Somebody needs a tiiiiiickle

Dagon giveth, Dagon taketh away.

It's interesting how life flatters you for a week before it knees you in the groin.
I've actually started to become suspicious of fate. Every time a series of good things happen to me, I prepare, because I know it's a sign that something absolutely awful is just around the corner, waiting patiently to wallop me in the face.
Last week was great. No problems. No notices. The only damper was shelling out a handful of cash because the fleas came back.
Its interesting how used to the fleas I've gotten. I imagine this is what owners of many large dogs must go through. The constant tickle. The bites that feel like pins poking your skin. The little black streaks against the blur out of the corner of ones eye, as the insects leap gracefully to a new buffet.
There have been FAR less fleas in this outbreak, so I assume this final extermination should do them in for good.
Other than that, though. Last week was great. I got plenty of animating done, made up with an old friend, talked to AlbinoBlackSheep himself about youtube and other things, and have been hanging out with friends. We've started fishing again, because its warmed up and Ybor has become stale and boring.

Then this week hits. Sallie Mae, the student loan equivalence of the Sheriff of Nottingham, have decided to increase my bill. BY A LOT. Thus stealing away pretty much everything in my savings and checking accounts.

Leaving my entire life savings at exactly:

Available Balance : $33.03

Thats it.
Thanks to Sallie Mae, that is all the money I have for the next two to three weeks.
Meaning that, other than gas, which around here is roughly 5/6 bucks a gallon, I cant do anything. I cant eat anything. Which means I will, once again have to resort to other methods to obtain food.
Now its not like I have not done this before.
But this was a ridiculous bill they sent. No student (or former student in my case) should have to pay such a meaty piece of paper.

So after several hours of bantering with the listless person on the phone, I was able to attain a website where I could change my billing options. I figured "hey i'll pay less per month over a longer period of time. yeah that's the ticket"

Except that it adds another 5,000 dollars I have to pay. And it only stays lower for roughly 7 months. After that it jumps back up to the high price. Isn't that lovely?

So, at work, I am going to see if I can find a way to get my paycheck in advance. I'm sure I cant because from a business standpoint, paying employees early is a retarded idea, but by the raven of Odin, I am going to try. I will sing a song and dance a dance the like of which hath not been seen for nary 15th of an Age. I shit thee not.

Now, encountering a problem that I've had before with this company is bad of course. But this reaches a new level of badness.
Because upon arriving home from the bank after finding out about all this mess, I get a message, several actually, from various people I have contact with. Most of them are younger than I, as most people my age have actually done something with their lives by this point, and being older and having been spat out by the collegiate system, I assume they think I'll have some sort of good advice aside from curling into a fetal position and sucking one's thumb.
And they send me links to paintings. Or sometimes not even paintings. Just scribbles they've done in photoshop with a tablet, that might become nice finished pieces later.

And I look at these, and my eyes pan over to whatever I'm doing with my own tablet at the time, and it just cows me. These people who are near half my age, are pumping out work that looks 100000000000 times better than anything I've produced.

How great would it be to wield that sort of power? To be able to just pick up a tablet pen and scribble in photoshop for a few hours and have some dinky scribbles look as nice as any concept art for some sort of incredible game or movie.

And it makes me wonder where I went wrong? Why cant I attain this level of creativity these people possess? I hang around the conceptart.org forums, picking up skills like they do, trying to make epic imagery. I do life drawings whenever I can.

Maybe these people use lots of references.
I usually dont. I usually just sketch about and then wing it when it comes to coloring. Maybe I should start taking photos off google and checking my colors and lighting.

I dont know.

Thats a problem I'll have to solve for the rest of my life I wager.

As for now, there is a more taxing problem plaguing my mind (other than being flat broke).

Salazar, my brother's pet snake whom I share a habitat with, is shedding his skin. This happens pretty often, which surprises me. But he seems to have given up. He got the skin on his little brown snake head off and has been just loping around the tank today. Whenever I approach he lifts his head and rises slowly up rubbing his nose on the ceiling grate, a sign he wants out.
Last time he was shedding, my brother just picked him up and took all his shedding skin off by hand.

I assume that's why he's doing his "i want out" dance right now.

He wants me to pull him out and take his skin of for him. But I think skinshedding is an important skill for a juvenile snake to have. If I keep babying him, he won't learn.

He has plenty of things to rub himself against to get the skin off anyway.









doo dee doo


lets see.

I whined about my life, talked about my art, talked about the snake.








Yep, this is definitely a typical blog post.




I have run out of things to talk about.

So I'll show off something, I suppose.


Many weeks ago, a good friend of mine named Gerkinman somehow found my zazzle site thing. And so, decided to buy a shirt and a print. I think he bought a print of that painting of the robot trying to grab the missiles. I dont know.
But he got the shirt called The Odd Couple where I had two little monsters standing side by side with some sort of alien text.

Well it finally arrived. (he lives very far away on an island), and took a picture.
Apparently a medium here in America is a large in his country. I admit I lol'd a good bit at that info.

There's so many things I could photoshop coming out of his mouth for a few cheap yuks, but he'd be pissed I assume. Apparently the print quality is good. Which sets my mind at ease.

When my dark shirt arrived, the inking was a plasticine substance on the threads of the shirt. Like something ironed on but of much higher quality. I still worry after a few washes this plasticy stuff will start peeling off and flaking away.

But only time will tell I assume.

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