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i've been pretty lazy about putting up my work on my purchased domain... but you can see at least my final project from my intro to illustration class on the shrunkenheadman website.
my name is mispelled, but it still feels good. :)
wicked i read because i plan on seeing the musical soon and wanted to develop my own idea of the characters and setting before i see someone else's interpretation of it. i'm not sure that i should have bothered.
confessions of an ugly stepsister i bought a while ago. i figured i would see if wicked was representative of gregory maguire's writing and if it was just as bad, it would go into the resell pile of books.
of the two, i definitely enjoyed confessions more. it had a more engaging tone and allowed some access to the characters, their motivations and feelings. with wicked, i agree with kwc, it does read like a biography, and an uninteresting one at that. it's a shame really, because i feel like the story, plot elements, etc had potential, it really was in how things were presented.
both books kind of left me somewhat dissatisfied with how the story ultimately unfolds and closes. it's as though the potential for an interesting interpretation of the stories was nowhere near reached. with wicked, you had great potential in looking at what motivated the villainess's heinous deeds. instead, the book follows different stages in her life, while leaving her mental and emotional developments obscure, which is what i would think makes that kind of retelling more interesting. a book which actually did a good job of this kind of retelling was phantom by susan kay. it totally changed how i saw the phantom and actually made me more sympathetic to the villain than the protagonists of the original story.
with confessions... i found certain mechanisms superfluous and other intriguing ideas left incomplete. the choice in narrator for prologue/epilogue versus for the actual story... a twist, yes. necessary, not at all. it did go more into the individual motivations of the character than wicked, but i didn't believe them. and it has that same problem as wicked, where the essential plot and the interpretation of the original story isn't dramatically different enough (especially towards the endings) to justify reading a whole new book on a story you've heard before. at least confessions had bigger font, some entertaining elements and... was shorter.
i probably also enjoyed confessions more because of some of the rants of the master painter struggling with his own work and reputation. but that doesn't really have much to do with the core story, it has more to do with the discussion of beauty which is found all over the story, but not really presented in a coherent manner.
some quotes i liked in the extended:
wicked:
pg 15:
"Brother Frexspar," said Bfee, the mayor of Rush Margins, "could you perhaps tone down our harangue until we get a chance to see what fresh new form temptation might take?"
"You have no mettle to resist new forms," said Frex, spitting.
"Haven't you been our able teacher these several years?" said Bfee. "We've hardly had such a good chance to prove ourselves against sin! We're looking forward to--to the spiritual test of it all."
confessions:
pg 47:
"Oh, Caspar," says Margarethe, "we will all be thrown out on our heads, and then what?"
"Nonsense," says Caspar cheeril. "He doesn't walk enough. He gets bad-humored. He'll be better when he gets back. This is part of my job, don't you see? I have to annoy him enough to keep him involved with the world. Otherwise he would latch the shutters and hide inside his paintings and never emerge. It's a steady trial for him, this habit of black spirits and black bile, and retreating from the world because of it."
"Does he request this of you?" says Margarethe.
"What he requests and what he needs are often separate things," says Caspar.
pg 119:
"So you have a mixed mind? Like most of us. You want the work and the reputation, and you also want to despise your patrons for refusing to pay for religious subjects. This way you can be unhappy whatever happens next."
pg 179:
"I've never drawn a line in my life," says Iris in a small voice.
"There was a moment in my life when the same was true of me," replies the Master.
pg 181:
"Approval is overrated," says Caspar, parroting his teacher. "Approval and disapproval alike satisfy those who deliver it more than those who receive it. I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without."
they sell prints as well, but they're basically an online art museum with really high quality images with over 55000 images.
so that i can install a punching bag...
and beat the shit out of it to vent out frustrations...
and not accidentally injure my boyfriend (i hit really hard, he's not good for punching practice. i like him. i don't want to break him).
You personally got 15 of the 20 people correct and were better at recognizing girls than guys. Overall, you guessed better than 74% of all test takers.
that's probably because i usually find gay guys attractive and find it hard to believe they're gay. :) i don't know why i did better on the gay girls thing, maybe it's my androgynous kicking in... or because i find them more attractive. :P
i've taken enneagrams before, via metamanda's tests (results 1, results 2), and i think i know why those results didn't feel all that accurate to me. those tests were designed to choose one polarity over another.
if the results from this book, which was recommended by a therapist, are accurate at all... it's more accurate to say that i have a lot of things that add together to make my personality, rather than leaning towards one thing over another (which is why taking those online tests was hard, they kept making me CHOOSE).
more in the extended (results, my thoughts on it, etc)
i tried very hard to prevent my gaming the answers, having parakkum check my answers and such to make sure i was treating myself fairly.
the results:
it really seems like i'm everything except a questioner, a kind of inverse-parakkum.
1 - The Perfectionist - 18/20
2 - The Helper - 15/20
3 - The Achiever - 16.5/20
4 - The Romantic - 15/20
5 - The Observer - 16/20
6 - The Questioner - 12/20
7 - The Adventurer - 19/20
8 - The Asserter - 17/20
9 - The Peacemaker 15.5/20
it's interesting... by and large, a lot of my characteristics tend to work against each other to keep out negative tendencies. at my best, i am enthusiastic, adventurous, self-assured, ambitious, hard-working and inspiring to others. at my worst... well.... let's say i try to keep myself well away from people then.
my ultimate weakness is from self-defeating depression and anxiety that can render me useless or the tendency to forget to slow down.
it was a little eery to read the book, which seemed to describe me all too well. it made it want to burn it because i felt like all my inner workings were revealed and exposed. but i sense that it would be a handy tool to further my understanding of self and how i interact with others.
i think the major deficiency of the online tests, which in prior occasions led me to unsatisfactory results and skepticism for enneagrams, was that they make you answer questions in either/or forms between polarities. you either avoid conflicts or embrace conflicts. when in actuality... i don't see a lot of occasion for conflicts, but if i disagree on something strongly, i will stand up. and it was this kind of sensitivity in the questions from the book that i appreciated. after all, an online test would have a hard time trying to come up with an answer for someone like myself, a personality strongly disposed to everything except a certain number.
i found the book, The Enneagram Made Easy very enlightening and helpful. it highlights the strong points as well as the weak points of each number and in which direction you tend to leans towards when feeling strong as well as feeling stressed. it's a good way to see what to watch out for in yourself. i found that if i was honest with myself, a lot of what the book had to say was quite useful.
so i'm starting to pay the consequences of speeding (well, aside from not speeding as much anymore)... which means traffic school and bail + court fees.
i'm taking online traffic school right now. one of the perks is that i can do it at home. it will save my progress. i can do it in multiple sessions.
and i can't fail.
in fact, i don't have to pay until i pass.
but some things bother me about the class...
the quizzes:
i would like to know what questions i got wrong and the right answers to them.
for the content, there are a few things i don't understand the recommendations for:
- high beaming and honking at the person you're passing on a two-lane freeway as *warning* for what you're planning on doing. i have a hard time seeing this as anything other than an inflammatory action.
- in efforts of avoiding backing out of a place which is "high risk" to pull forward into parking spaces on to the other side, so that you can pull forward on your way out instead of backing out. now... i see that as a riskier thing, seeing as how someone else might be trying to park into that spot as you're parking in this obnoxious way. i mean, parking places specifically ask you not to.
there are other silly things, but i really wonder at who thought that would be a good idea.