Short Update: If the "I LOVE MY CAR" displayed below my User ID didn't give you a hint, I managed to get a another car. It is sweetness....and its wheels have managed to stay on for TWO WHOLE MONTHS!

Current Ponderings/Issues: I'm totally loving Stephen King's Cell. The plot is totally preposterous--an electrical signal or "pulse" wipes everything but the id from human cell phone users, creating a bunch of wacked out zombies who are becoming increasingly more organized and powerful--but I'm becoming more drawn into the story, and hence more freaked out, every time I pick up the book. Maybe it's partly due to the intense gratitude I have to be reading anything INTERESTING in general.

The last book I read was Gregory Maguire's Lost, which is supposed to be related to Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I had been on a bit of Maguire binge; I blew through Wicked and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister like Lindsey Lohan through a bottle of Vodka when the nurses aren't looking. And I loved both novels! As a reader/writer of fanfiction, I can't help but admire Maguire's work. I mean, the guy literally makes a living (and a good one at that) out of writing fanfiction. His novel Lost deviates most from fanfiction, and I would take that as an indication/warning that I should stay away from all of Maguire's non-fanfiction works. The only real reference to Dickens' tale is an assumption that a rarely mentioned relative of the novel's protagonist may have told young Dickens' his lifestory that inspired Dickens' later tale. :whatever: Whatever :whatever:. I ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY, TOTALLY LOATHED GREGORY MAGUIRE'S LOST!!!! The real plot encompassed the last 75 pages of an almost 400 page novel and meandered uncomprehendingly through mental-illness/drama-masking-itself-as-a-real-ghost-story to real-ghost-story to utterly-boring-and-uninvolving-crap. I literally forced myself to finish it, thinking that given Maguire's utterly pretentious reader's group notes in the back of the book (which I was able to ignore in Wicked and Confessions) there might be some sort of plot twist that would give the story some meaning and make it worth a damn.

True, this is only my opinion of the book, so you can take it with a grain (or boulder) of salt. But here's a warning/plot-summary to anyone who would think of plodding through this muck of a novel. Yes, this is a **SPOILER ALERT**. The plot in a nutshell: Woman goes to England to write a novel (the reader is forced to read excerpts of said novel--which really sucks even more than the one the reader is currently torturing him/herself with--interspersed with the actual story) and some spooky-occurences-that-could-be-viewed-as-a-ghost-story begin to distract her. It turns out that her "novel in progress" is actually her real life story (the novel's protagonist is really her middle name and married name), which consists of her traveling to Romania with her cousin to pick up an adopted Romanian baby, having bad sex with said cousin, getting snowed in and being revolted by thought having sex with cousin but doing it anyway, and finally making it to the orphanage to find out that the adopted baby has meanwhile died of exposure when the nun tending the fire in his room suddenly (and conveniently for the plot) died and let the fire go out. Her husband divorces her over many things, least of all her having sex with her cousin. What an effin' tearjerker--and you will feel all of the sarcasm in that statement by the time you actually get to this plot revelation. The reader finds this out at the very end of the novel. Why? Because we're supposed to wonder whether or not she's experiencing a real ghost story or just a temporary mental fugue induced by all of the events in her sad-sack life. The answer is both: a real ghost finally surfaces and possesses her in the last 75 pages and drives her to try to relinquish her body to the ghost so that the ghost can kill the body and experience a real death of sorts. The ghost has absolutely nothing to do with either Dickens' Scrooge or Jack the Ripper. Believe me, if you make it this point in the story you won't care about any of the characters, least of all the protagonist and her trashy medieval French ghost.

Go read Stephen King's Cell. Go read anything else except for the utter crap that is Lost.


Enjoyed the fanfiction you read here? Want to read more? A fan of Trigun, perhaps? Well you're in luck, because this
[link] on 's gallery will take you to the first chapter of a big collaboration fic I'm writing with , , and our friend Melissa (who does not have a DevArt account currently, but will be forced at pain of a severe poptart beating to get one in the very near future ). Anyways, please check this out and leave us some comments!


My friends and other people whose galleries totally rock:



Young Infatuation--The New Sess x Rin Club!


Clubs I'm In:


Other Clubs I would like to join:

It's around finals time and crazy stories tend to start flying, usually in an effort to avoid presentations/project due dates/tests/etc. Wheels on automobiles usually do not fly, though.

Crap, I forgot to "usually".

It was teh amazing! And teh scary! And teh true! But enough with intentional spelling errors for effect. With Carlos O Kelly's as my witness, the wheel of my car actually flew off last week.

I was driving to work around lunchtime with no more problems than my car usually gives me. I began to hear this buzzing noise coming from that wheel and figured that the tire was rubbing up against something inside the wheel-well. The buzzing soon became a disjointed rumble and I figured that I better make a stop at my mechanic's garage, which was on the way, for a quick look-see. No sooner had the thought entered my head when the front of my car suddenly hit the ground. I was in the far-left lane of Coliseum Ave., which is a fairly large bypass in Ft. Wayne. My first action was to bring the car to a stop while not fishtailing out into traffic, which was luckily quite easy to do given the Insta-Brake effect the front of a car grinding onto a road has.

When my wheel fell off, the car probably fell on top of it first, which was just enough force to send the entire wheel bouncing into the air high above the tops of all vehicles on the road. While I watched, the wheel bounced over the median to the other side of the road, where it struck the rear passenger door of another vehicle. The impact of that sent the wheel careening back onto my side of the road, where it rolled all the way to the side of the road (cars were weaving back and forth trying to dodge it), bounced off the curb, and then rolled back across to land on top of the median at the head of the intersection at Coldwater Rd.

Meanwhile, the car that was struck by the wheel pulled to a stop beside the median and the car behind (who had not yet been struck by anything) does the same just because it was lunchtime traffic and he couldn't move into another lane. I was shaking behind the wheel wondering if somehow I had received some sort of nasty head-injury that made me hallucinate all of the wheel acrobatics.
Just as I'm stepping out of my car I hear a huge crash. Another driver, whom I assume was distracted by the sight of my pitiful 3-wheeler nose-diving into the pavement, had rear-ended the car that had been forced to stop behind the car that was struck by my wheel. The whole situation seemed unreal and impossible, like some crappy Michael Bay action sequence (without explosions and fire, thank God).

I had happened to pull to a stop right when the left turn lane was forming, which would have left me stranded between two lanes of streaming traffic had the woman who had been entering said turn lane next to me not stopped. Had she not, I probably would have ended up a road pancake because I was far too flabbergasted to think much beyond "OMG, my wheel just flew off my car and caused a multiple car accident on Coliseum!" This very kind person was already dialing 911 when I exited my car and comforted me. She wisely kept me away from the occupants of the vehicles who had been involved in the rear collision. I knew that I was not legally at fault in that accident, but I still felt extremely bad since the person who was had probably been distracted by what had happened.

My new-found Mediator and I spoke with the woman whose car had been struck by my wheel, and both she and her passenger had not been harmed by the impact (which probably wouldn't have been the case if the wheel had struck higher and possibly gone through a window). So all was good there. The police, an ambulance, a tow-truck, and my mother showed up shortly after that, and we began to get things sorted out. The man who had been rear-ended complained of some neck pain and ended up taking the ambulance the hospital. Since he was walking around after the accident, I would like to hope that his pain turned out to be nothing more than a combination of shock and mild whip-lash. The police confirmed that I was not at fault for the rear-collision and that a separate accident report was being filed for that.

So everything went as well as it possibly could after that. My car was towed to the garage I had been heading towards in the first place. My mechanic concluded that the wheel was loose due to faulty alignment work done by another mechanic back in April. My mechanic concluded that the reason the wheel ended up falling off in DECEMBER was probably because someone tried to steal one or more of my wheels but was interrupted before he could take off all of the nuts. I think that was the scariest part of the whole ordeal, learning that a dumbass criminal contributed to a 4-car accident on a large and busy road.

The entire wheel along with a tie rod and a few other miscellaneous wheel-related things had to be replaced. Final repair cost: approx. $600. And the best part: my car's blue blook value is about $200. And I'm in the process of looking for another car.

It's just mass cuh-raziness!




Enjoyed the fanfiction you read here? Want to read more? A fan of Trigun, perhaps? Well you're in luck, because this
[link] on 's gallery will take you to the first chapter of a big collaboration fic I'm writing with , , and our friend Melissa (who does not have a DevArt account currently, but will be forced at pain of a severe poptart beating to get one in the very near future ). Anyways, please check this out and leave us some comments!


My friends and other people whose galleries totally rock:



Young Infatuation--The New Sess x Rin Club!


Clubs I'm In:


Other Clubs I would like to join:

I've been floating onto DevArt every few days, responding to messages and leaving ones of my own. I'm waiting for some more time to go and read all of 's gorgeous Sessh/Rin fanmanga goodness. I could use a little inspiration. Heck, I could use a little energy.

I spent a lot of last night wading through amino acid and nucleotide sequences for HSV-1 and their analogs in VZV. That's all for my grad school thesis project. My prof works with herpes viruses (I tell people that and they usually tend to scoot a few feet away from me ), specifically VZV (that's the chickenpox and shingles virus) so I get to work with them too since I'll be doing my thesis in his lab. It's exciting stuff and he's a great prof. I've already sent a letter to the chancellor of my university about him, and I need to remember to send an equally glowing one to the chair of the Biology Department for tenure purposes. I'm thinking about using a phrase like "His enthusiasm for his subject matter is as infectious as the viruses he studies." I know, I'm weird.

But anyway, we've been discussing what I should do for my thesis and he's come up with phage display & bio-panning. The names are all techy sounding, but they basically just sum up to me using macrophages (viruses that infect bacteria) to find out if certain proteins in VZV interact. Bio-panning is kind of a take off panning for gold, and the technique is similar. If I find anything, that information could be used to develop vaccines or medicines to combat not just VZV (cuz' shingles sucks) but potentially all other herpes viruses. And that would be sweet for lots and lots of people.

The hardest part right now is the waiting. I haven't actually done any in-lab work yet, and probably won't be until next semester. Right now I'm just supposed to be researching journal papers and the manuals for the phage display/bio-panning kits and developing a plan of action. I feel kind of like a little kid because I have almost no concept for the amount of money ($600+ for 5 panning experiments?!!) and the time-frame (No panning until summer?!!) that real research requires. The journals and especially the manuals are pretty dry stuff, not fun like reading fanfics at all!

I'm actually trying not to work on fics right now so that that dry technical writing style doesn't bleed through into the fic. Just imagine a rousing chapter on Inuyasha's cold sore or Kagome getting shingles . Nope. Probably not going to be enjoyed by fangirls or fanboys.

I've just finished Stephen King's Dark Tower series and have been trying to read through all of his Dark Tower-related books and stories and make all of the connections. It's a pretty rewarding experience, and I found it more so when I found out that Stephen King actually lived in Fort Wayne, IN (my hometown) for awhile when he was a kid. The knowledge that he may have seen Slippage (read the DT books, people, and find out for yourselves) in old Fort Fun helps to counteract all of the dry journals and make me feel more inspired. On the otherhand, I tend to feel pretty insecure and intimidated when I start to analyze the writing of real authors. So it's a toss-up on whether or not I'll be adding any more chapters to Danketsu in the recent future.

And then, there's 's wedding coming up November 4th! Maid of Honor reporting for duty! We're gearing up for the bachelorette party right now. It's going to be on Halloween so us fangirls can get in costume and party hardy --with assorted male genitalia (fake not real ) for atmosphere. Maybe I'll even print off some good SDS to add to the fangirl ambiance. Either way you look at it, it's going to be cuh-razy! And 4 days later is the Big Day itself!

So I guess there's a lot more going on then I originally thought. Oh yeah, and I was told on Monday that my temp job would be ending on Friday (today), but then got a new job starting on Monday. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket or two?




Enjoyed the fanfiction you read here? Want to read more? A fan of Trigun, perhaps? Well you're in luck, because this
[link] on 's gallery will take you to the first chapter of a big collaboration fic I'm writing with , , and our friend Melissa (who does not have a DevArt account currently, but will be forced at pain of a severe poptart beating to get one in the very near future ). Anyways, please check this out and leave us some comments!


My friends and other people whose galleries totally rock:



Young Infatuation--The New Sess x Rin Club!


Clubs I'm In:


Other Clubs I would like to join:

Wow, that kinda sounds like the Japanese title for an episode of some weird cutesy anime. Wait a minute....it would need an even weirder subtitle. Let me think....

DEVART MENU CHANGE INSANITY: Fangirls unite strongly to battle the forces of mental breaks in the fast lane!

Or something like that. I'll add a funky emoticon to the end: Now that's sweet.


Anyway, what's up people? It's been a hella long time since I've blogged on DevArt (reminds self that she despises blogs with a passion ) and I have plenty of excuses for that, the first being that I've been lazy and have had a bunch of cuh-raziness going on this summer.

Let's summarize. First of all I had to get my costume made for SogenCon 2006 in Marshall, MN. Very cool, very small Con. I dressed up as Youko/Queen Kei from The Twelve Kingdoms (if you haven't seen it yet, please go out and do so because you won't ever regret it), my boyfriend, Nate, dressed up as Rakushun, and ~QueenOfTheCute dressed up as Shoukei. Our costumes were most sweet and we won the Best Craftsmanship Award. You can see some pics of these costumes if you go onto CosplayLab (click www.cosplaylab.com) and perform an anime search for "Twelve Kingdoms". I'm going to post more detailed pics here when I get the time to do it and play with the wig a little more. Heck, I might just make the Stupid Hat to go with it.

Anyways, after getting back from the Con I was busy with work stuff...and with finishing up my application for grad school. I just read over that sentence, and to me, those 22 words and 5 punctuation marks indicate a simplicity that simply does not exist. At least not in my situation. Let's see. First of all, I had to wait for one of my profs to change a grade for a class. He called me up at the end of the spring semester to say he'd misgraded and instead of a "C" I had actually earned a "B" in the class and that he would fix it. I wanted that nice shiny "B" on my transcript, after all I'd earned it, so I decided to wait...and wait...and wait. My nice and shiny "B" didn't end up appearing on my transcript until late June/early July, which is no big deal as the due date for the application was July 27. No sweat there, because I had everything else--my GRE, application form, statement of purpose, letters of recommendation--all ready to go. Or so I thought. You see, I received a bit, well a crap-load, of misinformation from a certain person (who from now on will be referred to as "CP") in the department, who for his position should have known what the hell he was talking about, that ended up screwing me over and putting me past the due date for both the application and class payment. I was told to NOT submit my application online to the big university that my university is affiliated with but to print it out and include it with my application materials. This shouldn't have been a really big problem, because the grad school booklet (written by CP) said I could pay the application fee at my school's Bursar and also I had everything else together. Well, it turns out that submitting the application online to the big university happened to be a really BIG deal. You see, the grad school book was misprinted (that's a nice word for totally screwed up) and I couldn't pay the application fee at my school's bursar and the application had to be submitted online to the big university. Tied to the latter is the fact that the profs I had asked for letters of recommendation would not be notified and sent the proper forms until the application was submitted online (which is also where you pay the app fee) and everything had now snowballed out of control. Being the person he is, CP declares that none of this is his fault, but this holds absolutely no water as he did the same thing a year ago by neglecting to tell me that I was missing one class I needed to graduate and I was forced to take an extra year of classes. That situation did benefit me in the end as I was able to walk with my classmates at the graduation ceremony before I took the class, and also earned minors in Chemistry and Psychology that following year, but the point is is that I was misled and misadvised. So after careful thought and discussion with relatives and other close friends I decided to pull a trump card and arranged to have a certain powerful someone (I will call this person PS) notified of the situation so he could put a fear of god into CP. I'm seriously regretting that I wasn't physically present to watch CP "flying" around the department trying to get my application approved as fast as possible, but the fact that CP was no longer dragging his feet and the report of his later antics was good enough. So in summary, 22 letters and 5 punctuation marks weigh an awful lot.

So what am I doing now besides avoiding work? Well, if anyone is still interested, I'm thinking about writing again. And I'm not going to start a new fic but continue the one I left off with, the sequel to my 2 IY fics. I got a bit of writer's block on the next chapter but that seems to have cleared up now. I think that the continuing downward spiral of the IY manga (why Sessh's mom, why???!!!!! ) has forced me to give up my revere of the story, and hence I feel more comfortable with writing fanfiction. After all, how could I screw it up with bad fanfiction when the canon is already sucking so badly?

Go ahead and flame away if you want for the sacrilege this fangirl just committed, but that truly corny completely OOC scene of Kikyo's final demise (no cliffs here, people), Kouga's pointless and incomprehensible surrender of his quest to avenge his people after he looses his shards, and the deus ex machina that is Sessh's mom coming out of the woodworks to convey to him Tenseiga's secret killing power has just broken my fangirl heart. I can sum my feelings up with one emoticon: .

First of all, Kouga has always been aware of the fact that he's not powerful enough to kill Naraku, but he's proud and devoted to his tribe and has indicated if not outright said that he was willing to continue his quest even if it meant his death. He even got ahold of those magic claws (Goraishi? I can't remember) and everything was looking pretty good for him. So why does that all suddenly become obsolete when he loses his shards?

Second of all, I would have loved to see Sessh's mom in the series if she had a more stand-alone role much earlier in the series. Her current role makes no sense for several big reasons. Why does she choose to appear at this point in the story? Why does she even care about the whole Naraku thing? And why, when Inutaisho had Tessaiga and Tenseiga made for his two sons, one of whom was born to a second wife probably long, long after his first son, would Sessh's mom know anything about the powers and abilities of those swords? I mean, come on, she's completely divorced from the story when it comes to the swords and hence she shouldn't be privy to any special information concerning them. Which brings us to the additional deus ex machina that is Tenseiga's new power. A non-killing sword with an ultimate killing attack? WTF, mates!!! Inutaisho's intention of giving Tenseiga to Sesshoumaru was to teach his cold (and powerful-enough) son to have compassion and appreciation for those who are physically weaker than him.

I just feel that by dragging out the plot this way, Takahashi has forgotten the spirit of the story and what made it so enjoyable in the first place--the characters. Whether they be the main characters, secondary characters, or appear for just a handful of episodes, each is well-rounded and unique, with an individual personality, goals, and idiosyncrasies that drive the humor and the drama in the series. By centering the focus of the series on one or two technically inanimate objects (Tessaiga and now Tenseiga) and slowly whittling down or weakening (what do Miroku and Sango do now? how 'bout Kagome?) the cast of main characters before the climax of the main plot (the destruction of Naraku) she has essentially left the fans with little more than a one-dimensional string of events that would be better off if it were used in an 80's video game. Think of it: Hit the monsters with the sword, make the sword stronger, advance to the next level and repeat! If you kill the boss, gain a multitude of points that mean nothing more than 3 garbled initials at the top of a list of other numbers and initials! Yay! Insert 3 more quarters to play again!

I understand that this is nothing more than a personal opinion on the series, and as such, it doesn't mean much more than those million points someone just scored playing Centipede or Pong (Note: I don't own or make any money off of these games, and despite the rant I really love playing them); however, being that this is a blog, I have a right to share them.

The good news: I'm going to continue the stories. The bad news: I'm unhappy with the way the canon series is going.

Ah well, I guess this is what fanfiction is for! And this is why despite my love for the series, I'll probably never write any fanfics for Twelve Kingdoms!





Enjoyed the fanfiction you read here? Want to read more? A fan of Trigun, perhaps? Well you're in luck, because this
[link] on 's gallery will take you to the first chapter of a big collaboration fic I'm writing with , , and our friend Melissa (who does not have a DevArt account currently, but will be forced at pain of a severe poptart beating to get one in the very near future ). Anyways, please check this out and leave us some comments!


My friends and other people whose galleries totally rock:



Young Infatuation--The New Sess x Rin Club!


Clubs I'm In:


Other Clubs I would like to join:

Hokay, so I just checked and saw that just tagged me for quiz-thingie of weirdness (hence the "-thingie"). I'm bored to death at work right now so here goes:



Rules : The 1st player of this "game" starts with the topic "6 weird habits/things about yourself" and people who get tagged need to write a journal about their 6 weird habits/things as well as state this rule clearly. (The s were my idea) In the end, you need to choose the next 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you are tagged" in their devpage comments and tell them to read yours....

1. When I eat french fries I arrange them systematically as I pull them from the box. The shortest ones are grouped together in 3's or 4's depending on how hungry I am and eaten. Then I move up to the larger fries, saving the big long ones for last.

2. I like to have my groups of fries even at the ends for equal dippage area in ketchup.

3. Like ~QueenOfTheCute, I also have a series of noises that I use exclusively. Somehow everyone else can translate and understand them.

4. I have two bunnies and I like to put rabbit words into songs I hear. For example, ~mentalbaka is a huge Doors fan so one day when she was playing "Riders on the Storm" I started thinking: "Rabbits have the Worms."

5. Ever since I started following the Go Fug Yourself website (www.gofugyourself.com), I've developed this habit of analyzing the clothes of other people and using GFY catchphrases to describe them. Example: "Sweet fancy Spears! Target must have the fug out on young girls since they're advertising spandex capri tights with jean minis! Maybe they can cinch a too-small belt around their waists to develop the dreaded quadra-butt."

6. I like things that make other people squeamish like viruses, bacteria, parasites, and nasty diseases. Did you know that a particular parasitic infection was (and still is) so common in Egypt that the ancient Egyptians believed that young boys hit puberty when they started pissing blood (a symptom of the infection)? Gross but true. I dig it.

My six victims:







Enjoyed the fanfiction you read here? Want to read more? A fan of Trigun, perhaps? Well you're in luck, because this
[link] on 's gallery will take you to the first chapter of a big collaboration fic I'm writing with , , and our friend Melissa (who does not have a DevArt account currently, but will be forced at pain of a severe poptart beating to get one in the very near future ). Anyways, please check this out and leave us some comments!


My friends and other people whose galleries totally rock:



Young Infatuation--The New Sess x Rin Club!


Clubs I'm In:


Other Clubs I would like to join: