The New Angle

So. I haven't been updating my Blog recently. That's because I found out last Thursday I have Lymphoma (there's still some question about weather or not it's Hodgkin's). I think my blog is going to start getting more personal.

My Reader(s) should he/she chose to continue reading my blog is going to get the day to day (or at least weekly) Scoop on what it's like to have a 90% curable cancer, in as up beat a read as I can manage.

Here goes...

Last Tuesday I had a lymph node removed to do a biopsy. Then last Thursday the results came back positive for Lymphoma.

Yesterday I got my Hair colored, and now it's teal and dark dark brown. I feel pretty cool right now. I know though that I was only aloud to do this at all, because chemotherapy will most likely cause it to all fallout. For now I'm just going to enjoy it though.

Tomorrow I'm going to Children's and UAMS so they can do a full battery of different tests. The goal is to find out what stage I am, and they want to give a second opinion on weather or not it is Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

I'm totally scared right now..

I have to get a CT scan and a PET scan.

Me, the claustrophobic blogger.

in a tube of noise..

anyways.. the diet I have to be on for a PET scan is ridiculous. For lunch today I had sauteed Mushrooms, broccoli and cauliflower over eggs. NO salt, NO cheese, NO milk...

...so lame...

so that's what I've been holding back.

The Sketchbook Part 2 of 2

So this is the second half of the images currently in my sketchbook. I will of course continue to draw in my sketchbook, and it's no where near full. As a fair number of works are drawn I will upload and display those too.

"Animal Kingdom Dominatrix"

This Art work was originally of a naked woman kneeling. Then one day in my Environmental Science Class as we were watching a "Plant Earth" installment I noticed a particularly bossy penguin. He was keeping all the other penguins in line, and I thought to myself, "what a Nazi." As soon as the thought came into my mind I knew I had to draw it and since there was all that bank space next to the woman I, Naturally, placed him there. I was then asked by a local graphic artist to share some of my work with him. (I knew he was christian, because he went to church with my mother) In the hope of possibly getting a job, or even an apprenticeship I made all the "scandalous" works into less "scandalous" pieces. The woman then got clothing, and to keep the drawing humorous I made her shirt say PETA. Now with all the changes the message is something like "just because there are people who want to treat animals ethically don't mean there are necessarily Animals for the Ethically Treatment of People)

"Tea Time in the Mother Country"

 This is a picture or a tea set. This picture was originally entirely different. I erased the entire original piece for fear of embarrassing the baptists. (my mother and the Graphic Artist) This page of my sketchbook originally had a drawing of a tattoo.

"The Truth about Love"

In this picture I use the hearts to represent lovers. Then the arrows, and the black and white to represent good and bad. The symbol means that love has it's ups and it's downs and it's goods and it's bads. 

"The Lovers Alchemist"

This was a concept sketch for a painting of a black board with all these math equations and symbols that led one to believe someone was working on the science of love.

"Monitor head Ballerina"

except or the swirls at the woman's feet this picture was completely redone during my self-censoring. It was a woman naked, and it seemed mythical.

"Mannequin Fish-tank"

I don't know what to say that the picture hasn't covered

"They're Gone"

This picture was inspired by a nightmare I had, in which; there was nothing but darkness. Then this girl appeared and I asked her where everyone was, and she said, "They're Gone." I then asked what she ment by "gone" and she told me she had killed them all. When I was angry with her she sat down, and wailed. Then I woke up.

"50/50"

This is one of the first sketches I've did of the first tattoos I'd like to get. I have struggled my whole life to understand the concept of good versus evil and even fought with in the events that have taken place, so it seems suiting that I commit that to my skin. Tattoos aren't just for misfits and criminals, and I think they are an amazing way to remind myself of what I've conquered.

"2012"

Most creative thinkers have epiphanies from time to time. This drawing is a prime example of one of mine. I may have 5 times while drawing this. from start to finish it was a steady movement of the pencil. 

"The Hearts of Good, and Evil"

In this work I drew a heart, half evil and half good. I then drew the darkness over taking the light. In a biblical sense it is what's to occur before the coming of christ.

"Cheeky Self Portrait"

I drew this while waiting for my hair appointment. It was my first and only attempt to date of a self portrait drawn from a mirror's reflection.

"Coy Kate"

This was one of my attempts to copy a photo to paper. It just happens to be that the photo I was attempting to copy was of me.

"The Flowers"

Inspired by a song that Regina Spektor sings with the same name.

"Wardrobe Chomp Down"

I drew this picture as a joke for my English teacher (Mrs. Ward, whom I adore and admire), she was discussing who might find Lady GaGa's meat dress attractive, and when she decided that it could only be a predator she then asked one of the artists in her class to draw that.

"Lung Cancer"

I drew this while thinking of a friend of mine who smokes a pack a day at age 17.

"The Phobia"

This piece began simply to freak a classmate out, and within the span of one school day evolved into one of my better works.

"Self-Portrait"

This is an expressive piece that I was drawing while feeling as if my exterior tricks many people into loving only so I can some how hurt them.

"Edison's Epiphany"

I drew this while bored in history. My motivation was sheer steampunk love.

"Souvenir to a God"

Medusa's head in a jar.


(I will post more when there are more works to be posted)

My Strange Little Brain

So it seems that all my personal Revelations on this topic happen in Math class. This time our teacher was setting up a gravity word problem on the projector.
He said, "If you throw a rock..."
as he trailed off for a considerable amount of time I interjected, "then you must be sinless." under my breath.
there was a long silence throughout the whole classroom (okay, so not as quietly as I had thought. DRAM!) After the silence turned into chuckles my teacher asked, "You don't ever stop thinking do you?"
He continued with math without me answering.

It sucks how right, he doesn't know, he is. I am ALWAYS thinking. It's only fun a fourth of the time too.

Why Thinking ALL THE TIME sucks:

• It makes meditation impossible
• When I'm sad there's never enough to distract me from thinking about what's upsetting me, which in turn further depresses me
• when I walk out of a movie theater with my date I want to analyze the plot line and talk about symbolism and it's relation to the movie as a whole
  (usually when i start to do that my date's eyes get big, and they look intimidated, or they'll say something like, "Kate, you know it's just a movie. Right?") 
• My jokes seem less funny, because they take the average person to long to understand
• I look like a smart ass* in class when I speak up to answer a question, and find out that everyone else knew way less about a given topic
• I second guess problems with simple solutions
  (this applies to school and my life in general. Extra trivia- it's also the reason I wasn't very useful for the quiz bowl team)
• I give very complicated advice, which; often renders it useless to the person whom I am advising
• I get side tracked when speaking
  (this happens in a great number of ways, but the two most common are having to define a word I used, and then having to define the synonym, and sometimes supply even that definition with another one, and when I tell a story I feel the need to give background information as I go, and then I usually fail to complete the original story.)

*Note to Self- Find a Nerdy word to use in place of "ass"

The artistic insomniac

   There are days, like today, where I partially wish I were of simple mind and not at all creative. These days are rare, and happily so. These days are the ones were I'm so tired that it becomes almost unbearable. I'm sure everyone's experienced at least one day like that by my age, but I am not meaning to keep myself awake. My mom would probably tell you that I do this to myself, because it's summer and that I never put my phone down, not even to sleep, and that I'm always on my laptop. As much as I'd like for that simple reason to be the truth it's simply not. I haven't had more than 7 hours of sleep in the past 2 months. My body's actually used to me usually running on 6 hours all the time, but here lately I've been getting any where from 6-1/2 hours of sleep in a night. I know exactly what's keeping me up too. It's my brain. I can't make it shut up.

   Now I know there's a medical solution to that, but I'm truly not interested in a dependency on sleeping meds (even herbal based ones) to be able to sleep. When I move out and do the dirt poor college kid thing I don't want to have to worry about having to buy a bottle of rest every 30-60 days. ADHD meds are going to be expensive enough. I've tried soothing music, and that just caused me to think even more.

   My brain seems to believe that the best time to have deep philosophical thoughts, and amazing creative ideas is as I'm right at the edge of consciousness and sleeping. Then I am awake writing it down, or drawing a rough sketch. When my mind isn't creating it's over analyzing. I worry about things that are silly. For example when I tried to sleep last night I began thinking about upcoming events, and before I knew it I was up, and placing every date I needed to remember on my iPhone calendar.
 
   I wish that my brain would realize that night is for thinking, and that when I sit at a desk with my journal and my sketchbook is when the creative thinking is to be done. I know it doesn't work that way, and it never will. It would be nice though.

   Since I'm already wide awake, which did cause me to cry a tad and think to myself in a mental whimper, "I just want to be able to sleep..", I guess I will think some more. I wonder how many great minds have actually ever managed the sleep well. I can't answer that of course, but I do have a few that I think are least likely.

Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Wolfe, Edgar Allen Poe, and Carl Sagan.

   I'm plenty sure that their aren't many true intellectuals that haven't suffered insomnia at some point in their lives. I don't mean to imply that I am nearly as visionary as any of the aforementioned minds. I am not nearly so pompous. Actually I should probably think I'm closer to their greatness than I do. That's what happens when I think so much, and yet I think so little of myself.

   I know this post, like the others before it, will seem babbley (yeah I just made that word up), but it wouldn't be truly me if it weren't "babbley", all over the place, and hard to follow. This post may even read less smoothly than the others. Well except for the pencil-sharpener post, (I'm so sorry web of the world far, and wide for using even a single bit of data to publish that gem), incidentally; that post was written on a day when I was more exhausted than I currently am.

Here's what caused me to sleep poorly two nights ago:

   I am still running full speed locomotive in my head, but I think anything else I'd have to say would be completely unrelated to my inability to sleep.

Me VS Myself

It's strange to be both Logical and Creative. I have a brain that won't even do both equally all the time. My mind works were I'm either in a mostly Logic based state of mind, or I am in a mostly Creative mindset. I think war is a good way to describe what goes on mentally my first few hours awake everyday. What I mean by that is the two sides of thinking seem to collide and which ever one is stronger that morning generally controls my whole day. It's almost like having two completely different personalities in the same pretty wrapping.

The Sketchbook 1 of 2

This is the first entry with pictures!!

I'm going to post all my artworks and give a short description and Explanation

"Living Hell"

 This is the very first picture in my sketchbook.

I drew it for a 6"x6" art contest.

The idea actually came from a very similar nightmare.

"A beautiful fallout"

This was a concept drawing for a tattoo.

"I'm late, I'm late!"

In this picture I've included a lot of my personal artistic fixation. 

the pocket watch, a leafless tree, death, an antique key, and the miss placed little girl.

"The 'perfect' form"

I also have focused on mannequins in the past months. 

This was a concept sketch for a final project in my Art Class.

"The internal beauty debate"

In this image there's a "normal" shaped woman form on the far left.

The center mannequin is that same woman being prep'ed for plastic surgery to because "perfect".

The 3rd mannequin is the woman who now looks perfect, but is now very sad.

"Manic Mannequins"

This is the very last of the sketches I did before I did the in class project.

This sketch is also the most like my actual piece.

"The heart of good vs evil"

There are many drawings like this one throughout my sketchbook.

I drew this one originally because it was for that same class assignment,

but I have my most serious artistic fixation on the struggle between good and evil.

"The Monstrous Conglomerate of Horrors"

 

All I can say for this one is that the whole time I was drawing it I was asking the guy next to me in that class "what am I drawing?" His guess was as good as any I can provide. 

It's a She-Zombie-Pirate-Were-Nazi in a post nuclear fallout cheer squad.

"The Sharkish Maiden"

This picture was inspired by the "The Little Mermaid" and "Shark Tales" 

It's a Mermaid that also has DNA of a shark

"Get a Clue"

It was Mrs. Peacock In the Library with The candle stick. End of story.

"30 Minute Meals with Rachel Ray"

This didn't actually start out as a drawing of what I think of Rachel Ray. 

This started out as me trying to draw a guy one of my friends described from his nightmare. 

Then as it continued to develop it turned into social commentary.

My Hobby is Collecting Hobbies

By that I mean that over the years I've accumulated many many hobbies. I'll try to make a quick list:

• Learning to play the Piano
• Scrap booking
•  Card Making
• Sewing
• Cross Stitching
• Knitting
• Playing Video Games
• Super Mario Brothers 64
• Pokemon Stadium
• Mario Kart 64
• Tetris
• Nintendo DS
• World of Warcraft
•  Coding
• Blogging
• Journaling
• Cooking
• Softball
• Collecting
• Shells
• Rocks
• Pez Dispensers
• First Edition Hardback Novels
• Vampire themed Media (books, Movies, art)
• Stickers
• Stamps
• Comic books
• Learning to Play the Guitar
• Drawing
• Painting
• Photography
• Sculpting

And so you see as a 17 year old I have Collected many hobbies. I think that even though I have spent a great deal of money on this collection it is worth the money. Often my family joke that I never stick to a hobby for long, but the knowledge earned from all my hobbies is very useful when combined. I know how to barter now from collecting comics so I can code a web page for someone in exchange for less expensive art supplies which I can use to paint a picture for a greater total profit. I also really like blogging because I had many good ideas that weren't being done justice when I just wrote them in my journal. I have some ideas that I feel deserve to be posted where others may one day find them. I am proud of my Hobby collection.

ubr l33t kydz -vs- supr n00bz

  I've managed to get my working on this blog to be considered a class project. I will be getting credit for working on it in and out of the classroom. Which is pretty much amazing. I'm getting A's for learning; how to compose a blog post, how to code a completely original blogger template, how to create blog elements from the ground up, while limiting my use of others graphic resources, and how to be a complete nerd for all the World Wide Web to see. I RULE!! Speaking of nerdy I've decided that I'm going to substitute all sorts of nerdy words for curse words. (i.e. God *DRAM it! What the **Frack? What a ***RIMM job! and so on....) 

I guess now that I'm on the topic of nerdy-ness I will inform my reader that I also play World of Warcraft (though many tell me I do so poorly :P), and I guess when I say "I play World of Warcraft" I should also inform the reader (my 1 reader) that I used to play WoW, because I currently do not have a computer with the means to run WoW. (My laptop is a hand-me-down of Jurassic proportions. Meaning I update my blog on a Dell-osaurus Rex. Okay, Fine!..... My laptop is old. That's what I'm saying.) Sadly I was still able to play WoW 9 days ago, and I still have a good 20 days left of subscription. (/emo hair swoosh) Lame. I guess I need to stop relying on other people's computers to play my video games. As I keep typing I'm realizing that this post has very little point to it. (yet I'll still click post, because I don't know how to make it have a point and I've already typed this far.) I have a feeling I know why there's no answer answer the the rhetoric annalist's question, "so what?". I think it's because Anthropologically the most pressing matter on my mind does not belong on a blog to float freely along the World Wide Whatever for all to see.


*Dynamic random-access memory
**originated Battlestar Galactica
***Rambus Inline Memory Module 

The Breakdown

So hello Internet this is my first blog post (unless you count xanga in the late nineties and the early 2000's, which obviously I don't). Now I don't read a whole lot of blogs and I don't expect I'll ever have many reader, for this reason I feel that I shouldn't have to introduce myself in length seeing as how I'll end up being my only reader. This vlog is not likely to be as structured as I want because I have some semblance of a life. (though obviously not enough to keep me from having a blog)I digress; most of my blog posts will be completely random but there are a few blog posts that I will be reoccurring:


Roadkill Roundup-
This is where I take a morbid fact of the number of roadkill sightings I've seen and attempt to make it humorous


Possible Band Names-
This is where I choose one of my possible band name ideas and see where it takes me


My favorite Stumble Upon links-
Self explanatory, I'd hope.


As for the rest of the posts, it's really anyone's guess and so with that I caution you.


I know that you spell blog B-L-O-G. Mine isn't spelled V-L-O-G because it sounds like something a Bram Stoker character would call a Internet blog. I am calling this a vlog with the hopes of eventually having video blog updates (just as soon as I can figure out how to do so without coming off whiny or have to dawn the fake British accent and degrading low-cut shirt with witty humor.)


Huzzah! and that is all. 

Over Thinking

I just don't think I'll ever understand the hopeful scientist who encouraged me to think less


Everything Has It's Place!!

*My Pencil Sharpener*


I keep my metal artist quality manual pencil sharpener separate from my pencils. (maybe, since this topic will be obscure as is, there should be some background.)


Background Information:


(I went to sharpen my pencil for Algebra II, and, due to the storm last night, that knocked out the school's power, the electric sharpener did not sharpen anything. No, in fact; it sat there plugged into the outlet, and taunted me. As a solution I pulled out my handy dandy manual sharpener, from my junk bag, (originally used as a clinique makeup bag), in my giant purse. As I retrieve the sharpener, i realize that is would be more time efficient to not have it in a separate location from my pencils.)


I sat and pondered a moment as to why it was that I kept it in my junk bag, and my brain pulls up a mental list. (it was fracking weird! it even looked oddly PDF-like) So below I'm going to attempt a recreation of my Brain generated file.



Why the pencil sharpener is in your Purse

Written and Edited by Your Brain


You love that sharpener.


You don’t want to lose that pencil sharpener.


You take your purse (w/ pencils) everywhere, and you only carry you pencil holder (inside your book bag) to school.


There’s a MUCH greater likelihood you’ll need a pencil sharpener when you’re outside of the educational environment. (I.e.: The Park, The Mall, That one Chick’s Bedroom, The Men’s Restroom, ect.)


High-Schoolers have little to no moral or ethical groundings, and would likely steal that sharpener. (w/ precious few exceptions)

Things that aren’t in a 50 foot radius of you, outside of your bedroom, have a 200% higher chance of being lost, or forgotten by you. (w/ a direct rate of increase dependent upon number and severity of hindrances such as lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of ADHD medication, excess of stress and/or excess of sadness)
Since you hold your purse closer to your physiognomy* which allows it to be much more easily seen then you backpack you have an even greater decrease in risk of loss.
Keeping your sharpener in your purse further prevents you from losing it simply due to the fact that you think “why do I keep my pencil sharpener here, in my purse?” every time you retrieve it to go to sharpen a/some pencil(s) with it. (the question is significant to your ability to keep the sharpener because it’s scientifically proven that if you question something you’re more likely to remember the a fore mentioned specimen of inquiry. [Questioning the Sharpener’s location = Remembering the Sharpener’s location.])


*Hawthornese for face, and my english teacher would be so proud.





If you are sitting there after having read this whole post and you don't understand why I wrote it, or you don't see the irony then I'm not sure this is the blog for you. I do promise though that not all my posts will be quiet this random and nearly irrelivant.