Bleeding Fiction

I sent out three more grad school applications today (those for University of Washington: China, Cornell and University of Pennsylvania), bringing the grand total of applications sent to four. To go out tomorrow or Wednesday are University of Washington: Japan and University of Arizona. And then I'm done. It'll be nice to be through with them all, but I'm not looking forward to the wait. I'll just have to throw myself into other things and try my best to forget about it all until the responses start showing up in my mailbox.

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving has come and gone. I have a hard time expressing how much this holiday means to me, mostly because I'm not sure why it does mean so much. Suffice to say it does and I'll get back to the idea of why some other time, like next year. For now, let's just say that I enjoyed the holiday immensely again this year, ate dinner with my mum's family and got to hang with my completely adorable little cousins.

Other than that, the weekend was pretty much a wash. I watched 5 hours of Kim Possible, got a haircut, helped my folks move their furniture, did my laundry, bought Christmas gifts for my grandparents and my mother, wrote some notes and did some research for a short story I'm going to write next weekend and did the outline/scene list for the second draft of my first novel. Which, looking at it, is a pretty big list of things, but I still don't feel like I had a productive weekend. Mostly that's because I didn't actually write anything, but the outline needs tweaks before I'm ready to have a go. The wordcount on the second draft will wait a bit, probably until I return from Russia, unfortunately.

I sent in my last two grad school applications on Thursday, so that's it. Khattum Shud - completely finished, over and done with. I'll give each of the schools a call on Tuesday to make sure they've got everything and then I'll stick true to plan and not think about them at all. I promise I'll let everyone know what's going on when I start to get responses.

In further news, InterExchange is changing offices and we spent this week packing. It was a big pain, but it's over now. Monday morning I'll walk into a brand new office. With a window!

So, here is some of the text of an email I received from a woman in the Asian & Middle Eastern Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania this morning:

We are in the process of reviewing applications for admission to our graduate program in September 2004. I cannot tell you anything official yet, but unofficially I am certain you will be admitted. We are now working on fellowships. We plan to make every effort to be able to offer you a fellowship for next year.

I know Prof. Hurst called you last week to let you know how impressed we are with your application.

Dear Jeffrey,

I might get in, I might not. I've got no way to know yet. But an email like this doesn't make me feel good about my chances and if I don't get in then the email just becomes cruel. And I was doing so well at not thinking about it, too...

note: the order of the quoted text above was changed for dramatic effect.

After I received that email on Sunday, I sent a nice reply to the woman at UPenn. I told her that I wasn't named Jeffrey, nor did I receive a call from a Prof. Hurst. I mentioned that I did, however, apply to UPenn and hoped that the email was meant for me but only slightly mistaken in the facts. If, however, I went on, the email was not for me, well, then I hoped my application was impressive nevertheless and that the email got to the proper person.

Here's the response:

Thank you for sending this. It was intended for someone named Jeffrey. I have not read your application. Probably it is in a field far different from mine. I am sorry about the confusion.

So now I make some deductions. First, as I have not received a phone call, my application was less exciting than Jeffrey's. Second, this woman (and I am intentionally preserving her anonymity here, although I realize a quick search makes that point moot) very likely did, in fact, read my application. After all, she didn't pull my email address randomly off of the web and she is the Graduate Chair.

This leads to the conclusion that she's lying to me. There could be any number of reasons for this, but the simplist explanation is that she wants to forestall my asking about the status of my application. Unfortunately here is where the causal chain breaks down. There are too many possibilities. It may be that my application is still under heavy review and she'd rather not say one way or the other while said review is going on. It may be that my application is not up to snuff and will be rejected and she would rather avoid the conflict of a personal declaration of such. Other reasons abound.

So, I'm left with a few questions: Did this woman think I wouldn't see through her transparent lie? Do I do anything about it? Do I call her on her lie? Would that be too insulting or would it demonstrate my intelligence? Do I take the subtle approach and express concern that, oh, well, maybe my application isn't complete if she hasn't seen it yet? Or would that display an inability to complete tasks and follow up? Or am I just thinking about this too much?

Well, I'm open to suggestions.

Got my first grad school rejection tonight. I expected a few, so it's not a surprise or anything. I'm fully aware and accepting of the fact that I may not get in anywhere at all.

It's just a little upsetting that the rejection came from Berkeley, seeing as the rejection came less than a week after my trip to San Francisco. Berkeley is, you know, right across the bay from San Francisco. It's on the same public transit system. After my trip I went and thought "hey, you know, I like this town a whole lot. I think I'd really like it if I got into Berkeley. I'd be very happy spending a few years here."

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call "tempting fate." Also "irony."

Well, back to not thinking about it and more waiting.

The response from Berkeley came via email. I forgot to mention that earlier. I guess it saves them a few bucks on postage to do it that way, but I think that's a tacky way to get an important bit of information. To be fair, I did send them my application by email, but I also paid them $60 for the privilege so hey.

Anyway, the day after I got the email I sent a response, asking if I could appeal the decision or get on a waiting list. I mentioned that I'd just been to the San Francisco Bay Area, spent a day in the Asian Art Museum, briefly toured through Berkeley and fell in love. I don't expect it'll help, but they've already rejected me, so it's not like it could hurt.

A letter came in the mail today. An honest-to-God letter in a really-and-truly envelope that was sitting in my actual, physical mailbox. I thought that was a nice touch. The letter came from the Japan Studies Program at the University of Washington and informed me that they "are recommending to the Graduate School that [I] be offered admission to [their] program for Autumn 2004." The letter went on to say that the Japan Studies people "expect that [the Graduate School] will concur in [their] recommendation and send [me] an official offer."

Take careful note of what's going on here: The program that I want to go to wants to accept me, but it's concievable that the school will say no. I've been in a situation like that before, only replace the "Japan Studies program" with "a girl I used to date" and the "Graduate School" with "her insane parents." I'm thinking of reasons why the Graduate School might disregard the Japan Studies Program's recommendation and turn me down, but all of the ones I can come up with involve circumstances that are a bit beyond the every day. Not that those have ever been lacking from my life...

The whole thing gets even more fun when you look at the form that came with the letter - the form I fill out and mail back to the Japan Studies Program in order to accept their offer of admission. The offer of admission that might never actually come. It'd be like buying tickets to see a movie that was never actually going to be released.

What makes this news particularly apt, though, is that it comes the day after Adi's birthday party, where the delightful Jeni Garber told me she planned to move to Seattle at the summer's end. How's that for timing?

And for the record: I'm waiting to send that form back until I a) get the actual admissions offer from the actual Graduate School and b) hear back from the other school's I've applied to. Yes, UW is my top choice, but I'm torn between their China and Japan Programs and if someone else offers me more money... well, sometimes want must bow to need.

I got an email today from a Graduate Assistant at Berkeley. When I sent out that email to ask for an appeal, I guess she was the person it went to. I guess that original email denial came from her mailbox, which makes the whole process at Berkeley even more tacky. Thinking about it, being a Graduate Assistant must suck. You're basically a secretary/intern/general grunt, doing the dirty work and without any say in what you do. Only you don't get paid for it (at least not much) and the people you're working for are people that you also need to learn from. At least as a Research Assistant you get to do research and as a Teaching Assistant you get to teach. To think I may be putting myself through Graduate School by doing this.

That's one thing I'll really miss about working at InterExchange. There, I have so much freedom in what I get to do and so much input into the way the program works. I may have a boss, but I have very rarely felt as if I were anything less than an important member of the team. At least in terms of dealing with the Camp USA program. The company as a whole, well, that's a slightly different story.

Anyway, the Graduate Assistant said she'd forward my message on to the Graduate Chair (the woman I thought I was writing to begin with) and one of the two of them would get back to me. I have to say, knowing that I've pretty much almost certainly gotten into UW, I'm a little less eager to get a turn-around on the Berkeley thing, and I will feel sort of bad if they admit me on appeal only to have me turn them down instead, but I'll live.

I got home today after a very, very long day to find a nice letter from the Graduate School at the University of Washington waiting for me . They've decided that they agree with the Japan Studies program, after all, and have extended me an offer of admission. So I can now say with a degree of comfortable certainty that I'll be going off to graduate school in the fall.

This is a good thing, but the timing on it is a little awkward and makes me pause to reflect. We placed thirty applicants at camps today. There are now thirty more people in the world who will have a chance to share their lives and cultures with Americans and take something of the US culture back home. There are thirty more people in the world who will have a chance to spread the idea of the global community, who can help to break down the barriers that exist between peoples and nations. Thirty young men and women from a dozen nations who are the future leaders of their communities and who will become small heroes in the world's search for peace.

When I go off to grad school, I'll be taking steps forward for me, personally. I'll broaden my personal horizons and abilities and opportunities. But I will leave behind a job that has more meaning and value to me, that does more for the world, than anything I have done before and anything I am likely to do after. I'm not trying to make myself out to be Gandhi; I know the victories I achieve are small ones. But, a person at a time, they are victories all the same. Come autumn I'll lay down the work I do now with a very heavy heart indeed.

I got my last email from UC Berkeley this evening. They reviewed my application and were unable to reconsider their decision. This isn't a surprise or anything, or even a big disappointment. I didn't really expect them to change their minds.

What aggrivates me, though, is the text of the email itself. Now, I do appreciate the time the woman took to write to me and even more the time she took to explain their reasoning; that was very kind and certainly more than they had to do. But there was one particular phrase in the email that really aggrivated me. It said "your statement for the FLAS fellowship...was not considered a sophisticated argument." Ouch.

Now, leaving aside the fact that my application for a particular fellowship shouldn't directly impact on my admission into the school or program at large, the woman had many solid reasons to restate my rejection from the program without citing my lack of a sophisticated argument. For example, she also cited the fact that I'm "not as far long on [my] language training [as the other applicants]." This is true and certainly the first reason that I would have to reject me from the program. She could easily have stopped there.

I can't, unfortunately, remember what statement I made for my FLAS fellowship application. For all I know it may well have been an "[un]sophisticated argument." I do make those from time to time. It may well be, and likely is, that I'm reading far too much into this. I want to stress that I'm not taking this personally; I know the woman and department haven't got it in for me and I bear her and them no malice, I know I wasn't the strongest applicant. It's just that I thought the tone of the statement - with its typos and use of the weak passive voice - was a little on the insulting side.

My second letter from UW came in the mail today. It was a brief and formal rejection. At least it was actually signed, with a pen, by a human being. Presumably the one whose name was attached to the letter.

So, I didn't make it into UW's China Studies program. I'm disappointed, of course, but in some ways this letter comes as a relief to me. Having to make the choice between UW's Japan and China programs was not something I was looking forward to; there are too many interesting things to study in each field and without the weight of location to help me make up my mind, the decision would've been difficult. I would've managed well enough, but now the problem's solved.

Half of the wait, then, is over. I've still got three more schools to hear from. Hopefully those letters'll come soon. I'm getting a little tired of this.

I am on a fuckin' roll here. Today's letter came from the University of Pennsylvania. Apologies to Bekah but despite her best efforts over the past few years it looks like I still won't be moving to Philly. This particular rejection comes as no surprise, given some of the email I had previously received on the subject.

The letter said, in part, that the writer trusts I "have been, or will son be, admitted elsewhere to a university of [my] choice." Delightful. As a matter of fact, I have. But what if Penn was my top choice? I mean, I didn't tell them that I'd applied to other schools and Penn's a great school with a solid program. What if I'd had my heart set on going there? Well, then the letter would just be rubbing some salt into the wound, eh? I understand that the people writing these things are just trying to make a hard blow land a little softer, and I appreciate that, but I think they should consider more carefully exactly how they do that. Eh. I'm sure people would complain just as much if they did it some other way.

As the deadline to respond to UW's Japan Studies program closes in (it's April 15th and keep in mind that my form still has to cross the country via your friends in the US Postal Service...), I've begun to pester the last two programs I need to hear from. I figure they should've responded to me by now...

Today I spoke to the fine people at the University of Arizona. I'll get my official letter in the mail in a week or so, but they were kind enough to send me an email to tell me that I was rejected, so that I could go about making other plans. I appreciate that, even if they should've gotten back to me two weeks ago.

The woman who wrote me the email was even kind enough to tell my why I got rejected. Here, of course, is where I get annoyed. According to the email, I was denied because my "Academic record was not competitive and [I had] low standard test scores." Alright, I'll give them a non-competitive academic record. I was never exactly what you would call an "achiever" in school. I was, to put a not-so-fine point on it, a slacker. That's not to say I didn't do well; I graduated with a 3.25 gpa overall and a 3.5 to 3.75 gpa in each of my major fields. When you consider that the scale only goes up to 4 that's not too shabby. But yeah, they're right: in the world of graduate school applications, that's not competitive.

However, that part about the "low standard test scores?" Bullshit. The only standard test that I took to get into grad school was the GRE, and I made that test my bitch. There are three sections to the GRE. First, analytical. I scored an 800 out of 800. It was literally impossible for me to have done any better. Second, verbal. I scored 760 out of 800. That was better than 96% of the other people who took the test. In what way are these two scores "low?" Am I to believe that my score of 650 out of 800 on the quantitative section of the test, which was only better than 76% of the other people who took the test, did me in? Are they seriously telling me that my math skills weren't good enough to get me into a program that has nothing whatsoever to do with math, but is rather about my ability to understand complex written material and formulate and communicate a written argument?

Further, am I expected to respect the decision of people who confuse the word "standard" for "standardized" and who use phrases such as "the deny reasons" and "you will be receiving" in their communications?

This is, I know, not the first time I've criticized the grammar of the grad school people, but I don't feel I'm unjustified in this. These are graduate-level academic departments at respected universities I'm talking about here. In the program I work in, which brings teenagers who do not speak English as a native language to work at summer camps (and I will be the first to admit that if there's one thing camp is not it is academic), we actually pay a professional to check over our form letters and make sure that we've weeded out things like the passive voice. It's not a hard thing for a person to do.

Alright, I'll stop now. I don't need to hear more of this, much less anyone else.

The letter came from Cornell today. It's really sad that I didn't get in there. I didn't particularly want to go there but... well, Jesus, I got in last time, you know, I really figured I'd get in this time, too. Eh, they probably rejected me just for harassing them so much.

Cornell has a nice logo, though. It's just a red square with the word "Cornell" in it in white.

The letter was a bit late, though. I gave up on hearing back from Cornell and mailed out my acceptances for UW yesterday. That's three letters, by the way. I think I've got a bureaucratic nightmare ahead of me...

To get into the Museology (read: Museum Studies) Certification program at UW, which is a 12-credit program beyond my 30-credit Master's degree, I had to send a little email with a paragraph or so explaining why I was interested. It took me a while to come up with a reason for doing the certification program that wouldn't get me the response "Why didn't you do a Museum Studies Master's then?" Here's what I came up with:

As you know, I'm interested in the Museology certification program. The "why" for that is pretty simple: I want to work in a museum. I think the better question is why I'm after a Museology certification instead of a Master's.

I grew up in New York City and spent much of my childhood at the different museums around here, big and small, and what I saw enchanted me. I've always been a fast reader with a good retention, but there's a certain visceral quality to museum exhibits that capture a physicality that text and picture can't come close to. A museum is, to me, experiential learning.

It's that sort of experiential learning that I'm hoping for by combining my Master's program in Japan Studies with a Museology certification. I'll be able to see the immediate usefulness of what I learn in the Japan program by considering how to apply it to a museum based on what I've learned in Museology and likewise the practicalities of Museology with, I hope, enhance my study of Japan as it clues me in to specific ideas to apply there. I used this same approach in my undergraduate career, where I tripple-majored in Anthropology, History and Religion, and applied the concepts and theory unique to each to enhance my understanding of the others in turn.

I got a fun email from the University of Washington today. This letter relates to my second-year tuition. UW being a State school, tuition is less expensive for Washington State residents than it is for non-residents. Traditionally, second-year graduate students can apply to register as if they were residents, thereby paying a substantially reduced tuition. "Substantially" as in "the amount of money I pay would be cut by more than half."

Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. UW changed their policy so that now the only way to get the reduced tuition is to prove actual, non-education-related residence in Washington State. I can't think of a reason for them to do this other than money and that just pisses me off. Of course a University is a corporation; I know that. They have to make money to survive. But is it strictly necessary to penalize the people who've uprooted their entire lives to go study with you? Sure, many of us are there only because of school. But we still rent apartments, buy food and gas, go out to bars and restaurants, see movies and shows and pay taxes. What else does a person need to do to be a resident of someplace?

As it happens, the email told me. I'd have to be, I'm told an "active member of the community" or demonstrate "community ties." This can include "the purchase of real property, children in local schools, a partner or spouse employed locally, and roots in the community such as local clubs or organizations, or local volunteer internships."

Obviously I can't afford to buy property and I don't have children or a partner or spouse. I'd considered getting involved a bit with the writing community while I was out there, maybe helping out the folks who organize Westercon or Clarion West, but that's an unlikely plan at best. Westercon won't be in Seattle for at least two years (likely more) and Clarion's a sort of odd bug, being a writer's workshop. I have every intention of getting involved with some of the museums out there (Seattle Asian Art Museum and Experience Science Fiction say what?), but given my course of study that's academic work, not voluntary. I'll have friends out there, of course, and some of them (the delightful Jeni Garber, for example) will even be unrelated to school. But will that be enough?

I fuckin' hope so.

Blog: Slightly wonked due to a hacker. Bastard. Host is cool, providing on-site visits and discussions of poetry. Also, she fixed the blog. Mostly. Last update along these lines lost to the digital ether. Good riddance, I say.

Vitaly: Got married recently. Yay! Nice wedding, very traditional, right down to the break-dancing-Brad-Pitt-look-alike rabbi.

Kiki: Now engaged. About damn time. She and Raphael have only been dating for eight and a half years.

Erin McKeown: Free show at South Street Seaport past Thursday. Excellent music, as always. Open air = poor acoustics but great breeze. Too much sitting, not enough dancing.

Visitations: Something Positive went pro; creator-dude Randy got mad donations and quit his job to do the comic. That's cool. Also, Bekah started a livejournal. Its bilingualness astounds me. Go be astounded too.

Lena: What I said I'd write: Everything she says about why she and I should not be together makes perfect sense. But my life bleeds fiction and makes no sense, so there. Plus, I love fairy tales and happily-ever-afters.

Mother: In hospital for non-serious, non-diabetes problems. Yeesh.

Borges: My current reading. Witty and self-deprecating. Major images are mirrors, labyrinths and knife-fights. Very cool.

Saved: A movie. Pokes fun at very religious types. Funny as hell. Go see it. I want to see it again. And own it on DVD.

Work: Increasingly less busy. Or decreasingly busy. Whichever. Yay.

School: Registration papers to arrive... soon?

Writing: It's June. Leave me the fuck alone.

Back to a regular schedule presently.

I have to confess that no matter what I've written in the Foundations to the left, I haven't been working on Fire and Jade lately. It's the summer, which means I've had a lot of distractions lately. Combine that with the nitty-gritty crap that I haven't spoken about much here, the stuff I need to do to move to Seattle, like packing and storing stuff at my parents' house, finding a moving company, finding a place to live, I just haven't gotten any work done on it. That's not meant to be an excuse, just a statement of fact.

In the meanwhile, it's not like I haven't gotten any writing done. I have, in fact, been doing a whole lot of research and note-taking for a few different things and actual scripting for another project. A project that will see the light of day, and the eyes of readers, much sooner than my massive pseudo-Chinese epic.

But once I'm off at school, I'm going to get back to that epic. When I do, though, I think I might be in some sort of trouble. See it's recently come to my attention that I have no idea how to write a best selling fantasy novel. Let me run you through the paces of what I've learned and tell you how I don't stack up:

1. Create a Main Character... 2. Create a Quest.

Most of the people who read your book will be unconfident males. So make your main character a Loser. Aimless, shy, cowardly, guilty, ill, lazy, rural - any of these will do... Out of the blue, the Loser must be suddenly told that the fate of the whole world � or some other world - rests in his incompetent hands.

Let's see... Guan Wen's unconfident, yes, but that sort of comes from standing around the greatest heroes your country's ever seen. You'd be pretty unconfident if you had to fight, say, Darth Vader, too. Of course, he's not saving the world, so much. No apocalypse looms. If he screws up, the worst that happens is some people die and his country gets taken over by a foreign power.

3. Create a Motley Bunch of Companions.

The Loser/Hero must have a Motley Bunch of Companions drawn from different human species e.g. dwarf, elf, Rotarian etc. Each of these companions will have one particular skill such as sword fighting, lasso twirling etc which will come in handy at a particular part of the story.

This is where I start to run into trouble. I've got no pointy-eared, thin and wispy types for girls to swoon over, no short, fat, bearded guys to make folks laugh. Do the hero's friends even have skills? More or less...

4. Create a Wise but Useless Guide.

The Guide is wise adviser who knows all about the Quest, but never fully reveals it. He also appears to have immense powers but will not use them when they are most required.

Gandalf will not be making an appearance in this book. Nor will Allanon, Zedd, Moiraine, Fizban, Zifnab or aging wizards of any other stripe. The closest I've got is a doctor. He's a really good doctor. That's about it.

6. Create the Enemy

Every Fantasy Land has a Dark Enemy, an almost omnipotent ArchVillain who is trying to utterly destroy it. It is not clear how the ArchVillain benefits from this. This Villain always has access to vast armies which require no food, payment or other provisioning and can travel thousands of mile and lay siege to cities without any need for a catering corps. For all this, the Enemy is completely dependant on some insignificant object such as a ring or a piece of rock for his power.

Shit. I knew I forgot something. Conflict? Conflict I've got in spades. Villains... hhm... maybe... Nope. Not a one.

Bad Expendables.

It will be necessary to create Bad Expendables. These are the orcs, goblins, trolls, dragons, wights or any other creatures that we are happy to kill in their thousands. They are usually black, hairy, sweaty or in some other way unacceptable by middle class Caucasian standards. Often they are deformed, based on the traditional belief that an ugly body reflects an ugly soul. It is our way of doing a service to the sick and disabled by reminding readers that people who are disfigured look that way because they�re evil.

Which means it's probably bad that, with one possible exception, every last character or extra in my book is human. Damn.

Note that in Fantasy Lands the concept of reform or rehabilitation is unknown. All allies, minions, vassals and instruments of the Enemy must be summarily killed even if they served their master primarily out of fear.

Also bad for me, in that the humans switch sides when they lose, what with them not wanting to die and all. And the army commanders take the troops, of course, since it gives them more soldiers fighting on their side.

Pure Maiden Warriors.

Losers are scared of sexuality or dependency in women, so women in fantasy novels are so powerful and pure they make Joan of Arc look like Pamela Anderson. They are strong, noble, loyal, brave, high-bred and usually die in the end � well what else are we going to with them? They�re too scary to marry, and no one in Epic Fantasy Novels ever has sex.

Uhm... I've got women, yes, and I'd like to think I'm writing a few strong female characters. But none of them are "pure maiden warriors" by any stretch of the imagination. Don't have any sex scenes, either.

Body Types.

Skinny people are wily and intelligent, big strong bear-like people are invariably dumb.

Things work a little differently in Chinese literature, where the wily ones are typically extremely obese. Because they're eunuchs. The going theory being that they've got plenty of time to eat and plot and scheme, what with them not having a sex drive and all.

Note: Fantasy Worlds never have working economies. Very few people work, there is little agriculture and it is not clear where food comes from.

And yet I keep putting all these damn farmers everywhere!

Of course, considering my initial idea when I sat down to write this thing was to get away from the stereotypical fantasy novel, which had become stale and boring and repetetive to my eyes (and clearly to the eyes of other people, if they're writing things like the web page I've been talking about, I think I'm succeeding admirably. Now I just have to, you know, finish.

I had a strange moment at orientation today wherein my graduate advisor effectively turned to me and said "Why'd we let you into this program?" It did wonders for my self-esteem, since I've been asking myself that question all summer. I considered asking to transfer out to the school's Comparative Religion or Russia, East Europe and Central Asia program, but I realized that my situation wouldn't change much, linguistically, in the former and I wouldn't be admitted into the later. So, I'm stuck here, which may be for the best.

I met a few people today, some of them in my program. The folks in my program are mostly coming fresh off the JET program, which means both that they have a common bond which can (at times) leave me out in the cold and that their Japanese is much better than mine. I think, just from research interests, I'm going to be the crazy fringe guy in the program, which is a bit expected and also suits me just fine. It's what comes of approaching Japan purely from a pop-culture perspective and looking at things, more than ever these days, as informative for strange fiction.

Speaking of fiction, or of strangeness, my stuff will arrive to me sometime around the fourth or fifth of October. My car will come about a week thereafter. Tomorrow I head off to the local mall to buy a sleeping bag; it would be plain silly of me to stay in a hotel for the next two weeks, and too expensive besides.

Aside from that, I deal with the necessities of life and wait for the day when I won't be ready to lay down and sleep at ten in the evening. I have the worst trouble with the time change between the Right Coast and this one. Perhaps counterintuitively larger shifts are easier to manage; they throw me up into the air along with my regular schedule and, when I come down, I land right into the new schedule. These smaller shifts are more difficult; they just mean that I wake up and get tired earlier.

More on time zones tomorrow. For now, I debate the relative benefits and drawbacks of committing acts of fiction while tired.

Let me first point out that I've noticed an unusually large number of Ravens here at UW. It's a little intimidating.

That said, amongst my errands for this morning was Registration. It was a battle against bureaucracy almost worthy of Ben. (Speaking of: Ben, do you know what's up with this pdf and your picture being on it?) I visited four different buildings on a journey that covered about two miles of ground (and resulted in me being right back here in my apartment to register online). Thankfully, I won't have to go through any of it next time around.

My classes this quarter are a mostly predictable set. I'm taking Japanese (second year, for now - we'll see if I have to drop down to first year or not once class begins), Introduction to Japanese Studies and Japanese Society. Both of the listed books for that last class are gender studies-type books. As an undergrad, I really hated the way women's studies had taken over all of academia. I hate it no less now. Nothing wrong with women's studies, mind you, just that it's not so much what I wanted to study. Ah, well. I've only got eleven actual classroom hours to clock in a week.

I'm also taking Russian, though I'm doing that unofficially. If I were actually getting credit for the class, I'd have to pay UW an extra $1600. Since those credits wouldn't do anything for me in terms of requirements, I spoke to the professor who said I could just sit in and learn. Woo hoo! I'm going to learn Russian! (at an extra four unofficial classroom hours)

Speaking of things Russian, UW has a Red Square. Here's a picture:

Nowhere near as impressive as the actual one in Moscow. Why, though, does everywhere I go seem to have a Red Square or some other Russian reference? Or is it just that my brain is cued up to notice this sort of thing?

My first two classes today were language classes. Japanese in the morning, Russian in the evening. My Japanese fucked me up the add with a knobby baseball bat and left splinters behind when it pulled out. It was, in other words, a bad experience. When I got into class, there was something written on the board. It turned out that it was our homework assignment, but I know that only from inference because I couldn't read it. It was in Japanese, you see. I wrote it down, to try and translate when I got home. No such luck. The kanji she used are in the first-year Japanese book. I understood pretty much nothing of what was being said in class today. Nothing.

I am, for the record, screwed. I can't take second year Japanese. But if I can't and have to move down to first year, there's the very real possibility that I'll get booted from my program. I'm not entirely sure I care. Watch as depression sets in!

That said, I owned my Russian class. It's a pity I'm not in school to study this shit. Now, admittedly, I have something of a leg-up in Russian, what with the intense exposure to the language over the past four years and my already knowing how to read Cyrillic. That made it very easy to handle today's class. That advantage won't last.

It's interesting the way they teach language here, by the way. They opt for total immersion from day one, not speaking English if it's at all possible. It's pretty cool, I think, and likely to be much more effective in the long run. But it's also a reason that I'm so tremendously far behind in Japanese.

Yeah, I'm screwed. Pity me.

It's not a very entertaining article, but I love the headline: "Models May Underestimate Climate Swings". Of course the article's talking about how current statistical analysis may have sold short the wide range of climactic conditions that our planet may have experienced before we were around to record such things and the wide range of climactic conditions we may yet encounter ("'Things can get pretty incendiary,' says Thomas Crowley"), but I've got the image of a bunch of Victoria's Secret models, complete with push-up bras and feathered wings, frowning thoughtfully in front of a weather map stuck in my head now.

In other news, my local volcano may erupt soon. I've never had a local volcano before. It's been pleasant, so far. There have apparently been three to four earthquakes every minute around the volcano, but I haven't felt a one. I hope it remains that way. I'm about a two hour drive away, which I'm guessing means about one hundred miles. The parks people have only evacuated a twelve mile radius, so I'm most likely safe. I guess we'll see.

If you want to watch a picture feed from the Mount St. Helen's VolcanoCam, you can do that here, but I warn you: like most things of its type, it's extraordinarily boring. Especially at night.

Lastly, school. I wasn't kicked out today. I'm dropping down to a first-year Japanese course, and probably start in winter quarter. My advisor stressed how difficult it'll be for me to complete the program in only two years by starting at first year Japanese, but said that if it was really necessary, we wouldn't have a choice. I wonder, but only vaguely, if maybe I wouldn't've done better to be kicked out.

(Russian class, by the way, continues to be fun. We had to pick Russian names for ourselves for class discussion; I picked Kostya, for obvious reasons. The name of the girl in today's example dialogue was Lena, which just made the exercise odd.)

My worldly possessions have still not yet arrived with me here. I did, however, receive a call this morning from the men who have my goods. I expected them to say something along the lines of "we haf ze documents. Eef you wish zem returned to you, you vill deliver fife meelion of your dollars to..." and so on. But no, I was simply told that my stuff's in Oregon and should be to me on Wednesday. Only a week after the due-date on the contract, so not too shabby.

In other news, I got back my first paper in my lame-ass Intro. to Japan Studies class. I got a B, which was better than I was expecting, and about what the paper was worth. However, I find it a little difficult to take advice on writing from someone who circles the "more so" and asks "is this a word?" First, no, it's two words. Second, yes, it is a perfectly valid phrase. In theory I'm meant to learn something while I'm here, right? I mean, besides how to be even more obnoxious, self-righteous and conceited than I already am?

Beyond that? Due to the lack of anything remotely comfortable to sit on and for other reasons which will soon become apparent, I'm feeling incredibly restless. I'm so easily distracted I may just stop this post in mid-

If it's not one thing, it's another. First heartbreak, and now I found out that the Museum Studies Certificate program has been suspended. As in "is no longer available to take/get."

I should, perhaps, take this opportunity to point out that when I was wrestling with the final decision of whether to go to UW or not, whether to incur the expense of another two years of schooling, whether to quit my stable and largely enjoyable job that had a positive impact (however small) on the world at large, it was the Museum Studies Certificate that pushed me over the edge. "Sure, there are a lot of down sides," I said to myself, "but at least at the end I'll be able to work in a museum, and that will be way cool." Not so, as it turns out.

I'm meeting with my advisor on Monday and find out if I have any real options. Can I, for example, transfer out to another program (The Museum Studies program, for preference, but the general International Studies program would serve me almost as well, just in a different area of interest)? In all likelihood, though, that will not be a choice. My choices will most likely come down to 1) Stay in school, spend a ton of money over the next two years, graduate with a Masters degree that will not help me at all in any career that I want to have or 2) Drop out of school, having wasted some four-thousand dollars or more in tuition and... do what? I don't have a job to go back to. I don't even have a room in my parents' house. And I don't want to talk about the wasted cost of shipping my car and things out here, only to ship them all back. But what else do I do? Stay here? Why? For how long? Doing what?

Have you ever had one of those months where you feel your life's just falling apart?

I spoke to the woman in charge of the Museum Studies Graduate Certificate yesterday. She took some sort of pity on me and let me into the program, despite the fact that it has officially closed and they have no more funding and usually only PhD candidates do something like this and so on. It's alright. I can take her pity. It's not like I begged for it or anything.

So, I'm not dropping out of school. I'm going to get a Master's degree with a Certificate in Museum Studies and, in theory, will get a fun job after that. That's pretty cool.

But with the results of the election last night, it's also sort of a pity. As I've said before, I do not want to live in a country in which Bush is president. It disappoints me to no end that Bush's party has won so many seats in Congress. It frightens me that he may have the opportunity to appoint three Supreme Court Justices in the next four years.

I'm not much in the way of conspiracy theories. I'm not inclined to believe that Bush stole this election. Honestly, I wish I could. Because the alternative, the true situation wherein the majority of the people in this country actually want Bush in the office, is infinitely more frightening to me.

But the fact of the matter is that things aren't over yet. The death knell hasn't rung on this whole "democracy" thing. Patriot Act aside, this isn't a fascist state. Things will doubtless get worse in the next four years, but after that there's the chance that things can get better.

That doesn't mean I want to be here and sit out those next four years, though. Any suggestions on where I can go and what I can do once I get there?

my Japanese speaking skills + Alcohol (within limits) = Better Japanese speaking skills

Given: I have a bottle of vodka in my freezer.

Given: I had my Japanese oral exam today.

Conclusion? I should have had a few shots before I went to take the exam.

Unfortunately, my math skills are not good enough for me to have realized this until after the exam.

Also, my math skills are not good enough for me to express the above equation in a way that would come off as... uhm... clever? Accurate? Cool? Funny?

Help?

Update: I got 94% on my oral exam. Which means either that my sober spoken Japanese is much better than my conscious mind is willing to comprehend ('cause my conscious mind is telling me about all of the things I said things wrong or didn't understand) or my Japanese teacher has a crush on me.

I said that I was going to like my classes much better this term because they were going to be things I was actually interested in. Well... sort of.

My museum class is actually a Museum Management Seminar. Anyone who's been to a management seminar before will know that they're boring as shit. Now picture that boredom and add in homework and you'll know the sort of agony this class is going to cause me over the next two and a half months. I'm surprised that the professor hasn't yet told us to "think outside the box."

My Seminar on Buddhism should be more interesting. It's about Buddha Nature which is... well, hard to pin down. Mostly the qualities of being a Buddha. But the class has already given me some insight into some fiction-related stuff so I'll consider it "good." (Yes, that's primarily what I look for in a class and what leads me to call a class "good." Always has been, even before I started actually, you know, writing.) Funny thing, though: the professor seems to want us to achieve enlightenment before the end of the term. I'd better get to it...

Words and phrases used by the professor today in my Seminar in Museum Management Theory class:

"Agenda Items"

"Action Steps"

"Strategic Planning"

"Visualize"

"Goals and Controls"

"A Team Consult"

Today the man told us that there are three ways to become a leader and that they are: 1) Be born a leader, 2) come to it gradually through the ranks or 3) have it thrust upon you unexpectedly.

I have to take a class for this?

I think I'm going to stop paying attention and just write or something. It'll be better for my brain.

The Henry M. Jackson School For International Studies here at the University of Washington ("The Wash") is one of the more prestigious schools of its type in the nation. It ranks pretty close to the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University ("Life Under the Doomshield") and the Elliot School for International Affairs at George Washington University ("The School I Couldn't Have Afforded To Go To"). Although I have no real school spirit whatsoever, I'm actually very proud to have done (some of) my undergraduate work at Maxwell and to be doing my graduate work at Jackson. But there are times when I have to wonder if that pride has been misplaced. This is an excerpt from an email I received today, about a class I might be interested in:

The Center has another Canadian Studies class available for spring quarter -- Canadian Values and Symbols. The course if very popular and can only accommodate 15 students. This seminar, a response to the events of September 11, 2001, is a review of the factors in Canadian life, history, and experience, which have contributed to the formation of national values that shape Canadian life. It also examines the role of symbols in Canadian life, including the monarchy and the crown, peacekeeping and compromise, willingness to accommodate a wide variety of peoples within Canadian society and, wherever possible, draw on the values of other cultures.

I had my second oral exam for Japanese today, wherein my teacher and I were supposed to have a brief conversation. It went about as poorly as the last time. My Japanese teacher said "Nihon ni itta koto ga arimasu ka," which means "have you ever been to Japan." I thought she said "Nihon ni ikitai desu ka," which means "do you want to go to Japan." So I answered in the affirmative, and things got worse from there. I realized, when she asked me when I went, that I had made a mistake, but it was really too late to go back at that point.

I swear, if I get anything more than a D for this exam, it is because my Japanese teacher is truly, madly, deeply in love with me.

Update, 3/12: Just got my oral exam score. 91%. An A-. Yeah, she totally loves me.

I applied for a Foreign Language Area Scholarship for next year. It's pretty keen. It covers tuition and give me 14k on top of that for the year. It would make things a whole lot easier next year.

I didn't get the scholarship. The letter came in the mail today.

I'm not disappointed. I mean, it's a hard scholarship to get, high requirements, only a few of them to go around and so on. I wasn't really expecting to get it, so it's not much of a surprise that I didn't.

I'm actually a lot more concerned that my iPod has decided to get stuck in the "on and frozen in the middle of a song without actually playing it or being paused or responding to any outside stimulus" position. I've tried plugging it in to charge, pushing the buttons and plugging it into my computer (which doesn't recognize it). I've now moved on to "wait for the battery to run out, recharge it and see what happens then."

Well, at least it's under warranty...

one

I'm only taking two classes this term, but they're keeping me very busy during the week. It's probably going to be one of my busiest terms. I suspect this is because I'm actually doing all of the reading. I suspect the reason for that is that I'm required to take and turn in copious notes on everything I read. Bastard professors.

two

To be fair, I'm taking two cool classes this term, with interesting reading. They are "New Religions in East Asia" (aka "Japanese Cults") and "History, Culture and Conflict in Japan" (aka "Japanese Protest Movements"). These two courses are pretty much going to form the basic research of my Master's Thesis, whatever that ends up being about, so I figure it's a good idea to pay close attention.

three

In my readings I've gotten to "reacquaint" myself with some "old friends." Which is to say I get to read about the writings of anthropologist and religious types that I read as an undergrad. Guys like Weber and Durkheim and Geertz and Marx. Also Foucault, who (to grossly stereotype, as is my wont) is one of the only cool French people. Ever.

four

There's a weird cycle of secondary vs. primary sources going on here. As an underclassman, I read secondary sources (i.e. Scholars writing about shit they had read or observed). As an upperclassman, I read mostly primary sources (i.e. Writings that were actually from a given time period in history, actual religious scripture, etc. Usually in translation.). Now I've gone back to reading secondary sources. Some folks have some interesting ideas (see above), but it's sort of frustrating.

five

There's a girl in my Culture & Conflict class who looks a lot like Ann. It's sort of creepy.

six

I watch the Daily Show every night. They have journalists on a lot, who write books. They write books about the government, but also a lot about what's going on in the world today. Which is, I guess, what journalists do. Academics do the same thing. Hunter S. Thompson, he went to ride around with the Hell's Angels for a while and then published a book on them. That's journalist, sure, but it's also anthropology. I mean, exactly the same thing. So, what's the difference?

The differences are speed and depth. The most recent stuff I get to read in class was published maybe five years ago, and was probably in research for two years and then peer review for another year after that. Which means I'm reading about phenomenon that are eight years old. That makes it tough to dealing with contemporary culture, which is what I'm trying to do. How do you make predictions when the movement you want to make predictions for is already gone? At the same time, a scholarly work is (in theory) deeper, more critical and more accurate for having taken so long and been so carefully looked at.

But I wonder if this carefulness doesn't make scholars too slow. How can scholarship stay relevent when it's continually out of date? I wonder if there maybe isn't a way to speed scholarship up a little, to reach some comprimise between depth and speed. I think maybe not publishing more or less exclusively through academic presses is a good place to start; being, instead, like journalists and publishing through the mainstream media.

I wonder if this is actually a good idea, or just seems like one at nearly two in the morning...

seven

Part of course readings early in the term, even for graduate courses, is what I call "getting on the same page." You read a brief run of introductory philosophy stuff, the sort of stuff I was talking about under three, and you frame the terms of the debate for the rest of the class. It feels like reinventing the wheel a lot of the time, but all in all it isn't a horrible idea. So, we were trying to define "religion" the other day. This is particularly relevant for the New Religions in East Asia, 'cause a lot of them don't have much in common with what most people think of as religion.

But every approach, every thinker, has his flaws. Social Science theory's been stuck for a while with this very West-centric bias, these Enlightenment and Economic models that really don't effectively describe what we observe in the world. I mean that right now, the way people (and I mean politicians and lawyers and journalists - the people who ostensibly hold the power in our society - as well as the "common folk" like you and I) look at the world is rooted in theories that have their start in the Enlightenment and with Marx's conception of class struggle and Nietzsche and it's all wrong.

And thinking about that, I thought about some psychics theory that I was learning from Ogre this summer (clearly nothing involving actual math - just conceptual stuff), and I realized that what the social sciences need is the same break physics had. Physics went from Classical to Quantum mechanics. Someone needs to figure out a Quantum Theory for the social sciences. If someone can do it right, it'll spread and we will have a new way of looking at the world.

It'll take a while, of course. A generation, maybe two or three. But if someone figures out how, we can change the way people see the world for the better. This is the responsibility for social change that academics have - to change the way people think about the world, and to change it for the better.

Or, I dunno, maybe I just like the phrase "quantum social science theory."

eight

Quarters suck as compared to semesters. I've done both now, and I say this after careful observation. I am not covering a greater amount of material in class and I am not covering it in more depth with quarters than with semesters. I may, in fact, be covering less material; at the very least, I have less time to discuss the material (fewer actual in-class hours per class) with classmates and professors, so I may be covering it in less depth. But group-learning aside, with less time in which to process the same amount of material I am able to absorb less of it and think about it less critically before I'm forced to move on to something else, and I am therefore getting a poorer education.

I am covering the material in less time than under semesters, but I'm taking fewer classes at once, so the actual rate of education has not increased, either.

I'm taking procrastination to a whole new level tonight; I'm reaching a personal best. I've got a paper due tomorrow (well, today), just before noon. I didn't start writing this paper until ten o'clock this evening. I wasn't busy this weekend, I just didn't feel like doing it. So I put it off until close to the last possible minute.

I've been doing this with all of my school stuff. I just keep putting it of. I don't mind, except that it's impacting my ability to do other productive things. Write, for example. The weight of my acumulating work hangs around my neck like an albatross and drags me away from doing something useful. I'm finding it difficult to break that mold.

It's not that my school work is boring, either, just that I'm having a really hard time caring if it gets done; like a focused form of ennui. It's a motivation issue; I have no motivation to get this done.

I'd like to be motivated, but there's no scholastic reason to do my work at any time before the last minute; it doesn't hurt me academically. That means that my only motivation for getting my school work done quickly is to get some proper writing done. For a reason that's still obscure to me I'm not finding that to be sufficient motivation.

So: Motivate me! Intrigue me! Get me moving again! Dangle a juicy carrot in front of my donkey-like face! Just don't try to use logic.

I read a book about Aum Shinrikyo, the religion responsible for the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway a decade ago, for my New Religions class this weekend. It's helped my motivation immensely; this religion and the concepts surrounding it are pretty much the reason I took the class to begin with. I don't want to make light of a group who killed about a hundred people, injured a thousand more and, well, engaged in some serious domestic terrorism, but these guys are unreal. Here's a sample of what they're all about:

According to Aum Shinrikyo, the world is a corrupt, evil place and just living in the world causes you to absorb all sorts of bad "data" that will cause you to go to hell when you die.

Yes, data.

To avoid going to hell, Aum Shinrikyo members tried to purify themselves through ascetic practices like fasting, meditation and mortification. Which included being buried alive for days on end. They called these practices "cloning the guru," because they were trying to reprogram their minds by erasing their normal, bad thoughts and replacing them with the thought patterns of the guru, their leader.

Yes, cloning.

To purge bad data Aum Shinrikyo members also wore some electronic headgear called PSI ("Perfect Salvation Initiation") units, which Aum Shinrikyo's technicians had developed, and drank down parts of their leader, like his blood or his bath water or a liquid that those technicians made that they claimed replicated his DNA structure.

Yes, electronic headgear. Yes, religious technicians (who also made the sarin gas they used in the subway). Yes, blood drinking.

Aum Shinrikyo was a millenial cult, meaning that they believed the world would end soon. But they weren't talking nuclear war. That was too pedestrian for them. The guru was preaching more about plasma canons and lasers and kilometer-long mirrors in orbit around the earth that could reflect and focus the rays of the sun to incinerate everything beneath it.

All of which is freaky enough, but remember that these dudes went out and killed people, too. Why? Well, there were a lot of factors that lead up to the actual attack, but the reasons that an attack like that is valid within the belief structure to begin with run a little something like this: You can't help but being infected by corrupted data so long as you live in the world. The guru and other high ranking members of the religion, however, were advanced spiritual beings and could perform prayer rituals for the dead that would purge them of the bad data. See the connection? Killing you is actually saving you from falling into hell. They're doing it for your own good.

They read like a freaky bit of fiction. Which makes their reality all the more freaky.

In my class on Japanese Conflict we've been reading accounts of union protest movements. One of these unions was with a company that, in order to preserve anonymity, the author referred to as "Unikon." Now, I figure most people here can sort of figure what that brought to mind.

So, yeah, throughout class discussion the past week I'm sitting there thinking to myself "don't say Unicron, don't say Unicron, don't say Unicron..."

I'm happy to report that I was successful.

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 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.

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...

(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?

I'm now three weeks into, or one third of the way through, my intensive Japanese class. We're covering an entire year of Japanese in nine weeks; that means we're doing the equivalent of ten weeks, or one school term/quarter, in three weeks. That means that the big test I took yesterday was the equivalent of a final exam.

My main problem with Japanese is the little things. I'll forget a particle here or there; I'll leave off a trailing "i" or a small "tsu" in the middle of a word; I'll miss a stroke on a kanji. Details, really, though not unimportant ones. My test yesterday was almost entirely multiple choice. That was a great relief. Recognition is much easier than reproduction. I think I did pretty well.

Class, homework and studying eat up most of my free time during the week, but I've managed to start developing a new comic, late at night and in short class breaks. It'd be a six issue mini-series; a theme piece, really. It incorporates a lot of the stuff I've learned about Aum Shinrikyo and it's title is inspired by part of something The Ogre™ once said to me. It's called "Truth and Madness".

(and other places)

I've been pretty busy this week, which isn't much surprising. Japanese class continues to kick my ass. As of mid-day on Wednesday I passed the half-way point for the class, which means it's pretty much all downhill from here. I'm getting a C right now and my hope is that I can keep that grade from dropping further. We'll see.

I've also given up on this whole "working in museums" idea I had. I can't get a museum job I'd want without spending another 4 years in school and the museum jobs I can get I really don't want. Plus, I miss the sort of work I was doing at InterSlice all to hell. With that decision behind me, I thought I'd try to switch programs - maybe into the general International Studies Masters or into the Masters in Public Affairs program. At the very least, I figured I could do the International Development and Relief Graduate Certification.

None of that's happening. My odds of getting into those programs aren't bad, but I'd still have to apply. Which I couldn't do until next year. So I'd be finishing out the Japan Studies Masters before moving on to another Masters, anyway. That's just dumb. So, I'm going to just take it a little easy next year and finish out this Masters and see if I can get myself a job that way. It should work.

Yesterday, I went on a four year overdue tour of the Seattle Underground. It was visually cool as hell; century-old brick vaulting and anchoring masonry accessable through a series of innocuous doors in building faces. I was disappointed only in the limited scope of the tour and in the way the underground came about. The underground itself actually covers an area about 25 blocks on a side, running under pretty much the entire downtown section of the city, but the tour itself only covers about one square block, and you file through it in a line. So I lost a lot of the impact of how massive this area could be. Also, the underground was deliberately created by the city as a way of avoiding tidal floods back in the late 19th century. A lot of the mystery and magic of having an underground city (of sorts) is lost when you realize it didn't come around by accident.

I also bought two albums yesterday. The first was The Shins' Chutes Too Narrow and the second was They Might Be Giants' Flood. I haven't listened to Chutes Too Narrow yet; I've been too amused by listening to Istanbul (Not Constantinople) over and over and over again.

I think that about covers it.

Week 6 of the Japanese class ended yesterday, which puts me 2/3 of the way through. Only 3 weeks to go, which is something I'm very happy about. My grades are slipping a little, which is frustrating, as they weren't tremendously great to begin with. It's stressful and the fact that I don't get a full night's sleep during the week because I have to wake up for class isn't helping. The result is that my back right now is perpetually sore. I feel like the entire thing has become a network of knots.

Only 3 weeks to go, though, which is good. Also on Monday I'm going to start working with a tutor for a few hours a week, which should help me out immensely. My tutor is cute, too, which isn't something you're likely to hear me complain about and gives me motivation to do well.

Beyond that, things have been a little odd here the past few weeks. With the first volume of the Fables wrapped up I gave myself a bit of a vacation from writing. It's saved me a lot more stress during the week, but it's left my weekends sort of wide open, which has prompted me to do things like not get out of bed until noon. I need to find something to get me out of bed earlier on Saturdays and Sundays. Send ideas. Also, send cute girls.

I had my first session with my tutor today. She remains cute.

I'm not sure how much she's going to help me, though. Oh, she knows her Japanese pretty well and it's good that I'm forced to think about Japanese for some extra time while she's here, but there's a difference between people and paper. People get a funny look on their faces when you do something wrong and you know right away that you need to correct yourself. Paper doesn't do that.

Anyway, she's coming back on Wednesday to help me go over flashcards and pitch me some sentences to translate. We'll see how well it works when I take my quiz on Thursday.

Speaking of, my grade in class as of today is a 1.3, or 68.5%. A poor grade won't negatively affect my GPA, but I think I'm supposed to have something like a 2.2 in order to go on to third year Japanese. In other words, it would be a good thing if I could get my grade up by a bit in these next three weeks.

My Japanese class ended this morning, and it ended with rapping pirates and zombies.

Perhaps I should explain. We had to do skits for our last oral exam rather than conversations. My group did a sort of classic samurai revenge epic (well, as epic as you can get in 6 minutes...), but one of the other groups did a skit about a pirate captain whose subordinate pirates give him a zombie for Christmas. There then follows a rap battle between the captain and another pirate for control of the... erm... clan? Tribe? Penzance? Well, control of the whatever the collective noun for pirates is.

The pirate skit won the class. I mean that seriously; there was a competition, with voting and everything. It was 34 votes for the pirate skit, 6 votes for the sexual harrasment skit and 1 vote for the ghost skit. I'd pay real cash money to see that pirate skit again...

So, class is over. I'd like to say it's no more Japanese for me, at least for 5 weeks, but to be keeping everything fresh in my head for third-year I'll be practicing with my (cute) tutor again once I get back from New Jersey.

Oh, right. New Jersey. So, I'm leaving for New Jersey in a few hours. I'll be there until just after Labor Day. I won't have access to the internet in that time, so no blog posts or emails until I get back. If you need to reach me, use the phone.

As always, I'll see some of you soon and I'll see the rest of you (at least metaphorically) when I get back.

Classes started up again today, so I actually have obligations that demand to be met. Japanese language class was first. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, when I compare the work in this class to what I did over the summer, I laugh a heart laugh. "Only 4 chapters in 10 weeks, but 50 kanji to learn and a mere hour of class a day? This is nothing," I proclaim in a stentorian voice, like that of the Mighty Thor. "Fie! What of the days when classes lasted 5 hours, when 9 chapters were the subject of 9 weeks' time and when 200 kanji or more had to be met and mastered? Offer unto me a challenge befitting my might!"

On the other hand, the class is conducted entirely in Japanese. We get, basically, no participation credit for the day if we use English in class. Honestly, it shouldn't be that bad; it's just responding to questions I already know the answers to, right? I should be able to manage. But, still: Eep. And my grade actually matters, now. I've got to get, at minimum, a 2.5 in Japanese to get credit for the course and get my degree. Hopefully I'll still have the aid of my (cute) tutor; just waiting on her to call me back.

(Update: spoke with (cute) tutor. Tuting will continue apace, twice-weekly and still at no cost.)

My other class (yes, I'm only taking two. I'm lazy; you all know this.) is about Civil Society in Japan. While I do like the non-profits, I'm finding in a little hard to get excited. I mean, if it's not Freaky Japanese Cults then, really, what's the point?

I wanted to take the class on the Samurai Tradition and Noh Theatre. Sounded cool. I mean, samurai. Rock on. Noh Theatre? Also cool. If I had to guess, I'd say that the entire class is probably about the Tale of the 47 Ronin or something. Sadly, they're only offering the class through the experimental college, which means I don't get credit if I take it. Also it's only offered from 7 to 10 at night on Tuesdays. That's just dumb.

Last, Mike did something cool and got me the first two volumes of the Journey to the West at a garage sale. It's one of the classic novels of ancient China, in a similar category as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Outlaws of the Marsh. It's a lot more magical than the other two; the main characters are, aside from a Buddhist monk, the monkey king, a pig monster, a half demon and a dragon prince.

I've said before that the Three Kingdoms holds the same place in the Chinese mind as the Illiad or Arthurian Legends do in the West, and that the Outlaws of the Marsh holds the same place as the Robin Hood story; I'm not sure, if we're making equivalencies, what I should compare Journey to the West to. I'm open to suggestions. Anyway, I'm eager to read it.

Someone please explain to me how it's possible for me to stand in front of 200 people for 2 hours and give a speech in English and not feel the least bit put out, to feel, in fact, calm, in control, witty and engaging, and yet stand in front of 20 people for 2 minutes and give a speech in Japanese and be shaking like a leaf.

I knew the material, too. I knew it cold.

So, so frustrating.

Found out today that I did really and truly fail this past Friday's Japanese test. I was, in fact, not hallucinating. This does not, strictly speaking, preclude my getting a 2.7 in the class (the minimum I need to get credit for it), but it sure doesn't make the outlook good.

Right now I'm staring down two options. I either retreat back to 2nd-year Japanese for the remainder of the year and hope that I can survive the 3rd-year intensive course this summer or I switch tracks altogether and start taking courses in the Evans School and get a Masters in Public Affairs, which I could also most likely finish by the end of this summer. Of course, I'd have to apply to the Evans School, and there's no guarantee I'd get in.

So it's a gamble, either way I go. No matter which I choose, I may be shooting myself in the foot.

On the up-side, I don't have to decide until early-to-mid-December.

To add to the irony, though, I got an email back from the guv'ment about this thing I'd applied for, the Presidential Management Fellowship. It's sort of an accelerated Feberal job placement program. I've cleared the first round of screening and they're now going to look my application over. That's cool, but my admission into the program is, of course, contingent on me getting my degree this spring. D'oh!

The second project in my Japanese class was to send an email to our teacher using typed Japanese. The most difficult part was getting my computer to actually type in Japanese. For your pleasure, I excerpt some of the email, and then translate it into English:

昨日の授業は、期末試験を受けるために、来られませんでした。私は暴走族にバットで叩かれたんです。体が痛いすぎるので、病院に行かなければらいませんでした。でも、今、なおるようになりました。

I was unable to come to yesterday's class and take the final exam. This is because I was beaten repeatedly by a biker gang who were using baseball bats. Since my body was in an excessive amount of pain, I had to go to the hospital. However, now I've gotten better.

Despite failing, despite having given up on doing the actual work for now, I'm still going to Japanese class. I feel as if I have something to prove, though I'm not exactly sure what or to whom. I feel really awkward being in class, though. The teacher doesn't call on me anymore, which isn't so bad itself, but the way she pretty obviously skips over me makes me just feel put out.

Then there's the thing with Natalie (erm... The Young Lady No Longer In Question). Walking past her before or after class and not talking to her feels funny; it's a strange thing to cut someone out of your life, especially when you still have to see them every day. By rights, I shouldn't care about this so much; I only knew the girl for a week. But the point I've been making the past week's been that we just clicked; why should it be easy? Still, I'm thinking about it less than I used to. I'm sure I'll be fine by week's end.

In the meanwhile, and in the class I'm actually doing well in, my professor asked me to help him with a new exchange program with UW proposed by a new-style Japanese University. If it goes through, it'd be pretty cool for both schools, as well as me personally, as I'd get to build fun job contacts and resume material.

Anyway, I'm a bit under the weather today; my throat's raw and my teeth feel ill-fitting in my gums. I might've had a fever earlier, but I think it's gone now. I'll turn in early tonight and see what tomorrow brings.

It's snowing here in Seattle, right at the opening of December. It's still a bit warm out, though, so the snowing turning straight to water on the roads and to slush on the sidewalks. Everything else, though, like lawns and rooftops, is getting a nice dusting of white. Very nice looking. I imagine that this bodes well for the rest of the winter.

I felt better yesterday than I did on Tuesday, but felt a bit cruddy again today - enough so that I slept in and skipped Japanese class. I'm feeling generally okay now, though; I'll have some tea in a bit and hope for the best. I think skipping class today is the death knell for Japanese, though; I was pretty pissed, being there yesterday, all for stupid reasons, and I was happy not to go today. I'm pretty much done with that class, now.

Yesterday, I spoke with the Admissions guy for the Evans School and how I want into their Public Affairs program (and out of the Japan Studies program I'm currently in. I mentioned this idea at the beginning of the month. The outlook is optimistic, to say the least. They don't guarantee my admission, but my odds are beyond good. Further, I'll get credit for basically every class I've taken so far that's relevant to Public Affairs. Since part of the program is an area focus... yeah. They'll honor most of my credits, in other words. Now I just need to figure out which classes to take. This is unabashedly good.

Today is the second time I've taken the GREs. The first was early in my senior year in college, back in 1999. I've come a long way in the six years since. A long way down.

You don't need to know my exact scores. It's enough for you to know that I dropped 30 points in the Verbal section and 80 points in the Quantitative section. They've changed the way the Analytical section works entirely, replacing the multiple choice with an essay question, so I've no idea how new stacks up to old. Essays take a little while to mark, after all. I guarantee it's worse, though.

Losing points from my Quant. score doesn't surprise me; I haven't taken a single math class in six years. Of course, I hadn't taken a single math class for five years before I took the last time, so... I'm not so bothered by my expectedly poorer Analytical grade, either. I did well last time. Really, really well. So losing a few points isn't that big a deal.

But verbal? I was disappointed with my verbal score last time around. To lose 30 points from that really turns my stomach. I'm half-tempted to go take the test again next month, when it'll be long after I've sent off my Evans School application, just to see if I can do better.

None of this aggrivation, by the way, is to say I did poorly. I'm probably in a high percentile bracket for Verbal and Analytical. Quantitative... eh, not so much. But, then, I never expected to be. I'm bad at math. But it just pisses me off; I feel like I've gotten stupider in the past six years, rather than smarter.

A few years ago, when I was working at InterSlice, I took a flight from Moscow to some smaller city in Russia. I've forgotten the name of the city, but I remember the crowded flight and the tiny plane and the strange thing that happened when we landed. Everyone cheered. The flight didn't last more than two hours, with smooth skies all the way and a textbook landing, but everyone cheered as enthusiastically as if the pilot had brought us down with only one engine left on the plane, and that one on fire.

I had a similar experience today, while taking the midterm for my Program Evaluation class. This thing was hefty; twelve to fourteen pages long, all of it writing. Not a single multiple choice or fill in the blank question to be found. Our professor expected it to take us about two and a half hours and we groaned at the weight. But for all of that, the test was actually pretty easy. Compare and contrast terms, a fair bit of analysis; simple stuff, provided you knew the material.

About an hour into the test, one girl got up. She put on her jacket, slung her bag over her shoulder and turned her test in. Everyone in class, every student in my class, dropped their pens and applauded. There were a few woots. One guy, very distinctly, said "you punched that test in the face!"

There are times and places where you don't expect to hear cheering, but it sneaks in anyway. Little moments, slices in time, when routine flights make heroes of pilots and let mere mortal students slip the surly bonds of earth and punch the face of a test.

Had an email today from the folks at the Evans School of Public Affairs. "Dear Admitted Students," it read. "From the Student Services team, I offer my congratulations to each of you on your acceptance to the MPA program at the Evans School of Public Affairs!"

No corresponding letter in the mail yet, but it's probably fair to think that I got into the Public Affairs program. It could all be a horrible fluke of some kind, but I kind of doubt it. So, some very cool good news, there. Gives me a solid plan for my remaining time in school and gives me a fairly accurate sense of how long it'll be until I get out of here, none of which is something I can complain about.

Unfortunately, my immediate enthusiasm for the news is dampened by the fact that I haven't been able to hear out of my right ear for the past two days. Well, not at more than, say, 50% of normal at most. Disgusting waxy build up that I can't seem to get rid of. Very annoying, but nothing more I can think of to do about it. I'll just have to wait until it goes away.

I can't snap with my right hand. At all. I really wish I could, but I've been trying for as long as I can remember, and I've never come close.

In other news, all but one of my old archaeology textbooks are in boxes up in my parents' attic. This isn't a surprise - I put them up there myself, after all - but I wish I had them with me right now. There's useful things in those books. On the upside, the one book I do have with me is probably the most useful; it's the one that most directly talks about method and process, in other words the book that most directly explains how to do archaeology. Still wish I had the rest, though.

Should probably say something else about what's going on here, but not a whole lot to report. New quarter's started; taking four classes, grading for a fifth. I'm pretty much in class Tuesday-Thursday and doing homework the rest of the time. Not as fun as it sounds, but overall pretty tolerable. I got an internship this summer, for which I'm overqualified. But I need an internship to graduate, so an internship I have. The place seems pretty cool, so I'm looking forward to it.

More as it occurs to me.

Someone on the boat cruise I mentioned a little while ago took some photos to share. There's shots of several of my friends from FIUTS. I'm lurking around the background of a few of them, and in the foreground of one.

Looks like Marc might get his wish, after all.

The administraty people here at The Wash have approved me for in-state tuition. Finally.

This is awesome, in that it represents a substantial savings over regular tuition.

That is all.

A funny thing happens to me around finals every quarter: I watch the West Wing.

I started up with Season 1 about a week ago, barreling through episodes here and there as my schedule lets me. I'm mid-way through Season 2 right now and I'll probably finish through Season 3 by the time I head to the Right Coast for break (more on that later).

There's nothing wrong with watching the West Wing a lot - it's an excellent show, the best on television during its time - but I watch it a lot. I watched Seasons 3 and 4 after last Spring quarter, Seasons 1 and 2 after Winter quarter just before that. And it's not like I don't have other things to watch. Five seasons of Gilmore Girls, 3 of Ruroni Kenshin, one each of Fraggle Rock, Firefly, X and a host of movies besides...

It's weird, is all I'm saying.

I discovered today that, if you count amateur productions, I have a Kevin Bacon Number of 3.

I was in Syracuse Live with Riki Lindhome

who was in was in Pulse (2006) with Octavia Spencer

who was in Beauty Shop (2005) with Kevin Bacon.

How weird is that?

This question came around 'cause I saw Riki on a Domino's commercial a few times this weekend.

Countdown: 58 days