Flatscreens Are An Artist's Best Friend

Screw dabbling.
Everything I said yesterday was crazy-talk.
My true new best friend is my flat screen in my bedroom.
Talk about a nifty surprise to come home from school to.
"Hey mom, what's under the blanket in the car?"
"Something for you."
"*lifts* HOLY SCHMOLY."
Sure, it's not super huge. But it's pretty and it lets me watch tv in my room.
Want to know the last time I had a television in my room?
Here's a hint: I had just lost my first ever tooth.
Give up?
I was about 5 or 6.
Yeah, I've been television-in-room deprived for a while. What do you see on my television screen you may ask?
Left 4 Dead.
WOW WHO WOULD'VE GUESSED? GEE THAT JUST CAME OUT OF THE BLUE.

Actually, it was a bittersweet day.
Yesterday my friend Kush that's deployed in Turkey was shot. Plus his whole troop or platoon or crew, whatever you call the people he was in charge of, was killed. He was demoted a rank and is being sent home.
But, the reason the day was bittersweet was because we were on the game, and then he suddenly signed off and sent Jessie a text message saying "everything in the base just went black." "something's up."
And we haven't heard from him since.
For any other person, we'd assume it was just a blown circuit or something. But for someone that was just shot and had a whole squad killed, we're worried.
He's actually very lucky. The shot that hit him was meant for his head. It deflected off of his helmet and struck him in the ass.
He was joking about it tonight. I said "I'm playing on my new flatscreen!" Jessie said "I'm playing with my new wireless mic!" "Really, I can top all of you! I'M PLAYING WITH HALF AN ASS!"

That's the last I remember him saying before we lost contact with him.
From what I've heard from Jessie and my friend Haney, he may not even receive a purple heart.
It makes me so angry. He's the sweetest guy ever and he's being put through so much. What scares me the most is that he could be dead today if not for his helmet. And how would we have found out?
All we can do is sit and wait and hope that he gets in touch and lets us know that he's okay.

Today at school was pretty uneventful. Math = math. History = history. Sociology = sociology. Spanish = leg tattoo.
What?
Oh, that's right. Leg tattoo! The thing that's completely altered how I view my teacher for the rest of the semester!
She's an older woman. In her 60s definitely. White hair, frail skin. Has a great body though. Apparently she scuba dives and never had kids.
She wears these cool outfits that are for older woman, but I appreciate them. Today she wore these shorts that came down just right above her knees and were baggy.
We were like okay, shorts. Cool.
She pulled us all up to the front of the class and had us do these exercises to remember certain phrases. She sat down to demonstrate us and we all got a nice view of up-shorts.
No, we didn't see her panties. We saw the long tattoo of paw prints going up her leg.
One girl said "Did you guys just see that?"
We were in disbelief. I mean wow.
One girl went to ask her to see it and another girl elbowed her in the ribs and we all were giggling. I'm sure the teacher thought we were talking bad about her. We weren't, really. We were just really surprised.
My friend KC HATES the class. I like it, on the other hand.
Here's me and KC:
You think my phone takes good pictures? Take a look at that bad-boy that she took.
There's actually a kind of cute guy in my spanish class named Daniel. He's an English major like me. That's what really bonds us well. There are NOT many English majors. No stable jobs for us.
He asked for my myspace today. Progress! So I wrote it on his hand.
Because that's where he asked me to write it.
That's a good sign, right? Asking me to temporarily ink my URL onto his body?
Next, he tattoos my name onto his buttocks!
Kidding.

As of right now the only unpacked COMPLETELY room in the house is our livingroom.I like it. But I've always liked rich colors. When my mom bought my TV at RC Willey she also bought us a loveseat, a chair, and an ottoman. So we get our family room soon. Yeah, we're spoiled. We get a family room and a livingroom.
I get my own office that sits off to the side of the living room in this weird tucked away corner with walls, but no door. It has walls and an opening that looks into the livingroom. That's where I'm sitting right now... so I leave you with a pic of me in it!

Dabbling is an Artist's Best Friend

I've found that the best way to grow as an "artist" (graphic artist or not) is to dabble.
Dabble in different things, whether you're good at them or not.
This is me dabbling in drawing:It's a pony.

This is me dabbling in photo-editing:Oooh, gruesome.

But the most recent thing I've started to "dabble" in is this:
Silhouettes.
Why?
Well, it never really hurts to learn how to do other things.
This is the first one I've ever done. It actually wasn't as hard as I expected it to be.
But why do I think it's important that I learn to do silhouettes?
Because the day someone asks me to do them for the layout and I say "I can't" will be the day I'm ashamed of myself.
That should be a simple thing for a graphic artist to do. But for the longest time I had no idea how do to it.

I'm not sure of the next thing that I should learn to do.
Obviously I can't draw. It's just not in my blood.
But I can't think of what else to learn. I even learned how to do minor animations.
It's not super amazing. But it can get me by when I need it.

What do you guys think I should dabble in next?

I'm just going to ramble.

It's easier for me to ramble. I can't really keep my mind on any specific subject right now.

The biggest subject in my mind is that I want a hot fudge sundae, but I don't know how long to heat the chocolate for.
I don't want to burn it. I burned more popcorn recently.
So I know that the second I put it in I'd smell burned, stinky chocolate.
I totally just messed up my hot fudge sundae.
I mixed the hot fudge with the ice cream. Thus making it... chocolate ice cream.
Boooo.
I don't know what it is. I've been so tired. So so so tired.
It makes it hard to focus on my screen.
That's why I haven't finished my sociology project yet.
But it'll be done tomorrow. It kind of has to be done tomorrow.
I haven't practiced any spanish, either. Which is pretty bad.
Everyone else will come in and be fluent in a bunch of crap.
And I'll be like... um... No tengo?

Holy crap, something on tv just blew my mind.
If you buy a copy of Highschool Musical 3 on Bluray, they throw in a free copy of it on DVD.
Is DVD becoming so obsolete that they can do that? I remember when DVD was the cool new thing.
Now bluray is the cool new thing. Pfft. I can't even afford bluray. Eventually they'll come out with something so fancy that it's 100 dollars per movie. And people will buy it. You know they will.

I was pretty sick yesterday while Drew was here. My stomach was killing me. And I had a headache for a while.
I took a laxative. Yeah, I'm totally telling you that.
I was actually gasing Drew and my mom for fun.
At one point they both ran out of the room screaming at me.
I dutch-ovened my cat and she screamed and hissed and clawed me.
Keep in mind she was perfectly calm beforehand.

I don't care if that's TMI. It was hilarious to me.
Here's some pics from yesterday:Went to Gamestop today. Picked up two games: Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2. I don't really like Gears of War. It's too easy and pretty boring to be honest. Your character walks so slow.
Fallout 3 is awesome. Already knew that, though. Played it with Drew yesterday.
It's based in a few years in the future. But the real action happened in 2070. The US got in a pissing contest with China, and so China nuked Washington. Washington got pissed and nuked China. Everyone nuked everything and voila, for the most part the world is turned to dead.
You play as someone that was born in a bunker a few hundrew years later. This bunker is different from others. This one has an Overseer, who killed anyone that tried to escape from the bunker.
Well, our "father" escapes from the bunker. He's a scientist. So then the overseer is trying to kill you, because he thinks you know something about where your father is. But you wind up escaping.
People have been mutated outside, but most of your enemies are actual people. Raiders.
Raiders suck. You'll be sitting somewhere looking at the horizon and start getting shot in the back. You'll turn around and the freaking raider is popping a cap into you. Not cool.
Oh, and the currency in this new land is bottlecaps. But sometimes you use real money. But mostly only bottlecaps.

Anyway, enough about games. I'll leave you with something that I found very humorous today.
How many times have you seen this message on your screen and wanted to crush your computer?Well apparently we aren't the only ones with this problem.
Even shopping complexes... with best buys and GEEK SQUADS in them... have computer problems. But when they have them, we all have to see them!

Honka Honka, I'm the Gamestop Queen!

Now see, my crown is to be silly, but the clown nose is to add a touch of sophistication.

I'm tired and I'm going to do a better post tomorrow. I just thought I'd share this picture with you.

Balls.

That's my new catchphrase, I think.
I've said it a lot in the past couple of days.
I drop something. "Balls."
I forget something. "Balls."
I kill someone. "Double balls."

Balls can convey a lot of things.
I feel like balls.
I especially feel like balls because I'm single on Valentines Day.
I spent 2 years having someone to celebrate with.
And then he broke my heart and spirit a lot of other things.

So instead my mom and I are celebrating together.
I went to meet Jessie today. I was by myself. OMG DANGER.

No. I was safe. I asked her if she was an axe murderer before I went down to Subway.
She swore she wasn't a murderer, so I trusted her.
The two of us walked over to Walmart after Subway.We bought these two bears for this guy we play on xbox with. He's the one deployed in Turkey, and he's single so we thought it'd be nice to show him some love.
Then I bought my mom a 25 dollar red lobster giftcard.
She had been saying she hasn't had lobster in years, so... Happy Valentines, mommy!

She's making dinner right now and just busted two glasses. So I can't walk barefoot in the kitchen.
Which sucks because I hate wearing shoes in the house. I want my feet to be free!

I just found this video which wasn't AMAZING, but the effort put into it was. So... watch it and you'll understand.
I'm going to go lay down.

Back to Work, I think.

I should probably start working on layouts again.
I don't know. I've been on hiatus for like 2 weeks, and eventually people will start turning to others for their layouts.

I actually think this wasn't a resting hiatus.
It was a Left 4 Dead hiatus.
An excuse for me to play without any interruptions.

Someone that I made a layout for sent me a 20 dollar subway giftcard.
That was uber cool. I went and got myself a sandwich.
And my mom got one, too.
And they were delicious.

I still have 10 dollars on the card. And I'm hungry right now. But I can't do anything about that. Ungh.

I just went through my email and emailed everyone that's asked for a layout. So that's a step in the right direction.
I'm super tired today. Again. What is wrong with me? No matter how much I sleep I'm tired.
It's like god is pouring ambien into my sodas.
"Heheheheh"
"What're you doing, dad?"
"I'm making Lee tired. Watch, watch, she's yawning again!"
"Isn't that wrong, dad?"
"Go to your room, Jesus."

Yeah, I'm probably going to hell for that.
Worth it.

My mom finally got some curtains up, which is good. I couldn't see the TV because there are windows RIGHT behind me.
I was trying to play Left 4 Dead. "I CAN'T SEE ANY ZOMBIES THERE IS GLARE ON MY... I'm dead, aren't I?" "Yep." "Balls."

I almost met someone last night that I met on xbox. It sounds dangerous, but my mom was with me and it was at Subway.
Her name is Jessie and she literally lives 2 minutes away from me. It was really weird. She was telling a story and said she lived in Vegas. "What? Me too! That's weird!"
Later on I asked what part of town, just being nice. "Oh, I live over at the ***** and ***."

Let me stop here for a minute. I made sure in going over the conversation that I never told her where I lived first. She always did.
"I live over around ******* (broad area), but wait... I'm moving around that same area you're in. Do you know where there's a walmart?" "Yeah, I live right next to it."
And then it hit me that she lives in my neighborhood.
Out of millions of people on xbox, I run into someone that lives in my neighborhood.
Weird weird weird.
But we were going to meet at Subway with my mom, and she was going to bring her kids. But then her son spilled chocolate milk on himself.

Let me say that I don't condone meeting people from the internet. But I figured you're better off meeting in a public place with someone there with you than going over to their house and meeting alone.
Because that's how you get found 20 years later in a basement eating crackers and talking to rats.

My sociology project is almost done.
I'm going to show you guys my research project that I'm setting up.
And if my teacher googles my paper to make sure I didn't steal it and comes across this, well that would suck.
Because she would think I stole it from this page.
That would be random, right? "HONESTLY, THAT'S MY BLOG."

My research question: What is the common perception that male video-gamers have of female video-gamers?

Screw it. That's all you're getting. But I'll further explain it now.
I'm going to interview people I meet on xbox. Over the xbox, obviously. I'm not going to meet all of them. I'm going to ask them a series of questions about female gamers. Something like this:
What do you think the typical female gamer looks like?
How well do you think the typical girl gamer plays video games?
How intelligent do you think the typical girl gamer is?
etc. etc.

From what I gather I'll get a "typical" response.
Oh, and me and my friend were sexually harassed on xbox a couple nights ago. Actually that friend was Jessie. Someone sent us messages. The one I got was just him moaning and saying I have a sexy voice.
She got a lot of worse smut. We reported him.
And got all of our other friends to report him.
We actually have a gang of friends, and we always play together on left 4 dead. It's really fun.

One of them, we call him Kush. (I call him KUSHIEEEEBEAR! And Jessie calls him KUSHIEBEN!!") He's deployed in Turkey right now in the Air Force. "I'm serving my country!" "No, you're serving your country THANKSGIVING DINNER."
We laughed so hard at that. We laugh a lot when we play together. We're like the xbox best friends.
And kush is a southern gentlemen. When that guy harassed us he went crazy. Sent out this nasty message about him to all of his friends and had them report him.
So that was sweet.

I need to go eat lunch. So... here's my required material in order to post this blog without being stoned to death:

Oh, and before I forget, here's two videos to make you laugh. One is the original, of a kid that was drugged at the dentist and his dad is recording him in the back seat of the car, and the other is him "20 years later" after getting a divorce. (it's a spoof, obviously)



The divorce one is my favorite.

Dude.

Yeah, you heard me.
Dude.
Dude is the only semi-intelligent word I can use to describe how I'm feeling right now.
I can elaborate on it if you wish.
Dude, man. This is whack.

I'm so many different kinds of tired.
If tired could be collected like bottles of wine, I'd have all of the crappiest wines ever made stored up inside of me.
Even my poor little tiffy-poo is tired. She's on my lap chillin' while I'm in bed blogging.
I could be playing left 4 dead.
But I'm scared that if I do something like that, I'll pass out with the controller and wake up to my friend's screaming at me.
"LEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THERE IS A HUNTER ON MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."
"zz... oh what?"

I'm actually having a butt-ton of fun in spanish now. At first I hated it.
But now I love it.
Why?
Cuz they called me pretty.
I like it when people call me pretty. It wins me over.
And everyone knows my name. I was walking out of the class and people said "Bye, Jerri!"
Then I was downstairs and heard "Adios senorita!"
Turned around, one of my classmates was waving at me.
I feel loved.

Oh, and I have an update on cute-guy in my history class.
His name is Giulio. And he is a dud.
He failed history last year, and he reads reeeaaaaaally slow.
And in saying that, I have a feeling I'm going to befriend him, have him read the blog on accident, and then un-friend him.
He said "suuuuuuuup" to me when I was walking by.
Totally intelligent greeting. My heart pitter-pattered and I was blown away.
*swoon*
Kidding.

Melora and I went to Mickey D's and got some food. I got a butto-tono of food. I was hungry.
We yelled about the economy. And religion. And selfish people. And waste.
Essentially Melora is my favorite person to mature-talk with.

Oh, and I forgot to do a small sociology homework.
I had to run with the whole "My printer broke, can I email it tonight?" thing.
That was bad.

Here's something interesting for you all to chew on. My sociology teacher showed us a site that lists how many known hate groups are in your state, what they are, where they're located, and what they're known to have done.
We have a Ku Klux Klan in Nevada apparently.
Here's the site:
SPLCenter.org

What you may find interesting is that "Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints" is actually listed as a hate group in Utah.

Have you ever visited the Klan gift shop?
I have.
They sell t-shirts and stuff.

Did you know that they used to use the rainbow flag as one of their symbols? The idea was that god meant for all races to be separated just like the lines on a flag.
Interesting lesson for the day.

Now for the required picture (thanks a LOT yaya! jeese!):

And my wordle: