| Ponyo! |
[Aug. 17th, 2009|12:51 pm] |
Miyazaki's latest film came out in the US last weekend: Ponyo. I went to see it last night with Maggie and Jessica S (formerly known as Other Jessica). I was happy to see about 20 other people in the relatively small theater our multiplex had it in. I was afraid, especially since it was Sunday evening, it might be one of those screenings with only like two other people in the whole venue. And... there were a bunch of kids there, too! Yay!
Anyway, the movie was great! Super cute and pretty funny, although I think I'd still say "The Cat Returns" is the funniest Ghibli film.
As ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) twotone said in her little review, it reminded me in a lot of ways of "Totoro", mainly in that the main characters -- Sosuke and Ponyo -- were very young children (five years old) instead of more like ten for Spirited Away and teenagers in most Ghibli films. They were adorable, and frequently acted like real kids instead of adults in tiny bodies.
Sosuke's mother, Lisa, is voiced by Tina Fey in the dub, and her performance was really great! The character was written pretty well, too. Human and flawed, but also generous and such a caring mother! She's careful (when not driving...) but not overprotective, and when crazy magic stuff starts happening she acknowledges that it's crazy but doesn't miss a beat in protecting and taking care of the people around her.
There was a moment where she was upset that her husband had to stay out on his ship for a few more days, and she was pouting and grumpy, and tells Sosuke they're going out. He reminds her that he needs to stay home in case his lost goldfish comes back (!), and she immediately realizes that the nurturing thing to do is to play along. She's frustrated by it, but she goes along with it anyway. Later she's still a little upset, but then Sosuke says something sweet and innocent and she just looks at him for a moment and then grabs him in a huge hug, exclaiming, "You are SO GOOD!!!" A great character.
I think my favorite visual aspect was how a lot of the art, particularly the opening titles, veered pretty far into "look at me, I'm a drawing" territory instead of just sticking to standard Ghibli house style. There was an extended storm sequence, for example, where the waves were these impossibly steep mounds of water. I felt like part of that was to emphasize that it was a magic storm, but at the same time, I also felt that the shapes and behavior of the water were being abstracted to emphasize that the vehicle for this story was hand-drawn animation. Sometimes when I've shown Ghibli films to people, they've said afterward "I kind of forgot partway through that it was even animated." In many ways that's a compliment, because it means that they found the film compelling enough that they weren't distracted by its artifice. But it also means that they probably weren't appreciating the artistry of the animation itself -- it became transparent to them. I don't think that's something people will say about this film.
Anyway, here's a link to a nice LA Times article about Miyazaki that eithnie gave me last week. It talks a little about his appearances in California last month:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-miyazaki9-2009aug09,0,7541470.story?track=rss
Everybody go see the movie! It got the widest US release yet for Ghibli, on 900+ screens. Looks like it made about 3 million in its opening weekend. Go help it out! It grossed over $160 million in Japan, so we have a lot of catching up to do. :) |
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| Fun at the Ohio State Fair |
[Aug. 9th, 2009|08:25 pm] |
The fair was lots of fun! Growing up in Indiana PA, I used to go to the Indiana County Fair almost every year, but the last time I went to one was probably around my senior year of high school, so... 15 years? I was actually kind of excited to walk through barns and see farm animals, like old times.
We spent most of our time looking at animals. The first place we went to was the sheep area so we could take sheep pictures for Graham. Then we headed over to watch a little bit of a horse show. I'd never seen one before, but it was kind of neat! It was a special show of Friesian horses which are apparently uncommon in the United States. We saw some walk-trot-canter action and totally called the winner -- the other horses looked like amateurs in comparison. There was also a "costume" round where women in fancy dresses rode around.
The horse show concluded with a very long section of "liberty" performances. In these, the horse ran around with a rider, and one or two trainers in the ring just made noise or waved whips to direct the horse around. The audience was also called on to Part of the judging in this competition was "obvious enjoyment of performing". Oh yeah, and they played music. Stuff like "Get Ready For This" and "Eye of the Tiger". And sadly most of the horses seemed preoccupied with this one section of the coliseum where some spectators were standing right up by the wall. I'd say 3/4 of the liberty horses never even went on the other half of the show floor because they kept trying to dodge their trainers so they could stand by that wall. That was kind of disappointing. One of the better performers, though, had this really sweet ending -- when the music ended, most horses kept running until their trainers came over to lead them away, but this one responded to the end of the music, and sauntered up to its trainer in the center, and stopped right in front of her with its head down, and then the trainer touched her nose to its snout like a little eskimo kiss.
Over in the pig section of the fair, we overhead the end of a hog contest in which the announcer, a man in his 50s or 60s got all choked up -- it was really cute. He talked about how much hogs mean to him and that he feels so honored and lucky whenever he gets to judge a really fine hog show. Unfortunately there was quite a crowd around the show area so we couldn't get up to see the amazing pigs that had touched his heart, but it made me happy to hear him feeling so earnestly happy himself.
From there we moved on to the art show. There were some really impressive paintings there of kids swimming with animals -- the rippling water looked almost photographic from a distance. It was an amazing reproduction, done with individual streaks of paint layered on top of each other almost like a topographic map. I saw some photos I liked a lot too, including a road bending off into the night and a pair of nervous-looking feet off-center, with most of the frame showing receding floorboards.
Then we went to see the chickens, which surprisingly turned out to be the highlight of the afternoon. I'd seen footage before of carefully-bred pigeons with bizarre plumage, but I'd never seen it done with chickens. I was surprised by the variety of sizes, colors and patterns even on the "normal" chickens, and then the more "showy" birds were just amazing. Meanwhile, there was also row of turkeys, and my god -- they are so disgusting. The bulbs of skin all over their heads and necks you see in photos (including but not limited to the wattle) are all soft and barely attached, so they flop all over the place, stretch out and contract spontaneously and they basically look like a big pile of convulsing flesh from a monster movie.
To get those images out of our minds we looked at rabbits for a while, but despite their cuteness we couldn't help but think, "the chickens were better." The rabbits were just too samey. I wanted more variety.
At this point we finally made our way to the rides area, stopping briefly to take a look at a "Masters of the Chainsaw" demonstration. I was interested to see that the sculptor actually had two chainsaws with him that he switched between, although I didn't figure out what the difference was -- like one was better at fine detail and the other for large cuts, or something.
It was approaching 7 PM by this time and we all had things to do, plus the rides are pretty expensive if you don't buy a ride-all-day and take advantage of it ($2 or $3 per ride when paying with tickets). There were two little roller coasters there -- a Wildcat and a Crazy Mouse -- which I would have really enjoyed, but the lines were pretty long and we were sort of winding down, so we only took one ride, on an off-brand Wave Swinger. Always a strong choice.
Heading back to the car, we stopped into a little NASA exhibit truck where they had some crappy computer terminals that didn't do very much, a bin of Duplo bricks that was sealed with duct tape so you couldn't play with them, and a piece of moon rock sealed in resin and being talked about by my former student Kevin D. That was a pleasant surprise. He was wearing his FEH program polo shirt and said the NASA guys hadn't given him a NASA shirt. It was the next-to-last day of the whole fair, NASA! What gives? Kevin totally deserves a shirt for helping out with the only interesting part of your dumb trailer.
The last stop on our way out was a little fresh-brewed root beer stand. (Pictured by someone else here, my camera had died by this point.) The guy running it was really cool -- apparently it's just a hobby but he goes around to a bunch of shows every summer to sell. He even has giant tin mugs to sell that he gives cheap refills for. I had a root beer, and it was *amazing*. Among well-known brands I'd say it was closest to an A&W, very creamy and frothy. Maggie got some cherry stuff which was also really good. I would have loved to try his other flavors... cream soda, a birch beer, and even an orange cream soda he calls "orange zippy"! He only sells in person at fairs and festivals and doesn't even have a website, but I will definitely look for him next year! Oh, and he had a fancy "Root Beer Man" logo shaved into the back of his head. Awesome.
Here is a link to the photos I posted on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2625136&id=12445111
And my videos as well:
http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=12445111
Enjoy! |
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| I live. |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|01:03 pm] |
So, what has happened in the last six months?
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I "failed" my winter teaching placement and had to repeat it in the spring instead of doing normal full-time student teaching then. Then, I failed it again. I am now scheduled to do the "winter style" placement a third time in the fall. If I perform up to spec I will student teach in the winter and then hopefully earn my teaching license.
It took a long time for me to have any understanding at all of what was going wrong, but I have finally come to agree with my evaluators that I need work. Teaching to secondary students -- especially 7th or 9th graders, who I had these past two terms -- is a lot different than teaching to college students and I have not adapted well. I am too concerned with teaching the material, and as a result I have not done well at managing my students' behavior. I also expect them to be more intrinsically motivated than they are, which leads to them often finding my instruction boring or not relevant to their lives and therefore also exacerbates behavior problems.
I showed some big improvements in my spring placement, but it still wasn't good enough. I'm going to give it another shot, and in the fall I will probably be working with a teacher I already know and admire, and that will also help. (Although I liked my spring mentor teacher a lot, too.) But if it doesn't work this time I will have to admit that a high school is not the right environment for me. I'll probably try to get back into the university level, doing adjunct work or maybe getting in at a community college. There's also a remote possibility I might decide to finish my PhD. But, I'll deal with all of that if/when it becomes necessary.
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In March I went out for a few weeks with a new woman, but ultimately it didn't go anywhere. I'd been enjoying her company but was a little unsure, and then just as I started to feel kind of good about it (after a nice evening of snuggling; physical contact is really powerful for me) she broke it off. Ah well...
I had another first date just before leaving for Comic-Con (see below) and will be seeing her again sometime this week. We're going to go to the state fair.
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I went to Comic-Con again this year! David got me in as a helper since he's an exhibitor, and I spent much of the convention at the Blank Label Comics booth as their cashier. I finally got to meet Greg Dean there, who writes one of the very first webcomics I ever read regularly.
David and I stayed at Maggie's parents' house outside of town, which was had its plusses and minuses. It was very nice not to have to spend money on a hotel, and Maggie's mom, Jeanne, made us amazing sack lunches every day. On the other hand, we still had to spend money on a rental car, had to struggle to find parking every day, and also had a ~30 minute drive to deal with every day early in the morning and late at night, both times at which we were exhausted.
I wanted desperately to attend the Disney animation panel this year because, amazingly, Hayao Miyazaki was going to be in attendance. Figuring this might well be the only chance I'd ever have to see him, I was determined to go. Unfortunately, I completely forgot that getting into the room it was held in, Hall H, requires you to start waiting in line for *at least* an hour before your panel starts. In my two previous Comic-Cons, I only tried to get into Hall H once and it wasn't for something I really cared that much about, so it didn't even occur to me that this would be a problem. I just knew it was an enormous room (with a capacity approaching 7000 people) and figured I'd be able to get in. Instead, I stood in line outside for an hour and a half as the panel went on. I never got to see Miyazaki. I did get a mild sunburn.
On the plus side, Kristen Bell was present again this year so I got to see her. And I met Kevin Eastman -- co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- and a bunch of other Turtles artists whose work I've been following for 20 years.
Lastly, the day after the con ended we went to the zoo with Jeanne. It was a pretty good zoo in my opinion, but not notably better than say, the Columbus Zoo. Admittedly, the Columbus Zoo is very well-regarded, but I've always thought of San Diego's as one of the "best"/most famous. Regardless, zoos are fun.
Here's some photos and links to videos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2621166&id=12445111&ref=mf
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That's all for now... hopefully I will begin updating semi-regularly again... obviously I go through phases with this thing. |
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| single again |
[Jan. 18th, 2009|11:13 pm] |
For the record, Jessica and I broke up about two weeks ago. She had been planning to move out in January for some time, but said on several occasions that she wanted to keep seeing me, and spoke often about continuing to be at the house frequently, like coming here to do laundry, spending Saturday nights with me, etc.. I figured that all of this was probably leading to a breakup down the line, but based on the way she talked about it I expected it to be a month or two. Instead it was quick. I had known she had some sort of "seeing other people" thing in mind for after moving, but based on all the other things she had said I thought it was a sort of abstract possibility rather than something she wanted to do immediately.
But, no. It was pretty much immediate. As soon as her stuff was settled in at her new place she brought it up. She wasn't actually "breaking up" with me exactly -- she was still open to seeing me, possibly even hoping for it. But she also guessed, correctly, that I wouldn't really be okay with regressing from living together to casual, non-exclusive dating. So in some sense it was my decision that we should break up... all she did was systematically push me away for months, avoid practically all forms of intimacy, decide to move out, and ask to see other people.
I hate that I can't write about this without becoming bitter. I know that this wasn't easy for her either. I know that a lot of the distancing was done intentionally both because she was becoming uncomfortable with it as she grew dissatisfied *and* because she was hoping to let me down gradually. There wasn't any malice or deception involved. And she spent the last six months depressed and feeling trapped... in light of that it seems petty for me to get pissy about her making completely natural and understandable decisions. But I'm pissy anyway, and that just makes me feel like a dick.
Regardless, she's gone. I like to think that I will be able to stay friends with her. We weren't much more than friends by the end anyway, despite sleeping alongside each other. But I was still in love with her, and now... now the bed is freezing cold every night. I was thinking just yesterday that I might want to see her soon, but then tonight was the apartment warming party for her and Other Jessica, and the thought of going... was... not good. I feel totally fine most of the time, but there are moments in which I feel the loss acutely, and so far they aren't getting any sparser.
I haven't really wanted to talk about it. I still don't, really. I think it was a full week before I even told David and Maggie that we'd broken up. But I felt like I should say something about it here, for those of you reading that are interested and just for the sake of documenting my life. That's what's going on with me these days.
(Whoops, sorry guys -- I meant to disable comments. Thanks, but, I'm deleting the ones that slipped through.) |
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| A day of twists and turns |
[Dec. 31st, 2008|07:01 pm] |
So last night Jessica went out, and since her car needs some maintenance, she took mine.( Long story. )
I got home, Other Jessica showed up, we got my car and her bags, and I went home, finally sitting to relax nearly 6 hours after leaving for lunch with Jessica. I am very happy to be just sitting around doing nothing now. |
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| Priorities for a new administration |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|07:58 pm] |
Pic asked in his LJ what people would like Obama's first priority to be. Most people there said something about energy or health care.
Those are nice ideas, but my #1 wish for the government right now is to undo my #1 problem with the current administration: blatant and repeated violations of civil and human rights as laid out in the Constitution, US law, and international law.
End the warrantless wiretapping programs. Eliminate the insane "enemy combatant" classification and give our prisoners of war habeas corpus. Stop torturing those same prisoners. Relax useless just-for-show restrictions on travel and information-gathering. Write new legislation to invalidate the Nevada statute (171.123(3), upheld by the US Supreme Court) that the police can essentially arrest you for no reason other than declining to identify yourself to them (they only have to claim they suspect you have committed a crime even without probable cause). I'd also like to see our nation voluntarily accept punishment from international courts for our illegal invasions and overthrows of Afghanistan and Iraq, but I totally recognize that will never, ever happen.
That sort of stuff bothers me to no end. It's why I can't understand how any human being could support the Bush administration (although admittedly they didn't play a role in the Nevada thing) despite whatever other things they may like. I don't care if somebody thinks Bush's tax policy is good, or they believe in No Child Left Behind or whatever; the civil/human liberties issues are a complete show-stopper, totally unacceptable in any circumstances. I seriously believe that the top Bush officials should be arrested and tried by an international tribunal for this shit. I know that, realistically, it is insane to call for this. I know that the people standing around with signs saying this are cranks. But I feel it is UNAMBIGUOUSLY TRUE that they are guilty of such crimes, and the fact that only cranks actually bother to say it just makes me even more upset.
Nothing else has ever shaken my belief in our government. I would love to have even a tiny sliver of that belief back by seeing some of these things undone.
Wow, that's sort of a downer. I actually am happy and am hopeful that things are going to get better. But I'm still angry too. |
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| Nice game review site |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|02:41 pm] |
My favorite video game reviewer is a guy named Tim Rogers who used to write for InsertCredit.com, and then for LargePrimeNumbers.com, and has apparently just moved to a new place called ActionButton.net. His reviews are... well, extremely long and meandering. I'm sure a lot of people would consider them pretentious. Even I, who love his reviews, frequently skip paragraphs in order to find parts that are more interesting to me. (His old review of "Shadow of the Colussus" was nearly 8000 words long, and he frequently goes longer.) But he is always right. His ideas about game design are so clear and deep that everything he writes about them seems not just reasonable but objectively correct. If you have any interest in game analysis beyond 1-5 ratings on graphics, sound, gameplay, etc., you should try taking a look at his articles.
Anyway, the neat thing about this new site is that they have posted a "best 25 games of all time" list with each entry linking to one of their absurdly long and thoughtful reviews. I usually enjoy that sort of thing even though the lists are always pretty predictable and samey. The awesome thing about this list though is that it isn't. It is almost totally different than any other "best games" list I've read, and it's really interesting to see the choices they made and why they made them. The writers at ActionButton have a very exacting idea of what they like and why, and it's a bit off from the mainstream. For example, the list includes a Castlevania game, but it's not "Symphony of the Night" (most best-game lists put it within the top five). It has "Secret of Evermore" but not "Secret of Mana" or a single "Final Fantasy" title (most lists feel compelled to list FF7 even though 4-6 were better). It puts the indie, developed-by-one-guy-in-his-spare-time adventure title "Cave Story" in the top 10 (most lists don't include it at all). And the number one entry is a barely-known PC game from the late 80s which, like Cave Story, was made by just one guy.
And yet at the same time that they make all these unusual choices, it's not a snooty example of "here's the games that are *actually* good, unlike those other lists". The list also includes common, popular picks like "Half-Life 2" and "Gears of War"... and things you might think are too plain for a best-games list like a soccer title and a racing game, and "Spartan: Total Warrior" which I always sort of assumed sucked.
Here's their list. Take a look for yourself and let me know what you think. |
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| Yourmorals.org survey |
[Sep. 16th, 2008|01:39 pm] |
Pic and Obs took the morality survey mentioned in one of the articles I linked yesterday, so I thought I would take it and show mine, too. It's the "Moral Foundations Questionnaire" at their site, if you want to try it out.
I'm actually a little surprised by the harm and authority scores. On harm, I figured I would be higher... but it probably ended up there because I consider harming others to be, in many cases, inevitable. The authority score is a bit more surprising. I got a "typical" liberal score on that dimension, but I expected it to be lower. I don't consider heeding authority to be a moral issue; it's a practical one. So I answered somewhat affirmatively on, for example, "children should be taught to respect authority". But not because I think authority is intrinsically important... simply because it is an invaluable social shortcut for evaluating expertise.
I imagine that if the questionnaire weren't so brief, and hit each dimension more times with slightly different questions, I would have higher harm and lower authority. |
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| Me on TV? Also, politics. |
[Sep. 15th, 2008|11:59 am] |
I was gonna make this post nearly 24 hours ago, but a windstorm knocked out power for about a million homes in Ohio and we spent all night in the dark. I came to OSU today to get my electronics and internet fix, since the campus has its own power plant. There are a lot of downed trees and telephone poles in our neighborhood... I'll post some photos once we get our own power back. It could potentially be days, but, since we live just a few blocks off one of Columbus' main streets in a densely-populated neighborhood, I'm hoping we'll have power back by sometime tomorrow, if not sooner.
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There's a PBS show about schools airing on Monday night called "Where We Stand". They filmed some segments at Metro School last year, and I may appear in some classroom shots. I do appear on the webpage about the show. (That's Mr. Trang, the physics teacher, in the foreground. The other picture shows principal Marcy Raymond and a student, Jacob, who we had in physics during the second quarter.) It was produced by the OSU PBS station but it appears that it will be airing widely.
[And, of course, chances are high that I won't be able to watch the show myself without electricity in the house...]
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I still follow the postings of Adam Cadre, the alternate-universe me that somehow didn't like "The Incredibles". He just made a big political post that makes me happy, angry, and sad. It's a very vociferous denouncement of McCain/Palin and Republicans in general and describes how he resigned to donate to Obama even though he doesn't really like Obama very much.
Although I don't agree with all of the post (and am uninformed on some as well), it's refreshing to read somebody making a strong case without pulling punches. That's the thing I like so much about Dennis Kucinich -- instead of talking like a politician, he just says exactly what he thinks and what he thinks is always (in my view) correct, without compromising any principles.
After the 2004 elections when Bush was put back in office against all reason and several states overwhelmingly approved amendments to deny rights to an already-oppressed minority, I basically lost all faith in the American voting public. It's not always on my mind, and I sometimes even feel a little bit of optimism, but when I think about it I always go back to that moment. And Adam's post nicely expresses many of my feelings along those lines. I of course do not think that ALL Republicans are morons. Certainly nobody on my LJ friends list. But large swaths of the party... yes. I'm sure large swaths of Democrats are also morons, but at least they vote for people that make decisions based on thought and compassion instead of dogma and in-group selfishness.
So, when Adam says that blue states actually *are better* than red states and that the red state people *should* feel like the blue states look down on them... a big part of me agrees. I think my only real objection to the statement is that it uses an awfully broad brush, possibly implying that each individual person within those groups fits the overall rule. But that's reading things into it that aren't neccessarily being said. One can talk about the mean of a group without saying anything at all about individual data points. And in that sense, I feel that Adam is spot-on.
He also makes a few comments about swing voters that I think are a little too harsh, but he has a small point which reminded me that I've been thinking about this: I don't think I've ever met a true swing voter. Apparently they are the most important deciding factor in American politics, but I have no experience with or understanding of them. Who are these people that in one election might vote for abortion bans, pre-emptive military invasions, and warrantless domestic wiretapping and in another election might vote against those things? How does a brain like that even operate? Now that both nominees are known, who could possibly still be undecided? What do they still want to know about the candidates that isn't already plain?
In Adam's closing, he says this:
Barack Obama has said on a number of occasions that the McCain/Palin lies won't work because "You can't just make stuff up... the American people aren't stupid." But there are two Americas. In one of them, the American people aren't stupid. It is actually kind of heartbreaking to think about the kind of modern, progressive country Blue America could be without Red America holding it back.
I don't pretend that Blue America would be uniformly better than Red America -- it would probably swing too far in some areas without the Reds to moderate it a bit -- but I feel the same way. It's depressing, and so frustrating, for all the things that Blue America could do to be prevented by a tyranny of the majority when the margins are so close (less then 10% in the last decade or so, gay marriage nonwithstanding).
I like Columbus, and still plan to live here for at least a few years after I finish school and start teaching. But longer-term, I am still seriously considering moving to Canada. It's hard to imagine a political change could occur in the US that would be do drastic and heartbreaking that I'd feel the need to leave immediately, and I would feel a little guilty about fleeing the problem and reducing the liberalness that little bit more... and of course you can't really escape America's foolishness just by leaving because of its enormous influence... but still. I would probably feel a lot more at home in a place that wasn't so backward.
Edited to add: Interestingly, I just came across this article by a social psychologist Jessica had told me about. It summarizes his work on morality, which comes down to conservatives analyzing right/wrong on five different axes, while liberals use only two of those five. Interesting reading, highly recommended. It's a much more sympathetic treatment of the same ideas Adam is discussing. |
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| Strange visitor |
[Sep. 11th, 2008|06:56 pm] |
I was looking around under the bed and dressers today and found something unexpected:
I have seen very few mantises in my life, especially this close up, and would not have guessed I would run into one this way. He was sitting on a piece that was broken off the front of Jessica's dresser, so I just sort of lifted it very gently and walked him over to the open window. He was quite reticent to let go of the wood and rejoin the world around him. It was really awesome to watch him cleaning the spines on his arms by running his mouth along them. A mantis is so much more humanoid than most insects, I couldn't help but imagine an intelligent agency operating in that tiny triangular head as I watched the way he moved and looked around. |
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| Nausicaa |
[Aug. 4th, 2008|09:29 pm] |
On last Wednesday I went to see "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind" play at a local arthouse theater. I was thrilled when I found out that it was playing... it seems likely that at some point in my life -- assuming I live several more decades -- I will get a second chance to see this movie projected from film instead of on a TV screen, but I didn't want to take the chance, so I made sure to catch a screening. The print they showed had a moderate amount of damage. Especially near the beginnings of reels there were scratches, and at one point a single bright green scratch ran down the center of the screen for about three or four minutes. Also, there was a point where the film had obviously broken and been spliced back together... because right as Asbel is sinking into the quicksand, the entire film turned upside down for several frames (less than half a second). That was kind of amusing.
I've never really been able to say what my "favorite" Ghibli film is, but I can point at a loose cloud consisting of Nausicaa, Totoro, and Mononoke, and say that these are the three with the most weighty emotional impact for me. (But "The Cat Returns" is the one I find funniest, easily.) I'm not sure exactly why it is that it hits me so hard, but a big part of it probably comes from having read the manga. Miyazaki worked sporadically on the Nausicaa manga for roughly 12 years. The movie is based on the first of seven volumes, and naturally is much abbreviated and simplified. The film has several flaws, but all I can see in it is the idealized, internalized version of the story that I carry inside myself. The Nausicaa manga is one of the most meaningful things I've ever read. It is deeply, deeply personal to me.
( Lots of talking about a movie most of you don't care about. ) |
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| Moving |
[Jun. 21st, 2008|10:32 am] |
The M.Ed. program started this week. Seems okay so far. I will usually refer to it as "MSAT" which stands for Math, Science and Technology, since it's specifically a program for teachers in those disciplines.
The big news, though, is that David, Maggie, Jessica and I are moving from our tiny apartment to this house:
We're just renting, but, it's exciting. We're picking up the keys in half an hour.
Figured I should break my posting silence to mention it. |
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| Various: School, GF, birthday, Smash, mucus |
[Mar. 25th, 2008|12:31 pm] |
Yesterday I finally received my acceptance into the M.Ed. program!
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Last week was spring break for both OSU and Metro school. I spent pretty much the entire week with Jessica. Things with her are just fantastic. We're together all the time and still aren't sick of each other. :)
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I guess my birthday is coming up? People are asking what they should get for me and I don't really know. Here is the stuff left from my Christmas list that I don't have yet:
DVD:
Teen Titans - The Complete Third Season
Music:
Hem - any album, just discovered them this year
Imogen Heap - any album, same deal
Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left
King Kong (1933) - this edition from Marco Polo, none other
Games:
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves for Wii
Wii points cards
Magic: The Gathering booster packs (any expansion set)
Another option would be for people to chip in and get a nice collapsable card table and some folding chairs so we would have someplace to play games in the apartment.
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I put my Smash Bros number into the database in the #wiigii! Yahoo group, so if you're in there, please look me up and add me. I put in a bunch of people's numbers but a lot of them still said "awaiting registration" or something the last time I checked.
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I've been a little sick the last few days. Not sure where I picked it up, but David (and to some extent Maggie) also have something. Post nasal drip is such a pain the in neck. I never used to get it, but sometime in my mid-20s it started happening every time I got sick and it really pisses me off. I could deal with having to spit all my excess saliva into a cup every 30 seconds if that were the whole thing, but the fact that it prevents me from falling asleep is just cruel. |
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| Smash Bros friend code; busy weekend. |
[Mar. 10th, 2008|12:48 am] |
0946-1895-1800
Somebody invite me into the channel's Yahoo group so I can see the files there? I assume I can be a member but still set it not to send me any mail.
We can connect to the Wi-Fi Connection, but can't manage to get any opponents in an "Anyone Match", and keep getting disconnected too. Anybody else having that kind of problem? I figured it might just be load on their network.
--
Last week was a big mess at Metro School. The students were doing Ohio Graduation Testing (OGT) during the morning every day, so we had shortened periods in the afternoons. We were also in intersession, with the new term starting on Thursday. But the students' new schedules weren't ready until midday Friday, which meant Thursday afternoon we basically did nothing, and Friday afternoon even though schedules *existed*, no more than half of them were correct, so lots of the students that came into the class hadn't wanted to take physics or had already taken it and passed.
Also with the change of terms, Thomas and I are moving into a different classroom. We had the biggest and nicest room in the building, but it's meant to be a chemistry classroom, and since somebody else is teaching chem this term instead of Thomas, we had to switch out. We got all the essential stuff moved after school Friday, with the help of a group of students who Thomas bribed with a box of Girl Scout Cookies.
Friday was also an early dismissal because of the huge blizzard that came through... It started snowing at about noon on Friday and didn't stop until 8 PM Saturday. (More than 20 inches in Columbus, according to one of our local news stations.) After we were done moving, I headed to OSU... it was the last day of classes there, which meant it was time for another end-of-quarter FEH party. I was a little distressed after braving the weather to find the physics building's atrium completely empty... so I called Jean's cell, which I am really glad I still had, and she told me to go over to Hitchcock.
I got to talk to Jean and Beth, and Pat, and Ryan, and Elyse and Kevin, Jen, Jenn, the other Kevin, Sage, and Jim. Oh, and Suzie showed up to crash. Masha didn't recognize me until the very end because of my beard. I think that was everyone? God, I love getting to see my old students again. They rock so hard.
I had expected to see Jessica later Friday night after her mom's birthday dinner, but that event was cancelled over the snow, so she came over early. We had fondue with Maggie and David, played some Chez Greek and Settlers of Catan, and probably watched a little something.
Saturday morning she slept in a bit and David and I watched tons of cartoons... two episodes of the Spider-Man show, plus Animated, a double episode of The Batman and a new lost ep of TMNT. We were pretty much snowed in all day so we all just hung around watching TiVo and playing games. In the evening Graham came over for a bit, and at midnight we headed out to a Wal*Mart to buy Smash Bros. When we got back, though, Maggie was already asleep and Graham went home, and Jessica had a bad headache and wanted to go back to her more comfortable bed, so we freed her car from the snow and headed out. David broke in the new game by himself. Aww. :(
Thankfully Jessica's work today was cancelled so instead of just dropping me off in the morning she came back over and stayed all day again. I love just having Jessica around, regardless of whether we're doing the same stuff or not. She mostly studied for her finals and napped a little while I alternately played Smash Bros and watched stuff on TiVo. David played a little bit too. Maybe later this week we can have the big Smash party Jen was envisioning on Wednesday night...
School for Monday is cancelled all across the county, so I'm going to have a pretty free day... Hopefully play some games, read some comics, and try to catch up on the Transformers Wiki. I keep going two or three full days without checking the Recent Changes list... I'm really not being a very effective admin right now. |
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| Various |
[Mar. 6th, 2008|10:20 am] |
Having a girlfriend is really time-consuming, but so worth it. What a great feeling. I've seen her every day for the past week, but yesterday it was only briefly before she went to work in the morning and I sort of missed her by evening. ::sigh:: It's been just over three weeks since our first date.
A few days ago an interview about the politics and philosophy of "Battlestar Galactica" went up which is interesting reading.
Still haven't received official word about my transfer to Education. Soon.
In an hour, I'll start meeting the new batch of physics students at Metro. Today's the first day of the new trimester there, and we will have physics classes in all three periods. Since I'll want to work with all the students, I'll probably go in for the whole school day three days a week and take the other two off. That will put me over my required 20 hours for the fellowship, but it's the easiest fit.
The new Spider-Man cartoon starts on Saturday! So excited!
The Order of the Stick had the best of the several Gary Gygax tributes that were posted in webcomics this week. It feels a little strange that Roy -- who had spent the last week or two on Earth as a ghost, trying to contact his still-living friends -- had returned to his cloudy purgatory, the perfect setting for a tribute, *just* before Gygax's death. I knew Burlew's storytelling was overflowing with foresight but really, that's kind of eerie. |
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| Dating; Application Status |
[Feb. 21st, 2008|12:51 am] |
Things with this new woman, Jessica, are going great. It's just... really exciting. Thursday will be our fourth date since we met last Tuesday. I am trying hard not to get too invested prematurely, but from my end all the signs are positive and, although she wisely wants to be cautious, she's a bit caught up in it too.
This whole thing where two people are both into each other is really brilliant.
I still have a couple more weeks to wait before I know for sure whether I will be admitted into the Masters of Education program this year. I've been told by everyone that it's pretty likely, but I'm still a little uneasy about it. If I don't, all it means is that I'll have to get a provisional teaching license and do the M.Ed. next year, or part time or something. It wouldn't change a thing about wanting to go into high school science. But getting in now would definitely work out the best for me.
Most of the petitions I turned in for having various OSU undergrad courses waived have been accepted (stuff that I have equivalents or way, way better for but that I didn't take at OSU). I signed up to start taking my introductory chemistry courses, but I've started to question whether I shouldn't just try to place out them like I plan to for the one biology course I need to take. I'm going to have to talk to somebody in the chem department to get their opinion on it... Jessica said that she thought the whole sequence was pretty much trivial when she took it. I know that, as Evan said a couple weeks ago at lunch, I "would be totally sweet at chem 121" -- it's not like I expect to be challenged by it. I just didn't really think that it would be so low-level that I might easily place out with a reading of the textbook. So, anyway, I'll need to consult with people on that.
Kathy -- the workshop organizer in my department who I talked to about wanting to quit the PhD a few weeks ago -- mentioned that one of the teachers we work with on the workshops was really excited to hear that I'll be doing the M.Ed., and wants to do whatever she can to get me assigned to her as a student teacher. It would be really fun to work with her (she's amazing), plus it felt great just to hear that she was so enthusiastic about my decision and the chance to work with me.
All in all, I am very happy with things right now. Yay for new directions in life and love! |
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| Date; random things. |
[Feb. 13th, 2008|09:48 am] |
My date last night went well! I liked her a lot. She's smart, pretty, funny, and geeky, which is pretty much ideal. And she seemed at least mildly enthusiastic about me, too. I'm seeing her again on Friday -- there's a bi-weekly board game night she goes to that I'm going to tag along at.
Yesterday and today both saw classes at Metro School cancelled due to weather. Monday night we got about three inches of snow, and last night it apparently got icy.
And lastly, here's two random internet things I came across recently:
At the website for NBC's "The Office", the actress who plays Angela (who is also named Angela) has her own little page where she posts little videos and stuff. She is *so* incredibly likable and cute. They're pretty much all fun, but I recommend "Pregnancy Bombshell" (Jenna mentions not being "allowed" to exercise yet because she'd severely injured her back), Angela Goes to the Emmys (I liked the first dress best), and the ones about their trip to Scranton. It's kind of disconcerting to see her being her giggly self instead of her character.
I've been reading the blog of James Gurney, the author/painter of the Dinotopia books. The other day he made this bizarre observation... if you look at the bottom half of a Stormtrooper upside down, it looks like an evil Pillsbury Doughboy. Check out his photo demonstrating this, complete with a little kerchief for the Stormtrooper. |
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| Speed Dating |
[Feb. 10th, 2008|04:43 pm] |
So, the speed dating night: It was a little over a week ago. And as expected, it was fairly weird.
When I arrived I was taken aback at the number of people there... somewhere around 300. Before the event officially started people were milling around, ordering drinks and socializing. It seemed as if most people came with friends, as most of the clusters of people were sex-homogeneous. There wasn't a whole lot of pre-event flirting. I sort of uncomfortably wandered around a little and then noticed a couple guys from the physics department (one who I am barely aquainted with and another who I merely recognize) and stood with them until things started up.
The room was split up into different clusters of tables, each with space for 30 men and 30 women. They started a little late so there were only four minutes for each "date", then the men moved to the next seat, until everyone in a cluster had met, and that was the end of the evening.
Four minutes is, in case you wondered, exactly enough time for two people to write down each other's names and to say what they study and where they're from. And most of the conversations I had went exactly like that. I tried to deviate a few times, but it seemed to always go back into that track. The pace was so quick that I didn't even have time to make little notes on my sheet to help me remember who was who, much less make and record my "yes" or "no" decisions on the spot. So, when it later came time to enter my selections there was some guesswork involved.
Strangely, one of the women I was interested in earlier this year was there -- another of the counselors from Metro. When I finally learned her last name a few months ago I looked her up on Facebook and concluded from her photos that she was seeing somebody, and stopped thinking about her. It was nice to sit with a familiar face for a little break. Judging by a brief conversation we had the following Monday, and the profile she put up on the site that runs the speed dating, I think it's safe to say we're not an appropriate match for each other anyway. Still, seeing her there made me feel lame for having passively looked her up and then done nothing when, in fact, she was apparently single after all.
Of the 30 women I met I ended up saying "yes" for about half. But my luck was even worse than _shmoo's experience that he mentioned in the comments to my last post. Apparently zero of the women I liked wanted to have a second conversation with me. I wasn't expecting to get, like 10 matches, but I figured at least one or two... I'm not devastated or anything, but it is a bit distressing. I figured that at least a couple of the women who I had non-formula conversations with would have been open to meeting again, and was bummed that they aren't. I suppose it's generally the way these go that the men will say "yes" to any moderately attractive woman who they liked talking to while the women are probably much more selective.
Anyway, the site that runs the whole thing (cupid.com) operates a little oddly. For one thing, it required me to put a yes or no vote for every woman who was there that night, even though only 30 of them were in my group. One of the first times I logged in, it told me that somebody had said "yes" to me, but it wasn't a women I had actually met, much less already said yes to myself. She must have liked my photo and just said yes based on that. But of course the "make your selections" page isn't actually linked to our profiles in any way, so I couldn't look her up to see if I liked her. I've never seen that woman appear again in subsequent logins. That means it reports at least some non-mutual "yes" votes, which I didn't expect, but it's not clear if it reports all yeses or just one at a time. Instead, it keeps showing me one woman who I *had* met, but wasn't really interested in. Further, I got an email saying that she had sent me a message on the site, but when I went to look at what she had written, the only message there was from the site itself saying a message to me had been removed for violating their terms of service, and went on to explain that "the most common scams" are people asking for money. So, uh... what? Also, my "results" page for the event which shows this one woman doesn't explicitly state that I have no matches... it just shows her and says that she liked me. And actually the link to the page states that I *do* have matches, even though I apparently don't.
So I don't quite know how to interpret all that. But, whatever. It's a normal-seeming dating site and they gave me a one-month "gold" membership for attending the event, so maybe I'll poke around in it while I still have the ability to send messages there.
Coincidentally, the same day as the speed dating event I got a message on OK Cupid -- my first in a while -- from somebody pretty promising. We've had trouble lining up our schedule but it looks like we're going to have dinner on Tuesday when she gets off from work. That will be nice. |
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| Life |
[Jan. 30th, 2008|01:27 am] |
Okay, so, post on more significant life things.
I am quitting my PhD program. Probably not a surprise to anybody at this point. But I finally made the decision 100%. It seems very likely that I will be able to get into the M.Ed. program, which starts in the summer quarter at the beginning of June. It's pretty intensive, so I probably won't be able to go to Comic Con this year, but them's the breaks. Everyone I've talked to about it has been supportive, including my parents and even my advisor, despite his earlier apprehensiveness.
Meantime, everything at Metro School is still great. I love being there. I enjoy working with Thomas, the students are wonderful, and I recently found out that the pay is great, too. (I knew the fellowship paid more than a normal TA position, but it turns out to be *significantly* more. Granted, those of you with real jobs would scoff at my stipend, but I've basically been given a 60% raise.) A couple weeks ago I was on my way out at lunchtime and passed my favorite of this term's students and stopped to talk to her for a moment. She made a comment about another teacher's facial hair to one of her friends, and he gestured to me and incredulously said to her, "There's another teacher standing right there." Dismissing his concern, she replied, "He's cool." I smiled the whole way home.
Actually, I also got a nice little visit from one of last year's students on Monday. I was in my office on campus filling out forms for my transfer, glancing out the big window watching people go by. And I was like, hey, that's Jen. And then she happened to turn toward the window and I waved, and she got all excited and did a 180, rushing back to the building's entrance to come in. She's an undergrad TA this year, and she loves it. I'm so proud! I miss her and all my great engineering kids.
In other parts of life: Women. I still need one. I did have lunch with the counselor who gave me her email (previously mentioned) to talk to her about my career crisis. And it helped to talk to a non-involved party. And I found that I really liked her. Unfortunately, not available. I didn't even get to ask; as we were wrapping up she mentioned a boyfriend. Not pointedly, just as part of the thought she was expressing. Oh well.
A few days before I met up with her, though, I got an email from the OSU activities board announcing a off-brand Speed Dating night for grad students that they are sponsoring. ("Speed Dating" is probably on its way to being genericized, but it's actually a trademark.) So I signed up for that. Figured, why not. I'd thought about it several times in the last few years, and here's a perfect (and free) opportunity. I don't really know what to expect. But it can't hurt. That's this Friday evening. Maybe something will come of that. |
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| Computer stuff and recent media consumption |
[Jan. 26th, 2008|11:47 pm] |
I've upgraded my desktop computer. It's been about five years, I guess. I mainly wanted a bigger hard drive, but I figured I could use a new processor, too. My old processor was an Athlon XP for Socket A, which is obsolete, and my old motherboard only had the old "parallel" ATA connections for drives anyway, so I basically went all-out. New mobo, CPU, and memory, plus the hard drive, and I threw in a 20" widescreen LCD too. (My old CRT had started losing a little blue, I think. The display was kind of yellowish most of the time.) And I also needed a new heatsink for my new CPU (and discovered that all heatsinks for modern processors are comically large), and when I realized that the leads for my case's LEDs didn't match the pins on my new motherboard I decided to get a new case, too! Seriously, the case was ancient. It was so old that it had a "turbo" LED.
The only thing that's the same now -- aside from peripherals -- is one of the hard disks and my DVD writer. Since I have a new case I was able to also dump a bunch of old components I'd left in purely because I didn't have any blanks to replace them with, like my LAN card from 1996 and my 5.25" floppy drive. Poor Fivey... you haven't even been attached to a data cable for about eight years and your door lever is broken and you are caked with dust inside and out, but you've been with me through every iteration of my computer for the last 15 years. I send you now to disk drive heaven.
I migrated my Windows install to my old "storage" drive so I could dump the old main drive and use new one for storage. That was fun. I had never cloned a drive before. Everything's all put together and working now, and I finally have the disk space on my main drive to install The Orange Box... I can finally play "Portal"!
In other computer news, I did receive a replacement laptop from HP earlier in the month. So far it has only seemingly malfunctioned once, and that might have been my fault. I'm keeping an eye on it. In any case, since it's a new machine it comes with a fresh warranty.
Moving on from computers to mass media... Maggie and I have been continuing to tear through my "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" DVDs, at a rate of roughly one season per week. We're nearly at the end of the series now. Last Monday I was off from school for the holiday and we're not sure which one we started with, but we watched between 9 and 11 episodes in that one day. Granted, it was split between morning and evening sessions, and we took a long break to talk after the end of season six before watching the first two from season seven, but still... that's a little crazy.
I also recently saw "Juno" and "Cloverfield", and liked both of them. "Juno" was kind of fantastic, really. I'm glad we finally went. And I liked "Cloverfield", but it didn't blow me away or anything. I expected to like it more than I did. Not really sure what part of it didn't meet my expectations. Maybe I'd just gotten a little too excited for it.
More to come in another post soon... life/school stuff. Wanted to get the trivialities out of the way first. |
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