me to even properly articulate.

I guess it was that the plot rolled along so straightforwardly (I hate that I just used that word). But with Alice you expect wandering and twists and turns and absurdities and tangents. And this movie put forward a standard Hollywood rescue mission/quest plot line right off the bat and then from that point on you know exactly how the story will play out.

Then there's the Hatter/Alice thing. They play them up like a romantic subplot and it's really really uncomfortable. It doesn't matter that it's Johnny Depp, it's still squicky, and not what I came to see. Fortunately at the end they ease off and kind of let you decide whether you want the story to go there or not.

I kind of liked Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, although she was so eerie I kept waiting for her to out to be evil. I don't really remember the book clearly, it's been years since I read it (except for Jabberwocky) but I vaguely recall the White and Red Queens (and their entire courts with the exception of the White Knight) being fairly equally self-absorbed and crazy.

I liked Alice in armor at the end. She made an excellent champion. I really liked the exchange of dialogue between the Jabberwock and the Vorpal Sword.

The very end I thought was sort of pat and goofy and anachronistic. Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie, but as an interpretation of the source material (which is obviously difficult to transpose into film) I was disappointed. I thought if anybody could do it Tim Burton could, but to me it left a bit to be desired.

Still though, if I ever have a 9 year old daughter, this would be a movie I would be comfortable having her obsess over. I think that Alice is a good female character. She was nervous and brave and intelligent (and mad). She was a typical misfit Burton hero but the moral at the end was that she could blaze her own path, rather than that she would have to be forever separate from the world (Edward Scissorhands anyone?). So I liked it. I just would have liked it better when I was 9.

Pi Day

First off, Beware The Ides of March!

There, glad we got that out of the way. As hopefully everyone knows, yesterday 3/14 was Pi Day (also the birthday of one Albert Einstein). To celebrate, I baked this delicious peach pie. It was (and continues to be) very good. I was quite please with the way that the lattice turned out.

I actually quite enjoyed Pi Day. It's a worthy holiday (like Talk Like a Pirate Day, Sept. 19) and you can't forget the date because it's 3.14. Imagine the Pi Day celebration in 2015. Eh?

Anywho, I plan to incorporate it into my personal roster of celebrated holidays. It can take the place of Easter.

In other news, Daylight Savings sucks. My current job starts at 5:30 in the morning. The worst part is this weekend I was starting on Sunday after coming off almost a week and a half of being out sick, so I'd been staying up and sleeping in later and my sleep schedule was already messed up. As far as I'm concerned, everyone has an excuse for being an ass for the next couple of days. I will attribute any cranky mood to Daylight Savings. Which is lucky for one of my coworkers because otherwise I would have been forced to ask who pissed in her cheerios this morning. It's been a couple days of this sullen attitude from her and I'm about done with it.

But maybe she'll cut loose on St. Patty's and calm down. So glad spring is here!

Postcards from the Deep

Back from my hiatus and I come bearing art. The local humane society is having an art auction and I decided to donate some work. I have a painting and an ink drawing in the works, but I'm also making a series of little 3x5 drawings that I call collectively "Postcards from the Deep."

This guy is the Nautilus. I've done a series of weird and awesome deep sea creatures. The best ones of course, are those that phosphoress. Spell check doesn't want to give me that word but I'm sure it's a verb and it looks correct to me. Spell check didn't want to give me siphonophore either. Another one of my pieces is a siphonophore. They are cool glowy things. They are listed as probably the longest animal in the world but they're kinda like coral in that they are actually a colony of small animals. So in the world record length sense that seems kind of like cheating. But they are really cool.

Anyway, the rest of my sea creatures can be found here.