Bleeding Fiction

I did a funny thing today. I applied for a job. At Cornell.

Cornell, as you likely know, is in New York State, which puts it a little over 2,200 miles from my current location in Seattle. As you also might have realized I haven't finished my Master's degree yet. So I guess the obvious question is, "Have you gone fucking insane?"

Eh, maybe. The way I see it, it looks like this: The job seems fun and pretty much up my alley (the position involves lot of event coordination, liasing between different campus groups and representing/promoting the program on a national and international level), it's got a good title (Administrative Director) and it's got a minimum starting salary that I couldn't complain about (especially living in Ithaca).

"But what about your Masters?" you might ask. Well, here's the thing: Cornell's a University. They offer their employees an education benefit. Give me two years at this job and I'd have my Master's anyway.

Honestly, I'm not likely to get the job. I'm sort of barely, minimally qualified for it. There'll be a ton of other, stronger applicants. But at the same time, it seemed like a pretty good opportunity and I had nothing to lose by sending my resume. So, most likely I'll be in Seattle for at least another year and I'll finish out my Master's here. But there's a non-zero chance that I'll be moving back to Upstate New York soon. How weird.

A little over a month ago I posted a bit about Aum Shinrikyo, the religious (cult) group responsible for the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. If you recall, I mentioned that these guys were a little bit on the side of crazy and suggested that I'd be doing my final paper in my New Religions class on them when the time came. The time has snuck up behind me with a two-by-four and caved my skull in. What I've decided to write about is the intimate connection between Aum Shinrikyo and postmodernism/poststructuralism. I'm not going to bother to explain that; it's sort of besides the point.

The point is that this paper's pretty ambitious. I mean mind-shatteringly ambitious. I'm reading a book about signs and signifiers and fashion and art and (virtual) reality. I'm reading about eight other books besides. If this paper manages to come together, it's going to be brilliant. I mean seriously "use it as half of my Master's thesis and present that at conferences" sort of brilliant.

But writing this paper is hurting me. My brain aches. I wasn't sleeping properly to begin with; I'm barely sleeping at all, now, and it's not from overwork. I giggle, sometimes, and I can't stop. I've only eaten maybe twice since... oh. It's only Saturday today. Okay, forget that last part.

I think I'm a little bit broken.

I really, really should be working right now, but while I was looking up Japanese population figures (127 million, by the way), I discovered the Pitcairn Islands and I just had to share some interesting facts:

The Pitcairn Islands are a British dependency in the South Pacific, about midway between Peru and New Zealand, and are the last of such still extant in the region. Only the main island ("Pitcairn") is actually inhabited and it has no port or natural harbor, meaning that supplies have to be shuttled in by longboats from larger ships stationed offshore.

The (estimated) population of Pitcairn is 46 people, the descendants of Bounty mutineers (of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame, I guess) and their Tahitian wives. In addition to the governor, the Island is legislated by an Island Council which seats 10. This means that just shy of 1/4 of the island's population participates in its government.

One of the major sources of island revenue is the sale of postage stamps to collectors.

The islands workforce consists of "15 able-bodied men," four of whom were arrested in October 2004, "putting the economy in a bind."

Ladies and gentlemen... Pitcairn!

I finished my paper on time. Which is to say I finished it in enough time to run to campus, print it out at the library and get it into my professor's hands about three minutes before she walked out of her office for the summer. It was 14.5 pages long, which gets rounded up to 15 and means "mission accomplished."

I didn't have time to write a second draft. I pretty much never bother to do that for papers, anyway, but for this one I would've liked to. I figure an ambitious thesis deserves me showing a little ambition in the writing. Plus, it would've made it less painful when I had to re-read it next year for my thesis. Either way, it's good enough for now. I think.

I was interrupted mid-morning (and mid-paper writing) by the arrival of the UPS man, who had one, two, three (mwa ha ha!) packages from Amazon.com for me. It was a nice gift (also known as "how I spent a portion of my freakishly huge income tax refund"), and I made myself wait until I got back from handing in my paper to open it. I sort of didn't have a choice.

I got some books for school research ("Critical Terms for Religious Studies" and "Supermodernism"), some books for writing research ("Pacing the Void" and "Records of the Grand Historian" - oh, yes, The Ogre�, that's right: by Sima Qian) and some books that I just wanted to have (The second volume of "The Deer and the Cauldron" and Teresa's totally awesome "Making Book"). I got some DVDs (Gilmore Girls 3rd season, The Incredibles and Enemy at the Gates).

I also got some CDs (Tori Amos, The Beekeeper; Richard Shindell, Vuelta; Ben Folds, Songs for Silverman; and the Rushmore soundtrack. Rushmore is an awesome movie, with an awesome soundtrack and the girl who shows up towards the end playing Margaret Yang, Sara Tanaka, looks really and truly almost identical to my friend Vanessa, who I have sadly lost touch with.). The CD I did not get, due to my not, in fact, ordering it when I thought I had, was Ani DiFranco's Knuckle Down, which I really, really want. A trip to Best Buy this weekend will fix this oversight, as well as possibly get me a CD from the Pixies or the Shins or the Clash. Or possibly a coffee table.

Now I have to go and write a Fable tonight, to catch up to the fact that I didn't post one at the stroke of midnight (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), and also start reading for that other, seven page paper that I have due on Thursday. That one's much less ambitious (not ambitious at all, actually) and should be much, much easier.

Hhm. Ok, I know I said I'd go write, but I forgot I wanted to do this first. I caught it from both The Corpuscle and Patrick, though neither person actually sent it my way or, you know, really knows who I am.

Total number of books owned:

Whee! Fun with counting! On my shelves at the moment or loaned out I've got 622, but that doesn't something probably pretty close to another 200 books sitting in boxes at my parents' house. For the record, though, I was counting comics in trade form, what with them being "graphic novels" and all, but not individual issues.

Last book bought:

I just listed six, all bought at once, in my last post, but that feels like cheating. The last book I bought before that was Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls, which was going for seriously cheap from some Canadian online bookseller. By the time I factored in the shipping, though, it ended up being only like two dollars cheaper than buying it from Amazon would've been. I should've gotten The Bard to order it and hold onto it for me, or something. Ah well.

Last book read:

I just finished, for my paper, a book called Hiding, by Mark C. Taylor. It's more accessable than the last book of his that I read, but it's still fairly weighty. It's basically a deconstruction, and partial refution, of the postmodern condition. He goes through body modification, fashion, architecture and virtual reality, talking about the substance that skims the surface. I'm not sure I could explain what he's talking about without rewriting part of my paper for all of you, which I'm not doing, but the crux of it is that there's no dichotomy between style and substance, as postmodern theorists (and pretty much everyone before them, too) would have you believe, but that, rather, style has a substance of its own, style is substance and isn't void of meaning but rather has a special meaning that builds upon the meaning of substance to create something more real than possible alone.

It is, to put not so fine a point on it, the sort of book that Warren Ellis would grind into a very fine powder and snort or, more likely, freebase and inject into his eyeball.

Five books that mean a lot to you:

This is always so tough... I mean limiting it to just five... Yeesh...

The Last Unicorn. For the reasons why, as well as a view of me demonstrating exactly how big of a Peter S. Beagle fan I am, read my comments in this fable.

The Princess Bride. Along with the aforementioned unicorn book and some randomly chosen Neil Gaiman book it's one of the three books I read once a year. I have since I was a freshman in college and Eric pointed out to me that it actually was a book and loaned me his copy. It's great fun.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Actually, it takes up the space of nine books on my shelves, since I have two different editions, at four and five volumes respectively, but it's all one book, really. If you haven't figured out that I love this book by now, you haven't been paying attention.

Les Miserables. By the word. That's how Victor Hugo must have been paid when he wrote this thing. It's the only way to explain the first 80 fucking pages being about a character who does not show up again in the book. For all of the long-windedness, though, it really is a great book. It's tremendously... human. Also one of the few things French that I like. Also I personally know only one person besides myself who has read the whole damn thing and he is an inestimably cool human being.

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. I had a lot of choices for what to put in the number five slot. I almost picked the Yale Complete Shakespeare, because it was a touching gift from a good friend and is the heaviest book I own. I almost picked The Perseids, because Robert Charles Wilson is the only author aside from Beagle who I wish I wrote more like, I almost picked Kavalier and Clay, because even though I only just read it this year it's probably the first book I ever read that I felt was written just for me, I almost picked Bullfinch's Mythology, because... yeah. I picked the Tough Guide because not only is it hilarious, but it's also useful and it makes fun of all of those bastards who bore me to tears because they do little more than rehash what that other guy who bores me to tears and whose name starts with "T" and ends with "olkien" wrote.

Tag five people to continue this meme:

Ideally, I'd like everyone I know to answer this. I loves me some books. But I'm particularly interested in hearing answers from:

Lukas

Bekah

Gus

Jon

The Bard

I did this funny thing last night: I didn't sleep. Now I loves me some sleep, so you may be wondering at the reason for this deprivation. Was there, perhaps, a monster under my bed keeping me awake? Was there a demon peering through my window with its single, bloodshot eye? Or was there maybe something pleasant going on instead, the sort of pleasant that you put some pimp music on the stereo for?

None of the above. I decided to stay up all night to get my sleep schedule thingie back on track. I figure I'll stay awake all day, too, crash at midnight and wake up tomorrow at a nice normal hour. Like, say, nine.

Now, there's the possiblity that I'll be too tired and sleep until about eleven to make up for it. But, honestly? That would still be better than I've been doing lately. The two days before this one I woke up at two in the afternoon. That's just wrong.

That's also the other reason I stayed up. My second paper is due today at noon. Given the trouble I've been having waking up before that hour, I really didn't want to risk oversleeping and missing the deadline.

So far I'm doing pretty good. Not even tired. Part of me wonders if I can do the same thing with sleep as I can with food, where I just don't have any for a day or two and it doesn't much bother me.

Another part of me is laughing and waiting to see me struggle to stay awake at three this afternoon...

I watched a lot of cartoons last night. I went over to Lukas' place and, with a bunch of friends of his (cool people, all) watched Grave of the Fireflies. It's a sad movie. Really, really sad. A "war is hell" movies, from the side of the civilians. I'd heard that if you think anime can't tell serious stories, this is the movie to prove you wrong. So true.

That said, what I really want to talk about is an episode of Justice League I watched, from tape, when I got home. It's called "Clash" and features everyone's favorite Big Red Cheese, Captain Marvel. Holy crap was this episode well done! Marvel's played as the idealist, hero-worshipping, innocent he should be and the contrast between him and the more realistic, slightly more cynical (at least where Luthor's concerned) Superman was not only great to see but also the cause of all of the problems in the episode. When it finally came down to a fight between the two, damn! They flew at each other and the shockwaves of their impact was visible on screen; the thunder of their punches shattered windows, took out buildings. This was animated perfectly for a fight between the Man of Steel and the World's Mightiest Mortal.

The absolute best part was how thoroughly Superman got played. Luthor is, as ever, the master manipulator and it's nice to see that, at this point, he can be 100% honest with Clark and still do nothing but cause the man endless trouble (not to mention sending his own public image through the roof).

I think I'm going to go watch it again...

I've been having some issues with my blog(s) and email address(es) over the past few days. I can't always see either blog, although I'm assured that they're both up and running.

Some email is getting dropped, too, or at least delayed. If you've sent me email over the past few days and not received a response (or if you send me email over the next few days and don't hear back), please send it again.

Hopefully things will settle down soon. Barring that, well, my phone works just fine.

I don't think I've mentioned it on here before, but my DVD player/stereo doesn't work quite right. There are a large number of DVDs (and a few CDs) that it just flat out refuses to play or, worse, teases me into thinking it might play and then changing its mind at the last minute. Or after the last minute, as when it froze right in the middle of Garden State! Grr!

Well, the thing's still under warranty and I found the receipt for it last week, so I went out today to the local Samsung authorized repair place and dropped my player off for service. The man at the shop told me that the repair would take a week to a week and a half.

I can, and probably will, plug my X-Box straight into my TV, so I'll be able to do all of the regular things I could do with my stereo, but I won't have the wonderfully rich quality of my 5.1 speaker surround sound.

This makes me sad.

Given... well, everything... it was only a matter of time until we got to see a Highlander Anime. You can find the trailer here on left of page.

Really. It's better to burn out than to fade away, you know...

Back in February, I mentioned a strange definition of Faeries as "secular," and although I was roundly shouted down as thinking too much about semantics in comments, the idea stuck with me. It finally crystalized into something real the other day when it was pointed out to me that iron (traditional bane of the fae folk) is the mid-point on the curve of nuclear energy reactions, and so is the "heaviest element that is produced exothermically through fusion and the lightest through fission." Since it's easiest for fission to occur/be induced in a heavy atom and it's easiest for fusion to occur/be induced in a light atom, iron is pretty much the midpoint of innefficiency between the two.

What does all of this mean? It means that the Fae are, in fact, small-scale fission or fusion reactions (some of each, probably, which would nicely explain the Seelie/Unseelie divide) that have taken on a solid and vaguely humanoid form and have attained consciousness.

Nuclear rods and cooling towers bind the fae into service a little more forcefully and a lot more efficiently than a saucer of milk, but it makes them go a little bit mad in the process; in a certain frame of reference, the destruction caused by a nuke is the maddened frenzy of the fae folk who used to be imprisoned inside. Chernobyl? Three Mile Island? Well, you had to know that they'd try to break free...

Ok, it's ridiculously stupid not-even-pseudo-science, but this is the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say "secular." Must continue with this line of thought... Wonder how lead plays into it...

I (finally) bought a coffee table. It arrived today. Its size is... substantial. Honestly, it's too big for the amount of space I have in which to fit it and looks a little awkward in my apartment. But, you know, I won't live here forever.

In the meantime, it folds out into an even larger table. In a transformer, this would be incredibly lame. In a coffee table, it's an admirable quality for this ability makes the coffee table a useful place on which to play games. (Or, as the saleswoman told me, "have a Japanese-style dinner." I hate saleswomen.)

More important, however, is that I now have a place for my large-ish collection of coffee table books. That was one of the key reasons for getting this thing to begin with, of course. (Also use as a footstool; which reminds me, I need to buy some pillows.)

I saw Batman Begins tonight. This movie was not made from celuloid but rather from 100% pure awesome. There is, in fact, very little that could have been done to make this movie any more awesome than it was and still have it retain its essential Batmanness. They could have, for example, shown two and a half hours of The State and simply called it Batman Begins and while that might have been more awesome than this movie, it wouldn't have been very Batman.

And every role and I mean every single role was perfectly cast. Perfectly. Also, I have become convinced that Gary Oldman is neither an actor nor even necessarily a human being, but rather some sort of mythic creature, a strange and creepy trickster figure, capable of taking on any form.

It's just so awesome. Go and see it. Then come back to discuss.

(Lit. "The Japanese language is currently making me dead." In other words "Japanese is killing me." There's probably an easier/more colloquial construction for that, but I'm pretty sure this one's right, gramatically...)

So, I'm in an intensive Japanese class this summer. We're going through all of second-year Japanese in 9 weeks. It's freakishly intense. I have about 4 hours of class, 3 hours of homework and 2 hours of studying a day, for a total of 9 hours of Japanese on the brain. The results... haven't been pretty. My difficulty putting phrases together in English is probably more the result of my lack of sleep than anything else, though; I've got to wake up at 8 every morning, but I still just can't get to sleep before 2 am.

I think I'm learning Japanese, though, so that's a plus. I can probably hold a (very slow) conversation about the weather right now. Yay.

I've got a new Japanese teacher, too. Well, new to me. This one's Japanese, not American, but she's also cute. Also like 32 and married, so don't even ask. She and the TAs, though, seem to assume that most people in the class are going to Japan to pick up chicks when it's over. A little strange, that.

I remain disturbed by how young everyone is. I'm partnered with a girl from my old Japanese class. She's 8 years younger than I am. 8 years. I feel so fucking old.

I'm far from the best student in class, but I'm far from the worst, too. That feels good. I wonder how long it'll last?

Some of my fans (and how weird it feels to say that...) over at the Fables decided that rather than just posting about the stuff I write in the section on each individual entry and in fact instead of just posting about the stuff I write, there should be a whole forum.

Since they did most of the work, sure, why not? It sounds like a cool idea.

So, you know, feel free to register and post there or whatever, if you want to.

Just thought I'd mention it.

I picked up my DVD player/stereo today. It took about two weeks to fix, but it now works perfectly and without flaw or delay. At least it does on every DVD and CD I've tried it with. But since I started with the ones I'd previously had problems with, I think it'll all be good.

I only wish I actually had time to watch DVDs right now. Ah, well. At least I should be able to listen to CDs without the occasional weird scratching noises I used to get.

Whenever I sit down to absorb a new project from an author or musician that I really love, I get a little bit scared. I have a moment's hesitation as I worry that it might suck. There are a few artists whose past work is so close to the core of my self that their continued greatness (or at least lack of suckitude) is vitally important to me. It's not like their old work would be somehow invalidated by something new and not so good; it's more like the world would be a lesser place for the lack of its ability to produce consistent wonder.

Erin McKeown released her new album, We Will Become Like Birds, today. It would be a cruel and pointless understatement to say that this has been my most anticipated event for the last two months, minimum. I've got the album on repeat in my stereo right now. The Lady does not disappoint. Birds is a little more sedate, a little more thoughtful than her previous albums, but it's also more even. The 12 songs on the album (not a one of them I didn't instantly like) are nicely balanced against each other and keep the feel and theme of the album going strong throughout. Erin's guitar and voice are as good as they've ever been, her lyrics are clever and playful. The whole thing's just great and, if I had to pick a single word, uplifting.

Erin's, stylistically, a hard girl to pin down, and I think that's intentional. She's not really folk, not really "singer-songwriter," not really indie. I think Erin probably puts it best herself on myspace, when she says "the music that i make is a direct reflection of the music i love, and i love music that lifts you, that makes you feel invincible and incredible for 3 and a half minutes of roaring guitars and choruses- the highest hopes, the deepest faith expressed in the dynamics of emotion and sound." I can't argue with that sentiment, and while this album might not quite get up to "roaring," it certainly hits the rest dead on. Honestly, this album reminds me a little of an all-Erin version of the Garden State soundtrack.

If you want to give a listen to what this album's like, check it out here. Needless to say, I heavily recommend it.

Oh, and this entry's title, a reference to the opening song on the album, is Latin. Translated into English it says "through rough ways, to the stars." In other words: through suffering, to greatness. Yeah.

Now there's something I actually like about Canada.*

*The Bard, to my mind, doesn't really count as Canadian. Nor do the members of Rush.