C.A. Talk Radio

Motherfucking comfort and joy

2009-12-22T04:13:25Z

Contrary to what the evidence might suggest, I am not, in fact, dead.

So I was being eaten alive by our holiday show -- and then started doing double-duty, working rehearsals for the next show (for which I am incredibly excited) whenever I'm not running said holiday show. I've also been pretty sick for about a week now. So while I love both shows and also love the holiday season, I am about as good-spirited as any sick person who will have had one day off in the span of December 1 through 24 can be.

(Which, to be honest, is pretty good-spirited. Being bitter about it helps, though, in a contradictory sort of way.)

Basically, I'm just postponing my Christmas cheer until New Year's. You will all be receiving tidings of goodwill and merriment then.

Also, my left knee and the left side of my ass are really hurting me from last night, when I was sitting on the bed and went to stand up but managed to miss the floor, and said knee and side of ass got all of the forward momentum that had been intended to carry me toward my desk. Well, it still did carry my toward my desk but not in the intended way. Overall, it was extraordinarily skillful.

I have over a month's-worth of questions to answer and events to recount, but hell if I am doing any of that now.

Have I made myself appealing enough yet?

ANON CRUSH MEME

Is it always "or"--

2009-12-15T05:12:52Z

"Gender will be a mandatory field at account creation. ... LiveJournal is removing the Unspecified option for the gender field."

Polite feedback (as it is to people who aren't the people who are actually making these decisions) can be left here.

Too tired and needing to go to bed in order to get to work tomorrow to provide editorial comment. Not that it needs much for the choir to which I'm preaching. But, as they say: signal boost.

"New York State Senate Votes Down Gay Marriage Bill"

2009-12-03T15:33:26Z

Fuck that noise.

I'm going into tech.

The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle--

2009-11-12T04:39:30Z

I've been meaning to mention this but keep forgetting.

This applies to anyone who lives in, lives near or is visiting Seattle, WA and has an interest in contemporary experimental theatre. If you haven't heard of them, there's a company called The Satori Group that moved to Seattle in 2008. They produced their first Seattle show this year, and they currently have Artifacts of Consequence running (through November 22).

I went to college with a number of the founding members, and they are very hip, smart, exciting people. If contemporary theatre is your thing -- or if you don't know and are willing to find out if it's your thing -- go check them out!

Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed--

2009-11-08T21:50:40Z

Dear Body,

You know, you are discouraging this whole "exercise" and "fitness" thing when it takes me about five minutes to find the strength to pick myself up off of the floor there after collapsing after four half-push-ups when even my normal state of non-fitness can accomplish four times that much. Really, five-pound dumbbells and some moderate DDR are suddenly looking to be impossible tasks right now.

I'll add "Muscle weakness" to my symptoms for today, and then let's give this one more try. If it still doesn't work out, I'll give you today. But seeing how much I wouldn't mind getting those exercise-induced happy brain drugs, let's try really hard, okay?

-Me

ETA: So lifting a bag of clothes is difficult enough today. Lifting myself or weights is not going to be happening. Let's give the jumping around a try.

ETA2: Some physical activity and a hot shower work wonders. Not miracles, but still, wonders.

I've no intention of confessing today--

2009-11-08T09:32:55Z

Look at things from a more philosophical perspective, dear Virgo, instead of seeing everything from such an intensely emotional perspective. You may have this constant fear that everyone is out to get you. More than likely, you are letting small instances get blown out of proportion in your own mind. Use your friends as a backboard that you can reflect your thoughts off of. More than likely, you will rise to a higher level of understanding of the situation by introducing this fresh perspective.

I really have no idea how I had been planning to start this entry, but I happened to stumble upon this random website that told me my daily horoscope -- which did that eerie thing where it's actually accurate. It is, after all, what I know intellectually, but it is annoying when my normal mental processes get exacerbated into such negative things as that (due to what I suspect might have been hormonal happenings). What made things worse the other day was that this particular period of vulnerability, with which I can usually deal just fine, happened to coincide with a Talk with the boss -- nothing bad, just a "checking up on how things are going for you" sort of deal.

Sadly, I'm extraordinarily bad as dealing with other people's concern for my non-physical well-being, since this tends to involve my emotions in some way. Now, I prefer to hold my deeper emotions at somewhat of an arm's length, given their tendency to be composed primarily of incoherent paranoia, despair and general violence. I've learned how to deal with those things for myself pretty well. It's different when they get dredged up by other people, though. Since things are how I've described them, it can create a somewhat awkward, difficult-to-explain situation, where attempts to explain only dig myself deeper into a hole and really don't explain anything at all. Attempting to communicate how I'm actually feeling in a direct manner is really much, much more trouble than it's worth -- but given the mistakes that I've made in the past when I haven't communicated anything at all (i.e. being overly stoic and determined to carry all of my burdens in silence), I instead made the new mistake of being honest.

Well, you know what they say about mistakes. (Something about making them being a good thing and learning stuff.) I do feel that going too far in the direction of openness has been a genuinely good thing, given my lifetime of swinging to the opposite extreme, but I think I have a better sense of that middle ground now and am eager to go there. I'll just pretend that I possess mind-powers that allow me to erase people's memories of past dealings in order to allow myself to move on as The New Me Who Knows That Most People Who Say That They Want To Understand What's Going On My Head Actually Have No Idea What They're Getting Into. While "I'm fine" might be a little too far from the truth, I need to come up with a general response that communicates the sense of my situation (there's a general set of such situations that I usually find myself dealing with) without bogging others down with too much accuracy.

In any case, with all of that occurring against the backdrop of the aforementioned biologically-induced emotional vulnerability, the past couple of days ended up being the low point of what has been a number of awesome weeks -- and even yesterday evening was highlighted by an opportunity to grab a comp ticket to the Yamato taiko show, which was wonderful.

Earlier this week, I was also able to snag a comp to Roger Rees' What You Will, which was an absolute delight -- a one-man show that's sure to be entertaining to anyone who enjoys things along the lines of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). And rounding out the end of this week, I'll be heading up to New York on Monday for a reading of Execution of Justice, a play by Emily Mann about the trial of Dan White.

I was in New York just last week, actually, meeting up with anatari, synergic and teleute12 after I had caught wind that there was a karaoke party going down. It was my first time singing at one of those "real" karaoke places (i.e. not in the beer pavilion at the county fair), and it was a blast, even though my voice was suffering from lack of use and pretty much shot within an hour. We went for shabu-shabu for dinner afterward, which was delicious, and popped in on hitode at work. Looking back, it's able to be a wonderful trip in hindsight as I forget about the huge amount of grief that the NYC public transportation system gave me getting there. (The combination of it being the weekend, it being the day of the NY marathon and my having not planned on stopping for this side-trip between home and Princeton, and thus not being packed for dragging all of my stuff around the city, proved to be a little deadly. At least it gave me the opportunity to work off some of the absolutely enormous amount of food that I consumed during that week that I was at home.)

I've been stumbling upon a lot of things by chance lately, really. A GoogleAd at the top of my Gmail happened to link me to Patients Like Me, which, for the fibro/CFE section, has a pretty awesome symptom tracking tool. While I wish that there were a feature for adding notes to days for noting possibly related circumstances (e.g. "rainy weather today" or "drank red wine at dinner" on a day when you had a headache), this really might finally make me be a good patient and track my symptoms, to better prepare me should things again take a turn for the worse. And hey, it makes colorful graphs.

I also made my first woot.com purchase today (well, yesterday) when I checked the site on a lark and found they were offering something I'd been looking into, on and off, for the past eight years or so.

I wonder that I have experienced all of this spontaneity and not yet exploded! Miraculous!

So let's start drinking before we start thinking--

2009-10-27T04:00:59Z

Hopefully, I'll have time to resume posting some actual substance this week. The past few weeks have had too highly concentrated awesome content to wrestle into journal entries. But the boss has me on vacation for the week, so I'm back on the homestead -- hopefully to be productive in a relaxed, vacation-y sort of way.

Really, this is all just the calm before the storm that is known as "holiday season."

Did you know but forget the method and moment in time--

2009-10-13T05:59:21Z

So I went to the local reading of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later. It wasn't a finished project by any means -- they were still receiving script changes this morning, this cast hadn't rehearsed until this afternoon. What today was, however, was an event: the same theatre project at hundreds of theaters worldwide on the anniversary of Matthew Shepard's murder.

It was a moving, informative experience for me. (Though not for everyone. During the short talk-back after the reading, one woman flatly stated that she did not consider what she had just seen to be art or theatre and that she was completely disappointed. Needless to say, while I consider her experience to be valid, I found her manner of expressing it to be quite rude and very possibly demonstrative of a lack of understanding of what she had just seen. But I digress.) One of the most intellectually interesting parts for me was the section with the university folklorist, where they discussed how we make our own stories, our control and lack thereof, the life of rumor. Just on a gut level, though, the words of the convicted murderers were heavy, so heavy, each of them for completely different reasons.

Father Roger said that Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney must be our teachers. I'm thinking that the first lesson might be humility.

Here at the crossroads of time--

2009-10-10T20:58:48Z

At 150 theaters in all 50 states and 8 other countries: The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later on October 12, 2009.

The free reading will be at 8 PM on Monday night in Princeton. Anyone interested in coming to see it with me? Or search out a theatre near you, and we'll just see it together in spirit.

RIP Bruce Bowes (1961-2009)

2009-10-07T17:59:17Z

I was going to make some artsy and youthful post about my life today, but then I found out that a sound designer with whom I worked last year passed away this past weekend.

It rather discomforts me that if I hadn't checked another person's Facebook page in order to e-mail them -- I'm one of those "as-needed" Facebook users, not a daily user -- I would never have known.

He was an awesome guy, y'all.

I'll be there someday--

2009-09-17T04:02:52Z

Officially older than Treize Khushrenada.

Have not yet taken over the world.

...mada mada dane.

ETA: From my e-mail...

Happy Birthday, [username]! Still single?

So remember that period of time when you were required to create an OK!Cupid profile in order to do their quizzes? And you know how I've been too lazy to delete my profile? MAYBE IT'S TIME TO DO SO.

The best thing about New York City is--

2009-09-08T04:22:03Z

I managed to have synergic and hitode over for about 24 hours, which was quite lovely. But now, I'm heading into tech week for Having Our Say -- about to hop into bed, and once my head hits the pillow, I will pretty much be at work all of the time until September 18.

...I don't particularly know where I was going with that, except to establish a legitimate reason for not talking to anyone or contributing to the world outside of work in any way for the next week and a half.

Shoulder to shoulder into the fray--

2009-08-27T04:45:51Z

On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was declared to be in effect -- granting American women the right to vote.

Fewer than 100 years, ladies -- for fewer than 100 years, we have had the right to vote in this country. Within the span of a century.

Voting means a lot of different things to different people -- to some people, I know that it means nothing -- but it's always been something very dear to me. I want to be able to cast a well-informed vote, so what with my life of an over-stressed and over-burdened vagrant for most of my voting years, I've only voted in the major national elections, where information and analysis was more easily accessible. But mercy, it means a lot to me.

I've never felt completely secure in my American-ness. While it's the only country I've ever known, I wasn't born here -- it's not something I can (or should) take for granted. Hell, I've encountered those individuals before who have taken a look at me and not taken it for granted for me (yes, ma'am, the place that this Asian-looking individual is "from" is actually here). I know that there are fellow citizens who would rather not share full ownership of the country with me due to any combination of my liberal-leaning social values, active non-religiousness, queerness or any other of my personal traits. We can disagree on many things, and that is just fine, my friend, because that is what life among people is, but the fact that I am here -- the fact that I am here -- is not up for dispute.

So to me, my vote is a huge "America, FUCK YEAH -- oh, and to the haters, FUCK YOU." It may just be me sticking my tiny foot into the huge, and sometimes horrible, machinery that runs this country, to little effect. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let anyone think that they can run it pass me without me at least tossing an egg at it.

American history and American time have been on my mind a lot lately, what with working on Having Our Say. It's a wonderful piece of dramatic storytelling, with Sadie and Bessie Delany inviting us into their home and telling us about their lives -- which just happen to cover over one hundred years of life in America.

I was only a child at the current point in time at which the play takes place, so it's been fascinating for me to be able to hear the history being discussed. My college studies unfortunately didn't include any history courses, so all I have is high school history -- which, as far as twentieth century American history is concerned, basically consisted of "WWI happened, Prohibition happened, speakesies, stock market crashed and the Depression happened, FDR and New Deal, WWII, something something Vietnam War, Nixon resigned and so-and-so is president now -- time for the AP exam!" But there's just something incredible about sitting in a room with people talking about 1968 and the fear and anxiety that filled that year, and things like that.

But even when talking about things from before I was born, the immediacy of it all is just mind-boggling to think about. There's women's right to vote, like I mentioned earlier. But also how interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia -- until 1967. Intellectually, I knew about that. But 1967 didn't really hit home for me until now. Interracial marriage has been universally legal in the United States for fewer than fifty years. I don't think of my parents' generation as being So Very Old, but had my father lived in Virginia and fallen in love with a non-white woman when he was my age? He couldn't have married her. By law.

American time.

During rehearsal the other day, we watched Dr. Cornel West's commencement speech for Spelmen College. It sure did bring me back to all of the reasons that I've always loved ministry. (Save for the whole "religious faith" bit, it really would be one of my ideal life paths.) Because that man wasn't giving a speech -- he was preaching, and I mean that in the best sense of the word, the kind of preaching that is meant to build up that fire inside of you until it just comes exploding out, where you can hardly contain your shout of "Yes, sir!"

"Don't be an echo -- be a voice."

And even so, mundane business must eventually be addressed. I am, believe it or not, still working on that meme. valancystar and misspeacock, I will be getting to your responses -- hopefully sooner than later, but who can say. Days at work have been long lately, about 10 hours without a meal break, and I am just dead at the end of them. Well, that's a lie -- actually, I'm starving at the end of them, but by the time I make dinner and clean up, I'm well dead.

It's strange to think of a U.S. Congress without Ted Kennedy.

Sometimes it just hits me right between the eyes, how glad I am to be alive.

It's been a long, been a long day--

2009-08-09T02:12:49Z

So I've had my first week in my new city, on my new job -- another stage management internship. It's been awesome so far: my housemates are great, my housing is incredible, the theatre season is exciting and my boss is terrifyingly competant. And it's really just now hitting me how great of an opportunity I've been given. Quite frankly, I'm a little intimidated -- it's been mentioned to me multiple times, by various people, how my position in particulay is a career-maker -- but I figure that all I have to do is not worry about living up to the person who was presented to them by my application (they accepted me, after all) and concentrate on showing them how much more awesome than that I actually am.

(Tangentially, I'll be heading to New York tomorrow through Monday to assist with a reading at the Manhattan Theatre Club, so I won't be around for the next couple of days. Cell phone will be the choice method of contact!)

Keeping this short and sweet, as I'm in the middle of making onigiri right now, what with not being around to do any cooking for the next few days. Also, I am rather tired. The hot and humid summer weather plus sitting at a desk for ten hours a day (plus a mattress, which, while I appreciate its full size, isn't particularly the best) is doing a number on my back -- my shoulders are like a pair of rocks right now. Painful rocks. So back to puttering around barefoot in the kitchen I go.

And while I know that I have an outstanding meme or two from before my move, here's that "Characters' ~Love Lives~" meme, ganked from Various Folks:

1. comment with a character of mine. (defined as a character I play/played in journal format or an original character)
2. receive three bits of headcanon about their sexuality: practices, preferences, experiences, fantasies, kinks, etc.
3. receive information about their current love life and/or sex life if applicable and I feel like rambling at you. (signs point to yes.)
4. receive three bits of headcanon about their life outside of sexuality and romance.

Character List
Enjolras (Les Miserables)
Maladict (Monstrous Regiment)
Tatsumi Seiichirou (Yami no Matsuei)
Takeuchi Sora (Air Gear)
Van Grants (Tales of the Abyss)
Rorschach (Watchmen)
Damien Sheares (original)
Zachary Campbell (original)

Just so you know, I will cry at you if you pick Rorschach. Tears of blood.

So I've got a black eye and my arm's in a cast--

2009-07-24T15:38:22Z

This is too much fuckery to fit on my Twitter account.

U.S. News & World report -- U.S. News & World Report -- recently published an article that has suggestions for how women can help their men in these trying economic times (as summarized by Jezebel):

That's why Lyons, working with couples therapist John Jacobs, has compiled a list of 5 ways women can help a man through this tough time. Jacobs recommends:

* Be his cheerleader, because men need to be rooted for.
* Don't push him to do anything, like talk about the feelings fueling his bad behavior (or how he needs to get off his ass and send out a resume or two.)
* Sit quietly, in case he decides to say something important to you.
* Make sure you don't stop sleeping with him. Men need sex.
* Don't place any blame on him for the state of your relationship.

This, despite the fact that Jacobs acknowledges explicitly that a man may well take his unemployment out on his partner and the relationship! In fact, if a guy's behavior changes, well, it's the woman's job to figure out how to deal with that... in addition to the increased financial responsibilities.

Though, I mean, if you are the strange type who thinks too much about these sorts of things and, thus, wonders if there might be any women who are being impacted by economic strife (aside from the heads of their households losing their jobs, that is), there are links within the original article so that you can "Read about the recession's impact on women's health — and how your anxieties might be affecting the kids." [Emphasis mine.] Oh, don't worry -- there aren't any silly suggestions that those poor menfolk should burden themselves by doing anything to help those recession-addled women.

That entire article is just so insulting to both men and women that I don't even know.

(Tip from shelightsupwell.)

ETA: The article is an online one, so you can post comments directly to it, if you so wish.

Posted solely for the amusement of those with whom I RP; all others can move along.

2009-07-08T16:26:36Z

Your result for Roleplayer Test!...

The Soap Opera Star

Plotful, Character-Oriented, Sexual

You're the Soap Opera Star, the center of a massive web of characters -- and more importantly, character relationships. You roleplay mainly for character dynamics, and romantic character dynamics at that: if you didn't start playing with a ship in mind, you're definitely shipping now that you're playing. But it's not random relationships that appeal to you. You like your plots! It's just that most or all of them are personal in nature and revolve around either getting characters together or developing relationships once they've formed. But if given a plot like that, you're a determined, reliable RP partner. However, of all roleplayers, you're likely to be the ones most emotionally attached to your character and to fall in RP-love with the players of your ships.

You scored 6 on Plotful, higher than 59% of your peers.
You scored -4 on Action-Oriented, higher than 43% of your peers.
You scored -3 on Platonic, higher than 18% of your peers.

Take Roleplayer Test! at HelloQuizzy

I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A MOMENT TO NOTE THAT NOT ONE OF THE CHARACTERS THAT I RP IS ACTUALLY IN A RELATIONSHIP-WITH-A-CAPITAL-R.

AND ALSO THAT

I JUST

...how can it be so accurate and yet so not at the same time.

'Cause everyone's your friend in New Yok City--

2009-07-08T04:41:39Z

And so I am returned from a short but lovely trip to New York. Highlights included synergic showing me video of lilorchid1023 wiggling her ass and icebellaseahawk summarizing Pericles for me, which resulted in me making a face comparable to the faces poor_choices and synergic made after consuming the McNuggetini (the sort of face that screams "why" into the void of a cold, uncaring universe). I'll perhaps write up a bit more tomorrow, but mainly I want to post the answers to the Words meme that I finally finished while on the train ride down.

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" (or you can just ask for the meme, I won't mind) and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

From actualize...

RORSFRIEND
...HOW IS THIS A WORD. Okay. I guess this is a new nickname of mine, considering that a small group of people calls me it rather consistently, I have it on ping in mIRC, I'm squatting on the LJ username and I once used it as a username to register for a forum. I'm not a big reader of American comics, but I do like catching shorter series here and there, and a few years ago, I picked up Watchmen at the library. With the movie looming on the horizon, I apped Rorschach at campfuckudie this past November. And since then, I have been doing horrible things on that nick in IRC, but mostly my friends have been being horrible to me, especially in the Watchmen chan, which isn't really so much a Watchmen chan as... the chan where people are horrible to me and quote me horribly out of context. 8( Anyway, at one point, it was concluded that horrible Rorschach names could be made with the basic formula of [something]-schach. This formula was then immediatley subverted as someone started calling me "Rorsfriend." And... it's just stuck. And I've grown pretty used to it now. It's funny, but the particular group of people who call me that are folks whom I'd always liked but never really hung with before the Watchmen resurgence due to the movie. And now... they are horrible to me and quote me horribly out of context. But I love them anyways. 8(

WHITE VAN
AGAIN, NOT A WORD. This links back to another CFUD character of mine -- Van Grants from the video game Tales of the Abyss. (The play on words being, obviously, the character's name plus the fact that the character does some horribly sketchy things to underaged characters in the story, leading to his fandom nickname of "Master Pedovan" or "Pedomaster Van" or what-have-you.) TotA was my first video game. (DDR doesn't count.) Playing TotA for the purpose of apping Van at CFUD was actually totally the reason that I got a PS2 at all, since aviy topped me horribly by barraging me with all the ways that character was made for me. And he was, and the game was, really. And in a way similar to "Rorsfriend," "white van" makes me think about how I love to take Serious Business and scatter it to the wind. Van is a Very Serious Character, and while it's the deep and solid aspects of his character that draw me to him and keep me there, I play him almost solely for the purpose of pulling shit like putting him into a Darth Vader costume or having him drive a ice cream truck around camp. I have no need to RP Nolan-verse Joker because he is there on a meta level as my entire philosophy of RPing -- everything can be corrupted. 8D

CORSETS
....OKAY, THIS ONE IS A WORD, BUT HOW DID IT MAKE IT ONTO THE LIST. Seriously, AJ, what... how... Okay. I have worn a corset but once in my life, and that was at AX 2008 (which was were I met AJ in person for the first time, but I wasn't wearing a corset then). One of my dirty little secrets is that I really, really love gothic and gothic-influenced clothing. However, you'll rarely find me owning or wearing any of it because that shit is expensive and generally not practical. But I love looking at it and trying it on and wish that I could own more of it. Also, I enjoy mildly waist-cinching clothing, as it allows me to cut a decent figure, so... yes, sometimes I would not mind some corsetry.

SECRETARY
...again with the CFUD! This time with Tatsumi Seiichirou, secretary extraordinaire from Yami no Matsuei. The first time I watched YnM, I immediately latched onto Tatsumi as my soul animal, and he totally is. (That occurring way back in my sophomore year of college -- prophetically enough, during my freshman year, I'd been cast in the department's first show of the season as a somewhat psychopathic secretary.) I am really sort of a "secretary" person, myself -- more a trusted lieutenant type than a commander. I WILL BE YOUR WINGMAN. But Tatsumi sort of embodies all of that, with added... soul animal. I've always seen a sometimes disturbing amount of my personal life reflected in and through this particular fictional character and... this just headed into awkward territory. Remember, kids: a secretary is not a toy!

ROBOCOCK
And here is more CFUD! With my secondary soul animal, Takeuchi Sora from the manga series Air Gear. Said character has some very advanced prostheses, which led to my terrible friends having this conversation, which is actually just the most in-depth discussion of the topic, as there have been multiple discussions of said topic. Nobody seems to believe me when I say that it's all real from mid-thigh up.

From piecrumbs...

rat bastard
Another reference to Takeuchi Sora of Air Gear. Since starting to RP him at CFUD, I have come to respond to a great variety of pejoratives and insults. This one stands out because I actually have a shirt that says "Rat Bastards" on it, from when I workshopped a play of that title.

magical breasts
I first met Pie in person less than a month ago. And on that day, I had, as she declared them, magical breasts. See, as much as I poke fun at myself, I am very happy with my chest size (which, tangentially, I think has slightly... filled out in recent months). The poking fun is easy, though, given that I'm a 32A... but I have this one bra that is pretty damn magical, in that it just about doubles the appearance of my bust size. Which is the bra that I was wearing the day that I met her. And when discussion of chest sizes came up as we were lounging around anatari's house, I could sense the doubt when I declared myself to be small-chested. So I said, no, really, it's just the bra, and I gave them a Before-and-After comparison. Magical.

MONTH-LONG THREADS
...what Pie and I do at CFUD with my Sora and her Radu. We both have crazy theatre schedules during the school year/regular season, and we're on opposite sides of the world (and, thus, opposite time zones) during the summer. It's not the usual play-style for that particular game, but we're both fine with plugging away with maybe a comment or two per day (or even every couple of days) with those threads because they're interesting while not being very urgent -- Sora and Radu are both crafty characters but have a very casual relationship with each other (i.e. they chill, provide each other with alcohol/drugs and make-out). So the threads are fun but are very unlikely to result in things occurring that would have to be retconned in threads that were started afterward.

korean bbq
DELICIOUSNESS. It was about a year ago now that I first ate at a Korean BBQ restaurant. *_____* It was with a group of CFUDers who were at AX 2008, and we found this great casual all-you-can-eat place... and left a few hours later, more fat and happy than we'd ever been. Or I was more fat and happy than I'd ever been, at least. I dragged Pie and anatari to Koreantown when I met up with them earlier this summer, and we ate Korean BBQ. There are no Korean BBQs near where I live. :(

DDR
I don't consider DDR to be proper video game, but if one does so, it's my first video game. I was enthralled with this game when I first became aware of it. Music! And dancing! In game form! What more could I want? I spent way too much money in arcades (only a couple bucks each time I went to the mall, which was maybe a few times per month, but that adds up) until I finally got a PS2 in early 2008. And ah, I've had so much fun since then! I have actually always been a very physical person. Not... completely skill-less, but more than making up for my lack of skills with deadly enthusiasm. So I love a game that's fundamentally physical and lets me earn points and look cool (. . .) just by jumping around to music. It's a very enjoyable form of exercise for me, and it's particularly nice because I prefer in-home exercising. I mostly play Supernova 2, because that's what came with my dance pad and I have all of the songs unlocked -- at this point, I play most songs on Expert (though I don't always pass) and a small number on Difficult, with a couple of the crazy ones on Basic. Which apparently impressed piecrumbs, apology and alioth when I hung out with them at anatari's. And so, my teenage dreams of being a smooth operator have finally been realized. I am... so proud... of myself.

From hijiri...

ROBOCOCK
...what is with you people. I'll re-link that conversation and add that nobody ever insists on Aeon Clock possessing mechanical manbits, despite recent spoilers. Everyone just enjoys picking on poor Sora. :( Of course, this is all fair, since he deserves it -- and I've also become much more of an asshole in chan since I've been RPing him. It's just one of those things -- I'm much more inclined to virtually punching people in the head or making off-color comments about people's relatives while on his nick.

Sora (they get two entries)
As I mentioned in a previous "robocock" answer, Sora is my secondary soul animal. Try to imagine a young Sora... but with a Lawful Good alignment. Which, yes, changes a lot fundamentally, but please, just try. Because that was me as a kid, up until about age 10. And it somehow worked out that certain aspects of my personality were re-establishing themselves around the time that I began reading Air Gear. After 8 volumes of being ambivalent about it -- but having the story and action keeping me turning the pages -- I finally got hopelessly hooked, and about 8 volumes after that, Sora cemented himself as my favorite character. What followed was the most epic roleplay app I have ever done and will ever do, the story of which is recounted in full here. Since then, Sora has been one of my two primary characters at CFUD and is probably currently my most visible. I certainly flip out over him the most, as he's the only character of mine from an ongoing canon, so he's still getting new material that makes me flail loudly at other people. Long story short, I could talk about Sora and Air Gear forever, and that punk-aesthetic quasi-sci-fi is to me now what high fantasy was to me as a kid -- totally the setting for my daydreams.

Les Mis
The book that changed my life, in no small part because it was my first fandom. I was first exposed to the story via the Tenth Anniversary Concert being aired on PBS back... when it was actually the show's tenth anniversay, 1995. I first saw the show in 1996, as a Christmas present, first stepped foot into the (now defunct) bulletin boards at the official Les Mis website in 1998 and first read the book in 1999. In hindsight, I was actually involved in the closest thing to BNF circle that fandom had at that point -- and I'm LiveJournal and Facebook friends with some of the people that I met way back then. (Not "still" LJ/FB friends, mind you -- LJ was just being born at that point and Facebook wasn't even a thought!) Anyhow, Les Mis is another thing that I could talk about forever. It's something that I first found just as I was beginning the really formative years of my life, and it's stayed with me since then, changing for me as I've changed -- while I still love the student insurrectionists, as I've gotten older, the main story of older adult protagonist Jean Valjean has grown more and more fascinating to me. And it was what first brought me online, really. It was my introduction to roleplaying. My college application essay was inspired by it. I just can't list all of the ways that that book changed my life.

Theater
I have always been a very level-headed drama queen. Keep it on the stage where it belongs, kids. I was onstage in school shows since second grade, taking part in my first full production when I was 10 (a summer community theatre production of Oliver!, for the record). Originally, I had performing ambitions -- which was something that made race a conscious factor for me at a young age, actually, as I remember, at one point, planning out my entire theatre career by aging through the cast of The King and I (because, really, where else did you see Asians in musicals?). I actually didn't get into straight drama until high school, which was a funny turn of events, given that my life ambition until that point had been to be in the high school musical. (It turned out that the drama club was actually where the geeks gathered, while the musical was more the province of cheerleader and stage-mothered types.) And, save for being given the designation of "stage manager" for the fifth grade school musical, I didn't do any tech theatre until my sophomore year of college. I've been mostly backstage since then, though, primarily stage managing, with a little bit of lighting design, light board operating and writing thrown into the mix. (Another effect of the drama/musical theatre divide from high school onward was that music has been mostly separate from theatre for me since then.) And I was determined to pursue a Sensible Career until just a bit over a year ago, when I finally caved and have been working on making an actual career in theatre. It's an awful love-hate sort of relationship, where you'll find me bitching and dying just about constantly while doing it, but that's just me. If I really didn't like it? I wouldn't be doing it. So the fact that I'm bitching that loudly and yet still doing it means that I love it.

Sock checks
I enjoy cosplay. I enjoy crossplay. But at AX 2008 (where I first met hijiri and a number of others in person), when it got out that, when crossplaying, I do, ahem, a full crossplay, various friends then kept trying to cop a feel. Obviously, a girl can't wear a fake cock in peace around some people. Jeez, guys.

From kingsraven...

ROBOCOCK
...OH MY GOD I HATE YOU ALL. What else can I say that hasn't already been said? Obviously, this is a thing of legend. "Words that remind me of you"... Mama, I hope that you're proud...

HATS
I love hats. I have many of them. And I always wear a hat whenever I go out -- even if it's just putting on a hat, walking twenty feet to the car and taking it off once I get in. (The only exception to this being if I'm taking an exercise-level walk or working outside -- I get too hot, then.) I have a few baseball caps, but it's mostly actual hats. Some for everyday wear, a couple fancier ones, a bunch of novelty hats.

DOGS
I also love dogs. I've always had dogs (usually two, though sometimes one) at home. I prefer large dogs, though our current ones are medium-sized. Whenever you go anywhere with me, you'll be stuck with me pointing and whispering/saying/yelling, "Doggie!" whenever I see a dog. Cats are nice to visit, but I'm totally a dog person. I like a well-run pack, and I don't think I could co-exist with a creature that couldn't accept a clear-cut hierarchy (with me in charge).

SOTOPPED
...WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN BY THAT. LIES. ALL OF IT.

THEATRE
hijiri got the long answer. I've gotten to the point where I just can't picture myself in a traditional workplace. And also where I have difficulty working in your average amateur/community theatre. Which, now that I think about it, makes me feel a little better about myself, in that I haven't lost that hard-assed, upwardly ambitious part of myself, though it's now being channeled through more non-traditional paths. Because sometimes, I do wonder if this is really what I want to be doing or if I just lack imagination. But I think that I can go from here to most anything else I could possibly want to be doing, and that's pretty good. Also, trivia: I usually use "theater" to refer to the physical building and "theatre" to refer to the general concept/art.

Waking up is harder--

2009-07-05T15:31:07Z

Hello, world. This morning, I passed out on the bathroom floor -- after hurling myself into the closet door and then presumably doing some more moving, as where I woke up was a couple meters away from the last place I remembered being -- in a grand crashing manner, so you all should tell me nice things about myself so that I feel like a useful human being again.

thefeelgoodmeme
my thread

In other news, Gatorade is gross.

I swear to goodness that I'm getting around to doing that "Words!" meme and recounting the grand adventures of the northern Kentity, but my internet was out at the beginning of the week (which led me to find another use for my Twitter account -- putting up a note if I'm unable to get online due to ISP restrictions or power outages) and I haven't been feeling very well since then. And I'm not going to be around much for the next couple of days as...

I'm going to be in New York from Monday afternoon through Tuesday evening. My mother and I are meeting a cousin for dinner Monday evening and I realize that people have school and work, but if anyone wants to meet for lunch Tuesday or what-have-you, well, I'll be around. I'll probably be getting some shopping (at least of the window variety) done -- it's been a while since I've just tooled around mid-town.

I think I'm going to spend much of my day lazing around and being an invalid.

In other news, stoned wallabies are making crop circles in Tasmania. (News tip from misspeacock.)

I put on some make-up, turn on the eight-track--

2009-06-25T19:37:59Z

RIP Farrah Fawcett.

ETA: And how much does it suck to battle cancer for years -- and then have Michael Jackson die the same day that you do? Dammit, Luck, give the woman a break!

That being said, respect to the king of pop.

Ask the birds--

2009-06-16T00:36:16Z

Andrew Sullivan has been blogging about the situation in Iran. One of his recent entries links President Obama's statement.

Dance this way they'd love--

2009-06-15T18:33:32Z

For a person who, in general, does not have what most would consider to be a particularly hopping social life, I seem to be awfully busy lately.

Thanks to the organization of a high school classmate whom I saw at last week's service and who has a lot more social initiative than I, there's going to be a mini-reunion next Friday. I mainly want to note a piece of advice that I'd meant to include in my earlier post of Seeing People From Previous Phases Of My Life: if you are seeing someone you haven't seen in a while, with whom you were perhaps friends but weren't particular well acquainted with the personal details of their life, please do ask how their family is. This allows the person being asked to include answer for all whom they personally consider family. This also allows the person being asked not to be asked how their parents are and feel caught in that awkward position of not wishing to shallowly answer with false platitudes but also feeling that it would be a bit out of place to respond, "Well, my father's still dead, but my mother is doing quite well, thank you."

Moving on, the weekend's trip to NYC was very enjoyable. I met piecrumbs and anatari in mid-town, and I tried to guide us toward Koreatown with very limited success. We finally made it, though, and had some delicious Korean BBQ. (The lack of Korean restaurants in the region where I live gives me a serious food mission whenever I find myself in a place where Korean food is available.) Then, we retired to anatari's place, where alioth and apology already were (and where synergic and brittyone would later join us). anatari was a wonderful host, as usual, and we were treated to both her bartending skills (I actually got to have a good mojito -- minty and refreshing, nothing like that sickeningly sugary crap they serve you in restaurants -- and the blue Long Island iced tea -- a.k.a. the Adios, Motherfucker -- that I sampled from others' glasses was equally delicious) and her delicious risotto. We DDRed our legs off on Saturday night, and Sunday was mostly spent in pleasant lethargy.

I ended up traveling by train, though I had been considering trying the Megabus for the southward journey. But I do so enjoy the train, so I think that it was worth the $12 extra that it cost me. (There hadn't been a bus running for when I was returning, so I would have taken the train back either way.)

I finally finished The Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert on the way down. I very much enjoyed it, though I think that I'll have to read it again. It takes you through the entire revolution, from the marriage of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to Napoleon becoming one of the three consuls, in 304 pages, so it's quite the whirlwind of names, place and events -- sometimes difficult to keep straight on who's who and what's what, particularly when read in piecemeal, as I did. But the whirlwind feel of it all is fitting, after all, and I look forward to going through it again. I had been rather rusty on my French revolutionary history, so it should be much easier going this time around.

Also, the day before I departed for the city, I read Naked Pictures of Famous People by Jon Stewart, which I'd picked up in a used book sale at the library some time ago. I must confess, I was quite disappointed by it. It was published in 1998, and it certainly hadn't held up over time. Most of it was very broad topical parody and not very amusing, in the same way that I find a lot of political cartoons to be not very amusing -- okay, you've drawn an over-the-top, ridiculous, not-particularly-clever picture of something that tells me absolutely nothing that I don't already know. Being a Jon Stewart fan, I tried pretty hard to like it, but I eventually abandoned that effort and just stuck it out to give it the chance to produce anything more entertaining. It might have been funnier if I had read it when it first came out, but as it exists now, it really isn't worth the read.

As a final note, because who knows what the weather will be giving us, to anyone who received the message that I was feeling sick last night, thank you for the loving kicks to the head that I know you were all giving me. While it's becoming a pretty regular thing, it's nothing serious or agonizing -- I just tend to feel worse and worse as the day progresses during periods of unstable weather. Headache, nausea, related/resultant lack of focus -- nothing too terrible, just enough to find socializing/thinking appear to be too great of an effort and make me much rather be sleeping. If it keeps up, I might have to do some dramatic and slightly unpleasant re-structuring of my day, which will involve a good less talking to people, simply due to having fewer productive hours of the day to work with and, thus, having to do some strict prioritizing in order to get anything done.

And I want to keep going--

2009-06-11T17:29:40Z

Let's call this a continuation of last night's entry! Just a simple resuming after far too much time spent in bed. Ah, that most persistent of my sins -- truly, I think that I'm reaping the biological karmic punishment of all of the sleep that I didn't get in high school and most of college.

There has been a rather poetic quantity and quality of traveling in the past month for me. Starting, of course, with the road trip from my job in Orlando, FL back home at the beginning of May. My mom flew down and drove up with me, which, in addition to adding pleasant company, was really sort of a requirement for any sort of progress being made, as both of us have not-so-great backs and I have a habit of uncontrollably falling asleep after lunchtime. A hardcore roadtripper never shall I be, alas.

While the trip southward had stayed closer to the coast with I-90 (passing through kerbox and aviy's neck of the woods), we went the more inland route back north. To be honest, I spent most of the trip as the DJ, armed with my iPod and a little AA-battery-powered mini-speaker, where I turned such wonders as bringing on Chattahoochee as we drove over the Chattahoochee River. This was an American musical roadtrip, people. Best be respectin'.

Also, one of my requirements for the trip was that I actually get some real southern food while I was still in the south, because god knows that I didn't get any in Orlando. And my wish was granted as, with the help of my GPS, I guided us to this little hole-in-the-wall BBQ joint, where my mom and I were the only non-black people in sight (interestingly enough, both my mom and my initial stating of the situation was that the two of us were the only white people around) and looked like such tourists that it was a little ridiculous. It turned out that the place was mostly a catering/take-out business and had won first place in the local 100 Black Men's BBQ competitions (commercial division) for the past ten years, except for one year when they took second. It was amazing and so delicious and, man, I am getting hungry just remembering it.

After my mother was struck by a whim and a memory, with much searching, we managed to find Stone Mountain the first evening. (You wouldn't think that a giant stone mountain would be so difficult to find.) Here's a tip: if you pay for driving admission into the park, you can just hang out in the parking lot of the main area and get some great views of the mountain without bothering with the kitschy Frontier Town-like place that they've built up around it now (and that costs additional money).

Next day, we headed into Tennessee, my first time in that state, and met up with kingsraven, who gave us quite the guided tour. And licked my ear. And then the two of us were assholes in IRC while ending up watching The Wedding Date, which was surprisingly entertaining, in the motel room. I know that everyone in the IRC chans that I frequent just can't wait for the two of us to be on the same laptop again. Just can't wait.

After that, my mom and I had a shared experience of "STFU BITCH" the next morning, as we had one of those morning programs on in the room as we were getting ready to leave, and some skinny bitch was on as a guest and talking about how horrible it was that clothes manufacturers were now making regular, fashionable clothing for young women in plus sizes. The poor lady who had to sit next to her, who was providing the other side of the "debate," had this hilarious look on her face where you could just tell that she was struggling with actually believing that that much idiot bitchery existed and was sitting right next to her. I believe that my mom and I actually both said, out loud, to the television, "...oh my god, shut up."

Anyway.

Then, it was a relatively straight shot back home. We stopped in Lexington, VA, where we ate at a very delicious little French restaurant -- La Nicoise Cafe, only with little accents on the "c" in "Nicoise" and the "e" in "Cafe" that are a pain to bother with on a laptop -- and stayed for the night. And, in the hotel pool, I swam for the first time since... I'm swum in a hotel pool on the way down south. Can we tell how much I took advantage of living in Orlando?

In any case, we tried to drive a bit of the Blue Ridge Parkway, but it was horribly foggy, so we said nuts to that and completed the rest of the journey through Pennsylvania and to home in a day. And shortly after that, I went to see Star Trek with the local game crew -- and channe, whom I'd totally failed to see (but for once) the entire time that I lived in the same city as her this past year. Can we tell how much I took advantage of living in Orlando?

I spent pretty much the entire month of May obsessing over the music for amcb13's wedding, which was at the end of the month. And so, at end of said month, I hauled my ass over to Williams and, appropriately, was in full-body pain by the time I set foot in town. It was great to be back on the organ in Thompson, though, and the wedding was wonderfully. I saw a number of people whom I hadn't seen since graduation. And also, the reception had an open bar. Curiously enough, a lot of people through their mid-twenties (which is to say, older than I am) got carded at the bar, much to their chagrin.

I did not get carded.

I choose to believe that this is because I looked sophisticated.

And so, I came home and felt sick for about a week. Which wasn't helped by bringing my college roomie, who crashed at my house, to the train station at a very early hour on Sunday, which was followed by a service at my high school to honor our campus president, who was retiring at 32 years. It was quite a nice service, and it was quite nice to see a classmate or two (though not many were there) and all of my old teachers. I also received several compliments on my appearance from said teachers, which is certainly never unwelcome. Although I have a feeling that I failed to give the correct and polite response when one of said teachers went on to say how cosmopolitan I looked -- and I burst out laughing. Me! Cosmopolitan! Who would have guessed?

So, in the past month, I've managed to travel from out-of-state employment, to living at home and working on music, to college, to high school. In a way, perhaps there was even a bit of middle school at the end of that, as I've been watching the Stanley Cup finals, indirectly harking back to my middle school days of playing street hockey.

And now, I'm going to set my mood as being "accomplished," since this is sort of an accomplishment, especially relative to all that I've been failing to accomplish over the past couple of weeks.

When the day is done--

2009-06-11T03:45:03Z

I started today at home. I put nearly 140 miles on my car. I ended today at home. As much as I enjoy staying at the old homestead, damn! This is why I tend to become a hermit out here!

That was intended to segue into a brief and belated recounting of my journey north from Orlando last month, but I must take a brief pause to mention how North Korea is so bewildering to me. For a citizen of a country to say of their leader that "I never thought that Kim Jong-il was human and thus mortal" is just so mind-blowing to me. (I'll admit to laughing at the "Cute Leader" moniker for Kim Jong-il's youngest son, though. "Kyaaa~ Kim Jong-un, so moe~"?)

...actually, I think that I'm going to just fall into bed now, because I feel so miserably exhausted. This is actually not due to any sickness-induced fatigue, but thanks to my sleep having been so marvelously disrupted by aforementioned sickness that, now that I'm feeling better, I'm left with a massive sleep debt to pay off.

You better shop around--

2009-06-09T19:52:30Z

Because good customer service should be appreciated: I had been quite frustrated by the fact that my Wacom tablet pen had apparently lost its mind and was no longer functional -- and this after having bought the pen directly from Wacom just this past March (to replace the pen that, after many years of use, was no longer functional through nobody's fault but my own).

So I fired off an e-mail to their customer service and received a reply back with a troubleshooting suggestion. And if that didn't work, the e-mail said, call them and they would run some more diagnostics.

...this being me and this being summer, some time passed.

But I called them this afternoon, and the fellow on the other end of the line, after receiving a brief recounting of the pen's erratic behavior, seemed to be rightfully taken by the fact that I've owned the thing for fewer than three months and just said, "...please confirm your mailing address, and we'll send you a new one."

Wacom, you have brought a happy customer back to yourself!

In other adventures in consumerism today, I stopped at Plato's Closet after my dentist appointment this morning, and I picked up a pair of nice trousers, a vest and an absolutely huge purse -- for approximately $25 total. As much as it pains me to part with my money, I do need to continue to work on building that professional wardrobe. At least second-hand shopping helps to soften the blow a little bit.

Random ETA: There was just a slug on my DDR pad. Unusual.

That's entertainment--

2009-06-08T03:46:44Z

I am so incredibly gay for Neil Patrick Harris right now. In general, I think that I'm always a little gay for him, but at the Tony Awards tonight, he truly stole my heart.

(Also, those three boys who won for Billy Elliot were just adorable. And there seemed to be a notable number of dresses that were Bad Decisions among the ladies tonight. But I digress.)

Neil Patrick Harris. I am gay. For you.