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Have a vegan Snickers bar. They're called "Jokerz" and they're made by GoMax (I think they are the creators of the Crispy Cat bars).
http://www.gomaxgofoods.com/
I discovered them a few weeks ago at the Living Earth store when trolling for snacks for the movies. In addition to the Jokerz bar there is a "Buccaneer" bar which is like 3 Muskateers, "Mahalo" like an Almond Joy and "Twilight" which is like a Milky Way bar. And they're AWESOME.
And I'm definately not goin' anywhere for a while. The housing market is worse than I imagined it would be. I looked around at the local property for sale and you can get an imacculate 3-4 bedroom house in Worcester for like $150,000 right now, which is less than we paid for this two bedroom. If we tried to sell it now, we'd actually owe money to the bank rather than making a profit. Looks like I'm stuck in Worcester indefinatley.
In other news, we went to The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary's "Thanksliving" event last weekend. They held it a month earlier this year because they thought there'd be warmer weather, but it was still cold as shit, haha. Dan Piraro was funny as usual. I hope he never stops hosting the event... but the event itself is rather small, I wonder if they'll ever make it larger. I didn't win any items in the raffle just like every other year, haha.
My chiropractor wanted me to try an anit-inflamatory diet plan to try to ease some of my back pain so I decided to start that after Thanksliving so I could eat all the food stuffs. I started the diet on Monday... so far it's been okay. I'm not like clawing up the walls with bread withdrawls or anything... it's just weird because I have to super think about the food I am preparing... and forget about take out... I wouldn't know where to look!
On top of my vegan-ness I can't have: Eggplant, Peppers, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Corn, Sugar, Rice, Wheat or Paprika. I'm supposed to add yogurt to my diet, but all the vegan yogurts have rice or corn starch.. so I have been taking oral probiotics. I also have to eat half a pineapple or papaya every day (I'm sticking with the pineapple as I have discovered Papaya is totally gross, haha). I'm leaning heavily on soy products as they are a pretty safe bet. Cooking a lot with Braggs and Wheat Free Tamari to avoid the wheat in soy sauce. The hardest thing to find was vegetable broth powder/boullion that didn't contain Peppers or Paprika. I'm also drinking a lot of herbal tea and eating goji berries. (Teavana has the fanciest teas EVER but so expensive!) I don't know how long I need to do the plan, some of the things I've read said it could take up to 3 months to notice any effects. I haven't noticed any decrese in pain yet.
Yesterday I went to Mohegan Sun with my mom and sister to celebrate our October birthdays. I didn't become a millionaire, haha. Mom won $30. She's going to retire in style now!
Coming up this weekend is the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. It's running for two days this year instead of one so Latanya and I rented a room up in Boston so we can go both days. The first day will be Halloween so we are going to dress up. I probably will be off my diet on those days due to eating out and pilfering tons of free samples... we'll see.
That's printed on the back window of one of my neighbor's vans. It's quite possibly one of the gayest things I've ever seen, haha. I really have to wonder about the person who had that professionally made for their mini van. Also, why is "Billy Joel" in quotes?
Anyways, Tortilla Sam's is a tex-mex style burrito joint in downtown Worcester. What makes it special for vegans is that they offer tofu burritos, buffallo tofu "wings" and un-chicken fajitas... or so I'm told. I think I may have ordered the un-chicken fajitas five times before they actually had the "un-chicken" in stock to make them. Turns out it was just some sort of seitan, nothing really to write home about. I have stuck with the tofu burritos since. Now, I don't know if Sam is struggling with the recession like most other businesses... lately I have been beginning to suspect they may be going under. The last few times we tried to order from them they had no tofu. Another time they put a different type of tofu in the burritos (they used the "wing" tofu instead of the marinated tofu) which was weird. Al just ordered from them tonight and they are all out of "wing" tofu but had marinated tofu for burritos. They were out of guacamole. Haha. What mexican place runs out of guac? I don't know why I'm telling y'all this; it's just weird. There a few "Moe's Southwest Grilles" around and they make tofu burritos (good, but not as good as the burritos from Sams) but they don't have fries. Sam's has the cleanest fries in town... you know what I mean? There's no, like, weird batter residue on them... they don't taste like everything else that's been in the fryer. Just good...clean...fries.
I saw "Zombie Land" today. I already knew I was going to like it since zombie movies are some of my favorites (the only ones I haven't liked so far have been from the "28 whatevers Later" series). The "Adventure Land" dude really is like the poor man's Michael Cera... it's kind of weird. Why do they act so much alike? Are they related? Michael Cera is definately better looking... if either of them are to be considered good looking (I'm not really attracted to either) but the one in Zombie Land's face is all wrong. At least it had my hot girlfriend in it... good ol' whatserface. Mmmmm...
If you couldn't tell already I'm having a better day than in my last post... although the shit storm continued for a little while after that. Raikou the wonder cat decided it would be a fabulous idea to pee a gallon of urine in the empty laundry basket in the basement (at least it wasn't a full laundry basket) and I didn't think much of it... his wires are a bit crossed (he's "special") so every once in a while he leaves his logs in the basket (when he's not leaving them on the floor). This was the first pee incident, though. In the evening... right as I was turning out the light to go to bed, I heard him scratching. I turned the light back on to see he had just peed on the carpet in the bedroom. I chased him downstairs to the "time out" zone (aka the downstairs bathroom) when I realized he had pissed all over the floor under the dining room table.
I stayed up most of the night scrubbing. I know that cat piss is a pain to get out, but nothing I've used has worked a hundred percent. As I was scrubbing I noticed the gerbils making a lot of noise in their tank. When I went to investigate I found two of the gerbils at war. One of them had a bit in half eyelid, the other had wounds all over her rump. Once gerbils start fighting like this (it's called "de-clan-ing"; it doesn't always happen but it happens) you have to seperate the gerbils forever or they will kill one another. So now the gerbil with the bit up rump (now named "Fanny") resides in a brand new tank with a high rise. Short Tail is her roomate... I don't think Short Tail's very thrilled about it but I hope they will get along.
Yesterday I spent a good chunk of time researching things to do in order to ready the house for selling. Most of the stuff has already been done: new roof, new windows, new doors, landscaped, new blinds. Stuff I plan to do includes: having the walls patched/painted, new carpet installed, re-doing some stuff in the bathroom, etc. Unfortunately, when I looked through listings for Worcester homes for sale for the price Al paid for this house 5 years ago, you can get a much bigger/fancier house today. I knew the market was bad, but I didn't realize it was that bad. Still, I need to talk to Al's old real estate agent and see if she has any advice since we wouldn't be planning to put the house on the market until spring and the housing market might be going back up by then.
We just watched Michal Moore's "Sicko" documentary on universal health care... now I'm trying to convince Al we should move to England.
I am about ready to kill myself because I spent the last week or so doing page after page of my comic. I am officially burned out on it so I have to take a break from it indefinately. Anyways, the first eighteen pages of my comic were in this entry here: http://jaymzeecat.livejournal.com/47504.h
( Anyways, onward! )
I've been pretty bummed out this week. Tired, depressed... irritable and angry.... and stressed. I recieved my rejection letter from Disability on Monday. It wouldn't have been so upsetting since I was expecting that to happen... everyone I have spoken to about Disability said that everyone gets turned down the first time... however the letter stated the reason was that "although (I) may experience some discomfort (I'm) still able to move (my) body, therefor (I) am able to work." This just really got stuck in my craw... they completely belittled my pain as if it's perfectly fine for me to be suffering in agonozing back pain working a job.
To make matters worse, I have been seeing the new Chiropractor for about two or three weeks now... for the first week I felt like I might have been feeling better (but it was a bit too soon to tell since I was still in pain) but last week the pain came back just as bad as it's been and I am becoming afraid that this treatment is not going to work. Al's coworker who's wife is disabled said it may help to get a letter from my Primary Care Physician so I am going to do that this week and file an appeal. It's just so stressful to be treated this way when I have paid taxes for Social Security and I am genuienly in pain.
I talked to my Aunt who has been disabled since 1996... she said that she filed and was approved right away. Sucks to be me, I guess.
Yesterday we went out with Al's dad to Shelburne Falls to see the Glacial Potholes and the Bridge of Flowers... on the way home he wanted to go canoeing. I haven't been in a canoe since I was a kid, and the trip would have been totally awesome except that sitting in the canoe was killing my back.. it made it pretty much impossible to concentrate on anything else. I didn't say anything because I felt like I would be ruining everyone else's good time... plus Lance paid to rent the canoe for two hours... but he said later that he could tell that I was uncomfortable. I had to lie in the back of the car for a while to try to get some relief.
I am sunburned today, but that's okay. Delicious Vitamin D, right? Anyways, I'm done bitching for now. Talk to you guys soon.
For lack of anything better to do/watch I am watching Entertainment Tonight go on and on about Michael Jackson. It's strange to think about his being gone. I always figured Michael Jackson would be someone I'd still be reading/hearing about when I was 50 years old... I didn't expect him to just up and die all of a sudden. I love his music, he will be missed.
In other news, Al had a week long vacation last week. When it began we talked about all these chores we were going to get done... painting the bathroom, seeding the yard with grass... by the end of his vacation we hadn't done shit. Part of the reason being that I threw my back out on Thursday. The worst part about it is that I wasn't really even doing anything that was worthy of throwing my back out. I was on the deck tipping my plant containers because the bottoms were so full of rain... I tipped one and something in my back felt like it ripped... the pot wasn't even heavy.
So I laid around for like two days... not really able to do much. Today I am not a hundred percent better but I'm getting there. I can't bend very well yet, so there wasn't much cleaning I could do around the house so I took some time to work on my art. I was thinking the other day about how I used to dream about having a published comic book. I loved drawing covers for them... mostly because I prefer large drawings to small ones and also because I'm not very good with backgrounds. So now that many self published comics are making their way to the web, rather than print... I feel like you don't really get to make many "covers". But I think I am going to anyway... maybe every twenty two pages like a comic in print.
( Click here for larger size and notes... )
- Music:"Rock My World" Michael Jackson
This sure has been a weekend! Latanya came by on Sunday as well as Meghan Dunne for the third not so annual Degrassi slumber party. We only made it about halfway through Degrassi High when Meg decided it was time to head out. Maybe she doesn't know what "slumber party" means, haha. Then we got into season one of Degrassi: The Next Generation. It took a while to sell this one to Latanya. She'd seen several episodes at Melissa's house last weekend and she wasn't feeling too enthusiastic about it. But once we got through the first few episodes, I think it has started to grow on her.
After season one was done we decided we needed more Degrassi so we put season two on the Netflix Instant Queue and started watching it via the XBox. Latanya found herself easily distracted by the "Spinner Can't Stop Getting Boners" episode. In the evening we went to the movies to see my boyfriend Ryan Reynolds in "The Proposal" which turned out to be much better than "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"... but it was a very weird movie... at least we got to see Bettie White dancing around in the forest with a sweet indian smock.
When we came home, Al was extremely drunk. We were only gone for two hours and he had drunk and entire bottle of Bacardi while playing the "Ghostbusters" game. He stumbled up the stairs and I was just going to leave him there but I heard him fall down... so over the next hour or so I had the pleasure of moving him around and picking up his vomit piles... Al does not usually drink this much. I can only think of one or two times he had been "wasted" like that... but he has been pretty much nothing but angry and depressed for a long time now and I'm not really sure what to do about it. Over the next couple of days I am planning to sit and have a long talk with him about counselling and other steps that we can take to ensure his happiness. I know that a major factor in his depression is that he doesn't like his job... perhaps he needs to go to school and find something he would really like to do more? I don't know. :/
Last night Latanya and I went up to Boston and saw "The Color Purple: The Musical" at the Wang theater. It was very cute, I am going to have to look in to getting the soundtrack so I can shake my ass to "Shug Avery Comin' to Town". The cast was very talented... the songs and performances were moving and sometimes funny. The only bad thing about the night was getting creepy hand molested by some dude on the Subway.
I'm spacing out right now.... my eyes are doing that thing that they do when you're looking at a "Magic Eye" picture. I don't feel competently articulate lately (don't let that last sentence fool you). I think a lot of it has to do with not talking to many people in person and having been out of school for so long. I feel like I sit down to write something and everything comes out sounding like I have a learning disability... I have all this stuff in my head and can't seem to get it out in words that make sense. I guess it's fortunate for me that I express myself visually. I think my comics look good put together (dialog, line work combined) but man... you do not want to see the train wreck of a script that I work from. "He go over dere now". Draw, draw, draw.
Anyways, Al and I have been looking for a hosting company to start putting my comic up on but haven't made any decisions. I am thinking that I don't want to put it on a webcomic specific hosting site... rather have my own domain name like "Jaymzeecat.com" or something where I can put all of my comics eventually... instead of something like "comicgenesis.com/4359/splitscreenco
I'm watching the movie "Alive" right now... you know the 1993 movie about a Rugby team that gets trapped in the Andes when their plane crashes? Then they get all cannaballistic on people's dead asses? PUN! I watched a documentary about the real life guys... so far the movie's pretty acurate aside from the actors being so very American and the actual guys being so very Uruguayan. They used the real names... it's just funny to think of Ethan Hawke as a "Nando". I wonder if I would last a long time in the Andes because I'm so fats mcgats.
Anyways, I finished my picture of Link:
Cross stopped by on Sunday which was a pleasant surprise. He didn't get to stay long, it would have been cool to go out for a bite or something but he had to put on his full safari gear and mow his parents' lawn.
( I go on and on about sodas and rant about Kool Aid... )
Also, get to the movies and see "the Hangover". It's seriously the funniest movie I have seen all year.
Can't sleep. Figured this was as good a time as any to update the ol' LJ. Squee has an appointment tomorrow morning at a new vet, we'll see how that pans out!
Haven't been up to much the past week. I spent the last three days pretty much playing non stop Legend of Zelda. I beat quest one, beat quest two... beat quest one again. I have no life. That game was so super hard when I was a kid.... why is it so easy to beat now? Then I started playing Ocarina of Time which is my favorite video game EVAR!! I got about two hours of gameplay into that only to discover the Wii apparently does not save your progress on the 64 games the way it does on the NES ones. Now I have to start all over. Good thing it's my favorite video game EVAR!!
I went to the movies some time back and saw "Terminator: Salvation". I thought it was alright, but I didn't cream my jeans for it. There were some things about it that bothered me.
( I'll put 'em under this here cut for possible spoilers... )
Latanya came by over the weekend and we finally saw "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" which was AWFUL! Now, now I wasn't expecting a cinematic masterpiece, but me and my vagina can get into some romantic comedies and take them at face value, you know? I know what I'm getting into when I go to one of these movies but this was sooooo bad!!!! The only note worthy thing from it was that the same girl that was used to play a teenaged Jennifer Garner in "13 Going on 30" was used to play her teenage self in this movie. Something has gone wrong with Jen Garner's face also. She has some crow-magnum jaw going on in this movie. It must be too much Afleck.
Raikou was discharged from Critical Care last night. His homecoming wasn't a happy one because he was angry and upset about being at the vet for two days and also still sick. He growled and cried around the house. He growled and cried when I picked him up. I tried playing with him and brushing him but all he wanted was to be alone. I tried putting him under the covers, which he usually likes but he just started crying. We left him in the bedroom to stay in the quiet. He vomitted on the bed sheets. Some time later we had to pull him out from under the bed to force meds and laxative on him, which he was very unhappy about. He came downstairs shortly before bedtime and got into his cat bed in the bathroom. He slept with his head tucked under his body. I went in to check on him before I went up to bed and I left some food and water nearby. He smelled the food like he was interested but just lip smacked at it instead of eating it. So I got some kibble and moistened it and offered him that. He seemed even more interested in this food, but became noticeably frustrated, turned around and put his head back under his body.
I went to bed reluctantly.... I realized that he might not be alive in the morning. He was so sick. I couldn't sleep, all I could do was lay there and cry. Some time during the night Raikou came upstairs. He started crying loudly and vomiting all over the floor. I got up to check on him, but didn't really know what I could do for him. He had not really eaten anything since Sunday and all he was vomiting was a foul smelling liquid. I got back in bed and about an hour later Raikou started crying and vomiting again. When I went to check on him again, there were two dark puddles of very smelly vomit in the hallway. One of them had an object in it. I knew what it was immediately... it was an eyeball from ( this toy )
When I bought that toy (some time ago) the first thing Raikou did was pull an eyeball off of it. I threw the eye away but some time later he must have pulled off the second eye and swallowed it. It was obvious this was what was causing all the trouble because Raikou's demeaner changed immediately after barfing it up. The thing's about the same size as a marble and it's been lodged some where inside him for a week. My cat almost died from this toy. If anyone has it THROW IT AWAY.
I wrote a complaint to Del Monte (they own Meow Mix) but haven't heard anything back. They need to recall these toys.
Raikou has improved leaps and bounds. He ate a little moistened food this morning then he went nuts over some boiled chicken my sister brought over for him. He has been active, happy, playing and grooming himself again (thank God because he smelled like old cheese). We called and left a message for the vet about his improvement. I am so happy that he is getting better now. I thought for sure we were going to lose him.
In other news, Al and I went to see "Wolverine: Origins" today. Some of it was a little silly but overall I liked it. Al said there was "too much back story and not enough action" to which I replied "it's called Wolverine Origins." It did not have enough of my boyfriend (Ryan Reynolds) in it, so I was a little disappointed about that but I liked it better than the X Men movies.
My vagina wants me to see "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" next even though I think Mathew Mcconaughaaa-aaay is totally gross. That is all for now.
- Music:"Always Be My Baby" David Cook
But, big shit is scary! And there's a big ass scary robot in that Terminator movie, that's enough for me. I don't know why I am creeped out by big shit... I don't even trust the Wind Turbine near my house... always plotting to sprout legs and kill me with it's laser eyes. The Tripods in the "War of the Worlds" remake? SCARY! Dr. Manhattan? FUCKING SCARY!!! Big shit is scary. I don't care what anyone says! Even the "Transformers" are a little on the freaky side. Big ass robots. I wish I had been in charge of marketing for the new Transformers movie. The preview would have just been a black screen... then the word "ROBOTS!" would come up... then "LeBOUF!" and then a date.
"Observe and Report" wasn't a very good movie. It was weird... not in a good way. A few funny moments. Kinda boring. It had one of th most disgusting sex scenes ever, haha.
"17 Again".... before you judge me let me just say this movie was not my idea... although I probably would have rented it for it's "13 Going on 30" like quality... but Latanya has recently been creamig her jeans for Zac Efron and needed her fix. This movie also had a few funny moments but overall nothing to write home about. It was a little unbeliveable to think that Zac Efron would turn into Chandler when he got older but whatevs. Chandler used to be cute for a while but now he's all old and pointy and kind of bird like.
"The Haunting in Connecticut" was a bit laughable like most horror movies. Latanya's movie commentary mostly consisted of shaking her head and going "*sigh* White People" and 'Uh-uh... no". The family's tolerance of scary ass ghosts in their RENTAL property was pretty unbelievable. I think their ass would be out of there.
In non movie relatd news, my baby cat is sick. :( He started lip smacking on Thursday or Friday, then sleeping a lot and his fur looked "fluffed up". He vomitted on Saturday, but wasn't necessarily unusual. I called the vet on Monday and they told us to bring him in. He was a horror at the vet like usual, screaming, hissing, generally acting like a vicious beast. They did a blood panel and administered some fluids and sent him home. He vomitted two or three times that night, the next day he slept a lot and hid under the bed for a while. Then he started vomitting all over the house. I was in hysterics because I had a 1 year old cat die on me suddenly like that several years ago. I called the vet again and brought him back in. His blood panels came back normal aside from him being dehydrated. He was admitted into the cat hospital that night. We don't really know anything yet. His xrays have only showed constipation so far. They gave him a cat enema and a laxative and some pepcid for his nausea nuggets. As of last night, he still was not eating much, he might be able to come home tonight. I miss my baby cat. The other cats have been enjoying their Raikou Free Vacation.
"Bones" is one of the worst shows I have ever seen. I wonder why it is still on. Al is channel surfing and he keeps landing on it. I am in the process of watching Squee because she has been pooping all over herself for about a week... she has a vet appt. tomorrow and they need a stool sample so I have to watch and wait for the poopins to happen.
I've been trying to keep busy all week, but being busy means being lax about dieting unfortunately but I wont get into that here; planning to update the
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fatvegans community soon. I took a trip down to Connecticut on Thursday to my Eye Doctor/Aunt's office (it is also my Mom's place of employment). I decided to try out some new contact lenses because they finally make them for Astigmatism. The left one was wonky all day and I discovered that the outside world is ridiculously bright so I had to buy a pair of sunglasses. Unfortunatley, the left lens stayed wonky over the next three days so I stopped wearing the contacts. I am going to have to talk to Hope about it and see if I can get another set of lenses that fit my left eye better.I got to ride the swings at the park that day which was super fun, but I couldn't ride for long because I am so fat and old! I had a nice lunch with my Aunt Beth, Lanchey Boy's wife Renee, my sister, and cousin Tessa.
Didn't do much this weekend. Al had an extra day off for the Masshole Patriot's Day bullshit holiday. Had to go grocery shopping today... also I picked up a bunch of fleece to make liners for the chinchillas cage for a more environmental approach to clean chins over the Carefresh. I don't know why more people don't use reusables for their pets.
Several Days later... I am the worst at posting. Been feeling pretty depressed today. I went to the clinic yesterday and signed a release form for my medical records because I am going to apply for disability benefits. I have been stressing about it all day (convinced I am going to be denied) and feeling like a failure at life because I am unable to return to work. If I am not able to get approved I am at a loss of what to do. Al and I don't have any extra money, we ran out our savings and have been living paycheck to paycheck. I thought I would be back at work by now and my back would be better but neither of those things has happenned. My back hurt so much yesterday, I couldn't clean my house or cook dinner. The only relief I get when my back gets bad is to lie down which is really no good for someone who needs to lose eighty pounds.
I realize that people abuse the system when it comes to disability but believe it or not I actually like the work I used to do and I'd much rather be doing that than collecting social security and being in pain all the time. I wish I had a diagnosis or better yet a cure.
My life is so boring. I never have anything to report.... but here I am anyway typing away because I am really bored. Dieting is going well, down seven pounds so far. I had one really bad day but other than that it's smooth sailing. One of the things that's keeping me motivated is the fact that I want to get a hip new hair cut and I think I need to be thinner to pull it off. I want my hair to be primarily black with red streaks and I don't want to end up looking like one of those fat goth girls that's trying too hard. I have been having a hard time finding a picture of a haircut that is making me cream my jeans. I found a few so far that I am interested in and I need some opinions:
( Your Opinionation... )
On a completely different note, I have fallen in love with Jason Somethingorother on SNL. I am going to leave Al and stalk him in New York and break up his marriage. I am not sure why I like him so much.. he is sooo very vanilla (perhaps more vanilla than Al?). Here he is: (the one in the hat, the nerd in the front is Latanya's pic in the SNL universe, the second guy is Bill Hader who I saw in New York. No one talked to him, haha.)
( Jason and Ike... so cute... so Very Vanilla... )I will have more of my comic up shortly. I ran into problems with my scanner last night, apparently he had a fight with my computer and now they're not talking. Will have Al fix soon (I hope). Also, half of my toenail died and fell off... why?
( Jaymz goes on and on about the Twilight movie... )In UPT news, I did not get my Tens Unit. Don't get me started on that either.
Right now Al is watching "Alien vs. Predator 2"... yes, they made a '2'.
It's beginning to feel a lot like (insert two syllable word), everywhere I go....
I have been thinking about Christmas for the past two days and I don't know why. It's weird that we're about to enter the fourth month of the "new" year already. I don't even know why I get excited about Christmas, haha. I have't had a present waiting for me under my fake tree for like four years now.
I am very tired right now. I have been tired for a while and I don't know why. I do know my cousin Paul was spreading the mono around like the plague, but if I did have that, I have no other symptoms of it. Al is wandering around the house right now with an energy audit dude trying to figure out what we can do to bring down our energy consumption. The irony of the situation is that they have turned on and left on every light in the house along the way.
Today is my last day of useless Physical Therapy (I thought it was yesterday but was turned away). I have a feeling I am just going to get mad about it. The whole reason I was sent back to UPT (useless Physical Therapy) was to get approved for this "Tens" electronic pain treatment and instead they've made me go through the "do more stretching" bullshit that I already did a year ago and had no signs of imrovement. Sigh. Then I get one guy only to get passed to some chick and nobody talks to each other, she was surprised I was trying to get a Tens unit. I hate that place. Today I am supposed to go talk to that first guy again, oh boy.
I have not been working on a lot of art this week, but I will have some new stuff done soon. (I was working on some sewing stuff) I finally found the holder for my tablet pen... it was in the Pizza Pizzazz machine. What?? The one place I didn't look! I am just glad I found it. I was starting to consider trying to order one... the buttons keep going off every time I lay it down and they drive me crazy.
My back hurts.
- Music:Precious Love~James Morisson
I have been really tired all week. I think I have the mono. I kept nodding off the other day (I'm not the type to take naps) and I slept until like nine thirty in the morning. I have been working on my comic a lot, but still don't have many pages -in a row- done. I have about twelve or thirteen of them actually finished but only the first three are done in order now.
( LOOK AT THE ART!!!!! )
- Music:"Human Nature" Michael Jackson
Latanya: "It wasn't a spaceship. It was his flyin' around mobile."
Me: (cackling) "I love how you're like 'how dare you call it a space ship when it was clearly a 'flyin' around mobile'!"
Latanya: "It WAS! He didn't go to SPACE!!"
There are times when something so retarded comes out of my mouth that it makes me realize that I spend way too much time in my house with my pets. Raikou got on one of my drawings and his paws were wet. It's no big deal, that drawing is only a sketch to be scanned into the computer later anyway but he just came over here (hours later) and smelled the paw prints he left on it for like five minutes all the while making faces. "You're the one that stinked it up, stupid!" are the actual words that just came out of my mouth.
A while back when I finished writing the script for my current comic, I drew up maybe ten pages from it in no particular order. I have been working on them on the computer pretty much non stop and now I am out of my pre drawn pages. So... I'm at a bit of a stand still. I want to do some rewrites to the script. but I have to admit that I hate writing. Not looking forward to that.
The working title for my comic is "Split Screen" but I don't know if that's the title I'm going to stick with. I named it after the John Mayer song: "Split Screen Sadness" that really summed up the way my main characters feel about each other. (I listened to a lot of John Mayer when I was writing it, haha)
( Split Screen Sadness Lyrics, Edited for length )
Music helps me a great deal with creativity. Right now I am watching a lot of Project Runway because one of my main characters (Jan) owns a fashion company and I know absolutely nothing about fashion. Latanya suggested this show as an easy way to learn some stuff. (Heidi Klum doesn't pronounce R's.... she talks like a baby and she makes me want to strangle her, haha). I feel like when a characters pops into my brain and everything about them starts to unfold; that's just how they are. Jan told me she was a fashion designer, there's no changing that.
I'm going to post some of the other pages I finished here at some point soon. in the mean time, for whoever's interested here is a summary of the comic.:
I'm not planning for this comic to be too terribly long, I want it to be the equivalent feel of watching a romantic (sometimes comedic) movie.
( Poorly Written Summary )
Al is watching a weird ass anime. I could fall asleep.
For the past few days I have actually been inspired to work on my -not on the- web(yet)comic. I had started one page probably like three months ago, but every time I looked at it I felt overwhelmed and didn't try to do anything with it. I finally finished it a few days ago. I did the line work in Illustrator and colored it in Photoshop. After I did the color work, I decided to try doing the line work and colors on the next page both in Photoshop.
Now, I seem to like the controls in Photoshop a lot better than in Illustrator but the one thing I really enjoy in Illustartor is that it automatically takes the 'shakes' out of my line work. Latanya asked her teacher about the difference between drawing in Illustrator vs. drawing in Photoshop. He said (and I'm paraphrasing) that because Illustrator is vector based and Photoshop is not, when you put a Photoshop drawing up on the web it will become pixellated and look bad whereas an Illustrator drawing will not.
So I put the pages I've done up on my Flickr account to see how they look and so far they all look about the same as they did in the original programs. I need to do some more research into this though, and also some research on the program controls, for instance I don't know how to make a shape (like a circle) in Photoshop without a fill. This is pretty much self explanatory on Illustrator. I may go back to doing my line work in Illustrator if I there is no function in Photoshop to take the shakes out of my lines or if I find out some other reason I should be.
So here are the three pages I have finished. Don't try to make any sense of them as they are not in any real order (the first one is page one, the second is page three and the third is page twenty, haha) and I have not yet learned how to make word balloons or fill in text, I plan to look at some tutorials online at some point... so there is no dialogue for you to read yet. So... in short the first page: Illustrator/Photoshop, the second and third: just Photoshop. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions!
