It's sorta hard to believe, but...

WOO-HOO

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:43:41 GMT

40046 / 50000 words. 80% done!

\m/>0<\m/

NaNo LOL

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:19:32 GMT

The scene: main character goes to an inn, gets drunk, wins a bar brawl, goes off to sleep.

My previous plans: angry gang of people he beat up invades inn to try and kill him.

What I actually wrote: Inn is located on a rift in space-time and goes to an alternate future every night. Turns out it is a local tourist attraction.

Whut?

NaNo babble

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:34:22 GMT

Wow. Just now, I actually wrote a scene that made me cry.

I don't know, I'm just really moved by what I wrote, which is kind of silly. I mean, the scene is just a young man giving his ignorant ass of a father an extremely backhanded present. It was supposed to be satisfying...

By the way:

29259 / 50000 words. 59% done!

It was kind of a long scene :D

WOO HOO

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:53:46 GMT

20021 / 50000 words. 40% done!

WOO HOOOO!

NaNoWriMo progress bar

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:00:57 GMT

12539 / 50000 words. 25% done!

:(

Sins of thy Beloved...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:51:05 GMT

I had no idea I had missed listening to my old goth metal mp3s that much. I guess Sins of Thy Beloved aged well, and the string solos are still pretty awesome. It does help that my soundbox is loads better than it used to be back when I listened to it all the time... the growly parts are actually intelligible!

Amusingly enough I've always assumed the solos were violin, but I now realize I have no confirmation it's the case. :x

I still think some selections from SoTB and early Theatre of Tragedy would make a pretty darn sweet soundtrack for Violinist of Hameln. XDD

Mememememe

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:06:09 GMT

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble of ANY pairing/character of their choosing (of ANY fandom) from me (with a prompt, if it pleases you to give me one). ~~In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level~~Post if you feel like it.

(Ganked from sekiharatae's livejournal)

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:13:43 GMT

Am I the only one who's found the end of Maskerade to be extremely cruel and depressing?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 02:07:40 GMT

So, I've been reading the whole discworld series since, uh, 10 days ago. I've just finished Soul Music, but now I'm faced with a certain degree of indecisiveness.

I love the Watch. Now, I quite like Rincewind and Cohen, and the Lancre witches are straight up awesome, but the Watch is The Watch. So... am I a bad person for wanting to skip Interesting Times and Maskerade and jump straight into Feet of Clay?

Now part of me is even willing to read Maskerade before Feet of Clay, I've read good things about that book, but somehow I'm just not up for Rincewind, even if he's tagging along with the fabled Silver Horde. He was cool and fun in the first two books but there's only so much interest a whiny wizard who never learns magic will generate on me. I've nothing against the cowardice. I just really wish he'd gain some skills.

Fanelorn, re-opening

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:25:34 GMT

http://www.fanelorn.net/

My website, recoded from scratch ;Dd how is it?

By the way, man, it's been raining for like 3 days non-stop.

hurts everywhere from the waist down

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:51:31 GMT

Can't sleep - the pain registers when I lie down. Ow!

DORAMA

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:52:20 GMT

There was a blackout for several hours last night. I can't even remember the last time this happened since we moved to this house.

It wasn't helped by a great deal of family *~drama~* involving my mother being her usual whiny and jerkish self, my sister complaining to/about her boyfriend on her cellphone non-stop, and Pituca peeing on one of the dining room's chairs. The latter has never happened before, but she was traumatized enough today after getting a fur-cut at a completely new place, then the blackout at night. Naturally, the dog was scapegoated, then I was (because I had been writing by the emergency light in the dining room when it happened, apparently I should have been dog-sitting my sister's dog while she yappered at the phone instead?), and in the end my sister refused to clean anything up, then my mother told me to not clean anything up because it was my sister's responsability... of course, when I came down the stairs this morning everything was still the way I left it, with the chair upside down and cleaning rags on the floor. Such a great display of maturity from all parties, it makes me want to cry.

head hurts, legs too

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:46:14 GMT

I feel just about dead. I think I see TMI time looming around the corner.

At least all that test stuff will be put on hold until december.

flops over

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:57:58 GMT

I'm so tired and mentally spent. I don't think I've posted about this, or if I have, not in details; but I've been kind of off lj, posting even less often than normal, because of these two test... exam... thingies. Fo two different government jobs.

Now it's always been my parents' dream that my sister and I would have secure government jobs (at least since we dashed their hopes of becoming a doctor and a lawyer, respectively), and I'm not going to begrudge them that, since government jobs are, according to rumors and folk tales, easy-peasy once you are in them, and if you make a good impression in the first 2 years nothing short of stealing a cabinet or killing your boss will get you fired. On the other hand, there are so many rumors about corruption and wank and mooching off without actually working, and my parents thinking that's all the more reason to get such a job, that I was never able to must any enthusiasm for the idea of working in one of them. But they wanted me to, oh they did; and I was sick and tired of my mother leaving open newspapers on my desk with anouncements of these such exams featured in them - usually asking for a minimum knowledge of laws and/or lawyering. Yeah.

My sister at least understood my issues, and found me two options that I would find more palatable, and that were at least related to my interests. One of them was for visual programming, and asked for knowledge of printing methods, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Corel and Indesign. I had to do a fair bit of studying, since my field (printmaking) only dealed with the artisan, historical part of printing and left the modern methods out, and I had never used Corel or heard of InDesign - but at least it was related to my field, and I was already proficient in two of those programs! This one took place yesterday, so it's finally, finally out of the way.

The other will make me a translator for the Commercial... thingie. This one is kind of funny because according to its documentation, it's not, and it won't count, as a government job; I'll be a free-lancer and paid by the page. It also talks about simultaneous translating or something, but I'm currently going "LALALA CAN'T HEAR" about that one because seriously... seriously. D: But anyway... from what I understod I'd be able to refuse or return any translation work I didn't feel up to doing, so I guess I won't be forced to try and translate some important guy's speech or something. I don't actually care much about this one, but my parents insisted as soon as they found out about it - my father even paid the ridiculous fee (almost 300 reais; the visual programming one was 50). But the exam will at least consist of nothing but translating, so I won't have to buy new books of hunt down older test or anything like that. XD;

So, if you've been wondering where I've been or why I haven't been all too coherent, this would be my situation since August.

FF6, Lucky Star Opening

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:49:56 GMT

Momentarily halting my cram exile just to post this:

SERIOUSLY. SERIOUSLY. I know I'm pretty tired of Lucky Star opening spoofs, but this? THIS. Watch to the end, it'll be worth it!

Newsflash: jerks everywhere

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:38:31 GMT

A while ago I posted about my sister breaking up with her long time boyfriend, remember? What I didn't bother posting about was that they went back a week or so later. Not only was I tired of posting "oh noes, they broke up, my sister is numb/a mess/numb!" and then posting "oh wait they're back lol" a couple days later, but I was kind of disappointed too. He was a nice guy, handsome and all, but had been screwing up in their relationship way too often lately.

Well, she broke up with him again this week. My reaction was mostly this: e__e. I just sat back to wait for it to resume. But then yesterday night I suddenly woke up to the sound of my sister crying convulsively downstairs. I laid there frozen for a minute, hearing her ranting about how he was an idiot, how all men were the same, etc, etc... this is bad, she hasn't been like this for years, not since her other boyfriend who... oh, shit.

So I ran downstairs to find out what was wrong, and stood there like an idiot while she told mom and dad about how she'd been suspicious for a while, and accessed his inbox yesterday morning and found confirmation... there was another girl. When she left for university after lunch, she was actually going to the university dorms to confront him about it. And he confessed he'd already screwed the girl "three times", all while spending his weekends here eating our food and playing soccer games on my sister's notebook.

For the record, this guy didn't want my sister to ever go on trips without him, not even university field trips to gather geological material, because it wasn't right for a commited woman to travel on her own, who knows what other people might think? Also, and this is something my sister always seemed to make too big a deal out of, but is now justified, he never wanted to change his status in Orkut. Whenever they fought, he'd set his status to single and available, and when they went back, he'd take his sweet time changing it back to commited. Hypocrite much?

Also for the record, my sister stuck by this guy through all sorts of shit, and spoiled and cuddled him and when he had testicle cancer and was being a ~pity mongering asshole~ about having to extract one of his balls. She also patiently put up with his low self-esteem brattishness about being mono-balled for up to a year afterwards, as he kept the pity-mongering attitude up long after all exams said he was cured. So... yeah, last time he was here they made plans, they browsed home magazines together and talked about how much it would take to rent a house with the money they both made. And all the time he had this girl on the side.

It was the same girl my sister had found about the last time. Three times my ass.

Sadly this post doesn't end here. After sleeping badly I woke up at 7am to more crying. My sister was arguing with mom, not a good sign - my mother has about as much tact as a brick. And I was right; mom was going on about how sis shouldn't have gone out with a guy so "young" and "inexperienced" because he would have wanted to do "other things" eventually, and she should have expected something like that to happen, and oh - it was her fault she was a mess, for snooping into his inbox. Also could she please tone it down? The neighbors might hear something! Well, this should make her feel better!

And not five minutes later, my sister went to talk to her again (I don't know why she tries) to say she was taking a ride with dad and going to my aunt's house, to spend the morning there and then go teach her afternoon class. My mother's answer: "Well, you're not going to school wearing that face, are you?" WAY TO GO, MOM. WAY TO MAKE HER START CRYING AGAIN.

At that point I had to jump in, and told mom that was a horrible thing to say. It must have been a completely novel concept for her, because she looked at me like I had suddenly started talking greek. Then she immediately backtracked and said sis' problem was that she expressed herself "too much". WTF is that supposed to mean? But nooo, sis expresses herself too much, she should tone it down. "Do you ever see me act like that when I'm upset?" My thought at that moment: derailing tactics, I'm dealing with a troll. I told mom people get upset in different ways and sis should be allowed to express her feelings however the hell she wanted. Mom pulled the jewish mother gambit: "Then I'm the wrong one." GUESS WHAT: YOU ARE.

At this point sis had already left the scene to go cry somewhere less likely to be in hearing range of assholes, and I tried to tell mom that sis was upset enough as it was and she was making it worse. But mom kept on completely missing the point - it was sister's fault, because the guy had been too young (note that their age difference is the same as mom and dad's) and sis had stuck her nose where she shouldn't (so it would have been alright if she had never found out?) plus lots of "so I'm the wrong one" and, oh, she had never really approved of him anyway, because he didn't seem able to protect and support sis which she thought were basic pre-requisites any man should possess before dating any of us. Uh, so where do our preferences come in in your perfect son-in-law profile? And funny how you never expressed those views before...

Eventually she told me her real problem: sis "owed" him some money and wanted help in getting it paid as soon as possible. Mom is short on money and doesn't want to spend what she's got, but instead of saying that, she just said she didn't want to pay the guy so he'd spend the money on some other woman. Fair enough, but I wish mom would understand the concept of pride - and, you know, not letting the guy have a leverage on you? And of course, I asked her if she had told sis this, and she did. You know, about him using her money on someone else. That's sure to have helped.

I've never put it into these terms, but my mother is a fucking jerk. (And oh! When I said I didn't give a fuck whether the neighbors could hear my sister crying or not, she was shocked! Offended! Because she never taught me those words! Lawl)

it's silly, and it's irrational, but it hurts

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:30:50 GMT

To anyone in the world that I may ever interact with through the internet EVER:

- If I say something that you feel has offended you or attacked you and your beliefs in any way, you're entirely entitled to tell me about it! For the love of god please do, because I'm paranoid about hurts people's feelings without knowing, principally through the internet.
- But if you do, please, please, please do not send me a monossilabic comment telling me I offended you because I did not specify in this one sentence that it was my personal opinion and it made you feel I was being reprobatory of your tastes - when the whole paragraph, the whole comment was about my opinions and I just didn't want to repeat "in my opinion" and similars in every freaking sentence.
- And I'll tell you why - because the curt reprobatory tone in the comment sends me right back to my sister in the height of her depression, talking through the cellphone to her abusive manipulative stalking ex-boyfriend in a calm and cold voice with monossilabic sentences, then turning it off and breaking down in tears, crying and sobbing on the bed above mine the whole night through. For months. For almost a year. Almost every fucking night. And she'd never tell me what was wrong. It's been almost ten years, and I still don't know. And how anything I said could set her off, how I couldn't say or do anything that might anger or hurt her, even when it seemed anything could anger or hurt her.
- And so what I picture as I read that cold comment is someone on the other side of this monitor, trying to seem strong but crying because of something I said. Because I didn't think hard enough about the words I was using. Because I made it seem like you were wrong or a bad person for liking something I don't like. That's not it, that's not it at all.

I'm the neutralest person ever. I'm not going to think any less of you just because you like something I don't. I just like to talk meta! We can bounce opinions back and forth, I love to learn about people. Just please don't suddenly turn around and sound like a disapproving teacher, it's the fastest way to send me spiralling into a nervous breakdown.

NOES

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:54:07 GMT

I went to the doctor on friday to check on allergies. You see, I don't really -suffer- the usual allergy symptoms, but since I've learned both my father and sister are wildly allergic to a bunch of stuff we'd have never guessed, and since I'm always getting annoying headaches I never found the cause of, I decided to give it a try. I mean, my sister suffered from several pains that stopped after she quit grapes, so...

Turns out I, too, am allergic to stuff I always took for granted, and some of them may cause headaches. Behold the list of doom:

- Gluten - ....but I've always eaten bread! Though it would explain a lot
- Cacao - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- Pineaple - this I've suspected since I was 12 - I avoid it like the plague anyway. The doctor underlined it - looks like I'm very allergic to it
- Shrimp - same as pineapple.
- Tomatoes - ...another thing I've always eaten. Funny because I used to not like tomatoes, but my mother would insist I ate them, so they're kind of an acquired taste...
- Egg yolk - According to the doctor, I can eat it, but only when it's cooked.
- Milk - only allowed if it's boiled or light.
- Bananas - only cooked. Wait, what?
- Spring greens, cauliflowers, cabbages - the test spot for this one got a HUGE, swollen rash. And these, too, are things my mother keeps trying to push into me! But I still hate them, so... yeah.
- Strawberries - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- Cucumber, melon, watermelon - also gave me a huge, horrible rash. And I never liked them either. Oh, well!
- Grapes - never been a fan of them either. Also gave me a big rash.
- Pepper of any kind - and here I was starting to develop a taste for them. *sigh*

Apart from gluten, cacao and strawberries, I can avoid the things in this list without much mourning. But really, chocolate and strawberries are two of my favorite things! And it's almost impossible to avoid gluten in this house!!

wistful sigh

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:43:49 GMT

http://maladies.deviantart.com/journal/26431117/

I wish I could buy one of these :( and not just because she's my friend.

Pity I didn't catch the little guy's name

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:33:25 GMT

Aww, I just heard news from the TV downstairs talking about a 12 year old boy who died protecting a six year old little friend from some nutsos who were walking down their street shooting at random to menace some guy they had nothing to do with.

I'm posting about it because I believe this is the kind of thing that deserves to be remembered.

ETA: When the guys showed up shooting, the 12 year old boy actualy ran and hugged the smaller boy, to whom he wasn't actually related in any way.

Hello world, my brain is melting into geological slag

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:32:13 GMT

My week so far:

Helping sister with end of term paper for her Masters degree in geology. This help mainly consists of translating crazy geology texts so she can edit, clean up and make something coherent out of them. Sample: "These techniques have been developed andrefined during the past few decades. Among the most important areseveral means of radiometric dating based on carbon-14, argon-argon,chlorine-36, beryllium-10, and uranium-thorium (Hall 1995).Non-radiometric dating techniques employ paleomagnetism, amino acids,tree rings, weathering rinds, lichens, and other materials." Obviously, it's kind of complicated. Doesn't help that it's a 27 page long word file (though I've mucked through 20 so far). At least she promised to pay me for it.

Also, one of my littler cousins came by yesterday, and I was volunteered to baby sit her while my mom and uncle went off to the doctor and shopping or whatever. On my sister's suggestion I went to the movie rental place and finally got to watch Nightmare before Christmas and Stardust :DDD though I had to watch the dub since my cousin can't grock anything out of english. It wasn't a problem with Stardust, but I feel NbC suffered a little, what with all the singing that had to both rhyme and fit the current scene! Made for very awkward verses. I'll have to sit and watch it again, and also the Sleeping Beauty, which I rented but didn't get to watch before cousin went home with her dad.

Meanwhie I'm just trying to procrastinate on translating this stuff. It's money, but it's also mind-numbingly BORING.

I was actually expecting them to reattach after a couple of days

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:37:45 GMT

*sigh* I didn't actually bother to write about it when it happened, thanks to a bunch of other things happening around the same time, but my sister broke up with her boyfriend last weekend. I don't know if it's permanent or not (whenever I think it is it never turns out to be), but it's been a whole week and they haven't made up, so at least it's deserving of note.

I do believe my sister is in the right, however. He objected to her travelling along with her class for a master degree in geology/geophysics, where they visit funny mountain ranges and pick up interesting rocks. I did notice that, whenever she'd go in these excursions, he'd be cold and kind of a jerk when she returned.

But then he went and told her - in the middle of a conversation about an eventual marriage, no less - and I quote, "I'm gonna tolerate that while you're studying, but I hope you don't get a job that requires this kind of travelling around. It's not right for a married woman to travel without her husband." So apparently he believed that my sister spent those excursions boinking her classmated and rolling down the mountains in a forniball - either that, or he thought everybody else would think that, and didn't want to be thought of as an idiot husband. And because there's no greater proof of love than making it clear that you do not trust your partner, he also said he'd want total separation of goods and money, in case they ever got divorced and my sister decided to take anything that wasn't hers along. Not to prevent infighting, but to prevent being cheated of his stuff by her.

A couple days later he was chasing after her saying that okay, he would "tolerate" her traveling without him for a job if that was the case!! And totally not getting the point when she tried to explain why the whole stupid thing had crushed her feelings and their relationship. Just now my sister was on the phone with him, and had to spell it out to him that, when she talked about "having a talk", she did not mean jumping into his arms with a sparkly pastel background and resuming where they left off, but just talking. And to think they'd been going four years strong. Makes me wonder how they managed to stick together this far when he suddenly turned out to be such a sexist.

*sigh* He used to be a pretty cool guy, to boot.

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:31:55 GMT

I just finished reading the Graveyard Book. I had stopped at the witch's headstone when university ate me, then finally picked back up today.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaawl

NEW COMPUTER

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:10:53 GMT

Postinating from my NEW COMPUTER

I'm so glad because my old HD was 40GB big and this one is 320. Nothing like having a C drive twice as big as all the space you had available for close to 8 years.

Also, a damn relief to not have to rely on that old thing. I'm pretty sure I wasn't even into VoH when that HD (and the case) was bought. XD;; We're talking 2001/2002 here.

And now I'm downloading a bunch of stuff while basking in the free disk space. Internet connection is still the same, unfortunately, which means it's kind of laggy what with 3 torrents running at the same time...

I think I'm going to sleep and let things downloading.

news

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:10:33 GMT

From the Department of Good News: I just need to fill in this paper here and turn it in to officially graduate.

From the Department of Pretty Damn Awesome News: My father finally, finally, finally agreed to buy me a new computer. With its parts chosen by ME and not my cousin Mr. Overpricing (in whom he's lost all trust).

From the Department of Not So Good but Not That Bad News: It took me signing into a test for a position in a government job for it. But at least it's not a position I utterly loathe like the law stuff he used to cut out of newspapers for me to see; it's in my university, and it actually deals with image editing and webdesign. From the description I think I'd just be making posters for internal events and tinkering with the university's website. I can deal with that.