4D Space

Am I the only one out there who can't stand the smell of colognes and perfumes? If I smell it on someone I will immediately leave the vicinity - it's the most vulgar, suffocating smell. The worst is when I'm at work and a perfumed customer comes up to the till - yuck!

I don't find B.O. to be gross, either. I mean, if you bathe regularly and then sweat after working out, the sweat doesn't smell bad, imo. I don't know why people get so squeamish about it. It's just... people smell. And tbh it can be a sexy smell, too.

I think it's sad that people want to hide the natural scent of their bodies, honestly.

( spoilers out the wazoo )

ETA: I like this post.

So uh I haven't looked at the Post Secret website for forever but I took a peek at it recently. There were some text-only comments that listed age and location.

I am seriously paranoid that one of them is about me. Seriously paranoid. The location is the nearby location of someone I know, and though the age of the person listed doesn't match up by a few years, I kind of think it's a personal attempt to fuzzle out being identified just in case (I've done similar things online). If anything that makes it more likely it's who I think it is. The details of the secret I suppose could very easily be about someone else, but the timing! And it just sounds like something that person would say. OMG the paranoia.

I wonder if other people ever get paranoid vibes like this from reading Post Secret. I mean, some of that stuff is pretty universally applicable.

...yeah this is gonna keep me up at night. I'll probably never find out if it is about me, either. But even if it isn't... the sentiment expressed might well be true for the person I know. I WILL NEVER KNOW.

I suppose that even if it is who I think it is... it wouldn't change my attitude or decisions. I kinda already knew half of it. But apologies and words and sentiments don't count for much in my book. If you don't translate it into action it's worthless. And I don't really like hanging around someone who treats me like crap.

I'm taking this introductory psych course for a breadth requirement, and I just looked over the grades for the last quiz, of which there are two for this class. (They're by student number so we don't humiliate ourselves.) I'm honestly amazed at how many people are either failing the class or getting C's. It's honestly a terribly easy class - you just have to read the goddamn textbook (which isn't even that long) and show up to class (and tbh I skip this class quite often and I'm getting A's.) The quiz is entirely multiple choice. I realized that with an 87 in this class I'm in like the top 10 percent, which seems ridiculous to me. Am I just really smart, or is everyone else just lazy as hell? One would think that to get into UBC you have to be able to, you know, read and retain information, but a high number of people in this class just seem incapable of doing that.

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about grades, and we both expressed the opinion that high school is terribly easy and that you just have to show up and do the work to get A's. But... most people don't get straight A's. And it just baffles me as to why they don't: the standard in high school is terribly low. Do they just not want to get good grades, or not care at all about school? Or am I just unusually smart? I don't feel like I'm a genius (I took one of those tests as a kid, and I was above average but not genius level). I just.. show up to class and do the work. Or is my perspective just skewed? Am I giving people too much credit, and everyone's much dumber than I think?

How the hell do you flunk out of an introductory psych course, seriously? My only explanation is that those students are out drinking and partying every weekend instead of doing the reading, but why even enroll in university and pay thousands of dollars in tuition to do that and flunk your classes? What a waste of time and money.

I recently stumbled across a blog post of George R.R. Martin whining about fanfiction. What a doucheface.

The fact that I find his books about as interesting as bricks and would never write fic based on his books anyway aside -

The emotional arguments against fanfiction are ludicrous. Characters are not your children, even if you base them loosely off your actual children (or yourself, which is more likely. I suspect this is the real reason authors don't like people interpreting their characters - because their writing got too damn autobiographical and it approaches RPF levels of squick to see other people write about themselves). I subscribe fully to the death of the author.

As for the copyright argument... I think it's kind of crass, and you're taking it all down to who gets the money. Fantasy and sci-fi authors like to bring up the Marion Zimmer-Bradley incident a lot, but honestly I think she was a victim of a) her own decision to let that one bad fan walk all over her and b) the failure of modern copyright law to provision fairly for this kind of situation.

I think it's pretty obvious by now that copyright laws that were invented a century before the internet are not relevant to the digital age, and that goes doubly for fanfiction and transformative works. And if you look at the history of human storytelling, the greatest stories of the past are collective narratives, often oral traditions, to which many voices contributed over the centuries. And we're still robbing those old stories blind today! When are we going to get sick of Hollywood adapting fairy tales to the screen? When will King Arthur stories stop getting rehashed? When will we stop adapting media? Never. It's human nature to weave stories in a collaborative fashion in this way. (And while we're at it, why is it common practice to make movies out of books but making books out of books is unheard of? Suddenly if you change the media platform it's whole new thing?) We're living in an age where adaptating and transforming media runs rampant, and the law needs to catch the fuck up.

So yeah, GRRM needs to stuff it. I'm certainly never going to waste money on any writer who condemns fanfiction. Way to stifle your fans' creativity and enjoyment of your work, douchenozzle. This is exactly why I stopped reading Robin McKinley and Anne McCaffrey books. If you don't like what I do, I will simply take my time and money elsewhere, and I don't think I'm alone on that count.

You get a trophy on the Metal Gear Solid HD collection version of Peace Walker for shooting someone right in the asshole. It's called "You're pretty good."

...I'm not the only one interpreting that as a Big Boss/Ocelot gay sex joke, am I? Tell me that was intentional. I need to believe it was intentional.

Because all I can think of right now is Ocelot doing his finger guns, saying "You're pretty good" and waggling his eyebrows suggestively at Big Boss.

PS I just recruited Hideo Kojima and stuck him in the medical team. I need crackfic where he nurses Amanda.

I was talking to someone today who teaches gymnastics to kids and he mentioned this book. He said his parents were religious adherents to that style of parenting and he tries to do the same with kids he teaches.

After reading the (fairly lengthly) preview of the book, I think I can say I agree wholeheartedly. When I was a kid I hated and distrusted that sort of attitude from parents and authority figures and I still do now. I think I was always a fairly rebellious child and I can't pin down why, but I have a strong memory from kindergarten - the teacher was teaching us to tie our shoes, and I said I already knew how to do it, and she made me go sit in the corner. I was furious. I think that was the beginning of a long trail of firmly believing authorities are full of shit. And that sort of punishment style is rife in schools - teachers who just punish for their convenience. I had to make so many insincere apologies as a student it's ridiculous. I loathed, loathed, LOATHED apologizing for things I was not sorry for, and saying please just because "it's the magic word". Why? Why do I have to do it? I always questioned why and found it lacking. I never had those moments as an adult where I look back on my childhood and think, "oh, they were right, and I was such a child." That sort of punishment never changed my behaviour. I still know I was right and that punishment is about the convenience of the adult and not the benefit of the child. I think this is the reason I became such an argumentative adult - I was always trying to argue down authority figures and explain the rationale behind what I did, but I was never listened to. "Just obey."

Ultimately I think children raised in this way will either becomes slaves for your approval with low self-esteem or just reject you entirely. My mother was (and still is) a very authoritarian abusive parent who saw her kids as little mini-reflections of her own personal achievement. She was only interested in having an ideal little academically achieving, violin-playing, ~artistic,~ polite and well-behaved pet to make her look good. Get a B on a report card? Easy way to start a shouting match.

She never supported things that I wanted and I learned quickly not to bother even trying to get her support. One of the longest points of contention we had was over computer usage. My mom is pretty old, almost 70, and completely technologically illiterate - she's convinced technology is the devil, basically. She was always railing on me for being on the computer "too much". And yet, she didn't even ask what I was doing! I would try to show her what I did - mostly I was writing and reading other peoples' stuff. I tried to show her some of my writing once and she told me it was trash. Ironic, considering she's a writer. I taught myself how to build websites - HTML, CSS, Photoshop. I tried to show her some early stuff I made but she would never even look.

You can't stop kids from doing things they really want to do, ultimately. They're human beings with their own wills. If you make unreasonable demands they will just sneak behind your back. I remember lying to my mother constantly about where I was - I wasn't allowed to have a sleepover if there were boys present, so I would just lie and say it was only girls or lie and say I was at a female friend's house and get my friend to lie for me. The source of the problem is that my mother didn't trust me - she didn't believe that my male friends were just FRIENDS even when I outlined to her very clearly that I was not interested in dating and why. I didn't date until after highschool because I felt I wasn't ready until then. And yet my mother was always convinced that I was an immature idiot about relationships for some reason and couldn't handle myself. She was constantly passing judgment on my friends and telling we which ones she liked and wanted me to spend time with and which ones she thought were a bad influence. She didn't even know these people!

And get this. My mom was also violently against videogames and anime. I wasn't allowed to play videogames when I was a kid - so when I was in elementary school I would just play them at friends' houses. When I was 10 or 11 I would buy them behind her back with my own money from my paper route and play them at night when she was asleep. I would do most of my anime watching while she was asleep so she wouldn't come in and harass me while I was watching. I would pretend to be asleep when she came downstairs at night so I could avoid a fight. I spent so much time trying to explain how videogames inspired me but it just went in one ear and out the other. When I told her I wanted to study Japanese at university she told me "But French is your worst subject (read: I got B's); you'd just do badly at Japanese." She's only pleased that I'm studying it now because she holds a university education in high esteem and what I'm taking is less important than me going to university. It sounds nice if she can tell her peers she has two children who have graduated from university so she can skim over the one that dropped out of uni and the one that dropped out of high school. I know her approval of me entirely hinges on academic standing and social status - I'm sure if I land a high-paying job she'll love to show it off as if it were her own job. Oh, I'm sure she'll tell me she loves me, and I'm sure she does in her own fucked-up way, but she's just too emotionally damaged to express it properly and frankly I don't want to deal with it.

And she's still like that, even now that I'm an adult. And so I just started ignoring her and lying to her. Those are your two options, really - you can either blindly attempt to please an authoritarian parent or just tell them to fuck off, and the latter option is really the only option available if you want to maintain your sanity. In a way I suppose I should thank her - I learned fairly young that attempting to gain approval from authority figures is pointless and I cultivated a very independent lifestyle. I dreamed of moving out and getting my own place and supporting myself ever since I was 10. I was always trying to do things by myself, but my mother would always tell me "You're a minor! I'm responsible for you! You can't do it by yourself!" I was so angry that I couldn't legally do it even though I knew I was responsible and capable enough to take care of myself. Now that I am an adult? I LOVE IT. I never had any difficulties and I never felt homesick. I love working and setting my own schedule and buying my own food and managing my own time. It was just an incredible relief. How the fuck did I survive being a child? It was like being in jail, it was so stressful. I'm pretty sure the reason I developed colitis in high school was from the stress of living at home. I was really miserable in high school because being at home was like being on high alert all the time. I would frequently go to the mall or the library and find a big squishy chair and sleep in it - I could relax there like I never could at home. At home I knew a screaming fight could break out at any minute. When I moved out of the house... my acne immediately cleared up, too. It started up again when I began going to university so I think my acne is very stress-related.

And honestly it was boggling how much reading this book re-affirmed my ideas about parenting: you don't tell kids what to do, you listen and work out solutions with them. You figure out what they want, and help them get what they need. I don't plan to have children, but I think these strategies are also applicable to teachers.

My course schedule is such a clusterfuck right now. Part of this is my fault (should have dropped this miserable class earlier); part of it is school (y u cancel classes on me at the last minute!) and part of it is just cramming everything together so I can graduate.

I hate. All. Of my courses. Literally everything I'm taking right now is a miserable graduation requirement. I'm just picking things to fit into my schedule at this point, too - I need time to work.

I really, really wanted to drop this one class because I hate it so passionately (20th Century British/Irish lit) but it's past the drop date so I'm fucked. I just need to do it. And for a set of complicated, stupid reasons I need to take another class for no reason other than to keep my minimum credit requirement up for student loan reasons (even though I'm taking five classes, two of them are two-term classes and so the credits only count for first term even though I'm still doing the work for them now ARGH). So I need to find a course that I can both stand and fits into my schedule and isn't too much of a workload. I registered for an English lit class in hope that I could drop that other lit class, but alas I cannot drop it, and I don't really want to take three lit classes at once, so I'm looking for something else. There's an upper-level Japanese class that I could take (newspaper Japanese, yey) but technically don't have the requirements for, but maybe I can bust in and wheedle and say "I can take this shit" and get in anyway (perhaps on the basis of exchange credit or passing N1...). I mean, I can read Japanese newspapers. They're not that hard.

So off to the Asian Centre I go! If I can't get in this class I can take art, but then I'd have to re-arrange my work schedule again and I worry my boss will get annoyed.

This last term is going to be hell. Such an awful workload. But I'm so close! So.... close... to graduation!

You know, I think this is the first time I've ever had something that can be described as an epiphany.

The a few weeks before Christmas I was dumped by a guy, and I was pretty miserable for a while, culminating on Christmas day me calling him up and saying "dump your girlfriend and take me instead." His answer was a mostly-no sort of answer, but I think I could have harassed him into cheating on her if I'd been really persistent. I know he's a cheater already; it wouldn't be hard.

This morning I woke up and sat down and watched a bunch of Revolutionary Girl Utena (nostalgia trip) for a few hours and after a few episodes I had to wonder, "Why was I so upset again?" Epiphany.

Utena is like... my life. (This is not a new conclusion; I've known it for years.) I am so much like Utena that watching that show is embarrassing. This guy... let's call him C. - is Touga-grade. He doesn't even have the seduction power of an Akio. And I don't particularly want to wear the dress he sent me for the dance party (Metaphorically speaking).

I realized why I'm attracted to him - he's very much like me, but all the worst traits. He's so damn arrogant, has no sense of empathy, he's self-centred and he has the same view on relationships as I did when I was like eighteen - all take and no give. He's not very perceptive either - he tends to project a lot. It took me a while to realize this because he's like... five years older than me (and I tend to find older guys intimidating) and he has this veneer of adultness but ultimately I feel like he's less mature than I am. Which is all hilarious, because part of the reason he thinks I'm "not girlfriend material" is because I'm apparently at an ~earlier stage in life~. He used to be a nerd when he was younger but ~grew out of it~ and he feels like I'd be holding him back - I find that attitude to be dumb, personally. I don't spend as much time watching anime or whatever as I did when I was younger because I've found fulfilling things to do with my time, but I see no reason to give up my hobbies entirely because I have to ~become an adult~. (I sorta respect that he wants to stay away from gaming because he went through a depression where he dropped out of university and played a lot of Counterstrike, but a) it's pretty clear that his issue was not Counterstrike, but his family and b) I did the same thing for a year with RO, and I don't feel the need to stay away from games foreverrrrr because the problems I had at that time I don't have anymore.)

He's with an older woman now, a doctor - I think he wants someone who will push him to do more with his life because he's having his "I'm almost 30 and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with my life" crisis. Apparently since I'm still a student I can't push him into shit. And honestly even if I were a doctor or whatever I wouldn't be interested in pushing him into doing anything - that's not what a relationship is to me. He wants someone he can use, imo. He's also way more emotionally needy than he lets on. I think he wants a relationship to solve his problems, as opposed to solving his problems first and then finding a relationship. He's the kind of guy who isn't happy unless he's in a relationship. /armchair psychology

My idea of a relationship, I've found, is not what most people are into. I'm very un-demanding - idc about seeing each other often or buying each other things or monogamy or commitment or anything of that nature. All I want is sex, respect, and common goals. My personal romanticized ideal is not someone who you live with but someone you see when your lives cross paths many times over the course of however many years. You compare notes, see how you've both changed. Keep in touch. Kind of like a close, long-term friend that you also fuck, actually. The idea of "WE MUST BE TOGETHER FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES" turns me off. That kind of relationship is only necessary if you want kids, imo, and I'm not interested in those at all. I'm not really interested in being tied down by kids or a commitment... it would take way too much time away from things I want to do with my life. I doubt I'll find the kind of ideal relationship I'm looking for, but I can live without it, too. It's more important to be happy with yourself than seek an SO, imo.

So basically, I do like this guy a lot, but I can't stand his bullshit and I don't really want a relationship with him. Epiphany.

"The pseudocouple is in this respect a kind of holding operation, in which impulses are at one and at the same time rigidly checked, and yet exasperated by an oscillating movement in which they find no satisfactory symbolic outlet. The new libidinal apparatus of the transindividual forces of the great ideologies, the forces of cultural corruption, the Time Cult, the corrupt intelligensia, the essentially collective dynamics of feminism or homosexual militancy, now makes for a grid in which psychic forces can know analogous figuration and are freed to capture and to expropriate narrative systems of which they were hitherto merely the bound components."

You know, I think I'm fairly literate and I read a lot of this bullshit for school (and sometimes for fun!), but I just do not understand what the fuck this is on about. It's from this book that's basically talking about what an asshole Wyndham Lewis is and his character Kreisler from his book Tarr. I suppose this paragraph is supposed to explain why Kreisler is such an asshole but I just do not get what the fuck this paragraph is on about. Actually, the entire book is like this.

I hate pretentious, incomprehensible, long-winded academics. Just make your point clear and concise, fuck.

Oh and while I'm at it, I can't fucking stand Wyndham Lewis. Why do I have to read books by this misanthropic douchebag again? He was clearly a miserable man who wrote books about miserable people. I get it, he's emotionally repressed and hates everyone and has anger issues and sabotages all his relationships and treats women like shit. Why do we keep reading his goddamn books like there's something to be learned from them besides "Wyndham Lewis is a douche"?

Actually most of the books I have to read for this British/Irish lit class are fucking asinine. It's all wealthy white men whining about how haaaaard their lives are, fuck. Joseph Conrad had a few things to say and he gets political at least, I'll give him that, but Joyce and Lewis and Lawrence? Ugh, STFU. They're all terribly self-involved narcissists whose characters are either flat-out semi-autobiographical or mouthpieces for their own views - and their views are fucking awful. Either they're mooning about being misunderstood artists or mooning about women or, in the case of Lewis, just hating everybody. Was that just a thing around the turn of the century?

I really want to burn all of the books I have to read for this class. It would give me so much satisfaction.