Varis’ Neighborhood

Do you believe in ghosts?  Have you ever seen a ghost? 
Submitted by Nancy.

I don't believe in ghosts, but shortly after my grandmother died, I was asleep with the door open in the house she had died in, and I remember staring at her, standing in the bedroom doorway, as she watched me.  I'm fairly certain I was dreaming, but I can't say it wasn't DAMN creepy.

contribute to the c'ruption of the innocent, guvna?

Actual paper I submitted today for Literary Landmarks Redux.

What saye for fair Chaucer that neer fore be mayd clare?
Hes speeche be ofe complecatione, and harde for to bare.
The only gentil maneer what macken it easyer to take
Is inne tone of voyce, yon Muppette chef to spake.
Yon narratoor – or Chaucer (Geoff in brief) shold Ik saye? –
Of thisse tale’s playerse lifes, both sadde and gay,
Doth kenne too much, the maneer and bredth
His descript seem fair too heafy in their depthe.
So I newell tyk hem at the honoor befitten hem visage,
Fore parfit strangefolke, his insyte be offe suspekt invalfe
And hem authoryel tone for charactoor insyte he denyes
For dissectione of the pilgrammes tales, and from theyr maneers surmise.
Thisse language ytires, I wan calle it quitten; for if Ik
Neemore type in cockuppe Olde Engolishe, I shalle falle sycke.

School consuming my brain.  More later when I bust my camera out.

settled, starting school, juggling credits, fairly sure I am going to be taking a victory lap (read: fifth year) to round out my credits.

Apartment fun, but a little sketchy.  Cory is dead convinced that cthulhu is breeding in our sink, biding his time until we prepare a sufficient curry-rice sacrifice to awaken him from his slumber.

Also, everybody thinks we're married.  What.

NEXT UP:  "Versus" review (WITH PICTURES.)

It's like 3 in the morning but I'm caffeinated as hell, and to wear myself out I thought I'd do a little heavy reading on ye olde MBlog to see what Matthew Good was making of all this crazy in the middle east these days.  He apparently thinks quite a bit about it, but even more surprising is the fact that he's moving!

Please note that it always makes me sad to hear about people leaving Vancouver.  It's a city that's treated me well; a beautiful, electrifying place that I miss every day with every fibre of my being.  Now Matt Good, the great bastion of cool whom I was always a little smug to consider among one of my Vancouver born-and-bred kin, is leaving it behind.  It's kind of like a gem losing a little bit of its sparkle.

However the really weird thing is that flipping back through his entries, it sounds like he's just gone through a very messy break-up with his (ex???) wife, Jennifer?  And god.

Already that old hope of being the rebound girl is starting to stir and resurface in my chest.

I feel like white trash but GOD MATT GOOD, YOU AND ME, WE COULD MAKE BEAUTIFUL, POLITICALLY-CHARGED MUSIC TOGETHER (except for the part where I am way too vapid to stand in your presence)

c'mon what do you say, me love you long time?

(I have a terrible headache and I've been listening to Bjork for HOURS.)

Walking Machine

Have some music, guys.

ALSO, RIDDLE ME THIS:

Vox's comment system, COOL or LAME?

Enquiring minds need to know.

I'm just trying to make the text and the object symmetrical because I'm OCD like that.

Poodle poodle poodle poodle.

EDIT:  I have no words for how remarkably hilarious this fug is.

Are there any snacks, food or candy that are no longer made that you desperately miss?

When I was a kid I was hardcore into those O'Ryan (or whatever) chips they made; apparently they only ever made sour cream & onion flavour, which is quite possibly the most effective form of market suicide ever, except for the part where they were wildly successful because they were so fucking awesome.  Ever since I landed east of the rockies I haven't seen them, which is a tragic thing.  I would breathe fire for those chips.

And I suppose it's still being made but I haven't eaten them in nigh on a century so you could say I desperately miss them--those japanese "CHOCO" snacks.  Ever since I left Hongcouver I've suffered this perpetual craving for them.  I've found things that come close, of course, like those prailine hazelnut tube things, but they were never truly CHOCO.

There are nights when I wake up in tears at the thought of stuffing me face with those tiny, Hello Kitty-shaped cookies with their melty chocolate centres, only to realize it was all a dream.  What I wouldn't give to have them again.

And Kusagi gummies.  I would kill people for those.

So today ended up being my last day at work.  The muffins that were the subject of last night's ramble were in fact for my coworkers, in a sort of half-assed gesture of thanks.  I'm not particularly good at saying "thank you for everything", I always find it sounds so trite even when you mean it with the utmost sincerity.  So instead of trying to convey my thoughts in words I forced my terrible cooking down everyones' throats.  Some "thank you", huh.

But you know as just another summer student, you kind of want to endear yourself to previous employers.  It might be too late to dazzle them with my wit and charm, but I always end up making this futile, after the fact effort to possibly instill in other people the kind of importance and value I feel for them.  My ex-coworkers might not think of me ever again and be back to life as per usual on Monday morning, but what I took away from the summer is going to last me probably the rest of my life.

Anyway on a less lame note I finished my last work day with a whimper and then stumbled off home, grabbed some subway for my nonfunctioning ass, and then checked my lj friendslist and WHAT HAVE I MISSED OUT ON.

IS IT "BADASS COOL LINK DAY" OR WHAT??  So yeah two things that deserve props:

First up is a handy little movie coming out called BOYS LOVE which is going to be a bastion of hot man-on-man fo sho I can tell you that.  Not only this but it has two SERIOUS young asian drama stars to watch, Saitoh Takumi and that other one I don't remember because he's not as pretty.  The plot is apparently pretty sketchy: magazine exec meets prettyboy model, there is casual sex, exec lands in a lawsuit with the model's management group and goes to apologize, finds out that the model is actually GASP, HUMAN, and hugely heartrending romansu ensues.

Yeah yeah, whatever, HOWEVER this is looking to be kind of monumental for the culture as a whole, DESPITE THE RIDICULOUSLY UNORIGINAL TITLE.  Like I mean the west is like bitch please, we've been doing the queer movie thing since PQotD, but as of yet the more traditional, conservative east has yet to really branch out and recognize that a whole lot of homosexual hijinks are going on.  I mean there was the chinese lesbian movie, but according to Jackie it was seriously lacking in gratuitous girl-on-girl plus listening to women shrieking at eachother in cantonese would ruin it for me, I think.

POINT IS:  Two VERY FINE tenipuri actors going at it on dvd for the general amusement of the female populace.  What the hell, japan, have you suddenly decided to exist solely for my benefit or something?

And awesome thing the second is stills from the live-action Mushishi movie that is going to be coming out later this year.  For those of you not in the loop, mushishi is an animanga that is pretty much just continuous frames of gratuitous, high-saturation nature scenes tied together loosely by a haunting soundtrack.

I'm actually kind of hesitant about seeing it translated into live-action, myself, because while there IS a plot

gratuitous pretty

I suppose what all that comes down to is that the plot is okay, kinda nutty, but the REAL reason to watch the series is in the unnaturally gorgeous, colourful, haunting artwork.  You can't see something like that in reality, which is sort of incentive to watch it.  How can they convey that with a real-life drama?  It seems kind of like a futile effort.  Oh well, I don't know, maybe they'll CG the fuck out of it?

And those were the moments of badass that really brightened my otherwise kinda sad day.  On the subject of reviews, I just finished watching the anime adaption of the great shoujo behemoth Cardcaptor Sakura (otherwise known as "let's replace Cait's coffee creamer with low-grade LSD and see what happens!") and I think I want to do a review of that.  Though I'm afraid it would kinda just be me sitting around going "wtf wtf universe = 0; ONOSAKA MAYASA = A MILLION" for like fifty paragraphs.

Although going through with it to extrapolate at length about Yue's Big Gay Crush on Clow could potentially be hilarious.

AND LASTLY, A GAME.  Five word video game reviews, I'll go first.

FINAL FANTASY IX:  Could use more metal bikini.

AND GO.

AND LO, THERE WERE MUFFINS.

Fotoblog forthcoming* when I can be bothered to do so.

* do not hold your breath**

** no seriously I have yet to blog about my ridiculously awesome weekend*** even, I don't know if these babies will ever see the light of the internet

*** said ridiculously awesome weekend involved Snakes on a Plane, purveyors of Mennonite confectionaries, llamas, and brie burgers in case you were curious

Man From Harold Wood

Let's be honest with ourselves:  Do you have a "cry" song?  You know the sort, you put it on for a good listen and it's so sad and powerful that immediately you start getting teary and have all sorts of ideas for really sad things to write, namely fanfiction, for all manner of fandom?  No?  Guess it's just me, then.

Weep. :((

(but in nonsucky news, MY DOUJINSHI CAME IN THE MAIL TODAY!  You'd better believe I'll be scanning those bastards, especially because one of the articles in question is GORGEOUS, GORGEOUS D.GRAY-MAN.  ohmanthisseries.)

What do you usually do on Sunday?

Traditionally, I wake up around one, roll around in bed for a while debating getting up.  If the energy expended getting out of bed, E, is less than the energy expended in rolling over to find my laptop, and coaxing the bastard into life, C, I wake up.  Once again that's E < C = Awake.

If awakeness is achieved, I usually trudge downstairs, pour myself a glass of milk and squint blearily at the paper for a good half hour, whereupon I decide what I'm going to do with my day:  Video Games or Movies.  There are usually other options, but these two are the predominant ones.  I then spend the entire day doing the actiivity of my choosing and thank god I am not one of the hopeless schlups dragging their asses to church to sit in rigid wooden pews and feel guilty for having money and copious amounts of spare time.

Today however went a little different.  Today my body decided it would attempt to reject my uterus forcibly out my LUNGS so the majority of the day was spent curled around the toilet making incoherent whining noises.  My father was terrified, I'm pretty sure he thought I was dying, but life is nowhere near that merciful.  I'm pretty sure the cramps I had today were right up there with the time the doctor had to prescribe me valium to keep me from going into shock.  I must have passed out on the bathroom floor or something because when I finally woke up in my bed it was like an hour later, I was liberally medicated, and there was a hot water bottle on my ribcage, probably my dad's doing.

So yeah the rest of the time was spent popping tylenol in groups of four and playing video games in a drugged out stupor.  I've been craving a cigarette like fucking crazy all day, but I decided that the last thing I needed was for my mom to walk into my room and see me slouched in bed, smoking a cigar with an upended bottle of tylenol on my bedside table.  She'd think I was pulling a jim morrison or something.