Psilocybin You Are A Star!

Look at who is on our Wikipedia today's featured article!

Psilocybin and his twin brother Psilocin are the most well-known Tryptamines.
(Man, how I wish I have their designs done!)
I underlined the important things or things I think it's interesting.

Digression: I love eating blood oranges, but I'm not sure about the claimed health benefits of them. When I was peeling the oranges, I suddenly wondered if eating blood oranges could satisfy some people's weird bloodthirsty fantasy. Their color makes it looks as though you're tearing some kind of tissues apart and biting into them ... I don't know. I don't have that kind of desire.

Digression P. S.: I bought two fennel bulbs last week but didn't know how to eat them. The tag on the vegetable said it could be made into salads, so I just cut and ate them raw. They had a very strong and unique aroma. When you get used to it, it's good!

White Rabbit

Trippy and awesomesauce from the 60's!

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit

LSD With Another Half of His Eyes

Because of the looks of 2C-B and 2C-E, I figured out it's too weird that LSD has only half of his eyes shown with glasses. I tried some sketches.

I'm glad LSD still looks like LSD. I'm very willing to give him the other half of his eyes. In fact, I think it'll make my life a lot easier for certain expressions. I'm good as long as he has that annoying smile.

武俠人名中英對照表？

(from Facebook)

Pfffffffffftt
OMG you must look at this!

2C-B and 2C-E Sketch

I've been feeling down since yesterday. I spent the whole afternoon reading articles for envrionmental studies and got sick of doing homework. So, I was drawing and procrastinating despite of tons of readings and projects waiting to be done.

2C-B (right) and 2C-E (left) Phenethylamine

Two young molecules. They are sister and brother, also, cousins of Mescaline.

Ahhhh but I'm not totally satisfied with their hairstyle.
The hair deco on 2C-B is her bromine atom by the way.
Because 2C-E likes eyeballs, he got a J-pop neckerchief with eyeballs for himself.
I need to add more stuff on either his T-shirt or his pants. Suggestion please?

Common 2C-B visual hallucination: moving waves, cliche 70's colors, green and red halos around objects
Common 2C-E visual hallucination: fractals comparable to Mescaline and LSD, but put more emphasis on colors (Mescaline puts more emphasis on geometric shapes.)

P. S. Indeed I felt much better after drawing. So I think the time wasn't wasted. Mental health is important too.

Somnambulist

What a weird name is that? I have no idea. I usually just call it "Simply Being Loved".
It's the 4th track from BT's album, Emotional Technology, and is one of BT's most popular tracks.
What surprised me is this track holds Guinness Book of World Records' song with largest number of vocal edits (6178 edits).
What? Does it sound like it has that many? Uhhh maybe? I bet BT must be very perfectionist.
BT is poppy but I love some of his tracks. The double play of Superfabulous and Somnambulist is pretty poppily delicious.

I sent out the application for a nice little efficiency on Langdon St. on Friday, and watched an idiotic movie, The Muppets (2011), on the same day. Pretty good day. :)

Ahh, if I have my own kitchen and bathroom, I'll keep them very clean. And I won't be sharing hallway with anyone. In fact the building doesn't have hallway, so I won't be smelling the annoying smell of pots from neighbors everyday.

P. S. I got good grades on midterms wooooohooooooo!

Texture Project

"When you look for style, you find death. When you look for life, you find style."
My art teacher said this to encourage me (regarding my comic) and he heard it from someone else.

My Recent Chemistry Labs

Those pictures won't make sense without some captions.
I made so many stupid mistakes during those labs.*sobs*
Such as getting unknown acid on my hand, inhaling some diethyl ether, and spilling some of the solution on the floor. Also, I completely lost the amine during the separation process.
Organic chemistry labs are so hard to do!

Alphaville

My weekend wasn't very productive. I felt so sleepy and still do. At least I finished my texture project for Art 102! Woohoo!
I'll post it when I have a good photo of it. (Maybe the art teacher will help me. He's a photographer.)

I've been listening to Alphaville (the German band that sang Forever Young). They're super 80's. I like their songs. LOL

(Does Marian Gold have buckteeth?)

Recipe: Black Vinegar Seafood Beans

Got some black vinegar? Let's make a very refreshing dish!
I was playing around with food materials. It turned out surprisingly good!
That's a really half-Western, half-Chinese dish, ha!

Degradation of Psilocin in Water and Stuff

I asked my chemistry professor and this was his guess.
Since he said that I think it's probably accurate.
Goshhhhhh much more complicated than I thought!

Angry Birds Realistic Version

(from Facebook)

They're actually cute!

Godspeed

It's like a sister track of Flaming June. I think it's good.

Urrrrgh I don't like my homework now. I really want to get more sleep or continue my comic but don't have time (especially for drawing).

Pandora Is An Expert of Cheesy Music

I asked Pandora the online radio to play artists similar to Pet Shop Boys.
It seemed like all of 80's most poppy and cheesy songs were incredibly played within an hour.

Toto - Africa
Erasure - Chains of Love, Sometimes, Blue Savannah
Duran Duran - A View To A Kill
Alphaville - Forever Young
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
Men At Work - Down Under
Cutting Crew - (I Just) Died In Your Arms
Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - If You Leave
A-Ha - Take Me On
Depeche Mode - People Are People, Everything Counts
Yaz - Situation
Thompson Twins - Hold Me Now
Peter Schilling - Major Tom (Coming Home)
Dead Or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)
The Police - Every Breath You Take

=口=
Pet Shop Boys are not that cheesy!

P. S. I wonder why there was no Rick Astley.

Dubstep Is Cool

Hanna introduced dubstep to me, but I didn't appreciate this genre then.
When I began to listen to Pendulum, I listened to dubstep without even knowing it.
Now dubstep is very popular and people play it at dance parties.
How interesting most people can't even dance to this "EDM" but just stand there or shake their heads.

Look at the basic beats of dubstep. Oh my gosh, these are complicated beats!

I checked out other molecules in DMT's family and found there's a guy named Diisopropyl Tryptamine. He produces mainly aural hallucinations that distort sounds, lowering their pitches and making them sound like flanging (mixing two identical signals with one delayed). And he does little visual hallucinations. What a strange guy. So I decided that he loves dubstep, wears/carries headsets everywhere, produces hallucinations of playing dubstep loudly, and bangs his head violently. LOL

Dog or Dragon?

I talked to Bridgett about The Neverending Story (the novel). She was interested to read the novel because she thought the movie was awesome. I said, Falkor the dragon was so much cooler in the book, but he looked like a dog in the movie. She said, "... it is not a dog? ... OMG my childhood altered!"
Falkor is slender, elegant, noble, and magical. He's actually more like the Chinese concept of dragons than the Western one. Why did that movie make him so ugly? =  =

The fortune cookie is really a genius invention of Chinese Americans. It makes all American people believe that Chinese people really eat it and believe the craps written on the little piece of paper. Many fortune cookies teach you how to speak Chinese words, using pinyin. The last one I got was 乾洗 (dry clean), but the pinyin it gave was "qian xi". What the heck ...

Nic and Ethan

Ideas for Nic (Nicotine Pyridine; right) and Ethan (Ethyl Alcohol; left).

If it doesn't seem strange, they're both going to be some kind of East European. I bet each of them is probably over a hundred years old. =P

Ethan: I drew him upon the request of someone on dA. Ethan is always drunk, but still, he can do tons of things (includes driving an ethanol-fueled car). He puts a lot of cologne on to cover his alcoholic smell. He's flammable and afraid of fire; however when the temperature increases slightly, he can vaporize and fly. At room temperature, Ethan is a liquid so he can squeeze into any shape. Catrina suggested me to put a stereotypical tie around his head. Does he look good with it?

Nic: I'm not totally satisfied with what ze's wearing. Any suggestion? Nic puts too much hair oil and make-up on and oil on the shoes (that's reflection on zir hair I can't draw it). Even though a lot of people don't consider zir a drug, ze is an incredibly famous and prevalent stimulant. Ethan is zir best friend and they hang out in bars all the time. Nic still goes for "he" usually because most other molecules don't know how to use "ze" (only Ethan knows). Ze uses the name Nico when ze puts zirself in a dress. Should I portray Nic with a cigarette? The molecule has a methyl group that looks kind of like a cigarette.

Here's an article talking about why Ethan and Nic are BFF's:
Ethyl alcohol makes nicotine more enjoyable

An Artist's Facebook Project

Our Art 102 class visited the studios of the graduate art students in our school and talked to them. One of the artists, Gabriel, got an crazy idea which he called the Facebook Project. It's still ongoing.

First, he went on FB and searched for people with the same name as he and added them as friends. Then he obtained their permission to use their photos. Those people are from around the world, with very different backgrounds, some with interesting profile pictures. Gabriel then tried his best to dress up like their profile pictures and imitate them (he bought costumes and even gained and lost some weight at some point), and took pictures of himself as other Gabriels.

He hung those pictures on the wall and began to imagine a series of exciting adventure stories of those Gabriels, each with a different personality and very cool life story. For example, a Mexican masked wrestler or a guy who always carries a machine gun and lives beside a volcano. In those stories, they are heroes, villains, friends, and they interact! Finally, he produced paintings of those adventures! Gabriel even gave them family and friends based on the looks of those people's real family, friends, and pets.

Everyone was impressed. Oh, what a creative and cool guy!

AFM Images

OMG I don't know how those were done, but we can actually see those molecules!! They ... they look just like my stick & ball model. *faint*

Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM): 

Pentacene on a copper surface

 AFM imaging of cephalandole A

My New Transgender Friend

I made a couple new friends today at an event. One of them was a strange transgender girl. She was very skinny, in a long skirt with 5 o'clock shadow, half-long hair, and a peace sign necklace.

She was initially a plant pathology major but now switched to political science, at the same time knowing quite some biology and chemistry. "Plants need a leader too," she joked. We began the conversation as I asked her if we have an introductory course about fungi in our school. (We do. It's much like the fungal counterpart of Prof. Y's entomology course. I don't know if I'll ever take it.) Then we chatted and laughed until almost 10 PM (because she could laugh at everything).

Even though I know a few transgender around campus, I don't really have such friends. When I think of her sometimes, I still intuitively think "she" is a "he". I need to get more used to that. I told her about that and she said it's okay, because she felt like when I talked to her, I treated her like a girl. Finally, she looked forward to become more girly after her hormone treatment months later ( ... who has been desparately wishing to have breast). Well, I hope that'll go well!

Semi-blind Continuous Contour Practice

These are two semi-blind contour I did yesterday in art class.
Contour is the basic outlines of things. Continuous means that the whole drawing is one continuous line; we can't take the pencil off until it's finished.
Semi-blind means that we can only look at the paper a few times to orientate ourselves, but we can't look at what we're drawing when the pencil is moving.
I'm VERY satisfied with them!

This one was done by my right hand. 

The model was my classmate who is black and wore a wool hat.

This one was done by my left hand. LOL

 The model was another classmate who is white (Jewish, actually) and has enormous eyes and wore earrings.

MDMA with Colors

Finally, I have a girl ...