desiree

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:05:18 GMT

OMFG! OP 550!!!!!

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:37:41 GMT

Oh my GOD that was farcical. *immensely relieved* Seriously? Our defence is just... scarily leaky. But I'm glad to see Ricky!

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:09:08 GMT

Seriously, we're playing Liverpool again? Again?!

よかった！

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:12:06 GMT

JLPTの3級に３９０/４００得点した！

幸せよ。

じゃ、今年2級に絶対に受かる。

皆も良い成績をあげてもいいよ！

to those who've read/watched HnG and know Japanese

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:00:39 GMT

どうして最後の

これが全てでわなく
これが終わりでわなく

が "this is not the end, there is no end" に翻訳されている？　

"there is no end"っては終わりがないね？ am i being too literal with the translation?

WIP

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:45:26 GMT

first session: 30/1/09

outline in dark grey

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:17:35 GMT

Seriously, how friggin' awesome is the latest chapter of Bleach?! Shunsui being.. focussed and determined and HOT! Stark being insanely cool, Yamamoto being all 'look at my prowess and despair, bitches', and thank god that Ulquiorra and Ichigo are finally back. God. Awesome.

jlpt level 3

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 06:38:52 GMT

難しくなさそうだったね。。。　hopefully i'm not jinxing myself.
いい成績が欲しい！！

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:51:36 GMT

He fucking killed Kakashi.

ETA: now ~~in denial~~ reconsidering. a dream sequence does seem.. possible, i guess.

*vents*

this cannot happen, kishimoto.

copied from paxnirvana

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:24:34 GMT

Olbermann: Gay marriage is a question of love
Everyone deserves the same chance at permanence and happiness

SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
msnbc.com
updated 6:13 p.m. PT, Mon., Nov. 10, 2008
Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.

And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics. This is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them — no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights—even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage. If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967.

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are gay.

And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing, centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children, all because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage.

How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.

It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate.

You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.

But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:

"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all: So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love."

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:44:56 GMT

...if Kakashi fucking dies!!! I will be so goddamned pissed.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:17:46 GMT

Oh, thank god.

Baa.

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:00:53 GMT

When you see this, post a SGA quote.

I react to certain doom in a certain way.

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:23:51 GMT

Test your colour IQ

Fun! Got a 0. ^__^ It probably helps to be doing it on a rather good desktop screen.

recs?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:56:22 GMT

I need epic recs, people! Anything at all; I'm incredibly desperate and bored. Not that I don't have a huge stack of books and anime around, but.. sometimes you just want fic, y'know?

another one of these again..

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:17:17 GMT

Your result for The Commonly Confused Words Test...

English Genius

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 100% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

Take The Commonly Confused Words Test at HelloQuizzy

no truly difficult words here, obviously

and i just read through the remarks by the creator of this test - "intelligence"? any idiot can memorise spellings! and the words were basically the commonly-confused ones, which most people really should already know.

Question re: rape and tempting fate

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:19:55 GMT

A girl just got raped walking through a park (which is rather isolated - the kind where no one can hear you scream) next to my place at 10.40pm last night.

My first reaction to this was, "That was stupid."

Yes, of course we all have a right to walk where we want to, regardless of the time or situation; yes, the rapist is fully accountable for his own actions and cannot place any tiny bit of blame on her; no, she didn't 'deserve it' for tempting the wrong kind of attraction.

On the other hand, why, why would you want to tempt fate like that? You know it's dark, late, deserted, and far away from inhabited areas. Yes, it's a convenient shortcut. But it's still incredibly foolish.

Of course, in a perfect world, none of this shit would happen and we'd all be happily oblivious to the need for caution. However. It isn't! God. It just.. so stupid.

I know it sounds like I'm blaming her. I'm not. Or, at least, I don't think I am? That's what I wanted to know - I'm afraid that I sound like/am one of those people who blame the victim for the crime, whether subconsciously or not.

taken from jbmcdragon

Thu, 22 May 2008 04:12:07 GMT

Go here. Click refresh until you hit five quotes that resonate with you, and slap 'em up.
(The real trick is getting ones that 'resonate' as opposed to ones that just tickle you.)

If you believe everything you read, better not read.
- Japanese proverb
(reminder to self)

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
- Thomas Wolfe

History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.
- Voltaire

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.
- Isaac Asimov

Man is what he believes.
- Anton Chekhov

what the hell, I can't count:
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
- Anatole France

oh, john..

Wed, 21 May 2008 21:38:35 GMT

fuck.

awesome!

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:42:25 GMT

heh.

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:31:05 GMT

48%

on the subject of privilege

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 07:11:54 GMT

grabbed from homasse, camillabloom etc.

Bold those that are true for you:

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course (heh. no need. 1590 on first try!)
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up (due to lack of interest on their part, i guess)
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

thoughts: a lot of this is actually highly specific to western countries eg. cars, heating bills, but.. the idea is there, i guess.

also, very interesting. a lot of us have an attitude of privilege that is mostly unconscious; might this be the cause of a somewhat elitist pov? and, wow, be grateful. always.

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:29:32 GMT

78 words

Touch Typing

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:39:50 GMT

was just watching gackt's older concerts and, wow, you think that the newer boybands are affectionate (to use a euphemism)? go watch the japanese; i'd completely forgotten that they practically invented fanservice.

god, gackt is hot in the drug party concert.

List of most "unread" books by LibraryThing's users

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:11:25 GMT

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you've read, italicize what you started, ~~strike through what you couldn't stand~~ couldn't be bothered; don't particularly hate most of them anyway. And absolutely love some.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (149)
Anna Karenina (132)
Crime and Punishment (121)
Catch-22 (117)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (115)
Wuthering Heights (110)
The Silmarillion (104)
Life of Pi: a novel (94)
The Name of the Rose (91)
Don Quixote (91)
Moby Dick (86)
Ulysses (84)
Madame Bovary (83)
The Odyssey (83)
Pride and Prejudice (83)
Jane Eyre (80)
A Tale of Two Cities (80)
The Brothers Karamazov (80)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (79)
War and Peace (78)
Vanity Fair (74)
The Time Traveler's Wife (73)
The Iliad (73)
Emma (73)
The Blind Assassin (73)
The Kite Runner (71)
Mrs. Dalloway (70)
Great Expectations (70)
American Gods (68)
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (67)
Atlas Shrugged (67)
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books (66)
Memoirs of a Geisha (66)
Middlesex (66)
Quicksilver (66)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West (65)
The Canterbury Tales (64)
The Historian : a novel (63)
A portrait of the artist as a young man (63)
Love in the Time of Cholera (62)
Brave New World (61)
The Fountainhead (61)
Foucault's Pendulum (61)
Middlemarch (61)
Frankenstein (59)
The Count of Monte Cristo (59)
Dracula (59)
A Clockwork Orange (59)
Anansi boys (58)
The Once and Future King (57)
The Grapes of wrath (57)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (57)
1984 (57)
Angels & Demons (56)
The Inferno (56)
The Satanic Verses (55)
Sense and sensibility (55)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (55)
Mansfield Park (55)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (54)
To the Lighthouse (54)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (54)
Oliver Twist (54)
Gulliver's Travels (53)
Les Misérables (53)
The Corrections (53)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (52)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (52)
Dune (51)
The Prince (51)
The Sound and the Fury (51)
Angela's Ashes : a memoir (51)
The God of Small Things (51)
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present (51)
Cryptonomicon (50)
Neverwhere (50)
A Confederacy of Dunces (50)
A short history of nearly everything (50)
Dubliners (50)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (49)
Beloved (49)
Slaughterhouse-five (49)
The Scarlet Letter (48)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (48)
The Mists of Avalon (47)
Oryx and Crake : a novel (47)
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (47)
Cloud Atlas (47)
The Confusion (46)
Lolita (46)
Persuasion (46)
Northanger Abbey (46)
The Catcher in the Rye (46)
On the Road (46)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (45)
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (45)
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into values (45)
The Aeneid (45)
Watership Down (44)
Gravity's Rainbow (44)
The Hobbit (44)
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences (44)
White Teeth (44)
Treasure Island (44)
David Copperfield (44)
The Three Musketeers (44)

- How on earth could anyone not finish Quicksilver?
- I just never seem to get around to reading the unbolded ones; some have been on my to-read list for years but, well.. *shrugs*