Cute Retarded Snail

During my World Conflict class last quarter, I was given a daunting assignment. I was supposed to come up with an oral presentation for the final. The subject matter was on Bosnia. I thought I knew everything about Bosnia going in to it, as it was the first major news story that I actively followed between second and fifth grade. Little did I know that when it came to acquiring resources and research for this presentation, it's impossible to find an objective unbiased source. Serbs are all evil. Croats eat babies. Serbs shoot elderly people for sport. Croats choose Starbucks over Coffee Bean. Such attrocious behavior was being said about the other side, and not one source making a half-assed attempt to defend their own. It was just bitch, bitch, bitch. Waaah waah, a Serb/Croat raped my mother/father.

So I was put on the most difficult subject. However, it was a group presentation. It was also supposed to be done using a wide array of multimedia that would be shown on the computer. I was in a classroom full of artists. Video production aces. Multimedia gurus. Animation majors. Computer game connesseurs. Web site designers. Graphic design prodigies. 3d modellers. Everybody pairs off into groups of four or five. I'm paired in the sole group of two, and I'm put with the only culinary student in there. Yeah, it was a great introduction. "Hi, I don't know anything about computers." Well hot damn, isn't this going to be fun?

So guess who did all the work? The one who knew his homerow keys.

So after three weeks of standing by, watching my partner submit absolutely nothing to the project, I was a bit worried when the finals were due. I naturally turned in my three pages of work required of us, while he naturally turned in...nothing. Yep. I was stuck in the water, and facing a harsh final project grade. We were assigned a day to present. The week previous to presentation, I had been conjuring up a quick interface for presenting the information. All he had to do was take the research I had printed it out, and convert it into a list of bullet points. Four days before presentation, he really botched his part by instead of giving me bullet points, he gave me a [link] massive block of text. It wasn't organized in any format, and I later found that half of it was just copy/pasted from a website.

I called him, and told him to remake it in bullet format. He says he'll get on it right away. I tell him this on Tuesday. We present on Friday. When Thursday night came around, I was ready to upload all the text and images he found into the project and get it done with. No problem, just a few hours of work, no big deal. I check my Email. Nothing. I check my Email again. Nothing. I call him. His phone isn't on. Great. For the next two hours, I was up doing his part of the assignment. I made bullets, I found my own images, and instead of taking between 2 to 3 hours, I was up until 3 in the morning pulling it all together. I wasn't happy with that turn of events, and I wasn't happy that I had labored throught 100 percent of the project itself. However, I maintained my cool, and showed up the next day at 7:30 in the morning. I was fatigued, felt heavy, but motivated because I had [link] finished the presentation.

Now think. I have done all the work up to the day of presentation. On the actual day of presentation, what is the worst thing that can happen? Think for a minute, what is the worst thing that could go wrong? He doesn't show up. On the day of our final presentation, the project that determines twenty percent of our quarter grade, he didn't even show. The teacher realizes the predicament when she says "okay, Bosnia is up." I stand up, and jokingly say "allright team, let's go get this over with" nice and loud, and carrying a bounce in my step, I trot to the front of the class. Alone. An uncomfortable five seconds pass, absolute silence, when the classroom jackass in the back (God bless him) breaks the tranquility. "Duuuuude!"

The teacher and I talked. I showed her the flash presentation after everybody had left. I showed her on my pen drive all the text files I had turned in. I successfully proved that I had done everything, and my partner had done nothing. Apparently, this was the first time that she had given a final score that determined who got the highest grade in the class and who got the lowest. This was one of those incidents in a group project where the lazy moron of the classroom got paired with the highest performer, and still failed without affecting the other in the least. In essence, I got lucky. I kept good record of all my contributions. And the teacher thought that my flash project was the coolest damn thing she'd ever seen, and was a novel advancement above the typical Powerpoint projects that were turned in en masse.

I did run into him on the way out, though. I was walking through the parking lot, and getting in my car. From the car next to me, his head was poking up like a prairie dog from the passenger seat. "What the hell?!?" I scream inside my own skull. I get out and he meets me.

"Hey dude I just got here."
"Why are you so late?"
"I tried to get here early."
"Being two and a half hours late isn't early."
"Well yeah, I got here at about 9:20."
"9:20? It's 10:00 right now. Where have you been? If you'd have shown up half an hour ago, we would be presenting!"

My question was answered right afterwards where his girlfriend also emerged from the passenger seat, adjusting her shirt. I only wish I was lying about this. But I'm not. This is one of those incidents that you CAN NOT make up. I tell him that we're presenting the next week, and that he'd better show up. The fact that I didn't break his kneecaps with my tripod scientifically proves that it is biologically impossible for me to get upset at anybody. I guess I was born without a temper, or my parents had it surgically removed when I was a toddler.

So the next week, when we finished presentations, I didn't even have to speak. I just had to show up to receive my A. Though I did listen intently, I was still tired from compositting and architectural modelling finals that I procrastinated on and was up late doing at school. So, to keep my head up and ears open, I drew a snail.

Medium:
3 crayola crayons (red/blue/yellow)
2 prismacolor pencils (blue/white)
2 sharpies (fine point/felt tip)
Printer paper FOR THE WIN.


Lineart: 15 minutes.
Base coloring: 1.5 hours.
Color refining: 1 hour.

Total Time: 2.75 hours.


I dedicate this to Kari. She loves snails. She'll also beat the ever living crap out of you if you step on one.