It makes me laugh, like when some one looks you straight in the eyes and says "banana." Apparently a gherkin a small, prickly cucumber that you pickle. There's also something called a "sea gherkin" which I'm taking the liberty of assuming is the same thing as a "sea cucumber" and that probably lives in a reef under water, and would be a prime character some day for an appearance in Spongebob or something, wearing a funny hat and making lewd innuendo jokes about being shaped like a cucumber. Anyway, that aside. . .

I've been scheduled for two more supervisor shifts of doooOOOooom at work; one today and one next week. I have a sneaking, paranoid suspicion that they're trying to secretly train me for Customer Service full-time and thus I must work extra hard to thwart them and prove that I should not be in CS. *Starts chasing customers around the store and beating them with empty water bottles that they try to return* I will exchange words with Carolina today and pray that she doesn't smite me with her eye lasers.

I went and saw The Princess Bride last night with Chelle, Amanda, and Lance. It wasn't anything dazzling, but it was pretty much what I expected from a high school theatre production, so with that in mind it was up to par. Weasley broke his broom-handle sword in half during his first duel, the castle banner was hung upside-down, and the Rodent of Unusual Size was a lion. . .but they had all the good lines and the "r" retarded priest, so I enjoyed myself.

On Monday morning I nearly put my plastic Jesus through the window in boiling rage. I was writing for the first time in months with a new idea that plowed me over and I trying to get it all down in words, and I was so excited, and I was saving and saving and saving after paragraph. And then I saved a last time, and then I quit AppleWorks, and when I opened it up again -- ALL GONE!!! Every fucking word except for the first line, THE WHOLE FUCKING PAGE AND A HALF. . .DISAPPEARED! DELETED! A page and a half is a big deal for me, because it takes me so freaking long to write anything, and when I have good ideas I have to get them down the moment I think of them or else I completely forget about them in two seconds. We have no idea what the hell happened, because I did everything right, I SAVED IT. I SAVED IT OVER AND OVER AND IT WAS DELETED! I don't remember the last time I've been that upset. I started crying, I was so angry -- and my dad doesn't understand and he's asking why I'm so upset and that's making me angrier. AAAARRRRGGGGGRRRRRHHHHHAAAAAHHHHH! So I spent fifteen minutes moping before I finally went back to computer and tried typing out what I'd lost all over again, and I know I'm missing stuff from it because I can't remember it. That pisses me off so freaking much. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck FUCK. Moving on. . .

Samurai Champloo episode 22 -- what the hell was that? @_o Zombies and space meteors and body-generating wasabi. . . Out of all the crack induced episodes to come out of this series, this was like KING OF CRACK. I'm sure one or more the Champloo writers on staff overdosed and died working on this episode. Craaaaaazy~ And despite what Lance says, I stand firm that Naruto 124 remains awesome and only more awesome-a-nized the drunk Rock Lee fight in every way. The animation was kicked up a nice notch too. And Gaara's back again to fuck Kimmi up and save everyone's ass. Shwa ha ha ha ha~

The cover art for Harry Potter book 6 is out. The adult version has a picture of a ratty, time worn copy of "Advanced Potions Making," which happies me, because potions = Snape = Snape angst = Brenna love. (If they trick me and end up killing Severus off, I'm going after J.K. Rowling and beating her with a shovel.)

Don't get me wrong, I mean there's no denying it, if you're a fanfiction writer or avid reader, it's the place to go (if you have the patience to wade through the ankle deep pile of bad writing and sewage that comes with it of course to get to the actual good ones, that is.) But seriously, this whole "buckling down" thing FF.net is going all Nazi with is starting to seriously try my patience. Things were fine when I first registered -- now I upload something new a year later and they've established so many new rules and restrictions on every single aspect that it's sick.

The whole no more NC-17 thing last year -- fine. Whatever. There's AdultFanFiction.net for that, and it's dandy. But the thing that annoys me is the fact that while they removed the NC-17 stuff but still graciously allowed R ratings, showing that they're fine supporting those, but at the same time they're so freaking prejudiced against them! Story searches are automatically listed in only the G - PG13 categories, you have to actually select "all ratings" to include the R ones in the list and anyone not tech savvy isn't even going to realize that, so that's a huge percentage of readership knocked down for you already. And now they have the new popular C2 groups ("like a favorite stories list on steroids",) but R ratings aren't allowed to even be linked to in them. So there's another drop in readership, because all the ways that authors are able to use FF.net to get their work spread around are locked out to any of the more adult-themed and insome cases with stuff I've read, extreamly amazing stories! I don't GET IT. The whole rating fiasco aside, the rules with story formatting and uploading has gotten to the point of being just rediculous -- no author's notes; no author's contact email; no characters like * @ < or > which ninety percent of authors including me use in story formatting and paragraph seperation, you can't even use tags like < pre > for extra line breaks -- two line breaks, that's all they allow now, and sometimes they even remove THOSE; no uploading "two-liners" (which I've found can be incredibly interesting short scribbles); no uploading anthing "scrypt-style" or "chat client-style" (which even though I don't personally read, doesn't mean they should be forced off); you can't even change font size. WHAT THE FUCK? It just makes me so angry the way they're restricting the concept of free creativity in writing.

< End wrath >

Okay, so that needed to be expressed and now it's done. I'm in class again this morning, again doing nothing, because the zip disc I brought with stuff to work on from home doesn't bloody work with the drives here, and they won't allow students to use FTP, so I have to wait until noon until Chelle comes for her class and drops off my stuff on a different disk. *Disgruntled* Before all the sitting around I've done in the past two days in this class, I don't remember the last time I've spent so much time reading fanfiction. (Hense sparkage of sudden rage above.)

Anyway, break time. I actually brought healthy food today. HUZZUH! *Bathes cucumbers in awesome, cleansing, holy light*

I'm posting for no other particular reason than killing time before I stop procrastinating and force myself to resume work on my writing. My brain has been setting up large, intimidating road blocks piled with bricks and cement in my head lately. Creative output is not high right now. Everyone says that you should keep writing even if what's coming out sucks though, and worry about fixing it later. Blah.

Whoop whoop, got our biannual review at work on Sunday they gave me another fifty cent raise. Up to the big $10.00 dollar now, that's double digits and THAT'S exciting. I've been avoiding the subject like a plague of locuts among coworkers though because apparently the tiny boss man was extra stingy and gave very few people raises this time around, and the last thing I need is for angry mobs of cashiers to come down flaming my ass about why I got one and they didn't. BUGGER ALL TO YOU, SUCKERS. More money for my room, la la la.

Speaking of which, my dad is displaying less enthusiasm about bedroom paint then he properly should be, especially since this upcoming Sunday is IKEA day when I pick up my new furniture and it only makes sense to have the paint before then. *After breakfast* "Are we going to get paint for my bedroom?" "No," *Working on the computer* "How you feeling about that paint now?" "No," *Preparing lunch* "While we're up and about, how about some paint?" "No," *Yelling through the bathroom door* "I don't know about you, BUT I SURE COULD USE SOME PAINT." "NO," *Pastes a yellow sticky post-it note on his forehead* "PAAAAAINT?" "Go away. . ."

I just found out that my uncle is dating Brad Anderson's mom. That's bordering on the side of weird with a serving of awkward. He's a guy that I went to school with, not really on good or bad terms, but never hung out with at all. If this goes on, Brad could suddenly start showing up at Christmas tree decorating night and Boxing Day dinner. If my uncle married his mom, we'd be. . .cousins. . .once removed. . .or something. Weird.

I guess I should go back to my writing. . . *Shifty eyes*

No, wait! Quizzes will take up more time!

How to make a Beans

Ingredients: 1 part mercy 3 parts silliness 1 part energy

Method: Add to a cocktail shaker and mix vigorously. Add a little cocktail umbrella and a dash of sadness

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

That's it, I've run out of things to waste time with.

Haven't posted in a while, one third due to my internet being a whore over the past week and randomly melting down on my ass when ever it pleases; one third being because I'm lazy; and the last third because my eye is twitching right now and is driving me insane, and I actually can't remember what the real final reason was. So ignore that last one third of a fraction. I would try to spin a pun involving fractions and math at this point but I don't remember anything from Math30 Pure. I hereby appoint this task to Brock.

The new opening theme for FMA, "Rewrite", is awesome. It's like . . . FREEZE FRAME! Head bob-age. GROOVE. Yeeee~~~~aah.

We had an Alien and Predator -athon for Chris's birthday on Saturday. That's all three Alien movies -- because according to the angry mob that are my friends, "Resurrection" doesn't count -- and two Predator movies. Put them together and they ultimately combine to form the Brenna Doomsday Device decked out in scary monster costumes. I used to be a horror nut back in the day, but then the Gremlins movies ate my soul, and now I'm very much not. But I watched them anyway, because I'm stupid. Alien was all right, I felt good; after Predator I was still going strong; Aliens left me in not so fine shape; then Predator 2 punched me in the fucking face. By the time we were about to finally stick in the third Alien installment, I whipped the blanket off my head and firmly declared that enough was enough and that I was going home for fear that the final movie would send me into another Gremlins relapse where I refuse to sleep in a room alone or walk around my house without every single light on for a full week. So I drove home ALONE, in the DARK, swearing at myself for being so STUPID, then RAN into my house and stayed up watching two hours of Sailor Moon before I decided I could go to sleep.

I've been invited to the Alien vs. Predator movie. Call me crazy, but I don't think I'm going to go.

In other news, I'm very sad that the fansubbing group, Spoon, seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet without little as a word and have forced me to finally pick up where they left off and begin watching SS and Sonchou fansubs of Full Metal Alchemist. I don't like having to switch subs mid-series, and Sonchou quality is not Spoon quality. Emphasis on the sadness.

And god damnit, they killed off Kimbley. I cried, I raged, I was very close to writing angry letters. At this time, I wish to take a moment to fondly remember Kimbley, in all of his gleeful bomb crazy glory. Even so close to death he looks so happy. ♥ That aside, this is really becoming an alarming trend in FMA; first Hughes, then Greed, now Kimbley. . . Eventually they're going to continue smoking off characters until they kill off every single living person on the face of the Earth except for Ed, Al, and Roy; and Ed and Roy are just going to stand there glowering at each other and Ed going to be like, "I hate you," and Roy will be like, "I hate you," and Al's going to have no choice but to just sit there on a little dune of sand brooding about how he got stuck with the two most gloomy, angry, and bitter people on the planet. He'll probably wish somebody had killed him off too.

Yay, Animethon was this weekend! Whoop it up now, y'all. Word. *Hand thing* Started off the festivities the night before with Lancedolf's birthday which was filled with Spiderman 2 and chocolate cakey times at my house. (Unlike it's predecessor, Spiderman 2 was cool. All they have to do is get rid of all the badly-acted sap exchanges between M-Jay and Peter and fill it in with more freaking Spiderman fighting Doc Oc on the top of a freaking bullet train and there's an all-star super hero movie there.)

We all camped out at my house Friday night, and Saturday morning dragged ourselves out of the house on four or five hours of sleep to make it to Grant MacEwan by nine so we could park ourselves at the front of the mile-long line for the vendor's room and wait for an hour until we were allowed in. AND MY KAKASHI PLUSHY WASN'T EVEN THERE. The one main reason I was so hyped to get in first this year and snatch myself one and they weren't even selling Naruto plushies this year. I wanted to cry. *Sits on the step pitifully waving her reserved twenty dollar bill from her back pocket* Guess I'll have to have him shipped to me in a little box from overseas. Saaa~ I missed out on the Full Metal Alchemist Edward pillow I saw too, damnit, I should have grabbed it when I saw it the first time. I did, however, buy two Kakashi key chains and a Gaara one, a handful of pins, and volumes two and three of Saiyuki.

Then Amanda, Jenny, and I all went to "Name That Tune" and the Amanda and me half of team three sat there very much useless and let the amazing thing that is the Lau sisters and their combined anime music trivia power keep us in the running. (We didn't win though. -__-;) I went to the Fanfiction panel which was disappointing because all it ended up being was a bunch of people trying to brag about and advertise their own stories and squabbling over insanely stupid topics. "I've written a stupider crossover than you have!" "Have not! I've written Evangelion and Harry Potter crossovers, stupid!" "I've done Gundum Wing, Inu Yasha, and Invader Zim!" "Ooh, dat's stupid!" "Stupid, ya, haw haw haw!" XP The Yaoi and Shounen-ai panel followed though, and that was obviously a whole lot of better. (Turns out Central Park Media is launching an affiliate company called BeBeautiful that will focus on licensing popular yaoi titles in America, which means there will be more English yaoi manga for me to waste my money away on. This may or may not turn out as a good thing. *Sweatdrop*)

Saturday night was wrapped up with the cosplay contest, which had some really awesome entries this year and almost makes me want to hop on the bandwagon next year as a sexy ANBU squad leader or something equally appealing that I won't look stupid in. You can't not look good as an ANBU. It's not freaking possible.

Saturday we all went back and slept at Amanda's, then got up and went straight back to Animethon the next morning. I didn't stay as long on Sunday though -- enough time to watch the two angsty-est episodes of FMA; sit through the first two episodes of Saiyuki which was enough time for me to firmly decide that the anime sucks compared to the manga and isn't worth my time; popped in for one episode of Witch Hunter Robin and two episodes of Get Backers; then one more quick browse through the vendors where I got to declare my bragging rights and general awesomeness over Chris about being right regarding Wolf's Rain already being out for sale, MUH HA HA HA HA!!! -- and then I went home. It was a good weekend though. *^^*

I was browsing through NarutoFan's fanart archive and laughed my ass off when I saw this comic strip. Does this just make me seem sick and twisted? *Shifty eyes* LOOK, A PIGEON!!! In any case, copyright to bloodstainedhands.

And now more comics of a somewhat less incesty type nature but still as funny:

The Truth by clingwrap
X-Men Dream Issue #1, X-Men Dream Issue #2, and Why, Wolfwood? All copyright by A. Mauchline of the hilarious webcomic, Nice Hair.

Holy shit, it's past twelve already. I hope I don't work early tomorrow.

Wheee, exchanged presents with friends tonight -- well, Amanda didn't have mine there, and Jenny didn't have either mine or Coleen's because her sister stole the car which they were sitting in, and I didn't have Jenny's there because I can't buy it until Tuesday. . . Luckily, however, Coleen came very well prepared -- if not a tad late, but a "tad" late is actually quite punctual for dear Carl, so good on her -- and she had all of our presents ready and waiting. She gave me two Christmas ornaments -- one for our nice, old fashioned pretty tree upstairs, and one for our. . .*cough*. . .somewhat more tacky and what we like to think of "special" tree downstairs that includes ornaments such as the clay reindeer I made in elementary that looks like a large, ugly pile of cow shit with some green pipe-cleaner antlers. I'll have to search for a small photo of the two of us to put in the frame, so Coleen can hang on our tree all the merry Christmas season. She also got me the "tATu" Russian lesbian fun-filled CD which is sweet ass and now she can finally steal back her own CD that I've been hoarding away for months, and to top it all off, a three foot long box of Purdy's chocolate which is great because it's chocolate, and did I mention it's a three foot long box of chocolate? It blows my mind.

Ha ha ha, oh my mom, she saw the homemade magnets I made for Amanda and Lance's presents and she lectured me on how they weren't appropriate. Really, come on now, how are magnets that say things like "fuck up some shit", "lotsa' lesbians", "MANLOVE", and several different pairings of "Lance x Brock, Chris, Vance", et cetera not appropriate? I suppose I should be grateful she didn't ask about the one that said "Jesus is yaoi." There would have had way too many questions for me to find answers to.

Lately, my brain feels like. . .*strains*. . .something. . .not fun. . . *Twitch* I have a million and one different on-going projects in the works right now and it's as if my brain is driving on the 60 km/h road of my imagination and mental capacity, but I'm going 180 over the delegated speed limit -- the gas is running low, the tires are squealing, the paint is chipping, and my windshield is sandblasted and covered with the green guts of assorted tiny flying objects. I've been feeling mentally and creatively exhausted, which is not good because I still have so much to do and none of it is even half done.

First off, Coleen's blog layout is making me annoyed and irate. It's not doing the things I want it to do and the things that it is doing can't be done because Blogger won't let me code it the way that it needs to be coded. I think I've restarted the template layout from scratch five or six times. No bad cookie.
Estimated Progress: 28.999994% complete

Secondly, my "Big Scary Out-of-Control Escaflowne Project" is, obviously, not yet completed, despite my wishful thinking that I would have it done more than six months ago. In fact, it's so far from being done that when I look at it and compare the amount that I've actually completed to that which I haven't, which stretched so far into oblivion and the next ice age, it makes me want to break down and sob and kick many cardboard boxes around the basement. However, this is still my main project for the next while, and I'm determined to finish it and I will finish it. All I have to do is stop eating, stop sleeping, quit my job, kill off the rest of the human race, and lock myself in a little dark room with only my computer and information resources and live as a hermit until I'm thirty. *Twitch twitch SPASM twitch*
Estimated Progress: 20. . .ish. . .% complete

Then there's the one big series of Escaflowne fanart pieces that I'd still really love to complete, one for each main character. I'm done Dilandau and Folken -- drawn only, keep in mind, since I can't color worth beans -- and half of Van. That's two and a half out of. . .ten.
Estimated Progress: 25% complete

And of course my writing. . . Oh, my writing. . . How I miss it so. I went through several months of continually updating my place on FanFiction.net, and now I have nothing to update or anything new to post, which makes me sad because I'm not spending a lot of time writing right now, which is something I really love. I literally have six folders full of brainstorms, dialogue, scene snippits, and assorted one-shot ideas for fanfiction pieces, all Dilandau-centric. There's only about three or four of them that I'm really serious about writing currently at this time, but the problem is that I can't work on any of them until I finish one specific one first. They're not in a series or an on-going story, but in each of them I have to reference things from this one or else it won't make sense. It's like a prerequisite I need to set the stage and give the necessary background information I need in all the other pieces which follow it, which sucks, because it's not writing well at all and my brain is drying up like a shriveled prune, and all I want to do is start on the fun ones. Blah. And don't even get me started on the two or three non-Escaflowne ficlets I have ideas for. Oh Touya and Yuki from "Cardcaptor Sakura," I have such the short little scene for you two. . . *Teardrop*
Estimated Progress: 35% complete

This doesn't even include the three different anime music videos I'd love to work on so I can get back to using my wonderful Adobe Premiere. . . Or the dozens of miscellaneous website details I have to get back on -- revamping BEANS, and continuing to update SLAP SLAP SLAP.

*Drowns her frustration and eats another foot off chocolate from her box*