elanid

Somewhere in me there is a much bigger post full of explanations and rantings (sane ones) and fury, but right now, I don't think I could write it without damaging my computer with the virulence.

Why?

Well, mostly because of this post, via jonquil , about the current state of American healthcare and how very easy it is to become uninsured.  (Hint: don't get any serious diseases, guys.  Because?  Your insurance?  Will not pay for it.)

And guess what else?  It's totally legal for them to refuse to.  So when your conservative friend who thinks he's so clever starts talking about how a public option for health insurance is going to destroy the country and result in the deaths of a lot of people?  Go ahead and tell them to fuck right off.

This isn't the only problem with the current insurance system.  But, hey.  Isn't this enough of a problem all by itself?

Fuckers.

(Seriously, go read the post, even if you think you disagree with me: it's a much better, more elqouent explanation of this than I can possibly provide, especially when I'm this angry.)

I.  Yo.  Rebecca (remarknj ) and I are having a competition leading up to Alpha, the better to go completely insane and stumble onto or into a train, plane, or water main the day we have to leave, ranting and raving in a horrifying display of girlish lunacy.  That is to say, we have agreed to amass some 28k in writing between the two of us by the 14th of July.

II.  Accordingly, we're each going to write 700 words a day on our respective novelly projects, which is admittedly a fairly puny and diminutive amount until you take into account the fact that I am about to start work on Monday.  (To give a point of reference, the last time I started work for the summer, I found myself sleeping away my entire life.  This is chiefly because of the fact that work is a known minor demon and deeply enjoys sneaking up behind you and putting worms down your shirt until you notice some indeterminate time later that your chest is looking awfully squirmy, and then they turn out to be actually bloodsucking caterpillars of death and the legs pop out and suddenly they have spiracles full of your perfectly good plasma the better to donate to a good cause.)  This count may go up if it seems appropriate to all parties, i.e. me.

III.  But, you say, what is to prevent us from just sort of doing the usual writer slouch thing and failing to finish those words?  I mean, 700 words might not be much, but look, you know writers.  You know what they're like!  Well, in fact, there is a way, and the way is called PUNISHMENT.  Yes, you heard me right, and here is how the punishment works.  (Yes, it is possible that I am using these roman numeral section headers basically at random, but can you prove anything?  I didn't think so.)

IV.  The PUNISHMENT is as follows.  First of all, for any day that I don't write my 700 words (to be proven, in email, to remarknj  each day), I must obtain for her a present, to be brought to Alpha and distributed under the public eye so that all are aware of my failure and humiliation!  (Alphans who will be present this year, you are all welcome to spectate).  And second, if she doesn't write her 700 words, she must get a present for me, same deal.

V.  Presents.  Lest all this get out of (or too well into) hand, the limitation on presents is as follows: first, no bought present may cost less than $1 or more than $5.  Second, no made present may take less than an hour or more than five.  Third, no lifeforms, not even if they're really awesome and especially not if you made them yourself.  Fourth, no two objects representative of fail may be the same, because, really, no two fails are the same.  Rationally speaking.  Fifth, no gum.

VI.  This is a glorious plan and can in no way fail, backfire, cause the end of the world as we know it, etc.  Accordingly I have made an internet table OF GLORY to represent its awesomeness, and if you disagree with me on this count, well, you suck.

June.

Victim	26	27	28	29	30
Ebeccarey	706	758	769	722	729
Yours Truly	774	776	:(	760	769

July 1 - 5.

Victim	1	2	3	4	5
Ebeccarey	743	718	749	it is a holiday dammit	742
Yours Truly	710	752	>.O	yes for me too!	1884*

*shut up


July 6 - 10.

Victim	6	7	8	9	10
Ebeccarey	735	726	766	823
Raquel	743	796	**	737

**I am totally applying half of that 1884 here, take that!



VII.  General-purpose prohibited: cheating, laziness, having a break, ducking out, running away to Antarctica (do you know how hard it is to find $3 presents in Antarctica?), murder, extreme sports over highways, contacting extraterrestrial lifeforms in an attempt to bargain your way out by way of insanely futuristic technology, tantrums, decaf, fleeing to a town without bookstores in the hopes of making your brain melt so far that everyone agrees you are incapable, conjuring up large winter storms (be classy, thunderstorms are seasonal), demonic visitations, etc.

By contrast, a random assortment of totally over-the-table activities: blackmail, bribery, lying, whining, bargaining, abusing younger siblings as outlet, abusing younger siblings as experiment, abusing younger siblings to demonstrate Timothy Zahn-style practicality or lack thereof in action scenes, overcaffeination, sleep deprivation, lunacy, reading Heinlein, etc.

VIII.  Your words are due before the other person wakes up the next morning.  Or else.

Hopefully someone with bigger circulation than me can pick this up, but:

It looks like sarahtales has had her livejournal hacked by the same rather nasty hackers who got a couple other people earlier this year; her most recent post claims to link to her new book online and her new blog, but the links actually seem to lead to the same unpleasant Russian poetry and dodgy downloads as the last couple times - I think they are supposed to include a keylogger, among other things.  Anyway, I know she has a pretty wide readership, so, PSA to the world, don't click those links!

Is destroying my life!  But that's all right, my notes are glorious works of art, and I have just sat through 50 minutes of recorded lecture, so I feel that I am entitled to have a snack.  Or, you know, lunch.  (My life is so exciting.  Later this afternoon I might do some listening comprehension exercises.  Someone, quick, get the fainting couch!)

...

In other news, why is writing only ever this appealing when there are nine hundred other vital things one has to be doing?

THE HOUSEMATE FROM HELLACIOUS HELL.

One of my housemates has been giving everyone trouble since pretty much the first day we moved in, but due to various factors (were I a wicked cynic, I would say for instance, the fact that some of my housemates have no spine), we haven't managed to get rid of her.  Her latest habit is not doing the chores assigned for the kitchen (such arduous tasks as taking out the garbage or putting the dishes away), which has made half of the house wroth with her.  (The other half says "Oh, dear," and then does her job for her.)

Accordingly I recently set out to have a conversation with her about this fascinating practice, which ran aground almost at once.

YOURS TRULY: Dearest Kearstyn, I can't help but notice that you didn't do your very simple job this entire week, thereby requiring other people to do it if they didn't want to end horribly with all the dishes in the house broken on their head.
HOUSEMATE FROM HELLACIOUS HELL: Well, I was at my grandmother's house today.  And it's Easter.  So I really don't think that you have any right to complain.
YOURS: I could not help but notice that it is Sunday, Kearstyn.  My dim recollection seems to be that the week starts on Monday, so far as chores are concerned?
HOUSEMATE: Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't give a shit about this house or anyone in it and have no intention of ever doing my chores.  Suck it!

At which point she trotted off into the bathroom and hid there for something like ten minutes while I loitered around on the first floor waiting to deliver my final warning.  Of course, as soon as I tried, she brushed me off again and stalked into her room, resulting in this dignified exchange:

YOURS TRULY: In fact, I think the new consensus is that if your chores do not get done, they will end up in your room.  I should point out at this point that next week you are supposed to be taking the compost out, although naturally if you really want that on your belongings, I cannot argue!
HOUSEMATE FROM HELLACIOUS HELL (slamming door to her room) : Could you shut up now?  Thanks!

At which point I shrugged and went to do homework, because honestly, I have better things to do than argue with her on this through a closed door.  Of course, while I was upstairs, some of my other housemates returned home, and I think you can pretty easily imagine my surprise when I wandered downstairs later to encounter various further housemates discussing the previous exchange in hushed tones.

HOUSEMATE SECUNDUS: Er, Rachel, I hope you don't mind my asking, but don't you think it was a little inappropriate to start the conversation about the dishes with "if you don't do what I say I'll put compost in your bed?"
HOUSEMATE TERTIUS: And also - wait, why are you laughing uncontrollably?  Are you quite sure you're feeling quite well today?  Are you having a seizure?

And so we continue on.  Perhaps eventually the rest of my housemates will muster up the conviction in the righteousness of their cause to say something to Hellacious Hell, but in the meantime I shall enjoy her pointed glares and refusal to talk to me all by myself.

OSCAR THE KIDNAPPED CAT.

Among her numerous other flaws, Kearstyn* is deeply, madly in love with a cat belonging to someone else, which I can nearly understand, because he's very sweet.  His name is Oscar, and he is small and stripey and quite charming.  We know him because while they were away on spring break, he showed up in our alley, and since his owners weren't picking up their phone, we had to keep him until they finally reappeared to claim him.  We were all a bit disappointed, but none more so than Kearstyn (whose idea of true love, by the way, mostly encompasses shutting him in her room and crooning "widdle boy!" at random moments).

However, I do feel that there is generally a line between true love and kidnapping, which is why it was a bit surprising to return home moderately late one night to find Oscar shut in the study room.

YOURS TRULY: Oh gracious, did he run away again?
KEARSTYN: Well, I found him wandering in the street.
YOURS TRULY (with air of dawning dread): In our alley, or in front of their house?
KEARSTYN (incriminating pause): Well, he's an indoors cat!

The other fun thing about this was that she had decided to kidnap Oscar with her boyfriend in tow, so while she and boyfriend disappeared into her room to pursue unspeakable acts (sample Facebook status from the next morning: "Kearstyn Hellacious should remember not to do things her body isn't capable of."**), the cat was dumped unceremoniously into the living room.

At which point Housemate Quartus pointed out that she was having a dance party later that evening, which certain small felines might not enjoy.  In mild bemusement, I retreated upstairs with Oscar and spent a vaguely entertaining evening watching him barrel around the room in pursuit of a stray (and doubtless very vicious) bottlecap while listening to the sweet strains of extremely loud music from downstairs.***

A couple days later, his owners deigned to resurface and carted him off again; I don't doubt that he'll show up again, though.

REASONS WHY MY JAPANESE HISTORY PROFESSOR IS AWESOME

I really don't think I've had any other professor who digresses with such reliability that he or she can get from "Japan is a highly stratified society" to "electric slippers!  They keep your feet warm!" in under ten minutes.


_________
*In her manifestation as Unduly Sucrose Irritation, rather than the rarer and more dangerous Housemate From Hellacious Hell.

**I give you this information on the principle that I suffer, you suffer.  Along which line I should mention that she spent most of that day wandering around in panties and a T-shirt, ice-pack clutched tenderly to her more personal anatomy.

***At least this time no drunk people tried to break into my room.

I know a lot of you have posted about the recent fail on Amazon's part in which books with LGBTQ content were delisted for being 'adult,' including such racy thrillers as Heather Has Two Mommies, and quite a lot of you have also linked to the petition against it, which is awesome - like anyone, I like to see fantastic fucktards get their comeuppance.

But how about the Avatar racefail casting petition?  (quick refresher: tiny kiddie television show turns out to be super fantastic; Hollywood sets out to adapt it to live action film; producers decide Asian heroes are too, well, Asian, and cast them all as white*; internet has minor implosion).  It takes like two minutes, you guys, and then you can post to your journal about how you're awesome.  (By the way, please do: the more people who know about this, the better!)  This petition has been up for quite a bit longer than the Amazon one, but it has something like one fifth the signatures; can we do something about this, please?  I for one support Asian heroes!


*The semi-antihero-kind-of-eventually-a-hero character was recently recast as Dev Patel.  This is nice and all, except that Patel is South Asian rather than East Asian - and also we now have brown villains and white heroes, which naturally is not at all problematic.**

**That was a good example of mild sarcasm.

The cat came back!

Is okay, but I prefer to get my lying lying ways out in smaller, more year-round increments.  :D

Okay.

Invertebrate paleontology vs. post-WWII Japan.

Discuss.

I need prompts.  To fix my brain.  Which is not working.

So, if you comment with a prompt, I will write you a thing.  (N.b., danger!)  I am so thrilling and exciting.

Exams done.  So tired.  Going to go see The History Boys tonight.  Flying home tomorrow morning ungodly early.  Woo!

ASDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOHGODOHGODOHGODpleasedie.



Spring break cannot come soon enough.

The Loyalty of Birds is up in the March issue of Clarkesworld, and you should totally go and read it!

Although I'm still at the sorta-kinda-mostly-I-read-papers-actually stage with regard to this project, I am now actually doing work and talking about things with people.  Which is really cool in absolutely every way but tends to result in my coming home and going, "Man, I wish I were a grad student already so I didn't have to do all this boring classwork!"  (Today it was even worse, since it was Kelsey's 21st birthday, and therefore: cupcakes, champagne, strawberries, bananas, and grapefruit.  The cupcakes were something epic - rum-raisin with kahlua buttercream ice cream or something like that.  And all of the people I adore from my department in one squnchy awkward bunch.  <33)

And everyone I live with is a humanities major who will laugh at me for this!  Ass. 

Wanted: one excitable biology major, smarter than me, interested in research, willing to listen to endless burbling on the subject of the awesomeness of my bio department, not about to graduate or go to Ecuador anytime soon.  Candidates must submit to interview, be able to survive prolonged exposure to yours truly.


Yeah, good luck with that, self.

As far as I can tell, "And then I started watching jdramas, and I haven't done any work since!" is the number one thing to hear in any classroom teaching an East Asian language.  Of course it isn't always jdramas - some extremely virtuous Chinese and Korean students will watch twdramas, hkdramas, kdramas, or even mainland dramas instead* - but on the whole, we fall beneath the same scythe, and that scythe is Japanese in origin.  Which is to say, I regret to announce that I too have been laid low by this mighty opponent.

Honestly, they don't sound so dangerous on paper.  For one thing, they're short - jdramas in particular are rarely more than 10-14 episodes long.  And for another thing, most of them don't have official subtitles, which means that you have to refer on fansubs - which can range from fantastic to frankly atrocious.  (Despite a certain degree of internet reputation of being soap operas, I've read synopses for jdramas ranging from action cop shows to srs bizness stories about the struggles of people with life-threatening illnesses toperiod dramas to sff pieces.)

Unfortunately, what this fails to take into account is the fact that you therefore can't even pretend to do work while watching them, since you have to be able to read what's on the screen - and because they're so short, it's technically possible to finish a single drama in just a day or two.  (Of course, it'd have to be a very stupid day, and I'm sure I don't know anyone quite that stupid - well, apart from...)

Anyway!  I could ramble on about the various traits of jdramas as opposed to Western television, both in terms of what I have picked up from my research and in terms of what I am speculating on, but I think that is probably really boring, judging by the way people look at me when I try.  Instead, therefore, I have decided mostly for my own elucidation to talk about the ones I have actually seen, in the hopes of convincing more people to join me in sin.

The first jdrama I ever watched was Hana Yori Dango, over last Thanksgiving (er, two ago, really) at my friend's house in California.  With eerie prescience, we went through both seasons - nearly 20 hours of television - over the course of three or four days, and managed to finish before we were deported to our various universities and back into school.  This is insofar as I can tell pretty much standard: EVERYONE watches Hana Yori Dango.  Everyone.  Because it's insanely famous, ( and also basically on crack. )

So, having been suitably traumatized by HYD, I returned home and vowed never to look at another jdrama again lest my eyeballs fall out and my schoolwork spontaneously combust** - a promise which I kept until, well...about two weeks ago, actually.  At which point my cousin introduced me to Gokusen 2.

Gokusen 2 is the sequel to Gokusen, and both of them, like Hana Yori Dango, are based on a manga (also named Gokusen).  There is also an anime.  And, again like HYD, Gokusen is therefore entirely made of crack.  ( However, it's the kind of crack where everyone gets beat up, so I am okay with this! )

Having destroyed my work ethic on Gokusen, I told my dealer to withhold all drugs until I had finished with my midterms for the week, and she kindly obliged; unfortunately, the next thing recommended to me was on mysoju, which is sort of like the jdrama capital of the internet, and thereby a place of incredible sin. 
Said next thing was Shibatora, a cop drama about tiny, baby-faced Shibata Taketora, a police officer who infiltrates various youth spots in his pursuit of CRIME!  ( Also it stars Koike Teppei, possibly the tiniest adult actor I have ever seen. )

Giving up on Shibatora, at least for the time being, I went looking for other dramas starring the same actors as Gokusen: here, to my delight, the magnificent dramawiki [which I would link to apart from not being able to get to it ] proved horrifically helpful, and steered me first into 1 Pound no Fukuin, a comedy about a boxer who keeps eating himself out of his weight class and into trouble, the nun he's in love with, and his hard-drinking lunatic female manager (who at one point picks a fight with a street sign) - surprisingly awesome, except I got bored during the boxing scenes, through an exceedingly brief Yukan Club detour (lols.  just.  lols.)  and then rather reluctantly into Tatta Hitotsu no Koi.

Like Hana Yori Dango, Tatta Hitotsu no Koi is a story about a romance between two people of vastly different social standing, but there the resemblance pretty much ends.  I started watching THNK mostly because it had an actor I rather like, but then it turned out to be AWESOME.  Not only are the production values the best I've seen - seriously, this thing is gorgeous - and the actor in question so in character as to be unrecognizable as his earlier role, but despite it being a romance, the main characters' problems do not revolve entirely around their being thwarted in love.  And from a pretty early episode, it takes predictable scenes and turns them 90 degrees until they become awesome.  I could talk about this one forever, and I know a certain person will read the spoilery bits if I were to post them, so I shall not; suffice it to say, this one was awesome!  And I finished it in two days, because my brain fails at life.

At the moment, I'm in the middle of Nobuta wo Produce - hilarious, ridiculous school-based comedy featuring ghosts, a vice principal who is probably a crow spirit, a bookseller who only lets people he likes read before buying, a little old man who will follow you everywhere asking you to tell him the truth, and a main character whose deep dark secret is that he wears his hair in a little ponytail on top of his head when he's at home.  I hear from my sources that it becomes srs bizness （一本正经!）before the end, but so far it is sheerly delightful.

Also on the list of May End Up Watching Despite Myself/have seen several bits: Kurosagi (a conman who cons other conmen), Ryusei no Kizuna (orphaned siblings taking revenge on their parents' murderers), and Yasha (secret twins, genetic manipulation, epidemics, and a theme that makes an oldskool Doctor Who soundtrack sound subtle).  Ryusei no Kizuna is probably winning at the moment, due largely to an awesome early scene which parodies the manga-is-reality school of jdramas, but in fact I'm kind of waffling. 

So!  Those of you who watch jdramas, what should I watch next?*** Those who managed to escape the lure, having once succumbed - how did you do it?  Those of you who think I'm insane, please tell me so!


____
*Each of these have their own unique quirks: loosely and unscientifically speaking, hkdramas are like the actionist action movie that ever blew up in your face; twdramas are like manga-based jdramas on crack with one hundreth the budget; and mainland dramas are full of nationalist sentiment.  I have no idea what kdramas are like because if I'm going to flail around in a language that isn't the one I'm studying, it might as well be the same one consistently, and jdramas are shorter.

**Sadly, at my school, this would not be an excuse not to do it, since I would be hard-pressed to get a doctor's note for the spontaneous combustion of my homework.

***My ideal jdrama consists of equal parts pretty boys and violence, with enormous showers of bonus points for a plot that doesn't routinely make me headdesk.  People who recommend me things typically miss the 'violence' part of this, which is saddening, especially since romances are typically my least favorite type of story, but if you happen to know one that fits, I am desperate, here!

Are like crack.

So is The West Wing.

You guys, I don't even watch television outside of winter quarter!  Surely this is a violation of contract or something.

Today, Barack Obama is going to be my President.

For damn straight actual goddamn serious.

Yeah.  :D

I am having a not entirely pleasant day, ergo, linkspam.

I'm sure some of you have already seen this marvelous essay, posted by sarahbrand , but have you seen these steampunk Star Wars drawings?  And how about these pictures of newly-discovered species in the Mekong Delta?  (or this giant pink lizard in the Galapagos which somehow was never accounted for until just recently?)  For the Doctor Who fans, how about the Bayeux Tardis? 

Historically speaking, here is a page on the Shinsengumi, a special police force in Kyoto at the time of the Bakumatsu (the turnover period between the rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Meiji Emperor), and if you don't specially like Japanese history, (you lunatic), here is a page full of crazy details about the very crazy forms of proper address in the English peerage.

And this is eigenfactor, which is one of my research professor's pet projects.  It is insane and makes my head hurt, but also it is awesome: the basic idea is that it is a map of how parts of science connect to other parts, which is a trendy idea right now - but most people just go for pretty spiderwebs and don't consider whether or not it tells you useful information.  Eigenfactor is supposed to address that.

So what cool links do you have squirrelled away for a rainy day, in case you find just the right person to throw them at?  Funny things (Arnold Chrysler and the 40,000 stolen hotel coat hangers!), or amazing science things (kleptoplast photosynthetic sea slugs), or angry essays (racefail, Earthsea movie), or beautiful pictures (the northern lights in Iceland) - whatever.  Send me your spare linkage!

Newly republished!  Everyone should read it.  EVERYONE.  It is right here.  You can buy it for people for Christmas!  It is fantastic.  Neil Gaiman says so, too.  There is an evil duke who threatens to slit you from your guggle to your zatch and feed you to his geese!  ("We all have flaws," he says, "and mine is being wicked.")   And a Golux.  And a prince whose name is Zorn of Zorna, who goes by Xingu.  It is THE BEST THING EVER.  Read it!  All of you!


NO I MEAN IT.