There Will Be No Talking. I Will Be Talking.

napthia9 @ 2009-09-22T15:41:00

2009-09-22T20:43:47Z

This week, in The Atlantic, Christopher Hitchens makes an idiot of himself. Again.

Why anyone would let him write anything again (let alone about comedy) after writing an article declaring that women couldn't be funny is beyond me. At least this worthless magazine is free.

Pure Rant

2009-09-02T21:14:39Z

Things I'm glad I didn't major in:

1. Economics
2. Philosophy. Because OH GOD I would have gone a killing spree!!!

Today in Understanding Our Cyborg Brains (it's as interesting as it sounds, and yes, everyone I talk to about it sounds a wee bit jealous,) we broke into groups to discuss sections of a long article. The teacher notices three philosophy majors are in one group, so she splits them up. No big deal there, because some of the language and concepts are covered in depth in philosophy courses and it just makes sense to balance the groups with regards to familiarity with terms and so on. Unfortunately this meant that the philosophy major whose group I ended up in (let's call him Phil) felt like this gave him greater leeway to tell everyone what the author meant. Which basically meant he told me things I already knew from reading the piece, didn't put anything in context of ongoing philosophical debates, and treated everything I said that wasn't a summary of the piece as if I didn't understand it. And nobody else in the group contributed anything (one guy even left), except for one woman who spent the first half reading my copy of the article because she hadn't read it and then spent the second half mirroring Pompous Phil. Great.

(Not like my behavior was any good. I mostly gave up discussing once I realized that no one else was going to say anything except for Phil, and he wasn't going to stop playing the expert. In fact, I mostly sulked. And glowered. Which isn't the best way of engaging successfully with people, but I tried.

On top of that, I found out I did one of the wrong problems for Biometrics and I have to redo it. In more positive news, Student Activities Fair was today! Last weekend I had a great time swing-dancing and then hunting my brother from party-to-party in order to get my room keys back from him. (Turns out they were in his dorm room all along! Thanks for nothing, brother's useless drunk roommate who I totally heard talking about me as I left! PS I don't care if you wouldn't want to go to college with your sibling, 'cos my brother did! Even if you can't understand why he'd want to be near me at all! Nyah!)

That was a pretty decent night. Ordinarily I feel conflicted at ballroom dance events, because I don't know even the basic steps really well and I don't feel comfortable dancing with people outside of a small (and increasingly smaller) pool of people. I mostly going because Catherine likes to go, I like to pretend I'm socializing, and I occasionally like dressing fancily. But I sort of miss the variation of first year life, and sometimes I even miss the company of people who feel confident about acting out from time to time (even though I prefer non-crazy people and tend to share more interests and feel more comfortable with people who don't usually act out). Ballroom dancing is usually the only couples, people taking the ballroom dance class (who thus automatically have partners), and people who know the steps. I don't feel comfortable asking for dances. But given that we showed up for basic lessons this time, and that there were a lot of other scared new people, it was a lot easier to a)dance and b)ask people to dance! I met some nice people, although I think I'll probably never talk to them again. (First years! I'm not gonna have any classes with them.) C'est la vie.

I do sort of wish I could socialize a little more broadly. I like my current friends and I like the pattern of my life, but I do wish there was some more variation. I'd like to date again, but dating current friends is so awkward, I think. I don't want to risk losing my current friends just because I'm lonely for non-platonic companionship. So I want to look for new people, but I mostly don't know any, and I feel like to find new people (not just dates- friends too!) I have to leave my current friends behind (or at least my current closeness to them). It's bad enough that Ms. Potter is living in a different dorm, and another friend is overseas. And I'd have to fit this around homework too. It's a little too much!

Which is why it was so nice that The Book tagged along on the Quest For My Keys. She only goes to ballroom dances, and of my close friends currently on campus, she and Ms Potter are the only ones who might actually go someplace on a weekend night. (Ms Potter and I did go to one party last year. It ended with too many people trying to bump n'grind to Motown whilest drinking things out of ziplocked baggies.) I don't think she'd enjoy these sorts of parties while they're in the middle of things, but it was nice that she came along. (Even if it meant I had to stay focused on finding my keys!)
Last and final piece of news: a nightmare woke me up at 5ish, which hasn't happened in... oh, years. It was about my family and some friends making a last stand against zombies. Blergh. So now to nap!

napthia9 @ 2009-07-18T00:56:00

2009-07-18T05:57:13Z

An addendum to the post I made re: the guy who catcalled me last night:

I don’t agree that all people, everywhere, should shut up and keep all their thoughts to themselves. I do believe that there are circumstances in which communication between strangers is not only friendly, but buoys the spirits and brightens one’s day.

It just goes without saying, to me, that most of these occasions are those which hold absolutely no sexual content. For example, one morning I was going to work, and an older man, about forty I would say, was walking along the parking lot perpendicularly to my path. He said “Good morning, senorita.” (Well, technically he didn’t say exactly that, as all of that sentence was in Spanish. But even though I cannot replicate the words here, I know it was good morning.) So I said good morning back. He said “You don’t speak Spanish?” and I said “No, sorry.” And we both walked on. That was it, the sum and total of our conversation. And it made me really happy. I have no way of knowing why he spoke to me, but I felt nothing that made me feel self-conscious or concerned. He was simply being polite, when he didn’t have to be. And it made me happy to be polite back.

This is not a feeling any cat-caller invokes (and not one I believe they want to invoke). In fact, many waitresses and well-meaning older people should probably realize that sometimes they’re straying into uncomfortable territory as well. (My brother is still frightened by the memory of a fifty-something waitress who, when it came time to hand out the check, gave it to my then-thirteen-year-old brother and announced that she “always gave the check to the handsomest man.”) Compliments can be embarrassing and make one extremely self-conscious, rather than confident. Plus it opens up that thorny question of what the other person really means by that- am I reminding that kindly old man of his granddaughter when he says I have a cute haircut, or did he say that because twenty years ago he was the guy wolf-whistling and I reminded him of that instead? Or is he just in a good mood and wants the whole world to know he thinks well of everything?

For the most part, compliments don’t bug me out. It’s usually easy enough to tell the difference between creeper and well-meaning friendly person. But still. Sometimes a compliment is -not- about making the receiver feel good. And thinking about all the times I have wanted to scream, to shout out, to tell someone off, to break someone’s nose, or just really let some stranger know that I do NOT appreciate their attentions, but didn’t… that makes me feel worse.

Work and depressing.

2009-07-17T06:11:21Z

Oh wow, I really haven't posted on here for a long while. At least it feels that way.

Meh. Not much has happened. Harry Potter opened, and I worked the midnight showing. It was fun. I didn't get nearly as panicked or upset as I was worried I might. I still think I'dve rather been on popcorn or drinks duty than on register. C'est la vie, though! There was a little trouble getting the credit card receipts to print at first. That wasn't fun. I was glad one of the other workers, Manny, handled it; although I'm not sure I wouldn't have preferred working with someone else since he occassionally stopped working to shout something at friends of his who had shown up, and it felt a little like he wasn't really listening to me. I like my job overall, although sometimes I think I let other people make final decisions re: things when I ought to be able to call them myself. It sucks when they jerk around the schedule though, like they did tonight. Pbbt. It just sucks.

I saw Knocked Up and The Hangover recently. Both recommended to me by various friends and family. All I can say is that The Hangover made me appreciate Knocked Up- and because of Knocked Up, I now have a folder labeled 'Hating Movies' in my bookmarks.

Tonight feels kinda blah. On the way back from the theater, I stopped to buy candy for my family, and some random stranger hanging around outside the 7-11 cat-called me. I hate that. I always want to be the sort of person who calls something back, like "Die in a fire, loser!" or "As IF!", but there's always the worry that that might escalate it. So instead I am that person who just totally ignores it, which is okay in that my day isn't disrupted entirely- just creepified. And, well, it doesn't really change anything- I don't think complete and utter indifference teaches anybody to knock it off, it's just not as interesting as any sort of response might be. Ugh. I don't know, this experience has just made me remember all sorts of things, like that one time freshman year when Joey Murray and one of his tall friends were mumbling to one another during a field trip, and I think the tall guy said something to me that I didn't hear clearly and so ignored, and then later when I was walking from my locker to class, the stupid tall guy came up and put his arm around my shoulder and just left it there while he talked to joey on the other side of me. I gave him the cold (and shaking) shoulder, and he and Joey slunk off snickering after a little bit, but looking back on it, I think my non-response, even though it marked me out as a boring target, maybe wasn't the response I wanted to give. Because I freaked out about that for days afterwards. Not panicky, scared freaking out, but the sort of what-does-this-meaaaaan?, next-time-I-see-them, if-they-say-this-I'll-say sort of obsessing that was all a sort of practice for what-I'd-do-if-they-tried-anything-again. But they didn't. And honestly, I'm a little disappointed by that. I missed my chance to tell them off, mainly because I didn't do it the first time, but also because they were a)looking for a fight, and b)completely uninterested in me once they'd proven whatever it was they were proving to themselves.

It just doesn't seem fair. It doesn't feel like there's anything I can do. If I don't say anything at all, then they never get told to STFU and quit doing it. But if I do say something, they've suckered me into a fight that I will almost certainly lose. Even if it is only a verbal battle, because nothing that I say will matter to them. They're already in a state of mind where my feelings don't matter to them. ('Cause if they cared, why say stuff that makes me feel so uncomfortable?) On top of that, they're in a state of mind where every complaint I could make, any demand that they treat me like a normal human being, makes me an unreasonable, crazy, demanding, snarly, aggressive hater. In sum, they just don't care about how I feel, and that's why they cat-call.

And yet, when I drove away from the 7-11, I still wanted to pull up next to the guy who'd cat-called me, roll down my window, and explain to him that while he might have meant well, maybe only meant to let me know he thought I was "beautiful," that I'dve felt safer and better if he'd never said anything to me at all. That commenting on a stranger's appearance, late at night, and while they're alone, does not make them feel more comfortable or secure. It makes me want to wear frumpy sweaters instead of my nice new shirt, leave my hair unkempt, and scowl at everything. I wanted to explain that whether he meant to or not, his behavior made me worry that he'd try something else, that he made me feel like I had to have my keys ready before I stepped out of the store, that stuff like this makes me speed-walk to my car. I wanted to ask if he'd ever, ever had a woman respond to this at all, if he really and sincerely thought that women liked this sort of thing, and I'd want him to say yes, because I'd rather think he was unbelievably stupid than that hopelessly un-empathetic. But as I was leaving, one of the 7-11 employees went out to talk to him, so I didn't.

And when I got home, my brother didn't even know what cat-calling meant.

napthia9 @ 2009-06-19T16:01:00

2009-06-19T21:02:36Z

Cookie dough recalled due to bacteria!

Sad news indeed.

napthia9 @ 2009-06-16T00:18:00

2009-06-16T06:19:19Z

Why didn't anyone TELL me Dangerous Liaisons was awesome? Sooooo evil, but sooooo awesome to watch.

Kinda like Artemisia Gentileschi. Except not, because she wasn't evil, she just painted my favorite picture of Judith cutting off some dude's head ever. So she was really just AWESOME in a way that has nothing in common with Dangerous Liaisons except that I like both of those things.

napthia9 @ 2009-03-22T21:46:00

2009-03-23T02:52:28Z

It's completely weird to feel this way because I'm not very fussy about looks, but after going so long without getting my haircut, it feels totally wonderful to get it done. And while it's nice to have my split ends gone and have my head feel so light, but oddly, what I'm really liking about this haircut is how it's not very stylized. (My brother and I went back to visit our parents today, as our grandmother was there and our mom was getting better from being sick, and I asked mom to cut my hair.) Hooray for straight-edge, chopped-in-the-bathroom, not-exactly-even cuts! Now I don't have anything uber-chic to compare it to, so whatever I wake up with will look fine.

napthia9 @ 2009-03-01T22:08:00

2009-03-02T04:13:38Z

Created by Train Horns

napthia9 @ 2009-02-28T16:00:00

2009-02-28T22:04:57Z

Surprisingly, I kinda wish today had been a weekday. As if we'd had a second Thursday or something. Because being holed up in my room doing nothing all day is kind of fabulous, but not very exciting and now I feel like I let myself down or something. I coulda done more since waking up this morning.

Aw, well. This evening will probably mostly be talking to other people, but I can get some stuff done before the real socializing begins to start. Like read everything for feminisms class a week earlier. (I'll get around to osteology, I swear!)

Yesterday in zoology, I got to touch a baby horseshoe crab. SO CUTE!!!

Ooh, wait. We're going to Applebees instead. Yay, food, except I'm being a total space cadet, so my socializing ability is gonna be squat.

napthia9 @ 2009-02-16T00:31:00

2009-02-16T06:44:25Z

WTF? There's only been one episode, folks! And that episode happened to be one that Whedon had to rewrite several times! So duh, of COURSE a TV show looks shallow and 2D. The pilot was reasonably entertaining. Give it three more episodes before writing a judgement on the ENTIRE FREAKING SERIES, geez!

Who the hell is Robinson Crusoe?

2009-02-05T08:29:35Z

Blergh.

Not so terrible after all!

2009-02-02T04:54:01Z

Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Pokemon and Indiana Jones.
The story should use magic as a plot device!

Generated by the Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator

This, too, seems like a good idea!

napthia9 @ 2009-02-01T12:44:00

2009-02-01T19:00:27Z

Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Muppet Babies and Calvin & Hobbes.
The story should use someone opening a gate to Hell as a plot device!

Generated by the Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator

See, I sort of think that except for the gate to Hell thing, this might be pretty ok!

napthia9 @ 2009-01-18T15:01:00

2009-01-18T21:05:13Z

Soooo several nights of watching Eureka plus sleepiness plus reading things equals me not doing any writing over the past few days. Whoops! And today is the day I head back to school, so my free time is dwindling.

Darn, and I hoped to be done with at least one project by the time break was over. Whatever, at least we got around to rearranging my room. Even though that's not -totally- done, only all the hard stuff.

napthia9 @ 2009-01-09T03:20:00

2009-01-09T09:28:41Z

I've been writing quite a bit over the past few days (not on the computer and nothing finished but still- writing!) and I'm beginning to recognize the signs of an approaching creative lull. I can win myself a few more days of creative frenzy if I just keep pushing myself to work on things, but little snippets of conversation that started me off on various different writing tasks have stopped multiplying, so it'll be tough goings. I'm also distracted by the urge to start drawing again, which is great and has let me make some nice sketches, but is very distracting when I intend to try and write. I keep getting ideas for things to draw and no more ideas for what to write. Agggh!

Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me?

The Natural Products of Library Visits Are Book Reviews

2009-01-06T10:48:58Z

Ugh, sometimes I seriously hate going into a reading trance. I keep meaning to do all these things, and instead I get sucked into a book or online. Somebody stop me before I read again! Heh. But really, I just finished On Killing yesterday, and today I finished Bambi Vs Godzilla, so it's book reviewing time!

Bambi Vs Godzilla was so-so; I expected it to be more about the movie industry, but instead it was just David Mamet's ramblings. They were tentatively connected to movies, but mostly they were just fancy boring writing. And the chapter Women, Writing For was essentially "Good writers can write both sexes; now I will complain about political correctness oppressing me." Which was both boring, annoying, and left me completely unsympathetic. The section of genre felt like total fluff to me. I still felt like I had to finish the book, because occasionally there were a few nuggets of what I thought the book would be about, but OH my GAWD it was painful to read it! I mean, I don't mind tangents and randomness, but most of Mamet's tangents were either boring, obnoxiously pretentious, or both. So I was relieved to reach the end of that book. I've got another book about the movie/TV business, so I'm hoping that one will be better.
On Killing was way way better. But the chapter On Killing In America (about desensitization in media) seemed totally out of date to me. How could he not mention the Saw series? And IMO virtual reality helmets aren't replacing the computer/TV screen anytime soon. Plus he analyzes horror films as if all viewers are seeing it one way and as if there are no anti-killing messages embedded alongside pro-killer messages in horror films. Discussion of the Saw series and similar movies would have been way more appropriate, but then I think he'd have to get into oppositional messages to these movies in media. Another thing he never goes into much depth is sexual assault, rape, and murder of intimates (family or sexual partners). Except for this chapter, the book is mainly about killing during wartime by soldiers. Desensitization to violence really deserves a book on its own. On Killing In America could have connected the book's research on killing by soldiers during wartime to murder more effectively if it had considered murder as well as wartime killing by soldiers, but I guess there are other books dealing with murder out there. Still, I would have preferred a more elaborate and detailed report on murder by this author, because his take on killing seems less sensationalized than many other writers out there. In other words, I trust this guy's expertise and don't want to have to go looking for another author.

I really liked the book. It was generally informative, and the author's tendency to repeat information and assure the reader that things will be covered in more depth in another section of the book didn't detract from this. I kind of wish there had been more information presented in the book (particularly things that touch on sexual violence and murder, as I said), but I suppose the book sparked my interest, rather than failed to answer questions that I already had prior to the book. On Killing has also made action sequences and violence in movies more interesting for me because of what they say about how close combat typically goes- ie, bashing or slashing motions rather than stabbing. It puts fencing in a different light too.
Hmm.... what else have I been doing.... Oh, I watched Garden State. I wouldn't have, if it wasn't a.)late, b.)a present, and c.) the only thing my brother and I could agree to watch. (Tess of D'Urbervilles was on TV!) But it wasn't disappointing or anything! It was kinda of cute, kind of nice.

napthia9 @ 2009-01-04T17:00:00

2009-01-04T23:05:19Z

I've finally found something likely to keep me from being online all day: books.

I went to library and got tons. My goodness, I am SO HAPPY somebody at the library likes Swan, the CMX title about ballet. It's soooo amazingly addictively cheesy. It's like Hikaru no Go plus a soap opera, but with ballet!

Anyway, thedeadqueen: So far, my dedication to JANOWRIMO has been pathetic. Pathetic, I say! I get distracted all day. What I have written has either been offline or posted elsewhere. (Perhaps checking out two bags of books was not a good decision? Naaaaah!)

Oh, and here's something kinda cute:

Okay, so James Bond I'm not. I can look forward to tedious stake-outs, abusive superiors, and three-minute potty-breaks. But I believe in my cause -- I'll be a force for good, righting wrongs and recovering more capsules of microfilm than the Major has 'issues'.

Curious to know where you belong?

Take the Eroica allegiance sorting quiz at fried-potatoes.com.

Movie Meme

2008-12-27T00:26:30Z

Gacked from thedeadqueen . Which of these movies have you seen?:

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
(x) Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club
(x) Starsky and Hutch (I assume they're talking about the recent movie, not the original show.)
(x) Neverending Story (I barely remember this.)
(x) Blazing Saddles
( ) Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
(x) Along Came Polly (Another one I barely remember...)
( ) Deep Impact
( ) KingPin
( ) Never Been Kissed
( ) Meet The Parents
(x) Meet the Fockers (Why I never wanted to see the previous movie.)
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
(x) KING KONG (the recent version, although I've seen clips from the first. Anyone remember a kid's book named Kat Kong? That was the BEST.)
Total so far: 13

( ) A Cinderella Story
( ) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie (I was in 8th grade, ok?)
( ) Passport to Paris
( ) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3 (Am I the only one who thinks sequels ought to be left off this list?)
( ) Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
(x) Flubber
Total so far: 14

(x) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
(x) Practical Magic
(x) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
(x) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
(x) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 19

(x) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky (Again with the sequels!)
( ) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
( ) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
(x) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
( ) The Mask (I saw the animated show as a kid...)
( ) Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 21

( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean's Eleven
(x) Ocean's Twelve (I didn't really like these... I couldn't keep track of the secondary characters and they were kinda dull.)
(x) Bourne Identity
( ) Bourne Supremecy
( ) Lone Star
(x) Bedazzled (Both versions!)
( ) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
( ) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
Total so far: 25

(x) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Bosses Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
( ) War of the Worlds
(x) Rush Hour (WAR! HUH! Good god, y'all!)
(x) Rush Hour 2 (No Rush Hour 3? How'd they decide what sequels made this list?)
Total so far: 29

( ) Best Bet
(x) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She's All That
( ) The Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
(x) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
( ) Forrest Gump
( ) Big Trouble in Little China
( ) The Terminator
( ) The Terminator 2 (I saw half of this! But I'm not going to count that.)
( ) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 32

(x) X-Men
(x) X-2
(x) X-3 (These movies were not very good, IMO.)
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
(x) Sky High (I am a sucker for superhero movies, apparently.)
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid (I wore out the VHS for this as a kid.)
(x) Freaky Friday
(x) Reign of Fire (CGI DRAGONS!!!)
( ) The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
( ) Shrek 2
Total so far: 43

( ) Swimfan
(x) Miracle on 34th street
( ) Old School
(x) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Kippendorf's Tribe
(x) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old-virgin (Not as terrible as I thought it'd be!)
Total so far: 47

(x) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
(x) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
(x) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(x) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 53

( ) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
( ) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
( ) Elf (I HATE THIS SORT OF MOVIE WITH A FIERY UNDYING PASSION.)
( ) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies (Hahaha, I remember classmates mocking this!)
(x) American History X (VERY good.)
( ) Three (3 what?)
Total so Far: 54

( ) The Jacket
(x) Kung Fu Hustle
(x) Shaolin Soccer
(x) Night Watch
(x) Monsters Inc.
(x) Titanic (The Notebook has a better romance, Titanic has more inadvertantly funny bits. See Titanic.)
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(x) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard
Total so far: 61

() High Tension
() Club Dread
() Hulk
() Dawn Of the Dead (Parts of at least one of this... but zombie movies scare me soooo much.)
(x) Hook
( ) Chronicle Of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
( ) 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo (I remember reading the back of this movie at the video store as a child, and being sooooo confused.)
( ) Phantasm
(x) Waterworld
Total so far: 63

(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
( ) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
( ) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) The Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
( ) Army of Darkness
Total so far: 65

(x) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
(x) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 71

(x) The Matrix
(x) The Matrix Reloaded
(x) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix (I've seen parts.
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
( ) Team America: World Police
( ) Red Dragon
( ) Silence of the Lambs (started watching this on vacation and my parents turned it off. But it looks sooooo good! And the book wasn't terrible.)
( ) Hannibal

Grand Total: 74. Siiiick. But I still hold that listing all those sequels is ridiculous.

Teaching Fanfic: General Thoughts

2008-12-18T13:45:44Z

So after nights and nights of sleepless panic, I finally got the chance to waste my energy for fun, instead of work-slash-feeling-guilty-for-procrastinating-instead. Rather than shepherd it carefully, I decided to stay up all night and pore over the Internet. (A telling indication that this strategy was ill-advised: I just wrote 'poor' and 'pour' before I got to the correct one.)

Anyway, this won't be very long or good, but I think I promised thedeadqueen my own fanfic manifesto. Tragically, I am not much of a writer- but the opinion of readers is underrated anyhow.

I think the article that started this all was on teachers beginning to use anime/manga and fanfiction as teaching tools. I'd been looking at the Journal of Transformative Works and Culture right around that time, and was highly enamoured with it. The idea of not only using fanfic to understand things, but treating it as a serious and worthy object of study enchanted me. My reading/listening/viewing style has always gone Step 1.) Analysize. Step 2.) Solicit other people's opinions. Step 3.) Share own observations until everyone is readily sick of them and declares that I have ruined their enjoyment of the thing. And why should a thing being fanfic stop me from doing any of that? I freaking love meta. I just read a romance novel wherein the heroine's expectations of everything were ripped off from cheesy romance novels (they had pirates) and then were... ahem... unfulfilled, and I got a little grin. I laughed and laughed when there was literal bodice-ripping at the end. (She had diamonds sewn onto her corset and was gonna drown if they weren't yanked off. Haha!) This stuff makes me happy.

I mean, I'm someone who reads Cliff Notes AFTER I've read the book in question, just 'cus I wanna know what other people thought of it. And considering that I read more fanfic than profic nowadays, OF COURSE I'd look for anaylsis of fanfic. Plus, fanfic has a lot of parts of it that even unpublished, free-on-the-Internet fic doesn't. Why wouldn't I welcome the additional challenge of analysizing the fic's relationship with canon? And popular culture is easy to recognize and understand for students- so of course I think using fanfiction to teach writing is the bomb!

But the problem with using popular culture to teach something is that not everyone approaches popular culture in the same way. At the end of the day, people still yell at people like me for "ruining" whatever it is through our endless critique/analysis. That's the freaking problem with teaching writing to people: they need to learn different ways of reading, writing, and enjoying words. My high school basically taught me a particular style of writing and reading- very formalized and very dull. Useful, but if that was all I knew I wouldn't be a very good writer/reader. My AP English classes were, ironically, better at making writing/reading interesting even though they were supposed to teach to a test. My most favorite essay was for that class and it was just a simple goofy book review! But it let me take a different tone than anything else I'd written. (I probably would have taken a more boring, formal tone for the assignment if I hadn't put off doing it until the last minute, but the fact is that my AP teacher accepted and LIKED it when I didn't write like I was writing something for class. More importantly, he made ME feel good about writing it that way- and unlike 90% of the rest of the class, I didn't have to do a second draft.)

But would teachers everywhere start teaching kids new ways of writing and reading if they started using fanfic? I doubt it. Most English classes do not focus on making people want to write/read. A damn lot of English teachers talk about encouraging students to read/write or making reading/writing fun, but IMO they don't do a very good job of it, if they're even trying. The most hated teacher I've ever had was an English teacher: he was good at seeming nice and at being friendly/"fun," but I loathed him because he didn't teach English very well. Junior year, we had this big-ass project that was little more than a glorified classroom-sized book report. At the end of the class, he stood up and annouced that he knew people complained that the projects weren't really teaching people about the book, but that was okay because they were supposed to teach "teamwork."

I kid you not. "Teamwork." I was in a junior year honors-level English course- one year away from taking AP Literature and Language- and here this evil twin of Mr. Rogers was teaching me things I learned in kindergarten. And that- that is why most high school, even some intro-level college course, will fail to make great writers and readers no matter what they use. Because most of them think that their job is to help students ease into an understanding of basic concepts. It's a great model for math and science course. It's okay for the social sciences. But it is crap for English. A good high school English program ought to go like this (whether it's fanfic, profic, all Old Dead White Guys, or the Token Minority Writers Unit):

Freshman Year: Read one short story for every scheduled class. Discuss in class. The more you talk- and the more you know- the higher your grade. Write a drabble- the 100 words only kind- as a response. In the last half of the course, drabbles that are just plot summary will not count, but drabbles that are not about the story will. They will also grow to 200-500 words. The final is a timed essay test ala the AP test. Students must answer a question using two or more of the short stories they read OR anything else they read IF the teacher deems it sufficient. The second part of the class is an original short story. Can be fiction or non-fiction.
Sophomore Year: Read one short story every other day and discuss in class. Drabbles every day- on the off day, students may write about anything they like. Then they read one scene from a play (usually something where almost everyone knows the plot) and act it out. With gusto, or it doesn't count. Basically, they're looking at dialogue and action this year. Students should be forced to write dialogue multiple times. First assignment is a script where everything is told via dialogue (no stage direction, no names even if you're particularly harsh), but there must be identifiable characters and action of some sort. Minimum of one page. Next assignment is the same, with names and limited use of stage directions. Third assignment is part of the final (which includes another AP-style essay test): write either a critique/analysis of a play or movie OR write a one-scene play which references/mocks/mimics/adds onto a play or movie they read.
Junior Year: Students start reading novellas/novels. One 200-500 drabble per week, plus one-page-single-spaced paper either about what they've been reading, a work of creative fiction, OR a diary entry. Discuss, discuss, discuss in class. Talk about the author, when the book was published, reactions to it, etc. Work on formalizing grammar, talking about why people write/read, rhetoric. This is where we get the bigass literary analysis final papers.
Senior Year: Students work on a major creative writing project that takes the entire course. Students are told to submit three "brainstorm things you find cool about writing/have interest writing about" lists before 2.5 week mark is hit. At the 2 week mark, a general concept is due. Students must flesh out plot/characters a bit, have an idea of what themes they want to think about. Rough drafts for a new scene are due every week. Corrections for these are due midway through the course. The final is nothing more than the improved scenes provided in order, hopefully connected into a coherent piece. However, pieces with abrupt transistions are acceptable and expected. Discussions topics may be very broad, but should be thought-provoking and not all oriented towards creative writing. Timed essay tests on short read-them-in-class blog posts/newspaper columns/movie&book reviews every three classes.

While the idea behind all this is not to have too much at-home stuff to do, apart from reading assignments, I think teachers ought to be at liberty to send home other things they think students will want to look at, assign essays/columns in place of short stories, etc. The idea is that students should be able to finish the piece in time to talk about it in class. Grading will be based on the teacher's subjective evaluation, but basically the more one improves or the better a writer/reader and the more prolific a speaker/writer one is, the better the grade. The typical student ought to get a B or a C. (I feel like I shouldn't have to say that, but WHATEVER. Grade inflation is bad, and lets teachers think that those students can't be expected to do much better.)

Um, that turned out to be not really fanfic-related. Well, I've got break, so I'll probably get around to writing more about fanfic. Anyway, thedeadqueen , you know lots about school and learning. Your evaluation/opinion? I think it's rather heavy on creative writing.

napthia9 @ 2008-12-12T06:29:00

2008-12-12T12:31:25Z

Ha-HA! I thought I had two finals today, and I only have one! The early morning final I set my alarm so early for is actually Monday! Yesss!!!

napthia9 @ 2008-12-09T20:39:00

2008-12-10T02:44:37Z

Got a whole bunch of CDs from the library yesterday. Currently listening to the Scarlet Pimpernel musical. Am totally amused by the song "Vivre," wherein (I presume) a bunch of Frenchmen and women are singing about how happy they are to be saved from the guilotine, and how much they're going to live life to the fullest now.

Which is all very well, but then they started singing about how they're never going to put off fun until tomorrow (or something similar) and I went Really? That's the message you're taking away from all this? When the French peasants were incited to riot because they were pissed that the artistos were taking all their money and wasting it on lavish parties? Really?

Ok, I guess I don't really know the full context for the song, so perhaps these characters or the lesser nobility weren't partying like Marie Antoinette and King Louie, but it was a pretty funny image nonetheless.

EDIT: Turns out it's actually the British aristos singing... give or take one French non-aristo wife. Whatever, I don't need no stinkin' context!

An Idle Thought...

2008-11-29T21:50:04Z

I was reading something talking about how tweens and young kids were beginning to act more and more like teenagers, in part because teen-like behavior is being marketed towards tweens more and more these days. Honestly, it freaks me out a bit. While I find trying to keep pre-pubescent kids and young teens from hearing or thinking about sex to be not only unwise but just plain futile, it really makes me uncomfortable to see teen behavior and trends aimed at younger kids. First off, they tend to take the most unsavory things and give it to pre-teens. (See: almost any Disney channel live action show. Seriously, not only are those depictions of high/middle school insipid and boring, they're unrealistic and encourage kids to mimic that sort of drama.)

But closer to my heart is the feeling that kids like me are just completely left out by all this hoopla. When teen culture is sold to pre-teens, kids like I was stop being able to play tag. It's not "cool" anymore. And so kids who are late developers, or who just prefer kid activities to teen activities get looked down on for not growing up as fast as everybody else. Even if a parent successfully shelters their children from Disney-style tween culture, their kid's still going to suffer 'cos their peers are going to look at them and go "nerd!" or at best not have much in common with them. Tween culture needs to be a safe place both for tweens going through puberty and all that that entails and tweens who are more late bloomers. (Or just not interested in dating and that whole shebang, for that matter.)

Okay, I need to seriously stop procrastinating now. I will not get credit for reading Internet articles about my paper's subject if I don't get anything written down.

napthia9 @ 2008-11-27T16:16:00

2008-11-27T22:33:14Z

I'd forgotten that Miracle on 34th Street was actually funny! The court scenes are the best. I still don't like the movie very much though. Ehhh, whatever.

So today my parents asked me what I'd like for presents, and I couldn't come up with anything other than a hot water heater and books. I'm getting oooooold!

Saw Twilight. It met expectations- aka, it was funny (but only rarely on purpose), and very very very cheesy. Edward looks like a mime. Rosalie is cartoonishly evil, just like she is in the book. Jasper does look like he's in pain 99% of the time. I would too if someone did that to my hair. The actors were decent though. The sparkle effects disappointed, but how could they not? I was hoping for something that would blind us all. It just looked like he was pixillated.

Hope to see Quantum of Solace soon. Mom had us all watch Casino Royale when we got home, and it reminded me of how awesome Judi Dench is as M.

Also, I have new icons to try out!

2008-11-21T06:44:28Z

Ugh, I am soooo tired of working right now... Can I pause my life and get back to it later?

Also, I can feel my teeth rotting. EW. People need to stop giving me loads of candy, I swear.

Mixing nicknames with real names? Doh!

2008-11-15T23:46:03Z

Back from sophomore retreat! That was a lot of fun. Not so much raucous, party fun (I'm sad I didn't go to the pool!), but quiet, good fun. It was nice to be off-campus for a bit. (Especially since the hotel had an awesome shower/bath! Even if I had to rush through and get done with it in 30 minutes so I could go to dinner. It was sooo nice to have hot water and a locked door for a change.) I hung around and watched the third Scarlet Pimpernel movie with friends who I now dub The Book, Miss Potter, Miss Sass, and (for part of the time) Axeminister. The Book really wanted to see all of them for some reason. Eh. I hung out with her a lot during the trip because I knew she probably wouldn't socialize much, but honestly I'm glad. While I would've preferred to do things like get up and dance or go swimming, it was nice to have a quiet trip. And I got to pace the halls talking to Miss Potter for some time, whereas when I first met her it was hard to talk to her no matter how much we had in common, and later it was difficult to concentrate on making sure she was part of the conversation.

The various panels and question sessions they had were interesting and generally fun, although I wound up skipping one of them. I went to one on the "sophomore slump" and it felt surprisingly good. The last twenty minutes were depressing though. I just kept thinking of all the work I could be doing. Ugh. I really couldn't relate to the people who reported difficult times with their familes though. Maybe it's because mine live so close and are so pleasant, but relations with the homestead couldn't be further from 'awful' if they tried. In fact, they're so good, I don't know if I can talk to them about anything unpleasant. It would be like telling a Care Bear that somebody kicked puppies for fun, or about the existence of Team Rocket.

But the real problem with going to lectures like this (and why I skipped the one on deciding on a major) is because I feel like I already know most of it. I know what the symptoms are, I know what's going on, I know what I should be doing to fix it... and then I'm not doing that. Like, I know that one of the major things I could do would be to talk to advisors and people in mentor positions, and eventually to simply decide on a major and pursue it whole heartedly. The problem is that while I like many of my professors and potential mentor types, I don't feel like I can talk to them. Nothing bad about them, but I just feel like I need to find the right situation and person in order to get the important conversations done right. I might go talk to one of the Anthro profs who was visiting my bio class the other day. I know her, and I know she's one of the people associated with a major I'm considering, and I feel relatively comfortable around her, but I don't want to barge into her office and say "hey, remember me? Yeah, so I'm thinking about this major... help, please?" But her being in the bio class gives me some sort of pretext, and reminded me that she actually does remember who I am... plus I might be signed up to take one of her classes next semester with The Book. (Osteology! Whoo!)

Speaking of my bio class... Prof. Micho has been bothering me lately. He's spent three class periods going over sex and reproduction stuff that's mostly health class information, and while I am totally fascinated/amused, I'm getting a little sick of some things. Firstly, why was Micho yacking up abstinence and waiting until marriage? We're in college, for godsakes. A goodly number of his students have quit waiting or never bothered in the first place. And any idiot can tell you that unless you marry REALLY young, you can't account for your spouse's former sex partners. Plus adultery? HELLO? Divorce, separation? I understand Micho talking about the risks, but shouldn't the focus be on "and now that you know the statistics, you can calculate the risks. BTW, with X pattern of sexual behavior, sexual health checkups probably ought to be Y frequent"?

Second, the gonnorhea-in-a-cup experiment we all did on Friday. Can't that be done for just about any contagious disease? And we all participated in the same behavior, so I don't think this experiment really captures nuance well. It seems like it's just sort of scary and threatening. Not that anybody was, as Miss Sass and I laughed it up talking about how the prof gave all the students gonnorhea. (Carlos attempted to say he gave us gonnorhea, but we ignored him because he clearly is a twit. The end.)

However, Micho gets props for explaining to some idiots (henceforth known as Contacts, Nickel, and Saltines) why same-sex attraction serves an evolutionary purpose. That was an awkward conversation, especially since HELLO, non-heterosexuals are IN YOUR CLASSROOM, doofuses! I wanted to facedesk. But Micho handled it.

Axeminister is going to Israel over winter break. I'm totally jealous, and I have no special reason to want to go to Israel. He was a little surprised to win the trip, but I'dve been surprised if he hadn't.

Oh, and I finally watched Sleepy Hollow, after picking it up in the bargain bin before Halloween. It was pretty GREAT, so I will be inflicting it upon friends and potentially family (David's keen on seeing it. I was surprised he'd heard of it, but he really liked Sweeney Todd, so it doesn't surprise me that he'd want to see it. Actually, comparing Sleepy Hollow to Sweeney Todd might be really interesting. They're similar artistically and both are pretty moody, but Sleepy Hollow is ultimately more hopeful than Sweeney Todd.) I really loved quite a bit about it, though the credits sequence would have been much better in theaters. It was really built for a much larger screen than my little TV. I'm surprised the film was blasted for gore and violence. I've seen worse on CSI during primetime!

There was a lot of little things that didn't get explored much in the movie that I think added thematically. All the witchery, the science-religion-paganism/nature/superstition thing, the very non-macho natures of the three heroes... Plus the final scene is a very twisted White-Knight-Saving-Damsel image. Cool. I could probably blather on a lot more about movies, but I think I will rewatch it. Actually, that has to be another night; arsarmatoria is taking me out for dinner and then we're going to go see Goodbye Lenin(?) with Axeminister. (Almost all movies are improved when they are watched with a Classics major and a history geek. 300 was improved immeasurably.)