Lorem Ipsum

Ah, man... I didn't quite make it to the one-year mark of post-silence...

For reasons that I won't go into at the moment (perhaps I'll come back and edit this post later, after my several end-of-semester deadlines have finally passed), I love Lorem Ipsum, the text-looking space filler that you can learn about here.  It really is telling about a lot of my personal aesthetic, and since I'm trying to keep this blog as egotistical as possible, I probably ought to explain more about it some time.

But the reason I bring it up now is because a moment ago, a word processor which shall remain unnamed was glitching on me, and I had to ditch the file I was working on and start a whole new one.  After copy-pasting my previously written text over, I needed to type some words to make sure the glitch had disappeared.  However, at the moment I was out of thoughts relevant to the topic at hand, so I just started typing filler stuff without really thinking about it--the Lorem Ipsum of my creativity, if you will.  The results made me laugh, so now I'm making you read them, too.

Hey guys.  

What can I do to make a difference in this world of differences?  

Must I be limited to subtraction?  

CAN YOU HEAR ME SAYING NOTHING?

If there are any doges reading this... this one's for dew.

Love,

Emily

Story jam: how to do it

This is an explanation of the rules of a story jam, which is the kind of awesome party that my fiance and I will be hosting in preparatory celebration of our wedding!  Here's how it works:

1. Everyone brings a story to share. 

This can be a favorite children's book, a chapter or excerpt from a novel, a monologue you've always wanted to perform, a movie scene you'd like to reinterpret, a poem, a tale you've written, a remarkable experience you've had... anything that you feel makes a good story. It can be funny, sweet, poignant, ironic, whatever mood you like. Just please consider propriety and courtesy in your selection.

Feel free to collaborate with others in the telling, if you wish. Feel free to bring more than one story, if you just can't decide on one; there will likely be time for both. Feel free to incorporate background music, props, and what have you--just nothing that will ruin the carpet or get us arrested. And, if you really don't want to bring a story, you can still come and hear everyone else's!

2. Everyone participates as a good audience member. 

This means you laugh and cry and applaud when you're supposed to so the story can come alive. It also means that there is no Peanut Gallery-ing or audio commentary UNLESS the storyteller gives the okay; we'll all be sharing a little bit of our souls here, and that merits respect from those receiving. Plus, it's just more fun when everyone feels good about each other and how the story came out.

We've done this in the past with our Friday night movie group, and it's really fun.  This particular event will feature food of some sort and squishy couches.
Stories are one of the things that Josh and I love most, and we intend to make story time a regular occurrence in our home.  We're looking forward to starting this tradition with our friends at the end of the week.  :)

Woohoo! 

Chickens!

Well, it's been forever since I've posted anything.  I've had a few posts in the works, but most of them involved intense thinking and writing, and...it's summer.  However, I did (finally) finish the elephant painting that I hinted at back in May!  And, here he is, folks!

In all his glory.  Photoshop, on a Cintiq; several brushes.

This is actually the painting for the cover of the next volume of the university psychology journal for which I edit.  The final product will have some titles and other info on the right side, a quote from a folktale on the left side (see below), and will be folded in half down the middle of the elephant's face.  And the journal will be 6x9 inches, or something like that.  'Twill be great.

The shapes all over his face are a reference to phrenology, a faulty but trendy idea from psychologists in the middle and late 1800s.  Here's a link to the Wikipedia article: head bumps

And, to round off this post, here's the excerpt that will be printed on the back of the journal, from the short tale, "The Blind Men and the Elephant."


"When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?'


"Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an elephant is like a pot.' And the men who had observed the ear replied, 'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.


"Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.


Psychology--trying to understand the human mind and the elephant of what we are--is like this.

EYN

I see

Practicing elephant eyes.  This was painted almost directly from photo reference--a practice technique I learned from my boyfriend (he can paint!), who learned it from this other guy, the other week.

Elephants!

I've been drawing and painting and looking at a lot of them recently.  And then I found these doodles that I did last fall while reading a story called "L'éléphant" (yes, "The Elephant"), by Marcel Aymé.  In this story there is a chicken who wants to be the elephant in a game of Noah's Ark.  She pretends so hard that she actually turns into an elephant and breaks the wall, among other things.

It's a good story.

What's in a name?

A Bertrude by any other name would be just as awkward, right?

Well, weird compound names are fun.  Bertrude and Jeffica having already been established, here are a couple that occurred as I was trying to name some characters in the play-type thing I have in the works.  My guess is that I'll continue to add to this post as time wears on, because a list of goofy names is something worth having on-hand.

Jilliam
Sethew (or, Sethieu, as it was originally spelled in my head)

Autobiographical

I've been mostly writing since 9:00 this morning, so I'm very creatively talkative at the moment.  That's why I'm making a tiny post about a book title that just came to mind:

Spiritual Calculus: Learning the Lord's Timing for Maximum Growth and Blessings


The best thing is that if this winds up being the title of an autobiography-style work, people who don't know me will go into it thinking I'm a math person.  Granted, I did do well in Calculus during high school...  There are all sorts of levels at which this title and the connotations it carries are appropriate.

Now you know.


P.S. It feels really weird to me to post rough, unfinished parts of ideas that may or may not actually go anywhere.