Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Pirates vs Ninjas
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On Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 02:53 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Remember how I said I emailed my the department's head of graduate programs? I emailed him asking to meet with him because I wanted to talk about switching my Master's and how this would affect my funding. His reply consisted of "This is who you email to change departments. You won't be able to be a TA next semster."

And that's it. No meeting. No nothing. It didn't even answer the question I wanted to talk with him about, which was the graduate support plan that takes care of my tuition. I wasn't expecting him to beg me not to leave or anything, but a "Let's talk" or "I'd be happy to answer your questions even if I can't meet with you" would have been nice. Can you feel the love? I sure can't. I get the feeling I've been written off already.

I'm glad my undergraduate experience was better than this. Otherwise, I wouldn't even have that degree.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Mining and the Geologic Resources of North Carolina
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On Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 08:46 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Thanks to all those who offered input on the website. I got full credit for it and an A in the class. Life is good.

It also appears that the printers in this lab, while printing rather nicely, are not charging my account. Do you know what this means? I just printed off about 50 pages worth of journal articles and did not get charged $0.06 a page. I like this. I also printed a copy of my application for jobs on campus. I submitted it on Monday, but the website with the information about what jobs I've applied for hasn't updated. However, it still lists all my old applications from 2002. Hrm. I'm going to sign this sucker and drop it into their box just in case the email got lost. Or something.

I've also emailed the head of graduate studies for my department to set up a meeting with him to talk about all that's going on and switching my Master's to another department. He hasn't responded. In fact, no one has responded to any of my emails I sent out this week. I expect that a few of them our out of town, but every one I've emailed? And they aren't checking their emails? I know emails are still coming to me because I get enough SPAM in my inbox to make me want to beat my head against a wall.

I sent one to my advisor on Monday asking to set up a meeting this week to go over some paperwork. No response. She specifically told me she would be checking her email all summer long, even when she was out of her office. She's told me before to just "stop by her office" but I've had little luck with doing that. It doesn't help that her office door is always closed and locked with the lights off, even when she's there. And she wonders why I never meet with her? I plan on emailing her on Monday of next week giving her another update on where I stand and telling her I'll try to come by and speak with her. Someone needs to inform her that this meeting stuff is a two-way street.

Heck, the guy I emailed who wound up being in Iran with sporadic computer access responded quicker to my questions. Sheesh.

I've been putting together a notebook of articles and research that I've done to give my advisor and the guy at the museum when I leave this project. That way, if someone else comes a long, they don't have to flounder quite as much as I have. It's going to include a list of people I've contacted and museum collections they might want to look at. It's also going to include several really nice, really helpful general articles on turtles as well as more specific stuff. That way the next person can have a clue and decide beforehand whether they want to do this. I think it's a nice gesture and will (hopefully) make this sudden bailing of mine be a little easier to swallow.

I really wish people would get back to me. I hate having to put my life on hold like this. It's annoying. I hate lacking direction and I hate feeling guilty for everything I do that's not on this project. I want my life back.

Now, I go procrastinate. And feel guilty about it.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Naughty gnomes made to cover up
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On Monday, May 17, 2004 at 09:57 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Did three things this morning concerning my Master's. I filled out my application for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology like my advisor asked me to. I sent in a progress report of everything I had done on my project for the week. And I emailed a professor in another department, specifically the department that handles the GIS program, and expressed interest in their non-thesis Master's option. The paleo people don't want to support me? Fine. That's okay. I can get a Master's degree involving GIS. With a non-thesis option I can even skip all ths BS that I'm currently stressing over now. This doesn't mean that I won't need to do a project; one is required for even the non-thesis Master's. But it does mean I'll have less of problem with devoting my time to a project that may or may not be feasible.

I am more cautious about jumping into this program than I was about the paleontology program. I'm going to talk with the professors about what kind of projects other people like me have done, what kind of options are available to me, etc. I want to know what I'm getting into. I'm alos a little more worried about how I'll support myself while getting this degree. The program that currently pays my tuition will last another year regardless of what program I'm in. At least that's how I'm reading it. However, I need to have some type of fellowship, TA or RA stipend to qualify for the program. Currently, I'm a TA for my department but if I switch departments.... yeah. There goes all my support. I'll need to talk with them about that as well.

Still, I feel more confident about this program than about the paleo one. They have laid out on their website exactly what I need to take each semester to finish in two years. I've already completed 9 hours of it with taking the GIS classes, which puts me only a semester behind. This seems to be much more organized that the "just take some stuff and work it out" approach of my current department. We'll see how I feel after I've talked with some people. If it falls through, I can still just get a job or continue working on my current Master's.

But now, I feel I have options. This makes my life a whole easier. It also helps that my Geology degree counts as a NR undergraduate degree (even though they're not in the same department). That means I don't have to take summer classes to catch up. ^_^

Optimism and excitement. Oh how I have missed you. I may complain about my GIS classes over the last year, but at least I feel like I can do them. They're challenging. They're aggravating. But I see a Master's degree with them as being more rewarding and more useful than a degree in paleo would be. I love paleo still, but I'm finding its not what I want to do.

In other news, I've been working on some original short stories. It's been slow going because instead of seeing the story unfold in my head as I write, I've been writing from the memory of what I had planned on writing. The spark itself isn't there, but I can manage to work on it nonetheless. It's a science fiction short story that I may get published one day. Or maybe not. It helps that it was inspired by one of the short stories by Anne McCaffery in a book that Skye got me a year ago. So if I feel the story start to falter, I can reread the short story and jog my memory of what I planned on doing. It's not much, but it's a start.

Life is okay at this point.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Pile-up
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On Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 10:08 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I need to archive at some point. I'll do that later. I just don't feel like messing with it this morning. My roomie and I were going to head to the beach this morning and spend the weekend there doing nothing. But this morning we woke up and both decided we didn't want to bother with it. So we remain at home. That's okay. Being at home is good. I've cleaned up and rearranged the kitchen some and we've got curtains up on some of the windows. It's something we've been meaning to do for awhile. The only problem is the cats demanded we do something about the curtain on our backdoor since it was blocking their morning sun beam.

The curtain has been temporarily tied back. This should tell you how well trained our cats have us.

I spent most of yesterday at the museum looking over the material I'm going to be looking at if I decided to finish my Master's. I also got to play around with two modern turtle shells to see how everything fit together. It was like playing with a strange jigsaw puzzle. By the end of the day (after about 7 hours) I had reconstructed the two modern turtle shells completely and verified most of the initial identifications the museum staff had made. I even narrowed down a few of the fossil carapace pieces more than they had. I also figured out they were mislabelling something. I need to talk with someone about that since it took me about a hour to figure out what was going on (I was confused ^_^;;).

To give you an idea, I stayed so long the curator told me to turn the lights off and shut the door when I leave. That's right, I stayed longer than the curator. I don't think I got a lot of actual work done. However, I feel a little more comfortable working with the material and have a better idea of what I'm getting myself into.

I'm still not sure if I'll do this. My self-confidence in this has been shot to Hell. At time I find myself having little mini panics of indecision because I'm afraid I'll do something wrong and my advisor/committee will find out and... I don't know. My mind never finishes. It's more of a "They'll find out. They'll find out." whispered over and over in my head. Fun stuff. It results in me having to really push myself to do anything because I don't want to for fear I'll mess up somehow. And when I do start doing stuff, I almost have coniptions because what if it's not right? Luckily, once I actually get past that first panic things smoothen out. It's getting past that first part that is a pain.

I haven't written anything and have barely worked on plotlines in my head for a week. I don't see this trend stopping any time soon and I know that if it continues, I will be a wreck before a month is out. I need my creative outlet to stay sane and level. I don't do well when it's gone. I'm hoping that I'm wrong and things will settle down. I don't think they will, but here's hoping.

I apologize to everyone about not being entertaining and just whining about the situation I'm in constantly. I know you people are sick of it about now. I just think better in written words than in spoken words. It helps me get across my feelings and meanings better if I write stuff down first even if I later talk to others. Besides, this is my journal. I can talk about whatever I want, and you can't stop me :P.

Still, I hope things will get better. For my sake if not for my reader's.

Everyone I've talked to about this has said the same thing: "You'll feel differently about the whole situation in a week." or "Give it time." or "Don't act hastely." or "Don't let these people stop your dreams." The biggest problem is, I'm not sure these are my dreams anymore. Miome made the statement that there are producers of knowledge and consumers of knowledge. I'm beginning to think I really am a consumer of knowledge. I like to learn. I like to know things, understand things, and then explain them to others.

I've known for awhile that two of the main reasons I went back to get my Master's was because everyone thought I would get a Master's and at the same time, they didn't beleive I would go back. So I figured I'd go back because I really didn't know what else to do and I wanted to prove them I would go back. Sheer stubborness on my part. And like I said before, I love taking the classes. But that's not what a Master's degree is about. Bah.

One nice thing: I discovered that working on my Master's is just about the best diet ever. Stress has made me nasueated which is making me eat less. Running around the museum collections, staying on my feet most of the day, and really concentrating on what I'm reading have been burning calories. I might not finish my Master's, but at this rate I'll drop fifteen pounds before I decide one way or the other.

Another nice thing is that I'm seriously considering picking up a day job and writing for extra money. Not making a career out of writing, I'm too sporadic for that. But maybe selling some short stories or writing romance stories or maybe a fantasy novel or two for some extra cash. Just make science and paleo a hobby that I love, writing part time, and working as an administrative assistant for a steady income. That option is looking better and better all the time. I'm still thinking about it though. To stubborn to quit right now.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: The Horror of Blimps (they're evil, you know...)
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On Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 09:18 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Apologies in advance to all those who have no idea what is going on. I've friend's locked the relavent post on LJ because I don't want anyone accidently stumbling across it and putting two and two together.

Thank you to everyone who left comments in my LJ about the whole advisor thing. In the past 3 1/2 days I've gone from crying (a lot more than I want to), to frustration, to determination, to a little bit of excitement that my project might be worth doing, to sick dread, to depression, to numbness, and then repeat again. I'm not kidding about the sick dread part. For two days I was eating half of what I normally would and felt like I was going to throw that up. I've also not been sleeping well. I was up till around 1am last night which is unheard of for me.

I've been worrying that I'm not doing enough, that when I email my advisor and the other person on my committee next Monday I'm not going to have enough to give them in the report. I talked with my mom. I told her that I can't be my advisor and get my Master's because right now that's what I'm doing. I'm making it up as I go along because I have no idea how it's supposed to be. And I get the sinking suspicion that I'm going to fall short of what my advisor and the other paleo prof. expect of me no matter what I do. I don't think they like me very much. The feeling is mutual at this point.

I emailed three people on Tuesday that were recommended to me. One of them, the big named turtle guy, emailed me back today saying that he'd be interesting to see what kind of data I got. No one has done this before. I figured that out when I did a literature search, but it was nice having it confirmed. He did mention one factor which I had considered, but didn't put in my initial email to him. He also stated that he didn't think that any of the other factors I had put as possibilities could be quantified. It wasn't exactly encouraging, but he didn't all out tell me that the project was a waste of my time and was unfeasible.

At the same time, I keep going over in my head everything that could possibly go wrong. A lot of it is that I haven't collected any of the data yet. I need to get some data in front of me before I can begin to make sense of what might be going on. At the same time, I need to think very carefully about what kind of data to obtain before I start making measurements. If I'm not careful I can really screw this up and double the amount of time this will take. I'm already in hot water with my advisor because I didn't magically know what to do. I don't want to screw up again.

My roomie has been wonderful. She's put up with me acting like a crazy woman and has helped me compose emails to people to get things rolling. I have this thing about contacting people I don't know and she's been helping me deal with that. I didn't send any emails off today, but another batch goes out tomorrow. I have to network and inquire and probably beg like crazy to get things done. I hate this so very much. You just do not understand. Luckily people have been nice to me but if I get a nasty email from someone... I'm not going to take it well in my emotional state.

One nice thing about all this nervous energy is that I've started cleaning our apartment. The cats are not pleased by this turn of events. I was hoping to use this summer to get the apartment cleaned and to read some books. I have a feeling that a majority of it will be spent working on this project and worrying about this project. This is not going to be a fun summer by any stretch of the imagination.

I've never been this paranoid before in my life. I don't ever want to again. If my health starts to suffer because of the amount of stress I'm under, if I start drastically losing weight, if I start having a mental break down that's it. Forget a sheet of paper saying Master's, a thesis, publication in journals. I don't want it enough to completely destroy myself. I'll find a decent job with decent pay and I'll be a glorified receptionist/secretary for the rest of my life.

There are few things worth my health and sanity. A Master's degree is not one of them.

So right now the project moves tentatively forward. Two days ago I wanted to withdraw from all my classes in the fall and get as far away from a Master's program as I could. Yesterday, I wanted to leave but with the option of staying until I found a job. Today, I'm sticking with it and giving myself till the end of summer to decide. If at the end of the summer its not working, I'm calling it quits.

I'm going to contact the head of graduate studies and talk to him about what is going on. Or possibly the dean. I need some kind of outside, rational, unbiased source to just sit down and talk with. I can't trust my advisor or the other paleo prof. at this point. I've loved taking classes, I've loved learning, but I do not like this one bit.

I got one of my other grades back. I would just like to make the statement that there is something wrong when I can get a 4.0 average in all the graduate courses I take, but can't get a straight answer about what I need to do to get my Master's.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: The Muses in Greek Mythology
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On Sunday, May 9, 2004 at 05:42 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Just when I think that everything is fine and dandy, something screws up. All I wanted was a week break before having to deal with anything school related like my thesis. Is that too much to ask? Obviously.

I checked my school email after I got home from eating lunch with my sister and my mom. I usually don't check it over the weekends, except maybe occasionally on Sunday. There were two lovely little emails in my inbox. The first was from my temporary advisor. I have a new advisor and a project, but in the chaos of the end of the year, I didn't have time to switch it over. I figured I get it done this early summer since the office staff is still going to be there and I needed to be on campus some days anyway to do research.

I opened the email and what does it say? That the temp. advisor is still my advisor. He expresses concern that I don't have a new advisor, a project, and that after a year at graduate school I really should be working on my project over the summer. He also makes mention that I'm signed up for some zoology courses in the Fall. I am because my new advisor has told me that I need to work on that area and I chose those from a list that she gave me. He then instructs me to talk with the paleo faculty about getting started.

That's all find and dandy. I had simply forgotten to switch everything over. It was my fault. I was just getting ready to send him an email explaining that I hadn't gotten switched advisors yet, I had a project and that the courses in the Fall were from a list given to me by the paleo person who was going to be my advisor when a little message came up asking if I wanted to send it to all reciepants? All reciepants? It seems my temp. advisor not only saw fit to send this email to me, but also to the two paleo professors, the paleo person at the Museum (who's collection I'm going to be using for my project), and the director of graduate programs.

I'm a little bit pissed right now. On one hand, I hadn't gotten around to getting my advisor changed over and I really should have. On the other hand, contacting me first and asking about it would have been nice. I sent a short email saying I did have a new advisor and I would take care of switching it over tomorrow. I'm debating sending out another email to the people he cc'ed and explaining the situation. It will have to wait though since I'm still rather upset at this point.

The second email I got was from one of my students inquiring about her grade. Something got messed up in one of my spreadsheets and one of her lab grades got erased. Of course, when I was doing the final grades, I saw the blank spot and assumed it was a 0 because she had missed the lab. She hadn't and is going to bring in her lab tomorrow for me to verify her grade. I apologized and told her I would get it changed. I now get the joy of figuring out how to change her grades once they've already been submitted. I know there's got to be a way. This can't have been the first time something like this has happened.

Which means I need to talk to the person who runs the intro. geology classes and tell him there was an error in one of the grades. Guess who this person is? If you said my temp. advisor, you would be correct.

Can I just start my vacation now? Please?

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is:
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On Thursday, May 6, 2004 at 01:07 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I am too nice.

I got an email last week from a student saying that the reason they weren't at the last class was because of family illness. It was a nice sob story and since I felt bad and was letting other people make-up. I emailed her back and told her to just slip her final project up under the door and I'd accept it. Today, ONE WEEK LATER, she sends a follow up email saying she never heard back from me. Which is interesting since I have the sent email sitting on my account. Benefit of a doubt, I gave her until 3pm tomorrow to get that project to me. Otherwise, F.

And I was just getting ready to turn in those grades too.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Megaman: Bohemian Rhapsody
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On Wednesday, May 5, 2004 at 01:04 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

One of the worse things ever is to finally have time to write... and not be in the mood to work on anything. I've done some minor revisions to some of my stuff today, but they're so minor that I'm probably the only one who would notice them. Instead I've got Spirited Away on and am half watching it while typing this. I want to write. I want to be inspired or be inspiring. Instead I'm just tired, kind of groggy and trying not to be bored.

There are times when I wish I could write Spirited Away fanfiction. The ideas I get are all trying to write the reactions and emotions of the characters during the movie. Sigh. I'd probably screw it up if I tried as once again I'm remined of how Japanese this movie is in places. No one would really care to read them anyway because I wouldn't actually have anything new to add. Just filling what's already there in the film.

I have one grade from my class. Basically, it was a for credit class. I got the credit. Yeah! Now I just have to wait for the three important, actually getting a grade classes to come in. I also need to report the grades for the sections I teach. I have one person who's going to fail that I really wish I didn't have to fail. Still, if you don't come to class and don't do the make-ups when you say you're going to do them... tough. I can't give you what you didn't earn.

I especially want to know how I did on the map website I did on the geologic resources of North Carolina. It was my final project and I want to know what I made in that class. I have to pull at least a B to get a minor/certificate in GIS.

My last presentation is Friday. Everything but one slide is done on it. It actually turned out to be niftier that I thought it would be. That's always good.

I still want to write. Or maybe I'll draw this afternoon. Or maybe... I'll just be entertained by Haku.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Chicxulub and the Cretaceous Boundary
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On Monday, May 3, 2004 at 08:32 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Okay, I am now going to reveal my dorkiness. So Nakaithus posted on his blog a bumper sticker he saw on two different cars. I got the joke almost immediately, and its such a geek joke that I had to share. However, I realize that some people (okay everyone who doesn't have an interest in astronomy or physics or isn't forced to know some of both due to their curriculum) aren't going to get it. So an explanation will be given after the retelling!

As seen on a red bumper sticker on the back of a car:
If this sticker is blue, you're driving too fast.

I got it. Of course, I'm a big dork. So what's so funny about this?

Everyone remember the visible light spectrum? ROYGBIV? For those of you who don't remember, white light breaks up into the visible spectrum composed of colors from red to violet (or blue). Red has a long wavelength, blue has a short wavelength. Light acts very much like sound in that as the source is getting closer to you the wave lengths are compressed and as the source is moving away from you, the wave lengths are expanded. The example often used for sound is a train moving towards you: the whistle sounds higher pitched as the train comes towards you and lower as it moves away.

For light, this means objects appear blue as they come closer to you and red as they move farther away. This was how astronomers first found out that the Universe was expanding: most stars exhibit a "red shift" in the calculated color of light they should be giving off.

So if the red bumper sticker looks blue, it means you're approaching the car way too fast!

Right, right.

I managed to get everything I had planned today done roughly on time. It was a close thing with getting my grades in (I finished all but two of the make-ups ten minutes before the grading meeting), but I prevailed. I also took my final exam where I did okay, but can only imagine I did better than my classmates. Mostly because I studied the climatic events and when they came rather than focusing on sedimentation. Lucky gamble, but it paid off.

It amazed me that I was the only one in there to know and be able to name all the epochs of the Tertiary from oldest to youngest (Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene). Especially given how much time he put into talking about when stuff happened in relation to those events. Being a paleo student, I'm required to know this kind of random crap. I can even tell you most of the epochs of the Cretaceous and a few of the Triassic. Other than that, I'm looking up the geologic time scale. Which was about where the other students in my class were with any of the epochs.

I felt really bad for one guy though. He's not a geology student and was completely lost when it came to the time scale. So he printed out a copy of one to study by. The only problem? It didn't list the Holocene (for those of you who don't know, the Holocene is the most recent time period and it's boundary is set at the end of the last ice age). I had never seen any chart leave it out. It was amusing if a little sad for him.

I'm not sure if I'll ever make my students do papers and presentations again. On one hand, I really liked hearing them talk about what they learned and what stuck out most in their mind when they did research. Their "visual aids" ranged from the very cool to the down right pathetic. Their papers on the other hand... good lord. If I ever turned in something so crappy to my teachers, I need to go back and apologize. I may not be the epitome of good grammar and good spelling, because I'm the first to admit I'm not, but I wouldn't dream of turning in a paper as bad as some of these for a grade.

The most common mistake? The random capitalization of words. I'm not kidding. I'd be reading along and in the middle of a sentence "Emeralds" would be capitalized. Or "Coastal Processes." Or "Undercutting." What is up with that? And then I'd see things like "north carolina" or "new river." The second most common mistake was verb agreement. Here's a hint: the correct phrase is "they are" not "they is." Also, verb tense was a big one. That's pretty sad when I'm recognizing problems in verb tense.

On a random note, I had one paper that couldn't tell the difference between possessive nouns, plural nouns, and contractions. Especially in reference to the words "its" and "it's." You have sentences that read "The farmer's abandoned their fields to look for gold." or "The gold rush is an important part of North Carolinas history." Every time I wrote a correction, I thought of you Del.

Changeling, I did see that you wished me Happy Birthday. I'm sorry I took so long to acknowledge it. Thank you!

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Fight Spam on the Internet
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On Thursday, April 29, 2004 at 08:40 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I am the biggest dork ever.

One of the things recommended to me is to set up a profolio showcasing what exactly I can do in GIS. This is not only to make me more marketable to future employers (hey, lookie what I can do), but also to keep me using what I learned in my classes so I don't immmediately forget it. Normally, I would use some of the projects I've been doing for class. However, I've been given almost no direction whatsoever in any of my GIS classes for the projects so I don't exactly want to use those. They've always turned out rather disappointing. Besides which, the data is pretty much gathered from other sources and one of the things I want to show-off is the fact that I can think through setting up a database. Meaning while I don't understand a lot of the SQL and programming involved, I can think and plan far enough ahead that the databases I create using Access or some other program can be intergrated together in another program (say ArcGIS).

This meant I needed some nifty idea for a project. The project idea came last semester when one of my professors mentioned that it use to be he only got Nigerian Scam emails from Nigeria, but lately he's been seeing them from various other countries. INSPIRATION! I would set up a dummy account on hotmail (or yahoo or some other free webservices, maybe even one at each. I'm still debating on this) and for one year I would track every SPAM email based on where it reportedly came from. I would enter information into a database like name of person, country, type of SPAM email (Nigerian scam, webcam, penis enlargement, free drugs, sex), etc. At the end of one year, I would put together a series of maps showing which countries supposedly had the most SPAM emails about them and make available my data.

Brilliant!

So where do you all come in? I need to know a few things.

1. Which free webservice in your opinion gets the most SPAM? Which ones have the worse SPAM filters? Remember I'm trying to get SPAM.
2. Should I track any other data beyond name, country, etc.? What classifications of SPAM email would you recommend?
3. Would you people like to see the top 10 names used by spammers? Maybe the top categories of spam email? I'd like to include graphs or charts in my porfolio thing, so why not.
4. Should I stick with one email address or get several? I'm trying to find the right mix between enough SPAM emails to make this interesting, but not so many that it becomes a pain to keep up with.
5. Where are the best places to post my devoted email addresses to to get SPAM? I know I'll get email to the addresses without posting since spammers are notorious for just stringing numbers and letters together and seeing what hits. Should I even post the email address or just focus on emails sent to an account that's email was never made available to the public?
6. Finally, do you think I should make an LJ where maybe once a week or every two weeks I make a post about my project? Would people even be interested?

Thank you in advance. All comments/suggestion can be left in the comments of this post. The experiment starts June 1st, 2004.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Naruto Cosplayer
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On Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 03:07 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

So, I've been updating things in my LJ and not my pitas page for awhile. Have I finally migrated fully over to Livejournal? Are my days with pitas over for good? No. Basically, my browser at home cached the pitas homepage as the one stating "Pitas is down right now." It only dawned on me yesterday that "Hey stupid, clear out you cache if you want to logon to pitas." So I did and I can. That means I can stop feeling guilty about spamming my friends with my giant entries of doom (tm).

My minions (aka my students) gave their final presentations yesterday. I only wanted them to speak for 5 minutes or less about their topic and they had to have some sort of visual aid. Oh the humor. I specifically said not to use powerpoint because we would not have access to computers. Well, one person brought in their laptop so he could use powerpoint -_-. I would take points off but I never said "Don't you powerpoint because I want you to be able to speak without using it as a crutch and BTW if I see one more powerpoint presentation I am going to stab my eyeballs out." Next year, that's going to be on my guidelines. NO POWERPOINT ALLOWED.

I had several people who could not follow directions. I'm one of those rare people who likes to read/write single spaced papers. So I specifically wrote that I wanted a page single spaced in 12pt font. I estimate about half the papers I got were double spaced. The visual aids were interetsing though. I got everything from the guy who downloaded the movie of them moving the Cape Hattaras Lighthouse and showed it on his computer to another guy who brought in a bag of sand. That's right, a plain bag of sand. I liked the posters the best and one girl who used the assignment as an opportunity to go down to the beach with her boyfriend and take pictures. That was cool. I might specify that next year I want everyone to make posters. I can put them up in the hallway. ^_^

I specifically told people I wanted a topic that related to geology and North Carolina. Since people were having a real hard time coming up with topics I gave them a list. Four people did the Mt. Airy granite. I'm definitely taking it off the list for next year. However, the funniest presentation award goes to one of the students who was talking about the Mt. Airy granite. This is almost word for word how he started his presentation. "The Mt. Airy granite is a granite. It is mined in Mt. Airy. Mt. Airy is famous for two things: the Andy Griffith show and granite." As you can imagine my jaw dropped. He did manage to go on and give a really good talk on the subject, but that opening will be my big impression of his presentation.

Another really funny moment was when two of my students almost got into a bitch fight over whose facts were more correct. Again, because I sent out a list of topics, they were covering the same thing (erosion and moving the Cape Hattaras Lighthouse). One guy got up and gave his presentation (incidentally, the same guy who brought the laptop). The guy who went right after him started his talk "Well, unlike some people, I have correct information." Again, my jaw dropped. Then the two of them started sniping at each other about where they got their information. "My information came from the National Parks Service website" followed by "Well, my information came from a journal article on the move."

I literally thought they were going to start throwing punches. If they had, I would have given them 10 points each for the entertainment value alone. being the good TA that I am, I didn't tell them this. Instead I called the next person up to give a talk and ignored those two. They were still bickering as they were leaving class.

The final highlight of the presentations was during my second class. One guy handed me a single sheet of paper. I specifically asked for a bibliography with at least three references. I figured he just forgot to give me his reference page because he was so nervous. Several people sat back down in their seats without turning in their papers until I gently reminded them I needed their paper. I figured this was much the same thing. So I asked him for his references. He looks at me then goes "Oh! Hold on." He digs in his backpack and produces... a crumpled printed out page from the internet. That was his references. I dutifully stapled it to his paper and moved on.

I can't beleive these people made it into my University.

Finally, I gave my presentation in my marine geology class. I finished it about 20 minutes before I had to speak. That's not bad since I found out I was going the day before. I wasn't in class on Monday because I was getting my license renewed and my lovely classmates voted that I should present on Monday. I found out about this on Tuesday. Wankers. Other than the grammer mistakes I saw while giving my presentation (doh!) I don't think it went too badly. I knew the stuff fairly well and was able to answer most of the questions even if they didn't directly relate to what I was talking about. Not bad for less than 24 hours notice.

And now, I shall write more cute Phoenix Davis/Dragon Ken story in order to entertain myself while I wait to work on my final project for GIS class. Until later.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Understanding the lyrics to American Pie
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On Friday, April 23, 2004 at 02:11 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I know a bunch of you are not going to understand this because I had to friend's lock the post (for various reasons), but thanks to everyone who offered comments and criticisms on my webpage. I've sent the URL to the teacher and now have to refrain from doing anything else to it until I get a grade back. It really helped to have feedback. I had been working on it so long that the pages could have been in Greek and I wouldn't have noticed until it was too late.

My stomach has hated me for most of the day. This is nothing new. What I have to remember is that no matter how much my stomach hurts, distracting myself from the pain by biting into my hand is not a good idea. Especially if I leave tooth mark shaped bruises and most especially when I draw blood. Yes, the pain is that bad sometimes. Bleck. I also managed to hurt my calf muscle in my leg. This again is nothing new. As I get more active, my calves always start hurting. In this particular case I stretched wrong and pulled or did something to it. So last night I'd stretch in my sleep and get jerked away when my muscle cramped. Fun, fun.

Okay, now getting away from the short coming of my body.

There are only three more days till my birthday. I was informed today at lunch that I will be spending Saturday with Shoi for birthday fun. I would complain, but given the number of times I've told Miome "BTW, this is what we're doing today and tomorrow", complaining would only make me a hypocrite. Well, more of a hypocrite than I already am (at times). I also have to remember to add my own little twist to the fable she has in her journal. I also need to ask her how she does the nifty changing colors back ground and get her to show me how to do something similar in my own livejournal.

And while I'm thinking about it, thank you Itland for the presents. I recieved them safe and sound. And not sitting in the rain like last time -_-. You have no idea how useful that thumb drive is going to be in the next two years. I also plan on reading the book you sent me as soon as I win the battle I'm currently having with the bubble wrap Amazon decided to vacuum seal your gifts in. I will be victorious!

I need to go to the library and pick up a few books on the Chicxulub Crater. I love learning about the affects the impact at the K-T boundary had on the globe. It's one of my favorite subjects. Besides killing off the dinosaurs, it also causes massive forest fires, punched a hole in the atmosphere, and probably trigger the Deccan traps (a massive out pouring of lava on the other side of the globe). There's even a theory that it produced giant hurricanes that caused a fresh water lens to form on the tops of the oceans. Destruction! Mayhem! Nifty geology geekiness. In fact, I'm pretty sure that one of my longer rants/speeches about the chaos that surrounds the impact at the K-T boundary was what inspired Kalil to come to the dark side get into geology. I love this subject and will talk about it for hours if you let me. Especially when I start into the "Oh shit" turtle and the flying stegosaur stories.

One of the books I'm going to pick up is by a guy named Alvarez, one of the original people that proposed the impact theory. After years of debate and research, he's mostly been vindicated. The name of his book? T. Rex and the Crater of DOOM! (emphasis mine).

And people wonder why I love my field. ^_^

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: US Geological Survey
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On Wednesday, April 21, 2004 at 01:49 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I don't do political entries. I don't. At least not often because inevitably they dissolve into some sort of debate over in my LJ comments, my inbox fills up, and I get flustered because I don't like debate or people fighting each other. So I try not to get dragged into political discussions, make politically charged declarations, or really even mention politics in general. So this is not a political entry. It is an observation of the people around me which may or may not reflect my own beliefs.

In other words, I'm not debating anything.

So when I was in college as an undergrad, Clinton was in office. The Clinton administration was known for its environmental policy. Even though professors are not supposed to interject their own opinions into classes, you really did not have to dig very deep to find them. There were lots of little jabs about "envirmentalists" or "those liberal, tree-hugging, hippy weirdos" as one of my professors put it.

You would think that this was odd coming from one of the natural sciences like gology. It wasn't that most of my professors wanted us to rape the planet of its natural resources and pollute out the wazoo (despite the tongue in cheek "Earth first. We'll strip mine the other planets later." bumper sticker one professor had). It was that they didn't want to sugar coat it. There's a lot of selfishness in wanting to conserve the natural world as it is. This is how we need the world to be for human beings to survive. That does not mean if we completely screw it up that we're going to kill all life. We're not. Life exists in more forms, for longer than we can imagine. Humans are not powerful enough to completely destroy all forms of life. So if you're going to conserve the world admit that it's because you don't want to die.

The weird thing is both liberal and conservative, both Democratic and Republican professors, held this view. Geologists have been accused of viewing the world through too large a lense. It's true. When you are use to thinking in terms of millions, tens of millions, or even billions of years, the last 10,000 doesn't even begin to compare. The last 200 hundred? That's nothing. The last 50 years of data when compared to 3.6 billion years of life? Don't make me laugh. And so as a whole (with some exceptions) geologists tend to quietly snicker at people who seem don't seem to get the fact that time and the world is much larger than they are.

Then again, it works both ways. People often point and criticize us for not getting the smaller pictures. For thinking too long term when we need to exist in the here and now. Everyone has their blind spots.

But back to the Clinton era environmentalism. For all that my professors didn't agree with the environmentalists, I never once heard them fault their methods. Their conclusions, yes, but never their methods. For the most part if the government made a policy change, they sought to back it up with multiple, reviewed scientific sources. Again, my professors didn't always agree with the conclusions of the authors of said papers, or the policy changes based on those papers, but they pretty much stated they couldn't fault the methods used.

I left school, watched Bush get elected, worked for two years, and came back. I didn't really hear anything for or against Bush until this year. You see, Bush made a big mistake that managed to piss of a great deal of my professors. He made an environmental policy shift using bad science.

I've actually read the paper that was the focal point for much of Bush's policies. It basically sought to refute the idea that there is a human element to the global warming. It didn't do that great of a job in my opinion, the authors were comparing to different climate records that I don't think really matched, though granted this is not my area of expertise. It even went so far as to say that we were actually going into a cooling period. This led to a lot of the policy changes because after all, if there's no global warming, why do we need to be worried about greenhouse gases and such?

Most people who have read and reviewed the article agree that their arguments were faulty. It made it into the journal for two reasons a) it was trying to do something new and different with comparing the two records and b) it challenged the established view. Science needs these challenges every once in a while. It helps keep people from spending so much time patting themselves on the back when they may or may not have an answer that works. This paper was seized on by the administration and used to support its policy despite the fact that more work has shown that yes, the world is warming up and yes, there's a pretty good chance its because of us.

Since then my professorsd have been taking pot shots at the President's policy. Not just one of them. Many of them. In class. Out of class. It doesn't matter. The scientists are not happy with Bush. How dare he use bad science to make his policies?

As a whole, I find it rather funny.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Geology of North Carolina: FAQ
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On Tuesday, April 20, 2004 at 10:37 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I actually got asked this question during lab today. "If it's labelled glacial deposits does it mean that the rocks were deposited by glaciers?" I had to restrain myself from giving this student the "Are you really that much of a moron?" look. Really, I don't know how these people function sometimes.

"If this sandwich is labelled turkey does it mean the meat came from a turkey?"

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair
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On Wednesday, April 14, 2004 at 01:36 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I swear people if I wasn't laughing hysterically at my link of the day, I would be crying. I still think "Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False" should have gotten a higher placing. Heck, I'm almost curious enough to want to see what that project was about.

Today is not good day. For one things it's the wrong time of the month. Which means no matter what I do I feel incredibly disgusting. At least today is nothing like yesterday where I kept having to stop my self from getting on the internet and announcing to everyone how much I hate the world. Suffice it to say, I don't handle pain well. In fact, I've gotten physically ill before just from pain. Anyone who remembers me from #acidreflux and caught me on one of the days I was in pain should know that. And yet as soon as the painkillers kick in, my mood stabilizes and I'm fine.

However, today brings its own set of problems. I keep swinging from one aspect of my personality to another. Every moderately loud sound has me shying away from people. I keep wanting to back myself into a corner, sit down, and not talk with anyone. Just watch them. Only I can't because you know people don't react well to that. So I swing to another opposite end of the spectrum only to have to explain to myself that know we cannot snap at the man getting on the elevator with us. It's not his fault that we don't want to be around people. If I'm not constantly jumpy I'm trying to prevent myself from biting people's heads of for no reason.

Really, I feel like a kindergarden teacher trying to keep my aspects in order. I have no idea where my third aspect has gone. Somewhere warm and peaceful I hope. I wonder if I can go join her...

At least I got the paper I have due at 5pm done this morning, turned in, and a hard copy I need for "class discussion" done. I hate having to present anything to a class. That's not helping with my jumpiness and general mood either. Too bad the presenting is part of my grade. Otherwise I'd just scream at someone and leave. Stress relief at the expense of others. Bad Tsaiko. Bad.

The only real bright spot on the day has been the fact that I have fan art for one of my stories. Yes! Someone drew me fanart. *does the happy dance* It was done by quinconcinnity and can be found here. Dragon Ken from the Phoenix universe. Squeee! Squeeeeeee!

And I think that's enough for now. Blah. At least anime is tonight.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Pliocene Warm Period
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On Monday, April 12, 2004 at 01:07 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

This morning ABC Family aired the infamous final episode of Digimon 02. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. My brain. Why do you hate me so, producers of Digimon? WHY? What did I ever do to you?

Easter weekend and break went okay. I was a giant slub for Thursday and Friday, went over to Shoi's house on Saturday (where I got to hear such wonderful things as the Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" remixed with Super Mario Bros. sounds as the background), and on Easter spent a few hours with my family and guests at my sister's fiance's house. Once again the topic of gay marriage was pointedly avoided. My mom is extremely Republican and my sister is Uber-Christian. The topic is all over the news and has been for months. Neither my mom nor my sister have any problems stating and argueing their opinions (especially my mom and political opinions) loudly. Yet, this topic has never once come up around me. NEVER.

I'm beginning to wonder about that.

This morning started out to be really cruddy. I was tired (for no apparent reason) beyond normal. See first paragraph for another reason. It was raining outside, so the world is dark and gray and colder than it should be. I spent most of the morning on campus grading some of the most depressing quizzes I have ever graded. I doubt these people even listened to me in class, never mind actually studing (<- is there supposed to be a y in there? Because right now, that word looks really, really wrong). Then I thought I had forgotten about a project that was due today. Luckily, I only forgot the due date which is Wednesday. Needless to say, not a good start to my day.

Then I got into my Marine Geology class.

One of the students in there is a poor guy trying to get a degree in Oceonography who needed a graduate level class. He really hasn't taken any geology and English is not his first language. At times he really struggles and the rest of the class (all Geology grad. students and one Geology undergrad.) help him out as much as we can. this morning he asked me a question about the K-T boundary which is when the impact event occurred that is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs. After a few questions and explanations, I realized he wanted to know what K-T stood for since none of the papers (all higher level journal articles) explained that fact. Also listening into the discussion was the geology undergrad. who was taking the class for approved credit so he could get his degree from another University without having to trasnfer classes.

Tsaiko: Oh! K-T stands for Cretaceous-Tertiary. It's the two geologic time periods that the impact happened between.
Oceonography guy: K-T stands for Cretaceous and Tertiary. I understand.
Geology undergrad.: You mean the K stands for Cretaceous?
Tsaiko: Er... yes. All the time periods have symbols. K is the one for the Cretaceous.
Geology undergrad.: I never knew...

Now if I had made it through the first year of my undergraduate without knowing that the geologic time periods had symbols to represent them I would have been laughed out of my department. Seriously, this is one of those basic things that geology people should know. How else do you read a geologic map? Or understand formation names? Or historical geology? This isn't a matter of specialization, it's a matter of lacking basic knowledge. Heck, most people who have picked up a basic dinosaur book written for seven year olds know that K-T stands for Cretaceous-Tertiary. They might not have any idea when the Cretaceous was or know any other symbol of the other time periods, but they do get that.

I was trying to explain to my roomie why this struck me as such a foreign concept using an equivalent computer example. I finally decided on "It's like someone not knowing that html is an acronym." Not exactly the same, but close enough. People in computer science might not be able to tell you what html stands for (hyper text mark-up language, I think) but they should be able to tell you that it's an acronym. Same with the time period symbols. I might not be able to match them all up, but I should at least be able to tell you they exist.

I explained a few more of them symbols to the undergrad while managing to keep the disbelief out of my voice. At one point when I showed him the one for the Triassic (it's capital T with an R merged to the side) he even said "Yeah, I've seen that before. Always wondered what it was." How I stopped myself from looking at him like he had grown a second head I'll never know.

Finally, the professor walks in. He gets up and starts talking. We finished covering the Miocene (a period of geologic time) today. Blah blah blah Miocinian salt crisis blah blah blah Monteray Carbon Excursion blah blah blah oxygen and carbon isotopes and Milankovich cycles. Typical stuff. We've been covering the Miocene for about four class period now and I'm pretty much tired of it since the professor keeps repeating certain facts over and over. Well towards the end of class period we finally got to the Pliocene (a period lasting from 5 to 1.8 million years ago).

One of the first things the professor covers is the Pliocene Warm Period. The link of the day has some more information on it, if you guys are interested. This period has recieved some intense study for a few reasons. One is that the warming was fairly recent (as far as geologic time goes). Another is that it was right before we started getting ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere instead of just down south. Finally, the carbon dioxide levels during this time period are about the same as what scientists predict we'll have if global warming continues. So everyone wants to know what the world was like then and use it to try and predict what our world will be like in a few hundred years.

All very interesting stuff if you cared. But what really caught my attention and had me forcing myself not to bust out laughing was the acronym used to describe this period. Pliocene Warm Period. PWP. Known to fanfic writers and readers every where as the acronym for "Plot? What Plot?" Porn without reason. And I'm sitting at the absolute front of class, trying not to laugh, as the professor states that we will be talking all about the PWP next class period. Oh lord, my mind is going to be in the gutter the entire time.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: All the ways to spell Viagra
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On Friday, April 9, 2004 at 01:16 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Okay, I am really the most pathetic person in the world. Itland mentioned that he tried getting something off my wishlist and couldn't get it sent to my gift address. Odd. So I went over to Amazon.com and figured out what was going on. It seems that if the stuff is not directly through Amazon, but is just being hosted there and is through another site, you can't send it to a gift address. Not only that, but it's subject to different shipping charges.

Oops.

I felt so bad about requiring people to go to a different site and paying additional charges just to get me something I want. So I pulled everything that was like that off my wishlist. That dropped my wishlist to less than 15. I've made a pact with myself to keep it at 20 so that people have a range of stuff to pick from but don't have to wade through multiple pages. I added a few books that looked interesting (Japanese textiles, another book on Heian Japan).

Then I started feeling guilty. I don't have anything on there above $30 but I didn't have a lot of things below $10. So I started adding some coloring books, a book of stencils, and a unicorn book I remember loving when I was younger. That's right people. I can be made to feel guilty about my wishlist without anyone having said a word. I think it's because I feel bad enough even asking for stuff on my birthday/Christmas.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Strangest State Tax Laws
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On Thursday, April 8, 2004 at 11:20 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

It never fails. I finally get some time off, time I can sit down with my laptop and write. And what happens? I have no desire to type. Zip. Zero. Nada. I don't want to work on plots. I don't want to work on characters. Heck, I don't even want to come up with story ideas. I hate the fact that when I'm under stress all I want to do is write but as soon as the stress is gone, I lose all desire to do so. Bah.

Interesting SPAM email yesterday. I know for a fact that SPAM-bots troll my pitas page and pull not only my email address, but also random words out of my entry to make subject lines. Why else would I recieve emails with petrographic microscopes, various minerals/rocks, centaur porn, etc in the subject lines. Yesterday, the subject line read "Your lord Ichijouji demands you read." Okay. I'll look. So I open the email to discover... advertisements for penis enlargments. So the Digimon Emperor wants me to enlarge my (non-existant) penis. That's interesting. I wonder if should forward this on to Davis.

*cough*

Thank you to all the people who wished me luck on my test. Everything went well except the essay part. On the essays, I proceeded to BS my way right on through. I'm hoping for at least partial credit for putting so many words down. I do think it went better than the last test. So that's good.

Okay, I must ask you people this. What is it about girls taking about buttsex that attracts every weirdo in my anime club? We're not sitting near them. We are not tracking them down and making them listen to our discussions about who should top and who should bottom. In fact, we are sitting as far as we can DOWN A SIDE HALL so that we are not disturbing anyone else. Why do they feel the need to follow us down the hall, sit next to us, and then insert their inane comments and observations into our conversation?

Who knows? I certainly don't. Maybe they're interested in insertions. Maybe they have problems with insertions and are looking for tips. If they want to know about yaoi, I will be more than happy to inform them, but please don't try to change the conversation that we were having away from what we want to talk about. And then, when we are talking about yaoi and explain that we do indeed like it, do not call it "dirty" or "unclean" or make fun of it. I am not stalking you and criticizing what you like. Do not do it to me.

In addition, trying to feign interest in what I like in order to sit close to me will not win you brownie points. Especially if I know you really don't care and just want to stare at boobs. This is not the yaoi fangirl petting zoo. Please go away. Thank you.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: New Novelist software
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On Tuesday, April 6, 2004 at 10:59 a.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

So I was looking at the Tsaiko's World ML when I happened to notice some of the ads down at the bottom. These ads change every time you reload the page. This time there was one to Poetry.com possibly the largest and most well known poetry scam in the world. Another was to some sort of writing workshops in New York. The third one is what caught my eye. It was to some software that supposedly helped you write a novel more quickly.

Okay. I'll bite. And so I clicked on the link to the site.

It's the link of the day today. Not because I think it's a good idea. Mostly because it illustrates one of my pet peeves about improving writing. Something I've come to call the laundry list method. That is, you will be able to improve your writing if you list every single thing about your world, characters, plot, story, etc. that there is. You're not actually writing anything. Oh no. You are just listing everything.

Now I will be the first to admit that doing some world building and character planning before hand can be useful especially in longer stories. When you are reintroducing a character that the readers haven't seen since chapter one, it's helpful to have a little notecard reminding you what their eye color or age was. Writing takes longer than reading. Therefore while it's been 3 months since you last saw said character, it might only be a few days or a few hours since your readers last saw him. You want to be consistant. You want your world to be consistant. I have no objections to that. That is a good thing.

However, the laundry list method is rarely invoked in such cases as that. Instead its used for other things. "My readers aren't connecting with my character" or "My world doesn't seem to be working." Those situations are when you get the laundry list advice. List everything about the character: his likes, dislikes, his hair color, his age, what his parents were like, what cereal he eats in the morning, what his favorite candy is, what kind of toilet paper he wipes his ass with, etc. Who cares about this? I couldn't tell you what brand of toilet paper I have at home and I'm a real person. Why would I need to know it about my character?

Same goes for my world. I don't have to know when the village my story is taking place was founded, who founded it, how many houses it has it in, where it's located in respect to every other city within a 10 mile radius, what it's main exports/imports are, how the local customs differ from customs found elsewhere in the country, how many daisies grow per square foot.

The truth of the matter is, I don't need to know. Heck, I can not know at the beginning, middle and end of a story any of these details about my character or my setting. Maybe it's important to the story. Maybe it's not. Figuring out what is and isn't essential for the readers to know is one of the skills that an author has to pick up. Making a laundry list is a temptation for people to include every single detail about their world whether or not it has any sort of relavance to the story.

And the thing is... making a laundry list doesn't solve the original problem. Nine times out of ten, I know exactly why readers aren't connecting with a character. It's because that character has all the depth of a parking lot puddle. They aren't real. They aren't someone that people can expect to meet while walking down the street. They are words on paper. They don't react like a person, think like a person, act like a person.

A lot of people tell you to make the laundry list because they hope that it will help you give depth to your characters. Does it work? No. It solves a symptom but doesn't address the problem. The problem being that the characters you are creating are flat and 2-dimensional. How do you solve this? I'm still working on that one. I do know it takes a lot of thinking, lots work, and the idea that your people should act like people. They should have justification if they don't. Period.

This software is probably a great organizational tool, but that's it. It's just for organization. I don't need to cough up $50 for a special piece of software. I can use a Excel Spreadsheet or a Word doc for that. It's not going to write the novel for me. It's not going to make the creative process easier. It's not going to do squat except possibly make me plan a little more. Is that worth $50? I don't think so.

I know I've ranted on this topic before. Consider this a refresher.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Orisinal games
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On Monday, April 5, 2004 at 07:16 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

It's time for another round of THOSE CRAZY REFERRERS.

anita blake mpreg: Now correct me if I'm wrong because I don't like and haven't read all of the Anita Blake series, but isn't Anita Blake female? And therefore, can't be involved in mpreg? Of course, maybe they were talking about the males in the series being pregnant. In which case I go o_O.

how to be an asshole: I am no longer listed in the search for this. I am disappointed. I could probably give pointers on how to be an asshole. Or at the very least being a scary yaoi fangirl, I can give pointers on how to find the asshole. ^_^

my pantyhose got accidently sucked up by the vacuum: First, I must point and laugh. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Okay, now I must dispense advice. As nice as it would be if you could vaccuum before picking up your room, your search engine query has just demonstrated exactly why this is not advisable.

A Woman asks Squall to forget Rinoa and Become her boyfriend Fanfic: Thank you for being put on this earth as an example to others of what not to do in their fanfics.

what happens to cats that eat powdered donuts?: Nothing, actually. I use to have a cat that would eat powdered donuts. She lived to the ripe old age of 18. This is the same cat that would chew on envelopes to get at the glue and gnaw photographs to get at the chemicals. Perhaps not the best example. The only thing I can tell you is don't feed the cat donuts too often. Especially if you yourself want to eat them.

GRE essay writing materia free downloads: Dude, if you find GRE essay writing materia and I can somehow download those little glowing balls off a website... SEND THE LINK TO ME. Doubly so if you can find some "Thesis writing" materia or "A+ test taking" materia.

"flying t.rex": It's the paleontology equivalent of when pigs fly!

trunks naked picture or naked picture or bold picture or sex someone pictures or fucking pictures of anydragonball series: You are the reason the internet is such a scary place. I am now invoking my right to revoke your permit to access the internet until such time that you can use a search engine properly. Oh yes, and stop coming to my page looking for "bold pictures" of anyone.

knight/princess sex: I wish. Oh how I wish. Think I can bribe anyone into writing me some for my birthday? Anyone? You'll have three weeks. Hello? Moshi moshi?

contest how many many can have sex with one woman in 48 hours: As many many as she wants to have sex with. ^_^

what happens to digested sperm from a blowjob: Um... I assume they are broken down and absorbed into the body JUST LIKE ANYTHING ELSE THAT IS DIGESTED. Twit.

dance of the scorpion porn: Is this some kind of weird cultural thing that I don't know about? And if it's not... do you think anyone would mind if I somehow incorporated this into a story? The scorpion porn dance. It has a nice ring to it.

"i want to see him naked": If he's cute, I do to. Send pictures.

Sora & Kairi said you''ll never know who you run into next from kh2: Tsaiko said you'll never know who will type outrageously long partial sentences into a search engine next from Dance of the Hours.

dragon jade paperweight penis: I don't know where you can get a jade dragon penis to use as a paperweight. However, if I ever find where I can get a carved dinosaur penis from... I'm so buying it. And sitting it on my desk in the graduate office. I could scare all my little minions. Heck, I bet I could justify buying it with grant money. YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.

That is all. Say good night Tsaiko. Good night Tsaiko.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Customer's Suck.com
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On Friday, April 2, 2004 at 03:15 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I've been reading through the Customer's Suck website and am reminded of the one and only time I ever lost my cool with a customer. This was years ago back in High School when I worked for the local Dairy Queen in the mall. I worked there about one year during my senior year. By the time I left, I had been there twice as long as any other employee. I was the only one who knew how to run everything. My own manager (who was fired/quit the night I left in a very loud screaming match) didn't even know as much as I did about getting stuff done. The owner tried to convince me to not to to college but to stay there and make working at the Dairy Queen my "career." I promptly sat down on the floor and laughed at him.

Moving on...

After about two months of working there, I acquired the reputation for being able to handle problem customers. I was nice. I was sweet. I would smile while calmly lying through my teeth, telling them "I'm sorry, I know we use to do it that way but we've changed management and we are no longer allowed to do that." We actually did change management and some procedural changes were made, but not this. I didn't care. There was stuff we did not do (like make milkshakes with hard ice cream instead of the soft kind unless they were diabetic and needed sugar free stuff). Not only did we not do it, we had never done it. While I was nice, I would refuse to break the rules and never got upset.

There was one notable exception to this rule. I was working that night with one of the managers She was in back doing inventory while I was manning the counters. It was a slow night. Two guys came up to the counter and ordered a small sundae. Now a little background. The standard way we make sundae's was to use soft serve ice cream and a topping. No cherries. No whip cream. No nuts. Vanilla ice cream and a topping. That was it. Some people got very irate that we would charge a whole $2.49 for a small sundae with one topping, but whatever. That was how we made them.

Guy order a chocolate sundae but also wants caramel on it as well. I explain that caramel will be $0.35 extra. He says fine and I make the sundae. Then he wants nuts on it. Again, $0.35 extra. Fine with him so I add the nuts. He also wants whip cream. You guessed it, $0.35 extra (although to be fair I would have given him the whipped cream free if he wasn't being such a jerk). Then he asks if we have cherries. I explain that no we don't, but I can add some cherry topping to the whipped cream if he would like for $0.35 extra. he then decides that he doesn't want it made with the soft ice cream he wants it made with the hard ice cream. I explain that we don't normally make sundaes with the hard ice cream. He is insistant. I explain that I will ask my manager about it.

I go ask the manager who tells me charge him an extra dollar for using the hard ice cream. This is because the hard ice cream is more expensive and more difficult to work with. I go up, explain that the hard ice cream will be an additional charge of $1. He says fine just do it just like I had made the other sundae. I toss the old sundae out and start again using the hard vanilla ice cream. He calls out each step to me like I can't remember them over the last five minutes. I make his sundae, smile, am polite while mentally calling him a jerk, and ring him up.

Now if you've been keeping track, you realize that this guy's $2.49 small sundae is now $4.89 without tax. With tax it comes up to over $5. I ring it up, and as standard procedure, announce each additional charge. The whole time he and his buddy are nodding away. The total comes up and I read it to him. He looks me right in the eye and tells me "The only reason it's so much is because I'm black."

Excuse me?

He repeats this claim, raising his voice to announce to the mall that I am over charging him simple because he was black. I saw people's heads turn towards us and I saw red. I have never been so insulted in my life. With my fake smile still on my face, I flip on the reciept button on the cash register. I then ring up his order once more. He and his friend are beginning to shift nervously wondering what is going on. I ring up their order, tear off the receipt and begin to go item by item down the list.

"Do you see this here, sir? This is the $0.35 I added for the caramel. Is there caramel on your sundae, sir? IS THERE?" I must have sounded like either his mom or his grade school teacher because every item I pointed out he said "Yes" to. "ARE THERE NUTS ON YOUR SUNDAE SIR?" His friend just stood there probably wonder when the nice, polite female high school student behind the counter had gotten replace with a raving psycho. "IS THERE WHIPPED CREAM ON YOUR SUNDAE SIR?" By this time my manager was at the counter, staring slack jawed at me. "AND DID I NOT MAKE YOUR SUNDAE WITH HARD ICE CREAM JUST LIKE YOU REQUESTED, SIR?" People were gravitating towards the Dairy Queen to see what was going on.

"You're total is $5.12, SIR. My manager will be taking your money." Keep in my I am still smiling and even though I am practically screaming by this point, my voice still has that sweet "I understand" tone to it. I slammed the reciept down onto counter and stalked into the back room. My manager proceeded to take the money and void the register from where I'd rung the sundae up twice. I had a nice long cry (I cry when I'm really sad or really angry) and my manager gave me free ice cream to take home.

Like I said, the one and only time I have ever let my temper get the better of me with a customer.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Harvard teacher bilks friends, falls for scam
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On Thursday, April 1, 2004 at 02:34 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

What is it about working with GIS and fire alarms? So yesterday I was in Jordan, which happens to be the place where my entire department resides. I was working on a project I have due Monday, trying to get it done early. The only plave in Jordan that has the software I need to do GIS is on the fifth floor. I get the program loaded, open it up (a feat unto itself), open my data and get to work. About an hour into the assignment, the fire alarm goes off.

Okay, no problem. Not the first time this has happened. I try and save my stuff and the computer freezes. Not wanting to cough up the $500 fine I'll get if Mr. Fireman finds me in the building and keeping in mind my roomie's threat that she'll reincarnate me and beat my ass if I burn up trying to save a file, I leave. There goes an hour's worth of work. I get down at the bottom of the building and start talking with some of the graduate students who were TA-ing labs at the time. Fire truck show up, no big deal. It wasn't until the camera crew showed up that we all realized the building might actually be on fire.

Two hours later, they let us back in. Seems there was smoke on the fourth floor but they could never find the source. Doesn't surprise me. The building has lots of people running lots of experiments. Occasionally, someone goofs. But the fireman gave it the all clear and it was back to work.

Fast forward to today.

Same project, same stupid program, different building. The laundry lab this time (don't ask why it's called this). I just finish saving my map when the fire alarm goes off. Everyone sits there like a moron. I get up and leave. Once again, Mr. Fireman and his $500 fine loom large in my conciousness. There didn't appear to be any smoke but I'm wasn't taking chances.

All the people just sitting there did remind me of the times when Miome worked at the library on campus. I know I've talked about this before. About five minutes before the library closed on Saturday nights (the only time ther library closed) they would ring the fire alarm. They'd do it again at closing. Almost gave me heart failure every time. When the fire alarm was going off people would sit there in the stacks or at the tables. Security would eventually have to chase them out. Often, they were asked why they didn't leave when the alarm went off. They're response? "I figured if there was an actual fire someone would come get me."

Right. And who exactly did you think is going to run back into a burning building because there may or may not be someone in the stacks?

On a totally unrelated topic, I want to talk about food. Specifically, strange food or food combinations. For instance I have on friend who likes to put a slice of cheese on Krispy Kreme donuts, melt it in the microwave, and eat it. As an undergraduate, there was a girl on our hall that would eat tuna, mustard and raisins mixed together.

What's my favorite strange food combination? Red grapes and chocolate pudding. Not green grapes, because they tend to be too tart, but red grapes. Half the fun of eating it is watching Miome's face while I do.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: 10 Worse Album Covers of All Time
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On Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 01:11 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

This weekend I finally got to see the last episode of Digimon Frontiers. Yes, I know I'm late to the party. Oh lord, that was an awful episode. I think I actually prefer the episode at the end of Season 2 (also known as "Hi! We're about to crap up two seasons worth of fanfics with our complete inanity. Have a nice day!) to this episode. At least at the end of Season 2 I could hear the collective "WTF?" and the general consensus just to ignore it. Even those who were not pro-yaoi tend to want to pretend that the last episode never happened. I have a feeling at the end of Digimon Frontiers there were hundreds of people going "That's how it should have ended." Er... I'm sorry, but no. I did not sit through several hours worth of episodes to be preached and moralized at. Thank you.

WARNING! SPOILERS FOR DIGIMON FRONTIERS AHEAD

I never saw the first part of the series. Really the only things I was interested in didn't happen till about half way through. I've tried watching the beginning a couple of times but I can't get into it. The characters are okay, they actually grow and change, but the random moments of moralizing just get on my nerves. Let's not even talk about how bad the opening is. The opening makes me long for the "Hey Digimon, friends to the boys and girls" theme that shows up in Season 2. That being said, there were two things that saved that series for me and kept me watching.

One was half-animal, Beast Takuya. He shows up in a grand total of one episode, but it's worth it. I've seen that episode about three times and it never fails to send me into fangirl giggles. Usually by about half way through the episode I'm announcing to anyone who will listen (and sometimes just the TV if no one is there) that I want one. I want a Beast Takuya. I WANT ONE! I have to physically restrain myself from picking up the laptop and writing because I know whatever I produced would consist of "Is he not the cutest thing EV4R?!?!?" I also wouldn't mind seeing the others in Beast forms as well and think the series suffers from not including them.

The other thing that kept me interested in this series also shows up in the Beast Takuya episode. That would be Kouichi. I was trying to get interested in the series for like the fourth time (yes it took me four attempts before I could sit through more than ten minutes) when suddenly Kouichi walked on screen. My head came up and I started really paying attention. "My angsty bishounen sense is tingling. I wonder who he is?" I was soon to discover that Kouichi was Kouji's long lost twin brother. At first I thought "How cheesy" but I was pleasantly surprised at how much they developed this. Personally, I thought the background of what happened to seperate Kouji and Kouichi to be one of the most interesting aspect of the series. At times, it was the only thing keeping me watching.

Now I tried not to see any sort of relationship between them. I really did. Stop laughing, I tried (for all of 30 seconds). But the Japanese did everything in their power to make me think that there was something going on between those two. Heck, they might as well have tatooed "TWINCEST" across their foreheads. So of course, I went there and enjoyed every moment of it with yaoi fangirlish glee. Because I am like that. Really, that's all the justification I need. The comments I made were so wrong and it was so much fun.

I am tempted to do fanfiction for it. So very, very tempted. I'm a little afraid too because I've heard from others that the Digimon Frontiers fandom is a cesspool. Of course, I hear this about many, many fandoms and that has never stopped me yet. If I did decide to do Kouji/Kouichi yaoi I know what angle I would take. There's something called Genetic Sexual Attraction that happens between close blood relatives who are seperated and then reunited. I think it would be an interesting way to approach a relationship between them. I'm just not sure I want to be the one to do it. Hrm... I'll think about it.

Anyway, back to the last episode. Besides the preaching and moralizing (Now I know how to be friends! Bleck) what got to me was Kouichi's "revival." Now I may not know much about hospitals, but I do know one thing. They are not going to let a bunch of kids come running into a room where they are trying resuscitate someone who has taken a nose dive down the stairs. There are nurses and guards and people who will stop you rather quickly if you are going where you are not supposed to go. Yes, even if you are heading there at a dead run.

They are especially not going to allow this person to grab the dead person and yell. The doctors are at some point going to say something. Not stand around like they have no clue. Yes, it was a very emotional scene and I'm sure the doctors were in a little bit of shock that these random kids are now in the room. Someone should have said something. I just felt very much like it was a contrived scene that could have been handled better.

Ah well. I will console myself with the image of half naked Kouichi being grabbed by his twin brother. Mmmmm... life is good.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Kouji x Kouichi DJ
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On Monday, March 29, 2004 at 07:59 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

There were small Catholic schoolgirls in my office today.

After what I saw yesterday, I'm beginning to think that being gay is one of the requirements for being an onmyoji.

My roomie had to get her pants out of the backseat of her car when we got home.

While I might complain about fried rice that has fruit in it, I will systematically go through and pick out all the raisins and eat them.

You can bring back the dead as long as your dance is both fruity and gay.

None of these things have anything to do with each other. They are just random facts. I am too tired to write an actual entry. This is all the entertainment you people get today. The end.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Symbolism of Heraldry
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On Saturday, March 27, 2004 at 01:04 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I just got back from Ren Faire. It was warm enough that I wore shorts. We got there a little after it had opened and there was already a line. We ate early and wandered around for a bit. There didn't seem to be as many good vendors as normal. After awhile, saw a few people we knew. Then we wandered over to the gem and mineral show.

Where I promptly got so dizzy and nasueated that we had to leave. The world was doing that lovely grayin gout from the edges thing. I think it was from coming out from the heat and into the cold AC. Now I'm at hom ewith something to drink waiting for the dizzying feeling to completely pass.

Anyway, I'll be going back next weekend so it's all good. This and Animazement are my two big spending events of the year, so I'm not too worried about the money.

And that is my life.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Why Are Japanese Girls’ Comics full of Boys Bonking?
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On Thursday, March 25, 2004 at 08:03 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

Thanks to Cneko for the link. I love the title of that article. Boys bonking indeed.

For those of you who might not be aware of it, I am a bibliophile. If your mind went immediately into the gutter, you've been around me too long. If you've never read my journal or met me, and your mind went in the gutter leave a comment I'd love to meet you ^_^. What that means is I love books. A lot. I don't just love the words on the page or the stories they tell. I love the heft of the book, the feel of the paper, there slight signs of wear and tear on the pages. I like books with thick, glossy colored plates that are hand painted photographs. I like new books with shiny pages or older books that are turning yellow with time. I like books where all the art is done with black and white engravings or books that are nothing but print. I love books.

I especially like old books and books that have not been checked out for a while. I don't know why. In my High School library it was always a challenge to myself to find the oldest book. I think the oldest I found was published in 1957. It had been rebound at some point and the call numbers were carved into the spine. I didn't actually read it, that wasn't the point. The point was that I found it. I did read Andre Norton's "The Beastmaster." Before I checked it out in 1996, the last time it had been checked out was 1964. Yes, I remeber the year. I did read that book and it was a personal squee that no one else had checked it out for over thirty years.

I have sitting on my floor right now, a book title "Fossil Turtles of North America." It's huge, about three inches thick (over 700 pages) and larger than most of the mythology and geology books I have to sit on the larger shelves because they don't fit on the small ones. It's an original edition, not a reprint. The copyright date? 1908.

When I found it, I did the dance of joy right there in the linrary.

I also have a much thinner, more practical book that illustrates the anatomy of turtles. I got them both in an effort to begin doing my research for my master's. Both have been checked out recently, within the last few years, and I have a sneaking suspicion I know by who. One of the other graduate students who had just finished his master's mentioned that George, another master's student who was here when I was an undergrad, had worked with some fossil turtles at his site. In the margins of the turtle anatomy book and labelled on some of the diagrams are names of bones and morphology all written in neat, pencil hadnwriting.

If I could confirm that it was George, I'd smack him upside the head. Bad George. Don't you know better than to write in books that aren't your own? That's what the copiers are for. I'm tempted to take an eraser to some of the stupider scribbles. The useful ones I might leave, but still. You do not write in books that aren't yours. Period. I knew this when I was four and just getting into the joys of books. George should definitely know this by now. If he doesn't, I may need to beat it into his skull.

I almost never write in my books. Most of the ones I have on my shelves are still pristine. I think the notable exception is my book of Grimm's fairytales. I've added some comments in the margins because I'm using it to find ideas for fairytale retellings. It's research for my novels. Still, that's MY book. I paid for it, I own it, and years from now my grandchildren will look at it and wonder about the batty old women who wrote "Good yaoi material, main character=seme" in the margins of a book of fairytales. It did not belong to someone else however, like say the library, and I was well within my rights to write in it.

At least the notes are not in pen. If they were, I'd have to hunt George down and kill him. Very sad, very tragic.

For all that I love books, I think they are meant to be shared. I would much rather return a book to its proper place on a shelf in a library for someone a few years down the road to enjoy than keep it on my own shelf where I might enjoy it once or twice in a lifetime. Books are meant to be shared. They are mean to be enjoyed and passed on. I guard the books I keep jealously, who knows when I may want to reread them or quote them or look up some bit of trivia in them, but I feel just as happy returning a well loved one back to the stacks. My only problem comes when the book disappears, and I am at a lost to find it on the shelves. Then I long for it and want it for my own.

Some people hoarde baseball cards. Other stamps. Some people collect memorabilia. Some people love coins or comics or old TV shows. I hoarde knowledge, collect trivia and love old books.

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: Carbon dioxide build-up accelerating
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On Monday, March 22, 2004 at 02:10 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

I am feeling much better today than I did last night. This is not unusual. A good night's sleep often makes me feel better. Also the fact that a part of personality has no problem smacking me from behind and telling me to stop being stupid helps. I'm kind of like a Weeble (and not a Wibble like I almost typed. I do not need a mental image of Tsuzuki as a small plastic figure that never falls over). My emotions may swing one way or the next, and I sometimes slip back to how I was years ago. Eventually I right myself and become my normal, slightly cheerful self. It usually just takes some time, some crying, and some wallowing in self-pity. It's all good.

My roomie made the comment that I have some of the best on-line friends ever. I tend to agree. You people listen to me whine and bitch and you offer support and help. I appreciate it more than you can ever know. Even if I don't always use the listening ears you all offered, just the fact that they are there is enough. Thank you.

After I make a post like that, I always check my referral lists. Inevitably, I get a whole string of hits from somewhere new. This always leaves me with the vague feeling that I've scared off a whole bunch of potential readers/fans/friends with my whininess and strangeness. I swear people, I'm not usually this bad! Come back! I'll write smut.

Somehow I get the feeling I just scared off even more people.

Speaking of smut, I stumbled across my first Arthurian Legend slash story. Now I don't like most Arthurian Legends. I don't know why since I absolutely love most other legends, but for some reason Arthur and his merry band of knights never appealed to me. However, in HS English literature I was forced to read "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." And since this particular story was based on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I gave it a shot. I'm always up for good knight slash. It was... okay. I liked the characterization of Gawain but the other characters fell kind of flat. It does make me want to find more knight/medieval slash. The problem is I don't think Google is going to be much help. Any reccomendtions? Anyone? Hello? *crickets chirp*

I'm trying to branch out into different forms of slash. I don't know why. I've been interested in reading/writing stuff other than yaoi (which is primarily Japanese based for all that I use the word interchangably with slash). Not that I'm stopping writing yaoi at all. I'm still working on it. But my interests are swinging more towards original stuff lately. I'm sure it will swing back and I'll be all about fanfiction soon, but right now I want to work on something different. And read something different.

Threesomes. I want to read about threesomes. And dragon sex, but then again I always want to read about dragon sex because I'm a big perv like that. I have a feeling I will regret saying that the very next time Google indexes my page for it's search engine.

Finally, since I seem to have a one track mind today and I'd hate to break a trend, I'm thinking of declaring a day "International PWP day." I'd even make a little page and everything for it. It's not like I have any kind of authority to do it, and there would be no prizes. Just a page saying "Write PWP's today. You need no plot, just lots of smut. Post your stories and celebrate." It would be completely pointless except for entertaining me, and really sometimes that is all that matters. I even have a date all picked out. What day is that you ask?

June 9th (6/9).

Tsaiko's neat, nifty URL of the day is: The SurLaLune Fairytales Pages
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On Sunday, March 21, 2004 at 08:18 p.m. Tsaiko was slowly going insane. This is why:

You know, I don't talk about my aspects much. I know I've defined them in this journal before: the wolf, the unicorn, and the dragon. They're a part of me and have been for years. I don't talk about them much on-line because I feel like a pretensious fuck when I do. It reminds me of all the people who run around the internet screaming "Look at me! I am special! I'm unique! I've got something wrong with me and nobody understands my PAIN." I don't want to be like that. I am not like that.

But at the same time, when I've been around people long enough, I start to relax. And when I start to relax, I start switching aspects. And when I do, they are going to notice. I act different, talk different, and think different depending on which of the three is dominant and dammit people are going to notice. I notice. Then I'm left with a dilema. How do I explain something that's been a part of me for so long I don't even think about much any more without sounding a) like a loony or b) like I'm trying for a great sympathy/attention grab.

I've tried just explaining it to people before. It doesn't work. Sometimes I get a lot of uncomfortable looks. Afterwards, people are quietly not as close to me as before or never speak of it again. How the Hell am I supposed to respond to that? Usually I just drop the subject and never bring it up again. I nervous enough about discussing the topic as is. I always feel like I'm imposing. I'm sure not going to press it if the other person feels uncomfortable.

Most times I get a reponse that I've dubbed the "metaphorical pissing contest." Suddenly they remember the times when they were having problems and how much worse their problems were and Oh! The crippling angst. Most times I don't even get to finish what I was saying. Now I don't know about anyone else, but when someone is talking about their emotional problems or how they got to be the way they are, I do not immediately jump in and talk over them. At least, I hope I don't (and if I do someone please give me a good verbal smack down). I don't go on and on about my own problems. What I do is listen.

I might offer sympathy. I might try to offer support by saying I know a little of what they are going through. But if I have never been in a situation that bad, I don't pretend that I have. I don't pretend that I automatically know what they are going through. I don't press them for details if they seem unwilling to give them. I wait, give them time to get to know me better, and then if the subject comes up ask. If they want to talk, fine. If they don't, fine. I just wish other people extended the same courtesy to me.

The problem is I can't just discuss what I went through to get where I am in one sitting. I'm not sure I've ever sat down or tried to explain it in one sitting. No wait... I have tried. I just don't think I succeeded. Good lord, it would take me hours just to explain that the Wolf isn't really a Wolf and why the Unicorn hasn't been in the shape of a Unicorn for (does mental math) almost twelve years? Yikes.

And how do you explain refusing to acknowledge a part of yourself until it became a seperate personality? How do you explain that that seperate personality nearly killed a part of your soul (the creator, the writer, the dreamer)? How do you explain to people having to drag yourself through each day, putting the splinters of yourself back together while having to act like nothing was wrong? How do you explain going through five years of no friend, no acquaintances, no one to talk to and no escape from day after day of nothingness? How do you explain fighting depression when you didn't know what was wrong with you? How do you explain that really no cared enough to find out what was wrong or you were too good at pretending that nothing was wrong for anyone to notice? How do you explain sheer stubborness, a refusal to give up, and clawing your way back to someone who could deal with the world?

I can't point to any scars. I can't point to anything physical and say "See? I am not making this up." I can't prove anything because all of it happened in my head. I can't even say I have a second opinion. I didn't get any help. I didn't get therapy. The only reason I'm here now and in any kind of decent shape was because I fought to be that way. It's not that I didn't need help. I now wish I had talked to or seen someone. I probably would have been a lot better off a lot sooner. But I didn't. I was so wrapped in making sure no one else figured out that I wasn't right, that I wouldn't get found out, it didn't even occur to me that maybe, just maybe, someone needed to know. Oh well. Water under the bridge.

But how do I explain all that verbally? Then how do I explain that my aspects were my way of coping with all that? I have enough coniptions as it is with trust.

Then there's all the idiosyncricies to deal with. Like the fact that the Unicorn is male, I'm female, the Dragon is female, and the Wolf... is male/female/nuetral depending what he feels like at the moment. I can't explain what I don't understand myself. I can't explain why I sometimes cry in the middle of class because I'm working on stories in my head, and why it's okay as long as the Unicorn is okay with it. I can't explain why the Wolf thinks all spirituality is bullshit while the Unicorn keeps trying to get me to buy more crystals and pendants and things with my birthsign on them (personally, I think this is because he found a story of how bulls seen from the side in India were once mistaken as unicorns). I can't explain that the reason I'm dressed in a tight shirt and skimpy shorts is because the Dragon was dominant this morning.

I definitely can't figure out how to tell people about the internal balancing act I go through almost daily to keep from swinging too far one way or the other. Or what happens when I don't succeed. Or, even worse, when one or more of my aspects goes to sleep leaving me to try and make it through the day with the remaining one as bast I can. It's not fun and it's not fair, but it's what I've got and it works.

Sigh... my life would be so much easier if I were normal. And not scaring away people by complaining about my internal psyche.