IT'S RANT TIME!!

I've talked about this a lot, because it's something I feel very passionate about. I'm going to talk about it more because it just keeps happening. No one seems to learn. Rantiness follows the jump.

COMPANIONS OF XANTH

via gamershell.com

via abandonia.com

Via abandonia.com

There's this old game released in 1993 called Companions of Xanth. It's based off a Piers Anthony book called Demons Don't Dream. I never read the book but I LOVED the game. Of course in 1993 I was 8 so I couldn't really appreciate the puns and metaphors that make up the game. Almost every character in the game has a name that is a pun. A great deal of the dialog is puns. There's puzzles and riddles and all kinds of fun word play. I love word play!

Anyway I've been wanting to play this game again for several months but I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the game, the characters, the release date. Nothing. I searched and searched through databases of video games released in the 1990s but I wasn't finding anything that sounded familiar besides stuff like Bomberman, Final Fantasy VII, and 007 Goldeneye. Not exactly what I was looking for! Finally I called my brother and asked him if he remembered. This hurt my pride a little because I was so determined to find it on my own. It was worth it though because he remembered immediately what I was talking about and gave me the title of the game!

With the title I was able to find an emulator for the game and I'm currently playing through right now! I remember a lot from when I was younger so that's helping solve the puzzles. It's not really a hard game to begin with. I'm playing it for the nostalgia mostly. I'm so glad that I found it and was able to download it for free. It's a lot of fun. Cute and silly with a lot of "Ha! See what they did there?!" with puns and metaphors.

One of the things that always amused me was the metaphors in the game. They're taken very literally. If you kick a bucket in the game you die. Also don't bite any dust! I don't remember if anyone offers to sell you a farm but I wouldn't buy that either! For someone who loves word play it's an excellent game. I think word play is the highest form of language. Knowing your language so well that you can alter it to hilarious ends is a fantastic ability. There are native English speakers in our country who can't enjoy puns because they just haven't learned enough grammar and vocabulary to understand them. That makes me really sad.

Word play is very close to my heart and so are video games! Any childhood favorites that you would love to get hold of? Maybe some vague memories of a game that influenced your life? I would love to hear about other's childhood game memories! Maybe we share some favorites!

And now back to the game!

Update 11:30PM 12/25/09: Just finished Companions of Xanth! It's not a very long game. Total play time was probably 4-6 hours over about 3 days. It's not a long game but it was still lots of fun. Just like I remember it! Only this time around I could fully appreciate the puns! It was worth looking up. I'm really glad I was able to find it again and play. I'm so grateful for the internet and all it has to offer, especially when it comes to old bootlegged games! Maybe I'll look up some more old games from my childhood.

ATTITUDE VS ACTION

Custom necklace for a 6 year old girl!

Cake or death?!

I've been having some panicky feelings lately about my little business. I'm trying really hard not to let the panic control me or my decisions. It can be SO hard though. Panicking comes pretty easily to me so it's been work to keep it from creeping in and ruining my positive outlook! My boyfriend tries to help but the way he goes about it can sometimes just upset me more. I was reading this article today and afterwards I said something like "I don't think I'll ever be making that kind of money". I didn't mean it to sound defeatist or like I was giving up but my boyfriend can be very black & white about things so he assumed I was just giving up. He then proceeded to give me a lecture about my attitude and how I was giving up before I even started. It really upset me, but when he gets like that there's NOTHING I can say to stop him. He believed that I was throwing in the towel just because I was having some worries and trying to be realistic. Sometimes I get so tired of him refusing to think about what might happen if things fail. And I don't just mean this little business. I mean anything. I NEED to have some sort of contingency plan in case things don't work out but no one seems to want to talk about that kind of stuff. As soon as I mention a worry I have about something not going the way I hope I feel like people give me the tired old "you just have to be positive" "you can't think that way" "you just have to keep working towards so-and-so".

I know that I need to stay positive and not give up. I'm going to keep plugging away and making new things and trying to reach out to people but I can't just pretend like I never get discouraged. I think what really matters is even when I'm not feeling awesome about life I'm still working at it. Isn't that what matters? A positive attitude will only get you as far as you're willing to work. I could be positive all day long about sitting on the couch and eating cookies, but I wouldn't get anywhere doing that. Why do I get attacked for not being the most upbeat person even though I'm still working, still trying, still wanting to make things move along? Attitude is important but ACTION is the real test, isn't it?

It seems, to me, like we place too much importance on attitude and not enough on action. Positive ACTION is what gets things done and causes change. WORKING for the better is so much more effective than being upbeat and hoping that your positive attitude will change the world. Shouldn't we all be allowed to have bad days as long as we don't let them interfere with our work ethic? Can't we be allowed to experience the full range of emotion without being labeled a sourpuss? Personally I would rather be able to truly appreciate the good days because I've been through the bad, experienced what unhappiness is so that I can fully understand what a gift it is to be happy. It becomes a problem when ALL you feel is bad, when nothing can make you smile and there's no cheering up for you. When things move from "I just feel off today" to being depressed most of the time then that's a deeper issue than attitude adjustment.

I'm not saying a positive attitude doesn't help facilitate getting things done, and everyone likes a positive person more than they like Eeyore. I just don't think it's realistic to expect someone to be positive every minute of every day. It puts a lot of strain on a person, having unrealistic expectations. It can be really hard when you're not feeling perky but you're afraid to let people down by showing it. I value transparency in a person. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and while that's not always a good thing for me socially it's not something I want to change about myself. Emotions are important, the bad just as much as the good. I like to feel anything. Feeling feels good, even if it feels bad.

What do you think internets? Anyone have a different opinion? How do you pull yourselves out of a funk? I try cupcakes and funny movies while snuggling with my boyfriend or my piggy dog. I would snuggle the kitten but he's usually too busy playing in the toilet or knocking shit over. :3

I'M NOT MAD I'M JUST DISAPPOINTED

Dog 'stache!

One of the nurses my mom works with made a custom order! I got to paint a horse for the first time and I'm actually pretty proud of the way it turned out. Especially considering that the space I had to work with is pretty small and the brush I had to use was NOT the one I would have preferred. I'll snap some pictures before I send it out tomorrow! It's going to be a Christmas present for a 6 year old. I hope she'll love it.

I've got a gallon resin coming in the mail on Thursday! That's pretty freaking sweet. Also my mother is sending me a whole box of yarn, my ski boots, and some cash to do my Christmas shopping with. I'm so grateful I have a family that helps and cares. This might seem a little weird but I really appreciate that my mother is perfectly OK with giving me money to buy her a Christmas present. I do hope that this is the last year I'll have to spend someone else's money for Christmas. It means a lot that she understand how tight money is, but that I still want to give presents. I just wish I had enough yarn to make everyone in my family hats or something. I need to buy something for my friend who's coming to visit right after Christmas! I want to get her something that really reminds me of her. I'll do some looking as soon as I have a little $$.

Jon has asked me not to bake anything for a bit. He doesn't like having tempting yummies around the house all the time and I understand why. He lost 100lbs in a year and he doesn't want the temptation of cupcakes and brownies all the time. So I'm gonna cool it with the sweets. I should make some bread or something instead! I'll go back to baking sweets when my friend is here and we can pig out on cupcakes!

A pretty serious bitchfest follows so I want to keep that a little more optional...

THIS IS WHY I HATE MYSPACE

Because of people like this:

Hello,how are you doing ? well am a new member on myspace. just looking 4 a woman of my life...
i was browsing through profiles now and i got your profile.I found your profile page very interesting,you pictures look cool.Indeed,I can tell You are so beautiful!!Anyway,i wouldnt mind talking to you so i can get to know you real well and may be know what you want as well...You can send me a message on here ,i will be pleased to see any message from you.

Regards!

And this:

u r realy my wife and realy realy my wife and i want u . plz plz plz its reqeust plz marry with me ,

I was going to reply to these people but I'm just gonna let it be. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings because I'm so squishy-hearted... I also don't want to open the lines of communication with these people. There's no point wasting my time or hurting their feelings. Nobody grows as a person from something like that. This is why I hate Myspace and usually avoid it. I hop on there once every couple of weeks to say no to 99% of the people who friend request me and to see if anyone I know is doing anything interesting. Social networking isn't really for people who hate to be social I guess XD

There are some people that it's really important for me to keep up with, even if "keeping up with" is just saying hi every once in a while and letting them know that I think about them a lot. I hope my friends know that just because I'm not a fan of emailing or talking on the phone that I DO thing about them almost every day and I love them the mostest. <3 <3 <3

DILEMMA

I had this friend in college who turned out to not really be my friend. There are a lot of reasons why I stopped talking to her but the biggest and most important one is that she was exceedingly manipulative. She used everyone she came into contact with in some way or another. She used me for money and validation mostly. I think she saw me as this weak girl with a low self image that she could take advantage of. She used me for money, she used me for pot, she used me to feel better about herself.

Once I finally stopped taking Prozac and woke up from my stupor I realized what was actually going on pretty quickly. Without the fog of an SSRI in my system I realized that she had been kinda awful throughout our entire time being friends. I wasn't about to subject myself to that crap anymore.

The final straw was an incident with a mutual friend that wasn't really important at all. It was the WAY my ex-friend handled the situation that made me want to walk away. I realized that she was the kind of person with no morals of her own. She would mold herself to suite the situation and the people in the room at the time. If the people in the room thought doing this one kind of thing was wrong or bad so did she, but as soon as those people left and she was with a different group her values changed completely. I am of the opinion that it's never OK to hit someone. Not ever. She is of the opinion that it would be too much trouble to get involved if a friend is being abused or if one friend hits another unprovoked because it's not "her business". That kind of bullshit doesn't sit right with me or Jon.

Speaking of Jon, he saw a lot of what happened between this friend and I. Let me say that Jon isn't the kind of person who sides with you just because you're his friend/girlfriend. If you're fucking up he's gonna let you know no matter who you are or what relationship you have with him. That's one of he reasons I like him so much. Honesty matters to me! In this case Jon was on my side because I was in the right. My friendship and loyalty were being abused by this girl and he didn't think that was OK. Not just because I'm his girlfriend but because you shouldn't treat people like I was being treated. Not ever. You just don't do it. So I cut all ties with this girl and never really looked back. It wasn't a malicious thing towards her, it was about saving myself from future grief. If I had stayed friends with this girl and continued to let her abuse our friendship that would have been MY fault for not getting out while I could. So I did.

Now she's sent me this message of Facebook demanding an apology and wanting to know why I "dumped her for my new boyfriend". It was a very telling message. This girl still thinks the world owes her. She thinks that I owe her my life for being friends with me. I don't think I owe her a thing, and if I ever did at any point that debt would have been paid after the hundreds and hundreds of dollars I spent keeping us stoned for the last 2 years. I'm not exaggerating either. Pot costs $$, she didn't have any to spend on pot. She sure as hell expected me to share mine with her though. She would go on and on about how she would repay me next time she bought weed but she never did. When she actually had pot it was the gross kind that gives you headaches. But I wasn't about to not share. I had weed and I didn't want to sit at home like a jerk and smoke it all alone. That's not fun!

It turns out I would rather not smoke at all than be taken advantage of like that. Anyway, I digress. The bottom line is I don't owe this girl an apology for finally sticking up for myself and realized I deserve more than to be used and abused in the guise of friendship. I'll never apologize for dropping her like an old bag of moldy tangerines.*

*I will make you cookies if you get that reference.

JOB HUNT

I'm on the hunt for a job. I've applied a bunch of places so far but I haven't heard anything back yet. It blows. I've had a group interview at Bath & Body Works that went fine. It's part time and not a job I really want. Especially since I'll have to buy a pair of pants and a long sleeve shirt to cover my tattoos. I'll have to wear pants and a long sleeves EVER DAY I work there. I'll also have to take my two facial piercings out and wash/bleach out the purple in my hair. That was almost a deal breaker for me. I'm so desperate that I can't really turn anything down if they want me but it sucks so hard that I'll have to totally change my appearance just for this one place. A part time place. A place I really don't actually want to work for.

I went to a job fair for a new Urban Outfitters that's opening up in the same complex as the Bath & Body. They did a little impromptu group interview and I did really well out of the group. Jon went with me. We're both in need of jobs. It was really nice to have him there. I felt more confident. I think I like group interviews better because it's a lot easier to gauge how well you're doing, at least compared to the other people in the group. Jon and I were the best, but then I'm pretty biased. I would much rather work for Urban because they actually encourage their employees to be individuals. I wouldn't have to change myself to fit some stupid model.

I think it's really silly that a lot of places want all their employees to look exactly the same. Doesn't it get boring? I don't want to blend in, to disappear in a sea of workers who are wearing the exact same clothes, who have the exact same hair. I'll wear a uniform, I'll wear khaki pants and a white collared shirt, but let me keep my tattoos visible! Let me dye my hair fun colors, let me keep my piercings for fuck's sake! Let me be me! I don't want to be another corporate robot that can be replaced in an instant by someone else who looks exactly the same.

I didn't go to art school so I could blend in with the crowd! I want to stand out, I want to be unique. I want to be bold, loud, colorful, and creative! It feels so wrong to contemplate changing so much about me for a stupid part time job that I don't REALLY want. It sucks that I'll take the job and do the changing because I need a job so desperately.

Please call me back UO! Please, someone, give me a chance to prove that just because I have purple hair, tattoos, colorful clothes, and piercings doesn't mean I can't sell the shit out of your product. Give me a chance and don't ask me to look like everyone else. Please!

SCHOOL IS A KILLER

AAAAAHHH!!! I have 3 weeks of college left and I'm excite but also freaking out because I have all this obnoxious work to do and only a little bit of it is actually FOR my major. All the other work is for stupid liberal arts classes where the teachers don't seem to understand that no one cares. Granted I would probably enjoy these two classes if they weren't at 8:30AM, but they ARE. So it doesn't really matter what they're about. I knew I wasn't going to learn a thing from them when I signed up, but they were the only classes that met the requirements and fit into my schedule. Ringling is retarded like that.

In a lot of ways I wish I had gone to a bigger school. Not a university, but a bigger school with more reverence for Fine Arts and their contribution to world culture. I wish I had gone to a school with enough enrolment to warrant a few different sections of each class. Most of the classes I'm taking are only one section, so that means you can either fit that one section into your schedule or you can't. If that one section doesn't work for you then you don't get to take that class. A lot of the interesting classes, like Dangerous Ideas and Ethics for Artists are held during my classes for my major. All in all Ringling College of Art and Design is never inflexible when it comes to scheduling. All classes (accept one or two of the freshmen level English classes) are 2 hours 45 minutes long, most of them are one section (I don't remember the last time there was more than one section to chose from), and most of the one section classes seem to only be held at 8:30 in the morning! I have no idea who decided this was a good idea, but I would like to personally punch them in the nose.

This Week in Resin:

In other news, I've been pouring more resin stuff! I've started on a whole bunch of littler hearts that will have stickers and insults embedded. I think the right price for them is $10-12, maybe $13-14 if they have a whole bunch of sweetness in them. I've been doing my Etsy research and I have to say I'm really disappointed in a lot of the other sellers of resin cuteness. They price their pieces WAY too high. They do this because epoxy and polyester resin are pretty mysterious and unknown. People just don't know that liquid plastic exists and they certainly don't know how much it actually costs. Let me demystify this for EVERYONE. 8 oz of resin at Michael's costs $11. That's it. I've found a gallon kit for epoxy resin for $50 online. There is NO REASON for a necklace that has maybe 60¢ worth of stickers, 50-60¢ worth of glitter and $1.30 worth of resin to cost $22 just because it's in a cute heart shape. That's ridiculous to me.

The only reason resin jewelry is expensive is because of the time that goes into making it. While creating each piece doesn't take THAT long, there's a lot of waiting that has to be done. Making a heart pendant that's just solid glitter takes at least a day and a half, maybe more. First the resin must be mixed then poured. You let that gel, and that can take all day or all night if you poured later in the day. Then you have add the eye-pin to the back of glitter resin and pour a layer of clear resin to hold the pin in place. That has to cure for several hours (depending on the temperature wherever you're pouring.) Once that's done you can pop the piece out of the mold, trim the excess off the edges and hang it from a chain. While you're doing all of this you can't really make more pieces because all your mold cavities are filled with half finished and curing pieces. That's the ONLY reason resin is expensive.

It upsets me a little to see all of these high priced resin pieces on Etsy and the Internet in general. I can really understand someone not wanting to pay $20 for a plastic pendant. I can even understand someone not wanting to spend $18 on my pieces. I started them all at $18 because I wanted to be competitive but still look serious. If i price everything at $12 I thought people might worry that there was something wrong with me or the pieces. If nothing else sells at that price I'll think seriously about bringing it down. I want to have jewelry in everyone's price range. I think anybody who likes what I'm doing is a potential customer and shouldn't I want to please them? Shouldn't I want them to feel like they're not throwing their money away?

The more I learn about resin casting the more I think most people's prices are pretty outrageous.

Anyway I'm going to be posting some more pictures to my DeviantART and I'm going to be posting a new listing to my Etsy Store sometime tonight (if I can get some homework done before it's time for yoga class that is!)

Wish me luck getting everything done!

UP AND RUNNING

These last few weeks have been spent putting together my Etsy Shop. I've been uploading photos of the jewelry to DeviantART too! I'm really excited to get off the ground with all this stuff! Money is nice, but mostly I just want to know that people out there, somewhere, are wearing things I made. I squee every time one of my friends wears their necklace, or whenever someone stops me on campus to talk resin. It's really awesome. It gives people an opening to talk to me (apparently I'm a little intimidating... maybe because I'm the tallest woman in the world?) and it gives me something to talk about endlessly so there's no awkward pauses and all that stuff.

That's right, this creator of cutesy, glittery goodies is actually pretty shy and awkward in social situations. I've been doing a lot to get over my social fears but many of them are still lingering. Doing all this resin stuff has really opened me up though! I know that if I have to keep interacting with strangers on a customer/seller basis my social skills will improve! I'm already much more comfortable talking to Etsy people, and I've only done it a few times.

RANT TIME!

Another thing has been bothering me and that's how closed the internet art community is. No one wants to share their secrets, everyone is so worried about who's copying them. Everyone seems to think that they did it FIRST and anyone who does anything similar after them is therefore a copycat, or just an asshole. Sure, tracing someone's art and calling it your own isn't such a good idea, but does that mean nothing is learned from it? Why can't we learn from each other? Why can't we share our secrets with everyone in the hopes that new and better ways of crafting and creating will be invented? Nothing ever changed by hoarding knowledge!

I know a lot of this attitude comes from this: "I learned on my own so everyone else should have to learn on their own too! No one taught ME how to do this so why should I help anyone else out? What if they do it better and they steal ALL my customers/fans/friends/spaceships/etc...?"

We need to get over this kind of thinking! In Fine Arts one of the biggest topics is that nothing is new under the sun. The only way to be original is to do things from your perspective. No two people see things exactly the same, and sometimes you learn the most by taking an idea and changing it, making it better, expanding on it. It's about the evolution of ideas. How can ideas evolve if we don't talk about them? How will techniques improve if we don't discuss them? If no one knows how to do something then no one will be able to come up with new and innovative ideas.

I guess what I'm trying to encourage here is a more open market, a more open attitude, and more open communication between artisans and artists on the web. And not to sound preachy, or like I know everything, but the contemporary art world that artists like Tracey Emin, Mike Kelley, Annette Messager, David Altmejd (and other people you would see in prestigious galleries and curated museum shows) don't hoard ideas. They don't gaurd their art making processies like Cerberus guards the gates of Hell. They speak openly about how they work and think because that's what art IS! It's the process, it's the materials, it's the IDEA!

Also, those secrets you guard so jealously aren't really secrets. There are so many people in this world that eventually someone, or multiple someones, are going to invent the exact technique you invented without ever even knowing who you are or that you "thought of it first". It just doesn't work that way and it's silly to think that any idea is ever completely yours.

I am not advocating copying someone else's design verbatim. I'm not advocating tracing as anything but a learning tool. Creativity DOES exist, you can be creative and unique, but there are going to be people just as creative and unique as you. Just be yourself and you'll be golden. No one can ever be JUST like you. So don't be afraid to share! If someone rips you off, so what?! If someone does something similar to you, don't think that they're copying, be amazed at how intricate this world is and how we're all connected in some way. Be fascinated! Not angry or upset! Be happy!

Share! <3

Rant is over :D