Jubilation!

Or not.

I'm enjoying 'The Color Purple' quite a bit, and I'm finding it much more difficult not to read ahead than I initially thought I would. It kind of kills me to know that I could find out what happens next at any moment, but I can't because I have to be at (basically) the same part as everyone else in my literature circle group. They're a nice bunch.

ANYWAY, as for themes I've noticed thus far...

- Sexism: The men in this novel are married and running around with other girls like that's their right, and nobody really seems to have a problem with it even though the characters seem to be Christians and as far as I know very few branches of Christianity do not find adultery to be sinful. It also feels strange that in those times your father pretty much selected a wife for you like an animal, based on their looks and family history. (Note: I'm not disregarding that Sofia also cheated on her husband, but quite frankly, Harpo was being an ass. :D)

-Abuse: Celie and many others in this book are frequently treated like material possessions. I was shocked at the reasons behind it all, too. "Oh, well, your mother is on her death bed, so I'll rape you instead. :D" "I'm really upset that I couldn't marry Shug Avery, so I'm going to hit you to relieve some stress. :D" I may joke about it, but it's honestly disgusting.

-Self-worth: I consider this a theme because one of the things that bothers me the most in the story is how Celie pretty much let's herself become a doormat so that she doesn't get hurt, and I really want to see her overcome her inferiority complex.

Etc.

I don't think I have any literal questions except "When does this take place?"
From what I've looked up it seems to be written about the late 1800s, but I'm not sure if my source is trustworthy. I really doubt that it's going to be revealed in the book if it hasn't by this point, so I hope to find out for certain some other way. I do so love the internet.

I'm really curious as to how this is going to end - so far, while it's really well done, it's basically just been snippets of Celie's life. I'd normally have an idea of what was going to happen, but most of the plot of 'The Color Purple' has proven to be pretty unpredictable. For me, anyway.

I'm a little iffy about what to do for the quotation analysis; while to me the story as a whole is really poignant, no particular quote has jumped out at me during this section. If I think of one later I'll edit the entry, though I'm not sure what good it'll do.

Er, instead I'll talk about the essay a very little bit. I think that I'll be writing about while most consider the issues presented in 'The Color Purple' to be uncommon now, the message is still really relevant to a modern audience. :D

And now I'm quite done.

Guacamurder

Oh right, I can write about that mini-project I did while everyone was in Mexico.

Making bread. Is difficult. I like cooking, and it was terribly difficult. D: Because the dough gets so hard to mix after awhile. I got so tired doing it, but then I felt bad when I realized that people've been making bread long before electric mixers and that no one really complained about it in the days of the wooden spoon. Still, it made the paper look like a minor issue.

Well... It pretty much was. I would post it, but I don't particularly want to sit here while word loads, so this blogpost can do without it.

Then also I got to draw, which is always fun. Oh, the subjects were anatomically incorrect skeletons, too, which was also fun. I really didn't have a clue as to what do draw them doing. I had planned to draw a band, but after looking through artwork of this genre on the internet I felt that my sketch was a bit hackneyed.

So I called my friend from out of state for a bit and we spoke about our plans for when I fly there during Spring break. She mentioned how she had to teach me to cook fishcakes when I was over there, and so I ended up drawing skeletons cooking. Huzzah.

CALL MY FRIENDS AND-- *crashes into wall*

I recently went to Point Loma Nazarene to interview college students. We had planned to go to SDSU, but we were rapidly running out of time to do so, and I go to Point Loma Nazarene for voice lessons as it is. So, in the end, while we did not get a frat boy, we got a rather interesting opinion that goes against Mr. Turner's 'San Diego Christians for Secure Borders' theory. (A student at Nazarene, a Christian college, said that as a Christian, the idea of borders troubled her since "everyone is equal in the eyes of God.")

I don't know. I thought it was interesting.

We also filmed/recorded the rest of our video clips in school the other day, although it took awhile since I couldn't get my lines out right and people kept slamming doors/walking in front of the camera/singing loudly and crashing into walls. Hilarity ensued, etc.

We have one more clip that we need to film tomorrow (Thursday the 15th of November) so we can close it out.

Taco Guacamorder~

It might be good to post here now and then.

Since we're supposed to have a daily average and all.

Er, I'll be posting a boatload tonight.

So. This evening I recorded a lovely (or not) piano piece to use as background music for our documentary. It is just the right length for the credits. What the actual piece is shall remain a mystery for now, but I'm certain nothing this hideous... er, well-done, could possibly have been copyrighted yet.

Credits! Speaking of credits, this evening I created them. For our documentary.

Right. Making separate posts for the sake of catching up on over a month's worth of this.

That's super chocolatey.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/latinamerica/la-fg-blackmagic5sep05,1,402692.story?coll=la-latinamerica

NOT EVEN THE DEAD ARE SAFE IN CARACAS.

So apparently, psycho grave-robbing black magic cults do exist. And a femur goes for about $30.00... In what way is that worth it? I mean, one would think it would look and feel disgusting, for one, and honestly, I've no clue how anyone could be alright with strolling into someone's crypt. Kind of gross.

Well, anyway, some people in Venezuela, where these lovely grave robberies are happening think it's being allowed to happen because of a rise in leftist power, since leftists see the Catholic church as an enemy.

I can't say I agree with that, since taking power away from the church is different than saying "Hey guys, worship Satan."

People are funny.

Is this good enough English?

http://students.hightechhigh.org/~sheinz/geo.html

Psst, this is my geometry mini-project page, on my DP. Naturally at some point I plan to re-do my DP so that it looks nice and professional, rather than lame and Pac-Man themed. I'll get to work on that soon.

But yes, geometer's sketchpad was a fun program to work with.

Argentine Independence Links - Oh no, relevant title.

lhttp://www.britannica.com/eb/article-33071/Argentina

lhttp://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/26516.htm

lhttp://www.onwar.com/aced/data/alpha/argentina1810.htm

lhttp://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h39-la.html

lhttps://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ar.html

lhttp://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/26516.htm

lhttp://www.argentour.com/historia/indexing.html

lhttp://www.danstopicals.com/explorers_in_uruguay.htm

Scurvy

I really need to catch up on this, so I'll post all that I did this week. I have been a tad bit ill and admittedly lazy. :<

So, I fixed up the flash intro. I spent about 5 million hours in MS paint getting rid of the bubbles. Well, okay, rather 1 hour in adobe photoshop. That program is a godsend. Uhm...

Oh, yeah, so I also shortened the little "We are traveling red dashes" bit. I plan to remove the old youtube link and re-add it so I can post it on the blog, but youtube is doing one of it's little downtime things.

I also highly doubt that we will be using
http://www.youtube.com/borderwitchproject/
as our account for the project, due to what I called it. There will be a format for naming them, I imagine. I just thought I would use it to post videos to my blog, so I'll probably use it in the future in case we're required to make not-so-border-related-videos for class. The name will be even more ridiculous then, but it can't really be helped.

My name is Colonel Sharlyn Heinz, 3rd Division, Malkuth Imperial Forces.

OTAY.

"The Plague" is depressing. The whole first chapter (introduction, rather) is this gloomy description of Oran. It was really only depressing because it reminded me so much of Monterey.
Perhaps I didn't see the better side of Monterey. At any rate, I'm afraid to go back lest I find heaps of dead rats.

Given all the dying rats and the title, it's fairly obvious what's coming. Unless it isn't and I'm assuming too much, which I doubt.

But yes, that'll be the first book I do. Hooray. It can finally feel the air outside of my backpack.

A forebrain hemmorrhage in a blog post.

Because I'm just that tired. I neglected friday's post due to the LAN party, which was excellent. I neglected saturday's post because I was still tired from the LAN party and did not even get out of bed for the majority of the day and night. Tonight I neglect no longer, and plan to post a long one. It will probably be somewhat worthless, but I'm still just that exhausted. I love LAN parties, but clearly they are not particularly good for me. Oh well.

Alright. So, I have not done much for humanities this weekend, since I highly doubt reading books that are not class-related counts for anything at all here. I desperately want to start my independent reading assignments, but I need a chance to get out to the bookstore (bookstar is reletively close and well-stocked) and ask about it and everything. My guess is I will have time to do so by wednesday, so I will plan to get a ride from my father or whoever is driving me to piano lessons.

As for the flash, I will attempt to finish fixing it up tomorrow (shortening the travel portion and removing the bubble effect.) The revamped script is due soon as well, and so I will be helping with that, I hope.

At any rate, this is the best I can do for a blog post this weekend.

It's not lupus.

So I'm working on the storyboard. Well, the half that is not already completed.

Come to think of it...

Since I'm only doing half of it in the first place, that makes it a quarter. Hooray, I know fractions.

I'm also worried about what I should be doing for the independent reading assignment. I'm not exactly sure what qualifies a book for this assignment, but aside from "A Clockwork Orange," I've either read or am not interested in reading the suggested books. That leaves me three books to scout out, since I doubt I'll get points for reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Why is that!?

F R E E Z E, please.

Alright, so tonight I scribbled out 3 storyboard panels. Exciting, no?

Anyway, tomorrow there's a Socratic Seminar. I'm not a fan of those. Well, not when I'm in them, at least. However, since it's a subject I feel strongly about (unlike outsourcing) I hope I can get some words out at least. After all, one should appreciate things like not being followed in convenience stores. I really feel like a lot of people probably didn't notice all their automatic privileges before we read this list, and I'm sure that a lot of people are going to say that they don't have some of these privileges; but we really do and it's not really okay with me.

I shouldn't type when I'm woozy and in an aimless rambling sort of mood, should I?

That wasn't terribly difficult.

I thought that I would have to spend hours searching the internet to find an swf-to-avi converter (I believe there is a program called "All To AVI"...), but as it turns out, flash gives you the option to export the animation as an avi in the first place. Huzzah.

So, I have it in both formats (swf and avi) for tomorrow, in case one of them is incorrect.

The only problem is that it is taking an eternity to upload this video, and I am positive it is in a compatible format this time around.

Oh, it's uploaded now.

I'm embedding it in this blog post and also posting the link.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ZZUU9JTj0

10:10 asteroids!

Well, I finally finished the flash, after re-doing the maps several times. Here's hoping it looks alright.

Oh, I also went ahead and made the group a youtube account so that it's already been done when we need it later.

The username is 'borderwitchproject.'

Here's a link to the profile page:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=borderwitchproject

I'm in the process of converting the flash (an swf file) into an avi file so that it can be posted to youtube.

DadadaDAdaDAAAA~ Bohr.

Finally home and able to blog.

Right, so Saturday (the 22nd) Laura and I interviewed Neil B. Turner, founder of "San Diego Christians for Secure Borders", an affiliate of the San Diego Minutemen. It was sort of a package deal, because he came with a woman named Sue who does not really have any affiliations, but clearly feels very strongly about the issue of illegal immigration and allowed us to film her voicing her opinions as well.

We woke up (very early, in my opinion) and went out to "Bobby's Hideaway Cafe" in Carlsbad, which is conveniently placed next to, as Neil referred to it, "a cesspool of migrant workers." Laura interviewed Neil and Sue while I filmed, and despite the answers being far from what we expected in some cases, we have a lot of good material. I am actually kind of upset that we have to cut so much of it out; it's like we could make a full length documentary rather than a six minute one.

ANYWAY, we had to omit a good deal of our questions as Neil and his group never patrol the borders themselves; we did get to see all of the signs they put up around areas, like the cafe we met up at, where illegal workers congregate. Neil and Sue's attitudes towards our questions were actually very surprising, and it was interesting to hear the views of people who care about the border situation for legitimate reasons and know how to express their reasons verbally. I also really appreciated that they didn't plan to push their views on us and actually they told us that they were grateful that we were even listening. It was a huge relief really, because going into the interview I was actually pretty terrified. It's hard to hear the word 'Minuteman' without feeling something negative, and it didn't help that the fellow who directed us to Neil (Jeff Schwilk) was in the Union Tribune the very same day for posting fliers on people's doors, calling them "Mexico Lovers" as a derogatory term.

Oh, also we ended up obtaining quite a bit of the fliers and informational packets handed out by the group, so if I can get them from Laura I'll be scanning them this week.

I'm sort of going on and on so I'll stop and work on the flash, which is very nearly done. I'll have to make a second flash as soon as I get a photo of Austin, so I'm hoping that isn't also due on Wednesday.

Why yes, I knew I had a blog.

And thus today I discovered that blogging is important. So much so that my computer monitor is now covered in sticky note reminders. It's obnoxious! 8D

This face is especially fun: >8{}

That all aside, tonight I continue to work on our flash intro. It will, without a doubt be done this week, and I apologize for taking so long. D: (I really need to stop it with the text faces, but I doubt I'll be able to wean myself off of them.)

I am a slow animator, probably because I detest motion tweens. I mean, not that they aren't convenient, because they certainly are, and not that they don't make the animation look smooth, because they most definitely do, but they're a bit, well... "Look, this object slid to the right at a steady pace. You may applaud now."

Actually, now that I think about it, the time I'm taking here probably doesn't have as much to do with my preference of frame-by-frame animation as it does with the nature of the animation. There aren't really any objects sliding at a steady pace, just a lot of appearing and fading, things which I've no clue how to do without using frame-by-frame techniques. So sorry.

Oh, and we get to interview our Minuteman, Neil B. (Skinhead) Turner on Saturday. I'm already frightened without having met the fellow.

He's affiliated with this website (http://unitedstates.fm/sdmm.htm), upon which Mexicans are at times referred to as Enriques. This is going to be the adventure of a tooth-time or not. D:

Oh, so in addition to all of this project stuff, we read a story tonight for homework, which, in my opinion, is the best type of homework, and I learned a new word, which is always neat. I had a bit of fun with it before I bothered digging the dictionary out though. It would be fun if vernal meant "of or pertaining to gentlemen named Vern." Not that it's real meaning isn't interesting.

Rambling, should be animating. Or leveling my healer up so that she can use the spell "Ray" and thus combine with my mage to use the Unison Attack "Prism Stars." Probably animating. Just a guess.

FLASH. Gordon.

The Megasized Project

I started a flash intro tonight. It was pretty flashtastic. It consists of a map of North America, and an epic journey. Soon to involve bagged milk.

The Not-Quite-So-Megasized Project. INCA ETC.

Posting sources as requested.

Scratch that, I've only got one recorded at home at the moment.

http://library.thinkquest.org/5058/incaart.htm

Bit of a cheap looking website, I'm well aware. Google isn't responding to my love. :< I have more credible looking sources tucked away in my school documents, and I'll be sure to post them tomorrow.

Oh, also! I'm going to make a tunic and a shawl this weekend. Hooray. If anyone still has a manikin (perhaps the one from Bussone's in 6th grade? What became of that poor, dismembered plasterchunk anyway? I've forgotten who donated it in the first place, so it may as well have been one of you, dear group members.) do let me know.