Puttin

I'm thinking about moving out of this dorm room. I've been thinking about it all semester, but these last 24 hours have put the idea in the front of my head.

It started around 2am, when my roommate thought she'd eat the noisiest bag of chips in the world for about an hour. She does that every weekend morning, and it always wakes me up, but I never said anything because hey, the weekend is the weekend, and she does it at like 8am anyways. But two in the freaking morning? On a school night? Not even a little bit okay.

Then there's the fact that the room has stunk all week. Today, I decided to go looking for the stench. Underneath my roommate's old pizza boxes that had moldy pizza in them, I found the thing that had been stinking up the room: A takeout container of old (and moldy) lasagna, heavy on the garlic. There's also a Tupperware container of moldy nachos rotting by the sink. She obviously doesn't know how to deal with food, or understand that it goes bad after a week and it turns into poison and starts to smell and should have gone in the fridge in the first place and stuff like that.

There are also two things I asked her not to do; I explicitly stated them when we put together the roommate contract. The first was to never touch my pens or pencils without asking. That's just because I'm crazy and those things are my breaking point. The second was to never have friends over while I am sleeping, and especially not to bring them around in the mornings when I am still in bed. I had a roommate that did that last year, and it turns out that it is an awful thing to do and I hate it. And I don't know why, but my current roommate keeps doing it. Sometimes I bring it up, and she says it'll never happen again, and other times I don't and I just seethe away into my pillow. This didn't happen today, but it still pisses me off.

I'm in the state of mind right now where if she is noisy and wakes me up again, or brings someone into the room again while I'm asleep, I'll just flip out and jump out of bed and tackle her. She can definitely take me down, but I've got crazy on my side.

Come to think of it, I don't have a problem with this room exactly, I just have a problem with the person living in it... And also I have a problem with its location. I would like it to not be on the other side of campus from the three friends I hang out with the most and the one parking lot that always has parking.

Either way, I got a letter in the mail today from housing asking me to verify that I am going to be in this same room this spring. So now is my chance to meet up with the lady behind the desk and arrange a new living situation. I already know of an open double-as-single room in South Hedges, and I have heard from a good source that there are going to be more open soon. And it just so happens that South Hedges is on the side of campus I want to live. I'll have to pay a lot more for housing, but I will be so much happier. I think this is going to work out well.

Cactus

To dearest Greg, who commented on my last entry,

I feel for you man, I really do. Also, who are you and how did you find my blog? You're blowing my mind over here.

Sincerely, Me!

My pathetic Halloween costume could be doing better at this point in time. It's never been much, but just now I've decided to ditch the outer sweater in the name of fashion, and I'm not entirely sure how to get the sword to attach to my back. It's also gone from being a knife in my back to being a sword in my back. I'm also running out of time to put the entire thing together, since Anime Club decided to bump out Halloween event from Sunday to Friday. I object to that because of the costume thing, and because it nows means I have no plans for Halloween, and no backup plans at all. How very sad.

So there is this drawing I've been working on. It involves a guy with his head completely tilted back. It's a difficult angle to draw, and it's impossible to find any references of a head at such an extreme angle. It's also been really hard trying to take a picture of myself with my head so far tilted back with only the camera on my phone. It's not like I can see what I'm doing. But I will persevere, because I really like how this image is turning out and I am having fun with all of the fiddly detailing that takes hours and hours to do. I'll consider showing you if I can ever find a way to get it onto my computer.

Anosmia

I tell people a lot that I don't have a sense of smell, but that is a lie. I do have a sense of smell, it is just really messed up. I know what things are supposed to smell like. Nine times out of ten, they smell completely wrong. I mean, my sense of smell used to be just fine, I haven't forgotten what things smell like. So it's not like I'm just confused about what things should smell like...

Here, let me give you an example.

I was melting some chocolate in a microwave with a friend. She went "Mmm, melted chocolate always smells so good," and then I held my nose because I thought it smelled horribly like burning rotten meat. Once the chocolate had cooled down, I took a sniff and it smelled like chocolate again.

There are some things that I can no longer smell: Cheddar cheese, certain flowers, and really random food items. Their scent is just completely gone to me. There are some things that I can smell correctly all of the time: Citrus, engine exhaust, poop, garlic. Everything else it seems like complete chance what will happen when I smell it. Usually it comes out really weird, "Your soap smells like duct tape," other times it smells completely normal, and sometimes I just can't smell it at all.

I don't know what caused my sense of smell to be like this. I don't know when it happened, but I do know it used to be just fine. I don't know what triggers it, and I don't know why some days it seems to be back to normal. I can taste everything just perfectly no matter what my sense of smell is doing. It is only a hindrance on days when everything smells extremely awful. And because of those days, I travel with a perfume stick and some spray that I can always smell that seems to covers up other bad smells just fine.

Anyways, I bring this up because I plugged in a cucumber melon scented thing, and it smells like peanuts and Chinese food to me.

Live Yesterday

I'm considering taking up a religion. We've been discussing Buddhism a lot in my Japanese Literature class. One basic idea of Buddhism, it seems, is that life is suffering, and suffering is caused by desire. Therefore, one should try to live life without desire. I like the way that works out--It encourages you to live simply and within your means. It causes you to take on a different view of life. It does not tell you what is right or wrong about another person, it just tells you how you should govern yourself. That is what I want in a religion, a way of thinking that will make me see the world in a different light, and will cause me to strive for something greater. In Buddhism's case, the something greater is enlightenment.

Unfortunately, I completely disagree with the idea that suffering is caused by desire. Desiring things is fun and healthy, there is no way I'm going to cut it out of my life. So Buddhism is not for me.

... But I might limit what I desire. Material things are pretty worthless in the end, so maybe I'll just desire more fulfilling things. Like earning my degree.

I was considering just sticking to Christianity, since that is what I was raised with and a lot of its values are just common sense to me. Plus, I already own a copy of the Bible. But there is so much stigma with that religion, and there are too many disagreements about how it should be practiced. I do not want to be associated with the people that have taken the religion too far. I just want to follow the ideas like "Turn the other cheek," and "Love thy neighbor." I feel like the actual stories and words are irrelevant, and the morals and ideas behind them are what I should listen to. But I don't know of any flavor of Christianity that thinks like I do.

I don't know enough about other religions to form any sort of idea about them. I'm thinking I'll just go out and buy some Dummies' Guides to a few popular religions, and see what they teach. I want to research old and possibly dead religions, and see what sorts of values they had as well. I'm probably not going to do any of this, though. I'm pretty lazy about these things.

My biggest problem with finding a religion that suits me will probably be that I pretty much reject the idea of a God. (I hope I don't accidentally offend people in this paragraph.) I have never been much into idol worship. Yeah, Jesus was a great guy and he did good things, and I'll do what I can to be like him, but I am not going to devote my life to worshiping and loving him. Or his dad. I find the whole idea of his dad to be absolutely baffling, but that is something for a later day. I just can't get into a religion where the whole point is to worship some being that may or may not exist. It's cool to admire strong figures in a religion, but worshiping them shouldn't be necessary.

In that same vein, stories of a supernatural being strike me as more of a bedtime story. The story where Jesus turns one fish and one loaf of bread into many fish and many loaves of bread is a good example of this. It's impossible, and I don't think it happened, and there is no reason why I should go about life as if it actually happened in the past. But it is a great story, that shows how Jesus was a good person that cared for others and did whatever was in his power to help. The story should be used to teach people what they should be like, as another example of how Jesus is a model Christian and you should try to be like him. The morals behind it all are just great, but asking me to firmly believe in it is akin to telling me Superman is real and he's saving people as we speak.

I think I will just stick with being agnostic for the next few years. It seems like the least offensive thing I can be. The popular religions have huge wars and crazies making the news, a lot of people find atheists to be morally offensive (But I do not understand why), and smaller religions tend to have to explain themselves to every person that is unfamiliar with them. So I am agnostic, with a chance of starting my own religion. (I'd really love to start a religion.)

Cafickle

My life has been reduced to sitting around and doing homework. When I'm not doing homework, I'm thinking about homework. Usually thoughts about which homeworks I don't absolutely need to do, and how I can get out of the ones that are required. That game I was programming last month? Dropped it. My knitting hobbies? Ignored for months. Video games? I allow myself to play for maybe 30 minutes at a time a few nights a week before I go to bed. If I want to play more, I risk getting less sleep than I need to feel alive. My life is so two dimensional right now that it horrifies me. I also haven't been eating so well lately, because my schedule has become so erratic. Even though I'm eating dramatically less than normal, I think I might have put on some weight. I can't really tell, though, I'm so skinny that any weight I put on just makes me appear more normal. My skin has been breaking out horribly, though, probably from poor nutrition.

Anyways, despite this sudden turn of stressful events, I believe that I am still a very interesting person. I'm getting all jazzed up about my Halloween costume, for example. It's really nothing special, but putting it together will be a lot of fun for me.

The idea for the costume is just me, but with a knife sticking out of my back. I want there to be blood stained all around the wound, and well as blood dripping form my darkened eyes and mouth. There are going to be three parts to this costume: The clothes, the makeup, and the knife.

The clothes:

Halloween here is notoriously cold. I can't simply attach a knife to my shirt and be done with it, I need a jacket if I want to survive outside. Even a kinda thick sweater will work. As it just so happens, I don't have a single jacket or sweater that I am willing to ruin, so a trip to GoodWill is required. I'm going to cut a slot in the jacket for the knife to fit through, and possibly a slot in the shirt too, depending on how I decide to attach the knife. The idea is that I will be able to remove my jacket (albeit with some difficulty) and still have the knife in my back. Both the jacket and the shirt will have blood stains around the knife. I want this to be gruesome.

The makeup:

I want to have super pale skin, so I'm gonna need to find some really ridiculously pale makeup to dust onto my face and hands. White face paint will be too stark and too messy and too difficult to apply evenly, so hopefully I'll find something. Maybe a pale creamy base makeup with talcum powder patted into it. I don't know, that sort of thing is not what I do well. But I also want to darken my eyes and make them look all sunken in. I'm going to mix up a tiny batch of fake blood and have some dripping from the corner of my mouth and one of my eyes. Because, c'mon, I was stabbed, I am bleeding internally.

The knife!:

I am excited about the knife because I want to make it out of my favorite clay. You know, for durability. I'm going to start out with a thin cardboard base, wrap up the handle part with some masking tape, and just go at it. I haven't decided on what type of knife or how big I want it to be yet. I might go for your average kitchen knife, or I might try a dagger with a pretty handle. I'm thinking I'm going to either paint it with metallic paint or use a glossy top coat, or both, to get it to look kinda like metal.

I also haven't decided on how I'm going to get the knife to attach to me. I'm thinking about wrapping bandages around my chest, and something from that knife is going to be held in place by those bandages. If I do that, then I will absolutely need to cut holes in the shirt and jacket. I'm also looking at really strong magnets embedded in the knife (unlikely, but it would be awesome if it worked), or wires from the knife that can poke through my shirt and then be secured to me by the bandages. The best solution would be the magnets, but the likelihood of finding magnets strong enough and in time is very low.

All I know is, the knife needs to be connected to me, not the shirt. Otherwise it'll sag and flop about.

Putting this costume together at home would be simple and easy, but trying to put it together here in the dorms is going to be where the fun and challenge comes in at. I don't have any of the supplies I need at all. I don't even have a workspace. Just trying to make the clay will be exciting. How many of the materials can I check out at the front desk, and how many materials can I borrow from friends? Will I have to buy all of it? I hope the front desk has drywall compound back there that I can borrow. Otherwise I don't know what I'm going to do with the leftovers. Probably donate it to them. Will they also have a clear finishing spray that I can use? Or... flour?

I can't sculpt the knife here in the dorms. It will take a long time for it to dry, and there isn't enough room in my room for it. I could use one of the little kitchens in the lounge, but I won't be able to sit there for a few days straight to make sure nobody messes with it while it dries. I think I will have to make it in my friend's apartment on her counter. I super hope she lets me.

Then there will also be spraying the outer coating on it. I might skip that part to save space, time, and money. But if I put expensive and strong magnet in it, then I want it to last, so I will have to spray it, and find a place to spray it. There are a lot of fields to use, but which one am I less likely to get yelled at for spraying stuff at?

Anyways, this entry is turning out really long because finishing it means going back to homework. Which, I guess, I'm gonna have to go back to now.

Waikiki

The next person that refuses to go to a dance with me because they think they can't dance will be forced to watch me dance for a solid ten minutes. If they still think they can't dance after that, then they must either be blind or have terrible judgement.

(I'm saying I can't dance, but I still enjoy doing it.)

I have been so busy lately. Dad says it's because I'm starting Real College, no more of this Freshman introductory stuff. The only reason I've had so much work lately is because I've been trying to get ahead in all of my classes. I want my grades to go up, so that my GPA can get better. I have no reason for wanting a higher GPA, so I'm ultimately driven by nothing. Also, I'm noticing that all of my classes above the 100-levels are much more interesting, and I'm doing way better in those classes than my only 100-level course. I kind of hate my 100-level class. Sociology 150, you remind me of all of my Freshman classes, therefore I think you are boring as all get out.

I've decided that I want to write a text adventure! Do you like how I revealed that as if it were an exciting fact? I had Griffin come up with the premise for a short game, and now I am trying to make it happen. It's slow going, because I can only work on it when I'm not doing homework, playing video games, hanging out with friends, keeping up with my club duties, or goofing off on the internet. I also don't really know how to work the programming language, so I'm figuring it all out as I go. I've been referring to the in-program documentation a ton, and I recently downloaded a sort of handbook that has been super helpful. I'm hoping to have it done in about a month, and the game should take about 5-10 minutes to play if you don't get distracted doing things like hiding in the closet or checking your phone for the time every few moves.

I want the game to be very modern. It's set in Now, inside of a house built Recently. It's all contained in a house, with maybe a front yard or a backyard if I can find a use for them. The house has the world's wonkiest floor plan because I have no idea how to design a house. I think Griffin will appreciate that, though, because the premise of the game is inspired by Slenderman and House of Leaves. A house with an unusual floor plan makes sense in the context of those things. The player carries around a phone that he can use to check the time (current time is important in the game), and I'm hoping I can figure out how to make it possible for him to receive texts. I want there to be random electronics in the house he can interact with, like a digital camera, a TV, a laptop, all with optional things that will help to further the story. I'm putting a lot of emphasis on the time, windows, lighting, and the stupid floor plan. I hope it all works out well.

I gotta stop writing this entry and continue with my homework. But I really don't want to.

Account Approval

Have you ever asked somebody if they have ever done a thing that is so weird and so oddly specific that you must have done it yourself, and then when they say they have not done it you respond with "Yeah, me neither," even though it is a complete lie?

Yeah, me neither.

I am back at school! Living on campus again. My friend was supposed to move over from Washington with me and be my roommate, but she backed out at the very last second. So I'm living with Mystery Roommate X. She seems pretty chill. She's spent a lot of time this weekend out of the room hanging with her friends, which is fine. She says she will probably be spending a lot more time in the room once school starts up. I'm hoping we'll get to be good enough buddies that we can go and grab dinner together and and watch movies and talk in general. She's not into geeky things like I am, and she is certainly more active than me. But so long as she doesn't mind my homebody habits, I think we'll be fine.

I also got a new computer! I am back to using a PC, and I am pretty jazzed about it. I still have my Mac with me so that I can get everything moved over. Dad wants me to bring it home and give it to him, but I don't know if I am ready to give it up yet. I was really excited about using Scrivener again this November for NaNoWriMo, and it's only available for Mac. But we will see what happens.

What I'm really excited about it that I've got my full version of Photoshop CS2 on here now. This means I won't have to fight with the program anymore to do simple things, like resize. I also have MSPaint again for really simple picture edits, like resizing. As you can see, I'm really excited about resizing my pictures. I can also finally go back to using all of the programs I learned to rely on all of those years ago. I put Noteworthy Composer on here almost immediately. Before iTunes, even! Every time I've complained about how a Mac can't run all of the programs a Windows machine can, that is the program I was thinking of. I'm so very, very happy to have it again.

Class starts tomorrow. Mondays and Fridays are my busiest days, with four of my five classes happening. I think I will be fine, so long as Philosophy doesn't prove to be too boring. It's my last class of the day, and it's a lecture. That is a recipe for disaster. But it's in a very small room (The same room anime club was held in), so I will probably be forced to pay attention and participate.

Okay!