“And sometimes this Blog is just a diary, or a reminder. You forget the things you were certain you would always remember, especially the tiny things, and all too often they’re the things that matter.”
Neil Gaiman, December 1, 2006

I know he said that in reference to his daughter, but dang I still love how he writes.

Yesterday I went to lecture, art lab, then printing lab. Oh. Before lecture I was in the library “tracing” over the landscapes/cityscapes/interiors (abstracting everything into geometric shapes). I got two thirds of it done in an hour. :o In lab we got a half hour presentation on what are abstract geometric shapes, and what are not. Then I spent another half hour finishing the third page of examples. Rest of the time I tried coming up with my own pictorial design. I came up with two then couldn’t really think of any more. x.x Have to work on that this weekend.

Had a lab final in printing. Oh yeah! My teacher said in class: she’s lived in Michigan, where it snows, and when she was moving to California she thought, oh yay, the sun is always out! But it’s so cold here! Not outside, but inside. Her husband said “we have to go get sweaters!”

Hah, yeah, no one heats (public) buildings around here. >_> My mom’s even got the thermostat at home down to 66° since last winter. I never even gave that a second thought. Do other places heat to a comfortable level during the winter?

Yesterday I forgot to turn off the heater (we don’t have a thermostat) in the morning, so it was on pretty high all day until I got home at 5:30. C and his friend had the windows open since they don’t know how to work the heater. -.- So I don’t have the heater on now, and I’m wearing a tank top, shirt, thermal top, sweatshirt, leggings, and sweatpants. Still a little cold though.

Wednesday night it was really cold. I think it went down to 42° while we were checking the weather. Thursday morning there was ice on my car! Only the rear window, but still! This one site C’s friend checked said that average and record temperatures in SLO are more extreme than temperatures in Berkeley/Davis. O_o I understand the highs; they’re more north, so naturally it’s cooler. But the lows! How in the world can we get colder than the Bay area??? They get fog! It rains often there! We’re in what’s called the Gold Coast. (I think it’s a just marketing/tourist gimmick though.)

Today I vacuumed my room and called the evaluations office to see if my transcripts were marked with the equivalent classes at Cal Poly. That’s it. bah! I should be working on art stuff, but I’m so lazy!

Last night I stayed up til 1:30 am working on my blog. XD; Moved the last of the pMachine entries to WordPress. No more pMachine floating around uselessly on my domain anymore, woohoo! Installed plugins for tags and weighted tags and for weighted categories. So now you’ll see those around.

I do believe that Amy and Ben didn’t really mean to make Evanescence a Christian band. I think (my opinion) that they just loved God so much, and when you love someone (or something … x.x), you just want to share it with everyone. God was a big part of their lives, so how could he not show up in their songs? But! What they weren’t doing was writing worship songs or songs telling everyone how great God is, ‘you should love God too!’ (“We want people to know that your salvation is not going to keep people from hurting you and it’s not going to stop you from feeling pain. But you are not alone. God made you the way you are for a reason. There are other people who think, feel, and dream the same way you do and Christ will never abandon you whether you go through trials or not.”)

Then they got big and everyone could see the Christian bits so they called Ev a Christian band even though Ev wasn’t trying to tell people about God or anything. I don’t really know why they decided to deny their religion had anything to do with their music; money, fame, or maybe they just didn’t want to limit their music to one audience? Whatever.

David Hodges is gone, and I think he’s in a Christian band now. Ben Moody’s gone, and he’s done some religious music. Amy Lee’s the member who is left, and she’s said she feels her relationship with God is personal and private. (I feel that way too. ^^;; Omigosh were so alyke we cud b bffs if she new meee!! … /end sarcasm. I mean, I understand what she’s saying.) John Lecompt and Rocky Gray were in Christian bands, too, right? You never know if God may slip in one of their songs. ;b

Not that I want to bring up that whole “OMG they so are/aren’t a Christian band!!!1″ controversy. I never really thought they were a Christian band after they said they weren’t. I still don’t. I just thought it was … very interesting and different, that article. ^_^;;

…

What I was looking for originally:

[Going Under] was um, the last song we wrote for Fallen. It’s the most recent, and it actually was more collaborative than any other song we’ve written in the past. … We were working on it all at once and she really branched out vocally and did a lot of really really cool sultry stuff on the verses which hadn’t been done by us yet.
–Ben Moody (in the “Making of the Video” … video

When I first heard that I was hoping Evanescence would make more songs like Going Under. It’s my favorite song of theirs. Along with Lies and Everybody’s Fool. ^^

Just because I feel like it, what Amy said in the video:

Well, Going Under to me is sort of um, an empowering song, it’s sort of like a really strong um, almost angry song, for me, and I wanted the video to really express sort of like this dark, like powerful, um, anger.

I still haven’t watched the Making of Fallen pt II video. pooh. First thing I’ll do after my chem final! XD Er, when I get home, that is.

I installed WordPress … which took quite a bit of work because for some reason my ftp thingamabobber keeps “timing out” or something, while I’m uploading stuff and I have to log out and log back in. I never said I understood ftp servers.

I guess WP is okay. I’m just not used to it. I can’t figure out their template system. It makes me sad. I must be doing something stupidly.

WP also only can import my Greymatter entries. They’re working on some pMachine Nucleus importer … what the heck is this Nucleus thing?

Also don’t like the categories thing. *pokes it* Never used it before, never was interested in it, won’t start anytime soon. boo. Why can’t I turn it off? (pMachine lets me do it. /end whiny child bit)

“People are voting like they’re picking furniture. … ‘Hm, this one looks good; this one feels good.’”

“Jesus died for everyone. But he didn’t really. … He died for you. But not really for you, because your lifestyle is bad.”

Hey! I just realized something. I’m gonna miss Dead Like Me again this week! *cries* Last week George got a friend … and I missed it. And I don’t even know what’s gonna happen this week. O_o That’s sad.

“A weakened mind always sees everything through a black veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is dark, which is why you see such a cloudy sky.”

“There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.”

Both from Count of Monte Cristo. Of course. :b I dunno. I just thought they were interesting.

Last night I read Preludes & Nocturnes. Wai wai, so cooool! ^___^ And then I got to meet Death in issue #8. W00T!!! XD

“Super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious. Utterly fantabulous word, huh? It means, y’know, great. Wonderful. Ginchy. Gnarly. Peachy Keen!”

That was my feeble attempt at recreating comic’s lettering technique. ^^;; Ah well.

Death: “… gets me down, too. Mostly they aren’t too keen to see me. They fear the sunless lands. But they enter your realm each night withought fear.”
Dream: “And I am far more terrible than you, my sister.”

Dream is uber cool too. :D

“I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister’s gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her.”

So said Dream. ^_^ Ooh, then in the recap in The Doll’s House, Neil Gaiman said, “… the Dream Lord is of the Endless, the race that are not Gods (for Gods die, when their believers are gone, but the Endless will be here when the last God has gone beyond the Realm of Death, and into non-existance)….” American Gods! :D:D

Hm, I wonder if God saves copies of other gods like he saves the ideas of fairies and leprachauns and unicorns …

Now I’ve got 12 more graphic novels to buy. >D #3–10 of The Sandman series, the two sidestories about Death, a collection of short stories about each of the Endless, and this comic about Japanese fables that Gaiman wrote and Yoshitaka Amano illustrated. *_* Must haave!

Today I finished the new layout for my diary (which you are still not allowed to read, SM00). I think I got tired of the black and darkness of the Tsuda layout, because this one’s PINK, and has white text. Well, it’s kind of a salmon/red pink. Not too bad, I don’t think. I don’t really know, I don’t hate pink, so I can’t tell if it’s bad or not. The only thing I don’t like is that I needed almost 15 images to make the layout, and I used div layers. ^^’ I’ve got a policy for my diary: simple coding, few images, simple layouts. It’s ’cause I use Netscape 4.5 (or is it 4.7?) to update my diary. Ah well. Maybe I’ll get tired of it quickly.

After dinner watched The Last Emperor with Mommy. O_O Umm … Good movie. Very. Asians look kinda cute in 20s/30s styles. ^__^ I want a haircut kinda like that wannabe pilot lady. Not so short in the back, though … I’m talking about the one she had when she first showed up. I didn’t know there was a Manchuria during World War II. Saw some footage … asked Mommy, and she said it’s probably real. *shudders* She asked, “What’s worse? The killing of [I forget the number] by one person or one million killing 200,000?”

Mm. Anyway.

“Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, ‘casualties may rise to a million.’ With individual stories, the statistics become people—but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child’s swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted, distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies’ own myriad squirming children?” Neil Gaiman, American Gods

You know … that doesn’t make much sense to me. Of course, it can’t help that both times I read it was after midnight. But it’s still worded so nicely …

Firstly, I don’t get more than 5 hits a day. ^_^;;; Isn’t that saad? :b I don’t mind really. Means I’m safe … from people knowing about me, and me not knowing about them. The people I know who read this blog: SM00, Adam, Noelle, Amanda, and Matt. Yup yup. I think SM00 and Adam also count as 70% or so of my hits. XP Well, that’s on my main site, anyway. Or here. The index page. On my whole domain, I get about … *checks last month’s stats* 250 hits per day. But that’s counting page views and such. Like frame layouts, they account for a lot of pages loading … Hm, about 80 visitors per day. o_O;;; *is scared all of a sudden* … *erases memory*

Okay! Moving on! So I get 5 hits on this page every day. That means not many people read this main page. I dunno what people are looking at otherwise. o.o Umm … I forget what my point is. >.> My point is not many people read this. So I could post almost anything I want. Almost. And since I don’t use real names of people who don’t want their real names used, there’s no security issue. And … I dunno. Forgot what I was thinking about.

Mmm … I don’t think anyone but people I know and Amanda read this blog regularly, so whatever I was thinking doesn’t really pertain to me. And … I’m not really all that personal in here, am I? That all goes into my other … things. Which no one can read, muahaha! *coughgagchoke* Umm … What’s a blog, anyway? See, convo from book (no spoilers, I don’t think):

>You should see the other journals out there. One girl is writing about how she’s a stripper with a drug habit. It’s such bullshit. You know she’s not, because if she was really doing all of the drugs she was bragging about, then she’d be too blitzed to figure out how to post a webpage. Actually, hers is really more like a blog.
>What’s a blog?
>You really don’t know anything about this, do you? Didn’t you read any journals before you started your own? Did you think you were the only one doing this?
>Why would you read something like that, like the stripper website?
>I get bored. They’re like soap operas. I can’t stop reading some of them. I can’t wait to see how they’re going to mess up their lives next. There’s this one guy who is totally stalking his ex-girlfriend, and he doesn’t seem to realize it. He keeps going on about how much he loves her, posting shitty poems, and the next day he’s whining about some restraining order she’s filed. It’s hysterical. I love him because he’s so clueless.
>That sounds awful.
>It’s so much fun. Either you’re reading someone like you, who writes about everything you can identify with, or it’s this total train wreck you can’t stop reading about. You just read about their pain and thank God you’re someone else. It really puts things into perspective knowing you’re not some poor bastard fired from his job because of a porn addiction.
>There’s a journal like that?
>There’s a journal like that.

Hmm, that may be a bit long. Anyway. Written by Pamela Ribon. Goood book! ^-^ And umm … so what’s a blog? What’s a journal? What’s a diary? I always thought a diary was personal thoughts and stuff and a journal was a recording of events. But then someone said it was the other way around. And now I’m all confused … And I don’t quite know what a blog is. I mean … I know the technical term. The one I remember is “a place for news or updates or a person’s personal journal.” Ohh welll …

Last night before I went to bed I was attracted by my Barnes & Noble bags. ^^; Pulled out Why Girls are Weird. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that much reading a book. I mean, they weren’t rip-roaring, huge guffaws. But a slow, steady, stream of laughter. I reeeeally like that book. :D I read like the first 20 or 30 pages then. >.>

Today I woke up so tired, I couldn’t concentrate on reading like I wanted. I watched a lot of IFC. One movie ended (in fact they played the Box Scores just a little while after I started watching). Played a short film afterwards. Wow, it was interesting. o_o M88 walked by and saw the screen and asked, “What are you watching?!” Baptism of Solitude, it was. Paul Bowles. Very cool. Never heard of him before, but still cool.

The Wedding Banquet started playing in the next time slot, so I watched that for 109 minutes. Yeah. I don’t see how that’s a comedy. O_o But still good. I noticed that the parts where they spoke English, I had to pay more attention than when I read the captions. ^^;;

After that went downstairs and ate leftovers of dinner last night. Daddy started watching Mr. Deeds. He left to get Jichan’s steel cabinet, so I watched it. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I guess it’s refreshing to see Adam Sandler in a rather clean movie. ^^;; Tried watching MTV2, MTV Hits, VH1, and VH1 Classic again, as I usually do. Settled for Topsy Turvy. The attempts at being Japanese cracked me up. ^_^;;;

Played The Sims after. Started playing with the Goth family. Failing miserably. -_-

Watched The Adventures of Pete and Pete with N. I didn’t mean to. I just sat on the sofa and opened my book, but every time I got caught up in the episode. ^.^;;

Some time during the day I felt so tired that I just laid down on the floor and closed my eyes. I thought, ‘Hm, like The Sim— O_O’ x.x; And I haven’t really been playing all that much, either. Just maybe a couple hours every day. Not anything like Animal Crossing. x.x Although I don’t remember much from that period. ^^;;;

Trying to find the little quote thing that showed up at the beginning of Baptism of Solitude. I have no idea what I’m looking for, though, so … X( Pointless. Found this though. I like it. :D

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.”
–Paul Bowles, from The Sheltering Sky

About 2 or 3 hours I tried to click on some window on my laptop, and the display froze. >.< I amazed myself. I was very cool and very collected and just picked up Neverwhere and started reading. XP I’ve started chapter eleven. O_O HOW COULD HE/SHE/IT?!?!?! *bangs* Not right, I say! Nooot riiiiiight! >.< Wooo. Two-thirds through the book. XD I started reading last Saturday, too.

“What,” asked Mr. Croup, “do you want?”
“What,” asked the marquis de Carabas, a little more rhetorically, “does anyone want?”
“Dead things,” suggested Mr. Vandamar. “Extra teeth.”
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

XDDD That makes me like Mr. Vandamar a bit more … that is … if I could like him. O_o

So, what I watched last night … The Panic Room, which I liked, good fun movie (“Get out of my house!” “Say fuck.” “What? Fuck!” O.o “No, say ‘Get the fuck out of my house!’” “Get the fuck out of my house!” haha! that was great) … and Dead Like Me, which was funnay! (“She doesn’t like the word moist because she thinks it sounds pornographic.” XP) Also, last Friday, Mommy and I watched Far From Heaven, which was interesting. Not anything fantabulous, though.