Saturday, June 5, 2004

Lower your head and take it in the body. So my graduation party was today. It started at 6 p.m. and ended some time shortly before 10 p.m. I must it was an absolute blast hanging out with all my family members I hardly know, but at least most of them gave me money, heh. I am now $200 richer than I was at the start of the day, which leaves me with a grand total of ... $200. *thumbs up* It was pretty miserable otherwise. I actually have a picture of me sitting in the corner against some cabinets on the kitchen floor. I am smiling, but my mom was making fun of me, lol. My dad and step-mother came over for a while, I actually had to invite them myself because my mom left them out. When they left my dad joked, "I'll go warm up the car, grab all your cards and make a break for it." =P The only real highlight of the evening was when I was "forced" to sit down and talk to everyone. We ended up getting on the subjects of the cartoons I did for my high school newspaper. i showed them off, as well as all my illustrations in the magazines and such. I guess they were all really impressed, heh. My uncle did not even know he was looking at a high school newspaper until I told him. My step-father's brother even went so far as to call up the place he works and see if there are any openings there in the artwork kind of area. o_O I do not know where he works, but I thought that was kind of cool. I do not think they had any openings, though. Speaking of jobs, I had an interview yesterday for a marketing company I just randomly applied for online. I was hired, but my mom does not want me to work there. Simply because I would have to actually go out to appointments I set up with people, and since I do not have a car, shedoes not want to have to drive me everywhere and wait while I do my business. -__-; So, there goes that idea. The one job I actually make the effort to apply for, and get excited about, I cannot even do. It has been the one job I have yet to find the hires based on character, and not so much on qualifications (because they can always train people). I am never going to be able to pay for college, and will be paying off loans for the rest of my life. Thank you, and good night. *bows head thrusting the 'metal' handsign in the air* -------------------------------------------------------------- Mmm ... existentialism. I just have a simple question for everyone. I somehow got on a mental (meaning, I was just thinking about it) topic about what really exemplifies me. What am I known by? If a person saw something or thought of something that instantaneously reminded them of me, what would it be? So if those who read this could answer that question in the comments, it would be cool. I know Panda already left a comment before I edited this in, but yeah. I am just curious. -------------------------------------------------------------- The Lotus in Konoha blooms twice. While I am in the mood of continuously editing this post with other things to say, I just felt like mentioning that I have been working on a quiz for the Otaku Guru. I keep trying to think of different questions, though. I have seven currently. I have thought of an eighth. I also need to finish the result images. I been watching the anime Naruto excessively, lateley. So it is obviously based around that. I might make another one as well with an idea that just popped into my head. I am rather behind in that anime. I think they have 86 episodes released so far, I am on 51. However, it is better then I was several days ago, heh. Sometimes I think the characters spend a little too much time talking. I absolutely hate that anime episode in general are so short. Twenty minutes it not really a lot of time. Anyway, just thought I would say that.

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Monday, May 31, 2004

At least it looks good. I honestly think I change the layout of this thing more than I actually update it, lol. I have been listening to the Smashing Pumpkins non-stop for about the past week, heh, and I still do not see an end in sight. Mainly I am listening to Twilight to Starlight, the second disc in the album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I have the song "Bodies" up to be played. I did have "Farewell and Goodnight," but felt it did not fit the site as well, heh. I kind of stole the subject-inside-the-table idea from Sara. >.> I liked it, so ... yeah. All credit goes to her for that one. And I have just been informed that Sara got the idea from James: So I got it from Sara, who got it from James. I say people should jump on the bandwagon and see how long we can trail that credit, heh. Anyway, not much is going on. It is my mom's birthday today, I graduate tomorrow. My graduation party thing is on Friday (you can come it you would like, just bring some money ^_~). I celebrated my step-brother's birthday yesterday. I gave him a self-made card featuring Mr. T, heh. My step-mother apparently wants me to create her companies website. Apparently no one where she works knows enough to create one on their own. The main thing I am worried about is an order form they want to have. I am not totally familiar with how those things work. I mean, I can create a form, but getting it to function right is a different story. I shall be getting more details tomorrow or Wednesday. Nothing much else is up. Just kind of chillin'. Yup. Added at 16:43 Well, I figured I might as well show this while I have it scanned in. This following piece is from that visual/literary arts magazine my old high school's journalism department published. I scanned it in for a scholarpship contest thing for cartoonists and graphic illustrators. They said they did not want photocopies, but I was not about to tear just one page out of the magazine. Anyway, this is a graphic I did to assist a column (or "commentary" as we called it in the magazine) someone wrote about cloning. I had a lot of fun making this, lol. Of the many things the journalism department is notorious for, it is our love of baby heads. This one was affectionatley named Fred, as you can see is written on its forehead if you look close enough. Added at 17:17 I just felt I should ramble a little more. Six days until Tori and I's 2 Year and 5 Month Anniversary. ^_^ I am already very anxious for the 3 Year mark.

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Saturday, May 8, 2004

So one time I was bored and was viewing an profile of mine on an online "matchmaking service" (which I joined just for kicks). There are certain features that can be unlocked temporarily by registering for certain websites, one of them being Poetry.com. In order to register, one must write a poem (following certain guidelines, pretty much "no haikus") and submit it. Now, as I was just doing this to unlock one of the features, I barely was actually attempting to try. However, I did base it off something I wrote randomly in a school notebook once. That little excerpt was also based of a picture I randomly drew (but really liked). I do not remember when I did that, but I received some mail today from Poetry.com claiming it to be an "Excellent poem," and they want my permission to publish it for something called Enternal Portraits. The following is a portion of the letter I received: "Dear John, After carefully reading and discussing your poem, our Selection Committee has certified your poem as a semi-finalist in our International Open Poetry Contest. Your poem will automatically be entered into the final competition held in May 2004. As a semi-finalist, you now have an excellent chance of winning one of the 104 cash or gift prizes--including the $1,000.00 Grand Prize. You may even win the $10,000.00 Annual Grand Prize! We wish you the best of luck as you compete for these prizes in the coming weeks (a complete list of prizes is enclosed). And that's not all . . . John . . . Imagine Your Poem Featured on a Page by Itself in a Beautiful Coffee-table Edition! In celebration of the unique talent that you have displayed, we also wish yo publish your poem on its own page in what promises to be one of the most highly regarded collections of poery we have ever publish . . ." o_O I would like to remind everyone at this point the I pulled that poem out of my ass, lol. I spent my time counting syllables and such, but that is it. It was completely improv otherwise. I think it would be the balls if I won something at that competition they mention, especially if it was money. I could use some of that right now. I had to hold back hysterical laughter when I first read this (considering my 2-year-old neice was sleeping in the next room). I am simply shocked. I mean, I liked the poem when I finished it and all, but I imagine there are some who put a lot more effort into theirs. That is generally my nature, though. At some point I just do something extremely well at random, whether it be graphics or whatever - poems in this case. So I think this is all pretty damn cool, lol. I am really interested in what their (or anybody's o_O) interpretation of it is. Anyway, here is the poem for all of you to read. The first three lines are the original three that I used as a foundation to start it. Cycle of the Absurd © John Kendall Now begins this walk of miles. Along the path gleams those darkened smiles, Mocking. Mind of a child. Eyes blinking mild. Want to be wild. Shocking. Then ends that trek of ups, downs. Around the maze fades those shimm'ring frowns, Blocking.

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Wednesday, May 5, 2004

In the Hood! (part 2)

Today I received an e-mail from the girl who currently owns the Hoodies Fanlisting. She said I could have it. ^_^ I am very excited for it. I e-mailed her back confirming that I do indeed want to take over the fanlisting, so she could then send me the FTP information needed to access the server. After I get that information I need to contact the host to see if she will set up a database for me so I can set up the PHPFanBase deal, which Tony has so graciously offered to help me with (because he is cool like that). Hopefully it is as easy as you say it is, lol. I should probably start thinking of a new layout. I have never actually seen the site itself, but I have seen a screenshot of it on the host's site. I do not know if that was a dated screenshot or not, but I did not like it. I have some ideas, though. Web design is so much fun it hurts when I walk, lol. Who would think such a menial task such as coding could be so entertaining?

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Monday, May 3, 2004

In the Hood!

So the possibility of owning the fanlisting for Hoodies has opened up just recently. I must say I am very excited, heh. I think I am probably one of, if notthe first person to see the opening. I have been checking it more and more recently to see if it would open back up from it downtime, then I found that the person was going to try and give it away. I e-mailed her immediately, lol. I have been trying to join that fanlisting for several months now, but every time I would go and check on it, it would be on some sort of haitus. It has more or less come to the person does not have the time to manage it. I figured I could probably get around often enough to update it, especially for something I love so much as hoodies. >_> What would be really cool is if I could figure out the PHPFanBase script that makes updating easier. However, I have never really messed with MySQL and a lot of the other stuff it contains. If I could at least learn how to work that script, it would be cool. I hope I get the ownership of that fanlisting, heh. I would love it so much.

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Wednesday, April 28, 2004

I am Bling-Blingin'

The high school at which I take my part in theater held their annual "Oscar Night" tonight. I dressed nicely for the occasion, considering it was supposed to be a formal event. I wore my $300 suit I bought for $9 from a thrift store, lol. I went in there very stately; confident, not to an arrogant degree, but I was not sulking either. There were some events that happened before the theater awards were handed out, but they eventually came around. As you can see, I won for Best Supporting Actor. I was surprised they had actual trophies, lol. When it came to Best Actor, I was not bitter or anything. I was just very light-heartedly sarcastic. I was standing in the back of the room with another guy. Pretty much the nominees were as such:a boy named Nate, the only person who I think holds any real competition in true acting ability against myself; Justin, a huge blindly-conceited "douche" who has mediocre talent; and a guy named Chris, who I think has the poorest talent of them all. I would not have chosen him as top three. I was fine with whoever won as long as it was not Justin. I have nothing truly against the guy, but his attitude is just off; he buys too much into his own hype. In all honesty I was rooting for Chris, lol. It would be a nice ego check for Justin. Lo' and behold, Chris won. I immediately burst out laughing. I just found it humorous the guy with the least talent of the three won overall. After I finished laughing, I said tongue-in-cheek, "How many people did he have to fuck to get that award?" I kept in mind the audience we were dealing with long before tonight. I knew he was simply "popular" among many of the younger girls. He is very much a "manly man," so all the giggly little freshmen develop small crushes and such. I, on the other hand, probably scare the crap out of many of the younger people, lol. I personally measure who I would see as the Best Actor as not one who did the best job this year, but in the long run could prove to actually be something. Who within the actors could play any role given to them, regardless of gender? I have heard many talented, professional actors say someone who can truly act can play someone of a different sexuality, and/or a different gender. I hold a firm belief that I would have no problem with that at all. I think the role I would most love to play out of any role I can ever think of in a movie/play is Dr. Frankenfurter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The only other person I think could achieve such a level at this point in time is Nate. He is a comfortably open-minded individual (I say "comfortably" as opposed to my more eccentric displays). If I could play the role of a gay man in a play with any guy in that theater group, it would be him. I imagine our on-stage chemistry would work very well together, especially considering we would have that typical masculing partner(Nate)/feminine partner(me) appeal going on. However, that is based solely on appearance. The roles could easily go the other way based on attitude. I naturally come off a lot more powerful and assertive than he does, whereas he, as I said before, is a more "comfortable" fellow. If there was one person I could stand losing an award next to, it would be him. Justin and Chris have both shown through certain events that they are not comfortable trying to act either as a woman or a homosexual. Justin shows more promise than Chris, who is your typical white trash. Chris I believe would refuse the role. Justin would take it, but he would not enjoy it. If you do not enjoy it, then you simply do not do it as well. I base my reasoning for myself being the Best Actor in the theater department there not only on this, but just the fact that of any of the other guys, I always picked up my role the quickest, not to mention I had a rather wide variety of personas. I started as Professor Plum, BA, MA, PhD in Clue: the Musical; a reserved and subtly arrogant English professor, and was also a bit of a "player." I then moved on to Ambrose Kemper in the Matchmaker, a headstrong and idealistic artist who was dead set on marrying the main male role's daughter despite his disapproval. Next there was the Herald/Steward in Roger & Hammerstein's Cinderella. I was extremely eccetric and was in a role where I knew I could almost never be too big, especially in the opening scene where I announce in song that "the Prince is giving a ball." Lastly, a Mr. William Collins, Reverend William Collins; a simpering and self-rightous bastard who aside from his conceitedness was rather gentlemanly and subservient. No other man in that cast had such a spectrum of roles that I had seen in my time. Their characters fit their personalities, more or less. Yet still I always molded to the part quickly. I was always the guy who received the least notes from the director, which is always a good sign because it says that you are developing your character well. I would often get agitated because I would not get any pointers, lol. By the time Cinderella and Pride & Prejudice came around, the only notes I really had (which were rare) was to fix my blocking in a certain scene. And despite all the confidence the others, actors and actresses alike, claim to have, I was always the one who never fretted over making sure they had their lines memorized, knew what their blocking was or if they would make their entrances and exits at the right time. People usually found this odd that I would be the one just sitting backstage in a chair awaiting my entrance during a practice while the others were pacing back and forth worry about not being prepared. I know this probably sounds extremely cocky, but I believe I am one of the best things to happen to that theater department in a while; I have left a definite, deep-seated mark in their tradition. I have received semi-similar comments from a few people who really seem to enjoy my company there, so it cannot only be myself who thinks that way. Also, just in case you have not noticed, there is a old new post below this one if you have not read it yet ... >.>

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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Static Here it is ladies and gentleman, Static. That is the cover to our journalism department's first (and probably only) literary/visual arts magazine. A little bizarre? Indeed, lol, but that is exactly what we wanted. It is personally one of the greatest things I have ever been a part of, in my opinion. The cover is printed on a matte finish, heavy-weight paper; comparable to cardstock, but perhaps a bit more durable. You may notice the babyhead's left eye (its left, not yours) looks a little funky. That is because we have a di-cut in the cover as well, meaning there is a hole there teasing the reader to look on to the next page. This one girl said she could just sit there and flip back and forth between the cover and page one for a while before actually reading the content, lol. The smaller text you cannot read beneath the name "static" says, "confusion enlightenment knowledge explosion." We used those four words to generate a theme to the magazine and each of our four sections was headed with one of them: poetry (confusion), commentary (enlightenment), short stories (knowledge) and visuals (explosion). The sales went very well, in my opinion. We did not sell enough to break even with what it cost us to print this, but for a product that no one has ever heard of before and we were not letting anyone see until our sales were over we did very well, especially considering our audience: 2,500 apathetic students. We were only about 184 copies sort of our financial goal. We needed to sell 720, I think, and we sold 536. We have 2,000 copies of it all together, lol, because it was cheaper to print 2,000 instead of 1,000 for whatever reason. Though we were a bit short in sales, our adviser is debating whether or not to open them up again later. He does not want to simply because he believes it would send the wrong message, that we could not hold ourselves to just the amount of time we did have them being sold. However, there is still the fact this is a new product that no one was suspecting and may not have had money at the time. There is no tradition behind it as there is with purchasing yearbooks. So in that instance he might open them up again closer to the end of the year before seniors leave. The main negative feedback we have gotten on it was simply from one of the staff member's mother who did not like the fact her son's story was changed by our editor. I mean, she really was not happy about it. She was asking for some sort of retraction, or sending copies of the original story to everyone who bought a magazine. We simply said, "No." She argues that she has shown the original story to psychology and English professors at a college she works at and they think it is really good. She fails to see, however, that our audience is not people on that thinking level. Most teenagers are not going to care about any undertone to a story, let alone even see it is there. Let us not forget that her son had plenty of chances to come in and change it himself. He even said he would at times, but never did. We do not even know if he is upset that it is changed. This is just his mother. It is simply the editor's license to freely edit content the way he or she sees fit. We change things all of the time. We even had to cut things out simply so the story would fit the space we had. We did the best we could do with in the time we had (which was very short), and with almost no support from the rest of the staff. When it came to the final stretch about placing the content on pages, editing and developing a style, there were usually no more than four people up there including the adviser with only two computers that can handle the program we use for pages (Adobe InDesign). His mother is trying to cheapen the entire product because of one story ... I remember our adviser just started laugh almost hysterically after he hung up the phone because the entire arguement was just so pathetic. We can understand why should we be upset, but to the measures she is taking it is a bit drastic. Look at the big picture for once: Her son has been part of one of the greatest publications to come out of that school when he hardly deserves to be on staff (because he rarely does any of his work). Anyway, I am extremely satisfied with the product. All of my graphics and illustrations look great and totally kick the ass of our other visual editor's stuff, lol.

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