:: Tensai Shoujo ::

:: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 ::

I hate to say this, but I have a problem. It might not seem serious, but it really bothers me. I have this problem where I get frustrated with people who think slower or differently than I do. I want to think of myself as open minded and accepting, but when it comes down to it, anyone who doesn't "get it" right away just pisses me off. This makes me really upset with myself.

To certain individuals in my Japanese class: even though you may be "smarter" than other people in the class, and by that I mean knowing vocabulary that we haven't learned in class, you just sound like a jackass when you use words that other people don't understand and make up huge gramatically-complicated sentences. Wanna know what? That just pisses people off. There's a difference between being smart without flaunting it, and being a sucker for attention who studies too much (and yes, one can study too much when it comes at the expense of being a well-rounded person). How to fix this? Just quit kissing up to the teacher, save your extra vocab for some outside venture, and quit trying to be the center of attention by asking grammar questions you already know the answer to. That is all.
:: Jessi 10/29/2003 02:07:00 AM [+] ::
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What I want for Christmas this year:
to be able to finally write a book
to learn to make sushi
to be able to speak up in class
to be able to speak up for myself
to like who I am
to move out
to get a new job
to be able to accept compliments
to be able to accept criticism
to be able to accept other people
to eat better
to exercise more
to learn more about sewing
to cook more
to focus on the beauty of the world
to be fully accepting when Eric tells me he loves me
to be able to express my love with the same earnesty
:: Jessi 10/27/2003 11:15:00 PM [+] ::
...

Jenny was just asking me questions about Red Lobster restaurant. It reminded me of this story about how awesome my parents have been to me in the past. Let me tell you.

It was sometime in high school, and my friend Nate invited me to go to Red Lobster after I was done with work (there's a Red Lobster about a block away from Target). Well, I asked my parents and they said it was fine, so Nate met me at work and we went right over. Well, I don't know if you've ever been there, but basically Red Lobster is always horribly busy. So we got over there I'd say about 6:45, and we didn't get seated until 8:00 or thereabouts. Anyway, we ate and I got home about 9:30. My parents freaked out at me, because they didn't believe that we had to wait that long and they were accusing me of going off and doing something else. So I was grounded for a week, and they probably hit me or something too, I think I've probably blocked it out. It's awesome how no one trusts me, it really makes me feel like a great person and a valued member of my family. I hope someday I can carry on this wonderful legacy of passive-aggressiveness and abuse.

Actually, I hope that someday I can leave it behind me.
:: Jessi 10/27/2003 10:59:00 PM [+] ::
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Ever notice how I always update this when I'm feeling bad? I had a bad day today. I got into a fight with Eric about employment. I said that I should get a job at Marshall Field's downtown, but that would require me to live in Minneapolis, or at least near school because that is a long bus ride and I'd have to get up really early or stay fairly late, which is not feasible with school. He didn't seem to understand this, and told me that I was in denial or something like that. Am I always so wrong? Don't I know what I can and can't do? I'm not in denial. If I worked downtown, that would leave me precious little time to do homework and whatnot. So I've been in a bad mood most of the day. I cried in the bathroom at school, which calmed me down enough to get through class, but now I feel like I'm going to cry again. And to top it off, my parents aren't any help either. They went to the grocery store, and then got home and yelled for me. Well, I was in the middle of sewing in my room, so I yelled "what?" from my room, but they wouldn't answer me. Then they called again, and the same happened. Finally my mom said "do you eat food here?" and it turned out that they needed me to help bring in the damn groceries, but I don't deserve to be asked if I have time or are in the middle of something apparently. Obviously I'm some shitty ungrateful 14 year old trapped in a 21 year old body. I can't live here anymore.

I went to an overnight party at Jo's and Lori's apartment over the weekend. It was fun until about 4am where I hit my wall and had to go to sleep. I had been up almost 24 hours at that point. They have a really cute kitty, who's sort of timid so I didn't really get to cuddle it. We watched crappy horror movies all night (well, some of them, like '28 days later,' were good). It was pretty funny.

Sewing on my costume isn't going quickly. I'm just not motivated, and I think it's just due to being depressed and having stuff due in school that's not quite imminent, but close enough. I'm interested in what I got on my Japanese tests, I hope it's good news rather than bad.

Back to sewing now.
:: Jessi 10/27/2003 10:46:00 PM [+] ::
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So we had kind of a heated discussion in my premodern Japanese lit class today, which is quite unusual because generally people don't respond very enthusiastically to the prompting the teacher gives. I suppose I'll have to go back to the beginning to try and explain the situation as it happened. Today for class, one of our readings was on the history of the Samurai class in Japan, who went from utilizing fighting technique in the purely martial sense, towards developing it, in times of peace, as an artform. The teacher wanted us to look at the article through the scope of Marxist criticism, which (if you aren't familiar with it) chooses to look at texts/situations as if things are all motivated by socioeconomic circumstances. The first person to raise his hand commented that he didn't find that Marxist criticism was applicable in this case, but there were many people who disagreed with his opinion. The discussion then began to transform itself into a debate about whether critical theories developed in the Western world are applicable to an Eastern situation. People were just going back and forth and back and forth about it. One side was saying that, even though you may try and utilize a theory from a location/culturally-neutral position, the fact that it was developed based on Western thinking will always leave some taint to the resultant analysis. The other was saying that any theory which doesn't base itself on specific cultural references will be equally applicable to a text from any culture. While I can see each side, I think that these two camps were missing the boat on the original cause for debate. The original point raised was that Marxism didn't seem particularly applicable to the specific text that we were reading in class, and it is my opinion that, while you can argue that any method of criticism can be applied to any text, the reality is that they won't equally apply to every text. If there's just not a lot of mention about the economics of the situation in the text, then it's foolish to try and dig for references that will apply to Marxism, and it's just as foolish to make uninformed speculation just to be able to utilize that framework.

Phew, so anyway, I spent two hours after that working on stuff for Japanese class. Even though I enjoy Japanese, it's been getting on my nerves lately. For today we had to read this long reading out of the book which was sort of hard to understand, and then answer some questions and finish off the second half of a letter. In the coming weeks, we have a chapter test, which is going to be darn difficult if it's anything like the last one, and we also have an oral interview and a project. Gyah. Eric's been having a difficult time with things lately too. We were talking to each other today about how it seems like the class has been geared more and more towards the students who have spent time in Japan. This may sound silly, but we both noticed that on the last test, these people in our class were all in the 90-95 range while a good majority of the people were doing below their performance of last year. That just seems wrong to me. In addition, the translations on the test have seemingly been unduly difficult, or just plain unclear (I'm talking Engrish-y here). Yeah, they're sentences that are based on specific translation exercises we do in class, but some of these sentences take me ten minutes to translate, and I even need the book in front of me to complete them sometimes. So just imagine the same type of thing, only with no outside help. Sheesh. Anyway, with Eric and I both in this situation, I feel like our frustrations are just compounding on each other, and that's not cool at all. Like, today he was having trouble with most of the homework for today, and he was asking for help. And I had enough trouble coming up with my own answers, it was really difficult to try and come up with original answers for him too, so I just sort of clammed up, and that's really difficult for us. *sigh* So it goes in college.

I may have mentioned a dumbass on the Anime Club message board earlier. Well, to give you a picture about just how annoying he is, take this example. Currently, the person with the most amount of posts on the board is someone named "Darth Sauron" and he has something like 390 or something as I remember. He joined back in February after the board had just been established. This aforementioned dumbass has been a member since September 12th, and has spammed his way to 317 posts in just the past month. Well, the mods finally got fed up with his annoying attitude and banned him for a month. I know it was for the best, but for some reason, I'll miss having this person to argue with all the time :D he he. Oh, and this guy did something else. He directly linked to some banners on the Anime Club page, and posted them on his stupid blog. So Eric and friends changed the filenames of the good ones, and made the files that Kyubi linked to quite humorous :D It was funny. Sadly, though, if you go and look on the blog now, he re-directly linked to the normal ones on the site, so I notified the board admins about it and I'm going to wait and see what happens.

I just got off the phone with Eric a little bit ago. He had a pretty bad evening apparently. School pressures and stuff. And to top that off, his brother made a powerpoint presentation, and in the frame about his family he made fun of Eric. Eric wanted to retaliate and add on another frame saying bad things about his brother, but I figured that something like that would just make his brother want to retaliate, so he decided against it.

Wow, so you knew I couldn't go an entire blog post without saying something depressing, so here goes. Eric and some friends decided to start a little thing that's sort of an "everything but anime" club. It's for watching Japanese movies, music videos, dramas etc. which aren't anime (Japan does put out more than just anime you know ;D). Anyway, I was really, really looking forward to it, because it's just a small group of people with similar interests getting together and having a good time, without the extra dumbasses running around and making things frustrating. Well, I didn't exactly know this, but I guess a couple nights ago, Eric and the others decided over AIM that they'd start having it on Sunday evenings, which is fine for most people, but with my schedule it doesn't really go well because of my job and all that. So I overheard one of the other people in the group mention it last night at anime club, and I mentioned to Eric that it was a bad night because I'd most likely always be working that night. He told me that Sunday was the only night that would work because the day that I was free, Friday, he would usually be heading home for the weekend. So I was suddenly overcome with this intense wave of sadness, that must have been readily apparent to anyone in the vicinity, but luckily that was only Eric at the time. I had worked myself up to being so excited about this new thing, that it was such a blow to be disappointed like that. I guess my feeling was that I longed to be part of something new, that if this new "club" turned out to be something enduring, I would be able to look back and say, "wow, I was part of that." I guess I have this thing in my ego that really wants to leave a legacy, to have something of my own, and to be accepted. Now if I don't get to go this semester, and start going, say, next semester, I'll forever be the "newbie". I'll never belong to that exclusive group that started things. It might sound cliche, but it's like being trapped on the outside watching everyone else bond together. Oh Jessi, why are you so sensitive?

So Eric's IRC friend is heading the art staff of this RPG and wants illustrations for it. I signed on and requested the offer of a copy of the instructions to read so that I could get a better Idea of what was expected. He still hasn't gotten back to me on that... and the deadline is Halloween for the one I want to work on. So I've been halfheartedly working on a few sketches, but I don't work well without more definite direction, so it's not really helpful or anything.

I think that's enough writing for tonight. I've been working on this post bit by bit over like three hours now 0_o. He he.
:: Jessi 10/17/2003 10:06:00 PM [+] ::
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Guess what? Tonight I'm typing from Eric's place, because I finally got a chance to stay over here. It was a luxury that I had most of the summer, but not much lately, so it's nice.

I did have a bit of a rude awakening this morning, however. I can't remember if I mentioned the anime club Tshirt contest at all, but in short, there was a contest to design the MAS Tshirt for this year, and voting was this weekend for the designs. I submitted a design, which took me a total of about three hours to put together, and had a design of a schoolgirl and a little creature on it. I liked it a lot, and I thought it had more to offer than most of the other entries. In fact, I had narrowed the top contenders down to my design, and the one by Vu Dang, which was really nice and also worthy. Well, the results came in today, and Vu's won, which didn't disagree with me because I decided that, in the end, it really was more appealing. I assumed that mine would be close to the front, because it really was the one that had the most design aesthetics other than the one which was the winner. However, it didn't come in second, or even third (there were two designs tied for third, neither of which was mine). No, I was one of the nameless rabble which basically fell under the category of "thanks for coming." I don't know, when I read that, I felt my insides drop. It's not necessarily earth shattering when you lose a contest at something you're no good at, but when you lose a contest, trying your best, doing something in which you have some documented skill, well, it's very depressing. I can blame it on the fickleness of the otaku mind, I can blame it on not being in tune with the kind of humor that otaku like (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but in the end, it's really just a slam to my ego and it seriously hurt me more than I let on most of the day today. No offense to Vu, whose design was very deserving.

Besides that, oh yeah, so I was in a wedding on Saturday. It was Jill's wedding, and even though she is my dear friend, for some reason I was dreading it. I don't know if it was the fact that I didn't really know anyone else who was a part of it, or the fact that it was a lot more religious than I expected, but there was just something that was making me feel uncomfortable. I must mention that this was a Catholic wedding, and I also must stress that, currently, my belief system doesn't really match with most forms of Christianity. So yeah, that was quite an interesting situation (mainly because I didn't know any of the prayers or the songs, so I just had to kind of stand around and pretend to look thoughtful when such things were going on, he he). Not to mention that I found the ceremony to be a bit impersonal... I don't know how to explain it. I hear that Jeremy, now Jill's husband, had specific ideas about what he wanted in a wedding ceremony, and I don't feel like Jill had much input, and sort of left it up to him and his family (mostly his mother.) I guess if that's what she expected, then it's okay and I shouldn't complain. When I think about myself, I always have some idea of what I'd like in a ceremony (actually, more an idea about what I wouldn't like, but anyway) so I guess not having an equal say really isn't an option for me. Note to self: quit judging other people based only on yourself and your situation. In any case, Jeremy is a great guy, Jill is a great gal, and I know they'll have a good life together. So congratulations you two.

I am happy that I do have a something nice to talk about, though. I've reached a point now where I've decided to stop letting Christianity make me feel like a bad person. For a long time, I've either resented the fact that I wasn't raised with some sort of Christian upbringing (which would have made certain aspects of my public life a lot smoother and would have required less thought, which is an appealing though ulitmately undesirable prospect), or felt I was a victim of a Christian society resentful (or violent) towards those who don't subscribe to the same ideals. Well, I've decided that it's not worth my time. I've come to the conclusion that all belief systems, or lack therof, all have equal merit to the people who believe them, whether I personally believe them or not. However, if one belief system consciously denies others legitimacy, and we all know who I'm talking about here, then it really isn't deserving of much respect. Basically, if it's hurting other people, denying them rights, and spreading hateful messages, what benefit does it have to a society which is already not in good shape? I'm much more interested in letting people do their thing, because all I really want is to do my thing without being harassed and told that I'm going to hell for not following a particular path. So anyway, I'm at least comfortable with that decision now, and I feel like it's something I won't have to worry about.

I think Eric really wants me to finish up, and it truly is getting late, so I'm going to wrap things up for now. I really want to write more often, but I'm so lazy sometimes or I don't remember. Hopefully more soon ;D
:: Jessi 10/14/2003 12:42:00 AM [+] ::
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