"Terrifying things, steel things, metal things, things with cylindrical bodies and multitudinous jointed limbs. Things without flesh and blood. Things that were made of metal and plastic and transistors and relays, and wires. Metal things. Metal things that could think. Thinking metal things. Terrifying in their strangeness, in their peculiar metal efficiency. Things the like of which had never been seen on the earth before. Things that were sliding back panels...Robots! Robots were marching..."
("Curiosities", F&SF, Oct/Nov 2004)

I'm still intermittently going over and annotating old LJ entries. It started as a quick skim-through to make sure I wasn't saying anything offensive to prospective employers, but I think I've only had to edit one or two entries for content, and iirc those were to remove mean comments about specific professors. All I'm really finding is a late high school/college student baring 90% of her real life to the world, ups and downs and cussing and rants and all, which is pretty much what I was going for.

( Life update of banality )

Gave blood today, then went directly to karate. In retrospect, this was not one of my better ideas. It all worked out, though.

Packing. Have to get up insanely early tomorrow in order to get on a train in order to get on another train which will take me to the airport where I will get on a plane to Florida. I will try to post con updates from there, depending on whether I have internet.

Back on Sunday. Wish me luck!

( Haikus! )

(jacked from gerbilicious85): http://www.timecube.com/ --> I couldn't take more than a couple of paragraphs, but if you scroll down to near the bottom, there's a link named "Proving Human Stupidity". All I could think was, "Why didn't he put that at the top of the page?"

( Read more... )

And the sunset was like an oil painting of the ocean, vibrant orange and pink and sea green over the black trees. We stood, transfixed, aware that we had places to be, but that they could never override this ephemeral beauty. And within seconds it faded, without even a camera to hand, but imprinted forever on our memories. The moon rose full.

Later, walking to our hall photo at LPAC, we looked up and saw it being devoured by the dragon. Darkness crept over its face, obscuring the bright features, and the stars came out. I wore my forest-green cloak, he wore a borrowed trench coat and carried a pimptastic cane and a small white dog. The photo took moments; from there we swept on to Paces, but found they were out of milkshakes. Strife! We adjourned to the Herb Garden in Tarble Courtyard, where we draped across a long wooden bench, his head in my lap, dog and cane at hand, and watched the moon vanish. The silhouette of Clothier Tower lent the scene a Gothic majesty, further enhanced by the a capella choir practicing nearby. Have you ever had one of those moments where you feel like you're in the most emotionally powerful scene of a blockbuster movie? The choir sang, the wind calmed, and the last sliver of the moon vanished beneath the Earth's onrushing umbra. The sky was a velvet blue-black, with stars liberally added in spite of our proximity to Philly. We began to talk about the moment we went from "friends" to "friends+", and how it was so gradual that, like a creeping eclipse, we were never quite sure where one ended and the other began.

The choir fell silent. Somewhere down the hill a train rumbled by. "This seems like a good anniversary," he said. I agreed.

The choir broke into "The Star-Spangled Banner" in six-part harmony. The moon was a dusky red, swept with shadows from the rim of the world. We kissed, and - I swear to God I'm not making this up - as I raised my head, a brilliant meteor shot across the sky, neatly framed between two trees.

Ever feel like you're in a movie? The kind that leaves you gasping, filled with love, inspiration, and a fresh purpose with which to go out and conquer the world? We strolled home, drunk with love, and I sat down to write. And though I know the next few days (weeks? months?) will be difficult, I know that he will be there. And things will be better.

Happy First Anniversary, deathbysnusnu - may there be many more. My love for you beats out even my love for adorable fuzzy animals.

And now I'm going to go watch the Sox make baseball history.


( Oh yeah, and here are some quizzes. )

[[6/21/08 - Now I'm just sad. :( ]]

Many Swatties have pointed this out before me, but I'll just say that when your college's own network registry system boots everyone off the internet for TWO DAYS, it's bound to raise blood pressure a little. But just because deathbysnusnu is a dorm tech and thus the physical embodiment of technology services on the hall does not mean he can always magically fix things. I know most of the overt hatred is all in good fun, but let's just keep it that way, folks.

Gah! Crazy school, makin' me think an' stuff. 4.5 credits of brain-melting goodness.

( My Courses (+ some description) )

Feeeelthy bathroom update: the yellow bucket spontaneously vanished, I fixed the toilet with my Magic Toilet Touch, the shower suddenly drains again...now all we have to worry about is the white cockroach-killing powder all over the floor, which apparently doesn't work. While it is still vaguely amusing to open the bathroom door and shout, "Run, run, my minions! FEAR YOUR GOD!!!" and watch about twenty little black bodies scurry frantically for cover, it would be very nice if they were to leave. Exterminator comes tomorrow, apparently. I guess our whining finally reached some sort of critical mass or something.

In more mundane news, our milk went bad. AGAIN. I blame the minifridge for sucking. This has happened to me so many times in the past, oh, THREE MONTHS, that I've just about given up on milk as a beverage. I find myself suspiciously sniffing just about everything I drink now. Discovered a temporary solution in that Essie Mae's sells large cartons of soymilk now, as well as whole gallons of raspberry-iced-tea-flavored junk. Since I often skip dinner before karate, I can use my extra meal credits to keep us in beverages for the entire year. I'm willing to put up with this strange "bean-milk" in my breakfast cereal if it means never again having to face some of the gastronomic agonies I suffered over the summer.

we're the pirates who don't do anything

[[4/6/08 - Yeah, I could've saved myself a lot of grief if I'd just dropped CS right then and there. Since dropping physics was not an option, I got to tough it out. Whee, more fun to come.]]

Woke up to the ML fire alarm at 9:30. Good morning, Swarthmore! Turns out the city water pressure suddenly spiked and they had to relieve the pressure in the sprinkler system, but apparently forgot to turn off the "water pressure is going down, which means the sprinklers are probably going off somewhere" alarm, which set off the actual fire alarm. At least it wasn't 3 AM, and it wasn't raining. Looks to be a very pleasant day, actually.

I've been here since Thursday night. The barn double is HUUUUGE. The one downside so far has been the fact that the bathroom is filthy with the filth of a thousand suns. The cockroaches are small but numerous, and strangely aggressive; apparently they long ago lost their fear of light. I'm already beginning to miss the non-mutated natural glory of my Vermont spiders, earwigs, silverfish, mosquitoes, and dobsonflies the size of my hand. Cynthia, our bathroom-mate and president of Anime Club, says that they started the extermination job last week and are coming back "any day now" to finish up. There's still a ton of industrial-strength chemicals and a large wheeled bucket crouching next to the shower like some eldritch cauldron. The first time I walked in to use the sink, I stepped on what felt like broken glass. The toilet has no cover, so I know I'm going to accidentally drop my toothbrush into it at some point this year. Anyway, the inability to walk barefoot in my own room is rather unnerving and sort of throws off an otherwise perfect situation. I get the skin-crawling-and-burning sort of feeling that the insecticides have been tracked from the bathroom to the door by feet other than my own. Gross. And painful.

My dad took Alex and I to dinner at Carrabba's, then I unpacked like mad, and then I crashed. Yesterday was mostly finishing unpacking, buying last-minute stuff (binders, string), and mulimedia entertainment. Jackie's folks took us out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. Watched Tokyo Godfathers, an anime movie, last night, and loved it immensely. I think I'm going to try to find my own copy (cheap). Watched nautiluspq play FF7 for a bit and determined that I should start a game. Bought five pluots at the Co-op, mostly because I thought the name was hilarious. They look like a diseased cross between a plum and human flesh, but taste more like plums than apricots. May not be as successful as the nectarine, but they have my two thumbs up. Hooray for unnatural hybrids! Then I crashed again.

Stressing mildly about classes, writing, people. Spent the whole summer hardly seeing a soul, and you know what? It suited me. I liked it. I'm a hermit. Now I'm suddenly plunged back into the wide and monstrously complex social life of a large dorm filled with my friends, and it's slightly overwhelming, to say the least. It's nice to be back, but I think that I'm going to have to retreat hermit-like into my room at strategic intervals in order to keep from going absolutely batshit insane.

This year is going to be better. I know what to do now, mostly. For the first time I bought all of my textbooks before the Bookstore ran out. I know which food at Sharples is absolutely toxic versus mildy edible. I know how to manage my time, which clubs to (re)join, where to relax and how to arrange my workspace for maximum efficiency. I have plans, and the ability to execute them. I have more free time this year.

The long and the short of it is, I will write if it kills me. And possibly other people. And inanimate objects.

( Quiz & amusing things )

In case you don't read The Onion regularly, I'd just like to share with you their latest cover story. XDDD

I have today off because I worked Sunday. W00t for three-day weekends! Once again, work has been insanely busy, but when I describe it in my head it sounds really boring, so I'm just going to skip it. Instead, I'm going to talk about art 'n' stuff.

Basically, I do a lot of sketching. Sometimes I even ink them, scan them and/or prettify them in Photoshop. However, for the last couple years, most of them have been about characters in my novel, and I wasn't willing to show them to anyone, not even strangers on the internet. Don't really know why - just wanted to find my style first, I guess.

Well, I was in a pretty deep artistic rut this past year. I could never seem to find the images or the words. There would be occasional late nights when I felt close to my old easy style, drawing and writing without conscious thought, but I never got there, and I thought that perhaps I was "growing out of it" or something. But after a long and punishing year of school, I came home, and relaxed. I came to Vermont, and I worked - but my afternoons and evenings were my own, and slowly I began to heal.

The upshot - I finally decided that "finding style" is a stupid reason to never show anyone about 80% of my art output, so I started posting ALL of my new work on Deviantart a few days ago. All I can say is, if that's the only thing that was causing my creativity block, I'm glad I fixed it, because the posting of that first sketch was like the opening of the floodgates. I wake up in the morning, my head crammed with pictures and phrases and characters, I go to work, I work, I come home, and I create from quarter of six to approximately midnight. It's slow right now, because I'm severely out of practice with writing, Photoshop and most of my art tools, but I'm gaining ground and learning something new with each new piece. Words and images flow like water from my fingers, and I am happy.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I only have a month before I go back to school and have my creativity sandblasted into oblivion again. I'm not bashing Swarthmore, it's just a simple fact that at no point in this coming year am I going to have the kind of time to do this.

I may be sort of incommunicado for a while.

http://ricerurouni.deviantart.com/

[[3/21/08 - I miss this feeling.]]

My sister and I finally watched Eddie Izzard's "Dress to Kill" thingy. This guy is SO FUNNY. You HAVE TO SEE IT. NOW.

So I was reading this article about the Stardust mission, and found a link for a "Science in the News" chat room. "Wow," I thought innocently. "What could be more interesting?"

I spent about 10 minutes talking an old guy named Greg about observing comets before all Hell broke loose. Now I'm not normally a vindictive person, but when someone just wanders into a serious chat room and yells, "THE MOON LANDEINGS WERE FAKE THE GOVERMINT MAKE TEM UP AND FILMS THEM AT AREA 51" I just can't control myself.

A selection (See if you can guess which one I am |^_^|):

( On the moon landings, God, and alien abduction )

Moonwatcher01, whoever you are, wherever you are, you are simply AWESOME. We had so much fun with these people I think it might be called child abuse in some states.

Later we started building on Pimpwalk's conspiracy theories:

( Bigfoot, Scary People on Trains, and American Idol )

There isn't a whole lot you can say to that, so I decided to change the subject. Not that this WORKED, mind...

At last, we came to Ranch. Ranch was one of those "special" children who...well...you'd better read for yourself.

( Alliteration, Space Food, and Multiple Personalities )

Eventually my sister wanted to get online and I wasn't getting very far in the "actual science" department, so I regretfully logged off and left the room to the psychos. Honestly, I haven't laughed that hard in weeks, but there are people who spend hours and hours every day in rooms like that. I don't understand how they can do it and not...explode or something. These idiots made me want to throttle someone even as I tried to take away the pain by making fun of them. I think I've been turned off to chat rooms forever.

Well, maybe just a little more...oh god, somebody stop me, I'm addicted to mocking morons...

Oh yeah, Happy New Year, folks. Rockin' in '04.

QotD: "Fist, hand, hoocha-hoocha-hoocha, lobster." -- Eddie Izzard on the Heimlich Maneuver (not what you were thinking, you perv! |^_^|)

you're the fire inside the man

[[1/14/08 - Okay, so every once in a while I get tired of the stupidity of the internet and rail at it in my best, though feeble, mocking form. Sue me.]]

Houston, we have liftoff!

Go. Livejournal is go.

Godspeed, livejournal.

Heheheh. Me like. Funny, since I've never been much of a journal-writing gal.

I guess it all started last week when I read about a new novel coming out by K.J. Bishop called The Etched City. It looks really good and all, and I'm definitely going to read it - but I was quite unsettled to discover that the names of her two main characters, Raule and Gwynn, are disturbingly similar to the names of MY two main characters in the novel that I've beeen working on for almost a year and a half. It occurred to me that I've only shown my work to one person and I haven't taken any of the usual precautions to avoid intellectual property arguments down the line (mailing a copy of the manuscript to myself, that kind of thing).

It also occurred to me that a livejournal is a very cool and fun thing to have. Many of my friends have been using it religiously for years with little or no ill effect.

Put the two together...with this tool I can have my cake and eat it too. A privately posted and dated list of ideas which can be called up at any time is a nice safeguard.

Plus I can post whatever I want in the public part. |^_^|

I hope you enjoy what I put in these pages. I think you'll find that my life is pretty darn interesting to read about. And I think I'll find that writing in a journal really isn't that bad for the ol' idea factory.

[[10/29/07 - I have begun annotating some of my older entries for my own amusement and future reference. Annotations will always appear in double brackets and begin with the date.]]

[[10/29/07 - Of course, I hadn't grasped that one can go back and edit anything they want...And that paranoia is no way to write.]]