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25yrs/ m/ aries/ year of the dog/ animation major/ illustration minor/ nicks: rurounibug; baskerville



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indoglish

Because I use a lot of Indo on this mostly English site, here's some lingo for the uninitiated:

abang=big brother
ade/adek=younger sibling (gender neutral)
bete/bt=a negative emotion, usually irritation or a bad mood
cewe/ce=slang for girls
cowo/co=slang for boys
ja'im (jaga imej/image)=guarding your social image
kakak (pronounced kaka')=older sibling (gender neutral, or female, depending)
--kak (ka')=honorific for older siblings or 'sempai'
kuliah/kul=college
gwe (sometimes gw, gue)=slang for I or me
SD=elementary school
SK (sometimes es-ka; setia kawan): solidarity, loyalty (among friends)
skul=school
SMA=high school
SMP=middle school
TK=kindergarten
wa=slang for I, me (same as 'gwe')

what are all those 2s? this is shorthand for a 'kata ulang' or repeated word. ngakak2 is read ngakak-ngakak= laughing very hard

any words that need to be added?




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Entries for January, 2005

January 4th, 2005

not a way to start a new year

Psyched on my apaprtment hunt, I sent off a query about pet-acceptance of certain premises with my fan-email-account. ><;;;

Guess I'm not getting that apartment.

Although I suspect--and strongly, too--that the answer would have been "no" regardless, it's kind of--well, very, actually--embarassing.

Guh.

At least I thought enough to unclick the 'sig' box, even though in my experience with yahoo, the email gets sig-ed anyway. Those ticky boxes are kind of treachearous.

rurounibug ; 07:22 PM|fine, ignore me


January 7th, 2005

udah enak sih!

You know, the real reason I keep a blog is for pouring out all the incivility I'd like to hurl at people. This time, its the particiants of certain threads at a certain forum. Some of you know. Yeah. XD

I suppose it takes a certain level of, well, dissillusionment and cynisism to really disscuss certain topics. Okay, most topics. And I'm sorry--no, not really, to always be the voice of snarkyness, but the Indonesian anime distributers aren't going to change their method of marketing/dubbing/editing ever if there isn't a financial gain to it.

The logic go-round of certain individuals not only causes vertigo, but also tension headaches and nausea.

Yes, I count not buying lincensed anime in Jakarta as a boycot, because the money I'm spending on other anime would be going to them, if only they'd get their shit together and stop overcharging for crappy sub/dub services and episode counts. (20-30K for 2 episodes as opposed to 10K for 4-6 episodes from subbers, who coincedentally have far batter translations and very decent picture quality, most times.)

Headache making logic goes like this: "If you're not buying their stuff then you can't count it as boycotting them, why would they care where you spend your money, if you won't spend it on their product?"

Uh . . . . Yeah. ^^;;;

The good part about having half a capitalist upbringing is that I get, kind of intuitively, the way money is the center of all. Even in so called non-capitalist countries. Please. The wheel of finance spins ever onward.

Listen. If I buy anime, but not your anime, then I'm effectively boycotting you, (well, in a sense, anyway) whether I've specifically set out to do so or not. If most people who buy anime aren't buying yours, then you, as a distributer or producer of this particular product, should take steps.

Somehow . . . . Arg.

Well, maybe this takes some more explanation. Can you sense the vertigo? This particular disscussion thread went on to, if I followed (I often really feel I don't. Logic appears to be a lost art.), suggest rather strongly that we, the buyers, are somehow responsible for the quality of the product. I guess thread participants were trying to be mature or something, but came off idealistic and naive.

They so piss me off.

This is why I have to take this shit elsewhere (like here). I get the feeling I've become the forum badguy and naysayer by insisting that so long one spends money on crap, the makers of the crap have no reason to improve it.

I like my fansubs. So why is shitty licenseing and production my problem? And you know, I don't think it's rude, selfish, infantile or self-centered of me to think that those who want me to spend my money on their stuff had better make that stuff worth buying.

Coming up next:
Be grateful I'm a plagerist

rurounibug ; 05:07 PM|fine, ignore me


January 7th, 2005

but I put my name on it (or: be grateful I'm a plagerist)

This should have been part of the previous post, but I had to split it up or my head would explode.

Thread number two (or more accurately: annoying thread number two) was on a similar topic: Quality of Crap They Sell Us.

Indonesia's leading animanga magazine is Animonster, which, other than having a really catchy title, has neat-o bonuses like keychains, coasters, and other useless, but adorable and fascinating junk. When I'm home I regularly buy it, and when at-home-people offer to send me stuff, I almost always wish-list it.

Now apparently animonster is plagerising it's ass off by translating articles from such sources as New Type and Animedia (japanese version) and passing them off as their own, or simply writing suspiciously similar articles.

We never realized this because most of us: 1. don't speak or read japanese; 2. can't afford the japanese imported mags; 3. were in denial (suuure they're stealing *snort* ); 4. wouldn't understand the basic concept of plagerism if it came up and bit us in the ass, being poorly educated morons; and 5. are idiots.

Now, my poor spelling aside, I've had to struggle through english classes where the penalty of plagerim was held over our heads like some Poe-ish pendulum. Copy-Paste, my beloved fools, is not the only sort of plagerism. Even borrowing a rhyming couplet or clever turn of phrase requires you give credit, let alone the filtching of an entire column. You know, I always wondered how a dirt-poor (relatively dirt poor, anyway) rag like animon managed to get interviews with the likes of Laraku and Brilliant Green. Well, well, well, well . . . .

All of this could be forgiveable, because, much as I love Indonesia, their schools don't teach us shit. (Well, street fighting, brick throwing, garisan-wielding, but you can't write with a brick, mein freund. But I'm sure some of you will try, just to be contrary and abnoxious. ) I would bet both testicles that none of the writers over at animon know the rules, regulations, and etiquette of citing works and sources, because honestly, no teacher probably ever gave a shit.

Example from a class:
(Indonesian exams tipically, at least in my day, had a story writing requirement.)
Teacher: If you make a mistake, don't scratch it out. Just keep writing. No ones going to read these things anyway, they just want you to have straight margins, neat text--no coretan (coretan: scribbling, as in scribbled out letters)--and keep your letters in the lines.

Why they required two pages of 'story' then, I don't know. I may as well have scrawled out:

title


blablhablhablhablhablahbalhlablahbalhabllahalalhalhalbb and a partridge in a pear tree.


I mean, if the form is all they cared about.

Sorry. I got sidetracked by bitterness. I wrote my heart out in those days.

But anyway, this is the system these morons come from, so maybe all this theft of intellectual property, as they're calling it these days, could be forgiven. But then, I doubt these "writers" (those are ironic quatation marks, by the way) would give a rat's ass on ice even if they did know the conventions of writing and journalism. (I've run into online at least a couple of animonster staffers. At least one was semi-psychotic.)

Anyway, its not as if the readers care. A popular agruement against worrying about such trivialities as copyright and plagerism was "we should be grateful theres such a high quality publication as this around for us to read. The magazine is here to serve the fan community. And piracy is out of control anyway, so who cares where the articles come from?"

Christ.

First of all: Piracy and plagirism, two similar looking but very different things.

Second: The mag is around to make money off your sorry selves, no more, no less. Otherwise they'd give it to you for free. And again, as long as you buy it . . . .

It gives me a stomach ache even before the posts go into patriotic jingo. (Like: Why are you against our publication? Would you rather defend an outside (foreign) mag? (*hurl*) ) Yeah, I'm glad someone's writing good stuff. I'm even glad I get to read it when I can get my grubby paws on it, and yeah, I hoard the bonusses like an otaku magpie with an eye for bishie things, but I'm not so far gone as to say stealing someone's brainchild or words is alright, just because it makes life fun and dandy and because no local can write as well to save their life.

Hell, I can always get reviews online, and so can they. I don't see why they think they should be so grateful. Is it time to fall on one's knees yet? I thank you, god, for people who can translate japanese and think that this means they wrote the damn piece.

This may be odd coming from someone who is in favor of music sharing (I don't do it, but only because I'm chicken), fansubs, scanlations, and fanfiction. But plagerising someone's works is, I think, a different sack of beans. If you copied my work or writing (not that you'd want to, but for arguement's sake) and let your freind take a look-see, thats one thing. That would be okay. If I were a rock star and you downloaded my music and shared it, I might not be thrilled to lose revenue, but it wouldn't be so big a thing.

Now if you did those things and said you wrote this story/song or drew this picture or said brilliant things that in fact I had thought up and said (again, not that I've said brilliant things, this is all theoretical), that I'd mind.

See, the first thing (copying and sharing) is just that, copying and sharing. The only thing lost is money, if that. But putting your name on something you didn't write or create steals not only the worth of that one story or painting or cd, but devalues and disrespects the talent, time, work, research and soul that someone's put into whatever it is you're scrawling your John Hancock on.

And yeah, even for a review mag. Because hell, you can damn well either sit through hours of bad dramas, animes, music, games and bleed your eyes out on pages and pages of lousy art and manga to find the few gems scattered through that mess of shaite or you can at least appreciate the effort some poor soul made to find them in the first place and give them appropriate credit.

All it takes, you shameless Animonster bastards, is a "taken from New Type" or a "Japan, Animedia:"

But then you'd have to pay for it, wouldn't you? Heres an idea: Watch some anime, read some manga, and honestly, tell us what you thought of it. Because pal, thats what reviewers do.

PS. If you don't know what a review looks like (and I wouldn't be surprised if you don't, really), google it. Google, my freind, can even tell you what a footnote and an in-line citation looks like.

This, of course, is assuming that Animonsters guilty as charged. But I fell pretty safe writing under that assumption.

rurounibug ; 06:09 PM|2 replies


January 10th, 2005

Stephen King's Dark Tower--you saw this coming

Its been a while, huh, folks? If I wasn't so lazy I'd go bug the folks at the scifi list (christ, I'm a nerd) with this, but they probably know everything about it already and have all the resources at the ready to shoot my kvetching down.

Other than having a really, really great opening line(The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.) Stephen King's dark tower also has all sorts of . . . . Well, let's just say this is the Western 'Trigun' tried to be.

Well, not really, because the whole premise/background is different. Dark Tower is more fantasy than Vash's story and, well, one's a novel, the other a manga/anime. Similar feel, though, except . . . Lets just get back on topic.

Roland Deschain is the last gunslinger, a sort-of knight in a weirdly familiar American West kind of setting, and he is searching for the Dark Tower, which is a nexus of sorts and I suppose it connects time and well, I'll just say dimentions, and be done with it. The man in black (not Will Smith) gives a lengthier, vaguer explanation. It connects Time and Distance, he says, or something like. Now, I've only read the first book and a bit of the second, and probably should be telling you about Tad William's 'The War of the Flowers', which I've actually finished, and I will, but later.

To say Roland's West is weird, is an understatement. It is in fact bizzare, filled with odd creatures that at this point I can't figure out. (Slow Mutants, Lobstrosities, Raven Men, etc) They sort of hover threateningly in the periphery, taking a finger or an eye now and then, but so far not an in-your-face presence like Tolkien's trolls.

Why the link to Tolkien? In the foreword of my version of Dark Tower (titiled: "on being 19 and other things", or some such) King talks about reading Lord of the Rings when it was huge in the 70s, and wanting to write his own sort of middle-earth. Maybe this is why Roland's world is called Mid-World. XP Maybe this is obviously stated somewhere and I'm not as brilliant as I just thought I was when I drew that parallel a second ago. Anyway,

I'm only a bit into book two, but I'm not getting that Tolkien-y sense of huge-ness. Tad Williams accomplished it in his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy, but I'm not getting it off Dark Tower. Maybe it takes more time, as things aren't fully developed yet.

My real problem is that certain elements in the Gunslinger (thats vol1) really bug me, and I assume they'll carry through the whole series (7 books). First off is the way Roland talks. He seems to speak pretty normally--if a little formal--most of the time, but occasionally slips into this weird west-lingo of sorts. "You say true, I say thank ya" and "Yar", which seems like it belongs on a whole different sort of sea, if you get my drift. Also, he likes to add "sai" to the end of things in a Japanese-honorific sort of way: "Thankee-sai". The problem is, he doens't always talk like this, and when he does it sort of slaps you in the face. Not only is the break from 'regular' talk unexplained, it seems contrived, the way ficcers will slip foreign words into an english story for the cool-ness of it and nothing more. Maybe King does it to push home the 'otherness' of Mid-World, but dude, we get it. Raven men did it for me from the get-go.

I do, however, like the phrase "the world has moved on." It fits naturally, is kind of uniquely Dark Tower's, but you get it right away, with none of the awkwardness of "Yar"s and "ka"s and "Thankee-sai"s.

Now, not to spoil too much, I'll tell you what else bugs me. Unexplained shit. Theres too much of it. Like why the thing with Jake at the end of the Gunslinger is such a big deal (other than that it happened, which would be kind of a big deal to Roland anyway) that it needs foreshadowing pages and pages and pages ahead of the event, and several times over. And why it means the man in black has to tell him stuff. I see the dots, but I'm not making the line, if you know what I mean.

Then, in book two, "The Drawing of the Three", although I'm not even a fourth of the way through it, smacks me with another imponderable(tm), and thats: Why do the doors appear on the beach? Granted, I'm only up to the first door, but I assume they'll be others. Theres three pictured on the cover of the book.

See, Roland's been told that three is his number, the number of his fate, the number of his destiny and so on. I'm assuming they'll be three companions. Yipee. It was getting kind of sucky with only Roland--unimaginitive, stodgy Roland--for company. But anyway, after getting into some trouble on the beach he ends up on after the man in black (So many MIB jokes, so little that make sense) has talked with him at the end of book one, Roland finds a door. It leads him--in a way--to the 'prisoner' who was foretold by a succubus in a willow grove, and/or by the man in black.

What I want to know is: What happened that made the door appear? Are there just doors to other people (and this one actually leads to more than just the person, btw. I won't spoil it, even if its no biggy. Actually, its a little predictable) lying around this landscape? Or did Roland do something to make it appear? Did the man in black? How? Why? If Jake wandered about long enough, would he find doors to his fate? What makes Roalnd so special that he warrants having doors lying about, conviniently leading to the very individuals he needs to find, or is fated to find, or whatever it is? It seems that whatever he needs sort of appears, incongrously and inexplicaply or not.

Anyway, its bugging me. Unexplained shit and wack language. Guess thats not so bad. It's good read, really. The book shop guy was kind of amused that I was so enthusiastic about the damn thing, but nerds can get kind of hardened to innate cool-ness. They need science and molecules and stuff. You know the sort. Yeah, Mid-World, is no Middle Earth (Sorry, Mr. King), but its a damn sight easier to read and even though I don't care much for Roland, I actually do want to know what happens next. Or, maybe, just find the part where all this weirdness is explained. You know, the part where the world makes sense and you kind of get the rules and can anticipate whats going on? Yeah, a book and a bit and I'm still not there. Mid-World does what it wants, when it wants, and doesn't tell you why.

In short:
Dark Tower: What the shit is going on?

rurounibug ; 06:38 PM|fine, ignore me


January 13th, 2005

wess coss~!

I was talking with my uncle. He says he saves his irritation for things more damaging than little Indo kids trying to be 'hip-hop'.

I, on the other hand, have plenty of irritation to go around.

Really.

Plus, I think little Indo kids going around appropriating someone else's pop culture instead of building one based on theri own identities is, you know, a little damaging, at least.

Anyway, if they had to do this foreign-culture fad thing, they could have chosen a cooler one. One that doesn't involve lame hand-signals, (Here's a hand signal for you, you stupid little shit!) odd hat-wearing practices, or big pants. You know, Jakarta buses don't stop for you to get on or off. Are huge-ass pants really a great idea? One day I will tell you my tale about big-ass pants, a train and a close call. Not now, but one day.

Anyway, we've all heard it before: Hip-hop tend to glorify violence and mysoginy. Not that Jakarta kids necessarily undestand the lyrics, but still.

What I don't get is why no one seems to think it odd or, frankly, pathetic and sad, that Jakarta is so quick to jump on any stupid top40 music fad. Yeah, I get everything in Jakarta needs to be up-to-the-minute-shiny-new or it's consider old and shitty, but we could, like, have our own fad.

Then again, what do I know. I have Dewa's 'Kirana' on my mp3. Or did, before the thing self-destructed. Why am I not surprised that iRiver belongs to microsoft? *pfft*

Where was I? Own culture. Right.

Now, I haven't been listening to Indonesian music till the last few years, (Go ahead, smack me. I slagged the stuff and now I admit I was wrong.) but even then I still know some band/singer names which have hung on. And none of them are left overs from the hard core pahse the city was going through before this hip-jop phase, or any other phase. And I don't know a single rappysh Indo band. These are legitimately . . . uh . . . I-rock? Seems I should be able to make a pun out of that. (And while I'm mentioning this: Stop trying to breakdance. You're just embarassing yourselves. You're not as good as you think you are. In fact, you suck. And pull those goddamn pants up.)


So; Indo bands I know and approve of, and some songs thereof.

Dewa: Surprise, surprise. The bon jovi of Indonesia as someone jokingly called them. Recently accused of plagirising lyrics, though. Stole 'em from a poet. We seem to have some issues with this 'originality' concept.

Nugie: Scorn me--I don't care. I think he was the one with that Mahadewi song (or was that Padi? shit), which is pretty good, but my personal favorite (again, I just think it was him. My kung-fu is weak and pitiful.) was that one about the bird and the "sanngupkah diriku/berkicau menambut pagi?" Crap thems great lyrics.

Padi: I have mocked Padi. I am very sorry. Padi has great lyrics, too. May or may not have had that 'Mahadewi' song, but who cares, because they have "Semua tak sama" Them too is great lyrics. Shaite, man.

So, ok, maybe these three--all I know that I'm pretty sure I won't get completely mocked for. Like I said, scant and lame knowledge, but I'm a bule. Bules have scant and lame knowledge. We can't help it.--so, these three may be very 'pop' and not 'edgy' and all that crap, and maybe (or maybe not) someone else is writting their stuff for them. (somehow, I doubt it.)

But the lyrics are so much better than any "ugh ugh slappin mah hoes/bitches takin clothes off ugh ugh"

I point you to Padi's semua tak sama, which was also on my mp3. Go ahead, laugh, I gt my music off freinds, so their responsible for waht I lissen to and the coolness/lameness thereof. And by the way, my bule lack of knowledge about everything just makes me an imparcial judge.

So; lyrics:

Padi: reff

Semua tak sama
Dan tak pernah sama
Apa yang kusentuh
Apa yang kukecup
Selembut belaimu
Sehangat pelukmu
Tak ada satupun yg sanggup menjadi
Sepertimu

Ok. It s sappy. Its worse that I typed that from memory. I'd prefer you didn't go and look it up, but I'm pretty sure I got that bit word-for-word. Oh, yeah, I'm lame.

For you others, that was, roughly and losing a lot in translation:

Eveything is not the same
And is never the same
What I touch
What I kiss
As soft as your touch
As warm as your embrace
There isn't one who is capable of being
Like you


('kecup' is a soft, little kiss. like a goodnight one. please don't read it 'ketchup')

Want more? (God, I'm so off-topic . . . .)

Dewa; old line up:

Kucoba memahami
Tempat ku berlabuh
Terdapar di keruhnya satu sisi dunia

I can't translate that, but I just think it's clever. That keruh-labuh play is neat. Because labuh is a harbor and unclear water is keruh and . . . never mind. It's clever is all.


Nugie's pelukis malam is decent, too, except it somehow creeps me out a little. It's not about smackin' up hoes, though. It's about a guy, talking to a long night about painting her portrait. Alright, so it's the concept, I like. I keep imagining long-haired women, half hidden in darkness, though. It makes me look over my shoulder. A lot.

So who cares if its not cool? They have good lyrics. Very good lyrics, I think, anyway, though I might just be looking at this in a stupid bule fashion. Like those assholes who wander around in sarong on the mainstreets with their ugly sunburns. Go home, jerk-offs! You, too, look like idiot. And it wouldn't kill your wife to put on a shirt.

Where was I? Loggin out is where I should be, probably. Christ, this topic is nonsensical. That and I've just passionately flogged what may be bad music. Who knows? Not me. I just take and listen to what poeple tell me to take and listen to.

But before I go, one last attept to drag this thing back to he topic I started on: Write your own goddman music and stop playing dress-up. All your big-name musicians aren't filthing sub-cultures they can't/don't comprehend and "monkey see, monkey doo"-ing them As my freind Ica says: you can be as item as you want, but you won't ever be black.

So go and, like, sing some item songs.

Meanwhile I will go re-program my mp3. Or smash it the rest of the way, damn malfunctioning thing.

. . . . Talk about cathartic. I'm exhausted. ^^;

rurounibug ; 12:52 AM|fine, ignore me


January 15th, 2005

*cough*

Wow.

Look at the crap I ramble on about. If I wasn't so sure no one was reading this, I'd actually be embarassed.

Well, that and if I had even a smidgen of tau diri. ^^V

Oo~h. I smell pizza. Guess this will be a short entry. Heheheh

rurounibug ; 08:54 PM|fine, ignore me


January 16th, 2005

style me

I'm considering a blog name change. "wanderlust" was fitting, but too melodramatic in a bad-internet-pay-attention-to-me sort of way.

Tell me if this (incivility) is better, or worse. (In the same bad-internet way.)

Unfortunately, altering my template will mean putting in tabulas's new "required" advert banner. One of the draws of tabulas was the lack of on-page advertising--I'd really prefer a pop-up that while annoying to surfers at least doesn't edge in on my crafted-through-pain layouts. ^^;;

But hey, at least you get to put it in where you want it--I smacked it onto the bottom on my page. heheheh~

rurounibug ; 07:53 PM|1 replies


January 16th, 2005

Tad Williams's The War of the Flowers--as promised

As I said: futher ranting on stuff you lot don't care about.

As I ranted in previous rants, Tad Williams is one of my more favorite authors, if only because of his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy. (Which is four books in paperback--I thought that was wonderfully illogical.)

Anyway, War of the Flowers is different sot of fantasy in that the fantasy world is linked to our 'real' one while Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (henceforth MS&T) is its own universe.

War of the Flowers, when not dealing with the Real World (as I'll call it) is set in Faerie, or something loosely resembling it. Think pixieland meets General Electric. Faerie has lights, cars, trains, gadgetry, racism, and class oppression, and Theo Vilmos, our protagonist, gets kind of hurtled into it when faerieland politics intersxects with the mortal world.

Of course, everything is not as it seems, but you should know that without having to be told.

Now for my favorite part: kvetching!

War of the Flowers has only a few chrachters I could even be bothered liking: Applecore, the foulmouthed, ill mannered pixie that everyone somehow thinks Theo is involved with. (Applecore is less than a foot tall, your typical fairy of childhood picture books. The whole idea is, frankly, whack, and is never explained except through some vague mention of an operation that is, apparently, easier going big to small than small to big. My imagination, I realized at that point, is pretty sick. I might need therapy.)

Caradenus (nos? nous?) Primrose seems an alright sort, but we don't see too much of him. Same for Lord Hollyhock, who was, frankly, my favorite charachter, and the only non-asshole of the Higher fairies. (Primrose, as I said, seems an alright sort, but with definite asshole tendencies.) I thought I'd like Cumber Sedge, but really, I thought wrong. Zirius could have been a neat guy, in an annoying not-quite-a-good-guy way, but again, we see very, very little of him.

Theo, on the other hand, we see way too much of. I realise hes the main charachter, but he's also whiny, irritating and, face it, pretty uncool. His romance with Poppae, who also has some asshole (and some spoiled, not too bright brat) elements to her personality, is unconvincing. Partly because I can't see why anyone would like either of them.

Although the cast is resonably sized for a 6-and-then-some centimeter thick book (paperback), there aren't a lot of 'cool' charachters trucking about, in case you really hate Theo. Applecore is great, but the pages she's not in are painfully Theo-filled. Some of the goblins and whatnot are decently interesting, but I didn't really like them, and plus, they were present now and again, and not constantly around like Theo.



Also, you get the feeling Mr. Williams was really trying for noticeable charachter development. Of the asshole to niceguy variety. Maybe it worked. I didn't much think so. Also, a lot of needless, irritating pontificating on Theo's part about shallowness and doing things with your life, etc. Just shut up and do it, Vilmos!

Also, parts where Theo contemplates how being a musician is who he is, and other like moments, came off pretentious, annoying, or melodramatic, depending on which particular scene we're talking about. Sometimes it was all three. Could this guy be more self-obsessed?

But then, Theo's mom didn't really love him, so who can blame him, right?

Fortunately, faery's politics, history, structures, and so forth are very well done and interesting. The world building alone makes the book worthwhile. Some very minor things are left hanging, but they were never integral threads. (Like the haunted stones--what happened to those dryads?) Only one major things is left unanswered, regarding Titania and Oberon, and Puck, but this whole jaunt was obviously about Theo.

In short, hated Theo, but still a good book. To be honest, theres a good chance I overreacted to Theo. Taking that into account, I still don't think he's very likeable, but give it a shot. New Erewhon alone is worth it.

rurounibug ; 09:08 PM|fine, ignore me


January 19th, 2005

when memes bite back

I played someone's meme a few days ago. It went like this:

comment on this post and i will tell you:

1)what song you remind me of
2)who you remind me of
3)what word you remind me of
4)what color i associate with you


This is the answer I got:

1)Dare you to Move by Switchfoot
2)Simon from American Idol
3)like
4)blue-green


I don't really get number three. Maybe I say 'like' too much. I should start watching that. ^^V

Number one I've never heard, so will refrain from comment, number foour seems like a pretty color, but I don't really see how I warrant it. (Whee~ anyway, right?) It's a very calming shade.

Number two, well. Heh.

Maybe this is because of the recent asian hip-hop bashing entry, but I really don't talk much about music. The stuff I actually listen to is too embarassingly dorky.

rurounibug ; 08:58 PM|fine, ignore me


January 19th, 2005

will dance for food


If someone had told me three years ago that I'd be in California now, I probably would have thought 'nah'. It would have been a pretty stupid thing to think because if thres one word to decribe my residential lifestyle it's 'uprooted'.

Still, I wouldn't have thought california, and I wouldn't have thought alone and on my own, either.

But here I am and I have no frikkin' idea how I got here. Well, how I got here was by car, but thats not what I meant.

Also, I realized a few nights ago, as I searched for where I'd thrown my jammies, that I also have no idea what I'm doing here. Other than supposedly trying to transfer, I mean. I could have stayed in NY, where I had, like, a home.

Now here I am living a sort of semi-transient kind of existence, having a hell of a time trying to get an apartment because I have a lousy job, lame rental/housing history from having lived most of the last decade overseas, and probably bad credit from never having owned a credit card. (Maybe thats 'no credit'?)

I can count the number of people I know here on both hands, and thats total, not 'number of freinds' or 'number of family', that the absolute all-in-one result of adding up everyone in this state whose names I know. By the way: thats a lousy amount of refferences. No one will ever rent me anything better than a chicken coop.

Could have gone to school in NY--didn't. Could have stayed in Jakarta--didn't. I never realised how quickly half-asses plans fall through.

When I was eighteen and failing math and chem . . . I thought that was stress. I had math nightmares, but nowadays I have tension chest-pains. Heh.

And this all seemed like such a good idea, back in NY, in front of my heater, watching cable TV the folks were paying for.

rurounibug ; 09:11 PM|1 replies


January 21st, 2005

why they gave us words


I never thought I'd grow up to be such a prude . . . but SMS (thats text message, as in handphone text messaging, for the rest of you) english bugs me. Not that its not fine when you have to hunt out each letter and push the key two or three time . . . wait . . . hunt for the next letter . . . . It's fine on hand phones.

But I really can't stand it on blogs or in emails. What, does your blog server/mail provider have a 200 charachter limit like my old, bodge phone (I hear new shiny phones have huge charachter limits) did? Huh? Because if not, then please take the extra second to tipe "to" instead of "2", and "for" instead of "4". Likewise, no one would drop dead if you wrote "you", "your" and "you're" instead of "u" and "ur".

You know those english classes they made you sit through, so you wouldn't sound like an illiterate morom when they let you out into the real world? Try making use of them so you don't sound illiterate, moronic, and, frankly, pubescent. This "ur" "2" "4" business has the definite whiff of middle school girl note-passing: "i luv u, m33t m3 83hind d gym".

By the way, do you see how annoying that is to read? It slows the eye down terribly, and doesn't even have the ironic cult cool-ness of "l33t". (Cool because its so hopelessly lame, sadly.)

I know you're trying to show the net world that you're hip, up-to-speed and can make up your own abbreviations. How very clever of you. We're all terribly impressed, I'm sure.

But you know, we'd be more impressed if you'd put your qwerty to good use and use those carefully placed keys to spell your damn message out so: 1. The rest of us can read it. unless you don't want us to, in which case you're going to need a more complex mode of encription. 2. You'll seem a little less thoughtless, a little less rude, and a little more like someone over thirteen.


rurounibug ; 07:21 PM|fine, ignore me


January 21st, 2005

my inner girl. heh.

You are an Athletic girl!!!

You are athletic. You love sports, playing or
watching people play it. This is good for you,
because you relate easily to guys unlike most
girls! Most girls are jealous of that ability
you have..hehe... You're fun to be with, if it
includes sports or not. Outgoing and fun! You
don't ask for much, but keeping fit is probably
one of the top things in your list of to-do's.
You don't have to worry about fats and
carbohydrates, because you lose them easily!
Good job, and keep that up! You are the Queen
of Weight Loss! Haha!

Please Rate and
Message!


What's The Girl Inside of You?
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rurounibug ; 07:33 PM|fine, ignore me


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