broken-nosed gods

Talking about the homeschooling/self-directed learning I did during 'high school' for college applications is really weird, because it sounds so different from what it actually was. It sounds like I was very goal-oriented and studious. The truth is that I am a pretentious asshole who wanted (wants) a classical education but couldn't be arsed to do a lot of it and so I ended up just picking up bits from whatever 'classical' education things looked interesting.

Which adds up to something almost resembling a real education, I mean, I did/am coming out of it with generalized history knowledge, some command of three languages, the ability to kind of play the piano, good handwriting in Chinese, and enough knowledge of a lot of things (particularly literature) to look impressive to people who don't know anything about it. And, of course, the ability to cook.

The downside of all of this is that I don't know enough about any one of these things to be really great at it, but. well. Broad rather than deep.

I downloaded Vienna Teng's new album, I'm on track to pass all of my tests/finals, and this got me in such a good mood that I managed to dodge Creepy Huggy Dude with just a cheerful high-five in passing. YES!

I always have trouble working out how to react in situations like that, because I freeze up when I get creeped out, but I totally nailed it today. :D

Okay, I take it back about not talking to people lately, I just had an hour-long conversation about houses and interior design and Venezuelan classical music. :D

Please recommend me manga to read! I feel like I've gone and fallen out of fandom, or at least like I'm still stuck in the fandoms I was in five years ago, and I'm finding it difficult to watch new shows/movies or read new novels at the moment. (Which is severely curtailing my ability to hold conversations with people on the internet, b/c it's like I have nothing new to talk about.)

In other news:

My psych teacher is TERRIBLE. Our midterm test covered, among other things, gender and sexuality, and every moment of those questions made me absolutely table-flipping angry. Not just because they were gross, but SO MUCH of the science and statistics were flat-out straight-out bang-up one hundred percent OUTDATED and WRONG. I'll give you less than three percent of the population is (willing to admit to be) homosexual (in nineteen ninety-two)! I'll give you over-simplified and completely inaccurate summations of chromosomes and their relationship to biological sex! I'LL GIVE YOU 'TRANSGENDERED', YOU HALF-ASSED LYING INCOHERENT EXCUSE FOR A COMMUNITY COLLEGE TEACHER!

I did write my midterm paper for that class on genderqueer people, though, since he said 'any topic from the selected chapters', so in a way I suppose I did get at least one good dig in.

I'm gonna stab myself in the face

my psych teacher is trying but he knows basically nothing about transgender ppl

send help

This evening I broke a decoration off my new purse, got blisters, lost: all the keys to my apartment (one to the entryway, one to the door, and the keycard that lets you get into both the courtyard and the actual building), the key to my house back in the U.S., my metro card, about RMB150 + change, and the birthday present from my aunt & cousin that I kept them all in.

I did have a pretty great night though! Erica invited me out for drinks & dancing, and we ended up dragging about two-thirds of the building with us. We did some bar-hopping with little to no actual drinking, mostly because everyone was way too busy playing loud but fun games. I finally learned how to play that one game! The one where you clap your hands, snap your fingers, and slap the table while saying something-something ei! You(singular, now) start off with a nonsense word and then it develops into someone's name, and whoever's name it is has to catch you and say 'ei!' with you the first time you do it, or they owe the group a forfeit. and later on Erica showed us one where you sit in a circle and send a table-slap around in rhythm, which sounds very simple but once you've done it all the way around and learned how to turn it everyone crosses their arms over everyone else's and suddenly it seems super complicated.

And also there was (eventually) live music and dancing! I am super awful at dancing, music doesn't make me want to move. Which is maybe a sign that I should be at a different school. I had a talk with one of the older students about that, and ended up deciding that I don't really have that passion everyone says you need for music. Well, I mostly knew that already. I feel about music about the same way I feel about writing, which is that it's awesome and I'm not terrible at it and I like to do it sometimes, and also now and then someone gets it wrong enough that I have to try & do it right.

(Which reminds me: I think classical music should come with photosets. Because photosets are cool. Pop music has lyrics and/or music videos, which sort of help direct the tone of the listener's thoughts. But I generally have no idea how to feel about any given classical piece until I've listened to it a lot of times, and a lot of the times the only pre-listening direction you get is from the title. Which really doesn't help much a lot of the time. Movie scores are great that way though, when you watch a great scene with great music and you have a ton of FEELINGS they come back every time you hear it again. So basically what I'm saying here is that I feel music should always be supplemented with other media, and some genres have still not figured this out. And I want to make a thing, a photoset + original music thing, and be like LOOK EVERYBODY THIS IS COOL YOU SHOULD DO IT.)

But everybody says you have to have ~talent or ~passion for music, and I . . . don't? I mean, my ~passion in life is basically not being a dick to people. I liked my violin teacher back home mostly b/c she seemed a lot like me, hah. Kind of laid-back and not SRS BZNS w/r/t music (or basically anything). I could be like her, maybe, but I'm definitely not cut out to be a virtuoso or anything like that.

...actually I think I will end up copping out of everything and just being an ~artiste who sticks things together and pretends they mean something. But also with a real job, like ...teaching or sth. --I might be a bit more like my mother, career-wise, than I'm comfortable with, haha.

Anyway, the purse still looks alright, I can probably get at least another keycard tomorrow, the metro card only had 5 yuan on it, 150 yuan is not that much money all considered, and now I can buy myself a similar keychainey thing that is not zebra-striped. I was actually pretty ticked off about losing the change, because I promised myself I'd buy laundry tokens this weekend, but when I came back home I discovered I'd dumped most of the change out on my bed.

So that happened!

I still haven't figured out the postal system here, so these might be a while in coming, but here goes:



(No actual ponies will be provided.)

Poems (or postcard-length letters) in Japanese or Chinese are great, because I have super awesome handwriting when it come to hanzi/kanji, and I love having an excuse to show people.

I have successfully arrived! I'm super tired, though. How do all those other people manage to sleep on planes?

If anyone wants pictures, I made a new & separate Tumblr. just-the-middleman, for photos of Shanghai, text posts about school, and various reblogs of The Middleman-related things. At least in theory. (My family is DELIGHTED that I finally have a blog I'm willing to show them.)

Is there a way to copy large amounts of text from one's laptop to one's iPhone without using the Internet? Our dorm doesn't have wireless, so I'm working off my phone for the time being.

(I'm super sad I haven't gotten to watch Elementary, though!)

I got into the Shanghai Conservatory of Music! So so so excited. I can now look forward to a school year of Chinese-learning, music, and intense envy that everyone else around me is better at those things than I am. :D :D :D Of course, the main reason I applied to that school is because I feel like I haven't been concentrating hard enough on music, and there's nothing like feelings of intense envy to make you concentrate—and/or pretend you had no interest in the subject in the first place, but since it's a MUSIC SCHOOL I doubt that will fly. --And another one of the reasons I applied there was because sometimes music schools let their students in free to student concerts. So. yes.

Oh god, I'm going to be a real college student. It's terrifying.

Apparently, I get to write a paper on my 'area of academic interest' for English 102! So, um. I'm wavering between a comparison of lolita & hard femme or something about the construction of femininity in magical girl shows/70s shoujo manga/Kuragehime (once I've read it)/modern shounen manga/etc.*

I'm not sure if I'm asking for help or crowing in delight.


*Gender studies is totally my area of academic interest, what are you talking about.

I hate being sick. I haaaate it, because it means constant discomfort, halved sleeping time, and getting absolutely nothing done because I'm too focused on distracting myself from being sick to concentrate on anything that involves more than a miniscule level of involvement.

This kind of reaction to a minor cold feels some kind of giant personal flaw.

On the plus side, however, I think I am developing a pattern for minimizing the amount of misery! Take Advil or other generic painkiller, avoiding Actafed & similar cold medicines as much as possible (enormous amounts of mucus are preferable to feeling like the inside of one's nose is made entirely of sandpaper), lock self in room with humidifier, and make sure to cook at least twice, because good food is essential. When throat begins to hurt worse than nose, abruptly stop drinking tea altogether, take acid reducer, and shift eating patterns slightly. Wait a few days, and hey presto! Wellness ensues.

Basically I get colds twice a year and never get sick otherwise. Thank goodness for that.


[added later] Also I have just spent fifteen minutes crying b/c I have not finished any of my homework for today and my professor has previously said he doesn't take late work. Fuck it, I'm going to take the zero, because you know what is more important than homework? My physical and metal health.