wJun 9, 2009


This post might be "too complex and nuanced for a typical web audience."

The last couple of days have been filled with anger, for me.

One involves a situation beyond my control, but leaves me feeling vulnerable and cheated by a faceless bureaucracy. Of course it will get sorted out for my personal situation, but it only reinforces my adamant belief that health care should be a right for every single person, and not a classist privilege accessible only to those who manage to find a full-time job or can afford to pay for their own health care out of pocket. What does it say about our society, if you can only gain access to medicine and technology that will make/keep you healthy if you have the money to pay for it? Isn't it bad enough for the unemployed or under-employed that they make very little money? Must we punish them further, by telling them that they don't deserve to be healthy? That, in some cases, they deserve to die?

And people truly argue about this? Fail.

I've also been thinking a lot about people in positions of power.

If you are in a position of power, and you see that the people over whom you exert power - the sheep of your flock, if you will - are not doing what they're supposed to be doing, which of the following do you think is the proper response to make your flock more functional?

A) Blame them for not knowing better (and be sure to blame other people for not teaching them better, willfully ignoring your own position of power at the moment).

B) Mock them while surrounding yourself with people who agree with you.

C) Ostracize them by making them feel ashamed or guilty, so as not to taint your tiny Type A flock of "true sheep."

D) Complain about them and how they are the reason that the group is failing as a whole. Make sure to not actually speak to them, tell them what you think what went wrong, or perform any action items to rectify what went wrong.

E) Point out to them what went wrong, and ask them what you can do with your position of power to ensure that it does not happen again.


On a lighter note, a friend of mine recently told me that she thought my Internet alias was "My Stick Eeper." I've had this alias for 8 years, and I never thought about it that way. It's supposed to be "Mystic Keeper," by the way; huzzah for aliases created at age 14.

If people want to start calling me "The Stick," though, I am okay with that.

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scribbled mystickeeper at 8:52 PM
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wJan 1, 2009


Why is everybody surrounding my apartment loud? Doesn't anybody else work tomorrow?!

I had meant to clean my apartment much more than I actually did today. Ryan is visiting me this weekend, so hopefully I....do that at some point.

Increasingly, personal posts of any nature are being made behind locked posts at LiveJournal. So if any of you want to read anything besides my thoughts on books, manga, anime, movies, and video games, I suggest getting an LJ account and letting me know what your handle is, so that I can friend you and let you in (if I want to, of course!).

I tried to go see the movie "Milk" late afternoon, but it was sold out. So instead, I went to Gretchen's apartment to join her, her girlfriend, and Sandy in a game of Starfarers of Catan. I liked it a lot! I like that game more than Settlers of Catan, I think.

I started to do a year-end report on all of the books I had read this year, with stats on male:female, white:people of color, manga:books, and whatever. But after I had counted everything, I realized that I never got around to using my syllabi to update my booklog with all of the stuff I had read for class, :(

Anyway, my completely booklog is kept here, where it lists what I've read for the last 7 years or so. You'll have to scroll a lot to get down to where the table actually begins, unfortunately. Blogger doesn't perform well with tables, and the post is literally too long to be made in LiveJournal. BWAHAHAHA. I'll update it whenever I take the time to find those syllabi. I guess this is why it's a New Year's resolution, and why it isn't already accomplished.


Current Music: Protege Moi - Placebo

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scribbled mystickeeper at 10:59 PM
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wNov 18, 2008


Paragraphs are different to me than line separators, but you couldn't tell by this post

I fucking love eggnog. It's the perfect combination of sweet and creamy and I love the way it coats your throat with goodness.* Whenever I happen to be standing in my kitchen (read: the area between the bar and the wall with fridge/sink/stove that is in my one-room efficiency), I pop the carton open and snag a mouthful. Amazing. Why is this beverage only available during wintertime? I think it would be equally satisfying on a hot summer day.

*First person to make a "That's what she said" joke gets stabbed.

Are the Japanese just like, ridiculous health conscious? Every time someone gets a cold or a fever in manga, it's like they've been diagnosed with about-to-die-liver-cancer. What's with all of the people passing out all the time? How come every time someone falls down in the hallway, they land in the nurse's office with cotton balls and cleaning stuff.


I feel like I should feel guilty about not working on Ghost Hunters in nearly a week. But I was suddenly desperately wanting to devour books, so I'm just going to let it happen. I'm not giving up on the story, though, and would still like to write a bunch more this month. Remind me to kick myhself in the butt and do something.


Lately, I have the strong urge to read Moby Dick. Nevermind that I have detested everything I've read by him thus far....I think Herman Melville is different than Charles Dickens, for me. I think he's redeemable. I'm sure he'll find redemption in my mind through Moby Dick. Now I just need to get me a copy of Moby Dick and hope it doesn't suck.


I had other things to write about, but alas, they are saved on a Notepad document at home. Oh no, I hope LiveJournal is still up!


Rejoice, loyal blog-readers of mine who refuse to go over to LiveJournal! LiveJournal.com is down for the next three hours for some server-transfers, so you get to see this post before any of them! Still, they have more points in my book because they leave way more comments than you guys do, :D

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scribbled mystickeeper at 11:01 AM
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wSep 28, 2008


Guys, I can make polls now! (Okay, only on LiveJournal)

Okay, I'm exhausted and am so not changing all of the LiveJournal usernames to actual names, so just read this post at my LiveJournal instead, kthx.

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scribbled mystickeeper at 12:07 AM
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wFeb 26, 2008


Politics and srs biz

Dear Hillary Clinton,
In a presidential debate about your hypothetical future presidency, YOU CANNOT GET MAD AT TIM RUSSERT FOR ASKING YOU HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS.

KTHX,
mystickeeper


Seriously, though, she was just angry tonight, whereas Obama was collected and forthright.


I have a dilemma. I own the first 9 volumes of the manga X/1999. The public library has volume 10. But I would like to read volumes 11 through 18 as well. Can anyone think of a solution to this dilemma?? Let me know!


I need more LJ icons. If I had more icons, what would I have?
Buffy icon
Angel icon (OF FRED OR LORNE OR WESLEY?!)
Obama icon
Lots more West Wing icons
Evangelion icon, for when I angst
George Stephanopoulos icon
PETER JENNINGS ICON, I MISS HIM
Wisconsin State Capitol icon
Brett Favre icon
John Edwards icon (I miss him, too)
Wizard People icon(s). Possible quotes include: "At least I'm not a hideous fucker." "I hope you get a new pillow to cry into. Shit."
Hermione Granger icon, looking like a know-it-all, for when I lay the smack down in my blog.
Gryffindor icon
Code Geass icon: Lelouch or Karen (or one of each!)
Scott Pilgrim icon: "Knives Chau: 17 years old," and possibly others


Lastly, I wish that Mike Huckabee wasn't a nutjob, because he's pretty damn funny. Watch this clip until the end (Google feed people, there is a Youtube link here, so you might actually have to come to my blog, OMGWTF, I know!).



Current Music:You Raise Me Up - Lena Park (Romeo x Juliet OP...you can tell it's midterms when I listen to the same song repeatedly for days)

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scribbled mystickeeper at 11:26 PM
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wDec 29, 2007


And now it's time for my Cesare Borgia manga

Today was very relaxing, which was a nice change compared to the last few days. I was in my pajamas for most of it, which always helps. My dad and I bought a space heater, so hopefully now when I go back to Madison, I won't feel like dying from coldness in my room all the time. Julie and her kids came to our house for dinner (steak and potatoes), and afterwards I went to Chad's house for a while, to spend time with him, Kristy, and a couple of other people.

I spent time doing some blog maintenance, too. While I originally thought that it would be too much of a pain in the ass to keep a heinously organized tagging system of labels for posts, I've since decided that it's quite useful. So, the LiveJournal tag list has been weeded through and organized, and I cleaned up the sidebar of the journal. As for the blog version of this blog, the tags list is still a bit of a work on progress, but can be found here.

Last night, I was also at Chad's while he entertained friends of his parents for dinner (delicious). After they left, Kristy, Chad, Dave, and I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which is the movie sequel to my favorite video game of all time, Final Fantasy VII. Kristy had played the game a long time ago, so I wanted her to see it for closure. From an outsiders' perspective (Chad's, Dave's), and even from an insiders' perspective, the movie was pretty lol. Chad kept asking if there was a plot, and if Sephiroth was going to show up, while we all laughed at at the improbable physics, and the cutting-in-half of a motorcycle with a sword. What got made fun of the most, though, was the English dub. I hadn't watched it all the way through in the dub yet, so I didn't know how poor it was. There were a lot of sentences that had unnecessarily large pauses in the middle of them, and I don't even know where all of that "dilly dally, shilly shally" crap came from. It gave me lots of game nostalgia, though. I should check out the special features on that DVD.

Speaking of movies, I've seen a number of ones for kids in the last few days, with my sister's kids. Among them are "Meet the Robinsons," "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," and "Night at the Museum." All of them were all right, although "Meet the Robinsons" was probably my favorite of the three.

Westmark
I finished read Lloyd Alexander's Westmark today. It is the first novel in the Westmark trilogy. I've never read anything by Lloyd Alexander before, but he seems well-known and respected in the Wiscon crowd for having been an author who wrote lots of YA fantasy that included strong female characters. Westmark was quite bleak in its reflections on human nature and society, and I quite liked it.

One thing that I definitely liked about the book was that Alexander doesn't take forever doing his world-building. His prose is sparse and to the point. Action, plot, dialogue. There is no lag. A pleasant change from, say, the endless reflections that plague the Libba Bray books.

I have other thoughts that are spoilery

I have the next book, The Kestrel, checked out, but I have some other things I need to read first. I'm looking forward to it, though, as many people say that The Kestrel had a profound impact on them.

rilina on Westmark here (Spoilers)
oyceter on The Westmark Trilogy as a whole here (No Spoilers)

Anyway, it's time for a bit of reading, and then bed. I'll be at the Packer game tomorrow with my dad, sister, and brother-in-law. I find it amusing that many households that live near Lambeau Field plow their lawns of snow (often to the point of completely covering their windows and siding with blasted snow) in order to be able to park more cars on their property, and make money.


Current Music: Dante - Fullmetal Alchemist OST

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scribbled mystickeeper at 11:55 PM
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wApr 24, 2007


I feel embarassingly angsty tonight. Perhaps I should write a story!

Hopefully my computer will allow to me complete a blog post! Somehow this afternoon, I contracted a very irritating virus. I've been running Spy-Bot and what-not, and hopefully it will be better tomorrow. It makes computer programs run and load at heinously low speeds, which is unfortunate.

Today has been irritating in almost more ways than I can count. I wish I could vent online about people without anyone else I know ever reading it. Well, I guess sometimes I do that under-lock at my LiveJournal. Still, though. It'd be cool if you all could read it and just not know who I was talking about - if it was someone from a class, from work, a friend, whatever. But you could still enjoy the premise and the story. And, most importantly, my righteous frustration.
Really, though, I feel sick of everything, and most of all sick of not knowing what I want to do with myself.

There is discussion going on in a LiveJournal I read (OMG best manga/anime posts ever) about the role reversal of Romeo and Juliet in the anime Romeo x Juliet. You can find the thread here. I had picked up on some of it myself, but not all. Yay for the power of collaborative nerd glee. The more I think about Romeo x Juliet, the more I like what it's trying to do with Shakespeare's story. Judging by the end of the latest episode, things are only going to get more badass from here.

Somehow, it is both too hot and too cold in my room.

Why is it that when I look at my actual calves on my body, they look chunky, but when I look at them in a mirror, they look slightly toned and lean?
(Self-Provided Answer, 30 minutes after the fact: Because when I look at my actual calves on my body, I'm sitting pretzel-legged and stuff looks different from that angle)

Current Music: 19sai - Suga Shikao

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scribbled mystickeeper at 11:35 PM
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wApr 2, 2007


I did nothing today, and it was glorious!

A Note on the Sidebar (this applies to the blog only, and not the LiveJournal)
You'll notice that I've actually put a list of links on the sidebar so that you can re-visit posts at a later time, if you so choose. Eventually, I'll get a link to my archives back up, too. For now, though, you can see that there is in fact a method to my madness of post labels. I've listed general topics together, and then separated out the anime and manga labels. I find label-sorted tags to be very useful when I'm reading other people's livejournals (especially when they review anime and manga), so hopefully at least one of you will find it equally useful!

Epiphany of the Day
I write the intercessions for mass for St. Paul's, the Catholic church here in Madison that is practically on campus. Today, while working on the intercessions for the Easter Vigil mass, I read the following, which is part of the story in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son and then says, "Just kidding!":
God put Abraham to the test.
He called to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am, “ he replied.
Then God said:
“Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love,
and go to the land of Moriah.
There you shall offer him up as a holocaust
on a height that I will point out to you.”
So! Where did Abraham have to go? Moriah.
I probably only thought of this because I'm currently rereading Lord of the Rings for my SciFi/Fantasy class, but where did the Fellowship have to go and sacrifice Gandalf (although that, too, was a "just kidding!" sacrifice)? Moriah. That Tolkien - what a whore!

Hiroki Endo's "Eden;" Volume 1
It's Spring Break, and that means that I have time to read at least a few volumes of manga. Yesterday, I was able to read the first volume of something that's been sitting on my shelf for a while, and that is Hiroki Endo's "Eden." I had found the book at HalfPrice Books, and had heard good things about it, so I picked it up. Luckily, those good things are true. Here, I will lazily transcribe the information on the back cover, but it is actually reflective of the style and story, so I feel justified in doing so.

Eden is both a brilliant love song to the post-apocalyptic survival genre and an exploration on humanity's role in the natural order. When a large portion of civilization is wiped out by a new virus, those who aren't immune are either severely crippled or live only with cybernetically enhanced or entirely mechanical bodies. Taking advantage of a world in chaos, the paramilitary Propater forces topple the United Nations and seek global domination. In this cutthroat, cyberpunk future, Elijah - a young boy on a personal quest - travels with an artificially intelligent combat robot through a pitiless, futuristic landscape.
Hiroki Endo's Eden is a garden of violence, pathos, and philosophy, where endearing, unique heroes face a constant struggle for survival and harsh surprises wait around every corner!

I guess that the series is a little comparable to Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is a post-apocalyptic world in which much of the world's population has been wiped out, the UN serves as a major character but has been subverted by an organization with ulterior motives, there are flashbacks that explain how the parents of the teenage protagonists were very much involved in instigating the events that propelled the world to where it is - etc.
At the end of this volume, the author's note explores the notion that he created this with his "leftover feelings" after watching Evangelion. Still, the story feels really fresh to me, and it is well-written in addition to being well-drawn.

As to whether or not the series will be good, I'll have to wait and see what exactly happened to the character in volume one. If nothing else, this first volume of the series does work nicely as a stand-alone, too. The first chapter serves as a set-up, but it is 116 pages in length. Chapters two and three take place 20 years after the first chapter, so obviously things have changed, and I'm not sure yet what happened to those characters to whom I became so attached to in chapter one. Still, I really want to find out! I will definitely continue reading this series to find out what happens.

Additional note: I've now read volume 2, and it is still awesome, and seems to have lost its Evangelion-esque-ness.

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scribbled mystickeeper at 10:50 PM
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wFeb 26, 2007


i hate writing titles the most

This little blog of mine
Yeah, I know, the color scheme sucks. But I wanted my new banner up, and I think that I can get Antoine to help me pick better colors tomorrow evening. The characters in the banner are from Honey & Clover, one of my most favorite anime series (or series of anything, for that matter) of all time. I highly recommend it if you have ever fallen in love, ever had friends, or have ever had feelings of any kind. Even if you've never watched anime before, I think you would like Honey & Clover.

In other blog news, after my blog reached over 97,000 hits, I remembered that FastCounter sent me an email saying that their hit counters would no longer be free. I've used them for over 4 years! (I had someone else before that) Does anyone know of a free hit counter service I can use, and enter in a starting number? I'd probably put in 97,000 as the starting number, even though I know I had a few hundred more than that. In the grand scheme of life, hits on a web page aren't very significant, but they are a status symbol for webmasters and bloggers. And I was very much looking forward to reaching 100,000 if only for bragging rights.

Sludge
Getting to class in the aftermath of the weekend's blizzard (and the continual accumulation that's been going on all day, and is forecasted to continue throughout the week) wouldn't be so bad if both the city and the university didn't suck so much at plowing. The sidewalks and footpaths on campus were terrible today. I literally had to jump across two feet of water to make it from Park Street to the sidewalk. I nearly lost my footing on icy patches at least 9 times, and I'm surprised I didn't fall and get my pants soaked with disgusting, dirty slush/water. I'm sure that that will happen tomorrow when I have my dress pants on to work at the Capitol. I haven't quite decided how to engineer my footgear yet, but I think that in order to catch the bus after work (I would prefer *not* to walk down State Street in the slush), I'll have to wear my brown leather shoe-boots with my black dress pants. Awesome.

At least work will be interesting tomorrow. I think that the Senate is set to discuss extending bar-time in Wisconsin due to a much early turning-clocks-forward federal Daylight Savings mandate (I think that's how the clock is turned? Not sure. It supposedly saves energy.).

Preemptive Woe
Speaking of work, I should go to sleep seeing as I need to get up at 6:00am and should have been asleep at 10:00pm.....but first! I am really afraid for this Sunday's episode of Battlestar Galactica. Rumors have been flying around for months that my favorite character is going to get killed off, but I refuse to believe it, and I think it's a ruse. We've been promised that one of the main characters will die (and one is a Cylon, and one will find Earth, blahblahblah), and I think *my* character is a red herring. They can't kill my character! I will be inconsolable if they do.

Current Music: A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture - Felix Mendelssohn (Featured in episode 19 of Princess Tutu, which also featured characters from the Shakespeare play of the same title! Have I mentioned that I love this anime?)

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scribbled mystickeeper at 11:30 PM
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