Colored Ink





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about me

name: n/a
aliases: kit, kits, kit kat, the smart girl, foxay, an chin
age: 19
location: oakland, ca
hobbies: anime, manga, reading, writing, doodling, video games, french horn
likes: all of the above, being lazy, mushrooms, cheese, animals, laughing loudly in public
dislikes: nuts, stinging/biting insects, religious fanatics, violence, olives
contact: coloredink@mailcity add .com

wishlist

playstation 2
car
a good night's sleep
money
stress-free life
trigun long colt keychain
cowboy bebop dvd box set
ipod
world peace

realistic wishlist

dayworld by philip jos?farmer
kabuki by david mack
lucifer by mike carey
indigo girls shaming of the sun
infernal affairs ii

long-term obsessions

anime/manga
yaoi/shounenai
writing
music
animals
life and living

current obsession(s)

infernal affairs
fullmetal alchemist

currently reading

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead by tom stoppard

currently watching

hana yori dango (20)
utena (23)
gto tv (39)
witch hunter robin (18)
naruto (56)
get backers (27)
rose of versailles (19)
matantei loki ragnarok (15)
scrapped princess (14)
peacemaker kurogane (13)
fullmetal alchemist (24)
sailormoon live action (22)
Thursday, April 1, 2004 [link]
01:39 p.m.
listening to: "Bratja" - Michiru Oshima


The student store's out of manila envelopes, so packages won't be sent out until next week at the earliest. ;_;

. . . and no, that was not an April Fools' joke.





Wednesday, March 31, 2004 [link]
11:38 a.m.
listening to: "Cathedrals" - Jump, Little Children


A lot of you have just received or are still receiving acceptance letters and are now in the midst of making your decisions (or perhaps have already made them). You will cruise through your last few months of high school, and then prepare for your glorious departure and arrival. Now is the time, then, for me to dispense a few words of advice.

You know nothing.

When you enter college, you will go from being a big fish in a little pond to a very, very small fish into a very, very large lake. The upperclassmen will not demean you intentionally, but you will find that whatever honors or awards you received in high school will have about as much significance as a rotting carp. It doesn't matter how many honors classes you were in. Nobody cares that you were valedictorian. No one will ask you your SAT score or your IQ. Your extensive vocabulary will earn you C's on papers. Your current study habits will not be enough to get you good grades. Your sweet and sunny disposition will avail you naught. You are not a good writer. You are not an excellent musician. You have not had a hard life. Whatever you were or did in high school, it no longer matters. There's nothing like being surrounded by people who accomplished all you did in high school and more (because, after all, they were accepted to the same school you were) to make you realize that you aren't special at all.

This is good for you. You probably didn't realize what a superiority complex you built up in high school, especially after you were accepted to one or more colleges/universities. You don't realize what kind of ego you had until you've been knocked down a few steps. And then, when the bruises heal, you'll realize that this gives you an opportunity to be an entirely new person, because nobody has any expectations of you. Whatever or whoever you were in high school, it no longer matters.





Tuesday, March 30, 2004 [link]
10:38 p.m.
listening to: nothing


I HAVE CDs.

That is to say, my cousin Kelvin took me to Office Depot today, and I bought a 100pk of Office Depot CDs. Cheap-cheap.

You know what that means? Yes, that means shortly, some of you will be receiving anime. It might take a while, because a) I only have so many hours in a day, b) I don't want to tire out my burner, and c) I've promised FMA to three of you, and that's a lot of burning. But it will come. Oh yes, it will come.





Tuesday, March 30, 2004 [link]
01:47 p.m.
listening to: "Stories I Tell" - Toad the Wet Sprocket


There are probably a million things I could be doing right now, but I'm not. I should be reading about Communist China, but instead, I am. . . blogging.

Every week, in Beginning Poetry Workshop, we take home several published poems, read them, and choose one to respond to. Last week, I read a poem by Paul Monette, the text of which I put up at my livejournal, here. I really wouldn't have known what the poem was about had I not put a line of it into Google to figure out who the author's name was; my professor's handwriting had mangled his name into "Paul Mmette," which I didn't think was really his name. Then I read who "Rog" was, and found out that Rog had died of AIDS, and that Paul himself had died of AIDS in 1995.

Death is my greatest fear; just the thought of not living anymore, not breathing, not feeling or experiencing or anything, just sleeping forever, is enough to make my stomach leap up into my throat in terror. It's one of those things I can't think about, but nobody likes to think about it, really. Death is something far away and immaterial and abstract.

But life is such a fragile thing, really. There's a Calvin and Hobbes strip in which our intrepid duo find a dead sparrow. Calvin muses, then, on the transience of life, and how you never really realize what a precious and temporary thing life is until it's too late. But in order to get on with our lives, we can't really think about that. We just move on and try to make the best of things.

"No doubt it will all make sense when we're grown up," Calvin says, and Hobbes agrees. I wish. And I wish that would never grow up, so that I wouldn't feel so helpless all the time.





Monday, March 29, 2004 [link]
10:53 a.m.
listening to: "Bratja (Brothers)" - Michiru Oshima


I finally, finally woke up early this morning to go walking. Most of my problems with waking up early to do this stemmed from sleep deprivation problems, and since I get horrifically depressed if I don't get enough sleep, I kind of value sleep over exercise. But last night I managed to fall asleep before 1 AM, actually slept through the entire night (well, no, I woke up once, and then went back to sleep), and got up when my alarm clock went off at 8:15. It took me about fifteen minutes to get ready, and then I walked for half an hour. Sometimes I got lost. The fitness trail is really a trail, and in some places it looks like it exists by the virtue of tire ruts. It also ends for no particular reason in some places. Bugger.

But it was really pretty. And I listened to Dave Matthews on my discman, and waved away bugs, and counted butterflies (seven), and climbed up and down some hills. I'm going to try and go a little farther every day, and maybe someday I'll walk around the entire school before going to class in the morning.





Sunday, March 28, 2004 [link]
02:12 p.m.
listening to: "Mess" - Ben Folds Five


I just got a phone call from my mother. She sent me an e-card for my birthday, but I didn't get it because I don't check my spammed account every day. ^^;; So from now on she's going to send all her mail to the Mills account.

She says she loves me. I am going to spend the rest of my day saturated in guilt.





Sunday, March 28, 2004 [link]
01:12 p.m.
listening to: "Haunted" - Poe


Sometimes I think, why the hell am I so goddamn far away from everyone I've ever known? And then I remember that, oh yeah, I wanted to get really far away from everyone I've ever known. And that it's been good for me, really.

But sometimes, it's lonely.





Saturday, March 27, 2004 [link]
09:42 p.m.
listening to: "Everything In Its Own Time" - Indigo Girls


Whenever things start biting me in my sleep, I wash my sheets. I don't know, that's just how I deal with it. It works, anyway. I don't know how bitey-things get in my bed, either. I usually presume they're spiders, seeing as how it's not mosquito season right now, and how would I pick up fleas? But some people express surprise at this. Why would a spider bite me? I am not a fly!

So one time, something was biting me in my sleep, so I decided it was time to wash the sheets again. I pulled them off the bed, then realized it was too early to do laundry (I generally wait until late evening to do laundry, to make sure the washers/dryers are free), and so left them on the floor. After a few minutes, I decided that they were in the way and hoisted them up into a messy pile on the bed. Then I went back to dinking on the computer.

A few minutes later, a large brown spider started crawling down my arm.

To my credit, I didn't shriek. I don't have the kind of voice that's good for shrieking, anyway; I'm not sure I even know how to shriek. But I kind of went "Agh" and shook the spider off, and it scuttled away somewhere. Well, I thought, that was probably what had been biting me! But all my sheets were

I've seen spiders several times in my room and I always leave them alone. I dunno. Spiders are good bugs. As long as they don't bite me, it's cool.

I bet there's tons of spiders hiding under the pile of plastic bags in my room. I keep forgetting to take them to be recycled.





Saturday, March 27, 2004 [link]
12:05 a.m.
listening to: nothing


. . . I've been a very bad blogger, haven't I?

Well, today (or rather, yesterday, considering the time) was my birthday. My friends and I went out for sushi, and it was very good. Mmmm, sushi. I got presents (mundane, practical things like I'd asked for, such as printer paper, highlighters, batteries, etc.). People are always more generous than I really want or expect them to be, which is a shame because I'm never so generous with presents myself. It has to do with the way I shop than lack of generosity, I guess. I'm very particular about the things I give to people.

My poetry is getting better. I realized the other day that this poetry workshop is better for me than I thought. It is, admittedly, something that I do not place a very high priority on (considering that I am also taking three rather difficult history classes that have a considerable amount of reading), but it's been good for me all the same. My prose writing is improving a great deal as well. I wrote slower now, I guess, and put more thought into my words, but I look forward to the day when I can just beat things out without thinking about them, and then be pleasantly surprised when I look back.





Sunday, March 21, 2004 [link]
09:01 p.m.
listening to: big honkin' playlist


Hi! My life is boring.

And also, Spring Break is over and I am sad. I am more sad because I didn't really get anything done; I'm pretty much caught up on work now, but I really wanted to be ahead, and I'm not. Sigh. But Rachel visited me! We had fun.

I've decided that God willing, I'm going to be in Hong Kong next spring, and then England the following summer. I had problems with deciding where to study abroad because, well, I still entertain a pipe dream of sorts of being a translator, which dictated that I should study abroad in the East. But I really didn't want to go back to China, I wasn't sure that Singapore or Malaysia would really give me the kind of Chinese-speaking environment that I needed. Besides which, I'm an English major, and surely none of these countries would have the kind of classes that I needed to take? And also, I really wanted to go to England.

And then there's Lingnan University, which not only has an English major but a translation program. Unfortunately, to participate in the translation program, I should really be fluent in Chinese already. But I'm thinking that as long as I cram Chinese in my brain this summer and next fall, I should know enough that I can take a class in the translation department and see if I really want to be a translator. A make me or break me sort of thing. And if I decide that no, I can't do this, I'll just do what I was doing before, and nothing will have changed, really. Not only that, Lingnan University requires all its English majors to spend six weeks in York during the summer, and maybe they'll let me tag along! It's all so perfect that I'm. . . really, really suspicious.





Thursday, March 18, 2004 [link]
02:13 p.m.
listening to: "Call Me Call Me" - Yoko Kanno


AH HA HA HA I HAVE NEW SPEAKERS.

So this is what it feels like to have bass. God, I can hear the music in my bones.





Tuesday, March 16, 2004 [link]
03:08 p.m.
listening to: "Wild Horses" - Off the Beat


So a friend of mine tells me that her senior year, her family moved into her grandmother's house a month after her death. Every corner she turned, she expected to see her grandmother there, and every time she tried to move something, her mother would burst into tears. She felt like she had to apologize every time she broke something. She felt like an intruder in her own home (it wasn't her home, really) and started spending an awful lot of time at school.

I think that accounts for some of my unease upon going "home." I feel like an intruder. Oh no, I'm assured, I'm not an intruder at all. In the legal sense, my father paid for that room, so it's "his" room, and I can use it. In the not-so-legal sense, I'm family, and how could I possibly be intruding? But of course I am. No matter whether or not I'm family, it's not my sphere. I don't know where the cups or dishes are, I don't feel right digging around in their fridge, and I don't know which remote control to use. It's not my house.

There's something liberating and empty at the same time about not having anywhere to return to. On the one hand, I'm free to go where I please. I have no one and nothing to answer to except myself. On the other hand, where do I rest my feet, when I'm done flying? Where do I go to ground? It gets exhausting after a while, never stopping and never looking back.

I'm probably making too big a deal out of this. After all, it's not like I'm homeless. Or houseless, as the case may be. My relatives gave up everything except what they could fit into two suitcases, and left their homes and families six thousand miles behind. What the hell am I complaining about? There are people who've lost or given up more. I have a hell of a lot more than a suitcase and a handful of dreams. Bitch bitch bitch whine whine whine me me me.

I wish I could stay here during the summer, too. But it costs too much money, and I have to get my wisdom teeth pulled this summer. There's only one dentist I trust, and he's in Los Angeles.





Tuesday, March 16, 2004 [link]
12:29 p.m.
listening to: "Reunion" - Indigo Girls


I should really be working. Instead, I am blogging. I'm not even sure what I'm really going to blog about, I just feel like procrastinating, because working involves showering and putting on clothes. I can't function if I'm not clean. ^^

And now, general guidelines for attempting to contact me!

Email:
- If you are a family member, you have my Mills email address. USE IT.
- If you are not a family member, you have my mailcity address, which is currently drowning in spam. Please don't kill me if I accidentally delete your email.
- If you are not a family member, you also have my shike.org address. Please use it, because my mailcity account is drowning in spam.

Actually, I'm thinking of abandoning my mailcity account entirely, seeing as how, yes, the spammers have somehow gotten to it. Don't ask me how, I honestly don't know. But hey, I have other email addresses, I should just use them. . .

Phone:
- I have a land line and a cellphone. Please use the land line whenever possible, because I only have 250 minutes a month. If it's after 9:00 PM (Pacific) or a weekend, call my cellphone as much as you like.
- If you call the land line and I don't pick up, leave a message. If I don't respond within a day, I probably forgot to check my messages again. -_-
- I don't have my mailbox set up on my cellphone yet because I'm a lazy ass. But don't worry, it tells me when I've missed calls.

AIM:
- If I don't IM you, it's a) I don't know that you're online or b) I don't want to intrude. If you want to talk, feel free to IM me. Nowadays, if I'm busy, I'm not on AIM at all.
- If I IM you (I want to discuss something with you or you've told me it's all right to IM you first), feel free to tell me to go away. Like I said, you might be busy.
- Sometimes I abandon the conversation halfway through. I don't hate you, I just probably got distracted by something (living in a dorm means people come into my room to talk to me a lot). Either that, or the conversation died and I forgot the window was open and went to cook dinner or take a shower or something.
- I have lots and lots of screennames. I generally use only three these days, which are at varying levels of security. If you're not on my "top level" s/n, it's not because I hate you. I'm just not sure how much I want to chat with you. There are some people I get along with IRL much better than online, and vice versa. ^^

There, wasn't that inane? . . . I hope you didn't read through all of that. If you did, I'm very sorry.

I spent a good part of the day in Berkeley yesterday. I wanted to take out some more library books, but someone (AHEM KITTY) still has one of the current batch, so I couldn't. Maybe later this week.

There was a blackout around 4 PM. It was kind of amusing, because like half the stores/restaurants were closed due to the power outage. I don't know why I find these things funny. I visited Yoshuya, a Japanese restaurant I've been meaning to try for a while. Good GOD, it's expensive. The sushi boat prices don't seem too extravagant, but it wasn't working due to the power outage. Bah. So instead I had ten-dollar sukiyaki. It was all right, but. . . BLEERRG. TOO MUCH MONEY.

Sushi sushi sushi. Suuuuuushi. Want sushi. Have no money for sushi. Cry. Crrrryyyyy. Sushi.

I should shower and put clothes on and WORK, goddammit. And eat lunch. Say, that sounds like a good idea.





my livejournal


blogs better than mine


friends

amber
dagger
gen
walker

ppl i wish were my friends

alexandra kleeman
dave barry
don ferrioli:
personal / political
natalie
neil gaiman
otherpeople

places to go


shameless plugs

blue tumbleweeds
casm
colored ink
hogwarts post rpg
role-play network
the book
my side7 gallery
notus bebhinn

friends

book of genism
hanaeda's corner
lost intent
shike.org
snag studios
pirates' alley
ex-technomancy productions
willf.org
yaoiville

non-friends

bishonenink
casualvillain.com
crimson tears
firecat fanfics
hanashika.com
impossible
kitsch
mooncalf
oki doki
rabi's headquarters
scribbled spaghetti
sekai seifuku
the void
tourniquet
twoflowerian fiction

comics

boondocks
something positive
bruno
badly drawn kitties
grayling
scary go round
penny arcade
megatokyo
questionable content
faux pas
jack
suburban jungle
mac hall
saturnalia
friendly hostility
better days
arcana
vg cats
bob the angry flower
nine swords
eidolic fringe
vinci and arty
kagerou [mirror]
sexy losers
sabrina

other cool sites

anime news network
animesuki
anipike
dictionary.com
explodingdog
elfwood
epilogue
gamefaqs
girlamatic
glasseyecomics
kekkai.org
livejournal
nerve.com
orisinal
otakuworld
side7
themeworld
the onion
toriyama world
yerf
zany video game quotes
google



i owe my stress to pitas.com