Don't expect depth

2003-09-14T19:28:00.000-04:00

Looking for updates?

Blogger was starting to suck and really mess up my posts. Plus with LJ you get comments and all that nonsense. So, yeah. LJ is the real blog now.

2003-09-08T23:45:00.000-04:00

See what happens?!

2003-09-08T14:30:00.000-04:00

Hello, old friend, whose gorgeous and weird voice got me through the first half of college.

When looking for inspiration for my stories, how the hell could I forget Faith No More? Now, Mike Patton himself really brings Jin to mind for me, (I'd always figured I'd based Jin on Matt Damon's Loki from Dogma, but I wonder if there wasn't some old Mike Patton freakiness left over when I built him,) but when going back to certain FNM lyrics, I find myself thinking of Sheik.

Also Jin, but he's going to have to wait a bit.

So then, why the hell am I blogging instead of writing the story? Lazyass!

2003-09-08T01:58:00.000-04:00

Return To Paradise? Ouch. That was one harsh movie.

Actually, it was a little heavy-handed for my taste, and I had a few problems with some parts of it. In case you haven't clicked on the link, the synopsis is this: Three young men--Sheriff, Tony and Lewis--meet and have a great time in Malaysia, and they buy and smoke a lot of hashish. Tony and Sheriff (David Conrad and Vince Vaughn) leave, and Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix...who else would I be watching these days?) stays behind for a good cause. However, Sheriff has inadvertantly done something that brings the law to the place they shared, where there is still loads of hashish lying around--enough for them to charge Lewis with dealing the stuff. So years later, Lewis faces the death penalty if neither of the other two come to take their share of the blame. If two of them go, they each get three years and Lewis lives. Only one of them, and that one gets six years. Beth, Lewis's lawyer (Anne Heche,) tries to convince both men to come back and take responsibility.

So you can see, this movie started out with a really interesting premise, and had a lot of potential for interesting character ambiguity. But some of the choices the writers and directors made tended to somehow overshadow this, and in some cases the subplots totally diverted the whole thing.

SPOILERS AHEAD!
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One of the problems I had was the sudden, unexplainable and pointless affair that springs up between Beth and Sheriff. Umm, hello, doesn't he sort of expect her to do, like, anything to save the life of this boy? And he takes up with her anyway? Why they all of a sudden fall in love is just unclear. I don't really think that's the fault of the actors, both of whom were really good. (Anne Heche, dude. She's such a terrific actress, at least in the few things I've seen her in. No exception in this: she's very intense.) It seemed like another example of Hollywood having to throw in a token romance, 'cause, well...just 'cause. :/ It didn't add depth to the characters or the story. In fact, instead of adding another cool layer, it made the story sort of murkier than it had to be.

Then there was the little last minute dealie thing with Beth being Lewis's sister. Yeah, I mean, I can see how that would give one or both of the men an excuse to weasle out of doing their part to save Lewis, and it did serve that purpose in the script, but they could have done that in some other way, without resorting to the old Sudden Immediate Family Tie. ((C) George Lucas, 1980)

I also didn't like the way the ideas were forced down my throat in some instances. It could have done with a little more subtlety. Once in a while I felt like the director or writers were hand-holding me because they thought that I ("I" being the general audience) was too stupid to get the little things on my own. I have that problem with a lot of movies, though.

David Conrad as Tony was actually pretty subtle in his performance, but I tell you, his final decision was plain to me from the start, as was Sheriff's. You just absolutely knew that Sheriff was going to end up being the one who stayed. They set that up in one of the early scenes. Actually, in a few early scenes.

Vince Vaughn, he's pretty good with the whole moral ambiguity, character arc-y kinda thing. He plays Sheriff very human and faceted...erm, up until he inexplicably falls for Beth.

Joaquiiiiiiin! You are so hard to watch in these harsh movies! ^_~ But for real, though, I mean that in the best possible way. He's hard to watch because one doesn't like to see another person in pain. It's all fun and good when it's fiction, but there's something about his performance (all of them that I've seen, actually,) that always seems not quite fictional; not quite theater; not quite fake. That's a good thing because if a script or director calls for unsettling scenes, then it's up to the actor to unsettle you and make you flinch and cringe and think about what you're seeing, even if you don't really want to. In that, Joaquin succeeds, at least for me.

The name of this blog is "Don't Expect Depth," so I'm obliged to add that Joaquin gets extra points for having had long hair for the first few scenes, and long hair works very well on him. Extra points also for having a scar on his lip. Also for being all like this and whatnot.

...What?! I'm a girl, damnit. I have estrogen.

2003-09-04T23:44:00.000-04:00

My last mocker died a few days ago, and my last oriole died tonight. No more going away in the summer. No more boarding baby birds, regardless of how many years of experience the person has. And no more whining about losing my babies after this. Just wanted to update those of you who'd wondered how they were.

2003-09-03T15:51:00.000-04:00

Thanks a bunch just for being there, Min and Kris. ^_^ I'm still trying to get my last oriole back on her feet. She's a struggle, but I have a bit more hope for her than I did the other day. Thanks for hearing me out. I'll stop now. ;)

Now this is odd and stupid. This is what comes up in the ads on my blog:

"Related Searches:
• mockingbird • fanfic • fandom • backstreet boys fan fiction • bird • slash • weblog • cassowary • fics • oology"

Cassowary? Sorry, never had one. Backstreet boys fan fiction?! Blech! Let it be known right now that I absolutely stand against the image-rape that is real person fic. Even when it does happen to silly boy bands. :/ 'Course, I have to laugh when it happens to someone I loathe. But on the other hand, I have to laugh when someone I loathe falls down the stairs, too--though on the whole I know that falling down the stairs is bad.

I just can't fathom anyone doing that to someone they claim to admire. If you like someone, you don't hurt them. You save your meanness for people who suck. I guess that's where I get confused on this subject. "I really like such and such. I'm going to abuse his image, write about him and his family, and who knows, maybe write stories where he gets raped and unexplainably impregnated." WTF, people? I can't even MST that kind of crap.

A few weeks ago while googling for lines from the movie Gladiator, I saw a RP fic about Joaquin Phoenix that was so intrusive and so vile, it made me want to seek out this author and slap her in the mouth. I don't even feel quite right blogging about it in detail, because it was so sleazy. I'll just say that she took something really, really personal about him, and used it as this twisted emotional manipulation device. That made me feel really bad.

Enough about that nonsense. I'm over it.

Say, a few weeks ago, did I use the words "meh" and "Joaquin Phoenix" in the same sentence? I'm a bad girl; I should learn to reserve my judgment. I'd only seen him in two movies at the time, and one of them happened to be among my least favorite movies ever. I shouldn't have judged him by Signs; he's a wonderful actor. I was watching Quills again last night and noticed something odd: In the scenes where he's suppsed to be happy and outgoing, he strikes me as a little nervous, or fidgety or something. Maybe a little uncomfortable. But in the scenes where he's sad or afraid or even out of his mind, he's so accurate that he's almost hard to watch. I almost feel like I'm invading his space and should leave him alone. Same went with Gladiator. At the same time, I can't look away, cause damn! How does he do that? How does he do it without overdoing it? (Especially with all the cameras and mics and lights in your face and whatnot, and the fact that these films are often not shot in sequence. Movies and TV shows have got to be so hard to act for.)

Anyway, so now I have to go and watch some more movies with him in it. I saw Clay Pigeons a while back, and that was a pretty good movie. (Vince Vaughn was really goddamned scary in that. And Janeane Garofalo just rocks my socks, even if I don't agree with every little thing she says. Love. Love. Love.) So I guess this weekend I'll get down to Blockbuster for some movie luuuuuuvin. ^_^

2003-09-01T22:46:00.000-04:00

Here's something funny, though. My Dad seems to judge the difficulty of a task by which part of your body you've broken during the accomplishment of said task. For something difficult, you break your back. "Your Mom and I really broke our backs today cleaning out the car." But for something extraordinarily difficult, you break your ass.

So I knew that my Dad appreciated the wildlife work that I do when I saw him today and he told me, "You know, I know it's none of my business, and not for nothing, but I'm a little upset about what happened to your birds at this place. I mean, here you spend all summer and you break your ass raising them, and then someone else lets them get sick and die."

Part of me wants to go, "Yeah, damnit!" and then just let loose crying, but another part is going, "grow up. You went on vacation and your wild birds died." And each self is telling the other to shut the hell up.

What I really miss all of a sudden right now is Sahrek, Hisoka and Sheik. And I keep telling myself to get back to work on Seer2...Hell, to just go ahead and break my ass working on it, but here I am, whining in my blog about my baby birds and the end of summer.

I can nearly see Sheik in the distance, and some mountains and the latest murder, but I can't seem to find the door back to their twisted, murky world. Maybe after I finish this latest Sorcerer Hunters MST, I can try it again.

2003-09-01T21:42:00.000-04:00

If anyone knows about any free programs that actually frigging work that can tell you what keywords people searched in order to hit your web page, please let me know. I've wanted one for my fanfic pages forever, and none of them have ever worked. Bastards.

Sex! Semen! PORN! PORN! PORN!

2003-09-01T21:38:00.000-04:00

Well, goddamnit, my last two mockers died, and now my last gorgeous oriole is dying as well. >_< I've had four lovely mockingbirds this year, and I've lost them all, and I've never, ever had trouble raising mockingbirds before. It looks as if most of my birds caught some awful bug or bacteria at the other place there.

Mockies are beautiful, especially when they're babies. They stamp their feet when they're hungry, and bop around like wind-up toys when you feed them. A month ago I downloaded the song "Mockingbird Girl" by The Magnificent Bastards, because I remembered it all of a sudden, and how it was one of my favorite songs when it first came out (what, like, seven years ago or something?! O_o ) I was all happy to find it again so I could be like, "dude, four healthy mockingbirds in one season! I am so Mockingbird Girl!"

Never. Should have. Left. I'm sick of crying over stuff that isn't my fault. Though I really do wish I hadn't gone on this vacation and left these babies to die.

And I find it disturbing that the ads on my blog are all about the removal of pest sparrows. >_< Jeez, get it straight already.

Here, let's try to get some porn up there instead. Semen! Sex! Hot! Wetness! Boffing! PORN! PORN! PORN!

2003-09-01T21:30:00.000-04:00

I am a elf.

What Race Are You in Middle Earth?

2003-08-31T12:16:00.000-04:00

No worries. ^_^ I just meant that I wouldn't be going away in the summer anymore. I usually don't; this was the first year in about five that I did. Usually I go to Florida for a week in September. The only reason it was changed this time was because Spencer is starting high school and we really wanted them to come with us.

My little mocker died this morning. But at least she was at home. She ate really well yesterday, but when they get to that point of starvation it takes them more calories to digest their food than you can keep up with. I've had birds come back from that point, but not often, plus she had avian pox so that compromised her too.

It's chiiiiilly here today. I can't believe that in a month I'll be decorating for Halloween. I hardly feel ready to let go of summer! This summer was so awesome and fun.

Plus I had three whole dates this year. WOW! ^_~ I have even more hope for the coming year! I am such the slut. ;D

2003-08-30T19:10:00.000-04:00

Only thing that has made me laugh today is LQ's review of a rendition of her "Mother Goddess" (*snick!*) character. Don't bother to click if you don't feel like it; the only fun things are her new fangirl Japanese ("*Falls over* KAWAII DESU!") and her "eyepoping" comment. Eyepoping! ^____^

I went down to work today and picked up Trisky, Sano and Pendragon. Pendragon is all mad and he tried to bite me. :D Sano barked at his bed for about three minutes then pawed at it and bit it. Trisky's just glad to be home.

Then I got a call from Mindy, who took eleven of my birds. Three died and one is dying. The baby goldfinch (Joaquin) that I got the day I dropped them off died. Ginny, one of the orioles, just dropped dead the other day, then yesterday Kaoru, one of my mockers (my littlest baby,) died, and today Mindy found Misao, the second littlest mocker, emaciated and dying. So as soon as she told me all of this I went down to Southampton (not fun going East on Labor Day weekend) to pick them up, so that at least they could be with me. It's such a mess; when I dropped them off I had such a bad feeling about leaving them there, and I also forgot to pack the last bit of baby food I had for them, and they were all gaping and asking me for food, so I was an emotional train wreck when I left them. Then today going to pick them up I was just as bad because I lost so many while I was away.

Bad day.

I'm never going away during the summer again; too much to lose.

The trip itself was great, aside from Gran having to go to the emergency room once (but she's fine now) and the flight back, during which two of Satan's foulest spawn sat behind Meghan and I. The boy was about five and the ugly little girl had to be about 12 or 13. I can say, without exaggerating, that I've never seen worse children in my life. And the mother was just as bad, because when I asked her to please ask her children to stop punching the back of Meghan's seat, she just stared at me. When Meghan turned around to glare at the boy after he tried to kick her through the gap in the seats, he complained to his mother, "That girl is looking at me!" and his mother said, "That's just because she likes you." Fat stupid bitch. I knew that the kids were listening to every word Meghan and I said, because everytime they did something obnoxious they would peer between the seats, giggling and waiting for our reaction, so at the end of the flight, I asked Meghan how she felt about doing an evil hex on the people behind us. We knew by their silence that we had their attention (they were no longer screaming to see what people around them would do or standing up on the seats by this point,) so we started talking about how we would grab some of their hairs off the seatbacks before we left, this way we could make the evil hex really personal. The only payoff was that they were looking at us like they were terrified by the time they left. So that was one good thing.

Other than that, the trip was really nice. There were thunderstorms every day that we were there. Each day would start out really hot and bright, then my around dinnertime the black clouds would just roll in and open up. It was great. I had a day by the pool (except I didn't swim for too long, because some little boy puked in it not ten minutes after I got in,) and got to ride my favorite rides; I think I had about five turns on Rockin Roller Coaster.

The children I travel with are spastic and extraordinarily bizarre. Spencer is brilliant at the devil sticks. Meghan and I did an impromptu Hula show at the Poly when this musician who worked there was entertaining the crowd playing the ukulele. The new lu'au isn't as good as the old one. I got to chat with Kaleo and Auntie Kau'i. And I spent way too much money.

There was a draught while I was away, so all of my plants in my yard are all brown and dry. However, the fail-proof cure for draughts out here is for me to put birds in the aviary. I put Will, Kamali, Remus (who has mysteriously lost his ability to fly,) and Sirius in the aviary, and now it's pouring.

Shout out to Min, Hwei, Lisa, Bev and Kris. Miss you guys! ^_^

2003-08-29T18:02:00.000-04:00

Your TIGER DAEMON shows an unmistakable aura of
pride, resilience, and aggression. Your balance
of impatience and inspiration make you a
creative leader, although you are prone to
dangerous extremes.

What Animal Would Your Daemon Settle As?
brought to you by Quizilla

Grrrr! Oh baby! I am a tiger! Grr! URAGH! /LQ

I'm home from vacation! More on this later.

2003-08-14T00:22:00.000-04:00

Ah. Here we are. ^_^

2003-08-13T20:52:00.000-04:00

Okay, so, by "tomorrow" I obviously meant, "whenever I could get to it." Among these 25 birds (lost two of my sparrows, >_< ) getting ready for The Big Show, also trying to place these birds and at the same time getting ready to board the pets as I'm leaving for Florida next week, as well as sneaking in some fanfic pieces for my nice new shiny fandom, (as well as some crappy fanart,) I guess one can say that there hasn't been much time for blogging about movies, no matter how fascinating they are.

Right, then, Quills. How much fun did Geoffrey Rush have with this role? Loads, and it totally shows. Not that the role was lighthearted at all, because it absolutely wasn't. The end of this movie is pretty crushing, and it shows his awesome range. Color me surprised. (But then, I'm always surprised when an actor is incredibly good. They're hard to find.) And check this action out: I just this very second found out that the chick who plays De Sade's wife in this movie is actually Geoffrey Rush's wife. Dang, now I have to watch it again!

Joaquin Phoenix, okay. I remember him as Leaf Phoenix, you know, from Parenthood. ^_^ I loved that movie when I was a kid. Then I saw him in Signs, which was a truly bad movie. My friend Mindy and I agreed that he was the only redeeming factor in the movie. But still, you know, kind of "meh."

Watching Quills, though, I feel like I finally got a chance to see him do his thing. He was exquisite. No, I don't mean that he's pretty or cute or gorgeous, I just mean that he was so there, in every scene. I loved watching him and Rush in all their scenes together; they made such a complicated, twisted pair of characters, and they did it effortlessly, or at least that's what it looked like.

(Also, while looking for screencaps of the movie, I found this interview with him. "I just think you're a total asshole if you wear fur. It's ridiculous! There's no need for real fur, since there are compassionate alternatives." ^___^ )

And I'm trying like the dickens to find a screencap of his last scene in the movie, but damnit, freaking no one has one. Grr. If anyone can find one, please link me up to it.

You know what, I like Kate Winslet. I thought that "Titanic" was one of the worst movies ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever. I saw the damned thing for free and I still wanted my money back. But Kate Winslet does seem to be a true actress and not just another symmetrical face with the body of a ten year old boy going through the motions in front of the camera. She actually bothers to act, and that's rare. I remember her in Heavenly Creatures, which was one freaked out, twisted piece of celluloid, but it was also an excellent and very sad film.

So, yeah, definitely see Quills.

And let me also add this: How come lately everytime I google or yahoo for the word "gallery" with anything else, I get all these freaking goddamned "autoceleb" and "allmovieportal" and "entertainmentguide" and "celebritystorm" bullcrap? Instead of the cool personal homepages that used to always pop up? The internet is really starting to disappoint me. >_<

2003-08-12T00:49:00.000-04:00

Quills. Geoffrey Rush, nakie? Ignored it. Geoffrey Rush, strutting, barking, unstoppably mad with the desire to write evil, nasty things? Thrill.

Joaquin Phoenix. Meh. Joaquin Phoenix barking mad? With long hair? Melt.

More on this phenomenon tomorrow.

2003-08-09T02:04:00.000-04:00

Eh, Kris! I could talk about Hula all day! This is a great page with lots of info about Hula, so that I don't have to. ;)

2003-08-05T23:25:00.000-04:00

So I had this really weird, intense night, emotionally and physically. Nah, not in an exciting, sexy way, either. (More's the pity.)

Trish came back from her month-long vacation, and tonight we had this women's self defense course, the first of three. It was totally awesome. I hate to use such a cliche and heavy word as "empowering," but it pretty much was. It's Tae Kwan Do based, but more than that, the teacher shows you how to rely on physics and common sense, along with getting yourself mentally geared up for confrontations without being paranoid about them, and tips on how not to get attacked in the first place.

Plus, there was lots and lots of kicking, punching and blocking, and now I'm tired out in that pleasant, painless way.

Then I came home, and there was this show on PBS called American Aloha, and it was about how Hula survives on the mainland, particularly California. Focussed on three different Kumu Hula, and Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu was in it.

I think that with The Big Show coming up (in less than two weeks!) and some of the girls I dance with suggesting that we cut back on our kahiko Hula (ancient, powerful, basic etc) and adding what she calls more "cheesy Hula," I'd nearly forgotten why I fell in love with it in the first place. With The Big Show, I guess in my planning I had started to aim more for pleasing the audience than showing them something complicated, intense and beautiful that they may or may not actually like or understand. She nearly had me talked into cutting one of the kahiko numbers and adding more 'auana. 'Auana is beautiful, difficult and intense as well, in general, but she wants to add more things like Tiny Bubbles and Pearly Shells.

I have nothing against Pearly Shells; I like the song and the Hula very much. But it's not why I started dancing. She tells me, "I know kahiko's your bag, but people don't get it." Well you know what? Too bad. You get kahiko or you don't, but either way it's an experience. I don't intend to teach people by dancing; just to show them this awesome thing that was written and taught by an awesome Kumu Hula (Sonny Ching, in this case. As it's for charity and I'm not making any profit, it's OK to use Sonny's CD and Hula in this context, and yeah, I did ask him.) So yes, A Kona Hema and O Pana 'Ewa stay in, and I'll do them both alone if the others don't like to do them. Cellophane skirts are all cute and fun (and yeah, authentic,) but they're also overwhelming and they don't define Hula, so there's really no reason to have all these cellophane skirt numbers and only like three kahiko numbers, damnit.

So now I'm all emotional, too.

And scared as hell, because kahiko's freaking hard and I really want to do it right. And it's less than two weeks until The Big Show. O_o

2003-08-01T22:44:00.000-04:00

You are "Welcome to the Caribbean, love."
You're more than a little world-weary, but also
intelligent and you keep your head when things
get dodgy. You're everybody's favorite
drinking buddy, but your stubbornness does get
in the way sometimes.

Which one of Captain Jack Sparrow's bizarre sayings from Pirates of the Caribbean are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

2003-07-29T17:48:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah, the internet! Right!

Actually, I lie. I've been visiting this one POTC fanfic site just about once a day, and, while it started out really cool, I think it's time to put the fandom down and back away slowly. You see, the archive is now about 90% pointless, OOC slash. Jack Sparrow is angsting for chrissakes. Hard. And Will Turner is...Well, Will Turner is Mary Sue. :/

And I sometimes have to remind myself that it's not fandom I love, but the original work. Fandom isn't the real deal. It doesn't thrill the way the original does; it's just other people's (occasionally really awesome) thoughts and visions. Or, well, I should say that fanart kicks nine kinds of ass in a five ass town, and that I'm much more touchy about fanfiction. Even though I write it. ;) But, yeah, I could take or leave fandom, and I need to remind myself of that. Which is why I'm going to see the movie again tonight. Because, although I've seen Jack Sparrow as I remember him from the move here and there, (you guys both rocked my socks with your fics,) really there is no Jack Sparrow other than the one created by POTC writers, staff, director etc, and Johnny Depp.

Alas, there is also no other Sirius Black than the one JK Rowling wrote, but I was so hoping that they'd cast someone I could totally get into for his role in the movie. Cause, god! why don't they let me cast these things? ;) I totally understand that he was all scraggy and unkempt and filthy and horrid in PoA and all, but, you know...My Mom and I had the same reaction to him after finishing PoA: "*sigh*! Sirius Black. You know, I'll bet he cleans up nicely." ^_~ In fact, we were just talking about that last night and we agreed: Sirius Black is supposed to be a hottie. I want him to be a hottie. I'm 30 years old! Give me my 39 year old hottie in a sea of little wizard children.

Then, Min filled me in a bit on the guy they picked to play Remus Lupin. Hello? Again, not a hottie! And to think, the original idea they had was to have Ewan McGregor play him. Why, god, why didn't that work out? They would have had to mop me out of the theater.

Speaking of which, I should get ready to go. I'm meeting up with a big bunch o' girls from work at the theater for POTC. Cause, what's better than going with a bunch of friends from work to look at hot guys in funny hats? Not much, I'll tell you that.

2003-07-20T00:35:00.000-04:00

Had a Hula/Tahitian show tonight in Greenport. Good turnout. Great show. Had to pick up a whole mess of birds on the way home, have a post-show pizza party with the dancers, take care of the whole mess of birds (two need tube-feeding and the other two need Baytril,) and I'm just sitting down now. I'm not convinced that I'm actually alive at the moment.

But dang, the show was great. ^_^

2003-07-14T16:27:00.000-04:00

Saturday was a little bleak, and yesterday was very bright. One of those summer days that one thinks of when one thinks of summer days.

Saturday was the day of our last Hula class. That was pretty hard. It was hard to say goodbye to Lynn because, no matter what our lifestyles are and how they differ, we did go through a lot together. The whole halau actually did. I know I'll still once in a while get to dance with Lynn (and the rest of the girls, certainly, as they still live here,) and talk on the phone and email and things, but it was still really emotional. We were all crying during class, and at the end of it, I couldn't seem to stop reminding myself, "You'll never dance in this studio again. Six years here, and you'll never set foot here again." Then, you know, you think about the one creaky board and the way the sun fell on the floor and the lights in the mirror. You realize you know every inch of the space after all. And it's very strange.

So technically there is no halau hula at the moment, and I'm not even sure if there is a Na Wahine O Mokupuni Lo'ihi anymore. That would be a shame, because I love that name. I came home, took everything out of my dance bag and reminded myself, "I can still dance. That doesn't have to change."

Have a (surprise!!) show coming up Saturday, in fact. Would be nice if I had a clue as to what the hell I'll be doing, where and when, and who's dancing with me. But it's something. (And then there's The Big Show. But we will not speak of The Big Show.)

Yesterday was really awesome. Meghan came over early, and then in the morning we hung around, had breakfast, and tried to speed up time so it would be 6:30 PM really soon. Because we were going to see POTC again, you see. So we went to the store and bought some pina colada mix. Then my cousin Chrissie came over, soon followed by her husband Timmy, and we all went for a swim and had pina colada and banana daquiri, and we listened to Tahitian music and did the whole summerthing. You know. One of those days that you remember, not because anything spectacular happened, just because it was a nice, mellow day.

Then 6:30 came around and I took Meghan, my parents, and my Grandma out to see Pirates, which was even better the second time around. I think some movies have to be seen twice for one to appreciate the things one missed the first time around, or understand the references in the beginning that one doesn't get the meaning of until the end. And I became obsessed with the way Captain Jack Sparrow, though he seemed mildly brain-damaged, was always one step ahead of everyone else in the whole film. I love a character who knows the score, especially when the rest of the characters don't expect him to.

At the end of the movie, Meghan jumped up and cheered, clapping her hands un-selfconsciously. The people two rows behind us thought that was the cutest thing in the world. Actually, I thought my Grandma was going to jump up and cheer, too. It was really cool.

When we came home, the full moon was rising like a biznatch, and there was a green lightning bug in the grass. Summer is my favorite season. So are autumn, winter and spring. ;)

Today's a little boring, though.

2003-07-11T21:38:00.000-04:00

"I want to turn my hair into this."

All I will say is, be very, very certain that you want to before you do. Dreadlocks are hard to keep, hard to manage, and hard to get rid of. They are relatively easy to keep clean, however. The more you wash (but not condition) them, the dread-ier they get. And you eventually do need he bandana thingie to keep them from flopping all around.

I know whereof I speak. But alas, there are no pictures. ;)

2003-07-10T18:17:00.000-04:00

Pirates of the Carribean, people. Right, then, let's get started.

A) It's a ride at Disneyworld in Adventureland. I love the Pirates of the Carribean ride. It's got a lot of history for me; been riding the silly thing since I was ten, that's--oh shoots!--twenty years. O_O (Shut up.) I know the ride by heart because it's one of my favorites.

B) I work with these people sometimes. It's safe to say that I really like pirates and pirate stories. Why, I even dated one. (Pirate, that is. Not a story. Or, well...But never mind.)

C) My friend Kim and I have been looking forward to seeing this movie for almost a month now. Our emails of late have consisted pretty much of count-downs. "Two more weeks, baby, till Pirate Day!" "One more week till Orlando Bloom with long hair!" (That'd be Kim.) "Three more days till guys in eye makeup!" (That'd be both of us.)

That in mind, I really didn't expect the movie to be very good. You know, I figured it would be entertaining, eye candy, guys-in-eye-makeup kinda fun, but I didn't actually think it would be good. Surprise! I was wrong!

This movie was great! It was entertaining and it was eye candy and it was guys-in-eye-makeup kinda fun, but it also had a really neat story, beautiful cinematography, smooth editing, loud music, awesome effects (the effects weren't over the top by today's standards; in fact the overall effect was just creepy and cool.) Probably one of the best things is that there were scenes based on the Disney ride, and they were almost exact renditions. How cool could you get? The skeletons were really great, and, hey! Good acting, too! Johnny Depp was outstanding.

WTF is this? you're asking. She says that Johnny Depp was outstanding? Yeah, I'm not too big on ole Mr. 21 Jump Street (though I do remember him from Nightmare On Elm Street and, is it terribly surprising that cute boy Glen did less for me than Robert Englund as Freddie? I loves me some Freddy. ^_^ But I digress.) TraumaWhore sez: Even his "I'm in so much shock throughout this movie that I'm going to keep falling over!" approach in Sleepy Hollow did nothing for me, and that's saying something. (Chris Walken was in that, though. Yum. But anyway.) I was never quite sure in Sleepy Hollow if Johnny Depp was trying to be taken seriously or not. It almost seemed at times that he wasn't; that he was more or less parodying himself, but for whatever reason, it fell flat.

He stole this entire movie. Orlando Bloom was really cool. God, he's precious. He's just such a cutie that you want to pinch his cheeks, and yeah, he was good in this. I guess he's turning out to be a pretty solid actor; sadly he doesn't get to do much but hop around in the LOTR movies so far (Legolas doesn't have many lines or that much of a character arc,) so it was hard to tell if he was really that good of an actor. But I'm going to say that he is. He plays the Good Guy with a lot of heart. Jonathin Price was funny in his own way, Geoffrey Rush was pretty intense and the other pirates were really awesome. But Johnny Depp walked away with the entire movie.

For me he succeeds as a comedian rather than a dramatic actor. I'm not sure what the original intention was for the character of Jack Sparrow, but what I can tell is that the character certainly evolved--probably through both JD and Gore Verbinski--into JD's own weird, stumbling, snarky, very appealing character. He absolutely doesn't take himself seriously. It's easy to tell when actors are having fun and cutting loose. The audience tends to cut loose, as well. "Oh, we're doing this without any self consciousness? Cool! I can get on board with that!"

Plus, there was that whole thing with the makeup and the beads and coins and all. ^_^;; heh heh. I noticed that throughout the movie, it bugged the hell out of me how the girl kept all her lipstick and crap on no matter what she went through, but it didn't bother me in the least (nor did I even stop to think about it,) that so did Jack Sparrow. But then, I figured, you know. It's not like he was supposed to be wearing makeup. He was just, like, all dark and freaked out and damaged. W00t!

Yeah, awesome movie, really funny. Go see it!

2003-07-08T23:19:00.000-04:00

I think there are times in every person's life when they realize that they are utterly alone. It doesn't matter who you know, how many family members, lovers or friends you have or have had, because during those times, you know that Thomas Wolfe was right: every man really is an island.

You're in the bathroom, and you've just taken a pee. A pretty good one, too. And now you feel refreshed and ready to get back to whatever you were doing. You turn around to flush the toilet, and instead of the water going down...it starts to come back up.

You start to think then that the plunger is your only friend, and you reach for it, frantic-like. Somewhere in the back of your mind you're thinking of stories you might have heard when you were younger: wasn't there something about a faucet behind the bowl that you could turn off if the water started to rise? Was that myth, or fact? And are you willing to reach behind the toilet to find out, with the water coming up as quickly as it is?

The toilet paper is reaching the lid and you're thinking, "what's behind it?" as you're shoving that plunger into the bowl. How the hell does the plunger work? Is it forcing the water down, or sucking it out?

Doesn't matter. There's no one there to help you; rich or poor, married or single, you are in this thing entirely, utterly, helplessly alone.

I guess the other big time you might think that is when you're dying.

2003-07-08T22:39:00.000-04:00

WTF is this? I'm sitting down?! I almost forgot how to do that!

So, had a crazy (but fun) weekend and Monday, and I worked today. And then worked some more! Came home, changed, got outside and released some robbies (Makar and Quill. Fly, babies, fly!) Then I put some more robbies and a grackle (Drono, Olivio, Aryll and Pashli) into the aviary. (They're not getting the hang of the foraging thing yet. :/ ) Trinity and Medli are still out there too, because they weren't ready to go yet.

Then I came inside, did the big cage switch (I have something like 26 birds now, after my two robbies left,) and cleaned everything top to bottom. This only took me about two hours, but it has taken me up to 3 or 3 1/2 depending on who needs what. The adorable fledgling black-capped chickadee that I got today died. I sort of knew he was going to. The lady who brought him to me found him on the pavement next to his nest mate, who was already dead. Never a good sign.

Then I had this nestling robin that I went to pick up yesterday. Cutest thing. And the guy who found him was this huge, wild-eyed, wild-haired type of guy, and he was so concerned over the poor robbie. He kept saying, "take good care of him, please! I can't take it if he dies!" He said he would call back to check up on him, too. Now I'm dreading the call, because wouldn't you know, the little robbie died? And the mistake I made was that when I picked him up to look him over at the guy's business (where he found him,) I confidentally said, "Oh, he'll be okay!" Erm. I should have been more honest at the time.

Then, just a while ago, the weirdest thing happened that gave me a shiver. So I often see some of the birds I released in my yard again. They come back to the feeder and the bath once in a while. So tonight, I'm out there in the aviary feeding the ones I just put out there earlier. I reach up to feed Pashli (because he's still asking for hand-outs,) who is on the crossbeam on the far side of the aviary--the Eastern side that's shaded by a tremendous grapevine. I look up, and there's my sparrow, Catnip, perched on the grapevine, not an inch from Pashli, only on the outside of the screen. And Catnip is just staring at me. He's not moving, or asking for food, or fluttering. Just staring me dead in the face. Usually when I see my birds come back I assume they want food or need help or something and I say to them, "Do you need help, or do you want to come back?" So I talked to him, expecting him to fly off, because he is totally wild now. But he doesn't fly off, he just keeps standing and watching. He was so quiet and intent, and so sort of ghostly in the dusky light that I totally expected him to do a Miyazaki Fadeout. I absolutely got a shiver. So I went outside with the net thinking to catch him, because if you can catch a bird, then it needs to come back inside. As soon as I raised the net, he flew off.

Now I hope he comes back, because I think he just probably wanted to sleep close to the aviary. I can't quite imagine why. Once they're free, they usually don't want to be near it again.

Odd thing is that I've seen Catnip bring other sparrows around, too, sparrows that I didn't raise. I leave baby bird formula outside for the ones who come back for a hand-out, and Sunday I saw Catnip eating some of it with another little sparrow. It was hilarious.

People ask me, "How the hell can you tell those are your birds?" Yeah, they do look alike, most birds of the same species, but if you know a bird--if you raised it--you recognize the way it's moving. What I tell people is something more along the lines of, "aviary birds fly differently," but that's not exactly it. It's more they way it cocks its head or picks at its food, or even sings. (I released a goldfinch last year, and she's got a very distinctive song. I hear her and see her a lot. She's also very fair, much lighter than other female goldies.) I also have this mockingbird named Hiko, who I released last year. I always know him, because his back is so dark that he's almost charcoal. I've seen him nearly everyday since his release. The other day when I was outside handling a robbie who was screaming bloody murder, Hiko came swooping down next to me and started cawing at me to let the bird go. It was hilarious. Mockers are bastards; they have very little fear and they get right up in your grill if you bug them. I just about died laughing when he started parading around and flapping his wings to scare me. ^_^

Shoot. I just spent fifteen minutes writing about freaking birds. How boring to anyone who isn't me. I did have some other stuff in mind to blog about, but, oh well. Maybe later.

2003-07-07T01:27:00.000-04:00

No, wait. One more thing. A good friend and I had an interesting chat tonight. It was about Jesus. I've often championed the humanity of Jesus and become obsessed with it, rather than with his divinity. (Not the devout Christian, am I.) I like Jesus as a human being, with feelings, passions, loves, lusts, anger and all. Jesus was a revolutionary as much as he was a sacrifice, or at least that's how I like to think of him. If Jesus was a character in a fanfiction, I could see fangirls just making him into what is the basic, accepted, simplistic Christian veiw of him: Lamb Of God, here for one simple reason, died on the cross.

BLAH! Whatever. I think that's rather selling him short. Where's the depth? Isn't that rather boring?

Plus, my favorite sculpture in the world is Michelangelo's Pieta. I've always rather felt that the Mary in the Pieta was Mary Magdelaine, and not his mother. Cause, dang, could you get any sexier?

That's all I'm saying.

2003-07-07T01:18:00.000-04:00

I have 28 birds. O_O WTF? I know I've had more than this at some point a few summers ago, but for some reason, this year, it seems a little bit more hectic. I have two baby orioles though, from different nests, even. That's different! I've never had orioles before, and they are precious. I've also seen an adult one flying around my house a lot. It's a sign. Of what, I don't know. ;)

I also have two baby bluejays, and they're heavenly. Like noisy blue clouds. Their names, I'm embarassed to say, are Sirius and Remus.

So, you know, it's all pretty good. Spencer was over yesterday and today. He says he'll chant with me at the show (but let us not speak of the show right now....) We swam a lot, and lifted weights. O_O Now I'm buff. Really. ^_^

Things are a little strange right now, and I'm not sure why. It feels very much like something good is going to happen. On the other hand, it's often felt like something good was going to happen, and it hasn't yet. Or maybe I'm just like Mink from Dragon Half. A very bad fortune teller.

I worked all day on the 4th, and you know, it was actually pretty nice. I was alone most of the day. Just me in the quiet hospital. I cleaned the lab top to bottom, even scrubbed the floors. I feel sexy when I'm scrubbing floors, but that's because I've got issues. I also feel sexy in the lab. (Of course, I also find "She Blinded Me With Science" to be one of the sexiest songs I've ever heard, so it all ties in.) So between being in the lab all day and scrubbing the floors... ;) Wow. The rubber gloves, the scrubbing, the antiseptic smell...watch out, men. Here I come. ;)

I have no business being online right now. I should be in bed, having some sort of bizarre dream about skating or turtles or lanterns.

2003-07-03T16:54:00.000-04:00

On this page is a pretty good one from LQ:

"Is this *new rule* or something or another pretain to all the clubs being supported on DA? Do they think this has something to do with abuse? If it's pretaining to abuse... Then there is seriously something wrong, because I've done my law homework and I most certianly know opening a fanclub doesn't hold pretense to abuse."

LMAO! yeah, LQ. We see how much "law homework" you have done. "Pretaining." "Doesn't hold a pretense?!" LMAO! I still adore your stupid posts, you moron. ^_^

2003-06-30T23:20:00.000-04:00

Erm...You sure he won't mind?

(The author of the Hero series is way too easily amused.)

2003-06-26T16:09:00.000-04:00

Do not click the link below unless you want "Order Of The Phoenix" spoiled for you.

For you, Kris.

Okay, okay...for me, really, but our HP blogging egged me on. I don't know if it's good or not. It's not beta'd, and for that I apologize. It sort of spilled out, like. Never wrote HP before, and probably never will again. It's too weird messing around in her carefully constructed, detailed world. ^_^

2003-06-24T23:28:00.000-04:00

Thanks, dude. Seriously. And to tell you the truth, while I was just rambling in my blog, well, if you found something in it that struck you as meaningful or whatever, does it matter where I wrote it? :)

Spoiler for Order Of The Phoenix
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I feel your pain. Keenly. Howlingly. But dude, it was just a silly spell. And just a silly veil. This is J.K. Rowling we're talking about. She'll pull some J.K. Rowling kinda thing and explain it all away. Just you watch, now. I mean, lookit. Luna Lovegood said that her dead mother was on the other side of it, but she's flakey. It doesn't mean she understands what it is. Rowling likes to mess with you like that. It's what she does. She won't do it in the next book, mind you...she'll do it in the 7th. 'Course, by then, we'll all be old and grey and senile and whatnot.... :/

Yeah, okay, so I'm deeply in denail, but so what? Also, you know, if she just sort of, well...keeps it this way, then, hey, there's always fanfic, right? ^_^ And fanart? She gave him a beautiful, visual death. Didn't she mention the words "graceful" and "handsome" in the space of two sentences during his death scene? I'll be disappointed if someone doesn't draw it. :)

But in the meantime, yeah. "Howl! Howl! Howl! Howl!" /King Lear. *cough* Sorry about that....

Even more tragic? Gary Oldman playing him. :/ Kee-Rist. Why don't they let me cast these things? >_<

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Spoiler Space for those reading Order Of The Phoenix, who might be reading this blog bass-ackwards! ^_^

2003-06-23T16:39:00.000-04:00

Erm, Kris? I took a look at the first line of your blog entry and quickly clicked the back button. I'm interested in what you have to say, but at that first line, red flags went off in my head.

That wasn't going to be a spoiler, was it?

Lemme know. I'm interested in your thoughts on HP, but I don't want it spoiled. ^_^

2003-06-23T01:27:00.000-04:00

It's past 1 AM and I am overly tired, and have no business being online, especially to blog and rave. But, still. Just a few thoughts on the first third of the new Harry Potter book. I guess there will be some mild spoilers in this, but if so, I promise that they will be vague, and won't give away anything about the actual plot. I really just want to talk generally about it, and about the feel of the book. But, for those of you who are sensitive to even the teensiest spoiler (like yours truly) then consider yourselves warned.

Okay, major angst for Harry. This book has a much darker mood than any of the previous ones, even GoF. (You know what's funny? The working title for "Goblet" was "Harry Potter and the Doomsday Tournament," and that's still what I call it in my head. It stuck with me, I guess.) So, yeah, this book is very, very dark. Harry is very, very dark. I know that makes sense, after the ending of the last book and all, but it's a little hard to get used to. It's bothering me on a personal level which has nothing to do with the actual writing, or with Rowling's decision to go in this direction. It bugs me out because my cousin is fourteen, and he's just about to go into his (polite and sensitive version of) the Teenage Rage Stage. I had one, too, when I was that age. You imagine injustice when there is none sometimes, but when there is, boy does it sting. I remember it, I see it about to happen to someone in my family, and so it bugs me out just a bit to read about it. (Not to mention that the fact that Harry is growing up makes me feel old. O_o )

Some dolt on some (non HP related) bulletin board made a comment to the effect of, "I can't imagine why Harry hasn't decided to kill himself, what with all the stuff going on at Hogwarts" or some crap like that. Part of me wanted to post there once more and say, "because Harry, though fictional, is not a whining, puling internet goth wannabe brat, like you and your ass-hat friends." I appreciate fictional angst where it's warranted, I really do. I see that it's appropriate in this book (because, yes, Rowling, with her past books, has made it so.) But the way some of these little creeps (and this "little" creep was actually an adult,) interpret it is, I see, going to be a bother to me.

Here comes a tiny spoiler. It won't give away any plot points, because I will be vague about who is doing what. But again, if you're sensitive to even small spoilers, here is your warning.

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Aside from being all kinds of mentally frigged with, Harry is purposely physically tormented in this book by someone in a position of authority. I remember that Voldemort physically tortured him at the end of GoF, briefly but brutally, and the fact that Rowling went into such detail with it sort of shocked me. I find myself shocked at the little bit of physical torment going on in this book, too. I'm not a fan of torture, and I'm touchy where child abuse is concerned, but here's my observation: Rowling is not writing children's stories anymore. I started to figure that one out with the last book. What she's doing now is just telling her story. I see it a lot with books that span many pages and many years. The writer starts out with one tone, and s/he doesn't know exactly where it's going at first. (It gains an audience, and if it's a popular series, that audience almost expects to be its target audience.) Then the series evolves, and the characters evolve and, with a good author, the characters become who they really are.

I fully believe that some stories write themselves. I absolutely understand that sometimes the author is just along for the ride. (If I may say so, I usually feel like that myself.) Sometimes one can even sense where the author comes back and writes his / her own points or thoughts into this thing that already exists. I'm fine with that if I like the author's voice--and I do like Rowling's voice. (Plus, it beats the hell out of the writer who just writes the same goddamn crap over and over again, because her squealing fangirls lavish her with praise. Because, hell, why evolve? Why change something that works, right? I'll tell you why, Fangirl Of Yourself: because your story is crap, and you're forcing scenes and characters and cliches out because you want the reward. And, pardon me while I puke on my pj's.)

So, with a good writer, I don't begrudge her the change in tone. I see that, for the most part, the HP series is telling itself, and I understand that. But god almighty, the squealing fangirls are going to have a blast with angst/weepy suicide fics. :/ BLECH!

And let me add this, too: Rowling seems to have fallen in love with Sirius Black. It's almost like she realized who he was and what he was like, and started giving him things like juicy lines to say...and if Sirius Black wasn't a sexy presence in the last few books (and I always felt that he was,) he definitely is now.

Again, I don't have a problem with that. I know it's supposed to be all icky and stuff when an author falls in love with his / her creation, but let me just say that if the author is talented and interesting enough, and the story is rich enough, s/he can pull it off beautifully. (Again: this does not work when a talentless hack writes about her masturbation fantasy characters: I'm telling you, the writer and the story both have to be good.) So, yeah. I don't have a problem with gratuitous Sirius Black backstory, or his snarky lines or his subtle sexiness. She's not overdoing it, in my opinion. I'm a fan of both Sirius and Lupin, hell, I'm a fangirl of the characters, so I'm eating it right up. Rowling is a good writer. I trust her.

This isn't going to be a spoiler, but it's going to be my guess on what the tragedy of this story is--on what the "unbearable sacrifice" mentioned in the inside cover is going to be. If you might have the story spoiled by my conjecture, then look away now. But keep in mind: I don't follow this fandom. I don't read the bulletin boards or anything, or even much fanfic (because from what I've read, it's crawling with underage NC17, pointless angst, and goofy-ass slash.) I don't read the rumors, I just read the stories, so this isn't coming from anywhere but me, and could be totally off the mark.

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I think Sirius Black is going to be the sacrifice. He's gotten too good, and his position has gotten too dangerous. Stephen King said, "Murder your darlings," and I think that she's going to. My cousin guesses that Ron will be the one. I also wondered if it would be Dumbledore. My Mom put in that it might be McGonagall. Those are all possibilities, I guess, but my money's on Sirius Black. And if so, then, damn.

Well, it is way too late and I should feed the birds and try to get some sleep.

Just some mana'o on a series that I really enjoy.

2003-06-19T16:26:00.000-04:00

Oooh, Min! Thankie sai for posting that DT link. Are you a DT junkie like I am? If so, let me know. I got loads of DT fanart on my HD. And let's see if I can fit another abbreviation in there somewhere. ;)

Thanks also for the support. Both of the birds are hanging in there (*knock on wood!*) So I have high hopes for them. Birds are tough little bastards. And your comment about your hampster cracked me the hell up. ^____^ Good to see you blogging again. Chat soon? Maybe tomorrow? If ya can?

Wowie wow wow wow. I had such a freaking nightmare last night. It's hilarious in the re-telling, but yikes. I woke up trying to scream. It was about ReDeads, people. How funny/pathetic is that? It started out with me walking through what used to be my Grandma's yard, but is now my cousin's yard. Everything was pixilated like in a video game. Then the main hero came walking through (also pixilated,) and he was like a cross between Squall from FFVIII and Link from OOT. There were draw points in the yard, like the draw points in FFVIII, and one of them was where my Gran and Gramp used to have a bleeding heart plant. Squall/Link went up to that one and drew earth magic, in the form of a bigass till. I thought, "Oh, a till--earth magic. That means that there are ReDeads coming up." (?!) I checked the player's guide (??!!) and sure enough, there was a battle with a ReDead coming next. As Squall/Link walked away from the draw point, I noticed an annoying light hanging around his head. (Like Navi the fairy, only this didn't occur to me in the dream.) I wondered what it was, then someone (I can't remember who,) told me that it was just this star-like light that followed him around, and that it had something to do with his angsting over a tragic past or something. Then the annoying light jumped into his hair, which was in a stupid ponytail.

Next thing I know, I'm the one walking through the yard and getting ready to fight a ReDead. I walked across the street, doing those somersaults that Link does to get there faster. (Picture it. It's hilarious.) I went to my parents' house and ended up in the bathroom. Michelle Trachtenberg from BTVS was in there, and she wouldn't stop talking. I kept telling her, "Shhh! There's a ReDead on the way! Be quiet! Maybe we can avoid fighting it!" But she wouldn't shut up, so eventually I knocked her out somehow. Then she disappeared.

But it was too late, because the ReDead was already outside the door. I heard it do that awful shriek that they do in the games, and I started digging around in my clothes for hidden magic or something. I found a piece of paper like an ofuda, and threw it out the door. But--auwe! I was out of magic! So I started calling for help. I could hear other video game characters outside the door, but they for some reason couldn't hear me calling.

I looked at the crack between the door and the floor, and I saw the ReDead's shoe under it. For some reason, the entire front of its shoe could fit under the crack, and I thought, "Holy Christ, it's squeezing its way through. Maybe I still have time to run." I started to run past the door, (my parents' bathroom has two doors; one from the hall and one to the bedroom,) but then I saw its eye looking into the crack between the door and the wall. I remember that it looked angry and hungry. The lightswitch was next to the door, and I tried to swat the light on without getting too close, but the light wasn't working either. Then it started to squeeze its head in, and it was baring its teeth. It didn't look like the video game ReDeads, but rather more like something that used to be human, but which has been stripped down to muscle. Also, it had long hair in a ponytail, and was wearing a baseball cap backwards. (???!!!)

I knew that if I tried to run past it to the other door, it would gain speed and get its whole self in through the crack, and it would grab me. So I started looking around for my weapons and everything, and started calling for help again.

Then I woke up, and it was just after 6 AM. God, but it was scary while I was dreaming it!

Hmmm. I am a product of my environment. I even dream in pixels.

In semi-related news, my Sheik mojo suddenly came back last night, and I'm so glad. Sometimes he's hard to find, and sometimes even if I do find him, it's still hard to find a plot to write around him. I don't have this problem with Sahrek and Hisoka. They always have a story. But Sheik, you know...How interesting is it to write nothing more than a teen marriage tragedy? Not much. So I had finished reading Red Dragon recently, and well, you know. I was just doing the dishes last night and trying to think of what was going on in this chapter I was struggling with and I thought, "hey, of course! A murder! Now why the hell didn't I see that before?!" I mean, something has to go on, right?

So, yeah. That was fun.

Well, it's Trish and Kim night, and I have to go bake. Hope to chat my 'net biznatches soon. ^_^ Love to all!

2003-06-18T19:01:00.000-04:00

What the...? You're Sheik? There are Sheik's out
there in the world? When Miyamoto's been
telling people you don't exist (plain rude of
him if you ask me, since I'm a Sheik...) Well,
anyways, you're one of the rarer and less known
characters, so here's the recognition you
deserve. SHEIK IS REAL, AND HE PLAYS THE LYRE
LIKE NO ONE ELSE EVER COULD!

What Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

O_O

2003-06-18T18:56:00.000-04:00

Thanks a bunch, Kris. ^_^ Jinpei put some weight back on and she's up and about. My prognosis is guarded but hopeful ^_^

This morning, I found one of my robins (Makar,) hanging from a cage door by her leg. WTF?! I think she'll be fine, though. She got herself frightened and got her leg all lacerated, but it's not broken. I wrapped it and she's getting herself on the highest perch again today.

Don't think I'm missing the fact that there is some symbolism here. I just have to bust out the ole Tarot deck and find out what it pertains to.

Robbies (Makar, Medli and Quill) and my grackle (Pashli) were misbehaving and I had to move them all to a big, huge cage today. It takes up most of my counter space. Then as I was doing that, one of my other finches (Arisu) got into a scrape with one of my two uninjured finches (Ryu or Catnip), who proceeded to bite half of her face off above her beak. I put her in the cage with Jinpei after cleaning her up and giving her her first dose of Baytril, and then she and Jinpei started getting into it. >_< WTF is with these bitchy birds?

Then yesterday I got two teensy, bitty finches, Linder and Oakin, and two little baby robins (because I just don't have enough robins this year, I guess,) Olivio and Drona. And, yeah, I have been playing Windwaker. Why do you ask? ;)

Hopefully this weekend will be nice. Spencer and Meghan are coming over, and we're doing Meghan's birthday party. She's going ot be eleven. O_o How the hell did that happen? I got her the cabbit backpack that she wanted, and this year's "Growing Up Girl" statue that I'v been getting her since she was born. She's got all of them so far. ^_^

Now if only the sun would come out. Wow, that's coming from me. Imagine that?

2003-06-16T16:19:00.000-04:00

Each year I seem to have some sort of freak accident with a bird. Today, Jinpei, one of my older finches, somehow hung herself by the chin from a stupid old S hook that I should have removed from the stupid cage years ago. It was all the way through her chin and she was dangling from the top of the cage like a side of beef at the slaughterhouse. I managed, after what seemed like a half an hour but was probably more like three minutes, to pry it off the bars with the scissors in my left hand, while I held her in the cage with my right. Then ran like hell--still holding her, with the S hook still in her chin--to the shed to grab the wire cutters. Ran like hell into the bathroom, wrapped her in a paper towel, and then cut the S hook as close to her beak as I could. Then I pulled it out the straight way, cleaned the wound in her chin, gave her her first AB and put her in a seperate cage. She's flying around and perching and is alert. I had to sit and shake for about two minutes. Now I have to cross my fingers that she can still eat, and won't get an infection. I think that Baytril is broad enough to fight it off, but I'm going to talk to Mindy to make sure. All in all, this sucks. And I had to vent.

2003-06-11T15:02:00.000-04:00

It's finally occurred to me that maybe there are more people out there besides LQ / Inu / Kitiara / Jenna / Jen / whatever the hell who don't know what the simplest words in the world mean. Sure, it's a rare thing to not know these words (if you were brought up in America and English is your first language,) and sure, maybe most people know many, many more words that she still fumbles, but I've realized that there are indeed people...hell, even groups of people, who are still screwing up a few really easy vocabulary words.

For instance, the trouble that these construction guys have with the word "definitely." It seems that everytime they say the word "definitely," they mean something more along the lines of "absolutely not." (Kinda in the same way that when LQ says "contrary to," she means...well, who the hell knows what that ass-hat means anymore?) Or, hmm. Maybe these contractor guys do know what "definitely" means, only they're confused about time, and the days of the week. (It'd have to be both.) Like, when they say "definitely tomorrow," they mean, "definitely in three months." And when they say, "definitely wednesday," they mean, "definitely some saturday in three months."

I'm just as stupid, because for some reason, when they said "we'll install your kitchen window, definitely tomorrow," (for the third day in a row yesterday--that's just this week, mind you,) I believed them this time. WTF was I thinking? Did I get stupid all of a sudden? They've been "definitely-ing" me since April about this befrigged job, and the window has been sitting in a goddamn shed outside since that time. So, what, all of a sudden they're clear on what the hell they're doing? So like an idiot, I go and rearrange my whole kitchen this afternoon, and hang around the house waiting instead of doing the many things I could have been doing? (The other thing that throws these guys? The fact that other people might have something to do. They seem to think, "eh? Other people have jobs and lives? Jeez, and here I thought they were OK to wait around for us all day. Wow!")

And water authority shut down the water today in order to work on Flanders road, which they've been doing for two years and nothing has changed there except more traffic than ever so that it takes you 20 minutes to go 2 miles, and I swear to christ all those bastards do out there all day is move traffic cones around. So no water, which I can tell you is buckets o' fun when you've got an aviary and a bunch of birds to hand-feed and you can't wash your hands.

And I finished my book and I have nothing new to read.

And I forgot to put gas in my car.

And I have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow morning and I know I'll be too pissed off and frustrated to sleep tonight.

And the guy I'm going to dinner with Friday night is a construction contractor guy, and now I'm pissed off.

I'm just really, all around pissed off.

2003-06-09T01:01:00.000-04:00

I just finally watched Red Dragon, which I wanted to see when it first came out. It was a little bit easy, if you get me, at least in the beginning. I mean easy in the way that I seemed to be a step ahead of the good guys. You know, like, "Mirrors in the eyes? Oh, he wants them to see him. I coulda told you guys that." Aside from that, though, Freaking Cool Movie! I jumped up and yelped "AWESOME!" at the end of it, but that was just a few minutes ago, and I'm still a little confused as to whether the movie was honestly that great, or I just fell in love with Will Graham. You know, brave, human, takes a stabbing like a man and all of that. ^_~ "Remarkable boy. I do admire your courage." (TraumaWhore sez: Good job there, Edward Norton. Nice touch, holding onto Lecter's shirt in that stabbing scene. And Anthony Hopkins? If ever an assailant was gentle, Lecter was, with his quiet voice and just kind of pushing the gun aside. TraumaWhore sez: God, but it's all in the details. ^_^;; )

It also rekindled my crush on Anthony Hopkins. Yeah, yeah, Ralph Fiennes, creepy and convincing (running up the stairs nakie, too, *boing boing boing boing!* "I love quicktime harch." /Madeline Kahn) But not as freaking scary as Lecter. Just nowhere as freaking scary. There's something he does with his eyes. They're wet, dead, and still somehow looking right through you. He manages to look weirdly misshapen as Lecter, but when you see him in other films, you see that he's actually quite a handsome man.)

Okay, now I'm not saying that it was anything close to Silence Of The Lambs, but it blew Hannibal out of the water. (This one made some really cool references to SOTL, and that last little exchange between Lecter and Dr. Chilton... *shiver!*) Hannibal was okay, but it tried to be something it wasn't. I think that this movie stood on its own, and while I can't possibly compare it to SOTL, I also kinda don't need to.

Right, but now I'm getting too far into it. The ending did to me what the ending of The Ring did: disappointed me for about 3 minutes by letting me think it was over while I sat there going, "Eh? How goddamn unsatisfying! What happened to the showdown? I need closure, damnit! Don't tell me that it's all just peachy!" And then, in the last five, ten minutes, it said, "Sit down and shut up, beeotch. I'm not done telling you the story." Eeeeeee! Nice. ^_^

What I hate though, is when I finally get to see a movie that I'd intended to see in the theaters, and then after I see it on TV I kick myself for not having made the time to see it on the big screen. Cause, crap! How awesome would that have been?

So yeah, fun movie, really cool, interesting, and satisfying. ^_^

2003-06-07T18:57:00.000-04:00

My first reaction after someone asks me on a date (rare) and I say yes (even rarer) is one of sinking panic. It's an odd panic, too, not the kind most neurotic girls describe ("what if I mess up? What will I wear/say/do? What if he doesn't like me" e?tc.) No, the second after I say, "sure, okay!" my brain starts yelling, "Don't you dare try to change me! Get away! I'm my own person! I'm not going to marry you!"

O_o

Christ, after getting asked on a measley date! And I wonder why guys don't often call on me. Maybe after I say "okay," they see the horror on my face, and can almost hear my brain going, "I AM SET IN MY WAYS! SO DON'T THINK I'M GOING TO BE YOUR GIRL!" ;D

Anyway, one of my pirate friends asked me on a date today, and since he's always been nice to me and is fun and interesting, I said okay. Then I went home and said, "well, he probably drinks or hunts or some other nasty thing that I don't know about, or...all of the above!" Yeah, wtf is wrong with me, and all.

One of the younger pirates asked me out about two, three years ago when I first started with them. Really younger. He's one of these natural comedian kids, always on. (I appreciate people like that if they're nice [and he is] but I have to take them in small doses.) But I had to be perfectly honest and tell him that if he had been ten years older, I would have said yes, because this kid (and I guess he's about 20 or so now,) is anime-classic beautiful. I don't often go for the bish, and I actually didn't go for him, but he's one of those people that make you (men and women) stop thinking for a second when you see him. It's creepy. He's not as breathtakingly handsome as my gay boyfriend (Adore! Adore! Adore!) who is 34 and stops my heart everytime I see him, but still lovely.

He, (the young pirate guy,) was there today, and he, his (adorable) girlfriend and I were talking about storms, and I happened to mention that I hadn't missed an east coast hurricaine in about 13 years. And that's true. If there's one in Florida, I'm in Florida at the time. If there's one here, I'm here for it. If there's one up the coast, I'm flying around it or driving through it. I've hit them all. To which he replies, "holy crap. That means you're an elemental." Uh huh, okay. ^_^ Now I've been called a lot of things in my lifetime... ;) Anyway.

It's still fun to be a wench. Guys can call you "girlie" and you don't have to pretend to be insulted. ;) And it's fun to just shut everything else out once in a while and sing and yell and act. Improv is cool that way. Concentration without the pressure of memorization.

In other news, love ya, Hwei! I've got a letter in the works for you; I guess it's gonna be kinda long, so I've been adding to it when I have the time. ^_^ Take care, and best of luck on your exams.

Malama kakou!

2003-06-05T17:00:00.000-04:00

Dude, that kind of comment from you means the world to me. ^_^ I know that I do play the "it's a hot Hylian guy, and let's watch him do things with knives!" angle, but I do try to pad it with stuff that is of interest to others. ;D And, I'm glad you enjoy it, and find it occasionally unpredictable. I do try to sometimes get away from the predictable, but I'm also really wary (or in LQ speak, "weary"...LMFAO!) of doing the "I'm going to use the most bizarre thing I can think of just to throw you off!" thing. Sorry about the popups. They are bastards.

I hear you on the fanart thing. LOZ fanart has gotten kinda stale. You know who's good, aside from Min? Christina Sanders. She can fill the LOZ fanart void in my heart, often in one pic. ^_^ And she's nice, too. (Maybe that's who you were thinking of, Min?)

I do so miss Min's fanart, as well. Min not only brought Link to life for me, but she made him a freaking man damnit! ^______^

Speaking of Min, hey, dude! It's good to see you blogging again. Hopefully one of these nights we'll all be on chat again. I'd have tried to catch you tonight, but it's an Out With My Biznatches night (and then to my place to watch a scary movie so all my friends cry like sissies on the way home. Those dark country roads, you know. :D ) So, yeah. Maybe chat soon? Like tomorrow if we can?

And also Min, dude. If you ever really miss fanart, you know...I'm saying, if you needed an outlet or something, someone to show fanart to if it happens to build up and pop out of you, well, you know. I wouldn't, like, be upset or anything. It wouldn't bother me. ;D

Raptor Crest, Raptor Crest... You know? Damnit, I promised myself I'd finally get to work on chapter three of Seer2, for chrissakes. I know it's in there somewhere, sort of piddling around in my head, like. Scenes and sentences and whatnot. But as of right now, I don't know exactly what its Big Thing is going to be. It kinda has no purpose; it's just, like, meandering. RC3 has a purpose in my head, and the opening scene has been banging to get out for months now. >_< Bastards. Why won't I do what I tell me to do?!

2003-06-04T16:23:00.000-04:00

I am... (drum roll!) 32.34714% - Total Geek! (From this test.)

^_^ Fair enough.

2003-06-02T22:43:00.000-04:00

Lately it seems that I can't get a grip on my time, and the things I have to do. Well, it's not exactly that so much as I don't feel as motivated by certain things as I used to. Certainly I still *want* to do them, it's just that I'm too lazy to actually do them. Like writing, for instance. I have the ideas that I need, I just don't feel like sitting at the computer and putting them down. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the weather and all, but it never really affected my writing like this before. I mean, last year I had a lot on my plate (maybe even more than this spring,) and I still wrote what I needed to write. (The only thing I've written lately was a few paragraphs of an original story called "Meeting Of The Minds," and I wrote it under the influence of Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science." WTF?)

I'm sure I'll get back to writing sooner or later, but it's strange that this is the longest break I've taken from writing so far.

Speaking of the outdoors, I have to say that I think I've finally transcended "gardening" and maybe even "yardwork", and have moved on to actual landscaping. O_o I've been doing some serious planning, planting, designing and stuff, and I realized that this really is an art. It's fun, but it's not as easy as it looks. It's so permenant, you know? It's not exactly easy to change your mind after you install a pond or plant a tree. I bought a tree today, in fact, and it's a tree that I've wanted for years and years, and just never had occasion to buy, or the perfect place for it. It's the most awesome Japanese red maple (with the lacy leaves, not the broad ones,) and when I wear my freaked otu sunglasses and look at in the sun, it shines like a prism. But then, so do most things when I have those sunglasses on.

I love my little section of yard. I know it sounds cornball, but it's heaven to me. I try to find excuses when I'm at home just to be out there and walk around. It even has a themesong (like, what in my life *doesn't* have a themesong?!) And if you've ever seen "Petshop Of Horrors" then you probably know the song "Delicious." That's my yard's summer song. I believe that its winter song is the theme from Fargo. The end of winter / very beginning of spring is "Where I Belong" from FF8. I'm sure it has an autumn song, but I forgot what it was, and I'm babbling like a moron now and I don't know why. See, this is what happens when I try to write and listen to music at the same time. I can't concentrate on anything that I'm saying when I listen to music. For those of you who write coherently when music is playing, how the hell do you do it? It's incredible. I need absolute silence.

I went down to the Playhouse today because we had rehearsal for Saturday's pirate show at Riverfest. I got there at the right time and all, and the Playhouse door was locked and no one was there. I banged on the door and kicked it, then waited around for about ten minutes, until I started to feel like I must look like a hooker standing there on the streetcorner. Then I bailed for home. I wrote to Captain afterwards, and he says that they were there the whole time. Nuh uh! I almost kicked the Playhouse down, I think they would have heard me. So then he also tells me that I'm in a new sketch (will just have to adlib and go along with what everyone else does) and that I'm doing the proclamation. Eh? Since when do I do the proclamation? Oh well.

Baby robins smell different from other birds. Not only that, but birds that come from different rehabbers smell different. That's to be expected of course. Different environment, different diet and stuff. But my birds smell good, and especially my robins. There's a sweet, dusty smell to baby robins, and you can smell it as soon as you walk into the room. Most people think, "what the hell is that?" but I think, "I love the smell of baby robins in the morning." And they taste like chicken.

KIDDING! (But I do love to see the look on people's faces when I kiss a baby bird in front of them and then comment, "So cute! Tastes like chicken!")

Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu released a CD called "Call It What You Like" and it has a hidden track on it which I can only imagine is called "Question." It's my favorite track. He pa'i's and talks through half of it, and chants through the rest, mostly about "po" which is the Hawaiian word for "night" or "obscurity" and related ideas. Shocked the hell out of me when I first heard it, not only because I didn't know the track was there, but because he's talking about things that I had been thinking of right before I heard it. I'll bet it's already available on WinMX or something.

"How do you malama 'aina?"

"You are the descendant of your ancestors, and the ancestor of your descendants."

"When you sleep... you are most able to connect with yourself. Even then we sometimes become afraid of what we dream. But we are the creators of our dreams. So why be afraid?"

"These are the obscurities of 'po.'"

Which, of course to me, is a sign.

2003-05-31T16:53:00.000-04:00

In other news, this from Link's Queen / Inuyasha / Kitiara / Jen / Jenna (add about a thousand other stupid names here:) "I've been saying since I was 14 that I don't want kids, and here I am 10 yrs later, STILL saying it. I don't talk out my arse when I state I never want kids, and yet, these people manage to keep coming back with the "You'll change your mind yet some day. You're still young." Load of stinkin bull."

Well all I can say to that is, thank freaking god! Could you just imagine what a weak-minded, puling, emotionally manipulative witch of a mother this psycho would make to some poor kid? God, she'd just mold it in her image. I actually did try to imagine what would happen if she ever decided to reproduce (or simply carry out binary fision, I'd imagine, in her case,) and it literally gave me a shiver.

I'm in a good mood. ^____^

2003-05-28T22:08:00.000-04:00

A Hula Pele
White girl dancing secretly
Kahiko kapu

2003-05-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

The Big Thing I mentioned down there is still up in the air, and will probably be for a while. But all I can say is that, in some way, I answer more to myself on something that means a lot to me, and that is of the good. ^_^

I have eleven birds as of today. For some reason my starlings aren't thriving. I've had tests run on them and all, and they're just not holding weight. Can't figure out why, but the same thing happened last year.

So as of now I have my finch, Auli'i; a dove and a pigeon in the aviary; my teeny tiny deformed nestling sun conure, Kalae; the three starlings, Joe, Ken and Jun; two sparrows, Ryu and Jinpei; a nestling sparrow whom I had named Arisu, but whom I keep calling Cat Toy instead, because that was what she was before she was rescued (she was covered in punctures and cat hair, too. O_o ) And just today I got a nestling robin, Medli. I had to go to this lady's house to pick Medli up because she had found this teeny bird in her yard with no parents in sight.

I started working with animals because I wasn't wild about working with people, but I've come to learn that as a rehabber, a big part of it is learning to talk to people a certain way, and also to listen and interpret what they say in a certain way. So I've started to make up a "J. Q. Public Rescues A Wild Bird" translator.

"I found a baby bluejay." 99% of the time this means, "I found a baby starling." Although today it meant, "I found a baby robin." (Granted that this is an easy mistake to make and very common. Quills, or feather casings, are a dark grey, almost blue color. Regardless of the bird's other attributes of colors of the actual feathers, everyone thinks everything is a bluejay. I made that mistake once with a starling when I very first started rehabbing. But this woman today, she was positive it was a bluejay, because, as she said, she'd rehabbed birds before, and she knows what bluejays look like. Which leads me to my next translation.)

"I've rehabbed birds before." This invariably means, "I've illegally raised and imprinted a robin, thus befrigging every chance it might have had in the wild. I now think I'm a rehabber because I dug up worms / fed it waxworms." (Waxworms are a really bad choice for feeding birds.)

"He's healthy and fat!" This always means, "He may be emaciated, but he has a round belly!" (Most hatchlings and nestlings do have a tubby round belly. It's because they're still the shape of the egg, yo. I've had people say that to me, then I later find that it's so emaciated that you could cut yourself on its keel.)

"I've been taking care of it." Often this means, "I fed it water or milk out of an eyedropper; it probably aspirated most of it and might now have pneumonia." (I know the old wive's tale about water out of an eyedropper and all, but I don't get the milk part. They're so obviously not mammals.)

"Birds love me." You know, it's funny, I get this one a lot, and it always comes after I've been totally nice, as congratulatory and thankful as I dare to be for the fact that they've taken the time to rescue a bird, and then politely point out that it's not only illegal for them to keep it, but it's not right for the bird to grow up around a human, either. This translates into, "I love birds," which I totally understand. They do mostly do it out of love.

"The parents are gone / haven't been around all day / are dead somewhere / have abandoned the nest." Can't tell you how many times I hear this every summer. It almost always means, "I've been hovering around the nest all day and scaring the parents away."

But the important thing to remember is that most of these people are really compassionate, really concerned, and are doing what they're doing out of love. There are some (mostly older adult women whose children have moved away, for some reason,) who will rescue a bird and then get all weirdly possessive and self-congratulatory about it. It's almost impossible to explain to those people that it's not right, on so many levels, for them to raise this wild bird, keep it away from other birds, screw up its diet so that it's got some sort of metabolic disease, and then throw it outside when you can't care for it anymore. There was this one woman two years ago who insisted on raising a cedar waxwing. She screwed up his diet so badly, and he was so vitamin deficient by the time she was done with him, that his legs were crippled. She was on the phone with me every week, (calling me at work, at home, on my cell, constantly,) asking what she was doing wrong, and what she should do about it. I told her, very patiently, every single time she called, that the diet was all wrong and I would gladly raise the bird. I had a cedar waxwing at the time who could have used a nest mate. Of course, eventually it died just as surely as if she had starved it, only much more slowly--we're talking over a month here--and in a pool of its own waste. Basically she tortured it to death because of her pride and clinginess. Grrr! Grrr! Uragh!

But I'm hormonal, so don't mind me. Those people are the minority. Most people have a clue, and more importantly, they care. If they didn't care, they wouldn't make the call in the first place.

And I'm also not being an experience snob. Honest! I know it sounds like I am, but I know better. There's still lots I don't know (like why my starlings won't thrive,) and I'm sure people would roll their eyes at me, too. Outside of birds, as well, there's loads I don't know. I'm sure I exasperate people with the fact that I've got a grasp on biology, but the simplest chemistry is beyond me. I know I exasperate myself when I can't even balance my checkbook and I bounce a check because I was short four lousy dollars. I do know these intelligence/aptitude/experience snobs, and I'm not being one right now. (I can be, though. Get me started on people who mangle English.) It's just that these bird rescue mistakes are so unbelievably consistant that I have to laugh about them sometimes, in the same way that I laugh at those "you might be (fill in the blank) if..." lists. That's all. ^_^ These mistakes are common, and they're usually harmless.

What isn't harmless is the kind of ignorance that comes from superstition or breeds fear in the really silly people. It was that sort of thing that got most of the wolves wiped out, and lots of our native birds, too. It seems like such a small thing sometimes, but often it's not. People who vilify certain animals like predators and raptors and such, you know. Often these are the same people who are predjudice against other people, but hey, let's not get into that, shall we?

OK, shoots, I didn't mean to madblog about all of this; I was going to make this a quickie but here I am babbling again.

I ordered collars for my dogs from Sirius Enterprises and they came today. These are sort of specialized dog collars for sighthounds, and I've wanted one for Trisky for like forever. Sano's not a sighthound, but I got one for him because I thought they were really neat. Of course I had to get Trisky one with freaking bells on it, and now it sounds like Christmas everytime she scratches. And for Sano I got this purple one. I think he feels silly wearing it. I hope the other dogs don't make fun of him or think he's less manly. But the collars are so neat and I really like them, so there.

I've been running around since 6:30 AM and I think it's time for me to pau! So, pau!

2003-05-25T20:56:00.000-04:00

Something happened today that, while I had nothing to do with it, is going to affect my life in a pretty big way one way or another. Even though the catalyst for this Big Thing in my life is an even Bigger Thing in someone else's life and, like I mentioned, had nothing to do with me. So by midsummer, everything's probably going to be really different.

Depending on how carefully I play my hand, and depending on a little bit of luck, this could go either really well or really badly for me. I should be really scared, but I'm not. I'm just sort of excited.

It's one of those things that wouldn't mean as much to anyone else, but to me, it means about 1/8th of my life. It's a Big Thing.

2003-05-24T17:46:00.000-04:00

Final Fantasy VII is not for the whimsical. The
world is cyberpunkish and (some have said)
Lovecraftian, with a kick of very adult humor.
There is very little opportunity for humor in
this world, and the main characters are too
well-set to create new life for. I'm glad you
got this option, because this game needs a few
new explorations.

Which Final Fantasy fandom should you be writing for?
brought to you by Quizilla

^_^ Been there!

2003-05-21T22:46:00.000-04:00

Lillia who? ^_~

2003-05-21T17:12:00.000-04:00

So two nights ago I had this weird dream about the Buffy finale. I don't remember much of it, only that Spike hadn't been a vampire for the entire season, and suddenly everyone was surrounded by vampires. Buffy killed one of them, and instead of turning to dust, it fell down. Only problem was that it fell onto Spike, and its fangs landed in his neck and he turned back into a vampire. All of a sudden I was in the scene, and I felt really badly for him. When he got up, he was looking all goth, so we knew he'd been turned back. It's funny now that I think of it. Then I had one in which I had to carry this weird egg around, (not a Weird Egg like in LOZ: OOT, mind you,) and I ended up taking it to this hotel that I was staying at for a seminar. Rachel and Jeremy were with me, and I remember saying, "us three again." It's odd, because a few years ago, Rachel, Jeremy and I used to go everywhere together, and I remember one night around '98 or so when we all got into the car to go to the store and I said, "us three again." So I think that's why I dreamed that line. At any rate, I remember that I wanted to go in the pool, but everyone was naked except the three of us, and I didn't want to take my clothes off. I was wearing my blue kimono and carrying around this weird egg. Jeez.

When I woke up, I thought those dreams had been real doozies, but it looks kind of blah compared to last night's. Now, I know I had two dreams and they were both pretty intense, but the last one is the one that stayed with me throughout the day.

It started at work, and I was walking around the outside of the building, on the hospital property at night. I walked to this little shed thing, which in the dream was a lot farther away than the real life little shed thing. In the dream, it was way back in the woods. Anyway I heard lots of stuff going on in the shed, and I opened the door to find a some of my co-workers in this little lab / storage closet thing. It served as both. There was this weird X-ray table/necropsy table/centrifuge thingie thing there, except that the entire dog went on top of the centrifuge for the necropsy, and then it spun and spun while the X-ray machine took shots. My boss explained to me that the centrifugal force helped make the X ray better somehow, and simplified the whole process of finding out what the animal had died of. I felt kind of skeeved watching the dead dogs get spun like that, so I went outside and started to kick around some of the dirt there.

Eventually I moved enough dirt away and found these bizarre looking, naked animals that seemed like they were part bird, part fish, part rodent. They had no fur or feathers or scales; rather they looked kind of fetal, and they were moving and breathing. Then Nancy came out and asked, "how did you find those? Those things are dead." I said, "How can they be dead when they're breathing?" and she told me that it only looked like they were breathing, but really it was just a result of leftover stimuli. She assured me that they were dead and should be left buried, and I wondered if I perhaps shouldn't be trying to dig things up anymore.

(Note how subtle the symbolism in my dreams isn't.)

Then they all invited me into the lab thing for a cup of tea, and it ended up that there was this bizarre, dark little party going on with some people I didn't know. I was about to go inside when I saw this guy, and he looked like the cute guy who plays Phoebe's boyfriend on Friends. Sort of like him I guess, only more exotic in a way. I said to myself, "I know him of old."

He turned to look at me, and I fell in love with him and asked him, "What should I call you?" He told me to call him Sano and I remember that that freaked me right out the door. I said, "I can't call you Sano; that's my dog's name." He reminded me that it had been the name of an anime character before it was my dog's name, and anyway, it was what he was called these days.

Then I seemed to remember something about his past; that he had been married or something like that, and I tried to remember what his name used to be. All I could come up with was that it sounded like "Rain."

After some hazy dream stuff that I dont quite remember, this woman showed up. She looked very sour, very small in a way, almost like her head was too big for her body, but her face was really pretty, and I thought, "That's the wife he's been trying to hard to get away from."

She took him by the hand and said, "You have to come with me, Urain," (and I swear, in the dream that name didn't sound half as hilarious as it does to me now.) I thought, "That's what it was, Urain; like Sir Uriens, only Greek." ( O_o ) She started to walk away with him and I knew that I couldn't let him go, and that he didn't want to go. So I said, "Sano! Wait!"

He turned around and said, "I can't stay. Do you have something to say to me?"

For some bizarre reason I felt like crying, and I couldn't say anything. She pulled him along again, and he started to walk away, and again I called him back, and again he turned back. He said, "Do you have something to say to me?" I started to answer him, but before I could, he said, "But remember that even if you do, I still have to go." As I was standing there thinking that he was the nicest, smartest, most gorgeous person I have ever met, the big-head girl pulled him again, and they disappeared, like they went into another dimension or something.

The lab was still behind me and the party was still going on, only now the ground was wet and everything was muddy and slick. One of the people I work with (though I can't remember which one,) said something about how that guy had been really cute, and asked if I didn't want to go and look for him again.

When I next saw him, he was wearing some sort of uniform, and he was just this hazy image in a sea of images, which is really weird for one of my dreams. Usually my dreams are pretty coherent when they're like this, and they make their own sort of logical sense. This didn't seem to follow any of that.

Then I was still in the woods, but on a cliff of sorts--almost a manmade cliff though, because it felt more like a balcony or terrace. I looked down, and there was a group or people in what looked like a coliseum, and the guy was down there with them. He looked different now, even more exotic and less like Phoebe's boyfriend than when I had first seen him. He seemed to be holding some chains or ropes or something, which were attached to these columns, or maybe they were some kind of tree. There was lots of screaming and wallowing going on down there, and this guy was pulling on the ropes / chains, and I think he toppled one of the columns / trees. And I thought, "Just look at him, he's toppling this whole thing by himself."

And then I realized that he wasn't holding the chains or whatever they were, but they were more or less keeping him down there. I thought something like, "Then that must be hell." (That's not as deep as it sounds; it almost looked like the inside of the Hellmouth in the BTVS series finale. It was just a residual image. ^_^ ) Anyway, he eventually joined up with the rest of the people who were wallowing in this muddy pit. It looked dirty and awful, but like they were having fun at the same time. I thought, "That's so disgusting, how can people like that kind of behavior?" Because it wasn't just mud, but it was blood and dirt and sewage.

I don't think he ever got out of there, but the weirdest part was that this was a good dream. I was really hopeful and excited during the whole thing, like I knew something good was going to come from it. I know it doesn't sound like it, but it was a happy dream, aside from the spinning dead dogs.

And I think that the guy, Urain or whatever, was like a composite of all the guys I've ever known or been close with in some way or another. I remember thinking that. I remember that at one point he looked almost like my first boyfriend, and the Greek reference definitely pointed back to the guy I dated for about five minutes last year. Jeremy was in there (I think that was the uniform part; it was sort of military looking,) and I'm fairly certain that when he was wallowing in that pit of filth there, he represented that one guy in whom I had that destructive faith (or clinginess [or stubbornness] for,) and I swear to god that by then I was happy to just let him stay down there, in that self-satisfied "be that way then and see where it gets you" way.

But lemme tell you, when I first saw him in the dream, he was some kinda hottie! ^_~

2003-05-19T12:51:00.000-04:00

Then there's this nonsense.

2003-05-19T12:36:00.000-04:00

I hear ya on the frustration, dude. And I know that you're just judging yourself and not other people, (even though "it's really creepy to be one of those twenty-somethings who's living with the 'rents" does sound like you might think so about other people....) But on the other hand, putting one of those age caps on something might make you even more frustrated, you know? I used to do that all the time, and I know society does it, too. It's not a fair thing to do to yourself. "If I don't have a date by the time I'm fifteen, I'm a loser." (Didn't have one till I was seventeen, personally.) "If I don't have a boyfriend by sixteen, I'm a loser." (Again, seventeen for me.) "If I don't have a date for the prom, my life is over!!" (Went with a friend, as said boyfriend couldn't make it. ;) ) "Must move away from parents right after college!" (I left a year and a half after.) "Must be married at twenty five!" (Still not.) "Must have kids by twenty seven!" (Still haven't.)

(And for the record, there are some families where it's the norm to stay with your parents until you get married, and sometimes even after. My family's one of them. In fact, out of all of my 40 someodd cousins, my one cousin (who is my age) and I are the only ones to have gone to college and gotten a degree, and I'm the only female out of the lot who moved away from home before she got married. And some of my cousins--even the men--got married and then continued to live with their parents for a while, bride and all. Some of my cousins got married and moved out of state, but that's also considered weird in my family. The idea, you see, is to live as close to your immediate family as possible. This way you can have dinner together sometimes, do barbeques, plan trips, and be there in case of emergencies. [Can't help thinking that if my Gran hadn't been living across the street when she collapsed in the bathroom, she wouldn't be here today. But that's also not the point.])

Mememememe. ;) That was a bit of a tangent, but the fact of the matter is, your opinion of your situation aside, it's not such an unusual thing. I know that it doesn't feel right to you and that's entirely different. But it is right for some other people (though I'd be tearing my hair out if I had to share space with my parents too, so I do know where you're coming from on that one,) but you shouldn't judge yourself over it.

Also I'm curious to know if you put an age cap on those other big life things, too, like relationships and jobs and such.

I also have to add, on an entirely different note, that I absolutely agree with you on the freaking Matrix thing when you said, "Damn you, Hollywood! Damn you and your insistance that there must be "romance" in a movie, even if there's no chemistry whatsoever." Even if there had been some chemistry (and the chilliness between them was part of what I liked; I didn't want a freaking romance novel,) why must there be romance at all anyway? I was just wondering that myself. Couldn't they tell the story without it?

"During an ad for Powerade: "That's just flavored water with electrolytes."

*slapslap!* That's when you turn around and give the person Stink Eye.

In yet other news, last night I finally watched The Ring. Well lemme tell you, for the first time in freaking years, I had to sleep with the TV on. (I don't get channels on the TV in my room; it's just for copying tapes. So I had to play my tapes of MST3K, which I knew would run at least until the sun came up.) I was that scared, and believe me when I tell you, movies don't scare me. They thrill me, or make me emotional, or give me a jolt, or gross me out, but I honestly haven't been frightened by a movie since The Shining. (Watch, though. Tonight I'll remember a movie since then that scared the bejesus out of me, and I'll prove myself a liar. But for right now, I can't think of any.) There are some movies that are suspenseful, tense, and some that disturb me because they seem too pointlessly cruel (Dr. Giggles springs to mind,) but this movie really had me freaked. It wasn't the idea of "seven days to live," and it wasn't the ghost story, either. And for all I've heard about how scary the part with the horse was, it wasn't that part, either. (That part just made me have to look away.) It was the faces, and if you've seen the movie, you will know what I mean. Or not. Maybe it's just me, I dunno. Faces scare me. For those who haven't yet seen it, I don't want to give too much away, but the part where Katie's mom asks Rachel to investigate, and she says, "I saw her face" and then they cut really briefly to the image, that is why I couldn't sleep. (They actually used that effect a few times, and it got me each time.) That and the part where (spoilers deleted) crawls out of the TV and moves across the room towards (spoilers deleted) with what horror novels like to call "hideous / unnatural speed." I hate that unnatural speed crap. (For the record, I thought the actual crawling out of the TV part was cheesy, and it would have been scarier if I hadn't seen that. But then the hair moved and I thought, "the face is going to be scary" and that scared me and then the speed thing happened and I almost screamed.)

It was so cool to be that scared of a movie again. ^_^

And the ending was neat. Again, I don't want to give anything away, but I was *this close* to being disappointed when everything turned peachy and I thought the credits were about to roll. And then the movie had another 15 or 20 minutes. Heee. Way to punch the viewer in the head. ^___^

And dude...That little chick was Lilo! O_O

Anyway, so maybe tomorrow I'll see the original Japanese movie. It's supposed to be more subtle and creepy. We shall see.

Well, that's enough rambling from me today. Except to say that, hmm, maybe I should blog some of LQ's funnier malapropisms. She's still got some really funny ones going on, and I think more people need to see them. You know, for entertainment purposes. ^_^

2003-05-15T19:45:00.000-04:00

The Matrix: Reloaded, or: Let's Mess With A Good Thing!

I'm going to try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible, but there may be one or two teensy minor ones in there, as a matter of course.

Now, I'm not one of those people who finds fault with every single movie, or one of those people who is above liking movies for action, drama, trauma, long black coats or even just hot guys. I do like many movies for just that reason. I don't have to learn something, or be changed in some way, or have my guts ripped out and then poured back down my throat in order to like a movie. I like movies in general. There's nothing better than sitting in the movie theater all alone and just being entertained; I live for that crap.

What I don't like, though, is sitting in a movie and being bored, and during this movie, there were times when I was rolling my eyes, sometimes even gesturing for the movie to get to the next frigging point, and once I was even perilously close to throwing a Twizzler. Umm, Morpheus's ridiculous pep talk at Club Zion, followed by a fifteen minute rave/orgy? Please. Can we do something else now?

Trinity and Neo? Okay, it's nice that you're in love, but can you please not schmoop like a couple of frigging corndogs? You had some great subtlety in the first movie, this wonderful slickness, and you were both just chilly and practical enough to make me go, "now there's a good team," and now all of a sudden it's, "I love you too damn much blah blah blah!" Gah. Maybe when I was 18 that might have jerked a string or two, and maybe it's just me, but that just doesn't fly. That could be because of my cold, cold heart, though. ;)

The Keymaker? (Which, swear to god, kept making me think, "Keymaster?! What the hell is this, Ghostbusters? Where's the Gatekeeper?") The guardian's "wife" macking Neo because she's lonely and jealous and bored? Freaking Milli Vanilli's ghosts chasing Trinity, Morpheus and this Keymaster guy down the freeway for like three hours? Neo doing a SuperSmash Brothers Melee with hundreds of Agent Smiths?

Ahhh, Agenst Smith, how I love you. It's too bad you were totally pointless. Agent Smith is in this movie for two reasons: 1) Agent Smith is cool and 2) Hugo Weaving is cool. (Hugo Weaving is also an 11 on the 1-10 hotness meter, but I understand that not everyone thinks so, so I left this out of the list of reasons because it probably didn't have much to do with writing him back into the script.) For real now. I have no problem with putting Agent Smith back into the movie because he's cool or because Hugo Weaving is cool, but for godsakes, if you're going to do it, then let him be cool and work with the coolness. Don't just throw hundreds of him into the mix and give him a few one-liners and some martial arts stuff. Give him a purpose, damn you! (No, I mean a real purpose. Not this whole thing that I won't write because I'm trying to keep ths spoiler free.) Point is, any points the movie needed to make could have been made much more easily without him, only that would have sucked, and I understand that. The Matrix needs Hugo. It needs Agent Smith. He's a essential to the coolness. (There was that one part when about a hundred of him swarmed Neo and I was like, "say...Sucks to be everyone but Neo!")

Then there was the point of the movie. Um, what the hell was it again? Part of what I liked about the nearly flawless part one was how seamless the story was. It made perfect sense, and there were no head-scratching moments. In this one, the things the movie was trying to say were muddled, and got lost in all of the chases and pointlessness and Milli Vanilli ghostliness. (For the record, I think the idea of a computer virus / glitch manifesting itself in the Matrix as something supernatural is really neat, but, come on, was this trip really necessary? It looked more like a case of "look what we can do!") When the movie did get around to saying all the things it wanted to say, it was so rushed and disjointed that at times I was sitting there going, "huh? The Oracle wha? You can't mean that. Neo did/is what? I must have misunderstood. And, hey...What happened to that guy who got (spoiler deleted)?! Oh, there he is. Whatever." It was just that the logic was muddy, and during the few times when the Exposition Fairy came along in its many guises to explain it all, it was kind of too glossy. Sort of like, "BAMBAMBAMBAM!BANG!CARCHASE!TENSION!DRAMA!EXPLOSIONS!!!!"Anyway, Neo, here's where it's at right now." Neo: "What? No way." Me: Yeah, I agree.

And the end? I wont give it away, but when such and such group of people are sitting around and getting the news of what just happened at Club Zion (you'll know what I mean when you see it,) I was sitting there going, "umm, hello? Reaction, people? Are we hearing the same thing?"

No, I didn't hate the movie. I squealed like a freaking little five year old when I first saw the technology-green, dripping, backwards kanji code that always means "The Matrix," because I am that much of a fangirl. In fact, I'll probably see it again, just because, after all, it was fun, and some parts were neat, Agent Smith was cool, there was a new guy named "Link" (heehee!) and he had really gorgeous eyes, and I need another viewing of the movie to get the stuff I missed the first time around while I was too busy going "Oooooo, long black coat swirling all around! I have to get one like that! Ooooo, flying! Ooooo, gotta get my hair cut like Trinity's! Oooo, martial arts in bullet-time!" It'll get its second viewing, most likely. But I'll just bring a book along for the whole "Club Zion" scene. ^_~

(One last thing. The thing with Neo at the end, with the "something feels different" stuff. Dude, I totally saw that coming, but it still surprised and pleased me. And then that fall afterwards: graceless, dramatic, very nice eye candy. I'm such a trauma whore. I'd see it again for that half second, and Keanu Reeves doesn't even do it for me.)

2003-05-11T11:43:00.000-04:00

Crappy sketch of Jin and Lillia, captioned by Lisa: "Legend Of Zelda Fanfiction, now with 50% more ass-grabbing!"

^_~

2003-05-09T23:43:00.000-04:00

E, Kris! I used to do astrology charts professionally. Full charts, sometimes drawn by hand, and if I really, really liked someone, I'd throw in the asteroids for free. ;) Took me weeks for a regular chart, months for a special one.

When you read astrology out of the newspaper or silly paperback books, they're talking about Sun Sign astrology, which is very loose and general, and often silly and pointless. Real astrology takes the entire chart into consideration (the Big Three: planets in signs, planets in houses, and signs on houses.) When you look at the details, you see how eerily exact and frighteningly specific (and terribly accurate) a natal chart really is.

Spooky stuff, but fun and often helpful. ^_^

2003-05-07T21:09:00.000-04:00

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Moderate
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	Moderate
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Moderate
Narcissistic:	Moderate
Avoidant:	High
Dependent:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive:	High
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

2003-05-06T19:49:00.000-04:00

I'm so upset I could just spit.

Ive worked with birds and rehabilitated them for 4 years and I've never seen a hummer in person before Makamea this weekend. He's half the size of my thumb, perfect irridescent green with gradient irridescent ruby feathers on his throat (hence the name: ruby-throated hummingbird.) My boss told me Saturday, "don't be discouraged; they never live. I've only ever known one rehabber who saved one, and she only did it once."

So since yesterday I'm waiting for the special "THEY'LL DIE WITH ANYTHING ELSE" hummer food to come in, and in the meantime I have to do the "in a pinch" recipe, only this one is a little different from my usual "in a pinch" recipes. This one is pedialyte, granulated sugar, BeneBac, vitamins, and meal worms. Pureed in my blender. (Anyone want to come over for mixed drinks? Kidding. I bought a new blender after that.)

So he actually did OK over the weekend and all last night, and today he seemed a little down. Finally some of the specialty food comes in today when I get home from work, (they could only send out a sample pack so far, because they were out of the regular packs until today,) only by now, Makamae's not interested in it. So at first I'm thinking it's hummer torpor (imagine eating your weight in sugar 80 times over and then crashing. That's what happens to hummers on the wrong diet.) But my gut (which has never been wrong) is telling me that it's not the diet, or the setup, or the environment, but rather the injury. I can't figure out why; I mean he's been on ABs since I got him. The infection should be going away by now, and certainly he's not showing any signs, even of the superficial injury.

So I put him aside after about 45 minutes of trying to get him to eat, wondering why his little red throat looks different to me. (Mind, this is my first hummingbird; I don't know what looks wrong yet.) Then I go and pick him back up to try to feed him again, and his throat feels funny. Now it feels like crop stasis. (Self explanatory. Crop: where the food goes. Stasis: not moving.) Now I'm thinking, why the hell would that be? Meanwhile my gut feeling is still going "it's the infection, idiot."

So I go feeling down his back, and nothing seems to be swollen or hot or giving me the bad feeling. It's still in his throat. So I dab a little water on his feathers to mat them down so I can see better (doesn't help that my eyesight is for crap,) and there's my answer: freaking ruptured air sacs.

It works like this. A bird's body has got air sacs in lots of its tissue; you might have heard about them having "hollow bones" so they could fly. Air sacs is what that refers to. When something injures them (ruptures them,) whether by blunt trauma that doesn't break the skin, or any kind of penetration, the air sacs rupture and the surrounding membranes fill with air. What you get then is a bird covered in bubbles all over its skin. Usually with ABs and time, it goes away. The only time you have to take emergency action is when it's over the airway or crop. Well guess what?

And I mean, this happened fast. One second he was standing on my hand, and the next he was falling over. So instead of letting him just die like he wanted to, I try to save him, and the only way to do that is by sticking a needle in the air sac and draining the air so they can breathe or swallow.

The worst part is that he died while I was doing that, and his last thought wasn't a quiet, peaceful one; it was that there was a needle in him.

I hate when I make mistakes like that; I should have just let him go quietly.

And as if it couldn't get any worse, I had to call up the bird company and ask if it was too late to cancel the order that I made such a fuss over. The office is closed, so I had to leave a message, and like a total freaking amateur, I start crying over the phone. >_<

Sorry; just had to vent. >_<

2003-05-04T20:25:00.000-04:00

Well, u-- um, can we come up and have a look?

What Monty Python Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

2003-05-04T14:58:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting tidbit that I just learned today: quality hummingbird food (read: the only thing not in the wild that will give them a chance to live,) runs about $100. O_o

This little guy had better live, damnit.

2003-05-03T22:48:00.000-04:00

Riiiight, the blog thing!

I swear, I sometimes just have too much going on at once. And sometimes, absolutely nothing, to the point where I'm almost catatonic.

Anyway.

It's been a kind of exciting and fast two weeks. I guess that in the Spring, I get all worked up with the outdoors stuff and the pond and the planting and the gardening and things. Plus, a new pool is going up in the yard. The old one finally collapsed this winter, and they Pool Guys took it away Tuesday. I came home from work when they were finishing up, and I went inside and cried like a sissy. The pool had been there for 27 years.

Now, though, they're starting work on putting the new one up. So I think it's going to be really nice. I also think it has the same spirit as the old pool. Like the old was was reincarnated into this bigger one that is closer to my apartment. Yeah, that's just what happened!

Then I found out what my tax return was, and I decided, like I do every year, to put it in the bank. Then about 90 seconds later, I said, "what the hell was I thinking? Of course I'm going to spend it!" and started to think of all the wonderful things I could do with it. I was sorely tempted to go back to Hawai'i for a few days; just email my cousin, say, "dude, let's go," and get on the plane. Alas, I've needed a new kitchen window for a long time.

So that's my other exciting thing, the new kitchen window. Oh, of course, by the time I actually get the damned thing installed, summer will be over and all of my indoor plants will be either dead or dormant, but, hey.

Anyway it's a 45 degree bay window, only it's not going to be as big as the one in the picture. I have all these plans and ideas about what to put there aside from my plants and whatnot. So the other day I have this idea. I'm going to make my own fountain. Yep, I'm feeling creative and ambitious, and I've got a leftover water pump from an old fountain and I'm not doing anything with it, so I'm just going to go ahead and make one, damnit! Like some kind of cracked out Martha Stewart, only cool, not evil, and without the whole tax evasion thing. In the back of my mind I had it figured as one of my big ideas that i never get around to doing. But do you know, today after dance class, laundry and cleaning the house, I went to Ben Franklin's and I actually bought the stuff to make the damned thing?

So here's what I got: a plain glass bowl, some sea glass, some mirrors, (one to put in the bowl, and one to break--more on that later,) and some Sculpey. I had this idea to sculpt my own waterfall kinda thing.

The one thing I forgot is that I don't have much talent for landscape, especially in a 3D medium. ^_^ The only things I can sculpt are flowers, and I haven't done those in a while. But I decided to keep trying anyway. What I finally ended up with is a pretty fair representation of some of the freakish, thorned fairy fountains from Wind Waker, the new Zelda game. O_o Only mine is in blue, sea green and silver. Also, I broke that one mirror and put shards of glass in the sculpture. I haven't baked the damned thing yet, and I'm not 100% certain about what happens if you put mirror shards in the oven. We shall see.

I might have gotten around to baking it today, had I not gotten an emergency wildlife call from work. One of those exciting and depressing things. So here I have my first ever hummingbird: a ruby throated hummingbird, and he's the most precious thing I've ever seen. He's absolutely teensy, and so freaking shiny that he looks like a gem with wings. His name is Makamae. The depressing part is that he got chewed on by a cat, and will probably die overnight. My boss told me not to be discouraged: he's only known one rehabber who ever successfully rehabbed a hummer. I know that Mindy did it once, though. I've got to give her a call tomorrow if Makamae is still with me, and see if she's got any tips for me. I have to handfeed the poor thing by holding him in one hand and a little syringe full of hummer food in the other. I also had this neat idea of putting a fake flower from one of my leis around the syringe and hooking it up inside his carrier where he can reach it, but so far he's been too weak to eat on his own. So my guess is that he won't last through the night, which makes me sad. I did get lots of pictures, though.

Anyway, that's where my life is on this day. Hectic, but productive.

Ah, damnit. For once, Sano decides that ten PM is a good bedtime, and he's relaxing, quiet and comfortable and so not annoying in his bed. And Trisky decides it's time to wind him up. >_< Better see to this.

2003-04-21T13:30:00.000-04:00

Got suckered into working today. Well, okay, maybe suckered isn't the right word. Maybe it was more along the lines of covering for someone who's covering for me Thursday. ^_~ What is this "work ethic" of which you speak?

Work work work. I like my job, mostly because of the people that I work with, but sometimes I'd rather garden. Or take my dogs outside. Ooooor...play the new Zelda game! Windwaker is knocking my socks off. More on Zelda later, though.

Of the good: Weather is nice. Rest of the day off. Hair is finally red. (Deep, unnatural burgundy; not any kind of natural red or Scully red. More on Scully later.)

Not of the good: Sick dogs. Kenshin on Toonami. Laundry day. TERMITES IN MY HOUSE! >_<

Anyway.

Sez Lisa: "Just now, I was seized with the sudden desire to say screw all this shit, I'm going home, getting my job back, paying off my debt, then buying Bitch Mare, and hitting the local show circuit--really commiting to it and her. You know that feeling you get when you just have to fic something RIGHT NOW BECAUSE IT MUST BE DONE (which, admittedly, happens to me only rarely)? That's the one I'm talking about. I wish I knew whether or not to trust my gut on stuff like this--as I've gotten older, I've realized that I've become a passion of the month kind of gal."

That's a really tough one, my dear (and I don't mean "my dear" in a snarky way,) and I wish I could help you out with that. Those are really big decisions there. I've most often gone with the gut feeling, because with me, when something starts kicking me in the head like that, I take it as A Sign. But you and I are different in that way, and, like they said in Sleepless In Seattle, "but you don't believe in signs!" ;)

All I can say is that I hope you have enough time to think it over, and to sort of feel it over, too. No hurry, right? The worst thing is to feel rushed into a decision.

I know that you'll do well with whatever you decide, though. You're just one of those people who does well. ^_^

Sez Min: "Man. Radiohead's "Karma Police" is the best song ever. mmmm. Comforting old standby.

I wish I were the type to air out dirty laundry via public diary."

(You said "laundry" and "karma" and now I've got that fantastic song that Lisa sent me, "Battleflag," stuck in my head. Battleflag! Lisa's Battleflag! More on Battleflag later.)

"I wish I were the type to air out dirty laundry via public diary. But alas, I am just too tasteful.
Damn my well-grounded sense of decency! Damn my innate goodness! Oh, the things I would say! But I am just too too kind! Damn my charitable soul!

Or, I just fear the wrath of the karma police. I'm one of those who fears hell more than salvation.

I hear ya. I'm not wild about using a blog as a passive aggressive device thing. I'm not much on passive aggression on the whole. On the other hand...Screw the karma police! You only live once! Okay, wait, the logic there didn't quite work out the way I'd planned it. Let me try it again. Screw the karma police! You live a bunch of times, but you only pay once. ;)

Heh. Right.

So. Battleflag!

So this morning, just before the alarm went off, I was having this involved dream about Lisa's Battleflag. Why? Because last night Lisa sent me an update. (Here's where I resist the urge to go, "I got a Battleflag update and youuuu didn't!" ;) I'm lucky because I get to see this stuff before anyone else, and Battleflag is far and away my favorite Zelda fic of all time.)

So here was the dream. I'm chatting with Lisa about Battleflag, and Lisa tells me that she's found this online program that lets you make movies out of your stories. Live action movies, and you get to choose whatever actors you want to be in them. (My god, could you just imagine? Talk about wish fulfillment dreams.) So we decide to to Battleflag, and we cast Ewan McGregor from his Shallow Grave days as Link. Not surprising. We also ended up casting Kerry Fox, (also from Shallow Grave; you can see her in some of those pics,) as Zelda. Then about halfway through, we decided on Gillian Anderson as Zelda instead.

But anyway, the Battleflag movie was like this: Link was not a journalist, but some kind of forensics detective. He was on a case that involved Battleflag's GFF bombings. ^_^ He was also moonlighting as a grade school music teacher, and he was teaching kids to conduct songs. (Hello, Windwaker anybody? God, I'm so obvious sometimes.) Kafei was in it, too. I don't remember who played him, just that he looked like the live-action Kafei that I picture when I read Lisa's fic. He was Link's best friend and old high school pal, as in Battleflag. But in the dream, he was an English teacher in the school where Link taught music.

Anyway, this Link was a bit more, hmm, emotional than Lisa's Link. He played Link the way I guess I imagine Ewan would play it, with that touch of vulnerability that I think he does on purpose to make the little girls squeal. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that it doesn't totally fit in with Lisa's Link. On the other hand, Ewan was pure snark in Shallow Grave, and that was a wonderful thing which, IMO, would work beautifully for Lisa's Link.)

Dark Link was in this, too, and he was hanging around outside of the school where link taught music, and it was raining, and he was standing under a tree. (Umm, hello. Ocarina of Time?) There was some kind of water tower or something behind him, and I think he was planning to do something to it. What, I don't know, but I think Link was supposed to figure this out.

As in Battleflag, Zelda had to take these pills. She was also still a surgeon. The pills had a name in the dream, but I can't remember what it was; only that Link had to stop at the lab on his way home to pick them up for her. (Link, Zelda and someone else all lived in an apartment together.) So, Link is walking to the lab after work, and Dark Link is watching him from under the tree. All of a sudden Link starts to laugh, because it's raining and he's in a good mood. (?) The movie gives a kind of close up on him, and then pans over to Dark Link, who's watching him like, "what's wrong with that guy?" But the interesting part was that, because Link was feeling joy, Dark Link had to, because of what he is, feel his own kind of dark joy at the same exact time, only his translated into a kind of sinister pleasure. How wack, right?

Link gets home and brings the pills to Scully / Zelda. This is where Lisa and I, who were all of a sudden watching this together on the computer screen, decide that we want to be in the movie instead of just directing it. So she goes to find Dark Link and bring him into the scene. Meanwhile, I get to play Scully / Zelda for a while. (You know how in dreams this sometimes isn't an actual decision? Like one second you're watching something, and the next second you're doing it?) So all of a sudden we're on the set; only it's not really a movie set. Instead, it's more like we're in the fic, and Lisa's writing it as we go along, and we're acting out these parts.

So Lisa goes to get Dark Link and bring him to Link and Zelda's house. (And can I just stop here for a second to tell you how goofy I feel writing that line?) I announce that I'm playing Zelda for a while, and I go to meet Link. He's in his bedroom, which doesn't have a bed in it, just a mattress on the floor. He's got a computer on one of those big, black, metal computer desks, and everything is all neat and tidy except for all of these wires all around it. He's got a lab coat hanging up next to it, and he's sitting on the floor looking at these two bottles of pills. One is for Zelda, and one is for Dark Link. It seems now that the plan is to catch him and try to get him to take these pills that would calm his urge to destroy things or something. I can just about, barely remember the name of those pills, too, but not entirely. I just remember taking the bottle from him, reading the label, and saying (and I had Gillian Anderson's voice, too) "These are dangerous. If he takes them, they might calm him down, but if you take them, you'll probably die."

Then there's this big crack of thunder, and I look out his bedroom window to see the sky turning dark. Of course, duh, it starts to rain really hard, with the lightning and the spookiness and blah blah blah. All that "it was a dark and stormy night" stuff that Lisa would never bother writing. Link / Ewan, still sitting on the floor, looks up at me and says, "he's coming. He'll be here any minute. And I already took one of these pills accidentally."

My first thought on this is to tell him that, for someone with the job and responsibilities he has, he can really be stupid. But what I say instead is, "I think we have a sex scene coming up. You'd better not start to die in the middle of that!"

Then there is this beeping noise, like an alarm or something, that tells us that Dark Link is close. Link / Ewan says, "she's bringing him up the driveway."

And then I wake up. The noise, of course, was my alarm clock. That in itself was pretty weird, because I usually wake up the second my alarm clock makes the soft "click" sound right before it starts beeping.

Isn't that just stupid and hilarious?

2003-04-12T16:07:00.000-04:00

Ahhh, and finally, some nice weather. This is coming from me, OK? That means something. I love winter and snow and rain. This morning was really nice, lots of rain and gray skies and all, and now, it's sunny and warm. Well, warm by recent standards.

I've got a robin in the aviary (guess he was hit by a car - they found him by the highway with busted air sacs everywhere,) Pendragon is in the sun in his outdoor cage, and even the pond looks almost promising. So, yeah. Ahh.

Went down to the Playhouse today because Pirate James emailed saying that NY Times wanted to do an article on us. It was fun; there were only six of us today so we each got interviewed and there was a photog there too, getting action shots and stuff. I swear, if I wasn't allowed to swing on ropes, sing, yell and stage-fight sometimes, I'd probably go nuts and start tearing up the grocery store with a spatula or something.

Say, Min, I hear you loud and clear on the creativity thing. I've found that I haven't been writing much lately. It's not that I'm dry; I'm not, I have ideas. I just haven't had the spit to put myself in front of the computer and write them out recently. It'll come back. I've been unmotivated and really lazy. I guess it's a phase we all have to go through.

When I do start again though, I'm going to get back to Seer2. It's been a really long time since I've written Seer, and I hope I can get back into Sheik's head. It's always a little harder with him. I wonder why. :/

Ah well. Meantime, I'll just be hanging out enjoying the weather, the pets, the dancing and the pirating. ^_^ All good in the hood. ;)

2003-04-06T14:22:00.000-04:00

Ahh, a thousand welcomes back Min. ^___^

"Overblogging) Had to add one thing. Huge pet peeve when someone says that they don't like art classes or art instruction. The "I'll learn it better on my own" philosophy. Teachers suck! Let me express myself! Yadda yadda yadda."

Blech, make it stop! Get that in writing, too. "Don't give me any feedback unless it glows and oozes like space mud! Otherwise you'll kill my muse!" I've even heard some writers say that writing instruction, you know, like, learning English, is stifling to their creativity. WTF? Hello! Can ya hear me in th'back?! (/Fenster) :/

"Temptestuous temptress of tempting tresses. Try saying that five times quick."

Wow, that was hot. ^_~ If only you could work "with weird horizontal black stripes in it from when you had to run out of the house half bleached" into it. ;)

Margaret Cho rocks my world as well and I, too, wish for BDT to rock mine. Gah! That chat! Those pics! ^_~

In other news, we're getting another big snowstorm tomorrow. Again I say, "WTF?" I'm all about winter and all of that, and I love the snow and the ice and the blah blah blah, but damnit, it's time for Spring. My plants are all confused. "Should we bud? No! Not yet, get back in! Oh...Do we bud now? AHHH! Ice! No budding!" And the birds. "Store food and huddle in the woodpile, or frolick and have sex? We can't tell!"

:/ Bah.

2003-04-05T19:01:00.000-05:00

Hmm. Don't think I ever linked this before, but here.

2003-04-05T18:48:00.000-05:00

And today looked so promising. >_<

So I get up, go to dance class, do the Hula thing for a while, then go out shopping. Ahh, nice shopping, saturday, ice cream, video rental, and yet more hair dye, because I'm just not ready to give up yet, right?

So I come home and let the dogs out, and the dogs are freaking crack monkeys these last to days for some reason. What's up with that? It's two weeks till the full moon! So they're tearing around the yard like maniacs. Trisky chases Sano and he runs into the pole that the bird feeders are on, *WHAM!* with me thinking "oh god, broken ribs!" and the bird feeder goes flying. Sano gets up. Trisky's just standing there, but the pole is ripped out of the ground. The wooden feeder is wrapped by its rope three times around the pole. The big metal bird feeder has gone whizzing like a projectile into the ground, and the two crack monkeys get up and go back to rumbling. So I've had enough, and I let Trisky in the house, keeping Sano out with me b/c I need to keep them apart and keep an eye on Sano while I put my new dragonfly lights on my tree. (Cool lights; too bad it's like -50 degrees out here and the cord for the lights apparently causes cancer. I hate when that happens. And now they're not even freaking working. Anyway.)

I go back inside, and Trisky's on her bed just chilling. Sano curls up beside her, and I go into the bathroom to wreck my hair again. Doodeedoo, pouring ammonia and hydrogen peroxide mixture on my head to remove all the artificial color from the last failed attempt. Then when I'm finished, I come out to the living room and sit down for a while and see what's on TV. Suprise! Buffy's on! And there's Spike! W00t, and all.

Then Trisky gets up and starts licking her leg and my first thought is, "crap, she must have pulled her tendon again. No romping for her for a few more weeks." But no, it can't be that, can it? Instead, she's got this big old flap triangular wound on her hock, where the skin is so delicate that you can see through it. So, holy crap. I flash to the big metal bird feeder projectile.

Still with this nasty bleachy stuff in my hair, I bandage her up and call NFAH to see if I can bring her in. Wouldn't you know that they're having an even worse day than I now am? They're so booked that it doesn't matter when I come by, because no time is going to be the best.

So I rinse my stupid, copper/orange, brittle hair, throw a hat on, put the dog in the car, and off I go.

Actually, my good little Saluki stood there and took a bunch of shots, a bunch of locals, having the flap (which was already necrotic) cut off, and a whole big bunch of stitches without even twitching or making a sound. She was, as she usually is, a perfect lady. Sweet Dr. Nancy gave her a pink bandage and told her what a good dog she is. Now Trisky's on antibiotics and yogurt to help with the quick healing. The label of the ABs reads: "give three times a day orally with food, biznatch! Holla! Holla back!" Because Jen typed it up for me. ;)

Sano was all worried when we got home. He stayed with my Mom, and she said that he'd lain in Trisky's bed and whined the entire time she was gone. When she came back home, he kept licking her foot like, "what happened to you? Is this OK?"

Then I tried to finish up dying my hair. I went for the plum-y burgundy color again. And don't you know, it looks exactly the same as it did yesterday? >_<

Bastards! And I got a really stupid movie, to boot. But at least I'll be eating ice cream while I watch it.

2003-04-01T21:11:00.000-05:00

The Hair Gods have spoken. They have declared that Jules is not to have hair of any shade of red. >_<

2003-03-31T20:47:00.000-05:00

'Kay, I didn't get this result, but the picture is, well, like it says: Wow. Just...Wow. ^_^

franky four fingers from snatch

which benicio del toro are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

2003-03-30T14:45:00.000-05:00

javier rodriguez rodriguez from traffic

which benicio del toro are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Heehee!

2003-03-28T15:57:00.000-05:00

So then, why am I going to see this glorified hide and seek movie again? ^_~

2003-03-22T16:05:00.000-05:00

I just got back from seeing "The Hunted" at the movie theater. (Benicio Del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones - HARDCORE Boy Scouts. ^_~ ) My first thought on this experience is, once again, how much I love going to the movies. There's almost no better feeling than going out to catch a matinee all alone. No one to bug you. It's just you and the movie; no one in between and no distractions. You can react the way you want and you never have to worry about having an awkward moment with someone else if there is an awkward moment on the screen. Stuff like that. I like to watch movies with my friends if I've already seen the movie, but watching something for the first time, I prefer to be alone. It's like a date with the story, all intimate and whatnot. ^_^

Blah blah.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The movie was mostly kind of boring and, although I understood everything it wanted to get across to me, for at least a half an hour it was nothing more than a Where's Waldo game. The cinematography and editing were pretty quick and clever, so that as the audience you'd catch really brief clues and glimpses, and it forced you to look quickly. That was neat, because the idea was that LT (Tommy Lee Jones) had to take everything in in a matter of seconds, so you could get into his world a little. But they, of course, overused it, and it dragged on, and on...and on, until after about twenty minutes I was sitting there going, "there he is! Oh, and there he is again. Oh, now he's up there. Peekaboo!" But there was no suspense at all to it, and that, I think, was because the movie didn't give me enough time to really care too much about either character.

I wanted to care about them, and they both could have been really interesting and sympathetic characters. In fact, I went into it totally expecting to sympathize with both of them, but I couldn't. They rushed the hell out of the exposition and we were expected to hit the ground running with them. Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro) is a war hero, but he's so deeply traumatized by what he's seen and done (which we're allowed to see, too,) that he's unreachable. PTSD, check. Loud and clear. Ten or so minutes of exposition, about a half a minute of angst and flashbacks, and there you go. I mean, this is Benicio Del Toro here, moviemaking people. You've got him. Use him! I haven't seen every movie he's done; only a handful really (and some of my favorite movies, too,) but I know enough to know that he's worth more than they got out of him in this. And Tommy Lee Jones? I know he's intense, because I've seen and enjoyed a lot of his movies. And in this movie, he's pretty much just a tracker type guy, blah blah blah, he's sympathetic to trapped animals and he's tough as nails, and some other cliches that they threw in there instead of taking the time to really draw the character out. Anyway.

They tell you from the first few lines that this is an "Abraham has to kill his son" deal, which they could have done a whole hell of a lot more subtly. (Aaron Hallam = Isaac, LT Bonham = Abraham, yeah yeah.) I get annoyed that just because most people in the theater aren't going to get it, writers and directors feel they need to bash us all with their messages. It would have been a lot cooler if they would have just alluded to it with images (like in the final scene between Aaron and LT, which was one of the only really good parts,) and such.

This movie was only good when they were on screen together. They were a little bit sparky, and the knife fighting - and I don't care how tragic it's supposed to be - was really sexy. I just squee over a good knife fight. There was some subtlety between them and some history, and even some sympathy, but the writers chose to only throw in little tiny morsels here and there in favor of expansive views and hide and seek games. In fact, they underused their chemistry so badly that at the end, when LT is forced to kill Aaron and he seems to grieve over this, I kinda wondered why the hell he was so upset.
One thing I did like, though, was that the very first time he finds Aaron, Aaron holds out his hand and starts to talk to him, and LT immediately starts fighting him. But when they have their last confrontation, LT has a split second where he holds out his hand and seems about to ask ask him to stop, and Aaron immediately fights him. A bit of good direction there, and good acting.

So LT kills Aaron after a choreographed, violent, bloody and pretty freaking cool knife fight complete with ripping sounds and all, and then he does like in the Abraham painting they show you in the beginning (all the while with me going, "screw that! Give us a Pieta! C'mon! For me!") and he's all upset. Meanwhile I'm sitting there thinking, "eh? But he was going to kill him that very first day in the woods!" I was even surprised when, right before the final chase (of too many) was afoot, LT referred to Aaron as "my boy." I mean, I know he trained him and Aaron sent him letters (cries for help that the writers could have totally delved into - I mean, how about a little guilt for LT, for ignoring them and letting "his boy" go over the edge?) but I was thinking, since when? Since he killed a bunch of people and you remembered him?

Interesting to note that there was very little dialogue in this movie, and what there was of it didn't really go anywhere. Throw in a couple of useless characters who didn't add squat to the story and, *yawn!*

However there was this one part during the last knife fight in which LT throws Aaron against some rocks. Just then, in one of those movie moments that seem made just for yours truly, Benicio Del Toro throws his head back, and all that nice black hair falls away from his face and I'm sitting there going, "is that nanosecond of a scene worth the price of a DVD? Yeah, I think so." ;D

2003-03-19T14:11:00.000-05:00

File this under "proof that I am a product of the media that surrounds me."

I had this dream this morning, a frigging Mary Sue dream of all things! >_< It's wildly retarded, and stupidly obvious. Hello, subconscious! I am not as obtuse as all that. You can try a little subtlety once in a while.

A little background that will figure into this nonsense. First: Anyone who has seen my winter coat knows that it is this uglyass, oversized, striped, brown woolen thing. I mean, I couldn't imagine a coat this ugly or bulky, and yet I own it. Second: I have this weird way of swimming underwater in that I don't move my arms or kick my feet. I swim with my arms to my sides and wiggle up and down like a dolphin, and I can go really fast like that. It's just this freak thing that I've always done. Anyway.

So in the dream I'm at this club, and I find out that James Marster's band is supposed to be playing there. So I'm like, hey, cool, and I decide to stay. I'm wearing my ugly winter coat inside the club while the band is playing, and the room is really hot.

I'm also wearing a wig, only the wig is a bigger, uncomfortable version of my own haircut. It's all scratchy and I can't see very well with the plastic hair all over, but I think that's OK, because no one can see me very well, either.

The bottom half of the floor is covered in water. (Note that on FX last night, they played the one where Buffy's basement is flooded.) However, I think that the water is really cool, because I can swim underwater and move around quickly, and avoid people. So while the band is playing and the audience is partying, I'm swimming around really fast. When I'm underwater, I don't have the coat on; just the wig. So I can move around really fluidly without it. And everytime I come up, the coat is back on.

Then the show is over, and all of a sudden some sort of Hollywood movie star or model scout comes into the club. There's a big commotion, and I stand up to hear what's going on (because I can't see very well.) He announces that he's looking for people to be in a movie, but, "only the beautiful people." He wants all of them to meet him outside to talk about getting an agent and stuff like that. So everyone rushes to the door. I remember seeing this one skinny, blond girl in a tight sweater running to the door, and just before I dove under the water I said, "go ahead, skankwhore. They're only looking for beauty, and not brains. You'll do fine." And I didn't even feel bad. Then I went back to swimming.

When I came up from under the water, almost everyone was gone, except for me and a group of RPing nerds. Then I saw the guys (and one girl) in the band laughing as they left the building. Laughing and putting on gorilla suits. I sighed and played with my wig. It was really hot and itchy.

Then an announcement came over the speakers that, from that moment on, only attractive, popular people would be allowed inside the club anymore. (Note that yesterday, I was talking to Spencer about cliques in High School.) So I said, "Oh, fine." I tried to straighten my scratchy wig, because it wouldn't stay on straight, and I left the club. I was more upset about having to stop swimming underwater than about not getting back into the club.

I go outside, and there's this little sidewalk cafe out there. My purse and my camera are on a little metal table, and I pick them up as I'm about to leave. Then I see the guys (and girl) in JM's band sitting at another table, and now they're all wearing these gorilla costumes and laughing amongst themselves. So I say to myself, "I wonder if I can get a picture with the cool gorillas." My reasoning was that this would be a good time to go and say hello, because since they were in costume, they wouldn't think I was being all starstruck and impressed; they would know that I wouldn't use the pictures as trophies or to say, "look who I met!" (Of note: When I lived in Seattle I met a lot of people I admired, and I had this thing about not asking for autographs or pictures. Because, what the hell do I want with a signature or a picture? One time Mark Arm from Mudhoney asked me if he should sign a CD that he'd given me and I told him that getting a free CD of good music was enough for me, and he said, "I respect that." So in the dream, I was in that mindset.) So anyway, I went up to the bandmembers and I said, "cool! Gorillas! Can I take a picture with you guys?" JM wasn't there, but they said OK, still laughing.

Then I sat between them on this bench by the wall, still at this sidewalk cafe, and suddenly my dad was there, and he was snapping the picture. One of the guys put his arm around me and said, "what's with the ugly brown coat?" Then, my Dad left with my camera and I said to the guy, "what's with the gorilla suit?" I started to get nervous because I was thinking, "are we going to banter? I'm too nervous right now to banter and I'm going to say something stupid."

The guy said, "Well, we heard the announcement about only beautiful people being allowed back in the club, and since we know they want us back there, this is our way of saying, 'we aren't interested in being in your club, because look at how ugly we all are.'"

I thought that was neat. But I said, "I can still see your faces, though." Because they had taken off the plastic heads, and instead there were just these brown fuzzy things around their faces, like hoods.

Then the girl next to me said, "I saw you swimming around in there. Why were you doing that?"

I told her, "I can hold my breath a loooong, looong time." (Of note: I caught the end of "Creepshow" the other night, with "Something To Tide You Over." It was in Spanish, and I was laughing at how the line "I can hold my breath a looong, looong time" just didn't sound the same.)

Then one of the guys in the band said, "well, that's cool and all, and you have this mermaid kinda thing going on, but...With the wig and the stupid coat and all..."

Then all of a sudden JM was there, without the gorilla costume or anything. He knelt down in front of me and said, "but love, it was really stupid and pointless." He said "love" but not with the fake Spike accent.

So I said, "I guess it was, but I didn't feel like coming up. And when you don't have to come up for air, it's nice to just swim around where no one can see you."

Then I saw that his eyes were this weird green color, like glass. (IIRC, his eyes are blue, I think.) I'm thinking to myself, "this is sort of Harry Potter-ish." Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

He kept saying these things to me, and I swore that I'd remember what they were by the time I sat down to write this, but now I don't remember, and that's pissing me off. It seemed like it was interesting. I know that he was really close to me and so were his friends, and it was way, way too hot, and I was starting to feel shy. Ah! I just remembered the thing that I said. He reached out and took my wig off, and I thought, "he's being flirty to make me feel better. That's kind of nice."

He said, "it's hot out here, pet. Take off that ugly coat; it's dragging you down."

I told him, "I'm too shy and retarded to skin my own camel."

That's not as abstract as it sounds. That used to be an in joke between my sister and I, and just a few days ago I read some of our old notes, which made reference to that joke. So that's where that came from.

He said, "But aren't you tired of hiding underwater? Don't you want to come up for air?"

I thought, "his eyes are so green it's scary," and then I woke up.

Duh.

2003-03-18T23:35:00.000-05:00

And life with two dogs is interesting. ^_^

Weather was all Springish today, with robins chirping and blueblue skies and the fresh breeze, all of that sappy nonsense. I was, like, happy with it and stuff. WTF? I found myself thinking about how the Earth is sheltered from all of those mean and nasty death rays in outer space and all, all nice and conducive to life, all pretty sounding and nice smelling and, just, GAAHHH! WTF? I was in a field with a friend of mine! A green, rolling field, with horses no less. And a little dog. And I was turning cartwheels. What's with me with the birds and flowers and frolicking these last few years? Christ on a bike!

My pal Nancy at work remarked the other day that I was usually all happy, and she came this close to calling me perky. O_O I shot her a look and she said, "no, not perky at all. Just sort of happy. In a dark, evil kind of way."

On the other hand, I probably shouldn't worry too much. Just last week I came to the conclusion that I am, in fact, evil. The reason I know this for sure is this: I've done loads of spells in my time. Loads. I've done good ones and bad ones. I used to do bad ones, back when I was in school and I didn't know how naughty it was to do bad spells on people. (You know, I mean it was always for a good reason and stuff. ^_^;; Like this guy who beat the hell out of my cousin, and her this mellow little girl and all. That kind of stuff, you know, to hurry karma up. And stuff. Anyway.) So, those dark spells? They all worked, and I do mean, they worked like the dickens. And yet, I've done tons and tons of nice spells, good happy sparkly ones and all, and those never freaking work. Not a single one!

So it stands to reason that I'm evil.

That's it. No more frolicking on the green grass while singing the theme to Please Save My Earth. No more planting flowers and growng wild rasperries for the cute little birdies. No more "Aloha Spirit!!" No more warm fuzzy feelings, waving to neighbors, baking pies, driving my friends to lunch and parties! No more laughing or romping or dancing, damnit! I'm evil! EVIL! I should just go with it! *waving to good ole LQ* Hi there, ahou! I am The One Nemesis! Squee! I am going to point out what a bad writer you are, because I am evil! (Oh no, wait; that's because you really are a moron. Oh well, scratch that.)

Tch. Or, whatever. I guess I could just be this frolicksome, pie-baking, flower-planting, bird-raising, AlohaHula-dancing, evil thing. That's not too far out, is it?

2003-03-15T17:35:00.000-05:00

Holy god, I have two dogs! O_O

It's been an adventure so far, pretty much. I went to pick Sano (you know, "Norton." BAH!) before noon today. The shelter sort of blew me off about giving him a bath, and as he was an absolute filth hound, there was no way he was coming to my house without a bath. So I took him right down to the AH on the other side of the frigging Island.

Sano's a good dog. A little timid, a little unsure of himself, and he doesn't like strangers too much. What he does like, though, is other dogs. I brought him home, all nice and clean and harnessed up (the anti jump harness, since he's a known fence jumper and that's also part of why he's been in the shelter for so long,) and let Trisky out to play with him.

Trisky went immediately into play bow. Sano, like all dogs she's met, was a little hesitant because Trisky plays rough; she's a real beast. But then he crept up to her, licked her muzzle, and bowed back. Then they romped for about ten minutes. Then Gran let Belle, her 130 lb mastiff mix come out too, and the three of them play bowed and licked. Both dogs gave props to Trisky, and Sano gave props to Belle, even. O_O Then the three of them ran around and played tag.

Sano doesn't seem to know what "come" means yet. :/ So I ended up "romping" for about ten minutes trying to catch him. He's pretty fast. Not as fast as Trisky, (who has SUPER GODLIKE SPEED! ;D ) but still pretty impressive.

In the house is a different story. They still bowed to each other, but their playing was definitely a status thing, and Trisky is very vocal about her status. So she barked for about fifteen minutes as she showed him the ropes. "Yes, we're playing, and anything I do is still play, but I could kick your ass if you tried anything funny."

The most hilarious part was when I put Sano's bed on the floor and gave them each a Booda Bone to play with. Trisky loves the Booda Bone above all other toys and snacks. She just can't get enough of the Booda Bone. Gotta have it. But she wanted no part of it just then. All she wanted was Sano's bed and Sano's Booda Bone. She chased him out of his own bed and took both bones, and when he tried to go into her bed, she chased him out of that one, too. He keeps on rolling over for her and licking her muzzle, telling her, "okay, you're Alpha, I won't challenge it. Can we play now?"

But finally we got it straightened out, and they were both just napping a second ago, then Trisky started fighting with her bed and Sano woke up to go, "huh?"

It's all good though; they're both quiet and chilled out now. That's not going to last. ;) As soon as I get up, Sano's going to get up to follow me, and Trisky's going to start yelling at him to get the hell back into his bed and stop sucking up. ;)

So it's going to be a big adjustment, and I know I'm not going to get any sleep tonight as they try to work out sleeping space.

But it's really nice to watch them playing in the yard together. ^_^

2003-03-14T23:18:00.000-05:00

STFU, badfic. Go away. >_<

2003-03-14T16:49:00.000-05:00

Hey, my leetle wild blogging doe! (/Chris Walken) ^_~ Re: Dawnie: Well, as I said, I came into this smack in the middle of season five, and have seen maaaaybe ten episodes in all (not counting one that I saw in like 97 or something at a friend's house in Seattle. Something about gentlemen? And only kids could see them? And everyone I hung with was afraid to drive home that night?) So not counting that one, the first one I saw already had Dawn in it and part of the gang. In fact, I think the first ep I saw last week was the one in which she found out that she was the Key. (I get the whole Glory / Key / bleeding dimensions thing as of the last few nights.)

"LurveBitch-Spike still had some great moments, but I love Badass Spike is all I'm sayin'."

I'd be willing to bet that you're right in that Badass!Spike is awesome as hell, especially in James Marster's hands. I like him as season five Spike, too. It's about acting, at least in part, and at least to me. And I'm warning you in advance that there's a good chance I will go all squishy when I get to RavingInTheBasement!Spike. 'Cause, I love a good, well-handled meltdown. ;D

"She wants a social life amid the insane-deathfest that comes with being the slayer's sister. Her dad's a flakey jerk. She loses her mom, an evil God is tryin' to kill her. And all that with no boyfriend to call her own. Wah!"

Well, shoot! Insane deathfest, evil, murderous god, and no boyfriend? I "wah" about those things all the time. ;D

And again, I don't know from pre-Dawn Buffy and pre-Lovesick!Spike. Maybe if I did, I might feel a bit differently. (A bit: when I think an actor is really good, it usually takes a full-on offense to drive me away. ;D ) And honestly, I do get peevish when my favorites get messed with. (*coughcough*AttackOfTheClones!*cough* Jeez, even Ewan couldn't save that fiasco.) But these two actors in Dawn and Spike are really enjoyable to watch, and that's my thing.

It's like Chris Walken. I always say that, for me, at least, he can often salvage a truly horrendous script and even bad direction. I'd be willing to see anything with him in it, even silly, badly directed and edited gay porn lite. He's a joy to watch, even when he's saying lines like "I am Mr. Huge and you are here to do me." ;D

But I'm a simple, simple creature. I'm all, "Vampires! Long black coats! GOOD ACTOR! Me like! Me watch! And watch again!" ^_^

All else failing, my defense for enjoying Spike could still be, "but look at those cheekbones!" ;D Bwah!

2003-03-13T15:13:00.000-05:00

Right, one last thing. James Marster's voice, minus the fake accent? Mmmmm, hell yes. Officially assigned to Sahrek. ^_^

2003-03-13T15:12:00.000-05:00

I finally met this handsome man today. He was very, very shy; almost neurotic. Took him a few minutes to warm up, you know? So, I know he doesn't just fall in love with everyone right away. I like a little bit of reserve. But as I was talking to the woman who had introduced us, I could see him inching his way closer to me, kind of scooting over a teeny bit at a time. Then, when I wasn't looking, he planted a big kiss on my face. AWWW!

And, you know, I just don't have enough black hair to vacuum off the rug every week. I need more.

MAN, but does he ever need a bath. He was all soaked, muddy and filthy, and it wasn't just from playing in a wet, dirty run all morning, either. It's from having played in a wet, dirty run for months.

I'm going back to get him on Saturday, but he's not setting paw onto my nice silver rug until he's sparkly clean and fresh.

I'm a little nervous, because this is going to be a big adjustment. But I've been thinking about getting another dog for about two years now. I've thought about pretty much everything. This one's kind of rowdy, and I'm in hopes that Trisky will keep him in line, sort of. As long as there's no blood involved, it will be fine. ^_^

In other news, I must admit, I've been watching Buffy lately. WTF? I read a fanfiction about a week ago, and it was interesting enough that I said, "hmm, I'd like to put some faces to these names." (Since "Buffy" was the only character I was at all familiar with at the time.) I've been kind of enjoying it, though sometimes I'm not 100% sure if I'm enjoying the show, or if I'm enjoying just sitting down to watch TV for a while. ^_^

I think I must somehow enjoy shows differently than most people. People seem to get really into a show, and if it throws them off with some different character thing that seems wrong, or with some flaw or major turn in the storyline, it seems to get everyone all upset. (It is true that certain shows have jumped the shark, and I hate when that happens.) But, unless I can tell that the actors are really sick of what they're doing, or are in some way not as into it anymore, I'm usually still pretty happy with it. I guess I tend to watch a show as much for the acting as for the story and characters.

Right now I'm mostly enjoying the kid who plays Dawn, and the guy who plays Spike. Hang on for just a sec while I find out their names.

(Crap! IE just crashed. >_< WTF?!! Hang on; everything but notepad crashed. GRR! Bastards!)

'Kay. Michelle Trachtenberg and James Marsters. Anyway. Much easier to type out Dawn and Spike. ^_^

Dawn, you know, the script gives her a lot of angst, and a lot of crying (and, yeah, she's bound to have more than any normal teen.) While I'm not a fan of the teen angst (lived it, then witnessed it close up... GAAH!!) this kid does a really good job with it. She seems to put a lot of thought into her character; she's not just reciting lines the way Anya seems to do most of the time. (The only time the actress playing Anya seemed really interesting was the awful, awful episode where Joyce died. But I digress.) She seems to give more depth and meaning to her role than Sarah Michelle Gellar gives to Buffy, even. Sometimes it looks to me like SMG is just reading the script. But anyway.

I saw this episode last night where all the girls fall under this love spell, and they all fall for the same high school jock. There's a scene where Buffy sees Dawn slutting it up at a club, and she confronts her about it. The attitude that Dawn gave back to her got me angry and panicked, because it reminded me way too much of the attitude I used to get from my sister when she was about 16 or so and I was 19. Man, she even looks a little like Celia did back then. (Yes, Celia is gorgeous, though she doesn't look exactly like her.) It was kind of jarring.

There seems to be a lot of talk about what happened to Spike's character over the last few years; that he used to be interesting and evil, and now he's all shmooshy and boring. Well, to be fair, I started smack dab in the middle of season 5, just about when he thinks he's falling in love with Buffy. I didn't see him before then. I guess that this is where most people think he starts to lose his edge.

Nuh uh. I can understand being disappointed in the story and how the writers handle the transition, but I like to see a character change, especially if the change is a struggle. It depends a lot on the script and stuff, but it really, really rides on the actor trying to convince the audience of the transition. That is something I like to watch. (Of note: acting is frigging hard. I used to attempt to do it, when I did some college theater work. I really can't explain just how difficult it is, and on how many levels. But anyway.) So, it really interests me to see how an actor is going to handle these things that a script throws at him.

I'm impressed with James Marsters; one can see that he's spent lots of time doing theater work. Sometimes you can notice a difference between actors who started in the theater and actors who started in movies or TV. Some of it has to do with continuity (theater actors have that luxury, and it does make it easier onstage,) but more than that, it has to do with the voice and the body. When you do something on stage, you have to do it so that people in the back row understand. There are no close-ups. Now, I would think that it would be really, really hard to make the transition from the stage, where there are 3 real walls and a 4th wall that you make for yourself, where there's continuity, and where there are no cameras in your face and little to no background noise, to TV or movies, where you have all those jarring cuts, interruptions and discractions. But there's something about actors who've jumped over from theater to movies / TV that still tries to reach the back row with the truth of what they're doing. I can't put my finger on it. It's just bigger. At the same time, they also seem to be a lot more subtle.

Wow, that was a huge tangent. What was I getting at? Right; the guy who plays Spike. I guess that one wouldn't really call Spike subtle, and Spike really isn't - but James Marsters is. He seems to say more when he's not saying anything (and that's good, b/c sometimes his fake accent is crappy.) So, even if some people think that the writers of the show are making Spike into a lovesick puppy and taking away his teeth (pun more or less intended,) for me at least, it is really interesting to watch him work with the stuff they're throwing at him. Because a good actor will work with it.

Again, I'm probably talking out of my ass because I've only seen about half of season five. But I really like what I have seen of Spike so far; I get a little thrill when he's on the screen. Yeah yeah, he's got that tall, sinewy thing going on, and the sexy bone structure and all, but I mean, aside from all of that yumminess. I just know that he's going to do something interesting for me to watch. And knowing how hard it is (at least it was for me,) to do something like act well, I appreciate that.

Plus, hell yes, I like the whole "no soul, still somehow soulful" thing. I like my heroes with a dark side, and I like my villains redeemable. (That's why the hell Darth Vader was so interesting, and Darth Maul, as slick and cool as he was, just could never, ever be as awesome as Vader. ;) ) They gave Spike a really raw hole in his evilness, and they get a lot of mileage out of poking it and going, "does this hurt? It does, doesn't it?! Writhe!" He does, and sometimes only with a glance. I think that's really neat.

I'm totally rambling now. It's nearly midnight and I'm overtired, and I should be going to bed and all b/c I have work stupid early tomorrow. I guess I'm all keyed up over this new dog thing. I need to take a chill, and stuff. Big adjustments coming up. Big changes. Panic, and all of that.

(Don't worry about me. I cried the entire first night I brought my Trisky home, because I had convinced myself that I couldn't make such a huge adjustment in my life, and that I would have to just take her back the next week. Just so glad I didn't. ^_^ I'll get over this nervousness, too.)

I was going to post this tonight, Mar. 12th, but now it's too late for me to go over it to see if I made any kind of sense at all, so I'm going to wait till the 13th and all. ^_^ Which, if you're reading this and it falls under March 13th 2003, you'll know I did just that.

*whew!*

2003-03-06T22:45:00.000-05:00

I might be in love. It's really hard to tell without meeting him, but he is very cute in the picture, with his bright eyes and goofy smile. However, as we know, cute is not enough. I am so not the kind of unrealistic "izzums so pwecious!" type who falls in love with every cutie she sees. No, they don't all win me over, and yes, there are a few that I just can't win over either. I don't have that ditzy, sovereign, "they all adore me because I am Nature Girl and I speak All Languages" conceit thing going on. I've been bitten.

He'd also have to be gentle, but not too submissive or shy. I don't like the doofy, climb all over you and ruin your clothes ones too much. I like 'em with that spark of intelligence and just a bit of reserve. But playful, too. And, he's got to get along with my family. If Trisky objects to him, or if he doesn't like Pendragon, it wouldn't work out. Love me, love my dog and lizard; that kind of thing.

And I also hope to god that he really is housetrained. I love my rug!

^_^

2003-03-04T18:14:00.000-05:00

VOMIT to sites that support the theft of art of really good people. >_< Is it a different story when the person whose art has been stolen is a well known and shameless art theif herself? Oh-ho! YES! ^_____^

Anyway, in other news. I'm thinking about adopting a dog. I don't make decisions like this lightly, and my stress level is way out of proportion when I start to consider things like this. It's a major decision for me. I have a dog. She's Alpha with a capital "A". I have an iguana, and I have to keep him and the dog separated at all times. It's a tricky situation, and I have to weigh this whole thing carefully before I make any decisions or promises.

But it is a really cute dog! And he really needs a home. The last thing I would want to do is bring a dog home with me, find out it wasn't going to work out, and have to bring him back to the shelter.

Have a benefit / fundraiser to attend at Atlantis this weekend. So yesterday, of course, I had to shop for a dress or something fancy to wear. I usually go in for the slinky dresses, but for the first time ever, a pantsuit caught my eye. It's red, and the top is all embroidered in the front. The back of the top goes down to the floor. EEEE! And I also had an excuse to buy new shoes, which I haven't done in years. 'Course, I went for the black ones with four inch heels. The punchline? I'm already 5'9&1/2". ^_^ Then of course, while I was out I had to buy interesting shampoo, bath salts, hair color, fuzzy slippers...God, I'm such a girl sometimes. ;)

Weird, finishing RC2. I can't believe it took me a whole year to write that one little book. :/ Anyway, it's strange finishing up a book. I notice that I have to take some time away from writing after I do that, or even after I do a big chapter. I have to take a few days to do other things, like play video games or watch movies and stuff. I guess that next I'll go back to writing Seer2; that makes sense, doesn't it? ^_^

Well, just some mana'o for today.

2003-03-01T23:21:00.000-05:00

And of course, welcome back Min! Hope you had a great trip. ^_^

2003-02-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

Good traveling vibes to you, Min! Will be thinking of you at 2 AM PST, that is...let's see...5 AM EST?! OK, how 'bout I start sending those vibes now? ^_~

Have a great trip!

2003-02-24T12:34:00.000-05:00

*Giggle* Thanks for the link to the fun quiz, Min!

Quiz
created by Polly Snodgrass.
	WATER OF FIRE. You are energetic and dramatic. You don't hesitate to take the initiative and aren't normally comfortable being cooped up in the house. You need to be involved in some kind of cause or activity. Your charismatic personality gets you plenty of attention. You'd make a good artist and are very creative. You have a strong will; beware of jealousy or instability. You fiery wench you.

2003-02-22T16:20:00.000-05:00

However, I'm fretting over the fact that BOTI's protagonist, Manji, is also called "Twelveblades," cause, I swear on everything I believe it, I only read BOTI today. I wrote the 16th chapter of RC, which names Sahrek "Fiveblades," last year. Tch! ;)

2003-02-22T15:56:00.000-05:00

Wow, today is gorgeous. It just got really dark all of a sudden, and it's a full-on downpour. It's sad to see the snow melt so quickly, and the ten year old in me is really sad because if it was a few degrees colder, we'd be getting even more snow! Think of how much we're missing out on!! But, it's misty and rainy and so cheerful and romantic. If I didn't have the sudden urge to draw, I'd be turning most of the lights off and watching a video. But alas, the urge to draw is upon me, and I apologize in advance for whatever the urge may release. :/ I just read "Blade Of The Immortal" and the black-and-white-ness of it knocked me out. He makes it look so damned simple to draw complex poses and emotions. His faces are made up of only a few lines but I can read them as well as text. Also, the style reminds me of HweiLin's work. I like it for a lot of the same reasons. Both artists draw really powerful features while keeping it fluid. There's a similar sensibility in the drawings of both artists and I like it a lot.

(Problem with me reading "Blade" is that he makes it look so easy that, here I am again, going, "drawing can't be that hard. Look at what he did with a few lines!" And as we all well know by now: "Duh.")

Dance class was really nice today. We learned a really gentle Tahitian Kapa Aparima, which is really the only gentle Tahitian that we do. (Just looked up "apalima" in my Hawaiian dictionary and, not finding it, looked up "apa," and found that it means "to tarry" or variations on that theme. "Lima" is hands and so now, Tahitiah "aparima" makes sense to me. It's a slow dance.)

Wow, it is absolutley torrential out there. Time for low lighting. ^_^

Another reason to be happy? Chris Walken on Saturday Night Live tonight! Could today realistically get any better?

I love winter and I want to savor it for the next month or so, but I have to say that I think spring is going to explode this year. I'm sort of looking forward to all the planting and landscaping, simple creature that I am.

I used to get annoyed when people would ask me things like, "don't you have any ambition? Don't you want to move up in the world? Shouldn't you have a more prestigious job?" and, my favorite, which our manager (a good one, not the PsychoWhore,) asked me one time, "what are you doing here? You're smarter than I am and I make twice your salary." Well, for one thing, I'm beginning to understand that "smart" is relative. By "smart," my good friend means "well read and diverse, has travelled and experienced many things." I can quote lots of things. But, I couldn't do her job; there's no way. Her job is all math and machines, and she's brilliant at it. She makes twice my salary, but has been there for over twenty years. I'm probably one of the highest paid assistants on the east end and, for however much I complain about some of our policies and dramas there, my boss is generous with the paycheck. (I got a raise yesterday! GOOOOO me!)

Anyway, I thought about that a lot after she asked me that and I really wondered, do I want more? Do I need more, in order to feel fulfilled? After all these years I have to say, I guess that I don't. I'm totally lacking in ambition. I don't need prestige or titles; I used to think that I did, or that I would somehow be less a part of society if I didn't have extra letters after my name, but I don't feel that way anymore. I'm not hungry or cold, I don't worry about putting gas in my car or buying clothes, books or anime. I'm able to have nice things. I can create things if I feel like it, and, even if they are trite or not as good as they could be, I'm not a bumbling LQ who treads all over the English language so that it's painful for other people to read my stuff. I travel, and hey, sometimes I travel on a whim. ^_____^

More important than any of that is that I can be close to my family and friends. I can also help them when they need me. I can build an aviary by myself and raise the birds, healthy and fat, to put into it. I can do an injection or set and splint a wing one-handed, and that's saying something. ;) I can dance and get paid $140 an hour for it, and the best part of that is that I would dance for free if no one was willing to pay.

I don't know; maybe someday I will realize that I want to do something else, but if it's out there, I just haven't run into it yet: nothing brings me as much joy as the stuff I do now. If you'd asked me when I was 15, or even 20, if simple things like birds, gardens, the ocean and dancing would keep me so happy, I'd have thrown a fit. "WHAT?!! I'm meant for bigger, better things!" But now I think that my "bigger, better" syndrome was just drama.

WHOA! Thunder and lightning! One time, my friend and I had this huge argument. She insisted that thunder and lightning were impossible in the winter, and she got so angry when I disagreed that she swore she'd never admit she was wrong, even if I could prove that she was. I've seen winter thunderstorms since then (and before then, actually,) and so I just have to laugh when it happens. Not so much laugh as titter and stick my tongue out, because damn, if it's good to be right, it's even better to be right when the person who was wrong is sooooo angry. ^_^

See? The simple things keep me happy! ;D

2003-02-21T19:11:00.000-05:00

You think that LQ google turning up that story was weird? Look at this.

This took me about a half an hour to do. I read through this LOZ badfic that I found last night while googling LQ, as you remember, and as I did so, I noticed even more similarities to the MIL travesty than I had last night. This wasn't hard to do. All I did was find some of the keywords from this fic (I think it's called "Heat," only 'cause that's what's in the URL,) and then I did a "find" for those keywords in MIL. I was really surprised.

I don't think this is LQ, but one of these two ripped the other off in a big, big way. I can't see anyone ripping off LQ, so my hypothesis here is that LQ read this fic, was jealous of Zelda in it, and wrote herself into it instead.

Go on, take a look. It's eerie.

Heat:
"She was not expecting this, and her back arched in sudden extacsy, the loudest vocalization yet escaping her lips. "

MIL:
"Slowly at first then I upped the movements, causing violent spasms to rage threw our bodies, the loudest vocalizations yet escaping past our lips."

Heat:
"They talked of their plans, mostly meaningless dribble of the LonLon Ranch annual get together,"

MIL:
" We just sat there and talked in meaningless dribble about who was going to set up the decorations...."

Heat:
"The sky was setting off tones of deep pink, and lavender, the sun nearly faded from the horizon.

MIL:
"The sky was setting off tones of deep pink, and lavender, the sun starting to set as we neared Dragonmount."

Heat:
"Zelda peered deep into his rippling pools of eyes,"

MIL:
"Then I walked into his arms again and looked into his rippling blue eyes."

Heat:
"He swept his hand up to her immaculate face,"

MIL:
"The candlelight reflected off his immaculate skin,"

Heat:
"She had her hands trickling up his narrow side, slipping off hi tunic so she could feel him bare against her."

MIL:
"As out tongues entwined I felt his hands trickling up my sides as he started sliding down the straps of my dress."

Heat:
"The warmth of Links lean, infatuated body made Zelda moan softly."

MIL:
"I let my soft hands trace over the muscular outlines of his infatuated body,"

Heat:
"He began to slowly thrust his hand in and out of her enchanted body."

MIL:
"Then I begun to cry out in ecstasy as he slowly penetrated my enchanted body."

Heat:
"Her body swam with sensations she had never known existed, and her murmers soon turned into cries of pleasure, and pure excatsy."

MIL:
"My back arched and groans of pure pleasure escaped past my lips. Never had I felt such feelings before. Never had my body ever felt such pleasure."

Heat:
"Her legs shuddered, and he increased his movements speed faster still, her moans soon lasting longer..."

MIL:
"Then I felt myself starting to climax as his fingers thrust deeper upping the movements. My body shuddered from the immense feelings that raged threw it."

Heat:
"She cried out in compltete bilss, heaving her shivering body against his, until an ever more violent spasm raged through her body, causing her to scream in mind boggling pleasure."

MIL:
" I cried out again as I bucked up against Link, my body shuddering in immense bliss, until an even more violent spasm raged it, causing me to scream out in mind boggling pleasure."

Heat:
"."Hmm..more...yes...Link..God...yes," Zelda cried, her entire being having shocks of wonderful pleasure sent through every vien, a tremor raging her body, radiating toward the nucleus between her thighs."

MIL:
" Our bodies withered together as I pumped faster, the sheer ecstasy raged threw my body, radiating toward the nucleus between my legs." (and) "With each thrust, my legs shuddered sending momentary shocks to my lower organs. Then I arched my back, my body screaming in ecstasy as his movements became faster. I reached up and dug my nails into his muscular back as the eternal bliss raced through my every vein."

Heat:
"Link finally climaxed, releasing a warmth into her, causing her to reach her second peak, convulsing violenly, and he thrust against her beautiful form."

MIL:
"My body started convulsing as I felt myself starting to climax. Then his thrusts came in faster beats as he started to climax. Our cries filled the air as we both came to our peaks."

Heat:
"Link cried, again grinding against her shaking, writhing, sweaty screaming form, releasing yet another time into her, causing her now limp, shuddering body to thrust forward in immense bliss,"

MIL:
"Link too cried out in immense bliss as I begun moving faster, grinding against his pelvis, his body shuddering violently..."

Heat:
"groaning, fighting for any left strength, Zelda despreately screaming, and moaning for another climax, bucking against Link, her hands finding thier way scross hs backside, down his legs, and up again..."

MIL:
"Exhausted, I screamed as I tried to find the strength to go on. I clawed into Link's back as I bucked against him. Sweat rolled down our bodies as we fought to climax a second time. I ran my now sweaty hands up and down his back digging my nails into his skin as I pushed up against him. "

Well? Which came first? That's what I'd like to know.

2003-02-20T23:59:00.000-05:00

Why does the internet always get fun just as I'm checking one last time before I go to bed?

2003-02-20T19:06:00.000-05:00

Some funny LQ related stuff that I found today. While MSTing a story, I decided to google one of my favorite LQ malapropisms, "from the gecko." The first page I turned up was this one. Kind of cute, no? However, while I didn't look at all the pages listed in the search results, I found that no one that I'd seen had mistaken "from the get-go" for "from the gecko."

Then, we take LQ's "doggy dog world." This mix up is very slightly more common, however, as this page pointed up, it's really a childish mistake to make: "Financial writer Andrew Tobias recounts how he earnestly told a preschooler, "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there," only to have the child beam with delight as he repeated the words he though he heard: "It's a doggy-dog world!"

There was, of course, her "know you from atom," phrase, which had me absolutely rolling. I see here that five other people have made this mistake. Does that make LQ one of the 6 stupidest people on the 'net? ^_~

A google of the LQ word, "persiflaga" only turns up one page. ^_^

A favorite of mine, one that always made me spit my water out if I happened to think of it while drinking, was "you thoust have no religion." I googled "you thoust have," "you thoust," and even "thoust have," and only found a few pages misusing "thoust have." This is still abuse of the language, but slightly more understandable than "you thoust." (LQ never got that "you" and "thou" were the same thing.)

There was one page for "up the yanny," but I couldn't get the page. :/

But here was the really, really frigging oddball one. I googled her extraordinarily (or as LQ says, "just short of extortionary") error, "infatuated body," and came up with only two sites: my own MSTing of one of her chapters and (this is the freaky part,) another LOZ GAFF! WTF? "His mere face brought her back to health...." Actually... O_O;; god help us...this fic reads like an LQ fic. ...This...is LQ, isn't it??

(All of this googling also led me to this page, which just screamed "Jenna; Link's Queen.")

2003-02-17T16:32:00.000-05:00

My bottom of door broke off this afternoon when I tried to open it to let my dog out. I can't find some of the smaller trees and bushes in my yard. I can see about half of my car. My windows are covered in ice.

And there's still more on the way. ^_____^

So I'm thinking: a nice, warm bath with some good music and candles, hot chocolate, and calling in "trapped" for tomorrow. "Hey guys. I live 35 miles away and I can't find my car. How about some of you who live right next door cover for me?" ;D That's not too unreasonable, is it? I mean, for an unmotivated, lazy, dreaming femme like me?

Thanks, Min! Welcome back, yourself. ^_^

2003-02-17T13:23:00.000-05:00

The Twenties.

Which Decade Are You?
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2003-02-16T23:35:00.000-05:00

What the hell is this? A blog? Ohhhh yeah. I think I remember what those are. ;)

Well, it's nice to be home again. The blizzard just started, and last week I was swimming, but it really is good to be home. I'll take the dark, windy, snowy stuff over the 80 degrees and sunny crap any day. ^_^

Things that rule:

My new mist / fog thing.

My new Japanese lantern under my living room window.

The fact that the new Zelda game is coming out soon.

Having a whole day tomorrow to write goofyass fanfiction and maybe even try to draw.

Spencer learning to chant and Meghan learning her first whole Hula kahiko.

Chris Walken on SNL! Or, hell, Chris Walken anywhere. ( Adore.)

This monster blizzard.

VD is over. (St. Valentine's Day, people. ;D )

Silky kimono, ice cream, and a new anime to watch. Duh!

Please Save My Earth!! Is Rin not the most fascinating character? (Maybe not the most, but pretty damned neat.)

Things that annoy:

People who suck the fun out of fandom by taking it all too seriously (while complaining that everyone takes it much too seriously.)

RPF.

This goddamned bronchitis.

People who ask you to do something for them and, after you take the time to do it, go back about their business without so much as a "thank you" or "go to hell."

The fact that this stupid cable modem is still freaking slow.

People who suck the fun...Oh, wait.

Things that confuse:

I was going to write something here, but it ended up being pointless, dramatic and silly. What really confuses me a lot of the time is me, and not the way things happen around me.

2003-02-10T22:44:00.000-05:00

I hear ya, Min. :/ And, yeah. Gross.

Two nights ago I accidentally saw the X Files episode where the Lone Gunmen died. >_< I knew it would make me sad, so I'd tried to avoid it, but I didn't realize that was the one I was watching until the end. I surprised myself by being sadder than I thought I'd be. :/ But then last night they played Bad Blood, and it erased the bad X Files vibe. ;)

Sooooo, well, tomorrow we're heading home. That's good; I'm Disneyed out and I miss my pets and my own bed. And the cold. And sleep. ;) Cause, yeah, Gran has some really interesting dreams. I'm on no sleep. /Kramer!Seinfeld.

Met up with my Hula brothers and sisters, learned two awesome Hulas, rode the roller coasters, saw the cool things, and now I'm pau. I had a great time; most of it is because of the company, though. I'm lucky to be with my family in Florida. ^_^ Very lucky.

Send us good flying vibes for tomorrow. ^_^

2003-02-08T22:23:00.000-05:00

Aloha e Min! You know, I've noticed that in some manga, and it always tends t make me get a little confused in the story. I always sort of felt like it was my fault for not paying enough attention. ;)

Still in Disney, chilling out, kicking it at the Poly. Spence, Meg and I did lots of HUla and chanting today. In fact, the three of us did chanting and pa'i for a class of dancers today, in the main lobby. O_O It was kind of an overwhelming experience. In a good way. ^_^

Man, I bought some cool stuff. ^_________^ This is good, because I have something to look forward to when I get home. Heh.

(Can't access my stupid optonline email for some reason. Grr. Reach me till tuesday at kapunua@yahoo.com or ndn_girl72@yahoo.com.)

2003-02-05T22:34:00.000-05:00

Aside from four out of the eight of us being sick, this is a great trip. ^_^ We started out with a kind of race to Disneyworld, which was funny, since half the party drove, and half flew. My Gran, aunt, and goddaughter and I flew down, (and watcd "Please Save My Earth" on my laptop on the plane,) and my Mom, Dad, uncle and cousin drove. They left a few hours after dinner the night before we left. And do you know, we beat them by five minutes? O_O How cool is that?

So here I am at the Poly, sharing a room with my Gran. Gran's a good roommate until the lights go out. She doesn't just talk in her sleep, she holds conversations, and sometimes she freaks out. So, it hasn't been totaly restful. ;) Well, for Gran, but not for me. She sleeps though the whole thing.

I bought the coolest thing for my house, and I'm so glad, because I've wanted it for years and I never had the space in my house before for it to be practical. Now that I've got the smaller sofa, it works out. WOOOO! It's one of these decorative disk fogger things, and the Engrish on the instructions is classic. "It's more full of natural fingering" indeed. O_O
So, we rode some rides and had some great dinners and hung out and shopped and things like that. But the best was last night and this morning, with Auntie Kau'i.

Last night we went to the 'Ohana room, and Kaleo was there, and Lipoa, Fili, two Hula teachers whom I hadn't met before, and of course, Auntie. (Auntie's leaving on a trip to Ireland tomorrow morning,) Spencer had been practicing chanting He Mele Inoa Kalakaua for a few weeks, and he sort of waffled about wanting o chant it for Auntie for a few days. Well last night at 'Ohana, we all ran into each other, and Auntie told him, "oh, you're here. Let's hear it." We were standing in front of the fire pit, surrounded by all these families and I told him, "come on, I'll chant it with you." Then some people clapped in rhythm, and he chanted the whole thing without making a single mistake. When we were done, Auntie says, "good! Now come down tomorrow morning and I teach you the dance."

...WOOOOOO! ^_______^

Well, last night the kids stayed over at the Poly with us, and after breakfast this morning, we went to the lobby where Auntie was waiting. I kinda had it in mind that she would forget or be too busy, but the first thing she said to me was, "hi! Where's the boy?!" Well, Spencer, being fourteen and male, didn't want to learn the dance, but he did offer to pa'i and chant while she taught. So! We took about twenty minutes, and Auntie taught Meghan and I (and a few stragglers,) te entire kahiko dance.

I know this means very little to anyone but me, but this is one of those things that's both really humbling and an incredible honor. You don't just go throwing kahiko hulas around. The people who watched the dance wouldn't remember it or even learn it in the first place, because she was speaking mostly Hawaiian the entire time. She taught it almost like they did it in Lilo and Stitch, too. ^_^ It's a really serious dance. What was more awesome, and it didn't occur to me till later, was that when Auntie asked Meghan if she knew basic, she didn't hesitate before answering "yes." And Spencer didn't say, "can I just beat on the gourd?" he asked, "can I just pa'i?" like it was the most natural thing in the world. I was really, really proud of them.

If this entry is really frigged up, it's because I'm having ahard time with this keyboard, and I can't hear myself freaking think. Gran, you see, is mostly deaf, and is watching the TV. ^_~

Well, once I get rid of this phlegm fairy who's taken up residence in my chest and baked itself a thick, solid cake in there, it'll all be 100% ;)

Hope you're all having an equally good, and much healthier time.

2003-01-29T17:24:00.000-05:00

E, Kris! Way to go on the wildlife rehabber thing! (I just dropped my birds off at Heart Of The Wild today. [HOTW is a very small rehab clinic, and I am its even smaller annex. ;D ]) Please let me know what you think of the clinic. I hope you meet some good people there, and I hope you don't run into the Animal People Ego. ^_~ *coughcough*wildliferefugeoftheh@mp+0nz*cough* ;P

And, ahh, so you want strong women in mythology? Yep, NA mythology is a good place to look. But don't overlook Hawaiian, either. Check out some Pele stories. ^_~

Sooooo, Min. I hear you're impure. Huh huh... We should, like, hang out and stuff. Huh huh. ;)

2003-01-29T16:24:00.000-05:00

Addendum to the MHMB rant down there:

I find it hilarious and very telling that, with all the people there who are 18+, Twinked, who is, what, 16? is the savviest and brightest one on the whole forum. Eh?

In other news, yay for Lisa on her first day of classes. Wishing you smile and shine days. ;D

2003-01-29T11:49:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I lurk. Why I no longer post there and have had my info removed is my own business, and, in fact, has nothing to do with this particular whining teen. However, this particular whining teen has irritated me today. Not because he has an opinion, but because his opinion is based on the ill-informed world that is his stratospheric ego. (I know this kid, and I know whereof I speak. He thinks he is The Hottest Thing On The 'Net.) I'm also irritated b/c he's letting his idea of politics define what he thinks all Americans are like. Have something against GWB, fine. So do some of us. Disagree with him, fine. But you're just plain against everything American, including Americans.

Hey, asswipe. You're posting that on an American board. Why not get your pathetic, puling, strutting, egotistical, and, I am gratified to add, stupid ass the hell off of it, if all Americans are so bad? Or, do you like to insult people who have nothing to do with anything that you've posted, and who have done nothing to you? I can only guess that it's because you're getting off on this in some preteen fantasy, egotistical way. I think you're doing it just to have something to say; I actually doubt you feel that way. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if you thought some other opinion would make you feel like a Big Stud, you'd be posting that one, instead. I think you just like the look of your posts b/c it makes you feel like a big, tough guy.

LMFAO. You are so not.

2003-01-29T11:21:00.000-05:00

You are orange. You are emotional. Outside, you are bitter and stubborn, inside you are hopeful, hoping someone will come save you from the bitterness of your own mind. You constantly feel the need to prove yourself, and you look up to those who can make thier dreams happen. You are broken, but not beyond repair like maroon.

What inner color are you?

2003-01-27T16:55:00.000-05:00

Best of luck to you, Lisa! Though, I know you don't need it. ;)

Kris, goddamnit, you're right. this is the creepiest page on the 'net.

And, hey. Where in the hell has Min gone? I'm sure everything is OK, but it has been a long time.

/senseless worry. Sorry, it's an "internet pal" thing. ;)

Off to FL next week, and it's going to be an awesome one. Something ugly and nervewracking always tends to happen the week before I go away, and then tends (thankfully) to get resolved a few days before. By which time, I'm a mental wreck and I really, really need this shopping spree...err, I mean, vacation! ;D

2003-01-22T00:19:00.000-05:00

All of this blogging on wildlife has led me to this wildlife rehabber humor page. It's really cute! This doesn't all apply to me since I mainly deal with birds (the occasional squirrel, rabbit, turtle etc, but only occasional.) Anyway, the "you might be a rehabber if..." thing really got me giggling. These are the ones that made me jump up and go, "yeah! That's me!"

You stop every 15 minutes while grocery shopping to feed the nestlings temporarily residing in your purse. (Every summer)

You "react" every time you see a cardboard box. (I get really excited.)

You assume every phone call you receive (at work OR at home) is about a injured/orphaned animal and respond accordingly. (To be fair, it usually is. At least in the summer.)

You plan your vacation around the "birthing" season. (This is the truest of them all, I think.)

You can't understand why your friend screamed when she found a few mealworms in your hairbrush. (Well, on the counter, actually.)

You're in the mall, and all you catch are the words "The Bird Lady". ( ^_^ )

Feathers in your hair are not a fashion statement. (Well, sometimes they are. ;) )

You buy more babyfood than anyone else in town, and you don't have any children. (LMAO!)

Your linen closet contains more than five heating pads. (Well...only three, really.

Friends arrive for dinner and bring roadkills that they picked up on the way over. (Yes, this has actually happened to me.)

Ahh, and it's only January. I've got one trip definite, (I'll be gone for half of Feb.,) possibly two more planned, and then it's nearly baby season. ^_^ That's when everything else stops. There is no traveling, there is no dating, there are no long road trips or visits that last more than an hour (if I can't bring the babies.) There is the very, very rare matinee movie, and that comes in late summer if it comes at all, because by then, most of the babies are eating on their own. In the Spring it's just gaping mouths, formula, nestling boxes, heating pads, the occasional heartbreak. And onwards to summer, and quills / casings / feathers, perches, water dishes with rocks in them, the first mealworm, the first fledge, first flight, the aviary, freedom, and the occasional heartbreak.

But why the hell am I thinking of this now? It's only January!