through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered . . .

First, thanks to everyone for your kind replies to my last post. People are being so wonderful and supportive and it's helping a lot.

Second, have a belated reaction to one of my favorite actors being cast as the next Doctor: HOLY FUCK YES. That was the first weekend after Grandma died, so Capaldi's reign will, I think, always be overshadowed for me, but I'll still enjoy it no matter how hard Moffat tries to fuck it up.

Third, catching up on media consumption. To the surprise of no one, the last two weeks have been very light, and most of what happened the week of the 22nd happened before Grandma's stroke.

(This is life right now. Before and after.)



Week of July 22

Podcasts

Welcome to Night Vale, 13-27

Television:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica, 1-12 (full series)
Corpse Party: Tortured Souls OVA, 1-4 (full series) (Came out the day of Grandma's stroke and improved my mood to no end, lack of subtitles and all.)
Danganronpa: the Animation, 1x03 (I am seriously starting to wonder how they're going to cram the entire story into thirteen episodes. And, considering how rushed it's already been, I am less than excited about finding out.)
Danganronpa: the Animation, 1x04 (A few days later. Apparently the answer to that is that now they've established everything, they are going to barrel right the fuck through the story at top speed. The opening of this episode has like two solid minutes of establishing shots while thirteen offscreen voices make various remarks. What do you mean, you didn't have each character's voice memorized? Too bad, sucks to be you! Here, have a random shot of Sakura spilling her coffee while someone else entirely voiceovers some other event! Bet that won't be important later! If I hadn't read a Let's Play of the game this is based on, I wouldn't have the faintest fucking clue what was going on. I'm gonna keep watching it because it is cool to hear the voice acting, but wow this not how you do an adaptation.)

Week of July 29:

Television:

Corpse Party: Tortured Souls OVA, 1x01 (Now with subtitles!) (And yes, this is a much better adaptation of a game called Corpse Party. It is so not without its flaws, having similar issues with a rushed story, but it's easier to follow for a newbie and has some awesome twists on the game's storyline that make it that much more fun. Fandom, of course, hates it.)

Podcasts:

Welcome to Night Vale, episode 28 (Came out the day Grandma died. Helped me to relax and fall asleep on a night I was sure I wouldn't sleep. Thanks, Night Vale.)

Week of August 5:

Television:

Danganronpa: the Animation 1x05, "Weekly Shonen Despair Magazine" (Sometimes the subs I find translate the episode title, sometimes they don't, and I don't really care enough to go looking. This is definitely the best episode so far, which is a little frustrating, because it's also the one in which the fucked-up gender bullshit with Chihiro comes into play. Whatever, I'm just gonna go with "Monobear is an unreliable narrator" because MONOBEAR. His reactions to Chihiro really do come off as intense transphobia, plus with the whole "making everyone despair!!" thing. It's not even a stretch.)

SO HI.

Back in, um, April (oops) I made a couple of posts indicating pretty clearly that my state of mind had not been quite right for some time. I have since then chatted with a lot of you on AIM and and followed you on Tumblr (yeah, whatever, same name, I just reblog random fandom stuff), but definitely not all of you. Soooo some of you might appreciate receiving the following update:

After I lost my shit, I had to face up to the fact that I had been suffering from depression for quite awhile and totally ignoring/not seeing it. Having had what I guess was a mini-nervous breakdown scared me into realizing that I had to do something before the suicidal feelings went further than just being feelings. So I dealt with some red tape that had been keeping me from seeing my therapist and started seeing her again. She put me on antidepressants, and omg, did you know that life isn't actually supposed to be a hopeless mire that everyone else is better at handling than I am so clearly I should just give up? I KNOW! It's like a miracle.

So my situation is not perfect right now (unemployment no income no qualifying for food stamps on account of being a full-time student ARGH), but neither am I in a place anymore where death seems like a viable option. And I'm not going back there any time soon.

And maybe now I'll start posting occasionally again. I've had things I've wanted to post but then I would be like "no I should probably post to explain all that stuff first but I don't want to right now" but now that's taken care of so - yep.

(Did I mention my therapist also put me on Ritalin for my ADD in place of the Adderall I can no longer afford? And it's even more effective? And it does exactly what you'd expect a stimulant to do within the first hour or so of taking a dose? WHEEEEEE.)

My roommate is so adorable sometimes. She's in her sixties and tends to be out of touch pop culturally (not that I can throw stones on that subject, but she makes me look up-to-date and knowledgeable).

A few minutes ago, she asked me, "Have you heard of the band Queen?"

I did, in fact, refrain from patting her on the head. Instead, I said, "Yes, because I live in the world" (she laughed, because she is used to my sarcasm and knows that I don't mean to be as snotty as I can often sound), and then praised her musical taste in hopes that it will continue to improve from the disco she has shown a tendency to favor. Cross your fingers with me, won't you?

. . . so apparently I am so awesome that I don't even notice when we're having an earthquake. Seriously. I thought it just wasn't felt in Maine until I saw sotto_voice's post about feeling it in a building maybe a couple miles from where I was at the time. I'm pretty sure I know what I was doing: walking down the sidewalk. And okay, I know I can get pretty oblivious when I'm walking and I've got my iPod on, but damn. Oh, well. At least I was outside already, though I wonder if I might have felt it if I'd been in a building (without my iPod).

In other news, I got my hair cut for the first time in like a year today, because this is the first time in like a year that I could freaking afford to. This is a momentous occasion, as my hair is so thick and grows so fast than I've been feeling in these last few months like it might be trying to devour my face. I'm so pleased with the results that I took a photo to show you all!

I apologize in advance for the MySpace Emo Special pose; I photograph better when I'm not smiling, and for some reason today I couldn't get a picture of myself looking into the camera that didn't look like a startled trout.

( Me! )

Oh, Torchwood. Why do you suck me in every time?

( brief comments on Miracle Day pt I. )

But the worst part is that that's probably going to be the last episode I see for a little while. Next week I'll be at my grandmother's looking after her cat while she recovers from shoulder surgery (the grandmother, not the cat), and while Grandma has cable she does not have internet, and I don't know if she has Starz but I'm not banking on it. And round about then is when my internet is going to get cut off anyway, because I am unemployed and broke and ISPs get cranky when you don't pay your bills. Hopefully it won't be out for too terribly long, and I'll still be able to take my laptop places and use internet there, but downloading episodes is probably going to be out of the question. But hey, marathoning everything I missed will be fun and exciting, right?

So the great irony of today is that with classes having, of course, been cancelled in honor of Veterans' Day, guess which one of my classes is cancelled?

My World War One class, of course.

I've spent the semester reading literature about the Great War - autobiographical accounts, fictional accounts, poems . . . a lot of writing by a lot of veterans, some of whom went on to be fiercely pacifistic, and some of whom I'm not sure I can call veterans because they didn't make it to November 11, 1918. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Did you know that the armistice was signed sooner than that, but the fighting kept right on going and people kept right on dying because those in charge wanted Poetic Symbolism (and something that would be easy for schoolchildren to remember)?

Because of all that reading, I'm not feeling as solemnly sentimental as I'm supposed to feel. Mostly, I'm feeling angry. So I'd like to join in the posting of poems in remembrance, but the one I've chosen is a little different. It was written by Siegfried Sassoon, a British officer who fought memorably in the war even after his published declaration of his belief that it had turned into a war being waged for the wrong reasons. Sassoon lived through the war and went on to become an angry veteran and pacifist, and spent his life writing about it.



"At the Cenotaph"
Siegfried Sassoon

I saw the Prince of Darkness, with his Staff,
Standing bare-headed by the Cenotaph:
Unostentatious and respectful, there
He stood, and offered up the following prayer.
"Make them forget, O Lord, what this Memorial
Means; their discredited ideas revive;
Breed new belief that War is purgatorial
Proof of the pride and power of being alive;
Men's biologic urge to readjust
The Map of Europe, Lord of Hosts, increase;
Lift up their hearts in large destructive lust;
And crown their heads with blind vindictive Peace."
The Prince of Darkness to the Cenotaph
Bowed. As he walked away I heard him laugh.



Sassoon was right. Today is the anniversary of the end of the war to end wars, but now we use it to honor countless men and women from the many wars that happened anyway. For myself, I will honor them by being angry that they had to fight at all.

THE FOLLOWING IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

DISCREET: Subtle, careful, under the radar. She discreetly pushed her bra strap back under her shirt. (Is it possible to do this discreetly? I haven't figured out how. But I digress.)

DISCRETE: Separate and individual. I will steal Merriam-Webster's example because I have way less practice using this in a sentence: There are several discrete sections to this vast medical complex, including a college of pharmacology and a research center.

If you need a trick to remember it, try thinking of the E's in "discrete" being two discrete units, separated as they are by the T.

Please. Stop making this mistake. It's almost as bad as loose/lose, and it is damn embarrassing to see when I know for a fact that the person doing it is too smart to get tripped up by homonyms HOMOPHONES see I'm not perfect either, nothing wrong with that.

That is all.

Today I attended an author's reading of an excerpt from his book, because I am required to write a couple of analyses of readings for my Oral Interpretation class. I feel that the following description of his own character is all you need to know to understand this experience.

"The most compassionate person in literature as I know it."

Also he went just long enough in the Q&A after for me to run to the corner just in time to watch the bus go by and have to wait an hour for the next.

It's a shame that his actual reading was good, because it means I won't get to tear him apart properly in my essay.

Windbag.

I just walked out into the kitchen and heard my roommate on the phone having this conversation:

"I don't mind euthanizing, but the thought of putting them in the casket is a little weird."

. . . no, I don't know what she was talking about.

Hey, guess what? I finally got around to figuring out how to use the webcam on my computer! Yeah, I knew it was there, and that there was doubtless some extremely easy way of using it, but I couldn't be bothered. But today I was, and entirely by happenstance, I got one of my favorite pictures of me to exist in a long while.

( Not to hype it up too much or anything, but I managed to duck the washout of the flash AND not appear too shiny despite today's heat. This is worth noting. )

My wall is not actually that shade of green.

It's turquoise. I bet you're jealous now.

I am also excited that I can finally take pictures of myself like everyone else on the Internet. Not excited enough to have made an effort to be able to do it before now, but it crops up more than you'd think.