profile

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

tabulas links

indoglish

Entries for July, 2006

July 3rd, 2006

woo-hoo

Today my in clothed figure someone finally choose my drawing for crit. Haha! Yay!

Why is my class filled with so many people who are good at this? Bah. Now I have to do actual work.

Also, I have the niggling suspicion we're supposed to be keeping sketchbooks. Not that I'm not anyway, in fact,

(here's some pages.)

It's just that I don't want to hand in the book I usually carry around with me. It has stuff in it. Yeah. Now I have to start a new book, and that means the current one will get not-carried-around, and things will be out of order and I'll have to draw things that are class-appropriate.

This is so annoying.

rurounibug ; 09:40 PM|fine, ignore me

July 4th, 2006

this independence day features no aliens

Of the Will Smith, save-the-world variety, I mean. Foreign citizens, I got no beef with.

My aunt wanted to know if I was going to any barbaques or such. And the answer would be no. I have no love for smaltzy patriotic anthems. For all that I'm American, I'm the other thing, too, and the 'neener-neener, we're better than you' attitude that lies under the 'I love this place'* lyrics grates on my last nerve.

No comment on how this country celebrates freedom by roasting meat over open flames. I don't know why I think thats funny, but it just is. ('Course Indonesia makes those of school-going age attend flag ceremonies, which is also kind of hilarious: "We're free, now go stand on parade in the hot, hot tropical sun." That funny is kinda more obvious.)

In honor of this auspicious day, I think I'll go fry up some meat. I believe theres still some hamburger in my freezer.


Also; I don't understand why the fireworks are from four to nine. It's not even dark by nine, this time of year, and fireworks just look lame if it's still light out.


*When they don't come right out and say it, I mean.


ETA: I went up to the building's roof to get a glimpse of the still-going fireworks, (from up there you can see Berkeley's, Marin's, SF's, A bit of Oakland's, and a glimpse of a few other city/county's) but it's cold up there, and theres people. I don't much like being under fireworks. I feel like I'm being frikkin' shelled, but from a distance they're quite ok, though lacking in the 'wow' factor.

rurounibug ; 08:00 PM|5 replies

July 5th, 2006

this post contains Nugie--Teman Baik

There was this boy once, who started a discussion about relationships and that kind of thing. You know, that kind of Romantic Theory thing that I can't stand.

So I said, that the best sort of relationship I could think of was the teman baik. And he made a face and said "Thats it?"

'Teman baik' translates directly into 'good friend'. Which does, I guess, sound kind of lame, but when I say it, I mean something more like Nugie's Teman Baik. Which is sort of what I thought everybody meant.

And when I call someone my good friend, this is still what I mean:

Teman Baik Makanlah baganku Tidurlah di alas tidurku Kubasuh tanganmu Hingga mewangi Pakailah bajuku Pilih mana yg kau suka Semakkan cicinku Diseluruh jarimu Teman baikku berkata Gunakan aku Tak perlu ku risau membayar Pamrih yg tersirat Minumlah airku Habiskan Hisaplah rokokku Sedalam dalam dalamnya Makanlah baganku Tidurlah di alas tidurku Kubasuh tanganmu Hingga mewangi Teman baikku berkata Gunakan aku Tak perlu ku risau membayar Pamrih yg tersirat

Good Friend Eat my food Sleep on my bed I'll wash your hands Till they are fragrant Wear my clothes Choose whichever you like Wear my rings On all of your fingers My good friend says Use me And don't worry About any debt recorded Drink my water Drink it all Smoke my cigarettes And inhale deeply, deeply, deeply Eat my food Sleep on my bed I'll wash your hands Till they are fragrant My good friend says Use me And don't worry About any debt recorded

notes:

Pamrih:
A reward for doing, or a reward you hope to receive for doing. If you help someone without pamrih, it means you do it without thought of gain or payback. I've translated it as 'debt', but thats not entirely acurate. In fact, theres a separate word for debt: hutang. I guess you can still owe someone, even if they don't expect compensation.

So the actual line "Tak perlu ku risau membayar pamrih yang tersirat" actually translates to "Don't worry about paying any debt that might be collecting/recording". Or something sort of like that. What it means is: there is expectation of anything in return.

It was a hard line to translate, largely because I think 'pamrih' is a cultural concept. Or at least enough so that one culture has a specific word for it, and the other does not. I did my best.

Mewangi:
Mewangi means 'to smell sweetly' like perfume or flowers. Fragrant is too strong a word, I think, because even soap is 'wangi', but thats what I went with, because 'smell sweet/sweetly' is clunky and weird-sounding, and 'perfumed' implies use of perfume, which would be weird in that context.

Sedalam dalam dalamnya:
As deeply as possible. This was another hard line, because in english telling someone to inhale cigarette smoke 'as deeply as possible' sounds like you're wishing them death instead of enjoyment. I settled for 'inhale deeply, deeply, deeply' (partly for the Indonesian triple-repeat) but it still sounds unfriendly, when it's supposed to mean, 'hey, enjoy my smokes, buddy.'

D/ls?
I think you can download it here.

rurounibug ; 01:00 AM|fine, ignore me

July 5th, 2006

crap, as they say

My recent phonebill can only be described as 'Holy Fuckin' God'. I knew it would be high since I had a couple of emergencies this last month in which I had to call home, and didn't have a phonecard, but shit. Talk about blindsided. I should keep a full phonecard around for these sorts of things, but I'm dumb, y'know?

(Actually, there should be one around here somewhere. *shuffles junk around* Possibly even two.)

Just . . . holy, holy holy crap.

And I still need to get my crown replaced, which is just . . . . Agh.

rurounibug ; 11:43 PM|fine, ignore me

July 6th, 2006

fanon Reno; fanon Rude

This is actually one of the rants I was saving for when I'm a BNF (obviously, I need to make more sockpuppets). But then I figured, heck, if it's still bugging me then, I can bitch about it again.

For those that don't do the FF7, Reno and Rude are members of a large power production company's hitman team. The company is called Shinra, and Shinra wants to rule the world. The hitmen are called Turks and they wear spiffy suits.

The Turks are, in the original game, background charachters who have their own little subplot going. Mostly, they're used for comedy relief (They look cool and posture like mad, but aren't all that effective good at their jobs) and exposition purposes. Reno, who conviniently talks too much, tends to tell you just what you need to know to continue the game, or tell you something that attempts to bridge the gaping FF7 plotholes, giving the illusion that, at some point, you'll actually know what the crap is going on.

You never really figure it out. The explanation I've been given destroys and craps all over bends the laws of logic as I thought only the Shatterstar Origins could.

But never mind that.

It's Reno's accepted and popularized-by-fans (aka. fanon) characterization that bugs me. In the game, he's a hitman. At some point in the game he appears to be acting as the team leader (although, FF7 being what it is, appearances mean nothing. Also, things that are all but spelled out to you mean nothing. Or are retracted by later released media. Same goes for things that are actually spelled out).

In 'canon'--that is, the original story as per officially released media--his personality is loud, brash, impulsive, and ineffectual. In the english translation he says 'yo' a lot. His shirt if usually untucked and his jacket unbuttoned. He seems to take his duty to Shinra completely seriously.

Remember: Slightly doofus-y hitman for major corporation hell-bent on world domination. At some point appears to act as team leader. Has spiffy suit.

And now on to fanon!

In fanon he is consistently portrayed as a womanizer (or, since most Turks fanfic is yaoi, a maninizer) a drunk--or at least someone who drinks an awful lot, and regularly gets blindingly inebriated. Often, the charachter is involved in drugs, hookers, and really really questionable behaviour. In fanfic, he often has weird sex during company dinners. He is also often drunk at those dinners.

How you get from a slightly rumpled, absolutely loyal--if loud--hitman, to unproffesional alcoholic nymphomaniac is a little bit beyond me.

Then theres Rude, who is is big, bald, and carries spare shades around. In canon he acts as Reno's foil cohort. He's really not much better, being only slightly less loud, brash, and ineffectual. It's possible he's less impulsive, but who the hell knows; they're both almost always in the same scenes, doing arguably stupid things together.

Fanon Rude, in case you were wondering, is portrayed as the strong silent, serious tipe.

rurounibug ; 10:37 PM|fine, ignore me

July 7th, 2006

mine says "no more pizza at bedtime"

Art History: we're talking about things like the Fountain: that urinal Duchamp signed "R. Mutt" and things like that. The sort of things that feel-good great-teacher movies like to plaster up in the background, while Julia Roberts asks her upper-class brain-washed textbook-learning students "Art or not?"

We get to the surrealists and the instructor puts up two images one abstract and one with realisticly painted objects in bizzarre size relationships (giant comb, tiny bed, etc). He says: One of these is better art than the other. A lot of instructors won't say that because they don't have the you-know-whats, but one of these is superior.

The realisticaly painted piece, apparently, is not it. I'd thought it was pretty obvious, just looking. I couldn't say why.

This painting, says the instructor, is contrived. It's all, 'I'm a surrealist, so I'm gonna do this and this and aren't I clever?' Theres too much 'whats a surrealist painting look like?' going on.

Too much head, not enough heart.

I realize that this is whats been bothering me about the art I see coming out of my generation of Indonesians. Not entirely, of course, but all too much. They try to fit the conventions of their medium or genre, or style, and never consult the gut, if they even know it's there to listen to. It's all, 'I'm a manga/graphic/comic/abstract artist, so I'm gonna do this, and this, and aren't I clever?' It's all "what should this sort of art look like?" and not "what do I want to say?"

Theres tons of them out there who have technical skills I will never have, (especially in the CG vein) but theres a decided lack of originality and new-ness.

This is another gift from our by-the-book education system: Everyone struggles to be 'right', and no one even knows if whats considered "correct art" is good art.

Forget knows. No one questions it. Indonesians don't ask questions, and so Indonesians can't paint or draw questions, either.

Because we've been taught to follow the rules, and ignore our hearts and our guts in favor of others' logic, thats what we end up painting: all the rules, all the head, none of the heart.

rurounibug ; 11:35 PM|2 replies

July 9th, 2006

even Mark Twain hates Mary Sues

I was just linked to this essay by Mark Twain (the American Writer, for those of you not from these here parts), in which he comments upon writing by Fenimore Cooper.

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses
Bless you heart, Cooper hadn't any more invention than a horse; and don't mean a high-class horse, either; I mean a clothes- horse.


On an entirely different subject; why are all the radio and tv people talking about the World Cup and how it's amazing how far France got, even if they didn't win and fronting like they know a damn thing about world soccer?

Please.

It's painfully obvious they've never watched soccer before this. Excepting, of course, ESPN highlights they had to suffer through while waiting for the baseball. (I'm thinking particularly on some painful commentary on channel4. I think I liked it better in the days when news anchors read the news and refrained from freindly banter and conversational commentary at the end of each segment. You don't know what you're talking about, channel4 dude who sits on the right. STFU.)

rurounibug ; 05:27 PM|fine, ignore me

July 10th, 2006

and fuck you, too

When other people do bad things, they are evil and immoral. When american soldiers do bad things (someone has just been proven to have raped an Iraqi girl and killed her and some of her relatives) then it's battle stress.

Some military talking head is on TV weaving a sob story about how long these boys have been overseas, and anyone might snap being in Iraq for three, two, or even one tour.

Newsflash: Iraqis? Live in Iraq. Don't they have a right to snap, too? I don't see any brass going 'aw, poor dears, anyone would snap living in that hell-hole and watching soldiers kill and rape your relatives.' Nope. Them? "Evil, freedom hating insurgents!"


And also, other countries don't hate use because they're 'just jealous'. WTH? Why do people keep saying this? It's like playground logic. But applied to politics and with landmines.


ETA: Oops. I thought the TV had said 'evidence to convict', but turns out I was wrong and it was 'evidence to arrest'. I apologize for this error.

rurounibug ; 10:32 PM|9 replies

July 11th, 2006

fandom is for girls (and boys)

I just felt I should pass this along. Because hell, those idiots who join a comm and then tell members to stop what they're doing and do what he wants instead piss me off, too.

Especially the ones that scream 'oppression!' when no one's actually stopping them from posting what they like or starting their own comm. Get out of my gender, guys. You're making it look bad.

Fandom and Male Privilege, from cereta on LJ.

rurounibug ; 01:33 AM|fine, ignore me

July 12th, 2006

world soccer has let me down

On otf_wank, someone reports what the Zidane-Materazzi head-butt was in retalliation for:

"The Guardian claims that Materazzi tweaked his nipple."

She even supplies a link to the Guardian article that claims it:

115 mins Replays show that Materazzi's crime was to, erm, tweak Zidane's nipple. I kid you not. Tyldesley, the Zidane lover, is now launching into the darker spots of Materazzi's CV, but whatever he did or said, Zidane is slap bang out of order, kinky nipple tweak or no nipple tweak.

Now it looks like Materazzi just called him a 'filthy terrorist'. Frankly, I'm dissapointed.

rurounibug ; 01:26 AM|fine, ignore me

July 12th, 2006

Romance is like zombies

in that it eats people's brains.

There were some ads on a while back, when the Pride and Prejudice DVD came out, featuring Darcy and Elizabeth walking along wind-swept cliffs that drop to the sea, while gushy pop music played. I can't remember what song it was now, but I remember thinking, damn, thats some sap for a commercial about a movie based on a book that satirizes and lampoons traditional ideas of romance.

I wonder if Austen spins in her grave whenever someone completely fails to notice the scorn with which she treats 'romance', interpreting her stories as being about 'true love' and 'lovers destined to be together'.

I mean, dude, I slept through English Lit, and I notice.

And btw? The best movie adaption of Pride and Prejudice ever? The Indian film Bride and Prejudice. (I dont' know if it counts as a 'Bollywood' film. It's rather too good, and non-campy, and, you know, in english.) It's funny and interesting to see that old-english situation being applied to a different--and contemporary--culture, and being relevant.

rurounibug ; 04:02 PM|6 replies

July 14th, 2006

Tonga

The killed Princess of Tonga's sister, speaking about the 18 year old girl accused of theri deaths (vehicular manslaughter) said, "I ask only for the spirit of forgiveness [....]"

Whoa.

In fact according to the news, much of the Tongan community has asked for the girl to be shown forgiveness, saying that punishing her won't bring the Prince and Princess back.

It sort of takes you by surprise when you're used to hearing, "They took my son/daughter/sister/brother and I want them to pay."

rurounibug ; 09:17 PM|fine, ignore me

July 15th, 2006

Gackt fans: "moshi moshi, booty call desu"

We all know from Men In Black that all the real news is in tabloids, right?

So I give you this, copy&pasted from that font of neverending entertainment, the cult of mean, the hive vagina itself, the one and only Fandom_Wank:


Oh noesis! Our Gacchan got caught brandishing the magnum!

It all started on July 13, when a Chinese tabloid and a Japanese tabloid broke the news that Gackt is apparently selling his body to Japanese fans for a price and being an internet predator with fangirls who e-mail him, and a fan brought it to LJ Dears. The fangirls are faced with the thought that their vampire yaoi god is. . . an abusive womanizer.


Hawhawhaw. Excuse me while I LOL.

rurounibug ; 02:34 PM|2 replies

July 17th, 2006

ways in which I'm weird

This is probably why I'm single.

Oh, don't give me that look. You know you do things like this, too.





(Also: more crap from my sketchbook)


On a different topic: I wish I knew when CSI:NY was on, because everytime I think it's on, it's always Miami playing, and I have a bit of a boy crush on Danny Messer really can't stand Horatio Caine. Damn summer scheduling!

rurounibug ; 10:06 PM|11 replies

July 20th, 2006

bucket hauling

I don't know if I've ever mentioned Jakarta blackouts and how it means hauling water from next door, because pumps don't run without electricity.

These rough sketches are from a sequence I was going to draw involving such an incident and my brother being a dick. I'll probably never draw it because a) I'm lazy as shit, and b) I don't think me and that particular brother are on speaking terms any more. At least, I don't consider myself on speaking terms with him.

But thats kind of OT. Hey! Sketches!

rurounibug ; 07:18 PM|fine, ignore me

July 21st, 2006

maybe I should have stayed in bed today

The city was weird today. First a couple of trains were held up for what must have close to twenty minutes while cops wandered around and some moron made bomb jokes to freak out his girlfriend (but only managed to annoy the rest of the car--not that he noticed). I was on one of them, and fifteen minutes late to class.

And then on the way home, as I was walking down Market to the trainstation, I passed some guys fighting it out. Or, actually, I just saw the tail end of it, but one of the guys was out cold on the sidewalk. I asked if they needed loan of a phone to call 9-1-1. Pedestrians started to gather, making simialr offers. The guys had a phone, but one of them was saying, "Don't call 9-1-1, nobody call 9-1-1," while another of the guys was asking, "Is he breathing? Is he breathing?"

If you're worried your friend might not be breathing, call fuckin' 9-1-1, idiot.
If my buddy was out cold on the walk with a bloody face, and I thought he might be that badly hurt, I'd call 9-1-1.

Jesus.

And then, as I was walking past the Metreon, cops had blocked off the street and a crowd was gathering. While I was hanging out, trying to see what was up, they put up a police line and a couple of people made jokes about bomb threats.

I decided I'd rather not be around if something bad was in the offing, and went home. I am now waiting for the news to come on, hoping someone will explain all the crazy.

Somethings I noticed today was that while something was clearly up--both on the train and by the Metreon . . . especially by the Metreon, because there were people with TV cameras ducking back and forth under the police line--no one knew anything. Cops were around, doing cop things, but no one filled any of the crowd in, which just encouraged them to hang around asking, "Whats going on? Is it a celebrity? Maybe the mayor?"

There hasn't been any 'breaking news' updates, or any news, actually, so maybe it was a celebrity, but it sure would be nice to know whats going on when cops are searching your train or blocking off streets, y'know?


ETA: A 12 foot (or was it 15 foot?) great white shark has been spotted today near the coast. O__o Surfers beware. I guess today is made of crazy.

ETA2: Metreon: it was a 'suspicious package' procedure. Turned out it was just a box with some clothes in it.

rurounibug ; 08:58 PM|fine, ignore me

July 21st, 2006

Who knew kenshi were such assholes?

Okay, not really.

But this (apparently quite large and popular) Kendo forum I've been reading the last few days not only uses the words 'gay' and 'homosexual' as derogatory terms (as in: "that dojo is so gay" and "another fuckin' wannabee ninja homo" ), the people who do so are never told to stop being fuckwads.

For the girls out there; someone mistaking another's university as a girls' school, was told he'd "insulted" the other's school, and no one jumped in to say STFU. Also, the womens' sub-forum is described as a place "for us women to discuss issues we'd not always be comfortable talking to guys about- or that they may not be interested in." (The descrition was written by a woman member) I guess if dudes aren't interested in a topic, it's to be hidden in a seperate section so's the cooties don't spread.

And yes, I do judge a community by offhand, unthinking marginalization of women and sex/gender minorities. I don't care that one can argue it's ingrained, normalized, and not meant that way.

For a community supposedly devoted to an art in which self-betterment is a focus . . . well, I guess I just expected them to act less like middle-schoolers. Dude, if you think 'gay', 'homo' and 'female'/'girl' are insults and/or are acceptable to be used as insults . . . grow the fuck up.

Also, you might want to work on that self-betterment aspect.

rurounibug ; 09:57 PM|fine, ignore me

July 22nd, 2006

da da da da da da da . . . just wrong

Wrong . . . but full of lol.

http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/64.html

rurounibug ; 10:08 PM|fine, ignore me

July 24th, 2006

pants

Yesterday I ran into one of my neighbors in the hall; middle-age, overweight dude leaving his apartment. Wearing only a small white towel like some sort of Roman at the baths, hair all weird like the proffesor from Back to the Future.

I tried to pretend like I hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

"It's too hot!" He said--gasped, actually--and headed down the stairs.

"It really is," I said, because it really, really was (and still is). And yet somehow, some way, the rest of us manage to at least put on shorts.

And no, when I went downstairs there was no sign of him. I have no idea where he went in his little white Roman-at-the-baths towel. I mean, where would you go?

rurounibug ; 06:17 PM|3 replies

July 28th, 2006

old dog

When I was fourteen, I got a dog to replace the one I'd received as a christmas gift at six, and who had dissapeared from our yard months before, never to be seen again.

The dog I got at fourteen stayed with my parents when I was shipped off to board for high-school at sixteen. She was my dog again, after high school, when I was home and going to college in Jakarta. Then I went to the states and she was their dog again.

Yesterday, they had to put her to sleep.

They left her body at the vet's. I wish they had brought her home. When they told me, I couldn't make a fuss, because I could tell Mom wanted me to be okay with their decision, and she'd been their dog for more years than she'd been mine. I just wish they had brought her home.

Doesn't an old dog deserve to be buried under a tree in her own yard? Doesn't an old dog deserve at least that much?

rurounibug ; 09:02 PM|4 replies

July 29th, 2006

You call that an upgrade?

Yesterday, the hot water heater in my building was 'upgraded'. There is now no hot water. There was hot water at three thirty AM last night, when I brushed my teeth, but there isn't any now.

I think I liked the old, down-grade water heater better. You know, the one that worked.

rurounibug ; 04:55 PM|fine, ignore me

July 30th, 2006

suuu~re you did/were/had

IM-ing with new people the last couple of days, I suddenly realized that my stories all sound like lies, of the sort my possibly slightly-insane friend Die would tell. You know, whoppers that weren't so . . . whoppy . . . as to be impossible, except that so much weird shit doesn't happen to one person.

Of course, with Die, all the weirdest shit was what turned out to be true, so you ended up believing everything just because it was easier than trying to sort it out.

For example, I mentioned I'd been mugged once by a transvestite. In Jakarta, this is pretty normal. Who hasn't been? In the US, not so much. When one then mentions things like having lived in NY, Australia, and then say 'boarding school' . . . well, this is where I'd roll my eyes if it was someone else telling the story.

Also, once, a crazy street person grabbed my butt.

And once, someone tried to kidnap me.

And once, when I was in middle school, there was a tank stationed at the end of our street.

And once, when I was on a bus, someone turned a van up ahead of us over and set it on fire and a guy got on the bus and said "People are shooting up ahead, theres already six dead. Turn off. Turn off here." And women in the back of the bus, coming home from shopping, were yelling, "Turn off, turn off, we don't want to die," and the bus driver yelled back, "You're not the only ones who want to live. Sit down and shut up."

I still have no idea what was actually going on.

And once, on a class trip, one of our buses hit a pick-up truck and killed six people, including a child. I got off the bus and went to look at the accident, and the whole area smelled of gasoline, and one of the instructors was lighting a cigarette, so I got my ass out of there. And my friend Ari said, on the way back to our bus, "Was that gas on the road, or blood?" I hadn't been looking too closely at the road. I'd been distracted by the truck driver's squashed face.

And also, I'm trilingual.

This is all true.

I swear it.

rurounibug ; 04:51 PM|2 replies

tagboard

blogs and journals

fiction

the layout