So I've been thinking: my new(ish) computer needs a name.

I called the old one "Isami", after Kondou Isami, because it tried its hardest and did its job well, even though it was sort of old and gimpy.

In keeping with the theme, I'm thinking that this one's a "Sano"--young and quick, but a bit of a derp sometimes. Also, huge. It's like... 17 inches across, or something ridiculous like that.

So yes. The computer is now Sano. When he is slow, I will make indulgently grumpy grumblings about Harada-kun being a 'tard again. This pleases me.

...I hope I'm not rambling. Home sick with a fever, so I might be. Sorry.

An excerpt from The Life of Ket:

Registrar: You're going to have to talk to [the head of the International Relations branch of the PoliSci department] about this senior seminar; it's not technically offered this semester and the add/drop period is supposed to be over, so I doubt it'll work.
Me: I'll talk to him.

[At the professor's office after class.]
Me: So, uh, I'm a senior, and I have all the requirements to graduate with both majors covered, except for your senior sem. Honestly, I feel like I might be better off with an informal direct inquiry approach to it anyway, but that's obviously if you're comfortable with it, I could just drop the second major if you can't do it...
Professor: You're you, it'll be fine. Here are the requirements, here's paperwork to shut the registrar's secretaries up, talk to me when/if you ever need help!
Me: Sweet, you're awesome!


...This proves iambic5's theory that I'm a Mary Sue, in all likelihood. But fuckit, I'm enrolled in both senior sems now, and won't have to go to any more classes than I'd be going to otherwise as long as I finish the damned paper and stay in touch with him about it!

( Further school talk under the cut. )

So hi, f-list!

I'm fairly certain most of you have heard about the recent earthquake in Haiti. And maybe some of you, like me, are looking for ways to help out!

Well, aside from the usual ways--donating money or time to reputable aid organizations like the Red Cross or the United Way, organizing fundraisers in your community, etc.--there's a pretty unique way to help out coming out of fandom, right here on LJ!

help_haiti is a fandom charity auction, where all manner of (not necessarily fannish) goods and services are being offered as donations. The winners donate the amount that their bid was for to an approved charity of their choice, the donors write them fic or draw them art or bake them cookies or whatever, the money goes to help Haitians recover, and everyone wins.

If any of you guys decide to check it out, my offer is here. I'm excited to be participating in this, and I hope that this message is helpful to some of you guys, too!

This made my day. Hope it makes at least one of yours :)

Okay, need to say this before I get in the car with him for four hours and say it to him, which would be a pretty mean-spirited act of filial impiety:

The thing I won't miss about being home is the fact that my Dad is...

-A morning person.
-A loud morning person.
-With a guitar.
-Who gets mad at you for spoiling his fun if you are less than enthusiastic about being serenaded at seven in the goddamned morning after writing all night for the fifth night in a row.

It's sick.

It's also bizarre, because my Dad's a good singer... usually. But either his tone and pitch get substantially worse along with his taste in songs at this hour, or I perceive them as such as a side effect of how bad I want to punch him when he does this and I just fucking want to sleep.

That's right. I long for the peace and quiet of a houseful of theatre majors and Cyrano the Spazzcat. Kill me now.

This is an update to let everyone know I'm not dead!

...Mostly. I'm mostly not dead. Getting sort of close, mind you, with OMG TWO SENIOR THESES, WHY AM I DOING THIS, WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I SLEPT OH GOD, but aside from occasional bursts of capslock-inducing stress, things are pretty good!

In other life news...
-I have a girlfriend! Hee. I'm still in the "gratuitous blushing and evasion of questions from outside parties" phase of things. It's nice. She's nice. Everything's nice. Except the part where I forget about my homework when I'm all focused on a girl, apparently. I... kinda failed my intro to Ceramics class because I forgot to go in and freaking do the work.
-But she's off in Japan for two months. After which she'll come back, but then I might be going back to Japan in late July. HA HA, thanks, life :|
-I am a semester from finishing college. I think. I hope. I'm trying to get my thesis rough drafts (yes, drafts, plural, I have two theses, because I'm the worst mix of overachiever and underachiever EVER) done BEFORE I go back, so I can convince my adviser to let me take everything I need. I may have been hindered by, uh, bad planning up to this point, but I CAN KICK THIS THING'S ASS! The ability to sort of... force-of-will my way through odd situations work is what gets me through things, often.
-I am going to DIE OF WORRYING by the time I hear back from JET.
-No chance to really test out the new camera yet. Customer reviews online are a bit mixed, but I'm hopeful! The specs are better than my old one's, and it's purple, which is fun, so I really hope it works well for me~
-I have a new winter coat, and it is SO WARM. YOU HAVE NO IDEA. IT HAS LITTLE BUILT-IN FINGERLESS GLOVES, FOR MY COMFORT AND HAPPINESS.

Uhm, that's about it, I guess. I still love you, f-list! I haven't yet been eaten by zombies, I swear!

( Resolutions! )

"Sure," I said. "Nathaniel and Marissa and the baby can have my room," I said. It won't be so bad, sleeping in my sister's room, right?

HA.

Somehow, during the negotiation of Christmas sleeping arrangements, I managed to forget that I have so damn much trouble sleeping with someone nearby and with clothes on that I regularly endure the pouty-faces of my girlfriend so I can sleep alone.

Being super-tired and unable to sleep makes me beyond grouchy. Grouchy enough to not care that I got ninja turtle slippers for Christmas, and that my godson's adorable.

...Okay, grouchy enough to almost not care. Still.

Think 6 AM is too early to hit the booze?

ETA: Also got a new camera, which means I finally got the pics off the old one. Might post some after I get some gorram sleep.

Another meme from criminalize~


Reply to this meme with "Words" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

POLAND

Well, it's obvious why she picked that one--I know her from an RP where I play Hetalia!Poland XD I love Hetalia!Poland to bits and pieces which means I torture him as much as possible, and I think real world!Poland seems pretty interesting. I'd like to poke at learning the language, if I ever have time; right now, my Polish-speaking ability stands at "can fumble out the pronunciation of most words after a few tries, and swear pretty proficiently".

cute

...Ffffff. Okay. Okay, hold on, this is actually pretty wildly amusing to me, because I spent years of my life denying that I ever did anything cute. Which was difficult, because I squeak when people poke me, and am extremely spontaneous. I think that, at this point, I've settled for "badass AND cute". I'm not sure why she picked this one, but... okay!

hugs

I love hugs. I am a REALLY tactile person, and when around my RL friends, pretty much cuddle nonstop. It confuses my friends sometimes, if I become friends with someone else really quickly. Like, this once, I met a girl, and totally didn't have a crush on her at all, but we hit it off really well on a friends-level, and she was about as snuggly as me, so my friends saw us around each other--"hanging all over each other", I think, was the term they use in recounting this--and assumed that we were, uh, more intimately involved than I'm personally comfortable with at this point in my life o///o Online, this love for snuggling translates into a LOT of use of the *hugs* emote, so yes.

NIHON

In case anyone in the world was not aware of this, I am quite fond of Japan. I intend to return, when I can.

curves

...In case anyone in the world was not aware of this, I, uh, find curves aesthetically pleasing? I'm also a fairly curvy person, myself. *understatement* But yes, the Ladies with a comfortable to snuggle level of squish are far cuter to me than really skinny ones. In large part because...boobs. And hips. They're nice =D Go, curves!

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will post the answers to the questions (and the questions themselves) on your blog or journal.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. And thus the endless cycle of the meme goes on and on and on and on...

( My interview )




In non meme-related news, I'm back in MD! Yep. Uh, that's about it. I'm glad not to be at school for a while, it was starting to drive me crazy.

Hahaha, I post a lot more to my main journal when I'm procrastinating desperately~

Briefly: Okay, seriously, America, WTF. I love you, deeply, but like...France is probably the one country we haven't gotten into any wars against since, like, BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, and they helped us in the Revolution and we've been allied ever since, and yet when I try to write a paper about US-French relations, I run up against more frothingly nationalistic, "Fuck those bastards" jingoism than I would researching a similar topic for...Oh, say, IRAN. The leaders of whom actively want to destroy us.

*headwall, for EVER* What. The. Fuck. I demand an explanation for this bullshit, world.

I need to stop procrastinating for a bit.

But the real reason I made this post? To inform any of my friends who may be as...uhm, stupid as me that putting tangerine peels around open wounds, or rubbing your eyes after touching them, or putting them in your ears (shut uuuuuuup, I have weird impulses and control them badly!) is a bad idea.

It...kind of burns really bad.

So yeah.

That's all. You may now go about your business.

So the past 24 hours have been a little on the mind-numbingly shitty side. Getting better, but still a pain in the ass I could have done without.

Naturally, the best way to deal with this is by PROCRASTINATING LIKE A MOFO on my schoolwork, and stealing a bunch of memes from murasaki_kaze. ILU, Kaze~

( Generic Anime Stereotype Meme )

Clearly, I'm a sexy tomboy.

( Generic Sort of Meme )

( 100 Truths )

( Nationality Meme )

Surprisingly accurate! Irish/German/Other stuff pride!

( One. Word. Only. Meme. )

( 80 Questions )

Getting into RP-related ones now...

( RP Personality Meme )

I'm going to combine the next 2, because I can. Name any of my characters (Ashura, Sano, Kondou, Hijikata [Sieben and TST], Watari, Ling Tong, Sun Ce, Utena, and Poland/Feliks [edingly and TST]), and I'll answer the questions under the cut for them!

( The Questions )

Finally, a poem, created with the "First lines of 20 random songs, use the 21st as the title" meme~

( This Appeared as a Moral Dilemma )

It has come to my attention that I've actually been keeping up with this journal for two years! Surprised? I am, since I seemed to max out at two entries the previous times I tried getting elljays or similar.

So, in celebration, dear f-list...As thanks to you for sticking around, making me laugh, making me think, whatever it is that makes us friends, I'm opening up shortfic requests. Any fandom I know, either rp I'm in, AU's, crackfic, shipfic, smut, gen, vignettes, you name it. Heck, it doesn't even have to be fanfic--I can make up a 'verse for you. I won't write for characters that I don't know and haven't rp'ed with, and I won't write like...non-con, or things that squick me out really hardcore. But anything else is fair game! Because I love you.

I won't start on them until tomorrow evening, though. That Calc test is in the morning...wish me luck!

So, I may have mentioned that I've been taking Calc this semester--PNCing it, because I'm a liberal arts major and didn't need the stress of trying to get a good grade in it. Various things have happened--namely, I've been too sick and exhausted to make it to like, a third of the classes, and thus failed to turn in a lot of homework. So my grade, as the teacher put it nicely, is "borderline".

It all comes down to this: If I pass the exam next week, I pass the class. If I fail...I fail.

Guys? I'm not going to pass that exam.

I'm going to kick its ASS. So help me God, that calculus exam won't know what the Hell hit it. Ket out, I've got another class in ten.

Dear Anthropology Teacher:

What in God's name possessed you to give us four essays to write in an hour, then say 7 extra minutes is plenty of time to finish up? Some of us take pride in doing good work, not just doing tons of slipshod work.

And because I care about the quality of my output, I'm getting a C on that test for incomplete work.

It also seems that no amount of logic or appeal to human compassion will make you give me the ten minutes I'd need to cobble together something for the last question worthy of your obviously questionable standards, which would raise me to...I don't know, not a C.

Fuck you hard with something on fire, you authoritarian bitch.

No love whatsoever, ever, even if you personally save my family from a fate worse than death or cure AIDS or whatever,

Ket

And my adviser is the nicest person in the world, but not much help with this whole mass of stupidity (except for the hug. The hug helped).

In related news, most people, when they are angry, probably do not have the urge to scream into a pillow, get into a fight, write poetry, draw, and perform angry monologues all at the same time. Indecisive Ket is indecisive.

...And wants chocolate. If the brownies aren't edible tonight, I may go on a violent rampage, because today has been than much shit.

Rin, I left my phone in your room. I need it back.

There are days when I almost wish the intertubes didn't give me access to viewpoints from liberal to conservative to libertarian to goddamned fascist.

To wit: When I am just trying to find a simple article to summarize for my Japanese class, I don't want the only recent article I can find on civil rights to be some backwards lunatic being all "baaaaaaw, interpreting the Bible/the Constitution as members of a modern, diverse society somehow is like taking rights back away from blacks, and those bad, nasty liberals are going to FORCE US ALL TO MARRY GAYS I TELL YOU and how DARE those pinko commie-fags say that queers fall in love and want to have that love recognized and socially validated like NORMAL people?! Baawwwwwwwwwwwwwwww ;A; We're still special snowflakes, dammit!"

Someday, we will look back on men like that the same way we now look back now on the Ku Klux Klan.

Until then, my head and my desk will remain friends.

Also, telling me "If that liberal Obama whippersnapper wins, there will be LIBERALS in the courts SUPPORTING HUMAN RIGHTS oh God the indignity of it all..." is just going to make me MORE likely to vote for him.

From The Book of Lord Shang:

The six parasites are: rites and music, odes and history, cultivation and goodness, filial
devotion and brotherly love, sincerity and trustworthiness, uprightness and integrity, humaneness
and rightness, criticism of the army and being ashamed of fighting...

It is clear that I'm something close to the Legalist Antichrist.

My mind boggles at the fact that there is a major school of philosophy based on the presumption that all people suck and need to be smacked into place, natural human relationships and decency are detrimental to society, and the best thing ever is having a god-like leader eternally sending his mindless, powerless peon minions (the ones who aren't farming and birthing kids at the moment) off to kill shit. Whut. Seriously, guys. Whut.

Fuck this shit, I'll take Taoism any day, and I'm not even that huge on Lao Tzu! As it has been said by the man with the Guy Fawkes mask: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

In other news, I registered to vote in Virginia, because my candidate's pretty much got MD in the bag anyway ♥ And I'm sick and damned tired of being afraid of my government.

Ganked from like, half my f-list.

Here's how it works: you can ask any question to any of my roleplaying characters. I've listed them below. They may not answer you truthfully, but they will answer.

Sieben:

-Hijikata Toshizou (Peacemaker Kurogane; mibu_alpha)
-Ashura (Rg Veda; heavens_schism)
-Watari Yutaka (Yami no Matsuei; kanscientist)
-Kondou Isami (Soshite Haru no Tsuki; not_blushing)
-Harada Sanosuke (Soshite Haru no Tsuki; all_heart_sano)
-Ling Tong (Dynasty Warriors; ukilledmyfather)

The Skytides:

-Hijikata Toshizou (Peacemaker Kurogane; smokydemon)

Have at!

Reply to this post, and I will list three things I love about you. Maybe more than three. Then repost to your own journal to spread the love.

Have at!