snarp

Go over there.

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 22:08:27 GMT

I choose not to post here any more for the present. Go to the Livejournal.

Rose of Versailles! OF VERSAILLES

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 02:48:37 GMT

Holy mother of awesome, these guys are translating Rose of Versailles! And I only found out because of the mainstream media. How weird is that?

What the hell is this thing?

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 01:15:30 GMT

I'm not telling.

My family is watching A Clockwork Orange over there and trying very hard, or not, to figure out what those guys are saying.

I am incompetent as a female Japanophilic internet user.

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 02:37:54 GMT

I created a tag called "hate" for that last post, as I consider it likely that I will eventually make *others* properly described by the word.

Man, I ain't *never* gonna break the chains of samsara and attain Buddha-hood at *this* rate.

The reason that I am incompetent is that I said "seme" in the last post, but it should have been "uke." If I don't do something to stop this slide, man, soon I just know I'm gonna fuck up something important - I mean, I feel like if I'm not careful I'm gonna be talking about Angel Sanctuary but actually mean X or something, and someone's just gonna end up *dead*, you know? I still have these bad flashbacks to the time that girl confused A. J. Hall and Cassie Claire, and that kid ended up with burns all over his face, you know? That could've been me. I don't know if I have the nerve for fandom anymore, I mean, I just *don't know*.

Someone write me a paper about Strange Tales from Make-Do Studio and the Chinese fantastic tradition real quick.

To whom it may concern

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:43:53 GMT

I really have trouble taking you seriously when you wear that scarf.

At least don't flop it around so goddamn much while you're talking, we are *indoors*, there is *no wind to mess it up* here. You are not a fucking pallid seme lingering on a seaside cliff.

Monster of the Day #2 - The Patchwork Girl

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:46:57 GMT

There is a square house arranged in three rings - the rooms along the outside walls, a red-carpeted hallway, and the inner rooms. There are small alcoves set into the inner walls in the hallway. One has a clock in it. The others are empty, and every time the clock strikes, something will come out of one of them somehow, and move in circles around the hallway for an hour until its shift is over and something else comes out. There aren't twelve alcoves, there are maybe five or something, and anyway the clock strikes thirteen once a day. Usually that happens after midnight, not after noon.

The monster that comes out at eleven at night is the patchwork girl. She's shaped like a human, not like a rag doll, though she's underweight and you can see the wire ribs that keep her shape pressing out against her worn cloth skin. If you punched them she would dent.

Her patches look from a distance like they might once have been all different colors, like you'd expect with a patchwork girl, but actually they're all pretty much the same shade of dull yellow; some of the fabrics have patterns in them, little flowers or ducks in darker or lighter yellow and brown, but in general she's just yellow. All the patches are different shapes - some are round and some square and some star-shaped or triangles - and a lot are velvet. She has a coat or robe down to her knees on, the belt untied and bouncing along after her, and it's made of the same stuff as she is.

She always skips instead of walking, and when she skips you can hear her squeaking. She's probably filled with that styrofoam stuff like they use in crane machine dolls. That would explain why she holds her shape so well, too.

Her hair is just a yellow patchwork veil, attached at a single point at the center of her scalp. It's not sewn on very well and sometimes gets twisted around in front of her face. She does notice when this happens, and tries to push it back, but when she moves it's just a gesture - when she pushes her hair back it's more to be pushing her hair back than because it bothers her that her hair's in her face. So sometimes the veil stays in her face for a while before she gets it fixed. She giggles more than usual when she's pushing her hair back.

She's always giggling. It seems like she does talk a little sometimes, but she never stops skipping or giggling for anything. She'll seem to raise her head a little to you when you talk to her, though it's hard to tell because she's still skipping, and she'll gasp something out, like, "- yeah, I *know*, well -" And then she'll collapse into giggles again and wave at you because she can't help it, something about it's funny. If you ask her something, she will seem to be amused that you don't know already, or that you even care. If you're scared because you can't find the door or because of the tree or something, you'll get the idea she thinks it's absolutely ridiculous to be scared. If you are, it won't reassure you. She probably wouldn't really notice if you followed her around for her whole hour - she might look back over her should and wave sometimes, making you think she wants you to come up to her, but she won't have anything to say if you do. She might wave at you again when it strikes midnight, and she goes back into an alcove and is gone.

You know that she's never, ever going to do anything other than skip in circles and giggle, until she finally gets torn apart by someone who's angry she doesn't answer questions. She can't do anything else. But still, she somehow seems very dangerous.

The Internet, the Magician, and the Goon

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 01:55:47 GMT

Her boyfriend had schizophrenia and had some sort of evil, twisted personality that would come out often -- she could tell when this happened because he changed his font color.

-someone on GAFF

-

"And so," said the Magician, "Begins the requiem for Prime Minister Haz. Such an *inspiring* sound."

She paused, and added gently, "You're supposed to say, "I don't hear nothin'.""

The Goon said, "Don't start with me today." She looked carefully in both mirrors and over her shoulder as she switched lanes - hoping to provide a salutary example for her colleague, maybe, Jessica thought. The cars moving past seemed unusually loud and fast, and Jessica's head hurt.

The Magician, stretching out in the back seat, looked smug and comfortable - she had probably had a bad day once or twice in her life, but preferred not to let it get around. "Oh, come now, humor me. Do you not know what a requiem is, is that it? Do you think it has to do with goths?"

"I said don't."

The horror

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 03:30:55 GMT

Something *hideous* just happened to me when I was Googling "bug butter."

LONG LOST FRIEND
He snuck in and called Love Bug, Butter-Cup, Jimby, Racoony and Razzle. Paddy said
to his friends," Please come to the horse stable. ...

I have seen the face of evil. It *smiled*.

Fucking ARIAL

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 23:59:05 GMT

I've just spent twenty minutes trying to download a copy of Arial Unicode for my Japanese dictionary on my brand new (really old) tablet.

Microsoft is afraid you'll like, pirate Arial and do nasty things to it. Like rape the letters that have holes in them or whatever it is you stinkin' pirates do. Pirating all the time.

So Arial Unicode is only available with Works, and can't be downloaded from their website.

The tablet has some ancient, bizarre version of Works installed, but it somehow apparently didn't come with the font. I have a newer copy of Works sitting here, and the library has the very newest one, if I wanted to walk over there - but the tablet doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, so I can't install either of them.

So in short, I have, theoretically, legal access to three separate copies of the damn font, but I can't use them. I feel justified looking for other places to download it - actually, it doesn't even occur to me yet that I need any justification, I mean, this is *Arial* we're talking about.

But Microsoft has apparently sent C&D's to every website that was offering the download. I just checked a couple of BitTorrent search engines. Didn't find anything, of couse.

And so then it kind of hit me - I was just reduced to trying to download an illicit copy of FUCKING ARIAL off of BitTorrent. And I FAILED. And I wasted TWENTY MINUTES of my time TRYING and FAILING to acquire ARIAL.

Which Microsoft is afraid that PEOPLE ARE GOING TO STEAL FROM THEM WITHOUT *PAYING* OH THEIR POOR BAAAAABY.

ARIAL.

If I ever meet Bill Gates, I am going to kick that stupid little wuss-face so *hard*.

Wha - ?

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 05:31:02 GMT

"A Tale of Two CIties was so stupendous, just reading the back cover I knew this wasn't just another corporate haiku. -DS"

Seriously, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with the SparkNotes people. I can't tell if they're stoned all the time or just stupid in kind of interesting ways.

I don't think you pluralize "bravo" like that, though.

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:19:47 GMT

Oh, my god. Anything bad I've ever said about Lois McMaster Bujold, I take it all back. I am going to have A Civil Campaign's crazy gender-bending test-tube clone-babies.

This would probably be angst if I weren't writing about telepathic dragons in the other window.

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 23:50:10 GMT

When they do obituaries for people who have done something big and important, the fourth paragraph or so starts, "It all started with [a story his five-year-old daughter told him/an idle thought during a TV show/a slight sports-related urethra injury/other innocuous things, I'm tired right now, okay]." I was reading one today and not totally paying attention, and thought the "it" in "it all started" meant the guy's death, like the "casual comment made by his wife" set off a disturbing chain of events that culminated in the discovery that his life had been meaningless, and he declined, shattered, into a state of gray apathy fading into a dry death indistinguishable from any other moment.

Haha, that Junichiro Tanizaki sure was a funny guy. OMGWTF. I actually couldn't remember what that acronym meant for a second just now.

So what do you think, is it really in character for the Imperial Wind Dragon to *help* bury the Mad King alive? I'm still thinking he might back off and leave the mafiosi dude to it, not dirty his talons and all.

Pointy

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 20:33:55 GMT

"The truth is, Red," Marsowen said confidentially, leaning closer to Scarlet, "I really don't like you much."

Scarlet's first impulse was to say, Well, I guess I'll just have to live with that - but abruptly he realized that that was something like exactly the opposite of what Marsowen was saying.

He dropped to the floor precisely in time to avoid the pointy clockwork ferret jumping at his ear.

Jadeite loves what Marilyn Quayle is doing with her hair.

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 03:43:52 GMT

We watched the live action Sailor Moon series in anime club today. I think my IQ dropped a few points; my heckling is generally at least slightly more coherent than, "Oh, my god, *why* - that doesn't even make sense! Oh, god, you can see the puppeteer's arm - did that cactus just go through *mitosis* - oh, no, *why?* WHY ARE THEY SINGING?"

As I was walking back to the dorm just now, a girl ran across the street to avoid me. This was not a coincidence - she was staring at me with her eyes bugged out, and she slowed down immediately once she was past me. I was, of course, wearing a long black coat and fedora...

...But, I mean, I'm kind of *small*. And this girl was something like a foot taller than I am. Also, I'm female, and affluent and Jewish, though I guess I couldn't expect her to know the second two, but in any case, I am definitely not in any of those demographics that get a lot of violent crimes pinned on them. I now know how it feels to be a large black man.

Seriously, I've been sitting here trying to figure out what I was doing that might freak out someone twice my size, but I think I was pretty much just walking - a few minutes before I'd suddenly thought of Negaverse hair and giggled, but there were shrubs and crap in the way and she wouldn't have seen that. So I'm ending up falling back on stereotyping myself, and have decided that she must just have been an Eastern European international student.

This is because two of the Eastern European international student girls I've met have had weird phobias, and my broad generalizations strikes hard and fast like lightning. If it makes sense for a broad generalization to *strike*. But anyway, I'm guessing that her particular silly-East-European-girl phobia must be of fedoras, since if it was the black coat she'd have been hospitalized by now - there's just way too many of them running around campus - and the same goes for short smirking people and little oval glasses.

I'm pretty sure she came out of the freshmen-only dorm that's right next to mine, so I guess I'm going to have to run into her again, and presumably scare her again, since I do kind of wear trenchcoats and fedoras a *lot*. Hopefully this will give her the courage to face up to her fears and break out of this terrible East European girl stereotype that an uncaring world has created for her.

I think I'm going to fall asleep on the keyboard in a second.

"Homme," apparently

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 05:59:54 GMT

So these guys (they're advertizing on Sluggy right now) are selling "man soap" with names like "lumberjack" and "goat." I should get some for Dad and see if the names convince him that expensive environmentally-friendly soap is not a threat to his masculinity.

I'm Captain Harlock, and I can breathe in space.

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 02:37:50 GMT

Galaxy Express 999 is completely insane. I think I'll watch it again and see how many times the kid yells "Maetel!"

In the bathroom last night there was a little black worm lying in the black space between the tiles, where it was invisible until I kicked it accidentally. It writhed itself back into place, and went still again. It probably is not an entirely new species of worm which evolved entirely in the SAE women's restroom into a form perfectly adapted to sitting motionless on the grout - but I *wish* it was.

It's moved now, I don't know where it is. *Ominous.*

I am going to kill you so hard.

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:05:16 GMT

I was forced to leave this note in the kitchen this morning:

"To the individual who, sometime Thursday morning, took my soup out of the fridge, spilled some on the floor, put it back without covering it properly, and left without cleaning up his spill, thus causing me to stumble barefoot into yellow liquid at 9:00 AM while nauseous:

When I find out who you are, you will suffer torments new to experience of man.

For a lesser food-crime than this, in Kentucky a man lies in a shallow grave, the fondou he did offend against smeared across his sightless eyes, his mouth still agape in an expression of faint shock. This fate and worse await you. Settle your affairs and compose your mind and spirit.

Have a nice day,
Sarah RP"

I think my handwriting sort of lends an air of legitimacy to death threats.

Halide halide halide halide, lide

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:28:27 GMT

I was listening to The New Pornographers before chemistry lab. I am now fairly certain that Bleeding Heart Show is about halides. Also, that the phrase "lead-two acetate" is in there *somewhere*.

I keep following Jenna's advice about Chinese Lit assignments and getting C's. I think I will stop doing that now. Bad Jenna.

Panache!

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 23:37:17 GMT

Today there was a most excellent thing in the dining hall. For some reason, they called it "Vegetable Panache."

Yes, I'm sure this dish does have more panache than most served there. It also has more moxie, more poise, more élan, and probably more Kool-Aid Points. And "Veggie Moxie" would have been a much better name. So I am left wondering, "why?" Why panache? Why use that specific word they don't understand, when out there in the wild outer reaches of the English language there are words like "agglutination" and "fandango?" Why don't they serve this more often? What does it take to get a correctly cooked piece of broccoli around here?

My mind may never be at peace.

Maybe I could *ask* them to rename it "Veggie Moxie."

Oh-em-gee capitalized

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 19:54:10 GMT

OMG OMG OMG today's Narbonic OMG punctuation UNNECESSARY

I have actually seen Advent Children this time.

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 06:04:23 GMT

1)

Okay, anyone know what the fuck happened?

2)

Spoilers:

...Okay, I guess they had to bring Sephiroth back. But, but - shouldn't he have had, like, EVIL DEEDS to do or something? Who, upon being resurrected after being dead for two years, hangs around and taunts Cloud? Why would you *do* that? There are certainly situations in which taunting Cloud is appropriate, nay, *required* - but immediately after miraculously coming back to life?! No!

I need a good dose of Kefka to clean out my system. Hey, remember how in FFVI, the villain, like, MADE FUN of the good guys when went got all inspirational-speaker? Sephiroth read the self-help books just like everyone else. (And why the hell is fucking *Vincent* the one to give Cloud the first big inspirational speech, how does that even work.)

3)

Reeve, man, do you have some body image issues you'd like to talk about?

MAGICAL TEARS OMG

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:18:24 GMT

In Advent Children, Cloud dies but is magically resurrected when Pokemon cry on him.

No, I haven't seen it yet.

I am so much smarter than you that it is physically painful.

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 22:01:53 GMT

My immense genius has naturally afforded me many opportunities in life that others, less-gifted, would never have the joy of experiencing. Today, for example, my brilliance led me not to check what was in the sink in the chemistry lab before I turned the faucet on, causing a mysterious blueish chemical in a tub to splash up onto my face, some of it getting into my mouth. I have spent the last forty-five minutes spitting and pondering whether my stomach is cramping because I swallowed some of it or because of the placebo effect.

You people who aren't *smart* don't even know what the placebo effect *is*, I'll bet.

...

I'll be skipping dinner. If I don't show up for work tonight, you have permission to break the door down with an axe. 'cause that'd be pretty cool. Us smart people *appreciate* axes.

Epiphany

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 01:50:10 GMT

I just had a revelation. Next time I'm watching a bad movie and there's some idiots in love talking about sunrises and flowers and kittens and stuff, I can sing, "Your love is like baaaad metaphors!"

My revelations aren't very good, are they?

$66

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 19:38:30 GMT

Yesterday I gave my paycheck for this week plus $5 to the Red Cross. Today the internet tells me that Homeland Security is keeping them out of New Orleans, because the people still in the city are all just there because they're too dumb and lazy to leave. If food and medical care are kept *just out of reach*, surely *then* those silly dying people will pick themselves up and get out.