Cataloging my library

I think I finally found a good system for cataloging my books! Goodreads.com :)

They *don't* import all the information from Amazon, and they allow me to create bookshelves. There are three automatic bookshelves: Read, Currently-Reading, and To-Read. A book can only be on one of these bookshelves at a time. I also have the ability to *create* bookshelves, and all my books can be in as many bookshelves as I like. So, for example, I have a "library" bookshelf, which will contain all the books in my library (so every book should be in here, unless I screw up), and then beyond that, I can separate the books out based on which bookshelf they're in, which is basically a reflection of how I have them organized at home. It's quite useful, and so far it has found a couple of my books that should be harder to find in that they came from out-of-the-country. But still, no problems!

Beyond that, it has options to export my collection in .csv and whatnot, so I'll easily be able to transfer it to my home computer. I'm quite excited. ^_^ Oh, and did I mention it's free to create an account? :D

So yes...if I figure out how to do it, very soon there should be a live feed on this blog of the different bookshelves in my collection. I'm going to try to go for one showing the recently added books in my library, and the books that I'm currently reading. :)

I like watching the colors gather rain...

I've been meaning to write another post for at least a week or two, if not longer. But life gets in the way, and I always want to write at awkward times...like in the middle of class when I'm surrounded by students and all the things I want to say are very personal and probably things that you don't want your students to know about you (although, I guess the blank void of the internet is okay).

Life has been a little hectic lately, but a lot better than it has been since about the end of January or the beginning of February. I've been royally unhappy for about the past two months or so and I think I finally discovered what was wrong/fixed it unintentionally, and I'm extremely happy about that. A word to the wise: if you find yourself in a situation in which you are consistently unhappy, then maybe you either need to change that situation or get yourself out of it. Not that anyone ever tends to listen to that advice. I know I sure don't most of the time.

I've been doing a lot of discovering about myself in the past two weeks. I mean, they're mostly little things, but they're things that I'm glad to find out. First off, if I'm depressed or down, that doesn't always necessarily mean that it's a return of my depression...sometimes it's just the circumstances I find myself in. This one is honestly such a relief. You guys have no idea. I thought my mind must have been going crazy or something since about November last fall since I was so irritable and unhappy most of the time. First I tried to convince myself that it was just the stress from school. Then the stress from school went away and I seemed happier for a few weeks, and then it started up again. Was it stress from school? Unhappiness from my relationship? Was it just my mind going bad again? I had no idea...until two weeks ago when I unintentionally broke up my relationship and suddenly life became amazing and wonderful again. It was an almost overnight switch. I guess sometimes life needs something radical to happen in order to bring clarity. Thank you randomness that allowed me to suddenly have clarity. :)

Another thing that's been on my mind is that some of the most interesting people I've known in my life have been suicidal at some point. I'm not sure what that says about me or the type of people I'm attracted to. I sometimes get the feeling that suicidal/depressed people are more interesting than everyone else because they actually have to work at life. Nothing ever comes easy. And it's not that a suicidal/depressed person can't be happy once in a while. It just takes a lot to actually get to that point, and most of us are simply content to be feeling "okay" for once. It's a massively different perspective on life. Sometimes the thoughts in your head drown out everything around you until it's like you're looking at an impressionist painting and the only thing that's real are the thoughts in your head that you so desperately want to get away from. And then the ironic thing (for me at least), is now that I've gotten away from those thoughts, I miss them. They were like a comfortable pillow...that familiar blanket on your bed that you could just wrap yourself in. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but I guess old habits die hard.

I also get the feeling that suicidal/depressed people feel life more intensely than other people. This is probably completely wrong and the first thing that my psychologist would want to beat out of my head, but I just can't convince myself otherwise. That flighty girl at that party who is only concerned about getting laid or that silly, comedic guy who never seems to stop smiling and laughing and joking around (assuming it's not a veil of what he actually feels)...I just can't convince myself that those people feel the same things at the same intensity that us suicidal/depressed people do. And I think it makes us interesting. We can see the great sorrow that life is all around us, and yet, sometimes it just takes a close friend to make us smile and decide it's worth it to go on living another day. In some ways, through all the complexity, it simplifies life a bit down to the important things because a suicidal/depressed person can't just simply ignore the fundamental things in life like trying to find our own happiness or how we feel on any given day or just let the stress from life build and build until we finally snap. We can't ignore these things because we *will* snap. It's not a question, but a pure statement of fact. Life is hard, and we have to work at it to keep on living.

*shrugs* And anyways...who ever wants to read a book about someone's life who is perfectly happy and content with how things are going? It would make for a pretty boring story. There's a reason why all the classic authors were depressed/suicidal/committed suicide. <.< And there's a reason that the 27 Club exists. Sure, a lot of those people died as a result of accidental drug overdoses. But life is crazy sometimes, and drugs don't help smooth it out any except in passing or for brief periods of time.

I've decided I want to let go of life. Stop fucking thinking about it and just fucking *live* it for once. I'm in my experimental mode, which in some ways means I shun closeness of any sort. It's hard to feel completely free if you have ties to the world or to specific people. But I feel like I need this right now. I feel like I need to feel like I can just do whatever the fuck I want without someone looking over my shoulder and telling me it's wrong. If it fucking feels good, then who are you to tell me no? I guess that could kinda classify me as a hedonist, but labels are labels. I've also been told that I'm an existentialist, but it wasn't because I read a bunch of existentialist literature and decided that's who I wanted to be. It was more like I thought and thought and thought and decided on my own philosophy of life, which just happened to coincide with all the existentialists, particularly in the early 20th century. Go figure. No one's thoughts are unique.

Hm...random thought time. Fuzzy kittens are amazing and my cat is the most amazing of all. :) Trance is awesome, yet it's not the soundtrack of my life right now. I keep getting progressive rock stuck in my head, which is quite amazing considering the unpredictableness of every song. Colors. Lights. Darkness. The moon. Twisty winding roads at high speed and falling asleep next to someone you care about with music playing in the background. :) Visual/tactile memories are awesome and evidently quite rare. I only know of one other person who has one (besides me), and it's fun to swap explanations of how it works. Mmmmm...long hair, you fascinate me. :) I am content with life right now. It better fucking stay that way. Lastly, the blog title is an intentional typo/reference to the song "No Rain" by Blind Melon. Cliche, but that song feels like my life and all my interactions with people over the years all rolled up into one little ball (down to the pouring tea for two and reading books because of the escape they provide).

:)

New Shoes!

Whee, new shoes! Specifically, Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" Converse shoes! (I owe Squalls for telling me about these. Thanks Squalls!)  :D

Whee...so tempting to put on that record and listen to it while I try to make boring graphs for this paper...  :D

Why everyone should be a night-owl...

Because I'm lazy, I'm pasting this directly from chat:

[vaaht] wow...I have a really bad picture of the fire last night <.<
[theclam] fire? :/
[wandering_nomad] munch!
[vaaht] not in my apartment <.<
[vaaht] outside
[vaaht] it was kinda funny actually <.<
[vaaht] I was sitting down to watch heroes at 4 am in-between working and I hear this weird sound and so I walk to my bathroom and look out the window and this huge palm tree at the opposite corner of the parking lot that's outside my bedroom window is on fire and there's flames rising up into the air and all the bushes are catching on fire <.<
[theclam] o.o
[vaaht] and these two security guys in the parking lot are freaking out not knowing what to do, so I yelled out that I had called 911 and the fire department was on the way <.<
[theclam] do you live on the pleasantville set or something?
[vaaht] and it took a couple minutes for them to get there (nm that the fire department is literally 3 blocks down the street) and then they circled around and completely missed the fire and kept going o.O
[theclam] haha
[vaaht] I think that might have been a different truck going elsewhere though <.<
[vaaht] I'm not sure how you miss a flaming palm tree on the corner of a major street o.o
[vaaht] but yeah...it was a two-alarm fire and they had it put out in five minutes and disappeared within 10 minutes <.<
[vaaht] and now there's just this charred palm tree and some missing bushes along that fence <.<
[vaaht] so yeah...I took a really crappy picture with my phone (didn't know where my camera was and the fire department was starting to put out the fire so I didn't want to miss it <.<)
[vaaht] so yes...these are the interesting things that life throws at you when you stay up until 4 am the night before a presentation that you have to give <.<
[vaaht] I'm just glad I wasn't asleep o.o
[vaaht] miss all the excitement :(

And finally, exciting picture time, or rather, really bad picture time because the only thing I had on me was my phone...

During fire:

To translate, that white rectangular object is a truck that was only about a car's length from the flaming bushes. The big light in the center and the smaller light directly below it are the flames (the top one is the tree and the bottom one are the bushes). The little red light off to the right is the lights from one of the fire trucks.

Better picture from this afternoon:


Just in case you can't tell, that big blackened tree trunk in the center is the burning tree from this morning. The big white truck is missing (but it does park there every night! ...well, except for maybe tonight... <.< ).

:D

GoW: New Members Not Welcome

So, I tried to join a discussion in #writers tonight. I was invited by Nadnerb a while ago so that I could listen to the discussion, mostly because I've been planning to start modeling in Blender for a while now, and I finally have some free time. He invited me about 24 hours before the discussion in that I will talk about.

I heard in CC that there was an argument going on, so I dropped into #writers to listen (or rather, I unlurked). *argue argue argue* Not being affiliated with the GoW, or any other writing groups, I had never heard in detail and/or paid attention to the politics. Within five minutes I could tell that BAD was in charge and held his rule with an iron fist, and that hoikas was BAD's little sidekick. I could also tell that Paradox was on the opposite side of BAD (ie: not GoW, but I had heard vague mentions of this beforehand). Zrax also made it pretty clear that he wasn't in total agreement with BAD. I couldn't tell where Kato stood.

*argue argue argue point fingers call names Paradox how dare you bring in your little toadies to this chatroom (as if RIUM and I would come because Paradox called and not of our free volition)* So, me, being one who always speaks her mind, decided to pipe up. Essentially, it went something like this (not quoted): "Guys, knock it off...this is the exact reason why I don't do anything more than chat in CC with this community...none of you guys get along, all of you guys argue. BAD, you're being an idiot, knock it off for one second. hoikas, please knock it off. paradox, you too, shush. Can you guys all step away from your computers for 10 minutes, take a deep breath, and calm down? And then we can talk rationally about this?"

How did BAD and hoikas respond? Hoikas muted the channel. Everyone was given voice. *EXCEPT ME*. BAD told me to stay out of it because none of this discussion was of my concern.

Wtf did I do to deserve this? I was trying to calm people down, listen to a (semi-)rational discussion... And the channel was muted on me.

And how do they know this is none of my concern? I am interested in possibly contributing to the GoW someday. Or at least, I was.

You can forget me ever joining the GoW. I will never support the GoW. If this is how they treat newcomers, no wonder they are such a niche, elitist group.

For those interested in reading the full transcript, it's posted on Paradox's blog here: http://paradox22.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/politics/.

My New Blackberry Storm!

So I just got a new phone and it's a Blackberry Storm (give me a break, I would get an iPhone if I had AT&T, but I like Verizon too much). Anyways, I am playing around with it and I had the bright idea to try and write a blog post with it! This will totally be the shortest blog post ever. So far it is surprisingly easy to type on despite the fact that I am using my thumbs to do it. My only complaint so far is that the Blogspot text box doesn't resize for me to view on this little screen. Ah well. Anyways, I should probably get back to working on my MA thesis that's due in a week. I'll hopefully post more updates later!

The Razorblade's Poetry

No, this isn't referring to cutting. That's the description someone put next to the song clip from Youtube that I'm about to talk about. I thought it was an interesting description of the song, although I'm sure they meant it in a different way than I mean it...it reminds me of the aimless up and down picking of notes on the guitar.

I was thinking about life, and there's this one movie clip/song that reminds me of my life on a day-to-day basis. It's this clip from Pink Floyd's "The Wall". The song I'm talking about starts after the silence in the video when the boy stops running. It's called "Is There Anybody Out There?" You can start playing at 1:09 if you want to cut straight to the scene. At 2:18 the guitar starts playing two solitary notes, and at 2:29 it cuts to the scene from the movie that I always see in my head when I hear the song: a guy (whose name is Pink Floyd) is sitting on the floor of his hotel room obsessively arranging the broken pieces of his room into neat little piles and organizing the chaos into a weird pattern that would cause anyone on the outside looking in to think he's crazy. At 2:30 the guitar starts playing single notes from the A minor chord, first transforming it into an F major chord, and then an F# dim before going back to the F major chord, and finally the A minor chord where it strays for a little while, and then repeats. The scene ends at 3:31, but the song doesn't end until 3:52. You should at least listen until the end of the song.

Even though I know from watching the movie that the reason the guy is rearranging the room is because he just trashed it, and that the reason he just trashed it is because he's trying to feel something in the midst of his depression which eventually leads him to try committing suicide and thereby completing his butterfly-like transformation into an unfeeling shell of Hitlerian non-emotion, I don't quite see it that way. I see it as a lonely person coming home to a quiet house on an ordinary day, aimlessly tidying the place that no one but her will usually see, and generally organizing her life in pointless piles just for the sake of the pointless piles.

*shrugs*  I usually interpret things in a way that no one else does.

As a side note, I think I finally figured out that my cat meows when she wants attention...not that she never gets attention; she's just the most needy cat in the world.