Yassir Arafat is dead. To sum up my feelings about this, I'll quote James Lileks:

"All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. All you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him."

I registered for my classes today, and I poured molten metal into a sandy mold. Within hours of each other, to boot.

At registration, I learned that the lot of the sophomore at MCAD is a hard one to shoulder, at least when trying to get the classes that one wants. The freshmen are getting all of their Foundation classes, and they're the only ones doing it, so they're pretty much guaranteed those. The juniors and seniors have seniority, so they've picked all of their classes a day or two before the sophomores. Thus...we get to pick from the dregs. Half of my schedule was unavailable by the time I got to the front of the line, and two of the alternate-alternate classes I madly searched for and scribbled down ended up being waitlisted classes (that is, I have to bring in an Add Form on the first day of the class in question and hope that the teacher's feeling generous). And I was one of the lucky ones. The girl next to me had her entire schedule wiped out within a fifteen minute period.

So, I think you know what this means.

This means I'm taking the roleplaying game class.

But I'm waitlisted for it.

In case you missed it, this is the class I mentioned before, called "Interactive Multi-Linear Narrative," a class in which we will investigate the methods used in writing computer roleplaying games and use HTML and a bit of Flash programming to design our own working CRPG. There wasn't any mention of whether or not they'd be teaching us this programming language stuff, but the description said it was appropriate for all kinds of writers and so on, and there were no prerequisite classes listed. Just in case, I'm going to check out an HTML for Dummies-type book from the library and study up during my month off between semesters.

I feel a bit like I'm wasting my time with this class, but I needed the credits and there really wasn't anything left open that would have been of any use to me that I could fit into the schedule I had. Having said that, it should be fun.

Here's the schedule I'm looking at:

Monday - No classes
Tuesday - 9:30-12 Noon: Interactive Multi-Linear Narrative;
1:00-6:00 PM: Visual Thinking;
6:30-9:00 PM: Learning and Teaching
Wednesday - No classes
Thursday - 1:00-6:00 PM: Special Topics: Digital Illustration One
Friday - 1:00-6:00 PM: Comic Art One

I had originally been hoping for History of Comic Books and Writers' Workshop; next semester, perhaps. Aside from RPG class, I'm also waitlisted for Visual Thinking. If I can't get into that class, I'll need to find another studio class to take, which doesn't look promising. Here's hoping I can stay with what I have...

I'll work on Monday and Wednesday nights, and I'll have Thursday and Friday mornings (as well as evenings) to work on homework. Very nice! Of course, with class for nearly 12 hours straight on Tuesdays, I'll need the breaks!

In my 3D shop class, we've finished with our tables and are now building weathervanes. Like the tables, they're supposed to be "self-portraits" in some respect. I decided that I wanted to do Saint Michael the Archangel spearing the dragon Satan. When asked how it was a self-portrait, I said, "Um, well, it reflects my faith as a Christian, and it also reflects that I'm drawn to epic stories of good versus evil, my enjoyment of the mythic, and, uh, it's also about my day-to-day struggles with temptation. Yeah, that's the ticket."

One thing this school has taught me is to make things up when people ask why I'm doing something, because I don't think they'll appreciate the explanation "Because I thought it would be cool." Don't get me wrong, I have stuff I'd like to do that has meaning, but it's a weathervane, for goodness' sake. Ask me again when I draw a comic.

First, we poured a mixture of sand and some kind of quick-drying concretey stuff into wooden frames. This gave us blocks of solid sand, from which we carved molds of what we wanted the main body of the weathervane to be. To prepare these molds for the FIERY LIQUID METAL, we brushed their insides with a graphite-alcohol mixture and set them on fire. Once they burned out, we put them into sandboxes on wheels and set them in front of the foundry. We suited up into our fireman-astronaut suits, complete with safety goggles and visors, and proceeded to pour out RED HOT LIQUID METAL into the molds. I was the Scraper: I stood in front of the glowing red-hot barrelly thing that held all of the FLESH-SCORCHINGLY MOLTEN METAL and scraped the slag that formed on the surface, holding it back as they poured it out, like someone trying to keep the pulp from pouring out of the orange juice caraffe. Though it looked more like Hawaiian Punch.

It was pretty cool; working with something that could melt the flesh from my bones made me feel all manly and stuff. And I haven't even used the plasma cutter yet!

So, school is fun, even though it stresses me out when I'm not in a class, and sometimes bores me when I am there (like in my Observational Drawing class...I'm sick to death of it). It's now less than a month before the semester ends, and thus far, I've spoken to most of my teachers about my grades, and I'm doing quite well - B's and B+'s all around. My Brother's Grimm teacher said that my grade there - B+ - will probably change based on my thesis paper. She's seemed pretty enthusiastic about my paper - she keeps giving me informational sources for it whenever I speak to her. I'm feeling pretty good about it...though I'll feel a lot better when I've finished the written portion and can work solely on the comic part, which I haven't even started yet. Fortunately, she told us today that she's postponing any thesis presentations until after Thanksgiving, so I've gotten a little bit of a time extention. Yay!