Okay, so I know a lot of my friends from KY may have no idea of what in the world I’m up to nowadays. So here’s the skinny of the day-in, day-out:

This is my last semester, and the first one I’ve taken anything less than the maximum number of units I can without paying more money to USC. My classes are:
1) CTCS 473, Film Theories
This is a high-theory cinema class, dealing with people like Bazin, Kracauer, Munsterburg, etc. Goes fast, in depth, fairly intense. If USC hadn’t spent the past 3.5 years teaching me everything they’re going over in this class, it’d probably be pretty difficult. But because they teach the same things over and over again in all the classes, well, it’s pretty easy.
2) CTCS 411, Sound Theory of Film
This is pretty interesting. It’s a class taught by my friend Bill, who is a rockin’ dude and an SCFX alum, at that. It’s cool because the last time anyone really wrote about sound in film was in the 30s, and it was mostly saying “The coming of sound will destroy film.” So yeah, nobody thinks of film as, wow, a construction. Since starting this class I’ve already started noticing stuff — for instance, if you see Kill Bill, whenever Go-Go Yubari’s morning star flies straight at the camera, they layer in the Godzilla atomic breath-scream sound. Gotta love Tarentino.
3) Japanese 6.
Yes, I am in the 6th straight semester of Japanese. I’m alright at it. It’s funny, because I’m one of the class’s resident smartasses — the other day, Tamanaha-sensei asked the class, “What sort of things make someone appear rich?” and I answered, “If one wears a lot of bling-bling, one appears rich.” Tamanaha-sensei looked puzzled and asked, “Buringu buringu tte nandesuka?” (“What is bling-bling?”) I answered, “Mimi ga itaku natte akarusugiru yubiwa touka eapiisu no youna koto desu” (“Things like earrings and finger rings that are too bright and hurt your eyes.”)

I’ve also been doing computer graphics (as usual) in my spare time. Latest example is here.