Of Twilight, Miyavi, and Dinocroc vs. Supergator

So I think I updated this last on Thursday or Friday, but now its Sunday and I should probably update again.

My weekend was pretty good, I hung out with my good friend Margo who came back from Russia and we talked about her trip and also how she went to see Miyavi in concert in Chicago which apparently was freaking amazing. He is a spectacular guitar player and master of visual kei style. He is pretty kickass. He cured her fever, even! Margo said he is god. I would say he is at least god-like.

We also watched terrible moves like Backwoods and Dinocroc vs. Supergator. The latter was especially awful, with actors who I could probably out-act and lots of people getting eaten and funny looking CGI and just.. bad-ness all around. But it was soooo funny. I especially loved the part where the bus driver was like sleeping and the giant crocodile appears around the corner all loudly with his stomping and the bus driver kinda wakes up for a second and then goes back to sleep.

Then when the croc starts coming closer he wakes up again, sees it in his rearview mirror, and starts the engine but at that precise moment the giant croc(which is far too heavy to do any kind of aerial action) jumps several meters up and across, and crushes the bus underneath its fat butt.

It was a priceless moment. Click here to see the trailer for this hilariously bad movie. It even has the bus crushing part in it!


So, on the topic of bad movies, I thought I would bring up Twilight. And when bringing up Twilight, I know it is wise to say early on.. I am not a Twilight fan. IF YOU ARE A TWILIGHT FAN, DO NOT READ!!!! ESPECIALLY DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE MANIACS THAT GOES AND KILLS PEOPLE WHO THINK TWILIGHT IS ONLY "OKAY." SEE A LICENSED PSYCHOLOGIST. NOW!!

Also, if your name is Maggie, I wouldn't recommend reading this either. You'll probably get mad at me.. and I'll be sad..

I wouldn't care about Twilight at all if it wasn't so popular and I could go a day without seeing references to it. However, since it is at best a mediocre book/movie I feel like having it become this popular is just heresy.

My favorite part from the Twilight movies was when Bella hits her head against the rock and Jacob decides that for some unknown to god reason he needs to wipe Bella's bloody head with his shirt, and that for this he MUST take it off in a very rushed manner. Everyone thinks its because he wants to help Bella, right, but my theory is he was just soooo hot with it on he couldn't bear it! Insert teen porn placement here. *imitates gaga eyes of 13 year old girl* -unbearably unmistakable fan girl high pitched screech- OMG he's soooooo hawt without his shirt on.


My second favorite part from the Twilight movies was at the beginning of the second movie when Bella is at school by her car waiting for Edward and when he shows up they show him walk over to her in all his slow motion glory, getting closer and closer with every second. It takes up an entire minute of the movie so fangirls can just gaze in awe of his anorexic looking sallow/sullen features. And then when Jacob shows up they like show him for two seconds. I was surprised no one in the audience yelled "why isn't he in slow motion?!?"

So anyways, now that all Twilight fans can hate me and go burn down my house (I live at 666 Lake Forest, Illinois, btw) I think my mission is done. Oh wait, not quite. I wanted to comment on this article I found on the topic as well.

So, there's this article on Twilight that's talking all about why Twilight is bad for humans. Particularly, young female humans. Its fine in a "oh you know, this is nice" kind of way but not fine in a "OMG I AM GOING TO ADOPT ALL THE FEATURES OF THIS MAIN CHARACTER AND MAKE HER MY NEW ROLE MODEL AND LOVE LOVE LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS EVAR." Someone could argue that such is never fine, but you know what I mean.

Read the article here.

So I know this article talks a lot about feminism. Let me clear something up. I don't think women can do everything that men can do. Women are physically different in some ways, which makes it hard and sometimes dangerous to do the same things men do. If they really want to, fine, its not like it will necessarily be bad for them and I do think anyone should get to do whatever the hell they want within you know, limits of law.

I think its a little freaky when women do weight lifting like crazy and stuff like that, but I don't think theres anything wrong with a strong woman. I don't think theres anything wrong with lesbians, or transgender. Do whatever you want. It's you. I don't think anyone should come up to someone and be like "hey, you can't do this because you're ____" Unless its life threatening, I suppose. There are exceptions, but overall, its the freaking persons decision.

To sum that up, I think there are two extremes when it comes to female gender roles. Theres the hard core "feminists" who basically hate men and think we should lock them up and use their sperm and nothing else.. or the ones who think we should be exactly the same as men.. and then there's the people who think women should get married to a man, raise babies, care for their babies, cook and clean, do whatever their man wants them to, be submissive always, and never stand up for themselves.

I'm going to quote Lady Gaga. That is, if I can find it... which it doesn't look like I can. Whatever. She basically said something like 'a woman can be ugly, beautiful, strong or weak, cruel or kind' whatever. There shouldn't be a label for it.

So anyways, lets tie this back into Twilight and particularly, Bella. Bella embodies an incredibly traditional female role. See the article for why. She's not a powerful figure, the guys around her basically make all the decisions, not to mention she's kind of a zombie, and she can't live without her Edward (considering she almost kills herself and has a hysterical breakdown for three months).

Basically, she is nothing without the dominant male figures. By making her main character so incredibly... THAT... Stephanie Meyer is basically saying "oh, yeah, if you act like that a really sexy dominant guy will come along and you will become a zombie for him and basically your entire life will revolve around him and you will be soo incredibly happy," etc. etc. I know that humans aren't that stupid that they will consciously be thinking that unless they're a really hopeless case, but the novels just scream that kind of attitude.

So even if 13 year old girls aren't thinking "omg, I want a really dominant guy who will do naughty violent things to me and say I am his only and I can belong to him and be really really submissive always" probably it will enter their minds subconsciously.

Another note. Twilight promotes ridiculous, suicidal, over the top teenage girl breakup angst. I HATE THAT. Guys will probably break up with you. Life will suck for a while, maybe, but don't actually convince yourself that you will not live past that day and not do anything but sit and stare out the window for 3 months like an emo child.

Phew. So I think I'm done ranting about Twilight for now. And the best part is, all those twilight fans who hate me (though I doubt you are reading this, whatever), I may publish a book in the future that you might end up reading and being like OMG THIS IS SOOO GOOD! and I'll laugh. Bwuahahha. Maggie, don't hate me.


I know here I only talked about why I don't like Twilight in a "how it effects humans" sort of way.. but I also don't think the writing is good.. which I might get into in another blog entry if you know, I have time. Or actually.. maybe I'll just link to some other places which embody my opinion:

http://fricknits.typepad.com/fricknits/2008/06/10-things-i-hate-about-twilight.html

http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/friends-chat/anyone-else-can-t-stand-twilight/t.24736495/

http://bookstove.com/fantasy/why-i-hate-twilight/

If Romantic Stuff Makes You Want to Barf, Don't Read This.

So today I am rather tired but I wanted to talk about the history of my relationship with my boyfriend since it is his birthday today! Happy Birthday Stephen!

We've been dating for about two and a half years, and started dating in high school. It was a rather unpleasant time for my because my dad left to live in Cleveland for a year because my mom lost her job and he didn't get a raise so had to find a better paying job so that I could finish high school and we could keep the house longer.

Before all this started, though, I was rather depressed after a very sad trip to Russia and having not that many friends in the first two years of high school because I was sick of moving and sick of making new friends and I just felt like the world was fundamentally unfair and was a real cynic, had no faith in my friends and didn't think anybody gave a shit about me even if they said they did. The first two years the main person who got me through it before my boyfriend came along was this guy who I knew when I lived in Washington State. His name was Jake.

He talked to me a lot and made me laugh and we had lots of good times. Chatting. We never saw each other or anything, it was all completely online since by then I lived in Minnesota. I guess at the time I kind of liked him, even though I was very blunt and dark and acted like I hated everything. One of my other friends caught on that I liked him and basically told him about it because she hates it when people don't tell each other stuff and basically he told her he liked me too, but that she wasn't allowed to tell me.

So of course, she told me, and then shortly after Jake disappeared. I was crushed, because he was kind of my lifeline. I could talk to him about stuff that was bothering me and complain endlessly and he just knew what to say to cheer me up.

A little before that I had gotten together again with my friends from 8th grade, who kind of left me for a year when I switched to a different high school than the one they were in (not because I wanted to). I was happy that I was getting to hang out with them again, and through that group I sort of re-met Stephen (I had known him before, but we never talked).

At the time Stephen was rather unhappy because of a certain unrequited high school crush, and so I tried to comfort him because I like to help people. At the time though I was not very happy myself so I made a rather terrible comforter. I was also rather bipolar, and might have gone from being somewhat comforting, to downright harsh, or well, I don't even know honestly, in the span of a minute.

Somehow through all of my depressive psychoticness Stephen saw my 'charm.' At first I didn't realize that he liked me, but it started to become more and more obvious over time, and one day he was really upset because I didn't sit next to him on a long bus trip. He's had a lot of bad bus trips where no one sat by him and it made him feel lonely.

I still feel kind of bad about that. He was quite upset. I felt pretty bad about it at the time, but I still couldn't figure out if it was pity or something else. I went back and forth a lot, because I never pictured myself in a relationship before and always thought I would just be the nice girl who helped people out or got picked on. I never thought I would be the center of someones attention.

I couldn't really bring myself to believe that he liked me that much. I felt like it was all my fault, and it would probably be better if I left him alone. I felt like he had too much of a soft heart, whereas mine is pretty bruised and battered in comparison.

I went back and forth with him about us being in a relationship for a long time. I told him I hated the terms 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' and I hated all the hype surrounded by it. I just wanted to be his friend. That turned into being his 'close friend' as we spent more and more time together. Eventually, though, there was a bit of an ultimatum.

I think it might have been that day when he was already upset with me, and I said something about how maybe we shouldn't date, because it just seemed bad for us both. I know what I said at the time was far more convoluted than that but I think that's what I was going for. Not ruling it out, just feeling that it was maybe a bad idea. I felt like I had to watch everything I said because I was just that blunt. He took my saying that "maybe it was a bad idea" as "it's never going to happen" and got really upset and angry and didn't want to talk to me.

I felt awful after that. I couldn't sleep all night, my whole body was shaking, I felt a little nauseous. I think I realized then that I couldn't stand being like that. Being distant from everyone, and feeling like nobody cared 'that much'. I needed someone closer. Closer than Jake. I needed affection. Hugs. Cuddles. Kisses. Things that I didn't get.

The next day he called me, saying he was sorry. I felt bad, but I was upset also. I told him I didn't mean that there was no chance we would date. I just felt like things weren't working because I always upset him, but I didn't want to rule it out, and that he hurt my feelings a lot. I don't think he realized that meant that I cared. I said I was sorry too.

After that conversation, a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. Things got better.


Eventually, after people kept asking us if we were dating, I finally decided I wasn't scared of the word anymore and we made it "facebook official." Woo. Facebook.

We slowly started to get more comfortable with each other, we talked a lot about everything, he started visiting more and put up with my moms demands like making him pot plants and clean things and carry things and move things. He was there when I had arguments with my parents. He was almost always there when things went wrong, to comfort me. I finally had a real shoulder to cry on. Literally.

He would host parties for both of our groups of friends at his house. They were always a blast. I had so much fun.

Eventually I felt like I could tell him anything.

Stephen was the first real person who I could hold in my arms for more than a few seconds. I felt warm inside, and calm, a feeling I really hadn't felt in years.

I started making more friends in school, people got less scared of me, I started feeling less insecure and more confident. If he hadn't been there my last two years of high school might have been completely different.

When I had to move here, we both were forced to consider breaking it off, but decided against it because we both knew that we cared about each other too much to let distance get in the way. At least, not without a fight. At times the school year was rough, and then we would get a little rough on each other, but it worked out okay. We wanted things to come naturally, see where the flow took us. Right now the flow is keeping us together. And against some peoples predictions.

So let me end this with a super cheesy note that my boyfriend would highly approve of. Go where your heart takes you. Don't plan everything ahead. Take things one step at a time. Sometimes you just have to feel whats right in the moment, and thats the best judge of everything.

I'm going to see him again in a week. Words cannot express how much I look forward to it ^__^.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Oh yeah, and then there's this random image I made to go with yesterdays entry.

A quick comic thingy I made about Horse and Buggy Parking. Click on image for full view!

Of Muscular Black Male Strippers, a Time When Glasses Kits Were Sold in Every Checkout Aisle, and Saving Pitiful Kittens

So today was a strange (and WAY eventful) day. It started off with a strange dream that my friend, Taryn---HOLD EVERYTHING-- I remembered more of the dream! Rewind!

So I was at this computer science meeting where we were reviewing our final animations and all of a sudden I got like.. lost there... or something.. or maybe I couldn't figure out where the meeting was. So I started running around the whole place and running up these stairs and when I got to the top it was a dead end. When I started running back down all these guys who were in the room decided to randomly start stripping. I tried to look away and run past them, but there were some really big stripper black guys at the bottom of the steps that tried to block my way. Somehow I ran away from them...

Okay.. so I think it was later in the dream, I ran into Taryn out of nowhere and we were just like chilling.. and suddenly there was this kitten.. and Taryn basically bit its hind leg off and I was like WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?!? And she was like what? It's good for the cat. I was like uhh NO ITS NOT.

She was like "See the cat isn't complaining." And so I looked at the cat and the cat did actually look fine. It was like all cats hind legs had infections and it was better to bite them off. I dunno. But basically I tried arguing with her and then she showed me this like educational game where two cats competed to bite the cats in the middle who held up its hind leg.

So if you're willing to keep reading about my day, please continue. If you've had enough of the insanity, that's fine too.

I woke up to find that it was 9:30 and my alarm silences itself after 5 minutes of ringing.. which I don't think it actually rang to begin with but whatever. Then I went to work. At work I listened to Aries bitch about this other friend of hers who is dating an asshole but doesn't realize it and is miserable all the time and makes all her friends miserable.

Aries who was dealing with this was basically pounding on her desk and saying "YOU DUMB BITCH. OF COURSE YOU MAKE YOUR FRIENDS MISERABLE!" I was quite amused and started telling her about some of my experiences with girls who don't understand the concept of dating someone who is in any way good for them.

Then I checked my computer to find that my boss had returned an edited version of my article. At first I was stupid and opened it in Google Docs, only to find out after some confusion and anger that it looked completely different when you downloaded it and opened it in Word. Granted, this article "is very challenging for a beginning journalist", and granted, "we will all help edit it together," but it's always a little weird to see your article look completely different after trying to get it to flow right and sound right.

So I was kind of frustrated, but whatever. Me and Stephen talked about Vampire Knight. He likes the second season more. Blasphemy. It is all fantastic, sexy shit.

Then interrupting all of this was a giant ass storm which Jeff had the bright idea of driving through thanks to leaving about 10 minutes before it started. I hope he made it home safely. There were sheets of water just just pounding against the concrete.

So what happened next.. oh yeah, I took photos of the storm, and then I got kind of sick to my stomach. OH YEAH! I totally forgot, one of the employees collapsed half an hour before the storm started and we had to call 911.

Okay.. so after the storm, I went back to work, which was kinda boring there for a while. I was trying to return the flow to the article. I mean I know that my superiors are wiser than me about how the article should look but the problem is I don't think the way they do.

Eventually I got sick of it and then one of the employees said the storm might start up again and offered me a ride so I went ahead and took it since I didn't want to be stormed on. Then when I got 'home' my roommates said they wanted to have dinner with a friend of theirs somewhere around town so I agreed to go with them. Basically we went to one restaurant, which was packed, and then we decided to go to Qdoba (basically Chipotle) instead.

I got this giant ass quesadilla of deliciousness. Yeah.

During this time I got to know some basic facts about my roommates friend: that she's a french major, that shes going to be a junior, that she's pretty hilarious, and that I overall liked her. She clearly liked me too, since after going to Wal-Mart and probably having more fun than should be had in Wal-Mart, she declared "Nadya is awesome. I like Nadya." I almost blushed. D'aaaaw. People like me. Contrary to popular belief, I like it when people like me.

My roommates are pretty awesome, too. One is a history major who has lived in Russia house for a year already and is pretty down to earth and normal for an Oberlin student. She also amuses me with her occasionally hermit like tendencies and saying blunt stuff about disliking humans and complaining about how dumb they are. She's pretty awesome.

My other roommate is a biochem major and is in my year but only 17 years old!!!!!!!1111

Holy shit, right? Makes me feel like an old woman.

The reason we went to Wal-Mart was because her glasses were broken and her contacts were making her allergies seem particularly shitty. And of course the vision section of Wal-Mart had to close 10 minutes before we got there. So we ducked under the dumb fence thingy and searched for the stupid glasses fixy kit thing and found 1 out of like 6 racks of fucking lens cleaner. I never thought I would say this, but "BACK IN MY DAY, THEY SOLD GLASSES FIXING KITS IN EVERY FUCKING CHECKOUT AISLE!"

So after all this was done (btw, at the ghetto Oberlin Wal Mart they have parking designated for HORSE AND BUGGY!) we went back to the apartment and toiled for like half an hour trying to get the stupid tiny screw into the tiny little hole (get your dirty minds out of the gutter) and screwing it in with the tiny little plastic screwdriver that stabbed my hand every time it got loose.

We had to redo it three times because first the lens wouldn't pop in, and so we loosened the screw, and then the lens popped in unevenly but we didn't notice until it was screwed all the way in again! By the end my hand was shaking so bad and my stomach was twisting in frustration and anger at the stupid screwdriver and the stupid fucking tiny screw.

Okay, so then I thought my day was surely over. Plenty of eventful shit. PLENTY. I was going to cozy up next to my computer on skype with my bf and hope that we could have a pleasant conversation instead of arguing about web design. My other roommate was still not back.

Suddenly, I hear my roommate with the broken glasses say something about a stray cat and bringing tuna. Yes, you guessed it. My other roommate came across a random stray kitten who was hiding under a car (4 weeks old) so of course we had to come help rescue it. We brought milk and tuna. When we get there we can hear the kitten meowing at the top of its lungs, and could have been there for at least 24 hours.

It sounded like a squirrel. I didn't know cats could do that.

There were other ladies there who were semi cat experts, and one of them knew the phone number of the lady in town who fosters kittens and adopts them out in the town art gallery and art store, gingko gallery. But before she showed up we opened the tuna (I was beneath the tuna opener at the time, and got tuna sprayed all over me, followed by lots of apologies. I still smell like tuna) and the kitten ALMOST came out, but then at the last second ran off.

We tried to corner it by surrounding the car but it ended up climbing into the fucking tire. Inside the suspension. Goddammit, kitten. We're trying to save you. Get with the picture.

The present cat lady expert tried to get the cat out, but was worried that it was too narrow. Then the almighty cat savior from gingko gallery (forgot her name, sorry) came in to the rescue, and with her magical hands somehow managed to reach around the back of the tire and raise the kitten out. We tried to give it some tuna but it wouldn't eat it because it had a sinus infection that kept it from being able to smell food. All that tuna wasted. Except when it was spilled on me, of course. But it was all okay because the nice almighty cat/kitten savior said "you helped saved a youth's life today" and drove off in her catmobile.

I returned to the apartment feeling more noble than I probably should have. That's right, bastards. I helped save a kitten, made a new friend, screwed a tiny screw into a tiny hole so that my roommate could not have burning eyes, worked on an article that both my bosses would be intimidated by, and ate a quesadilla.

Of Safe Words, Daria, and the BIG BOOK OF FUCK UP

So it took me a while, but I finally figured out how to get a visitor counter on my blog. If anyone is interested in how I did it, let me know. I will inform ya. Probably this hit counter will just make me depressed about how few people read this thing... but if it really comes to that I will just.. eat a snake or something.

Today I wrote about dead people a lot. Since my article is being edited by my boss
I had no excuses of anything else to work on. This rather sucked, and I got pretty depressed. Among jokes made by Aries about how I should think of it as me writing about their "life cycle" as if it were a "period cycle." You know, they start off fine, then the bleed a lot, and then they die. That was only one of the many 'interesting' conversations we had today.

Aries and Stephen also educated me today about safe words in what could have been interpreted in quite a patronizing way.

"When two people love each other, they sometimes want to do things, Nadya."

"Really? Like roll around in the grass and eat mud?"

"No, Nadya. "

"Well, I like to do that when I love someone."

... No, that's not how it actually went. Though I think that first sentence was pretty close.


This is how it actually went. I'm skipping that first sentence. I think this whole thing started out because Aries was looking at a vintage lesbian blog. Then she started arguing with Stephen about whether red would be a good safe word and then I had the stupid idea of asking them what a safe word was. (If everyone else knows what this is, I feel like an idiot.)

"And when they do things, these things sometimes hurt. But sometimes they hurt in a sexy way, you know, but sometimes it hurts in a very un-sexy way. It's when things hurt that the safe word comes in handy. And you're probably wondering, why not just say stop? Well, because some people like to say stop when really, they don't want you to stop at all, and then it turns into awkward situations where you're like STOP STOP and then they stop and you're like NOOOO keep going! So that's why you make your safe word something else, that you really only say when you're actually in un-sexy pain that could cause permanent damage in a un-sexy way. "

That may have seemed long, but it wasn't even the whole thing. That was paraphrased. Yeah.

Needless to say, my recent graduate of Oberlin friends don't understand the concept of keeping it PG at work. They also made me feel like a dumb ten year old, but in a surprisingly not "I want to rip you to shreds now" kind of way.

I just found this interesting website where college artists can sell their work and get it purchased by college alumni or whatever. That's pretty cool. Anyone think I should make an account?

One of my friends at work thinks that I am like this chick, Daria. I have never seen the show so today I watched stuff from youtube. It was pretty amusing, she's pretty snarky and always has the same tone of voice and even looks a little like me. So weird. I wonder if I'm more like Daria or more like Raven. *sigh* They're both pretty extreme cases. Until I came to Oberlin, nobody compared me to random TV characters. The things college brings. Ways to one dimensionalize my personality. Yeah, I know dimensionalize isn't a word. BUT I USED IT ANYWAYS! HA!

This is my last week of work, btw. Then I will be FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! That will be good. Not that I dislike work, but it gets a bit I dunno.. boring or tiring or.. something like that.

Oh, and Jeff found an error in our most recent magazine. Well, actually, we both kind of found it and so.. he got very frustrated that he found a mistake and so he started looking through the whole magazine for more mistakes he made because he was afraid that the one mistake messed up everything else somehow.

Then he wrote BIG BOOK OF FUCK UP on the front of the copy of the magazine he had. I didn't know whether to laugh or feel bad for him. Me and one of my friends tried to convince him that we hear nobody is perfect, but you know, it's just a rumor, something we heard on the radio.

Of Foreigness, Silly Oberlinians, and Canada Dry

So.. today I am going to write a really fast post.

BLARGHEDEEBLARGHEBLARGH

...jk

Anyways, today I didn't do much. Finished the rough draft of the super important article of superness. I hope my boss reads it quickly so I can make it a not-rough-draft.

It's a thousand words long. This is bad because it has to be 800. But then my boss's boss was like OMG you could totally summarize that down to 400. I was like EXCUSE ME?! NO I CAN'T! Then I told him that if they cut it down that much I wouldn't read it. And he was like "Oh, you'll read it, and we will cut it. There may be blood." Silly Jeff.

Stephen at work is very absent minded. He's always so diligently working and then he starts talking to himself in programming jargon, occasionally explaining it to me as if I have some kind of clue about what he is saying. Also, every time I tell him anything about being annoyed/upset/ blah about something he looks at me as though he is scared and says 'sorry?' or just doesn't say anything. Silly socially awkward Oberlinians.


I skyped with my BF and my other friends from home. If I can call it that... I think I can... even though I don't live there. WTF. forget that debate. But yeah, I spoke with Denise, and Jason, and Maggie, and yeah. And then my BF's interwebs died and I was sad. But I still got to talk to people so that was good.

I bought Canada Dry today. Not to make alcoholic beverages, silly. I just like to drink it. Also, my BF kept drinking it in front of me on Skype and I got a pretty bad craving. It's just like ARRGHH GIVE ME THE SODA PLEEASE.

So I bought it for 1.75. It was a medium sized bottle, so the price will do. I also bought cheap ice cream. Yay for being unhealthy. But I did eat spinach today, and whole wheat cereal and a whole wheat wrap so HA. I also walk every weekend(well, every day, but its not super far. Probably 35 minutes a day) I should also play DDR more. Being healthy is important.

I shaved. In Oberlin a lot of girls don't shave, so nobody really cared. It's too hot to wear pants or even leggings. And my roommates don't turn on the air conditioning really so I just have to deal with it.

I talked to my awesome Korean friend Karen last night. She was telling me about how in Korea apparently being unique is like an insult. Everyone thinks conformity is the only way, and dresses the same. Karen.. she cut her hair and got a nose piercing and she also smokes (which apparently it is OK for guys to smoke but not for girls) and some girl on the bus was like "god I hate that girls style. It's so unique."

That's pretty crazy isn't it? See, Americans? Not everyone in every country values individuality. BUT OMG HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!?! It is. Deal with it.

Speaking of foreigness, another friend of mine, Margo (a Russian friend to be exact who I've known since I was 4) came back from Russia today. This is a pretty big deal since she's been away for a month and I must say I am quite happy that she is back. I will have to ask her lots of questions about how her trip in Russia went since I am rather out of touch with.. that. I'm one of those damned home country- betrayers that moved away from her homeland and now prefers the uh.. new land?

I see the flaws in both Russia and America (yeah, I'm not an America lover either). They both have their extremes which I dislike (I think happy mediums are good, you know, super rude bitchyness kinda sucks but really fake 'nice nice' bullshit does too).

Because you know, where I'm from in Russia (aka Siberia) life kinda sucks (I mean, its freezing ass cold most of the year, and they don't have nearly the resources of big cities like Moscow or St. Petersburg) so people aren't very friendly and most of my relatives have depression and quite a lot of them died under bad circumstances and its just freaking depressing as hell.

Also the culture is kinda polar opposite to America. Happiness isn't valued. Independence is.. kinda valued. I even wrote a poem about my emo trip of emo. Though I don't feel like posting it here. If you care enough to have it I can send it to you, just comment on here or something.

Obviously I like things about Russia too or I wouldn't have bothered to keep the language and learn the culture, etc etc. I have Russia inside of me, even if my relatives don't see it.

You know my moms uncle saw me grown up for the first time when I visited after freshmen year. He basically looked at me for a couple of seconds, hugged me, and was like "I need to.. measure you up.. " or something like that.

Basically, he concluded I was a good person by just looking at me. I don't know if that's really.. valid.. but whatever. I have this giant ass diary I kept while I was in Russia. Probably I should type it all out. But that would take a long time. Egh.

I'm trying to make my entries more accesible for readers by breaking up long paragraphs. I know I tend to ramble, sorry about that!

Of Phones, Shopping, False Memories, and Dentists

So.. the weekend is over. What did I do...

I finished Spice and Wolf Season 1. The main characters remind me of me and my boyfriend. It's so cute and wonderful and makes me smile.

I bought a phone. It's a Motorola Flipback and its loads better than my old phone. It's a smart phone so I can be like those other annoying teenagers who browse the internet and text each other 24 hours a day back and forth about random pointless shit. "omg katy what shoes should i buy?" "i dunno" "you got 2 no tho" "i don't care about your friggin shoes. y u texting me bout it?" "u don't care?!?!" I can also take pictures, and movies, and check my e-mail, and IM with people, and browse the interwebs, and get new ringtones for free! It's so great. I can FINALLY HAVE AYUMI AS MY RINGTONE! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW AWESOME THIS IS.

I bought shoes. It took forever because I am just SO picky about shoes. Not really. Actually, you won't believe this. My dad is the most picky about shoes. "These are soo ugly Nadya you shouldn't buy them." "Why don't you like these shoes they're soo chic." Okay, maybe not quite that girly sounding.. but you get the picture. Basically we ended up buying shoes that I liked, but they hurt my feet. FML

I bought sexy skinny jeans and a t-shirt hoodie.. thing? The skinny jeans are amazing. They're kinda tight but I dunno. I haven't gotten a pair of jeans in a while.

We're close to solidifying all our plans for my bf to come to see me. YAAY! We're going to stay in Chicago during July 4 and it's gonna be rad. Yes, I just used the word rad. I don't remember the last time I heard anyone use that word.

This all happened on Saturday. It was certainly an eventful day full of money-spending. I almost felt guilty by the end of it. Like, who buys so much shit in one day? I guess I do... whoops.

But it's okay because on Sunday my dad dragged me on an hour.. two hour? long hike. It was long. I dunno, but I couldn't really move for a while afterwards. My parents were cleaning my room (it was a pig sty after moving college stuff in) and they kept asking me to help and I was like UGUSHGKJ I NO MOVE NOW. But it worked out in the end. I took out the trash and. stuff... Watched Durarara.. Oh yeah, and I slept on the couch on Saturday night because it was just way too hot in my room. Freaking sauna, I swear.

So I don't know why anyone would find any of the above interesting, but yeah. It's so I don't forget stuff that I did. Because I swear I forget everything that I ever do. It's just gone.. after like a week I remember nothing. Nothing. NOTHING. That reminds me, I forgot how old I was last week. My roommates were like WHAAT how can you forget how old you are? I was like.. uhh.. I dunno? Does it really matter? Apparently it does, and I'm crazy to boot.

I also realized that I have false memories about doing gymnastics when I was a little kid. I have quite a clear memory of swinging on the bars, and being scared to swing all the way around and the teacher being like YOU HAVE TO , and me finally doing it. My dad was like "it must have been your previous life!" and I was like.. uh.. no dad... I think I just dreamed it or something. He also is convinced that I was Japanese in a previous life and that's why I am obsessed with Japan.

So I just took a break to talk to my roommate Caitlin and we were talking about dentists and I had a terrible experience at the dentists this year in Cleveland. She was just.. evil. She gave me this fucking shot that drizzled down into my mouth with this terrible taste (its the numbing shot) and she gave them to me not once, not twice, but THREE EFFING TIMES. FOR ONE CAVITY. And she used an out of date drill that like bounced against my teeth and had such a terrible sound that it made my stomach churn and my ears wish they were deaf and just.. it was this high pitched, like BR-R-RRRRRRRRRRR sound that I can't even describe. Such. An. Awful. Sound. It made tears come to my eyes. Just the sound of it. Maybe my ears are sensitive or something. But then the lady was all like "this guy told me that he hated this drill and that I should upgrade to the latest but I like this one" or something like that. There should be a law not to use that kind of drill. Seriously. They also laughed at me to boot and were like "its a good thing you only had one cavity or you would probably die." I wanted to kill both of them. Honestly.

Moral of the story. Don't go to dentists that work in old office buildings above grocery stores.

When Sleeping is Easier Than Facing the World

So I am making an entry.. because I promised that I would make an entry every day. So everyone has been talking about how I'm like Raven from Teen Titans. I had never seen Teen Titans before, but today Terrance did the honor of showing me a youtube video of Raven's best moments. Aries, Stephen, and Terrance all think I am like Raven. Also I guess Taryn and her mom also think I am like Raven. Probably there's other people who think I am like Raven out there. Apparently I have dead pan humor. I never really thought of myself as being QUITE that dead pan, but I guess I have my moments. Especially when I just moved from some place, I get particularly dead pan because I stop caring about what anyone thinks. So maybe I am like Raven. Or at least around some people. Oh yeah, I think Harris also thinks I'm like Raven. I should make a list or something. Even Margo seemed to think I am kind of like her... I should probably figure out how other people view my personality.

I know none of this has anything to do with sleeping, but on the subject of my personality, I really enjoy sleep. For a while some people I thought I had some kind of problem because I could sleep 12 hours every night.. for like..a long time, not feeling like I was missing out on life or anything. I think I can still do that. Even now for work I go to bed at like 12:30 and get up at 9:15 or at the latest, 10. On the weekend I definitely sleep forever though.

Speaking of work, today was kind of weird. I felt like I didn't get much done, though I did get to interview Rian and Geoff, and they are kind of leading the whole summer media workshop. I spoke to them for about half an hour. Tomorrow there is going to be almost no one at work. This worries me. I have about 300 words of like.. sensical article type stuff, and a lot more words of random quotes and information that is currently unorganized. I am having a really difficult time making an outline or anything to get everything squared away. There's just too much.


Ugh. This entry is too short. But I need to take a shower.. and go to bed. Sorry, world. T__T

OH WAIT! one more thing. I'm watching Spice and Wolf, and it's freaking awesome.

"Are We Fuck-Ups?"

"Are we fuck ups?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, we don't have the basics figured out."
"What basics?"
"Like how to live?"
"We're not fuck ups"
"I think we're fuck ups."
"We're not fuck ups."
"We have a cardboard window."
"We're not fuck ups."

I like this snip-it of quotes from the movie I'm watching (Away We Go). I wonder if I'll feel like this in 20 years, since I don't really like planning too much for the future, though I am really trying to get my career figured out. But still, I don't like planning big life stuff. Like whether I want kids or like, marriage, and.. I dunno... important stuff?

I want to make sure I have money, so I'm not constantly restricted by.. that I guess. Not that I want to be rich. I just don't want to be poor. And I like it when people like me.. sorta. Even though I don't like a lot of people. I like to build a name for myself, and have people that appreciate me. I haven't given it much thought, though. But there are so many people in the world who just fuck up their entire lives.

They only live for the moment, and even then they don't think about the massive effects that moment has, or how even in that moment they could be hurting themselves. People that use drugs, get drunk, have unprotected sex when they're 14, flunk out of college, have unrealistic expectations about their lives and don't get off their lazy ass to do any work. People who just think the world will work for them.

Those people usually end up being fuck ups. I don't want to be one of those people. I want my life to have meaning. I don't want to have huge regrets.

American culture tends to think that the goal of life is for themselves to be happy, and they're always on the search for happiness. I don't really think of my life that way. I'm not always on this search for happiness. A lot of people think there's something fundamentally wrong with that. "omg happiness isn't like the goal of your liiffe?!?!" no, it's not.

I don't think meaning in life is based on happiness. I could be happy if I knew nothing about the world and could take happy pills all the time. What kind of life is that? I'll tell you. It isn't. Sometimes, I almost like being sad. Everyone thinks its always like downright depression. "get out of your emo corner naddyaaa!!" I mean at the time that was said I actually was kind of depressed, but like, I dunno, my life kind of sucked so what did they expect me to act like? I think of my 'sadness' more as melancholy. There's a range, at any rate.

Oh, look. The characters in the movie are in Madison, Wisconsin. That's pretty close to where my boyfriend goes to college. This movie is so messed up. I don't think I can focus on this blog while watching a movie. What was I thinking? Another quote is.. something about your life being all affected about how you come into the world (are born into the world).

Well, when I came into this world, my mother was starving, was in shitloads of pain, and there was no nurses around and the only food my mom had was an apple or something and she had nothing to drink and she was in a shitty hospital where the nurses yelled at her if she asked them for anything, even if she was screaming and they would tell her they didn't have any water or apples or anything.

My mom was miserable. My dad missed the entire birth and wasn't there to support her. So... if my entire life is formed by my birth then.. well, I'm screwed. But my life doesn't suck that much, so it's all good.

I think I'm pretty ambitious at this point in my life. I have a lot of stuff I've been doing and I want to get good at.. stuff. By stuff I actually mean drawing, writing, taking pictures, making animations, and programming. There's also a lot of stuff I want to learn. I think it's important to know stuff about the world. In some way at least. I want to be good at .. everything I like? I guess?

I'm probably crazy. This is probably why I don't think about babies. And marriage. Theres so many things I enjoy doing, how am I supposed to get all this shit done in my life? I don't know. It's probably why I don't think about it too much.

Okay. Movie is finally over. I can.. maybe focus on finishing this now. Today consisted of this movie and.. work. Work consisted of interviewing 5 people that are involved with the teen media workshop thing and sitting in on their brainstorming session for their group film making exercise. At least I didn't have to walk all over campus to find them this time. I also talked to Terrance some more today.

He was telling me more about kind of office politics stuff. I've been learning a lot about that. I think it's important to know how office politics work, and how powerful everyone is just so I know what to expect in my future. Or even if it's not for my future, I guess I find it interesting. It's bad when good people have power but don't use it. Usually its bad people that have power, but if good people don't use their power, well that's just sad.

My thing about interviewing people reminded me of something. One of the teachers I was interviewing said he thought blogs were really dumb, but he was starting one to help other people, and not just himself, not just a blog about himself anyhow.

Probably he's right and those blogs are more useful. I had to think about that for a second, and you know.. he's probably right. A lot of blogs don't really serve much of a purpose. My blog is pretty selfish. But it can maybe make me a better person, so... why not I guess? It helps me organize my thoughts. Get them out of my brain and onto.. a computer screen.

I See, Says the Blind Man to His Deaf Wife

So I'm on Second Life right now... but that's not very important. I was doing some photography on Second Life and posted the stuff I took on deviantart with my own avatar as the model .It was interesting. I wanted to try artistic nudes, and apparently they get a lot more views. I uploaded some new photos that I took for work.. but none of them have any views. That kinda sucks.

Honestly the following story is kind of my own fault, because I didn't carefully read the e-mail saying I have to tell Rian ahead of time that I want to report on the summer media workshop, because she said she wouldn't give me the location until then. Why someone would intentionally leave out the location where they were meeting to make the reporters life more difficult, I don't know. It just happened that way for some reason.

Today was kind of a crappy but also kind of a good day. At work things were a bit stressful because I wanted to report on this summer media workshop for teens that's going on this week and next. However, there was one teeny problem. We didn't know where the workshop was meeting that day. We called: the high school office, the cinema studies department, the art department, the Apollo movie theater(main number and office number), and Mudd library. No luck.

The lady in Mudd said that she would check the Media Lab. She did but she said nobody was there. So after all this effort I realize my friend Aries actually knew where it might be because she's friends with Ma'ayan who happened to be one of the camp counselors for the workshop. However, Ma'ayan didn't respond to a text or phone call from Aries but Aries said she thought it might be in FAVA.

So I told my boss I would go to FAVA (or she told me to, whatevs) . FAVA is a 20 minutes walk from work. I got to FAVA and the person there got a pamphlet for the workshop that said Langston Middle School on it. I went to Langston Middle School (a 5-10 minute walk).

It started raining. I walked through all three levels of Langston Middle School. Nobody there. People outside said they didn't think it was here. I was going to walk back to work, but then I decided to stop at Rice and then King to see if my Computer Science professor was there (another 10 minute walk).

He was, and we talked about my animation and he will hopefully have it rendered before I leave for the month. Then I decided to ask him if he knew where the location was and lo and behold, his daughter was in the workshop. Soooo he told me it was in Warner. I went to Warner. There was a "Summer Music Festival" going on. Great.

By the way, I was wearing sandals with no support this whole time. I go to the other Warner building. Walk up some more stairs. Nobody there. Exhausted, I go back to King. Now my professor is gone. I go back down. Probably another 10 minutes lost by then.

I was just about to go back to the office in resignation, but then at the last second I see one of the professors for the workshop and ask him where the stupid workshop is going on. He says its in Mudd. I wanted to shoot a baby sheep. In bloody, meaningless glory. It was in Mudd the whole time!?!?!? WHAAAT?!?! The media lab was on the fucking fourth floor. Needless to say, I took the elevator.

This was where things got awkward. I saw a group of students working on a video. Some of them looked like college students. I waited for them to finish talking and then asked if they would mind if I sat in and observed since I was reporting. Then I realized they were all high school students. Fail. I felt like a moron.

After listening to them for a while I went downstairs and outside and Ma'ayan found me and was like "omg there you are" and I was like "yeah.." and she explained to me more of what was going on which helped. I felt like I was giving off an impression that I wasn't happy or something. I hate it when that happens because then I seem like a douchebag. Really I was just tired and my feet ached.

When all my reporting I had to walk back to the office (another 10 minutes). I called my boyfriend and we had a dumb argument for like 50 minutes. By that point I was like.. sweaty, disgusting, exhausted, the heels of my shoes were peeling off. I just wanted water and cold air.

So I go in and talk to my boss. Basically the first thing she tells me is.. "btw, the president wants this article to be totally awesome. He is invested in it and thinks its really important. no pressure." At that point I kind of felt like melting into the carpet. At least there was only like 30 minutes left to my workday.

So I finished what I had left to do (resizing some pictures) and then my friends at work were like "we should go eat out" and so we went to the restaurant that my apartment is literally right above. We probably stayed there for at least 2 hours. Arguing about whether our fortunes in the fortune cookies are predetermined and if they are ours once we read them or once we choose them.

We also talked about anime and manga and acid trips (in that context). Joseph and Alyssa had a long conversation about.. something.. that I had trouble understanding. I think Alyssa was trying to get Joseph to understand sociology or something but it was rather difficult because he always takes the argument to a way more fundamental/philosophical level than what the argument originally was.

Stephen's fortune cookie said that it was sleeping.

We also talked about how we all pronounce things differently. Oh, and how the word Jimmy can be put in any context and mean something different. "I have to go to the Jimmy (bathroom). "Wow, that was a Jimmy!" or "We get so many Jimmy's these days." Can all be somehow understood as making sense. Oh yeah, I really wanted Joseph's eggroll. I kind of freaked out when they brought it and I nommed it.

I want to talk about this stuff in more detail, but my brain is so fried. I'm nervous about this article I have to write.. but... it will be okay.. I hope. O_O.

Of Obituaries, Work, and Lady Gaga

I am vowing to try and write a blog entry every day for the next two weeks. Lets see if this will happen. So today... uh, today I wrote about dead people. Ten dead people to be exact. I have 36 more to look forward to. I also edited an article about myself and my impression of alumni weekend here at Oberlin.

I didn't really like the article at first but then I had a chance to change it to something more like what I would write. You see, article A had lots of cliche phrases and made me sound somewhat douchey becuase I didn't offer much explanation behind my feelings at the time. Article B, the new one, has that in it, with less cliche-ness. I hope that version gets to go in instead.

This was one of those days that started off happy, and kinda ended on a dull note.

My day started off quite happy because I kept procrastinating by listening to Terrance (one of my bosses) talking to Joseph (college student age, but full time employee). They have the most hilarious conversations. Or at least, I find them hilarious. We basically critiqued the writing and art departments because they try to formalize art, and that the idea of art is freedom and not formalization.

Joseph told me that if I want to write, I will write, and that he thinks it's actually better that I didn't get into the program because they would try to force their style or whatever upon me. He said if I'm stubborn about it I will get my way of writing.

This made me feel rather good.

I also told them stories about my experience in the art department. That was fun. How people tried to put deep meaning into artists work that basically consisted of... lines.. and gradients.. and graphs. Something about depicting peacefulness and ultimate serenity and simplicity because the artist doesn't believe nature is like.. the ultimate form.. theres a simplicity beyond nature and.. yeah, I don't get it either.

I paint nature. Nature is cool. I don't think lines and graphs and gradients are better than nature. Sorry.

I also learned about politics at the office I work at, and that all the people who I thought had been there for a while actually hadn't been there for very long, and that the whole place got totally revamped and everyone's positions kinda changed and whatnot. That was a pretty big shock to me, since everyone seemed so calm and as if they knew everything already.

I also learned that the previous director of the place had a nervous breakdown and had to quit his job. Apparently the head honcho at the Office gets a lot of pressure from the President's Office and stuff.. so, basically, it sucks. He didn't even get to be VP. All the pressure, without the title.


So that was kinda shitty to hear about and then I started writing about dead people, and thinking about death, and how some of these people died pretty young, and thinking about how if they hadn't died I wouldn't be at this computer writing about it, and how its so weird that theres so many dead people and where do dead people go, and how I still haven't really lived that much of my life but everyone has different fates (I'm not sure I believe in fate, but we'll go with that term for now) so I could die young or old or whatever, I don't know. I know some stuff is definitely out of my control.

This scares me. However, I'd like to think that some stuff is in my control. Wait, I know that is true. To some degree it is most certainly true. Thinking about how there was such a huge history before me and so many wonderful people have passed away and well, yeah, that all kinda sucks. Sooo.. lets change the subject.

I saw the Alejandro music video last week. It was.. pretty messed up. I definetely got a Nazi vibe.. and a anal sex vibe.. and a overall dark vibe. I mean, I'm cool with dark. I didn't really need to see the sex reenactions with clothes (little) on, however. I was pretty confused though. There were some cool dancey stuff in there, and some interesting outfits.

Probably if I watch it a few more times the sheer weirdness of it will probably subside and I will get it more. I hope. I read some comments on Youtube about it though (why the hell was I doing that, Youtube comments are like spam hell) and they pissed me off (of course, because they're youtube comments and youtube comments always piss me off) becuase they were saying all this dumb shit about Gaga, and it's like -okay, if you said it with any kind of coherence or sense of constructive criticism, thats one thing, but being like "omg she's insulting christians!!!11 i hate her noowww" is so fucking stupid.

Or saying "omg i bet only gay ppl like this vid." I don't fully understand the video but that doens't mean I'm going to be like THIS is what she is saying. Only she knows what she wants to convey, and like, I definitely see the whole idea of being sick of people defining girls as one thing or another (woman vary. a lot), and having men be the sexual object instead. I like that, not gonna lie.

People get outraged so easily, and its always about stupid shit. It makes me hate the human race.. so much. Judging everything about a person based on one thing, and one thing that clearly has an explanation that they are too lazy to look into it? That would be like if I said something to my friend I'd known for two years that like "Hey, I don't like you anymore because of your facebook status about not liking babies. I know you're trying to tell me now that it's because a baby bit your finger off, but I still hate you."

By the way, I don't like babies. Just to make you Youtube Commenter folks hate me early on, because its going to happen. Not that anyone like that would read this anyways, since only like 5 people read this.. probably less. That's a good thing too. This is also coming from someone who didn't even like Lady Gaga that much in the first place. I like her a lot more now, actually.

I haven't eaten since like.. 4.. probably should do that soon. But uh, yeah. Maybe I'll add more to this later.

Updating Fail - It's Catch Up Time!

I'm really bad at writing about myself. I sit at the computer thinking: hmm.. my life is boring. Why would anyone want to read about my life? Usually there's something crappy going on, and I want to complain about it- but I don't want to be one of those annoying bloggers that just complains about shit all the time. That's stupid. I could talk about random stuff that happens to me - but why would anyone want to read about fine arts fairs, or driving by a hostage situation, or working at college over the summer? It's not like I was taken hostage, or I was showing stuff at the art fair, and honestly, no one would want to read about my job. I mean- woo, writing obits? OMG so like today I wrote stuff about dead people hahah isn't that great?!? Uh.. no. It's depressing. And though I usually depress people accidentally I don't really like just saying obvious Debbie Downer stuff. I like to do it slowly, so that they don't realize I'm sucking out their soul. And no, I don't only write obits... I write articles that don't get published and take photos of occasionally important things. And no, I don't suck souls. That was like, so three years ago when Harry Potter was still in. I mean, I don't get all this Twilight shit. Come on people, read Vampire Knight. It's waaaay better.

Okay, so my life isn't totally boring. I was actually lying. My life has occasionally interesting, dramatic things. Not right now though. Lets see if I can summarize the last like.. entire semester since I've updated this thing. I did fine in all my classes, though I felt dumb the whole time because lets face it, I only took twelve credits whereas my roommates and basically everyone else was taking 15-16 credits. Honestly, I think they were all a little nuts. In some cases, thoroughly nuts. Like the girl who was walking by me on my way to class around midterms. "Hey Nadya! How's your week? Well, I haven't gotten any sleep ALL week because I've had like 5 midterms and it's just been crazy. I mean, if I can get 5 hours I'm happy. How about you, how are your midterms?"

What I wanted to say: Are you fucking nuts? You can't possibly function on that much sleep, so you're either lying to me or you're going to pass out in 3..2...1. Plus how can you even have that many midterms, when you can only be taking like 5 or 6 classes and one of them doesn't have a midterm because you're in it with me.

What I said: Well, I've been really sick and I don't have any midterms.

Okay, moving on. I took an animation class. Really chill professor, so that was fun. I learned how to use Maya which is what all the professionals in Pixar and whatnot use. I made a penguin sliding down a mountain. It was all happy and cute and maybe I'll render it, stick it on youtube, and then link ya. Too bad it costs like 10,000 dollars. I could totally buy that on my minimum wage, right? Not.

I also made a new friend, a Korean girl who works at the Office of Communications. I haven't really made many new friends since first semester so it was cool, plus I kind of love Asian people so meeting a legit international student was pretty awesome. I hope I haven't scared her with my "OMG Asians are sooo hawt!" fangirl behavior.

I'm kind of excited for next year because I will have my own single room! I won't have to worry about one of my roommates zoning in and out of consciousness in our living room for a week! I won't have to wait hours before I can get privacy! I won't have to clean up other peoples messes or feel guilty for my own! It's like, heaven or something. Plus I'm a self absorbed only child so I need my privacy, y'know? Even though I'm Russian and Russians don't have a word for privacy. Bet you didn't know that, eh? Plus the room is like huuuuuge. Its the size of a double or maybe bigger. Jealous? You should be. Its pretty damn awesome. I'm practically jealous of myself.

Plus I can like, watch awesome Russian TV. And drink black Russian tea. And listen to Russian music.

But, back to last semester. I saw my boyfriend again. For a week. This made me ecquisitely happy but then when I was leaving him it was like my heart was being ripped out. Or my ribs were breaking. Or I was drowning. I dunno, some combination of those. The trip back was horrendous. This long distance thing kinda sucks, putting it mildly. But I'm good at it thanks to moving and shit. Whatever. We made it through a whole year, with neither of us cheating on each other or getting into epic fights.

Oh, art class. This will be fun. Full of hipsters, of course. I felt like such an outsider, and nobody really talked to me. At some point someone turned to me from their group of giggling girls being like "Hey Nadya, are you in a co-op?" and I was like "Uhhh. noo.." and then they all laughed. Because apparently that's just hilarious. I always laugh at people who are too lazy to cook and clean and attend boring meetings where people argue about the same thing over and over. Sounds like such a hoot. So the first assignment in art class involved making an art book. It required good craftman skills. I've never worked at my craft in my entire life, because I never had to. So I had one idea at the beginning but then she kept telling me to change it, cut it up, make my little icons 3D. Which required a lot more craft. Basically I took her advice, and then in front of the whole class she looked at it and was like "You need to cut it up more. Cut the fucking paper." So that was pretty awkward/embarrassing/blah. I cut it up some more after that. Made it.. "better". Then the students had to walk around the class and talk about each book. Lets just say someone basically told me to my face that "The craft sucks." Thanks. Love you too, bitch. I say this with as much sincerity as possible: I hate hipsters.

Luckily, the art class got better. We started painting- I'm actually kinda good at that and suddenly my painting was one of the best in the class (no, I'm not full of myself, the professor actually told me that in private) and people didn't insult my work anymore. That was nice. I got an A. I like the professor now. Just needed some.. adjusting.

What else did I take?

Russian. My professor is a very sweet lady. We had a bit of a strange relationship, since she treated me as her fellow Russian, but I still feel caught between cultural worlds. She kept saying "how much I've grown" which I guess annoys me a little since I don't see myself as being that different. I didn't have any revelations, nor did I drastically change my behavior like a lot of college students do: you know, having lots of sex, drinking, stuff they didn't do as much of in high school because it was harder to get away with it.

Aaaand.. Creative Writing. How could I forget. I got rejected from the program a second time. I edited my submissions 4 times. With each draft I had advice from a senior with an Honors Creative Writing major. I took so few classes so I could devote to my writing. It kind of feels like a huge waste now, and the professor could have been more organized. Much.. more. He always wanted the students to be organized, but he never was. Rather hypocritical, wouldn't you say? And yet, everyone loved him. He's a good person and all, but come on guys.

Well, that was a pretty quick overview. You're probably thinking "what?! no it wasn't!!!1" Well, I say it was, so it was.

So fast forward to now. I've been working at the Office of Communications for a semester and I'm working full time for the month of June. It's not too bad, but its rather lonely. My roommates are people I didn't really know during the year and the people at work are all graduated seniors so I feel like getting to know them too much is mildly masochistic.


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After checking back on my blog I realized that my last post wasn't even at the end of first semester. So.. its hard to remember that long ago. I know that my grades were fine, but one of my roommates was having a lot of issues because she never handed anything in on time and was seeing the effects of her procrastination. I just remember being kinda glad that first semester was over. I quit my job at Girls in Motion after one of the black girls basically pounced on a white girl when she said that she liked Black Eyed Peas or something and said "excuse me, but for your information I do know that band." After that happened the black girls friends were rolling around the floor laughing hysterically and reenacting the scene. It was a zoo, I got such a terrible headache. I don't even know how I lived through that. Then I worked for two weeks at the Oberlin Heritage Center. I felt pretty bad quitting after so little time, but I hadn't expect to get the Communications job. I mostly just did paperwork there, so it was much more relaxing and I liked working in such an old, historically important building.

I got to see my boyfriend over Christmas break, which was spectacular. I also got to see all my friends from high school too, since everyone I know from that time is in Minnesota. I even got to see my friend who moved to Puerto Rico. It was fantastic. I don't like thinking about it too much, though, because it makes me depressed. The best part was my boyfriend of course. I feel like a different person around him. He fills me with happiness. It was hard moving away. It was also hard leaving after Christmas break. Really hard. Eh, leaving him is always torture. Hopefully when I see him this summer it won't break my heart quite as much.

Then for the rest of winter term I just worried about making a house in Second Life, so I learned how to use 3 dimensional tools and stuff in Second Life. I read books about having a business in Second Life. I realized Second Life could actually be quite profitable and I could try to make a business there myself. I didn't do that though. Instead I just made a cool looking Oriental style cozy cafe looking thing with a fireplace and modern looking. I like how it turned out. Here's a picture.

That took me a lot of work. It's totally 3 dimensional, I had to build it out of parts. Different shapes that I can manipulate in specific ways through Second Life's system. It's practically its own world, really. Second Life money can be translated into real money. Basically everything you think of in real life exists in Second Life. Yes, even the inappropriate things. You can make money having an avatar that knows strip tease and just have her do that at a club. Just invest some money in a sexy looking avatar and some animations for stripping and vallah! There you go. You can also be a waitress. Or a model. Or a geisha. Whatever you please! Your avatar can be the dream you! Theres also great resources. Harvard, Princeton, etc. have hubs on Second Life where you can download lectures and all sorts of other neat stuff. There are museums, artworks, fashion designers who work on Second Life. People who like to write poetry can read it aloud at poetry readings in beautiful Second Life locations. It's a whole different world to explore, and if you have a high resolution, pretty fast processing speed and whatnot the visuals are just gorgeous. And no, Second Life is not my first life, I haven't even been on it in months. But it is an experience.

So basically once I was done with winter term my professor liked the house I came up with and said she wants to try and see if Oberlin will take it to be their own location in Second Life. I think that would be pretty awesome. Its a work in progress, but its pretty neat.

After that I basically started second semester, and I already told you all about that. Oh, theres also a huge music scene in Second Life. Musicians can make a lot of extra money performing there. This makes my love for Second Life well up inside me again. What a wonderful tool for communicating across states, countries, the world.