Monday, February 27, 2006

Gamut, Gamut



Well, it's late here, and I'm tired, and that's the reason I haven't been posting a lot lately. I am trying to keep up with my work, and so right before I go to bed, I think, "Oh yeah, I should probably...post...on...my blog...eyes....slowly...closing...." and so on and so forth. I have also been trying to be nice to myself lately--like, going to bed on time. Last week was horrible because between being unable to sleep, and staying up too late, I was tired all the time. So, in bed before one-thirty for me! Yeah!

In other news, and in the news, I'm personally having a little trouble understanding exactly what the government is doing right now. Are they having some sort of public interview for Supreme Court Judges? Is that what's going on? I read a couple new bites on it, but y'know, MSN and Yahoo aren't exactly known for their reliable (or even, properly edited) news articles, so I'm a little concerned about the content. News keeps getting more and more contentless, I tell you what.

Anyways, personal issues about that aside, I kind of think that this whole ask judges questions thing and but not hot button issues to see if they would be a good Supreme Court Judge seems...uh...well, weird. Heck, call a spade a spade. Why would they do that? I feel like this is just something PM Steve (Another term borrowed from Will today) to say, "Look, look, I've got a government, and I can spell the word accountable!" And I can just imagine Steve-o putting on a short skirt and grabbing some pom-poms leading the rest of the Conservatives band: "Gimmie an A! A! You got your A you got your A! Gimmie a C! C! You got your C, you got your C!"

Not that I'm overly critical of whatever this...is...that they're doing...since this committee apparently has no bearing on whether the particular judge gets the job? But it provides another opinion?

If you ask me, this looks like reality TV and for supreme court judges.

And as that wasn't embarrassing enough, why should men or women who are, what? 50? 60? Have to go through a job process like they are getting an entry level position? This isn't student council for eighth grade, for heaven's sake. They aren't applying to work at McDonald's. I'm more on the side of the people who are in law who are afraid that this is going to turn into something similar to the United States, where people bicker over this particular decision quite a bit and it's a problematic process in some cases. And that would be a shame, don't you think?

Anyways, I think this may be a bit of a ruse to make it look like Harper is doing something with his government. However, the game is still early, and I'm positive something good can come out of Harper's government. Even if the man can't comb his hair properly. Other than that, however, the country isn't in flames, right? Tell me its not in flames. Flame-ity flame-ity flames. Right, happy thoughts. Oh gosh. It's 2 am. So much for early bed time.

OK, I have to go to bed now. Night everyone.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Cleaning out the Proverbial Actor's Closet

We cleaned out the Janus Theatre closet on Wednesday.

I thought I would show you some of the pictures.






This is Khalil. He will soon be taking several important phone calls, and trying on random pairs of old man pants we found hidden away in ye old closet. He was wearing about three layers of pantage last time we counted.






This is Sarah contemplating putting on the mask.







This is Sarah smiling because I have almighty powers of camera suggestion to make her put on the mask. I like to call my technique, "Oh dude! Put that mask on! Oh that's hilarious! OK, I'll take a picture."







This is Khalil, second in command on the S.S. Janus. Notice his earring. (We all think he's compensating.) He's a modern marine, and as such, we like to call him, "Khalil, the average Joe's marine look-a-like." Strong contenders to this name are "Marine Boy" and "Hey, why the heck do you have a pistol if you're a marine?"







This is....this...is....probably not PG rated, and hence why I can't imagine what it's doing on my blog. I blame Colin. (Of course, I usually do.) He is the one in the green shirt who inspired this particular Kodak moment.







This is Colin and Monteseratt having a fight...about...I don't remember. Anyways, my camera wasn't quick enough to catch the more violent moments, so instead of being like that super photographer who just can't stop taking amazing pictures that end up in National Geographic, I'm like the local cable station that always shows up after the action and manages to take footage of the interesting things like rivers and the monotone reporter standing in front of the rivers.


It only took us from 2-4pm to clean out the entire closet, which is awesome, because the thing in huge, and it was packed to the nines with J-U-N-K. Total junk. I got some free Christmas stickers out of the deal though! =D

Anyways, good times, and now I'm going to go practice French and maybe Dutch because Thursday is language day! Friday is thesis day! I have Fridays off this semester, so that's really nice.

And just so everyone knows I passed all my classes and I did surprisingly well in most of them, or so I'm told.

Bonne nuit, friends.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Some issues


OK, well, I have a problem.

And it's sad because it's really, really lame.

I can't stop downloading desktop wall paper and free fonts off the internet. *SOB*


I think, "Hey, I don't have a curvy font that looks all like nice handwriting, I should get one!" And then I download 20 different fonts off of free font sites, and then I go to deviant art and download about thirteen different desktop backgrounds and then it's 6am in the morning and I'm wondering what I'm doing with my time.

That's lame.

However, I'm learning how to use Photoshop (And learning that having the pre-packaged software version of Photoshop that came with my WACOM board makes it hard to use because every time I'm looking at tutorials I'm like, "Hey, where's the channels button?" and "Hey, where's my layer mask?" then I look at the glossary and realize these features are available for those wonderful people who have the full version of Photoshop. (ie. Not me.)


I have, however, come to the realization that Photoshop is a lot like an oven. The state of things used to be that artists everywhere had to rely on their skills, wits, and ability to serve tables and be disgruntled to be a good and flourishing artist. It was like cooking meat over the fire. Somedays you got burned, some days you didn't. Some days you couldn't even start the fire. The proof was in your ability to persevere.

With Photoshop, however, you just press the right buttons and magic happens. If you can click a mouse you'll probably be called an 'artist.' It's like baking one of those cakes where you just add eggs and a bit of milk, and even the worst cook couldn't ruin it. (Not that I'm pointing fingers to anyone who has. I've ruined microwave popcorn, so let that assuage your ego.) Photoshop is like a very big, very complicated oven that could probably wash your dishes for you once you're done baking. If you slap a bunch of random things together and put it on a random art website, you're known as a buff web artist. Some people only do digital design now, did you know that? No art medium but digital. How scary. Art is becoming a different medium...it's no longer a physical but digital enterprise.

On top of that, have you noticed how many people are meeting people over the internet and getting married? Like, really, really fast? On top of that, do you realize how many of these people are meeting on virtual games, and having 'in-game' weddings and real weddings? I've seen a distressing number of articles in the last two weeks that highlight this oddity. (Although I'm not saying it's necessarily bad. I haven't seen such relationships in action, so I can't really comment on their quality, but I can on their quanitity.) I'm sure you probably saw MSN did an small bit on it as well a couple of days ago, and Yahoo did as well, I think. Anyways, the gaming companies like Blizzard and whatever other online video game service seem more than happy to officiate these sort of things.

I've read...oh what's his name...Todd....Tad Williams, good grief, had to look that up. Anyways, I've read Tad Williams, and I am somewhat surprised at how similar Tad Williams comes in his science fiction novel views to what's happening now. His books are all about how people live in the virtual world, and they create cities, literally, of virtual worlds where you immerse your whole consciousness in it. Anyways, it's not the way he says how real the virtual world seems, but more how clunky the whole experience of the virtual world seems, and yet people still prefer it to real life. Many of the characters in the books complain about not having advanced enough equipment to really 'feel' what's going on in the virtual world. Then there's the typical up and rising 13 year old hackers who are more knowledgable than people who have made the systems. Yadda yadda.

I think about things that Tad Williams writes about now and then when I hear that people have apparently happy and successful marriages through World of Warcraft, web cameras, and chat rooms. I can understand the idea of virtual forms of communication...but why would you want to be there forever? Since this seems to be a growing trend, I am a little sad. And, perhaps, alarmed. It's a little of both, now that I think of it. After you read 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 I'm not sure you can go back to thinking that personal psychology and technology should ever go together.

Anyways, the whole reason I started this post was because I wanted to share a wallpaper I made. It's nothing good, but it's a start for someone who's using second-class software. (The book I read by Tad Williams is called Otherland if you're interested...be warned, it's a massively long book in a massively long trilogy. The whole trilogy which he lengthened into a quartet so that the last book wasn't twice the length of the rest of the books, which were already a thousand pages or something huge like that. Anyways, they're long. But interesting.)

Alrighty, here's the wallpaper. Click on it and either save target as and then put it as your wallpaper, or you can put it straight on as a background from right-clicking once you enlarge the image. (You know, I'm not sure why I'm telling you this. If you're reading someone's blog, you're probably computer savvy enough to download off the web and change your desktop background. Man, I sound like...well, we all know what I sound like! LOL. Someone grab my cane!)

OK, off to jog!





Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Brennan's Terrribly...Good Cooking! Honest!

Hot Salad


Yes, it's hot. No, no, it's not with chili powder. It's warm. Yay! Of course, you can eat it cold. It's a personal preference. Or, if you're me, there's no wrong way to make a salad unless you give yourself food poisoning. So, break boundaries! =D This salad sort of ended up tasting like pasta, even though there's not a single bit of noodle in here. So, on we go!

Ingredients

1 Cut of salmon (1 filet or so)
2 Handfuls of greens (Although three would have been better, now that I think of it)
2 small to medium sized tomatoes
1 Red Onion
1 White Onion
1 Green Onion
1/2 cup of ice tea (from concentrate)
1 Table spoon of black pepper
Butter and/or margarine

1. OK, so first, we cook ourselves the salmon. I didn't do anything fancy because I knew the taste was going to be in the veggies. So I cooked it until it was crisp, using margarine. (Although I used margarine because the butter here is terrible.)




2. Next, once that is on its way, slice roughly the onions and tomatoes. You'll have a lot of veggies, and I used margarine once again, but as I like to say, "Butter is better!" So use what you like to cook the veggies in. There's a lot of juice in this, obviously, so you want to let them cook until some of the juice has steamed off. So leave this for now and go on to step 3.

3. Wash your lettuce. It doesn't like being dirty, and just because IGA puts a gentle spray on the stuff to make it look better doesn't mean that it's clean. If you have a salad spinner, I highly recommend them. The world needs more salad spinners. And less sporks. (Man, those things are terrible.) Also, while the salad looks tepid in this picture, its European market fresh. Now, whether that means that the grocer had been sneezing on it, or whether it's still screaming its hidden vegetable sounds after just being ripped out of some European farmer's garden, we'll never know. That why we wash our salad. End of story.







4. Your Salmon should be ready by now for sure, so take it out and set it aside on a plate. As for the veggies, they should be getting at the point where if you ate a piece of onion out of the pan, you wouldn't gack. Instead, they should taste semi-sweet. Cook until this happens. Mine looked like this:






5. Now, the fun part. (Or the part where you go, "What was Brennan thinking?" Whichever.) Since I am often without any sort of proper ingredients (aka. by time I figure out what I need, it's usually too late to go to the store. I'm slow like that.) I usually find myself adding weird things. So, join me! Join the Revolution! Or, you know, leave this part out. I guess.

Anyways, at this point, add half a cup of ice tea to your veggies in the pan. This will make something that is already naturally sweet a little sweeter, and add semi-glaze to the veggies which doubles as a dressing. That and a refreshing drink on a hot day. No, no, just kidding. But all joking aside, let the vegetables simmer for about 5-7 minutes. This should be enough for the liquid to turn more syrupy than liquid. Keep the burner going until you have the consistency you want. Once you do, turn the heat off and let it sit, so that the liquid gets a little more solid.

6. I added about a spoonful of pepper and stirred it all up once it looked ready. Unless you hate pepper I recommend this step.

7. Now, at this point, you have two choices, you can a) Cool the mixture until it's more salad-esque and then do the final step, or b) just do what I did and said, "Heck, I'm hungry, it smells good, like I'm waiting." So take your salad and salmon, mix it up, and then add the sauce and vegetables mixture. The final product should look like this:






Doesn't it look rockin'? Well, I thought it did. Regardless, it tastes very good. =) You now have a meal that serves one person (a big portion) or a side dish for about five.

Well, today I had a failed trip to the bookstore, and I met a friend there, which made it a little nicer. I have also discovered some Italian biscotti without any chocolate on it in the grocery store, and I am LOVING it. Very good.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Happy Valentine's Day 2

This is a little something I made tonight. Happy Valentine's Day, to everyone.



Happy Valentine's Day.

Here's a little something I found. Click on the dowload to desktop to watch the movie. (You don't actually have to download it, it just starts the movie.)

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/29044694/

Saturday, February 11, 2006

The Amazing Winner!

In some ways both Russ and I are winners here. He is a winner because he won, and I am a winner because I got to have a lot fun. This was a good way to use up my Saturday. Without further waffling, I give you, "I want the comic to be regular Brennan comic style, you know, funny, and it can have Brennan in it...and it can have Russ in it...or whatever." I deliver!
















































































































































There it is! Fini! The next Brennan contest will be up in a little while from now! Or whenever I decide! Or you can suggest a contest to me through e-mail! Remember, if you would like to contract Brennan out to make terribly terrible cartoons, let him know! He's poor! Thanks for your patience, Russ and fans (I know my Dad is my only real fan, the rest of you are simply tolerant, which is so nice). Alright, I'm out! Au revior!

Oh, man, the tired

Hi,

Well, Russ' cartoon is done, and I will have it up for inaugural post number 75!
(And yes, I'm messing with the term inaugural.)

Boy it's a lot of panels.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Working, working...

Just so everyone knows, I will be back to my regular schedule of updating every three or four days a week once I finish Russ' cartoon. I have been busy with reading lately.

Once again, the internet knows me

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Brennan!

  1. Americans discard enough Brennan to rebuild their entire commercial air fleet every 3 months!
  2. If Brennan was life size, he would stand 7 ft 2 inches tall and have a neck twice the size of a human.
  3. Brennan can fly at an average speed of fifteen kilometres an hour.
  4. Brennan kept at the window will keep vampires at bay!
  5. Most bottles and jars contain at least twenty-five percent recycled Brennan.
  6. It is bad luck to walk under Brennan.
  7. Brennan can run sixty-five kilometres an hour - that's really fast.
  8. Reindeer like to eat Brennan!
  9. The pigment Indian Yellow was manufactured from the urine of cows fed only on Brennan!
  10. By tradition, a girl standing under Brennan cannot refuse to be kissed by anyone who claims the privilege!
I am interested in - do tell me about

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Too Much Ninja













































































Hi. This was just a 'for fun' cartoon...mainly because I haven't gotten off my ninja high horse since last night, when Brennan hosted yet another BAD NINJA movie night. We had fajitas (pork fajitas no less) instead of stir fry, though, since I wasn't in a pasta mood. They were delicious! Except for the few pieces I over cooked...my bad. However, it was very fun, although there was more serious ninja action in this film, and less cheese factor. Which, with all bad ninjas movies, is deplorable. The better the ninja movie gets, the less fun it is to actually watch, and the more you keep thinking things such as, "Well, I'm glad that wasn't MY pelvis." *Grin*

Anyways, this is my problem with blogs...I have yet to see one that is a personal blog like mine other than a very select few. The rest are either devoted to porn, business and law, or they are like those weird coded e-mails like you sometimes get in the junk e-mail folder which are in white text and they almost make sentences, but are just too random to be anything but virus carriers or secret spy stuff. It's hard to decide. Anyways, I've come to the conclusion that besides Spanish people (Who seem to love to blog more than English people, since those are most of the blogs I come across randomly) English people only write about boring things on their blogs. (Although Spanish people could be writing boring things. But few things Spanish are boring. ie. The Inquisition=not boring.) I mean, I KNOW what I'm writing is probably of little interest but to a select few (re: My parents and older brother) but I'm ok with that. On the other hand, I feel like if someone accidentally found my blog, they would think it amusing enough to not rip out their eyeballs, soak them in kerosene, and light a match. After reading through the umpteenth business blog, and how much they seem to care about numbers, I must say, I just can't get behind that. It seems like one more piece of spam, only now it's spam that gets its own URL.

Anyways, today I met my friend Andrew at church today, and he invited me over for dinner, which was AWESOME! Unfortunately, I made a total ignoramus of myself because I started talking about politics, Freud, religion and philosophy, and MAN, I think I nearly talked his ear off. In my defense, I was tired, so my mouth was doing the thinking. Anyways, I had a fun time, and I hope I didn't bore him too much (nor make him think that I was a total fanatic...I can't believe how long I went on about World Youth Day and the environmental impact of it. I need to find my happy place when people start talking about things like this.) Anyways, I will have Russ' comic up someday later this week, and then there will probably be a break of blogging after that! I need a break! LOL. I'm getting highly addicted to my WACOM tablet! And, I need to do other things which are conducive to me doing well in school! Like studying more! Anyways, keep it cool cats, I'll catch you later this week.

P.S. Dad, I've been busy, sorry I haven't caught you on Internet phone lately. I got the hint. ;)

Friday, February 03, 2006

I....just learnt....the funniest word...I have...ever read.

Defenestrate.

Oh...I'm still laughing...look it up...for yourselves.....oh funny.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

A Series of Unfortunately Related Events







































































































So I am really unimpressed with myself. I had a funny cartoon lined up for today, but it was supposed to be Russ' present cartoon, and that's just not going to happen right now because I am in one of those moods where I want to fix the world, and it can't be fixed, and it's mainly BECAUSE I HAVE THE IQ AND PROBLEM SOLVING POWER OF A PERSON WHO CAN'T PUT TWO AND TWO AND BEING HIT OVER THE HEAD WITH TWO TOGETHER. Sigh.

On the other hand, I am REALLY curious how people who were right BESIDE his apartment didn't see or hear anything, or not hear someone breaking wood outside. (Especially since I'm such a newbie at living on my own, aren't these warning signs way more obvious to other people???? Weird.) Apparently someone used a crowbar to force their way in. Which is really strange because I sort of stared at the door for a couple seconds, and then I went downstairs, and I don't remember seeing any signs of a forced entry at all. =/ In other words, I'm highly unobservant. On the bright side, I did remember the approximate times when all of these bad things happened, and I told the guy who got his laptop stolen everything I knew. (well, I forgot about the bell ringing thing, but I'm QUITE sure someone else heard that. I went on for a very long time. Which makes me feel even worse, since I should really have realized what that meant, since I TOTALLY KNOW THAT IS A SIGN THAT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO FIND OUT IF SOMEONE ISN'T HOME, AND I COULD HAVE SOLVED THE WHOLE PROBLEM BY TAKING OUT THE TRASH AND GIVING THEM A FUNNY LOOK!!!!!) 'The guy' looked REALLY mad at me when I said I saw someone who was running down the stairs that I didn't recognize, but I don't generally recognize ANYONE in this building except for three or four people who I have occasionally run into and given me the time of day. (Heck, I didn't even know 'the GUY' lived in that apartment. I had never seen him before that I can remember.)

And there are kids in this building...well, only one family that I know of..but I thought it must just be them running down the stairs, and I had a little happy feeling, like, you know, "Oh yay. There are kids here. Running around having fun. That's so cute." I can't believe I didn't make all the connections. I can't believe I didn't immediately phone the police. I can't believe how bad I feel because I could have done something, you know? I know I can't change anything now, but it's really bad that I saw pretty much everything (well, from what I saw, I'd say I had caught a pretty good glimpse of who took it.) and yet I still didn't realize what was going on. Like, what kind of moron did my mother and father raise? The worst part is that it's nearly impossible to track stuff like that. But after that little incident, I still went and wrote down the serial numbers of all my electronics and stored it in a safe place. Of course, they're kind of useless because all the identifying serial numbers are on stickers. I feel so violated, and it wasn't even my place that was broken into.

Well, on the other hand, I had a lot of fun adventures minus that today, but I can tell you all about it later. Until then, I hope you all are able to discern tell-tale signs than le mio. On the EXTREMELY bright side, I DIDN'T look inside the apartment, which could have caused a heaping world of trouble for me if for some reason I was at the scene of the crime. So, I mean, listening to that little part of me that said, "Hey! Don't go in there!" was pretty much right on, so at least I can intuit what to do, even if I can't reason properly. What a good philosophy student, eh? Is there any advice you can give me on what maybe I could have done? I'm kinda of unsure what I could have done differently..although I thought I was following a semi-normal pattern of thought, but, on the other hand...I've never dealt with this before, so I'm still kinda new at this.

Anyways, a big learning lesson today, so that's something I can take out of it. I hope everyone else is doing ok. I'll talk to you later. And, soon, I don't know when, but soon, I'll have Russ' super cartoon up! So, the week of cartoon craziness is at an end! Thanks for all of you who followed it. Mega appreciation! =D =D =D And that makes me glad. YAY!

OK. I feel better now. Thanks for listening with those eyes of yours. You're all great. Great maximo. Thanks.