Today, at 10:24 PM, I popped the right arrow key off of Nessa's keyboard, only to find that it could never be popped back on again because one of the little metal things holding it in had snapped in half.  I'd like to request a brief moment of silence in remembrance of the Right Arrow key. 

It shall be missed.

STOLEN FROM WOLFIE:

Post "words" below and I will give you a list of five words that make me think of you.  You then must describe each of those words, in detail, in your own LJ.  No slacking, peeps!

1) Animation: Definitely superior to live action.  I personally think that any live action movie that's over 50% special effects should just be animated.  Harry Potter, for example.  Any film in the Harry Potter series would be BRILLIANT if it were animated.  Wicked, too...and pretty much everything Tim Burton puts out.  His live action stuff is nice, but I really want to see him go all-out in the animated medium, and I mean SERIOUSLY all-out.  Also, enough is enough, Helena Bonham Carter isn't all that.  Seriously.  I prefer 2D to 3D, but stop-motion is okay in moderation.  Disney used to have an iron grip on the animation market, but with their mediocre foray into the live action scene, it isn't just me who's doubting their credibility these days.

2) College: The next logical step after high school.  If you are a crazy, wild, happy-go-lucky party animal like my pal Nimby, then it's a lovely place to get yourself wasted and laid at unruly, loud parties with poor lighting and excessive alcohol.  If you aren't, and you're just some crazy chump like me who hated high school and the stupid people in it, then there is a very good chance you will fit in better at college than you ever did in high school.  Being focused into a major tends to do that.  It's easier to ace than people let on if you have half a brain and serious work ethic.  My advice for college?  Don't date anyone, especially not right at the start, if ever, and be yourself...even if it means chewing someone out for drinking when they're underaged. 

3) Nessa: Take me, get rid of my mad walking skills, and subtract ten maturity points and you will have Nessarose Thropp, younger sister to Elphaba, and stalker to Boq.  In the book, she's an armless TV evangelist, and I had no qualms about her death whatsoever.  In fact, I wanted her dead.  However, seeing as I relate far too well to Musical!Nessa for my own good, and look that much like her, I have formulated a scenario where the house doesn't crush her...just smooshes her legs up at the point of impact you see in the 1939 Wizard of Oz.  Because she's basically just fallen into a sort of trench or hole in the ground and she's left dangling upside-down by the legs.  She then slides the rest of the way into the ditch, only to realize she can't walk anymore...again.  I am also convinced that she has green eyes, simply because they'd match her Act 2 outfit the best.  Most of my LJ icons are of Nessa.

4) Internet Forums: These places are usually full of brainless nobodies but once in a while you stumble upon a community that's (mostly) intelligent.  I have a knack for becoming very well-known very quickly once I do join them, and often wind up owning the place within two years if I decide to stick around.  Right now I'm really only in one, and that's just because I do run the place, but I really ought to go drop in on some of the others.  See topic number two for my inactivity excuse.  In forums, as in real life, I am quick to judge others and ruthless if I decide I don't like you.  Just hope that if this happens, I'm not a mod or something.

5) Fanboys: I haven't picked up any new fanboys as of late.  I think word's gone around of my corrupt administration over them, as there are far less boys trying to latch onto me right now than there ever were.  This new block of free time normally devoted to shooing them away has been reassigned to thinking up new ways to torment Professor Ninja and documenting all of my hilariously awkward conversations with Troy in comic format.  This reassignment has done wonders for my productivity level.

This evening I booted Nessa and she greeted me with the Blue Screen of Death. 

I rebooted and she requested the system disk, which I promptly inserted.  

And then she told me there was no drive on which to install Windows, and I needed some driver software.

I told her this was a load of crap and to quit being an asswipe.

I rebooted again.

On the fourth reboot she started Windows like normal...go figure.  Guess there is a god.  I'm still backing up everything.

The touchpad under Nessa's keyboard has been acting wonky and unresponsive off again and on again, so I've switched to the mouse.  The tablet screen is fine.  I haven't used my mouse since Character Design and Layout last year.  Man, that was a long time ago. 

Jacques has been bringing entire heads of romaine lettuce to class and handing individual leaves out to his students, which is nice of him but at the same time incredibly hilarious to picture, much less witness on a biweekly basis.  Just try.  A dumpy-looking balding guy with a goofy pedophiliac smile and extraordinarily hairy arms ripping pieces of lettuce off and handing it to college kids to eat.  

Meanwhile, across the hall, Ninja's ordering his class pizza.  Seriously, I am so hopping on that bandwagon.  Pizza and lettuce every Tuesday and Thursday?  Man, I'd be living the dream!  Worst case scenario I can steal Al's pizza, he likes being kicked around enough.  I'm kind of mad the animation building's closed today and tomorrow for the 4th of July, though, because about 50% of the students there are international and don't celebrate it, and because I have a project due on Thursday and need to use the animation tables. 

I miss being able to just walk up to my friends' houses and just make up stuff with them and goof off all day long without having to schedule it in advance.

I found my old Windows 95 copy of The Incredible Machine, and surprisingly Nessa can actually play it!  Yay!  I don't know if I can save, but the game plays fine.  

My mom said I have to be quiet when it's two in the morning and she's trying to sleep...but I laughed too hard during the RP and now I have the hiccups.  I have not had hiccups in at least a year. 

I think if I ever become rich and famous I'm going to buy her a lifetime's supply of Lunesta.  Or maybe Nyquil.

Andy.
Emailed.
Me.
Back.

Yes, four months later.  And he sent, like, a book.  Full of misspellings.  It's hilarious, really, and I can't stop grinning.  I might muster up the guts to email him back, and then get another one in like four months.  XD 

Thanks to Mr. Roboto's calculus adventure in high school, I can take FX, keep my minor, AND graduate in May!  Provided, of course, I fail none of my courses this quarter, next quarter, or the quarter after that.  

Fingers crossed, peeps!  ;)

Oh shit, I'm graduating next year.  'Or else,' my mom says.  I honestly don't know if I can even do it.

No, really!  I'm not!  Because today I went to the sequential art building (which is 15% amazing visual artists and 85% raving anime/superhero fanboys) where I stumbled upon some lolita chick who had to be at least 25 throwing a tantrum and whacking herself in the face, reeeeeeeeally hard, apparently over not being able to get a table at an anime convention.  And a bunch of furries were trying desperately to get her to go to psychotherapy.  I mean, if furries are telling you to get psychiactric help, THEN you're really crazy.  

I guess, maybe, there are just two kinds of crazies in the world--constructive crazy and destructive crazy.  And if your madness helps you help society, then you're really not that bad off.  After all, geniuses are just crazy people with complete confidence in their own insanity despite overwhelming opposition.  It's only when your madness puts your (and other people's) well-beings at stake when you really belong in some kind of institution, or at least on some kind of medication. 

*Jumps off Nimby's soapbox and returns it to its rightful owner* Tomorrow is Dimmy's birthday party.  Yay!

If FX happens, I will be highly surprised, only one other person signed up for it this summer and the minimum required number of students is supposedly five. It kind of blows, really. I was looking forward to the self-mutilation that would've been in store for me. Unless, of course, Troy manages to pull three more students out of his ass.

Which would also blow, because now I've told Mr. Ninja that I'd take his advanced character animation class too. If I do both I'm not taking ANY other classes this summer because a third would kill me. It may be suicidal, but I REALLY want to learn to be a good animator. And neither of them are offering their courses in the fall. Le sigh.

I keep missing the bus to the animation building by like three minutes or less, thus putting me in the position to have to wait another HOUR to catch the next one. This bus system is absolutely horrid, but if I want a car I'd need a job. And classes themselves are exhausting me already!

Figures this building is literally the only one in the city that I can't physically bike to in the summer (I would die of heatstroke, and if not, I'd get shot riding through the ghetto.) And next quarter, so long as the professor doesn't just drop the class due to lack of students signing up for it, I'm taking FX animation, which is (without question) the hardest 2D animation class my school offers.

I keep daydreaming up this vision of me winding up as the only student in the class and nearly killing myself getting there every day, only to be told that I have absolutely no future in the animation industry whatsoever. So far none of the upperclassmen have signed up for it and there's two days left till course selection, so it's not a matter of getting in, it's a matter of how small of a class the professor is willing to deal with.

Personally I would jump for joy at the prospect of teaching a class with just me in it, but I am just a narcissist like that. It would be a very interesting class, but I think it would make any normal professor rip all of their hair out and eat it simply from the sheer volume of nonsense that would come spilling out of my mouth on a daily basis.

I like sitting in the back of the bus. Call me a thrill-seeker if you will, but I really like it when the crazy drivers hit the bumps going far faster than they should really be going and send me flying. I swear, there is this one bump just before the freshman dorms that gets me at least eight inches of air every time. Yay!

I guess I'm part of a small back-of-the-bus-loving faction, because whenever I get on a bus and it isn't too crowded, everyone else seems to crowd near the front. Either that, or I just smell really bad and don't realize it.

Prof. Ninja randomly gave me a free ticket to go see Monsters vs. Aliens whenever the hell I want, and as dumb as it looks and sounds...I don't think I'd mind seeing it now that I don't have to pay.  The whole class got to look at all the thumbnails and doodles he stole from Disney when he got fired in '04.  Apparently they used to religiously play Goldeneye 007 in the Disney theater in Orlando and it was really, really intense. 

And my Jiminy Cricket animation is timed and keyed out and it actually doesn't suck.  All that crazy practice has paid off, I think.  Either that or it's the fact that I have an awesome top hat myself.  :P

I think my brain just bluescreened...Troy desperately needs a haircut and is starting to look like a grayer version of Chuck Norris on a diet of roughly twenty Reeses cups a day.  

Oh well, I was supposed to animate Walker: Texas Ranger, the Musical anyway.  

Next to my animation building is a long strip of warehouses and for the longest time I didn't quite know why they were there, or who was using them. 

I first ventured behind the structure back in '07.  A concrete ledge extending from one side of the edifice to another awaited me, along with an ample supply of grass and the dilapidated ruins of train tracks, with a fence blocking the surprisingly long strip of land into a secluded little slice of school property.  About halfway down this strip, almost flush with the fence, was a brick well that had been filled in until roughly five feet of empty space remained...along with a sloshy pool of mud that would have probably come up to my ankles had I decided to climb in.  Three wrought-iron patio tables were haphazardly strewn along the elevated ledge of concrete overlooking the beaten train tracks, and a few chairs had been scattered about.  The farthest of the tables was actually upright, with two chairs set at it as though someone had recently been sitting there. 

I started using the place as my personal getaway shortly afterward, all the while formulating elaborate fantasies about ghost trains pulling in at midnight to whisk me off to a bizarre alternate reality beyond even the limits of Hayao Miyazaki's imagination--from which the only way I would eventually be able to escape would be through (what else) the well on the other side.  And the range of people I've fictionally dragged along with me in my hypothetical adventures, one by one, is downright absurd. 

It's been two years and I still haven't encountered any phantom trains or parallel dimensions.  I did, however, learn that those warehouses are where they build and paint all the set pieces for the school's plays, and that they look much bigger from the inside.

I just ate the best felafel I've had in a very, very, very long time.  I think the guy who made it put extra tahini in the hummus or something but whatever it was, it was like Angelina's hot chocolate, only in felafel form.  It was THAT good.  Definitely expensive (10.50 for a piece of what I think is naan bread stuffed with stuff D:) but sooooooo worth it.  

The end of this mad, mad, maaaaaad finals week is drawing nigh.  It was a finals week so mad that I saw the Pizza Fairy, which is the Finals Week equivalent of Santa Claus.  He comes to the animation building in the dead of night and gives pizza to the zombie-students there.  Finals Week is a lot like Hannukah with a mascot and no presents.  You only think you have enough energy drink to last one day, but it lasts eight instead...and it definitely takes miracles to get through it. 

I am also 530 Coca-Cola points away from getting a food processor.  If anyone has codes they're willing to part with, message them to me, svp!  My school excusively sells coke products so I get a lot of them from trash-picking, but it still couldn't hurt to solicit a bit.  ;)

And!  And!  I am DEFINITELY going to finish!  Literally, just one scene left to clean up!  I might even get sleep!

One week!

60 seconds of character animation!

Two gallons of Vault Hybrid Energy Soda!  

Can it be done?  Will Sale Snatchum Chenoweth save Finals Week and finish Animation: The Musical or will the very fabric of time and space collapse in on itself in an apocalyptic deluge of lethargy?  Will she ever get her voice back?  

Stay tuned for an action-packed Finals Week Special you won't want to miss!