A little bit of magic...

It's time for the requisite HARRY POTTER post. Yes, you heard me. This post is all schmollieollie and katiat325's fault, because with the way they were whispering and giggling in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," I wanted to know why- they said I had to read the books. Turned out my Mom had books 1-4, so I read them-- in about a week and a half. ALL FOUR OF THEM. What an adventure! Then, Stephanie was kind enough to give me "Order of the Phoenix" as a going-away present just before I moved down here to Northridge.

Now, a year later, "The Half-Blood Prince" is coming out, and I'm one of the many eager fans who's preordered and is waiting for something to actually tide me over and give me a good long read (I finished Book 2 and 3 of "The Mediator" this morning). But first-- a few questions...

(1) HEY, CANADIAN HP FANS! What's up with the "adult edition" of Harry Potter, anyway?
On FictionAlley.org, they have a listing of all the books released in the respective countries/areas-- the U.S. has got the spooky green art by Mary GrandPré... but the Deluxe Edition has DIFFERENT art by MGP, and the Canadian version has the same art as the U.K. -- with an "adult" edition and a "youth" edition! What's going on, here?

(2) Think I oughta dress up?
I figure I might actually have some fun and go to the Midnight Magic Party at my local Borders on Jul. 15th at 9:00-- I work close enough to the mall to be able to. Not that I have a scarf or anything else... But every time I see the "Chamber of Secrets," I notice an uncanny resemblance between myself and Moaning Myrtle. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? (I happen to like Hermione a lot more, but my hair couldn't be bushy if I tried.)

(3) Aren't there still some things that need clarifying?
Of course, I plan on re-reading all the books while I'm in San Francisco (this will be after I've re-read OotP and have tHBP already in hand), but I want to make sure I'm not missing out on any big important facts. So, everyone: What are 3 things that every Harry Potter fan absolutely MUST know by now-- things that are undisputed facts, but not trivial things/things that everyone knows no matter what, like Hermione has bushy hair, Scabbers = Peter Pettigrew, and Hogwarts just can't seem to find a reliable DADA teacher? WHAT ELSE? (The little, harder-to-deduce facts, if you please-- especially anything re: Voldemort)

And now for something completely different...

Mamono and I tried to duel today, but a thunderstorm (!?) cut her short. But for those interested (and Mamono, if you're a peeping Duelist, like Kaiba-boy of Chapter 17/WDKY is) you can check out my decks:

A semi-Mai deck: http://www.yugioh-deck.com/ViewDeck.php?deckid=1067076909
A vaguely-Kaiba deck: http://www.yugioh-deck.com/ViewDeck.php?deckid=1173124046
A Fairy-deck: http://www.yugioh-deck.com/ViewDeck.php?deckid=1741789476 (Formerly my Anzu cosplay deck, but with a spruce of Isis mixed in)

I also have an Egypt-themed deck in the works, though that would really kick butt if I had cards from Malik's Structure Deck.

( It's time to Duel! All the decks, boosters, and promo cards out there! )

What sucks is that I *REALLY* want to go to the Cybernetic Revolution Sneak Preview (Embodiment of Apophis!!!! Okay, I just think the name/picture are cool; they blurred out the text on the sample card at yugioh-card.com) but the nearest one is 55 miles away. -_- I need a car dammit, and I need to learn to drive! Just so I can be the biggest (girl) geek at one of these events-- but who cares!? I want my free card!

:O You know what I just found out? Mai's signature cards in the Orichalchos arc-- Harpie's Lady Phoenix Formation and Sparrow Formation... I knew one of them was supposed to be Suzaku Formation, but I thought the other one was supposed to be Seiryuu Formation (it looked like a dragon to me, was blue, and would make sense if Suzaku was the other one...) but it turns out it's Hou'ou, which means Phoenix in Japanese, but refers to the Chinese MALE mythical phoenix, while apparently Suzaku is female...!? That can't be right, because according to the kanji compound, the characters in Hou'ou refer to BOTH the male and female phoenix birds, respectively.

Fanfiction gets WIRED!

WIRED magazine (July 2005) mentions fanfiction-- okay, more than "mention" -- Neal Pollack does a short article on it, entitled "Spock the Sith Slayer." For the most part, it's your typical outsider's view on fanfiction:
"Gwuh!? Fagin and Artful Dodger sex!?"
"Superman ditched Lois Lane for some chick from Ice Castle!?"
and so on. But there are intelligent, thoughtful writers out there (with a decent grasp of the English language) that don't try to date the guy from Stargate Atlantis, aren't glittering, emerald-eyed Mary Sues, and so on. I wrote them a thanks/it's not QUITE how you see it letter. Maybe we'll see it in next month's issue?

My Recycle Bin is still on the fritz, and of course, Microsoft's "Knowledge Base" doesn't offer any new insight. -_- Oh well, I just have to be careful what I delete then, I guess...

Geez, I'm beginning to REALLY dislike the dueling side of Yu-Gi-Oh. Not the anime or the manga, but the game. The people on Yu-Gi-Oh online are insanely immature, and on yugioh-deck.com, they're downright vicious AND lacking any English skills. The comments I got on my decks:

Vaguely-Kaiba1
GlitchSamo21        5        Red-Eyes don't belong to Kaiba's deck, I don't see him using it... removing him to add Call of the Haunted
Okay, this is the one comment that I appreciate. But I did say it's "Vaguely" Kaiba's deck. Really, it's more of a Beatdown deck with a Dragon influence. I LIKE Dragons, hence Red-Eyes.

juriaantas        3        ?
Uhh... okay?

mystic_dragon        4        Worst deck.
Why did you give it a 4 then, if it's the worst deck? What makes it so horrible? Geez. (I USED to kick people around with it, but new starters and boosters are coming out so fast, I don't want to waste my money with the game anymore! There's no one to duel!)

Fairy Deck
juriaantas        5        ?I don't think this is a very good deck? remove the shining abys and add some traps
It's a Fairy Deck-- it's not that easy to make a "good" Fairy deck without adding something else. I'm fine with removing weaker monsters, but as for traps-- which ones?

Mai-Deck1
yami-Zaxter        6        add harpy's pet dragon
I would if I had it. It's true that the database lets you create whatever cards you want, but what good does that do if you don't actually HAVE the cards to duel with? Besides, isn't Harpie's Pet Dragon only in Tournament Packs? That means it's expensive!

juriaantas        7.5        add more traps and delete the hary girl add a harpy's pet dagon delete the de-spell's and maybe add mystical space typoon
Gawd, this guy can't spell. Again with the "more traps," but not specifying which ones or what kind. You can also only have ONE Mystical Space Typhoon per deck so that it conforms to Upper Deck's rules-- and I'd prefer my decks did. I don't duel "casually" with God Cards and such. Trés lame. Also, I STILL don't have the Harpie's Pet Dragon. Believe me, if I had it, it would be in there!

Yeesh. -_-

*yawn* I got about 3 hours of sleep last night because I had a nightmare. Truthfully-- I had this dream that Scott was just into white girls with glasses, and he found some girl that looked a bit like me, but taller and... well, there was obviously something he liked a lot more about her than me. So I was just some "thing" to him, some girl that suited his fetish, and he went off with her... there was nothing I could do. I kept thinking about it and thinking about it, waiting for him to come home... but he never did. My dream abruptly flashed over to a scene of Yu-Gi-Oh (that never happened) with Kaiba holding Joey's head down to a guillotine, and the blade was centimeters from Joey's neck... then I woke up.

Needless to say, I was scared shitless either way. I went right downstairs and told Scott (who was eating breakfast) to please come upstairs and talk to me when he was done. He knew I'd had a nightmare and said as much, but he thought it had to do with Aragog (giant spider) from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which we'd watched last night. Uh, no. I might have had a bad dream about millions of spiders chasing me ONCE after I first saw CoS, but not after that. It kinda pissed me off that he assumed that's what it was. He makes my fear of spiders seem lame or stupid-- it's not!

Anyway, we ended up talking after that... various things that really didn't have too much to do with my nightmare, but then again, that's what dreams are all about, right? Not being related to what you think they are... of course I have internal fears about him moving away and leaving me, replacing me, having me all along, waiting and hoping for him to come back when he never will. Things have been a bit strained lately, if only because he's constantly at school or work (or studying), and he never seems the least bit affectionate toward me. That ended up changing later this afternoon, when he got home... but nonetheless, what he said in the morning motivated me to eat some breakfast and (after he left), have a short nap before waking up to shower and start my pre-lim sketch of the house. It looks good, and I hope to start painting on my next day off.

But I'm still tired.

Speaking of work though, they apparently changed the schedule on me, and one of the managers surprised me by calling and asking why I hadn't showed up yet. @_O I thought I had yesterday and today off! Yesterday yes, but apparently not today-- anyway, I changed shifts for Friday and Saturday with "S," that guy that is sometimes nice, sometimes obnoxious... but I'm all confused about what's going to happen. Am I going to get written up for not knowing exactly what day I copied down the old schedule, and then not having anyone TELL me that they'd changed the schedule? Geez.