Back to school?

I set an appointment to talk with a rep at a smaller-sized university. I need to see what it will take to get my Bachelor's for Computer Graphic Design or Computer Graphic Design: Web Design with a minor in Art: Studio or Marketing Management. I'm hoping the majority of my credits from my previous college (where I earned a 2-year associate's degree) are transferable. I'll be really annoyed if they're not... I don't want to have to start over from scratch. I'll also find out how much money I need to have to afford this, and how many internal organs I will have to sell to get the money I need.

Anyway, I know you can't tell, but I'm kind of excited. Really, I am!

New meaning of the word asshat.

I've been a vegetarian since I was about 13. That's over 10 years and it continues to be a learning experience. So consequently, PETA's international spys somehow found me on the "National Vegetarians List" or something (That's not real, okay. I made it up), and has started mailing me magazines and literature.

I like the idea of PETA. It's People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, for those of you who don't know. I like their name and I like the idea of a large group of people organizing to make themselves heard. But I definitely don't like the scare tactics... the gory photos... the horror shows they display on a regular basis. That's what they've become known for too. Showing people things they don't want to see. Trying to shock people into caring about animals. It doesn't work... it just makes people think PETA is insane and fanatic and outrageous and extreme and it causes people to discredit the things they have to say and label them as propaganda. (Which they might very well be just mere propaganda, though I personally don't believe that.)

Well, I don't want to see these images and stories either. Hello, the whole reason I became a vegetarian was because I wanted to avoid thinking about how animals die. The best way to avoid this guilt is to stop eating them. And yes, eventually I'll become a full-on vegan, but until I make that choice I'd like it if they would stop trying to make me cry.

Anyway, on to my point. I started getting emails from Compassion Over Killing (COK... yes, I know), which appears to be "affiliated" with PETA. And by "affiliated" I mean that I can't seem to find their connection to PETA, but because they both use the same scare tactics and display the same horrific photos, it's my opinion that they are lumped together as one big scary company.

Now, I'm all for getting the word out about animal cruelty. And I agree with the beliefs and principles they are preaching. And I'm all for going vegan, when I can actually afford to do so. (Soy products are not cheap.)

But I think these people a new marketing guy. Like, 5 years ago.

Check this email out that I just got from the people at COK:

Subject: Action Alert: Act Today to Help Caged Hens

Compassion Over Killing and Vegan Outreach are teaming up with compassionate people everywhere to ask Morningstar Farms® to stop using eggs in its product line.

[[Insert disturbing photo of hens in very small cages and a caption below it with a horrifying statistic]]

[[Insert link to an entire photo gallery of these terrible images.]]

Morningstar Farms®, which is owned by the Kellogg® company, was approached in September 2005 about its use of eggs in its products...

[[Insert link to more disturbing photos of hens in cages.]]

[[Insert long description of horrible conditions that the hens live in that I am certain my readers don't want to hear.]]

Morningstar Farms® has long been a leader in supplying delicious vegetarian foods to a growing market.
[[Insert a suggestion that everyone should contact Morningstar Farms and tell them to stop using eggs in their products]] ...encourage them to join with companies like Gardenburger®, which last year announced it has taken eggs out of all its products except for one private-sourced item.

Okay. What the hell, COK!? Are you actually picking on a company that provides us vegetarians with yummy yummy food-stuffs in lieu of a company that is mistreating the animal directly? What happened to going to the root of the problem?

You seriously need to learn how to pick your battles, COK. You're biting the hand that literally feeds you. In fact, let's throw another cliche in there: beggars can't be choosers.

It's like saying to a doctor, "Well you sorta cured cancer, but it's really not good enough yet. Think you can work on that? Uhm, oh yeah and here are a TON of my friends to tell you the EXACT same thing until you DO fix the problem."

Or saying to the rocket scientist, "Well, the rocket got us safely to the moon and stuff, that's great... but the coffeemaker inside the rocket isn't working right now, ya think you could take a look at that? Cuz the astronauts are really thirsty and uhm... you're gonna get about 40 emails a day until it's fixed. Thanks!"

WTF?

Geeks eat cake too.

My birthday isn't until December, but you can start planning now if you want. Or maybe you have a geeky friend who would appreciate an awesome cake. I know this has been done elsewhere, but I just love the idea so I thought I'd share some of my favorite geek cakes:

Happy Birthday coding cake. Not my cup of tea, but The boyfriend would love it.

Lego cake. No explanation needed. :) I'll take mine in ANY color.

Arrr, matey. Yeah, so geeks have this fascination with pirates. (Because they are usually "software pirates") Pirates, and also ninjas. It's almost a war over who's more awesome. But yeah, apparently the pirates win because they have this freakin sweet cake.

Well this is about as close to a "ninja" cake as I've seen. Which isn't very close. Well who hasn't played Mortal Kombat anyway? I once went out with a guy who had the soundtrack to Mortal Kombat and would play absolutely nothing else in his car. Ugh.

Homestar Runner! If you don't know Homestar, you should go here. I'm still looking for a Trogdor cake. Nothing says geeky like online cartoons.

Very cute Star Trek cake with the Enterprise and Vulcan saying "Live Long and Prosper".

Superb R2D2 Cake. Wow.

A Nintendo Gamecube cake. Aww. Isn't it cuuute? I'll take one in Platinum, because that's that color of my GC. Thanks! (Actually, my GC is skinned with a lovely pink faux Louis Vuitton print from eBay.)

Another Nintendo cake, this time it's Kirby. Am I just out of the Kirby loop (Frankly, I don't ever remember playing a Kirby game, so I assume that I am) or is he supposed to be carrying a sandwich on dark rye with eyeballs? WTF is that?

OMG! Yessssss. Dual Nintendo Wii remote (wii-mote) cakes. Beautiful.

Remember my post from this past September, You can have your Mario and eat it too, where I said that this Super Mario/Princess Peach/Mushroom wedding cake would be my future wedding cake? Well, I've decided that that's probably not gonna happen...

Because, this one is SO much better!!!Oh my hell. Look at that masterpiece. A "shoot-em-up" style wedding cake. Check out the detail. From bottom to top, here's the specs:

• Level One, bottom of cake: 1 dead groom and crashed airplane.
  
• Level Two: 1 groom scaling the edge of the cake (in the back), 1 groom shooting a machine gun at the top of the cake, and 2 other grooms appear to be working together to saw down one of the legs of the cake.
• Level Three: 1 groom with pushed-down detonator and a very big explosion and a couple of the cake legs blown up (causing the cake top to be tilted)
  
• Level Four, top of cake: 1 groom climbing up to tilted top level and Bride and groom backing away to cake's far edge.

Required improvements: Bride needs glasses and an uzi. The uzi in white, please.

Oh, the crazy things we say.

Just to clarify, the lady we're talking about really is a bitch:

Nadine: so i go ask her if it was hers and she goes "oh my god where did you find it?" and i was like it was in the toilet paper dispenser

1:59 PM Jen: lol

Nadine: and then she goes "oh my god i didn't even know it was missing, its worth thousands and my husband would have killed me, i guess i owe you big time."

Jen: yeah, how about a GET OUTTA BITCH FREE CARD?

Nadine: LOL

Nadine: HA HA HA Nadine: SERIOUSLY!

I think she says it just to get me to shut up:

Jen: he said that he's even happier now than when we first starting dating, isn't that sweet?

Jen: he is the best Nadine: aww

3:57 PM Nadine: that's cheesy Nadine: have to poop brb.

Jen: EW
Jen: i hate you

My skills are deteriorating.

Maybe I was wrong in the first place about being skilled at graphic design and 3D modelling and multimedia in general. I used to think my 2D designs and 3D models were really great. And I figured that since I was just starting out I would get even better. I thought, Wow, I found my true calling. That's something that not a lot of people have ever felt and may never feel, and that felt so precious to me. And I thought that things could only get better after I graduated. My school (which shall remain unnamed) made it seem like I'd be making bank at doing exactly what I loved. They made it seem like companies would be begging for me to work for them, because I was so talented and multi-skilled and creative and yadda yadda yadda.

Well, it's over 2 years after graduating, and nobody's ever beat on my door looking for my skills and talent or anything. In fact, I beat on their door and I can hear the deadbolt click into place and hearty laughter coming from inside the building. It's disheartening, to say the least. I'm still at the same bad job that pays nothing with a boss that frequently makes me either scream inside my brain or burst into tears; it's the same job that I thought was "just a stepping stone" in my path.

That alone wouldn't be so awful if I still enjoyed the work I do as much as I used to. But lately I've felt like every ad I make is incredibly tacky. I'm embarassed when I see them printed in the magazines or newspaper. I used to be so proud that I once asked my boss if I could sign my name somewhere on the ad so that everyone would know who designed it. Lol.

Every flyer I print is so ugly and messy and cluttered. And I have to print them in mass quantities, so each one that falls out of the printer is uglier than the last. The 3D work I do is lame and no one cares about it except our customers, which are all 87-year-old couples that have never even been within 10 miles of a computer. And the websites I make are only about 2 steps away from Geocities.

Is it my hell-on-earth job that is making me lose my love of design? Was I just inspired by my teachers and classes, is that why I did so well before? Or was I never really good at it in the first place, and no one had the heart to tell me the truth? How is it that everytime I make a new ad or design or logo, I end up loathing it?

I know you guys can't answer these questions and you all have never even seen any of my work, but I need to rant. I can't stand my job and I can't stand constantly applying to places that literally ignore me. The boyfriend says it's because I only have a 2-year degree and not a Bachelor's, but that's bull. If I were really talented and skilled, someone would have snatched me up by now, whether I had a 4-year degree or 2-year degree or highschool degree. If my portfolio really stood out, I would have been hired by now... right?

End of self pity rant. Lol. Sorry about that.

Taggy goodness.

Music is my #3 favorite thing ever, so of course I'm excited about this taggy-post from the lovely and stupendous Tiffany. So, I'm supposed to list the Top 10 Songs in my iTunes library...

Okay, so I don't use iTunes and will probably never use iTunes. I don't even know what's so great about it (or care). My excuse for a long time was that I don't have a Mac (yet), but now I know you can use iTunes whether you have a Mac or PC, so that excuse is out the window.

My new excuse: I don't like music organizers. I make the rules, damnit.

Anyway, so I'm gonna bring up one of my all-time-greatest-songs mixes in WinAmp (yeah, that's right, WinAmp. How can you use anything else?) and list the top Songs from that instead.

Tiffany posted her top 25 though, so I think I'll post 25 too. Mostly because it's super hard for me to narrow it down to my favorites.

I'm also supposed to list them in Song - Artist - Album format, which is going to be hard because, uhm, I have to Google most of these to find that out. (yeah yeah I know if I used iTunes it would do all that crap for me. shut it.)

And, because I'm a visual person, I thought I'd add some pics that I googled. Then I felt extremely old because some of the bands I listen to look 5-10 years younger than me. And I'm only 23.

1. Done Wrong - Ani DiFranco - Dilate
2. All Hail the Heartbreaker - The Spill Canvas - Sunsets and Car Crashes
3. Take Me Anywhere - Tegan and Sara - So Jealous
4. It's Cool, We Can Still Be Friends - Bright Eyes - Transmission One: Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
5. Combat Baby - Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
6. Probably - Kevin Devine - Split the Country, Split the Street
7. Spanish Doll - Poe - Haunted
8. Waste of Paint - Bright Eyes - Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground - [see above photo]
   
9. I Wasn't Prepared - Eisley - Room Noises
10. Ever So Sweet - The Early November - The Room's Too Cold
11. I Don't Miss You Anymore - Lisa Ekdahl - Sings Salvadore Poe (Bonus track)
12. Sitting, Waiting, Wishing - Jack Johnson - Sitting, Waiting, Wishing
13. Winter - Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes
14. Calling You - Blue October - History for Sale
15. Brightest - Copeland - Beneath the Medicine Tree
16. Here I Am - Tegan and Sara - Unreleased/Live - [see above photo]
17. Forget December - Something Corporate - Songs for Silent Movies
18. Anything - Plain White T's - All That We Needed
19. Riot Nrrrd - 2 Skinnee J's - Super Marcado
20. TKO - Le Tigre - This Island
21. Broken - Lucky Boys Confusion - Commitment
22. Not Tonight - Tegan and Sara - If It Was You - [see above photo]
23. Are You Sad? - Our Lady Peace - Spiritual Machines
24. The Absence of God - Rilo Kiley - Execution of All Things
25. Spawn - Silverchair - Neon Ballroom

Whoa, that's way too many photos. Good luck loading this page.

If you don't know any of these bands, you are severely depriving yourself of some really great music. You're probably too busy listening to crap on the radio that you've forgotten there are real bands out there in this world.

(And yes, I'm a music snob. but I'm a closet music snob, which means I pretend I'm not a snob most of the time and when it's completely appropriate I break out with a "WHAT IS THAT CRAP YOU'RE LISTENING TO?" and also I never admit my music guilty pleasures... you would be a bit suprised, I think.)

That's it. I'm done with the music taggy post. I tag... uhm. Everyone who reads my blog has already been tagged by Tiffany. So, I tag everyone else. That's right, that means you Missy. :)