Attack of the Killer Grems.

My friends, Darren and Jenna, really love each other. In fact, they married each other. Sometimes I wonder, however, about all of the aggression. Like at my birthday party in March, and in public, no less! (Okay, so it was the Taco Stand, and yes, they've probably seen weirder things).

Darren makes the first strike, moving in for the rear choke attack!




What the...?! I'm completely dazed and confused at this random, senseless attack!



Steve and Anita find the whole thing amusing, not realizing the gravity of the situation. They're just here for the booze anyway.



Unlike Grover, who eats when he is anxious. He calms himself with a tortilla chip, and tries to pretend nothing is happening.



I decide that Grover has the right idea, and cheer myself up with a delicious Cadbury Egg.™ Mmmm...mmmm.........



Brooke wishes she was in on the action, and flexes her phalanges in anticipation. If only she had a throat to wrap those fingers around.



But Jenna comes back with a knockout for the win! Jenna wins! Jenna wins!



This, my dear readers, just shows to go you, that I have really awesome friends that know how to throw a surprise birthday party! Sorry for the long delay in getting these pics out there, but hope you enjoyed the show.

Happy MONDAY!! I'm a whole day early!

"Brevity is the soul of wit..."

(And, if you'll recall, that was part of the humor of Polonius's characterization, for he was hardly ever concise in speech)

Well, my gentle readers, I have neglected you for quite long enough.
So, since it's only 10am and I have had NO COFFEE, this post will undoubtedly be malapropos, inchoate, and laconic. And plus I wanted to use those groovy words.

I started to write a really personal post today, but decided against it. This is a public forum, and the eerie awareness of friends and strangers sort of peering over my shoulder really gives me pause sometimes. Unless I'm ranting, of course. But an intimate discussion of my deep emotional concerns sometimes seems a little - - - self-indulgent, actually. I know most of you come here because you think I'm so awesome and everything, but I don't imagine you need to read all that junx (the eJ and the Anita will certainly both note the attempt at linguistic humor as a deflection from the possible emotional exposition). Ahem.

I will say this, however: an email that the j to the enna sent me last week is still rolling around in my head, in that way that only things that are so-true-they-sting-a-little do. Girl knows her stuff, and her timing is astonishing. The subject line of the message was: "When God pounds us repeatedly over the head," and in it, she quoted a friend-of-a-friend's blog comment. Bit of a long chain of communication, but that doesn't make the comment any less poignant, or any less startlingly apt:

"if we are beginning to learn that God is strong -
prepare to feel weak, and if we are learning that God
fills our needs - prepare to be keenly aware of your
neediness"

So...finding a church and a small group and fellowship and support has given me strength and new eyes to see the world - or, at least, has polished up the old ones - but it sure hasn't made things easier. But at least I know where I have to go to find rest, and where I can, and should, lay my burdens.

On an entirely different note (I think maybe...C#...) a friend of mine, Dave Marck, of the inimitable duo, Shelley and Dave, wrote this in the local "independent, student-run" newspaper. One can only imagine the level of ignorance and bad writing typical of this paper, and you Athens locals can do more than imagine: you've probably been subjected to the agonies of those editorial/opinion/ill-informed articles. Dave, however, is a former editor and a darn good writer, and he wrote the linked article in response to an opinion piece by a philosophy major here at UGA. A philosophy major, writing about the American Soldiers and their bad behavior in Iraq, blaming them, rather than the government. I'll let you read the articles and the responses without my own opinion (yet!), but I will say this: I agree that the philosophy brat is a pompous a**. And you all know how I react to pomposity.

That's all for today, boys and girls. I'll have plenty more to say tomorrow. And what is it with me and Tuesdays, anyway?

Mmmmm...coookies...

You Are a Smiley Face Cookie

You're happy go lucky. So happy, in fact, it's a little past the point of normal sanity. You usually make those around you smile ... when you're not creeping them out!

What Kind of Cookie Are You?

When knowing is half the battle.

Okay, so I don't really have that much to do as I sit around the Gainesville State College (Oconee campus) Library, waiting for the possibility of a student who needs writing help. I guess one might argue that the potential, the waiting itself, is a kind of exciting suspense...but I think that that one would really need to get a life, and maybe go see a scary movie. (But take me, 'cause I want to see this).

I have officially declared that this week is "Get Papers Ready for Possible Publication Week." A newly created holiday, though not as cool as this one. Which means that I spend about an hour every day looking over my previous writing and editing it a bit, another 1/2 hour researching potential journals, and probably about 15 minutes debating my worth as a scholar at all. Even in the field of Science Fiction, which I can now claim as "my field," since I officially have an M.A. with a thesis on that subject, and that makes me "one-of-the-gang," I feel like a kindergardener who somehow wandered into the reference section at Congressional Library. Look at all the pretty books! Oooooh...words...! And they even have Where the Wild Things Are! . . . which I suppose is in the reference section for some doctoral candidate who's writing a dissertation on... Songs of Innocence: the subjectivity of story in children's narrative. Or something.

Anyway, it's like that old commercial on NBC, with all of the movie-stars and rock-idols making obvious statements about how to live your life: "The More You Know." The only thing is, those sage-like celebrities never finished the dratted sentence. It should be: "The More You Know, The More You Realize the Indescribable Vastness of the Previous Research and Thought in Your Field and Thus Your Own Pathetic Peon-like Quantities of Knowledge in Said Field." Or, in layman's terms (for the general populace - this is Public Access, after all) "The More You Realize You Know Nothing At All." And, for the harsher of tongue and the generally flippant, "The More You Realize You Suck Big Time."

I have a plan, however. Today, even though I was seriously distracted by my older papers and their possibilities, I will restrict myself to only the main one, The Big One, as it were, and its potentialities. (Ya like that word, dontcha?). The Big One, the shattered remains of my thesis-become-presentation-become-publication, "The Grand Inquisitor: Seeking the Sublime in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space." I will finish it this week. You'll recall that this week is officially "Get Papers Ready for Possible Publication Week." Well, I will rephrase. From henceforth, this week shall be called, "Get One Paper Ready for Possible Publication Week." Less, pressure, you see.

I also want to add, before I head out, how proud I am of the Ej! She is mostly finished with her thesis, and she's still working as hard as ever to make it the best thing since sliced bread, instead of just a pretty good thing called bread. So anyway, she's pretty darn awesome. Go comment on her awesomeness at her blog. For you are finished here. This is the end. I'm going now. To work on stuff. Well?! Get outta here!

Oh, wait: Be sure to have a marvelous 3rd-day-of-the-week! (or second-day, if you're one of those crazy Latins or Europeans. Weirdos.).

Bueller...? Bueller...?

Okay. So, I'm here. Or there. Or somewhere.

People have been requesting my current schedule, so that they can find me. Why they'd want that, I have no idea. And who are "they," anyway...

But here it is:

Monday thru Thursday:

8am-12pm - - tutoring at GSC
12pm-5:30pm - - grading at TSARS
6pm-8:30pm - - martial arts (M & W only)
6pm-7pm - - other workouts (T & Th only)
9pm-11pm - - LOST and then Ghost Hunters (W only)

Friday:

8am-5:30pm - - grading at TSARS
6pm-7pm - - working out

Saturday:

Whatever and Wherever the heck I want.

Sunday:

10:30-12:00 - - Redeemer
2pm-6pm - - tutoring at GSC

This will change, of course, in May. And again in June, and once more in July. But it's a start. Hopefully (cross your fingers and pray!) after July, my schedule will be set for at least a year. We hope hope hope.

Okay, I'll write more later. Joyeux mardi! ¡Feliz martes!

¡Hasta la vista!

WARNING! Super-Geeky Post. Normal friends beware.

My dear readers, you may remember my "birthday wish" post that I put up last week, as I struggled to find silliness and happiness in the midst of my 27-year-old-to-be gloom. I cheered myself with goofy links to farfetched wishes for gifts and to random pages that made me laugh. Turns out that someone took me at least partially seriously...

My little brother just moved to Austin, Texas, apparently the live-music capital of the world. I'm thinking it's not much more than Athens, GA with cowboy boots and prairie dogs, but Matthew is getting to love it (I think).

Anyway, the one thing that he and I have always had in common is an interest in video games: console, PC, and otherwise. Let me tell you, he was a bit disappointed that I bought a Mac laptop, since game programmers hardly ever make games for that platform. But I have WoW to keep me content, and that's all I need.

As time has gone by, our consoles have changed, as have our interests. I was formerly a strict Super Mario Brothers (esp. #3), Castlevania, and anything with fast cars and the option for manual shifting. Matt and Dave, my older brother, got into PC first-person shooters, like Half-Life and Counterstrike, and while I enjoyed the heck out of the storyline Half-Life, as well as Duke Nukem - really hilarious - the Doom series didn't appeal to me at all. I would say that it was the violence and gore, and perhaps I'd be somewhat correct, but really it was the stress and tension that arises when playing against others, usually 12-14-year-old angsty brats that like to snipe - and whine when nobody listens to their rants - that turned me off of most FPS. In college, though, I remember Matt and I playing Diablo on PS-1, for 8 hours straight one weekend that he came to visit me at JMU. Crazy fun, that game. With two players, it's always a battle to see who leads the way to the next engagement, and with Matthew and I, you know that's a good time.

Matt and I found common ground again in H.S. with a series on PlayStation that was so graphic, my mother banned it after Matt had already purchased it. He took it back to the store... only to buy it again several months later, when we got televisions in our own rooms and he could be sneaky about it. I know he re-bought it because I had fallen in love with it.

The game was Resident Evil, by Capcom. Ooooooh it was good. Replete with spooky sounds, slasher-flick camera angles, make-you-jump scare sequences, and crafty little puzzles to solve. It was like Castlevania on steroids. And with guns. RE-1 was the first RPG console game I'd completely beaten since Castlevania, back in the day. I mean, of course I'd beaten MegaMan and all of those fun Nintendo Games, as well as Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis, but this! This was something to accomplish. Those of you who've played - remember listening down a long hallway, with the camera view at an angle that rendered it impossible to see ahead, waiting to hear the sticky-stomp footsteps of a wandering zombie? What about the time you jumped - and you know you did - when those dogs first crashed through the line of windows?

It wasn't until RE-1 that I realized that the kinds of gaming that I prefer is the *gasp* RPG. You'll notice that, even now, I have a hard time expanding that acronym to Role-Playing-Game. RPG is a nice little euphemism for those of us just on the fringes of absolute geekdom. Or, those of us who like to believe we're on the fringes. Heh. I loved the idea of solving puzzles and advancing an interesting storyline, as well as battling the bad guys that were obvious bad guys, as opposed to the FPS that encouraged me to shoot other human beings on the opposing team. I guess one might argue that RE-1 isn't really an RPG, since it doesn't involve chance (dice-rolling, or saves, in RPG terms), or experience points, but you can alternatively argue that the increasing weapons capabilities and storage capacity is a form of character-leveling. At least I think so, and I'm the one writing the post. But for the sticklers, RE is technically a "Survival Horror" game. Whatever that means.

Anyway, after beating RE-1 (twice), I moved on to RE-2. I didn't find it as compelling as the first one, all though there were definitely more zombies. There was something about the puzzles being too easy and almost perfunctory that I found kind of bland. I didn't play Resident Evil just to shoot up some zombies, after all.

RE-3 rediscovered its creepy self, with new characters and monsters and puzzles and goriness. I won't give away any of the secrets, but I will say that players get fun prizes for beating this one.

Now, I could only play 2 and 3 because my awesome little brother "lent" me his PS-1 while I was at JMU, because he'd gotten a Nintendo 64, and because he was far more invested in EverQuest on his PC than in his console systems. When I moved to GA, the PS came with me...and, um... I finally returned Matt's Final Fantasy VII to him this past Christmas. Sorry, man. I didn't even play FF.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for my grad school career, RE-Code Veronica and RE-4 were released only for the PlayStation 2, which I did not have and had no intention of getting. Money was tight, and so was time. I happily played EQ for a while, until the game visuals outstripped my PC processor capacity. I didn't play much of anything until EQ-II, and that was only at home with the bros. Blizzard, brilliant company that they are, decided to release World of Warcraft as a dual-platform game, which means that we poor, oft-overlooked Mac gamers got in on the goods right at the beginning.

But I still missed my Resident Evil.

So, my brother continued his outstandingness this year, and actually sent me a PlayStation 2 for my birthday, along with a still-in-the-plastic copy of RE-4. Wow. WOW. Of course, it's wonderful for me in a selfish, time-consuming, geek-chick kind of way. But the best part is that for me, RE brings up the connection I have to my little brother. Yeah, I know, it's dorky. But it's important to me. I don't know, maybe he didn't even think of any of this when he bought it and had it sent; but it's still an incredibly thoughtful gesture to remember my favorite game of ALL TIME and send me the components I need to play it at the next level. I'm a lucky girl to have a brother like that.

I'll admit, I played for 5 or 10 minutes last night, just to see. It's beautiful. And, of course, horrific. I promise I'll get my work done before I get a memory card and start really playing...but when I do, you may just have to leave a message, 'cause I'll be busy for a few days.

Bro, you rock my face off. Even if you are a psuedo-commie-robot-space-cadet.

Reviews

If you know me, you know how I feel about books. It's no secret, really: I have an addiction to getting lost in a good story.

So, then, I have decided to do my best to maintain an updated and ongoing list of reviews of my reading material. I have my current reading in a list in the sidebar, and any books that are linked have reviews attached at my other blog, ktg-words.

I'll do what I can to keep up with it, and if you have book recommendations, please send 'em my way!