Mouseketeer Roll Call

So it finally happened—I got scheduled for a cultural diversity class. I probably could have handled it better, but there is just something happening with me lately. It’s odd. I feel like part of me has been switched off for a very long time and suddenly…my wiring is starting to spark back to life. Which is great, except that when I am full-on I think I might just be a full-on bitch. On the bright side, I am more active and happy, so maybe it works out?

This gradual muting of who I was started happening when my biological father died, but I really didn’t realize it until my mother had her stroke, and I lost her as a daily companion. When that happened, I stopped doing anything—stopped creating, stopped writing, stopped drawing, stopped even listening to music, but probably most detrimental to who I am…I stopped just opening up on people and speaking my mind.

I am the rant. The rant is me.

Anyway. So I have to take cultural diversity, which I think is just flat out stupid, and I am sure I will end up posting every assignment online somewhere because I won’t be able to do it without making a joke out of the assignment. Below is part of my “biography” in which I was supposed to say what I hoped to get from the class and other blah, blah, blah.

__________________________________________

I don’t expect to get a lot out of this class--anything really. I may meet some people, I may make some friends, but as far as learning anything new goes, no. Cultural diversity courses are probably the worst sociology courses you can take, in that the bulk of the coursework IS opinion and feeling based. There are statistics that people like to use to base their feelings on, but in the end, it’s all one group’s ideas of how things should be said and how people should react and feel, versus another’s.

As for what I expect from this class, I first of all think it is an incredible waste of resources (my money, my time) that focuses on our differences as a people rather than our common bonds--as most politically correct efforts do. I’m not racist or prejudice in most anything, and in fact you may have a hard time pinning down what I truly feel about anything in broad general strokes, because I just don’t think that way. I welcome all debate to my convictions, which can be shifted with proof and further analysis. I’m not afraid to change my mind, and I rarely have any preconceived notions about something I know little about. I have always believed in being completely open to new people and new ideas, so the concept of reeducating me for the purpose of equality enlightenment is just offensive. That being said, after reading the book sent for this course, and going through and reading each and every assignment, if I could take basket-weaving right now instead of this I’d do it in a heartbeat.

If you’ve ever seen the book or even the poster “All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”, and you took any of it to heart, then you don’t need this class. I’ll tell you what I could use though, for the money we spent on this. I could really appreciate another storyboard class, or maybe an illustration class that actually covers illustration and not just Illustrator the program. Of course, we don’t get a say in the classes we take here. How’s that for diversity? :)

Additionally, it's bad enough we have to have a social engineering class at all mandatory for our degree, do we really have a class scheduled at 10AM on a Sunday when a good number of us are supposed to be in church?

I won’t be attending a single Sunday class. 


Photography Class

Sooo, I’m taking a photography class.
These are some of the shots I took with my old crappy camera, but my second adopted parents (David’s Mom and Dad) bought me a toootally awesome new camera for the class so I will have bunches and bunches of new shots soon that will actually look cool.



This one is my fav. My teacher liked it too.







The rest can be found on my MySpace page. :)

Total BS

Heh, just got off the phone with my old school, the one who finally forgave that huge debt they said I owed them? Turns out I STILL owe them money and my transcripts STILL haven’t been sent to my current school. $250 dollars. In interest. Towards a debt they agree was bullshit and I didn’t really owe, that they should never have charged me in the first place. But…I still have to pay the interest that accumulated on it during the year and so many months it took me to fight them into admitting as much.

Can I ever just win anything outright? I ask you, can I?

My Appeal...

Dear Shannon:


I am writing in response to the financial appeal that you recently filed. The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division takes very seriously any and all appeals that we received, and as such, we have performed a thorough internal investigation regarding your request for an adjustment to the balance due. Upon researching this issue further we have found that there were mitigating circumstances that prevented the successful completion of courses. As such, we have waived the tuition and fees associated with the C211 class. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly.



Best regards,
XXXXXXXXXX



RAAAAWWWWRRRRRRRR

I am financially Unburdened!! It's taken over a year to get this mess straightened out, but finally it is done and they will send my transcript to my other college so I don't have to repeat MAAAAAATH!!!!

0.0 I hates math.

Psycho Killer

So I am in animation class.

We have this...vague but annoying assignment where we have to take this skeleton storyline and make it our own...change the character, change location...whatever, have to make it our own but keep the base movement elements present. Even doing so, we will spend the next 5 weeks answering stupid questions about the original base script...so lemme brief you on TIM.

Tim is lounging in his chair in the back yard, he sees a ball, he thinks it must belong to the kids next door so...Tim goes to get the ball and slips on a banana peel. Maybe Tim saved a life by being the one to slip on the peel, who knows!!!!111 It’s...really lame.

 
So one the of discussion questions today was:

3. Now that you have seen the script and designed the character, speculate on what kind of game this short animation could be incorporated into. Would it be an introductory animation or a cut scene? What kind of game would it be? What would the game involve?  

And my studious reply?

Graves              14 Jan 08    5:27 PM MST
            It could be either a cut scene or opening animation. Since we’re just “speculating” on the sort of game it could be...maybe it’s one of those very violent sorts and Tim is prone to rapid mood swings—kind and benevolent one moment, and oh so willing to help out the neighbor kids, and then vicious and homicidal the next—and that slip on the banana peel just seriously set him off. So...he takes out the baseball bat that he has in his inventory from a few scenes back (which we won’t go into) and goes next door to stir up a little carnage--and also rack up many brutality points for wild swings that send little punk-ball-tossing heads soaring over fence lines. It’d be a mostly nonlinear game of course, unlocking a bit of plot here and there when certain items are found and actions are done, but mostly the point of the game would be to wreak as much havoc as psychotically possible without the police finding the bodies that you are hiding in the empty in-ground pool you have covered for the winter. Purely speculative of course. :)