Wow, I haven't done this in a while. Hi, readers. If you're still out there. If you were every out there in the first place. I have less than a week til school starts, and I woke up 20 minutes ago, at 4:05 pm. Usually, the last week of the summer is spent waking up at 8 am, finishing up summer homework, and being astounded by the concept of breakfast, which is apparently food that people eat in the mornings, because apparently people wake up in the mornings. But the past two weeks have been spent watching Supernatural, waking up anywhere between 6 am and 3 pm and just generally being miserable.
I am almost done with my summer homework, though, which was reading and annotating a short novel. Which is pathetic, actually, cuz it's 209 pages of very readable prose, and I have three frickin months to do it, and I could have just finished annotating it in three days, but I just felt lazy.
Anyway, yesterday I went to pick up my textbooks, and I hate them. And I'm going to keep hating them until I go to return them.
My school's being renovated over the summer, and from the looks of it, it probably won't be done by the time school starts. I mean, they never fix anything quickly in my city, but they were able to paint the window frames. My school is a very ugly school, as a lot of high schools are, but in an attempt to alleviate some of the ugliness, it has splashes of teal on pillars, railings, just little random places. And it's ugly. Cuz the rest of the building is a sandy brown/gray. And they made it uglier by putting the teal in more places. Like the window frames. So now it's everywhere, and it's an assault on the eyes.
The inside better be f*cking beautiful.
_________________________
I think I had more stuff to write about, but it just kinda flew out of my head.
Oh, the only reason I'm excited for summer to be over is because once it is, little kids will stop running around the pool outside my window, so I won't have to be assaulted by their shrill screams every day from midday to evening.
21 August 2012
29 June 2012
Ain't it cute; also: driving is still scary
Before I start, an open letter to the idiot teenagers/college students making a ruckus at the pool:
Dear idiot teenagers/college students making a ruckus at the pool:
After a few months of living in this apartment that overlooks the pool, I've more or less gotten used to idiot seven-year-olds (and their self-entitled asshole parents) running around and screaming as if they're being murdered. Some people may call it cute.
You know what's not cute? You.
You are not being cute or funny or young or free or wonderful or youthful as your blast your shitty pop music as your scream bad jokes and thinly-veiled insults at each other. Let me tell it to you straight: Your music sucks. If you're the type to blast your sucky music at a deafening level so the entire neighborhood can hear it, your music sucks. It sucks even more because you're the inconsiderate assholes who listen to it. Stop it. I don't care if it's Friday night and you don't have a test on Monday and you haven't seen your friends in a whole week. Be civil.
The laughter of children is (to many) wonderful and the epitome of youth. Your drunken, shrill screams are that of a banshee and I don't want to spend *my* Friday night glaring daggers at you idiots while you have your wild, idiotic fun while disturbing the public. So stop it. No one wants to see your scantily-clad, orange bodies, no one wants to hear your hilarious "inside jokes" and no one cares if you only live once. Your stupid choices won't kill you fast enough.
Why not go to one of your idiot rich friend's houses where they have their own pool and you won't bother the dozens of innocent apartment dwellers who were so unfortunate to be occupying the apartments surrounding the pool while you asholes party? If you have to, do it during the day time when all the grown-ups are working. Did you think no one would be bothered? Did you think people magically get rested on their commute back home? Stop it. No one cares why you're there or what you're trying to do. We care that you're being noisy in a blatant, inconsiderate act of complete and utter selfishness and declaring your dumb notion of some inherently deserved freedom. You can go celebrate your drunken, misinformed idea of freedom somewhere else.
Again, your music sucks. Stop it. I don't want to hear "Somebody I Used to Know" or any of the other shitty pop radio hits you tasteless idiots adore. I don't even know you people, and your dumb behavior is making me hate you. I honestly hate you, idiot teenagers/college students making a ruckus at the pool.
You guys can go fuck yourselves.
Sincerely,
A concerned citizen who would like some QUIET after a stressful day
____________________________________
God, young people suck (said the teenager).
________________
So, I operated a car for the first time in my life.
It was only for a couple hours, and half of it was spent circling a parking lot and the other half was spent circling a residential area, but I drove a car and that's all that matters.
I was really nervous for it, because I've been in 4 car accidents and cars scare me to death, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. Once I started to get the hang of it, I probably had a really dumb, half-scared, half-excited expression. Oh, face, why can't you just stay normal?
Dear idiot teenagers/college students making a ruckus at the pool:
After a few months of living in this apartment that overlooks the pool, I've more or less gotten used to idiot seven-year-olds (and their self-entitled asshole parents) running around and screaming as if they're being murdered. Some people may call it cute.
You know what's not cute? You.
You are not being cute or funny or young or free or wonderful or youthful as your blast your shitty pop music as your scream bad jokes and thinly-veiled insults at each other. Let me tell it to you straight: Your music sucks. If you're the type to blast your sucky music at a deafening level so the entire neighborhood can hear it, your music sucks. It sucks even more because you're the inconsiderate assholes who listen to it. Stop it. I don't care if it's Friday night and you don't have a test on Monday and you haven't seen your friends in a whole week. Be civil.
The laughter of children is (to many) wonderful and the epitome of youth. Your drunken, shrill screams are that of a banshee and I don't want to spend *my* Friday night glaring daggers at you idiots while you have your wild, idiotic fun while disturbing the public. So stop it. No one wants to see your scantily-clad, orange bodies, no one wants to hear your hilarious "inside jokes" and no one cares if you only live once. Your stupid choices won't kill you fast enough.
Why not go to one of your idiot rich friend's houses where they have their own pool and you won't bother the dozens of innocent apartment dwellers who were so unfortunate to be occupying the apartments surrounding the pool while you asholes party? If you have to, do it during the day time when all the grown-ups are working. Did you think no one would be bothered? Did you think people magically get rested on their commute back home? Stop it. No one cares why you're there or what you're trying to do. We care that you're being noisy in a blatant, inconsiderate act of complete and utter selfishness and declaring your dumb notion of some inherently deserved freedom. You can go celebrate your drunken, misinformed idea of freedom somewhere else.
Again, your music sucks. Stop it. I don't want to hear "Somebody I Used to Know" or any of the other shitty pop radio hits you tasteless idiots adore. I don't even know you people, and your dumb behavior is making me hate you. I honestly hate you, idiot teenagers/college students making a ruckus at the pool.
You guys can go fuck yourselves.
Sincerely,
A concerned citizen who would like some QUIET after a stressful day
____________________________________
God, young people suck (said the teenager).
________________
So, I operated a car for the first time in my life.
It was only for a couple hours, and half of it was spent circling a parking lot and the other half was spent circling a residential area, but I drove a car and that's all that matters.
I was really nervous for it, because I've been in 4 car accidents and cars scare me to death, but it wasn't as bad as I expected. Once I started to get the hang of it, I probably had a really dumb, half-scared, half-excited expression. Oh, face, why can't you just stay normal?
27 June 2012
The Summer of Indigestion and Exams (also: Cars are f*cking terrifying)
I tried to write this post a few days ago at about 2 in the morning when I was insomniatic(not sure if that's a real word) and slightly delirious (fairly sure that's a word). After a few minutes I realized that would've been stupid and I stopped.
Anyway, I'm about a month into my summer, and most of it was spent either in or in preparations for exams. A lot of the month was also spent having indigestion. It's probably because I've been staying up late and then sleeping in late and then stuffing my face the entire time I'm awake, but I don't have any plans to stop that any time soon.
At least, I wouldn't if I didn't start driving school a few days ago.
For the past few days I've been sitting in a room that starts off swelteringly hot and gradually turns ball-freezing-ly cold staring at a lady explaining traffic laws, trying not to fall asleep as I stare at the drivers' handbook in front of me.
I'm not the type to label all my days so I can remember them later (which, if Sex and the City can be believed, is what 35-year-old single women do) but this summer is rapidly turning into the Summer of Exams and Indigestion. What with the SAT Subject Tests (done) , ACT (done), the various tests I'll have to get to get my license (not done), and the near-constant indigestion, which has actually become more manageable, but only because I've had to wake up at a reasonable time because of driving school.
Speaking of which, I got my instructional license today, meaning I am now allowed to operate a wheeled vehicle as long as there's an adult with a driver's license and a year's driving experience conscious and in the passenger's seat. My mother tried to convince me that the test for it was going to be insanely difficult, but it wasn't. What was insanely difficult, though, was not going crazy during the 3-hour wait at the DPS office in order to get my instructional license. I swear, Hell consists of one of those offices, and they always close just before they can get to you. We left with about 45 minutes til closing, and there were still dozens of people waiting.
I'm not actually terribly excited to learn how to drive. I don't actually want all the independence and freedom or whatever a license is supposed to give me. Cars are frikking scary, man.
While we were going to the DPS office, only vaguely aware of the hellish wait that awaited us, two cars in front of us nearly hit each other. One swerved slightly but was able to keep going without a problem but the other one, holy shit, the driver lost control and his car swerved and spun around and there was screeching and tire marks and smoke from the friction between the wheels and the road--
It was really scary.
I don't want to drive.
Anyway, I'm about a month into my summer, and most of it was spent either in or in preparations for exams. A lot of the month was also spent having indigestion. It's probably because I've been staying up late and then sleeping in late and then stuffing my face the entire time I'm awake, but I don't have any plans to stop that any time soon.
At least, I wouldn't if I didn't start driving school a few days ago.
For the past few days I've been sitting in a room that starts off swelteringly hot and gradually turns ball-freezing-ly cold staring at a lady explaining traffic laws, trying not to fall asleep as I stare at the drivers' handbook in front of me.
I'm not the type to label all my days so I can remember them later (which, if Sex and the City can be believed, is what 35-year-old single women do) but this summer is rapidly turning into the Summer of Exams and Indigestion. What with the SAT Subject Tests (done) , ACT (done), the various tests I'll have to get to get my license (not done), and the near-constant indigestion, which has actually become more manageable, but only because I've had to wake up at a reasonable time because of driving school.
Speaking of which, I got my instructional license today, meaning I am now allowed to operate a wheeled vehicle as long as there's an adult with a driver's license and a year's driving experience conscious and in the passenger's seat. My mother tried to convince me that the test for it was going to be insanely difficult, but it wasn't. What was insanely difficult, though, was not going crazy during the 3-hour wait at the DPS office in order to get my instructional license. I swear, Hell consists of one of those offices, and they always close just before they can get to you. We left with about 45 minutes til closing, and there were still dozens of people waiting.
I'm not actually terribly excited to learn how to drive. I don't actually want all the independence and freedom or whatever a license is supposed to give me. Cars are frikking scary, man.
While we were going to the DPS office, only vaguely aware of the hellish wait that awaited us, two cars in front of us nearly hit each other. One swerved slightly but was able to keep going without a problem but the other one, holy shit, the driver lost control and his car swerved and spun around and there was screeching and tire marks and smoke from the friction between the wheels and the road--
It was really scary.
I don't want to drive.
27 May 2012
Harder to Die
Before I start, I'd like to say that I feel like I went through a slightly manic phase yesterday. I'm not going to panic and think I have manic/depressive disorder, because I'm probably perfectly fine. It was a bit worrying, though, because I feel as if I went crazy last night. Perhaps I did.
During the past few weeks of school, I'd spent a lot of time folding chains of paper cranes. I made a few hundred of them, and for some reason, last night, I went and attached all the little chains to make a big chain and hung it up in a corner of my room. When I woke up this morning, the chain had broken in the middle and it struck me how dumb it looked to be hanging there. When my father had first come in and saw it, he laughed at me. So he took it down.
And then I dug through that box I described yesterday and watched that video montage from my elementary school graduation. Why the hell would I need to watch that again? Jeez.
And, finally, a few hours after that, I decided to go through my old sketchbooks and stuff and redraw every single piece I was proud of to see how much I've improved. I mean, people do this all the time, but what in Deep Thought's name (no one's gonna get that reference, you nerd) was I thinking, wanting to redraw every single one?
Obviously, it only took til halfway through the second one that I began hating myself and had to stop. At that point it was 5 in the morning, and I was forced to wake up at 8, and I saw the patheticness of the paper cranes and so today hasn't had the greatest start.
__________________
I only had a small thing to say today. For my final, I had to do a presentation for one of my classes. The topic was euthanasia, and I had to discuss its morality from three angles. At the end, my teacher commented that it was getting harder to die. Which, it really is. People live to be over 100 nowadays. Not 50 years ago, it was about 60.
Anyway, I was thinking that with further advances in medical science, people might be able to live for 500, 600, maybe even thousands of years. The whole point of reproduction is to keep the species from dying off, and we're always going to need new people to produce and consume things for our society to function. You've seen how the body begins to fail when one turns 60, or even earlier.
What I'm driving at is, at some point, in the distant future, people would be able to live for, maybe, thousands of years. They're probably going to spend a couple centuries unable to function well. At some point, someone, possibly the government, is going to have to decide on cutoff point. People need to die. It's necessary, again, for our society to function. So there will likely be a time when there is a limit to how long people are allowed to live.
But considering the general attitude toward death, that it's a very, very, very, very bad thing that must be avoided as long as possible, and the fact that people in power probably won't want to die, and they're going to be the ones the government listens to, there might actually be protests where the central argument is the right to die. You get all these activists all up in arms about the sanctity of life, so at some point the right to die has got to become equally prevalent in the world.
It's always interesting to try to think of where the world will go from here.
If you think I'm a wackjob for thinking that humans would ever be able to live that long, think I'm a wackjob for thinking the "right to die" is a thing (it totally is), or if you have any crazy ideas about the future (or if you think I'm a wackjob, period), then go ahead and comment! Because it gets lonely over here on the internet.
During the past few weeks of school, I'd spent a lot of time folding chains of paper cranes. I made a few hundred of them, and for some reason, last night, I went and attached all the little chains to make a big chain and hung it up in a corner of my room. When I woke up this morning, the chain had broken in the middle and it struck me how dumb it looked to be hanging there. When my father had first come in and saw it, he laughed at me. So he took it down.
And then I dug through that box I described yesterday and watched that video montage from my elementary school graduation. Why the hell would I need to watch that again? Jeez.
And, finally, a few hours after that, I decided to go through my old sketchbooks and stuff and redraw every single piece I was proud of to see how much I've improved. I mean, people do this all the time, but what in Deep Thought's name (no one's gonna get that reference, you nerd) was I thinking, wanting to redraw every single one?
Obviously, it only took til halfway through the second one that I began hating myself and had to stop. At that point it was 5 in the morning, and I was forced to wake up at 8, and I saw the patheticness of the paper cranes and so today hasn't had the greatest start.
__________________
I only had a small thing to say today. For my final, I had to do a presentation for one of my classes. The topic was euthanasia, and I had to discuss its morality from three angles. At the end, my teacher commented that it was getting harder to die. Which, it really is. People live to be over 100 nowadays. Not 50 years ago, it was about 60.
Anyway, I was thinking that with further advances in medical science, people might be able to live for 500, 600, maybe even thousands of years. The whole point of reproduction is to keep the species from dying off, and we're always going to need new people to produce and consume things for our society to function. You've seen how the body begins to fail when one turns 60, or even earlier.
What I'm driving at is, at some point, in the distant future, people would be able to live for, maybe, thousands of years. They're probably going to spend a couple centuries unable to function well. At some point, someone, possibly the government, is going to have to decide on cutoff point. People need to die. It's necessary, again, for our society to function. So there will likely be a time when there is a limit to how long people are allowed to live.
But considering the general attitude toward death, that it's a very, very, very, very bad thing that must be avoided as long as possible, and the fact that people in power probably won't want to die, and they're going to be the ones the government listens to, there might actually be protests where the central argument is the right to die. You get all these activists all up in arms about the sanctity of life, so at some point the right to die has got to become equally prevalent in the world.
It's always interesting to try to think of where the world will go from here.
If you think I'm a wackjob for thinking that humans would ever be able to live that long, think I'm a wackjob for thinking the "right to die" is a thing (it totally is), or if you have any crazy ideas about the future (or if you think I'm a wackjob, period), then go ahead and comment! Because it gets lonely over here on the internet.
Inevitable
So, it seems that I've neglected this blog for so long that the format change has come and gone and it just took me a few minutes to find the "new post" button.
I am very sorry that I away for so long. How long has it been? Months? I'm terribly sorry.
This is my last weekend before the end of junior and then, of course, the start of my senior year. I'm growing up and this is quite scary. I'm almost an adult, did you know that? I am very close to being two semesters away from graduating high school and then going off to college.
My, god, nothing in the past 11 year (13 if you count pre-K and kindergarten) has taught me how to handle this.
So, I have this box where I keep little treasured things like drawings and writings and little knick knacks I wouldn't want to forget. I taped on a sheet of paper that says "Thanks for the memories" even though I don't listen to Fall Out Boy anymore. It's a little thing for nostalgia. Every now and then, I'll look through the little momentos of my life since 6th grade. Some of the things in there are weird, too. Like the first ramune bottle I ever drank. The good-bye card given to my 8th grade GT Research class by a teacher I adored. This little booklet I made that I called my "Book of Friends" (after the manga) that contains little messages and into from my friends in 8th grade. I'm ashamed to admit, there are a couple of names I don't remember. I'm also ashamed to admit that I didn't let a couple people write in it that I now wish I did, because, even if I didn't like them very much, I wish there was some little momento of them so they won't be forgotten.
Because they will be forgotten, eventually.
In my little box of memories, I keep this DVD that was handed out at my elementary school graduation ceremony. It contains a montage of photos of 6th grade students that year, set to a rock song about how hard it is it say good-bye and Unwritten by that one lady whose name I can't remember. Basically, it was to tell us good-bye, but don't you fret, because you're future's yours. Standard stuff, that.
I watched it just now. I don't even know why.
There were 2 6th grade classes that year, so I wasn't familiar with about half the kids in it. I couldn't remember the names of a lot of people in my class, though. It took me a while to recognize the ones I did know. When you're a child, you don't realize that your face is that of a child, because you have no grown-up experiences to compare, and you're always around other children, so the people your age look normal and anyone older looks way old and anyone younger looks way young.
I also realized that, just as I've forgotten most of the people in the photos, most of the people in them have forgotten me, as well. They've probably forgotten each other. But maybe not; maybe they're all at the same high school, or still see each other on weekends. My point is, we're not on each other's minds.
I will be forgotten, and people will forget me. Someday, 10 years from now, I'll look through a high school year book I've inexplicably kept, and I won't remember half the people in my year. They won't remember me, either.
It's a little sad how human relations fall apart like that. There are people I've known since I moved to Texas whom I don't talk to anymore. It feels like a really sudden change.
I've never had the chance to make life-long friends, because I've never stayed at a place long enough to make a friend for more than a few years. Even when I stay for more than a few years, friends never last.
But, I might have better luck this time. I have the internet, and an understanding of how to use it. Maybe I won't have to lose friends 10 years from now. Maybe, ten years from now, I'll still have my blog and even you guys, my followers, will be following it still.
And, so it is about 3:00 am and for once I ended a blog post with a bit of optimism.
EDIT: I just learned that rock song was by Nickleback. Oh, god, oh, god.
I am very sorry that I away for so long. How long has it been? Months? I'm terribly sorry.
This is my last weekend before the end of junior and then, of course, the start of my senior year. I'm growing up and this is quite scary. I'm almost an adult, did you know that? I am very close to being two semesters away from graduating high school and then going off to college.
My, god, nothing in the past 11 year (13 if you count pre-K and kindergarten) has taught me how to handle this.
So, I have this box where I keep little treasured things like drawings and writings and little knick knacks I wouldn't want to forget. I taped on a sheet of paper that says "Thanks for the memories" even though I don't listen to Fall Out Boy anymore. It's a little thing for nostalgia. Every now and then, I'll look through the little momentos of my life since 6th grade. Some of the things in there are weird, too. Like the first ramune bottle I ever drank. The good-bye card given to my 8th grade GT Research class by a teacher I adored. This little booklet I made that I called my "Book of Friends" (after the manga) that contains little messages and into from my friends in 8th grade. I'm ashamed to admit, there are a couple of names I don't remember. I'm also ashamed to admit that I didn't let a couple people write in it that I now wish I did, because, even if I didn't like them very much, I wish there was some little momento of them so they won't be forgotten.
Because they will be forgotten, eventually.
In my little box of memories, I keep this DVD that was handed out at my elementary school graduation ceremony. It contains a montage of photos of 6th grade students that year, set to a rock song about how hard it is it say good-bye and Unwritten by that one lady whose name I can't remember. Basically, it was to tell us good-bye, but don't you fret, because you're future's yours. Standard stuff, that.
I watched it just now. I don't even know why.
There were 2 6th grade classes that year, so I wasn't familiar with about half the kids in it. I couldn't remember the names of a lot of people in my class, though. It took me a while to recognize the ones I did know. When you're a child, you don't realize that your face is that of a child, because you have no grown-up experiences to compare, and you're always around other children, so the people your age look normal and anyone older looks way old and anyone younger looks way young.
I also realized that, just as I've forgotten most of the people in the photos, most of the people in them have forgotten me, as well. They've probably forgotten each other. But maybe not; maybe they're all at the same high school, or still see each other on weekends. My point is, we're not on each other's minds.
I will be forgotten, and people will forget me. Someday, 10 years from now, I'll look through a high school year book I've inexplicably kept, and I won't remember half the people in my year. They won't remember me, either.
It's a little sad how human relations fall apart like that. There are people I've known since I moved to Texas whom I don't talk to anymore. It feels like a really sudden change.
I've never had the chance to make life-long friends, because I've never stayed at a place long enough to make a friend for more than a few years. Even when I stay for more than a few years, friends never last.
But, I might have better luck this time. I have the internet, and an understanding of how to use it. Maybe I won't have to lose friends 10 years from now. Maybe, ten years from now, I'll still have my blog and even you guys, my followers, will be following it still.
And, so it is about 3:00 am and for once I ended a blog post with a bit of optimism.
EDIT: I just learned that rock song was by Nickleback. Oh, god, oh, god.
29 April 2012
and the pursuit of Happiness...
So, uh, it's occurred to me that I do indeed have a blog, and that I do indeed have people who read it regularly (plus ou moins) and that I ought to write another post. So here I am, after several weeks of lack of motivation, laziness, writer's block, and a couple weeks of all those plus utter bewilderment at the new format of the blog page... dashboard... layout thing.
Anyway, here I am, slinking back after months of no word.
Actually, the main reason really has been writer's block, and instead of mashing keyboards and pouring out brain goo, I decided to wait until I actually had something to write about. And I do.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my father's coworker's house out in the suburbs. They're a very Korean and very suburbsy family in a very suburbsy area. They have two small children, one of whom was at a baseball game or something. So, I only had to deal with one of their children. Unfortunately, it was the younger one, this extremely unnerving three-year-old girl.
Now, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but I really, really hate children. This is probably awful to hear from a teenager, and you're probably all going to tell me that I'll change my mind when I have some. Three things. No one can say that I will have children, even if I have children I'll probably end up only liking my own, and I do not have any children at this moment in time so please shut up about that, and that's really not a great argument anyway.
I've come to realize one of the reasons I hate children is that they're so undeservingly happy. That, and they're a bit creepy. At least, this particular little girl, who actually looked about four or five, who kept staring at me with this blank expression as if she'd seen my murder the day before and was going to do absolutely nothing to stop it.
But, anyway, let's focus on the happiness. Children are happy. I'm not talking about the children in middle school, or even late elementary school who're starting to learn that life absolutely and truly sucks. I'm talking about children before they reach double digits, small children whose entire worlds are Mommy, classroom and candy. Those children are happy. They whine the most, but they forget what they whine about the fastest.
These kids have done nothing to be happy. They whine, they poop, get sick, get other people sick, sleep and do it all over again the next day. They put minimal effort into life, and it's okay because they're children and Mommy will do everything for them. And yet, you have mature, young, middle-aged and elderly, adult men and women working their butts off in some office building somewhere, trying to make the money to put their kids through college, pay off credit card debt, pay mortgages, and maybe take that trip to Hawaii before they die and they're miserable. Even if they get that trip to Hawaii, they have to come back and be miserable again.
And then it hit me, just recently. Maybe happiness isn't actually something we have to work for. A lot of people say that the key to happiness is to accept your lot in life. Take what you got, cut your losses, give up while you're ahead. And children do that. They're perfectly happy where they are. Their worlds are tiny and they're happy with tiny worlds. You don't need a bunch of stuff to fill up that tiny room. So they're happy.
Of course, this doesn't make me like children any more.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts I had.
It really hurts me to click "publish" because then this'll be the first thing people see when they come to this blog...
Anyway, here I am, slinking back after months of no word.
Actually, the main reason really has been writer's block, and instead of mashing keyboards and pouring out brain goo, I decided to wait until I actually had something to write about. And I do.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my father's coworker's house out in the suburbs. They're a very Korean and very suburbsy family in a very suburbsy area. They have two small children, one of whom was at a baseball game or something. So, I only had to deal with one of their children. Unfortunately, it was the younger one, this extremely unnerving three-year-old girl.
Now, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but I really, really hate children. This is probably awful to hear from a teenager, and you're probably all going to tell me that I'll change my mind when I have some. Three things. No one can say that I will have children, even if I have children I'll probably end up only liking my own, and I do not have any children at this moment in time so please shut up about that, and that's really not a great argument anyway.
I've come to realize one of the reasons I hate children is that they're so undeservingly happy. That, and they're a bit creepy. At least, this particular little girl, who actually looked about four or five, who kept staring at me with this blank expression as if she'd seen my murder the day before and was going to do absolutely nothing to stop it.
But, anyway, let's focus on the happiness. Children are happy. I'm not talking about the children in middle school, or even late elementary school who're starting to learn that life absolutely and truly sucks. I'm talking about children before they reach double digits, small children whose entire worlds are Mommy, classroom and candy. Those children are happy. They whine the most, but they forget what they whine about the fastest.
These kids have done nothing to be happy. They whine, they poop, get sick, get other people sick, sleep and do it all over again the next day. They put minimal effort into life, and it's okay because they're children and Mommy will do everything for them. And yet, you have mature, young, middle-aged and elderly, adult men and women working their butts off in some office building somewhere, trying to make the money to put their kids through college, pay off credit card debt, pay mortgages, and maybe take that trip to Hawaii before they die and they're miserable. Even if they get that trip to Hawaii, they have to come back and be miserable again.
And then it hit me, just recently. Maybe happiness isn't actually something we have to work for. A lot of people say that the key to happiness is to accept your lot in life. Take what you got, cut your losses, give up while you're ahead. And children do that. They're perfectly happy where they are. Their worlds are tiny and they're happy with tiny worlds. You don't need a bunch of stuff to fill up that tiny room. So they're happy.
Of course, this doesn't make me like children any more.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts I had.
It really hurts me to click "publish" because then this'll be the first thing people see when they come to this blog...
30 March 2012
Maybe...
-Maybe all we're trying to do is survive.
-We are. At least, we were, trying to stay alive and better the species. But we don't need to anymore. We don't need to evolve because we've shaped this world to fit our needs exactly.
-Maybe that means we won.
-What are we looking for, then? A prize?
-Yes. Heaven, Hell. Enlightenment.
-Maybe they're just a prize.
-Or maybe we think we deserve a prize. After all, we won.
-We are. At least, we were, trying to stay alive and better the species. But we don't need to anymore. We don't need to evolve because we've shaped this world to fit our needs exactly.
-Maybe that means we won.
-What are we looking for, then? A prize?
-Yes. Heaven, Hell. Enlightenment.
-Maybe they're just a prize.
-Or maybe we think we deserve a prize. After all, we won.
29 March 2012
School closes down to make way for strip club
Students at a Texas high school were surprised to see ten poles installed in a row in their courtyard this Monday. The school has since revealed that it will be closing down this year to be turned into a strip club.
"This is a great way for students to learn valuable skills they'll need later in life," said one administrator. "They're really going to need them, too. It's not like they actually learn anything here."
Some students have expressed outrage over the change...
__________________
So, my school has installed ten poles in the courtyard on Monday. It's been a few days, and all they've done is put some pieces of metal on top of them. They're just there, in a row by a wall of the west building.
The general consensus of the students is, however surprisingly, that they're for pole dancing.
My theory:
They'll take the ten most productive people in the school, chop off their heads and mount them on top of the poles as an example to the rest of us. How dare you try to be productive human beings!
Other people seem to think that they're for flags, but the poles are square, not round. So they can't be for flags or pole dancing. (Though, honestly,that's what half the girls at my school are going to end up doing, anyway.) (Hey! That's someone's daughter!)
Ahem, so, the poles are a bit of a weird addition to the outdoor decor. Cuz they're isn't any. It's as ugly as sin out there, and the poles ain't helping.
Someone said they might be for banners or something. Whoo hoo, more propaganda. Like we don't have enough of that with the flatscreens they put up in the hallways.
________
The real use of the poles has yet to be confirmed, but we'll be back with more updates as soon as more info's available. Back to you, Bob.
"This is a great way for students to learn valuable skills they'll need later in life," said one administrator. "They're really going to need them, too. It's not like they actually learn anything here."
Some students have expressed outrage over the change...
__________________
So, my school has installed ten poles in the courtyard on Monday. It's been a few days, and all they've done is put some pieces of metal on top of them. They're just there, in a row by a wall of the west building.
The general consensus of the students is, however surprisingly, that they're for pole dancing.
My theory:
They'll take the ten most productive people in the school, chop off their heads and mount them on top of the poles as an example to the rest of us. How dare you try to be productive human beings!
Other people seem to think that they're for flags, but the poles are square, not round. So they can't be for flags or pole dancing. (Though, honestly,
Ahem, so, the poles are a bit of a weird addition to the outdoor decor. Cuz they're isn't any. It's as ugly as sin out there, and the poles ain't helping.
Someone said they might be for banners or something. Whoo hoo, more propaganda. Like we don't have enough of that with the flatscreens they put up in the hallways.
________
The real use of the poles has yet to be confirmed, but we'll be back with more updates as soon as more info's available. Back to you, Bob.
24 February 2012
I think I have issues
And, no, I don't mean that I like to hang pictures of celebrities on walls and sip tea while talking to them in a room lit by red scented candles arranged vaguely like a magic circle. I have just been seeing a few changes in myself that I find... more than a bit disconcerting, and, as they're not really the kinds of things you'd divulge to someone in real life, I decided I shall go into them in detail here, on my blog! In front of the whole internetz!
Or, at least, the very-very-very-very-close-to-but-not-quite 0% of the internetz that actually read this blog.
So, I've been having the uncomfortable feeling that I've become a bit dumber. Not even the "Oh, god, I was such an idiot last year. I sure hope I've made progress this year" kind of feeling. I truly and sincerely believe I've become dumber. I'm no longer as eloquent as I am fairly convinced I used to be when I speak (not that I was particularly eloquent at any point in my life), and I can't even write fiction as easily as I used to, and it's taking me longer to understand mathematical concepts than I used to, the list goes on.
It's a very uncomfortable sort of feeling, that you've become dumber. I don't know if it is because I'm becoming stupid or if it's a testament to my growing maturity, but when I think back on how I was last year, I think less that I was such and idiot and more that, Oh, given the circumstances and my emotional state at those points, I suppose there wasn't much helping it. Is this because I'm becoming a bit more accepting of the fact that sometimes even I think and say stupid things, or am I just trying to rationalize because my brain knows I won't be able to do any better in the future?
And maybe I'm overthinking this, but this is the kind of thing I worry about late at night when I should be sleeping. That and zombies. Yup.
______________________________
I've also come across a few other disturbing moments in the past few weeks. For the last issue of my school's magazine, a large part of my work was drawing these cute little personifications of the horoscope symbol... things. Because the editors thought it would be a good idea or something. Anyway, I spent two or three hours on each drawing, giving us a total of about 30 hours of drawing. Since then, it's been pretty hard for me to draw. Like, anything. And it didn't really kick in right away, but the amount of stuff I've been drawing has been decreasing and decreasing, and now it's dwindled to a whopping two or three pieces a week. And don't think I mean finished pencil drawings, either. I mean barely shaded, 30-minute sketches that take up about a third of a page in my sketchbook.
But art slumps are manageable. They happen. Sure.
But.
For this issue of the magazine, I've been assigned 2 articles, plus the comics (I usually do two 4-panel comics)! I mean, I've talked to one of the editors and maybe I'll be able to drop one of the articles. Maybe. But, I still had to do two rough drafts for those two articles, and I was up pretty late writing them.
And as I was writing them, a thought came to me:
God, I hate writing.
It was terrifying.
So, yeah, it's as if the magazine's ruining my love for anything and everything. Next thing you know, I'm gonna hate kittens because of it.
Hopefully, though, that won't happen, and maybe I'll be able to write and draw and stuff eventually. But art blocks are always a terrible thing to go through.
Or, at least, the very-very-very-very-close-to-but-not-quite 0% of the internetz that actually read this blog.
So, I've been having the uncomfortable feeling that I've become a bit dumber. Not even the "Oh, god, I was such an idiot last year. I sure hope I've made progress this year" kind of feeling. I truly and sincerely believe I've become dumber. I'm no longer as eloquent as I am fairly convinced I used to be when I speak (not that I was particularly eloquent at any point in my life), and I can't even write fiction as easily as I used to, and it's taking me longer to understand mathematical concepts than I used to, the list goes on.
It's a very uncomfortable sort of feeling, that you've become dumber. I don't know if it is because I'm becoming stupid or if it's a testament to my growing maturity, but when I think back on how I was last year, I think less that I was such and idiot and more that, Oh, given the circumstances and my emotional state at those points, I suppose there wasn't much helping it. Is this because I'm becoming a bit more accepting of the fact that sometimes even I think and say stupid things, or am I just trying to rationalize because my brain knows I won't be able to do any better in the future?
And maybe I'm overthinking this, but this is the kind of thing I worry about late at night when I should be sleeping. That and zombies. Yup.
______________________________
I've also come across a few other disturbing moments in the past few weeks. For the last issue of my school's magazine, a large part of my work was drawing these cute little personifications of the horoscope symbol... things. Because the editors thought it would be a good idea or something. Anyway, I spent two or three hours on each drawing, giving us a total of about 30 hours of drawing. Since then, it's been pretty hard for me to draw. Like, anything. And it didn't really kick in right away, but the amount of stuff I've been drawing has been decreasing and decreasing, and now it's dwindled to a whopping two or three pieces a week. And don't think I mean finished pencil drawings, either. I mean barely shaded, 30-minute sketches that take up about a third of a page in my sketchbook.
But art slumps are manageable. They happen. Sure.
But.
For this issue of the magazine, I've been assigned 2 articles, plus the comics (I usually do two 4-panel comics)! I mean, I've talked to one of the editors and maybe I'll be able to drop one of the articles. Maybe. But, I still had to do two rough drafts for those two articles, and I was up pretty late writing them.
And as I was writing them, a thought came to me:
God, I hate writing.
It was terrifying.
So, yeah, it's as if the magazine's ruining my love for anything and everything. Next thing you know, I'm gonna hate kittens because of it.
Hopefully, though, that won't happen, and maybe I'll be able to write and draw and stuff eventually. But art blocks are always a terrible thing to go through.
21 February 2012
Labels
For a really long time, the word I used to describe myself was "cynical." Now that I may be coming out of the emo-pseudo-depressed-pessimistic stage of my life, I'm starting to wonder if I really am, or ever was a cynic. Sure, I have this general lack of faith in humanity, but a lot of people, from a young age, have realized that the human race is, eh, not that great.
If I were to ask people who know me well enough to form any sort of substantial opinion of me, I think the following words would probably be the most common:
Cute
Smart
Artistic
Asian
Cynical? Probably not.
In fact, the only two people who've really heard anything cynical from me are... my parents. And maybe the readers of this blog, but, a) you're not technically "hearing" anything that I write and b) maybe none of this is actually cynical at all, and it's all just... negative.
I'm not trying to be cocky here or anything, either. I don't like the word "cute"; I don't consider myself cute; I don't like being called cute and I don't think anything about me is "cute" at all except my height and the fact that I'm Asian. But, that is probably the most common word people would use to describe me. I know this for a fact because I've heard accounts of people talking about me (when I'm not there) and most of the comments that have been reported to me are: Oh, yeah, she's so cute!
I don't consider myself particularly smart. I do have some level of common sense and reasoning, but not much more than the average person, and not much less, either. I'm only called artistic because I draw in class all the time, and, well, I am Asian.
Anyway, I honestly wouldn't choose these words to describe myself. Maybe it's because I don't like having to "label" myself, but how else would you give yourself an identity?
Saying that I like to draw, I like to sleep, I like anime, I don't like people... They're all assigning some sort of label to the concept that is "me." I'm an artist, a lazy person, an otaku, a cynic... They're all labels.
So, really, I don't mind labels. Not the idea of them, anyway. But I've started to realize that there's some sort of disconnect between what labels I consider fitting me, and what labels other people think fit me.
Which labels would really fit me, anyway? The labels I attribute to myself? But my ego and general lack of understanding of my behavior keep me from really knowing myself enough to describe myself. The labels other people attribute to me? But which people? No matter what, parents, friends, teachers, strangers, they're not me. There's no way they can understand anything about me, because they're not me.
(I swear I had a concrete idea of what I wanted to write when I got out of the shower earlier...)
Um, so, anyway, I guess this is my way of saying, maybe I'm not so much of a cynic after all. Given the popularity of sardonic comedy and internet memes, I don't hold humanity in especially low esteem. This may just be the usual phase of negativity everyone goes through. A couple of years ago, I heard some girls in homeroom say, "I hate people."
Well, I hate people, too! We should totally be friends!
Not really. I thought, somewhere in the back of my mind, that she didn't really understand what she meant by "I hate people." She doesn't truly hate people. She doesn't understand the consequences of being a true cynic-- a true cynic like what I thought I was.
But there's probably someone out there thinking to him/herself the exact same thing of me that I thought of that girl in my homeroom.
So, I guess labels just kind of fall apart as you grow up, and it just happens. You can't really know yourself by the time you're fourteen, and it's okay if you're wrong about yourself sometimes.
So, uh...
I swear, guys, I honestly had a point I wanted to make with this. Ugh, I don't know... Just... Just take what you will from this and please don't think I'm just a rambling idiot... Which... which I am, but you don't have to think that.
30 January 2012
More Realizations
So, my brother got a new tablet, meaning I get his old one! Yaaay, the universe ain't so much of a bitch after all!
Um, anyway, I realized something else on the way home from school today.
I have a cousin who's somewhere in Canada at the moment. She is already a decade old, and I may or may not met her nine or ten years ago when she was a wee little bawling lump of skin and mucus. I keep forgetting that I have a ten year old female cousin who's the daughter of my mother's brother. I met her older brother a few times, but I've never met her, so it's a little bit hard for me to believe she exists.
And then I had this realization:
She's existed every day since the day she was born.
Yeah, she doesn't only exist when someone talks about her. She's a real, live human being who breathes oxygen and annoys grown-ups with her talk of unicorns and sparkles and unanswerable questions.
This probably seems pretty obvious. More than pretty obvious. That, actually, should be blatantly obvious.
And this is just another small look into the brain of an egotistical teenage girl.
Um, anyway, I realized something else on the way home from school today.
I have a cousin who's somewhere in Canada at the moment. She is already a decade old, and I may or may not met her nine or ten years ago when she was a wee little bawling lump of skin and mucus. I keep forgetting that I have a ten year old female cousin who's the daughter of my mother's brother. I met her older brother a few times, but I've never met her, so it's a little bit hard for me to believe she exists.
And then I had this realization:
She's existed every day since the day she was born.
Yeah, she doesn't only exist when someone talks about her. She's a real, live human being who breathes oxygen and annoys grown-ups with her talk of unicorns and sparkles and unanswerable questions.
This probably seems pretty obvious. More than pretty obvious. That, actually, should be blatantly obvious.
And this is just another small look into the brain of an egotistical teenage girl.
28 January 2012
Realizations
(Also: Some perhaps unreasonable complaints concerning the Cintiq my parents got me last December)
I've come to realize the true secrets to becoming an artist. While I've never gained the internet fame (or real-world fame, even in my school) to have dozens of people ask me, "OMG, leik, how does u draw so good?" I have in fact figured out how to get there.
I first discovered what may be considered by some to be artistic talent in about 4th grade, when we were assigned to draw trees, and the trees I drew looked 6% more like trees than the trees my classmates drew, and they told me that my trees were amazing and that I must be so talented. I let those few comments get to my head and I started drawing everywhere. I'd doodle on my notes, on assignments; I would've drawn on the walls if my parents hadn't been so strict. My fifth grade teacher hated me because of it, but I didn't think too highly of her, either, and that childish spite spurred me on to keep drawing and drawing in drawing. In sixth grade, my homeroom teacher and my art teacher complimented my drawings, and that burst of confidence lasted through seventh grade.
I thought to myself, somewhat subconsciously, that I was chosen in some way, that I was special, as long as I wasn't looking at someone else's artwork. At first, only the artwork that was better than mine bothered me. Something pricked at the back of my mind, asking, if I was so special, why wasn't I as good as Sally or Joey or Kevin or Rachel? So I quietly pushed those doubts away and kept drawing and drawing, telling myself I'd be as good as them soon enough.
And then I reached high school, and that confidence, completely unfounded, now that I think about it, started to dissipate. I started to notice weird quirks in anatomy, weird facial features, in middle pointed out and poked fun at by peers. Now that I was in high school, I started to notice them myself and worked and worked to try to fix them. Now, it's not only the amazing artwork that smashes my ego into tiny little fragments. It didn't take me that long to consider professional-level artists waay out of my league, to tell myself I didn't have to worry about them for another ten years. Now, it's the artwork that's as good as mine, slightly better, or slightly worse. With the art that's at my level, I ask myself why I'm still at the level I am. With artwork that's slightly better, I ask myself why I'm not there yet. With artwork that's slightly worse than mine, I ask myself why I still have the flaws present in that artwork. The worst part is, the remnants of my ego from elementary school keep me from distinguishing what's what.
And so comes the realization that I'm not improving as rapidly or as much as I'd like. So come the realizations that I'm not special or chosen or unique, that I'm not impressive, and neither is my artwork. Drawing can be learned after all, and there are many who can recreate a scene exactly with the slightest effort. It's come to the point that I see my art as getting worse and worse instead of better and better. At times, I wish and hope and yearn (I'd pray if I believed in any of it) to hate my art, just so I could give up and quit and never have to look at a 4B pencil with any more thought than, "Huh, I didn't know there was anything other than HB" ever again.
So, if anyone would like the know, the secret to being an artist is to practice, of course, and be cocky. Draw whenever you can, at any possible moment, even if your teachers hate you for it or your friends make fun of you for it. You're an artist, so create art. But let yourself get a little bit cocky. Tell yourself, Hey, I'm pretty good at this. There's no other way you'll be able to get over the constant self-criticism or the jeers from your friends.
And, look, I'm not saying that's gonna get you to be a good artist. You're going to have to study some things and keep working and bashing yourself and trying to improve. But the ego's going to help you get to the point where you're willing to do that. What I'm trying to figure out is how to keep that ego from getting so big that it keeps you from getting anywhere once you've really started to improve.
__________________________
Lately, I think I've come dangerously close to quitting drawing quite a few times in that past, say, five weeks. I don't know if maybe I'm just going through a phase, or maybe drawing was just a phase (that lasted almost 8 years) but I don't really enjoy it. Then again, I've come to not enjoy sleeping, either, so maybe there's just something wrong with me.
The good news is, I'm starting to invest in traditional artwork, where I use an actual pencil or a real paintbrush with real synthetic hair (see what I did there?), a bit more. Actually, this morning I was at an art class (because I've started taking real art classes, in which I give someone some money, and in turn someone tells me, Move your pencil like this, keep in mind the light source, and voila, a masterpiece) and I swear to god I heard someone from the kids' painting class in the next room say, "When I was a little kid..." The kid couldn't have been older than 7. Are seven-year-olds allowed to say that, or am I just a senile old f**k who needs to be institutionalized?
Anyway, I think I started to come dangerously close to quitting soon after my parents got me a new tablet last month. That isn't to say I didn't appreciate it-- tablets are lovely inventions, and I was a stupid prick for not appreciating them in middle school. No, not that at all. It's just the type of tablet they got . 'Cuz it was a Wacom Cintiq.
That, for all you traditionalists out there who don't know what a tablet is, is a device used for drawing that features a large pad on which you can use an electronic pen and make lines and scribbles and marks appear on the computer screen as if by magic. With most tablets, that pad is blank and you're forced to look up at the computer screen, meaning you're not actually looking at where your hand is, so it takes a few months of practice before the lines start to move any distance away from awkward. With a Cintiq, however (the smaller of the two models, incidentally, costing, oh, about $1,000 [that's a comma, folks]) the pad is actually an LCD screen on which you can see the computer screen, so you don't have to look two feet from where your hand actually is to draw.
It's a beautiful manifestation of human ingenuity, but it's making me miserable. First off, it has miles and miles of wires, and a bajillion little plugs and it's a pain to start up. Secondly, plugging in the video adapter causes the colors on my computer screen to turn unnaturally bright, and the colors on the tablet differ from the ones normally on my computer, so the colors on my drawing turn out more than a little warped. Lastly, I am a 16-year-old girl who draws cartoons as a hobby. What the f**king hell am I doing with a Cintiq?
A Cintiq is a tablet primarily used by professionals-- because, really, only advanced and well-off professionals are able to afford it. It's the kind of tablet that should only be touched by a professional who's able to sell his/her artwork for thousands of dollars with the confidence that some company or advertiser or other will willingly pay those thousands of dollars to use that artwork. I have a hard time getting people to pay a couple of bucks for my artwork. (*ahem* Artwork that takes me four or more hours to make. Meaning for any four hour drawing sold at $2, I'm basically paid 50 cents an hour.) I'm nowhere near skilled enough to use a Cintiq properly, and I really shouldn't be within a 20-meter radius of it, anyway.
And it's been a while since we bought it, and it's been used, and I doubt anyone I could possibly contact would be willing/able to drop a few hundred (or a thousand) dollars to take it off my hands. I actually stated explicitly that all I wanted was an intuos4, a very nice tablet by the same company. Sure, it doesn't have a screen on it, but it doesn't have 6 miles of wires, doesn't take half an hour to set up, and I won't need to get a separate truck to drive it to another state when I leave for college.
So, I don't really mean to complain about my tablet, though that's really what I'm doing. My dad, the, er, genius who decided to buy me that monster of a doohickey, gave the excuse of, Oh, it's for my precious and only daughter. If you really thought so highly of me, you'd take the time to listen to a few of the words that come out of my mouth and maybe take them into consideration when you want to buy me a $1,000 gadget that I neither need nor want.
And as a warning to any aspiring digital artists who may have come across this blog post because I used the words "cintiq" and "wacom" and "tablet" so many times, if you're a beginner, get a bamboo. Once you get better, stick with your bamboo. Once that thing gets old and decrepit and you're serious about your art and you've lost the arrogance that got you so into drawing and you think you may have improved a smidgen since you started over 5 years ago, go ahead and get a better tablet. But stay away from the Cintiq until you're absolutely sure you need it. There are professional artists who are making money without Cintiqs, and who've even forgone the chance to get one because they don't need one. So don't bother. You don't need one. Why would you need one? Honestly?
I've come to realize the true secrets to becoming an artist. While I've never gained the internet fame (or real-world fame, even in my school) to have dozens of people ask me, "OMG, leik, how does u draw so good?" I have in fact figured out how to get there.
I first discovered what may be considered by some to be artistic talent in about 4th grade, when we were assigned to draw trees, and the trees I drew looked 6% more like trees than the trees my classmates drew, and they told me that my trees were amazing and that I must be so talented. I let those few comments get to my head and I started drawing everywhere. I'd doodle on my notes, on assignments; I would've drawn on the walls if my parents hadn't been so strict. My fifth grade teacher hated me because of it, but I didn't think too highly of her, either, and that childish spite spurred me on to keep drawing and drawing in drawing. In sixth grade, my homeroom teacher and my art teacher complimented my drawings, and that burst of confidence lasted through seventh grade.
I thought to myself, somewhat subconsciously, that I was chosen in some way, that I was special, as long as I wasn't looking at someone else's artwork. At first, only the artwork that was better than mine bothered me. Something pricked at the back of my mind, asking, if I was so special, why wasn't I as good as Sally or Joey or Kevin or Rachel? So I quietly pushed those doubts away and kept drawing and drawing, telling myself I'd be as good as them soon enough.
And then I reached high school, and that confidence, completely unfounded, now that I think about it, started to dissipate. I started to notice weird quirks in anatomy, weird facial features, in middle pointed out and poked fun at by peers. Now that I was in high school, I started to notice them myself and worked and worked to try to fix them. Now, it's not only the amazing artwork that smashes my ego into tiny little fragments. It didn't take me that long to consider professional-level artists waay out of my league, to tell myself I didn't have to worry about them for another ten years. Now, it's the artwork that's as good as mine, slightly better, or slightly worse. With the art that's at my level, I ask myself why I'm still at the level I am. With artwork that's slightly better, I ask myself why I'm not there yet. With artwork that's slightly worse than mine, I ask myself why I still have the flaws present in that artwork. The worst part is, the remnants of my ego from elementary school keep me from distinguishing what's what.
And so comes the realization that I'm not improving as rapidly or as much as I'd like. So come the realizations that I'm not special or chosen or unique, that I'm not impressive, and neither is my artwork. Drawing can be learned after all, and there are many who can recreate a scene exactly with the slightest effort. It's come to the point that I see my art as getting worse and worse instead of better and better. At times, I wish and hope and yearn (I'd pray if I believed in any of it) to hate my art, just so I could give up and quit and never have to look at a 4B pencil with any more thought than, "Huh, I didn't know there was anything other than HB" ever again.
So, if anyone would like the know, the secret to being an artist is to practice, of course, and be cocky. Draw whenever you can, at any possible moment, even if your teachers hate you for it or your friends make fun of you for it. You're an artist, so create art. But let yourself get a little bit cocky. Tell yourself, Hey, I'm pretty good at this. There's no other way you'll be able to get over the constant self-criticism or the jeers from your friends.
And, look, I'm not saying that's gonna get you to be a good artist. You're going to have to study some things and keep working and bashing yourself and trying to improve. But the ego's going to help you get to the point where you're willing to do that. What I'm trying to figure out is how to keep that ego from getting so big that it keeps you from getting anywhere once you've really started to improve.
__________________________
Lately, I think I've come dangerously close to quitting drawing quite a few times in that past, say, five weeks. I don't know if maybe I'm just going through a phase, or maybe drawing was just a phase (that lasted almost 8 years) but I don't really enjoy it. Then again, I've come to not enjoy sleeping, either, so maybe there's just something wrong with me.
The good news is, I'm starting to invest in traditional artwork, where I use an actual pencil or a real paintbrush with real synthetic hair (see what I did there?), a bit more. Actually, this morning I was at an art class (because I've started taking real art classes, in which I give someone some money, and in turn someone tells me, Move your pencil like this, keep in mind the light source, and voila, a masterpiece) and I swear to god I heard someone from the kids' painting class in the next room say, "When I was a little kid..." The kid couldn't have been older than 7. Are seven-year-olds allowed to say that, or am I just a senile old f**k who needs to be institutionalized?
Anyway, I think I started to come dangerously close to quitting soon after my parents got me a new tablet last month. That isn't to say I didn't appreciate it-- tablets are lovely inventions, and I was a stupid prick for not appreciating them in middle school. No, not that at all. It's just the type of tablet they got . 'Cuz it was a Wacom Cintiq.
That, for all you traditionalists out there who don't know what a tablet is, is a device used for drawing that features a large pad on which you can use an electronic pen and make lines and scribbles and marks appear on the computer screen as if by magic. With most tablets, that pad is blank and you're forced to look up at the computer screen, meaning you're not actually looking at where your hand is, so it takes a few months of practice before the lines start to move any distance away from awkward. With a Cintiq, however (the smaller of the two models, incidentally, costing, oh, about $1,000 [that's a comma, folks]) the pad is actually an LCD screen on which you can see the computer screen, so you don't have to look two feet from where your hand actually is to draw.
It's a beautiful manifestation of human ingenuity, but it's making me miserable. First off, it has miles and miles of wires, and a bajillion little plugs and it's a pain to start up. Secondly, plugging in the video adapter causes the colors on my computer screen to turn unnaturally bright, and the colors on the tablet differ from the ones normally on my computer, so the colors on my drawing turn out more than a little warped. Lastly, I am a 16-year-old girl who draws cartoons as a hobby. What the f**king hell am I doing with a Cintiq?
A Cintiq is a tablet primarily used by professionals-- because, really, only advanced and well-off professionals are able to afford it. It's the kind of tablet that should only be touched by a professional who's able to sell his/her artwork for thousands of dollars with the confidence that some company or advertiser or other will willingly pay those thousands of dollars to use that artwork. I have a hard time getting people to pay a couple of bucks for my artwork. (*ahem* Artwork that takes me four or more hours to make. Meaning for any four hour drawing sold at $2, I'm basically paid 50 cents an hour.) I'm nowhere near skilled enough to use a Cintiq properly, and I really shouldn't be within a 20-meter radius of it, anyway.
And it's been a while since we bought it, and it's been used, and I doubt anyone I could possibly contact would be willing/able to drop a few hundred (or a thousand) dollars to take it off my hands. I actually stated explicitly that all I wanted was an intuos4, a very nice tablet by the same company. Sure, it doesn't have a screen on it, but it doesn't have 6 miles of wires, doesn't take half an hour to set up, and I won't need to get a separate truck to drive it to another state when I leave for college.
So, I don't really mean to complain about my tablet, though that's really what I'm doing. My dad, the, er, genius who decided to buy me that monster of a doohickey, gave the excuse of, Oh, it's for my precious and only daughter. If you really thought so highly of me, you'd take the time to listen to a few of the words that come out of my mouth and maybe take them into consideration when you want to buy me a $1,000 gadget that I neither need nor want.
And as a warning to any aspiring digital artists who may have come across this blog post because I used the words "cintiq" and "wacom" and "tablet" so many times, if you're a beginner, get a bamboo. Once you get better, stick with your bamboo. Once that thing gets old and decrepit and you're serious about your art and you've lost the arrogance that got you so into drawing and you think you may have improved a smidgen since you started over 5 years ago, go ahead and get a better tablet. But stay away from the Cintiq until you're absolutely sure you need it. There are professional artists who are making money without Cintiqs, and who've even forgone the chance to get one because they don't need one. So don't bother. You don't need one. Why would you need one? Honestly?
25 January 2012
So.. Hospitals
Something wonderful happened to me last night. I went to bed at 11pm! And it was amazing. But, when I woke up and my stomach started hurting reaally badly, and so I went to the doctor. She was worried I might have appendicitis, so I went to the emergency center of a nearby hospital, where I had an ultrasound, and they couldn't find my appendix. They said, Hey, maybe nuthin's wrong with ya, and sent me home.
I am a firm believer in karma and the balance of cosmic energy, so I'm not trying to think of what terrible thing I did last week. Firstly, there are waaay too many terrible things I did. Secondly, no matter what thousands of clueless white people say, karma has bad things happen to you because of bad things you did in a past life. So if you punched your sister in the face for no reason or ran over a cat, your retribution did not come two weeks later in the form of rotten milk. No, the universe ain't done with you yet, and you're gonna have to pay for it in your next life.
Anyway, what I mean to say is, maybe because I was actually able to get more than 5 hours of sleep last night, the universe decided something bad needed to happen to me to balance it out.
And you'd think that since I didn't need much done while I was there, I'd be in and out pretty quickly. But I was there for about 5 hours. And any amount of hours is waaay to long to stay in a hospital. It was all white and sterile and noisy and scrubs. And it reminded me of something I haven't heard since elementary school.
Remember in elementary school, your teacher would always call your mother "Mum" and your father "Dad"? Well, it happened again. Turns out they do it in children's hospitals, too.
I never understood why people do it. What? Don't call my mum "Mum." You already have a mum. Heck, you're old enough to be her parent! Stoppit.
So, all in all, I'm more or less okay. My stomach hurts if I press it too hard, but, hey, I got to miss school! I thought it'd be a great chance to get homework done, but I still got home at about three, so I won't be getting much more done in the end.
I am a firm believer in karma and the balance of cosmic energy, so I'm not trying to think of what terrible thing I did last week. Firstly, there are waaay too many terrible things I did. Secondly, no matter what thousands of clueless white people say, karma has bad things happen to you because of bad things you did in a past life. So if you punched your sister in the face for no reason or ran over a cat, your retribution did not come two weeks later in the form of rotten milk. No, the universe ain't done with you yet, and you're gonna have to pay for it in your next life.
Anyway, what I mean to say is, maybe because I was actually able to get more than 5 hours of sleep last night, the universe decided something bad needed to happen to me to balance it out.
And you'd think that since I didn't need much done while I was there, I'd be in and out pretty quickly. But I was there for about 5 hours. And any amount of hours is waaay to long to stay in a hospital. It was all white and sterile and noisy and scrubs. And it reminded me of something I haven't heard since elementary school.
Remember in elementary school, your teacher would always call your mother "Mum" and your father "Dad"? Well, it happened again. Turns out they do it in children's hospitals, too.
I never understood why people do it. What? Don't call my mum "Mum." You already have a mum. Heck, you're old enough to be her parent! Stoppit.
So, all in all, I'm more or less okay. My stomach hurts if I press it too hard, but, hey, I got to miss school! I thought it'd be a great chance to get homework done, but I still got home at about three, so I won't be getting much more done in the end.
23 January 2012
Wasted Effort
Boy, oh, boy, three weeks into January and I'm already failing at improving myself as a human being. I haven't been sleeping at 11, even though I've had the chance to quite a few times, and I keep putting off homework, and I haven't been blogging...
And I honestly have no excuse for it. I just never really felt like it, or I just had nothing to talk about, or I didn't feel like it... But I do feel sorry for it. I'm very sorry, guys (meaning the... two(?) people who read this).
Oh, and, uh, it's been brought to my attention that on a recent blog post, when I gave you my tumblr, I went and wrote "twitter" instead of "tumblr." And I don't even have a tumblr... But, evidently from the URL, it is, indeed, a tumblr. And I don't really feel like fixing it, especially since I discovered it quite a while ago, but I just wanted to put that out there. I did something stupid, ahahaha...
So, uh, anyway, I, somehow, have been put in charge of writing horoscopes for my school's magazine this issue! Yaaay! Not really... It's hard for someone like me to write stuff like, "Oh, hey, your life is wonderful and you are totally not a waste-of-space excuse for a human being! Don't change anything about your life because you are awesome! Oh, and you'll meet a tall, dark stranger at 5pm next Tuesday." But, I did it, somehow, and it's really, I dunno, 300 words of, what was it, brain goo (a term I learned from a friend, and I've just been waiting and waiting to use!) but it seems to be publishable, at least, so away to the presses!
I was also put in charge of drawing little personifications of the zodiac signs, like little, weirdly-proportioned anime drawings and I put a crapload of effort into all 12 of them. And then I remembered (all too late) that I only had one page to squeeze them all onto, so they're all very tiny and you can't really see any of the crapload of effort I put into anything, and it really made me very sad. Why did I go spend 3 hours on each one? Bah, it's because I love drawing with photoshop, and I needed an excuse to stay up for hours, just mindlessly drawing and muttering to myself. But I regret it now!
Though, when I think about it, it's really all my fault. I could've just done little sketchy, half-hour doodle things. And I actually kinda chose, somehow, to write the horoscopes. See, at the beginning of the grading cycle, I wasn't assigned a story, and one of the editors felt bad, and I had a choice between writing horoscopes, a story on basketball (I think) or a list of the 5 best places to take a date! Sadly, my knowledge of basketball stops at "the ball is orange" and my knowledge of dating is limited to "um...what?" so I just chose what I'm best at, which is making stuff up. But I had to make stuff up that was optimistic and happy. So, I wrote stuff, slapped on an awful pseudonym, and that is my greatest regret for this month.
_____________
Y'know, it's only January, and I already can't wait for summer to come. I have the kind of feeling I get when I decide to stay up all night, thinking it'll be easy. But I don't take into account aaall the hours between 11pm and 7am, which is a sh*t-ton of hours to not spend sleeping, and I think to myself, holy crap, there is no way I'll get through this alive. So I give up and go to bed at maybe 1 or 2 in the morning, and roll around fitfully in bed before falling into a relaxing, fitful slumber, and waking up 4 hours later wanting to stab a small animal.
But June's really a long, long ways away. I wonder if I can survive that long... I have this vague, uncomfortable feeling that I'm slowly being driven mad by somebody, but it might just be that I've always had that feeling, but I'm just more aware of it now, because I am a paranoid little twit.
Anyway, I'm sorry this blog post was also a bit of a flop (a bit?), but the whole, "Ha I'mma stay up all night-- never mind, holy crap it's three, I should go to sleep now" thing happened. Last night. So I honestly don't know if I'm writing in English right now.
Am I making any sense?
Comprenez-vous?
私の言葉分かりますか？
I don't know how to write that in any other language. And what I have written is more like, "Do you understand?" because I have really forgotten the majority of French and Japanese I should know...
Aah, I hope this feeling goes away when I'm a grown-up...
And I honestly have no excuse for it. I just never really felt like it, or I just had nothing to talk about, or I didn't feel like it... But I do feel sorry for it. I'm very sorry, guys (meaning the... two(?) people who read this).
Oh, and, uh, it's been brought to my attention that on a recent blog post, when I gave you my tumblr, I went and wrote "twitter" instead of "tumblr." And I don't even have a tumblr... But, evidently from the URL, it is, indeed, a tumblr. And I don't really feel like fixing it, especially since I discovered it quite a while ago, but I just wanted to put that out there. I did something stupid, ahahaha...
So, uh, anyway, I, somehow, have been put in charge of writing horoscopes for my school's magazine this issue! Yaaay! Not really... It's hard for someone like me to write stuff like, "Oh, hey, your life is wonderful and you are totally not a waste-of-space excuse for a human being! Don't change anything about your life because you are awesome! Oh, and you'll meet a tall, dark stranger at 5pm next Tuesday." But, I did it, somehow, and it's really, I dunno, 300 words of, what was it, brain goo (a term I learned from a friend, and I've just been waiting and waiting to use!) but it seems to be publishable, at least, so away to the presses!
I was also put in charge of drawing little personifications of the zodiac signs, like little, weirdly-proportioned anime drawings and I put a crapload of effort into all 12 of them. And then I remembered (all too late) that I only had one page to squeeze them all onto, so they're all very tiny and you can't really see any of the crapload of effort I put into anything, and it really made me very sad. Why did I go spend 3 hours on each one? Bah, it's because I love drawing with photoshop, and I needed an excuse to stay up for hours, just mindlessly drawing and muttering to myself. But I regret it now!
Though, when I think about it, it's really all my fault. I could've just done little sketchy, half-hour doodle things. And I actually kinda chose, somehow, to write the horoscopes. See, at the beginning of the grading cycle, I wasn't assigned a story, and one of the editors felt bad, and I had a choice between writing horoscopes, a story on basketball (I think) or a list of the 5 best places to take a date! Sadly, my knowledge of basketball stops at "the ball is orange" and my knowledge of dating is limited to "um...what?" so I just chose what I'm best at, which is making stuff up. But I had to make stuff up that was optimistic and happy. So, I wrote stuff, slapped on an awful pseudonym, and that is my greatest regret for this month.
_____________
Y'know, it's only January, and I already can't wait for summer to come. I have the kind of feeling I get when I decide to stay up all night, thinking it'll be easy. But I don't take into account aaall the hours between 11pm and 7am, which is a sh*t-ton of hours to not spend sleeping, and I think to myself, holy crap, there is no way I'll get through this alive. So I give up and go to bed at maybe 1 or 2 in the morning, and roll around fitfully in bed before falling into a relaxing, fitful slumber, and waking up 4 hours later wanting to stab a small animal.
But June's really a long, long ways away. I wonder if I can survive that long... I have this vague, uncomfortable feeling that I'm slowly being driven mad by somebody, but it might just be that I've always had that feeling, but I'm just more aware of it now, because I am a paranoid little twit.
Anyway, I'm sorry this blog post was also a bit of a flop (a bit?), but the whole, "Ha I'mma stay up all night-- never mind, holy crap it's three, I should go to sleep now" thing happened. Last night. So I honestly don't know if I'm writing in English right now.
Am I making any sense?
Comprenez-vous?
私の言葉分かりますか？
I don't know how to write that in any other language. And what I have written is more like, "Do you understand?" because I have really forgotten the majority of French and Japanese I should know...
Aah, I hope this feeling goes away when I'm a grown-up...
03 January 2012
Semester 2: Day 1
Okay, so today wasn't too bad.
None of my classes were as miserable as they usually are, and some of them were downright tolerable. Already, I'm starting to wonder if those 2 weeks of vacation were just a dream... Did they really happen? As soon as I got out of the car and entered the courtyard, I had the very strong feeling that I had never left.
I should make another resolution.
My alarm is set at 6:46, and when it goes off, I will damn well get up at 6:46! I am a grown (teenage) woman (girl)! I have discipline, goshdarnit! (I have no impulse control and I hate myself for it!)
Anyway, I just found out I have a couple extra weeks to write an essay, so I can go do that over a weekend! Isn't it wonderful? Wonderful, wonderful. And I mean it this time.
Anyway, I'm actually doing homework right now. That is to say, I was, but then I decided to start blogging because procrastination means momentary happiness! Goddamnit I need to fix that... Anyway, I'm actually doing most of my homework the day it's assigned, which means I'm kind of starting to improve a little bit... Bah, wait til next week.......
And I miiight be able to go to bed before midnight today! Woo hoo, I am just rocking and rolling here...
And while I have a couple of hours of homework, my lovely freshman brother has none. Did I have that much free time in freshman year? Is that what it was like? Oh, let me go back, let me go back. Let's just hope I can survive until the second semester of senior year! I can do this! Rah rah! Hear me roar, world!
Anyway, I have homework to finish, but I felt like reporting on my first day back, and while it doesn't feel like the first day back after a long vacation at all (the general grogginess is felt every day!) it actually wasn't that terrible.
So, yeah. Doin' my homework the day it's assigned. This is an achievement.
Oh, and this is my second post of the week. Bahahaha!
Guwah, I need to get back to my homework...
Oh, and we've reached WWII in US history, which is gonna be fuuun. Except we only have two weeks to learn about it, but I have books and movies and historical articles on Cracked.com.
I feel like I should give this post a proper conclusion, but I didn't really have a plan for it, anyway. And, whew, there went 15 or 20 minutes. Yeah...
None of my classes were as miserable as they usually are, and some of them were downright tolerable. Already, I'm starting to wonder if those 2 weeks of vacation were just a dream... Did they really happen? As soon as I got out of the car and entered the courtyard, I had the very strong feeling that I had never left.
I should make another resolution.
My alarm is set at 6:46, and when it goes off, I will damn well get up at 6:46! I am a grown (teenage) woman (girl)! I have discipline, goshdarnit! (I have no impulse control and I hate myself for it!)
Anyway, I just found out I have a couple extra weeks to write an essay, so I can go do that over a weekend! Isn't it wonderful? Wonderful, wonderful. And I mean it this time.
Anyway, I'm actually doing homework right now. That is to say, I was, but then I decided to start blogging because procrastination means momentary happiness! Goddamnit I need to fix that... Anyway, I'm actually doing most of my homework the day it's assigned, which means I'm kind of starting to improve a little bit... Bah, wait til next week.......
And I miiight be able to go to bed before midnight today! Woo hoo, I am just rocking and rolling here...
And while I have a couple of hours of homework, my lovely freshman brother has none. Did I have that much free time in freshman year? Is that what it was like? Oh, let me go back, let me go back. Let's just hope I can survive until the second semester of senior year! I can do this! Rah rah! Hear me roar, world!
Anyway, I have homework to finish, but I felt like reporting on my first day back, and while it doesn't feel like the first day back after a long vacation at all (the general grogginess is felt every day!) it actually wasn't that terrible.
So, yeah. Doin' my homework the day it's assigned. This is an achievement.
Oh, and this is my second post of the week. Bahahaha!
Guwah, I need to get back to my homework...
Oh, and we've reached WWII in US history, which is gonna be fuuun. Except we only have two weeks to learn about it, but I have books and movies and historical articles on Cracked.com.
I feel like I should give this post a proper conclusion, but I didn't really have a plan for it, anyway. And, whew, there went 15 or 20 minutes. Yeah...
01 January 2012
I've just remembered...
What that last resolution was supposed to be. I will blog more often. I posted way too often when I first started this blog, and the writing was crap. Which isn't to say this writing isn't crap. We'll see.
Anyway, recently, I've been blogging less and less and instead of just letting this blog die, I've decided to try to keep it alive. Because I have people who read my writing, and I have people who seem to like it (again, for some... unfathomable reason...)
So, I will try to blog twice a week, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep that resolution for longer than, oh... half a week.
But, I like having this support for what you guys can tell is a crumbling ego, so this blog stays up!
(In case you couldn't tell, I hate myself a bit for waking up at about noon... I HAVE SCHOOL IN 2 DAYS WTFUDGE AM I DOING?)
Yeah, basically, what I need to work on this year (and the rest of my life) is IMPULSE CONTROL. Because procrastinating and doing dumb things lead to stress, which leads to illness, which leads to quicker death!
_____________
Also, I have a twitter now.
I've mentioned that I draw a few times on this blog, and in case you guys thought I was lying,
HERE:
http://kylix-bacchanalian.tumblr.com/
I started it only recently, but I decided that I will take the effort to post WIPs (works-in-progress) and doodles on it, because I want to start to make a name for myself in the internet's artistic community so that I could maybe start taking drawing commissions. So spread the word to your friends, if you feel so inclined! (Shameless self-advertising wut?)
_________
Ahem, anyway,
Happy New Year, guys!
Again....
I actually didn't have anything in particular to talk about (except what I wrote above, which is technically stuff to talk about, so why am I saying...)
Uh...
I'm glad you guys liked the story yesterday.
Hearing feedback was a nice way to start the year...
Anyway, recently, I've been blogging less and less and instead of just letting this blog die, I've decided to try to keep it alive. Because I have people who read my writing, and I have people who seem to like it (again, for some... unfathomable reason...)
So, I will try to blog twice a week, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep that resolution for longer than, oh... half a week.
But, I like having this support for what you guys can tell is a crumbling ego, so this blog stays up!
(In case you couldn't tell, I hate myself a bit for waking up at about noon... I HAVE SCHOOL IN 2 DAYS WTFUDGE AM I DOING?)
Yeah, basically, what I need to work on this year (and the rest of my life) is IMPULSE CONTROL. Because procrastinating and doing dumb things lead to stress, which leads to illness, which leads to quicker death!
_____________
Also, I have a twitter now.
I've mentioned that I draw a few times on this blog, and in case you guys thought I was lying,
HERE:
http://kylix-bacchanalian.tumblr.com/
I started it only recently, but I decided that I will take the effort to post WIPs (works-in-progress) and doodles on it, because I want to start to make a name for myself in the internet's artistic community so that I could maybe start taking drawing commissions. So spread the word to your friends, if you feel so inclined! (Shameless self-advertising wut?)
_________
Ahem, anyway,
Happy New Year, guys!
Again....
I actually didn't have anything in particular to talk about (except what I wrote above, which is technically stuff to talk about, so why am I saying...)
Uh...
I'm glad you guys liked the story yesterday.
Hearing feedback was a nice way to start the year...
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