Salamander Update

Yeah, this is mostly just an excuse to post a ton of cutesy salamander pictures I've been taking lately. It seems like X, Y and Z's appetite changes with the season; right now since its spring they've all been extremely hungry. They're also getting a lot smarter. Every time I walk by the cage they stick their heads out looking for food, and yesterday when I went to lower insects into the cage Xenon jumped up into the air, mouth open, tongue outstretched, four separate times. How do they even have the muscle for that kind of thing!? Anyway, they're all about 10 inches long now, and Zinc is for sure a girl.

(Zinc is in the back, Xenon is the left-most foreground salamander, and Yttrium is on the right. You can tell them apart because Zinc has a black stripe down her spine, Xenon is full of spots, and Yttrium has thin, black stripes.)

A lot of people say that salamanders don't care whether they have company or not, but I'm not so sure. They tend to all congregate together in a big cute lump more often then not, so I think they enjoy each other's company. Also, the general opinion about plants in cages is that since salamanders burrow, they couldn't care less about whether or not there is greenery in their cages. I disagree. They seem to like burrowing in the plant's roots, and definitely like taking shelter under it. So I have no idea what those people are talking about.

I also recently gave them a bath, as you can see by the first picture on this post. It's one of those things that people tell you not to do, but salamanders are amphibians! And they seemed to like it, except for Xenon who is a huge poop and just wanted to climb out. I even took a video of that so if I get around to it, maybe I'll post it on youtube.

Anyway, that's that. Maybe I'll post again sometime soon. :)

Bad Pick-Up Lines

Do you work at Subway? Because you just gave me a footlong.

*beckon the person over with your index finger* I made you come with one finger, imagine what I could do with the rest.

Hey, did you know I'm an astronaut? My next trip is to Uranus.

Are you a fan of Pokemon because I'd love to Pikachu.

I'll give you a nickel if you tickle my pickle.

If snowflakes were kisses I'd send you a blizzard!

You have 209 bones in your body... do you want another?

Do you work at UPS, because I swear you were just checking out my package.

Do you want to see something swell?

Wanna come over to myspace and twitter all over my yahoo until I google all over your facebook?

You must be a parking ticket because you have “fine” written all over you!

I'm like a rubrics cube, the more you play with me the harder I get.

I'm 5 foot 9 inches. Now enough about the five feet, lets talk about the nine inches.

How heavy is a polar bear? ...heavy enough to break the ice!

That shirt is quite becoming of you. If I were on you I'd becoming too.

- - - - -

Back in 2003 I burned a disk of my computer files. It was a good thing too, because that computer and its hard drive is long gone now, and I had a lot of art and stories that I saved that way. The best part was the mass of old art files I found on there, a lot of them almost painful to look at now. However, there also was an image I once considered to be the best picture I ever made. I still think it is quite good, especially since I made it when I was about 13.

Larger Image Here: Click Me!

I still like that image a ton actually. The only downfall is the color blemishes on the lettering, which I messed up with white-out and then had to try to make presentable. Oh well, art is just like that sometimes.

God

"Oh, what," she says to me. I shoot her a glance, slightly annoyed.

"Can't I hide anything from you?" I pout, mostly on purpose but slightly because I actually mean it.

"Oh come on now, don't go there. Don't go changing the subject before you've even had anything to say." She looks at me, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, brow slightly pressed until mini folds of skin wrinkle up somewhere between her right eye and her left. Small enough that you don't really notice unless you're looking right at them, and even then you don't normally notice unless for some reason you do. A lot of things are like that.

I look at those small folds of skin and cross my own arms. "Hmmph," I say, not really a word but more of a sound. I don't want to talk about it. I really don't. In fact, I'd rather chew my own toe off then talk about it. She knows that. She does! That wrinkle of skin, right there, that proves that she does. "Hrrrmm," I express again. Maybe she'll get the idea and go back down to wherever she came from. That place that, well, I'm not quite sure where it is to be honest. She just sort of comes up from there and then disappears back into it, whether I want her to or not.

And, of course, she always has to come at the wrong times. Like now. Why now?

"It's God again, isn't it."

"Oh, shut up!" I snap back. I'm uncomfortable. I don't want to talk about it. She knows this! In fact, God is definitely the absolute last thing I want to even pretend to think about. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm probably so angry precisely because I don't want to think about it! Think about Him. It. You know, the whole situation surrounding it. Him.

It occurs to me that grammar might be a good skill to learn some day.

"He's a sock puppet you know," she says slyly, mockingly. "People just, you know, poof Him up into their minds, take some of that old glue they used to chew on as a kid and paste their beliefs all over Him." She takes a step to the side. "Kind of like those construction paper monstrosities you see in the kindergarten section of elementary schools. They're all ugly and horribly misshapen, little bits of extras tacked on to the side, some weird marker scribbles in the corner, a freaky attempt at a face in the upper middle." I growl, and she just nods, lip slightly curled in an expression that makes me furious. "God, really, is just as significant as those pasted artworks. Oh, wait!" She lifts a finger, as if a new idea has suddenly struck her. "In fact, less important! Because, obviously, every intelligent person in the world knows He doesn't actually exist. Unlike kindergarten art, you see. Walk into any elementary school and you'll see that exists, plain as day, hanging on the walls. But you can't really walk anywhere and see that God exists." She looks at me for a moment, head cocked slightly to the side, eyes looking painfully masked.

"Grrrmmm," I say, again, more of a sound than a word. She knows she's just making me angry. She knows that I'm feeling those thoughts again, the ones the bubble up from nowhere, that want to gurgle their way up my throat and squeeze their tiny hands through my teeth until they wiggle themselves so far through the cracks that my mouth just bursts open and out they come, spilling like a hypothetical overflowing toilet, spurts of words that when put in the right context would probably make sense but the way they're splashing out just makes them a jumble-

"Haha, ha!" She laughs. She laughs because even though I'm not saying anything, she knows what I want to say. "Oh you're silly," she mocks again, stepping closer. I can feel the anger oozing up my chest, thick and warm and swirling farther up my throat. "You think you can hide yourself from me? Oh, haha, how silly!" She steps close and places one, dainty, dirty, disgusting finger right square on my lips. "You can't hide thoughts from me. I'm you! I'm that part that you always want to ignore, that part that you want to forget about and pretend doesn't exist so that one day, maybe, I'll just disappear and never return." She smiles. "But you know that's not how it works, baby. Oh no. You try to hide things from me, you try to ignore me. But it doesn't work like that. In fact, I'd wager that I can hide your thoughts from you better then you can hide your thoughts from me!"

Oh that fucker. Her face with those wrinkles, that look, oh if I could just take my hands and wrap them tight around her metaphysical neck, and then squeeze-oh it would hurt so bad-squeeze until her little dull eyes pop straight out of her head, and her fingers wilt down the the ground like dying wildflowers, and her blood spurts out of her, pure evil I'm sure, smelling like rotten eggs and the dying piss and shit of babies-

"But then, darling, you'd be dead too you know." She says, simply. "You'd be dead too because as much as you don't want to admit it, I am you and you are me. Every evil thought I have you have too, every good thought that you grasp for is tainted by me." Her eyes narrow. "You can't escape me. Just as you can't escape God you can't escape me. You can't even breathe without Him saying its okay, without him pulling back your tiny little diaphragm, without him letting that oxygen and nitrogen and whatever else the fuck is in the air swoosh into your lungs so that your tiny little red blood cells, created and maintained by His power alone, can carry those essential things into your body and keep you alive."

"You're wrong," I say. No, I spit. I spit it right out of myself, thick and heavy and hot. "God is even stronger than you," I say, the words fumbling out. "Whatever you are, you disgusting thing, whatever you do to me, however I choose to go with you (for everything you do is done by me), God is greater than all of that. ALL of it!" I feel sick, somewhere in my body. It doesn't matter. "I don't care how bound I am by you, you twat, you disgrace, you piece of slime. Because you don't matter! You DON'T! You wish you had power, and you hold on to what you can, a parasite, self-bound, self-destructive, but in the end you have nothing because without God you are nothing and I, with Him, am stronger than YOU."

Her lip curls and her face is unreadable, and really, at the end of it all, what did I even say? Did I even believe myself? Does she believe it? That thick anger is still there, thumping, squirting, roaring. She opens her mouth and then closes it, not because she can't speak, but because she is fading away again, leaking back into that place where she lives deep within myself, that dark place, and hidden place, that place where she sleeps until the time is right...

She'll be back. She always comes back.

I roll over, exhausted.

Sleep.

I'm totally a college student.

I experimented with making Ramen today. I had some celery laying around and was in the mood for something quick yet delicious, so I was like, "what the heck?" I then dug through my food cupboard and found a can of chicken, kinda like a can of tuna only it was chicken. So, I put some water in a pan and cut up two stalks of celery, and then threw the chicken in there and the flavoring packet too. (The flavor was roast beef, and I figured I wanted some of that flavor to ooze into my celery so I better cook it together, you know?) Anyway, I dug around some more and found a few beef granules, like bullion cubes mushed up. So I threw some of that in too. Add the noodles, boil it for a bit, and tadaa! Food! I definitely like the celery, but I probably didn't need two stalks, and the flavor is pretty good but maybe some garlic would make it even better. Oh well, there you go. Proof that I'm a college student. :)

Sonnet

So, I have this online poem class I'm taking right now where once I week I have to write two poems and send them in. It's pretty easy and kind of fun, since I've never seriously wrote any poems before and the atmosphere is so relaxed I can just plop down whatever I want and not have to worry about it. This week I had to write a sonnet for one of my poems, and I actually think mine is pretty sweet so I'm going to share it. (If you need a brush up on what a sonnet is, it is a 14 line poem with an iambic pentameter meter. That is, an unstressed-stressed pattern, and there needs to be five of those in each line. Confused? Yeah, me too!)

So, anyway, here you go!

Trans Fat

What is the use of a mere onion ring,

Dripping with oil and full of gross fat?

Who in the world would eat such a thing?

Taste and shape not even fit for a cat!

And yet sometimes when I order some fries,

I peek inside and what do my eyes see?

Amid the sticks of potatoes it lies,

A round deep fried product of greesery!

"What is this monstrosity?" I exclaim!

With a finger and thumb I fish it out.

"An onion ring?" I say with clear disdain!

Looking at it my mouth forms to a pout.

But after a moment I plop it in,

"It's not that bad," I say with a small grin.

I seem to like silly poems, hehe. :D

Also, I had a project due for my drawing class this last Tuesday and of course I didn't start until the day before. I was feeling a bit crappy just in general about life, (I feel a lot better now, it was a weird funk) and so I just used that to pump out a big charcoal mess. My favorite is the little dude in the upper right:

Otherwise, I'm thinking for my final painting project I might get a little ambitious and try to pump out a short little animation... I dunno though, that's a lot of work. Corey has inspired me though and I'm always trying to work up the motivation to make an actual hand-drawn animation, so maybe this is my chance!? We'll see....

Why do deer move around in the morning? Why!?

Deer hunting is pretty much the lazy man's connection to being awesome. All you do is sit around for hours and hope a big meaty deer comes waltzing past. Deer, surprisingly, are amazingly quiet. I always assumed I'd be able to hear a deer coming a mile away, but they are very sneaky animals and very rarely do their feet make any noise. So, you have to keep your eyes open and look for movement. (Which of course makes everything look like a deer whenever it moves, and then you know you're getting way too excited.) But, if you do see one and are able to sneak your gun up to it without it noticing you (in addition to being silent they have great hearing, so you can't make any noise or they'll hear it and run like a bitch), there is pretty much no way you can miss. Compared to duck hunting it's basically cake, if you can sit still that is. But it occured to me today that there is one freaky thing about deer hunting that completely blows duck hunting out of the water.

Walking out to your stand.

Because deer move around the most when it is just getting light out, you want to be sitting in your stand ideally at least a half-hour before it gets light. Yeah, you know what that means; you gotta get up early and walk through the woods. In the dark. Did you know there are wolves and bears up in northern Minnesota? Of course you do. But it really doesn't seem like that big of a deal... until you need to walk blindly through the trees in complete darkness. Suddenly, a place that is usually peaceful becomes a full of hungry, rabid predators. All you have is one measly flashlight, and it bounces off all this brush and trees you didn't even notice in the daylight. It feels like you're boxed in! Boxed in, and only able to see a few feet in front of you, with the possibility of anything creeping around to your sides or behind you or anything. And when you're tramping out there, hoping you're not lost, and you hear those wolves start howling... I'm pretty sure I lose a few pounds in sweat everytime.

Then, of course, are those times you get lost. You have markers, gashes, broken twigs, shiny little tacks, everything, and still you get lost. So you sit there in darkness with your one little flashlight, shining it all over the place trying to look for that one shiny tack that'll lead you farther into the mess of trees around you. It sucks! Today I had to sit for a while on a big rock because I took a right when I was supposed to take a left. I was following my trail and then I started following another path and then I was in a clearing and there was no where to go! And then I was like, "Uhm, where did I come from?" so I poked around and realized I had no idea. Luckily I eventually figured it out once I calmed down and just sat, but still, getting lost in the woods at 4:30am is not how I like to start my day. Luckily, there were no wolves howling this morning. :)

And, of course it was worth it!

I'm actually feeling quite good today.

Do you ever feel like the stuff you care about is something that no one else really understands? I mean, really. No one cares to see it, or look for it, or even think that it's worth caring about. They're more interested in making what you're interested in into something that they already like, or persuading you to move away from it, or trying to tell you that its dumb and obviously not as important as what they care about. I mean, shit, I do that all the time so just typing it out makes me feel a bit hypocritical. But at the same time, there are days when I just feel weary and wish I had more little "Sara-groupies" to keep me inspired and wanting to pursue the things I like. In general, I'm just lazy and devolve into this strange fleshy doormat that agrees with profs and peers and whoever about how my stuff sucks. And hey, sometimes they have great points and great insights so I love that. But other times I think, "can't you just try to like this? I like it. There are things in there that I know are worth liking." I think the fault in all this comes in my timid nature. I am not always the best in articulating what I think, and honestly it makes me nervous. So I devolve to this safe place, this comfort zone, where I don't try to explain what I was going for in a piece of artwork or whatever creative vision I may be working towards. I just agree with what people say and don't try to fight it... why would they care about something when I'm not showing them why they should care?

Hmm, this reminds me of how I go about stating opinions. Very similar really. Arguing for an opinion is way more difficult though, for me anyway. Though I'd venture to say my sense of right and wrong is persuasive, my logical explanations of said rights and wrongs leave me feeling very dissatisfied. Most of the time if I get to the point of explaining what is on my mind, what people mirror back to me is not what I was trying to say, and other times I just get poked in the logical holes I created for myself. Our world is such a logical place, and I know that all people have strong logical sides if only they'd let them out. I strangle mine and kill it with fear, and so it struggles and gimps along and leaves me with exactly what I try so hard to avoid: rejection. How ironic!

It occurs to me that maybe people don't preform as well as they wish they did not because they can't, but because they stop themselves. They have all these abilities but they are hard to those things, they fear rejection and failure and so they try to "toughen" themselves in order to avoid the unavoidable. Life, I think, is important because of rejection and failure. And if you think about it, rejection and failure are not bad things. They're sort of like getting a cold. No one likes getting stuffed up and sick, but the reason your body is doing that is to save you from death. Not that rejection and failure is that extreme, but I think they serve a similar purpose. They're uncomfortable and unwanted, but they are not bad things. And maybe, in an ideal world, they would not be quite so uncomfortable and unwanted. Maybe they're so feared because we try to harden ourselves to them, to stop them from happening. Maybe colds wouldn't be so bad either, if we just opened ourselves to them and allowed our bodies to fully and completely fight whatever is making us ill.

Or, maybe not. :)

Storybook Project... Take 2!?

So after seeing "Where the Wild Things Are" this past Monday (I really liked it by the way) I've been once again inspired to work on my storybook project from last year. Though I loved where the project was going, the images were a bit sloppy and generic (in my opinion) and the way everything unfolded deserved to be fine-tuned a bit. Anyway, it's been on my mind so today during painting class and drawing class I did a shit-ton of doodles, basically redesigning the main creatures. I liked all of their basic shapes (besides snake, which looked terrible imo), but the original impression I had of them was lost in the execution of the assignment. So, I tried my best to hold on to what I wanted them to be and then just experimented with different looks.

Bat was first. I always saw him as a more sleek creature then I originally designed him. I also figured he would be pretty shy, and would use his multiple wings to hide behind. I still wanted big ears though, and I wanted the mouth to still be huge when he actually opens it. (Think of those anime cats that have cute small faces, but when they yawn or whatever their mouth gets REALLY BIG! Like that.) I'm also thinking of changing it to a she... hmm.

Dog was second. I actually liked Dog's design a lot, but kind of wanted to incorporate a little bit of turtle onto him. I'm not sure why, I thought it'd make him even cuter or something. :) (Plus, people seemed to really like the first design so I didn't want to change it that much!) Anyway, now he'll have a spiky shell-butt for his lower body, think like a Map Turtle: http://www.redorbit.com/modules/reflib/article_images/11_6a7a9731fef1787b7556bf9fe3b301dc.jpg

I did a fair amount of work on Tiger (who might now be named Cat) but I couldn't quite get expression down I was trying to go for. The biggest thing about Tiger (Cat?) is that he has fingers that are constantly touching things, sort of pressing in to himself and twirling about themselves. That plus a lanky look was hard to pull off, but maybe I'll have more luck in a few days.

I also wrote a lot of stuff about what I find interesting in my own artwork, just so that I could understand why I like to draw I guess! I want to post that here too, but it'd make this blog too long so I'll just slap it up in a day or two instead. Otherwise, enjoy, and lemme know if you have any suggestions of your own.

Cockroaches. Yes, cockroaches.

So, you know that time in your life when you want to breed little insects as food? You know, like crickets? But, as you research what you have to do to make your own colony, you realize they're smelly, loud, and can escape their cage like no tomorrow? So then you go searching, trying to find if there is any alternative to crickets. Something meaty, not really tough, you know, something docile that won't do anything but sleep and eat and make babies?

Well, I've found it. Cockroaches. Tropical cockroaches. And after a month of troubles with ordering them (turns out it was just a simple misunderstanding), they've arrived. *deep breath*

THEY'RE CUUUUUTTTEEEE!!!

So the adults get about an inch to an inch and a fourth long; that's a picture of me holding a female while it just chills out on my hands. They remind me a lot of big fat ants to be honest; their head (which you can only see if you look underneath them) looks exactly like an ant head, although they lack any sort of little mandibles or anything. To be honest I don't know how they survive so well in the wild. They can't really climb, they can't bite, and they're afraid of pretty much everything including sunlight and slight movements. They also can't tolerate cold temperatures and if it gets below 70 degrees they refuse to make babies, so essentially if one gets loose it'll just scavenge around for a while and then die.

The males look a lot different then the females and they're not quite as fat; as you can see they have some big wings but no worries, they can't fly. In all truthfulness they are pretty much foolproof in terms of raising them, just keep them warm and give them food and they'll poop out babies with no trouble at all.

I hear that if you keep the conditions right they'll make more babies then you'll know what to do with, so maybe I can use that as an excuse to get another pet... *cough* beardeddragon *cough*

Oh gees, otherwise, a lot has been going on. School has been kicking my ass; I have a few cool art projects I want to get uploaded to DA though as a result so that should be popping up soon. I do have a few rough previews of what I have waiting, most of it is still in the works but here are a few crappy phone pictures anyway:

This guy is something I've been working on between painting projects; sometimes I think the assignments are retarded so to vent my frustration I work on this since I actually like it. Very controlled, pretty normal; for some reason a girl in my class really likes it, heh.

Also unfinished, and I'm not sure what I think about this guy yet. I'm not going to lie, it's like 90% taken from that flying machine monster in the movie "9." That bad guy made the movie worth seeing in my opinion... but you all know me and flying critters.

This one is actually complete, just not properly scanned or anything. Very different then my normal stuff, and I did a ton of color layering. I tried to do that thing where you slap on a lot of different colors and have the end result actually look cool, and I personally think it worked out. The picture obviously does not do it justice, but hopefully my final DA scan will be closer to what it actually looks like.

I have more stuff I could say, and I could go on another thought rant no problem, but I'll save that and maybe update again next week sometime. For now, I'm gunna go play with my buggies!

Bearded Dragons and Normality

So, over the past month or so I've been doing a lot of research on different types of pets. Once I started learning about all the people who keep salamanders, I've been looking into different types of amphibians and reptiles just for fun. But, there is one type of reptile I keep coming back to... the bearded dragon. They're these desert lizards from Australia, really docile, easy to breed, and get to about 1 1/2 - 2 feet long. So, naturally, now I really want one... and absolutely can't afford one. Damn! They just eat too much and need a fairly large cage, and the animal itself (especially the color morphs) is not cheap. If I did get one it'd probably be a black and red male if possible. Man, if only I had unlimited money... oh well. :)

This little guy is available right now, and exactly the color I want... wow, I wish I could afford one!

In other news, I've been working a lot on t-shirt designs lately as I'm sure some of you have noticed. I've been motivated to try to get my work out there and maybe get a few dollars for it in the meantime. The problem is making a design that people would want to wear. O.O I'm not the best at anticipating what people like, but I'm gunna keep trying. I figure, eventually one of my ideas has to get through, right? I guess some people might think that mentality is dumb (I'm not really doing the "normal" thing, a.k.a. getting a job, but instead am making t-shirt designs to get money) but I enjoy it a lot so I don't mind. :)

Which kinda brings me to another thing I've been thinking about lately. "The normal thing." We all judge people according to what we think is normal. For example, when you hear about a 40 year old guy who is still living at home, or a person who drops out of high school or doesn't want to attend college, or maybe someone who has some crazy idea, like they're going to write music and be famous someday. That is when "the normal thing" rears its ugly head. I mean, lets be honest, all of us look down on people who aren't "normal" every once in a while. It's largely subconscious I think. You see it on TV a lot, on the internet ALL the time (trolls love this), and even when we're interacting with each other face-to-face. Sometimes, it's warranted. I mean, a 50 year old drug addict who lives on the street? That really is pretty gross and not normal or healthy.

But what about the people who are actually going for something that hasn't been done before? Something that isn't normal precisely because it is beyond normal, because it's new, it's exciting, it's different. Sometimes those new and different things seem weird. They aren't always amazing right off the bat, and they often go down in quality before they go up. And how do we as people treat those ideas? Basically, like shit. "Oh, you're trying to do what? That's not normal. That's weird. You're stupid, why aren't you doing something that's normal? Why don't you get a real job? Why don't you get a girlfriend? Give up your stupid dream, it's worthless." We aren't that harsh about it, but we all feel it. That awkward twisting in the gut, the sudden rush of anger or discomfort, the desire to say something lashing or demeaning for reasons we don't really understand. Why to people do that? Why do they feel the need to tell other people what they should be doing? Why do we all need to stick to what has been done before? What's wrong with a little bit of difference? A little bit of something new? And most of all, why do people even care what someone else is doing with their life? At some point you just have to give someone the authority to live how they want to live, for good or bad.

I personally am terrible at all this. But it doesn't stop me from thinking about it and being effected by it. (You're an art major? Have fun living in a box for the rest of your life. Oh, you want to do what? Write a book? Make shirt designs? And how many people are successful at that? That's right, no one you can think of. Why don't you go to college for a real reason, like being a nurse? Or maybe, I don't know, getting a job or something?) And I'm not even trying to do anything super weird or exciting! The world is a very strange place sometimes.

Well, that's about all I have for now. Thanks for reading guys. :)

Worm Hunting

Sometimes, you just gotta go do something ridiculous. It might have a purpose, maybe not, but if one day you wake up, look outside, and decide you want to gather up a large quantity of worms, well, this is the blog post for you.

First of all, go barefoot. Why? Because everyone needs an excuse to go romping around in the mud, and worm hunting is one of those reasons.

Second of all, go after a rainfall. Why? Well, apparently worms come crawling out of the ground after a rain. I've never really seen it myself, but you might get lucky. And hey, you need after-rain mud to squish inbetween your toes, right?

Now, if you seriously want to go digging for these crawly critters (maybe for fish bait, maybe for animal food, maybe just for fun) digging around in the ground is a sure-fire solution. Just as long as you have some dirt you're sure to find some worms as well, assuming you dig around long enough. But the problem is, you don't get very many little creepy crawlies this way, and most of them aren't really big either. So, how can you improve your worm hunting skills? Well look for fallen branches and logs, silly!

In all seriousness, any object that has been plastered onto the ground (you can tell because the bottom bits will be sunk into the dirt a little) is what you're looking for. Warm up those muscles and push whatever you find aside, and sure enough you'll see tons of worms nestled underneath! Other critters, such as centipedes, slugs, and ants are also common, but whether or not you want to collect those too is purely optional.

Now this is when you have to be fast. The little worms aren't all that worried about what you just did, but the big fat ones (like nightcrawlers) get pretty scared pretty fast. Though you'd assume that the smaller worms would be the faster worms, this unfortunately is not the case. So if you're hunting for large prey rather then mere numbers, you have to be quick. Having a garden scoop is handy here; though worms quickly slide down into the dirt if you're careful you can dig them out before they crawl too far out of sight. Inevitably, you're going to lose some of them. But, how fun would this hunting experience be if you caught everything you were searching for?

And, well, that's all there is to it! Worm hunting might not be the msot exciting of sports, but lack of complexity is not directly proportional to lack of fun. However, an enjoyment of slimy things definitely helps.

Pictures are not related, but definitely hilarious. (Thanks to my dad for finding this in the first place.)

Dungeons and Dragons Strikes Again

You know, D&D is one of those nerdy things that never seems to get anywhere, but never really goes away either. It's different, fun, and always hilarious, but in terms of actual plot and normal RPG style progression, nothing really happens. You kill some baddies, sometimes you die, every session comes with a slew of witty jokes, bathroom humor, and awkward roleplay. And, nearly every campaign has a fight that ends in a truely awesome way. But, eventually, people get busy or lose interest or something goes wrong, and the campaign drops off at a strange spot and

never is picked up again. However, sure enough, a month or two or three later someone says "HAY GUYS, lets play D&D, I got some suh-weet ideas!" and the process starts all over again.

It occurs to me that there are a few things that have taken on this "on-off" cycle throughout the years. Starcraft, obviously the best game ever (in my opinion), is one that always seems to make a comeback and delivers fun times. Diablo 2 appears now and again, and usually we'll all play halfway through Nightmare or a little bit into Hell before we realize how much of a pain in the ass the game is and move on. Magic has swelled and receeded, never really dissapearing completely but always sort of in the background; the game that fills up the boring times between other events. And, of course, World of Warcraft, a game that sticks around primarily because it is so damn addictive. There are other things too, like Smash Bros and nightly walks and other (less nerdy) things that come and go as well.

It makes me wonder what it is about these activities that makes them cycle in and out. They are all extremely fun, but I suppose that without variety even the most refreshing of activities can quickly become stale. So you need to boot them out and then bring them back in order to keep getting enjoyment out of them. I guess this is a pretty obvious conclusion... but it was on my mind. I think there would be a lot more activities that would take on this nature if people were able to participate in them. Especially "kid things" if you know what I mean, like playing at a park or who knows what. (Not that you can't play at a park now, but people would look at you pretty wierd if you did.)

You know, if adults were allowed to play in playgrounds, I think there would be a lot less fat people in the world. And why can't they? I mean, playgrounds are fun, and healthy! But think about it, if you saw some 30 year old man crawling around on top of the monkey bars (yes, you're not supposed to be on top, but everyone did it!) it would probably wierd you out a bit. There are a lot of things in the world that are like that. I mean, I'd love to go and play pretend out in the woods with some toys like I did as a kid. But it's just... not acceptable I guess. And because of that I'd feel wierd doing it too. I really think if there wasn't such a stigma attached to

adulthood, where you "need to grow up" and "stop doing kid things" people would be a lot healthier in general. They could just go play pretend and enjoy simple things sometimes, and you know, that makes people feel good. Sometimes you just have to go play pretend, or climb on top of the monkey bars.

Uuuh, wow. This post got out of hand.

Anyway, I've had the next panel of Adventures in D&D nearly finished for a few months now, so I should probably get on that and continue with it. It really was a great fight, and extremely hilarious at the time, so I should finish what I started! Here is a teaser in the meantime:

This time the Ent is the one freaking out....

The main reason why I should finish this strip is to make way for future strips. D&D always has funny moments just begging to be illustrated, you know? :)

10 things about ND that are different than MN

1.) "Can I have a sack?"

I'm not really sure where this came from, but at least fifty percent of the people who come into my work a call bags "sacks." It is more common among older folk then younger, and definitely more common among people from other states like Texas and Montana. I just wonder where the name came from, because "bag" seems to make so much more sense to me then "sack." Oh well!

2.) Fat Chicks

This is probably more of an area thing then a problem with all of North Dakota, but the percent of fat chicks is much larger here then it is in Minnesota. (Male obesity rates seem to be about the same.) I'd say about nine out of every ten women are very large, which seems wierd because most of the people around here are involved in farming and oil working. Perhaps oil workers make so much that their wives can just sit at home and get fat? I'm not even trying to be mean here, it's just true!

3.) Box Burning

In Minnesota, most cardboard boxes are unrecycleable or else they need to got through an entirely different system in order to be re-used. In North Dakota? Just burn those sons-of-bitches! I guess in Minnesota it is illegal to burn boxes, which is absurd (in my opinion) because they burn clean and stores get so many of them, and it's not like they're hard to make. Oh well!

4.) Gun Laws

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the gun laws in Minnesota, but when transporting a firearm in a car you must have it unloaded and in a gun case. North Dakota is almost completely opposite. If you have your guns cased, they have to be in a place in the car that is easily visible. And, it is not illegal to have them uncased and loaded. Shooting prairie dogs out of the window of your car is probably one of the most hilarious things I've done while I've been up here, and in Minnesota it would be completely impossible.

5.) Cowboys

I'm going to be competely honest here; I really didn't think cowboys existed anymore. Not in terms of the profession, because there is obviously enough free-range cows around to warrent the existance of cowboys. I'm talking the dress style. Tall leather boots, the signature cowboy hat, plaid shirts nestled underneath a stylish, fringed leather jacket? Oh how wrong I was. On a side note, however, it is a pretty attractive style on skinny young guys, so I suppose the fact that it still exists isn't really a bad thing. :)

6.) White Trucks

Is white a very interesting car color to you? I didn't think so! But I guess in North Dakota it is. Again, this could be just a regional difference, but the amount of white trucks in this place compared to other colored trucks is at least 2:1. Why are there so many!? I really have no idea. One day I held a count of how many white trucks I saw while going about my normal business, and I made it well up into the forties. I just don't get it!

7.) Montana Tax

"Uhm, yeah, I'm from Montana but I'm in North Dakota so can I just skip your tax and have mine instead?" Yeah, I know it sounds dumb, enough that when someone asked for it for the first time I just laughed at him. (Not a very good idea for a cashier to do, and he wasn't very happy about it.) But, apparently, in North Dakota this is actually possible! If you're from Montana and you buy over $50 of anything, you can take off the North Dakota tax and have Montana tax instead. What the hell? Too bad I'm from Minnesota I guess....

8.) "Sorry, you're not old enough to look at booze."

In North Dakota, liquor stores tend to be in places that you don't really expect them to be. Like, latched on the side of a Wal-mart, or nestled in the back of a convenience store. But, what's even more surprising is that you can't enter one unless you're 21. Period. I found this out the hard way, by following my dad into one after a day of shopping. Once I told the lady at the counter my age she gave me a huge buggy-eyed stare and pointed towards the door, complete with incoherent babbling that I didn't quite understand. What I want to know is why? "Oh no, I've been in a beer store! I'M GOING TO DRINK AND HAVE LOTS OF SEX NOW!" It's just wierd, I guess this is a law I don't quite understand.

9.) 24-Hour Stores

You know those stores that are open 24/7, like Walmart or Cub Foods? In North Dakota there is a law that says that every 24-hour store must be closed for at least 8 hours a week. This kind of defeats the purpose of the 24 hour label wouldn't you say? At least they close Sunday mornings most of the time. Who would want to go to Walmart that early in the morning anyway?

10.) Drive-Through Subways

This is something I've never seen before until I came here. Maybe they exist in Minnesota, but if not, I wonder, why not!? Subways in North Dakota have a drive through option! It'd be a little more complicated then ordering a burger at Hardies, but also a lot more convenient for people on the go! I was pretty surprised when I found out about it myself, and my coworkers seemed pretty amused by my excitement. I suppose I'm just easily entertained or something. :)

Also, here is a WTF doodle that is not related to this post at all:

Aaand, me and Chad beat Diablo 2 last night. I took a screenshot as proof! Pretty cool huh? (My character was a summoning druid that attacked with a bow [hence the name PewPewDrood] and his was a concentrate barb that used a lot of warcries. Kind of a wierd combo but we ended up kicking ass.)

A Confession

So I have a confession to make. I've never been a huge fan of music. I like music, it's not something I dislike, but keeping up with it and learning about it and collecting it has never been something I've been interested in or have wanted to spend my time on. I also love silence. When I go for too long of a time with constant noise, I just get irritated! I need time where I can just listen to the normal sounds around me, devoid of music and TV and other inturruptions. I don't know why this is... I never made the choice to detatch myself from music and the music community. It's just an interest that never really developed within me, and continues to be low-key and uninterested.

Anyway, that said, I have a very interesting dilemma. As many of you know, the only thing I can multitask with (as far as I know) is drawing. I love drawing and painting in silence, or having a TV playing in the background, or talking with someone while I draw; it's like while my eyes are focused on creating my ears and mouth are free to focus on other things. While working on traditional peices I can sit for hours and hours just drawing and listening, whether there is silence around me or otherwise. However, when I'm on the computer this focus for some reason crumbles. I have such a strong desire to create digital work, but I just can't keep up the focus for it to happen. The internet distracts me, or my mind wanders to a thought so interesting that I break from my work; often times I can only draw for a mere 15 minutes before dropping it altogether. That is, unless...

You guessed it. Unless I'm listening to music.

There is this artist that goes by the internet name "Neon Dragon." She often does live streams of herself drawing in photoshop, complete with a musical track to suppliment her work. Her stuff is popular and decent but not fantastic; she created the common "How to Draw Dragons" artbook that I'm sure you guys have seen at Borders and Barnes and Noble. Anyway, whenever I find her streaming I often don't even watch her; instead after five minutes I really want to draw so I open up photoshop and get to work while her music streams in the background. Guess what happens? Well shit, I can't stop drawing! My mind is satisfied listening to her music while my eyes and hands are busy creating.

This leaves me in an interesting predicament. Do I go through the trouble of collecting a music library for my own artistic purposes when my actual interest in the process is low? Or do I just keep on doing what I'm doing? Hmm.

Anyway, this is a lot of text and no pictures. Here, have a dinosaur update: (Bigger image here: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y120/Rikkoshaye/Rex-Half-Color.jpg )

Not so sure about the collar, but I'm afraid people might be too daft to get the connection without it. Also not so sure on the tree coloring yet. Any input?

Yttrium

Congrats little dude, you made it! :D

So, Yttrium is changing into an adult salamander.

*deep breath*

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!

His eyes, which were flat against his head, have started bugging out, and his tail fin has been getting much smaller. His gills have been shrinking, and he walks on his little legs more like a salamander does, with his elbows stuck out instead of laying flat against his sides. Xenon has been shedding (salamanders shed, did you know?) and his belly is lightening up quite a bit. I think that means he will be changing soon too! Zinc is still quite small so I think he has a ways to go. :)

I've been moving along on my T-shirt design as well, but I haven't been able to work on it as much as I'd like due to work and retarded coworkers who just quit without letting anyone know.

It's not nearly close to being finished but I fixed some of the anatomical problems and I'm playing around with the markings. Since Blogger didn't allow people to click on the image before, here is a link to a larger version of Rex: Click Me!

Any suggestions from you guys? If anything looks weird just let me know and I'll see if I can play around with it. :)

Otherwise, just a short post for right now I guess... 13 more days until I can come home! :D

Animal Personalities

The fact that animals have personalities has always been something that is very interesting to me. If you've observed a few animals for more than 5 minutes it becomes obvious that no two creatures are alike; they all have their own actions and quirks that are unique to them, much like humans. Assuming that animals have no sense of self (something that seems true but no one really knows for sure) it's pretty cool that beings that primarily react to the world and their bodily needs still have room for uniqueness. It shows that not all personality traits come from what us humans posess; perhaps our quirks are meerly amplified by our sense of self and do not originate from that part of us? Anyway, I digress.

Because I've had my salamanders for more then 10 days now, their personalities have been appearing! Zinc, the little guy, is the most active of the bunch. He zooms around the cage and bumps into the other critters, and likes to park in the corners and swim up and down with his nose against the glass.

Xenon is definitely the most intelligent. It only took him a few days to realize that "the big pink human" is the thing that gives him food. Whenever I come close to the cage he swims up to the side of the glass and looks at me, and when I put my hand in the water he'll swim up to it and push his nose against my fingers looking for food. This of course doesn't happen if he can't see me, but most of the time he does. :)

Yttrium is the most antisocial. He generally hides behind the fake plants a lot, and sticks to the back of the cage. However, when Xenon was busy exploring my hand today he did come up to explore as well; I'm sure he will become more friendly as time goes on. What silly pets. :)

All three of them like to swim against the current in the aquarium (created by my bubbler as it pours water into the tank) and they all seem to enjoy parking themselves on top of the plants and just sitting there. (Especially Yttrium and Xenon.) Unfortunately they all like taking nips at each other's tails as well, and Zinc has a chunk missing so I'm not so happy about that. Hopefully if I feed them enough they won't do it too often though! I'm also not sure of their genders yet, though once they mature it'll be easy to tell. So, even though I'm calling them all "he" right now they could all very well become "she"! We'll see what happens. :)

I'm also working on another T-shirt design. This one is sort of a play off the dog name "Rex." It's far from finished but here is the outline so far (you can click on it for a larger version):

It is going to be holding a tree in it's mouth and I want to make the expression more confused then it already is. Also, T-Rex feet have an additional back digit so I'll have to fit that in somehow... anyway, that's about all.

Only 20 more days until I come home! Who wants to hang out? ;D

Xenon, Yttrium, and Zinc

So I've finally come up with the names for my Salamanders. After thinking on it for a few days I decided to name them after some elements on the periodic table because, well, elements are cool! :) My first two choices were Zinc and Zirconium, with the possibilities of Tungsten, Xenon, Argon, and a few others. After mentioning it to Chad he said it was too bad I didn't have three little critters, because then I could name them Xenon, Yttrium, and Zinc. (X, Y, Z!) This seemed so cool to me that I couldn't quite let it go, and yep, you guessed it: I bought another little salamander.

This pretty much made the purchase of a new tank nessisary! So, I went out to walmart and picked up a nice 14 gallon glass tank. I definitely don't have the room for it but I placed it on the floor; right now it is cycling water and getting everything oxygenated for when I add X, Y, and Z.

So here are a few more pictures of Zinc (the little guy), Xenon (aka Fatty, the large dark one) and Yttrium (the large light one.) Only one more day and they'll be in their new, big cage! Hurray!

I really need to find a hobby so I stop talking about these damn salamanders. ;)

Salamander Care

Though it has only been a few days since I have gotten my two salamanders, I've already had to go through quite a bit of work to keep them feeling happy and healthy! The day after I made my last post I came home from work to find an unsettling sight. The smaller of the two salamanders had some strange, white fungus growing on its left hand and one of its gills! Of the two salamanders I brought home, this little guy was the one in the worst condition. Though he moved around healthily he was missing one toe on his right hand and two toes on his left, and he had a noticable red spot underneath his jaw. Seeing him develop fuzzies was obviously not a good sign! (Especially since the fungus on his hand was encasing where his two missing fingers were supposed to be!)

After some quick research I found that fungus on salamander larvae was not all that uncommon, especially around healing wounds. The cure was not too difficult either; the proper mixing of water and salt would help kill the infection and wouldn't hurt the little critter. I was a little skeptical that just salt would do the job, but I diligently mixed eight cups of water and two teaspoons of salt together into a nice saline mixture. (I technically wasn't supposed to use regular table salt but I figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal.)

After a half-hour bath in the mix, the little salamander came out with the fungus around his hand compeltely gone. The gill stuff was still there, however, so I gently wiped a wad of toilet paper against it. No luck. The wad of fungus did seem to go down, but there still was a lot of it there and it wasn't coming loose. So, I just put the little guy back in his aquarium, deciding to see how it looked the next day. But not a half hour later, the fungus had mysteriously dissapeared! I guess the salt really did kill it, and a little swimming around must have knocked it loose. So far there has been no sign of reoccuring fuzzies, and the little salamander seems even more active then before. :D Furthermore, the red spot underneath the little guy's jaw has been gradually shrinking, so I think he is healing up well. :)




In terms of eating, both of the salamanders have been doing well. I haven't seen the smaller one eat more then a couple little worm sections, but given his size that definitely would fill his belly. The larger of the two salamanders though... well, I think the fact that I keep calling him "fatty" about says it all. So far I've seen him stuff his face with two huge worm halves and six little worm pieces. It's actually quite ridiculous what he manages to shove inside his body. I swear the amount of worm that he has devoured equals more then he actually weighs, but sure enough he just keeps eating. What a fatty.

There is one thing I am a little worried about with these two. According to what I've read, salamander larvae like to have a lot of room to move around. (One suggestion was 10 gallons of space for every salamander you have!) But, given my current living conditions, it's just not possible to have more then the 1.5 gallon tank I have now. Furthermore, the amount of waste they produce in such a small space requires that I'll have to clean their cage once every few days or so. From what I've read on the internet, frequent handling and small spaces have a chance of stressing out the creatures, which makes them sickly and unhealthy and could possibly kill them. So far they seem just fine, but given how fast Fatty is growing (due to his enormous appetite I'm sure) I'm worried they might get stressed out and sick. I only hope that the two critters are strong enough to make it another month! Then I'll be able to get a nice big cage for them to move around in. :)

I still haven't decided on names for the two of them yet. I tossed around the idea of "Alpha" and "Omega" for a while, but even though "Omega" is like the most badass name ever "Alpha"... well, isn't. I'm still keeping those two names in mind but we'll see what else I can come up with. I defintely don't want the name "Fatty" to become permanent... maybe it could be a nickname though. :)

Tiger Salamanders

So, I wasn't planning it, but it seems that I have aquired a couple new pets! Two little baby tiger salamanders, to be exact! When they're little they have big tadpole tails, cute fuzzy gills, and tiny stubby legs. Eventually they mature into those black salamanders with big yellow spots that we are all familiar with. However, they are also known to grow up in their larval form, forever staying the little swimming critters that I have now. Basically, it's up to them! They live for about 10 years on average, and some have lived over 20; in either case they are easy to take care of whether they're swimming or crawling. I think they're really cute as they are right now, and will be just as cute if they decide to transform. :)

But how did I get these little guys? Well, the store that I work at has a bait shop among other things. And, I guess some people like to use baby salamanders as bait! I decided to buy a couple (at 60 cents each it was no big deal) and save them from their fate as fish food. I then of course had to go to Walmart and buy a little aquarium and some decorations, but after putting them inside they seemed to like it a lot! Assuming they survive my trip back home, I'm going to get a bigger tank and keep them with me over the school year.

So far neither of them have names, and I still don't have any good ideas. But I'm sure I'll think of something eventually (suggestions are always awesome though!) I guess tiger salamanders aren't too picky about their food, and so I've been putting worms into their tank and they've been eating them like crazy. Though the picture below is a little blurry, I even managed to get an action shot! Unfortunately the worm was too big for the little salamander's stomach, but once I split it in half one of the pieces mysteriously disapeared rather quickly. ;)

I'm going to try to take some better pictures as the little guys get settled. I never thought I'd have a pet quite like this one, but they are cute and energetic so I think they are perfect. :)

Now to name them! :D