Poisoned Mushrooms and Random Piles

In our public speaking class on Tuesday, we all had to do an impromptu speech on a random subject. Everyone in the class had to think up some completely random topic, the more obscure the better. (I loved this, as I’m sure you know by now, I love random humor) I wrote down Poisonous Mushrooms, and Joel wrote down Blue Toe Fungus. All the topics were mixed up, and everyone got someone else’s. The girl who got mine proceeded to explain what poisonous mushrooms looked like, “They’re round, and they have a thing underneath that looks like a tree,” and that they are poisonous, because “at night someone goes around and sprinkles poisonous stuff on them.” The guy who got Joel’s warned of the dangers of blue toe fungus, and said that if you get it you don’t have long before the fungus spreads to the rest of your feet, and if you leave it untreated, it eventually will spread to your entire body. According to him, that’s what happened to Sully from Monsters Inc. The speech I got was far less funny. I got “Why do blue and brown go so well together in decorating?” Not much to work with humor-wise there, but for some reason everyone thought it was hilarious. One girl said it was funny because I was a guy explaining about interior decorating. Oh well, if I amused them I guess that’s all that matters. My speech centered around the fact that brown and blue are seen together in a lot of natural settings, and landscape photography, such as deserts, beaches, lakes, and rivers, so these colors translate well to decorating. Again, I didn’t think it was funny, but, whatever. Another memorable speech was a girl who claimed that “Dinosaurs lived thousands of years ago, but they are making a comeback, so you had all better all get yourselves machine guns and a sword if you want to protect yourselves.” Her delivery was hilarious. After everyone was done someone said that our teacher needed to give a speech too. She agreed, and asked for a topic. I threw out poison arrow frogs, and she went with that one. Instead of talking about tiny blue spotted frogs in the rainforest though, she proceeded to tell a story about being at the beach and seeing a massive green creature swimming to shore with a bow and arrow. It was really random, but so funny.
Next week we have to deliver a “Process” speech. We are to explain how to do something using visual aids.
In Launching the imagination we have now finished our abstract color collages. We turned them in on Tuesday, and began work on our next project. In this project we are to again draw the same picture four times, sort of like when I drew the four spheres with different textures, only this time, we are to use four different color schemes. I hope he doesn’t want identical pictures, because unless I used a computer there’s no way I am going to be able to draw four identical pictures. I have finished the drawings,(Without color as of yet) and they don’t look exactly alike. You can tell that they are supposed to be the same picture, but they don’t look the same. One I am not really happy with, so I am coloring it in with sickly colors to show my feelings toward it.
In my Design 1 class we are working on the designs for our kites. I am still basically clueless as to what I am going to do, and how I am going to get it done. I really have nowhere around here that I can work on a kite, and we are not supposed to do something simple like a regular diamond kite. I decided to talk to my teacher about it today, and I explained that I have never built anything before, and I really have no idea where to even start. I also told him that I can’t work on it at home because of the whole flood situation, and I just don’t have room. Plus I don’t know where to get any materials for the project. He told me that for this weekend, search for different kite plans, and imagine that instead of living here, I live inside a kite factory, and I can get anything I want. Basically what he wants is for me to come up with a design, and we’ll worry about materials later, because even if the design calls for specific things we can substitute other things, and we may even have some stuff in the art room at school. So I am a little less apprehensive about it now, but I still need to find a good kite plan and come up with a design.
Tomorrow we have our Drawing 1 class. Hopefully it will go better than last week. Last week we did charcoal drawings. Of a pile. A giant pile of random boxes was at the side of the room with all the drawing horses arranged around it so everyone could see it and draw it. It was pretty much the dumbest thing ever. Well, maybe not, but I did not enjoy drawing a pile. I do enjoy typing a pile though. Right now it is really amusing to me to write that I had to draw a pile. I understand why he had us draw just a random pile, he wants us to focus on the details and not what we are drawing, but I like drawing actual things, not random messes. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have a more fun exercise to do. And hopefully something less messy than charcoal. My hands were stained black all the rest of that day.

Heh, I just realized, this post was filled with random, even though I wasn’t trying to be random. I love it when random happens in real life.