The Daily Adventures of Mercat

So, first day back in my car, successfully went out shopping and bought some beautiful things such as stripey reusable drink straws in my favorite colors. And delicious chocolate with caramel and Hawaiian sea salt (om nom nom). And then I went up to Urbana to hang out with peeps and see Avengers...

...and got a speeding ticket.

Idk. I'm torn between being pissed at myself and just being over it. I mean, I deserved it, I was not paying attention and I was speeding. But I'm simultaneously sort of happy that I didn't start freaking out and crying, because I do not deal with social pressure well. But also... wtf? It's kind of assholish to be like "I'm proud I gave less of a fuck than I should". But I also don't want to hate myself. Not that I don't. I just hate guilt, which I don't know if it's my own empathy or the fact that I was raised Catholic, which I may never know. But I hate the fact that I am way too self-conscious. Second-hand-embarassment ruins so many social situations for me.

On the other hand, Avengers was PRETTY FUCKING BEAUTIFUL and Joss Whedon writes a goddamn beautiful piece of cinema. Nice, tight, snappy script. Characters with depth. Handled a multitude of characters fantastically well, without too much weakness to any. Although I hope Cobie Smulders' character gets some more attention in (a) sequel(s), as she seemed kind of like a "uh crap we have a lot of dudes in here let's get some chicks for balance". Granted, I would like to thank Whedon for actually being able to recognize that in the first place, which is kind of sad that I have to say that.

ALSO I fucking love Tony Stark. He + Banner geeking out was THE BEST THING EVER, and his dialogues with Steve were be-god-damn-utiful. Mark Ruffalo as Banner was surprisingly great, because I really liked Norton in the earlier film. But, I mean, does anyone hate Mark Ruffalo? Not that I'm aware of. Black Widow and Hawkeye were beautiful and I am SO EXCITED that she's getting an origin film! :D Loki, despite Tom-Hiddleston-with-black-hair, and Thor were aawwweeeessssoooommmeee. (It totally blew my mind when someone pointed out that Chris Hemsworth was Kirk's dad in the new Star Trek, which is adorable and honestly I think he looks much better without the Thor-locks-and-facial-hair.) (Then again Avengers is pretty hard to complain about, I mean two tech dudes and at least three other guys running around being muscly and badass, yeah.)

SOOOOOO I spent the ride home trying to channel my inner Tony Stark and not give a fuck about the fact that I got a ticket. I deserved it, I can pay it, and hopefully it doesn't affect the insurance too badly. Luckily my parents weren't too upset, which I suppose would have been the really worst part. (Also-- glad Whedon kept some of the jokes going from Iron Man 2 and such. Yay continuity!)

So, all in all, hopefully I can keep working on getting over social anxiety bullshit and get to work on summer projects.

Lots to do.

I seem to have somehow done my amazing "crusing good, tank horribly" rollercoaster shit in the past 48-ish hours. Yesterday I just didn't care about anything. Not in a bad way, but in a "I feel like I'm letting go of things and maybe taking some steps forward" way. And today I'm just frustrated. I found out yesterday, after paying my rent and my credit card bill, that I am functionally broke. Whatever I had saved from working the past six-ish years is gone, so I basically have no wiggle room.

And no time to work. But we'll come back to that.

Thankfully, my parents are paying for rent and food... However, they failed to account for the fact that food is HELLA EXPENSIVE here in Hawaii where they import literally almost everything.

I'm not shitting you, even pineapples.

In Hawaii.

Where there is the Dole Plantation.

ON THIS VERY ISLAND.

Anyway, before I left my mom had mentioned something about "well we'll see how it goes and maybe readjust after a little bit" but every time I bring it up she gets super judgmental, like I'm spending it on all on alcohol and fast food.

I can assure you, that is not the case. I haven't bought a single drink, the only eating out I've had is a couple days' lunch from the school center, and I learned yesterday after reevaluating my budget that I basically can't eat out at all! Or, you know, DO ANYTHING.

Need new shoes? Nope. Go see a movie? Nope.

For once, I don't need to buy books, because my mom keeps shipping me mine from home. Hopefully she doesn't send me too many more, I already have an entire shelf-full, and considering I'm functionally living out of two suitcases that's a bit much. The ironic part of this? I still have a Barnes and Noble gift card from Christmas.

Luckily I don't have to be spending money on a car, but at the same time, not having money on top of not having a car just exacerbates my problem of feeling trapped here. Not on the island, but by my situation.

I need a new bike seat. "Need" because the one that came with the bike is SO SHITTILY DESIGNED. It curves a ton, which is nice if you're dicking around the block like a five-year old, but god forbid you need to commute with a backpack on your back! I have the nose turned down a SHIT TON already, and the fact that the back of the seat is curved up even more pushes you forward into the dipped center-- why would you design that on a bike seat-- so now you are not sitting on your butt bones but more on your crotch area and just FUCK YOU, SEAT DESIGNERS.

But I didn't go to the bike store, you know why? Because it is five miles away, on the other side of Honolulu, and even though it's only five miles it is through the city which is just terrible on bike. It makes me feel like I'm driving through Chicago. (They really need better bike roads here.) And I don't have the money to spend on what I would like to spend it on, which is 1) a new bike seat, 2) a second water bottle cage and bottle, and 3) a Longboard Lager jersey which is DEFS not happening because they are $75. Oh and also 4) a waterproof stem mount bag so I can stick my phone in there and use it as an odometer. I'd kinda like to buy a pair of cleats and some clips for my pedals, but right now that is a far-off dream. And I didn't feel like it was worth riding a half hour through traffic on rides I don't know with terrible drivers to the nearly-industrial part of town so I can sit in a shop for an hour while they give me a check-up on my bike and I feel guilty for buying things I need or want.

Anyway. So not going anywhere just exacerbates my feeling trapped, but I don't have the money to go see anything and it's kinda hard to go anywhere around here without a car. And I don't exactly have any people to just hop on the bus with and go to Chinatown or anything, because last time we tried that... OH THAT'S RIGHT, EVERYONE CRAPPED OUT ON ME. (Okay, not technically the last time, last time only half the people crapped out on us. But statistically that is 75% failure rate.)

And on top of that! The whole time I was at home I was talking about working at the zoo (trying to get in contact with someone there, it is RIGHT DOWN THE HILL IT WOULD BE PERFECT) and such, and mom was saying "oh, you probably won't have time for a job, most grad students are expected to be working on classes like a full time job". Now here we are, I could dip into my savings but I'm trying not to because I need that to pay for school, I'm eating whatever's on sale and probably not getting enough fruits and veggies, and my mom asks me why I'm not working. AUGH. Maybe because I spend more time in the studio in the week than I likely ever spent on homework for a single engineering class for a year?! And I am exaggerating very little. In the past three weeks I spent two entire weekends in the studio.

You know what we've also found out more of this week? Using the plotter is a $5 print job per page. Using the laser cutter is $2+ $1 per minute. So on top of the fact that the school doesn't have any student software licenses, we have to buy all our own modeling materials, AND PAY FOR ALL THE PRINTERS AND SHOP TOOLS PER USE. I understand you don't want kids in there abusing the 3D printer or hogging the laser cutter. BUT FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WHAT AM I PAYING YOU $14000+ A SEMESTER FOR IF I AM ALSO BUYING ALL MY OWN MEDIA?!

Speaking of which? I have to go to the bookstore tomorrow, and the craft store over the weekend, for guess what-- you guessed it-- MORE SUPPLIES! Meanwhile my checking account reads zero.

I think the part that's killing me the most that is on top of everything else, I would just like to go on a bike ride to train for TOSRV one weekend day, or ride down to the beach and swim and sit there for a few hours. Hasn't happened yet. Don't know how I'm going to train for TOSRV this way, all I can do right now is force myself to work as hard as I can to get up the hills on the way home.

Which, today, on the longest and steepest hill, I accidentally pulled out in front of a full-length fire truck thinking it was The Bus which would turn on the route rather than go up the hill. NOPE! So that was a little terrifying having them barrelling down on me while I tried to ride as quickly as I could...

So. My goals currently. See if I can find a part-time job that I can actually travel to. This is difficult because I don't really trust riding my bike or the bus at night, and I have to be working in the studio so many hours a day. Find a cheaper grocery store? I would love to find an Aldi-equivalent. I can't seem to find any coupons for any of the things I buy, and even though I'm a "club member" and I'm supposed to be saving, I really don't see much benefit currently. And I am trying, beyond all belief, to not just go to Walmart. One, it's downtown anyway so travel would be a hassle, but two, it's Walmart. Lastly, scholarships. Gotta find some. Found out today that architecture ones are unlikely considering that, apparently, white girls are the largest percentage of architecture students. But come on, there has to be an engineering/design one out there somewhere! Female engineers are one of the lower statistical groups! FUUUCCKKK

On the plus side of things, I shot off an email to the guy in the themed design group I'm in who sends out all the newsletters and things, asking him if there was anyone (around the offices) who could help me look for internships. Right away he asked what I did, and then I didn't hear back from him for a week. I asked if he had any ideas of people to contact, thinking there might be someone who was a membership person who could point me in the right direction. Turns out he sent out emails to different people and is trying to find someone who might take an intern/co-op. And then TWO I accidentally realized today he's like one of the top group member-people, and I'm a little embarrassed. I'm also a little uneasy because it's more out of my control-- I don't ask people about internships so I don't get any of the no's along with any possible leads, so I have no idea where the situation stands. I didn't know he was going to be doing the asking for me, so I should have told him more than just "engineering and architecture", but I figured he was busy and I should keep it as short as possible and that I could set up more of a sales pitch later on down the line when I emailed companies-- so hopefully I don't end up with a strictly-ride-engineering firm co-op, although that would still be fascinating I am sure. (Just not the kind of design I'd like to go into, I think.) ON THE OTHER HAND, when you have a big gun sending out emails to companies asking for internships and co-ops?! Hopefully that plays to my advantage, that he can catch the eye of someone really good who will give me a chance.

However now I am super-nervous because I don't know how long to wait to expect to hear back from anyone and I definitely don't want to bombard him with questions as he is very, very busy.

Regardless, I will be mailing him a thank-you note, because holy shit. I did not expect him to send out notes. I just expected, like, a "here's some potential companies that are members, shoot them a line" type email.

Ffffuuuucccckkkkkk my life right now augh

So much to do, so little time. But a few important things, the good news and the bad news.

The good news: Someone finally created an LED lightbulb with incandescent tone! (Color? idk. I'm no lighting engineer.) It's only been, um, AGES since we've been talking about this in my engineering classes (aka why hadn't anyone done it yet).

The bad news: Instructables was bought by Autodesk. I have nothing against Autodesk, but Instructables is a great site that is fed SIGNIFICANTLY by the hackersphere. That just seems like conflict of interest to me (Autodesk getting sued for publishing hacking how-tos, maybe forcing use of their products as a requirement for publication), not to mention I just see it going down like LJ's slow death via SixApart and the Russian company. "Of course we listen to the users, we fuck up majorly several times a year and yet we never fucking learn!"

Then again, maybe it's a viable business model, Facebook doesn't seem to be suffering much from terrible fucking ideas

NORMAL POST

LEGIT EXCUSE: I TOOK THE GRE TODAY THEN PARTYFAILED. MOM WAS ALL "HEY WANT TO GO TO SKYLINE AFTERWARDS?" AND I SAID PROBABLY AND I CAME HOME TO COLD PIZZA AND A REQUEST TO CLEAN THE BATHROOMS. SO I DID THAT AND LEFT. AND THEN NOBODY ACTUALLY WANTED TO "GO OUT" LIKE WE PLANNED, EVEN TO DRUNK KARAOKE, SO I WAS KINDA IN A BAD MOOD AND THIS DAY WAS KIND OF A WASTE OF MY LIFE TO BE HONEST

SO I'M UP LATE CATCHING UP ON IMPORTANT THINGS (LIKE LIVEJOURNALLING) AND NOT GIVING A SHIT BECAUSE I'M GOING TO SLEEP IN BUT WATCH THE DAMN PARADE TOMORROW ANYWAY

AND THEN AS SOON AS GRANDMA GETS DEPRESSED AND ASKS ME WHY I'M NOT DATING ETC ETC AND MOM STARTS TALKING AT ME ABOUT GRAD STUFF AGAIN I'M JUST GONNA GTFO AND GO SEE DUE DATE AND THEN GO TO WAFFLE HOUSE BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO GO FOR THREE WEEKS AND NOBODY WANTS TO FUCKING GO AND YOU KNOW WHAT? FINE. I'LL GO BY MYSELF. THIS IS WHY I HATE PEOPLE SOMETIMES. BECAUSE LITERALLY NO ONE IN TOWN WANTS TO GO TO THE MOVIES WITH ME.

Some fucking friends sometimes, I swear to god. There is more to life than alcohol.

BUT I DIGRESS.

/capsrage!off

(Note, that is not capsrage "yelling" but rather "comically over-loud voice".)

Now onto your regularly scheduled programming.

OH, HOW APPROPRIATE, yesterday's prompt was the last movie I saw in theatres. INCEPTION. WHEN I GOT BACK THIS SUMMER, AND I FUCKING HAD TO DRAG MY SISTER TO GO SEE IT WITH ME. And before that?! Iron Man 2! My moviegoing track this year is a shame! WHY DOES NO ONE WANT TO GO OUT TO MOVIES THIS YEAR?! Fucking idek.

Last book I read... Well, last book I finished was probably Lost City of Z which I read for fun over the summer and was amazing despite its ending. I mean, the ending is still amazing from a historical point of view but (without giving much away) the whole thing is this buildup and then--AUGH. You have to read it, if you are in the slightest a history or Indiana Jones or adventuring fan, oh boy.



...Not gonna lie though, despite being in a general good mood, handling school okay, work is going fine, working out, et cetera, I am a bit emotionally unstable at the moment. I can tell because the slightest little comments are making me upset enough to almost nearly ruin my evenings. I really can't handle people brushing me off much more to go to parties/drink but "oh I don't have enough money to go to a movie". Because alcohol comes out of the faucet for free, I see. Well alrightythen. I'm hoping Laura's not going to be bitchy tomorrow because I think I'm going to need to run away from the rest of the family with her, particularly since the cuzs (cuzns? cuzzes? idek. "cuzs" looks like it should be Polish.) are on the other side of the goddamned country.


...*sigh*. I miss my drum corps family =(

Things I also failed to bitch about earlier this week: The DJ on Saturday, who took requests up to a few days in advance because he couldn't/didn't do on-the-spot mixing (HA, mixing, if you could call it that--what with jumps and awfully apparent tempo changes), in the three hours we were at the dance, played TWO, count 'em, TWO songs that were 1) older than 2000, 2) not a dance/pop/hip-hop song. Seriously, the guy was awful. About 30 minutes in to the dance he played "Wannabe" (Spice Girls--ngl had to look up the title of that song) and with about 20 minutes left he played "You Shook Me All Night Long". The only other song he played that wasn't some currently-top-40-but-actually-shitty-dance-tune-excuse-to-party-hard song was Pokerface. So out of the songs I requested (Fuck You, anything by Gaga, anything by Queen, and anything by Billy Joel), I got one song. Needless to say, I was PISSED THE FUCK OFF. I spent probably half to two-thirds of the dance glaring at the DJ from my chair. I mean, this could be the fault of the coordinators who hired a friend-of-a-friend and maybe forgot to forward our requests, but what kind of shitty DJ plays pretty much ONE TYPE OF SONG all night?! And not even varying between dance tunes and slow songs? WE HAD NO SLOW SONGS ALL NIGHT.

Basically I'm pissed at everyone and everything right now and I'm about to snap. Not angry-snap but just break-down-snap and no one seems to really give a shit, because that's just how things go. Ugh. I'm kinda tired of this crap, really.

Also I do not recommend trying to follow a conversation about a boyfriend's roommate's cousin who is that person's ex and their crazy parents at a party after taking the GRE, because the actual GRE's paragraph and word problems turned out to be much more difficult and brain-power-consuming than I expected them to be and I was (and am) rather brain dead on the this-idea-requires-a-complex-sentence-of-at-least-four-phrases front.

But onto the linkspam:

So, uh, this happened.

MY LIFE MAY OR MAY NOT BE COMPLETE NOW. <3

A really interesting article about Florence Nightingale's influential graph and a common mathematical fallacy of graph creation/interpretation. Fascinating because I encounter a lot of misunderstood data on a fairly regular basis (thank you, journalism majors), and also because these are the type of subtleties you may have to discern between on the GRE. (I did pretty well on the quantitative section, but the reading/vocab was much more difficult than I anticipated and I nearly ran out of time, having to guess haphazardly at a few questions.) Anyway. Data is pretty, and presentation is valuable. I wish I knew more about the historical context of these charts because it might be an interesting topic for Ada Lovelace Day, although perhaps something that focuses on the graphical fallacy is not the best topic. (Nightingale was particularly observant in clinical matters though, wasn't she? Wasn't she the one who told people to wash their hands, basically, kill less people with infection? Or am I thinking of someone else entirely? FIFTH GRADE HISTORY IS FAILING ME.)

An interesting article about Native American culture, race, and steampunk, with significantly more win than all the shenanigans last year. Although I must admit, I don't think I ever heard the story of "the first Thanksgiving" in school. At least, not as a history lesson, but as more of a holiday folklore type thing, minus maybe the "learning how to plant corn" part. ALTHOUGH ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT we never approached it from the accuracy point-of-view either. So.

For the record I still don't like "ray guns" as a steampunk thing. I have never come into acceptance of them. Then again I've also become more standoffish about pop culture's reaction to steampunk as a whole anyhow, so, some part of me just also doesn't give a shit (that my entire POV on steampunk is decidedly different, because the generic running-with-steampunk scene is not my cup of tea).

DAMN I AM RANTY TONIGHT. Sorry about that folks. I'm a bit tweaky, it seems.

(I do like that EL wire on the gun, though, despite my active distaste for mods of that nerf gun... Hm. Considerations, considerations.)


Holy crap this test fried my brain a lot more than I expected it to. First I was moody, now I'm just too tired to parse any article with more than one sentence and a funny picture. Basically my brain is running like MemeGenerator at the moment.

Yep, late again. Still working on this damn reinforced concrete footing design spreadsheet. THRILLING, I KNOW.

Hilarious: watching Australia before or after watching VanHelsing. Also, Nicole Kidman kind of bothers me in this movie.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT NOT AGAIN. It says they did it to Phantom in '09 (?) but I don't recall off the top of my head. (Then again, Red Violin... nobody cared? I didn't say that, haha) There's a strong wave of response to this on my facebook. Is Troop responsible for the video rights? Is DCI? No one seems to know. Anyway, this is CRAP. However, they still have the music rights, so... buy the mp3, rip the video, mash them together. The worst part about the stupid thing is, though, that I'm pretty sure Wanted is the song they didn't get rights to. Which means: no intro, no outro, AND NO CLOSER COMPANY FRONT. Goddamn that's ridiculous.

I'm also a little depressed because just a few days ago my wall was a flood of people registering for camps and buying plane tickets. I miss everyone dearly. I'm starting to wonder how crazy the scene is in Japan, maybe march a summer there or something, huh? That would be crazygonuts awesome. (March with Tatsu and Aya? haha)

ANYWAY, once again, two days worth of prompts while I procrastinate on my other homework some more:

My closest friends... I have a lot. People from high school, college roomies, and corps people. I'll keep it simple for the sake of people's sanity. (Roughly 850 facebook friends ensures this is not a simple answer.)

Three favorite colors? ALSO A LOT. Haha. Generally I lean towards (surprise!) really bright colors, but I also lean towards blue, green, and purple. And then orange, and also pink, and in particular any of these colors with gray tones. Classy.

Happy belated Halloween, everyone! You'd think with it being my favorite holiday and everything, that I would have a fantastic holiday post ready, but alas, I do not. I am too overwhelmed with school right now, and grad applications, and the fact that one of my friends has decided to be a drama queen and start stirring the shit. So. I will get some pics up of my costume eventually, but possibly not until I get some pro photos taken for my portfolio.

Oooof course I can't seem to celebrate a big Halloween without things going awry, so. I don't know, I'm so tired of all this shit, I need something different to come my way. Bleh.

In defense of free material boosting your sales, an interesting article on Monty Python's sales after posting videos on youtube. SALES INCREASED 23,000 PERCENT. TWENTY-THREE THOUSAND. (This guy had his comic posted to 4chan and it got him some good sales, too.)

Bomb squad diffuses box full of kittens. BEST BOMB EVER.

Anyway. Not doing NaNoWriMo, because, I think, I am not cut out to be a writer. I can write with other people, but I think I'm more of a 3d-design person. I try to write stories but they come out rather derivative. HOWEVER, I am going to do this 30 day challenge instead:

My middle name is Margaret. It is my mom's middle name and her mother's oldest sister, who died when she was only 20ish. I don't use it very much, because I rather like Diane. So, I don't really love or hate it. I considered taking Ursula as my confirmation name in 8th grade though so that my initials would be D.U.M.B. (Yet another example of why I was a strange kid.)

Also... I'm kind of ready for Christmas. Kind of. It got freezing this week, and I determined that I am of the opinion that the months of November and October should be switched. Something about Thanksgiving just seems like it should come before Halloween--it's about harvesting and all that, and the colors are so much warmer than Halloween; so it's odd that it comes first, almost.

I've been thinking about a lot of things lately. This may be partly due to psych 101; much like philosophy courses, I end up having a great deal to think about that impacts my normal everyday already large-topic-encompassing thought process. As such, this post is all over the places and contains both shallow and ponderous (omg, "pond"erous, get it? pun not intended, but fully enjoyed by this mercat) artifacts.

I freaking love crazy fan theories. I've read a few great ones lately, that Fight Club is grown up Calvin & Hobbes, Pokemon is a coma dream Ash is having to deal with his issues, Ferris Beuller is all in Cameron's head, it goes on. Some of them are crazy-awesome but completely unncessary (like these), others more legit (the r2d2 theory, which sort of retcons the plot holes added by the new trilogy). ANYWAY, I was directed to this fantabulous page of crazy fan theories about Iron Man. My personal favorites are:

1) The quantum moustache theory

Tony's facial hair exists in a state of quantum entanglement
This theory is an attempt to reconcile how Tony can appear in separate comics with either the modern goatee or the retro 'stache. In a similar situation to Schrodinger's Cat, Tony simultaneously has a goatee and a mustache until the artist "observes" him.

* Screw the laws of physics, I have money!

2) The Tesla theory

Tony Stark is a clone of Nikola Tesla.
Minus the madness, of course.

The man builds an arc reactor (in a cave with a box of scraps no less), plugs it into his chest, builds the iron man suit and hunts down the people who got access to his weapons without him knowing about it and you're trying to tell me he's not crazy?

3) Rhody's recasting

Rhody is going to get severely injured between films and require skin grafts
The recovery process will result in Rhodes getting thinner and his skin getting darker.

4) The Iron Man theory

Tony Stark is really Iron Man.
I've got it! Iron Man is supposedly an employee of Stark Enterprises but no evidence of this has ever been really seen - he's never seen following Stark even though he's supposed to be Stark's bodyguard, and on the rare occasions they are seen in the same room, Iron Man never speaks, so it could easily be anyone wearing the same armour. Stark has numerous times supposedly fired Iron Man but it doesn't stop Iron Man from appearing even though he should be out of funding and Stark always welcomes him back with open arms in the end. What more evidence do you need?

* Dude, where have you been? He claimed so in that one meet the press thing the military did about Iron Man.
* No, that press thing was just a stint to throw us off it was just like that time Harvey Dent said he was the Batman but he wasn't! But maybe you're on to something with the jerkass billionaire playboy idea... Hmm. Have we ever seen Bruce Wayne and Iron Man together?

o And Peter Parker can never get photos of Superman! It's all so clear.

+ Yes, of course... BRUCE WAYNE IS TONY STARK!
+ Obviously, they agreed to a corporate merger. It was cemented by Stark and Wayne by using the Dragon Ball Z fusion earrings. Ladies and Gentlemen: Toby Stayne!

5) All of Stan Lee's characters are the same guy (just plain epic)

6) ALL OF THE CROSSOVER THEORIES

Seriously, this page, just for entertainment's sake, I love it. The pure hilarity of it is impressive.

(Also, just ran over to the Indy page to see what the deal was, of course, it's not so nearly entertainment so much as people trying to pretend ToD and KotCS didn't happen. ACCEPT THEM AND MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE. It's on these occasions I am sad that the Indy fans are relatively a good deal older or a good deal younger than me...)

(Additionally, wtf, "the skull was magnetic, the gold could actually be real magnetic material"?! YOU FAIL AT SCIENCE. CRYSTAL =/= MAGNETIC.)

These sort of things make me wonder how many movie viewers actually incorrectly explain plot holes, as some people clearly to not understand logic and some to not understand science. BUT I DIGRESS, I am so far afield from anything relevant to this post idek.

Let's go where I was originally going, teenage rebellion. I don't know why it came up, but I was thinking about it yesterday and I have concluded that perhaps, despite my "goody-two-shoes" image (ha), there may exist a natural rebellion in every teenager, and perhaps I was just lucky enough to be able to funnel this energy into more useful outlets. Pats for Hats, holding grudges against certain asshats, and feminism. How did I realize this? I realized, when speaking metaphorically that sexism is THE button to press to make me go off--I realized that I (rather comparatively) flip out whenever sexism is the issue at hand. Regardless of how big or small the issue may be. And I really have no reason for feeling that passionately--well, actually, that may not be true, now that I put it to paper (or blog as the case may be). Perhaps my paranoia (well, constant worry over unnecessary things) against all sorts of things to go wrong causes me to feel oppressed by my environments and that's why I flip out with feminism? To try to regain confidence for the oppressed? I don't know, it's a legitimate theory.

Particularly in relation to this article I just read, that the objectification of women by men DIRECTLY AFFECTS THEIR SELF-CONFIDENCE. Perhaps what I believe to be my greater social awareness is to blame for what I call my "paranoia"? Maybe I will just start calling it "avid awareness" or some bullshit term because I feel like paranoia is unfair (not to mention unfounded. I'm somewhat clinically curious, though). ANYWAY.

(...My theory also explains why, I think, my family thinks I am bat-shit for thinking Twilight is bat-shit. Because I react that way, and I expect others to be as offended about feminism and stalkers and pedophilia BUT MAYBE THAT'S JUST ME.)

No, I definitely still think that shit is horrifying

Again on the topic of feminism, the anti-rape condom. I have mixed feelings about this. One, well, it is good to have a tool to fight in this war? I don't know. But (two) it really bothers me that this puts the responsibility in the hands of the victim. I mean, I don't want to have to shove that thing up my vag just to maim a rapist in the event that may happen. I mean, what, do you wear this every time you go out? Every day? All day, all the time? (And technically, by the mechanics of it, is it really a condom? Idk, it's more like... a diaphragm trap. Except it's not a diaphragm either, I know I know, so... what is it?

...Well let's just say I'm resisting the urge to post Ackbar in here.) Anyway. I feel like this is a measure for the desperate only, and otherwise has some rather dire implications. BUT that is society and welcome to it =/

I am learning to play Hey Soul Sister on my uke; the chords are difficult both in that they hurt (gotta learn that stretch and that muscle memory) and that I don't know how to hold my uke properly to change chords rapidly. THIS IS A PROBLEM. No thanks to my uke teacher, of course, because I remember asking her and she never really had anything to say because she didn't have any sort of formal teaching. Awesomesauce.

Melissa taught me a new word today: revagulous. This may just take over for recockulous in terms of outlandishness and entertainment value. (See, I told you, I can appreciate bodily function jokes on the same level of my brain that is in psychology-mode. IT'S CRAZY, I know.)

(...Literally?)

CLUB OBI-WAN let's goooooo

Handwriting is History?! Let me answer that with an emphatic NO. What if all our computers were to die? And I'm guessing it teaches kids good small-motor-skills. Oh and then there's the part where typing special characters and equations is still a huge fucking pain in the ass. But this dude is a journalist so I'm sure he has no idea that trying to write out Taylor Series expansions is SO EASY WITH TABLETS, amirite? Oh wait, almost none of the engineers use their laptops to take notes. Too much a novelty, still.

This shirt is ugly as sin but I love the pun.

Random thing: I was just looking at passiveaggressivenotes.com and saw a "flowers to go: if your name is bitch, come in and get your free flowers" post. It reminded me that, I think, the night before I left for Spain, I was coming home from Regal 20 and met my parents for dinner at Marion's or ice cream at Friendly's or something (actually, I think it was a Thursday and I was coming home from my Thursday night science lecture), and I passed the flower place over by the gas station, and it had that promotion but it said "Diane" that day. =) Good times. Wow, random memory, huh?

A somewhat worrisome facebook article. They keep everything. HOLY SHIT. Also, it pisses me off that though they have all this old data, I can't recover my statuses and Twitter only keeeps 1,000 tweets. I lost all my first tweets :( And I had some good stuff I wanted to come back to, as well...

(Also, Facebook Beacon! Done via a 1x1 GIF bug. That is sly. And douchey. And I'm starting to hate facebook more and more.)

A history of the ampersand! Completely fascinating.

And on the topic of typography and characters, an English-language sarcasm mark. Only I find it ugly and I think if you are blatantly told something is sarcasm you are missing a critical level of enjoyment and understanding of sarcasm. In addition, if you miss written sarcasm you may want to re-evaluate whether you are truly understanding the writer. (Although the use for indicating sarcasm in subtitles is useful.) (And... it costs $2 to buy and use? Yeah... not gonna catch on, buds.)

Nightmare snowmen! As featured in Calvin and Hobbes. Fantastic work. Art.

Family dinner tonight, that was interesting. Max called beforehand and told Laura and I to wear plaid, it turns out Max and Kyle and Chris all wore flannel plaid, it was awesome. We were so ridiculous-looking.

The only bad part was when Kyle ran off to the bathroom once, we started joking that we wouldn't be surprised if he came out bi, more likely than gay, seriously, he has some... interesting affectations. But it sort of veered off into a discussion about bisexuality, and it really pissed me off because Max and Laura said they didn't understand it, you either are or you aren't gay, and I was just pissed because trying to explain anything subtle to them--here the Kinsey scale, or like earlier, the racism and shit in Avatar--first, they don't want to listen. Second, they assume I have to be a part of that minority to be offended, and I really, really don't need them to be seriously thinking I'm gay or something. I mean, not that it would be a slur, but that I already get enough harassment from my family for not liking ham and pineapple. Seriously. (Tangent: is there something similar to the Kinsey scale for hyper-/a-sexuality/romanticism? Because I'm not completely polarized but I'm definitely more on the icebitch side, to put it one way...) Yeah, so I got to be offended by their ignorance for a bit, listen to them talk about all their drinking and dating and crap like that, and sometimes I forget that I spend so much time online and that people online... actually read... and know things. =/

Yeah.

Probably not going to do a big post for New Year's since there's going to be PARTY AT MY HOUSE omg beer pong on the back porch gonna be ridic sleepover with ~everyone~ I am super excited. Not too crazy but I love my friends. =)

2009... you can show yourself to the door. My summer was amazing, I made a lot of friends, a lot of best friends, and yet the rest of the year sucked fucking ass. A fucking shit-ton of it.

2010... I am willing to have another crappy year to have a summer better than the last. Age-out, go big or go home, I want to come in more than 12th. Glassmen can GTFO and passing Phantom would be amazing, idk, this summer is going to be amazing, period. But 2010, I'd really like to start the teens (EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT THE NEXT DECADE, I ~KNOW~) well, so if you could see it to not be so shitty? That would be great. Really.


goddamn, 2009, you were a bitch

First of all, happy holidays, merry christmas, all that jazz. It still doesn't feel like Christmas... which sucks. This semester just took so much out of me, mentally.

I was going to do a whole special holiday post and go "caroling" on people's journals this year, but damned if I am just not too tired. Ugh. I think I will do a christmas recap later.

Instead, Laura, Max, Kyle, Chris, and I got bored and went out to see a movie on Christmas, the first time in my life I have ever done that. I was a little pissed because I wanted to see Sherlock Holmes or Imaginarium and Imaginarium isn't out anywhere locally as far as I can tell and everybody else decided no, Holmes was going to suck, so let's see Avatar.

I was a bit reluctant because of all the Dances With Smurfs crap I've seen about it, not to mention the fact that I hatehatehate most CGI because it comes off looking fake. Maybe not the textures, but the laws of physics never seem to apply. (Not to mention Uncanny Valley shit like Polar Express, GOTDAMN.) But Chris as drunk as fuck and my whole life I've been trying to fight Max and Kyle and Laura when they team up and it just does not fucking work, okay? Ugh. I hate them when they get like that.

Anyway, the non-spoilery summary, it's pretty good. Yes, Dances With Smurfs. Yes, visually stunning. Yes, has lots of lame moments. Dialogue was actually better than I expected. Anyway, I'd say, if you're interested, see it, but it's not some great epic, and it has lots of eye-rolling moments. (At three hours long, I do mean lots.)

( and now, the spoilers, warning for discussions on race, gender, engineering, and more )

Dear fate/destiny/life/whatever:

YOU HAVE THE WORST FUCKING TIMING EVER. Can't you at least wait to pull this shit when I don't have tests happening? This is definitely the worst semester ever.

Today is Thursday, and today I am most definitely Arthur Dent.

I absolutely cannot wait for Christmas so I can just be done with this shit.




Ugh.



(On the positive side, I posted something similar as my facebook status, and Uncle Steve told me to start drinking and Don't Panic. I love my family.)