Sunday, April 28, 2013

Graduation Invitation Doodle

I am about to graduate from college, finally. This is a pretty big deal seeing as I possess enough college credit for two diplomas, and yet! I have not managed to procure even one.
The only things standing in the way are some finals on the metaphysics (peppered with fun phraseology such as: "being as being"). By Friday I will probably kill anyone who says the word "being" in my vicinity.
Anyways I was recently addressing invitations to my graduation, they are very boring.
Observe: (some lack of creativity in whatever tiny graphics department my small very catholic college may possess)



Boooring- Yawn-ity Yawn sauce with a side of lame.
Anyway I was going to send one of these to my brother - but then I was embarrassed at the thought of sending something so mundane all the way across the cussing country, (unless my brother has been suffering from a recent bout of insomnia in which case this invitation could put him directly to sleep).
So of course I started doodling all over it- which is what happens to anything left in my hands for more than three seconds. 
and this was the result:


well actually I pretty much like the faculty...hm, maybe I had a bad day.






Sunday, April 21, 2013

Predictably, Senioritus has fallen


It is ever so predictably time for senioritus to run rampant throughout the colleges and high schools of America. This plague of apathy has by no means passed over Thomas Aquinas College- no! rather it has struck the seniors with unparalleled force.
Tutor: “So who wants to demonstrate this fun Lobachevsky prop?”
Class: bleak silence.
Tutor: “So who even read this prop?”
Class: more silence.
Student: “I forgot how to read.”

Today someone suggested that they just let all the seniors stop pretending to pay attention in class- but then we would just stop paying attention earlier…
I would, however, propose as a remedy- that we substitute all the curriculum books with children’s books and continue to discuss them seminar style.

Which would look something like this:

Tutor: Who fell into the well?

Student1:  Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo

Student2: I believe this story indicates a limit to the way in which personal names can be used effectively. If you choose to signify your children by incredibly long names they will have trouble getting help in a timely manner – and also have a terrible time learning to write their name in kindergarten.  

Tutor: “What do you think of Madeline as a character? What are her personal struggles and virtues?”

Student1: “I think that Madeline represents, and could even be said to embody courage- which we can see in the text where it says, ‘to the tiger in the zoo, Madeline said Poo-poo’. Which is very courageous especially seeing as, it looks, from the illustration…uh, like the tiger could pretty much walk out of the cage if he felt like it.”

Student 2: (which in this case is going to be me): And this corresponds with a common experience of red headed people, you know…that they are courageous. For example over Spring Break, which I like to call: “Netflix and Netflix Alone Time”, my red-headed friend said something brave like “you should put down your laptop and step outside.”

[This is very close to a real life situation and in fact a friend of mine succeeded in getting me to leave the house and go to the Norton Simon- to which I said something like: “I hate….going.”]

 Student 2: That personal digression was intended to show that Bemelmans is really pointing out a universal truth about the courage –or even rashness- of redheads.

Student 3: Buuut she does have a sort of rebellious attitude, and one might say that it is not virtuous.

Student 2: Well if you had to do everything in two straight lines, and speak in a set metrical pattern- you might get kind of rebellious too.

Tutor: “Lastly I wanted to ask two questions about the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar,
First, how long did it take him to chew a very precise circle in a lollipop?
And second, why do these illustrations made out of cut up paper look so tasty?”

All this reminds me of this random thing that I painted on a T-Shirt once:










Which is the Hungry Hungry caterpillar eating a hole through Madeline.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes - Disneyland



I love Disneyland. A couple months ago we went to Disneyland and stayed at the Disneyland hotel – Mickey’s disembodied head was every place that you could think of: the sheets, the carpet, the mirror...
That is attention to detail folks.
Our room was Cinderella themed and so it had throw pillows which said, “A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep.” (it is required that you sing that part)
Now if you just think about this for a second you will realize that it is in fact pretty creepy, especially when you remember that last night you had a dream in which all of your friends died, you wore a scuba diving suit perpetually, and your “home” was a bouncy castle.
            I love that about dreams, you see a massive aquarium tank and something says to you, “this is your house,” and you think, “why yes it is! My house has always been full of aquatic life forms!” Or when there are tasks that you must accomplish for no apparent reason, the dream says to you, “ you absolutely have to place a watermelon in the watermelon cannon and shoot it into the courtyard of a neighboring dorm.” And off you go, required by the rules of dreams to accomplish this important mission.
            Anyway yesterday I had a dream that I possessed a pet alligator and a capybara – this dream is not a wish my heart makes. I in  no way wish for this to become true… well a capybara might be ok, but certainly not an alligator.
(twinkly song plays yet again:) "If you keep on believing the dream that you wish will come true."  
ME: E-gad. No. I do not want this dream to come true. Stop. 
INTERRUPTING FREUD: A dream is certainly a wish your heart makes! I the famous psycho – analysist completely agree with this. Except I might say, “a dream is a wish your subconscious sex drive makes, when you’re fast asleep."
DISNEY: That’s not quite what we meant. It also has less of a ring to it.
ME: Shut up Freud.

Anyway, questions about taking pleasant Disney sentiments in a perverse manner aside, I love Disneyland.





I love Disneyland so much that when we went to Disneyland last year I forgot to drink coffee.





I forgot to drink coffee.

Actually I am a morning person, I like mornings, but coffee is an essential part of them. I was so busy bouncing around like a euphorically happy five year old that I forgot to drink it at all before we left for Disneyland and five hours later I had a splitting headache and was close to lying down on the pavement and mumbling quietly, “so much pain…I love Disneyland so much… headache…haunted mansion…never been…so happy and in so much pain…at the same time.”
All of this was resolved by purchasing a small cup of coffee at the low low price of my first born child and an unblemished lamb. 

Sunday, April 7, 2013

college bucket list

Now that my thesis is done I am free to begin a college senior bucket list involving all of the things that I want to do before I graduate.
1. make a vodka melon and drink...eat? it on the beach



Inevitably someone runs around with a hollowed out watermelon rind on their head- I hope that it will be me.


2. play campus wide capture the flag-
The night after my thesis defense I could not sleep. But not because I was thinking about my defense, instead I was trying to decide how to best split the campus into two halves for capture the flag.
 Additional bragging stuff: y'all losers have no idea how sneaky I am. I am fantastic at hiding- hiding all six feet of myself. You will never find me.
Of course I mean capture the flag- outside with lots of crap to hide behind- not on one stupid field, and also in the dark. Capture the flag that does not involve sneaking like a ninja and require night owl vision is not capture the flag its tag.

All of this reminds me of the most epic game of my childhood - "raptor" it was based on Jurassic Park, the kid who made it up was lauded as a god among children, we considered him a veritable Homer of creativity.
It goes like this: there are a couple raptors- and everyone else is human,
If the raptor tags you, then you turn into an "egg" and count to 30, while you are an egg if another human tags you then you don't become a raptor and you are saved from transformation into a carnivorous dinosaur, but if you get to 30 then you are born anew as a ferocious raptor.
Two humans can kill a raptor if they join hands and tag one.
Anyway to be successful in raptor was the greatest glory a kid could achieve.
 Don't mind me I'm just re-living my childhood, and I wanted to tell you about raptor because it was awesome.

3. To do as much nothing as possible.