littlestar

stormy: *sticks her head under pearl's head* groom me.

pearl: *looks around elsewhere* nah.

stormy: fine. ok. *hop away* *sticks her head under lena's head* groom me.

lena: *starts grooming herself* nah.

stormy: fine. *hops away* *sticks her head under beau's head* groom me.

beau: *groom groom*

stormy: *snuggles up to beau* thank you.

lena/pearl: *hops over and sticks her head under stormy's head* groom me.

stormy: *groom groom*

lena/pearl: thanks

stormy: *sticks her head out for a grooming*

lena/pearl: *hops away*

stormy: grrr... *nip*

and that's where i come along to clean up the fur.

i think stormy feels put upon that she's grooming everyone and no one except beau grooms back. so now she's just going around biting everyone.

now that they are in the bathtub, they're all snuggled together. hopefully they'll get used to that and keep that up when they're eventually let out into the bathroom again.

of course, after pearl tried to dominate beau, he's off in a corner to himself. i think being surrounded by three girls is getting intimidating for him.

Posted by littlestar at 05:39 PM | Permalink

my bunnies are still in the process of getting along.

for a couple of days last week, they were roaming my whole apartment. this stopped once stormy decided that she wanted to start nipping and chasing everyone again.

they were put into the bathroom and pooped up a storm. this did not stop the nipping and chasing.

they are now in the bathtub, where i just witnessed pearl trying to dominate beau and lena. pearl used to be the quietest of the bunch.

i blame hormones.

pearl and lena are approaching the age where their hormones are just starting to affect their behavior. now i have no clue where things are going to go and i have a feeling that i have my work cut out for me until both pearl and lena are spayed and lose the effects of hormones. i have a feeling that stormy started nipping and chasing them more because she could sense their hormones. so basically... they're not going to settle down till sometime in november.

Posted by littlestar at 05:36 PM | Permalink

a list of the things i did today:

1. called people about brunch
2. shower
3. brunch
4. pick up veggies and prescription from safeway
5. place all bunnies and accoutrements into bathtub
6. unearthed all poop from bunny blanket and rugs in bathroom
7. sweeped all poop and wiped off pee from bathroom
8. cleaned toilet bowl and removed hardwater buildup from icky san jose water
9. washed all blankets and bunny towels with pee on them
10. washed all rugs
11. 1.5 masterworks studies, 2 snapshots
12. cleaned up two litterboxes
13. some notes on drama/acting
14. fixed charcoal drawings in my sketchbook
15. made a map of all whodunits for my notebook
16. took out some trash
17. finished a design on illustrator
18. another load of laundry and sorted the rest
19. a blog entry
20. answered emails from classmates

and it's only 530 :)

update:
21. dinner
22. two more loads of laundry
23. mopping the bathroom floor with cleaner
24. sketchbook work
25. actually folding my laundry for once
26. looked over first draft of parakkum's application essay for a consulting firm
27. acted as middleman for class server to several of my classmates, including reformatting their files when they weren't in the specs the teachers requested.

but mainly... sketchbook stuff took up the rest of the evening.

i'm pooped. i go to bed now. well... after i:
28. feed the bunnies
29. wash up for bed

Posted by littlestar at 05:25 PM | Permalink

i went shooting yesterday. but everyone knows that i'm lazy about writing about such things so i'll reference kwc's entry on it.

he even has a movie of me shooting the shotgun.

oh yeah... and it shows my pink hair. :)

Posted by littlestar at 05:08 PM | Permalink

i was good girl today. i caught up on my art 50 homework yesterday. i also went to the drawing session from 630-930pm after a full day of class from 8am-3pm.

things are exciting and tiring at the same time.

oh yeah... if you for whatever reason (my birthday was 7/17 or if you just like me THAT much) feel like getting me a present, i have a lot of stuff on my amazon wishlist. :) oh... i don't know. maybe an art book or something like that. used or not doesn't matter.

yes, i'm shamelessly fishing for art books. they're just so tempting!

hehe. :)

Posted by littlestar at 10:19 PM | Permalink

i've noticed some changes in how people perceive and treat me now that i have pink hair:

- people stare at me more. i sometimes forget and get antagonized and grumpy. then i see a reflection of me somewhere and i realize they must be staring at my hair and not necessarily me.
- people remember me better. this brings out the embarrassment when i don't remember them. but at least they know who i am. this makes me wonder if i should always have whacked out hair.
- random strangers walk up to me and hand me a flyer for free haircuts for hair models.

the last one happened while i was looking at wines at the market. the only thing is... it's a handwritten copy flyer and i'm wondering if that means they'll bushwhack my hair. then again... it IS free. and i AM a student... should i be worried?

on a completely unrelated note: i now have another bookshelf and a papasan. :) the papasan is wonderful. but i'm waiting for the cushion to be more broken in. then i will truly sink into the chair.

my car looked like it was wearing a beanie while i was transporting the chair frame back. i had to strap it down on my roof with twine. :)

Posted by littlestar at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

so now that i have school again, i've once more become the dork with the sketchbook attached to my hand/back. that is... i bring those damn things everywhere with me and i'm working all the time when i get a chance.

oh... that movie is subtitled? that's nice. i'll just have no clue by the time it's done.

let me be rude as i draw on the table while we wait for food (this is reserved for fellow art geeks only).

the past couple days i've had a fabulous time dorking out with other art students. thursday morning when we found out that class was cancelled due to teacher being sick (dude, the guy emailed at 230 in the morning. he's such a workaholic. :)) we all hung out in front of the art building looking at each other's sketchbooks and talking about classes, about artists, about methods, etc and we moved that to a cafe until the horrendous & cycling music videos chased us out. by the time we were done, we were all wanting to go home and draw.

friday night... more art geekiness, talking about class, talking about different artists and drawing while waiting for the food to come. it was great.

and then i realized... i enjoy art geekiness more than listening to computer geekiness (hci geekiness from thursday night) and game geekiness. i don't think i was ever a premed geek (about classes, schools, programs, etc) but i was a medicine geek (i loved pharmacology, physiology, etc) though not a bio geek. so it's probably good that i'm in art right now. and it's nice to know that everyone has a little geekiness in them, it's just a matter of in what.

so... cultivate your inner geek and walk down that path. :)

now... at some point in the next year when i have some free time (i laugh at this hopeless dream) i would like some help putting together a website for my work. the blog is great, but i really think i should have something showcasing my stuff. don't have a whole lot yet, but i should at least have my past drawings on display. this will require taking pictures of those things. and whatnot.

i was inspired by a classmate, jamaica. apparently, she's already getting published in comics and stuff. it's really cool.

Posted by littlestar at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i realized that i hadn't updated with my most recent (and final) schedule.

T:
8-11am Art 50, Visual Principles
12-3pm Art 112a, Intro to Illustration
315-530 Theatre Arts 5, Drama for Non-Majors

Th:
8-11am Art 50
12-3pm Art 112a
3-6pm optional visits (read: self-propelled) to my art 28 prof's class for some gesture drawing practice
630-930pm optional figure drawing session put together by shrunkenheadman

i will be attending my film class for lectures only on monday nights from 6-830pm. i had the realization that it's a recommended elective, but in the animation/illustration industry, they don't really look at your transcripts when they hire you anyway.

it's all about your portfolio and reels. and the knowledge in your head when you talk to people.

so why take time away from the classes that matter (art 50 and art 112a) with work i don't care about (2 exams and a lame paper) for units i don't need (3 units, that will only take time away from other electives i actually want to take)?

i may also start going to the figure drawing sessions that's organized by our animation/illustration club, shrunkenheadman from 630-930pm on thursdays. this makes me a little sad, because that does directly kill my social life, but most of my semester seems to be that way.

i can't complain though. as tired as i am most of the time (most people have been greeting me with "you look so tired" lately. bad sign.) i do generally like what i'm doing. i just wish i had more time to do it. :)

now.... time to get myself off the safeway track and catch up on the ridiculous amounts of homework (2 artist hunts, 6 masterwork studies, 4 daily comps to go. that and i need to buy fruit to draw for my 112a class and work on my sketchbook). it's beautiful.

Posted by littlestar at 10:41 AM | Permalink

i just finished watching the most intensely unsatifying version of the trojan war ever.

now my mind feels sullied and i feel the urge to purge it with teen titans or some other quality show.

why did i hate it so?
- menalaus forces helen to parade herself naked in front of all the greek kings as they leer and make lewd comments at/about her so that they may understand the worth of the woman they have all gathered to make an oath on.
- needless to say, when she's already had a vision sent by the gods of paris and he doesn't treat her like a prize pony to be rutted around, she bails.
- agamemnon has had the hots for her since the beginning and eventually rapes her, after the greeks successfully sack troy. menalaus is too much of a pussy to actually stop his older brother from raping his own WIFE. never mind that he's dragged 1000s of greeks to troy to retrieve his wife... he fails at retrieving her from his own brother.
- did not appreciate the suggestion that agamemnon would have just left troy and let paris live if helen had just let agamemnon rape her when she offers to go home with them if he returned hector's body and leave. of course, he responds by killing paris and setting up the wooden horse over night. cassandra tells helen that if she had "surrendered" agamemnon would have left like she had suggested earlier. cassandra is full of it.
- btw, menalaus only won his fight against paris because agamemnon tipped his javelins with poison.
- hector dies because achilles is a punkass that threw a javellin after hector decided against fighting. then he stabs him again in the heart while hector lays dying. and despite that there is no patroklos in this story, he still wants to drag hector around behind his chariot.
- since agamemnon is the disturbed individual that murders his own daughter to ensure favorable winds from artemis, clytemnestra is royally pissed off. she also caught him making passes at her sister before her sister bailed.
- the dumbass priest argue priam into accepting the horse. i'm with priam here. burn the cursed thing. helen also has the right idea "don't trust gifts from the agaeans."
- achilles is a disappointing, uncouth barbarian.

good points:
- gimli/treebird is priam. he did pretty good. the reasoning that agamemnon is a mad man that killed his own daughter to get here and would therefore not leave troy just because his sister-in-law was returned to the greeks was an astute assessment of character.
- clytemnestra very thoroughly kills agamemnon. this was intensely satisfying.

main ideas:
- the greeks are dishonorable, untrustworthy, greedy bastards.
- war sucks.
- menalaus is a weak pussy.
- helen, after her rebellion has caused a giant war leading to tragedy everywhere, falls in line and follows her idiot husband.
- troy, for having wanted to provide refuge to a woman severely mistreated and misused by chauvanistic men, is severely punished by testosterone and trickery. yay, values!
- you can basically kick the snot out of honor and good people if you're willing to be a endless, hopeless bastard.
- if you're enough of a bastard, your wife will stab you with a knife 10s of times as she drowns you.

Posted by littlestar at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

note: i'm not writing this to make you feel bad, parakkum, so you can stop doing that right now. :)

the basic idea:
a period of uncertain future plans
2-2.5 years of planned lon distance
+ 1 year unplanned
+ however long till parakkum finishes grad school.

details in the extended.

i just wanted to lament how this happened. mind you, i think it's a good relationship and that's why i've been in it so long. but would i have gotten myself into this had i known that it would be long distance for 5 years? i got to thinking about this because of some friends of mine.

basically, it was the frog in boiling water syndrome. for those of you who aren't familiar.... when trying to boil a frog (i haven't tried this, i've only heard of it) you have to start with it in the pot of water as it is heating up. the frog isn't very bright, so it won't notice the that the water is getting hotter steadily because the change will be imperceptible to it and it will boil to death because it doesn't have the sense to jump out. however, if you try to throw in the frog into boiling water, it will jump right out because it will actually notice how hot the stinkin' water is.

not that i'm boiling to death here. i think we're good for each other. some times it's easier to drive him to the airport to drop him off. but other times... it just plain old fucking sucks.

oh yeah... did i mention depressing? depressing, too.

when parakkum and i got together... well, we didn't really think it through that much. he was leaving soon (having graduated and all) and i was going to start my second year in college, so it was a make the best of the time we have kind of situation.

once he left, we decided to stay together because we liked each other and it was worth trying for a long distance relationship while we still liked each other.

by the time we were getting more serious with each other we were talking about doing the long distance thing until i finished college, after which i could head down to san diego either as a med school student or a research slave until i get into med school. we were looking at 2-2.5 years of long distance.

for some reason (probably because i liked him that much) 2.5 years seemed doable. it didn't seem that bad. and honestly... we weren't getting tired of the situation then. we were ok with a visit every 6 weeks or so. a phone call maybe once a week with lotsa chatting online.

well... the 2.5 year plan changed a little when i decided against med school and try some art classes for another year at cal.

when i decided to go for the second bachelor's... i thought i could do it at san diego state. then it would just be 3.5 years of long distance, right?

this sort of got derailed when san diego state and various other socal state school decided they weren't taking second bachelor's anymore. which turned out to be ok overall, since san jose state has a great program and i've made good friends here.

still... that put me at 3.5 years of long distance without any sight of when the thing would get local until parakkum finished his phd.

today... we're at 5 years of long distance. and i'm glad to say that we're soon approaching the end of this period. which is good. but the last couple months have been a little frustrating.

since parakkum has been working on his dissertation, i haven't been able to talk to him that much. then i was in la or in korea. or he was in vermont. or or or. etc etc etc.

originally, i thought he would be able to make it up here by end of summer. as of august, when people asked when parakkum would be getting up to the bay area, i said 1-1.5 months.

now in mid september, i'm still saying 1-1.5 months.

i'm thinking that it will probably end up being around november before he gets to the bay area.

it just ends up feeling like an endless cycle of extending that day when we'll be together again... just when i think that we're almost done being challenged by distance, the time just gets extended some more.

then i feel pissed off at being strung along and being given false hopes, except there's no one to blame. it's not parakkum's fault. it's not mine. it's just situation.

i guess i get back to the "would i have entered into this relationship had someone told a 19-year-old me that i will be doing long distance for 5 years?" question. hmmm... that's a tough one. i don't know. i love parakkum and i love that we're good for and good to each other. i think the 19-year-old would have been too young and scared to go for it. i guess, in the end, i needed to be strung along to have enough patience and forced to just go along with it, learning about how to love someone and how to deal with issues and communicating things the way i truly feel, without all the pretenses. as a 19-year-old, i just didn't have those skills available to me yet... my anxieties would have gotten the best of me.

Posted by littlestar at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

i will be taking my drama class after all

M: 600-820pm
T: 800-1050am, 1200-250pm, 300-530pm
Th: 800-1050am, 1200-250pm, (sitting in on) 300-550

and bunny names....
beau, stormy, cookie, pearl.
(edit: beau, stormy, lena, pearl)

she's too quiet to be truffles even. pearl sounds more serene.

Posted by littlestar at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i got home late last night to find a message on my machine. at first i thought it was a call from my parents. they're the only ones that really call my landline.

it happened to be a pretty garbled message with some guy saying some things. i deleted without paying much attention to it once i realized that it must've been a wrong number.

i stayed up till about 3am doing homework and watching my bunnies. i woke up around 630am to wake up and do some more homework (i actually slept through my alarm clock for about an hour).

soon after i got comfortable and set up to do more homework, i got a phone call. it was still around 630am so i was a little surprised and had worked myself up to thinking that there was some emergency with my family.

"hello?"

*silence*

"hello?"

"who's this?" (mildly accusatory)

"uh... i would like to ask YOU that question since you just called me at friggin' 630 in the morning"

"my husband's phone says he called this number at 12:01am." (pretty accusatory at this point)

"ok... i don't know any husbands unless you're my friend shane"

*silence*
*click*

needless to say, this had me a little more than pissed. for one thing, i was only awake because i had to do some homework but it would otherwise have been at a time when i would still be catching precious shut eye.

and what the fuck was that chick thinking in calling someone at friggin 630 in the morning? for all she knew, the number would have led to a guy. would she just have assumed that her husband has turned gay at this point??

the crux of my anger towards this woman was that she thought that she was entitled to harass someone that early. a complete stranger, just because she has an apparently unhealthy marriage with her husband.

dude. go take it out on husband, not some random stranger.

then again, given that she's the type of person that thinks calling a complete stranger at that unholy hour just because she feels insecure and suspicious, she probably isn't that happy a person anyway.

but yeah... that made for an odd way to begin a morning. at least i had enough peace of mind to be grumpy back.

chalk another up to my weird shit magnet.

Posted by littlestar at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

M:
6-830pm -- Modern Film

TuTh:
8-11am -- Visual Principles
12-3pm -- Introduction to Illustration

on thursdays, i will most likely go to my old prof's class as well for more (free) figure drawing sessions:
3-6pm

i figure all my projects, homework and reading on top of 18 hours of class will keep me busy enough and i can still probably squeeze in a social life somewhere in there.

besides, i woke up not wanting to take my drama class. i take that as a sign.

given that i now have 4 bunnies and parakkum is moving up this semester, i thought i'd take it easy on myself and just take my film class and two art studios.

i realized that all the work i've been doing lately have been for my two art studio classes, and that i would have more work on top of that.

no fun.

that and i never wanted to take drama anyway.

i'd rather help amanda's hair go platinum. :)

Posted by littlestar at 05:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

lena is now.... cookie!

tina is now.... truffle!

these names are probably inspired from a series of crack-smoking dreams and my wanting cookies when i woke up... but i think they work. :)

and they're cute. like my bunnies!

Posted by littlestar at 05:43 PM | Permalink

i spent all of today trying to get my bunnies to get along.

the following are some peaceful pictures of them together.

from left to right:
lena, tina, beau (all brown), stormy (all black)

stormy is being a curmudgeon and nipping lena and tina whenever she feels like it.

they've figured out though that she doesn't have it in for them, she's just a grumpy sourpuss.

i'm also looking for new names for lena and tina. the names don't stick in my mind much and i think it's because their names don't feel like they match them well.

tina... she's the calmest and the peacemaker. she's the only bunny that was relaxed enough to eat and poop regularly all day. i've considered "serena" as a name, but it's too long.

lena... she's spunkier than tina, but still very sweet. she's a little cowed by stormy right now, but you can tell from the picture that she's getting used to being kicked around and still enjoying life.

surprisingly enough, every bunny has groomed each other now. this is a good sign. all four bunnies have also flopped (lying completely on their sides) at least once around each other too.

as for how common is it for 4 bunnies to coexist happily? not that common... most bonding literature only talks about bonding two bunnies and warn people about bonding more. but i think this will work.

Posted by littlestar at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

just something funny i found as i was looking up stuff on kelly jones, a penciler. apparently, he's done stuff in sandman as well.

Fanzing 50 - November 2002 - The Problem with Batman's Crotch

Speaking of armor…the shorts are probably concealing a bit of equipment…and I don't just mean the equipment he was born with. Batman sees more beatings in a month than a football quarterback or hockey goalie will experience in their professional careers, yet he doesn't wear anything resembling the sports gear that they do. Are we to believe that Batman wouldn't have a bit of protection for the Wayne family jewels? I should hope that those shorts are obscuring a cup of the latest space age polymers manufactured by Wayne industries. I'm talking something with the tensile strength to take a direct hit from Killer Croc and survive intact.

Posted by littlestar at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

i went to the pet supplies store today to get some litter for beau and stormy.

there i met lena (horn) and tina (turner) who were being fostered by the store. they're really sweet 12-wk-old sisters.

i'd been thinking about adding a bunny to my mix of stormy and beau... and when i met lena and tina, it seemed liek it would work.

so i returned with beau and stormy to the pet supplies store to have the four bunnies meet in neutral territory. we hung out for about 2-3 hours trying to figure things out.

more bunny madness in the extended

lena and stormy are both dominant bunnies. so it was a little traumatizing for them to meet. especially since stormy is not exactly tactful.

tina and beau are both dominated bunnies, so they were trying to figure out who amongst them would be the lower bunny.

lena spent a lot of the time guarded in her corner. stormy would walk over and inspect lena and tina to see how they're doing. lena would thump and run.

sometimes stormy would be a brat and just give them chase.

i tried to let the four guys run around in my place when we got here, but stormy immediately started to terrorize everyone.

now everyone's sitting in a cage in my kitchen and trying to figure things out.

beau is being a little pimp. he's now nestled between lena and tina. i even caught him giving tina little ear kisses.

stormy is off in the corner hanging out in the litter box.

we'll see how this drama further unfolds.

right now, things seem to be calm. i hope it stays that way. it seems to be up to how much stormy will exert her dominance. everyone else seems to be making peace with one another.

Posted by littlestar at 08:04 PM | Permalink

been busy with school = minimal blogging. but i think this was worth blogging about.

one of my daily assignments (i have 4) is to look up an artist/writer/filmmaker/fashion/anyone that creates and figure out how they have influenced other creative individuals. branching out from artist to artist, i will end up with something like 120 artists by the end of the semester.

ray bradbury is one of those names that i've kept hearing over and over again.

from his website in his own words:
Happy Birthday to Me!

he's a pretty amazing 84-year-old (though i still don't agree with his reaction to michael moore's fahrenheit 9/11).

more thoughts...

a quote i particularly liked:
"Live a life in which you cram yourself with all kinds of metaphors, all kinds of activities and all kinds of love. And take time to laugh -- find something that makes you truly happy -- every day of your life."

"Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made up or paid for in factories."

i'm always aware of the fact that some day... i will die. for some odd reason, i've just always been aware of my own mortality. maybe i was sick too much as a kid or all that talk of heaven in sunday school got to me... at least i don't think i'm going to die in my 40s or 50s anymore. at least, i'm not as completely convinced anymore. :)

in recognizing that i have finite amount of time in this world, i always thought that i should make every moment count.

as i grow older, i find this harder to do.

it's not like i needed something grand and meaningful. i just didn't want to live life with regrets (this i loudly declared to my mom when i was 12). people talk about changing what they would have done in the past sometimes. despite some difficult periods in my life, i can honestly say that i don't regret my decisions. i think some of them led to unfortunate consequences but i also wouldn't be the person that i am today.

and i like who i am today.

that brings me some comfort when i find myself getting too morose/depressed about some hardships in my life.

i'm pretty different from both my family. i think most of my friends can tell. i blame growing up with two different cultures that don't always agree with each other. i mean... it pretty much highlights that a lot of this stuff is truly arbitrary and that the individual has a choice in what they choose to believe and how to live his/her life.

i find some aspects of the asian/my family mentality hard to deal with. i really do like who i am today, and my past experiences have helped me develop into this personality. so i consider a lot of my past as a process. life as a process with an outcome that you can't forsee because nothing really goes as you planned anyway.

my family an relatives have the idea that life is a road, where you can go off on paths that will lead you to misery and unhappiness and regret. in fact, they already see my life heading towards this unsightly end. they regret my decisions when i don't. they believe that i should compromise, that growing up is about the willingness to see "reality" and acting "maturely".

is this just my family or an asian thing?

i attribute a lot of it to growing up in a society where survival really did come first before dreams.

i consider myself fortunate for not having to worry about surviving.

but growing up with all these expectations and views on life, i'm not immune to feeling trapped. that i'm somehow foolish for not going down a sure road (med school) and going for something tenuous and risky (art).

but i really really want to give it a shot. i want to wake up each morning happy and satisfied with my life. well... even if i feel grumpy/hungover/tired/lazy/etc, i want there to be an underlying sense of happiness.

it encourages me to read about or meet people that have that enthusiasm for life. it reminds me that certain things are worth the effort.

thus ends my long rambly post on why i liked what ray bradbury wrote.

Posted by littlestar at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)