Saturday, October 30, 2010

Bastion

My 20th birthday is next week. I normally get all excited about my birthday, but this year I'm having a hard time rallying up some energy. Maybe it'll come to me when the actual day is nearer. My birthday falls on daylight savings this year. I think that means it will be an extra hour longer! I like the idea of having a 25-hour birthday. Even though I have no plans to celebrate it at all yet.

I have no idea what I want for my birthday. I never do. I've been slowly putting together an Amazon Wishlist to prepare for such an occasion, but it seems like all I want are books and sewing machines. I am the most boring person on the planet. My parents already bought me my birthday present, this new computer, and for some reason I doubt that I will be getting many from other family or friends. Ah~ It sucks to grow up.


I really want to make another mask. I am already sort of planning out my next mask. I want to create the kitsune-type mask seen in the Noppera-Bo arc of Mononoke. (That one in the picture up there.) It may be way out of my league, though. Everything about that mask is a challenge, from the shape, to the multiple sections, to the eyes, even the little hairs sticking out. I don't even have a clue how to get the teeth in there, but one of the paper mache sculptors I watch on youtube uses a lot of teeth like that in his work, so I might just buy his book and apply his technique. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I just follow what's in his book, I'll have all of these difficult parts handled pretty well. Hmm...

I don't know when I am going to make this mask. I would like to make it over winter break when I am at home, but if I run out of time it might become a problem for my parents. But at the same time I think it would be really cool to work with Griffin on the mask. My next option is to make it next semester, but only if I move into a double-as-a-single room in the dorms. I'll have a spare desk I can make it on, and even the option to loft my bed and turn the area underneath into a work area. But then it's also a tiny room with virtually no ventilation (unless I want to freeze to death) so I can't use anything smelly, I won't have a dremel tool so I'll super need to plan ahead, and I have school all semester so I might not have much time to actually work on it. My final option is to wait and make it over summer break. It's the best option because I will have plenty of free time at home, even if I get a job and go through all that dental work. But it's my least favorite option because summer break is so far away.

But no matter what, I am excited at the idea of making another mask.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Puttin

I'm thinking about moving out of this dorm room. I've been thinking about it all semester, but these last 24 hours have put the idea in the front of my head.

It started around 2am, when my roommate thought she'd eat the noisiest bag of chips in the world for about an hour. She does that every weekend morning, and it always wakes me up, but I never said anything because hey, the weekend is the weekend, and she does it at like 8am anyways. But two in the freaking morning? On a school night? Not even a little bit okay.

Then there's the fact that the room has stunk all week. Today, I decided to go looking for the stench. Underneath my roommate's old pizza boxes that had moldy pizza in them, I found the thing that had been stinking up the room: A takeout container of old (and moldy) lasagna, heavy on the garlic. There's also a Tupperware container of moldy nachos rotting by the sink. She obviously doesn't know how to deal with food, or understand that it goes bad after a week and it turns into poison and starts to smell and should have gone in the fridge in the first place and stuff like that.

There are also two things I asked her not to do; I explicitly stated them when we put together the roommate contract. The first was to never touch my pens or pencils without asking. That's just because I'm crazy and those things are my breaking point. The second was to never have friends over while I am sleeping, and especially not to bring them around in the mornings when I am still in bed. I had a roommate that did that last year, and it turns out that it is an awful thing to do and I hate it. And I don't know why, but my current roommate keeps doing it. Sometimes I bring it up, and she says it'll never happen again, and other times I don't and I just seethe away into my pillow. This didn't happen today, but it still pisses me off.

I'm in the state of mind right now where if she is noisy and wakes me up again, or brings someone into the room again while I'm asleep, I'll just flip out and jump out of bed and tackle her. She can definitely take me down, but I've got crazy on my side.

Come to think of it, I don't have a problem with this room exactly, I just have a problem with the person living in it... And also I have a problem with its location. I would like it to not be on the other side of campus from the three friends I hang out with the most and the one parking lot that always has parking.

Either way, I got a letter in the mail today from housing asking me to verify that I am going to be in this same room this spring. So now is my chance to meet up with the lady behind the desk and arrange a new living situation. I already know of an open double-as-single room in South Hedges, and I have heard from a good source that there are going to be more open soon. And it just so happens that South Hedges is on the side of campus I want to live. I'll have to pay a lot more for housing, but I will be so much happier. I think this is going to work out well.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Cactus

To dearest Greg, who commented on my last entry,

I feel for you man, I really do. Also, who are you and how did you find my blog? You're blowing my mind over here.

Sincerely, Me!

My pathetic Halloween costume could be doing better at this point in time. It's never been much, but just now I've decided to ditch the outer sweater in the name of fashion, and I'm not entirely sure how to get the sword to attach to my back. It's also gone from being a knife in my back to being a sword in my back. I'm also running out of time to put the entire thing together, since Anime Club decided to bump out Halloween event from Sunday to Friday. I object to that because of the costume thing, and because it nows means I have no plans for Halloween, and no backup plans at all. How very sad.

So there is this drawing I've been working on. It involves a guy with his head completely tilted back. It's a difficult angle to draw, and it's impossible to find any references of a head at such an extreme angle. It's also been really hard trying to take a picture of myself with my head so far tilted back with only the camera on my phone. It's not like I can see what I'm doing. But I will persevere, because I really like how this image is turning out and I am having fun with all of the fiddly detailing that takes hours and hours to do. I'll consider showing you if I can ever find a way to get it onto my computer.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Anosmia

I tell people a lot that I don't have a sense of smell, but that is a lie. I do have a sense of smell, it is just really messed up. I know what things are supposed to smell like. Nine times out of ten, they smell completely wrong. I mean, my sense of smell used to be just fine, I haven't forgotten what things smell like. So it's not like I'm just confused about what things should smell like...

Here, let me give you an example.

I was melting some chocolate in a microwave with a friend. She went "Mmm, melted chocolate always smells so good," and then I held my nose because I thought it smelled horribly like burning rotten meat. Once the chocolate had cooled down, I took a sniff and it smelled like chocolate again.

There are some things that I can no longer smell: Cheddar cheese, certain flowers, and really random food items. Their scent is just completely gone to me. There are some things that I can smell correctly all of the time: Citrus, engine exhaust, poop, garlic. Everything else it seems like complete chance what will happen when I smell it. Usually it comes out really weird, "Your soap smells like duct tape," other times it smells completely normal, and sometimes I just can't smell it at all.

I don't know what caused my sense of smell to be like this. I don't know when it happened, but I do know it used to be just fine. I don't know what triggers it, and I don't know why some days it seems to be back to normal. I can taste everything just perfectly no matter what my sense of smell is doing. It is only a hindrance on days when everything smells extremely awful. And because of those days, I travel with a perfume stick and some spray that I can always smell that seems to covers up other bad smells just fine.

Anyways, I bring this up because I plugged in a cucumber melon scented thing, and it smells like peanuts and Chinese food to me.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Live Yesterday

I'm considering taking up a religion. We've been discussing Buddhism a lot in my Japanese Literature class. One basic idea of Buddhism, it seems, is that life is suffering, and suffering is caused by desire. Therefore, one should try to live life without desire. I like the way that works out--It encourages you to live simply and within your means. It causes you to take on a different view of life. It does not tell you what is right or wrong about another person, it just tells you how you should govern yourself. That is what I want in a religion, a way of thinking that will make me see the world in a different light, and will cause me to strive for something greater. In Buddhism's case, the something greater is enlightenment.

Unfortunately, I completely disagree with the idea that suffering is caused by desire. Desiring things is fun and healthy, there is no way I'm going to cut it out of my life. So Buddhism is not for me.

... But I might limit what I desire. Material things are pretty worthless in the end, so maybe I'll just desire more fulfilling things. Like earning my degree.

I was considering just sticking to Christianity, since that is what I was raised with and a lot of its values are just common sense to me. Plus, I already own a copy of the Bible. But there is so much stigma with that religion, and there are too many disagreements about how it should be practiced. I do not want to be associated with the people that have taken the religion too far. I just want to follow the ideas like "Turn the other cheek," and "Love thy neighbor." I feel like the actual stories and words are irrelevant, and the morals and ideas behind them are what I should listen to. But I don't know of any flavor of Christianity that thinks like I do.

I don't know enough about other religions to form any sort of idea about them. I'm thinking I'll just go out and buy some Dummies' Guides to a few popular religions, and see what they teach. I want to research old and possibly dead religions, and see what sorts of values they had as well. I'm probably not going to do any of this, though. I'm pretty lazy about these things.

My biggest problem with finding a religion that suits me will probably be that I pretty much reject the idea of a God. (I hope I don't accidentally offend people in this paragraph.) I have never been much into idol worship. Yeah, Jesus was a great guy and he did good things, and I'll do what I can to be like him, but I am not going to devote my life to worshiping and loving him. Or his dad. I find the whole idea of his dad to be absolutely baffling, but that is something for a later day. I just can't get into a religion where the whole point is to worship some being that may or may not exist. It's cool to admire strong figures in a religion, but worshiping them shouldn't be necessary.

In that same vein, stories of a supernatural being strike me as more of a bedtime story. The story where Jesus turns one fish and one loaf of bread into many fish and many loaves of bread is a good example of this. It's impossible, and I don't think it happened, and there is no reason why I should go about life as if it actually happened in the past. But it is a great story, that shows how Jesus was a good person that cared for others and did whatever was in his power to help. The story should be used to teach people what they should be like, as another example of how Jesus is a model Christian and you should try to be like him. The morals behind it all are just great, but asking me to firmly believe in it is akin to telling me Superman is real and he's saving people as we speak.

I think I will just stick with being agnostic for the next few years. It seems like the least offensive thing I can be. The popular religions have huge wars and crazies making the news, a lot of people find atheists to be morally offensive (But I do not understand why), and smaller religions tend to have to explain themselves to every person that is unfamiliar with them. So I am agnostic, with a chance of starting my own religion. (I'd really love to start a religion.)

Monday, October 18, 2010

Cafickle

My life has been reduced to sitting around and doing homework. When I'm not doing homework, I'm thinking about homework. Usually thoughts about which homeworks I don't absolutely need to do, and how I can get out of the ones that are required. That game I was programming last month? Dropped it. My knitting hobbies? Ignored for months. Video games? I allow myself to play for maybe 30 minutes at a time a few nights a week before I go to bed. If I want to play more, I risk getting less sleep than I need to feel alive. My life is so two dimensional right now that it horrifies me. I also haven't been eating so well lately, because my schedule has become so erratic. Even though I'm eating dramatically less than normal, I think I might have put on some weight. I can't really tell, though, I'm so skinny that any weight I put on just makes me appear more normal. My skin has been breaking out horribly, though, probably from poor nutrition.

Anyways, despite this sudden turn of stressful events, I believe that I am still a very interesting person. I'm getting all jazzed up about my Halloween costume, for example. It's really nothing special, but putting it together will be a lot of fun for me.

The idea for the costume is just me, but with a knife sticking out of my back. I want there to be blood stained all around the wound, and well as blood dripping form my darkened eyes and mouth. There are going to be three parts to this costume: The clothes, the makeup, and the knife.

The clothes:
Halloween here is notoriously cold. I can't simply attach a knife to my shirt and be done with it, I need a jacket if I want to survive outside. Even a kinda thick sweater will work. As it just so happens, I don't have a single jacket or sweater that I am willing to ruin, so a trip to GoodWill is required. I'm going to cut a slot in the jacket for the knife to fit through, and possibly a slot in the shirt too, depending on how I decide to attach the knife. The idea is that I will be able to remove my jacket (albeit with some difficulty) and still have the knife in my back. Both the jacket and the shirt will have blood stains around the knife. I want this to be gruesome.

The makeup:
I want to have super pale skin, so I'm gonna need to find some really ridiculously pale makeup to dust onto my face and hands. White face paint will be too stark and too messy and too difficult to apply evenly, so hopefully I'll find something. Maybe a pale creamy base makeup with talcum powder patted into it. I don't know, that sort of thing is not what I do well. But I also want to darken my eyes and make them look all sunken in. I'm going to mix up a tiny batch of fake blood and have some dripping from the corner of my mouth and one of my eyes. Because, c'mon, I was stabbed, I am bleeding internally.

The knife!:
I am excited about the knife because I want to make it out of my favorite clay. You know, for durability. I'm going to start out with a thin cardboard base, wrap up the handle part with some masking tape, and just go at it. I haven't decided on what type of knife or how big I want it to be yet. I might go for your average kitchen knife, or I might try a dagger with a pretty handle. I'm thinking I'm going to either paint it with metallic paint or use a glossy top coat, or both, to get it to look kinda like metal.
I also haven't decided on how I'm going to get the knife to attach to me. I'm thinking about wrapping bandages around my chest, and something from that knife is going to be held in place by those bandages. If I do that, then I will absolutely need to cut holes in the shirt and jacket. I'm also looking at really strong magnets embedded in the knife (unlikely, but it would be awesome if it worked), or wires from the knife that can poke through my shirt and then be secured to me by the bandages. The best solution would be the magnets, but the likelihood of finding magnets strong enough and in time is very low.
All I know is, the knife needs to be connected to me, not the shirt. Otherwise it'll sag and flop about.

Putting this costume together at home would be simple and easy, but trying to put it together here in the dorms is going to be where the fun and challenge comes in at. I don't have any of the supplies I need at all. I don't even have a workspace. Just trying to make the clay will be exciting. How many of the materials can I check out at the front desk, and how many materials can I borrow from friends? Will I have to buy all of it? I hope the front desk has drywall compound back there that I can borrow. Otherwise I don't know what I'm going to do with the leftovers. Probably donate it to them. Will they also have a clear finishing spray that I can use? Or... flour?

I can't sculpt the knife here in the dorms. It will take a long time for it to dry, and there isn't enough room in my room for it. I could use one of the little kitchens in the lounge, but I won't be able to sit there for a few days straight to make sure nobody messes with it while it dries. I think I will have to make it in my friend's apartment on her counter. I super hope she lets me.

Then there will also be spraying the outer coating on it. I might skip that part to save space, time, and money. But if I put expensive and strong magnet in it, then I want it to last, so I will have to spray it, and find a place to spray it. There are a lot of fields to use, but which one am I less likely to get yelled at for spraying stuff at?

Anyways, this entry is turning out really long because finishing it means going back to homework. Which, I guess, I'm gonna have to go back to now.