You know what? If I knew HOW to say what I was trying to say in that fucking essay, I WOULD'VE FUCKING SAID IT instead of asking for your help so you could stand over me and repeatedly ask me things that I don't know the answer to and then talking about me over my fucking head when on of my classmates was kind enough to try to rescue me. Funny enough, embarassing someone doesn't make them produce full, complete, grammatically correct sentences. So now I'm hiding in the goddamn bathroom and pretending to be sick because while I'd like to make the point that thanks, I'm 27, how about you treat me like an adult, I realize the best way to accomplish this is NOT screaming at the teacher. I wish I hadn't dragged myself out of bed this morning.

2時にだけど、スピーチの最初のドラフトを書き終わった。12時は本当の書き終わった時が、私は原稿用紙で書かないわけにはいかなかった。1500字だ。死ぬほど疲れた。

It's 2 in the morning, but I finally finished writing the first draft of my speech. It's 1500 characters, which is almost twice as long as required, but the damn thing also has to be at least five minutes when spoken. Hopefully it's not total crap.

So tired.

I got an 87% on my Japanese test, which I studied my ass off for. I don't know. I'm getting B and not A grades this semester, and I'm working a lot harder than I've ever worked at any other Japanese class, even Advanced I. I'm worried about my grade. And yeah, I know, a B is a good grade. But this would be the first Japanese class I didn't get an A in, and... well, it's just kind of depressing. And makes me worry about the even more advanced classes I'm taking in the fall.

Anyway, I'm going to go to bed. I wonder if the bit I wrote in Japanese up there makes any sense? It's quite possible it doesn't, because my brain has melted.

NOTE: THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS.

DARK KNIGHT IS THE GREATEST BATMAN MOVIE EVER!!!!

GO SEE IT THEN GO SEE IT AGAIN AND HOLY CRAP

( Spoilers )

I think the really big test will be how the third movie turns out. Because there has to be a third one, right? The third was where Spiderman just fell flat on its face. I don't want to see that happen to new Batman, because so far it has been just STUNNING and amazing.

And actually, you know who I hope is in the next movie? Catwoman. I want to see her done right. If they did Catwoman as well as they did the Joker and Two Face, HOLY CRAP. It would be just insane.

OH AND. There was a preview for Watchmen. I just about jumped out of my chair. And considering that the director is the guy that did 300, it will be exceedingly pretty, and I think we can have great hopes for accuracy too.

What a great way to start my day. Even if movie theater popcorn is perhaps not the wisest breakfast choice possible.

And now, time to head off for Angie's baby shower!

I think homework has melted my brain, and it's only the second week of class. I'm tired, I'm incredibly grouchy (yes, like more than normal) and I can't write worth a good goddamn even though I want to, which is so incredibly frustrating that I can't put it into words.

I would like to repeat my normal threat, to destroy the world with fire if I don't get a drink with an umbrella in it soon. Except I don't think I have the creative strength necessary to destroy the world, and alcohol will probably put me asleep in my chair.

I have this strange feeling, like I'm slowly transforming into a live action TV-series Batman villain. Badly dressed, badly scripted, and doomed to ultimate failure in the form of some brightly colored Pows and Zaps. I think my villain name will be 'The Wibbler.' And even if I do end up wearing something in an utterly tasteless shade of lime green, I'm certain I'll still at least have a nice hat.

So on Friday, Mike decided to go over to Best Buy to see if he could find a trackball. That search was unsuccessful, but they had just gotten in a shipment of Wii Fits. He bought one, and then I ran over to the shop as soon as he got home to buy a second one for Kat, since she hasn't been able to find one.

I finally took it out of the box today and played with it, and it's a lot of fun, and quite interesting. I like the balance system, and I love the aerobic games, especially hula hoop. I sucked at that and the step aerobics until I finally realized that I had the balance board turned around, so that right and left were reversed. Boy, I'm smart. But once I turned it the right way, I kicked some ass. And the hula hoop game is awesome on the abs. So yay, another toy that has physical fitness value. And takes up less space than the exercise bike. (Though don't get me wrong, I still like my exercise bike a lot. It's just nice to have some variation.)

I managed to get all of my homework done this weekend in plenty of time, despite the fact that I did absolutely nothing on Friday because I'm a loser. Saturday we played D&D and today was Werewolf, so lots of geeky things happened.

Before tai chi this morning, I talked to Terry (one of the Terrys from kung fu) and it just made me miss kung fu all over again. I really hope that in a year or two, my knees will be good enough that I can start doing a bit more high impact stuff again. I figure that I might get to start some light running again (because god, I miss running SO MUCH) and if that doesn't destroy me utterly, then I can probably go back to kung fu if I still miss it as much then as I do now. But we'll see. That's a ways away and I just have to keep working at it. But I can hope!

I don't feel like going to class tomorrow. Bleh. But I'd better go to bed now. Double bleh. I technically paid for the sunrise yoga class this summer term as well (though mercifully, it was quite cheap), but I'm having zero success motivating myself to get out of bed for something that I'm not getting graded on or paid for.

I must play with the Wii Fit more tomorrow. I want to unlock more aerobic games.

I just took my balls firmly in hand and submitted Fire in the Belly to Strange Horizons. We'll see how long it takes me to get my first rejection of the year. When I sent them Mr. Clutter's Obsession, the editor that wrote the rejection (Susan) was super nice and included a comment on the story. (She said it had a 'lovely lyrical feel' which made me go all squee inside.) I really like them...

For sadly, I have had little to do with squid lately.

I had a moment of squee today at work. Tom (my Overlord Geologist) told me that one of the wells out of my project from last summer has doubled its production from the pre-recompletion five barrels per day to ten barrels. This is happy news, since the recompletion was my project, and initially it had killed the well's production. Then apparently, it slowly went back to where it had been, then doubled. Woot. I feel so much better about it now. And as a bonus, of the three wells I worked on, they only picked one as an initial test, and it was the worst prospect of the three. Now that it's doubled production, they're probably going to do the work on at least one more of the wells I recommended. So I feel like I accomplished something.

Now if only all that work I did on the second field wouldn't go to waste. But I guess if you're worried about killing everyone in the surrounding area, which includes a grade school, with sulfuric acid when you drill a well, that does put a crimp on things. (The field has a teeny sulfur issue.)

Today was the second day of the last summer term. I'm back in summer class hell for another five weeks. I really miss Fujimoto-sensei. I don't think new sensei is bad, she's just much stricter, and some things I don't seem to be learning as well from her. (Part of this may be because Fujimoto-sensei had been teaching most of us in Advanced I for at least two semesters, so she knew us really well and knew what sort of slack to give us.) Though she is making us speak Japanese so much more than even Fujimoto-sensei did, which is great. My spoken Japanese needs that work. And after only one day, she's already cowed Johnson-san, who I have not bitched about in LJ before I think, but he was pissing a lot of us off previously because he'd be fucking around with his laptop while Fujimoto-sensei was trying to teach or one of us was trying to present. I have a feeling that he sensed that would not fly with this teacher, in much the same way that mice sense they're being watched by something much larger than them that's hungry and has sharp claws.

The weekend was mighty in the amount of awesome it contained, though Jesus fucking Christ, Phoenix was like the sweaty armpit of the devil. Yes, yes, I know, it's Arizona, it's fucking hot. But it was fucking hot. The only time we ever left the safety of an air conditioned house was to get in a car, and after a bit of driving around I felt like someone had sucked all the life out of me, and by life I probably mean sweat.

But other than the partial melting that occurred, it was way fun. We got to meet our WoW homies, Swang and Cchan and Karra and Kristik and Ama and Lorale and Elfling. While I know it's probably a sign of pathetic geekiness that we went across state lines to meet people from WoW, I really don't fucking care, because they're all absolutely awesome people in real life and we had so much fun hanging out with them. And for posterity I will note that we did many things while there that had nothing to do with WoW, and they were all sorts of gloriously nerdy fun.

So, we played Paranoia (Ed! is now on its second six pack of clones, but I can't say I'm sorry because it also got promoted to Yellow clearance!) and skulked around in book stores and talked about anime. And I showed Swang, Cchan, Karra, and Kristik the Greatest Movie Ever Made, which is of course Hot Fuzz. Karra is taller than she sounds on Vent, Swang makes funny faces, Cchan is definitely my evil twin (and I'm her evil twin, so it works), Ama is adorable and bouncy, and Kristik... looks like a fucking musketeer. Like from the Walt Disney The Three Musketeers movie. Seriously. [If you know him] I DARE YOU TO TELL ME I'M WRONG.

OH AND. Flashback more than ten years (...oh hell) to when I was in high school and did winter percussion. The big championship that year was in Phoenix, and I believe it was when we made it to finals that we went to a really cool pizza place called the Organ Stop. It's a restaurant where one entire wall is a huge Wurlitzer organ and there are instruments of all sorts hanging from the walls that can be remotely played from the organ. It made a huge impression on me back then; the man that played the organ was really nice, and played stuff for us like the theme from Star Wars. So, fast forward to the vacation in Phoenix, and we went back to that very same restaurant, and it was just like I remembered it, and it was COOL.

And the pizza was pretty good too.

So yes. It was a great vacation, even if going to class the next day after it ended was a bit of a let-down. I'm really glad that I went. (And even more glad we flew instead of driving.) I can't wait to visit them all again, though in the winter, thankyouverymuch.

Isaac told me that while we were gone, it was cool and cloudy in Denver. Because he's a bastard.

And that is that. Back to the regularly scheduled having little to talk about except homework and how much I wish I didn't have any.

EXCEPT FIRST!

Jefferson Bible reveals Founding Father's view of God, faith - I hope we all knew about the "Jefferson Bible" already, but if you didn't, you ought to read this article. Just in case you'd forgotten that Thomas Jefferson could pwn you.

For those of us that believe in strict separation of church and state, there's a story circulating that would be a real deal-breaker for the Obama lovers out there - it's about him wanting to expand Bush's hideous fath-based initiatives. However, the story isn't entirely true.

Friendly Atheist has the round-up. While I know there are some people on my side of the church/state debate that won't be happy, I find I can certainly live with this. And I still love Obama lots.

In less interesting news, I survived my Japanese final this morning. I think I did pretty well. Once I was done I did the kanji ability assessment, which took about an hour. It spat on my shoes and called me a bitch, because I suck at writing kanji and couldn't remember an on-reading to save my life. However, I did get a 80-90% score in several areas, all of them to do with reading and understanding meaning. So apparently I need to keep up with the reading and also get off my lazy ass and study more of the writing stuff. Bleh.

Tomorrow is the oral exam, which I expect to suck. I love Fujimoto-sensei, but being stuck alone in a room with her for twenty minutes while she grills me in Japanese is not my idea of a good time. And then my presentation is on Thursday, and I expect that to suck like nothing has sucked before. I simply don't have the time to get it memorized, so I'll be lucky if I'm doing even slightly better than just reading woodenly off a piece of paper.

Then it's the weekend! Woo! I'll be in Phoenix, doing the ultimate dork thing and visiting people from my WoW guild. And melting in the heat like a candle that's been left too long in the sun, no doubt.

Remember the bacteria evolving in a lab article that I posted a while back.

Here's an utterly hilarious and snark-filled follow-up. Andrew Schlafly, the person who runs Conservapedia (note my restraint in simply referring to him as a person? Thank you.) wrote a nasty e-mail to Professor Lenski, who headed the study. Because, as you might imagine if you've ever tainted your eyes with Conservapedia, as I did when I was trying to find out what sort of lies creationists tell about geology, he was very offended by the whole evolution thing and was apparently under the sad delusion that he could cause Dr. Lenski public embarrassment by being a prick to him.

Professor Lenski had a few things to say about that. Lenski's second reply is quite long, but a thing beautiful to read.

Oh Professor Lenski. I less than three you long time.

It turns out to be a good thing I didn't go to tai chi this afternoon. It's 10:00 and I'm still not quite finished with my kanji worksheet. I wrote a 700+ character essay from scratch and did about 400+ characters of research summaries. Though the good news is there that I'm done with those and I've turned them in, incoherent as they might be. So I can start working on the research project tomorrow.

My brain, it has melted. It's dribbling out my ear. Did I mention that I'm never going to do summer school again? Because I'm not. Ever.

That loud popping sound? My irony gland just exploded.

Oh and? The LHC is NOT, in fact, going to destroy the Earth with a tiny black hole. I'm sure that all of you are greeting this revelation with a resounding "duh," considering that the universe at large contains an enormous number of collisions similar to what will be happening at the LHC every day and has failed to destroy itself with microscopic black holes. Here's the BBC's article on it. Sadly, I'm sure this won't shut the nuts up.

I am scared to even think about my homework today. I have a 600 character essay, and I need to work on my research summaries for tomorrow, and I have a kanji worksheet to do. I'm currently not sure if I ought to go to tai chi or not, because I want the exercise, but I think I may not have the time to spare.

In good news, though, I no longer feel like barfing and dying. So things are looking up.

Rest in peace, Mr. Carlin.

I intend to write about the awesome of TAM a bit later, but right now I'm still not feeling at all well (lunch yesterday at the airport, a Quizno's turkey, bacon, and guacamole sub has caused much barfing, and I didn't go to school and will probably not make it to work today) and am feeling rather depressed with this news. I think I'll put his CDs on while I work on my Japanese translation project.

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival is doing Love's Labours Lost this year. I haven't seen that one yet. Anyone for it? They are also doing Henry VIII, which I haven't seen as well, so either sounds good to me.

Yesterday I started playing my koto again, after a long time of being a lazy shit and not practicing. This is mostly because I want to be able to play something and not embarrass myself for my Japanese research project presentation. But getting back to playing has reminded me how nice it is to be a bit musical, so I will try to keep it up after the project is done. And I'm hoping, once I'm done with school and have the whole money thing again, I'll be able to go back to lessons.

Man, I miss my calluses, though. I hope they build back up fairly fast. The fingers on my left hand hate me a lot right now. I've set my koto up in the spare room since that means I can leave the stand put together and not have to cover the koto nightly, since the cats normally can't get in to mess with it. That's really nice to be able to do.

Anyway, both yesterday and today, as soon as I started playing, Tengu evaporated. Mike managed to locate him, curled up under our bed in the exact center. So apparently, my playing is terrifying, right up there with Nick and Chelsea's dogs and the horrifying apparition that is known as the Vacuum Cleaner.

I hadn't thought I was that bad off, really. Everyone's a critic.

I've got the two decimated catnip containers up there too, in the windowsill on the off chance I can coax them in to growing back in. There was an absolutely huge jumping spider on one of them. I took it outside with the intention to release it, but it didn't seem to want to go. So I put it back in the spare bedroom with the catnip plants. I doubt there's anything to eat in that room, but considering how darn big that spider was, I guess it won't have trouble figuring out how to feed itself. (We'll see if one of the cats ends up vanishing.)

Congratulations to George Takei and his partner, Brad Altman! And to all of the other newly made married couples in California. Here's an adorable picture.

(...hopefully the majority of the state won't prove to be a bunch of selfish dicks come November. Because totally, the best way to protect marriage is to forcibly destroy a ton of them. In jerk logic, at least.)

My life is school, with massive, terrifying piles of homework every night. And being tired. I had a really weird, bad dream last night I could have done without. And woke up this morning to find Loki snuggled up next to me. And kneading my boobs while purring up a storm. It was fucking bizarre.

I leave for TAM on Friday. To be honest, I'm not excited about it at all, because I've just been so busy and tired. Hopefully that'll change once I get there. And hopefully I'll be able to find the people I'm bumming crash space off of.

Wow, talk about mood. That movie was crazy good, and tense, and it scared the pants off of me. (Not that it's hard to do, but still.) It just felt so... claustrophobic. And even though there were CGI monsters, they didn't look nearly as silly as some of the other CGI I've seen recently. (coughcoughIndianaJonescoughcough) I spent a lot of time squirming in my seat and yelling helpful advice like, "Don't just stand there! RUN! RUN LIKE A BITCH!" at the TV. Which is just another reason why I don't normally watch scary movies in the theater, because that sort of behavior is generally frowned upon. (That, and I can easily hide in a very non-scary bathroom if things get too tense for a wuss like me.)

The ending was just... horrid. I mean, in a good way, but horrid and depressing. I should have expected something that mean from Stephen King.

So, excellent movie. I will never, ever watch it again. Even if it would be nice to see Scary Woman I Loathed get shot again.

Oh, and unrelated, BUT THIS IS SO FREAKING COOL.

Well, the weather is getting quite summery, though it's still been cool enough that I haven't felt the need to turn the air conditioning on yet. (Yay, lower utility bill.) I'm more just feeling that it can't be summer, because I'm in class for three hours a day, and still have no social life because I've got several hours of homework to do each night once I'm done with work. The whining will no doubt be great when the fall semester starts and I finally accept that really, I'm not going to get a break this year.

TAM is next weekend. The thought that I'm going this year, thanks to charity paying for my admission fee, hasn't really sunk in either. I doubt I'll really grasp it until I'm actually in Las Vegas and wondering what the hell I've gotten myself in to.

I've been reading an absolutely ridiculous amount, lately. I guess to make up for how little reading outside of school work I've done over the last few semesters. I devoured Kushiel's Scion in about three days and am already halfway through Kushiel's Justice. It feels nice to read stuff just for the fun of it. And Naomi Novik's fourth book is out, so that's what I'll be jumping in to once I've gotten done with this one. Alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars with dragons, for the win!

Saturday I got to go for a little walk around at Marshall Mesa, which was a nice reminder that not all hikes end up being evil, tick-infested death marches that destroy my joints. Sunday was the werewolf game, but I got quite sick and had to go home, so that was less fun than it really should have been. (It's a weird thing, I've noticed. If I'm going to start violently barfing, before hand I get really, really sleepy, to the point that I'll actually do things like fall asleep while sitting at a really uncomfortable picnic table.)

Currently, I'm attempting to find women's polo shirts to buy since mine are looking seriously disreputable. I bought my last round at Lane Bryant (and they actually look good on tubby chicks, far better than the men's shirts I've been wearing that simply look too big) but the store in the mall has closed, and the website produced nothing I'd consider wearable. I'm most displeased. Also the hippy grocery store near my house has failed to produce henna for Sin to smear in my hair, and I'm pretty annoyed about that, too, since my roots are starting to look extremely scary. I'm hoping I can find some up in Boulder on Friday. Otherwise I ordered some from the manufacturer's site and will just have to wait, I guess.

Oh, and speaking of spending money, I will probably be getting a new laptop in the fall. I'm still mulling over my options. It would be nice to have a laptop, though I have no intention of taking it to school, because then I'd never pay attention in class again. My desktop's lack of portability has frustrated me quite a few times, though, which is why I'm thinking of switching over. I figure whatever brand of laptop I end up with, I'll see if I can get one of those docking things for it so I can use a real keyboard when I'm at home. I just have to settle on a brand and all that. As much as I keep saying I want to go with a Mac, they're more expensive than I'd like, and it'd probably be better to get to try one out somehow before I spend that much money on it. And I have to say that Dell has scored some serious points with me since you can still buy laptops with Windows XP (home or professional) from them. I really don't want Vista, and I don't want to deal with reinstalling a system I've only just bought. Bleh. I've still got several months to consider my options, since I'm not going to spend the money until the fall semester starts and I see how hideously expensive my books (and the tuition, which they're jacking up) are going to be.

Woo, exciting life!

From the Department of Oh No They Didn't: Michelle Obama = baby mama? What the hell. Seriously. Scalzi opines about this bit of tastelessness. I agree. What scares me is that there's still almost five months left and things are only going to get more cringe-inducing from here.

From the Department of Just In Case You Needed a Reminder That Fox Doesn't Like Atheists: Atheist billboard clip. (Embedded in the page.) This comic expresses my feelings on it well.

I get my national and international news from the BBC, by the way.

Everyone else is doing it!



...basically, I'm a frank, impatient asshole. So... yeah. They got me.

Okay, and we also did Mike's because I found it incredibly amusing:



...back to the homework. For real this time.

It's June, and I haven't done my 2008 list yet. Not that I ever accomplish any of my goals, but I guess it doesn't hurt to think big.

Wait, I know. I'll cheat and add a couple things that I've already done.

Edit Fire in the Belly
Write/edit story for the Center for the West short story contest [I did, I finished it, and I lost. Woo!]
Finish typing/editing the first half of Worth Saving Me
Type/edit Fire in the Bones
Type/edit Talk
Send Fire in the Belly to at least two magazines
Finish hand writing Scarabaeus Sacer, then type and edit
Edit at least a couple chapters of Save Yourself and/or Throne of Nightmares before Worldcon
2 new Hob stories
Get off your ass and write some new material, for goodness sake.
Collect some rejection slips [I will count my story losing in that contest as one.]


[Well, I got 2 things done on the 2007 list of epic fail. I guess that counts for something.]