Girl Crushes (and why I'll be alone for the rest of my life)

I'm an obsessive person by nature; always have been. This can be a good thing:

But most of the time it's really not:

When I was seven I became hopelessly in love with Tweety Bird and learned everything I could about the cartoon canary (Who is actually a boy bird, believe it or not. How the creators expected people to know that, I have no idea. I still don't believe it.). Strangely enough, I was never interested in watching the cartoon, I just liked the character which consequently made me strongly dislike cats. You know, because of Sylvester. Just so people would know that I liked Tweety I made sure to draw little Tweety heads everywhere. Oversized bird heads turned up on school papers, my pants, my best friend's pants, my mom's pants (I don't recall her being as happy about it as I was), as well as other prime locations, and these shenanigans went on unhindered  for a few years allowing me to build a small army of inaccurately drawn Tweety Bird heads.

This obsession culminated in my begging my parents for a real Tweety Bird who I promised I would love and feed and take on walks and play frisbee with forever and ever. I honestly don't know how I convinced tham that this was a good idea. One day I came home from school (this was in the fourth grade, I think) and a small yellow bird was staring at me from a cage on the floor. It was not what I expected. This bird's head wasn't completely disproportionate to its body. It's feet didn't look like small orange boats; they weren't even orange. I didn't know how to react. There was a stranger in my house, but I didn't want to be rude so I reached into the cage and picked the thing up; it crawled onto my head and I fell in love. Then it took a dump on me and our relationship became somewhat strained, but we worked it out.

Shortly after that I became disenchanted with Tweety Bird (although I did name my new bird friend Tweety in honor of me obsession). However, for many years after my stint with the big-headed bird I still harbored a dislike for cats.

Post-Tweety I found myself completely enamored with many more things: soccer, t.v. shows, movies, comics, etc. but my passion does not only swell for non-living things, sometimes people are subject to my obsessive tendencies. For some reason the people I fangirl over are generally women. I don't know really understand why I tend to favor women over men when it comes to celebrity crushes so sometimes I pretend I'm a psychoanalyst trying to figure this out so I push up my imaginary glasses (all therapists wear glasses, right?) and I ask myself questions about myself. I think we still have a few more sessions to go until I find the cause of these girl crushes.

I got my first girl crush when I started getting interested in t.v. shows, and I;m not proud to admit this, but my first t.v. love was Smallville. Like, I was completely obsessed with it. I even convinced my family that we should go to Vancouver, B.C. for vacation (that's where the show films) and then I made them drive through Cloverdale so we could see downtown Smallville. Oh man, was am I a nerd. Good times. But the girl crush that came out of my love for the show was Kristin Kreuk. I don't know if it was the name, but whatever it was I was crazy about her. I went through my normal "getting to know you: stalker style" steps when it came to learning everything I could about her: check her out on IMDb, stalk her fanpages, read her interviews, look at the entire gallery of her fanpage (multiple times), daydream about being best friends, etc. You know, the classic fangirl antics.

After looking through the galleries I noticed that whenever she smiled her nose would crinkle in a really adorable way, so I figured that if she looked cute because of her nose crinkle I would look cute too, and anything that made me more like her could only be a good thing.

And so ended my crush on Kristin Kreuk.

Kristen Bell came next. Again with the name, right? But I was starting to deviate (there's a whole letter of difference!). After Smallville I moved to Veronica Mars, and consequently, from Kristin Kreuk to Kristen Bell. This onslaught of girl crushes continued for a few years and included the likes of Audrewy Hepburn, Natalie Portman, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kate Winslet, Tina Fey, Summer Glau, Lena Headey, Claire Danes, Jayma Mays and most recently Ellen Page.

Recently I've spent some time trying to figure out the connection between these women, and here's what I came up with:

Conclusion: I like short girls with small boobs. They can be funny and smart too. And if they're not short they still have small boobs. Except Kate Winslet, but she's Kate Winslet, bitches.

And because I can.

And my honorary girl crush...

Yes, that is Joss Whedon.

Update on the other shoe!

I finished it a while ago but never got around to posting pictures of it because I'm lazy. For this shoe I went with a superhero theme and I  think it turned out pretty well.

Click for a closer view

Sorry that I didn't write much, but I'm really sleepy and I already mentioned that I'm lazy.

Procrastination and Paint

I've been procrastinating again. But in a good way! Last summer I painted a pair of shoes for myself with Star Wars, Buffy, Supernatural and some more shows so yesterday I was like, "let's do that again!" even though I should have said no to myself because it took me forever to finish last time. Here are last summer's shoes:

Those aren't all of the angles because I didn't feel like taking pictures of all of them, but one shoe is TV show themed and the other is Star Wars. Yes, I am a nerd.

I made a pair for my sister for her birthday last year but I never got around to taking pictures, but trust me that they turned out even better than my first pair, much, and they had more than just pop culture stuff. On one shoe she had me paint a landscape of houses along a cliff in Greece, Stonehenge, the Eiffel Tower, etc. So I figured that if I made a new pair they'd be even better than the last ones (two pairs of shoes totally makes a trend, it's common knowledge). For the new shoes I decided to go a movie route, and considering that a majority of my favorite movies happen to be made by Pixar (I'm seriously starting to wonder if they made some sort of deal with the devil or something because how is it possible that every movie they make is pure gold?) I figured that it should be the theme for one of the shoes. And so, A MASTERPIECE IS BORN!

Click for the big picture. Also, all images belong to Disney and Pixar.

And I made myself all paint-y.

I'm not sure how I got that much paint on my legs, especially considering I was painting a shoe...

I don't know what to paint on the other shoe. Maybe classic movies like Casablanca and North by Northwest or movies like Jurassic Park and Fight Club. Suggestions?

PS. A real post is still coming..... eventually. But in more procrastinating news (yay!), I'm still working on my graphic novel. I finished two more pages and I storyboarded the next few pages, so I think I'm on a good track, and even if I never finish it I can still put some of the art in a portfolio. Here's one of the new pages.

PPS. I made paella for dinner tonight and now my tummy is happy. :)

Why Do I Do This To Myself?

Okay, so I just got really excited about this idea, like, an hour ago, and I usually never finish any of the projects I start, but I hope this one will be different because I think it could be totally awesome. I have decided that I want to make a graphic novel. I have a few different ideas but I already started planning the story for one of them as well as illustrated the first page. I'm never going to finish this, I can just tell. God, I suck. But it's fun for the moment!

I'm not going to tell you what it's about right now because I have a fear that someone douche bag is going to find it and be like "Oh hey, I can use this idea and become super rich from it because I'm an asshole and I don't care about the person who actually came up with it! Radical!" because OF COURSE my idea will be so good that it should make me a billionaire if it ever comes to fruition. Man, I'm a genius.

So, because I don't want any assholes stealing my really-super-amazing-almost-as-cool-as-a-dinosaur-pirate idea, I'm just going to post the first page which makes no sense without any context and is still unfinished. SO SUCK IT, ASSHOLES.

You can click on the image to make it bigger.

PS. I'm still too giddy from being so brilliant that I don't think that I can write an actual post today, but I'm working on some drawings for a new post and I might finish them by tomorrow.

PPS. I got my course schedule for the fall and my Mondays and Wednesdays are going to feel like a super long session of Space Invaders because they last FOREVER. All of the classes I wanted were on Mondays and Wednesdays. It's just not right.

RAPTOR SNEAK ATTACK!

This post has been brought to you by a RAPTOR SNEAK ATTACK!

I told you I would be gone for a while for the Intro"duck"tion, and I was telling the truth because I'm still gone, but I timed this post just to freak you out.

Here's a picture of a sexy velociraptor.

I really have to leave now.

When Did Any Time Before 5:00am Exist?

Dear Blog (I would say readers but I don't feel like I have enough yet to feel like I'm talking to actual humans, also, I don't know exactly what an "actual human" constitutes, and also, by the time I have actual human readers I'll probably have a cool name for you guys, like "Kristinites". Maybe not that.),

I'd like you to guess what time it is. You may be saying, "You really want me to guess the time? But it says right here on your post" and I'd say, "but do you actually recognize those numbers? OF COURSE YOU DON'T BECAUSE IT'S BARELY AFTER 5:00! IN THE MORNING. I didn't even know this time existed!". You'd probably shut up then.

So, I had to get up at 4:00 and I went to sleep at 11:30. Yes, I'm aware I'm an idiot. The university I'm going to in the fall has its Intro"duck"tion today and I have to drive for a few hours to get to it. And why, UofO, do you persist on being so presumptuous as to put the word "duck" into introduction? Huh? It's lame. You're lame. And it's 5:00 in the morning. WHICH IS LAME.

Also, if you actually are human, you're probably like "your mascot is a duck?" and I'm like "hell yes it is! We're so cool that our mascot is actually Donald Duck", you can't beat that. I bet your school mascot can't even beat a banana slug. Although, having a banana slug as a school mascot would be awesome, but not more awesome than a velociraptor.

I can just imagine telling someone about your mascot if it was a raptor.

Me: Hey, guess what my school mascot is.
Other person: I don't know... a banana slug?
Me: Close. It's a velociraptor.
Other person: How is that close?
Me: The two are close on the awesome scale for school mascots.
Other person: Okay, but a raptor doesn't sound that cool.
Me: You're not cool, and I bet your school mascot couldn't beat mine.
Other person: We're the T-rexes.
Me: Shit.

I have to go now.

Love, total BFFness, and Loss: The Tale of Spike the Gerbil

When I was twelve I had a gerbil named Spike. Spike was no ordinary gerbil, he was a gerbil of integrity and love. Spike and I formed a bond that I believed could never be broken, not even by all of the sexy girlfriend gerbils that I imagined Spike would someday have (he was totally a studly gerbil).

I never thought that a gerbil could be so much fun; he would chew on empty toilet paper rolls and I would watch, he would scamper across my hands and I would watch, sometimes he would even be sleeping and there I’d be, like a stalker with my pants down in the middle of the night holding only a camera and a switchblade, watching. Ah, memories. 

Spike’s entrance into my life was completely unexpected, or, I guess as unexpected as it can be to have what you thought were two female gerbils get pregnant and have babies. So, pretty unexpected. I noticed that one of the gerbils, Mocha Latte (most creative name ever, right?), had chubbed up a bit, so we bought her a wheel so she could get busy getting back into shape because no one likes a lazy gerbil. Turns out she already got busy a few weeks earlier, and one morning I could hear my sister yelling about how there were tiny pink worms in our gerbils’ cage. Those worms were six very wrinkly baby gerbils. My parents were SO stoked. 

I soon zeroed in on a cute, black baby gerbil who I knew would be the most kick-ass little gerbil ever, so therefore I named him Spike because of the name’s apparent awesomeness. I wish I had named him Spike after Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I wasn't that cool yet, I was just pretty unoriginal, I mean I named my bird Tweety and my fish Fishy.

Spike and I were BFF for a few weeks and I continued to love him and the little white stripes on his back that made him look like a skunk. Everything changed so quickly. One day I went to go watch Spike chew on things but when I got to his cage I couldn’t find him anywhere. I looked inside his little wooden house, under the cedar shavings, on the floor of the room and everywhere in between. I couldn’t find my furry friend.

That’s when I noticed the tail. A black tail with a white tip was sticking out from underneath the food dish; it took every ounce of courage I had to lift that bowl up. My life would never be the same.

Spike was dead. And not only was he dead, he was completely flat. 

The food dish, a source of happiness for many, became the source of all that was evil for my twelve year old self. It flattened my best friend.

From that point on I think rage must have clouded my memories of that day because I don’t remember what happened to the food dish, only that it ended up mutilated and in pieces in the garbage later on. My parents were slightly concerned.

The next day I went to gaze at the empty place where Spike once slept in his cage and almost immediately fell in love with another baby gerbil whom I subsequently named Spike.