Christmas wasn't particularly special. Stella and Jonathan came over on Christmas Eve with Nathan rather unexpectedly, so my mom had to accomodate them by cooking more, which she started rather late because she got into a totally pointless argument with Jonathan about driver's license requirements (on my behalf). After dinner was cooked Nathan wouldn't stop crying, so after Stella fit in a few ceremonial bites, they left. So we were left with all this extra food but no one to eat it (except for me)(and my parents). My dad commented, "Other people's kids are always more annoying, aren't they?" and I concurred. Nathan is three months old now and incredibly cute, though we joke about him being cone-headed (my mom semi-seriously joked that you have to place him down in different positions when he sleeps so that his skull will grow evenly). I have a Christmas card of him looking cherubic stuck to the fridge with a magnet, but in reality he cries entirely too much; Stella says the doctors said he has a good set of lungs. No kidding.
I vow (sometimes successfully) not to go online on Christmas, so I spent Christmas rereading Lord of the Rings, though of course not all of it. This is better than going online because I can pursue fairly good conversations with my family while I'm reading, and relax over tea. I did this last year too, inspired by the Fellowship Extended DVD (and of course this year by the T2T DVD and RotK), so I think I may make this an annual tradition. I have a longer break this year, until the 27th of January so I might actually re-read the whole book, who knows? My attention span, not time, is the limit. At certain parts of the book lines from the movie (sometimes one and the same) would echo in my head and sometimes I would find myself humming themes from the soundtracks. Tolkien really does write beautifully, but it can be annoying how many times I have to pull out the dictionary only to find that certain words aren't in it. Tolkein actually wrote parts of the Oxford English dictionary... damn dictionary writers shouldn't write novels! Grrr! ^___^
I had dim sum for lunch (because on Christmas only Chinese places are open) with my mom and dad and Mark, one of my dad's friends from China with no family here to keep him company over Christmas or whatever, as it always seems to be with my dad's friends. We bumped into Shirley, my ex-piano teacher, and her family there, which is what I dislike about going to Oriental East; you always see random Chinese people who you know but don't really feel like talking to. My dad wondered if he could go visit Rosita, his depressed and sometimes suicidal ex-wife who is the cause of most our family issues, but my mom wouldn't allow it and that was that.
Later on T and Mehmet came over so that I could give T her Christmas present (and birthday present because it turns out I'd never given her one), which was money to buy a hoodie with, but since Mehmet had already given her a hoodie she'll just have to buy something else. My dad yelled at me for not introducing Mehmet to him. Chastised, I did so, and just for courtesy I also introduced Mark to Mehmet, to Mark a friend's daughter's friend's boyfriend. Both Mehmet and Mark found it strange and awkward because they really, really could've gone through life perfectly happily without ever having talked to one another. It really made people's lives a little worse, as opposed to a little more pleasant, as such introductions turn out to be examples of exalting the form of etiquette over function.
We spent the night eating from the hotpot and watching Finding Nemo. My dad isn't really a fan of animated movies, but he loves fish (our entire basement is fish tanks). He was rather enthusiastic about it and I was pleasantly surprised.
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Wherein Angie Experiments with Drugs
In the evening after RotK, I went with T and Mehmet to Georgetown to do holiday shopping. Because of the prices of anything, we didn't get much shopping done, but it was fun looking around. Georgetown has a very nice small town feel that's almost colonial. I think, this year, that I've been happiest when I'm shopping. I never buy anything, but there are so many new things to see.
We found, in Georgetown, a restaurant called The Prince, which is a Middle Eastern restaurant chain of sorts that T and Mehmet are familiar with. The atmosphere was rather bad; it was something of a swanky place, given a kind of underwater European nightclub look by having the whole room dark and dimly lit in watery greens, blues and purples. This reminded T to seek out a similar (less swanky) restaurant called the Oasis in Alexandria, so we drove there, past the White House and the National Christmas Tree and National Mennorah*. Across the Key Bridge someone had taken the time and effort to get every single highrise building to line its roof in white Christmas lights. The entire skyline was silhouetted as if someone had drawn the shape of buildings in the sky with light.
The Oasis is mainly visited for its shishah, a type of flavored tobacco smoked in Egyptian waterpipes, like hookah I suppose. It has one smokey, sweet-smelling room, with sturdy fretwork tables and benches, and metal traceried lanterns hanging from chains above, and to either side, painted walls with sand dunes and camels and minarets and the Nile, and the eyes of a veiled woman peering out a window. Chatter, the clicking of dominoes, and all around, young people of dubious legal age (many seem suspiciously high schoolish; all the cool kids) and one or two genuine Arabs (sometimes school aged, sometimes not). The menu is in English and Arabic, and one flap, piously Islamic, reads, "Absolutely no gambling or alcohol!" White Christmas lights are strung around the ceiling. The restaurant was constantly busy.
Mehmet didn't want to be known as the Bad Guy Who Introduces Me to Smoking, so he made me swear, quite solemnly, "Promise me that after this you will never ever touch a cigarette." I promised, and with that we rented a smoking pot thing. It looks like a metal brazier that comes up to about table height; on the very top is a lump of glowing coal which heats tobacco in a compartment under it. The smoke is drawn down, through a glass bulb filled with water, and into a tube from which you inhale. Anecdotally the water filters out many of the toxins in the smoke. This story is probably not true but it made me feel better so I don't care.
I didn't really know what to do with the tube. I inhaled, kind of went "Huh?" and exhaled, coughing. ("Cute!" T declared about my inexperience.) But actually it's rather easy; you inhale, and exhale, slowly. T and Mehmet can both make smoke rings like Gandalf, but I never could really manage it. T had said that her first time smoking had involved the burning sensation of what is essentially hot smoke pouring down your throat and into your lungs, but waterpipes are different. It only felt to me like pleasantly inhaling a mist, or the vapor of a tea, sweet-smelling and tasting. T said I should pretend it was my 18th birthday, since I'd never indulged in the tobacco part of turning 18, but since they never checked ID anyways it didn't make me feel special.
We ate, without forks originally because they'd given us pita and expected us to eat with our hands, but we requested utensils and got them. We smoked and ate and played a game of dominoes, and after the coal died, went home.
We got thoroughly lost on the way back, going in circles and driving along Massachusetts Avenue at least twice, and got an unintentional nighttime tour of DC. "Look, the Lincoln Monument! Union Station! The National Postal Museum! The Natural History Museum! The Washington Monument! The Capital building!" Mehmet had a big headache by the end of it, driving, but I think I had fun, having had a very satisfying night.
*I'd never known there was one. It looks ghastly, and Mehmet said disparaging things about Israeli national interests. Trees are naturally as big as they grow to be, but mennorahs aren't meant to be twenty feet tall and electrically lit.
In the evening after RotK, I went with T and Mehmet to Georgetown to do holiday shopping. Because of the prices of anything, we didn't get much shopping done, but it was fun looking around. Georgetown has a very nice small town feel that's almost colonial. I think, this year, that I've been happiest when I'm shopping. I never buy anything, but there are so many new things to see.
We found, in Georgetown, a restaurant called The Prince, which is a Middle Eastern restaurant chain of sorts that T and Mehmet are familiar with. The atmosphere was rather bad; it was something of a swanky place, given a kind of underwater European nightclub look by having the whole room dark and dimly lit in watery greens, blues and purples. This reminded T to seek out a similar (less swanky) restaurant called the Oasis in Alexandria, so we drove there, past the White House and the National Christmas Tree and National Mennorah*. Across the Key Bridge someone had taken the time and effort to get every single highrise building to line its roof in white Christmas lights. The entire skyline was silhouetted as if someone had drawn the shape of buildings in the sky with light.
The Oasis is mainly visited for its shishah, a type of flavored tobacco smoked in Egyptian waterpipes, like hookah I suppose. It has one smokey, sweet-smelling room, with sturdy fretwork tables and benches, and metal traceried lanterns hanging from chains above, and to either side, painted walls with sand dunes and camels and minarets and the Nile, and the eyes of a veiled woman peering out a window. Chatter, the clicking of dominoes, and all around, young people of dubious legal age (many seem suspiciously high schoolish; all the cool kids) and one or two genuine Arabs (sometimes school aged, sometimes not). The menu is in English and Arabic, and one flap, piously Islamic, reads, "Absolutely no gambling or alcohol!" White Christmas lights are strung around the ceiling. The restaurant was constantly busy.
Mehmet didn't want to be known as the Bad Guy Who Introduces Me to Smoking, so he made me swear, quite solemnly, "Promise me that after this you will never ever touch a cigarette." I promised, and with that we rented a smoking pot thing. It looks like a metal brazier that comes up to about table height; on the very top is a lump of glowing coal which heats tobacco in a compartment under it. The smoke is drawn down, through a glass bulb filled with water, and into a tube from which you inhale. Anecdotally the water filters out many of the toxins in the smoke. This story is probably not true but it made me feel better so I don't care.
I didn't really know what to do with the tube. I inhaled, kind of went "Huh?" and exhaled, coughing. ("Cute!" T declared about my inexperience.) But actually it's rather easy; you inhale, and exhale, slowly. T and Mehmet can both make smoke rings like Gandalf, but I never could really manage it. T had said that her first time smoking had involved the burning sensation of what is essentially hot smoke pouring down your throat and into your lungs, but waterpipes are different. It only felt to me like pleasantly inhaling a mist, or the vapor of a tea, sweet-smelling and tasting. T said I should pretend it was my 18th birthday, since I'd never indulged in the tobacco part of turning 18, but since they never checked ID anyways it didn't make me feel special.
We ate, without forks originally because they'd given us pita and expected us to eat with our hands, but we requested utensils and got them. We smoked and ate and played a game of dominoes, and after the coal died, went home.
We got thoroughly lost on the way back, going in circles and driving along Massachusetts Avenue at least twice, and got an unintentional nighttime tour of DC. "Look, the Lincoln Monument! Union Station! The National Postal Museum! The Natural History Museum! The Washington Monument! The Capital building!" Mehmet had a big headache by the end of it, driving, but I think I had fun, having had a very satisfying night.
*I'd never known there was one. It looks ghastly, and Mehmet said disparaging things about Israeli national interests. Trees are naturally as big as they grow to be, but mennorahs aren't meant to be twenty feet tall and electrically lit.
RotK Redux
So yesterday, I went to lunch at Lebanese Taverna with T and Mehmet. I have decided that the food there is bad.
Then we went to see Return of the King at the Uptown, which for those of you who don't know, is a big single-screen theater in DC which has balcony seating, like in the old days. They don't make theaters like that now, just multiplexes, so it's like an annual pilgrimage for us locals to go to the Uptown to watch whatever big nerd movie that's out. T asked where I'd seen RotK before, and I told her at Muvico at Arundel Mills, and she was for some reason impressed; I think it has quite a reputation. *
It could just be that I was watching RotK for the second time, in some fairly crappy seats at the back of the balcony, but the Uptown was not as impressive as usual. Still, it was fun because of the size of the crowd. It was very applause-happy, and we clapped in all the right places and then in some rather questionable ones; we clapped for Viggo in the Hidalgo trailer, and as in the first time I saw RotK, people clapped for Denethor's death, which is a big difference from the books because it's not a death you're supposed to applaud, you know? But John Noble did make himself so exquisitely despicable. Some poor fool clapped at the end of the Rivendell scene after the fade to black, only to face laughter from the entire theater when he and the entire audience realized that, of course, the movie wasn't over yet.
Comments overheard during RotK:
"He's finally washed his hair!" -Person sitting next to me regarding Aragorn at the end.
Mehmet and T spent a lot of the time cuddling*/making slashy comments regarding Frodo and Sam, and groaning when I said, cheerfully, "It's not over!" I enjoyed misleading T because she never read the books; I got her to think that Frodo would jump in after the ring. Well, she came up with the idea herself, but I rather encouraged it.
Mehmet said that out of three hours and forty minutes, forty minutes of RotK is the ending. When we left, we had a hilarious time walking past the long line of people waiting to get in for the next showing and saying things like, "Why did they have to kill Frodo? That's just wrong!" Don't think anyone bought it though.
I was impressed that I didn't have to pee for the whole time, but of course I was dehydrated because I'd hardly drank anything during lunch beforehand.
PS:
I feel the need to add this to the list of things to not do during a RotK showing: throw popcorn kernels at the screen during the Cracks of Doom sequence.
*Jose and Kay will be glad to hear (or confirm) that Muvico gives the Uptown a run for its money. It has reclining seats and a mural of the Nile at sunset (or sunrise) painted on the walls. The lobby has these big plaster columns, the halls have electric torches and the doors have brass fan-shaped handles that remind me of those jeweled collars pharoahs wear. So we have some pretty nice theaters close by UMBC, it turns out, though we don't often appreciate it.
*Watching other people cuddle is a bit annoying. Being that this is something I myself inflict upon innocent bystanders whenever Jeremy is around, I figure that I'm obligated to put up with it from other people.
So yesterday, I went to lunch at Lebanese Taverna with T and Mehmet. I have decided that the food there is bad.
Then we went to see Return of the King at the Uptown, which for those of you who don't know, is a big single-screen theater in DC which has balcony seating, like in the old days. They don't make theaters like that now, just multiplexes, so it's like an annual pilgrimage for us locals to go to the Uptown to watch whatever big nerd movie that's out. T asked where I'd seen RotK before, and I told her at Muvico at Arundel Mills, and she was for some reason impressed; I think it has quite a reputation. *
It could just be that I was watching RotK for the second time, in some fairly crappy seats at the back of the balcony, but the Uptown was not as impressive as usual. Still, it was fun because of the size of the crowd. It was very applause-happy, and we clapped in all the right places and then in some rather questionable ones; we clapped for Viggo in the Hidalgo trailer, and as in the first time I saw RotK, people clapped for Denethor's death, which is a big difference from the books because it's not a death you're supposed to applaud, you know? But John Noble did make himself so exquisitely despicable. Some poor fool clapped at the end of the Rivendell scene after the fade to black, only to face laughter from the entire theater when he and the entire audience realized that, of course, the movie wasn't over yet.
Comments overheard during RotK:
"He's finally washed his hair!" -Person sitting next to me regarding Aragorn at the end.
Mehmet and T spent a lot of the time cuddling*/making slashy comments regarding Frodo and Sam, and groaning when I said, cheerfully, "It's not over!" I enjoyed misleading T because she never read the books; I got her to think that Frodo would jump in after the ring. Well, she came up with the idea herself, but I rather encouraged it.
Mehmet said that out of three hours and forty minutes, forty minutes of RotK is the ending. When we left, we had a hilarious time walking past the long line of people waiting to get in for the next showing and saying things like, "Why did they have to kill Frodo? That's just wrong!" Don't think anyone bought it though.
I was impressed that I didn't have to pee for the whole time, but of course I was dehydrated because I'd hardly drank anything during lunch beforehand.
PS:
I feel the need to add this to the list of things to not do during a RotK showing: throw popcorn kernels at the screen during the Cracks of Doom sequence.
*Jose and Kay will be glad to hear (or confirm) that Muvico gives the Uptown a run for its money. It has reclining seats and a mural of the Nile at sunset (or sunrise) painted on the walls. The lobby has these big plaster columns, the halls have electric torches and the doors have brass fan-shaped handles that remind me of those jeweled collars pharoahs wear. So we have some pretty nice theaters close by UMBC, it turns out, though we don't often appreciate it.
*Watching other people cuddle is a bit annoying. Being that this is something I myself inflict upon innocent bystanders whenever Jeremy is around, I figure that I'm obligated to put up with it from other people.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Things Not to Do At Return of the King
(Stolen from The Two Towers MUD discussion boards, courtesy Langor, whoever the hell he is.)
For those of you planning on seeing the third LOTR movie at the theatre here are some survival tips.
1. Stand up halfway through the movie and yell loudly, "Wait... where the hell is Harry Potter?"
2. Block the entrance to the theatre while screaming: "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!". After the movie, say "Lucas could have done it better."
3. At some point during the movie, stand up and shout: "I must go! Middle Earth needs me!" and run and try to jump into the screen.
After bouncing off, return quietly to your seat.
4. Play a drinking game where you have to take a sip every time someone says: "The Ring."
5. Point and laugh whenever someone dies.
6. Ask the nearest ring-nut if he thinks Gandalf went to Hogwarts.
7. Finish off every one of Elrond's lines with "Mr. Anderson."
8. When Aragorn is crowned king, stand up and at the top of your lungs sing, "And I did it.... MY way...!"
9. At the end, complain that Gollum was offensive to Ethiopians.
10. Talk like Gollum all through the movie. At the end, bite off someone's finger and fall down the stairs.
11. When Shelob appears, pinch the guy in front of you on the back of the neck.
12. Dress up as old ladies and re-enact "The Battle of Helms Deep" Monty Python style.
13. When Denethor lights the fire, shout "Barbecue!"
14. Ask people around you who they think is the next "Terminator" sent from the Middle Earth of the future to assassinate Frodo Baggins.
15. In TTT when the Ents decide to march to war, stand up and shout "RUN FOREST, RUN!"
16. Every time someone kills an Orc, yell: "That's what I'm Tolkien about!" See how long it takes before you get kicked out of the theatre.
17. During a wide shot of a battle, inquire, "Where's Wally?"
18. Talk loudly about how you heard that there is a single frame of a nude Elf hidden somewhere in the movie.
19. Start an Orc sing-a-long.
20. Come to the premiere dressed as Frankenfurter and wander around looking terribly confused.
(Stolen from The Two Towers MUD discussion boards, courtesy Langor, whoever the hell he is.)
For those of you planning on seeing the third LOTR movie at the theatre here are some survival tips.
1. Stand up halfway through the movie and yell loudly, "Wait... where the hell is Harry Potter?"
2. Block the entrance to the theatre while screaming: "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!". After the movie, say "Lucas could have done it better."
3. At some point during the movie, stand up and shout: "I must go! Middle Earth needs me!" and run and try to jump into the screen.
After bouncing off, return quietly to your seat.
4. Play a drinking game where you have to take a sip every time someone says: "The Ring."
5. Point and laugh whenever someone dies.
6. Ask the nearest ring-nut if he thinks Gandalf went to Hogwarts.
7. Finish off every one of Elrond's lines with "Mr. Anderson."
8. When Aragorn is crowned king, stand up and at the top of your lungs sing, "And I did it.... MY way...!"
9. At the end, complain that Gollum was offensive to Ethiopians.
10. Talk like Gollum all through the movie. At the end, bite off someone's finger and fall down the stairs.
11. When Shelob appears, pinch the guy in front of you on the back of the neck.
12. Dress up as old ladies and re-enact "The Battle of Helms Deep" Monty Python style.
13. When Denethor lights the fire, shout "Barbecue!"
14. Ask people around you who they think is the next "Terminator" sent from the Middle Earth of the future to assassinate Frodo Baggins.
15. In TTT when the Ents decide to march to war, stand up and shout "RUN FOREST, RUN!"
16. Every time someone kills an Orc, yell: "That's what I'm Tolkien about!" See how long it takes before you get kicked out of the theatre.
17. During a wide shot of a battle, inquire, "Where's Wally?"
18. Talk loudly about how you heard that there is a single frame of a nude Elf hidden somewhere in the movie.
19. Start an Orc sing-a-long.
20. Come to the premiere dressed as Frankenfurter and wander around looking terribly confused.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Dear Jeremy,
My love for you is as immovable as a fat kid on a seesaw. It burns like the eye of Sauron at Barad-Dur*, a magnesium strip exposed to a friction force, and vampire blood in World of Darkness, all at once. It is undying like a Shambling Mound with a Shocker Lizard familiar*. The world is just you and I (in Otiluke's Resilient Sphere). I fail my will save. I love you.
*Except if a wizard cast levitate to ten feet above the shambling mound, cast shape change, turned into a 250 by 250 foot platinum cube, and fell.
*As in, the tower in Mordor, not Andrew D's dorm, y'all.
My love for you is as immovable as a fat kid on a seesaw. It burns like the eye of Sauron at Barad-Dur*, a magnesium strip exposed to a friction force, and vampire blood in World of Darkness, all at once. It is undying like a Shambling Mound with a Shocker Lizard familiar*. The world is just you and I (in Otiluke's Resilient Sphere). I fail my will save. I love you.
*Except if a wizard cast levitate to ten feet above the shambling mound, cast shape change, turned into a 250 by 250 foot platinum cube, and fell.
*As in, the tower in Mordor, not Andrew D's dorm, y'all.
Winter Break (Holy Shit, It's A Month Long!)
And what's really funny is that Jeremy looks different in every single picture I have of him. If they're going to be bad pictures they ought to be consistently bad, but each of them is bad in a different way. It's bewildering; I think cameras hate him.
I'm at home right now and I miss my Pie. I have the sole picture of him that doesn't contain a family member of some sort (the dachsund doesn't count) framed in my bedroom. It's the one in which he looks like a chubby vampire, with a dog. All these pictures are embarrassingly shitty.
I had a dream where Jeremy was madly doing his coding project, an electronic copy of which is due by 12am Friday, and being cranky. This is probably more or less what he's actually doing, which confirms my psychic powers. He's stuck in my head, like flashbacks in a bad movie.
In the meantime, after dinner on Wednesday at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant with really good seafood, my mom has been yelling at me.
"You should've stowed your things out of sight in your room so that nobody steals them!"
(My room is locked. The whole dorm is locked from now until the 25th of January)
"Why did you stay up watching Lord of the Rings the night before a final?"
"Why is your GPA so low? You won't be able to use it as a buffer in case you do badly in your upperclassman years!"
"Why are you taking such useless classes next semester?"
"I'm so happy to have someone to yell at now!"
Evidently.
I feel like a little kid again.
And what's really funny is that Jeremy looks different in every single picture I have of him. If they're going to be bad pictures they ought to be consistently bad, but each of them is bad in a different way. It's bewildering; I think cameras hate him.
I'm at home right now and I miss my Pie. I have the sole picture of him that doesn't contain a family member of some sort (the dachsund doesn't count) framed in my bedroom. It's the one in which he looks like a chubby vampire, with a dog. All these pictures are embarrassingly shitty.
I had a dream where Jeremy was madly doing his coding project, an electronic copy of which is due by 12am Friday, and being cranky. This is probably more or less what he's actually doing, which confirms my psychic powers. He's stuck in my head, like flashbacks in a bad movie.
In the meantime, after dinner on Wednesday at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant with really good seafood, my mom has been yelling at me.
"You should've stowed your things out of sight in your room so that nobody steals them!"
(My room is locked. The whole dorm is locked from now until the 25th of January)
"Why did you stay up watching Lord of the Rings the night before a final?"
"Why is your GPA so low? You won't be able to use it as a buffer in case you do badly in your upperclassman years!"
"Why are you taking such useless classes next semester?"
"I'm so happy to have someone to yell at now!"
Evidently.
I feel like a little kid again.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
It was hailing earlier as I helped Jeremy move out. His (our) room was all empty by the end. It was kind of depressing. His family was there, so it circumvented any kind of meaningful goodbye. Towards the end the hail had stopped and turned into snow.
After he left I realized that I hadn't gotten his phone number, address, or e-mail.
I have photos of him, but in them he looks like a totally different person, which makes me wonder if it wouldn't have been better to not have any photos at all.
After he left I realized that I hadn't gotten his phone number, address, or e-mail.
I have photos of him, but in them he looks like a totally different person, which makes me wonder if it wouldn't have been better to not have any photos at all.
So I went to the midnight showing of Return of the King with Jeremy and Jose. I was going to go with Sasha but she was a studious girl and didn't want to spend a night out from like 10:30 til 4 because of our Archaeology final. Haha. Study? I don't need no stinkin' study! Sleep??
Ha!
I didn't survive the IB program for nothin', punks!
We'll watch it again at Olney 6 or something.
There were some people who dressed up, but in not very spectacular manner. Mostly girls in generic medieval garb trying to pass for elves I guess, and one guy who was Gimli in a plastic Viking helmet and tartans of some sort. And a Nazgul. We had a Nazgul.
But the movie! The movie was cool! What was the most jaw-dropping was that it was The Two Towers MUD come to life, in a way moreso even than the Two Towers movie. Of all of you who read this, only Azoriel will know what I'm talking about. Anyone who's spent any significant amount of time in the lower levels of Minas Tirith trying to put out fires, running around during the Gate Password quest, comically bumping his nose into Mount Mindolluin, bandaging NPCs at the Houses of Healing, and surviving the text-based siege along the walls will know what I'm talking about. And as an Eorling I remember my newbie days killing evil-aligned Dunlendings for gold, exp and equipment, and yelling, "FORTH EORLINGAS!" (in capital letters of course). Okay, so only Azoriel. But maybe the rest of you who roleplay understand my nostalgia.
Anyway, RotK is the best one. I liked Fellowship, especially after watching the DVD over and over, and loved the themes of home and friendship, but it wasn't spectacular, simply by nature of being well... Fellowship. It was my least favorite book too. Two Towers I thought was ill-paced; boring in the beginning, action in the end, and too many changes from the book. Of course Helm's Deep rocked..
But RotK is.. perfect.
I'll have to see it again of course. We were interrupted once when the lights started coming back on and the movie stopped all of a sudden. People went out, to use the restroom, and possibly to complain, and the movie started again. It was interrupted again.
Near the end, a woman stood up and called, "Someone call 911!" Her son had had a seizure. So a bunch of people crowded around him and called 911 and I suppose there were a few doctors in the audience too who said things like, "Has he ever had a seizure before?" Aside from that I don't think anyone else in the theater particularly cared after we were assured everything was under control. ("An ambulance is on the way." "He's breathing just fine.") I would make some comment about the callousness of crowds, but this is the second time I've seen someone with a medical emergency in public. I'm beginning to suspect that it is a social phenomenon that when stuff like this happens a few people stop to help and everybody else goes about their business without getting in the way, and it ceases to feel particularly insensitive anymore.
Ha!
I didn't survive the IB program for nothin', punks!
We'll watch it again at Olney 6 or something.
There were some people who dressed up, but in not very spectacular manner. Mostly girls in generic medieval garb trying to pass for elves I guess, and one guy who was Gimli in a plastic Viking helmet and tartans of some sort. And a Nazgul. We had a Nazgul.
But the movie! The movie was cool! What was the most jaw-dropping was that it was The Two Towers MUD come to life, in a way moreso even than the Two Towers movie. Of all of you who read this, only Azoriel will know what I'm talking about. Anyone who's spent any significant amount of time in the lower levels of Minas Tirith trying to put out fires, running around during the Gate Password quest, comically bumping his nose into Mount Mindolluin, bandaging NPCs at the Houses of Healing, and surviving the text-based siege along the walls will know what I'm talking about. And as an Eorling I remember my newbie days killing evil-aligned Dunlendings for gold, exp and equipment, and yelling, "FORTH EORLINGAS!" (in capital letters of course). Okay, so only Azoriel. But maybe the rest of you who roleplay understand my nostalgia.
Anyway, RotK is the best one. I liked Fellowship, especially after watching the DVD over and over, and loved the themes of home and friendship, but it wasn't spectacular, simply by nature of being well... Fellowship. It was my least favorite book too. Two Towers I thought was ill-paced; boring in the beginning, action in the end, and too many changes from the book. Of course Helm's Deep rocked..
But RotK is.. perfect.
I'll have to see it again of course. We were interrupted once when the lights started coming back on and the movie stopped all of a sudden. People went out, to use the restroom, and possibly to complain, and the movie started again. It was interrupted again.
Near the end, a woman stood up and called, "Someone call 911!" Her son had had a seizure. So a bunch of people crowded around him and called 911 and I suppose there were a few doctors in the audience too who said things like, "Has he ever had a seizure before?" Aside from that I don't think anyone else in the theater particularly cared after we were assured everything was under control. ("An ambulance is on the way." "He's breathing just fine.") I would make some comment about the callousness of crowds, but this is the second time I've seen someone with a medical emergency in public. I'm beginning to suspect that it is a social phenomenon that when stuff like this happens a few people stop to help and everybody else goes about their business without getting in the way, and it ceases to feel particularly insensitive anymore.
Monday, December 15, 2003
Sunday, December 14, 2003
What am I doing? I am reading Soul Calibur fanfiction. Why? Because Siegfried Schtauffen is my Bishonnen of the Hour.
Jose says that I just like boys with swords. I concede that this certainly helps (as does martial ability of any kind). However, his point is disproven by the fact that he has a sword, and I don't like him.
Jose says that I just like boys with swords. I concede that this certainly helps (as does martial ability of any kind). However, his point is disproven by the fact that he has a sword, and I don't like him.
Tom Cruise Would Make a Horrible Bishonnen
Kay: To the _____ ! Jeremy, this is your least favorite book!
Jeremy: Lighthouse!
-Jeremy and Kay, while playing Taboo on Friday
On Saturday, I went with Jeremy to watch the Last Samurai. Went, beforehand, to something that wasn't exactly a real restaurant (it was in a mall), but we had calamari and (he had, and I stole sips out of) a glass of chianti so I felt posh.
The actual movie was kind of blah. Note: Tom Cruise, for however old he is (he must be at least forty by now), is remarkably well preserved. It's really creepy how pretty he is. He's pretty like an anime character but since the thought of Tom Cruise as an anime character scares me, let's think of something else.
Moving on.
(God, isn't he pretty? If Tom Cruise were an anime character his hair would have sparkly sparklies! And he would be in yaoi with Brad Pitt.)
Moving on.
There always is a danger of reviewing a movie by measuring it up to the standards of the movie you felt should have been made, instead of measuring it as the movie that it is. I apologize deeply for that bias, but here we go. It was a good movie except that I felt it was entirely too politically correct, probably a symptom of white liberal guilt again. It was too clearly one-sided and too simplistic a romanticization of the samurai. Japan good, capitalism bad, etc. Honor, dignity, etc. aside, it must be remembered that as a feudal class the samurai reinforced strict social immobility, and that their romanticization had been extensively used as propaganda during World War II.
I don't mean to be insulting, I just think that we should view Samurai with the same skepticism that we view our knights. While the Honorable Warrior image is appealing, we're still comfortable with things like Monty Python. It would seem, however, that we're too squeamish to make similar comments about someone else's culture. I honestly think a Japanese director would have treated the subject matter better. Which of course brings me back to the point that I may be unfairly castigating the movie for not being how I would have made it. In any case, I felt it would've been an improvement if the motivations of the railroad baron, the cavalry captain, and other industrial interests had been developed in a more sophisticated manner than just, "We're greedy, we like whoring Japan."
("Yay, whoring! Bring me a geisha!")
What a ridiculously apologist ending. ("Japan must be a mix of the modern, but we shall remember our past! Which is why I now refuse to sign this treaty with the West!" .. wha??)
Also, side note: What's up with Taka? Her character didn't irritate me, but I just felt her character could've been developed beyond the typical Aesthetically Tragic Asian Woman (what is this, the Joy Luck Club?), you know, who palely haunts rice paper screens, looking up with pained, about-to-cry eyes every once in a while from the Weight of her Sacrifice for the sake of Duty, and conveniently somehow is always in the middle of gracefully, sorrowfully, tying up her kimono whenever Tom Cruise walks in. It makes you wonder if she does it on purpose.
("He's about to walk in.. right.. about... NOW!")
PS: I want a hot Japanese chick to undress me.
PSS: I mean, if I were a straight guy who was into hot Japanese chicks, I'd want a hot Japanese chick to undress me.*
*("Oh, yeah, baby! Who's your otosan?!")
Kay: To the _____ ! Jeremy, this is your least favorite book!
Jeremy: Lighthouse!
-Jeremy and Kay, while playing Taboo on Friday
On Saturday, I went with Jeremy to watch the Last Samurai. Went, beforehand, to something that wasn't exactly a real restaurant (it was in a mall), but we had calamari and (he had, and I stole sips out of) a glass of chianti so I felt posh.
The actual movie was kind of blah. Note: Tom Cruise, for however old he is (he must be at least forty by now), is remarkably well preserved. It's really creepy how pretty he is. He's pretty like an anime character but since the thought of Tom Cruise as an anime character scares me, let's think of something else.
Moving on.
(God, isn't he pretty? If Tom Cruise were an anime character his hair would have sparkly sparklies! And he would be in yaoi with Brad Pitt.)
Moving on.
There always is a danger of reviewing a movie by measuring it up to the standards of the movie you felt should have been made, instead of measuring it as the movie that it is. I apologize deeply for that bias, but here we go. It was a good movie except that I felt it was entirely too politically correct, probably a symptom of white liberal guilt again. It was too clearly one-sided and too simplistic a romanticization of the samurai. Japan good, capitalism bad, etc. Honor, dignity, etc. aside, it must be remembered that as a feudal class the samurai reinforced strict social immobility, and that their romanticization had been extensively used as propaganda during World War II.
I don't mean to be insulting, I just think that we should view Samurai with the same skepticism that we view our knights. While the Honorable Warrior image is appealing, we're still comfortable with things like Monty Python. It would seem, however, that we're too squeamish to make similar comments about someone else's culture. I honestly think a Japanese director would have treated the subject matter better. Which of course brings me back to the point that I may be unfairly castigating the movie for not being how I would have made it. In any case, I felt it would've been an improvement if the motivations of the railroad baron, the cavalry captain, and other industrial interests had been developed in a more sophisticated manner than just, "We're greedy, we like whoring Japan."
("Yay, whoring! Bring me a geisha!")
What a ridiculously apologist ending. ("Japan must be a mix of the modern, but we shall remember our past! Which is why I now refuse to sign this treaty with the West!" .. wha??)
Also, side note: What's up with Taka? Her character didn't irritate me, but I just felt her character could've been developed beyond the typical Aesthetically Tragic Asian Woman (what is this, the Joy Luck Club?), you know, who palely haunts rice paper screens, looking up with pained, about-to-cry eyes every once in a while from the Weight of her Sacrifice for the sake of Duty, and conveniently somehow is always in the middle of gracefully, sorrowfully, tying up her kimono whenever Tom Cruise walks in. It makes you wonder if she does it on purpose.
("He's about to walk in.. right.. about... NOW!")
PS: I want a hot Japanese chick to undress me.
PSS: I mean, if I were a straight guy who was into hot Japanese chicks, I'd want a hot Japanese chick to undress me.*
*("Oh, yeah, baby! Who's your otosan?!")
You're used to people telling you that you're cute because you simply are!
Your love for beauty and all things social makes you a positive force amongst any group of people.
Although you may seem delicate and fanciful on the outside, you're a lot stronger than people
think you are. Purity, inner strength, and a sense of aesthetics is what makes you Xianghua.
Which Soul Calibur character are you?
this quiz was made by david park
Thursday, December 11, 2003
My Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: -1.75
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.90
I suppose this means I'm a wishy washy moderate, slightly liberal on social and economic issues.
Economic Left/Right: -1.75
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.90
I suppose this means I'm a wishy washy moderate, slightly liberal on social and economic issues.
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Wherein Angie is Hit By A Car
It snowed on Thursday night. No school on Friday; which for us dorks, means roleplaying all night long. Jeremy ended up severely aggravating Niall, who was GMing, by coming up with scientific uses for just about everything in our survival RP... "I take the pipe, the shower head, and the gasoline to make an improvised rocket launcher." "I take the wire from the hair dryer, coil it into loops and use it to determine the origin of the radio signal." "I take the styrofoam packing peanuts and melt them for napalm." "I wrap the wire around the electrical generator to create a giant EMP field, knocking out the signal from the satelite to the explosives detonators." It was in character, as the escaped convict he was playing was a criminal mastermind with a specialty in chemistry, detonation devices and improvised weaponry, but still, it was annoying.
Saturday, went fencing, was slashed with the edge of a foil (surprisingly sharp) across the knuckle (which is why it's good to wear gloves). Broke an epee, stabbed Jeremy with it (not on purpose), and inflicted a deep gash. We now have matching fencing wounds.
Sunday, we stood on the icy sidewalk as wind swept cold powder off snowy dunes and glacially jagged contemporary architecture rooftops, and scoured our faces with crystalline snow. The bus we were waiting for (to Hagerstown) never came. So instead, Jeremy spent the day futilely teaching me hirakana, a syllabic Japanese alphabet, ("ah... ee... oo... eh... oh... ka .... ki... koo... keh... koh... sa .. shi... shoo.... seh.. soh.. Jeremy, I'm bored!"). I thought that being Chinese would make it easier for me to learn totally random squiggly-line characters, but apparently not. Then, after deciding that 20 characters is enough for me for one day, we went to see Buried, a UMBC uh... 'original puppet performance.' It was an excessively abstract, pseudo-mystical puppet show about the horrors of war, which was very trippy and creepy. Good puppetry. Bad actors. ("Noooooo!!!") One of the good things I can say about it is that it utilized stage lighting, tin foil, and saran wrap to great effect. Sparkly sparklies!
Also went to see Timeline, later that night, thanks to Tim, Kay's Friend With Car. Kay scooped up a snowball in the parking lot and brandished it at me, yelling, "Run, Angie, run!" I ran backwards, into the side of a moving car. According to Kay he yelled for me to stop and I slowed down, so the car passed me, and (Jeremy says) the side mirror clipped my arm and my heel hit the hubcap of the rear wheel and I was thrown to the ground. Myself, I don't remember that much; I remember running backwards and going THUD against something hard and felt the tire moving against my shoe, and I thought in that split second that a car had run over my foot. I don't remember if I fell, but later on I recall having a scraped knee and elbow. My toes are fine, so evidently a car did not run over my foot. Jeremy says that if I hadn't hesitated when I did I would've stepped backwards directly into the path of the moving vehicle. The driving punched the brakes and rolled down a window; we were actually cracking up and told him that we were fine. It must've scarred him/her for a while though.
This is the sort of thing that's supposed to make you contemplate your mortality or whatnot. Well, it really didn't. Except for the idle joke that Kay both almost killed me and then saved my life ("At least kept you from having your legs broken") and that if it were Jose, with his notoriously bad luck, I would've been hit by the snowball and by the car.
Anyway, I liked the movie because it had people with swords in it. Was it a good movie? Nah. There was no time for charactierization at all. But I had fun with flaming trebuchets. Critics say it had bad special effects but I think this is because it was historically accurate, therefore, rather passe from an asthetic standpoint. No, it had no CGI orcs, no bullet dodging, no running on water and tree-top fighting. There were really no special effects; I'll bet they filmed exploding walls by actually planting explosives in a wall. I bet they filmed shooting a storm of arrows by literally shooting a bunch of arrows (probably with an arrow launching machine instead of real archers, but the point is they probably actually shot them). You want a trebuchet in the movie? You build a trebuchet. Not a lot of CGI; I guess it's what I call 'literalist special effects.' But at least they stayed true to their roots and I appreciated that. I also liked Marek as a character, because Jeremy can do everything that he can (riding, archery, long sword); someday, if he ever discovers a time machine Jeremy can be a Michael Crichton action hero too.
Monday, went to see Elf (courtesy Tim again), which was hilarious, and infectiously jolly. Went to Books a Million, and like total nerds, marched straight to the science fiction/ fantasy section and had conversations with random strangers about recommended reading. I went to Wizards of the Coast and bought myself some dice (the D&D set and some d10's) and a dice bag. The dice are green; the bag is velvety and maroon. That just wouldn't do, so I bought some pink translucent d10's so that my die and dice bag would be color coordinated. Jeremy and Jose were appropriately sickened. (Also pooled money with them to get Kay's Christmas present; Jose's Christmas present has just come in today through the mail, from E-bay.) Had coffee, relaxed, shopped for high powered hunting rifles, did not die, stuffed snow down Jose's coat collar and skated around (in our shoes) on patches of ice, and life, as it were, is good.
It snowed on Thursday night. No school on Friday; which for us dorks, means roleplaying all night long. Jeremy ended up severely aggravating Niall, who was GMing, by coming up with scientific uses for just about everything in our survival RP... "I take the pipe, the shower head, and the gasoline to make an improvised rocket launcher." "I take the wire from the hair dryer, coil it into loops and use it to determine the origin of the radio signal." "I take the styrofoam packing peanuts and melt them for napalm." "I wrap the wire around the electrical generator to create a giant EMP field, knocking out the signal from the satelite to the explosives detonators." It was in character, as the escaped convict he was playing was a criminal mastermind with a specialty in chemistry, detonation devices and improvised weaponry, but still, it was annoying.
Saturday, went fencing, was slashed with the edge of a foil (surprisingly sharp) across the knuckle (which is why it's good to wear gloves). Broke an epee, stabbed Jeremy with it (not on purpose), and inflicted a deep gash. We now have matching fencing wounds.
Sunday, we stood on the icy sidewalk as wind swept cold powder off snowy dunes and glacially jagged contemporary architecture rooftops, and scoured our faces with crystalline snow. The bus we were waiting for (to Hagerstown) never came. So instead, Jeremy spent the day futilely teaching me hirakana, a syllabic Japanese alphabet, ("ah... ee... oo... eh... oh... ka .... ki... koo... keh... koh... sa .. shi... shoo.... seh.. soh.. Jeremy, I'm bored!"). I thought that being Chinese would make it easier for me to learn totally random squiggly-line characters, but apparently not. Then, after deciding that 20 characters is enough for me for one day, we went to see Buried, a UMBC uh... 'original puppet performance.' It was an excessively abstract, pseudo-mystical puppet show about the horrors of war, which was very trippy and creepy. Good puppetry. Bad actors. ("Noooooo!!!") One of the good things I can say about it is that it utilized stage lighting, tin foil, and saran wrap to great effect. Sparkly sparklies!
Also went to see Timeline, later that night, thanks to Tim, Kay's Friend With Car. Kay scooped up a snowball in the parking lot and brandished it at me, yelling, "Run, Angie, run!" I ran backwards, into the side of a moving car. According to Kay he yelled for me to stop and I slowed down, so the car passed me, and (Jeremy says) the side mirror clipped my arm and my heel hit the hubcap of the rear wheel and I was thrown to the ground. Myself, I don't remember that much; I remember running backwards and going THUD against something hard and felt the tire moving against my shoe, and I thought in that split second that a car had run over my foot. I don't remember if I fell, but later on I recall having a scraped knee and elbow. My toes are fine, so evidently a car did not run over my foot. Jeremy says that if I hadn't hesitated when I did I would've stepped backwards directly into the path of the moving vehicle. The driving punched the brakes and rolled down a window; we were actually cracking up and told him that we were fine. It must've scarred him/her for a while though.
This is the sort of thing that's supposed to make you contemplate your mortality or whatnot. Well, it really didn't. Except for the idle joke that Kay both almost killed me and then saved my life ("At least kept you from having your legs broken") and that if it were Jose, with his notoriously bad luck, I would've been hit by the snowball and by the car.
Anyway, I liked the movie because it had people with swords in it. Was it a good movie? Nah. There was no time for charactierization at all. But I had fun with flaming trebuchets. Critics say it had bad special effects but I think this is because it was historically accurate, therefore, rather passe from an asthetic standpoint. No, it had no CGI orcs, no bullet dodging, no running on water and tree-top fighting. There were really no special effects; I'll bet they filmed exploding walls by actually planting explosives in a wall. I bet they filmed shooting a storm of arrows by literally shooting a bunch of arrows (probably with an arrow launching machine instead of real archers, but the point is they probably actually shot them). You want a trebuchet in the movie? You build a trebuchet. Not a lot of CGI; I guess it's what I call 'literalist special effects.' But at least they stayed true to their roots and I appreciated that. I also liked Marek as a character, because Jeremy can do everything that he can (riding, archery, long sword); someday, if he ever discovers a time machine Jeremy can be a Michael Crichton action hero too.
Monday, went to see Elf (courtesy Tim again), which was hilarious, and infectiously jolly. Went to Books a Million, and like total nerds, marched straight to the science fiction/ fantasy section and had conversations with random strangers about recommended reading. I went to Wizards of the Coast and bought myself some dice (the D&D set and some d10's) and a dice bag. The dice are green; the bag is velvety and maroon. That just wouldn't do, so I bought some pink translucent d10's so that my die and dice bag would be color coordinated. Jeremy and Jose were appropriately sickened. (Also pooled money with them to get Kay's Christmas present; Jose's Christmas present has just come in today through the mail, from E-bay.) Had coffee, relaxed, shopped for high powered hunting rifles, did not die, stuffed snow down Jose's coat collar and skated around (in our shoes) on patches of ice, and life, as it were, is good.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
WTF, mate?
The End of the World Flash Movie
What half of us were cracking up over, at Malex's house.
The End of the World Flash Movie
What half of us were cracking up over, at Malex's house.
Well, it seems that Jeremy's room is now a bit cheerier, because we now have an 8 inch Christmas tree. He has a walnut in a pot, and hopes to grow a real tree, over the next 20 years or so. (I asked him what his long-term goals are; this is one of them. And then after twenty years he's going to tie a swing to it.)
He also has a new Browns blanket and matching pillows. I laugh at him; it's kind of funny being the fan of a football team that is A) not from your home state and B) is named after and has a mascot that is a color. It's like rooting for UPS!
XD
He also has a new Browns blanket and matching pillows. I laugh at him; it's kind of funny being the fan of a football team that is A) not from your home state and B) is named after and has a mascot that is a color. It's like rooting for UPS!
XD
Letters from Home
I am not depressed; I am actually quite upbeat these days. But aside from that, this is a list of things I was thinking about, though not at the same time and not all the time.
---
Going home for the holidays is really weird. It would seem that I have developed a plethora of child-like mannerisms at college. Also, I couldn't get used to sleeping by myself again, but now that I'm back I can't get used to sleeping with someone next to me, and suffer restless nights. And apparently my fractured family has a lot of issues; my mom has done very well of harboring me from them. I've always grown up believing I lived in a nice and normal American home. "Why did I tell you all this?" my mom says. I was wondering myself but I thought perhaps her telling it would make her feel better. I think as you get older you become overrun with disappointment and regret. And that's as much detail as I'm going to go into with that.
My mom reports that family friends say, "Why didn't she go to an Ivy League school where she can meet a nice Chinese boy?" I wonder this myself; I'm a bit self-conscious being like the only one in the Old Guard (so to speak) of high school who's going to a state college. I think it's slightly frowned upon. I'm not quite keeping up with the Joneses. Early senior year if you'd asked me what college I'd want to go to I'd tell you, "Feh, find me one and I'll be happy." Thinking upon this now (although there's really no use), I really should have specified, "Find me a small liberal arts college that has a strong humanities program, lots of tall, leafy, deciduous trees, cozy architecture, dorms with temperature control, co-ed housing, and no gang bathrooms, and is in a decent sized, crime-free college town, with access to reliable, convenient, public transportation." Well, too late for that.
I also wonder why all of my parents' friends are Chinese. It seems kind of dumb that they speak Chinese except for at work. It seems like a very insular way to live.
I was also thinking that role-playing is bad in that you live vicariously through other people. I told Jeremy that unlike even movies or books (where you also live vicariously through other people) there is no external stimulus, so you're drawing on all your old memories and experiences to try to imagine new things, like re-arranging furniture to make things look new. You're living your same experiences and emotions over and over again.
I want new furniture.
I am not depressed; I am actually quite upbeat these days. But aside from that, this is a list of things I was thinking about, though not at the same time and not all the time.
---
Going home for the holidays is really weird. It would seem that I have developed a plethora of child-like mannerisms at college. Also, I couldn't get used to sleeping by myself again, but now that I'm back I can't get used to sleeping with someone next to me, and suffer restless nights. And apparently my fractured family has a lot of issues; my mom has done very well of harboring me from them. I've always grown up believing I lived in a nice and normal American home. "Why did I tell you all this?" my mom says. I was wondering myself but I thought perhaps her telling it would make her feel better. I think as you get older you become overrun with disappointment and regret. And that's as much detail as I'm going to go into with that.
My mom reports that family friends say, "Why didn't she go to an Ivy League school where she can meet a nice Chinese boy?" I wonder this myself; I'm a bit self-conscious being like the only one in the Old Guard (so to speak) of high school who's going to a state college. I think it's slightly frowned upon. I'm not quite keeping up with the Joneses. Early senior year if you'd asked me what college I'd want to go to I'd tell you, "Feh, find me one and I'll be happy." Thinking upon this now (although there's really no use), I really should have specified, "Find me a small liberal arts college that has a strong humanities program, lots of tall, leafy, deciduous trees, cozy architecture, dorms with temperature control, co-ed housing, and no gang bathrooms, and is in a decent sized, crime-free college town, with access to reliable, convenient, public transportation." Well, too late for that.
I also wonder why all of my parents' friends are Chinese. It seems kind of dumb that they speak Chinese except for at work. It seems like a very insular way to live.
I was also thinking that role-playing is bad in that you live vicariously through other people. I told Jeremy that unlike even movies or books (where you also live vicariously through other people) there is no external stimulus, so you're drawing on all your old memories and experiences to try to imagine new things, like re-arranging furniture to make things look new. You're living your same experiences and emotions over and over again.
I want new furniture.
Monday, December 01, 2003
Poo, Metrosexuals, Illegal Activities, and Heavy Artillery
Thanksgiving was relaxing. Went to Maggie and Dongwoo's new house in Elkridge Wednesday night for Thanksgiving dinner. Jesse's boyfriend, Dan, is also a big gamer dork (I caught him loafing around kind of sheepishly with a Forgotten Realms campaign rulebook) which is exciting yet disturbing because there should only be one of us in each family. I can imagine D&D as a family activity at holiday dinners; I really don't want to. We played Street Fighter 3 for a while before I went to help out with dinner, and he kicked my ass. Stella and Jonathan brought baby Nathan and though they did have dinner with us, they were more preoccupied by his cranky crying and had to constantly run off to change his diapers or cajole him back to sleep midway through dinner. Nathan is a little over two months old now (he was born the 17th of September) and now looks more like a little boy and less like me. Stella is going back to work in a bit, but Jonathan can stay home to take care of Nathan, which is good. I've always liked the concept of one parent staying home, at least for the first few years of a kid's life.
Didn't actually do anything on Thursday, except go to John and Sharon's house (family friends) for Thanksgiving lunch. Spent the rest of my time reading and watching the Two Towers extended DVD. I keep forgetting how beautiful that movie is.
Friday, Malex came by. He's bristled his hair, and therefore, with one of those silly woven guys' necklaces, looks very Californian. Went with Malex to Josh's house to lend moral support, (with Dena and Hank also), to Yonni, Josh and Puffy (who has since grown out his Jewfro again) building a potato gun. It was made of PVC pipe but masterfully spray painted to a sleek chrome shine, and was very professional looking. Unlike the wussy UMBC one that used compressed air, this one had a combustion chamber (for highly volatile hair spray) and a sparker, which would give a jolting, if harmless shock to your hand if you held it an inch away. After sunset as the wind bent the trees, we went to test it by Potomac elementary, with the car headlights casting a little puddle of light on the rain, and a runny reflection on the asphalt like crayon. After fifteen minutes my hands were frozen and fur wet on my jacket. After trying to set up the gun against a chain fence and having it fall down and bash itself into the ground several times, Josh managed to hit the sparker without the gun falling out of its precarious propped position. There was a bright burst at the end of the barrel (a muzzleflash, I'm told it's called), and the gun rang and echoed like a howitzer*.
God knows where the spud went.
We wanted to try again, but apparently the sparker broke.
Took the Metro with Malex to Bethesda, where we waited at Barnes and Noble for Nick to meet up with us for dinner. We met Bivalve Debb and her girlfriend and a dozen red roses instead. Since they had also intended on going to the same restaurant (Delhi Dhaba) and were hungry, we asked them (probably nosily, in hindsight, since they were on a date) to reserve a table for five so we could catch up on old times. After finding Nick, in his ostentatious Vassar sweatshirt, we went to the restaurant and ordered food whose names we couldn't pronounce, and talked. Went afterwards to B&N again for coffee and overpriced desserts. Debb and Kayla left for their movie, and we sat on high stools eating pastries and taking Cosmo quizzes in a cozy womb of girliness. I observed, of Nick and Malex, that I'd missed them very much.
Saturday, studied for accounting, then went to Nick's party at Malex's house, which had already been decorated for Christmas. Josh had brought the spud gun; and told us stories, using regional dialects to great effect, of the crusty hardware store man who was apparently a great weathered potato gun veteran. We went out to Lake Frank (or Needwood) where there were no lights and the stars stood out like diamond dust strewn on the cold and brittle sky. There was no flash; there was a artillery-induced thunderclap that made several people scream (who weren't expecting it); then the woods were quiet again. We looked around at the houses nearby with their slumbering denizens inside, and then, simultaneously, ran for our cars.
We went back to Malex's house, where I gossiped with Janis and Lauren about Jeremy-pie. They were a very appreciative audience and went, "Awwww, how sweet!" at just the right times. I delivered messages from Sasha. Lots of gay flirting ensued along the Nick-Valex-Malex-Hank front. Alan, Lizzie's new boyfriend from Cornell, seemed slightly nervous. Yes, we are a very odd crew.
Sunday, went to Lake Forest Mall with my parents, in a very Christmassy mood, and got Jeremy a b-day gift, belatedly. Joy comes in cups of pepperming coffee. I love malls. I love looking at stuff. It's not so much shopping that's fun, as all the new sights and sounds.
*I've never heard a howitzer. But the grizzled potato gun veteran had, and says that spud guns sound like them. I certainly believe him.
Thanksgiving was relaxing. Went to Maggie and Dongwoo's new house in Elkridge Wednesday night for Thanksgiving dinner. Jesse's boyfriend, Dan, is also a big gamer dork (I caught him loafing around kind of sheepishly with a Forgotten Realms campaign rulebook) which is exciting yet disturbing because there should only be one of us in each family. I can imagine D&D as a family activity at holiday dinners; I really don't want to. We played Street Fighter 3 for a while before I went to help out with dinner, and he kicked my ass. Stella and Jonathan brought baby Nathan and though they did have dinner with us, they were more preoccupied by his cranky crying and had to constantly run off to change his diapers or cajole him back to sleep midway through dinner. Nathan is a little over two months old now (he was born the 17th of September) and now looks more like a little boy and less like me. Stella is going back to work in a bit, but Jonathan can stay home to take care of Nathan, which is good. I've always liked the concept of one parent staying home, at least for the first few years of a kid's life.
Didn't actually do anything on Thursday, except go to John and Sharon's house (family friends) for Thanksgiving lunch. Spent the rest of my time reading and watching the Two Towers extended DVD. I keep forgetting how beautiful that movie is.
Friday, Malex came by. He's bristled his hair, and therefore, with one of those silly woven guys' necklaces, looks very Californian. Went with Malex to Josh's house to lend moral support, (with Dena and Hank also), to Yonni, Josh and Puffy (who has since grown out his Jewfro again) building a potato gun. It was made of PVC pipe but masterfully spray painted to a sleek chrome shine, and was very professional looking. Unlike the wussy UMBC one that used compressed air, this one had a combustion chamber (for highly volatile hair spray) and a sparker, which would give a jolting, if harmless shock to your hand if you held it an inch away. After sunset as the wind bent the trees, we went to test it by Potomac elementary, with the car headlights casting a little puddle of light on the rain, and a runny reflection on the asphalt like crayon. After fifteen minutes my hands were frozen and fur wet on my jacket. After trying to set up the gun against a chain fence and having it fall down and bash itself into the ground several times, Josh managed to hit the sparker without the gun falling out of its precarious propped position. There was a bright burst at the end of the barrel (a muzzleflash, I'm told it's called), and the gun rang and echoed like a howitzer*.
God knows where the spud went.
We wanted to try again, but apparently the sparker broke.
Took the Metro with Malex to Bethesda, where we waited at Barnes and Noble for Nick to meet up with us for dinner. We met Bivalve Debb and her girlfriend and a dozen red roses instead. Since they had also intended on going to the same restaurant (Delhi Dhaba) and were hungry, we asked them (probably nosily, in hindsight, since they were on a date) to reserve a table for five so we could catch up on old times. After finding Nick, in his ostentatious Vassar sweatshirt, we went to the restaurant and ordered food whose names we couldn't pronounce, and talked. Went afterwards to B&N again for coffee and overpriced desserts. Debb and Kayla left for their movie, and we sat on high stools eating pastries and taking Cosmo quizzes in a cozy womb of girliness. I observed, of Nick and Malex, that I'd missed them very much.
Saturday, studied for accounting, then went to Nick's party at Malex's house, which had already been decorated for Christmas. Josh had brought the spud gun; and told us stories, using regional dialects to great effect, of the crusty hardware store man who was apparently a great weathered potato gun veteran. We went out to Lake Frank (or Needwood) where there were no lights and the stars stood out like diamond dust strewn on the cold and brittle sky. There was no flash; there was a artillery-induced thunderclap that made several people scream (who weren't expecting it); then the woods were quiet again. We looked around at the houses nearby with their slumbering denizens inside, and then, simultaneously, ran for our cars.
We went back to Malex's house, where I gossiped with Janis and Lauren about Jeremy-pie. They were a very appreciative audience and went, "Awwww, how sweet!" at just the right times. I delivered messages from Sasha. Lots of gay flirting ensued along the Nick-Valex-Malex-Hank front. Alan, Lizzie's new boyfriend from Cornell, seemed slightly nervous. Yes, we are a very odd crew.
Sunday, went to Lake Forest Mall with my parents, in a very Christmassy mood, and got Jeremy a b-day gift, belatedly. Joy comes in cups of pepperming coffee. I love malls. I love looking at stuff. It's not so much shopping that's fun, as all the new sights and sounds.
*I've never heard a howitzer. But the grizzled potato gun veteran had, and says that spud guns sound like them. I certainly believe him.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
I was morally disturbed last night because I killed someone in Whitewolf (the Nagah setting). Kay said it isn't any different from Counterstrike, but I think it is, because Counterstrike is just like a pixellated game of paintball. Maybe people's heads explode, but they do it in such an over the top spray of ketchup that it doesn't matter (it's actually kind of funny), and people respawn within the next fifteen minutes anyhow. In a pen and paper role playing game you actually choose to kill someone. If you have a choice, and make an immoral decision, then you are capable of being evil.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Wherein Angie Gets Girly Friends
So, on Sunday I met up with Sasha (someone in my archaeology class) for dinner before going to the library to work on our papers. So I was like eating the dining hall food and kind of blah, and I saw her t-shirt which said, "Sherwood High School."
So I was like, "Hey, do you know Lauren R?"
And she was like, "OMG!"
And I was like, "OMG!"
And she was like, "OMG! She's the coolest person ever!"
And Jeremy was like: '-_-
And I was like, "OMG! She is!"
And she was like, "OMG! Lauren has the prettiest hair ever!"
And I was like, "OMG! She cut it."
And she was like, "OMG!"
And I was like, "It's not like she shaved her head; I don't think. OMG!
Do you know Janis D?"
And she was like, "OMG! I do! Do you know Caitlin S?"
Yes, yes, yes, and OMG.
So I gave her Lauren's phone number, and now we must call and inflict visitiness over Thanksgiving.
So, on Sunday I met up with Sasha (someone in my archaeology class) for dinner before going to the library to work on our papers. So I was like eating the dining hall food and kind of blah, and I saw her t-shirt which said, "Sherwood High School."
So I was like, "Hey, do you know Lauren R?"
And she was like, "OMG!"
And I was like, "OMG!"
And she was like, "OMG! She's the coolest person ever!"
And Jeremy was like: '-_-
And I was like, "OMG! She is!"
And she was like, "OMG! Lauren has the prettiest hair ever!"
And I was like, "OMG! She cut it."
And she was like, "OMG!"
And I was like, "It's not like she shaved her head; I don't think. OMG!
Do you know Janis D?"
And she was like, "OMG! I do! Do you know Caitlin S?"
Yes, yes, yes, and OMG.
So I gave her Lauren's phone number, and now we must call and inflict visitiness over Thanksgiving.
Monday, November 24, 2003
A Winner Is Me!
So Jeremy had this argument over dinner with Fat Eric about whether belief defines reality, as continued from, oh... a month ago. (Jeremy's theory is that people are only capable of observing what they expect to observe.) Jeremy won this one. Everyone said he did, but it really wasn't a challenge because everyone expected him to win in the first place. It wouldn't have mattered what Eric said, Jeremy was pre-destined to win the argument because he's more charismatic, so that's what people saw.
This, noted Jeremy, proves his argument.
So Jeremy had this argument over dinner with Fat Eric about whether belief defines reality, as continued from, oh... a month ago. (Jeremy's theory is that people are only capable of observing what they expect to observe.) Jeremy won this one. Everyone said he did, but it really wasn't a challenge because everyone expected him to win in the first place. It wouldn't have mattered what Eric said, Jeremy was pre-destined to win the argument because he's more charismatic, so that's what people saw.
This, noted Jeremy, proves his argument.
Angie's Vagina Party
I sheepishly joined UMBC'S NOW chapter. It's kind of embarassing; I was at the Commons for lunch and since there were no seats inside, I went outside, where there was this small rally among a sea of bewildered (and mostly male) onlookers.
Apparently according to NOW, Bush is responsible for all my life's problems.
I never knew.
NOW supports such things as affirmative action ("The end of affirmative action will be the end of equality in America!" -_-), which I dislike, and abortion, which I also dislike (though I'm vaguely pro-choice). Various college girls in perky little skirts and rimmed artiste glasses punctuated the speech with enthusiastic applause ala Bush's State of the Union address, and yelled empowering things (Hell yeeeah! You go, girl! Tell it like it is!). I sat quietly eating my lukewarm lunch and cringed, hoping nobody I knew saw me there. I happen to support privacy laws regarding the medical records of minors and confidential access to birth control for minors, as well as contraceptives education in schools as opposed to abstinence-only sex ed, and non-surgical abortion (aka the abortion pill), but as I was sitting there listening to the combat booted broad* on a soapbox ranting, "We must return power to the people!" I felt like a big Nazi.
I do menstruate once every month though, so I am a woman, but clearly I must have read the letters wrong because it really ought to be NOLW, the National Organization for Liberal Women.
I picked up some pamphlets on how to help the pro-choice cause, and this amused me: "Donate $15 to a pro-choice organization once every month until we elect a pro-choice president!" "Leave pro-choice slogans on your answering machine!"
That sounds like a great ide- ... no.
*Nothing wrong with women in combat boots in general, just this particular woman in combat boots.
I sheepishly joined UMBC'S NOW chapter. It's kind of embarassing; I was at the Commons for lunch and since there were no seats inside, I went outside, where there was this small rally among a sea of bewildered (and mostly male) onlookers.
Apparently according to NOW, Bush is responsible for all my life's problems.
I never knew.
NOW supports such things as affirmative action ("The end of affirmative action will be the end of equality in America!" -_-), which I dislike, and abortion, which I also dislike (though I'm vaguely pro-choice). Various college girls in perky little skirts and rimmed artiste glasses punctuated the speech with enthusiastic applause ala Bush's State of the Union address, and yelled empowering things (Hell yeeeah! You go, girl! Tell it like it is!). I sat quietly eating my lukewarm lunch and cringed, hoping nobody I knew saw me there. I happen to support privacy laws regarding the medical records of minors and confidential access to birth control for minors, as well as contraceptives education in schools as opposed to abstinence-only sex ed, and non-surgical abortion (aka the abortion pill), but as I was sitting there listening to the combat booted broad* on a soapbox ranting, "We must return power to the people!" I felt like a big Nazi.
I do menstruate once every month though, so I am a woman, but clearly I must have read the letters wrong because it really ought to be NOLW, the National Organization for Liberal Women.
I picked up some pamphlets on how to help the pro-choice cause, and this amused me: "Donate $15 to a pro-choice organization once every month until we elect a pro-choice president!" "Leave pro-choice slogans on your answering machine!"
That sounds like a great ide- ... no.
*Nothing wrong with women in combat boots in general, just this particular woman in combat boots.
Friday, November 21, 2003
So Aunt Ah Gam decided not to come to the US because her life is comfortable enough. Uncle Power is considering. Aunt Sally (his wife) does not want to come, but will go with him if he does. Their primary consideration is Kai-Lap; apparently it would be good for him to go to school in the US, where it isn't as competitive with cram schools and entrance exams and whatnot. Lydia, I don't know; my mom says she may continue going to college and living by herself in Hong Kong while the rest of her family lives in the US. I asked my mom what kind of job Uncle could get here; she said maybe teaching Chinese, or a bank teller, or working at CVS or a Chinese store or something like that. I think it's such a big risk to take; why would someone give up being a teacher to end up being a store clerk in a foreign country?
Thursday, November 20, 2003
What News
So, my Aunt Ah Gam (mother's sister) and Uncle Power (mother's brother), after waiting for their forms to be processed for ten years, are finally immigrating to America from Hong Kong. I don't understand why at such an age; my aunt is retired and my uncle close to. It seems strange to trade everything in for an alien and distant land where people will always look on them as foreigners anyway. I can see the young doing it, because young people have very little to lose, but I find it hard imagining people with well-established lives and families uprooting themselves just like that. I don't know what they really intend to do. My mom says that also a consideration were the political situation in Hong Kong after the handover (they applied for permanent residency in 1993), and that perhaps they are doing it more for their children than themselves.
I still don't understand.
The other news being this: Jon Gray, an online friend of seven years, has been hired as a penciller for the Sonic the Hedgehog comics. His artwork starts appearing as of issue #134. Go him!
So, my Aunt Ah Gam (mother's sister) and Uncle Power (mother's brother), after waiting for their forms to be processed for ten years, are finally immigrating to America from Hong Kong. I don't understand why at such an age; my aunt is retired and my uncle close to. It seems strange to trade everything in for an alien and distant land where people will always look on them as foreigners anyway. I can see the young doing it, because young people have very little to lose, but I find it hard imagining people with well-established lives and families uprooting themselves just like that. I don't know what they really intend to do. My mom says that also a consideration were the political situation in Hong Kong after the handover (they applied for permanent residency in 1993), and that perhaps they are doing it more for their children than themselves.
I still don't understand.
The other news being this: Jon Gray, an online friend of seven years, has been hired as a penciller for the Sonic the Hedgehog comics. His artwork starts appearing as of issue #134. Go him!
Monday, November 17, 2003
Projectile Weapon Day
There were people testing out trebuchets outside today in Erickson field. They really sucked; I suspect Puffy's was better. There was one without a sling, so it was basically a pivoting piece of wood with a counterweight. The wooden cube they threw went like three feet. The running joke was: "We'll make this thing ten thousand times bigger, and it'll go five feet!" Some of the others were more impressive; there was one where the counterweight fell straight down in a guided frame like the blade in a guillotine, as opposed to rotating on the shaft around a pivot point as it fell. Mostly the trebuchets didn't shoot very far, mostly like twenty feet at the greatest and the wooden blocks they shot went higher than far. Sometimes the blocks fell out of the sling. One of the trebuchets shot a block across the field when the group gave up on the counterweight and just had one of their members pull on the shaft. Also, instead of a trebuchet one group used essentially a potato gun, which consisted of a PVC pipe for a barrel and dry ice and water for charge. This didn't work. It sent the block of wood like ten feet. They tried this again with compressed air, and it sent the cube hurtling across the field with a neat little pop sound.
There were people testing out trebuchets outside today in Erickson field. They really sucked; I suspect Puffy's was better. There was one without a sling, so it was basically a pivoting piece of wood with a counterweight. The wooden cube they threw went like three feet. The running joke was: "We'll make this thing ten thousand times bigger, and it'll go five feet!" Some of the others were more impressive; there was one where the counterweight fell straight down in a guided frame like the blade in a guillotine, as opposed to rotating on the shaft around a pivot point as it fell. Mostly the trebuchets didn't shoot very far, mostly like twenty feet at the greatest and the wooden blocks they shot went higher than far. Sometimes the blocks fell out of the sling. One of the trebuchets shot a block across the field when the group gave up on the counterweight and just had one of their members pull on the shaft. Also, instead of a trebuchet one group used essentially a potato gun, which consisted of a PVC pipe for a barrel and dry ice and water for charge. This didn't work. It sent the block of wood like ten feet. They tried this again with compressed air, and it sent the cube hurtling across the field with a neat little pop sound.
Arrows: A primative form of birth control
Sunday's RPG involved me playing a Dragonblooded hostage in Exalted (Chris, the GM, had an NPC he thought I'd be interested in playing). I had sex with Jeremy's character in hope of him letting me go, but he didn't. The dice though, say it was very good sex. Later on, in a disagreement with the rest of the party he threw Mike's character into a lifeboat and cast him off in the general direction of the Blessed Isle (or something) which was where I wanted to go. I jumped onto the lifeboat and taunted Jeremy's character about the size of his genitalia, whereupon he shot me in groin.
I hurt in sympathy.
My character's goal in life is now to find him and castrate him.
---
Oh yes. In Jeremy's game I ended up seducing a guard and sending him off into a demon temple, wherein he went insane.
I find this amusing, even though I feel kind of bad for the driving-crazy of a fictional character. I really didn't know it would happen.
---
I don't know what is up with all the sex RP. It just kind of happens that way.
Sunday's RPG involved me playing a Dragonblooded hostage in Exalted (Chris, the GM, had an NPC he thought I'd be interested in playing). I had sex with Jeremy's character in hope of him letting me go, but he didn't. The dice though, say it was very good sex. Later on, in a disagreement with the rest of the party he threw Mike's character into a lifeboat and cast him off in the general direction of the Blessed Isle (or something) which was where I wanted to go. I jumped onto the lifeboat and taunted Jeremy's character about the size of his genitalia, whereupon he shot me in groin.
I hurt in sympathy.
My character's goal in life is now to find him and castrate him.
---
Oh yes. In Jeremy's game I ended up seducing a guard and sending him off into a demon temple, wherein he went insane.
I find this amusing, even though I feel kind of bad for the driving-crazy of a fictional character. I really didn't know it would happen.
---
I don't know what is up with all the sex RP. It just kind of happens that way.
Sunday, November 16, 2003
A Day in the Life of Jeremy's Lovebunny
Me and Jeremy have this game called Fingerbuttag. The objective of it is to poke the other player on the butt and yell, "Tag, you're it!" mostly at random times, like, at dinner, or in the elevator. You're supposed to run away, but this mostly degenerates into us circling each other facing foward.
Niall is excluded because his butt is too small, and Kay is excluded because his butt is too big. Jeremy is glad of this.
Me and Jeremy have this game called Fingerbuttag. The objective of it is to poke the other player on the butt and yell, "Tag, you're it!" mostly at random times, like, at dinner, or in the elevator. You're supposed to run away, but this mostly degenerates into us circling each other facing foward.
Niall is excluded because his butt is too small, and Kay is excluded because his butt is too big. Jeremy is glad of this.
On Friday, played Jeremy's game set in his world. He used the Mage system, which I liked because it's really not necessary to have combat skills, so it focuses much more on role playing. I wuv Mage. Currently, Niall's character is doing the fantasy equivalent of considering going to World War II Germany and finding and killing Hitler... as a gay Jewish black man.
Saturday, November 15, 2003
Shiny Shinies
I went to see Matrix Revolutions with Jeremy and Pat, his friend. I suppose I spent 2 hours and $6.25 staring at shiny lights, glass and rain. Good music, especially the choral stuff. Nice fighting; I'm glad there was more mechanical stuff- I had been getting sick of the hand-to-hand, honestly. It reminded me of Final Fantasy Spirits Within but hell of a lot cooler. The designs of the Machines were very impressive in their insect-ness. Also, I thought the guy who played the man possessed by Agent Smith (from Reloaded, remember?) was a very good actor; he managed to pin down the exact mannerisms of Hugo Weaving without looking the least bit like him. Plot was incomprehensible, as usual. I think the first Matrix was the best because the point of the first one was of course that you didn't know whether the world you lived in was real or no. But now with all that Zion stuff outside the Matrix, it doesn't seem real anymore. It's just another man-against-machine sci-fi movie. I'm not a fan of Zion in general with the knit sweaters and plastic beads. The design of it looks like a bad episode of Stargate. Grungy sci-fi was pioneered visually by Star Wars, IMHO, and has never been portrayed in movies well since. I'm not disappointed by the Matrix; I never was a big fan, so I was satisfied with my shiny shinies.
PS: One of the reasons why I picked Matrix over Master and Commander to watch is because I heard Matrix has a Troy preview. It does. Troy looks great, and my inner ancient studies nerd is happy. There was the Return of the King Teaser trailer, which made me happy to see bits of RotK on the big screen as opposed to downloaded on my computer, but disappointed because it was just the teaser. Saw the trailer for Last Samurai. It looks like a beautiful historical epic, but I hope there's at least one comic relief Asian character there too, because I'm sick of Asians being all solemn with sticks up their asses in movies all the time. (While black actors of course have the opposite problem). Timeline (the new Michael Crichton movie about timetraveling archaeologists) has flaming trebuchets, so even if that sucks, I'll watch it anyways. There are suddenly so many historical epics coming out though that I am a tremendously happy girl.
Since we were at Arundel Mills, I dragged Jeremy to the Sanrio store ("I survived," he said regarding that) and he dragged me to Game Stop where one of the employees taught us how to play the Lord of the Rings game (with Warhammer style miniatures). That must be the best job ever, to be paid to paint miniatures and battlefields and play games with people. We went to a bunch of game stores and just went "ooh" "ahh" at things beyond our budget. We tried to look at Medieval Times but we weren't even allowed in the store without a ticket (which is for the tournament and dinner). That is definitely beyond our budget ($45 or so for the tourney) and I don't even know if it'll be significantly better than what goes on at Rennfest, but I vow to come back sometime.
Still, I had a great time getting out of the house. I should do it more often.
I went to see Matrix Revolutions with Jeremy and Pat, his friend. I suppose I spent 2 hours and $6.25 staring at shiny lights, glass and rain. Good music, especially the choral stuff. Nice fighting; I'm glad there was more mechanical stuff- I had been getting sick of the hand-to-hand, honestly. It reminded me of Final Fantasy Spirits Within but hell of a lot cooler. The designs of the Machines were very impressive in their insect-ness. Also, I thought the guy who played the man possessed by Agent Smith (from Reloaded, remember?) was a very good actor; he managed to pin down the exact mannerisms of Hugo Weaving without looking the least bit like him. Plot was incomprehensible, as usual. I think the first Matrix was the best because the point of the first one was of course that you didn't know whether the world you lived in was real or no. But now with all that Zion stuff outside the Matrix, it doesn't seem real anymore. It's just another man-against-machine sci-fi movie. I'm not a fan of Zion in general with the knit sweaters and plastic beads. The design of it looks like a bad episode of Stargate. Grungy sci-fi was pioneered visually by Star Wars, IMHO, and has never been portrayed in movies well since. I'm not disappointed by the Matrix; I never was a big fan, so I was satisfied with my shiny shinies.
PS: One of the reasons why I picked Matrix over Master and Commander to watch is because I heard Matrix has a Troy preview. It does. Troy looks great, and my inner ancient studies nerd is happy. There was the Return of the King Teaser trailer, which made me happy to see bits of RotK on the big screen as opposed to downloaded on my computer, but disappointed because it was just the teaser. Saw the trailer for Last Samurai. It looks like a beautiful historical epic, but I hope there's at least one comic relief Asian character there too, because I'm sick of Asians being all solemn with sticks up their asses in movies all the time. (While black actors of course have the opposite problem). Timeline (the new Michael Crichton movie about timetraveling archaeologists) has flaming trebuchets, so even if that sucks, I'll watch it anyways. There are suddenly so many historical epics coming out though that I am a tremendously happy girl.
Since we were at Arundel Mills, I dragged Jeremy to the Sanrio store ("I survived," he said regarding that) and he dragged me to Game Stop where one of the employees taught us how to play the Lord of the Rings game (with Warhammer style miniatures). That must be the best job ever, to be paid to paint miniatures and battlefields and play games with people. We went to a bunch of game stores and just went "ooh" "ahh" at things beyond our budget. We tried to look at Medieval Times but we weren't even allowed in the store without a ticket (which is for the tournament and dinner). That is definitely beyond our budget ($45 or so for the tourney) and I don't even know if it'll be significantly better than what goes on at Rennfest, but I vow to come back sometime.
Still, I had a great time getting out of the house. I should do it more often.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
This blows
Windy today isn't it? I was awakened at 4 in the morning by the howling outside of our window and the bang bang thud. Ryan opened the window later on because he said the wind was "sucking the window out" and the wind blew directly into the room and made the Venetian blinds rattle. Me and Jeremy stayed on the bed where it managed to be windy inside the room, and I wrapped myself in his blanket like a hajib, and for a while I thought of nomads and faraway places. Then classes and UMBC beckoned. I wore a jacket today that is knit; I made a bad choice because the wind simply goes through the holes and still makes me cold.
Windy today isn't it? I was awakened at 4 in the morning by the howling outside of our window and the bang bang thud. Ryan opened the window later on because he said the wind was "sucking the window out" and the wind blew directly into the room and made the Venetian blinds rattle. Me and Jeremy stayed on the bed where it managed to be windy inside the room, and I wrapped myself in his blanket like a hajib, and for a while I thought of nomads and faraway places. Then classes and UMBC beckoned. I wore a jacket today that is knit; I made a bad choice because the wind simply goes through the holes and still makes me cold.
I'm now taking Ancient Studies 201, Introduction to Ancient Greek History. Not officially; it just happens to be a class both Jeremy and Kay are in, so I've been following them to lecture on Tuesdays and Thursdays and taking notes for fun. I went today to take notes for Jeremy because he's holed up in the CAD lab doing a computer programming project.
I am a lab widow. Yesterday I was wondering where Jeremy was, and I went to dinner by myself, and met up with Kay and Niall and Chris quite by accident. We went back to Erickson and played Settlers of Cattan (the running joke is: Settlers of Catonsville: "God, what a hellhole!"). I lost miserably. After that I tried to work on my novel for NaNoWriMo which I am miserably behind on, because I haven't been working on it during the weekends of November.
Jeremy came home in the middle of the night all droopy. I gave him back rubs and he had pizza and ate ice cream out of the carton. Awwww @___@. I wuv when he's such a sad widdle puppy...
I'm perverse, aren't I?
I am a lab widow. Yesterday I was wondering where Jeremy was, and I went to dinner by myself, and met up with Kay and Niall and Chris quite by accident. We went back to Erickson and played Settlers of Cattan (the running joke is: Settlers of Catonsville: "God, what a hellhole!"). I lost miserably. After that I tried to work on my novel for NaNoWriMo which I am miserably behind on, because I haven't been working on it during the weekends of November.
Jeremy came home in the middle of the night all droopy. I gave him back rubs and he had pizza and ate ice cream out of the carton. Awwww @___@. I wuv when he's such a sad widdle puppy...
I'm perverse, aren't I?
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Addendum
Also yesterday, I started fencing epee. It is very hard to be short. I lost to Jeremy, who was gracious enough to allow me four points to his five. I still consider myself a winner after a heavy-handed and strategically placed touch that had Jeremy subsequently curled up into a little ball on the floor, crying for his mommy.
On the bright side, he still has one working testicle remaining.
Also yesterday, I started fencing epee. It is very hard to be short. I lost to Jeremy, who was gracious enough to allow me four points to his five. I still consider myself a winner after a heavy-handed and strategically placed touch that had Jeremy subsequently curled up into a little ball on the floor, crying for his mommy.
On the bright side, he still has one working testicle remaining.
So yesterday, I was in my room laying on my bed thinking, God let me fall in love with him again.
I heard a knock on the door and opened it and Jeremy was there.
We kissed and made up.
He apologized, I'm not sure what for, which shows that he is an amazing person because I was not aware that I needed an apology. I have no idea in the world how he could have known.
I heard a knock on the door and opened it and Jeremy was there.
We kissed and made up.
He apologized, I'm not sure what for, which shows that he is an amazing person because I was not aware that I needed an apology. I have no idea in the world how he could have known.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Goin' to New Oxford, Gonna Leave My World Behind
So this weekend I went to New Oxford, a small town in rural Pennsylvania 100 miles due north of Rockville. 10 miles away from Gettysburg. 30 miles from Carlisle, home of Dickenson College and fond memories. 5 miles away from Hanover, snack food capital of the world. It's the main distribution center of Snyder pretzels and Utz chips, and possibly some other stuff. I always thought the Utz girl was creepy, with her goth complexion and that fiendish, slightly glazed look in her eyes as she buries her hand into that giant bag of crack... uh, chips, yes. But anyway, Hanover is the snack food capital of the world, meaning if you live there and there's a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, you'll still never starve.
But in New Oxford proper, there is really nothing at all. It's rural, but not redneck. It's cozy. Approaching it there are rolling hills on either side that let you see far off into the distance, sometimes a low blue smear against the sky. The trees are bare now but I imagine it must look better in the summer or spring. There are wheat fields, and cows, race horses in your backyard, that kind of thing. It's cold up north.
Jeremy went home and I went home with him.
It was strange. I had a New Place Headache, that headache you get when you go to and stay at a completely different place.
At home, Jeremy was greeted by his menagerie of dogs and cat. Jeremy called them a "welcome committee." I call them, "dogs that are clawing at their cages and want to kill me." Jeremy, later, said it was only that the black lab was very territorial, and wanted to keep strangers away from its loved ones.
"Wants to kill me," I said.
"He wants to scare people away," Jeremy said.
".. and kill me," I said.
Jeremy's family is Sporty. We went to York College for a swim meet. I got a chlorine headache. I watched people swim back and forth and back and forth. Through the water. We sat on the ass-numbing benches. People stood at the side of the lanes cheering, mostly for the slowest swimmers to finish up faster. Jeremy told me it would be boring. I didn't believe it coud possibly be as boring as he said. Well, that was my reaction about people's comments on UMBC too during senior year, and look where it got me. I saw a York College swim shirt with someone's arm covering the Y. I imagined orcs in speedos, goggles and swim caps, doing synchronised swimming. "Ock-tar Logar! For the Horde!" This amused me slightly. Jeremy informed me that orc naval units really suck though.
Natalie, Jeremy's younger sister who is a sophomore at York, came out of the pool. She's a female version of him. She has his eyes, forehead, nose and mouth, but not the stubble. She has the oblong head. She's kind of hot (for a girl). It disturbs me. She looks like Jeremy with estrogen injections and boobs and curves. But you might find her sexy. You know what's also disturbing? She's a year older than me, so essentially Jeremy's girlfriend (me) is younger than his little sister. I guess that's not too extraordinary, but it just sounds wrong, you know?
We went "home." Jeremy's mom coaches field hockey. Natalie plays field hockey. Amie (his youngest sister in middle school) plays field hockey. Jeremy's lifelong dream is to play field hockey. They talked about field hockey. I haven't liked field hockey since Lizzie D stole my man in 11th grade. In the living room, we watched football. I tried to understand why they did that whole throwing the ball and running at each other thing. We ate dinner, during which we talked about low-calorie foods and the household made fun of Amie for eating too much.
There were long swathes of free time during which neither me nor Jeremy had anything to do. We played some pixelated games on his fossil of a computer. We went upstairs to his room, which had dinosaurs painted on the wall from when he was five, and a stuffed pterodactyl hung from the ceiling with the words 'I love you' sewn on a little heart on its chest. At a certain position laying on his bed you can't see the strings holding it up and it looks like there is a monstrous yet amorous turkey hovering over you, waiting to gouge out your eyes. He has matching dinosaur curtains, a longsword, and a fish tank bubbling in the corner that needs water changing. We discussed the anatomical impossibilities of the rainbow colored dinosaurs parading around on his walls, and whether the pterodactyl truly did love him. I asked him why he had fish. He said they were for his fish tank. I asked him why he had a fish tank. He said you couldn't have fish without a fish tank now could you? I asked him which one he got first, the fish or the fish tank, but he said you couldn't have one without the other, so he got them at the same time. I asked him why he chose to have fish AND a fish tank instead of NO fish and NO tank. He said because they swim. I asked why swimming helped. He said it'd be pretty dumb to be a fish that couldn't swim. I asked why swimming things enhanced the general atmosphere of the room. He said because they made the room interesting. I asked how swimming things made the room interesting as opposed to hopping or crawling or slithering things. He said, "Because goldfish are five cents a piece." I took a deep breath and sighed, and he said, "See, now didn't the fish just make the conversation a whole lot more interesting?"
We went and watched Finding Nemo on VHS, and watched the lunar eclipse outside the living room window.
I looked at Jeremy's ginormous collection of fantasy, sci-fi and horror novels. However, he has an intense amount of author loyalty, so while he maybe has a hundred books or so, they're by perhaps the same six authors.
We went to sleep. In seperate rooms, to please his parents. I slept in Amie's room. It has deep red hardwood furniture with scrollwork, an old-style kerosine lamp attached to the wall in a curled brass sconce (with an electric bulb), floral curtains, a fluffy pink carpet, a pink feathered net above my head holding all her stuffed animals, and a bed with lacy floral bedcovers and pink blankets. Jeremy tucked me into the warmness with all the teddy bears suspended above my head. I went to sleep watching the white plaster ceiling and for a while it was my room with neither a roommate nor flourescent lights nor cinderblock walls, a real honest to God room, and when I woke up the New Place Headache was gone.
I woke up at around 9, earlier than Jeremy. I didn't know what to do because I didn't particularly feel like dealing with his family without him around. I washed my face and brushed my teeth and loafed around for about an hour with the guinea pig in Amie's room chattering at the cage and yelling at me, then I burst into Jeremy's room and bounced on his bed until he woke up. He snapped his eyes open in shock but then he saw it was me. (He's lived in that house so long he's always subconsciously braced to be awakened at 4 am for swim practice).
We ate breakfast. Amie and Natalie ignored me. They have a habit of not talking to anyone except each other. Amie seems possibly like the kind of girl who'd beat me up in middle school. But Jeremy says that she's just pissed off because her parents made her clean her room (which she usually uses as a crap room, and stays in Natalie's room) so I could sleep in it. I think she's just pissed off because she's 13. Being 13 does that to you. Natalie's pissed off over her swim meet times, so both of them are pissed off. This kind of creeps me out because I keep thinking they are conspiring to kick my ass as the Perpetually Pissed Off Sisters. Over the course of the weekend Jeremy talked to them as sparingly as possible. Maybe it's their dad. He's one of those guys who is maybe sarcastic, if you could tell.
We waited to go to lunch. I played with Jeremy's longsword while he stood in a corner defending the fishtank from sword-related accidents. The sword was so long and heavy I couldn't control it. This is not a sexual euphemism.
We went to lunch at Pizza Hut. It was frigid inside. I was the only person there who wasn't white. Jeremy made fun of Amie eating too much again. After Jeremy's mom kissed him goodbye (on the lips...???!!), Jeremy's dad drove us home... kind of. After a lengthy amount of time trying to figure out parking, we went to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and looked at cool shit while I did my write-up for Archaeology.
Now I'm home, and writing my blog. It seems inevitable that Jeremy will read it. Hidy ho!
So this weekend I went to New Oxford, a small town in rural Pennsylvania 100 miles due north of Rockville. 10 miles away from Gettysburg. 30 miles from Carlisle, home of Dickenson College and fond memories. 5 miles away from Hanover, snack food capital of the world. It's the main distribution center of Snyder pretzels and Utz chips, and possibly some other stuff. I always thought the Utz girl was creepy, with her goth complexion and that fiendish, slightly glazed look in her eyes as she buries her hand into that giant bag of crack... uh, chips, yes. But anyway, Hanover is the snack food capital of the world, meaning if you live there and there's a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, you'll still never starve.
But in New Oxford proper, there is really nothing at all. It's rural, but not redneck. It's cozy. Approaching it there are rolling hills on either side that let you see far off into the distance, sometimes a low blue smear against the sky. The trees are bare now but I imagine it must look better in the summer or spring. There are wheat fields, and cows, race horses in your backyard, that kind of thing. It's cold up north.
Jeremy went home and I went home with him.
It was strange. I had a New Place Headache, that headache you get when you go to and stay at a completely different place.
At home, Jeremy was greeted by his menagerie of dogs and cat. Jeremy called them a "welcome committee." I call them, "dogs that are clawing at their cages and want to kill me." Jeremy, later, said it was only that the black lab was very territorial, and wanted to keep strangers away from its loved ones.
"Wants to kill me," I said.
"He wants to scare people away," Jeremy said.
".. and kill me," I said.
Jeremy's family is Sporty. We went to York College for a swim meet. I got a chlorine headache. I watched people swim back and forth and back and forth. Through the water. We sat on the ass-numbing benches. People stood at the side of the lanes cheering, mostly for the slowest swimmers to finish up faster. Jeremy told me it would be boring. I didn't believe it coud possibly be as boring as he said. Well, that was my reaction about people's comments on UMBC too during senior year, and look where it got me. I saw a York College swim shirt with someone's arm covering the Y. I imagined orcs in speedos, goggles and swim caps, doing synchronised swimming. "Ock-tar Logar! For the Horde!" This amused me slightly. Jeremy informed me that orc naval units really suck though.
Natalie, Jeremy's younger sister who is a sophomore at York, came out of the pool. She's a female version of him. She has his eyes, forehead, nose and mouth, but not the stubble. She has the oblong head. She's kind of hot (for a girl). It disturbs me. She looks like Jeremy with estrogen injections and boobs and curves. But you might find her sexy. You know what's also disturbing? She's a year older than me, so essentially Jeremy's girlfriend (me) is younger than his little sister. I guess that's not too extraordinary, but it just sounds wrong, you know?
We went "home." Jeremy's mom coaches field hockey. Natalie plays field hockey. Amie (his youngest sister in middle school) plays field hockey. Jeremy's lifelong dream is to play field hockey. They talked about field hockey. I haven't liked field hockey since Lizzie D stole my man in 11th grade. In the living room, we watched football. I tried to understand why they did that whole throwing the ball and running at each other thing. We ate dinner, during which we talked about low-calorie foods and the household made fun of Amie for eating too much.
There were long swathes of free time during which neither me nor Jeremy had anything to do. We played some pixelated games on his fossil of a computer. We went upstairs to his room, which had dinosaurs painted on the wall from when he was five, and a stuffed pterodactyl hung from the ceiling with the words 'I love you' sewn on a little heart on its chest. At a certain position laying on his bed you can't see the strings holding it up and it looks like there is a monstrous yet amorous turkey hovering over you, waiting to gouge out your eyes. He has matching dinosaur curtains, a longsword, and a fish tank bubbling in the corner that needs water changing. We discussed the anatomical impossibilities of the rainbow colored dinosaurs parading around on his walls, and whether the pterodactyl truly did love him. I asked him why he had fish. He said they were for his fish tank. I asked him why he had a fish tank. He said you couldn't have fish without a fish tank now could you? I asked him which one he got first, the fish or the fish tank, but he said you couldn't have one without the other, so he got them at the same time. I asked him why he chose to have fish AND a fish tank instead of NO fish and NO tank. He said because they swim. I asked why swimming helped. He said it'd be pretty dumb to be a fish that couldn't swim. I asked why swimming things enhanced the general atmosphere of the room. He said because they made the room interesting. I asked how swimming things made the room interesting as opposed to hopping or crawling or slithering things. He said, "Because goldfish are five cents a piece." I took a deep breath and sighed, and he said, "See, now didn't the fish just make the conversation a whole lot more interesting?"
We went and watched Finding Nemo on VHS, and watched the lunar eclipse outside the living room window.
I looked at Jeremy's ginormous collection of fantasy, sci-fi and horror novels. However, he has an intense amount of author loyalty, so while he maybe has a hundred books or so, they're by perhaps the same six authors.
We went to sleep. In seperate rooms, to please his parents. I slept in Amie's room. It has deep red hardwood furniture with scrollwork, an old-style kerosine lamp attached to the wall in a curled brass sconce (with an electric bulb), floral curtains, a fluffy pink carpet, a pink feathered net above my head holding all her stuffed animals, and a bed with lacy floral bedcovers and pink blankets. Jeremy tucked me into the warmness with all the teddy bears suspended above my head. I went to sleep watching the white plaster ceiling and for a while it was my room with neither a roommate nor flourescent lights nor cinderblock walls, a real honest to God room, and when I woke up the New Place Headache was gone.
I woke up at around 9, earlier than Jeremy. I didn't know what to do because I didn't particularly feel like dealing with his family without him around. I washed my face and brushed my teeth and loafed around for about an hour with the guinea pig in Amie's room chattering at the cage and yelling at me, then I burst into Jeremy's room and bounced on his bed until he woke up. He snapped his eyes open in shock but then he saw it was me. (He's lived in that house so long he's always subconsciously braced to be awakened at 4 am for swim practice).
We ate breakfast. Amie and Natalie ignored me. They have a habit of not talking to anyone except each other. Amie seems possibly like the kind of girl who'd beat me up in middle school. But Jeremy says that she's just pissed off because her parents made her clean her room (which she usually uses as a crap room, and stays in Natalie's room) so I could sleep in it. I think she's just pissed off because she's 13. Being 13 does that to you. Natalie's pissed off over her swim meet times, so both of them are pissed off. This kind of creeps me out because I keep thinking they are conspiring to kick my ass as the Perpetually Pissed Off Sisters. Over the course of the weekend Jeremy talked to them as sparingly as possible. Maybe it's their dad. He's one of those guys who is maybe sarcastic, if you could tell.
We waited to go to lunch. I played with Jeremy's longsword while he stood in a corner defending the fishtank from sword-related accidents. The sword was so long and heavy I couldn't control it. This is not a sexual euphemism.
We went to lunch at Pizza Hut. It was frigid inside. I was the only person there who wasn't white. Jeremy made fun of Amie eating too much again. After Jeremy's mom kissed him goodbye (on the lips...???!!), Jeremy's dad drove us home... kind of. After a lengthy amount of time trying to figure out parking, we went to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and looked at cool shit while I did my write-up for Archaeology.
Now I'm home, and writing my blog. It seems inevitable that Jeremy will read it. Hidy ho!
Friday, November 07, 2003
Marital state
This is an unexaggerated account of my strange emotional shit from last night. I never heard of it happening to anyone before me. I trust we are all mature adults.
-----
So last night I came home from fencing and was depressed. This was triggered by an offhand discussion about condoms; Jeremy said he didn't need any because his conditions still hold. I had been happy for the last few days because I thought he'd changed his mind, so this made me quiet and disappointed. Jeremy thought I was tired and tucked me into bed, and then he went back out into the common room of the suite to play Mage. I didn't want to be alone and when he was leaving I thought to him Please don't close the door all the way but he closed the door all the way so it was dark. I sat up on the bed with my thoughts swarming around in my head and bouncing off the inside of my skull. I began punching the mattress in frustration and ripping up the pillows (unsuccessfully). The phone rang. I went back to "sleep." Jeremy came to answer the phone. It was his parents. I was angry at him for impinging upon my pillow punching and wanted him to leave. He finished his phone conversation, hung up, kissed me on the forehead, and went back outside.
I couldn't stand being alone, but every time I thought of him it hurt (even in a physical way, which shocked me) and my nerve endings screamed. (That feeling you get after you've broken up with someone and it hurts to think about him, which is weird because we're still quite together) I wanted to think of something else but couldn't think of anything else. The words My conditions still hold hurt the most and though I thought the more I repeated them in my head the more desensitized I'd get, the more I thought about them the more they hurt. This confused me because a lot of boys are abstinent and it doesn't make their girlfriends upset. I mean, if a boy were upset over his girlfriend not having sex people would just pass him off as horny. But I know I'm not the only girl in this situation. You can't do that; you can't do everything except for sex which is supposed to be the thing that ties and man and a woman together, and then go, "Oh, it doesn't matter, it doesn't count, it's not real sex." Because if we can't have sex, what is it we've been doing for the last... month? You can't go nearly there and not all the way there like, "Oh, whoops, my bad" like taking back a chess move or stopping a freight train on a dime or undoing what you did.
I have no idea what I'm talking about but all I know is how I feel.
I passed out sometime in the night.
At two in the morning Jeremy climbed back into bed. I realized I had fallen asleep. I went to sleep again.
At around five twenty in the morning I woke up hazily to some strange boy asleep by my side. I thought it was Jose but I said to myself "I don't care" and leaned forward to kiss him, but woke up fully and realized it was Jeremy, duh, who else would it be, and what the hell was I doing? I got out of bed to go to the bathroom and was disturbed. I wondered if it was rather arbitrary that I picked Jeremy over Jose (now with the revelation that they were both making moves on me at the same time) and if it wasn't detrimental that I've never really talked to Jeremy as just a friend. I wondered if I really loved Jeremy and what our relationship was built upon, or if I just believed I loved him because I was afraid not to. I washed my hands and watched Jeremy sleeping under the light of the window, but the last thing I wanted then was to go back into that bed. I cowered by the sink with my back to the wall for half an hour. I thought I could maybe go back to Chesapeake or call up Jose or Lori but that was dumb and after a time I went back into bed. I at first slept facing the wall facing the corner of the room but that was where I had piled all my pain earlier in the night so it was still there. I turned over and held Jeremy and was comforted by his sleeping closeness, but he rolled over away from me and I cried into his shirt for his forgiveness. He rolled over again sometime later to face me and opened his eyes but he was asleep and neither saw nor heard nor felt me there. I watched his face which was there but I might as well have been alone and I pondered poking him to wake him up so that he could see me cry. Isn't that the dumbest thing in the whole world? So I let him sleep because I didn't want him to hurt for me just so I could feel better. I went to sleep too.
He woke me up at 11 am after he'd come back from class and we lay there for a while on the bed awake but resting. We actually got out of bed around 12 and went to lunch. During casual conversation (on a totally unrelated topic) he said I maintain my theory and I flinched because it sounded so much like, My conditions still hold.
"What are you thinking?" he said. He said I looked half spaced out again.
This is an unexaggerated account of my strange emotional shit from last night. I never heard of it happening to anyone before me. I trust we are all mature adults.
-----
So last night I came home from fencing and was depressed. This was triggered by an offhand discussion about condoms; Jeremy said he didn't need any because his conditions still hold. I had been happy for the last few days because I thought he'd changed his mind, so this made me quiet and disappointed. Jeremy thought I was tired and tucked me into bed, and then he went back out into the common room of the suite to play Mage. I didn't want to be alone and when he was leaving I thought to him Please don't close the door all the way but he closed the door all the way so it was dark. I sat up on the bed with my thoughts swarming around in my head and bouncing off the inside of my skull. I began punching the mattress in frustration and ripping up the pillows (unsuccessfully). The phone rang. I went back to "sleep." Jeremy came to answer the phone. It was his parents. I was angry at him for impinging upon my pillow punching and wanted him to leave. He finished his phone conversation, hung up, kissed me on the forehead, and went back outside.
I couldn't stand being alone, but every time I thought of him it hurt (even in a physical way, which shocked me) and my nerve endings screamed. (That feeling you get after you've broken up with someone and it hurts to think about him, which is weird because we're still quite together) I wanted to think of something else but couldn't think of anything else. The words My conditions still hold hurt the most and though I thought the more I repeated them in my head the more desensitized I'd get, the more I thought about them the more they hurt. This confused me because a lot of boys are abstinent and it doesn't make their girlfriends upset. I mean, if a boy were upset over his girlfriend not having sex people would just pass him off as horny. But I know I'm not the only girl in this situation. You can't do that; you can't do everything except for sex which is supposed to be the thing that ties and man and a woman together, and then go, "Oh, it doesn't matter, it doesn't count, it's not real sex." Because if we can't have sex, what is it we've been doing for the last... month? You can't go nearly there and not all the way there like, "Oh, whoops, my bad" like taking back a chess move or stopping a freight train on a dime or undoing what you did.
I have no idea what I'm talking about but all I know is how I feel.
I passed out sometime in the night.
At two in the morning Jeremy climbed back into bed. I realized I had fallen asleep. I went to sleep again.
At around five twenty in the morning I woke up hazily to some strange boy asleep by my side. I thought it was Jose but I said to myself "I don't care" and leaned forward to kiss him, but woke up fully and realized it was Jeremy, duh, who else would it be, and what the hell was I doing? I got out of bed to go to the bathroom and was disturbed. I wondered if it was rather arbitrary that I picked Jeremy over Jose (now with the revelation that they were both making moves on me at the same time) and if it wasn't detrimental that I've never really talked to Jeremy as just a friend. I wondered if I really loved Jeremy and what our relationship was built upon, or if I just believed I loved him because I was afraid not to. I washed my hands and watched Jeremy sleeping under the light of the window, but the last thing I wanted then was to go back into that bed. I cowered by the sink with my back to the wall for half an hour. I thought I could maybe go back to Chesapeake or call up Jose or Lori but that was dumb and after a time I went back into bed. I at first slept facing the wall facing the corner of the room but that was where I had piled all my pain earlier in the night so it was still there. I turned over and held Jeremy and was comforted by his sleeping closeness, but he rolled over away from me and I cried into his shirt for his forgiveness. He rolled over again sometime later to face me and opened his eyes but he was asleep and neither saw nor heard nor felt me there. I watched his face which was there but I might as well have been alone and I pondered poking him to wake him up so that he could see me cry. Isn't that the dumbest thing in the whole world? So I let him sleep because I didn't want him to hurt for me just so I could feel better. I went to sleep too.
He woke me up at 11 am after he'd come back from class and we lay there for a while on the bed awake but resting. We actually got out of bed around 12 and went to lunch. During casual conversation (on a totally unrelated topic) he said I maintain my theory and I flinched because it sounded so much like, My conditions still hold.
"What are you thinking?" he said. He said I looked half spaced out again.
The Cause of My Antisocial Activity and Emotional Detachment
SFX 87: when you almost have sex but don't have sex it feels like shit.
ADurfor: ah, ok. so it was just an emotional let down
SFX 87: yeah,
SFX 87: so that's why I'm bummed
ADurfor: there are 2 schools of though on this
SFX 87: (There! Not that complicated!)
ADurfor: ah, so your fixed?
SFX 87: no.
ADurfor: what was that "(There! Not that complicated!)" about then?
SFX 87: when it comes down to it what I'm feeling isn't that complicated
ADurfor: true
ADurfor: its the same depression i get after dart guns
SFX 87: it's basically "I had an emotional letdown over not having sex." Of course there's more detail to it but that's basically it
ADurfor: yep
ADurfor: i have the same thing after a dart gun fight
SFX 87: and not so much about not having sex as the fact that we won't ever be having sex ever.
ADurfor: wait, no sex ever?
SFX 87: No sex til marriage. Am I marrying him? Probably not
SFX 87: (unless he means no sex until we marry other people. Which is just weird. :P)
ADurfor: smart to recognize that
ADurfor: well, isn't the not sex good enough?
SFX 87: I guess.
ADurfor: well, you have 2 paths ahead
SFX 87: (Andrew, has anyone ever told you about talking to girls?)
SFX 87: (They want sympathy, not advice)
ADurfor: yes actually people did talk to me about that
SFX 87: well don't give me advice
SFX 87: I'm not going to have sex with him, things will continue as normal, and that's that.
ADurfor: sounds good
ADurfor: well, you've set your course, now sail it
ADurfor: and i know i'm horrible at cherring people up
SFX 87: indeed.
SFX 87: work on that, all right?
SFX 87: The girl is always right. Even when she's wrong.
ADurfor: nah, it would give me people skills
SFX 87: It's chivalrous, like opening doors and whatnot
ADurfor: but see, if you fix the girl by giving a logical reasonable path of choice
SFX 87: you can't *fix* a girl
SFX 87: you can't fix a guy either
ADurfor: true
ADurfor: but you can fix individual problems
SFX 87: mmm.. no
ADurfor: by breaking down into smaller problems, and then look at all possible solutions
ADurfor: and pick one
ADurfor: thats how i order my life
ADurfor: btw, the girl is right only when she has a logical argument w/ ordered progression of steps
ADurfor: same w/ the guy
ADurfor: logic decides who is right and wrong
ADurfor: wizards 6th rule
SFX 87: the girl is always right when you are talking to her
SFX 87: she will believe what she wants to believe. Wizard's first rule
ADurfor: but all of the wizards rules rotate around the 6th, its the hub that makes them work
SFX 87: oh, hell, whatever
ADurfor: now you see y i'm not a good bf
SFX 87: if you want to be a good bf, stop reading Terry Goodkind for Christ's sake. :-)
ADurfor: hmmm, i'd have to say that between terry goodkind and gf, terry goodkind wins
SFX 87: when you almost have sex but don't have sex it feels like shit.
ADurfor: ah, ok. so it was just an emotional let down
SFX 87: yeah,
SFX 87: so that's why I'm bummed
ADurfor: there are 2 schools of though on this
SFX 87: (There! Not that complicated!)
ADurfor: ah, so your fixed?
SFX 87: no.
ADurfor: what was that "(There! Not that complicated!)" about then?
SFX 87: when it comes down to it what I'm feeling isn't that complicated
ADurfor: true
ADurfor: its the same depression i get after dart guns
SFX 87: it's basically "I had an emotional letdown over not having sex." Of course there's more detail to it but that's basically it
ADurfor: yep
ADurfor: i have the same thing after a dart gun fight
SFX 87: and not so much about not having sex as the fact that we won't ever be having sex ever.
ADurfor: wait, no sex ever?
SFX 87: No sex til marriage. Am I marrying him? Probably not
SFX 87: (unless he means no sex until we marry other people. Which is just weird. :P)
ADurfor: smart to recognize that
ADurfor: well, isn't the not sex good enough?
SFX 87: I guess.
ADurfor: well, you have 2 paths ahead
SFX 87: (Andrew, has anyone ever told you about talking to girls?)
SFX 87: (They want sympathy, not advice)
ADurfor: yes actually people did talk to me about that
SFX 87: well don't give me advice
SFX 87: I'm not going to have sex with him, things will continue as normal, and that's that.
ADurfor: sounds good
ADurfor: well, you've set your course, now sail it
ADurfor: and i know i'm horrible at cherring people up
SFX 87: indeed.
SFX 87: work on that, all right?
SFX 87: The girl is always right. Even when she's wrong.
ADurfor: nah, it would give me people skills
SFX 87: It's chivalrous, like opening doors and whatnot
ADurfor: but see, if you fix the girl by giving a logical reasonable path of choice
SFX 87: you can't *fix* a girl
SFX 87: you can't fix a guy either
ADurfor: true
ADurfor: but you can fix individual problems
SFX 87: mmm.. no
ADurfor: by breaking down into smaller problems, and then look at all possible solutions
ADurfor: and pick one
ADurfor: thats how i order my life
ADurfor: btw, the girl is right only when she has a logical argument w/ ordered progression of steps
ADurfor: same w/ the guy
ADurfor: logic decides who is right and wrong
ADurfor: wizards 6th rule
SFX 87: the girl is always right when you are talking to her
SFX 87: she will believe what she wants to believe. Wizard's first rule
ADurfor: but all of the wizards rules rotate around the 6th, its the hub that makes them work
SFX 87: oh, hell, whatever
ADurfor: now you see y i'm not a good bf
SFX 87: if you want to be a good bf, stop reading Terry Goodkind for Christ's sake. :-)
ADurfor: hmmm, i'd have to say that between terry goodkind and gf, terry goodkind wins
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Monday, November 03, 2003
Subwoofing
Andrew from downstairs helped me set up my subwoofer, so now my music sounds so much better. Listening to Rammstein without a woofer is like fucking someone without a dick. It just doesn't work.
BTW, went to UMBC Writers' Guild's first meeting. We did this handy little writing exercise, which was to write anything with the phrase 'red and nodding' in it. Here's mine... I realized afterwards that it does kind of double as a blog post. It's kind of stream of consciousness, seeing as that it was written in ten minutes. Unlike someone else's there, this is not a rant against liberal America.
---
It's around this time of year when people fall into a deep dark rut, a deep blue funk, when people start and keep on (through inertia) cranking at the handle of their daily grind. Coffee in the morning work in the afternoon, food and cofee at night and then maybe sleep and dreams uneasily as the world goes round. People watch the geese fly south (away from here) and feed ducks breakfast muffins at the coffee colored pond (expresso) and ask the red and nodding leaves of autumn what we should do, but of course all they say is yes, so they keep on going, back to grinding. I told my boyfriend once (while we were playing Sattergories to kill our time and grind away the time) that while 'grinder' starts with the letter G, it is not a thing. There are meat grinders coffee grinders maybe but in itself there is no such thing as just a grinder. We would've stopped arguing, but there's nothing better to do, and he goes and puts a pot of black like night coffee on the illegal heating plate.
Andrew from downstairs helped me set up my subwoofer, so now my music sounds so much better. Listening to Rammstein without a woofer is like fucking someone without a dick. It just doesn't work.
BTW, went to UMBC Writers' Guild's first meeting. We did this handy little writing exercise, which was to write anything with the phrase 'red and nodding' in it. Here's mine... I realized afterwards that it does kind of double as a blog post. It's kind of stream of consciousness, seeing as that it was written in ten minutes. Unlike someone else's there, this is not a rant against liberal America.
---
It's around this time of year when people fall into a deep dark rut, a deep blue funk, when people start and keep on (through inertia) cranking at the handle of their daily grind. Coffee in the morning work in the afternoon, food and cofee at night and then maybe sleep and dreams uneasily as the world goes round. People watch the geese fly south (away from here) and feed ducks breakfast muffins at the coffee colored pond (expresso) and ask the red and nodding leaves of autumn what we should do, but of course all they say is yes, so they keep on going, back to grinding. I told my boyfriend once (while we were playing Sattergories to kill our time and grind away the time) that while 'grinder' starts with the letter G, it is not a thing. There are meat grinders coffee grinders maybe but in itself there is no such thing as just a grinder. We would've stopped arguing, but there's nothing better to do, and he goes and puts a pot of black like night coffee on the illegal heating plate.
Sunday, November 02, 2003
When the Poo Spirit Moves Me
Friday was Halloween, which meant Sam dressed normally. Jeremy dressed up as Larva from Vampire Princess Miyu. He painted his mask himself. We skulked around various dorm buildings, with him following behind me wordlessly, masked and in a hooded black robe. We managed to creep a lot of people out.
It was also Mary's Halloween party at the apartment, which was Harry Potter themed in decor. This resulted in us eating candy from a dead unicorn (paper mache). Because it was mostly a fencers' party this resulted in bizarre incidents such as Death dueling Jesus in saber. Death had a costume with glowing red LED lights for eyes, but the batteries died. Mostly we watched the Princess Bride, making appropriate D&D themed commentary ("Tumble check!" "Buttercup has an int of 15 but a wisdom of 6..." "Intimidate" "Failed 'detect motive' ") which annoyed Mary to no end until she ended up busting a cap with a plastic pistol.
I spent the night with Jeremy, but Niall was outside the room, for some reason or another, howling and yelling in an exaggerated manner, "You are sinnahs... in the eyes of the Lawd!"
Which was something of a deterent.
The costumed fencing continued on into Saturday practice with Legolas vs the Dread Pirate Roberts (cloak and foil vs foil and dagger), Jesus vs Legolas, Link vs Link, and Link vs Jesus. Jesus triumphed in every match. Jeremy (uncostumed) fenced double daggers, and as usual, was sexy while doing it, since they are his best weapon (even better than epee). I am at that stage in fencing where I am bad enough at foil to still suck at it, but good enough at foil where my foil habits make me bad at epee. You lose some, you lose some.
I introduced Jeremy to my parents and went home Saturday night. My mom said he looked younger than she thought he would; when she was my age seniors looked a lot older to her. She can't get over his hairstyle, how it's parted evenly in the middle and slightly 19th century. I noticed this the first time I met him and then forgot about it, but it's like the only thing my mom remembers about him. They have cute nicknames* for him and his hair, neither of which are translatable from Chinese. I guess nicknames are good though, seeing as my parents can pronounce neither his first nor last name. ("Like the thing you use to cut your grass...") Also it's really fucking embarrassing how much they like him: "He stands so straight! You should have posture like him!" "He has muscles like steel cables!" -_- *sweatdrop* Please let me die.
Anyway. At home I realized that I was starving for mental stimulation outside of D&D and anime; I spent the weekend ravenously reading the Post and Newsweek and Electronic Gaming Monthly for hours on end. I've brought back my stack of National Geographic and Smithsonian mags.
*Nickname for him is "Gezi," which literally translates to "little big brother." "Ge" is the word for an older brother, whereas "Di" is the word for younger brother. "Di" can also be used as a term of address for a little boy; in similar fashion, "Ge" can also be used as a term of address for a young man, or a male buddy. "Zi" is the dimunitive; therefore "Gezi" is like... a young guy pal? "Young buddy" I guess... Nickname for his hair (this isn't something they made up, it's an actual term in Chinese apparently) is "da xiao bien bu fen" which literally means "big and small side are indistinguishable" aka he parts his hair in the middle so one side isn't bigger than the other. The pun on this is that "da bien," literally translated as "the big side," also means to poo, and "xiao bien," "the small side," also means to piss.
I'm sure Niall and his scat jokes were there in spirit.
Friday was Halloween, which meant Sam dressed normally. Jeremy dressed up as Larva from Vampire Princess Miyu. He painted his mask himself. We skulked around various dorm buildings, with him following behind me wordlessly, masked and in a hooded black robe. We managed to creep a lot of people out.
It was also Mary's Halloween party at the apartment, which was Harry Potter themed in decor. This resulted in us eating candy from a dead unicorn (paper mache). Because it was mostly a fencers' party this resulted in bizarre incidents such as Death dueling Jesus in saber. Death had a costume with glowing red LED lights for eyes, but the batteries died. Mostly we watched the Princess Bride, making appropriate D&D themed commentary ("Tumble check!" "Buttercup has an int of 15 but a wisdom of 6..." "Intimidate" "Failed 'detect motive' ") which annoyed Mary to no end until she ended up busting a cap with a plastic pistol.
I spent the night with Jeremy, but Niall was outside the room, for some reason or another, howling and yelling in an exaggerated manner, "You are sinnahs... in the eyes of the Lawd!"
Which was something of a deterent.
The costumed fencing continued on into Saturday practice with Legolas vs the Dread Pirate Roberts (cloak and foil vs foil and dagger), Jesus vs Legolas, Link vs Link, and Link vs Jesus. Jesus triumphed in every match. Jeremy (uncostumed) fenced double daggers, and as usual, was sexy while doing it, since they are his best weapon (even better than epee). I am at that stage in fencing where I am bad enough at foil to still suck at it, but good enough at foil where my foil habits make me bad at epee. You lose some, you lose some.
I introduced Jeremy to my parents and went home Saturday night. My mom said he looked younger than she thought he would; when she was my age seniors looked a lot older to her. She can't get over his hairstyle, how it's parted evenly in the middle and slightly 19th century. I noticed this the first time I met him and then forgot about it, but it's like the only thing my mom remembers about him. They have cute nicknames* for him and his hair, neither of which are translatable from Chinese. I guess nicknames are good though, seeing as my parents can pronounce neither his first nor last name. ("Like the thing you use to cut your grass...") Also it's really fucking embarrassing how much they like him: "He stands so straight! You should have posture like him!" "He has muscles like steel cables!" -_- *sweatdrop* Please let me die.
Anyway. At home I realized that I was starving for mental stimulation outside of D&D and anime; I spent the weekend ravenously reading the Post and Newsweek and Electronic Gaming Monthly for hours on end. I've brought back my stack of National Geographic and Smithsonian mags.
*Nickname for him is "Gezi," which literally translates to "little big brother." "Ge" is the word for an older brother, whereas "Di" is the word for younger brother. "Di" can also be used as a term of address for a little boy; in similar fashion, "Ge" can also be used as a term of address for a young man, or a male buddy. "Zi" is the dimunitive; therefore "Gezi" is like... a young guy pal? "Young buddy" I guess... Nickname for his hair (this isn't something they made up, it's an actual term in Chinese apparently) is "da xiao bien bu fen" which literally means "big and small side are indistinguishable" aka he parts his hair in the middle so one side isn't bigger than the other. The pun on this is that "da bien," literally translated as "the big side," also means to poo, and "xiao bien," "the small side," also means to piss.
I'm sure Niall and his scat jokes were there in spirit.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
But Why the Rum??
Saw Pirates of the Caribbean again at Lecture Hall Two with Jeremy (and Sam), who'd never seen it. There was a really great turnout; some people had actually dressed up for it, with pirate hats and fake hook hands. So we had a great audience that really improved the viewing experience; people laughed and applauded at just the right times. Jeremy would've settled for Pirates on DVD but I told him it was something he should actually see on a big screen.
He liked it and said the fencing was good.
Lauren and Janis! Jeremy says that Johnny Depp is cooler than Orlando Bloom, so BOOYA! He won't answer who is hotter though. ^__^
PS: Hey, technically, in the movie, wouldn't Will Turner's (Orlando Bloom's character) dad be cursed because he took a coin? (Remember, he took a coin and sent it to Will, which is why he has it.) So when the mutineers threw him into the ocean attached to a cannon, wouldn't he just be an undead skeleton standing around on the sea floor? So when Will took the curse off the coins, making the pirates mortal again, didn't he end up inadvertantly killing his dad? Just a thought..
Saw Pirates of the Caribbean again at Lecture Hall Two with Jeremy (and Sam), who'd never seen it. There was a really great turnout; some people had actually dressed up for it, with pirate hats and fake hook hands. So we had a great audience that really improved the viewing experience; people laughed and applauded at just the right times. Jeremy would've settled for Pirates on DVD but I told him it was something he should actually see on a big screen.
He liked it and said the fencing was good.
Lauren and Janis! Jeremy says that Johnny Depp is cooler than Orlando Bloom, so BOOYA! He won't answer who is hotter though. ^__^
PS: Hey, technically, in the movie, wouldn't Will Turner's (Orlando Bloom's character) dad be cursed because he took a coin? (Remember, he took a coin and sent it to Will, which is why he has it.) So when the mutineers threw him into the ocean attached to a cannon, wouldn't he just be an undead skeleton standing around on the sea floor? So when Will took the curse off the coins, making the pirates mortal again, didn't he end up inadvertantly killing his dad? Just a thought..
Wherein Angie goes, Toga! Toga!
So yesterday I went to Party City with Jeremy (and Stan and Mary who graciously drove us) to get costume things. I suppose the latter two need introduction to everyone who reads this except for Jeremy and Jose (who lurk but don't comment).
Mary: Short. Foilist. Random. Nerdy. Swears like drunken pirate, drives like one too. Likes Civ 3. Gets poked/bruised by Jeremy repeatedly in epee.
Stan: Tall. Epeeist. Mary's ex-boyfriend (I think). Looks uncannily like Malex.
Obligatory introductions done.
Anyway, Party City was crowded as hell. They had this ridiculous system of having pictures of costumes posted on a wall with numbers, and you'd have to shout your number to the guys in the store room who would get your costume for you. Naturally, it was a chaotic mess of people all crowded in the back of the store, shouting over each other. I waited forever in the crowd of screaming people and (naturally) crying and frightened kids only for the people in the store room to tell metThe costume I wanted was sold out, and I gave up. Jeremy got a black cloak and a theater mask so he can be Larva from Vampire Princess Miyu.
We went to Walmart. I got accessories for my peplos like a Roman style coin belt and a butterfly and an octopus brooch. Yes, I'm being Ancient Greek for Halloween, thanks to my conveniently colored bedsheets and my Archaeology textbook with a page on how to drape a variety of Greek garments with a rectangular cloth (chiton, peplos, himation). I know it's nerdy, but it's the best I can do and I like it. Besides, they were selling Athena costumes at Party City for like around $30 when they don't even look authentic.
So yesterday I went to Party City with Jeremy (and Stan and Mary who graciously drove us) to get costume things. I suppose the latter two need introduction to everyone who reads this except for Jeremy and Jose (who lurk but don't comment).
Mary: Short. Foilist. Random. Nerdy. Swears like drunken pirate, drives like one too. Likes Civ 3. Gets poked/bruised by Jeremy repeatedly in epee.
Stan: Tall. Epeeist. Mary's ex-boyfriend (I think). Looks uncannily like Malex.
Obligatory introductions done.
Anyway, Party City was crowded as hell. They had this ridiculous system of having pictures of costumes posted on a wall with numbers, and you'd have to shout your number to the guys in the store room who would get your costume for you. Naturally, it was a chaotic mess of people all crowded in the back of the store, shouting over each other. I waited forever in the crowd of screaming people and (naturally) crying and frightened kids only for the people in the store room to tell metThe costume I wanted was sold out, and I gave up. Jeremy got a black cloak and a theater mask so he can be Larva from Vampire Princess Miyu.
We went to Walmart. I got accessories for my peplos like a Roman style coin belt and a butterfly and an octopus brooch. Yes, I'm being Ancient Greek for Halloween, thanks to my conveniently colored bedsheets and my Archaeology textbook with a page on how to drape a variety of Greek garments with a rectangular cloth (chiton, peplos, himation). I know it's nerdy, but it's the best I can do and I like it. Besides, they were selling Athena costumes at Party City for like around $30 when they don't even look authentic.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
I Win
(the following is an edited AIM convo between me and Doug)
DHobbitODeath: so tell me about jeremy. yes, i know i'm digging
SFX 87: he's adorable when he eats grapes. (no, digging is good.) he's a lefthanded epeeist. he wears shades all the time. he's read every single Pern book
DHobbitODeath: swordfighter?
SFX 87: yes sir.
DHobbitODeath: shades of what color?
SFX 87: he does longsword also. black. he has no fashion sense. he's immune to cold. he sings atonally. he plays trombone
DHobbitODeath: black's a nice color, how dare u
SFX 87: well they're big clipon shades
DHobbitODeath: immune to COLD! that's it god does exist . . . as jeremy
SFX 87: he wears big durforesque glasses. no, Andrew P is immune to cold also
DHobbitODeath: ouch on the voice. damn. [Andrew P's] ... cloned himself. ad's [Andrew D's] type glasses! oooooooooooooooh. trombone, ok
SFX 87: he swims..
DHobbitODeath: ok. i know people who do that too
SFX 87: he has lots of body hair and stubble
DHobbitODeath: that's a GOOD thing???? r u mad?
SFX 87: hey, the stubble is!
DHobbitODeath: ok i'll concede that but don't make this a habit. so, his stubble improves the appearance i assume
SFX 87: no, i like him cleanshaven
DHobbitODeath: then y stubble good?
SFX 87: well stubble is better than a full fucking beard
DHobbitODeath: ah
SFX 87: and stubble is better than being 'I am hairless like a eunuch'
DHobbitODeath: WHAT!!!! r u from a grecian culture or not? ... my what comment was for the hair
SFX 87: Who the hell said I was Greek? Jeremy's all GERMAN, baby!
DHobbitODeath: america is a grecian based culture
SFX 87: no, we're Anglo sometin'
DHobbitODeath: germany is grecian based too
SFX 87: no. hey, he's a swimmer. This means he shaves body hair.
DHobbitODeath: as in ancient greek influence
SFX 87: no.
DHobbitODeath: ah
SFX 87: The Romans didn't get that far.
DHobbitODeath: what????
SFX 87: to Germany, moron
DHobbitODeath: but germany is a european culture allof which is heavily influenced by ancient greece. i mean, even russia man, come on
SFX 87: I suppose
DHobbitODeath: VICTORY!!!!
DHobbitODeath: is mine
DHobbitODeath: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH
SFX 87: oh yes, he's 5'10" and buff and has a perky ass.
DHobbitODeath: LOL
SFX 87: booya!
SFX 87: VICTORY!!!!
DHobbitODeath: *laughing uncontrollably*
(the following is an edited AIM convo between me and Doug)
DHobbitODeath: so tell me about jeremy. yes, i know i'm digging
SFX 87: he's adorable when he eats grapes. (no, digging is good.) he's a lefthanded epeeist. he wears shades all the time. he's read every single Pern book
DHobbitODeath: swordfighter?
SFX 87: yes sir.
DHobbitODeath: shades of what color?
SFX 87: he does longsword also. black. he has no fashion sense. he's immune to cold. he sings atonally. he plays trombone
DHobbitODeath: black's a nice color, how dare u
SFX 87: well they're big clipon shades
DHobbitODeath: immune to COLD! that's it god does exist . . . as jeremy
SFX 87: he wears big durforesque glasses. no, Andrew P is immune to cold also
DHobbitODeath: ouch on the voice. damn. [Andrew P's] ... cloned himself. ad's [Andrew D's] type glasses! oooooooooooooooh. trombone, ok
SFX 87: he swims..
DHobbitODeath: ok. i know people who do that too
SFX 87: he has lots of body hair and stubble
DHobbitODeath: that's a GOOD thing???? r u mad?
SFX 87: hey, the stubble is!
DHobbitODeath: ok i'll concede that but don't make this a habit. so, his stubble improves the appearance i assume
SFX 87: no, i like him cleanshaven
DHobbitODeath: then y stubble good?
SFX 87: well stubble is better than a full fucking beard
DHobbitODeath: ah
SFX 87: and stubble is better than being 'I am hairless like a eunuch'
DHobbitODeath: WHAT!!!! r u from a grecian culture or not? ... my what comment was for the hair
SFX 87: Who the hell said I was Greek? Jeremy's all GERMAN, baby!
DHobbitODeath: america is a grecian based culture
SFX 87: no, we're Anglo sometin'
DHobbitODeath: germany is grecian based too
SFX 87: no. hey, he's a swimmer. This means he shaves body hair.
DHobbitODeath: as in ancient greek influence
SFX 87: no.
DHobbitODeath: ah
SFX 87: The Romans didn't get that far.
DHobbitODeath: what????
SFX 87: to Germany, moron
DHobbitODeath: but germany is a european culture allof which is heavily influenced by ancient greece. i mean, even russia man, come on
SFX 87: I suppose
DHobbitODeath: VICTORY!!!!
DHobbitODeath: is mine
DHobbitODeath: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH
SFX 87: oh yes, he's 5'10" and buff and has a perky ass.
DHobbitODeath: LOL
SFX 87: booya!
SFX 87: VICTORY!!!!
DHobbitODeath: *laughing uncontrollably*
Saturday, October 25, 2003
The UV Ray Knows All
Jeremy gave me caffeine, and as a result I was hyper and coming on to him rather strongly. It's more that I need his attention and executing various gestures of affection is a good way of getting it. Jeremy said "Yes, dear" once when I was in one of my more frivolous moods as an offhanded comment, but if he says it again things will become vastly unpleasant for him because I do not like those words. I am used to being sidelined all though high school, acting as an observer of things. I think it amusing that Jeremy and Jose call me an extreme extrovert. It's simply that I don't make friends easily and therefore if I don't constantly try, making myself go to socials and by force of will enjoying them and whatnot, all hope is lost for me. Perhaps it is that I have had it pounded into my head that social activities will make my life better.
The Briggs-Meyer personality test says I am exactly half intro and half extro, if you really must know.
(Malex, this may seem random but it is not): Went to the comedy show starring Tracy Morgan. Yes, SNL's Tracy Morgan. It was funny (lots of sex jokes) but not very witty. I also think this whole 'guys are sexual, girls are emotional' thing in general is overdone to the point of being affecting how I interact with guys. I am doing things I think Jeremy would want me to do/ would make him happy. I don't know how it is really possible to make assumptions about someone you love based on vague generalizations about one half of the human population, but I have warped expectations as a result.
Jeremy gave me caffeine, and as a result I was hyper and coming on to him rather strongly. It's more that I need his attention and executing various gestures of affection is a good way of getting it. Jeremy said "Yes, dear" once when I was in one of my more frivolous moods as an offhanded comment, but if he says it again things will become vastly unpleasant for him because I do not like those words. I am used to being sidelined all though high school, acting as an observer of things. I think it amusing that Jeremy and Jose call me an extreme extrovert. It's simply that I don't make friends easily and therefore if I don't constantly try, making myself go to socials and by force of will enjoying them and whatnot, all hope is lost for me. Perhaps it is that I have had it pounded into my head that social activities will make my life better.
The Briggs-Meyer personality test says I am exactly half intro and half extro, if you really must know.
(Malex, this may seem random but it is not): Went to the comedy show starring Tracy Morgan. Yes, SNL's Tracy Morgan. It was funny (lots of sex jokes) but not very witty. I also think this whole 'guys are sexual, girls are emotional' thing in general is overdone to the point of being affecting how I interact with guys. I am doing things I think Jeremy would want me to do/ would make him happy. I don't know how it is really possible to make assumptions about someone you love based on vague generalizations about one half of the human population, but I have warped expectations as a result.
Right up your allez
Fencing is now three times a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I still suck, and as a newbie am not allowed to use an epee until indefinitely (currently I am with foil). This is slightly aggravating because Amber, who is also a newbie (commonly known as maggots) about my size, is allowed to use sabre. She was fairly successful in direct eliminations at College Park or something which is why she's judged good enough to start another weapon I guess, but I'm wondering if I'm not just 'fencing retarded.' I never seem to be able to make corrections people tell me to and I think I am once again the worst of the regular newbies. Fencing leaves me a bit disappointed when I'm done.
I want to come back over winter break and fence Nick B who has hit the ground running at Vassar with epee and this mysterious 'fencing conditioning' he blogs about. I imagine he must be very good by now; he was the best in his pool at DCFC. I was the worst in my pool, which seems normal. Regardless of experience or physical condition I always seem to be fencing retarded. Nick B will of course kick my ass again once he sees me. Stupid tall people. But we can haunt DCFC again and tease Greg and see if all the old people from our class are still there (like Stewart, and that tall blonde woman who was Nick's nemesis). Nick says on AIM that we should fence Greg but of course we'll get slaughtered. He's a B rated epeeist now. I swear he was D in 10th grade so either I'm mistaken or he must've improved.
I like fencing on Saturdays though because there really is nothing better to do here. It's strange not fencing at night, and seeing daylight outside the windows. There is more time (two and a half hours) and less people, therefore more space and more equipment for the each of us. It's rather relaxed, like a gym or something instead of a class and people just hang out and bout, which is nice for a change instead of being ordered around. A lot of the time though is spent waiting around for people to fence me; Jeremy and Jose will each fence me on occasion but they both dislike foil so they end up fencing other people in their respective weapons (epee and sabre). I hope repeated bouting will make me better. Jeremy fleched me (layman's term- bumrushed) and I in response went EEPPP! and fell over. This amused him to no end though it pissed me off enough to fence better, and raised me from 0-4 to 3-4 before he won, 5-3.
Fencing is now three times a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I still suck, and as a newbie am not allowed to use an epee until indefinitely (currently I am with foil). This is slightly aggravating because Amber, who is also a newbie (commonly known as maggots) about my size, is allowed to use sabre. She was fairly successful in direct eliminations at College Park or something which is why she's judged good enough to start another weapon I guess, but I'm wondering if I'm not just 'fencing retarded.' I never seem to be able to make corrections people tell me to and I think I am once again the worst of the regular newbies. Fencing leaves me a bit disappointed when I'm done.
I want to come back over winter break and fence Nick B who has hit the ground running at Vassar with epee and this mysterious 'fencing conditioning' he blogs about. I imagine he must be very good by now; he was the best in his pool at DCFC. I was the worst in my pool, which seems normal. Regardless of experience or physical condition I always seem to be fencing retarded. Nick B will of course kick my ass again once he sees me. Stupid tall people. But we can haunt DCFC again and tease Greg and see if all the old people from our class are still there (like Stewart, and that tall blonde woman who was Nick's nemesis). Nick says on AIM that we should fence Greg but of course we'll get slaughtered. He's a B rated epeeist now. I swear he was D in 10th grade so either I'm mistaken or he must've improved.
I like fencing on Saturdays though because there really is nothing better to do here. It's strange not fencing at night, and seeing daylight outside the windows. There is more time (two and a half hours) and less people, therefore more space and more equipment for the each of us. It's rather relaxed, like a gym or something instead of a class and people just hang out and bout, which is nice for a change instead of being ordered around. A lot of the time though is spent waiting around for people to fence me; Jeremy and Jose will each fence me on occasion but they both dislike foil so they end up fencing other people in their respective weapons (epee and sabre). I hope repeated bouting will make me better. Jeremy fleched me (layman's term- bumrushed) and I in response went EEPPP! and fell over. This amused him to no end though it pissed me off enough to fence better, and raised me from 0-4 to 3-4 before he won, 5-3.
Friday, October 24, 2003
Wherein Angie's Inner High School Girl Tries Pathetically to Compensate For Being a Dork
Jeremy gave me two rules for clubbing: Have fun, and Don't Do Anything You'd Regret Telling Me.
Lori had come over Erickson North at 10 last night to help me pick out clubbing clothes and apply makeup. Being that all my clothes (and duplicate copies of my toiletries) are in Jeremy's room, it was logically the best place to do it. I pressed my mouth to tissue paper. I thought I'd leave it on Jeremy's bed as a souvenier but didn't know if he'd recognize a (admittedly very blurry) lipstick mark if he saw one. Feeling girly, we clonked down three flights of stairs in dressy calf boots and out the door.
---
Went clubbing yesterday at Mint Baltimore with Lori, setting out with an air of vague excitement as we pulled onto the highway in a school bus loud and dark and crowded, lit by the cool blue of cell phone displays and the bobbing embers of lit cigarettes. I don't understand why it was so necessary that lighting up couldn't be done either in the parking lot or at the club, but I digress. The girl sitting in front of us sprayed fireflies of flaming paper over everyone in her proximity, and guys talked in low jock voices ("Dude.. yeah.. huh huh huh") and I missed Jeremy for being articulate. There's something subversive about riding a full school bus at night, something that screams, "Hey mom, I'm not in elementary school anymore!" We were all happy in a very stupid way.
The thing about going to college and having to walk everywhere is that car rides of any sort now make me ridiculously happy, as if I'd spent all my childhood only riding donkeys. We flew into Baltimore proper over those marvelous soaring skyway ramps and I gaped like a little kid at the horizon that seemed to be a massive floating disk of orange lights and illuminated skyline.
Mint Baltimore is not that far from the Inner Harbor. We stood in line for a while, laughing at the people who weren't wearing jackets. I think it's stupid; girls may feel they look ugly in jackets but they look like morons anyway, shivering like plucked chickens with their hands stuck in their armpits. Be that as it may, they got to laugh at us in return because in the club, for some demented reason, the coat check "wasn't open" so we had to lug our jackets around for a while before giving up and setting them down on a chair. We bumped into Kristin T who was very happy to see us. Lori commented (discreetly) that she was slightly drunk; I never noticed and will stick to the term "sociable."
Griping aside. The Mint used to be a bank (hence the name), so inside Corinthian columns lit up in orange and purple extend to a high paneled ceiling, and above us, a balcony of ironwork tracery that overlooks the dance floor. I got the impression of those places I dream about that make no sense in a jumble of the classical and modern, like a hyperactive masquerade (with really skanky people). I went onto the dance floor and looked up and a flurry of soapy snow caught in the smoky beams of spotlights came down and settled on everyone's hair and shoulders, and strobe lights cast everyone in a state of stop-motion animation. Girls orbiting the dance floor managed to dance and serve shooters from a tray balanced on one hand, which, I admit, takes talent.
It was Ladies' Night. It is no fun unless there are boys to do erotic things with, and I regreted not taking Jeremy because he would've liked it, introvert or no. He needs to unwind. In any case, all the other guys were lame. Lori got groped and ground (past tense of grind) by a stoner (I think so; his eyes were out of focus), and got beer spilled on her. We got bored/tired/headaches and decided there were better ways of meeting single boys. We left, were accosted by panhandlers, and hailed a cab at the harbor.
It was an experience nonetheless, and fun if you suspend your cynicism. We promise to return to Baltimore again sometime for something social and girly, but probably to the Gallery on Calvert street for some high class shopping.
Jeremy gave me two rules for clubbing: Have fun, and Don't Do Anything You'd Regret Telling Me.
Lori had come over Erickson North at 10 last night to help me pick out clubbing clothes and apply makeup. Being that all my clothes (and duplicate copies of my toiletries) are in Jeremy's room, it was logically the best place to do it. I pressed my mouth to tissue paper. I thought I'd leave it on Jeremy's bed as a souvenier but didn't know if he'd recognize a (admittedly very blurry) lipstick mark if he saw one. Feeling girly, we clonked down three flights of stairs in dressy calf boots and out the door.
---
Went clubbing yesterday at Mint Baltimore with Lori, setting out with an air of vague excitement as we pulled onto the highway in a school bus loud and dark and crowded, lit by the cool blue of cell phone displays and the bobbing embers of lit cigarettes. I don't understand why it was so necessary that lighting up couldn't be done either in the parking lot or at the club, but I digress. The girl sitting in front of us sprayed fireflies of flaming paper over everyone in her proximity, and guys talked in low jock voices ("Dude.. yeah.. huh huh huh") and I missed Jeremy for being articulate. There's something subversive about riding a full school bus at night, something that screams, "Hey mom, I'm not in elementary school anymore!" We were all happy in a very stupid way.
The thing about going to college and having to walk everywhere is that car rides of any sort now make me ridiculously happy, as if I'd spent all my childhood only riding donkeys. We flew into Baltimore proper over those marvelous soaring skyway ramps and I gaped like a little kid at the horizon that seemed to be a massive floating disk of orange lights and illuminated skyline.
Mint Baltimore is not that far from the Inner Harbor. We stood in line for a while, laughing at the people who weren't wearing jackets. I think it's stupid; girls may feel they look ugly in jackets but they look like morons anyway, shivering like plucked chickens with their hands stuck in their armpits. Be that as it may, they got to laugh at us in return because in the club, for some demented reason, the coat check "wasn't open" so we had to lug our jackets around for a while before giving up and setting them down on a chair. We bumped into Kristin T who was very happy to see us. Lori commented (discreetly) that she was slightly drunk; I never noticed and will stick to the term "sociable."
Griping aside. The Mint used to be a bank (hence the name), so inside Corinthian columns lit up in orange and purple extend to a high paneled ceiling, and above us, a balcony of ironwork tracery that overlooks the dance floor. I got the impression of those places I dream about that make no sense in a jumble of the classical and modern, like a hyperactive masquerade (with really skanky people). I went onto the dance floor and looked up and a flurry of soapy snow caught in the smoky beams of spotlights came down and settled on everyone's hair and shoulders, and strobe lights cast everyone in a state of stop-motion animation. Girls orbiting the dance floor managed to dance and serve shooters from a tray balanced on one hand, which, I admit, takes talent.
It was Ladies' Night. It is no fun unless there are boys to do erotic things with, and I regreted not taking Jeremy because he would've liked it, introvert or no. He needs to unwind. In any case, all the other guys were lame. Lori got groped and ground (past tense of grind) by a stoner (I think so; his eyes were out of focus), and got beer spilled on her. We got bored/tired/headaches and decided there were better ways of meeting single boys. We left, were accosted by panhandlers, and hailed a cab at the harbor.
It was an experience nonetheless, and fun if you suspend your cynicism. We promise to return to Baltimore again sometime for something social and girly, but probably to the Gallery on Calvert street for some high class shopping.
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
A good day, I think. Worth noting because of anything extraordinary but because there are so few of those around. I am happy at times of course, but it hardly lasts. Sleep and the muzziness of mornings are an escape where there is warmth and softness and peace.
Learned binds in fencing. Still suck at it, of course. Both binds and fencing. I wonder when I'll ever be good, and if it'll feel different.
Had honeydew bubble tea this morning. Going clubbing with Lori on Thursday. Possibly going to Costco with Kay and Jeremy, which is cool because that means going off campus, and good sushi. Possibly visiting Janis over the weekend, possibly going to the Walter Reed Art Museum for a lecture on Athenian friezes. I have too much to do ex potentia, but in a good way. ^__^
Learned binds in fencing. Still suck at it, of course. Both binds and fencing. I wonder when I'll ever be good, and if it'll feel different.
Had honeydew bubble tea this morning. Going clubbing with Lori on Thursday. Possibly going to Costco with Kay and Jeremy, which is cool because that means going off campus, and good sushi. Possibly visiting Janis over the weekend, possibly going to the Walter Reed Art Museum for a lecture on Athenian friezes. I have too much to do ex potentia, but in a good way. ^__^
Monday, October 20, 2003
Outside the Loop
On Friday morning, I was on my way to class, cutting across Erickson field when I noticed two people standing there staring at the sky. Of course I did the same after asking what they were looking at, and it was a black balloon disappearing into the low white clouds. We watched it become proportionally smaller as the wind took it, until the ribbon dangling from it was no longer visible, and then it was only a pinprick as if someone had poked a hole in the sky, and then if you looked away you had a hard time finding it. A friend of the onlookers came to see what they were doing. I turned to greet him and when I turned back the balloon was gone, though I continued staring into the sky all the same and pointing, like the rest of them. I wonder if we made anyone curious.
Perhaps it is not a conventional accomplishment, but one of those things in life worth noting.
I, Angela C, have seen a balloon disappear.
Friday afternoon after biology was spent looking for cool and shiny rocks.
On Friday night, me and Jeremy ate dinner with and played Apples to Apples with Tanya (one of Jose's numerous female acquaintances) and Sam, an eccentric cloaked figure I'd seen around campus and had accosted, since I figured that anyone who wears a velvet cloak to school is interesting enough to introduce myself to.
Saturday was boring because everyone in Jeremy's suite was gone, as was basically everyone in fencing since they'd all gone away to College Park or something for a tournament. I spent the day contriving to find Friends With Cars, which involved me dragging Jeremy along and forcing him to socialize with various people in my dorm. In short, no one had a car available. I talked to Lori, who was in Rockville, for like an hour on the phone about issues that Jeremy found to be totally mystifying (such as the impossibility, among the female gender as a whole, to go into a store and buy pants that fit, boys and their strange minds, tendencies to gain fifty pounds after eating like a carrot, and the seductive evilness that is Late Night* at UMBC; so on so forth). Great conversation; no car. We vowed to be girlfriends and go clubbing sometime.
*Late Night is the after hours meal thing at the dining hall, with pizza, subs, chips, soft pretzels, soda, etc.
Me and Jeremy went to dinner, with Will and Melissa, and found out that we'd missed the shuttle bus to Baltimore, which set me in a very cranky mood. Andrew, the Terry Goodkind fan who lives downstairs, had a term paper to do, and so couldn't do anything that night.
I needed to go off campus or I would go crazy. I wanted to find Sam, but Jeremy was looking wilted from having met so many people. We (me and Jeremy) got a map to Patapsco State Park, and we started walking.
Yes, state parks close at sunset, but the point is to have a place to go, not to actually get there.
We left the enclosing loop of asphalt around UMBC and begin walking along places not overlit, where you could actually see stars once in a while, and I recognized Cassiopeia as I had that clear night at Rocky Gap. The roads had no sidewalks and we walked along the shoulder by the woods silhouetted by purple sky. In the distance we could see the blinking radio tower that marked our secret hill on campus (which has a dewy grassy dip behind it where no one ever goes except for us). Strings of cars would come over the curves of the road and occasionally blinded us with their halogens. We walked through the outskirts of Catonsville through the brisk cold and the smell of woodsmoke and dinner, through the leafy streets with porched houses, that looked like Takoma Park and in that way seemed not very far away from home.
It was good to be moving, beyond that binding circle around campus, and though we never did find the entrance to the park (maybe our directions were wrong or we missed the entrance in the dark) it is the thought that counts.
When we came back on campus Jeremy went inside the Fine Arts building for some reason. I thought he wanted to take a shortcut out of the cold or something since he didn't have a jacket. (I wasn't quite sure how the Fine Arts building could be a short cut to anywhere, but Jeremy had, on one occasion, to escape the driving rain after fencing, shown me some convoluted secret basement passageway leading from the social sciences building through the math building through the biology building to just outside of Erickson dorm. So I pretty much took his word for it.) At the door to Fine Arts, I was distracted by a large gaggle of laughing people getting out of a car in the parking lot, because I wondered what could possibly be so interesting at this time of night at UMBC of all places. They were well dressed. "That's nice," I said, and went into the FA building lobby, where Jeremy wasn't.
"Hello," I called up the stairwell. No response. I thought maybe he was outside looking for me.
I went back outside again and stood next to the FA building on the stairs that go down from the parking lot to the main street where all the academic buildings are. I waited for a while.
There was a group of people descending the grand stairway from the parking lot, girls with dark smooth hair combed back. They shivered in airy saris that swished behind them every time they dropped down a step and mirrored pieces glittered from the obiquitous lamps lining the stairway, and they clung to tall and groomed boys on their arms, and asked me, a ressie girl in jeans and a boy's jacket with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than wander around on a dead campus and had lost her boyfriend, the direction to the UC Ballroom.
"Go down these stairs and take a left," I said.
They thanked me, and continued downward.
"Uh, I mean right," I said.
They were gone, and the campus fell dead again.
I stood on the steps some more. More shiny people came down. "Go down these stairs and take a right," I said. They thanked me, and went. I followed them down the stairs to the UC Ballroom, where they were waiting in line to buy tickets to something. At the side of the ballroom I could hear music coming through the emergency exits. I went down the stairs some more, to the main street. Shiny people were coming up it.
"Up the stairs and to your left," I said, before they asked. They asked me how I knew. I told them to follow the crowd of shiny people.
Jeremy was neither up nor down the stairs and I stood on them for a while like Cinderella.
I went back to Erickson to see if he was there. He wasn't. I watched some crap tv in the lounge for a while. Some shiny people came down the elevator, and went outside, and left for the ballroom. I followed them partially, then went up the stairs again to the FA building, which Jeremy was standing outside of. He said he'd gone to the bathroom, and I felt like a moron for having left.
I asked him if he wanted to go to the ball. He said no, loud music and people weren't his thing. I shouldn't blame Jeremy for having no money and no car and no inclination for social gatherings but sometimes I do a little and I'm wrong. In any case we didn't go, and I sat around in my dorm room with him, watching video clips of people fighting with longswords and looking at John Howe's bright and misty oil paintings that take my mind places beyond the binding circle.
On Friday morning, I was on my way to class, cutting across Erickson field when I noticed two people standing there staring at the sky. Of course I did the same after asking what they were looking at, and it was a black balloon disappearing into the low white clouds. We watched it become proportionally smaller as the wind took it, until the ribbon dangling from it was no longer visible, and then it was only a pinprick as if someone had poked a hole in the sky, and then if you looked away you had a hard time finding it. A friend of the onlookers came to see what they were doing. I turned to greet him and when I turned back the balloon was gone, though I continued staring into the sky all the same and pointing, like the rest of them. I wonder if we made anyone curious.
Perhaps it is not a conventional accomplishment, but one of those things in life worth noting.
I, Angela C, have seen a balloon disappear.
Friday afternoon after biology was spent looking for cool and shiny rocks.
On Friday night, me and Jeremy ate dinner with and played Apples to Apples with Tanya (one of Jose's numerous female acquaintances) and Sam, an eccentric cloaked figure I'd seen around campus and had accosted, since I figured that anyone who wears a velvet cloak to school is interesting enough to introduce myself to.
Saturday was boring because everyone in Jeremy's suite was gone, as was basically everyone in fencing since they'd all gone away to College Park or something for a tournament. I spent the day contriving to find Friends With Cars, which involved me dragging Jeremy along and forcing him to socialize with various people in my dorm. In short, no one had a car available. I talked to Lori, who was in Rockville, for like an hour on the phone about issues that Jeremy found to be totally mystifying (such as the impossibility, among the female gender as a whole, to go into a store and buy pants that fit, boys and their strange minds, tendencies to gain fifty pounds after eating like a carrot, and the seductive evilness that is Late Night* at UMBC; so on so forth). Great conversation; no car. We vowed to be girlfriends and go clubbing sometime.
*Late Night is the after hours meal thing at the dining hall, with pizza, subs, chips, soft pretzels, soda, etc.
Me and Jeremy went to dinner, with Will and Melissa, and found out that we'd missed the shuttle bus to Baltimore, which set me in a very cranky mood. Andrew, the Terry Goodkind fan who lives downstairs, had a term paper to do, and so couldn't do anything that night.
I needed to go off campus or I would go crazy. I wanted to find Sam, but Jeremy was looking wilted from having met so many people. We (me and Jeremy) got a map to Patapsco State Park, and we started walking.
Yes, state parks close at sunset, but the point is to have a place to go, not to actually get there.
We left the enclosing loop of asphalt around UMBC and begin walking along places not overlit, where you could actually see stars once in a while, and I recognized Cassiopeia as I had that clear night at Rocky Gap. The roads had no sidewalks and we walked along the shoulder by the woods silhouetted by purple sky. In the distance we could see the blinking radio tower that marked our secret hill on campus (which has a dewy grassy dip behind it where no one ever goes except for us). Strings of cars would come over the curves of the road and occasionally blinded us with their halogens. We walked through the outskirts of Catonsville through the brisk cold and the smell of woodsmoke and dinner, through the leafy streets with porched houses, that looked like Takoma Park and in that way seemed not very far away from home.
It was good to be moving, beyond that binding circle around campus, and though we never did find the entrance to the park (maybe our directions were wrong or we missed the entrance in the dark) it is the thought that counts.
When we came back on campus Jeremy went inside the Fine Arts building for some reason. I thought he wanted to take a shortcut out of the cold or something since he didn't have a jacket. (I wasn't quite sure how the Fine Arts building could be a short cut to anywhere, but Jeremy had, on one occasion, to escape the driving rain after fencing, shown me some convoluted secret basement passageway leading from the social sciences building through the math building through the biology building to just outside of Erickson dorm. So I pretty much took his word for it.) At the door to Fine Arts, I was distracted by a large gaggle of laughing people getting out of a car in the parking lot, because I wondered what could possibly be so interesting at this time of night at UMBC of all places. They were well dressed. "That's nice," I said, and went into the FA building lobby, where Jeremy wasn't.
"Hello," I called up the stairwell. No response. I thought maybe he was outside looking for me.
I went back outside again and stood next to the FA building on the stairs that go down from the parking lot to the main street where all the academic buildings are. I waited for a while.
There was a group of people descending the grand stairway from the parking lot, girls with dark smooth hair combed back. They shivered in airy saris that swished behind them every time they dropped down a step and mirrored pieces glittered from the obiquitous lamps lining the stairway, and they clung to tall and groomed boys on their arms, and asked me, a ressie girl in jeans and a boy's jacket with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than wander around on a dead campus and had lost her boyfriend, the direction to the UC Ballroom.
"Go down these stairs and take a left," I said.
They thanked me, and continued downward.
"Uh, I mean right," I said.
They were gone, and the campus fell dead again.
I stood on the steps some more. More shiny people came down. "Go down these stairs and take a right," I said. They thanked me, and went. I followed them down the stairs to the UC Ballroom, where they were waiting in line to buy tickets to something. At the side of the ballroom I could hear music coming through the emergency exits. I went down the stairs some more, to the main street. Shiny people were coming up it.
"Up the stairs and to your left," I said, before they asked. They asked me how I knew. I told them to follow the crowd of shiny people.
Jeremy was neither up nor down the stairs and I stood on them for a while like Cinderella.
I went back to Erickson to see if he was there. He wasn't. I watched some crap tv in the lounge for a while. Some shiny people came down the elevator, and went outside, and left for the ballroom. I followed them partially, then went up the stairs again to the FA building, which Jeremy was standing outside of. He said he'd gone to the bathroom, and I felt like a moron for having left.
I asked him if he wanted to go to the ball. He said no, loud music and people weren't his thing. I shouldn't blame Jeremy for having no money and no car and no inclination for social gatherings but sometimes I do a little and I'm wrong. In any case we didn't go, and I sat around in my dorm room with him, watching video clips of people fighting with longswords and looking at John Howe's bright and misty oil paintings that take my mind places beyond the binding circle.
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