:: 2005 16 May :: 6.26 pm

Sitting here listening to music. What right to I have to be so profoundly unhappy?
There's nothing wrong with me. Nothing is being done to me. Just the same thousand petty torments that fly below my radar.

Even my repression isn't perfect.

I should not even be writing this. But then, why do I continue? Ah, the questions. *muses* I'd say that I'm probably writing because I'm doing the elevator-button thing. If I keep pressing the button, the elevator will go faster. If I keep writing, someone will log on and respond. The logic is roughly as sound.

Meh. Resume stoicism.

3 TOOTHMARKS | BITE ME

:: 2005 16 May :: 5.23 pm

Home sucks. All of them. If they didn't, no one would leave.

Read more..

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:: 2005 16 May :: 5.23 pm

Well. I was reprimanded for something interesting today. You know those picture holder things with the weighted base and a clip on a flexible wire? The clip holds the picture, and the base says something like "Butler Fall Ball 2004" on occasion?

My mother threw both of mine out, and told me never to bring drug paraphernalia home again. When I had no idea what the hell she was talking about, she told me she found two roach clips in my boxes from college. When she described those, I tried not to laugh at her, but I knew that laughing would only make it worse.

She told me that even though she knew I didn't know what they were (because God forbid they be for photos), if the military ever found out that shit was in this house, Mitch could be court-martialed. She said that she didn't tell Mitch what she'd found, she just threw them away. But if he'd known, he'd have been pissed and would have kicked me out of the house. (Which is just her trying to give us a common enemy to get me on her side.) Right.

"And it's not because we don't love you or anything like that, but we can't have these in our house. Don't ever bring drug paraphernalia home again."
"Wait, what? Where did that disclaimer come from?"
"Well, I don't want you to think that we don't love you or I'm just being mean about this, because I know that's how it must seem."
"Well, at the beginning I thought you were accusing me of smoking pot, but after that... that wasn't the conclusion I came to."
"No. I know that you aren't into all of that. [author note: Feel free to cast detect bullshit right about here.] But I was there in the 60's and 70's when all these came out, and that's what those are."
"Okay."
"Just don't bring drug shit home ever again."


Seriously. For fuck's sake.

Read more..

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:: 2005 15 May :: 7.54 pm

I'm considering doing one of those 'friends list cleanout' things.

So, if you still read anything on this blog, kindly post so I don't accidentally delete someone who might want to read the odds and ends I post.

9 TOOTHMARKS | BITE ME

:: 2005 12 May :: 4.29 pm

This is all such a waste.

My mother is making me leave the house at night when they go to bed. I have to go out to my room now no matter when they retire. Don't get me wrong, I like living in the pool house. But I can't be online at night now without making a huge production out of it, and she bitches if I'm 'on that computer all day just like Mitch. I fucking hate that computer. All he ever does is play that game and I never see him and nothing ever gets done and I'm so fucking sick and tired of it." This goes on for another ten minutes until she gets tired, has something else to do or finds something else to bitch about.
Also, she bitches if I go out to my room to play final fantasy. That should tell you how hard up I am for effective escapism up here. Mindless repetitive leveling-up is preferable to anything else going on.

This is just such a waste. Where are those people who enjoy their vacations? Where are those people who look forward to going home from school so they can relax? Where are these people and why aren't any of them me?
We went shopping for food yesterday for four hours. Four hours of her bitching, both of them dithering about and Mitch wandering off because he doesn't want to be around her any more than I do. That kind of shit just drains the life right out of me. People wonder why I forgo emotions up here. I just don't have the energy for any of it. This is the kind of thing that saps the will to live right out of me until I'm just waiting for something to happen. Waiting for a good day, waiting for an open argument at least, waiting to be hit by a car. Anything.

Such a waste.

5 TOOTHMARKS | BITE ME

:: 2005 30 April :: 7.13 pm

Soul Caliber II!

I beat the game for the first time. With Ivy.
I've never beaten a video game before. *beams*

6 TOOTHMARKS | BITE ME

:: 2005 28 April :: 9.56 pm

I'll be spending eight weeks this summer at an NSF-funded archaeological field school. They only chose 14 people, and they picked me.
Also nice is the $300/week stipend. 300x8=2400. That's a lot of money to take off of next year's college costs. That may just save my ass. It might get me ahead enough that if I keep my wits about me, I can stay ahead of my bills.

Fantastic. Also, Strawtown, IN is a hell of a lot closer to Dayton than MI is. Closer to Brian=good.

4 TOOTHMARKS | BITE ME

:: 2005 24 April :: 10.26 pm

For Caro

Love gives you wings. It makes you fly. I don't even call it love. I call it Geronimo. When you're in love, you'll jump right from the top of the Empire State and you won't care -- screaming 'Geronimo' the whole way down.

BITE ME

:: 2005 24 April :: 12.28 am

I should never take just one or two shots late at night.
Get all melancholy.

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:: 2005 22 April :: 5.10 pm

Apocalyptic Hail
Recently (in the last few minutes) 1/2 to 3/4 inch hailstones created whiteout conditions on the Butler campus for about fifteen minutes.
There is now about an inch of rolling ice on the ground in seventy-degree weather.

This has been your latest weather update from FUCKING INDIANA! Damn the weather here is odd.

Last night the thunderstorms were so loud they set off car alarms. -_-'

3 TOOTHMARKS | BITE ME

:: 2005 22 April :: 11.21 am

If Butler were Mainframe.... I think we all know who I'd be.
Not even a question, is it?
Though, I'm probably closer to Sprite Hex than original viral Hex, now. Brian fixed my mask.


"I simply adore children. But I could never eat a whole one."

1 TOOTHMARK | BITE ME

:: 2005 19 April :: 9.44 pm

Panzer Cardinal Selected as Pope
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1463902,00.html#article_continue


Profile: Joseph Ratzinger
From Hitler Youth to the Vatican
Bavarian who deserted Wehrmacht was a liberal but turned to conservatism in face of 1968 student rebellions

Stephen Bates and John Hooper in Rome
Wednesday April 20, 2005
The Guardian

Joseph Ratzinger was not always considered a reactionary. Born in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, the first German pope for nearly 1,000 years comes from the country's traditionalist Catholic heartland, Bavaria.

His father was a police officer from a family of farmers whose career suffered because he refused to become a Nazi. The young Ratzinger served briefly and unenthusiastically with the Hitler Youth and later with a German army anti-aircraft unit guarding the BMW factory in Munich. He says he never fired a shot.

Article continues
Ratzinger has defended himself from criticism of his war record by claiming - not strictly truthfully - that he could not have avoided military service in the circumstances. Others did and maybe he could have used his training in a seminary to dodge the call-up.

But there is no doubt that his heart was not in his military service and he deserted in April 1944, ending the war in an American prisoner of war camp.

Ordained with his older brother, Georg, in 1951, Ratzinger was a liberal theological adviser at the Second Vatican Council in Rome but became a conservative after the 1968 student movement prompted him to defend the faith against secularism.

In his autobiography, he wrote how he realised he was increasingly out of step with his fellow Germans as early as the 1960s.

"I found the mood in the church and among theologians to be agitated," he recalled. "More and more there was the impression that nothing stood fast in the church, that everything was up for revision."

He has written a number of books and within hours of his election as pope yesterday, several leapt up the Amazon bestseller list, including Salt of the Earth, The Ratzinger Report, Introduction to Christianity, and his memoirs, Milestones, which cover his life until 1977.

It was in 1977 he became archbishop of Munich and a cardinal. He was one of only two cardinals in the conclave that ended yesterday to have been elevated by John Paul's predecessor but one, Paul VI.

In 1981, Pope John Paul called him to Rome to take over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is the department that was once known as the Holy Inquisition.

Ratzinger's defence of conservative orthodoxy has been part of his job. But it has not made him popular, especially in more progressive corners of the faith.

An opinion poll in the German newspaper Der Spiegel found opponents of his election as pope outnumbering supporters by 36% to 29%.

It was an open secret before the conclave that all but two of the German bishops were opposed to his candidacy.

In western Europe and North America, in particular, there is an acute perception that the church is losing ground and needs to reinvigorate its flock with a less uncompromising hostility to the outside world.

In Latin America, he disciplined the advocates of "liberation theology" and cracked down on Asian priests who saw non-Christian religions as part of God's plan for humanity.

Before the death of Pope John Paul, his theological watchdog spoke passionately of the need to clean up the "filth" in the church, an allusion to successive child abuse scandals involving clerics. His remark held out hope that he would tackle vigorously one of the church's most pressing problems.

However, he has himself been accused by campaigners of shielding a prominent alleged paedophile.

The softly spoken Bavarian, who is an accomplished pianist with a fondness for Mozart, turned 78 last Saturday, but is in apparently excellent health.

Three years ago, he became dean of the College of Cardinals, a position which made him the key figure in the interregnum between popes and enabled him to exert immense influence on his fellow cardinals as they prepared to choose the next pontiff.

At Pope John Paul's funeral, he impressed his listeners by deftly balancing solemnity and populism in his homily. He drew roars from the crowd when he pointed to the window from which the late pope had delivered his blessings, saying: "We can be sure our beloved Pope is now at the window of the house of his Father and he sees us and he blesses us."

Days later, he seized the initiative again at the mass immediately before the start of the conclave when he inveighed against the moral relativism of today's society. In what was seen by Vatican insiders as a blatant campaign speech, he warned the church to withstand the "tides of trends and latest novelties".

Clearly, his fellow cardinals were listening hard.

But when looking at his life so far, it is hard to know which is more memorable: the things that have been said about Ratzinger or what he has himself said.

Five years ago, a former colleague in the theological faculty of Tübingen University, Hans Küng, whom he banned from teaching on the church's behalf in 1979, described a document published by Cardinal Ratzinger's department in the Vatican as "a hotch-potch of medieval backwardness and folie de grandeur".

He was referring to the document Dominus Jesus issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, which, in highly unecumenical language, described other Christian faiths and world religions as "deficient or not quite real churches". When the Lutherans complained, the future Benedict XVI dismissed their objections as "absurd".

Another liberal Catholic and former priest, the late Peter Hebblethwaite, called him "the big, bad wolf of the new Inquisition ... For some, the thought [of his becoming pope] is just too terrible to contemplate. To have him as pope would be inconceivably divisive, runs the common wisdom."

It is not just people who do not believe in Roman Catholicism who attract the new pope's ire. Four years ago, he wrote that rock music was "the expression of elemental passions which, in the big musical festivals, have taken on a cultural character, that is to say, [the character] of a counter-cult, opposed to Christian worship".

Only this week, he declared that "having a clear faith based on the creed of the church is often labelled today as fundamentalism. Relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards."

Small wonder that the 78-year-old German has won nicknames such as God's Rottweiler and the Panzer Cardinal. Even Corriere della Sera, the voice of the Italian moderate right, which is normally deeply respectful of the church hierarchy, recently labelled him "Cardinal No".

For the past 24 years, he has headed the Vatican "ministry" responsible for defending and enforcing Catholic orthodoxy, particularly in the world's theological faculties.

Ratzinger once denied being "the Grand Inquisitor".

However, under his guidance, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued a stream of hardline instructions and rebukes.

The hand of the new pope has been seen in most of the more reactionary proclamations made by the Vatican in the final years of John Paul II's papacy, as his health waned.

They sometimes took away the breath of the more progressive elements in the church: from denouncing homosexuality as intrinsically evil, to suggesting that parishes should limit the use of female altar servers and choristers.

BITE ME

:: 2005 17 April :: 2.27 pm

if it hadn't been for that meddling chair
I am now the proud owner of 5 or 6 stitches in my scalp.
I was dismissed from the hospital at 5.5am, and am no longer bleeding copiously, although my hair still has some blood in it.
I am largely unharmed, and the stitches come out in 7-10 days.

The official story is... I tripped and cracked my head on a chair. When it has healed, then we will tell the rest of the story. I demand secrecy until then. Only then can the world know how hilarious it is. It's funnier with scars than actual present wounds.

I've done my best to contact people from last night to let everyone know that I did have a reason to leave so abruptly. I had to go to the emergency room.

On the upside, my anesthesiologist was an enormous geek of the finest order. When I was being admitted, we made matrix references and a couple or star wars ones too. It made me feel better. Then he walks in with his stuff and asks us if we roleplay. *facefault* He specifically asked if we used any of the White Wolf systems, to which we replied we played D&D. Brian also noted that GURPS tends to be the favorite, however. The man responded, "Ah, now you're speaking my language."

Also, according to Brian, as he moved toward me ominously with his giant anesthesia needle, he pointed it down at me and asked, "Where is the rebel base?"

He also gave me a new title to add to my list. "Ashley The Chairslayer Holmes, we have a room for you."

I'm going to get that chair. That chair is so fucking dead, it doesn't know what kind of horrible crap I'm going to do to it. But it's coming.

On a related note, my mother had to expressly forbid me to go to work because I have a shiny new head injury. I was worried about the forty dollars. I may be a workaholic, but I'm pretty sure I'm not nearly as bad as Gregor Samsa. He was a giant vermin. I think even I would stop worrying about work at that point.


Also, I think Brian has some things he wants to comment on himself, because it has to do with the way the cops responded to him. It was rather unexpected. I'll paste them to this blog so you guys can experience more interesting shit vicariously.

That's why Jughead's wearing that crown hat. Because he's king of Archie's world.

4 TOOTHMARKS | BITE ME

:: 2005 16 April :: 4.46 pm

a. Post a list of 15 fandoms.
b. Have your friends list guess your favorite character from each one.
c. When guessed, embolden the line, include the character name, and write a sentence about why you like that character.

1.LotR-Aragorn He's a hardass. How can I not love that?

2.Anne Rice vampire chronicles-Lestat Self-explanatory. Anyone who knows who this is is forced to love him or God smites you.

3.InuYasha-Kikyou She's inextricably connected to InuYasha. She has nothing to live for, and when she tries forget what she is and live like a normal woman, it all goes wrong and she's back where she started. Her sense of duty toward Naraku and InuYasha is also something I can sympathize with. "Your life is mine, InuYasha... and I'll surrender it to no one."

4.Trigun-Legato Legato is the ultimate dispassionate sexy bishounen. His loyalty to Knives is commendable, and his willingness to die strikes me as a refreshing lack of cowardice in that arena.

5.Digimon (season 2 to make it easier on you)-Ken Ichijouji: Digimon emperor turned would-be hero. He was the only digidestined child to react to the other kids like I would... after the whole 'digimon exist' revelation of course. He didn't want to be around them. He would save their asses in a way that some found morally questionable, and then he'd leave again.

6.Neil Gaiman's Sandman novels-Dream: Maybe it's because he was technically Gaiman's main character in this series, but I identified with him more. He seemed the most like a normal person. He's fallen in love, made mistakes, been lonely, made enemies and sarcastic jokes about Freudian symbolism. How could I resist.

7.Yu Yu Hakusho (this one's obvious if you know where to look)-HieiI'll clarify this. Hiei is my hero... plain and simple. In fact, if you know your YYH trivia, you'll know that his full name is Jaganshi Hiei.

8.Slayers-Xellos: The Mysterious Priest. He shows up, manipulates everyone into following his plan, and then refuses to explain anything... from his presence to his knowledge to his rediculous power. "Sore wa... himitsu desu..."

9.Hellsing-Integra Hellsing (though Alucard is a close second): This is a theme you'll notice. The cold-hearted badassery is not something I can ever turn down.

10.Stargate-Daniel Jackson: Anthropologist role model. If there were any chance my career would take the same turns as his... the opportunities he's had would make everything worth it. He gets to see ancient cultures first-hand.

11.X-Men-Rogue She can't touch anyone. I used to literally wear gloves so that people couldn't make skin contact with me because it made me so uncomfortable. If anyone so much as brushed my shoulder, I could still feel it a minute or so later as a sort of crawly feeling in my skin.

12.Lexx-Kai: Cold-hearted badassery. Insists he doesn't have feelings, and it's probably more his belief in his own emotionlessness than an actual deficiency that makes Kai Kai. I also partly named myself after him on the RPGWW forum. I don't care if he's a guy. It's a good gender-ambiguous name.

13.Dune-Alia: Abomination.

14.X-Files-Mulder: Geek. Hopeful, cynical, geek on a doomed quest for the sake of someone he can't save anyway.

15.Chobits-Chii I actually made an entry about this a while ago. Here it is if you want to read it.

BITE ME

:: 2005 16 April :: 3.40 pm

Sometimes I feel like people are competing to see who has the most baggage. I get the impression that it's a point of pride for far too many people.
The fact is, there are a lot of people who can't participate in that shit. You know why? The difference between angst and actual emotional problems is in the manifestation. If people want you to know they're fucked up... just wait until they stop talking about it. Then you'll know they're serious.
Until then, it's just a bunch of teens and young adults trying to outdick each other any way they can.

I'm tired of it, and I can't believe I had so much tolerance for it before. I used to think that maybe if I could catch people and help them while they're still at the angst phase, they'd never have to know what it felt like to be fucked in a way that isolated them even from other insane citizens of the younger generation.

Not any more. I won't do it. I will not spend my time trying to help people. In a way, by developing emotional tendencies, I'm even more inexcusably cold than I was before because I know what it is to feel and I actively refuse to do it for anyone else's sake.

No one can make me feel anything I don't want to feel. That's the way I live, and it's the way I've survived.

Anyone else... let them make their own choices. Let everyone else live or die according to their own whims and efforts, not mine.
"If they're to die let them do it quickly and decrease the surplus population."

I am not in control of anyone else. Anyone who even considers handing their salvation over to me will be very disappointed, because I've changed. That's not my game anymore.

BITE ME

:: 2005 13 April :: 9.30 pm

The nights that help me survive my job...
I received my yearbook in the mail today. Huzzah. It's awesome. *thumbs up*

Also, our calling center was recognized for being at least 10% above ALL of our quarterly goals. These emails came from Brian Donnelly (The O in RuffaloCODY), and Duane Jasper (The D). We're excited. We rock.

I had one man talk to me for two minutes about how mature I sound on the phone and how refreshing it is not to hear 'a giggler'. Apparently his wife gets calls from PhiDelt girls, and they live in Florida. He commented that the young women there 'sound like children' and he couldn't believe I was a freshman. I was actually calling to talk to his wife, and he did end up telling me when I could call back. I thanked him for the information, and HE thanked ME for sounding wonderful on the phone. He was so excited.

I also called one or two of those old ladies who just sit alone in their houses all day and all they want is to hear a human voice every now and again. They seemed so happy just to talk to someone. I'll call those women over the people who whine at me ANY DAY.

So... overall it was a good night at work tonight.

3 TOOTHMARKS | BITE ME

:: 2005 10 April :: 9.20 pm

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/0,12243,1448487,00.html
Relax about sex selection

Nature itself manipulates whether a particular couple has a boy or a girl, says Vivienne Parry. So fertility clinics won't be skewing population ratios by offering choice


Read more..
· Vivienne Parry is the author of The Truth about Hormones (Atlantic Books).

1 TOOTHMARK | BITE ME

:: 2005 10 April :: 8.45 pm

OMFGZ

find your element
at mutedfaith.com.

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