| In case anyone wondered, I've been conspicuously absent lately mostly because I am in Jacksonville providing maid of honor services for Meggie in her wedding. :D
Last night was the "bachelor/bachelorette party," sort of--nothing traditional, we just got a big karaoke room and partied all night. Well, for three hours. We brought pizza and eggrolls and chicken wings and dessert, and sang our butts off.
Now I'm up at 5:30 in the morning because I'm sleeping in Meg and Brendon's office room and the computer makes a very slight sound--it must turn on at a certain time or something--and it made me want to go to it. Like some kind of Internet zombie. LJaaaaay!
And in about 4 hours we have a hair appointment and then in 2 more hours THEY'RE GONNA GET MARRIED! And we'll eat lots of food, including wedding cake.
We're all happy, excited, and ready for it to be over. ;)
I'll be more postey and e-mail-answery soon. Bye! | comments: Leave a comment   |
| | Tags: | drawings, negative one | | Subject: | Well, it's edible. . . . a comic | | Time: | 12:20 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/purple/artistic_sp.gif) artistic |
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| Hi,
Negative One's up a little earlier than you guys are used to. I'm out of town (stayin' with Meggie, gearing up for her wedding!), but I got the comic done ahead of time and now I've gone in and changed settings so it'll show. Here it is:
#0178: dax #18: dark places
Negative One main comic page
I'm afraid you will end up seeing Dax eat some rather nasty things. Sorry.
Includes several drawings of a cute little girl. :) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I don't usually post about politics (and don't currently plan to start), but I thought this was a really cool link:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/fact-check/
One of my friends sent me this in e-mail. It's nonpartisan. You go there and see the kinds of things the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates have been saying--statements they have made--and this nonpartisan group evaluates the truth of the statements and gives you an explanation of the big picture, with a "verdict" at the end that tells you whether the statement a candidate made is "true," "misleading," or "false." I like it.
Enjoy! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| As mentioned in a previous post, AOL is closing its doors to the Hometown community, where my Web site has been sitting pretty for the last ten years. This has left me with two undesirable choices:
- Rush to slap either skeletal or temporary versions of everything on Budgiland into their future homes on swankivy.com
- Shrug, keep going at the same pace I was going at before I got the news, and accept that the content I don't finish moving will be unavailable until such time as I get around to doing it how I want it
You people probably know that shrugging and saying "Meh, I don't care about my Web page" is NOT likely to happen with THIS webmistress, so yes, I have chosen option 1.
A few things began migrating in temporary or skeletal form this weekend.
Temporaries include the following:
- Favorite Music
- Weird Links
- Offensive Links
- Weird Religion Links
Skeletals include the following (links go to new home):
The BIG surprise was that I had barely gotten into moving the doodles page when I decided to GO ALL OUT. So, even though I did not plan to do it at this time, all my drawings, in their ENTIRETY, have moved to swankivy.com !
Click that swanky graphic to check it out, please. The new page has ten full sections, some of which are further subdivided. It's really pretty amazing for a weekend's work if I do say so myself. I still have a lot of CONTENT to add to some of the sections, because stuff like the Animaniacs doodles, some realistic drawings, some character doodles, and various other stuff needs to be added to, but I'm not interested in adding content right now so much as saving what's there.
Feedback appreciated! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | meme, surveys | | Subject: | Honesty Meme | | Time: | 09:10 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/purple/indifferent_sp.gif) blah |
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| I'm doing the Honesty Meme! Thanks, Ronni-chan.
· bold the ones that are true.
· italicize the ones that are sort of true; please elaborate on them too. ;)
( Get goin' on the readin'! ) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| One of my frequent commenters (you know who you are) sorta makes a joke out of how the only thing she seems to be able to say in response to Meri Lin comics is "poor Meri Lin."
Yeah, well, nothing's changed. What do you expect?
#0177: meri lin #86: don't worry
Negative One main comic page
These drawings were done early and I'm already four panels into the next comic for next week because I have a LOT going on next week and I need to be prepared. :D
I bet most people who know me would NEVER have suspected that I'd be making a comic that's this much of a downer on a weekly basis, huh?
Don't worry (haha), next week's (Dax) has some comic relief, and the week after that (Ivy again) you'll get . . . an important new character.
WOOOO! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| In spite of recent bad news, the PhotoJournal went up (actually, it's been up since the wee hours, and I'm just posting the LJ version now).
It's time for September's PhotoJournal Calendar!
For those who weren't around yet or didn't pay attention last time I posted this, I call it the SwankiVY PhotoJournal Calendar. It's an experiment I'm doing until the end of this year.
Every day I took at least one representative photo for the day, and I have chosen one to stand for each day for the month of September. It's now on my Web site right here if you want to see the full page with explanations--the "journal" part of the PhotoJournal. But I'm also going to paste just the calendar part here into LiveJournal. It has to be under a cut, though, in case the largeness pisses people off.
( Go ahead and click it to browse larger versions of the photos by clicking their thumbnails. )
And that's all, folks. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | sad, web page | | Subject: | D: | | Time: | 12:40 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/purple/achy_sp.gif) horrified |
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| Whaaaat?
I got an e-mail saying AOL Journals is closing permanently, and I was like, uh, that doesn't affect me. But then ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) 3v1lsh33pz said THEY'RE SHUTTING DOWN HOMETOWN TOO.
Do you know what this means, kids?
THAT IS GOING TO KILL BUDGILAND.
My Web page is getting EATEN. In its ENTIRETY. In ONE MONTH'S TIME.
D: D: D:
The most important things on my site--i.e., Negative One, the writing, and I guess photos, are all comfortable in their new home, but . . . I know I'm not going to be close to being finished moving my crap over by then. It's taken me around 2 years to get 30% done.
This is really effed. I mean, it's terrible. It would be a huge earthquake if I hadn't already purchased my own domain and started building, and had an agenda and everything, but . . . shit, all that content is going to be UNAVAILABLE for the entire time that it will take me to get around to posting it!
I have backups of everything--in fact, it all resides on my computer and gets built there, and is THEN uploaded to AOL, so it's not a problem of scrambling to save my stuff. It's that when Hometown dies, all that great Budgiland stuff will not be there anymore until I get it up on swankivy.com , and also my holder pages won't get to sit there and rot on the Internet, pointing people to the new homes. LOTS and lots of people are going to lose me.
Thousands of people.
Yes, I know this by my hit trackers, guys.
THOUUUUUSANDS of people are not going to know where the content went unless they are upset enough about its disappearance that they Google it to find me in my new home. And think about it--how often do you actually do that when you get a dead page?
Still to go:
Almost everything on the personal site is not moved yet. My "favorites" section is going to take forever to build the way I want it, and beyond that I've still got to do the life story, education, career, beliefs, family, and friends pages, do the incidentals (handwriting, computer, languages, personality tests, fanlistings, cliques, organizations, all incomplete) . . . I've got the ENTIRE doodles page--ALL my artwork--to move, and ALL my music stuff (singing, sound samples, etc.) Pranks site. RECIPES SITE. All my links. Everything. Shit! The whole Craft page, too. WAAAAAAH.
Oh, and my fansites for Lemony Snicket, Francesca Lia Block, Neil Gaiman, and Joan D. Vinge are gonna die too.
Oh balls. This sucks. I'm horrified. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | drawings, negative one | | Subject: | Whoa, she's hot! A comic. . . . | | Time: | 11:56 pm | | Current Mood: | artistic |
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| Whoa, watch out for Ivy this week! She's HOT! (And extremely adorable. Historic cuteness inside.)
If you ever wanted to see a flying baby THROW DOWN, this is your comic.
#0176: ivy #6: hot stuff
Negative One main comic page
And yeah, it was almost late again. This was a really, really long comic and it took forever to draw!
. . . I wonder if this has some very faint connection to why Ivy doesn't really like coffee in the future? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Hey GUYZZZ. . . .
Little things to tell you. First off, I got my Copics:
If you weren't aware, Copics are markers made in Japan that are very hard to get over here (though I hear some art stores do stock them). They are amazing and crazy and far too fine a product and far too expensive for someone like me, who is NOT a professional artist, to have. I have gone way out of my league to get these. And the amount they cost? Lordy! Good thing I used the gift card to Amazon that I got from my summer gift at the office to pay for them. I wasn't going to--I was gonna save the card for other people's presents for the holidays or someone's birthday or MAYBE some books for me, but as lilrongal said, "NO, you spend gift cards on YOURSELF." And I'm glad I did, because otherwise there is no way I could justify spending $400 on friggin' MARKERS.
Though they are lovely and nice markers.
Let me tell you how lovely and nice they are.
First off, you can buy them individually if you want, and you can buy refills once they're dry. That way you don't get trapped by having to replace the whole set if you need a new marker to replace one you use a lot; they are very like buying a new color when you're a painter. And speaking of which, one of the nibs that comes with the markers is a paintbrush nib that makes the color flow oh-so-nice. The other side, as a default, is a sorta highlighter nib.
You can buy other nibs, from wider than that to itty-tiny-precision, and change them on whatever marker you want. You can also buy a "colorless blender" to blend colors (ever hear of THAT with other markers?), and . . . you ready for this? . . . you can buy empty marker "shells," purchase colors, and MIX them to MAKE YOUR OWN COLORS if you should desire. But why would you? There are over 300 colors to choose from!
I first became aware of Copics by reading Eyeshield 21, believe it or not--one of the characters has a set and mentioned dropping them once, and she likes art. I figured out from the context what they were and looked them up, and was curious but blown away by the scary prices. And then lovely Japan-living Jessie (skygawker) went and sent me a sample of six shades of skin colors after we had an e-mail discussion about the impossibility of finding a good marker to color skin with. (Especially white people. In the past, if I wanted to draw people with light skin, I had to use a colored pencil for their skin unless I wanted to end up with a person who looked orange or pink.)
I was skeptical at first because the color seemed to bleed a lot and looked darker than the color it eventually fades to once it's dry, but it helped a lot to start using marker paper, which isn't rough and absorbent like pencil sketch paper. I found this out because I tested the original skin color markers by drawing a character my friend made up, in a "chibi manga" style. This is what I came up with. See how smooth the skin colors are? The rest of the colors are Sharpie. Which of course has its place, but holds no candle to Copic in certain departments.
So I am now the proud owner of a 72-marker Copic set, and may browse colors on their site to purchase individually if I see the need. I might also look at their inking pens and other products. Serious business!!!
In case you were wondering, NO this does not mean the webcomic is going to start being in color. Sorry. It already takes too much of my life away.
But speaking of which . . . the baby. God, the baby. She is so cute this week.
A preview:
Want to see the flying baby as she floats out of bed all groggy-sleepy in the morning? Click to see the whole drawing.
This is, like, historic cuteness in this episode. I'm not done drawing it--I'm currently in progress on frame 4 of 12--but it's an extra-long one (usually they have 10, not 12), and in ADDITION to the 12 frames there are four detailed just-waking-up doodles of the floaty baby. And babies = awesome.
Ah, and one more photo related to the above discussions. . . .
I don't know how many of you know this (probably my family members are the only ones who could possibly remember), but I used to have a *thing* for wearing a baby bonnet when I was a kid. No one understood why. I just wanted to wear it. I wore it to the skating rink and stuff. As I've gotten older I've still thought baby bonnets rock ass, and kept my eyes open for a baby-bonnet-style hat that I could wear despite being, uh, close to adult size.
I found one!
Yup, I can shop for my hats in the toddler section. ::beams:: I found that when I went on my Tarpon Springs jaunt with Mikey last weekend!
And that's all the rambling I have for you today! | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | silly, writing | | Subject: | What must they have thought. . . . | | Time: | 12:52 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/purple/pensive_sp.gif) nostalgic |
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| Still going through old journals.
I found a hilarious "about me" packet from fifth grade. I'm really wondering what my teachers thought.
Usually I just answered the prompts in stupid short ways like kids do. Like "My classmates like me because . . . " and I write "I'M NICE."
But then there are these very odd things like "When I want to show my family I appreciate them, I do these things:"
I answered:
"Get Dad a beer. Get Mom a cigarette."
HAHAHAHAH.
Let's see.
In response to the prompt "People dislike these things about me . . . " I wrote this:
I am a cry baby.
I am not a good kicker in kickball.
The way I bowl.
That I hate hamburgers and tacos.
That I like tuna fish with potato chips in it.
That's kinda cute. And it's totally true. Kids find out you have A TUNA FISH SANDWICH WITH POTATO CHIPS IN IT and seriously, that could ruin your life when you're a fifth grader.
On another page I wrote that I get picked on because I'm short. I also wrote that the most important thing in my life was reading, and this was really cute. . . .
In asking what I wanted to be when I grew up, it said "When I grow up, I want to be a . . . "
I wanted to be an author.
So I wrote "author" and then I corrected the prompt above by changing "a" to "an." That'll show those jerks who can't imagine that any kid would want to grow up to be something that starts with a vowel.
But I think the cutest thing about this packet was a prompt that said "To help my fellow man, I would . . . "
I filled it in with "NOT. I'm a woman!"
Bwahahahah. Kids are so literal. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | drawings, negative one | | Subject: | Early comic, featuring Dax in a crawlspace | | Time: | 04:25 am | | Current Mood: | artistic |
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| Hi! My comic is up early 'cause I'm gonna run off and hang out with Mikey in St. Pete and stuff, and I didn't want to worry about it.
Here you go! Yay Dax in the dark. Hey, I'm having flashbacks to Adele's old comics with Tabitha!
#0175: dax #17: talking back
Negative One main comic page
I don't have much else to say about it, so check it out and vote for me and crap. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Erghh, my brain know not what to do with this information.
I just heard that there is going to be a sixth Hitchhiker's Guide book. Yes, after Mostly Harmless. Yes, even though the esteemed author, Douglas Adams, is dead.
How is this happening, you ask?
Douglas Adams's widow asked another author to write the sixth book. Adams planned to write a sixth book, you see, but hadn't left any notes or anything (I think he was working on the next Dirk Gently when he died, and I saw the published parts of it in The Salmon of Doubt, the posthumously-released book of his odds and ends).
WHO DID THEY ASK TO WRITE THIS MONUMENTAL THING, YOU ASK?
They asked friggin' Eoin Colfer! Yes, Eoin Colfer of Artemis Fowl! One of my favorite authors!
And he's thrilled, I tell you. He says getting asked to write the next one is like being granted the wish "what superpower would you pick?" WOW! And apparently he's sort of been fanfictioning an ending for the series on his own for years. Dreaming up a next volume. So yeah, maybe he's the guy.
He says he's not planning on trying to "be" Douglas Adams or anything. He's going to write it his own way. But still. I know he's an awesome writer, but I really hope he "gets" it. Ya know?
In other news, I did the picture meme.
the rules:
take a picture of yourself right now.
don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair... just take a picture.
post that picture with NO editing.
post these instructions with your picture.
My picture:
Meh, I feel fugly today. Maybe it's 'cause I worked THREE EXTRA HOURS TODAY with no extra food (NOOOOOOO) and came home and ate like a nutbag and then fell asleep on the floor.
I smell candles. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I wasn't going to talk about this because I figured it was stupid, but now I just have to friggin' share.
I've been looking for some info and I had to peek into an old journal and go through an old box to find it. And, of course, as always, I found stuff I wasn't looking for that was just as interesting and more than just a little distracting.
I found a lot of whining in the journals. A surprising amount of it involved social groups, family squabbling, and berating the hypothetical JERK who would read my diary. There was also a very large chunk of space in one of the journals in which I wrote letters to an imaginary alien family that I pretended I had once been part of. The aliens' reproduction required two dads and a mom, and their family structures accommodated this by having four-parent houses as the norm, and both dads would have kids with both moms. My alternate alien self was supposed to have three sisters and two brothers and one of the moms was pregnant when I went away to live on Earth. Whee!
And speaking of children, I also wrote letters to my future children, and named them and gave them personalities like book characters. Hmmmm.
And of course, in the little kid diaries there were hilarious dirty pictures drawn. Some of them were surprisingly graphic, actually. Mostly they just featured poop and puke though.
In a memory box I found my last personal communication from my grandmother (which, of course, I kept). It was a card for my 22nd birthday in which she wished me a happy birthday and then wrote that she wasn't sure if it had already passed. It made me cry.
I found old calendars and planners from college. Also, a rather creative evangelical weirdo had tried to witness to me by sending me a party invitation, but the "party" was in Heaven and the date was "in the near future." I found some doodles that weren't bad. I found my packet of crap I saved from when I went to Japan. I found programs from performances I sang in, and performances I wasn't in (invariably doodled upon). Concert ticket stubs. Lots of letters. A crazy card my sister wrote me when she was in college and announced she was sleep deprived.
I found the log I kept when I was trying to figure out if Mia was being a selfish bitch or if I was just imagining it. It seemed like she only came to my room if she wanted something, so I wrote down what her reason for approaching my door was every day for a week, to collect scientific data, haha.
1/26 - "Can I borrow your laundry basket?"
1/26 - "Here's your basket back."
1/26 - "Do you want me to use your computer today or tomorrow?"
1/27 - "Can I use your computer now?"
1/27 - "Do you have any white-out?"
1/27 - "Here's your white-out back. Can I use your stapler?"
1/27 - "Can I use your laundry basket?"
1/27 - "Do you have any index cards? No? Do you think John would?"
1/27 - "Do you know anyplace Reuben can get a job?"
1/28 - "Can you think of any third ingredient to go with coconut and macadamia nut ice cream?" (Huh?)
1/28 - "Do you wanna hear Sarah McLaughlin sing live?"
1/28 - "Do you have dollars for change?"
1/28 - "Can you smell this milk and tell me if it's bad?"
1/29 - "Can I use your colored pencils?"
1/29 - "Here you go, whore."
1/31 - "Reuben got a job!"
Yeah, she mostly just wanted stuff.
Please bear with me if I feel like rambling about this stuff over the next few days. I'm finding such interesting crap from my past. Most of it is really boring but there really are some gems in here. . . . | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | drawings, negative one | | Subject: | He sure can pace, can't he? A comic. | | Time: | 07:22 pm | | Current Mood: | artistic |
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| It appears that Fred is doing an awful lot of pacing this week in the first four frames. I like how it came out. I feel like I really nailed the characters' movements and facial expressions this week.
#0174: meri lin #85: should've
Negative One main comic page
Up early this week because I drew nine frames before I even got home from work today! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Short update!
You should know that . . .
I'm submitting my book in two days. (SCREAAAAAAM!) I'll be giving it a last read-through in the next couple days and hopefully sending the query/sample material off early Wednesday, and hopefully I shall have good news for you shortly thereafter.
Meggie and Brendon are getting married next month. I'm maid of honor, because well after all I do kinda rock and stuff. So I am going to fly to Jacksonville on Thursday, help with preparey stuff, do rehearsal dinners, night-before parties, and wedding ceremonies/receptions, and the next day I am staying at Meg's for most of the week because I'm gonna watch her daughter Katelyn while they go on their honeymoon. (She has to be in school, so I gotta stay there rather than the reverse.) I'm looking forward to it.
This weekend, Meg's coming into town and we're going to grab her other bridesmaid and decide extra stuff like jewelry and shoes. How exciting. I still have to get my bridesmaid dress taken in, because the company doesn't make dresses for midgets. :p
The final evaluation stuff went in at work so I guess I'll find out soon what kinda raise I got. Mmyay.
Negative One's hits are going through the roof. Well, comparatively. The ads are apparently working. I'm getting more mail (some of it is . . . kinda stupid, though) and I had hits in the 90s over the weekend (which is cool compared to the previous weeks' high 60s/early 70s).
I had my new friend Avi over again last night and we made veggie shepherd's pie. It was delicious, and he said something really nice: "It's so nice that you're asexual!" Hah. He meant that it is cool he doesn't have to worry I'm going to start randomly hitting on him or giving him "the signs" and making shit complicated. :P I'm glad that he finds that to be a GOOD thing. Definitely the kind of person I'm glad to have as a friend.
And . . . I'm about to go raise hell on the DDR pad! Bye now. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | drawings, negative one | | Subject: | Crappy cute baby drawings: A comic | | Time: | 11:15 pm | | Current Mood: | artistic |
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| I don't know what happened, but for some reason all the drawings look fuzzy and muddy this week. I don't know if I did something stupid on the scanner or if my drawings just aren't picking up like normal because I drew crappy or what. But for some reason the art on this looks particularly unprofessional.
No reason not to put it up. :P
#0173: ivy #5: the best place
Negative One main comic page
Even though the drawing's not the best, I think my favorite frame is when li'l Ivy is yawning in the background. Awww! | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Well, it's September, so it's time for August's PhotoJournal Calendar.
For those who weren't around yet or didn't pay attention last time I posted this, I call it the SwankiVY PhotoJournal Calendar. It's an experiment I'm doing until the end of this year.
Every day I took at least one representative photo for the day, and I have chosen one to stand for each day for the month of August. It's now on my Web site right here if you want to see the full page with explanations--the "journal" part of the PhotoJournal. But I'm also going to paste just the calendar part here into LiveJournal. It has to be under a cut, though, in case the largeness pisses people off.
( Go ahead and click it to browse larger versions of the photos by clicking their thumbnails. )
Hope y'all like that. ;) | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | mulligan, writing | | Subject: | New deadline | | Time: | 10:33 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/purple/happy_sp.gif) optimistic |
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| Ah, in case you guys were wondering. . . .
I'm not submitting my book today. Not because I *couldn't*, but because I did a little checkup on the blog of the literary agent I want to send my query to, and she's on vacation this week. :X
She's back on September 3 I think, and I didn't want my query to be one of a bunch sitting in her mailbox to weed through when she gets back. I also don't think a person is really in a particularly forgiving mood when one has just returned from vacation. So I am going to wait until a week after she gets back to submit. My new deadline is September 10.
This is also kind of a superstitious date for me because September 10, 2006 is the date of my last query letter (the one that got accepted by this same agent).
So, there's another ten days. If there're any new faces out there who suddenly decide "hey, I think I can read a book in ten days and I want to help swankivy out!" you can always volunteer to take a last-minute peep at it. But don't do it unless you want to. I have more than enough help--over two dozen people volunteered, and eighteen of them finished the book and gave at least some comments.
Back to working on it I go! | | comments: Leave a comment |
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![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/purple/silly_sp.gif){kind=small}
giddy![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/purple/working_sp.gif){kind=small}
accomplished
![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/stars/purple/confused_sp.gif){kind=small}
curious