#296 - The neverending fight continues. (Wait...that's redundant, isn't it?)

[reileen]

Writing this while taking a break from attempting to make sense of the cacophony of my room (spring cleaning, what), eating a bowl of Apple Jacks with milk. Even though it's 6:30pm. Ye-e-s. And I kind of have a craving for chicharron again, too.

I uploaded a new icon (see this entry) and replaced my music one. Yay? Still haven't figured out my tags - I've only been tagging lately for link-o-llections and not content. I'm also thinking of adding a section for links to various online stores in my profile, since I seem to have accumulated a decent amount of them. (Plus, it also makes it easier for me to get to those links, haha.)

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Link-o-llection!

I think everyone's familiar with the "make your prom outfits out of duct tape and get a $3000 college scholarship" contest. It sounds silly, but you'd be surprised with the awesome shit that people come up with, such as this steampunk-esque pair. I mean, that would be amazing with justregular fabric! (In fact it looks like PVC at a glance.) Be sure to check out the other outfits through the official site (linked in the entry).

Via vyctori, my fellow musicslut, I bring you a cover of The Offspring's "Pretty Fly For a White Guy" sung in bad Engrish by what sound like pre-teen Japanese schoolgirls but which are actually anime voice actresses. OW. OW OW OW. I resolve to inflict this on the otaku corner when I get back to classes.

5 Awesome Sci-Fi Inventions That Would Actually Suck.

Dragonshit: De-Evolution Dragonball: Evolution was reviewed in advance over at Anime News Network. Part of me wants to go see it for the lulz and sneak in some Mike's Hard Lemonade, but then I remembered that getting into the movie theater would require money, which could be better used to pay off strippers.

What really sucks about Dragonball: Evolution - I mean, besides some obvious points like the fact that GOKU AND CHICHI ARE WHITE WHAT THE SHIT - is how it turned the original story, which was based loosely off one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature and originally featured an innocent, childlike protagonist, got mutilated into loser fanboy wish fulfillment crack. And it's not even the good crack, it's the kind of crack where the dealers mix in three parts baby powder and two and a half parts Chlorox bleach to make their original crack stock last so that they can con more suckers out of their greenbacks. Lord Almighty on a hellbound moped, after reading this review I think I'd rather watch the Twilight movie multiple times for 24 hours straight than subject myself to five minutes of Dragonball: Evolution.

I have to say, though, that while Dragonball: Evolution sounds bad (HA UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE EON), I'm not sure that I'd pass on it if given a choice between watching it multiple times for 24 hours straight, or either piercing my cervix, piercing my ass crack, or tattooing my eyeball.

Relatedly, here's an interview with the cervix-piercer, who is interested in the dynamics and implications of post-gender existence. It's...an interesting read, to say the least.

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Oddly enough, I ended up getting an A in ART105. I guess the professor also thought it would be stupid for me to get a B just because of my attendance (especially because it wasn't like I was excessively late or absent like this other chick in my class)? I mean, I did totally ace the final project (A+, bitches!), and the only things I didn't get A's on were the line project (because I was late to the class critique and couldn't present it, so my A got reduced to a B) and the value scale and the color wheel (but those are technical shit that no one likes anyway - my value scale earned a C and my color wheel earned a B).

Also received an A in ART200, but that was expected by this point.

JPN106 isn't up yet, but based on the grades the professor showed me in the last week of classes, I've got an A.

No clue on HON301. B, maybe?

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MONDAY
JPN106 - Intermediate Japanese III - 10:50am to 11:50am
HAA115 - Survey of Asian Art - 2:20pm to 3:20pm

TUESDAY
ART227 - Digital Imaging - 8:30am to 11:15am
ART264 - Typography I - 5:45pm to 8:30pm

WEDNESDAY
JPN106 - Intermediate Japanese III - 10:50am to 11:50am
HAA115 - Survey of Asian Art - 2:20pm to 3:20pm

THURSDAY
ART227 - Digital Imaging - 8:30am to 11:15am
ART264 - Typography I - 5:45pm to 8:30pm

FRIDAY
JPN106 - Intermediate Japanese III - 10:50am to 11:50am
HAA115 - Survey of Asian Art - 2:20pm to 3:20pm

Spring quarter's going to be interesting, what with the - *counts off on fingers* - approximately seven-hours-long chunk of time I have on Tuesdays and Thursdays between the two classes I have on those days. orz Increasing the suckitude of this arrangement is that my first class is an 8:30am class, which I swore I wouldn't take after ANT120 in fall quarter. But this is one of the core courses of my A&D major, and this is the only time this quarter it's being offered, so unfortunately I just gotta suck it up and deal. (Incidentally, the same professor teaches both of the classes I have on Tuesdays and Thursdays, hahaha. I hope he's a tolerable one, at the least.) The good part about having that huge-ass chunk o' time between classes is that after ART227, I can head to the third floor of the library and nap for a bit if I need to, and still have time left over to eat, read, muck around on the interwebs, etc., before heading off to ART264.

But I'm hoping to utilize that time for more actively productive activities, such as homework, gleaning information from the various books on ancient Greek paganism at the libraries, working on art or fiction (most likely art, since I find that I can't really write with people milling around me) (although actually I can't really draw with people around me either, but considering that ACEN is fast approaching and I still haven't done anything for my AA booth yet...yeah), and other things. So I'm going to start bringing my huge-ass, 17" HP laptop with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at least. I'll have to switch back from my newer aqua backpack to my old-school pink backpack from high school (which is still in good condition - just well-loved) and probably drag my laptop over to technology services to figure out how to get into DePaul's wi-fi network, but that's no biggie.




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Hey, Reileen has some semblance of new friends at college! It only took her, like, four years to figure out this "socializing" shit!

In all seriousness, I've been amazed that I'm in the company of such friendly, entertaining individuals. I'm not amazed at the fact that they're friendly and entertaining (I'm mostly relieved at that aspect); I'm amazed that I'm...well...actually hanging out with them. I hadn't specifically planned on making friends upon returning to classes after my approximately year-long break from school. With this type of thing, I've always been more of a "que sera sera" sort of gal, since I'm mostly fine just amusing myself in various ways (drawing, writing, musicing, reading, etc.). While I enjoy the company of my friends, I don't really see them in person all too often, partially because of busy schedules but also partially because I'm the kind of person that needs a lot of alone time.

That being said, during the first week or so of fall quarter, I noticed a group of people near where I sat in JPN104 who seemed to be into video gaming and animanga. It wasn't exactly surprising, since this was a Japanese language class in the middle of urban Chicago, so of course even an intermediate Japanese language class was bound to be stuffed to the gills with otaku. Certainly in my introductory Japanese classes I'd run across other animangaming (holy shit, what a hideous-looking word) fans. But while I occasionally chatted with them during class, I hadn't really cared to actively make friends with them back then. I suspect it was a combination of my solitary nature and the fact that during the year I was taking those introductory classes, I was starting to slip into the valleys of depression that would eventually force me to take a break from school for a while. The other issue was that I felt out of place, out of the loop, and generally out of my element with the gaming and animanga fans. I'd attended meetings for both of those fandoms and found myself overwhelmed at everything: the people, the amount of things going on, the stuff I didn't know. I like gaming and animanga (HOBVIOUSLY), but the fandoms that I have the most affinity for tend to have smaller-ish followings.* (This includes Vienna Teng fandom, to an extent.) So I was used to, and even preferred, being by myself when it came to these kinds of things.

Nevertheless, in JPN104, for whatever reason, I found myself wanting to be friends with this group of fen. Not that I thought anything would come of it.

Then Lydia, who sat next to me in class, began talking to me. She thought she knew me from somewhere (we'd later speculate that perhaps she'd seen me a few times at an anime club meeting a few years ago), but I didn't recognize her. We began to bond over pairwork in class and problems with homework, interspersed with some discussion about anime and video games. It turned out that she happened to know the other people in the group of fen I wanted to befriend, so through her I had a connection to them.

But I didn't start hanging out with them until maybe a few weeks into the quarter. Incidentally, it was on a day that Lydia was absent that I decided to step forward and take a risk. On a whim after class that day, I asked Michelle (the girl who sat on Lydia's other side) what she did after class.

"Oh, I eat lunch with a bunch of other people at the cafeteria."

"Interesting. I think I'm going to stalk you there."

"Okay!"

So the otaku corner at the student center cafeteria became a regular hangout for me after Japanese class. In addition to Michelle, I found out that Lydia hung out there too, as did Josh and Geoff; they comprised the group of fen in class that I'd wanted to talk to more. I also met their friends: Claire, Peter, Pierre, and others, and enjoyed their company, even though I barely knew (know) them. I began to look forward to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays precisely for the fact that I could talk to these people, and laugh and learn and live.

It's weird articulating my thoughts and feelings on this new development in my life. I'm actually embarrassed to be talking about it, because it's very much unlike me to be so...hopeful, I guess? And I'm not particularly close to these people, and don't know if I ever will be in the same degree that I am close to, say, lysis_to_kill and mia_noire. I don't know how long these friendships will last or what's going to happen.

But that doesn't really matter to me, in the long run. It doesn't change the fact that I am profoundly grateful for the presence of these people in my life, for reasons that pertain more to the timing of their introduction into my life than to them as individual persons (although they are certainly very nice people! ...mostly?). Talking to them makes my days at school pass a little more smoothly, a little more amusingly. I'm happy when they recognize me outside of class and say hi, or when they initiate conversation with me, or when they invite me to come hang out with them at someone's place or at a restaurant. It brings me out of myself for a little bit; it pulls me out of the darkness and brings me into the light. Sometimes you just really need to get out of your house (literally or metaphorically) and breathe some fresh air, and I suppose that documenting the process by which an embarrassingly OOC wish of mine came true is meant both to remind me of this lesson and to remind me of where some of the numerous blessings in my life came from.

...so, what was I supposed to talk about? Oh, right, the Korean BBQ thing.

Lydia invited a bunch of people for dinner at this Korean BBQ place near her apartment (which is just off the Western stop on the Brown Line). It was meant to be a celebration of the end of winter quarter, which of course I was totally down with. There were about 14 people in our group at the restaurant; more people joined us once we returned to Lydia's apartment to play video games.

Our tables were on a platform that was raised off the ground a little. We had to take our shoes off before stepping onto it, and we had these little I-don't-know-what-you'd-call-them floor seats that you could rest on. Each table had two holes in it, which was for the grills that the waiters brought later on - we'd use that to cook the chunks of raw meat that we were served. The food was really good, although funnily enough I think my favorite food out of what Lydia ordered for everyone was the tempura. (One of these things is not like the other...!) I also had a couple of shots of this really awesome Korean raspberry wine that I swear I'll find again somewhere someday. I got into a discussion with another girl at the table that I just met that night about modern art and art in general (thank you, ART200!), among other things.

At the apartment, I played one match of Soul Calibur IV on PS3 as Tira against Art's Cervantes, and won despite 1) not having played SC4 at all and 2) sucking rather horribly at what little I did play of SCIII months ago. Then again, I'd mentioned to everyone prior to playing that I hadn't played SC4 before ("OMG U GAIZ HOW DO I THROW SUM1 AGAAAIIIIN????"), so Art let me have an HP handicap. Still, that was fun. After that one match, though, I handed over the controller to someone else and was a gaming spectator for a few more matches. After SC4 came Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Then it was a chain of matches on Street Fighter 4, upon which I and some other folk retired to Lydia's room to talk about random things. It started off calmly enough, where I mostly sat there and flipped through Lydia's gothic lolita magazines (nomg the pretttyyyy), until other folk from the living room invaded Lydia's bedroom and began raiding her formidable collection of hats and thusly transformed the gathering into a party of silly hats. I was eventually voted as having the best silly hat, because my hat was actually not a hat but instead a bag that happened to be in the hat bin.

In conclusion: Much lulz were had.




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Aaaand this post took me longer than I thought, so I'll post more stuff about music, reading, and manga in my next entry tomorrow or something.

-Reileen
through the fire and the flames we carry on

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*There's a whole spiel I could go into here about why I tend to produce more fanwork for smaller fandoms than I do for larger fandoms, but the basic gist goes that, in larger fandoms, there are more people doing more things, so I have less of an incentive (personally) to do what I want to do.

Comments

[dantaron.livejournal.com]

*glomp* I told you socializing and being a social butterfly was fun~

^^ That's great to hear, Sora. I'm glad you're finally connecting with university people and generally having a ball~
=3 It seems to reflect well on you... if your tone is anything to go by, you definitely sound happy~