And never finishing blog posts. I think I want to move on, find a different blog with a different name. This blog feels heavy, like I’ve had it through too many phases.

I really like them. Like, a lot. I think I’ve already written at least one other blog post about them. They appeal to everyone I know, though!

For instance, not only do I like them, but so does one of my step sisters, who gave an album to my dad, who likes them. I remember jamming to them in middle school, and when I got to college, they were still the cool thing to listen to.

Happy times! Enjoy!

I’ve been reading Questionable Content for about a month, going through it from the beginning. Then, to take a break (and because i forgot about it) I went and checked out another comic I had gone through beginning to current, to see what was going on.

So I go to Anders Loves Maria and see…. this. I was really confused for all of a minute and thought maybe my vision was permanently damaged from reading so much QC lately.

It was weird, s’all I’m saying.

But on another note, I actually have finally completely caught up to QC, and it’s such a feeling of accomplishment. To me, it reads like long novel with slow development, so if you figure every comic is a page, the “book” is over 1,000 pages. Thus the feeling of accomplishment. Also, it means that I need a new comic to read front to back, so if anyone stumbling on this blog has a recommendation, I’d surely appreciate it

For any and all incapable of interpreting the subject line, this isn’t a happy post. This is me complaining. You’ve been warned!

Some days just plain ol’ suck. This was a day where nothing went right, and I had to do things I didn’t want to do, and my trust was betrayed, and I cried. In fact, the high point was when I was relating everything to my sister, sobbing, and eating chocolate (we stopped by the gas station on the way home and I picked up four different kind of chocolate candy bars. And root beer. It was that bad.)

Now, I’m kind of known for getting worked up over nothing, and I know my moods can go way out of wack before they ever should, but that really isn’t it. Today sucked.

So I’m ending it, officially, now that Carol is fast asleep, on the couch, with chocolate (Kit Kats), a book I’ve already read and plan on rereading, and a comfortable sweatshirt. Then I’ll go to sleep, go home to my mum who will give me a nice big hug, and then I shall walk my adorable puppy.

See? See how adorable she is? She looks so eager to love and ready to please… Okay, but also it looks like the most emo, MySpace-appropriate self-portrait-y that a dog could ever possibly manage. Except that she just moves a lot when I snap pictures of her and this is one of the few non-blurry ones.

My process, at least. How elitist can I sound, saying that?

Well, I lately started going to yoga a couple of days a week and it’s pretty nice. A few of the poses really resonate with me, and the form stays in my head long after yoga. This is one of them

This is just a scan from my journal, where I spent two pages outlining the form and then filling it in. This one girl in yoga wore shorts, which completly baffled me. I mean, granted, it was her first time, but…. I would never be comfortable wearing shorts to yoga. I bet she never does it again…

I was a little sad that I didn’t lay out the body on the paper properly, so she doesn’t have a full left arm. I thought about ways to fix it, and they all led to me tracing her on a new piece of paper and finishing it out.

So now she has both arms, which I like. I was staring and thinking about this full, completed person, and decided she needed a background. I thought about drawing one in around her, but I was a little too inspired by the card-making gathering I had just been at. I decided to create a background for her, so I traced and then cut her out. You can *kinda* see the lines where I cut her out.

So I created a background. It took a good few hours to do it, and I’m sure I did it in the least-efficient way possible, but it was pretty fun. I traced out on a white piece of paper all the main lines (window frame, room outline, etc), and then used the pieces as guidelines. I held them over the five or so sheets of paper I picked for both the floor boards and the window scene, then cut through all of them. Mix-matched the pieces of paper and turned it into a big puzzle! Like I said, time consuming and paper-wasting, but actually a lot of fun.

I put together all the pieces, and then used these scrapbooking sticker-tape pieces that elevate the image to paste of on the girl, so she’s like an eighth of an inch higher than the rest of the scene, and printed out the title in a typewriter font, taped them on the same way, and voila!

It was a gradual evolution of choices, but in the end, it looks like I’m diving right in to the world of outsider music.

A few months back a friend (Glenn) and I were walking through the bookstore and he pointed out a book by Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia. I read Sack’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat when I was in grade school and loved it, and have since perused his book An Anthropologist On Mars. I also loved loved Awakenings, which was based off his work.

So hearing the recommendation for Musicophilia, I tucked the thought in the back of my head and continued on, planning on looking into it when I had some more time.

Some time goes by and I do find the space in my day to read it, so early January I pick it up from my favorite bookstore EVER, Elliot Bay Bookstore (yeah, no plug here…) and I start reading it.

Reading it makes me scared I’ll go into a seizure, though, and it’s turning me into a hypochondriac. I love the book, but I’m scared to read it while also listening to music. I mean… It’s just a little scary. In a dorky way. For me. The book is incredible, though, and I really love how accessible Oliver Sacks makes his field in his writing. I never feel like what he’s saying is going over my head.

Parallel to this, I’ve been going to the theater with my mom a lot, and I keep seeing this preview for this one movie, The Soloist. It looks amazing, but I know I won’t be able to make it ten minutes in the actual movie with a dry eye. It just won’t happen.

I decided, on a whim, to get the book first and read it. I figured it would better prepare me for the movie. Reading it hasn’t made me cry quite yet, but it’s so fantastically beautiful and sad, I know it’s only a matter of time. I love it, though, and I think it’s really well written.

As a side note, those who know me pretty well know that I avoid movie-sponsored books like the devil. I’ll go out of my way, pay a few dollars extra, whatever it takes to avoid the “Now A Major Motion Picture” sticker. But I bought this copy willingly, even though it’s cover is basically a movie cover. It’s beautiful. This book cover makes me want to become a book cover designer, just so I can make things look this pretty. Yeah, I’m a dork. So what.

So the last tie-in was watching the Inauguration stuff yesterday. As unusual as it is for me, I wasn’t really into it. I just didn’t care a whole lot about Obama’s speech (gasp, shock, I know, I know) or any of the political tidbits. I didn’t even like the poem much, but not because it isn’t high caliber or anything. It just didn’t resonate with me.

What did resonate with me, though, was Yo-Yo Ma’s performance of John William’s composition. It was composed especially for the Inauguration, and it just moved me. I thought it was beautiful. It also (and here’s the tie in) reminded me of the cello music in the trailer for The Soloist.

…So I hopped onto iTunes and the internet and eventually found this.

And, of course, I ended up buying on iTunes the entirety of Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s The Cello Suite. It’s beautiful, and the music accompanying me reading Musicophilia as well as a book about a man driven to the depths of his mind, all the while retaining his passion and ability to make music.

See? Diving right in, and tying it all together.

______________

PS-I still haven’t found a video/clip/mp3 of Yo-Yo Ma’s performance at the Inauguration, so if anyone finds a copy, can they leave a comment? I’d be much obliged.

I watched a scary movie.

Then I watched junk tv and got lost in the blogosphere.

I’m feeling a smidge lonely.

I developed a crush.

My world makes sense with a touch of Marci-logic sprinkled on top. I like distractions. It doesn’t even have to be big distractions, like a brand new crush, or a medium sized distraction, like junk tv to take my mind of the (very) scary movie. Just, distractions.

Although, in proof of a good metaphor, my tv/blog-distraction-as-an-example is thorough. Distractions are fleeting and cures (unlike my new-crush-distraction-as-an-example, I hope). I’m in bed and the goddamnscarymoviethatwassomuchscarierthanIthoughtitwouldbe is coming back to me and I’m scared now, thinking about it.  I will sleep with the light on tonight, and I’m not so much a baby as I can’t take the heat from publicly announcing it.

That typo is an intentional one, never fear. I wouldn’t let something like that slide (I hope not, at least!). I had a professor who used to say and spell drawing that way, and he made it adorable. So when I’m drawring big girl things, I like to use that spelling.

So I am. And I feel rather uncomfortable about it, because I’m staring at pictures of myself, trying to analyze every stupid little curve and line in my face in order to reproduce it on paper. No one should stare at themselves this much.

But I am… I’m taking big girl steps and trying to follow a certain someone’s advice (I’m still glaring at you, internally, by the way, since you’ve become my little scapegoat for my frustrations about this whole thing. Hope you don’t mind! ) and working on building up a portfolio. I’m still not sold on the whole thing, but I figure it’ll occupy my time during my little sabbatical, if nothing else. It’s still rather uncomfortable, though, staring at myself like this. I’d rather draw pictures of other things, but let’s face it. I’m not really good at drawing anything, and once i master my own face, others should come much easier. Right?

Right.

(and this is my silly little Photoshop doodle)

She took me all of an hour and is the closest thing I have to a self portrait, lawls. Notice how she looks kinda tired? That ’s the self portrait part.

I really am–I’m incredibly judgemental about books. I know it’s one of my vices, but it’s one I don’t try very hard to fix. I really do tend to judge books by their covers, and my shelves are full not just of books that I think are beautiful on the inside, but books that are also outwardly beautiful.

So when I read this one, at my mother’s suggestion, I didn’t expect to like it. I mean, I’m pretty sure she bought the book at Costco, and what book sold at Costco can be worthwhile, right? At least, that’s what the book-snob in me was thinking. It’s horrible, I know, but it’s honesty.

But I read the whole book, and I was so surpised that I liked it. It was so much better than I thought–the plot was interesting, yes, and stimulating, but it wasn’t just that. I loved the way she wove the characters together. It seems like such a cliche sentence to write, especially concerning a book, but it’s true. She created characters that were full of stereotypes, and then forced them to go against the grain of their own niche. It was really intersting how she did it, too. I appreciated her work.

I really only have one complaint with this book, though, and it’s honestly something that could change to a compliment, depending on my mood. I feel, at the end of the bookk, drained because of the emotions in it. It’s too vivid and real, not quite plausible or likely, but real. The emotions that the characters go through are just too much, and now I feel tired. I want the clean lines of an Austen novel, or the caustic bitter humor of Dostoevsky.

Digital Love Lyrics
» Daft Punk

Last night I had a dream about you
In this dream I’m dancing right beside you
And it looked like everyone was having fun
the kind of feeling I’ve waited so long

Don’t stop come a little closer
As we jam the rythm gets stronger
There’s nothing wrong with just a little little fun
We were dancing all night long

The time is right to put my arms around you
You’re feeling right
You wrap your arms around too
But suddenly I feel the shining sun
Before I knew it this dream was all gone

Ooh I don’t know what to do
About this dream and you
I wish this dream comes true

Ooh I don’t know what to do
About this dream and you
We’ll make this dream come true

Why don’t you play the game ?
Why don’t you play the game ?

___________________________________

I love rediscovering old things I really loved. Daft Punk always makes me smile and move and dance. And this one just makes me think about… well, someone. I won’t go into any details here, though, for fear of… well yeah. Nevermind.

(Speak in riddles, Corinna.  Or rather, lyrics. “You’re so vain… You think this song is about you, don’t you?” It isn’t. Truly enough, it isn’t. Sorry.)

In conclusion, Daft Punk always makes me happy!