godream

Another entry without actually any original content.

Evidently, I am:


The Powerful Tiger
My comments in good old sarcastic bold. Some parts of this are actually far more accurate than others, I discovered.


"Born leader" is the key phrase for tigers.Nope. They are always in the lead and are most likely the ones to cry out "Let's Go"! Noble and fearless, tigers are respected for their courage even by their opponents. Don't I wish!

Tiger people are daring fighters and they are capable of fighting to the bitter end for what they think is right. When I'm not too busy or too scared... Although they can be selfish from time to time in the little things, they are capable of great generosity. Tigers are unpredictable and always tense and in a hurry. Okay, I'll buy that...

Tiger people are difficult to resist, for they have magnetic personalities and their natural air of authority confers a certain prestige on them. See "respected". They are tempestuous yet calm, warm-hearted yet fearsome, courageous in the face of danger yet gentle.

Tigers are very confident, perhaps too confident at times.*muffled snickers* Although they love adventures and are addicted to excitement it is better not to challenge a tiger. They like being in charge and may feel the need to put you in your place!

Because tigers are always in a hurry to get things done right, they usually choose to operate alone.Okay, that fits. Tigers like to work and are hard-working and dynamic. Okay, that doesn't.If you assign a task to a tiger, the job will be undertaken and accomplished with enthusiasm and efficiency. *looks at empty word processing document waiting for philosophy paper...* Tigers make money but they are not directly interested in money. Still, a tiger need not worry about money for just when he fears the money is gone, more seems to show up.

Tigers are sensitive and emotional. They are capable of great love but they become too intense about it.Yeah, I guess. They are also territorial and possessive. If you are a friend of a tiger, he wants you to take his side against the bad guys and because the tiger is so adorable, ...no comment... you often do. As lovers, tigers are passionate and romantic, but the real challenge for a tiger is to grasp the true meaning of moderation.

The best matches for a tiger is a dog, horse, or monkey. Good matches are a pig or dragon by the way, this is Seifer's sign. Ok matches are a snake or rat. Matches of a rooster, another tiger, rabbit -- my mother, who I love dearly, ox -- both Squall and Rinoa, who are generally tolerable or better, or sheep are not advised.

http://www.dun.org/sulan/horoscope/

Searching on Amazon.com for reviews of Tori Amos CDs, I find the following:

Customers who shopped for this item also wear:
Clean Underwear from Amazon's Gap Store

...fascinating, but perhaps a bit too much information for my taste.

Turned in that essay on Plato's Republic -- on time, even, more or less, despite the Buffy episodes that were calling my name and the printer which decided it was bored of its current ip address and wanted a new one -- but you don't want to hear me go on about that. Random musings here, some in reiteration of that essay and some that even in my far-off wanderings away from the given topic I didn't touch on in the silly writing.

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I would love to have Plato's straight-lines-and-right-angles view on humanity. I really would. Sure, it's narrow-minded and doesn't strike me as valid at all -- but I want convictions! I want to stop seeing both sides, eradicate this compulsion to play devil's advocate to any discussion, to be less easily influenced, to be certain. Possibly even at the cost of being totally fixed on one completely incorrect view. Or maybe I don't, maybe it's an asset to see at least more of the whole than that...

Question: Is it better to see a part clearly, or the whole as a blur?

One of the things that grated on me all through the Republic was how callous Plato seems to be on the subject of love. To him, it's just another appetitive need. [Background: to Plato, everyone is ruled by either the rational part of their soul (which loves/needs/seeks wisdom and knowledge), the spirited part (honor, victory and courage), or the appetitive part (food, drink, sex, money, all that jazz). Those ruled by the first part are happiest and most just, the second part less so, and the third part least.] I am, I guess, still a romantic somewhere hidden under the cynicism. Must be all those fantasy novels. Anyways, that part of me that maintains faith in love spent three hours last night/this morning while I was trying to write complaining about how love makes the world go round, love is integral to hope and happiness, and love is ultimately what makes us human. And... I have no recourse but to agree.

Don't get me wrong, I fully believe one can be in love and totally miserable, or not in love and happy as a clam. But I can't relegate emotional attachments down to the level of hungry/thirsty/horny/tired. I find it difficult to believe that a human being can be totally autonomous and still healthy -- to put it a bit more Socratically, I think that if "men must care for their souls" an integral part of that is love. Not just romantic love, but family love (mother, sister, grandparent, cousin, whatever) and love for friends as well. Sappy as it all sounds, and I realize I'm throwing around that four-letter word an awful lot, I think that love is vital to being human, to living happily.

Not that this necessarily makes me happy. I'd feel -- perhaps not overjoyed, but certainly freer -- if I woke up tomorrow morning and didn't need anyone, was totally independent. But a major part of what I need love for is to balance out the negativity of other interactions. When I fail to meet expectations, my own or others', when I hurt someone's feelings or am hurt myself, when my social ineptitude rears its ugly head -- I need people to counteract that. I don't want to. I want to be able to sit here and say "ha ha, you dissed me, but I still know I'm a good person", but it's... perhaps not impossible, but certainly not easy. It helps immensely to have love and reassurance, to have someone say "just let it go..." I hate needing this, but I do. And I do appreciate the wonderful loving people who do this for me (and who deal with me day after day). I just also dislike feeling that I need this comfort to get past events.

Question II: Without the negative side of social interaction (yeah, that one that seems to draw me like a magnet), would I still be as frustratingly dependent?

Still working on the Halloween pix... we shall see.

So I got off my lazy rear and got an application from one of the local libraries, which is hiring for page positions. Got my recommendations, information, and just need to finish filling it out to give back today -- I'm crossing my fingers that I get this 'cause otherwise I have this sneaking suspicion I'll end up working at a grocery store or wholesale club or *shudder* the vet... or something else less interesting and/or more gross. Yeah, I'm a spoiled brat, why do you ask? :P Anyways. Hope-hope-hope-hope-hope I get this job. Sheesh, if I'm this stressed over a part-time job can you imagine me come college applications?

Those tropical skittles are really good. I am callously taking advantage of the fact that my dad's house is way far out in the woods and no trick-or-treaters bother to make their way back here... more candy for me. >:)

Let's see, what other random comments can I make? I have discovered that people I would never have suspected have incredible art talents. Through actually looking at the names on the art, I found that this one kid in my philosophy class did the cover art for last year's fall lit magazine. It's an anime-style drawing, probably ink and watercolor, a happy cheerleader-type giving a big hug to a slightly stressed-looking ("get me out of here", you can see him saying) young man. It's a really nice drawing, and it's kinda weird to think that its artist is sitting two seats down from me every day in class. You know? Plus I caught sight of the sketches that this one guy I help with programming a lot made, and they're pretty impressive as well. Once again I find myself taught that there is indeed more than meets the eye to some of these people. Note to self: be slightly less cynical. make fewer assumptions.

And while I'm at it, get little sister a pony.

OK, that was over-sarcastic, this is certainly something far more feasible than that -- but it's so hard to have faith in humanity when so much of it seems bent on proving that wrong. I wish I had a cynical anecdote to add here but I can't think of one right now. It's kind of sad: I need to *not* get enough sleep so that when I'm half-dozing and out of it I can blame it on not having enough sleep. When I get my nine hours' worth, there's nothing to blame my absentmindedness on but myself, and that's no fun at all.

Off to leave an entry in wolfwoman's diary, as requested, though the mood I'm in she may well regret that. :P

PM, not AM. Thus, having been awake for only seven hours so far, I'm sadly low on amusing anecdotes and rants about today. Instead, I give you this quote from my dear brother Seifer, in a strange mood this afternoon:

"Hey, I've got a good one. (*sings, to the tune of Avril Lavigne's Skater Boy*) It was a brick, it was a brick, I can't tell which is which..."

And yes, I know that's not how the song title's spelled, it's just that seeing that other spelling drives me crazy. Plus, I can't remember what it is.

416 words written thus far on the NaNoWriMo project, some of which may be posted here at some point. If I want 50000 by the 30th, I better get writing about now. (Or I could go work on that philosophy paper due Wednesday... but where's the fun in that?)

I suck at communication, which often causes me to strongly dislike the whole practice.

Before anyone points out the whole poetry/forums/online diary I tend to do, let me elucidate. I guess it isn't communication in general I feel like this about, it's face-to-face conversations where I'm emotionally wrought up. I tend to fail miserably at saying what I want to say, instead agreeing verbally as things seem to make sense (and of course coming up with brilliant counter-arguments later) or stuttering towards some mindless conclusion that wasn't what I was trying to get at either. I say "you know" a lot too, regardless of the fact that my listener cannot possibly know because I have said nothing useful or relevant. You know?

Anyways. To avoid said conversations I tend towards the afore-mentioned stewing. By the time I have figured out what I'm upset about and tried to compose a halfway coherent method of expressing it the issue at hand has usually flown out of the minds of everyone involved but me, and I don't want to bring up annoying episodes again, and I don't want to do all that messy ineffective spewing, and... thus I stew.

And what I have to learn to do is balance the stewing and spewing, I suppose, and learn to bring things up as they come, and let go totally of the small unimportant things before they even get to either phase. And... man, it's not an easy thing to do, and I'm not sure if I'll ever learn. And like everything else, it seems, this is a learn-by-practice thing, and practicing is no fun at all (and often painful) till you get the hang of it. I feel like I'm trying to learn to bungee-jump by trial and error. "Whoops! I'll make sure I tie THAT knot tighter next time, and maybe then I won't go splattering messily all over the cliffs!"

...but even I have to admit that on those extremely rare occasions when it goes halfway right, it's a nice thing to have happen. You know?

Ode to The Stairs

o tiered refuge of the clique
of self-proclaimed outcasts
noble fortress besieged by freshmen
you cannot have it both ways

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notes: "the stairs" is the hangout spot of the group this particular rant speaks of.
this particular bit of poetry is only a snippet and not really finished.

---

(considerations of a lunchtime family conversation)

So Zidane (the brother -- see "cast of characters" -- not the FFIX character) went to Hot Topic and bought a black shirt with the slogan "keep staring, I might do a trick". Lulu (and Rikku, and Squall -- but mostly Lulu) finds this extremely offensive.

I'll be the first to admit that Zidane is a mainstream kind of kid. Eavesdropping on a conversation of his after church with two of his female friends (I was bored, OK?), I learned that he's fairly well-known in school, he's thought of as a nice guy, maybe somewhat popular. Compare this to Lulu, who got caught with a self-pierced bellybutton immediately following this conversation, and who appears to work very hard to be punk or grunge or goth or whatever the current word for alternative cool is.

Lulu complained loudly that his is a shirt for "freaks". The parents wanted a definition, which she couldn't give, but I guess I know what she means. The people that other people stare at, thus the slogan. Zidane, not being freaky enough for her, is thus the ultimate evil, the "poseur", the popular wannabe outcast.

Is this striking anyone else as extremely silly?

It's again this whole bit where outcast/loser/outsider becomes a social ranking of its own. It seems so hypocritical: you're just your own popular group. In spite of what you think it seems to become increasingly evident that the outcasts are neither above nor below the popular kids they mock. They're parallel, with their own shallow fashion-slave mentality and their own set of outcasts to exclude. This is not to say they're all just angsty ditzes -- but almost certainly some are, and quite probably just as many are as the portion found in their less-angsty counterparts.

After yesterday's entry, I figured it might be a good idea to go through who exactly my siblings are, since my Imaginary Readers will likely be seeing a lot of them. Ages are on the day this entry's dated and are (duh) subject to change. :P From oldest to youngest, and with entirely fictional Final Fantasy inspired aliases, we have:

[Edited 6-13-04: This journal interfaces a lot more with Real Life these days, and I've grown up a bit, so the aliases aren't really used anymore. But in case anyone wants to read the descriptions anyways, I've put real names down at the end so this still makes some vague sort of sense with respect to the more current entries -- though I haven't altered blurbs so they're still really with respect to two years ago, and there's no time when people change faster than where we all are now, so caveat emptor or whatever. :P]

Rinoa: Four months older than I am, Rinoa is part of my family at my father and stepmother's house. Like her namesake for the purposes of this diary, she's brunette, popular, and cheerful. She's also athletic, sixteen years old at the moment with a birthday coming in October, and funny. [Jordan]

Squall: This isn't an entirely accurate name for my only older stepsibling at my mom/stepfather's house. Sure, half the time or more he's introverted and sometimes downright sullen. The other half, though, he's generous, helpful, and his quirky sense of humor never fails to crack me up. If Square ever made a character this schizophrenic, the reviews would shoot them down for being unrealistic and inconsistent. He'll be seventeen come November. [Derek]

Lulu: She's named for her love of dark clothing and for her relationship with Rikku. Lulu is extremely fashion-conscious and is the family hairdresser of the mom's house crew for fancy occasions. She's also very social and very cool, and possibly my opposite in even more ways than those. She is, though, near my age: seven months younger. [Denise]

Seifer: *sigh* Fourteen and... difficult, he's the one I get along with least. Like his namesake, he seems to enjoy mocking people. Squall is best able of all of us to deal with him (by ignoring him, like their namesakes), partially because Seifer seems to admire him and picks on him less, but even Squall has occasionally lost control and snapped. Seifer is quite athletic. On very rare and very random occasions, he is for a few minutes a really nice person. [Tyler]

Selphie: How did I forget her? Loud and hyper, the real life Selphie sometimes has a meaner side than FFVIII's character, but she's far easier to deal with than Seifer. She's a socialite and a bit of an abercrombie girl, if you know what I mean. (I'm not sure I do, but oh well.) Laughs a lot, yells a lot, hangs out with friends a lot. Thirteen, dad's house, eighth grade. [Jessica]

Zidane: I'm not sure this is a perfect name for him... but I couldn't think of anything better. Zidane is generally a nice guy, and for some reason tends to recieve more calls from girls at his school than the rest of the males at the house combined. (Thus the name.) He's thirteen, lives at my mom/stepdad's house, and is an artist, generally of tough guys to be potential Dungeons & Dragons characters. [Dan]

Rikku: Eleven, hyper, blonde, and cute. Longest eyelashes I've ever seen. She's my full-sibling, and when we're at our mom's house, inseparable from Lulu. FFX players will remember (***minor spoiler***) the scene where Rikku asks Tidus if he thinks she could grow up and be just like Lulu -- that's one of the main thoughts that went into their names here. They'll also recall Rikku's breakdown in the Thunder Plains, and that's my Rikku as well: when she's cheerful (most of the time) she's very very cheerful; when she's upset she's sobbing and clinging and... well. Yeah. But that's not too often; she's usually really sweet. [Roxanne]

Eiko: She's eight, lives at my mom/stepdad's house. Like her namesake, she's always searching for attention, and usually in vain. She's most often reproached by Lulu for intruding and general annoyance. Eiko is easily upset and a little spoiled. Cute, though. [Nika]

Cid: At nearly a year old, he hasn't really had a chance to develop enough of a personality to develop a similarity so I can name him after a specific character. So for now, we'll call the cutest baby in the world Cid and you can think of it as representing his possibility of growing into any of the various characters by this name in Final Fantasies. (I would hope, though, for my dad and stepmom's sake, that he doesn't end up like VII's Cid. O_o) He seems to be turning out to be a Tidus -- blonde, cute, and happy. But, well, we'll see. :) [Noah]

First off, the apology to myself and my imaginary readers for opening a diary and proceeding to ignore it for weeks. The working excuse is Fun With Blended Families. In spite of the previous sentence, I wouldn't give up (most of) either of my families for the world. It's just that DSL at one house and 14.4 bps on a good day at the other makes for schizophrenic spoiled/impatient net access.

All right then. In this, the first link-peppered entry, I'll first cross my fingers that HTML works 'round here... {edit after posting: It does, doesn't it. I'll have to see if I can change the default blue link color tomorrow... sorry about that, IRs.}

Big Fat Ugly General Disclaimer: (This bit goes for everything, I suppose.) This journal is my outlet. If you're offended feel free to tell me in that little comment section below, though I'd prefer civilly. Words I have to look up are an added bonus. :) But anyways -- I'm writing for myself and I'm not trying to be mean, but I may end up that way. Oops.

Big Fat Ugly Specific Disclaimer: I am neither punk nor goth. I doubt I fit the elite qualifications of any particular subculture, except perhaps geek. Frankly, that's what the whole rant's about. I'm not at all qualified, though, to be writing this. I know I don't know much on this particular topic, you don't have to tell me that. And I've nothing against punks/goths/whoever in general, only possibly certain ones mentioned below.

Addition: I reread this a day after posting it. It didn't make sense. Note to self: writing diary entries at 12:30 with a killer headache = bad idea. :P Not that that'll stop me in future.

Now. Today's rant, boys and girls, has been triggered by this, imsocomplicated's web journal. This is an entry in a blog that was probably made entirely as a troll for the "anti-Avril community". It features such gems as "56. What is the elusive quality that makes someone Punk? y0u dress like one!!!1". Now, I don't consider myself remotely punk. I haven't the faintest how one would go about dressing like one, my knowledge of punk music is scant, and personally I haven't a clue what the aforementioned "elusive quality" might be. The punk community, though, pounced on this like myself leaping upon a suitably vicious metaphor. In no uncertain terms they informed her repeatedly that if there was nothing less punk than thinking dressing punk was punk. Or something. And, even more important, that Avril Lavigne was not punk. Five pages of comments mainly along these lines. If it was a troll, someone is sitting and giggling, ecstatic, in a basement somewhere. All it takes is a few minutes of typing "pxnk", "AVRiL", "hot topic", and "lolz" and out of the walls come swarms of irate punks flaming the girl and telling her, in effect, "get out of our counterculture". As a certified antisocial freak, my idea of counterculture may be wrong. But the influx of flames to the troll left me feeling cynical. At the mere sight of a poser (or poseur, if you want to look classy and French or something) these herds of unique youth who spurn pop culture and mainstream ideas mob around to tell how much cooler they collectively are and how this one outsider will never ever manage to be really truly punk. Huh.

Someone wiser than I, a frequenter of the now defunct pleiades-net.com, once posted, "You want to be different like everyone else." It seems counterculture is being dragged kicking and screaming into the spotlight, where teenage consumers can see its coolness and flock to it, so it can become the new mainstream to be rebelled against. I don't know, does it ever seem silly to anyone else? (For a more reasoned "Avril Lavigne sucks" commentary you might try here
. I have no issue with this lady's reasoning (for that matter, I've little problem with the slavering mob's points); I just happen to be irrational on subjects I know nothing of.)

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Gother Than Thou, which (besides having the only address I've ever seen to spell it "luvcraft", earning a laugh in and of itself) proudly proclaims itself the Most Pretentious Card Game Ever. I know little more of goths than I do punks, but I am told this game is brimming with in-jokes that only begin with "This Corrosion". The impression I get is that it's a game for goths with senses of humor, who appreciate making fun of themselves. While I doubt there's a goth out there who cares what my opinion is, the website leaves me with a far different impression than even the most educated of Lavigne dissection, feeling whoever made this insane game is more mature than The Mob, in spite of appearances not quite so deathly serious and aware of their own pride.

Repeat disclaimer: This is an unfairly biased sample of cultures. I'm sure there's tons of punks with excellent flame-recognition skills and goths who just get offended at poking fun at themselves. This just happened to be the sites I found today. It's past midnight as I type these words, and I'm enough of a loser to desparately need sleep. That's all for now, folks.