after one long season of waiting

Dear Japanese,

Kindly make it so I can understand you.

<3
-evilhippo


FMA 56, hee! (And now I delete it from this computer before my roomie stumbles across the fanservice and doesn't go any farther, labelling me as... even weirder than she thinks I am. Especially after the myriad fits I've thrown today.) But yay anyway! I can't wait for it to make sense! (Because... ahh... things happened that I cannot understand, and we're about to go off on what will probably be the second half of things, and I want to know whyyyy.) Thank you, FMA, for cheering me up a bit today. Because holy crap otherwise, world... I said finals week. Not day-before-suicide-prevention day. Way to ruin my weekend (that was already icky because, no matter how I'm feeling, I've got two papers and a load of research that needs to be done by Wednesday of next week). But at least I've kept my emo mostly to myself. I don't know why I think that's noble, but it sort of is. Nya.

(Oh, and should you venture into the comments, there will doubtless be spoilers for chapter 56. You've been warned.)

Dear University of Chicago,

Now... I really have nothing against thought and discussion. But my friends, sometimes you take things too far. I have for you two examples that I would like you to consider. One is on a small scale, though I think it reflects the same lack of, oh, a sense of humour. Nor is it as all-out controversial. But, hey, what can you do. You need two arguments to prove a point, non?

First we'll start with the über-controversial and... non-sensical. Here is your required reading. The short of it is that, somewhere in Max P., a party was thrown. A "Ghetto-themed" party. What they meant by this is not something I will speculate on, since the Maroon is a secondary source, and an unreliable one at that. I'll take it as granted, however, that this was a small party. Now, by the comments the host may have made to the people who showed up, I can guess that there was some latent racism in existence here. Though, really, on the part of one person. Who offended a bunch of people who were, in the true UofC sense of things, probably looking for an argument anyway. We do that here. If I had a penny for every argument I'd seen unnecessarily picked here, I might be able to pay for this education. I think part of the problem here is that we live in a very segregated neighbourhood. This leads to an involuntary sort of racism no matter what, and as an intellectual community we're hyper-sensitive to this, if not a bit paranoid. But I fail to see the point in flipping out over it. And that is exactly what we've done. We've taken a party with fewer than 20 people, one that wasn't making any noise, and a dispute some people in the house had with the people who threw it, and blown it entirely out of proportion. Because today I received a long-winded letter from the president of the university (along with every other student) informing us of the "issues at stake" and the "climate for minority students, faculty, and staff." There wasn't even noise coming from this party, according to the RHs! Okay, UofC. Let's face it. Some people -- educated or not, attending your university or not -- are racist. Are idiots. Have no social skills, no tact, whatever. I fail to see how we need "an all-University open conversation on this topic." Because even if we need to keep in mind, on the whole, our roles in a community, there are some people who are going to throw stupid theme parties with their friends, whether they intend to offend and cause a big mess or not. It happens.

So. Point one of things being blown out of proportion and taken far too seriously. Next we get to look at the purely academic. Today I took a midterm in Civ. It was, by far, the strangest midterm I have ever taken. Not because it was multiple choice. Not because it was unusually hard. Not because I probably didn't know a third of the material as well as I should have. But because a quarter of the test had questions like "Which of the following best describes Billie Holiday's voice?" and "Who was referred to as 'Pres'?" I laughed at it. Apparently (though, I suppose, unsurprisingly), many people did not. Really, I would have been more surprised by the insanity of this midterm had the professor not given us several big speeches about how we shouldn't worry about getting everything right. Oh, and if I hadn't noticed that he had a freaking sense of humour. The e-mail I just received, though, just makes me scratch my head at people.

To: Students in Science, Culture, and Society

There is a saying in theater that irony closes on Saturday night. I think some of you may have an underdeveloped sense, well, if not of irony, of something just this side of Dadaism. The last several questions on the exam were to measure your cultural development, though that development will not be reflected in your final score.

I, for one, officially love this guy. And I am saddened that the last twelve questions of the test won't be graded, because I had a lot of fun jusifying my answers on the back of the answer sheet. And I was failing the rest of the freaking midterm, you'd think if I could have a sense of humour about it other people could suck it up and maybe not complain about it? Seriously, like he would take a grade on those. What the heck? And the thing's graded on a curve, anyway. How many of you must have e-mailed him over this for there to be an e-mail to the entire class about the questions? How could you take it that seriously??

Sigh. I give up on you people, UofC. Loosen up. Get a sense of humour sometimes. And if you're going to pick arguments, for goodness sake don't drag the entire university in on them. Don't pirate people's webshots for your revenge because people are (GASP!) wearing sideways baseball caps! (Because I've never seen white kids doing that normally... no). And let your professor have some fun, it's rare enough that they're not curmudgeony as it is. Holy. freaking. goodness.

Frustrated,
evilhippo

P.S. Any UofC people, friended or randomly wandering by, are more than welcome to pick an argument with me. Or comment. Because this worries me.

Dear People Who Wrote in the 1800s and Before,

Okay... you know that little thing you have going on with the letter s? Or, not-s, as the case may be. When I've got to read 50 or more pages of it it is not endearing anymore. Stop it. I can see that your crazy old printing press had the letter s because it's there when there's a double s.

Gofhdarnit, Erafmuf Darwin, why didn't you have a typewriter and modern Englifh fpelling?

Finferely,
evilhippopotamuf

Dear Jin,

Why the heck are you wearing Citan's outfit? Why?? No, like seriously, Jin. Why? Because I am a fangirl, and you know what? That's probably enough (along with all the other random pretty in the trailer) to make me attempt to play it. (Actually, I was planning on it all along. I was sort of liking XSII before my sister tore me away from it. Though I guess it did eventually go a little nuts... I recall my sister saying she was fighting a church). I should just be happy you're not in a freaking skirt anymore. What were you thinking?? There was no way I could take you seriously when I could see your leg like that... (that and you kept patting yourself on the back or something, what the heck?)

I think it's probably clear that I should just play Xenogears again. That way I get my Citan and my coherently incoherent plot.

Love,
evilhippo

P.S. Monolith, stop with the character redesigns plzkthnx. Ziggy's looked the same through the entire series, he's going to feel left out. I'm all for making Shion not suck, but... making her bare her stomach like that isn't going to help.

And all this because I accidentally clicked the wrong link in my favourites list... I hadn't checked up on Xenosaga in... probably a year. And crap. They say the third one's the last. Also, why the heck am I up right now? I went to bed at two! Why did I roll out of bed before 8?

Dear People of the Telemarketing and Phone-Related World,

STOP CALLING MY HOUSE AT NINE FREAKING A.M. I had to wake up, roll out of bed, and dash into the living room to answer the phone so my dad didn't get annoyed. And now I'm awake, despite the fact that I would really like to spend another hour in bed. Oh, and I'm cold. Not cool! Remember when you called my dorm every day at 8 o'clock sharp, right after my roomie left for class, and wouldn't even hang up if I didn't answer the phone? That was also a very good example of Not Cool. I even finally lost my temper and yelled at you over that. You're going to make me explode.

Siiiigh,
me

Oh, and at best it will be another nine hours before I can see the FMA movie, even if it does finish downloading. Darn the internets! Oh, what to do. I guess I'll scan the incredibly dorky things I did last night, even though I won't be needing them for about a week. Weee.

Editness: (Because I don't have anything to do but wait to go to work in the next fifteen minutes). My summer is almost over. Gah! (All right, I'm trying to waste time before work by tacking more onto this entry now, like, an hour after I wrote it). So, letsee... what have I done. I still can't speak or read Japanese. And I definitely can't draw, though maybe I've improved slightly. I finished a lot of books early in the summer, and then the library decided to let me down and lose most of the other ones I wanted. I've discovered a weird amusement with figuring out what the handwritings of different fictional characters would be like. Now that it's September and all the deadlines for having writing samples are in, I suddenly find myself underneath a veritable flood of plot ideas (gee thanks, brain. I love you too). And I still don't have a major. Wee.

P.S. I <3 Neil Gaiman. And I'm really leaving now, because otherwise I'm going to be late. And at 8 I might actually get to sneak over to sketchyheart's and watch the movie, yaaaay!!

Cher de Tocqueville,

Bon soir. J'éspere que vous etes bon aujourd'hui. Je sais que vous etes mort, t'sais, mais, sans compter que cela... Je m'écarte.

Nous sommes finis. Totallement finis. Je ne vous aime pas. Je ne vous aime jamais. Et, maintenant, j'ai fini ton livre, je n'ai pas besoin de vous. Je ne l'ai pas compris. Vous avez trop d'idées que vous n'avez pas expliqué. Vous (et pardonnez mon francais) sucez le lac Michigan.

Au Revoir!
moi

(Yes, it's been more than a year since I've written anything in French. I still suck. But at least I don't suck Lake Michigan like certain authors. And yes, I'm blaming Tocqueville for my bad paper and not the fact that I put it off and was very distracted. Hehehe).

Dear Physics,

Hi, Physics. It's been a little while since I talked to you last, and I sort of regret I didn't take this issue up with you before. But now it's come to the point where I just can't remain silent on the matter. Please, Physics, there are twenty six letters in the alphabet. There is no earthly excuse for you to have three different meanings for V and two for E, and countless other things. Just because you make one of them italic does not make a difference. I'm starting to think that you just like to make things more confusing than they have to be. You might have an excuse if electric potential had anything at all to do with the letter V, but it doesn't. Why couldn't you have chosen a different letter, then? I think you're just being mean.

Thanks,
- Me

P.S. I hope you catch on fire.