Today they were hiring at my work. They put out a notice saying they were going to take applications and do interviews between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. this afternoon.
And man did they come! As I said to Lisa, the CSR I was bagging for, it's proof of the sad state of our economy. The hiring didn't even start till 1, and (according to Lisa - I was on break at the time) people started lining up at 12:15! I must have directed at least 15-20 people to where to go just in the last fifteen minutes before hiring started alone! And when I got off work at 3pm, when the hiring was supposed to end, there was still a long line of people waiting!
The only time I have ever seen such a line that I was not in was when I went to Barnes and Noble one day when some midnight release party (for Harry Potter, I think) was supposed to happen. When I left the store around 6 p.m., people were already getting in line. Yeah, seriously. And the only times I've waited in such a line is when I've gone to concerts and such events, and also when I had to wait in line to get my badge at Comic-Con last year and then to get into the Harry Potter panel I was late to thanks to the long badge pickup line I'd just waited in.
I finished The Freedom Writers Diary today. It sounds like all the Writers got to go to college -- and some of them were the first in their families to do so. One of them, whose story comes up in a couple entries, died though before the group's trip to Europe, when the double lung transplant she'd gotten to help deal with her cystic fibrosis was rejected by her body. That was sad. (Frankly, before reading this book, I didn't know you could even get a lung transplant, let alone a double lung transplant, but knowing what I know about CF and what it does to your lungs, I'm glad she at least got it).
I also brought with me this book from my Web Page Fundamentals class called Cool HTML for Web Pages and a book called The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Christian Fiction (a rare find indeed, especially since I found it at a secular bookstore, no less), but I was tired today and didn't get much reading done in either of them. I think I was tired due to having only 6 hours of sleep, plus my period started today (sort of; I saw red on my TP when I went to the bathroom, but my underwear didn't have any blood on it, as usually happens since my period often starts while I'm asleep or in some other situation where I can't easily get to the bathroom right away) after a false alarm yesterday (I get false alarms sometimes - I'll think I'm having the discomfort I usually get on the first day of my period, and so I'll put on a pad, and then look at it later, and there's no blood).
This is the second time I've read any of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Christian Fiction. Despite it being more of a reference book, I have actually read it all the way through. I was put off by it initially because of the author saying science fiction and fantasy were a hard sell in the Christian market (this from a guy who coauthors cozy mysteries with his wife, when mystery is still pretty rare in the Christian market), since those are the genres of the stuff I've primarily been writing for the last few years. But when I looked again, I saw there were two publishers he listed in the book that specifically do take fantasy and/or speculative fiction or both. One is Multnomah. Multnomah is a Christian imprint of Random House, so its acceptance of speculative fiction (the blanket term in literary circles for fantasy, science fiction, and their various cousins and subgenres) is not surprising to me. After all, Random House is also the proud owner of one of the most well-known (if not the most well-known) science fiction and fantasy imprints out there, Del Rey. If you don't know what I'm talking about, think of the Star Wars novels or the pioneering fantasy book The Sword of Shannara. Both of those are/were published by Del Rey. And of course, Del Rey is now so big it has a manga division, as I've mentioned in the past in reference to the Del Rey mangas I own (Pichi Pichi Pitch Mermaid Melody, Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE,
and xxxHolic). The other publisher is Strang Communications, which publishes speculative fiction under an imprint called "Realms." I've heard of Strang from my days at Loaves and Fishes, but I think pretty much everything I've seen published by them was nonfiction. I could be wrong about that though.
At any rate, this gives me some hope.
I had plans to tie together Us Against the World, Darkly Bound (the tentative title of my Avalon Jacobs story, chosen for when I submitted a chapter of it -- a very BAD chapter -- to Anime Angels), and an as-yet-untitled planned book about the Christian Youth Alliance, starring a girl named Emily who is Avalon's niece. But while Darkly Bound and the CYA story work well together since they are related somewhat, Us Against the World was written totally independently of the other two and would take a good deal of revising to tie it to the others.
In the notebook I brought with me to write down notes from the books, I found a page where I'd tried to plan out what books and story collections I'd do about Walden. Here's the list:
Novels
- The Elven Princess
- Hirion and Estelle: A Love Story of the Great War
- The Last Age Begins
- The End of Bitterness
Story Collections
- Tales of the Days Before the Great War
- Tales of the Great War
- Tales After the Great War
- Dwarven Tales
- Dwelven Tales
- Sea-people Tales
The "story collection" ones are more tentative than anything else; but giving them generic titles gives me an idea of which tales I would do in them. Tales of the Nuri Fidele (elves) and men would be in the first three collections, whereas the other races - dwarves, dwelves, and sea-people - would be featured in the other three, as the titles suggest.
I might rename the war due to the term "The Great War" often being used for World War I.
Also, if I do write these tales, I will probably have to make a timeline of Walden events, a la Tolkien. I have written a few "Tales of Walden" already, as separate stories. They are called "The Tale of Lady Victoria," "How the Irvin Settled With the Sea-People," and "The Paradise Charm." Also, though it is not named, I did technically write the Tale of Argus and Alan, which would be a dwelvish tale.
Ah yes, dwelves. My one success at originality in a series that could end up very Tolkien-like. Dwelves are a mix of dwarves and elves, resulting both from the marriage of Hirion and Estelle and from marriages between elves and dwarves when people from Linus's group in "How the Irvin Settled with the Sea-People" settled in the Forest of Light with the elves for protection from men trying to take their land.
Ok I hate to end this here but I'm pretty tired again and can't think of anything to say. Goodnight.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Laughter is good medicine
One oft-quoted Bible verse, Proverbs 17:22, goes thus: "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones" (KJV). This is where we get the expression about laughter being the best medicine. And today, I have to agree.
I was listening to PotterCast today, and the episode I listened to today was their "Best of 2008" episode, in which they played a bunch of "fan favorite" clips from the year. There is a clip in there from I can't remember what episode. Anyway, it was from one of the "Phoenix Files" segments, a segment the show temporarily had where they discussed the Order of the Phoenix movie. They were discussing the Order of the Phoenix apparating into the Ministry of Magic, and John says how Kingsley Shacklebolt comes down "like a god" and then comments that he would've liked to see him summon Pikachu from the "Pikaball." They then continue with the joke, making the stick-pounding movie Mad-Eye Moody into a Pokemon too, and laughing their heads off. And I was laughing my head off also. It felt good, in a way, since I was pretty blue the day before.
Granted, I was in a better mood cause after my blue day yesterday I decided it would be good if I got more sleep than the night before, so I went to bed earlier, around 10ish. Right before bed, I watched an episode of CLAMP School Detectives, which I hadn't watched since my computer got broken. It definitely left me in a lighter mood, which is just as well after a blue day and reading the intriguing yet unnerving book The Freedom Writers Diary.
I heard of the Freedom Writers book from the movie that was made of it in 2007, starring Hilary Swank as a teacher named Erin Gruwell who transformed the lives of her English students in Long Beach, California, in the 1990's. The book is a compilation of entries from the journals Ms. Gruwell had the students keep. And it is intense. These are kids who went through everything from dyslexia to seeing their friends murdered in race or gang-related fights. Most of them were afraid to walk the streets of their neighborhoods for fear of being shot, and many had troubled situations at home. Yet it is intriguing to see the students' perspectives change as time goes on and they gain the courage to fight for tolerance as the Freedom Writers and even bring their cause to the attention of Richard Riley, the U.S. Secretary of Education.
Reading what the kids go through those is intense and unnerving. So I need breaks in between reading it...I just do.
I just checked to see if my booklist for spring is up; it is. (The "booklist" function was unavailable last night, rather than saying "Fall 2008," so I figured they were setting it up for spring). There's a lot of books I need, mainly for my U.S. Lit class. She's asking for Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I own already (I think I still have it, anyway). It looks like we're also reading Emerson and Hawthorne. The book of Hawthorne stuff that is listed is of his short stories; I wonder if "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is in there. Ok, just checked Amazon, and yes it is! Yay!
This requires explaining. "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, as you might have guessed. It is a story about a doctor who claims to his dinner guests to have found the Fountain of Youth and brought back water from it. The results are not as expected. I read it back in high school. A passage from it had shown up on some essay test I had taken. It was either due to English class or for the AP English Lit test prep we did, because I remember Mrs. Burnworth was involved. I seem to recall my close friend Desiree reading it too. I think we both saw the passage and then wanted to read the whole story, so Mrs. Burnworth ran it off for us from somewhere. Something like that.
Somehow, I'm surprised to not see Poe as a featured writer in the booklist (since he seems to be one in almost every English curriculum I've come into contact with). I read something by him in every English class from 8th through 11th grade. We read "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Raven," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." That last one is particularly freaky.
Emerson is good though; I like his essays. I've read parts of "Nature" and "Self-Reliance" in school. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a classic; I read it in American Lit in high school too. As for the other novel-sounding books required, I've never read them, but I think I saw people reading them in my American Ethnic Lit class last semester (which was taught by the same teacher). There's also a book of autobiographies.
Besides this, I need three books for my other Lit class, a class also taught by Dr. Cucinella, on the Theory and Practice of K-12 Writing Instruction. (I'm not sure if I'm going to be a teacher exactly, but I figure maybe this class will help me decide yea or nay on that issue, plus it counts toward my major in the Pedagogy section). Also I need 5 books for my History class, which is on the history of U.S. foreign policy (I needed a fourth class, and there was a time conflict with my humanities GE class and something else, so I picked this class instead). And naturally, I need a book and workbook for my new French class, French 202, which doesn't use the same book and workbook as my last class.
I have some doubts regarding my career, as you know from my last entry, and this extends to my major as well. I chose English (or Literature and Writing Studies as CSUSM calls it) because I want to be a writer, but I have found out quickly that "the sky is the limit" as far as the variety of jobs one can get with a B.A. in English. Foreign Languages (the broad discipline under which my minor resides) is pretty broad too. Up till practically the end, I was still debating between English and History, which is why I took classes toward both in my penultimate (second to last) semester, the Fall of 2007 (I wasn't able to attend school in Spring 2007 cause I didn't have the money, due to having lost my job at Loaves and Fishes the previous fall and not getting my job at Stater Bros. till the week before school started). I did take one set of two classes toward the History one at MiraCosta and half of another, and I took Intro to Lit towards the Literature and Writing Studies major.
I need to look at the career stuff I typed up on my other computer again. At any rate, there's a lot left to take on my current major, including almost all my core because the core classes are really hard to get into. I was lucky enough to get into one (U.S. Lit) this semester. With luck, I'll get to take one next semester too, or two if I decide to forgo my Humanities G.E. class (which I still need) or the elective I have to take for my French minor (you can't take the ones listed on the worksheet anymore due to program cuts, so you can take a class in another discipline to count for it, according to Professor Anover). Actually, the latter is probably easier to forgo next fall, since I want to get my G.E. done as soon as possible so I can focus on my major and minor. Already, at the rate I'm going, I'll waste my entire latter 20's getting this degree finished. I'll be lucky if I'm out of college by age 30.
Next semester, aside from the Humanities class I still need and my next French class (French 311), I'd like to take some core class (only cause I need them bad) and maybe the Creative Writing Workshop. Something not in the "Theory and Pedagogy" section, as my currently enrolled elective is. Just because that class might be kind of heavy, not only cause it's 400-level but also cause it's a theory class, and theory classes can either really intrigue you or put you right to sleep, I think.
I might take Small Press Publishing as my other elective in the Workshop category, since the school newspaper (the Pride, so called because our mascot is the cougar) is no longer a class, for one, and also because I have recently considered going for a job writing for a magazine. I'm not sure still on this though. Man, I am soooo lost.
People may think a major with a wide array of job possibilities would be fantastic, but for a specifics-loving, extremely future-oriented person like me, it's a nightmare. I wanted to go into university knowing I'd be able for sure to get a job when I got out. This is mainly because, while I am neither a miser nor entirely a spend-my-whole-check-right-away person (I've been getting better there), the idea of having money is important to me. One of the things I do NOT want to do is end up on welfare. Granted, welfare is fine for those who truly need it. Heck, I work at a place where people use WIC checks and EBT Food cards (a.k.a. food stamps) all the time -- so I see public assistance at work. But there are those who take welfare because they truly need it, and there are those who take welfare cause they're lazy and don't want to work, even though they are able-bodied and could totally get a job if they wanted to. I am one of those employable able-bodied people. Granted, I don't make much; in fact on my last taxes I apparently made so little (a little over $14,000 for the year), I actually somehow qualified for grants when I did my FAFSA, which I figured was impossible for a white girl from an upper-middle-class family (since so much financial aid is based on financial need and minority statuses). And if my good fortune continues with the FAFSA, I may end up getting out of college debt-free, which would be very nice (and a relief to my parents, I'm sure). But at any rate, even if fortune befell in such a way that I should end up poor and on my own, I would try to find a job so I would at least have a roof over my head, food, and clothes. You know, the basic things. I know this because I very much dislike being idle. I couldn't just sit around the house all day; in fact, I rarely do so on my days off unless I am working on some extremely focused project, like a school report or something else equally important. Often, I will come up with some reason to walk to the store or somewhere around there, simply so I can get out of the house. Or if I have errands to do, I'll do those. Once or twice, I've gone to the mall by myself simply to get out of the house. Most of the time, I don't actually buy anything, and if I do, it's usually a book or the latest volume of some manga series I'm reading. A few times, I have made plans to take trips. I went to Balboa Park a couple times during the summer and also to Seaport Village once. Oh and one day I went to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, just to try out a new beach. (The closest beach to us gets REALLY crowded during the summer).
I don't doubt that I can write. I know I still have it in me to come up with stories, and as awkward as some of my attempts at novels and such might be, I communicate well using the written word, often more so than using the spoken word. English teachers in the past have recognized my talent as a writer and encouraged it. I generally do well on essays for classes.
I guess my talent isn't very honed yet. I haven't really developed a style or found a genre I'm really good at yet. Plus, even I recognize that my writing is very derivative of styles I have read, which may or may not be a bad thing. Still, I'd rather avoid something akin to the plagiarism charge that ended Nella Larsen's career.
I do enjoy both fantasy and technology. My attempts at sci-fi have had high technology content. In fact, the technology is all that really makes my novel Us Against the World sci-fi; as a story about people having to decide between the law and their convictions in the face of an oppressive political takeover, it could happen anywhere and at any time period, including the present. My main worry is that if I place it in the present day, it will be too controversial to publish. When you do novels which contain themes like political corruption and the like, and you set them in the present day of the time you're writing them, people will more likely than not try to read a lot into the book that you did not intend. This is what I deduce.
If you set the same story in a science fiction setting though, it seems to be ok. I mean, look at Star Wars and The Matrix. The science fiction genre has a genre name for books like mine - cyberpunk. The term generally describes sci-fi stories with a focus on technology and usually set in a dystopian setting.
I intend to type up that novel for my writing website, so maybe I can figure out the issues that made me abandon the manuscript while I do that. I can also go back to Fiction Express and dig up the posts people made in response to the two chapters of it that I posted there.
I think one issue the book has is that it is told in first person; this limits what can be told. Third person would probably be better, or even multiple first person, like the book we read for Dr. Cucinella's class called Getting Mother's Body (or the quintessential multiple-first-person example in articles on POV, The Poisonwood Bible). Even multiple third person technically works, either in the favored third person omnisicent or with sections focusing on certain characters, like in the novel we read for my Intro to Lit class, White Teeth.
Also, while the evil political organization (New Age-based too) seemed like a good idea at the time, maybe a more focused evil is needed. Alan's father, meant to be a major player in Sphere (the bad guys in the book) could be more of a character, or I could go for the evil Darien Palmer character I created during the time I was attempting to novelize Lightning Girl. As the CEO of a record company in public and an evil villain (or the half-werewolf alien Lord Nekros in my made-up Lightning Girl TV show) in private, he seemed an interesting villain. Bond villains are often like that, especially Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies and Gustav Graves from Die Another Day. Alan's father, as the rich PM who acts, along with other rich men, as the financial backing for the takeover, is sort of like Lucius Malfoy I guess.
I also need to decide what to do about Avi, the AI I created for the "virtual reality room" main character Eve had used in the past. (I named the AI "Avalon" before planning the Avalon Jacobs story, so I didn't realize till later that I'd used the same name twice). I had an idea for her which involved some delving into the genetics info I gained from bio class, but it seemed too hard to explain and too much of a plot divergence.
As for my Walden novel -- The Elven Princess -- I have a basic plot outline written somewhere, as well as a list of locations I plan for main character Robin to visit and some other background on Walden itself, but not much else. I'm also considering changing the country name so as to avoid any possibility of plaigarism accusations regarding the work Walden by Thoreau. Plus, I think I need to come up with a better name after encountering names like Alagaësia (the name of the world where Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, the fantasy series I'm engrossed in at the moment, is set). Although one could argue that Tolkien's world was simply called "Middle-earth." And even "Narnia" is a fairly plain-sounding name, as is "The Land" (the name of the fantasy world in Lisa Wright-DeGroodt's Quest series, which I have read the first book of; and YES, it is literally called "The Land"...I am NOT making that up).
I suppose my country name should be worthy of the place names I came up with, which come primarily from me looking up words in a Bible concordance and then finding the Hebrew and or Greek word in the accompanying dictionaries. What didn't come from that I just made up. There is no formal languages really made up yet for this world. As much as I love languages, I do not think it would be easy (or indeed, even necessary) for me to make up an entire language -- well, actually, multiple languages -- for this series. Try as I might, I am not a linguist, and I certainly do not possess the amazing talent of J.R.R. Tolkien, who created two elvish languages (Sindarin and Quenya) pretty much entirely from scratch, forming languages for the other peoples from existing languages (Norse and Old English).
I suppose I could put the Celtic language resources I gathered for my manga project with Amy to good use with that story, particularly the searchable Manx/English dictionary program I downloaded (yes, such a program exists -- and it's very user-friendly as well, and a pretty cool resource).
Most of the background I have on Walden has come from making up folklore-esque stories explaining how things happened. This probably comes from me reading tons of mythology and fairy tales, as well as the "background" books to The Lord of the Rings (The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Lost Tales, etc). In fact, I have mentioned in my notes a story of an elf and a dwarf meeting and having an epic romance, which I have a funny feeling will end up somewhat like Tolkien's famous "Lay of Leithian," or the Tale of Beren and Lúthien (which actually has a few different versions).
I have established the world with a sort of Christian religious structure in mind, with a God-like figure (named "Chaimvin," a combination of the Hebrew word Chaim, meaning "life," and the suffix vin, which comes from the Germanic suffix win and means "friend," which I translate as "friend of life") who has "servants" (which I have yet to define; I guess they would be like angels) and a Satan-like figure (named "Marek," a name that simply popped into my head one day, and to which I cannot tie an origin) who has followers as well, the main ones being the "dark elves," elves he won to his side during the "Great War" of long ago. Like Satan, he is responsible for bringing sin and evil into the world, and like Satan (and like Tolkien's Melkor/Morgoth), he rebelled against God (Chaimvin here) and lost. Chaimvin is depicted as a creator who is intimately tied to his people, but who leaves administration of the land to others, not unlike Eru Ilúvatar of Tolkien's world. He's not like the deist God who created everything and then did not become involved in human affairs again, far from it. However, Walden has not received a savior as in our world -- it has not had its Christ figure, not had the sacrifice of Aslan as in Narnia -- although one has been promised to come and deliver them from evil. Robin might have been prophesied as the elven princess who saves the Kannarah (another word that simply came to me; they are creatures created from the dark elves' cruel practice of mating animals with captured members of other races, such as humans and elves), but she is not the savior of all Walden, and indeed since she spent most of her life in our world, she may not be meant to stay in Walden once her purpose is fulfilled anyway. In a way, she's like Princess Elyon from W.I.T.C.H. -- Elyon has a purpose to save Meridian (Metamoor in the comics) from her evil brother Prince Phobos, but what she does after he is defeated is up to her. She is the heir to the throne, but she also grew up on Earth and thus could live there if she wished (indeed, early in season 2, she returns to Heatherfield -- the town on Earth where the series is set -- to "finish school" as she calls it).
I hope I can make time this semester to work on my writing seriously, though given how tough last semester was, juggling work AND school, it will probably be pretty difficult. Plus I only get so much vacation time in a year, and I have to spend it wisely. Most likely I will use my vacation time in the summer, since that seems to be the easiest time for me to take vacation since I'm not in school, and the easiest time (other than right now) for the company to give me the time, since it's before the big holiday crunch brought on by Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Sure, spring and summer have holidays -- but not really major retail ones except for Valentine's Day, Easter, and 4th of July. There's also Memorial Day and Mother's and Father's Day, but they're not as big. If I was still in the bakery, Valentine's might be big cause lots of people buy sweets then, as would the time around late May to the middle or end of June, because of graduation.
I am debating whether to use my vacation right before school like I did last year or to use it in July so I can go to all four days of Comic-Con. Not that I really need to go all four days, but I will admit that it is really hard to see everything in one day as I have tried to do on my two previous trips. Plus, the programming is spread out over all four days, so you can easily miss stuff. Mainly, I want to go whatever day the PotterCast people are doing something, since they mentioned on the most recent episode (New Year's) that their summer tour would include Comic-Con, which Melissa and Sue of PotterCast, along with a couple other people, did a panel for this year. It would be fun to go to the Masquerade on Saturday night, which is usually one of the highlights of the convention. But a Masquerade at a fan convention = cosplay, and I have no clue who I would dress up as. Amy kindly offered to make me a cosplay costume for the '09 Comic-Con, though how she would be able to get my measurements when she's miles away in Oregon is beyond me. Anime cosplay is not completely out of the ordinary at the primarily comic book-oriented Comic-Con. The main thing is I've never cosplayed before, and the only character I can think of cosplaying as is Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon, since I sort of physically resemble her (tall with long brown hair and a big chest). A Jedi might work (I saw a few at Comic-Con '08), although I'm not sure what female Jedi look like as there haven't really been any human-like ones shown in the movies. The only well-known female Jedi I can think of are Mara Jade Skywalker from the novels, and Ahsoka from the Clone Wars movie (I'm too old to play Ahsoka anyway). Padme is a cool character, but aside from a few scenes in the movies where her hair is back in a simple bun, she usually wears very complicated hairstyles that would be well nigh impossible for me to imitate.
Well, I'm tired and it's 10 p.m., and despite having been home since around 4:30 p.m., I haven't eaten dinner yet. (We don't have a regular dinnertime in our family). So I'm going to go. Goodnight!
I was listening to PotterCast today, and the episode I listened to today was their "Best of 2008" episode, in which they played a bunch of "fan favorite" clips from the year. There is a clip in there from I can't remember what episode. Anyway, it was from one of the "Phoenix Files" segments, a segment the show temporarily had where they discussed the Order of the Phoenix movie. They were discussing the Order of the Phoenix apparating into the Ministry of Magic, and John says how Kingsley Shacklebolt comes down "like a god" and then comments that he would've liked to see him summon Pikachu from the "Pikaball." They then continue with the joke, making the stick-pounding movie Mad-Eye Moody into a Pokemon too, and laughing their heads off. And I was laughing my head off also. It felt good, in a way, since I was pretty blue the day before.
Granted, I was in a better mood cause after my blue day yesterday I decided it would be good if I got more sleep than the night before, so I went to bed earlier, around 10ish. Right before bed, I watched an episode of CLAMP School Detectives, which I hadn't watched since my computer got broken. It definitely left me in a lighter mood, which is just as well after a blue day and reading the intriguing yet unnerving book The Freedom Writers Diary.
I heard of the Freedom Writers book from the movie that was made of it in 2007, starring Hilary Swank as a teacher named Erin Gruwell who transformed the lives of her English students in Long Beach, California, in the 1990's. The book is a compilation of entries from the journals Ms. Gruwell had the students keep. And it is intense. These are kids who went through everything from dyslexia to seeing their friends murdered in race or gang-related fights. Most of them were afraid to walk the streets of their neighborhoods for fear of being shot, and many had troubled situations at home. Yet it is intriguing to see the students' perspectives change as time goes on and they gain the courage to fight for tolerance as the Freedom Writers and even bring their cause to the attention of Richard Riley, the U.S. Secretary of Education.
Reading what the kids go through those is intense and unnerving. So I need breaks in between reading it...I just do.
I just checked to see if my booklist for spring is up; it is. (The "booklist" function was unavailable last night, rather than saying "Fall 2008," so I figured they were setting it up for spring). There's a lot of books I need, mainly for my U.S. Lit class. She's asking for Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I own already (I think I still have it, anyway). It looks like we're also reading Emerson and Hawthorne. The book of Hawthorne stuff that is listed is of his short stories; I wonder if "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is in there. Ok, just checked Amazon, and yes it is! Yay!
This requires explaining. "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, as you might have guessed. It is a story about a doctor who claims to his dinner guests to have found the Fountain of Youth and brought back water from it. The results are not as expected. I read it back in high school. A passage from it had shown up on some essay test I had taken. It was either due to English class or for the AP English Lit test prep we did, because I remember Mrs. Burnworth was involved. I seem to recall my close friend Desiree reading it too. I think we both saw the passage and then wanted to read the whole story, so Mrs. Burnworth ran it off for us from somewhere. Something like that.
Somehow, I'm surprised to not see Poe as a featured writer in the booklist (since he seems to be one in almost every English curriculum I've come into contact with). I read something by him in every English class from 8th through 11th grade. We read "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Raven," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." That last one is particularly freaky.
Emerson is good though; I like his essays. I've read parts of "Nature" and "Self-Reliance" in school. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a classic; I read it in American Lit in high school too. As for the other novel-sounding books required, I've never read them, but I think I saw people reading them in my American Ethnic Lit class last semester (which was taught by the same teacher). There's also a book of autobiographies.
Besides this, I need three books for my other Lit class, a class also taught by Dr. Cucinella, on the Theory and Practice of K-12 Writing Instruction. (I'm not sure if I'm going to be a teacher exactly, but I figure maybe this class will help me decide yea or nay on that issue, plus it counts toward my major in the Pedagogy section). Also I need 5 books for my History class, which is on the history of U.S. foreign policy (I needed a fourth class, and there was a time conflict with my humanities GE class and something else, so I picked this class instead). And naturally, I need a book and workbook for my new French class, French 202, which doesn't use the same book and workbook as my last class.
I have some doubts regarding my career, as you know from my last entry, and this extends to my major as well. I chose English (or Literature and Writing Studies as CSUSM calls it) because I want to be a writer, but I have found out quickly that "the sky is the limit" as far as the variety of jobs one can get with a B.A. in English. Foreign Languages (the broad discipline under which my minor resides) is pretty broad too. Up till practically the end, I was still debating between English and History, which is why I took classes toward both in my penultimate (second to last) semester, the Fall of 2007 (I wasn't able to attend school in Spring 2007 cause I didn't have the money, due to having lost my job at Loaves and Fishes the previous fall and not getting my job at Stater Bros. till the week before school started). I did take one set of two classes toward the History one at MiraCosta and half of another, and I took Intro to Lit towards the Literature and Writing Studies major.
I need to look at the career stuff I typed up on my other computer again. At any rate, there's a lot left to take on my current major, including almost all my core because the core classes are really hard to get into. I was lucky enough to get into one (U.S. Lit) this semester. With luck, I'll get to take one next semester too, or two if I decide to forgo my Humanities G.E. class (which I still need) or the elective I have to take for my French minor (you can't take the ones listed on the worksheet anymore due to program cuts, so you can take a class in another discipline to count for it, according to Professor Anover). Actually, the latter is probably easier to forgo next fall, since I want to get my G.E. done as soon as possible so I can focus on my major and minor. Already, at the rate I'm going, I'll waste my entire latter 20's getting this degree finished. I'll be lucky if I'm out of college by age 30.
Next semester, aside from the Humanities class I still need and my next French class (French 311), I'd like to take some core class (only cause I need them bad) and maybe the Creative Writing Workshop. Something not in the "Theory and Pedagogy" section, as my currently enrolled elective is. Just because that class might be kind of heavy, not only cause it's 400-level but also cause it's a theory class, and theory classes can either really intrigue you or put you right to sleep, I think.
I might take Small Press Publishing as my other elective in the Workshop category, since the school newspaper (the Pride, so called because our mascot is the cougar) is no longer a class, for one, and also because I have recently considered going for a job writing for a magazine. I'm not sure still on this though. Man, I am soooo lost.
People may think a major with a wide array of job possibilities would be fantastic, but for a specifics-loving, extremely future-oriented person like me, it's a nightmare. I wanted to go into university knowing I'd be able for sure to get a job when I got out. This is mainly because, while I am neither a miser nor entirely a spend-my-whole-check-right-away person (I've been getting better there), the idea of having money is important to me. One of the things I do NOT want to do is end up on welfare. Granted, welfare is fine for those who truly need it. Heck, I work at a place where people use WIC checks and EBT Food cards (a.k.a. food stamps) all the time -- so I see public assistance at work. But there are those who take welfare because they truly need it, and there are those who take welfare cause they're lazy and don't want to work, even though they are able-bodied and could totally get a job if they wanted to. I am one of those employable able-bodied people. Granted, I don't make much; in fact on my last taxes I apparently made so little (a little over $14,000 for the year), I actually somehow qualified for grants when I did my FAFSA, which I figured was impossible for a white girl from an upper-middle-class family (since so much financial aid is based on financial need and minority statuses). And if my good fortune continues with the FAFSA, I may end up getting out of college debt-free, which would be very nice (and a relief to my parents, I'm sure). But at any rate, even if fortune befell in such a way that I should end up poor and on my own, I would try to find a job so I would at least have a roof over my head, food, and clothes. You know, the basic things. I know this because I very much dislike being idle. I couldn't just sit around the house all day; in fact, I rarely do so on my days off unless I am working on some extremely focused project, like a school report or something else equally important. Often, I will come up with some reason to walk to the store or somewhere around there, simply so I can get out of the house. Or if I have errands to do, I'll do those. Once or twice, I've gone to the mall by myself simply to get out of the house. Most of the time, I don't actually buy anything, and if I do, it's usually a book or the latest volume of some manga series I'm reading. A few times, I have made plans to take trips. I went to Balboa Park a couple times during the summer and also to Seaport Village once. Oh and one day I went to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, just to try out a new beach. (The closest beach to us gets REALLY crowded during the summer).
I don't doubt that I can write. I know I still have it in me to come up with stories, and as awkward as some of my attempts at novels and such might be, I communicate well using the written word, often more so than using the spoken word. English teachers in the past have recognized my talent as a writer and encouraged it. I generally do well on essays for classes.
I guess my talent isn't very honed yet. I haven't really developed a style or found a genre I'm really good at yet. Plus, even I recognize that my writing is very derivative of styles I have read, which may or may not be a bad thing. Still, I'd rather avoid something akin to the plagiarism charge that ended Nella Larsen's career.
I do enjoy both fantasy and technology. My attempts at sci-fi have had high technology content. In fact, the technology is all that really makes my novel Us Against the World sci-fi; as a story about people having to decide between the law and their convictions in the face of an oppressive political takeover, it could happen anywhere and at any time period, including the present. My main worry is that if I place it in the present day, it will be too controversial to publish. When you do novels which contain themes like political corruption and the like, and you set them in the present day of the time you're writing them, people will more likely than not try to read a lot into the book that you did not intend. This is what I deduce.
If you set the same story in a science fiction setting though, it seems to be ok. I mean, look at Star Wars and The Matrix. The science fiction genre has a genre name for books like mine - cyberpunk. The term generally describes sci-fi stories with a focus on technology and usually set in a dystopian setting.
I intend to type up that novel for my writing website, so maybe I can figure out the issues that made me abandon the manuscript while I do that. I can also go back to Fiction Express and dig up the posts people made in response to the two chapters of it that I posted there.
I think one issue the book has is that it is told in first person; this limits what can be told. Third person would probably be better, or even multiple first person, like the book we read for Dr. Cucinella's class called Getting Mother's Body (or the quintessential multiple-first-person example in articles on POV, The Poisonwood Bible). Even multiple third person technically works, either in the favored third person omnisicent or with sections focusing on certain characters, like in the novel we read for my Intro to Lit class, White Teeth.
Also, while the evil political organization (New Age-based too) seemed like a good idea at the time, maybe a more focused evil is needed. Alan's father, meant to be a major player in Sphere (the bad guys in the book) could be more of a character, or I could go for the evil Darien Palmer character I created during the time I was attempting to novelize Lightning Girl. As the CEO of a record company in public and an evil villain (or the half-werewolf alien Lord Nekros in my made-up Lightning Girl TV show) in private, he seemed an interesting villain. Bond villains are often like that, especially Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies and Gustav Graves from Die Another Day. Alan's father, as the rich PM who acts, along with other rich men, as the financial backing for the takeover, is sort of like Lucius Malfoy I guess.
I also need to decide what to do about Avi, the AI I created for the "virtual reality room" main character Eve had used in the past. (I named the AI "Avalon" before planning the Avalon Jacobs story, so I didn't realize till later that I'd used the same name twice). I had an idea for her which involved some delving into the genetics info I gained from bio class, but it seemed too hard to explain and too much of a plot divergence.
As for my Walden novel -- The Elven Princess -- I have a basic plot outline written somewhere, as well as a list of locations I plan for main character Robin to visit and some other background on Walden itself, but not much else. I'm also considering changing the country name so as to avoid any possibility of plaigarism accusations regarding the work Walden by Thoreau. Plus, I think I need to come up with a better name after encountering names like Alagaësia (the name of the world where Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, the fantasy series I'm engrossed in at the moment, is set). Although one could argue that Tolkien's world was simply called "Middle-earth." And even "Narnia" is a fairly plain-sounding name, as is "The Land" (the name of the fantasy world in Lisa Wright-DeGroodt's Quest series, which I have read the first book of; and YES, it is literally called "The Land"...I am NOT making that up).
I suppose my country name should be worthy of the place names I came up with, which come primarily from me looking up words in a Bible concordance and then finding the Hebrew and or Greek word in the accompanying dictionaries. What didn't come from that I just made up. There is no formal languages really made up yet for this world. As much as I love languages, I do not think it would be easy (or indeed, even necessary) for me to make up an entire language -- well, actually, multiple languages -- for this series. Try as I might, I am not a linguist, and I certainly do not possess the amazing talent of J.R.R. Tolkien, who created two elvish languages (Sindarin and Quenya) pretty much entirely from scratch, forming languages for the other peoples from existing languages (Norse and Old English).
I suppose I could put the Celtic language resources I gathered for my manga project with Amy to good use with that story, particularly the searchable Manx/English dictionary program I downloaded (yes, such a program exists -- and it's very user-friendly as well, and a pretty cool resource).
Most of the background I have on Walden has come from making up folklore-esque stories explaining how things happened. This probably comes from me reading tons of mythology and fairy tales, as well as the "background" books to The Lord of the Rings (The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Lost Tales, etc). In fact, I have mentioned in my notes a story of an elf and a dwarf meeting and having an epic romance, which I have a funny feeling will end up somewhat like Tolkien's famous "Lay of Leithian," or the Tale of Beren and Lúthien (which actually has a few different versions).
I have established the world with a sort of Christian religious structure in mind, with a God-like figure (named "Chaimvin," a combination of the Hebrew word Chaim, meaning "life," and the suffix vin, which comes from the Germanic suffix win and means "friend," which I translate as "friend of life") who has "servants" (which I have yet to define; I guess they would be like angels) and a Satan-like figure (named "Marek," a name that simply popped into my head one day, and to which I cannot tie an origin) who has followers as well, the main ones being the "dark elves," elves he won to his side during the "Great War" of long ago. Like Satan, he is responsible for bringing sin and evil into the world, and like Satan (and like Tolkien's Melkor/Morgoth), he rebelled against God (Chaimvin here) and lost. Chaimvin is depicted as a creator who is intimately tied to his people, but who leaves administration of the land to others, not unlike Eru Ilúvatar of Tolkien's world. He's not like the deist God who created everything and then did not become involved in human affairs again, far from it. However, Walden has not received a savior as in our world -- it has not had its Christ figure, not had the sacrifice of Aslan as in Narnia -- although one has been promised to come and deliver them from evil. Robin might have been prophesied as the elven princess who saves the Kannarah (another word that simply came to me; they are creatures created from the dark elves' cruel practice of mating animals with captured members of other races, such as humans and elves), but she is not the savior of all Walden, and indeed since she spent most of her life in our world, she may not be meant to stay in Walden once her purpose is fulfilled anyway. In a way, she's like Princess Elyon from W.I.T.C.H. -- Elyon has a purpose to save Meridian (Metamoor in the comics) from her evil brother Prince Phobos, but what she does after he is defeated is up to her. She is the heir to the throne, but she also grew up on Earth and thus could live there if she wished (indeed, early in season 2, she returns to Heatherfield -- the town on Earth where the series is set -- to "finish school" as she calls it).
I hope I can make time this semester to work on my writing seriously, though given how tough last semester was, juggling work AND school, it will probably be pretty difficult. Plus I only get so much vacation time in a year, and I have to spend it wisely. Most likely I will use my vacation time in the summer, since that seems to be the easiest time for me to take vacation since I'm not in school, and the easiest time (other than right now) for the company to give me the time, since it's before the big holiday crunch brought on by Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Sure, spring and summer have holidays -- but not really major retail ones except for Valentine's Day, Easter, and 4th of July. There's also Memorial Day and Mother's and Father's Day, but they're not as big. If I was still in the bakery, Valentine's might be big cause lots of people buy sweets then, as would the time around late May to the middle or end of June, because of graduation.
I am debating whether to use my vacation right before school like I did last year or to use it in July so I can go to all four days of Comic-Con. Not that I really need to go all four days, but I will admit that it is really hard to see everything in one day as I have tried to do on my two previous trips. Plus, the programming is spread out over all four days, so you can easily miss stuff. Mainly, I want to go whatever day the PotterCast people are doing something, since they mentioned on the most recent episode (New Year's) that their summer tour would include Comic-Con, which Melissa and Sue of PotterCast, along with a couple other people, did a panel for this year. It would be fun to go to the Masquerade on Saturday night, which is usually one of the highlights of the convention. But a Masquerade at a fan convention = cosplay, and I have no clue who I would dress up as. Amy kindly offered to make me a cosplay costume for the '09 Comic-Con, though how she would be able to get my measurements when she's miles away in Oregon is beyond me. Anime cosplay is not completely out of the ordinary at the primarily comic book-oriented Comic-Con. The main thing is I've never cosplayed before, and the only character I can think of cosplaying as is Sailor Jupiter from Sailor Moon, since I sort of physically resemble her (tall with long brown hair and a big chest). A Jedi might work (I saw a few at Comic-Con '08), although I'm not sure what female Jedi look like as there haven't really been any human-like ones shown in the movies. The only well-known female Jedi I can think of are Mara Jade Skywalker from the novels, and Ahsoka from the Clone Wars movie (I'm too old to play Ahsoka anyway). Padme is a cool character, but aside from a few scenes in the movies where her hair is back in a simple bun, she usually wears very complicated hairstyles that would be well nigh impossible for me to imitate.
Well, I'm tired and it's 10 p.m., and despite having been home since around 4:30 p.m., I haven't eaten dinner yet. (We don't have a regular dinnertime in our family). So I'm going to go. Goodnight!
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Happy New Year
Hello again. HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!
Well yet another year has begun. I will be 25 this year. Scary.
Yet in a way I feel my life is escaping me. I'm not getting any younger, and by the end of this year I'll be halfway through my twenties, on the way to the dreaded 30.
I celebrate my 2-year anniversary of working at Stater Bros. on January 17th. These last two years have simply flown by. I miss them in a way. Never before in my life has time gone by so quickly for me. And what do I have to show for it? Aside from finally getting actually close to the 2-year mark with a job for the first time ever and an A.A. degree, not much that seems of consequence. I have finally gotten to university after 5 years in junior college and seem to have some purpose to my studies. But not much else.
I am 24 and I still haven't been able to get my Asperger's diagnosed, I've never dated (I've never even kissed a boy), I haven't gone to a party (aside from Asperger group parties) for who knows how long, I haven't progressed past an entry-level job, I don't have a driver's license (or a car, for that matter), my spiritual life doesn't seem to have matured much at all even though I've been a Christian for 17 years, I haven't determined my career even though I have finally picked a major, and I barely have any real friends -- settling for acquaintances in my various life spheres - work, school, spiritual, and my personal life - and compartmentalizing them, not inviting friends to my house (i.e., my personal life), to church (i.e., my spiritual life), or anywhere else outside the sphere in which I regularly interact with them. My friendships in my personal life consist of my almost sisterlike best friend Amy, my family, the other people in the Asperger's meetup group I'm a part of, and a handful of "online-only" friends from YouTube, Facebook, and forums.
My life seems senseless, compartmentalized to a "t" but yet not organized, and very much not fulfilling. In essence, I feel my life is so far deviant of "normal" -- not deviant enough to mean crime or other such deviant behavior, but deviant nonetheless -- that it seems wrong.
All my life I have sensed I was not "normal." No one specifically said "You are not normal." I just felt it. If I was normal, I thought to myself, I'd have more friends. To be sure, I had been told (and believed) that I had borderline cerebral palsy, the condition the then Asperger's-ignorant doctors slapped me with. My lack of coordination and poor handwriting (bettered by therapy) came as a result of this. I spent parts of my third and sixth grade years in physical therapy, with occupational therapy also the first time around (3rd grade).
Yet I knew I was intelligent - another difference! - and (as I know now) probably more intelligent than most people with any form of cerebral palsy. Plus I could walk and talk normally, unlike the typical CP sufferer. I scored Post High School in the Reading categories of the Stanford Achievement Test - a standardized test students at my school took every year from kindergarten through 10th grade - even in elementary school, and scored rather well in everything else except for math. In fourth grade (or was it fifth? I forget) I was part of a program for "gifted" students (not GATE or any of those other public school programs, but something supposedly similar). My mother, who had then gone back to school since she didn't go to college before she married, did an oral report on cerebral palsy using me and my achievements as an example.
When my mother began intensive study for her psychology degree, she came across Asperger's Syndrome, which was not discovered until the early 1990's when the papers of a certain German scientist, Hans Asperger, from the 1940's were finally translated. (Autism had already been widely known since the '60's or so). Reading about the symptoms and other such information then available on the condition, my mother began to suspect that I had been misdiagnosed at birth and that I in fact did have Asperger's. She mentioned it to me and gave me stuff to read on it, which I did (as best as I could understand). Since then, I have begun to see that the symptoms of Asperger's - difficulties in social interaction coupled with motor skill difficulties, along with very restricted interests, repetitive behavior, and some speech issues - explain to a degree the things about myself I have considered eccentric or un-normal in the past. Though Asperger's is considered an autism spectrum disorder, people with it are less socially withdrawn than those with regular (or "classic") autism, and can generally speak fine, while a good portion of those with "classic" autism do not speak (although they do not lack the physical and mental capacity to do so, they simply don't talk).
I can see the Asperger's symptoms in my life - though they may not be obvious to others - but I can not be sure until I get a medical diagnosis, and this is difficult to do with adults as diagnosis is generally made these days in childhood. Plus, guys get the disorder more often than girls (which explains the guy/girl ratio in my Asperger's group), and -- according to a report a group in my bio class this semester did on autism -- autism itself is harder to diagnose in girls because girls tend to be able to adapt their behavior easier than boys, imitating "normal" behavior they see in others. Thus, girls may seem totally normal and have their issues go unchecked, whereas boys's issues will be spotted early.
I was speaking with Adam yesterday (a guy who is in my Asperger's group and also works at the same Stater Bros. I do) and we ended up talking about the condition. He seemed surprised that I had not yet been diagnosed, since he was diagnosed in high school (he's younger than me). I reminded him I was born in 1984, before the 1990's discovery of Asperger's. I told him that my parents had tried to find someone who could diagnose me, to no avail, and that I had no clue how to find someone myself who could do it. There are people who could do it, but they are up in Orange County (an hour or so north of the part of CA where I live). He said he had been diagnosed and hadn't had to go up there. I didn't have the energy to argue the point much further (I had woken up rather tired and was still pretty tired when I got to work).
Aside from my conflict about my personality and my Asperger's, I have career doubts these days. Since I was young, I have loved stories. I loved to use my imagination and make up stories and complicated "imaginary lives" for myself, like in elementary school where I made up the WTT (some obscure group I was a part of that I think was a drama or dancing school) and a long list of imaginary kids I would babysit on certain days of the week (I scheduled it out too). Since around age 11, when I began writing seriously (I had written things before then, but at that time I began to consider it as a possible career), I began imagining a life of fame as a writer, a singer, an actress, or combinations of the three. I invented a pen/stage name for myself - Rosamond Bennett - since I found my own name boring for a writer's or singer's name. I would make up things about bands I was in - including one that broke up over financial worries and personal differences - and books I'd written or films and TV shows I'd been in (usually based on my own books, or with screenplays written by me).
When it comes to actually writing stories down though, I have had difficulty. I have felt compelled to write "Christian" books, since I believed that is what would honor God - but my two obvious attempts at "preachy" works, a short novel about a guardian angel visiting her charge and a novel called Dear Meg based a great deal on a teen missions pamphlet, ended up being works I didn't much care for later on and having manuscripts that were later lost to time. Trying to put Christian messages into not-obviously-preachy works have not totally satisfied me either. My first attempt at a mystery - a novel called The Chess Master - seemed fine but met heavy criticism at the hand of my friend Tammy. Plus, it seemed too derivative of the main mysteries I was familiar with - the works of Agatha Christie.
I have since tried my hand at both fantasy and sci-fi. One project of mine were two scripts for a futuristic superhero comic called Lightning Girl and its highly-based-on-Norse-Ragnarok sequel, Lightning Girl 2: Chaos of the Light and the Dark. These seemed fine, but I forgot that I lack visual art ability of any noticeable caliber. Thus it would be hard to do a comic. So I unsuccessfully tried to turn it into a novel, and realized quickly why superhero stories don't usually come out in novel form. Then I realized there would be no possible way to sell the story to a Christian market due to the Bible's negative views on magic. This has kept me unsettled about the Lightning Girl story for some time. Finally, after having been tormented about the issue for a while, I drastically shredded everything I had on the Lightning Girl story (see this post).
All that remain of my most recent writing works are an unfinished novel called Us Against the World, an unfinished fantasy novel based on Walden (the fantasy world I created) called The Elven Princess, plans for two other novels semi-related to Us Against the World, and a Code Lyoko fanfic called "William's Escape." Plus I am assisting Amy in coming up with a manga story to possibly submit to Tokyopop's big "new talent" search known as Rising Stars of Manga. I also have fished a lot of my old poetry and such out of an old computer folder I backed up on a CD-R, have a short story of mine that got published in the 2003 edition of the Anthology of Short Stories by Young Americans, and have some other writing (including a long, sort of nonsense song) that resides in my "Works-in-Progress" file folder in my file cabinet.
I would like to make a sort of author website to feature my work and hopefully promote myself. I was just reading some essays on this today on this guy's website, and it seems complicated. Plus I have to figure out who to go with to buy a domain name, since having a domain (especially a .com one) would help make my site easier to find and also promote more traffic than the abysmal numbers my previous websites have gotten. I have been planning to make it since the beginning of the school semester, devoting a notebook in OneNote to website-planning purposes.
The one guy's website said you can mention your other interests - not just your written works - on an author website, that that is ok. I was surprised at this statement. I had been planning to focus my site just on my writing, since I figured that was the thing to do. I was struggling to come up with sites to devote to my non-writing interests. Like a typical Asperger's person, I love to find out tons of info on specific topics, mainly minor details (see this Wikipedia summary for an idea of what I mean). So it's proven difficult for me to make websites that wouldn't end up being huge sprawling creatures. So far, plans for expanding my site Misty's Piscine (devoted to Misty from Pokemon and her--and my--favorite type of Pokemon, water-types) have gone well though -- probably because the basic site is already made and just needs updating in its info mostly, though I'd like to develop it a good deal. It's probably gone as well as my past site Ayeka's Palace (a fairly simple shrine to Ayeka of Tenchi Muyo which had some basic info, pictures, and a couple AyekaxTenchi fanfics of mine). I also once had a fairly decent "shrine" (a name usually used in internet-friendly fandoms for sites devoted to a certain specific topic within a larger topic, like a certain character in a series or a certain "ship," the two most common shrine topics) devoted to Sailor Mercury called Liquid Mercury, though I can't for the life of me remember the content I had on it.
I will have to re-read that guy's essays slowly - maybe once I get my laptop back from the place it's being fixed at and have some measure of privacy. Then maybe I can decide how to structure the site.
That's all I can think of to say right now. Bye.
Well yet another year has begun. I will be 25 this year. Scary.
Yet in a way I feel my life is escaping me. I'm not getting any younger, and by the end of this year I'll be halfway through my twenties, on the way to the dreaded 30.
I celebrate my 2-year anniversary of working at Stater Bros. on January 17th. These last two years have simply flown by. I miss them in a way. Never before in my life has time gone by so quickly for me. And what do I have to show for it? Aside from finally getting actually close to the 2-year mark with a job for the first time ever and an A.A. degree, not much that seems of consequence. I have finally gotten to university after 5 years in junior college and seem to have some purpose to my studies. But not much else.
I am 24 and I still haven't been able to get my Asperger's diagnosed, I've never dated (I've never even kissed a boy), I haven't gone to a party (aside from Asperger group parties) for who knows how long, I haven't progressed past an entry-level job, I don't have a driver's license (or a car, for that matter), my spiritual life doesn't seem to have matured much at all even though I've been a Christian for 17 years, I haven't determined my career even though I have finally picked a major, and I barely have any real friends -- settling for acquaintances in my various life spheres - work, school, spiritual, and my personal life - and compartmentalizing them, not inviting friends to my house (i.e., my personal life), to church (i.e., my spiritual life), or anywhere else outside the sphere in which I regularly interact with them. My friendships in my personal life consist of my almost sisterlike best friend Amy, my family, the other people in the Asperger's meetup group I'm a part of, and a handful of "online-only" friends from YouTube, Facebook, and forums.
My life seems senseless, compartmentalized to a "t" but yet not organized, and very much not fulfilling. In essence, I feel my life is so far deviant of "normal" -- not deviant enough to mean crime or other such deviant behavior, but deviant nonetheless -- that it seems wrong.
All my life I have sensed I was not "normal." No one specifically said "You are not normal." I just felt it. If I was normal, I thought to myself, I'd have more friends. To be sure, I had been told (and believed) that I had borderline cerebral palsy, the condition the then Asperger's-ignorant doctors slapped me with. My lack of coordination and poor handwriting (bettered by therapy) came as a result of this. I spent parts of my third and sixth grade years in physical therapy, with occupational therapy also the first time around (3rd grade).
Yet I knew I was intelligent - another difference! - and (as I know now) probably more intelligent than most people with any form of cerebral palsy. Plus I could walk and talk normally, unlike the typical CP sufferer. I scored Post High School in the Reading categories of the Stanford Achievement Test - a standardized test students at my school took every year from kindergarten through 10th grade - even in elementary school, and scored rather well in everything else except for math. In fourth grade (or was it fifth? I forget) I was part of a program for "gifted" students (not GATE or any of those other public school programs, but something supposedly similar). My mother, who had then gone back to school since she didn't go to college before she married, did an oral report on cerebral palsy using me and my achievements as an example.
When my mother began intensive study for her psychology degree, she came across Asperger's Syndrome, which was not discovered until the early 1990's when the papers of a certain German scientist, Hans Asperger, from the 1940's were finally translated. (Autism had already been widely known since the '60's or so). Reading about the symptoms and other such information then available on the condition, my mother began to suspect that I had been misdiagnosed at birth and that I in fact did have Asperger's. She mentioned it to me and gave me stuff to read on it, which I did (as best as I could understand). Since then, I have begun to see that the symptoms of Asperger's - difficulties in social interaction coupled with motor skill difficulties, along with very restricted interests, repetitive behavior, and some speech issues - explain to a degree the things about myself I have considered eccentric or un-normal in the past. Though Asperger's is considered an autism spectrum disorder, people with it are less socially withdrawn than those with regular (or "classic") autism, and can generally speak fine, while a good portion of those with "classic" autism do not speak (although they do not lack the physical and mental capacity to do so, they simply don't talk).
I can see the Asperger's symptoms in my life - though they may not be obvious to others - but I can not be sure until I get a medical diagnosis, and this is difficult to do with adults as diagnosis is generally made these days in childhood. Plus, guys get the disorder more often than girls (which explains the guy/girl ratio in my Asperger's group), and -- according to a report a group in my bio class this semester did on autism -- autism itself is harder to diagnose in girls because girls tend to be able to adapt their behavior easier than boys, imitating "normal" behavior they see in others. Thus, girls may seem totally normal and have their issues go unchecked, whereas boys's issues will be spotted early.
I was speaking with Adam yesterday (a guy who is in my Asperger's group and also works at the same Stater Bros. I do) and we ended up talking about the condition. He seemed surprised that I had not yet been diagnosed, since he was diagnosed in high school (he's younger than me). I reminded him I was born in 1984, before the 1990's discovery of Asperger's. I told him that my parents had tried to find someone who could diagnose me, to no avail, and that I had no clue how to find someone myself who could do it. There are people who could do it, but they are up in Orange County (an hour or so north of the part of CA where I live). He said he had been diagnosed and hadn't had to go up there. I didn't have the energy to argue the point much further (I had woken up rather tired and was still pretty tired when I got to work).
Aside from my conflict about my personality and my Asperger's, I have career doubts these days. Since I was young, I have loved stories. I loved to use my imagination and make up stories and complicated "imaginary lives" for myself, like in elementary school where I made up the WTT (some obscure group I was a part of that I think was a drama or dancing school) and a long list of imaginary kids I would babysit on certain days of the week (I scheduled it out too). Since around age 11, when I began writing seriously (I had written things before then, but at that time I began to consider it as a possible career), I began imagining a life of fame as a writer, a singer, an actress, or combinations of the three. I invented a pen/stage name for myself - Rosamond Bennett - since I found my own name boring for a writer's or singer's name. I would make up things about bands I was in - including one that broke up over financial worries and personal differences - and books I'd written or films and TV shows I'd been in (usually based on my own books, or with screenplays written by me).
When it comes to actually writing stories down though, I have had difficulty. I have felt compelled to write "Christian" books, since I believed that is what would honor God - but my two obvious attempts at "preachy" works, a short novel about a guardian angel visiting her charge and a novel called Dear Meg based a great deal on a teen missions pamphlet, ended up being works I didn't much care for later on and having manuscripts that were later lost to time. Trying to put Christian messages into not-obviously-preachy works have not totally satisfied me either. My first attempt at a mystery - a novel called The Chess Master - seemed fine but met heavy criticism at the hand of my friend Tammy. Plus, it seemed too derivative of the main mysteries I was familiar with - the works of Agatha Christie.
I have since tried my hand at both fantasy and sci-fi. One project of mine were two scripts for a futuristic superhero comic called Lightning Girl and its highly-based-on-Norse-Ragnarok sequel, Lightning Girl 2: Chaos of the Light and the Dark. These seemed fine, but I forgot that I lack visual art ability of any noticeable caliber. Thus it would be hard to do a comic. So I unsuccessfully tried to turn it into a novel, and realized quickly why superhero stories don't usually come out in novel form. Then I realized there would be no possible way to sell the story to a Christian market due to the Bible's negative views on magic. This has kept me unsettled about the Lightning Girl story for some time. Finally, after having been tormented about the issue for a while, I drastically shredded everything I had on the Lightning Girl story (see this post).
All that remain of my most recent writing works are an unfinished novel called Us Against the World, an unfinished fantasy novel based on Walden (the fantasy world I created) called The Elven Princess, plans for two other novels semi-related to Us Against the World, and a Code Lyoko fanfic called "William's Escape." Plus I am assisting Amy in coming up with a manga story to possibly submit to Tokyopop's big "new talent" search known as Rising Stars of Manga. I also have fished a lot of my old poetry and such out of an old computer folder I backed up on a CD-R, have a short story of mine that got published in the 2003 edition of the Anthology of Short Stories by Young Americans, and have some other writing (including a long, sort of nonsense song) that resides in my "Works-in-Progress" file folder in my file cabinet.
I would like to make a sort of author website to feature my work and hopefully promote myself. I was just reading some essays on this today on this guy's website, and it seems complicated. Plus I have to figure out who to go with to buy a domain name, since having a domain (especially a .com one) would help make my site easier to find and also promote more traffic than the abysmal numbers my previous websites have gotten. I have been planning to make it since the beginning of the school semester, devoting a notebook in OneNote to website-planning purposes.
The one guy's website said you can mention your other interests - not just your written works - on an author website, that that is ok. I was surprised at this statement. I had been planning to focus my site just on my writing, since I figured that was the thing to do. I was struggling to come up with sites to devote to my non-writing interests. Like a typical Asperger's person, I love to find out tons of info on specific topics, mainly minor details (see this Wikipedia summary for an idea of what I mean). So it's proven difficult for me to make websites that wouldn't end up being huge sprawling creatures. So far, plans for expanding my site Misty's Piscine (devoted to Misty from Pokemon and her--and my--favorite type of Pokemon, water-types) have gone well though -- probably because the basic site is already made and just needs updating in its info mostly, though I'd like to develop it a good deal. It's probably gone as well as my past site Ayeka's Palace (a fairly simple shrine to Ayeka of Tenchi Muyo which had some basic info, pictures, and a couple AyekaxTenchi fanfics of mine). I also once had a fairly decent "shrine" (a name usually used in internet-friendly fandoms for sites devoted to a certain specific topic within a larger topic, like a certain character in a series or a certain "ship," the two most common shrine topics) devoted to Sailor Mercury called Liquid Mercury, though I can't for the life of me remember the content I had on it.
I will have to re-read that guy's essays slowly - maybe once I get my laptop back from the place it's being fixed at and have some measure of privacy. Then maybe I can decide how to structure the site.
That's all I can think of to say right now. Bye.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
A lot of catching up
Wow! I haven't written in here since Thanksgiving! Sheesh!
Well, this is probably cause shortly after Thanksgiving not much happened. I worked, and I also had to prep for finals. That kept me busy.
Let's see...what else happened? Well, finals. I only had four but it still was a good deal of work. There was a lot to remember. Plus I had my stupid paper for Lit to finish. Fortunately, somebody in my Lit class got the bright idea of splitting up the final exam study guide among all the members of the class, so each of us did a little bit, and then after we all did our bits she sent us all the complete study guide. This helped a good deal. I think this girl probably got the idea from how everyone was comparing study guides for the midterm right before class, trying to get answers they hadn't been able to find, or better answers for questions they had answers to.
Oh and also in early December my group for Bio had to give our presentation. I think it went well. We needed the points, given our bad quiz record.
Since finals, I have been working primarily. Oh and I joined the forum for the Pokemon podcast I've been listening to, now re-named The Pallet Tribune (apparently due to some copyright thing -- they never really explained it).
Oh speaking of work my position has been changed somewhat. I am now a floor GMC rather than bakery. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do much GMC work due to having to help bag a lot. I don't see how this can be helped, but Peter (the GMC who they told to show me how to do GMC stuff) isn't happy about it. I suppose more experience would've helped for times like Christmas Eve when I had to go stock beer by myself. I have had to face beer and stuff before, but since we had sold a lot of beer that day there was a lot of stocking to do, and the beer room (a refrigerated walk-in case) is cold. Plus, people were getting beer while I was stocking, making my job even harder.
Hmm just checked my fall grades. A- in History and Lit, an A in French, and a C+ in Bio. I'm not happy about the C in Bio -- I would've rather had a B than a C -- at least I passed. And my cumulative term GPA -- cumulative of my enrolled classes and my transferred units -- is 3.152, which means I still have a B average. That Bio class was hard though, seriously. Those quizzes and tests -- I'd be surprised if anybody did really well in that class, unless they were science majors. It's ridiculous to make that class a GE class. But at least I got an A- in Lit, which was a 400-level class, and an A- in History, in which I bombed the midterm. The French grade is not as high as I expected (given my track record with French classes, I expected an A+), considering I aced every test I know the grade of, did all the workbook stuff (which was extra credit), and did well on the other assignments. But oh well. Also, I just checked WebCT and there were no grades posted for that class, despite the fact I had a final grade posted on MyCSUSM. So maybe it will change? Hard to say.
The Sunday before Christmas, the shelf above my desk fell off the wall, landing on my open computer. The screen display was subsequently messed up, and according to people more knowledgable than I in these matters, the screen is cracked. Therefore, I have not been able to use my computer since then (I'm using my mom's computer right now). I am currently trying to see whether I can get it repaired or if it will be cheaper to get a new computer. Even though I just got paid today, I don't have a ton of funds in either of my accounts, since I had to take over $700 out of my savings account to pay off my current computer, which I had purchased on credit and missed a couple bills on (which isn't good for my credit, my parents say). Strangely enough, I only paid $600 and something for the thing in the first place. I think cause of late fees and the 30% interest on the credit, the amount got bigger.
Anyway, I called this place called Data Doctors, and they called me back and told me the screen was broken and referred me to another place called Laptops Plus. I called that place this morning, and they said they would have to look at the screen before they could tell me what it would cost to replace, since screens are often made by different companies than computers are. Then they would do a diagnostic ($85), the money for which would go toward the labor, which the guy said would take about 30 minutes. Mum still wants Papa to go with me, since she thinks the guys at Laptops Plus are crooks. So I will have to go soon, while Papa is still on vacation. Maybe on my next day off.
My Aunt Jane was supposed to come for Christmas, something we found out a few days beforehand. But then she had some chest pains on December 23rd, was hospitalized, and was thus unable to come out. My dad drove to Vegas (where she lives) to be with her and drove back in time for Christmas. She is out of the hospital now.
Christmas morning finally came. I got a lot of presents, way more than I actually bought (I always buy 4 presents each for my mom, my dad, and my brother -- I figure each person having an equal amount of presents is fair). But I did get almost everything I'd put on the list I gave my parents, and some other things besides. I got:
~Prince Caspian DS game
~Princess Peach DS Character Stylus
~ESV Study Bible
~Cinema Sweets lip balm set
~Wireless headphones with transmitter
~Prince Caspian DVD
~2 jackets
~1 pair of jeans
~David Cook CD, by David Cook
~John Adams DVD set
~The Freedom Writers' Diary (book)
~Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World (book)
~Loving God with All Your Mind (book)
~Mythbusters: The Explosive Truth Behind 30 of the Most Perplexing Urban Legends of All Time (book)
~Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg (book)
Plus I got miscellaneous candy in my stocking, including 4 packs of Mentos, as well as (ironically) Aquafresh toothpaste and a Crest SpinBrush toothbrush. Also, I got the traditional stocking stuffer - a Life Savers Sweet Storybook (my brother's traditional stocking stuffer is a Chocolate Orange).
In addition to this stuff from my family, I got a 2-disc Pokemon Diamond and Pearl DVD set and a DVD of Pokemon: The Rise of Darkrai (the most recently-released-in-America Pokemon movie) from Amy (as a thanks for me sending her presents, I think, but anyway - yay!) and a copy of the DS game Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia (the new game in the Ranger series) from my "Secret Santa" in the deli-bakery "Secret Santa," Chase from the service deli. (double yay!) Actually, Chase totally gave himself away - bad boy! I mean, I guess you might have to ask questions to find out what the person you get for Secret Santa might like, but don't ask the actual person for goodness sake! Still, I am happy he got it for me, and I have been playing it for a few days now. I am now (as of today) at Ranger Rank 3. In my case, I got Juan from the bakery, and I got him a Walmart gift card, which he was happy about.
Apparently, however, over the holidays, I caught a bug, because right before I went to bed Christmas night, my stomach felt weird. I took an antacid. But this didn't do much, as my stomach still felt bad. I didn't sleep well, and at around 1:30 am on the 26th, I threw up. I spent some time cleaning up the bathroom (and my bedroom door and the nearby wall, which got the first bit of the throwup, from before I reached the bathroom) then went back to bed. I put a trashbag by my bed, should I throw up again.
And I did - around 5:30am. It wasn't as bad as the first time, though. But I found it strange that I had thrown up again.
When I got up at 6:45 (since I was supposed to work that day but wasn't sure when), I wasn't sure I should go to work, and Mum told me to take a shower and then call work to see when I was supposed to be at work. I called after 7am (when the store I'm at now opens) and found out I was to be in at 11. But even after the shower I threw up once, and long story short -- I called in sick. I spent the day lying down, and threw up a couple more times during the day. I also slept a lot. I was able to hold down some ginger ale in the evening though, and today (my day off this weekend) I feel better, aside from an aching head and back. I actually ate some food today too, and haven't thrown up since last night. I think I can go to work tomorrow and be fine. I'll just have to watch what I eat perhaps. I'll make my own lunch.
Today I was well enough to not lie down so much, but my aching head and nervousness about taking any pills made me sit around a lot. I alternated between reading and playing my new Ranger game.
And that's the catchup report. Nothing else really to say. Bye.
Well, this is probably cause shortly after Thanksgiving not much happened. I worked, and I also had to prep for finals. That kept me busy.
Let's see...what else happened? Well, finals. I only had four but it still was a good deal of work. There was a lot to remember. Plus I had my stupid paper for Lit to finish. Fortunately, somebody in my Lit class got the bright idea of splitting up the final exam study guide among all the members of the class, so each of us did a little bit, and then after we all did our bits she sent us all the complete study guide. This helped a good deal. I think this girl probably got the idea from how everyone was comparing study guides for the midterm right before class, trying to get answers they hadn't been able to find, or better answers for questions they had answers to.
Oh and also in early December my group for Bio had to give our presentation. I think it went well. We needed the points, given our bad quiz record.
Since finals, I have been working primarily. Oh and I joined the forum for the Pokemon podcast I've been listening to, now re-named The Pallet Tribune (apparently due to some copyright thing -- they never really explained it).
Oh speaking of work my position has been changed somewhat. I am now a floor GMC rather than bakery. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do much GMC work due to having to help bag a lot. I don't see how this can be helped, but Peter (the GMC who they told to show me how to do GMC stuff) isn't happy about it. I suppose more experience would've helped for times like Christmas Eve when I had to go stock beer by myself. I have had to face beer and stuff before, but since we had sold a lot of beer that day there was a lot of stocking to do, and the beer room (a refrigerated walk-in case) is cold. Plus, people were getting beer while I was stocking, making my job even harder.
Hmm just checked my fall grades. A- in History and Lit, an A in French, and a C+ in Bio. I'm not happy about the C in Bio -- I would've rather had a B than a C -- at least I passed. And my cumulative term GPA -- cumulative of my enrolled classes and my transferred units -- is 3.152, which means I still have a B average. That Bio class was hard though, seriously. Those quizzes and tests -- I'd be surprised if anybody did really well in that class, unless they were science majors. It's ridiculous to make that class a GE class. But at least I got an A- in Lit, which was a 400-level class, and an A- in History, in which I bombed the midterm. The French grade is not as high as I expected (given my track record with French classes, I expected an A+), considering I aced every test I know the grade of, did all the workbook stuff (which was extra credit), and did well on the other assignments. But oh well. Also, I just checked WebCT and there were no grades posted for that class, despite the fact I had a final grade posted on MyCSUSM. So maybe it will change? Hard to say.
The Sunday before Christmas, the shelf above my desk fell off the wall, landing on my open computer. The screen display was subsequently messed up, and according to people more knowledgable than I in these matters, the screen is cracked. Therefore, I have not been able to use my computer since then (I'm using my mom's computer right now). I am currently trying to see whether I can get it repaired or if it will be cheaper to get a new computer. Even though I just got paid today, I don't have a ton of funds in either of my accounts, since I had to take over $700 out of my savings account to pay off my current computer, which I had purchased on credit and missed a couple bills on (which isn't good for my credit, my parents say). Strangely enough, I only paid $600 and something for the thing in the first place. I think cause of late fees and the 30% interest on the credit, the amount got bigger.
Anyway, I called this place called Data Doctors, and they called me back and told me the screen was broken and referred me to another place called Laptops Plus. I called that place this morning, and they said they would have to look at the screen before they could tell me what it would cost to replace, since screens are often made by different companies than computers are. Then they would do a diagnostic ($85), the money for which would go toward the labor, which the guy said would take about 30 minutes. Mum still wants Papa to go with me, since she thinks the guys at Laptops Plus are crooks. So I will have to go soon, while Papa is still on vacation. Maybe on my next day off.
My Aunt Jane was supposed to come for Christmas, something we found out a few days beforehand. But then she had some chest pains on December 23rd, was hospitalized, and was thus unable to come out. My dad drove to Vegas (where she lives) to be with her and drove back in time for Christmas. She is out of the hospital now.
Christmas morning finally came. I got a lot of presents, way more than I actually bought (I always buy 4 presents each for my mom, my dad, and my brother -- I figure each person having an equal amount of presents is fair). But I did get almost everything I'd put on the list I gave my parents, and some other things besides. I got:
~Prince Caspian DS game
~Princess Peach DS Character Stylus
~ESV Study Bible
~Cinema Sweets lip balm set
~Wireless headphones with transmitter
~Prince Caspian DVD
~2 jackets
~1 pair of jeans
~David Cook CD, by David Cook
~John Adams DVD set
~The Freedom Writers' Diary (book)
~Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World (book)
~Loving God with All Your Mind (book)
~Mythbusters: The Explosive Truth Behind 30 of the Most Perplexing Urban Legends of All Time (book)
~Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg (book)
Plus I got miscellaneous candy in my stocking, including 4 packs of Mentos, as well as (ironically) Aquafresh toothpaste and a Crest SpinBrush toothbrush. Also, I got the traditional stocking stuffer - a Life Savers Sweet Storybook (my brother's traditional stocking stuffer is a Chocolate Orange).
In addition to this stuff from my family, I got a 2-disc Pokemon Diamond and Pearl DVD set and a DVD of Pokemon: The Rise of Darkrai (the most recently-released-in-America Pokemon movie) from Amy (as a thanks for me sending her presents, I think, but anyway - yay!) and a copy of the DS game Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia (the new game in the Ranger series) from my "Secret Santa" in the deli-bakery "Secret Santa," Chase from the service deli. (double yay!) Actually, Chase totally gave himself away - bad boy! I mean, I guess you might have to ask questions to find out what the person you get for Secret Santa might like, but don't ask the actual person for goodness sake! Still, I am happy he got it for me, and I have been playing it for a few days now. I am now (as of today) at Ranger Rank 3. In my case, I got Juan from the bakery, and I got him a Walmart gift card, which he was happy about.
Apparently, however, over the holidays, I caught a bug, because right before I went to bed Christmas night, my stomach felt weird. I took an antacid. But this didn't do much, as my stomach still felt bad. I didn't sleep well, and at around 1:30 am on the 26th, I threw up. I spent some time cleaning up the bathroom (and my bedroom door and the nearby wall, which got the first bit of the throwup, from before I reached the bathroom) then went back to bed. I put a trashbag by my bed, should I throw up again.
And I did - around 5:30am. It wasn't as bad as the first time, though. But I found it strange that I had thrown up again.
When I got up at 6:45 (since I was supposed to work that day but wasn't sure when), I wasn't sure I should go to work, and Mum told me to take a shower and then call work to see when I was supposed to be at work. I called after 7am (when the store I'm at now opens) and found out I was to be in at 11. But even after the shower I threw up once, and long story short -- I called in sick. I spent the day lying down, and threw up a couple more times during the day. I also slept a lot. I was able to hold down some ginger ale in the evening though, and today (my day off this weekend) I feel better, aside from an aching head and back. I actually ate some food today too, and haven't thrown up since last night. I think I can go to work tomorrow and be fine. I'll just have to watch what I eat perhaps. I'll make my own lunch.
Today I was well enough to not lie down so much, but my aching head and nervousness about taking any pills made me sit around a lot. I alternated between reading and playing my new Ranger game.
And that's the catchup report. Nothing else really to say. Bye.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Gattaca, transferred (AGAIN), the awful truth about coworkers, burned out
This week, being that there is no class cause of Thanksgiving (which is actually today -- HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE), my bio teacher made arrangements to stream the movie Gattaca for us over WebCT, the service which manages all online class content for CSUSM. I just finished watching it. I've seen it before, but I re-watched it anyways. I watched it a while back, I think for a class. Or it might have been because Tammy told me I should see it. I can't remember exactly. It was one of those two things.
Gattaca (whose name, cleverly, consists only of the letters - G, C, T, and A -- used to designate the four base pairs in DNA) is a movie which stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. Set in the "not-too-distant future," it shows a world where genetics has become everything. Your genetics determine your fate, including what job you are allowed to take. Most people choose to consult a genetic counselor before having a child, in order to assure it has the best chances possible. But there are a few people who choose to give birth without any genetic manipulation, but this is not recommended, and the births are pejoratively called "faith births" or "God births." Those born this way are deemed unfit for most aspects of normal societies and are labeled, literally, as "in-valid."
Vincent Freeman (Hawke's character) is one such "in-valid." Since his parents decided to do the typical genetic manipulation with their second child, he's had to deal with his genetically perfect brother Anton all his life. Despite his chances of life in the "elite" society being slim, Vincent dreams of going to space. His parents tell him with the heart condition he has (which was predicted at birth via a blood test from his foot), the agency sending people into space -- Gattaca -- would never take him.
Vincent is determined, however, and after much training and studying, he realizes none of that will matter; his genetics will stop his chances. So he decides to take drastic action. He contacts a man he hears about through word of mouth (played by Tony Shalhoub, now famous for the show Monk), who hooks him up with a wheelchair-bound former professional swimmer named Jerome Morrow (played by Jude Law). Genetically, Jerome is perfect -- exactly the kind of person that could attain what Vincent dreams of. But Jerome naturally can't take his usual place in society due to the accident that put him in a wheelchair. So, he agrees to help Vincent out by allowing Vincent to take on his identity. He provides him with blood and urine samples, as well as other genetics-related material for any genetic tests Vincent may have to take.
The plan works, and Vincent (now Jerome) gets hired at Gattaca (on the basis of a simple gene test, no less, with no "traditional" interview) and over time gets into the elite ranks. The movie (after the flashbacks) starts one week before Vincent/Jerome, a space navigator, is to fly on a 1-year manned mission to Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. At the beginning of the week, though, one of Gattaca's mission directors -- one who had opposed the Titan mission -- is found dead. Vincent/Jerome, who passes by the crowd of spectators by the director's office, accidentially leaves an eyelash behind on the windowsill.
The murder is, naturally, investigated. The eyelash is found, and comes up with Vincent's "in-valid" profile. This leads the cops to search for an in-valid who might have committed the crime, not believing Vincent is still alive (since he was predicted at birth to only live 30 years).
Meanwhile, Vincent/Jerome makes the acquaintance of fellow Gattaca worker Irene (Thurman). She tells him she isn't quite genetically perfect; like the real Vincent, she too has a heart condition. The post of Vincent's face on a company-wide bulletin leads him to consider abandoning his contract with the real Jerome, but the real Jerome talks him out of it. After a surprise police investigation at a party Vincent/Jerome and Irene attend, they run out the back door, and hear one of the cops calling "Vincent."
Evidence from a mint tin leads the cop (really Vincent's brother Anton) to associate Irene with Jerome. Irene sees Anton coming and secretly warns Vincent/Jerome, who is just coming into work, telling him he looks sick and should go home. However, Anton confronts Irene and demands that she take him to Jerome's house. Fortunately, Vincent/Jerome catches on and informs the real Jerome, who struggles out of his wheelchair, up the stairs, and into a chair to distract Irene and Anton. Anton does a blood test, and when it comes up with Jerome's profile (the same one Vincent/Jerome's blood sample came up as), he smells a rat. Once Anton leaves, Vincent/Jerome comes out of hiding just as Irene is leaving and addresses the real Jerome as Jerome (he had been calling him Eugene, to maintain their ruse), to which the real Jerome addresses Vincent/Jerome, also as Jerome.
Irene rushes out, and Vincent/Jerome runs after her and tells her his real name, that he is a "faith birth," and that he too has a heart condition. She can't quite take this and leaves.
Meanwhile, Anton arrives at Gattaca, having been contacted by his partner, to find that the partner has found the murder culprit -- the main director of Gattaca. It turns out the mysterious "in-valid" -- Vincent -- had nothing to do with it. Anton is annoyed at this turn of events.
Vincent/Jerome and the real Jerome discuss events, and Vincent/Jerome says he has to go see the cop. The two meet at Gattaca, and acknowledge each other. Anton tries to tell Vincent he will be in real trouble for fraud. Vincent tells Anton that he doesn't need Anton to save him -- but reminds him that he saved Anton's life once (this refers to one of the childhood flashbacks, which shows the boys racing at swimming as far out in the ocean as they dare, and Vincent having to save Anton from drowning once). They go out to the ocean to prove themselves to each other in another match of swimming. Anton begins to get scared when they can't see the land anymore, but Vincent tells him to keep going, saying he didn't save anything for the swim back. Eventually, Anton loses strength and Vincent has to rescue him again.
The day of Vincent's launch arrives. Before he leaves home, the real Jerome takes him to a room with multiple fridges, filled with enough urine, blood, and other samples to last him two lifetimes. When Vincent protests that he doesn't need samples in space, Jerome says he might need them when he gets back. Vincent asks Jerome where he's going, but Jerome only says, "I'm traveling too." He gives Vincent a card to open when he gets "upstairs."
Vincent heads down a hallway to enter the spaceship, and is stopped by his usual doctor for a random urine test. He purposely fills the cup with his own urine rather than one of Jerome's urine samples, and thereby reveals his real identity to the doctor. The doctor is surprised, but does nothing but say, "You're going to miss your flight, Vincent."
Vincent boards the spaceship. As it takes off, he opens Jerome's card and finds a lock of hair. Meanwhile, as Vincent boards, we see Jerome climb into the chamber where Vincent scraped off his extra skin, hair, fingernails, and the like and burned them nightly. Donning his second-place swimming metal, Jerome reaches out of the door and hits the switch to start the chamber burning. All we see is fire inside the door, and an empty wheelchair sitting outside.
The movie closes with Vincent saying in voice-over that he feels a little sad leaving Earth, even though he was someone "not meant for this world." Then, he says, since all the atoms in our body are said to have once been in stars, maybe he's not leaving after all -- maybe he's going home.
~~~
I wonder what life would be like if our future was like the one in Gattaca. Granted, a recent law passed by President Bush -- GINA, or the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act -- would prevent discrimination on the basis of genetic information. But in the future that might not matter. In Gattaca, Vincent mentions that it is against the law to discriminate based on genes, but that nobody really follows that law.
In my Biological Anthropology class, they taught us that only 1% of our genes differentiates us from everybody else on the planet. And according to the oft-mentioned studies, about that much makes us different from chimpanizees genetically. Actually apparently we are genetically similar to dogs, fruit flies, and even yeast -- to name a few.
Naturally, this genetic similarity to other species would seem to support the traditional Darwinian view, which suggests that all species had a common origin -- a pool of slime that existed somewhere around the dawn of time.
But humans are different than animals in some ways. In the rather boring book I had to read for history class -- The Wretched of the Earth -- they mention that having a cortex in our brains is a distinctively human thing; other rational animals lack the cortex and operate mainly from their diencephalon. Thus, when those who theorized that Algerians were savage stated that Algerians had no cortex, they were suggesting that they were nothing more than animals. The cortex, or cerebral cortex as it is commonly known, plays a role in memory, attention, awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. These are things that are commonly thought as making humans human. Animals are not self-aware or self-conscious; they don't necessarily have thought processes as we define them, either. You might say they have language because animals do communicate -- often in very interesting ways too. And certain animals would have to have attention to, say, track down prey. I argue some animals have memory because a squirrel, for instance, can bury a nut under a tree before hibernating, and then find it again in the spring. But none of these are quite on par with what humans have. Unlike in fairy tales and children's stories, animals don't actually talk or act human-like.
As a believer in creation, I find this genetic similarity thing hard to swallow. Does the 1% difference mean, as evolution suggests, that we came from another species, or does the 1% difference mean that we are all unique in our own way, even if we are similar in many others?
The verse Psalms 139:14 comes to mind: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well" (NIV). I have believed that verse for a long time. The verses that follow it in the passage suggest that God knew us in the womb, and that all our days were written down before we were even born. I still believe that.
Being of childbearing age, I know I will have decisions to make on this issue sometime in the near future most likely. It's one thing if you take preventive genetic tests to see if you could pass on a disease, for instance. I myself am considering getting tested for cystic fibrosis, since my frequent respiratory problems could be signs of mild CF expression, and also as a white person my chances are 1 in 23 of having the gene. And based on the talk one of the project groups in my bio class did on autism, that's highly genetic as well, so I might want to find out about that.
But even my bio teacher has talked about how people could very easily manipulate genetics to their own ends. It would be scary.
~~~~~
Well on to less complicated topics. Anyway, as you can see in the title, I got transferred again. No real reason given, it just happened. I was informed of the fact last Friday, and on Monday I was at the new store. The new store is #157, the "Santa Fe" store. On the bright side, it is closer to my house than Encinitas, and as a lower-volume store it's not as busy. But it did stink to leave my friends at Encinitas, and as this was my second transfer since I've been with Stater Bros., I was worried that I had done something wrong.
So I started on Monday. I am working with Sandra again, who got sent back there from Encinitas. It does seem like it is easier to get work done, though I am still not totally familar with everything. The first night, I didn't put the respective breakout items in the right place and I ran out of time to mop the floor. The second day (yesterday), I accidentially forgot to clock in for work and didn't realize till I'd gone back in my department and started icing cinnamon rolls -- which meant it was off-the-clock work, which is a big no-no. I did go and clock in as soon as I realized, but I had to embarrassingly confess it to the store manager (I told him since I figure a timeclock change was needed, and based on experiences at Encinitas where I needed a timeclock change, I figured only the store manager had access to that), and he didn't seem happy, and then he had to go and tell me I had the wrong type of shoes for work on top of it, even though the shoes I was wearing I have worn to work for a long time without being told by anybody that they were wrong. So now I have to get new shoes, which I was going to do today except that Mum rather curtly reminded me nothing would be open today cause of the holiday. She suggested we go early tomorrow before I have to work (since lots of stores are open early thanks to Black Friday sales) but I didn't want to do that, saying I wanted the bus time to try to get my reading for school done. So I've decided to go on Sunday, which I also have off (yay!), and if Augie (the store manager) asks, I'll tell him I couldn't get them before Friday because nothing was open today. Hopefully, he'll accept that.
I will have to walk to the stores on Monday, but oh well. I want to do Christmas shopping for Amy and her family anyway. Actually, I already bought Amy's present on Tuesday after school. But I want to buy stuff for Jesse (her husband) and her two children. Arielle, her new daughter, likes things that play music, and Kevin, her son, loves Pokemon, so I should be able to get something for them easily. Jesse she said likes books, movies, video games, etc, so he might be harder to shop for. Plus, I don't know him very well. It's one thing when you're shopping for kids. Kids aren't as picky about gifts. People Jesse's age are. I don't want to get him a video game cause I can't remember what systems he has. As for books and movies, I don't know his preferences either. I suppose I could ballpark it. I hate to do that, but I don't know what else to do.
Speaking of presents, Sandra invited me to participate in a Secret Santa drawing between us and the deli department. I got Juan, the one lone guy in bakery, who I just met yesterday. I have no idea what to get him so I will have to ask Andrew (who's home for the holiday) what guys his age like (since Juan is 18). I have a feeling that Chase, the deli assistant manager and the lone guy over there, got me cause he was asking if there were video games coming out that I wanted (he probably heard that I like video games from Sandra, cause Sandra knows since she caught me playing my DS in the breakroom one day at Encinitas). I did check the "Game Forecast" in the recent issue of Nintendo Power that I bought, but nothing that's coming out for DS before Christmas looked interesting to me.
***
Yesterday, the same day I embarrassed myself by doing off-the-clock work and having Augie tell me my shoes were wrong, Sandra started telling me, unsolicited, that there were people at Encinitas, including the store manager, who wanted her out of there. This was already an awkward discussion, but then the focus turned to me. Sandra told me point-blank that she had had to fight to keep me in her department. I thought this related to her trying to get me working back in the department rather than sampling, so I explained how the sampling thing came about -- that Jennifer, our store assistant manager before Joe Bravo, decided we should have a sample person out there who knew the product and figured I'd be a good candidate, and that after that Diana Kelly (one of the district supervisors) took up the idea. But Sandra had to go and elaborate.
Apparently, there are people who wanted ME out too, including PATRICIA, of all people, who I really love and have missed greatly since she was transferred to the Jefferson store (#151). Sandra told me Patricia's one of those people who is nice to your face but stabs you in the back when you're not around.
I admit I was in shock. I remember my eyes going wide when I heard Patricia's name. My eyes usually go wide in the same fashion as other people's eyebrows raise -- out of shock or surprise.
I tried to take it calmly. I said, "Well, you think you know people" and then, a little later, I vocalized a thought. I said, "I wonder, what is it about me that makes people think they have to talk bad about me behind my back?"
I don't think Sandra answered, or if she did, I don't recall what she said. When I told my parents later, they said that I reacted very maturely.
Do I want to know, from the lips of these supposed backstabbers, their reason for their feelings against me? Sure. But the only way I could find out this information accurately is to ask them directly, and that would be very uncomfortable.
Why would I be so unliked? I don't think it's my faith; to be honest, I'm not very vocal about it, even at work. I'm not the type who tries to save every lost soul they see. In fact, I'm not sure how to witness at all.
Is it something about how I work? Generally, I don't complain too much; I usually save my complaints for my parents after work, for this blog, and occasionally for a few trusted coworkers to whom I feel I can vent at safe times. The only times other than these that I might complain badly is if I get visibly stressed or lose my composure, which does sadly, happen sometimes.
Katie told me before I left I shouldn't focus so much on the details of other people, such as their schedules (this rose from a misunderstanding regarding something I said that came off wrong). Initially, although I apologized to Katie, I felt that my natural extreme curiosity just lead me to focus on such things. Now I wonder.
Sandra said people wanted her to get rid of Joseph too. Impulsively, I told her she would be stupid if she did that. Maybe "stupid" is too strong a word, but she didn't take it badly. It's true though; Joseph has been with Stater Bros. for 8 years and is probably the best worker they have back in that bakery. He works really hard and is definitely dedicated; until he took vacation recently, he hadn't been on vacation in 4 years. Only recently has he been getting decent shifts and not closing all the time (his seniority deserves it), although he is an excellent closer. He's overall a nice guy, too, and I got the impression that he was well-liked. He seems easy-going, though I've noticed he stutters sometimes when he's nervous. I have told female co-workers that I can't understand why he doesn't have a girlfriend (he's in his 30's, someone told me, and I know from Joseph himself that he lives with his mother), because I think any girl would be lucky to have him. Come to think of it, why is it that the easy-going Average Joe (no pun intended) never seems to be able to get a girlfriend, while all the non-decent jerks do? Actually, it's that way with girls too -- normal, boring girls, girls like me who aren't obsessed with fashion, makeup, and drooling over say, the Jonas Brothers (or, to use a personal example, supposedly cute guys who run rides at Disneyland) don't seem to get guys as easily, whereas the pretty, popular girls do. It's odd, there are people and groups that fight against females being perceived as mere objects, and yet women are obsessed with being perfectly thin, overly pretty, and eternally young (just think about the number of anti-aging products you see ads for). In a way, they are unconsciously asking to be perceived as objects, perceived the way guys' visual-propelled instincts push them to perceive women.
The traditional marriage service says that marriage exists for three reasons: for the procreation of children; as a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; and for the mutual society, help, and comfort of each other in prosperity and adversity. Affairs and the breakup of marriages when hard times hit show that people don't follow the last two. But children people seem to care about; a couple on the verge of divorce will often try to save the marriage for the children's sake. So apparently some people marry to have children.
Sorry, I know the above was random; I am writing off the top of my head at this point.
Anyway, I wish I knew exactly what people didn't like about me at work, but I am afraid to ask them, and they would likely be ashamed to admit it anyway.
***
On other notes, I traded in three of my DS games that I decided I didn't want anymore -- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Totally Spies! 2: Undercover and Code Lyoko (or, as it's sometimes known, Code Lyoko: Get Ready to Virtualize). I ended up buying the newer Code Lyoko DS game, Code Lyoko: Fall of X.A.N.A. It's based on season four and looks a lot more interesting.
So, the DS games I currently own are: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (which I'm still trying to beat the bonus case on), Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, Pokémon Pearl, Pokémon Ranger, Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, and Code Lyoko: Fall of X.A.N.A. I figured the less games I have, the more likely I will play them all to the end. I do still want to buy the Pokémon Ranger sequel that just came out, and there's a few games I saw reviewed or featured in the recent issue of Nintendo Power I bought, including a sequel to Rune Factory, that I am interested in getting. Right now, I am post-game in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Pokémon Pearl. Rune Factory I recently decided to play again but I restarted the game because that game is really hard to pick up where you left off after a long absence. Today I restarted mine cause I couldn't get the sickle from Rosetta, and then I went online and found out you have to till 50 tiles of land in your field first before she'll give it to you. So I did.
Plans for the rest of the weekend: on Sunday, church (double yay!) and then shopping. Tomorrow and Saturday I have to work. But I did finish that boring history book (well, the content was all right, but the essays were really long and couldn't keep my attention), so now I am on to the novel for lit, which looks like it might be more interesting. I finished my slide for the bio project PowerPoint today, wrote my notecards from it, and sent the edited PowerPoint to Meiling, the girl who's going to put everything together in regards to the PowerPoint. So that's basically done. But I have to turn my attention to my huge lit project now, and I'm totally lost. I sent an edited thesis and intro for my critical analysis and an edited first part of my paper (the part we previously turned in) to my teacher via e-mail and am awaiting her advice. I also went through my OneNote notes for the project and discarded into "Unfiled Notes" any notes that didn't look useful, and tagged (with a star) the ones I'd already cited from or which looked useful. Hopefully, that will help. If anything, I can at least write the critical reception part and start compiling my final bibliography, which will go between the critical reception and critical analysis section.
I'm going to end with a positive "girl power" image from the scanalations of volumes 5 and 6 of the original Cardcaptor Sakura manga that I read today, but which I haven't been able to buy yet in print. (Dialogue is from right to left). It features Mizuki-sensei helping Sakura during the Last Judgment using the Moon Bell.
Aside from the cool "girl power" factor, I love the art (especially of the bell itself) and the act itself (in the anime, Mizuki-sensei's bell only gave Sakura a second chance at the Last Judgment -- it didn't change her wand like it ends up doing in the manga). Good night!
Gattaca (whose name, cleverly, consists only of the letters - G, C, T, and A -- used to designate the four base pairs in DNA) is a movie which stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. Set in the "not-too-distant future," it shows a world where genetics has become everything. Your genetics determine your fate, including what job you are allowed to take. Most people choose to consult a genetic counselor before having a child, in order to assure it has the best chances possible. But there are a few people who choose to give birth without any genetic manipulation, but this is not recommended, and the births are pejoratively called "faith births" or "God births." Those born this way are deemed unfit for most aspects of normal societies and are labeled, literally, as "in-valid."
Vincent Freeman (Hawke's character) is one such "in-valid." Since his parents decided to do the typical genetic manipulation with their second child, he's had to deal with his genetically perfect brother Anton all his life. Despite his chances of life in the "elite" society being slim, Vincent dreams of going to space. His parents tell him with the heart condition he has (which was predicted at birth via a blood test from his foot), the agency sending people into space -- Gattaca -- would never take him.
Vincent is determined, however, and after much training and studying, he realizes none of that will matter; his genetics will stop his chances. So he decides to take drastic action. He contacts a man he hears about through word of mouth (played by Tony Shalhoub, now famous for the show Monk), who hooks him up with a wheelchair-bound former professional swimmer named Jerome Morrow (played by Jude Law). Genetically, Jerome is perfect -- exactly the kind of person that could attain what Vincent dreams of. But Jerome naturally can't take his usual place in society due to the accident that put him in a wheelchair. So, he agrees to help Vincent out by allowing Vincent to take on his identity. He provides him with blood and urine samples, as well as other genetics-related material for any genetic tests Vincent may have to take.
The plan works, and Vincent (now Jerome) gets hired at Gattaca (on the basis of a simple gene test, no less, with no "traditional" interview) and over time gets into the elite ranks. The movie (after the flashbacks) starts one week before Vincent/Jerome, a space navigator, is to fly on a 1-year manned mission to Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. At the beginning of the week, though, one of Gattaca's mission directors -- one who had opposed the Titan mission -- is found dead. Vincent/Jerome, who passes by the crowd of spectators by the director's office, accidentially leaves an eyelash behind on the windowsill.
The murder is, naturally, investigated. The eyelash is found, and comes up with Vincent's "in-valid" profile. This leads the cops to search for an in-valid who might have committed the crime, not believing Vincent is still alive (since he was predicted at birth to only live 30 years).
Meanwhile, Vincent/Jerome makes the acquaintance of fellow Gattaca worker Irene (Thurman). She tells him she isn't quite genetically perfect; like the real Vincent, she too has a heart condition. The post of Vincent's face on a company-wide bulletin leads him to consider abandoning his contract with the real Jerome, but the real Jerome talks him out of it. After a surprise police investigation at a party Vincent/Jerome and Irene attend, they run out the back door, and hear one of the cops calling "Vincent."
Evidence from a mint tin leads the cop (really Vincent's brother Anton) to associate Irene with Jerome. Irene sees Anton coming and secretly warns Vincent/Jerome, who is just coming into work, telling him he looks sick and should go home. However, Anton confronts Irene and demands that she take him to Jerome's house. Fortunately, Vincent/Jerome catches on and informs the real Jerome, who struggles out of his wheelchair, up the stairs, and into a chair to distract Irene and Anton. Anton does a blood test, and when it comes up with Jerome's profile (the same one Vincent/Jerome's blood sample came up as), he smells a rat. Once Anton leaves, Vincent/Jerome comes out of hiding just as Irene is leaving and addresses the real Jerome as Jerome (he had been calling him Eugene, to maintain their ruse), to which the real Jerome addresses Vincent/Jerome, also as Jerome.
Irene rushes out, and Vincent/Jerome runs after her and tells her his real name, that he is a "faith birth," and that he too has a heart condition. She can't quite take this and leaves.
Meanwhile, Anton arrives at Gattaca, having been contacted by his partner, to find that the partner has found the murder culprit -- the main director of Gattaca. It turns out the mysterious "in-valid" -- Vincent -- had nothing to do with it. Anton is annoyed at this turn of events.
Vincent/Jerome and the real Jerome discuss events, and Vincent/Jerome says he has to go see the cop. The two meet at Gattaca, and acknowledge each other. Anton tries to tell Vincent he will be in real trouble for fraud. Vincent tells Anton that he doesn't need Anton to save him -- but reminds him that he saved Anton's life once (this refers to one of the childhood flashbacks, which shows the boys racing at swimming as far out in the ocean as they dare, and Vincent having to save Anton from drowning once). They go out to the ocean to prove themselves to each other in another match of swimming. Anton begins to get scared when they can't see the land anymore, but Vincent tells him to keep going, saying he didn't save anything for the swim back. Eventually, Anton loses strength and Vincent has to rescue him again.
The day of Vincent's launch arrives. Before he leaves home, the real Jerome takes him to a room with multiple fridges, filled with enough urine, blood, and other samples to last him two lifetimes. When Vincent protests that he doesn't need samples in space, Jerome says he might need them when he gets back. Vincent asks Jerome where he's going, but Jerome only says, "I'm traveling too." He gives Vincent a card to open when he gets "upstairs."
Vincent heads down a hallway to enter the spaceship, and is stopped by his usual doctor for a random urine test. He purposely fills the cup with his own urine rather than one of Jerome's urine samples, and thereby reveals his real identity to the doctor. The doctor is surprised, but does nothing but say, "You're going to miss your flight, Vincent."
Vincent boards the spaceship. As it takes off, he opens Jerome's card and finds a lock of hair. Meanwhile, as Vincent boards, we see Jerome climb into the chamber where Vincent scraped off his extra skin, hair, fingernails, and the like and burned them nightly. Donning his second-place swimming metal, Jerome reaches out of the door and hits the switch to start the chamber burning. All we see is fire inside the door, and an empty wheelchair sitting outside.
The movie closes with Vincent saying in voice-over that he feels a little sad leaving Earth, even though he was someone "not meant for this world." Then, he says, since all the atoms in our body are said to have once been in stars, maybe he's not leaving after all -- maybe he's going home.
~~~
I wonder what life would be like if our future was like the one in Gattaca. Granted, a recent law passed by President Bush -- GINA, or the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act -- would prevent discrimination on the basis of genetic information. But in the future that might not matter. In Gattaca, Vincent mentions that it is against the law to discriminate based on genes, but that nobody really follows that law.
In my Biological Anthropology class, they taught us that only 1% of our genes differentiates us from everybody else on the planet. And according to the oft-mentioned studies, about that much makes us different from chimpanizees genetically. Actually apparently we are genetically similar to dogs, fruit flies, and even yeast -- to name a few.
Naturally, this genetic similarity to other species would seem to support the traditional Darwinian view, which suggests that all species had a common origin -- a pool of slime that existed somewhere around the dawn of time.
But humans are different than animals in some ways. In the rather boring book I had to read for history class -- The Wretched of the Earth -- they mention that having a cortex in our brains is a distinctively human thing; other rational animals lack the cortex and operate mainly from their diencephalon. Thus, when those who theorized that Algerians were savage stated that Algerians had no cortex, they were suggesting that they were nothing more than animals. The cortex, or cerebral cortex as it is commonly known, plays a role in memory, attention, awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. These are things that are commonly thought as making humans human. Animals are not self-aware or self-conscious; they don't necessarily have thought processes as we define them, either. You might say they have language because animals do communicate -- often in very interesting ways too. And certain animals would have to have attention to, say, track down prey. I argue some animals have memory because a squirrel, for instance, can bury a nut under a tree before hibernating, and then find it again in the spring. But none of these are quite on par with what humans have. Unlike in fairy tales and children's stories, animals don't actually talk or act human-like.
As a believer in creation, I find this genetic similarity thing hard to swallow. Does the 1% difference mean, as evolution suggests, that we came from another species, or does the 1% difference mean that we are all unique in our own way, even if we are similar in many others?
The verse Psalms 139:14 comes to mind: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well" (NIV). I have believed that verse for a long time. The verses that follow it in the passage suggest that God knew us in the womb, and that all our days were written down before we were even born. I still believe that.
Being of childbearing age, I know I will have decisions to make on this issue sometime in the near future most likely. It's one thing if you take preventive genetic tests to see if you could pass on a disease, for instance. I myself am considering getting tested for cystic fibrosis, since my frequent respiratory problems could be signs of mild CF expression, and also as a white person my chances are 1 in 23 of having the gene. And based on the talk one of the project groups in my bio class did on autism, that's highly genetic as well, so I might want to find out about that.
But even my bio teacher has talked about how people could very easily manipulate genetics to their own ends. It would be scary.
~~~~~
Well on to less complicated topics. Anyway, as you can see in the title, I got transferred again. No real reason given, it just happened. I was informed of the fact last Friday, and on Monday I was at the new store. The new store is #157, the "Santa Fe" store. On the bright side, it is closer to my house than Encinitas, and as a lower-volume store it's not as busy. But it did stink to leave my friends at Encinitas, and as this was my second transfer since I've been with Stater Bros., I was worried that I had done something wrong.
So I started on Monday. I am working with Sandra again, who got sent back there from Encinitas. It does seem like it is easier to get work done, though I am still not totally familar with everything. The first night, I didn't put the respective breakout items in the right place and I ran out of time to mop the floor. The second day (yesterday), I accidentially forgot to clock in for work and didn't realize till I'd gone back in my department and started icing cinnamon rolls -- which meant it was off-the-clock work, which is a big no-no. I did go and clock in as soon as I realized, but I had to embarrassingly confess it to the store manager (I told him since I figure a timeclock change was needed, and based on experiences at Encinitas where I needed a timeclock change, I figured only the store manager had access to that), and he didn't seem happy, and then he had to go and tell me I had the wrong type of shoes for work on top of it, even though the shoes I was wearing I have worn to work for a long time without being told by anybody that they were wrong. So now I have to get new shoes, which I was going to do today except that Mum rather curtly reminded me nothing would be open today cause of the holiday. She suggested we go early tomorrow before I have to work (since lots of stores are open early thanks to Black Friday sales) but I didn't want to do that, saying I wanted the bus time to try to get my reading for school done. So I've decided to go on Sunday, which I also have off (yay!), and if Augie (the store manager) asks, I'll tell him I couldn't get them before Friday because nothing was open today. Hopefully, he'll accept that.
I will have to walk to the stores on Monday, but oh well. I want to do Christmas shopping for Amy and her family anyway. Actually, I already bought Amy's present on Tuesday after school. But I want to buy stuff for Jesse (her husband) and her two children. Arielle, her new daughter, likes things that play music, and Kevin, her son, loves Pokemon, so I should be able to get something for them easily. Jesse she said likes books, movies, video games, etc, so he might be harder to shop for. Plus, I don't know him very well. It's one thing when you're shopping for kids. Kids aren't as picky about gifts. People Jesse's age are. I don't want to get him a video game cause I can't remember what systems he has. As for books and movies, I don't know his preferences either. I suppose I could ballpark it. I hate to do that, but I don't know what else to do.
Speaking of presents, Sandra invited me to participate in a Secret Santa drawing between us and the deli department. I got Juan, the one lone guy in bakery, who I just met yesterday. I have no idea what to get him so I will have to ask Andrew (who's home for the holiday) what guys his age like (since Juan is 18). I have a feeling that Chase, the deli assistant manager and the lone guy over there, got me cause he was asking if there were video games coming out that I wanted (he probably heard that I like video games from Sandra, cause Sandra knows since she caught me playing my DS in the breakroom one day at Encinitas). I did check the "Game Forecast" in the recent issue of Nintendo Power that I bought, but nothing that's coming out for DS before Christmas looked interesting to me.
***
Yesterday, the same day I embarrassed myself by doing off-the-clock work and having Augie tell me my shoes were wrong, Sandra started telling me, unsolicited, that there were people at Encinitas, including the store manager, who wanted her out of there. This was already an awkward discussion, but then the focus turned to me. Sandra told me point-blank that she had had to fight to keep me in her department. I thought this related to her trying to get me working back in the department rather than sampling, so I explained how the sampling thing came about -- that Jennifer, our store assistant manager before Joe Bravo, decided we should have a sample person out there who knew the product and figured I'd be a good candidate, and that after that Diana Kelly (one of the district supervisors) took up the idea. But Sandra had to go and elaborate.
Apparently, there are people who wanted ME out too, including PATRICIA, of all people, who I really love and have missed greatly since she was transferred to the Jefferson store (#151). Sandra told me Patricia's one of those people who is nice to your face but stabs you in the back when you're not around.
I admit I was in shock. I remember my eyes going wide when I heard Patricia's name. My eyes usually go wide in the same fashion as other people's eyebrows raise -- out of shock or surprise.
I tried to take it calmly. I said, "Well, you think you know people" and then, a little later, I vocalized a thought. I said, "I wonder, what is it about me that makes people think they have to talk bad about me behind my back?"
I don't think Sandra answered, or if she did, I don't recall what she said. When I told my parents later, they said that I reacted very maturely.
Do I want to know, from the lips of these supposed backstabbers, their reason for their feelings against me? Sure. But the only way I could find out this information accurately is to ask them directly, and that would be very uncomfortable.
Why would I be so unliked? I don't think it's my faith; to be honest, I'm not very vocal about it, even at work. I'm not the type who tries to save every lost soul they see. In fact, I'm not sure how to witness at all.
Is it something about how I work? Generally, I don't complain too much; I usually save my complaints for my parents after work, for this blog, and occasionally for a few trusted coworkers to whom I feel I can vent at safe times. The only times other than these that I might complain badly is if I get visibly stressed or lose my composure, which does sadly, happen sometimes.
Katie told me before I left I shouldn't focus so much on the details of other people, such as their schedules (this rose from a misunderstanding regarding something I said that came off wrong). Initially, although I apologized to Katie, I felt that my natural extreme curiosity just lead me to focus on such things. Now I wonder.
Sandra said people wanted her to get rid of Joseph too. Impulsively, I told her she would be stupid if she did that. Maybe "stupid" is too strong a word, but she didn't take it badly. It's true though; Joseph has been with Stater Bros. for 8 years and is probably the best worker they have back in that bakery. He works really hard and is definitely dedicated; until he took vacation recently, he hadn't been on vacation in 4 years. Only recently has he been getting decent shifts and not closing all the time (his seniority deserves it), although he is an excellent closer. He's overall a nice guy, too, and I got the impression that he was well-liked. He seems easy-going, though I've noticed he stutters sometimes when he's nervous. I have told female co-workers that I can't understand why he doesn't have a girlfriend (he's in his 30's, someone told me, and I know from Joseph himself that he lives with his mother), because I think any girl would be lucky to have him. Come to think of it, why is it that the easy-going Average Joe (no pun intended) never seems to be able to get a girlfriend, while all the non-decent jerks do? Actually, it's that way with girls too -- normal, boring girls, girls like me who aren't obsessed with fashion, makeup, and drooling over say, the Jonas Brothers (or, to use a personal example, supposedly cute guys who run rides at Disneyland) don't seem to get guys as easily, whereas the pretty, popular girls do. It's odd, there are people and groups that fight against females being perceived as mere objects, and yet women are obsessed with being perfectly thin, overly pretty, and eternally young (just think about the number of anti-aging products you see ads for). In a way, they are unconsciously asking to be perceived as objects, perceived the way guys' visual-propelled instincts push them to perceive women.
The traditional marriage service says that marriage exists for three reasons: for the procreation of children; as a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; and for the mutual society, help, and comfort of each other in prosperity and adversity. Affairs and the breakup of marriages when hard times hit show that people don't follow the last two. But children people seem to care about; a couple on the verge of divorce will often try to save the marriage for the children's sake. So apparently some people marry to have children.
Sorry, I know the above was random; I am writing off the top of my head at this point.
Anyway, I wish I knew exactly what people didn't like about me at work, but I am afraid to ask them, and they would likely be ashamed to admit it anyway.
***
On other notes, I traded in three of my DS games that I decided I didn't want anymore -- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Totally Spies! 2: Undercover and Code Lyoko (or, as it's sometimes known, Code Lyoko: Get Ready to Virtualize). I ended up buying the newer Code Lyoko DS game, Code Lyoko: Fall of X.A.N.A. It's based on season four and looks a lot more interesting.
So, the DS games I currently own are: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (which I'm still trying to beat the bonus case on), Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, Pokémon Pearl, Pokémon Ranger, Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, and Code Lyoko: Fall of X.A.N.A. I figured the less games I have, the more likely I will play them all to the end. I do still want to buy the Pokémon Ranger sequel that just came out, and there's a few games I saw reviewed or featured in the recent issue of Nintendo Power I bought, including a sequel to Rune Factory, that I am interested in getting. Right now, I am post-game in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Pokémon Pearl. Rune Factory I recently decided to play again but I restarted the game because that game is really hard to pick up where you left off after a long absence. Today I restarted mine cause I couldn't get the sickle from Rosetta, and then I went online and found out you have to till 50 tiles of land in your field first before she'll give it to you. So I did.
Plans for the rest of the weekend: on Sunday, church (double yay!) and then shopping. Tomorrow and Saturday I have to work. But I did finish that boring history book (well, the content was all right, but the essays were really long and couldn't keep my attention), so now I am on to the novel for lit, which looks like it might be more interesting. I finished my slide for the bio project PowerPoint today, wrote my notecards from it, and sent the edited PowerPoint to Meiling, the girl who's going to put everything together in regards to the PowerPoint. So that's basically done. But I have to turn my attention to my huge lit project now, and I'm totally lost. I sent an edited thesis and intro for my critical analysis and an edited first part of my paper (the part we previously turned in) to my teacher via e-mail and am awaiting her advice. I also went through my OneNote notes for the project and discarded into "Unfiled Notes" any notes that didn't look useful, and tagged (with a star) the ones I'd already cited from or which looked useful. Hopefully, that will help. If anything, I can at least write the critical reception part and start compiling my final bibliography, which will go between the critical reception and critical analysis section.
I'm going to end with a positive "girl power" image from the scanalations of volumes 5 and 6 of the original Cardcaptor Sakura manga that I read today, but which I haven't been able to buy yet in print. (Dialogue is from right to left). It features Mizuki-sensei helping Sakura during the Last Judgment using the Moon Bell.
Aside from the cool "girl power" factor, I love the art (especially of the bell itself) and the act itself (in the anime, Mizuki-sensei's bell only gave Sakura a second chance at the Last Judgment -- it didn't change her wand like it ends up doing in the manga). Good night!
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Magic Knight Rayearth OVA, I caught Salamence (FINALLY), career thoughts, etc.
Last night, I was bored and so on a whim I decided to search out a place to watch some anime, and decided on the OVA (Original Video Animation) for Magic Knight Rayearth, one of my favorite anime series. It consists of 3 episodes and was released independently of the Magic Knight Rayearth manga and TV series. I found a site where you could stream it, and sat back to watch.
The OVA was certainly interesting. Its characters are all part of the existing MKR canon, but the setting and story are different. In the OVA, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu already know each other and even go to the same school. Hikaru is no longer a kendo practicer and is instead head of the gymnastics club. Umi is the captain of some team, as in the original anime, but not fencing -- tennis this time. Fuu plays the piano. They all look slightly different too artistically -- well and also they are older; in the OVA they are a week away from graduating junior high, and junior high ends with 9th grade in Japan. In the main series they were all in 8th grade (and Hikaru was considerably shorter; in the OVA she's as tall as Umi and Fuu).
The storyline is that Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu made a promise under a certain cherry tree at the school that they would be friends forever. The cherry tree is said to have a fairy in it that will grant wishes it hears made under its tree. However, now that they are graduating, they are going to be separated -- Umi is going to a school somewhere else in Japan, and Fuu's father is being transferred to some other country for work. Hikaru, saddened by this, goes to stand under the cherry tree, and a creature (Mokona from the main series) falls out of the tree. Hikaru is excited that the cherry blossom fairy is real, but when she tells Umi and Fuu, they don't believe her.
Meanwhile, as these girls have their problems, a greater problem is on the way. Emeraude (the same Emeraude of Cephiro from the series, except here she resembles the older-looking "evil Emeraude" form she took on after the girls killed Zagato) is lost in a dream-like state of a time when her love, Zagato, was still alive. For whatever reason, just like in the original series, they can't be together (I think the reason in the OVA is that humans and spirits couldn't be together romantically; meaning one of them was a spirit). Zagato was killed as part of a ritual to save Cephiro, which is in peril because the number of its protective spirits has declined over time, causing the land to become a rocky wasteland. Anyway, Emeraude has made some wish which involves moving her castle to modern-day Tokyo, an act which will ultimately destroy our world. Her brother, Eagle (probably based on Eagle Vision of Autozam from season 2), is the primary person ensuring that Emeraude's wish is fulfilled. Meanwhile, great sorcerers of Cephiro have gathered in Tokyo for some sort of "divine test": Alycone (remember her? Zagato's ice-using minion?), Ascot (that little kid beast-summoner), and even Ferio (who in the OVA is apparently not Emeraude's brother). They all use animal "familiars" - Alycone has a cat that resembles an evil-looking, black-colored Glameow; Ascot has some beast of sorts (I think); and Ferio has an army of mechanized-looking insects. All three of them can turn these familiars into huge mechas called "deities." Ascot's looks like a lobster for some reason. Ferio's is insect-like, and I can't remember what Alycone's looks like but it's pretty scary and powerful.
So anyway, the only people who can stop these invaders are, apparently, those who inherit the "orbs" that will awaken the three Mashin (or "gods") that sleep within the Earth, and -- true to the original -- Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are these people. Once again, they are helped by Clef, who is one of the few Cephiro residents actually opposing the invasion. Clef is significantly more older-looking in the OVA, though his general design (and even his magic staff) are pretty much the same. Also joining the resistance is Lantis, Zagato's brother. He actually has a spirit familiar too (some sort of dog or wolf, I believe) and he's also the best swordsman in Cephiro. He comes to Hikaru's rescue after she gets knocked unconscious after the fight with Alycone, and later, with the help of Ferio, assists the girls in the end.
The Mashin are similar to the TV series but are designed very differently, almost like EVAs but with animal attributes. They also are located on Earth instead of in Cephiro for some reason. Umi and Fuu's Mashin keep their original names, Selece and Windam. Hikaru's, on the other hand, is now named Lexus instead of Rayearth (maybe because the Earth in the OVA is now called RayEarth they didn't want to make things confusing by calling the Mashin Rayearth). The name "Lexus" may have to do the "car name" theme with character names in the series, since all the characters in MKR, except for Mokona and the three Magic Knights (Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu) are apparently named for cars.
Anyway, similar to the end of season 1 of the anime, the girls end up having to join together to fight the final boss (Zagato's "deity," which he can apparently control despite the fact that he's dead) but here this involves actually combining the three Mashin into one super-Mashin and doing a spell called Helix of Light. Oh and each girl has one spell only -- the rest of the fighting is hand-in-hand combat, much like the EVA-Angel fights in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hikaru's is Flame Arrow, Umi's is Water Dragon, and Fuu's is Emerald Gale.
However, in the end, they still go their separate ways, so whether Hikaru's wish that they stay together actually comes true is uncertain.
Oh and Clef apparently uses some spell to trap all the other people on Earth in a time warp to protect them, and this makes the girls somewhat mad at him. Also Clef's health suffers because of his act, suggesting that it is something he should not have done.
Curiously enough, only the neighborhoods where we see fighting take place (Roppongi and one other neighborhood) actually are damaged, as we see in a news report at the end, meaning that despite the arrival of the castle, the entire Earth was not destroyed.
~~~
So anyway today I took a break from cleaning my room to play Pokémon Ranger while listening to Mugglecast at the same time. I was sitting down in my desk chair, cleaning off my desk, because I had suddenly had this awful back spasm again that I had last week when we went to shop for glasses, where it makes it hard to walk or bend down. (Mum said tonight that it could because I'm overweight, and that kind of talk always depresses me). Anyway, I was still trying to beat the stupid trial in the Jungle Relic where you have to capture Salamence at the end. And today, I DID IT. Yay!!! Basically what I did was seize an opportunity where I could draw circles around it, and started drawing circles crazy fast (since you need 21 circles to capture Salamence). And before I knew it, I had caught it. Yesss!!
After you capture Salamence (or Flygon or Kingdra), the 4th challenge becomes available, where you have to chase around and then capture a Charizard. Charizard doesn't take as many circles as Salamence (I think it takes like 12 to capture it) but while you try to capture it, these little flames appear on the ground which can hurt your Capture Line. So I failed in my first attempt, and so I'll have to try again.
I am thinking about careers again. I found and pulled out all my career assessment results from my Intro to Career Planning class, and I was just looking them over right now. I'm kind of too tired to analyze them though.
I just got an e-mail today saying I could start enrolling for Spring. But I need to get my MMR booster first, I know, so I don't have an immunization hold on my record. It's been hard to work it into my schedule. I'll probably have to make an appointment, cause their clinic times don't work with when I'll be free at school tomorrow. I guess I could make an appointment either today or tomorrow, assuming my work schedule will stay the same as usual (it hasn't changed yet).
Well there's not really anything else to say. Good night!
The OVA was certainly interesting. Its characters are all part of the existing MKR canon, but the setting and story are different. In the OVA, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu already know each other and even go to the same school. Hikaru is no longer a kendo practicer and is instead head of the gymnastics club. Umi is the captain of some team, as in the original anime, but not fencing -- tennis this time. Fuu plays the piano. They all look slightly different too artistically -- well and also they are older; in the OVA they are a week away from graduating junior high, and junior high ends with 9th grade in Japan. In the main series they were all in 8th grade (and Hikaru was considerably shorter; in the OVA she's as tall as Umi and Fuu).
The storyline is that Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu made a promise under a certain cherry tree at the school that they would be friends forever. The cherry tree is said to have a fairy in it that will grant wishes it hears made under its tree. However, now that they are graduating, they are going to be separated -- Umi is going to a school somewhere else in Japan, and Fuu's father is being transferred to some other country for work. Hikaru, saddened by this, goes to stand under the cherry tree, and a creature (Mokona from the main series) falls out of the tree. Hikaru is excited that the cherry blossom fairy is real, but when she tells Umi and Fuu, they don't believe her.
Meanwhile, as these girls have their problems, a greater problem is on the way. Emeraude (the same Emeraude of Cephiro from the series, except here she resembles the older-looking "evil Emeraude" form she took on after the girls killed Zagato) is lost in a dream-like state of a time when her love, Zagato, was still alive. For whatever reason, just like in the original series, they can't be together (I think the reason in the OVA is that humans and spirits couldn't be together romantically; meaning one of them was a spirit). Zagato was killed as part of a ritual to save Cephiro, which is in peril because the number of its protective spirits has declined over time, causing the land to become a rocky wasteland. Anyway, Emeraude has made some wish which involves moving her castle to modern-day Tokyo, an act which will ultimately destroy our world. Her brother, Eagle (probably based on Eagle Vision of Autozam from season 2), is the primary person ensuring that Emeraude's wish is fulfilled. Meanwhile, great sorcerers of Cephiro have gathered in Tokyo for some sort of "divine test": Alycone (remember her? Zagato's ice-using minion?), Ascot (that little kid beast-summoner), and even Ferio (who in the OVA is apparently not Emeraude's brother). They all use animal "familiars" - Alycone has a cat that resembles an evil-looking, black-colored Glameow; Ascot has some beast of sorts (I think); and Ferio has an army of mechanized-looking insects. All three of them can turn these familiars into huge mechas called "deities." Ascot's looks like a lobster for some reason. Ferio's is insect-like, and I can't remember what Alycone's looks like but it's pretty scary and powerful.
So anyway, the only people who can stop these invaders are, apparently, those who inherit the "orbs" that will awaken the three Mashin (or "gods") that sleep within the Earth, and -- true to the original -- Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are these people. Once again, they are helped by Clef, who is one of the few Cephiro residents actually opposing the invasion. Clef is significantly more older-looking in the OVA, though his general design (and even his magic staff) are pretty much the same. Also joining the resistance is Lantis, Zagato's brother. He actually has a spirit familiar too (some sort of dog or wolf, I believe) and he's also the best swordsman in Cephiro. He comes to Hikaru's rescue after she gets knocked unconscious after the fight with Alycone, and later, with the help of Ferio, assists the girls in the end.
The Mashin are similar to the TV series but are designed very differently, almost like EVAs but with animal attributes. They also are located on Earth instead of in Cephiro for some reason. Umi and Fuu's Mashin keep their original names, Selece and Windam. Hikaru's, on the other hand, is now named Lexus instead of Rayearth (maybe because the Earth in the OVA is now called RayEarth they didn't want to make things confusing by calling the Mashin Rayearth). The name "Lexus" may have to do the "car name" theme with character names in the series, since all the characters in MKR, except for Mokona and the three Magic Knights (Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu) are apparently named for cars.
Anyway, similar to the end of season 1 of the anime, the girls end up having to join together to fight the final boss (Zagato's "deity," which he can apparently control despite the fact that he's dead) but here this involves actually combining the three Mashin into one super-Mashin and doing a spell called Helix of Light. Oh and each girl has one spell only -- the rest of the fighting is hand-in-hand combat, much like the EVA-Angel fights in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hikaru's is Flame Arrow, Umi's is Water Dragon, and Fuu's is Emerald Gale.
However, in the end, they still go their separate ways, so whether Hikaru's wish that they stay together actually comes true is uncertain.
Oh and Clef apparently uses some spell to trap all the other people on Earth in a time warp to protect them, and this makes the girls somewhat mad at him. Also Clef's health suffers because of his act, suggesting that it is something he should not have done.
Curiously enough, only the neighborhoods where we see fighting take place (Roppongi and one other neighborhood) actually are damaged, as we see in a news report at the end, meaning that despite the arrival of the castle, the entire Earth was not destroyed.
~~~
So anyway today I took a break from cleaning my room to play Pokémon Ranger while listening to Mugglecast at the same time. I was sitting down in my desk chair, cleaning off my desk, because I had suddenly had this awful back spasm again that I had last week when we went to shop for glasses, where it makes it hard to walk or bend down. (Mum said tonight that it could because I'm overweight, and that kind of talk always depresses me). Anyway, I was still trying to beat the stupid trial in the Jungle Relic where you have to capture Salamence at the end. And today, I DID IT. Yay!!! Basically what I did was seize an opportunity where I could draw circles around it, and started drawing circles crazy fast (since you need 21 circles to capture Salamence). And before I knew it, I had caught it. Yesss!!
After you capture Salamence (or Flygon or Kingdra), the 4th challenge becomes available, where you have to chase around and then capture a Charizard. Charizard doesn't take as many circles as Salamence (I think it takes like 12 to capture it) but while you try to capture it, these little flames appear on the ground which can hurt your Capture Line. So I failed in my first attempt, and so I'll have to try again.
I am thinking about careers again. I found and pulled out all my career assessment results from my Intro to Career Planning class, and I was just looking them over right now. I'm kind of too tired to analyze them though.
I just got an e-mail today saying I could start enrolling for Spring. But I need to get my MMR booster first, I know, so I don't have an immunization hold on my record. It's been hard to work it into my schedule. I'll probably have to make an appointment, cause their clinic times don't work with when I'll be free at school tomorrow. I guess I could make an appointment either today or tomorrow, assuming my work schedule will stay the same as usual (it hasn't changed yet).
Well there's not really anything else to say. Good night!
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
A short post-election response
(Woo this will be my 200th post!)
Well, as you all know, Barack Obama was elected the new President of the United States by a crazy electoral vote margin - 349-162 as of this very minute (187 vote difference, and 79 more votes for Obama than were needed to clinch the presidency). He won by a 6% margin of the popular vote (52% compared with McCain's 46%), by 7,343,831 votes. So in the popular vote it was very close, and this is probably because a number of the state races for Obama and McCain were really close (except for D.C. where Obama got 93% and McCain got 7%).
In McCain's concession speech, I could tell he seemed bummed about losing, but willing to accept Obama as the president (he kept calling him "my president"). He was very polite about it. It was a good speech.
Am I not happy? Well, yeah, cause I voted for McCain. But I'm not furious, cause I mean, it's done, there's nothing we can do about it, que sera sera. We have to move on. (I'm not nearly as annoyed about it as the College Republicans person is who sent out a club-wide e-mail giving his reaction).
On a lighter note, it looks like the state propositions I voted no on are going down, and the ones I voted yes on are passing. Particularly, 4 and 8 are passing, which is huge. Prop 4, if it passes, requires a minor to get parental consent before getting an abortion. I think this will be huge in abortion prevention. Prop 8 is the much-publicized "ban gay marriage" proposition.
Hooray.
On other notes...The Wretched of the Earth finally showed up yesterday. Yay.
Well I'm going to go out and get some new sneakers. Bye.
Well, as you all know, Barack Obama was elected the new President of the United States by a crazy electoral vote margin - 349-162 as of this very minute (187 vote difference, and 79 more votes for Obama than were needed to clinch the presidency). He won by a 6% margin of the popular vote (52% compared with McCain's 46%), by 7,343,831 votes. So in the popular vote it was very close, and this is probably because a number of the state races for Obama and McCain were really close (except for D.C. where Obama got 93% and McCain got 7%).
In McCain's concession speech, I could tell he seemed bummed about losing, but willing to accept Obama as the president (he kept calling him "my president"). He was very polite about it. It was a good speech.
Am I not happy? Well, yeah, cause I voted for McCain. But I'm not furious, cause I mean, it's done, there's nothing we can do about it, que sera sera. We have to move on. (I'm not nearly as annoyed about it as the College Republicans person is who sent out a club-wide e-mail giving his reaction).
On a lighter note, it looks like the state propositions I voted no on are going down, and the ones I voted yes on are passing. Particularly, 4 and 8 are passing, which is huge. Prop 4, if it passes, requires a minor to get parental consent before getting an abortion. I think this will be huge in abortion prevention. Prop 8 is the much-publicized "ban gay marriage" proposition.
Hooray.
On other notes...The Wretched of the Earth finally showed up yesterday. Yay.
Well I'm going to go out and get some new sneakers. Bye.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Thoughts on "Harry, a History"
I pre-ordered Melissa Anelli's book Harry, a History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon, and for whatever reason it arrived early (it's not supposed to come out till tomorrow). It arrived last Monday (October 27th), just in time for my birthday. I was surprised to see it, actually. Mum handed me a package that had come, and I figured it was The Wretched of the Earth, the second of the two books which I ordered for school (and which still hasn't shown up), but no, it was Harry, a History. I was happy, though, because I had just finished my history reading that day and was looking for something new to read. Unfortunately, the history reading for Thursday took precedence over pleasure, as well as a chapter for bio, so I didn't end up reading it right away. But after I finished the bio chapter on Thursday morning, I was free to read. I probably would've started at lunchtime except that I was going to a College Republicans meeting to hear about the California Republican Party's stances on the state propositions for this week's election (which are, by the way, YES on props 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, and 12 and NO on props 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 10).
After school, though, I started, and for the rest of the weekend, it was hard to stop. But I had to work, so reading ended up being restricted to before and after work, on breaks, and on lunch. Like with Deathly Hallows (or any good book when I read it for the first time), I took my time with it, savored it. And last night, I finished it, having read it cover to cover over four days, even the notes, bibliography, and acknowledgments at the end. In my excitement over it, I posted a review on Amazon right away and commented on the fan page for it on Facebook and in the "Eagerly Awaiting Melissa Anelli's Book" Facebook group I'm a part of.
The book is awesome. I had heard teases of it on PotterCast, of course, but those barely said anything about the book, now that I look back on it. Even Sue's interview with Melissa didn't say much. I suppose they didn't want to spoil too much.
Anyway, the book filled me in on a huge part of the fandom that I'd missed by not getting into the books until January 2005, six months before Half-Blood Prince was released. I started listening to MuggleCast not too long after, and PotterCast (which I prefer to MuggleCast most of the time, since it features less goofing around and more serious discussion) came later. I believe I started listening in 2006. I seem to remember it was around Christmastime. Apparently, according to this blog, I started listening to PotterCast soon after (a post dated January 5, 2007, mentions it). I didn't have an iPod then; I had an mp3 player though so I just downloaded the episodes from the respective websites for the podcasts.
It was interesting to learn about Melissa's experiences and about the fandom in general, and I chuckled at things like finding out I was very not alone as a Harry/Hermione shipper in the pre-Deathly Hallows days. I was thinking about that at work this weekend. Why did I become a Harry/Hermione shipper? Why did I insist on it, even after Half-Blood Prince made the Ron/Hermione ship rather clear? I don't know exactly. I think it stemmed from really liking Hermione as a character and not caring much for Ron as a character. Ron, Cho, and Umbridge are the characters I can say for sure I disliked in the books. I never did like Cho, even in her brief introduction in Prisoner of Azkaban as the Seeker in the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw Quidditch match. I didn't much care for her in Goblet of Fire either (but then Goblet's not one of my favorites among the books), although I liked Cedric. The way they played with a Harry/Cho romance in Order of the Phoenix was sort of silly, especially the scene in the tea shop. And when the movie for Phoenix was coming out, they over-promoted the Harry/Cho kiss.
I pretended a certain Harry/Hermione fervor, as I recall, stating in the months before Deathly Hallows that Harry and Hermione should get together, and that Ron could be left in the cold (romantically speaking) for all I cared. For whatever reason, Harry just seemed a better fit for Hermione; she and Ron fought all the time, and for two people who fight all the time to end up together is a very overused cliché. Not that I regarded Ginny (who was touted as who Harry would end up with) with a similar negativity to how I regarded Cho. I do like Ginny. It just seemed very random that of anybody he would end up with Ginny. Yeah, he saved her life in Chamber of Secrets, but that's because she was his best friend's sister. (As Harry and the Potters say in their song "Save Ginny Weasley": "You can't take my best friend's sister...and get away with it!"). Heck, even Luna Lovegood would've made more sense. (She and Harry did seem like kindred spirits in Phoenix, and he even took her to Slughorn's party in Half-Blood Prince). But why Ginny? I will never quite understand Rowling's decision to pair her with Harry. I will accept it, since it is now canon thanks to the Deathly Hallows epilogue, but I will probably never understand it.
I also laughed at some of the later parts of the book which discuss the PotterCast tour in the weeks before the Deathly Hallows release; having listened to those episodes, I remembered a lot of the moments mentioned there.
The one chapter that really caught me off guard was the chapter "Banned and Burned," which deals with both censorship of the book by schools and Christians and Melissa's interview with Laura Mallory, a Christian woman in Georgia who has made herself infamous by her endless attempts to, via the legal system, get the Harry Potter books taken off of shelves in her state, claiming that the inclusion of witchcraft in the books could influence children who read them to practice witchcraft, and that therefore the books are evil and should be banned. PotterCast, when they have mentioned Laura Mallory in the past, have been careful to mention her in a respectful fashion, though their disagreement with her views is obvious. (Unlike MuggleCast, who has bashed her in the past and even tried to call her up multiple times while recording the show). Having heard that Melissa had interviewed Mallory for this book, I was interested to hear what Mallory had to say in her own words.
I won't go too much into detail about what she said (since the book is not yet out officially) but I will mention my reaction to what she said (trying to remain respectful). I must say Mallory takes her faith very seriously and has strong convictions, which one might consider admirable. I daresay I have never taken my faith as seriously as she. But then, I have never cared for extreme fundamentalist Christian views. I grew up going to a Baptist school (and Baptists are very fundamentalist), but the church I went to with my family was an Evangelical Free church, which while still conservative is not as fundamentalist (you can read more about it here). I do not know which denomination Mallory is a part of (the book said that she was not part of any one domination growing up), although I do know the Southern Baptist denomination is popular in the South. The way she talks about God speaking to her, and also about seeing this vision, makes her seem somewhat Penecostal to me.
One thing that shocked me was that Mallory had said that books like Harry Potter LEAD TO SCHOOL SHOOTINGS. I kid you not. The actual quote from the book (p. 189) says: "In October 2006, six months after that infamous school hearing, Laura made some of her most explosive comments about Harry Potter to date: that books that promote evil, like Harry Potter, promote a culture in which tragic school shootings occur, like the one at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two students opened fire on their class and killed thirteen people." WHAT?! That just sounds shocking to me that she would even dare to say that. I remember quite well when Columbine happened. April 20, 1999, was a Tuesday and I remember I was home. I think it was before school. Suddenly a report came on the radio that something had happened in Littleton, Colorado. Since my dad grew up in Littleton, my parents turned the radio up. That was how I found out about the Columbine shootings. I remember that, even though I didn't know anyone involved or anything, I felt sadness. (I had similar feelings about 9/11). Why would someone do such a thing? Much later, I saw part of a TV program that detailed the incident and the investigations that followed. I could hardly watch it, remembering how awful it was from the news reports, and from reading the books about Cassie Bernall (She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall) and Rachel Scott (Rachel’s Tears: the Spiritual Journey of Columbine Martyr Rachel Scott) that came out not long after the incident. (She Said Yes was based on the initial report that Cassie had been asked if she believed in God and responded "yes" before being shot; this has since been shown to not be the case). I should mention that I did also see the Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine, which mentions the shooting (I don't actually like Michael Moore; I had to watch the film for a class).
For Mallory to suggest that books like Harry Potter promote school shootings just blows my mind. While what you read, see, and so on can influence your behavior most definitely (those reading this might recall the famous allegation that playing violent video games influenced the actions of the Columbine shooters). But to say a book that includes witchcraft (which, remember, Mallory views as evil) promotes a tragedy like Columbine seems like such a non sequitur.
As for the idea of witchcraft being evil, Mallory gets the grain of that idea from the Bible. Multiple times in the Bible, we are told not to practice witchcraft (and various other forms of the occult, tied or not tied to witchcraft). Indeed, Saul in particular gets in a heap of trouble for calling up Samuel's spirit using a medium. It is condemned both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. I have actually read a very excellent Christian book on the subject called Dewitched: What You Need to Know about the Dangers of Witchcraft and Wicca. That book was not all "fire and brimstone" (the term for people who condemn sinners of every sort immediately to hell just because of their sin, without considering the possibility of redemption and/or forgiveness) but in a very understandable way addresses the main practices and beliefs of those who practice witchcraft and Wicca and what we can do as Christians when faced with these practices and beliefs. It's written technically for teens, but I got something out of it.
So, as a believer of the Bible, I believe what it says to be true, and this includes the fact that practicing witchcraft and the occult is wrong. In fact, in my story Darkly Bound, those shown to use "occult" powers are the bad guys, namely Shea and Jago. Even Nightshade, whose powers derive from an "occult" curse, is considered evil, whereas the powers Avalon has normally are used for good, like in fighting against Jago (twice), using postcognition to try to determine Terrence/Jago's identity, and precognition that allows her to anticipate the attack on Ryan's grandfather Barnaby. (Also, although it is not mentioned in this story, I had originally planned that Avalon, when she realizes in the morning what she has done as Nightshade, uses her telekinesis to return stolen products anonymously).
But practicing witchcraft and reading about a magical school are two different things. Magic has been part of mythology, folklore, and fairy tales for centuries. Heck, we even studied Edith Hamilton's Mythology in Mrs. Burnworth's senior year English class at Tri-City (a Christian school, remember). Nearly every classic Disney movie contains magic, mainly because they are based on those folktales and fairy tales of old (examples include Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, all based on old fairy tales, and the more recent Arabian Nights-based Aladdin trilogy). One -- Fantasia -- even focuses partially on a sorcerer's apprentice (played by Disney icon Mickey Mouse). And Harry Potter isn't alone among fantasy series with magic that are acclaimed by Christians. There is, of course, the more overtly Christian Chronicles of Narnia series, as well as the not-so-overt (unless you read The Silmarillion's Ainulindalë, or Music of the Ainur, as well as other parts of The Silmarillion, and see the Christian parallels) Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was promoted by Christians as well as non-Christians when interest in the series re-ignited with the release of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Well, actually Narnia is not so obvious, because I was working at Loaves and Fishes at the time the first Narnia movie was released, and I got asked at least a million times how Narnia was Christian, and thus many times I got to go on a geeky spiel of my knowledge about Narnia and Lewis in response.
Actually, I was talking with Papa about this chapter the other night, and he mentioned Narnia, and I commented that I would be curious to know what Mallory thinks of Narnia, a clearly Christian series that also contains magic.
That chapter aside, I did enjoy the book immensely and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Harry Potter or knows someone who is. I definitely recommend it to people like me who aren't long-time fans or are fans who are not well-versed in the fandom, as it will definitely educate you about the intricate thing that is the Harry Potter fandom.
Well, that's all I can think of to say. I may blog on other things later today.
After school, though, I started, and for the rest of the weekend, it was hard to stop. But I had to work, so reading ended up being restricted to before and after work, on breaks, and on lunch. Like with Deathly Hallows (or any good book when I read it for the first time), I took my time with it, savored it. And last night, I finished it, having read it cover to cover over four days, even the notes, bibliography, and acknowledgments at the end. In my excitement over it, I posted a review on Amazon right away and commented on the fan page for it on Facebook and in the "Eagerly Awaiting Melissa Anelli's Book" Facebook group I'm a part of.
The book is awesome. I had heard teases of it on PotterCast, of course, but those barely said anything about the book, now that I look back on it. Even Sue's interview with Melissa didn't say much. I suppose they didn't want to spoil too much.
Anyway, the book filled me in on a huge part of the fandom that I'd missed by not getting into the books until January 2005, six months before Half-Blood Prince was released. I started listening to MuggleCast not too long after, and PotterCast (which I prefer to MuggleCast most of the time, since it features less goofing around and more serious discussion) came later. I believe I started listening in 2006. I seem to remember it was around Christmastime. Apparently, according to this blog, I started listening to PotterCast soon after (a post dated January 5, 2007, mentions it). I didn't have an iPod then; I had an mp3 player though so I just downloaded the episodes from the respective websites for the podcasts.
It was interesting to learn about Melissa's experiences and about the fandom in general, and I chuckled at things like finding out I was very not alone as a Harry/Hermione shipper in the pre-Deathly Hallows days. I was thinking about that at work this weekend. Why did I become a Harry/Hermione shipper? Why did I insist on it, even after Half-Blood Prince made the Ron/Hermione ship rather clear? I don't know exactly. I think it stemmed from really liking Hermione as a character and not caring much for Ron as a character. Ron, Cho, and Umbridge are the characters I can say for sure I disliked in the books. I never did like Cho, even in her brief introduction in Prisoner of Azkaban as the Seeker in the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw Quidditch match. I didn't much care for her in Goblet of Fire either (but then Goblet's not one of my favorites among the books), although I liked Cedric. The way they played with a Harry/Cho romance in Order of the Phoenix was sort of silly, especially the scene in the tea shop. And when the movie for Phoenix was coming out, they over-promoted the Harry/Cho kiss.
I pretended a certain Harry/Hermione fervor, as I recall, stating in the months before Deathly Hallows that Harry and Hermione should get together, and that Ron could be left in the cold (romantically speaking) for all I cared. For whatever reason, Harry just seemed a better fit for Hermione; she and Ron fought all the time, and for two people who fight all the time to end up together is a very overused cliché. Not that I regarded Ginny (who was touted as who Harry would end up with) with a similar negativity to how I regarded Cho. I do like Ginny. It just seemed very random that of anybody he would end up with Ginny. Yeah, he saved her life in Chamber of Secrets, but that's because she was his best friend's sister. (As Harry and the Potters say in their song "Save Ginny Weasley": "You can't take my best friend's sister...and get away with it!"). Heck, even Luna Lovegood would've made more sense. (She and Harry did seem like kindred spirits in Phoenix, and he even took her to Slughorn's party in Half-Blood Prince). But why Ginny? I will never quite understand Rowling's decision to pair her with Harry. I will accept it, since it is now canon thanks to the Deathly Hallows epilogue, but I will probably never understand it.
I also laughed at some of the later parts of the book which discuss the PotterCast tour in the weeks before the Deathly Hallows release; having listened to those episodes, I remembered a lot of the moments mentioned there.
The one chapter that really caught me off guard was the chapter "Banned and Burned," which deals with both censorship of the book by schools and Christians and Melissa's interview with Laura Mallory, a Christian woman in Georgia who has made herself infamous by her endless attempts to, via the legal system, get the Harry Potter books taken off of shelves in her state, claiming that the inclusion of witchcraft in the books could influence children who read them to practice witchcraft, and that therefore the books are evil and should be banned. PotterCast, when they have mentioned Laura Mallory in the past, have been careful to mention her in a respectful fashion, though their disagreement with her views is obvious. (Unlike MuggleCast, who has bashed her in the past and even tried to call her up multiple times while recording the show). Having heard that Melissa had interviewed Mallory for this book, I was interested to hear what Mallory had to say in her own words.
I won't go too much into detail about what she said (since the book is not yet out officially) but I will mention my reaction to what she said (trying to remain respectful). I must say Mallory takes her faith very seriously and has strong convictions, which one might consider admirable. I daresay I have never taken my faith as seriously as she. But then, I have never cared for extreme fundamentalist Christian views. I grew up going to a Baptist school (and Baptists are very fundamentalist), but the church I went to with my family was an Evangelical Free church, which while still conservative is not as fundamentalist (you can read more about it here). I do not know which denomination Mallory is a part of (the book said that she was not part of any one domination growing up), although I do know the Southern Baptist denomination is popular in the South. The way she talks about God speaking to her, and also about seeing this vision, makes her seem somewhat Penecostal to me.
One thing that shocked me was that Mallory had said that books like Harry Potter LEAD TO SCHOOL SHOOTINGS. I kid you not. The actual quote from the book (p. 189) says: "In October 2006, six months after that infamous school hearing, Laura made some of her most explosive comments about Harry Potter to date: that books that promote evil, like Harry Potter, promote a culture in which tragic school shootings occur, like the one at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two students opened fire on their class and killed thirteen people." WHAT?! That just sounds shocking to me that she would even dare to say that. I remember quite well when Columbine happened. April 20, 1999, was a Tuesday and I remember I was home. I think it was before school. Suddenly a report came on the radio that something had happened in Littleton, Colorado. Since my dad grew up in Littleton, my parents turned the radio up. That was how I found out about the Columbine shootings. I remember that, even though I didn't know anyone involved or anything, I felt sadness. (I had similar feelings about 9/11). Why would someone do such a thing? Much later, I saw part of a TV program that detailed the incident and the investigations that followed. I could hardly watch it, remembering how awful it was from the news reports, and from reading the books about Cassie Bernall (She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall) and Rachel Scott (Rachel’s Tears: the Spiritual Journey of Columbine Martyr Rachel Scott) that came out not long after the incident. (She Said Yes was based on the initial report that Cassie had been asked if she believed in God and responded "yes" before being shot; this has since been shown to not be the case). I should mention that I did also see the Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine, which mentions the shooting (I don't actually like Michael Moore; I had to watch the film for a class).
For Mallory to suggest that books like Harry Potter promote school shootings just blows my mind. While what you read, see, and so on can influence your behavior most definitely (those reading this might recall the famous allegation that playing violent video games influenced the actions of the Columbine shooters). But to say a book that includes witchcraft (which, remember, Mallory views as evil) promotes a tragedy like Columbine seems like such a non sequitur.
As for the idea of witchcraft being evil, Mallory gets the grain of that idea from the Bible. Multiple times in the Bible, we are told not to practice witchcraft (and various other forms of the occult, tied or not tied to witchcraft). Indeed, Saul in particular gets in a heap of trouble for calling up Samuel's spirit using a medium. It is condemned both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. I have actually read a very excellent Christian book on the subject called Dewitched: What You Need to Know about the Dangers of Witchcraft and Wicca. That book was not all "fire and brimstone" (the term for people who condemn sinners of every sort immediately to hell just because of their sin, without considering the possibility of redemption and/or forgiveness) but in a very understandable way addresses the main practices and beliefs of those who practice witchcraft and Wicca and what we can do as Christians when faced with these practices and beliefs. It's written technically for teens, but I got something out of it.
So, as a believer of the Bible, I believe what it says to be true, and this includes the fact that practicing witchcraft and the occult is wrong. In fact, in my story Darkly Bound, those shown to use "occult" powers are the bad guys, namely Shea and Jago. Even Nightshade, whose powers derive from an "occult" curse, is considered evil, whereas the powers Avalon has normally are used for good, like in fighting against Jago (twice), using postcognition to try to determine Terrence/Jago's identity, and precognition that allows her to anticipate the attack on Ryan's grandfather Barnaby. (Also, although it is not mentioned in this story, I had originally planned that Avalon, when she realizes in the morning what she has done as Nightshade, uses her telekinesis to return stolen products anonymously).
But practicing witchcraft and reading about a magical school are two different things. Magic has been part of mythology, folklore, and fairy tales for centuries. Heck, we even studied Edith Hamilton's Mythology in Mrs. Burnworth's senior year English class at Tri-City (a Christian school, remember). Nearly every classic Disney movie contains magic, mainly because they are based on those folktales and fairy tales of old (examples include Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, all based on old fairy tales, and the more recent Arabian Nights-based Aladdin trilogy). One -- Fantasia -- even focuses partially on a sorcerer's apprentice (played by Disney icon Mickey Mouse). And Harry Potter isn't alone among fantasy series with magic that are acclaimed by Christians. There is, of course, the more overtly Christian Chronicles of Narnia series, as well as the not-so-overt (unless you read The Silmarillion's Ainulindalë, or Music of the Ainur, as well as other parts of The Silmarillion, and see the Christian parallels) Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was promoted by Christians as well as non-Christians when interest in the series re-ignited with the release of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Well, actually Narnia is not so obvious, because I was working at Loaves and Fishes at the time the first Narnia movie was released, and I got asked at least a million times how Narnia was Christian, and thus many times I got to go on a geeky spiel of my knowledge about Narnia and Lewis in response.
Actually, I was talking with Papa about this chapter the other night, and he mentioned Narnia, and I commented that I would be curious to know what Mallory thinks of Narnia, a clearly Christian series that also contains magic.
That chapter aside, I did enjoy the book immensely and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Harry Potter or knows someone who is. I definitely recommend it to people like me who aren't long-time fans or are fans who are not well-versed in the fandom, as it will definitely educate you about the intricate thing that is the Harry Potter fandom.
Well, that's all I can think of to say. I may blog on other things later today.
