Birthday Thoughts

Last year, I posted a video of myself essentially trapped in the world that is cyberspace.

This year, I'm officially going to give my decision that I've been sitting on for the last week or so. My mind and energy already made that clear these past few days given the lack of productivity.

So, yeah, I'm not graduating this semester. The more people I talk to, the more it is clear that I need more time. What I think about the department, my teacher, my self doesn't matter at this point. Objectively, I haven't met the level of standards for the class in order to graduate. My paper is nothing but examples after examples with no real correlation to the work. The work is starting to appear forced and tries too hard to tell the viewer where it is I want them to go, almost to the point of insulting their intelligence. Outside my own mind, I'm a wreck physically, staring at notes trying to figure them out only to ultimately leave in silent frustration.

With a month left in the semester, I'm going to start asking questions like hell. What kind of paperwork do I have to do to get this over with? What happens to the money I paid to participate in the walk this semester? Will I be able to keep my studio space over the summer or move out? Can I still get financial aid even though I'm way past the deadline to turn it in? Do I have to go through the entire process of thesis again since I'm essentially retaking the class? After all the paperwork is filled, do I still have to show up for class since I'm technically not withdrawing?

"Thorough" may be brought to OCD levels once stop asking questions to the people that can answer them.

A feel-good closer for those who know the relationship I have with my family: Since the mid-term letter and my ever-present stress of panic and confusion, my family has started to get a better understanding of what it is I'm doing. They come from the school of thought that making art is easy and that anything can be art with time and care. To see someone like me be told "Sorry, you're stuff is weak, and we think you need more time" is quite the wake-up call to what I've been saying for a while to anything that thinks art is easy. So while I was off looking for books to beef up my paper's cited resources and artists as examples of tactics and aesthetics accepted by art history, they were off trying to figure out how to best help me. This was mostly through conversation about my day and trying to understand what it was that Terry or Lauren or Kristi or Amanda was telling me when I asked them for help. Most recently, my mother made me aware of a show in Washington DC featuring anime and manga which apparently features an animation done by Takashi Muramaki, the first animation I've heard of from him. With so much stress and depression looming over my head to the point where they see my video game behavior more as a cry for help than a time-waster, it was suggested that a kind of vacation would be good for me. Though, I would have to do some homework into finding out what other exhibits or museums there are in the DC area we could go to that fall in the time frame of this show. But then again, what vacation doesn't involve some kind of homework like that?

To the outside observer, it may appear that I've become hard boiled and do not appreciate the attempts they are making to understand what it is I want to do and why being told that what I am doing isn't up to par is making me more panicked than a claustrophobic trapped in a stuck elevator. And, yes, I could do better in showing my appreciation for what they are doing for me rather than storming off more upset than I was before the conversation started because of the failure of trying to suppress socially unacceptable reactions. But when I'm about to go to sleep at night and as I'm fighting with Skippy for space on the bed to actually sleep on, the thought comes wandering with a casual stroll. And I end up finally seeing what everyone else has been saying about my parents. They really are good people, and I'm lucky to have them. My only regret is that it took me a quarter of a century to realize this.

A&E: Avatar and Explination

So apparently my last little story caused a rub. Normally, if you leave a comment anonymously, I don't pay it any attention. I think Tom Hanks said something similar when he talked about MySpace: If you don't have the balls to at least leave your name in a spiteful comment, then you don't deserve my attention.

This is the exception due to the fact that said comment is the kind that shows the power of the internet and anonymity, which can lead to mindless and often blind fanatical behavior. I've seen it on YouTube, any Disney forum I've posted on, and any website that offers a way to leave comments and critiques. It's what I like to call blind fanaticism. Basically, you are such a fan of whatever it is you are a fan of to the point where any negative criticism said or relaid by anyone is like an act of blasphemy to your God of religion of choice.

As a fan of Disney, I consider one of my best strengths is that I can critique the company and their products without blindly hating the name. For example, the way that the states are treating their theme parks is rather insulting. All the best parades are being debuted either in California or Tokyo while Florida, their crown jewel, is still using a float that debuted nearly thirty years ago. We will probably never see events that have the same grand or majesty as Tokyo DisneySea's Style, which featured floats and costumes representing the various classic art movements (personal favorite goes to Ursula designed as a Japanese woodblock print Geisha) or even something as simple as fun as Chip & Dale's Cool Service. And all that show is is a boat with water guns spraying guests to cool them down during the torturous summer heat! Meanwhile, as bad as this is, I feel confident that their film division may be on the right track again with animated stories that actually rely on heart and making the viewer care about the character. I saw this with Enchanted and is looking forward to seeing this again in Wall-E. I didn't see it with Valent or even Chicken Little. There was nothing there that made me care about the characters.

Now, those comments would be replied with equal spite from people who see the state properties of theme parks as the best in the world. In fact, they have at one point or another.

This is very much a personal opinion, but I think that this kind of fanatical behavior is rather dangerous. If you cannot step outside of your fandom to see how your interest and behaviors are seen by those that are not member of your little club, then you're not getting a well-rounded view of yourself, the world you live in, and all things in between. Do I practice what I preach? To a degree, yes. I see the art work from both within and outside of it. That's why I can laugh at the token episodes about the art world I see on sit-coms while rolling my eyes in disapproval at the same kind scenes in movies like Along Came Polly. That's also why I can appreciate and actually spend time with the pieces I did in Venice, even if all I saw were (and this is a face value description) was a bank of monitors of women reading the same letter in different ways or a three portable urinals broadcasting various post-war speeches from three of history's top political figureheads.

With my recent critique with Lauren, she said that I need to be objectively stand outside of my thesis and look at my work to see if it saying what I want it to. This is a very difficult ability to step outside yourself and look at the world completely disconnected from the experience. But to just look at something and then completely be turned off by it because it rubs you the wrong way feels a bit ignorant.

Now then, on to the next subject...

This little guy on the right is my Gaia Online avatar. Over the weekend, I've been thinking about these self-portraits and came to the conclusion that, on my own, I've run out of representations for myself. Some of the images are starting to repeat themselves. The strange thing is, I've had this avatar for about four years now, and the range of representations for myself is nearly infinite given the inventory of items I have collected. I mean, on that website, I've dressed in drag, as a vessel for demons, a ninja, a pirate, a robot, an elf, a fairy, a pimp, a cowboy, a stripper, Satan, Santa Claus, Cupid/Eros, a vampire, a humanoid dragon...

You get the idea.

In relation to the subject above, these avatars pretty much let me do things I wouldn't normally do. I wouldn't dress in drag or have a cybernetic arm surgically integrated to my body. Some of the characters I've come up with tend to look like they would act in a way that I wouldn't act in real life, such as my stripper character that pops up on the site whenever I've been sexually frustrated.

I think this is that nuance that Terry was talking about. It wasn't so much the mathematical construction so much as it is that personal quirk unique to an individual's personality.

What I plan to do isn't anything new to Gaia. Users there draw their avatars all the time, giving them a more appealing aesthetic representation outside of the pixel doll base used to make programing the avatar feature on the site easier on the servers. It's allowed simply because there's that protection of fandom. It's probably why my Sea of Dreams subtitles haven't been pulled from YouTube. But can fan art be fine art? Sure, if done properly. Murakami used the iconic image from Time Boken for his paintings, but he put a little spin on it that made it into art. Andy Warhol did the same thing using the very image of Marilyn Monroe. On top of that, I don't think Gaia owns exclusive rights to wings that sprout from the temple of one's head or white summer dresses with a black waist band.

I have enough options with my Gaia avatar to use as a foundation guide in designing a character. From there, it's all a matter of drawing that image in a style and in an aesthetic that is unique to me and fits the collective whole I have going on. If an avatar strikes me as something that would be interesting to sculpt, I may pursue that as well. Mostly because my two sculptures are the ones people are responding to the most. The drawings? Not so much.

The thing that bothers me right now is the fact that I know someone would rather want these portraits to be treated like art portraits. Painted, not drawn. Elegantly framed, not pinned or taped to the wall. Clean and refine in presentation, not raw. It's something I thought would be interesting, but I don't know if I have the money for it.

Besides, I like digital paint rather than real paint. Less mess to deal with.

The List (Part 2)

After much thought, or rather little thought depending on whose eyes you are looking through, the battle between creativity and cartoons as far as which tops the list of personal interest is one of mutual understanding and not one for dominance.

How creativity got past the round of necessity is clear when you realize I don't need to be creative all the time. The same goes for cartoons, as there are some nights where I don't even watch adult swim, which unfortunately are the nights they are rerunning Venture Bros. Season 2. So what was the deciding factor in the final round?

Personal connection. Yes, a vague thing to consider given how many different ways that could be interpreted. But there's a logic to this that needs explaining and a thought process that requires rest, relaxation for clarity of thought, and a level of personal honesty I really don't like facing due to the severity of realizing a truth that I was naive enough to not believe out of comfort and a lack of security. Don't know what I'm talking about? Look my my Seattle blog entries and those that follow. If you can find them, that is.

The personal connection starts with cartoons. They were there from the beginning and have always been there for as long as I could remember. Alvin and the Chipmunks, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney films, DuckTales, Tale Spin, Chip & Dale's Rescue Ranger, Goof Troop, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, Sailor Moon, Sonic the Hedgehog (PKA Sonic SatAM), Sam & Max: Freelance Police, Pepper Anne, Recess, Pixar films, Pokemon, DragonBallZ, Powerpuff Girls, Gundam Wing, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Cowboy Bebop, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Teen Titans, Kids Next Door, Robot Chicken, Ben 10, Futurama, Family Guy, Full Metal Alchemist, The Boondocks, American Dad, Venture Brothers, and just added to that list are the short films on The Grickle Channel. And those are the shows I can remember by name if not by their episode contents that date as far back as when I first moved out of California and into Oregon. Which was back when I was three. And for the most part, those shows are in chronological order as I discovered them and fell fan of them. Keen eyes should notice a trend in my cartoon interest starting with what was seen as kid-friendly to more mature and even stylistic animations. Who knows what will be the next cartoon or animation interest to catch my eye. Horton Hears a Who did catch my eye, but not enough to warrant an addition to the list. The only certain thing is that these shows capture my imagination on levels that I can't even describe with words let alone properly illustrate with images.

The personal connection with creativity has a similar history. From my main interest with cartoons spawned a tangent of creating what could be classified these days as fan fictions. It started, more or less somewhere between when I discovered Gargoyles and Sonic SatAM. They were mostly unfinished products or projects that lead to nowhere due to a lack of knowing what I was doing. Those were the more ambitious ones. Generally speaking, stayed in the realm of character design using visual influences from what I was watching and then using what elements I liked into creating characters. Some could be easily inserted into their respective universe I appropriated their look from while others too original to fit in anything I was watching at the time. Either way you look at it, the happiest times I had growing up were drawing and creating characters who ultimately wouldn't live past their initial design phase. It was a private performance that I got a lot of joy out of, as one teacher once said of me when she saw a pile of dismantled computer parts in my seminar studio one critique.

To pick one over the other is to create a paradox by the very definition of the word. If creativity is more important than cartoons, the how was I able to create anything without cartoons to inspire me? Conversely, if cartoons are the most important of my interests, then why do I not get the same joy from watching them as I do from drawing characters inspired by them? Maybe in some alternate timeline one can exist without the other, but in this temporal tangent? That is not the case.

I've been trying my damnest to bring this into my college education, my poor excuse for an art career. And every time I do, it seems like the people I'm showing it to are either not accepting the aesthetics of it or simply cannot get past the idea that what they are looking at is a cartoon. Maybe they are the same thing, but either way, that's how I've felt for a while. I've cited artists in the past that use elements of cartoons as well as appropriated their aestheics either because of their influence, the subversiveness of play, how they function as a security blanket, an ability to trigger a familiar feeling of nostalgia even if the image is something new, or even their marketability.

What I know about cartoons probably doesn't translate very well into art. That's how I felt before I even saw any art by any of these artists. I've come to realize that is a half-truth. What I do know about cartoons can be art, but I have to figure out what if any can be made into art. Creativity takes a backseat, as does my interest in cartoons, because logic is the only thing that can solve such a mental challenge. You can be creative in your solutions, which is probably where the bulk of the art of the world actually comes from. But a creative solution for me is using a 9mm hollow point as a can-opener for an industrial-size barrel of baking soda or flushing pasta noodles down the toilet so that it creates a wig that can be styled through the use of a "dinglehopper."

Question is what do I know that the artists I've cited know about cartoons that can translate into art? Rhetorical, I know, seeing how I just answered that question with the citation of said artists. But what do I know about what these artists have done with the genre that I can use in the same way that I use design elements from cartoons I like in my own character designs? You can only do so much before you end up producing a product that ends up fooling your viewer into thinking they are looking at something their mind is saying is one thing but you're saying is something else that is appropriating the look of that thing you are thinking about that you think are you looking at.

I know I lost a few of you with that last sentence, so consider this break a visual bookmark while you make sense of it.

This whole thing comes back full circle. Right now, I don't know what I'm doing. My art interest and my personal interests have decided to go two different routes due to the opinions and critiques of the people who are ultimately in control of if I graduate or not, and there is no route on the maps I have that can bring the two back no the same path.

I'll close this with a little story. I talked to one of my out-spoken film friends, one I believe talks badly about me behind my back, about my situation. She feels that the school is probably just trying to get more money out of me. It's a very real possibility, because she believes all the stuff she's seen in the gallery every show since she's been enrolled is utter crap. She's taken Art History and while she understand the evolution of thought of contemporary art, it's still crap. It makes me wonder if the contemporary artist really is living the pop culture stereotype and just doesn't know it. But she is also in the same frame of mind I am, which is the last thing I want to do to the department is produce work that ultimately gives them and the school a big middle-finger. She says contest it. Debating has never been my strongest ability. Mostly because I never have anything to say supporting my point of view that is credible.

The List (Part 1)

On Friday, Jason wrote:

Reading your last blog entry, I don't know if my comment is encouraging or not. This phrase stood out to me also, and I have a special request:

I don't know where my interests are anymore.
I don't know what drives me to create things.
I don't know why I wanted to be an artist in the first place.

The last of these phrases is irrelevent - it's too late because you're already an artist whether you want to be or not.

The first two sentences are important though, and require your IMMEDIATE attention.

Please do me a favor. In your next blog entry write only a list. A list of all of your interests. One word interests. And at the end of this blog-entry that consists ONLY of a list, answer two questions: "Which of these things makes the top of your list?" and "Why?" The thing that you love the most, sex, cooking, drawing, telling your parents to go fuck themselves (I doubt you actually do that) telling me that you don't give a fuck about driving... whatever - what is the thing that you'd choose for the rest of your life, the thing you can see yourself doing as you take your last breath. And then explain to yourself, and me, and everyone else that read your blog (but have stopped leaving comments) why this is your thing.

I'm really curious to read this list. It can be as long as you want. It can't be short, though.

The List

• games
• cartoons
• art
• rides
• creativity
• twinks
• wrestling
• technology
• food
• music
• sleep
• toys
• pornography

What tops the list and Why
If work can be play and play can be work, then what tops the list should be fun. This immediately cancels out sleep (though the research of sleep could be fun, but not to me).

Games are fun.
Cartoons are fun to watch.
Rides are fun to experience.
Art and the creative process are fun.
Wrestling can be fun to both watch and mutually participate in.
Twinks and pornography can be fun.
Music is always fun.
Technology is fun, for better or worse.
Toys are fun.
Food can be fun to make, display, and even eat.

One cannot seem to out-weigh the other, so another process of elimination is needed. So not only does the top of this list need to be fun, it has to be something I regularly participate in. This eliminates twinks and wrestling from the list due to a lack of interaction in both. Rides is also knocked out mostly because it's an annoying vague one-word consolidation of what that really means but also because the type of rides that are fun to experience are the kind that I only experience once every so-many years via trips to theme parks. Art also takes a drop off the list because the participation and interaction with it is only when someone shows me something I may be interested in. In other words, I don't go looking for art, and recent developments clearly indicate that I certainly cannot create art.

I eat food everyday.
I play music to lighten the mood.
I own toys that I play with, if only once every month or two.
I'm using technology right now.
I play games to kill time
I watch cartoons nightly.
I use creativity and imagination in some of my personal projects.
I view pornography of a regular basis.

Round three of elimination! This time things done out of necessity needs to leave the list. Food, technology, toys, porn, and, surprisingly, music and games are now out of the running. This leaves cartoons and creativity as the finalists on the list. Having gone three rounds of elimination processes, which one of these two will come out on top? Who will achieve total victory and who will go home the loser?

Find out next time!

No Work and No Play

Normally, today would be my Research day where I work on the paper portion of my thesis. But, seeing how the entire department is off on a trip to NYC because of a major art opening, class was cancelled. Which left today open for work as we would feel fit.

That said, I didn't do much work today at all. In fact, I've been avoiding it as best as I could simply because I can't bare to face it anymore. Yesterday's lack of creativity and lack of personal connection to my work put a lot of things into perspective.

I don't know where my interests are anymore.
I don't know what drives me to create things.
I don't know why I wanted to be an artist in the first place.

It's a really bad place to be in. The area of indecision is like a huge gray area with neither sky or land or sea or direction as to what is up or down or east or west. It's what I believe Purgatory or at least Limbo is like.

I told a few people this already, but I might as well air the dirty laundry in the front yard. I knew this was going to happen. I knew ever since I was given the choice of either getting everything together or trying again next semester. The shattered, rushed, panicked, whatever you want to call this feeling has rocked the very core of my being to the point where no amount of positive thinking can help me out of it.

I can't concentrate on my theme park project.
I haven't even touched my last fireworks show.
I find little enjoyment now in the video games I play.

All I want to do is sleep and not wake up again. And I knew this was going to happen too. I just want to quit.

I honestly do not know!

My creative energy seems to be failing me today. It’s only been two hours since I started working in the studio today, and I can already feel the energy slipping away.

All the while, the burning question in the back of my head keeps coming back over and over and over. What does my art mean to me? Does it mean anything to me?

The only answer I can give myself is an honest and blank “I don’t know.” I lack a personal connection to it other than the fact that I made it, and yet I know that isn’t enough to give it any kind of meaning outside of sentimental value.

I kept looking at the work I had finished to see if there was any meaning to me, but all I saw was one sculpture about my sexual frustration and one sculpture about my want for attention. But that’s a new thesis entirely, and I really don’t want to rewrite the whole damn thing over again with new research only to find out what I researched isn’t enough and all that going-on’s.

These past few weeks have made me forget so many things. I’ve forgotten what sex is like. I’ve forgotten what a really good and deep sleep is like, as well as that feeling of waking up refreshed and ready for the day. I even forgot about my own birthday that’s coming up until my mom reminded me! There are some days I’m working so hard I forget what my thesis is.

Why? Because of my work? Because of the stuff I actually want to create? Because I’m so hell-bent on trying to graduate now? Or because I’m so confused that I don’t even know what I want anymore?

I don’t know. I honestly do not know anymore.

Focus Deferred

After taking a stress-induced break yesterday, I tried to get started on some work. I talked to Lauren, my sculpture and video art and public art teacher, about my work.

This was the first time I got a straight answer as to what I was doing right. Most of the time, I was told what I was doing wrong and then given the vague push into fixing the problem. Never really told what works.

Apparently, she found it interesting that there were so many self-portraits in what would otherwise be a boring collections of cartoon drawings. Editing those out cut the overall volume of the product to the very bone. More self-portraits, be them drawings or sculptures, means the more visual information for the viewer to get the idea that my personal interests are creating a social barrier because I cannot realistically... well, something like that.

As an added suggestion, if I wanted to keep the installation as I designed it, all I would have to do is play Six Degrees of Separation with the self-portraits. This portrait is linked to that one because of this reason while this one is linked to that one because of that reason and around and around and around.

While it's nice to have my focus back, I couldn't help but get the implication that more time is needed. It is putting me in this gray area of doing the work because I know it needs to get done and wanting to just stop so I don't end up killing my brain cells again like I did the other day. Basically, I'm continuing to produce and adjust the work because I don't know what else to do despite getting my focus back.

I can't help but wonder how my work and other's work would look if the thesis class was a year-long class. Not divided up like Seminar, but a single class with one syllabus that lasted two semesters. These deadlines that are way too close to each other and unrealistically spaced out is really starting to kill both me mentally and how I feel the department is going about educating their students.

12 Hour Studio Day

I don't know where to start.
I don't know what to say.

My mind finally has come down from a stressful race through my thesis paper that desperately tried to insert my art into the academic research into my overall subject.

I don't feel any better.
I don't feel any worse.

I blink and it feels like I have no eyeballs in my sockets proving two things.

I don't know what I'm doing
I need to rest.

Sanity is slowly losing itself to general frustration due to a lack of direction, a lack of understanding, and, not surprisingly, a new obstacle I never thought of until now.

From one big question to another.
What does my art mean to me?

Does it mean anything to me?

No Leg To Stand On

I went to school today to figure out where to insert my art in relationship to the information in my paper. I came to the sharp realization that I undermined my main piece while making my sculptures a little bit stronger in their overall representation.

I asked Amanda to swing by when she had time to help me out. She came by when I was finishing repainting my avatar's gang logo found on the back of his vest. He now sports a Viagra pill.

It's nice to know that I found someone who has found themselves in the same situation I am. Amanda is pretty much faced with the same suggestions for her graduate program: take a semester off to concentrate on your work more. As such, I felt she was very empathetic to my situation.

I expressed how I felt about having knocked the legs out from under my installation. She suggested creating an element that would invite the viewer inward, essentially baiting them to attempt to enter a space they do not have physical access to, thereby activating the space. A sound piece was suggested, set at a volume just barely audible at a certain distance. It could be something that illustrates that social barrier created by a personal interest, like my key example I've been telling everyone. ("I can talk about Superman until I'm blue in the face, and you wouldn't care.")

One of the strangest but interesting critiques I got from her was the comment about how my work appears to exist in that dichotomy of what I want to create and the world of academics. The black foam board reminded Amanda of giant blackboards from grade school. The strings in the model going back and forth, as well as the organization I talked about, read as something very mathematical. I got the implication that she meant it was more technical in its construction rather than artistic.

After she went back to her duties helping out the weekend YAP classes, I was left with feeling like my work was not going to make it in time for my April 4th re-evaluation. Having no teachers in the building made it that much worse for me. I'll have to wait until Monday to express this to anyone in the faculty willing to listen and help me out.

Paper: DONE! Art: None?

Wow, three entries in one day! It's just like in the early days of my blog!

The paper, as far as the academic stuff, is done. I sent it off to three different people for three different perspectives, one of which was my sister for clarity purposes. Unfortunately, I still don't know what to do about the work I've already produced and how to insert it into the thesis.

My brain hasn't been wrecked as of yet compared to earlier in the week where I had no idea if what I was doing was right or wrong. If anything, it just can't think well enough to figure out a way to address my thesis visually.

My thesis still involves a social barrier, only now it isn't about the knowledge found in a subculture but their perspective on the world. Otakus liked anime because they felt it told a better store and was more visually engaging than the mainstream soap operas; pornographers see their work as no different than a Hollywood film in the way they go about making their films; the online world is seen by teenagers and young adults as a place to express themselves with limitless creative potential. Those outside of those groups don't see it that way. They see otakus as slobs with no friends, pornographers as dirty people that degrade society, and the online youth as the source of media piracy and identity theft. Why? Personal perspective based around the meaning of a single signifier or set of signifiers.

It's the reason I was public enemy number one after the Columbine shooting even though I was probably just as sane as the next person in the school.

Hopefully an idea will come to me in my sleep, but in the meantime, I'm hoping that the people I e-mailed my paper to get back to me before I have to fire it off to Jack, who will ultimately say that I didn't insert my work in it and thereby confirming that I need to wait until December to have my show.

Art? What Art?

Four pages in and as I was preparing my head on how to weave in the evolution of signifier of otaku interest with the view of pornography as seen from within the porn industry, I came to the sharp realization that I have not talked about my art works yet.

From there, I realized that my thesis paper doesn't have any art work to support. What I have produced is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, my sculptural works seem to hold more weight now, unlike before, since bringing semiotics into the mix. But my main piece, the installation, has no relationship at all to the paper anymore. It was heavily based in social interaction and the lack thereof due to a fan knowledge that causes misunderstandings. Reading over my paper proves this, but looking at the piece doesn't. Hell, it doesn't even hint to a pool of cartoon knowledge exclusive to me and people like me!

It's bad enough that I typed four pages without even referencing my art, but to realize that nothing I've produce so far can be inserted in doesn't sit well with me. Despite finding the connections I did yesterday at the library.

Prometheus and Bob

I'm at the point in my revision of my paper where I link subcultures to Prometheus and how they act as defying authority while still bringing something positive and unique to the table. (Though linking that to the porn industry will be interesting for me to figure out.) I then remembered an old NickToon short from the early 1990s I used to hate because I didn't get it at the time. It seemed appropriate to revisit now.



I can't help but wonder who is the real Prometheus in this short. You have the alien who is the authority figure and Bob, the caveman who is incapable of learning and thereby advancing in the evolution of man. I personally think it's the monkey, due to his cartoon ability to defy the authority of both the alien and Bob to produce a portrait of the three of them that is far more advance in technique and skill than what a normal monkey would produce. But, then again, it's a cartoon. You'd be surprised what you can get away with. Two-minutes into this short, you'll hear a song titled "Spooning in a Spoon." No joke.

Porn Subculture & The Online Youth

About two hours into what ended up being a three-and-a-half-hour long skim through the section of the library devoted to counter culture social studies (The 306's), I found a chapter in a book titled The Call of the Weird that was devoted to the pornography industry. I found it by accident due to how the book has their chapters set up. Each chapter is based on the author catching up several years later with people he documented for a similar program that aired on the BBC. I found the chapter because the person it was devoted to caught my attention. Take a guess how and why.

Anyway, what I found about the porn industry seems to mirror that of most subcultures, sans the capitalism. There is a pool of veterans who see the industry as being similar to any socially acceptable film project, often wondering how the stuff they find degrading--mostly the things they do on Fear Factor--is not attacked as such because it doesn't involve sex. There's a great quote by a "horror porn" director that I wrote down that made me think back to my conversation I had with my teachers the other day.

"Being degraded is a sense of one's own mind. [...] If you perceive that what's going on is degrading to you, then that's that. But if you don't perceive that you're being degraded, then it's not degrading."

"A girl is degraded in a Hollywood movie, what happens? That's acting. And they get a fucking Academy Award. A girl is degraded in porn and for some reason that's more extreme than a real movie."

While the second quote is more riddled with anger, it shows that there really is a social barrier between what is essentially the same kind of work industry. In both cases, actors and actresses have to be hired, sign model release forms, and consent to having their actions recorded on video record (especially if you are a reality show). The difference is public perception of the two.

Another book I skimmed through was about hacker culture. It was way too technical for a social study book, but what I got out of it is another example of this. Thanks to the media and press, hackers are pegged as teenagers that sit around on their computers trying to get credit card numbers. If they are not seen as that, then the contemporary online youth culture is seen as a bunch of lazy time wasters that are on the internet to play video games with their friends online. (That's my mom's point of view for a long time. I don't think she counts as a citable source.) On the other side of the fence, hackers are really just a bunch of kids playing cyber pranks or even adults whose job it is to specifically find and patch security holes. Generational gaps aside, the internet is also a way for the online youth culture to express themselves and their interests through, what else? MySpace! Blogs! YouTube! And avatar-based forum sites like Gaia!

Things are starting to piece together now quite nicely, don't you think? I still have yet to figure out how to communicate this visually, though. A few art works did pop into my head, but I don't have the skill to create a full-size and life-like sculpture of a suicide victim hung by the neck with X's silk-screened over where his eyes should be. And I doubt I have time to render a very pornographic anime drawing version of that one sculpture of Atlas that reeks of homo-eroticism. I guess that's why the department gave me the "Graduate in December" option. To figure out if I should even do those pieces and to how to do them is I actually want to see them through.

For Jason

Jason's been picking my brain about animation, cartoons, graphic novels, and the like for a project of his. I found this while I was preparing to go to the downtown library today to beef up my paper. (The librarians are going to hate me before the hour is up given how over-dependent on them I'll probably be.)



What this guy has done is taken still drawings, all hand drawn, and through Photoshop either placed them where he wants them to be (i.e. put them in a new background), colored them, and probably scale them if needed. He then used a very simple video editing program to just animate them in the way he wanted the short to be cut or paced out.

This is probably one of his more artistic videos. Most of the ones I've viewed on his YouTube channel are sight gags.

Juvenile Moment

It's raining
It's pouring
They say my art is boring

I wrecked my head
'til my brain is dead
God, why did I get up this morning?

What I Did Wrong

I asked for another impromtu critique from Terry, and as I was coming back to the studio, I ran into my drawing teacher of great influence. I asked if she was too busy to help me out, to which she gladly came with me back to the studio. After what felt like an entire day of conversation and critique with both of them, it's become clear what I've not been able to do.

The idea and concept is great and thought provoking, but the execution isn't living up to the grandness of the idea. As an artist, it is our challenge to make damn sure that our idea and concept is communicated as grand visually as it is conceptually. If a line of thought comes off as scary, make art that evokes that sense as well as communicates that thought.

This is apparently where I went wrong. The idea of a community accepting or cutting off a person based on collective knowledge spans more than cartoon geeks like myself and semiotic relationships on a social scale. It can be applied to politics and personal relationships in the form of witheld information. But visually? I've been keeping it in an area of play so small it doesn't have an affect on the viewer's social conciousness.

I got the impression that I didn't have to do any of my work over again (which is a good thing since I just spent $120 on foam board yesterday in hope that I could use it to make my work more formal), but that I should not concern myself with what I've produced up until now and look at my conceptual intent and underlying subject matter.

In other words, paper first; art second. I've been trying to do both side-by-side as the class was designed. Or more accurately reformed. I can't tell you what came first, but before now, students would do more of one than they would the other during the first half of the semester, leaving them with nothing but weeks to come up with the the part they should have done all that time. I don't know. Making art is hard.

The bottom line is this: The fact that I've been struggling with just trying to type my paper is proof alone that I don't know how to communicate my thesis. This has translated to my art work. I am in a position now where I need to figure out what it is I want to say based on my thesis research. I do not have to make any new art unless need be. I have to do so in a way that is formally interesting, visually appealing, and stimulates critical thinking in the same line as what it is I want to communicate.

Question is can I do all this before April 4th?

Part of Me @ Odds

I am at odds with myself right now.

Part of me wants to complete the paper I'm still torturing myself with in to hopes of graduating on time.

Part of me doesn't see the point knowing what the end result will be and I should just try again later now that I know what I'm doing.

Part of me wants to just quit and become that 25-year-old who is still working for minimum wage at a job designed for high school teens that just got their driver's license.

Part of me is laughing at the other parts for being so naive.

Part of me is having pity on the part that's laughing.

Part of me just doesn't care anymore.

Only one thing is for certain. I need a hug.

Should-a Would-a Didn't Done Do

The only reason I'm blogging now and not wrecking my brain on my paper is because I just typed a forced statement into my revision that I'm not proud about. So much so that I screamed in frustration so loud my aunt stopped her afternoon shower to check if everything was all right with me.

I've been doing this for the better part of the day since I got home. It's not a fun process when you have to type an important paper all over again, especially when the only thing that you can save are the first two paragraphs and nothing else because none of it makes any sense any more given the academic evaluation I received.

Speaking of which, my friend was a no-show after the morning kids left, but I did find the department chair floating about the hallways, so I asked him to come by. Terry pretty much told me what I've been doing wrong. My personality has prevented me from doing things I should have been talking about a year ago with him. I guess I'm still a little shell shocked after the whole "Changing of the Guards" thing we had to go through after Jason graduated, what with loosing the two most influential teachers I could ever ask for and being unable to talk to them in a way that is benefiting. I mean, hell, I've been too busy to e-mail them! (And yet not busy enough to not take time out and blog. Curious.) Among just talking to my teachers, I should have been talking to all the other students in the school and getting more feedback from people from the Freshmen class and the like. I should have also had a subscription and reading Art Forum reviews on shows. I should have figured out what it was I wanted to do for my thesis a year ago, and now I'm in what is known as an eleventh-hour Hail Mary situation that I'll be lucky to pull out of my ass by April 4th!

Dropping the course is starting to look more and more viable, but I still don't like the idea knowing what I'll end up doing instead of art. My YouTube channel is a great example of this. Once I publish this post, I'll have to go back to fighting the urge to stop trying to write and work on my half-finished theme park. And to put that into perspective, it's like Homer Simpson trying to think unsexy thoughts about the new hot female co-worker.

At School During Spring Break

So here I am at the college all ready to do all the things I rather not do because I don't know what else to do, and I find out the room that I have permission to install in is being used by Watkin's Young Artist Program. Because the college is closed for the week, it is the perfect time for YAP to take over some of the studio rooms to teach the kids about the world of art.

This means I am in the middle of trying to figure out what to do in order to get any work done in order to save my ass from the fire that is my April 4th deadline/evaluation. I already have the hours as to when the program will be going on all this week, which pretty much leaves me high and dry as far as installing the damned installation the way I want it in the space smaller than what is needed. The only thing I can do is my paper. And we all know how well that's been going just trying to understand the text I'm reading.

In the meantime, I caught a graduate and former classmate of mine teaching one of the kids and asked her to help me out when she is done with my thesis. To be perfectly blunt, I really rather have other people do my work for me like Jeff Koons or Maya Lin and only deal with coming up with the idea and concept.

How Quickly the Weak Fall

My new-found confidence from last night was quickly replaced with doubt and a brooding depression that would make my parents' assumptions as to what I was thinking a true fact. And all it took was one person.

I don't like the idea of dropping out of a class and retaking it, especially when I feel I've done so much. My focus has been shattered by all this, much like my confidence now. Worse-case scenarios keep playing in my head of me spending three, four, even five semesters trying to meet the expectations of just one class. A scenario where the press got wind of my situation even played out while I was taking a nap to get my mind off of these kind of thoughts!

My cousin in California told me once that one of her friends was studying art. The program required their students to take every other semester off because of the demands of the classes. I can only imagine the benefits from that.

I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I've already made up my mind to sacrifice Spring Break and install all of my pieces in the room next door to the seminar studio spaces, even if it causes the subject of driving to pop up again when my parents call asking when I want to be picked up for the millionth time because I didn't give them a time table as to when I would be done. From there, I'm suppose to get the faculty to look at it all, but they will be out for Spring Break. And then there's the fact that the room is also the strong hold for two classes--both of which I got permission from the instructor to set up--and for the new monthly documentation the school is offering. I run the risk of the installation not standing up to other people more so than their opinion, what with people potentially accidentally knocking my sculpture off and what-have-you.

Then there's the nagging thought in the back of my head that if I do take a semester off, all I'll be doing is researching once the semester beings and not producing. That's my biggest problem that I was going to address until now. Just make the paper more creditable, readable, and academically sound. But if the work sucks just as bad as the paper, and all I do is research until the cows come home, then I'll be asked "where's the art?" It will be Art History all over again, where I'm able to produce a fantastic paper but nothing that supports my research artistically.

It's amazing how one person's opinion can have this kind of affect on me. Makes me want to look up the psychological effects of opinions... that is, if I wasn't trying to look up and understand Eco and semiotics better in relation to my paper. Damn my lack of comprehension.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Despite what my parents were thinking I was really doing, I've been sitting on my thesis situation and figuring out which option is the better of the two. On the side, I've been trying to come up with four positive things about my thesis to cancel out the negative situation. I only came up with two, but that's better than mulling it over like an emo stereotype.

First off, the work I've done so far is the stuff I went to college to do. I didn't want to be an animator or an illustrator, even though I resigned myself and accepted that could very well be a possibility for me. I wanted to create art. Cartoon art. No, Contemporary Popular Culture Art. And all I have done up until this point is exactly what I wanted to do since I started learning how to draw.

Second, I take pride and have a level of self-confidence now that I didn't have before because of my work. Finally, I can talk about my personal interests on a college level and have been applying that interest into readings that are related through the suggestions of others. I wanted to bring the illustrated cartoon out of the kiddie sand box and into an arena of higher thinking. What surprises me even now is just how high a level I can get. Linking Mickey Mouse to Dadaism or being able to point out the hidden sexual jokes in a Saturday morning cartoon never made me feel this way. In fact, it used to make me feel pathetic. While I haven't achieved the level of "otaku" in feeling a prideful patheticness, at least I know now that knowledge can be applied in an academic arena.

Like I said, I'm still working on the other two.

As far as the situation goes, I was never given any indication that what I was doing was weak. Talking to Jack only indicated a failure to communicate my ideas through paper. When you think about it, that's the point of my thesis. Any community built on knowledge will have a failure in communicating these ideas to another community. That's why Murakami said he can't be an otaku and why otakus don't see what makes Murakami's work art when they can find the same characters and figurines buried at the bottom of potato chip bags. It's why some people see comic books as a place where men can draw big breasted women and not as a place of contemporary social commentary that was twice sponsored by the US Government in several public service campaigns. Dare I say, it is also why I believe that my department feels my thesis is weak while I and others I've explained it to feel the idea is a strong one. We can't communicate.

There's the rub. I can't make the lack of communication or understanding the point of my thesis by presenting a thesis paper nobody understands. I have to communicate this lack of communication in a way that makes my work look strong, which I feel it is. Doing so requires an entire rewrite of my paper... AGAIN. The suggestions about organization and commodity fetish do not apply as heavily as social reaction or even basic semiotics. More research is needed, but not in the sense of a different subject matter. Commodity fetish can relate to semiotics. After all, when humans become things through commodity fetish, those things become a signifier for the subculture which are read differently depending on who is viewing them. Not in the sense that what you read as "chair" may be read as "table" to another, but more along the lines of what you see as normal compared to abnormal. Though, in my thesis, it isn't the people so much as it is their actions and knowledge based on their personal interests.

If I communicated that idea clearly here, then please someone tell me! (Preferably Jason or Hugo. No offence Robert.) I don't expect anyone to understand what I just said, because that's the point of my thesis. Much like what makes Damien Hirst's floating shark art, I don't expect people outside of my nerdism to "get it." For all I know, they may see it as nothing but the usual angsty blog entry much like how someone would see the shark piece as just a gross display of a dead animal that is better suited for a science lab than an art gallery.

There's a quote from Murakami that I've been hanging on to since I started this thesis. He said it when he was comparing the art community and the otaku community in how exclusive and difficult it is to be accepted within it.

If you can't discuss its [art] history, you won't be taken seriously and you won't be accepted on their [the art world] turf.

That's pretty much what I'm facing right now. I can't talk the talk, so they feel like I can't do the walk.

I feel I can, though. For the first time in recent memory, I feel confident in my thesis. No, I feel confident in me.

I just need to make my paper so clear the five-year-old across the street can understand it.

No Help, No Choice

I talked to Jack about how I felt about yesterday. He apologized, but it didn't feel sincere. I said my piece before dismissing myself out of respect in order to avoid venturing into territory I would rather not go to while dwelling on the subject.

The rest of the day, I was just utterly frustrated with my work. Sitting in my studio only made me angrier. I got nothing done as I was fighting back the boiling rage.

I have no option left but to just do as I'm told. I tried doing what I want, and look where it got me. I can't do what I want in the way I want to do it. I guess all I can do is say what I want to do and have other people tell me how to do it.

And that's not being an artist. That's not even being creative. That's just being a drone, which is probably all I'm good for.

Why bother now?

My day was going so well, but, as you can probably find examples of in my blog archives, that doesn't mean it will end well.

My teacher pulled me aside and handed me a letter involving the mid-term presentation for Distinction. I didn't get it; I didn't expect to.

That's not what is bothering me. What's bothering me is why I didn't get it. I can understand if they felt my work up until that point wasn't at the level of execution they wanted, but the way it was explained to me is that my entire thesis is wrong. I even questioned this due to how it was explained. I didn't have creditable resources or not enough sources, and there was grammar issues that made understanding my first generation of the paper incomprehensible. But what about the thesis itself? Was there anything wrong with the thesis or was it all about the paper and presentation that was flawed? I never got a straight answer to that question.

All I was told was that the work didn't match their expectation and that what I had produced was not as engaging as the sculptures I'm working on. The installation needs to be installed in order for something, anything to be taken away from it. A two-category mock-up, no matter how well documented or photographed, won't cut it. I need to find a 10 ft. by 10 ft. by 10 ft. area to put the thing in even if that means intruding on a class. Then, I will be told what works and what doesn't when everything is in place. In other words, I should have set up my show by this week not for public exhibition but rather for editing purposes.

Furthermore, because my thesis was lacking, I need to start on beefing that up as well. More books, less online sites from dot com sites because of how it is implied they are not academically creditable (even the news articles from news sites that I used), and somehow fit Marx's Commodity Fetish into it to give it some philosophical if not socialogolical ground to stand on in the academic sense. Things I was planning on doing anyway but are now told me as if I was completely oblivious to the fact and wasn't doing them outside of my studio art work.

Now, I have a second option other than the "haul ass and get it done before the end of the first week of April" scenario. Continue working on refining the idea and not graduate until December. The idea of having more time to research and produce means more opportunities to make the thesis better and clearer to understand. But I've already put this much work into what I have now that taking this option would be an insult to all the time and energy before. If I knew I wasn't ready now, why didn't I know before the semester started? Why waste both my time and money?

I tried my best to stay calm during this, despite my teacher saying over and over again that this isn't meant to make me feel like I was being picked on or to get all beat up over. The car ride home caused an internal explosion of frustration that was exactly the same feeling I had at midterm during Seminar 2 last semester. Once again, I thought I was on the right path and was doing work I was not only proud of but could talk about on a college level. Something worthy of devoting a thesis paper and gallery to.

And I was told I'm doing it all wrong because I didn't get on some stupid track that is similar to a high school honors program in some respect. Why couldn't they just leave it at that and let me continue with what I was doing? While it isn't a required asset to graduate, I still feel like I'm being told what I've done isn't good enough because I didn't get considered for Distinction.

I'm still going through the motion while Skippy tries to cheer me up by jumping on my lap and curling under my arms while I try and type this. I think he can sense that something is wrong with me, because he's not acting as hyper as he usually does. While it helps, it's not putting any resolve to the matter.

My situation is this: I have a specialized, only-applying-to-me deadline. Post-Spring Break, my installation has to be up. I have to bring in the entire faculty to critique the work. This is priority one over the 2nd Generation of my thesis paper, revives artist statement, press release blurb, and any other paperwork that is also due post-Spring Break.

That's something not even the loving gaze from a one-year-old puppy can fix. And to think, originally I was going to blog about how I believe I officially forgot what sex feels like and is probably closer to a virgin than the porn stars that play them.

Good-Bye Virtual Magic Kingdom

Mike Bielaczyc once said when I first met him that he didn't realize how much time he wasted playing video games until he actually stopped playing them. That was the start of a new life for him, from what I remember, and he now makes a ton of money selling fantasy prosthetics (elf ears, satyr horns, etc.) to his respective obsessive fan subculture that he is a part of.

Today marks the day that I officially quit from Disney's advert-gaming experience known as Virtual Magic Kingdom. This MMOG (Massively Multi-Player Online Game) was designed to advertise the Disney parks while providing a free game of sorts to people who couldn't experience the magic of the theme park.

Some magic. Since I joined the game about two and a half years ago, I watched it devolve into a pool of general hormonal angst where the youth of our generation think it is a requirement to hook up with another player and pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Completely unaware that the person they may be pretending with may very well be an adult. That's not including the fact that kids these days will curse at you the moment they do not get their way, at least in the game, calling you things like "cheater" if you win a player-verses-player game fair and square.

The bottom line is that this free game has attracted a group of people I not only pity but wish not to be around anymore. They are an obsessive fan base that is not only obsessed with Disney, as I am, but are obsessed with themselves. I'm not going to even attempt to psychoanalyze them; I don't have that right. All I know is that these bad apples are spoiling the entire bushel, and what few good apples that are in there have already been taken out.

What Mike said was true. Looking back on my VMK experience, I can't believe that I spent two and a half years with that game, often devoting entire weekends to it for the sake of some Flash animation for my avatar. As someone who swore he wouldn't fall into the same category as those who play EverQuest and World of Warcraft, it only serves as ironic that I fell to that level through my own fandom with Disney.

Avatar Sculptures Update

So, as you can see from this photograph, my initial plan for my avatar sculpture didn't pan out as well as I had originally hoped. The big flaw is kind of hard to pin point, but I'm guessing that it had something to do with how poorly I am as a mould maker. As you'll see in the other photographs I took, I'm not that bad of a sculpture artist. It's making a mould that is just asking for trouble. You've heard the old saying "You can't rush art." You don't know how true that really is when it comes to the mould process. Being a being of instant gratification, I guess I was destine to screw that up.

With that firmly set in stone, in a way, here is what I ended up with upon hitting the restart button. It still amazes me that you can make these things out of kids craft items and call it art. Hell, I think this was the same material they used to give us in pre-school to make kiddy jewelry, such as those multi-color necklaces and bracelets. After baking him in the oven, painting him was relatively simple. Too simple, in fact. If I had known how quickly the process would have taken me (about 3 weeks at a casual pace), I would have designed and made more.




It was suggested that I use the same pallet of colors between this avatar and the more detailed one as a way to link them visually, implying that they are the same character and the only thing that has changed is their appearance. Well, I found out by the second color application that isn't going to work. This sculpture is suppose to be cute and playful, which needs bright and fun colors. Hence the off-white-pink shirt. With the other one, you are dealing with a design that is more mature and almost requires more realistic coloring, if not more attention to detail and a darker pallet.





My biggest problem with this figure is coming up this week. Once I'm done painting all the little details on him, I need to reattach him to a base. After that, I just have to figure out how to light these two. I already finalized on where I'll put them in relationship to my installation and how high of a pedestal I want. I kind of just need a really good focus light or something.

Relics of the Past Resurfaced

I received a back-order today, and as I was putting it away, I discovered a rather sticky situation. Apparently, I had a slow leak for only God knows how long. That's all I'm going to say knowing who reads my blog now. Those that know me well enough can read between the lines and figure it out.

As I was in the process of cleaning the location out, I came upon some relics from a time when I was more naive than I am now. An on-ride photo from a theme park's roller coaster, my notes to an e-mail address that I long forgot about detailing an apparent apology to someone I held in high regard to, a (now obsolete) floppy disk containing labeled "Important pictures" possibly containing images I've long forgotten about, a hand-written letter instructing me to "take care of business," and the odd meat thermometer that was wrapped by two scrap pieces of paper with what appeared to be recipes written on them. At the bottom of it all was a painting I did in high school of me as a comic character, hand out stretched in a dramatic pose, tears in my eyes, screaming a name that once held some significance to me.

The memories came rushing back along with the doubts. I put the towel that was lining the location with my laundry and then used the painting, wrapped in a large trash bag, and the face towel from my bathroom to line it to protect the items I was going to put back. As I was putting all the contra ban back, I couldn't help but wonder why I kept those things. And as much as I knew I was better off throwing them away, a part of me told me not to. And I listened to it.

Despite all the doubt I have about that time in my life, despite all the questions on what was the truth and what was a lie, apparently I still have some small piece of hope that what happened was real. And if it was, what happened afterwards should have really hurt me more than it did.

Memories and attachments to the past, even when you question their legitimacy, do affect who you are at this very moment. After finding those objects, I can't help but ask the proverbial question of regret: What if...

It's Finally My Turn

Well, it finally happened. After a month of being exposed to people who have had it or have had people in their family that had it, I caught that strange flu/cold bug that's been going around.

Right now, it's just a sinus thing, with the sniffling and the sneezing and all that jazz. I need to nip this one in the bud before it gets too far along, as well as cancel any human interactions I have scheduled for today like my dentist appointment to check out why my teeth feel strange after brushing them. (It started after I had a filling on one of the two front teeth put in about a month ago, if anyone is curious.)

Good timing, too, because I finished my postcard image Friday, which is due at the end of the week. Painting my avatar statues with acrylic shouldn't take that long, even thought I have a history of paint not liking me or doing what I ask it to.

Riddle Me This, Batman!

Most keyboards have the letters silk-screen'd on to the keys. Without a proper seal or even a protective covering the oils of your skins can quite laterally rub out the letters. Unless you are a QWERTY typer (one that can type at the keyboard without looking), this can screw you over if more than one key is missing their marking.

With that in mind, here's a little riddle! This computer that I am using is approximately two years old. They keyboard is starting to lose some of the letters. As of now, the M Key is completely gone. The N Key is about half way on the way out, followed by the L Key, which I just noticed is starting to fade away.

What could I have possibly been typing to warrant those letters to disappear on me?

Surprisingly, all my vowels are still still in one piece. On my last computer, the A Key was rubbed out just after the M Key disappeared.

Birthday Thesis Theme Park

In just a month's time, I will have to have had finished painting and securing to a base my avatar sculptures. Among other things include a second draft of my thesis paper, second draft of my artist statement, postcard image, and countless crits. Kind of makes my 25th birthday seem like a fizzle.

My brain and thought process are both dead at this moment. Mostly because of the mid-term, which was a presentation of my thesis to the department chair in application to be a candidate for distinction. You tell me what that means, because I thought it was something else.

It didn't go as bad as it could have. I was told that I was stating my thoughts better than before, though I still need to clarify some areas more and omit others. The most interesting suggestion: actually nerd out and show my knowledge of the cartoon genre. It makes sense, seeing how that is the forum for it. But once you get a nerd going, there's no stopping them. That's why you always have the two-beat joke in sit-coms where they end the speech, nobody claps, and then the teacher says something like "Thank you for that presentation, but your assignment was on the Star Wars project and not the films." Everything in front of the punchline is irrelevant, because you have a good idea where the conversation went.

It was also mentioned that I read something on Marx's commodity fetish when talking about fan collections. Thing is, I did read about that, and what I could understand of it was applied to the context in which I was looking it up for: why the early black-and-white Dada-ish cartoons had living cars and buildings. My challenge now is to take what little I understood and link it to a different context. The benefit would be my paper would have an academic backing that, apparently, I was missing. Should be simple, since I've done half of work already, but my mind is so exhausted.

I rather design a theme park's theme layout.