Sakura of DOOM

Am still recovering from being drunk! Whheee! First time drunk in a very loooong time.

So I watched the Stargate pilot with T. and his friend from NYC. I liked. Jack (who was Kurt Russell in the movie) is quite cool. The girl was really, unbelievably annoying! "Look at me, I'm a scientist, and I know everything! And you don't like me because I'm a grrrl so watch me make not-so-smart comebacks. Like me, like me!" Thankfully, T. says her part in the pilot is incredibly badly written (miss Buffy already, sigh) and that her character gets much much better later on. Which is good, or else I would have to glance askance (askew? Hee. Fun with words!) at Sam/Jack shipper people. And definitely slashy subtext between Jack and Daniel.

Now I will watch more episodes and hope that the writing tightens up. They get so much money to make that show! So many special effects! I wish Buffy got that much money, though I heard they're not holding anything back for the final few episodes.

Lalalala... head still spin-y and wobbly. Wooooooo. Fun. T. had some yummy vanilla shot things... das Komet or something... that tasted very good. Which is good, because I'm the girliest drinker ever. S. fed me some scotch once and nearly killed me. Then she fed me 151, which nearly killed both of us. I think after drinking 151, I could breathe out and light my breath on fire, it was that strong.

And I have clean clothes now! Yay!

Still missing the boy =(.

Hey, hecatehatesthat, is there going to be a NJ Buffy finale party? *grins prettily and bats wobbly lashes*

It is almost done! 96 pages, not counting bibliography or appendices. I still have to format a title page, think of a title, do acknowledgements and make my appendices prettier. And proofread for stupid spelling mistakes. But it's almost done!!

Didn't get to watch Angel because of the stupid thing =(.

Did I mention, it's almost done? It should get to the binders by Friday at the latest. Go me!

*dances until collapsing into sleep*

Just came back with a meeting with my advisor. And well, it wasn't totally bad. She likes my third chapter, but I really need to get moving. And now, of course, I am regretting the wasted past week. But I guess that's just how the story goes. And it is almost complete, except for the 5-8 page conclusion -- it's just very ugly and messy.

The entire time, she keeps telling me that I need more structure and more organization. Even the comment on my final body chapter, the one that I thought was all structured, comes with advice about structure and how the chapter reads a bit like stream of consciousness. And here I was actually trying too! I know I need it to be tidy, but I have no idea how to do it! I've never done anything remotely as big as this in my life (previous record, page-wise, somewhere around 30 pages... this baby's already up to 82, pre-conclusion and editing). And just argh.

So after work and Angel tonight (no way I am skipping my TV show because I am just that sad), I will stay up and work very hard on the whole thing, maybe draw it out? I have no idea how to do any of this. I will be good and not read LJ, despite the temptations. And damnit, I will have stuff by Friday to give to her.

I'm so ready for this to be over and done with.

Finally, the last body chapter of my thesis is finished! Currently, the entire thing runs up to 82 pages, but I haven't written the conclusion yet. I refuse to do anything that has to do with schoolwork tonight and instead have fun, since editing and writing papers for other classes starts tomorrow.

After remembering stuff about the Forbidden Game and starting my little fic, I've started looking into Norse runes. I think I might end up buying a set... there's this nice place online that sells them carved from wood, where you can pick the wood. So I've borrowed a book on them from S. and started reading up. It'll be interesting to look at something like this that isn't tarot. Heh. Next up, Brian Froud's Faeries Oracle. Even if I never use them to read for people, I want them just because... faeries! How can you go wrong?

scrollgirl's entry that pointed me to an online debate between FayJay and Jemima got me thinking about slash again. Right now, I'm too tired to get all my thoughts down, but I left some comments in her LJ. It's always interesting to me to start thinking about slash, just because it feels like the flip side of what I'm doing for my thesis. Basically, I'm concentrating on how most of the scholarship on shojo manga is strictly limited to yaoi and shonen ai in an attempt to "solve the problem" of why female writers write stuff like this and why female readers would read stuff like this. And then it gets very complicated because the feminists have their ideas, then the queer theorists have their own ideas about the appropriation of gay culture for feminism, and etc. Whereas for slash, the problem almost seems to be taking it not seriously at all. And I'll stop now so I can coherently organize my thoughts and maybe even write something intelligible. My brain is in a state of mush right now.

This stupid state needs to make up its mind and stop being schizophrenic. It's April! It's spring! There are little tulip leaves and daffodils sprouting everywhere! What's with the snow?!

Need to move to California as soon as possible.

Still chugging along on this thesis chapter, damnit. Thank goodness the boy finished Zelda yesterday, or else who only knows what I would be doing instead of writing. Of course, it's probably the whole push to finish Zelda that was highly detrimental to the writing of the thesis. It would be nice if I had some sort of motivation...

Met with my advisor today. Apparently the thesis doesn't suck (this is good). However, it is a problem because basically, I think it's got a lot of good ideas in absolutely no coherent order at all. But this is ok. This is fixable. I also didn't get yelled at for not finished my third body chapter on time (I should have handed it in today). But this is good too, because this means I have more time to coherently outline and organize my thoughts, which is one of my weak points. I also found out that Brad is still working on his first chapter, so I feel much better.

Talked to professors about comps. Just my luck that this year my department decides to start seriously doing comps instead of asking a few questions about them during thesis defense. I talked to two of the three professors who are giving me comps, and apparently, they know less about them than I do. I don't know if this is good or bad.

My head hurts a lot because I spend too much time online.

I've burned all of Buffy season one and almost all of season two onto CD-R, and I'm now working on season 4. This by no means indicates that I won't buy the DVDs when they come out (still saving up for seasons 1 and 2), but I still like having them on my computer. However, my little laptop for some reason doesn't have enough space for me to keep all seven seasons of Buffy and all four of Angel on it, so I've decided to download all of them and burn them on disk in anticipation of the day I can get something ridiculously large, like 200 GB. MMMmmmm... hard drive space.

Also bidding on the original 1995 edition of the Vertigo tarot on ebay. I won the reprint a few months ago, and I decided I love the deck to pieces. I'd love to make it my regular reading deck, because I feel as though I can really GET the cards, as opposed to my Gendron deck (way too cute and fuzzy), my Osho Zen tarot (love it very very much, but it's a bit untraditional for normal readings of other people), and my Rider-Waite (standard readings, which is good, but no real resonance with me). The Vertigo deck is simply gorgeous in a creepy, Dave McKean style, rich in symbolism, takes off in interesting ways from the RWS, and have I mentioned I love it to pieces? So I'd like two decks, one for normal reading and one simply to ogle over. Plus, the reprint deck is very nice, but the cards are smaller, so the images are less clear, and the card stock is definitely flimsy. And I go through this entire rationale to justify spending probably up to 40 dollars for another deck when I've already got four. Sarah unleashed a demon when she got me into tarot =(.

In the middle of page twelve, which means I will probably be done before midnight. So it's still in by Monday, which means I haven't really lied to my advisor, yes?

I hate the feeling that I've already said everything I wanted to say in the introduction, and the entire twelve pages of this chapter are simply reiterating everything I wrote in the intro and my first chapter. Almost can't wait to get to the Utena chapter, in which I can stop being all meta about anime and manga scholarship and just deal with a text! Yay symbolism!

However, now I'm extremely interested in why people read and write slash. My entire thesis is pretty much based on the fact that I think anime and manga shouldn't just be read in a sociological light, especially shojo manga, and especially shonen ai. All the critics mostly argue that Japanese girls read and write shonen ai and yaoi because they are afraid of their own sexuality or rebelling against patriarchal society. Or both. Is it that way for slash too? Or is it more something like a personal turn-on?

Anyway, these are my muddled thesis thoughts of the day.

Well, apparently this journal has just become a way for me to keep track of my thesis progress. I'm currently at the middle of page 17 and just writing soooo slooooowly right now. Hopefully by tomorrow at 5 I'll have finished my leftover points and hit page 20. Yes. Go me go!

In other, happier, non-thesis-related things, wisteria_ finished her Eleven Straight Days of Rain fic, and it's a nice, realistically romantic Spuffy fic that just makes me want to beg Joss to show it. Or parts at least. Actually, I'll just settle for the general idea... please ME, toss me a bone?

In other, non-happy, non-thesis-related things, it really looks like we're going to war. I don't really have anything to say. I feel bad, but I've been concentrating on my thesis so much that I haven't really been paying attention. And I guess I've just been expecting this to happen to matter what, looking at the way Bush has been doing things, so this is almost anticlimactic. Well. Please, whoever's in charge of this place, don't get too many people killed?

And now, to sleep, in preparation for more thesising tomorrow.

Bottom of page 6. Go me, go!

I constantly vacillate between worrying that I can't possibly stretch all my points out into 25 or so pages and worrying that I can't possibly squeeze all my points to fit 25 or so pages. I wish I could make up my mind.

The writing still goes as slowly as ever, especially since I have recently become distracted by a video game, of all things. I don't game. I'm not good at it. But this is some electronic board game type thing, which actually doesn't involve anything like hand-eye coordination or good reflexes. Perfect for me.

I forced the boy into helping me make a new icon, which is sitting on my page right now, yay!

Reading some of these newspaper articles on anime and manga, it still amazes me how stereotyped they are. In a 1987 Wall Street Journal article: Manga is all about sex and violence! And millions of other things as well. But mostly sex and violence! It's getting a lot better now, especially after Pokemon got so popular in 1999, followed by Princess Mononoke. But those articles are all about: Wow, look at this strange thing called anime! Doesn't it look funny? Aren't the people strange-looking? But it's good! Really! Well... some of it. And now, after Spirited Away and more waves of Pokemon-esque things, like Yu-Gi-Oh, everyone's suddenly talking about Miyazaki like he's the next god or something.

Anyway, that's what I've been writing about for the past few pages.

Yay. My first chapter is in, as well as my working bibliography, all before five. Good job, me. Unfortunately, it's not a very good chapter and will probably need a great deal of revising later. And I fudged a bit on the bibliography. I hate all the weird MLA things. I mean, citing DVDs and stuff is frustrating, especially when they are Japanese and you can't for the life of you figure out when they were released. Grrrr.

My high school friend and her boyfriend are then coming over in the evening, which will mean more running around for me. I am glad I'll be seeing her, but in the end, having to play host always just gets me more stressed and even more in a tizzy. Especially with all this thesis stuff going around.

More on Flogging Molly later (they were awesome).