Got up at 5am to watch That Wedding in London. I'm in it for the fascinators and the military uniforms. (And thanks for the drive-by body shame, broadcasters! I seriously needed to feel bad about my waist at six in the fucking morning.) Should've gone more like this, but we can't have everything. And LOL WUT I've played the processional they used. Oh, high school marching band...

Moving on...

Due to conversations with artimusdin and jukeboxhound (Why do all of my creative things seem to have this introduction?), apparently I resemble pre-Nibelheim!Sephiroth. Yeah, I don't know, either. So, there also need to be thematically accurate icons. Two Sephiroth icons, with a caption picked from a wank on "Xmas" from last year.

    

Hey! Remember when I was doing student teaching and I fell off the face of the internet? No? Well, you're about to experience that first hand, then!

I'm currently teaching at a language school and doing tutoring (both there and in other places). The commute and the necessity of being genki and uplifting and energizing at both 8AM and 8 PM is putting me through the wringer. Until I can manage to regulate my sleep and thought patterns, I'm in hermit mode. I will still be writing, but probably not publishing. E-mail and text are always available.

Also, IRL folks, weeknights and weekends are shot for a few months, and so, no cons this summer. No vacations, either. I'm still in the "must work my ass off to please the bosses" phase, and because this is a transfer from one office to another (long story), I need to work harder to polish my turdish teaching.

Got the "diarrhea of the pen" drafts done of December Festival Drabbles One and Two. I'm trying too hard with both of them. I'll let them rest for a few days and see what happens.

PAYCHECKS! Part of them go to Sister for tolls, and part to bills, and most to December Festival Gifts.

Did I mention that my car almost died? Yeah, well, my car almost died. I had to walk home from the mechanic (A bit over a mile, according to Google Maps), and I was wearing the Sensible Walking Shoes I scored on Black Friday. Sensible Walking Shoes are sensible, so I made it fine.

Been playing a lot of Sengoku Basara, probably because of the feeling of accomplishment. (Still no Oichi. Sigh.) Nothing's really left in FFXIII besides five starring the missions and Orphan, grinding for cash, and getting all accessories and weapons. Basara-wise, dear God is Magoichi fun to play. Even though she comes off as kind of a bitch during James Mason Lazard Valeth Tokugawa's campaign, the bitchiness turns into snark in her campaigns, and so I love her.

(dedpoo, I have ACB. I just haven't cracked it open yet because of Basara. I know you understand. Right?)

I wanted to write something that would allow me to use the "what do you do with a BA in..." tag, but I can't remember it. Oh, well, you're all spared from some sort of pretentious shit, I guess.

Okay, enough of my whining.

So, it's gotten cold all of a sudden (Oops), and that means that it's soup making time. Usually, I lie in wait until my mom or grandmother makes chicken soup and then down the stuff until I feel ready to explode. This time, however, feeling inspired, I decided to make my own. It also had the awesome side effect of warming up the house, so now I'm not so cold.

My grandmother acted as supervisor, and going around the kitchen and getting things while I was chopping/dicing. In the middle of all this, my dad comes down to make brunch for himself and my mom. This included sacrificing one of the chicken breasts I was going to use for the soup. My grandmother decides to escape (our kitchen is pretty small).

So, I'm chopping vegetables and chicken, waiting for the water to boil, and my dad is also darting around the kitchen making salad and broiling the chicken breast. And then he goes and uses my now-boiling water to make a soft boiled egg for my mom. (Yeah, I know that it's a good use of time and space, but that means that I can't thow in the chicken for the soup until the egg's done. And you can't bring along the fox with the chickens or else he'll eat them, and you can't bring the chickens over with the wheat or else...)

As the soup's going, I take periodical sips of the broth, to see what needs to be added. Every time, the broth seems...off, so I go and add something else. First time, it was salt. Next, tumeric. Once the soup had a chance to boil for a bit, it tasted pretty good, but it still needed something. By this time, my grandmother had reentered the kitchen.

Me: I think I added too much tumeric. Everything's all yellow.
Grandma: You're not supposed to add tumeric. Add oregano.
Me: ...?
Grandma: Every time I make soup, I make sure to add oregano.

Sure enough. that's what it needed. It's a running gag, by the way. Every time my cooking tastes off, a bit of oregano fixes everything.

In other news, I think I'm going to do that Thirty Days of Gaming meme. If only to have more times to post icons with Ashelia B'nargin DalMASca!

I decided to go to the mall today, not only to pick up some clothes I ordered, but to mess around in the arcade for a while. Missions accomplished. However, as I was walking around, something in the hall caught my eye.

( Such genius. Such vision. )

To conclude, utter fail for Work Out World, and this nonsense is why I do DDR at home.

Long time no write. Every time I want to make a post about something, I brush it off and then it's not very relevant. Whatever.

Okay, so to the title. My mother is trying to improve her English and to do that, she's trying to read more. My sister has some YA stuff and I have things that are all over the place, genre-wise, but there might be an issue with the difficulty of the language. So, dear readers, this is where I involve you: do you have any suggestions on easy to read, engaging books? Length isn't an issue, just language use. Any input is appreciated.

Triple word post score!

So I've decided to actually, you know, use the DW, but it's probably going to have a similar fate to the IJ: a mirror journal. At least this time I uploaded my ElJay entries so that I don't get stuck in an archiving mire like I am at IJ. (Uh, yeah... about posting what I've got of Benefit-verse using in-fic chronological order...)

Hrm... now to have a point to use the Ashe icon... Well, first is Yahtzee's fail of a review for The Sims 3. The whole "Dude, not funny" feel of the review was of course magnified in the forums. Conversations about the fail here and here. This business hits close to home because I used to be (and have my moments of being) one of those types that derided the "casual gamer" in order to bolster my own old school cred. (Of course, being a [female] fan of the Final Fantasy series means that I'm about half a step above the casual gamer in the hierarchy. Is there a gamer hierarchy? You know, like The Geek Hierarchy the Brunching Shuttlecocks made. Whoo, tangent.) This also sort of stinks of "I am better than other girls, because I can do this guy thing!" which is not cool. Remedial feminism is remedial.

In actual gaming news, I finished Tierkreis and have started Final Fantasy. Thanks to canis_m whenever I see Atrie I start thinking "Taiki~" and wonder how everyone's favorite black kirin would look in Atrie's gear. (Answer: adorable, but of course) To remain vauge, yet ranty: it's really great that you've finally decided to have a female Tenkai, Konami. Next time, how about we make her something more than an NPC? Also, I want a Nimni plushie. His armor would be insane, though. I still have a lot of white fleece, so maybe a Neira is in the future?

Now, for Final Fantasy. It's going a lot faster than I thought it would, mostly because I got my plot background from 8-Bit Theater and it took a while for the strip to do the first five minutes of the game. (I still think "stabbity" whenever my black mage has a knife/dagger.) Names: Namae, Nom, Elia, and Nombre. One of these names is not like the others...

Live, from the work desk...

more of Kushiel-verse?

I think I might pick this up as a brain-fluff read. It... actually sounds kind of fun. Extra bonus that it takes place in the same 'verse and doesn't deal with the same characters. I kind of got thrown out of Kushiel's Dart when I realized that Joscelin was basically bizarro fanon!Suikoden III!Yuber. (I guess this makes Phèdre bizarro!fanon!Albert. And Delalunay bizarro!Leon. And I should stop this madness now.)

Actually, now that I think about it, the threshold started looking appealing with "bistre."

Yeah, I finished it, because that's how I roll. I stuck with it for the pr0n, because that's also how I roll.

Then again, I have a hella lot of stuff to read, as it is. Maybe I should invest in more paid accounts for my journals, just so that I can have polls where my lists tell me what bits of my queues to work on next.

So. AnimeNext 2009.

AN moved house this year, to a place that's closer to home, but still out of the way enough to be annoying to commute to every day. (I've commuted to AN before when it was in Secaucus. It's not fun. Commuting from home to Somerset isn't very fun, either.) So, yeah, lazy Chofi was lazy and stayed at a hotel with beechan2 and a cohort she put together. Having a room is convenient because there is a place where one can sit or lie down, is near a bathroom, and has suitable entertainments should the people-watching suck, the panels not be interesting or the panelists existent, and the video rooms too far away to bother for shows that one doesn't care to watch.

The con wasn't that bad, not really. Con experiences are one of those things you have to make for yourself, of course. Still, I feel like I've outgrown this con. Jaded fan is jaded was in full effect. The fact that this con felt like a first year con because of the mix ups involved with moving house didn't help matters. Don't get me wrong, Uncle Yo was fun, the dealer's room was decent, it's always amusing to talk shop Soul Series with senkami, prizes at the Anti-Cosplay Bonanza were great, and Human Cosplay Chess was love.

I think it's time to upgrade cons, but I sort of want to stay with AN, 'cause it's the local con. It's familiar.

I think I'll consider Otakon and/or PAX East for next year.

Just got out of my American Government final. Not bad. There was one trick question, but I think that you need a few of those every so often, just so that not all meaning is lost.

It's actually that trick question that I wanted to rant about.

Very quick background: I'm sure that you know that I'm in teacher education, and going for social studies at that. This class is a requirement for my content knowledge, because I leaned into history, psychology, and sociology as an undergrad.

So, part of the teacher ed thing is to make yourself relevant to your students. I'm down. I'm not exactly down with how this professor did it, but that's a difference of personalities, and a rant for another time.

However, to be so comfortable with the professor that you feel the need to start whining to him about the final while the final is taking place is not right. Yes, it was a trick question. However, if you made careful enough notes you'd know what the full name of the act was. Also, I would dearly love to hear about what you think is more important than knowing material for a final exam. (Teacher-me says that it would be persuasive essay writing time.)

I would whine about this shit too. The difference was that I was nine at the time.

Oh hi, arc words. Nice to see you. Yeah, so I've just started up Suikoden: Bob Tierkreis. Lol whut for naming the Tenkai Star after a 12K OC. It's sort of a shame that I didn't keep up my theme of KoF characters, but whatever. I have to get used to Suikoden-type battles after the Final Fantasy Tactics meets Valkyrie Profile affair that was Covenant of the Plume. (Suck it, Iseria Ethereal Queen. Suck. It. Also, thanks, game, for making Wyl a Destroyer of Worlds after that hellish tenth go around. Meh.)

Right. Tierkreis. I'm keeping this banter above a cut because I'm only about two hours in.

Again, I need to get back into the Suikoden-type battle groove. Holy crap, I can power game again.

The voice acting. Good Lord. That is some inconsistent shiz up in there.

I'm all for the wacky AU hijinks.

The art style's kind of generic, but there's something there that I like. I'll get used to it, I'm sure.

What else...? I overpaid for bought a 12K art book, and it came in crazy fast from Japan. I'm a sucker for character design/concept art (LOL, surly Gyousou in his daikyuu is surly), and since this stuff is all line art, it'd be fairly easy to scan in and color.

And a final amusing thing: I'm working on feed back surveys for the advisers in teacher education. They're giving me a list of names so that I can start spamming the link to the survey. So I'm going along, and then: William Lawrence. Alas, not spelled correctly, but still rather amusing. Would he be in math, do you think, or sciences?

Because I do, boy, and it's cool, boy...

So I took advantage of GameStop's sale last weekend and binged on games that were in the buying queue (Notice that I didn't say anything about the playing queue.). I managed to finish most of Covenant of the Plume, but I've still got to finish off the Seraphic Gate. Still, the queue grows longer. I now have copies of Final Fantasies I - III and Persona 3 FES (Hence the title. I've been wanting to use those lyrics to talk about Persona 3 for such a long time...)

Last week was also my grandmother's 90th birthday, and the trip to the mall to get supplies (dress, accessories, etc.) was how I was in the vicinity of a GameStop in the first place. I managed to dance at the party, OMG, and doing Kid's Table Redux is always fun.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of stuff out there for Covenant of the Plume, does there? Can anyone point me in the direction of gen-fic? Wyl-centric, Cheripha-centric, or Phiona-centric? (sigh) I've sort of got an idea for a piece on Wyl and another on Phiona, but I want to save the invoking of Rule 35 until I know for sure something's not out there.

So, it's the most wonderful time of the year. The malls are open for longer, making shopping more convenient; the shoppers exhibit their usual good cheer, energy, and bloodlust.

But! That is not why we're here. The Management of Fandom in the Raw has decided to dole out Winter Holiday cards for whoever'd like them. Please leave addresses in the comments, which will be screened.

(Not going to give my address here, as this is a public post. I'm extremely paranoid about FiR being linked to my meat world identity. It's the teaching thing. I'll contact you via e-mail if you'd like to send a card to me.)

Oh, and if anyone has ever had any burning questions about the Fourth of July in New York City between 1801 and 1815, I suggest they ask them now.

(live, from the work desk...)

I got an e-mail with the subject line "Notebook." I immediately thought of my sister's laptop and of the presentation I have to do on Readers' Theater next Wednesday. So, I open it up.

It turns out it's from my early American republic prof, telling me that I've left behind one of my notebooks when I did my office visit. I kind of got peeved that he spelled my last name wrong in the body of the e-mail (Since the format of the school e-mail addresses are LastnameFirstInitialNumber@mail.montclair.edu.), which spawned this whole rant about how touchy I am about how people address me, but that is really too wanky to be published.

Anyway. That notebook. It was the notebook I used for educational psych over the summer, and it was pretty bare, so I've been using it as a notebook-of-all-work, scribbling in it whenever I had the chance.

It's got 12K, FFVII, and mercverse original fic and drawings.

And smut.

Of all people to have it, why him? I mean, my student literacy prof would at least look at it through an academic lens... I only hope he's read through the front end of it, (where the actual academic notes are) and he said he's had trouble reading my writing, so...

(sigh)

In other news, undergrads who decide that they want to attend my sessions the day of, when the damn things are overbooked, really need to look at where I state to RSVP two days before.

...

The Apple Crisp recipe is here!

ETA, 4:42 pm: Got my notebook back, a little neater-looking than I left it. A note card with my name on it is on the front page, so maybe he didn't pry too deeply? One can hope...

So, remember when I said that my cell phone went poof? Guess what the car wash attendant found today when mucking out my car?

Despite having a media intake queue, I went and bought more books to read. I managed to finish them off, so at least I've kept myself neutral. And then this post on Jezebel reminded me that I'd like to get a Game Rectangular Prism and Ikaruga. Damn it.

It's more likely than you think.

ZOMG, they played "A Simple Life" during the start of the women's road race. I don't know what they were trying to imply with Bridget and the women racers, but still. Guilty Gear in my Olympiad!

So. The New York Times did an article on whether reading on the 'tubes counts as "actual" reading. Cue references to MySpace, Wiki, and Google. Surprisingly (at least to me, since I'm not very used to meat-world media talking about fandom), there were also references to Gaia, the Pit, and fanfic writing, in general.

I'd like to rant about how the representation of fanfic is more skewed towards the "Lol, I wrote this on a suga high! R/R!" types. Or on how you could totally call the Comments section being "I have [condition]! Reading on the 'tubes helps me!" vs. "STFU and read a real world book!" vs. "At least they're reading!" vs. "Um... I like to do both?" However, my eyes are shot, so I'll just leave you with a constant:

Anyone who thinks that reading teen gossip or making up fantasy characters that change plot to satisfy the adolescent mind is remotely similar to reading a great book must be suffering from the same malaise that the Internet is purported to create. So at least their reading, huh? Even if the grammar and syntex, well, again, forgive me, SUCKS!

I should start a collection of "Famous People Who Want to Spell My Name with 'ph'" signatures.

Yeah. Still no Temeraire icon.

So, went off to the Victory of Eagles reading/signing in the Village today.

Rather than read an excerpt from Victory, we had a short story from the Tem-verse, "Vinci," that talks about the taming of the first western dragon. I (heart) Vinci. She's awesome. Cato was pretty good, too. And Novik did voices. <3

Things That We Found Out:

Novik's got an idea of where the rest of the books will be heading, but not the specific plots. It'll end with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but we can't expect a finish similar to the one that's IRL. (So, if/when Waterloo happens, it's going to be hella different.)

The dragon's colorations are from butterfly species. Temrer's blue spots on black came from the black swallowtail.

Nothing about Jackson's option. It is a very long option, and she can't give out more than that. (His spies are everywhere...)

There will be visits to the parts of the world still remaining. Those who've finished VoE already know where the next stop of the Fantastic Voyage is headed. The Americas will happen, which means that I have to finish my Tem-verse chasqui fic before I get jossed.

AnimeNext 2008 Con report is go!
( Read more... )

Crazy-ass con was crazy.

...in the leaves.