So I got a Twitter. Mostly so that I could follow the Iran Election stuff, which has pretty consistently been the number one trending topic over there. Anyway, you can find me at TalkingSoup, if you so desire.

As for the business in Iran, well, things are pretty damn shitty, with the police beating the shit out of protesters and anywhere between twenty and a hundred people dead, depending on who you're listening to. My Iranian tweeters all seem to be legit and accurate, and basically, it's ugly over there. Plus they're dropping acid on people from helicopters. Nice.

I support their movement wholeheartedly, but I can't help but be reminded of a Carl Sagan quote: "If we like them, they're freedom fighters. If we don't like them, they're terrorists. In the unlikely case we can't make up our minds, they're temporarily only guerrillas." Are we Americans so enthralled by this movement only because they're trying to depose a leader we despise? Because they're trying to create a less theocratic--read: less Muslim--state? I sincerely hope not. Hopefully it's just us and our love of freedom.

ANYWAY on the less heavy side of things--okay, some of you out there know that I'm a fan of the show Soul Eater, and I've been meaning to read the manga for some time now. Even more so since the show ended on a rather...weird and poorly written note. And I just started reading it, mostly skimming through chapters 1-38, which is where the story diverges. And man. A chapter after the story starts diverging, and I'm already liking the story so much more. No wonder I felt so weird after Buttataki Joe showed up--the anime crams things together and explains things really stupidly, plus there's a lot of OOC stuff happening, now that I think about it. The manga just makes so much more sense. Plus the writing and general storytelling is better.

I'm a little leery of the art, but it's starting to grow on me.

Certainly giving me pointers on how to play Soul better, too.

I also finally finished Kanon, which I started, god, must be several months ago. It's a great show, though it suffers a bit from LotR syndrome--that is, it ends in about five different places. It's a sweet show all around, though.

Yeah, remember me? Look, I'm alive!

So, summing up the past, what, two months? We have moved into our apartment/house and are slowly making it all homey, our landlord is an anal retentive douchebag, Julie and I got cats--Elwood and Nephry (Elwood is mine), I went home to see my brother's graduation (he actually did it!), and I finally got a job--at Michael's. I'm actually going in for my second day in about an hour :D

Julie and I are still in the RP, of course. It is so epically awesome. I absolutely love the people there, they're all such good players. I'm actually playing two characters now--Hei and Amaterasu from Okami.

We're still working our way through Persona 3 and Tales of the Abyss. Also, I bought a few new games for Ezili (my DS) including The World Ends With You. I like it so far! And I finished the first Phoenix Wright game, hooray! The last case was pretty epic.

I finished the first season of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni which was terrifying and awesome. Now I need to get through the second season (ni Kai). I'm also working my way through the 114 episodes and several OAVs of cheese that is Saint Seiya. It's ridiculously epic.

Julie and I have begun, watched through, and finished what we both agree is the best television show we've ever seen, which is Life on Mars. The British version. We don't talk about the forthcoming American version. Basically, Sam Tyler is a cop who gets hit by a car and suddenly ends up back in 1973. Awesomeness ensues.

More evidence of the BBC's prowess for good telly, Doctor Who has been pretty amazing this season, with a couple of ups and downs. The most recent episode was...well. "Fuckawesome" comes to mind. I'm talking about the most recent episode that aired in Britain (and is of course available online), not the most recent one that aired in America. The question on everyone's mind right now is of course ( SPOILERZ XOMG! )

I haven't really been writing, like, at all. I'm such a failure. New ideas have been swimming around my head, though. And that key kid is still nagging at me. There's a new character as well--well, a new double-character, I guess. But I'll go over all of that in a locked post like usual.

So yeah! I'm alive, things have been good. Ithaca is as awesome as ever.

I found a dead lizard outside of apartment 25-1. No, seriously. A dead lizard. In winter, just skooshed there on the concrete, right outside the door. What the fuck! A dead lizard! It doesn't make sense! It goes against all logic!

Well. In other news, life and college is EATING MY FACE, and there's various drama shit going on, and we've apparently found an apartment. Or rather, a house. Um. Three floors, the most beautiful kitchen ever, four bedrooms, XOMG it is gorgeous and affordable, assuming we live with six people. So far that seems to be the plan. Julie's been buying furniture already! We're going to be responsible adults!...Sort of!

This means I have to get a job here for the summer, so I'm thinking of Brotchen, this awesome little bread-and-coffee shop down on the Commons.

Let's see. Tales of the Abyss continues to pwn. There's been quite a bit of brain break there recently. And I finally got my copy of Persona 3 which is prooobably the most amazing game ever. It consists of you shooting yourself in the head to summon a monster which fights other monsters. It's supremely existential and psychological and brilliant. The gameplay is probably the most elaborate of any game I've seen, and the soundtrack is pretty wonderful.

Also, the RP has gotten a whole lot more intricate, and there's a bunch of new people who have arrived, including the Tenth Doctor and the most recent Master, Persona 3 characters, a serial killer from "Dexter" and the main character from "Psych," among others. Woot.

ASIC has been room-hopping, and now we're in one of the lecture halls in Williams, which is pretty brilliant. Nodame Cantabile and Gurren Lagann have reached new heights of brilliance. Nodame has gotten more layered; and Gurren Lagann is about to do a timeskip (so I've heard).

Oh, right, Boskone. Well, it went from late Friday to the middle of Sunday, and it was awesome, as cons are wont to be. The panels were a lot more enjoyable than the ones at World Fantasy. Everyone was very friendly, there was a weapons display, and the art room had some amazing pieces in it. I didn't buy a single thing. I'm trying to cut back on my spending overall.

Amanda and Darcy, Julie's little sister, came with us, and we rode up with Tammy, Tim, Cara Coville and one of Bruce Coville's assistants. Good times were had by all, and now, thanks to Tim's podcasts, I think I want to learn some programming. /wrists

I also got a lot of writing done. Mot is this close to being finished. I intend to be up quite late tonight, writing.

...My icon makes me want to watch Ergo Proxy again.

So I've been having my first ever classes in Smiddy Hall lately, Smiddy being the most damn-fuck furthest building from Gardens as you could like, except for Cerrache. And who knew Smiddy was the business school? I'd never been in there before. Why am I in there now? Well, because the ceilings above at least two classrooms in CNS--one of them being my classroom--collapsed. No one knows why. Even ASIC got kicked out of the building, though now we have the freaking conference hall in Williams. So it's a win-win, I suppose.

Tales of the Abyss proves to be awesome. At first it was just kind of fun times and equally fun to make fun of, particularly because Luke is such an ass, but now it's full of political stuff and awesome cut-scenes and mindfuck, all of which add up to equal much win and awesome.

Unfortunately I'm also bogged down with Phoenix Wright (finally have all 3 of them), FFXII or whatever the hell it is (Revenant Wings), and I just bought Zelda: Phantom Hourglass because I'm insane. Plus I've never really played a Zelda game, at least not all the way through (I seem to recall fucking around with, um, one of the earlier ones and Twilight Princess, but that's it. We never had any Nintendo stations). Not that I mind it, though it cuts in on the homework time and it's already looking like I'm screwed this semester. *sigh*

The RP continues to be brilliant. It's definitely making me hate crossovers less.

Went to Tammy's house this weekend, got no homework done but had a brilliant time. Saw "Mirrormask", which is a combination of Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Monkeybone, and Tommy. Beautiful, but I had no idea what was going on. The main actress was really good though.

Motley Crew is, at long last, rolling toward its final end. It's all downhill skiing from here, I should think, unless I run into unexpected roadblocks. At the very least, it's going to be fun. Epic battles and all.

So, this semester is already killing me because I have an ENORMOUS amount of reading for every class, not to mention our independent study with Jules, Amanda, and the lot of them which consists of reading about a book a week. Which is all good and fine, I just wish the rest of my classes weren't pretty much doing the same thing. Hard stuff, too.

Went to the Neko Case concert last night--abso-fucking-lutely brilliant. Like, literally, she sings so well that you could be listening to a CD, except more awesome. She's also really casual and confident--there were some idiots in the audience, but she totally just rolled with it. There was even a dog on stage! She's really cute and funny, too. You could tell she and the band were having a good time just playing music.

She played all the songs I wanted to hear, too! All the best, plus some brand new ones. God I can't wait for her next CD. It's so unfortunate that she's not very well known--but then I suppose that keeps her off the corporate radar.

Cara Coville, Tammy and Julie's friend came with us too since she's a big fan, and afterwards we went driving around looking for open liquor stores (none. Hate you, NY alcohol laws). We ended up just going to Wegmans and I bought my first thing of alcohol, some fruity German thing, while Julie got that flavored Smirinoff stuff. Felt really good to flash my card for the first time. Then spent the rest of the night showing Cara various anime, including Darker than BLACK and Ouran. She enjoyed it all.

Unfortunately now it turns out that Kate has a serious aversion to alcohol--we're talking phobic here--so we're going to have to rethink our in-house policies on alcohol, but I don't really mind. We can either keep it hidden in our room, or I'm sure Amanda et. al. would be happy to hold onto it for us. I'm pretty sure we also agreed with Kate back in Sophomore year that we wouldn't actually keep alcohol in the apartment. Anyway, no one wants to drink alone, right? We usually only drink when we're with the girls anyway.

Made it up to the "Blink" episode on Doctor Who, which, yes, is the fucking best one ever. But I'm kind of disappointed that they're only giving three episodes to the Master. This is the guy who was the Doctor's singlemost nemesis for, like, the entire series, and they only give him 3 episodes? Especially now that I know his backstory, to some degree--it's just wrong, man.

Not much else of note has happened, except I've decided to go ahead with the RP--as if I don't have enough going on this semester--as Hei from Darker than BLACK. You can look me up at contract_star if you want. And anyone who's interested should check out the RP itself, because Sephiroth just arrived, and seeing him interact with the Master, and of course with Cloud, is quite entertaining.

Right, my schedule:

Poetics: 11-12, MWF

Research Methods: 1-2, MWF

World Civ II: 10:50-12:05, TR

Global Sociology: 2:35-3:50, TR

Simulating Social Processes: 4-6:40, T

Alternative Reality Fiction--ARF for short: 12:10-1, T (this is our independent study).


Should be fun, but hectic.

First of all, PAT THANK YOU for surfthechannel because it's a lifesaver, even if a lot of the links are down right now. I'm actually kinda sorta starting to get caught up on Bleach because I was bored out of my mind the other day. At least now I know who the hell Grimmjow and Ulquiorra are (though skipping ahead through the filler arc has left me going "who the fuck is this" every time one of those other guys shows up. Seriously, who the hell are they, and what are the "Bount" they keep mentioning? Why are they keeping filler characters around anyway??)

Also, after half a year of waiting for it to come out on DVD so I could finally watch it, I managed to see "The Lives of Others," which is a damn-fuck brilliant movie. Definitely a keeper. I think I need to buy it.

It's won some awards, and deservedly so. It's a love story. It's about East Germany in the 80's, a few years before the wall fell, when no one was allowed to lead private lives and the Stasi--the secret police--had files on everyone. When a government official sets his sight on a beautiful actress, who happens to be going out with a pro-Socialist writer, the official orders the Stasi to wiretap and bug the writer's home and find some dirt on him, to get him out of the way. The man in charge of watching the writer Georg and the actress Christa is a cold-iron Stasi type who always does his job perfectly--until he starts to watch Georg and Christa's story unfold.

It's not your average love story, since it's not about a man and a woman (or man and man, woman and woman, what have you) falling in love with each other. It's about a man falling in love with the lives of two complete strangers. The movie is simply expert. The subtlety. The beauty. The acting, the setting, the way the plot unfolds. The ending. It's all absolutely incredible. Makes me wish I knew more German. Makes me appreciate more the fact that I was allowed to walk around in former East Germany at all, and how life was lived there only a few years before I was born.

Absolutely 100% wonderful.

Score: 10 out of 10 (!)

Also, I'm thinking of joining an online LJ RP. Only I've never been in an RP before. I have no idea what it really entails. Plus it's another big commitment along with my writing and along with school. I mean, it would take up a relatively substantial part of my day, and for what? For fun? Can I really do something like that, in the midst of the more important, Real Life things I've got going on? And can I do it, I mean, channel a character like that?

I just don't know. But I'm thinking about it. I'd play either Haraken from Dennou Coil or Hei from Darker than BLACK (leaning toward Hei right now).

It's a really interesting concept, the RP, and it's fun if only to watch the interactions between characters unfolding right now. It only opened a few days ago. It's realityshifted and it's open to everyone and all characters right now. And I do mean all characters, if I go by what the mods have told me. They have people from Doctor Who, Life on Mars, D. Gray-Man, Air Gear, Dennou Coil and so on over there already, but the taken list is pretty short at this point. So...if anyone else is interested, go check it out (like I said, it's worth it if only to watch).

And someone either talk me into this, or out of it ^_^

( A Shift In Reality )