Let me tell you about spiders. Specifically, let me tell you about one spider. A very large spider. He would have fed a family of four. For a week. *shudder*

Last week while talking to one Heathersmithkalonklaxon on the phone about our upcoming trip to Atlanta (see next post), I sauntered up to the foyer of my apartment and noticed a large dark thing by the baseboard. My first thought was, oh, I must have tracked a leaf in, until I took a closer look. HOLY FUCK GODDAMN BIG ASS EVIL SPIDER HERE TO RAPE BABIES AND DEVOUR SOULS!!!

I don't like spiders. At all. My first impulse was to kill the goddamn thing, but I decided, no. I'm not going to kill you, Spider. I'm going to master this fear, and give you an honest chance to get the hell out of my apartment. So I backed away, and took some breaths. About five minutes later I walked back to the foyer, but the spider was gone... Now, this didn't help me feel any better, precisely because I didn't know where the hell it'd gone! It could have gone back outside... or it could be in my bed, waiting to kill me in my sleep.

Fast forward to the next day. I got home from work, dropped my stuff and grabbed my bike to go check the mail. As I rolled it around the kitchen table, I noticed something move along the baseboard by the laundry room. I look down, sure enough, there's that fucking huge ass spider again. (Just a quick note, my skin is crawling as I write this.) And so, with a sigh I said aloud, "Alright, listen asshole. I saw you in here once, and didn't kill you. I gave you an honest chance to get out of here safely. You chose to say. And now, you're going to die."

I went to get some ant spray I had. I wasn't sure it'd kill it, but figured it was worth a try. As I got the spray, the spider crawled under the laundry room door. I opened it, and quickly found him there in the corner, and sprayed. I got him, but he scurried away. I looked over the top of the dryer and saw him there on the floor, still alive.

I went and got my BB gun.

Yes, I realize that's a little crazy.

By the time I got back and ready to fire, the spider was gone, presumably scurried under the dryer. I cursed under my breath, put the gun away, and went to check the mail.

When I came back, Nehai was acting a little funny, like he was hunting/playing with something. Sure enough, the spider had crawled out and Nehai was playing with him, batting him around, picking him up and dropping him, like a good little Killer Kitty :)

I let Nehai do some damage before I pulled him away--mostly because I didn't want him to eat the spider while he was covered with ant poison. At that point, the spider was mortally wounded. I swept the spider outside, where I took about 6 shots at him with my BB gun (and embarassingly missed every time).

YYYYYYYUUUCCK!!! Gads, I hate spiders. To give you more idea of how big this thing was, you could see his curled up corpse as a noticeable black lump from more than 30 feet away.

Anyway, I shot a little video of Nehai playing with the spider. Enjoy.

And... speaking of Nehai...

-P.

So, in order.

Happy (late) Birthday, Jennpac! Many years of printmaking goodness to you!

So, the post I made earlier? Yeah. So, I can't have water in my room anymore unless I'm drinking it at that moment. My cat, Nehai, always tries to drink out of whatever beverage I have. Lately he's been more insistent about it; if he can't reach his head far enough into my glass to get the liquid, he'll end up knocking it over. He did so this morning, when I had about half an inch of water left in my cup. Half an inch is an important figure here, because that's exactly how much actual keyspace of my keyboard was exposed from its sliding drawer position, and which the spilled water immediately flowed into. *sigh*. I dried as much as I could, and thought things were fine, but then the keyboard started acting up. Seriously. I wish Heather had posted the conversation we had this morning, because I'm sure it would have been hillarious to see my typing get more screwed up and more illegible. Anyway, after drying for a few hours in the sun and a reboot, things seem to be ok. Oh Nehai, one day you're going to make the most comfortable pair of slippers I've ever owned. You're lucky you're so cute. *pets*

Happy early birthday to Lisamy_treehouse!!! Many years of plushie plundering!!!! (don't kill me)

Speaking of April birthdays. My 24th is friday!!! Holy crap, I'm officially in my mid-twenties. And what have I done with my life? Made a linocut of a dildo. Anyway, so, my folks are coming up tomorrow, which will be awesome. I have not seen them in much too long. There may be a trip to see the premier of Grindhouse tomorrow night or friday? If you want to go, let me know. Also, there's an all night life drawing event at Guilford college starting at 6pm running through 6am that I'm going to go to for at least part of (not sure what part). If you want to go to that, let me know. Um.... so yeah, my birthday is friday and other than the life drawing thing, got no plans, so if you want to do anything, just give me a holler. I'm thinking something out, and about, maybe outside, etc, would be awesome :)

Then Saturday night is ROMP!!! The fabled party event I missed last year, but will not be missing this year, graaaaaawwwww!!!!

Hm. In shittier news, despite the senior show being over, I'm finding that I'm still dealing with some pretty serious anxiety--with accompanying shallow breathing--and I'm not sure what's going on. It sucks. I also need to start taking better care of my health. Hopefully that will help.

In better news, I'm about about to eat really fucking yummy arroz y habichuelas.

Later.
-P.

Meh, today was crappy, for a great many reasons, but dwelling on this is lame, so I won't.

I will however talk about plaster. Plaster is of the devil. Plaster may well be one of the worst substances yet known to us (even worse than flan!). First off, plaster sucks for walls. It's hard as stone! Thumbtacks are right out of the question, and tack nails will bend as soon as they'd actually go in. Second off, plaster sticks to things, like hair. Like, suppose you had to make a model of a napkin in your clay modeling class, and then you had to make a plaster cast of that clay model. You'd have to mix up all that plaster by hand, and you can't wash the plaster down the sink, so it had to dry on your hand, sticking to every fucking hair on your hand.

Then suppose you had to spend 30 fucking minutes of your afternoon pulling hundreds of chunks of plaster off your hand, each taking a hair or three with it.

Fuck plaster.



Anyway, let me tell you about my dinner last night. Can I tell you about my dinner last night? I'm gonna tell you about my dinner last night.

Last night I cooked myself up a delicious swordfish steak, cooked up in butter and minced garlic, with salt, pepper, and a dash of lemon juice. On the side I had chopped spinach and red chili fetuccine in cream sauce, and a glass of fine Argentinian wine.

*mmmm*

-P.

The first week of school was awesome :) Classes are thus:

History of Printmaking / Goldstein - Awesome. It's with Goldstein, so explanations aren't great, questions aren't always answered clearly, but I'm still learning, and this is the first art history I've taken where the course has my complete, rapt attention for the entire class. I chuckled when I saw what our required text was; I'd actually read half of it on my own last semester.

MultiMedia Print / Maggio - Nontraditional print processes = Sweeeeeet. It's a lot less structured than I had thought; as long as we turn in four projects in experimental media, Maggio isn't entirely concerned with us using the exact techniques he teaches us, in the order he teaches them in. So, this will almost be an independent study in printmaking :) Speaking of which...

Independent Study / Creus - Eh, will be fine. I'm doing printmaking, so basically I'm just doubling my workload for MultiMedia. What makes or breaks an independent study is how good the feedback from your professors and peers is. It's an undergrad class, though, and undergrads are pretty lame with feedback.

Clay Modeling / Lee - Heh, I like the professor already. The other day in class he interrupted the class with this: "Wait a minute, wait a minute guys, could I get everybody's attention, please. You all realize this is a 100 level class then, yeah? So why are there 60% of Seniors here?" Ha! Apparently I'm not the only person that waited until their last year to take clay modeling ;) The class will just be modeling three still lives in clay, which will be boring, but eh, I like getting my hands dirty.



I feel like this semester is getting off to a slow start. Maybe that's because I've got big ideas and ambitions and am anxious to see them get out of my head and into reality. Printmaking is a process-oriented medium, though, so I've spent this entire week just doing prep-work; I've levigated a litho stone (jesus CHRIST my shoulders are sore!), taped off two screens, and prepped a zinc plate for a feaux mezzotint, plus gathering various materials for monotyping and collagraphy. I'm going to be learning lithography and screenprinting this semester. This is a good thing, being that they're pretty major print media.

Ooh!!!! and the print studio finally has an exposure unit!!! A really freaking sweet one that's 24x36 with a vaccuum unit on it, too! Scoooooooore! I wish my professors hadn't put it by the window though; it's gonna be tricky to get light sensitive materials to the unit without fogging them at the window :-\

( Scary thing that happened in the studio this week. )

I'm forgetting something, but this post is long enough anyway.
Peace!
-P.

Got a call from my buddy Loren at about a quarter to one, seeing if I still wanted to hang out and get a drink this weekend. I said sure, and we made impromptu plans to go have a beer and play late night frisbee. Hehe, so we went to the field in front of the EUC, cracked open a pair of Pete's Wicked Strawberry Blondes and threw the disc around. Had a blast :)

At some point, a car pulls up to one corner of the field (a few hundred feed from where we were) and we notice that there's something odd about the car. What was odd, precisely, was that there was a fucking person on top of it, and the car seemed to be trying to drive up onto the grass. The car's headlights were off, only adding to the obvious picture of mischief. Less than 30 seconds after noticing the misbehaving youths, a cop car pulls up, the lights go on, and the kids are busted. We still have no idea what was going on, but I feel absolutely certain that copious amounts of alcohol were involved.

Hehe, so we threw the disc for a while longer before having a seat and watching the cops do their thing while we chatted, open containers in hand, in plain sight. Lol. what a night.

-P.

PS - Hehe, went out to eat Vietnamese with Mattxem and his lovely lady Angie friday night. I got a fortune cookie whose fortune simply read "It tastes sweet." Awesome!

So, I'm pretty much sitting here making a grocery list a fucking around on LJ while I wait for my iPod batteries to charge enough to last through the stuff I've gotta take care of tonight. I'll make up for this with an art post later.

( Read more... )

Ta!
-P.

The trip to DC was a fucking blast. I remember when Logan invited me I felt like Meg on Family Guy getting invited to go on a spring break trip by the cool kids, hehehehehe. 10 people went in all; mostly painting BFAs, me, and one or two others who were boyfriends/girlfriends of people on the trip. We left by train Monday morning. Here, for those of you who are interested, are the details of the trip. There are no pictures yet; I'm an asshat and didn't charge my digital camera, so I took a bunch of b/w 35mm shots, which I'll develop this week.

Monday
We met up and departed from the Greensboro Amtrak station at 9am. I was only lightly acquainted with most of the group, so the four-seater spot we had on the train was great for getting to know people. Hehe, Reid and I were making Snakes on a Plane jokes the entire trip. It was awesome. Due to track construction down the line, we were only on the train for two hours; they transferred us to charter buses for the rest of the trip to DC. It kinda sucked; the forward facing seats and loud noise of the bus really cut us all off from eachother. We made up for it later, though.

That night we got into DC, exhausted and starving (we hadn't eaten all day). I took a picture of everyone figuring out how to use the farecard machines at the metro station; it was hilarious. We got that figured out, made it back to our motel and ordered pizza. Later, when everyone was rested and fed, we ventured out into downtown DC. None of us knew the city, but we figured something had to be going on, so we picked a random metro stop and went looking for a bar. Hehe, we passed this bar called The Angry Inch. Logan looked it and said, "The Angry Inch? What's the Angry Inch?" I immediately responded, "my penis," and Angry Inch jokes were made for the rest of the trip. Mature, no? *grin* We found this place called Madam's Organ (I think a double entendre may well have been implied) that had a live band playing. They were pretty good; they did covers of pop music from the 70s and 80s. I think our waitress told the singer there was a group from UNCG in the bar on spring break, and the singer called us to come down and dance. I was the first one down. It was kinda hard to dance around the baby boomer crowd on the dance floor, but we managed. Hehe, I have discovered that I cannot hear Rick James' Brick House without dancing. It is an impossibility.

( The rest of the trip.... )



The trip was fantastic. I'm so glad I was invited, and that I went. I got to know some of my peers a lot better, I got to see Washington DC for an extended period of time, I got to see some phenomenal art. I had an adventure I'll always remember. DC is a pretty cool town. The residential districts are beautiful, but no doubt more expensive than I could ever afford. The total cost of the trip wasn't too bad. Everything; my part of the hotel, train tickets, metro passes, food, spending money, etc. was less than $400. With better planning, two or three people could probably do it for much less. I want to go back again sometime in the next few years, take things slower, maybe spend a few days just checking out the National Gallery. I don't really have a profound thought to wrap this up with, so I guess I'll just say this: Snakes!!!!!!

-P.

I got back from DC last night. When I came in the house, no one was home. It was quiet; exactly what I needed after four days of constant social activity. The house had a strange feel to it. There was a certain ambient smell to it that was present when I first moved in, but haven't smelled since. Hehe, in fact, since I was carrying some heavy shit and had a cat alternately trying to get out the door and attacking my feet, it felt exactly like the day I first moved in. It was like entering the house for the first time.

It feels good to be home, although the house is already bustling with activity. Amanda is here this weekend, though, which means good times shall abound. House of Pain best be representin'.

The trip to DC was a fucking blast. I had so much fun and can't wait to tell you all about it. That'll come later tonight or tomorrow, though.

Pizza
I have a cooking project this week I'm really excited about. If it goes well, it may be the best damned thing I've made yet. I'm going to cook up a white pizza with pesto, a light layer of mozarella, roasted chicken, tomato, fresh basil leaves and feta. I'm already lightly salivating thinking about this.

Thing is, I haven't really worked with chicken, so that'll be a bit of an experiment. I'm thinking I'll cook it up in a skillet with either lemon juice, garlic and cheyenne pepper, or garlic, soy sauce and maybe chili powder. Hm, just not sure yet. Suggestions are appreciated.

Felices,
-P.

(I have a bad habit of writing about things long after they're actually relevant. I need to fix this.)

Let me begin by saying that What The Hell con 2006 was fucking awesome. And I mean more awesome than 't-rexes flying F-14s.' Those kids at Guilford know how to throw a party. WTHC is way more fun that HeroesCon could ever hope to be. (Photo gallery here.)

Hehe, there's this thing that goes on at WTHC every year which may well by the high point of my year. Every time someone says my name--my full name--the entire room bursts into applause and cheers. Hehe, where else would this *ever* happen? It's awesome. It's sort of a symptom of a larger part of WTHC; it's a place where everyone, even the lowest, least socially adept geek can be made to feel attractive and welcome. Those guilford kids know how to party.

I was included as a guest (for some reason), along with a number of other great people who actually *do* webcomic work currently. Among them were Matt Woodvictor_von of Likely Stories, Jennie Breedenjenniebreeden of The Devil's Panties, Phillip Wrightxodin of Furmentation, Chris Wright of Help Desk, much to my pleasant surprise, the boys from Gravy Boy were there, and last but not least, Ed Peduzzi, who wrote, directed, produced, ETC an entire movie, which by all accounts was fucking badass (I unfortunately missed both showings of it). It was a really interesting and talented bunch. It's awesome to hear Jennie Breeden talk. She's got so much experience and has so many funny stories. Larry Holderfieldmckenzee of Sinister Bedfellows and Jamie Robertson of Clan of the Cats were in the audience and had a lot to contribute. The panel, while fun, was probably the most awkward part of the weekend for me. For one thing, it began with five minutes of ridiculing me for some prints I had made, which I was fine with, but when one is already nervous about talking in front of a crowd, that kind of thing doesn't help. Moreover, though, I just didn't have a lot to say. Most of the discussion revolved around current issues surrounding webcomics, which I'm just not well versed on. I don't think there were any questions specifically related to art, in which case, I might have had something worthwhile to contribute.

( Read more... )


Anyway, this has gotten quite long enough. Thank you, Yachters, for a wonderful weekend. I already can't wait for next year's. Click here for picures.

-P.

Hehe, I hadn't planned on posting anything else until tomorrow, but this is pretty funny.

I got some new boxers for christmas (w00t! needed those), and I put them in the wash today. There was also a yellow towel in that load. Hehe, that towel is now a very bright green, HAHAHAHA. It never occurred to me that the new, blue boxers might bleed. Oops :)

-P.

I'm back in greensboro after a really nice Thanksgiving. I really have a great family. I'm not sure I could ask for a better one. I hope everyone else had a great one as well :) I'm getting caught up on your journals now.

For your amusement:
As I mentioned, my brother lent me his Pentax manual camera. I shot off my first roll of film in about an hour on Tuesday, and got the pictures developed Wednesday. When I went to pick them up, the lady at the counter said, "Oh hey, yours were the pictures that looked really cool!" I was already excited when I went in; after she said that I could barely wait to tear the package open. So, I opened them up and took a look.

The pictures were grainy as hell, and the colours looked like someone had put an LSD filter on the camera while I was shooting. My sister in law took a look at them when I got to her and my brother's home and figured out the problem. It turns out I shot the pictures on goddamn slide film. *HEADDESK*

Ah well, novices learn hard lessons. Even if I had more closely inspected the roll, I wouldn't have known what slide film was or that it was any different from print film. I know now. It's a shame, though; some of those pictures would have been really nice. Hopefully I'll have better luck with this next roll.

Alrighty. Now I'm going to go play some Counterstrike Source, eat a bowl of Boo Berry and try on some pants.

Ta!
-P.

Shite. I've been vaguely aware of this since I got into art, but the full force of what it means is hitting me now. My father is an artist. I remember him doing paintings, drawings, carvings, woodcuts, etc all throughout my youth. He used to take me to openings in Raleigh all the time. Twenty-two years of missed fucking opportunities to learn the skills I need now.

Here I am, mostly starting from scratch. I had the most valuable resource I could have possibly asked for at my fingertips and didn't take advantage of it. If I had just taken a notion and said, "dad, teach me to draw. teach me to paint..."

To be fair, I had no way to know I'd choose to become an artist. In my youth, I had no interest in learning to make art, beyond the selfish aim of being able to do something that skillful. I asked my dad to teach me once. He gave me some exercises, which I nearly immediately lost interest in, and never did.

I am taking advantage of my father's knowledge now; I go to him for questions (which I have a lot of), critiques, feedback, advice, etc. But goddamnit, I do wish I'd gotten an earlier start.

If I ever build a thematic body of work, there are two Raleigh artists--Andrea Gomez and Gerry Lynch--who I've had enough contact with, that I can go to them for advice, and ask where a good place to start would be. Next time I'm in Raleigh, I should stop in and talk to them.

Fuck, it'd be worth making a special trip. Hm, wait. I'm not doing anything Thursday. Hey! Anybody want to drive to Raleigh with me Thursday and go to a few studios/galleries?

-P.

Aaahahahahah. So, I've tried giving my kitten a catnip toy before, but she just kinda ignored it. Someone told me that sometimes cats don't respond to it until they're six or seven months old(?). Well, Geneva was nosing about my desk, trying to knock papers, brushes, erasers, etc off, so I put her on the floor and put her catnip toy in front of her.

Imagine if you will, that my bed were a WWF (that's wrestling, incase you didn't know) ring. My kitten just spent the last five minutes having an epic match on my bed by herself. Aaahahahahahaha.

******

Anyway, here's what I really wanted to post about: does anyone know the exact font used in the iPod?

-P.

For those of you who don't know him, good_benito (Matt Bentley) is a guy from Wyoming. He worked as a secretary for a lawyer for far too long. This wasn't really what he wanted out of his life, so he quit his job, left his life and has been taking a trip around the country, making business contacts, meeting people from his friends list, etc. This week, he made it to North Carolina. He got in Wednesday night and stayed until late this afternoon.

It was really cool getting to meet a guy whose LJ I've been reading for over a year now. He's a very interesting character. I'm not sure I've met anyone quite like him, at least not many. He's a very lucid and interesting conversationalist. I tend to form... not quite an image, but a conception of my online friends in my head. I was pleased to see that my conception of good_benito wasn't too far off. I think the only major difference was that he was a bit more docile than I anticipated.

I'm not sure how much the mundane aspects of the visit interest you all. Suffice it to say that we didn't do much beyond hang out, talk, watch tv/movies, eat a lot of really fucking good food and relax. This seemed to be what he needed more than anything else, and I'm glad I was able to provide it. I cooked this again. Matt seemed like his conception of heaven might have shifted slightly when he tried it. I also introduced him to my favourite sandwich: olive oil, tomatoes and basil, pastrami and cheddar on toasted rye.

Anyway, it was a really good experience. I'm glad I was able to offer the dude some shelter and good food for a couple of days. I wish him well in his future travels and endeavours. If ever the man wants to visit your town, put him up for a night.

-P.

I.... made a complete fucking ass of myself during my digital design critique last night. I was discussing my Digital Self print and I kept making matrix references like "...mental projection of your digital self..." and "...free your mind." The said thing is that I wasn't trying to be funny; I was being completely serious. Uuuuuuuhgghghggh CHRIST. The Matrix was not my inspiration for that print. Not in the least. But imagery and dialogue from it made explaining the meaning behind the image so much easier. Fuck.

-P.

I'm going downstairs to play DDR with my roommates now.

As some of you know, I'm not a fan of anime. The stories seldom interest me and I don't like the art at all. Much like the old Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, the art is stylized and conventionalized to the point that it looks mostly the same, and differences between the work of different artists are frequently negligible. Er, anyway, this is completely digressing from what I wanted to talk about.

I like to try new things. I like to keep an open mind. Tonight, I paid money to go see Howl's Moving Castle with my roommate. It was made by the same guy as Spirited Away, which sucked, so I was wary of the film, but I kept an open mind.

The movie was... enjoyable; I felt for the characters, I laughed quite a bit. The movie was, however, from start to finish, a total, unmitigated plagiarism of The Wizard of Oz. Just like WoZ and Spirited Away, the movie was essentially juvenile escapist fantasy, and I hated that aspect of it. The art was... alright. I really liked the backgrounds, which were beautifully painted, but the figures were still too heavily stylized, and the 'anime eyes' bugged me. Or, perhaps it's more appropriate to say they simply bugged.

-P.

The week before HeroCon was utter hell for me. Every second I wasn't at work I was running around trying to get things ready. I wanted to have at least one new strip finished, I wanted to make sure I had prints of comics to show off and sell, I wanted to get the TSE site redesigned, and I wanted to make some prints of my linocut blocks to sell.

Wednesday night after dinner, I went into the print studio at UNCG to print up editions of three different blocks. It was relatively late in the evening, and the only other people in the building were errant grad students working in their studios. Being late, desolate and also very hot in the studio, I didn't think anything of taking my shirt off while I worked. Most of you probably know by now that I go almost nowhere without my iPod. It's like an appendage for me. This night was no exception. I had my iPod on and was rocking out while I measured and cut the paper I was going to use into sheets of the appropriate size.

And so I worked for quite some time, getting more and more into the process. There I was--topless, nipple piercings and tattoos blazing, long hair shaking around as I sang and danced along to Primus' Sgt Baker--when a motion from the corner of my eye caught my attention.

I looked up.

An older security guard was standing in the doorway looking at me. Looking at me like you'd look at the guy who just went on a two minute rant about how you would treat Seven of Nine better than any of her other delta quadrant suitors.

"Murrfle rffflelfl rflding long?" he said as I snapped up and took one of my headphones out. He wanted to find out how long I was going to be in the building.

He didn't actually say anything about my singing, or dancing, or not wearing a shirt. I dunno, maybe topless undergrads singing and dancing isn't that unusual a thing in the art buildling. Ma--

Maybe I need to be spending more time in the art building.... hmm...

-P.