Wednesday, October 31, 2001

For many, many years, including several when I was growing up, my mother was a Home Ec teacher (and, from all accounts, a damned good one). One of the many things that means is that I never once wore a costume out of a box on Halloween; she either made them all, or helped me make them, until I was old enough to make them by myself.
I wish I had photos to go with this, but since I don't, I can at least talk about some of my favorite Costumes of Halloweens Past:

1). The Ghostbuster.
I was in junior high somewhere, and the movie had just come out. My mother bought a cheap tan jumpsuit and sewed nifty patches and stuff all over it, and we cannibalized a vacuum cleaner, spray-painted a big cardboard box black and silver, and made me a neat backpack, complete with 'firing attachment'. I was just so damn cool. I was! Quit snickering!

2). The Rubik's Cube.
Also in junior high, I think, maybe a year or two earlier. Again, right at the height of their popularity. We got a big square box, spraypainted it black, and covered it with squares of construction paper; I was a solved Rubik's Cube, thanks, in case you were wondering. There were holes cut out of the front and top for me to stick my hands and head through, and I wore it like a giant square muumuu over a black leotard. Wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but hey.

3). The Unicorn.
This was in high school, an outfit that I made for myself for the drama club's Halloween party. I went all out on this; I made a mane and tail out of glossy white yarn threaded with gold thread, and a short plaster muzzle, and a big golden horn. The best part was the hooves, though; for my feet, it was just a pair of golden shoes with white spats over them, but for my hands I made a nifty pair of actual 'hooves', painted gold. The bottoms were hinged with tape and had a loop of yarn inside, so that I could hold them shut and they would look like hooves; but then I could drop the yarn and they would open so that I could poke my hands out and use them. Tra la, I'm a genius.

4). Gothkitty!
In college, just for the hell of it, but it ended up amusing me. I had a large number of eeeenteresting black pieces in my wardrobe, you see. So I wore my Death boots (lace-up calf-high black boots with flaring tops, pointed toes, and witchy heels), my tuxedo jacket, my black lace corset-vest that tied up the front, and appropriate underblack. I dyed my hair jet-black and wore a black cat-faced half-mask to which I had given appropriate piercings; four in each ear, one in the nose.
The fun part was that, under the mask, I had painted my eyes in the baroque faux-Egyptian style favored by Death in the Sandman comic books. For some reason, every time I pulled the mask up to eat or converse, all my comic-book-reading friends got spooked... la la la!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 08:02 PM EST
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Tuesday, October 30, 2001

Well, having finally won FF4 tonight (yay me), I just have a few observations:

1). There appears to be some sort of rule that only two classes of people can wear high-heeled boots: a) grown women, and b) legitimate sons of royalty.
I guess it's only fitting that Edward the Giant Poof should wear heels. But Edge? Edge, honey, is there something you're not telling us? Is that smirky disrespectful womanizer routine all an act, Edge?
2). While we're talking about Edge: why does he wear his hair like Dagwood Bumstead? And what's with the bright orange leotard and blue cape, Edge?
I wonder about him. I really do. Bright orange leotard, bare legs, high-heeled boots, cape, face mask, incredibly stupid hair... maybe he's the pseudo-medieval equivalent of an American comic-book superhero!
3). Kain is blond. Mmmmmm, blond.
I have nothing else to say about that. Just... mmmmm, blond.
4). My goodness, the FMV shows its age.
You can really tell they did the 'new' FMV pre-FF7. Ouchie.
5). The final boss was growling at me. Like a big hairy dog!
I felt like holding out my hand and crooning 'Good boy'. Doubt it would have worked, though.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 09:13 PM EST
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Monday, October 29, 2001

You know, as far as being a responsible crewmember of Spaceship Earth goes, I suck.
I'm bad about recycling, I don't usually get involved in politics or causes, I eat meat, I wear leather, I buy crap with irresponsible packaging, I use household chemicals, I turn the heat and the A/C up too high... when the dolphins emerge to kick our resource-wasting asses off the planet, I'm going to be one of the first to go.

Sometimes, this bothers me. And it should. But a couple of days ago, I sat down and talked to the earth, and she and I struck a deal. It went like this:

EARTH: Yeah, whaddaya w... oh, shit, it's YOU.

MOONCALF: ... yeah. I want to talk to you.

EARTH: Look, I'm a very busy planet! You want to talk? Recycle a couple of pounds of aluminum and talk to my secretary!

MOONCALF: See, that's what I want to talk to you about...

EARTH: ... my secretary?

MOONCALF: No, no. Recycling. Or, uh, my lack of it.

EARTH: Don't tell me you plan to mend your ways. I know you! You talk a good game and then you buy food packaged in plastic! The day you change is the day I initiate a new ice age!

MOONCALF: ... no, but... see, it's like this. I want to cut a deal with you.

EARTH: ... a deal.

MOONCALF: Yeah. A deal.

EARTH: I'm listening.

MOONCALF: I suck, and I'm sorry. But we both know that I'm not going to change any time soon.

EARTH: No shit.

MOONCALF: So here's what I propose: you and your self-appointed agents stop giving me shit about my habits, and in return, I promise not to have kids.

EARTH: ...

MOONCALF: Think about it. If I don't squat out any rugrats, that's one less person draining your resources. Every kid I don't have doesn't have kids of their own. Hell, in four hundred years, that'll be something like 400,000 Mooncalves' worth of trouble I saved you.

EARTH: ... so you're offering to let me naturally select against you.

MOONCALF: I'm willing to collude in my own deselection.

EARTH: In return for letting you be an obese snorting resource hog.

MOONCALF: ... gee, you don't have to put it that bluntly, but yeah.

EARTH: I don't have to mince words. What are you going to do, leave? But... okay, you got a deal.

MOONCALF: Great! Thanks!

EARTH: But I swear, you go back on your promise, I'll make you a tornado magnet.

MOONCALF: ... seems fair. Thanks, Earth. You're pretty cool, for a planet.

EARTH: Bah, enough with the flattery.

MOONCALF: Yeah. Now tell your agents to quit bugging me. I'm officially Out of the Recycling Loop.

EARTH: Right, right. Shoo, now, get back on the concrete, stop eroding my topsoil.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 01:23 AM EST
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Thursday, October 25, 2001

AIEEEEEE one of my parents found my website and read my blog AIEEEEEE.

Uh... I mean... hi Dad!

You see, due to circumstances beyond my control, somewhere out there, my real name appears on the Web, linked to my pen name and my website. So my father (who, also due to circumstances beyond my control, knows my real name) typed said name into Google, and followed the chain of incidents back to... my site.
All of it.
Including the blog and the smutty bits.
Oh dear.

That's right, folks, Google has outed me to my father!
Not that this situation really compares to the heart-pounding seriousness of telling your folks you're gay. Or so I'd imagine; being heterosexual really limits the number of times you can come out of the closet, you know?
But it's a really strange feeling to know that Google has turned to your father and coolly informed him that his little girl, whom he has known and loved since she was the size and shape of a loaf of bread, is a yaoi fangirl. And tends to write about smut and dead skunk cum and condoms and all sorts of other loveliness.

So. Um.

Hi Dad!

......

*cough*

... lot of weather we're having!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 07:33 PM EST
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Wednesday, October 24, 2001

Hm. As long as I'm going to be inflicting random spasms of bad poetry on my hapless readers, I might as well talk about my life as a poet some, huh?

It all starts here: In fourth grade, our teacher required us all to keep journals. Ten minutes a day, she said. All you have to do is write in it for ten minutes a day.
Well, okay, that's nice, and in the grand scheme of things a tiny, tiny investment of time. Of course, when you're a kid, ten minutes in front of a spiral notebook is an aeon, right? Compounding the problem is the fact that ever since I was a teeny tiny mite, I've been Lazy. Not just lazy, but Lazy. But, well, this was fourth grade, and I hadn't yet perfected the art of not handing in homework, so I grudgingly wrote journal entries in my scraggly nine-year-old cursive.
Then, one day, for no reason whatsoever, I wrote a couple of little stupid rhyming couplets. I don't remember what I wrote about -- probably something incredibly vapid, some things never change no matter how old you get -- but the teacher really liked it. She said, you should write more poetry for your journal entries!
Wait, says nine-year-old me. I can write poetry for my journal entries?
Sure, says the teacher. That would be great!
What about haiku? Or limericks? Can I write those? I inquired.
Absolutely! she says. A haiku would be a great journal entry! I look forward to it! Write all the poetry you want!

I was smart enough not to snort and say, ONE haiku? Oh, lady, you don't know me very well.

While I've long since given up any delusions that I might have about being 'a poet', I will admit that I've always had a certain facile gift for rhyme and syllable. Chiefly, I can poetick FAST.
From that day forward, I hardly ever wrote a journal entry in prose again. I could crank out a fourth-grader haiku in, literally, thirty seconds, and a fourth-grader limerick in something like a minute and a half. Which, of course, gave me almost nine minutes more to waste in front of the television! This made me, a child of the eighties, very happy indeed, in a shallow sort of way.
And the teacher was happy, believing that it took me ten minutes to write a poem; so we were all happy. Yes we were. One big happy suburban school family glued together with rhyme and syllable.

And of course, I went through a period in high school where I wrote abysmal and oddly-formatted free verse in a tiny spiral notebook. There are always kids like that in American high schools; one out of every five high school students writes Deep Poetry, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of those... suck. I sucked hard. Never stopped me.

I still have that shiny little notebook; it was lost for years, but when my mother cleaned out the attic this year, she found it.
Whenever I start to get delusions of writing grandeur, I know how to pull myself back down to earth.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 11:36 PM EST
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Tuesday, October 23, 2001

Blah. I am slumping.
The computer beckons me;
Come, Mooncalf, and write.

Alas, I cannot.
The muse, it sleeps within me;
Everything seems trite.

I know I should blog.
I set my fingers to keys;
Nothing emerges.

My voice is silenced.
And yet I... I must create.
I damn these urges.

Therefore... I haiku.
If I should rhyme, what of it?
It is my habit.

Please do not tell me
That these are not true haiku.
I know... dagnabbit.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 08:18 PM EST
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Saturday, October 20, 2001

There is. More. ReBoot.
There is. ReBoot. Season FOUR. On Cartoon Network.
They made Season Freaking Four, and I saw the first two eps.

Well, okay, actually, it's an eight-episode-long movie, Daemon Rising. But... it's the fabled SEASON FOUR!

Words cannot express how happy this makes me. I am such an animation geek...

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 08:18 PM EST
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Tuesday, October 16, 2001

*singing*
Ohhh, my boyfriend is in Portland and my kitty is insane
And I can't go get breakfast 'cause outside it's pissing rain
And the television bores me, and I'm all out of comic books
And this web/IRC thing isn't as nifty as it looks
So I'm bored and I'm lonely and I'm depressed and in a rut...
Oh, well, screw you all then, dears, I'm off to look at smut!

It's smut! It's smut! It's glorious smut! It never lets me down!
Pull up the smut, affirm my age, and BABY! Go to town!
Some smut is great, some smut is bad. These things I understand.
Let's hear it for the Web, my dears, and its smut on command!

Some smut comes in pretty pictures, some comes in simple text
Some comes in complicated Flash, which really makes me vexed.
Some smut wants me to pay for it, to which I reply 'ha ha!'
'Cause the best smut is always free, or so I think, tra la.
It may annoy the government, and I may go to hell...
But until that day I'll read my smut and enjoy myself quite well.

It's smut! It's smut! It's raunchy smut! I'm blushing over here!
Anyone can do anyone, be they arrow-straight or oh so queer.
Some smut is quiet, some smut is loud. These things I understand.
Let's hear it for the Web, my dears, and its smut on command!

Some people like it sweet and kind, some people like it cruel,
Some people like the evil smut that breaks darn near every rule.
Some people like their solo smut, some people like three or more,
Some people like the kind with toys; who knows what they're for?
Some people like it short and sweet, and others like it long...
Some people like their smut with kids, and oh my god that's wrong.

It's smut! It's smut! It's pretty smut! Oh, my mind's aflame!
But please skip the euphemisms, because holy cow, that's lame.
Some smut is art, some smut is words. These things I understand.
Let's hear it for the Web, my dears, and its smut on command!

I like my smut with pretty boys, and for that I won't apologize.
The things that I find fascinating aren't for everybody's eyes.
Every one of us is different. Every one of us is BENT.
And the things that I get off on might leave you quite unspent.
So you can have your girly smut, but leave my sweet yaoi alone.
'Cause, goddamn it all, I like it when I hear biseinen moan.

It's smut! It's smut! It's yaoi smut! Let's hear the fangirls cheer!
Well, they can go out cheering, and I'll just stay down here.
Some smut is mine, some smut is yours. These things I understand.
Let's hear it for the pretty smut. On the Web, and on command.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 06:18 AM EST
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Saturday, October 13, 2001

WARNING: Part 3 of 3, of a grim, angry, depressing story from my past. This will all make more sense if you scroll down and read the entries in order.

=====

And the saddest thing is that, no matter how bad I had it (and it was bad, believe me), others had it worse. Remember that student of my mother's?
There's a certain point on the Fat Scale beyond which people are just not functional, and she was far, far past that point. She could not physically fit into the shower stalls provided. She actively could not participate in most of the exercise activities; she was just unable to do the things that we were required to do. She could barely walk without physical pain, let alone run or do situps.
And the counselors, untrained and confused as they were, didn't know what to do with her. Hate Botchers camp is designed for people who are twenty to eighty pounds overweight, not three to four hundred pounds overweight. After trying halfheartedly to make up special exercises for her to do (and, of course, thereby setting her apart as an icon to be snickered at by the rest of the camp), they pretty much gave up.
Out of some devotion to my mother, I tried to be her friend, even rooming with her for a while. And she was a very nice girl, she really was; I hope I helped, at least a little. Unfortunately, it may have been that very friendship that caused my own ostracism, at least in part. I'll never know now.

One of the saddest things I've ever seen occurred during the Color War. One of the many competitive events was a tug-of-war; her team suddenly realized that this five-hundred-pound girl was their ultimate advantage. All she needed to do was hold onto the rope and sit down, and no one would ever be able to pull her anywhere.
They were right, of course. They won every single tug-of-war there was. I'll never forget how happy she looked during that hour of her life; it was probably the first and last time anyone would ever cheer her name.
And then the tug-of-wars ended, and her teammates all slapped her on the back and congratulated her... before walking off to dinner with their friends, leaving her alone.
She stopped looking happy pretty soon thereafter.

So I'm fat now, really fat, and I just don't care. The people who leech money off America's hysterical desire to be thin disgust me, almost as much as the people who are hysterical to be thin. If you have to look like you stepped off the cover of Cosmopolitan to feel good about yourself, if being ten pounds overweight makes you nauseated and fills you with self-loathing, then somewhere in your psyche you are shallow, little woman. If I have to be thin and pretty to get your attention, then fuck you, little man, your attention isn't worth the entrance price.

There's one final irony here, and it's the big one. Without the Fat Gulag, I don't know if I could have ever developed such a healthy mental attitude towards body shape. It's a memory that proves to me, once and for all, that the suffering we endure in the name of thin is not worth it.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 10:31 PM EST
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WARNING: Grim and depressing oversharing rant. Also, this is part 2; if you haven't been here in a few days, you'll want to read the entry below first.

=====

You see, my mother had told me that I only had to go to fat camp for two weeks. They were a godawful two weeks, all told, but I'd suffered worse in my life; then my mother picked me up to take me to my other summer camp, a weeklong session of a camp for gifted children that is, ironically, one of my very best memories of childhood.
You want more irony? Here it is: smart children are able to look past body shape and size in a way that fat children cannot. You would think that fat children could overlook size and shape; but they can't. They've become their fat, remember? After a few years, all that matters to them is their size, and other people's size...
That very summer, at Camp Mind's Eye (which I will call by its full and proper name, because it was a wonderful place and deserving of all the compliments I can heap upon it), I learned for the first time what it feels like to be popular. Not just tolerated, not just orbiting, but out and out popular. For one week, out of my entire life, people actively sought my company and wanted to be my friend. I had a wonderful time. I ate three candy bars every day, I ran all over the place in a herd of friends, I participated in activities and barely slept, I managed to put the discomfort that was Camp Bone Spar behind.

And then came the hours that broke my heart.

My mother had arranged for one of the Camp Mind's Eye counselors to drive me into town and put me on a plane, after the session ended. When we got to the airport, I discovered that, instead of being booked on a flight home to Houston, I was booked on a flight to Dallas. To the nearest airport to Camp Bone Spar, actually.
And in my happy post-Mind's-Eye naivete, I actually didn't get it. You see, my father lived in Dallas. So I got on that plane, convinced that my father was going to pick me up at the airport and take me home from there. My mother was a busy woman, after all, and it didn't surprise me that she would need to make such a strange arrangement to get me home. She was always having my relatives pitch in to help get me places, and I enjoyed it. No big deal!

So I got off the plane in Dallas and claimed all my luggage. I had five enormous mismatched soft-sided suitcases; I was packed for two different intensive summer camps, after all, camps without any sort of laundry facilities.
No father. No mother. Hm. Oh well, they were probably just late. I had a book, I was fine. After about an hour, I heard a message on the intercom with my name attached; please meet my party at Baggage Claim C.
But I was in Baggage Claim A! Oh well, no problem. My father had always had a serious weight problem too; he wouldn't want to walk all this way, and it made sense that he would have me paged. So I'll go meet him there. I managed to string the shoulder straps of these five enormous suitcases into a string of baggage that was, literally, ten feet long, and dragged it from one end of the airport to the other. I must have been quite a sight: one little fat girl, completely alone and about thirteen, walking backwards in order to lug this huge slithering train of luggage across three terminals, a distance of almost half a mile. It was loud, it was attention-getting, it was exhausting. I've never had so many people smile pityingly at me in my life.
So, finally, wrung out, exhausted, sweaty, I made it to Baggage Claim C. Dropping the handle of the Luggage Train, I turned around and looked for my father. Didn't see him... then I suddenly noticed that some strange man with a clipboard had walked up to me and was saying something.

And do you know what I said next? I said, completely confident, "No, that's not right, my father's coming to pick me up and take me home." I had managed to completely convince myself that that was what was happening. No, of course I wouldn't have to go back to Camp Bone Spar. No.
But... yes. This man was the new driver for Camp Bone Spar. It was his very first day on the job, and his very first job was to come pick me up at the airport and take me back.
It took us about an hour and a half to get back to the camp, and I bawled the entire way. I told this poor man everything about the camp: how much I hated it, all the horrible things that had happened to me at the hands of the counselors and the other kids, how I didn't know that I was coming back...
And he believed me. Finally, finally, an adult attached to Camp Bone Spar had actually listened to me. Over the next week, he quietly spoke to several of the other campers, and they confirmed everything I had told him. Finally, outraged at the treatment the campers were getting and the treatment they were giving each other, he confronted the owners of the camp.
So of course, they fired him.

I made several whoopingly upset phone calls to my mother over the next three or four days, of course under the watchful eyes of the head counselor. It turns out that my mother had told me I was coming back to Camp Bone Spar... while I was asleep in the car on the way to Camp Mind's Eye. Apparently I'd made some sort of noise of assent in my sleep, and she took this to mean that it was just a-okay with me.
And my mother decided that I was 'only homesick', and refused to listen to my pleas to be allowed to come home. No matter what I said about the camp, she refused to take me seriously, thinking it was just a passing adolescent tantrum.
And then, of course, after the phone call was over, I'd have to have a long talk with the head counselor after that about the 'horrible and untrue' things that I'd said about the camp, and that I'd 'feel better soon' after I 'settled back in with my little friends'.
After three calls, my mother stopped accepting the collect calls. And there I was. The first two weeks had been terrible; the last three weeks were worse. But I survived.

About two years later, I was in the car with my mother, driving somewhere halfway across Houston. The conversation turned to Camp Bone Spar, and for the first time I was able to calmly tell her everything that had happened without crying. It took me most of an hour. I didn't pull a single punch. She needed to know what had happened, what she had done, even though she meant well.
I think I broke my mother pretty badly, that day. In many ways, that day in the car changed our relationship forever, and in some ways, for the better. My mother got a completely new opinion about my maturity level, and I got the small tired pleasure of knowing that finally, she truly understood what I was trying to say in those hysterical phone calls from camp two years before. A bit late, but...
Ever since then, she's always taken me seriously. Which is a good thing... if not quite worth the five weeks that it cost me.

There'll have to be one more segment to this, if I'm going to bring the story to its close, so I'll just write To Be Continued here...

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 09:58 PM EST
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WARNING: Long, grouchy, confessional over-sharing ahead.

For those of you who haven't gathered as much yet, I am a Fat Chick. Quite the Mooing Heifer, indeed. I am 5'7 and I weigh approximately 260 pounds.
Furthermore, I have always been fat, ever since I was a little tiny kid. I didn't look too terribly different from anyone else until about fourth grade, but my mother knew from the time I was about three that I was going to grow up to be fat.
That being said, it's never particularly bothered me. Sure, I'd like to be thin, but I've never wanted to be thin enough to bother doing anything about it. I am perfectly happy to live fat and die well-fed, preferably somewhere that's adequately air-conditioned. My favorite pastimes are sedentary and intellectual, and always have been.

Once I did try to do something about my weight, though. Although it wasn't precisely my idea.

When I was in seventh grade, I weighed about 170 pounds. My mother, who taught at a different junior high school, had a student who had a serious weight problem indeed, weighing in at over 400 pounds. My mother worried about this girl, so she got together with the girl's parents and talked them into trying 'fat camp'. Well, okay, so by this point they were calling it 'weight loss camp'. Fuck that, it was FAT CAMP.
So this girl and her parents were sitting in our den, and I was sitting in the adjoining kitchen doing my homework, because my mother had wanted me to sit in and listen. And at the end of her presentation, my mother turned to me and asked me if I wanted to go to 'fat camp' too. I seem to remember making some sort of noncommittal noise and agreeing, mostly to get my mother to stop dragging me into the conversation, because, I am ashamed to admit, the immense girl and her equally immense loud parents scared the hell out of me.

Big mistake.

I won't say which fat camp, because I'm a bit leery of, let's say, huge angry lawsuits that threaten to suck out my eyeballs. But it was run by a company whose name rhymed with 'Hate Botchers', and since it was in Texas, they named it something that rhymed with 'Camp Bone Spar'. I was there for five weeks.

There are a lot of stories I can tell you here. I can tell you about the completely incompetent and untrained management and counselors, who broke every single promise they ever made to us. They promised us that food would never be used as a punishment or a reward, and then told us that we couldn't have our precious low-cal popsicles if we didn't finish our liver. (Liver and onions once a WEEK. It must have been the cheapest meat they could find.) They promised us that we would never be forced to compete athletically against one another, and then declared the last week of camp to be a huge camp-wide Color War, pitting us against each other in a desperate flabby battle to prove ourselves, somehow, less enormous than each other. I seem to remember they promised us that we would have fun, too. They broke that promise first.

I can tell you about how none of the 'adults' ever bothered to take us seriously, because we were just a bunch of whining fat spoiled children. I can tell you how no one was ever allowed to speak on the phone to their parents without the head counselor sitting right there staring at you.
I can tell you about how girls who claimed to be menstruating were forced to strip and prove it before they were excused from the daily swimming exercises. I can tell you how badly trained the counselors were, and how few of them there were, and how useless they were.
I can also tell you about the time that the Health Department shut down the kitchen for three days. Once we got served cauliflower with vibrant blue mold all over it; once our weekly liver was a shiny iridescent green, although our portions were carefully turned brown side up to hide it.

But, for all that we suffered at the hands of the adults, it's the kids I want to talk about here.
Very Incredibly Obvious Statement here. America loves beauty, and is thoroughly socialized to appreciate and reward it, and to subtly punish the unbeautiful and the fat. Especially children, who are evil little tribal savages without a single redeeming quality. Fat children are stigmatized and bullied. That's a fact. It's very seldom that a fat child is popular with his peers; usually s/he is an outcast. S/he learns to bear a number of vicious slights, and, in essence, becomes the fat, embodying 'fat' in the eyes and minds of thinner children and, eventually, in his or her own mind. Yes, I'm speaking from personal experience.

But what happens when you take sixty or so fat hormone-maddened socially-squashed pre-teens and teenagers and put them together in a loosely supervised environment set on the immense grounds of a lush private school, away from their parents, where everyone is fat and there isn't a single thin person there to remind you that you're fat?
You get a seven-week-long orgy, that's what you get. Every single bit of that socialized "I'm fat so I must be ugly" falls away, because everybody's fat! So who gives a damn? It's a damn heady feeling, realizing that, for the first time in your miserable little teenaged life, you are just as desirable as every other person within range. And when morals and your parents' teaching collide with raging hormones and a very, very real chance to indulge those hormones? Guess who wins. Every time.
And, of course, given America's particular beauty biases, there were fifty-five girls and six boys at this camp. Every boy, no matter how gross, had a blubbery harem of teenaged female lust surrounding him at all times, and they casually picked and chose from this harem as they saw fit. There was only one counselor for the boys and only four counselors for the girls, and they were completely unable to control us. After the first week, they gave up trying. There were a million hideyholes where you could meet your current paramour, and sneaking out at any hour was laughably simple.
I sometimes wonder how many girls ended up pregnant afterwards. Then I decide I don't want to know.

Was I able to take advantage of this? No, I wasn't. You see, even fat people need someone to look down on. Teenagers and children seem to have this intense need to stratify and ossify themselves into 'popular' and 'outcast', and they need to constantly prove themselves upon the bodies and souls of their peers. Even the ones who should know better, who suffer at the hands of this need every day, automatically turn around and enforce that need themselves.
Therefore, at fat camp as in every single high school across the nation, there needed to be human targets. I was one.

Not that I wasn't used to this, of course. It did hurt a little more to suffer those indignities at the hands of fellow outcasts, but it was relatively easy to get used to. So I didn't have any friends? So I occasionally had buckets of what I devoutly hope was water thrown on me in the middle of the night? So the other girls would scrawl obscenities in red marker on a maxipad and glue it to my door? So I had all my tapes and most of my clothing stolen? So the only way to keep people from tormenting me physically was to refuse to bathe until I stank? Big deal. I've suffered worse.

No, what hurt is that, for the first time in my life, I had a major communications breakdown with my mother, who in all other respects had always been a truly gifted parent.
But that, in and of itself, is a fairly long story, so I'll just write 'To Be Continued' here.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 12:39 AM EST
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Friday, October 12, 2001

This file is actually about a year old, but heck. Let me explain.
Right after I discovered Babelfish, altavista's translation program, I decided to break it in as many ways as possible. I chose a bunch of totally random sentences (basically, whatever came to mind) and subjected them to being retro-translated: translated into a foreign language and back into English. I even did the first sentence from the first Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story, just because it's such a wonderful piece of writing in English.
The results were highly variable. Some of them were jaw-droppingly inane, some of them were actually pretty funny... I showed my friends the results, we laughed, and then I saved them and forgot about them.
Until today. I was poking around in my files and I found that one, and, well, I thought I'd share.
=====

Original phrase: Out of sight, out of mind.
English to French and back: Out of the sight, of the spirit.
English to German and back: From sight from understanding out.
English to Italian and back: From sight, the mind.
English to Portuguese and back: It are of the sight, it are of the mind.
English to Spanish and back: Outside Vista, the mind.

Original phrase: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
English to French and back: Is now the hour for all the good men to come using their country.
English to German and back: Is now the time for all good men to come to the aid of its country.
English to Italian and back: Hour is the moment for all the good men to come to the subsidy of their country.
English to Portuguese and back: It is now the moment for all the men good to come to dae (automatic device of input) of its country. (?)
English to Spanish and back: Now it is the time for all the good men to come to the aid of its country.

Original phrase: Time is of the essence.
English to French and back: Time is gasoline.
English to German and back: Time is from the substantial one.
English to Italian and back: The time is of the essence.
English to Portuguese and back: The time is of the essence.
English to Spanish and back: The time is of the essence.

Original phrase: In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine, lived a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter, Clementine.
English to French and back: In English: In a cave, in a throat, excavating for a mine, lived a minor, forty-niner, and his daughter, clementine.
English to German and back: Digging in a cave in a Canyon, lived for a pit out, a miner, forty more niner and its daughter, Klementine.
English to Italian and back: In one spelonca, in a canyon, digging for one mine, alive a miner, forty-niner and its daughter, clementina.
English to Portuguese and back: In a cave, in a throat, excavating for one mines, lived a miner, to forty-niner, and its son, clementine.
English to Spanish and back: In a cavern, in a ravine, excavating for a mine, lived a miner, to forty-niner, and his daughter, clementina.

Original phrase: Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.
English to French and back: The pinks are red, the purple ones are blue, sugar is soft, and thus is you.
English to German and back: Roses are red, are blue violet ones, are sugar sweetly and thus are you.
English to Italian and back: The roses are red, the viola are blue, the sugar is sweet and so as to he is you.
English to Portuguese and back: The roses are red, the violet are blue, the sugar is candy, and thus that she is you.
English to Spanish and back: The roses are red, the violet are blue, the sugar is sweet, and so you are.

Original phrase: It happened that while Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were dallying in a wine shop near the Sidonian Harbor of Tyre, where all wine shops are of doubtful repute, a long-limbed yellow-haired Galatian girl lolling in Fafhrd's lap turned suddenly into a wallopingly large sow.
English to French and back: It occurred that while Fafhrd and gray Mouser dallying in a wine system close to the port of Sidonian of the tire, where all the wine systems are of doubtful reputation, a long-limbed girl yellow-haired of Galatian lolling in the recovery of Fafhrd was transformed suddenly into large sow wallopingly.
English to German and back: It occurred that, while Fafhrd and the grey Mouser in a wine system near the port Sidonian of the tire dallying, in which all wine systems are about the doubtful Repute, long limbed yellow-shark-talk girl Galatian, which is in the lap Fafhrd lolling, suddenly one wallopingly large tap ditch made.
English to Italian and back: It is happened that while Fafhrd and the Mouser gray dallying in a store of the wine close to the port of Sidonian of the tire, in which all the storees of the wine they are of doubtful rinomanza, long-limbed a yellow-haired girl of Galatian that lolling nel.giro.di Fafhrd has been transformed in without warning one scrofa wallopingly large.
English to Portuguese and back: Fafhrd happened that when and the cinereous Mouser dallying in a store of the wine close to the port to Sidonian it tyre, where all the store it wine are of it repute doubtful, a long-limbed yellow-haired girl of Galatian that lolling in the lap of Fafhrd turned suddenly in a great nut wallopingly.
English to Spanish and back: It happened that whereas Fafhrd and the gray Mouser dallying in a department of the wine near the port of Sidonian of the tire, in where all the departments of the wine are of doubtful reputation, a girl long-limbed yellow-haired of Galatian lolling in the lap of Fafhrd suddenly gave to return in a great pig wallopingly.

=====
Wallopingly! Yes! Man, I wonder if Babelfish has gotten any better?

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 02:30 AM EST
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Wednesday, October 10, 2001

... I love the Weekly World News.
For those of you who are too intellectual to know this, the WWN is one of those puerile supermarket tabloids; however, unlike its kin, the WWN eschews telling lies about celebrities for telling lies about aliens and monsters and the Second Coming and all that sort of thing. So it's a lot more fun to begin with.
Anyway, for years now, the WWN has been championing this weird creature they call the 'Bat Boy'. You may have seen the pictures... it resembles a computer-morphed picture of a human baby with grotesquely large eyes and pointy teeth and ears. And it's always the same picture of Bat Boy. Bat Boy is the WWN's own personal version of Bigfoot or the chupacabra, that was discovered hiding in a cave somewhere and was captured by scientists...

This week's issue, once again, featured Bat Boy. Yes. The exact same picture of Bat Boy... except this time, with an American flag bandanna tied around his head. The headline? 'BAT BOY VOLUNTEERS TO FIGHT TERRORISTS!'
Apparently Bat Boy walked onto a Marine base and told people he wanted to help fight the terrorist menace! Well, go Bat Boy! We sure could use your help!

Thank you, Weekly World News. Thank you for this timely and inspiring piece of journalism. Bat Boy is truly an inspiration to us all.

By the way, this is Bat Boy. URL courtesy of my dear mousey-love Nezumi!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 06:59 AM EST
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Monday, October 8, 2001

The English language is a dangerous thing. It's not a toy. And it's something that I should not be allowed to play with.
Witness the following series of statements made online, not half an hour ago:
(From Mooncalf: I used to sleep in a bra when I was in junior high school, out of some stupid adolescent misapprehension that it would keep my boobs from getting saggy.)
(From Mooncalf: I slept in an /underwire bra/ every night for /five years/. I have seen hell, and it's a pointy thing in my armpit.)
(From Mooncalf: The only way my boobs wouldn't sag now is if I had my feet stapled to the ceiling.)
(From Mooncalf: Actually, they'd still sag, but they'd sag up.)
(From Mooncalf: Well, down. But... up.)
(From Mooncalf: Dammit, why do people let me play with the English language anyway?)

Why is there not a law regulating the usage of the English language by idiots like me? You wait and see. One of these days, I'm going to make a tragic misstep and metaphorically blow the top of my head off, and lobbyists will force Congress to pass the Mooncalf Bill.
You'll no longer have access to the English language without a 21-day waiting period, and you'll have to buy your punctuation separately in little cardboard boxes. If you want your English language to continue to function, you need to clean it regularly with a small rag on a stick and lots of oil! Language nuts will compare the caliber and rate of fire of their words! Every fall, people armed with the English language will flood our forests, firing devastating salvos of puns at hapless wildlife and the occasional cow! (Ow.)

The English language is, after all, most devastating when sharp and pointed, although perhaps not at high velocity... and we all know how the English language, when misused, can backfire, just blow up in our faces, and hurt us terribly. Of course, there would be plenty of illegal English language being smuggled into the country and put to illicit use, used to settle arguments between drunks and criminals, used to back up the activities of drug smugglers and language-runners... crack down now, America! Don't let your children be wounded by the terror that is the English language! Keep it locked up safely and out of their reach! Let's never let another child be wounded by words!

I... think I'll put this metaphor down now. See? Look at that. I just metaphorically blew my own head off. Get your English language now, before it's too late... I've just ruined it for us all!

Oh, and I should apologize for the oversharing boob rant above. Yes, I should. See? Wasn't it a painful boob rant? Didn't it hurt you? I'm dangerous with the English language! It shouldn't go unregulated! Keep it away from people like me!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 02:43 AM EST
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In lieu of a real entry, a brief announcement... for those of you who care, I'll be attending Sugoicon, in Cincinnati, November 9th through the 11th. Look for the redheaded cow!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 12:27 AM EST
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Wednesday, October 3, 2001

There was this plastic bottle of fruit smoothie in the fridge. Terribly organic and natural and yummy and good for me, or it would have been if I had drunk it the day I bought it. Two weeks ago.

But since it was so terribly organic and preservative-free, when I pulled the bottle out of the fridge tonight, it was swollen to a vaguely spherical shape that screamed 'botulism'. The thick gooey liquids inside had all separated. I could feel the bottle ticking like a time bomb in my hands. So I got rid of it the only way I knew how: I drank it!

No, no, seriously, I threw the bottle into the garbage can. Gross, man. And then I went back downstairs.

Half an hour later, I was sitting in front of the computer when I heard a loud explosion from upstairs. I thought the cat had knocked something off the table; that's usually what it is... but no. As the swollen bottle warmed up to room temperature, the contents tried to expand some more, and there was just nowhere else to go...

BOOM.

Pinkish-purple botulistic froth all over the walls and floor. Frothy botulism dripping down the inside of the trash can. Little pinkish-purple spots all over the kitchen island, all over my purse and my copy of Gormenghast...

I laughed myself silly, of course. And wouldn't Frothy Botulism be a great name for a band?

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 05:07 AM EST
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Monday, October 1, 2001

WARNING: Random sentimental babbling.

It's kind of weird. There are a whole lot of songs out there that have been written specifically to make people feel things, obviously. Sad songs, love songs, all those songs, they want to make you experience an emotion. Well, okay, they really want you to buy a copy of the album and make the singer rich. But most of them want to tug on your heartstrings, too.
When I was a teenager, I felt a lot of sappy love songs really, really deeply. That's par for the course during adolescence, I know. Most of those songs kind of embarrass me today, although I still like a lot of them for the sheer nostalgia value.

But, you know, now I'm 29, which is something approximating a 'real' age. I'm not immune to skilfully-crafted love songs, but they don't sway my emotions very much any more. (Love is a crock, but it's such a nice crock.)
There's one song, though. One particular song, not a love song. Actually, one particular line of that song that still affects me immensely, changes my emotional state every time. It makes me happy. From 'Solsbury Hill', by Peter Gabriel:

Grab your things, I've come to take you home...

Home.
Home.

When I sing that lyric to myself, I feel: Like I was stuck in the hospital for over a year, looking at the same four white walls day in and day out, alienated, lost in the anonymous and non-comforting surroundings, never belonging, without privacy, in great pain... and then one day, my best friend bursts in waving a sheaf of paperwork, and sings:

Grab your things, I've come to take you home...

Can you imagine the relief? The joy?

But I've never been in the hospital, not like that. I've lived in many places that definitely were not home, though, and finally leaving those places was like a breath of fresh air across the cramped acre of my soul.

To me, home is as real and as affecting a concept as 'love' is for your average teenaged girl. I guess I have a fairly unreal concept of 'home', really, as some place I've never been but some place I'd feel utterly... well, at home.
And just like that starry-eyed teenaged girl, it's as if I'm looking outwards, for someone to come 'take me home' instead of finding 'home' myself. How could anyone take me home? It's really something I'd have to find on my own, right? Just like love... love isn't given to you like a present. It's something that you create, or stumble over. And I suppose that's equally true of home.
Home, though, the kind of home I'm looking for... I don't know if such a thing exists. I doubt it. It's like looking for the perfect man, or the perfect woman... there really isn't any 'home'. Just as there isn't any 'perfect love'. There's just... 'good enough for now.' 'Not bad.' 'As much as I can afford.' 'Convenient.' 'Comfortable.'

Grab your things, I've come to take you home...

So I'm not that teenaged girl, not any more. I'm not looking for love, not really... I have love already, and it's nice. I want to go home. Home is love, I guess. A calm kind of love that surrounds you every day, and doesn't change with time or familiarity, and isn't totally dependent on another person, who's just as fucked up as you are... maybe, just maybe, all those years I was looking for someone to love, I really wanted someone to take me home. Maybe I was just too young to know what I really wanted.

The words 'I love you' come pretty easily to me. And I do love you. I spread love around easily because I have a lot of it, and it doesn't mean anything, it's just... love, for you, because you make my life better, more fun, more interesting. But the words have lost that heart-pounding sense of romance... sure, I love you. I love my mother, too, and my boyfriend, and all my friends, both online and off.
But if I ever tell you 'you're my home'...

I want that comfort, that sense of belonging, that sense of... this place is mine, and I am this place's. Some people feel that way about their country. Some people feel that way about their city, or their neighborhood, or their house, or just their room... but 'true home', like 'true love', might just be childish hopes and dreams.
Ah, well. Maybe, if I'm lucky, that's where I'll go after I die... home.

Grab your things, I've come to take you home...

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 09:21 PM EST
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