So, this week has been crazy. School is crazy, my schedule is crazy, and european history AP is crazy. We are currently learning about France during the reformation and all the lovely civil wars and massacres and what naught. So, as fun, my teacher decides we should watch this wonderful french film. I don't think i ever want to watch that again. can anyone say awkward, a class of all females watching a very explicit movie while their male teacher is present? Oh well, the colors are stunning, even if it is .... NOT pg... and really gory. Orchestra is what I am really excited about. We are playing Carol of the Bells and Once Upon a December. The latter makes me REALLY happy because iit is all first violin! wOOt. Well, didn't really have a point in writing this, but i can't wait to start my lit books (weird, i know) because we are reading Margarette Attwood, whom i think is an amazing author. So, off to that!.

son no clue if anyone reads these, but here is another story! not finished... he. should do that. but ap euro takes precedence, and creepy medieval popes are fun to read about.
so, follow the cut!
hope you enjoy

Awww, the end of summer is comming, i am thouroughly depressed because i haven't started on my summer reading. This year it is a whopping 7 novels, 2 essays and one 25 paged packet. i thank my wonderful teachers for this. However, I WILL get to be a senior at my school, and that means.....
MAKING RIDICULOUS HATS FOR THE FROSHIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (we like to call them beanies, but they are so large that the kids get stuck in doorways.) maybe one of these days i shall post the comic i made about that. (oh, i am illustrating a comic for our school newspaper this year. Think azumanga daioh meets zits meets Frazz and then came to my school.)

Other than illustrations, this summer I have been writing some stories. I enjoy revamping old fairytales and putting a humorous spin on them. The first one is just something that has been cooking in my brain for years, and it finally came out on paper. i have not finished it and really have no motivation to do so. It is about a highschool girl who goes back to her old home on fall break to discover somethings about her parents and ends up discovering something much more... an old friend and what it means to be part of her family. 

NOW the pitch of the second one! I will definitely keep writing this, so i hope if anyone at all reads this journal they will keep in touch with this story or maybe just tell me it sucks and i shall quit. It is a "twisted fairytale" version of the Grimm's brothers' "The Golden Bird". I let a friend read it and she thought it was pretty darned hillarious, so... If anyone likes a bit of goofiness about being the youngest child, the oldest child, living under a rock (being sheltered) slow thinking princes, and talking-foxes, well please read this. It is what i have been doing instead of my homework. 

Welps, other than that, I really should get some shuteye. But little people keep running around in my head making me think about writing. Until Later!

SPOILIER WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you did not read furuba 129, then DO NOT read this. Acutally, if you are following the english release DONT READ.
I am not so sure about the "promise" mentioned at the end of the chapter, "The one who was never to be loved was loved... That "small" promise from long ago was fulfilled" as the one between Kyoko and Kyo. It does make sense that, in finally telling Tohru he loves her, and accepting her love, he is fulfilling the pact to "always protect her", but there are just too many loose ends. That does not seem at all connected to the zodiac, and Akito saying "sayonara". I agree with the earlier statement that the curse was lifted, little by little, as kyo was loved. Kyo is part of the curse and what it is based on. Ironically, his "life built on the sacrifice of others" is sacrificed to let the other junishi have some confidence about themselves, as Shigure said. "the cat is much worse off". Now, if Kyo is that important, if the "cat" always holds the curse together, and his lot is the most unchanging, Kyo is the antithesis of Akito. Same problem. THey are the "bookends" of the curse. Think of it as a beaded bracelet. As kyo starts to be loved, something never intended to do and shakes the curse (rather, as OUTSIDERS begin to love him and he WANTS a change from sohma. Kureno was released around the time he met Kyoko) then the curse is slowly unraveled because the beads have become loose. The ones who are released are simply the ones who have the least connection, at their own times, least sadness (in a way) to the curse. They are the ones who cling to its identity the least. Akito is also shaken when the people are released. So it is a combination of these events that must be used to break the curse. Think of it, Akito was still comming to grips with the death of her father and mother's malice when Kureno was released. At that time the cat encountered his first outsider, Kyoko. Then, when momiji was released Tohru realized she loved Kyo, and Akito was severely upset about Ren and the box with her "father" in it. When Hiro was released she had just had a great upset and stabbed Kureno. (what was it that caused her that shock?) and Now that she has changed, the curse may completely come undone. Because she is no longer going to hold it together, and Kyo has completely broken from the traditions of the curse, and has fallen in love. He has found "hope", something the cat was never to have.
As for the small promise, who knows.

Usually vacations are pretty nice and fun, you know, but mine... it seemed to begin as the vacation from hell. It all started two weeks ago, as my mother, father and me journeyed to Washington DC. Here, i actually wrote about it:
The Great Flood
I looked out the window of my brother’s apartment and saw Noah’s arc float down the street in front of the Russian embasy. As I watched, rather listlessly, I wondered how the hell a simple vacation had come to this.
It had all started normally, normal for my family anyways. Dad had packed the minivan, mom had freaked out the night before about driving and threatened not to come, and I packed an entertainment bag. Only problem with this vacation was that I would be the only one of their five children accompanying them for the first time of their married lives. The trip: visiting my two siblings and some family friends/could by my siblings if I had a desire for any more/ colleges in Washington D.C. with a little sidetrip to Philadelphia first to see my mom’s sister and then down to Williamsburg and later Charlottesville Va. Innocent sounding enough, but my parents have this odd knack for turning the smallest situations into large procedures, wearing unplanned matching outfits, and setting off alarms in museums.
The rain came as we reached Philadelphia on Saturday evening. Joy. It poured on Sunday, and the news showed pictures of the horrible flooding on the east coast, namely the D.C. area. Joy. At 11 o’clock that night a phone call came in from my sister, quite distraught, that her apartment had flooded. When I heard the news my mind moved in a cycle like this… “Flooded…. Colleen’s…. Where the hell is the body of water near her… Patomic… downhill…. Flooded…. What the hell…. Water…… I wonder how her bird is….. flooded….”. Yeah, couldn’t comprehend it.
The cause of the flooding was apparently a combination of unexpected torrential downpour, lack of proper landscaping, the fact that they lived at the bottom of a hill, and neglect of the manager for cleaning storm drains around the property. All together, these forces, in terms of management and lease, are “an act of God”. Yes, God himself apparently told management not to clean the gutters that year.
Now, this was where we were going to stay whilst in D.C. Not only were we without a place to live, but so were Colleen and her roommate. Another factor adding to her stress was the fact that she had just bought a piano and new couch. All that lovely furniture might be ruined in the ankle deep water.
When we arrived at her apartment in Arlington, VA that afternoon, the whole complex looked like a picture from the weather channel where people put sand bags in front of their doors and houses and wear yellow coats. That’s what they were doing. I was surprised, with all the flooding, roads closed, and power outages that FEMA wasn’t standing in my sister’s front yard. The only extravagant precaution I had heard of was that Sunday night, when the highways were dead stopped, the police actually reversed the flow of traffic and some poor unsuspecting, lost idiots followed a green geoprism with Ohio license plates off of the expressway, assuming he new where he was, and promptly found themselves lost.
Her house was sopping smelly, and the piano was on telephone books. They had pulled up the soaked carpet to expose a buckled, moldy parquet floor. Definitely NOT livable conditions, the stench and humidity were enough, and the fact that the ceiling in her bathroom had collapsed.
Anyways, we found a hotel, but all were booked in the whole entire city for the rest of the week, so we had to throw ourselves upon the mercy of my brother. (while at the hotel, I learned always to check that you don’t just have the correct room number, but also FLOOR before you politely ask a maid, in Spanish, to please open your room because you don’t have a key and your father is in the shower and therefore cannot hear you. It may end up in an awkward situation)
We found ourselves in his tiny, three room apartment on Teusday afternoon, and I quickly took stock of my surroundings. Everything there was perfectly neat and at right angles. All his hats perfectly spaced, books on his shelves alphabetized by genre, not one sticking out in front of another, magazines stacked so perfectly on top of one another it seemed there was just one giant one lying on the table.
Out his window I saw the now familiar downpour. Oh, did I mention it rained (imagine the worst and heaviest rain you can imagine) for four days strait with barely a break. I saw the Russian embasy, which is giant, imposing, and quite hideous.

On Wednesday things literally brightened up. We visited the “Heirich House” in Dupont circle. A lovely large Victorian mansion where my brother wishes to shoot his thesis. Later, after getting slightly lost, a very kind lady of about 60 years pointed my very touristy looking family in the direction of the Renwick Museum of art. When we arrived I looked across the street at the builing next to the white house and wondered why in the world a continuous stream of people eminated from the builing, all in suits and tie, and why they were flying the Japanese flag. Surely that wasn’t the embassy. (later I found out that a conference between President Bush and PM Izumi (I think that is it, anyway, he loves Elvis, thanks CNN for that weird fact. No I DON’T want to hear him sing Elvis again) Well, I brushed aside the worrying about how our government functions, like most Americans, and stepped inside of the museum to check out works by Grant Woods. Namely to see his “American Gothic” and “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “Daughters of the American Revolution”.
After an eventful day my family attended a free brass band concert, members in period, union army brass band dress, at the Kennedy center where my brother works.
We then enjoyed a wonderful weekend at Williamsburg. And, my friends, I learned when people displayed their arms back then, they meant it quite literally. All naked swords and guns (some 400 of them) lined the walls of the Governor’s Mansion. THAT is a great way to keep people from putting fingerprints on them. Yes, in the 18th century they were all sharp and ready to use, easily drawn out of their latticework pattern on the wall.
The drive home was uneventful, as most drives are. No rain this time, sadly, and my sister welcomed us home to a large pile of mail and pictures from her Alaskan vacation.

It is summer vacation. A time for fun, baseball, the beach, staying up late, fireflies, humidity and work.

It is also a time where I go crazy in finding new books and manga to read. Recently I have read chapter 128 of fruits basket (furuba) and would like to say "wow". I guess the story really will end soon. It all seemed to happen so fast, Akito's change, Kyo going to see his father, Arisa and Kureno, the plot seems to be resolved, but still there is a little bit of me that screams "TOO FAST! Too many loose ends! What about Manabe? What will happen to Momiji?" I think that the Momiji bit is what is eating at me. (My favourite character)He is released, yet not free to have what he wants. But will he ever be that concert violinist? So sad. That is where Takaya's bittersweet endings come into play. Well, not much to comment on the development or predict in the plot with only two chapters to go in japan. (Release is July 5th for 129 in Hakusensha's Hana to Yume)
One thing I have finally been able to do is find places to access raw scans of furuba on the internet. One can search in photobucket and find them fairly easily. They are there, just don't give up hope!

One series that I started reading recently is Mieru Hito, and i believe it is fairly underrated. Consistently it ranks in the last 5 of Weekly Shonen Jump, but it is up against stories like Bleach and Naruto. This is one series that is almost impossible to get raws of, due to the fact that it really isn't popular. BUT maximum 7 has 16 chapters scanslated (out of 37 total).
Story: Himeno, aged 16, moves to Tokyo to attend highschool. On the way their she runs into a mysterious man named Myoujin, who appears to be speaking to himslef. However, it is ghosts he can speak to, and see. He is a guide, one who "guides" spirits to the next world. (sound like bleach?) he gets rid of the giant dolphin-like evil spirit that is following Himeno around. Himeno later learns that htis crazy man is the landlord if the rundown appartment she will be living in, actually, she will be the only living person in it. It is an apartment for ghosts also. Basically, the story is about Myojin, Himeno, and the ghosts Himeno meets at her new residence.
It has the air of the mysterious and ghosts like bleach, but isn't so fight intensive. The story does not revolve around a teenaged boy who has a need to become stronger, and doesn't have much blood and gore. It is as if the author threw Bleach, Rumiko Takahashi's works, and Hayao Miyazaki's works (namely Spirited Away)into a large pot, mixed them up and wrote them out, then seasoned them with a little of the madness of Lewis Carol, Tim Burton and The Sixth Sense and voila! Mieru Hito was born. For those who want a light, non-spooky yet touching story of the supernatural. Not licensed by any company in English yet.

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle is amazing, for anyone who loves CLAMP, they will certainly love this. Currently it is published in Shonen Magazine (I do believe Monthly) and has 117 chapters. They have stated that it will be longer than 16 volumes, but the story seems to either be winding down, or just winding up, true to clamp's story-telling style. The art may turn some people off, being fairly angular and elongated, but really, the story and the cross-overs with other series make it worth it. Clamp's xxxHolic, which is running at the same time and coincides with Tsubasa frequently, sees to have much better art that is just, weird. I really like it. There are groups on MSN currently scanslating Tsubasa, and Holic is done by Be With You Scans, but the manga are being released in English by DelRey comics.

Busou Renkin, Nobuhiro Watsuki's second work, is to be released in the United States in August. It looks fairly good, slightly run-of-the-mill, but humorous and the art is quite beautiful. It has 8 volumes all total and finished its two year run in Jump in the fall. (I wonder if it was Mieru Hito that replaced it, hmmm). For all those worried that Busou Renkin (armored alchemist) is a fullmetal ripoff, have no fear. Watsuki is slightly more original than that. First off, nothing can come close to the craziness, seriousness, laughableness, sadness, microcosm that is the Fullmetal Manga (Hiromu Arakawa is my hero). Secondly, though they both have homunculi, Watsuki takes homunculi to their literal definition of a "small machine" originally believed to control the body or the brain. An artificial life form if you will. Not so much confusing philosophy and german mythology wrapped up into his works. The work is decidedly different from Ruroken, not as timeless, but still has Watsuki's "growing" theme tied in. The design for the main character is reminescent of Yahiko, but that is basically where the similarities stop. Machines are still there, Watsuki's artistry has definitely improved. His lines have been simplified, yet the drawing is more acurate to life. It gets better as the chapters go on and makes for wonderful light reading.

Wow that was a long post.

So, my sister brought home a shirt from school that read "celebrate awkwardity". I just thought it was funny, so I had her give me one, but oh how i do need it now.

It is odd how life works out, in its mysterious little ways, like the rules of english spelling and grammar. Once again, the boy I have a crush on, asks out my best friend. This is about the fifth time it has happened. I meet someone, talk to him, and then my friend comes up, and he has eyes only for her. ARGH. frustrating. But they are good guys, and these are my friends. So I guess i should be happy for them. I need to get a shirt that says "good matchmaker", and now I can also use the "awkwardity" shirt as we all hang out on the weekends. Me, the girls and their boyfriends.

Ahh, the trivialities of life.

Another pair of socks went missing today. As well as an earring.

Have you ever noticed how things just go missing in the middle of the night? You place a necklace on a night stand, and it is gone in the morning, or socks never return from the wash! Some people may say "oh, you just misplaced that" but I have a better explanation. . .
It all started as an innocent racket between the sock companies, dryer companies, and gremlins. For, you see, gremlins do exist. They are not to be confused with silly little faeries, or clumsy gnomes. They are small, goblin-like creatures that tend to inhabit places full of old machinery. They are greedy, clever and love to make a profit. Anyways, they figured that they could start taking over the world by stealing socks. They brought this idea before the sock and dryer companies who both agreed that it was a wonderful idea. The sock companies would make a profit, because people need to replace the missing footwear, and the dryer companies would win because people would constantly have their dryer fixed because they thought it was "eating" socks. The gremlins would gain a small portion of the profits from both companies and keep the socks. These socks they could put to use in all manner of funcions, great source of thread and cotton for clothing, bedding, and other every day needs. They would also be able to sell them to make more money to build their empire.
Well, the socks were the first step. They now have moved on to other textile items, such as dishrags. But that wasn't enough. Gremlins branched out into small, valuable items such as earrings, rings, bracelets and necklaces. Their main goal is not really to gain power through wealth, because no one believes they exist. They wish to pull all the strings behind the economy. Slowly they will make people believe that they are going insane because they keep losing things without reason. Then they will take over the world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

My suggestion: do not leave things unattended. put all jewelry on a leash. And don't believe this post.

and for all those who know what quixotic means. good for you. It has nothing to do with this post. Thank you, now, Sancho and I must ride off to La Mancha and find my fair sweet Dulcinea. But saying that is rather redundant.

Took tests all day today. I feel completely drained of all knowlendge and ability to think. However, I would like to state clear goals for this site:
Provide room for thought on the following manga series:
Fruits Basket
Bleach
Ruroken, if anyone so chooses. I kind of fell away from it, but...

AND to discuss mythological connections if harry potter and other books. Davinci Code?

Perhaps summaries of up- to date furuba volumes for the US release will be posted, if I have time or feel like it. Mostly it will be reactions and discussion.

Right now, I have nothing to write about, but there is never really anything to write about in the first place. I guess this page will just be a way to keep track of random things and an aid to the search to the meaning of the number 42. Perhaps a wonderful list of vocabulary will pop up, or a rant about Harry Potter. Well, life is crazy, it's the end of the school year and exams just might try and kill me. But life is good because I stopped and smelled the flowers today, then got yelled at by my PE teacher to keep moving woman! You're on a run!