Mascot Roadkill Mark 2

ALERT!!!

THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!!

YOU CAN GET PIZZA EXPRESS DOUGHBALLS IN THE SUPERMARKET!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am going to consume mine through tears of happiness.

Also, happy birthday Tasha. I'm sorry you have to be second to delicious (un)baked products, but you understand the importance of this revelation, I'm sure.

WHY NOT TRY CELEBRATING WITH SOME PIZZA EXPRESS DOUGHBALLS?????

Pay no attention to the machinations of the outside world...

Throwing a dust sheet over the jumble pile of my life, things that don't involve me complaining about my own unfortunate series of events.

Wayne Rooney is quite good at football isn't he? (No, no one else will have been watching the Champions League, Katy...) Well *I* was watching the football tonight, Manchester United matches being one of the more amusing tv offerings for myself and my dad to watch together. We are both armchair managers/referees/commentators, sue me. :p

In other news, this. Rejoice, Ass-no-Ryu, I finally got it on the wall!! Wallspace is like gold dust in this house. At least now the area around the computer is officially staked as mine. And if you have issue with that, talk to the lady with the panties and the guns. ^____^

So other than those two little gems, and I'm sure you'll agree that they were indeed gems, I've been working on commissions. Many many Yu-Gi-Oh! toys. I have, however, had a rather unusual request. One guy who has bought a few things from me before wants me to make a model of him and his girlfriend. ^__^;; I've said yep, I will indeed give it a go, if he doesn't mind chibi versions of them, cause I think it'd be quite fun. ^_^ It'll be a challenge anyway, and I share her opinion that it's only fun when you're making things you haven't made before.

Oh and speaking of fimo things, a person who won one of my auctions today lives in Katy, Tx. ^___^ Well I laughed. :p

Anyway, there's not a great deal of news on the life-changing-events front, other than my dad has offered to pay for me to go and see D at Christmas. Which is very kind of him, given that it was unsolicited. ^_^ I suspect on the permanent residence front, I'm going to have to plead with the American Embassy or something. I don't see how it would do any bad to America to give me residency, I mean, Texas needs teachers, I want to train to be a teacher. If they gave me residency I could go and help fill a need in the education sector.

But things are never that simple.

...

What did I do to deserve this year? -_- Extract from an email received this evening:

"To receive a teacher's certificate in Texas, you must be a US citizen or
Permanent Alien Resident."

-_-

Beware low-flying adjectives

...or, "How Katy went to see Hero and was somewhat impressed". If you replace the word "somewhat" with the word "incredibly".

You will get the rest of this review after dinner. However, for the moment I would like to express my immense awe at how spectacularly awesomebad Snow is.

...dinner, various stresses...

So, Hero. It's quite an awesome film. It's just a shame I had to go and see it by myself because I have no one to enthuse about it with. >_< And don't worry, I'll keep this spoiler-free.

I feel a fair portion of the amusement in this review will probably come from what happened *before* the film. I went to buy my ticket, and when I said what I wanted to see, the conversation went thus:
nice girl: "You know it's subtitled? o_0"
katy: "Oh yeah, about ninety percent of the things I watched seem to be subtitled these days! ^_^"
nice girl: "Hehe, yeah, it's just we've had a few people complaining about it..."
nice girl and katy: *joint look of despair at national intellect going down the pan*

So on to the actual film, in a non-spoilerish way. I have to say, this is one of the few films where even retards like me can be impressed by the direction. It's quite stunning. The use of colour is just absolutely incredible. And the costumes and the scenery are beautiful. But these are all things that are quite difficult to explain in words. ^__^ Suffice to say I now wish for many many silk garments. Also knowledge of Chinese caligraphy and colour symbolism. >_<

The structure of the film might put some people off. It does its best to be confusing with a fairly unconfusing plot. ^__^ Essentially, you get to hear the story of the film in flashback from the main character, as he's telling it to the king. Which sounds simple enough, but various digressions and diversions occur, that would constitute spoilers if I said them. Go and see the film. :p

The fighting in the movie is exemplary throughout, if you're a fan of the "people flying about and standing on rooftops" style of fight choreography, like me. ^_^ There is one absolute stand out scene for the whole film though, involving two of the main female characters in a glade, battering each other silly with whirlwinds of leaves. Once again, one of those things you have to see to get the full effect of, it's severely impressive.

So I loved this movie, but then I have been waiting for it for a horribly long time, since people were complaining online about it not getting a western release. It had pretty much won me over before I saw it, but it is a fantastic piece of cinema.

I should be asleep...

Particularly as the parentals come to snatch me away pick me up tomorrow. (Do not be mean, Katy. Your parents love you and you cannot live on the hospitality and long-sufferance of Ivan and Jane forever. o_0) I would be asleep, but the same problem as always is keeping me awake. I really ought to have brought some Temazepam with me or something. >_< I'm not happy about how repetitive my whining is at the moment, and I beg the forgiveness of anyone reading this blog. I just can't seem to get things right in my head at the moment, it's really unpleasant. It's mainly because I'm trying to grab all the loose ends of things in my life at the moment so that I can bundle them into some kind of getting-to-San-Antonio thread. I keep reminding myself I managed it last year getting out there for the summer doing my internship, so I can do it now, but depressed me is not one for positive thinking most of the time, and laughs bitterly into its own scorn at the attempts of happy me. o_0 (Yes, I want to watch Black Books, that always makes things better).

Thinking of which, there's something to look forward too. Black Books season 3 comes out next month, on the same day as the new Lemony Snicket book. Both of which cause huge spasms of glee in Katy. When I grow up, I want to be some kind of hybrid personality of Bernard Black and Sunny Baudelaire. A drunken bibliophile with incredibly sharp teeth? Well, I admire both those qualities in certain measures...

Someone else in this group should read the Lemony Snicket books, I love them. Although I love the Lemony/Beatrice storyline much more than the Baudelaire orphans' story on its own. I require one of you to theorize about the secrets of VFD with. >_< It's no fun figuring out these things when you have no one to shout enthusiastically about them with, and my mother is too many books behind me to do that yet. >_<

Now I should aspire towards a state of dormancy (a word which here means "sleep").

(Dude, why make that joke when you've just whined that no one reads the books? Loser. >_<)

I love nogs

Ever heard of a cat that can do this? :p

*claws walls*

I apologise for the verbal diarrhoea going on on this blog at the moment. I'm having a horribly skittish few days/life. I really can't stop feeling decidedly panicked about the whole teaching situation, especially how I'm going to fund it. I know I *have* to be able to fund it, because there's nothing else I could plausibly do with my life without turning further into a ball of stinky depression. I'm fond of all of my internal organs, and I think the chances of some affluent philanthropist reading this and giving me thousands of pounds are slim to none.

And tomorrow I have to return home. >_< It's not that I don't love my family, it's just that I'm not used to spending so much time with them anymore. Last year I think I spent three weeks at home, out of the possible fifty-two, and that was fair enough. I just can't cope with the idea of going back to a house where people aren't happy with each other, which may well be the case. My siblings even present something of an issue at the moment. Older sibling hasn't been desparately happy with me for some time, and really doesn't seem to like the fact that I'm not doing a regular part-time job. (I made \a380 yesterday, alright? >_<) It just gets wearying sometimes when it feels like yet another force is trying to put me down. -_-

But that's not an accurate portrait of what it's like in my house, and the last thing I want to do is slander my own family, because I really do love them. I live with four very witty, intellectual people, and a lot of the time it's incredibly amusing. We don't argue all the time, it's just that things have not exactly been brilliant these past few years. I don't know why, I don't suppose they do either. I don't want all this crap about my parents splitting up to happen, and I don't want my siblings to dislike me, but I imagine I'm just as hard work as I sometimes find them. I don't want anyone to think it's a nightmare living in my house, because it isn't. It's just a bit difficult at the moment.

It probably doesn't help that I'm pining for San Antonio more than usual right now either. It's been nine months since I was there, and I want to go back. It's not even just the fact that D lives there, which is obviously a good 99.9% of the reason I want to go, but I just miss the place. I miss the many and various places D and I haunt, because they're fun. >_< But, you know, if I get there to study, all these feelings will change and I'll probably appreciate it more for the effort I put in.

Sorry about this entry. >_<

Blogging frenzy!!

It's like some kind of blog party around here! Twice in one day?? Katy must be depressed!! To be fair, I'm not miserable as sin miserable, I'm just the same as earlier, feeling a bit weighed down. Even taking useful measures towards attaining my goal haven't made me feel that cheerful. But I phoned up the Board of Education in Texas and spoke to a nice man who told me I need to go over to Texas to do my teacher training at a college, then I can get the whole job thing sorted out. How I'm going to fund it, I don't know. Oh, and incidentally, the Board of Education in Texas' hold music is God Save the Queen, in a minor key. o_0 I don't know either.

I hope someone goes for this. I really need the money, and it *is* a nice item. >_<

Phlurgh...

So it looks like it is going to be difficult for me to get to the teacher training in America. >_< But hey, why does this surprise me? It's not going to stop me doing it, because I have to, but it just gets a bit wearying sometimes when you feel like everything is against you trying to do what you want. I'm having one of those days where I feel more depressed than usual about D not being on the same continent as me. >_<

...I should probably stop this blog entry here cause otherwise I'm going to get really whiney.

NONONONONONONO >_<

I can SEE where you're going with this one, fate. DON'T EVEN THINK OF MAKING THIS TEACHER THING HARDER THAN IT SHOULD BE. >_<

I am having horrible suspicions that I may be requried to do some kind of teacher training here before I can go to Texas to train. Sounds sensible? Not to me. >_< Just let me go over there and I'll learn everything you want me to learn your way and teach in your state. >_<

I have emailed them to get more information, but I don't know whether the news is going to be good or bad. >_< No, wait, it's 2004, it's going to suck, isn't it? >_< We can only hope for a freak change in my run of bad luck. o_0

*grits teeth*

I really want to write Hellsing fic again. o_0 Rewatching for the billionth time was possibly not a good idea, because this always happens. >_< I think it's about time I did some angsty death fic, it might make me feel better. ^__^ But then this reminds me how much I want to finish the distinctly disturbing Sephiroth fic I penned on a particularly pissed off day earlier this year. I think that got shown to one person, then quarantined for the sake of an illusion of mental health. o_0 Alucard needs a fic like that, although he really doesn't have *quite* the same malicious streak that Sephy does. ^___^

...I blame all this on being at Jane's house. o_0

Sooo, Tashular came to see us! Which was wonderful, but perhaps even more incredible than this felicitous occasion is the oh so very cool hat bought for me by the aforementioned visitor. ^______________________^ I have a cowboy hat!! ^_____^ I walked around Oxford wearing it and people looked at me like I was ever so slightly odd. ^____^ Is there anything greater to aspire to in this world? ^____^

The eBayage is going relatively well at the moment. I don't have a lot up right now, due to being officially away right now. I've made a Juri locket, which was something of a challenge. Petals are not a cool thing to make out of fimo. o_0 I've got to paint the CCS staff then assemble it, but that's almost done and....hn, I don't see why anyone would want to read about this stuff so, um, I'll stop. o_0

I think I may have to consider some of these Hellsing ficbunnies this evening. ^___^

So...

Things that aren't the horrible mess in my life. I have started a lovely new project on the cosplay items front. For when my brain implodes making Millenum Items, a Card Captor Sakura staff. ^__^ The pink and the sparkly makes me happy.

I also had an *interesting* trip to the Oxford market with Jane. Oxford market (the outdoor one at Gloucester Green) has the highest concentration of market jewellery stalls I've ever seen. Which is a wonderful, wonderful thing for trawling for cosplay items. I even found the Holy Grail of cosplay items, Utena rings that will actually fit a female hand. o_0 The stall holder was shocked and amused in equal parts when I told him I was going to dissect his jewellery for cartoon products. ^_^ He did, however, give me his card and the promise of help acquiring more Utena rings in decent sizes. ^__^ I like that stall.

So now I'm making this CCS thing, I should probably be doing that now I haven't got a splitting headache finally. Most of the day I've felt like someone drilled into my eye. Nummy. o_0

In case of depression, break glass

Extract from a conversation tonight, about all this, and my overriding feeling that I've done something to deserve it.

"the vampire sandfleas says:
hehe, a leopard can't change it's spots
| kyrrl\e1tt kalda vermsl | augum dj\faps | \fat\ed himinfyrr\f0 | starir stillt um n\f3tt | says:
no, but they can connect the dots and make some kind of tigerard hybrid thing"

Screw everything

I have Starsky and Hutch Season 2 on dvd, all my life problems can take a running jump. There's nothing super-gay 70s shows can't make better.

*wades into a sea of Starsky and Hutch and The Dukes of Hazzard*

*sigh*

You know what? I'm at the end of my teather now, I just am. I don't want to know what else is going to crap on my life this year.

I had a phone call about three quarters of an hour ago. My parents are splitting up. So there you go. I don't know what to do about this, I don't know how to feel and I don't know what to say.

The sound of Katy's childhood memories being shattered

....Or "How Katy ruined her life by buying the latest Tomb Raider game".

It's a fairly well-known fact amongst those to whom I will admit my geekery that I've always been a huge fan of the Tomb Raider games. Yes I know it's neither big, nor clever, nor even slightly cool, but I do. I thought Lara Croft was wonderful when I was fourteen, and I still do now. If it weren't for her I wouldn't have a degree in Egyptology. :p

So when I found out they were making a Tomb Raider game for the PS2, I was happy. And then I read reviews of it, and was less so. And so I steeled myself and didn't buy a copy so as to keep the memories of having enjoyed the previous incarnations of the game unblemished. Until yesterday. In a moment of weakness, I thought I'd probably enjoy it because i'm such a die-hard Lara fan.

I think it's probably best to take my experience of the game in a chronological order. Starting with the box. o_0 Which took Ivan and me a good half an hour to open, thanks to the security lock having been left on. Which isn't technically anything to do with the game, but hey, start as you mean to go on.

Now, there are a number of very good things about this game. It has very nice music, as Ivan remarked to me. Its graphics are nothing to write home about, but it's lovely to see Tomb Raider looking fairly spangly anyway. And it has a plot that I at least am quite interested in. It's just a shame the game has such utterly utterly horrible controls and camera. Because, you know, if they'd just got that right, I would have utterly adored this game, but as it is it's less fun than pulling one's own teeth.

*sigh*

"...but you think all nogs are dice nogs!"

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'MMM IIIIIINNNNN OXFORD!!! ^_________^

Man little things like this make me feel better. ^__^ Got the train down to London yesterday and spent a lovely afternoon wandering around the usual locations with Janeular. Bought many silly things, including Totoro fans, which are utterly adorable. ^______^

...and then we spent three hours on the bus trying to get home in the usual London Friday night rush hour *and* the aftermath of two crashes on the motorway. o_0 But this give plenty of time to sit and read Lemony Snicket books and discover the only know usage of the word "xylophone" as an adjective.

But now I'm back in the wonderful city. Jane decided to have a night of cinematic education last night, which consisted chiefly of scaring the life out of unsuspecting mes with David Bowie's "leave nothing to the imagination" leggings in Labyrinth. o_0 But it's ok, we watched Guns and Talks afterwards, which is truly one of the greatest films ever made ever. ^___________^ We're four Korean bishounen! We work as farmhands by day, assassins by night! Koyasu Takehito could quite easily have sued us!

Everyone should watch Guns and Talks, it's so funny. ^____^ And now I'm going to do something else because my neck is cricked. o_0

Explanation, read at own risk.

That's right, it's self-indulgant whining time!!

So I'm not happy at the moment. I found out today that there's no chance of me getting a job at the museum in San Antonio. -_- They don't have the funding for a third person in the education dept, so no job for me. So that's knocked the wind out of my sails, somewhat. I really wanted to work there, I got on well with the people there, I liked the work, it was something I would've felt useful doing. But apparently it wasn't meant to be, and much as I'd like to pretend I'm not fatalistic, I know that's that.

I've got one more plan. Frankly I'm considering whether I should put it off until next year to initiate because 2004 hasn't exactly been my lucky year and I really don't need to mess this up. I'm going for this. Basically it's teacher training. Yeah, I'm going to be a teacher. *But* I want to be an English as a Second Language teacher, which seems a bit less hateful and gets a tick in my "doing something useful for people" box.

As usual, the money is a big issue. I don't have the foggiest idea how much this is going to cost, and I don't even know if I can get a bank loan to cover it. But I need some way that I can go out and be with Daniel, and this is one I might even enjoy.

Anyway, I need to think about all this, get all the information read and things. And then at some point in the near future you'll get bloggage on the results. And some ranting about why you should all love Witch Hunter Robin and Juuni Kokki just because you can't really want to read my whining.

-_-

...could really do with being sedated right now. Not having a good day.

Jane correctly predicted this one o_0

You are Wrath!


Which Homunculus Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

*screams*

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!

DON'T YOU DARE USE THE WORD "PARTY" AS A VERB IN THIS SHOP!!! ^________________________________________^

We're better than you - and we know it.

...or, How Katy Lowered Her Mental Age By Going To See Dodgeball Today.

I'll start this entry with the same disclaimer every single opinon that ever comes from my brain should have. My taste in almost everything is, how you might say, retarded. Thus, my opinions reflect this.

So you might have figured from that that I really liked Dodgeball. o_0 Yep, I sat through it laughing my little head off at the purile humour and Ben Stiller. And yes, Ben Stiller does appear to make films in his own homoerotic fantasy world, but Dodgeball was just *so funny*.

I am going to avoid the "telling everyone the really funny bits of the film" thing, because I urge each and every one of you to GO AND SEE DODGEBALL. It's retarded, it's predictable, it's totally and utterly purile...but good. ^_____^ And I want to be Steve the Pirate, who is tied with Pepper the announcer for the best character in the whole film. Ben Stiller is utterly repulsive throughout the whole thing, and might be the one person that wears kinda thin for my tastes, but he's frankly still very funny.

I really wasn't expecting to enjoy Dodgeball very much, actually. It was only because elder sibling refused to go to see The Chronicles of Riddick that I saw it anyway. *But* it was a comedy that actually ended up being funny, and everyone knows they're a rareity these days, so in conclusion GO AND SEE DODGEBALL!! ^_________________________________^

^_____^

I just thought I would share this because it's given me considerable glee this evening. I got the loveliest piece of feedback ever on an eBay item today: "very nice you made one kid very happy".

^________________^

See, even *I* get happy doing nice things for people once in a while. :p

*cries*

BYE LIZ!!!! :'( DON'T FORGET US IN JAPAN!! :'(

*glee*

Because I like to maintain an emotionally undulating effect to my blog entries. I think everyone would want to tear me to shreds for the amount I've been listening to incredibly annoying rap music the last few days. Except possibly the city slicker because my little sister found me a copy of Lapdance by N.E.R.D. You know you want it. ^______^

...apart from now I walk around singing "ooh baby you want me? well you can get this lapdance here for free" in my head all day, which is *somewhat* embarrasing. o_0

Anyway, um, stuff. I am presently covered in specks of purest Green, not through dabbling with alchemy, no, much more fun than that, from mixing power tools and fimo. ^____________^ Some things just make my life infinitely more fun when I'm feel lonely and unloved. Power tools are one of those things, as are duvets. I have the awesomest drill ever. It's got about a million different attachments to make it do many many whizzy things which have resulted in a good amount of the conservatory being covered in dust and holes. And I have a saw. ^__________________^ Older sibling took me to B&Q yesterday where I purchased a very large piece of dowel and said saw, and I've been having fun ever since. ^___________^

But anyway, before that paragraph gets any more disturbing. MY DAD WAS ON TV TONIGHT!! ^_______^ He was, he was on ITV on their show about the Red Arrows. It was awesomebad. They had pictures of *my* *actual* *dad* on actual tv.

And just because it wouldn't be right not to have something really retarded in my blog entry (don't say it, I mean *more* retarded than the rest of this :p). Does anyone else ever get the urge to get really stupid things at ridiculous times of the night, like at two o'clock in the morning deciding you need to tidy up your matchbox and put some posters on the wall? It would almost be presentable it it weren't for all the rubbish on the top bunk now, but hey, it's not as if I'm expecting guests anytime soon. >_<

Yeah, so, posting this and doing important things like tending to Siaenkaty, the second city of the Tjauenankhenkaty empire.