:: Tensai Shoujo ::

:: Sunday, June 29, 2003 ::

I was sitting around yesterday, and figured that, since I've finished Order of the Phoenix, I ought to write some sort of book review to let everyone know how it was. I mean, obviously there are tons of reviews out already, but I'll spare you the detailed plot summary of some reviewers, because I don't want to provide any severe spoilers for those of you who have yet to read the book. Anyway, on to my comments.

I'll say this first; OotP is the darkest of the series so far. Not only does it begin with Harry seriously in jeopardy of not attending Hogwarts any longer, it continues with action upon action by certain members of the Ministry of Magic that seem to be nothing more than stabs at the liberty of the students and staff of Hogwarts School. I found myself feeling more and more frustrated for the characters as the book progressed, especially Harry and Prof. Dumbledore, who often seem to bear the brunt what's going on. And the last 150 pages or so are some of the most intense I've ever read. Gone are the days when the end of the school year meant celebrating with fellow students over a tall mug of butterbeer.

I would like to mention the end portion of the book, if only to address the two significant bits of information released before the book's debut on store shelves. The first would be the death of one of the characters close to Harry (I'm sure if you really want to know who it is, you can find someone to tell you). While the death is quite tragic, I found that I wasn't exactly surprised as to the identity of the unfortunate character, and I would venture to say that most others would share my feelings on the matter. And it's also my opinion that the nature of the death does leave some room for speculation, but I'll leave that up to every individual to decide.

The other significant moment occurs when Dumbledore lets Harry in on what he "should have told him 5 years ago". I won't tell what this "secret" is, but it's very illuminating, and there's even a surprise pertaining to another character who may not have seemed significant up to this point. Very intriguing ^_^

In terms of writing style, J.K. Rowling, as usual, has done a great job of depicting a fantasy world very vividly. I've felt since reading the first book that Hogwarts and the Wizarding world balance on that thin line between fantasy and reality, as if there really could be a whole other world we Muggles are scarcely aware of.

Well, I think I did a good job not revealing anything too juicy. Go read the book, I highly recommend it, and those 870 pages go by really fast.
:: Jessi 6/29/2003 01:13:00 AM [+] ::
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Gosh, so I keep forgetting that I have this little blog here... I don't mean to neglect you, little blog.

I suppose the most monumental thing of note in the past week is that I spent last weekend up at Jenny's house (whenever I talk about it, I keep wanting to call it a cabin because it's by a lake and all that.) That was pretty fun. We stayed up late and watched movies and played games and that stuff. I got sort of frustrated because we watched "Army of Darkness," which is basically a comedy disguised as a horror film, and it is very aware of its own B-movie-ness. Well, see I got frustrated not because I didn't like the movie; on the contrary, I thought it was funny and entertaining, but because one of the other people along for the trip kept complaining about how bad it was. Well yeah, of course it was bad, which she should have known going into it. But every time something would happen, she'd reiterate how poor she thought the movie was. Well, see, generally if I find a movie too bad to watch, then I just quit watching it. Seems like the logical thing to do to me, anyway.

Anyway, I think I'm just not going to talk about that right now. I had kind of a bad night last night. I'm here at Eric's apartment, where I stayed the night. Last night I just had some sort of emotional breakdown, like all the things I bottled up just came out. You know, work frustrations, personal feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and that sort of thing. I know there ought to be some healthier way of doing this, but for some reason I just can't seem to do it. I think the problem is that I don't usually see my problems as anything worthy of telling others, because I'm sure they also have their own stuff to deal with and I don't want to impose. I just need to learn to talk about things more and to help myself as well as respecting other people.

I feel sort of exhausted right now. I meant to write more, but it's just not coming, I think I wore myself out. I'm going to sit down, and tell Eric I love him, because he really deserves it and I really mean it.
:: Jessi 6/26/2003 03:18:00 PM [+] ::
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Oooh, there's something on Food Network about foods one might find at a fair (cotton candy, candy apples, lollypops, that sort of thing.) It's really interesting, and it's making me crave the State Fair. Well, not the stinky animal part of the State Fair, just the massive amounts of food part.

Anyway

I just finished The Valley of Horses earlier today, and I've just begun The Mammoth Hunters. I should tell you about my little bookstore adventure I had on Sunday. See, Brian wanted to get together and do something, so we did our standard which is getting coffee at Caribou Coffee and hitting up the Half Price Books bookstore which is in the same building. I figured that as long as we were there, I'd look for a couple of books that I'd been interested in. The first one was one called The Handmaid's Tale, and I was interested in it because I'd read a review of it in the paper recently. Well, I couldn't remember the name of the author at the time, and I figured that I'd be out of luck because the books there are organized by author. In addition, I wasn't quite sure which genre it would be because it's fiction which deals with some themes about the future, so it could have been just fiction, or it could have been Sci-Fi. Well, Brian came to the rescue with his cell phone which connects to the internet. Sort of. It took a long time to get connected because his phone was being weird and having errors that it didn't usually have... so he rebooted it. Geez, when you have to reboot a phone, you know technology is just getting out of hand ^_^. So anyway, he finally figured out that the book was by Margaret Atwood, so I went to look in both the Sci-Fi and normal Fiction areas, and lo and behold they didn't have it. Damn. I also looked for the next book in the Earth's Children series which is called The Shelters of Stone, but all they had was the hardcover and I wanted to look around for paperback.

So then, not having found any of the books we actually wanted, we went to Barnes and Noble to see if they actually exist. I found out that The Shelters of Stone doesn't yet exist in paperback, and that The Handmaid's Tale is like thirteen dollars for a trade paperback. I decided to just look for it on Amazon or something, where I can usually save some money. Yar, but it was a fruitless journey for the most part. Well, I did find the new Utena manga that I need, but I decided that I didn't have the money for it at the moment. ::sigh::

On Monday, I got up real early and went to Eric's, and then around 5:00pm or so we met up with Brian and we went to United Noodles. I got some nice Japanese rice for my rice cooker, and lots of snacks and things to hold me over for a while. Eric got some tea and Brian got some sweet snacks. I'm just glad to have the rice, and then rice seasoning which Eric gave to me because he doesn't have a rice cooker anymore because it was his roommate's.

Anyway, my day was fine until later in the evening. At around 9:30 or something like that, my mother called me into the kitchen where she was doing dishes and tried to give me some lecture about working more and I told her that there are no hours to give so I can't work much more than I already do. So basically she decided to call me lazy, disrespect me, and treat me like I was some lousy 14 year old. So I left the room and let her stew in her own juices while I sat in my room feeling very, very depressed. I talked to Eric and cried to him over the phone. I feel like my parents want me to do things that are outside my power. It's not like there are jobs all over the place for a Japanese major. I mean, people who do computers and math have all sorts of jobs jumping out at them, because they have the skills that people give a damn about and will pay money for. I'm just above average at language, and there are no opportunities for me. Sometimes I feel like my life would've been easier if I had just tried harder at math and gotten some engineering job somewhere, but then I know that I would've hated it. So basically I'm getting punished by my family for following something that I like which doesn't have as many opportunities for employment. God, sometimes I just want to pick up and move out of the house so I don't have to be made to feel like a baby anymore. It's just the kind of insidious disrespect that makes my insides shrivel and steals my motivation. Hell, I'd been hoping to do lots of fiction writing this summer, and I feel like my motivation is just being sucked away.

I'm going to eat breakfast and hope it doesn't hurt my stomach.
:: Jessi 6/17/2003 09:33:00 AM [+] ::
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It's sort of late right now and I really need to get to bed soon, but I just have to rant a little about some stuff that I read online tonight.

Earlier in the evening, Eric sent me a link to this editorial on the Anime News Network, which is about a US anime distributor in an argument with a fansubbing group (Anime Junkies) over the fansubbing group's continued distribution of an anime title (Ninja Scroll TV) which was recently licensed for US release. If you're unfamiliar with the relationship between fansubbers and anime licensing companies I'll give you a little overview of what I understand about the whole legality issue. Basically, fansubs are translations of anime titles which haven't yet been licensed for realease in the United States. A group will translate the title, subtitle it, then release it for download over irc channels, websites, and sometimes for purchase on video tape or Video CD, though they generally only charge for shipping and tape/CD costs because it would technically be illegal for them to be making a profit from the title which wasn't theirs to begin with. It is generally understood that, once a title is licensed for release in the United States, the fansubbers will stop distribution and stop access to the files from their servers, so they can't be held responsible.

In this particular case, the Anime Junkies group hadn't taken down links to the first five episodes of the Ninja Scroll TV episodes they had translated, and when Urban Visions, the company responsible for licensing the title, contacted the group, they apparently were met with a rude response. Anime Junkies replied as if it were their right to distribute their translation, even though the series had been licensed. ( Note: I went back to the site a few minutes ago, and it seems that Anime Junkies has taken any links to Ninja Scroll off of the site.)

While this incident may be isolated, what really irks me about the whole situation is that one bad apple like Anime Junkies could potentially make things quite a bit more difficult for other fansubbing groups who operate according to the rules. Had legal action been taken in this case, it may have prompted a move towards more regulation of fansubbers, and more regulation would equal less exposure for anime in general.

Wow, I had felt a bigger rant would come of that... too bad for you guys.

As a side note, I learned the that the kanji in the word "kawaii" (cute, adorable) translate as "to be worthy of love" (ka = worthiness and ai = love). And you other Japanese students thought that there weren't any kanji for "kawaii", suckers :P I win.
:: Jessi 6/11/2003 12:21:00 AM [+] ::
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Wooo, sinus medication... yeah, I've been sick the past few days. Last week it was a sore throat, then a little fever, and now my sinuses are stuffed up like, well, like something stuffy. I think I just need to get more sleep, but then I always need more sleep. I've slept for ten or eleven hours somedays, and still felt like I hadn't gotten enough sleep. Oh well.

Yesterday was my sister's graduation open house, and that was just crazy crazy (yeah, I meant to write the word twice). Saturday evening we picked Eric up so that he could stay the night. We picked up some tables from where my dad used to work, then got some allergy medicine at Target for because Eric is allergic to kitties and we have four of those. We cut some buns in half after we got home so that they'd form easily into sandwiches for the guests, and then got ready for bed. Well, sort of. We watched Hellraiser III, which was sort of stupid and laughable. Then we went to bed, or tried to at least. I couldn't sleep for some reason. Then I got up the next morning and felt really crappy. I think some of it was not sleeping well, but I was also really stressed out about everything and I broke down crying and probably made Eric freak out about me. It was nothing a couple rounds of Tetris Attack couldn't cure though.

The party itself went off without a hitch, and we ended up having a lot of food left over, so we sent a lot of it home with Eric, because we never would have eaten it all ourselves. We'll all be eating lunch meat and veggies for the rest of the week...

I've got a headache so I'm going to finish this off early. I don't want to take another sinus med because it'll make me drop off to sleep again (I almost fell asleep in the bathtub earlier...)
:: Jessi 6/09/2003 11:19:00 PM [+] ::
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I feel much better that I've gotten back to at least something of a normal blogging schedule. I took way too long of a hiatus, and I was just bursting for an outlet for my awesomely creative writing style. Awesomely creative meaning boring and trite, of course. Really the best I could hope for would be middlingly mediocre, but that might be pushing it. Someday I'll write a funny story that isn't dumb, I know it. Then maybe I can get famous writing books and I can do my Japanese translating on the side. Now that would be a perfect life ^_^ I seriously wouldn't mind writing young adult fantasy books for the rest of my life, you know? That would be fun. Then I could write all about dragons and armor and swords... I like swords!

Today we went to the Como zoo. It was pretty fun. What was really nice was to actually get outside and get some air, even though it was pretty hot. To tell you the truth, it felt pretty good just to sweat a little for once. I've been naughty so far this summer and I've spent too much time in front of my computer in the relative coolness of my room. Anyway, first we stopped for lunch. I packed peanut butter and jelly, plus some side items, for Eric and I. Jenny, Marni, and Jeanine and Alan were there also. After that we hung around the zoo there for a while, and saw most or all of the animals. My favorites were the orangutans who were wearing T-shirts (I'm serious! There was one who had wrapped himself up in a T-shirt so that he looked like he was wearing a strait jacket). I was also quite amused by these little monkeys who looked like they had little curled French mustaches. And then there were the gorillas. There was one sitting on a hammock in the gorilla pen, and she laid back and the way her hand was resting made her look like she was diddling herself, as we were saying at the time. We are all six years old, did I forget to mention that? Anyway, it was sad to see the animals in such small pens, but some of it was amusing anyway.

After looking at all the animals we cared to see, we went to the Como conservatory, which has lots of pretty plants inside. We walked around for a while, and saw all sorts of jungle-like plants, plus lots of bonsai trees in this one room that was a bonsai room. Then there was the room with the fountain and all the flowers that smelled sweet like candy. I like that room a lot, but when we went in there we shared it with a bunch of poorly-behaved children, or "yard apes" as I like to call them. They were picking flowers and waving the stems in the water, bothering the goldfish that were in there. Tards. They were also sticking their hands in the water, and basically being a collective nuisance. You know, I'm all for giving children an opportunity to learn about the world in which they live, but damn, don't take them on a field trip where they could potentially be damaging lots of rare plants and flowers, and then not give them the supervision they require. Damn, common sense. Afterwards, we decided to go to the Japanese garden, which was accessed through the conservatory greenhouse building. On our way down the path to the garden, we noticed an ambulance and a fire truck, plus a crowd gathered out front. I looked like the paramedics were treating someone right next to the outside of the building, but not wanting to gawk, we continued on without finding out much more.

The Japanese garden was pretty interesting. It was mostly about the layout and style of the garden rather than the plants which weren't too noticeable on their own. There was a roped off area that we didn't get to go down. We asked a guide and she said that it was a replica of a Japanese tea house, but that it was under construction so that we couldn't go and see it. Too bad, it sounded interesting. After we finished walking around in there, we decided to leave out the nearest gate, which just so happened to take us past the scene of whatever accident had taken place. The only thing we could see was that one of the panes of glass which made up one of the windows of the greenhouse was shattered, and we speculated that someone had fallen on it and got cut, or fainted into the window, or something like that. Sort of a strange occurrence, anyway.

After we were all done at Como park, we left back for Blaine to drop of Alan and Jeanine at their house, and then we went to Anoka because Jenny and Marni wanted to go to a specific coffee house that they've been talking about ever since the first time they'd been there, which had to have been a couple of years ago at least. It was in the sort of "historical" part of Anoka, which meant that finding a place to park, especially during the busy evening hours, was going to be a bitch. We spent at least 10 minutes driving around before we figured it out. The coffee shop itself was pretty quirky, and the size of the Italian soda was pretty big compared to Starbucks or something like that, so it was kind of nice. We even got to read part of a Glamour magazine, especially the s-e-x articles, tee hee ^_^ I'll remind you that we're all actually six years old. We got dinner at Baker's Square after that, then headed for the Mall of America, where we spent most of the time there wandering around, except when I got thirsty and had an Orange Julius. Too expensive, but pretty good anyway. The best thing we did there was go to the Sharper Image store, where I was introduced to the massage chair of awesomeness. I sat there for waaaay too long getting a massage. I also had a great time at Williams Sonoma, as I always do. I can't get enough of that store, I tell you. I saw a set of copper cookware that I would want if I had my own place. 800 dollars though... not right now :) I'm poor and a college student! The store did make me feel very domestic, though, hee hee.

We were pretty satisfied when we left, since we'd spent the whole day having a good time. Eric kept telling me how much he liked hanging out with my friends, and that made me feel really good. I'll say that I think my friends are generally very good people, and they are good about including other people most of the time. I'll say that I liked spending time with Eric's friends when we were out actually doing stuff, but the one time I spent with all of them at Denny's sort of made me feel awkward. Like two of them were arguing philosophy and it didn't seem like either of them had a solid grasp of what they were talking about, and I sensed this but didn't want to be an ass and call them on it. And then some of them went to play Magic cards, and all I could think while they were doing it was, "my friends got over this in the 8th grade." And the smoking. I'm very sensitive to smoking, and yet I was getting pelted in the face with it. As nice as they were, I had trouble getting beyond that. I think that's probably more of a weakness in myself, because I must say in general I think they are nice people, but in some ways I didn't feel very welcomed into the group, and maybe I could have tried harder myself to be a participant. I mean, I do like some of Eric's friends a whole lot. Like Willie, who I can share playful insults with, and Jo, who laughs at my stupid jokes (^.^). And I really liked his friend Cara (sp?) and her boyfriend Mike, who were both really nice and easy to get along with. But I think my friends are just really good at allowing people into the group, and I think that's just the type of people I'm used to.

Heh, anyway, so I got this rice cooker today. Well, really my mom went and bought it, but I told her which one to get and she got her employee discount and everything. I really wanted one because Eric introduced me to the merits of Japanese rice this semester, and so I really wanted to have it at my convenience, rather than only at his apartment. When we dropped him off he even gave me the remainder of his rice because he didn't have access to a rice cooker anymore. The one he used wasn't really his, it was his room mate's, and she moved out at the end of Spring semester. What I never understood was that, even though the rice cooker was hers, and she brought it for the sole reason to let Eric use it and never used it once herself like ever, she took it back anyway when she moved out. Now, I suppose it might have been her mom's or something, but if I had ownership of something and I saw someone getting more use out of it than I ever would, it would just be easier for me to leave it with them and be gone with it, rather than having it sitting around and taking up space. Oh well, it's not really any of my business.

So yeah, rice. I hope I can get some of that seasoning that Eric has. I can't remember what it's called, but it has dried seaweed and some other dried veggies and sesame seeds in it, and it's really good. I'll have to take a trip to United Noodles soon and pick up some more rice and some of that seasoning. I hope eating rice and stuff will help clean out my system, because I've been eating lots of crummy food and sweets lately, and I kind of want to start over and eat some not so nasty stuff. And maybe get some exercise, thought that might be a stretch ^_^

I have to mention something that I feel sort of bad about though. Like, Marni had this job that was going to have her working every day from 2pm-10pm, which would mean it would be that much harder for us to hang out, and it made me sad. But she actually just quit her job yesterday, and now she doesn't have another lined up yet. However, selfishly I'm sort of happy for the fact that I'll get to see her some more. It's not like I don't want her to make money, but I miss her when she's gone at school, and now we'll have an easier time hanging out. Plus she can come to anime club when it starts up later in the month ^_^ Always a plus.

Ah, and I have another little secret to tell. See, at a past craptacular (where we watch bad or weird anime at club during finals week) we watched a show called "Princess Tutu" which was like the most cracktacular thing I'd seen to that point. It's basically about ballet and a duck. So yeah, I laughed really hard and I'm like, "why would anyone watch this?" But the thing is, I've heard so much positive stuff about it (albeit it's been from people that I wouldn't necessarily associate with if I didn't see them at club ever week) that I decided to download a couple of episodes and try it again. I watched the first episode again to refresh myself, and I find that it's actually sort of funny... but it remains to be seen if it really actually has some redeeming value. I'm also downloading "Kaze no Yojimbo" at Eric's recommendation, plus I want to finish getting "Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai" though that'll be more difficult since the show's been licensed, so I'll have to go looking on kazaa which has been acting like a bitch lately. Ah, well.

I think I ought to go to bed because I have to work tomorrow morning, and I'd like to be rested.

P.S. I got the hiccups today, so maybe I should learn not to make fun of the people in my group who have them -_-;;
:: Jessi 6/06/2003 12:18:00 AM [+] ::
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Dude, so I've been playing this game of "Bookworm" on www.popcap.com for like two days now. I'm on like level 8, which is like the farthest I've managed to get in a long, long time. It's good mental exercise, especially since I've been doing nothing stimulating so far this summer.

So yesterday I started to feel really sick. It started off as a scratchy throat, then progressed to exhaustion, and now I have a slight fever. I hope it doesn't get any worse, because I just really don't want to be battling illness during the summer. It's more depressing then. After having taken a shower, I feel a little better, we'll see if I can shake the illness before it gets bad.

So what am I planning to do today? Most likely some artwork, which has been sorely lacking thus far, and probably some reading. I finished Clan of the Cave Bear the other day, and now I'm on to the second in the series, The Valley of Horses. I'm hoping to lead up into reading the fifth book in the series which just came out last year, and which I haven't yet read. I'm hoping that it might be out in paperback by now, but I'm not so sure. I read a couple of reviews about the new book when it first came out, and the one criticism of it that seemed to remain constant was that Ayla, the main character, was beginning to become a bit unbelievable. Meaning that she was coming up with innovations at a pace unreal for an actual human of the time to have come up with them (the story takes place during the last ice age.) Meaning that she was basically becoming superhuman in nature. I think my opinion on the matter is that the more interesting part of this series is learning about the (speculated) culture of the time period, and even though Ayla may be somewhat unbelievable, the interesting part of the books is learning about just what human of the time were coming up with. The easiest way of doing that would be to confine these inventions to a singular area. Anyway, I hope to get a hold of the book at some point so I can compare my reactions to those of the professional critics.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to go to Como park with Jenny and Eric, and a couple of other folks (I can't remember who Jenny said was going to come, oh well.) It should be fun, though the Como Zoo is a little depressing because the cages for the animals are too small. Maybe we'll go to the Como Park conservatory, though. That's something I always think is really interesting.

I think I'm gonna go back to watching the Food Network now, they're making some mouth watering stuff and it's distracting me ^_^
:: Jessi 6/04/2003 12:34:00 PM [+] ::
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Hey guys... yeah, I know I haven't updated in a long, long time. See, there's something about me that maybe you need to understand. Like, during the busiest times of my life, all I can think about is how much easier things like this will be when I don't have three papers to write and a test to study for. But when I'm done being busy, like during summer vacation, I just have no motivation to do the things that I wanted more time for when I was overwhelmed. It's odd, isn't it? So that's why I haven't written anything for like the past couple of weeks. I've been so non-busy that I find myself just sitting in front of the computer watching anime or playing games, and not working on something constructive. And I have half of an entry about my adventures at Anime Central saved somewhere on my computer. I don't know if I'll actually finish it now, though...

I actually have been sort of depressed lately. I couldn't think of a reason for it until I hung out with some friends the other day. I came to the realization that I'm one of the few people I know who doesn't have something adventurous or different planned for the summer. Meaning I'm not going to some foreign country, I don't have an internship, and basically I'm not doing anything related to academics. Many of my friends either have jobs which will consume a lot of their time, or are going to be out of the state for something or another, and I'm beginning to feel like the odd one out because I haven't really made an effort to do anything similar. I suppose part of it is that my major in particular is sort of lacking in opportunities for extra work. I mean, I could tutor Japanese I suppose, but I don't really have the resources to do so. And there's always the option of studying in Japan, which would be viable if I had money... that's another thing. I've fallen into this awful rut with my job. I don't like it very much, as I'm sure you know, and yet, I have no motivation to go and find something better. I don't understand myself, I really don't. So anyway, last night this all came to a head and I was on the phone with Eric crying about it because I was feeling extremely inadequate. I was having this feeling that I wasn't living up to my high potential, and it was really pretty miserable.

So anyway, it's been a rough couple of days, but I got some watercolor stuff to do and a couple of story ideas. Even if my stories are dumb, they are entertaining ^_^

I am tired. Maybe a recount of my Anime Central trip will be forthcoming, maybe it won't. We'll see.
:: Jessi 6/02/2003 11:23:00 PM [+] ::
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