Thursday, August 19, 2010

Freedom almost over

By the end of this week, I'll have one week left before I start my senior year of college.  Hopefully I will graduate with a BA in Anthropology and technically a BA in English.  Sadly, the university I attend won't let me get to separate degrees, I only get the degree for my first major.  I guess it's okay since I'm applying to a creative writing program at this university that doesn't require you to have a background in English; they require just a Bachelor's Degree.  (I won't name the university just in case I don't get in.)  Then, I will continue with my hopes on becoming a forensic anthropologists.  I'm going to apply to grad schools for anthropology at the same time I'm applying for the MFA though as just-in-cases.  Don't want to end up going nowhere for grad school.

And speaking of grad school, I have to take my GRE which I totally forgot about.  I have 3 months to take it.  That also means I have 3 months to study for it.  Me and my procrastinating ways.  The reason I have 3 months is because the deadline to submit the GRE scores to the university I'm applying too is Dec. 18.  It takes 15 days for your scores to become available (if you take it online); so, I need to take it no later than the end of November.  I'm going to pick the latest date available for me in order to study obviously. 

Also during these 3 months I have to prepare a 25 page writing sample to go with my application.  Don't quote me on this, but I think it's safe to say they expect the story itself to be 25 pages long.  I am sadly not good at writing short stories.  I always end up wanting to add more or my simple little story ends up becoming this huge idea that can't be contained in a small amount of pages.  I'm also bad at even starting or finishing one of these ideas.

Speaking of starting an idea.  The Landon story is being started all over again.  I'm taking a point from one of my other introductions and starting it when he's a kid.  I've also added new quirks to his personality and also to another character whom I'm starting to very much dislike.  She used to be such a sweet, nice character, but now she's turning into a bitch.  Oh wells.  I always meant for something bad to happen between the two and these new character developments are going to help with that.

So, I'm going to get started on that right now.  Maybe.  I think I have an ear infection because the inner part of my right ear is throbbing badly and I also don't feel quite well.  I have more snifflies than usual.  *sigh* Just like me to get sick right before school starts. 

Anyways, I'll sign off by saying Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen is a very good book and I highly recommend it.  (It's also now a movie directed by Rob Renier.)

Saturday, August 7, 2010

sagitall suture ???

Another end of the week, meaning another week close to school starting.  Also, I have two days left to read three chapters in my Sociology textbook and take the quizzes for those chapters.  My test for the class will be available on Monday I think and I have until Wednesday to take it.  It's an online class.  I have an A so far and hope to keep it that way.  However, the author of this textbook kinda sucks.  The first two chapters were interesting with the background on different sociologists and the variety of cultures in the world and how people react to them.  The third chapter about the different levels of society and the psychology behind it was crap.  The author mostly repeated himself on every other page.  Hopefully the chapters I have to read tomorrow will be better.

I finally got to see White Heat today.  It's a film from 1949 and stars James Cagney, one of my favorite actors.  A famous quote from the movie is towards the end of the film with Cagney on top of this gas tanker sort of thing and he screams: "Made it Ma! Top of the world."  This was a brilliant piece of work.  I'm a big fan of the classic gangster films.  Just wish they still made movies like this.

Started up on my drawings again.  It's been a few months since I first decided to try drawing 'manga style' and so the character I drew just a few minutes ago looks like crap.  I was trying to draw my vision of Landon from the vampire story I'm writing which I mentioned in my first blog.  For some reason, he looks stoned in my drawing.  If you look at it from the side though, it looks alright.  I'm just going to try and stick with it this time around.  I'm also going to by myself a black pen tomorrow.  I went to buy new pens today that are fine points and bleed a little.  I found these sharpie pens that were pretty cheap and decided that I'll give them a try since the ones I usually buy weren't there.  When I got home to try them out, I had the misfortune of realizing too late that the ink for the pen... is blue.  Blue!  Ugh.  Maybe that's why Landon looks stoned?  It's a freaking blue pen.  Tomorrow I'll get the right color pen.

Speaking of Landon, I'm scraping yet again another first chapter I've started for this story.  This file was my 20th beginning.  I just can't seem to get the right beginning to this story.  I have everything else planned out in my head and I do have a beginning.  But, I just can't get it right enough that it starts to flow.  After a couple of pages or even paragraphs, I feel like I'm forcing myself to continue.  I know it also has to deal with the fact that this stories gone from a piece of fluff I made up last Halloween to a more horror/slasher type with Landon being a sociopath to what is now a mixture of the two minus the sociopath characteristic.  It's also jumped from the characters being around seventeen to them being in college and back again to high school.  At least the setting has stayed the same.  I think I'll give this story another go tomorrow and if it doesn't pan out in the next few weeks, I'll move on to another one.

In sad news, I have officially contacted Ticketmaster to get a refund for my Jonas Brothers tickets.  The concert was originally July 31 and then they had to reschedule it to September 11.  It's a Saturday, but it's about a six hour drive and my brother and I have school.  Oh wells.  I went to two gigs this year at least.  Saw the 100 Monkeys in January and then MGMT in June.  I'm sure something will come up later this year and maybe closer to where I live and with a band that won't cancel or reschedule their dates.

I guess I'll end today's blog there.  I do want to mention before I go that you should check out the new Stand Up 2 Cancer PSA about changing the odds.  It has a good amount of young actors in it like Logan Lerman, Zac Efron, Kristin Bell, Andrew Garfield, Dakota Fanning (who also narrates it) and many more.  I think having so many of these actors in the PSA is a good way of getting the younger generations to take notice of the cause.  In full honesty, I didn't take full notice of this organization until I saw this.  I know they used to show the video with Joss Stone singing at the movie theaters, but I never looked it up when I got home.  But, this PSA, even though it has some funny moments like when Zac Efron gets stuck in an elevator with a bunch of girls (this video is about the odds of certain things happening to you), when it gets to the end, it becomes a bit scary.  The PSA says that 1:2 men and 1:3 women are the odds of getting cancer in your lifetime.  This was definitely an eye opener.  I've already joined their website and also plan on donating money for cancer research.  The website is very informative and even gives ways you can start changing the odds like not smoking, managing stress, getting exams, etc.  At the bottom of this entry will be the website address.  Hopefully you can take a look around when you get the chance.

Take care!  And, one more thing.  The title for my blog is 'sagitall suture' because when I clicked that space to place a title, it gave me two things: the title of my last blog and sagitall suture.  I have no idea why.  I've never typed that there before.  Weird.

http://changetheodds.standup2cancer.org/

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Don't Know What I'm Doing

I decided to start one of these blogs for several reasons:
A. My sister has one.
...
Actually, that is the only reason.  I haven't had a chance yet to look around at other blogs, but I'll probably start by reading through my sister's favorites.  She started one of these to stop being an anonymous follower and to start commenting on her favorite author's blogs.  I'm actually not brave enough to comment because I'm always afraid of saying the wrong thing.  Not something stupid, just wrong.

I guess another reason I started one of these is to motivate myself into finishing one of my own stories I've created.  I've been coming up with stories since the third grade with this short story called St. Martin.  It's about these two kids who get shipwrecked on a non-existing island in the 1940s.  It also involves unicorns, dragons, faeries, a fountain of youth, Atlantis and a boy named Ash.  Fourteen years later, St. Martin has grown into a 11 book series (with some short stories in between). 

At the moment I'm currently writing a horror story that I came up with two summers ago while watching Ghost Hunting with McFly.  (I wrote part of it as a short story for Creative Writing I that same summer.)  I'm also hard working on this supernatural story as well with a main character I hold dearly to my heart.  His name is Landon and he's a major pervert.  He's also a vampire and has a black cat named Juju Beans.

There are two other ones that are 85% formulated in my brain at the moment: One is the 10th book to the St. Martin series (I wrote two chapters of this one during high school); the second is an adventure/action story that has grown onto epic proportions over the last few months.  I'm trying not to bother with either of these two at the moment because they involve to many different characters and settings.


Well, I was typing this out while reading the tweets of Psych writer Tim Meltreger who was tweeting live during the West Coast broadcast of tonight's episode of Psych.  He just confirmed that Little Shawn will be back next week!  Liam James is adorable.  If you haven't watched Psych, you should.  It's an awesome detective show and Shawn Spencer is the original fake psychic detective.

Anyway, I guess this will be the end of my first post.  My eyes are already shutting and I can't seem to type straight.  I keep misspelling words.  Then again, that could just be my poor language skills.  That's why English is my second major and Anthropology is my first!

Goodnight