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[personal profile] azurite
This country is going to hell, and I'm going to mourn the loss of the wonderful nation that is the United Sates. Goodbye!

*cough* No, not really, but blech, sometimes I can't believe the elections here. Maybe I'll just convert to Socialism or something. Move to Cuba! Haha... No, kidding. I'm in shock, really, but... whatever. Maybe with some dumb luck we'll pull off an impeachment a'la Clinton's last few years, or a'la Governor Gray Davis. *grin* (And we could get that amendment to the Constitution so that Schwarzie can run for President! HAH. HAH. HAH!)

In other news, I stayed here (at the Collabatory) until 11pm last night. CLOSING. -_-; Yes, I know I'm a procrastinator, the Queen of Bullshit Artists, and many other things, but yeouch. Thank goodness Scott was good enough to wait around for me (he got out of class around 7:45, which is pretty early for him), because otherwise I would have had to walk home. No way Grandpa would have stayed up that late to wait for me to call him.

I was working on my speech for today, the informative one on the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. I finally finished the outline, but I was lacking a 2nd book source (required: 2 books, 3 journals, and as many others as necessary or desired). I came up with the idea to search my personal collection, or at worst, the bibliography in the Black Hat book I'd used as my first book source, but then inspiration (and luck!) struck me this morning.

For one, SBC discovered the problem behind my home Internet, and I think it's working again (for real). Something about water flooding their underground cables, and now they had to redirect the lines or pump out the water or something. Anyway, I managed to go to Amazon.com and find a spam-related book, "The Anti-Spam Toolikit." This book also happened to have an excerpt, which I used. I used my scanner to uce OCR, and turn my previously-printed pages into editable text on the newly-installed MSOffice 2002. I redid the Works Cited Page and Page 3 of my outline, and tah-dah! All done! ^_^

Of course, today, I was paranoid because despite the extra hour and a half I'd allotted myself, I didn't finish copying my outline to index cards so I could actually MAKE my speech. And I didn't think to make a copy of my outline to work off of INSTEAD of index cards, simply because my rationale is that index cards are smaller and less obtrusive. Well, as it all turned out, I didn't have to go anyway. Friday, I'll be the first one to go, and obviously, with the extra time, I'll revise my index cards and practice as much as I can.

I also completed my Mortgage Project to the best of my ability; questions 14 and 15 confused me because they were asking "what if you paid an additional $100/$200 toward your principal each month? how would that affect your payments, how long it takes you to pay, etc." I tried several ways of inserting that value into the formula P(1 + r/n)nt = pymt (1 + r/n)nt -1
r/n
But I don't think I did it correctly, because I keep getting monthly payments that are only a few cents off (that is, HIGHER, when it should be LOWER) than my original monthly payment. Therefore, the time (30 yr. fixed loan rate @ 7.25%) wouldn't change, right? Are there any math experts in the house who'd care to help me with this one?

Well, aside from that, we started on Central Asia in Geography today... Mr. Davidson was "in mourning" just like me, wearing navy and blue. We're all bummed about Kerry losing this one, but... well, who knows? Bush knows about his criticizers, so maybe he'll try and shape up to do better than they (read: we the people) expect of him. We missed Kerry's concession speech, though. Wonder what that was like? CNN.com, here I come!

Journalism-- we ended working on TV, and we'll move onto Film on Friday. My 2nd Media Notebook entry (2-2) is due the 17th, and the whole notebook, bundled with the first one, is due on the 22nd. That doesn't give me much time to revise my 2-1 entry, though I will be waiting until we get the TV topic list before writing 2-2. My fallback in case none of the TV ones interest me (which seems doubtful, but knowing Ms. Henry's lists...) is the magazine muckraking one.

And now onto the juicy stuff.

(1) It's a good thing when you can see and accept flaws in the one you love, right? Well, Scott's actually been kind of annoying the past few days. The thing that sticks out in my mind (and you know me, I have a penchant for remembering pointless things, holding grudges, etc.) is last night. As we left the library, we checked the electoral college votes, as were a pair of girls at a computer terminal next to us. Since we were all looking at different sites, we all got different numbers, and I commented on the differing numbers. Despite the fact that I barely spoke above "library level" and that the library was closing anyway (therefore, no students studying and requiring the absolute peace and quiet), Scott was all "Mer, SSH!" -_- I just walked out of the library without him. I was tempted to snap at him when he finally caught up with me, but then I remembered how red-rimmed his eyes were, how tired he looked even BEFORE he'd agreed to stick around with me in the library while I slaved away at something I should have done a week ago, and that he'd fallen asleep in his earlier class. Again, that wonderful self-doubt. I kept my mouth shut and decided I had no right to be upset. He could have been more polite and understanding, but...

Anyway, he actually apologized, which probably surprised me more than it should have. We walked to his car and went home, but before I left the car, Scott more than made up for pissing me off by giving me the most incredible kiss I have ever had. Seriously. You know those sappy kisses I write about? Or hell, pick a romance novel, any romance novel. Those breath-stealing, face-flushing, eye-dilating kisses? Yeah, like that. He was the one that said "Wow, I'm feeling a bit lightheaded," and trust me, it had nothing to do with him being tired or having eaten bad lasagna.

*sways* Sometimes it's good when my life is a bit dramatic and soap-opera like, right?

(2) Look at my icon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nanowrimo has begun, and, bad girl that I am, I haven't really started. Well, I didn't on Day 1 or 2, so I planned to make up for it today by writing 5,001 words, which is the average word count by Day 3. The thing is, I sort of lost inspiration for the story I was writing and how I was going to go about writing it. I gave it a shot anyway, and here's what I've got so far-- 1,008 words of "Soul Half." Tell me what you think, whether I should change POVs, go into more detail, etc.

=Prologue=

I’m doomed.
Utterly, completely, and undeniably doomed.
This feeling of foreboding has been hanging over me for months –no, years!—now, and when I turn eighteen at the end of this month, the whole world will know what kind of a person I am.
A hopeless, unattractive, pathetic person who will die a spinster.
Yep, that’s me.
I can’t even stand going to school now, even though I’ve been known as the “teacher’s pet” for as long as I can remember. I used to love school! And then You-Know-What happened.
No, I guess you don’t know what ‘You-Know-What’ is. So I guess I’ll tell you.

Soul Half happened.

=1=

There’s this little chain hanging around my neck, with a black pendant hooked onto the bottom. To some, it’s a kitschy little necklace, a cute thing, really. But to most of the people on my world, it’s a heck of a lot more than that. That pendant isn’t just some everyday pendant, and this necklace isn’t some original piece of art. No, every girl in the world has one of these necklaces with a black pendant, and every single guy in the world has one with a white pendant.

See where I’m going with this?

Where I come from, every child born receives one of these nice little necklaces at birth. Black pendants for girls, white pendants for boys. I don’t know why they think women are “darker” or “heavier,” or some such nonsense, and whenever I ask anyone about it, all they tell me is ‘Because that’s the way it is. It’s the way it’s been since before anyone can remember.’

Yeah, well, that’s not an answer!

Anyway, so everyone gets one of these pendants. But they’re not just cute little necklaces, as I’ve said before. See, the pendants are shaped like commas, I suppose—almost like crescent moons with a blob on the end. There’s a small circle in the center of that blob, the opposite color of the pendant. So if you’re female and have a black pendant, the circle is white, and if you’re male and have a white pendant, the circle is black. Make sense?

This basically means that a black pendant can connect perfectly with a white pendant, and the two will form a perfect circle. How nice. It also means that the two people wearing those necklaces are bound together. For life.

Do you get why I’m doomed yet? I’m turning eighteen in less than a month, and I’m the only one –out of my whole family, my whole class, my whole school even that hasn’t found my Other. My Soul Half.

Maybe I just don’t have one.
It’s unheard of, I know, but if you were in my shoes, you’d probably have a lot of nagging self-doubt too.

The whole ‘bound together for life’ thing isn’t just a tradition in my world, though. As a matter of fact, there’s actually magic at work behind these necklaces of ours. That’s what makes the relationships so unbreakable. You find your Soul Half, and you have that sense of wholeness and completion that other people elsewhere only dream about. There’s no divorce on my world. The idea exists, the concept exists, but for some reason, there’s no record of it ever actually happening.

Everyone just takes these pendants of theirs, lives their life until BAM! One day your Other walks into your life, and that’s it—life’s perfect. There’s no need for soul-searching, blind dates, awkward breakups, or anything like that. Sure, dating exists on my world, but that’s only because people spend so much time trying to discover who their Soul Half is.

It’s not as though the pendants just start blaring alarms or flashing colors when you find your other. No, you actually have to put a little “heart and soul” into it. Like I said, the pendants are magical, and when you first get them, they’re pretty much ordinary necklaces. But you wear them all the time –even while you sleep, shower, swim, and… everything else. The necklace starts to imprint your thoughts and feelings into it, and somehow works its magic into that. Somehow, the pendant works everything into a simple sort of signal, and when it finds a pendant matching yours… well, that’s your Other.

No one knows just what determines how someone becomes your Soul Half. There are plenty of couples out there who love different colors, food, or are even part of different political parties. There are couples from different races, speaking different languages, or have anywhere from a single month to ten years difference in age.

But everyone and I mean everyone always finds their Soul Half by eighteen. Most people find that special person by sixteen, actually… and I feel like the only one on the whole planet who hasn’t.

I probably am.

I’m cursed, I’m jinxed—or there’s something wrong with me.

But maybe I’d rather not think that way. Maybe it’s not me at all, but the pendant. Maybe I got a defective one, or maybe mine just doesn’t broadcast on the same bandwidth as everyone else’s.

Maybe I have to go far, far away from home in order for it to work. Who says my true soul mate is in my neighborhood, let alone my city or country? Maybe he’s waiting for me thousands of miles away…

But no one’s going to let me go anywhere or do anything until I turn eighteen and it’s confirmed to everyone that I’m some sort of freak.

The One without an Other. The Soul-Halfless one.

Well, I don’t plan on sticking around for that. I don’t care what restrictions they try to impose on me, or how tightly they think they’ll lock me up. I’ll find a way to get out of here before I turn eighteen, and I’ll find a way to get the answers I want.

I’m sick of hearing the excuse ‘because that’s the way it is.’ I don’t believe it. I believe in myself—that I can make my own destiny, fall in love for real, and not base the rest of my life on the glowing of some charm. I believe that we shouldn’t just swallow tradition as fact, and that someone needs to go out there and show them where all this stuff came from, and why we stick to it so much.

I believe I’m going to be that person.

No, I don’t just believe it. I know it.

Option #2 is to try my other idea-- which, like Soul Half, is based off something I initially wanted to turn into a manga. It's called "I'm Listening," and is a suspense-thriller, I'd say. Which would be somewhat new for me, but at least I have some material to work with already.

Option #3 is to take that story I have partially done on FictionPress.com and completely revamp it. It's called "Wandering Spirit," and is (currently) about a girl named Fuyuu Mitama... and well, since it's only 740 words long (!) you can read the teaser for it here...

Fuyuu Mitama.
That’s what I’ve called myself for the past… God, I can’t even remember. There’s a lot of things I can’t remember. I’ve gotten used to it—it’s a part of me really. If I ever remembered what I forget so often, I think I’d be afraid. I’m not sure. I can’t remember.

Sometimes I make up nonsense like that, and it helps ease the loneliness of my existence. If you can call it that.

What else would you call a girl who’s trapped in the mortal plane, not quite dead, but never quite alive?

My name –or the one I’ve come to call myself—means “Wandering Spirit.” I suppose it’s the most accurate description of me.

I’m an average 17-year-old, Japanese schoolgirl. I’m fairly petite, with a nice, creamy white skin, and decent enough complexion. Bright brown eyes, perfectly straight hair.

Oh, and I’m dead.

Or at least, I think that’s what you’d call me. I don’t even recall “waking up” as I am now—perhaps I should call it my “birth.” I have no memories of that time, or any time “before” that, for that matter.

All I know is that no one on this Earth can see me. I don’t need to eat. I don’t need to breathe. I have no pulse, no heartbeat, no warmth. No memories.

There shouldn’t be anything keeping me here, preventing me from melting into Earth’s crusts itself… but there is. For the longest time, I was desperate to discover who I was. As time passed, I realized I was very different from normal humans.

They could not see me, not as they saw their friends, their family, their loved ones.

I wonder if I ever had anyone like that.

Fuyuu Mitama, the wandering spirit.

It’s been a century or so since I last went anywhere new. Where shall I go now?

And the fourth option would be to let someone CHALLENGE me, because I always seem to respond to those well. A challenge would have to be fairly loose (that is, no established characters), but things like:
-events, circumstances
-settings (time and place)
-genre (romance, suspense, horror, etc.)

I could always go to SeventhSanctum.com and challenge myself, but somehow that wouldn't seem as "fun" or "fulfilling." Maybe if a bunch of people gave me various things to work with, I could try and write my NaNo based off that? If that were the case, I would accept VAGUE character descriptions, actions, etc. As long as the challenger wouldn't later scream copyright violation.

And, just to add to the fun and joy... I think I'm pretty much done here. I ate part of my lunch, but Scott said he was stuck in the lab for an hour... and it's been over 2 and a half. -_- I don't think he's coming. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure he's stuck in class. And me? I just want to go home and kick back. Maybe write my notecards, hope for inspiration for NaNoWriMo, and maybe with some dumb luck, TALK to people. That'd be nice. I could also get some webpages and skins and stuff done.

Geh, I need a laptop.

(Holy mother of Shiva. My new favorite song just came on the Windows Media RADIO! I think today's turning out okay after all!) *dances* (When I get enough footage, I AM SO MAKING THIS INTO A S/T AMV!!)
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