My Neighbor is Gardening in the Dark

Flowers are NOT this important.

What I Have Learned From Drunken Dance Parties in Orgrimmar

That is my undead destruction warlock, Veveze.  She's pretty cool.  She has cute horns sometimes when she wants to. 

And Veveze likes to party.

I have Veveze sometimes head over to Orgrimmar, a horde city where lots of commerce gets done, and I have her strip dance.  Because I can.

And I have learned a very important lesson from these impromptu gatherings.

Yeah, taurens are basically cow people.  But they're effing cool.  Check out my other character Straz, Arielle as Roz, and this tauren in a nice pose:

For fun, here's a cute picture of mine and Mike's characters:

His character isn't a dragon, but that is a mount he has that turns into a dragon. 

I'm in Virginia right now, playing WoW with Arielle.  Seriously.  Now I'm going to enjoy my time away from the internet. Yay!

ACE

This will make sense soon.

Started storyboarding, and it turned into this.  My storyboards will not be in color.  I promise.

Gossip Girl

Sometimes I think my mother is a teenage girl because she watches shows like Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries and Degrassi and gets legitimately into them.  But then sometimes she's cool and she'll watch Lost and Firefly and I.T. Crowd with me.

My mom was a HUGE Lost fan.

Anyway, the whole Gossip Girl thing can be blamed on me.  Hard pressed for something to watch freshman year of college, Catherine and I ventured into a depressing year of television watching with Gossip Girl.  We were alright with the show at first, but got fed up when they created really interesting plot lines that they either would not follow with or seemingly forget were ever created.

I know, what can you really expect from a show called Gossip Girl?

I'll tell you what you can expect:

The Chuck-Blair drama and Chuck Bass' purple suits were the only reasons to watch the show.

My mom keeps hounding me about watching this "really great episode" she has tivoed where I think Chuck and Blair have hate sex or something and there's a tangled web woven by a bunch of snotty, uptown, New York college students.

The moral of the story is: Don't watch Gossip Girl, unless you enjoy purple suits and elegantly disheveled hair.

Tornadoes in Jersey?

Why I will probably not sleep tonight:

My fear might make more sense if you read this.  Or, it might just confuse the issue.  Good night.

Am I a Magnet for Kidnappers?

I am not sure if I attract weirdos, or if they just happen to populate in the areas I also spend time.  A man with a white-blond ponytail and a dumb safari hat came into the liquor store and said something worthy of adding to my extensive list of "Creepy Things People Say When I am Trying to do my Job." 

I'm not sure if the wink was meant to emphasize the beer, or to allude to something unspeakable.

He then told a joke that I half-listened to and did not completely understand.  I gave a tiny laugh to which he said, "Well I thought it was funny."

Again, did not know if this was part of the joke or a sly accusation that I might not appreciate his sense of humor.

Guess what, guy?  I don't appreciate your sense of humor.

And then later that night THIS GUY came in.

Why is he laughing at that?  Is he planning something?  I have never before wanted mind-reading abilities so badly, as I do when I encounter weirdos.

I do not want to be locked anywhere with these people.  Because they will inevitably chain me to a wall.  Especially the one who wanted to drink beer with me.

There is no escaping this.  Probably.

Let's Talk About the Time I Painted Myself Blue

For Comic Con this year my friend Arielle and I decided to go as Prise.  Prise are basically blue angels with yellow hair that guard God's riddle, or something.  This whole mythology is scrawled out in a few comic books and a really terrible novel adaptation of the album Year of the Black Rainbow.  Claudio Sanchez, lead singer of Coheed and Cambria, invented all this. 

I'm not going to bother explaining the story because half of it is in vague lyrics, another part in a comic book with an ever-changing illustrator (can you say distracting) and then another part of this story was ruined by the aforementioned novel.

It was honestly the worst thing I've ever read, and I love Claudio Sanchez like he is my own flesh and blood.

I already wrote a post about the first time I met Claudio, found here. 

The second time I met Claudio went a little something like this:

I didn't ask if he recognized me, because I didn't want to destroy my original credibility as a college reporter who just happened to be a fan.  This would make me crossover into super-stalker-ommigod-why-are-you-doing-this territory.

That's not saying I regret my decision to slather my face in blue eyeshadow and dress up like a blue angel to meet one of my musical heroes.  No.  It was awesome. 

So, here are some highlight pictures from that great day:

Me and Arielle, being awesome.

Arielle loves her Batman.

I love my Deadpool.

Mike helping me wrap my arms like a boxer, because Mike fancies himself a boxing expert.  Almost.

My whole blue suit is pretty awesome.  And slightly embarrassing; why am I posting this?

 

Oh, right.  Because I'm lazy. 

The day ended with me taking home some free goodies, a signed copy of Prize Fighter Inferno (I judged that album here) and a bunch of awesome comics. 

I cannot think of an ending for this post.  Here is a lizard entering an oasis in the desert:

I hope that will suffice.

The Rapture

Serena Tries to be an Artist

Every once in a while I go crazy and try my hand at some art form, believing I will find a new talent within myself.  I never do.

While writing a story about a character who has abstract paintings around her house I decide I cannot write any more until I possess those paintings.  Paintings that are not even central to the story.  I think there are two lines of dialogue surrounding said paintings, but I had this overwhelming feeling that I could do nothing until they existed.    

I decided to draw these myself.  This is possibly an attempt to procrastinate that my subconscious mind devised.  But, I don't think my subconscious is that intelligent.  I probably just wanted to play artist for an hour. 

I used my old, multicolored pastels that are hardly used and pretty beat up.  I've been waiting for a special occasion to whip them out.  So, here's what I ended up drawing:

I was trying to be artsy and combine the idea of an identity and a tree into a singular drawing.  It looks like a green thought bubble that a tiny, Chinese baby conjured up, in which he is trying to spell his name and keeps failing. 

This one is actually really close to what I wanted, but still looks a blurry, dying flower.

This one was going to be a colorful Rorschach test, but that ended up being really hard to pull off.  So, instead I inserted this Iron & Wine lyric to cover up my failure. 

I am really scared of this picture.  I think it's the eyes.

My hands got even dirtier than that, but it was totally worth it.  Even if the drawings end up looking like cat hairballs, moving what is essentially chalk dust around on construction paper is really therapeutic. 

It's the messier version of popping bubble wrap.

A Rush and a Push, and the Land is Ours

This is a video I made for my Television 3 class.  The song is originally by The Smiths, but covered here by Claudio and Travis of Coheed & Cambria.  I am so limited by my footage and what I originally wanted isn't totally realized, but I still like it.

Also, Catherine still hasn't seen it.  I'm sorry that all of her footage was shot on a shitty tape.

And starting Saturday I am going to be shooting footage for triathlons and weddings!  Not sure if my employers should be worried.

Should I Feel Threatened?

There's this guy comes into the liquor store.  He comes in intermittently and always makes comments about me.  Recently, the comments have escalated into the creepy zone.  This man told me he was 50 years old, and last night our one-sided conversation sent off a red flag.

There are two ways I could take this comment.

SCENARIO A:

SCENARIO B:

I am going to prefer to think that this man is completely harmless.  But, too many customers at the store like me and because of it, strange things escape from their mouths.  I think I am going to dye my hair so no one recognizes me.  And pierce my entire face.

It's for safety.

5 Really Great Reasons I'm Not Walking at Graduation

How I Spent my First Full Day as a College Graduate

Remember that post I wrote about a month ago about looking like Justin Bieber in that wig? 

Well, I decided to spend my first day of possible professionalism engulfed in immaturity.

I went to the King of Prussia Mall dressed as Justin Bieber.

That's me in the parking garage before entering the mall.  Not Justin Bieber, I know.  The resemblance is haunting.

The reason we went to that specific mall was because my friend Bridget dressed up as the character Prussia from the anime Hetalia.  I have not yet seen Hetalia, but now I really want to. 

I honestly thought I was making that "P" the right way.

So here are some pictures from our adventure Liz took that I stole from Bridget's facebook without her permission.

My intention was to make it look like I was falling into the fountain, that is not what it looks like.

Malls get tiring.

That girl in the background is totally checking me out.

Unfortunately, no teenage girls asked me for my autograph but on the up side I did not get hounded for free samples.  No one wants to offer the Justin Bieber lookalike and the girl in the white wig anything, it might end in an awkward conversation.

On a completely different note, blogger was down for like 24 hours and prevented me from updating and leaving you with these incriminating pictures.  I have a post I've been working on that will hopefully be up by tomorrow or Sunday.  However, I got a third part time job in my field and that might impact my updates.  We'll see!  Hooray for entering the real world, sort of!

A Guy Walks into a Liquor Store- Almost a Music Review

 So, a guy walked into the liquor store this weekend and he immediately struck up a conversation with me about the south after asking where the Jeremiah Weed was.  I guess he likes the south.  He seemed like a decent guy, not a normal liquor store weirdo or anything.  For some odd reason, though, he was very excited about life.

Then in the middle of talking to him he says,

It would be fair to note here that prolonged eye contact with strangers makes me feel mildly uncomfortable.  If I was looking at this man's shirt, I apologize, but I was probably just searching for something less awkward to stare at than his pupils.

Anyway, he explained to me that his shirt displays the logo of his friend's band: Denison.  He told me to check them out.  Well, I will do you one better strange southern kid who forgot to buy ice: here is a blog post!

Surprisingly, this band has an E.P.  And, I am pretty sure this is a one-man show. 

While the majority of the songs are slow, the spokesman for this singer lucked out in plugging it to someone who loves slow, sad, sappy folk rock songs.  The piano chords on the song Firefly sounds so similar to any song by The Fray, it is uncanny.  Shaking What Her Mother Gave Her might be the band's strongest track, though still slow it picks up the pace and is a bit more enjoyable.  The song is fun and kind of silly.

This band attempts to pull off a slow, drawn-out tone that Tim Kasher of Cursive and The Good Life does splendidly, but this person needs some practice. Their track No Way to Win is an example of why this sound does not work.  However, their song Hospital is very close to achieving what Kasher does so well. 

The vocals are reminiscent of a band that I cannot quite put a finger on, I want to blurt out Say Hi or Mumford and Sons or possibly some super cheesy '90s alt rock band but I cannot say for sure.  If you have any idea as to what the sound of this singer's voice reminds me of, do not hesitate to let me know.  It is driving me crazy.  I spent ten minutes listening to thirty second clips of the song with the name of what it reminds me of on the tip of my tongue and I am sick of almost realizing something so trivial.  Thanks!

Overall, I'm going to give this band a B.  Mostly because their PR agents are very personable.  But seriously, while I might have only said negative things about the songs, there is something here.  If you're a folk rock or slow, Southern rock fan, check them out.

I Don't Know if it's Obvious,

but I'm still putting off that paper.

I need some Party Panda in my life.

How to be Fiscally Responsible

Staying on top of finances these days can be really rough what with credit cards and all the temptations of the internet.  But have no fear, Super Serena is here to save you the embarrassment of getting shown up by the treachery of the world wide web!

1. Identify wants vs. needs

Late at night you have it in your head that you should upload all the songs on your ipod to a new computer.  To do this, you need to buy an internet program.  While part of you is chomping at the bit thinking, "If I do not copy these songs immediately they will be lost forever," a more rational side of you realizes that you probably do not need to empty your wallet right this second on a program that hardly seems legitimate.

2. Recognize a scam

You know those advertisements that promise you a free Macbook Pro in whatever color you choose?  While this may seem fucking sweet, it is also a fucking scam.  If you actually decide you want to buy an expensive Apple product because you have some cash floating around never choose an option that suggests a substitution in payment.

It might seem really awesome to get 5 books for .99 cents from a sponsor in exchange for a program that uploads songs from your ipod to your computer, but trust me: paying the $25 will not hurt you that badly in comparison.

3. Read the fine print

4. Check your bank statements

If you are not regularly checking your email, you might miss something you should have declined.  And you might have been charged $58.

5. Do not be afraid to send threatening emails to get your money back

While you know you were totally in the wrong and did all of the irresponsible things you shouldn't have done (idiot), the people on the other end of the telephone do not.  Call, email and snail mail your way out of the payment.  Lying is kind of like inviting yourself to the club that is Corporate America.

 
Congratulations, kid, you've finally made it!