Colored Ink
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miss something? check the archives about me name: n/aaliases: kit (and various iterations thereof) age: 21 location: oakland, ca hobbies: anime, manga, comic books, reading, writing, doodling, video games likes: all of the above, being lazy, mushrooms, animals, food, laughing loudly in public, SUSHI dislikes: nuts, stinging/biting insects, religious fanatics, violence, olives contact: coloredink(at)gmail.com wishlist playstation 2car a good night's sleep money stress-free life trigun long colt keychain hardon-kardon speakers 19" flatscreen monitor world peace realistic wishlist transmetropolitan vol 5-6, 9-10long-term obsessions comicsslash writing reading music animals life and living current obsession(s) supernaturalhouse m.d. veronica mars temeraire currently reading the earthsea trilogy by ursula k. leguincurrently watching smallville (3.4)farscape (1.) stargate: atlantis (1.7) scrubs (2.1) hana yori dango (20) utena (23) witch hunter robin (18) rose of versailles (19) matantei loki ragnarok (15) scrapped princess (14) sailormoon live action (25) supernatural (hiatus) house md (hiatus) veronica mars (hiatus) |
Friday, March 23, 2007 [link] 01:37 a.m. listening to: "Whiskey" - Voxtrot I don't think I've been sleeping well lately; I wake with the comforter kicked off and the sheet all twisted around. I'm tired during the day even when I've supposedly gotten a full eight hours. Blarg. Spring Break was supposed to be a time for me to rest and rejuvenate myself. I planned on spending it writing, sleeping, and playing video games, in that order. Oh, and work on my research paper. Then journalism happened, and journalism ate my life, and life careens toward graduation and I'm still not very good at this adult thing, guys. I can't get my shit together, and the more stressed I get, the more I panic, and the less able I am to get my shit together. Things I still need to get done before Spring Break: - my clips - taxes - at least start researching your paper, you lazy fuck Things I need to get done after Spring Break: - do some proper job-hunting; visit the Career Center - find somewhere to live - I just want to play video games and write. Why can't someone pay me to do that? Dammit. Tuesday, March 6, 2007 [link] 04:17 p.m. listening to: "Wildflowers" - Tom Petty The side of the hill is covered in greenery. It grows taller by the day. I first noticed it a few weeks ago, after the rains began; a green layer, slowly growing thicker, until it was a lush green carpet. Today, I realized that it was all nearly knee-high (though I'm not very tall, so my knees are not very high). What happens to all that flora, I wonder? Surely they don't mow it; the hill is so steep as to be nearly vertical in places. It must all just die, then, when the rains stop. How sad. Sunday, February 25, 2007 [link] 10:26 p.m. listening to: "Memorias Perdias" - Ojos de Brujo Ugh. This weekend was just a complete black hole of time. I got a little bit of homework done Friday night. I wasted half of Saturday trying to get my old drives to work in my new computer, and I spent nearly all of today installing programs etc. on my computer so that I could use it at something approaching my normal efficiency. I have an article due Tuesday and I don't know what to write. Ugh. Tuesday, February 13, 2007 [link] 06:07 p.m. listening to: nothing Things I need to bring with me to Chicago: - a good jacket - boots - warm sweaters and shit - a hat (where is my hat?????) - laptop (make sure i have saved whatever i need for journalism on it) - archaeology textbook (?) - whatever i need to read for journalism Friday, February 9, 2007 [link] 02:56 p.m. listening to: "Hope" - R.E.M. Oops. I've been remiss again. Yesterday's dentist visit was remarkably pain-free. In fact, the worst part was walking four blocks in the pouring rain to the dentist's office. There's something about a bad journey to the dentist that just makes it seem like insult to injury; not only are you going to have your mouth violated by a dentist, you've got to be soaking wet or something while it happens. Bah. But the actual dentist visit itself wasn't bad at all. I think I've just had bad experiences with previous dentists. While I was lying there in the chair, I remembered talking to someone--I can no longer remember who--who said that she'd been hit on by her dental hygienist. What kind of guy, I wondered, hits on his dental patient? I don't think I could be attracted to someone with whose mouth I'd just been so intimate. Especially if I've seen her gums bleed. Monday, January 29, 2007 [link] 11:34 p.m. listening to: nothing Bad day. My computer's motherboard might be failing, which more or less necessitates a new computer that I can't really afford, and my aunt's tourist visa was denied because she's a permanent resident. This makes no sense, as she hasn't lived in the United States since 1997 and her green card has long since expired. She won't be able to make it to graduation, then, which angers me because if there's anyone who should be at my graduation, it's my aunt. She raised me for the first thirteen years of my life. She has more right than my mother to be there. Took a walk, although I didn't go very far. There's a vista point across the road from my apartment, with a convenient bench and a felled tree, and from there you can see across the Bay. Not today; a dense fog lay over the city, and I could only faintly see the lights of St. Francis. I tried to think of Washington apples, legos, moose, anything except the ten thousand large and tiny things that upset me, and I wished I'd thought to bring a cigarette or something with me so that I had something to do with my hands. I sat there until my toes hurt from the cold and my teeth chattered and I couldn't smell the eucalyptus and wet earth anymore, and left before I could start reliving Venice. Friday, January 26, 2007 [link] 03:09 a.m. listening to: nothing Mixed writing day today. I wrote a lot of words, but somehow none of them went anywhere. Worked on three separate pieces, and finished none of them. Feel strangely dissatisfied. Thursday, January 25, 2007 [link] 01:49 p.m. listening to: "New Slang" - The Shins My housemate is being a sillypants. She's taking a fiction writing workshop, and last night and today she's moaned about not being inspired by The Lover. "Well, do you have to write something that has to do with The Lover?" I asked. It seemed a little odd that they were reading The Lover for a fiction course, since we had to read it last semester for a creative nonfiction class. But what do I know? And it's not as if there's no fiction in nonfiction, for that matter. "No," she groused. Well then, what was the problem? She could write about anything. "But I'm just not inspired!" Flail. "Period!" She's a sillypants. She hasn't realized, yet, that writing isn't about being inspired. It's about writing because you don't know how not to write. Friday, January 19, 2007 [link] 11:01 a.m. listening to: "Sway" - Voxtrot I cannot stop listening to this song. I also cannot seem to stop writing. I feel like I've more or less stopped sleeping in order to write. It's glorious. Wednesday, January 17, 2007 [link] 07:45 p.m. listening to: nothing The desktop computer failed to load even in Safe Mode today, causing a very small amount of worry on my part. Very small because the most important data, my documents, gets backed up somewhat regularly, and most of it is mirrored on the laptop. I downloaded and burned a boot CD, but then suddenly my computer loaded Windows normally--probably not due to the boot CD, since past experience with BartPE usually resulted in a completely different GUI. Still, the computer works, and I don't plan on turning it off anytime in the near future lest it stop working. At this point I suspect impending hard drive failure; it's been sounding a little loud lately. I'm going to buy a new hard drive as soon as humanly possible. Thursday, January 11, 2007 [link] 01:03 a.m. listening to: nothing While walking to BART today from work, it occurred to me that I haven't blogged in a while. Well, I thought, I should probably remedy that before someone yells at me, "Why haven't you blogged? I don't know what's going on in your life anymore!" Which is unlikely to happen, seeing as how I don't think there's anyone who reads this blog that I don't also talk to on a regular basis, but one never knows. The reason I have not blogged is merely this: My life is boring! For a while, it consisted of getting up in the morning--or, more increasingly, in the afternoon--and turning on the television to a channel that looked interesting, but not too interesting, as I spent the majority of the day online and did not want to get distracted. Occasionally, I would walk to the bank to withdraw cash (I lost my ATM card and have not yet received my new one). Then I would also go to the video rental establishment, rent a few movies, and on the way back hit up the grocery store for food. At one point I also hit up KFC, as they have a ridiculous 12 pc leg and thigh deal for $9.99. I'm aware that fried chicken is terrible for me and dark meat fried chicken even more so, but $10 for enough food to feed me for three days was not a deal I could pass up. I mentioned work earlier in this entry; I've gotten a lot more hours at work recently, since the other proofreader is out of town and the copy chief has gotten a Real Job. So much more, in fact, that I actually had to bring some work home with me today, which I assure you was little short of horrifying to me. I feel as if I have passed some adult rite of suckitude, which is to say, This Is Your Life For The Next 40 Years! But I get paid by the hour, so really, I am just making more money from the comfort of my own home rather than having to go into the office tomorrow. Otherwise, I have just been writing, writing, writing. Mostly derivative work, but I'm feeling an urge to return to original writing. I was thinking about that, too, on the way to BART. I don't feel like I have any novels in me other than the nonfiction one, but I think I have several short stories that might be interesting and fun. I've improved greatly over the past four months, and all the derivative writing (ie, fanfiction) has given me a chance to experiment and challenge myself "safely," if that makes any sense. I think I'm ready to write original work again and challenge myself even more. In fact, I wish there was a way for me to simply take six months off of life, without having to worry about rent or work or anything, and simply write; these past two weeks doing nothing but writing have been delightful. My writing instructor this semester would beg to differ, I'm sure; she once said that she didn't believe in full time writing. Get a job, she said; without experiences, what do you have to write? I mainly agree, but I also think that at some point, you have to take a break from experiencing to write down what you've just experienced. I really want that, right now. Maybe I'll go to Antarctica. Tuesday, January 2, 2007 [link] 07:32 p.m. listening to: nothing Things I need to do tomorrow: - tidy up the kitchen - do laundry - work out a budget for this semester - fix my desktop computer Saturday, December 30, 2006 [link] 06:25 p.m. listening to: "You Won't Find Me" - Peter Bruntnell I just came to the realization that really what I want to do is take a year or two off from school and just write. It's too bad that journalism won't really give me time for that. Maybe I'll make a living selling kitchen cabinets. Thursday, December 28, 2006 [link] 12:46 p.m. listening to: nothing Home now. Home yesterday, as a matter of fact, but my flight was delayed by three hours and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was watch reruns of Criminal Minds and scavenge food from the fridge. So, I'm home! And it is glorious. The apartment was spotless when I arrived, and I've taken some guilty pleasure in cluttering up the sink now that I no longer have to provide a good example by doing dishes instantly. My snake is fatter and happier than when I left, I think; it's rather difficult to tell with reptiles. And when I awoke this morning, the newspaper was waiting for me on the front walk. (Considering it took me six weeks to get them to deliver the damn thing, it's amazing that the vacation hold worked so flawlessly.) It's spread open on the table now, and I believe I hear the comics calling me. Wednesday, December 20, 2006 [link] 08:00 p.m. listening to: "Iowa" - Dar Williams Do we listen to sad music because we are sad, or are we sad because we listen to sad music? Tuesday, December 19, 2006 [link] 02:27 a.m. listening to: "Exhibit 13" - Blue Man Group Home again, home again, jiggity jig. I've been remarkably remiss in posting lately, for which I apologize (to the two people who read this). But there really hasn't been much to say. I have been writing. I have been reading (Eragon, which was very clearly written by a 15-year-old boy--granted, a fairly remarkable 15-year-old boy). I have been watching my cousin play Valkyrie Profile 2. I have been experimenting with cooking Cornish hens. All in all, it's been good. Very peaceful. I hope that I will return to the Bay Area fully recharged and ready to take command of my life (and the apartment) once more. On the subject of writing, I really feel compelled to comment that I think this semester's Creative Nonfiction course really did improve my writing a tremendous around. The risks I've been attempting in my writing these past few weeks would not have succeeded a mere six months ago, and indeed, the writing that I'm attempting right now is the most challenging--but rewarding--thing that I have written in quite some time. Kudos to my instructor, who is responsible for all this, and I hope she knows what she did. As for my grades: two As and one B. Exactly what I expected. My GPA still hovers barely above a 3.5. Let's hope I can keep it that way. Monday, December 11, 2006 [link] 07:34 p.m. listening to: "Be Mine" - R.E.M. Things I need to do before I leave: - - - pay the school - - clean the kitchen (wipe down the counters, clean the stove) - clear the fridge of perishables - Wednesday, December 6, 2006 [link] 04:56 p.m. listening to: "Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad (And Far Away From Home)" - Peter Mulvey I read Robert Frost's "Death of the Hired Man" today, which I'd never read before. I admit to an unfamiliarity with Frost, which is shameful of me, but I'm not as well-versed in poetry as I'd like. I was familiar with the line from the poem about home and how when you go, they have to take you in, but had no idea that it was Frost who coined it. The poem is heartbreaking, and I think I like it better than the (in)famous "Road Less Traveled," though "Hired Man" reads more like prose than poetry. I think. What do I know? I'm tired. So very, very tired. Tired of cleaning, tired of cooking, tired of the screaming meemees (mimis?) at three in the morning, when I can't fall asleep and all I can do is stare at the backs of my eyelids and think. I need to go away and recharge for a while, I think. Some time with family will be good for me. Some time away from people will be good for me, too. Ah, the holidays. Therapy yesterday completely sucked, although maybe in a good way. What was especially aggravating was how my therapist kept saying, "I think this is very important," as if these weren't things I've been thinking for months. I'd just never voiced them before. Therapy's helpful sometimes, but sometimes it isn't; sometimes, it's all things I already know. And then what? And then nothing. There's nothing I can do. I already knew that. Monday, December 4, 2006 [link] 12:31 a.m. listening to: "Draw Down the Stars" - Tom McRae Yesterday, I thought, for the first in four years, about moving back to Los Angeles. One of my greatest fears has always been having to move back to Los Angeles. I hate it there. I have written stories, publishable pieces, about how much I hate it there. But this hatred is irrational; I know it, my family knows it, everyone knows it. They humor me. But it's illogical; why shouldn't I move back to Los Angeles? There are job opportunities there. I have family there, who can help me until I get on my feet. And I have friends, too; I won't be alone. I'm learning to drive. I can do this. I can go back. But it feels like defeat. It feels like crawling back with my tail between my legs, begging the lady to please, please take me back. It feels like admitting that I don't know what to do on my own, that I think I won't make it without a safety net. It feels like failing, somehow, when really it's just the only logical thing to do. Sunday, December 3, 2006 [link] 10:57 p.m. listening to: "Iowa" - Dar Williams I'm having another cleaning crisis, which I'm sure is mostly brought on by senior year blues and a decided lack of sleep. The sniffles I mentioned in the previous entry finally seem to be clearing up, in that I'm not suddenly congested every time I lie down. But by "cleaning crisis" I mean another spell of "Oh dear God nobody around here except ME ever cleans woe is I blah blah blah tears and crying." I had a really bad fit earlier this semester where I nearly broke down crying as I loaded the dishwasher. I felt taken for granted. My housemates perpetually reassured me, "Just tell us to do the dishes, and we will!" except I don't want to always have to tell someone to do the dishes, I want people to do them because it is the Right Thing To Do, because pots and pans left overnight are disgusting, because we are all adults around here and we should be able to fucking clean up after ourselves. Anyway, we had a chat about it and now my housemates mostly do the dishes. Hurrah. But now there is the crisis of The Stove. And also, The Counters. And The Leftovers. I don't think I'm the only person who ever wipes down the counters, but I sure as hell am the only person who cleans the stove, and I am the only person who throws out leftovers. I feel another crisis coming on. Saturday, December 2, 2006 [link] 11:54 p.m. listening to: nothing I live! Thanksgiving Break was a whole lotta fun. Kaie came to visit, and she and Thesis was eating my life for a while, but now it's done. Mostly. I think. I turned it in to my thesis advisor, and she said if she thought it still needed big revisions then she would give it back and give me another deadline. Hopefully there will be only minor revisions, but. . . I really want to make it really, really good. If things go well this could be the first four chapters of a book. There's one piece in there that, standing alone, is good enough to submit somewhere, and I want everything to be that level of writing. The built-in spellcheck in Firefox says that advisor is actually spelled adviser. I am disturbed. Have I been misspelling this word my entire life? What else. . . Final Fantasy XII is eating my life, blah blah blah you've heard this all before. I have the sniffles and it makes it difficult to sleep at night because I CAN'T BREATHE. Benadryl doesn't help. I think I might have to. . . buy cold medicine. Oh God. Kill me now. Monday, November 20, 2006 [link] 09:29 p.m. listening to: nothing Things I need to do: - work on/finish thesis - write two articles for The Weekly - finish invoice for Curve Thursday, November 9, 2006 [link] 11:35 p.m. listening to: "Air on a G String" - J.S. Bach NOTE TO SELF: DROP OFF INDEPENDENT STUDY FORM W/ SARAH Wednesday, November 8, 2006 [link] 09:47 p.m. listening to: nothing I twisted my ankle a few days ago, and oddly enough it's not behaving the same way it did when I twisted it earlier this year in Italy. Then, I iced it for an hour or so, then went to sleep, got up the next day and went to Venice. My ankle felt fine and I walked on it all over Venice. Later, though, it was evident it hadn't healed correctly, as I had somewhat limited mobility and experienced pain if I stretched my ankle in certain ways. So this time, I iced it, elevated it, then switched between icing and applying heat. I bandaged it. Two days later, it still hurts a little, although now it's the sort of ache that comes from an overextended muscle/tendon/ligament and not the bone-deep pain that sent me into a crippled hobble. I've been approaching the supposed Democratic victory in the Senate with elation and trepidation. If you actually read the article, you'll see that nothing's actually been decided; it's AP getting ahead of itself. Still, the Associated Press is an enormously influential newswire, and you can bet your grandmother's good china that all the major news networks have picked this up and reported it as news. Allen must be under enormous pressure; headlines everywhere make his defeat seem inevitable, and really, nobody--not even Allen, I'm betting--wants to drag this out into a recount. Is this a case of the media actually influencing the outcome of an election? By jumping the gun, has AP in fact turned a projection into reality? I hope I am not betraying the democratic process by summing up my thoughts as: God, I hope so. Saturday, November 4, 2006 [link] 02:30 p.m. listening to: "Pink Moon" - Nick Drake My family loves food. You'd think that we would all be enormously fat cooks or something, but this is actually not the case. One of my cousins is tiny--five foot even--but she can easily outeat my larger male cousins. It's kind of amazing. But we all love food. If there's one luxury my family can command for itself, it's food. If it's a choice between, say, a weekend in Las Vegas and a lavish banquet. . . well, actually, they'd probably pick Las Vegas because you can get a lavish banquet in Las Vegas. But my family has admitted that one of the major factors in living location is definitely the nearby presence of food that they like and enjoy, including grocery stores. They don't want to have to drive five miles to find good Thai food. When we drove from Kuala Lumpur to Kamunting, we stopped two or three times to sample the local cuisine. Dinner was not a meal so much as a process. And then, when we got to Kamunting, we gorged ourselves on fruit: durian, coconuts, and some sort of yellow-skinned fruit similar to longan, with translucent white flesh and a very bitter seed. My family grew up poor. After World War II, the Malaysian economy tanked. Eggs and butter became a luxury reserved for birthdays and special occasions. Some of my relatives still regard butter as a health food instead of something to avoid; in a world where food was scarce, anything rich in fat and calories was something to be treasured. It confuses me when people apparently take food for granted. They'll take bad food or good food, it doesn't matter which, like they're both the same. I don't get it. If you can have good food, why not take good food? I know some people can't afford good food, which is understandable. But if you can afford it, why not eat fresh produce? It tastes better and is better for you. If you can afford it, why not buy and eat all-natural products, without preservatives or added food coloring? If you can, why not? There are people who have so much less; why not take advantage of what you have? I don't understand why picky eaters exist, either. Unless you have dietary restrictions or food allergies (I know a girl who's allergic to nuts, seafood, and tomatoes--and that's just to name a few), there's really no reason to not eat something, particularly if it's good for you. I mean, I really don't understand why some people don't like to try new things. What if it's delicious? You might never know. I don't know. I love food. I'll eat it if it's put in front of me unless it actively makes me gag (some foods make me gag, usually due to texture or smell). I'll eat anything when I'm hungry. I've starved before, I'm not about to let it happen again. I'm not stupid. Food is food. I need food to survive. And since food is one of my basic needs, why shouldn't I eat the good stuff, since I can afford it? Friday, November 3, 2006 [link] 01:55 p.m. listening to: "Cello Song" - Nick Drake Nick Drake is kind of amazing, y'all. |
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