This is a strange test format. I missed #17 and tried a bunch of times to figure out different words for it... then I realized that I was right the first time, but had misspelled it! Dur. This one I can't figure out #10, and this one has me stumped for #7.

I started watching American Idol last year, and am watching it again this year. A lot of the time it's painful for me because it tends to have a lot of that Whitney Houston/Mariah Carey melismatic style singing, which I absolutely can't stand, but some of the time it's really good, and it's usually entertaining. I don't think I could watch it if I didn't have TiVo, though. For example, last night we watched both Tuesday's performance show and Wednesday's results show back to back in a total of about 45 minutes. I couldn't have spent 2 hours watching that.

Anyway, last night Jason Castro went home. He was the happy go lucky guy with the dreadlocks who was probably stoned about 98% of the time. I agree it was time for him to go home--vocally he just isn't up for this level of the competition. But I like the guy so much! He seems like he'd be really fun to hang around with (though he seems a little airheaded which would probably get old after a while) and he seems so genuinely nice! One thing I loved about him is his attitude about the show. He doesn't let it get to him. He seems happy to take the ride he's on for what it is, have fun doing it, and not take it too seriously. I think he was totally ready to go home and probably sort of baffled that he'd made it this far. His goodbye sing-out was so joyful and happy! I was a bit irritated that they cut it off when the credits ended. Boo!!

My favorite contestant is David Cook. I love his voice. He's also unsettlingly sexy, even though he isn't actually handsome or attractive. He just has a sexy way about him. I have downloaded some of his songs and some of the stuff he did with his old band, Axium. It's pretty good stuff. While he is my favorite, I don't think that I want him to win. The winner gets saddled with a really restrictive and controlling recording contract, and I think that it would hold him back from doing the music he wants and needs to do. I would probably buy an album of his, which I can't really say for any other AI contestant that I've seen in the 2 years I've watched the show.

David Archuleta I can't stand. He started off as a nice kid with a sweet voice, but now he's a bland, boring kid and all of his songs sound the same. His niceness turned out to be just shy dullness. He's totally one-dimensional (or comes across that way on TV anyway) and we've seen everything he can do and personally, I don't need to see any more. It would be bad enough if he was just boring. But he actively pisses me off because he chooses these iconic songs with really beautiful melodies, and then he takes a big, steamy crap on the melody and changes it into something unrecognizable. Or at least, it was unrecognizable. I've come to realize over the last several weeks that it's no longer unrecognizable because I've come to recognize it: it's the same freakin' melody that he morphs every other song he sings into. He has what I refer to as "pet note combinations" that he puts together that are the same in every song.The only thing different from week to week is the lyrics. It would be one thing if he was a kick ass songwriter and his new melodies were awesome, but he isn't and they're not. They're bland and awful and they're always the same. And then he throws all that melisma bullshit on top of it and makes me gag. He also breathes too loudly into the microphone and has zero stage presence. And then the judges, who must be smoking something, fawn all over him like he's a musical genius! It makes me want to throw things at the TV.

I want Syesha to win. She has had a great attitude through the whole show, she seems really nice, she has talent, and I think she has a career ahead of her (probably on Broadway). I don't think she'd be hurt by the AI recording contract the way Cook would, and she isn't as irritating as Archuleta.

So that's my opinion, anyway.

So I had my sculpture final critique today. It was supposed to be at 1:30 and you bring everything you've done all semester in and sit down one-on-one with the teacher and go over it. I started loading my car at 12:45 so I could get there early--it takes 10-15 minutes to drive to the school. So I load the two cat sculptures into a box in the car (the box is so they don't bump into stuff)...


Then I go back in and get the heads and carry them out to the back seat.


Just as I'm standing back up, the head in the middle falls off. HOLY CRAP! It's been glued down since yesterday with the lie that is Liquid Nails, but the glue is still squishy. Worse, it's stringy. The gesso that gave the base texture wasn't 100% dry yet, so it gouged up some of that and rubbed off onto the chin of the head. I tried sticking it back on but it just fell right back over. It leans slightly (intentionally), so it's not well balanced. Well what the hell do I do now?! My critique is in less than 45 minutes and my biggest project just broke! I started to sweat--literally--and then I had an idea. I took the whole thing back inside and put it on the counter, hanging over. I got out the drill and drilled a hole up through the base into the head, and then put a screw in it from the bottom. You can't see the screw inside the head because the Barbie doll is there. Then for good measure I put a screw in the other head that is on a neck. (The third head, with the bunny inside, is still emerging and is supported by the cross-section of the face, not the cross-section of the neck, so there is no top-heaviness to make it fall over.)

I get some white acrylic paint--no time to get the gesso and have it dry--and use it to touch up the gouged gesso and to "reseal" the seam where the neck meets the base, which had obviously torn open when the head fell over. Then I got out the red paint and touched up the part of the face that had gesso on it, and a razor blade and scraped off a little gesso from another spot that couldn't be painted. Now, in the course of handling the head to put it back on, it had gotten fingerprints all over it (the surface is still slightly soft) so I sprayed some varnish on it to make it look glassy again.

Whew! It's fixed! Wet, but fixed! I race it out to the car and start for school. It's 1:20. I called Justin, who I thought would be at the school and thankfully he was. I told him what happened and asked him to tell my teacher that I'd be there in about 15 minutes, but that I was on my way. At 1:35 exactly I pulled my car up to the sculpture studio loading door.

My critique ended up being around 2ish, and thankfully she liked the way the heads came out. She said the base sucks, but I knew that. It isn't the base I wanted to make but I didn't have the tools or materials to make the base I wanted, and I needed *something* to attach them to--so I threw this one together at the last minute because it was what I could do. She agreed that making a real base for it can be a project I do in the fall for Sculpture II. Yay! She also said that I can develop some more elements into my chair piece next semester.

(My invisible chair with the invisible person sitting in it that I did for the "chair" assignment. Not sure if I've posted anything about that one before.)

Her critique notes were:
Course Grade: A
1. Effort
2. Strong intuitive design
3. Intuitive understanding of what makes art art
4. Unmatched learning curve

That last one is awesome. I feel like I learned pretty quickly this semester--I learned a LOT of stuff--and it's awesome to know that it isn't just my own opinion.

My sculpture teacher is awesome. I really feel like I've found a mentor with her. I'm taking Sculpture II in the fall and will take III next spring. She's also going to guide me with my painting, since she is also a painter. I think her feedback is a thousand times more valuable than what I ever got from my painting teacher.

Interestingly, she said that she thinks that my sculptural concepts are stronger than my painting ones (though my technique in painting is more developed) which another classmate agreed with. Of course, she is the sculpture teacher so she may be biased.

Anyway, I'm really happy with how the critique went, and my semester is officially OVER! *party* I hung out for an hour or so after the critique chatting with the other people in my class. We're planning a cookout at my house next weekend, which should be fun. Also, Justin is probably coming over tomorrow night to watch Galaxy Quest. Woohoo!

Well that was different. I had my art history final this morning at 8:30am. I got there at 8:28 after having sat in traffic on the interstate for over half an hour (it usually takes me 10-15 minutes to drive to school) and I already had a headache from only getting about 3 hours of sleep.

The final is three sections. First is vocabulary, then slide identification, then essay. We do the vocabulary. I did fine on that part--I knew all of the words and could give examples. Then we did the slide identifications. I knew all of those, too, including the extra credit bits of info. About 15 minutes into the essay the power went out. We giggled figuring it was just going to be a flicker and it would be back on in a few seconds. That or the backup generators would kick in.

It didn't. They didn't.

After a couple of minutes of sitting in the dark a few of us tried to write by the light of our cell phones, but that was making my headache get worse rapidly. I said to the teacher that I was getting a headache and she said that there was some light coming in by the door at the back of the room and there was an empty desk up there. I tried that, but the people outside in the hall (zillions of them) were really loud and with little sleep + headache it was impossible to concentrate. After about 10-15 minutes of trying to write in the dark she said that if we wanted to just have her grade the first two parts, we could just write that on the front of the test booklet and go home. Or if we wanted to finish the essay and have it graded, we should write on the booklet to grade all three parts.

So I wrote "grade the first two" and threw in the towel on the essay and I left. I still have a headache. I have my final review for sculpture at 1:30; I think I might lie down for an hour or two between now and then and see if that helps.

There is a lot of really, really strange stuff out there on the web. For example... How to Crochet a Psychotic Tomato.

I haven't posted anything lately about how my final sculpture project is coming along. It's not because I haven't been working on it! I actually didn't document the long, boring middle part where I made a rubber mold from the clay head I sculpted, then made three wax heads from the rubber mold, then three plaster molds from the wax heads. But that's what I've been doing in sculpture class for several weeks now.

This weekend I actually got to start the fun part! I poured the resin!! I now have three transparent heads with "stuff" inside them. I don't have a name for this yet, but it's going to be something like "Developing Aesthetics"... something that explains that it's showing the progress of what is enjoyable aesthetically. The first emerging one has a stuffed bunny inside, and some sparkly gems. Little kids like fuzzy toys and sparkly things. That's what appeals to them aesthetically. The next one is filled with silk roses and a ballerina Barbie doll. As girls get older they tend to go through a romantic phase where everything is hearts and roses and princesses and ballerinas, etc.. The final head has paintbrushes in it, trailing ribbons of paint. This one shows where the aesthetic sense has moved on to enjoying art.



After I broke them out of the molds, there was a lot of work to do on the surface with a Dremel and sandpaper to get the surfaces smooth. Once they were mostly smooth, I painted on another coat of resin (mixed with extra hardener, because it's such a thin coat) which takes all the "frostedness" off of the surface that is left by sanding, and surface tension does what elbow grease didn't have time to do with regards to creating a smooth, even, glassy surface. That's where things sit right now.

Tomorrow I think I am going to mix up some resin with dye in it, and paint a layer of that just over the face on each head. Sort of reminiscent of the painted face in my self portrait, except that it will not be opaque. I want to do this for two reasons. First, the facial features are a little hard to see on 100% clear resin. They'd show up better if it was a little less transparent. Secondly, the one with the roses doesn't quite look right from the front. The roses shifted after I poured the resin, plus they're red (in hindsight, I'd have chosen pink) and so from the front there is this large, dark splotch on the face, just behind and above one eye. I think it would be less jarring if the face were a little more translucent and had a color to it.

Then I have to build a stand for it, and it will be done!

During the second urban revolution, suburbs began to _______, which was the purview of central cities during the first urban revolution.
a. offer lower property taxes
b. a comprehensive portfolio of quality services
c. operate political machines
d. offer good schools

The answer is b.

So let's look at that sentence again, with the correct answer in place:

During the second urban revolution, suburbs began to a comprehensive portfolio of quality services, which was the purview of central cities during the first urban revolution.

Yeah. That makes sense.

Here is an example of the stupid type of question that I get tested on in my Urban Studies course:

Families in poverty are more likely to suffer in the areas of _______.
a. the level of unemployment among African American males
b. the disproportionate number of arrests, convictions, and incarcerations of black men
c. the shortage of black men or black women of marriageable age
d. a & b
e. all of the above

The answer is "all of the above"...ok so leaving aside the whole concept of "all of the above" being a poor answer for a question that asks "...are more likely..." or rather, "...are more likely..." is a poorly worded questeion for an answer that is "all of the above"...anyway, leaving that aside...

Is it just me or does this question imply that any given family in poverty is more likely to suffer those effects? For example, if I became poor, suddenly I'd be more likely to suffer a higher level of unemployment among African American males. Or my family's poverty is going to result in a shortage of marriagable black men and women.

I'm not even going to bother listing all of the questions with typos, mispellings, bad grammar, etc. or all the questions where the "fill in the blank" correct answer is the wrong format (wrong verb agreement, missing articles, etc)...

I will, however, give this example:

In Figure 14.1, what percentage of African Americans are considered middle class?
a. 50%
b. 40%
c. 7%
d. 3%

This wouldn't really be a problem except that this is a question on a test, and the figure is in the book, and not replicated anywhere on the test. We're just expected, I suppose, to have memorized the contents and numbering of every chart, graph, and illustration in the textbook.

Right now I have...
American Idol (yeah I know, shaddap)
Battlestar Galactica
House
Lost
My Name is Earl
Doctor Who
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Grey's Anatomy
Stargate: SG1
Stargate: Atlantis
Star Trek Voyager
Star Trek Enterprise

and a few other things that aren't currently showing, but that I hope to catch whenever they do air (mostly BBC America stuff).

The Stargate and Star Trek stuff is my "comfort food" category TV. I've seen them all and they're familiar, so they make good background noise if I need it, or if I just want to sort of zone out, I can watch them without having to pay attention. This is a good way for me to take a nap, for example, because it focuses my mind enough to quiet it down from the 50 other things it's thinking about, but doesn't command my attention enough to keep me from dozing off, since I already know what's going to happen.

I honestly can't imagine watching TV without TiVo. We were very early adopters of TiVo--we got it just a few months after it came out, I think. It totally revolutionized how we watch TV and the idea of going back... :shudder:

So one of my cats, Indigo, was just by my chair meowing. He's the shyest one, having previously been a stray. He's the one who begs for attention, then ducks when you pet him. Anyway, he came in for attention, and I finished typing something, then reached down. I didn't meet fur. I met empty air. I looked down...he'd already moved on and was halfway to the door. My hand was still dangling by the chair, and he looked back and caught my eye... we had a shared moment of understanding... and he came back and deigned to let me pet him, and then left. But it was SO obvious that he only came back because he could tell I was disappointed. It was kind of hilarious, touching, sweet, and sad all at the same time.

I just remembered this. I was driving home from school yesterday when I saw a car on the interstate. It was decked out like a "just married" car with streamers, cans tied to the bumper, shoe-polish messages written on the window, etc.

The difference is that in big letters on the back window it said "JUST FIRED" and the messages were a combination of well wishes and things like the word "job" with a circle-slash over it.

I thought it was highly amusing.

I don't know if it could be salvaged or not, but after we tried to dry Dominic's phone after he put it in the laundry, the screen would come on but give the error that he was not using a genuine battery. His phone uses the same battery as Dan's old phone, so I switched out the batteries and got the same error. We just decided it was easier to activate Dan's old phone on Dominic's number rather than doing anything further with the other phone, especially anything that might cost money. Dan's old phone isn't in good enough shape to be worth selling, and the New Every Two thing comes up mid-June so we can get a new phone at that point.

So this is my last week of classes. Next week is finals, then I'm done for the semester. Yesterday I had my final review in painting. The teacher pretty much had negative things to say about all of my work. His biggest criticism was that all of my work was "took dark" and "dull" but whatever. My sense of aesthetics tends toward overall dark images with concentrated, small areas of brighter light. That's what I like. That's not what he likes. We're going to have to agree to disagree. It would be one thing if his criticism served as a guide to help me become a better painter of the style I want to paint, but everything he says is either so vague as to be worthless, or is an attempt to change my style to something he likes. Not helpful. I'm new to painting. I have a lot to learn. I'd love to have a mentor who could truly help me become better. But what I have, essentially, is someone who says "I don't lilke your painting of a starscape, because there isn't enough sunlight in it" or "I don't like your landscape painting because it needs more sofas" or "I don't like your portrait because you haven't painted in a refrigerator"... it's pointless.

Anyway, this weekend Dan came home from his month-long internship in Arizona. He drove for four days, with the last day being Sunday. Dominic and I left Sunday morning to drive 3+ hours to Dayton, where we met Dan coming the other way. We arrived within minutes of each other. Can we plan or what? Anyway we did that so that we could see the musical Spamalot (the Monty Python thing). It was hilarious. There were one or two numbers that I didn't care for (the 'not dead yet' part dragged on a bit long, for example) but overall it was really well done and very funny. We had a great time, then drove home caravan style. We stopped at a very strange Thai restaurant in Columbus for dinner. The tofu looked like little slices of bread. It had the weirdest texture I've ever seen. It tasted good, though.

I put in my petition for residency last week but I'm extremely nervous. There is a thing that says that some types of financial aid awarded in one state will make you ineligible to be a resident in another state for that time period. I was living in Cleveland last summer and fall, but my classes last fall were online from a school in Georgia, and so my financial aid was from Georgia. That may mean that I can't be considered a resident until next spring. Which will essentially mean that I can't go to school again until next spring. The tuition alone comes to about a thousand dollars more than my Pell grant, subsidized loans, and unsubsidized loans combined. Which means that I'd still have to come up with money for tuition, plus have no money at all for things like...oh...rent, food, gas, bills, etc. My mom's not in a position to help much with school right now because the roof came off of the cottage in NH during a wind storm and she's having to spend a crapload of money on fixing that, and things were tight with her to begin with.

So that's fairly scary. It also means that if I can't go to school in the fall, I forfeit the art merit scholarship that I won, because you have to take 12 credits in the fall and 12 in the spring to qualify for it.

"You clicked 266 times in 30 seconds.
Your caffeine level for today is:
Near Death - Delusions of Godlike power"
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Intermission from the back row.

This is due on Monday so I am on the home stretch. Tonight I worked on the razor blades and the cut hair, mostly, as well as lightening up the upper right corner. I darkened the ear. I also lightened part of the hand print, but that makes it too much of a "baby blue" for now. Tomorrow night I will do a little more work in the hair and do a cobalt blue wash over the lightened part of the handprint, which should maintain much of the lightness, but return the depth of color.

Created by OnePlusYou

"Insanely high - a vibrating crackhead"

There is something wrong with getting a score like that at 1:10am, while drinking wine, painting, and listening to (dare I admit it?) Phil Collins*.









*in my defense, it's not like a whole album or something, just the song that came up on my playlist just now.
 
Current Music: Phil Collins - Billy Don't You Lose My Number

I have two bits of art-related news. First, I got my letter today from the Merit Scholarship Committee. This was a scholarship I applied for a few months ago that is offered by the art department. You submit 6 pictures of your art, and they award the scholarships based solely on merit. They award several scholarships, and they award them at different levels each year depending on how many people apply and how good their work is. I was awarded $3865, half of which I will get for the fall semester and half for the spring semester. Yay! This week I also put in my petition for residency so hopefully I will get in-state tuition rates for the fall. If so, that scholarship money would put a much bigger dent in my tuition.

The other bit of news isn't necessarily news yet, it's just something that might happen. I might have a solo gallery show for the month of June. This hinges upon a few things, one of which is whether I can get enough pieces together by that time, and the other of which is whether the space has been rented by someone else before then. I'm considering putting up my huge painting that I'm working on right now,

along with these:



In addition, I want to put together a group of Giclee prints of these... I have only colorized these three so far, but I have over a dozen of them total that could be done, and I think they'd make good prints (and would be the kind of thing I could see someone actually buying to hang in their home or business)...



It's a small gallery, so those paintings plus, say, six of the bottle prints would pretty much fill it, I think. Even if I would be renting the gallery myself, the ability to say I've had a solo show is huge, resume-wise. Also, it would get me some exposure in the local art scene, give me a shot at maybe even selling something, and create the potential for even getting a review written. It would be a great opportunity for me.

I've sat down at this thing on 14 separate days! That's over twice the length I've spent on any of my other paintings, I think. Anyway, here is where it currently stands... Note that there is a sort of "glow" next to the nose that will go away, also the lips look kind of "puffy"... both of those are simply cases of the paint getting too wet and built up and I can't refine them any more until the paint dries, so they're frozen at sort of an awkward stage. Anyway:

My website is set up so that I have to approve comments before they appear. This is because there are so many bots out there that find sites with guestbooks or comment forms that use them to post spam. Gah. Anyway, recently I've been getting a flurry of these attempted comments, but they're absolutely pointless. Here is an example of one:

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First off, it's all jumbled gobbledygook. It doesn't mention any product names and the websites don't exist. Further, the "links" are done in message board syntax, not HTML, so they don't even make links.

What is the point in running a bot that posts this? Is it SOLELY to be disruptive and annoying? Why??