And by packing I mean throwing my laundry basket in the car, dicking around on the Internet, throwing some books into the car, waiting until the last possible minute to pack up my laptop, and lamenting the last few ounces of milk I wasted that would have gone bad over break anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving break, dudes.

Oh FUCK.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

* That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

* Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

Spread the word. If this passes, it'll let the government get their greasy paws on the most readily accessible source of communication and more or less shit on the First Amendment.

Wasted another weekend. I feel fucking terrible.

 Hot damn, Communication Design department, you vex me so. It seems that every other senior seminar I need or want to take is scheduled on Tuesday or Thursday at about the same time. I really shouldn't have to choose between the one Interactive seminar I need to finish the concentration AND the two Illustration seminars I really, really want.

I may also be taking Elementary Chinese II in the same semester that I'm to be taking my Portfolio seminar because I'm not sane. Turns out that same prof's also teaching a course in Chinese culture and history, and dag, I should've known about that sooner.

The CD dept. is also finally bringing back their UK program... which is scheduled for the summer after I graduate. At this point I feel like I could just tack on a minor in Recreational Sports or some shit for the lulz and the extra year or so.

Thanks a fucking lot, Topless Robot.

 My friends are awesome. We all piled up into two cars last Saturday and went to a Chinese buffet (a hasty decision after we discovered that the sushi place on Main St. is closed on Saturdays for some strange reason), went back and had some chocolate covered fruit my parents mailed to me, and They Might Be Giants turned out to be the most awesome thing to come to K-town in the history of, like, ever. I also got some amazing mix CDs out of the deal.

Confetti showers, sockpuppets, lights that blinded me from the aisles, and John Linell rambling about how fun it would be to get drunk for the show. That and the opening act was supercute and had a guy who played a mean ukelele.

Saw my family on Sunday, got awesome clothes and chocolate along with a home-cooked dinner. It was really nice.

I finished the Web Presence workshop on my official for reals birthday, for which I managed to code a site in time but with an incredibly broken contact page that my prof probably wouldn't give a shit about. This same prof is teaching the Multimedia workshop I'm having right now, and we'll see how that goes. I know he's chill and sometimes not even teaching shit, but I need to start pushing to learn coding and generally sucking less at web design. These classes actually cost money, and the closer I get to graduation the more urgent this material is becoming. This is the stuff I'm falling back on between the inevitably sparse freelance illustration gigs.

Also started Restaurant Graphics, and I'm not a huge fan of the prof teaching that either, but I'm excited enough about this workshop and running on the confidence I gained from my internship. The problem is that I've got two ideas running in my head that would be great to work with, but I have absolutely no clue which one to pick. On one hand, I'd love to do a restaurant with a retro-style arcade—sort of like Dave & Buster's but with '80s/early '90s arcade games—which would be awesome because 1) I'd be branching out from my normal sketchy/cartoony style into vector-based graphics mimicking old pixelated sprites and 2) FUCK YEAR VEDYA GAEMS. On the other hand, I remember talking with my friends about diners and places that deliver and lamenting there are no places that deliver breakfast. This sounds like an incredible idea to me, and one that probably hasn't been done before or very often in that class, so I'm seeing a lot of potential with this concept as well. HELP ME CHOOSE, INTERNETS.

Also also inked the first few pages of my comic, but I might wait until I clean up the linework in Photoshop so that some of the panels look slightly less like shite.

Last night I spent far too much time looking for music for, of all things, a Mother 3 playlist. My punishment for this unbelievable nerdery was sleeping in until 2 PM, the latest I've ever woken up out of my already lazy college Saturdays. Anything past 1 makes me feel like I've wasted most of the day. :|

No park today because of crazy heavy rains (I also walked to the convenience store for toilet paper in this weather because I are genius). Going home very, very soon to hang out with my baby brother while the parentals are out.

Hooooshit. I thought tickets for the They Might Be Giants concert were going to be $25, but it turns out they're $20 cheaper for students.

So there we have it: They Might Be Giants. At my school. On the weekend before my birthday. Only five dolla.

This is going to be the BEST BIRTDHAY EVER.

( TMI goes here )

On top of that, one of my BFFs at school is home for swine flu. And then the prof for Web Presence called in sick, effectively cancelling the only class I had today. K-town, you'd better not be giving me some muthafuckin' pig flu. That's not cool.

On the plus side, I'm only spending $20 on a PDF for a textbook that would have otherwise cost about $100, and it's for a friggin' health class.

Also, I drew fluffy fanart on Tegaki (a non-sucky Tegaki, no less), and I made it pretty for DevArt last night. Maybe I'll get some actually school-related crap done when I'm not curled up in a fetal position waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in.

AHHHH I HEART CHARLOTTE RUSSE

They're selling these steampunky studded boots on their online store for only $20. Boots are usually super crazy expensive too, so that's an absolute steal. I just might have to order these sometime.

I really need to put up pics of those spats I made back in March, but I left them at home. D:

Aaaaaand I have class in seven hours. I'm far too used to staying up late when I'm at school.

Thanks to a Facebook friend, I found out about yet another super sketch site, and I seem to be having an easier time adjusting to this than I have with Oekaki or Tegaki. I guess I like having tools that look more like brush strokes, as it's easier for me to create varying line widths with that when I'm drawing with my tablet (and even after several attempts, I still suck at making smooth lines on Tegaki). It'd be nice if they had some kind of comments system, though. Aaaand I checked my profile there today, and it turns out that this little doodle I did of Duster is now a Featured sketch. YAAAY I FEEL VALIDATED. The thumbnail looks better than the actual sketch, though.

I kind of sort of have an idea for the plot in my webcomic-thesis-type-thing, which as of now is some sort of modern fantasy/magical realism quest with elements of Neverwhere and Earthbound thrown in. I think. I really hope it doesn't feel too derivative when I actually flesh out the story.

Also: hiii people who added me on the last friending meme on Fandom Secrets! Thanks for friending me, and if you don't mind filling out a survey:

What do you usually go by?
What's your favorite animal?
How do you feel about capslock? Hats? Memes?
Tell me five random things about yourself.
What's the last thing on YouTube/Vimeo/Any Video Site You Get Your Jollies From that gave you jollies?

So I've decided to create a webcomic for my Honors thesis. And it is going to be awesome.

Having the big room also kicks ass, as does seeing one of my old suitemates in a foil fencing class.

I think it's safe to say that this is going to be a pretty good semester.

Moving back to K-town tomorrow. I have, of course, been putting off the whole organizing thing in preparation for the packing and moving in, but I've still got the night to get that sorted out. And the moving in part is hardly that bad; I'm looking forward to seeing all the wonderful dorks of the Honors Hall.

Graduating, however... holy crap. I've still pretty much spent the whole summer, internship and all, trying to ignore the fact that this is going to be my last year. I've finally gotten used to this place and gotten most of it figured out, and now I have to leave. Chances are I'll be leaving the nest in the midst of an economy that's still shitting itself, too. This scares the hell out of me.

It was a good summer, though. Sofie and I got to see Enter the Haggis at Celtic Fling in July, and we saw them yet again along with OMG THE MUTHAFUCKIN' DECEMBERISTS just last week. My sunburn from that weekend is still peeling off, but the memories have sunken in like a particularly fine sun screen. The Decemberists were particularly amazing in that they played the whole of their Hazards of Love album for the concert without skipping a beat. It was just beautiful, and if nothing else, they really do have some serious stamina. And it ended with everyone singing along with "Sons & Daughters", one of my favorites. <3

Okay, there's another reason to stay at K-Town: They Might Be Giants. October. By some bizarre coincidence, they're playing on the weekend before Sofie's and my birthdays. This is going to be the BEST THING.

At this moment I'm kind of obsessed with Mother 3 and Earthbound.

That is all.

Guuuuh I'm terribly behind on this whole updating thing, and I'm sorry I didn't respond to the comments left in the last entry, which were pretty awesome.

I'm back home, and the router's been a bitch for a few weeks, so now we don't get wireless, and as a result I have a very lonely, unconnected laptop. So I'm back to sharing the ancient desktop, which is always something of an adventure.

I'm also... I guess it's week five or six of my internship with a web design firm. So far I've made a fuckton of banners and I even got to do a set of emoticons. It was a little daunting at first, since I haven't really made graphic design as big a priority as illustration at Kutztown, but if anything the whole thing has boosted my Photoshop skills up a few notches. And maybe it's helped my work ethic, since I'm now actually motivated to get shit done by the end of th










...oh, and I might make my own website some time this summer. Maybe once I can get online with my laptop.

Also, Tommy and I saw Up last weekend. It was immensely cute (I keep getting a Miyazaki vibe from it for some reason), bittersweet, and not at all disappointing for Pixar. It wasn't exactly mind-blowing, but like Ratatoille, I think this one could really grow on me.

Also also, my current hobby right now is watching some crazy forum shit going down. The original admin got outed for trolling her own place, as detailed here, then one of the mods stepped up to take her place and change some stuff around, then the other mod/admin's main crony came back and is currently throwing a shitfit of epic proportions, aaaaand I really have no idea what's going to happen next. It's a little scary not knowing who's doing the actual trolling; a little disappointing, since the new admin is/was a vast improvement over the previous one; and... something of a fun adventure.

Part the first:
( Personal crap )

Part the Second:

( So, guys who friended me through fandomsecrets a while back... )

What area of the U.S. should you live in?

You should live in New England. New England is the center of the historic settlement of the U.S. It is the most European area, and culturally is a bit different than the rest. It is also renouned for East Coast culture. Check out New England on Wikipedia.

Find out where should YOU should live.

The East Coast is very well-known for East Coast culture.


Daaaaang, I think I need, uh, eight spreads for my Ed Wood book by Monday. Oh, Advanced Typography. :D D:

Okay, grades were decent. Not great, but at least my GPA's going up, and I'm still in Honors and capable of proposing my thesis. Whatever the hell it's going to be. :B At the very least, I don't regret taking Digital Animation in place of Graphics I at all. That was awesome.

I'm genuinely optimistic about classes this semester, and it's not just because of the typical high I get from OkayNewClassesI'mTotesNotScrewingUpThisTimeHONEST whenever a new semester starts. I know what I'm doing for the most part, and even the required elective is supposed to be fun and relatively interesting.

Advanced Typography — Half-semester seminar with Roz, in which we rehash some stuff from the first Typography class while conducting research on some famous person to be the subject of a coffee-table biography (I think mine's going to be about Ed Wood, since you can't go wrong with crossdressing hack directors).
Astronomy — "But Kate," my parents cried, upon seeing the tuition bill, "it's got physics in it!" Uh, by physics you surely couldn't mean measuring angles, right? Because just today I had a no-brainer lab that just involved pointing out stars and asterisms. And hey, star maps! I remember those from when I was 8 or so.
Illustration II — Early morning classes are the bane of my existence. But it's my one passion, and it's with one of my favorite profs, Prof. Not Billy Crystal (who sadly is retiring after this semester).
Interactive Design II — I've heard mixed criticisms of this Prof, but the first class was merely rehashing stuff about Flash that I learned in Digital Animation... no more grappling with Dreamweaver yet, thank God. And I'm in with an acquaintance who was in my VoTech Commercial Art class way back in high school, so that's always good.

And there's space in the Elementary Chinese I class, which I've been dying to take since I realized it was available and regretted not taking up more of the language after elementary school... except it's going on at the same time as my Astronomy lab. So I might do an independent study in it and, what the heck, do it with an Honors credit. Couldn't hurt.

It's seriously good to be back here. Break was nice and wonderful and quiet, but my life is here in cow country.

So I learned last night that I'm physically incapable of rolling my R's. It's been years since the essential phase in early childhood when one learns to speak and roll R's or bend the tongue into a W shape, so it's too late for me now. Recall this error in my ways, young children, before you too miss the time when it is most important to learn how to pronounce your R's properly.


But on the psychological end of things, I also just realized that I might have some form of mild synesthesia. This song was playing in Marissa's apartment, and in my late night haze, my thoughts of the song went from, "Yeah, this song is absolutely terrific" to, "This song is kind of yellow." I don't actually see the color (except when the music is loud enough and I shut my eyes tight), but most stuff in E major and occasionally E minor makes me think of the color yellow. It's not always consistent, and it doesn't seem to happen unless I'm focusing completely on the music, but it seems that the scale, in my mind, goes up with the color spectrum.

When I listen to this and try to picture imagery to go with it, most of it is purple, leaning slightly towards red. I also picture this in purple, but it's more of a lavender tint. The song in the last entry is mostly green. I'm not quite sure how much of these colors have to do with memory triggers, though, rather than an actual case of synesthesia.

It must be amazing to actually see these colors, to see actual notes or hear colors. I've heard of people who have such severe synesthesia that they can't listen to music when they're driving, though, so it may not be all it's cracked up to be.


So, whopping three people who read this: ever hear of this marvelous condition? Have you had such an experience?

(And lulz at spellcheck for not recognizing the word "synesthesia" and trying to replace it with "anesthesia".)

Saw Mom come back from her trip to Greece and Italy last Saturday. Heard more than I wanted to know about drunken karaoke, enjoyed seeing everyone back (especially my favorite stupid blind dog in the whole wide world <3), and got a bottle of pink Bellini.

Still worried as all hell about Web Design, but now only it's only slightly less so.

Found out that I was dropped from my commission for time constraints rather than my own failure to respond to the client promptly, which was rather relieving. The client still seems to be open to networking.

Came back to Swing Club for the first time in about a month (and it's only my second time there still, lawl), and it turned out to be quite nice, and not just because Shani from Illustration I was running it. There are enough quirky and vaguely hipsterish people there to keep me interested, and the music is oh so fine.

Played a bit of Little Nemo on vNES, and I just can't seem to get very far in the second level because of MUTHAFUCKIN' BEES. I get to punch them when I'm riding the gorilla, but then they just respawn in 5 seconds. A curse upon your house, Capcom!

Just discovered the BEST SONG EVER via a thread on GAFF:


It's like Nightwish only BETTER. And touring with the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Oingo Boingo.

As a matter of fact, this actually kind of reminds me of The Forbidden Zone. This only makes it even more awesome.

It's all confusing 'cuz it's new and stuff and BAWWWWW THEY CHANGED IT NOW IT SUCKS.

Except it's not all that bad, and the shitstorm it's causing is almost as funny as the one that started over the New Facebook.



I really, really need to finish packing.