Talking Soup

The time has come, my friends. I am a writer. I play Pokemon and other silly video games. I have participated in online LJ RP games. I have long discussions about various sci-fi shows and watch things like Star Trek, Farscape, Doctor Who and Firefly. I respect William Shatner. I watch anime with a somewhat religious fervor at times. I have conversations about the merits of certain weapons, the various histories and lifestyles of the Middle Ages, and complain about historical or logical inaccuracies in movies concerning the era. I have been to a Renn Faire. I have gone to sci-fi and fantasy cons, as well as anime cons. I read comic books, webcomics and manga. I play WoW. I collect Magic Cards. I'm an amateur astronomer and I listen to shortwave radio. I can readily quote Star Wars.

In short, I am a full blown nerd. And the time has now come to tackle the last bastion of nerddom, to venture into the fearsome, Mountain Dew-soaked, Cheeto-stained basement in the nether regions of the House of Nerd.

Yes, my friends. I speak of Dungeons and Dragons.

I am, as we speak, in the process of building a character and will soon start a campaign involving my similarly nerdy Ithaca friends. I am learning all about Spot Checks, Ability Modifiers, and D20s.

With this, I say my final farewell to the world of coolness, fashion and all semblance of sanity. Farewell, Lady Gaga, Eat, Pray, Love, 24, and True Blood. Goodbye, Justin Bieber and Louis Vuitton. Auf wiedersehn, mainstream media. To make a nerd quote, "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." I go now to the Land of Fun, the Plane of Silliness, and the House of Nerd, and never shall I return to hipness, coolness and popularity. Good night...and good luck.

Just be glad I'm not LARPing.

I've been so unbelievably BORED lately. Which is probably part of the reason I haven't posted anything in, like, months. Plenty of stuff has happened, but most of it is big, overarching real life stuff, the kind of things that are just sort of there and that you can't focus on 24/7. Boring stuff.

Let's see...I got a new job. I'm a part-time caretaker for an old lady with Alzheimer's and dementia. There's a total of five of us who look after her 24/7, and it's all under the table, working right in the lady's house. We get paid by one of her daughters. It's pretty decent money, but I really need a second job. My parents are currently paying my rent, but I'm 23 and that's really got to stop. I can't keep mooching on them forever.

Money's been tight all around, which is one of the reasons why Julie has decided to move back home to Minnesota. She needs to get out of here, or at least get away from her current job, which has been crushing her so bad that it's actually painful to watch. I'd like to keep living with her, but this is probably what's best for her.

It also means Pat and I need to find a smaller, cheaper apartment, and that we're both going to be paying more overall for rent. Which is also no good, for one thing because Pat will be paying more than half, which isn't fair, and because my parents will be picking up my half. I'm such a leech.

Speaking of parents, I'll be heading home sometime in July for the annual star party at Yosemite. It'll be good to be back for awhile. And I swear one day I'm gonna drag Pat and Julie with me.

I've gotten thoroughly addicted to Glee and Supernatural. Well, not Supernatural so much anymore. Julie found it first and then we all marathoned basically the whole thing in a matter of weeks. I don't have much desire to see the next season, though I'll try it out. Glee just continues to be awesome, with really great comedy and well-rounded characters. It makes for a hilarious parody of high school in general.

Saw Ironman 2, loved it, saw Kickass, loved it, and I think that's all in the way of movies.

Meanwhile I was pretty addicted to World of Warcraft, but last week my account got hacked and stolen. I'm still waiting to hear from Blizzard, but in the meantime I haven't been able to play at all. Ah well. It's nice to have a good long break from it.

On the anime front, the three of us here have been marathoning Yu Yu Hakusho...I don't really know why, but does there need to be a reason? It's awesome either way. I've also been steadfastly watching the Darker than BLACK OAVS (AMAZING), and two new shows called Durarara and Angel Beats, which are both pretty sweet in different ways. Also Hetalia, since Heathers got me hooked.

I'm finally writing again, specifically a new novel. This is the Jin novel that I'm pretty sure I've mentioned a few times. Basically, space dragons and evil robots. It's fun so far, though for some reason I'm not as crazy-into-it as I was with my previous novels. I've just been so...blase about writing in general, but I'm getting back into it. I think the lack of significant RP lately has something to do with that. I love Route 47, and I think it's gonna keep going for a good while, but it's been so slow for almost a month and a half now that it's become this casual thing, instead of taking up a good portion of my day like before. IDK. I'm just really unmotivated lately.

Another reason that I'm glad I'm going back home soon, even if it's just for a week, is that I think I'm needed there. I swear, I love my brother but he's going to kill my parents with the stress he causes. If it's not drug addiction and the police, it's fights with the neighbors. This is a major reason I want to become financially independent, because my parents have enough to worry about with Ben around. He really does seem to be trying to do better, but it's not happening fast enough. The best I can do is try to take my burden off of them.

Ah well. Life goes on, even when Israeli commandos are killing activists, the Koreans are at war again, and the oil at the Deepwater Horizon just will not stop flowing.

So what do you call a fan of Doctor Who? A Tard?

It's getting its own tag now.

I also must be the last person on Earth to have discovered Doctor Who.

Not that I didn't know it was out there, but it's a hard show to catch in terms of "when the fuck is it on and where?"

It's the fucking shit. One of the best shows I've seen. Now I understand why everyone's been raving about it for years. It really is that good. Three episodes in (lol, familiar?) and I'm totally sold.

Cheesy and hilarious and angsty and intense, and how often do you get that combination??

It's supposed to hemorrhage snow today.

I love this show. And I usually hate reality TV.

Julie and I have been coming up with names for all of them--since I can never remember their real names.

So far we've got:

Crazy Train
Village People
Country Club
Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong
Chicken Dance

That's all we've got so far. Try and guess which ones they are.

I've been really crappy at updating this lately, but yes, I'm still alive.

Woo, sinus infection! Ah, this always happens at least once a year, but it doesn't make it any more fun. Woke up a few mornings ago just like "oh my god I'm drowning -fhggakhhggghkksnerk-*" I know what this is all about by now so I went to the health center right after class, and despite waiting for an hour and a half it wasn't as awful an experience as I thought it would be. Got some Amoxicillin and now I'm feeling better. Though I didn't sleep much two nights ago. Not. Fun.

We have mice. Like, an infestation. No, I'm kidding, but we do have mice--two of them, in a cage. One is brown and the other is white with a black patch over his eye. The brown one's name is Malcom Reynolds. The white one's name is Hoban Washburn, or Wash for short. This is because they have a little spaceship in their cage upon which we have written "Serenity." Wash is excitable, friendly, and likes sweets. Mal is somewhat antisocial, cautious, and likes to hide his food, which is mostly health food.

I swear, they are Mal and Wash in...mouse form.

Plus they are tiny and fuzzy and cute and thus far have remained undiscovered by said RA peoples.

Though we did have an adventure last week, I think. Mal got away from me and ended up under the couch. We spent awhile trying to catch him and finally just lifted the couch up, but Mal is not one to be held down by The Man (or Woman) and actually squeezed under the door and ran out into the stairwell. Well, as one who has owned mice before, I figured hope was pretty much lost by then, but we chased him. He was on the edge of the balcony part of the staircase and we were chasing him along the edge, but then I got distracted when the door across the hall opened and a kid started walking out. Mal decided death would be better than capture by The Woman and threw himself off the stairs, landing two sections down. I ran all the way down and managed to catch him and scoop him up just as the kid drew level with me. It was like something out of a college comedy movie. And let me tell you right now, catching a mouse barehanded is no easy feat. Mal was returned to his cage where I'm sure he told Wash all about his adventure and has since not attempted escape.

I'm gonna get started on the next chapter of my fic since it's been awhile. I also need to write two things for Fiction II, one of which is due tomorrow. Dear God I'm starting to hate that class. I think I mentioned already that it's taught by a teacher I'm not really fond of, but more than that--she's one of the many writing teachers 'round these parts who is all like "oh, haha, genre, it's not really writing. It's all cheap and pulpy. It must all be literateur and meta if it's going to be legit!" To which Julie and I say a big FUCK YOU. We're both gonna write nothing but genre stuff for that class. So fucking there, bitch.

Grants and Proposals is picking up speed as we hear from more and more promising projects (the ones I'm looking at so far are this local alt ed school which teaches diversity education and wants to get funding for a trip to Guatemala, one involving EcoFashion, and of course the SPCA one which involves a spay/neuter program (desperately needed!)). We get assigned our groups over the weekend and have to have make our choice on which project to tackle by Friday. After that we leap off the boat and then it's sink or swim. Man.

Going to a thing at Cornell tomorrow for my Terrorism class--a talk by a woman who is a Palestinian and is working on the peace movement. Should be awesome.

ASIC has been awesome. We've been watching Death Note which leaves nothing to be desired (L, I want to have your babies!) and the second part of Jubei-chan which is as insane as the first part. But this one has a tiny little chibi-guy who is...so...cute.

I've heard tell that we'll be watching Ouran later in the semester too. Yes!

So far we've been maintaining a shopping/cooking schedule in the apartment and it's been working! I cook on Wednesdays. I've gotta work on my time management where that's concerned, but so far my recipes have worked (just made carrot-ginger-pear soup and pots de creme which is XOMG awesome). Woo. And Kate continues to be AWESOME by making AWESOME food. She also won our Iron Chef two Fridays or so ago.

Julie has successfully completed both Kingdom Hearts I and II and now understands my love of the Organization members. And the awesome tragedy that is Axel and Roxas's relationship, whether or not you think it's just friendship or what have you (I must confess myself a shipper, but y'all knew that. I think...).

Avatar starts Friday, Heroes the following Monday, and House the Tuesday after. Hells ya.

Oh, and. The latest Naruto chapter? WHUT? WHUT? Revelations liek woah??

Quite the double-post, innit? I hadn't realized I hadn't updated at all in two weeks.

Anyway, continuing in the amazing story of my life...

So yeah, the last half of break we spent doing the book thing and hanging with my people. I think it was Friday night we went to Caleb and Asher's (the cousins) school to hear a jazz and poetry thing--Caleb plays guitar, Asher plays drums. The only way I can really describe it is that it was very, very New York. It was interesting the way the poems and the music melted together, though I don't know if I actually liked it or not. Though some of the poems were pretty awesome. One was a poem about being in the primordial soup and amoeba love, haha. Brilliant.

Speaking of primordial soup, holy FUCK, Spore is coming out this fall apparently. What is Spore? Spore is only the most awesome computer game probably to ever grace geekdom. Pretty much, in the game you start out as a one-celled organism, and then you evolve. You choose what lines you want to evolve along, giving yourself X number appendages and so on. And according to their new video
you can do a lot more than that. *squee!* I've been anticipating this game ever since I heard about it about two years ago.

The only problem being that I'll need a new laptop to handle this game. Septimus is getting up there, but he still works and he's still mostly reliable, like an old dog. I don't want to get rid of him yet. I'm one of those people who keeps using my things until they fall apart ^.^

Had a bit of a surreal moment when we drove by the World Trade Center. I'm still sort of torn about visiting places like that. It was the same when we went to Dachau in Germany--just the idea of a place of such suffering becoming a tourist attraction. But I did tell myself this time that I wanted to go there, because 9/11 I think played a major role in my anxiety disorder, and I need to start facing that. We never actually made it to the WTC, but we did drive past it, and it was just like, "wow...there used to be towers there. There used to be people there." Ah, man. I dunno.

But, enough with the depressing. I can't be entirely depressed right now because there's an icicle hanging outside my window that looks like an alien's hand, no joke.

Last day spent in NYC we went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, kind of like a smaller version of the Met, though it was still all kinds of brilliant. We only had time for two floors (there were five), so we checked out the floor with American art (woot) and the floor with the Egyptian stuff (holy crap, Batman!). No mummies, but it was all very awesome.

And now we're back in good old Ithaca and it's cold and wet and there are classes to attend and Julie and I are still sick. *sigh*

And now the requisite reports on the various and sundry things that came out in the past week. Though first, another book I read.

Have I mentioned the Retriever's Series here? The series is about Wren, a Retriever living in NYC. A Retriever is like a Get Backer (lol) in that she "retrieves" things for people, which usually means steals them. Except that in this world there is magic, and it takes a very interesting form. In any case, Wren has gotten up to some shit in the last two books, but the most recent one out, the third, is definitely my favorite. At this point, it looks like war's about to break out between the Mage Council (the organized group of magic users), the lonejacks (the live-free-or-die types of magic users) and the fatae (the non-human people living in the city). It's gotten very awesome, and it's an excellent example of modern urban fantasy. If you like Dresden, you'll probably like Wren, though this series falls a bit more on the female side of things, though not to a chick-lit degree. Wren is an awesome character, and the book has its own voice that is a blatantly New York voice. Love it.

So what have we? No House on Tuesday due to March Madness, but Crossing Jordan and Lost were both on Wednesday, of course, and they were both ALL KINDS of awesome. I'm really impressed with this season of Jordan so far, since it's really branching out and doing some interesting things. And Lost is no longer sucking! It's getting back into the mysterious and strange that made the first season and the first part of the second season so brilliant.

However, there are things I must report and speculate on. For instance, in ( Crossing Jordan...*spoilers alert* )

As if that wasn't intense enough, we follow it up immediately with...

( Lost )

And of course, of course, there were the Narutos that came out, being the latest manga chapter and the latest Shippuden episode.

( Chapter spoilers )

As for the episode, well, it's following the manga, and it continues to be brilliant, although it was lacking on the crazy music front.

Back in my world, in terms of writing, I didn't get half as much done of the rewrite over break as I wanted. Between being sick and hitting a snag that Pat pointed out, it just kind of came to a standstill. But I'm going to get back in it now, and keep thinking about that snag. Mostly the thing is, do I want to overhaul the beginning in order to get things moving faster, or draw it out so things are more dramatic? I'm long-winded, in case you couldn't tell, but that's something I'm trying to fix. So I dunno. There are a few things I'm going to extend because they kind of have to be.

Also, a lot's been coming together for some of my other projects. Mot has been niggling me again. The thing with Ramsey--my white haired, cloak-wielding heroine--is taking shape in my head. Have I mentioned Skye? Skye is the main character of Ramsey's story--I don't know her last name, but she's a snarky tattoo artist in Berkely who was diagnosed with schizophrenia some years ago. This was because she could see the things that Ramsey fights--critters I have dubbed darksouls for now, who are kind of shadow creatures that haunt people at their best and kill them at their worst. Anyway, Skye could see those things, and ghosts and stuff, but it made her a strange kid and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She believes now that all the things she saw when she was younger were hallucinations, but when she meets Ramsey she realizes she's been sane all along. Should be fun.

Things are also really coming together for North, though I'm still not sure how far I am from actually starting it. I've got a better sense of what's going on in the Whodden--where the Folk, the spirits and non-humans live--and what's going on in North's own life. I just need to figure out certain things about the beginning of the story.


And now I have to get some things done before Women and Writing. Another long post! Lol, and these two were supposed to be all one. Nya-ha.

Julie:

I accidentally saw a spoiler for the OC.

A very, very, very major spoiler.

That has to do with Marissa.

*koff*

But it's okay, because I still want to see what leads up to it and why it happened, etc.