01.03.08
Posted in Haiku at 9:37 am by admin
Today’s goal? Things that are solidly somewhat spooky, because I spent New Year’s Day watching slasher movies.
Ringu
In which a woman
finds a tape but loses
her integrity
Friday the 13th
Murder, sex, and weed
Kevin Bacon’s number’s dead
Camp Crystal Lake’s closed
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Transvestite Tim
Curry, tears through trust and he
makes many monsters
Nightmare on Elm Street
Is that Johnny Depp?
No. Wait, that is Johnny Depp!
Shock! He exploded!!
League of Gentlemen
It’s not a film, but
It’s got necrophiles, incest,
dead dogs. So, who cares?
Halloween
Michael Meyers stalks
and kills women. His mask? Kirk.
How appropriate
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12.22.07
Posted in Geekery at 12:56 pm by admin
In which more movies are reviewed via haiku. This will probably continue ’round here in a similar weekly fashion, at least until my college apps are in and the Beast calms down a little. Unfortunately, I seem to be.. Kind of.. Running out of movies.
Snakes on a Plane
In which snakes attack
Samuel “MoFo” Jackson
Wait.. Did I like it?
Gilda
Rita Hayworth is
excessively beautiful
and a femme fatal.
Chicago
Lovely women sing
and dance and dance to jazzy rhythms
–oh. And Richard Grere
Marie-Antoinette
Marie lives like
a rockstar to pop music.
What’s “boring” in French?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Chocolate, tears, and joy.
A more faithful retelling
Of a wacky tale.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Though made for children
this 70’s acid trip
stars Gene Wilder.
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12.17.07
Posted in Haiku at 4:45 pm by admin
So, senior year is pretty hard. That’s about all I’ve got to say. Except, my august father had been bullying me for about six years now to do some haiku. So, I’ll [finally] get on that. Luckily, since my closest friend is a film major, I end up seeing a lot of films. Ready? Go!
Eragon
In which a young boy
Rides a dragon, saves a girl
And no one can act.
30 Days Of Night
Tensions are high. The
townsfolk are being eaten.
Vampires ain’t hot.
Transformers
..Some kind of cube thing..
Some kid does… some sort of stuff
GIANT ROBOT FIGHT!
Ultraviolet
In the dystopic
future everything looks good
Maybe there’s a plot?
10 Things I Hate About You
A Shakespeare remake
With wild parties and models
Set at Nineties High
The Blues Brothers
For once, seventeen
sylables will not suffice.
Go watch this film now.
Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance
Everything looks bad.
Billy the kid is a vamp.
The worst choice ever.
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09.17.07
Posted in Squid at 1:16 pm by admin
Excuse the pun, but I’m sick.
It’s a pretty standard illness. Stuffy nose, stuffy ears, stuffy chest, coughing, lots of sneezing, a sore throat occasionally, mild to moderate misery. Basically your standard cold fare.
So I walk into the kitchen sneezing, and coughing up a lung for good measure, intent on getting a glass of water of a muffin or something. And my mom, sitting on the counter, munching something, looks up at me
“Honey, you gotta stop smoking. It’s not good for you.”
School Takeover Update: Though I have yet to be elected president, I am the a joint chairperson of the student. But, we’ll see how long that joint business lasts, won’t we? Also, some people call me Joey now.
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09.06.07
Posted in School at 9:27 pm by admin
To reiterate: My school is very odd.
Within my school there are various mandatory committees which are a lot like clubs, but they’re graded and take up one period a week. They include a sports committee, a social committee that organizes dances, and a peer mediation committee that helps students and teachers get through disputes.
The committee that I applied to join this year was Student Government which serves as a sort of segway between he students and the absolute power of the staff. They try to mediate things like iPods in class and so forth. From what I’ve heard tell, they usually lose, but hey. They try.
Two representatives are chosen by each class of each grade. Most grades have one or two classes, so this leads to student government having about fifteen people in it. I was elected by my small class, along with two other people–we are seniors and are throwing our weight around with a vigor–to the position. This means that I’m on student government.
But one also has to write an application.
I asked Gareth–who just keeps on popping up here, doesn’t he?–if I had to because he’s not only basically my homeroom teacher, but the head teacher for Student Government. He said yes, but basically that I could write anything I wanted.
I wrote
I just want to govern things with an iron fist.
and passed it back to him.
But the point of this is to tell you what I will do with my newfound power. From within Student Government I will take over. My senior power, and also my superior intelligence and scathing wit will cause them to elect me president*, and from there I will begin my takeover of the school using radical techniques, I will lead the revolution!
Yes, friends. It will be The People’s Republic of City Academy, and I shall be its Stalin!
My fists shall be heavier only than my mustache and my fake Russian accent! I will reign supreme and the couch in Gareth’s room shall be my Kremlin! I will lead high schools into a new era of greatness and communism!
As soon as I’m done with my homework.
*There is no student government president.
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09.04.07
Posted in Geekery at 8:35 pm by admin
Warning: Extremely geeky content ahead.
So I’m a D&D nerd, along with every other kind of nerd I can manage without incurring the wrath of the Acne God who clearly hates geeks. But you probably knew that I’m nerdy already, didn’t you?
Now, the honest truth of the matter is that I barely know any mechanics and have to have somebody hold my hand when I get ready to create a character, but I do know enough about them to know that life would be a whole lot easier if it were governed entirely by mechanics.
You could pretty easily turn stats that no one would ever use in the real world into more useful things. For example, very few people will really ever use “Use Rope” in their general life. So you could make that something more like “Use Cosmetics”, and you can just take 20 at Girl Scout Camp. But clearly “Use Magical Device” would be “Use Technical Device/Computer” and anyone over sixty would take a -2 modifier unless they’ve have at least one rank in said skill.
This leads us to magic. The last time I checked, no matter how hard one tries to get a book to come to them using only force of will, magic doesn’t really work. If I have any Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, Witches, or Schizophrenics in the audience I would absolutely love to hear your magic stories and invite you to drop me an e-mail. Not that any of those things are the same. But, anyway, no magic. Instead, we have technology and the sciences and also schooling.
Since generally speaking we don’t fight monsters test scores and grades in school would probably manage our experience, but also other things like making a piece of furniture or completing a task, for example a chore. As one grew older and leveled up, these tasks would obviously give you less experience. If you did especially well in a certain (school) class or a a certain kind of task, you would be able to get more ranks in that (school) class.
Imagine the possibilities. You’re sitting in math class and you roll a natural 20, which, given that you already have at least five ranks in Mathematics, you’re able to create a new theorem for solving math problems involving trigonometry. The teacher stares at you in awe and you walk out of the class for an early lunch. So long, suckers.
Unfortunately, your next class happens to be History which, it being not a part of your interests, you have no ranks in. You roll a one and find you’ve forgotten who Napoleon is.
Later, maybe I’ll post a character sheet. Maybe not. I’d hate to be used as an annoying NPC in somebody’s campaign, and moreover I’d be far too tempted to send Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom through the roof.
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08.30.07
Posted in Geekery at 10:04 pm by admin
I have weird, weird conversations online about myself. The strange thing is that the vast majority of things that are said are… Nothing like this at all. Anyway, today’s snip comes from me and a friend called Alex, but through a complex and slightly inexplicable series of events, I began to call him Sasha. Sasha is a very good young man. He’s also very tall. And really actually a boy.
Sasha says: Ugh, this Halo 3 Mountain Dew is disgusting.
Carrie says:What colour/flavor is it?
Sasha says: It is.. orange, and it is CHERRY CITRUS BLAST
Carrie: Yuck. Cherry *and* citrus?
Sasha says: It tastes like cancer. YOU taste like cancer. 
Carrie says: Eh? Why!? Cancer is bad!
Sasha says: YOU KNOW WHY
Carrie says: Actually… I taste sort of like salt. It was hot today :{
Sasha says:*laughs* My point exactly! Did you totally just lick yourself?
Carrie: Totally.
By the way, this little dude: :{ is Senor Frowns. He is the saddest little mustachio’d man ever. His mustache is one of the Great Power Beards of Might, along with Uncle Joe/Doctor Phil’s ’stash.
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08.29.07
Posted in School at 4:51 pm by admin
How appropriate! It’s the forty-second post!
Guess what! Today was my first day of being a senior in high school! If felt exactly like being a junior. I’m taking a full schedule this year, like I have every other year of my life, this means that I’m not allowed to have senioritis.
Basically, my year looks a lot like high school. An uber-advanced English class, chemistry, pre-calculus, advanced Japanese, P.E. “But what about history,” you ask. “I thought you liked history! What about that Andrew Jackson fellow you were always pining over?
Well… International Academy European History. The problem with this class, is that it’s sort of my class. I kind of… Chose it. For everybody. By vociferating about Otto Von Bismarck. Who is totally cool, by the way.
Anyway, the point is that I chose this class as the curriculum for the rest of the twelfth grade, which means that if it’s an intensely bad class that nobody enjoys, it’s all on my head and I’m totally doomed. I will be beaten up. I pray to mighty Cthulhu (who clearly governs history classes; they’re at least a level 12 Eldritch Monstrosity) that it’ll be good.
I’m looking a you, Gareth.
And by the way, in case you were wondering about my AP results, you know, the ones I whined about for months? I got fours on both of ‘em. Fours out of five. I guess I didn’t need to whine so much. Sorry.
But, can you believe there’s a Wikipedia article on senioritis? I wonder what else there might be wikipedia articles on.
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08.28.07
Posted in Haiku at 1:00 pm by admin
Really, honestly, I like movies a lot. I can think of few things I’d rather do than hang around and watch movies on somebody’s couch. Including mini-golf, but that’s a different anecdote all together. Having recently discovered (through Fight Club, of course) that Edward Norton is the best person ever, a lot of these movies have him in them, or are ones I saw in Japan. Ready?
Sad Movie
(this ones needs a bit of explanation. It’s a Korean movie that I saw in Japan, sub-titled in Japanese).
It’s such a shame that
‘Incomprehensible’ has
six whole syllables
Cube
Death is often swift
For traps are very lethal
But people more so
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Quite reasonable
Though Fight Club quotes abounded
“Marla, you’re magic!?”
The Italian Job
A very fun flick
Gold, villainy, explosions
Ukrainians, too.
Kingdom of Heaven
Baldwin is hardcore
Balian is oddly hot
Arabs win at last
American History X
Skinheads aren’t happy
Extremely unpleasant film
Best movie ever.
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08.27.07
Posted in Geekery, Squid at 12:49 pm by admin
…Since I last posted three months ago. I’m sorry about that. I went to Japan and I came back and stayed up for something like 40 hours. Then loafed around and ate all of the snacks I brought back from Japan. And then I loafed around some more. And then I waned to post for weeks, but couldn’t decide what to post. And now, here I am, ready to post at last. I’ve learned a lot since, then though. Because life’s a journey. Or something.
1) Though there are many things that ought not to be welcome in your house, a jackhammer should be at the very top of the list.
2) The Japanese think that American houses take so long to clean because we wear our shoes indoors.
3) In Japanese schools, it’s acceptable to sleep during class.
4) As a foreign exchange student, the most common questions you will be asked are “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “Where are you from?”
5) Japanese people almost all have really bad teeth, actually. Braces aren’t covered under Japanese insurance and are considered purely cosmetic.
6) If your dental filling pops out while in a foreign country, you can fill it with wax, or sugarless gum. I used wax.
7) Japanese girls are completely obsessed with fashion. They flatten their hair, brush it backwards, straighten it, and put on layers of makeup. All during class if they can manage.
In Japanese culture, having very white skin is considered to be beautiful. They have cosmetics specifically designed to whiten one’s skin. I’m basically an albino marshmallow being eaten by a polar bear wearing a wedding dress in a blizzard, so my classmates got very excited about me.
9) Also, Japanese people identify themselves as being “black”.
10) In Japan, there’s pretty much a temple or shrine on every corner. Some Japanese people don’t even really know the difference between these! (Temples = Buddhist, Shrines = Shinto)
11) Saying “Atashi no kaizoku” rather than “Atashi no kazoku” is pretty much the funniest language gaff of all time. The latter means “my family” and the former means “my pirate.”
12) When all of the speech around you is complete gibberish to you, it’s incredibly easy to tune it out as just background noise.
13) The last hour of a ten-hour flight is certainly the worst. It’s like purgatory. That and crossing the International Date Line seems to take forever, too.
14) Hello Kitty is completely pervasive in Japan. She’s absolutely everywhere. Even adult men call her kitty-chan.
15) Speaking of Hello Kitty, she’s on a lot of keychains, which the Japanese attach to their cell phones. Some of these are huge, and it’s not uncommon to see an adult lady with four or five (if not more) of these cutsey cell phone charms.
16) While we’re talking about cell phones, Japanese cell phones are enormous. They’re like a brick. But the thing about them is that you can do anything in the world with a Japanese cell phone. Access the internet via bar codes on stuff, put music on it, use it as a flashlight, take really good pictures… Basically, what I’m trying to say is, that if you needed to shut down a nuclear reactor in the next twelve seconds, you could do it with a Japanese cell phone.
17) There are tons of stray cats in Japan. They’re all these ragged, half-mad little creatures who stare at you angrily and are smelly.
18) There are also a lot of crows. Just hanging around. Doing crow stuff. I neglected to tell the Japanese people that many crows are called a “murder” in English.
19) Japanese keyboards are pretty much the weirdest thing in the world. And if you hit caps lock, you have to manually turn it off by clicking something on the tool bar. You can’t just hit caps lock again. It was really hard to type.
20) In Japan, they eat the tails off of shrimp. Weird. Also, shrimp sashimi is just a shrimp head and all. And you suck the brains out. They’re creamy and gross.
21) They also eat sea snails right out of the shells.
22) In Japan, they watch American Idol. I had never watched American Idol, or been really present when it was on before going to Japan.
23) There is really only one kind of cool/attractive guy in Japan. And he’s pretty.
24) Japanese soap operas are called “renzoku merodrama”. They come on in the afternoon And are incredibly popular. On Operation Love, my favourite soap, the main (girly) male’s activities consisted of running, crying, and going “Huh?”
25) The Japanese hate rain.
26) On a hot day the most common comment from students is “atsui!” which simply means “Hot!” or “It’s hot!”
27) Though the skirt of a typical schoolgirl uniform in Japan goes down to the knees, after school’s out, these skirts are typically rolled to mid-thigh, or higher.
28) It’s easy to become incredibly lonely.
29) When people talk about how trains are crowded in Japan, they’re not kidding. You really are smashed in there during the morning commute.
30) The morning commute, by the way, took about a half an hour, even just to get to school via the subway and train systems.
31) They sleep on these silly pillows in Japan which have an indentation for one’s head, and therefore support the neck when one is sleeping on one’s back. Unfortunately, I can’t sleep on my back.
32) Speaking of sleeping, I had this nice, raised bed. I went to sit on it sort of floppily, and discovered that it was hard. It was just a futon on a bedframe.
33) VNV Nation’s album Judgement is pretty much he best thing to ever happen to the world.
34) Edward Norton is the best person ever.
35) It is a useless endeavor to try to explain sarcasm to a Japanese person.
36) If a dish is cooked with octopus, that flavor becomes entirely pervasive.
37) Within five minutes of meeting a Japanese person you can have a chan added to the end of your name.
38) Though the Japanese name is hyaku en mise, 100 Yen Stores (the equivalent of dollar stores) are still called “100 En Shops”.
39) Yen is called En in Japan because there is no “ye” sound in the language.
40) Since a lot of foreign (English) words are thrown around in Japan, they’ve really reworked and twisted up their language in order to write things like “Fanta”.
41) The Japanese love melon flavoring. They have melon sodas, melon breads and melon ice cream. Very tasty.
42) As far as I could tell, the Japanese are universally pacifists. I guess having two atomic bombs dropped on you does a big thing for a culture.
43) Japanese houses seem to typically have three floors. Mind you these floors are very small.
44) Perhaps because of this, it’s not especially uncommon to find a house with a small elevator.
45) A western-style toilet in Japan has at least five buttons, which do different things, and a heated seat.
46) A Japanese-style toilet is infinitely more terrifying.
47) They really do karaoke, at huge karaoke centers. You go into this little private room and order food or melon soda and sing.
48) Japanese girls strive only to be cute, unlike American girls who can strive to be anything from cute, to sexy, to grungy and unattractive.
49) Their idea of cute is a bit warped, too. For example, Avril Lavigne is adorable.
50) They know all of the words to her songs, but have no idea a) what they mean and b) that they’re rude.
51) Anime fans think that kawaii (cute) and baka (idiot, fool, etc) are extremely important words. Though I very rarely heard the word baka in real life, kawaii seems to be just as important as fangirls seem to think.
52) I continue to be amazed by the effect that one can have on people without even knowing it.
53) Freakonomics is one of the most fascinating books I have ever encountered.
54) There’s a Japanese fairytale called Momotaro which is about a young boy who hatches from a very large peach and grows up to fight demons.
55) There is no health food boom in Japan. Nobody seems to care.
56) Hot dogs are called “American Dogs”.
57) There’s a very famous series of workout videos called “Billy’s Bootcamp” in which an African-American guy does seemingly bogus and weird exercises. The Japanese believe that he’s very famous in America as he is, in fact, an American. They were shocked that I had never heard of him.
58) Counting in Japanese is an incredibly complex and difficult affair. There are six different kinds of counters that I can think of off the top of my head and they have all sorts of strange irregularities.
59) The majority of Japanese music stars are single idols who sing, or boy bands. They don’t especially comprehend the idea of a “band”, a group of people who make music and also sing.
60) There are no house numbers in Japan. Japanese cities are cut into strange sections and subsections.
61) Streets are mostly very skinny and one-way.
62) People in Japan are hugely overworked. Men may not come home from work until nine o’ clock in the evening. Dinner is left out on the table for them.
63) Unsurprisingly, the day-to-day food in Japan is completely different from the food that you can get at Japanese restaurants in America.
64) They even eat incredibly odd things that I had never encountered before in my life. Lotus root, burdock, shiso.
65) Sushi is incredibly inexpensive. Two pieces can be as cheap as 100 yen, less than a dollar. That’s roughly a quarter of what one might pay here.
66) It’s also pretty weird a lot of the time. Think corn, mayo, and seaweed.
67) The Japanese love mayo. It’s on a lot of things. Sushi, takoyaki, pizza, etc.
68) Bottled mineral water is popular in Japan. So popular that most people drink it rather than tap water.
69) Also very popular are vending machines. These exist on roughly every street corner, and there are small alcoves on occasion that can contain four or five machines. Soda is somewhat uncommon in these machines, and I never saw snacks.
70) Available products include bottled teas, coffee, water, and sports drinks. Also occasionally alcoholic drinks and cigarettes.
71) Though cigarettes and alcohol are disallowed for minors, anyone can buy alcohol, and the vending machines (though reading “21 up”) are unguarded.
72) Each big city in Japan has a specialty food, a food for which they are well-known. Like New Orleans with gumbo, or Texas with barbecue. Osaka’s specialty foods are takoyaki and okonamiyaki.
73) The use of drugs is incredibly penalized in Japan. As such, Japanese people are pretty naive about it.
74) Similar to America, the Marijuana leaf is an iconic symbol in Japan. It’s on towels, pencil cases, and jewelry. Unlike in America, the teens and adults wearing this symbol have no idea what it means.
75) I saw one of these items in a store and asked the girls I was with if they knew what it meant. They answered “Jamaica?” and were shocked when I told them otherwise.
76) Because Japanese teens know what’s popular in America and are fans of it, they are surprised that American teens don’t have any idea who SMAP or Ayumi Hamasaki is. (This is not wholly true. I was familiar with Ayumi Hamasaki was before I came to Japan).
77) Rap is very popular in Japan, but the Japanese have no idea that the lyrics are often crude and objectify women and glorify crime and violence.
78) Though I had a difficult time understanding it, from what I can gather from the content of music videos, it has none of the aforementioned aspects.
79) Prostitution is legal in Japan. It’s often between a teenaged girl and an older business man. They call it “assisted companionship.”
80) There are homeless people in Japan. They’re mostly men, and they don’t beg.
81) They construct house-tents in parks out of tarps and spare 2×4s
82) Buying English books in Japan is expensive. A book that says “$6″ on it can be more than 1000 yen (ten or so dollars)
83) Japanese school is based more on knowing things than actually learning them.
84) As such, they rush through, say, English. Though they study it for years, they forget everything immediately.
85) To give an example, they’re doing roughly fourth grade grammar, though they can hardly string the sentence “when are you going back to America?” together.
86) The green light in Japan is called aoshingo which means “blue signal”, though the light is very clearly green.
87) “Engrish” definitely happens. I saw an folder with an old-time style matchbox decoration. Unfortunately, it said “Impregnated Matches” on it.
88) The language that I spoke in Japan was neither Japanese nor English. It was Japanglish, a slowly spoken dialect that is basically incredibly simple English with Japanese words thrown in.
89) The people who answer your adds for D&D group members aren’t actually that weird!
90) I don’t like to eat raw squid. It’s got an unfortunate texture and no flavor. I guess I don’t like to eat my own kind.
91) The Japanese word for delicious is oishii. The kanji for oishii are “beautiful” and “taste”.
92) Even the Japanese people think that kanji is difficult.
93) Many chips and other snack foods in America are cheese-flavored. Japan has a similar popular flavor. It’s shrimp.
94) Television in Japan is very strange. A lot of it seems to involve a sort of council of people who play small game-show type games and then watch the program with you. Also, the commercials are hilarious.
95) A large Japanese soda really is roughly the equivalent of an American medium or small.
96) Tourists in Japan look pretty universally bewildered and confused.
97) he flavor of the famous Japanese daikon radish is like being bitten on the tongue.
98) Though seemingly technophiles, Japanese people actually have a hard time using computers to do various things.
99) Japanese high school students don’t get to choose their classes and only one language is studied: English.
100) Heliotrope is a colour of purplish pink.
101) Riding in a plane into the sunrise and knowing that, after a whole month, you’re finally coming home is one is one of the more beautiful experiences a person can have.
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