about me
name: n/aaliases: kit, kits, kit kat, the smart girl, foxay, an chin
age: 17
location: socal, usa
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 220-30 gig hard drive
car
summer job
a good night's sleep
money
stress-free life
trigun dvd box set
realistic wishlist
dayworld by philip josé farmerkabuki by david mack
over the rhine cd
moxy fruvous cd
hellsing dvd box set
long-term obsessions
anime/mangayaoi/shounenai
clamp
music
animals
life and living
video games
current obsession(s)
schoolcollege
currently reading
the picture of dorian gray by oscar wildecurrently playing
ffviiiffx
currently watching
hana yori dango (20)gravitation oav (1)
ayashi no ceres (11)
utena (16)
rayearth (8)
gto tv (15)
ccs tv (19?)
blaze of mirage (3)
star ocean ex (22)
06:59 p.m.
listening to: "99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees" - Suzanne Vega
I just watched The Lion King in Japanese because I am that big of a dork.
Anyway. So. Recap of my Very Interesting Day.
Linda picked me up around 10:00 AM to go downtown. I was to accompany her on some errands first. We went to the post office, where she promptly locked her keys in the car. She was most upset. She didn't want to call home and ask her mom to bring the spare key because her parents were already upset that she'd gotten a rather expensive ticket the day before. We tried to find some way into the car, and finally we just decided to walk home and get her key (it wasn't that far, really). Halfway there we stopped by a car dealership staffed by a lone man with a thick Mexican accent (seeing as how he was, uh, Mexican). He listened to our problem, nodded, asked certain questions, and then said he'd try to help us. He got a slim jim (the thing you use to open cars, not the beef jerky) and drove us back to the post office in his battered and ancient car. But he was unable to open the lock, though he tried several times. Apparently Linda's car is weird. But he gave us a ride to Linda's apartment.
Linda somehow managed to sneak the key out of the apartment, leading her parents to believe that she had locked the keys in the car at my house instead of at the post office. Then we walked back to the post office and finished running errands. This set us back about an hour in our planned schedule. ^^;;
As usual, we hit Kinokuniya first. I bought the third volume of Clover (which has a disappointing lack of Lan, who is my favorite character by far) and some manga for Gen. I ordered Gohou Drug 2 because they didn't have it in stock, the buggers. Then we went to the other plaza, had lunch, and checked out the video store in the mini mall. I wanted to see if I could get a copy of The Lion King from them. I did, though it cost me twenty dollars (&@^%&$& ripoff), but it'd take ninety minutes to copy.
Then we went to the big mall, which is a tourist trap. I bought a plastic tub, the perfect size for soaking tired feet in (as long as you have reasonably-sized feet). We bought some ice cream. We looked at all the stores. We went to Asahiya, where they also did not have Gohou Drug. Linda bought an artbook. Then we went back to the video store, where I tried to get them to lower the price of the video. But they were adamant, so I paid twenty dollars and got my video.
Then we went home and I watched The Lion King in Japanese and understood practically nothing. If I didn't have the story memorized I probably wouldn't have understood what was going on at all. But, uh, it's good learning! Yeah.
Now, if I could find Final Fantasy 7 in Japanese I'd be happy. And if they'd hurry up and release Japanese Harry Potter in paperback I'd be even happier.
Friday, October 11, 2002 [link]
11:32 p.m.
listening to: "Hymn" - Jars of Clay
Wallpaper time! There are Trigun-ish spoilers, but I guess if you know enough to know what you're looking at, you already know too much.
Series: Trigun
Character(s): Nicholas D. Wolfwood
Song/Title: "Hymn" by Jars of Clay
Blurb: This is really just a redone version of my very first collage, which sucked ass. This one's much better and is actually much closer to my original vision. I can't believe I didn't think of using this song before; it's so perfect.
Collage: http://coloredink.shike.org/images/hymn.jpg
There will be more Wolfwood-ish wallpaper along soon, I think. Rebecca was kind enough to send me the image I needed, bless her little heart.
Thursday, October 10, 2002 [link]
03:23 p.m.
listening to: big honkin' playlist
My big honkin' playlist is really not that big. It's only about three hundred mp3s. But, uh, well, it consists of nearly all the songs I possess, so it's big. Right.
Went to school today. Survived. Didn't march, which is probably a good thing, because although I feel relatively all right this would probably become the reverse if I had marched. Just playing took a bit out of me. So I'm not going to the game tonight. I told Edo ahead of time. I feel a little bad about it, but also relieved, because that gives me time to catch up on all the stuff I missed while I was out. >_<
Poor Darcie and Losmeiya and Kristine.
I think I'll take some time to talk about my dad now. I love my dad. He is, in my opinion, infinitely wise and understanding and logical. Well, okay, not infinitely. But he is very brilliant. He's majored, at some point in another, in business, math, chemistry, chemical engineering, and oceanography (?!). The chemistry and chemical engineering majors are incomplete, but in the rest he has either a bachelor's or a master's. For some reason, one of those masters is in oceanography.
This means that not only is my father excellent in things like micromanagement and advanced calculus, he can apply chemistry concepts to cooking (ie: "Are you adding salt now? No! That'll change the boiling temperature! **thwap**) and make fairly accurate predictions on the weather. When I asked him about the latter, he explained to me that because he majored in oceanography, he also studied meteorology. The ocean and the atmosphere are connected; they all one thing. I conceded that, well, the atmosphere is an awful lot like the ocean. It has currents and everything.
Someone once asked my father why he majored in oceanography. He answered, that, well, it sounded like fun! You get to play at the beach all day and go out on a boat and stuff. Fun.
He got a scholarship to MIT to continue his studies in oceanography (he was attending OSU). After a while he decided it was too much work and dropped out. Of MIT. I was speechless when he told me this. At first he thought I didn't know what MIT was. "Massachusetts Institute of Technology?" "Yes dad, I know."
It's kind of admirable, in a way. I mean, yeah, you have to be tough to be in MIT, but you have to be equally tough to decide, "Eh, this is too much work" and leave. I don't think he thought it was too hard; my father has an incredibly brilliant brain. So it couldn't have been too hard. But my dad likes to take things easy.
My father has a very laissez-faire attitude towards life. Those are his words, not mine. Especially when it comes to learning. Not just education, but learning. He's never pestered me about my grades. He's only recently started pestering me about college. He firmly believes that experience is the best teacher. When a friend of his expressed concern that her sister, newly immigrated and not English-proficient, would get lost living on her own, my father snorted and replied, "Let her get lost, then. Once she gets lost once or twice, she'll be sure not to get lost again." The friend was furious at his flippant attitude, but you have to admit it does make sense.
He memorizes bus routes to make sure he doesn't get lost on the way back. He also memorizes freeway exits.
When I was young, my uncle was very enthusiastic about letting me try alcohol. I hated it, of course, when I was young. When I was older and developed a palate for it, he let me drink as much as I wanted to see how much I could handle (which isn't very much). I don't know if my father knows about this, but he certainly wouldn't disapprove. Every time he buys beer, he offers me some.
"Would you like some beer?"
"No, dad."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure, dad."
"Sure is hot. You don't want some beer?"
"No."
Of course, when he gets a present of those tasty liquer chocolates, he protests that I shouldn't have any because I'm underage.
He has some amusing little idiosyncrasies. He likes to blame things on me even though I'm sure he knows full well that they're not my fault. For example, when the electric can-opener broke down, he went out and bought a hand-operated can-opener. I didn't know he'd bought one, so I went to the store and bought one as well, a heavy-duty one. When I brought it home, my father was annoyed that I'd bought such a big, clumsy-looking can-opener when we'd already had one. Oops. Oh well, can't hurt to have two. A few days later the one he'd bought broke (I bet he bought the cheapest one they had), and he said triumphantly, "See? The bigger one I bought was better!" I protested that I'd bought the heavy-duty one and he acquiesced eventually.
He sleeps in front of the TV. When I come in and change the channel, he wakes up and protests, "Hey, I was watching that!"
My father doesn't understand slang. He's still confused by "cool."
My dad has some weird friends. They go to raves and do drugs, that kind of thing. Sometimes he has little parties on the patio where they play rave music and they try to get my dad to dance (he really doesn't see the appeal). For some reason, though, he really likes dance music. Techno and trance and stuff. He also likes hip hop and rap. He does not like music of "his generation," such as Peter, Paul, and Mary and Simon and Garfunkel. I like that stuff. He thinks I'm strange, I think he's strange, so we're even.
I love my dad.
Wednesday, October 9, 2002 [link]
10:08 p.m.
listening to: "Take On Me" - A-ha
Because I'm really, really curious and a bloody sheep, does anyone have episodes of Weiß Kreuz: Gluhen or tell me where I can get them?
I'm going to fail the Bio test tomorrow and I don't care la la la.
Wednesday, October 9, 2002 [link]
05:12 p.m.
listening to: "Hallelujah" - Jeff Buckley
Took another day off. This is the last one; tomorrow I'm going back to school whether I feel like crap or not.
News story on Andrew
Ganked from Walker.
Apparently we were "stalked by news people" yesterday, according to Rachel. I'm not quite sure what to make of this.
Tuesday, October 8, 2002 [link]
09:58 p.m.
listening to: "Hallelujah" - Jeff Buckley
Oh, yeah, I'm gonna blog something kind of anecdotal here. Kind of. I guess. It can be taken to have Deep Meaning.
I have these relatives, you know. In Malaysia. Most of them live in rural areas. They go to the bathroom in squat toilets. There's one flush toilet outside, in an outhouse. They have one small television. They don't have cable. They don't have a microwave or a toaster. They don't have a computer, much less Internet. They don't have a car. They boil the water before they drink it. The road outside isn't anything amounting to paved; it's just packed dirt. There aren't any street lamps.
But they're happy. They eat little green bananas and fresh roti canai dipped in curry. Geckos climb up and down the walls and across the ceiling and eat the insects. Everyone piles into a neighbor's pick-up truck and heads for the creek, and everyone jumps in with their clothes on. Some of the children dive in without any clothes on at all. The food is always fresh and good. They grow their own vegetables, and what they don't grow they walk or ride bicycles to the market and buy.
(This is in rural Malaysia. I visited one cousin who lives in Kuala Lumpur, the capitol, and he has more of the modern amenities that city-dwelling Americans have.)
While I was there, one of my second cousins asked me, "Is it true that on one day of the year everyone dresses up in costumes and you go door to door and people give you free candy?"
I was surprised by the question. Halloween and trick-or-treating was something I had always taken for granted. "Yes," I said. "It's true."
"That's so cool!" she gushed. "I want to do that!"
(My father told me that the Malaysians are simple people. They are not materialistic. Many of them are very poor, by American standards, but they are happy. Then the government told them, no, you shouldn't be happy. You don't have color cable television and radios and two-car garages. And the Malaysians said, wow, that sounds good, how can we get these things? The government said, well, you have to work for them. And then the Malaysians were no longer happy.)
I want to go back there someday. I want to get up early in the morning and buy fresh roti canai from the old Indian man. I want to eat a dozen of those little green bananas and lie on my bed, watching for the geckos. I want to go swimming in the creek, trying to catch fish with my hands.
(I hope that when I get there, nothing will have changed.)
Tuesday, October 8, 2002 [link]
09:54 p.m.
listening to: "Rakuen" - Tsuneo Imahori
If anyone could find or has a decently sized, good quality picture of the Trigun LD cover that has Wolfwood on it, could you please pass it on to me? It'd be greatly appreciated. Click here for a not so decently sized, slightly blurry version of the picture I want. Thanks.
Tuesday, October 8, 2002 [link]
07:53 p.m.
listening to: various selections
Still sick. Stayed home from school today, although I'm confident I couldn't have missed too much, since nearly all of my classes would have been in the library doing research. But I can't give any reports on Andrew's condition. I'm sure someone would have called me if there were any drastic changes, though.
I've been replaying FFX lately, taking time to level my characters up properly and not screw up their sphere grids. For some reason, I'm experiencing a disconcerting lack of ability spheres, probably because my characters are gaining abilities faster than I'm gaining spheres.
I missed a rather important cutscene at the Mushroom Rock Road the first time I played. You know that scene where Wakka punches Luzzu? Yeah. That one. Can't believe I missed it. Although most of the information gained from that cutscene can be inferred later throughout the game, anyway. It's sadly ironic that during that scene it's heavily implied that Luzzu is going to die, but during this playthrough I let Gatta die instead, just to see what would happen. I'd heard that Luzzu goes crazy.
And, well, Luzzu does go a little crazy, but no crazier than Gatta, really. I did feel incredibly bad, but I would have felt incredibly bad either way. ^^;; I've somehow taken it into my head that Luzzu somehow contrived to keep Gatta back so he wouldn't get hurt--but Gatta got killed anyway. And Luzzu lived.
I've also somehow gotten it into my head that Lulu has or had a sister, although I'm fairly sure that this is never actually said in the game.
Monday, October 7, 2002 [link]
08:09 p.m.
listening to: stuff
Still alive. Still sick. I missed zero and first period and went second to fifth, then came home. I doubt I'll be going to school tomorrow, or if I do, it'll be only for fifth period (Dr. Jang and his frickin' crazy rules).
Andrew is, to my knowledge, still in ICU in critical condition. There was brain hemorrhaging and they performed emergency surgery Friday night to remove a blood clot from the surface of his brain, and then performed more surgery on Sunday when he started bleeding again. He has not regained consciousness since Friday night, although I think now the doctors are making sure he stays unconscious until the bleeding stops.
Homecoming has been postponed until sometime in November. I don't know whether the game this week has been postponed or cancelled, although I have heard that it's been called off. A small, infinitely selfish part of me is glad (because that means I don't have to go), and the larger part of me is ashamed of that. >_<
Walker: Uh. . . you're welcome? I meant to reply to that stuff about changing in/because of college, too, but I forgot. What I was trying to say is that people tend to assume that when they're in college, they will just magically change for the better. Of course we're changing all the time anyway, whether we're in high school, college, or retirement, and in college some of that change will be because of the "college experience." So. . . uh. . . what was I talking about again?
Eyes burn. Sinuses burn. Want to sleep, but can't fall asleep. Argh.
Sunday, October 6, 2002 [link]
06:31 p.m.
listening to: "ELM" - Yoko Kanno
Still sick as a dog. Feel like crap. Have to go to school tomorrow. Arrrgh. Remembered there was a PYMA rehearsal only when I got a phone call from Ms. Wilcox. Although honestly, I had no idea whether or not I'd gotten into PYMO or PYMA because I was never notified. So. Um. It's not my fault, is it? God, they must think I'm such a flake. Uuuggghh.
I should really do my homework (what little of it I have), but I still can't concentrate. I just want to ramble some more. I think I ended up rambling last night to Rebecca about something. Happiness? My previous post makes little to no sense to me right now; I just find myself mildly astonished that I somehow managed managed to skip between so many subjects.
I think I'll talk about love now. Except that I'm not really sure what to say about love that I haven't said before (I probably talked about love on Valentine's Day). So maybe I won't talk about love. Maybe I'll talk about something else.
Actually, one thing has been bugging me lately about unrequited love in fanfiction or original fiction or comics or whatever, and that's the "s/he doesn't love me back and it's killing me" line. Maybe it's just me, but I find it a little hard to buy that unreturned love can kill someone. Yes, I'm sure it must hurt like hell, but I think you can live. No. Really. Give it a try.
Or maybe I'm just a cynical bitch when it comes to love.
(I want the muse to be my lover. I want her to hold me close and whisper sweet nothings in my ear that would be poetry, would be song, would be fiction and truth and fantasy.)
I think I will attempt to social blog now. I'm not sure I'm coherent yet (I feel relatively coherent), though.
Jen: This is long overdue about the testing-in-college thing. And I forget what I was going to say other than: I know. I am, technically, taking college classes, and I am well aware that not all tests are just rote memorization of facts (although some people can't even seem to handle that, which worries me). That doesn't make those tests any less difficult. -_- But thank you.
Walker: I know funerals used to be a celebration of someone's life; I read that in a book somewhere, something to do with African tribes. Funerals would be a big ol' party, with feasting and dancing and whatnot. And I doubt that someone will not hire you just because you have some acne. That's the most ridiculous reason anyone could possibly come up with.
Which Element Represents You?
created by 
kefkafanatic @ mental insanity
I took this test solely for the cool image. Heehee.
Saturday, October 5, 2002 [link]
10:48 p.m.
listening to: "To Zanarkand" - Final Fantasy X OST / "Calypso" - Suzanne Vega
So. I'm sick as a dog. You'd think I'd be in bed resting, but noooo. I was earlier--thought I'd sleep but ended up finishing Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett instead--and then ended up getting up and playing a bit of FFX instead. I never actually finished it, but I saw the ending anyway, so now I'm just restarting the game and doing it right. I totally effed up everyone's sphere grid last time.
I tend to get restless when I'm sick. Not very sick, mind you--if I'm sick enough to not be able to move or to make moving a very, very bad idea, then, well, I don't move. But when I'm sick and still mobile, I get very fidgety. I don't want to lie in bed and rest. I suffer from insomnia. I don't have an attention span long enough to focus on doing anything like drawing, writing, playing games, or even surfing the Internet.
But I'm very, very good at rambling when I'm sick. Especially if I'm feverish. I'm not sure if I have a fever right now, but I'll ramble anyway.
People like to read my blog. I really don't understand why. I don't think it's that interesting. Jean says I make it sound interesting and so does Rachel, so I guess it must be true, but I don't know how I do it. How do I make an ordinary life sound interesting? I don't angst on my blog. I don't bitch. I don't have an interesting life in any way, shape, or form. I don't go to parties, I don't do drugs, I don't drink (often), I don't date, I don't even go out. All I do is read and write and chat and occasionally take computers apart.
Which reminds me, Nick will probably be dropping by for that floppy drive sometime soon. Hmm.
I saw an interesting picture just now. I was surfing Yerf, as I try to do daily, and I saw an image of a gryphon that had torn one of its wings out and was offering it to someone or something, I don't know. It's ntenough.jpg by Heather Schumacher; I don't want to link to it here, because bandwidth thievery is bad, boys and girls. The description reads "It's just never quite enough." It's kind of a horrifying picture, although it's not terribly gruesome (there's blood, of course, but not buckets of it). The gryphon doesn't look like he's in a lot of pain. But I couldn't stop staring at it, for some reason.
I suppose it's because I know how it feels. I know how it feels for it to never be enough, although in different situations. I'm never quite smart enough, never quite fast enough, never quite strong enough, never in the right place at the right time. I'm sure you all know how that feels. It's enough to make you just want to cry in frustration. Sometimes, yes, I feel like I could tear off my arm as an offering and it just wouldn't be enough because I'm just not good enough. And who dictates whether or not I'm good enough? I don't know. The colleges. The tests. The teachers. God. Myself.
(The muse, she laughs at me. She winks so slyly and dances forever out of my reach. I am not good enough. I can offer her my blood, I can offer her my soul, I can offer her my tears, but still the words won't come, flowing like poetry and water, the cold that burns and the heat that warms. I feel like I could shatter a windowpane and break the world in half with my anger, and still she'll just laugh at me. I am not good enough for her.)
I heard of a legend some time ago that said that men were born with only one wing, so that they could help each other fly.
(I could tear off my wings, but still I would not be good enough.)
College scares me. I think there's a lot of assumptions that we make about college that never really come true. We assume that we'll just somehow be thinner, smarter, more beautiful, better than we were before. But I think a lot of us go to college and realize that no, we're still the same people, we will always be the same people until we realize that we've changed. And that's all there is to it.
My father's been doing college research for me. This is kind of a relief, because whatever he does means I won't have to. But now I have a definite list of colleges that I'm going to apply to, which is discomfiting. College applications were something abstract before; now there's a list of names, a list of applications I have to download and fill out, test scores and transcripts I have to send, letters of recommendation I have to ask for. I'm not even sure who to ask for recommendations; I know I can get one from Ms. Monahan for sure, but I need at least three. Glargh.
For some reason, four of the colleges I'm applying to are women's colleges. This strikes me as oddly bizarre. I think my father thinks I can concentrate better in an environment that doesn't have distracting things like men, but what if I'm attracted to other women? Not that this is an issue (I think), but still. It looks like he didn't think about that.
I wonder if my insomnia has anything to do with the fact that I drank a cup of rather strong tea a few hours ago.
I was reading "The Sound of Her Wings" last night, after that horrible traumatic football game. It's rather morbid; that chapter of The Sandman is about Death, after all (the anthropomorphic representation as well as the state of nonbeing, you must understand), and at that time I didn't know what condition Andrew was in. But I find that chapter more comforting than horrifying. Death is, in Neil Gaiman's world, a lively, bubbly young woman. And people, when they face her, don't fear her. I think there's something about looking Death in the face that makes you accept it; she's here, it's over, it's time to go. And there is the sound of her wings and nothing more.
Neil Gaiman posted a letter he got on his blog. It was from a doctor who apparently read The Sandman when he was in medical school and, in fact, has the death poem from "The Sound of Her Wings" in his notebook somewhere, along with symptoms and treatments and other scribbed notes. In his letter he talks about working on a young woman who had no hope and says, "I've found it helpful to reflect on in the past during times like this, and I'm very grateful for the ability to, sometimes, imagine death as a fun-filled, life-defining young woman who likes Mary Poppins and who does a difficult job as well as she can."
I will now transcribe that poem here:
Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness.
Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.
Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.
I think that people in general have lost sight of what death is. In a fast-paced world that can prolong life and delay death (and give us entertainment in which we can forget that we all must someday die), we have become afraid of something that is, in fact, as natural as life. "They fear the sunless lands," says Death to her brother, Dream. "And yet they enter your realm each night without fear." "And I am far more terrible than you, sister," Dream answers gravely.
I think that when I die (and I die, I know I must die, but still I think that I am invincible; I cannot die now, not yet, death is a long time in the future), I don't want the kinds of funerals they have now, full of weeping and grieving and people wearing a lot of black. I want people to wear clothes they are comfortable in--I don't care if they're black or not. I don't want people to talk about me in the past tense, remininscing as if I have already been dead thirty thousand years.
I want a Speaker at my funeral; someone who will say who I was and who I tried to be instead of simply what I was. I want someone to Send me, to dance my spirit to the heavens lest I return as a vengeful fiend. I want people to laugh and be joyful, to celebrate my life instead of mourn my death. Grieve if you must, yes, but remember to smile as well. I don't want to be buried in a cemetary in a rented plot that I can keep for only twenty-five years, one headstone among many, unloved and forgotten. I want to be burned and my ashes flung into the sea, so that anyone who wants to remember me need only look to the ocean.
(I want to live forever, but I also want to choose my time to die.)
. . . I think it's time for me to try and sleep now. Good night.
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