I Am Completely Serious

Damnit, it’s less than a week to April Fools and I still have no idea what kind of signs I’m going to put up.

-Stuff I’ve thought about but am not really into-

1) Very serious announcements for Sarah Anti-Proliferation Day, urging that all 1500 Sarahs on campus legally change their names. Will involve bulleted scare statistics about accidents caused by “a phenomenon experts call “Sarah Saturation”" - someone yelling “Sarah!” and 12% of the people within earshot stopping and looking around.

Cons: I’ve talked about this before, people’ll know it was me. And that’s boring.

2) Signs apparently conversing amongst themselves about how Lymond is back.

Cons: No one will get it. Also, the people in my lit class might see the name “Lymond” and guess it was me, because I brought up Pawn in Frankincense to extend some kind of point about Antony and Cleopatra that I’ve totally already forgotten.

3) Signs “looking for a good home” for Zapdos, Moltres, and Articuno (”spayed, housebroken; got too big for the apartment”). Thinly-veiled Team Rocket ploy. Possibly acquire some kind of toy with plastic blue/fuchsia hair and “accidentally” get some caught in the tape.

Cons: People will know it was me. I will, illogically, think this unjust.

4) MephistoPhair Job Fair, with recruiters from Shinra Corp, Ootori Medical Supply, the Knights of the Eastern Calculus, both “Magus’s Army” and “Power-Mad Minions of Lavos,” the State Alchemists, and many others!

Cons: I’m just not feeling it.

5) The Whimsical Manga Job Fair, with recruiters from Antique Bakery, Cafe Alpha, Kyoto University School of Mushi Studies, Yuuko’s Shop, Nico’s Enjo Kousai Service, and others! (Possibly combine with 4 and put both at the same time and place.)

Cons: See 4.

6) There are some signs up about plagiarism right now, saying stuff like, “Are you a plagiarist?” with statistics formatted like “four out of ten” on them. Put up signs right next to them saying, “Are you incapable of reducing a fraction?”, with course numbers for introductory calc sections.

Cons: If I did this, it would mean I was a -ing tool.

-Rejected ideas-

1) Call for submissions for a “new literary campus erotica publication DeniseXXXy!” With instructions to submit via email in RTF, PDF, or PNG format, to somebody I don’t like.

Cons: The individual in question is wealthy and brittle. Lawsuits would swiftly follow.

2) Sticking the 95 Theses on some doors.

Cons: Unoriginal.

3) Mark of Samael. Should probably use sidewalk chalk.

Cons: See 2.

4) Sloppy sorority-girl-school-of-graphic-design signs wishing Anne McCaffrey a happy birthday, with implication in text that Mercedes Lackey made them. Clipart pictures of dragons arranged so it kind of looks like they’re humping.

Cons: This is a bad idea.

5) Release the scorpions.

Cons: None whatsoever.

Today Mercury came in to work extremely hung-over. (Her makeup was nonetheless perfect.) She told me this in between moaning and carefully sipping tea in a way that didn’t require her to move her head much, and asked me not to tell Supervisor 009 - but Guy Whose Last Name Is Sexual Slang For Something* had already told her somehow.

I guess he just came onto his shift, saw who was working later on, and then the conversation went something like this:

GWLNISSFS: Oh, man, Mercury consumed considerable quantities of alcohol last night! She is probably going to be extremely hung-over when she comes in to work. Ha ha!

009: (all quiet-like) Oh, really? Ha ha.

* I don’t have blog-nicknames worked out for everyone I know, you know.

So when she saw Mercury, 009 just smiled and said, all quiet-like, “So, are you a little bit hung-over today?” And in between moaning and drinking, Mercury desultorily cursed GWLNISSFS as a base traitor.

009 sent me on the walking-around jobs so Mercury could sit at the desk, and then, apparently when the moaning did not abate, sent Mercury home. I can’t complain since she did the same thing for me the time I’d stayed up most of the night trying to game the market value of a certain item in a certain MMO, which I imagine is a slightly darker shade of moral gray. 009 is probably way too nice.

-

“Anachronism is when you have technology being used before it was invented! It happens whenever Shakespeare listens to his MP3s.”

As we all know, I am a sort of AI that constructs its methodology for communicating with others by manipulating apparently-significant phrases found in blocks of text. (I forget the term for this because it is not, apparently, significant.) If anyone ever asks me to define “anachronism,” Dinosaur Comics has given me the data necessary to proceed.

“So what’s he doing in space?”

“Character development!”

And this is what I’m going to say when someone patiently asks me to explain my brilliant literary projects.

“What’s she doing in a volcano behind enemy lines?”

“Character development!”

It’s even true! For values of “character development” equal to “losing an eye”!

bool isCharDevelopment()
{
if ( whatsshedoing == “losing an eye” && A == “CLAMP” )
{
return TRUE; // we assume
}
}

(I accidentally posted this before completely typing out the incomplete test routine the first time. Then I rewrote it again a minute later. I apologize to those of you who were shocked and dismayed by all that.)

MALCOLM: I’m going to kill myself.

HIDEO: - what for?

MALCOLM: They keep saying stuff about their souls, I don’t know how you figure out what color and texture your soul is, and if it’s shaped like a little star…

HIDEO: So you are going to kill yourself - not because of all the horrible things that have happened to you - but because there is a religious program on the radio?

MALCOLM: Yes.

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

I started reading the Lymond books again. I say “started again,” because I read the first two last year, and then decided I did not have the patience for the plot and the shenanigans and Lymond never, you know, stuttering, or conjugating a Latin verb wrong, or anything.

But recently my body has started physically rejecting books where someone has to save the whole universe by being nicer than everyone. By this I mean that I toss the books down on the floor and sit irritatedly fiddling with my hat for twenty minutes, without any conscious awareness of my own actions. Perhaps sleep deprivation and job applications are to blame. Perhaps soy cheese.

But this criteria, in any case, appears to disqualify most of my to-read pile, which due to my own emotional immaturity is saturated with just this type of scenario. Some people on my LiveJournal list are reading the Lymond series, and I thought that perhaps my system could handle a book about someone who only partly succeeds at saving relatively small numbers of people by being bitchier than everyone else. So I requested the rest of the series off of ILL to take home with me on break.

In summary: Lymond is a tool. It is a good thing he gets beat up so often, or no one would be able to stand him.

Also in summary: I keep staying up all night reading these -ing things.

( Disconnected spoiler-ridden thoughts for The Disorderly Knights )

( And for Pawn in Frankincense )

( The first half or so of The Ringed Castle )

Continue reading “[back at school]“

Gandalf is afraid of what’ll happen if he wakes him up, so he’s sitting down over here instead.

This family strongly believes that names for pets must, out-of-context, make all descriptions of their behavior appear to be excerpts from NC-17-rated crossover fanfic.

Other mental exercises:

Ophelia bitch-slapped Kim Jong Il* at dinner, and I had to separate them.

Gigi’s probably not going to come down until we get Lenin inside.

Michael Faraday is having his testicles removed next week.

* The cat was actually named after the original Pink Ranger. I have since mentally changed the attribution several times (she was Kim from Doonesbury for a while) because she’s technically my cat and I can.

My body begins to alter itself for optimal performance in a dog-saturated environment the moment I take my first breath inside the house. After five days back, today it took me about forty minutes to be completely awakened by the barking.

I could hear all four of them out on the porch, a rare moment of unity - typically they bark independently from multiple locations to achieve the best harmonic resonance with the walls. When all of them are in the same place for an extended period of time, it tends to mean that they are surrounding another animal (ie, the neighbors’ Pomeranian, a postal employee, or Papaw). So I got up to see what they were doing.

All four were lying down on the front porch, the Saint Bernard’s front paws crossed in a ladylike manner, facing in the same direction and barking with dutiful persistence at the man working on the telephone lines up on the hill. When one got tired and stopped to lick itself or chew on something it had, another raised its voice.

They had obviously been at this important task for some time. The repairman paid them no attention whatsoever.

Nonetheless concerned that they might decide to take a more hands-on managerial approach, I called for them to come inside. They immediately obeyed. Clearly they weren’t doing this for fun. This was their job.

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

…was that the ending? Really? That was the ending?

Well, I mean, okay, but…

( Spoilers )

Anyway. The first half or so was awesome, and vocabulary was abused, so, I liked it anyway. But I would have liked it a lot more if the focus of the ending had been different.

Continue reading “One For The Morning Glory, John Barnes”

Me: I don’t know, I think they pretty much topped out when they had Patrick Stewart reciting poetry.

Mom: - what?

Me: *points at the TV* Crestor? That commercial, there…

Mom: …oh.

Me: I am a connoisseur of pharmaceutical commercials.

Mom: *knits*

I read somewhere recently (I cannot now find the link) about people who roam college campuses at night, looking for girls walking by themselves. They approach them with a pamphlet full of scare statistics and say something like, “Ma’am, do you know what the leading cause of rape on campus is?”

The correct answer to this question is, of course, “Do you know what the leading cause of assault on campus is?… Assailants.”

And then you kick them in the fucking crotch.

Relatedly. Mom, thegeekgene and I were eating breakfast in a hotel dining room this morning, and Fox News was on. They were interviewing a guy whose disabled baby’s surgery money had been stolen, like they do. One of the guys asked this guy, very smugly and approvingly, “So I understand you say that the police had better find the thief before you do, is that right? Can you tell us why you’d say something like that?”

We are Fox News, and we approve of unsanctioned violence.

Also, apparently it’s bin Laden’s birthday? They kept saying, “Osama bin Laden turns fifty today,” and you could tell they were having trouble reconciling the hard-coded [string] << "turns" << [int] << "today" cheery vocal patterns to the stern ones for the "Osama bin Laden" << [string] ones. I bet some poor jerk spent the whole night hacking together a new pitch arrangement. The Obligatory Woman (v. Caucasian.0) had some pretty bad lag going on.

This week’s Minus has a Battle Angel Alita reference. This is very important news.

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

( ANTONIO: I know not why I am so sad. *is so sad* )

Continue reading “The Merchant of Venice In Brief”

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

I am writing a short story to submit to this anthology! I have had a poor attention span all this semester due to stress and death and panic and self-castigation over my failure to get at least fifty pages of the Worst Cleric Ever book finished by the end of February despite my vow to do so two months previously!

Thus I am posting my unfinished short story here! Here on this Livejournal! Its presence in public where other people can see it will, it is hoped, cause me to immediately see every single one of its flaws in glaring detail (as has been the case with my senior research), allowing me to correct them and understand in a blinding flash of semi-competence how it should be structured! And then I will hurt myself banging my head against the wall but at least I will have finished the stupid short story!

Please do not attempt to tell me things about it! That is not the point of this exercise! The comments are turned off! If you wish you may insult me in two weeks about my discomfort with the first-person POV and its result which is my heroine’s over-the-top “salty”-as-it-is-called language, because in two weeks there will be two weeks left before the first deadline!

Do not tell me I am wrong about things about Sweden! That is also not the point!

( ‘IN THE SNOW’ )

GRRRRAHHH ALL SHORT STORIES END IN A ROAR OF EXISTENTIAL RAGE YES YES I SEE IT

(It probably will not actually end in a roar of existential rage!)

This entry may disappear at some point!

Continue reading “THE SACRED ACT OF CREATION FILLS ME WITH HATE AND EXCLAMATION POINTS”

The extremely poker-faced, extremely androgynous Kino and her childlike talking motorcycle Hermes are travelers who spend exactly three days in each city they come to. The cities all have some improbable, ironic mystery to them, which Kino exposes by being impassive at someone until he says something perceptive. There is obviously some backstory, but probably no plot. (Well, in the anime; in the novel we get all Kino’s and Hermes’s backstory in the first chapter, but it sounds like the anime’s using a different one.)

I don’t get much out of this. The show’s theme, frequently elaborated upon by Kino, is “The world is not beautiful; therefore it is” - you’re supposed to find beauty in imperfections and transience of the world. The pitch could probably have just said “wabi-sabi” and left it at that.

Except that if Kino finds much of what she sees beautiful, she doesn’t show it. She’s kind of a smug little bastard, and while I personally like seeing a female anime character like that (there’s no shortage of male ones), I don’t think that kind of protagonist is appropriate to this kind of story. Kino seems to totally lack the requisite sense of wonder; she’s a cynic who doesn’t have much respect for the people she talks to, and is willing to at least entertain the possibility that they’re all just crazy. Which they mostly are, because the nature of the ironic twists required by each chapter makes it necessary. Kino carries guns, which have names, and in the novel, the two people for whom she seems to feel the most empathy are a mass murderer, and person who wants to embroil a whole city (though an over-the-top corrupt one) in rioting for revenge on a single individual.

If I’d found this five years ago, I probably would have loved it, but I’ve seen other examples of this genre before, the genre being loosely defined as “carefree person discovers strange things and people, wonders at them, and moves on.” Kino’s Journey doesn’t compare to, say, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, or Sexy Voice and Robo. I’m not really interested in going any further.

One thing that did amuse me, and will affect no other human being in like manner - Kino’s voice sounds kind of like Haruhi’s from Ouran High School Host Club, and Hermes’s sounds exactly like Kaoru’s. (They’re not the same actors, I looked it up.) Only in this way can they consummate their love!… go away. You people will never understand.