and maybe you should sleep

( Epic high-res picspam of Jake Gyllenhaal behind the cut! )

Today I'm in a really good mood for no real reason. A subconscious sense of self-preservation, perhaps.

On Sunday I -finally- managed to kidnap my sister convince Sis to watch Donnie Darko with me, and despite all the eye-rolling that ensued when I would tell her that she has to see Donnie Darko, she LOVED IT. ♥ I have now, officially, recruited my sister into the cult of Donnie Darko. This makes me happy.

It's been ages since Brandon and I have written each other, but yesterday I finally got an e-mail from him. Brandon's a boy about a year and a half younger than I am who I met through our old acting class, and one of the few people I've encountered in my life who I consider a true friend. It'd been so long since we'd been in touch that I was fully expecting that we would just fade out of each other's lives eventually, the way people do - but it was a nice surprise to hear from him. Lately, people have been turning out to care more about me than I'd expected them to.

Yesterday night was piano lessons and... I don't think my piano teacher likes me. Shame. I quite like her, but I'm pretty sure I come across as a flailing idiot-child to her. It doesn't really matter; I'll be so glad not have to take piano next year.

I got my marks in from my English teacher for the first four assignment booklets I sent in. My marks range from 93%-100%. Small victories. :)

On the way home from grocery shopping, Mom stopped at Safeway to pick up organic banana chips.

Mhmm.

"Organic banana chips."

Which quickly became a five-minute meme with me and Sis.

So after tossing and turning until 12:00 last night because of my goddam stuffy nose, I finally managed to get to sleep. Mom let me sleep in 'till ten, so it kind of evens out, I guess. But today my back aches, and my nose is still stuffy, and my throat is dry because I had to breathe through it last night, and I'm not looking forward to trying to get to sleep tonight. :(

In conclusion: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

On a slightly less sucky note, I came across this today:



...I've never played the Prince of Persia games, but I have such mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, it's more or less guaranteed to be typical Blockbuster-esque CGI-filled action-flick garbage, and the total and complete racefail is going to make me continually cringe. It's called Prince of Persia. Persia. Shouldn't there be some actors in it who look remotely, oh, I don't know, INDIAN? Furthermore, WHYYYYYYYY DOES THE PRINCE HAVE A BRITISH ACCENT. WHYYYYYY IS THE PRETTY INDIAN PRINCESS OBVIOUSLY A WHITE GIRL IN BROWNFACE. WHYYYYYYY ALSDJFDSLKFJ.

...On the other hand, it's Jake Gyllenhaal.

Jakie.

In an action movie.

With... with long, unkempt hair and... and... he's going to be all scruffy and sweaty and he's got a beard and...

UNF.

So basically, I have to see it.

There's only one way I'm going to be able to sit through this movie without having my brain melt and drip out my ears in a goopy mess that some poor kid is going to have to mop up off the theater floor, and avoid walking out of the place in an utter rage at the producers for all the racefail.

And that is to pretend that the entire movie is an elaborate fantasy dreamed up by Donnie Darko while he was bored in English class.

THIS IS MY CANON NOW.

My father has the swine flu. WHEEEEEE. Apparently, some jackass at work gave it to him by shaking his hand. Said jackass informed him shortly afterwards that his wife had H1N1, but "she's over it."

NICE.

Thanks a lot, asshole! Not only does Dad have weird symptoms that are characteristic of the swine flu, but now I'm pretty sure I'm coming down with something, too! I've felt a bit cruddy all day and my throat's sore. The clinics in our area have only been allowing high-risk cases to get the shots because of the vaccine shortage, but on Monday they're going to be letting low-risk peeps get vaccinated again, and the 'rents are planning to haul our butts over there while we cross our fingers and pray that there aren't 3-hour-long lineups like before.

All this after I said we should get the shot.

After we, y'know, didn't.

And after Dad is infected.

The whole family will probably have it come Monday, rrrrarrrgh.

Mother, if you're reading this,

♪♫I WAS RIGHT AND YOU WERE WROOOOONG♪♫

*Is immature*

On Thursday and Friday evening, Sissy had her final performances for her theater group. We used to take the same class together and had so much fun you wouldn't believe, but now that I'm too old for it she goes alone and gets to have all the fun by herself. :C Anyways, she played her character quite well; this year they were performing The Mousetrap and even though it wasn't up to the caliber of some of the group's previous performances, (-cough-) the kids still did a good job and I enjoyed getting out and spreading our swine flu around watching them.

To cheer him up a little, we gave Dad an early birthday gift today. Star Trek '09 on DVD! ♥♥♥ Watched it this evening and yeah... it was epic. I wish I wasn't feeling under the weather, because then I could've enjoyed it more. :C But yeah... I've been putting off a Star Trek '09/Firefly crossover I started last summer because I'd gone so long without seeing the movie I wanted to make sure I could characterize nu!Spock properly. A couple more rewatches and I should be ready to dive back in, om nom nom. ♥

RIVER AND SPOCK FIND EACH OTHER INHERENTLY FASCINATING, whoo~

Tacos can make everything better.

I needa get myself new icons omfg.

OKAY SO. Usually I wouldn't be making an update at this time of day on Wednesday but since it's Remembrance Day here and therefore a holiday (Dad gets the day off) so I'm being rather lenient with myself when it comes to work today. We're going to have the traditional two minutes' silence at eleven AM. Even though I have nothing but distaste for wars and those who start them, I have nothing but respect for the men and women who have sacrificed their lives for the freedom of their nations. Today I plan to honour fallen soldiers and veterans from all over the world - with perhaps a bit of special attention to Canadian soldiers. ♥

In a completely different train of thought, I'm thinking of asking for an MP3 player for Christmas this year. Usually I'd reel in disgust at the idea of asking for a $200 piece of technology designed to last only about two years on average, but hauling CDs around is killing me and I'm rabidly protective of the music library I have on our family computer, which consists of all the music I've been listening to for the five years since we got it, and I'd like to be able to actually listen to it when I'm, y'know, not on the computer.

Title: Desert Flowers
Fandom: Jak and Daxter
Pairing: Jak x Seem
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Slight violence, strong innuendo, colon and semicolon abuse, run-ons, randomness, crack pairing.
Notes: Written for my claim over at 1sentence! #4 is courtesy of my sister. xP

( It was the smell of him - blood and gunmetal, dark and dirty and sinfully enticing )


x-posted to 1sentence, jak_fanfics and fanfiction.net.

Quick intro: K so, I don't pretend to be a poet or anything, but I had to write two poems for English on the same theme. This is my first; I'm still working on the second. I decided to center it because it looked kewl. :3

( Night )

I've also been working on a bunch of JakxSeem sentences for my claim at 1sentence and I'm over halfway done, yay. ♥ Jak fandom needs moar Jak x Seem goodness, srsly. Writing sentences for a pairing may not seem like much of a challenge, but I find it's useful to keep my writing skills limber when I have no plotbunnies (and my muse is being a little uncooperative so-and-so.)

I want this game.



Do my eyes deceive me? Is this a video game with a female protagonist who isn't a sex object?! I would probably get this for that reason alone, but besides the rarity of main characters like Faith, I like the visual style of the game and it looks like fun. I'm a little iffy on first-person - usually I find first-person dizzying and nauseating - but maybe Mirror's Edge will change my mind.

Title: Ruse
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: K
Word Count: 1,814
Genre: Family, hurt/comfort
Characters: Azula, Zuko
Warnings: None.

Summary: The newly-crowned Fire Lord pays his sister a visit.

( Oh, I know! You want me to become a good girl so you and I can have that sweet, darling brother-sister relationship we never had! )


Crossposted to avatar_fans, avatarfic, and Fanfiction.net.

I ARE WINNER. I had two essays I had to do for English worth 30 marks each. Usually for me essays = LOL STRESS TIEM, but the "talk" I gave myself the other day actually succeeded in putting the fear of God into me, so now I'm *almost* done the one essay (a personal essay on Alberta's crappy health care system, lololol - I just have to edit/proofread) and I have the thesis, introductory paragraph and outline for the other critical essay. Bonus good news is that I don't actually have to write the whole critical essay, just the introductory paragraph, outline, thesis, and conclusion paragraph. (...Which is... really weird. I don't know why they're not making me write the whole damn thing since those are the most important parts of the essay, but I don't care! YAY, LESS WORK!)

Bad news: I won't be able to submit the whole assignment booklet just yet because I have some totally weird random thing to do called a photo essay, but whatever, I'm going to ignore that for now in favour of basking in this small victory!

On top of that, I FINALLY WROTE SOMETHING!!!1 YAY!1 EXCLAMATION POINT! AND I THINK IT'S ACTUALLY WORTH PUBLISHING! Okay, so I finished this little drabble-y Avatar: TLA number about Zuko and Azula after the end of season three, and it doesn't sparkle with holy awesomeness or anything, but it's a personal accomplishment for me because it's been so long since I wrote something that says what I want it to say and wraps itself up neatly. I'll polish it up later and perhaps join some Avatar communities so I can pimp it in a few places.

Sidenote: lols, I straightened my hair yesterday. I haven't done that in a long time just 'cause I'm usually too lazy, but my Mom couldn't stop noticing it. She says straight hair makes me look like a completely different person. Dad says he likes it "crooked". xP lulz, he's great.

Well, it's official. I have Sissy's cold. My nose is stuffy (though I can still breathe through it, thank God), my throat is sore, my body aches all over, and my Mom's insisting on serving me lemon and honey tea. (Which tastes awful, thank you for asking.) Every time I swallow It's okay, though, because I'm going to fight it with the POWERS OF POSITIVITY! (Which basically means I'm going to watch the third season of Avatar, screw around on Maplestory, and make more blinged-out pics of Jak characters when I'm not, y'know. Doing homework. -cue headdesk-)







I could waste many hours of my life on this site, I swear.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEE

OH MY GOD TOY STORY AND TOY STORY 2 HAVE BEEN RE-RELEASED IN 3D I'VE FIGURED OUT WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY WEEKEND NOW I HAVE TO BEG MOM AND DAD TO TAKE US.

*Faints*

This random update is brought to you by the letter ASOFUDSALFUDSAOFUIASLDFUJDOSKUFASLKDF.

I HAVE JUST REDISCOVERED MY LOVE FOR COLOURED PENCILS. Because of a stupid art assignment, I actually got around to digging out my old coloured pencils and naow I'm drawing pretty pictures. Haha, I'll try and upload a picture once the project's done. ♥

I finished watching the second season of Avatar and OH MY GOD, THIS SHOW IS SO EPIC, I LOVE IT SO MUCH, ZUKO IS SO AWESOME but unfortunately not during the finale, way to throw away a season and a half's worth of character development ZUKO, ASOKAJSXDLFKUDSAOFDUF, ALSKDUFOASUDF, nevermind, I still love you ♥ AND I CAN'T WAIT TO WATCH THE THIRD SEASON.

Poor Sis has a cold today and was being even more mopey than usual. On Tuesday I checked out Season 2 of Avatar from the library, and yesterday I wanted to give her the first disc of the set so she could start watching it, but LUCKEEE US, that disc had mysteriously gone missing. Today I found in - IN THE BACK OF THE TRUCK, WHERE I HAD ALREADY CHECKED AT LEAST HALF A DOZEN TIMES, OMG - and when I handed the disc to her, Sis gave me her first smile of the day.

♥

SIS, IF YOU'RE READING, I CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO MEET TOPH, SHE IS SO AWESOME AND BLIND AND AWESOME XD ALSO I HAVE WONDERFUL CAPSLOCK-WORTHY NEWS:

ZUKO/KATARA HAS CANONICAL BASIS!

Or at least, enough canonical basis to move it from the realm of total crack into the realm of semi-crack. Unfortunately Aang/Toph is still total and complete crack.

I'm having a hard time imagining what I'm going to do with my life once I've finished watching this series. Here's hoping I can find a really awesome community or something.

Also, yesterday while we were out walking, there was a kitty wandering around in the neighbour's backyard and she stopped and let me pet her. FWeeeee, I love cats. =3

And that's about all the spazzing I have to do for today. Some of y'all probably think I'm a capslock-happy 'tard by now AND YOU'RE RIGHT.

'Kay so this update probably should've been written like, five days ago but I've been too scatterbrained and neglecting my Ell Jay, so better late than never, roight?

Friday was interesting. Dad invited us along to a company barbecue being held at his boss's place, and by "invited" I mean we were pretty much obligated to go on pain of feeling like absolute heels if we declined. It wasn't as awful as I expected, though. Yes, there was plenty of standing around, feeling awkward, making inane chit-chat and smiling good-naturedly at people I didn't know, but nothing disasterous happened, and that, in my humble opinion, is a victory.

My dad's boss lives on his own little ranch, complete with horses and fun cattle-roping parties. I'm not so hot on the cattle-roping (YES CRUELTY TO ANIMALS IS ALIVE AND WELL, THANK YOU!), but to get away from the "party" for a little while, Mom and Sis and I went down to see the horses, which was interesting for all of five minutes, for both us and the horses, who, upon realizing that we did not come bearing treats, proceeded to ignore us and munch hay.

It got cold as the night wore on. It's really hard for me to not start getting all poetic about the way the sun looked setting on that huge open field, or how the distant shape of the mountains curved against the sky; suffice it to say that for me, watching the sun die was the only enjoyable part of the evening. That, and watching the toddler belonging to some lady whose name I can't remember play a game with a bottle cap with my dad. Kid takes bottle cap, dad holds out hand, kid gives dad bottle cap, dad puts cap on table, kid takes cap back, repeat. The most fun was watching the joy that little boy got out of that simple game.

Fast forward to Tuesday, library day. While Mom's grocery shopping, Sis and I sit in the library and read/write/work while children scream in the background. The closest library to the grocery store happens to be inside a recreational center that advertises its friendliness towards challenged people; last week I made the mistake of sitting next to one mentally challenged woman who, apparently, did not want to be sat beside. She gave me a very dirty look and hauled off, muttering to herself. Which was, I have to admit, pretty amusing. This week, I decided to actually make good on my claim of being a science fiction geek and checked out Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I'm only a few pages in, but it looks very interesting. Apparently there's a movie or something called Blade Runner based off the book, which I'll have to check out if the book turns out to be sufficiently badass.

Oh, and this announcement is way late, but...

I HAS A NEW FANDOM!

Okay, now that you're all done deleting me from your flists, I gotta say I am quickly falling in love with this show:


I'm already on to the sixth episode of Book 2, and I can already understand why this show has over 21,000 fics at Fanfiction.net. I just can't stop drooling over the art. It's amazing. I know I haven't watched any anime in a loooong time, but I love how this show doesn't fall into the traps of ugliness that a lot of anime does, and I can't get over how anatomically correct and lovely all the characters look; watching this show really wants me to become a better artist. The detail is amazing, the bones and muscles and skin and interesting camera angles and foreshortening and the Bending effects and ALSDJOFSUIFLUDASFODSUA I LOVE IT. ♥ Also, THE PROTAGONIST IS A BALD 12-YEAR-OLD VEGETARIAN MONK BOY. I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO ARTICULATE HOW MUCH THAT WINS. (Funny enough those traits on their own don't do anything for me, but if you put them together you get Aang, who is MADE OF WIN.)

(Actually, Aang isn't the first bald monk character I've worshipped, come to think of it. ARGH, now I can't help thinking about how well Aang and Seem would get along. MAKE THE CRACK STOP, MOMMY!)

Kitara is one of those rare and few female characters that I think actually do justice to girls in general, and also one I like and respect a lot. ♥ Nearing the end of Season 1, I really wanted to stand up and SCREAM for her when she was taking on that water bending teacher, even though she knew she couldn't win.

I'm also a Zuko fangirl more or less falling in love with Zuko really fond of Zuko because, zomg, a three-dimensional sympathetic villain with solid, logical motivation! Now THAT'S something you don't see every day! :3

Just to make things even MORE awesome, I'm in the middle of watching Toph's introductory episode. (Episode 6 of Book 2.) Toph is a blind earth-bender around Aang's age. I... I kind of ship it. o_o And she is AWESOME. As I was watching her fight, I was like, "OH MY GOD, SHE ROCKS SO HARD, LOOK AT HER STANCE AND HER FIGHTING STYLE IT'S UNIQUE AND AMAZING I HOPE SHE'S A NEW REGULAR."

And that pretty much sums up my thoughts on Avatar for now.

*Faints*

Oh, and I fail at memes, just in case that wasn't already perfectly obvious.

Note to self: Get an Avatar icon.

It's been a rather boring day. Mom bought some new non-permanent markers for some art thing or another that my teacher wants me to do, so what was the first thing I did with them? I drew all over my bedroom window! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. Sometimes I swear I'm like, ten, and not seventeen... hummm.

I have some neat things out from the library right now; the novelization of Serenity and the "visual movie companion", for example. I've already finished flipping through the "visual movie companion" and on the page where Joss talks about how he chose to light each character, this bit caught my eye:

"Zoe glows. She cannot help it."

The funny thing is, when I read that, I think I finally started to understand what Zoe is all about. The first time I watched the series, I didn't take much interest in Zoe because I didn't see... I hate to use these words, but I couldn't see the "point" of her. I never disliked her, but I never found any reason to like her. Other than being Mal's old war buddy and Wash's husband, I couldn't figure out how she fit in with the rest of the crew, because she didn't seem to have any relationships outside Mal and Wash, and she didn't seem to have much personality besides being obedient [of Mal] and stoic. Once I read Joss's comment (on how he lights her, no less), I got it. She's strength and tempered passion, a woman made resilient, wise, and mature by her experiences in the war but not hardened. I can just see her going into the War of Unification as a kid young woman, green and naive, and coming out having learned all these hard lessons but not being any less for that.

I really want to write some Firefly genfic now. If only I could come up with an idea...

Aaaand here are about a million memes, since my flist is full of them right now:

( Stop! It's meme time! )

day 01 | a song
day 02 | a picture
day 03 | a book/ebook/fanfic
day 04 | a site
day 05 | a youtube clip
day 06 | a quote
day 07 | whatever tickles your fancy

I couldn't pick just one. :3

( Here, have a gorgeous picture of gorgeous Zachary Quinto. )

( Or how 'bout a (really old) pic of my favourite band? )


And yeah, I realize this is a day late. I had to spend like, all day yesterday working to get two assignments for English done. Ugh. My family and I ended up not seeing 9 yesterday when we all collectively realized there were no movies that we really wanted to see at the theater, so we watched Coraline on Video On Demand instead. It was a good movie, very pretty and visually rich with enough originality to keep me interested; the idea didn't feel like it'd been done a million times before. You don't see a lot of stop motion anymore now that we've been introduced to digital 3D animation, but I liked how the creators of Coraline used the quirks/weaknesses of stop motion - that odd, jerky, slighty creepy quality - to their advantage when it came to some of the more disturbing elements of the movie. I felt oddly... emotionally distanced from it, though. They wasted a lot of time indulging the audience in an exploration of the world Coraline found herself in which they could've used for emotional storytelling or character development.

I had a meeting with my Art 30 teacher today, which meant a lot of driving. For nothing, as it turns out. It was pretty much a waste of time, her telling me everything I already knew (which is basically that she has NO CLUE how I should complete this course this year) and barely even glancing at the couple of sketches I've already done. There's some valuable time I could've been spending on English, down the drain. The good news is that it looks like I'll be able to cut an entire assignment booklet in English, which will make me all caught up. Less work! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay~!

On the way into the "school" building (the base of operations for the learning-at-home school board Sis and I subscribe to) I noticed that a ladybug landed on Sis; I looked up and saw about a half a dozen of them crawling around on the walls. They must've had a nest or something around there. I love ladybugs; they're pretty and gentle and one of the least annoying species of insects. I'm not superstitious, but I'd like to think that seeing those ladybugs today means I'll have good luck. :) I could use it...

I remember one time when my family and I still lived in Ontario, we took a drive and went for a walk along the beach and we discovered hundreds of ladybugs - maybe thousands - had landed on the shore and died. They must have migrated there to mate and then died. It was incredible.

Wasps, on the other hand, I abhor. I have nothing against bees; bees are intelligent and cute, and the "if you don't bother them, they won't bother you" rule actually applies. I've never been stung by a bee, because if a bee stings, it loses its stinger and dies, so bees make it count. Wasps, on the other hand, are some of the stupidest insects known to mankind and mean-spirited little pests. In the last house we had, wasps had decided to build a nest in a little crevice under the wall of our garage (for no apparent reason other than to piss us off) and wouldn't die even after multiple applications of Raid. Worse, unlike bees, they'll sting and bite just for the lulz. Sis is the only one in the family who hasn't been stung/bitten by a wasp for no apparent reason. Once, one was dense enough to fly up the sleeve of my coat and stung me. :/

What else? OH, yesterday I got some stuffs in from the library and AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES was finally in. YESSSSSSS OMG. I LOVE JOHN GREEN THAT MAN NEEDS TO WRITE MORE BOOKS ARGH I CAN'T WAIT TO READ THIS ONE. >:D I've been waiting for a spare moment to start reading it. I want to be able to sit down and really absorb this book.

For English today, I had to write a short story of no more than sixty-five words. Mhmm. 65. I've done drabbles before, but this is ridiculous. xD Anyways, here it is:

Do Humans Dream of Organic Sheep?
They made a boy out of metal, but couldn't believe he was real, so the learned men came and held debates on whether or not he could feel. The boy made a wish on a star, that people could change what they are, and the learned robots came and held debates and wondered if a boy of flesh could feel.

(It was for school, cut me a break. >_>)

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ELL JAY, I know I haven't updated in a couple days but that's 'cause I've been like ridiculously busy with schoolwork and I spent all of today trying to get these two assignments done but neither of them are done but the good news is that it's going to turn out better than I thought it would and JESUS I HOPE I GET GOOD MARKS FOR THIS, GAWD, I DESERVE IT. D:< I ALSO THINK I DESERVE TO GO TO A GOOD UNIVERSITY AND GET A HIGH-PAYING JOB SO I CAN GET LOTS OF MONEY AND RETIRE EARLY AND SIP MARGARITAS ON THE BEACH.

asldfusaf this is what my brain does when I've been working all day, sorry.

In other news, I have a new River icon and it's pretty. x3

Tomorrow, in between working my ass off and working my ass off some more, I'm going to be going out with my family to see a movie. Fwee, this one. It's called "9"." The reviewers aren't so hot on it, but the only other choice was "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", and well, do I have to explain why I don't want to go to that one?

IT'S ABOUT FOOD THAT RAINS FROM THE SKY.

And honestly those were the only two choices that weren't rated R or getting phenomenally awful ratings. (WOW. THE CRITICS ARE REALLY, REALLY HATING ON "ALL ABOUT STEVE". :o)

But whatever. "9" actually looks kind of interesting, even though the critics are complaining that it's cliched, they're also talking about it having a great visual style, and even if a movie's awful, at least I can zone out and look at the pretty pictures. I'll give you my full review tomorrow.

So last Monday I got the Firefly series DVDs in from the library and I've been rewatching them. It's been so long since I watched it on Youtube (the 'tube nazies have taken down the episodes since then) that it's been a real treat, seeing the series again for the first time in months. (The only reason I haven't gone out and bought the DVDs yet is because I'm having a tough time finding them sold in stores, and online buying is generally a no-no in our house.)

God, I love this show. Just the way the characters relate to eachother and how Serenity seems like a wonderful, warm, welcoming, safe, cozy place to live. To be honest, I don't really ship any Firefly pairings, and most of the popular pairings in the fandom cause me to make "D:" faces, even though I love the dynamics between the members of the crew. I don't know, I think it's the fact that everyone aboard Serenity is in love with everyone else - in a family sense - that romance between particular characters doesn't really appeal to me. Oh well. Genfic all the way, baby.

It's funny, but I've just started to realize that Wash is one of my favourite characters. The first time I watched the show, he was more of a background character to me, but now I realize how sweet and likable he is. I think it was the dinosaur bit that got me. :P

I also finished watching a movie called Ben X on Youtube, about a boy with Asperger's who's subjected to constant bullying. It was good; I liked it. One of those tense, edgy things I seem to be attracted to more and more lately, although the ending was a little "meh". I would write a whole detailed review, but I'm much too tired. It's been a harrowing day.