posted 2003/04/30 at 23:54
What's worse than going to one party in a day where people get stinking drunk? Going to two parties in a day where people get stinking drunk. Kee-ripes.
At least now I've got two classes totally finished with. Hopefully I'll get a take-home final done by the end of the week, then I'll only have two classes to worry about for finals week -- plus I'll only have to go in one day, unless I go to that commencement where they want to give me that thing for the Dean's Prize. I still don't know if I want to go or not. I get embarassed enough when my professors announce it in my class; how will I feel in front of all those people?
posted 2003/04/29 at 18:43
Bridgette is blogging. There may be hope for the universe yet.
posted 2003/04/28 at 22:56
Okay my fellow liberals, it's time we round up pictures of Bill O'Reilly, Senator Santorum, Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity ... oh hell just add the entire Fox News Channel anchor lineup ... Rupert Murdoch, Ari Fleischer, blah-di-blah-di-blah until we get to 52, make playing cards of each of them with one of their most offensive quotes printed underneath their portraits (I know, it'll take months to pick out just one for most of them), and sell them as "Humanity's Most Wanted" playing cards. I swear, the Republicans must be behind the whole "Iraq's Most Wanted" shit, and they're probably making a fucking mint off of them. Or at least they're driving the rest of us into insanity by spamming us with that "AUTHENTIC REPLICA DOD PLAYING CARDS" bullshit. When will liberals learn that the only way we're going to rescue our image as a bunch of simpering ne'er-do-wells is to stoop to the conservatives' level?
posted 2003/04/27 at 14:58
Couple of presents for myself for winning the Dean's Prize: yesterday I got some money from my sister to pick up an Inoue Kikuko CD I'd seen at Media Play on Friday but couldn't afford, in exchange for picking up another DVD of The Bride with White Hair for her after she gave her first copy to someone else. Both of them were bought on my Replay card, though, so hopefully I'll have some nice gift certificates coming my way soon. Unfortunately the Kiku-chan CD turned out to be techno (as opposed to electronic music; I use "techno" to describe the commercial stuff you're used to hearing at malls and such), but it was still nice to pick up a CD of my favourite seiyuu. I also ordered the soundtrack to Oh My Goddess!: the Movie, since I've really wanted that for a long time for obvious reasons; hopefully that will arrive soon.
Unfortunately today I find myself on campus, researching for my last big paper of the semester, as well as getting myself away from Final Fantasy Origins, which I've been playing entirely too much of this weekend. The good news is that if I can just get past Wednesday, then I'll have two of my classes completed, and thanks to take-home finals and such I'll only have one in-class final to take care of next week. The bad news is that it's a real long haul up to that point. As always, don't be surprised if .org updates are sporadic for the next couple of weeks, as I rush to get everything taken care of. I have the feeling that my 4.0 may get broken this semester, but I'll be damned if it's going to get broken without a hell of a fight. Wish me well.
posted 2003/04/26 at 14:28
I never know how to handle good news, but here goes ...
"Something Better", the not-so-short story I wrote for the introductory Creative Writing course I took last summer (and which is currently in .fiction for your perusal), won the 2003 Dean's Prize for Creative Writing. That'll add another $250 to my pocketbook here shortly, but more importantly, it'll look really nice on my CV, once I get around to writing that. (Which'll have to be soon, considering I'll probably start applying to grad schools in about the next six months.)
What makes this all the cooler is that earlier in the week I'd lost an enivornmental poetry contest, and the $50 that came with that, to someone who's in a couple of my classes this semester. And I know he submitted something for the Dean's Prize as well. It's so much easier to feel glad that he won the poetry contest now, since I got the bigger award, both in terms of recognition and money. And I know how horrible that must sound, and I'm pretty sure I don't really mean it. I just don't get a chance to gloat about these things so often, so when something like this comes up, I don't know how to react.
No, I don't really mean to gloat. But I'm pretty proud of myself right now, and only those of you who've read me for a long time know how odd a feeling this is for me. I think I need to go get some fresh air.
posted 2003/04/25 at 16:17
Replay weekend at Media Play plus me having a bit of cash equals a chance to shop for once, and now I've finally picked up Final Fantasy Origins. I'm probably not going to get much of a chance to play it with finals so close (I have to finish up two classes next week, before finals start), but I'm just glad to have picked it up.
posted 2003/04/23 at 22:49
Okay, I just upgraded the .forum to the latest version of XMB, which appears to have taken care of some of the problems we were having earlier. As usual let me know if you have any problems with it. And if you haven't visited the .forum recently, please do so. We could use the company in there.
posted at 16:31
Came home for dinner this afternoon to find my first rejection notice for poetry I'd submitted to a journal. The rejection really isn't fazing me that much, so I guess that means I'm a real writer already, har dee har.
I'm going to be sending grad school applications out at the end of the year, though, so I'm hoping I get published here soon. Thankfully I shouldn't be so busy with classes this summer that I won't be able to write more, submit more, and hopefully get something published somewhere.
posted 2003/04/22 at 21:36
You know what the funnest part about signing up for online banking is? Having your bank make you install this ActiveX control on your system that causes your computer to pause for thirty seconds every time you press a form button. Methinks that $200 from the essay contest may need to go towards a new computer ... not that I hadn't been doing some pricing already, but necessity is a mother.
posted at 00:04
Abby, I respect you, but this is one case in which you are so wrong ... and I'm more than willing to loan you any of these if you're interested:
Top Five NES Games of All Time
1. Magic of Scheherazade
2. Bubble Bobble
3. Clash at Demonhead
4. Final Fantasy
5. Legend of Zelda
Like your list, no particular order there, and I don't even want to get into all the honourable mentions ...
posted 2003/04/21 at 16:12
So I took fourth place in that essay-rewriting contest I took part in a couple of weeks ago. I suppose having an extra two hundred dollars in my pocket (once the cheque arrives) isn't something to be complained about, but of course now I'm wondering what the three people who finished ahead of me wrote, and how I could have made my own essay better. That's one of the problems of being a perfectionist.
Okay, you want to know what my own personal hell is like? Here's a good approximation: go tape the opening of The Caroline Rhea Show. Don't tape the monologue or anything like that, just tape the opening video. Then turn the volume on your TV all the way up and watch the opening. Then rewind and watch it again ninety-nine more times in a row. That should give you a good idea of what my personal hell has been like recently.
posted 2003/04/20 at 20:32
My next project: developing a sport that's a cross between horseshoes and cricket. Anyone interested?
posted 2003/04/19 at 22:55
Recently I seem to be distracted by a couple of things: online games and bad television. The online games I can understand, especially given all that I've been doing for classes recently, but all that bad TV I've been watching just hasn't been good for me. I've moved into a real crunch time here, and I've got to make the most of my time. I just don't know how I'm going to pull it off.
posted 2003/04/18 at 22:28
Well, as of later this month I will be a member of Phi Kappa Phi. For those of you scoring at home (or even if you're alone), that now makes $108 that I've given to get into honours societies, and $0 in scholarship money received. Fun, huh?
Funnily enough, one of the churches I pass close to my house just changed the letter-sign by the street in front of them to the same phrase that they had a few years ago. I tried shooting a picture of that sign when it was first there, but I only had a crappy digital camera and I tried to take it as my father drove past it, and I never got a good shot at it. Had the picture turned out, it would have been the first shot for "Postcards from Over the Edge", which I started in .photography but abandoned a while back; at the time I first conceived the feature, I was actually hoping to put it on Vulgar Unicorn, if any of you remember that little project.
I had a breakthrough with my counselor earlier today, although it will probably be a while before I figure out where it will all end up. I'm running the risk of losing something that means a lot to me right now, but if things work out, I could really, really be okay for once in my life. Unfortunately, I can't push this matter even in the slightest amount, so I guess I'd better apply all my patience to this matter over the next few weeks.
I'm not too terribly loaded up on homework this weekend, but the next weekend is so bad that I'm having to start on next weekend's stuff now. Just three more weeks until I'm done with finals ... and then I get a whole week off before twelve straight weeks of summer classes. Pity me. Please.
posted 2003/04/17 at 23:37
You ever know some people who you think are the dumbest people you know, but then you see them drunk and somehow they've gotten even dumber? And people wonder why I don't drink.
Speaking of dumb people, I don't know why, but I've been watching a lot of Jimmy Kimmel Live recently. Somehow I have the strange suspicion that there are a lot of people who would like to see the .org get on that show in some way. I'll warn you ahead of time: if I get on the show, I will find out who told Kimmel about the .org, and I will do very unpleasant things to that person. I've been mocked enough in my lifetime, I don't need some unfunny meathead, who can't even fill Bill Maher's shoes in his wet dreams, skewering me on national television.
posted 2003/04/16 at 17:18
Ever have one of those Single White Female moments? (No, I'm not referring to the bondage scene.)
Bit of good news today: the Oh My Goddess! merchandise from Right Stuf International that I blew my tax refund on came in the mail, minus a shirt that's on backorder. But I finally have a couple of t-shirts, and I filled a hole in my manga collection to boot. Now if only I had the money to get the rest ...
posted 2003/04/12 at 20:01
The joys of shopping on a Saturday ...
Another one of the books I needed for this one class of mine wasn't at the student bookstore on campus. (This isn't the fault of the professor; it's the fault of the bookstore for sending books back too early.) So I went all over town looking for it, and again drew a big blank. So now I have to go order the books from Amazon and hope they get in before the end of the semester.
While I was over at the only real mall left in Toledo, Franklin Park, I browsed around a bit. My father used to take me to Franklin Park every Saturday, and I used to love that place. But now it's so changed ... the worst part was discovering that Red Baron, the arcade where I used to waste my youth, is now gone. When I was over at their other location a few weeks ago, I found out that they'd closed up there as well. The worst part is that I still have a bunch of Skee-Ball tickets saved that I can't do anything with now, as well as a few tokens. On the plus side, I finally found out where Hot Topic's store in the mall was, but in all honesty I looked at that place and it scared me. You know me, all fragile and stuff.
And then I headed over to the post office to get some stamps for sending out my first submissions to poetry journals. In the parking lot, there was this woman there who'd brought her dog along, and hadn't bothered to tether it to anything, so of course it charges straight at me. Damn near caused my heart to explode. And the worst part was that the machines in the post office only wanted to sell stamps in books, and I didn't have the money for that.
So after all that shopping, I came home pretty much empty-handed. Sigh. And it looks like there's going to be a big push to the finish here for me, with all kinds of tests and papers due, not to mention my first big poetry portfolio to get together. Don't be surprised if updates are sporadic for the next few weeks, as I try to get all this stuff done.
posted 2003/04/10 at 23:44
Nice to know I can maintain a 4.0 GPA, be president of a student organization, donate my time writing software for the Department of Foreign Languages and still get turned down for scholarships. I couldn't even make it to the interview phase with the latest one, and that really sucks because it was a $4,000 scholarship, too. Do people just hate me or something?
posted 2003/04/08 at 23:43
I got my student aid packet from UT in the mail today. Thankfully I qualify for more than enough loans to cover next year's tuition, plus enough grants that I don't have to worry about getting myself too much in debt. Of course, I'm still hoping that I can get some scholarships, despite last week's debacle. We'll see how it goes.
This is why I'm glad that I don't have any previous financial aid experience; I'll still have three years of eligibility left after next year, which will be just long enough to go to Antioch University Los Angeles and get my MFA with a dual poetry/fiction concentration, plus get a Certificate in the Pedagogy of Creative Writing. Mind you, that's assuming I get into AULA, and I really need to get published before then. Thankfully I'm getting ready to send my first submissions out now, and with any luck my next entry in .poetry will be a "go out and buy this poetry journal" sort of thing. Sorry, but these poems are about to become my lifeblood, so don't expect too many freebies for the next little while.
posted at 20:13
You know, there was a chart on gallup.com today showing how women over age 50 are the least likely to support that business going on in Iraq right now. I wanted to post it here under the quote, "What the world needs right now is more aggressive grandmothers!", but I can't remember where that quote comes from. Google isn't even helping me with it. Anyone got a clue where that line comes from?
posted 2003/04/07 at 16:21
There was snow last night, but the accumulation was little more than a dusting; unfortunately, now there's a whole lot of freezing rain out there, which should make driving home a joy of joys. Oh well, we'll be back up into the 50s in a couple of days, so I can put up with it for now, I guess.
Someone actually had Rush Limbaugh on in the Spectrum office when I was in there earlier today, and I got to hear Rush boast about how they'd finally found chemical weapons in Iraq, and how now "all the liberals were scurrying" because justification for the incursion had finally been found. Mind you, it turned out that they'd just found some pesticide, but I guess you need something to rally the Republicans with, right? Oh, and I just loved how Rush said that once the incursion was over, that the US economy would stop stagnating and start blooming again. Just like after the first time we sent troops over there, right Rusty? And people actually swallow this bullshit?
posted 2003/04/05 at 18:26
There was actually a bit of sleet as I was out today. (I had to head back to UT's library to do some research on a presentation I have to give next week.) Mind you, it hit 77 degrees on Wednesday, so this is, shall we say, quite the shock. The snowbanks finally melted, but it took a while because there was so much snow; there's still flooding in some areas here because of all the snow that had to melt away. Good thing I live on high ground, even if my morals don't necessarily do the same.
Quick question for the vidgamers out there: what's the best backup device for PS2 memory cards right now? The reason I ask is that I'm going to try to get RPG Maker 2 as soon as it comes out, and I'd like to share my efforts with the rest of you, but I'd like to put the files up in a format that you all can use.
posted 2003/04/04 at 19:40
Just to clarify on the last item, it was actually two scholarships I would have gotten that I didn't because they were canceled: one was a summer scholarship that would have paid $500-$1,000 for the summer courses I'm planning on taking this year; the second was $2,000 towards my tuition for the next full academic year. But because the University's trust funds have sunk to new lows due to the continuously flagging stock market (hence me blaming Dubya instead of Taft), that whole line of scholarships got canned.
I applied for a bunch of other scholarships, but of course now I have to wonder if any of them will get canceled. UT's President, Dan Johnson, actually sent an e-mail to everyone today warning about the upcoming tuition increases, and I'm thinking about writing him to voice my opinion on this whole mess. While it's hard to be polite when you realize you won three thousand dollars but they don't have the fucking money to give to you, I will do my best. I just hope President Johnson can be as impressed with my writing skills as my English professors are.
Oh, and here's the kicker: another honours society, Phi Kappa Phi, just mailed me to say they want me in. But it's $40 to get in. Why is it that as hard as I work at my school work, all my hard work only seems to result in me having to pay more money instead of getting a freaking scholarship to defray rapidly rising tuition costs? Can someone throw me a bone here? Anyone?
posted 2003/04/03 at 15:33
Nothing like finding out you're going to win a $2,000 scholarship -- especially with strong rumours that tuition is about to go up 20% next year -- only to find out that they can't give you the scholarship because they don't have enough money. As if I needed more reasons to hate Dubya and his cronies in Congress.
posted at 12:06
Yahoo! News - Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists
I knew this was going to happen, I fucking knew this was going to happen. I hate it when I'm right.
posted 2003/04/01 at 11:54
If you're looking for April Fools jokes, go somewhere else please. See you tomorrow.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon