Things to read

First off:

Books of 2009, as of 27 December
1. Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil - Inga Muscio
2. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
3. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
4. The Zombie Survival Guide - Max Brooks
5. Neuromancer - William Gibson
6. The Opposite of Fate - Amy Tan
7. The Joy-Luck Club - Amy Tan
8. The Bonesetter's Daughter - Amy Tan
9. Takarazuka (Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan) - Jennifer Robertson
10. The Hundred Secret Senses - Amy Tan
11. The Kitchen God's Wife - Amy Tan
12. Cunt - Inga Muscio
13. Beyond Heaving Bosoms (The Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels) - Sarah Wendell, Candy Tan
14. Killing Rage - bell hooks
15. Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman
16. Polite Lies - Kyoko Mori
17. Looking for the Lost (Journeys Through a Vanishing Japan) - Alan Booth
18. Lost Japan - Alex Kerr
19. Geisha: A Life - Mineko Iwasaki
20. Women of the Pleasure Quarters - Lesley Downer
21. The Faded Sun Trilogy - C.J. Cherryh [it's an omnibus, so I'm counting it as one]
22. The Loved Dead - H.P. Lovecraft
23. Idoru - William Gibson
24. Looking for Jake - China Mieville [a volume of short fiction]
25. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
26. Dune - Frank Herbert
27. World War Z - Max Brooks

Now I'm on to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell by Susanna Clark. It's a long book, so I'll probably be at it for a week at least. It's sort of alternate history meets fantasy, which I love: 19th century England with magic, more or less. I've only just started, so I don't have an opinion yet, but I think it'll be a fun read. And, if you like zombies at all, read World War Z because it's awesome. It's written as an oral history of the zombie apocalypse - interviews with and first hand accounts from people who survived it (soldiers, politicians, normal people, etc.). Brilliant stuff.

Outside of the realm of books, but still related, I've fallen deeply, passionately in love with two web comics. I wasn't into web comics for a long time, to be perfectly honest, but recently I stumbled across a couple and started reading and am now completely engrossed and waiting for them to pick back up now that Christmas is past.

The first one is Trying Human. It's a sci-fi romance predominantly about a woman who gets abducted by aliens (who look sort of like stereotypical UFOs) and eventually falls in love with one of them. Then there are subplots, mostly about other attempts at inter-species romance. The title comes from this thing the second alien species in the comic (reptilian) have, the Trying Human circuit, which lets the alien wearing it take on the appearance of a human. So, if you like sci-fi, it updates every Monday and Thursday.

The second one is Beauty and the Beast. As I'm sure you've guessed by the title, it's a retelling of the fairy tale, with a somewhat unusual take on the story and great art (very distinctive and nothing like the Disney film). The Beauty character is a little too perfect, but considering the nature of the story, it's forgivable. This one updates 5 days a week.

Yes, it's Christmas break, which means it's time to catch up on my reading.

Almost Done

First of all: I will be back in Seattle December 20 (that's next Sunday, for the record). Actually, I might be back Saturday night, but I'm getting a ride from Alex like usual, so it depends on whether he wants to leave after his last final on Saturday, or wait till Sunday morning. I'll be around till mid-January (like, the 16th or 17th), so if you want to hang out (and why wouldn't you? I mean, seriously), we can definitely work that out.

I'm also getting my wisdom teeth extracted at some point, because one of them has been actually causing on and off pain since, oh, October, but awesomeness needs to go down around my first ever experience with dental surgery.

Actually, speaking of my wisdom teeth and pain, how lame is it that I don't have dental coverage outside of the state of Washington? I was so mad when I learned that a couple months ago. I am in pain (minor and not all the time, but still) and I can't deal with it until I leave Oregon for more than a couple of days.

Putting all that aside, it is cold in Salem. And I don't mean cold like 'maybe I should wear an extra sweater today,' I mean cold, like 'oh, wow, my arm just snapped off and shattered like an icicle on the floor.' We're reaching such blistering high temperatures as 28 degrees during the day and it's getting down to the low teens at night (it's 18 degrees right now). Salem is almost never this cold. The stream running through campus actually froze last night. To make matters worse, my apartment has 1920s windows with no insulation, so there is a constant draft. And, just to add insult to injury, it's really dry, so I'm getting little annoying nosebleeds about 5 times a day and there's not even any snow to make up for the suffering.

So:

Dear Oregon Weather Gods,

If you're going to subject me to painful cold, the least you could do is throw in some snow to make me feel better. This whole dry cold thing? Yeah, I don't approve.

No love,
Me

And, just to close up another of my habitual all-over-the-place blog entries, tomorrow and Friday are Christmas in Hudson Hall (the big Christmas program the choir department does every year - readings and carols and... stuff), classes end on Friday, my only finals are next Thursday and Friday, which means I have plenty of study time should I need it, Annie and I are hosting a Christmas party on Saturday, and I am all but counting the hours until this term ends. So burned out. So ready for Christmas and relaxing for a few weeks.

Actually, I'm ready for it to be May. Graduation is looking pretty good right now.

Sci-Fi Nerd Post Ahead

Okay, so it's no secret that I love science-fiction. The novel I'm still writing for NaNoWriMo¹ is sci-fi, my favourite TV show of all time is Babylon 5, my favourite novel is Dune, and I've watched at least some of every incarnation of Star Trek (my favourites are The Original Series and Deep Space Nine). It's probably safe to say, in fact, that sci-fi is my favourite genre. So, I want to take a moment to talk about Star Trek. Not the new movie, which I can enjoy as long as I pretend it has nothing to do with any other Star Trek and overlook the plot holes big enough to drive the Enterprise through, because I've already discussed my issues with it and more or less moved on. No, I want to talk about the fact that, in all these years, they still haven't had queer people and the few times they've come close, they've managed to cop-out at the last minute.

DS9 is an easy example of where they totally could have gone there... and didn't. You see, right at the very beginning of Season 1 the character Garak is introduced. He comes up to Doctor Bashir, introduces himself and proceeds to hit on him in a slightly sketchy way for the duration of their short conversation. It's totally there. In fact, it was supposed to be. Andrew Robinson, the actor who played Garak, has said so. However, the show's producers saw that first meeting and told him he was playing the character too gay and needed to knock it off. The hitting on Bashir thing doesn't totally go away, and Garak gets all the best lines, but it does lighten up and I'm pretty sure the fact that Garak and Bashir have fewer conversations as the show progresses is due largely to the fact that there was a lot of chemistry that could be easily interpreted as flirting. Then, because Andrew Robinson is awesome, he wrote a Garak novel (there are a lot of Star Trek novelisations, if you live under a rock without used bookstores and hadn't noticed) that says straight up that Garak is bisexual. Lovely man, Andrew Robinson.

They also almost went in the queer-friendly direction in Enterprise. Originally, one of the officers (I don't remember which one, I'm not a huge fan of this series) was supposed to be gay and there were going to be little nods to it like references to a past relationship and whatnot. It wasn't going to be a focus, or an issue within the show, just a positive inclusion of a queer character. Then they decided not to, gave him an ex-wife or something like that, and ditched the whole thing. And that annoys me so much. Just... fail. So much fail. Babylon 5 went there back in the mid-90s, with a lesbian sub-plot for part of the series, because JMS is bad ass and does things like that (the Pope is also a woman), but out of all the Star Trek series and films and novels (except Andrew Robinson's), no one will include a visible queer character anywhere.

I still love DS9 and TOS, and Voyager and TNG are also awesome (Enterprise is so-so), but it bothers me that they could pretty easily take that one step and just won't do it. I hold out hope, though, that one day they will.

Related, but on a different note, if I look half as fierce as Nichelle Nichols when I'm in my 70s, I'll be ecstatic. And, if you watch TOS, you'll notice that Uhura's legs are in the background of so many shots on the bridge. I'm pretty sure they framed shots specifically so her legs would be visible, even when she has nothing to do with the interaction in the foreground. I'm serious.

I'll just go back to rewatching B5 (albeit slightly out of order, because I wanted to watch The Corps is Mother, The Corps is Father and that's from season 5) and keep my fingers crossed that Star Trek will get with it.

But first, I need to go turn in my application to graduate. That'd be a smart thing to do.

---

¹ National Novel Writing Month. I wrote 50,204 words between November 1 and 29, winning the challenge with one day to spare, but the novel is still only 2/3 of the way through. I'll get there eventually.

Almost registration time

As in, I can register for my final semester of classes tomorrow at 9:30PM. I met with the head of the department the other day (because I no longer have an adviser - long story) to discuss my classes and she ended up talking me into taking a full course load. I don't have to - I need exactly one class to graduate - but she told me that I shouldn't let myself graduate without taking a class with Ricardo de Mambro Santos, so I'm going to take one of his art history classes.

Anyway, this is the class breakdown for my last semester:

.Humanities 497: Paradise Lost Seminar
.English 456: Apocalyptic Literature
.Politics 374: Asia and the International System
.Art History 263: Baroque and Neoclassical

Paradise Lost is the equivalent of my thesis. Since I decided not to write an independent thesis (English majors here don't have to), I'm taking the humanities seminar instead. It's taught by Hobgood, one of my favourites, and I'm really looking forward to it. Actually, I'm really looking forward to all of them - Apocalyptic lit sounds amazing, I like international politics and the professor teaching that course, and de Mambro Santos is apparently one of the awesomest professors on campus. I'll also continue Voce, of course, which will mean I'll have been in a Willamette choir every semester I've been on campus. I just hope Christine comes back. I miss her.

And... yeah, a little less than six months till graduation. Craziness. My JET application was mailed off on Friday, I've decided to apply for an internship at the Carnegie Endowment in DC because it would be very cool (not getting my hopes up, but it can't hurt to apply, right?), and I've basically settled into a general plan of applying for whatever catches my interest because the worst that can happen is they say no.

Oh, and I'm supposed to take the GRE sometime this year, to get it out of the way. I'm excited about that, let me tell you.

I'm just glad this semester's almost over, really. I'm tired of math, tired of biology labs, and Victorian Poetry is not my favourite class ever. I am more than ready for my last semester, filled with classes I actually want to take. But it's almost Thanksgiving, which means home with my family and my dog, and then very soon after that it's Christmas. I've made it this far, I can definitely handle the last three and a half weeks.

Long time no post

October has been a crazy ass month. I'm so happy it's almost over, you don't even know.

To recap, at the beginning of the month Yasu died and the university held a memorial service, which I attended. Then I got sick. In fact, I started getting sick the day of the memorial service and it just kept getting worse. Monday, I was told that I had a virus and should stay home for a couple of days. It started getting better on Tuesday, then got massively worse on Wednesday, so I dragged myself back out to see the nurse. Turns out it's flu. In fact, turns out it's swine flu. So I spent the rest of the weak utterly miserable and sicker than I've been in years. It sucked and I missed a full week of class and had ridiculous catch up to do.

But I survived, got an A on my second math exam (no idea how, considering I only studied for an hour and a half before giving up, but I'm not complaining), wrote a crap paper about Browning's "Caliban upon Setebos" (but apparently everyone sucked, because the professor is making all of us come in separately for private meetings about the sort of analysis he's looking for - at least I have a reason my paper was terrible), and my two biology quizzes weren't too bad.

Unfortunately, Voce, which should be a nice constant because I love choir, is also problematic right now because Christine had to take an emergency leave of absence for the rest of the semester. Something happened to her son, involving brain damage, so she's taking time off to help take care of him. We're all really worried about her, and this is all totally understandable, but it resulted in us being handed over to Dr. Long, the head of the choral department and conductor of Chamber Choir. I have some issues with DL, and have for quite some time, mostly related to the condescending way he talks to Voce, like we're little kids who shock him every time we perform well. It really gets on my nerves. But he's a very good conductor and the only other concert this term is Christmas in Hudson Hall, which is his big program, so it was going pretty well. In fact, after two weeks I'd made peace with the fact that we were going to be working with him and, while I seriously miss Christine, it was cool.

Then the university powers that be decided that DL can't have that additional 5 hours a week. So, they brought in an outside conductor to work with us Mondays and Wednesdays, with DL keeping our Friday rehearsal. It's... interesting. And so far from ideal it's ridiculous.

I'm just praying Christine's son makes a good recovery and she's able to come back. If we're stuck with a situation like this next semester, I'll cry.

In happier news, I've figured out what I'm doing for Halloween - there's a group of people going up to northern Portland to this sort of Halloween theme park, with all ages trick-or-treating and rides and haunted houses and other awesome things. And I'm going as Lucheni, from Elisabeth. It's an easy costume and my love for Takarazuka is well-established, so it's perfect.

In case you're not sure on character names, Lucheni is the one in the black and white striped shirt:



I would totally go as Der Tod, except that costume would be crazy difficult to put together. Lucheni is doable.

Oh, also? The fact that everyone who's watched my Elisabeth DVD thinks Mizu is ridiculously hot both amuses me and makes me happy. It's like proof that it's not just me.

It's been a long week

It started off pretty normal, stress and quizzes and the upcoming choir concert for parents and family weekend, but got really bad really fast when, on Wednesday at about a quarter to five, an email went out to the campus that a TIUA student, Yasuyuki Sampei, died that morning. Yasu was my friend, even though I hadn't seen him much since last semester, and it managed to get just that much worse when the report from the medical examiner came back and confirmed that he'd killed himself.

So now, rather than just have a chill weekend with my mum and sister, I'm also going to a memorial service on Sunday. Yasu's parents, who TIUA brought from Japan, gave the university permission to have a service more or less as we see fit. I'm grateful for that, as are a lot of us, because they didn't have to that, but it's very kind. It's going to be open-casket, which will be difficult, but good in a way, too. We need the closure. I personally am not planning to speak, but two of my friends are - Alex as a Willamette student, and Atsushi as a TIUA - and it's finally set in that, yes, this really happened. At the meeting at TIUA today, which a few of us WU students went to because we're part of this, too, a lot of people, including the dean of students, broke down, and that was what really drove it home. When I went up to check in with Lorenzo, the TIUA coordinator, I finally started properly crying, too, rather than tearing up and stopping myself, and he and I hugged for about two solid minutes. It helped more than I thought it would.

And that's where things stand. The loud, outgoing, outrageously funny guy who came with us to Genderfunk dressed in Annie's lolita skirt and a blonde wig, who made up a long, nonsensical version of happy birthday for me last year (complete with air microphone), who would shout my name from a block away and wave like a lunatic just so he could say hi, who carried a camera everywhere and took awesome pictures, is gone.

I'm glad I knew him, even if things ended like this. He was a really great guy.