why yes, i am avoiding homework by posting on the internet

[katekat]

how could you tell?

two memes stolen borrowed from brutti_ma_buoni and ruuger:

My "Job" description (which devolved into me trying to summarize my thesis) using only the most used 1000 words:

I want to be a teacher of books, so right now I study books every day. And to be a teacher the next thing I will do is write about books from another place in a long piece that I hope will be a book some day.

That long piece is about many different things. It is about the next form of human life. It is about art that shows memories of a time, not the past, and not the present, but some other time. It is about how women who write have changed what we know about the next form of human life, and about how the reason why that next form of human life will always be about men and women no matter what other form it takes. And I think about how the people who write books about these things are also changing the way they write.

... that was weird.

And, this one is for you dear readers:

I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. [Some people I know lots. Some people, if they're reading this, gave birth to me.] But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal if you feel inclined. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer

Comments

[biodamped]

Oooh, I wonder if I could summarise mine like that?

I shall repost your meme tomorrow because it's one am here and I'm shattered. But to answer: I've called myself Lil/y for so long it seems more natural sometimes than introducing myself as Amanda, I only like half-green bananas, I have synaesthesia and I'm currently learning French. As for you - how did you get into studying Japanese, what's the most vivid memory from each decade of your life so far, and what's your most watched film? :D

(one am. html fail. shattered, i tell you!)

[littleotter73]

That's a really cool summary, actually! I understood it much better than the one you wrote for your doctoral candidate thingy. LOL

Umm about me... I suppose I'll tell you about the otter and why it's my totem. I was hiking through the woods with my best friend from middle/high school and her dad. He's a naturalist, boy scout leader/eagle scout, and a bird watcher. As we were walking along a stream, there was evidence of beaver activity which he pointed out. And for some reason, I just said, "Otters are cooler. They don't seem to really work like beavers. They play, they swim, and they don't take life so seriously." To this day I have no idea where that came from. I'd never been into the animal. They are cute, but I'd not paid too much attention. And then I stopped and had one of those really profound moments where everything hit me all at once. I'd been taking life way to seriously and hadn't been having fun for quite a while. The otter became my spirit guide at that moment, reminding me to take the time to play. I need to listen to her more often. She crops up periodically to guide me back. In her honour, I had an otter tattooed on the side of my lower left leg, so I get a visual reminder as well.

Questions for you: What is your guilty music pleasure? Other than Japan, have you traveled/lived outside of the US?, and if so where? What drew you to graphic design?

[katekat]

ok, so, first off, i did know about the Lil/y parts, but I didn't know you ahve synaesthesia - which kind? and good luck with French mon cherie!

as for studying Japanese, it's weird because it's kind of a lazy reason. I wanted to go back to grad school and study sci fi, but most american sci fi people are in comparative lit departments, which all require you to speak at least three languages fluently. And there was no way i was going to be able to that since i'd only taken high school friench. Asian studies departments only require two (usually english and language of country)... and since Japan and the US are the two countries whose SF works have global impact ... I chose Japan. and now i'm working harder than i ever thought i'd be able to on one of the 5 most difficult languages for english speakers to learn...ha.

as far as the memories for decades of my life, that is SO DIFFICULT. for 1-10, probably the night i had the talk with my mom about the tooth fairy and santa claus. i'd been sleeping in her bed, waiting for the tooth fairy to come, when i realized (somehow, don't quite remember how) that she didn't exist. went out to the living room where my mom was necking with her boyfriend on the couch to tell her. I remember my mom stopping what she was doing and giving me her undivided attention, and I told her, "mom, the tooth fairy doesn't really exist does she?" she gravely said no, and I responded with "and santa claus too, huh?" and again had it confirmed. it wasn't traumatic or anything, but it's one of those clear memories. for 10-20 UGH so hard! probably the strongest sense memory is of when i took a 2-credit elective class on cyberpunk, and our class was held in a lounge instead of a classroom. Imagine 8 super smart people lazing on couches and armchairs speculating about the future as written in these startling books... it was the kind of class i had always pictured college was about, and even though i was too shy to talk most of the time, it was something that effected me so much. for 20-30.... wow. there was a lot of living that went on during that time for me, and it's hard to pick just one memory - the morning after my graduation party when my dad and stepmom showed up early to my apartment (of course i'd partied the night before the graduation ceremony), there were people literally still passed out on our living room couch or wandering around in hangover-fugue (even my mom was there in her robe, having split a bottle of gin between her and my friend Tyler the night before), and I just remember the sheer physical horror of having my parents in the same place, with the house a wreck and me still feeling like a zombie, and them being chipper and giving me a tiny box for a graduation present that had a toy car in it, because they were going to give me a car for graduation. My eyelashes literally started falling out i was so stressed. :D As for 30s they're not entirely over, but it's probably going to be the visual of the street I was on when Tyler told me that the ex and the hoar had been sleeping together off and on over the last couple of years, and getting off the freeway so that I could drive back over the hill from the valley and confront him with his wretched behavior. The sun was shining, and there wasn't much traffic so I could pull off the freeway easily, and get onto the winding road that took me back to an apartment i had been calling home. I was shaking I was so mad, and the whole of that drive was beautiful as it always is.

And omg most watched film is a DIFFICULT one! My stepmom and I used to have a set of films we would watch in rotation when we went to the parent's cabin (summer or winter, we watched movies all the time): Willow, Overboard, Blade Runner. But my guilty secret in highschool was that I loved Dirty Dancing, and I think I actually came home and watched it every afternoon for almost six months at one point... Of course The Princesses Bride I have watched so many countless times I can't actually watch it without saying the words now, and you can literally play a 10 second clip and I'll tell you where in the movie it is.

good questions bb!

[katekat]

I understood it much better than the one you wrote for your doctoral candidate thingy.

HA! oh dear, that probably means that I should go back and fix the doctoral statement! well, homework for another day ;)

And that is the BEST story for a username and totem animal I have EVER HEARD. And also one of the best reasons i've heard to get a tattoo too - to remind you of something seriously important that we could ALL do with remembering, you know?

And as far as guilty music pleasure for me? Beyond Adam Lambert's first album? (which i totally do like tracks off of) ... i'm not so terribly guilty about the fact that i actually like pop music, and i'm not a music snob. i love turning on the radio and singing or bouncing up and down to club tunes on road trips - they make the miles go faster.

as far as travelling non japan outside of the US, i've gone to Puerta Vallarta (spelling could be wrong there) two? three? times, and did a six week European walking thing (i had a backpack, but it mostly stayed in the hotel, not true backpacking) where I started in Amsterdam, went to Paris and Rome and Barcelona and Vienna and Berlin and Cannes and some other places in between I'm not remembering. I think every person should leave the US at least once in their lives - that trip gave me such a good feeling about living in a wider world.

As far as graphic design goes, my mom is actually a mixed media artist and has been creating beautiful things in acrylic and cloth for almost as long as i've been alive, and she always made room for me to make things (even if they were hideous) and encouraged me to do so. but i first started tinkering with layouts and formatting in MS word, and in one of the old pre-Indesign programs that allowed you to make invitations and party programs. And when the ex had a band and i helped create their first logos and stickers in MS word with different fonts. And then i worked for a web company where the designers were my friends - they were actual designers - i really consider myself a dabbler - but i got my first version of photoshop. Some of the time they'd spend after hours teaching me little tricks of the program, and then the art director actually taught a class on flash and how cool it was, and that motivated me a bit. for me design was always wrapped up in web stuff - creating websites, formatting things prettier for friends, that kind of stuff. and it spiraled out from there. i did take an illustrator class at the local community college, though i was already addicted to photoshop by the time I did that, and most of the tricks i know are from fandom tutorials. fandom has give me a lot that way that i'm really thankful for.

[biodamped]

Grapheme, though not the same way Wiki describe it - words have colour but individual letters not so much. Auditory and personality too - every song I hear has a colour, and everyone I know has a colour, which sometimes matches the colour their name would be but more often than not doesn't. Like, Anna is a yellow name for me, but I only know one Anna who is a yellow person. Days and weeks and special anniversaries have colours... just, everything really, except numbers. :P Times of day, you name it. My brain is saturated in spectrums.

Ahaha, omg, that's mental. I'm so glad there isn't a fluency restriction here, because I'm only fluent in German and English - Latin and Ancietn Greek tend not to count so much. :P

1-10 is too precious, bless you! 11-20 sounds AMAZING, wow. I wish I'd had a college class like that! :D 21-30 is a hard one to pick, you do so much growing, but I think graduation's one of my clearest and strongest too. (That last one is a killer. Why does life always put something gorgeous in with the horrifying things? I have this memory of when my grandad was sick, before he died, standing in a hospital ground and it should have been awful, but it was autumn. Sun out, crisp wind, lichen and moss growing up over these old red bricks. Fallen leaves on ashphalt, and I was in my teens, looking around this courtyard, feeling completely disturbed because I should have been miserable and I was surrounded by wonder instead.)

Nice film choices! :D I wholeheartedly approve.

[littleotter73]

No No NO! That's not what I meant... because I am not the target audience for your thesis. I mean I understood it when I read it back then. I just have a much better idea now. Remember, I'm not a snooty academic (and I mean that in a respectful and loving way) that you have to impress. They way you address the Thesis committee and they way you casually tell friends is totally different. I just have a better understanding, because it involved very little thinking. :)

It's definitely special to me. I am not religious in the sense of a one religion to rule them all - no, no, no. Maybe I am more of an animist, I don't know. But it's definitely a strange thing that happened. And I was surprised when I talked to my dad about it and he revealed that he also has spirit guides and he knows all three of them. One is a snowy owl, one is fox, and I can't remember the other one. I definitely know my otter. The hawk is one of my guides as well. We have a ton of red tail and cooper hawks around here.I know I have one more that I haven't met yet. It's just out of my grasp and I need to be patient, but I am pretty sure it's a big cat of some kind.

I like Adam Lambert's first album too. I really wish he would do a cover of "The Show Must Go On" by Queen. I mean seriously. When they did Queen on AI, I thought that was the one he should've done. Sigh.

Very cool. I've always wanted to do the backpack across Europe thing. But I've resigned myself to traveling in Europe. And I agree, every person should experience a foreign country at least once in their lives, and when they do it, immerse themselves in the culture. Leave America at home.

For a dabbler, I have to say you are far more talented than several designers I know!