snarp’s blog

Mom: What was the big paper about?

Me: Uhhh… Iago, basically. Like, from Othello, not from Disney.

Mom: And what was the big computer assignment about?

Me: WaaaAGH I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT TO NORMAL PEOPLE!

Mom: Okay -

Me: IT HAS NO PRACTICAL APPLICATION it’s sort of a simulator, of something you don’t know what is -

Mom: So I don’t -

Me: - it’s a simulator of something that doesn’t exist! It’s like I made a toy unicorn -

Mom: Okay! Okay! I get it!

I took the DVD to anime club and told the male people to fight over it. Our Great Leader ended up taking it home. Murgatroyd turned out to be actually for some reason familiar with the franchise and I think we may have to stop being friends.

I think Suki might be the creepiest of all the creepy CLAMP manga.

I ordered the first two volumes of Princess Tutu all legal-like during ADV’s sale last week. They showed up today, along with a free Valentines Day bonus!

I googled some reviews, and apparently it’s based on a comic, and apparently no, it isn’t somehow secretly not horrible. And I can’t even really sell it, the Amazon prices are mostly sub-$4.

So do I see what happens if I try to donate it to the library, or do I abandon it in the middle of the student union, swaddled in a thin blanket and clutching a locket containing sepia-tone pictures of two individual breasts and a wisp of hair sawed off a plastic figurine?

TITUS: Man, what the fuck is wrong with me?

AARON: No, what the fuck is wrong with me! (Me!)

*LAVINIA has no frickin’ hands anymore.*

LITTLE LUCIUS: What the fuck is wrong with Lavinia?

TITUS: She’s fine! *kills her because there is something fucking wrong with him*

AARON: I work at a goth club. Bartending. In the dark. THE NASTY SYMBOLIC RACIAL DARK THAT IS

*AARON’S KID is maybe Othello? Symbolically?*

Me: So at the party last night, did you guys lock a bunch of people out in the snow for a couple minutes?

Kon: *heh heh heh* Yeeeeah.

Me: That was rather unkind of you.

Kon, eyes cast heavenward: Well, I didn’t do it.

I believe this. Because he was at the piano bench both times I went out there earlier on, and I’ll bet he was the one playing something cheerful while the people outside were banging on the doors.

I think half of the Chinese New Year party just celebrated by locking the other half outside.

WE ARE ALL THE VULTURES

WE SAY “HI”

Flickr photoset

We got three or four inches of snow last night - on top of the several inches we already had - and it’s been sleeting all day. Thus,

* “ALL CLASSES COMMENCING AT OR LATER THAN 2:30 PM CANCELED.” See, if they’d done that one hour earlier, I would have gotten my first snow day off since high school. The library’s closing at exactly 7:00, though, which is precisely when I was supposed to be there. (I’m actually kind of annoyed about that part; I needed those hours.)

This email was sent at 2:32.

* Internet’s twitchy. Who knows if this will be posted today!

* Some people ran their SUV into the guardrail right near the dorm, right in the busiest intersection. The bumper was pretty smashed, but no one got hurt. The guardrail was undamaged. It’s made of wood, which amuses me for some reason. Hummer should make a wooden version of their penis extender. No, actual wood. Think how many dudes insecure about their Americanasculinity would buy a wooden Hummer. There could be versions with wolf-related landscapes carved into them.

* I had to buy groceries today. Yes, definitely had. It’s not because I wanted to go into town (in spite of the danger of getting hit by a skidding SUV) and see how messed-up everything looked and watch the streets nearly empty with the few cars there are going really slowly, which I always think is awesome.

So I went to buy groceries. My coat, backpack, and headphones all got covered with a sort of film of ice after a few minutes. Most of the sidewalks hadn’t been shoveled, and because the snow has been melting and refreezing over and over the past couple weeks, there’s multiple layers of ice crusts under there. I was never totally sure when I was walking on pavement and when it was ice - sometimes I’d take a step and find my foot had gone down two inches further than I’d expected.

HAHAHA it was great.

* The grocery store closed early, too. The cashiers were annoyed with me for packing my stuff into my backpack rather than just letting them put it in bags. Look, I did need that stuff to make it up to the dorm intact…

* There was a little girl pulling a grocery bag home on her little toboggan. She was insanely cute. She was not unaware of this, and said “hi” to everyone she passed so they would have time to notice that she was pulling a grocery bag home on her little toboggan.

* There were also parents hauling two very excited little boys on their little toboggans, which sadly immediately lost its Cutest Thing Of The Day status when I saw the girl.

* On the way back up the hill, one of the snowplow guys passed me, going very quickly and yelling “Wooooo-hoooooo!“

* Patricia A. McKillip wrote a three-book series in which “Hegdis-Noon the Talking Pig of Hel” was an important historical figure. Hegdis-Noon has no lines.

* The “A” stands for “Actuary,” which was the career which Patricia A. McKillip’s parents dreamed of for her in their native land of Bungali.

* The second fact is not true. I only really had one.

(This text was originally posted on LiveJournal. It has been reformatted (awkwardly) for use on WordPress.)

Sodexho has generously given me a light pink plastic tumbler that turns darker pink when it gets cold, in an obvious and completely inappropriate reference to nipples. I wonder if they’re going to email me telling me to deposit it in a box someplace on campus, because I am not on the meal plan anymore and am not therefore entitled to a plastic tumbler.

Printed on it in very small type is a schedule of what I assume someone considers to be the school’s “feminist events” for the next three months. The schedule gives dates but no times, and is badly spaced and punctuated.

I mean, this isn’t a disposable cup or anything. It must have been expensive to get these things custom-made. Isn’t it kind of weird to give out a reusable item with your February-March-April 2007 schedule on it? Am I supposed to treasure it forever as a memento of “Love Your Body Day” (which is apparently on Valentines Day)? Is there going to be a whole series of collectible 2007 color-change cups?

Oh, wait, the year’s not on there.

Actually, the schedule itself is even more bizarre than its presence on a cup. Here it is (formatting, punctuation, etc. all theirs):

( commentary, or, This Plastic Tumbler Is A Story About Rape )

Edited deep in the night because my own formatting was somewhat sketchy.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is exactly zero degrees Fahrenheit outside.

When I got to the library for my midnight-to-two shift, I noticed that the inside of the bathroom window had a white coating around the edges. I poked it and left a fingerprint; it was frost. I’d never seen that before, and guessed the window must have been left open, and only been closed a few minutes before.

Later I went into the stacks to shelve. All the windows were frosted over - the condensation was freezing as it formed on the glass. The spot I’d melted in the bathroom window had frozen over again when I went to turn off the lights at closing.

I thought I was wearing my scarf today, but during lit I realized I’d actually picked up the piece of polartec fabric I’d bought to sew a bag out of. I can’t find my real scarf. I grant that the polartec’s warmer, but my throat’s still too sore for me to breathe out there without something shielding my mouth, and polartec isn’t exactly permeable. So I have been walking around all day in a partly-chopped-up polartec pseudo-scarf, with my hands over my mouth as though I am shocked and scandalized.

To round up the list of grievances, I’ve applied moisturizer four times in the past three hours, and have put some water boiling in my rice-cooker to act as a humidifier, because I can’t breathe very well in here, either. I hope it doesn’t break.

Girl Out In The Common Room: Oh, it’s going to be 21 degrees on my birthday! We could have an outdoor party!

Guy Out In The Common Room: What? No!

Another Girl: Bonfire!

Guy: No! No!

-

I still feel kind of horrible. I wonder if it would help my insomnia tonight if I held my nose and drank that alcoholic beverage I still have in the fridge? Or does the soporific effect not kick in unless you drink enough to get a hangover? Because I imagine that would be at least an equally bad way to start the week. Alcohol is mysterious.

Oh, wait, you’re not supposed to drink with cold medicine anyway.

I actually made it through my shift at work last night (even though I shouldn’t really have gone at all, because I definitely had a fever), but it’s a very good thing I don’t have one tonight. I went to bed early last night, and, seeing as I don’t have class Thursdays anyway, set my alarm for four PM. It took probably two or three minutes before I managed to wake up enough to get over there and turn it off.

With the speed and alacrity of a reptile on an ice cube, I settled myself back on the bed and slowly surveyed my room. After some minutes of careful consideration, I came to the regretful conclusion that white rice and a single brownie was probably not an acceptable diet for an invalid. Having showered (an occupation not without its perils - slipperiness, sparkly dots in front of my eyes, my own hair, water) I called Murgatroyd and asked her if she could drive me down to the store, fearing my own inadvertent annihilation if I should walk. Despite the obviously grave danger to her own health, she agreed. I bought frozen pasta dishes, and pills.

I had a dream about orangutan villains last night. They were not so bad - the real trouble began when they were exposed to The Terrible Secret Of Space, and became pirate zombie orangutans in dashing greatcoats. They would not let me pass, and I was forced to draw my sword upon them and leap from the ship (it was in water, rather than in space, by this time) and swim for shore, which was evidently the expansive Ohio shore. I decided I ought to get back to the dorm as my first order of business, and from there plan my defense. For as we all know, zombie pirate orangutans have long memories, and a thirst for vengeance matched only by their thirst for brains, rum, and bananas.

Occasionally, since I woke up, I have found myself thinking, “Okay, now that I am back in the dorm, I should really be working on a plan for dealing with those orangutans…”