Things I overheard while talking to myself

The holidays went pretty well, and I mostly managed to avoid wanting to kill my relatives. That's considered a success with our family. My parents and aunt got me and my cousin Derek American Express giftcards that will be very handy, and I also got some books and trinkets.  I also made my grandmother some breakfast rolls using my mom's breadmachine, and those went down very well. My cousin Derek also finally managed to find work after over a year, so he knows exactly what this is like, and the other family members were smart enough not to make any comments about how the job market sucks to me, which some well-intentioned but kind of dumb people have been doing lately and driving me batty. So I'll give them credit where it's due.

Today mom and I went to JC Penny and I got some new clothes, though I brought the wrong giftcard with me and gave mom the difference once we were back home. Oops.

I've also been applying to lots of different jobs, and made an account with the state unemployment office website. I haven't actually filed anything yet, because I'm not actually unemployed yet, but I knew I should at least have it set up in case I need to use it. My pride also took a bit of a hit, but there is actually a lot of stuff that's been coming along that I can do, so I'm trying to think positive. Once I get back to Boston I'm really going to start looking around, and with any luck something will turn up.

So this weekend while I was home we got some Asahi Beer, and as I was heading downstairs I passed the printout we have of my great-great-great grandfather's obituary. He was the one who was in Japan just as it opened and died there, so when we were in Japan we visited his grave.

Anyway, I knew his picture and obit were there, but as I was heading down the stairs I looked at it and did a massive double take. There's his picture, and on the right border is an ad for...

An ad for Asahi Lager! From 1915!

I knew Asahi was an old brand, but that's just funny.

Reposted from my mom's journal with permission. My grandfather wrote this letter while he was in the Ardennes Forest in WWII. These were her comments on the letter:

I received this letter from my uncle, quite unexpectedly, a year or so ago. I believe the "shrine" my Dad refers to is the helmet on top of a gun. Wasn't sure what he meant at the time I first posted this. E.T.O is European Theater of Operations.

March 29, 1945

Spring is coming to the E.T.O. and some of us Etousans have stopped digging long enough to appreciate the beauty of the landscape that we are so industrially changing. Last night was a lovely night. The stars were so clear and a quarter moon softened the shadows.

The other day I went for a walk in a nearby woods - everything was so peaceful-- for a while. The sound of the little stream - playing appropriate background music to a chorus of birds - was enough to send my thoughts back to the picnics near Scappoose. A deer was startled by my approach and splashed across the stream to the safety of the shadows on the other side. The trees have tender green buds now and soon the woods will be green. Some flowers are blooming now. The beauty of spring is soon to be with us.

The trees shook and dead leaves fell as a nearby battery fired. The woods were German woods after all and my thoughts were back to the E.T.O. The grandparents of the German "soldaten" had erected a shrine to the Virgin Mary in these cool woods; their grandchildren had erected a shrine in a bullet-riddled Yank helmet nearby. And our artillery was paying a noisy tribute to that shrine.

Sometimes I get so angry at civilians who complain of lack of cigarettes, liquor, and other "luxury" items. The price of this war is not paid for in dollars and cents. The price is broken lives and lives that no longer exist.

Not so long ago, I came upon one of the boys who had paid the price of his life. He was just a kid and looked as if he were asleep in his slit trench. A Jerry mortar had burst nearby and the kid never knew what hit him. A college alumni paper was by his hole. But the G.I. Bill of Rights won't pay for his sacrifice.

We artillerymen don't always see the excitement, the flash and sound of close combat but we do see the smoking ruins of war, the dead soldiers, the knocked out tanks and planes falling in flames. And they leave a deep impression.

But the worst impression is the one caused by the papers that tell of the people worrying about petty little things like cigarettes. We can't ever replace lives with bonds or stamps. But we can honor the dead with more respect for the living and the unborn. If Christians would only be Christians and stop making shrines out of stone and wood; if people would only make a shrine out of living.

The papers say that we should give until it hurts but giving should never hurt - if we can give, we should be filled with joy at being able to give.

I don't want this letter to sound like a sermon but I had to get a weight off my chest.

P.F.C. Philip M. Gray

I think I got my dad addicted to Firefly. Also, Gina Torres (Zoe) is damn hot.

Been a mostly quiet stay out in the Western part of the state, the cats have mostly been behaving but the weather has gone between rainy and very windy. Jesse has pretty much taken over my bed, and Stella, though still not sitting on me, is being her usual self.

Thanksgiving was the usual mixture of weird family dynamics, though it was more civil than in years past. It was pretty strange when pretty much everyone took out their cell phones and were playing with them, but other than that it was the usual.

While I was here I had to watch Gattaca for my Science and Religion class. Interesting movie, though it's about as subtle as a bomb in your pants. Good fodder for the class, though.

And tomorrow I have to go back to Boston and a three hour bus ride. Bleh. But I'll be back in a few weeks for the holiday break.

Subject line is sarcastic in case you couldn't tell.

We had our usual family shindig today at my grandmother's house. I came down at 10:30 to help my aunt and grandmother set the things up and do the sort of manual labor that's hard for them, and they paid me at the end of the day. Overall it was enjoyable though I still can't keep the cousins straight (and trust me, there are many) but I nearly flipped my shit at one point.

So this little 6 or so year old girl who is somehow distantly related to me (third cousin or somesuch) comes up to me, and the first thing she says is "Why are you dressed like a boy?" This made me do a bit of a double take, since I don't think I was dressed especially masculine today (brown short-sleeved blouse, jeans and my black heeled boots) but trying to be gentle I said that it's how I prefer to dress. She then started on this thing about how girls are supposed to wear skirts and dresses and pink and blah blah blah the usual gendered crap, but I just tuned it out. Amusingly only one woman at this party was wearing a skirt, and that was my mom.

But then it got worse. This girl picks up her little iPod with its speakers and starts playing that godawful "I Kissed A Girl" song. But then, then she turns to me, starts giggling, and says "She kissed another girl, isn't that weird?"

So let me recap. She not only insulted my gender identity and started playing a song that I abhor, but she then went and insulted my orientation when just last week I locked lips with Sara. It was the perfect storm of things to piss me off. At that point I reminded myself that strangling a 6 year old girl is not a wise course of action and retreated.

I know that at that age they just parrot what other people have said, but UGH!

There's also the fact that I can only take so may people at one time, and near the end there I was reaching my limit. I was pretty exhausted by the time I got out and a bit punchy, but I usually don't have to deal with so many people at once.

But to paraphrase something my dad would say, family are the only people who have to let you in when you knock on the door at 1 in the morning.

I'm glad to say that Christmas went pretty well the other day both at home and at my grandmother's. As expected my cousin Derek had a funny reaction to getting his GameStop gift card that was in a tiny tin that looked like an XBox 360, and my grandmother and aunt made me laugh since they both gave me a wallet. It also appears that this year the gift of choice was flashlights, since not only did I give that goes on your head to my dad, but dad gave one to my mom, and then my grandmother gave everyone a bunch of little flashlights (and flashdrives).

My aunts also surprised me by giving my grandmother a Wii Sports, since apparently grandma had used it at my aunt Sharon's house and liked it. Sharon and I then tried to set it up for a good ten minutes until we finally did what I'd said and plugged it in where the VCR goes. Once we finally had it hooked up I made a couple of Miis, including my grandmother, my dad, me, and my mom, and Sharon made one of herself. Then the hilarity began. I'm glad to say that my grandmother, despite being in her 80s, beat my ass at Wii Bowling. Of course we all ended up looking silly playing it, but that's half the fun of it.

My dad also gave me a two disk set of Pink Floyd, which while live is still pretty good. I can't stand live music where the audience won't shut up and let me hear the damn music, but this is a pretty good set. My mom also gave me a battery recharger, which will certainly come in handy back at the dorm. I'd say that this year it was mostly useful stuff being given, but that's perfectly fine with me.

I've now got Jesse-cat on my lap, whether I want him there or not. He and Stella were running around the other day as we were opening presents, and we gave them a bit of catnip as a present. Maybe Dad and I will get them another "crazy blanket" (a pad with catnip inside) while we're out.

Well, after a year of wonky weather it seems to be trying to catch up to itself and make it actually look like December out there, and as a result we have around a foot out there, having been piling up since yesterday around noon.

In other news ( For feminine issues )

Speaking of holiday shopping, I talked with my aunt on the phone the other day and got some ideas for what to get my cousin Derek, who I drew for Secret Santa this year. Apparently gift certificates to a local restaurant and Gamestop would make him very happy. She also asked me what I wanted, and then basically had to interrogate me to get me to even start to figure it out, since asking me that question basically gets you a blank stare and a lot of "Uh"ing. Besides the sarcastic answers of "a job" "money" and "financial aid" I really don't know what I want. I recall my dad saying that this tends to happen as you get older, since by then if you want something you're able to get it yourself (well, maybe not that last part at the moment, but same idea). I can also see why gift cards are so popular, if a somewhat lazy option. But hey, if that's what my cousin wants it's what he'll get!

I also just checked the radar for this area, and it turns out that the snow is basically stationary over us. It's pretty, but knowing New England it'll get old really really fast.

Little Boy didn't make it. We decided it would be more humane to put him down than to force him to keep going, but he went with the people and horses he loved right with him. I know he wanted to keep fighting, but I also knew that he was holding out for me, and I didn't want him to suffer any more than was necessary.

Here's a picture of him as I want to remember him: Healthy, strong, and with a certain wise-guy attitude. He was at least 33 (which is impressive even for a pony), but he lived well just about until the end:



Little Boy
Circa 1975 - 2008

We will miss you.

So what have I been up to?

Got to disc 2 of Metal Gear Solid, and am definitely seeing why it is sometimes referred to as "The best movie I ever played." Also... stairs! The last hour of disc 1 seemed to be made of nothing but stairs. Gah... You also know things have gotten weird when you realize that you just beat a Hind D helicopter on foot, with only a bunch of stinger missiles. I'm good. -3-

Also making some progress on writing Mai-HiME Origin. I think I've gotten to the point that I can stop with the exposition and get to the good parts -- IE the fighting. I'm torn between wanting to get to the good bits but wanting to develop the characters adequately so what happens to them actually means something on a deeper level, but it's getting easier. Ironically the chapter where everything starts to go bad in the fourth one, which is rather appropriate given the Japanese association of four with death. That wasn't intended, but it turned out that way.

I'm also finally focusing on the character of Mashiro after only a brief mention, but that's at least partially intentional. My Mashiro is more or less a blank slate, and what happens later shapes her into what we saw in the series. I'm also trying to make a point about where the term HiME may have come from, since real princesses were more or less political pawns who were manipulated for other's purposes, and most of the HiME we see are in the same boat. I'm also aware that what I'm writing is dark, but that's just a reflection of the time it's set in. Tokugawa Japan was not a nice place.

So anywho, that's how I've been spending my time. That and working and meeting up with the family for Mother's Day Chinese food, which went over pretty well with the usual weirdness. And I have to open up again tomorrow, so I'm going to take a bath (since we have a new water heater and the water is actually hot again -- as in turn you into a lobster hot) and crash out.

Also, if I haven't mentioned it before, Stella-cat came home a few days ago and is doing well. They think she had some sort of intestinal problem, but she has her appetite back. We have to space her meals out and give her medicine, and with the latter she's gotten her claws into me a few times. Cats don't take getting medicine well, but it's done out of love. Not sure she gets that, but luckily holding grudges isn't her strong suite. ;)

My aunt Kate told us a few days ago that a musical political parody group, the Capitol Steps (website here) would be coming into town. We saw them a few years ago, and I don't think I've ever laughed so hard. This year was no different. They were originally a group of former Congressional aides who started singing parody songs about politics for Christmas parties until they got a gig, and boy do they never run out of material. And more impressively, there were only 5 of them at this show, but given how frequently they were changing costume there seemed to be more.

It was absolutely hilarious, and no one -- and I mean no one -- was immune to being mocked. And they even managed to get in stuff about the Annapolis conference pretty soon after it happened, so these guys must work fast. But then again, they have an endless supply of material.

Before we went to the show I met up with Mom and Kate at Chili's, where we had dinner and gabbed about college stuff, since Kate is an admissions officer at UMASS. She told me some stuff I knew already and some things I didn't know, so it was definitely helpful. She also told me about the worst college essay she ever read, where a kid wrote about his first sexual experience and hoped that it was "the first of many". Yowza.

It was also interesting that she made a few LGBT related comments about when people apply and list things like the GSA on their club lists. Nothing she said was explicitly homophobic, and that convinced me that yes, she is still clueless about me. You know, I almost wish that someone in my family would have figured it out by now, I mean, just how stereotypically dykish do I have to be before someone even begins to wonder?! Oh well, might be a blessing in disguise, though I can certainly see the case people make for Lesbian invisibility. Does it honestly never occur to people? We're only (at least) 10% of the population! *sigh*

In other news, rodent versions of the Hellsing cast! Ridiculously cute, I tell you. I especially want the Integra one as a pet. :)