燕

On a lite-er note, a pirate!

The joke in the artist's comments had me laughing for a good long while.

Lifted from Warren Ellis' livejournal:

( Submunitions: July 4 )

Anyone who reads this journal knows by now that I don't really do the "random life updates" that are so common to livejournal. Political stuff and news articles? Yes. Travel writing? Yes. Introspection? Yes. Writings? Yes. Heavily disguised and confusing angst-rambles? Yes. Poetry postings? Yes. Photos? Yes. "This is what I did today and how my life is going"? Very, very rarely.

Well, why not?

I'm . . . not entirely certain. But it's not something that's unique to my livejournal, as you may well know if you talk to me in any medium outside it. I don't really talk about my everyday life much with other people-- not on the phone, not face-to-face, not in emails or letters or IM or whatever. Possibly because, as I live it every day, it doesn't seem particularly interesting to me, and hence I consider it even less interesting to other people.

I have often been accused of hypocrisy because, while I am disinclined to share the details of my existence, I am deeply interested in the details of my friends' and family's lives and insist on hearing about them. What no one seems to understand is that this is not hypocrisy, but two entirely different situations that do not bear comparison. Apples and oranges. The same goes for when I give advice to others that I do not follow myself. Firstly, your situation and mine are entirely different. Secondly, I fail to see how my failure to do what I should invalidates the fact that it should be done, by myself and by others.

. . . I suffer deeply from wordiness. All I wanted to say in the above is that I don't often do random life updates, but today I am!

School (work) has once again eaten my life. Obscurely this makes me happy-- I like nothing better than feeling that I'm needed and useful, and staying late and coming early and working constantly throughout the day fill me with contentment. I had a terrible time adjusting to spring vacation-- an entire month when I wasn't necessary at all! It was horribly depressing for the first week or so before I adjusted and kicked myself into pursuing my own projects, at which point I felt much better. I like to be busy, which is why I usually am. When I have nothing I'm supposed to be doing, I make things for myself to do.

Yes, I'm a workaholic. When a friend asked me to meet him during my lunch break, it took me a little while to remember that yes, I actually have one. Or I'm supposed to have one, anyway. Usually I just eat in about five minutes and go back to whatever I was doing.

So now I'm busy and happy to be so. Unfortunately, expending so much energy at school means that I have none left over for life details-- mental energy as much as physical. So for the past two weeks I've been going back to my apartment and either reading or playing video games until I fall asleep, usually without doing any cleaning or cooking or practicing or studying or emailing or writing or anything. It's not that I don't have time to do these things, it's just that they all seem to take too much effort and I'd rather sit around, thinking and doing not much at all.

Sometimes it seems like I'm a machine with only two settings: "go" and "dead."

Possible third setting: obsess over Yue. Because as I've said to majochan, a real fangirl never dies, she just gets distracted by other shiny things for a while.

Other possible third setting: kick ass in Kingdom Hearts 2. I am totally ruling that game. Possibly because I take vicious joy in pulverising enemies with my Big Stick o' Poking and never run away from battles. And I have my Big Book o' Cheating to make sure I don't miss any items, too! But I missed one back in Twilight Town and I can't go back for it and you have no idea how much pain that hole in my items list causes me. Oh, and I think Sora's voice is teh awesome.

. . . this would be another reason why I don't do random life updates. I'd rather obsess over other things than my life. Sometimes when I talk to other people I'm astounded by just how much time and energy they devote to themselves. I don't mean that I think they're selfish or self-centered, just that . . . they ponder conversations they've had in minute detail, plan future ones, deeply analyze their interactions with others, ruminate over possibilities and choices, and expend a great deal of energy just in being themselves. It's not something that I really understand. Why obsess over my own problems? Will thinking about them make them go away or really change anything when I can't actively do something about them? Not really. So I just shrug, figure that things will work out eventually, and go on with whatever I'm doing.

Likewise I see no need to try to be myself-- whatever it is that I'm doing, or thinking, or whatever, that's myself. How could I do something that isn't me? How could I be someone that isn't me? It doesn't make sense at all. I can pretend to feel something I don't feel, but that's still me doing the pretending. I can say something I don't really mean, but that's still me doing the talking. As much as I enjoy and indulge in philosophical conversations about what makes us who we are, I don't feel particularly confused or upset about it myself.

. . . even when I try to do random life entries, I end up not doing them. Um. Today I had a first year class with Kodama-sensei, it went okay. Last night I played Kingdom Hearts 2 and had gyoza and toast and cheese and . . . um, something else I don't remember for dinner. Yesterday I had two classes with Nomura-sensei, which were a bit awkward because I don't have a pattern worked out with her yet. This weekend I'm going to see RENT. Next weekend I'm going whitewater rafting in Gifu, and that week is the recontracting conference in Kobe, and I really need to study more and practice more, and . . .

. . . and I'm very, very bored with this. Since I'm bored with this, you must be too. So. BACK TO WORK!!!

I just found out about these, and am linking to this person's lj links as a public service.

Here be Fullmetal Alchemist OVAs!

ph33r. For they are mighty.

I'm making astounding progress in terms of reading lately. I finished Essays Written in Idleness, and then I Am a Cat. Next I tore through Shinsengumi: the Shogun's Last Samurai Corps, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I suppose it whetted my appetite for battles and glory and tragedy, because now I'm flying through a reread of Katharine Kerr's Deverry books, and enjoying them fully as much as I did the first time (which was some years back, during high school). Daggerspell's behind me now, and I'm fast approaching the halfway point in Darkspell. Which means that soon I'll be placing an order with Amazon to get my hands on more of them.

There's much to admire about them. The setting is rich and realistic, a Celtic kingdom modeled on old Wales. The focus is on nobles and princes and the warriors that make or lose their destinies, but there's no shortage of politics to lend urgency to the battles. The magic is well thought-out and far from omnipotent. The characters are deep, each with their own motivations and involved histories. And it even has a race of elves that I can stand, and even like-- I can't tell you how rare that is, because normally I despise elves in fantasy books. They tend to be self-involved, arrogant, annoyingly perfect, insufferably smug, and so holier-than-thou that I pray for someone to come and take them down a peg. And no one ever does, more's the pity. If I lived with elves, I'd constantly be rigging low wires all over the place, just so that I could see them trip and fall on their faces.

Deverry has the Elcyion Lacar, and while they might have some of the above listed qualities, there's enough about them that isn't perfect that I can accept and even like them. No shining, pearly, unlivable cities for them-- they're nomads, traveling with herds of horses and living in painted tents. They may scorn human cities as cramped and dirty, but that's not surprising when they live in a vast open space and never stay in one place long enough for sewage to become a problem. Marvelous craftsmanship, yes. Superior technology? Hells no; they don't even have wheels. They use travois to haul their stuff. Beautiful? Yes. Graceful? Yes. Superior archers? Yes. Perfect? Not on your life. They feud and argue and sleep around just as much as the humans do. They're real, that's what it comes down to for me.

Trying to recall another set of elves I've liked . . . the Sithi, "the Peaceful Ones," from Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy comes to mind. They're a little closer to the classic annoying elves, but they still have enough reality to them for me to like them. Overall, I'd say the situation there was the equivalent of taking a scullion from a castle in barely-medieval France and dropping him in the royal court of Heian Japan. If the royal court liked trees a whole lot. Although I haven't read those books in a long time; perhaps I should turn to them after I finish with Deverry.

I liked the elves in Judith Tarr's Hound and the Falcon trilogy and accompanying books, largely because while they themselves were far beyond human, and had a good measure of perfection to them, they lived entirely immersed in the human world. They were fully human in terms of their personalities and their emotions. Beautiful and magical, yes, powerful, but by no means above or detached from that which is normal.

To put it bluntly, I like the kind of elves who can eat too much rich food at a feast and must spend an hour or two in the loo afterwards.

Perfect societies of any sort rankle with me; I could never accept Star Trek (a human society without money or exchange of any kind? Come ON) for much the same reason I can't accept most elves. Perhaps it's a failing on my part; elves are supposed to be a different species, and I'm always wanting them to be human. Which means they must be fallible, capable of pettiness and stupidity as well as breathtaking beauty. That a society should exist out of reach of those sins that humanity is constantly beset by is not a society that I can accept in my heart as true.

And come on, the tripwires would be an excellent idea. You'd laugh, too. And if the elf who fell over laughed as well, I'd swear blood kinship with him and buy him a beer down at Kuttaro. Or even some girly, elf-y fruit-flavored chu-hai. As long as he can put up with me teasing him for drinking the sugary stuff.

( Hikaru )

I think I'm going to have to skip the characters I don't remember enough about to type coherently on. For instance, that same year I played a Korean-American woman in a Hunter game, but the game was not particularly long-lived, nor was the character particularly detailed. I don't even remember her name, just that she crushed zombies using moves based on WWE.

In repayment to myself for surviving the second most miserable class ever today, I'm going to spend some time doing something that is only relevant and enjoyable to me, and that I've been wanting to do for a while: ramble on about my old roleplaying characters.

As a small measure of mercy to those who are far enough from sanity to actually read my journal, I'm sticking them behind cuts. Feel grateful.

( Kamiya Ashura )

I want to write something lovely and poignant here. Barring that, I want to write some Emrys-story.

I shall do neither. First of all because I'm tired and it's late, and second of all because I want to read more of Kafka on the Shore. Blasted cliffhanger chapters.

Instead I shall post several haiku, none of which were written by me. No, these are my favorites exerted from One Hundred Great Books in Haiku, by David Bader. The book was my Christmas gift from Pam, and in the interests of saving suitcase space I typed my favorites into my laptop and left the book at home.

I typed all of my favorites save The Rise and Fall of Rome, which was just too bloody long.

Inadvertant joke, heh.

( Oh, that the profound and sophisticated art of haiku should come to this . . . damn, but they're funny. )

Have spent a day that was either deeply unproductive or astoundingly productive, or possibly both. Have placed most of this entry behind cuts for the sake of not being horribly annoying. Don't expect me to make a habit of being considerate with my lj entries, though.

( Lazy Saturday . . . )

( Poetry . . . )

A small child is screaming bloody murder beyond my balcony. There is a gread deal of humanity crammed into a very small amount of space here; perhaps the greatest feat of those who live in this country is to create an impression of infinite space where there is in fact very little. It is not one that I can imitate, as my nature is given to clutter and overcrowding, a riot of colors and motion in a small space.

( More poetry . . . )

( Question and answer . . . )

The heart has reasons about which reason knows nothing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Plato having defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers, Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the Academy, and said, ‘This is Plato’s man.’ On which account this addition was made to the definition: ‘With broad flat nails.’

( Missing people . . . )

Found while re-organizing my bookmarks: the webpage of Heinz Insu Fenkl. I was perhaps a little in love with him while I was reading Memories of my Ghost Brother, and his page is very interesting to browse through. I especially recommend the links at the bottom, particularly if you are at all curious about comparative mythology.

Random conversation regarding Gankutsuou and it's relation to the Count of Monte Cristo:

Me: Well, as far as I can tell, it seems fairly true to the book so far.
Me: Except for the gay thing.
Me: And, you know, the space thing.
Me: Oh, and the vampire thing.

Download faster, blast it . . .