Breaking the rules

Coming soon to a screen near you.

Class Takeaway 9/22

Yesterday's class got me thinking more about why I chose the book that I did for the Altered book project. I chose a copy of Twilight for this assignment, mostly because I couldn't think of any book in particular that I hated. Hate is a strong word. But I decided that Twilight represents something in my future field that I'm not a fan of. To me, it always seemed that Twilight was so successful based not on its story or quality of writing but by, essentially, catering to the "lowest common denominator." As a public relations major, I see a lot of catering to the lowest common denominator. It is an effective strategy for what we do and there is nothing nefarious about it (as some people like to believe), however, I've always felt that this concept was lazy and somewhat insulting to peoples' intelligence, as if people are sheep-like enough to buy whatever formulaic garbage you put in front of them. But then, a lot of people bought into Twilight. So whatever.

Class takeaway 9/15

Today, I missed most of class. Monday is my one day of the week where I'm not super busy. I have Seeing Sideways at 3pm, and otherwise it is a day to relax or do homework because I'm generally hectically busy the other days of the week. Because of this, the first half of my Mondays are a nebulous time where my brain resets and my body tries to release as much tension as possible. Sooo... I spaced that class starts at 3 instead of 4, like had been in my head all day. Imagine my surprise when I drove the half hour to school to find that I only had to be in class for maybe ten minutes before turning around and going back. Going back in the middle of rush hour/Colts game traffic.

The day went from relaxing to intensely irritating really fast and as I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic I had plenty of time to meditate on this. Perhaps this is a good time to start "altering" (ie: destroying) that book.

Doodle assignment

I wasn't sure where to start with my doodling, so I just made some scribbles. At first, whenever anything began to look like it was coming together, I would intentionally add something completely out of place. After a while, that got boring and I drew some squares. They reminded me of picture frames with pieces of the scribbles behind them, so I made pictures out of them. Then I felt like doodling a person. So I did that. This was the result!

The ninja egg

I like ninjas. So I made a traditional ninja tool, an eggshell grenade. These were used by ninja back in the day to distract opponents and allow them a safe escape. They could be thrown at armored opponents at a distance or discreetly crushed in-hand to throw in an enemy's face.

First, I poked small holes in each end of an egg using a nail.

Then, I blew the yoke out through the holes.

While the egg dried I made a mixture of cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt, and some other unpleasant things to fill my shell with. Actual ninja would fill these with all kinds of things. Certain chemicals could create a flash or smoke, or they could be filled with glass dust or poisoned iron filings among other things.

Then I poured my pepper mixture into the shell with a paper funnel. THIS WAS WAY HARDER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. Use a real funnel, It'll save you a lot of time.

Close the holes up with melted wax...

And voila. One eggshell pepper grenade.