Doodle hum dee dum dum

Taro, Lolita, and Lux -->

This is Taro! Notice adorable belly spot! --->

Below is Rowan (left) and Sicily (right). Such wonderful girls. Sicily was rambunctious...

Below is my cat Tama. This wasn't really taken in 2004 and neither was the picture above. My camera is just wonky. Both were taken in either 2008 or 2009.

Weird day. My mom got overwhelmed over worrying and cried, then we watched a movie which made me feel strangely nostalgic about Japan, and one of my four fish (Shark) looks like he's gonna die because he's really thin and is missing his dorsal fin. I have no idea how it happened.

Okay and I found cat barf under my bed. =_= Stupid Tama. Tama is my cat. He's about 10 but rambunctiously annoying. Like now. He wants to go outside. So now he'll start pitifully meowing to be let out-- yup there he goes. Well my mom let him out so that's good. Blargh.

Speaking of pets, I also have a black and white fancy rat named Taro who's still not a year old, and an albino fancy mouse named Lolita. Lolita used to have a cage-mate named Lux, but she got killed by Taro.

Let me explain. Lux was on a wheel that I'd placed in a box (because the old cage enabled the two to escape so I had to move them into the traveling cage which is much smaller, so I bought a separated wheel and put it in the box so they could move around), but she escaped and I tried catching her but she wouldn't come, and she ended up crawling into Taro's cage, and being a male, he was territorial and well... beheaded her. It wasn't a nice thing to come home to.

Before Taro however, I used to have two female rats, Sicily and Rowan. Rowan was quiet and timid, and she always seemed weak-- she was adorable though, and possessed a kind of intelligence that I've never seen in an animal before. She died of respiratory disease, but she fought a hard battle-- I took her to the vet in July, who said that she wouldn't live long and should be euthanized, but I didn't listen and took her home, and she ended up living four months longer, looking better at times and worse at times. Her passing was really hard on me, and Sicily seceded her by a few months-- she passed in February because of a mammary tumor. I was ready when it came to Sicily's death, but it was Rowan's that was... unpredictable and very upsetting. I'd bought the two mice Lux and Lolita in December right after Christmas, so I could have company after Sicily passed. She passed on in February, and I was left feeling empty-- I had a special spot for rats in me, and having that spot gone just felt unnatural, so I asked my mom if I could get a new one-- just one this time. She agreed, and I decided to get a male. I went to Petco on April 10, two days before my birthday, and the lady handed Taro to me. She asked if I wanted to choose another one but I was fine with him-- his soft baby fur was irresistible, and his little black eyes were like gems. And so I have him now.

Tama (TAH-mah) is a domestic shorthair cat, brown tabby and white, with green-yellow eyes. He's just about 10 years old now, and his name when we first got him apparently was Ted. He is nothing like a Ted, haha. He's pretty territorial and sprays in the house because of the neighbor cats, but well, we love him because he's just so cuddly.

And I have four fish now, Shark, Sunshine, Bernard, and Hokkaido. THey all look different, but they're feeder fish. I guess Shark's time is coming soon.

Wow my day sure sounds depressing, doesn't it? On the other hand, I built a table out of cardboard and an old scanner. I like it quite a bit. It's holding up well despite being put together with just super glue (found my glue gun at last!).

ANGST ANGST ANGST!!!!!!

Oh maaaaaaan I'm going through my rebel phase again. I mean, I cursed off two guys on YouTube in one day (picture is displayed), and I bought a rubber bracelet that says 'Fuck Off' and a keychain with a kitten on it that says 'Fucking Vicious'. Maaaaan... it's like middle school all over again!

In other news, just finished the first of SPUD, and the ending was surprisingly serious-sounding instead of... well... downright goofy. It was brilliant though, and I highly recommend it. Plus I put the second book on hold at my local library... har har har!

But I am tired so I will sleep now. I have a bad headache. Grar.

~3~ Mindless Self Indulgence (MSI)

Mindless Self Indulgence, or MSI as most commonly known, are a metal/screamo/rock band comprised of singer Jimmy Urine; Steve, Righ?; LynZ, and Kitty. LynZ is currently with MCR's singer Gerard Way, and has had a baby.

Just watch music videos and performance videos of them to see the awesome craziness of MSI.

Favorite lyrics from them are "The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble; I like my coffee black just like my metal" from "Shut Me Up".

Playlist:

1. Shut Me Up

2. Never Wanted to Dance

3. Evening Wear

4. Animal

5. Stupid MF

6. Planet of the Apes

7. Revenge

8. Issues

9. Bomb this Track

10. Straight to Video

Movie 1: Eclipse

So the Inland Taipan has the most lethal venom of any snake in the world!

Yesh.

Well today my best friend and I travelled to Reading Cinemas (used to be Pacific Theatres until some douche bags decided to buy it and make it this huge chain extending to San Diego...) to watch Eclipse, seeing as we wanted to chill, and we both had some interest in the movie.

The movie was pretty chill, I give it three stars (not many movies I like get four stars. I've only given it to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Pride & Prejudice) out of four.

The theater was surprisingly not very full, with only about ten seats filled when we first marched in.

The trailers were pretty dull, like Thomas the Train goes to Misty Mountain or something, and Paranormal Activity 2, and one called RED which seemed pretty awesome, considering the fact that Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis were in it. My friend and I also talked a bit about The Human Centipede, which frankly looks both stupid and very disturbing. I mean, these stupid girls are tourists in Germany and get stuck in the rain when their car breaks down, they find a house, and it turns out to be the house of some mad surgeon dude who already has one guy captive, and he wants to make the human centipede, which breathes through this one long tube that's made from mouth to anus to mouth to each person he connects. What. The. Hell. I must say that I am slightly intrigued by the outcome of the project, but I can skip all the horror drama shit.

I'm not really a fan of horror. I don't find any fun in watching it. It's all just in an attempt to scare you, and I don't really want to go through the dull process of waiting for it to be over because it's always going to have some kind of surprise ending, and people are yelling in agony all throughout, blah blah blah. It's typical to me. But hell, whatever.

I have complaints about Eclipse, just to get back on track:

Complaint #1: JASPER'S HAIR. I have no idea, but it just DOESN'T MATCH HIS FACE. I HATE IT. I WANT TO SHAVE IT OFF. AAAGH.

Complaint #2: The drama. Maaaaaaan. Jacob vs Edward was getting out of hand! They were always fighting over Bella, and she's just like "Oh help me boo hoo what do I do" and well... ugh. Plus she's kind of being a slut, going for both Jacob and Edward (oh okay I would've done the same in her position, but whatever).

Complaint #3: Just all the darn cheesiness. But hey, that has come to be expected.

Oh hold on Complaint #4: CARLISLE. The actor who plays him I mean, I don't know his name. He just seems so creepy and well... gay. Just... ugh.

After the movie my friend and I roamed over to Target, where we looked at random stuff and she picked out a t-shirt, then we went to Starbucks where I got a Doubleshot and she got a Passion fruit tea + lemonade thing, and we were walking when she told me how before she went to see Toy Story 3, a friend of hers told her that Woody dies. Upon telling me this, I started laughing with a lungful of espresso cream, and I nearly choked to death. Such a dreadful experience... okay not really, it was quite hilarious.

All right, I think I'm done for the night... and tomorrow I shall romp. >Skips away<

~2~ Arctic Monkeys

Arctic Monkeys... from High Green (which is a suburb off of Sheffield, England), the singer (Alex Turner) sings like a god, and the music is brilliant.

That is all.

Okay no, not really there's a bit more.

Their songs are Indies rock, and they range quite interestingly from punk-like tunes to Beach Boy like ballads (I am speaking of "Baby I'm Yours"). They're just... well you have to listen to them.

Playlist:

1. I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor

2. Crying Lightning

3. Baby I'm Yours

4. The View from the Afternoon

5. Balaclava

6. Brianstorm

7. Mardy Bum

8. A Certain Romance

9. Fluorescent Adolescent

10. When the Sun Goes Down

Essay 1: Neil Gaiman

Okay this essay was done on November 3, 2009 for my English class, where we had to write about an author who has experienced censorship in some way. I was supposed to do this essay with my friend, but we'd gotten in a kind of spat and we'd just done separate things. Anyway, this is it. Personally I really like Neil Gaiman, his novel The Graveyard Book being one of my favorites. Coraline was a really great movie as well.

Neil Gaiman is the acclaimed author of fantasy and science fiction stories, some of which include Stardust, Mirrormask, The Graveyard Book, and Coraline. He as a writer, is friends with many famous people, including writer Terry Pratchett (author of Discworld), Diana Wynne Jones (author of Howl’s Moving Castle), Alan Moore (comic book author of V for Vendetta), and is even currently dating Amanda Palmer, singer of the famous “Brechtian punk cabaret” duo, The Dresden Dolls.

In 2006, a man in Iowa by the name of Christopher Handley received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven comic books. The package was intercepted by a Postal Inspector who applied for a warrant after looking through it and determining that it was illustrated child pornography, which he found as objectionable content. The police were contacted later and followed Handley to his house, where his collection of 1,200 manga books or publications, hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser discs, seven computers, and other documents were confiscated. Even if the offensive images were found only in a small handful of all the things that were confiscated, the government still prosecuted against him.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund had come to the aid of Mr. Handley, as well as Neil Gaiman, who objectified against the government’s actions towards the avid comic book collector.

“If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said,” said Gaiman on his blog. “The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't. This is how the Law is made. People making art find out where the limits of free expression are by going beyond them and getting into trouble.”

Gaiman has been defended by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (or CBLDF for short) as well, because a Chief of Police in Jacksonville, Florida ordered a comic book shop not to sell his comic book Death Talks About Life because she thought it promoted teen sex. The legal counsel of CBLDF talked to the Jacksonville Police Department about the First Amendment, and they shut up and didn’t object any further.

Gaiman also said, “In this case you obviously have read lolicon, and I haven't. I don't know whether you're writing from personal experience here, and whether you have personally been incited to rape children or give inappropriate hugs by reading it. (I assume you haven't. I assume that Chris Handley, with his huge manga collection, wasn't either. I've read books that claimed that exposure to porn causes rape, but have seen no statistical evidence that porn causes rape -- and indeed have seen claims that the declining number of US rapes may be due to wider availability of porn. Honestly, I think it's a red herring in First Amendment matters, and I'll leave it for other people to argue about.) Still, you seem to want lolicon banned, and people prosecuted for owning it, and I don't. You ask, What makes it worth defending? and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.

“Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.”

Lolicon or yaoi is a Japanese portmanteau of the phrase “Lolita complex”, which is a sexual attraction to younger girls by adult males, as portrayed in the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Lolicon comic books are more commonly known in Japan, where they originally began, and are a genre of comic books with childlike females being depicted erotically. Some critics say that lolicon contributes to actual sexual abuse of children, while others say that there is no evidence to support this, or there is evidence to the contrary. Some countries have attempted to criminalize lolicon comic books because of their sexual explicitness, pertaining to child pornography, but Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, and the Philippines are the only countries to have actually been able to do so. This itself is enough to say that Christopher Handley, a resident of Iowa, USA, shouldn’t be charged with such a thing as this, because it is not illegal to have such possessions, and isn’t harming anyone else. Sure, it may be irksome to law enforcement officers, but since there are no actual child porn victims involved, there shouldn’t be that much of a problem.

However, in May 2009, Christopher Handley pleaded guilty of owning the said obscene lolicon graphic comic books, most likely because he couldn’t afford to keep fighting in the trial. He could face a fine of $250,000 and up to fifteen years in jail. These results are not surprising, but disappointing, because as Gaiman said in a part of his blog, people have more freedom in the United States, and according to the First Amendment, Americans have the right to freedom of speech, and just because that Postal Inspector found the item suspicious didn’t mean that he had to report it as child porn, because, as stated previously, it officially isn’t. Neil Gaiman was right in defending the matter of Christopher Handley, and had the tables turned and Handley been released, it would’ve been a sign of freedom still standing in the United States.

Bibliography:

Trexler, Jeff. “Comics, Child Porn and the Law” Blogs at Newsarama. 23 December 2008. Newsarama. 3 November 2009. <http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/12/23/comics-child-porn-and-the-law/>.

Otakureview. “The Case Against Christopher Handley” Otaku Review. 11 December 2008. Otaku Review. 3 November 2009. <http://otakureview.today.com/2008/12/11/the-case-against-christopher-handley/>.

“Censorship” Wikipedia. 30 October 2009. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 3 November 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship>.

Vineyard, Jennifer. “Neil Gaiman on the ‘obscenity’ of Manga Collector Christopher Handley’s Trial” Splashpage MTV. 24 November 2008. MTV. 3 November 2009. <http://splashpage.mtv.com/2008/11/24/neil-gaiman-on-the-obscenity-of-manga-collector-christopher-handleys-trial/>.

Gaiman, Neil. “Why defend freedom of icky speech?” Neil Gaiman. 1 December 2008. Harper Collins Publishers. 3 November 2009. <http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html>.

“Lolicon” Wikipedia. 24 October 2009. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 3 November 2009. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon>.

#2: SPUD

Oh gosh what to rant about... uh... okay well let's just go with book 2 since I'm in the middle of one right now...

SPUD is a hilarious young adult novel by a South African white man named John Van de Ruit. The book is written as a diary, which Spud narrates. It takes place in 1990, right along the time that Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and it's about a boy named John Milton who goes to boarding school in South Africa. John is nicknamed 'Spud' because his balls haven't dropped yet, and so far, his roommates and teachers are downright awesome.

The seven other boys who share Spud's dorm with him are: Vern, the deranged boy who pulls out clumps of his hair and talks to inanimate objects, Mad Dog who shoots things with his catapult, Gecko who needs to throw up every time anything mildly disgusting happens, Rambo the so-called leader, Simon who has railway braces, Fatty whose name speaks for itself, and Boggo who is "a greasy-looking boy with big teeth and a bad case of pimples" (Van de Ruit, p.10).

The following is a description of Vern:

"I'm sleeping next to a deranged individual called Vern Blackadder, who looks slightly brain damaged. He also has the nasty habit of pulling out large clumps of his own hair with a loud thunk.

"I lie in bed listening to assorted snores and mutterings, the odd thunk of Vern's hair being ripped out, and the never-ending trickle of Pissing Pete (the concrete statue of St. Peter), who stands proudly in the fish pond in the quadrangle with water dribbling out of his sword." ~ Van de Ruit, pg. 7

Vern is a very peculiar individual indeed. He later befriends a Siamese named Roger, who is cared for by Sparerib, nickname for Mr. Wilson, the Housemaster. Mr. Wilson has his own seven commandments, which are as follows:

"He announced his seven commandments with a flourish of his cane:
1. Thou shalt not disobey those in authority.
2. Thou shalt not behave in a depraved fashion.
3. Thou shalt not tease my cat. (This is apparently a Siamese called Roger.)
4. Thou shalt not waste toilet paper
5. Thou shalt not play with yourself (or others) after lights-out
6. Thou shalt not go night swimming.
7. Thou shalt not play darts (a bit strange considering the lack of a dartboard)." ~ Van de Ruit, pg. 10"

I am pretty much in love with this novel by now, and according to the jacket, it says there is a sequel. I am oh so intrigued.

As a side note, Spud's grandmother's name is Wombat.