I took a walk through the lovely picket fence and apple pie suburbs, where there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the sky was a deep, deep blue. Beautiful, but strange; perhaps the calm before the storm. People thought I was weird.. local resident kids were like, "Are you lost? Cuz I saw you walking by five minutes ago."

Well, I got this letter in the mail about preparations for Hurricane Isabel, and we won't know if the school is closed until Thursday morning... I may not be going home this weekend after all.. first of all because Andrew is visiting and second because I'm not sure I want my parents driving through the highway in the rain.

Lori's been feeling bad. Here's what you do when you feel like shit, as I have discovered; Take a walk (though it turns out the wheat field actually is authorized personnel only... so we cannot go, or at least we must take care not to get caught) It also turns out that we have a pond, with a dirt trail that goes around it through wooded patches, with thorny briars, ducks, and a small wooden patio and mossy bird houses, all of which seem to have been abandoned for a long time. Or, go to the gym. Movement is a the ultimate cure for ennui and restlessness.

The weight machines scare the crap out of me but treadmills and other low impact cardio are my friend....

As are hot showers, after the treadmill.

Also, Dan Savage. Anything to make you laugh.

You know what the dining hall is good for? Coffee. Yes. All the coffee you could possibly want, with all the cream you could possibly want, and by default all the sugar you could possibly want though I think sugar ruins an otherwise perfectly heavenly cup of coffee. After you've got your cup of coffee, you must sip it with a straw.

Have a cuppa. It'll make you happy.

Damn hurricane.

Now I must go out and hoard food and move my roommate's printer and all my computer stuff away from the windows.

Casey and her boyfriend are watching Dude Where's My Car. This isn't exactly quality cinema, but it has its good points:

1) Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott's slashy kiss. (insert fangirlish squealing here)
2) Maybe I'm nuts, but I liked the narrative structure. I mean, nobody likes Dude Where's My Car for its narrative structure but I do. There's something about not knowing what happened, and then going places to find out bit by bit that's just cool.
3) The repeated use of the word "shibby." This is some food for thought; I want to know the etymological origins of it.
4) A lifetime supply of pudding.
5) Monty Python references
6) Totally Gay Nordic Dudes
7) The fact that Chester is a total pothead, but knows his Animal Planet. I think it's adorable.
8) "Honaouble!"
9) When the Chinese tailor says "wasted" in Chinese, what he actually says is "trash bag" in Cantonese. That cracked me up when I heard it.

Dude in a nutshell.

I was reading everyone (from high school)'s blogs today, catching up with old things, and it made me feel remotely sad. Everyone is so happy, and it seems, infinitely more mature than me. Of peoples' blogs... Ranwa, Sharon and Puffy are all going places and seem to be rising and filled to the brim with potential... perhaps twenty years later I will be like, "Guess who I knew in high school?" Me... well, I'm happy sometimes, sad sometimes, which is a lot like how it used to be. I thought that college would be this big, brilliant life-altering change, but life continues more or less the same, in a different place. I don't know if these are the Best Years of My Life or whatever.

Also, everyone is so different... if I met my high school friends in the street now I wonder if I'd still become friends with them. Everyone is "nice" you know... and I'm sure most people are honest and decent, and enough have common interests, and I'd probably get along with them. I wonder if that really is what friendship is, though... just finding the people who are in your approximate vicinity, and nice enough.... and not something inherent in the human spirit. People always say you'll fall in love with The One and when you're in love you'll know it. Perhaps something similar has been said of friends... when someone is a kindred spirit with you you'll know it. I wonder how much of that is true, or if I won't be stuck with a bunch of "People I'm okay with" for a good long time. Perhaps my switches are malfunctioning... am I not in love and do I not have friends, or is it just that I am in love and do have friends but am being divided between so many people that I just don't know how to tell any longer? I have been in love and had had friends, and this doesn't feel quite like that, which is what confuses me. Of course you'll say, "What, relax, you've only had two weeks, you'll get to know people better" but it makes me wonder, how people have such strong bonds already.

My roommate invited her boyfriend and her girlfriend to stay last night, and the four of us got on as if we'd known each other forever, though I think that may partially have to do with the fact that three of the four had known each other forever. That made me happy; I thought it'd be weird having two additional random strangers living in my room.

I don't really know how things will be.

Yesterday, I went to Arundel Mills with Sexy Genius Pat and his friend Matt. It was quite fun, actually, and I was pleasantly surprised after I thought about it that guys would go to a mall. We saw Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which was good, and I think my first rated R "action" movie ever (I don't really consider the Cube, which is horror, Gladiator, which is a historical epic, or the Matrix, which is sci-fi/philosophical). Yes, Johnny Depp was in it, and happily, he is the type of actor who isn't good in just one movie.

Pat bought a Neo trenchcoat from Hot Topic, and I got a Zelda t-shirt, but we paid for it with my credit card, coming to a whopping sum of $98.70, of which he repaid me with $80 in cash (which is the cost of his coat). I don't mind walking around with like $2000 on my credit card, but walking around with $80 in greenbacks is just bizarre. It's a different mindset for some reason; I don't feel comfortable with having $80 in "spending money" which is what cash is to me, while the credit card was more like, "This is here if you need it." My room and board and tuition is free, so I have quite a bit of leeway in how much I spend on "stuff," but still. In high school I mostly didn't carry a wallet at all until senior year, and I usually had like.. fives. And then I'll have to explain my bank statement to my mom once she gets it; what I spent $98 at a mall on.

Pat looks hot in his trenchcoat though, and it is quite practical. I think the major payoff will come once it snows.

The downside, or perhaps the upside, of hanging out with Pat is that I have to constantly not think about jumping his bones. It's distracting, you know? I don't think he knows quite how hot he is, and I feel bad, because he has a girlfriend already and also it's just a fundamental aspect of courtesy to stop looking at people's crotches every once in a while and pay attention to the words coming out of their mouths. I don't think I even like him like him (I've known him for all of what, two weeks), I just want to do dirty things with him. Which is inconsiderate (of me).

Quote (from today, in a seperate context): "I'll fuck him til he loves me!"

Anyway... we went back to Matt's room and watched Spawn the animated series on DVD, which was gratuitously violent and annoyed me, so after a while I spent most of the time lying on Matt's absent roommate's bed watching Pat. Pat's roommate Eric came back, but he was depressed because his home life is bad, which is one of the downsides of being gay. His parents are disappointed that he won't have children, so home is a strained place... I don't know what I would do if I were gay; I think a lot of the things that gay people have to deal with I don't even given a second thought to in my everyday life. Pat made him take a shower, despite Eric's warning that, "If I take a shower I'm going to have sex and if I have sex you're leaving," because Pat would rather leave the room for a night than have Eric continue to be depressed ("Sex will make you feel better!").

I hear (this morning) that Eric got his boyfriend and played Scrabble.

Nonetheless, the result is the same; Eric is in a brilliant mood.

I wonder if I should not type of people's personal problems on my blog, especially one that they don't read, and therefore upon which they can't defend themselves. Sometimes it feels like a tabloid. However, it is a blog of my life, and as time passes other people's lives are getting more involved with my own.

Sharon W asked if I link to my creative writing. Well, I didn't, but I feel I should. So here. The only thing I've written with an actual plot. Does it make sense? Nah... still, it has a semblance of a plot. If you're wondering why it's so funky, no, that is not my usual writing syle.

It was a very blah day.

The most uneventful September 11 ever.

And you know what I realized?

I'm not dead.

This is a very hopeful sentiment. The sun rises tomorrow for me.

This is warm and friendly

See. We don't suck so bad. I feel better.

Malex called me on Thursday, but I found that I didn't really miss him all that much. I don't miss anyone, I don't care about anyone, I don't... anything.

Fencing Boys

Are you into pale skinny boys who have long hair tied up in ponytails, facial hair and big glasses?

If so, fencing is for you!

Something to mention; today is the Chinese Midautumn Moon Festival. As you can see, the moon is full.

Link Courtesy of Azoriel

Check your color vision.

Bah, people were up at one thirty last night playing field hockey... in the hallway. What the hell?

Meeting People

Have been meeting a lot of people, actually. Andrew who showed up at the first Ancient Studies Club meeting on Monday... I'm ostracizing him, and by ostracizing I mean going to his room and calling him a poopyhead. Yesterday we saw the tail hour of the Two Towers with Russel, his friend from across the hall, and cheered very loudly in all the right places. I'd forgotten how good that movie was. We went to fencing together, where he kept noting how different it was from wrestling. Lori was there too... there was a humongous group, and even though it was the second meeting most people hadn't gone the first time, so we did... en garde... advance... retreat.... lunge... again. Blah. Anyway, Andrew is the world's biggest Terry Goodkind fan, and wants to lend me Stone of Tears. I'm like, "No." But his Morrowind music is very atmospheric for Wizard's First Rule... partly because he has great speakers. He blasts the Pirate of the Caribbean soundtrack from his super powerful speakers, and the subwoofers make everything vibrate. He has to be careful though, because apparently he blew a speaker with that soundtrack, just having cranked it all the way up. The Pirates soundtrack is some great stuff. He has introduced me to Boogie Knights, a band that sings parody songs with a D&D slant.

He's sick though, quite possibly from eating pizza immediately before fencing, despite all of us warning him not to. Silly. So I couldn't really hang out with him today.

Alex and Shayne are some other random Gothesque people from my Archaeology class today. They're interested in fencing on Thursday.

Totally by accident, I ran into the room of Joe and John when I was looking for the source of the Star Spangled Banner played on the sax, which was audible all down the first floor hall. They weren't playing it, but Joe turns out to be like the president or something of Ancient Studies Club, and he recognized me from the first meeting, though I didn't talk to him there. He had a paper on witchcraft to write, but he was nice enough. Amusing things to note; he has a giant cardboard Tuvok in his room, which he uses as a coatrack... though I personally think it'd be creepy to have a giant Vulcan staring at me in my sleep. He's a great sci-fi/fantasy fan of course. A significant portion of his bookshelf is devoted to Robert Jordan. He also has nearly the entire Alexander the Great trilogy by Mary Renault, who I love to death. Alexander the Great is my favorite conqueror ever. He ownz j00. (I did my EE on him and read a biographies and a bunch of articles, have the Iron Maiden song about him, have watched a good deal of his anime series, and will totally watch the Baz Luhrman film about him when it comes out, despite Leonardo DiCaprio being in it). Joe has "Persian Boy" and "Funeral Games".... I have "Fire From Heaven," so if I bring that his collection will be complete. Mary Renault writes historical fiction, of course, not fantasy, but since me and Joe both are great phil-Hellenes, this is even better. And he's read "The King Must Die" and loves it. Score! He also reads Terry Pratchett, Larry Niven (whose Ringworld I've read) and Iain Banks, who I've never heard of.

John, his roomie... also a great Terry Goodkind fan. He reads more sci-fi than fantasy though... William Gibson, who I should read (In "Neuromancer" he invented the word cyberspace) and SM Stirling's "Conquistador." He likes war movies, but not war books, which is why he likes "The Sun Also Rises" but not "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and is reading "Heart of Darkness" because he worships "Apocalypse Now," which, as you know, is the Vietnam War movie based on HoD. He, less belligerently, likes Tenchi Muyo, and has a little stick figure dialogue taped to his door reading, "Why did the man like Japanese animation movies?" "I dunno." "Because he was overweight and had no friends." This cracks me up. John though actually is not overweight and does have friends. He has big stompy boots and wears black.

It seems that you can tell a lot about people by their possessions, because this blog post of mine seems to be one great inventory.

Hey, did you know? Andrew D's aunt reads my blog.

I seem to have inadvertantly introduced her to the joys of slash fiction.

Good times!

I woke up at 1 in the afternoon today, which is when my first class is, so I simply didn't go. I took a long walk, because I was mildly depressed and lonely. The thing about college is, you have loneliness with no privacy; loneliness with no solitude and crowds with no companionship, so it really is the worst of both worlds. Right now I am in some sort of transition and so am not attached to anyone (though I talk to people periodically)... not you who read this nor my family nor the people I am now with. I seem to go through life insulated. Also, I don't know what I am to do with the rest of it; I was reading Lauren's book for high school dropouts while she was talking to Janis on the phone over the weekend, and one thing that it said that made an impression on me was that people go to school because they "have" to, in preparation for some kind of abstract future, when really they can start doing what they want to be doing in life right now. (They used starting your own business, learning a language, getting a hobby, doing volunteer work and political activism as several examples) I don't know why I don't write right now because that's what I want to do; and I know I'm fairly good at it or at least as good as Terry Goodkind, though he will always sell better than me because he's a genius at those things called: plot and pacing. And Brian Clevinger dropped out of college to write 8 Bit Theater and now he's like ruler of a media empire... I don't plan on dropping out, but you know what I mean. Nobody every lost anything by starting their lives. In the meantime I am stuck taking classes like Principles of Accounting and Linear Algebra.

Usually when I am depressed and lonely I go outside, but here it's all Campus, which is like a glorified Costco parking lot, so there is no real Outside. It often feels as if I live within a ferro-concrete bunker. We have a Field, which is a rectangle of mown grass neatly clipped between sidewalks, which is a travesty, like perfectly good boys who join the military and shear their lovely tumbled locks away. So anyway, I tromped around the campus, where away from everything, close to the sports fields, the grass is unkempt because nobody bothers (we have a stadium but no football team), and where there are small groves of trees on hills and low hollows where the water collects and a thicket grows around it with blueberries (I think; I ate two, perhaps unwisely) and those white bell-shaped flowers which are purple deep inside. There's a creek that runs from somewhere to somewhere else, on the banks of which are tumbleface walls of concrete cakes and trash, and a tree that grows on the bank and stoops over the water like Ophelia's tree, turning leaves gold at the arch and bending down to meet a winding vine of orange flowers. The wind pushes at the leaves that are still green so that they swim in layers above your head. Over aways, I don't know where because I stopped keeping track of where I was walking, there is a picnic table that's green with moss and with one bench that's fallen off, under the shelter of a thin, drooping branches like a bower.

I walked off campus into the suburbs, with two-laned roads with no sidewalks, and pickup trucks, and houses with porches with patio chairs on them, and American flags and brick chimneys, and small steepled churches every block. High school kids in Metallica shirts say things loudly like, "Don't think Ah like Chinese people, do yew?" and "Ah don't like Japanese people." Though it really doesn't matter to me because I will never see them again and they are small enough for me to give them wedgies, when I was turning down the road and they were coming in the opposite direction I jaywalked across the street and turned around because they didn't seem like great people to encounter. It is otherwise a lovely neighborhood, and doesn't bother me too much. I think that if I lived in such a pretty place so squarely in Confederate country, that I would be angry too, with rap music and gangsters and immigrants and things that ruin my way of life among the black shutters and whitewashed walls.

UMBC is always visible, that big ghastly metal drum that is our library always in view if you look for it, like an orienting landmark. I went back on campus but was sidetracked by a small gravel road that meandered off away, and being how I am, I said (not aloud, dumbass) "Where does this road go?" and followed it as it switchbacked over hilly grass. I reached a wheat field leaping with grasshoppers, with a swathe cut through up a hill, and at the crown of it the wheat was shorn and there was a wooden frame lying upon the ground, and shallow holes dug in the dirt laid over with reeds. The wind was strong and around me panoramically I could see waving stalks and the woods that went blue in the distance and the school, and to my left, the points of two steeples far away.

I'm pretty sure it was not private property. There was no sign and no gate.

By the time I came back I was not depressed but contemplative, which inself is not a bad mood to be in.

If Lori is still upset with school I might take her there and if she is anything at all like me (and also, not afraid of insects) she might like it. I will walk with her if she wishes, but I will not be in a talking mood.

My parents are in Canada for a wedding, so I went home (thanks, Lori, for the drive!). Andrew D said it must suck to be at home and still not have homecooked meals, but actually the reason I went home is because I could visit Lauren and not feel guilty about spending the weekend with friends instead of family. It's not dreadful being home alone in an empty house- I missed the serenity and the little bubble of solitude and privacy.

On Saturday night I went to watch "Bowling For Columbine" with Lauren, at Caitlin's house. Met Caitlin... not Caitlin B the Face that Launched A Thousand Minivans, but another one, who was also disgustingly beautiful. She looked like a porcelain doll; I was afraid her boyfriend would like, tip her over and smash her or something. She had her boyfriend over, Jay, who succeeded in being much more hyper and random than I am. Much more random than I am. Imagine a large, hairy, Boedecker-esque character with a heart of gold and ADHD. At one point Caitlin tickled him madly, causing him to laugh hysterically in such a funny way that the rest of us couldn't stop laughing either. Everytime Caitlin tickled him, me and Lauren would burst out laughing as if we had some kind of telepathic connection. By the end of the night, Caitlin seemed very weary.

Anyway, "Bowling" was the most moving documentary ever. Of course, it was hardly an objective documentary, being that Michael Moore was deeply involved in it, and was obviously manipulating interviews and whatever to make his point, so it was really more like a movie. It really blurred the line between movie and documentary. Like "Adaptation" was a documentary masquerading as a movie... "Bowling" was a movie masquerading as a documentary. I'm not sure if I make sense. But anyway. We'll say that "Bowling" is as much a documentary as my blog is; the account of one person's experience, with certain parts embellished and emphasized for dramatic effect. But, taking its factuality with a grain of salt, "Bowling" is still beautifully made and emotionally powerful.

Went to Lauren's house, where we called Janis in Illinois to wish her happy birthday and talk out some Issues (but if Janis and Lauren want that to be put on the internet for anyone to read that's their prerogative). It was a strange three-way phone call that lasted for hours, which was weird because I was at Lauren's house in a different rom but still talking to her on the phone. I was in the same house with her, and Janis being halfway across the country, and yet on the phone with both of them who could tell? When I was in the same room with Lauren (she got a headset phone later so that she could join me in her room, instead of using the phone in the kitchen) it was like surround sound. I could hear her next to me and yet through the phone too.

You know what me and Janis will patent? A teleprompter for the blind. This brainstorming session stemmed from Lauren going up the stairs to make spaghetti while I remained in Lauren's room on the phone:

Me: Janis, I will now give you a play by play narrative of what Lauren is doing. Right now she is going up the stairs.

Janis: Is she wearing shoes?

Me: I don't know.

Janis: That's a pretty stupid play by play if you can't even tell me if she's wearing shoes.

Me: Well I can't see her going up the stairs, I can only hear her.

Janis: Well that still is pretty stupid. What kind of head of state would I be if I were president and invaded a country and was like, "I can't see that we've won, I can only hear our cries of victory and induce that we're winning"?

Me: Well what if you were a blind president? It wouldn't be extraordinarily incompetent to only hear the cries of victory, because you can't see anything.

Janis: It's weird how we've never had a blind president, yet nobody ever complains.

*insert obligatory joke about how much Bush is blind to*

Me: Well I think it'd be kind of limiting. You wouldn't be able to read the teleprompter...

And hence we came up with the design for a teleprompter for the blind... I think it's pretty cool, and is one of my (and Janis') totally random ideas that could actually turn out to be practical. Ok. Basically, a grid of little pegs could be programmed to rise and fall based on computer input. These pegs would punch raised Braille indentations in a hand-held conveyer belt of rubber-like material that would keep its shape. The belt would scroll under the blind person's fingers. Like an escalator, the belt would roll underneath a covering, which would flatten out the bumps again. We'd never build one ourselves because we aren't oh... electronical engineers, chemists specializing in synthetic materials, and computer scientists, but in theory, it could be made.

Why not just use earphones, you say? Well you could, but these babies could potentially also be used as palm pilots for the blind, or other such things that require text messaging. I'd think it's less intrusive. You could also maintain a conversation with someone while reading in Braille, which is something more difficult to do with earphones on. And have you ever tried to deliver a speech by ear? (As in someone telling you what to say as you're saying it) It's pretty hard, and even if you could do it there'd still be a time delay. (*silence* "My fellow Americans!" *silence* "We are a nation at war!" *silence* "But fear not!" *silence*) You see how that would be.

Something else: Lauren is cool. If you think about it, I've only really known her since late this summer, not particularly more than I know these random people at college. Yet there's something about having her as part of my Old Life that makes her feel like a "friend from high school" and keeps me from being lonely in a way that these people I am surrounded by can't.

It was supposedly a sleepover but we didn't sleep. We watched really cool Trigun musicals, and Escaflowne from 5 in the morning on Sunday until like 10. Esca... I don't know how I feel about it; it's very good but it doesn't feel like it did when I was watching it for the first time when I thought it was grippingly exciting, mindblowing and jaw-droppingly beautiful and the best thing on God's good earth. Perhaps it means that I've grown up, or been jaded. Or maybe it means nothing at all; different emotions will be caused by different viewings of just about everything.... things are always better or worse the first/second/third time you watch them and it all depends on your mood. I still enjoyed myself immensely but I've been an Esca fan for such a long time on the basis of maybe two or three episodes that I wouldn't know what I'd do if I suddenly discovered that Esca actually isn't all that good.

We got to make fun of Esca though, and Gaddes, a totally minor character (one of Alan Schezar's crewmembers on the airship Crusade) who looks EXACTLY like Wolfwood except given a sword and decked out in a puffy blouse and tunic, medieval style. Slashy implications galore: "Go to your room! I'll be joining you shortly!" being our main repeated joke.

Lauren's family got up in the morning and was kind of bewildered to find me, this random girl, in their house. When I went home, bewildered by the bright sunshine in conjuction with my lack of sleep (what happened to the night darkness? It's sleepy time, my brain said), I collapsed in my (mine!) bed and went to sleep.

It was really beautiful out. The weather is cool and fresh now, and the clouds are high in the sky and the moon near full.

When I went back to school, we had a floor meeting. I was introduced to some girls from Hong Kong, specifically because they were from Hong Kong. They didn't speak English perfectly but I refused to let myself lapse into the "Let's Speak the Native Language!" thing lest I appear patronizing. You could tell they were Hong Kong girls because of their feathered hair and bangs, which I have also. It's very amusing that you can tell who's from which part of China by their hairstyles; Beijing girls always have long hair pulled back in high ponytails. You know it's true.

I ate dinner and talked to some totally random people about what it would be like if cheese grew from trees.

"Western slash fiction has never been taken up commercially, and most women’s slash fanzines barely make enough to cover costs. But Japanese publishing companies with an eye for profit have picked up some of the brightest amateur YAOI artists of the early 80s and published their work. One of the earliest ‘boy love’ monthly magazines was June (pronounced ju-neh) first published in 1978. In 1995, June was still being published, now in a 300-page bimonthly format, and with a circulation of between 80,000 and 100,000 (Schodt 1996: 120). In contrast, G-Men, one of Japan's most popular gay magazines, sells only 20,000 copies per month (McLelland 2000a:140)."

-Homoerotic manga

Whoa.

Also, a comparison of Western and Japanese Harry Potter slash fandoms.

My email box decided to empty itself, so if you all would please resend your contact information, that would be just dandy! I need to start writing people; I'm tired of my roomie getting all the mail! ^__^

Angie Tells A Story

It was a fine afternoon in September, still the tail of summer but yet with the brisk and cool feeling of autumn to come.

So, Angie was walking by the Commons and saw Pat there, but he didn't see her, and he was with some girl with his arm wrapped around her waist.

"Agh," she said. "Sexy Genius Pat already has a girlfriend!"

So Angie went to her dorm and crawled into a ball and cried. Her heart comically went tinkletinkletinkle like when someone throws a brick at your window, which is really only something that happens in cartoons, like lightbulbs over your head and little hearts for eyes. <------ Artistic license. This paragraph.

So, more realistically, Angie went to her dorm and ate some Pocky and other fattening sugary foods. <----- True.

(To answer Sharon W's question... I think maybe 20% of my blog is embellished for dramatic effect.)

My biological hourglass is ticking... ticktickticktick.... or whatever the hell sound hourglasses make.

In biology lab today, we were getting our blood tested, which involved stabbing ourselves with sterilized lancets. This was optional of course, but I didn't want to feel like a big wussy so I went ahead and did it. You know that I for the life of me cannot make myself bleed, not even by "milking" the finger and stabbing myself multiple times. (These were tiny tiny lancets) (Though I was probably doing it wrong... I couldn't aim all that well, and probably wasn't stabbing myself hard enough. Motto: If it doesn't hurt, you're doing it wrong!) I could bleed. Problem was bleeding onto a glass slide before the blood either soaked into the wood of my sterilized toothpick (used to move our blood from the wound to the slide), dried into a rusty smear, or soaked into my alcohol-swabbed skin. I have this problem in giving blood and blood testing normally. Maybe I should drink more coffee to get my blood pressure up.

Will M needed to be consoled because he got rejected by a girl, and by console I mean going up to his room to watch him play Counterstrike. Do I understand boys? No, not really.

Anyway, I thought it would be amusing to have a pornographic mod of Counterstrike, so that people's sex wouldn't cut into their quality CS time.

~

"Enemy spotted."

"Cover me."

"Affirmative."

"Oh YEAH! BABY!"

Gawd, I have a new cell phone and so don't know how to work it. I'm like calling people by accident.. this is a coincidental way to get in touch with people I haven't talked to in a while, but Jesus, I'd like to talk to people only when I intend to!

I went to fencing, which is by its nature, dorky and white. Had the obligatory en garde advance retreat lunge class. Had my lunge corrected.. yet again, have to step farther, like my foil coach said over the summer. Seems like I haven't learned anything. Will do it again. It may get funner once I actually get to wield cutlery.

So, I went to math today, and I suddenly remembered that ad Lauren told me about. With the two brothers who wordlessly smash a Hotpocket so that the stuffing splatters all over their faces. Do you know how hard it is to try to sit quietly in a room for an hour biting on your hand trying not to laugh out loud hysterically? I was afraid I would have to excuse myself and run out of the classroom to the bathroom going, "MWAHAHAHAHA!" the entire time, my laughter echoing down the hall after me. Everytime I got myself somewhat under control and paying attention to the professor my mind would be like, "HOTPOCKET!" and then I'd collapse into an internal fit of giggles every time.

It's never happened to me before.

You Asked For It

Also, something else: The mad frenzy of introductions and friend-making is slowly winding down, I think. We're starting to get Groups* now. I think I may be relieved.

*Such as the group of Ancient Studies majors I met today, who are very hardcore, with Hatshepsut t-shirts, Aristotle quotes (in Greek) plastered on their backpacks, and various pieces of Renaissance and Greek art tattooed over their bodies. They are the punks of archaeology. We discussed the prospects of getting a tattoo of a Minoan octopus or monkey, in the style of those found painted on the walls of the volcanic island of Thira. I think the girl in question should get the tatoo on her butt. So when people ask, she can say, "I have Minoan Buttmonkeys!"

The Boy I Don't Like But Who Prompts Philosophical Introspection

My Escaflowne SVCDs do work, though on Pat's computer. He must be some sort of crazy genius. A sexy crazy genius.

This is totally unrelated (related to something of course; nothing I think of is truly random.) I really hate it when my male friends get girlfriends and leave me in the dirt. It's not that I even have to like these male friends in "that way" to be bothered; it's just that I think "Why not me?" I should like to have someone fall in love with me, even someone I don't like. Let me ask you something:

If I were less fat and had bigger boobs and were white, would people love me more? It's not that I have overwhelming lack of self confidence, it's just that I wonder. These things have been scientifically proven to make an impact in finding jobs and commanding a salary, even when people first judge by merit and try to be as open minded as possible (at least about things that don't affect profit opportunities). Everything else matters little. In love, where there are no rules and no one to sue you if you turn someone down, no one to tell you you aren't being fair, where people can fall out of love over such little things as a person laughing too loud, biting their nails, singing in the shower, not putting up the toilet seat, wouldn't it be naive to think that it's not a worse situation? We like to think of love, like justice, to be blind, the great unifier of people of all nations, classes and religions, but isn't love also, if you think about it, the most prejudiced institution of the known world?

I wonder what those little invisible things are, those little habits and personality quirks that keep people from loving me...

...and also, which invisible ones people would fall in love with.

Do you know something else? Will lives in the room directly above mine, as I have mentioned. I usually think of the distance from it as the distance from my room, down the hall to the stairwell, up the stairwell, and down the hall again to his room, but if you think about it, there usually is not ten feet seperating me from him at any given time. So when I'm lying on my bed at night staring at the ceiling what I really am staring at, or would be staring at if I had x-ray vision, would be the back of his head.

Nicholas D Wolfwood wearing only sunglasses and a cross.

Vash giving Wolfwood noogies.

Look, I know you can't stand my yaoi, but it's been a shitty day okay? Shut yer trap. (Yes, the links do work. If they don't, go to the picture directory, then click on the links from there)

It's Too Early in the Day for Romantic Entanglements

It's also too damn early in the year.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Ebay Hates Me

(Stolen verbatim from an AIM convo with Lauren)

Ebay says I never paid for the Trigun poster.. I have to wait five to seven business days to check my credit history online to see if I did pay. If my bank says I paid but ebay says I didn't, I will e-mail the seller and uh... negotiate. If my bank says I indeed didn't pay, I will politely apologize to the seller, pay him, and ask him to ship. I have a receipt though. It is very weird. The seller placed the poster for auction after he never got my payment, but fortunately the auction expired before anyone bid so theoretically he should still have the poster unless he sold it or gave it away offline. And the Escaflowne SVCDs (complete series for $16), I won, but the SVCDs don't work on my computer or my suitemate's computer, even my computer with a ton of Codecs. I'm thinking it may work on a real DVD player but I'll have to check up tomorrow. Everyone I know with a DVD player is either asleep or doing homework. I don't know think I'll be able to sleep without knowing if it works... I mean I don't have anyone to bitch to, because it is bootleg, and the seller clearly said he'd never viewed the discs.. that's my $16 down the drain if it sucks.

I'd be happier if I had either the Vash poster OR the videos. The fact that the state of both are uncertain pisses me off to no end.

Legolas gained some weight. XD!

Link courtesy Lauren.

Battle of the Wills

-Back at school. Have returned to attach external speakers to my laptop, and hang up posters to make this place look more like home. Van Gogh's Sunflowers, and Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, and a poster of a Napoleonic tallship, which I got for free. It's actually a fairly classy promotional item for Russel Crowe's newest movie, "Master and Commander." I may take it down if the movie ends up sucking.

-Got Counterstrike to work.

-Decided, since my conscience was stinging me about downloading but not sharing, that I was reasonably safe on Kazaa as long as I share obscure files the RIAA has no interest in, and have started sharing again.

-Hung out with Will M, the Will who lives in the room above me. He is a comp sci major too but not to be confused with the other compsci Will I know, Will Cooper who made me an oragami crane and lives off campus. I call Will M "rude Will" because he disses Will Cooper on AIM, insisting there can only be one Will.

Went with him and Melissa to order Chinese takeout and watch Osamu Tezuka's "Metropolis." (Osamu Tezuka btw is the creator of Astroboy, and I think Kimba the Lion). Very god-like movie. Mindblowing visuals and music, and profound too. Malex, you should watch it. This is a good anime movie to get non-anime people to watch. For those of you in Film Studies or whatever, yes, it is based on Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the famous 1930's-ish silent film. I have that at home; I will bring it to compare it to the anime version.

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Wherein Angie Plays Midnight Indoor Capture the Flag With Many Shirtless Boys

The resident shirt ninja barged into my room at twelve and demanded that I play capture the flag, so of course I had to oblige him.

This requires chanting war cries, hurtling through corridors and stairwells of our slumbering dorm at high speeds (remember, grab the stair railing so that your forward momentum will give you tighter turns!), taunting opponents from the neutral zones, dragging opponent players into the stairwells and pinning them down to keep them from defending their flag, hiding the flag, having the flag carried around by a player, leading opponents on by jogging back and forth through the same hallway, distracting enemy defenders with balloons, fake flags, and fake injuries ("I'm just getting a drink of water" "I'm so tired.." "ow, my arm... my arm... RUN RUN RUN!" ) tackling people, putting them into headlocks, making flying leaps over the collapsed and comatose in the halls, returning both flags at the exact same second, hiding in rooms, wrestling your opponent team captain ("Knock it off, guys!" "But I was winning!" "Calm down!" "We can't, we're raging testosterone!"), colliding at a run into opposing players, and carrying the victorious flagbearer up on your shoulders loudly singing, "We are the champions!!" at 2 in the morning. Capture the flag has become a contact sport.

People who came into the dorm late at night looked bewildered. We recruited them. They sucked. Rookies.

Wherein Angie Stays Sober, Keeps Her Clothes On and Makes Love to a Palm Tree

So anyway, I went with Melissa to see a men's soccer match in the soccer field, and met up with two other freshmen (Joe and Lola) looking for directions. So we went with them, and talked about how amazed we were about the lack of cliques in college and the way people could randomly introduce themselves, and worried when the window of everyone being super-friendly would close. By the time we got there, it was raining ridiculously, and though it made the men in white t-shirts look good and drove off the muggy heat we got seriously wet and the game got canceled because of lightning. Shortly after, it stopped raining, because God has a sense of humor.

Lola had a car, so we took that to Quiznos, a sub place recommended by Joe who lives in the area, around Fort Meade. He lives in a military family and moves around a lot, which is why Lola says he's super-friendly; he has to be to survive. He says he deals with loss a lot better. I wish I could. We ate and then went to Arundel Mills, possibly the biggest mall in Maryland though I don't know for sure. It also has a Medieval Times (a medieval themed entertainment venue with jousting, melee combat, and "medieval cuisine" including anachronistic potatoes) being constructed; I could see its tacky concrete castle halfway finished. YES! It looks so gay (as gay as anything abstractly inanimate can be), I must go when it's operational! At the real, modern mall, we laughed at the Dee's Nuts mall booth ("You have the biggest nuts I've ever seen!") and the explicit sex guide books in the book store. Overall, we were really immature and had a lot of fun, though Joe and Lola seemed mostly involved in each other and me and Melissa didn't really get in any words edgewise.

Lola said as part of her roommate agreement; no sex in the dorm while one roommate was trying to sleep. We laughed, because it implied people could have sex if the roommate was awake. Joe said as part of his roommate agreement; no sex in his dorm, but I didn't see why people can't have sex in their own bed ("I don't want my room to smell like funk!" he replied) or in the shower, ("Oh that's gross," he said) or his car ("No!"). Joe and Lola talked about their alcohol tolerances (and beer pong tables!!!) much like many other people I'd been introduced to, and porn parties on their floor, and I wondered if I was seriously so square as to be the only person to have never gotten drunk or made out with someone by now. It's not so much peer pressure... why should I be in such a hurry to dispense with innocence?... but that I feel that I may be missing so much of life.

BTW: a semi comical goal I've developed this year is to go to Annapolis and lose my virginity to a midshipman. It was rather scandalous in my dorm... some girl someone knew lost 100 pounds through a stomach stapling procedure and went to Annapolis and shagged two naval officers at a time (or straight consecutively, I don't remember.) Girls were repulsed when they heard this story but I thought it rather sounded like fun.

Then we went to the Foam Party, which is like clubbing I guess except in a vat full of soap suds. I got lei'd, but didn't really know anyone and it looked hella stupid with all the freshmen who also didn't know anyone standing around looking hella stupid but I went into the foam vat just for the hell of it. Much to my surprise, Eric (introduced Tuesday, August 26, 6:20 PM blog); big fat smartass loser Eric, was there. I'd talked to him at lunch and while we had some good conversation about my "information should be free" rant (Monday, August 25, 2:43 blog) and other random things, I rather disliked his negative personality. He'd say things like, "I'd rather be fat than be stupid" and he seemed really defensively arrogant about his weight. I mean, I hardly know this guy and it's the first thing he brings up (he introduces his nickname as "the fat boy in the third row"). He said, "I don't have anything against musclebound idiots but..." (and trailed off) in a way that indicated he clearly did have something against them. It was a very highschoolish mentality. And he has a whiny, Doug-like voice that is annoying (not that Doug's voice is annoying; Eric just happens to have a super exaggerated version of Doug's voice), and he has a pretentious way of speaking.

Earlier in the week he had interrupted our motivational speaker, who was talking about diversity and was using an example of how bias was ingrained in even our language. Eric had to point out that actually terms like blackmail, blacklist, black magic, etc, had been in the English language before the introduction of black people. Later in the week he interrupted a presentation on date rape (Monday, August 25, 2:43 blog) to say that he'd like to kick the perpetrator's ass he'd have a bad taste in his mouth. The audience was supposed to participate and discuss of course, but he didn't bring anything to that discussion except his righteous indignation. So anyway, I got the impression that not only was he a loser, but he was also loser who was so embittered he just turned his defensiveness into moral/intellectual superiority and inflicted it on everyone else. I was bothered though, to come to that conclusion after only meeting someone twice or so. Besides, I've been/still am a fat defensive loser, and know how it felt to be the subject of snap judgements. So maybe his voice, his combover, his big glasses, his weight, his greasy nose (to be fair, it was hot out. We're all greasy), and his tucked in shirt, just negatively impacted my view of his personality in a way that maybe big muscle-bound good looks wouldn't have, I don't know. In any case, I've kind of become his pity friend (someone who hangs out with someone because they feel sorry for them) except I hope not because that's patronizing, and we do have better intellectual conversations than me with other people, even if his looks and personality are serious turn offs.

Anyway, he was at the foam party and I was surprised because I thought he was an antisocial kind of person, so we had a surprising lot of fun throwing suds and rubber balls at each other and pushing each other over in the vat, and we got all huggy cuz he's BIG. He looks okay (maybe because it was dark) without glasses and his hair gelled by the foam so that it's not in the dorky combover; I don't think his weight is as much of an issue as he makes it out to be; his angry dorkiness is self inflicted, methinks. We didn't dance though because he doesn't do that.

Because he wasn't up to it and I probably wouldn't have been up to it with him anyways, I did some ass grinding dances with Joe and another Eric, Pat's (introduced Monday August 25, 12:36 AM) roommate at Susquehana Second North (henceforth to be referred to as Sus. I will talk about it a lot this year; it is after all also Caitlin's floor). He's very cool and easygoing though unfortunately I don't know him very well. Though it was rather symbolic because he's gay anyway, he had a girl (a Stephanie from Sus for the record, though nobody cares) with him so I felt bad about hogging him all to myself. At one point we were dancing with a rubber inflatable palm tree between us, which allowed us to get more wild and intimate (with the tree) than our states of not-knowing-each other would have allowed us to be with each other. It was funny though. I think we ruled the dance floor for maybe thirty seconds (wasn't hard to rule; remember a lot of the freshmen were standing around feeling embarrassed), and that was the highlight of my night. I danced with Joe too, but he was of course with Lola; so it was mostly like a sandwich dance; Lola on his crotch, me on his butt. I danced with... nonsexually this time.. George, a blonde black boy from Sus who has promised to introduce me to reggae videos.

But people started leaving and the dancing never did pick up momentum (to show you what I mean; the room was cold. Usually at dances the problem is that it gets to damn hot) so I left.

But it's not over yet.

As I was walking back to the dorm, these random people (well not that random.. one guy, some girls I'm not that familiar with on my floor) called out to me, "Would you like to streak?"

I said: "Let me think about that." then "Are you serious?"

and they said, "Yes, we will if other people do it."

and I said, "Can I be arrested?"

and they said, "Yes,"

and I said, "Okay but only to my underwear."

So we did, but one girl insisted we get out of the well lit parking lot and go to the dark field, and then she refused to take off her shirt like the rest of us, because she had a rather immodest bra, so we lost our nerve and quit, promising we'd have the help of alcohol next time. The boy, Jim, did streak with his pants off through the women's floor though. The amusement of this was lost on everyone; they'd all gone home for the weekend. Laura, the girl who refused to take off her shirt, offered her dorm room for truth or dare, and I declined, saying I wasn't drunk enough.

It kind of worries me. I do such weird things when I'm sober.

I was talking to Lori and we agreed on this; Being in college and not knowing anyone is like getting wisdom teeth pulled; temporary discomfort. Except after the drugs wear off; it's not like it hurts, it just sucks. It's this continuous feeling of sub-surface suckiness that just won't go away.

BTW, my Greek Archaeology class really kicks ass. Today we looked at random slides... it gives me a good excuse to test my sketching skills, both with speed, accuracy, and variability. (Since there are slides of landscapes, people, objects..) The people next to me are majoring in Ancient Studies. I so want to do that (or anthropology, or archaeology); I'm so passionate about it.

The more I think about it the less I understand my econ major.

Practical, makes good money, yes, yes.

Maybe I'll understand when I'm older; maybe it'll be too late.

Or for that matter, why am I in a major that requires little creative writing? Perhaps this is a pretension, but I believe I do it relatively well. I'm bored. Perhaps this would be a good time to start writing a novel.

BTW, my air conditioning has broken down and won't be repaired until next week. We've just opened the door to let the aircon in the hallway come in.

Didn't do much yesterday. Went to class... boring... first was linear algebra which confused the daylights out of me even though it's algebra for cryin' out loud. Then went to macroeconomics which bored me to death. We talked about scarcity. The people in my class didn't understand the concept of "marginal." My professor doesn't speak English as a first language and was inarticulate at explaining this (to be fair, he was fairly articulate, just not as articulate as I felt I could have been, and also the students were kinda slow.) I was weeping bored by the end of it.

Read some Wizard's First Rule.

Saw the Matrix Reloaded for $2, but of course, like four months late. I didn't think it was too bad, though I didn't understand the plot, though that could be because I came in 10/20/30 minutes late (I don't know how late I was but I was late). Ate really good popcorn. It was such exceptionally good popcorn it deserves mention here.

Anyway, it turns out that I didn't have an accounting textbook. Apparently there are three books I need. One is the textbook, one is the student workbook, one is a book of working papers. The syllabus is very vague on this- it says you need the book, a workbook, and accounting paper. All of these books have exactly the same name ("Financial Accounting; Tools for Business Decision Making, Third Edition") so I, like a dumbass, thought that the student workbook I had was the textbook (after all, it is in textbook format, readability and all) and the working papers I had was the workbook. So it took me forever to figure out why I couldn't find the homework problems. I thought I might have the wrong textbook, but again, the name thing... when I checked the syllabus, of course the title was the same as that on my workbook, I thought to myself, "But this is the same book," and when I checked the textbook writers' website, which had chapters available online, I downloaded a chapter and checked it against my workbook... and it was the same! So it took me a long time to realize that the problem wasn't that I had a completely different book, but that what I had wasn't the complete textbook. So I had to run out and buy the book and do the homework this morning.

Blah. Ick. >__<

BTW, accounting is easy so far; even Fred and George could do it. I always wondered where they learned to run a business. Maybe they attend the Hogwarts version of MK.

Apparently John and Will's version of Counterstrike is known as Steam and is not bootleg, but a beta testing version available for free. I have it too now. But technicalities are technicalities... the point is that I don't have to pay for Halflife or Counterstrike.

PS: Played Enter the Matrix. That game is just falling down hilarious. Unintentionally.

Instant Bishounen! by mizery
Your username
Your eye colour
Hair colour and length	blond, short and tousled
Place of residence	San Francisco
Sexual orientation	straight, but crossdresses
Special Quirk	has no alcohol tolerance
Created with quill18's MemeGen!

No, darling, this is Vash.

It was raining cats and dogs tonight, so it rather dampened my plans to go see the Matrix Reloaded (which is being re-released at UMBC many months after its actual theatrical release for an admission fee of $2). Also, I was not enthused about ice cream because I don't want the Freshman Fifteen.

So I went upstairs to John and Will's room, where they have their computers hooked up with each other and was rapidly schooled by them in the ways of Counterstrike and Unreal Tournament. I learned the values of cover, sporadic firing, and had a lot of fun. It's funny... the boys across the hall also were playing Counterstrike, though not with us because we were using the noncompatible bootleg version. But the whole floor is like a gamer's floor. It's awesome. I promised to bring my PS2, and then our domination will be complete.

For Jen in Bryn Mawr

I talked yesterday to a sociology professor, Dr. Rothstein. We talked about the difference between applied anthropoloy and traditional anthropology. Traditional has emphasis on pre-literate cultures, while applied emphasizes the study of human behavior in modern societies, to analyze things like crime or consumer behavior, etc. Obviously applied anthropology leads to more job opportunities. He recommended some books too, which I may never read but you may find useful: "The Human Group" by George Caspar Homans published in 1950 and "Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples" by Margaret Mead. The first book has stuff on Polynesia and Tiki and the Norton Street Gang; obviously the first two things are traditional anthropology and the last is applied.

Had "Principles of Accounting" and "Ancient Greek Archaeology" today. The first one blew chunks.. for the hour while I was learning about balancing sheets I was like.. "Am I going to spend my life doing this?" I am an econ major after all. But Arc gave me hope, although other people found it boring. (But honestly, if you're not interested, why the hell take the class? It's not like you're in archaeology for the money, fucktard.) Is this cool or is this cool? Hurrah! Wars and gay sex! Badass.

People who went to Greece with and Ex-Archaeology Club people who read this will know exactly how I feel, except I feel even better. No more square/round nails and coke bottles for me!

The cynics (most likely Andrew P) will remind me of the living hell that is pottery shards and "creamware," but you can go to Hellas.

Don't rain on my party!

Wherein Angie Has Some Crazy Orgasmic Fun

Discovered, to my joy, that I can call Lauren non long distance from my cell. Yay!

Also:

Asked Caitlin if Andrew D's blog was incomprehensible or if it was just me. No, Andrew's blog really is incomprehensible. I myself don't understand why I don't understand his blog. I don't think my own blog is any more coherent, yet I undersand myself.

Anyway, tonight was "Crazy Fun Night," which I went to with Will* and John, the boys from the room above me. They came, kind of in apology for their air conditioning leaking all over our room (it's since been fixed), and Will was very chivalrous, holding doors open for me and things (!). It was very sweet. John was preoocupied and possibly stressed out; apparently he only got his schedule finalized today, and classes are tomorrow. There was laser tag, a giant inflatable slide, black light pool (billiards type pool, unfortunately, not a swimming pool), karaoke, fake gambling games, a gyroscope, popcorn, cotton candy, sno-cones, drinks and raffle tickets.

The line for laser tag was incredibly long (my roommate who eventually got in said it took an hour) so I didn't go, and pool is accessible any time. But I did go on the giant slide, which is great climbing up hand over hand with the rope as the thing bounces and rocks, and then bouncing all the way down (if you just slide, like I did the first time, you will get friction burn). Learned to play blackjack and the wheel of fortune... lost gratuitous amounts of fake money. Watched people do karaoke, which was hilarious, because it was lively, with people performing like in music videos. Also went on the gyroscope, was the last person in line, and unlike other people, did actually scream while on it. (another person had his loose change fall out) Don't know if it's more fun or more tortuous, but it felt so good after I got off. The guy who worked the slide (by ensuring not too many people got on it) had said to the guy who worked the gyroscope (by pushing it and stopping it): "You should get your wife on this. Maybe then you could make her scream." Paraphrased of course; I didn't get exact words because I was kind of whirling around on my head at the time.

*not Will Cooper, the Will I met for lunch on Sunday. I don't see him around, though we AIM. He does deserve a short cameo in today's blog though; he folded an oragami crane, and gave it to my roommate to give to me. Aww..

Last night, we went to a hypnotist show, which was really funny but kind of creepy. Later, Eric (one of many Erics I know) who was hypnotized, was really shaken and like, "I need someone to talk to." He made me say one of those trigger words, and I yelled, "GOLD!" In the show, when the hypnotist says gold, the hypnotized person think there's a little leprechaun in the room with a potta, and chases it. So when I yelled gold Eric attacked me. He apologized for it afterwards. Bizarre.

Met Lori Rowan, Andrew D's girlfriend, today. She's very nice, and not nearly as freaky as Andrew. Apparently she went to RM. I never knew. Pity. I looked through her pictures (here in these boring dorms it's a form of entertainment) and there are pictures of her at graduation, and at the senior picnic with Malex and Nick. So you must know her, gentle readers. She also has, framed, a photo of Andrew D wearing a crab hat. Apparently it's a graduation picnic.

Honestly though, I think if you're bored, you aren't trying hard enough. You can always come up with things to do, like me. I get so bored that I transcend to this sublime level of happiness; everything seems so exciting. Some people get high on crack; I get high on boredom. But seriously, there are many things you can do. You can paint a picture with toothpaste on your mirror. You can throw rocks at puddles. You can make a paperclip chain as long as your dorm hall. You can throw water balloons at hapless pedestrians outside your dorm room window. You can roll down hills or go land sledding on a cardboard box. You could go on a slip and slide. You can string together bottle caps to make a bracelet. You can have a fake campfire with a fan blowing orange tissue paper, and microwaved s'mores, and blast Kumbaya.mp3 from your computer. And those are just things you can do by yourself... with people, you can play Werewolf, crack-the-whip, red rover, spin the bottle, human jousting.. The opportunities are endless. If you have to resort to drinking and having sex, you are a truly sad person.

(Though if you drink and have sex not as a last resort, you're okay.)

The women's floor lacks the best things about boys; dicks and video games.

These are really cool chairs. They have rockers, so you can lean back in them, but it's kind of creepy we you feel yourself tilting back and you don't know if you'll fall over. I tried this though.. no matter how far you lean though, you simply won't fall.

Also, the air conditioning from the room above us is dripping on us. We've put out plastic cups under the drip but those don't contain all that well. I want to install a gutter.

Wherein Angie Loots, Rapes and Pillages

Went to this thing on sexual assault in which these actors role-play a scenario. There was this drunk chick who had sex and then woke up really upset, and her friends were like "ooh, you've been raped!" and the guy who did it was like "no, it was consentual." I think I was the only one in the audience who didn't think she as raped, because she didn't actually say no. She said "not right now" when she was in the car, which could mean "later" and she said "that's it" while he was taking off her shirt. Now maybe it's just my uptight IB self, which has been brainwashed into never using the word "this" or "that" by itself in a sentence, but "that's it" is seriously ambiguous. Is it "that's it" as in "that's enough" or "that's it" as in "oooh baby, that's it"? That's what? What's what? And the boy was drunk too, and they'd been making out beforehand, so seriously, how much linguistic comprehension do you expect him to possess? And plus, boys are stupid... if you don't say "NO, I'm not having sex with you tonight, stop it" you can't expect them to read your mind or even decypher your cryptic sentences while you're drooling all over them and both of you are raging drunk. Being dumb is not a crime.

I feel like an asshole for not being like, "You evil rapist!"

We also had a talk on file sharing. Apparently, in a wink-nod way while being totally straight faced, the guy said that you can only be tracked on a file sharing program if you're sharing files, so you can really download all you want. Plus, there's always mIRC. I'm morally outraged at not being able to share, which of course is totally irrational because pirating files is immoral in the first place. But I irrationally feel that information should be free; of all things in the world, from food to love to reputation, it seems that only ideas truly are free to be circulated and are the most basic principle of egalitarianism. It's a lovely idea, isn't it? Doesn't reflect economic reality at all though... it costs money to print books, money to maintain satelites, money to maintain wiring and fiber optics, money to buy acoustic equipment, money to distribute records. Somehow though I even hate paying money to talk on my cell phone, money to go online. It's totally reasonable for them to charge of course, but I just... emotionally and perhaps stupidly... feel cruddy that I have to pay to express myself. It really is a pity, because for me it seems that such things as art and music and words should be obtainable (for free) by everyone. It's not satisfying to have to pay for them, which is probably why so many people download, more for that than pure greed. It's like communism; I think communism is morally reprehensible. You shouldn't steal from someone no matter how much you need what they have, no matter how little they deserve their fortune, which is at least one thing Atlas Shrugged has taught me. But sometimes people feel so cheated of something that's rightfully their's that they do steal, even though it's immoral, thinking "why can't I?" "why shouldn't I?" "I deserve this."

And that's how I feel about music, and I continue to pirate.

Yo ho, yo ho...

Yet another reason why Susquehana Hall rules and Chesapeake ... rules less:

Susquehana dorms are routinely invaded by shirt ninjas, who barge into our room and throw paper ninja stars at you with messages reading: "YOU HAVE BEEN NINJAED!"

Chesapeake dorms are routinely invaded by drunks on tequila.

(at least they're hot and male. Don't know how long that will last.)

Not so random people meeting on Sunday as well;

Went to the Inner Harbor to eat dinner with my parents (well not "went." My parents drove me, since they came over to drop off a minifridge and my underwear... heh. ) I fell asleep in the car on the way back and it was quiet and dark and comforting and it almost felt like I was at home again, but when I woke up I was at college, and everything was strange still.

Met Caitlin B and a lot of her friends. Yeah, she's pretty, she's nice. She likes Buffy. You all know Caitlin better than I, so this description is probably redundant. Her hall, Susquehana, kicks ass, while mine, Chesapeake. is quiet. Cuz I'm on the "women's floor." No boys to make trouble. Damn women. On her floor is Pat, who brought DDR. He's a major otaku with yaoi posters on his walls, but he is a straight boi. We talked about yuri vs yaoi and Otakon and German penises ("a long word for a short thing"). He is cool. I also met more other people at random, including a whole group of black people. I feel bad because I only remember half their names; in all seriousness, they all look alike, which is a horrible thing to say, but I'm honestly having trouble telling people of the same skin, eye, and hair color apart and also some of the names can be difficult. It's no longer like the IB with like the solo black person... or none. Since I'm already lumping all dark-skinned minorities together (okay Asian people too... can't tell Asian people apart) I feel I should say that I saw Koushik again. WHO? I didn't know either until I saw him today. I haven't seen him "in like ten years," and vaguely remember going to CTY at Sandy Springs with him, way back in the elementary school days. It's very strange; I don't remember him at all but I recognized his face. Watched Chicago on DVD in Caitlin and Allison (her roommate, who wasn't feeling well earlier)'s room. They're bunked together, and their room is the homiest on the floor.

On the emotional side of college, I don't feel anything at all. Not depression, homesickness or giddy happiness at new things.. I'm just stunned and flattened like a landed flounder. The one thing to say is, all the people meeting can be emotionally draining, and when you're alone you feel really alone. But it's also so easy to visit people that I think once I get to know more people better, I will be happy.

Have met some people, mostly at random. This morning, wandering around because my roommate was still sleeping, joined up with Lily and Ariana, two girls who were also looking, futilely, for breakfast. Nothing was open, as only freshmen have moved in so far, so I went to their suite. They went to Gaithersburg High, but knew Ben Evans in middle school. They wonder if he turned out to be cute, and remember him to be sweet and a leader of "Future Farmers of America." Apparently Lily traumatized him in eighth grade on a King's Dominion trip and thinks that Ben would remember her. Okay. They were too cool for me, though not advertantly or in a snobby way, and spent the whole time I was there looking through photos of people on their high school girl's lacrosse team reminiscing on which girls were good/bad/bitchy (none of who I know), hot male friends (none of who I know), and cute Hollywood couples (none of who I know). This is why I don't really get along well with people who know each other already; I don't know any of it.

Sarah, an RM alumni who graduated last year and wears a hajib is here also, and is a guide on my floor. I might have known her. I don't know.

Went to some welcome speech thing about diversity and the way people tend to get together in groups. It was quite good actually. Downside; have been guilted into writing letters home. Let's see if I can get stamps and envelopes and so forth.

Went to ... brunch. Met more random people. Will and Liz, who know each other in the loosest sense of the word in that they met each other yesterday. Will's a talkative comp-sci major who lives off campus. Liz doesn't say very much. I got their AIMs and we gossiped about the antics of our high school teachers.

My parents will be coming in like an hour to drop off my bag of underwear, which I left at home yesterday. Oh yeah, and a minifridge.

T, on Friday before I left for college, visited me for one last time with Mehmet, and gave me some advice:

-Don't be distracted.
-If someone tries to rape you, yell "FIRE!" because if you yell "Rape!" people may not necessarily come to your rescue. (A kind of cynical view of humanity, IMHO, but true.... I've heard cases of people totally ignoring rape in public.)
-Don't leave your laptop on overnight or it'll overheat.
-Don't download exe files from Kazaa.

So there you go.

Got a Trigun wallpaper. I also want a Trigun wallscroll, for real life of course. I'm so addicted. Eeek. Lauren!!! XD

Went to "Playfair," an icebreaker type activity in which people frenetically introduce themselves to as many other people as possible, in the form of many different games and totally random events. It's hell for people who aren't people persons. I don't know if I was a people person or not; I had fun but was embarrassed at the forced social activity.

After I came back to my dorm I anti-virused my laptop; it's a new laptop, and I was amazed to have had a worm already.

Went and talked with the girl who lives in the room next to mine. We share a bathroom between our rooms and so are in and out of each other's rooms often. Her roommate has yet to move in, so in the quad there are three of us; me, Casey (my roommate) and Melissa. Melissa is a pink-haired girl from Staten Island. She plays the guitar (acoustic and electric) and used to have a punk band called Pocky, named, of course, after the Japanese dessert. She has Totoro tatooed to her hip, and she is damn cool.

She thinks our accents are funny, which amuses me to no end.

Am at UMBC. Kind of stressful with my mom yelling at me as I moved, and also not knowing anyone, but I'm not homesick at all, just kind of relieved that my parents left. Getting better though. Food is nice. My room is a bit too blank for me; I need to collect stuff like a hamster. My roomie is nicer than I'd expected from the beer pong conversation.

Partings

Yesterday was both happy and sad. I went to Potbelly's with Malex, after accompanying him on many diverting errands. Also at Potbelly's were Puffy and Andrew D, Jen, Dena, Lizzie, Karina and Ranwa. I ate a sandwich partially, and drank a shake, and it was a fast lunch. I don't remember any significant conversation. In hindsight it was rather a dumb farewell. We finished quickly, mostly so that we could go and visit RM, and we seperated, stalking the school in groups of twos and threes. We visited people, feeling very strange and wondering what on God's good earth we were doing in that place for four years. Everything was all very familiar yet different for some reason. I believe I accidentally left the remains of my partially eaten tuna sandwich in the girls' bathroom. Call it a parting gift. I asked Mr. Baron whether Operation Uranus* was real. Indeed it was, according to Mr. Thomas.. it was.. an operation.. involving.. Uranus... right. It still cracks me up after six months. We visited Mr. Evans, still, even after graduating, holding the History Office in awe as a sacred place. Andrew stole a 2 by 4. Defiler! (Well, from the main hallway) The library where I used to collapse in a comatose pile every morning has shiny, new, (sleek, black and sinister) computers that all work. The foreign language hall's construction paper flags are now painted onto the walls. It is bizarre. Such a clutter of memories and routines that ghost around in my memory.

*Russian plan led by General Zhukov to break out of the siege of Stalingrad during WWII. People who say we remember nothing of high school history should be shot. In Uranus.

We left. Me and Malex dropped off Andrew D at his house, which was deja vu for me.. I remember it when I was there in November and in the bare woods beside his house, and it was cold. I hugged him, he went in the house and we left.

More errands with Malex.

Then Lauren's house to finish Trigun. Yay, Lauren! Yay, Trigun! Me and Lauren conspired quite stealthily not to reveal spoilers to Malex and his virgin ears, but he'd picked up spoilers from fanfic already anyway. I'd picked them up from fan art. Lauren'd picked them up from listening to people. So all of us knew the ending before the end. Wolfwood kicks ass and other things. I love his crossfire but thinking about Trigun too much makes things make less sense. Todd was there also. One of Lauren's friends, and therefore on the stage of life for me, miscellaneous set dressing. He was hot and funny and passed out teatree chew sticks, but he will most likely never appear in my blog again. Why I bothered to introduce him, I don't know.

We had, not at the same time, pizza, "sinfully chocolate ice cream cake" (metaphysically Wolfwood) and pudding pie (metaphysically Vash).

Janis and a bunch of people who I will not bother to introduce came over at night. Todd and Laurens' noses fit together, because he has a Wolfwood nose and she has a Vash nose (convex and concave). You can fit them together like a puzzle piece if you have one person stand upside down.

I called home at around 11, and my dad was pissed, so I didn't go to the Silver Diner with everyone. We said goodbye to Lauren (though I will see her in the year because she's going to MC) and Janis; Malex drove me home. I hugged him outside my house and won't see him again until December I think, but I didn't really get a good look at him last night there anyways, because it was dark. We will no longer live five minutes away anymore. My dad yelled at me for not calling earlier and then tangented into a lecture about discipline and responsibility. I know that parents get irritable with their kids when they get sad and worried about them leaving; it seems a common phenomenon. Well, I know my dad loves me. It's interesting.. parents always want their children to be happy and think they know but don't quite know what will make their children happy. What is most important to them right now it seems is stuff. They want me to major in econ and pre-law and be successful and happy and filthy rich. Stuff. But I am young yet and have the luxury of dreaming, so let me dream now about what I can, of friendship and maybe love. It's not that financial or academic success are unimportant, it's just that in the context of starting an entirely new life, not just a new school, it seems trivial compared to the scope of everything.

I went to bed and was sad. It's worse not during the goodbyes, but after, when you acutely remember what you just left and have no longer. Though it was only a little while ago the goodbyes were said and life procedes as normal, and it seems so illusively easy to reach back into my memory and touch everything, as if the clarity of it would make it real again, and it takes a while to realize that the goodbyes were indeed goodbyes .... and that everything is gone. Give me one day more, one hour more, one minute more, one second more.

But I have no time left.

I talked to my roomey, Casey. She lives in Denton MD with all the cows and goats. For fun, she plays with pigs and also plays beer pong, a game involving tossing a pingpong ball into a cup and drinking the beer in it. She says she has nothing better to do. She has a boyfriend and a 14 year old sister who is entering high school this year. If she could be any type of insect she'd be a lightning bug, which is hick for firefly. But I kid. ^__^ Lauren uses that term too, on her livejournal. But she lives in Olney, so the point still stands. :P It's a bug, like lightning!

Thai Man Dies Laughing

Now that is a good way to go!

Hey, you guys know Caitlin B? The beautiful, the mysterious, the Caitlin B, whose face launched a thousand minivans?

No? Damn. Refresher: She's the girl who, according to Nick B, melted Andrew P's icy heart in middle school, vanquished his wild spirit, and was darn tootin' hot, and very nice to boot. Matt G knew her not from middle school but at drama camp or something, and wrote lovely sonnets to/of her. As a matter of fact, Matt found my blog by Googling for her, though I did a Google search today, and it does not yield my blog anymore. More concretely, she is a girl who used to go to Takoma Park Middle and Northwestern High. But my point is, Caitlin B is a beautiful, mythical, elusive creature who weaves her ethereal webs of high passion and tragedy. Or something like that.

She's going to UMBC this year, says Andrew D, who somehow knows her as well. (I tell you her influence is unfathomable) I should like to meet her, if only to see what all this hype is about.

Wherein Angie Organizes Her Internet Correspondances

Andrew D now has a blog, which I have linked to permanently.

Andrew likes to be called by his full name so he can find it via Google. I feel it's too formal, and call him Andrew D just to distinguish him from Andrew P; otherwise he'd just be Andrew.

Andrew says that Doug may like me, which I think is astounding because nobody's done it before, so it's hard to imagine.

(Also, and totally irrelevantly: Angela J gave me her AIM and chatted with me in a useless attempt to procrastinate from reading "The Long Fuse.")

The Totally Chronologically Backwards Post, in Honor of Chrononaughts

Blogger ate my post. I am retyping it, as close to verbatim as possible. Dammity damn! And it was a long post! I know the time stamp says Tuesday, but since it was written at 1 at night, that really counts for Monday night, doesn't it? When, in the course of this post, I say "this evening," or "this afternoon," or "this morning," it means Monday evening, Monday afternoon, and Monday morning. Thank you, kind readers, for your patience.

----

Andrew D wants me to give a shout out to Doug M who will be googling this page shortly.

This evening before sunset my mom let me drive around in an empty parking lot at the local Hebrew Academy. It was fun but tense with my mom yelling at me, and both easier and harder than I thought.

Earlier, we had been walking through Rock Creek Park looking at deer. (We found two, which were small and dappled.) We talked also, though it felt like in different languages. I am not prepared for college mentally. I am not prepared to go anywhere. I don't feel like an adult, but a post-teenager. I am afraid of re-entering the maelstrom of social affairs because there has been one lesson that has been pounded into my head all this summer. If I don't make friends in the first year of college while social groups are fluid and un-codified, I won't make them. I have to frenetically pound out my social circles before the primordial lava has cooled or else the world will be formed already around me. It's kind of funny, because I had friends. I was friends with Andrew D, Doug, Mary W, and Rachel M, but for some reason or another I never figured out in my four years of high school what Malex knew within the first two months of freshman year after the first Introverted White Boys and Angie party: if they are your friends, do stuff with them. So it is four years later now, and that is what I regret the most. I had my own friends, yet we never were a group. (Also, I am afraid that at UMBC will be morons I can't talk to). That is what I tried to tell my mom. She gave me banal advice that didn't address any of my problems: Do more social activities. Go to church. Don't feel uncomfortable at church because many other people there are also nonbelievers looking for friends. Make more friends with girls than boys because boys will be embarrassed to go shopping with you. Befriend new immigrants and offer to make phone calls for them. Ask for homework help even if you don't need the advice.

All gimmicks, I thought.

Blah blah. Blah blah.

I told my mom the things she was saying was more annoying than if she hadn't spoken at all, and she said, "If we don't talk now, when will we?" I didn't really have an answer for her.

Before my mom came home from work, I'd watched the episodes of Trigun on VCD that Lauren had loaned me, episodes 5-9 because I'd missed that viewing last Wednesday. I wuv Vashy! ^__^ Earlier in the day, in a fit of deja vu, I had been afraid that I would miss Malex calling me asking about another Trigun session, because I wasn't home in the afternoon.

I wasn't home because I was at the Aspen Hill Library, where I bought some used books. I am a used book buying addict. I do this because UMBC's library isn't exactly an accessible fountain of fun, unless your idea of pleasure reading is something like, "The Importance of Noserings in Polygamous Cultures of the Polynesian Islands." So, I bought.. "The Cowtail Switch," a collection of West African folk tales because I need to diversify my reading, "The Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, and "Beauty" by Robin McKinley. Yes, in spite of many warnings about boredom, I am giving Robin McKinley another go even after "Deerskin," because she is capable of much better.

I was close to the library because I'd gone for a walk at around noon, when it was still cool. I was around suburbia, and it was gorgeous. There were some belled flowers as big as my face that grew in vined clusters, and there was this tree that looked exactly like a fork, with part of the trunk growing totally horizontally, and three prongs growing from it completely vertical. People have very beautiful gardens, with tomatoes, sunflowers, black-eyed susans, daisies, zuchinni, peppers, myrtle, ... countless things if you care to look, and more than I can name. It seems that I have all the time in the world yet none at all, because in five days I will be starting a different life. As it were, here is a qoute, though not my quote: Live every day both as if you will live forever and die tomorrow.

It turns out that while I was away, Malex did not call me, but Doug did, twice, and left messages on my machine asking for a working e-mail address because the one he got from Andrew D was wrong.

At five thirty this morning, I'd gone outside to look at the moon, half-full in the bowl of the night circling with clouds, and I was amazed at how bright the moon made the sky. I slipped inside for around twenty minutes, and when I looked out the window again the sun had risen, and the sky was bright, and it was as if night had never been. It seems that I am always in love with things only when they are to be imminently taken away from me, or gone already, things that I normally take for granted, for how many of us would wake up at five in the morning to look at the moon? In this way God is infinitely cruel and infinitely kind, and He gives us the winter so that we may be grateful for spring.

It hurts to leave.

Sunday night I'd watched the Discovery Channel documentary on Nefertiti, which was entirely too sensationalized. It's entertaining to watch people drive chariots and other historical eye-candy, but I think the documentary lacked credance as an educational source because of it. It was like, "We can't prove this mummy is really Nefertiti. In the meantime, look at our cool cinematics of a dark-skinned woman looking mysterious! Ooh, ooh! CGI!" Also, in a very superficial way, I just don't trust any egyptologist who has poofy red hair. I'm a poofyredhairist. Sorry, miss!

I watched Anatomy of a Shark Bite too. I wanna be a were-shark! Remember! The were-shark's sole weakness is.. the Silver Surfer!

Sunday afternoon, I'd gone to Lisa's house for her party, and met Andrew D there. I have a list of people off the top of my head who were there as well: Martin, Natalie D, Kate N, Francie, Bert, Yoni, Gavin, Matt B. I should take this occasion to gloat that Lisa and Matt also lost power on Thursday, so I am indeed not the only person in the state of Maryland who lost power power that day. The real reason I list these people though is to show you what type of people were there; people who are nice IB kids who I don't know well. This makes me kind of sad. They were such nice people. I wish I'd known them better. Lisa is really Nice. I don't mean nice, which is a term I use for lack of original description, or a term I use for people I don't know well who seem quite decent. Lisa's Nice. She packs serious Niceness. She is the Queen of Nice. The only other person in the world with such extraordinary Niceness is my aunt. Not only is Lisa polite, which anyone can pull off, but she's warm and welcoming. We had conversations about camping-themed dorm rooms complete with faux can-o-beans and fake smores, and being great fans of Dragon Strike* without actually playing the game. This is unordinary in itself but incredible in context, because most other people I know so not-well begin conversations with me by saying things like: "So... Angie... where are you going to college?" and other formulaic nonsense. Lisa's house is how you'd imagine for someone so Nice; there's a shady crabapple tree in the yard, a sunflower garden in the back and white bell-shaped flowers. Inside, there are homey paintings and framed needlework samplers and clippings of inspirational sayings and scripture stuck to the fridge with magnets. I think I'd like to be Lisa because she's so wonderful.

After playing a group game of Taboo, I played Chrononaughts, a time-travelling history-altering card game, with Andrew D. Andrew has a long tradition of always losing to Rob, but since Rob wasn't there, Andrew beat me quite soundly. Twice.

Friday, I went to Lauren's house with Malex and Janis to watch episodes 10-17 of Trigun. I brought over my Vash fan art. Lauren is nice, but not Nice, since it's not her distinguishing feature. Rather, she's funny and original, and we have.. er.. interesting.. conversations.

Quote: FIRED! (Lauren to Malex whenever he was acting gay.)

Lauren likes Vash and Meryl together, but me and Malex shall convert her to the sexy glory that is Vash/Wolfwood. Or.. um, as Malex says, Vash/Frank. Gross. Vash/Wolfwood all the way! Vashy! ^___^ Wolfy! ^___^ Vashy!!! ^___^ Wolfy! ^____^

I'll stop now, before I start typing in Leet like a bad fangirl.

*Dragon Strike: a hilariously campy 80's D&D style board game with included adventure movie filmed in "Hyper-reality, a suspenseful mixture of live action and computer animation"

Minutes before 2pm, Angie was thinking like this:

...listening to Siny Platocheck, aka The Blue Shawl, a popular Russian song during WWII. I have no idea what the lyrics mean. Anyone care to be a fountain of information?

BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL, I HAVE... no power.

I seem to be the only one in the state of Maryland who lost power today. It irks me. Mayor Williams said our area is unaffected, but I want a grandiouse, newsworthy explanation for why I, out of all people, had no power.

("CNN reports that all of the northeastern United States and southern Canada is in disorder as the cities of New York, Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, Ontario, and Cleveland suffered a major power outage, bringing activity to a halt in Wall Street, airports, the subway, offices, and hospitals. Thousands streamed onto the streets or were trapped in elevators when workplaces lost power at approximately four in the afternoon today, and crowds of people were seen thronging across the Brooklyn bridge as public transportation was halted and traffic lights remained dark. Many people continue to be evacuated from subway cars and tunnels, and remain seperated from their families due to lack of transportation and cell phone failure. 140 miners are trapped 4000 feet below ground in four mines in Ontario, where there is no power for the elevators. Though the miners are in no immediate danger, the usage of ladders is certainly a possibility, to which the general response by said miners was, "No fucking way you motherfucking fuckers!" In the meantime, in one house in the Washington DC area, Angela of Rockville also has no power, but for no particular reason.")*

The power was already out when I got up at... 12:40pm (this is what I get for going to bed at 4 in the morning talking to Lauren on AIM and drawing Vash) and I called my dad since I knew he'd be concerned about the fish. He came home and put battery-operated pumps into the fish tanks, so that the fish could breathe.

Me, after dialing 411: "I want Pepco, the electricity people, not PetCo!"

Pepco (the automated lady for Pepco anyways) said they'd said a crew around and my power would come back on by 7:40 at night... but it came back on much earlier than that, at around 3 or so.

I think there is something viscerally appealing about having New York City be reduced to a jungle of stone towers and monuments like Mayan pyramids; not because like Nick said I want to see NYC humiliated, but because it gives the city a raw sense of power, to have such monoliths looming in the dark.

I went to the oral surgeon to get my stitches out, but apparently my stitches are dissolvable, and they've dissolved, except for one which really isn't worth digging around for. Otherwise, I'm good; no bone socket inflammation or anything like that.

*I made all of this up, though it is general paraphrasing of the actual news. Don't kill me. Or CNN. They're good people.

I really should not read Savage Love, a highly dysfunctional sex advice column, before going to bed. Why? Because I get weird dreams.

I do not want to have any more dreams about making out with Nick B, or conspiring with Jen to lie to my mom, saying I'm lesbian.

Other dreams of last night that don't make sense include: camping out on an asphalt basketball court in a forest surrounded by buildings.

Die, subconscious, die.

Went to T's house today, where she warned me not to download exe files from Kazaa for fear of viruses, and not to keep my laptop on overnight in college, for fear of overheating. I will keep this in mind. She made me some miso soup, and I was duly impressed, because I've never had homemade miso soup.

I watched "Adaptation" with her, which she probably burned. It was good, yes. Profound, yes. Beautiful, in its own way, and I grudgingly agree that it really does deserve the title of "best movie of the year," as judged by Washington Post critics anyway. Yes, even over "The Two Towers." "Adaptation" is about Charlie Kaufman, a writer writing the screenplay for a dramatization of a book about orchids, aka the movie you're watching. So it's a movie about the writing of the movie... The acting is very naturalistic, and I recognized many things from life captured perfectly, from that little smile waitresses give you, to the politely charming and emotionally detached smalltalk of people at parties. It's basically the movie version of "To the Lighthouse," with similar thematic emphasis on the superficiality of plot and structure, and the importance of seeing and celebrating life as it is. (Though it has more plot than TTL) The funny thing is, immediately after a scene in which the screenwriter's twin brother, who typically writes thrillers, becomes Charlie's partner with the script, the movie becomes plotted and structured, with one increasingly unbelievable event following another in an incredibly cliched manner. I'd say the first half of the movie, without drug addicts, voyeurism, car chases, adulteresses, armed psychopaths, man-eating alligators, and people dying in each others' arms rings much truer, but I think that indeed is the point.

Something funny; at T's house, I called Malex, wondering if we could drop by, but of course he wasn't in. Turns out he was at Lauren's house with Janis watching Trigun; he'd called me and gotten my answering machine a little while before, and had actually come over and banged on my doors and windows. When I got home, I gave Lauren a ring, and through her had a long and zany conversation with the Trigun crowd over the phone.

More Trigun, Friday; Lauren is also holding an anime party on Saturday.

I'm not sure that I like it that Malex has changed his name to Mike. He may also be dying his hair; and his moving to California is inevitable. It's like he's trying to transform himself into a different person, who is too cool for us. I don't mean it like a snub; just that the summer is ending with the days peeling off, and Mike feels as far removed as a person on the moon.

People drift apart, and Mike pushes off the banks and quietly slashes the moorings and goes gently into that good night.