A/N: Okay, NOW its time to bore you with my excuses and irritating details of my life. Here are some short stories to show you just how obsessed I am with Trigun (although I do refer to Lord of the Rings in one of them. They come out of my everyday life as a college student. I just HAD to share them with you, plus I didn't know what to do with them. ^_^; Enjoy! ~NB~
*************************************************************************************
~*Trigun in the Everyday*~
I have a printmaking class at eight in the morning three days a week. My teacher was getting tired of students coming in late, so she decided that anyone who comes in after class starts has to help with clean up. She also said that the last person who comes in gets to buy donuts for everyone! We already had three people buy donuts, and with about five or six weeks left of school, we'll probably have at least two more people. Vash would have adored her. ^_^ I bet he would be late every time!
~*~
This is what inspired me to do this. This past Friday, my teacher in my metals and jewelry class (right after printmaking) was doing a demo on how to shape a circular piece of copper 6" in diameter into a bowl. She used this one guy's copper piece to do the demo. After pounding the metal into a shallow bowl shape, she mentioned that we'll have repeat the process about three more times to get it smoothed out (when the metal gets too hard to manipulate each time you hammer, bend, or stamp it enough times, you have to anneal it; meaning that you heat it up to make it flexible again. Just some extra info in case you decide to take a class in metals ^_^).
Well, the guy to whom the metal belonged said, "It looks like an ashtray."
Our teacher looked at it and replied, "I does look like an ashtray." She picked up the hammer to continue, and as she was situating the metal piece in a wooden block with circular depression in it, she said, "This person's a heavy smoker, so we'll have to make this deeper. That way, he can see all the butts he can smoke in one day. I'm thinking probably about 50."
Who does that remind you of?
~*~
I had to make a 'precious' box not long ago in this class, and let me tell you that thing had been the source of my pain and suffering for a full month, starting the week of Valentine's Day (now you know why I haven't been updating ^_^;). We were supposed to pick a theme for it, and I chose butterflies; I think you know why. ~_~ Well, as I began drawing designs I started thinking about adding spiders to it. Soon I had the whole 'Kill the spiders to save the butterflies' thing going. The sides are copper with flowers cut in spirals so they can poke out from the side of the box and butterfly shapes were sawed out in between them. The biggest flower on each side has a leaf made of brass wire. I drilled in hole patterns at the top of each side, and all the other leaves and designs were stamped in. The inside has 'Kill the spiders to save the butterflies...simple logic.' stamped on the brass bottom with a bunch of fat, circular spiders with little legs also stamped in looking like their running around.
As if that wasn't enough work, the lid was even worse. Its sides were copper and the top was a huge brass spider web. I probably went through five dozen saw blades sawing that sucker out and spent one Saturday night watching (or rather listening to) the entire Trigun series while working on it. I still wasn't done, so I decided to watch the Academy Awards while I finished up (Yay for LOTR!!!). After all the sawing, filing, soldering (used to put separate pieces of metal together), stamping, and sanding I was wiped out, and my brain was fried from looking at that box too much. My hands were cut up, and my fingers were swollen for days. Although no one in my class was able to get what that stamped message really meant, I am very proud of it and don't care if they didn't get it. I wish I had a scanner to show you what it looks like. I hate and love that 'precious' box at the same time, the same way Gollum felt about his 'precious'. ^_^
~*~
My next class is Art History Survey (I bet you can guess what my major is now). The teacher who teaches this class is pretty cool, even if he swears a little too much for my liking. He knows his stuff and always kept the lectures interesting. On the week of Valentine's Day, we were looking at paintings about love, marriage, and some that had sexual references in them (about half of the paintings we look at do. That's one of the reasons I stay away from lemons most of the time YP). He went a little off the subject for a moment to talk about how great love is and that if we haven't fallen in love yet, we should because giving heart out to someone and then having it smashed is a painful but necessary experience to go through before you get married. It kind of reminded what happened to Vash when he lost Rem and Milly when she lost Wolfwood, although they didn't leave or betray them by choice. Losing someone you love in any way is always painful.
Speaking of smashing hearts, about a month later we had another lecture on Romanticism. It wasn't just a style of painting but also an attitude many people had between the mid 1700s and mid 1800s, and it counteracted the Enlightenment that occurred right before it (the Enlightenment was the rise of rational thinking and scientific thought. Perfect for Knives huh? ^_^;). It was a longing for the past, the way things used to be, about how love is a beautiful and powerful emotion, but what was even more powerful is the beauty of feeling pain, of having love crushed. Pain was something that would stay in your memory and never forget. Unrequited love was also part of this, and there were many young people committing suicide because they read this book some guy wrote a story with this theme. This movement fit this time period perfectly because there was a great deal of suffering going on (If you don't know your history, go read about it). I know a certain blue-haired telepathic psychopath who could have taken notes from this guy. His gang could probably benefit attending his lectures as well.
Had enough? @.@ Okay, time for something lighter.
~*~
I want to tell you about my watercolor teacher. She's sweet, caring, WAY smarter than you think she is (she just keeps surprising me), always willing to help if you're having trouble, very patient, sees the best in other people, insists that you call her by her first name, knows the importance of friendship, lends an understanding ear when you need one, encourages you, and can get tough when she needs to. You want to know something REALLY interesting?
Here name is Milly. ^_^
~*~
Remember when Milly got angry at the man who stepped on her can of pudding, blew him and his friends away, and said, "You should never get between people and their pudding!"? Well, I got an interesting piece of food philosophy from a good friend of mine I'll call 'Amy'. One time, while we were eating dinner with some other friends at a cafeteria on campus, and they were having steak fingers. One of our friends commented on how nasty they tasted. Amy agreed with her and said, "It is my philosophy that cows should not have fingers. That's why I don't eat steak fingers. Same thing goes with chicken fingers." I just cracked up! ^O^ Milly would have been proud of her. The cafeteria has good pudding however, and every time they have it we all try to get seconds or even thirds! ^_^
~*~
There's a stray cat that appears randomly around the art building. I've seen it about three or four times this past semester, and well, if you know me you know I'm obsessed with that bug-eyed black kitty we know as Kuroneko-sama. I'm so obsessed that one time when I came out of the building and saw it staring at me intently, I half expected it's eyes to grow ten times their normal size and go *Nyaooo*. O.o That was scary! I think it was in the evening, and cat's eyes can reflect light and appear to glow when there's light. O~O That would have been freaky!
~*~
During the fall I play flute in my college marching band just for fun (big band geek and proud of it! ^_^). We have some of the most talented people you will ever meet, but we have some that are real show-offs. Aside, from the trumpets and the drum section (both sections are show-offs .), we have a few saxophone players who just won't stop playing after practice. Some even walk straight back to their dorms from the football field with their instruments still strapped on playing up and down scales or any jazz pieces they knew by memory (I envy them for that). The streets would echo and the surrounding buildings would bounce the sounds around, so it was impossible to find the source. I think that Midvalley would have fit in perfectly, he would just have to be careful playing that B-flat of his. As for good looks, he would have some competition. I know one saxophone guy who's WAY cuter and cooler than he is (Sorry Midvalley fans). Too bad he's already taken (Nuts!). What is it with saxophones that make a guy SO COOL?! ^.^
*************************************************************************************
A/N: Review time! Did I forget to tell you I was banned from the computer at during my spring break because I screwed it up trying to watch Trigun in Japanese? ^~^ That was no fun. I'll be back, I promise!!! ~NB~
