:: Tensai Shoujo ::

:: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 ::

Yuck.

Today I had a bad day. A really bad day. And the really crappy thing about it is that nothing really happened that would normally make me upset, and so I can only chalk it up to some sort of hormonal thing. Probably due to my birth control methods. Damn hormonal manipulation. Anyway, so I spent about a half an hour at Eric's moping around, then I spent all of our next class together (totaling about two hours) hovering between crying and anger with brief spurts of happiness every once in a while. It was a very non productive period. Oh wait, but that had nothing to do with my depression, and everything to do with that class sucking like calf at it's mother's teat. I don't know what the teacher thinks she's doing, but when she shows a movie like "Death By Hanging" and then gives us a worksheet with unclear directions and then we go off on tangent discussions about whether or not the main character actually raped the women he killed, then she needs to understand that maybe she needs to be more organized about things.

So anyway, now I feel a little ill, and I can't decide if it's because it's just really cold in here, or I'm just really cold because I'm sick. What a dilemma. I'll be getting under the warm covers very soon anyway, so it won't matter, but I still wonder. I wonder how I'll be feeling tomorrow in general, because I'll start to get scared if I'm still all depressed and moody like today.

So there was a school shooting today at ROCORI high school west of St. Cloud (Greg, if you're reading, I bet it was really because the drumline sucked so badly that someone just had to do something about it.) Call me insensitive, but I could just as well have gone the afternoon without seeing that on the news. It preempted "All My Children" which was getting really juicy, and it was just another example of how the newsmedia tends to overload on really bad and depressing stories. No wonder I'm depressed...

Well, off to do a little Japanese homework before bedtime. Laterz
:: Jessi 9/24/2003 11:20:00 PM [+] ::
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Bwa ha ha!

This is for all of those Azumanga Daioh fans among you. Eric showed it to me.

This one is just plain awesome.

Enjoy :D
:: Jessi 9/22/2003 11:10:00 PM [+] ::
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Well, I'd like to start off tonight with a book review, then get onto how things have been going at school since the last time I wrote, approximately three weeks ago.

I just finished reading the newest book in the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel, entitled The Shelters of Stone. All in all, it was a good book, and worthy of the series, but I would not count it among the best. In fact, though I enjoyed it, it is probably my least favorite compared to the other books.

The gist of the plot is that Ayla, the heroine from the previous four books, and her beloved, Jondalar, are returning to his home and his people, the Zelandonii. They bring with them two horses, Whinny and Racer, and a wolf appropriately named "Wolf". They arrive, much to the surprise of the Zelandonii and Jondalar's family, and startle them greatly, because at this point in humanity's history, tame animals are quite the novelty. Did I mention that the story takes place in Europe during the Ice Age? Heh, silly me.

In any case, they arrive at Jondalar's home, the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, meet his family and the cave's spiritual leader, Zelandoni. Despite their happiness at being able to settle down, Ayla and Jondalar have serious business to discuss with Joharran, leader of the Ninth Cave, and also Jondalar's brother. The modern humans of this period believe that the Neanderthal people scattered about are nothing more than animals, and they've been treating them as such (the Ninth Cave itself was once even a home to these Neanderthals, or "Clan" as they call themselves). Ayla, who was rescued and raised by the Clan as a young child, and Jondalar who has learned that the Clan are not just animals, or "flatheads" as his people refer to them, want to try and convince the others that they are humans, and worth making diplomatic ties to. Much of the novel is spent in debate over this point, with most of Jondalar's family taking to the idea rather quickly, with some of the less "enlightened" Zelandonii refusing to believe that animals could have a vibrant language and culture on par with their own.

Another important conflict that stems from this believe that the Clan are animals, are the disgust with what the Zelandonii call "abominations," babies born from one Clan parent and one Modern Human parent. Ayla, who had a half-Clan baby while she lived with the Clan, doesn't believe that any child could be an abomination, but old ideas are hard to change.

Surprisingly, though one would think that these matters would be a source of great conflict in a book plot, there is surprisingly little conflict or tension through most of the book. While near the beginning, Marona, Jondalar's ex-girlfriend from five years previous, tries to humiliate Ayla out of jealousy, she doesn't show up again until very near the end of the book, and at that point it has little to do with causing trouble for Ayla or Jondalar. And though there are those among the Zelandonii who find the idea of intelligent "animals" (The horses, wolf, and Clan included), these people are overshadowed by the few who are on the very open-minded end of the spectrum. Most of the book is a relatively laid-back introduction to Zelandonii customs, their hunting ceremonies, their style of dress and dwellings, marriage and religious ceremonies, etc. This is interesting, but it sort of drains most of the tension and excitement out of the story.

This is not to say there aren't some extremely moving parts of the story. During the first hunt in the book, the hunters, Ayla and Jondalar included, go out in the early morning while it is still dark, and participate in a ceremony invocing the Great Earth Mother, the deity who the people worship, for good luck in the hunt. The description of the people chanting and the spiritual nature of the entire ceremony were described breathtakingly. My eyes were teared up because it was so beautiful and so haunting, and it was so vivid that I believed that I could have been taken from real human history. There was also a very moving scene during the funeral of a man killed during the aforementioned hunt. During the ceremony, Zelandoni sings the legend of the Great Earth Mother, and having read the other books in the series, it's not only a great payoff, but also a wonderful legend, and seen through Ayla's eyes, quite breathtaking and meaningful.

All in all, The Shelters of Stone is a good book, and I would recommend it to fans of the Earth's Children series, but just be forewarned, it is a little dryer and less tense than the other books in the series, though the ending (which as usual, is left as a quasi-cliffhanger) may lead into more intriguing things to come. The next book is supposed to be the last, and I will be very heartbroken to see the saga end.

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Okay, so school. I started school on the 2nd of September, and things have been going pretty well since then. Japanese is about the same as usual, though the classes are smaller because I'd say more than half of the people from second year didn't go on, because there's only a two year language requirement. I am also taking Chinese calligraphy, which is pretty fun, though a little stressful because when we're practicing in class, the teacher hangs right over our shoulders. yar.

I have two classes with the same teacher. One is just a premodern japanese literature class, which has been pretty fun so far. This week we were reading exerpts from the Tale of Genji, one of the most famous examples of Japanese literature in general. The other is a class on Japanese feminism which has been really fun because the class is pretty small and we get to have good discussions.

The last class I'm taking is a class on Asian film and animation, which I figured would be a piece of cake, because it was a 10xx level class, and full of freshmen. Well, it's turning out to be a little more than I bargained for. The teacher, while nice and rather funny, is treating this like a higher level class, but a lot of the people in the class aren't mature enough to handle it (ex. She was trying to talk the other day, and there were a few guys who, even after repeated requests to be quiet, wouldn't stop talking to each other). And then there's the jackass. Yeah, so there's this guy in my class who I hate. The first day in class, he kept making stupid, paper thin comments during discussion, and I thought he was just annoying, but then I began to realize that he wasn't just annoying, he was a pretentious ass. Basically his story is that he does poetry or something, and so he was led to believe that certain techniques of storytelling, including cliche, are all bad. Basically his problem is that he thinks that he's right, and he's basically becoming the class jackass and I want to put him in his place somehow. Grr, rage is a powerful thing. And now this guy comes to anime club. Fucker.

Speaking of anime club, it is going well. We can't have our normal room anymore, because the fucking medical school decided it was theirs and theirs alone. Cocksuckers. So anyway, we're in a decidedly crummier room, but it hasn't turned out to be so bad. Attendance seems to be up in spite of the room situation, and the admins, Eric included, are pushing for a higher membership rate so that they can make some money for a bigger room, and possibly more membership bonuses.

This week on Friday there's going to be the first social night of the year. In previous semesters, there've only been maybe two a semester, one on a holiday and one during finals week, but this semester they're upping it to once a month, on the Friday of the week rather than Thursday, which is club meeting day. The first one is going to be a karaoke night apparently. I don't know what else they're planning. I don't even know if I'm going to go or not, because I'm not much of a singer, but it might be fun to watch others do the singing, he he. Next will be Halloween. I haven't decided on a costume yet, but hopefully I'll have something worked out by then. Maybe something from Haibane Renmei? That wouldn't be too complicated or anything. Anyway, we'll have to see how much time I have in the near future to work on it.

Last week, I spent two nights at Eric's place. It was good. We hadn't gotten much time alone lately and it was nice to be together. The two of us were in kind of a bad mood Thursday night, mostly due to stress, so we were up really late and I didn't make it to my morning class the next day because I felt really crappy. I think the both of us are worried both about school, and what's supposed to come afterward. The job market isn't exactly friendly right now, neither of us has rich parents to back us up, neither of us has a driver's license for goodness sakes. The real world is a frightening concept and it's almost too much for us to handle. Sometimes I just want to imagine that none of it matters and sit in my room playing computer games, but that's just being in denial about things. I hope my sanity stays intact so that I can just graduate already. I want us both to get through this unscathed.

Well, I guess that's all I really have to talk about now. Most of what's been going on lately is just ho hum stuff. Hopefully I can update more frequently from now one though :D
:: Jessi 9/21/2003 10:46:00 PM [+] ::
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Oh, oh, btw, check out The Boyfriend's Blog. He has pics up from his new place, where I have spent many days so far :D
:: Jessi 9/01/2003 01:32:00 AM [+] ::
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So I write to you now on the eve of the eve of my first day back at school. I'm anticipating it to a point, but there is that whole summer vacation freedom thing that I'm just so used to. The one thing I really am looking for is getting to japanese class and anime club and having tons of material for my webcomic in development. Otaku are just ripe with humorous situations. So wish me luck on that.

I have the feeling I'll be doing a lot of walking this semester. No, not from class to class, because all my classes are in the same place. I mean from my classes to eric's house, which is a darn long walk. My ass will be perky in no time :D ha ha. Seriously, though.

We had a planning meeting for anime club the other day, where we picked out the shows that we're going to watch this coming semester. This was a semester that I really didn't have any expectations about what we were going to watch. I'd been keeping my eye out for shows that I wanted to suggest, but I just didn't feel committed enough to anything that anyone else would like to watch. Really, the only thing I've been watching lately is Rose of Versailles which is a great show, but which has a few things going against it as far as anime club is concerned: firstly, it's a 40 episode show, and we only have room for 26 during the semester. Secondly, though it is a show which contains action, it's not an action or humor oriented show, which sort of falls flat if the audience isn't interested in it in the first place. And lastly, it's mildly educational, which, if you've seen some of the people who come to club, would be a disaster. So even though I like it, it doesn't necessarily have the mass appeal of other shows. So we're watching three shows that I've heard of, two of which are really pretty new (Scrapped Princess and Last Exile) and one which is fairly old (Escaflowne.) I guess Escaflowne was shown some years ago in club, but someone suggested it and it was decided that there had been enough time in between to show it again. It's good to have a mix of old and new, I think. And the preshowing is a show I'd never heard of, "Sugoi yo Masura-san" which was described mainly as "guys dropping their pants," but we'll see.

Yeah, and so that guy who I wrote about a few month back, the one being an ass on the anime club message board, well, he really seems to cling to these really ass shows like Digi Charat and its various related entities. This time he suggested a similar show, called "Princess Tutu." I have the entire series, and people claim that it's some serious dramatic story, but really it's just silliness which wishes really hard that it had depth. So anyway, it was voted down, despite a large contingent of people who voted for it, or at least advocated it. I would have watched it if it had been voted into the lineup, but it was satisfying just to see it not get voted in. See, there was a time on the message board when this aforementioned annoying guy complained about the way club was run and how it was undemocratic, bla bla bla, which I'm pretty sure was just whining because the shows which were in the lineup just weren't the kind of thing he liked. But he's come to the meetings since then, and his ideas never make it in, so even though he isn't getting what he wants, there's no way he can complain about it because he knows it's a democratic process. HA!

I downloaded lots of Stepmania songs the other day. They're all pretty good, but one of them is this 13.5 minute long medly, which is ever so hard on my wrist. See, I don't have a dance pad yet, so I have to use the keyboard. It sucks after about 10 minutes straight. I really need that dance pad.

Oh, so this sucks. We can no longer have our normal room for anime club because of some ass new rule about keeping the room in the medical school only. So now we're going to end up in the shitty room we had for one meeting back in winter semester, which isn't tiered so it's so damn hard to see that it sucks weenies. I hope something else works out, but it probably won't. The club website is down also. I guess the U of M people gave the url to the U of M Morris anime club without checking to verify that it was actually being used by our group already. So the admins can't log on or anything. God damn it, that's shitty. Damn U of M. They just don't like our club at all. I blame the damn otaku for giving us a bad image.

But there is some good news. The club is having a Tshirt design contest, which I hope I can win but we'll see. I've already considered some ideas, but I'll really have to buckle down and work on it if I want it to be the one that people want to pick. I've got to be one of the best artists in club, but there are others who have more friends, so we'll see if it comes down to playing favorites, which I hope we're all beyond. That's not to say that there won't be someone more deserving than me, I've just been a victim of "playing favorites" before, and it's just lame. May the best person win. There are lots of new things at club this semester. Like new social nights, raffles, tshirts, and lots of other stuff. I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope to be a participant rather than just a tagalong.

eep it's 1am already. I got really messed up because I was at work really late tonight. The store closed at 9pm, and I didn't get home until after 11pm. Damn school shoppers. See, the world would be a much better if people would just put things back where they found them. But no, they have to be little shits and toss them on the floor or hide them on the shelf. Their little shits of children are no better either. Grr, I just want to stand back there on my day off tomorrow and make disgusted faces at the assholes who don't put things back. Grow up cocksuckers! You're teaching a generation of children to be lazy little buttfucks.

Phew, when that stuff starts coming out, you know it's time for me to quite writing ;P I'll let everyone know how my first day back at school goes. Hopefully something funny will happen :D
:: Jessi 9/01/2003 01:11:00 AM [+] ::
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