Methyl Ethyl Aldehyde

Also, I can kill you with my brain.

2011-05-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

My friend Eva just pointed out something pretty weird to me. On Monday, May 2, Osama bin Laden was shot and killed by U.S. troops. But on the Thursday just four days before that, I wrote the following in my blog entry "Happy Birthday to Blog":

"Julia! You are creative! Your wit and insight are just what the world needed! Osama bin Laden was so moved, he gave up terrorism and started planting flowers!"

I said that he would be planting flowers, and now he is PUSHING UP DAISIES. My blog has superpowers. Excuse me as I go sell the television rights to FOX and then retire to a life of following the example of the prophet Light Yagami.

The Books Every Child Should Read, Part 1

2011-05-05T16:08:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of books growing up. It was my replacement for a social life. Heck, I was even part of a four-member team of competitive book readers two years in a row (read twelve books, answer questions, see which team gets the most right. We were really good and should have won both years, but we got ripped off. Especially the first. I think we got one question out of ten wrong each year, and I think even the winning team one year admitted that they had easier questions and we had really hard ones. But I digress). The point is that I know a lot about children's literature. I read Animorphs, Goosebumps, the Clue books, the Little House on the Prairie Series, and basically every children's book that the library and the system overall wanted kids to read. You know the ones: put on display in the school library and probably marked with Newbery Medals. Maniac Magee, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Island of the Blue Dolphins, etc., etc., etc.

(Honestly, I just checked the Newbery list, and I was shocked to see how many book titles I recognized that I had just completely forgotten about. My childhood may have been lonely, but it was positively rich with literature)

Anyway, looking back on my life, there are a few books which really stand out as having profoundly shaped me. Though I know that in some way, all the books of my childhood helped me see the world in a more complete or thoughtful way, there are a few that I think every child should read because I know that they were invaluable in creating some of the best parts of me.

1) Harry Potter

Okay, let's get this out of the way. Yes, everyone should read the Harry Potter series. I'm a bit sad that the younger generations will read them all in one go, because it means that the books won't grow up with them as they did for me, but that's what rereading is for. Anyway, time to start preaching to the choir about why Harry Potter is the best thing ever.

First, I have talked to at least one person who owes her love of reading to Harry Potter. Before Harry Potter, she was below the expected literacy level for her age; afterwards, she skyrocketed. Harry Potter teaches kids to love reading.

Second, the general values and lessons of Harry Potter are incredibly important. They teach courage, self-sacrifice, the real meaning and value of friendship (without shouting "BY THE POWER OF REAL AND TRUE FRIENDSHIP" as some stories tend to do - I'm looking at you, Yu-Gi-Oh), that intelligence is admirable and that girls can be both smart and badass, and that growing up means learning how to apologize (Ron).

There are of course many other great lessons that it imparts, but I would like to focus on one in particular. I've always had a deep fondness for Chamber of Secrets, which few other people understand. I think I've figured it out, though. At the end of the book, after Harry has been terrified for months that he is actually a Slytherin and not a good person after all, Dumbledore points out to him that his choice to be in Gryffindor was the most important thing. I think it was this specific idea that planted itself in my mind and has since evolved into an important aspect of how I understand the world. I've written about this idea before: how I chose things based not on what I want now, but who I want to become. Whether it's choosing a college or choosing a job, I know that my environment will shape me, but I have to choose it first. The point of this is that Harry Potter has affected me in many ways; this is simply the most obvious one.

2) The Phantom Tollbooth

This is a book that you should hand to a child as soon as they are old enough to read. Actually, read it to them as soon as they learn to speak. It's all about learning and perspective and engaging with the world, packaged in a bizarre-but-interesting narrative. I know that I read and reread this book at least ten times growing up (probably more), and as I got older I understood more and more of it and got more and more out of it. In fact, this was a book I brought with me to college. But even when I was too young to understand all the wordplay and references, it shaped my thinking. I'll give you a few examples of the interesting ideas in the book.

One section dealt with a boy named Alec Bings, who sees through things. The first thing you should understand is that he comes from a group of people who grow downwards, that is, they float in the air with their head at their adult height and their feet grow down to the ground. Alec thinks that it's strange that Milo, the protagonist, should grow in such a way that his perceptive is always changing. The second thing you should know is that Alec literally sees through things. He's always running into trees right in front of him, because he can't see whatever is right in front of his nose.

Another section tells of the story of the cities of Illusions and Reality. Illusions is a beautiful city, but it's a mirage. Reality used to look like Illusions, but the residents decided to be as efficient as possible when walking and so always looked down. Reality slowly became invisible all around them and no one noticed.

There's no good way to describe this book in a way that conveys how profound it is in its own way. I really cannot recommend it highly enough. If you somehow didn't read it growing up, please do so now. You might not find it as illuminating as I did, but you'll discover a book that's completely different to anything else you've ever read and something that you'll want to pass on to the next generation.

Okay, that's it for tonight. I definitely did not think I would be writing mini-essays about each book when I started. I'll get back to this list as soon as I can, I promise! :)

In which I whine about education and how studying abroad kind of sucks sometimes, because I'm privileged and ungrateful

2011-05-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because I've spent the last two and a half weeks doing nothing but studying, or maybe it's because I have two weeks left containing nothing but four finals and even more studying, but I'm kind of sick of the educational system over here right now. I would like to say, for the record, that my college in the U.S. is academically superior to the University of Edinburgh, at least in terms of professors and lecture style. Two of the professors I've had this semester were, to put it politely, pretty underwhelming in their lecture capabilities. The lectures are huge and impersonal, and the only redeeming factor is the once-a-week tutorials that have now gone away. Those were where all the people I could most consider my friends were. And even when I had my tutorial friends, I never had anyone I could really confide in.

I miss my college. I honestly just want to head back to California right now to see my friends and take some science classes and some math that doesn't make me want to stab my eyes out (actually, the one class I'm fond of here is one of my math classes, but my other math class is making me want to stab my graph paper). I want to see my friends both at home and at college - friends who I know and who know me and who I can just really be myself with again. I don't really know anyone here, and there's maybe one person I can go full tilt nerdy with, and I literally haven't seen her in months. Other than my two trips out of Scotland and the time my parents visited, I could probably count the number of times I've been hugged on one hand.

The problem is that right now my whole life is studying, and not living in Scotland. I don't think I've really lived in Scotland since I got here. Kind of a vicious cycle: I didn't make friends quickly so I stayed in at night, I stayed in at night so I didn't make friends. So here I am, sitting in my room staring at math like I have been nearly every night for the last two and a half weeks, mentally cursing my professor for being completely unhelpful in lecture and for being so unengaging that what he did teach properly didn't register in my brain like it should have. Sitting here feeling sorry for myself because I'm lonely and frustrated and bored, and then feeling disappointed in myself for moping because kids in Japan are being irradiated as I type and they're all going to die of cancer while I sit around feeling sorry for myself and not doing anything about it.

This is my life right now. History all day, math at night, shower and laundry when I can squeeze it in, sleep when I get too frustrated with math to keep going. I guess there are two final points to be made here:

1) There is most likely going to be nothing of interest on this blog or on my YouTube account until early June, when I'll finally be back in the States after five months. I've got quite a few ideas backed up, don't worry about that.
2) Say hi. Comment on this blog or send me a Facebook message or whatever works. I've desperately been trying not to spam my friends on Facebook with messages, because I don't want to drive them all away, but I really am a bit lonely over here. So this is my open call to say IT'S OKAY TO SPAM ME WITH MESSAGES (as long as they aren't, well, spam). Don't worry about bothering me; I'll tell you if it becomes a problem. Make these last few weeks in Scotland feel less like self-imposed solitary confinement.

Happy Birthday to Blog

2011-04-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Well, today's the big day. The one-year anniversary of a girl and her blog. Sadly, this is the most significant anniversary I have in my life right now (probably has something to do with how much time I spend on the internet), but let's put that aside for now. I actually can't think of what I should put here. Just three months ago on my birthday I summarized most of the important events of the last year, so that option is gone.

I guess what interests me most is how I've evolved since I started this thing. When I first dove in, starting a blog for the internet to see, it was basically a rejection of what I'd been telling myself my whole life. You aren't good enough. You aren't creative enough. Just stick to your science and stay in your place. For all I knew, it was true, but I'd never know if I didn't try. I was twenty years old and tired of feeling like my fate was already fixed. It's like the Nightmare Before Christmas. In the actual movie, *SPOILERS*, Jack Skellington, tired of being the Pumpkin King of Halloween, tries to take charge of running Christmas that year. He fails spectacularly, and the movie ends with him realizing that he's happy as he is. But, if you listen to the last track that wasn't actually in the movie, where the narrator talks about visiting Jack many years after the story ended:

And I asked old Jack, "Do you remember the night
When the sky was so dark and the moon shone so bright?
When a million small children pretending to sleep
Nearly didn't have Christmas at all, so to speak?
And would, if you could, turn that mighty clock back,
To that long, fateful night. Now, think carefully, Jack.
Would you do the whole thing all over again,
Knowing what you know now, knowing what you knew then?"

And he smiled, like the old pumpkin king that I knew,
Then turned and asked softly of me, "Wouldn't you?"

That really important lesson - the value of trying something new, no matter what the outcome is - stuck with me ever since I saw that movie as a senior in high school. So two years later it took the form of deeds and actions, the result of which is Methyl Ethyl Aldehyde, a name I picked practically as a placeholder, because if I let myself get stuck on a title, I would never start the project at all. And that was unacceptable.

So I wrote. And eventually, I drew, at least so much as you can call dragging a mouse around the screen in MS Paint "drawing". And not-so deep down lurked a hope that someone would see something I wrote and then pass it around the internet and I would become famous and crowds of people would lift me high above the streets shouting, "Julia! You are creative! Your wit and insight are just what the world needed! Osama bin Laden was so moved, he gave up terrorism and started planting flowers!"

Okay, I didn't really think that, but I did hope for some recognition that I was more than just some girl who was good at science. And I got it, not on a large scale, but from you readers, my friends. All of you were really brilliant about saying nice things about my crazy drawings and my weird little stories. You told me that you laughed and I felt like I had done something right. So I moved up to a bigger ambition. I started making videos.

My first video was a lot like my blog title - something I threw together in a few minutes just to make sure I didn't get hung up on making everything perfect. And it was pretty bad. But I kept trying and trying, and eventually, people took notice. I still don't have a ton of subscribers; hell, Charlie McDonnell could make a video of himself sneezing and pick up more followers than I have in 3 seconds. That's okay, because "making it on the internet" isn't really something I think about much any more. I think about making videos because I like it, posting blogs when I see religious symbolism in a mediocre movie, and engaging with the community I've found. I think about pushing the envelope of my creativity in whatever way I feel like that day - provided that I don't have homework. And from the few people who read and watch what I do, I see that enough people like what I do that I must be doing something right.

So now here I am. I am a person who has learned how to take risks. I write blogs, I make videos, and I walk through the Red Light district in Amsterdam at 9:30 PM by myself because it's a necessary cultural experience (well, not the "by myself" bit, but that's what happens when you travel alone). I've learned that perfection is something to strive for, not something to start at, and that sometimes getting something started means jumping in the water and flailing until you eventually learn how to swim.

To those of you who stuck with me during the first year of this project, thank you. It's been fun to have you along. And to those of you who have told me you look forward to saying "I knew her when", well, it might be a while. And that's okay. :)

Quirrell, Defender of Earth

2011-03-25T15:35:00.000-07:00

I hope you all appreciate that I spent hours making this video instead of packing for my two-week trip where I around 5 countries armed with nothing but a passport, a backpack, and a couple of phrase sheets for the four foreign languages that I'll need to know but have never learned. Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, London. It's going to be awesome! I mean, my hostel in Berlin is a boat run by a hippie! What could possibly be better?

P.S. If you find either of my really lame jokes funny, please do not hesitate to tell me. If you didn't, I regret to inform you that the comments section is broken right now.

P.P.S. Part of me is just waiting for someone to say, "But [insert Harry Potter fan here] already said all this!" Yeah, well I didn't see it. The problem with the Harry Potter fandom is that there's really nothing new to say. Everyone's already talked it to death.

OH MY GOD LONDON

2011-03-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

As most of you are aware, I went to London last weekend for a YouTube gathering (which was totally awesome, but can best be summarized by this video:

I just put a video in a parenthetical remark. How weird is that?

It just so happened that the night I got in, 3/4 of the band formerly known as Sons of Admirals (according to Michael Aranda, it's complicated) did a gig 5 minutes from my hostel. It was awesome, and I managed to get video footage of it all (if you aren't interested, just scroll down. There's more blog after the videos, though the concert was quite good and you should be watching all three performers on YouTube - they are really awesome). The gig in order is as follows:

I managed to talk to Alex Day and Eddplant after the show, and they were really nice, as is typical of big name YouTubers (this is why the YouTube community is awesome, guys). I was also fortunate enough to meet up with some YouTubers named Ali (RogueBlueJay) and Austin (outofthedark) before the concert, and we hung out with Michael Aranda for a few minutes afterward. Most of you might not understand why you should care about these random people named Alex Day, Eddplant, and Michael Aranda, but just know that they are really respected and admired within the YouTube community.

So Saturday was the YouTube gathering, as I mentioned before, which was fun, but mostly just involved a bunch of YouTubers hanging out, playing with iPads in a Mac Store, and making lip-sync videos with less than 20 minutes prep time (see above).

Sunday I went on a walking tour of London in the morning and then I went to the Science Museum in the afternoon with some YouTubers before catching the train home in the evening. Here's a picture of the museum gang:

Remember that Michael Aranda fellow I mentioned before? Yeah, he was there, and I was really impressed that over the course of the three hours I spent with the group he didn't demonstrate any signs of an over-inflated ego or act in any way like he was better than us. Austin and Ali were also there, along with several other great people who I was simply too lazy to tag in Paint. Sorry. :(

The Science Museum was great. Michael and Ali and I worked on solving a "build a bridge out of blocks" puzzle for about 20 minutes, with occasional assistance from Austin. A girl who was maybe 8 years old joined in to help about 10 minutes in. She then solved it within a minute (maybe two) of the rest of us giving up. That hurt.

Well, that's probably enough information for now. Needless to say, that was one of the best weekends of my life. VidCon 2010 was better, but I plan on having the very best weekend of my life in 4.5 months at VidCon 2011! I've booked all the tickets and everything. And this time I'll actually know people there! :D

Here is the important conclusion: Between my loving family, my awesome (non-YouTube) friends, my incredible summer job researching HIV in Seattle, my amazing opportunity to study and travel abroad, and the fantastic YouTube community, I have the best life in the world. Bar none.

Ali: http://www.youtube.com/user/RogueBlueJay

Austin: http://www.youtube.com/user/outofthedark

Michael Aranda: http://www.youtube.com/user/michaelaranda

The Concert Peformers:

Eddplant: http://www.youtube.com/user/eddplant

Alex Day: http://www.youtube.com/user/nerimon

Tom Milsom: http://www.youtube.com/user/hexachordal

Charlie McDonnell and the Where's Waldo Button

2011-03-09T18:40:00.000-08:00

I've been working on this thing for a week. Definitely the most technically complicated video so far (particularly without my good editing software). And so much footage to dig through and so many things I changed after I shot the footage! Oh well, 'tis done now, and good thing, too, for I've been wanting to make this video for months. Time to sleep.

Loch'd in Translation

2011-02-18T16:30:00.000-08:00

Ye gods! A video!

I need to acknowledge that I stole the word "Loch'd" straight from the title of Katie's blog, as I am not witty enough to have come up with it first.

In related news, I'm going to Loch Lomond all day tomorrow! I'm really excited. :D

The Birthday Paradox

2011-02-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

In forty minutes, I turn 21. Or maybe it's 8 hours and 40 minutes. Birthdays are profoundly disorienting when you're an ocean and a continent away from the time zone you were born and (mostly) raised in. Hell, I wasn't actually born until about 5:17 AM (or thereabouts), so maybe I'm not really 21 until it's 1:17 PM here. I never really had to deal much with that question back home, having been born at an ungodly hour before most people even consider waking up.

All I know is that for some reason, this really matters to me. Maybe it's because turning 21 is a really important birthday in the U.S. Maybe it's because it's the last birthday where you gain privileges rather than simply get one year closer to the grave. It doesn't really matter here, though. I bought a beer around two weeks ago just for the hell of it (and to try and train myself to hate the taste less), and it was all perfectly legal. Mostly, though, I think I just miss my family and friends from back home. Here I don't have anyone I know well enough to celebrate the midnight turnover with.

I think my 20th year has been a good one, and probably one of my most interesting so far. I built a hammer, discovered the vlogging community on YouTube (yay Charlie McDonnell), found the true potential of blogs (Hyperbole and a Half) watched a Doctor Who season as it aired for the first time, started blogging, moved three times, had a summer job making faces at crayfish, went to VidCon, started vlogging, made friends and got subscribers on YouTube, found out how to use a Hamiltonian in quantum chemistry, learned the entire mechanism for digesting glucose (then promptly forgot it), learned genetics, learned Linear Algebra, wrote a paper on yeast and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, discovered some awesome hammocks, beat Mass Effect 2, went to a California beach for the first time, woke up early to watch the World Cup, discovered a Very Potter Musical, beat the first boss on Ninja Gaiden, got most of the way through Jade Empire, lived in a house for the first time, made friends with my housemates, drank alcohol for the first time (peach beer is disgusting, yo), left the country to study in Scotland, met people from all over the world, and wrote an essay on The Irish Question, which I turned in today.

You know what? I've just confirmed something that I've believed for a long time. See, before I started writing that list, I hadn't even thought about most of those items, including VidCon. Frakking VidCon, THE highlight of my life so far (no joke). The only reason I thought I'd had a really interesting year was Scotland. But looking back, I lived this year. That's the thing. We live more than we think we do, more than our memories let us remember right off the bat. At least it's true for me. For example, I always think about how much time I wasted as a child playing video games and watching TV. But then I find myself talking about all these really obscure things I did or learned or saw or thought growing up, and I realize that my life happens. I don't know how to explain it better than that. I have wasted a lot of time, but I have also accomplished a ton of things and seen and felt a lot.

You know what? I think I'm ready to turn 21 now. I wasn't before. I still feel a bit sad, because if homesickness is going to kick in when you're abroad, it's going to be on your birthday. But I'm okay. When I started this year, I was a Washingtonian. However, my homesickness tells me that I am now Californian as well. And if my regret at the semester moving too fast is any indication, I have a home here in Scotland too. I can't help but feel lucky that wherever I go, I now have the option of being homesick for three different places.

Now if you'll excuse me, I turn 21 in five minutes. And then again in 8 hours and five minutes, and then one more time in 13 hours and 21 minutes. How many people are fortunate enough to turn 21 three times in one day?

Cake or death?

2011-01-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

A point to all of you who know the origin of the title. Double points if you have the whole speech memorized, and fifty points to any of you who thought, "Oh ho! That whole sketch was about the Church of England, therefore this post is going to be about religion!" If any of you did earn those fifty points, please turn off your computer and your television and go outside for a while, because you are more plugged in and crazy than I am and that's saying something.

As most or all of you know, I'm agnostic. Now, to clear up any terminology issues, when I say agnostic I mean that I don't believe in God and don't believe there isn't a God - I quite simply don't know one way or the other. I was raised in a household without much exposure to religion and a great deal of exposure to the scientific method, so the latter trumps the former. But since I can't disprove God's existence just as much as I can't prove it, I'm stuck floating in between somewhere.

Do I lean one way or the other? Depends on what day it is, honestly. Days when I'm feeling especially down-to-earth rational, I lean against belief. Days when I can't handle the idea of neuroscience because the whole human consciousness could not possibly be created from one single brain filled with so few neurons? Those are the days I almost believe in a soul. And yes, I was a neuroscience major until I hit that wall. I couldn't handle progressing in a field with such an important, potentially unanswerable question.

I guess the point that I want to make here - something that I didn't realize until this very sentence - is that agnosticism is not the same as apathy. For evidence, please see the last post where I couldn't concentrate on homework for nearly three hours because I was compelled to break down Tron: Legacy into its bite-sized Catholic symbolism components.

The thing is, I love religion. I've written a whole post on why religious studies classes are so important. Most of the people of the world are religious, and when you understand the ideas of the major world religions, you understand people. Many wars, stories, and actions only really make sense in the context of religion. That's why the three books that will never leave my dorm room are the Bible, the English Translation of the Meaning of the Qur'an, and the Book of Mormon. If anyone feels like giving me a copy of the Talmud or the Ramayana, I'll gladly add it to that collection.

The problem is that collecting religion is not the same as being part of one, but I fear that it is too late for me. If you want to try and convert me, go ahead - it makes me feel happy that someone cares about my immortal soul (just don't be sneaky or manipulative about it, because that kind of behavior severely pisses me off). But if you try, know that many others have come before you. Hell, I've tried to convert me to something, and it's always failed.

It's always seemed like being part of a religion would make life better. Not easier, mind you, because from what I understand, if you do it right, being part of a religion takes a lot of time and searching and doubt. But religion gives you a special community and a certain fulfillment when you live and comfort when you die. But like I said, I think it's too late for me. It's something I've learned to live with.

But sometimes, just in case someone is listening, I pray. And when I do pray, I pray for the things I think God would want to answer, because if there is something that observation has taught me, I don't think God directly intervenes with cancer removal or test scores. I mean, if all the Unitarian Universalists suddenly started winning the lottery and getting miraculously cured of their AIDS through intensive prayer, we'd have heard about it by now. So I pray for things that aren't tangible, things that don't require massive changes in the cause-and-effect of the world. Like if you're out there, help me find you and help make my work ethic better or make me a kinder person or help my friend through her illness. Because if every once in a while I offer a well-intentioned prayer to make myself a better person instead of to have the world bend itself to my needs, just maybe, maybe, someone might answer.

In the name of the Father and of the Tron...

2011-01-20T05:41:00.000-08:00

As pretty much all of you who read this know, I saw TRON: Legacy last weekend. For reasons even I don’t fully understand, I loved it. A big part of it was due to the fact that I actually liked the story and it made sense to me, unlike the many critics who just couldn’t follow it or didn’t like what they did understand. Looking back at the story, I can see two main reasons why.

1) I have watched the original TRON within the last 4 months

2) I attended a Catholic high school.

Weren’t expecting that second one, were you? But as it happens, TRON: Legacy is filled with crazy-tons of religious symbolism and biblical stories all piled together in one mish-mash of awesome, something which my years of Bible study and comparative religion have allowed me to appreciate. Now I am by far not the first person to point out the obvious religious symbolism in the movie, but I’d like to put my own take on some of the details. Here’s a pretty spoiler free-one - the opening narration that sets the tone for the movie:

The grid.

A digital frontier.

I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer.

What did they look like?

Ships? Motorcycles?

Were the circuits like freeways?

I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see.

And then, one day,

I got in.

What I love about this is the way it’s spoken. At least on the soundtrack, the whole thing has the feeling of a religious story or an old fairy tale. In a strange way, it almost feels like someone reciting the words of a prophet’s story written in the Bible. Here, take a look at what happens when just a few nouns are swapped out:

Heaven.

A spiritual frontier.

I tried to picture clusters of souls as they moved through the realm.

What did they look like?

Ghosts? People?

Were the angels like humans?

I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see.

And then, one day,

I got in.

This is what really got me thinking about the religious symbolism of the movie, and what I found is really interesting. But for those of you who haven’t watched the movie yet, please don’t continue reading until you have. The movie is worth seeing all theatrical-like and in 3D without spoilers (just make sure that you watch the original movie first or else the story will be harder to understand and much less fun). If you need, here’s the original movie all in one go on YouTube:

HERE THAR BE SPOILERS.

Right-o. So in TRON: Legacy, we have Kevin Flynn, a User and the father of Sam Flynn, who is trapped in a world in which he has god-like powers and which he has, in part or in whole, created. Many cycles ago, Flynn created a program named Clu in his own image. Flynn’s command to Clu was simple: help create a perfect world. Flynn and Clu worked together in harmony to perfect the digital world until a new kind of program appeared. These programs were called ISOs, and they were unique for appearing spontaneously without having been programmed and for having the ability to evolve and learn, almost like they had souls. Kevin Flynn (the Father) sees these new creations as wonderful miracles with great potential to shape the future, and they become his favored children in The Grid. Clucifer (sorry, couldn’t resist) sees these programs (humans) as flaws in a perfect system, seeks to destroy all of them, and rebels against the Father to usurp him and take over The Grid.

In what is possibly the best metaphorical answer to the question “If God exists, where is he now and why isn’t he doing anything about all these wars” that I’ve ever seen, Flynn ends up hiding from Clu outside of the Grid proper in a home where he mostly sits around and meditates on nature of the universe while looking exactly like Michelangelo’s interpretation of God:

Seriously, the hair, the beard, the robes, the weird thing(s) on his back…

The reason given for him not leaving and, say, doing something in either of his worlds is that if he does, Clucifer will instantly find him, grab his info disc, and hitch it up to his digital Tower of Babel so that he and his army of fallen ~~angels~~ ~~humans~~ programs can walk amongst the Users and cause an Apocalypse by taking over the world. Clu’s rebel programs have two possible origins: either they turned to serve him willingly (Castor, for instance) or they were brainwashed and corrupted into serving him instead of the Users.

Flynn’s only company is Quarra, the last remaining ISO, a young woman who is naïve and pure and innocent and completely loyal to him, making her possibly the first time that the Virgin Mary has been so clearly realized as a digital character.

Ultimately, the restoration of the balance in the world only comes about when Sam Flynn, Kevin Flynn’s approximately thirty year old Son who shares the same substance as his Father (flesh, blood, and DNA as opposed to zeroes and ones) becomes data incarnate. His mission: rescuing his father to get him (and by extension his father’s corporate message of generosity and good will) back to the physical world, which will in turn save his father’s company (his father’s people) from its path of selfishness and corruption. In doing so, he also helps his father to purify the Grid of Clu’s evil influence and saves the last of the ISOs (humanity) before both he and the Virgin Mary stand-in are assumed, body and soul, back into heaven/reality.

Clearly there are problems with this analysis, what with things like the programs standing in for both humans and angels as necessary and the Son falling in love with the Virgin Mary. But hey, I never claimed that this movie was an exact Biblical retelling, just that there's a lot of religious symbolism in this movie. I think I've proven my point. I hope at least one person cares about this, because I've just blown about 2.5 hours of quality homework time getting this out of my system.

Hark how the bells/ Sweet silver bells/ All seem to say/ Panic today

2010-12-30T21:11:00.000-08:00

Here is how my Christmas break has gone:

1) Get home from college a week before Christmas after packing my entire college room in one day (on almost no sleep).

2) Sore throat within two days of being home

3) Minor oral surgery

4) Full-blown cold

5) CHRISTMAS!

6) Back to sneezing

7) Start seriously working on summer research applications. Panic.

8) Take care of other work necessary to fully start in on research applications. Lose two days in Excel spreadsheets.

8) Start to fully realize will be leaving the country to study abroad on January 4th. Panic.

9) Begin to comprehend the massive amounts of work it's going to take to complete all the applications and pack optimally in the next four days before I leave *brain asplodes*

Dear Universe, please return my work ethic. I think I left my Windows 7 version back in senior year of high school. I've been making do with Vista ever since, but it just suffered a bad virus and is having trouble getting back on its feet. Help?

Warning: Angst Below

2010-12-26T08:58:00.000-08:00

This is just a heads up to those of you who haven't read it yet - my previous post, the one I wrote last night, is pretty angsty. It was also written around 2:00 AM, and it probably shows. I could take it down, but I'm not going to, because I think there isn't enough emotional honesty in the world. Too many people ask, "How are you?" and don't expect a real answer. So the entry below is pretty much me at my lowest and most melodramatic. That's okay. It's a part of who I am that doesn't make public appearances very often, and I feel like I don't want to hide that part of myself away anymore.

I'm being taken over by the fear

2010-12-26T02:12:00.000-08:00

I'm a procrastinator. I hate it, but it's true. Any kind of work that feels forced or has a deadline just gets pushed off, even if I don't really mind it or want to get it done. Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, there is one topic my brain works constantly to take care of in advance - mourning, death, and disaster. This has been true all my life.

When I was seven or eight, I used to have recurring nightmares about my house catching on fire several times a week. Before I went to sleep every night, I even made sure I had everything on hand that I needed to grab so I could get out quickly if a fire hit. By the time I became clinically depressed in high school (a period which has thankfully passed), my fears had matured to include the deaths of my parents, my friends, even myself (mostly as an afterthought, because few teenagers can really conceptualize themselves dying). Nearly every night I would lay awake in bed, thinking of all the ways my parents could die. What would it feel like? How would I find out? How could I live without one of my parents? How could I keep going under the crushing agony?

I can feel it, you see. I have felt in my heart a miniature version of the pain I know will come when they die. It stabs and it burns. I can't imagine what the real version will feel like. But that's not the point. The point is that I have mourned the death of my parents a thousand times when there has been no reason to even think they were in danger. So much of my life has been spent wasting time investing in a sadness that won't decrease later for all that I'm putting into it now. So why? Why do I live with this?

The truth is that I love my parents more than anyone else in the world. I have amazing friends who I love dearly, but no one can compete with my mom and dad. They are truly amazing, loving, smart, kind, and good people. They have given me so much love, great advice, and every opportunity to be the best person I can be. I can never thank them enough, and I can't imagine my world without them. It is for this reason that in the dark hours of the night after the best Christmas I can ever remember having - sitting with my parents and exchanging gifts and love and stories - that I have fallen into a deep sadness. I remember exactly how much I have to lose. And I'm not being randomly paranoid - without being too specific about my mother's age, I can tell you that both my parents are early baby boomers. They're not old, but they aren't spring chickens either.

I guess I also think my life has been too good and my luck has to run out soon. I've never really suffered in any way that counted, and I feel like it's got to bite me in the ass any day now. My mother once got in bad bicycle accident and another time we thought she was having a heart attack, but both turned out okay. My father has had to go to the hospital several times for heart problems to get his heart set right with the paddles - maybe that counts. I think that problem will kill him someday, and every hospital visit carries the risk that his heart will just stop and not start again. Do the suicides of an aunt and a cousin count? The deaths of three grandparents? The amazing grandmother I don't remember because strokes rendered her entire body unresponsive? I don't know. I don't know what will satisfy the universe.

These days, the depression is gone but the fears are not. The nighttime terror only hits every month or two now, but it hurts terribly when it does because I know that whether I have suffered enough to satisfy fate or not, my parents will die. And on the nights when the terror strikes, I see car crashes. I see flat lines. I see The Big One (the massive 9.0+ earthquake that's long overdue) hitting Seattle and crushing my parents in their beds or making the bluff under the house slide away, carrying my parents with it. I hear one parent calling me to tell me the other has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The list goes on and on. And I know that I will see the deaths of my parents come to pass one day unless I die before them. That is an unacceptable alternative because one of the worst things a person can suffer is to bury their own child, and I know my parents love me at least as much as I love them. Therefore the only hope that I have is that my parents live to a truly ripe old age in good health, and that when they die I'll have a husband and a child of my own to give me the love I'll need to make it through what will hopefully be the worst times of my life.

Great. This means that logically I have to get married and pregnant ASAP to help get my fear under control. That seems like a bad motivation. Also, I'll then be even more terrified about the safety of my husband and kid. I feel like I'm playing fear Whack-a-Mole where hitting one more just makes the next one bigger, angrier, and rabid. I'm gonna need a bitter mallet.

If you made it through that entire entry, thank you for reading what must have been one of the most morbid and depressing blog posts you've ever seen. Maybe some of you saw yourself reflected in it, and if so, I'm sorry.

P.S. Mom, Dad, I love you, and I fully expect one of you to come at me crying as soon as you read this. Sorry.

Vampire Pimp

2010-11-11T23:54:00.001-08:00

This is probably the last you'll hear from me before Thanksgiving. SO MUCH WORK.

Chicken Soup For the Paranoid Soul

2010-10-19T17:23:00.000-07:00

(and now for a copy-and-paste of my video description on YouTube)

Hello, everyone! You might be thinking to yourself, "Wow, what an ungrateful person! Rootsays spends half a video plugging her and she doesn't even mention it!" The truth is, I filmed an entire video just for that purpose (filmed it twice, actually), but when I was almost done editing it, my editing software crashed and now appears to be broken for good. It's actually quite fortunate that this video was already saved to my computer when it happened.

Basically, the lost video said three things:
1) Rootberry/Rootsays: totally awesome. (for all 16 of you who were subscribers before they/he sent the rest of you over, http://www.youtube.com/rootberry and http://www.youtube.com/rootsays
2) Thank you to everyone who subscribed, particularly those who went from my channel to blkfrhwk's and then subscribed to her. Blkfrhwk a.k.a. Jude was the first person to, uh, "discover" me on YouTube and has been an incredibly supportive and awesome friend ever since. Check her out if you haven't already: http://www.youtube.com/blkfrhwk
3) The promised "coolest responses for ways to die": Mister Flask: teleporter accident CallieLauren: flying a spaceship into a black hole DampRabbitVideo: being hit by a meteor Zjeli: having a heart attack onto the letter k (my Cliff's notes version)

Anyway, I don't know how long it's going to be until I get my new editing software, but despite that problem and all the homework I'm about to get slammed with, I'll be back as soon as I have any time to give.

P.S. Bet you five imaginary dollars that while they were watching the video, my parents were shaking their heads and thinking about how I was talking too fast.

P.P.S. For those of you sharp-eyed people who noticed a slight audio desync in certain areas, that was the fault of my now-dead editing software. I spent hours fixing as much of it as I could stand.

P.P.P.S. I don't want any debates about the definition of irony.

(end YouTube copy-paste)

And now for exclusive content! Which boils down to - ARG EDITING PROGRAM ARG. Before it crashed, the editing software gave me another problem - when it imported a clip, it gradually desynced the audio and the video over time. Identifying, learning how to fix, and fixing the problem ate up about a day of my weekend. And right after I learned how to drive the metaphorical clunker, it died on me. Oh well. C'est la vie.

How I want to Die (as the coolest grandma ever)

2010-09-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

7/11 is good for more than Big Gulps.

Sons of Admirals "Here Comes My Baby": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR5wKL...

Band Members:

Charlie McDonnell: http://www.youtube.com/user/charlieis...

Alex Day: http://www.youtube.com/user/nerimon?b...

Tom Milsom: http://www.youtube.com/user/hexachordal

Eddplant: http://www.youtube.com/user/eddplant?...

How to look suspicious at night.

2010-09-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

Because I felt like it, that's why. I love how much accidental innuendo snuck into my discussion of nerds. And no, I really couldn't see where I was going. It was a very interesting experience, particularly when a whole herd of cars drove past multiple times. I have never seen so many cars in this area in my life. It's like they knew I was outside doing something stupid.

I mentioned someone named Toby in this video. He's a really fun vlogger and you should check out his channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TobyTurner

I feel so weird linking to him like that because he's the famous vlogger and I'm just a young rapscallion with a camera, but if I know my audience (and I do know 90% of you personally), you probably have no idea who he is.

Time Travel

2010-09-16T17:29:00.000-07:00

New video, new understanding of how to make YouTube HD work for me, new room to film in. More videos will be coming soon. I'm looking forward to not having to put a framing device in again, but hey, I like this one. Also, why does dry ice only come around when you have no idea what to do with it?

It's been a while!

2010-09-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! I'm not dead, but classes are slowly blinding me with science (I see what I did there). I have four videos all filmed up (well, one was pretty extemporaneous and it might get re-filmed to increase transmission of what I wanted to say and decrease transmission of emo) and I'm now actively working to start getting them edited and posted. I hope to get the first one up by tomorrow, but no later than Friday.

I'm actually getting a little distracted from homework because I keep wanting to go edit my videos and script and shoot new ones. This is not necessarily great for my academics, but I'm still keeping ahead of my homework, so Mom, Dad, don't get too worried. This is, however, really encouraging for me, as I like this hobby (as I have written, facebooked, and talked about to no end for the last few months) and would like to invest time into practicing and improving and creating quality output.

Also, I've just been reviewing the footage of the video that even I recognize is emo and a little melodramatic, and you know what? I like me. Once again, I've probably said that before, and I know it must be getting old, but it's always a great feeling to get, especially for a person whose self confidence is so small it could win any limbo competition in the world. Every time I watch a video I've made and find myself laughing or smiling, I feel some childhood wounds make progress on their final healing process. Now I just have to wait for the first troll to find my videos on YouTube and start tearing them apart with hate comments.

Actually, I'm somewhat looking forward to my first troll, if he/she ever comes (yay awkward political correctness!). It will hurt, but it will also a sign that random people are actually watching.

Alright, back to homework or video editing. Like I said, keep an eye out for tomorrow or Friday. It's gonna be totally awesome. Or mildly awesome. Or maybe just mild. :)

Update: The first edit of the video is complete. It will almost definitely be ready by tomorrow, and I'm pretty pleased with how it's shaping up.

Fun with Post-Its

2010-08-20T01:22:00.001-07:00

Probably no video tomorrow. So appreciate what I have today!

100th post Bonanza!

2010-08-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

And by bonanza, I mean the standard video. Woot?

The good news is that I've started to pick up on a verbal tic I have that's rather annoying. The good news being that I found it, not that it's annoying. Luckily, it's pretty easy to edit out, but I apparently didn't do a very good job of it on this video. Can you spot the easily editable verbal tic?

Cow poop.

2010-08-18T23:58:00.000-07:00

First off, to explain the title, I was working with compost that contained cow manure for 7 hours today. Glad that's all cleared up. Shoveling, wheelbarrowing, and spreading compost for 7 hours is a very good way to make oneself very tired. This is why I shall be editing and posting today's vlog tomorrow. I could stay up and finish it, but I would probably get sloppy quickly, and no one wants that. I've already got tomorrow's vlog planned and plenty of time to do it in, so I shouldn't fall behind again.

Godzilla! (a.k.a. Obooma!)

2010-08-17T23:33:00.000-07:00

It was just one of those days when you feel and hear giant earthshaking noises outside your house and think you might die. Pretty standard. Apparently, it's gone down in Twitter history as Obooma. Awesome.

I'm really happy with how much more natural I sounded on camera in this video. Also, the whole experience was just kind of exhilarating. This is the first time that I've been really happy that YouTube seriously messes up my video quality, though, because I had no makeup throughout the entire video and I had been in the sun all morning. Not an attractive combo in HD, trust me.

Time (Warp) Capsule.

2010-08-17T17:09:00.001-07:00

And no, there is no relation to the Rocky Horror Picture show, I just love the time warp song.

ugh

2010-08-17T01:55:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a video for hours and it's all uploaded to YouTube but it's not participating so I'm just going to finish it up tomorrow after I wake up early in the morning and do a lot of yardwork. The good news is the large amount of work I'm doing tomorrow means that I probably wasn't going to be making a video tomorrow anyway, so at least you'll get something tomorrow. Apologies for incohesiveness.

Hey, did I just live up to the title of this blog?

2010-08-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

SCIENCE! But not scary science, I promise. *shifty eyes*

Also, it's A REAL VLOG THINGY that I made for my own purposes! Finally, after all these weeks. I still need a lot of work to become a decent vlogger, but practice makes perfect! Hope springs eternal and whatnot! This paragraph needs more exclamation points!

FANCY DINNERS = TIRED

2010-08-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

So I just got back from Oregon last night and found myself prepping for a fancy dinner with family friends all day. I got some stuff filmed just now, but none of it's really good except for me messing around a bit on camera. Since I'm not going to upload for the sake of uploading, I'm going to start my video-a-day marathon tomorrow. And I may take a cue from Dr. Noise and make weekend vlogging optional. Don't worry, I have a definite video planned for tomorrow along with a stupidly long backlog of ideas, so I really will get on it tomorrow. I just have to finish my yardwork in the morning, nap, shower, and hit the ground running on my vlog. And since I'm going to be up tomorrow at 7:00 to do yardwork, sleep time is NOW (another reason why I'm not going to put time into a so-so vlog entry for today). Goodnight, all!

An Excuse and a Lot of Awesome

2010-08-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

So you may have noticed I still haven't posted a video after Life in a Day. Well, I might not have done my own video recently, but I did shoot and compile footage for another person's compilation video. That person is known as RoxinPunch on YouTube, and she is awesome. I'm really sad that I didn't cross paths with her at VidCon, because I really would have liked to talk to her about vlogging and building an audience (she just broke 1000 subscribers). Anyway, she should have a video coming out soon and it's possible that some of my footage will be in it. Whether or not it is, you should keep an eye out for the video, and if you are a subscribing type of person, subscribe to her channel. I think you'll be happy. She's got quite a persona. http://www.youtube.com/roxinpunch

Now if your name is Lizzle, you've been sitting around for two weeks wondering WHERE ARE THESE VIDEOS JULIA SHOT AND PROMISED. Well, bad news, I was moving all of last week, got home from summer research yesterday, and am leaving for a short family road trip five minutes ago. I'll be gone until Friday, but I promise that I'll upload one video per day (no strict midnight deadline) when I get back, at least for the two weeks until I go back to school. It's a short term way to clear out some idea clutter and get some vlogging practice. And the reason that I didn't edit and upload a video yesterday was this: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2269863/Less_Wrong This is the profile page for the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfiction where Harry Potter, due to certain circumstances, grew up to be very much like Artemis Fowl. It is scientific, rational, silly, and absolutely hilarious. There's a whole section that reads rather like Ender's Game. And it is AWESOME. I linked to you the author's profile instead of directly to the story because I encourage you to click the PDF download link from that page. If you download the PDF, it looks almost EXACTLY like an actual Harry Potter book. Be warned, it can be very hard to put down.

Okay, I'll be back on Friday or Saturday to start my video-a-day marathon. Have a great week, everyone!

Life in a Day

2010-07-31T23:11:00.000-07:00

After fighting with Adobe Premiere Elements 4 for a few hours, I finished my project. More to come soon now that I've re-overcome my mild distaste for editing video (to be fair, I think I shot more than 80 video clips for this project. I had a right to not want to deal with that). I still haven't figured out why YouTube is lowering the quality of my video, but I'm going to work that out ASAP and re-upload when the problem is fixed. Anyway, this is my life in a day.

I'm hoping to get less awkward on camera with time. I think I'm on my way, though. Just got to take myself a little less seriously, because it worked when I did.

I'm in love with vlogs and I feel fine

2010-07-29T23:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you all are probably wondering why I've been radio silent so much recently after PROMISING that I would have videos up ASAP and after I had already filmed four like a week ago. There are four primary reasons for this:

1) I have been busy. This ranges from standard work hours through my entire Sunday (and I mean ENTIRE Sunday) being suddenly and completely unexpectedly taken up by the most awesome (well, only) session of D&D I've ever played (more tomorrow, yay!). I'm so glad I've found an RPG setting that suits me. Also, I've been plowing through books that were due back at the library today (I think I'm going to do a full video on The 4-Hour Workweek). However, I was busy when I was doing daily blogs before, right? What's different now? Well...

2) Once something becomes a responsibility instead of a diversion, I start avoiding it like the plague, no matter what it is. This, combined with my fear of success, fear of failure, and general tendencies toward procrastination make it nearly impossible for me to get anything done. Fortunately, this is slightly countered by the fact that I now feel guilty about wasting time watching online videos because it reminds me that I have videos of my own to make, driving me back towards the work at hand.

3) I hate my video editing software. It's Adobe Premiere Elements 4, and it runs about as smoothly on my computer as Velcro on carpet.

4) Life in a Day. That is the big project going on right now (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/07/07/youtube-film-life-in-a-day-to-employ-user-generated-content/). All Saturday I was running around with my camera trying to shoot interesting video of my life. Unfortunately, my friend's cool event got delayed by a few days and my office was locked so I couldn't film my kissy-face crayfish interactions. However, I got some footage and answered the Life in a Day questions, so now all I have to do is edit my video together by the end of this Saturday. This video is really the wrench in the works. Not only does it preempt my other videos, but it falls into the traps outlined in numbers 2 and 3 above.

The good news is that Life in a Day has also convinced me that vlogging is the path I want to take. Just a few minutes ago, I started reviewing the footage. Even as I watched myself bungling lines, I found myself smiling, and I mean really smiling. This statement comes from a girl who suffered a great deal of self-hatred during a bout of clinical depression which has left a rather significant scar, so please realize that this is something of a big deal. I like watching my videos, even unedited. I think I'm fun to watch, at least for me. That's all that counts, really. No matter who ends up watching my videos, whether it's 5 people or 5,000, I will always be able to look back on them, see myself as I am today, and smile. Vlogging is my path, and I'm getting back on the bandwagon ASAP (well, after a full day of work and D&D tomorrow). I'll have to have my Life in a Day video up by Saturday, anyway (well, that may go unlisted, but we'll see).

DFTBA,

Julia

I'm back (and will be back more shortly)!

2010-07-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

I've just gotten over myself and my self-consciousness to film four videos that will be making their way on to YouTube over the next fortnight or so. My hair doesn't look up to snuff, but that's part of the point. I can't wait for all of the stars to align to make a video; that kind of attitude is what's been keeping me from working on any so far. It's time to make the leap into YouTube head on in HD, even if my head is covered with what are now highly-visible acne scars. For anyone who cares, here are the topics of the videos I shot tonight:

1) General news about vlogging and VidCon
2) Indiana Jones
3) An analysis of the song "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast (this one may or may not make it to YouTube)
4) A personalized video for one of my blog readers (it could be YOU, but statistically probably not).

Anyway, the videos may not be perfect, but I'm going in knowing that the only way to get better is to PRACTICE. Stay tuned for the actual videos!

DFTBA,

Julia

The End of an Era

2010-07-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, I came to a realization today. A multi-part, rather verbose revelation.

1) Putting myself on a daily blogging schedule/midnight deadline is really cutting down my quality.
2) I'm involved enough in my blogging/vlogging now that removing the one-a-day limitation is NOT going to cause me to go into a slippery spiral of not posting anymore.
3) When I write blogs, I am now starting to see them as vlogs in my head. This is because, as I have been told, I write like I talk. I can't script, but I can blog. I SEE A SOLUTION.

In combination, this tells me that many of the blog entries I write from now on are going to be turned into vlogs. I'm not going to stop blogging - not by a long shot - but there's going to be a shift. This shift includes no more one-a-day blogs, at least not in an enforced manner. Midnight deadlines will be flouted. Time will be spent planning and editing blogs and vlogs. Quality will increase. And everyone will be happier (honestly, how many of you wanted to read something by me EVERY SINGLE DAY? It's a little overwhelming).

Thank you all for supporting me thus far. I hope you'll all stick with me through the transition. I really look forward to what comes next - I have been planning it since at least April, after all.

DFTBA,
Julia

VidCon Day One, Part One:

2010-07-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to record every awesome moment here - that would just be mean. Instead, I'm going to try to make this concise (the first paragraph after this fails - sorry) and keep the rest of this in a journal somewhere. You don't need all the gory details.

So after staying up way too late watching Twilight: Eclipse, I woke up around 7:30 to shower, wash my hair, and pack my bag. For the record, I got about 4.5 hours of sleep that night. This will become more important as these posts go on, trust me. Around 9:40 I picked up my carpool buddy and off we went to VidCon. The drive was about an hour long, so we got to talk a little bit. Apparently she's kind of a big deal with the higher-ups at http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/ and had friends who went to Disneyland with Charlie McDonnell the day before. Yeah, she's kind of connected. It was really cool listening to her talk about her experiences with the online community - she really inspired me to follow in her footsteps.

We arrived. She had places to go - she got recruited to help out by her friends - so after registering, getting my badge, and picking up my VidCon bag with my shirt and various goodies, I was alone at VidCon. At first, I was a little overwhelmed. This wasn't helped by the fact that within about two minutes of arriving I saw this guy:

and this guy:

just standing out in the lobby area in real life and 3D.

Now I'll admit, I've never actually watched Chocolate Rain all the way through, but that was one of the early defining videos of YouTube. That guy is legend. The second video, though, that's one of my all-time favorites. I used to have it memorized (probably still do). I knew that video well enough that I remembered that the guy who made it is named Corey Vidal even though I hadn't seen it in months. In fact, when my friend heard the video playing out of another friend's room back in winter, she knew instantly that I was responsible. That's how much I love this video. So when I saw a familiar-looking tall guy hanging out in the lobby area of the conference and then suddenly realized who he was, I may have goggled slightly. When he looked over and caught me staring, I got supremely embarrassed and couldn't work up the courage to talk to him for the rest of the day.

I did, however, see someone who I had not heard was going to be there. One of the very first people I was ever exposed to on YouTube. One of my original YouTube idols, you might say. If you know me, you probably know him from this video:

Hell yeah. Joe Bereta (the one with the beard in the video. Sadly, I never found Luke, but apparently he was totally there. Argh). I walked up to him and told him how much I loved his videos and how big "Bible in a Minute" was at my high school. He seemed genuinely happy to talk to me. I even got his autograph. And that, my friends, was when VidCon's awesome began to fully manifest.

I'm going to cut the story off here for now because it's already way too long. To be continued tomorrow.

***

Now onto non-VidCon related items.

Finally, I would like to point out that I can't hold any of you responsible for not subscribing to my YouTube channel, as it was apparently on private. However, I can hold you accountable for not figuring this out and telling me. Now a stranger in the Nerdfighters chat room gets the privilege of being my first subscriber.

My new camera arrived today and I know exactly what I want my first few videos to be. Well, almost exactly. It's going to require a bit of scripting, but I think I've laid the groundwork for a YouTube series, at least in the notes I've taken in the spare seconds I find during work. I love the title I came up with, too. I just hope it comes out as I envision it and that other people find it worth watching. I really think it has potential, after I spend a few episodes ironing the wrinkles out. I'll get to do two things I love - be informative and entertain people. The only reasons I'm not filming right now is that my cold in combination with my slowly receding acne attack make me look like Rudolph after acupunture gone horribly wrong.

Also, I haven't ordered the ukulele yet, but it still seems like a likely thing to happen. Can't remember if I've already written this, but I figure the worst thing that happens is I can't songwrite/sing to save my life and I end up still knowing how to play ukulele.

SHAMELESS PLUG http://www.youtube.com/tropegirl SHAMELESS PLUG

Sorry, VidCon posts are being delayed by a day.

2010-07-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

I am currently ill/indisposed in two or three different mild but annoying ways plus my laptop is currently required for a viewing of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Ergo, no VidCon posts tonight. But by tomorrow hopefully I'll have more video clips to add, so hooray for that.

DFTBA,
Julia

VidCon: The Aftermath

2010-07-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

Best time of my life. Maybe Disney World tied for best. Maybe.

The next several days are all going to be about documentation. Tomorrow I compile all my memories and post about the first half of day 1. Then I'll post about the night of day 1. And so on.

The most important thing you should know is that I'm serious about the YouTube/Nerdfighter community now. As soon as I get my new camera, I'm going to start posting video. Good quality, planned out, well-edited video. I've been writing down ideas for ages. I hope that you all will support me in my endeavors. I really can't remember the last time I was this driven to do anything. I may even buy a cheap ukulele off of Amazon and learn how to play it so I can try my hand at songwriting (Dear Mom and Dad: Yes, I have a guitar. No, I never really learned to play it. But it's at home and not very portable. Also, right now I have time to learn ukulele and it's more conducive to the type of songs I'm thinking about. And I'm going to practice the guitar when I get home in a few weeks).

I'm on Twitter now in a serious fashion at twitter.com/tropegirl. Follow me there if you'd like, but don't feel you have to. And I'm not going to lie, I'd feel a little better about myself if my YouTube channel had some subscriptions and/or comments (youtube.com/tropegirl). BUT DON'T FEEL FORCED INTO ANYTHING. The last thing I want is to pressure you guys.

DFTBA,
Julia

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep

2010-07-11T01:48:00.000-07:00

Day 2 of VidCon also amazing. Got shirt signed by many amazing people. Awesome concert. More details later. Sleep now. Will sleep after get back from conference also. Probably no new blog entry until Monday proper. Continued bad luck in Callie's car - that will be a blog in and of itself.

MIND BLOWN

2010-07-10T03:03:00.000-07:00

First day of VidCon was amazing, bizarre, and wonderful. Best day of my life that I can think of. Also most stressful. Will write more when sleep less urgently critical. Highlights:

Hugging my favorite "celebrity"
Moshing with some of my favorite YouTubers (mostly Hank Green and Tom Millson, with a few others sometimes in the mix
Dancing to Numa Numa with people who were really excited about it
Being in a crowd of people singing along to Charlie McDonnell singing "Exterminate, Regenerate"
Having serious car troubles in LA at night.

Eclipse: A review.

2010-07-09T01:12:00.000-07:00

It was actually quite entertaining, but probably not in the way it was supposed to be. Warning, here there be minor spoilers.

***

Best line in the movie:
Jacob: "Well, I *am* hotter than you."

Also, I swear that Edward and Jacob were just shy of flirting in that scene. It was ever so slightly awkward given the context.

Second best line in the movie:
Edward: "Isabella Swan, I promise to love you every moment of forever."

Wow, Edward, what are you, twelve? (I think I may be quoting the Buffy crossover video now, but I'm too tired to look that up).

Also, I don't get why so many girls love Edward so much. He's boring. And awkward. And kind of ugly. I also don't get why everyone in the Twilight universe loves Bella. She's also really, really boring. I guess they're perfect for each other.

Oh goodness, time to sleep now. I have a long weekend ahead of me.

How do I get myself into these situations?

2010-07-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Twilight: Eclipse tonight. I wouldn't go because I have work and it costs money and I have PRINCIPLES, but there's a whole group of people going who are going to make it totally awesome. We're going to have an amazing Parody!Edward and Parody!Jacob and several Parody!Fangirls. To let you all know that I'm still pure of heart, here is the Buffy vs. Edward video that made Twilight even more hilarious.

P.S. I learned from my friend who was drawing Jacob abs on another friend that apparently you can blend Sharpie on skin. *The More You Know*

A Vid Before Vidcon

2010-07-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

In which I discuss Toy Story 3 and how VidCon is going to be the best thing since YouTube.

My most sincere apologies for the drunken sailor nature of the camera. Apparently video stabilizing can only do so much when both the camera and the rather bouncy subject are sitting on a springy bed. Never. Again.

Yet another placeholder

2010-07-07T22:13:00.000-07:00

Hey all, I know I promised that I would post a vlog today, but I realized that I really wanted a second try at recording it (the footage yesterday was, in retrospect, more rushed than I would like). So I'm about to try recording again at a slower pace with more time for editing. This means that the video probably won't be loaded until after midnight. Ergo, placeholder post!

Losing my memory already

2010-07-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

So apparently when I linked to Minesweeper the Movie yesterday, it was not the first time I had done so on this blog. Next thing you know, I'll be forgetting what I ate for breakfast. Wait...oh right, a bagel. Anyway, today I'll make up the repeated video with another old classic video suggested to me by Lizzle: The Mantage.

In other news, I've recorded a vlog that I'm not going to be able to post until tomorrow. I may or may not be going to Toy Story 3 tonight, so time is slightly crunchy right now. But the good news is that this may be one of the last vlogs I film on my webcam. I've decided on a camera that I'm going to get from Amazon which should make the video product much better in both audio and video quality. Not only that, but once I get the camera I'll feel more urgency toward actually getting my video projects done. Productivity!

Finally, I'm going to link you over to today's Hyperbole and a Half at http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/07/dog.html. I found it particularly hilarious today for some reason.

All right, time to get things done in the real world now. GERONIMO!

Change is coming

2010-07-05T23:02:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have noticed that this blog has slowed down a bit. It's not just laziness on my part. You see, I've started to set aside some of my better material for my vlog. I have long intended to start up vlogging again, but life has gotten crazy busy recently, and I just got a roommate a week ago. As you might guess, having a roommate makes filming a lot harder. But now, I'm deciding on a camera to buy. A real camera, not just a webcam. And I'm going to make things with it. I've had plans since a month before the school year ended, and they are not going to waste. The videos are probably going to be much more structured than the blog has been thus far and probably more time consuming. Therefore the next few weeks before the camera arrives and I fully adjust to it are probably going to be the tail end of the daily posting era. Quality over quantity, right?

Anyway, boring post is boring. So to make it a little less sleep-inducing, here's one of my all-time favorite YouTube videos. Most of you have probably already seen it, but it's still brilliant.

Who are you? What do you want?

2010-07-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's the thing. This post is important to me. I've spent more time trying to figure out how to best present it than I have with any other blog post. But I've come up with nothing so far, so I'm just going to be as straightforward as possible.

Babylon 5 is a damn good show and you should watch it.

For those of you who have never heard of it, it's a science fiction show from the mid-nineties about a space station which acts as an intergalactic United Nations in the middle of the 23rd century. WAIT, DON'T STOP READING YET. I know that for most of you, this probably sounds about as interesting as watching paint dry. But it's not. Babylon 5 is a truly epic story. It is about love, war, telepaths, betrayal, redemption, and many other things that I want to say but can't because it would ruin the show for you. Best of all, the story was written as a television novel, or five-year miniseries. The creator, J. Michael Straczynski, had been planning the story for years. Every apparent loose end and unanswered question created in the first season is resolved and woven back into the story by the end. In other words, this is a show for those of you who loved Lost or Battlestar Galactica but felt let down by the finales or the general sense that the creators had been making it up as they went along (Note: I love BSG AND the most of the finale, but it was slightly disappointing that the creators had clearly not planned some things out in advance).

Now, the show isn’t perfect. I’ll be the first to admit that. The acting is sometimes questionable and the first season is not that gripping. The fifth season was also weakened by the un-cancellation of the show. But don’t let that turn you away. The first season may be slow, but it is critical to setting up the rest of the series. The sometimes shoddy acting is compensated for by the lead actors. And the story is worth all of it. Seasons 3 and 4 in particular kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time in a way that nothing else ever has. The finale, which I had high expectations for, didn’t disappoint me. I sobbed for the last twenty minutes or so at the understated beauty of it. I can’t remember crying that much for any other work of fiction in my life. And the character development in the show is subtle but powerful – some of the best I’ve ever seen.

Like I said, the show has its flaws. Don’t go in expecting greatness - you will be sorely disappointed. Let yourself get immersed in the world and then slowly, over time, the greatness will become apparent. The story unfolds gracefully, the characters evolve, and the ending is beautiful.

The show in its entirety can be viewed legally at http://www.slashcontrol.com/free-tv-shows/babylon-5. Alternatively, the first two seasons are available on Hulu. I find Hulu slightly less frustrating.

If this post has not convinced you to watch Babylon 5, you should think about viewing the write-up about the show at http://aria.dreamwidth.org/82959.html. Though I love what she has written, I would actually recommend not reading it except as a last resort. There are some minor spoilers there which I would rather keep new viewers pure of. You might also notice that my post title and her entry title are almost the same. That’s because if you want to write about Babylon 5, that’s pretty much the best title there is.

Now the only thing left for me to do is decide whether to re-watch it now or later.

Classes for the Masses Part 2: Religious Studies

2010-07-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not a religious person, but I went to a Catholic high school. I was drawn there by the fantastic general academics the school offered, but I was initially slightly wary of the four-year sequence of required religious classes. In retrospect, two of those classes have been some of the most important courses I've ever taken, at least in terms of being a member of society.

The class I took in freshman year was an overview of the major modern world religions. This included, but was not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. That class really opened my eyes. Understanding the major religions of the world is key to understanding the dynamics of the world as a whole. That may sound hyperbolic, but it really isn't. Religion can act as a path to peace or to war, and misunderstandings between religious groups tip the balance toward the latter. This is why I think that everyone should have a basic understanding of world religions. I firmly believe that if everyone took a class like this, these misunderstandings and their consequences would drop drastically. The problems wouldn't go away entirely - people are people, after all - but there would be a difference.

The class I took in sophomore year was an in-depth study of the Old Testament. This is another area of knowledge that I believe everyone should have some experience in. The Old Testament is a key document for three major world religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Because these three religions also happen to have millennia of history of members warring with each other over religious disputes, it is especially important to understand the text that they hold as relatively common ground. The Old Testament helps to give perspective on many things that happen throughout history up through today because it is so crucial to three religions that have shaped the modern world.

The areas of religious studies are not the only ones that are interesting or useful. For example, I took a class just last semester which examined the role of bodies in early Christianity which gave me a totally different perspective on the early Church than my high school had. However, I believe that some basic religious studies knowledge, particularly in the areas outlined above, is important for everyone to have so that communication between members of different religions is effective and so that mutual respect and tolerance is maximized.

Okay, I just looked back on what I wrote and I realized something a little creepy. This four-paragraph blog post shares some striking similarities with the highly structured four paragraph essays I wrote back in high school. STOP HAUNTING ME, JANE SCHAFFER AND YOUR BLASTED ESSAY FORMAT.

Classes for the Masses Part 1: Computer Science

2010-07-02T23:58:00.000-07:00

I am a student of the sciences, so I could have gone to a science-oriented college and just generally avoided the humanities. However, I chose a liberal-arts college for a reason. I believe that the tools for a happy and successful life are scattered throughout many disciplines and subject areas. Because of this, I'm starting a series of posts on subject that everyone should have some experience in.

First up is computer science. Admittedly, computer science might seem like a bit of a cop-out for my first post. I am a scientist, after all, so computer science is something I should be taking anyway. My major (Molecular Biology, in case you don't read the blurb at the top of the page) doesn't require it, though, which is slightly baffling to me. Just a few days ago I found my coding skills suddenly necessary for a summer job doing biology research. What shocked me was that a semester of intro computer science a year ago was sufficient to problem-solve a real data-interpretation problem.

Computer science can be useful in ways other than just sciences, though. Want to make your own digital Connect Four game? It's really not that complicated (okay, three hours of coding with some guidance. But still!). Need to do a lot of repetitive calculations for something in your everyday life? Write a simple code and save yourself a lot of time. Python is a simple, friendly programming language and it's free for download on the internet. Free. There is a lot of power just sitting there waiting for you to use it. Seize the opportunity! Whether you want to code something useful or something fun, computer science is an invaluable tool in today's world, and you never know when it will suddenly save your butt in a tight situation. If you're still in college, take a computer science class. You won't regret it.

How to watch The Last Airbender

2010-07-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

1) Check Rotten Tomatoes. See that the movie has a 7% fresh rating. Rapidly readjust expectations from Twilight ha-ha bad to Manos the Hands of Fate horrible. Feel better knowing that you can't be disappointed now.
2) Realize that the whole group of people you're going with is dressing up for the event. Get a Facebook message telling you which characters have already been taken. Tear apart your room and Google Images looking for a way to create a non-taken costume. Fail miserably. Figure that if you can't go in character, geek it out. Put on your science-y M.I.T. shirt and Triforce belt buckle.
3) Watch seven episodes of Avatar: The Abridged Series while you're waiting.
4) Meet up with the group and tell them that you wanted to be Zuko, but couldn't quite pull it off. Get attacked with eye-scar make-up and put your ponytail a little higher on your head. Instant costume. Zuko is now a nerd, but you realize that The Legend of Zelda probably doesn't exist in the Avatar universe. Remove the belt buckle.
5) Drive to the theater. Plot with the group about how to kidnap an Aang - a surprising omission in a group of nine costumes.
6) Arrive at the theater. Get stared at a lot.
7) Watch as the movie begins. Realize exactly how bad it is when it starts with a badly-written text scroll paired with a badly-acted narration. Settle in for a bumpy ride.
8) Cringe every time they mispronounce a word or name, which happens at least once a minute. Console yourself with the fact that you had enough foresight to watch Avatar: The Abridged Series first so that you can transfer some of the mocking humor from that to the horribly dull and unfunny movie in front of you.
9) Continue cringing.
10) Resist throwing things at Katara. The theater might kick you out. Actually, that might not be a bad plan...
11) Exit the theater and make fun of the movie with friends. Discuss how it was a miracle that the movie got a whole 7% on Rotten Tomatoes.
12) Continue complaining and mocking during the car ride home.
13) Fall asleep feeling contented. You had a good bonding experience over a bad movie. Victory.

The Times I Know I am a College Student Part 3: What a college party should be

2010-06-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

My life has continued to go well recently. Last night, for the first time, I experienced what I consider to be a nearly ideal college party. There were between 10 and 15 total people in a common room of a suite. The first order of business was a quick round of four-player Bomberman 64 (something I have dreamed of doing since childhood - I only have two controllers at home) while people were still arriving. Then, once almost everyone had arrived, it was beer pong time. I was a little nervous about that because I don't drink and had never seen much of beer pong before, so I thought that I would end up left out in a room full of loud, drunk people. Not so. Apparently about half of the people there didn't drink either and the game was a very laid-back two vs. two match. It was actually quite fun to watch with all of my non-drinking comrades, and it took so long that no one got hammered.

So after beer pong, what then? Why, what else but charades? No seriously, the party went straight from beer pong from charades. I can't make this stuff up. But it was fun. I had to act out Apocalypse Now really early on, and it would have taken hours if my roommate wasn't psychic or something. I gave as good as I got though, with Zardoz, Manos the Hands of Fate, and Hercules. Other memorable ones were A Scanner Darkly and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (both of which were surprisingly easy). Everyone was legitimately having fun playing charades at this party. It was strange but wonderful.

The night ended with about ten of us (including two random people from the suite who joined in sometime during charades) sitting around swapping riddles. At that point it was 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning so everything was absolutely hilarious. The party finally ended at 3:00 in the morning. Did I have work the next day? Yes. Do I regret it? No. I'd gotten plenty of sleep for two nights before and I strive to live well when I get the opportunity. That party was a rare gem that I was not going to toss away before its time.

I feel it is important to note at this point that the people I was hanging out with weren't all recluses like I am. The two random guys from the suite looked like they had probably seen their share of pretty wild parties. No one really expected the party to go the way it did, but everyone had fun. That really was my ideal college party. The people who wanted to drink got some beer from the beer pong but they didn't actually get drunk (at least not enough for there to be problems), no one who didn't want to drink got pressured to or felt left out because they didn't, everyone got to know each other better, and there was a real whole-group dynamic (by which I mean there weren't small groups of people all doing their own thing). It was great and I hope I get to experience that again before I graduate. I really love this little group of summer friends I'm growing.

Now I'm off to a midnight showing of The Last Airbender. This is probably a very bad life decision in many ways (I really don't need two late nights in a row and it's supposed to be a terrible movie), but I'll be going with a group of cool people, so there's only so bad it can be. Allons-y!

The Times I Know I am a College Student Part 2: Does duct tape fix people too?

2010-06-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

The first time I really felt like I was in college was in October of my freshman year. I was hanging out in my room with my roommates and two of their friends late one school night when we suddenly heard singing from outside. We looked out the window and saw a whole group of guys singing "Build Me Up Buttercup" to the second floor of the front of our dorm. We all assumed that they were serenading some girl on the floor above us and thought that it was a really cute gesture, so we opened the window to listen and then applauded them when they were done. To our surprise, they turned and looked right at us as intently as predators studying their prey.

"Come outside, we have a gift for you," one of them said.

All of us stared back out at the boys, confused as to whether or not they were actually speaking to us.

"Come out here, we have a present for you." Definitely talking to us.

We started to run to the front door, but one of the girls warned, "Be careful, they're college boys. We don't know what they're up to." We all nodded our understanding and then walked out the front door.

The crowd had dispersed. All that remained was something lying on the ground. We moved forward to get a closer look. It was a boy, stretched out lengthwise on the ground with his arms stretched far above his head. He was duct taped to a wooden post. And it wasn't just a few pieces of duct tape, no. He was strapped throughly onto the post in at least five places.

I sighed and turned back toward the front door. "Okay, I'll go get the scissors."

It shouldn't have been hard to find my scissors. It really shouldn't. But for some reason that day my scissors had decided to disappear permanently and never return. I spent at least five minutes digging through my part of the room to no avail. Finally, feeling the time pressure from knowing that the poor boy was still bound up on our lawn, I ran to the back of the dorm, happened upon some friends in the hallway, and gasped out some garbled pleas for scissors I could borrow. A few minutes later I booked it back to the front of the dorm with two pairs of scissors clasped in my hand. We were finally able to cut him loose.

I don't remember much of what he said, but I think that he had lost a drinking game and his friends decided that he really needed to meet new people. I forgot his name and his face almost instantly, so I think we can all agree that their plan didn't quite work. However, I still have a clump of duct tape that I pulled off his foot nearly a year and a half ago as a souvenir of the first time I felt like I was a college student.

Two months in and I already have grandchildren.

2010-06-28T23:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know that I promised the second installment of my "Times I Know I am in College" posts today, but something else has come up. Today is the two month anniversary of this blog! Now I know what you might be thinking: "Two months? So what?" Well here's a question. Have you ever tried blogging every day? For most of you, the answer is no. It's often somewhat difficult and takes a bit of planning and thought. However, some of you out there have taken up the challenge of blogging, and therefore this post is about you.

One of the reasons that I started blogging is that I wanted to make some sort of mark on the world. Now it could be that this is as big as my blog ever gets. That's fine. I like doing this for fun and I have enough readers that I feel motivated to maintain my daily posting schedule. However, my blog has gone on to reach a little beyond itself. One of the things that makes me happiest in the world is when someone tells me that they have started a blog and that Methyl Ethyl Aldehyde helped to inspire their action. This has happened several times. A few of my friends have recently started small blogs that update infrequently but accomplish the purposes that their authors set out to do. Some other friends have followed more closely in my footsteps. I would like to point these blogs out.

The first blog that cites Methyl Ethyl Aldehyde as one influence is Business as Usual, a daily blog by The Artful Dodger (T.A.D.) over at http://workingsofbrilliance.blogspot.com/. It tends toward somewhat philosophical reflections on life and societal expectations, and T.A.D. does it quite well. I am quite proud of her and the thoughts she puts on the internet. Her blog has also inspired another person to give blogging a shot and, since I sort of consider bloggers to form a strange kind of family, I like to think of that blog as a kind of internet grandchild. It puts a smile on my face whenever I think about it.

The other daily blog is The Zeppelin Diaries by Mister Flask at http://twentyfivehour.blogspot.com/. I think the fact that this is one of my favorite blogs reflects quite strongly on the type of person I am, but I believe that Mister Flask has produced some genuinely hilarious posts. The Zeppelin Diaries is mostly about RPGs like D&D, but it is also about BEEEEEEEEEEEEEES. Two of my favorite posts so far are this and this.

I really hope that neither of these authors has a problem with me linking their blogs, mostly because I think that they are worthy of a few more readers taking a look at them. I'm proud of these bloggers who looked at M.E.A. and decided to jump in head-first and give daily blogging a shot. They are producing quality stuff and in many ways have already surpassed me. I love it.

Once again, I would like to thank my readers for continuing to spend a little of their valuable time reading this blog. It has been a great two months so far and I hope this blog continues to take me wherever it may go for a long time to come. Allons-y!

The Times I Know I am a College Student Part 1: SoCal in the Summer

2010-06-27T16:16:00.000-07:00

I've probably made this clear before, but even though I am a college student, I've never lived much like one. Well, at least not like the type of college students movies and popular culture love to portray. I've only been to a few parties, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't hang out in the campus café, and you can probably fill in the rest. My life is basically eat, sleep, class, homework, YouTube, Hulu, Google Reader, blog, and maybe play some video games. I do have some very good friends, but they normally fit somewhere within the comfortable rhythms of my life. Truth be told, it gets rather boring sometimes. It's not that I don't like adventure, it's just that most of the experiences college students "should" be having don't appeal to me that much. Wild parties aren't my scene.

My whole life has kind of been this way, actually. From the time I was very little I have been a recluse not so much by choice as by vicious cycle. Example: because I don't go to parties, when people ask me to go to parties with them, I tend to say no because I don't know how to handle myself at a party. This then makes people less likely to invite me to a party next time, which is unfortunate because the only way I would go to a party at that point would be if someone I knew invited me and/or went with me.

The thing is, though, that I want to go out and have fun. I want to really feel like I'm a college student instead of a high school student with more homework and a dorm room. And sometimes, I do. When this happens, I remember it as an event of great importance. I can really savor it because of its rarity in my life. Take, for example, yesterday. I went with six other people to a friend's house to hang out and watch the World Cup. We shouted at the television, ate burgers, mourned our team's loss, then tossed some people in the pool to cheer ourselves up. Then we went to the beach. Now remember how I said that I tend to be a recluse? Despite loving the ocean and having lived in SoCal for the last two years, I have not been to a California beach since the first time I went to one in seventh grade. Fail. But I was redeemed yesterday when I went into the ocean with my fellow college students and we messed around and had fun. When we got tired of the water, we played frisbee on the beach. It was perfect. It was an experience I hadn't realized I needed until I'd had it. I felt like a real, proper college student for the first time in a long time. It was also the first time that I really appreciated the advantages of living in SoCal and that there are experiences I can have here that aren't possible in my native Pacific Northwest (I'd still rather live there, though; my home state is simply the best).

This isn't the only time that I've felt like a college student. The very first time was less glamorous and more filled with duct tape. But that's a story for tomorrow, for now I must prepare for a round of five-hour laser tag. If I actually get to do this tonight without some unforeseen problem throwing a wrench in the works, this will go down in history as one of my coolest weekends ever.

Not what you would call a great first impression.

2010-06-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing that is really reliable about my behavior, it is that unless I do a semi-time-sensitive task immediately, it won't get done until the last minute. For example, if I do the laundry and I don't put it away within a few minutes (or hours at the maximum) of the dryer spitting out the clothes, the clothes will almost certainly not get properly folded or hung up until the next time they get washed. As you can probably guess, this behavior is not very conducive to living an organized or responsible lifestyle, particularly because I am usually able to convince myself that I can put the task at hand off for just a little while because this time it will be different. It almost never is.

So with this in mind, it is perhaps understandable that yesterday my floor was filled with my still-unpacked suitcase from my New Jersey trip and all the no-refrigeration-required groceries that I had bought four days before. There were also several empty boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios and Cheez-Its scattered around with two small boxes I had never bothered to collapse from moving day as well as miscellaneous items haphazardly pulled out my backpack. There were dishes on the unoccupied dresser and desk of my double and books on the empty bed. Even my vlog station - the four boxes I stack on top of each other to make my webcam high enough - was fully set up in the middle of the room.

I arrived back at my room on Friday a little after 5:00 with the knowledge that I had to have my room somewhat clean by 5:30 so that it would be presentable when my friends arrived to hang out. It was a daunting task, but I went in armed with the knowledge that it didn't have to be perfect - just not a pigsty. After a few minutes of cleaning I noticed a brown suitcase on the floor. I couldn't figure out who it belonged to. None of my friends had told me they were planning to stay in my room; then I realized that none of them had a key. I looked around, noticing a pair of boots by the empty bed, a backpack on the desk, and a few other small items that suddenly told me exactly how much trouble I was in. My roommate had finally arrived, and her first impression of me was that I was a total slob. Crap.

After a few seconds of shocked processing, I started to clean frantically. Luckily, the mess was exactly what I expected it was - ugly, but not difficult. I managed to clean it all up in time for my friends to arrive. There were, however, a few minutes when I ended up lying on my bed because I was feeling a bit dizzy from the non-stop cleaning and slightly-panicky breathing. In that time I realized what changes were going to take place in my room. No more free reign on when I got to shoot my vlogs. Headphones instead of computer speakers. Eating breakfast quietly outside the room. But the most worrying thing of all was that my roommate could be a jerk who had a horrible first impression of me.

After my friends arrived, we hung out until about 1:00 AM with no sign of the mysterious roommate. But after they left she came back to the room. I was, and am, lucky. She seems like a great person. Totally cool about the whole mess earlier. She even told me that when she saw my collection of books and DVDs she knew we were going to get along. She's a Molecular Biology and Physics major (which actually sounds really fun. Too bad I didn't figure out my majors sooner or I might have done a minor in Physics). She's so awesome that when I woke up from a nightmare in the middle of the night (I dreamed I that had crushed a mantis), forgot I had a roommate now, and turned on the light to check myself for a mantis corpse, she was totally cool and forgiving about the whole thing. I think we're going to get along.

I have to run to the beach now, so apologies for typos. I'll fix them later, but I have to post this now because I don't know when I'll be getting back.

A different kind of heiress

2010-06-25T23:56:00.000-07:00

When people hear the word "heiress", the first thing they think of is probably this:

And her little dog too.

The general perception of an heiress is that she must be a person who stands to inherit a great deal of money from her older relatives and, in cases like Paris Hilton's, is already reaping the benefits of said family money. However, I would argue that things like money and property are perhaps the least important things one can inherit from one's family. They are not trivial by any means, but, unless you are living near or below the poverty line, they do not strongly influence your happiness. What matters most is what your inheritance gives you as a person.

If I am still alive by the time that both of my parents pass away, I know what I'll value most in my inheritance. It won't be their money, even though they've worked so hard and saved so well throughout their lives that the amount will probably not be inconsequential. It won't be their house, even though it and the environment around it are beautiful. No, what I will be most grateful for is the little bits of themselves that they've embedded in me. I have my mother's drive to meet self-made goals (for her, it's Wii Fit every day, for me, it's blogging). I have my father's love of math and physics. They have both given me a deep-rooted morality and an overbearing perfectionism (a trait which has its negative qualities greatly amplified by the tendency for procrastination I get from my mother). They have taught me that store-brand is usually just as good as name-brand and that a Roth IRA is the best retirement savings plan for a person my age. They have taught me love and compassion and responsibility. When they die, I will carry on the best of them in how I act and who I am to the best of my ability.

Just like Paris Hilton, I am reaping the benefits of my inheritance now. But money is fickle; as we've all seen recently, a few screw-ups made in smoke-filled rooms can rob anyone of the material worth they have. My true inheritance, though, is made of hardier stuff. No fickle quirk of fate will take away the gifts my parents have given me. Therefore, I do consider myself an heiress. Perhaps I am not the kind of heiress society would deem as such, but I would not trade my inheritance for the world.

The Vacations of Doom Part 1: My Mother Scares Children

2010-06-24T23:52:00.000-07:00

My family used to go to Maryland each summer for two weeks of sun, ocean, and mini-golf. There was a streak of at least three summers, however, when it wasn't all fun and games. Those three summers tended to bring strange injuries and usually ambulances. This is what I believe to be the story of the final summer, by which time my mother had apparently become immune to pain in Maryland. Hopefully the other stories will be told in time.

My mother always enjoyed going for walks while in Maryland. One day, however, everything went more than a little wrong.

From the tone of her voice, I stood up to help her expecting a small, run-of-the-mill scratch. Alas, it was not to be.

I don't think that was the minor injury that ended up requiring stitches, but I'm not sure. I would also like to add that I'm pretty sure there was actually that much blood on her shirt. I feel so bad for that little kid, standing in an elevator with a perfectly calm woman drenched in blood in an area near her mouth. I think that the thoughts "VAMPIRE!" and "WEREWOLF!" must have sprinted back and forth across his brain several times.

The Chameleon Actor

2010-06-23T22:42:00.000-07:00

I have a real story to tell you all that I've been planning all day, but I woke up early to watch the World Cup and it's catching up to me fast. When I tell my stories, I want to do it right. So here's a few thoughts instead.

First, I never appreciated how beautifully quiet my college is during the school year until this summer. Currently, it is a strange night when there isn't loud drumming or music leaking through my window for hours at a stretch in the late evening. During the school year, my college takes a great pride in keeping things quiet for studying/napping students. I think I will appreciate this fact much more after sleeping in a noisy dorm room all summer (even the room I stayed in during vacation last week was right next to an oddly noisy road and morning construction).

Second, I would like you to figure out who this actor is. I don't care so much about his name as I do that you should really be able to place the most famous character that he's played:

The reason I'm asking is that this man, despite having played one of the most quoted characters in history, is apparently some kind of ninja (but not the same kind as Sea World). I was recently introduced to Dead Like Me, a show that used to run on Showtime. I knew who this actor was before I saw him because I recognized his rather distinctive name in the opening credits, but if I hadn't known this, I probably wouldn't have recognized him. I know this to be true because everyone I know who watches the show (okay, only three people, but at least one really liked the show and had seen all of it) didn't realize who he was until I pointed it out. Apparently he disguised himself so well in his character that he didn't even trigger any sort of nagging partial recognition feeling in any of them. Take a look here starting at around 1:25:

If you still haven't figured it out, here's a hint - the character in question has a problem with the word "inconceivable" when it's used incorrectly. Have most of you figured it out now? "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Apparently, what we didn't know about Inigo Montoya is that he is a master of disguise. Also that he isn't really from Spain. It's just so interesting to me how well a haircut and an accent change can hide a person. I should try that sometime...

Things I've learned so far this summer: Part 1

2010-06-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

Living on one's own is somewhat of an adventure, particularly in the early times. Learning to buy food and pay bills consistently are only a few parts of it, however. Many other valuable life lessons are also learned alone the way. Here is what I've gleaned so far:

Hearts is a surprisingly fun game to play.
Challenging someone to hack your Facebook is not a good idea.
Especially if you eat dinner with them most nights.
And if you have a tendency to have your laptop out, open, and unguarded around dinnertime.
Always carry your keys with you. You never know when someone is going to lock themselves in your room to hack your Facebook.
Mounties are fun.
So are grim reapers.
I'd still much rather read young adult books like The Hunger Games trilogy than a grown-up book like Love Walked In. Much better characters and plot.
Peanut butter is not a substitute for ketchup, but it's not horrible on hot dogs.
Grilling chicken in a pan is not a good idea if you don't know what you are doing.
Teriyaki marinade is not the same as teriyaki sauce. At all.
Some potatoes are too big to be properly baked in a microwave, but extra cheese can cover up any deficiencies in the cooking process.
Life has a weird way of invading your schedule and making it both more awesome and more exhausting.
Sleep is great, but living life is too.
Webcams are very bad quality cameras, but they do a good job of naturally blurring acne away.
Nothing is perfect the first time, so try for what you want and then keep trying until you produce something great.
Bolas save lives.

How To Deal with Alien Drug Lords

2010-06-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

Before I begin the post proper, I would like to point out that right now, on the evening of the solstice, I am sitting outside in a hammock on a comfortably cool night with a light breeze. I can faintly hear the sounds of happy volleyball players several hundred feet away, the waxing moon is shining bright in a cloudless sky, and I have a full WiFi signal. No matter what small unhappinesses I face day to day, my life is beautiful right in this moment.

And now for something completely different: a story about an alien drug lord.

I have twice previously mentioned the ongoing story of my GURPS roleplaying character, Captain Luke Roberts. On the second and final night of the campaign, a great deal of sneaking around and listening at doors led to a final confrontation with a winged alien drug lord. I learned a few things from that confrontation. Here, then, is a how-to guide for dealing with alien drug lords:

DO tell the drug lord that when two of his underlings attacked you, you temporarily incapacitated them with your bolas and were so able to end the encounter without killing or permanently injuring them.

DON'T tell him in the interest of full disclosure that three of his other alien subordinates also attacked you in the fight and had to be killed in self-defense. It will get people shot in the arm.

And...that's about it. But really, is there anything else to know?

2010-06-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

It's my very last day with my friends and I'm leaving for an airplane in just over three hours so I'm posting quickly now in case I can't get back to a computer with internet access before midnight (and even if I do, I might be too exhausted to post). So here's an old but great video from YouTube - one of the founding classics, you might say. Even after all this time it still made me laugh to the point where I almost wasn't breathing. Watch it with friends and/or people who haven't seen it before - it's about 5 times better that way.

The Life and Times of Captain Luke Roberts

2010-06-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

This is my last night with my friends all together for who knows how long, so this is going to be a short post. When it comes to blogging vs. friendship, friendship wins.

This is an update on Captain Luke Roberts, my RPG character who I referenced two posts ago. On the first night of the campaign, he got hired for a job, discovered that the plant that produces the stims he uses has been stolen to be used by a drug lord, and has traveled to the asteroid mine used by the plant producers to try to recover some hostages and to get the drug shipment back. Also, due to a critically failed dice roll which I had actually volunteered for, he not does not know that our P.I. team member is kleptomaniac and in fact trusts her so much that he gives her items to take care of. Fun times.

Now he's stuck on the asteroid with a kleptomaniac P.I. and an assassin and only they can rescue the hostages and retrieve the shipment from six-fingered, clawed, winged aliens. Can he make it? Probably not.

Mountie Crack.

2010-06-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Imagine you are a modern-day pirate on Lake Michigan. Then imagine that a full crew of Mounties on a tall ship start firing their cannons at you and then rappel on board. This is the world of Due South, a show about a Mountie named Benton Fraser who, as he explains it, "First came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father and, for reasons which don't need exploring at this juncture, I have remained, attached as liaison to the Canadian consulate." Fraser is polite, truthful, and oblivious - or, as dreamwaffles puts it, Dudley Do-Right played straight.

Also, he has a wolf.

She also describes the show as "Mountie crack", which, as my first two sentences would indicate, is a rather apt description. I've only seen one episode, but the show is amazing. My friend Nia described the show as a weird violation of the first law of tragicomedy in which drama increases with tension while comedy decreases. In Due South, both the humor and drama increase with tension. It's different than anything I've seen before, but it really works. Check it out if you have some spare time.

Taking the night off for role-playing.

2010-06-17T21:26:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! I am on vacation but have still been blogging as if I'm not. Well, now I'm taking the night off to start my friend's GURPS campaign. I'm a space pirate named Luke Roberts who is basically Mal Reynolds with a stims addiction and first aid knowledge. Also he can use bolas. Anyway, I'm off to have fun with friends I won't see again for a very long time after this week, so this blog can take a one-night break from real content (depending on what you call real content, this break could have been going on for a very long time). Goodnight!

One day I will have revenge!

2010-06-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

WANTED

FOR STALKING ME AND RIGGING CARD GAMES

Seriously, I don't care if you're the queen. I don't care if you love me above all other people who play Hearts. You do NOT get to appear in my hands every single round like a sugar-high attention-seeking rabbit popping out of a magician's hat every five seconds whether it's wanted or not, disrupting the show and taking the magic out of the act. YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE. Don't make me take out a restraining order on you. It would hurt me more than it hurt you because I like being able to play card games with my friends. It's kind of what I do. But you are making it very hard on me, Your Majesty. So go pester someone else for a while. Oh, and go talk to the King of Hearts about how he's feeling. I'm a bit worried about that sword in his head.

(I think I've played a few too many card games tonight)

Image taken from http://www.madore.org/~david/images/cards/english/queen-spades.png

In which I say uncharacteristic things about Twilight

2010-06-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

Today I went into the bookstore and I found something which I had been hearing about for several months but had never seen in person: Twilight: The Graphic Novel Vol. 1. After laughing evilly for about 10 seconds in anticipation of how bad it would be, I opened it up to take a look.

Now what I have to say next may be shocking to some of you, so pregnant women and people with heart conditions should stop reading now. Basically, I liked it. For those of you who don't know, this is coming from a person who will tell anyone that will listen that Edward is an embarrassment to vampires (they. do. not. SPARKLE!) and that Edward and Bella have a very bad/stupid/obnoxious relationship. Now, from the brief view I had of the graphic novel, neither of these problems changed. However, the context of them did.

A few months ago I decided to sit down and reread Twilight in order to get a fresh perspective. I got all of four pages in and had to quit. I hated the writing. Couldn't stand it. In the graphic novel, it's different. All of the pointless writing is re-expressed in drawings, which are remarkably good. I love the art style in the graphic novel. It really suits the story.

There's also the issue of the medium itself. I read a lot of manga and have done so for years. Clearly, I love the art form as a whole. Its real strength is providing a way for overly dramatic and ridiculous stories to be told in a way which makes them seem less ridiculous. You expect a certain amount of melodrama and crazy situations in manga, and the Twilight graphic novel is very similar in feel to a manga. Therefore the story, which is pretty melodramatic and somewhat absurd, feels more at home and acceptable in this new format. I would still have the same basic problems with the story if I actually read the graphic novel version, but from what I saw, the story is probably much easier to swallow this way.

Essentially, I believe Twilight could have been a decent graphic novel series from the start. In retrospect, that is clearly a much better medium for the story than a novel ever was. It's too bad Stephanie Meyer couldn't pull that off.

I stole the cookies from the cookie jar.

2010-06-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Video now functional.

Children's toys are so much more fun when used incorrectly.

Sorry about the wavering light quality. The camera just doesn't know what to do with a moving cookie jar.

Update: Forgot to mention, this game was a joint invention with The Artful Dodger over at http://workingsofbrilliance.blogspot.com/. I might have "borrowed" this blog idea from her. She was very lovely to let me have it.

Punk nerd!

2010-06-13T20:17:00.000-07:00

As I have mentioned in a previous post, my fashion sense in middle school was slightly sub-par. As a refresher, here was my standard outfit:

Standard hoodie and jeans. Not going to get any popularity points, but not awful. But wait, there's more.

You see that little rectangle in my hoodie pocket? That was one of the many books I might carry around on any given day. I wore hoodies with big pockets that could hold relatively big books. That cemented me as a nerd. However, there was something even worse that completed my accidentally self-inflicted social ostracization: the bracelet.

I was so hardcore.

I wore this bracelet every day for months. I happened to have a couple of friends who were more on the punk end of the spectrum. The girl who inspired me to buy it had one with only two rows, but I figured that more had to be better. I can't make this stuff up; I was just a really, really awkward middle schooler. Take a look at the complete picture:

Wow. Shapeless, nerdy, and a poser; the trifecta.

If there had been a nerd group at the school, the bracelet would have tipped them off that I didn't belong. The punks clearly wouldn't have adopted me for reasons which I should hope are very clear by now. Basically, I was lucky that a few very nice people decided to risk social suicide by being friends with me anyway and that by high school I had wised up to the fact that my bracelet was not helping me socially. I still love that thing, though. I don't know where it is now, but I do know that I wore it to an academic award ceremony back in the day. Oh yeah, I was a total rebel.

The Anatomy of "A Day"

2010-06-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

When people have had a bad, stressful, or eventful day, a standard summary often given to friends and family (at least in my experience) is a variation on very simple sentence: "Today has been A Day." Well, yesterday I had A Day that made me think about the nature of Days, so let's take a look at them to see what makes them tick.

In my opinion, there are two major forms A Day can take (with a spectrum of Days lying in between). The first is the one where things just go wrong. A plane leaves four hours late, traffic is a mess, you forgot to do a homework assignment, that kind of thing. Nothing tragic or horrific (those events are outside the scope of Days), just a pile-up of standard day-to-day issues. I had a minor version of this kind of Day today when my flight was significantly delayed. The second form is the one where nothing particularly goes wrong except inside your own mind. This is the kind of day I had yesterday, and it is far worse than the first kind.

In the mental Day, most everything goes normally on the surface. The milk stays fresh, the power doesn't go out, a test isn't failed. But somewhere along the way someone says or does something that shakes you. It's probably accidental, but their words knock-down a card in the base of delicate house of cards that is your happiness. That little card that holds up the self-esteem section of the structure has always been weak - it has a crack where one part of your self-worth has always been vulnerable. You had tried propping it up with glue and toothpicks and a prayer, but it falls down anyway because a word from a friend accidentally struck it like a stray bullet. You start running around trying to right the card, but the foundations of the whole structure have been shaken. The rest of the glued-together cards start to give way bit by bit, leaving you scrambling to catch up and put right what has gone wrong as the whole thing continues to slowly collapse. This second kind of Day is much worse than the first because there is nothing to blame for your mood except your own pieces of self-contempt.

That was what happened to me yesterday for a few hours. I was tired and a certain adjective had been tossed around as a description of me a few too many times for my comfort. That word triggered the initial breach of my defenses. From there it never really went to all-out sadness, but rather to a feeling of mild hopelessness. Luckily, I had medicine. One of the few things that can combat the inner struggle of A Day is an unexpected kind word. The source isn't the important bit, but the meaning and sincerity is. I talked to someone who used a synonym of my trigger word to describe me, but then immediately, sincerely, and intently told me that the word was one of my most positive character traits. There was no prompting; she just somehow intuitively understood that it needed to be said. For that, I am truly grateful. Now, a kind word can't entirely fix A Day. A person has to do that on their own. But that little bit of honest encouragement can help catch some cards as they fall so that they can more easily be righted. It is a great help to have.

I guess the take-home message of this post is the following: be careful of your words. When people are with friends, it's natural to joke around with them, making fun of some aspects of their personality or some mistakes they have made. Much of the time, this is okay. Most people are good at accepting good-natured jokes from friends. But in my experience, some of those jokes/jabs/words leave small cuts every time they happen. They might be laughed off at the time by the person being targeted, but they do add up over time. Now what I'm not asking you to do is to stop teasing a friend (unless the person actually shows signs of discomfort). Good-natured teasing is part of friendship, and from my experience, 90% of it is fine and won't trigger any long-term negative reactions. However, every once in a while, make sure that your friend knows that you really are teasing. Make sure that they understand what you really think about them. It could save a lot of pain in the long run.

I've been deliberately vague about my trigger word in this post. I hope it wasn't too annoying. My reason for not disclosing the word that slightly hurts me (other than it not being the main point of this post) is that I have too many good friends who use it to describe me for me to risk them feeling bad about it. It is a perfectly reasonable adjective to use to describe me - people have used it for years and will continue to do so as long as I keep meeting new people. So to my friends, don't worry about what you have said to me. I don't hold any grudges against you for using this word and I never will.

Finally, I'm writing this on two nights of greatly reduced sleep and after a full day of airports and airplanes. Any stiltedness can be attributed to that until I actually come back and edit this post sometime in the future.

This isn't it for today.

2010-06-12T02:18:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be travelling all of today. I'm going to be working on a blog post while I'm flying and should be able to get to WiFi soon enough to post it; however, travel is filled with uncertainties. This post is here in case something goes horrifyingly wrong and I can't put my real post up by midnight. However, I promise that if the real post doesn't make the midnight deadline, I will post it as soon as possible after that and then post a new, unique post for the next day.

As a bonus, here's one of my favorite YouTube videos of all time. Most, if not all of you, have probably seen it already, but it's worth a re-watch.

Tutoring!

2010-06-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

I have tutoring and packing to do tonight, so here is a short post for today. Tomorrow's post might be quite short as well because I will be on airplanes all day.

Praying mantises are quite cute in person. I work with five every day and I was surprised at how non-threatening they were when I first got them. However, what is scary about having 1 or 1 and 1/2 inch long mantises is that when they jump at you, you have to be very careful about finding them without squishing them. The other day, one jumped at me and was found near my armpit by a team of three coworkers. It was a very good thing I didn't move.

It's a girl?

2010-06-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

I was reading a manga today where a girl was praised for becoming more feminine because it meant she was growing up. It reminded me of some realizations I've been having about myself lately. Hold on to your seats, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in-between, because this is going to end up somewhere between a reflection on societal expectations and the nature of the self and an undercover exposé on the Oatmeal. Probably significantly closer to the former.

Note: Blogger.com ate the entire body of my completed blog post, so forgive any frustration/anger/RAGE that leaks into here as I rewrite the whole thing.

I am a woman (that word feels so wrong. When did I stop being a girl? Why is there no decent female analogue of the word "guy"? "Gal" doesn't count - it is a dumb word). However, I never acted feminine growing up. I was the girl who played video games all the time, who didn't like clothes shopping, makeup, or shoes, and who wore baggy shirts and hoodies all the time. Seriously, my close high school friend told me that she found me in crowds consistently by looking for the tall brown-haired girl in a bright yellow or red hoodie. It was a perfect system (well, except for the days when I was wearing a brown, black, or grey hoodie). It was so bad that in middle school, when I took off my hoodie one day in math class, some classmates were legitimately shocked to find out that I had something approximating a figure and was not simply an amorphous mass of brightly cloth. My hair was a blunt cut that my friends often told me looked horrible (in kinder words, but the sentiment got across) and I never washed my face. I was, in short, a disgrace to what society considers femininity. I was okay with that on the whole, though sometimes I wished to be more like the beautiful, fashion-conscious girls.

Even in my freshman year of college, my first year in a coed environment since middle school, things didn't much improve. I stuck to my video games and my baggy clothes, though I was a bit more conscious about my concealer. I got my hair cut, but all it did was add bangs to my now somewhat-shorter blunt cut. Nothing significant had changed.

Last semester, though, something changed. During the second half of my sophomore year, I started to research potential hairstyles for myself, seriously considering a professional haircut for the first time in my life. I bought a pair of dangly earrings on a whim to supplement my tiny diamond studs that I had worn nearly consistently for several years. I accidentally severely decreased the amount of time I spent playing video games. Worst of all, I wore a skirt voluntarily one day (it was laundry day, okay?), and though I thought it was strange and note-worthy and defended my reasons for doing so all day (I have a well-known grudge against skirts), NO ONE seemed to think it was out of the ordinary except two guy friends who commented on my related facebook status. What happened to me?

At the end of the semester I realized what had been happening. I had been changing without realizing it. Part of me was happy; I was ready to become less of the crazy outsider that I had been my whole life. Part of me, however, was very sad. I missed my simpler existence in the time before makeup and dressing to impress and having boys in the local area. I miss tossing on a baggy black D.A.R.E. t-shirt every weekend and then going to play Morrowind or the Sims all day without having to worry about social obligations. But I'm growing up, and I accept that. I can only hope that I'm becoming more feminine now because somewhere deep down I really want to, rather than social pressure or the universal law of girls growing up that the manga mentioned above seems to suggest. I think that's the case.

Also, the author of the Oatmeal is secretly a fish. I have no evidence for this except a non-existent gut feeling. There's the exposé section of the post.

Radical Music

2010-06-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure many of you are well aware, Organic Chemistry is hard. Really, really hard. It is the only science class I have ever really struggled in. But the worst part of it isn't the millions of flashcards you have to memorize or the mechanisms you have to know backwards and forwards, it's what it does to your mind.

Before Winter Break this year, the last thing we learned about in O. Chem was free radicals. For those of you who don't know what free radicals are, here's a quick summary.

This system of atom with a lone electron is called a free radical and it is fifty kinds of unstable and really reactive, kind of like a house of cards made of baking soda built over a pool of vinegar.

Boom.

In chemistry, an free radical is represented by the letter symbol for the element with a lone dot next to it, like this:

It looks deceptively innocuous to those who haven't studied Organic Chemistry, but slightly terrifying to students who have just been introduced to them.

Anyway, when I got back to orchestra after a full month of not seeing free radicals or any kind of chemistry at all (I love Winter Break so much), I got my new sheet music for the quarter. That's when I saw a full sheet of staccato notes that looked rather like this:

Except that's not what I saw. My brain didn't see music notes with dots, it saw a whole army of free radicals, or in other words, a whole pack of dynamite ready to go off at a moment's notice. For a second or two, I froze in fear. Then I realized that I was being scared to death by a SHEET OF MUSIC. Not one of my prouder moments, especially because I had only been exposed to free radicals for a few weeks over a month ago and I had been seeing staccato notes since 5th grade. Like I said, O. Chem really messes with your head.

House of cards photo credit: http://gallerydriver.com/Art/Costello,%20House%20of%20Cards%20%232,%20detail.jpg

Sheet music photo credit: http://www.melmartin.com/html_pages/sheet_music.html

It's my line, clearly.

2010-06-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to do a full vlog or drawing-y post tonight, so you're going to have to settle with a celebration of a television show. While my favorite show is Doctor Who and the best show I've ever seen is Firefly, the most sheerly entertaining show that I've ever known is Whose Line is it Anyway. I love that show to death. If I could pick any job in the world (assuming I would have all the necessary skill), I would be on that show. Most of you have seen it or bits of it, but here I'm going to compile what I think are the greatest bits ever aired on the show.

Colin and Ryan are always great together:

However, while Colin can stay absolutely serious, Ryan sometimes can't contain his laughter when Colin does something totally ridiculous:

However, Colin is often the butt of the joke. This time it was in the best way possible:

Wayne Brady is not infallible either, as this great clip demonstrates:

And last but definitely not least, things can never, EVER be boring when Richard Simmons is allowed on set:

There are many other great moments that this show has produced (it is by far the biggest YouTube time sink I have ever run across), but I've already flooded you with too much. I hope that whatever you watched of that whole slew of clips made you laugh - they always work for me.

You are amazing.

2010-06-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt so strongly about life in a long time.

For most of my life, I've never been passionate about anything except for getting A grades. Well, as coincidence and fate would have it, now I've gotten a B+ in Organic Chemistry and have simultaneously found my long missing drive. I am a blogger. I feel I can say that with real truth now. I started this blog out of boredom and because I wanted to put myself on the internet. Then I blogged because I had made a promise to post every day. Now I blog because I love it. I really do. I feel liberated, like I can finally defeat the voice that has always told me that I wasn't funny enough, likable enough, eloquent enough, or creative enough to do anything like this. This blog is helping me restore some of the humanity that I'd lost, even though it is simultaneously pulling me further and further into the depths of the internet.

I also love vlogging. I'm bad at it, but I love it. I figure it's like instant immersion in a different culture - I learn as I go. However, though blogging is good for my self-esteem, vlogging is likely hurting it. The thing is that, as I said earlier, I know I'm no good at it. I've got little-to-no charisma, bad lighting, a low-res webcam, and a really poor quality microphone. Even when I look at Charlie McDonnell's early videos, I can see the humor and presence that carried him all the way to the top. I don't have any trace of that. Even so, I am set on completing my sort-of-super-secret video project (and yes, it is secret because it's different than the one I mentioned a month ago. The project evolves fast). The only problem is that I desperately, DESPERATELY need a decent camera, and I'm really not sure that I can get access to one without dropping several hundred dollars. This is my dilemma. I want to film, but I can't, and every day that passes reminds me that the clock is ticking on my deadline. It hurts. I guess that's a good sign though - it means I finally care about something. I wouldn't get rid of that pain if I could.

I have a hobby now. A true hobby. And for that, I thank you. All of you. Your support means the world to me. Your kind comments have propelled me to where I am now. It might not be a great place from an external perspective - only a handful of visible subscribers to this blog and none to my YouTube, no YouTube comments, only three bad quality videos - but I see it for what it is. It is my legacy in the making. It is a place where some people come to be entertained once a day. It is a kind of journal - something I always wanted but could never keep on my own - where I can keep a record of myself as I am. It is a place I feel loved. Thank you all so, so much. You have made my life so much richer. Now, time to find a camera and keep the dream alive!

Note: Apologies for any typos, this has to go unedited for the time being.

Update: This is post is NOT meant to guilt people into subscribing/commenting. I appreciate the encouraging comments I've been getting regarding my videos, but I am really, really not trying to fish for complements. This post is all about what you and this blog have done for me. This is a thank-you post, not a pity-me post. I would also like to clarify that I am very proud of my vlogs, even if I think they are rather low quality. :)

Sea World is a Ninja

2010-06-06T23:46:00.000-07:00

Apparently, theme parks can be stealthy and pop up where you least expect them.

On a separate note, I was asked by a friend if she was allowed to plug my blog. I thought I'd made it obvious before, but the answer is YES. This is not meant to be a private blog. If it does just turn out to be for my friends, that's fine. But I love to entertain people, and I would like as many people to read my blog as the internet allows. I just wanted to clarify that point.

Update: Apparently spending an extra hour on HD processing does nothing to bring the video back up to its original quality. Never. Again.

Cooties vs. Crawfish

2010-06-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

Here is my second vlog. If any of you went to my YouTube channel yesterday, you probably noticed that this video was posted then. You get extra imaginary cookies for that, but no new blog post.

I'll be back tomorrow with hopefully a little more time on my hands and some stories to tell!

Trope Girl Enters the Vlogosphere

2010-06-04T19:47:00.000-07:00

In a misguided attempt to save time on my blog by avoiding MS Paint, I decided to make a video. Apparently it takes over seven minutes to get about a minute-and-a-half of video uploaded to YouTube. The video and sound quality aren't great, but my webcam does the best that it can. Also please forgive the lack of scripting and any sloppy editing; I really am working under a deadline.

I think a little more introspection might be in order.

2010-06-03T21:01:00.000-07:00

You find inspiration. The motivation you've been lacking for so long finally kicks in. You're going to make real progress on your project, the one that makes you excited but also terrified, the one that could change your life forever, bring you into a community, and let you prove to yourself that you are actually creative. But first, you need the materials. You need to watch and eventually buy an episode of a TV show, but not just any episode, THE episode. You could probably find another, but in your mind only that one will do (you have access to a version in Spanish and have already put a lot of thought into it).

First, you check YouTube. Only parts 2 and 3 are there. You hunt around desperately, resorting to Google video, but part 1 is just not there.

You don't panic. Everything is on the internet somewhere. You try every means you can think of, avoiding the downloading sites because you're terrified of viruses, the long arm of the law, and your own hardcore guilt-trip issues. Nothing meets your requirements.

You check Amazon because you heard that you can buy single episodes there. Great! You love the idea of buying the episode now and getting it immediately. But the episode isn't there, and you don't have the time/money/patience to buy a full season DVD and wait for it to ship.

You check iTunes and find that they DO sell episodes individually! You check the season that should hold your episode...and it isn't there. It isn't anywhere. You check and recheck, desperation turning into resignation.

Suddenly, you realize that you are a college student who has spent a good half-hour chunk of the best years of her life hunting down an episode of Dora the Explorer. You examine your life seriously for a few seconds. Then you take a shower and start to mentally prepare yourself to begin research on other usable and iTunes-available episodes of Dora the Explorer.

I just wanted to take a nap, that's all...

2010-06-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

This evening, I tried to take a nap in the hour before my friend was going to call about fixing dinner. This is what happened instead.

First, the formerly-latent creative part of my brain decided to start spouting off ideas really urgently...AGAIN. It seems to hibernate while I'm awake and then wake up with a bang as soon as I try to fall asleep.

Then I noticed the drummers outside. They drummed a really repetitive rhythm almost non-stop for at least an hour or an hour-and-a-half.

Then my fridge decided to act up. While it is useful to have a fridge acting as a makeshift bedside table, I clearly didn't think the consequences all the way through before I put it right next to my bed.

Finally, just when I was starting to filter out the distractions and drift off, the phone rang. C'est la vie.

(and then I found five dollars)

P.S. First person to point out the pop-culture reference in this blog wins imaginary internet cookies!

Edit: I have to give half-points for Fat Albert and "Hey hey hey", but that's actually not the reference I was thinking of. Also, in terms of the reference, I ONLY want the name of the show (there are people reading who do not need any spoilers). I'll know if you actually know what I'm talking about (as opposed to a shot in the dark) by who you are.

Stage Beauty

2010-06-01T23:54:00.000-07:00

Once again I must admit defeat, the deadline is fast approaching and I must blog quickly. No drawings today then. However, the reason that I ran out of time was that some friends were visiting whom I don't get to see very often. We watched a movie called Stage Beauty, which, if you were paying attention to the title of this post, is today's topic.

The movie is about the era when all female theater roles were played by men. I don't want to say much more than that because the movie is something that deserves to be discovered on its own. What I'm about to write is true of any movie, but the less you know going in, the happier you'll be. It's not critical to go in without reading the back of the DVD case, but I know I was happier that way.

Anyway, the movie is one of the most interesting studies of gender I've seen in a long time. It is a movie that could be read as either highly problematic or very unproblematic in its portrayal of gender; I tend strongly toward the latter. Now, before you run away, I am not usually a person who goes for gender studies issues; however, the movie impressed me because it put the issues in an interesting context and wove them skillfully into a good story. I very much enjoyed the movie and would strongly recommend it, whether you're looking for something to think about or whether you just want to have fun.

I think I just found one of my buttons.

2010-05-31T20:46:00.000-07:00

You know, I had something funny prepared to write today, but I guess that's just going to have to wait until tomorrow. This post is not funny. It is serious, and although I don't want this blog to turn into me airing my grievances, I won't be able to focus on blogging properly until I get this off my chest. I also want to say that though this blog takes its inspiration from differences of opinion, this post is not going to be about whose opinion is right or wrong (as hard as it may be to not write about that). This is about the best and worst ways to support a viewpoint such that other people will actually listen.

My afternoon:

Image from http://xkcd.com/386/

I want to preface this by saying that I can count on three fingers the number of times I can remember getting into an internet argument/debate. I generally avoid getting into internet debates like the plague because I, like everyone else, has seen how they turn out on YouTube (see the TVTropes page on GIFT). Usually no-one ends up either victorious or happy. The first time was a debate about the finale of Battlestar Galactica, in which both sides were actually quite polite and I think a mutual agreement/respect was achieved. The second was a Facebook debate about feminism, which never devolved into a horrifying mess but which basically ended with everyone realizing that an agreement was not going to be reached. I can accept that. The third is what I am about to describe. It is once again rooted in feminism (though this time I found myself disagreeing with someone from the opposite side of the spectrum), but the topic that I disagreed with was not actually what set me off.

Today, I was directed to an article which was a self-proclaimed "radical feminist" analysis of a popular TV show. Now, I consider myself a feminist, but I disagreed with much of what the author was writing. Like I said, I'm not going to go into that. Reading through the article and the comments, I let everything slide because my general way of thinking is that everyone has the right to their own opinion, no matter what I may believe. However, there was one thing that just completely sent me over the edge. One person who had read her article left the following comment:

"While I realise you hate my sex, may a gay man comment on what has been a facinating read?"

The author of the post had the following response.

"I don't hate your sex, I hate your gender. If you don't understand what I mean by that then go and do your feminist homework before attempting to take up space on my blog."

This response riled me up enough that I wrote an email, and since I don't feel like completely rewriting what I've already written, here's the main body of the email I sent to her:

"This man, a man who is, due to his sexuality, probably trying to fight the establishment in many of the ways you are, is trying to complement you. He wants to open a discussion. He is trying to present himself as an ally. [...]

"You shut him down and chased him away because he didn't use one word in the way you consider correct. He's clearly interested in what you have to say, so why not explain the difference to him yourself? Educate him. Maybe just give him a few links to look at explaining the difference. Then tell him that you would like to talk more about this issue which is clearly so important to you.

"The battle of equality is not going to be won by locking people out. If you want to convince people of the validity your viewpoint, you have to be willing to talk to them first. Otherwise you give your movement a bad name. Listen, I'm a feminist too. [...] But it's hard to get these things rolling when part of our movement exudes blind, mass hatred (reminder, you used "hate" in your comment - I'm not pulling that out of thin air) for so much of society with little chance of letting people in. It makes me sad to say it, but in some ways it seems to me that you are hurting the cause. I know that is not your goal. Please, please, please let people engage in conversation with you. Your ideas deserve to be heard and discussed. Right now, you are the major reason why it's not happening."

I wish I'd edited the message when I'd had a cooler head to check aggression levels and grammar, but it is what it is. Anyway, the point is not the feminism, the point is that locking out outsiders by shutting down communication is detrimental to people trying to spread a message. It causes resentment and misunderstanding and can lead to many larger problems down the road. If someone expresses interest in an idea that you care about, guide them though it!

Anyway, that's my thought for today. Hopefully the funny will return tomorrow.

It's Sunday!

2010-05-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

Because it's Sunday, I'm taking the chance to do only a small post instead of a huge one. Don't worry, my time is being well spent doing research for my internet video thing. There's been quite a bit of evolution in the project recently, as the trope videos are turning into more of a side project to my newer videos. I'm not going to say too much about it (I'm a bit paranoid about getting my ideas stolen), but basically I'm retooling the videos I was going to make so that I can submit them to Channel Awesome, which many of you may know as the home of the Nostalgia Critic. As my mantra has been for months now, if I can script well and make some decent funny (that's the hard part, but I'm figuring out a decent system), I think I have a shot.

Anyway, the thought for today is really just an observation I had as a child. When I was watching Teletubbies one day (YES I WATCHED TELETUBBIES. GO AHEAD, MOCK AWAY), I noticed that if I turned the volume up on the TV, I continued to feel the need to increase the volume. However, if I decreased the volume slowly, I could eventually bring the volume down to very low levels without losing any understanding of what was being said. My ears adjusted to the reduced volume quite quickly. The urge to continue turning down the volume in the latter situation turned out to be much stronger than the need to turn up the volume in the former situation. Has anyone else ever noticed this effect?

Finally, a video which everyone should see and which most of you have probably already seen: Kirby meets Snoop Dogg.

Is that a clown in the mirror?

2010-05-29T23:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's the thing. Even though I'm a twenty-year old college student, make-up sort of terrifies me. I just have no real concept of how it is supposed to be used. The only lessons I got in the area came from my brief exposure to fashion magazines, but with no close, fashion-capable female friends during my formative years, I quickly lost any knowledge I gained. It's been an uphill struggle ever since to try to catch up with my peers. I'm pretty sure it's too late, though. Basically, I have no sense of how to apply makeup and how much makeup is enough. To any guys reading this, I want you to think about how lucky you are as you keep reading.

Here is all the makeup I have with me for the summer. At least I think that it's all that I have, but there could be more hiding elsewhere...

And yes, for those of you paying attention, I do have 3 nearly identical hairbrushes there. There's one or two more hiding in other places. Yet my hair does not stay neat and tidy. Make of that what you will.

Now, if the intelligence I have gathered is correct, that's actually a relatively small number of cosmetic-y things for a girl/woman [insert Britney Spears song here] my age to have. That's scary. Here's a breakdown of these various war paints and how much I understand them.

The Lip Coloring Agents

Okay, these I mostly get. However, these are all either glosses (generally no real color) or very light lip tints. Even so, I'm worried that I put on too much. I put on the slightest bit of lip tint and see this:

turn into this:

So I defeat the purpose of the whole venture by wiping off most of what I just put on.

Eyeliner and Mascara

I actually used to know how to use eyeliner and mascara, at least somewhat. I still have some mascara skills (kind of) but it doesn't help that all I have is mascara I inherited from my mom that is now at least 3 years old. It clumps and doesn't quite work right and I'm always worried I'm going to have a tiny seizure and get the stupid stuff all over my face. Speaking of tiny seizures: eyeliner. Eyeliner is one of the scariest things in the world to use, and yet many women are societally expected to use the stuff every day. IT'S A PENCIL MOVING RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR EYE. THAT IS INHERENTLY DANGEROUS. But even if I do manage to get eyeliner on without poking my eye out, apply the mascara, and then use the little curling thing to make my eyelashes stick up, I always feel like I've messed up.

I make a lovely raccoon.

It doesn't matter what I'm doing or wearing, I always feel like eyeliner in particular marks me out as trying too hard.

Also, you see that little brush in the picture? I've tried using it to untangle my eyelashes (yes, that is a problem), but I have no idea if I'm even using the thing correctly.

Eyeshadow

Oh God, eyeshadow. This stuff really terrifies me. I've had it all my life, but it has brought me almost nothing but pain. The only time I ever wore it was when I went to my proms. I had a friend (Tonks from the last post) put it on for me both times and before I got the dress on I always thought I looked like a prostitute (and, as Tonks will tell you, I declared that thought quite loudly and with great emotion the first time). I just have no idea. I put a little on and I see nothing. I put a little more on:

I should audition for the part of Oscar the Grouch.

My friends tell me that I'm supposed to blend it or something. Okay.

THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU. BEGONE, SATAN!

It just never works, so I never wear it. So why do I have so much of it lying around? Why do I bother to bring it to college and bring it home every time I travel? Because I have a vain hope that one day I'll have a magical epiphany about the stuff, that's why.

Note: You may have noticed that there is no blush anywhere in my makeup stash. That is because, if anything, I know less about blush than I do about eyeshadow. Oddly, though, I trust it more.

Face junk

This one hurts the most because I thought I actually had a handle on it. Wash face twice a day with the face-washy stuff (doesn't always happen, but I know how to do it!), put lotion on skin (well, apparently I should really have some special face moisturizer, but I don't), then put foundation/concealer stuff over face so that my acne and acne scars are less blatantly obvious. I've been using concealer since high school (I didn't even know it existed until about sophomore year - what a great discovery that was!), so I was almost positive I knew what I was doing. That is, until about a month ago. One of my friends asked, "Are you wearing foundation?". My response:

Captain Oblivious.

My friends finally told me that apparently there were lines around the edges of my foundation that I hadn't blended in well enough. Great. Apparently, the only makeup I really felt comfortable with was stuff I had been using wrong for years on end. Brilliant. The worst part? My skin problems were still pretty visible anyway.

So, in conclusion, there are way too many cosmetic products out there, and some of us were absent on makeup day in the School of Life. Maybe someday I'll figure it all out, but part of me doesn't want to. Part of my identity has been set pretty firmly as "the girl who doesn't do girly stuff," and I'm not sure how much I want to change that. Basically, if you ever see me wearing well-applied eyeshadow that I put on myself, keep an eye out for four menacing horsemen hanging around.

Edit: I have remembered at least two fashion-savvy friends I had growing up. However, by that point I was focused on video games instead of asking questions about makeup.

The Greatest Sales Pitch In the World

2010-05-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

I sold Girl Scout cookies for most of my life up until college. From second grade through senior year of high school, I was going door to door, standing out in front of banks, and bothering people at Blockbuster, all for the sake of supporting the Scouts.

Every year the major way I sold cookies was site sales, where I would go out to grocery stores and banks and the like for two hour blocks of time in order to disrupt the lives of the general populace with sales pitches about boxes of delicious fat and sugar. The older I got, the more site sales I did. This was problematic, and the best way I can explain why is through an urban legend among older Girl Scouts.

They say that there was once a Girl Scout in high school who tried to sell cookies to a man, but he said he wanted none. She later saw him across the street buying from an adorable little Girl Scout, maybe seven years old. And they say this was not the only time this happened...

The fact of the matter is that people generally tend not to want to buy from older Girl Scouts. We are simply less endearing and are perhaps seen as too old to be Girl Scouts. What this means is that we have to better and more persistent in our sales pitch in order to bring in any customers. So I was assertive. Every single time a person walked by during a site sale, I asked, "Would you like to buy some Girl Scout Cookies?" I said it so often that it started slurring into a southern drawl that I couldn't get rid of if I tried. I also got creative with my sales. This is where my awesome friend (who will here be known as Tonks for her sheer awesomeness) comes in.

One night in my junior year of high school Tonks volunteered to sell cookies with me. I was ecstatic, and for very good reason. It was a slow sales night, so we spent the better part of two hours building towers on the sales table with the cookies. When I say towers, I don't mean stacks. I mean tall and relatively complex structures with flying buttresses. Every time we sold a box, we had to rebuild the structure. It was great, and the sheer awesomeness probably convinced several customers to buy (after I assaulted them with my drawl, of course).

Afterwards, Tonks came home with me to eat dinner with my family. As at every meal, we started with my family's only real remaining connection to religion - saying grace. I started to speak, expecting the classic Catholic grace I had recited since childhood to come out. Instead...

That's right. I tried to sell Girl Scout cookies to God. You only wish you were as accidentally blasphemously cool as me. I really kind of wish I had finished that sentence. Just think of the untapped divine market. I mean, who doesn't like Girl Scout cookies?

I would like to end this post by noting that this blog is exactly one month old today. Not long in the grand scheme of things, but after posting every day, it feels like forever. I would really like to thank my readers for all of your support. I have gotten such lovely comments and phone calls and complements, all encouraging me to keep going. You are why I post every day. I have had such a blast writing this so far, and if you think that you would also like to start a blog, go for it! Just make sure to tell me if you do; I'd love to follow it.

Bubble Girl

2010-05-27T23:16:00.000-07:00

Something strange happened to me recently.

I became the sole resident of a self-contained world.

That statement might seem like an exaggeration, and in some ways it is, but the basic truth of it stands. A few days back, on a day when I didn't have work, I found that until my friend summoned me from my habitat to go food shopping, I was doing all my living from three rooms. Dorm rooms during the school year are already strange places where one not only sleeps and dresses but also does work. Now I find that my room is also where I store all the food I need to survive, not just occasional snacks. My food lives on my dresser, on my shelf, and in my refrigerator. I pack lunches on the unoccupied desk across the room. The only times I need to leave my room even within my suite are when I need to cook something on the stove or in the microwave in the main room or when I need to do a sink-or-bathroom related activity in the bathroom across the hall. That's it. Everything I need is within ten steps of my room. I could live entire weekends without going more than 15 or 20 feet from my room door. Entire weeks, if I didn't have to buy food or go to work. Luckily, I have a friend who I eat dinner with some nights, but the fact of the matter is that other than work, 90% of my interactions with the outside world happen through the internet.

A few months ago a friend of mine who graduated college went through much the same thing, at least in terms of sudden social isolation (I don't know if he stored food on top of his dresser). I find that I understand what he went through a little better now.

The only things keeping me tied down to sanity right now are this blog (which eats up a fair chunk of time, let me tell you) and the hope of getting my video series launched. Unfortunately, both are starting to pull me down more than I'd like - the stress of getting a decent blog entry up every single day is more than I'd like to admit, particularly now that they are becoming increasingly MS Paint heavy. This last week I haven't been able to make them as good as I would like, and I think it shows. The first week of work is always kind of a shock to the system. I promise that tomorrow I will do my best to break the slump and get something legitimately funny posted again.

The vlog is also a problem. Long hours of work and tutoring mean that I have made almost no progress on that front, and I feel that the longer I go before I get the ball rolling the less likely it is that it will ever start. I'm not going to let this opportunity pass, though. This weekend I will get a script done, if not filming. Hold me to this, readers. I'm going to shatter this bubble I find myself in, even if it is only virtually. Let's rock and roll!

The Zombie War Escort Mission Part 3: Live and Let Die

2010-05-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

Part 1 is here, part 2 is here.

Although we could clearly hear the zombies ahead of us, the only viable option was to move toward them until we could divert left down a slope. The group quietly divided up into pairs so that we could send staggered bursts of people down the path to safety. When it was my turn to go, I ran as quickly and as low to the ground as I could. The combination of the two quickly connected by butt to the ground in a rather undignified manner, but I picked myself up and kept moving.

The whole group managed to reach the bottom of the slope. We also met up with another group of resistance members, doubling our numbers from about 15 to 30. Everything seemed like it was going to be all right.

We moved along in our herd for a few minutes, the package safely concealed in the middle, but two problems quickly became apparent. The first was that no one seemed to know exactly when we were supposed to arrive back at the main safe zone. The second was quite a bit more serious. At some point, for some reason, about two-thirds of the group, including several key leaders, decided to go somewhere else. I don't know where they went or why they decided to go, but they left behind the package - the whole point of the mission - very exposed and weakly defended.

Once they left, our odds of survival plummeted. We were out in the middle of an open area with zombies visible in the distance, moaning for brains. The only cover we had was the slight slope of the ground. We lay flat for several seconds, analyzing the threat. Finally, we realized that time before the mission ended was running out. The only thing we could do was to run the last few hundred feet to the final safe zone, otherwise we would fail the mission by default. We ran, sprinting through open area and stray zombies. When we approached the safe zone, the whole area was filled with people. I heard vague shouting, but I was so confused that I couldn't process any of it. For all I could tell I might have been running toward a patch of zombies hidden in the crush of people. I ran anyway.

I made it. I lived. I arrived at the final safe zone untouched with my other team members. Some scattered humans had not been so lucky. I saw friends of mine who had been converted to the zombie horde. From that point on,

they were truly dead to me.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

The end (finally).

The Zombie War Escort Mission Part 2: (Artificial) Intelligence

2010-05-25T23:20:00.000-07:00

If you haven't read part 1 yet, either scroll down or click here.

The resistance finally arrived to liberate us. We opened the door to discuss strategy with them and found out that for some reason the zombies had left their post. I was excited to see that the group sent to rescue me included the two friends I knew who were in the resistance. One of my friends was carrying this style of gun:

For those of you who have been reading since the beginning, this is the gun I have mentioned before. I liked my friend's so much that I later bought this one for myself in preparation for the ultimate battle described here.

This gun, however, was far from the biggest or most impressive. Some people were carrying fully automatic Nerf guns. That's gun power.

From this point on, my group and I were referred to as "the package". We were to be protected at all costs. As I mentioned previously, if one of us got bitten, all of us became zombies. It was then that I realized what I was. I was Ashley from Resident Evil 4 - a huge liability and a zombie magnet. I was the dreaded escort mission that all gamers must eventually face. I comforted myself with the thought that I at least I probably had better AI than Ashley did.

The group swarmed around us as we left the building. We moved as quickly and silently as possible - the package doing our best to stay in the middle of the pack, the resistance doing their best to cover all sides.

Zombie howls filled the air almost immediately. We couldn't run without running the risk of exposing the package to zombie assault, so our speed was stunted. We were only saved by the apparent stupidity, cowardice, or ignorance of the zombies - they didn't even try to attack us.

We kept moving through the dark fields and roads of the college. Every bush was suspected of secluding zombies. Then we saw the parking lot.

I don't know how many of you have ever looked at a parking lot the way I saw it that night. It was terrifying. Every car presented the perfect hiding spot for a zombie. Not only that, but we clearly heard zombies coming from the direction we had to move toward if we wanted to escape. We all flattened ourselves behind the cars and waited for them to pass, hoping that they hadn't seen us. It was no good. The zombies were still out there. Staying in place guaranteed our doom. We had to run.

To be continued...

The Zombie War Escort Mission Part 1: Moons and Socks

2010-05-24T23:37:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, zombies invaded my college. They went under the guise of armband-wearing college students, but those in the resistance knew the truth. They were zombies and they wanted human flesh.

One night, the resistance learned of small packs of human survivors who were spread out across the campus. They knew that there were seven safe locations in which three or four teams of these humans were hidden. However, the zombies had somehow gotten the same information. The two groups had very clear goals: the resistance had to rescue the survivors, the zombies had to bite a human in each group in order to turn the whole pack into zombies. I was one of the scattered humans. This is my story.

I was out of the loop when the zombie invasion began. I had been too busy doing homework to notice what was going on in the outside world. By the time I realized what was happening, the resistance had already formed and settled into a base location far away from where I was. I found two other humans like me who had been left behind. They had heard of the safe locations, so we decided to travel to one and hope that the resistance found us so that we could join their ranks instead of succumbing to the zombie horde.

Before we began our journey, I prepared myself for the trials to come. The only weapons known to hurt the zombies were socks and Nerf gun darts; therefore, lacking the latter, I stocked up on all the balled-up socks I could find. I put on my black leather jacket because it served as nighttime camouflage and because it had deep enough pockets to hold my arsenal of projectiles. With courage in my heart and socks in my hands, I went out to face the night with my team.

Ready to kick butt.

Trouble made itself known as soon just after we left the team meeting spot. As we made our way to the safe zone, we saw zombies tailing us in the far distance. They knew exactly which location we were going to hide in. Luckily, we arrived before they did, rushing into the dorm common room and locking the door before the zombies could get in. All we could do then was wait.

The team in the safe room.

The locked door we had entered through.

The wall on the opposite side of the room from the entrance door. There was a door in the glass wall which opened outward but was locked to the outside. It was our alternate escape route.

The zombies arrived soon after we did. They were stymied by the locks and didn't notice the emergency escape route (we worked hard not to draw attention to it). For a while, nothing happened. We sat in the room and the zombies patrolled the hallway outside the entrance door; no one could do anything until the resistance arrived.

I decided that the best thing to do was to demoralize the enemy. I made faces at the zombies outside our door, sticking out my tongue, stretching out my cheeks, and pulling down on the skin below my eyes. They responded in kind, but despite their rotting skin none of them could make a face to match the horrors that mine could produce. Victory was mine.

The zombies did get their vengeance in another way, however. When we opened the blinds around our alternative exit, the zombies became aware of our back-up plan. They immediately ran around to that side of the room to see if they could get in through the glass door, but they failed.

Our enemies in all their undead glory.

The female zombie on the far right decided to strike back against the blow their morale had taken in the face-off by pulling down her shorts and ramming her rear end against the glass. Truly there is no flesh as disgusting as that of a zombie.

The zombies soon gave up their assault on the glass wall and returned to the hallway. Eventually, we couldn't see them at all. For all we knew, they were plotting to get into the safe room through the interior balcony on the second floor. All we could do was sit and hope that the humans would arrive before the zombies could get in.

To be continued...

Note: the framing story for this story might be fictionalized, but the events themselves are eventually true. This event was one of the most fun things I have ever done. Advice for everyone out there: if your college/local area does have Humans vs. Zombies, join in the next game. If not, start one for yourself.

http://humansvszombies.org/

P.S. Lizzle, this is for you.

P.P.S. TWAIO, who are you? Am I just being really thick about acronyms?

P.P.P.S. This site's crazy formatting issues are my real arch-enemy.

A History of Social Awkwardness #2: The Boston Tree Party

2010-05-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: this post actually has nothing to do with Boston. I apologize to any native Bostonians who may read this.

I don't know what impression I tend to give, but at heart I'm really a very shy person. This trait becomes especially apparent at parties.

When I was a freshman at college, the first week of classes was filled with parties for freshman to get to know each other. One party was outdoors at a place I didn't know very well. It was a nice night, the party was going well, and there were nice trees around for scenery. I was pretty happy. There was only one problem. This isn't true for most of the world, but for me, going into a crowd at a dance party and meeting new people is about as likely to happen as going up to an Orc to ask for a cup of sugar.

Not going to happen.

Instead, I decided to go examine the trees. I found a cool line of ants walking up and down the tree and examined their paths. I examined their paths more intently than I really wanted to, actually, mostly because I wanted someone to notice.

My attempts at gaining people's attention by thinking at them VERY LOUDLY only worked a little. One or two people walked by, asked what I was looking at, and then immediately figured out that I was a few Roswells more strange than they wanted to deal with and moved on. I met no one and went home a little more informed about ants and a little less socially competent.

Today's lesson: People are less aware of you than you think. Standing around and waiting for someone to talk to you is a strategy with a high rate of failure. Don't do what Trope Girl did.

Orc photo from http://orc-world.com/images/orcs.jpg

A History of Social Awkwardness #1: Personal Choo-Choo Bubble

2010-05-22T23:14:00.000-07:00

This is the first installment of my multi-part series “A History of Social Awkwardness”. I’m not even going to try to put the parts of this series in chronological order because I am positive that I will continue remembering more incidents in no particular order over the course of the series. Because I have a bit of time on my hands right now, I’m going to give you the most elaborate event first.

When I was 18 years old, I went to Disney World with my mom, dad, and best friend. We went to Disney’s Hollywood Studios the first day and it was great. Even though it is distinctly the weakest of the four parks, you really can’t go wrong with the Tower of Terror and the Rock n’ ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLercoster [Man, it would be so cool if Disney actually spelled it that way]. We had lunch reservations at the Prime Time Café. The point of the café is that the employees act like it’s still the ‘50’s, minus the racism and McCarthyism. As we were led to our table by the hostess, we were told that this was “Ma’s place” and that we had to follow Ma’s rules. We got to our table and saw that there were little televisions everywhere, all of them playing the same clips of 1950s television. It was, in theory, a very fun little place.

When our waiter (I’m going to call him Joey, although I forget if that’s really his name) showed up, he told us Ma’s rules. They were approximately as follows:

1) No elbows on the table

2) Eat all your vegetables

3) Clean your plate.

The second rule seems redundant in light of the third rule, but in retrospect it’s very possible that he really meant “Eat all your vegetables first.” Anyway, my family smiled and nodded and agreed to all the rules, then promptly forgot all about them for five minutes. What we didn’t know was that Joey was serious.

We were distinctly more careful about our elbows after that. It’s amazing how intimidating a Disney employee in his mid-twenties can be.

Our food arrived a little while later. I had ordered a chicken pot pie in a bowl. It was delicious, so I was guaranteed to clean my plate, and because there were no side dishes, I didn’t have to worry about eating all my vegetables. I was totally solid.

We all sat at the table happily eating our food when Joey came back. “I see you haven’t eaten all your vegetables,” he said to me. I looked at my half-eaten pot pie, confused, and then saw the offending vegetable.

A single pea. A single pea was visible on the surface of my pot pie. I want to make something very clear about pot pies. THEY ARE MEANT TO BE FILLED WITH VEGETABLES. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO PICK THEM ALL OUT FIRST. THAT WOULD BE INCREDIBLY TEDIOUS AND AGAINST THE PURPOSE OF THE PIE. But Joey didn’t care. Before I knew what was happening, Joey walked up next to my chair, grabbed my fork, scooped up the pea and the surrounding pie, and held the loaded fork in front of me.

Finally, my social survival instincts overwhelmed the embarrassment-induced freeze. I ate the pea.

Joey left the table right after that. Let me tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as fast as I did in the minutes after the choo-choo incident. I made darn well sure that the plate would be absolutely clean and that my elbows would be off the table when he returned. I succeeded. When Joey came back, I was ready, but there was one factor I couldn’t control: my mother.

Things got kind of blurry after that. Joey and my parents joked around a bit about long-distance relationships. I’m pretty sure that I found a nice spot on the table to give my attention to. I was all too happy to get out of that restaurant when it was time to leave.

I promised to get revenge on my mother that would arrive five years after the event. I wonder if she’s forgotten…I certainly haven’t.

Worth my weight in quarters

2010-05-21T23:27:00.000-07:00

As I have already firmly established, I lacked a certain degree of common sense as a child. And by that I mean that I had fewer street smarts at age ten than the average three-year-old. My excess of academic aptitude had to get drawn off from somewhere else, and that somewhere else was my "how to operate in the real world" aptitude. Those of you who know me well are fully aware that this imbalance is still in full effect. But I digress.

One night when I was about nine or ten years old, I decided to heat coins in front of the fireplace. They didn't actually get hot, just warm. One quarter called out to me and I decided to put it in my mouth. Why did I do that even though I was old enough to know better? Please see the first paragraph.

Anyway, I made some strange movement and suddenly the quarter slid to the back of my throat. My mom was nowhere within the immediate vicinity to Heimlich me out of the situation, so the only option to prevent asphyxiation was to swallow said quarter. It. Hurt.

I found myself marvelously not dead a few seconds later. I tried swallowing and felt the quarter stuck in my throat, though I could still breathe normally. Starting to worry, I ran upstairs and found my mother in the bathroom. I didn't want to scare her, so I presented the issue as gently as I could.

Her mother senses kicked in and told her exactly what had happened. We called a nurse hotline and found out that I was most likely not going to die. The quarter had gone into my stomach and not my windpipe (which really would have killed me) and the quarter I thought I had stuck in my throat was just some scraping from the quarter's journey.

The take home message: when it comes to small objects, keep an eye on me as you would a toddler.

"I'm having a really hard time naming this post," Trope Girl said titularly.

2010-05-20T23:39:00.000-07:00

Some of my friends are going to kill me for bringing this topic up, but I am the daughter of a woman who makes puns constantly - it's kind of in my blood. Today's topic is Tom Swifties. I suppose the best way to explain what these are is to give a few examples (courtesy of Wikipedia):

"They had to amputate them both at the ankles," Tom said defeatedly.
"Who discovered radium?" asked Marie curiously..
"Who put the moss in the bog again?" asked Tom repeatedly.
"A word that contains all five vowels? And I suppose you want those vowels to appear in alphabetical order?" asked Tom facetiously.
"The robber is coming down the stairs", Tom said condescendingly.
"Nnnn", Tom murmured forensically.

So, as you've probably gleaned, Tom Swifties are a specific type of pun in which someone says a sentence and the sentence is described with a pun. They were originally inspired by the Tom Swift books in which no one ever just said anything, they always spoke with an descriptive flair.

Anyway, a few summers back my friends introduced me to Tom Swifties while we were on a trip together. They quickly regretted this decision. Here's some of what was produced then*:

“Stop throwing trash out of your car,” the cop said literally, and Tom refused.
-Me, Nia, and one other

“Man overboard!” Tom said swimmingly.
-Me

“Your toupee fell off,” Tom said baldly.
-Me

“I’m all for cow rights,” Tom said provocatively. [This is my favorite. Hint: Spanish is required.]
-Me

“I fail,” Tom said saucily. [This one expects that "failsauce" is part of your vocabulary. If it isn't already, make it so.]
-Dreamwaffles

“I have the queen of spades,” Tom said heartily.
-Dreamwaffles

“I’ve tried every way to get to sleep,” Tom said sheepishly.
-Me

“I’ve cleared the lawn of leaves,” Tom said rakishly.
-Me

“I’m tired of digging,” Tom said trenchantly.
-Dreamwaffles

“Ms. Little’s here,” Tom said in a small voice.
-Me and Nia

“What’s the antiderivative of sec²?” Tom said tangentially.
-Me

“I’m menstruating,” Tina said periodically.
-Me

“I have a turtle,” Tom said awkwardly.
-Dreamwaffles

“That brush hit me really hard,” Trope Girl said bruisingly.
-Dreamwaffles

“I’ve lost my flashlight,” Tom said darkly.
-Me

“I’m a believer,” Tom said faithfully.
-Me

“Hi!” Tom said loftily.
-Dreamwaffles and/or me

“Put some more hemlock in the pot,” Tom said deadpan.
- U-dawg

“I love semaphore!” Tom said unflaggingly.
-Me

*Credit to Dreamwaffles for transcribing these.

If you want to know more about Tom Swifties, you can visit the Wikipedia page. For a more fun use of your time, read Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar, a very funny book about a high school student which includes many well-done Tom Swifties.

["I don't know how to end this blog post," Trope Girl said terminally.]

Note: yes, the font and format went a little screwy, but I don't know how to fix it without a lot of work.

What is means to chose a college

2010-05-19T23:58:00.000-07:00

When I was picking what college I was going to attend, I came to a realization which has shaped my attitude toward life ever since. I realized in my deliberations between the two finalist colleges that what I was choosing was not the college that would be best for me, but who I wanted to become. It is true that people should apply to colleges where they think they would be happy, but once they have been accepted, the final decision should be based on the type of person a student wants to become. For example, if someone is choosing between a college that specializes in athletics and parties and a college that is more quiet and academically based, they are essentially choosing the person that they want to evolve into over the course of their college career. Even more subtle differences, such as the presence or absence of a ballroom team, exert their influence on a person.

For me, this ultimately became a choice between two colleges of generally equal academic merit - one with more diverse academics and more high-profile local events, the other with a better chance of a social life and dating. I chose the former, knowing that I was choosing to put myself in an environment where I would have more opportunities to become a well-rounded person in every way except dating. As far as I know, this has played out pretty accurately. In fact, I couldn't even imagine going to the other college now. But that's the point - I couldn't have. The person I am now is a product of the experiences I have had in college. A different person would have emerged from the other college I would have chosen. She could not have attended the college I have. I know that's all a bit fuzzy - but it's how I think.

An environment is not the sole determining factor in shaping a person. Some people have totally surpassed or missed the opportunities or detriments present in their environment to become an unexpected person. However, choosing an environment will change you in some way. Make sure you play the odds as best you can to become the person you think you should be.

Note: Apologies for any grammatical problems and the rampant use of the word "environment". I'm writing this very quickly to meet the deadline and I'm not very awake right now. I'll hopefully be back with the funny illustrations tomorrow. At least, I hope they're funny.

The short version is that I cannot be trusted around food.

2010-05-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, I have a strong mischievous streak in me, though it has (un)fortunately been suppressed slightly as of late. When I was younger, though, it was something that was very clear to everyone around me.

My best friend threw a party at her house one day. I think that there were about 15 to 20 people there, about half of whom I knew. We were all just hanging out having a good time when I suddenly got bored in a way that is dangerous for everyone around me. I went upstairs with another friend, a girl a few years younger than me, then we came back down about ten minutes later with a surprise for everyone.

Who wouldn't trust such innocent faces like that?

Apparently, almost everybody. Everyone who knew me had, by the looks on their faces, pretty clearly decided not to touch those marshmallows with a ten foot pole. Some people who didn't know me but who were observant of the first group's reactions also decided to decline the treats. But a couple of teenage boys, bless their souls, were oblivious to everything but their stomachs. Everyone else watched with bated breath as the boys reached for the sugar bombs on the tray.

The audience wasn't disappointed.

It was true that the tray held marshmallows covered in syrup; however, my associate and I had loaded the syrup up with salt. Tasty. After all this time I've forgotten who those boys were, but I wouldn't be surprised if they involuntarily shuddered upon meeting me again.

Apparently beheading isn't that bad.

2010-05-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

I had a strange dream last night. I've forgotten the bulk of it, but all I know is that at some point, I died. I think possibly through beheading - that feels like it was a pretty big theme. I felt the life leave my body, but then woke up in a nearly identical one somewhere else. In context of the dream, it was like reincarnation hybridized with Quantum Leap (from what I know of that show). Each time I died I woke in a different body. The first was a girl who looked exactly like me, the second a young boy, the third a teenage boy. Each time I woke, the most urgent thought in my head was the hope that I had reincarnated near the time of my death so that I could find my parents and let them know that I was okay. I never did find them before I woke up.

The most interesting part of the dream came in my first reincarnated body when I saw a whole army lead by someone who I think looked like Russell Crowe demolish an entire city before he got there just so that he could dramatically run straight to the king from the beach with no hindrance. As his executioner lifted up the blade to behead the king, I knelt down on the ground as well, suddenly understanding that the king and I were linked and that a blade to his neck would sever mine as well. I felt no pain as the sword struck my/his neck, but as I lay there on the beach with the life bleeding out of me, my last thoughts in the comfortable warmth of death (I was sleeping in a warm bed in real life) were how good this body had been to me all my life (somehow it didn't matter that it was actually just an identical body to the first) and how much I would miss it. I thanked the body, felt the last of its life leave it, and then jumped to the next one.

Somehow I don't think that a creepy dream should count as the daily post. I'll try to get something funnier/more interesting up later.

Back in my day (A love letter to the internet)

2010-05-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

Note: I've realized that the linked text on this blog (and in this post) is rather hard to see and I don't know how to fix it. Just keep your eye out for some slightly pinker text.

Often, it is too easy to look around at the world and think that nothing is changing, that even with the advances in technology that we see, things are generally staying the same. But they aren't. The world is constantly in flux, it's just that often, changes creep up on us.

When I was a child, cell phones were rare. Not unheard of, but not ubiquitous, either. Getting a cell phone for high school was a big deal. Now everyone has one. Quick, try to think of how your life would be if you got lost while driving and couldn't call a friend for directions (or for some people, if you couldn't pull up Google Maps on your phone). Google Maps, for that matter. Mapquest and the like have given us the ability to ignore maps altogether and simply tell the computer to get us from point A to point B. I don't remember having that as a child.

The internet as a whole is quite astounding. I know that I would have lost contact with all my amazing friends from high school without Facebook. I'm bad at letters and phone calls and even emails, but Facebook is just so easy. Way back when, and I'm talking 10 years ago, whole families shared email addresses. Now I'm not part of the real world right now (yay college!), but I feel like that's changed as well.

Some of us remember actually having to go to the library to do any kind of research. Back in my childhood, internet access was limited, and what we could get was sometimes blocked by dial-up anyway. Now, the information of the world is at our fingertips. Heck, even I have designed a website for a class. And in another one of those airplane/ice-cube type situations I mentioned yesterday, I just realized that I'm being astonished at the power of the internet to let people design their own internet and broadcast their own information while writing my own blog.

Blogging! Vlogging! Allie Brosh, Charlie McDonnell, Alex Day, BriTANick, The Nostalgia Critic, Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation, Barats and Bereta, Justin Bieber, and many, many others are all people who would likely have remained undiscovered and unheard without the internet. Now, they get to share their awesomeness with the world, and we get to benefit from it. The internet is a place where the people of the world get to decide what is seen and what is popular. Anyone can try, and with a lot of luck, they can find their place and their online community. People who have gotten their start on LiveJournal have even published their own great books. It's a new and amazing world out there.

On a related note, the final thing I want to discuss is YouTube and video-sharing sites. I didn't discover YouTube until the middle of my junior year of high school, but now I can't really imagine life without it. Want to know what a politician said years ago? YouTube it. Want to watch and rewatch a favorite clip from a favorite show? YouTube it. Want to see an awesome hybridization of Kirby and Snoop Dogg? YouTube it.

There's a lot going on out there and it's all at our fingertips. Is the internet perfect? No. But it is changing the world, and faster than we realize. With our cellphones and our internet (and our increasingly internet-capable cell phones) we are moving forward. Maybe it will turn out in the end that the catalyst for world peace is finding that everybody thinks that videos of kittens are adorable.

Ice Ice Baby

2010-05-15T22:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I was going to subject you to parody lyrics of Ice Ice Baby, but I figure trying to do that with my brain as deep-fried as it is right now would be a bad idea for all involved. Warning: there may be coherency problems ahead. 3.5 hours of sleep after several other low-sleep nights will do that.

Anyway, to get to the main point of the thing, I was flying home from college today when I noticed the stewardesses travelling through the aisle and dispensing drinks, adding ice to the cups with the water and soda. I was then overwhelmed with appreciation for how awesome it is that we have the ability to create and store ice at will. Really, think about how cool that is. Back in the pioneer days, when the pioneers weren't break-dancing to catch a ride from a guy driving a giant rock, they could only get ice in the winter when it snowed. We take it for granted, but ice is awesome.

In the middle of this thought process, I realized something. I was thinking about how incredibly awesome readily-available ice is while I was flying through the air at hundreds of miles an hour in a metal flying machine. Believe it or not, I was actually still more impressed by the ice at the time.

With regards to the airplane, it's weird what people take for granted. Just think about all the things you use all the time that people just a hundred years ago, or even fifty or fewer years ago, would have thought impossible to have at this time. I think I'm going to talk about that a little more tomorrow - even within our lives there have been some pretty substantial changes.

Now I'm off to sleep for about 12 hours. No alarm set - that's going to be a very nice change after all these weeks.

Edit: Just remembered there is a new Doctor Who episode out that looks to be really awesome. I wish I was awake enough to watch it now!

Coming soon...

2010-05-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

Thoughts about ice cubes. However, I have things to do right now and I'm worried the post won't make it before midnight. I'll try to at least post it before I go to sleep. If the post doesn't make it before midnight, this will technically be the post for today, but the ice cube one later will really belong to today. Another one will go up tomorrow either way.

Yay blogging!

The semester's over!

2010-05-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

Congratulations! You've just survived one of your hardest semesters yet! What are you going to do now?

...I'm going to pack.

Which is why this is the third day in a row with no real content. Fun fact: packing is much better with real storage containers instead of re-taped and crumbling used cardboard boxes.

Interesting fact: at one point some people said the Earth had two moons: "The Moon" and Cruithne. The latter is actually not a moon, but now you know what people are talking about if you ever hear it come up.

AHHHHHHHHHHHH

2010-05-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

O. Chem.

So yeah, no real post today due to imminent O. Chem final. This no-time-to-blog problem should be fully remedied by Saturday, maybe Friday night. Until then, be like the electrons in an aromatic ring and just keep flowing.

AHHH I'M GONNA DIE I'M GONNA DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEE!
(mostly kidding. The "mostly" refers to the level of drama expressed, not to the actual basic sentiment of "I am in so much trouble right now")

2010-05-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

It's another one of those nights. I'm either going to be sleeping or studying, and I don't want to miss my daily blog. It's been about two weeks now, I think, and I haven't missed a day. Hooray!

Let's see, what content can I give you... Uhh....

Scribblenauts is the only way I know of in the world to pit God against a vampire and have the vampire turn God into a zombie.

Sorry, that was really lame, but I'm tired and O. Chem is going to require all my processing power. I did manage to clean my whole room today, though!