[mood]: goot.
[music]: coffee shop tunes... not the greatest, but I think Curt and I are the biggest nerds this place has ever seen.
[msn]: Pirate

So.  Here we are.  It's August 13th (just missed Friday) and I haven't written in a while.  I can't say the updates are going to be spectacular... let's just say that working at Walmart has taken most of my soul.  What remained after Engineering Year III anyway.  That seems morbid.  I'm not in a sulky mood, trust me!

Anyway.  I have 5 days until I leave for JAPAN again :D  and I am obviously looking forward to that.

...otherwise I honestly don't have that much to update you all about.  I drew something else since my last entry, so you can see that I suppose:

About this one... I'm quite pleased with it.  It's not often I draw two people (though it has become more common recently... and by that I mean I can think of one other I've done within the year) and I think I did a pretty good job :D  Also the wheelchair was THE hugest pain in my ass, and I have to check out a reference online for it.  Yeah.  So for a while I had some cool wheelchair pics on my desktop.  I like wheelchair-boy's socks. ^^

...and yeah, they're both dudes.  Suck it up.

And I also finished that painting I showed you (I think) a few entries ago (and no, I'm not gonna go check, so if I didn't show you a few entries ago, I actually don't really care that much, so HA!).  Anyway, here it is finished:

Putting these two arts in a line like this really makes it look like I have a thing for leashes... For now you're just going to have to deal with the fact that I'm weird and so is my art, and to remember that these didn't actually get drawn at the same time, nor in order.  There are stories behind each, but for that you'd have to dig through my external.  And for that matter there's no story behind the painting.  That one's just a painting.

Also... er... forgiveness for the background and still-life objects in this painting.  This is why I draw people.  PEOPLE I SAY!  Because objects are boring and do not hold my interest... therefore they become BLAH when they exist.

Ummm I also sent off my manuscript semi-recently.  Again.  To DAW.  If you don't know what DAW is, it's a publishing company that's part of Penguin (which you HAVE heard of, and if you haven't, don't bother telling me).  Here is a link to their website if you'd like to peruse it, since I'm sure you'd love to open a new window and check out how awesome/not awesome their company is:
http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/daw/index.html
I sent them a postcard and they're supposed to send it back when they open my manuscript box.  Or when my manuscript is "logged in" or some nonsense like that.  Well, I mailed it on... ...actually I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure I still have the little mail-slip thing... somewhere... anyway!  Some time near the beginning of August/end of July.  Going with end of July.  That means it's been a couple weeks.  So assuming my giant box of paper actually got there... woot?  Anyway, here is a picture of my gigantic manuscript:

DAW requires submissions to be double-spaced and single-sided.  Seven hundred and seventy-seven pages of goodness (yeah, you read that right; 777 pages).  And yeah, if you have Facebook, you've already seen this image... too freaking bad for you.

Umm...what else?  Oh, time for a syntax shift up.  Yeah, I learned something from author guy I visited at school.

I went home recently, had a pretty pleasant trip there though the trip back blew pretty huge chunks of gook.  On the way there, on my first plane, something pretty hilarious happened, and I will describe as follows for your amusement:

Al drove me to the airport because he's such a dear, and when I got into the waiting room I was texting him as I sat down.  Out of my peripheral I could see what I thought was Cheng, one of our professors from second year (for me, anyway).  I didn't dare look up until I was pretty sure he wasn't looking in my direction. 

Yup, definitely Cheng.  I begged the universe not to make him sit beside me, and then we all boarded.  I sat down in 4F and Cheng sat in the front.  The girl who sat beside me was pretty cool, and we started chatting/making fun of the people getting onto the plane, since LOADS of them were apparently totally inept at putting their luggage into overhead compartments.  Cheng, meanwhile, seemed REALLY agigated; he kept moving around, looking at things, and just appearing generally nervous. 

Soon, a lady got on and said that Cheng was in her spot, so the professor, stammering his apologies and wondering aloud if he'd read his ticket wrong, moved towards the back of the plane to a different seat - effectively removing himself from my view. 

A few minutes later, people were still boarding, and Cheng suddenly got up from his seat, clutching various small, black articles of luggage, and forced his way off the plane, still agitated.  I glanced at the girl next to me and we chuckled, supposing he was terribly afraid of flying.

People stopped getting on and I took to looking out the window, bored with nothing more to make fun of.  As our engines started, I was staring outside.  There, running across the tarmac, was Cheng, still clutching his luggage to his body, frantically moving towards a different plane that boarded only a few minutes before ours.

I had a good chuckle.  Upon relating this story to my family, they speculated that maybe the attendant who had boarded him had been a previous student.

Sure.  Enjoy your conference in "Seattle", professor...

I found that amusing.  What else?

Oh, bad news.  Hermes has perished, to I suppose no delicious hermit crab for me.  Crabbington is still alive and I suspect foul play.  There will be tabloids written about it.  According to sources, Crabbington's stomach was making the rumblies...that only CRAB could satisfy.

Har.  Anyway.  It was a sad sight.  He was all dried up and half-fallen out of his shell.  He didn't die of lack of water, though, because there was still lots in the dish.  I made sure to soak that place before I left for home.  Ergo the foul play assumption.  Dried corpses are Crabbington's MO.

Onward...

Recently I have been wondering what to do for Nanowrimo this year.  Also, Myles has a nano shirt that makes me extremely jealous, but I have no moneys for such frivolities this year.  Maybe later.  Anyway, about the writing.  Now that I have submitted my manuscript again, I again feel weird about it, just like last time.  I have taken to writing shorts about Zenith, but nothing spectacular.  So here are my considerations:

Zenith: would be a prequel to my current manuscript on submission, probably with more of an M rating than my previous story as well... though I don't really have a lot to happen in it.  Although I think it would be fun to write because Zenith is so deliciously EVIL, and I'd get to destroy lots of stuff and be freaky.  But I would have to think of some nature of global plot.  Which I probably could.  But there would have to be plot, because otherwise Zenith isn't a super exciting character on his own.

Orion/Sebastian/Pius: the characters I think I wrote a bit about in my previous entry.  A modern story, which I have sort of proven to myself I'm not good at, so I could use the practise.  Also the characters are pretty fun (they have pseudo-super powers, are pretty interesting peeps on their own) but... again not a lot of global plot.  I have things to happen to them but there's nothing earth-shattering, and I don't think the story of their lives would be particularly interesting to read about.  I need something BIGGER.

Something else: so yeah... I'd have to invent this.  Been thinking about a pirate novel for some time now, which I could do.  Plot is pretty huge so it would be pretty spectacular, but would require some recherche (en français!) because I'd want it to be more historical fiction, no fantasy mumbo-jumbo.  Ergo it would be more difficult and time-consuming.  But the plot is fully there, as are most of the characters.  Problem: the main character is mostly insane, so I might have to try to write it from someone else's POV or something... which could totally work as well... hmmm.  And of course there are other things inside my brain but these three ideas seem to be the most prominent.

One more thing.

Tanis: new character I have been toying with in my brain.  She's an alien, and I'm having a lot of fun playing with other-world type stuffs in my head.  Story is, she is sent to earth to learn about humans.  Her race can take the shape of anything they want to, and they live forever.  I would have her in a modern setting because I think that's more fun.  I just don't really know where to go with the plot on this one either.

Anyway!  Now that you're all bored... I really have nothin else to regale you with.  I am excited to be off to J-pan with Erin, and I am somewhat excited for school to start again, even though I am also very NOT looking forward to that.  I always get this glimmer of hope that tells me maybe it won't be as bad as last time... but I'm trying to prepare myself to be crushed again.  We'll see.

Thoughts surrounding January are vague.  I need to take Transportation again, but I am considering trying to find out if I can take it elsewhere in the summer (maybe Vancouver?) because then I could move somewhere else and still take the course... depending on where else I can get a co-op job, of course.  We'll see.  I am trying to think about it somewhat but also trying to keep those thoughts as far from my mind as possible.  I like them there.

Completely unrelated, I watched Brave Story last night; an anime that was really popular in Japan last time I went.  It was pretty good, if childishly drawn.

With no other art and no other stories to tell you... I bid you all adieu.  With some writing?  No, not this time.  Maybe next time.  Maybe.  Otherwise, there will be stories from Japan.  Even if it annoys the shit out of Erin that I take time to update peeps.

<3

/mads

PS pay no attention to the title; it is as nonsensical as it can be. ^^