I think people talk too much anyway.*
It feels like I haven't written a proper post in ages, that the last time I did, dinosaurs were fighting off hoards of ninjas whilst crashing into tiny little wooden cottages filled with scared French peasants. Which is a shame, because there's actually quite a bit I ought to recount. (It's also a shame about the peasants and their little yet charming huts.) I have yet, for example, to give an account of my Christmas swag or wax poetical about my Time for Something Biblical proof copy, but seeing as that requires photographs that, yes, have already been taken, to be downloaded and uploaded and all that, those particular topics will have to remain unexplored. For now.
Instead, let me tell you about my German class, for example. It's the usual mix of young and middle-aged people, of about nine girls and two boys and if anyone gives me any gripe about saying girls and boys then you're reading the wrong blog. One of the guys (there, happy?) has albinism, which is absolutely fascinating.
I guess the most surprising thing about his condition - can we call recessive genetic mutations "conditions"? - is how red his skin is, all over. Like he's permanently blushing a lot. His eyes are also really neat (a bit like this, blue with red streaks) and, apparently, really not so good. While I knew - especially from Threshold by greygirlbeast - that albino eyes are particularly sensitive to light, I wasn't as aware of the eyesight problems linked to the mutation. The guy in my class has some serious lenses for far-seeing and others for reading, which he amps up with an extra hand-held lens. He sits next to me in class, which means we've partnered a few times for the conversation practices and he seems nice, although we haven't really chatted. I keep being struck not by his albinism but by his glasses, which make his eyes look huge, and it's taking me a while to get used to the effect.
Curiously, there's also another girl my class with what must be a very high prescription because they give a strong magnifying effect to her eyes, which makes my brain itch in the "something's slightly different here and I can't stop noticing" sense.
On Monday, we had a substitute teacher - rumoured to be Brazilian, of all things - because our teacher was off wrangling unicorns or something, I don't know. It a bit sad that I much preferred the substitute to our regular teacher, isn't it? I mean, her class felt like a real honest to Pumpkinhead's Goethe Institute class. There was casual banter, grammar revision and application, conversation exercises, the whole lot. Whereas today, for example, with our usual teacher, "grammar revision" took the form it always takes, which involves her handing out a sheet or calling out an exercise number in the book, saying, "You all remember the [grammar], right? Let's review it," and then having us do the exercises and then call out the answers. There is no revision anywhere to be seen, not even under the carpet or behind the desks, and I'm left scrambling, trying to keep up and remember what verb tenses go where and how they are conjugated and generally feeling rather like a small child being pushed into the deep end with a cry of, "We did the kiddy pool last week! You should be fine!"
Let me also tell you about my dreams, because they're still being strangely nice to me. Case in point: last night's dream. It involved two large, thick snakes looking rather like overgrown-to-young-boa-proportions King Browns, although this is the first I know of this snake. They were both in my room by my wardrobe, and deemed poisonous. As I was trying to figure out what the hell to do with to large snakes in my room - thanks, Roald Dalh, with your Flying Solo stories, I'm sure you helped my imagination - they slipped in behind the wardrobe. Panic! Or, well, that was my intention, because the dream now had two large poisonous snakes behind the wardrobe and thus unatainable and still dangerous. But instead of the dream swerving into "oh good gods, where are they?!?" terror, I walked around the wardrobe and, aha! The wardrobe is a good two or three feet away from the wall and the snakes are exposed!
Then I resorted to trying to smash their heads in with some weapon - which is something I would never do because I'm not an idiot - and while I did feel the usual weakness that comes on when I try to fight in my dreams - I'll be throwing a punch and feel the intent not match the power behind the swing at all - the shocking thing is that it worked! The dream didn't spiral into my whacking pathetically at the snakes and then getting bitten horrifically, no. It had me fighting back - weakly, but enough - to beat those fuckers. I'm still shocked about all these turns of events the dream gave me. (And that's not including the GIANT MASSIVE HUGE GIGANTIC spider that took up the entire hallways and was bright yellow. Instead of panicking - although, being a bit apprehensive wasn't off the table - I simply grabbed some binoculars so I could observe the arachnid at my leisure. It was an awesome spider. (A bit like this one, but with the colours inverted.)
Granted, all that "Yay, Psyche Power!" kind of goes down the drain when you realize that the night before that, I half woke up in bed and instantly knew that something was standing over me, staring at me and ready to hurt me, so I shoved my hands over my face and turned around to burrow under the blankets. True, I often to wake up and instantly leap into "Ack! We're on our backs! Exposure on high! Turn over! Repeat, turn over!" overdrive because as you can tell, while sleeping on my back may occur, it makes me feel horribly exposed when I actually realize I'm on my back. But this was the first time I was convinced something bad was over me and before that thought had even finished, it was face-palm and blanket-burrow time.
But another dream carried on with the Avoidance of Worst Case Scenario We Know Should Be Happening thing my dreams have going on now. (And trust me, I know we're avoiding the Worst Case Scenario, because I'll be thinking, "Man, it would totally suck if this happened," in the dream, and lo and behold, it doesn't.) This one's a bit more dream-logic - or possibly comic-logic - because I am in a giant sewer or metro tunnel which suddenly explodes and is flooded with a massive river coursing through it. I'm safe, but Human Target's Chance would be pretty much doomed if he weren't, you know, Chance, so just about when I start thinking, "If only he had a boat, he wouldn't drown," Chance finds a raft and latches onto it as he goes over a waterfall. Which for Chance means he's perfectly safe.
Lastly, a dream I had that was much easier to understand basically involved my relaxing on a hill until people come, and because people suck, even in dreams, my deciding to says, "Screw it!" to socializing and instead wander down the hill to enjoy reveling in nature and solitude. I spotted a Kookaburra and rode a horse. It was good.
I have a couple other dreams jotted down involving dinosaurs, but I'll leave those for another time. Suffice to say they do not involve velociraptors breaking into my home and trying to slice me open which thank fucking gods. I've only been having that dream since I watched Jurassic Park in theatres. Which is to say, since 1993. Oy.
I've been getting through January's Haitus of Death weeks - including the "We're back! We're gone again!" horrors that various shows did - by listening to podcasts. Today I listened to MonsterTalk, which is MADE OF SCIENCE and therefore awesome (and geckos). I'm really looking forward to the current episode, though. It's about ninjas, guys. Ninjas. And they Ask a Ninja.
I've also been playing catch-up on all those movies I've been meaning to watch and have had staring at me with puppy eyes Sam Winchester would be proud of. My boss gave me - or rather, regifted, because his wife already had one, but hey, gift horse of awesome - an agenda, and since it's only got wee tiny lines and sticks in four days per page, I've been using it to be ridiculous obsessive and organized and listmaking, by which I mean jotting down every book, podcast, episode and movie I read, listen to or watch. Last week, for example, included the Podfic Beautiful Disaster by thenyxie, which was really good and long and used music breaks to glorious effect (and because damn, do you need breaks after a couple hours of listening). My only complaint is that there really was too much porn - hours and hours of it. Don't get me wrong, it was well-written, smutty, and full of characterization, but the characters went at it like rabbits on E.
My other literary foray included the audiobook of The Metamorphosis. Let me put it this way: if TV Tropes had a posterchild for It Got Worse, The Metamorphosis would be it. Ye gods! but things just kept on getting worse for poor Gregor.
At the moment, I'm listening to The Trial, on seschat's recommendation. Not much happens, really, although I guess that's the whole point. For the most part it's interesting in an absurd sort of way, although I think K. is a complete jerk. I have just gotten through a pretty dull patch involving Titorelli, the court painter, and what felt like hours and hours of a lecture on court process. Let me tell you, when you're scanning document after document and need something to distract you, that is not it.
I also went to the cinema twice - well, once was the French Institute - for Gainsbourg: Vie Heroique (WIN) and The King's Speech (WIN). Not in the cinema, I've watched The Girl Who Played With Fire(which was so rivetting - and I say with with all the sarcasm in the world - that I started knitting whilst watching it just to get through it). "Thriller" my half-finished wristwramer. Splice, which was decent enough although I kept wanting to shout at the screen all the ways that they were doing science and scientists wrong, and I was very much amused that it remembered in the last twenty minutes that it was supposed to be a horror movie and not a science fiction one meant to comment on scientific advantages.
Oh, and I finally watched Twilight. With RiffTrax, of course, which made it hilarious. Since this subject has been done to death and sparlkepire beyond, I'm just going to point to made_of_fail_pc's What, would you prefer "Undead American"?, Do We Dazzle You?, FACE PUNCH! and Powedered Sparklepire and say, "Yeah, that."
Although to my complete and abject horror, I actually liked Edward for a total of five seconds split between two tiny little moments. One is when he's at the Cullen residence and going o.0 at Alice the Crazy Haired Touchy-Feely One. It's just so normal, it's a relief!
(Where concidently, I can't stop staring at Mama Cullen, thinking, "Ah! Grey's Anatomy's Jane Doe!" and where I sputter a "How stupid are you?" when Bella says, "Bon giorno" and Mama Cullen answers, "Molto bene!" which is the equivalent of "Good day" answered by "Very well!")
And his face when Alice's Boy is all "Must feed!" is hysterical as well, all normal teenage "oh gods, I am so embarrassed and disgusted and this has to stop now, come on, guys, shut it". I can't remember what the other moment was, but it was also Edward being a person (or possibly just being Robert).
twilightxlamb, here
As for Bella, I have this to say:
misteroogieboogie, here
That, and her utterly flabbergasted speechless "omgwtfbbq" sputtering when Edward told her he was leaving was hilarious.
* Elle DeGeneres
Instead, let me tell you about my German class, for example. It's the usual mix of young and middle-aged people, of about nine girls and two boys and if anyone gives me any gripe about saying girls and boys then you're reading the wrong blog. One of the guys (there, happy?) has albinism, which is absolutely fascinating.
I guess the most surprising thing about his condition - can we call recessive genetic mutations "conditions"? - is how red his skin is, all over. Like he's permanently blushing a lot. His eyes are also really neat (a bit like this, blue with red streaks) and, apparently, really not so good. While I knew - especially from Threshold by greygirlbeast - that albino eyes are particularly sensitive to light, I wasn't as aware of the eyesight problems linked to the mutation. The guy in my class has some serious lenses for far-seeing and others for reading, which he amps up with an extra hand-held lens. He sits next to me in class, which means we've partnered a few times for the conversation practices and he seems nice, although we haven't really chatted. I keep being struck not by his albinism but by his glasses, which make his eyes look huge, and it's taking me a while to get used to the effect.
Curiously, there's also another girl my class with what must be a very high prescription because they give a strong magnifying effect to her eyes, which makes my brain itch in the "something's slightly different here and I can't stop noticing" sense.
On Monday, we had a substitute teacher - rumoured to be Brazilian, of all things - because our teacher was off wrangling unicorns or something, I don't know. It a bit sad that I much preferred the substitute to our regular teacher, isn't it? I mean, her class felt like a real honest to Pumpkinhead's Goethe Institute class. There was casual banter, grammar revision and application, conversation exercises, the whole lot. Whereas today, for example, with our usual teacher, "grammar revision" took the form it always takes, which involves her handing out a sheet or calling out an exercise number in the book, saying, "You all remember the [grammar], right? Let's review it," and then having us do the exercises and then call out the answers. There is no revision anywhere to be seen, not even under the carpet or behind the desks, and I'm left scrambling, trying to keep up and remember what verb tenses go where and how they are conjugated and generally feeling rather like a small child being pushed into the deep end with a cry of, "We did the kiddy pool last week! You should be fine!"
Let me also tell you about my dreams, because they're still being strangely nice to me. Case in point: last night's dream. It involved two large, thick snakes looking rather like overgrown-to-young-boa-proportions King Browns, although this is the first I know of this snake. They were both in my room by my wardrobe, and deemed poisonous. As I was trying to figure out what the hell to do with to large snakes in my room - thanks, Roald Dalh, with your Flying Solo stories, I'm sure you helped my imagination - they slipped in behind the wardrobe. Panic! Or, well, that was my intention, because the dream now had two large poisonous snakes behind the wardrobe and thus unatainable and still dangerous. But instead of the dream swerving into "oh good gods, where are they?!?" terror, I walked around the wardrobe and, aha! The wardrobe is a good two or three feet away from the wall and the snakes are exposed!
Then I resorted to trying to smash their heads in with some weapon - which is something I would never do because I'm not an idiot - and while I did feel the usual weakness that comes on when I try to fight in my dreams - I'll be throwing a punch and feel the intent not match the power behind the swing at all - the shocking thing is that it worked! The dream didn't spiral into my whacking pathetically at the snakes and then getting bitten horrifically, no. It had me fighting back - weakly, but enough - to beat those fuckers. I'm still shocked about all these turns of events the dream gave me. (And that's not including the GIANT MASSIVE HUGE GIGANTIC spider that took up the entire hallways and was bright yellow. Instead of panicking - although, being a bit apprehensive wasn't off the table - I simply grabbed some binoculars so I could observe the arachnid at my leisure. It was an awesome spider. (A bit like this one, but with the colours inverted.)
Granted, all that "Yay, Psyche Power!" kind of goes down the drain when you realize that the night before that, I half woke up in bed and instantly knew that something was standing over me, staring at me and ready to hurt me, so I shoved my hands over my face and turned around to burrow under the blankets. True, I often to wake up and instantly leap into "Ack! We're on our backs! Exposure on high! Turn over! Repeat, turn over!" overdrive because as you can tell, while sleeping on my back may occur, it makes me feel horribly exposed when I actually realize I'm on my back. But this was the first time I was convinced something bad was over me and before that thought had even finished, it was face-palm and blanket-burrow time.
But another dream carried on with the Avoidance of Worst Case Scenario We Know Should Be Happening thing my dreams have going on now. (And trust me, I know we're avoiding the Worst Case Scenario, because I'll be thinking, "Man, it would totally suck if this happened," in the dream, and lo and behold, it doesn't.) This one's a bit more dream-logic - or possibly comic-logic - because I am in a giant sewer or metro tunnel which suddenly explodes and is flooded with a massive river coursing through it. I'm safe, but Human Target's Chance would be pretty much doomed if he weren't, you know, Chance, so just about when I start thinking, "If only he had a boat, he wouldn't drown," Chance finds a raft and latches onto it as he goes over a waterfall. Which for Chance means he's perfectly safe.
Lastly, a dream I had that was much easier to understand basically involved my relaxing on a hill until people come, and because people suck, even in dreams, my deciding to says, "Screw it!" to socializing and instead wander down the hill to enjoy reveling in nature and solitude. I spotted a Kookaburra and rode a horse. It was good.
I have a couple other dreams jotted down involving dinosaurs, but I'll leave those for another time. Suffice to say they do not involve velociraptors breaking into my home and trying to slice me open which thank fucking gods. I've only been having that dream since I watched Jurassic Park in theatres. Which is to say, since 1993. Oy.
I've been getting through January's Haitus of Death weeks - including the "We're back! We're gone again!" horrors that various shows did - by listening to podcasts. Today I listened to MonsterTalk, which is MADE OF SCIENCE and therefore awesome (and geckos). I'm really looking forward to the current episode, though. It's about ninjas, guys. Ninjas. And they Ask a Ninja.
I've also been playing catch-up on all those movies I've been meaning to watch and have had staring at me with puppy eyes Sam Winchester would be proud of. My boss gave me - or rather, regifted, because his wife already had one, but hey, gift horse of awesome - an agenda, and since it's only got wee tiny lines and sticks in four days per page, I've been using it to be ridiculous obsessive and organized and listmaking, by which I mean jotting down every book, podcast, episode and movie I read, listen to or watch. Last week, for example, included the Podfic Beautiful Disaster by thenyxie, which was really good and long and used music breaks to glorious effect (and because damn, do you need breaks after a couple hours of listening). My only complaint is that there really was too much porn - hours and hours of it. Don't get me wrong, it was well-written, smutty, and full of characterization, but the characters went at it like rabbits on E.
My other literary foray included the audiobook of The Metamorphosis. Let me put it this way: if TV Tropes had a posterchild for It Got Worse, The Metamorphosis would be it. Ye gods! but things just kept on getting worse for poor Gregor.
At the moment, I'm listening to The Trial, on seschat's recommendation. Not much happens, really, although I guess that's the whole point. For the most part it's interesting in an absurd sort of way, although I think K. is a complete jerk. I have just gotten through a pretty dull patch involving Titorelli, the court painter, and what felt like hours and hours of a lecture on court process. Let me tell you, when you're scanning document after document and need something to distract you, that is not it.
I also went to the cinema twice - well, once was the French Institute - for Gainsbourg: Vie Heroique (WIN) and The King's Speech (WIN). Not in the cinema, I've watched The Girl Who Played With Fire(which was so rivetting - and I say with with all the sarcasm in the world - that I started knitting whilst watching it just to get through it). "Thriller" my half-finished wristwramer. Splice, which was decent enough although I kept wanting to shout at the screen all the ways that they were doing science and scientists wrong, and I was very much amused that it remembered in the last twenty minutes that it was supposed to be a horror movie and not a science fiction one meant to comment on scientific advantages.
Oh, and I finally watched Twilight. With RiffTrax, of course, which made it hilarious. Since this subject has been done to death and sparlkepire beyond, I'm just going to point to made_of_fail_pc's What, would you prefer "Undead American"?, Do We Dazzle You?, FACE PUNCH! and Powedered Sparklepire and say, "Yeah, that."
Although to my complete and abject horror, I actually liked Edward for a total of five seconds split between two tiny little moments. One is when he's at the Cullen residence and going o.0 at Alice the Crazy Haired Touchy-Feely One. It's just so normal, it's a relief!
(Where concidently, I can't stop staring at Mama Cullen, thinking, "Ah! Grey's Anatomy's Jane Doe!" and where I sputter a "How stupid are you?" when Bella says, "Bon giorno" and Mama Cullen answers, "Molto bene!" which is the equivalent of "Good day" answered by "Very well!")
And his face when Alice's Boy is all "Must feed!" is hysterical as well, all normal teenage "oh gods, I am so embarrassed and disgusted and this has to stop now, come on, guys, shut it". I can't remember what the other moment was, but it was also Edward being a person (or possibly just being Robert).
twilightxlamb, here
As for Bella, I have this to say:
misteroogieboogie, here
That, and her utterly flabbergasted speechless "omgwtfbbq" sputtering when Edward told her he was leaving was hilarious.
* Elle DeGeneres