Flaming Szechuan Pickle

Alex goes back to THE FUTURE!...three months late.

2010-03-12T05:23:15Z

Hi internet! Happy 2010 to you!

So. Been a while since I updated this puppy. (I know. I suck at LJing on time. I know.) I just realized I never did this year's resolutions. Time to fix that, I think.

Strikeouts mean completion, italics mean a resolution is in progress. Most qualitative resolutions are considered "in progress". Many of these are re-used from last year because I am lazy and should be working on my IR paper right now. Hur.

Get a job. Because I need one.
Gain some conversational skills.
Dress more like a girl.
Take better care of my body - my skin (get rid of my face-ne...and rest-of-me-ne), my slight chub factor (do more DDR, walking, etc.), and eat better overall.
Go abroad. (Whether for a week or a couple of months. I need to be on a plane.)
Blog more - do more posts for Daily Dose, especially.
Purchase another resin. (This one is a bit selfish...but I'm allowed to be selfish every once in a blue.)
Be a nicer person overall - less overhanded snark, more genuine caring.
Be wittier.
Improve my creative talents - sewing, drawing, writing, singing.
Beat NaNoWriMo for the fifth year in a row.
ScriptFrenzy! Defeat it!
Work on comic projects - maybe even start a webcomic.
Update LJ more often! Loser.
Beat some video games, Manhunt 2 among them.
Write more! Especially Butterfly Effect, WW fanfiction, and FAIL. Also, actually start Wilderness of Mirrors - I've had chapter one half-baked for about TWO YEARS, Jesus.
Be more active on TLV. Finally face up to the fact that you have to drop just about everyone but Exile on Damned. Let it go, jerk.
Don't fuck up your relationship.
Be more confident in myself. I'm smart, talented, and apparently pretty. It's time I lived up to the potential people see in me.
Visit more DC sights and government buildings.
Wacky misadventures: Has them.

See, that wasn't so bad.

I only seem to post from home, because idk, I suck at posting at school or something. Anyway. Spring Break is almost over - shed a tear - and I have only had one thing that could conceivably be called a wacky misadventure yet. I leave on Sunday. Obviously this must be remedied. Looks like no briefing this break, either. Ah well.

Meredyth and I went to go cover a pro-health reform protest on Tuesday, but by the time we got to the site of the protest, the Ritz-Carlton, it was over. So we decided to walk to Chinatown from Foggy Bottom, and then to the Capitol. Why? Why not? In the grand tradition, let me present you with the route map, notable because I walked four miles on my protesting ankle (which may or may not be connected to my stupidfit last November when I slipped and banged my leg up. Needs x-rays.)

I've also bowed out of ROTC, at least for the semester...not sure if I'm going back. It's not really my thing, you know? I thought it was, but it definitely was not. I kind of miss the workouts, though.

Ain't gonna say much about the Oscars but that District 9 got screwed but good. I saw The Departed, finally, and holy shit is it awesome. I've seen it twice this year - ditto Shutter Island. I blame Leonardo DiCaprio or Martin Scorsese for that. No. Both. Must not app Colin Sullivan on TLV! Or maybe I must. Who knows. But I cannot monopolize the Matt Damon characters any more than I already have. Maybe he'll become my signature PB. ~~And Costigan can greet them all with a punch to the jaw.~~

Ramble ramble ramble. Hooray. Now I'm done procrastinating and will try to get shit done on this paper. Because seriously, Alex. Seriously.

noisemaker

2010-01-01T02:05:30Z

Strikeouts mean completion, italics mean a resolution is in progress. Most qualitative resolutions are considered "in progress".

Get into college. (Ideally, get into Hopkins or Swarthmore.) William & Mary, ftmfw!
~~Gain some conversational skills.~~
Dress more like a girl. Not so much this one.
~~Take better care of my body - my skin (get rid of my face-ne...and rest-of-me-ne), my slight chub factor (do more DDR, walking, etc.), and eat better overall.~~ I hesitate to strike it out, because it's an ongoing process...but I definitely have improved. ROTC helped see to that.
~~Go abroad. (Whether for a week or a couple of months. I need to be on a plane.)~~ PERU
~~Become more active in politics and activism - whether just locally or on a larger scale, life permitting.~~ Hahahahaha BLOGGING MOTHERFUCKERS, WHITE HOUSE ACCESS
~~Attend Obama's inauguration!~~
Purchase resin!Rupert and possibly Nacht. (This one is a bit selfish...but I'm allowed to be selfish every once in a blue.) Okay, that never happened.
~~Be a nicer person overall - less overhanded snark, more genuine caring.~~< It is an ongoing process still, but I call success. I'm less combative than I was.
~~Be wittier.~~ Another ongoing process, but I'm sharpening up again.
~~Watch season 7 of The West Wing.~~ Like twice over.
Improve my creative talents - sewing, drawing, writing, singing.
~~Beat NaNoWriMo for the fourth year in a row, probably with Erebus, the third book of my unnamed series.~~ Started a new series, reached 50k in record time. Check and check checky check.
~~Take better advantage of any opportunities presented to me.~~ SO CHECK.
Work on comic projects - maybe even start a webcomic. Not so much with the drawing this year. Sadfacery.
~~Start an "issue blog".~~ lol blogging for Daily Dose and tWits.
Come to that, update LJ more often! I went three whole months without posting - waste of a paid account, if you ask me. I'll be better. I promise. Uhhh...I kind of was.
~~Punch out a dinosaur.~~ My life has been sufficiently awesome to cross this off.
~~Be less timid; ask more questions, especially of friends.~~ Timidity, I have learned, gets you nowhere.
Beat some video games, Manhunt 2 among them. Haven't beaten Manhunt 2 yet, but have played more video games.
Write more! Especially Butterfly Effect, WW fanfiction, and FAIL. Also, actually start Wilderness of Mirrors - I've had chapter one half-baked for about a year. I have written more, but not as much as I'd like.
Be more active on Landel's! Active enough to warrant a fifth character...I'm looking at you, Jed Bartlet! Or maybe Leo. I'll be The One Who Plays All The Alcoholics and/or Old Dudes With Canes. Not like there's a problem with that. x3 lol fail so hard at that
~~Acquire some sort of love interest - whether male or female, idk. But probably preferably male.~~ Boyfriend-type, check!
~~Be more confident in myself. I'm smart, talented, and apparently pretty. It's time I lived up to the potential people see in me.~~ Oh yeah. I'm worthy! I'm worthy! Also an ongoing process.
~~Visit more DC sights and government buildings.~~ Like all the time!
~~Be called evil by Sarah Palin.~~ Essentially.

Analysis: Pretty good! I'm mostly pleased with how the year went, and I love William & Mary. I am quite sad about the cats, though...I miss them every day. Things are better than they were. And now we have a Wii!

Christmas was fun, but the Wii didn't come from that. Mom and I got it with our birthday money as a present to ourselves. I don't get to take it to school with me, though.

It's been a decent year, really. I'm trying to get mom to adopt this cat we fell in love with at Petco. He was found under a trailer in West Virginia, and they named him Jasper. I'd call him Jazz, or maybe Jazzy Spazzy. He looks a lot like Cat. We're probably not going to get him, though - mom doesn't want another cat, and I can understand why.

I think I'll end this with another poem:

So long
'09
We had
Some epic times

Come on
Twenty-ten
We're gonna rock
The world again!

Good night, and good luck. See you in the future! *puts on sunglasses*

Year 19, INITIATE!

2009-12-01T03:58:50Z

Ha ha ha oh wow. Sorry LJ. I miss you. :(

We lost Lady Marmelade back in October - we had to put her to sleep when I came back for Fall Break. That was upsetting...so now we have two cats. Marco and Sushi.

Microeconomics and I are emphatically not friends, but I will soon see what I can do to fix that. And college is still pretty great. Tearing my hair out half the time - I blame you, Sharpe - but I do love it. Even ROTC, which we are not such great friends anymore but that is okay. I managed to screw up my leg - I slipped and fell in Colonial Williamsburg, bruising my shin and knee pretty badly and scraping up the leg through my jeans. So, yay. I'm my own worst enemy. Also I am still at home even though I should be at school, I have missed four days of classes, ha ha fail.

I've been up since the 20th, back here at home. Coincidentally, that was the day I finished my NaNoWriMo, the first time I haven't completed it on my birthday! I waited until today to verify the count, though.

A winner is me!

So, I am 19 today. Yay. Even though it is a weird age. I am very happy with my birthday presents - mom got me the complete box set of The West Wing! We've been watching episodes all over the place. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Christine got me a Gundam 00 model kit, which I will have to leave here and put together over winter break. I also went to the briefing today, and got into an event at the OEOB for World AIDS Day. So that was interesting. We went to P.F. Chang's for dinner, and it was delicious. My day's been rad as hell.

Going back tomorrow. Yay, and also boo. I'm sorry, LJ. I will pay more attention to you and the RPGs I play with LJ starting now. Good night, and good luck.

I love college~

2009-09-20T02:30:08Z

Okay. So it's been a while since I've posted, LJ. I'm sorry. I was broken up about Cat for a while.

I'm at college now! William & Mary is awesome; I know I made the right choice. Even if I do kind of suck at Econ. I'm in ROTC, too. Tomás is in his little tank behind me. My roommate and I are practically the same person. I've been writing more. Life is aight.

...except that I have sprained my left wrist and ankle, burned my right thumb really badly, and have a ridiculous amount of chigger bites all the way up my legs. I swear, worst itch in the world.

I'm having fun overall. I miss the cats. I've been here for almost a whole month...I think as of today it will have been a month. Either today or tomorrow.

There's really been too much gone on in the past two months since Cat died for me to recap properly. I mean, I went to the zoo before we left. I now have a stuffed red panda. I went to the White House the Thursday before I left. I realized that I spent more time with the White House Press Corps that summer than I did with most of my friends. It was depressing.

College is pretty cool. Like, REALLY cool. I'm not really a party person though. To pass the time, I've even started watching The West Wing again. (Shut up.) Waiting on the person who has season 2 vol 1 to return it to the library.

I go to school the same place Jon Stewart did. This makes me far too happy.

Later gator!

And you, who loved to love...♥

2009-07-30T13:53:27Z

I was going to do an entry about seeing the new Harry Potter movie twice, and why I enjoyed G-Force but had some issues with the writing, and why Torchwood: Children of Earth is excellent and also makes me want to hurt something. However, that has been superceded by what has to be one of the worst 24-hour periods of my life.

I came home from G-Force to find Cat, my 15-year-old cat, panting on the floor. The A/C had stopped working properly. Fearing he was dehydrated, we put him in the tub with a half-inch of water to cool his feet, and he drank for ten minutes straight. His breathing was wheezy and not at all good. So we took him to the emergency vet at one in the morning. "Come on, Cat," I said, without really knowing why. "We're going on an adventure..."

He had lung cancer that had metastasized. We were going to have to put him to sleep. I was up 'til four in the morning crying and praying that he would be okay.

He wasn't. Poor little man, he was so miserable, they had to keep him in the oxygen cage and his breathing was still awful...he was in so much pain. We sat with him and talked to him and told him we loved him and cried and pet him for about a half an hour before the vet came in to give him the shots...

...and I saw my furry brother die.

We opted to have him privately cremated, since he deserved better than the mass cremation for the pet cemetary. (That was all my push - it was more expensive but I would have paid for it on my own.) So his urn is getting shipped to us in about another week or so. I listened to "Bright Eyes" and "The Day Before The Day" in the car on the way back and cried my eyes out.

I miss him. I miss the way he'd always come up and beg for food in the kitchen. I miss the way he'd try and steal some off my plate. I miss giving him his thyroid pill. I miss how loud and energetic he was. I miss the particular way he trilled when he meowed. I miss the way he came trotting down the hall when we called him, the little pouch he got when we neutered him swinging freely. I miss his cute little paws and his horribly dirty little ears. I miss his patches above his eyes that were practically bald. I miss the way he smelled. I miss how he was always purring.

I miss Cat, god damn it. More than words can express.

Merlin Dulles "Cat" Villanueva
April 4, 1994 - July 26, 2009
"Bite; bite hard, and find the tenth life."

Not gonna lie, my life is awesome.

2009-07-16T05:00:58Z

Dear Livejournal: Salutations.

I'd tell you what I've been up to for the past month and a half, but you would never believe me. Oh, fine, I'll tell you anyway.

On June 5th, I got to take the train to New York City with Jabari, to celebrate his birthday. It was pretty chill - we got to go to Coney Island and the Nintendo Store - and we returned on the 7th.

I also attended MHS graduation 09, because the speaker was Colin Powell and how could I pass that up, I mean really.

Then my life was mostly boring, and then this happened. No, I assure you, it's real. I was there. I have pics. And it was awesome.

On the 22nd, I flew to Peru with my mom. Well, really, in no sense did I fly 'with' her. We left on different planes, from different airlines, from different airports, to different stopover destinations. All would have gone well except my American Eagle flight to JFK was delayed for two hours, forcing me to miss my connection - and the only direct flight to Lima out of JFK for 24 hours. After some arguing with the night counter guy, I managed to secure a reroute to Lima via Miami for no additional charge - however, it was gone midnight and my flight to Miami wasn't until 6 AM. Under New York law, I was forbidden from getting a hotel room as I am not yet 21, so I stayed up all night, talked to a British girl named Sammy Jo, and caught a few restless winks on the plane. Once in Miami, I secured a day room at the airport hotel (since Florida doesn't have that idiotic law or anything resembling it) and got a shower and two hours of sleep.

Did I mention that my Miami layover was nine hours? Because it was nine hours. Once I was on the plane to Lima (finally), I was seated next to a nice Peruvian lady named Veronica and we chatted. I got through customs with no problem and took the cab to the hotel. Overall, I was travelling for 28 hours. And that wasn't even the end of my soujourn.

Since I missed an entire day due to air traffic control fuckery, I didn't have too much time in Lima before we went to Cusco. I spent most of my days in the open-air shopping mall across the street, Larcomar, and went on a bus tour of the city. Cusco followed on the fourth day after a one-hour plane ride. Cusco is actually quite beautiful, and I wish we'd been able to spend more time there, but it was arrive on Friday, go to Machu Picchu on Saturday, depart on Sunday. Alas.

Machu P was cool. Except for the bureaucracy. Oh, the bureaucracy. But it is quite cool overall. And I got an Indiana Jones hat! \o/

Sunday I flew from Cusco to Lima with mom, and then she had to take her plane, which left - you guessed it - nine hours before mine did. Again. WTF? I read and wrote and played Audiosurf, then boarded the plane. There were seatback screens and I honestly spent more time watching Witness than I did sleeping. I arrived in 'Nueva York' and hopped my flight back down to DCA with no problems...but I still spent 27 hours in transit. Repeat: The hell?

Then my life was quiet for a while, up until the fourth of July, which I spent at cookouts with Jabari, and the tenth, at which point we went to the Video Games Live concert in Wolf Trap. Also with Jabari. The VGL concert was actually quite rad, and Grant Kirkhope (the sound designer for Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007) signed my poster. It was a good day. (They turned off the lights as Kirkhope was signing my poster, and he took out his cell phone to have light to finish. :D Ilu Grant Kirkhope.)

Aaaaand I'm typing this from the White House Briefing Room because I have an hour before the briefing starts. So...feel special, guys. I can't post from here because there is no WiFi in the briefing room (weird, right? But that is how things are).

...I'm gonna play Audiosurf now. *shrug* [Note from the Future: Playing Audiosurf on a fast, metal Muse song is not exactly conducive to calmness.]

Oh yeah, and happy Bastille Day. Also, Resinthing turned two on the ninth. Weird, right? Who knew I could keep a hobby up that long? GUESS WHAT, I CAN.

CIA frisbees and an addition to Alex's Menagerie of Crazy

2009-05-19T03:02:20Z

I've seen the new Star Trek film three times in the first week since it came out. And the third time was even kind of an accident. ("What, how do you see a film by accident, I don't understand, Alex, did you trip into the theater or something?" No.) I went with lyriael's family, and I didn't realize we were going to see the movie. So. The first time was for Mother's Day - a family of dorks are we. I even went out and bought the soundtrack immediately. The second time was on Thursday, since Tommy Christopher was in town and we decided to see it together and be total Trekkies about it afterwards, arguing about when the Federation canonically became aware of the Romulan Empire. (Seriously.)

Friday was, actually, pretty chill. Meredyth/lyriael had just come back from school literally the previous night, so we decided to hang out. Her dad picked me up at 11 AM, and drove us to the Metro station. And we got there before we realized we had no idea what we were going to do or where we were going to go. We rode the Orange Line all the way down to Eastern Market, and then we found out that there was nothing going on there since it was not the weekend. Undaunted, we headed into the nearby Dunkin' Donuts to regroup and procure some delicious cool drinks, since it was crazy-humid outside. I got a raspberry iced tea, which for some reason tasted of pecan. Meh, it was delicious. And apparently Obama and Biden had visited that Dunkin' Donuts, since there were pictures of them with a box of donuts on the wall. (The pictures were on the wall, not the donuts. Anyway.)

Once we were fueled with cold drinks, we headed out into the bright, hot day, going up to Capitol Hill, since Meredyth's mom works in the Longworth building. We walked for a while, and her mom let us into Longworth's cafeteria. They had some epic Cajun cod thing with sweet potatoes as their lunch-of-the-day, so we picked that. Let me tell you - the Congressional offices do not skimp on the portion sizes.

After that, we had no idea what the hell we were going to do, and there was some epic fail with trying to get a hold of a congressman to interview for Tommy...anyway, yeah, we walked to Union Station for shopping purposes. We spent about an hour in there, and then walked past the Newseum, and finally to the Smithsonian Metro station.

View Larger Map

So yes, the new Star Trek film is wicked awesome, and I will definitely buy the special-edition DVD or whatever when it comes out. Because damn. And Zachary Quinto is perfect as Spock. Perfect. And new-Chekov is my fave, with his overwrought accent. Hahaha. He's so cute.

Saturday I was babysitting until I managed to get out and go to McLean Day, which I've missed every year for the past, uh...five years. So I got to see Sara, Rachel, Christine, Stephanie, Marisa, Nikki, Rhiannon, and the freshman horde that Christine has accumulated and drawn into her life of crime. (I am, however, the undisputed leader of the cult). Let me just say this: There's something a little weird and surreal about a town fair that has a CIA booth. No, really. The CIA's Office of Public Relations was out in full force, with a bunch of random free stuff. I am now the proud owner of a CIA pin, a CIA frisbee that folds up into a cool little pouch (really), a CIA plastic bag, a couple posters that say "I spied the CIA at McLean Day" (seriously), some CIA OPR post-it pads (no, really!), and a couple of little booklets about the OSS and intelligence during the Revolutionary War. And an awesome booklet about the CIA where you pull this little tab and it turns the pages. Oh yeah, and a couple CIA K-9 unit trading cards. (I am not making this up - it's kind of fucking awesome.) For someone who's as interested in the Agency as I am, this is a windfall of...random stuff. :D

I hung out with Sara and Rachel for most of the day, and bought two bracelets from Stephanie's mom. Then Sara and Rachel helped me win a goldfish! His name is Tomás. Or Tomásito, if you're my mom. (It's a long story, but it has to do with The West Wing and this crackfic that's been stewing in my headbox, wherein Gail gets a fishy boyfriend named Tomás, who is a calico, just like RL Tomás. Seriously it is wack, and that is not even the wackest part.)

I spent most of Sunday watching season 7 of The West Wing, which was so therapeutic, you do not even know. And today I found out some pretty gonk-worthy news that mixes religion and politics in the worst possible way, so I'm trying to calm my brain before I fire off a post at Daily Dose about it. Going to chill with Meredyth tomorrow, too. In the meantime, I'll just watch old Star Trek episodes on Youtube. Woot!

Got in off the waitlist at NYU, too. No way I can afford it, and I've fallen too hard in love with W&M. Maybe for law school, though!

Also, Zetapets is closing, possibly forever. I has a sad. :(

Been working on The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Bourne Betrayal. The parody is now fifty pages long and I'm not even a full third done with the book. The other parody was about ninety-six pages when complete. Yeah, this book is worse. By about a factor of what the fuck.

Quick! To the Zed-Cave!

2009-05-04T05:25:54Z

So I seem to have become a blogger when I wasn't looking. Like, an honest-to-goodness cub-reporter-type blogger. Huh. It's pretty chill, actually. Neglecting the Spy Hat Zed, but, whatever. On that, since it is my own site, I will be more of an insane person.

Anyway, I got to meet Reza Aslan when he came to Politics & Prose on the tour for his new book, How to Win a Cosmic War. Also I spent about fifteen dollars on really awesome stamp bookmarks, including three from former Soviet republics with dinosaurs on them, one from another former Soviet republic with UFOs on them, one from Equatorial Guinea with US Presidents on them, and one from São Tomé and Príncipe with blimps on them. I am not making this up. Man, how come we only get lame stamps here? It is a mystery. Anyway, that place is the cradle of my childhood, and I blew twenty more bucks on Tintin: The Land of Black Gold and Tintin Aux Pays du Soviets...in ENGLISH. I have Aux Pays du Soviets in French, but now I have the English version! Now all I need is the English version of Tintin au Congo (which I have in French, and you apparently cannot get it outside the UK) and Tintin and Alph-Art, which I don't have in any form at all. Obviously you can see where my love for journalism came up - I was raised on Belgian journalism comics!

I spend Wednesday and Thursday working at NAWC again, setting up Vista and applications multifarious on the new computers. Dell XPS = love. (Sorry, Liebchen.) Past three days I've spent at home to avoid bacon flu (ostensibly) and I spent all of yesterday watching three versions of Pride and Prejudice (1980 BBC, 1995 A&E, 2005 film)...just because I felt like it. Yeah, boyeeee. I love the A&E version the best, but I just love the visuals in the 2005 version. And Matthew MacFadyen. Yum.

Just watched The Candidate, and now I'm watching Nothing But The Truth (another journalism film! Hilarious to me as a WW fan because there's a right-wing President Lyman and Alan Alda is in it). Both of them are excellent moviefilms.

Oh! And I sent in my housing deposit for William & Mary! Woo! No progress on anything I've been writing, though. Too busy cleaning out the Tivo late at night. Speaking of which, if Chuck doesn't get a third season after that finale, there is no justice in the world.

"Using Powerpoint for EVIL?! You are SUCH a PC." lol jon stewart

2009-04-23T17:40:56Z

Happy Earth Day, all! I brought you some environmentally friendly macros and also some fic. No, no - it's not what you're thinking. It's PPC fic. Using prompts from the 1sentence challenge. And I wrote it all while trying not to fall asleep, so hey, you know, it's probably better than the mess I churn out while awake.

I blame that macro with Obama in the safety goggles and the similar 8| look on his face from RBR for this.

...wakkachikka wakkachikka.

It's Republicans, 'cos Richie was made of fail...and also I didn't feel like changing the song. So. (Bartlet is so gangsta, you do not even know.)

And now, the minifics, from 1sentence prompt set Beta! (Why I decided to do this for PPC and not Pandashipping, well, I am not sure. This does not preclude me from doing it for Panda, of course, though probably with a different prompt set? idk.)

Warning: These are all incredibly disjointed and most of them make reference back to Valcentica or the long and complicated romantic breaking-every-rule-in-the-book-and-some-rules-that-had-to-be-created-because-of-this-madness backstory between Alec and Samantha Carter (yes, that Sam, from Stargate SG-1)...and really, you don't want to know. And a couple refer back to Undeserving, which is a rare Alec's-POV fic I never posted on LJ. (I find it horribly cheesy now, but, THERE'S YOUR CONTEXT.)

Title: Snapshots
Characters: Kitty Callahan, Alec Trevelyan, Samantha Carter, Rena Chang, Patrick Koster (mentioned), David Toombs (mentioned)
Pairing: Sam/Alec
Rating: PG-13 for swearing, violence, drug and alcohol use, and wacky hijinks

Snapshots in the lives of two overworked and underpaid PPC agents

#01 – Walking

The halls were always so twisty, but if they forgot where they were heading they ended up there anyway; Headquarters was funny like that.

#02 – Waltz

Alec didn’t really know why he was teaching her to dance, but it was probably something Kitty ought to know – it could end up being useful someday.

#03 – Wishes

Alec always thought that wishes were for the weak, but when Kitty’s face lit up like that after she blew out the scavenged candles on the overloaded cupcake, he almost forgot to be disdainful, and wondered what she’d wished for.

#04 – Wonder

It was in the way he took in the first new breath of air on a mission; it never truly got old, the canon-hopping.

#05 – Worry

When Sam had left him, Kitty had taken tea up to her colleague eight times in half as many days, more as a pretext to make sure he was doing all right than anything else; he was unstable, and she knew that.

#06 – Whimsy

Going out into canons just for fun was strictly forbidden, and they both knew that, but somehow Kitty had convinced Alec that chasing around after wild Pokémon in their natural habitat would be a really great idea.

#07 - Waste/Wasteland

The total dumpiness of the area appealed to something in Kitty, perhaps the burning inside her to fix the world – whatever it was, scorched-earth areas were so visually interesting that Alec often had to drag her away from commenting on the formations of the ash.

#08 - Whiskey and rum

Although Kitty hadn’t been fond of the drink, probably because she’d chugged it on down instead of sipping it like a normal person, Alec had made her have it again anyway (battle shock took a hell of a lot of time to wear off, and so did the psychological effect of shooting someone in the fucking throat).

#09 – War

When Alec had found out about the Macrovirus, he’d thrown half his equipment across the room in disgust – just why the fuck hadn’t anyone bothered to tell him that Makes-Things was dead?!

#10 – Weddings

Though she seemed weirded out by the whole idea, Alec got the sense that Kitty was the one leaving messages on his console that said “marry her, you fool” in Klingon, since Kos didn’t know Klingon and Davey wasn’t quite that creative.

#11 – Birthday

According to what Alec knew of Headquarters Standard Time, today would have been his fiftieth birthday instead of him being stuck at perpetual thirty-seven like he was…Christ, he needed a drink.

#12 – Blessing

“Hey douchenozzle – fucking marry her already, okay, just promise me you won’t have kids, at least not until I’m dead…I don’t think I could handle that.”

#13 – Bias

Whenever they had assignments in Alec’s home continuum (which wasn’t often), he always let James get beat on a little longer than was absolutely necessary; if Kitty noticed, she never said anything.

#14 – Burning

Sometimes Trevelyan relived the incident at Arkangelsk, and Kitty could catch him with his hand on his facial scar and his eyes staring off into the distance at a time and place only he could see, and that all of it was chemical fire.

#15 – Breathing

Oh, Powers, oh, God, please let her be alive, but Kitty’s chest wasn’t moving, and nobody who’d lost that much blood from their ears, nose, and mouth could possibly still be expected to survive anyway.

#16 – Breaking

He could tell that the wall in her head was cracking as they spoke with her – Kitty would soon be herself again, not this persona crafted remarkably like her for the infiltration of Valcentica, the Kitty-that-wasn’t.

#17 – Belief

Alec had lost his faith a long time ago, and Kitty’d never really had any, but she’d still believed in Santa Claus right up until she’d caught Alec putting presents under the tree…and hell, she probably still believed anyway.

#18 – Balloon

It was such a stupid thing, but it could keep her happy, and as long as that was the case she probably wasn’t killing anyone she shouldn’t be; it kept her busy long enough for Alec to find the mark.

#19 – Balcony

After Daniel had died, Alec often found her sitting outside with her Manual, staring hard at the sky as if she could pinpoint the exact spot where he was going to return.

#20 – Bane

It had been abrupt, too abrupt, and brought him back to that day in Cuba, except instead of the world stopping before he was to be impaled, it kept going, and going, and going, like the Energizer Bunny had a twisted sense of humor – oh, God, he could feel open air on his heart, how the hell did that even work, but at least he’d paid back the debt; he could die satisfied now, he’d saved Kitty’s life and now they were even.

#21 – Quiet

It wasn’t like her to stay quite so subdued, since usually she was the loudest person Alec knew, but for a while after her memories came back, she had to hide someplace, catatonic, as she fought with the Other in her head that had almost overcome her.

#22 – Quirks

The headband had confused Trevelyan for a while, until he’d asked about it and she said she didn’t know, but she liked the jingling and it made sense with her name and all.

#23 – Question

It’s the most important thing he’s ever had to ask her, the question that, if answered correctly, would break the non-Kitty persona and bring her back to herself: “Do you trust me?”

#24 – Quarrel

It was an awful fight by their standards, because Kitty was still weirded out by the idea of other people having sex and Alec was too pigheaded to realize it; they made up the next day, but Kitty had run off to Daniel’s house and commandeered his TV and cried a lot.

#25 – Quitting

A fact of life to Alec – if he quit, he would die; not because it had been in the agreement, but because this was so much more satisfying than anything he’d ever done before, even building up the Janus Syndicate.

#26 – Jump

The first few portal-trips were always gut-wrenching, because the technology managed to combine both the feeling of blindingly fast movement and standing completely still.

#27 – Jester

Kitty had thought that because she was the jester and not that much of a fighter that she couldn’t help in the demon battle, but her sense of humor was what kept half the castle fighting even after their wands had broken and their swords were heavy.

#28 – Jousting

It had been a really good idea to kill the Tortallan knight-Sue with until Kitty realized that she was awful at riding horses.

#29 – Jewel

The black opal around her neck had long since served its useful purpose – keeping the barrier in her head from shattering before its time and dooming the ‘verse – but she kept it anyway, claiming that she could think clearer while wearing it.

#30 – Just

The thought of the principles was the only thing that kept Kitty going, some days, because she found the killing distasteful; but they had broken the highest law, thou shalt not self-insert, and rules were rules.

#31 – Smirk

That little look Alec got on his face sometimes always let Kitty know there was going to be trouble; Alec worried more when he saw that look mirrored on his partner.

#32 – Sorrow

They’d both lost someone, albeit in different ways, so Kitty brought cake, and Alec brought all the Die Hard movies, and that was their coping mechanism.

#33 – Stupidity

Alec was glad that stupidity was a legally punishable offense in this job; he’d often wished it back in his home canon.

#34 – Serenade

“Kitty, for God’s sake, please stop singing the theme from ‘Cheers’, you’ve got it stuck in my head now.”

#35 – Sarcasm

It had been Alec’s verbal weapon of choice, but Kitty was getting surprisingly good at it; disturbingly good, for someone whose rhetorical repertoire usually consisted of ‘yo mama’ and ‘that’s what she said!’ jokes.

#36 – Sordid

Kitty had asked to be spared all the gory details of Alec and Sam getting back together – and by ‘spared’ she obviously meant ‘masochistically wanting to know’.

#37 – Soliloquy

Kitty had just delivered a longwinded, rambling speech to Alec about why keeping a sock on the door during, ahem, private moments was an excellent idea, but Trevelyan had already moved onto other, more interesting things in his head.

#38 – Sojourn

Alec had always known that their time in Colorado Springs would feel a hell of a lot shorter than ten years, ‘cause it actually wasn’t, but it still felt weird to leave, since it had been the first time in his adult life he’d lived anywhere for longer than a solid year.

#39 – Share

Kitty had a very odd idea of ‘sharing’ cake – it meant one quarter went to Alec, the rest of the cake and half of Alec’s piece went back to her.

#40 – Solitary

It was hard to find a lonely spot in Headquarters, but Kitty had found one; unfortunately, it was right next to the console’s speakers.

#41 – Nowhere

Sam had asked him exactly where Headquarters was once, and he’d weighed the option of explaining the eighth-dimensional origami that had to be understood because he knew she would get it and challenge it, before taking the easy route out, shrugging, and saying, “Nowhere.”

#42 – Neutral

Everyone had their preferences in the PPC – nobody was really impartial, which explained the occasional tackling of a lust object, and occasionally, a tree, but nobody really talked about that incident, since that agent was now blacklisted among Ents.

#43 – Nuance

Kitty was many things – funny, dead-eye sniper, and quite possibly insane – but when she’d directed Alec into Sam’s response center for what was ‘totally not a surprise party’, he realized that ‘subtle’ was not on that list.

#44 – Near

The great thing about having your partner across the hall instead of in your response center was that you could tell them to bugger off every once in a while and they still had somewhere to go…and they were still close enough to hear the damn console go off.

#45 – Natural

Kitty’s natural hair color was brown and her eyes were green, but one could be forgiven for getting confused, since she could and did change it up at least three times a day, until Alec threatened to shave her head if she made her hair hot pink one more time.

#46 - Horizon

When they got to see the sun rise, as they rarely did, Alec always wanted to smoke, but couldn’t because he knew Kitty would get all frowny and disapprove, and she’d be impossible to deal with, but he could get away with a bit of drinking while she was distracted by the sun.

#47 - Valiant

Kitty had called Alec brave, and that confused him for a little while because he couldn’t remember a single brave thing he’d ever done, and then she said that saving her life had been damn heroic, and he needed to take a fucking compliment for once, the prick.

#48 – Virtuous

Alec took a peek into Kitty’s file, just a peek, and wondered how on earth the goddess-born and immaculately-created supposed Hylian embodiment of sweetness and innocence and light learned all of the dirty jokes and bawdy things that she had, before realizing that he and the Team were responsible for that part of it…oops.

#49 - Victory

The battle was over, and Ashkahn had been killed, a win in anyone’s book, marred only by the few dead students littering the field among the hundreds of fallen demons, but really, it wasn’t a bad killer-to-killed ratio, all things considered.

#50 – Defeat

He couldn’t hold out any longer, and reached into his desk for the whiskey and cigarettes – the death of his self-control was the result of a building-up of events both in Valcentica and out of it – but his quiet time was foiled by Rena knocking on the door…busted.

I've also started on The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Bourne Betrayal, and by 'started' I mean 'typing up the portion that I'd written down already'. Twenty pages in and I can feel my brain cells boiling away.

Journalism Wow! \o/

2009-04-22T05:44:42Z

Hello, internet! Sorry for the scare - I am, as you can probably tell, alive and well. Got my Tea Party coverage on my spankin' new issue blog (and I can cross THAT one off my list of resolutions if I can maintain it), except I left out the part where I met this AOL News reporter because he had an awesome jacket. His name is Tommy Christopher, and he let me tag along as he interviewed the leader of the counter-protesters (which is where I got my quotes from). Yes, I got permission to interview the guy, too. I have standards! I got to chill with him for a while and see how professional (read: paid) bloggers do their thing. And I got a shout-out in an article, so.

Thursday was uneventful for the most part. Friday we hopped in the car down to Williamsburg for the William & Mary info session. Of course, as we were driving past about Fredericksburg, Mom noticed a weird sound coming from the car. Turns out two of our tires were about ready to bite the big one - treads flying off and all! Luckily, we were able to get them replaced quickly enough and made it down to W-burg in time for the session.

Sweet fancy Moses, but I love W&M. Didn't take any pictures - too bowled over by the WIN. The next day we went shopping and I got some decent summer clothes and a pair of nice new shoes for teh cheap! Outlet malls enable me. And I had my heart broken by a Liz Claiborne vest that was just a liiiiittle bit too friggin' big around the EVERYTHING for me. Shed a tear. (And this is the most I shall gush about clothing.)

Sunday was the GMU admission event day. And, foof, I hate to say it...but GMU is really just disorganized and discombobulated and not at all fun to navigate. I love the location, but the school, not so much. And they have some great academic programs, but I don't think I could live there, and commuting would be a bitch and a half. (The bathrooms are fail and the freshman housing is claustrophobia-inducing.) The only great thing about the day was that I got to see Markoff and meet his mysterious father for the first time. Afterwards, there was a reception for those accepted to the Honors College...and I was not impressed with that either. Bleh. So as of the now it looks like I will be attending W&M in the fall. Just waiting for the financial aid info and looking through the papers and such I got while on the trip. Just...W&M seems like they get me, and I think I get them, too. It's a match.

Finished the library at work, so I am done with that! \o/ It is now organized and pretty. Of course, I'm going to get called in to configure the new computers that'll be in next week, but I have a very long weekend in the meantime. So this, I can get behind.

Got to go see State of Play today, and let me tell you this: I am in love with the cinematography. The rest of the movie in general, too, but especially the cinematography/editing (oh God the thirty seconds of epic Metro footage made my entire freaking life), the establishing shots - so different from the usual shots of the Capitol and Washington Monument! - and the geographical accuracy (I am looking at you, West Wing, it's quite a detour to pass by the National Cathedral on the way to the State Department from the White House >( But I forgive you because Two Cathedrals was just that awesome). I love it all. And of course Helen Mirren was excellent, and Russell Crowe's long hair made me lol because he kept brushing it back like a supermodel. Oh! And the writing. I love the writing. It's all very good, but I'm shy of seeing the original BBC series, 'cause if I remember right, Marc Warren is in that. And as longtime readers of this journal (a couple years back longtime!) might know, I am not a fan of him so much, due to his piss-poor interpretation of Teatime in Hogfather (unforgivable!) and his quite frankly disturbing Dracula. Oh God I still have nightmares about such. Syphillis.

I'll be doing up a full review of the moviefilm probably in the morning, because I am le tired, and it will likely go up on Spy Hat Zed...that is, my new issue/random crap blog. (Shameless self-promotion ftw!) I also have a really longwinded and rambly rant about racial identification and just how being an ethnicityblender makes focusing on race seem really, really inane, but I have to compile that from about twenty LJ comments of mine, and I just don't have the energy right now. To wit: RACISM IS STUPID, INTERNET, CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG. As well as some thoughts on being an ethnicityblender.

Uuurrrgh. Speaking of geographical accuracy, I actually went on Google Maps to diagram a sequence out for Wilderness of Mirrors. I even have dialogue in my head for that scene - even in my non-Ludlum head Conklin and Panov have great conversations/quips/banter. Great, now I need to fuckin' write it. But tomorrow. If I go to sleep now, I'm only going to be getting about seven hours, since I'm waking up at 8:30. Tragedy! And yet it is now that I want to write. Ain't that always the way?

That's a full lid, y'all. 'Night, and stay frosty, scumbags (and I mean that in the most loving way possible)! ♥

The Best [bleep]ing News Girl Ever

2009-04-15T15:28:37Z

We ended up going to Great Falls on Easter. But that's not important right now. I'm going to be attending the DC Tea Party protest - not as a protester, but as a reporter. I will be Livetweeting, taking pictures, and pen-and-pad reporting for the Huffington Post and Teablogging. So yeah. Wish me luck, and if I never post again, I have been destroyed/trampled/ripped apart by angry conservatives who attacked when I said, "Yes, I'm with the Huffington Post, and I'd like to inter--NO NOT THE FACE!". Know that I have lost my life in the noble pursuit of the truth. I would just like to say that I love you all very much, and that even though it is raining today, this is gonna be totally worth it.

Except that my tape recorder is a giant prick.

Anyway. I will be wandering around by the Lafayette Park/Treasury Department protests, wearing my favorite self-defeating hat (the one that says SPY all over it in huge letters). Because, idk, I'm crazy. See y'all on the flip side!

Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

2009-04-12T17:41:11Z

How Alex Celebrates ~~Easter~~ Zombie Jesus Day: Doodling on hard-boiled eggs with markers, eating a metric fuckton of candy, and watching old Biblical movies (Ben-Hur, Solomon and Sheba, King of Kings - the one where Jeffrey Hunter shaves his armpits to play Jesus, etc.) on Turner Classic Movies. Why don't we make sword-and-sandal epics anymore? Gladiator was the last of them...and we are not counting Alexander, hell no, that movie does not exist. Sword-and-sandal epics are great. Maybe we'll watch Monty Python's Life of Brian later.

It's a nice day, so maybe we'll go outside, too. The week was okay - I got off work on Friday so I could help mom babysit Josie. We took her to the mall, 'cause there's a playground thing there that she loves and never gets to go to. Aside from her almost killing herself by climbing up onto the railing, things went well. I picked up some new clothes for Julian - hey, remember Julian, my stuffed Build-a-Bunny? - at Build-a-Bear. The clothes are super-cute; camo shorts and a "World Peace" t-shirt. Of course, since Julian is four years old, he needed a bath and brushing, since his fur was all nappy and gross. He has to be all gussied up for ~~Easter~~ Zombie Jesus Day! So I spent yesterday on and off cleaning my stuffed bunny and fluffing out his fur. And trying to play Fusionfall. And watching The Wind and the Lion. Fun Fact: It is actually possible that I could maybe be related to Raisuli. \o/ But I love The Wind and the Lion, aside from the Epic Win that is Sean Connery playing a Berber general and Brian Keith's best portrayal ever of Teddy Roosevelt.

More dreams...night sixteen of them. It would be seventeen, but I don't think there was anything related to West Wing or even politics on Friday night. (This is beginning to freak me out.) Thursday night I dreamed that the Secret Service kicked my ass as I was trying to meet the President and also that I walked up to a bunch of senators at a picnic table talking about Eye-rack and called them all douchebags for not pronouncing it correctly. And last night, I dreamed that I was in a meeting with Obama in the Oval Office and trying desperately not to freak out in my own mind, and then most of my friends were there too, and after the meeting we went on the President's secret Metro line (seriously) to work on a problem, and it took us to all these stations with secret, hidden entrances all around DC. (Holy run-on sentence, Batman!) Actually, it was pretty chill. I wish it had really happened.

I have finally broken down, and, after having The Bourne Betrayal in the house for three weeks, I am finally going to write the Idiot's Guide for it. That's another reason I have so much candy - to dull the pain. And part of a bacon-cheeseburger pizza from Domino's. Mmm. Heart attack. (There is also The Bourne Sanction, but I will leave that be for now. Because augh.

...haha, I can't get over how my tag for all Bourne-related entries is "May I suggest 'Bitchy von Crypants'?". I love you, RiffTrax. Except maybe I will save this tag for the Uncanon Sequels and use something like "Bob...Notaspy" for the main ones. Who knows? Certainly not me.

Still haven't decided which college to go to, GAH.

My recent entries have all been WALL OF TEXT-like. Huh. I am longwinded.

Cookout at Joey B.'s place!

2009-04-07T19:06:23Z

Guess what I got to do on Saturday? Being that this is the Year of Astronomy and April 4 was the 400th anniversary of Galileo looking through a telescope at the heavens, the U.S. Naval Observatory was having an open house for the first time since 2001. (Read: When ick-Day eney-Chey moved in.) So what did I do on Saturday? I hung out at Joey B.'s house. (Joey B. being Vice President Joe Biden, of course. No, rahmbamarama isn't ruining my brain, what are you talking about.) And the USNO has an epic library. It is a library that I would like to move into with a blanket and some cats and a keg of Earl Grey. I will post pics later (really!) of the ~epic library~ (tildes totally justified) and Joey B.'s house proper. 'Cause I'm that much of a fan. Also, the Navy was selling hot dogs and hamburgers and BBQ chicken and coleslaw, there was a cookout on Joey B.'s back lawn. So that was awesome.

Sunday was cool too - somehow, no babysitting at all worked out (tragedy, I have no cash), but we got together with Uncle Carlos for the first time all year (outside of work for me, lol). We saw The International, and it was fantastico, and I upheld my strong moral position that I will never leave the theatre during a movie, even if I have to go to the bathroom. (Yo, that ticket was ten dollars and I am getting my money's worth.) This posed a problem, for long movie is long and constantly plot-advancing. And very, very, very good. And Clive Owen is also a yummy badass. Afterwards, we went to Silver Diner and I got the Ultimate Strawberry French Toast (with a side of bacon. Mmm). And I ate it all. Somehow. This is more lulzy when one realizes that I had just learned that Rahm Emanuel's Secret Service Code Name is...(wait for it)...Strawberry. RAHMTOAST! \o/

Monday. Monday was made of epic fail. Epic, epic fail. It was one of those FML days. I had been at work for about thirty minutes when I started noticing problems with my vision. Sometimes it goes away if I ignore it, so I tried that. No such luck, amigo. Fifteen minutes later, I was definitely seeing scintillating scotoma and zigzag lines and half my field of vision was useless. Ocular migraine. Or a migraine with aura - I really don't know, but I think it's an OM. Anyway, these fucking suck and I hate them (as tagged above). So I dimmed the lights in my office, turned one set off, got an extra-strength Advil to head off the inevitable headache, and a can of Coke (which I have been trying to avoid, even though only Diet Coke has aspartame, which is what I am really trying to avoid as it may have totally fucked up my system) for the caffeine to open up my brain's blood vessels as I mostly hate coffee, and sat on my office couch and waited for death or relief, whichever came first. I am one of the unlucky ones - problems with vision are supposed to last from five to thirty minutes. I trend towards the upper end of the scale for these fuckers. And then came the headache, creeping slowly like a creeping thing, so I had thought I'd gotten lucky and avoided it, as sometimes happens. No dice here either. I was in pain - I could work now because I could see (and ignored repeated requests to go home from bossman aka Uncle Carlos), and I knew my body. I even ran down to the Chinese place around the corner and picked up lunch, though I could only stomach a few bites because my sense of smell is greatly enhanced when I have a headache. I even got queasy and a touch of the dry heaves a little bit when I was working, another symptom of the complete and utter neurological bullshit fail that is my life. I also got in a fight with the packaging for my new wireless work mouse. I won (after like fifteen minutes, but that is far too long to spend trying to open plastic packaging and retrieve a fucking mouse), but at great cost to my hands - I have plastic cuts, which are in their own way worse than papercuts. Logitech, you suck at existing.

And then, just when I had gotten mostly over the headache? The fucking fire alarm went off. And it is loud, and clangy, and even more annoying than the McLean one, if that were possible and I found out that it is. The crepe place downstairs had a small fire...but at least I now know that there is a crepe place downstairs. I hate writing about all of this headache crap, because even thinking about it makes me feel awful (so does smelling coffee, but that is neither here nor there - more neurological bullshit), but it must be done. Why? Obviously I am a masochist. Anyway, Carlos and I went down to the Borders to wait while the fire crews did their job. Suffice to say, I did not get a ton of work done yesterday. But mom and I went for pho when I got home, so I guess that is an improvement. (But there was mold on the delicious Arabic rice pudding when I looked in the fridge, so I had to toss it out. Sadface.)

Night ten of West Wing-related dreams, even peripherally. My dreams usually are never consistent across nights (unless they're intermittently recurring), so this is...odd to say the least. Last night's dream involved two WW SNES ROMs (!, why SNES, I do not know) that I found on the internet - sadly, they probably do not exist. I don't remember one of them, but the other had a ridiculously long title and required you to be a random assistant who had to contend with both office gossip and a crisis in...I'm gonna say Bolivia, because that was in the episode I saw last night (365 Days). This has inspired me to see if I can nab a Windows copy of RPG Maker 2000 for cheap and make a WW game. (Like this will ever happen, but I HAVE TO TRY DAMMIT. I mean, I could just do it with the PS2's RPG Maker 2 or 3, both of which I own...but then I cannot share. And I am not quite that selfish.)

And speaking of 365 Days, I have come to a conclusion.

Aside from being in fucking love with Leo McGarry and John Spencer in general, I am in fucking love with Leo's smile. Much the same way that people are in love with Joey B.'s smile (or his teeth, rather). I...I see Leo smile, either just a little smile or a gigantic grin, and I melt like chocolate in the sun. I'm pretty sure there's a mathematical/physics formula for this: where x is the size of Leo's smile, y is how fast Alex turns into a puddle of goo (in nanoseconds), and c is the speed of light/speed of smiles:

y = (x^{[degrees of x]} + ([length of time shown on screen in seconds]*42))
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(0.[squee factor]*c))

Solve for y, motherfucker!

I don't even fucking know if this formula is valid or not, but it's the truth! So, for your viewing pleasure (and possible conversion), I present to you: Leosmile, The Picspam!

Warning: May lead to blindness from smiles, dangerously toxic levels of SQUEE, and fancying John Spencer.

:D

OH HAY

"No thank you. I have had enough."

:)

:3

:D

Teef.

"How YOU doin'?"

Teef! And glasses! Lordy.

:D

:)

:D

:D

:D

8D hugs tiem nao

:3

>:3

:)

:3

:3

"Hold the phone."

8D

8|

:D

>:)

:D

:)

:3

BRB ALEX IS MELTING

Phew. Yeah. I have a thing for silver foxes, apparently. No idea why...but oh, do I love it. This may mean that I will be picking boyfriends in future based on a careful extrapolation of what they will probably look like forty years from now. Usually, I am okay, but when I see that smile, well, my little heart goes pitter-pat. Is there something wrong with me? Probably. And I love it.

Why does no auto-focus feature exist? Accursed camera.

2009-04-04T06:07:39Z

Got waitlisted at NYU, and that's it for the letters! Four rejections, two acceptances, two waitlists.

After seeing how much fun the tags are at rahmbamarama, I've spent the last couple of days going back through all six-hundred-something of my old entries and tagging them! Every. Single. One. The tags "fail at life" and "ramblings of a diseased mind" get a lot of use towards the end. The journal should now be easier to navigate - just another service we provide here at Alex's House of Useless Knowledge. I was twisted back in eighth grade and freshman year. And by twisted, I mean obviously eating lead paint chips like candy.

My life is still sunshine, and will be for the foreseeable future (read: forevermore). Because I am still wondering if Tuesday was a delusion/hallucination/dream, due to amazing. I have to fix my Photoshop, though, so I can kill the blur on that one picture of me and Martin Sheen! Blur is not my friend.

I will try and actually, you know, write this weekend. Been too tired to for a while. Except I have to finish my Landel's application first (!). Exile or Blitz, Exile or Blitz...either way, I still have to do the history. Ugh faaaaail. Will do it in the morning.

Had some weird dreams for the past week, all of which involved, in some way, The West Wing, and specifically, Bartlet. (Starting the night after I read that EFCA article, in fact.) They're all very weird - and pretty much in no way related - except that he is always the president. And one of the dreams had Charlie knowing both Zoey (in high school!) and Bartlet independently, and not knowing they were related...my mind is a wack place. And another one had the cactus that I'm going to get when I go to college in it. (Yes. I'm getting a cactus since I can't have a pet. A little cactus. I'm going to decorate its pot and everything.)

So speaking of college, I now have to decide where I'm going. Obviously I have to look at the curricula for both where I've been accepted to and where I've been waitlisted. American and GMU would probably be better for studying PoliSci, but I have an odd attachment to W&M. They've been the only school to accept me in two years, no drama, no strings. Just "Welcome to William and Mary. Jon Stewart went here, you know! We hope you'll go here too. :3" And of course NYU is NYU, which would be epic. I don't know. Thoughts?

As of 2 AM, Photoshop CS4 is cooperating...somewhat. Am removing blur manually (!) with clone stamp. You go with what works. But I am le tired, and going to bed now, because I have been working on this image for about four hours. FOUR HOURS, AND IT BARELY LOOKS DIFFERENT. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS. (Okay, so I spent two hours trying to use Focus Magic on it, which failed miserably, because the blur is going in all directions. The awesome broke my camera.)

Also, it is Cat's birthday today. He's turning fifteen! This is old for a cat. And he is still mostly healthy!

THE BEST DAY EVER \o/

2009-04-01T01:24:27Z

I got waitlisted at American and rejected from Tufts. BUT WHO CARES, that's not what this entry is about!

Woke up at 7:45 to head down to the Metro at 9. By 9:45, we were already down at Capitol Hill, on an epic quest for the West Wing cast...Operation Wingnut had begun! We tromped down to the Visitor Center - nobody had a clue there. Okay, back up to the East Front. No clues there either. So it was tromp, tromp, tromp around to the West Front. Still no luck!

Discouraged, we decided we'd check the Russell Senate Office Building, where Senator Kennedy's office is, since they were supposed to meet with Sen. Kennedy. So we took the elevator up to Sen. Kennedy's office and asked the aide there about the EFCA ad campaign...and he told us that a reception was being held not fifty yards away! And it wasn't closed to the public!

Jackpot!

We managed to find seats, and...was that...well, as I live and breathe! It was Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford, and Richard Schiff up on the dais! We'd apparently missed Richard speak (sadface :( ), but we managed to catch Bradley introducing Martin, and holy crap, it was awesome. Brad told an anecdote about how it's always interesting to fly with Martin because he hands out crucifixes on the plane, and when Martin got up to speak he said, "It's rosaries, not crucifixes..." Okay, maybe you had to be there, but it was hilarious! He also told a couple anecdotes about the flight over, like when he got on the plane at LAX, someone recognized him and said, "Hey, Mr. President. Is Air Force One in the shop?" and an old couple who kept confusing him (sotto voce) for other members of his family...and then two teenage girls when he landed who went up to him and were all, "Oh wow, we're super major fans, can we have your autograph?" and he said, "Sure," and as they walked away, he heard one of them say, "Man, I can't read his handwriting...who did you say he was again?" Fail, but also win. So he talked about how he started what turns out was the first caddies union in the country, and how the strike he started lasted a grand total of 48 hours...and the union lasted 72. And he was friends with Cesar Chavez, and seriously, omg, so awesome, is there any wonder he is my personal hero? The answer you are looking for is 'no'.

Some of the people featured in the "Faces of EFCA" campaign spoke for a little while (which inspired mom to try and unionize the World Bank consultants), and then the speechifyin' was over. The actors, of course, got swarmed - mom ended up talking to Richard Schiff, as detailed below.

Mom: Mr. Schiff, hi, big fan.
Richard Schiff: Hi, nice to meet you.
Mom: Nice to meet you too. I'm sorry, but I have to say this line..."the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing."
Richard Schiff: Ah, that was pure Sorkin.
Mom: Yep, it sure was. My daughter's a super major fan, too! *points in my general direction*

So Richard Schiff walked over to me and said "Hi, are you the daughter?" I was mildly flummoxed for a half a second before I said, "Yes, I am, very nice to meet you, Mr. Schiff, big fan," or words to that effect, because my brain had quite obviously dropped out, and I shook his hand. I shook hands with Toby Ziegler mahahahaha~

I saw Bradley Whitford getting coffee, but I didn't want to bother him, because I had seen Josh Lyman without coffee on the show and wasn't sure how closely drawn from his own life that reaction was. So the actors and union spokespeople headed out through a side door, heading to Sen. Kennedy's office, and I ran out the main door in a desperate attempt to catch them. (Are you kidding I would never have been let through that side door.) Luckily, they were still surrounded by a gaggle of people, so the clump was moving slowly. Martin Sheen was being super super nice, and talking to everyone who talked to him, because he is just the nicest person in the whole wide world, and signing autographs and what have you. Mom had disappeared to talk to one of the union people, so I was on my own.

Alas! He was about to go into Sen. Kennedy's office! Mom had arrived, and I passed her my camera. I had to act immediately:

Me: Mr. Sheen? *smile, smile* Can I have your autograph?
Martin Sheen: Sure, how could I refuse you?
Me: 8D
Martin Sheen: What's your name?
Me: Alex. 8D
Martin Sheen: *scribbling in my notebook* Agh...I messed up...mind if I use another page?
Me: *stammering* Please, go ahead, sure, use as many as you like! (at this point, my brain had dropped out. again.)
Martin Sheen: *writes autograph, which is SUPER COOL*
Mom: Mind if I get your picture?
Martin Sheen: Are you with her?
Mom: Yes, I'm her mother.
Martin Sheen: Okay!
Me: 8D *tries to keep from smiling the creepy smile, because there is ONE SHOT at this picture*
Mom: Okay...Bartlet for America!
Me: *quietly dying inside of omg geekish awesome*
Camera: *click*
Mom: Gracias mil!
Martin Sheen: *to mom* What's your name?
Mom: Cynthia Villanueva.
Martin Sheen: Ah, encantada, es un placer. (HE SPOKE SPANISH TO MY MOM, BRB DYING. HE ALSO SAID MORE SPANISH BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER IT AND NEITHER CAN MOM, BUT IT WAS SOMETHING LIKE THAT, HAHAHAHA OMG SPANISH.)
Me: I wish you had really been President the last eight years, Mr. Sheen.
Martin Sheen: Yeah, but not anymore! We've got a good one now; I've met him, he's a great guy!
Me and Mom: 8D
Me: Nice to meet you, Mr. Sheen, thanks so much!
Martin Sheen: No problem. :D

And then I had to get out of Bradley Whitford's way, because otherwise I would have been coffee'd by accident. But I think we exchanged words (hahaha that makes it sound like we were going to duel...), something like "Excuse me," and "Sure thing, Mr. Whitford 8D 8D 8D". After that conversation, a reporter from the Washington Times asked me for my name and where I was from...so keep a lookout for that! (Wow!)

And then I had to go sit down and Twitter about it, while trying to keep from spontaneously combusting. It seriously couldn't have lasted more than, what, two minutes tops...but it was so awesome, SO AWESOME.

...then they came back around. I followed them like I was in a walk-and-talk, trying to gather my wits enough to tell Martin Sheen that his performance on the show inspired me to go into PoliSci, but he was talking to someone else. That was cool, though! I GOT TO SEE HIM AGAIN. HAHAHA. We had to leave then because otherwise we would seem 'stalkerish', according to mom, so we went back to the World Bank for lunch, which consisted of sushi and delicious cake. Then we walked past the White House and back to the Metro station to go home. And I found a coin from Peru near the White House. Also, there was ice cream. Obviously not on the coin. That would be weird.

Even getting rejected from Tufts couldn't ruin today! IT WAS TOO AWESOME. \o/

And also, there were pictures. I took about fifty...no, really, fifty...so I'll pare them down to the ones with the least amount of blur, because my camera is shit at not being blurry and my hands shake when I'm taking pictures normally, never mind when I'm excited/freaked/delighted to be in the same room as awesome people...man, it was an off-chance that we'd even get to see them at all, so it's just way too epic that what happened, happened!

Bradley Whitford! \o/

Martin Sheen! \o/ BARTLET FOR ~~SENATOR~~ PRESIDENT

Seriously, I took like 15 pictures of him at the podium and these are the only two that are serviceable. *fail*

Richard Schiff! \o/

Toby, ilu...I love your hat...you are so awesome~!

Lol, ~~Josh~~ Bradley looks bored...

Martin, shouting, "Si se puede!"

Close encounter but no cigar!

Why do I think this is so awesome? BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME, OBV.

Bradley Whitford's head! And some guy's shoulder! (Moved in front of my camera just as I was taking the shot, grr.)

[IMG]http://img.ph
The back of Bradley Whitford's head! Ooh, exciting!

I feel like I'm in a West Wing walk-and-talk...

...BECAUSE I AM!

AUTOGRAPH! \o/ "To Alex: Peace! Martin Sheen, 3/31/'09". That be getting framed, yo.

*dies* You see that, that is a side-hug, I got side-hugged by Martin Sheen.

Hoshi-- RATZILLA! TAKING A BITE OF THE J BUILDING! OH, THE HUMANITY! (Actually, I forgot to explain this earlier - it was a protest of a construction company that had been building near the World Bank. And there was a gigantic inflatable rat. HILARITY.)

White House, beautiful spring day! \o/ (I maintain that the three West Wing stars brought some California weather with them, just for us.)

The RL West Wing itself! SUPER-YAY!

Also, I'm addicted to Pokémon Diamond and it's kind of ridiculous how much fun it is. My Chimchar is named Rahm (although a Piplup is more likely to bequeath upon you a dead fish) and I caught a Bidoof and named it Biden. BECAUSE OF THE TEETH. (Joey B. has awesome teeth...Bidoof has awesome teeth...Bidoof sounds kind of like Biden...there ya go.)

OH MY GOD DID CHRIS MATTHEWS JUST PLAY A CLIP FROM LOVE, ACTUALLY ON HARDBALL, HE DID, OMG. "David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot, come to that..." He's referenced it before, so I think he just really likes that movie. xD Hey, so do I...and I'm glad I'm not the only person who thought, "Obama's going to London? Like in Love, Actually? Except he is not a jerk?"

I woke up this morning and felt like something had changed. 364 days ago, I was depressed and crying - April 1, 2008 was when I got all my rejections. Since then, I've felt cursed, in a way...but I think that's over now.

To reiterate: BEST DAY EVER OMFG. \o/

In which Alex abuses the shift key due to EXCITEMENT!!!11one`

2009-03-28T16:59:22Z

We had a power outage for an hour last night! Very exciting. I went and got my Arc reactor from Halloween and changed into my Landel's shirt for pajamas...and we had demon cats running around. Well, normal cats that make you trip over them, anyway. But that is just like my life, isn't it? I get rejected from Hopkins, then the power goes out as I try and watch my recuperative West Wing, and it cuts out half of my Tivoing of The Rachel Maddow Show. It is an obvious metaphor for being powerless, as I so often am. Typical. Even the symbolism in my life is lazy.

Also, Martin Sheen, Richard Schiff, and Bradley Whitford are going to be on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to talk about EFCA hahahahaha. AND I HAVE OFF OF WORK ON TUESDAY. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. 8D Too bad I do not have any West Wing anything to get automagraphed, if possible. PICTURES WILL DO ME JUST FINE. That reminds me, I had a dream (inspired by the article, obv.) that I got to meet Martin Sheen, and my camera was out of space...which it actually is, so it is my subconscious telling me that I HAVE TO CLEAN OUT MY CAMERA BEFORE TUESDAY. (Also in my dream was a whole bunch of wack crossover novels, like - seriously - James Bond and Jason Bourne crossovers, the one I had picked up was book three in a series of Bond/Bourne crossover books and it had an awesome cover and I read some of it and it looked really really cool so I'm sad it doesn't really exist. Also I had a dream about a house fire, and something about unicorns...? But I digress.) Because getting my picture taken with them would make my LIFE. *_* And it would also be my Facebook profile picture FOREVER.

CAPSLOCK WHOO.

So, yeah. I'm over Hopkins, for the most part - it still stings, and it'll sting for a while. Curiously enough, I think going outside, turning around three times, and spitting (and cursing) might have had something to do with it; I felt better afterwards. I mean, I'm already into two very good schools...but I really wanted JHop, and it's like a slap in the face after getting waitlisted last year. Oh well. Mustn't dwell.

...what's next?

twice bitten, forever shy

2009-03-28T00:14:27Z

Didn't even get waitlisted at Hopkins this year.

It's not meant to be.

Gonna go cry now.

Colleges Applied To: 8 (JHop, NYU, Swarthmore, Georgetown, American, George Mason, William and Mary, Tufts)
Total Replies: 3 (George Mason, William and Mary, JHop)
Colleges Accepted To: 2 (George Mason, William and Mary)
Colleges Rejected From: 1 (JHop)

To prevent this from happening again, and due to my growing conception that The West Wing is the source of all human knowledge, I went outside, turned around three times, and spat. (And cursed. Spit and curse. Go. Go! Go!)

And speaking of WW, this is what I wish was actually going on in my head:

oh laaaaawdy I got problems. Bad ones. Really bad ones...

Outlining it in Photoshop killed the art - my tablet and computer are not friends no more - but the original was super sketchy. Maybe I'll go over the next one in pen.

there is a pile of environmental papers practically up to my waist

2009-03-26T18:39:00Z

Over my (five-day) weekend, things were pretty chill. Did not get a lot of writing done, except for about a page of backstory/exposition on my FusionFall character, who is still nameless because all of the preapproved names are lame and my two picked names so far (Zed Bartlet [YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE, I combined my less-often used username of Zed and Jed Bartlet, I am so awesomely geeky], Zed al-Qutt ["القط" or "the Cat" in Arabic but God knows I have seen like fifty billion other transliterations and don't actually speak Arabic, though it is a goal of mine]) have fallen through. So now I will try for Zed Altair, and I wonder if that will somehow be found offensive by the Cartoon Network Oberführers.

We went to Gravelly Point on Tuesday and watched the planes come in and take off. There is some crazy optical illusionry because, if you're standing close enough to the edge of the little marshy bit that separates the runway from the park, you'd swear that if you just stretched up your hands you could skim the bellies of the airplanes with your fingertips as they pass by. I always get a little melancholy when I hang out there - how long has it been since I've flown? Three years already? - but it's a strange sort of melancholy. Bitter happiness? Who knows.

I was surprised to learn on Wednesday that I got into William and Mary, which means I now have something in common with Jon Stewart, aside from being short, of course. (More surprised that I learned on Wednesday than surprised that I got in...you know what I mean. Usually they release decisions closer to April 1...but maybe the college community at large realized that is a cruel joke?) So, app status as of the now:

Colleges Applied To: 8 (JHop, NYU, Swarthmore, Georgetown, American, George Mason, William and Mary, Tufts)
Total Replies: 2 (George Mason, William and Mary)
Colleges Accepted To: 2 (George Mason, William and Mary)
Colleges Rejected From: 0

Let's hope that last stat holds up!

Stuffing a doner (beef and lamb) sandwich into my mouth at what could charitably be called my desk but is actually a hard counter with steel drawers that I have banged my knees into several times, plus a laptop. My office now has a floor, mostly, and I have freed up the coffee table. We've also managed to throw out half the library's contents, so yay for that. Drew a comic about the state of my headbox right now, which is currently festering in Photoshop at home (the comic, not my headbox). Screw coloring at this point, I'm just going to add the text and have done with it. Photoshop and my machine, they are not pallies no more. Sad.

I have also just discovered the magic and wonder of iGoogle...Alex has a new homepage! \o/ I took the "Which West Wing guy is right for YOU?" quiz, and am pleased (and disturbed, and confused, and amused, etc.) to discover that my ideal match is...wait for it..."President Batlett". President...Bat'leth? What the hell do you call a West Wing mini, anyway? I stretched Bourne enough with the mini-Jackals! But a "Batlett" does sound pretty cute. Like a teeny tiny little bat. A batlet!

Finally, this made me have a laugh attack: The Air America White House Briefing Drinking Game. Oh, Gibbsey. Never change.

ETA: Holy crap, ~~Matt Parkman~~ Greg Grunberg is in town! ~~and not to be captured or framed for terrorism this time~~

Of jobs and a fortuitous letter

2009-03-20T04:47:29Z

So I've been working my new job at NAWC (National Association of Water Companies) for the past couple of days - I have a passkey and everything. It's really an internship, I'm in charge of reorganizing and cleaning out the library, and it's a hell of a lot of fun. Also I need kneepads, since I use up all my table/counter space so quickly, and thus am reduced to spreading out and organizing on the floor. I'm enjoying it, though. I put my Last.FM on quietly and organize and pare away at the old files, and it quiets my brain.

Also, I got a letter today! My first thought was, "Oh, look, a letter." My second thought, verbatim, was, "Thank fucking Christ, I got into George Mason." Profanity, blasphemy, and all. Okay, and then I bit the envelope. I...lick or bite things I'm happy with. And I wasn't going to lick that envelope, it had gone through the US Postal Service, hahaha, zing. (And I have a song by the band The Postal Service in my head...freaky-deaky.)

...I was going to say a lot more, but I can't think of anything. It's weird, but I'm barely relieved. My first college acceptance letter...and I'm numb!

I don't know. I guess I was setting myself up for failure so much - and the SAT snafu from last year means that I could have gotten in if it hadn't happened and gone through a year of my life that was lost to fucknuttery - that I can't take success. I'm just kind of floating here...haven't had dinner but I'm not hungry, and I want to write but I can't find the words. I can't even describe my past week. It's just...meh.

Stupid brain.

...what's next?

I said tell me your name is it sweet? She said my boy it's Dagger, oh yeah~

2009-03-15T20:22:39Z

The Fairfax County DMV can bite my ass, because it made me lose a day and a half of my precious life. Thursday was pretty much epic fail, 'cause we'd gotten a ticket for our registration tags being out of date ($40...egregious fee, I know!), so we went to the DMV.

Well, that's a lie. First we went to the auto shop across town to get our emissions inspected...except the place we went to didn't actually do emissions inspections. Then we were informed that the Sunoco across the street from our house did emissions inspections, so we left the car there and got some pineapple Fanta from the nearby 7-11. And apparently...we hadn't needed to, because when we'd taken the car in to change the headlight bulb last month, they'd done the emissions inspection already. That two hours of wasted time over with, we finally went to the DMV.

And waited. And waited. And waited. A086? Finally. Up to the window, where we were informed that there was a stop on our account because we hadn't paid the property tax on our car, and we would have to get that taken care of before we could update the registration. So we drove all the way back home and made the call (because we needed some papers that were at home), paid the balance, and drove back to the DMV. Except...although we had paid the balance, the stop was still on our account! We tried calling the number to speak to a human - closed. It was 4:30. Yes, it closed before 5. Yes, that is lame. I had wanted to go to the Best Buy and use my gift card, but no such luck. We went home, thoroughly discouraged.

Next day! We got up, and somehow managed to waste three hours in between waking up and getting to the DMV. Fail. We got the person on the phone to remove the stop, and finally, finally, finally freed ourselves from the tyrannical grasp of Fairfax County's DMV. (Aside: Mom kept saying "DMZ"...it's easy to tell where she grew up.) I was finally able to get to the Metro to go and see Jabari before he left back for Gettysburg College. So I got to West Falls Church, grabbed an Express and a copy of The Onion, and went through the card-readers. Nothing was on the arrivals board, so I thought I'd take my time. Then I saw a commercial pilot (must have been fresh off the Dulles shuttle) running out of them, and if I have learned anything in my life, it is that when a pilot is running, you follow him. So I tore down the escalator, and saw a train with its doors open, waiting. The display said 'Special', not 'New Carrolton' as it should have, but I didn't care, and got in a couple of seconds before the doors closed. I was so pleased with my awesomeness at catching trains that I almost missed the announcement - the train was going to stop at Foggy Bottom and disgorge all passengers, due to an incident at McPherson Square.

Dammit, why is McPherson always the problem stop?!

This, of course, was a problem for me, because I had to get to Metro Center - the stop after McPherson, so I could transfer to the Red Line. So I called the relevant people (i.e. Jabari and mom), and rode the train to its new terminus. The lights flickered on and off in the train itself to warn everyone that they should leave, which was seriously creepier than it should have been. There was a line outside for the shuttle to Metro Center, which of course hadn't arrived yet, and I ended up somewhere in the middle of the gigantic line. I called Jabari to tell him the situation, and his mother kindly offered to pick me up. I accepted, because it was damn cold. So after a two-day ordeal...I finally got to hang with Jabari again.

It was a mess of Burnout and Guild Wars and Spore and Cold Winter, which was fantastic fun. We devoured an extra-large pizza, and he rode almost all the way home with me on the Metro to protect me from things that a lone female must be protected from. Even one with a multi-tool and who doesn't actually dress like a girl. That was very sweet of him indeed.

Saturday had awful weather, much like today, and mom and I proceeded to depress ourselves horribly by watching the HBO original film Recount. It's quite good, although horribly depressing, since not only do you know how it ends, you know what it causes. Namely, a seven-year-long war and quite possibly 9/11 itself might have been avoided had Gore been the President...but we have Obama now, so maybe, maybe things will be all right, and if we had Gore, we might not have made history on November 4, 2008...but it's a hefty price. There's really no way to win here.

Lots of babysitting this weekend...joy. Still, I'll make some money from it.

Matthew McConaughey is NOT sexier than Daniel Craig, and Christian Bale is not sexier than Matt Damon. This list is made of lies. Oh, TV Guide...it's fun to see what you tell people to think. I CALL YOUR BLUFF. Your move, TV Guide, your move...

Jellyfish: Adorable little bastards of the deep. Also, orcas are JERKS.

2009-03-12T06:41:33Z

Monday was fun - I got to see Jabari, who is down from college this week! We played lots of Guild Wars and Burnout 3, and walked to Baja Fresh and Ben & Jerry's (mmm...Yes Pecan...), and I only left at about 10:30 in the evening because mom was a little worried about the Metro at night and me being a sole female. I tried to reassure her that I had my Swiss army knife and thus could shank people, but she was having none of it. So, sadface. But there was some awesome graffiti of Obama and the Joker on the way over, which was pretty damn epic.

And it seems that everybody and their pet chinchilla is back from college, because Meredyth called me on Tuesday, and we decided to hang out as well! We ended up at the National Museum of Natural History, which is known colloquially (at least by me) as "DINOSAURS!!!!11``one". We spent most of our time in the new Oceans exhibit, which is actually pretty cool and has live tropical fish (!) and a whole bunch of pickled specimens, models that hang from the ceiling (GIANT LION JELLYFISH AAARGH) and epic sections about fishcreatures that live where no sunlight ever touches. Bioluminescence is pretty damn spiffy. After finding ice cream to temporarily sate our hunger, we walked up Constitution and 15th past the White House (because that is what I do, okay, it is where I hang out and contemplate my future), and I'm pretty sure we weirded out a bunch of staffers who were congregating by the gate, because we were being our spazzy selves. I also got to give the Grand Tour (read: "And that is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, formerly known as the Old Executive Office Building, which I still call the OEOB because, let's face it, the DDEEOB is...a very cumbersome acronym. And also there is the White House on your left."), and that was amusing. The weather was creepily nice, too...it was scary.

After our wacky hijinks, we drove to Chipotle for some delicious food. (Ice cream and chicken tacos seem to be my diet of choice.) Then we made things with felt, played Manhunt 2, and watched the first half of Patriot Games...which seriously made an impact on my brainbox, if my dreams are any indication.

Okay, so I had some seriously fucked-up dreams last night and this is why I should never play Manhunt 2 and watch half of Patriot Games just before sleeping. Because then my brain comes up with weird shit like zombie invasions at some summer camp or other with me leading the charge with my shotgun and their heads exploding like overripe watermelons (that was all Manhunt's doing...I was disappointed when watching Patriot Games later and people's heads didn't explode into chunks when they got shot). And after that, the scene sort of shifted to a Metro station, which I'm pretty sure was either Gallery Pl/Chinatown or Metro Center, and I was wandering around until I saw (no shit) Jed Bartlet, Abbey Bartlet, and Leo McGarry, which makes no sense because none of them would ever have to take the Metro since Jed is, you know, the fucking fictional president and all. I walked up to them and was like "Guys! 8D" and they were free with the hugs and said, "Hey, we've been looking for you, come on, let's all go to the Situation Room, there's shit going down," which of course made me very happy, because at this point I'm still just 18-year-old me, not an actual adult. (Oh, who am I kidding...I'd be happy as a clam no matter what my age.) So then the scene sort of shifted again to the basement of the White House, and as I was following them into the Sit Room, I noticed the bowl of M&Ms just outside, like there is IRL (oh Obama admin I love you so much), and I was all, "Oooh, delicious political M&Ms," because of course in dreamland I am as much of a spaz as I am when I'm awake. So I grabbed a handful as I walked towards the room, but then I slipped on the floor and hit my head on the right side. It really hurt, and when I touched where I had hit my head, my fingers came away bloody. "Shit." So I held my hand to my head and walked into the Situation Room (which was for some reason looking like something out of Hogwarts and not the White House), and I remembered that Abbey was a doctor. "Dr. Bartlet?" I said, looking around for her. "I fell down..." She told me to lie down and that she'd get me an ice pack, and not to fall asleep...all sound advice for someone who's just had a concussion, really.

That was when things got weird.

Then the scene mutated to this war zone around this castle that was falling apart - that was where the West Wing people were. I was out on the battlefield, with three manuals - the official Army manual, a basic simple English version of the same (the Army Field Manual for Dummies, pretty much), and finally, a version in Ebonics (wtf, brain?!). It was a sort of futuristic battle, and I think we were still fighting zombies...except they were smart zombies. And my head was still bleeding. I was behind a whole bunch of other soldiers, and we fired off a blue phosphorus missile into the enemy zombies (just like white phosphorus, only...blue for some reason). Then they shot something back, and a lot of the people in front of me died and fell back onto me...so I was being protected by the dead and wounded only by virtue of being in the middle of the column. So much survivor's guilt.

The perspective changed then, just like I was playing a video game - I even remember seeing the pause menu and hitting something to switch characters, and then I was back and fully immersed in the dream-world again, only now I was Bartlet. The old castle was crumbling and besieged, and half of the top level that we were on was open and bare. We were trying to move down to the bottom, but before we could, Abbey got shot in the leg...and I-as-Bartlet had to help her, because she's my/Bartlet's wife...and of course, he's got a doctorate in economics, not medicine. So she was starting to talk him/me through what to do to get the bullet out of her leg (wtf, she's a thoracic surgeon...how much experience would she have with gunshot wounds?) and I-as-Bartlet was getting some epic survivor's guilt about getting shot at Rosslyn in season 1/2 and how we hadn't been able to protect Abbey this time (even though, lol, she wasn't AT Rosslyn)...and then Meredyth's phone alarm went off and I woke up.

And I'm not even going to get into the dream from a few nights ago where I was Susan Sto-Helit's apprentice Death type dealie, scythe and all, with a small glowing blue scar on my collarbone. WTF brain.

I went home, half-collapsed on my bed, and had a tuna sandwich for breakfast (at 1 pm) - oh, my glorious life. And then tilapia fillets for dinner. I seem to have transitioned to a fish diet instead of tacos and ice cream. I am not sure if I am pleased by this turn of events. I have started watching Dollhouse, and I have to say, I like it. It is strange, but I do enjoy it. And on top of that, Guild Wars has me in its delicious, delicious tentacles once more. I finally made it to Zen Daijun...which means I will soon be off of Shing Jea Island! (It only took me what, like two years.)

Also, I am putting bets on Matt Damon coming to DC in the next month to hang out with Nancy Pelosi...perhaps to do some location scouting for the fourth Bourne movie. The Bourne Legislation? Mr. Bourne Goes to Washington?

...I'll get my coat. (Wait, this is my blog...)

"I am turning into one of the funnel people."

2009-03-09T03:34:47Z

Strikeouts mean completion, italics mean a resolution is in progress. Most qualitative resolutions are considered "in progress".

Get into college. (Ideally, get into Hopkins or Swarthmore.)
Gain some conversational skills.
Dress more like a girl.
Take better care of my body - my skin (get rid of my face-ne...and rest-of-me-ne), my slight chub factor (do more DDR, walking, etc.), and eat better overall.
Go abroad. (Whether for a week or a couple of months. I need to be on a plane.)
Become more active in politics and activism - whether just locally or on a larger scale, life permitting.
~~Attend Obama's inauguration!~~
Purchase resin!Rupert and possibly Nacht. (This one is a bit selfish...but I'm allowed to be selfish every once in a blue.)
Be a nicer person overall - less overhanded snark, more genuine caring.
Be wittier.
~~Watch season 7 of The West Wing.~~
Improve my creative talents - sewing, drawing, writing, singing.
Beat NaNoWriMo for the fourth year in a row, probably with Erebus, the third book of my unnamed series.
Take better advantage of any opportunities presented to me.
Work on comic projects - maybe even start a webcomic.
Start an "issue blog".
Come to that, update LJ more often! I went three whole months without posting - waste of a paid account, if you ask me. I'll be better. I promise.
Punch out a dinosaur.
Be less timid; ask more questions, especially of friends.
Beat some video games, Manhunt 2 among them.
Write more! Especially Butterfly Effect, WW fanfiction, and FAIL. Also, actually start Wilderness of Mirrors - I've had chapter one half-baked for about a year.
Be more active on Landel's! Active enough to warrant a fifth character...I'm looking at you, Jed Bartlet! Or maybe Leo. I'll be The One Who Plays All The Alcoholics and/or Old Dudes With Canes. Not like there's a problem with that. x3
Acquire some sort of love interest - whether male or female, idk. But probably preferably male.
Be more confident in myself. I'm smart, talented, and apparently pretty. It's time I lived up to the potential people see in me.
Visit more DC sights and government buildings.
Be called evil by Sarah Palin.

Analysis: Not great. Granted, most of my resolutions are qualitative, not quantitative, or haven't yet occurred (e.g. NaNoWriMo). It's just...God, what am I doing with my life? Answer: Not a hell of a lot. But that's going to change, I hope. The waiting for the letters is killing me.

Also: Man, it is really hard to find either one of the SNL West Wing parody sketches. My Google-fu is failing me. But this...oh my God, it is, how you say, AMAZING.

Oh, and Daylight Savings Time can bite my ass.

Today, I woke up at almost noon (this is why DST can bite my ass) and we went into DC. Once there, mom had to get things from her office and I was not allowed up, so I walked on down to the White House and had an interesting debate with a ~~crazy person~~ protester who was saying erroneous things about Obama's birth certificate. I wonder if he knows he got his ass whooped by an 18-year-old girl?

Afterwards, we had lunch and went to the Kennedy Center's Arabesque festival to take pictures of pretty Arabian bridal gowns and other such lovely things. Little did we know that (Sir!) Ted Kennedy's birthday party was being held there! I got pictures of some people as they came in, though my computer refused to take a picture of John McCain. We did not get to see Obama, though; I think he snuck in, or as much as the President of the United States can sneak into anyplace. But he was definitely there. Yay, I was in the same building as the President and also less than 10 feet away from Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry and Chris Matthews at one point, so \o/!

Yes, my life is fascinating. And I am not a dork at all. No, sir. Nooooo, sir.

(And adding to my not-dorkdom, I also just re-watched "Bartlet For America" and I swear to God, that is the episode where I fell in love with Leo, for serious and for sure. The drinking, and the MS attack, and the napkin - oh my GOD, the napkin made me almost cry and it made Leo almost cry and and and and I love Leo.)

The Late Entry With Alex V! (Replacing your old host, CONAN! But not really.)

2009-03-07T06:22:57Z

...this entry was supposed to be up a week ago. I fail, I know.

Last Wednesday, I went to the Newseum! I was very excited about this because I hadn't been in about eight years - since they packed up from their Rosslyn location (Fun Fact: Where the finale/opening of seasons 1 and 2 of The West Wing were filmed). Neeewwwsss. It was very awesome despite being one of the only pay-to-enter museums in DC. The Smithsonian has spoiled me.

That Saturday, I went over to Rachel's house and then we went a-lasertagging with David. It was fun, because we ran into the American University College Democrats club, and they were pretty cool people. There were also a mass of wankster posers...one of whom grabbed Rachel's gun. If you know me IRL, you know that, when startled or angry, I tend to break into a Tourette's-like fit of compulsive, nonsensical swearing. And when I did such, they were like "Aaaw, shit son, yeah, Jesus Fuck, yeah, you betta reco'nahze!" Obviously we had to kill them. And we did. The posers got SPANKED. They had 50,000 points at the end of the game...we had 100,000. SUCK IT, YOU LOSERS, YOU WERE ACTING ALL HOOD AND TWO SKINNY-ASS SHORT GIRLS AND A BADASS RUSSIAN BEAT YOUR ASSES DOWN. (That was incredibly therapeutic. Also, we were the Three Musketeers! Markoff was Porthos, Rachel was Athos, and I was Aramis.)

The rest of my life is incredibly interesting, and by that I mean boring as all hell. Except I did get really pissed at CollegeBoard due to the CSS/PROFILE costing me ninety bucks. The only other interesting thing I did was on this past Wednesday, I went up to Capitol Hill to find a job. And, and, and, I am so super mega excited about this, I got to see the Senate Subway. Though sadly I could not board. That privilege is reserved for...you know...actual Senate members. The rest of my time on the Hill was spent enjoying the sunlight, hearing snippets of conversations (including some interesting stories that Capitol Police were telling that I sadly could not loiter to listen to) and moving my ass from Rayburn to Russell to Dirksen. Also, Gordon Brown was there, so since I had no ID badge I couldn't actually walk on the grounds of the Capitol proper. Such is my life. Further details-or-lack-thereof on my Twitter, because I am a lazy person and will not recap again here. Yes, I know, I'm using more energy linking you to my Twitter and explaining why than I would if I just flat out recapped it. Good point, but I don't care. (Note: I am still pissed as all hell about the fact that there was no AP Gov trip and thus no getting to wander freely around the Hill with classmates, boarding the Senate Subway, and casually bumping into the next President of the United States TOTALLY BY ACCIDENT, because I know that would have happened and and and and just argh.)

Oh, and today I went to Christine's house to hang out with Stephanie and Sara, and then we all played Star Wars: Battlefront II. Productive. Useful. Not lame. Even though Christine and I did get into a scarily well-informed argument about which Jedi classes can wield which color lightsaber. And then we talked about Jedi Sentinels and silver lightsabers which are TEH RAREST!!!!111`1 and obviously the best. The black-crystal lightsabers were evil and unstable and oh look here I go. Never let me browse Wookieepedia again!

It snowed! I forgot about that! ...yeah, that's about it. It snowed. Six inches or thereabouts. And now temperatures have soared to the mid-60s, and all of my pretty, school-closing snow has disappeared. (Pause for tears.)

My life. It is so interesting. Now I'm going to go feed my doll hobby. That's a full lid, all, good night!

The Oscars! And a dream about Joe Biden. (Not necessarily in that order.)

2009-02-23T07:53:21Z

I had a dream a couple of nights ago that I was Joe Biden's Chief of Staff at what seemed to be a Fourth of July picnic at the White House...except I was still 18. And Jill was there, and there was hugs tiem from everyone, and I woke up feeling extremely pleased for about a second until I realized that it didn't actually happen. Oh well...maybe it's a sign. A sign of what, exactly, I don't know.

I saw Slumdog Millionaire a few days ago! I have only this advice to offer: GO SEE IT. NOW.

I fell off the wagon. And by that I mean I started watching The West Wing again. When am I just going to break down and buy it? Answer: When I have accumulated enough babysitting money to do so. Then, to Amazon.com! Yeah, I have been babysitting a lot. Hey, it's as close to steady work as I have come in recent days...and since I get between eight and ten dollars an hour for doing it, I'm down with that.

And of course, it's time for what is to become an annual tradition that I really should have started while I was actually watching the Oscars - Alex's 2009 Oscar Blogfest Extravaganza In Space With A Thousand Elephants Mega Super Ultra Super Mega Hyper Raving Dancefest Monster Truck Rally Kickass Popcorn-Stravaganza! On a stick.

First off, I was a little worried about the lack of an opening skit, but Hugh Jackman (♥!) put my fears to rest with a fantastically epic sketch, in which props and sets are constructed of random crap (e.g., pizza boxes), as well as it being a song and dance number. So I was pleasantly surprised, because that was really funny - I was in for a good night, if nothing else. I also was a fan of the musicals tribute, put together by Baz Luhrmann himself - well done, sir! The 2008 Movie Yearbook pieces were also quite amusing, especially the Comedy one, starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, which took off on their film Pineapple Express. My favorite was when they thought The Reader was a comedy.

Now, to the awards themselves!

Best Supporting Actress - Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Didn't see the film, so I have no idea if this is justified or not, but I think it is. She's a great actress.

Best Supporting Actor - Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (posthumous)
Heath winning was the easy money tonight. I was personally hoping for Robert Downey, Jr. to squeak out ahead (for the sheer epic absurdity of the dude playing the dude who is the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude winning an Oscar), but I knew that Heath was going to walk away (figuratively) with the award tonight. Let's face it, his Joker was excellent - certainly Oscar-worthy on his own - but the added tragedy that Ledger died while The Dark Knight was in post added to the weight behind his nomination and subsequent win. Congratulations, Heath. ♥

Best Original Screenplay - Dustin Lance Black, Milk
Again, I did not get a chance to see Milk, but I thought that Mr. Black's speech was touching. And adorabibble. (Whoops, and there went any credibility I may have been trying to establish as an entertainment reporter.)

Best Adapted Screenplay - Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
I was not surprised about this at all! The movie was put together so intricately, the screenplay had to be a work of mind-bending cleverness to make it all fit within the framing device (the game show) that becomes the plot, and seriously I cannot rate this movie enough.

Best Animated Feature - WALL-E
Oh, LIKE THERE WAS ANY DOUBT. Pssshhh. If either of the other two would have won, the Academy would have had to do some serious re-examining of its priorities, that is for goddamn sure. Fuck yeah, Wall-E. \m/

Best Art Direction - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
I have to agree here, although The Dark Knight had some superb art direction. It's hard enough to do one period piece - Benjamin Button was like doing seven. Well done!

Best Costume Design - The Duchess
Lord, those were some beautiful, sumptuous costumes in that film. Not my style - I would have gone with...uh...anything else, but that's what appeals to my aesthetic sensibilities. Plus, I think clothes from the 1930s-1970s - you know, suits, work clothes - are wonderful and also a bitch to draw.

Best Cinematography - Slumdog Millionaire
Ohhh Godddd Yesssss. That's really all I have to say - each shot in that film was almost like art.

Best Makeup - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Old-age makeup always wins, though Hellboy II and The Dark Knight also had some absolutely fantastic makeup jobs (TDK mostly for the now-iconic Joker Greasepaint). But old-age makeup always wins - and with TCCoBB, it's easy to see why.

Best Visual Effects - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
See above - but the tricks they used to ageify Brad Pitt and put his head on other people's bodies were seamless.

Best Sound Mixing - Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog almost totally sweeps the sound categories, and there's really almost no contest. Having Bollywood roots, it is heavily focused on sound and music, right down to the little melodies of everyday life in the Mumbai slums. (Oh my God you guys, I am so deep, I could be a journalist.)

Best Sound Editing - The Dark Knight
I was a little disappointed that Iron Man was totally shut out of any wins, but TDK had some quite glorious sound editing. Try watching it in IMAX!

Best Original Score - A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
I'm a fan of A.R. Rahman's anyway, but the score for Slumdog is just glory on a boat. (Though I am a bit irritated that Quantum of Solace's David Arnold score didn't get so much as an Oscar nod...it's quite atmospheric.)

Best Original Song - "Jai Ho", A.R. Rahman (music), Gulzar (lyrics), Slumdog Millionaire
Is it bad that I was dancing when this was announced? And singing along? Jai Ho is fucking catchy, my friends. Though I wish they hadn't cut "O...Saya" off during the presentation before M.I.A. got to sing.

And now we come to the big guns, ladies and gentlemen. The four awards that everyone and their pet rabbit cares about - Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Moviefilm! Drumroll, please!

Best Director - Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Not really a surprise - and I love it. The screenplay was only a success because of the director, and so was the editing. Danny Boyle turned Slumdog into The Little Film That Could, and he also did an adorabibble (my credentials!) Tigger-hop after winning the award.

Best Actress - Kate Winslet, The Reader
Alex's Film Rule of Award Nominations - If it has Nazis, it will win. Kind of like a reverse Godwin. I have not yet seen The Reader, but by all accounts, Kate Winslet is very good, and I always like her, so I will call this award justified.

Best Actor - Sean Penn, Milk
UWHAAAAAAAT? UPSET, UPSET! Nate Silver's got to be chewing on a pen right now, because he had Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler down to win it. First Nebraska, now this? Come on, up your game, Nate. :P Nonetheless, it set the stage for more soapboxing about Prop 8 (and Sean Penn is prone to soapboxing anyway) - not like that's a problem, it's just when the time limit on speechifyin' is blatantly ignored I get a minor case of the irrits. (I would have liked for Frank Langella to win, though.)

Best Picture - ... (wait for it) ... Slumdog Millionaire!!!
Oh, wow! This is...this is incredible! Oh my God! They brought the kids, the little kids from the slums who played Salim and Latika at age like seven and ohmygodthey'resocuuuuute ♥ *ahem* All fangirling aside, Slumdog was clearly the best and proper choice for Best Picture. Because...because it was just so daaaaaammmmnnnn. Watch it, you'll get what I'm talking about.

For Best Foreign-Language Film, Best Animated Short, Best Live-Action Short, Best Documentary Short, and Best Documentary Feature, I'm afraid I cannot comment as I am uninformed about all the nominees except Oktapodi, which didn't win anyway. Sorry.

Final Wrap-Up
Among those nominated who got gypped are Doubt, Changeling, Revolutionary Road, Frost/Nixon, and The Wrestler, which really surprised me, due to the amount of critical buzz each film generated. Benny B (seriously, fuck typing out the whole thing again) cleaned up in the makeup and design department, for the most part, just as I expected it to. I was surprised that Wall-E only got the Animated Feature award, but it was well-represented with six nominations, being the first animated film since Beauty and the Beast to garner so many. Iron Man and RDJ in general got screwed, which I am not happy with, but I do think that the best man/moviefilm did truly win in each category. (Except for maybe sound editing - I thought Wall-E had that all wrapped up.) I was also surprised that Benny B didn't get more than three awards, and all for technical things, since it was nominated for 13. Jeez, guys, The Bourne Ultimatum swept all categories it was in (all technical but you shut your piehole plz). Let me reiterate - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has the same number of Oscars as Matt Damon running around and kicking ass for two hours. The aforementioned ass-kicking-fest has more Oscars than a movie about the struggle for gay rights and the first openly gay man elected to public office in this country. A movie about Batman (a very good movie about Batman, but a movie about Batman) has more Oscars, including an acting one, than a movie about Richard Nixon. Robert Downey, Jr. was nominated for playing an Australian actor in blackface...and he lost to a dead real Australian guy playing a deranged, psychotic clown! With green hair!

To wit: I fuckin' love Hollywood, you guys, don't ever change.

That's a full lid, scumbags (and I mean that not as an insult, but the way Rahm Emanuel says it, which is so much more meaningful, I think)! See you next time on Alex's Oscar Wrap-Up Blagojevich Something Something Hyper Mega Kamehameha Wave Bonbon Hummer H2 Radioactive Mechanical Steampunk Dork-stravaganza! With cake!

That is all, you may go. Stay classy, now.

...okay, I gotta go to bed, I'm going a little loopy. Peace out.

Is it just me, or would "Nuclear Sea of Fire" be a BITCHIN' name for a band?

2009-02-17T20:25:30Z

Okay, so the interviews went well! Or at least passably well. I wouldn't say that they were 'fun', but I did not make a complete fool of myself, at least. I felt like I was going to lose my lunch all through the Tufts inty, but I think it was less due to nervousness and more due to me catching Josie's stomach AIDS. Yeaaahhh. So I was down and out for a few days with that. I've actually been working out, using the rebounder (mini-trampoline to you) and the Air Climber (which is basically a ghetto stairmaster/foot-powered bellows). Since I decided to do Workout Time, I created an appropriately heinous Workout Outfit that Alyssa Milano's Teen Steam video from the 1980s would have been jealous of. The outfit consists of large olive-green gym shorts, a Survivor: Marquesas turquoise buff (because I am small-boned I can use it as a top - great success!), and a bright orange PNC Bank earmuff headband (to keep my earbuds in, of course). So I have been doing that on and off, because I must be in shape to be like my role model of the now, Jason Bourne. (Well...he's a role model of the now. My other role models of the now are the entire cast of The West Wing...and by extension, Aaron Sorkin.)

I've also taken to having a lollipop addiction. I'm like Kojak with the bloody things, it's great. (And also why I am working out - I do not want my new habit to make me fat and ugly.)

On Wednesday I went to Capitol Hill to look for a job...

Wed Feb 11, 2009 - 12:05 pm - outside the Capitol

Well, it'd be a nice day for sailing today. Warm...nice breeze. Not like February at all. Today I've come down here to find a job. Read: Going to my senators' and representative's offices and asking nicely whilst handing out copies of my CV. I should probably change my shoes. I have got sneakers on. I need a map...I'm also going to check the LoC. Who knows, maybe I have something to offer them. I felt out of place when I got to Cannon - a bunch of Important People were coming out and talking, and all I wanted to do was follow them to their power lunch and ask questions, but that's just not done. I still feel a bit out of place, but not as much as I have been. I'm getting calmer. I'm gaining self-confidence. Hell, I actually think I can DO this! Now to locate a map. I'ma rock this joint. Yes.

12:50 pm - Rayburn

I am officially living in a Tex Avery cartoon, and I know this for a fact. Went to LoC to find job, redirected to other receptionist, redirected to other building. No receptionist there - this is important. Went to 6th floor. Wandered around to find HR. Was redirected by them to 1st floor. Sign on hiring door says to see the receptionist - who isn't there. Grah!

Note from the future: Tyler was there! The National Youth Leadership Conference was going on all last week - I would have gone if I could a few years back, but familial circumstances (read: lack of money) prevented that. I am so pissed, because Tyler told me all about it and it sounded super fucking cool. I thought I'd seen Tyler there, but I couldn't be sure until he told me where he'd been all week. So that was funny. And mildly depressing. (Dammit, I deserved that! I wanted to gooooo!)

On Thursday I had to wake up early because we were driving to Pennsylvania for a funeral. Yeah, I know. And back. Same day. The funeral was for my mom's ex-brother-in-law - we're on good terms with the whole family, including her (first) ex-husband (not my father - that would probably make me about forty). They're great people, and I really do love them, but I wish I'd been able to spend more time with Dan. I think I only met him once, at Christmas, and he died quite suddenly.

So I had to go to church. And no, I did not burst into flames the minute I stepped through the door, thanks loads. (Although I was a little worried there.) The service was followed by a light luncheon, during which everyone got to catch up with everyone else on everything that's happened. Like I said, it was nice to see everyone again...though I wish it had been under different circumstances.

After the funeral, we called Meredyth (lyriael) to see if she wouldn't mind us popping 'round Swarthmore (we were in Glenside, about 20 minutes away) and giving us a tour. After a response of "OMG HELL YEAH", we went. I like Swat, and it was great to see Meredyth again (I know, a broken record is me). She showed us all around the campus and I got to ask her questions about the college. Seriously, if you're visiting a college, if at all possible, have a friend show you around. It's about a squillion times more fun. (Yes, a squillion...it's greater than trillion by about six orders of magnitude. And has tentacles and tastes rather oniony.) We found a bunch of discarded marine soil with dead crabs in it. I picked one up and named it Quincy before returning it to its natural habitat of the nearby birdbath. There were pictures taken and fun had, and ginger ale bottles exploding (no, really). She also was able to get us into the greenhouse, where she works, and her dorm, which we had to drive her to since it's about a 20-minute walk from the main campus (no, really). That was also fun. We had to leave before it got dark, since mom hates driving down side streets she doesn't know when it's late.

On Friday we watched W, which is actually rather good - Josh Brolin is scary accurate as no. 43, it's really freaky. Jeffrey Wright was an awesome Colin Powell (but I love him anyway), and Richard Dreyfus was Dick Cheney. It was...frightening. But a good movie, if you can get over the omgwhat factor!

Couldn't go to Katsucon due to family funds being insufficient to spend on fun, so I babysat all weekend, and ended up at Rachel's house (where I am pretty sure my coat has ended up, so I need to check on that). We went to Ultrazone and shot things with laser guns. That was fun - I even dressed like a girl for once. Weird, I know, right? And someone asked Rachel for her number and there was no interest in me. Oh well. Screw the rules, I have-- oh. No I don't. Never mind.

Yeah. The Sims decided to crash and burn, so I had to install it on my internal HD, and move my West Wing nooblets to a new house, and then furnish that house. I hate furnishing. But I had to, so damn. That's about it for my interesting life this week. I mean, I applied to some temp agencies too, but nobody wants to hear about that. So here's hoping I can maybe get a job somewhere soon that I don't actually despise?

Been cleaning the kitchen all day. Huzzah! (God, my life is lame.)

Regarding the entry's title...Google it. Seriously. "Nuclear Sea of Fire". Just do it.

...also, I need a shirt with Toby on it and that little Windows-styled dialog box graphic that says "Attempting to give a fuck...operation failed. Fuck not given." It would be awesome.

Also: Why do I keep thinking that Chuck Todd looks waaayyyy too much like Danny Concannon for comfort? Or do all bearded ginger reporters just look alike? Uh-oh...the Obama administration is The West Wing! Right down to the freaking Press Corps! (Never mind that Danny worked for the Post and Chuck works for NBC. It still counts!)

...if he starts hitting on Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, I quit like forever. (Gibbs looks nothing like Allison Janney, but...)

Flaming Szechuan Pickle

Alex goes back to THE FUTURE!...three months late.

*noisemaker*

Year 19, INITIATE!

I love college~

And you, who loved to love...♥

Not gonna lie, my life is awesome.

CIA frisbees and an addition to Alex's Menagerie of Crazy

Quick! To the Zed-Cave!

"Using Powerpoint for EVIL?! You are SUCH a PC." lol jon stewart

Journalism Wow! \o/

The Best [bleep]ing News Girl Ever

Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

Cookout at Joey B.'s place!

Why does no auto-focus feature exist? Accursed camera.

THE BEST DAY EVER \o/

In which Alex abuses the shift key due to EXCITEMENT!!!11one`

twice bitten, forever shy

there is a pile of environmental papers practically up to my waist

Of jobs and a fortuitous letter

I said tell me your name is it sweet? She said my boy it's Dagger, oh yeah~

Jellyfish: Adorable little bastards of the deep. Also, orcas are JERKS.

"I am turning into one of the funnel people."

The Late Entry With Alex V! (Replacing your old host, CONAN! But not really.)

The Oscars! And a dream about Joe Biden. (Not necessarily in that order.)

Is it just me, or would "Nuclear Sea of Fire" be a BITCHIN' name for a band?

noisemaker