http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:lekosis&section=today deviantART RSS for by:lekosis en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:23:11 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/29001339/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/29001339/ Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:53:47 PST
The experience got me thinking about good and evil. Writers and philosophers are fond of telling us that there's no such thing as good and evil in real life, only the shades of grey in between. That may well be true, but I feel like today I encountered something pretty dark.

Now Leko, you're thinking, don't blow this out of proportion. Sure you're pissed that some virus ate your computer, but that's no reason to start throwing conceptual social terms around like candy. It's not like the guy was eating babies.

Well, you're right. He WASN'T eating babies. That... is true.

But the people who program viruses and malware put in serious amounts of effort to gain no result beyond causing the suffering of as many innocent people as possible. Viruses load themselves onto your computer, fuck things up, and then spread through your email or any other internet-using programs to as many new computers as they can find, repeating the process until they're eradicated permanently or the user gives up and buys a new computer.

These are people who put in hours and hours of their own time to create programs that net them little or no gain. Think about it--most viruses don't even try to scam you into buying crap. They exist ONLY to delete your files, rearrange your computers' innards, slow everything to a crawl, and make your computer stop functioning entirely. The people who program these things know exactly how to get into your computer's most vulnerable parts and crack them open till they bleed. Why?

Why do they do this? They're clearly talented programmers. Do they simply get bored and seek to wreak havoc because suffering amuses them? Were they in a bad mood and felt like taking it out on people they'd never even met? Did someone piss them off to the point that they felt the entire internet needed to be punished? What could possibly make someone want to put in so much effort to cause tears, frustration, destruction, and mental stress? What are they getting out of it? Some kind of sick satisfaction in the suffering of their fellow human beings?

At best, these people have serious antisocial disorders. At worst, they're borderline sociopaths.

Thankfully, there's another side of the coin. These are the people who program anti-virus and anti-malware software and distribute it online at no charge. The exact opposite of virus programmers, these men and women put in hours of their own time not because they expect to gain some kind of benefit from their work, but rather because they want to HELP their fellow human beings.

If you think about that long enough, these guys start sounding more and more like superheroes.

So this one's for you, nameless programmers and virus-fighters. You may not be saving lives, but all of you are my heroes.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28977560/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28977560/ Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:48:05 PST
Iran: Awww, gee!

International Community: Now you stop building nukes now, young man! And no buts!

Iran: But moooom, it's not FOOOOR nukes! I'm doing a SCIENCE PROJECT

International Community: I don't want to hear it, mister. And stop picking on little Israel! I don't want to have to put you in time out!

Iran: Fiiiiiine I won't make nuuuukes *coughcoughTestOfAMissleWithTheRangeToStr ikeIsraelcough*

International Community: WHAT WAS THAT?

Iran: NOTHING MOM

Israel: Mooooooom he's doing it again!

International Community: Darn it kids, I WILL turn this planet around!

Palestine: Mooom Israel's on my side of the seat again!

International Community: Lord give me strength.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28958423/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28958423/ Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:53:02 PST
What follows is a list of everything that has sucked balls about living in Chicago and attending Columbia College.

1. Student Financial Services for Columbia College Chicago.
Why? Because the retarded fuckers DON'T TAKE VISA for student transactions. How many college students have personal checks? If you won't take debit or my credit card and I don't have checks, it's PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO PAY MY BILL, you MORONS. What the FUCK, guys, Visa's like the biggest credit card company in the COUNTRY, what POSSIBLE reason for this is there? Did Visa call your mom a WHORE or something? AAARHGh.

2. Marijuana.
Why? It smells NASTY. It makes me NAUSEOUS. The damn apartment has no ventilation to BEGIN with. You're always bringing your stupid pothead friends over to smoke, why don't you go to THEIR apartments for once in the goddamn semester?

3. Fiction Writing Department.
Why? Because it's run like a goddamn cult. If you don't fit into their cookie-cutter little way of doing things, you're going to be screwed. You're going to be frustrated, stifled, and bitched into a corner until your options are violate your artistic integrity to write whatever your teacher wants to hear, or leap out a window and DIE. Genre fiction writers? Stay the FUCK away from this college.

4. Housing and Residential Life department.
Why? Because it's run by MORONS of the same stripe as financial aid. I have to PETITION to "break contract" to move out at the SEMESTER BREAK? Are you fucking KIDDING me?

5. The city of Chicago.
Why? Mayor Daley has some kind of cult in his honor, it's colder than the asshole of Dante's Inferno, the traffic is governed by non-Euclidian snarls in reality on a Cthulhu-esque level of insanity inducement, there are hobos everywhere, construction crews begin work at four in the morning every day (JACKHAMMERS AT FOUR IN THE MORNING MAKE THE LEKO CRY), the air is dirty, the snow is dirty, the rain is dirty, the sky is missing, the lake is polluted, and there are retarded pigeons everywhere. Chicago makes me want to hurl kittens out of thirty-story windows. Oh, and did I mention that everything is about FIVE TIMES as expensive here?



I refuse to apologize to anyone who lives in the city of Chicago. Fuck you. I'M the one who deserves an apology for this crap.

On the upside, come Saturday I get to drive away from this stupid place and NEVER RETURN.

I am counting the days. Fuck, I'm counting the SECONDS.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28908857/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28908857/ Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:52:13 PST
You take a set goal, say, world domination, which makes you evil. (Benign dictators are technically possible, but not according to popular thinking, which is what determines all of these things.) You pick out a sexy second in command of the appropriate gender and set him to enforcing your rule because he has a thing for black-ops and intel work, and because he looks damn sexy in a trenchcoat. (Rowr. Heheheh.)

You set up your various buddies as evil lieutenants in the organization and send them around the world to wreak havoc. You'll need a crazy chick who can terrify her victims just by grinning madly, a straight man to throw emphasis on your own evil genius (it helps if he's British), and an intellectual equal who doesn't share your goals that will be fun to have gloaty tea with. (Being a megalomaniac is no fun if you've got no one to gloat with. Gloating AT is nearly as fun, but evil is better if you share it with someone who appreciates it.)

You build your fortress, include the requisite booby traps, gun turrets, and single confined path through it all. Contrary to popular belief, the traps are not there to kill the hero. (They'll kill most of the small fry, but the guy you're REALLY worried about will be able to get past them.) No, they're there to force your counterpart to a single predictable direction of attack.

Now, your hero has to be someone you've known in the past. (Up the emotional ante. If you can find one, convince one of your ex-boyfriends to fill this post, perhaps by means of enslaving his home village or kidnapping his parents or his new girlfriend. If you go with this last option, be sure to humiliate him in her eyes at every opportunity, and if you can, seduce her.) This has the advantage of giving you a hero who already hates you and will have no qualms being your antagonist.

Your hero will probably need all the help he can get. Feel free to sow hints and clues, most of them hilariously misleading, all over your conquered territories. And make sure you have some way of observing it when he falls for your tricks, so you can laugh about it with your hot second in command before the makeouts. (Makeouts are a prime benefit of having a sexy second in command. Rowr.)

Speaking of the hot second in command, he'll probably want some kind of giant robot with which to raze the villages that try to raise the flag of rebellion, so make it something distinctive. He should be nearly as feared as you yourself are, since he's your sword arm and he does the dirty work. People will see a lot more of him than they will of you, since half the fun of being an evil dictator is being next to impossible to actually assassinate.

Make sure your fortress is not going to self-destruct unless you WANT it to, and make sure there are voice commands to operate it from anywhere so you don't have to mess with your dignity by making a mad run for the control booth with the only button that will shut down the sequence. People will take you more seriously if you're ALWAYS calm. And smirking. You CANNOT forget the smirking. The smirking is ESSENTIAL. Remember this rule of thumb: As long as you're smirking, you're winning.

You'll want plenty of escape options so you can be sure to get away when the hero DOES destroy your fortress despite all your safeguards. (Because he totally will.) Make sure you make a witty one-liner in there so he KNOWS you're getting away and can be paranoid for the rest of his days even if you don't feel like ruling the world anymore.

Finally, you have to remember that however successful your bid for world domination is, it WILL be temporary. Even if you manage to die before your empire breaks up, there's no way in the cold frosty core of hell that your kids are going to be able to A) decide which one of them should inherit without all killing each other, or B) be as good at it as you were, so it's a given things will fall apart as soon as you're gone, and that's only if you're not deposed before then. The trick to remember is that you're not out to KILL or DEFEAT the hero at all. You're out to make his life as miserable as possible so that you can LAUGH at him. The crowning jewel of this is that when he FINALLY gets past your second in command, your laser grids, your acid lakes, your spiked floors, your gassed hallways, your hundreds of sentries and motion-detecting infrared security cameras, and FINALLY makes it to the throne room itself, instead of finding an evil dictator to assassinate so that he can feel at LAST like he's won something, he instead finds a note on your chair that says "FOOLED YOUUU!"

Make sure you put up enough cameras to catch a shot of the look on his face from your new vacation home in a suitably glorious, isolated natural environment (to which you've retired early with th... ]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28787666/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28787666/ Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:21:59 PST
Return of the King is on TV. We're at the scene where he confronts the dead folks in the mountain pass. Through most of it he's got this great expression on his face that's basically "I am a badass, don't FUCK with me." The dead may not suffer the living to pass, but Aragorn does not suffer the dead to fuck with him.

In other news, go here: [link] Family Man (Dylan Meconis) is a comic some of you may already be familiar with, and if not you should be. It's a comic I feel an intense amount of affection toward, since Luther Levy (the main character) was my favorite character in Dylan's previous comic (now ended) "Bite Me". Family Man is a prequel to Bite Me and--

Aw man, now they're at the "release the prisoners!" part. That always sucks. That albino orc general's a total dick. Great villain, though. (lmao. Run, Pippin, run on your stubby little hobbit legs!)

--anyway, Family Man's one of the most beautiful webcomics currently on the web. Not only is Dylan a master of digital art, the sepia tone of the comic is unique and well suited to the subject matter and time setting of the comic itself.

(Bwaahahhahaha that's right bitches! I'm the orc king and while all you other idiots are busy freaking out about the giant rocks falling from the sky I'M gonna have a staring contest with the rock and WIN)

But what makes Family Man really, TRULY artistic genius is Dylan's use of composition. I mean yeah it helps that the pictures she draws are amazing, but the way she uses the space of a comic page is innovative, exciting, and often mind-blowingly beautiful. It's not always the shape but the ARRANGEMENT of artistic elements that counts. Also her characters are so amazingly well written it's hard to believe she's not secretly two people, since I usually only see that caliber of both writing and art in the same comic when you have one person writing and somebody else arting.

(GO RIDERS OF ROHAN GO)

Anyway I don't really know why I'm plugging Family Man. I don't normally plug webcomics. I was just reading it today and was overcome with affection by it, which I felt compelled to share. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28709785/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/28709785/ Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:14:09 PST
I see them get made fun of all the time. You know the type. You've seen the same joke in all your favorite webcomic. The vampire/werewolf lusting teenage girl with the IQ of a gnat who is shockingly ignorant of more prestigious fantasy/horror novels in favor of her rabid obsession with how hot Edward is. She gets made fun of all the time, I mean, I did not invent this stereotype. I am not hallucinating it.

Does anybody actually KNOW somebody who is this big a fan of Twilight? Not necessarily the whole stereotype obviously, since that's an exaggeration by definition, but a fan to that LEVEL of obsession. I'm curious. I've seen people obsess this much over Pirates of the Caribbean, definitely. (I have been that person.)

I suspect the Twifan is an illusion.

A piece of irony: my mom is a pretty big Twilight fan. She thinks the books are pretty amazing. She hated the first movie, because she thought "the guy they picked to play Edward is so UGLY!" and she loved the second movie because "All those young werewolf boys are so SEXY!"

Movie producers, webcomic parodists, marketing specialists and bloggers: THIS is your target audience. Take the lesson to heart.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/27773330/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/27773330/ Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:56:31 PDT
In my defense, Kickass Leroy wouldn't read the driver disc for my new tablet and my boyfriend took HIS laptop to a different state.

Also, my scanner's screen shattered in transit to Chicago.

....

All of which is ironic, since I suddenly have a craving to restart Thespiphobia.

So how've you guys been? Good? Good.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/24261983/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/24261983/ Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:09:34 PDT
Me = poor college student, trying to find summer apartment and food money for the semester.

If I started doing commissions, who would give me money?

Not really expecting a rush, just seeing who might be interested in a character sketch or painting or something. Price range would be around $10-$20, I think, depending on size and how complicated the painting was.

So would anyone be interested?

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23908657/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23908657/ Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:36:29 PDT
I can has new tablet.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23892640/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23892640/ Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:14:51 PDT


We came home from spring break to find that my rat had a massive infection and had to be put to sleep.

Our college's financial troubles have finally gotten the better of it, and pending a miracle, we have no school in the fall.

I've been nauseous since Texas. I had two random nosebleeds in the laundry room today.

Hobby Lobby still won't get off their bums and hire me. The college apartments are shutting down at the end of the semester, so in a month and a half, I'm unemployed AND homeless.

The library closed early today so I didn't get in to do the assigned reading, so I'll fail the reading quiz tomorrow. My boy even called me from work to remind me to do it; guess I let him down, too.

My circle of friends is no longer made of human beings; they now appear to be strange creatures from planet Dramatron, or possibly its moon, Bitchinon.

I was excited about getting teach-out in Chicago, until my roommate told me everything that was wrong with it.

Did I mention I lost my tablet?

I don't even have the energy to solve any of these problems. Are you allowed to want to go home even if you don't really have one anymore? Because I totally do, and I totally don't. I just want there to be somewhere in the universe where I can go and not feel like the whole world is falling apart around me.

Somewhere where if I end up alone on the streets, at least it'll be because of something I DID.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23666872/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23666872/ Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:00:48 PDT
I cry.

Anyway, I have arts for you guys, but it's all sketches until I find my tablet or buy a new one.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23652595/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23652595/ Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:56:04 PDT
I have a whole shitton sitting on my scanner, too. I'm just too lazy to upload it.

So you can't see any of it yet.

Hahahahahaha.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23460848/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/23460848/ Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:27:40 PST
Get together a whole bunch of old-school love songs (Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Queen, ABBA and the like), put the TV on mute, and play Soul Calibur IV.

Turns out Raphael synchs up really well to Rocky Horror's "Sweet Transvestite" number.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/21471067/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/21471067/ Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:51:28 PST
This is what they don't tell you. They want you to believe that college is a wondrous experience, a whirl of booze, drugs, sex, or, depending on who you're talking to, lifelong memories and experiences that will build your character and develop you as a person (see above: booze, drugs, sex).

They don't tell you that you'll probably change majors and that it won't be your fault for being too weak to handle your department. They don't tell you that you'll feel like you've just cut your straps, snapped your reins, and run off into the wilderness while the camelherd jogs frustratedly after you. They don't tell you about the petty joys you get when the theater department calls you to try to make you sign up to usher but you don't even have to respond because what are they going to do, put you on departmental probation? Fuck that shit, you're a creative writing major now.

Hahahahahaha.

They also don't tell you that you'll meet the love of your life in college. (Sex and love are two different things.) They don't tell you he'll be handsome and witty and charming and caring and empathic and perfect. They also don't tell you he'll be going out with another chick when you first meet him, and you'll be going out with another guy, and you'll spend six months crushing on him before the both of you finally get down to brass tacks and break up with the people in the way and get together. (Huzzah.)

They don't tell you that college will fuck you up, but they also don't tell you how AWESOME it is when it does.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19993923/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19993923/ Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:02:38 PDT
Islocen is not a nice person.

Sadly, he may be the last new art to arrive for a while. I leave for school on Tuesday, and we all know how college eats my soul. I'll try to swing some pictures of set design models, though.

As recompense, I leave for you wonderful childrens the following list of the top ten ways you can die in Resident Evil 4.


10. Mauled by garden dogs who appeared the FUCK out of NOWHERE Jesus CHRIST
9. Whipped to death by garden dogs' back tentacles (WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WASN'T DEAD YET)
8. Eaten by The Spanish Midget's Organic Mecha Of Questionable Visual Subtext in final castle level
7. Impaled by Right Hand Man's scorpion tail coming out of ceiling
6. Crushed by rampaging Gigante (Oh GodDAMNIT I was CLEAR you stupid GAME)
5. Throttled by headless zombie when you blow its head off, get impatient, and try to walk past it before it's completely dead
4. Head chainsawed off
3. Head eaten by Stage Two headburster when you blow it open, get impatient, and try to walk past it without shooting it first
2. Eaten off the dock by lake monster while trying to shoot fish
1. Head impaled by Ganados' right claw while left claw tears torso in half (FUCK, I'm dead. SHIT, that was the coolest thing EVER but FUCK I'm dead. STUPID GAME.)

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19906311/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19906311/ Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:49:22 PDT
Freaky, no?

I, myself, am fortunately still among the living.

Also I promise I am not systematically eliminating comedians from the mortal coil.

You have to admit it's a bit creepy though.

In other news, Thespiphobia's new artist is busy with work and should become more available for art soon. We'd like to build up a bit of a buffer for you guys before we begin updating in earnest again.

I myself am also working on a new piece of artwork. It's taking forever but sweet Jesus will it be worth it.

Furthermore, only nine days until I return to Santa Fe and the hustle and bustle of schooltime. The theater beckons... I have a new minion this year. (By minion I of course mean I am a Peer Mentor.) Her name is Amanda, and the school has at last given me a techie for my very own. (My last several mentees were actors. Currently, none of them are attending the college. I am 3 for 3 if we are keeping score on how many I've apparently driven away. They were mostly bitches though so no real loss. Except Jaron, who was pretty neat.)

Amanda needs to email me back though. I sent her a novel by internet and she has yet to respond. Amanda, if you read this blog, seriously hon. I'm not going to eat your brains. I am not a mechanized automaton sent by the school to brainwash you.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I am in fact human.

Also I am a human with a toothache. This displeases me. *grumble*

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19746036/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19746036/ Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:35:29 PDT
]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19631196/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19631196/ Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:22:37 PDT
It's a lot like playing the pennywhistle. If you're good, it's lovely. If you're bad, people want to drive a spork into first your throat and then their own.

But I really do love poetry. Good poetry is such a delicious thing. It has a taste, a texture. A darkness. Perhaps a joy. I'm calmer when I read good poetry. I feel as if I'm sinking into a pond of thought. It's hard to get out of. I'll spend the rest of the day in a dreamy stupor if I spend too much time immersed in good poetry.

I like writing poems, too. Same thing, only without that nagging jealousy that comes with reading poets with more skill than you.


Next week is tech week.

Farewell.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19500839/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19500839/ Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:42:06 PDT
I think, deep down, we all want to be the first to notice something nobody's ever seen before. It's why half the population become scientists, and the other half artists. The way I see it, it's just different ways of approaching the same problem.

There's an arrow, for example, in the FedEx logo. It's in the negative space between the E and the x. I know I'm not the first to notice that; I bet loads of you guys being the artsy visual thinkers that you are figured it out years ago. I always wondered, though, why the people who built the logo never noticed. If they have noticed, you'd think they'd capitalize on it--after all, an arrow is a GREAT image to associate with a shipping company, right? Paint it bright green or something.

And then I think about things that people think I'm weird for thinking about. You know what I mean? An intellectual exercise, just pondering the inner workings and processes of some mundane thing that nobody else bothers to waste brain cycles on.

Why are movie theater nachos round? If they're stamping the nachos out of sheets, that's incredibly inefficient, because circles don't tesselate, so you'll always have some dough left over. On the other hand, if you're laying out spheres and then squashing them flat, it DOES make sense, and THAT would probably waste even less dough than stamping tesselating images out of a sheet. I now have a fairly good idea of how theater nachos are made.

Furthermore, has anyone ever considered how much it must suck to be an alarm clock? You exist only to jolt someone out of a pleasant dream. Although you're only doing your job, everyone hates you for it. You become similar to the tax-man, or the retail clerk who can't provide a product because the store doesn't carry it anymore. Alarm clocks are sad, miserable, abused little devices. Next time you think your life sucks, imagine yourself as an alarm clock.

And finally for today, a thought on the decimal number system. The base number here is 10. That's not something humans made up; it's how numbers work. Multiply or divide a number by 10, and you move the decimal point right or left. That's how it works.

So through what cosmic coincidence is it that humans have 10 fingers?

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19317935/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19317935/ Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:57:01 PDT
]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19115670/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/19115670/ Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:23:04 PDT
Traditional media are as popular as ever, surfacing in gorgeous and often wonderfully imaginative works of art created with watercolor, acrylic, oil, photography, sculpture media, crafts, etc. But there is now emerging a new medium of artwork here to take its place of greatness among the stars of the Renaissance: the computer.

Think about it. How many of your favorite works of art were produced mostly, or even entirely, on the computer? Digital painting, digital collage, digital photography and photomanipulation, even digital sculpture using 3-D rendering programs have all moved to the forefront of popular art.

How much of modern art even exists outside of the digital world?

Previously, only originals had value, and posters were nothing more than cheap knock-offs. But nowadays, in the age of digital art, prints and posters BECOME the originals. Since so many of these artworks don't EXIST on paper, you can print as many as you want, or copy the file to as many places as you want, and still validly call it an original. How do you collect a piece of exclusive artwork that anyone else can also own for the same or even a cheaper price? How do you put a price tag on an infinitely duplicable work?

There's an ugly horror attached to this realization. What happens if some catastrophe causes the meltdown of deviantart's servers or our personal compters or both? How much modern art would be deleted forever?

Again, it's certainly true that traditional media are by no means on the way out and in my opinion are actually witnessing a resurgence during the past two decades or so. Related to growing themes of environmental concern and appreciation for the human condition, spirit, and imagination, the artwork of recent times has become a movement of incredible richness. Digital art is a major part of that, and in my opinion, that's what this generation will be remembered for artistically.

And what are the implications for galleries? Even the highest-quality printer still can't duplicate the true grain of a digital painting between the virtual world and a paper reality. So where do we turn to display to modern audiences the work that their generation has produced?

In many cases, the answer lies in the fact that you're reading this blog right now. Despite my high-flung words of a 'movement', digital artwork may find itself in the public attention largely confined to nothing more than the people who browse the expanses of deviantart during a few free minutes at work.

So, many might ask, why bother worrying about galleries, since one can peruse all the art they want online without even leaving the comfort of their homes? Hasn't the internet made the gallery obsolete? I don't think so.

A gallery is a place designed to bring individual artworks together into a meaningful collective that can't quite be accomplished online--or at least not that I've seen. Among other things, individual computer screens are simply too small to place artworks together in such a fashion.

Certainly much of the artwork on deviantart is gallery-worthy. I've seen paintings in this massive community that had they been produced traditionally would be tastefully lit on a spacious white wall in New York or San Francisco right now. The question is, will the gallery world pick up on this opportunity they have, or will they let us fall by the wayside?

Imagine it: high-definition, high-resolution computer screens instead of picture frames. The digital gallery, in which pictures need never be stored in a warehouse, only moved back into a neat file folder on some massive database somewhere.

So what's the future of digital art? Obscurity, a community populated by artists whose fame is limited to those who also belong to the community?

Or might we break loose? Mightn't the virtual world take reality by storm?






(By the way, YES we are working on new Thespiphobia episodes so STOP BUGGING ME ALREADY. You'll get a restart date when you GET one, GAWD.

It's not like you people PAY me, yanno.)

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18843562/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18843562/ Sat, 14 Jun 2008 19:15:56 PDT
And everyone else, please welcome Celiedh [link] , the newest addition to the Thespiphobic team. Congrats, love.

Keep checking back; I'll put up Thespiphobia's revival date here soon.

Nyahahaha. We're back, folks.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18754483/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18754483/ Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:39:13 PDT
My birthday.

And the deadline for the Thespiphobia Artist Call.

GIVE ME AN ARTIST FOR MY BIRTHDAY.

You still have a week to send in your sketches.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18504191/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18504191/ Mon, 26 May 2008 02:07:58 PDT
(Those of you who have no idea what the bloody fuck I'm talking about, go to [link])

See you might have noticed that Thespiphobia hasn't been updating in like forever. This is because drawing it got boring. But I've been approached by like a gajillion people I didn't even know existed about the damn thing, and I've been thinking about it pretty heavily and I think maybe I can make it start up again.

Here's the thing though. I thought about it and the thing about comicking is that it's annoying and it takes forever. I mean I did it for two years (three? Shit, I don't remember) and while writing the scripts comes like butter to me, I only ever considered myself enough of an artist to convey the writing at its basest requirements.

Arting for comics sucks balls. I hate it. It takes forever and I hate that you have to draw it and then pencil it and then scan it and make it all pretty and shit and it just never ENDS.

So! This is an art society, right. This is where all the crazy peoples in the art world, the peoples what wants to make their living with the arts come to hang out.

So theoretically, there's probably a person on Deviantart who
A) wants to draw a comic;
B) doesn't mind being told what and what not to draw;
C) is willing to do this regularly on an indefinite schedule, and
D) can draw Tito Marcas' hair properly.

Tough criteria, I know. Especially that last one. (You've got no idea.)

So here's my proposal. Artists interested, send me a sample of your work with some contact information and a little about yourself. (I don't want to work with a total douchebag, after all.) I don't care if I get it linked from here in deviantart or as an attachment in my email (scaletayle@hotmail.com) or whatever, as long as I've got access to it.

I'd prefer pics of the comic's characters, but feel free to pepper it with your own stuff. I don't need to see your best. Trust me, that is NOT what goes into a regularly updated comic strip.

If you want to give me color samples, that's great. Keep in mind though that color comics are even more of a bitch to keep updated than black and white ones.

Gives me your stuffs. Your deadline is uh... Fuck what's today? the 26th. Right, your deadline is my BIRTHDAY!

June 13th.

DAZZLE ME.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18446856/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18446856/ Thu, 22 May 2008 12:36:08 PDT
I'm home for the summer from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I went to my old high school today to pick up my little brother on the last day of school. I got there an hour or so early to visit all my old teachers and say hi to everyone, and in the last classroom I visited, I was kind of half-propositioned by one of the most confident young women I've ever met. What was sad was that when she approached me, her first question was, "You're probably straight, huh." It was incredibly fatalistic, and it's one of the tragedies of heterosexuality being the majority.

Got me thinking.

Not a lot of people know who they are that early in life. I know people at the College of Santa Fe who are still trying to figure it out. And not a lot of the people who DO know are as cool about it as this girl was. At this point in life and at any point in life, it seems to me, people have a choice: to be an asshole or to be clingy, passive, and co-dependent. This girl was neither. I think she's going to go far in life.

I had a lot to think about today. In the same classroom, I ran into a girl who I barely remembered who'd been in the newspaper with me two years ago when she was a sophomore and I was a senior. She's graduating now, and she came up and said hi, and I had an uncomfortable moment when I realized that she remembered me perfectly, while I had next to no idea who she was.

Was--am--I really that selfish? Did I honestly turn into what I despised about those old movies--the girl people look up to, who doesn't pay attention to her followers? It feels pretentious to claim that, but it was unsettling to see her face fall when I made a guess as to how I knew her--and it was wrong.

Another girl met me in the old auditorium and said I'd gotten her really interested in comic art, and that because of me she wanted to make her own comics and webcomics, and she thanked me for turning her life around. Turning her life around! I had that much of an impact?

That's terrifying.

All my life I've been hiding in the dark, staying away from the spotlight--hell, it's why I want to be a set designer and not an actor. All my life, all I've tried to do is enjoy myself and be honest about it. Have I really changed this many lives without noticing?

I'm wishing now that I could borrow some of that young lesbian's confidence. She knows who she is, even if it doesn't mean a job for her or a life--she just knows. I know a lot of people who'd give an arm and a leg for that kind of self-reliance. I'm one of them.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18423808/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18423808/ Tue, 20 May 2008 22:48:52 PDT
I still got it, though. Muaha.

It's a portrait. Guess who it's of. Only the sexiest bitch in the world, that's who. ~~<3

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18386437/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/18386437/ Sun, 18 May 2008 16:33:20 PDT
You see, I used to believe that the reason I had such a weird collection (spanning Cirque du Soleil, epic metal, fantasy rock, eastern european gypsy fiddling, opera, musical scores, and Disney musicals) was because I don't listen to the radio and am apathetic towards new albums at best. You see, I tend to be resistant to change, and it's rare that I seek out and attempt to own music I haven't heard before, even if I know and like the band.

So I was pretty sure that my small music collection was due to underexposure to music in general, and too much apathy to go out and overcome this difficulty.

However, this past Thursday night, during our final RPG session of the school year, one of the gang dumped his entire music library onto Leroy's harddrive. (Leroy is my heart of gold, two-year-old hardworking Dell laptop.) Before Thursday, I had roughly 600 songs. Now, I have over 4000. That's almost an order of magnitude that my music collection has grown. That, ladies and gentlemen, is ridiculous.

So I've been sitting here for the past two days, going through all of his crap, and I've made an important discovery:

Every song that came out of the past two decades is exactly the same.

I swear to God AC/DC just wrote a popular single and then rewrote it fifty more times in a row. AFI has roughly the same problem, as does Aerosmith. (Note that all the band names begin with A. I've been sitting here for two days and that's as far as I've gotten. Send help.)

Furthermore, these bands are not only identical to themselves, they're identical to one another. Young men with belting tenor voices in the punk rock/emo style are really starting to piss me off. Does anyone else have that problem?

And it occurred to me that a better reason for my music collection having been so small is that modern music sucks and there isn't enough weird shit in the world.

I'll probably be here for another three weeks just going through this crap.

Clean out your goddamn ipod, Nick.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/17919723/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/17919723/ Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:20:23 PDT
Those of you who work in theater are likely wondering what in God's name I'm doing with enough time to post this in the middle of dry tech. Those of you who don't work in theater are likely wondering what the hell dry tech is.

Dry tech, if I may update the ignorant before getting to my real point, is the best rehearsal in the whole process, because we go through the entire show without actors. Why on Earth would you do something like that, you ask? Simply put, we do it because it's easier to tweak rough light cues when you don't have a bunch of actors desperate to go home breathing down your neck. Why is it called dry tech, you ask? Because calling the next rehearsal, tech WITH actors, "wet tech" is both apt and deliciously punny.

But that's not the point.

The point is that I currently hold the title of Student Tech Director (the guy who hired me didn't notice the acronym until it was far too late, sadly) for a little-known musical by Brecht and Weill called Happy End.

Happy End is about capitalism, organized crime, God, morality, and the Salvation Army. So far as I know, there have been three attempts to mount this show commercially. The first, its premier performance in the late 20s, was cut short after the first night by the unfortunate death of the lead actress. The second run, attempted shortly after they replaced her, found little love in the hearts of the public for its "radical" content. The third seems to be mere rumor and hearsay, a myth of the 80s whose actual existence has yet to be proven.

It's not a bad show, really. The tunes are occasionally quite catchy, and the final number is spine-tingling, though I'm not sure how it actually connects to the rest of the musical.

The point is, I'm sitting in the back of the house, watching the light crew go through this show with the director, sans actors, barely bothering to keep track of what's going on, and wishing I was in the dorm lounge playing Dungeons and Dragons. On the up side, I'm no longer cramping the cramps of Satan.

Yes, gentlemen, I went there.

I'm sure the ladies in the audience will agree that we now have proof that Satan does, in fact, exist, and that he does not, in fact, have any friends. We know this because, regardless of how out of schedule it is, we will always start menstruating during tech week.

Since I entered into the theater, this has happened without fail. The one time of the month I need my sanity most, along comes Satan with his snatchy little fingers and runs off into the night with it, giggling like a lawn gnome on speed.

Now there's an image for you. But anyway.

I spent Act One drawing a poster. I spent Act Two staring at said poster. I spent the first half of Act Three sleeping between the seats. I spent the second half of Act Three chatting with the scene designer about how bullshit this was. Now I'm chatting up you guys to stave off the mind-crushing boredom.

They're on curtain call now, and in a moment I'll be able to go home.

By the way, why isn't there a "boredom" emoticon in here? "Tired" is the closest it gets. Somebody ought to remedy that.

And on that note, I'm off to the dorms. Maybe there's some videogames going on. One can only hope, no?

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16451097/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16451097/ Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:26:02 PST [link]) and it's a pretty awesome concept. It's a vocabulary game: every word you get right donates 20 grains of rice through the UN to end world hunger. It's paid for with ads at the bottom of the page, which reload and change every time you click on a word. The ads pay for the rice, your vocabulary improves, and somewhere, somebody eats today.

The internet is doing wonderful things for charity these days.

There's a lot of concern from the world of the scholars that the information put out online isn't as accurate as it should be, since anybody can publish anything, and rightfully so (although they DID do a study with Wikipedia, putting out purposefully false information, and it was all corrected within seven hours each time, if I remember correctly).

And people will say we're wasting our lives away on the computer, never doing anything with our lives, never accomplishing anything real. But while Solitaire still comes standard with Windows computers, there's a lot you can actually accomplish with an internet connection.

I met my best friend online. We knew each other for nearly two years before we had a chance to meet face to face. Knowing that I could come home and chat her up online got me through some tough days in school, and we spawned a variety of projects together that taught me a lot about art, philosophy, psychology... and how to interact with people, oddly enough. You can get a lot more through simple text than some people realize.

And in much the same way I met Selene ([link]), the internet is constantly bringing people together who never would have met without it. Forums spring up around common creations given the slightest excuse, and now websites like FreeRice are taking advantage of the internet's community spirit to do some solid good in the world.

I joined the ONE collective today, which you've probably heard of: they're the ones that Bono's in all the ads for, trying to end AIDS and world poverty. A few months ago, I sent in an email to Congress that another group put together, asking for help to end the genocide in Darfur, and another website did the same thing for endangered species across the globe.

What the internet is doing is making charity convenient.

A web domain is not expensive--I've seen them as cheap as two bucks a year--and groups like ONE and FreeRice are taking advantage of it to bring their messages to more and more people. Suddenly, without being asked to call a phone number or mail in a letter, millions of people can now find the time to do some good for the world. After all, we can't all be missionaries, but now instead of sitting around playing Solitaire, we can play a vocabulary game that feeds the hungry.

The next time someone says to me, "You're always playing on your computer! What have you ACCOMPLISHED?" it's going to feel good to reply, "I donated 14,000 grains of rice to the impoverished this week. How about you?"

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16338725/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16338725/ Thu, 10 Jan 2008 03:17:37 PST
God I love him.

Watch out, Seth. Erin might have a new favorite. *grin*

Also, it came up on random, but it occurs to me that the song Winamp is currently playing is incredibly apt.

And now it is off to bed with me!

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16233754/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16233754/ Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:20:19 PST
I uh. I live in Arizona.

I don't like the cold.


In other news, new Masquerade. [link]

Edit: Also new art lookie look. I am on a roll this winter break. Enjoy it while it lasts--as soon as the end of the month rolls around, this surge of new arts is going to dry up like a puddle in the Sahara.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16199511/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16199511/ Tue, 01 Jan 2008 03:48:10 PST
I am so backed up on my tablet roster. The trouble is that the only way to be comfortable is to put the tablet on top of my laptop's keyboard, which means I can't type, so I can't use the tablet and carry on an instant message conversation at the same time. One of these days I'll figure things out and just not sign on to AIM.

Bloody hell, it's four thirty in the morning and I am having difficulty remaining upright. Masquerade will have to wait for tomorrow.

Oh yeah that. So I have this other comic besides Thespiphobia (which is updating again btw) called The Masquerade and you should go check it out because it is totally awesome and cool and things.

[link]

Them's be what I learned to use the Gimp on and now that I'm using my tablet it's another way to practice that too. Lots of fun :3

In other news, the boy is a clever one and read the last journal thingie. I think. He's being mean. >.< whine whine bitch moan. I'm too tired to think of something witty and elegant to say about the situation, blaaaahhhh

Emotes are hard

I'm tired but I'm also high on exhaustion

CHOOSING IS HARD

Oh ya btw happy new year

bed now

wheee

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16160204/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16160204/ Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:01:54 PST
This boy called me, you see.

And I came back (three hours later) and looked at it, and I realized, you know, I only saw this musical for the first time like a month and a half ago. Who am I to judge?

I still have the review, and sooner or later I'll be in a mood to post it, but right now I'm thinking about this boy.

He's going away soon. Isn't that always how it goes? For me, yes. They come and go, and I crush on them, and they often like me back, (yes, we're dragging out the grade school terms), but then they have to graduate or change schools or something--and off I go again.

He's going to London for a month this semester to audition for schools, and if he wins, then he'll be spending three years in London and I'll probably never see him again, because that's always how that works. You promise you'll stay in touch, but you never do, and you're depressed until the next crush comes along. Is it even real feelings anymore, or is it just leaping from one rebound to the next?

Is it wrong of me to be really hoping that he does badly in his auditions?

He reads Thespiphobia. Here's hoping he doesn't get curious and click on the link to my deviantart account. That would be rather embarassing, and we can't have that, can we?

And now a previous crush is returning to the college after a sojourn through the wilderness of financial troubles, and there's a whole 'nother nest of awkwardsauce. He knows I had a crush on him, you see, and we talked, and agreed it would be best not to pursue anything. One would think that would end the awkward, but any girl who's talked to a crush about said crushing state knows that the situation is never that simple.

And I lied to the new boy. I said that the brief thing this semester was one day, when really it was one night. Lies and dishonesty, when I spend so much time telling him that dishonest relationships are bad, and no matter how much people like being told lies about themselves, honesty is always best... is it different when the truth doesn't really apply to him, and I'm only telling a lie to save my pride? Or am I just trying to look better in his eyes? Am I thinking about it too much, or am I letting emotion overpower logic? Who can tell?

I only realized this week how I felt about the boy. (Yes, he has been elevated to definite article status--this is serious.) I was walking down the hallway and thinking about him, and it hit me. It's a feeling in my lungs, like where I told him crying came from: my lungs and gut. I guess poets call it their heart, but that's not where it is. And I thought, "son of a bitch. I'm in love again."

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16008997/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/16008997/ Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:07:56 PST
Well guess what? No one gets to complain, because last week contained TWO--count them, TWO--days in which I did not have time for FOOD.

Much less tabletry.

I love that, though.
"God, stop sleeping in until three in the afternoon!"
"Bitch, please. I didn't have time to EAT last week."
"Oh--oh I'm so sorry... sleep in as long as you want..."
"Damn STRAIGHT."

Finished off the Seagull--pictures of the seagull itself to come in late January, since I didn't have time to take pics of it before I left Santa Fe. Also will post pics of final set design project at that time. Was totally fucking kickass, can't wait to show you guys XD

In other news, Thespiphobia's up and running again. Yay me! I am awesome.

Think I'm PMSing though. Probably the boredom getting to me. Ran out of shit to do tonight and really am wishing was back in Santa Fe with people, playing DnD or some shit.

Ooo, I should post pics of the mini I made, too.

I'm playing a vampire. He's awesome. He has an umbrellasword. I call it the Doombrella.

But yeah. Depressed, pissy, tired but not sleepy. Yeah. Probably PMS. Totally sucks.

Blah, I don't even feel like messing with peoples' heads on the neopets roleplaying board... this is SERIOUS, you guys.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/15580680/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/15580680/ Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:57:16 PST
I went as Dr. Doom for Halloween this year (a long-standing ambition of mine that has finally been realized; pictures to come eventually) and also as some kind of satyr thing that I pulled together from stuff in my closet (pictures also to come eventually).

We're going to have a masquerade ball next semester and I've already got rough sketches of my costume design (listen to me; I sound like a theatrical designer already). Must to scan and color them later... muahah. Must to color many, many things. On my list:

1. A lovely pen drawing of Frank Wildhorn (plagiarized the name out of adoration, no relation otherwise)
2. Pirate Faerie
3. Candledragon
4. Jack Frost
5. psionic tech support
6. Tim, Eileen, and Jack: a werewolf, a bainsidhe, and a vampire
7. Pages for that damned faerie comic... it has a name now! I'm calling it Divided Kingdom
8. And, of course, another portrait of Seth, this one entitled "Pied Piper".

Going to be a busy Thanksgiving, and, likely, a busier Christmas. Hurrah hurrah.

In other news, I'm deathly ill, and my voice sounds like a motorboat with wet rocks stuck in the engine.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14735862/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14735862/ Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:14:43 PDT
Troubadour, a loose confederacy of guerrilla entertainers
Thespiphobia
Props design for Chekhov's The Seagull, produced at the College
A local children's production of Peter Pan
Nineteen credits of classes (which is actually more like 25 weekly hours, plus homework)
The local student chapter of the US Institute for Theater Technology
An independent festival production of my original play, Tricksters
Possibly costume designing for another student's play, In Morpheus' Arms
Writing tutoring in the library from 5:30-10:00 pm on Mondays and Thursdays
Taking care of my pet rat without campus admin finding out about him


Things I haven't had time for for a couple of weeks now:
My second novel
That faerie project I was talking about a couple blogs back
Michili, another comic project I'm starting work on
The Masquerade, which really freaking needs to be updated Goddamnit
AIM and my darling Helen ;_; I miss you so


It's 11:11. Make a wish! I wish for robot workers to do my endless and ever-multiplying chore list.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14582766/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14582766/ Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:19:45 PDT
I abruptly find it necessary to explain the sudden dearth of imagery after months of almost daily artworks. This is due to College. Pretty much exclusively, in fact, although my hobbies do tend to move in cycles (a few months where my ONLY leisure activity is my novel, followed by a few months of ONLY art, followed by a few months of OBSESSIVE buffer-building with Thespiphobia...).

Oh, and did you hear? I'm going to Kansas on Friday.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14568553/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14568553/ Sun, 09 Sep 2007 22:02:51 PDT
I was unable to attend this past year, due to it being my first year of college and the Festival occurring at a most inconvenient time for the students of the world. This depressed me. My father attends every year without fail, leaving two weeks early in fact and camping out on the bank of the river with all of the other musicians as they wait for the festival to begin and, in the meantime, JAM THEIR ASSES OFF.

The typical day for a musician at Winfield is as follows:
12:00 pm---Wake up when tent gets too hot to allow further sleep. Stumble outside, pull fruit or juice or something out of the cooler, grunt greetings at fellow musicians, maybe take a rude shower in the little tarp-cube set up at the edge of the circle of trailers and tents.
1:00-2:00 pm--Eat lunch under the shade of the great tarp over the jam circle area.
2:00pm-5:00 pm---Pull out mandolin/guitar/dulcimer/bodhran/whistle/pipes/flute/didjeridoo and learn a new tune or two. In between, visit the fairgrounds and buy new music books and other nifty things.
5:00 pm---Dinnertime. Cold meat/cheese from cooler, or maybe something hot if people are willing and you've picked a good circle of folks to make camp with.
6:00 pm or as soon as people are finished eating---Pull instruments back out, JAM YOUR ASSES OFF.
4:00 am---finally become too exhausted to jam anymore, have an early breakfast of biscuits and gravy down at the 24/7 stand at the fairgrounds before collapsing in tent/trailer.

The last time I was able to attend was, I believe, two years ago. I spent four days there, rather than the three weeks that my father did, because I couldn't miss that much school. On the Friday night, I played at the Jam. (I play the bodhran, which is a type of drum peculiar especially to Ireland.) I played until my fingers bled and my wrist screamed for mercy with every stroke, and then died during the polka set (a polka is the easiest type of tune for the melodist to play, but by some peculiarity of rhythm, the hardest for a drummer).

I could drum no more. My right hand would not hear of it.

This, I decided, would not do. All during the next day, I carried my tipper (beating stick) around with me, holding it properly in my left hand, in order to get used to having it there. I even took a nap while still holding it. That night, I again played in the Jam, this time left handed, and I went home with BOTH hands bloody.

Best. Weekend. Ever.

And now I am returning. My glee knows NO BOUNDS.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14487663/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14487663/ Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:22:22 PDT
So! You get to wait. Won't that be nice?

In other news, I finished the scripts last night for that faerie comic project I mentioned, and will forthwith be editing the draft and then perhaps producing a few pages. 'Twill be an extremely long term project, several years probably. Which reminds me, I need to freaking do a Masquerade...

If you don't know the Masquerade, go to [link] . She are a comic I produce jointly with ~selesen. It are sexy!

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14443651/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14443651/ Sat, 01 Sep 2007 15:52:38 PDT
Hot DAMN I'm awesome.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14415129/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14415129/ Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:20:50 PDT
And I'm not even done with the first week yet. *whimper* College is kicking my ASS. Nineteen credits of classes, I'm a tutor for the academic resource center, theatrical work in the evenings, music festival in kansas coming up, and a buddy and myself are going to start a variety show troupe soon to entertain the masses. Plus I submitted a script to a new play festival.

I'm also still working on the scripts for that faerie comic I told you about in my last journal. It still needs a name. Bleh. Probably would be easier if I had a name for the world it takes place in. At some point I'll just start picking random nouns and putting them together. "Fiery Catalyst".

I'm also beginning serious formative work on another project--while the faerie comic will be a good way to practice my tabletry, the main focus of this particular comic will be the writing and plot. It will be a mindfuck. I am very excited so far. It involves marshes, bear people, elves, snake people, humans, oppression, a dying king and an epic quest.

I've got a stack of crap on my scanner that wants to be scanned in and colored. Unfortunately, I have no time for it ;_; Or for my painting of Seth, although what little progress I have made on it is extremely badass. But that could just be the subject matter.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14308980/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14308980/ Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:59:12 PDT ). We leave Tucson tomorrow morning.

I'm so happy. I get to go to another state, set up my own space, do my own laundry, eat when I'm hungry, sleep when I'm tired, and never worry about keeping the people down the hall away with my typing. College means privacy, even when you live in the dorms. College also means people, reunions, and new friendships, which is good because I'm afraid living with my little brother is stunting my growth.

I spent all day yesterday scanning inks n stuff for later tableting. The next thing you'll see here will probably be my painting of Seth, but that'll take a while cause I'm going crazy with the background. I need to work on my background skills, as I plan on starting a new webcomic soon. It's a pretty straightforward bit of writing, but it's humorous and fun and will allow me to screw around with some interesting visuals that I've had in my head for a while. (Skoo--my avatar--is one of them.)

Speaking of which, what would you guys name a comic that was mainly an excuse to draw faeries and stuff?

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14290761/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14290761/ Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:43:46 PDT
Back in June or so, maybe early July, a virus infected my laptop pretty badly, and I wasn't able to turn it on without it crashing. I was able to boot it in Safe Mode and get all my stuff off the harddrive before it died completely, but Safe Mode doesn't allow the internet, so I lost all of my bookmarks.

Today, I finally finished going back through the archives of all of the webcomics I read and getting caught up with them again.

If you don't think that's a very impressive milestone, please take note of the following two lists. The first list consists of the comics I read on a daily basis, and the second consists of comics I read on a weekly basis.

List One
Crtl+Alt+Del
The Last Days Of Foxhound
Wondermark!
Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire
Fade To Black
Theater Hopper
Geek Blather
Applegeeks Lite
El Goonish Shive
Darken
Devil's Panties
Something Positive
Flux
Evil Incorporated
Questionable Content
Schlock Mercenary
Friendly Hostility
Girl Genius
Least I Could Do
Real Life
Schortpacked!
Sinfest
Starslip Crisis
The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
Ubersoft
Inverloch
Zap!
The Mansion of E
xkcd

List Two:
Antagonist
Awkward Zombie
Rob And Elliot
Order Of The Stick
Tales Of Pylea
Exterminatus Now
Earthsong Saga
Tales Of The Traveling Gnome
Kawaii Not
Comedity
Erfworld
Lackadaisy
Elf Only Inn
No Need For Bushido!
Paradigm Shift
True Magic
Reckless Youth
Six Seconds
The Curious Adventures of Aldus Maycombe
Thunder And Lightning
Weregeek
Undertow
Partially Clips
Wayfarer's Moon
YU+MEream
Penny And Aggie
Cat Legend
Such Rubbish
Blockheads
No Pink Ponies
Zebra Girl
Legendary
Gunnerkrigg Court
August Jessor
The Forsaken
WHAT DO I SEE?
Geebas On Parade
Astorauth
Ninja Verses
The Holy Bibble
Legostar Galactica

On a good night, I can get through the archives of two or three different webcomics, depending on the size of the archive (Schlock Mercenary has a massive archive, compared to xkcd's more modest one). Size of the archive is determined both by age of the comic and number of updates per week. On at least one occasion, I have read more than three thousand comic strips in one twelve-hour period.

When looking for new and interesting comics to read, I begin with the first page. If the comic's art is decent AND/OR if the joke that day is funny, I read through the archives. This process ends when A)I get bored and decide the comic's not worth my time OR B) I get to the end of the archives and decide not to keep up with the comic OR C) I finish the archives and like what I see.

At that point, the comic goes into a probationary period in which it remains in the Weekly list until I can figure out its update schedule. Lucky comics get promoted to the Daily folder; comics with inconsistent updates get demoted to the Not Updating Enough folder. Comics belonging to people I know (who tell me when they update), or that never update, or that are finished, or are on hiatus, go in the Miscellaneous folder.

For most people, online comics are a time-waster or, at best, a hobby. For me, they are a WAY OF LIFE. I may not be knowledgable about music or art; I may not have status in society, or fame; but GODDAMNIT, I know my Webcomics.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14233627/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14233627/ Sat, 18 Aug 2007 23:59:23 PDT
Whoahey it smells like rain outside *runs out door*

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14158737/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14158737/ Tue, 14 Aug 2007 01:51:35 PDT
1. Poetry about being left by your significant other/hating people/hating life/not having a reason to live/hurting people and being guilty about it/hurting yourself.
2. People who don't understand the basic grammatical structures that govern the usage of quotations. NEW PERSON TALKING MEANS NEW PARAGRAPH GODDAMNIT.
3. Those stupid copy and paste signatures. "98% of people have one of these copy and paste signatures. If you're one of the 2% who doesn't, hop on the bandwagon now to make your assimilation quick, easy, and convenient." Why is it always 98 and 2, by the way? Are you morally OPPOSED to other numbers?
4. Too much buildup for not enough payoff. For reference, see Ghost Rider.
5. Hypocrisy.
6. Teachers who are more interested in showing off their own knowledge than teaching.
7. Creepy dudes, especially the ones who won't stop talking to me despite my obvious disinterest. Why do I always attract the creepy ones? Goddamnit.
8. Bureaucrats, rules, and the people who enforce those rules regardless of how senseless they are. "No hats in school"? WHY THE FUCK NOT? DO I HAVE A SHOTGUN UNDER MY BASEBALL CAP?
9. Politics.
10. All of this goddamn free time I've got on my hands this summer. PLEASE DEAR LORD LET THE SCHOOL YEAR START I AM BORED OUT OF MY MIND.

Related: A list of things that make me smile inside.
1. Cosplay.
2. Flamers.
3. Jesus. I love you too, man.
4. My tablet.
5. Roleplay. I need to find a decent MMORPG so I can fuck with some people, before I get desperate and go back to neopets.
6. My rat. His name is Jack Han Strider. [For Sparrow, Skellington, Solo, and Aragorn respectively.]
7. My dog. His name is Chase because before we could adopt him we had to chase him across a parking lot.
8. A little goat-legged man named Sethmire Quickhoof. I know I've been neglecting you, baby. Don't worry. I still love you.
9. People who say my art is pretty.
10. Helen Moon-Wainwright. <3<3<3<3

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14136494/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14136494/ Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:51:20 PDT
I didn't actually do them all. Depending on the version of Final Fantasy you're playing, I'm missing Blue Mage, Time Mage, Berserker, Dragoon, Mimic, Bard, Monk, Freelancer, and/or Knight, although I guess Knight is more FF5's answer to the original Fighter class than a class in and of itself.

However, laziness trumps OCD every time. I'm done now.

On to the next series! This time: Disney Villains. Or maybe renderings of the costumes in my closet. OR BOTH. WOOO

Actually I finally got around to taking a digital camera to all my crap that was too big to scan, so you'll be seeing a load of that before you see anything digital again. Most of it's from my last art class, which I had a lot of fun at.

Damn things are bloody difficult to make pretty again after being dragged through the digital camera though.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14080405/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14080405/ Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:40:20 PDT
It opens on Friday. Not a big thing, just amateur volunteer children's theater, but the kids are having a lot of fun and it turns out so am I even though I'm directing stage managing lighting costuming working props and publicizing.

My lead actress' best friend just called me to tell me that she's been taken away from her mother by Child Protective Services and can't perform.

Also, I started menstruating today.

I'm finding it difficult to breathe.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14037395/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/14037395/ Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:00:12 PDT
It's like... I mean, dogs, man. All they want is love, you know? Love, and food is nice too. And all I could think while he was looking up at me like that was "Fuck, if I can find a human being who will look at me like that, my life will be complete."

I have pinned my romantic hopes and dreams on the way my dog looks at me.

I am either fucking PATHETIC or a goddamn GENIUS.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13861384/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13861384/ Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:35:49 PDT
Went for a nice long hike in a redwood forest, took many many notes for my book. Tehwoot. Fog and beaches were also very nice.

I was there to visit my best friend for her birthday, then went down to Hayward to visit my grandma afterwards. Good times at that birthday party, let me tell you: four day sleepover at her grandparent's massively massive empty house down in Monterey equals FUN STUFF. I made quiche and pasta sauce and dressed up like a faerie. Might post pics of the costume later (costuming is a secret vice of mine) or I might just draw it. Either way I looked totally badass, not even kidding.

I was a pirate faerie. XD

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13628073/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13628073/ Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:59:36 PDT
If it's still down on Sunday, I'll upload to deviantart whatever comics we've missed at that point, starting from today's comic. Odds are she'll be back up in a couple days though.

In other news... now, I hated Dead Man's Chest with a passion and would be happy if all copies of it were burned, and no matter how cool the effects were in At World's End it did not make up for how they treated Jack's character in DMC. ("I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy?" Became "WHOOO I'M A DRUNKEN MORON")

That said, I could listen to the soundtracks until the end of time. Such pretty music ;_;

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13511618/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13511618/ Wed, 27 Jun 2007 11:54:34 PDT
So I've noticed that it's a habit among you people to thank each other for having favorited pieces of work. This seems like an awkward pursuit to me. What does one say in response? Is reasoning or more praise required, or is a simple "You're welcome" sufficient? But then what if you get tired of saying "You're Welcome" over and over again? And then if you have a lot of favorites you run the risk of having every single comment on your front page be a "thank you for the fav" post.

That's not to say that I'm degrading the people who've thanked ME for a favorite. They SHOULD be thanking me. My favorites gallery is a work of art unto itself. Where some would simply add whatever looked pretty, I go through an artist's entire gallery and select only the one (or two if you're REALLY good) pieces that I think are their best. This is based on criteria like composition of the piece, workability of the colors, emotional content, and mastery of the medium. My favorites are all artworks that I cannot at this point in time figure out how they did that.

I suppose a general "You're welcome" to everyone who's thanked me for a favorite is in order. Cause yeah. You rock, dudes. Feel good about yourself for being in my highly select favorites gallery. Someday people are going to be fighting tooth and nail to get into it.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13504815/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13504815/ Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:09:19 PDT
Come to me,
Rain god,
Mysticism,
Haunting mists.

Show me your cloudy greyness.
Wrap me in your darkness and damp.
Wink at me from the puddles and the streams.
Fill my nose and soul with your caress.

Let me hear you,
Rain god,
Mysticism,
Haunted man.


Going to be an AWESOME painting.

I've got shittons of stuff I done for this class that's not up here cause it's too big to scan. Just got my digital camera running again though. Probably get a deluge of crap here within the next week or two.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13488575/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13488575/ Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:39:23 PDT
Sketch journal to follow.

It was kinda nice going to Disney without coming home pissed at the world. (That is what normally happens.) The changes to Pirates were not as drastic or offensive as I thought they would be, although the animatronics said the phrase "Captain Jack Sparrow" about a BILLION times. The Davy Jones hologram was pretty nifty.

We got to eat lunch at the Blue Bayou. I was literally TEN FEET from the boats as they went by. SQUEEE

I also bought a pirate medallion from the first movie because that's the only movie I believe in.

It's pretty. :3

In other news, Seth's not in Thespiphobia anymore. WHOA

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13427184/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13427184/ Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:11:01 PDT
There will be more of these. Oh yes.

But now I must sleep.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13405419/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13405419/ Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:15:41 PDT
In other news, I'm going to Disneyland on Friday.

Woohoo!

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13346404/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13346404/ Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:09:28 PDT



In other news, wtf is up with the comicgenesis servers lately? Down for days, then suddenly a super-efficient update, then it's down again. What in tarnation did they do? If this keeps up, I may need to get a mirror site or something.


But. Zomg. TABLET. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13301540/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13301540/ Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:05:09 PDT
They must be testing out some stuff lately, because in the past month or two the CG servers have been going down a LOT. Or maybe they're getting old and need replacing.

In other news, the skies are full of clouds and it smells like wonderful outside.

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13283119/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13283119/ Sat, 09 Jun 2007 21:01:14 PDT
I swear to God I'll post on the regular Thesp blog tomorrow, but I just spent about thirteen hours working hard labor in the sun today on top of another hour battling with my laptop to get the internet up and running again, and I cannot be bothered.

Furthermore, Internet Explorer is inexplicably no longer here, so I have no ftp client to upload an update for Thespiphobia. Yes, I could go out and download one if I had the initiative. Unfortunately, the necessary file (the comic) is on the other computer, and my flash drive is across town because I'm a moron and left my purse at the hard-labor-in-the-sun place. Yes, I could email it to myself. No, I really don't give a crap about what I COULD do. Say what you want about how Internet Explorer is a shitty browser, too insecure, not as pretty or as smooth or as polished as Firefox or as well coded or whatever, but until Firefox implements a built-in ftp client like IE's got, I'll always have a copy of IE on my harddrive.

so tired x_X

So yes, Thesp misses an update. Meh. I'll make it up to everyone tomorrow. There's not much else I have the energy for at this point. I've got three quarters of a real episode penciled; I'll scan it tomorrow and use the original backup plan for the missed Saturday update.

I'd be guilty about this except for the fact that in life and especially in my obligations, I'm a practicing apathist. For the simple minded, that means "It's a free service and you get what you pay for, so I really don't give a shit." Feel free to send me hate mail if you disagree; scaletayle@hotmail.com

So stupid. Why in God's name would I forget my purse? Wallet, bus pass, ID, flash drive, checkbook... I also left an umbrella there that I was using for shade. It's a miracle I made it home with the car, really.

I am going to sleep in SO HARDCORE tomorrow.

Seriously.

PS: What the fuck is up with this smiley's hair? IS it hair? Someone enlighten me.

PPS: Despite the grouchiness... LEROY'S HOME! HOORAY!

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13246295/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13246295/ Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:36:10 PDT
So we're looking at sometime on Friday. Maybe. Here's hoping. Fear not, for I have a contingency plan in case Leroy (his full name is Kickass Leroy but he's a laptop so we shortened it) doesn't get home in time for Saturday's update. It is top secret. Actually it's so hilarious that I might put it up even if Leroy DOES get home in time.

Gnar. I want my laptop back. I've had writing on the brain for days now and I can't get it out of my system on this four year old stupid desktop. Not with my brother constantly in the room with his stupid cartoons on. Sethmire demands screen time!

Have to go to drawing class tomorrow, le sigh. Had artist's block since yesterday. We started working on graphite and I was still stuck in charcoal mode so I ruined four sheets of giant paper before I finally gave up and hid outside with a romance/mystery novel for the rest of the class. Now I'm three drawings behind.

On the plus side, I'm babysitting a couple of awesome girls on Friday. We're going to the water park. RAWK \m/

]]> ~lekosis http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13209534/ http://lekosis.deviantart.com/journal/13209534/ Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:53:06 PDT
If you live in Tucson, give me your email so I can tell you when rehearsals start. There are five speaking roles, three swordfights, one large crowd of faerie partiers, and three combat-trained ladies in waiting. I need actors, stage managers, adults who can sit and stare at kids backstage and keep them from being stupid, costumers, publicists, electricians, etc. etc. No money, only volunteers. No experience necessary, and I swear to God the next person who says "oh I don't really act" gets punched in the mouth. I have no patience for wusses.

We'll also be doing buttloads of maintenance projects for the Moon, so I'll need landscapers, carpenters, and cement workers to supervise the small army of young people who will be attempting to make the place presentable for my show and everything else that goes on there.

The Valley of the Moon is located at 2544 E Allen Road. Just go north on Country Club until you hit Allen, turn left, and drive for a ways.



This Saturday we're opening our gates for some casual entertainment; there has been talk of live music and I will certainly be dressing up as a pirate to terrify small children.

So if you want to see me dressed up as a pirate, show up at the Valley of the Moon this Saturday (the 9th) at 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

Bring your small children. }: D

]]> ~lekosis