Twilight Oceans

darksea @ 2009-11-19T18:53:00

2009-11-19T23:53:04Z

Just once, I want to read a romance that doesn't have the "oh my god, s/he's paying attention to competition, I'm so jealous" plot point.

It's really annoying when it's before the relationship has been established. She's not your girlfriend yet, you moron, you don't even know if she likes you like that, what are you glowering and glaring and acting possessive about? How arrogant can you be?

And it's just as annoying when the relationship is already there. He chose you, he spends all his time with you, he's happy with you, would you stop being so damn jealous? Are you really that insecure?

To both: you're going to ruin it if you don't stop it. Right now.

Arrrgh.

darksea @ 2009-11-17T03:12:00

2009-11-17T08:13:02Z

I keep meaning to post something and never having the time. So, really quick here:

I just spent the past week in Baltimore (actually, we spent Tuesday driving up and visiting places along the way; Saturday we went to Monticello, and Sunday we saw old friends. But it's close enough and much easier to say "a week in Baltimore"). Mom was in meetings for the first two days, and Dad is really getting too old to stride about vigorously any more, so we didn't do all that much. I had my laptop, but no internet (it's an interesting fact, I think, that the more expensive the hotel, the more likely they are to try and tempt you into spending more. I have no idea how much the hotel cost because Mom's company took care of it, but it was on the harbor; the view cost extra, there was a mini vending machine inside the room, and the internet wanted a cable and money. In contrast, the hotel we stayed overnight at in Charlottesville was nowhere near as grand or fancy but had free wireless), but I was expecting that and well prepared due to the Internetsless Curse of Doom on my room. It was okay. The aquarium was a lot of fun, especially due to Liss who came up for the day to go see it with me. The jellyfish and the nautili also helped, but there was no octopus, which made me sad.

My impression of Baltimore pretty much boils down to:
Too windy (there may have been hurricane remnants exacerbating that, I'm not sure), needs more public transport.

Liss kept comparing it to San Diego, and in comparison I think the latter won. My favorite city is still London.

Also, since we got back, Ruby (the cat) has been very very clingy and demanding. Dad is certain it's because "she feels the end coming." I would prefer not to think that she's going to die soon, much less than that she can predict it. We were gone much longer than usual, and she's often clingy and demanding after only a weekend away, after all.

La

2009-09-18T19:47:43Z

AION. The game for which I got a Windows OS. It starts on the 22nd, but since I preordered (how many people from my WoW guild are doing the same thing? *counts* ... 6 plus?) I get two days in which to make two characters in advance, and then two days to get ahead of all regular buyers. Given the only way to get into the betas was to preorder, and the betas were really full... not so much in the get-ahead phase. Oh well.

Still, Aion is quite pretty. I'm going to need an icon with wings if I post about it more than once.

Sir Ken Robinson - says schools kill creativity

2009-07-15T17:09:36Z

The last story he tells. That one.

darksea @ 2009-07-11T07:48:00

2009-07-11T12:08:21Z

Okay! Now that I'm a little more coherent...

Part of the reason I kept up with LJ so much was because I wanted to tell people stuff and had no other method of doing so. Now I live with other people, talk to my best-friend-sister nearly every day, play WoW, and have Vent. I'm telling people stuff all the time. And LJ gets neglected. Poor LJ.

Last week I had half my wisdom teeth out. The bottom two. And they had to cut into my jaw to remove them, so I'm still recovering. Currently, this means that it's hard to sleep at night from the pain, and the usual medication I have for it, prescription-strength Ibuprofen, doesn't seem to work if I take it and go to sleep for some reason. So last night I tried the other stuff for the first time: Percocet, which is an opiate. And I'd say "Whoo, that stuff is strong," except that it's more of an "urg" than a "woo". Weak joints and dizzy, and six hours later, as the pain starts to wear back on, so does nausea. No fun. In fact, it feels an awful lot like having the 'flu, only without the coughs or runny nose.

Why I was up earlier this morning and why I'm up now, I don't know. I'm going back to sleep.

darksea @ 2009-07-11T03:08:00

2009-07-11T07:08:58Z

I am still alive!

I reject your reality and, uh... what was that again?

2009-03-07T01:08:56Z

I am really very fond of The Quiet Gentleman. It is not, in fact, the first story by Georgette Heyer I ever read, but it is the first I encountered, because my father read it to me when I was sick, some twelve or so years ago. And of all her works, it's one of my favorites.

But.

The last time I read it was before I had much, if any, knowledge of FF7, and as I try to reread it this time, I find myself somewhat distracted by the hero's pale grey horse, whose name is Cloud.

Not that horses have anything to do with any Final Fantasy world other than the first (Crazy Horse is one of the monsters you can run into there). So the fact that I can read of Gervase's horse Cloud and be made to think of FF7!Cloud-as-a-horse is all Coyo's fault.

Just. The name keeps jumping out at me, that's all.

darksea @ 2009-02-07T11:57:00

2009-02-07T17:59:03Z

Dammit, I love it more and more each time I read it. The Most Grievous and Lamentable Tragedie of The Death of Lord Voldemort (A Small Play in Three Acts) is a burlesque in the style of revenge plays, in iambic pentameter, and is such tasty, tasty crack.

For some reason, my favorite line is one of Voldemort's, in the first act: "'Twill be a fun and nifty thing to do!"

And then of course there's the Nekkid Quidditch Match (final part here), but that's something else entirely. I don't usually like tales told through letters, btw.

Both stories were pointed out to me by firelizard5 ages ago, and I still love them so much.

[Edit] - Oh hell, why not. Anyone who knows D.Grayman may enjoy You Give Love A Bad Name, though it's not funny in the same way as the two above. But it's veelafic! Actually decent veelafic, at that. You should be aware, though, that it's not entirely work-safe, and the final couple are both boys.

But. It is most emphatically not plotted out as "It turns out that A is part veela, which makes B realize how hot he/she is, they get it on, and everything is happy ever after." It is also not "It turns out that A is part veela, and now they'll never know if B really loves them for themself or not, woe." And it is humorous. Go read it.

darksea @ 2009-01-24T18:55:00

2009-01-25T00:03:11Z

I do not like multiplayer games. I don't like dealing with strangers, being expected to always form parties, etc. I infinitely prefer to play solo, off-line, where I control either one or more people and it doesn't matter if I decide that I care more about the story than the fairness of my methods. In fact, if there are cheats for a game, I usually wind up using them. And dying annoys me.

And yet.

My sister is somehow ~~perverting~~ converting me to WoW.

WTF.

darksea @ 2009-01-16T10:49:00

2009-01-16T15:51:02Z

It was 17°F out there when I got up this morning. It's now 20°. And we're about to head off to MarsCon.

Aaaaah.

Haaaaaaaate.

2009-01-15T21:35:07Z

Alright, I realize that I'm spoiled, but come on, people! Text rotation and text direction. I want them. I do databases. And cross-referencing. That means that sometimes I want my text to be sideways, as in at a 90° angle. So I can list 17 stories and 70 characters and neatly record who is alive, appearing, the main character, or important-but-dead in each. So I can see that Way of Life, Ally, Dallas, Davin, Felecia, Jake, Johnathan, Kali, Kyle, Misty, Nature, Pie, Terry, Tirrike, TR, Ula, Urien, and VR all show up, and Carnelian, Cid, Cuddles, Liebe, Lucy, Sara, Ting, and Viviane are alive but not there," and also, from the same source, see that Ula is first alive in Camoflage, where she's a main character, and then doesn't appear again until Way of Life, Déjà Vu, and Chosen Few, and also makes appearances in the omake. Like this.

Now, I'm used to having to use spreadsheet software to make my databases, and I'm also used to being limited in this case by the fact that I'm a mac-user. Also, I can't stand File Maker. (Dad is listening to their promo-demo-thing right now, and my god, they are so condescending it enrages me.) So I'm basically limited to Excel (and its imitators: Open Office, NeoOffice, I'm looking at you) and Apple's iWork Numbers.

Neither of them allows non-Roman text direction. Admittedly, the chances that I'd want to write Japanese in its natural direction (top-bottom, right-left) in a table are practically nil, so I'm willing to let that go. Reluctantly, as it's a backup option.

Excel does not permit unicode characters. Which I do use. And it has a tendency to try and assume that any numbers I do put in are either currency or dates, but I know how to get around that. Mainly, I dislike Excel because of the no-unicode rule, because I dislike Microsoft, and because it has recently become bloody expensive, and the chances of documents being backwards-compatible? Not so great.

Numbers takes some getting used to, but it's pretty neat and superior to Excel in many ways. The tables exist separately from the sheet, so when you change the dimensions of a cell, you're changing it in the table, and not in the graph paper. [See? This is the kind of table I might make.] Which means that you don't have to do funky things with merging if the second table has columns of a different width from the first. And there's a lot more color variability, which can be handy. And unicode is perfectly welcome. But.
- No text rotation. No text direction options. RAR.
- You don't un-merge cells, you split them. And you can only split them in half. So if I merge an odd number cells, do a lot of work, and discover that I don't want them merged after all...? Tough luck. I can undo to the point before the cells were merged, losing all my hard work in the process, or I can suck it up. Or start over.

I repeat: HATE. Haaaaaaaaaaaate.

darksea @ 2009-01-09T15:48:00

2009-01-09T20:49:31Z

Well. I really like it. So there.

The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

Ahh! It disapeared! Oh well, have the youtube version instead.

hahaha thunk

2009-01-07T06:31:26Z

I order my sister around mercilessly.

She called me tonight to let me know that she'd got her voice back again! (I hadn't known it was lost.) And she's still sick. But. They don't have any organge juice. No limeaide. No citrus juice, no apple juice, no fruit juices of any sort, no fruit ices, no... Well, they do have fruit.

So, my parting line was: Eat fruit, and go to sleep.

Aside from that, my body has started a new tactic in its somewhat intermittent battle to evict me (my body is a reluctant landlord. It hates me. I have no intention of leaving, so I put up with it). Heart palpatations, joy. It does not, after two weeks of experimentation, seem to be tied, or at least not solely tied, to my focus-meds. As soon as my new insurance kicks in, I'm going to see my doctor about it.

But! Starting tomorrow, I can start taking my meds again. Which means I get eight hours a day of my life back from the sometimes overwhelming fuzzy-brain syndrome known as ADD. God, I had forgotten what it was like to be thinking three things at once. I'd also forgotten what it was like to be so full of static that the only activity I could think of was to wander into the kitchen and snack. I miss having things like, y'know, willpower, and not being useless, and— NO. Stop it.

I think I'll take my own advice, with an addendum: Eat fruit, read a fun story, and go to sleep.

sneak sneak

2008-12-19T07:54:34Z

Who gets full off a few swallows of root beer? Me, apparently. What the hell.

Also, when the rest of the room is dark, the tree makes a red, red glow down the hall. It's a very magenta-red, and it's still and solid, so it doesn't resemble firelight at all, but it does bear some resemblance to movie!nuclear-reactor-glows. Kind of disturbing. But cool.

I love this icon.

2008-12-14T22:01:50Z

Well, the sink research turned out okay, and there's a plumber coming tomorrow. So.

I get to be happy now. We got a tree~~ And it's small and cute and pretty~~

And last night I had a caramel walnut apple crumble, yum. It did not inspire me to propose to the chef*, but I suspect that's because I didn't know him/her, and they weren't Aerith. Also, as an extremely picky eater with rather pessimistic tendencies, I'm not in the habit of being swayed to positive extremes by food. But lo, it was good.

Mmm.

last year I would have been a sobbing victim over this, so at least there's that.

2008-12-13T20:37:44Z

It all started when the microwave went kaput.

We use our microwave every single day, so replacing it was absolutely necessary. And we did. And in the process, I noticed a refrigerator, which turned out to be completely wrong, but still got my parents (especially my mother, but me too, we all agreed) on a fridge kick. And so we replaced the refrigerator. It arrived yesterday, and we had to take off half of the doorframe between the living room and the kitchen in order to fit it in. (Which we wanted to do anyway, but still. That does need to be fixed. We've got raw wall exposed right now.) And we knew -- have known for a long time -- that the oven needs to be replaced sometime in here, because we had to re-calibrate it several years ago, and now we can't trust it to cook things right at all. But.

The kitchen sink is broken.

And the part which is broken, is broken clean through on one side. It's made of lead. And its got non-regulation/code/whatever threads, which means that it cannot be replaced.

Never mind that lead shouldn't be anywhere near anything that could be ingested. Never mind that epoxy isn't guaranteed to actually hold for long under the kind of pressure that kitchen sinks fall under, super-glue won't do the trick, and gorilla-glue is toxic. The part is broken and irreplaceable.

The whole sink needs to be replaced.

Now, Dad hates that sink, so yeah, we wanted to replace it eventually, but still. It's like this is the year when everything falls down around our ears. Me? I hate the people who built this house. In 1961. And cut corners while they were at it, which means the house was never fully up to code, and is a hazard at it. (Electrical boxes without covers. Wires left lying out in the open up in the attic. Mostly ungrounded wiring, at that. Hello, fire hazard. Also, the attic is completlely uninsulated, has no flooring, has roofing nails sticking out where you could implale your hand or head on them just trying to not fall through the ceiling, and the windows are none of them the same size and had to each be custom-fit when we decided we wanted, y'know, double-glazed windows instead of the single-glazed four-pane ones that they built the house with (which that part I understand, I mean, 1961. It's the irregularity that annoys me).) I don't hate the house, it's my childhood home and hopefully my inheritance and the neighborhood is really, really nice in that the crime rate is through the floor, insanely low. But sometimes I'd really like to strangle the people who built it.

In the end, given that it'll probably cost as much as the house is worth to bring it up to today's code, there's really only two reasons, excepting my sentimental childhood-home thing and the fact that moving is utterly sucky and Dad hates it with an oh-god-why-are-you-eating-me-slowly dread, why we don't just get a new house.

1. The mortgage is paid off.
2. This house is within walking distance of Mom's work, the car repair, the pharmacy/drug store, the family practice, the optometrist's office, the library, and a grocery store. Among other things.

But. We haven't even had time to do Christmas shopping. It's twelve days away, and we have no tree, no presents, no room because of all the shifting things around to replace necessary appliances when they die on us. And we're hosting it.

Hate the people who built this house, the crummy luck right now. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

behold, I am sleepwalking!dangerous

2008-09-19T19:07:13Z

Okay, so. For whatever reason, my mattress is about five inches short for my bedframe. So I had made a pillow-thing to sit over the gap, so things didn't fall through... like my head, for example, back when I slept in that direction. The pillow is a little wider than the bed, actually, and round; to make it, I took one of those floating noodle thingies that kids play with in the pool, and wrapped a fair amount of batting around it, then finished it up with a round bag-shape sort of like a golf-bag, which is made most randomly of green-and-autumn colored, formal-brocade-patterned corduroy, and is the actual outside of the pillow. It was there, and is nowhere near as ugly as that description makes it sound. Only the bag was too big, still, even after all that batting, so I pulled out a needle with a blunt end and a huge eye and stitched it tight with some narrow ribbon. And the open end was already designed to simply close with a drawstring, so that was that.

Anyway.

I know that I am a violent sleeper. (Not always. Sometimes I lie deathly still and wake up in a cold sweat. But that's rare.) My sister refuses to share a bed with me after I clocked her in the eye. While asleep. With no memory of it afterwards. But still.

I just noticed that that pillow, which lies at the foot of my bed, had been ejected at some time in the night, and is lying on the floor in a manner that suggests it might have gotten there by bouncing off the far wall first. Well, was. I've picked it up and put it back now. And my feet don't normally reach the foot of the bed! Man. Apparently I not only swing fists but have the kick of doom when I'm asleep.

WTF, I am confused.

2008-09-07T05:00:20Z

The internet in my room is wonky. This is an established fact. It's also been established through exhaustive experimentation that it's not the hardware, and it's not the software, and while fussing with positioning and restarting and rebooting the airport hub and all that may sometimes improve things, it may not. There doesn't seem to be any pattern I can follow.

But. When I go to choose a network, there's this random, rogue other network, unencrypted, unimaginatively called "linksys". Linksys will form a connection on the least provocation, but it will not supply you with an IP. Very annoying.

The current theory is that linksys is interfering with my connection. Dad wants to take some time someday to have me watch the strength of the connection (with the PSP, since the computer only shoes me blippies and not an actual, fluctuating percentage; and it will sometimes tell me that I'm on and going strong when linksys has hijacked me again, but I can't actually connect because of the no-IP thing) while he he moves this piece of sheet metal he's got around the room.

Now, here's another thing: I have no idea of the actual cardinal directions, so I'm just going to assume that the entrance faces south (I'm pretty sure it doesn't) in order to make it easy on myself. My room is in the far house!SE corner of the house. It's the third largest room in the house (surpassed only by the master bedroom and my mother's studio), and has more windows than any other room except the studio, which is an extension and therefore doesn't play fair. Anyway. You would think that the linksys connection is being broadcast by our neighbors beyond my bedroom window, perhaps. Which it might be. There's just one problem with this.

Wireless internet signals do not extend particularly far, and every time they hit an obstacle and either pass through it or bounce around it, they weaken, sometimes dramatically. I can understand the possibility of accidentally picking up our neighbor's signal, sometimes, if it's managed to reach me despite the distance, the walls, my dresser, bookcases, and stuff, as well as my own elsewhere-attuned signal, which should logically be interfering with it as much as it interferes with me.

But I've picked up linksys in both the living room and the kitchen, which are at the opposite end of the house.

Where is this signal coming from? Why does it only mess up my internet in my room? And why, when I deliberately scan for any possible signals with the PSP, does it not recognize it, even when my computer tells me it's at full strength?

I do not comprehend.

It's a phantom internet. It must be. Why it has decided to haunt my room, and why it seems to occasionally be appeased when I haul furniture around, I do not know.

Obviously, I need an exorcist.

EDIT - If you can figure out why I've given this the 'fan' and 'game' tags, points to you.

yay a side character / suspect I like

2008-08-30T06:15:26Z

Ah, catching up on Detective Conan... I love Genta's dad. He did just what I often want to do, and runs a bar, and is not your stereotypical "large dad to a large kid", and is therefore made of awesome.

— I mean, erk. Nonono, I'm in bed and asleep, honest!

Uh.

2008-08-28T20:23:37Z

I just... volunteered to be on a committee for organizing my high school class' five year reunion.

Why does this sound so much like con com? And didn't I say that I wouldn't do that?

Actually, being on a con committee is not as full of questions as this. I mean, yeah, there's a lot I don't know, and it's hella full of work, and I would be very, very stupid to try. And masochistic. Even though I kinda want to. And I have the connections to at least make a try and putting together a dealer's room. And— I'm not going to do it, I have to get my own life organized first, stop looking at me like that.

But I at least have a general idea of how a con is run. ... Alright, and I know how orientations get done too, I've been on committees for those too, yes. Reunions? No.

But I did it. I volunteered. Now the question is: how hard am I going to be kicking myself for this, and will it be worth it in the end?

another followup

2008-07-26T05:07:38Z

I just realized. Wow. Okay, so I just managed to imply (vaguely) that I was in some sort of foursome. Um.

Well... there's me, and my best friend, who I usually describe as my sister, except when I'm calling her my girlfriend... and my fiancé, and ... Kyle, who I can't really describe. He's an amazing backrest and gives really good hugs and hits on everyone, so. But he's my amazing backrest who gives really good hugs and hits on everyone. And Liss's.

And there's the guy Liss has been eyeing since before I knew her, who's the grumpy-denial type and is always glaring but keeps hanging around, only he and I mostly leave each other alone.

But it's not a kinky foursome! I swear! It just sometimes comes across that way.

followup to previous

2008-07-26T04:55:06Z

Okay, I? Have the best sister/girlfriend/bestfriend ever. I can't stay sad when I'm talking with Liss, even if I'm just being distracted by rarring over idiot people who try to kill feral cats by trapping them and then giving them to the Humane Society. WTF, people.

And then this:

Jake: I don't go out with humans, so why would I go out with a cat in human shoes?
Liss: *immediately thinks of Urien as Puss-in-Boots*
(as this is in her head, it is immediately so.)
Jake: *lights the image on fire*

... I still want Kyle and Izumi, though. They give the best cuddles.

Fail.

2008-07-26T02:13:12Z

So. The attempt to return to Pomona failed. Well, actually, it went through successfully, everything went great, and then I had another breakdown, because ~~the only options left open to me~~ — correction. If I wanted to graduate from Pomona, then the only option that they would accept was one I couldn't stand. At all.

So I wrote to the dean, saying I'd had another breakdown (what they call a relapse, bah), now what?

She said that the school expected all sophomores to choose a major, so I, a senior, had to commit to a plan for graduation.

I said that I had committed to a plan/major, before it was taken away from me. Besides, that wasn't the issue. I'd had another breakdown, I felt trapped, help me. I also asked if maybe she skimmed instead of reading emails, or how else did she so completely get the wrong idea?

She said that she read every email closely and carefully drafted all of her replies, and that she hoped the trapped feelings would dissipate.

So my leave has been extended. By me, at least, so that's one less thing that has been taken out of my control.

But I'm still unhappy. And I'm in a hotel, for a convention, and I've retreated to the room we have because I can't find my parents and I don't have my cellphone with me (it was almost dead anyway, and I needed to copy a number, so it got left behind at home, I guess) so I can't call them or Liss, and I can't find the room they're supposed to be in, either. It was... 151? But it doesn't get any higher than 139. But I wasn't even thinking about this whole stupid leave/school/whatever thing before I started typing this entry, and I started crying a while before that, so I don't know why I'm so upset.

I want to go home (to when life was simpler and I didn't have to fight to be seen as a person). I want someone to hold me and comfort me. I want to talk to Liss (but she's at work, and I don't have my damn phone). Failing that, I want to play a game, but that's at home too. And while home is only four minutes away driving, it's 45-minute walk, and it's dark out and I'm not in the right frame of mind to be out, alone, at night, along a highway. I want to be happy again, dammit, as a regular occurrence. I want some idea of how to get ... any of the above.

I also want to stop crying, but I can't seem to do that either.

Adding to the list: I want to stop feeling helpless. I want to stop feeling useless. I want to stop feeling like a burden. I want to feel like I belong, again. I want to see friends again, without having to inconvenience someone, or jump through hoops. I want to have something to positively want, instead of an end to negatives.

I want Liss, and Kyle, and Izumi, and Liebe. And Louis and Lewis and Sylvia and Jesse and Jeff. I want...

Never mind.

okay, yeah, I'm showing off

2008-06-28T00:06:36Z

Word of advice: don't try to post to LJ with a PSP. Takes too long.

But yeah. Guess what's eating all my free time?

Hah.

2008-06-03T17:30:33Z

The trouble with fanfiction as a term is that, for many people, it's become derogatory. However, technically, what Shakespeare wrote was fanfiction. So obviously, if you think that being fanfic makes it automatically bad, then you'll see where I have trouble with the term as it's used today.

So we need something else to call the serious stuff that borrows someone else's story/world/idea and runs with it. It's not like we don't do that all the time anyway.

Fanfic is the fannish stuff. The stuff that was written by fans in a moment of OMG this story! orgasmic glee, and that can't possibly be any good (note the sarcasm. More like fanfic gets a really bad rep because there's no one to go through the slush pile and pick out the stuff worth reading and throw the rest away. Anyway). The other stuff, the serous stuff, like Shakespeare, and all the people who retell folk tales and fairy tales and all that, and also the really, really good stuff out there that I'm tired of seeing derided despite the obvious quality and original plot and good characterization and absolutely wonderful ideas because maybe it borrows a bit from something else and has the decency to admit it – the stuff that has to make shift with the term "fanfiction" but doesn't deserve the flak – that's world-borrowing.

So yeah. I've got a new term to separate the flailing stuff that can't stand without the original story from the stuff that's original but borrows bits (IC bits only, please) from someone else. The first is fanfiction. The second is worldborrowing. Or worldplay, that's easier to say but a little more confusing. Plus it sounds an awful lot like wordplay. Still, I think I like worldplay as a term a lot. We'll see.

Wah, blather.