http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Conundra&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Conundra en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:47:58 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27736434/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27736434/ Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:47:15 PDT [link])... and seduced it in the process

I'm presenting it here, because I'm just that proud of it.
and I'm just that much of an incorrigible geek.

PotentSaarlac:
Dear Shower: 20 minutes of attempts to scald me to death will not go unpunished. This house is no longer big enough for the both of us.

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
My dear battle station, I desperately need your assistance. Will you help me dispatch the Galaxy's most cantankerous shower?

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
Dammit woman, I'm a battle-station not a plumber. I could fire my superlaser at it, but you may not like the side effects.

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
Piffle, my good destroyer of worlds. I want it annihilated, not coddled - if I wanted a plumber, I would have asked Boba Fett.

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
I could annihilate it, certainly, but if I were to fire at your planet, hot water would be the least of your worries.

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
Not that you would HAVE any worries, since you'd just be a small cloud of sub-atomic dust, but you know what I mean.

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
Nonsense. My subnuclear particles have feelings, too. If you could arrange to transport me before firing your laser...

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
... I could make it worth your while

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
Worth my while? What would you pay a planet-destroying space station?

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
When was the last time you experienced a neutrino flux that rocked you to your very gluons? I can make that happen, baby...

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
... and then some

death_star @PotentSaarlac:
Setting course for Earth.

PotentSaarlac @death_star:
I knew you'd see things my way, lover. Sweet recharging - dream of the quantum singularities we'll create together.

PotentSaarlac:
Have successfully lured @death_star to Earth by talking dirty to it about quantum physics. My life is now complete.


TREMBLE BEFORE MY MIGHTY NERDINESS!!! TREMBLE, I SAY!!!!

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27735163/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27735163/ Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:53:22 PDT
Granted, I know people who have had 60,000 pageviews in their first month on DA, but hey, who am I to complain? I'm holding my breath for 100k. Let's hope it doesn't take another two years.

Lessee... it's been a while since my last real update.

Things aren't so great right now in Megan-land.
I've had a really rough month. Significant life changes are not the sort of thing one makes contingency plans for when one is in college - I couldn't very well have not taken Virology because I was afraid of my life being turned upside down - and between dealing with emotional backlash, serious illness and impending death in the family, my own illness (contemptible hormones!), a period of very significant transitions and re-orienting myself in the world, and all my schoolwork, life is, for lack of a more delicate, euphemistic way to put it, kicking the crap out of me.

I'm finding lots of pennies, seeing lots of chipmunks, receiving a lot of hugs, and coming across a lot of little things that help me get through the day, but I won't lie; I'm a little sick of having to scrounge so hard for reasons to be happy. Oh, well. That's life, I suppose.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27674070/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27674070/ Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:25:20 PDT Come validate my internet existence by stalking me - there is much tomfoolery, absurdity, random silliness, and more insight into my best friends' and my twisted little minds than anyone could ever want.
[link]

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27451476/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27451476/ Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:07:21 PDT
The cast this year is a dream, and I'm so happy to be a part of it.
Even happier, though, to be the main part of it.

There will be pictures. Oh yes, there will be!
I'll just have to figure out who will be taking them. Why, oh why, are all the people I work with based on the West Coast?

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27279954/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27279954/ Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:43:15 PDT
I really didn't expect this change to be made, and if I'd known it was in the works, I wouldn't have deleted so many deviations. Oh, well.
I'm just glad a compromise was reached. I've missed being able to share my work.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27267980/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/27267980/ Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:43:27 PDT "The dream is not forgotten,
nor in dreaming have you lost
the promise of your ardor
your love will ne'er exhaust
you've walked through somber valleys
and sailed the welkin ways
your soul is merely waiting for a time to newly blaze"

Yesterday, I ended a relationship with a man who has been my home, my companion, and my love for the last two and a half years.
It was easily the most difficult decision I've ever had to make.

As far as reasons why, they are my own, and I don't want to talk about it.
There is no hate in my heart, no desire for his pain or suffering.
I love him far too much to wish him ill.

I'll be okay someday.
and until that someday comes, its promise will be enough for me.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26899853/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26899853/ Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:45:20 PDT in the shade.

To pass the time, beat the heat, and generally enjoy ourselves, ^Battledress and I are experimenting with the good-bye gift bottle of Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur I recently bestowed upon her.

In the last hour, we've come up with a drink called Turkish Delight, combining

one part Domaine de Canton
one part Henry Winehard's gourmet Vanilla Cream soda
and rose water to taste (we added about 1/4 teaspoon)

into pure, gingery-vanilla-y-rose-y deliciousness. Lisa came up with the ingredient combination, I supplied the cream soda and the name.

and

Bouncy-Balls, a concoction of hot sake and Domaine de Canton-soaked boba (bubble tea tapioca balls). We decided to have a little fun with it and use confetti boba, so the bottom of our drink resembles a children's ball pit. It's fun and very tasty.


I don't know where my summer went. It's like I blinked in early July and boom - it's time to go back to school.
This is always a really hard time for me. My heart has been in Southern California since I met my boyfriend in January 2007, and leaving is rough. I've built a home and a little family of close friends here, and it's all I can do to tear myself away.

I'm also terrified of flying, which doesn't help anything. You'd think I would have gotten over that a while ago, since I fly between 45 and 50 thousand miles a year, but it doesn't ever seem to get any easier.

With every hour that passes by, my heart grows a little heavier.
Having boba to chew on (I'd never had them before today, and I'm delighted to report that they're like little superballs for the teeth) and people I love to spend time with helps, but it's still hard. I've done my best to make the most of the time I have left, but it's hard for me to live in the moment when I know how sad and lonely I'll be in such a short time period.

I knew the day had to come, and I always do. Doesn't seem to make it any easier to bear when the day comes around.
I always want just a little more time: one more week turns to one more day turns to one more hour, and at the very end I find myself wanting just one more minute to pretend like I never have to leave.

My peanut gallery is distracting me by giving me crap about the journal-novel I'm writing and making obscene figures out of rubber bands. It's time for me to go pay attention to them again.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26886594/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26886594/ Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:46:29 PDT Battledress compound with people I love. There are definitely worse ways to pass one's time.

My gallery-gutting is complete, for now. I've gone from 71 deviations to 28, and the ones that are left over have been mature-locked. My gallery is a very different place, now, and it's definitely taking a bit of getting used to. Fortunately, most of my best-received work, and the remainder of the work from my first published shoot that I have yet to post, falls into the category of "work I'm comfortable keeping in my gallery", but it's still a sad transition.

To all my watchers, thank you so much for your support; and I'd like to extend a warm welcome to the new watchers I've somehow acquired over the last week or so.

We'll have to see where things go, but one thing is for certain. I love this site, and the people here, far too much to leave. I know I probably won't have as much traffic now that I'm no longer posting art nudes, but I'm happy just to be here.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26775270/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26775270/ Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:59:00 PDT
I haven't said much of anything about the debate over the new photo-sharing tools because I didn't want to get involved until I really understood what was going on and because, in the words of another deviant, "I felt I wouldn't be adding to the debate as much as perpetuating it."
However, I must state that I am blatantly appalled at the manner in which this controversy has been handled.
People who want simply to have the option of disabling the share tools are being ridiculed for being illogical, unintelligent, and ignorant, and wanting some degree of privacy and choice in whether or not they want to use the new share features.

There are those on both sides who have expressed their opinions with some amount of respect and regard for others in this debate, and I commend those individuals.

For the last two years, I've kept a very strong boundary between my identity as a model and my identity as a regular, college-attending human being. While I understand that people will link my work where they feel like it, when they feel like it (which I have a problem with, but can't do much about), I have a serious problem with the fact that those linking tools connect to websites where my real name and personal information, professors and peers at college, and family members may have access to them. Paranoid, perhaps, but the reaction of graduate schools, colleges, and potential employers who all use Facebook to check up on people would have serious long-term consequences for my future. I don't want my work linked anywhere, but I especially don't want it linked using share tools that were added to my account without my consent or permission. I also have serious concerns regarding the fact that, when images are posted on many of those social networking sites they technically become property of those sites. Facebook has some lines of policy that concern me a lot.

Privacy is important, and I believe very strongly that the option for privacy should be given to those who want it. Not everyone on DeviantArt is here to become widely known, some people just want an opportunity to share their art with people in an appreciative environment. The general attitude of people who support link-sharing seems to be that if you don't want your images all over the internet, you shouldn't post them anywhere. The message seems to be that people who want some degree of privacy don't belong here or on any other photo/art site, and that alone makes me very, very sad.

I've loved being a part of this site, and I've met so many wonderfully talented artists and wonderful people here. I don't want to limit the works I post or leave, but like so many others, I'm tired of being misunderstood, insulted, and ridiculed because I want a choice. There are GMs who are starting "moron lists" and admins whose cruelty and lack of respect are completely reprehensible, and I don't think I want to be part of a site that treats its members in such a fashion for stating their opinions and making requests about things that are important to them.

It has been said in numerous places that if, and I quote, "the artist can't deal with (the) promotion, then perhaps they should re-think what they're uploading to DA."
and "Do not upload you art to the internet if you don't want it linked to. The end."

I can't deal with this kind of "promotion", and I don't want my art linked to.
I've thought long and hard about this, and I've started taking down images - half my gallery, to be exact. I won't be deleting my DD, non-nudes, and other nudes that don't show my face clearly, but everything else has to go.
I really don't want this to be the case because most of the images I love most by Perry, Michael, Shy, Froggy, and David fall into this category, but the simple fact of the matter is that:

a. I do not understand why DA is objecting so strongly to people who want an option or choice in this matter, and I do not appreciate the way people with this opinion have been treated, and the way people have been treating each other. It's ridiculous and unkind and the polar opposite of the sort of family-community feel/attitude that drew me to DA in the first place.

b. I only want my art to appear on those sites by my own choice, not by someone else's.
(see =kittiem's statement about this below, she put it much better than I could).

c. I'm concerned about what will happen to the community as a result of these share tools
(see *noughtagroos' statement below)

d. I care more about being a part of my family and keeping the general populace of my college from knowing about my modeling than I do about having my work posted here, and I cannot take the risk, ho... ]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26752699/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26752699/ Sat, 22 Aug 2009 11:06:23 PDT Her name is Casey, and she's only nineteen years old. She's got courage and strength like you wouldn't believe, and she's a generally exemplary human being. She deserves the world, but deserve doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things sometimes.
By the time they caught the tumor in her pelvis, it had progressed to the point where her leg required amputation.
Her amputation date is scheduled for mid-September.

We've fallen out of contact over the years, and there isn't much I can do to help her. But I can try to get the 1000+ people who watch me here on DA to chip in and help.

She recently entered the Body by Victoria contest, the reward for which is a trip to New York City and some serious pampering. She's at #2 in the standings now, and giving her something to look forward to after her amputation would mean so much.

Her entry caption reads:
"I don't love my cancer. But I love my body even though it's bald and can't sexily toy with its hair,
even though it has no eyebrows to arch, even though it will soon have only one leg and some people
will be disgusted by it. I love it because it's mine."

Please go here
[link]
and vote for Casey once a day. (to find her, click on "view and vote", then go to "most loved") Pass this on to your friends, your friend's friends (and if your friend's friend's have friends, pass it on to them, too) your family, your co-workers, your watchers, anyone and everyone you know through every internet channel you can. Casey's been dealt a nasty hand with this cancer; let's give her some solid, good proof that the universe, or at the very least the people in it, is capable of some good, too.
Edit: the person in #1 is a male internet personality. He's got over 16,000 votes. The contest ends on September 14, so there's still plenty of time. Let's make this happen.

To everyone who reads this entry, votes for her, and/or passes it on: thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26574104/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26574104/ Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:07:56 PDT
As the day went by, the sensation in my eye progressed from annoyance to agony, and by the evening, my eye hurt so badly I could barely stand to blink or close my eyelid for more than a second. I wasn't able to sleep last night, and the color of the white of my eye began to change to a brilliant, bloodshot pink.
By morning, I'd had enough. I've been given enough scare-tactic lectures by optometrists trying to put the fear of God (or, at the very least, eye infections) into my youthful, contact wearing soul to know the signs of keratitis (inflammation/infection of the cornea) when I see them, and my extreme light sensitivity, constant tearing, near-red eyes, and moderate to severe pain were indicating the potential for a serious, nasty problem

To make a long story short, eight hours and two separate doctor's visits later, I had my diagnosis. I didn't have keratitis. I had iritis, a form of anterior uveitis (inflammation of the uveal tissues, namely, the iris and/or the ciliary body). I was unaware until I returned home and did a bit of research that iritis was a form of anterior uveitis, which is a condition I saw frequently in animals when I worked in a veterinary clinic, and I was flabbergassted when I read that anterior uveitis, when chronic and/or improperly treated, is the third leading cause of blindness in the developed world. The severity of inflammation in this disease is measured on a scale from 1-4, based upon the quantity of white blood cells circulating in the fluids of the eye, 1 being not so bad, 4 being SWEET ZOMBIE JEEBUS!!!! In less than 24 hours, I went from being completely asymptomatic to being assessed at a level 2-3.

Fortunately, the opthalmologist told me that the problem is nothing major in my case, that no infection is present, and that I should be fine. If this turns out to be true, I feel very lucky.
The cause, in my case (as in many cases of acute anterior uveitis that don't involve trauma), is unknown.
Which scares me a bit. To be perfectly honest, this whole fiasco scares me a bit. One of my absolute worst fears is losing my sight, or having something bad happen to my eyes that compromises them, and this just hit me out of the blue.

Basically, my left iris decided to become seriously inflamed for no apparent reason three days before a shoot scheduled with =Auriethepixie that I've been keeping under wraps because I'm so stoked about it and wanted to surprise everyone. I'm not allowed to wear contact lenses or eye makeup until Monday at the earliest, when I'll be getting a progress check up to see if the fancy steroid/antibiotic eye drops that cost about as much per ounce as gold (okay, I'm exaggerating. They cost half as much per ounce as gold. I only wish I were kidding. Fortunately, I'm buying in much smaller quantities than ounces, and have excellent health insurance for the next eight months) are doing their job properly. So I'll have to cancel or reschedule.

I'm really, really relieved that it wasn't more serious, but I'm also just plain frustrated. Not to mention shaken.
Not to mention exhausted, because I can't close my eyes for more than 20 seconds, tops, and that won't change until the medication kicks in. Until then, I'll just have to chill with my hot, dry, irritated, sore, light-sensitive, painful eye. Twenty-eight hours without sleep and counting...

I'm going to go sit on the couch and do my best impression of a sulking, cranky, cantankerous old man who hasn't had his prunes in a week.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26323502/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26323502/ Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:15:37 PDT [link] has been awarded a Daily Deviation on =LovittGirl's account.

For both myself and Rachel, this image and, to some extent, the shoot itself, was a definite departure from the art we're used to creating, exploring a different side of artistic nudes and nude modeling. It was so much of a departure, in fact, that I balked at posting the image when I first saw it, despite its beauty. Here's to expanding one's artistic horizons and being open to new experiences.

As with any nude photograph that isn't completely devoid of sensuality (and some that are), there have been a few comments accusing the content of being porn, being dull, being boring, and so on and so forth. A discussion of my views on the nature of erotica (porn or not) and the place of sensual and/or sexual content in artistic nudes is most definitely in the works, but now is not the time.

Go congratulate her, and enjoy.



]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26163863/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26163863/ Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:32:10 PDT
Turns out my regular dentist is a hyperbole-loving alarmist who enjoys scaring the shit out of her patients.
I only ended up having one tooth repaired due to jaw inflammation from yesterday, and no root canal was required.

In addition to this good news, the dentist who worked on me was a gentle sweetheart, and so skilled that he managed to numb me without using the gum-traumatizing, nasty technique usually employed, and I stayed numb far beyond the end of the appointment. Hooray for minimal ouchies.
I'm in some pain (enough to prevent me from being able to chew on the left side of my mouth, or even touch my teeth together), but most of it is from yesterday, and it's nothing compared to the world of hurt I would have been in for had one (or two) root canals been performed.

I'm really happy with the way things turned out today.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26142076/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26142076/ Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:12:48 PDT
I'm having a double root canal tomorrow. One on each side.
If I'm really, really lucky, the teeth I'm scheduled to have work done on will just require pretty big fillings, but I've been told that there's a 90% chance that each will need a root canal.

Due to unfortunate circumstances involving misprescribed medications and complications from withdrawal when I stopped taking them, five years ago I became unable to tolerate all local anaesthetics containing epinephrine, which are used in virtually every dentist-related procedure. At the time, I didn't take the best care of my teeth, and I ended up with a few little cavities here and there, which should have been no big deal and easy to repair.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I couldn't handle anaesthetics containing epi, I couldn't find any dentists who were willing to work on me for a year and a half, and I eventually stopped trying. I was told to just take care of my teeth and the cavities wouldn't get any worse which, according to the dentist I have now, was a moronic piece of advice. I took decent care of my teeth over that five-year time period, but the damage was done, and over time it grew steadily worse, which I was unaware of until one of my teeth partially shattered back in October while I was chewing on a Necco wafer.
I've had a fair bit of work done since that time, and all major damage has been repaired, with the exception of these two teeth.

The tooth that broke back in October required an emergency root canal and it, for lack of a more eloquent way to put it, really sucked. Because I can't tolerate vasoconstrictor anaesthetics, the only safe way to get me numb involves the use of the plain anaesthetic dentists inject to numb a patient's mouth so they don't feel the pain of the vasoconstrictor anaesthetic. Plain anaesthetic wears off quickly on the average person, and I'm resistant to anaesthesia to begin with, so I have a nasty habit of regaining feeling in the middle of procedures.
In order to get me numb and keep me that way for longer than a few minutes, a technique which forces anaesthetic deep into my tissue has to be used.

I had a cavity filled earlier today, and the anaesthetic wore off no less than four times. My gums are purple-black from repeated injection site trauma, and the teeth in that area hurt so badly that I can't chew any solid food, lay on that side of my body, or sleep.
and that's just from a goddamn cavity.

I may do a lot of vocalizing in the form of complaining and whinging, and I know I come across as something of a whiny, oversensitive wussbag, but when push comes to shove I can tolerate quite a bit of pain (see: my tattoos). During my last root canal, I regained feeling when they were poking around to remove the last bit of nerve, and there really aren't words for how that felt.
I'm genuinely, honestly scared.

In addition to this, my physical health has taken a turn for the worse, and I'm struggling with hormone problems that have persisted for over a month, and I can't tell if my symptoms are getting better or worse. I'm not sure exactly what all this means, but when these new complications are viewed in the context of the other hormone issues I've had in the last few months, it adds up to some very not-good things. I have an appointment in a few days that will hopefully shed some light on what's going on, and I'm hoping hard that my ovaries won't look like bubble wrap on the ultrasound and that my medication isn't failing.

I've never been a terribly healthy human being. All the major stuff works pretty well as far as anyone knows, with the notable exception of my blasted endocrine system, but as far as minor stuff is concerned, my body just doesn't work the way it's supposed to. For the last three years, though, I've been relatively illness-free, and it's been wonderful. Feeling like a (physiologically) normal, healthy human being for so long has been such a gift and a blessing, and it's damn discouraging to be reminded again that I'm not.

I'll be surviving on a diet of Jello, applesauce, mashed potatoes, and painkillers for the next few days.
Zombie night tomorrow is going to be fun.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26057605/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26057605/ Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:09:33 PDT
A little over a month ago, I became the proud mommy of four tree frogs (Ickle, Hoppers, Wilbur, and George) and a tadpole.

I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to watch a tadpole metamorphose, but it's a really, really cool process.
When we acquired him, he was a perfectly smooth, speckled little teardrop content to sit on the bottom of the tank munching on algae all day. Within a week or two, he'd developed the beginnings of hind legs and had taken to sitting on the submerged part of our tank's big rock, looking up at the air-breathing frogs in an almost wistful manner. A few days ago, he developed anterior limbs and was using them to scoot around the tank.

We figured he wouldn't be ready to venture onto dry land for at least another few days.
Tonight, when I walked into the room, I saw him sitting on the glass, looking around at the brave new world he'd discovered. Grinning like an idiot, I watched him crawl up the side of the tank, dragging his fat little tail behind him as he tested out his little suction-cup feet.

The intrepid little darling doesn't seem quite ready to leave behind his aquatic home just yet - he's back in the water again - but he took his first steps on land today, which is a pretty major milestone.
Looks like it's time to give the cute little bugger a name.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26009699/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/26009699/ Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:44:17 PDT
Nothing has changed. The college still won't answer our questions about why it is that a semester in which I attended school for only three weeks, and the medical reason for my leave of absence resulted in my needing major surgery, counts as a full gift aid semester (they keep ignoring our questions and talking about loan options instead). There's still a little hope we'll be able to appeal the college's decision to deny me gift aid, but it doesn't look too good.

Despite this, my mom and dad managed to put my mind at ease.

No matter what the obstacle, my dad has always had a talent for making big, nasty things seem manageable and easily overcome, and, amazingly enough, he's already managed to find a potential option or two (which I didn't even know existed) for finding the money to cover at least 2/3 of next semester's tuition. He also put a really big smile on my face by calling the woman we're dealing with a fargin icehole, which is family-speak for f**king asshole.

and, from my mama: "Remember, Megan, we are a family and we can and will make this work. In the future we will look back on this last challenge at Sarah Lawrence and say 'Whew, we did it"... Please don't worry. remember when my brother told my Mom that he didn't think he could go to college at all because we and he didn't have the money and she just firmly told him that the money would be there for him and it WAS. Somehow. You are every bit as deserving and smart as my Bro and you, too, will (and are) getting it done."

I'm one lucky, blessed girl to have such wonderful, supportive parents and friends.
The encouragement I've received means so much, and really helped me get over the initial surge of worry and panic I felt after yesterday's bad news.

Thank you all so much.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25986342/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25986342/ Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:32:38 PDT
I know people who are graduating with over $200,000 in debt.

I've been lucky so far, with the school awarding me thousands upon thousands of dollars in gift aid, and it looked like I was on track to graduate with a mere $10,000 in student loans.
But it seems that this year, my luck has ran out.

It turns out that Sarah Lawrence has a policy (which we were completely unaware of) wherein they only give each student eight semesters of gift aid.
Soon after I started school in 2005, I fell very ill, and had to take a medical leave of absence. I left school after attending for only three and a half weeks.

They're counting that as the first of my eight semesters, which means that my gift aid will run out this fall. The burden of my Spring semester tuition will fall on my parents and I. All thirty thousand dollars of it.
When I found out about this a month ago, I very nearly had a panic attack. My parents calmed me down and reassured me by telling me that the school will probably let us appeal it due to special circumstances. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case - our prospects for discussing this reasonably with those bureaucratic nightmares really aren't looking good, and I don't know what we're going to do.

My family and I are not wealthy people by any stretch of the imagination. We just shelled out nearly ten thousand dollars we didn't have to pay for the portion of my Fall semester that isn't covered by my financial aid.
I can't deal with the idea of being that far in debt. I'll spend a decade of my life, if not more, paying for school, and there's a 99.9% chance that I'll end up going to grad school, too.

There aren't words for how incredibly fucked I am.
I've wished many a time over the last three years that I'd chosen to attend another school, but all those regrets combined don't come close to describing how I feel now.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25870300/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25870300/ Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:22:50 PDT
=Myndzeye and =LovittGirl picked me up around 11.30, and we headed over to `PerryGallagher's place, where I had the pleasure of meeting *Anyssa (who is even more beautiful in person).
We hung out, shot, and bonded for a few hours, then met up with `Pelicanh for the Japanese dinner I've ever eaten.

Scott and Rachel drove me home in their rented 2010 Mustang convertible with the top down.
Driving in a convertible with the top down wasn't ever on my list of things I wanted to do in life, and I don't understand how I could have possibly overlooked it.

Take it from me, there are few things in life better than going 80 miles per hour down a freeway at night while rocking out to "Welcome to the Jungle", "The Safety Dance", and "Highway to Hell" (to name a few of the awesomely awesome songs the radio blessed us with).
I'm high as a kite on endorphins and general happies.

Wonderful shoots, wonderful food, wonderful car ride, wonderful people.
I'm going to top it off with Diablo II, a tasty margarita and some quality time with my four pet tree frogs.

There should be more days like today.
Have a lovely night, everyone.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25824550/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25824550/ Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:56:54 PDT
Tomorrow: second shoot with ~koopfilms
Friday: meeting up with =LovittGirl and =Myndzeye (Yays), shooting with both of them and `PerryGallagher
Saturday: meet-and-greet at ^cosfrog's place
next Tuesday: shoot with ^wynnesome

I've also got plans in the works to shoot with a photographer who approached me a month or two back. His style is a little (make that a lot) different from what I'm used to, and he's been published in Maxim, FHM, Playboy, Glamour, and a bunch of other magazines. He's worked with some of the most beautiful women in the world, and given his background I was a bit shocked when he contacted me. It should be interesting, to say the least.

Be prepared for a veritable inundation of new work.
I do so love productive time periods, even moreso when they result in the making of new friends.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25787559/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25787559/ Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:59:01 PDT
Unfortunately, these individuals rarely receive the accolades and recognition they deserve. Every now and then, though, something happens that puts a serious smile on my face.

When I opened up DeviantArt today, I found something really awesome.



IMATS Sydney is using the above image, taken last year at IMATS Pasadena featuring my boyfriend/fellow model ~FrenzyModel painted up all blue and gold and pretty-like by our friend and tremendously skilled artist-in-crime ^Battledress, as the primary advertising image on their home site ( [link] ). The image is also featured on Makeup Artist Magazine's website.
"IMATS is the premier Trade Show for the makeup and special effects community, and is put on by Makeup Artist Magazine" - in other words, this is a pretty big freaking deal.

It's really exciting to see work done by people I'm close to in an advertising image that talks about the appearance of an Academy-Award winner. Go congratulate them. They both deserve it.

The version posted on ~FrenzyModel's account:


A studio version of the same concept, photographed by Adam Chilson, *Doomsday-Dawn :


]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25598399/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25598399/ Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:47:06 PDT
These are the best ones I've found so far















]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25597569/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25597569/ Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:14:43 PDT At this point, I want the damn virus to quit skulking around like a pussy and just hit me so I can feel even worse for a little while, then recover and put it behind me.

As a result of this, I'm in a pretty terrible mood.
I wanted the subject of my fifth and final dirty little secret to be something suitably juicy and interesting, but not too heavy, something that would leave a good final impression. That's not the way it's going to be.
My ill, tired, disappointed, premenstrual mind has sunk its teeth into a subject, and it isn't letting go.

This is a confession of my greatest flaw, it doesn't get much more secret and honest.

In my life, I can't stand mediocrity.
I hold myself to incredibly high standards, and as a result I compare myself to other people way too much and am prone to serious bouts of envy.
From sixth grade, when they started assigning letter grades, until the day I dropped out of high school at the end of my junior year, I maintained a near-flawless 4.0 and was ranked first in my class. There were a few A minus grades here and there, but my school counted those as A grades. Had an A minus counted as a 3.7, those A minuses would have disappeared.
I won first place in three different categories in every one of the four state-wide French competitions my teacher entered me in, was accelerated two years in math, was a very successful triple threat (Drama/Debate/Forensics) on my high school's DDF team (had I stayed in school for my senior year, I would have been a powerhouse), and was ranked the best bass clarinet player in the region, and one of the best in the state. It didn't matter what subject I was placed into, I aced everything I came across.
My parents would have been happy with me whether I had perfect grades or average ones, so my insane drive for perfection had nothing to do with their expectations, and everything to do with me.

I worked too hard, and as a result my health was horrible.
When I was sixteen, I got sick for two weeks before the end of school and made up those two weeks of work plus all the work I had to do in the final week in the span of five days. As a result, I had a complete mental and physical breakdown.
After that, necessity taught me to relax and be less hard on myself.

In college, my grade point average is around a 3.75 (although after last semester, I'd place it lower). The worst grades I've ever had were two B-pluses, both from notoriously tough teachers, one in a subject I had absolutely no experience in (Visual Arts). In high school, this would have sent me into a fit, but I was pretty happy that I managed to do as well as I did, and felt good about the work I'd done. I still have twinges every now and then when I look at my transcript because it isn't flawless, and I'm still way too hard on myself sometimes, but I've come incredibly far compared to where I used to be.

What most people don't know about me is that this same perfectionism and dread of mediocrity applies to the way I look, too. I've always wanted to be one of the supremely beautiful people, and I hate it that I'm not. I'm by no means a genius, and I wouldn't even call myself brilliant, but I can do some pretty remarkable things with my brain, and I've always been incredibly frustrated that my face and body fall short.
Looking at work done by the superhuman models the top-notch photographers I've worked with is sometimes enough to send me into a discouraged slump. Compared to them, I'm mediocre. I've gone on hiatus before because I couldn't stand that fact, and there are times it makes me want to quit modeling for good.

I'm a terrible hypocrite, in that I shout praises of the beauty of all women from the rooftops and have made a personal crusade out of trying to expand people's perceptions of what beauty is, but given the chance to be beautiful on a level with Mosh, Jayme, Megan Fox, or Scarlett Johansson, I'd take it without thinking twice.

The greatest struggle I face in my life is not against the perceptions of the rest of the world, but against myself.
I faced a tremendous amount of adversity in my life when I was younger and I showed a hell of a lot of resilience and determination. I shouldn't expect myself to not have any remaining issues, but I do, and I feel disappointed in myself for being human and having flaws. Despite the fact that I'm not perfect, physically or otherwise, I've done very, very well for myself, and I'm sure if I stopped being so damn hard on myself and so self-conscious and nervous about approaching top-notch photographers I really admire, I could continue to do so.
My father and grandfather are both un... ]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25572355/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25572355/ Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:24:12 PDT dwingephotography is throwing a shindig tonight celebrating the publication of his book, Desert Nudes.
I've had the pleasure of shooting with him three times over the last year and a half, and believe me, it is an absolute pleasure. I can't think of anyone I'd rather go scampering around the desert with. He's brought wonderful images to my portfolio, wonderful adventures to my ever-growing collection of memories and stories, and a wonderful friend to my life. I'm so proud to be part of his book and his work.









Congratulations, my friend. Thank you for showing me both the desert and myself through your eyes.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25518174/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25518174/ Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:28:33 PDT
This is the story of how I lost my virginity and the sexual experiences that shaped the relationships and lifestyle I have today.

It's been five years to the day since I lost my virginity to a man nine years my senior.
He and his girlfriend of three years had recently parted ways, and I was coming out of a rough few months involving family death, leaving high school, and learning to make my own way in the world; we turned to each other for comfort, and one thing led to another. I didn't love him, but he was my friend and he treated me well during the few months we were seeing each other.
In September, his ex-girlfriend came back into his life. As soon as she moved back to Alaska, he told me how he felt, and asked me what I thought. Over the previous few months I'd heard a lot of stories about her and her children, how wonderful their life had been together, and how much he missed the kids he'd practically adopted. There was no question in my mind about what I had to do - I looked him square in the eye and told him not to think twice about going back to her. I told him with complete honesty that I'd be fine and I let him go with grace and my best wishes.

I don't regret it, any of it. It isn't a fairy-tale story, but it isn't a bad story, either.

For the next year after that, I went through a very promiscuous time period that I refer to as my libertine phase, which began because I wanted to experiment and have fun and ended because I didn't feel good about what I was doing any longer.
To be perfectly honest, I do regret some of the decisions I made during that time-period, but I don't dwell on it much. I had some good times, I had some bad times, and I'm content to leave it at that. I'm in a completely different place in my life now, and I don't care to burden myself with agonizing over the past.

I've tried the whole love/sex/relationships thing in a few different ways, and after those experiences, I came to the same conclusions I'd had when I was a dreamy-eyed twelve year old with a head full of idealistic romance and fluff.
I am, at core, a monogamous being, and having sex with someone I don't care about or love isn't right for me. I've always known that sex can be a wonderful, amazing, fun, silly, intense, intimate, sensual, beautiful thing, but I didn't fully understand just how incredible it could be until I had the chance to share it with a longtime, monogamous lover.

Monogamous lifestyles don't work for everyone, though, and I respect the decisions and life choices of people who have chosen to walk a different path from my own. Having been involved in both conventional and nonconventional lifestyles, I understand the rationale behind both sides, and I understand the sort of pain that can result from being harshly judged and mistreated as a result of non-conventional relationships and behavior. The phrase, "to each, their own" rings particularly true when it comes to aspects of life as deeply personal as sex, love, and relationships. What you do behind closed doors, who you choose to love, and how you choose to love them is nobody's damn business but your own.

Monogamous, polyamorous, celibate, libertine, virgin, heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, asexual, pansexual, kinky, vanilla, dominant, submissive; whatever your choices are, the Wiccans put it best - "and it harm none, do what you will."

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25486971/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25486971/ Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:33:44 PDT
When it comes to fruit trees, I'm a certifiable kleptomaniac.

Where I grew up, there were no fruit trees, with the exception of the 11-inch tall citrus tree in my family's living room that produced the tiniest fruit I'd ever seen. My grandparents live in southern Arizona; their backyard and the adjoining alley are chock full of fruit trees. The first time I saw a tree laden with ripe fruit, I was fascinated, and made it my personal business to sample fruit from every tree in my grandparents' yard. When I'd chewed through their grapefruit, tangerines, and peaches, I set my sights on the neighbors' oranges and lemons, and discovered that the old adage about stolen fruit tasting better is, indeed, true.

Those childhood escapades instilled in me a lifetime love of fruit trees, as well as a passion for stealing from them.
I'm not a complete pirate; I only take a few pieces, and always leave enough left over for the owners.
Plus, California law states that if a branch of a fruit tree hangs over a fence, it's legal to harvest any fruit that branch produces.

My place of residence in Southern California is fruit-yoinking heaven. Within two blocks of where I'm sitting right now, there are two lemon trees (one of which is home to the tastiest lemons ever), an orange tree, a blood orange tree, two grapefruit trees, two yellow peach trees, one white peach tree, two or three cherry trees, a Japanese lime tree whose fruit makes fantastic margaritas, an apricot tree, a plum tree, two apple trees, a pear tree, and a fig tree.

From May through December, at least one of those trees is producing tasty, tasty fruit for me to pilfer and carry back to my lair. The people who own these trees seem to completely ignore the fact that they've got delicious food growing in their backyard, and are content to let it spoil. It would be a crime to let all that yummy fruit go to waste.

(I've actually obtained permission from some of the neighbors to harvest their fruit, but the subversive child in me thinks it's more fun to pretend that I'm being a dastardly fruit-stealing rapscallion).

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25462878/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25462878/ Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:00:10 PDT LovittGirl's dirty little secret series. She's a beautiful woman, whose honesty and courage are nearly as admirable as her loveliness.

I'll open with my only true flaw, the darkest of my dirty little secrets, which isn't such a secret to a lot of people who know me, but which definitely causes me to feel the most shame. It'll get a lot lighter from here on out, but for now, I've got to get this off my chest.

I don't like my body.
The extent ranges from mild distaste to vehement loathing, and has been an intermittent part of my life for the last nine years. I often go through long time periods where I'm comfortable with myself, but once or twice a year my negative feelings about the way I look rear their ugly heads, and I'm miserable for a while.

This is a hard subject for me to talk about, and there's a good chance I'll be deleting this journal entry or heavily editing it soon after I post it. I've been going through one of my self conscious, mirror-avoiding phases lately, and it's hard to keep it bottled up and hidden away from everyone.
I'm completely secure in nearly every other aspect of who and what I am, and I don't like admitting to having such a serious issue; I've found that having this sort of issue is something that makes people think less of one. The fact that I don't like my body is something I try to hide, and feel pretty terrible about when it pops up. I dress and behave as though I'm comfortable with the way I look, and most of the time, it isn't just an act. However, that comfort is born not of liking the way I look, but of tolerating and accepting the fact that I'm five feet nine inches tall, weigh 150 pounds, am larger than the majority of people my age, and can't find a part of my body other than my neck, collarbone, arms, hands, feet, and ankles that I genuinely like.

No amount of compliments, reassurance or positive feedback about the way I look can help or correct the way I feel. I've received so much of it, and I'm grateful to each and every person who has offered me support and kind words. Unfortunately, being comfortable in my own skin is something that has to come from me, and me alone, it isn't something I can be given.

It never occured to me that there might be something wrong with the way I looked until I was twelve years old, when I contracted a fever that raged through my body for a week and shrunk my five-foot six-inch 130 pound body to 118 pounds. When I came back to school, weak and miserable, my gym teacher looked at me and said, "Megan, you're so thin - you look like a whole new person."
And thus, self-esteem issues that plagued me throughout my adolescence, drove me to eating disorders, and cost me a ridiculous amount of my time and my favorite high school boyfriend were born.

A normal human being who put themselves through the exercise and diet regimens I subjected myself to as a teenager would have lost a ridiculous amount of weight, but I didn't, and it drove me crazy.
Unbeknownst to me, there was a reason why I measured nearly five feet nine inches tall and built like a Clydesdale in a family of slender women with an average height of around 5'3", had no chest, and couldn't lose more than five pounds no matter how hard I tried.

When I was nineteen, I found out that I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, a hormone imbalance involving higher-than-normal androgen (male hormone) levels. I'd been presenting general symptoms for years, such as periods of mood swings that can be mistaken for bipolar disorder or cyclothymia and practically nonexistent breasts, but I didn't have any of the classic signs, which include ovarian cysts, hirsutism, weight control issues, acne, and a host of serious health problems, until I was eighteen.
Even after I developed a cyst the size of a baseball, doctors were still reluctant to test me for PCOS, since I presented with none of the other physical symptoms.

Turns out I'm lucky to look the way I do, as 50% of women with PCOS are obese and even more are overweight (especially ones whose imbalances are as bad as mine), but I don't feel lucky.
Medication has given me my life back, almost completely banishing my cysts and correcting my mood disorder, but there are limits to the wonders it can perform.
It can't give me back my body (I suppose back isn't the right word to use, since I never had the large breasts and slender form other women in my family are blessed with, in the first place), and I wish it could. I don't know what it's like to wear a bikini to the beach or to look in the mirror and be proud of what I see from the neck down. I'd love to know what it's like to be thin, to be like *miss-mosh, `ulorinvex, ~<... ]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25378978/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25378978/ Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:59:18 PDT Be forewarned: this baby chameleon is so excessively adorable that looking at him can be addictive.






later edit:


Were I to make a list of my ten favorite deviants, *Blepharopsis would be near the top.
His photography is excellent, and his subjects are always fantastic. I'd feature his entire gallery if I could.

some other *Blepharopsis favorites







]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25284767/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25284767/ Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:30:14 PDT The three shoots I've done in the last week have really pulled me up out of the apathetic modeling funk I've been stuck in for the last month, which is also a serious plus.

Speaking of which, I was very pleasantly surprised earlier today by the first of the completed images from my shoot with ^cosfrog. After looking through all the proofs, I was even more pleased. I'm really picky about images of myself, and rarely like more than five images from any single shoot, but I managed to find about eight images I adored and at least fifteen I liked, which makes me a happy Megan.

I'm having a very pleasant, relaxed night, and I've been indulging in one of my favorite mindless pastimes: the making of silly lists.
On this particular occasion, I felt like following up last week's barrage of my favorite literature with a smidgeon about some of my favorite music.

Were I to make a list of my favorite songs, it would be at least three times longer than my post about my favorite books, so I figured out a way to limit the list a bit.

A - "Another Irish Drinking Song" - Da Vinci's Notebook
B - "Bitches" or "Big Poppa" - Mindless Self Indulgence
C - "Closer to Mario" - Nine Inch Nails and a certain Nintendo theme song. So wrong, and yet so deliciously right.
D - "Devil's Dance Floor" - Flogging Molly
E - "Engel" - Rammstein
F - "Fette's Vette" - MC Chris and "Fiction (Dreams in Digital)" - Orgy
G - "Give Head if You Got It" - Combichrist
H - "Hysteria" - Muse
I - "I'm Your Man" - Leonard Cohen
J - "Just Lose It" - Eminem. Oh, the stories and memories associated with this song...
K - "Kiss From a Rose" - Seal
L - "Links 2 3 4" - Rammstein and "Livin' On a Prayer" - Bon Jovi
M - three Rammstein songs, some fantastic 80s music, Vienna Teng's best song, my favorite song by Girls Under Glass, and MMMBop fall under this letter. I refuse to choose.
N - "Never Gonna Stop (the Red, Red Krovvy)" - Rob Zombie. What can I say, I'm a sucker for A Clockwork Orange, and the use of nadsat in this song makes me squeeful.
O - "Opheliac" - Emilie Autumn
P - "Poison" - Alice Cooper
Q - "Que Pasa" - Orishas
R - "Rock You Like a Hurricane" - Scorpions
S - "Sonne" - Rammstein
T - "Timekiller" - And One
U - "Unwell" - Matchbox Twenty
V - "Voodoo" - Godsmack
W - "Word Up" - Cameo or Korn. Either way, it's a hell of a fun song.
X - "The Sexy Data Tango" - Voltaire (no songs started with x, so a song containing x will have to do)
Y - "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" - Dead or Alive. Dope's cover is also acceptable.
Z - "Zu Den Sternen" - Megaherz


and, since I can't ever seem to choose just one of anything, here are my runners-up:
B runners up: "Bachelorette" - Bjork, "Black Friday Rule" - Flogging Molly, "Blue" - A Perfect Circle
D runner up: "Du Riechst So Gut" - Rammstein
F runners up: "Fette's Vette" - MC Chris, "Fiction (Dreams in Digital)" - Orgy, "Feed My Frankenstein" - Alice Cooper
H runners up: "Harder to Breathe" - Maroon 5, "Heroin, She Said" - Wolfsheim, "Hotel California" - Eagles
I runners up: "Ich Will" - Rammstein, "Ist Das Gut (XXX mix)" - Rammstein and t.A.T.u.
L runner up: "Livin' La Vida Loca" - Ricky Martin
P runners up: "Passive" - A Perfect Circle and "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" - Relient K
S runners up: runners-up: too damn many, including songs by Icon of Coil ("Simulated"), Emilie Autumn ("Shalott"), Poe ("Spanish Doll"), and the Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Suck My Kiss").
T runners up: runners-up: "Tainted Love" - Marilyn Manson, "To the Moon and Back" - Savage Garden
extra-special honorable mention goes to "Tearin' Up My Heart" by NSync
Y runner up: "You Know I'm No Good" - Amy Winehouse or Arctic Monkeys

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25278318/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25278318/ Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:02:54 PDT
Thank god.

Warning: entirely superficial story concerning a near-disaster of the hair variety ahead. Story is completely appearance-oriented and the sort of thing that only someone who relies on their appearance to make money would care this much about. Read on at your own risk.

Day before yesterday, I mentioned that I needed to touch up my roots before shooting. I figured it would be a fairly ordinary process that would go off without a hitch.

Oh, boy, was I wrong.

During the five years I spent coloring my hair all manner of brilliant, unnatural colors, I was very lucky. Of the 20+ times I colored my own hair, only one of my bleach and/or dye-jobs was botched, and only one resulted in my hair being so damaged I had to cut most of it off (that was the first and only time I ever used a Manic Panic lightening product).

Then I transitioned into the realm of normal hair colors, and my luck started to run out.
Natural hair colors are tricky things. When you've got a bottle of bright blue dye, you can pretty much guarantee that if you follow the instructions on the box and bleach your hair, it will turn out bright blue. No real guess-work, there.
Natural colors, on the other hand (especially salon products) are made of lies. Dirty, filthy, stinking, lying lies.

When I'm at school, I get lazy when it comes to my hair, so lazy that I often go a month or two without bothering to touch up my roots. I recently set a laziness record of six months without a dye job, resulting in about three inches of medium red-brown roots crowning my otherwise blonde head.
I was toying with the idea of growing my hair out completely, but two-toned hair in that configuration photographs very poorly. With paid shoots, ^cosfrog, and `PerryGallagher coming up, it was high time to do something about the dark halo of hair at the top of my head.

Over the last few years, whenever I've needed to touch up my roots, I've done the exact same thing: buy a thingy of Clairol bleach and nuke the offending hair until it turns the proper color. I was intending on following this strategy, but was convinced instead to buy the clairol professional high lift color that was used in the salon to lighten my hair at a beauty supply store.

I grabbed a tube of golden-blonde color that matched the lighter section of my hair, a bottle of the proper developer, and some hardcore conditioner, processed my hair (following the directions to the letter), and...
my dark roots, predicted by the tube's box to be a pale-ish shade of neutral blonde, were a dark red-blonde, and the sections of hair I'd highlighted to make sure the color would transition nicely instead of creating a stripe effect looked the same.

After consulting a few sources, I went back to the beauty supply store and bought a tube of color that was a bit lighter and a bit higher lift, repeated the process and...
my roots were a slightly less dark shade of red-blonde, and the sections of hair I'd highlighted, instead of being a bit more golden than usual as I'd been assured they would be, were a weird shade of silver.

At this point, I decided I'd had enough of these shenanigans. I went down to the drugstore, bought a box of good old-fashioned bleach, and got-r-done.
My roots turned out a lovely shade of pale blonde, but unfortunately they were a shade lighter and an entirely different tone than the rest of my hair.

So I fixed it the way anyone with a hair death-wish would. I combed the leftover bleach through my neutral-blonde hair, waited fifteen minutes, and...

My hair turned out a brilliant shade of pale blonde, a step down from platinum. It's all pretty much the same shade, with pretty highlights and color variations, and since I'm so fair, the color works well.
Overall, my hair is in pretty good condition, which is something of a miracle considering my roots' and highlights' three processings in 24 hours. My hair is a bit dry and rough, but is improving each time I condition the hell out of it.
I'm debating whether or not I want to purple-tone it to remove the yellow tones and make it more of a silvery-white, as it was shooting a bit more yellow than I would have liked, but that isn't very important right now. I'm just glad it all ended up being the same color in time for my shoots.

Had I gone with my original plan and just bleached my roots for half and... ]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25240948/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25240948/ Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:45:36 PDT
Thursday seems to be shooting day this summer, and I've got a busy one ahead of me tomorrow.
I'm really excited.

In the afternoon, I'll be shooting with Adrian Fernandez in Long Beach, then I'm hoofing it south for an evening shoot with ^cosfrog.

After spending a few months in New York without so much as seeing a camera, I always feel a bit stagnant and rusty and eager to produce some good work. Last weekend's desert shoot with =dwingephotography was a wonderful welcome back to California, and the rest of the month is shaping up to be quite productive.
It'll be really nice to have more work to post and be proud of.

I'm off to dye my half-year's worth of roots to a shade that matches the rest of my head, pick out an outfit or two (I haven't worn clothes in front of a camera for a deliberate photoshoot in a long time. Strange concept, that one.), and do other necessary bits of pre-shoot primping and fluffing.

Wish me luck.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25154822/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25154822/ Sat, 06 Jun 2009 03:03:52 PDT I'm more of a book-fiend.

When I was born, my parents decided to raise me right. They were bound and determined not to let me be raised by a television like so many other children. Instead, they decided to instill in me a deep love of the written word whether I liked it or not, and started reading to me a few days after I was born.

Within two and a half years, I was reading books without assistance, and I've had an insatiable appetite for them ever since. Throughout elementary school, junior high, and high school, my parents practically had to pry books out of my hand so I'd get some sleep - left to my own devices, I would read into the wee hours of the morning.

I'm a list-maker by nature, it's one of my favorite things to do when I'm relaxing or winding down before I go to sleep. It occurred to me day before yesterday that I've never really bothered making a list of my favorite books, and I decided to remedy that.

After two days of thought and compiling, I've managed to come up with around seventy of the books I love most. There are definitely more that I neglected to think of, but the bulk of the really important ones are here.
It will most likely become more annotated as time passes.

1984 - George Orwell
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
An Author Bites the Dust and about ten other books by Arthur Upfield
Battle Royale - Koshun Takami
The Blind Watchmaker - Richard Dawkins. I don't much subscribe to his militant atheism - while I myself don't belong to a religion, I respect those who choose to, and don't consider them to be intellectually crippled and/or the root of all evil - but his snark-laden science and I get along very well. And I quote: "To call oneself a reductionist will sound, in some circles, a bit like admitting to eating babies".
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
The Chronicles of Narnia (favorite: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. runner-up: The Magician's Nephew) - C.S. Lewis
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (British edition, with the extra chapter). My best friend in high school and I learned nadsat slang and drove everyone around us crazy with it for a few months.
The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett
The Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Crooked Little Vein - Warren Ellis
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
The Dragonriders of Pern series, selected books (Dragonsdawn, Dragonflight, Dragonquest, Dragonsinger, Dragonsong, The White Dragon) - Anne McCaffrey
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation - Olivia Judson
Dune - Frank Herbert
Exquisite Corpse - Poppy Z Brite
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett
The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling. I grew up with these books, and love them dearly. I don't much care for literary snobbery.
Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
The Inferno - Dante Alighieri (Palma translation)
The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lost Souls - Poppy Z Brite
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience - William Blake
Metamorphoses - Ovid
The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey
The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
Dame Ngaio Marsh's murder mysteries
On a Pale Horse - Piers Anthony
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster
P.G. Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves novels
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Pornucopia and the Xanth books by Piers Anthony
The Portable Curmudgeon - Jon Winokur
The Prydain Chronicles - Lloyd Alexander
The Redwall series from Mossflower to Marlfox (books 2 - 10) - Brian Jacques
The Ring - Koji Suzuki
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Sonnets and Narrative Poems: the Complete Non-Dramatic Poetry - Willi... ]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25109942/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/25109942/ Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:34:39 PDT About half an hour before, I'd noticed the characteristic blue flash of lightning, and was trying to persuade Chris to go outside and watch the storm with me. I scampered outside to the driveway and sat down to inspect the sky. While I was watching for flashes, he told me a preposterous story about a trailer at the side of the house being struck by lightning a few years ago, when he and his family were in the driveway; my response was to make some comment about that never happening again.
After a bit, disappointed by the lack of lightning, we returned to our SNES racing game.
Twenty-five minutes later, the lightning started up again. I, being an avid lover of most things involving bright lights and loud noises, asked if we could go outside again; Chris persuaded me to stay indoors.

Good thing, too.
That big flash and explodey noise was lightning striking our yard less than a hundred feet away. I've never experienced anything remotely like that in my entire life, my blood was about half adrenaline afterwards. It was terrifying and, once my brain realized I wasn't in imminent danger, really, really, really cool.

I've witnessed a lot of thunderstorms in my time. When you live in the Midwest during the summer and go to school in New York, they come with the territory. When thunder and lightning are out and about, my first instinct is to scurry outside and play. I'll be thinking twice about that from now on, let me tell you (as well as making "that won't happen again" type statements. That's just asking for it).

In slightly less exciting, somewhat less dangerous news:
I'm back in Los Angeles for the summer. Fun as it was at times, last semester was about as enjoyable as having one's teeth forcibly removed from one's mouth without benefit of anesthesia, and I'm glad its over.

There is awesomeness in the works, oh yes there is. In some cases, it's already been shot, and I'm just waiting to be able to post the images - I've only received one image from my shoot with Michael, and I did some work with Joseph Corsetino and ^Battledress a few months back that's going to be featured in a magazine in August, so I have to wait to post photos until it's published.

Here's a taste of what this summer has in store:

more playing around in the desert with =dwingephotography and some awesome new models, including =kittiem, this Saturday and many dates to come
`PerryGallagher and, hopefully, `Pelicanh on June 25
~koopfilms, who I've wanted to do a solo shoot with for a long time. Shooting sometime in the next two weeks
^cosfrog, date TBA, but hopefully sometime this month
a shoot with *Doomsday-Dawn and ^Battledress, on a concept I find equal parts incredibly exciting and incredibly terrifying. date TBA
=littlegett, mister Zesty Mint himself. I got my first taste of that stuff recently, and I'm addicted. date TBA

I'm also going to try and get together with ^wynnesome, as it's been far too long since we last shot together, and finally shoot with =NevaehLleh and Don Sir. Another shoot with Joseph Corsetino would be amazing, too.

As far as concepts are concerned, I'm hoping to get some neat blacklight work under my belt sometime this summer. I'm also acquiring some new wardrobe pieces and shoes, as I'm finally starting to make money at this, and I'm discovering that the more footwear and pretty, skimpy clothing one owns, the more desirable one is as a subject/muse. I must confess that I'm finding it damn hard to stay on track and stick to buying the bare essentials. Standard-issue black stripper heels and standard-issue clear stripper heels are all well and good, but neon green blacklight reactive spike heels and clear heels with goldfish in the platforms are a mighty temptation.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/24488628/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/24488628/ Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:11:23 PDT (DeviantArt is silly, and apparently still thinks it's April 28th)

My younger friends have taken to asking me when I'm going to retire, what I gave John McCain for his first birthday, what real-life dinosaurs looked like, what the world was like before God created light, and offering to buy me a walker and Viagra.

Goddamn uppity kids. When I was their age, Pluto was a planet, Britney Spears and K-Fed hadn't corrupted the earth with their spawn, Fidel Castro was still head dictator-special-pants of Cuba, and youngsters had some respect for their elders.

I'm here to set the record straight. I still have all but one of my teeth, I do not wear a light jacket to the grocery store because it gets cold in the dairy aisle, Jesus didn't sign my yearbook, I don't know anything about Moses' donkey trick, and for the last time, ~duanya, Ovid never grabbed my ass.

All joking aside, turning 22 doesn't bother me.
Another year has gone by, and I've still got the heart, energy, and playfulness of a seven-year old. I can still pass for eighteen (sometimes younger), especially if my tattoos are covered.
I've got all the positive aspects of being a teenager going for me, but I can enjoy the benefits of looking like I'm fresh out of high school with all the freedoms of adulthood (with the exception of being able to rent a car. I'm okay with that).

21 was a pretty good year.
In January, my four-year hiatus from alcohol and caffeine officially ended, so I got to enjoy the freedoms that come with that landmark age. I still have more than enough fun when I'm sober, but a little booze every now and then is a beautiful thing.

I petted and hand-fed a wallaby and stingrays, touched a 2600 year old tree, had a positively epic mud-fight that raged across campus, rode in the sidecar of a motorcycle, welcomed some wonderful new friends into my life and became much closer to some I already had, grew a pair of balls and rode Tatsu, held more awesome dance parties than I can count, experienced the glory of a beer fight, visited Disneyland 20 times, played on an inflatable slide shaped like a shark, produced some incredible work with some incredible photographers, wrote a story called Fridolph Tomkin and the Fellowship of the Apocalyptic Pants, learned a lot of neat stuff about astrophysics, leveled two Diablo II characters to the high 70s, and had a bunch of other adventures and experiences that slip my mind, at the moment but were really, really cool.
There's just too many of them for my aging neurons to properly recall.

I've had a habit, since I was seventeen, of making lists of x+1 number of things to do before I turn x+1 years old, where x is the age I turn on the birthday I make the list. I'm not such a fan anymore of making long lists and setting more than a few goals. When one is too fixated on predefined objectives, life has a habit of passing one by. I'd rather just go with the flow and see what happens.
There are, however, a few things I'd like to do before my next birthday, so here's my list of...

23 things to do before I turn 23, and by 23, I mean 10
1. Participate in the Polar Dip, an annual tradition in my hometown wherein a few hundred people get dressed up in swimsuits and/or odd, skimpy costumes and charge headlong into the Pacific Ocean. Bear in mind that this takes place in mid-December, when the average air temperature is around 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and in order to properly take part, you have to immerse yourself chest-deep in the freezing water.
2. Go paintballing. I've wanted to do this since I was in fifth grade, and I'm thinking it's time to make that happen.
3. Get my damned passport.
4. Ride Xcelerator at Knott's Berry Farm
5. Pet or hold a kind of animal I've never touched before.
6. Have the tattoo on my right arm touched up
7. Reassemble my library of favoritest books
8. Visit the ocean more often
9. Enjoy my final year of college as much as possible
10. Relax. Whether I worry or not, my life will happen. What will be will be, what won't, won't, and I'd rather spend my energy adventuring, laughing, and doing things that make me happy.

Here's to hoping this year will bring lots of contentment, love, general awesomeness, and good memories.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23978198/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23978198/ Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:28:37 PDT Time always speeds by without so much as a by your leave when I'm there, and crawl when I'm here. Must be something to the old adage, after all.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller has been one of my favorite books since I was a freshman in High School. Of all the characters in that novel, one of my absolute favorites is the man who wants to feel like he's living forever, so he fills his days with tasks he finds boring or loathsome.
I'm afraid I don't have that sort of willpower when I'm back home in Los Angeles. I'd rather enjoy my time and have it pass in an eyeblink.

One would think that, after so much coast-hopping, I'd be more used to the transitional period. While it is true that I've become a master of switching mental states as I move from place to place, from utter relaxation one day to paper-writing fiend the next, that ability only seems to apply to the academic parts of my life.
The ache in my heart for the people and places I leave behind each time I return to school stays just as strong, no matter how many times I make the trip.

Oh, well.

I'm terribly sorry that I've fallen so behind on responding to all your comments and favourites. All the support is so very much appreciated, and I'll be much better about answering them once I catch up with all my work.

Until then, as one of my more quirky West-Coast acquaintances is fond of saying...
love, peace, and chicken grease
(you know who you are, zesty mint!)

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23882342/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23882342/ Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:43:51 PDT
At first, I had attacks nearly every day (sometimes multiple times per day), and I went to the hospital four times in two weeks. Fortunately, my heart was in otherwise excellent condition, and the attacks would subside on their own without the intervention of injections or a defibrillator.
With time, the attacks declined in frequency: once a week, once every two weeks, once a month, once every six months, once a year.

With the tachycardia came certain dietary and medication restrictions, some of which are no longer in effect: red food dye, caffeine (I couldn't eat chocolate for nearly a year), alcohol, decongestants, atropine, and stimulants in general.
One substance that I'm still not supposed to be anywhere near is the anaesthetic that most dentists use, which contains a combination of lidocaine and epinephrine.

I had a dentist appointment today with someone who has worked on me before and is well aware of that restriction.
Unfortunately, there was a mix-up with the vials and she ended up injecting me with the wrong anaesthetic, sending me into my first attack of tachycardia since June 2006 (which, interestingly enough, was also induced by a dentist).

The attack was minor, lasting only a minute or two, but it wiped me out. I'm physically okay now, besides a bit of weakness and shakiness, but mentally I'm nervous and unsettled.
This is the first time in almost three years that I've experienced SVT, and I'd forgotten how scary it can be. Even when I know what's going on and that I'm going to be fine, having my heart pounding out of control is still absolutely terrifying.

I don't think it'll ever stop amazing me that two minutes of a runaway heart can drain a person of energy completely for hours.
I'm just glad that the attack was so mild.

I haven't had the best of fortune with my physical health for the last month and a half, and I really hope this trend doesn't continue.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23807209/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23807209/ Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:00:47 PDT
A day that starts out with a DD just has to be good, and today definitely was.
Great open house with ^wynnesome with good friends, good booze, and bad 80s rocker clothing to spare.
It was a total blast, with epic epic epicness at every turn. Unfortunately, I lost track of time at the Open House, and I now have only two hours to sleep before I wake up for my shoot with =dwingephotography. Oh, well.

Point being, I really needed a day like today, and I'm very grateful to each and every one of you who helped make it what it was.

Sleep well.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23795839/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23795839/ Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:14:49 PDT At first, I thought it had to be a mistake. There was no possible way this could have happened, unless Michael Helms had posted another photo of me. I scanned my watchers' deviations... nope, no photo of me.
and then it occurred to me that I might have snagged my first Daily Deviation.
I checked the DDs for today, and yeppers indeed, it's Daily Deviation time for Meggy!

The timing couldn't have been better. I really needed a pick-me up like this today.

In my opinion, rupture is one of the ugliest words in the entire English language.
This might be because of its structure or sound, but probably has more to do with my personal experience with the word.

When I was nineteen, I was diagnosed with a bad case of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, one of the symptoms of which is, obviously, abnormal ovarian cysts.
Before I was on medication to treat it, once a month one of the little bubbles on my ovary would rupture, causing me extreme pain and rendering me unable to walk or do much of anything for a few days until it healed (unless a really large cyst bursts or one develops a fever, these things generally don't require medical attention).

Two days ago, a cyst on my right ovary busted.
This is the first time in over two years that I've experienced this. It's an incredibly discouraging reminder of the fact that, even if one takes one's medication and everything has been under control for years with hardly a bump or blip, this damned disorder can strike out of nowhere.
At this point, there's no reason to go to the hospital - I talked to my doctor, and unless I develop a fever or the pain doesn't get any better after a few days, I should be fine. For now, I'm playing the waiting game, crossing my fingers that I heal up just fine.

Until it heals, I'll be in a lot of pain. It hurts every time I take a step, when I sit in certain positions, when I stand in certain positions, even when I'm lying down.
I really needed a good, happy, relaxing Spring Break. Instead, I've had two very unpleasant dental appointments and a ruptured ovarian cyst.

So I'm very, very thankful that this DD was given on this day. It seems that whenever anything unfortunate happens to me and I start to become sad or depressed, the universe sends me a reason to smile and feel better.
Thank you so much to whoever suggested it, and to ^wynnesome for featuring it.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23773854/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23773854/ Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:44:12 PDT and, more often than not, a comment involving the concept of "real women" is made, the quintessential example being "it's nice to see a real woman for a change" on an image of either London Andrews or *groovaciousk in `Pelicanh's gallery.

I take very serious issue with comments of this nature.
In the media and popular culture, there is so much discussion of "real women" and "real bodies", with women like Queen Latifah, America Ferrera, and Jennifer Lopez praised for their curves.
While I think that the appreciation of women who aren't thin is a step in the right direction, the language used to praise them is the opposite.

For the last few decades, average women have been made to feel inadequate because they aren't built like sticks, and now our culture is erring in the opposite direction by sending skinny women the message that they aren't real, that they are somehow deficient.

Let me tell you a thing or two about real women.
I know a woman whose natural, healthy weight at five feet eight inches tall is 100 pounds. She's real.
I know a woman whose natural, healthy weight at five feet eight inches tall is 150 pounds. She's real
I know women who, without any sort of starvation or dieting, are a size two. People stop them on the street and go on tirades about how they're responsible for teenage girls having eating disorders and tell them to eat a sandwich.
I know women who are in quite good health and wear a size twelve. People stop them on the street and call them fat.

In my experience, most people would sympathize more with the size twelve woman rather than the size two woman, but the thin woman's encounter was just as insulting and made her feel just as bad.
As someone who has been fighting a battle with my body off and on since I was twelve years old, it took me a long time to realize that thin women suffer, too. I find it appalling that people who have witnessed women be tormented for being larger than a size six and have spoken out on behalf of those who are undesirable by our society's ridiculous standards seem to have no problem turning the tables around and criticizing women who are naturally slender by implying that there's something false or unnatural about them.

I believe that no healthy woman, be she a size zero or a size sixteen, should ever suffer for looking the way she does.
There's no size or weight limit that defines a real woman or beauty.
Real women don't have curves. Real women don't lack curves.
Real women simply exist as they are, with curves or no curves, large breasts or small breasts, big hips or little hips or no hips at all.
If you have two X chromosomes, you're a real woman. Hell, in my opinion, if you feel like you should have two X chromosomes, you're a real woman (but that's a debate for another time).

So, dear world, do all women a favor and stop perpetuating the idea that there is a single standard for what is beautiful, natural, and acceptable.

A Necessary Disclaimer to the Above Journal Entry, as I've Seen and Initiated Enough Discussions of This Type to Know What Tends to Come Up: I do believe that too thin and too heavy exist; I don't think that unhealthiness is positive at either extreme. I'm referring to the broad spectrum of healthy weight, not necessarily as defined by a Body-Mass index chart. As far as women who diet or have had plastic surgery, call me crazy, but I think they're real, too, but I'll have to add that to my list of tirades to expound upon later.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23737274/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23737274/ Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:25:01 PDT Now, everybody's died
so until our tears have dried
we'll drink and drink and drink and drink
and then we'll drink some more
we'll dance and sing and fight
until the early morning light
then we'll throw up, pass out, wake up
and then go drinking once again
- Da Vinci's Notebook

On March 17, 1984, more than three years before I was born, Margaret Mckellar Phillips died of lung cancer at the age of 71 in the company of her two sons (my father and my uncle Charles) and her husband of nearly 40 years.
According to my dad and my uncle, Grandma Helen and I are incredibly similar, sharing names, body language, mannerisms, and speech patterns. I've always wished I could have known her.

Saint Patrick's Day was her favorite holiday. Like any good Scotswoman, Grandma Helen loved good booze and good company, and once a year she laid aside her inherent disdain for all things Irish to get hammered with the people she loved.
At first glance, dying on one's favorite holiday might seem a particularly cruel bit of irony, but it wasn't so in Grandma Helen's case. Grandma would have wanted the people who loved her to drink, sing, and party like there was no tomorrow rather than have everyone mope around on the anniversary of her death.

and that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Rest in peace, Grandma. I never knew you, but I love you nonetheless, and I solemnly swear to get drunk enough for both of us.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23573683/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23573683/ Sat, 07 Mar 2009 11:53:32 PST After the gray, frigid, plague-ridden hell of February, the advent of Spring feels like being given a new lease on life.

YAYS!

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23368577/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23368577/ Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:32:31 PST If you have anything at all that is good for brightening moods, be it cute baby animals or pictures of large firearms or explosions, or just a simple hug, pretty please send it my way?
I'd appreciate it a lot.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23270337/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23270337/ Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:07:42 PST
I logged into DeviantArt half an hour ago and discovered, much to my delight, that `Pelicanh had posted a photograph of me. It instantaneously made my whole day about ten thousand percent better.

and, as if that were not enough, one of the people commenting on the photo on Michael's page has declared that I am Samus, which promptly sent me into a state of flailing nerd-gasm.
That just might be the most awesome compliment I've been given in, oh, EVER.

*happy dance*

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23041042/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23041042/ Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:37:21 PST
"Pluto, formal designation (134340) Pluto, is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System (after Eris) and the tenth-largest body observed directly orbiting the Sun. Originally classified as a planet, Pluto is now considered the largest member of a distinct population called the Kuiper belt...

From its discovery in 1930 until 2006, Pluto was considered the Solar System's ninth planet. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, many objects similar to Pluto were discovered in the outer solar system, notably the scattered disc object Eris, which is 27% more massive than Pluto. On August 24, 2006, the IAU defined the term "planet" for the first time. This definition excluded Pluto, which the IAU reclassified as a member of the new category of dwarf planets along with Eris and Ceres. After the reclassification, Pluto was added to the list of minor planets and given the number 134340."

The decision to reclassify Pluto was total bullshit. Less than 5% of astronomers voted on the new definition of planet that excluded Pluto (hardly representative of the astronomical community as a whole).
By this definition

1. The object must be in orbit around the Sun.
2. The object must be massive enough to be a sphere by its own gravitational force. More specifically, its own gravity should pull it into a shape of hydrostatic equilibrium.
3. It must have cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

Pluto was excluded based on the third, since it shares its orbit with asteroids.
By this definition Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune, all of which share their orbits with asteroids, should be excluded, too.

In addition, Pluto doesn't deserve to be treated like a mediocre trans-neptunian object or a bloody asteroid less than a quarter its size. It's just too awesome. It and it's moon Charon are tidally locked, and form a the largest binary system in the solar system and, as such, they are the only known example of a double dwarf planet. Evidence from Charon's surface indicates that it has active cryo-geysers. Cryo-geysers, for love of god.

I don't care what a vast minority of wankers at the IAU say, Pluto is a damn planet.
The plaques on Pioneer 10 and 11 say so.
The golden record on Voyager says so.
The Disney character named after it says so.
The fact that the scientific community cannot reach a consensus on the definition of a planet two years after it was reclassified says so.
and I say so.

Humph.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23029507/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/23029507/ Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:24:01 PST A few days ago, I caught a 24-hour virus, complete with nausea of the numerous-bouts-of-near-vomiting variety, headaches, and the general ickies.
Then, when I was barely recovered, I started showing the signs of the nasty cold that's running rampant through the dorms and dining halls of this fine institution.

I've been fighting that cold off for about three days now.
My consumption of near-toxic levels of Emergen-C and enough water to fill numerous bathtubs is keeping the virus at bay, but it seems to just be maintaining the status quo, rather than making an improvement.
So, until further notice, I'm stuck flat on my ass playing Pandemic II, eating soup, and watching Criminal Minds until my eyes bleed. Wonderful though these endeavors may be, one can only engineer apocalyptic pathogens and marvel at Matthew Gray-Gubler's bone structure for so long, and I'm starting to go a little stir-crazy.

Boredom and the ouchies make me a sad panda.

edit:
It seems that the people at the pub mixed up the milk and soymilk canisters, and I thus used the wrong one in my coffee earlier today. My body can't tolerate the protein in milk, and consuming it makes me sick. It's just not my week.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22844310/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22844310/ Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:53:55 PST Someone tagged me in the "sixteen things" meme on facebook a while ago, and I decided a few days that it might be a good time to get around to doing it.

Here it is, in its completed glory: a list of sixteen facts about myself.

1. I don't look like either one of my parents. My mother is a tiny, olive-skinned Italian woman with black hair and deep brown eyes, my father is a relatively short, pale, brunette, blue/green eyed, coarse-featured Welsh/Scotsman. The resemblance is so close to non-existent that a fair number of people who meet my family or see photos of them think I'm adopted (or that my mother had a dalliance with our theoretical mailman).

2. My favorite number is 17. I find prime numbers oddly wonderful, and there's something about the number seventeen that I particularly adore. The only logical reason I can figure out for my love of seventeen lies in my favorite of the strange prime-number related phenomena in nature - the life cycle patterns of cicadas, the longest of which is seventeen years. Yum, yum, entomology and math.

3. I'm a sucker for awful, nerdy pick-up lines. If someone walked up to me and said something along the lines of, "If I were an enzyme, I'd be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes", "I'd like to cause a quantum singularity in your transwarp conduit", or "I've got twelve parsecs for your Kessel run", my attraction to them wouldn't necessarily increase, but I'd be more inclined to talk to them instead of kicking them in the kneecaps.

4. I was born with beautiful red hair. Much to my chagrin, it didn't last, fading within six months to strawberry blonde, and progressively darkening as the years passed. Nowadays, my natural hair color is a not-particularly attractive shade of light brown with a hint of red.

5. Music is one of the most important things in my life. I don't really know how I'd survive without it.
When my parents brought me home from the hospital three weeks after I was born, my dad sat me on his lap and played me "Hotel California" by Eagles. From then on, one of my daddy's favorite ways to show me love and devotion was to play his guitar and sing to me. Before I could talk, before I could walk, before I could form memories, I learned to associate music with love and happiness.
When I was a bit older, I started playing clarinet and bass clarinet, and I absolutely loved it. I played for eight years, until I left for college, and when I'm out of school, one of my dreams is to buy a beautiful wood bass clarinet and start playing again.

To this day, all it takes to make me happy is listening to one of my favorite songs. Discovering new, beautiful music is one of my greatest joys in life.
I don't really care much about genres. I'm a rocker at heart, but I appreciate well-crafted music of any genre.

6. My love of music goes hand in hand with a deep love of dance. I love, love, love to dance. I don't much care what kind of music I'm dancing to, as long as I like it and it has a beat I can follow.

7. I'm not comfortable with anger. It's a powerful, overwhelming, negatively chaotic emotion, and as such, runs contrary to my generally peaceful nature. It's very difficult for me to be mad for very long, no matter how valid or justified the feeling may be - I tend to be, with very few exceptions, slow to anger, quick to forgive.

8. Environments without forest and ocean feel alien and uncomfortable to me. I grew up in the temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska, and spent the first seventeen years of my life less than a minute's walk from the ocean. When I'm away from the Pacific Ocean and trees for too long, I start craving their feel and scents like other people crave chocolate.

8. I have the weakest fingernails of anyone I've ever met (and, oddly enough, very, very tough toenails).

9. When I'm sad, there are three things that are guaranteed to cheer me up: really good, crispy kosher dill pickles (preferably from Disneyland, which is home to the bestest pickles evar), petting the bat rays at Seaworld, and listening to "Word Up" by Cameo while doing the ridiculous dance from the music video.

10. I loves me some rollercoasters, ones with huge drops and air time in particular. My current favorite is Goliath at Six Flags: Magic Mountain.

11. "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton was the first song that ever made me cry. It's been thirteen years, and the song still brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.

12. I have a triangle of chicken pox scars on my forehead, one of which is centered perfectly between my eyes. D... ]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22830632/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22830632/ Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:31:44 PST giving my academic advisor an update, and I decided today would be a good day to do that.
The school I attend doesn't put much emphasis on letter grades, relying instead on teacher-written evaluations to assess a student's performance, but grades are still assigned. As such, the grading system here is somewhat arbitrary - a teacher can write a flawless evaluation, and give the student a B+, or an evaluation full of criticism and award the student in question an A. It varies from teacher to teacher, and isn't terribly predictable - we're told not to worry about it, as good class performance ensures good grades 9 times out of 10.

When I was younger, I was obsessed with my grades, receiving nothing but A+, A, and A- grades from sixth grade until I dropped out of high school in my junior year. When I came here, I was told by my teachers that I didn't need to be concerned about my grades, that learning was the goal, not perfection. Wish someone had told me that and meant it a long, long time before.

Last semester, I took two semester-long classes. I received A- grades and excellent evaluations from both (one of which was downright glowing), with nary a criticism in sight.
I've been here for two and a half years, and have earned in that time two B+ grades, two A- grades (counting those above), and one A+. Every single other grade I've received is an A.
Before last semester, my grade point average was a 3.86. Now, it's a 3.75.
Not phenomenal, but not bad, considering the fact that I've stepped pretty far out of my area of expertise, taking visual art and literature courses with some of the toughest professors on campus.

I went to my advisor to show him my grades today.
He looked at my transcript, and his reaction was disappointment. He actually said, "from anyone else, this would be good, but you can do better," and told me to check with the teacher of my year-long class to see how I'm doing so I can at least get an A in that class.

I would use the word flabbergasted to describe how I feel right now, but it's far too silly. I'm downright angry.

I'm being criticized for A- grades, for fuck's sake, one in a class where I was one of the top two students, the other in a Milton class taught by one of the foremost Milton scholars in the country.
I don't know why I bother. I really don't. I have the highest GPA of anyone I know, I've been awarded two scholarships for scientific excellence, and I've received awards for each of the three conference projects I've submitted to poster sessions here, a feat that has not been met, to my knowledge, by any other student currently enrolled in the science program, and I still get this kind of treatment.

I know a lot is expected of me because my advisor thinks I'm brilliant, but for fuck's sake, this is too much. My advisor was one of the people who told me not to worry about my grades, and I never expected to hear something like this from him, given the circumstances.
I could understand this kind of talking-to had I gotten a C or a B-, or even a B, but an A-?

I'm not paying an insane amount of money every year to be berated for doing my best when my best produces these kinds of results.
I spent years making myself miserable in my early teens, agonizing over the horrid possibility of receiving anything less than an A. I'm happier now, and I'm not about to go back to the same kind of obsessive, misery-inducing, life-sucking behavior because my advisor is disappointed in me for getting an A- or two.

My performance may not be good enough for him, but it's good enough for me, and I'm not going to bend over backwards at this school to please anyone other than myself.
Milton, Blake, and the Bible was an incredible class that pushed me in wonderful ways. For the first time since I got here, I brainstormed my own paper topic, worked my ass off, and created something that, despite it's flaws, I was honestly proud of.
I did an excellent job in Botany, with my teacher joking at times that I was helping him teach the class. My test scores were at the top of the class curve, my conference project was good, and I participated actively in class.

I will not make apologies for my performance in either class, and I feel the same way about the art class and the classical/medieval literature lecture that were the sources of my two B+ grades. I would rather work hard in a class I love and have a B on my transcript than be bored and have a 4.0.

I'm not here to be perfect, I'm here to expand my horizons, challenge myself, and learn, and as long as I'm stuck here, I'm going to do just that.

/end tirade.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22779169/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22779169/ Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:20:29 PST The tours are scheduled for sunrise, half day and full day excursions.

David Winge as featured in World of the Art Nude, equipped with camera, RocksAnne (David's beloved Jeep) and a beautiful model will take you to see the exquisite beauty of untouched nature at its finest in the California deserts.
Explore the beauty of the wild wilderness and the great, grand outdoors.
Journey to the seeming ends of the earth and stop for the best eats to be had in small town USA.
Come back with an expanded sense of the fragments of space that reflects beautifully in the awesome pictures you will shoot. This is no tourist's tour. It's not for the faint of spirit.
Bring your camera and sense of adventure!

Book now with DWinge Photography. Dates and fees available through
Reserve your space in the best lands CA has to offer. For best selection of model, book a minimum of a month in advance. Recommended early booking for seasonal desert flowers of spring shoot, a breath taking aromatic experience.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22514772/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22514772/ Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:36:39 PST Pelicanh and `Shy-Too-Shy.
It took me all of five minutes to fall in love with them.
Michael and Shy are incredible photographers and such sweet, adorable, funny, charming, welcoming, beautiful people.
Working with them and spending time with them was a delight.

If the shots I saw today are any indication, this shoot produced some amazing images, making it a double success: I gained a pair of wonderful new friends and new work for my portfolio.

Win.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22416169/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22416169/ Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:29:53 PST - 1 Corinthians 13, 1-3

A little over three years ago, I was nearly dead.
The hormone imbalance I wouldn't be diagnosed with for another six months had begun to emerge over a year before, coming into existence in a slow crescendo that thundered into full voice around my eightennth birthday, brought into full being by a combination of extreme stress and my coming of age.
It raged through my body, wreaking complete and utter havoc on my physical and mental health.
I was misdiagnosed with serious psychological disorders and put on medications that landed me in the emergency room. I had to leave college in late September 2005, less than a month after the beginning of my freshman year. Three months later, a six inch cyst on my right oveary ruptured, sending me into emergency surgery. Had I stayed in school, there's a good chance it would have killed me.
My dreams, the people I loved, and my very life were slipping away from me, one by one, and I didn't take it very well. I became incredibly angry and bitter, filled with self-pity and convinced that I was cursed. I lashed out at everyone and everything within hearing distance, and when they wouldn't listen any longer, I took it out on myself. I had no hope, and was very rapidly losing my desire to live.

and somewhere in the middle of these days, easily the darkest I've ever experienced, my soul was set alight.

I still remember the moment I had the epiphany, years in the making, that started me on the path to becoming the person I am today.
I was sitting on a bus somewhere near Colorado in March 2006. A horrible accident had closed off the road, and myself and my fellow passengers were stuck in the middle of nowhere.

To pass the time, and distract myself from the fact that I was slowly but surely freezing my ass off, I decided to write about the previous two years of my life. As I got everything out of my head and onto paper, I looked at my words and realized that my anger, bitterness, hopelessness, and hate were part of a deadly self-perpetuating cycle. I had decided that the world woudln't stop mistreating me and looked for the worst in everything, and because of that decision, the worst was all I'd ever be able to see.

I replaced my despair with hope and my anger with determination.
I got back in touch with my inner five-year-old and re-learned the value of silliness and simple pleasures.
I learned to see and appreciate all the beautiful things, great and small, that make life worth living, even in the darkest of times

and wonderful things began happening.

I've changed so much since those days that it really doesn't seem possible that I used to be that lost, miserable girl.

I by no means lead a charmed life. Sonce that snowbound spring day, I've experienced some fantastic times and some downright ucky times. Life's like that.
The basic ups and downs of living haven't changed much, but my methods of handling them have.

I'm still a human being, with my fair share (and sometimes more) of flaws and mistakes and moments I'm not proud of
But I'm an extraordinarily blessed human being.
When I opened my heart to all the hope and promise the world has to offer, I gained a capacity to love of such magnitude that I live my whole life in love.

I love being alive, and I'm grateful for every single second.

I love waking up in the morning with the knowledge that I'm still breathing, that today I might find a penny or play in the rain or share an epic moment with my best friend or stumble upon any one of the hundreds of thousands of tiny, everyday events, adventures, and reasons to laugh that make me thankful for the sheer opportunity to exist.

I love the fact that I've lived long enough to see myself become a person I'm proud of, and happy to be.

Three years ago, I didn't think I would live to see 2009, let alone that I would have the capacity to be this content, or have this deep of a lust for life.
My sole resolution is to continue living this year as I have for the last three, with a thankful, joyous heart, an open mind, and a metric ton of silliness. Life is the single greatest gift, the ultimate experience, and I won't stop hoping and dreaming and loving my life and the people in it with all my heart until the day I die.
(and I'm not even sure that could stop me)

Happy New Year, everyone!
May you find peace, happiness, love, or whatever it is you're... ]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22125889/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22125889/ Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:19:37 PST
When I was traveling out to California for Thanksgiving Break, the hydraulics system on my plane started to have issues less than two minutes before takeoff. We were literally next in line for takeoff, pulling up to the end of the runway, when the warning light came on. They ended up having to replace the entire hydraulics computer. If that had happened two minutes later, there's a decent chance I wouldn't be here typing this.

I was scheduled to leave New York for this Christmas break on December 19th at 5.59 pm. I would like to here make a note of the fact that, up until that day, it had snowed twice the entire semester; the most that had accumulated was around an inch, which was promptly rained on.
On December 19th at around 10.00 am, the sky opened up and began dumping snow on most of the Northeast. I have never been so unhappy to see snow in my entire life.

All flights out of LaGuardia were cancelled. When I arrived at JFK at 12.30 pm (the roads were getting so bad that I decided to leave ridiculously early) every digit I had firmly crossed, I looked up at the Arrivals/Departures board, and promptly started cursing a blue streak.
Flight 353 to Burbank was delayed three hours, which, under those conditions, is generally indicative of a cancellation.

You see, JFK International Airport is pathetically equipped to deal with snowstorms. The problem wasn't the weather, insofar as planes could take off, but the fact that they only have the equipment to clear one runway. If there was a plane at your gate, you were leaving. If not, your flight was cancelled.

Four hours later, my flight was officially cancelled. I called JetBlue, they informed me that the next flight I could get on was Sunday, the very day that a pair of low pressure storm systems were due to collide over the Northeast. In tears, I went to the counter and asked them if there was anything else they could do.

There was one flight to Long Beach that had a plane at the gate - it had been scheduled to leave at 4.00, but they were waiting on finding a crew. The only problem: there were 27 other people in the standby line ahead of me, and the flight was overbooked.

I had a snowball's chance in hell of getting on that plane, but I decided to try anyways. At 6.30, they started boarding. Passengers I'd explained my plight to squeezed my shoulder and wished me luck as they walked by.
At 6.50, they started calling the names of standby passengers.
There were at least ten people standing there. There were six spots on the plane.
After half of those spots were filled, what little hope I had faded.
And then, the most wonderful thing happened.
They called my name.

When I walked onto that plane, all the people I'd talked to before boarding stood up and started clapping.

I left New York at 7.00 pm on the only flight departing for the entire Southern California area since 1.00 that afternoon, 28th on the standby passenger list.

I don't know how it happened, or how many good karma points I used up, but I made it home only two and a half hours late.

It isn't someone returning from the brink of death, cancer being cured, or the finding of a long-lost loved one, but I think it still qualifies as a Christmas miracle.

Thanks, universe.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22052031/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/22052031/ Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:38:59 PST
I've been here for five semesters, and I have yet to pull a single all-nighter. Once my senior thesis enters the picture, I'm fairly sure that will change, but until then, I want to keep my record going.

The time period from the end of Thanksgiving Break to the beginning of Christmas Break is called conference week, in honor of the fact that the bazillion-page papers we research all semester, the formal term for which is "conference projects" (although we usually refer to them by way of a few colorful expletives), are due during this time period.

My work tally since the beginning of conference week is as follows:

Astronomy
Observational study poster
Observational study paper (3 pages)
Astronomy conference poster: "The Quest for Population III: the Search for the First Stars in the Universe"
(6 pages of text, 5 hours of formatting, photoshopping, and layout work)

Botany
Conference Paper: "The Flowers of Evil: Diversity and Evolution of Carnivory in Plants" (24 pages)
Conference Presentation
Third Exam

Milton, Blake, and the Bible
Group Conference Thought Pieces (8 pages)
Third Class Paper: "The Codex of Unfettered Energy: the Conundrum of Blake's 'Bible of Hell'" (5 pages)
Worksheet (3 pages)

Final Count: Seventeen days, 9 assignments, 51 pages

At this time last year, I had to write two conference papers and a massive take-home final for my Literature class and do a poster and do a bunch of class papers AND take a nasty Cell Biology test. Compared to that, this was a breeze.

It feels so phenomenally good to be done.
Celebration is in order - I'm going to go dance around my room with all the grace of an epileptic elephant to the awesomely awful music of the 1980s and 1990s.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21989698/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21989698/ Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:53:39 PST
My January is shaping up to be amazing.
*sitamae on the third, `Pelicanh and `Shy-Too-Shy on the tenth.

Now, I just have to figure out a date to shoot with *dwingephotography, hijack =NevaehLleh, and see if I can convince ^Battledress to play with me, and my shoot quota for the next five months will be filled.

WHEE!!!

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21917813/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21917813/ Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:06:33 PST sitamae over break, and in light of that fact, I've decided that its high time to pull myself up out of it.

I had substantial reason to do so before
but dear lord, do I have motivation now.

I wrote out a general schematic of my artistic goals at the beginning of the summer, and included within it a brief list of dream photographers.
and one of them is coming true.

I'm shooting with `Pelicanh in January.
You read that right. I am shooting with Michael Helms next month.
As if that wasn't amazing enough, I'll also be shooting with the incredible `Shy-Too-Shy on the same day.

and, to top it all off, *groovaciousk will be there, too.
I have high hopes that it's going to be a free-for-all of awesome.
I'm so excited, I can hardly wait.


And, in slightly less "goddamn, that was unexpected. YAY!" but still excellent news, I just completed my only conference paper.

I'm going to go have a flailing dance party in celebration, fueled by happiness over nabbing this shoot, relief at having 19 pages of paper out of the way, and the bag of dark chocolate M&Ms my advisor gave me an hour ago.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21837977/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21837977/ Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:03:08 PST
In that time, I've collected over 300 watchers, accumulated almost 17,000 pageviews, and suckered well over a thousand favourites out of my hapless audience.
Six of my deviations have over 50 favourites, and one recently topped 100: Vintage Reality, which is currently sitting pretty with 123 of them.

I've also been a part of a Daily Deviation.

Not that significant, in the grand scheme of things on DeviantArt, but these little landmarks make me smile.
I'm grateful for all the kind words, wonderful comments, and support I've received here, as well as the neat people I've lured into watching me.

Sorry about the months of relative inactivity, I've been going through a bit of a creative dry spell for a while. I'll hopefully have some new work to post before too long.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21674857/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21674857/ Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:29:30 PST
With the horrors of Spring registration and the slew of work my dearest darling professors so generously heaped upon the heads of myself and my peers, keeping us too mired to think for the last two weeks, behind me, I can welcome Thanksgiving break in the proper fashion.
Yes, my compatriots, after earning the right to spend five days in a vegetative state, emerging from my coma intermittently to stuff my face with everything in sight, I am now going to blow the world a giant raspberry and collapse.

Thank God for the sweet, sweet respite of Turkey Day, with its many-splendored wonders... large bird legs to gnaw, entire cans of olives to demolish, pumpkin pies to obliterate, mashed potatoes to decimate en masse, stuffing to consume by the truckload, and that triumph of modern culinary genius, that glory of glories: the cranberry sauce shaped like a can.

Have a fantastic Thanksgiving, everyone.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21628822/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21628822/ Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:25:26 PST
I'd been a storyteller since soon after I began to speak (quite literally, my mother has copies of the stories I told her as a very small child), and a writer since I could hold a pencil. After years of devoting my mind to other things, I'd finally started getting in touch with the creative writing part of my brain, and losing my ability to craft words within a few short months of this undertaking brought me incredible frustration.

As with any art form, sometimes inspiration and ability depart from a writer without warning.
After numerous failed attempts to force something out of the silent machinery in my head, I resigned myself to not writing again for a long, long time.


A few weeks ago, my advisor told me he wanted me to write a book for my senior thesis. I told him that I've been unable to write fiction for a long, long time, to which he simply replied,
"I have faith in you."

The idea terrified me. I'd become convinced that I wouldn't write again for years and years, if ever. I made up my mind that, come Spring Registration time, I would sign up for a Fiction writing workshop, and force myself to write again whether I liked it or not.

and then, something wonderful happened.


The last piece I'd been working on before my silent period began was only a sentence long. It was a good sentence, and I never forgot it, storing it away in a corner of my mind for a day when it might prove useful.
After three years of dormancy, that sentence came to the surface a few days ago.
I sat down, typed it out, and began to write.

Seven and a half pages later, I'm up to my elbows in a story.
It isn't the best of stories, but it's mine
and I am elated

With luck, the wonderful professor I talked with a few days ago will guide my way next semester, and this will be the first of many works.
and maybe, just maybe, I'll create something I can be genuinely proud of.

This couldn't have happened without Drew Cressman, who has enough belief in my intellect and potential for both of us, and my darling ~duanya, whose encouragement and loving threats have proved invaluable. I'll be giving them each a dose of hugs and chocolate in the near future.

YAYS!!!

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21340634/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/21340634/ Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:23:36 PST
I was too young by mere months to vote four years later, and again, I watched another disaster unfold.

A year and a half ago, I took an interest in a young Senator from Illinois who seemed to have less than no chance of winning the nomination, let alone the election, but who compelled and moved me in a way I'd always hoped for, but had little hope of ever finding outside of Hollywood fiction. I've never seen Barack Obama as the Second Coming (eight years of the Bush Administration could turn anyone into a cynic), but he filled me with hope and optimism and the idea that maybe, just maybe, the day might come when I wouldn't be ashamed to be American.

After a month or two of watching and listening and studying, I became involved in his campaign and watched it grow from a quaint grassroots experiment in futile idealism to a powerful political force.

As the campaigns unfolded, I began to feel really, really good about this election. Even if Barack Obama lost, it looked like John McCain wouldn't be so bad - up until 2004, when he took on his role as President Bush's lapdog, I respected him, his experience, and his politics a great deal (with exceptions here and there). As time passed, however, I became increasingly nervous about the idea of John McCain becoming President, a feeling which grew close to panic when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. I'm fairly moderate in my political views, with left-leaning tendencies here and there, and the idea of that insane, radical woman whose only political experience consists of running a town of 5000 people $22 million into debt over six years and spending four years in charge of my home state, which has the lowest population and least complex political arena of any in the nation being so close to running the country terrified me.

Yesterday was my first opportunity to vote, to participate in the democratic process, futile though my one voice may be in the grand scheme of things.

My 6.30-9.30 p.m. class ended two hours early, and I scurried to the enormous tent set up on the South lawn to watch election results.
For over three hours, my friends, my mother, and over 500 of my fellow students watched Barack Obama's electoral vote count climb higher and higher. At first, we were cautiously optimistic, but as state after state was projected to At 10.45 pm, when CNN declared Obama's win in Virginia, driving his electoral votes to 220, the excitement drew to a fever pitch. We counted down the seconds to the closing of the West Coast polls together, hundreds of voices as one, and when the words "Barack Obama Elected President" flashed across the screen, those hundreds of voices again became one as every person in that room screamed and jumped to their feet, flailing and laughing and crying and hugging everyone in reach.

We were simultaneously joined by thousands in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Philadelphia, Columbus, Minneapolis, Madison, San Francisco, and countless other cities and towns across the United States and the world, one voice becoming hundreds, becoming thousands, becoming millions.

As John McCain made his concession speech with, showing a remarkable amount of grace, dignity, and respect, everyone fell silent. Nearly two years of campaigning and bickering and draining, repetitious bullshit had come to an end in a single night, and none of us could really believe it. In dumbfounded silence, we watched Barack Obama's first speech as President-elect of the United States.
Immediately afterwards, two of my closest friends and I walked to the flagpole, looked up, and voluntarily said the P[link]
Your Journalledge of Allegiance for the first time in eight years.

I don't think we're out of the woods yet, by a long shot, but I think that electing Barack Obama president was a good first step to fixing this country. Let's hope time proves me, and the other 63.5 million people who voted for him, right.

Also, happy Guy Fawkes Day.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/20107618/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/20107618/ Sat, 23 Aug 2008 05:08:41 PDT
I'm leaving in less than 10 days.
Most of the people I know out here are going to Burning Man; their departure date has snuck up on me so quickly that I probably won't have a chance to say goodbye to them.
I really don't know where the last month went - it literally seems like it was only yesterday that I shot with =wynnesome and *Battledress.

As far as modeling is concerned, I've pretty much lost my motivation altogether over the last month and a half. The desire to create is never latent for long, but I get the feeling that it'll be finding different outlets from here on out.

Don't expect to hear too much from me for a while.
Going back to school is always a rough transition, not to mention a busy one.
I've got friends returning from Europe after a year away to make up for lost time with, loved ones I haven't seen for over three months to catch up with, class schedules to figure out, a new room to turn into a home, and a rhythm to re-establish.

Be well, everyone.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/19821007/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/19821007/ Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:57:36 PDT
I'm quite happy for her - she's a wonderful human being, and I'm sure she'll be a great mother - but I can't help but feel a bit stunned.

It seems like only yesterday that we were a pair of 16 year old terrors raiding her father's copious liquor cabinet and getting tipsy from eating too many rum balls over Christmas vacation, having ridiculous dance parties in our underwear, and spending hours agonizing over the trials and tribulations of teenage-girl life.

A lot of people from Sitka get married young.
Most don't even go out and see the world before settling down; some do, more don't.

By 2005, at age 18, Kathryn's best friend, who I also went to school with, was married and had her first child. I think she's had at least two at this point.
My friend Erin, who is only a year and a half older than I am, got married in 2006.
Her older sister was married a bit before that, and she had a child last November.
Every time I turn around, it seems like someone else I grew up with is getting hitched and breeding.
Hell, people who graduated a year after I did are tying the knot and producing offspring.

I can't really wrap my brain around the fact that people I spent my teenage years with are getting married and having children. Even more baffling is the fact that I'm their age.

Despite the fact that I've grown so much as a human being over the last few years, and thus can't say I still feel like I did when I was a teenager, it's hard for me to get used to the idea that I'm now officially in my twenties. A real live adult (at least in the chronological sense of the word).
I've been aware for a long time, of course, that other people accept huge responsibilities, such as childbearing, at this age, but it really hits home when the people having kids and settling down for the rest of their lives are people who I grew up with, whose birthdays are within a year or two of mine.

The idea takes a bit of getting used to.
Yikes.

]]> *Conundra http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/19705089/ http://Conundra.deviantart.com/journal/19705089/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:02:35 PDT Battledress) recieved a Daily Deviation today for Beauty in Inches II [link]
(in my gallery as Ideal Illusion: Repose)
I'm so happy that Lisa is recieving some of the recognition she deserves, and I'm so glad to have been a part of this image.

Head on over to her gallery and give her some favourites and love.

]]> *Conundra