I, ah...wrote something for a character I love and posted it over at my wordpress blog. Haven't checked yet if there's a Mizushiro Setona group up in here, but if anyone's looking for good, possibly heavy summer reading, The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese and its sequel The Carp on the Chopping Block Jumps Twice is probably one of the most lovely, compelling meditations on adult love I have ever encountered.

Here is my love letter to Imagase Wataru from the series.

152. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.1 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 
153. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.2 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 
154. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.3 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 
155. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.4 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 
156. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.5 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 
157. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.6 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 
158. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.7 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 
159. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.8 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 
160. Hana Yori Dango [Boys Over Flowers], vol.9 (Yoko Kamio, Viz) 


I'm still waiting to feel empowered, but I guess high school is more about misguided toughness and being overwhelmed with change. Fickleness ensues...

Who ever said the only sure things in life are death and taxes totally forgot about bugs and loneliness. And I know it might be uber-humanist-squeamish-silly of me to feel this way, but I hate them bugs. Pests, we call them when they intrude on our homes, but I prefer to shelve that distinction to a) preserve the truth of my massacre of them as part of my personal issues rather than any territorial whatever (I don't like them in nature either, which is why I don't do camping) and b) pretend they care about the sincerity with which I approach their extermination.

I'm mad I can get felled by this kind of thing (very unawesome, would say Gil), but the same can be said of greater beings (what's that lion from madagascar?). It was near midnight and I was finally hitting a human bed time for once in forever, when, before my eyes, sailing gently on the breeze of my rotating fan, was a tiny grey spider, like a ghastly kite on an invisible string. 

Had I had a moment longer to be awestruck, I wouldn't have caught the little beast (they all grow up to be fierce, leggy bastards) before it effectively crawled into bed with me. But it didn't take many moments longer for all these things about today to click...the suspicion of fuzz balls floating before my eyes, the distinct feel of a pinch with no usual suspects in sight...yes, where there is one tiny spider, there is bound to be a whole bunch of them spreading from some hatching point.

Luckily, the nest quickly presented itself...and I was able to make a concentrated effort at attack.

*cruelty towards other living beings censored*

After doing a quick sweep of all ceilings, vacuuming the floor, and lightly spraying down possible cracks and openings, I decided a shower was in order (could they be CORPSING IN MY HAIR????). As I wait for my hair to dry, I suddenly recall how Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder once said that Huey, Riley, and G-pa Freeman are all different parts of him. Didn't Philip Pullman also divulge that the gimmick of daemons in his famous trilogy was meant to facilitate narration of interiority?

Well, right about now, the story of my life is showing a personification of a younger me (a childhood friend perhaps, or a rodent) shaking their head at the current me and saying, "You didn't use to be like this."

And this is followed by a flashback montage of the two years I spent on my own in Wisconsin battling spiders that only come in degrees of furry, featuring one scene where an infestation was so sudden, I was smashing them into my rug with my bare hands. Argghhhhhhh! All be damned if I let such trivialities mess with my well-laid plans. 

Man, my childhood friend/rodent sighs, you were such a badass then. And then like Tsukushi from Hana Yori Dango, I gradually work up that old mojo towards unexpected alliances and new experiences!!!!!

If only the toil against such an insignificant certainty could be life altering.

In reality, I'm just shot with adrenaline, so now I'm going sit here twitchily while I try to catch up on some entries. 

For that, I apologize in advance.

i think i'm going to take a break from this...just because a series is finished doesn't mean you have to read it to the end in one blow...

133. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad vol.13 (Harold Sakuishi, Mangascreener Scanlations)
134. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad vol.14 (Harold Sakuishi, Mangascreener Scanlations)
135. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad vol.15 (Harold Sakuishi, Mangascreener Scanlations)
136. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad vol.16 (Harold Sakuishi, Mangascreener Scanlations)

then again, there's the series that are just too much fun to stop reading...if only my life were as idle as that of these silly boys and girls...

137. Ouran High School Host Club, vol. 1 (Hatori Bisco, Shojo Beat)

116. Revolutionary Girl Utena, vol.1 (Saito Chiho, Viz)
117. Revolutionary Girl Utena, vol.2 (Saito Chiho, Viz)
118. Revolutionary Girl Utena, vol.3 (Saito Chiho, Viz)
119. Revolutionary Girl Utena, vol.4 (Saito Chiho, Viz)
120. Revolutionary Girl Utena, vol.5 (Saito Chiho, Viz)

112. Endou-kun no Kansatsu Nikki (Hayakawa Nojiko, Acme + Futari wa Pretty Anon Scanlations) 
113. Kuragehime [Princess Jellyfish], vol.1 (Higashimura Akiko, Hachimitsu Scans)
114. Kaze to Ki no Uta, vol.1 (Takemiya Keiko, Shougakukan) <-- old school yaoi angst!
115. Kino Nani wo Tabeta, vol.5 (Yoshinaga Fumi, Kodansha) <-- he said "please picture Gilbert when you imagine my bf"

I suppose the fact that I'm up thinking about teaching woes instead of drowning myself in some extended un-promising narrative is a sign that my master plan to re-integrate (the temporality of this word choice is suspect) into RL via taking on highly un-rewarding but very "the ways things are" type teaching is part success (other parts include narcissism and self-pity).

there are so many things I didn't know about this gig. well, some of it I knew but didn't know (like Swimming vs. swimming...damn you Kierkegaard...). I know some of you out there are teachers and "splendid adults" as they say, so please forgive this epic fail at getting over oneself...but man do I feel vulnerable and helpless when I reflect on my time in front of the classroom sometimes.

here's what's got me down. plagiarism/cheating. man. if this isn't ever a problem. i think having a language issue in many of my classes (many of my students are international students from China) and also different cultures of pedagogical treatment (being expected to crank out formulaic answers vs. being expected to say something original etc.) might contribute to this issue...but since two cases came to light, transforming what formerly seemed like just an unfortunate possibility into a pressurized inevitability, every paper seems shady as hell. they smack of google translate of random blog commentary...students who couldn't articulate an opinion about The Matrix (i don't teach this) suddenly are talking about psychoanalytical theory (nor this)...the same sentence patterns and structures keep appearing among clusters of papers...and i'm so tired from trying to discern between fob English (and trust me, i'm reasonably fluent at this), well-intentioned uses of reference material, readings generally endorsed by the communist state (these are chinese lit courses), and flat-out whackness.

thinking back to high school, I know it may be privileged, at worst un-mindful, and more innocuously just naive to think that teaching ought not to include things like policing and, I mean this in the most general way, parenting (even though this is never really part of any job description and certainly not what attracts me to a profession in education). and no, i have no personal investment in essential notions of adulthood versus childhood and what forms of behavior or formal elements of presentation should come with (although standards of formal elements of presentation and behavior seem to be key to classroom effectiveness and general efficiency/progress)...but as far as I know, we haven't yet reached the point of cynicism where college is just a glorified/extremely expensive kind of daycare to put disaffected youth...have we?

(says friend: go read some zetsubo-sensei and you'll be fine)

Minekura Kazuya breaks me heart...

108. Saiyuki Gaiden, vol.1 (Minekura Kazuya, MangaCity Scanlations)  
109. Saiyuki Gaiden, vol.2 (Minekura Kazuya, Dragon Voice Project scans)
110. Saiyuki Gaiden, vol.3 (Minekura Kazuya, uncredited scanlations)
111. Saiyuki Gaiden, vol.4 (Minekura Kazuya, uncredited scanlations)

"This life be over soon, heaven last forever..." -The Color Purple

At the beginning, Sanzo ikkou returns to say f that s.