[during my ART395 class...]

-Classmate #1: What's the date today?
-Classmate #2: April 1.
-Classmate #1: Okay, thanks.
reileen: No, it's not.
-Classmate #1: It isn't?
reileen: APRIL FOOLS!

The Filipino Name Generator. Come be a member of the tribe! Apparently my Filipinoized name (in the order of first name, middle name, nickname, and last name) is "Evangeline Magdalena Apple Pie Garcia". I...sound kind of delicious, actually. o_O

I totally have plans to write a Fil-Am-themed(?) urban fantasy story (stories?) featuring a protagonist named Angelina "Jelly" Sanchez. :D

Also, apparently my mom's maiden name, Moraga, means "barbecue" in Arabic! nomnombbq.

***

Aaaaand long time no post! I've been blathering on Twitter because it's easier, but I do have stuff to post out. Namely, lots of pictures of some of the work I did for my design classes over winter quarter. Buuuuut I've been too lazy to pull it all together, chu. In other words, nothing new under the sun.

Today lysis_to_kill and I witnessed what looked like a robbery.

We were getting off the northbound Brown Line at Belmont when a guy ran past us, laughing. A girl sprinted after him on the semi-slushy platform, shouting for him to give back to her phone. At first Liz and I didn't really think anything of it; we figured that maybe they were friends who were rough-housing on the platform.

But as we descended the platform staircase, we could hear more and more of the desperation and anger in the girl's voice, and suddenly it occurred to us that we had just witnessed a robbery in the middle of the afternoon on a crowded platform, and that the person may have gotten away with it.

I seriously hope that girl got her phone back and the guy slipped and wiped out on the new tile floors of the station.

I Need to Get Out More, the picture I finally came up with for DePaul's winter thematic show.

You can also see a progress sheet of the picture here.

Ohmy gods why am I so tiiiirrreeeddd. This is bad, because I have two projects that need full-sized mockups by Monday and Tuesday and I haven't even started any computer work for any of them. I thought I was going to start one of them today, but then I was lying in bed finishing Blood Lines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism by Vamik Volkan and I ended up taking a nap after it. (Not because the book was boring, I assure you. It actually was quite interesting, explaining the possible psychology driving ethnic clashes such as that of the Greeks and the Turks on Cyprus, or the Russians and the Estonians, and other similar conflicts.) I'm only up right now because Daddykins needed me to wash the dishes. This probably means I should start working on my projects, but my brain, she is dead for some reason.

Maybe I'll go paint Kirby pumpkins instead.

I'm not sure that this is the complete list, since I can't seem to find the original list I made somewhere, but this is stuff that I've found by poking around on Amazon, Wikipedia, and other places.

BOOKS
Jan. 5 - Blood Cross (Jane Yellowrock) by Faith Hunter
Mar. 10 - Roadkill (Cal Leandros) by Rob Thurman
Apr. 6 - Changes (Harry Dresden) by Jim Butcher
May 18 - The Demon's Covenant (The Demon's Lexicon Trilogy) by Sarah Rees Brennan
Jul. 6 - Red Hood's Revenge (Princess novels)

Some Amazon reviews indicate that Jane Yellowrock seems to be less strong of a character in Blood Cross than she was in Skinwalker, but I'll see how it goes when I get it from the library. (The cover for it is just as smokin' hot as the first one, though.) I just finished the 4th Cal Leandros book, Deathwish, which I think has to be my favorite by far - I loved that Thurman included Niko's POV this time, and I hope she does it for Roadkill as well. Changes could be potentially absurd in a bad way (secret baby, WTF?), but I'm going to keep faith that it'll at least be an interesting ride that'll show off more facets of Harry's character. I'm a little disappointed that Nick won't be the main character of The Demon's Covenant, but I'll still check the book out because the world is potentially interesting. Finally, I am totally stoked for Red Hood's Revenge because I've heard that we get to find out more about Talia and see a showdown between her and Red Riding Hood. FUCK YEAH.

MUSIC
Feb. 14 - Auralei EP by Artemis
Spring - Body of Glass by Artemis
Spring - Tall Tales for Spring by Vanessa Carlton
Summer - Disturbed
Autumn - Within Temptation
Unknown - Weird Al Yankovic
Unknown - Evanescence

I was actually really disappointed with the samples I heard of the Auralei EP - it's a good thing I held off on buying the downloads. I'll see if there are any songs I might like on the actual album. I hope Vanessa Carlton includes a studio recording of "All Is Well", because I think that's easily her best song yet. Wikipedia says that the new Disturbed album is going to be even darker than Indestructible, but the musical style will be more reminiscent of their album Believe (which I've got somewhere but haven't listened to because I am so fucking bad with listening to stuff I...um...receive from the Music Fairy, ye-e-s). No clue what to expect from the Within Temptation album. Should probably listen to the Weird Al EP Internet Leaks to get an idea of what might be on the next studio album; I wonder if he'll do a Lady GaGa parody? That would be epic. No clue what to expect from Evanescence either, but here's hoping it's better than The Open Door.

Also, whatever happened with Ghost Orgy? I've been checking their MySpace and main website for news, and aside from an update on the main website about releasing an EP in early 2008(!!!), there hasn't been anything. I wonder what came up?

Well, now this is interesting. I hadn't realized I'd been reading more over the past few years.

Table 1. Number of books read by Reileen, broken down by year and separated into fiction and nonfiction.

Year	Fiction	Nonfiction	TOTAL
2006	37	25	62
2007	58	15	73
2008	75	15	90
2009	83	26	109

(i h8 u tables!!!)

Manga not counted in this, partly because it feels slightly like "cheating" and partly because I'm not sure how one would quantify reading the serialized chapters. Split it up between tankoubon and weeklies/monthlies, maybe?

( Booklist 2009 )

So, that GPS drawing I was babbling about in the previous entry? A horse A hoax. (Via holyschist.) :(

Lynn Viehal blogs about the reality of a Times Bestseller. (Via jimhines.)

***

I still owe giftmas presents to people, whoops. There's some I can ship out tomorrow once I pack 'em up tonight, but others will require a wee bit more browsing. Hopefully I can be done by this weekend.

***

Finished Mike Carey's Vicious Circle (which I enjoyed greatly) and Gail Carriger's Soulless (which was merely okay; I adore the cover design though).

To expand a bit on my reactions without devoting entire LJ posts to them:

Vicious Circle: Second installment in the Felix Castor series. Felix (whom I don't recall as having a physical description in the books, but even if it's there and I just forgot it, I will continue to amuse myself by imagining him as looking like Felix from the Golden Sun games) takes on an odd case where he has to find a missing ghost, but finds himself entangled up in Satanic plots to raise one of the most powerful demons of Hell. It's fairly obvious early on which demon it's going to be, and the Satanic cult in the novel itself is rather hokey. There's other more interesting things going on in the book, however: seeing the succubus Juliet kick some ass alongside Felix, the actual story behind the missing ghost and how it intersects with the Satanic cult story, and some worldbuilding stuff involving the legal status of ghosts. And - not to spoil it too much - but this is one of those novels where technically the good guy wins, and yet it has a completely depressing ending. I really enjoy Felix's character and this world, and I hope I can get my hands on the other novels.

Soulless: First book in the Alexia Tarabotti series. Takes place in a magical AU Victorian London. Alexia Tarabotti is a literally soulless spinster who accidentally kills a vampire in the first couple of pages of the novel. She didn't do it because she was soulless, though - it was the vampire's fault for being completely ignorant of his proper manners! Hijinks ensues as the local head of the supernatural bureau in this particular 'verse, Lord Maccon, tries to figure out what the hell is going on, among other things. A fun, fluffy read, though YMMV on the pseudo-Victorian tone and the romance. I wasn't as impressed by this as I thought I'd be, but I think I might check out the second book anyway (although the question of buying it or not is still up in the air).

I think I need to revamp the "books" tags into "authors" tags...

Say hello to the Biggest Fucking Drawing in the World by Erik Nordenankar. He did it by FedExing a briefcase with a GPS device in it through the world, and the trail of the GPS device drew out a self-portrait when plotted on a world map.

IS THAT NOT THE FUCKING COOLEST THING?!?!

...

...

...

Anyway. I'm back at this thing called school and I am tired and depressed (it is likely the former is influencing the latter). I think most people tend to have some kind of "back-to-school-blues", though; for me the last couple of quarters, it's been manifesting with this overwhelming fear that I'm not good enough at anything I do and am going to fail all of my classes. Even if they're just art classes. Because I'm nowhere near as good as I think I am, you see. No talent, no brain cells, no social skills, no worth. And there she goes again with her trainwrecks of thought! You should probably look away now if you want to be more productive that I ever will be.

ART228 is my Computer Applications For Design II class, and it's going to be heavily based in Adobe InDesign. Our three projects are 1) an information map about some event in Chicago history; 2) a conceptual travel guide; and 3) a collateral set (poster, postcard, and trifold brochure) for a Chicago nonprofit organization. That last project technically got assigned today, but then again since all of the project guidelines are in the syllabus, I guess you could say that the projects all got assigned today. All in ten weeks! Thank the Gods I only have three classes this quarter.

At 1:00pm I have my final liberal arts requirement (except for my experiential learning requirement, but I can fulfill that with a major-related class), which is my Honors senior seminar about identity in the 21st century. I have 8 books to read for that class, wtf?

Not the list of books I read over 2009 (that'll come once I update my running list on my computer and figure out something meaningful to say), but the books I just ordered from Borders using a $50 gift card.



I'm so excited! I don't know where to start first. D: Maybe with Soulless, since I have a friend who just ordered it from her library to read based on being interested from the Amazon description.

Half-assed New Year's Resolution: Re-read older favorites with a more critical, analytical eye, so I can learn how to do this shit myself. Especially with plotting and pacing. *sigh*

Done with the usual meme of taking the first line of the first entry of every month, because I'm too lazy to do actual post write-ups. There's a lot to post about but I never really feel like sitting down and writing/posting. That, and every time I come back with something to talk about, I never think it's really worth posting about.

JANUARY: An interesting article about how Obama seems to be dealing with his fame.
FEBRUARY: From Kotaku: Suspect arrested for threatening to blow up Hudson
MARCH: Just a quick post before I have to work on my HON301 paper, which, uh, I still have no idea what I'm going to write about.
APRIL: It's only the first week of classes and I'm skipping already, whoops.
MAY: I didn't make a lot from Artist Alley this year, but that was about what I expected.
JUNE: I want to win this contest on Tuts+ like Burning Fire Bomb.
JULY: Gonna start off with the Serious Business stuff this time before I babble about fannish things.
AUGUST: Summer never lasts long enough for me.
SEPTEMBER: On Reading
OCTOBER: I've had this link-o-llection lying around for almost a month now.
NOVEMBER: RE: NaNoWriMo 2009
DECEMBER: Look, author.

Hrm. What an odd collection of lines. Later I'll type up my list of books read over 2009. My first book of 2010 is Spell Games by Marla Mason, which I greatly enjoyed.