axis on a tilt † Anti-Shell Matter v. 10.0

Saturday, July 22, 2006

5:53 PM

Whut.

Current Sound: silence

Of 117 emails I got over the past thirty-six-or-so hours, a hundred were for Viagra. From Canada.

I'm not exaggerating here. WHO THE FUCK LOOKS ME UP LIKE THIS. I don't know which is a bigger indicator that I have zero need for Viagra: that I'm female, or that my boyfriend is seventeen.

I'd move email addresses so very fast if every fanlisting and college-related thing ever did not have this current email.

And I can't find my iPod. It's disappeared somewhere between my house, my car, and Sam's house, and I've searched every inch of those places. Buh. I don't know where the hell it could have gone. When it's not in my car with me, it's in my shoulder bag. Hopefully it'll show up, because the last time I saw it was after I had left a place that was not one of the above three.

On the serious upside of things, Mom and Dad went furniture shopping at the Chinese furniture store, and since Dad was convinced that I need more shelf space, I've picked out a lovely cabinet. And a kickass ceiling-lamp like the ones you'd see in Chinese restaurants. Just don't have the ceiling wiring for it yet. I think they feel somewhat guilty for how much Rachel has done to doll up her room, and how much I haven't. And the fact that she got the suite.

Since I've gotten more graduation money the past week from various sources, in the spirit of re-doing my room a bit, I may go to the Fashion Square and get a small fountain or more bamboo. It's about half as much there as it is at the Cultural Center. It may very well be worth it for the next year, since it looks as though I'll be going to the West Campus half the time anyway, so I might as well live at home for the time being. Too bad my parents don't have a basement, so I can't say "I'm living in my mother's basement". That's always been a life goal of mine.

I also much need a sword-rack or some hooks for my sword and my naginata. The nail thing is great, but someday a nice, black-lacquered rack would be nice. Hell, I haven't even hung my naginata yet.

Sam's in Minnesota for a week. I've never even been to that part of the country, save layovers in airports. Nowhere further northeasterly than, say, Tulsa or North Carolina, if that gives an idea.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

12:03 AM

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.

Current Sound: Bloodhound Gang -- "Fire Water Burn"

I cleaned house today. While going through a pile of Stuff I Need to Return I found What the Bleep Do We Know?, which was lent to me months ago, and watched it. Better than I thought it was going to be. I vaguely remember something about some quantum physics buffs hating it and thinking of it in much the same way that hardcore scientists think of Wired, but given that I only know the pedestrian aspects of quantum physics (His Dark Materials helped my interest), I enjoyed it. It was a run-down of stuff I've heard before, though without the pretty colorful graphics and the hot deaf girl. And at least the ultimate message is of the uplifting "You are God / you create your own reality" variety, as opposed to ending on the nihilistic "Yeah, life's pretty empty, and, uh, yeah, pretty empty and pointless" note a lot of related works end on. (Yes, technically it is, but you know damn well what I mean. I tend to be more agnostic than atheist in various respects.) Anybody in a better standing than I am to judge? It made sense to me for the most part--the driving philosophy of subjective reality and infinite possibility is stuff I had intuitively deduced a while ago / been exposed to over the years, and became my personal philosophy--though it seemed some of the guest scientists (especially the mystic woman) jumped to some unbased conclusions. Maybe there wasn't time left for explanation. Or maybe I should have spent more time reading up on the technicalities and less time writing about the yaoibois in Tokyo. And reading Jungian psychology and Hermann Hesse, who still kicks ass. Yeah, it's definitely worth a watch, two if you don't get theoretical physics easily.

So, yeah, since it was basically an extended theoretical physical proof for my personal philosophy, and I like science, it was pretty masturbatory. And nobody doesn't like that.

Watched the news with Dad while I made dinner. Admittedly I know damn little about what's going on in Lebanon and Israel beyond what CNN tells me, but it's sobering. Reflexive, though: the face of war truly has changed when the death of two soldiers makes headlines (or a 2000 total) as compared to the catastrophic casualty count even thirty years ago. I can't imagine being British or German or French during either of the World Wars and hearing the death totals from the trenches or the sea or what-have-you. Each death is a monstrosity, but we're talking about degrees by powers of ten. I know the counterargument is that nuclear or biological war would blow the roof back off the mortality count, but I'm just talking about Right Now.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

5:36 PM

California rest in peace

Current Sound: Coldplay -- "A Warning"

So, this is the result of a rather long, complicated story involving the weighing of various factors: I'm not going to Berkeley. I'm going to Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University, which means I'll be going to school thirty-or-so minutes from home.

I'm sure a lot of you are asking "WHAT THE FUCK LAUREN WHY ARE YOU GOING TO ASU INSTEAD OF BERKELEY OMG", as some of you have already asked when I said that ASU was still an option. Well, first off, money is a factor. The Berkeley undergraduate degree is flat-out not worth the astronomical cost (we're talking a difference of $36,000 a year, scholarship factored in), and I'm getting a huge scholarship to an already-cheap school. I'd be a fool not take it. Orientation did not impress me in the slightest--yes, the campus is lovely, and the graduate studies / professor research is top notch, but undergrad programs sound like endless bureaucracy. The honors college at ASU is a group of 2700 in a school of 60,000 in a huge city, and I can get my standardized test scores up for grad school regardless of where I am. I've been told time-and-again by people who would actually know about the graduate school process that it's what you do where you are that matters far more than where you are. I've been promised access to great internships and select attention in the research sector; sounds like a far greater chance for actually doing research instead of cranking somebody's data for endless hours. There are multiple other factors weighing into the advantage of going to school here. I'll get to keep my car, I'll be close to the people I care about, and I can live at home half-time, at least.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure Berkeley would have been a blast, even though orientation rankled my chains with its constant sophomoric "WE'RE SO DIVERSE AND DEEP OMG EXCEPT WE'RE DOING YOU'RE-NOT-ALONE ACTIVITIES KIDS DO IN KINDERGARTEN NOWADAYS" mantra. It's no deep and profound thought to me that other people (OMG GASP) may be or know somebody who is LBGTIQQ (lesbian bisexual gay transgender intersex queer questioning), and that this is okay and accepted at Berkeley. HOLY SHIT WOW. I'm in love with Telegraph Street, though. And they do the Time Warp as a band stand tune. But this is the best decision, all factors considered. I have not lived in Arizona my entire life, so I'm not desperate to leave. Phoenix is a vast improvement over the asshole-of-nowhere in Texas. And it sounds as though this is financially and various-other-cascading-factors concerned best for my family, which I did not know until somebody finally told me the truth yesterday. I never would have taken the out-of-state thing this far had I known. I feel so stupid on this side of things, but I was doing the best I could the entire time with what I actually knew.

It's a long story. But damn, I'm glad I decided to apply to Barrett at the last minute as a backup. And all things considered, I'm happy with this.

--------------------

Samson's birthday was yesterday. It was much fun. I fell asleep over there and came home this morning.

I keep making the same mistakes over and over again, no matter how aware I am of them, no matter how many times I've said I'd stop. But it's the selfish desire to vent and see somebody else be effected. I feel awful. But there's a sick side of me that's glad to have all of this selfish crap off my chest. And writing it out in a journal just doesn't do it for me. I have to tell somebody. Specifically somebody. And those of you who have had not-so-pleasant interpersonal encounters with me before know this.

I desperately want to apologize, but I've already done that twenty-or-so times, and I'll never feel it's enough.

I hope I don't get the stomach virus that Dad and Rachel have, though since Rachel got sick today and was exposed to Dad a day before I was, I may be next tomorrow. Fucktastic.

I have free time on my hands. I really should do something creative.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

4:49 PM

I think I flipped off the German Police.

Current Sound: Depeche Mode -- "Everything Counts"

I’m home. It’s so good to be back. Happy Independence Day, by the way, America.

------------------

I was halfway through the security line in the Berlin airport when somebody told me that she had heard my presence requested at the "change desk" over the loudspeaker. I was sure that she had misheard until two of the trip chaperones told me that they had also heard my name, just as an attendant wove around the corner and asked me to follow him because the police wanted to see me.

There were two stern-looking cops in full drab-green regalia back at the check-in desk with one of my shuriken (throwing stars; think ninjas) on the counter. All right. So, we had been weapons shopping in Prague, because pretty much everything is legal there, and I didn't think there would be a problem with shuriken. They're a hell of a lot more useless than a Swiss Army knife, three of which I had in my bag right next to the shuriken.

Notably, there were also two shuriken in my bag since I was also carrying Samson's stuff, flush against one another in file, and only one was on the counter.

The police told the attendant something in German, and he translated that they had found this in my bag, and asked if I wanted to deny that charge. I was sorely tempted to say that it could have been included in all bags manufactured since the beginning of the year, or something, but I didn't know how fucked I really was at this point, so I just affirmed that. Apparently, shuriken are illegal in Germany, but knives are fine. They're legal in the United States, so I don't see why they just let it pass through out of the country, but whatever. I've never followed politics or law closely unless it parallels a passion of mine, like freedom of pretty much anything or gay marriage.

Miller had rounded the corner by this point and was trying to figure out why the hell the German Police wanted to have a word with me, and she was quite irritated that they sent cops who speak two words of English: "No English". In all fairness, they provided an interpreter, and we are in their country, so I don't see a problem with that.

Around the shoulders of a conversation between the interpreter and Miller I tried to tell the German cops that there had been two shuriken, since I was afraid they'd re-check the bag and would be even more pissed if I didn't pony up about the second one, and I wondered if it had fallen into my carry-on. I kept trying to sign "two" with two fingers and point at the shuriken, and they just stared at me. All right. I naturally count on my fingers with the back of my hand away from me, and I use my index and middle fingers for "one" and "two", and I remembered in retrospect that is the equivalent of flipping the bird in England. I have no idea if that is offensive in Germany.

So, I may have been flipping off the German police.

While pointing at an illegal weapon they had taken from my bag.

Irritated as they were about the shuriken in my check-in bag, I knew I'd be absolutely screwed if another one was found in my carry-on, so I dropped my backpack and duffel and rooted through them for the second star. The cops seemed uninterested enough on the surface, but I felt that one of them was being painfully aware of what I was doing in his peripheral vision.

In typical passive-aggressive fashion I apologized and said that I had no idea this was contraband, given that "German jail" makes me think of the Gestapo, but I was only asked to provide my passport for photocopying and provide my "permanent address" in the United States. I was asked to sign a form in German; upon inquiry, it just said that I had peacefully surrendered the weapon, and if I didn't sign it, I wasn't going home anyway.

I wonder if this means I have a criminal record for possession of illegal arms in Germany. Sweet.

I was told that if I had been caught in a British airport with the shuriken, the authorities would have gone berserk.

After a thorough and fruitless search through my carry-ons, I went back through airport security, during which my duffel had to be hand-checked and go back through the machine (god damn my heart really did skip then), but just because a clock had confused them, or something. Maybe the cheeses looked like plastic explosives. In any case, the rest of the trip passed without event, besides getting to explain to various people what exactly had happened back across the security gates. Everybody already knew the basics of what had happened by the time I was back at the gate, as I'm sure Miller had gotten a slew of "what happened" inquiries.

The best part is that upon opening my bag back at Sky Harbor, there was one shuriken left in my bag. In the same compartment the other one had been in. It’s a small, mesh compartment. This is amazing. As glad as I am that one survived the search, how the hell do you miss that? Freaking German police. I gave it to Samson, though, as one was his anyway. At least I still have my boss Swiss Army knife that was an anniversary present, of sorts.

-------------

My body is convinced it is midnight, and it is hinting at shutting down right now. It’ll be difficult to get away with, as my parents want to pin me down and do college stuff right now. I went to sleep at 10:00 PM and woke wide awake up at 5:00 AM. Seven hours of restless sleep is not what I expected after having not really slept for 48 hours. The last night before the commute I think I maybe got a cumulative of one hour of sleep, given all of the spirited partying and the fact that my roommate locked me out so I had to sleep on a rather cold couch.

Oh, I was definitely in Berlin the night Depeche Mode was playing, but I didn’t get to go see them. Boo. I’d trade them for Death Cab anyday. I thought missing them in London by a week was bad enough. I did see the Blue Man Group for the first time, though, which was an awesome show. As much as I would have loved to be swinging my arms and yelling an encore rendition of “Everything Counts” with thousands of drunk Germans, I enjoyed the show immensely. Didn’t understand any of the spoken or written jokes, but most of the show is sans dialogue anyway. It’s badass. The music was excellent; I’m definitely going to get my hands on a copy somehow. Most shows I admittedly get antsy and hope it ends, regardless of how good it is, but I did not notice two hours go by. I did have that song stuck in my head the rest of the trip, though. I really hope the Playing the Angel tour has a DVD release, as the Phoenix show, at least, was amazing.

I have some-odd 1500 pictures to mine through. Maybe I’ll post some once I’ve given them a go-through.

Oh, if anybody remembers my graduation necklace from my parents, it definately fell off in Berlin. Fuck.

Oh, I finished Perdido Street Station this morning (the book sent me for Christmas), and it is staggering. Creative in the manner of things that are half-intuition, half-brilliance. Cool. Plain, freaking the-stuff-of-intellectual-dreams, but also goddamn well-written. Not at all pretentious or smacking of pseudo-intellectualism. Think Cowboy Bebop-styled writing and dialogue, but grittier and harder and darker and more cyberpunk, with a heavier science fiction angle.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

12:01 PM

Don't drink the water.

Current Sound: Coldplay -- "Warning Sign"

I have so much work to do, the majority of it for economics. The majority of this three(four)-day-weekend has already been deathly slow; the rest might be as well. At least I think I've fixed the wireless network. I think. I hope. Networking is my weakest area of computer knowledge.

Friday was boring as all hell. I stayed home the entire day except for a run to the post office and the bank, and most of that time, I was working. I went out to dinner with my family that evening, which was nice.

I went out Saturday afternoon, which was great fun. Bath and Body Works is having a promotional sale where five bottles of antibacterial hand soap costs ten dollars, so I took advantage of that. I absolutely love their line of ~~sakura~~ cherry blossom products. Obsession aside, it's a lovely scent. I'm also trying the Japanese Cherry Blossom body scrub. I don't use the lotions and all that other stuff, but since they started with the cherry blossom line of stuff, I've been using their body scrub/soap/body splash every so often. Went swimming at Sam's house and watched his sister while his parents were out that evening, though the latter was not part of our original plan. He's probably still killing himself over his English project.

Sunday and Monday, thus far, look as though they'll be much the same as Friday. I heard rumor of a taco party at Kaity's house. I've got to get dad's website up and running before I leave for Europe, and there is some ad stuff I still need to finish for mom. Hm.

So I dreamt that, for whatever reason, I was lying on a concrete floor in a spot-lit room with my abdomen being filleted so that Sam and one of his friends could take care of some bad condition that demanded immediate attention. I forgot what the condition was, but trying to sew me back up was nerve-wracking. I didn't feel any pain in the dream--I suspect this has something to do with Chuck Palahniuk's assertion that intestines don't feel pain--but my intestines kept falling out onto this dirty floor. My small intestines looked like thin noodles, bloodless; the other guy kept scooping them up and dropping them back into my body. My large intestine was cut into pieces, the end-of-things of which were on the floor at my side. It looked like a smooth, liver-colored tube, flanking the left wall of my abdomen. My skin and abdominal wall had been cut off in a circle, like lopping off a portion of a sphere; they kept trying to stick it back on, waiting for it to re-fuse with my body. I'd keep trying to stand up with my hand on the skin lid, but the intestines and organs would slide out from underneath, half on the floor, half into somebody's bare, dirty, waiting hands, and I would collapse again as he poured them back into my body in a jumbled heap. Sam was always by my left side, trying to seal up the lid; he ended up using some sort of white tape at regular intervals along the circumference, which he claimed would fix everything. I then noticed that the ends of my large intestine were still on the floor, anus and all; I started yelling that I was going to die if they didn't put all of it back where it belonged right now, but they didn't listen to me. These green sprouts that looked like tea pearls fell out of the hole in my backside; looking at them left a bitter taste in my mouth. I kept screaming that I was going to die, I was going to die, this was going to be the rest of my life on a machine, and I was going to die, and I vaguely remembered being lifted up by my shoulders--

I woke up at roughly 5:00 AM, shaking and clutching my abdomen, forcing my eyes to stay open so I wouldn't slip back into the same dream.

When I fell back asleep, I dreamed that I was part of a school program that had me drive down to a Mexican university hospital to perform an operation. You know how they say "Don't drink the water" in Mexico? No matter what I did to keep the Mexican water away from me, it kept getting all over me, especially around my mouth. I knew, intuitively, could almost see, that the water was rich with transparent amoebas; I was going to get amoebic dysentery, and there was nothing I could do about it. Troxler and Fillman were part of my expedition group, and we kept trying to find bottled water to buy, though we half-knew it was probably just tap water. I went back and forth over the border a few times, but every single time, I forgot potable water from the US. The hospital had misters that sprayed water all over me; the drinking fountain, which I was walking toward in a daze, unable to control my body, was hooked to the regular main; I couldn't get away from it. I was doomed. I kept seeing mental pictures of an intestine rotted inside-out by dysentery; I knew this would be my fate.

I woke up, again, at some time I forgot, and fell back asleep again. This time around, somebody else dear to me was in the hospital living hooked to a machine, and I was cat-walking along the top of an apartment building with canvas awnings planning on hacking into multiple computers to get money to finance this hospital visit. You know, using a virus like the one in Office Space that only takes fractions of pennies, though I wanted to run this virus on an entire bank. I had a third-person view of Brian from Family Guy running along the rim of the canyon community where I lived several years ago before jumping off onto the canvas awning; Brian and I merged quite often. I was then in his place, trying to hold onto a sign in the sloped awning that jutted out from the rest, like a piece of cardboard pushed up underneath. I remember part of it said "NASDAQ". The more I tried to pull myself up, the further I slipped; I finally fell several stories onto the next awning, in the same position; fell, and over and over again until I hit the ground on both feet. I had a third-person view of Brian again, and I saw him climb over a bike rack or something and slip into an apartment through the sliding glass door. It looked like Kaity's old apartments by now.

I woke up for good this time.

Somebody explain all that. Yes, I'm aware it has a root in my already-existing stress level.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

11:52 PM

I'm not obsessed.

Current Sound: Silence

God damn. I am bidding way too much money on those Tokyo Babylon doujinshi.

Tomorrow is Senior Ditch Day. Hopefully I'll remember to call my mommy at work in Texas tomorrow morning and beg like a little bitch to be allowed to stay home. I had that contract signed and notarized that allows me to call myself out of school (for a full day, for illness only) since I'm 18 and whatnot, but the administration knows damn well what tomorrow is, and they reserve the right to call and check with our parents. A coincidental tummy ache is going to be rather suspicious. If it's my dad they check with, my proverbial balls are grass.

Ergo, I may end up going to school after all.

Oh, Over the Hedge was excellent. It was far more enjoyable than I had been anticipating.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

9:53 PM

Here comes the sun.

Current Sound: Sakamoto Maaya -- "Hikari no Naka e"

I missed the season finale of House. Fuck.

That article for which I was interviewed appeared in 101 North, and it sounds as though all of the stuff I wrote down just to see if it would get printed did get printed. Now I just need to get my hands on a copy of the magazine. It's too exclusive to be sold in, say, Walgreens.

Hopefully I'll win those eBay auctions for the Tokyo Babylon and X doujinshi. I'm eager to get back into writing for the fandom once things calm down around here. It, admittedly, may be later than sooner, given that I'm trying to live up my last days here, but once I get to college and I have no friends around again, it will be more plausible. I've gone horribly rusty with prose writing. I'll write a few things I hate, scrap them, and then start to get back into the groove. I promised myself that I would finish A Perfect Circle as my first complete long work, since multiple people have asked me to finish it, and it is a story that means a lot to me, though for me to be able to stomach that I'll have to re-write a lot of things I wrote my sophomore year.

The weather has been surprisingly pleasant lately for impending summer in Phoenix. There was a day recently it was overcast, pre-storm windy, and cool. It was orgasmic. That + desert vegetation = love. Say what you will about the desert, but I think Arizona is a beautiful state, despite the hellish heat. But the clouds have burned off, and full-blown summer is well on its way. We're already regularly hitting triple-digits Fahrenheit by afternoon.

I just learned that Melanie (Peep), my sister's parakeet, died at the vet's this morning. Apparently she had a respiratory infection, and she was quite older than we thought she was, given that we had found her on our doorstep one morning a few years ago. We knew she was domesticated, and after we had placed fliers and walked door-to-door and nobody claimed her, we took her in. She had been looking ill the past few days. Peep, we will miss you.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

7:51 PM

Your circuit’s dead; there's something wrong--

Current Sound: David Bowie -- "Ziggy Stardust"

To: Arizona, weather of, Southern
Re: Thanks

As I am wont to do about everything, I was having second thoughts about my college decision, given that I was talking to a guy who is having a blast at ASU honors college. However, your spirited heat today has hardened my resolve to leave. Kthx. You've made my life marginally easier.

-----------------

I've had zero drive to do anything the past couple of days other than exercise, futz around livejournal, and watch Depeche Mode concerts when I'm not playing Final Fantasy VII. Maybe this is a sudden acute of Senioritis. I've been out of class a lot for AP testing the past week, which is my excuse for not having done homework in that same amount of time. Frankly, I just don't care anymore. Of course I'll get on the job at the last possible second and throw everything into the 'in' box right before grades are finalized, but I just want to veg this last month of high school. Just like everybody else.

Graduation announcements came in on Monday. I think they're tacky, but Mom and Dad insisted. They don't make graduation seem any more 'real' or anything profound like that. I'm still not comprehending that as of a month from today, I will be a graduate~~, and in the state of Arizona my relationship with my boyfriend will be illegal~~.

The Science Olympiad banquet in on Friday. That should prove interesting, Gods all willing.

I'm craving chips and salsa, but given that half the house is on the Zone diet, and another fourth is avoiding carbs, we have no chips. Blast. And there damn well better be good Mexican food in San Francisco, because my tastes in food run about three-quarters Asian and one-quarter Southwestern American / Mexican / Tex-Mex / you get the idea.

I'm going to commit suicide before the Saguaro Unplugged concert on Tuesday. I've been sleeping during guitar class instead of actually, y'know, playing. Yes, I know I had this coming. And, for those who are interested, I'll be performing "Space Oddity" by David Bowie with Sam, the latter of whom is going to end up pulling a good share of the weight since he's badass on the guitar already.

NSA Prom this Saturday; Saguaro Prom next Saturday. I've got such a rousing social roster up this month, considerably less hectic than last month's. Seriously, I've got high hopes for the proms this year. I've already accepted that (at least at the latter prom) the music is going to suck ass, but beyond that, it'll be good times. Which reminds me that I need to make those reservations at PF Chang's goddamnit I completely forgot about that until now.

I fail as a good date. I won't be getting none after prom now.

I need to start writing again. I miss it so very much, and I've gotten so very rusty.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

2:46 PM

I have stabbythings.

Current Sound: Tenkuu no Escaflowne -- "Kaze ga Fuku Hi"

First weekend at home in over a month. It feels so good. I slept until noon. I've got a day I can do absolutely nothing with, though as soon as I finish this I'm off to work out.

So, my Instruments of Deth arrived from Chinatown in the mail today. I got a kick-ass naginata (Japanese glaive) that's only an inch shorter than I am with golden sakura nuts around the hilt, and Sam got a lovely Tai Chi sword with an elegantly simple yin-yang design on the hilt. I've decided that I'm keeping them both, after I've sharpened the blades. Ornamental swords my ass. I want to know I have something dethly on my wall, not a purty decoration. Naginata has been my favorite weapon for a while now. It's part bo staff, which is the weapon in which I am most proficient and feels most natural to me, and part blade, which can be used to stab at people, and that's cool. For anybody who ever read Tamora Pierce, naginata was Kel's weapon of choice in the Protector of the Small quartet. That and watching the end of the Narnia movie with my family makes me want to re-read all those books, especially the Song of the Lioness quartet. I thought the Narnia movie was quite lacking (I thought the book was too when I read it; it came off as dry and sterile), but seeing the battle scenes reminded me of those books. I really need to read the new books featuring Alanna's and George's daughter.

The Joe Satriani concert was pretty kickass. I wish I hadn't been falling asleep for the last half of it, though. I need to get my sleep cycle back to its summer state. Every time Eric Johnson played check-the-amp chords on his guitar I expected "Kaze ga Fuku Hi" from Tenkuu no Escaflowne to follow on its heels. That's what the beginning sounds like.

The English test was pretty easy; hopefully the government test will be the same. After Tuesday, I'm pretty much done with school. My AP tests will be done, and my senior year research report is already turned in. Because SUSD is run by morons we graduate June 8, which just means I'll have to sluff around school for a month. Honors Economics has far too much work for a mandatory second-semester senior-year class, but it's not a big deal. And I get to race cardboard boats in physics on the 19th. Hopefully this means I'll get back to writing more. I've written, what, one new thing this entire school year, and that was re-writing the beginning to an already-existing story. Then again, I've been trying to soak up all possible time with people before graduation, so we'll see.

The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie better not suck.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

9:49 PM

But in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on.

Current Sound: Magic Knight Rayearth -- "Zutto"

I committed to Berkeley. The door is closed on San Diego and all the other California schools. I can't guarantee that this is the road of least regrets, but nobody ever can before making a decision. We can only go by so much. I think I'll enjoy myself in the San Francisco Bay area. The BART (subway) gives me motion sickness like none other, but Bonine helps with that. It's how I will be getting around, since maintaining a car is expensive and a pain in the ass in that area. It will take some getting used to. Phoenix is spread out and having a car is a near-must, since our public transportation sucks ass, and it's too hot most of the time to walk far. I'll miss the desert. It's come to feel like home these past five years.

I've spent some time meditating on what it will actually be like to be apart from everybody I know and love since this weekend. Having actually seen the campus and been in the town, it is easier to place myself there and emulate that feeling of solitude in a huge city, without my dad and Sam there as they were this weekend. I've become rather spoiled with having everybody around all the time. It will be hard not to be able to just call somebody up and be with them in half an hour, in a familiar setting, or see my family when I get home in the evening. I am quite solitary by nature, and I like my time alone, but I love enjoyable company as well. Of course, I fear what distance will do to my relationships. I am no phone talker; I do far better face-to-face, and a deep connection comes of just being in somebody's physical presence. I know the power of a mental connection and its ability to span distance, but you know damn well what I mean when I say it's different to have people there. I've had long distance friends, but this is the first time I will be involved in a long-distance romantic relationship (first relationship at all, so it's a lot of firsts), and I know that both of us will withstand missing each other terribly, but I'm not looking forward to it. We'll visit, but plane tickets are expensive, and we're both busy people. It seems as though the rest of my friends who are leaving are in relationships with the unspoken understanding that they will terminate after college begins. Perhaps I am reading things incorrectly. I honestly do not know if that situation would be easier or harder, but regardless of that, what I have is what I want. And my friends, who have known me longer than any other friends have for any extended period of time, are staying in the valley for at least a couple of years.

Oh well. This is nothing new to many people, and I know it's going to be just fine, regardless of any initial homesickness. As that one board in the choir room at Saguaro says, "You can't discover new... lands, places, something...unless you're willing to lose sight of the shore." I forgot exactly what it said, but that was the gist of it. And that being said, if I change my mind for whatever reason, I can still go to ASU honors college. It would be damn foolish to do that to stick with people who are staying another year or two, because most of them are planning on scattering soon, but the college itself is still making good pitches. Most of them involving me not paying for college.

The AP Calculus BC test was this morning. It was only marginally less ass-rape than I had been expecting, based on the practice test. But, as Sam pointed out, not even Chuck Norris could answer the last free-response question. Since it's curved at 60%, I may have gotten a 5. Tomorrow morning is the AP English Literature test, which I am not worried about a whit, since even though I may forget the formula for the arc length of a polar equation segment I sure as hell know how to write an essay, and Tuesday is the AP US Government and Politics test. Granted, College Board also runs the SATs, and that test shafted me on writing when I thought I had gotten an 800, so who knows.

I'm going to do my housing application now.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

6:49 PM

This is why we make phone calls first.

Current Sound: Nothing

So, I drove up to the Arabian Library after school to get my passport papers in line, and nobody tells me until I get there that they only do passports on Wednesdays.

Upon driving to the North Phoenix city hall, because I was told they were open until 5 and did passports five days a week, I realized I did not have an itinerary to prove that I am actually leaving the country for someplace America considers benign and not just investing in a passport for fun, or something. And this after I had frantically used their copy machine trying to beat the 5 o'clock deadline.

It was quite frustrating.

AniZona was grand times. I'll post pictures and a con report later.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

5:09 PM

Cheaper than your mom. And that's cheap.

Current Sound: Tokyo Babylon -- "Motor Drive"

So, again, I have not been around much lately, and I won't be until mid-May, at least. My senior year research report is due in two weeks, AP tests are in early May, and between all that, the economics teacher is an ass, AniZona is this weekend (w00t!!!!), next weekend is Calculus Camp, and the weekend after that I am going to San Fran to tour UC Berkeley. And somewhere in there I'll take up the offer to tour the Barrett Honors College at ASU. And, oh, yeah, family and friends and schoolboys warrant tending to as well.

In short, fear not. I have not abandoned thee. I will be a slacker on commenting for a while, and I won't be on AIM unless necessary for school. Both LJ and AIM are traps that can waste hours, and those hours are not something I can afford to waste screwing around.

On another note, I hate everybody making it to Anime Expo this year.

This past weekend was amazing. I went on the physics trip to Magick Mountain in Valencia, drove back on the bus (two nights in a row on the bus, since the school does not want to pay for a hotel room), got home, and left two hours later for the airport to visit UC San Diego. The school is far stronger than I had anticipated. I can easily see myself doing undergraduate school there. Their biological sciences are supurb, and they (like all other schools) promise endless graduate school opportunities. And, the school is within walking distance of the beach. And the coolest store in the entire world is on the campus. It's a quicky-mart called "The G-Spot" with the subtitle "Cheaper than your mom... and that's cheap!" But they don't have a DDR machine.

Annie, I think you need to check on this. I don't see our names up there. I think they're supposed to be.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

12:08 AM

"I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine."

Current Sound: The Beatles -- "Let It Be"

I have no words for my love for Steve-o right now. That is such a fetching rendition of me. All the resemblence is in the expression.

I will, for all purposes, consider my rough draft due Thursday, given that jack will get done over AniZona weekend, and that is the way I like it. And I hope that all of you have registered, because they're sold out. No waiting in line at the door. And it will be the first time I've been in the cosplay since A-Kon a few years ago. Boss. Annie's costumes are going to be on parade; we get to be the models.

We are going to rock the stage.

If you are going to be staying in my room, email or call me ASAP so we can get a head count and divvy up cost.

I have managed to narrow my college choices down to four. I think.

University of California, San Diego
University of California, Berkeley
University of Arizona
Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University

I will be visiting UCSD on Saturday with Samson in tow, as he has a long-standing interest in the UC system, and I will be visiting Berkeley on the weekend of the 28th. That gives me a good two days after to decide and commit someplace. Friday is the physics trip to Magic Mountain (I had no idea that was a Six Flags until a few days ago), with a turn-around time of about two hours between arriving back home at 2 AM and leaving for the airport at 4 AM. Assuming that the bus gets back as scheduled. Hello, sweet, sweet sleeping pills.

Kaity had her sweet 19th birthday today. We had a sweet time with Annie and Whitney involving balloons. It has been too long since the reunion of the quad. She is the Fuuma to my Seishirou and will be cosplaying the Fuuma to my Seishirou at AniZona, even though she is about nine inches taller than me. It's the spirit that counts. We've kind of given up on looking legit given that our Kamui is taller than me. Everybody throw an uke-pie at her blog.

Friday, March 31, 2006

8:40 PM

A mostly music-related post, all things considered.

Current Sound: Buck-Tick -- "Doubt 99" (Hide cover)

Well, the final verdict is in on those last two schools.

University of California, Berkeley: Accepted
Stanford: Rejected

Which is a total of eight acceptances and one rejection. Oh well. Now I have no excuse to stall anymore, though.

I've been quite spoiled today; two packages for me arrived in the mail, one from Corey of Assemblage 23 music (Thank you! Thank you! You made me grin with love.), and a belated birthday package from Cousin Chris, along with Chrissy's pagkage.

A surprisingly high number of anime character file songs are ripped directly off incredibly popular English-language songs. I noticed this when I was on an 80's rock binge yesterday. This is really dipping into my old-skool bag of fun. Listen to these songs:

Bon Jovi -- "Run Away"
Fushigi Yuugi (Suboshi character file) -- "Never Get Away"
In this pair, it is obvious where the opening to "Never Get Away" came from. Listen past the cloudy-mystic sounds at the beginning to the piano.

The Beatles -- "Across the Universe"
Magic Knight Rayearth (Lantis character file) -- "Across the Universe"
They both contain the line "Nothing's gonna change my world", though the instrumentation is not similar.

(I don't know what song; somebody on my friends list with a working knowledge of English-language rock listen to "For Real" and help me out here.)
Gensoumaden Saiyuki (first opening) -- "For Real"
It's the opening guitar. Dead on. This is quite a bit bolder than the obscure character songs that were written circa 1995, when both Rayearth and Fushigi Yuugi were soon to be only available as fansubs in the west for a long time (and damn, do I remember watching those fansubs in sixth grade. I'm so old skool.) One morning before marching band I heard That Song and, in a 5:00 AM confusion, thought 96.9 was playing J-rock. It was pretty surreal.

I've finally replaced the car adapter for my iPod that went missing when my car was jacked. Damn, it's hard to go back to CDs after having been spoiled with an iPod in the car. I've also gotten a decent protection case for my iPod and some noise-cancelling headphones, since those iPod earbuds quite frankly suck, aside from the fact that they won't stay in my ears, and I've never had noise-cancelling headphones. Those should come in handy on upcoming bus trips. Now, if only Annie hadn't sold her Nintendo DS to somebody else for $20.

I'm getting excited for AniZona. I just need to knuckle down and work this weekend. I have to be at school at 7:55 AM tomorrow for a practice AP test, with all the poor ~~underage~~ saps who have to take their SATs.

12:34 AM

"Would you ever say to me 'Stop. If you love me, stop.'?"

Current Sound: Ishida Yoko -- "Proof of Life"

God damn it.

Nobody said this was easy. But no one ever said it would be this hard.

Oh well. Everything will be all right, in the end. No matter what. I refuse to accept anything less.

I get to go to California in a week for the physics trip. That should prove amusing. The week after that is AniZona, and the week after that is Calculus Camp. Serious party up in the hizzah. April is going to be one hell of a month. In every way that sentence can mean. And it will go by too quickly for so many reasons.

This is my tentative cosplay list for AniZona:

Mad Hatter (per Annie's Alice in Wonderland designs; not Angel Sanctuary)
Dead!Seishirou
X!Seishirou (for the group, for the tradition)
Tokyo Babylon!Seishirou (especially if Tara is cosplaying Subaru)

Tell me, preferably sooner than later, if I'm in any groups I've forgotten about.

I'd considered cosplaying Subaru for a change--quite a change; I naturally slip into Seishirou-mode far more easily--but I think I'd look rather foolish wearing the tight Tokyo Babylon OVA outfit. My body is markedly feminine, especially around the hips, and Subaru is relatively straight-up-and-down, and his ass is flat as a board. At least as Seishirou I wear dress pants with enough volume that my legs look straight. I am just the right height for jailbait!Subaru, and obviously far too small for anything!Seishirou, so per precedent I do not see why size should stop me from giving Subaru a try. Except my seme pride.

Oh, yeah. Seishirou is a hell of a lot more fun.

I am greatly amused by third graders who write poems about diversity that contain the line "There is a God and false gods". Wonder how that kid was raised. And, apparently Mexicans eat burritos and tacos and listen to Spanish music. And Americans listen to heavy metal and eat American food. No, I do not think I am a bad person for taking sardonic amusement in things elementary school kids write. What the hell else was I supposed to do during Spanish anyway?