Update for Everyone II - Less Boring, More Whoring

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm so sorry about your cat. I lost the big old Maine coon mix who had been my companion since the age of four this past summer. It still hurts. So I know how you feel.

And what a freaking asshole. Super-aggressive drivers are the worst.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This weekend I'm in principle supposed to be doing this big final assignment for one of my classes--really the only outstanding work I have other than tests--and I'm really freaking out about that because I don't actually know what exactly it is that I'm supposed to do and I'm not sure whether or not the piece of paper I have explaining it is here at home with me. I'm also trying to start actually going through the process of divinity school application.

I also feel like crap about myself in just a general sense.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Worst Update thread ever.

Did somebody get out of the wrong side of bed this morning? Or is the problem is that your bed only has one side, so that you get of the wrong side of the bed every morning?

I value sincerity. You should try it some time.

Well, I mean, I agree with you on valuing sincerity--I emptyquoted you to that effect in the Scott Walker thread!--but what we need to accept is that--and this is so obvious that I feel a little embarrassed saying it--when we are being sincere, what we say and the way we say it says quite a lot about us.

But, yeah, I do appreciate that you're not a weasel or a flim-flam man about this stuff.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm working on doing a translation and presentation of a really off-the-beaten-path Japanese news story about a multimedia smartphone 'app'. It's fun, even though I don't actually have a smartphone and don't particularly want one.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I just finished all work for my bachelor's degree. Now I will commence to worrying about my grades.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had a bad fight with my best friend and it was almost entirely my fault.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I visited the Boston University School of Theology yesterday and I think it's jumped to the top of my list of preferred options for graduate school, at least for now. I'm actively excited to finish up that application this weekend. I also got my grades back for my final undergraduate semester--my final cumulative GPA is 3.63, 3.80 for my last two years, 3.52 in my major because I had trouble with the language component early on.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My condolences, Kalwejt. I bet she lived an amazing life.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My diminishing reservoirs of moral patience, to which Atlas Forum has been subjected for by my count about a year, are starting to diminish in my offline life as well, and I'm actually beginning to be seriously concerned about my ability to maintain some of my friendships. I feel profoundly guilty and I'm scared.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I spent significant amounts of yesterday evening getting gaslighted. Not fun.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I got into the Master of Theological Studies program at Boston University School of Theology.

The problems to which I alluded in my last post in this thread have mostly subsided, to be replaced by new but less severe problems.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I got my undergraduate diploma in the mail today. Backdated to February 1. So that part of my life is officially over, I suppose.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I got my undergraduate diploma in the mail today. Backdated to February 1. So that part of my life is officially over, I suppose.

Why did it come by mail? Did you graduate through an online program?

No, I was an on-campus student; that's just how the university did it. I'm not sure why but it could have something to do with the fact that I finished in December and as such am graduating in an entirely different time of year to the commencement ceremony.

Thank you, Vega!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I turn twenty-one in two days. Since I don't really ever plan on drinking regularly, I'm going to buy a bottle of white wine, and then use it to make a sauce for some fish I'm cooking for friends who will be visiting next weekend. Also I'm trying to work out housing for my time at B.U. School of Theology and I'm starting to get really worried, since I don't deal well with roommates and don't want to have to ride the T to get to class, so my options are somewhat self-limiting.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I turn twenty-one in two days. Since I don't really ever plan on drinking regularly, I'm going to buy a bottle of white wine, and then use it to make a sauce for some fish I'm cooking for friends who will be visiting next weekend. Also I'm trying to work out housing for my time at B.U. School of Theology and I'm starting to get really worried, since I don't deal well with roommates and don't want to have to ride the T to get to class, so my options are somewhat self-limiting.

Huh. I thought you were older and wiser.

Well, I've had an inordinate amount of sh[Inks] happen to me. My teen years did not treat me well.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I turn twenty-one in two days. Since I don't really ever plan on drinking regularly, I'm going to buy a bottle of white wine, and then use it to make a sauce for some fish I'm cooking for friends who will be visiting next weekend.

Couldn't you at least be one of those hipster micro-brew types?

I would if I could but I have a family history of alcoholism that I'd like to avoid. I might finish off the wine if there's any left over.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

On another note, under the circumstances I would strongly prefer not to be in love, but I have no idea any more.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well, it would be hard to be less vague than that.

I'm sorry but there really isn't that much more that I'm comfortable explaining. There's somebody in my life about whom I have very strong and complicated feelings, and because sex is off the table even as an abstract concept I have a hard time identifying what does and does not constitute romantic feeling. The circumstances of my relationship with this person make it pointedly preferable that the feelings not be romantic.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well, it would be hard to be less vague than that.

I'm sorry but there really isn't that much more that I'm comfortable explaining. There's somebody in my life about whom I have very strong and complicated feelings, and because sex is off the table even as an abstract concept I have a hard time identifying what does and does not constitute romantic feeling. The circumstances of my relationship with this person make it pointedly preferable that the feelings not be romantic.

A nun?

No, just somebody with a very difficult personality. Sex is off the table for reasons to do with my personality, actually.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I said goodbye--for a few months, more or less, roughly--to somebody I really love today. It went as well as it possibly could have, but I'm not okay.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I can't stop crying.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm sorry for your loss, Flo. Both of my maternal grandparents died before I was born, but my paternal grandparents both died within the past ten years, so I can say from experience that while little is more sad than the death of a grandparent, little is better for alleviating that sadness than a good, appropriate, preferably at least somewhat amusing funeral.

It seems almost disrespectful to talk about what I'm about to talk about in the same post as this so I'm going to set it apart very clearly.

_____

Seeing the new Godzilla--adaptation? localization? remake? something along those lines--has, more than anything else, rekindled my somewhat atavistic affection for the classic Godzilla franchise. I'd love to sit down and rewatch the sequence of Heisei-series films with Saegusa Miki in them: Godzilla vs. Biollante, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, and of course the elegiac Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. Yes, I know that several of these films aren't generally thought of very highly, but I maintain that the development of the Saegusa character is the closest any aspect of the franchise after the 1954 original has come to 'working' according to traditional dramatic sensibilities. (These are also some of the only Godzilla flicks to pass the Bechdel Test--albeit only in the same way that the original Dykes to Watch Out For strip that named the concept said Alien did--unless you count Mothra's fairies singing her theme song.) I'm sad that she didn't show up in Godzilla: Final Wars. She's at least as important to the series as several of the minor monsters.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I have just moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I will live for the next fifteen months.  So, new avatar.

What brought you to Nova Scotia, anvi? A teaching job? Some other work opportunity? Personal business?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Found out that my Great-Great Grandmother had a wild and intense fetish for Adolf Hitler's Country House in Obersalzburg as she entered her senile years.

That sentence was a wild ride from beginning to end.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You had the rotten luck to be watching during a fund drive. They only happen a few times a year; PBS is usually very much not like that. I agree that they're just this side of completely intolerable and if PBS was actually properly publicly funded as its name implies it would be better for all concerned.