What animal best represents your inner spirit? If you had to wake up as an animal, which one would you choose, and why? Are your two answers the same? Why or why not?
I think I'm a manatee on the inside, big, bumbling, passive and gentle. However, I would like to wake up as a goose, because they can walk, swim and fly, and they're protected, so I'd have less chance of getting shot.
Oh lord yes. Twice. First, I had Shennan in Japan. She was an upper-middle class republican WASP, a tightwad, a bug collector, and she thrashed and snorted and whimpered in her sleep. She was also a generally mean and nasty person. I'm a light sleeper, a semi-socialist, I'm all about sharing if I have something someone needs, like bread, or eggs, or a pencil or an internet connection. I'm also a slob, and she hated that. I think dead insects are gross. I'm kind of sensitive. It just didn't work out. We resolved our conflicts by moving back to our seperate countries. I recently lived in a bedsit. The landlady was a nutcase with strict rules and a condescending, slightly insulting manner. She clearly had emotional and psychological issues. I'm very quiet, reserved and mild-mannered. I think she thought I was cold and ungrateful. I thought she was psychotic. It could never work. I did my best to be as polite and appologetic as possible throughout the whole ordeal, and I actually started to lose my mind a little by the end of it, as I was so tense all the time. Once again, resolution only came from my moving back to Canada. I'm clearly not suited to living with a roommate.
Do you believe the groundhog can accurately sense the approach of spring? Even if you don't buy it, are you happy when the little guy doesn't see his shadow?
I think it's a superstition, and that's it, but that doesn't stop me from absolutely adoring the little guys and squeeling when I see them do their thing on the evening news. As for when they see their shadows or not, it doesn't bug me one way or another. Especially this year, since we've had such a mild winter to start with.
If you could wake up and spend 24 hours in an online game with any weapons/powers, would you do it? If so, what type of game would you choose, and why?
I'm on a QotD roll, so I thought I'd try to answer this, even though I have absolutely nothing to say on the subject. I don't play online games. I'd have to say, then, Bookworm Adventures. I know it's PopCap and that it doesn't count, but it's as close as I'm ever gonna get. I'd like to have the power to have a total knowledge of all the words in the English language and a lighting fast capability for recall. Or like, a mental Scrabble generator.
I can't remember my last random act of kindness. Any considerate thing I do sort of feels premeditated. I guess I should work on that. ... *d'oh* I don't particlarly believe in karma. I'm not Hindu, Buddhist, Jain or Sikh, and karma, at least in the strictist sense, is not a part of my religious beliefs. While I do believe in cause and effect, karma is a little too intense for me. Plus, karma as a concept is actually really complicated and it varies by culture and religion, so... I basically don't understand it enough to comment in any kind of useful way. That said, sometimes I do feel like the stupid things I've done in the past have a direct bearing on my life now, but it's more like a self-pitying-the-world-is-weeing-on-me feeling than anything else.
Given the choice, would you rather sleep in or eat a delicious breakfast? Is there any food you love so much that you'd wake up at dawn or travel a great distance just to eat it?
Given that we're less than a week out from Valentines, how do you feel about the approaching holiday? Will you participate or abstain? If you're not in a relationship, how will you celebrate your single status?
I'll be abstaining. I'm not in a relationship, and I don't really see the point in "celebrat[ing] [my] single status." Valentine's Day depresses me slightly. Not a whole lot, like some singles, but I still feel a bit weird each Feb 14th. I'm pretty much Charlie Brown that day. His experience is my experience, and it has been since I was his age. I've never received a valentine, even when I was Chuck's age. Bah. This year I'm thinking of sending one as a postcard to someone with a brilliant Peanut's strip on it. Linus gets Sally to release a balloon with the word LOVE written on it. They get all philosophical about who might find it and what they might feel, and then in the last panel you see Woodstock staring at it with a confused look on his face. It kind of sums up my feelings about the holiday. Absurd and confusing.
If you're in the U.S., will you watch all or part of the Superbowl? Do you have a favorite team? If you're not American, what do you think about Superbowl Sunday?
I'm not American and I don't follow football. For me, Superbowl Sunday means an evening with nothing to watch on TV. This time, however, I was rooting for the Saints. I thought New Orleans could use something happy and exciting like a big win, and also, someone I strongly dislike favoured the Colts, so... I was doubly happy to see the Saints win. I actually did watch the last ten minutes and found it incomprehensible, but still rather thrilling.
How has your education prepared you for your current or intended career? Do you wish you had taken a different path academically? Would you consider transferring or going back to school?
Although I'm relatively happy with my master's, my chosen career path, museum studies/to be a curator, is pretty much impossible to get started on. I often wish I had either gone to art school, taken a trade, or maybe even joined a convent straight after high school. At least then I wouldn't be in such massive amounts of debt. And I'd actually have a career/calling that was in some way viable. Ugh.
Did you ever do anything in your youth that you lived to regret? Do you think you ultimately learned from it or do you wish you could go back in time and do it over?
There is a whole whack of stuff I wish I could go back in time and do over, or at least warn my younger self about. Everything from not staying in Chinese school and highland dance lessons to serious stuff I'm not going to get into here. Yeah, I've learned from things, but if I could go back and do it differently, I absolutely would.
I'm back. We finally have a proper internet connection, so now I have no excuse not to update. I've graduated officially but I'm still jobless. I'm volunteering at the CBCHS, and I'll be taking French lessons starting in two weeks. I'm thinking of Japanese lessons. I'm starting to seriously hunt for work. It's daunting. I'm pretty nervous about it all. The debtload is making me sick. But it'll get done. I just got two fillings (in white, for the first time) and I'm mushmouthed and pained. I hate the anesthetic. I take a lot to freeze, and a lot of time to thaw. I've been making a lot of doll clothes and people jewelery. I repainted the bathroom and now I'm working on the kitchen. My room is finally halfways clean.
I found David Papp. That's pretty much the reason for this post. I discovered his facebook after wondering about him last night. He's an actor now. I almost fainted. I thought he was doomed to be a D&D playing, mouth-breathing gamer with the same severely limited social skill set as when I knew him as a child. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. In a way that makes me feel relieved. I was kind of cruel to him, once. But I'll get to that. He turned out to be a seemingly confident, well-rounded individual who happened to just play a leading man in a Victorian-era drama piece. I won't go so far as to say that he became very good looking, because I can still see in his face the creepy looking fat kid who puked pink froth all over the playground at recess, but, well, he did become pretty good looking, and a very, very good dresser. It was such a shock! I'm really very glad that he's done so well, at least from what little I could tell on that social networking site. I've often wondered about him, guiltily. When I first moved to DC, during my first year at ND, my first month, even, he came up to me on the playground, we were about 7 or 8, and declared that he liked me. I think he said something like "I have something to tell you." I made some kind of response and he said "I like you." And I said "Well I don't" and I ran away in shock and terror. I was so uncomfortable I almost got sick. I just left him standing there. Later on I heard that I wasn't the first he'd done that to, so I dunno. Even so, I've felt guilty every day since. Sometimes I think that because of my lack of tact and my unintentional cruelty that day, I doomed myself to be alone forever. Apart from one other guy with serious emotional and probably psychological problems, he's the only guy to ever have expressed any interest in me. And we were 7 or 8 years old. Sometimes I think that my whole life course was set that day 16 years ago and it scares me.
A natural progression from that topic would be the quease I felt when I read that Jimmy had removed his "Interested in" and "Single" status from facebook. I'm a jealous freak with a commitment phobia and a complete fear of relationships. Go me.
On the up side, I have an idea for a book! My inspiration is baaaaaaack!
A belated merry Christmas to all :) I've been living a hermit's life, but with the family. The holidays have been very nice so far. I'm reverting to childhood until January and playing boardgames and building forts out of sheets and basically ignoring the fact that I need a job and that student loans have come calling. I think I should resolve to write here more. It's therapeutic and I realise how much I've missed it.
It's been ages, again. It's like I never know what to say. I freeze up, get anxious about it, the longer I wait the more intense it gets. On the up side, I'm now on anti-anxiety medication. I have no idea if they'll work or not yet, as it's said that they take time to build up in your system, but I feel better knowing that I'm doing it. We're painting the house and everything is in chaos. It'll be good to have the living room fresh and clean, though.
Weirdness alert. Tonight I'm going to a movie with J and his ex-girlfriend, who I first met at the movies- it was a birthday party for Christie, and I remember her, the ex, excitedly telling the girls that J had just asked her out. Weird, right? Anyway, I recall her being nice, so it's all fine with me. It's just like, yup, obviously this isn't going anywhere. Again, no complaints, though- at least it's gotten me out of the house every now and then for movies and shows. Which is pretty much just what the doctor ordered, literally. I was prescribed to have fun and go hang out with friends. Which would be better if J wasn't the only one left here. Ah, well.
Tonight it's Goodbye, Solo, and I hear it's quite good. Plus it'll get me out of the smell of paint.
I can't help but wonder. And sometimes I feel grateful for being picky because it spares me needless trouble. Or so I like to think.
Er, yes. Hopefully I'll be posting more frequently now that I'm out of that hole.
The above quote comes from the dreadful D and I'm not ashamed to admit that it made me happy. I don't know if I miss him. I do, in a strange way. I miss all my friends from Leicester. Which remindes me, I have to call Vanessa somehow.
I'll explain the circumstances of my final months in the UK in a later post. I think I'm still not up to it. I can feel the tension building in my chest just thinking about it. I will say, the time I spent with Luke was pretty great. A few rough patches, a few times I could have left him there, haha, and one horrible cold, but mostly it was fun. Disney and Paris were a blast. I even got Minnie Mouse's autograph on the back of a drycleaning leaflet. Nice.
Ya know what I hate? When someone responds to a comment in a thread with:
"This."
or
"That."
AAAARGH! It sounds incredibly pretentious and twat-like, and really, how hard is it to write "I think that's it, as well," or, "They're right," or "I agree"? Seriously?
I want to reach through the computer and smack the writer.
is who I identify with, fictional character-wise. From "The Kindness of Strangers" song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
They found Mary Bellows cuffed to the bed With a rag in her mouth and a bullet in her head O poor Mary Bellows She'd grown up hungry, she'd grown up poor She left her home in Arkansas O poor Mary Bellows She wanted to see the deep blue sea She travelled across Tennessee O poor Mary Bellows She met a man along the way He introduced himself as Richard Slade O poor Mary Bellows Poor Mary thought that she might die When she saw the ocean for the first time O poor Mary Bellows She checked into a cheap little place Richard Slade carried in her old suitcase O poor Mary Bellows "I'm a good girl, sir", she said to him I couldn't possibly permit you in O poor Mary Bellows Slade tipped his hat and winked his eye And turned away without goodbye O poor Mary Bellows She sat on her bed and thought of home With the sea breeze whistling all alone O poor Mary Bellows In hope and loneliness she crossed the floor And undid the latch on the front door O poor Mary Bellows They found her the next day cuffed to the bed A rag in her mouth and a bullet in her head O poor Mary Bellows So mothers keep your girls at home Don't let them journey all alone Tell them this world is full of danger And to shun the company of strangers O poor Mary Bellows O poor Mary Bellows
I can see myself getting into such a situation. I would never do it, really, but I can understand the desire to, the overwhelming hope and loneliness. Whenever I hear the song I'm struck with sadness. It's morbid and all that, but really quite tragic.
I sound so awful, haha. All my posts lately have been grim. I'm not, it's just been a long month.
I should have gone to see Pierrot le Fou today, but I didn't. I wasted time.
Crich Tramway Village 50s event was fun, but the turn-out could have been better. And it would have been nicer had I gone with other people. The costumes and cars were amazing, and the dancing was swell, even if I didn't, because I had no partner, and couldn't even if I did. The music was really neat. Even the weather was ok. Grey, but dry and not hot.
The only weird thing was on the guy in the seat behind me on the train. I caught his reflection in the window. He was reading a porn mag and touching himself. Classy.
Reading through some of the answers made me kind of not want to reply, myself, but I found it to be a really good question. Some people had answers that were like, profound, almost, and very well reasoned. And others said characters from Twilight or the OC. People are funny. I've got a couple that I identify with, but they're all kind of silly. Daria Morgendorfer. Enough said. Beth from Little Women, but only because of her dying speach. Jupiter Jones from The Three Investigators- fat, socially awkward and uses big words? I've never solved a mystery, but I want to. I'd have to think harder to come up with a good one. I mean, I can relate to the pathetic heroes of my Scandinavian mysteries, but... I don't know. Fictional characters always try and fail. I never try to begin with, and fail anyway. That's the difference.
