Foretell...?

Hmm.
So, my Ashes story is what I'm using for my grad project. The disaster that takes place in the story initially starts when a human-caused earthquake (from wastewater injection related to mining) hits the oil storage facility in Cushing Oklahoma.

Today my teacher sent me an article of a human-caused earthquake (from wastewater injection related to mining) that hit near Cushing, Oklahoma, doing significant damage to the town of Cushing.

Man, I gotta be careful what I write, I guess?
If it starts to come true.

In my thesis defense in about a week, I'm going to mention the manga series Coppelion, which is about a Tokyo that has been abandoned doe to nuclear radiation contamination. That series came out a couple years before the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
I wonder if I should mention this to. They probably expect me to add it to my paper.

Best Halloween Decoration Ever

While we were driving the day after Halloween, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, and immediately wanted to check it out.
As it was, I had to backtrack the next day on my bike.
And I'm glad I did.



Hell yes! They dressed up their Skeleton as Papyrus!

I went back the next day (yesterday). I couldn't resist. I had to stick this up next to the skeleton.


I wanted to see what they thought of it, but it would have been weird to lurk around outside their house.
Anyway, that was fun~



And I saw something really cool today!


I think it's a piebald squirrel!
So appropriate too. I was just looking at pictures of other piebald animals. They are really amazing. Especially the peacocks @_@

Scales!

Whoo! New background!
I've been wanting to do this for a while~
To continue the theme of the dragon mascot.

Enthusiasm

The Artist's Way again.

When you're working on a project, discipline is important. It keeps you focused on your work, and on track to get it done.
But discipline can only take you so far. It's still missing something.


Enthusiasm.


Enthusiasm isn't just emotion, although that can be an important part.
Enthusiasm is letting yourself get drawn into the creative process. It lets you appreciate the creativity that surrounds us.

Artists are not disciplined soldiers. Artists are releasing their inner child, and children aren't necessarily the best about discipline.
It's devotion that we really need.
For us, our work can be like our play, because we love it, and we get to unleash that inner child.

Oh Yeah

Hay, I forgot to mention.
Had my practice defense on Monday.
My advisers said I was really well prepared, especially compared to a lot of other students.

So, awesome.

I think I have a date set for my official defense too.

FMA Rules!

I've been steadily increasing the number of anime and manga in my repertoire.
I've gotten hooked on a number of them.
And yet my favorite series remains one of the very first I ever read: Fullmetal Alchemist. The manga, and the Brotherhood anime.
I've read it and seen it several times.
IT is also the only manga that I bought almost entirely new for the whole series. Usually I raid used book stores...

I've been thinking about what makes FMA so awesome. Besides the fact that it's one of the things that originally got me hooked on anime/manga (hey, there's plenty of sentimental value there. For me, that's hard to shake).

Checked around for some other opinions too, to see how ideas compared.

First of all, FMA has great characters. Which is always an extremely important thing.
Ling makes me laugh so much. And Ed and Al are also great.


The development of the world and the system of alchemy is fantastic too.

Also emotion. FMA is a series that can leave you laughing, crying, or gasping with horror within a couple chapters.
Phew. Awesome.


But one thing that, at least to me, makes it stick out from other anime/manga is the timeline.

I'm going to use some other popular series for comparison.
Inuyasha. I enjoyed the first part of this series. I don't know how many volumes there are in the series. It kept my interest up through volume 16. Everything after that was just limping along, dragging out as far as it could go.
This partly has to do with the way manga is serialized, I think. There doesn't seem much encouragement to make the story neat and enclosed, like a book or movie might be. It's more like a TV show, which can go on long after it has ceased to be interesting.
There's plenty of other anime/manga that follow this, but I use Inuyasha because I quite like the beginning. I'm not really into Bleach (though I gave it a really long try), and I haven't gotten into any of the other hyper-long series.

Fullmetal Alchemist does not drag on and on and on. It goes through the story, and it concludes when it is timely for it to conclude. It might be a bit longer than it could be, but whatever.

And another thing I love, everyone in FMA is important. Even the sleazy mine guy in one of the first chapters? Yep. In the end, he's important.
I really really love it when things tie together.

So, go read FMA! It's awesome~

Defense

Been working on my thesis defense (it's not technically a thesis defense, since I didn't do a thesis - I did a project, but I'll call it a thesis defense anyway).
Designing the outline of the slides was pretty fun, actually, because I got to put up lots of pictures from movies like Ponyo, Bambi, Princess Mononoke, and Tomorrowland.

The past couple nights have been dedicated to citing everything. Less exciting.
I'm going down on Monday to do a practice defense. MY real defense should be a couple weeks after that.