One Step at a Time

I think that the biggest problem with creativity is that I'm not the only creative person out there. Not only are others prone to coming up with good ideas, but sometimes they even manage to rope me into their propositions.

Sometimes the ideas I get roped into are SO AMAZING that it's hard to stop working on them. Allow me to explain.

There's this guy, William Pryor. Most people call him Teddy though.

OMG

That's Teddy. One of his interesting abilities is being good at pretty much everything: he's a fantastic visual artist, a great script writer/ film director, a determinedly loyal friend, not to mention he is pound for pound the strongest person alive. Imagine the Hulk, jacked up on steroids, powered by solar panels. WHILE STANDING ON THE SURFACE OF THE SUN.

Yay muscles.

But recently he devised this awesome plan, and then decided to share it with me. I feel that it's appropriate to now pass this plan on to you all.

Everyone knows what pokemon is. If you don't know what "pikachu" means, you were probably just never exposed to culture as a young child.

But the point is that pokemon have pretty much come and gone as a widespread interest. Sure, they keep adding more of them to try and lure unsuspecting children to keep playing, but by now most of us have caught on to their scheming and moved on.

That having been said, there was at least for me a small portion of my heart reserved for the rather underwhelming pokemon. Take Jigglypuff for example- just because of the way the game was made, Jigglypuff was totally useless. The poor thing never even stood a chance. Pokemon was a game rigged against about 2/3 of their own creations.

But, and this is where the idea I've been putting off revealing comes in, Teddy found a way for them to turn the tables.

Hack the game, and change EVERYTHING.

What's that? Caterpie pisses you off because it looks dumb? Turn it into a koala bear. You want a cerberus with spiky collars? Now you can find them everywhere. Dinosaurs? Walking on water? Piranhas that shoot lasers out of their eyes? Done. You're tired of looking at the rest of the usual, boring pokemon beating all of your favorites?

Have we got a solution for you.

The thought of a mutant, gorilla-esque pink monster beating the tar and feathers out of a Charizard is nothing short of amazing. It's almost a guilty pleasure kind of feeling, except there's no guilt attached! (We all know that it's has been a very long time coming, after all.)

If that sort of thing isn't up your alley, then I don't know what to tell you, but all I can say for sure is that I am enjoying this new game immensely.

Which reminds me, hello all of you. :) It's been quite some time since I posted anything. I got tied up in finals, then break, then the Florida training trip, but I'm back!

I've also blocked out about an hour or so in between two of my classes that I'm specifically devoting to blogging. So now progress will occur DAILY as opposed to eh-well-I-mean-I'll-get-around-to-it-sometime-tomorrow. No more of that!

Still open to suggestions. Still very receptive to comments! If there's one thing a blogger likes, it's hearing from their audience. Just, you know, so I know you're all still there and I'm not just talking to myself here.

Of Reluctant Importance

It's finals week. Meaning I have a lot of legitimate reading and studying to do.

I don't like it, but I can't update this week. This is too important, and especially in my Art History class, this will help to decide my grade for the semester. So I need to devote all of my energies into working.

Thanks for putting up with me during this kind of slow period :) see you all soon!

Nightmare Santa

I've begun work on a story board. It's for a project that I've been running through my head over and over again, lengthening, refining, and I'll admit, endlessly obsessing over.

I honestly don't know if I'll ever be able to actually complete this project. It's a short film, but it would need to be all CGI- like, we're talking legitimately 100% fabricated imagery. And since I have neither the programs and experience or the money to commission a professional to create this short, it's probably going to stay on the drawing board for a very long time.

That's the only problem with having an overactive imagination. Most of the things you come up with are totally unreasonable. Awesome, but unreasonable.

Which reminds me, no, I'm not going to tell you what it's about just yet. I have to get some of the pages done first and THEN I will let you all in on it. If I just went and told you, my bet is that at least one of your brains would implode from the sheer magnitude of my rampant nerdery.

Which is a risk that, while tempting, I'm not willing to take.

Anyway. Back to the reason most of you read this stuff: story time!

As you all should have figured out by now, I live in Trustees. 3rd east, Citadel, all that. What you probably don't know is that I have a habit of pacing the halls sometimes- when I'm bored, looking for inspiration, or whatever.

Yesterday, I was wandering around the building, when I came across something I wasn't expecting:

My pace quickened considerably at that point.

Probably the most unnerving thing was that when I had to actually leave the building about 20 minutes later for a class, I was walking down some stairs and took a peek down the hall Nightmare Santa was lurking on-- and he was nowhere to be found.

Gone. Into thin air, just like that. Weirdest thing that's happened to me this week, other than making snow angels in the snow with nothing but a speedo on.

I know what you're all thinking, and no I'm not making of picture of that. Sorry.

On a related topic, the weeks most DISTURBING moment came from the caf- little surprise there though, I guess.

As is my usual fare in that building, I had grabbed a plate from the shelves and was hunting for identifiable food. That's the joke, in the caf- if you can figure out what it is, it's safe to eat. Otherwise, hopefully your insurance is paid up.

As I was passing the main line, I overheard a short exchange between two of the workers. It went something like:

One of the workers came out of the kitchen to check on the amount of food still available. The second staff member noticed him and waved him over, saying "Hey, so and so, could you go get me some more of the..."

He paused and looked down at the meat tray he was standing next to. Silence ensued for a moment, then he looked back up and finished, "some more of the, uhm, meat?"

I was floored. And a little disturbed. Was this really happening?

In case you didn't catch it, NOT EVEN THE PEOPLE WHO WORK IN THE CAF KNOW WHAT THEY'RE SERVING US. People always joke about a schools "mystery meat", but in our case, it's literally an enigma.

Maybe it's just me, but ewwwww.

Dysfunctional Doesn't Even Begin To Describe It

It's so good to be home in the good old frozen north. Massachusetts. Very liberal, but still home.

I had an interesting experience a couple of days ago, at a conversation during dinner (lunch?) with the swim team. It was either hilarious or extremely depressing, I honestly can't tell which one.

Oh and as a bit of a warning, normally I don't address more mature things in my blog as a matter of principle, but here I'm going to slightly deviate from that policy. Consider yourself warned!

Ok. Dinner. I was sitting near a bunch of the other swimmers when one of them makes a joke about how guys are totally useless.

Now, normally I'd be inclined to take the other side of that argument, but I was kind of hungry and so I stayed out of the vast majority of the conversation at this point. What ensued was that, after some people had retaliated with the expected "well, girls are STUPID", everyone began to think of lists of what guys and girls respectively are good for. Were we sarcastic? Yes. Were we also incredibly sexist? Well, yeah. But that's ok because girls were making the girls list just as much as the guys were, and vise versa.

Not to mention that if you can't take a joke, well, you're just really lame. :P

The lists are as follows:

GIRLS

1. Cooking

2. Cleaning

3. Conceiving

4. Looking pretty

GUYS

1. Cuddling

2. Physical labor

3. Random, useless facts

4. Technological skills

Everyone had a good laugh about it, until one of the girls who I've elected to leave nameless suddenly turned to me...

She looked at me for a second, and then blurted out wait- Brian's so much smaller than the other guys!

Obviously what she meant by that was I'm a lot weaker than them. Embarrassing, but a sad reality I've been working on.

Well, yeah, I said. This is true.

Then, my technical skills came into question, at which point I needed to admit that I wasn't particularly good at fixing things either. I laughed and said something about how useless I was beginning to feel.

The girl in question laughed and said "That stinks, I guess you're probably only good for sex then."

Geez.

Guest Post: Artistic Blunders

Hey, everyone. How's it going? Just a disclaimer, I'm not Brian. As far as introductions go, I'm Ari and I'm a senior at Needham High School. You'll be finding out more about me in a little bit, after I finish writing a smashing introduction about how much I like Brian and what a cool kid he is. (Stop smirking, Carolyn!)

Anyway, I am so excited to be blogging for Brian! He wrote a guest post for me a while back, and after that I really wanted to make an awesome post for him as well. I finally got around to it during my 20th Century Physics class, which is a complete joke and equivalent to nap time. Actually, today we were assigned homework for the first time in nearly a month and I almost had an aneurysm. Which is remarkably similar to what Brian is going through now. Just kidding. He's just sick and throwing up all over the place. (Feel better!)

So moving on. Brian's blog is one of my absolute favorites, very reminiscent of one of our mutual loves (Hyperbole and a Half). And this is a reminder to him that he owes me some mac & cheese. You want to know the story behind that? Of course you do. One time, Brian used an interesting analogy - he compared a certain blog to a recipe book, saying, "No one likes to read recipe books unless you get at least some muffins out of it. I mean, come on, muffins > no muffins." - to which I replied, "So he's just bluffin' with his muffin. Lame." He apparently got a kick out of that and rewarded me with 100,000,000 Brian dollars, and supposedly 100 of them will get someone you don't like to be tackled, and 1000 of them is the equivalent of a bowl of macaroni and cheese. So I want my mac & cheese, yo. :)

Alright, now to the real shiz. I welcome you to...
So most of you have probably noticed that Brian has some cool drawings on his blog. He does really funny mini-cartoon type things, filled with little puns and corny jokes. I love them. They make me LOL.

I kind of wish I could do something that awesome, too. The problem is that I'm Asian. Which means I have small eyes. Which means when I try to do a caricature of myself, it looks a little like this:
And it's impossible to convey different expressions, a crucial part of any comical sketch, when your eyes have to be drawn as mere lines. It just cannot be done.

In order to solve this problem, I considered drawing objects around me with very expressive eyes in order to show what I was feeling. For example, if I wanted to draw what my thoughts were on Brian, I could vicariously show my "distaste" through a sun in the background.
Except then, it looks like the sun is repulsed by me, not like I'm repulsed by Brian. And then people will assume that others are hating on me for my insulting Brian. Which is totally not the point. See the dilemma?

There is actually one expression that I can draw using squinty eyes, and although I'm sure some people would like to argue that it is quite an appropriate face for me, I would have to disagree. This expression is one of distrust, of suspicion, of disgust. (Unintentional rhyming ftw.)

And it is very, very ugly. And not exactly the greatest image to look at. (I made it gray on purpose to show how dismal it is.)

So although I adore these little drawings and wish I could do them regularly on my blog to tell cute stories, I have decided that it is best to stick to what I know and do well:
So I take pictures, I bake cupcakes, and I write. And in between I throw in a little lovin' for my friends and my life in general. ♥

And that's a heartful of Ari! This was a brave endeavor considering my lack of confidence when it comes to my artistic skills, so I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to stop by my blog if you want to see my photography, find out more about me, etc. (click here)

Thanks for letting me guest post, Brian! I expect more awesomeness from you soon. :)

A More Personal Update

I really don't know how this happened, but it sucks so bad.

I woke up this morning after having spent an amazing saturday with tons of different people doing all kinds of fun college weekend stuff, and almost fell over when I stood up. My head was swimming, my stomach was throbbing and I was incredibly weak.

Turns out I'm rampantly sick right now. Surprise, right?

I've been bedridden literally all day, except for the one adventure I went on from my dorm room to the front door to get some get-better-gatorade and soup from Courtney LeMay.

This is Courtney. She swims the same events as I do here, the 50 and 100 free plus relays. She's also our team photographer! (most of the time, anyway. She does a really good job, though)

...I'm too disoriented to do a full bio on her, though. I'll finish hers when I can sit up without feeling like I'm going to pass out, promise.

I also got some of the same stuff from Nathan Runtas-

Runtas is the guy on the left who can clearly out-lift anyone reading this blog. Not Runtas is actually Andrew Canada, a senior on the team.

But anyway, Runtas brought me crackers in addition to more gatorade and soup, so I am very well taken care of. That being said, the only reason I could write this much was because I threw up about five or six times and it messed up my body enough that it thinks it's been purged.

Unfortunately, that not-quite-as-bad feeling is leaving more rapidly now, so I need to go back to bed before something bad happens.

I hate being sick...

Yawn

I'm tired today so I'm not going to be posting anything particularly interesting.

I will be, however, working on a draft for a comic that I'm going to submit to the campus paper for the next time it gets published. Hopefully they'll like it. I'm just testing the waters for now, I guess.

Exciting stuff. At any rate. Time for a nap! Welcome to college :)

*UPDATE*

Ok, so instead of working on that draft like I had promised I was going to, instead I found myself getting roped into hanging out with Daniel and then later going to the student center for a while to see what the hijinks over there was on about. (They had cookies covered in frosting, it was a good time)

Suffice to say I didn't ACTUALLY get any work done? But I'll bring my notepad with me to the swim meet tomorrow and work on it during the bus ride.

HURRAY FOR PROGRESS

* 'NOTHER UPDATE*

So I couldn't really think of any particularly successful ideas on the bus ride home. Instead I drew a picture of Presto (I'll talk about him later, when it's NOT 2:20 in the morning) riding his old segway and waving a cowboy hat. It seemed appropriate. I'll post it later. Maybe.

No Shave November?

I have a confession to make.

I entered November making the same promise as any self respecting guy capable of growing facial hair: no shaving, for one month. GO BEARDS!

However, almost exactly one week into it, I came to a realization. I look utterly ridiculous as anything other than clean shaven.

Some people can rock the bearded look pretty well. Take Pat for instance.

It is important to note that Chris is not Pat. Chris is the happy one. Pat is the less openly happy one. Maybe I'll talk about Chris at some point, but for now we need to focus on Pat.

He's the third, yet-unmentioned-so-far freshman guy on our swim team. He's from Colorado. The thing about Pat is that not only is he an INCREDIBLE swimmer, but he's also impossible to make fun of. People can tease Daniel for acting a little excitable sometimes (no offense meant, Daniel), I get called out on being a social psychopath, but Pat...

I mean, he's Pat. Look at him. He's awesome!

Anyway, Pat rocks the bearded look pretty well. I couldn't find a good picture on Facebook anywhere of him with a beard... so...

That's... kind of what it looks like. It looks a lot better in reality, trust me.

The point is that some people can get away with the bearded look, others (such as myself) can't.

As such, it became obvious that measures needed to be taken to prevent my further descent into freakdom.

I'll get over the shame and humiliation eventually. I also gain solace from the fact that I look more normal now.

Fist Bump of Horror (at last)

Sickening deja vu, I know. This post has been coming for quite some time.

But since you've all been waiting oh so patiently for this story, I'll give it to you. I apologize if it makes very little sense, it's been on the shelf of ideas in my brain for some time now. (Please bear in mind I was planning on posting this about a week and a half ago, so the story is a wee bit outdated)

During one of the swim practices, I was rather surprised when Dorothy- our coach- moved me up into one of the more intense lanes. Since I'm more or less the pansy of the guys team I don't normally PRACTICE with them, I'm with some of the girls in one of the side lanes.

Today however was different, as per the whims of Dorothy. This meant two things: one, my arms and legs would be functioning very poorly for the rest of the day, and I would be swimming with Tyler.

Now, what you have to realize about the mens swim team is that most of them are really intimidating. They're a great group of guys, and Tyler wouldn't intentionally do anything to scare/injure me, but having to stand next to him in the pool is along the same lines as putting a kid on a tricycle next to Bruce Wayne on his bat motorcycle thing.

Exactly.

So I figured that so long as I could remain a respectable distance behind him, I wouldn't be TOO humiliated by my failure to appear competent by comparison.

This proved to be quite the difficult task, however. Tyler is much better at swimming than I am, especially when we were doing pull sets (basically you just swim with your arms while wearing these paddles on your hands- they make you go a lot faster, but they take a bit of a toll on your shoulders). Having never done them before college, my arms are still rather unaccustomed to the effort. I was quite tired when the next set started.

I don't even fully remember what we were doing next, but one particular part sticks out in my mind:

I was swimming a little farther behind than before. Tyler had already done his turn and was heading back towards me. Right when we were about to pass each other, I had turned my head up to breathe, when I saw this headed right at me:

The most powerful thought going through my mind at the sight of Tylers fist was DEAR LORD I'M GOING TO HAVE A HOLE IN MY HEAD IN ABOUT ONE SECOND

Logically, there was only one way to avoid being killed. I had to punch him back.

Ok, obviously not just aim for his face. That would be terrible- "Brian! What the heck were you thinking??"

"I had to! Otherwise he'd have hit me! ..maybe."

"So.. you punched one of our best swimmers in the face... because he might have hit you. Brian, people get hit in swimming all the time!"

"Wait.. oh."

"Moron."

So I aimed for the giant fist headed my way, instead- and connected.

I somehow managed to keep scrambling my way down the pool, but my nervous system was totally convinced that I had destroyed my wrist. It was gone, probably reduced to dust. I would never be able to write an essay or take notes in class ever again.

Actually, hold that thought. I hate doing both of those...

I would never be able to hold a cheeseburger the right way or type normally again. The point being that I was now short one hand- at least, that was the way it registered.

The sad thing is that it didn't even hurt all that much afterwards. I had gone through a pretty medium level panic attack at what I thought would be a career ending injury, only to discover that my skeleton had responded positively to the thousands of gallons of milk I consumed in my youth. Reassuring in a sense, but the event was still wet-your-pants terrifying.

I mean, I normally pride myself on being a pretty big guy- I'm like 6'2" and I have a pretty broad frame- but Tyler is HUGE. He almost accidentally PUNCHED me. Think like Nick Nemeth is giving you a hug, trips somehow, and hammer drops you onto a sidewalk on your head. We're talking about a pretty terrifying level of "Sorry about atomizing your spine, man- promise it wasn't on purpose!"

I guess the moral of the story is that you should drink milk? Otherwise your hands might get shattered in freak punching accidents.

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Disclaimer

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The reason it took so long to post this was because for some reason, when I saved the batman picture the first time, my computer decided to save every individual pixel i hadn't colored in as a different shade of white. Meaning I had to go in without the paintbucket tool and color the darn thing in myself, which I would get bored with rather quickly.

So, my apologies, but I don't want to devote an overwhelming amount of effort to my posts. That would be silly.

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End Disclaimer

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I get to register for classes for the next semester today! Hopefully I'll be able to get into the ones I picked out, otherwise I'm going to get stuck with a boatload of unhappy for the spring semester.

And no one likes unhappy.

Illogical at best

I was originally going to post this yesterday, but then Taryn sort of "borrowed" my computer for a while, and so I figured that meant I didn't have to post since you were all sufficiently entertained. :)

That having been said, I really ought to finish what I start, and if I don't then I'll be hounded by this guilty feeling for days on end. Plus, it would be rather lame if I just up and let my blog die, so...

At any rate. Post.

I don't know why it's taken me this long to realize the oddity of this phenomenon, pardon the technical speak, but I finally have and as such will speculate about it ad nauseum.

The sun. It's a giant ball of incredibly hot burn-y stuff that floats really far away in a land of pure nothing. It's yellow, or at least we like to pretend it is, since looking directly at it would melt our eyes. It's really big, like I mentioned before, to the point where if you put the earth paradoxically next to itself just over 109 times, that would ALMOST be as wide as the sun. It keeps us warm, lets us see, moves across the sky, probably does other things behind our back that we're not aware of....

and it makes us sneeze?

It's true, sunlight makes people sneeze, but apparently not everyone.

For example: I have never seen some of the people here at college sneeze. Daniel Bowman has never sneezed, as far as i can tell. Some Needham people, such as Jansen, have never sneezed before in their lives (so long as I was there too).

Other people, like my little brother Matthew-

The one in the orange shirt is Matthew. He's been unanimously selected as the most awesome of the Keeler brothers, of which there are four: Andrew, myself, Stephen, and then the aforementioned Matt. He's probably smarter than I am, and definitely just as spontaneous. You have not truly experienced childhood until you've pretended to be a "grazing pony" and rolled around on your front lawn with him for over an hour while your dumbfounded neighbors look on suspiciously. Hooligans.

Anyway. Where was I going with mentioning Matt?

Right, the sun. I apologize, all of my non-sequitors are rather bizarre.

Matt is the worst offender I have ever met for the sneezing in sunlight thing. Give or take about 20 seconds after he steps outside, he'll suddenly let forth a stream of rampant ah-chooing. EVERY TIME. It's like he's allergic to the sun, but in the really pathetic cartoony way where people only sneeze instead of breaking out in hives or something horrible along those lines.

That having been said, it's probably a good thing that people don't just erupt with horrible rashes when they go out into sunlight... that wouldn't be very conducive to living productively/ for long periods of time.

Ok, so some people sneeze in the sun. Some don't.

WHY?

that question suddenly occurred to me, and has been pestering the portions of my mind that should be devoted to working on papers for school and such. Why doesn't either EVERYONE or NO ONE sneeze when they walk outside into the sun? Am I the only one who's bothered by this??

Probably.

You know, it's probably God who does that. I really wouldn't be surprised. I mean, think about it- it's totally harmless, completely irrational... people always say that he has a sense of humor.

I bet He does it. I bet God makes people sneeze for kicks.

I hope that's not sacrilegious, actually. I honestly don't know if God is a 100% serious being all the time. I would expect He does things for amusement, but then that's only based on how I would do things if I were God.

Which, clearly I'm not.

I guess I'll leave it at that God MIGHT be the one who makes people sneeze in the sun. Just in case.

I had something really important that I wanted to update you guys on, but it's slipped my mind for the time being. Something cool about swimming. It might come back by the time I finish the painful picture for the post I was going to post a while ago.

Which reminds me, I have to finish that post now too. Wow... this is a lot more work than I thought it would be.

Still waiting on Ari's guest post, and still waiting on the Andy's guest post. Andy has an excuse though, he's busy doing the college thing.

Uhm. I think that's about it.

LESS THAN THREE WEEKS UNTIL I GET TO GO BACK HOME. I'm so excited to see my family again. College is fun, sure, but family is like a royal flush to colleges straight.

I probably shouldn't use poker terms, since I don't really know what they mean. A straight is good, right?

Hopefully?

Whatever. You know what I meant.

this is taryn

Brian's blog has been commandeered for today.

Hi, I'm Taryn. I'm 17, a swimmer and a freshman at Asbury University, which means I have to put up with Brian way too often. He stole my laptop right now, so I stole his back.

(Not his back-back, because that would be weird. But I stole his laptop. Anyway.)

Umm, Kelsey wants to be mentioned, so here I am mentioning her.

Anyway, Brian is reading something I wrote, but I accidentally deleted something he wrote which I really do feel bad about, by the way. I'm way too mean to Brian. But he's way too nice. Toughen up, bud! Hearts!

Umm, I don't really know what I want to talk about, but Brian is going to have my computer for awhile longer (he's reading 30 pages) so I have to keep on babbling.

Just keep babbling, that's my motto.

I just ate a piece of apple flavored Dubble Bubble gum, and it didn't taste very good. Kinda left a nasty taste in my mouth, actually. Yuck. Makes me want some water, but alas, none exists in my immediate vicinity. If I were to get up, Brian might re-steal his computer and delete this brilliant blog post.

(Haha, re-steal makes it sound like Brian stole this computer in the first place. Which he probably did. Everyone knows Brian is a notorious criminal.)

Oh, if you didn't know, Brian has a Mac. Also if you didn't know, my madre works at Microsoft. This means that Brian and I are mortal enemies. And Brian is the one at fault, fyi. Though seriously, if he had to steal a computer, why on earth would he go for a Mac? Dumb.

Okay, talking about Macs is making me angry. Grr, grr.

Should I be doing anything else right now? Probably not. I mean, sure, I do have some reading for a couple classes and one assignment for another, but who actually does homework in college? What a funny thought.

All I want to do right now is write. (in case you couldn't tell by the prolific nature of this post, I am a writer. Kinda impressive it's been five minutes since I started this, huh?) Anyway, I can't do that because Brian is busy reading, that silly face.

By the way, we all need to give Brian a round of applause for a couple things:

A) he wears jeans now!

B) he got rid of his ugly old jammer and now wears a drag suit like a real swimmer!

Yay, Brian!

Aww, they grow up so fast.

Umm, what else can I babble about for a few more minutes?

Brian just called me infuriating. I suppose I am. It's fun. Makes life interesting, especially when I am drowning in a big vat of liquid boredom. How's that for imagery? Boredom is usually a pale green-gray color with a viscous tactility (is that a word?) not dissimilar to warm honey.

Wow, I really am not thinking about anything I'm saying. It's kind of falling out of my fingers like word vomit. (Yay, Mean Girls!) I just really want my laptop back. Brian is a slow reader, I have now decided, and should definitely hurry his little four-eyes up.

Ummmm, running out of things about which to babble . . .

Kelsey has a water bottle right now which she stole from our 1:00 English class. It had been on the table for almost a week, so she figured she'd just take it. Thief, I know. And kinda gross, especially if you could see this particular water bottle. It's metal and real legit--you know, the kind you could run over with a tank and it would only get a couple dings. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what has happened, since it does have a few dings.

Kelsey herself is working on a Spanish worksheet. It looks tedious, but that might be because I'm in Latin and can only fondly remember my high school days of Spanish.

Okay, well I am going to post this now. If Brian objects, he can edit/delete it later, but that would make me really, really sad.

Ok, so this really doesn't count

But bear with me.

I'm really excited about this new picture I started a couple of days ago. It's pretty awesome, and it's about my character- it's kind of two pictures in one, and they're not like oh ehm gee gorgeous pictures or anything, but they're cool and I SHOULD have enough free time tomorrow to finish them up and post them.

Either that, or I forget and you'll never see them ever.

Hopefully that won't be the case.

Technical Difficulties?

Ok, this might sound really bizarre, but I need to upload a random picture just to see if it will work.Ok, good.

I had to do that because there was this unexpected notice at the top of my page saying how "image uploads will be disabled for two hours" something something whatever.

Which, of course, is extremely lame. If it hadn't worked I would have put off the post until tomorrow. Since it is working, however, here goes.

Ahem.

Have you ever had a moment where you're so overcome by something that just happened that you convince yourself that it was much, much worse than in reality? I had one of them a couple of days ago.

Except I totally forgot until now that I was going to tell you the dissection story, so unfortunately the Fist Bump of Horror story is going to have to wait for a couple of days. Sorry!

So here we go, dissection story. To begin, since I can't recall if I ever explained to everyone what Archways was, I have to start with that.

Archways was a week-or-so long backpacking pre-orientation trip for upcoming freshmen. Several of you may recall that I had to leave Needham abnormally early? Well, it was for that. It was definitely worthwhile though- I got introduced to a ton of people who helped to streamline the whole "getting used to college" thing. If you remember Taryn from the photography post, she was in my group.

But anyway. This particular story sadly doesn't involve her, it's about Kelsey and Daniel.

...No, not THAT Daniel. Daniel Alexander, our student leader. I had been sitting with a couple of my other archways groupies, Kelsey being one of them, and Daniel apparently saw us and came over to say hi (he had been slacking off about the whole "staying in touch" ordeal... lazy bum).

We got to talking, and at one point during the conversation Kelsey looked at my head funny and said something about how "one of your ears is REALLY STRANGE!"

Well yeah, I said. That's my crazy ear.

It looks a bit odd because while most ears curl back in on themselves at the edges, this particular one does not. So it looks a lot flatter than other ears.

Daniel decided that this was something he HAD to see for himself. The first problem with this ordeal was with the order that everyone was sitting in:

The second problem was, as you may have guessed, that the "crazy ear" was on the OPPOSITE side of my head as Daniel. So, obviously, you just get the person to turn their head so that you can take a look for yourself.

WRONG. Within seconds of Kelsey saying that Daniel had grabbed my head.

The long and short of what happened was that I ended up almost sideways with my head pinned to the table, while Daniel and Kelsey and a couple of other relatively interested people looked at what must the most fascinating ear ever.

When they finally let me sit back up, I was taken aback by Kelsey taking a knife back from Daniel and putting it in her pocket.

Which reminds me, I should probably introduce Kelsey to you all.

Meet Kelsey. :)

Anyway. Kelsey has a habit of carrying a pocketknife around with her pretty much wherever she goes. In fact, she's sitting next to me while I'm writing this- and sure enough, she has one with her.

She's a really nice girl, one of the best. Yet for some reason (this explains why she was putting her knife AWAY) her initial reaction to my hapless position was to whip out the blade and hand it to Daniel.

...What??

If you're half as confused about that as I was, then you would be very confused. Although I was laughing so hard at the time though that I didn't really care- I mean, it's not like she or Daniel was going to stab my head or anything.

...Probably, anyway. :/ Temporary fits of laughter do a lot to help cover up those nagging thoughts about potential deaths.

Oh, bit of a non-sequitor, but I actually have a question for all of my adoring *cough* fans out there. I'm contemplating inquiring at the campus newspaper next semester to see if they'd take me on as a cartoonist/ article-writing-human. I'm not totally sure that this is a good decision though... swim team takes up a rather large quantity of my time here.

So hopefully, upon reading this, you'll weigh in. I'm about 90% sure that you can comment anonymously, so it wouldn't be a hassle- just say something like "go for it", "you should prioritize!" or "write about pandas, dammit!"

I probably won't write about pandas though, just a heads up. I do have standards, after all!

Low Battery Warning

I'm pretty tired today.

And yet here I am, writing a post for you guys anyway! You should be flattered. Or possibly worried about my bizarre sense of dedication to my readers, most of whom I probably don't even know are there.

The Christian College Invitational (read: swim meet) was on Saturday. It was a blast! There wasn't a scored meet, so everyone could try their best without having to worry about who was winning or not. Because while it is disgustingly cliché, we were ALL winners.

In all honesty, the only thing I can really miss about high school swimming is being the guy that the other swimmers look up to. It was a good feeling to be able to inspire confidence in the rest of my team. Here, I don't have that since I'm almost at the bottom of the food chain so to speak, but at the same time the camaraderie and just raw team spirit here is so strong it's intoxicating.

I love it. Swim meets are when I get to unleash everything, and just pace up and down the sides of the pool screaming and urging the competitors on. (Disclaimer: your throat will not be pleased of you are yelling at the top of your lungs for four hours)

But in spite of that, one of the coolest parts is getting to know the other swimmers. Take this guy, for instance:

Is this a swimming picture? No. Do I know who the girl is, and does she even go to college here at Asbury? No. But the guy in the picture is a bit of a hero of mine, and let's face it, this is a pretty badass picture too.

That's Daniel, see the photography post if you've forgotten who he is. He is, legitimately, THE fastest and most well rounded swimmer I've ever met. Barely two months into the season and he has already qualified for I think it's five nationals events, not to mention the three team records he's DESTROYED.

And he's incredibly humble about it all, too. He doesn't really boast about anything, he's really smart, personable, trustworthy, and he photographs pretty well too.

Haha, sorry- that's an artist thing. Being photogenic is a standard I sometimes secretly hold people to.

Speaking of art, by the way, I'm working on a couple of different pieces at the moment. One of them is really intricate/ about half done, and the other one is just a design. I don't know when I'll be able to upload them, though- my scanner has been on the fritz. That's my excuse for a lack of legitimate concept art lately... bad tech.

Bad tech, however, means that I have lots of time to listen to music. And since music is really good for the nerves, stress has been almost bearable lately!

Fantastic stuff. I actually enjoyed doing Daniel's bio- I might do others.

But I promise that the next post will be the near-death-dissection story. That was a good time. Especially since I got out of it very not dead or gutted. :P

Evidence of Intelligent Design, part Double Gamma

Let me just begin by saying that I love my new swim team. Every last one of them (including the people whose names I'm still figuring out).

It was one dinner conversation that inspired this post. It helped me to realize that I have been quite negligent in my duty to helping you, as my reader, stay safe from all manner of impending harm.

We were discussing our zombie apocalypse plan.

First of all, it was decided that the entire population of the (un-infected) Earth would have to move to Canada. Now, before you all start complaining about how awful that sounds, think about it- Canada is cold.

Very, VERY cold.

So cold, that I bet that stuff there freezes. Like, say, the blood of a dead creature with no means to heat itself or intelligence as to ascertain how. Example, zombies. And since it's rather hard to bite/ kill/ do anything when you're frozen like a popsicle, Canada seems like a pretty safe place for when the zombie apocalypse arrives.

What?

No, of course it's coming. Stop pretending it won't, you're just being silly.

Anyway. So now that we all live in Canada, it stands to reason that people would need some kind of secure shelter. Allow me to propose a simple yet effective house:

Ok, I'll admit, most of the space in your house at this point is completely arbitrary- just so long as you have a set of good, thick walls, and Chuck Norris vigilantly standing guard on your front porch.

Hopefully I'll at least be old and senile before this happens. It would put such a damper on my day otherwise!

Oh and expect one of two things for the next post: either the strangest gift box I've ever received, or something about almost getting dissected on top of a dinner table in the caf.

College? Adventurous? Heck yeah.

A Classic Response

I started this little habit a while ago- maybe last year- of leaving a small picture everywhere.
It's not supposed to be artistic or anything, just simple and easy: so you can draw it quickly and leave without anyone seeing that is was you who did it. So I called it the "stealthy ninja", because it was supposed to just appear and disappear. And so on.

And so this hobby has gone on for a while, and I took it with me to college and have left a couple here and there, but I saw one day that someone ELSE had taken a notice.

Normally when people see them, they're just all "Huh, that's cool" or something along those lines. No, not this person- they were creative, and they RESPONDED.

It was easily the highlight of my day. So whoever you are, Mr. Burly Pirate, just letting you know that you're my hero.

And my eternal rival. Ninjas will always prevail, it's inevitable. Sorry!

On the subject of prevailing, I made a list of ideas for future posts- so now it will be a) easier for me to make them and b) get rid of my excuse for NOT making them consistently.

Yay productivity :)

A Silver Girl on a Storming Sky

This post is a little different than the others, but bear with me.

Let me tell you a story. It's not about superheroes or some great injustice in the world- it's about two totally normal people. But this story is special because one of them is me, and the other is a girl I wish I could have been friends with for much longer than I have.

She's an artist, like I am. We got to know each other at difficult points in our life- separate events that had nothing to do with each other, but it was obvious that we both needed someone to support us. You'll have to forgive me since I don't remember exactly how it all started, but we became best friends for a time. And it was at some point during those tough times that she gave me one of the greatest gifts anyone could hope for.

I was really down and out. We were talking, and for me, things had gotten quite hopeless. I felt like if I were to just up and leave Needham, never to return, no one would either notice or care. And I told her that. I was unneeded, unwanted, and just in the way.

The moment those words had left my mouth, without hesitation, she said "But Brian, you dummy- I DO need you!"

She was the first person to EVER have told me that I meant anything to them. Think about that for a second, in case you don't really grasp the significance.

Or you don't have to, I suppose. It's your call. But this girl will forever and always have a special place in my heart.

So... thank you, Katie Peck. You're the best friend a guy could hope for. :) I can't wait to see you again.

Swan Crossing- Watch your Children

Hello humanity!

Today's been pretty much a regular tuesday for me, so far. Nothing too exciting, I woke up late (as is my usual fare), went to the gym, had my daily brush with mortality, got lunch, etc.

Today's episode was on the way down the stairs- I was headed over to the library, where I am now, and I passed one of my hall mates. I said hi, waved, continued on my way down the stairs- and almost fell to my death.

What had happened was he'd grabbed the back of my shirt and shoved- and no, I hadn't provoked him at all. Apparently this is one of the ways guys connect on an emotional level, causing harm to each other.

So I tripped and almost fell down a flight of stairs today. Think about that- trying to explain why you couldn't swim anymore to your coach.

"Brian, why is your neck broken?"

"...One of my friends tried to kill me."

"Why?"

"You know, I'm not totally sure. I should ask him!"

Now, what I can't figure out is how the next conversation would go. THAT would be interesting.

I had had another one of those crazy thoughts today. You know how the atomic bomb worked by transforming matter into energy at a really high speed? And it made that gigantic explosion?

Well, I don't know the intricacies of the principles involved in why matter makes giant craters, but the thought hit me- what would happen if you took a person and instantly converted them into energy?

And if you were to take people of different sizes, would it make craters of different sizes?

Hm.

I wonder.

But anyway. Our first swim meet is on friday! It's a pretty exciting event for me, aside from the fact that I'm not going to be doing any of my normal meet events... normally I'm in the 100 fly and 200 IM, but now I got the 50 and 100 free. And relays. But since now I'm an all out sprinter, which by the way is something I have always secretly wanted to do, it's not THAT big of a deal.

People are convinced that I'm going to be a big shot sprinter, but in all honesty the OTHER two freshman are where it's at. You've seen Daniel, and the other one is Pat. They're AMAZING. They've both already either beaten or tied the pool records for Asbury in their respective events. I might do bios on them at some point, who knows.

But yeah. They're wicked fast. Swimming is going to be on a whole new level of intensity.

And yeah, you've all probably decided that there aren't any large birds in Trustees, and you're right. But it just seemed cooler to fall on top of an angry bird than a surprised guy sitting at the bottom of the stairs.

Which may or may not have happened. But regardless. Gnight!

This was an actual thought I had today

I know that little will transpire from me bringing this up except that all of you will think I'm that little bit more crazy, but it was interesting enough so I'll just mention it anyway.

In my expos and research class, one of the guys was talking about how warm his phone was- neither of us knew exactly WHY it was heating up, he hadn't been using it, but it was just the same. So I made a joke about how whichever company it was, probably Samsung, had invented a new and awesomer phone for people: a phone with a built in microwave.

It would be, needless to say, probably the single most amazing and simultaneously impractical thing ever created by human hands. You could make little with it except bacon. Maybe really thin pancakes.

But the embarrassing thing is that it couldn't have a name. The realization was a tragic one.

Pity, though- it would have been a pretty cool idea.

It's like a Swiss Army knife of mad skill

So you all know by now (hopefully) that I'm an artist, and I love pencil drawing in particular. Admittedly they're all rather one-track-minded, but that's fine because I think they're awesome anyway. :P

At any rate, I also really enjoy photography, but I've never had enough money to devote to buying a particularly high quality camera. So what's happened up until recently is I've had to resort to using my cell phone camera (it's pretty useless, but that's not much of a surprise.)

Here are a few of the "good" ones I managed to capture with that 1.3 megapixel camera:

They're all right, but it would still be much cooler to be able to take pictures of PEOPLE with an ACTUAL CAMERA.

Well, it seems that good fortune was on my side a few days ago, because I got a text from Katie Duncan (see an earlier post for what she looks like) saying "Come be our photographer!"

Some of the freshman swimmers had decided they wanted to do a photoshoot, just for fun. It was a pretty cool idea, but I couldn't really take part because I don't own blue jeans (more on that later, possibly) That was fine by me- I was happy to be the picture guy.

So I got to use Hillary's camera! Admittedly it's not as good as the REALLY expensive ones I had gotten to use with the NHS art department, but it was leaps and bounds better than the one I had.

Here are a couple of my favorite shots that I took:

Oh, also bear in mind that since this was Hillary's camera, she didn't upload everything. So a couple of the really good ones never made it online. Boo.

Anyway, the pictures, for real this time:

By the way, introductions, from left to right: Taryn, Katie (you already know her), Daniel, Hillary, and Cali (you already know her too).
I had to basically steal him for this one. But I'm a huge fan of how it turned out.
This last one is my favorite by far, for obvious reasons. It's just so freaking great. Thanks to the people in it for setting up such an awesome composition!

I need a camera. I also need to do my homework. Oops.

It's Irrational, I Know

Yes, I am slightly afraid of orange candy. Or for that matter, almost anything orange flavored. Does it make sense? No, but it's still true.

Orange colored things are scary.

I don't really remember very well when this fear first began per say, but there are a couple of possible reasons I've narrowed it down to. They are as follows:

I probably can't speak for the entirety of humanity when I say that Ernie haunts the dream of little children, but you can tell by the way his soulless eyes pierce your soul that he's probably not just interested in playing with rubber ducks.

You can run, but Ernie always knows where you're going so he'll be there when you arrive. THERE IS NO ESCAPE.

Then there are tigers. My brother, Stephen-

- that's Stephen- but anyway, tigers are his favorite animal. The background on his computer is a tiger. It's a pretty cool picture, admittedly, but... I mean...

Am I the only one who seems to think that tigers are always that one mental step ahead of us? Because that's the look they're always giving. They just sort of watch when you're looking at them in the zoo. Other animals normally do their own thing, but no- not tigers. They just lie there, eyeing you, and they're like "Ah, yes... He's the one who picks his nose even though he's 20! Gregory, did you hear about that one time he fell trying to catch his dog? T'was a very good show, I heard. Let us fetch some tea!"
Finally, and possibly the most terrifying, is some freaky kid. There has probably not been a more annoying creation ever to laugh maniacally at humanity, but regardless I feel compelled to share. I apologize if this makes any of you cry, and I hope that you'll forgive me for letting this horror show its face.

If you know anything about Naruto, it's that he drives any competent human to the brink of insanity with all of his nonsense about what he thinks ninjas should be. They should fight for their friends, and stand up for what's right! Never give up, even when you've been beaten down for the last 4 or 5 episodes by the same guy and then miraculously beat them in the end!

WRONG. Ninjas don't fight each other, they're all on the same team. Any indication otherwise is trickery of their own design. Ninjas can't get hurt. If a ninja wanted to kill someone, it would look like this:

That was slowed down considerably for dramatic effect, too.

Real people don't mess with ninjas. You can't, because it's impossible to find them. If Naruto is a ninja, then the queen of England is a burrito riding a yak.

And yet for some reason, there are people out there who are obsessed with him. THAT'S why he scares me- because he's so terrible but apparently captivating at the same time.

There you have it, that's why I'm afraid of orange stuff. There are a couple of exceptions, though- orange juice and orange sorbet are pretty good. That's it. Don't ask me why.

And..... I also drew a giant robot! I was going to work on the ninja picture some more, but I got distracted, and... this was the result.

I love me some giant robot.

I also heard something from a pretty reliable source that the Andy's guest post is almost done, so if you're still looking forward to that then rest assured- you don't have to look forward to it for as long as you did before.

Until next time, over and out.