2012: The end of the world?

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MAYA (and Megan):

So I just watched a trailer for the movie 2012 which involves the Maya Long Count calendar ending on December 21st, 2012, and so begins the apocalypse . The Maya calender does indeed end, after 5000 years, on Dec. 21st 2012, but it is the same as our calender ending every year on Dec. 31st, not a prediction of the end of the world.

However, I think the most interesting thing about the trailer was the final shot telling us to "find the truth, Google 2012". I must admit I love Google and Wikipedia almost as much as I love my own self, but anyone who admonishes you to seek the truth through amateur web sites is clearly grasping for straws. It is also very clear to me after reading a few of the Googled web sites, that anyone who believes this theory has not studied the Maya because they call them "Mayans".

I feel it my duty as a student in a Maya art history class to tell everyone out there that only the Maya language is called "Mayan", never the people or anything else having to do with their culture, they are always referred to as Maya (By themselves and by those who study their culture. Yes they are still alive and well in Mexico and Guatemala).

So if you feel compelled to research the Maya, make sure the sources you are using do not use the word Mayan inappropriately. It means they don't have any idea what they are talking about or are just making wild and unresearched accusations without understanding the Maya culture.

Thank you, you may continue with your day.

T'is the season for me to stop slacking

So it is getting to that time of the school year: "the hump". I really despise 'the hump' because it is the time when all the projects a haven't done or assignments haven't read come back and slap me in the face. This year I've been way better than in previous years but it has also been different because this year I am married and have a whole nother person to take care of beside myself. Even as I write this I am putting off writing a short essay on the Iconography and Importance of Blood in Maya Culture. Fascinating, yes. Nauseating, yes. Completed, no.

I'm wondering if "the hump" is something only experienced by slacker college students. Feel free to follow my example and whine and moan on my blog about "the hump". Also, if you want to learn about some nasty Maya self-sacrifice I can e-mail my essay to you. With illustrations!

Very interesting....

I received an E-mail yesterday saying that my blog had been flagged as one potentially being a "spam blog", but since I was an "actual human being reading this" my blog probably wasn't a spam blog. When I read how they flag spam blogs it said those blogs often participate in link spamming and use gibberish and nonsense words....but please believe me, Gouache is in fact a real thing and I'm not making it up.

I also thought I should give a pronunciation guide since for the first year I saw the word Gouache I thought it was pronounced as if it rhymed with grouch. It is really pronounced /goo-w-ah-sh/ but faster and slurring all the sounds together. If you know the IPA then it would be /guwoʃ/.

I bring in the IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, into this because I'm taking an introduction to linguistics class, that I love, and I learn all sorts of interesting and hypocritical things people do with language.

Today I think I will rant about people making fun of Bush for saying "nucular" instead of "nuclear" (which incidentally people don't even say that one right: the clear part is pronounced /klee-are/ not like /ear/). Anyway, apart from Bush having a totally different dialect than western America, he is making a mistake that EVERY SINGLE one of us makes, almost on a daily basis, just not necessarily with nuclear. Take for instance the word WEDNESDAY. Over time the pronunciation has been modified from the original /wed-nes/ to the switching of the consonants /d/ and /n/. This has been done presumably because it is much easier to pronounce.

The same can be said of the Midwestern and southern version of nuclear. The ending /ular/ is much more prevalent in English than the ending /lee-are/ (muscular, popular, tubular, etc. vs. Cochlear). So while the ending is incorrect, it is easier to say and it is more common.

If you are worried over our president's mispronunciations, take a chill pill. You do the same thing, just with different words. (Also look at the words, familiar /fermilar/, asterisk /asteriks/, Samson /Sampson/)

There is my rant. Obviously I have no pictures yet. Maybe sometime in the future...

My new blog because the old one was deleted...probably because I ignored it.

So here is my new blog. I was guilted into making a new one since I have no way of communicating with the outside world that does not involve a computer.

Anyway, I'd better start with the title of this thang. For most of you normal people you probably have no idea what Gouache is. It is an opaque watercolor that is favored among illustrators because of its fast drying time, ease of application, velvet type texture, and ability to be erased/corrected. I just started using it for the first time in my Aqueous Media class and I have to say that it is the shiz. My plan with this blog is to post my current projects, wheather they be in gouache, oil, acrylic, finger paint, whatever. I know that there are like 3 people out there who are dying to see my work, so here it comes people!

I might also post my thoughts about things, I am rather opinionated and like to pontificate. I also reserve the right to do other things to my blog that are neither related to art nor interesting. Blogging world, here I come!

THIS JUST IN!
My old blog wasn't deleted, I just can't edit it anymore. If you want to look at the sad sad remnant of my former blog, here it is.