MatthewMeyer.net

This is something that completely baffles me. I’ve been getting a lot of comment spams recently, and it just doesn’t seem like this is a worthwhile business move. I mean, sure, it’s automated and therefore doesn’t actually require human effort to spam blogs, but who buys [penis, hair, breast] growth pills from the internet? And if you’re so low that you’re actually going to buy these products from the internet, who in their right mind would but them from spam. And if you’re willing to buy from spam, who on this planet would buy from a comment in a blog owned by some person they don’t even know? Heck, we all get enough email ads for viagra and propecia and vaginia or whatever new nickname modern science has come up with (they all sound like Cirque du Soleil names to me) in our inboxes every day; who needs to leave the comfort of their email to go scouring blogs for viagra? Is this viagra somehow better? Do rednecks respect spammers who post in blogs because they don’t trust the ones who email them directly? Who knows what people are thinking… oh well. Just a rant.

It’s so hard to believe I’m now in the last month of school. That also means one month until I go to Japan… I’ve got to do good cram session to refresh my memory of all the Japanese I’ve taught myself so I can learn worthwhile stuff while I’m there.

This Thursday I get to pick classes for next year. I’m pretty excited about finally drawing a good time to select classes. I’m looking at Small Business Management and Understanding the Art of Film to finish off my liberal arts requirements. Then I’ll have the second semester of my senior year free for whatever I want. As for art classes, I’m required to take Advaned Illustration and Portfolio, so that makes 4 classes. For my 5th class I’m looking at Advanced Computer Illustration, Children’s Book Illustration, or Advanced Figure Painting. Hopefully I’ll get one of those, in which case I’ll have an awesome schedule next year.

The worst thing about the end of the year being in sight is that it makes you realize how much work you actually have and how little time you have to do it. Work is piling up despite my best efforst to keep at it, and a lot of it is going to be really difficult. I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to finish on time, but if anything ends up suffering it will be my video project, which would be a shame because I love that class. Seeing as video is something I’m considering for a career, it would be a real shame if I didn’t do as well as I possibly can in that class.

Well I’ve been really busy lately so I know this is kind of overdue, but here are some of the new pictures I promised. I have more coming, I just haven’t gotten around to scanning them yet.

Here is a “master copy” of a Frank Frazetta piece. The original is posted to the right.

Man it feels good to be done with last week. I’ll post some new images soon, since I scanned a lot on Friday. I’m still really busy, but nothing like like week. Today I’m going to go apply for my passport, repair my firewire drive, work what I didn’t get to do last night due to the fact that my firewire drive was not working, plan my new shots that I need to do for my video, come up with an idea and thumbnails for a book cover/collage project that I need to start tomorrow, find textures to scan for that project, register to select classes for next year, get a refund of my room deposit, buy some illustration board, and begin work on my cows (3 ads for Ben & Jerry’s).

The reason I am doing 3 illustrations this time is due to something I’ve discovered about my teacher. No, it’s not that he’s an idiot, I already knew that. It’s that for him to like what I do, I have to do at least 3. If I only do one, he makes me redo it 3 times. If I do 3, he hates two and says that one of them is only “satifactory.” See, he grades me differently than the rest of the class. If I paint a cartoon bus driving off a cartoon cliff with cartoon children in the back, he demands that I have a photo-realistic George Bush driving the bus. If someone else in the class draws a caricature, anything with hair and two eyes is acceptable. If I draw a black guy wearing a Russian hat to advertise “Black Russian” flavored ice cream, it’s a stupid idea. Yet he praised how creative my classmate was when he showed him his excellent idea: a black guy wearing a Russian hat. If there was any doubt that he was treating me unfairly it vanished after that incident. I’m not all that unhappy at this. It’s frustrating, sure, but I don’t get half the guff from him that a lot of other students do. Everyone knows that he plays favorites and that he picks his favorites out of a baboon’s ass. And even though he picks on my work a lot, the extra work is making me better and that’s always a good thing. And while he picks on my work, he is not mean to me at all. Whether or not his criticisms are unfounded is a matter of opinion, but he’s always been as nice to me as he is to people he likes. It’s just part of the enigma that is Thiel, I guess.

I really hope I can get my firewire drive to work on the Macs again without having to reformat it. I could lose 45 gigs of stuff and, well, that would just bite. And I really need to get it to work again soon because I have a ton of work to do. Most people are making videos that are 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. Mine will probably be 6 to 10 minutes long… :-\

Man I have so much work to do… I’ve broken out in hives… maybe due to stress, maybe due to some allergy, but it’s driving me crazy. Must… not… scratch!!!

Today I have to complete my concept art project for Computer Illustration. It’s probably gonna look like crap, but oh well. I just can’t imagine finishing it well in the short amount of time I have… I have to finish it between 11 (when I get off work) and 2 am (when the labs close). Oi. So after my critique tomorrow, I have to make a portfolio for tomorrow night. That’s *really* pushing it close. Agh agh… You can bet that something will go wrong and screw it up. Then, this weekend… beautiful beautiful sleep. I can’t wait for sleep. I feel so crummy. I can’t even think of a way to end this post, so I’ll just stop it right here. Cheers.

Edit: On a side note, it feels really good to be back here in the ARC. I’ve been gone for 2 weeks, as last week was Spring Break, and the previous week was… well… the Taxco Incident. The music here on iTunes is great, and it’s just reminding me of the great TV series I finished last night — Long Vacation. So at least that’s helping my mood a bit. Anyway, back to work…

It’s not really that bad I guess, but nobody likes returning to school after Spring Break, especially if they did nothing but work all break long. Anyway, a few of the highlights of Suck Week so far: no matter what I do, my Illustration teacher doesn’t like it; I have to make a portfolio by the end of the week; I have to finish a barely started project by the end of the week; I have to have thumbnails for my new project and repaint my old project again by tomorrow; I need to get my passport really soon; I got screwed out of a *lot* of money by a guy on eBay… well that’s all I feel like writing for now. It would only be a normal busy and frustrating week if it wasn’t for other sucky things that have been happening to people around me, so thats why I dub this week Suck Week. Now I am going to go get some work done, then do laundry and grocery shopping right after I get off work so I can spend the rest of today working my butt off and hopefully catching up so I’ll hav everything done on time…

So I finally saw The Passion of the Christ last night. I was pretty impressed. It didn’t meet any of my negative expectations. It wasn’t anti-Jewish (though I can see a chance for lots of morons getting riled up against the Jews after seeing things movie) and the concerns about Pontius Pilate being too soft were silly. He is presented just as he is in the Bible. In fact, all of the movie seemed very accurate compared to what I remember of the Bible, and I didn’t notice anything that went against anything I learned in Sunday School or Confirmation. There’s still a lot of historical inaccuracies in the movie, which I won’t list here because they’re so easily found online, but they didn’t bother me because I was just glad that the movie did not feel anti-Semitic in the least.

I was watching the movie with two people who violently hate Christianity. I pretty much forced them to watch it with me (keep in mind that I was not trying to convert them, as I’m also not Christian). Anyway I ended up having to defend Jesus most of the time while they were complaining about how stupid Christianity is and how hypocritical it is. Blah blah blah. Sorry if you read this guys, but you’re being pretty hypocritical yourselves if you can respect other religions but not Christianity. I found nothing evangelical about the movie — it was just a very vivid telling of Jesus’ death and I saw no strings attached to it.

Anyway I just wanted to post that my honest opinion about this movie is a positive one; that I think it delivered its message without improperly distorting anything that was written in the Bible (whether or not what is written in the Bible is true is another argument that I will leave for some other time). That is my honest opinion as a logical human being and as a non-Christian. If you haven’t seen it yet, go see it (if for nothing else than the opportunity to see a story that has been critical in shaping the course of History for the past two millenia).