Lissiel's Journal

Assuming I don't fail any of my classes this semester please, self, please get your shit together, I will have a BA in roughly 11 weeks.

That game company is talking to M about coming up this summer, or early in the fall, to work full-time for them. So! We may be moving to Seattle after all, and pretty soon. geezus I wish they'd just make a decision about something all this back and forth is driving me crazy.

If we do move in, say, late August, it would make sense to have the wedding before we go. So June or July. Er. I think we're going to do super-soakers and Guitar hero. Because formal receptions are for pussies.

After that... um. I have no idea? The graduate program (in medieval lit! OMG YOU GUYS, A WHOLE PROGRAM IN MEDIEVAL LIT. O.O) that I'm interested in, I learn I should have applied to back in November? Er. So. I fail! I guess I'll do something non-or-only-vaguely academic next semester and try to apply for next year. What that might be, though... um. Is a good question!

I'm hoping, since spring break is coming up, and we're starting to look like we know what's going to be going on, a bit, that I'll feel like doing some art. I haven't drawn anything serious since December, and I really, really don't like that. Though I did draw a set of dr. seuss-esque emu and kiwis down the sides of my notes last week that turned out pretty cute. Not much beats tiny panicking fluffy birds. <3

And that's what I know! What are you guys up to?

I got my hair cut. It has long-ish layers now, that make it curl instead of frizz weirdly. The lady took more off the ends than I wanted though. It's maybe three, four inches from my belt? At least I don't need to worry about tucking it into my pants anymore.

Have read Rabbit, Run, Native Son, Evolution and Why it Matters, The Analects of K'ung Tsu, The Daxue (Higher Education) and Xiao Jing (Classic of Filial Piety), half of Graham's Disputers of the Tao, On the Warrior's Path, and The Art of Peace. Since two weeks ago. And I still have quite a bit more I'm supposed to have done. Why did I think 18 units was a good idea again?

Been playing with the slow cooker I got for Christmas. I love how convenient it is, but somehow everything I cook in it sucks. Tasteless, and unevenly cooked. :/ I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Valentines day is coming up. I guess this year we should really do something for that. Er. That doesn't involve taking the long weekend and just sleeping and catching up on homework. Probably. I don't know.

I don't know if it's the stress, or the graduation anxiety, or the lack of sleep and not remembering to eat, or some hormonal/neurochemical thing, but I've really been having a hard time, lately. I'm tired, and cranky, and I don't want to talk to anyone or do anything but sit around in my pajamas with M and play video games. Also, people have been writing SO MUCH SHINY, and I haven't had the spare time/energy/emotional well-being to read any of it for weeks and eeeeeeeeh. *whine, bitch, moan, complain*

This is why no one has heard from me for weeks. H-hi guys! I still love you! Tell me what you're doing. <3

-Walked Finn around an increasingly-crowded local park. Christmas displays are A++. Cute construction-worker girl who petted Finn, A++. Creepy-ass hordes of drunk-at-10am businessmen? F-.

-Went to class. This should not feel like an accomplishment.

-Did not nap! (self, why are you so tired all the time these days, wtf?)

-Sat around on the couch for a few hours, vaguely screwing around on the computer and sulking for all the time that I wasn't napping.

-Did my reading for American Lit. :Db Poe is kind of fucking awesome; somehow, I always forget.

-Realized that filing my graduation paperwork meant I had to start figuring out wtf I'm going to do with myself after school. Since it looks like we won't be moving to Seattle after all--or, at least, not in January anyway--I get to start back at the beginning on this. Just as I had gotten accustomed to the idea, too. >:( Spent two hours or so crying/freaking out my dog.

-Half-way done with the AmerLit paper I was supposed to be writing yesterday. >.> This is...like progress?

-Lost two turns to re-reading bits of Z/C/S christmas-fluff. Did not pass 'Go'. Paper still incomplete.

-Moar screwing around on the internet, IJ not least. Sigh. Can I just hide now?

I think I might attempt Nanowrimo again this year. There's kind of a lot going on, and although I have a tentative timeline for things, I still don't have my plot actually laid out, and the chances of my actually making 50,000 are slim-to-none, but...

I have some characters I really like, male and female characters I think I can feel good about. I have a setting in the north of France in 1942-3, though I still need to narrow it down to a city. I have some idea of what needs to happen, and how it should end.

I think this year, though, what I'm going to do is set up a filter on this journal and post bits of the story to it as I write--character sketches, scenes, worldbuilding, etc--to see if having it collected will help. And since I'm going to do that, I'm wondering if there's anyone who'd like to see it? I can't make any promises on quality, since this'll be pretty hastily written and non-edited, but...If people are curious, feel free to comment here and I'll add you.

/edit: ALSO! If you're also participating this year and want to be writing buddies, I'm Mitsuhachi over there too. :)

My capstone class is doing a student-led writing workshop tomorrow, for which they've asked us to bring a page of fiction that we've written. Ok. So I am going through my documents folder, looking over the stuff I've written. And I've come to something of a conclusion.

I CAN'T BRING THIS SHIT IN. D:

I have:

1. Ridiculously old things that make ME cringe to read, much less allowing anyone else to see.
2. Weird romance-bits--queer things, polyamourous pairings, really broken and unhealthy relationships. Just. No. Not in a class where I have to convince people I'm not a creepy perv for the rest of the semester, thank you.
3. Fanfiction. Right. Because that's a good way to get people to take your writing seriously. But that's the thing! *I* don't take my writing seriously anymore! And I don't even think I have anything where I could file off the serial numbers and have it still make sense/have a point.

*cries* I'm going to die. T^T

Edit: In case anyone wanted to know how my trip down south with the GPS worked out...

Awesome: Including Native American storytelling in an American Lit class. Points for social awareness and non-Eurocentrality!

Not awesome: Including Navaho death curses, to be read OUT LOUD in class. See also: the implication that all (or even most) Native American medicine men would have anything to do with such a thing. Because. HELLO, DEATH CURSE. You. Really not getting it here, teach.

Not awesome: William Bradford and his racist "G-dless Savages, OHNOEZ!!" bullshit.

Very awesome: Rick Mora: Kind of exoticism/fetishization GO!, but still. aksdg;ahsdg;lkjHE'S REALLY HOT, OKAY?


In other news, Finn is still really cute, and really dumb. <3

It's been a while since I had something to post, so. SPAM!

1. We saw Elizabeth: The Golden Age last night. ( Generally, I liked it. )

2. I wrote an essay about the Faerie Queene today, and only used the word "whore" twice and never had to use the words "penis" or "misogyny". I feel accomplished. <3

3. My strawberry plants! They have little green berry-lets on them! Eee! *thrilled*

4. I've mentioned, lately, things like wanting to have candles in case the power goes out or a first-aid kit for my car or an out-of-state emergency contact, yeah? And a lot of people have been kind of like..."that's weird. Why would you do that? Are you a crazy person now?" And, I mean... Aside from the fact that when you spend as much time walking into things/scraping yourself up/ getting random headaches/whatever as I do, you'd have to be crazy NOT to want tylenol and band-aids on you. *lol* For one thing, what does it hurt? And for the other, well...

I think I've mentioned to anyone who'd read this that sometimes I have nightmares, yeah? ( cut for those who don't care ) Long story short, I'm not crazy, and this is probably a pretty safe thing to humor me on, for those who were wondering. :D

5.Camping! This summer! Anybody interested? It'd be fun to do a family-oriented kinda thinger, but it'd also be fun to do a people-our-age kind of thing too-- burn some marshmallows into irrecognizablity, roast some corn-on-the-cob? Eeeh? come on you all know you want to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Blank_White_Cards

Basically, the idea is that you have four to ten players, who each show up to play with five to ten pre-made cards (fewer if there are more players, more if there are fewer players). These cards can have anything they want on them, though the usual format is a)a title, b)a picture--stick figure or mona lisa, doesn't matter--and c)a rule/point value. There are also a number--100+--blank white cards to be filled in during play. Play is over when everyone is out of cards and/or no more cards can be played, and theoretically whoever has the most points at the end "wins".

There's a bit at the end though where everyone goes through the cards and cards people like are put aside for the "starter" deck for next time and cards people hate go in the "suck box". Most players take getting more of their cards into the preferred deck as winning, rather than the arbitrary designation of points.

I. Would really love to play this game. Please tell me someone else finds this concept as entertaining as I do. *hopeful face*

/edit:"Dickens remains the most precious imperishable afterimage of the juridical exfoliation of these entities, unimaginable crystalline growths like some cancerous Antarctica."
--from Jameson's Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, courtesy of other english-geek friends.

I want to slap this author for violence against the English language. D:

How you can tell you've spent too much time studying lately: it's almost dawn and you're so used to staying up you're not even tired yet. *headdesk*


Things that are happy-making, in no particular order:

Spring Break! Whoot. Hanging out with people, and seeing family and going to the Egyptian Museum, and maybe a puppy. :D Good times, good times.

Tomorrow Matt is coming over for dinner, and we're gonna have fondue, and maybe play some Smash Brothers or watch a movie or something.

I got back all but one of my midterm papers and tests, and so far the lowest I've gotten has been a 91%. Rock. After the way I screwed around my first year of college, I thought my GPA was pretty well shot, but SJSU doesn't carry over GPA from your previous institutions, so if I can make straight A's this semester, that means I'm rockin a 4.0. Sweet deal.

My Age of Elizabeth teacher is taking suggestions on the historical fiction we're going to read at the end of class, y'know, "look at the cover, read the blurb on the back, check the number of pages, and let me know if you find something that looks good." She specifically told us to go look for one that was "hot". "Think how much faster it'll read if there's a lot of sex!" she tells us. I hunker down over my desk and laugh until I can't breathe. Oh man, such a crush on her. <3

Meine Liebe. Looking at the character design, you'd swear this would devolve quickly into big big yaoi plotlessness, but it actually ends up being gratifyingly political and fun, and the characters are interesting if somewhat juvenile (well, it IS a school-anime, so I shouldn't be suprised, and the adults are REALLY interesting). *shrugs* I enjoyed it, and will definitely watch the first season if I can find it somewhere. Loveless this is not, but still pretty good.

Poked more at the Cyberpunk!Mercenaries story I was working on. Eh. You'd think heist-fic would be exciting to write. I dunno. My characters still want to just sit around and talk instead of actually doing anything, and the pacing=fail. *sigh*

Midterms. Argh. For the record? Everyone ever hates Leviticus. Even G-d hates Leviticus.

In better news! Awesome things!

1. Tiny little houses. I don't know what about these I love so much, except that they just seem so cozy and easy and you could take them anywhere. /gypsy

b.Alien Lolcat alksdhghak You guys. I don't even know what torchwood is. Just. ALIEN LOLCAT. a;lsjdghga. Go read it.

III.Space 1889: The Adventure Of Le Cirque De Venus A Victorian Ball in Space. Steampunk FTW. You all have no idea how much I want to get a group together for this. *puppy eyes*

Four. Michael's Birthday. Went to the Melting Pot for slightly expensive but really really good fondue dinner (cute place with good service too, btw. I'd definitely recommend it for those of you who might have a date to impress at some point), and then went to see Diary of the Dead after. ( Good date movie, Y/Y? )

Y'know, like ( Punky Elf-girls Riding the Train! )

I really like this genre: an otherwise completely realistic (if frequently somewhat dystopian) setting that also includes elements of traditional fantasy/fairytales! It's frequently featured in the novels and short stories of Neil Gaiman, as well as the World of Darkness role-playing games. It's related to but not the same as cyberpunk! I really wish I knew where to find more novels/graphic novels/games/etc. that featured it. :(

Um?

So, I'm taking a couple of classes. SJSU's dicking me around (surprise surprise)and saying that I can't take gen ed classes because they haven't decided what my classes from before will transfer as, and a lot of the upper division classes require you to have finished your gen ed and also to have taken a test to prove eng 1b writing skills (which, if they make me take it, will really annoy me. Just for the record.) But! I've gotten into a couple:

The Bible as Literature: Looks like it's going to be really interesting, and the teacher, while personally clearly devoutly Christian, is at least trying to talk about other perspectives on the text, and ways that the text influences non-religious parts of American culture from the arts to civil rights to current science. Unfortunately, she thinks we're all idiots. She asked a whole room full of upper division college english majors today whether any of use knew what a "motif" was. Seriously. Seriously, you guys. *cries, a little*

The Age of Elizabeth: A look at both the ways that Elizabeth herself used language--in speeches, and in court documents/proceedings, and her poetry-- and the ways she influenced various important creative minds of the day. Any class that gives me an excuse to make fun of Sydney's raging crush on Elizabeth is a good class. Also? My teacher is really really cool. <3

YogaAikido: I know, some of you are reading that going ??? The story goes that I got 45 minutes through my first day of yoga at school today before I realized I'd gotten into an aikido class by mistake. We're in the middle of a throw, and I say to my partner "you know, I realize yoga styles can be really different and it's been a while and all, but..." And then my partner went "Ur so dum. Lolz." And I facepalmed a lot. And then the teacher has to come over and find out why we're both down on the mat laughing ourselves sick. :Db I feel like I ought to be embarrassed but at this point I'm just still too amused to feel it. *shrug* But it was really fun, and I've been wanting to do aikido at some point anyway, and I already had the add code, so I'm gonna stay with it. :D

Internship Not sure where yet, but I have an appointment to meet with the coordinator, and we're going to work out the details. I'll proof-read, which is always fun Seriously, getting paid to read stuff. A+ But on the other hand, I'll have to meet new people and deal with them. It will probably be scary and awful. Some of both. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for me.

I was telling my mom how ridiculously formulaic my process for writing english papers is, a while ago when she was making >:/ faces about writing them. Since teachers seem to like the result, I told her I'd write out the basic formula for her sometime, and since I'm writing it out anyway, I figure I might as well post it for you all to see. It might be helpful to someone, I guess. ( Under here. )

Excerpt from "On Beauty and Being Wrong," by Elaine Scarry, from a section detailing an episode in the Odyssey:

"The moment of coming upon something or someone beautiful might sound--if lifted away from Odysseus's own voice and arriving from a voice outside him--like this: 'You are about to be in the presence of something life-giving, lifesaving, something that deserves from you a posture of reverence or petition. It's not clear whether you should throw yourself on your knees before it or keep your distance from it, but you had better figure out the right answer because this isn't an occasion for carelessness, or for leaving your own postures wholly to chance. It's not that beauty is life-threatening (though this attribute has sometimes been assigned to it) but instead that it is life-affirming, life giving; and therefore if, through your careless approach, you become cut off from it, you will feel its removal as a retraction of life. You will fall back into the sea, which even now, as you stand there gazing, is only a few feet behind you."

"The beautiful, almost without any effort of our own, acquaints us with the mental event of conviction, and so pleasurable a mental state is this that ever afterwards one is willing to labor, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction--to locate what is true."

We may suck a lot, as a species, and we'll probably kill ourselves entirely within the next hundred years; but our perception of, awareness of, and response to beauty is a pretty good reason for humanity to have existed.

So, a couple of things:

1. We got home ok, and had a nice easy trip, and I miss everyone already. Like. A lot. Plz to expect numerous letters, and not to hesitate to write. Also, big thank-yous to everyone who came to my party on friday: it was such fun to get to see you all. Really made for an awesome send off. And lexi, sorry you couldn't make it- feel better, ok?

2. Everyone needs to go out right now- literally, as soon as you're done reading this, go- and buy a copy of The Chalice and The Blade. I read it on the way home, and. I think it might be the most powerful, important book I've ever read. Which. Yeah. I can't even. Just go read it.

3.Is anyone still checking the Halloween sticky? I keep adding new links and stuff, and some of them are really cool. Probably I will keep adding until halloween itself, so..

4. I'd thought so before, but figured I was just being homesick and should stick it out and not be dumb, cause I mean... Who WOULDN'T want to live in Honolulu? But, um. Apparently, I don't. It's a great city, and it's been a really great experience, living on my own like this, and getting to live in such a different kind of cultural and physical environment, and I'm really grateful for it, but. I miss my friends and my family and I'm sick unto death of summer.

So Michael and I are looking, sort of preliminarily, into alternatives. And I was kind of wondering, I know some of you know the CalState system, either living in say, San Jose, or else actually attending, say, East Bay. And if you have any thoughts on either the cities or the campuses, we'd love to hear about them.oh please g-d I want to go home please let something look doable.

So, even though I, like a big moron, didn't reserve my copy of Deathly Hallows, I went down today and got my purple wristband and am going to diligently line up tonight starting at 11 hoping to the bottom of my black little heart that the local Borders will be benevolent and give me my long-awaited sexy-ambiguous-villain fix. Pretty much this means that either a) I'll get it tonight, and then stay up all night reading it in one sitting like I did for all of the other books, or b) I won't get it tonight, at which point I will have to cloister myself away from all human contact until I can get my greedy little hands on a copy, for fear of spoilers *cough cough NEW YORK FUCKING TIMES cough*. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Also, I noticed when I went to pick up my wristband that among the scheduled festivities at the Borders is a planned "Great Snape Debate". I got all excited for about a minute and a half before I tried to picture this and got a mental image of myself decking some fifth grader dressed up in a Hermione costume for badmouthing my favorite character and... it just didn't seem like a good idea. Particularly since there remains the slight possibility that he actually IS evil, at which point I'd feel pretty dumb.

Who else is waiting anxiously?

Last year, about this time, I read this book Melusine on the plane here, yeah? And I spent from about the first chapter on going "...omg, this is terrible. I've never read such terrible writing, this has nothing to do with anything. And...gratuitous girlfriend syndrome! Oh, onventions of the fantasy genre, ilusm. In the special way that involves viscous hate." And yet, couldn't put it down. I read the whole thing in one sitting and then went, "wait, that's the end? That sucked!!! What happened next?! *seethe*"

So my question is, now that I'm looking for new books for girls week and I figure no one else will want to read critical essays in pop culture when I'm done with them, buying the sequel is an awesome idea, y/n?

Also, has anyone read any ellen kushner? I'm told that Thomas the Rhymer and Swordpoint: A melodrama of manners are both supposed to be excellent, but I've never heard of her, and I'd love a second opinion if anyone has one. :/

Lastly? OMG NEW HARRY POTTER. That is all.

I know you all really wanted me to keep adding to my retarded j-pop!love post below. You'll just have to wait for the next one. I know, how will any of you endure the wait?

But yeah, I was doing some reading this morning, and I noticed this technique, where one writer with take tiny details (the poster on the subway car; a certain house in a town, the materia so and so is given to train with)that show up in another writer's work, and then use them in her own writing, so that the two works start to play off of each other and reflect on each other. It shows up a lot in amfic, but very rarely in published fiction (lovecraft's mythos being the only example I've been able to think of) and I LOOOOOOVE. It lends such a sense of depth and community to both works, and yet... yeah. :( I wish people did things like that more often in published fiction.

also, my boss at work and this other woman that we work with brought in a bga full of trashy romance novels they're sharing around, and they were like, you should read some, they're really fun. And I was like, "...um, no." Not cause I object to trashy novels-- I'm not that hypocritical yet-- but because i find that I really can't deal with the child!porn. So, if anyone can think of a politic way to tell one's boss "I'll start reading romance novels when the industry admits that women grow up and that helpless little girls aren't sexy," I'd love to talk.

Also, my keybord is effed up again. :/ Michael ordered me a new one this morning (<3) but in the meantime, I'm using his plug-in WOW keyboard, and nothing is in the right place, and I keep mis-typing things. D:

Lastly, 6 days til I get to see my family again! Yay!