The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I missed a few days worth of prompts, sorry. I've been looking at grad school stuff... I'm kind of intimidated :( I'm starting to think I should have done mechanical or computer science engineering or something like that, but five years ago I didn't have quite the same aspirations.

Mean Girls: is a fantastic movie. Fun to watch, amazingly quotable, aptly quotable on an everyday basis, and hilarious. Also, it's probably a good icon for women in comedy. I don't know much about the comedy forefront but I do know that it's considered a job where men flourish and women fail. And the guys I always get to watch this movie agree that it is not a chick flick like they expected, but a fantastic (and wonderfully quotable) comedy. So. We should all just stab Caesar!

I have a sister. She and I get on much better now that we don't see eachother much, but we do tend to snip at eachother if we're both home for a few days in eachother's company. We're strangely opposites, and I think the way we have turned out isn't exactly how I would have predicted it ten years ago. Then I would have said that she would turn out to be the sorority-sister arts major, and here I am in an engineering sorority and not wanting to engineer a damn thing (well, sort of). And she used to talk about starting a fashion company, and now she's pre-med. And I'm a nerd who loves to read, but she is probably smarter than me. Or she's just really good and guessing and BSing, which is both accurate and enough. I am a little too honest and a little too paranoid to be a good BSer. Which is a shame, really, because being an introvert in a world of extroverts is exhausting.

Buuuuut enough about that.

My favorite junk food... is probably Mountain Dew. I try to treat it like a dessert; one, because it has a lot of empty calories, two, because too much caffiene headaches gives me mini-migraine-mock-caffiene-withdrawal headaches and they suck balls.

BACK TO APPLYING TO GRAD SCHOOLS =/

(and waiting for it to be Thanksgiving so I can get excited about Christmas except I listened to the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy cover of Mr. Heatmiser today and I DON'T CARE)

So. I'm very tired and and I very much want to go to bed and just post tomorrow, but I do a lot of my best thinking when I'm experiencing extremes... being tired, being very happy, being very excited, being very sad. I wrote something about this early on when I started my blog, not that it's interesting, and not that I am in any way proud of a lot of the stuff I wrote for the first year and a half or so. But I've grown into my tone and whatnot and for now I'm not ashamed of what I posted yesterday (although to be fair when I don't like what I posted originally I still stand by the fact that it was ME and though I may have grown from then I came from that and you have to learn from your mistakes or they're worthless time and you are the sum of all yous, you're not ever definite, not comletely anyhow).

But, to really get into this. I shall start with House on the Rock. When I first went there... I don't know how old I was. I loved the architecture of the house, I know that much. How it was worked into the stone and there was a three (I believe) story library (more like a three story bookshelf to be honest) and there were musician-engineer gadgets everywhere and old things and mysterious things and I don't think I really remembered any of the rooms other than the Transporation Room, which I really don't like that much. (Plus, whatever they're doing to House on the Rock [from now on HotR] now to update it or whatnot... the Transporation Room and the restrooms in the cafe and whatnot...NO. YOU ARE WRONG. More on that later.) But there was something about it that drew me in, was a part of me. I'm trying to analyze that knowing what I know about myself now... sum of who I've been... although if you'd asked me the first time I'd been there whether I saw these qualities in myself, I could have maybe told you one. I mean, you define yourself my creating a distinction between you and other things, or you in relation to other things. I'm not good with ideas, sometimes. If I have an idea I can work the words sometimes, but much more often I just have a feeling, and no way to express it until I stumble upon it. Such as this entry. I suppose it's self-philosophy or somesuch but the only word that comes to mind is Thanatopsis and I know for an absolute fact (thank you, Word Clues) that that is not the word I am looking for. ("These are not the words you are looking for.")

But... something drew me back to House on the Rock. I've never been particularly drawn to Architecture, I mean, at least not until I was thinking about it, and then it's a combination of design artistically and structurally for me, that's how my mind works. I have no idea what I would have done if Architecture hadn't been suggested to me... back then I was so naive and just... transparent. I don't think I had--or at least I can't remember--a good shade of myself back then.

But like I was saying. I had to go back. Which is why I told my mom we needed time to go back last summer, while we were up in Madison for DCI finals. And because I was growing an interest in the house, I was looking on Amazon for books, and this, I'm pretty sure, was after I'd read Neverwhere, which I enjoyed immensely, and I stumbled upon Neil Gaiman's book American Gods. But we're not quite to that point in the story yet, my dear friends.

I am... ha, unsure of how to define this. I am a collector. Of things, or information. I just like to know, to remember, to experience. Now I can define this much better than I could ever before, which I just somehow related to the fact that I was a packrat and my mom wanted me to throw stuff out but everything I did had to be carefully selected to be thrown out or given away. (I had... a white bear? With a yellow balloon? Or dress? I remember giving her away and then crying, later. And now I don't remember her. And this is why I can't give my dolls away. They have personalities, stories, lives I need to know and remember and cultivate. I know it sounds ridiculous but I've already told you a million times my mind works in strange ways. And I'm writing this as much for me as I am for you, if not more. This is so... central... to who I am. Who I was. Who I will be. Or at least, who I see myself as now and project myself as in the future, and the shades of that definition I see in the past.) So. I remember reading tons when I was little. Duh. But if I could get my hands on a good, informationally interesting magazine, there was no stopping me. I'd save articles and pictures and jokes and anything with an interesting design. And by design I so often mean both How Things Work and How Things Look, they are both Design, they are both me. At Nana's I read Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens (Would you believe how long it took me to realize the line in "Somewhere that's Green" used that magazine? Jesus.) and took out photos of cool gardens or projects or house designs or relationship things or ANYTHING. At the hairdressers' and Gma/Gpa's I'd read Time and Newsweek and especially Readers Digest. And I read almost anything whenever I can.

I am an information whore.

If there's something to be read--perhaps this stems from my self-appointed paranoia--perhaps I can glean some someday-useful information from it. That whole "spy, what if" Bond-like impossibly fictional situation. The reason I know that armadillos are the only other animals besides humans that can get leprosy (although a quick Wiki tells me about three other animals can get it on their footpads), the reason I know that curling your tongue is genetic or that the plastic thing on the end of your shoelaces is called an aglet. Seemingly useless, except in my wishful thinking, of some manner.

So. I collect things. It was mostly information, but then Harry Potter rolled around and my cousins and Laura and I had our little play shops, and having chosen Apothecarist it was the perfect opportunity for me to collect just about anything. Bottles, burrs and baubles. (I swear I didn't force that.) And then Indiana Jones, and I could collect even more strange things, more artifacty things. And then pirates came about, and I know that I collect two things: skills (slash knowledge) and treasures. Really, that truly does sum it up.

And I have been keeping a dream journal (as often as possible... which unfortunately isn't as often as I'd like) for several years, in order to collect the oddities of my brain. Many times I feel uncreative unless happenstance juxtaposition occurs in daily life. But writing down my dreams gives me something to work from. Random "I'm not paying attention in class" doodles often lead to something. Feed your brain, all that jazz, but I like to piece things together into puzzles.

My toys had names and stories and personalities and I don't want to seem crazy here but I still think about all that kind of stuff. Perhaps it's a writer side of me, seeing different stories. My dolls, my muse (which I need to write about sometime... get some more concrete stuff down on it, it's just a tiki at this point), Mercat. She's the me I wish I could be, the me I am in my creation of worlds.

Because that's what I do. I design. I create. How things work. How they look, with Phi, I think, in mind. Rather, in the eye. I don't mathematically draw things out but I will resketch and resketch until they look right and things balance. Art Nouveau is a big influence on that, I think. Or 180 degree rotational symmetry, thank you ambigrams. I really need to get those posted on DeviantArt.

But I mean... I design. My brain has always worked on little inventions, sometimes pointless, sometimes things I see in stores about seven years down the road, sometimes just to see if I can make something nefarious in design to actually crank a gear. And then to make it look like a piece of art at the same time... it's my nature. I try to encompass wholes, and parts, and just understand.

Have I written about how I was the peacemaker in gradeschool? I'm not trying to brag here or anything, I'm trying to explain who I think I was, and it's not narciscism that I'm describing me but reflection. At least I try to make it that. I do hope I'm not being egotistical, because that is a topic for another day and boyhowdy is there so much to say on that lately.

But I mean... I've never been comfortable on extremes. I've wanted middle ground, reconciliation, understand of both sides. It's probably greedy or egotistical but it's human curiosity, I want to know it all.

But I am five miles from my original point.

The designer part of me, and the imaginative-artsy part of me, and the intelligent part of me, and the curious part of me, and the paranoia and the Mercat and the Every Mes that ever were--they've made up what I think I want to do with my life. I've looked at JPI for COSI's Adventure and Cost of Wisconsin for it's Tomb Raider and Disney for it's million mysterious creations, movies and shows and roller coasters and haunted houses.

It's mystery of another world and mystery of behind-the-scenes how-does-that-work (for I am truly a behind the scenes person... the pit rather than the diva is the position I am comfortable recieving compliments in, and probably the only one at that [yet another rainy-day topic]) and a mystery of what-ifs and worlds and anything and everything I know.

I've wanted to create and I've wanted to collect and my world my understandings my stories, and House on the Rock is it.

Alex Jordan, Jr. From his unauthorized biography, he was an asshole. So was Frank Lloyd Wright, I hear. =) So many people whose work I enjoy are either crazy or jerks or something. So maybe that says something about me, I don't know, haha...

But he collected things. And he made things. And he designed contraptions and houses and arranged and did art. It's everything I want to do.


I'm pretty sure I've found it this time. It's more than architecture, more than engineering, more than music, more than piracy or archaeology, more than art, more than writing.




It's creating an entire other world, and it's an idea I've had in my head for a very long time now. I've only just found how to express it.

Okay, too dramatic there. But it is powerful. I'm going to keep on going because a part of me is chiding me for being overdramatic, haha.

So...American Gods, where does this fit in? I read part of a series, back in eighth grade, Neverworld or something, where all these gods existed in a parallel universe all at the same time. I've often thought on that, and I've wanted to write about it, but I haven't had any good, original ideas to make me now feel like I was ripping someone off. (But now I have to create my own world! And a world needs religions, haha, so I am set.) But American Gods just hits the head on the nail. It's one of the best damn things I've ever read, and not just because House on the Rock is in it. That's why I bought it, but this book keyed me in on everything (or at least so much of) what I want to be. What I am. What I'm going to do with what I am, rather. It's about the gods and how the holiest places in America are the places we're drawn to, our silly roadside attractions. Places I have, of late, been so obsessed with. (Americana, House on the Rock... causing me to go into depressions and creative fits and buy books and research and miss and everything--which you can see is why I find things so important.) But... it's true. I am drawn to them, I am fascinated with their abilities to make you wonder... where people have created things beyond your imagination, from their own, their personal portals to another dimension, another way of understanding this life, another aspect you have to try to understand to learn. Because if you don't learn, you die. Body and soul, it doesn't matter. (God, I can see where authors affect how I write. I read Douglas Adams and I'm snarky and random. I read Gaiman and I am prone to fits of blatant authorial truths in the middle of a story. Plus when I'm tired or snugly into a writing fit the words flow in certain thoughtless ways, and I'm sure that has to reflect authors somehow. Which is why if I ever publish a novel I'll have to read it several times after reading certain other authors in order to flesh out my work into the different aspects of who I am. Ah, the difficulties of representing things correctly, something I take into special care to be able to do, or at least I try.)

So... American Gods... some snippets to whet your appetite.

"'You know,' he said, 'I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don't need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It's what we do.'"

"'I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mr. Ed. Listen--I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in American is concident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state-to-state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destrying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alove and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I live in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things, too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and you might as well lie back and enjoy it.'"

Well, I think I’ve figured it out a little... whenever I post I’m apologizing that I sound so bitchy. And I mean, I’ve been posting like once a month now, rants and whatnot. But I think the reason is that I write to figure things out, help myself clarify my thoughts and everything. That’s always how I’ve kind of been about writing. Like my mind is buzzing and writing makes you take it one step at a time, slowly, figure it all out and find the words. It happens when I write papers, too. I have a rough idea of what I want to do but when I go to write it I sometimes think of ideas I maybe wouldn’t have otherwise thought of, just because of the way I phrased something or whatnot. I know that when I’m in stressful situations I try to write out letters or imagine phone calls or blog entries in my head, like at night, to help me figure out what I’m going to do so I panic less. (Of course, I still panic, because I’ve only imagined one scenario and what if...? Plus, there’s always "DON’T PANIC." I need that posted all over like everything I own.)

You know what? That’s another thing. I’ve started blogging using the word "like" as I would use it if I were talking. Which is because when I blog, I just have at it and write as if I am talking to myself, or an audience, or something. Sometimes I feel bad that I use it and I remove it, but I do like how I write as if I were talking, it’s just how my mind works.

But back to my original case study, here. I write when I’m stressed, to help figure things out. Which is why many of my entries are complaining and whining and bitchy and ranty. I need to remember those things, because a lot of times they help define who I am, or at least clarify. But then I do miss out on blogging a lot of the good events, too, which does make me a little sad. Like I still haven’t writte--anywhere--all the stuff that happened on the band trip to Disney World. I’m serious. I have it all in my memory but I haven’t written it down yet. It’s on my to-do list, though.

I’m really hoping that this summer I can take a notebook on the bus. I mean, we’re not allowed to have cell phones so taking a laptop to get online with one of those Verizon cards wasn’t going to work, so it would be fairly pointless to find some cheapo, tiny laptop, just so I could write. I mean, I could, but I don’t think anyone would be too happy about it. So I’ll have to resort to as many notebooks as I can and maybe get grandma and grandpa and dad to trade out new ones for me if I do manage to fill them. Or mail them to myself at home and buy new ones on days off... hmm, hadn’t thought about that idea before. (See what I mean about coming up with new ideas on the fly? Plus this style of writing kind of follows how my brain works, more. This, then this, and this and then oh I have to come back to this and this, too.)

BUT ANYWAY.

I’ve been wanting to post this for a long time, but I haven’t gotten around to it. (And here I am at work procrastinating because I don’t want to work on those silly charts. I hate Microsoft Excel, with a passion. [stupid science fair graphs...] So, yeah, not having class=going to work=blogging if I can manage it. Although, to be fair, I am using my work email address and emailing myself the blog entry and posting it later.) (DUDE. So all the salt they’ve been putting down for the ice? Doing little to nothing and the bottoms of my pants are SOLID SALT. Gross. I was going to wash them last night but the laundry room was full and I didn’t want to go down later. But I will go down tonight. And read Neil Gaiman. <3) So anyway, this question has been sitting on my mind a lot lately, maybe because of philosophy, but I don’t think so. It’s just something that struck me one day when I was thinking a lot, which I HAVE been doing more of in my classes because a lot of them are lame, or thought-provoking, or I’ve just been in a weird mood lately. Although, I rather like the weird mood and shall touch on it later.

At any rate! Moving onward. This whole idea is "what if?" But not future-wise, really, more of a looking at the past and seeing how things impacted eachother. I have a few trains of thought going that I find particularly stunning:

What if I’d never joined girl scouts? I might have never gone to the new COSI, and I might have never seen Adventure. And because I might have never seen Adventure, and been utterly obsessed with it, my mom and dad might never have mentioned Indiana Jones to me. And man, if I’d never known about Indiana Jones… I might never have become obsessed with it. And it defines so incredibly much of--or at least influence--who I am. I might have never decided I want to do this strange, artsy engineering… a combination of architecture and Disney World and JPI and Cost of Wisconsin. And I might have never watched Star Wars (although truth be told, it’s kind of always influenced my life a little [the red truck game, anyone?], although I can’t admit I’ve been as obsessed with it as I have before now when I watched them and I understood a lot more of what was going on and I’d seen three and remembered the plot and my friends are dorks who have plastic lightsaber fights. Yeah. If hadn’t discovered Adventure/Indiana Jones, would I still be obsessed with tikis and cultures and codes and Hawaii ?

What does all that mean? If I’d never joined Girl Scouts... would I be who I am today? But more strikingly: If I’d never joined Girl Scouts, would I be planning to become a set/museum design/strange engineer-slash-architect?

And what if my cousins and I had never designed those marble runs with all the blocks my grandma has in her basement? Would she have ever said, "Diane, I think you should be an architect"? What would I be doing with my life right now? I have no idea what I was seriously going to do, until she mentioned it to me in fifth grade, and since then that’s what I’ve been interested in. Can you believe that?! I mean, I’ve drifted away from it a little, what with Adventure and tomb Raider and that stuff being so utterly awesome, but I still absolutely love Wright and Gaudi and House on the Rock (although that has multiple reasons, which I will get into later. Damn, this is one looong entry.).

And what if my dad and uncle had never marched drum corps? Would we still go to Madison to watch finals? Would I have still visited House on the Rock? (Still, more on that later. To understand the impact of that one you kind of have to know a lot more background information that’s been going through my head this semester.) (And on another note: What did I remember as being so cool from the first time we went? I know how badly I wanted to go back last summer, but for the life of me I was surprised by every room. What was so compelling?)

How did I find out about Talk Like a Pirate Day? (Dave Barry, I think... a year after it was started) If I’d never found Talk Like a Pirate Day, around the same time I actually consciously watched Pirates of the Caribbean , and around the time FSM came around, would I be obsessed with Pirates? "With treasure"? (Combination pirate/Indiana Jones there. Which leads to: would I? I’ve always liked collecting oddities, is it just that these are two outlets that made me recognize it more consciously?) [Side note: Damn. I have been writing for roughly an hour and I have over 1,300 words. Geez.] Would I have decided to make Mercat (my RP character over at PR, who I really don’t play anymore, but I still create her story) wander off to have been a pirate for awhile? And oh, geez, I could go on forever. I might come back to it later, but there’s just so incredibly much that I’ve found to help define me in the last few years that it’s incredibly... something. Incredible, wonderful, confusing, amazing, something.

Another thing about how I blog, seemingly without order... side notes. I enjoy them. It’s a blog so I don’t bother to get into asterisks and footnotes and all that jazz. I like to know how my mind worked, roughly, as I wrote each entry. Although I do do a tiny bit of jumping around, since I can only write one thing at a time, as opposed to when [random tangent: you know what pisses me off? I just looked up at the "<3" I wrote up above and it reminded me that stupid facebook automatically turns them into little hearts now. It pisses me off. I use it because it’s kind of geeky to have "<3" but little hearts are ridiculous. I never dotted my i’s with hearts or little froopy circles or anything crappy like that. {yes, this is a mini-rant} I dotted the "i" in my name with a star starting in fifth grade because I wanted to be unique. {I know, everyone who’s a member of metaquotes or something right now is thinking "you are a unique and special snowflake, fuck off," which I admit is a bit how it was {it was fifth grade, and yes I am a little ashamed of it for that fact}, but also, come on. It’s not like I was trotting around in GAP and Abercrombie {I am tempted to change that to "It’s not like I was an Abercrombie Bitch," but it doesn’t quite fit as well, and I couldn’t work out the play on Fitch leaving out the "and."} and proclaiming to be unique. I just tried to be me. And that’s what I thought was a good addition to me, and now it is me. I don’t know anyone else that does it {AND I DON’T DO IT TO ALL MY I’S!...ferchrissakes} and a lot of people think it’s a quirky little goofy thing that makes them smile. Ooh, I kind of remember why I added that. Or at least, I think I remember why, I could have rationalized it and made it up, BUT. Basically, I have never been able to have a "signature." I didn’t like having unclear letters and it just came out looking like cursive, so I added that to make it more a signature, and less cursive. Which is also why I don’t to it to all my i’s. It would be hara-kiri time for me, then, if I did. But I’m pretty sure that’s true, and not a rationalization. I don’t think I was really ever the person to do something to make myself more unique… I didn’t want to stand out. BUT, now that I’ve been writing on a tangent for a good 90% of this paragraph, I will move on.] you’re thinking and you can have one thing trigger like five others in your brain all at the same time. (And omg I apologize for breaking that off in the middle of a sentence. I didn’t think I’d rant that long about facebook hearts.)

Hm. Writing "hara-kiri" (which we learned in World Religions was "hari-kari" or whatever, the proper name, I think) put that “Mata Hari” song from Little Mary Sunshine in my head. Good times. I am not getting into the Aladdin deal on this, though, even though my brain wants to. I’m going to write about the other things I put notes down to write about.

Eddie Izzard: This man is a genius. I spent about two hours watching his stuff the other night online when I should have been doing calculus. *sigh*

So... these long entries! Well, I’ve already told you I tend to update more when I’m stressed and need to write things out (and then I question; do I leave it public because I believe in not hiding anything, or do I keep it friends-locked or private? I think I only have one private entry.) and that I’ve been having more interesting thoughts as of late. (I wonder if I’m going over the character limit, here. I haven’t written an entry yet that has, but this one’s getting pretty long-winded.) Plus I’ve been compulsively writing down more of my thoughts, ideas, and dreams, so I can write them down later so I have some record for me or for other people when I die or something. I hate losing stuff, ideas especially. Dreams, too. Which is why I write them down. But anyway, so I write more, less often, and I’ve started adding interesting articles and links, so that’s why these are getting so long. But I rarely get comments (although I think I have one or two regular "readers"), so I’m assuming the sort-of-open-personal tone that causes such long entries isn’t bothering anyone. I’m not even sure a lot of people use their friends page to read all the entries anyway, and I know I do because it’s easier than going around daily to each of the what, 80-some communities I’m in now? plus friends, to read each day’s entries. And I really don’t understand the whole "LJ-CUT!!1" yell of death, either. I mean, I use the internet for information, so it’s much more utilitilogical (I made that up) for me, so I really don’t get the whole "I’m going to personalize my myspace/xanga/lj to the xTREEEMZ!11!" thing either, but I mean if it’s fucking up your layout, 1) why did you customize it that much so it matters and 2) SCROLL DOWN PAST IT, YOU NITWIT. Seriously. I don’ wanna hafta smackabitch.

Oh, cruppers. That Neil Gaiman crystal ball he posted on his blog? I was trying to come up with the first answer it gave me, which was one word that I’m pretty sure started with a C, like compose or create or something, sort of a command and sort of a job, and it was really applicable and now I’ve completely forgotten what it was.

And crapcakes, now I have to run this envelope to the post office (I just started writing library... yeah, I don’t think that would work) and then go to class, so, more blogging later if I decide I’m not too stressed to just read American Gods. =D

Or, you know, more blogging while I’m at work, too. I just hate making charts in Microsoft Excel so incredibly much. Pain in the ass because I have to go back and edit like a gajillion things and I don’t know if the older versions of excel just sucked or if I only really figured it out last year. I dunno. It seems to me that I’ve only really been...conscious... within the past few years. Maybe four or five. I mean, I know I had creative thoughts and deep thoughts when I was younger, because most all of what I did was think or read and I know it drove Anna up the wall. But either I was naive or your brain just doesn’t function multilevelly until you’re older, something. My bet’s on the second, because I always thought I was fairly mature for my age and that the multilevel thinking was something that develops as you hit puberty and all that fun stuff. Either my dad was telling me or I read something about how women’s brains mature early (early 20’s) and men’s later (near 30) than they originally thought, which was that most people’s brains, regardless of gender mature when you’re in your mid 20’s. At any rate, other than dad warning the girl scout troop to stay away from boys until we’re in our mid 20’s because they’re still immature anyway (this made me laugh when my dad told the story recently…I’ve never been boy-crazy, lol), it kind of confirms my idea on the brain maturing thing. When you’re younger, you just can’t handle all the information you can handle when you’re older. Which is a shame, because I feel like my gradeschool education was kind of a waste, in the sense that I could have learned so much more but we had to spend THREE FREAKING YEARS DOING FRACTIONS. And that type of stuff. I mean, really. Definitely some wasted time in there. If they’d just said "learn it and advance or fail and take it again" I think it would have gone so much better. *le sigh*

Something else I don’t think I’ve blogged about yet. Internet slang or acronyms and emoticons and whatnot. In general, internet written slang. A lot of people get pissed off when there are emoticons (=D) (or IMHO anime smilies: ;_;) or acronyms (LOLs and ROFLs and OMGWTFBBQs) or <3’s or !1!!11’s or [tangent: !1!!11!!: the binary of excited internet twerps—gonna have to take note of that for a comic (whenever I get it up...yeeeah)] OMGSQUEE!’s or *squee*s or a million other things that I would determine to be internet slang. (Written slang... strange that it’s worked it’s way into conversation, even, with random lol’s maybe. But that’s probably excessive use and habit that causes that, rather than it being legitimate spoken slang, because you really can’t say lol without looking like an idiot.) MOVING ON. A lot of people get pissed off because people use them, period. Yeah, gramma ho’s. (So, is "ho’s" the slang abbreviation or "whores"? It really bothers me when people write "hoe" or "hoes" or "hose," because, you know, they’re already words. But "hos" looks wrong, too. I guess, grammatically and technically, it’d be ‘ho’s to show the lack of w, r, and e, but then again it’s slang. And BTW betch, it’s "’n’", not "’n" or "n’". Got it? =D yay.) But I think that online, you can appropriately use internet slang without looking like a grammatically-retarded fool. For example, if you want to put down constructive criticism (I don’t care if it’s fanfiction or what, just you trying to be constructive and actually share some useful information) for someone without offending them, or comment on something seriously without coming off as a prick, I think it’s justifiable to use an emoticon or acronym for every handful of sentences. It makes it seem like you’re actually being nicer, so it’s what I would call e-tiquette, but then I remembered somebody already called it netiquette. (I wonder what percentage of people my age can spell "etiquette" correctly? No, seriously. You try it.) (Also, I apologize for my grammatically off-and-on use of quotation marks when discussing spellings and whatnot. Sometimes I think it needs it and sometimes I think it doesn’t matter. Because, you know, it’s my damn blog. At any rate, here’s an example of what I’m trying to express. I was trying to write an example here about watching what you say over in your comments in metaquotes, but I couldn’t come up with an example that didn’t involve completely changing your answer to be funny. So, now that I think about it, grammar_whores is probably better. There are some real stingy folks over there who won’t forgive you if you don’t spellcheck everything. ON A BLOG. If you were to notice a misspelling and say "It’s "misspell," not "misspell,"" then I would see it as you trying to be a pretentious ass. (That is such a glorious term.) I mean, I can see why you’d get annoyed, I have my rants, too. But you’d seem like less of a jerk in my eyes if you said, "Hey, it’s "misspell," =P" or "lol, irony... =)" or something like that. Although saying "Lol, irony," alone would come off as pretentious, and I’m not even going into whether it’s always LOL or whether it can be lol or Lol or what. None of that. Note the lack of quotation marks. My blog, posting for me and maybe a few others, it’s still coherent and not glaringly annoying to me (like that girl who spelled "day" as "dei" because her name was "Deisomething." No, I’m not kidding. And yes, when I lead into these parentheses I think it’s going to be a phrase, which is why it’s not capitalized, although I finish it as if it were. Ignore it. I don’t think anyone on my friends list is more of a grammar whore than I am, and I’m really not that bad. [Watch me get flamed for this mini-rant, I’d laugh.]), so deal. Like you people actually care anyway. Hahaha. Anyway, don’t use "!!11!!" unless you’re mocking people, and as Miss Downie would rant, you only need one exclamation point anyway. Any more and, to me, it looks like you’re trying too hard. Thank you, Miss Downie. <3’s and lol’s and rofl’s (but not rotfl’s... it’s like killing the engine of the roflcopter. It just doesn’t work) and omg’s and wtf’s are all okay in my book. I use =) and =D more often now because people couldn’t figure out that =^n.n^= was happy mercat and was the equivalent of =D. But phooey on them. So I use =^n.n^= much less often now, but I still do, sometimes. It’s just grammatically harder as I develop my own sense of context for things. Like lol is not punctuation. =) kind of is. But it would still be nice if you’d throw in some periods! Geez. And then there is the whole thing where sometimes it’s fine to not use punctuation on a one-sentence comment or not capitalize your sentences. Sometimes it just doesn’t matter. Like over at cat_macros. "love it" is just as acceptable as "Great work!" although possibly with a little less emotion, but that’s pretty much irrelevant. And sometimes I think it’s appropriate to leave off punctuation if you’re writing as if it were a byline, such as "A++, would lol again". Right? Right. Moving on to more important and less ranty things to blog about.

Daaaamn this is getting long-winded. Oh, well. BETTER THAN EXCEL!

Next thing on the list is... hmm... I’ll post about what’s actually happening in my life in stead of "I see dumb people" because it’s the internet and they’re everywhere and that’s why I rant all the time. Last week I spent one day studying for eight and a half hours to pass my math exam. Got it back on Monday, 68. Yeah, I’m not doing too well in that class (F! arrrrghstressstress). So I’ve been in a panic because of all that along with all the other shit that’s gone down this week like not getting a UD-XU shirt and Dr. Morris going kind of nuts and finding out the WGI schedules are different than I thought they were along with all the other stuff I have to do like clean my part of our room a little and organize some stuff and do some laundry (the bottom of my jeans are SOLID from the salt. Gross.) and balance my checkbook and SHOOOOOTIJUSTREMEMBEREDIHAVETOPRACTICEMYTRUMPET. Grr. Plus read American Gods, because it’s so incredibly awesome. (Though, er, all the gods-rape-sex really threw me for a loop. Totally unexpected and too much of it if you ask me.)

The only good side to being slightly depressed and sick and overworked and paranoid is that I don’t give a damn about guys right now. It’s very nice to not have my emotions fucking with me, again, for a change. I missed it. =D

Oh! So Gold Award ceremony is coming up soon, but I hate doing readings at mass, reallyreally. Grr. Plus I always get stuck doing them because I’m an older girl scout that the others can look up to, blah blah. (At that age, you don’t have a freaking clue.) So... I guess that’s good… more stress and crap, though...

And then I had something else... oh, yeah! Did I already post about getting to go to Hawaii next year? I think I might have, because that’s truly an exciting prospect. (Tuition exchange with Chaminade in Honolulu .) Only thing is it means I have a million more things to straighten out... like getting a co-op or internship for the following summer and figuring out how housing stuff will go for junior year and what the classes are that I’ll be able to take while I’m down there and OMFG LIVING HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD (almost...) ON MY OWN. OMGWTF. (Only thing is no island hopping = sadness, but it’s too expensive to do it.)

Aaaand...um. I actually have things written down to talk about but I’m kind of tired or talking for now. Let’s see if I can spark anything.

Nah...nothing on my list looks like I want to get into it...it’s either not the right place for it or I don’t want to be writing for the next three hours. *sigh*

So-hoooo, yeah. I think I’m pretty much done for now. Ooh, except for one thing (and later I’ll come back with linkspam, too). I saw a silly video about going to the movies and sitting through all the crappy commercials and whatnot. The one thing was like one of those stupid game, "who is funnier, Jim Carrey or Ben Stiller?" and it had Ben Stiller in his Dodgeball outfit, and I was like OMG I DID NOT REALIZE BEN STILLER WAS IN DODGEBALL. Seriously, the whole time my brain registered him as Will Ferrel. Which led me to think... what if Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, and Will Ferrel all made a movie together? If it weren’t a comedy it’d still be good but if it were a comedy, humanity would be fucked, because the sheer awesomeness of it might just cause everyone’s brains to explode. I MEAN SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE. That would be awexomepossum.