Now I will tell to you the story of my fabulous journey to the comic book shop! Yay!

Okay, so it wasn't really all that fabulous... after Mom wandered around a garage sale and got herself in a pissy mood because some lady bought this chair she wanted, we went and picked up Kai (we could have gone earlier, but she was... baking), and then off we go into the city of Memphis. Now, this is exciting for me, because I am a Loser who does Not Get Out Much, so I actually went to the trouble of putting on a little makeup and perfume and all of that other girlish excess. I was wearing a fairly nice dress, as well, but I always wear fairly nice dresses, because they take the least amount of time to get into and I am very lazy.

But anyway, we get to the store, and it is a wonderful store, and it has many wonderful things, including pretty much every comic I've been reading about on the internet for the past few days. I saw the infamously fabled Bad Art Collection, and flipped through it...and it was bad. So I didn't buy it. I also flipped through the fillerbunny minis, but did not buy those either, because I didn't have a lot of money...I did, however, buy both I Feel Sick #1 and I Feel Sick #2. I also bought issues of Scary Godmother, Little Gloomy, and Action Girl. Kai spotted a Squee! shirt that was very cute, and they also had both the Spooky and Fillerbunny toys.

And, since I can't go anywhere without displaying my vast incompetence, I dropped a twenty dollar bill on the floor and did not notice I had done so until the nice boy (who was actually cute) working there pointed it out while I was arguing with mom. OH yes I was embarrassed. But it was better than losing the twenty.

So anyway, I very much enjoyed all that I got, especially I Feel Sick (like I thought I would). I'm very fond of the artwork in Scary Godmother and Little Gloomy is cutely funny. I liked the stories in Action Girl well enough, though they didn't really knock me over in their awesomeness, but what I really liked was a section in the back about working in the comics industry which dealt with copyrights and intellectual properties and so on and so forth.

Woo, there you are, Donna... I was getting severely worried.

Uhhmm, I am pale, but I look paler than I am in that picture because my face is covered with white talcum powder.

Mom's taking me to the comic book shop I was told of by Ali & Laris...I'm working up the courage right now to phone them and ask them if perhaps they would still like to meet us there...^_^; I also kind of want to see if Kai wants to go, but I'm pretty she'll just say 'No, that's way too far out.'

My brother and his repulsive friends are over. They are causing my organs great amounts of nervousness.
But at least Bryan acts like a decent person instead of his true ragingly violent, maniacal self when in the company of others.

This might sound a little dumb, but...the hardest part about writing is the writing itself. Thinking about ideas and plotting them out in your brain is the fun, easy bit. Sitting down and forcing it into something coherent and digestible is often hard work, because there's a part of you (or a part of me, anyway) that wants to just skip from interesting scene to interesting scene, but you can't do that. You have to have transition & exposition or else it will just be a mess of nonsensical messiness. It's a little easier to get away with stuff in comics and cartoons than it is in written stories. I say this because characters can die or otherwise have horrible things happen to them in a segment of a comic or a cartoon, and then show up in the next segment perfectly fine, and no one really minds too much. You can't do that kind of madness in a written story without someone calling you on it, viciously.

Anyway. The editing process that I go through--which is the transferring of the story from my notebook into my word processor--is the most difficult part, because I agonize over everything even after I've messed with it, wondering if it's good enough for public consumption. Hoping that whoever reads doesn't think 'MAN, this fucking SUCKS.' But then again, one could also say that the day a writer is satisfied with his/her work is the day that s/he can stop. And I don't think I ever want to stop.

Salllyyy, I love yooouuu

Booh... Bryan's computer discovered a Backdoor virus on itself. For those of you not l33t enough to know what that is, it's a particularly virulent virus of a Trojan nature. When nestled safely in your computer, they enable whoever is in control of it to screw with your system--rewrite files, delete files, steal files, restart windows, get funky with your screen, your keyboard... et cetera, et cetera. So, in otherwords, real bad mojo. I had Norton do what it could (which was quarantine the infected file) and when Bryan gets home I'll have to tell him about it..and I know he'll find some way to blame me.

Whose Line is it Anyway is a wonderful prelude to Zim. Wheeheehee!

"Nailbunny?"
"Yes, Nny?"
"I'm not happy."

Hmm, actually, Vera, my hair is a lighter brown... it looks nearly black in that picture, I don't know why.

::poking around Sequentialtart listlessly:: I really need to go study for my Chemistry test, even though I'm not sure even if I'm even having a test, because our teacher has been absent all week and none of us knows what's going to be on this test or how to do anything we are currently doing...but then she's pulled this kind of stunt on us before, so. I heard a rumor that it was being post-poned until Monday, which would be good for me because that means I can devote tomorrow to my English project.

I'm a little worried about that, too, because a part of it depends on literary criticism, except mine is being replaced by actual words from the author, since she's contemporary and lives here and everything. If she doesn't respond to me by tomorrow, I'll have to suck up my courage and actually phone her. God, I hope I don't have to do that. I REALLY hope I don't have to do that. I HATE phone conversations with people I don't know. I just hate them. When I was in California it took me aeons to work up the courage to phone up Vera; fortunately talking to her wasn't as difficult as, say, the people at Pizza Hut, who I'm not sure even speak English.

"...I felt like I am reading a comic book rather than fan-fic! I really think you should make a comic out of your story :)"

This entry in my gb neither told me which story the person was remarking on, nor did the nice person leave their name/site/email address, but it made me feel very warm and fuzzy. This is because I get, from time to time, people comparing my work to a comic book, which makes me happy, because I want to write comic books (as well as novels) some day. My main problem with getting into the industry is that I'd need an artist, or a team of artists, or somebody to draw what I write, since I lack the skillz to do it myself. So if I ever manage it, it won't be alone.

My plan right now is to kidnap Etoile and move to California (where it seems like most all of the cool comics people are) and do stuff. If I go to college here (which is very likely, because it is cheaper) I will of course wait until I've graduated to enact this plan, but if, by some magic of creation, I end up going to college in California (where if anyone gives me touristy glares I can just say 'Hey, I was born here, man') I will probably try it sooner.

What did you think I looked like, Vera? A deformed circus midget? X3 (although actually I do kind of look like one of those in that photo..)

My Zim story got some nice reviews. I is happy. On that same note, I came across IZ as a topic on one of the message boards I (used to, not much anymore) lurk at and someone said something like 'I hope they don't cancel it when they find out [Jhonen Vasquez] did JTHM'...yeah, like they don't know. Come on. Nickelodeon isn't that stupid.

Speaking of Zim stories, read Etoile's, for it is funny and much better than mine. :B

I think Kai is annoyed-ed at me. But then I suppose she would have more annoyed if I had lied.

On another note, I finally finished my Zim story. Kind of sad that something so short took me so long to finish. Please read it. :3

Oh yeah. Look, it's me. Bow to my ugliness! BOW!

You can also a little bit of Larisfluffer (this was, of course, taken on the Cosplay Mall day).

Grrr. I am surly. Surlier than normal. This is because my brother, who is a violent psychopath, came up behind me holding the cat up above his head, and then I 'kicked the table' or something (actually I think I was just swinging the chair around to look at him and my leg hit the table in the process), causing Jefferey (the cat) to fall and get him in the back of neck. He blames me and bashes my left wrist in (after my right wrist has just finished recovering from his previous attack, which was cause I was singing), and then strangles me (not too hard, but enough to generate surliness). He has some awful anger management problems, if that's not already evident...

He also chews on Jeff, which is just disturbing.

I believe I shall talk about Douglas Adams again, because I was too shocked and dismayed when I found out he was dead to say what I really needed to say.

Adams and his books were important to me because his work was among the stuff I really devoured when I was in middle school and just forming whatever writing abilities I have now. So what I'm trying to say is that his writing had a pretty profound effect on my style, and I think that's probably most evident in Clarity. He was, like Jaimie-J said, one of my literary heros and someone that I would have loved to meet, and it's just really depressing that not only will I never meet him, but he'll never write anything again.

GodDAMN my throat hurts. Why is it that illness always strikes at the most inopportune times? I cannot afford to miss any school; I have two weeks and missing something would be fatal at this point. Also the wasp sting has developed a rather ugly rash. I believe this is a Bad Thing.

Jamie-J, you're making me look like a pervert...but then I am a pervert, so I guess it's okay.

Let it be known that when I make a post such as 'Hm..' or 'Um...' that I am not contemplating some great topic that I fear posting about--I'm simply testing to see if blogger is choosing to obey or not (I post this because last time I posted a Hm entry a few people got confused ^_^;).

I drew my mother a card for Mother's Day...she wanted me to write her a poem, but the fact is that I'm really not very good at poetry, especially the kind that expresses filial love. Most of the poetry I write is not about myself, it's about my characters, and when it's about me it's usually whiny sob-poetry that no one wants to read anyway.

I am at once pleased and dismayed by the rapid growth of Zim fanfiction on ff.net. Pleased because it's nice that it has a fast growing fandom, but dismayed because most of it really sucks. I mean, seriously. I writhe in agony at the sheer badness of these stories. And what's really agonizing is that sometimes they're written well enough, but the situation and characterization seem very off and weird. They're not my characters so I can't really say 'Oh, they would never do that in ten milleniums, you crazy monkeys', but it's definitely stuff I have a hard time picturing.

I only comment on a very few of these stories even though I've read most all of them (unless the description was just so repugnant that even it alone caused my insides to squirm with fear and pain), and I've read most of the posts at the related message board. I lurk at very, very many message boards. I have been reading some boards for years that I have posted at maybe once, and quite often not at all. This is mainly because I, being dull, have nothing to say. But chances are that if you post at a board that you think I might post at (such as, say, Jaimie-J's board for Zim....), then I'm reading it. I'm just keeping whatever thoughts I have on the matter at hand to myself.

Alright, let's try this again.

Yesterday was a very long day. I spent most of the morning either cleaning or being hounded to clean, and then I went to the last anime club meeting of the school year. It wasn't all that bad, but there's a little boy in our anime club who is quite possibly one of the most annoying creatures to ever walk the planet. He makes comments that even overshadow my own banality, has an extremely grating laugh, and he never keeps quiet. I had to work very hard to suppress my urge to jump up and duct tape his mouth shut. However, the host's mother made us white rice and Korean beefiness, so that was nice.

Then I get home to find all these people swarming in my backyard, with the back door open, so as to allow flesh eating bugs easy access into my home. Mom proceeds to embarrass me thoroughly by showing some complete strangers my poetry. But I guess it wasn't all that bad--we did have those little hors d'oeuvre cheeses. And the band (which played mostly covers, like Walking in Memphis, All For You, and Kryptonite [all songs that I love dearly]) was very cool also. Large crowds of people (especially people I don't know) just make me nervous. I have a real lack of social skills, but I like to watch people talk to each other, and I like to talk, too--I'm just too afraid of coming off sounding like an inane dork (which I really do, most of the time).

However, I did recruit a new Zim fan. (insert evil laughter here)

Hm...