arrrrg!! damn you clamp and your cryptic dialogue!!! i need to memorize that one phrase i've heard a few times in different animes, the one that translates to "can't you speak plainly (forthrightly, unequivocally) for once?!" then shout it after every new xxxholic chapter that comes out. geez i feel sorry for the people at del rey who'll have to translate this sheet.

i just saw inuyasha (well, technically, kagome) make an apperance in the big bag theory. i fangirl'd so hard...

forgot my wallet at work last friday and stayed home sick today. most of what i still had in my fridge was chinese food (albiet 4 boxes worth of instant stuff) but no soy sauce. :(

God i want some chocolate. and pizza. mmmm pizza. and some mountain dew/pepsi. or apple juice.

and i think the unbelievable had happened...i am tired of chinese food. @.@ or at least, of chicken fried rice. beef and broccoli i'm not quite ready give up on yet...unless it too is soy sauce less.

in other news, it doesnt look like i can afford to fly or drive home for thanksgiving :( i had expected the tickets to be somewhere are 2-3 hundred bucks, but they turned out to be more like 5-6 hundred. and the time sink/stress required for driving both ways by myself is enough to make even me, extrovert-is-my-middle-name, admit defeat. i had been sooooooo looking forward to seeing my friends, family and most important bryan again i might just shell out that 500 bucks. *cringe* 600 bucks....ew. *sigh*

so i've been marathoning inuyasha lately and i even got an episode in at lunch today where the internet was nice and fast. I felt so proud of myself for being able to just listen to the japanese dialouge and know what was going on without subtitles. and these last couple days i've been listening to so much japanese it's begun to soak into my head again and for the rest of the afternoon my japanglish habit flared up again and i was tumbling over り and　ら till 6. everytime I said anything in japanese and was met with a confused look felt a pang of loss and desire to be back in tokyo with my beloved dormmates and sempai and mary-san.

I am suddenly in japan withdrawl and perhaps I have been for a while. maybe it'll clear up if i take a japanese class again but after looking back through my photos from the trip i realise it's something more. now, i won't deny that there were many lonely and scary and anxious times in tokyo. The coursework was hard and being away from my loved ones even harder. but just as the KCP guidebook suggested, I miss the excitement and adventure and the comradery of being a foreigner in tokyo. i miss the public transit and everyday going to a famous exotic place right out of manga and anime. it's almost like having been transported to london and standing where king arthur and peter pan and sherlock holmes stood. i loved that i could use what i had learned in a practical situation almost immediatly after learning it. it was so rewarding to listen to the voiceover on the train everyday and understand more and more of the message every week.

and just now i feel struck as if by a bolt of loneliness, remembering some of the pain i went through even while in that magical city. I wish bryan and i could go to KCP together and learn more japanese so that i had someone else to talk to who had been through the same thing. I wish bryan knew some japanese so i could rattle off the phrases so pleasing to my tongue and take joy in being understood, especially by the love of my life.

all the friends i had from KCP are from faraway states, no one was from the midwest but me.

wait...wait...WAITAMINUTE. two of the girls from my dorm are from new england...how could i forget? one is from upstate new york and one is from conneticuit! I should see if they're up for a mini reunion!

recently i've been eagerly watching the new episodes of inuyasha on hulu. I then realised that while i've read all the manga there are alot of fluffy hilarious filler anime episodes i've missed, so i've marathoning the pointless or especially romantic episodes and i am so HAPPY that i did! the ones where he spends time in kagome's world are the BEST!!! the four that are now my absolute favorite are the 2 where inuyasha disrupts kagome's cultural fest at school (127-128), the one where he trashes her bike and meets her friends (160), and the one where he runs around tokyo saving people (includes the infamous naked inuyasha scene) (82).

although right now i'm watching 161, the episode where miroku fights a catfish who's trying to take sango as his bride and i'm mildly upset at a spot in the translation. at one point in the show, miroku is trying to convince a young girl that she doesn't actually want to marry him while the others wait outside the house and comment. in the original, inuyasha cites an old japanese saying "a man cannot refuse the food placed before him" which i think sounds kinder than what the dub translates it to. in the english language version he says "only a fool refuses a woman who offers herself" which i think is alot harsher and way less in character for inuyasha. arrrg and then the girl's FATHER repeats the line?!? geez. i dunno, but the original phrase seems like it's reffering not only to taking the girl herself but also the lifestyle and prestige entering the girl's family would give, not to mention the children miroku longs for. maybe that's worse, but the Viz translation implys all miroku would want is the girl's body. oh well. this is the episode where miroku gets all passionate over sango, so it's way worth finishing.

and actual;ly i'm pretty sure this episode marks where miroku gets really serious about sango and finally learns how badly his womanizing affects his relationship. (or in this case, even his repuation as a womanizer) it's weird but i really believe this episode is the definative point where he stops considering other women. i mean, he's had multiple other episodes to have the point thrown at him, it's been a process for him to reach this state of maturity and commitment to sango. i think in the beginning or their courtship he couldnt believe that sango would actually go through with being the mother of his children, couldnt believe he could have a future with her that would fufill his dreams of fatherhood. so he'd still wander in his thoughts and hands believing he still needed to generate a legacy before he died. it's probably been just as big a learning experiance for him to discover he was capable of a steady monogamous relationship.

it;s kinda funny, in love, inuyasha's strengths are that he is fiercely loyal, protective, possessive and steadfast (i was gonna say patient...he did wait 3 years for kagome, and most of the series for kikyo, but patient and inuyasha's name seem weird next to each other XD). his weaknesses are that he isn't in touch with his feelings, is stubborn, slow to affection (sooo DAMN SLOW), emotionally dense, indescisionate and brash. Miroku's love stats are almost the opposite, he's overly affectionate, eloquent, charming, forgiving but also flighty, haphazard, transient, manipulative and flirtatious. those two could (and i believe have) probably learn(ed) alot from one another.

ahh, watching inuyasha again, drawing inuyasha again, reading my old saved fanfiction is such a pleasant, nostalgic indulgance. it really takes me back and makes me fall in love with the series all over again. such good times we had in high school obsessing over inuyasha.

here's a shout out to my girl Erin, whom shared alot of my obsession back in the day. good times, good times. you know, i'd almost blame inuyasha for my enjoyment in learning japanese history. CCS might have brought me to love anime in general, but inuyasha inspired alot of my japanese-culture-specific interests.

I'm having a mild identity crises, i've been using alot of photoshop while here at hasbro and recently started using illustrator again for some logo work...and whenever i'm in illustrator i think of something i need that only photoshop can do and when i'm in photoshop i think of things only illustrator can do!!

going to bed after finally finsihing my lame halloween costume. damn hasbro for doing its costume contest on thursday instead of friday. and curse my inability to let a chance to dress up go by.

also,

dear closet,

I miss you and your racks of my favoritest clothing in da world: costumes. I miss you japanese stuff, ren fair stuff and cosplay stuff. oh sewing machine, i miss you most of all. if only you were here with me i wouldnt have had to hand sew felt lollipops to a goodwill dress I won't touch again for at least 8 months. or spend 20 dollars on giant rainbow lollipops to attach to a pair of children's fairy wings. or be stuck with a suspicious glue taste on my tongue.

yours, zab

zabchan's Halloween party:

aeirol dressed as a monster from a Silent Hill game.
arielavader dressed as the President of Taiwan.
awolfwhowrites dressed as Mr. Spock from "Star Trek".
digitailgurl dressed as the Vicomte des Boules-Velues.
dravit dressed as a new member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Thunderous Dominator.
driley1 dressed as Marie Antoinette going to her death.
estalio dressed as Marilyn Manson.
fuzzy_squish dressed as Sigfried in need of testosterone.
gettingspam dressed as Claudia Schiffer riding a badger.
grungivaldi dressed as the resurrected dead -- complete with the most convincing coffin.
iharthdarth dressed as Josephine Baker but the banana "skirt" didn't survive the night.
imbrii dressed as your cousin.
likeredgold dressed as Chandra Levy - tarred and feathered.
lucid_dr34ming dressed as Mary-Kate Olsen with her very own conjoined Ashley.
maramijade dressed as a lampshade.
pyro_turk dressed as Mde. Lachienne Foutue d'Enfer -- you don't wanna know, though it looked more like a rainbow fish.
raisexyourxhead didn't dress up, spoilsport.
rufftoon dressed as a bottle of Prevqueiqua.
sakuraxchan dressed as Nosferatu the Supreme Vampire.
silvander dressed as a velocity.
smallredfox dressed as Helga the wisewoman, although the live snake was a mistake.
tab_sempai dressed as Optimus Prime, and it suited them all too well.
toastyeggs didn't dress up, spoilsport.
ubervirgin dressed as Jennifer Lopez.
unicornbee dressed as a pixie.
vixen_in_purple gets drunk, strips naked, and somehow emerges dressed as the Dreadful Power Ranger.
waterkittie dressed as Sybil - except that Sybil didn't show but the other 24 personalities did.
xxbloodyxlovexx dressed as a pixie.
zell_chan dressed as a linebacker for the Colts.

Throw your own party at the Hallomeme!
Created by sigma7: More info here.

something I picked up while bored at work. I lol'd.


Graphic Designer Humour
posted by cx_ed, Apr 25, 2007 8:38 AM — 13 comments

(In no particular order)

1. You've almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.

2. You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.

3. You'd rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend's shirt than listen to what he/she has to say.

4. You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can't type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard.

5. You've had "Software Nightmares," when you've been working way too much.

6. You consider meals interruptions.

7. You've learned your lesson and stopped using the word "final" in any file name when saving.

8. You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.

9. You've intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers.

10. You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix.

11. You'd rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer.

12. When you heard that Adobe was aquiring Macromedia, you had a Design Orgasm.

13. When you look at Album art all you see are grunge Photoshop Brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple minutes later)

14. You've Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up.

15. You've actually $paid for a font.

16. You've totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer)

17. The amount of words you've written with a sharpie labeling burned discs total more than the amount of words you've read in novels.

18. You've had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn't part of the deal.

19. You've kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it.

20. You've nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately)spinning beachball o’ death

21. You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town.

22. You've intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away.

23. You can't go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.

24. You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper.

25. If you had a penny for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago.

26. You have removed the arrows and cleaned up the fonts on a forwarded mail before forwarding on


I have not yet had to pay for a font although I came damn close last quarter. (the project turned out better for it. also bryan doesn't wear enough paisley shirts

first off, exciting news: theyre finally finishing inuyasha the anime!!! the manga finished quite some time ago but the anime dropped off waaay before, and now theyre finally going back and finishing the series! i knew that this was in the works about a month ago, but i had no idea that the anime was so close to being aired! aaand viz media is apperantly going to air it online for free! (at least i'm pretty sure it's viz media) shonensunday.com and here's the link for the preview.

http://shonensunday.com/video/index.shtml#inuyasha

i squee'd. i'm really happy because as much as i like the manga, the anime handles the romantic scenes and context way better than rumiko takehashi does. i cant wait to see the emotionally charged ending in moving color! <3

in other news: my money troubles have abated and things got painfully resolved thanks to an impomptou loan from bryan and my first hasbro paycheck. i am having an absolute blast here at hasbro designing and playing games all day. i cant go into detail due to my nondisclosure contract but everyday i get to playtest some new goodie, and best of all i get paid to sit around and draw! :3

my debit card has been missing for a few days, i called it in as lost and their mailing me a new one. the reason this sucks is because to check into the hotel hasbro is paying for i need a credit/debit card in case of damages. the debit card is theoretically supposed to come to my house in cincinnati in 6 days...which is too late, as i leave on the 19th. i was planning on forwarding my mail to the hotel in MA, but if i cant check in to the hotel next saturday...

i'm calling my hr contact to see what we can do. hmmm i do still have my citibank card i used in japan....as long as they dont try and take money from the card....i'll check that out tomorrow...

i am wallowing is so much self hate right now...i am once again broke and it took me by complete surprise.

i was an idiot and wasnt watching my bank account after my projects came due. i kept spending my loan money on project materials and paying back people who had loaned me money earlier this quarter for more project supplies. i paid them and my rent with checks and then forgot to keep track of those checks. after my quarter ended i was just so relieved to have school done with i went and spent about 200$ on myself, believing i had plenty to cover it still, forgetting about the 1000$ worth of checks that were yet to be cashed, including my rent. i might still be recieving a final paycheck from uc, but i dont think it'll be enough.

i hate myself for not keeping an accurate idea of my bank account in my head. i hate myself for being in debt again. i hate myself for running back to bryan for money after he lost his job. i hate that he helped me so much last quarter because he thought he'd have a job for a long time. i hate myself for being such an idiot. a penniless idiot. over and over again i find myself broke and stressing out waiting for that loan check or next coop paycheck. i applied for a credit card recently, when i thought i had money, because in the past having overdraft charges accumulate, due to my having a debit card, has been a big problem.

ugh i hate myself

goddamn computer craSHED making me lose 1.5 hours of work goddamnitallthehell. <20 hours left to do all my projects in time for my final critique tomorrow.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa

hate my life right now....so much.

just a short post to get the news out so i can sart mentioning it in casual conversation: I got my ideal Co-op option this fall at Hasbro!!!!!!!

i get to design FUN THINGS! and hasbro owns wizards of the coast i believe so there's a chance i'll get to work on THE GAMES ME AND MY FRIENDS ALREADY PLAY! and the entire design culture at hasbro is very geek/ dungeons and dragons/video games so i'll be amoung my own people!!

other perks include hasbro paying for me to live out of a hotel the entire 3 months, and if they end up giving me a suite-mate it'll most likely be with this industrial design student i already know, racheal (oz's girlfriend).

what it does mean, is that from september 23rd to sometime before christmas i'll be in east longmeadow massachusetts. and it's a 12 hour drive from cincinnati, so anytime i wanna attend something in cincinnati it's have to be either sunday or saturday and i get monday or friday off for driving time. so it's more likely that people won't see me at all during that time unless they drive up to me XP

had two interviews for next quarter's co-op today, one downtown at blue whitespace on 4th and one at halter design on colarein ave about 5-10min from my house. the blue whitespace interview was rather awkward...i must ahve been nervous or something because i kept repeating myself and gebnerally being inarticulate. it didnt help that the woman interviewing me was very down-to-business and inresponsive when I showed her my portfolio.

the second interview was much better and i actually had alot of fun talking to the two designers who were there. the lead designer gave me advice on my resume and said that i was one of the view who showed any drawing work and that was one of the strong points in the portfolio. he's worked quite a bit at hasbro and designed toys and things at quite a few other places which i found very interesting. I ended up being half an hour early for that interview and the three of us actually ended up filling an hour with good conversation. they thought I justified many of my pieces well. I have high hopes for a position with them, especially now that i know that the company i interviewed with friday chose someone else. my halter interview felt..natural somehow, casual and interesting and with much the same vibe as i remember my successful chiquita interview being. I also discovered that everyone who works there is a believer and that seems a good omen. not to mention that they asked about my japanese XP

my fear however is that halter is interviewing all 10 of the graphic students who applied and lord knows how many industrial design students as well. and i fear that since the lead interviewing design is of an ID background he'll gravitate toward those students. however he seems to really value being able to sketch ideas and communicate well visually, which he praised me on.

ok so recently I discovered Dexter's Laboratory. I was reading back through bleedman's PowerPuff Girl doujinshi and paying close attention to dexter and blossom's relationship. If any of you liked cartoon network as a kid i recommend bleedman's comics to you as he takes CN characters like grim, billy, mandy, dexter, PPGs, courage the dog, invader zim, gir, samurai jack etc and gives them an epic anime style world to run around in and have adventures.

anyway, so i was reading the comic and thinking 'man, this dexter guy kicks ass! i wonder if he's like this in his show?' so of course i spent most of the day having dexter's lab running in the background as i worked on stuff.

i have come to fall just the teensiest bit in love with dexter. that accent! that lab coat! the glasses! the geekety! the fact he cosplays kirk to go to star trek conventions! and his password to his secret lab is occasionally 'star wars'(...as if no one who guess THAT one...)!

and of course i watched the movie where dex meets all his future selves before watching the series...in which grown up dex is a bearded bespeckled badass who reminds me of weapon brown.(google it)

anyway, all this mild fangirling led me to drawn pics of various ages of dexter with blossom, and then watch lots of powerpuff girls Z, and the original PPGs, and then finally, to play Fusion Fall the 'free' MMORPG that CN put out that's a giant crossover world. (makes me wonder if bleedman got hired to work on it...or got his ideas stolen)

anyway, it turned out to be surprisingly fun. my char is so cute! and i love seeing all the CN chars grown up by about 5-8 years, especially dex and the PPGs, and i look forward to meeting Mandy, Grim, Blossom, Samurai Jack and AKUUUUUUUUUU. another plus is that the entire world is very anime-esque, which unifies alot of the various CN character styles and really makes it feel like one world instead of a disneyland-esqe CN themepark. the combat and moving system is pretty nice and the UI is reasonable if not exactly Blizzard-level intuitive.

if i was on co-op (or maybe even after i get my loan) I would seriously consider subscribing to this game, especially as it seems to only be 6$ a month or so. the free version only gets you to like, level 4, and the subscription takes you to lvl28 so far. (with more in the works as this starts to look profitable i imagine)

and here is my char:



maybe soon i will put up pics of some of the chars i run into.

my new laptop is so very very shiney. I have named it casanova, because it is so
sexyfine "and even this potent word can not truly describe how beautiful I am." it even has patent leather detail!


in other news i'm back at daap and oddly happy to be there. i have some fun projects this quarter although I find it difficult to transition between projects sometimes. i'll get excited and working on one project for a while and when it's time to make progress on another class's assignment i end up floundering. *shrug* it just takes a bit of readjusting.

my projects this quarter are to design a paper "educational" toy, redesign or create a book or magazine, design a book around photography taken with a traditional 4x5 B&W camera, and apply a series of icons that we designed in the previous drawn design class to something marketable. I had a set of american desert animal icons that i'm applying to a line of salsas, hot sauces and chip dip. this is the project i can't seem to get motivated about. maybe because we're coming up with a whole style guide and design system to go with our product, and it seems a bit overwhelming. oddly enough, the project i had been dreading, the paper toy, seems the most inviting, now that i have two concepts that have really good potential.

in prep for the paper toy project i watched read or die. XD in prep for the photo project (in which i'm photographing the kimono i bought in japan) i watched memoirs of a geisha. now i guess i need to come up with things to watch for my other two in order to get motivated. X)

lessie....something with southwestern animals like eagles, coyotes, jackrabbits, scorpions, lizards and cacti....or something with spicy snack foods...

and for my book project i'm redesigning a book called "anime classics zettai! 100 must-see animation masterpieces." i guess for that one i need to watch through everything the book recoomends!! >.<

actually the challenge with the anime book is decided how to represent the vast range of genres anime spans, and then to collect the images from the various series.

alright, i guess i've stalled the inevitable long enough

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!


i am posting this to you live from my new studio xps laptop!!!!

es so preeeetty

You’re not supposed to think too long or too hard on this one.

List 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you – list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don’t take too long to think about it.

1. memoirs of a geisha
2. the return of the king
3. thud by terry pratchett
4. gone with the wind
5. the oracle glass
6. dragon sword, wind child
7. the dawn treader by cs lewis
8. joust by mercedes lackey
9. the little princess
10. dragonsong by anne mccaffery

i could prolly do another 15 just of manga...and another 15 more books.

got alot of work done on my neglected black sheep problem child 10 page paper for mayan royal courts

got week extension on problem child paper (YAAAAAY!!!)

dell has shipped my new laptop it will arrive somewhere between friday and monday in dayton
(another reason to go up there next week

other than finishing and emailing in paper, this quarter is over for me :D

bryan's parent's out of town today and tomorrow, so i get to sleep over at bryan's (with air conditioning) tonight.

had chinese food for dinner

had bryan for dessert XP

....twice

got to snuggle with bryan and feel reassured in our relationship. we've been fighting alot lately and I think it's because i'm depressed and moody and more likely to take things the wrong way. we talked for a long time about how he felt when he had to switch colleges and didn't have a job....comparing it to my current quarter where i'm depressed because i feel like nothing i do matters....none of my classes are contributing to my degree at this point. and that feeling of futility in school bleeds out into the other areas of my life, as illogical as that is. we talked and i feel like things will be better once i get back into daap classes, i'll feel like i'm moving again and i'll be back in that environment of discipline and design that i've missed. (well i'm not sure i can say i've missed the discipline....) it probably doesnt immediately explain how i feel reassured about our relationship, but it felt amazing to hear that bryan understood perfectly what i was going through...and reassuring to remember that i'll be back on track soon, and that there is a solution to this particular brand of downcastity. (not a real word.)



it's nice to have such a good day in comparison with yesterday's craptastic one, what with the buckets-of-water-from-the-sky and stinging hail storm we had yesterday i had to walk home through then clean up the flooded bathroom one of the housemates had neglected to close once the rain started
D:< and of course it's my month to clean the bathroom....

and i was still freaking out because i hadn't heard back from my prof about the extension request and was working my ass off as if it were due tomorrow. and to top it all off, WoW was down all day and i couldn't raid XD

but today was good.

for some reason I am afraid of designing my resume.

or i should say redesigning it, as i theorically have one...it's just lame and out of date. i'm afraid because a a designer i should have the most kick-ass designed piece of resume ever...i'm afraid of the fine line between boring and elegantly simple, and then the other line of unique, creative and trying too hard, being confusing.

i also need to have a go at the porfolio sometime too, i need pages for my time at chiquita and an ikasucon page. i'd like to have a japan photography page too but i'm scratching my head on whether or not to try and 'design' the photos i took and give them some kind of purposeful text. i also have my last daap quarter's work to put in. the big thing is the chiquita work. its just alot to go through.

what intimidates me about these projects is that the portfolio and resume have such a huge expectation attached to them. theyre suppose to represent all that is desirable and marketable about me and can be easily 85% of the decision to hire a designer. (i'll throw the other 15% to luck and good vibes)


ugh i'll deal with it after i finish this research paper. maybe the week after the quarter's out. (since all my exams are in end-of-term-paper format rather than actual test i'll have a week to throw at it before disney if i like.)

'sides i won't need this stuff till midsummer.