Well, school’s... back again. I ought to be writing a story right now, but I’m not. Life’s funny like that. Oh well, I guess if I look past the couple times I felt a strong urge to put a drill to my head, the whole day wasn’t so god awful. (That’s probably a filthy lie, by the way.) If I could interact properly with other human beings that would probably help, but life is funny in that way too.

I keep getting looks at school. I think it might be the haircut... maybe people aren’t used to it or something. Hopefully it’s nothing bad. There’s only so much I can take before I start worrying that I have something on my face.

I keep feeling these strong cravings to play in the wonderful world Morrowind, but then I remember that my graphics card hasn’t worked since I had to replace the motherboard. Upon this realization, I kind of scoot over to the corner and take up the fetal position until I fall asleep. I want to play Oblivion and Fable so much that I can’t even really hold any sort of rational thought anymore. Ug, talking about that reminded me how much I want to play Dirge of Cerberus, too. Why must my thought process be so cruel?

Anyway, because someone I mildly trust recommended it (and because I really needed a break from Anne Rice’s bizarre world of increasingly homosexual vampire chronicles) I started reading the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Last night I got about halfway through the first book and I have my doubts about the series, but I’ll stick it out for a lack of anything better to do. He said that I would like a character that debuts in the third book, so meh. (Yes, I honestly couldn’t think of another word besides “meh.”)

I wish I had some deep revelation to share with you all, but I’m really not in peak form at the moment. Earlier today I sat in my room and kept myself occupied with a tape measure for almost ten minutes. Knowing your measurements can make you feel kind of depressed. I don’t know, I think it’s something about confirming that no, you do not have a fifteen inch waist. Oh well, I guess I should be glad I actually have some kind of figure and I’m not just a rectangle. Too bad most guys seem to like the rectangle look. Eh, que sera sera. I’m pretty shallow myself. It's a odd sort of shallow though. There's not really any definition for what I find attractive, but at the same time I'm picky. Ah, complicated.

Dear God,

Let me sleep, or I will kill this rabbit.

With love,
         Erica

Come on people. It's a dragon versus a turtle.

K: and no more charizards
K: blastoise pwns charizard
E: (._.)
K: just face it
E: untrue
K: water > fire
K: blastoise > charizard
E: i hold the power to cancel downloads
K: ...
K: you wouldn't
E: fire can evaporate water
E: it's the lack of oxygen that hurts it
K: not my blastoise's water attacks
E: not the water
E: oooo, BUBBLE
E: i'm SO AFRAID of the BUBBLE ATTACK
K: hey now no dissing his attacks
E: GOD HELP ME
K: what about ... surf? and the water guns?
E: THERE ARE BUBBLES EVERYWHERE
E: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
E: oh lordy
K: pshhh
K: alright bedtime for me
E: well, good night chumychumuffinbatter
K: goodnight chumbuddy
E: don't let the bubbles get you
K: ...

Lord on high.

My father came back to celebrate my birthday so now my mum is on edge like she has been marked for death by ninjas. It is not really my fault, but I guess that does not matter when you are being blamed for it, right? Although, it was funny, right when I was about ready to just mope today away, one of my friends got to me first. Some of those guys are amazingly accurate without even making a move. That’s our strong point though, I suppose. Oi, I am not crazy about it, but maybe I should try celebrating again. The human voice might yet be my favorite instrument. Eh, that's probably a filthy lie. And I quite dislike cake.

Speaking of going back down some ancient paths, I was thinking about finding my old keyboard and seeing if I was still any good. If I ever was. Yesterday I sort of pulled a half smile when I realized I was absentmindedly patting out the keys to the Mexican Hat Dance. When I tripped in the storage room I landed on a box full of some old sheet music so I don’t know. Really though, nostalgia was the entire reason why I stopped... so having it be the reason why I start again seems so ironic.

Ah, this isn’t like me. Hell be the past and heaven my future.

(Maybe I’ll learn the Naruto soundtrack, just to tick everyone off.)

France amused me, but onto a bigger topic. Why the heck do my goldfish keep eating each other? Bongo was my favorite one too... poor little guy. That one fish from South Park keeps coming into my mind whenever I’m down here with these guys late at night. I’m just waiting for Gold to start leaving ominous messages in blood. Lord have mercy. They ate his eyes!

Well, besides the fish skeleton ordeal, it would seem a couple other storms occurred while I was abroad, but oh well. It seems like that always happens around my birthday. I haven’t in good faith been able to look forward to it. Age has always been mildly useless to me anyway. That’s why I decided to stop formally celebrating it a few years back. Obviously I’m not yet satisfactory enough to keep people from arguing for even a couple hours. Ah, I say that but I don’t want to put anyone in an uncomfortable situation, either. I must admit I like so many various things, at least more so than the usual person, so I suppose that this kind of... unfortunate circumstance would arise. At least I get the rare chance to converse with faraway friends. I’m not really a party person, anyway. But who really cares?

Sitting outside in the lovely hundred-degree weather, I was pondering about the Ten Commandments. Back when I was smaller than my mother, many a year ago, she used to always say that there would not be any problems in the world if everyone would just follow those laws. That, in turn, made me think about how many battles are fought on the base of religion. I always thought most people were zealots in their own way. People are just strange that way. I guess narrow-minded would be best word for it all, but I guess most people cannot survive without some kind of belief that would justify their existence. I’m too apathetic to worry about those kinds of things, but I came to the conclusion that if everyone on the planet were to agree on a single set of ten laws, then we probably wouldn’t even need them anymore.

Honestly, I don’t think people need to keep learning about what is wrong, but more about what helps others. Oi. I cannot comprehend why people got such a wonderful gift as the history left by their predecessors and yet they refuse to make use of it for common things. Thousands of years and hardly a bloody thing to show for it.

Tomorrow I will be on a plane to the French lands. I doubt I will update until I get back, because God help me if I go to Europe just to hang out at an internet café. An arcade I do, perhaps, but not an internet café. Yes, most of my time will be spent trying to track down specific overpriced souvenirs that I could easily find on Google. Alas, my relatives are a vicious bunch, and even mean to torture me across the vast waters of the Atlantic Ocean. I have to find peach tea, a poster of something Monet and five whales-worth of chocolate, not even to mention a plethora of postcards that would make a even a seasoned mailman weep. I don’t even know half the people and for God’s sake I’m only going to be gone ten days. I was mildly contemplating just jumping off the Eiffel tower since it’s the last place we’re going, but someone informed me that they have rails or something now. Buggers.

Nah, I wouldn’t kill myself before I got to see the new pirate movie. I love how much society has glorified such an awful group of people. I wanted to go see it before I left but I never got a chance thanks to certain people and their not wearing of watches. At least I got a milkshake. Milkshakes are pretty good.

So... I feel so sorry for everyone who is going to have to put up with me for the next few days. I’m going to get about three hours of sleep and then have to go about forty hours before I see a bed. If I don’t stab some poor bystander with a pen and start strangling them with their own innards, it will be a miracle. It’s not so much the lack of sleep as it is the lack of movement for eleven hours while being tired. It’s going to be like one long chemistry class, where you have nothing whatsoever to stimulate you, but you can’t just nod off either. Once I actually spent forty minutes talking about an invisible quacking moose. It’s times like these where I wish I hadn’t left my Gameboy in the sunlight until it melted.

Oh well. If I decide to run away with gypsies, keep your hands off my things. Seriously. I already gave it all the cool stuff to someone else.

Did I kick puppies in a past life? Why am I not capable of simply playing a round of Final Fantasy Tactics without unleashing the legions of hell? Every single time, I swear to God. First time through I had just learned the bit about Mewt and lo and behold, there was corrupt save data. Second time through my brother somehow in his infinite folly managed to completely destroy the motherboard of my computer, and I had to spend a week trying to shop for a new one while trying to study (reality: play DDR) for my midterms. Third time through I was forced to save in the middle of a battle because someone had another kid or something and I had to go my grandparents and use my mad ninja skills to hide from my relatives. Ten years later I got home and realized all my characters had been sent to jail except Marche, and the only weapon he had actually GAVE the enemy health, so that save was worthless. Now, you would think three times would be enough to pacify whatever god might be laughing at me, but NO, they had to do it AGAIN. Literally a year after all this happened, I decided to maybe try to beat the game once more. I had just gotten past that long stretch of god-awful boredom when I went to save... and instead of Shift+F1... I pressed CTRL+F1... Just that little thing and the whole day’s work was gone. Why?

That aside, reflexologists and chiropractors are some sadistic people. I’ll just leave it at that.

Monday I’ll be leaving for France, but anyone I talk to already knows that. Yesterday I organized my CD collections and put 186 songs on my brother’s substandard MP3 player because I don’t like him and I don’t want to carry forty pounds of CDs while traipsing about in unknown territory. Considering I listen to music at almost all times, I don’t honestly know if 186 songs will be enough, but I can only fit one measly gigabyte on there so I suppose I will have to deal with it. I was thinking about listening only to the Zelda sing-a-along on the eleven-hour flight there, but I don’t know what that might to do my sanity. Being serious though, I put December by George Winston on there, which has an amazing set of my beloved classical music, so I could listen to just that for hours on end and be pacified. Lately though, I’ve just been listening to “Samson” by Regina Spektor on repeat, like for the past week. For some reason that song sort of reminds me of Evangelion. I couldn’t tell you exactly why I like it so much, but for whatever justification I do. I can’t tell people a lot of things. I’m just not good at words... or emotions in general, really.

I get yelled at a whole lot for my “apathy”... but in reality I’m just calm about most things. I feel somewhat conceited describing myself. I’m not so much stoic as I am reserved, but more than anything I’m sarcastic. If I get any more minutely detailed than that it varies upon whom I’m with. There are people who would say that is juvenile, and I should be myself at all times, but I can’t really help but be different things to different people. Really, you are even if you don’t want to be. That, and hell yes I’m juvenile.

In other news, I went through the horrors of cleaning out two fish tanks today. You may think “big deal,” but you can’t comprehend these fish. First off, I should mention that the gold fish are not actually owned by me, so much as they own me. You see, my father likes brining home the few animals I don’t actually want for a pet, like fish and turtles. It took me three years to find a new home for that turtle. If you combine a dead skunk with a snobby cat, and then shave off all its hair, that might equal a just a fraction of what Poke was like. It seems like I’ve gone off on a tangent, so back to the fish.

It all started when daddy dearest bought two goldfish for my little brother’s second birthday, a few months over four years ago. Through some bizarre series of events that probably involved some bad juju, I was stuck taking care of Happy the First and Gold. A few weeks later, Gold killed Happy the First in the ballroom with the candlestick. He then developed what I can only call a Hitler moustache, which he keeps to this day. After that, my other brother and father went to the pet store to get more fish food, and came back with a bigger tank and Happy the Second. Now you see why my mother deals with the financial transactions. Gold ended up killing Happy the Second when I was away melding with my friend’s couch while playing Mario Kart 64. Heh, that game probably burst as many blood vessels as Devil May Cry 3, but I suppose that’s beside the point. Over the years, Corky (now deceased), Happy the Third and Bongo have all worked their way into my living hell. Happy the Third lived by growing to the size of my thigh, the whole Corky experience taught me more than I ever wanted to know about fish medicine and Bongo... well, he kind of just scares me. I think he and Gold are the shadow kings of the Yazuka. My other fish is a beta. I think that speaks for itself.

If you were to take one thing away from this whole post, it should be that Devil May Cry 3 is one of the most arduous games I have ever played, and that’s not even getting into the fact that Dante’s dialogue alone makes me want to punch him in the face. Hard. With a pointy ring. Repeatedly.

So, my knee hurts like a lead pipe upside the head. You know, I’m half tempted to look into this whole cane business. Even if it doesn’t help the pain, I can still swing it around and frighten small children. That’s some good wholesome fun, that is.

The ending of the Evangelion series... is beyond my ability of description. I believe my words upon seeing the credits were more or less, “What in the hell was that?” I’m not one to knock the psychological speculation and open endings, but you see, there’s this thing called “closure.” If I didn’t know better, I would still be waiting for a second season because literally everything outside Shinji’s head was left up in the air. I understand that they needed to explain the project and they did a good job, but it seemed like the storyboard just decided “to hell with it all” and left to go get tacos. Honestly, the “second” ending wasn’t much better. If you’ve seen Wolf’s Rain, well, that’s what happened. You... you don’t do that. Bad Japan! Bad! Of course, maybe I’m just bitter about what they did to Kaoru. What was the point of that? Why do I always have to like the characters with the short life spans? I mean I’m still irked with L and the whole Death Note situation.

Oh, yes. Just on a side note, don’t throw firecrackers into bonfires, and no, I wasn’t the one who did it. Don’t put them in your friend’s gas tank either. *cough*

My muse seems to have gone on another one of those video game binges, so I’ve been doing a lot of that fan art that makes me feel like amputating my hands just a little. Even worse, I’ve been doing it on actual paper, since I haven’t kept up the monthly sacrifices to my printer so it stopped working. That’s right, my printer is fueled by pure evil, an evil that comes in six outrageously priced colors, an evil that keeps me from printing if even ONE FREAKING COLOR IS OUT. Now, I could just suck it up and buy the evil seventy-dollar refill pack from the evil internet, but I could also spend that money on sweet, sweet milkshakes and bug my parentals until they either buy it or kill themselves and let me collect the life insurance, which hopefully I wouldn’t completely blow on milkshakes and Reese’s flurries.

I know... I don’t have a soul.

Learn to walk before you fly. I will bet you that most people would suffer vertigo because their souls are too heavy to lift off. You know, it’s not like that’s such a bad thing. The more down you are, the more opportunities you have to develop your value. Does life have value at the beginning? I think new life has potential, which may be even greater than existing value, all because of the hope that is unique because it seems to be the only thing we truly believe in without having to see it. Seriously, what is it about flying that fascinates humans so? People always want the thing they can’t have; the hope to attain everything. Desire leads to hell, you know. If you acquired everything that boredom would be hell, too. Feel free to ignore me, though, because it’s not like I really care either way. What ticks me off is that’s probably just a lie. Not even knowing what I want is most likely my own circle of hell.

Maybe I’m one of those scums who look down on company but loathe being alone.

Come around and say you love me, then. Confirm my existence. Make it so when I die, I won’t be gone.

Maybe I’m one of those idiots who would kill themselves just to say, “Screw you!” to death.

Nah, I’ve got plenty of company, for better or worse. People listen to the dead more than teenage girls.

No one is greater than anyone else if you’re objective. You’ll all still die from a bullet to the head. Isn’t it amazing how your psyche can make up all the things that it does? It’s because no one is objective. Objectivity doesn’t exist any more than unicorns do. I severely doubt people truly want absolute truth. People just want proof to support their truths. My parents always search my room looking for something, anything that could give them some reason to look down on me. They want proof to support that I need them. Honestly, how childish can they be... it’s not like it would anything opportune to strike out on my own right now. I’m not letting them pay for college, which annoyed my mother to no end recently. That side of the family is looking for anything that would tie me down to them, since I am the oldest of my generation and have been groomed to take over the affairs with the passing of my grandparents, which will most likely occur in another fifteen years, but I have no intention of being this anachronism forever. Jake is the one who’s after it, and he’s only a year behind me in age. Maybe if he managed to get better than a “D” at his academy then they would be a little more inclined to let him handle things, because the “truth” is that they don’t like me. Only one more year of this stuff. One. One. One. After that, I can go out and look for a family of mutual choosing, or I can just let myself be with a house full of plants and a pet cat. Not right away though, because these things take some careful time.

It’s kind of amusing how people can mistake feelings. Learn to feel before you speak.

Despite my pleas about not feeling well, my mother woke me up early and made me go shopping. It’s not that I hate going to the mall... mostly, but lord knows all I really wanted to do today was sleep, not freaking bra shopping. Oh well, Victoria’s Secret’s new bra is actually pretty comfortable. Ah, this is a bit of a strange topic so I’ll just move on.

So sleepy... bah. When the modest amount of sleep I do actually get is threatened, I become quite disagreeable to be around. Imagine a zombie on steroids, and that might come kind of close to what I’m like. You’re probably thinking, “But Erica, it’s not like you’re a ray of sunshine and fairy dust normally,” but believe me, it gets oh so much worse. People never seem to want to be the one who wakes me up. My parents used to... well, my mother still does... just kind of yell and throw soft things at me so they wouldn’t be within my “strangle” reach. Mm, I just noticed that one of my arms smells slightly of plastic. That’s bizarre.

Someone at the mall called me “some scene college kid” and that made my day like you wouldn’t believe. X3 Oh Eri, you’re so scene!

My senior picture thing is tomorrow... GAH!!! That means I have to wake up early again. The urge to kill is rising to unprecedented levels this week. I don’t want to be in the yearbook and if I wanted a picture of myself I would just ask one of my friends to take one. I don’t want to go back to Boylan over the summer... *whines* Yes, I’m not very photogenic most of the time; it’s just part of being a hideous monster, I suppose.

I want to meet someone who I can catch head banging to the Arctic Monkeys, because that would make me smile really big. Actually, I wouldn’t mind meeting someone who just plain likes them, since it seems like I am the only one who does sometimes. A lot of people say that if you like something, then who cares if anyone else likes it, but sometimes you just kind of want to, well, kind of share the things that make you happy. It’s just something I used to like to do, I guess. It’s a good thing I’m quiet, because I would probably be pretty annoying if I wasn’t.

Random Fact #1: My first words were at my second birthday party and they were “May I please have a glass of water?” I knew how to talk before then because I used to use sign language, but I never felt like actually saying things, apparently. Thirst can make people do crazy things.

I think I’m going to throw up. (^_^)

Oh well, my being sick is no new thing. My body lacks the will to be healthy. It just doesn’t like me very much, you know. I suppose it cannot be helped. My doctors are about ready to kill me off and call it a day, probably. I’m drinking more water though, so that’s good. Maybe soon I’ll be able to hold down those stupid supplements that I am supposed to take since my body is too retarded to work right on its own. Okay, enough complaining...

I want a kaleidoscope really badly. I had a neat one, but I gave it away. I don’t regret that, but I still sort of want one. The person I gave it to said I was a lot like a kaleidoscope, but I don’t really understand completely...

Dot, dot... dot. Peace be with you, cause believe me kiddies, you're going to need it.

Apologizing for not caring, what a paradox. I smile whenever I do because I like to smile and I do not get much of a chance to anymore. It is not that I need rose-tinted glasses to see the beauty of it all, I see it, but I’m sorry. Ne.

I should probably start to work on my summer homework. Studying is fun, analyzing and learning, but going to school is something I loathe. I don’t have any particularly strong feelings towards the people or anything; it is just that I learn better by myself. Hearing what other people think is interesting but my schoolmates never really discuss things at any level of depth so I get so bored that I just kind of wander off and hold my own theoretical discussions. When I was younger I used to try and start discussions, but no one followed me and they just eventually didn’t pay attention.

I’m just not really that friendly. Actually, I probably come off as distant and, well, weird. Though, if I acted any different, it would still be that way. Depending on who I am with my personality changes a little bit, but I still am essentially the same awkward child. I say child, because can you really picture me as a parent? Little half-Erica’s… wow. It’s a little difficult to imagine without knowing the other half of the chromosome set. Don’t get me wrong, though, I would make a terrible mother and I’ve never really enjoyed kids, so bah.

Nah, I’m fine being the loner type. Being able to meet someone that played with my hair and said my existence was all they would ever need, well, that’s enough and it is more than someone such as me deserves. I’ve never felt lonely. On the off chance that I might meet someone who also says, “Your existence makes me happy,” then that’s wonderful, but really, I’m fine like this.

Ah, this entry isn’t going to make much sense to most of you. I just wanted to get it out, I guess. Not like any of my other ramblings make any sense, either.