I'm totally getting sick. I was so glad to leave work and be out in the cold for a while; that's not a good sign.

Some of my friends and I are going on a visit to the College of Wooster tomorrow. We will miss school and eat delicious food and be dorks and actually be doing something productive. How awesome is that?

Turns out we'll be doing a straight play, not a musical, this year. Okay by me, expanding horizons and all that. That said, CLUE PLZ.

at least you don't have to talk to me on this one IT IS JUST BLIND

FANGIRLING.

So every time I see anything Hikaru no Go related I WANT TO PICK IT BACK UP SO BADLY. I finally downloaded it again, and I'm making icons, and oh my god.

The second read-through it's so obvious how beautiful it is, even from the very beginning. It starts out strong and ends strong. It's just. So amazing.

There's this one scene at the Kaio match, where Kaga sees Touya and looks surprised, and then notices that he's staring at Hikaru's game. And he just. Knows what it's all about, in that moment. It's like, two panels, but it's so beautiful.

Not to mention Touya's face when he tells Hikaru, "Your match was beautiful. Why couldn't I have been your opponent?"

And from the beginning, you can tell where it's leading. Everything that it's going to teach you. It's all laid out, bare and thin, for you to see. You see Sai beginning to concede to Hikaru in just the first few chapters. You see Hikaru not even gradually falling in love with Go; you see him falling in full force into it, enthusiastically waving his arms and comparing go stones to constellations.

This manga is probably going to be my favorite forever. It's just perfect. I could wax poetic about every panel. It is quite possibly the fiction love of my life. It sounds stupid, because shouldn't something more LITERARY and widely received win that title? But no. This manga taught me more than any classic.

I know people are sick of politics, but for the sake of this post, I don't care.

I have politibling on my jeans.


Barack Obama has really nifty campaign buttons.

OH MAN YOU GUYS I totally saw Nathan Fillion at Kingsway today. I freaked out on the inside and now it will haunt me forever that I didn't say hi or anything.


AAAAAAAA

44 Howls Moving castle

Teasers:


Howl's Moving Castle @ hadesunderworld

Sooo... in between my epic struggle with True Blood last night, I forgot to give my rave review for Pushing Daisies. Still trying to win some friends over to that. I didn't quite have the "OMG" reaction to the end that I saw on my f-list. I think it's because I was never too interested in that part of the story, but the writers will probably change my mind by the next episode. They're good like that. Someone needs to tell me how I can watch True Blood. Even if the near half-hour of nothing but the brother dealing with his sexual problem almost did me in. Show is only half as good if Bill's not around.

Spent work watching Palin SNL skits. (I should probably f-lock this if I'm going to keep mentioning what I do at work aside form work.) My favorite is currently the debate one. Not only did they nail Biden's endless love for John McCain but they picked up on Palin's absolute refusal to answer a single question and instead divert it to something she thought she had an iota of insight on. But above all else, my favorite quote has got to be: "You got schooled Biden-style!" Either that or "If I had to be trapped on a deserted island with one man, I'd want that man to be John McCain." I so love SNL's Biden. I loved him more than Fey's Palin actually. I like when SNL targets both sides.

Roommate came home unexpectedly last night. She had some trouble with the door and I almost ended up thinking she was breaking in. Thankfully my guard cats were bold enough to... scurry under the bed. Thanks, girls. I love you too.

You know, I had a good music quote that I was going to put in the subject, but as usual, I forgot it. Though kadekmoment has been getting me into the Decemberists as evidenced in one of my icon keywords. Such a pretty song. Though I envision it more with Lysander and Ari for the moment.

Tired. Here is meme.

( clicky )

ADVICE OF THE MONTH FROM TAL: Do not get your nose pierced if the plague is going around. You will eventually catch it. Your nose will drip. And no, you won't be able to blow it.

Right. I've been addicted to a song lately, so I ended up writing a drabble to it.

It involves Allelujah and Karina (aka Allemama), mostly. Past to present. It's also horribly written but I feel like I needed to do something.

Dedicated to Hebe because she is love.

( The rain'll be gone in the morning )

Yesterday I bought a disappointing pomegranate from Wal Mart for $2.28. Today I went to Toucan Market (local sort of hippy-ish store) and then had locally grown pomegranates for $0.88 a pound. They probably just grew in somebody's backyard. I bought two, and I'm eating one and it is DELICIOUS. I got 2 for a dollar, basically. That's 1/4 of the price of the original crap pomegranate. Guess who's going to Toucan Market all the time now?

YEAH.

POMEGRANATES!

Taylor Momsen [01 - 11]
Toradora! [12 - 36]
Casshern [37 - 45]
Superbad [46 - 47]

PREVIEW :
  

(follow the cut)

Apparently, a test came back "sort of positive" according to my answering machine.


And it's "imperative" I call the doctor's office tomorrow.



Thank you , Dr. Cryptic.


Well, I guess it's better than having Dr. Godot.

I feel rotten. My head is stuffy and I have a headache. I came home early today because I felt so shitty. I'll be honest. I don't know if I'm going to be feeling well enough to work tomorrow. We'll see. I'd feel guilty calling in sick, but I don't know how productive I'll be if I do still feel lousy. So, I'll play it by ear.


The dow plunged 800 points today. Even I, the economic illiterate knew that was an upsetting number. Luckily, we made up almost 500 of those points, leaving us with a net loss of a little over 300. This shit is only going to get worse, according to the experts (which apparently doesn't include our president who assures us everything will be fine soon).



The thing is, it hasn't really ocurred to me to be worried about my own finances. But, you know I've begun to think about things like my job, healthcare, bills, all of that stuff. I wonder if it really will get that bad. I hope not. Watching/reading the news all the time is scaring me. Maybe I should stop. CAN I stop? Hmmm...

I am really, really pissed off right now.

The virus has spread, blocking my hard drive from me and cutting off my internet. I'm on the laptop right now.

I ran out and bought an external hard drive, spending $80 I don't even have, and the damn thing won't even be recognized by my PC. To little, too late.

And to make my day even shittier, SPN Creation Con is SOLD OUT. Even though it's not until the fucking END of MARCH, and it's only the first week of October. Nice.

Feeling lame for having a period of playing Nero Wolfe badly is driving me to DISTRACTION. Internets. I am bad at them.

Well, that and reading about the minutiae of protein synthesis chains in the immune system isn't exactly engaging. One of the enzymes is literally called "C4bBb3b" DDD:

I AM LITERALLY ANGRY WITH RAGE! So it turns out, it wasn't that I "didn't get" the role in in the Correspondance team (read: writing letters instead of talking to fuckwits over telephone); my cuntfuckpisscockshitwanktardhateyoudiebitch manager didn't put me forward for it because she "didn't feel comfortable" doing so. Apparently I'm not ready for it. What? What?! Didn't feel I was ready for reading a bunch of fucking letters by illiterate halfwits and writing replies? Go fuck yourself! This is the same woman, by the way, who read the word "redress" in a briefing as "red dress" and actually wondered out loud why they'd used that term in relation to our compensation policy. I fucking shit you not.

Clearly the only option left to me is to stage a string of fake serial killings using red ribbon, a set of false teeth and my own natural ability to put the "sick and wrong" into "sick and wrong". Watch out, crazy homeless people - Froodle is coming, and she's going to fuck you up.

I had some stuff I was going to say about the last season of the 4400, but I'm too cross now to get appropriately enthusiastic about Jordans hotness, so I'll leave that for tomorrow.

The immigration process is broken, and even when we do discuss it the majority of the times we think of Mexico. Forgotten are the others who cross oceans to work, live, or even visit here. One sad and infuriating example is Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea. For six years he worked for a clothing store in the West Village, sewing dresses that sold for up to $2,000. He had family both in the US and abroad, and his earnings supported a first wife, sons, ailing mother, and second wife in Africa. He'd not seen them for eight years, so he took a 3 month trip to visit them in May 2006, but upon his return immigration authorities at Kennedy Airport told him that his green card application had been denied while he was away, automatically revoking his permission to re-enter the US and landing him in detention for 9 months.

While there he somehow hit his head. He suffered foaming of the mouth, seizures, and vomiting. He was shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit then left in a disciplinary cell for over 13 hours, unresponsive and moaning. Finally he had emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages, but it was too late, and he was left in a coma for four months, eventually dying. And during all this, his family didn't know his fate.

But three days after he suffered a head injury in detention last year, no one in his New York circle knew that he was lying comatose in a Newark hospital, where he had already been identified as a possible organ donor. “Thank you for the referral,” an organ-sharing network wrote on Feb. 3, 2007, according to hospital records. “This patient is a potential candidate for organ donation once brain death criteria is met.”

Four days after the fall, tipped off by a detainee who called Mr. Bah’s roommate in Brooklyn, relatives rushed to the detention center to ask Corrections Corporation employees where he was. “They wouldn’t give us any information,” said Lamine Dieng, an American citizen who teaches physics at Bronx Community College and is married to Mr. Bah’s cousin Khadidiatou.

On the fifth day, they said, a detention official called them with the name of the hospital. There they found Mr. Bah on life support, still in custody, with a detention guard around the clock. “There was one guard who knew Boubacar,” Ms. Bah said. “He told me on the down-low: ‘This guy, you have to fight for him. This guy was neglected.’ ”

He's not alone either.

In California, relatives of Walter Rodriguez-Castro, 28, said they were rebuffed when they tried to find out why his calls had stopped coming from the Kern County Jail in Bakersfield in April 2006. Then in June, his wife went to his scheduled hearing in San Francisco’s immigration court and learned that he had been dead for many weeks, his body unclaimed in the county morgue.

The coroner found that Mr. Rodriguez-Castro, a mover from El Salvador in the country illegally, had died of undiagnosed meningitis and H.I.V., after days complaining of fever, stiff neck and vomiting. The cause of death on the government’s list: “unresponsive.” [...]

Four sons in another family, in Sacramento, described trying for days to get medical care for their father, Maya Nand, a 56-year-old legal immigrant from Fiji, at a detention center run by the Corrections Corporation in Eloy, Ariz. Mr. Nand, an architectural draftsman, had been ailing when he was taken into custody on Jan. 13, 2005, apparently because his application for citizenship had been rejected, based on an earlier conviction for misdemeanor domestic violence. In collect calls, the sons said, he told them that despite his chest pains and breathing problems, doctors at the detention center did not take his condition seriously.

The Corrections Corporation said he had been seen and treated “multiple times.” But a letter to the family from an immigration official said his treatment was for a respiratory infection. The letter said that Mr. Nand was taken to an emergency room on Jan. 25, where congestive heart failure was diagnosed, and that he “suffered an apparent heart attack while at the hospital.” He died on Feb. 2, 2005, shackled to a hospital bed in Tucson

Bah had family here and a steady job and a lawyer, but even he didn't fare well, so what hope do others who are often afraid to cause trouble or perhaps unfamiliar with the legal system have? It's frightening.