So yesterday was a Thursday, and for me it was 28 hours long.

It went kind of like this.

Wednesday, 6:30-9:30 PM: Nap.
Wednesday, 10:00 PM-Thursday, 10:00 AM: Writing rough draft for Cultural essay (final copy due 5 PM Thursday). Then fancying it up for the final copy, since the rough draft was written in a notebook so that I could speed through it without feeling a compulsion to edit as I went. Then adding more quotes to each paragraph, since it was supposed to be a research paper.

This? Probably took like five hours altogether. Why does it fill twelve hours on my hindsight-schedule? Because I spent most of it reading quotes from The Office, daydreaming about the Amoral Mastermind 'Verse (indulgent self-contained fantasy world #212, stuck in my head all week), and listening to the Decemberists (i.e. The Island, likewise stuck in my head all day).

If

1. starting an essay at the last minute,
2. pulling a pseudo-all-nighter to finish it, and
3. then spending equal amounts of said all-nighter staring into space vs. working on the essay,

seems kinda unprofessional to you, then you'd best check yourself before you wreck yourself, 'cause that's just how I roll.

Thursday, 11:00 AM-12:15 PM: French. Got my rough draft peer-edited. Y'know, like I was supposed to do a week ago.
Thursday, 12:30-3:00 PM: Sat around in the break between classes. Surfed the web a bit. Finished final draft.
Thursday, 3:30-4:45 PM: Presentation in Counter-Cultural class about Anonymous vs. Scientology. My third presentation this week and definitely the best. Had an amicable discussion with my project partner afterwards involving the unlikelihood of she, who'd picked out the topic beforehand, choosing a partner at random and getting one of maybe two other people in that class who knew about 4Chan.
Thursday, 4:45-5:15 PM: Turned in final draft, cleaned trashed post-all-nighter dorm room, and then went down to the parking garage to get my weekly ride home.

I stayed up until one AM on my laptop, watching House and Supernatural while picking out Christmas presents online and getting caught up with stuff I'd missed this week. Then I went to bed and dreamt about the characters from The Office breaking into a rendition of Yankee Bayonet (which I didn't even listen to yesterday, what gives?) and also had one of my quite rare "and now we're apparently starting again an RP that we haven't played in five years" dreams. (Someone, I don't remember who, was powergaming and cast a spell that covered me in snakes. "Are they poisonous snakes?" I inquired politely, watching them writhe all over me; upon receiving a sort of "well of course" response I smiled and said, "Oh, well, that's okay then", mostly just to make the powergamer simultaneously annoyed that I wasn't freaking out and suspicious of my motives. It worked.)

If this seems more like a day-in-the-life post than anything else, well, it was a good one. I've got two essays left to write and two midterms left to attend next week, but no more classes, and as much as I've enjoyed some of them it's a very freeing feeling. And sitting in my dorm room in the early morning, editing a paragraph postulating that Montaigne's view of cannibals is as a race undescended from Adam and Eve and lacking that original sin, while listening to Franz Ferdinand's The Fallen on repeat and basking in the triplet glows of accomplishment, the sunrise, and the light at the end of the tunnel that is an approaching Christmas break--that's a moment in time that I think will come back to me when I'm reflecting on my first college semester later on.

Not to mention things like shuttle rides through the snow or buying gooey butter cake from a vendor in a building on North Campus.

There's a "mandatory hall meeting" in this lobby in an hour and a half that I'll probably be avoiding like the plague, so I'd better do this quick:


( Y'know, if I didn't know any better, I'd almost think I was sort of missing high school friends. )

Last night I got four hours of sleep.

Not all together, mind you--the first hour and a half was sometime after midnight, when I decided to rest my eyes for a little bit before finishing the last half of my essay. And after over half an hour of honestly resting my eyes and maintaining a coherent and vivid and quite awake thank you train of thought, I relaxed slightly and said train shifted into dreams. I woke up at 3:00 AM, in exactly the same tensed-up position as I remember adopting specifically because it was tensed-up and I couldn't imagine actually going to sleep like that.

After finishing my essay I couldn't get back to sleep until 6:30 AM.

Then I woke up at 8:00 AM when my alarm clock went off.

And then woke at 9:00 AM from dreams of food to realize that A) I'd only had two slices of pizza to eat the previous day; B) I had no idea where my things for that day's classes were because my floor (and by extension the books on my floor) was covered in newspapers from an assignment which turned out, after an hour's work last night, to be due next Wednesday; and C) HOLY SHIT I MISSED THE FIRST SHUTTLE TO NORTH CAMPUS AND I'VE GOT TEN MINUTES TO GET READY IF I WANT TO CATCH THE "FIVE MINUTES LATE TO CLASS" ONE.

Having ten minutes to get ready really gives you an idea of what you consider to be essential (i.e. brush teeth+hair, put on deodorant, make sure we're wearing clothes of some sort, and OFF WE GO). I was already budgeting time as I went--can't print off the essay this morning 'cause I don't want to be late for Sex and Gender 'cause I don't actually have the work due today in that class and I may as well print it off when I get back to South Campus even though when I get back to South Campus is usually "five minutes after the class the essay is due in starts"--this is fine, because even if I saunter in fifteen to twenty minutes late with no knowledge of the readings we were supposed to do, at least I've got a written-at-three-in-the-morning essay in my hands.

Then I got to North Campus half an hour ago and looked in to see that the class was empty. Found a bench, pulled out my laptop, and checked online; class is cancelled today. For Sex and Gender and for the class I've got the essay for.

I wouldn't keep pulling this kind of shit if it didn't keep working out for me, dammit.

Songs that have been in my head all week:

1) All I Know -- Screaming Trees
2) Grounds For Divorce -- Elbow
3) God's Gonna Cut You Down -- Johnny Cash
4) Crying Lightning -- Arctic Monkeys
5) Busted -- Black Keys

The second two took longer to grow on me (I loved the first three as soon as I heard them), but all are good.


I finished my French test early today (having previously studied said language, as any cunning linguist should) and wandered around north campus for an hour before my English class. I bought gooey butter cake from a coffee stand and sat on a bench to eat it while reading the assigned texts for some class or other. And I took pictures of things. One shot I wanted to get of these autumn-colored trees had me waiting for a few minutes to get a clear, people-free view. And then just as I raised the camera and took it, someone walked out into view, a few yards away, right into the shot. I took it anyway, somewhat frustrated by this point and deciding I'd rather have a shot of pretty autumn trees and one person I didn't know than sit around for another five minutes with my camera in my lap. And then as I lowered the camera I realized the person was my roommate.

I hope she didn't notice me lurking around the corner with a camera aimed at her as she walked by. Because that's like the sort of bad luck people are supposed to have in sitcoms. Ideally at this point she would assume that I'm stalking her and hijinks would ensue, only to be resolved within the half-hour and never mentioned again. But hijinks so rarely ensue in the real world.


One thing I have noticed about college is that the people are unaccountably old. Not just the obligatory middle-aged people in the general ed classes, but people who look like they're about my age who then turn out to be five years older than me. Which is a lot when you're 18. (This goes both ways; when we were practicing the birthday-related talk in French, one girl seemed surprised by my age and told me I didn't look it.) And then there's all this talk, especially in my female-dominated Sex and Gender class, from girls who, again, look about my age, regarding paying off home ownership bills or trying to get pregnant or being pissed at their stupid ex-husbands or whatever. Not to mention the class discussion today involving coming of age rituals*, where people kept throwing out ages in the 14-15 range for typical loss of virginity. God, that class depresses me sometimes.

On the other hand, we're reading something from the Marquis de Sade for Counter-Culture**, and if the fact that I've seen far, far worse online (while trying to avoid such things, mind you) doesn't make me feel better/more worldly, nothing will.

*Pun unintended.
**Disclaimer: Merely an excerpt from "Philosophy of the Bedroom". And not one of the torture parts, either. No way in hell I'm going anywhere near that "The 120 Days of Sodom" shit.

( Mild dream log. )

1) Mis-set the alarm clock and missed my first class, which I had stayed up doing homework for until midnight.

2) Accidentally neglected a week's worth of French homework. C'est la vie.

3) Am still worried about not having done English assignment correctly. Fear that I will be pulled aside in class today to hear "Uh, yeah, not that it wasn't a nice little poem you sent in, but I couldn't help but notice the lack of a 3-4 page essay attached to it..."

4) Did not do short writing for Honors Cultural.

5) Dorm shower is fucked. Have bathed, but have not washed hair in two days. Thankfully because it is bushy and thick and does not oil itself up very quickly this is unnoticeable unless someone decides to walk up to me and run their fingers through it. Also thankfully I doubt anyone else in college washes their hair all that often either.

6) I am fairly certain I am the only person on campus who is not getting stoned, drunk, or laid. This applies to today too because I haven't done any of those things today... yet.

7) Blah. High school dreams.


The two ways in which it is not: snakeskin shirt and plaid underwear. Both of these patterns are nature's way of saying "Bring it on, bitches."

I... have slightly less homework at the moment than I do normally!

Well, I mean, essays due tomorrow and Friday and stuff, but right now things are fine. And anyway I'm considering skiving off the Honors essay, 'cause, Jesus, we've got essays like every day in that class, I'm not sure if missing one will hurt.

By "Honors" I of course mean Honors Cultural, not to be confused with Honors Counter-Cultural because the two are very very different. HCC hardly ever has homework, except some readings from shall-we-say unusual texts (crossdressing book, swearing etymology book, Communist Manifesto, etc). HC, on the other hand, has both the constant essays and constant readings, mostly like old Greek literature and dense philosophical texts and stuff. We read a chapter from a book called Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I took notes on it, but that was less to remember what it was about and more because I kept yelling at the paper and wouldn't have been able to go on if I hadn't got my hostility out somehow. (They were not very nice notes. The phrase "bitch, please" may have been thrown around.)

The Counter-Cultural class has very relaxed conversations where we posit that, like, dude, the bourgeois has totally been screwing over the proletariat for the entirety of history, amirite? Whereas the Cultural class involves discussions of things like, oh, say, interesting rhythmic devices which seem to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor of the humanity Vogonity humanity of the poet's compassionate soul, which contrives through the medium of the verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of the other, and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into... uh... the texts that I skim in five minutes just before writing in-class essays that I invariably get top marks on. So, y'know.

Though I am not actually fond of the book we are reading in Counter-Cultural now. It's an easy read, but it's entirely about this author avatar working for the post office, drinking a lot, fucking a lot, and generally perceiving the world in the most unromantic way possible. Because I am a huge chick, I have mild issues with this, and ended up reading Vonnegut before bed to cheer myself up. The change in gears from the previous book to stuff like Long Walk To Forever had me more or less flailing around and squealing quietly as I read the latter. BECAUSE I AM A HUGE CHICK and that story is amaaazing.

All right, off to class.

This morning I talked with a Chinese girl on the bus. I complimented her hat, she gave me a cookie, I asked where she was from, she asked where I was going, I failed to comprehend what she was saying because she had a mild accent and I am completely deaf as it is, we sat quiet for a few moments (from embarrassment on my part), and then she told me that I have pretty eyes, and I stammered out an inarticulate thank-you. ("I, uh, get that sometimes." "I'd think all the time," she replied, and I began to blush profusely. Dammit, self.) Then we got off the bus and went our separate ways with a wave and a "seeya 'round".

The weather is nice today. Cloudy white sky, soft breeze, and the sort of moisture-saturated atmosphere that makes all the trees look greener than they do in pure sunlight. And I got ten hours' sleep last night, so I've been in a good mood.

By ten hours' sleep, I actually mean that I've been going to bed at midnight lately (and the night before at 2:00 AM, since shitloads of homework in my Monday-Wednesday classes kept me from getting more than five hours' sleep), so last night I decided to take a nap at 7:00 PM, even though I know that naps, on the rare occasions when I am tired enough to take them, do weird things to my sleep schedule, especially without a TV to keep my sleeping habits in check. Anyway! I got up and ate dinner at midnight (and brushed my teeth, and took off my make-up, and screwed around on the laptop) and went back to sleep at 4:00 AM, then woke up at 9:00 AM feeling quite well-rested. Three or four hours of computer time in the dead of night (between semi-pleasant dreams) must calm my nerves. Or maybe it's that I temporarily do not have homework, whereas lately I have been thinking that "having homework" seems like the default state of a college student.

Lol I hear geese.

Also I am pleased because Roommate A has a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that she has offered to let me borrow whenever I'd like. I will have to take her up on that at some point, but I really ought to finish Neverwhere first, since I've been halfway through that one since the week I started college. And pretty much haven't picked it up since the week I started college. Dammit, college.

Back to the dorm, I guess; I've got to put some things together for my counter-culture class.

ETA: Oh, man, so I went to that class, got stressed out because I hadn't realized I've got this big project due in there on Thursday, came back to the dorms to do homework... on the first floor lobby, the only place I get wireless... with the pool in full view outside... the pool that I haven't been swimming in yet... the pool that's probably closing soon...

Long story short, I decided, y'know, screw homework, and went swimming. For the first time in years! Oh god it was fanfuckingtastic. All those semi-lucid dreams I have where I can float above the grass in circles if I try, and roll over and over in a way I can't in, say, bed (where I basically turn over by lifting myself up, pivoting, and flopping back down)? That is the feeling of swimming! AND I HAD NEARLY FORGOTTEN IT.

Then all these people started coming outside for some sort of meeting and I decided that I should probably go back in. Whereupon I showered, then ate, then got stressed out again, then... went to the fifth floor lobby, because I'd seen people in there on laptops and I wondered if we could get internet access there. I am there now, so I guess we can! And I checked my mail and I have less homework and I am decidedly less stressed now.

The meeting outside has turned into a giant clap-clap-stomp rhythmic dance routine. I can see it out of the window. It is kind of totally awesome. There's this bass "stommmp stomp, stomp-stommmmp stomp" rhythm under a "clap-clap, cla-clap! clap-clap, cla-clap! (HUNH!)"

So maybe I'm having mood swings today. Just the impulsive swimming and flirting with Asians versus the stress attacks is sort of... yeah. Swing-y.

Perhaps the lack of constant internet and inability to listen to music or watch TV is driving me mad. (Maaad!)

...I take everything back! It is probably like my favorite class now. We're reading a book about the etymology of curse words. For the blasphemy unit, we read excerpts from Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff. And for our last unit, we read chapters of a book written by the wife of a male crossdresser, which sparked class discussion of gender roles/sexuality/deviancy/various grey areas. Most of which I participated heartily in. This may have been a mistake.

JADE: Blah blah blah double standards in clothing blah blah acceptable to imitate the upper class but not to degrade oneself with femininity blah blah so stupid, should be able to wear make-up or wigs or whatever if they really want to, blah blah besides, men in skirts are hot--
OTHER THREE GUYS IN OUR FOUR-PERSON GROUP: ...What was that, now?
JADE: Er. Gnuh. The. The double-standards! About the imitation and the girls and the guys and other things having nothing to do with sk--
OTGIUFPG: *stare*
JADE: --kilts. Uh, kilts, right. Like, worn by Scottish guys. When they have nice legs. Are... sort of attractive. Innnn obviously a very odd way and it is just--me, I think, not something that is generally... liked by legions of other girls on the internet or mrgshmg stop looking at meeee

They decided that this was strange, but not all that weird. I must never tell them anything else about my kinks quirks. Except for the part where I may have already claimed that I am "attracted to people, and not very often" when one of them insinuated that my liking of... kilts might imply certain things about my preferences. EXCEPT FOR THAT, NEVER.

I didn't contribute that much last class, either. I mean, when it wasn't the out-of-nowhere discussion topics...

TEACHER: This wasn't in the reading, but I wanted to bring it up anyway: in the chapter about crossdressing sexuality, the author mentions that a lot of crossdressers own up to having a hidden fantasy of, basically, their wife forcing them to crossdress--
RANDOM STUDENT: --which they would like because it would mean that their wife not only approves but wants them to be that way, and also being forced to crossdress alleviates the guilt of having to make the decision themselves--
TEACHER: --right, and then, here's the strange part: she then, in this fantasy of theirs, forces them to perform... certain services... on another, non-crossdressed, man. Now, why do you suppose they'd fantasize about that?
CLASSROOM: *stares in shocked silence*
JADEBRAIN: Do not say "because it's hot". Do NOT say "because it's hot".
JADE: becgnsa;lasjdf gnuh.
TEACHER: Yeah, not exactly the kind of discussion topic you thought you'd be getting in college, huh?
CLASSROOM: *begins to crack up, students making half-awkward half-giggling comments to each other*
JADEBRAIN: NOT. A. WORD.
TEACHER: So, seriously, with what we've learned about the whole crossdressing mentality and all, why do you think--
JADEBRAIN: I IMPLORE YOU NOT TO SAY A SINGLE PART OF WHAT YOU ARE THINKING FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

...there was also the guy who sat in on our class last Tuesday, completely derailing any coherent thoughts I may have had about that day's topic. I don't know if he was there to see if he wanted to switch into the class or what--he was only there for ten minutes--but what I do know is that he had shoulder-length semi-wavy hair, rectangular thick-rimmed geek glasses, and clothes that looked like they'd been stolen from a Salvation Army or maybe a skinny sixty-year-old woman's closet (button-down womans' styled shirt hanging on a very tall, very lanky frame = YES PLZ). Three great tastes that I have never before seen together in one male human being. I think I forgot how to say words for some time after he entered the room.

Anyway! If I've embarrassed myself enough, I think it is time to go back to my internet-less dorm and pack up for the weekend at home. Au revoir, LiveJournal.

( What I wrote last night and then couldn't get online to post. )


Today!:

My first class is in an hour and a half, so I probably should be getting ready, but... eh. My schedule for today, and the one I had on Monday, is as follows--Sex and Gender Across Cultures (assignments so far include writing an essay on what life would be like if we were the opposite sex, in which I accidentally 93MB of .rar files wrote like nearly three pages for a one to two page paper, but after fiddling with the margins and fonts I hope it at least looks like it's of an acceptable length); then French (already vastly different than high school French, if only because I apparently do not know how to pronounce anything); then English (speaking of mispronunciations! we are reading some things in the Old English and it sounds like Welsh or Gaelic or something and I think I am in love with it).

After lunch I've got an Honors class on, uh. Shit, lemme check the schedule. "Cultural traditions". The syllabus says that we're doing things like "interrogating texts from the wrong perspective and their distinctive features" and "engaging in an atmosphere of lasting intellectual and social relationships in order to feel at home at the Honors College and the Campus at large". It looks like all the academic-talk that our Gate teacher used to put into syllabi to justify the class, but I get the feeling that this teacher is dead serious about it. Rawr.

My other "daily schedule" is basically just French and an Honors class on Counter-Culture, which I can't remember why the hell I took. All the people sitting around with big brand-name shirts and perfectly styled hair, talking about how they're so edgy and off-the-wall, Christ. When we went around the room explaining why we were there I think I babbled out an explanation about thinking I was counter-culture, and then getting sick of Rebels Without Causes Or Forethought and becoming counter-counter-culture, and then deciding conformity probably wasn't very good either (not that I'm strictly against it, some of my best friends are conformists) and becoming counter-counter-counter-culture, and then deciding that that was entirely too convoluted and giving up. In truth I am far too ignorant about "culture" to be in line with or countering it, and I get pretty annoyed with people who base all of their actions on this mysterious "culture", whether they're saying that you have to do what everyone else does or saying that you can't do this because everyone else does it (the latter maintaining a moral high ground despite, y'know, being more or less the-same-but-opposite). Fuck you all, I do what I want! And also wear make-up buy fashionable clothes stay silent when I have a dissenting view from the majority of the people around me and pretend to be a completely different person when I am socializing so as not to immediately alienate whoever I'm socializing with.

I guess I'm to be playing a quiet and incoherent devil's advocate in that class, then. (Although there was one girl who was at least amused by my counter-counter-counter-culture explanation and on the walk back to the dorms she explained how they'd had Pointless Rebels at her school too--including the group who tried to start an Anarchist Club.)

More later, maybe, and assuming I'm still online; I really have to go get ready.

So, uh. I'm in my college dorm room.

I've only moved in a few things, like books and bedsheets--the clothes and personal items I'll move in on Sunday--and it looks pretty spartan at the moment. It's fairly self-contained, what with the microwave/fridge/dresser/generally everything but a bathroom, which means I'll more than likely be spending most of my free time in here. Or maybe outside with the laptop, when it gets colder.

It is, however, very quiet here. I'm not sure how I feel about a place where I can't talk to myself or play music without roommates overhearing. But it's at the back of a four-room suite, which is itself at the end of the long fifth-floor hallway, and I'll be home in the basement from Friday to Sunday (four day week!), so I suppose I'll have sufficient amounts of isolation.

On the topic of roommates: when my mother and I showed up to furnish my room, the girl in Room A (I'm Room C) was doing likewise with her family. The latter my mother promptly assaulted with inquiries as to dorm-style interior design and comfort that were met with enthusiastic replies. Girl A and I, just to say, didn't exchange more words than our respective names until we both went off to orientation together. Hooray for parents dominating the conversation.

We more or less stuck with each other through the orientating, neither of us having anyone else to hang out with. I attempted conversation and got her to laugh a few times...

JADE: *in a sardonic, it-could-be-worse voice* Y'know, my friend going to SLU says that at their orientation, they all went around the room, saying their names, and then the name of an animal that started with the same letter, and then repeated everyone else's names... and animals. And so on.
GIRL A: Heh. Sounds like, uh, fun. *pondering* Not a lot of animals that start with J, though...
JADE: Ah, yeah, his name does too. I'd sort of wondered what he went with. All I could think of was jaguar. Course, his name is Joey, and that is a baby kangaroo, so...
GIRL A: He could just use that, huh? Well, there's--*counting on fingers*--jaguar, joey...
JADE: ...misspelled giraffe...
GIRL A: lolright, and... Wow, I got nothin'.
JADE: ...I'm thinking "geranium", and that's wrong in a lot of ways.

...and she returned the favor, especially when discussing a skit some upperclassmen put on (which happened to involve one guy wearing multiple layers of clothes, which he'd have to take off in a hurry)...

GUY: Hah, yeah, well, I hope you liked the skit, at least.
GIRL A: *sotto voce* I liked the stripping part.
JADE: *pfftsnort*

...aaand then I ran out of things to say and must have come off as being rather distant. ("You wanna take the elevator up?" she asks. "You can," I say, wincing a bit. "I think I'll take the stairs..." Halfway up I realize there was nothing to distinguish my actual meaning of "...because these elevators give me vertigo" from, for example, "...because I don't want to talk to you anymore.")

I assume this will be another of those short-lived friendships of convenience which will fade out as soon as she finds friends of her social level who are therefore socially competent and also have more to add to conversations than 4Chan memes. C'est la vie.

After orientation (which ran short) we returned to the dorm room to find that Girl B was moving in, so we poked our heads in to introduce ourselves, and then I, having an hour remaining before my mother was expecting to come pick me up, got online and... wrote this!

And now I've got a half-hour and am not sure what I'm doing. Hmm.


ETA: The answer: ( WEBCAMWHORING. )

( Two brief ranty interludes. )

Some days ago an earring that I've been missing since shortly after freshman year Homecoming reappeared in the middle of my neatly-swept living room floor, at the center of a thick dust bunny composed of hair too long to be my cat's and too grey-black to be my mother's. I'd just been thinking the day before that I was silly to keep the rest of the set when there was pretty much no hope of finding the other earring, short of my mother discovering it in a vent when cleaning the trailer for resale. And now, inexplicably, here it is. I blame, and then possibly thank, jewelry fairies.

Also: One of my problems over the last year or so has been that I keep plotting out what range from "stories" to "fantasy epics", and then not writing down a word of them anywhere, so that when I return to pondering them a month later I cannot remember the justification for certain actions/plot points, or the order in which things were supposed to go, or what that nice little turn of phrase was, or whatever. This not-writing-down is not a thing which I am going to change, because most of these plots are just exercises in characterization that get away from me, and I am not going to dignify them in that manner. But still, sometimes I sorta wish I had. (The one I've been on for the past two days has three main characters, at least four secondary characters, and one character who is in between; I might lose interest in it after a week, but if I regain said interest later, the fact that I won't have recorded its basics anywhere is... probably going to be frustrating.)

( The concept of not writing down pointless half-baked pseudo-stories does not apply to dreams. )

...and the redheads are nocturnal.

Well, the coolest ones, anyway. And I assure you, I am very cool, due to A) living in a nearly-refrigerated basement suite, and B) only going outside on occasion and at around three AM, when the temperatures have fallen to non-furnace levels.

I have been putting a lot of things off in favor of other, more important things like sleeping and capturing spiders to be released outside and sleeping. Writing up an LJ entry was one of the things I've been putting off. I wanted to write about some dreams I'd been having (which I've mostly forgotten) and do a senior year version of this (which seems somewhat pointless especially considering that I haven't actually written anything in like half a year) and maybe mention a few things about what it is that I am currently doing (which is essentially summed up under "more important things" above).

So now, despite the parentheticals, I am going to do these things!


Like over the past week or two, on and off, I've been playing this country-naming game. Because I have no life, and if I'm going to obsessively memorize something it ought to be geography instead of TVTropes. I've gone from being able to get maybe forty or fifty countries to around a hundred and eighty. The remaining countries are usually all those frikkin' islands east of Australia and one (extremely obvious) non-Oceanic country. In other words, I get Azerbaijan, Sao Tome and Principae, Liechtenstein, et cetera, and then miss Colombia. Or Japan.

The game provides the extremely valuable and educational service of informing its players that Moldova is not a fictional country, and that it is actually located in Europe.

( Also today: This is why I hate Joey. )

( And finally, dreams! )

...Okay, this is more than long enough. Writings later?

GET THIS: I don't have to wait for YouTube to load videos. I just click on the video and it starts playing and keeps playing. No "oh, better put it on pause and wait a few minutes while I go do something else". It actually loads faster than it plays!

THIS IS AMAZING.


...I'd be running over with praises for Firefox, too, but so far the three things I've noticed about it are 1) it has a kickass icon; 2) you can customize the toolbars at the top to be all like colorful dude awesome; 3) it scrolls, for some reason, at one line per arrow-key-tap, so I have to buttonmash furiously to reach previous speeds of websurfing. So the "woo!" and "dammit" are kinda cancelling each other out.

OMGLOL JUST FOUND A BoS FIC.

Packing keeps having these weird, suddenly interesting moments. There are certain layers, strata of papers in these drawers, that haven't been disturbed since probably eighth grade, or freshman year at the latest. I feel like an archaeologist!

I'm in a bit of a hurry since I'm apparently moving tonight; I can but hope I'm not throwing out interesting relics in my haste to reach the good stuff. So I guess the archaeologist I feel like is Heinrich Schliemann.

...OMG STILL LOLING OVER BoS FIC.


EDIT: I feel I should add that I got my last report card the other day, and apparently I managed to pull off a B in Chemistry. I have no idea how--certainly when I spent that week doing nothing but as described in the last entry (i.e. fanfic binging and pseudo-nocturnalism), I was completely resigned to making a C in that class. I feel a bit guilty now, actually. I doubt I deserved a B. Oh well; I totally deserved an A in French last semester, so I guess it evens out.

The C in Calculus was nearer the expected mark.

Here are the things which, upon waking yesterday, I discovered that I could spend the day doing.

1) Work on the English portfolio that's worth 45% of our total grade, including the two book reports for books I haven't read yet and the dozen or so reader's logs for a few that I have.

2) Work on the Science report that's worth 10% of our grade, including picking an actual topic and then doing enough research on it to, oh, say, fill a seven-page (minimum) paper.

3) Stay up until midnight reading Good Omens fic.


...

Yeah.

Today, however, I shall be strong enough to resist temptation, and will contain my fic-binging to the wee hours of the morning, all the better to spend the rest of the day delving into oh fuck me running it's 6:30.

GO TEAM JADE

Okay, y'know what? Disregard the last entry.

Band stuff's over, so I can take off school and sleep in any day I want to; besides that, my grade in Calculus is back up to a C, I just got back from said party I didn't think I was going to be able to attend (I played Halo! (and by "played" I mean "suck at")), and scholarships--well, whatever.

I don't like change, and I'm going to have to move houses, cities, and schools (as in, "to college") in another few months. But on the other hand, I'm not having dissociative episodes anymore. On the other other hand, this is probably because I've gone all, shall we say, cheerfully spacey, and being a ditz is not really funtiems socially or academically. But on the final hand, I think I might be fine with "stupid" as long as I've also got happy and numb. 'Sides, I'm still intelligent.

Plus there's the fact that I'd been thinking, based on something my mother said a month or so ago, that she'd be cancelling AOL a full month before we moved. This has turned out to be false. I will have the internet for my last month of high school. I think I can say with reasonable certainly that I can get through 90% of any shit that has ensued or may ensue in the future, just as long as I still have the internet.

I'm really gonna miss this trailer, though. The shadowy corner of the kitchen where I used to sit on the counter, staring at the glowing monitor in the living room and waiting for people to post at BoS! The hills that inspired The Novel! The spot on my bedroom ceiling I'd stare at on those can't-work-up-the-will-to-turn-off-the-bedside-lamp-and-sleep-for-some-reason-so-I-may-as-well-just-talk-to-myself-for-the-next-half-hour late nights! The hallway where I had several nervous--okay, not so much the hallway. Aside from its breakdown-inducing properties, which are probably more like "a narrow space! safety! you may collapse now" than anything, the hallway kind of freaks me out. During BoS-posting and The Novel-writing late nights I'd go to the kitchen to get something or just to lean on the counter and ponder, and I'd think I'd see something in the hallway out of the corner of my eye, but there's never anything there. And we used to keep the door to the spare room (in the middle of said hallway) closed, so when going to my room at the end of the hallway, late at night, I'd always feel vaguely like something might throw the door open and attack me. Didn't help when the hall light mysteriously stopped working*. (Now we keep the cat litter in the spare room, which rather killed the effect.)

*Most likely due to mysteeeerious bad wiring.

Hallways don't usually have a tendency to spook me, which is probably why I was sort of disappointed with House of Leaves.

I... don't actually go to update this journal with the intention to record only the bad things that happen to me. It's just that--if only lately--my good moods (which I have been in for the last week or so, up until about last night's band concert) don't give me anything specific to write about, while my bad moods, usually caused by outside forces, make me want to complain.

I have to go to college after this year. My mother told me to fill out this scholarship application on the UMSL website. Because I don't actually know anything about the real world (and all this FAFSA shite), she's mostly been handling my application information, which annoys her. I'd been putting this one off, and apparently it's past due; that aside, the website isn't working with my account for some reason.

My mother says I'll have to try it again tomorrow, which will probably end up with her taking the computer from me and getting progressively more annoyed until she starts yelling at me for not taking responsibility for my future etc.

Look, I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. It's damn hard to navigate around the stupid UMSL site in the first place.

Part of the reason I put this off for so long was because I was busy raising my failing grade in Calculus back up to a D. Most of the rest of the reason is because I am so completely burnt out on everything. I don't want to do anything--I don't even want to do nothing, because that's still something--I just want to collapse into a coma and not wake up until my life has somehow arranged itself, on its own, into the kind of day-in-day-out stability you don't really get until middle age. Y'know, the kind where you can take a few vacation days and give yourself a five-day weekend of complete isolation. Most of which I would spend sleeping. Are we seeing a pattern with this sleeping thing? 'Cause yeah, sleeping has sounded nice lately. I'd go off and sleep right now if it weren't for the fact that the sooner I go to sleep, the sooner another day of school will get here. With Calculus first hour.

I assume the scholarship stuff and failing math grades will eventually work out all right. What I'm concerned about right now is that part of my mother's "you have to take responsibility" thing is that she's considering setting me up in a dorm at school. Which was actually my own idea, and something that I suggested several months ago. But my thoughts then were that I could alternate between living at school and in her basement, depending on A) current misanthropy, B) whether I felt like driving from one to the other, C) the internet I have at whichever place, and D) how lonely my cat was getting.

Now--and maybe it's just today, and things will be different in the future--I could really go for, um, having my own place which is my own, not like a shared room or public library or something, where I can wind down. 'Cause right now I'm in this trailer that we've had for four years, that I picked out because it's decorated in pretty greens, on my computer, in the living room, alone, and unwinding is still proving rather difficult. God knows how strung out I'd get with a roommate.

EDIT: Might I add that I might not end up getting to go to the only party I've been invited to in the last half a year, with the only people I'd actually like to attend a party with, because my mother signed me up to go see the college or something like that on that day. After I've been telling her for weeks that I don't, y'know, want to do that. I mean, what, am I going to change my mind and apply to another college at the last minute? She says it's so that I can start getting acquainted with how the college is set up. I said that one day's headstart doesn't seem like it'd be all that significant. To which she replies that she doesn't want to argue, which is what she says when she wants to end an argument on her own terms.

I will run away and live in the woods.

Several days ago I realized I hadn't been having dreams in quite a long time--more than a week, at least. I came to the conclusion that this really sucked, and that I wanted dreams again.

This may have been a bad thing to wish for.

See, I like dreams because when I haven't written anything in a while, my subconscious can go off while I'm sleeping and make some plots. That's... the usual result. Nice little stories waiting for me when I wake up. What I didn't account for is that if you occasionally have "holy shit my mind is all fogged and I feel like I'm trapped in a dream" episodes, actually suddenly finding yourself in a dream, unable to wake up, may... cause anxiety.

So I started having dreams again, basically the very night I realized I hadn't been having any, and because of this anxiety, the dreams quickly became, ah, somewhat threatening in nature. However, I can manipulate them to make them better in some small degree, because--well, when I dream I often seem to think I'm in the Matrix. In other words, it may be important, but it's not real. It's a different world, one where I have more power.

For example.

The first dream was only sort of disconcerting--I was at an inn with a suggestive name, and there were ants and dead snakes. (In this case I more or less decided that I was not going to have dead snakes in my dream and wished them out of existance.) The second was distressing, because I was acting as a spy and while I had manipulated things in a few instances to allow myself to escape from situations where I was physically trapped, I was still overall trapped emotionally and also by my own mission, and things were starting to get... difficult. The third dream involved zombies and hand grenades and when death eventually seemed imminent I more or less decided fuck no and dragged the dream back to a point where I could make different decisions and hopefully achieve a different outcome.

After three nights of rather stressful dreams I was beginning to grow ambivalent about whether or not I wanted to go back to dreamless sleep again. Then, last night, I had ( this one. )

LiveJournal posts made in the month of--

MAY: 10
JUNE: 9
JULY: 7
AUGUST: 5
SEPTEMBER: 1
OCTOBER: 2
NOVEMBER: 0
DECEMBER: 2
JANUARY: 0 1


...So I may have fallen down on updates somewhat.

Fortunately, there is a snow day today, so I have more than enough free time to get so bored that I finally make an update.

We're having another snow day tomorrow, too. We were supposed to get about an inch of teeny ice pellets and then six inches of snow. We've got about six inches of teeny ice pellets. It's pretty awesome, I'd go make an igloo or something if I were at all inspired in that direction.

Instead I've been like reading webcomics and also I played the Wii for an hour or so. I finally got around to finishing off the Mii version of Team The Novel. The guys took a while to do, but I think I succeeded in the end. The biggest challenge with the first was getting that proper expression of smirking "What, me?" douchebaggery on his face. The biggest challenge with the second was keeping him from looking like Ellen DeGeneres. Thankfully I figured it out eventually, even though his hair is still yellow and, uh, chosen from the selection of chick styles. Sorry, Theo. If it's any consolation, you look ~angelic~.


We took another Biblical Allusions Research Test (tm) in English class yesterday. I more or less aced it, except one bonus question which I didn't know--the origin of the phrase "head on a platter". Apparently the origin is that King Herod's daughter wanted one of the Biblical Johns' head. On a platter. I, not knowing this answer but guessing that King Herod was a head-on-a-platter sort of a guy, nearly got this one right:

"After King Herod killed tons of babies in his Massacre of the Innocents, no one wanted to let all the baby corpses go to waste, so Herod invented the new meal of baby-on-a-platter. The soft baby head became an especial delicacy. This dish was still in fashion a few decades later when Jesus was preaching, but since Jesus had bigger problems to worry about at the time, Simon-not-called-Peter and James the Lesser (tired of being in the shadow of their similarly-named counterparts) set out to ban the dish. It took them two weeks, and when they came back none of the other apostles noticed they had gone."

We're also doing another one of those skit things soon. The first one was Oedipus Rex in the style of Scooby Doo, the second was Antigone in the style of sock puppets and also a soap opera whynot, and the third is going to be Hamlet, in the style of Pokemon. I haven't written the script yet, but oh, so many ideas...

I am going to be Ophelia, of course, since that is the part that I read aloud in class. (Read badly, mind you. I need to start reading guys' parts or something, I really can't do the whole crazy over-emotional chick thing. For one thing, the extent of my voice acting tends to consist of pitching my voice up a few keys so I sound like a proper chick, and for another thing, I have no idea how to do extraverted crazy. Crazy for me is staring into space, dead silent, twitching gently, listening to reality begin to fray at the edges, with shapeless things flashing over the backs of my eyelids every time I blink and stabbing at my retinas with little pins made of half-forgotten nightmares.)

...Though actually it's 'cause I have to be Misty (I've got the red hair and ability to broadcast a temper), and Misty has to be Ophelia, 'cause that's the way the script outline ended up working out. Also, Hamlet is Brock. And Ash is Hamlet's mother the Queen, married to a usurping Hitmonchan. Yeah, I know. But Joey wanted to be a Hitmonchan, and I figured, what the hell, it's not like it's gonna make any less sense.


( And here is a story about something that happened a few weeks ago. )


Also, I have orange/tangerine chapstick and it is fantastic, although it's starting to make me want one of those push-up creamy orange popsicle things. I don't know why that and not, say, oranges or orange juice, which I have in abundance. If I have enough self-control I will not end up eating the chapstick which tastes oh my god exactly like a push-pop. But with just a hint of wax.