http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:SenoritaRin&section=today deviantART RSS for by:SenoritaRin en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:57:48 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28991089/ http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28991089/ Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:16:54 PST Basically, I feel like an idiot. I am a Christian - generally I think not a shove-the-Bible-down-your-throat menace to society, but not a silent one either. Point of saying that is, I was reading a review criticizing Paradise Lost by Milton, and saw one comment that said, and I quote (or rather, and I copy-paste): "You could've saved people time by simply typing "CHRISTIANITY IS MISOGYNISTIC, NEWS AT ELEVEN" with blink, bold, and marquee tags."
Uh...am I the only one who thinks that's rude? And this from somebody who spent most of high school arguing Christianity with some seriously hardcore atheists, also know as my best friends at the time. I love a challenge. I really do. Christianity hasn't failed me yet and the best way to learn is to be challenged by someone who doesn't believe.
But bald statements like "Christianity is misogynistic," put in this way, are just flat-out rude. Not that I'm a sweet and kind person all the time, but come on people, grow up. (I realized I have no idea how old the poster is. Maybe they're younger. Still; not an excuse. I've met some seriously well-mannered people of all ages.)
I made the mistake of responding; therein lies my EPIC FAIL. EPIC. FREAKING. FAIL. Now there's a spam war going on between me and Snarky McSnark-Snark and somehow I end up feeling like the jerk.
Mistake, mistake, mistake. Add this to my list of things to beat myself up about when I have nothing better to do.
I'm tempted to give up on LJ communities. Somehow I've never run into such disasters on any other website. At least in my limited circle I've never seen rudeness like that. DIDN'T YOUR MOTHER RAISE YOU BETTER??
Lesson learned. DON'T RESPOND TO SNARKTASTIC COMMENTS. YOU WILL LOSE. I knew this, I forgot it, now I remembered it. BLARGH.

I meant to post a journal today about how nice Colorado was and how happy I am to be home and how much I'm looking forward to Christmas but that'll have to wait, I ruined my own day. :/

]]> ~SenoritaRin http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28888749/ http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28888749/ Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:18:10 PST Totally failed though. My memory was hazy so I couldn't provide details, and honestly even if I had read it yesterday I might not have remembered details. Not one person agreed with me, and I tried to take another look at the book, thinking maybe I was wrong, but I'm not. I sincerely don't like it. I try. I can see all the things they say are so wonderful about it, but they just mean nothing to me when I'm reading it. It's utterly forgettable and mediocre, and for something that's hailed as the next LOTR, I wanted to see something spectacular and saw nothing of consequence. Other than creepy things that I didn't WANT to see, there was nothing there that I hadn't seen before in some form or another. The characters all blended together in one mass of gray in which nobody stood out and nobody was lovable.
I seriously had to go over to Amazon and console myself with the 80+ negative reviews of the book. It's good to know that I'm not the only one out there who put the book down and was left with an overwhelming sense of meh.

In other news, I am absurdly tired after studying and essay-writing until 3:30 am last night, then waking up at 6 am for my final. I still have my short story rewrite due at midnight tonight and I'm all out of inspiration. I also still have to finish cleaning and vacuuming my room and doing last-minute laundry and all those other exciting flight preparations.

BUT CHRISTMAS IS ALMOST HERE. I'M ALMOST IN COLORADO. I CAN'T WAIT!!!!

]]> ~SenoritaRin http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28868370/ http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28868370/ Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:29:22 PST
HOWEVER, I really, really want to go into editing when I graduate, so any compliments I get related to editing, I MUST be smug about. Not really smug, more like insanely happy!
The compliment: this is the third creative writing teacher who has singled me out, along with one or two other students, and told us at the end of the semester that we have exceptional editing abilities. To quote exactly, he said "I must admit to feeling a bit shamed by the depth of your observations; I almost felt as if you were doing my job."
THANK YOU MR. CRAZY SCI FI TEACHER!! My one and only ability is an ability to critique stuff, and the only job I can imagine doing is critiquing stuff for a living, so it's good to know that I have half a chance at actually achieving my mediocre goal.
Just had to give myself a little moment of OMG YAY in the midst of all this homework...because aside from that one shining moment, I'm mostly occupied with kicking myself for being such a colossal idiot and leaving all my homework to the last minute. Bahahaa.
Hope all you school people are surviving your school stuff, and hope everybody else is doin' well in the real world.
IT'S ALMOST CHRISTMAS!!!

]]> ~SenoritaRin http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28805210/ http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28805210/ Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:47:16 PST I have an 8-page essay due in, oh, about two hours which I haven't written.
I have a 10-page research paper due Wednesday (although I'm about halfway done with that, thank GOD.)
I have a 600-page book to read by Friday and I'm only on chapter 3.
I have a 300-page book to read by Friday and I haven't even opened it.
I have a history test on Friday and God knows when I'll have time to study for it.
I have a 10-page history paper due Friday, so I have to have the two books read before then, seeing as the paper is ABOUT them. Oh, and this paper is also an honors contract, meaning instead of getting a grade I either get the honors credit or I don't, and if I don't, that means I basically wasted my time, and if I fail too many honors contracts I will be unable to gradate from the honors college, and I have one semester left. But no pressure.
I have a British literature final exam due by the 16th which I have not even thought about, but that, mercifully, is an online test; OPEN NOTE TEST ftw!
I have a 34-page short story to rewrite and turn in by Friday. This sounds easy but creative writing is not something you can flip on and off like a switch, so here's hoping inspiration strikes with good timing.
I have somewhere between 5-10 short stories, all 20+ pages long, to read and comment on, also by Friday.
I have very little money in my checking account and am down to one bag of frozen corn, a can of beans, half a box of Fruity Pebbles, two bananas, and two slices of GF bread. This must last me until Saturday.
I also must be checked out of my dorm by Saturday morning and find some way to get to the airport by 11 for my flight home. Before I leave, I must move several large pieces of furniture across my room and somehow cram all my stuff into one tiny closet, as well as clean my (disastrous) room on the off-chance that I will get a new roommate next semester. This would be no problem if I didn't have so much stuff and so little time.
I also have to do laundry (although that's negotiable), wash all my dishes, and pack for home. When I will do this, I have no idea.
My computer is also making creepy death noises and I live in fear that it will die before I can churn out all these essays. DON'T DIE ON ME, COMPUTER!!
OH. And I have to get a 3.6 GPA this semester, or my aunt's "scholarship" will become a loan, and that will be another something-thousand dollars to pay back someday. So no presure...

I FREAKING LOVE COLLEGE! No seriously, that's not sarcasm. Gotta love hell weeks like this. It seems impossible but I know that by this time next week I'll be safe at home counting my presents and decorating the tree and feeling all smug that I can write three essays in one week.
Either that, or I'll have a mental breakdown and fail college.

WE'LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS.

]]> ~SenoritaRin http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28620177/ http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28620177/ Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:14:38 PST It helps that I know it's all for the better, but you know, try telling your emotions that, they just don't listen... It's not even anything serious; I'm just not friends with someone anymore. It sounds silly but it suuuuure don't feel silly.

For those who haven't seen it, this is the incredibly hilarious Dane Cook skit on crying, which can make me laugh even in the midst of a full-fledged weepathon. He's crude but when he's behaving himself he's HILARIOUS: [link]

The other helpful thing has been, surprisingly enough, Jane Austen. There's something about the way she skewers human emotions and points out how hilarious they are that makes everything a little bit better. :3 This quote from Mansfield Park had me just dying with laughter: "I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people." Stuffy British humor might not seem hysterically funny to some people, but I literally laughed out loud. We all think we're just NEVER EVER gonna get over it and then whaddaya know, we do. Hehe.

In the next two weeks or so I hopefully won't have much time to devote to rethinking everything and wondering if I should have done anything differently, and then it'll be Christmas and I really won't have time for that, so by next semester I think I'll be in a good place about it all. Since Thanksgiving just passed I have to also mention that I'm really thankful that this is currently the absolute worst thing going on right now; life is good.

Oh! And I apologize for my last journal entry. My deviants were great but I don't want anyone to think I was throwing a pity party and begging for attention; I use my journal as just that, a journal, and while I very very much appreciate comments, I'm not begging for attention or anything. I'm a writer; I have to write things down for them to make sense. Sometimes I use my LiveJournal so nobody will see it but sometimes I prefer DA, probably for the possibility somebody will see and understand. Turned out to be a good move with the last one, I felt much better after all those comments. :3

Next thing you'll see from me on this account will hopefully (barring all disasters) be the final draft of my tunnels short story. It's got a lot of problems but I am exceptionally proud of this story because it's the first time I actually managed to see a story through all the way to the end and worked through all the problems instead of just abandoning it. I'll post it on DA because it makes me feel accomplished to have somewhere to put it.

Hope everybody is doing well, happy holidays and all that, go sing Christmas songs, and if you're in school, DO YOUR HOMEWORK!

]]> ~SenoritaRin http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28554060/ http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28554060/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:57:21 PST I wish there was a pill you could take to forget people. Or a pill to reverse actions you regret.
But there isn't.
How long is this going to fucking take to get over???
I thought I was right but maybe I was just vindictive. I wouldn't put it past me.
Fuck it.

EDIT: Oh I feel SOOOO much better than the angry above. I was being morose and mopey but then I ran into my friends and now I feel just really damn happy. Life is good. And there's nothing in the world better than having friends you can count on, friends you can freaking TRUST.(SAPPY ALERT! but it's true )God gave me some spectacular friends. He knows what He's doing.
Too bad I can't pack them up and take them with me when I leave!

I'm still keeping this journal up, though. I need to stop deleting my journals all the time. What am I afraid of, that some random ass person is going to come along and make fun of me? That somebody's going to criticize me for using my journal as a journal? Fuck em!

And besides, I will soon have more deviations for all my non-existent watchers, because it makes me feel accomplished to have somewhere to put them when I'm done. And maybe when I have more time I'll go troll the prose and find some watchers/watchees.

END OF RANT-NESS AND WHININESS!

]]> ~SenoritaRin http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28519784/ http://SenoritaRin.deviantart.com/journal/28519784/ Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:39:16 PST See, I had (as usual) written myself into a corner. I had too many conceits and no way to reconcile them into a cohesive whole, and I didn't even have explanations for the mythology of my own world, and my plot was slightly wandering and contrived and possibly nonexistent.
AND THEY SAVED IT! My lovely wonderful friends read my abominable and messy draft, then sat with me for well over three hours endlessly hashing out my story until finally, FINALLY, I had straightened it out into something that may just work.
It makes me sad in a way, because that is the kind of thing that I always hoped for and expected from DeviantArt, and the thing that I have absolutely never gotten. This is the first time in my life that I've actually learned how to work through the problems of a story, how to rewrite it. My one friend (who we shall call Batman although that is definitely not her real name in the interests of protecting privacy on the internetz ) is one of the most bizarrely, insanely creative people I have ever met. She marches to the beat of her own drum. Talking to her is sometimes dizzying because her logic is utterly nonsensical, but fascinating. She's also an aspiring comic book artist, and a damn good one too IMHO (and I'm as critical of my friends as I am of strangers when it comes to art). She's creative in that zany, original kind of way that I can never entirely achieve. I'm good at world-building and character development, but plot and everything that goes with that is entirely beyond me. Then my other friend, a voice major and lovely lovely singer, is incredibly analytical and organized. She can spot plot consistencies that I would never in a million years have noticed, and she thinks very logically and clearly. The fact that they are even willing to spend the time doing this, and that they loved the whole process as much as I did, is completely amazing to me.
I've never had creative friends like that before. I've known creative people, but I could never talk with them the way I can with these people, except in the context of a creative writing class when they do it because they have to.
It makes me sad to think I have only one more semester with these people and then I'll be leaving Arizona, first for England, then likely back to Colorado. That's depressing.
BUT I won't think about that, because for the moment I'm ecstatically happy - MY STORY IS SAVED! I think it might actually work in this revision!!
I have learned so much more from this one class than from every other creative writing class I've taken about how to really make a story work. Forcing us to revise our stories not once but twice forces us to work through the hairy knots we would otherwise have given up on and abandoned. I'm not saying I wrote the next Great American Novel or something; it's a mediocre story, and amateurish, but the point is, I MADE IT WORK.
Boo yah.

p.s. I just realized I revealed the state I live in, both of them. OH NOES SOMEBODY'S GOING TO SEARCH THE ENTIRE STATE OF ARIZONA AND FIND ME ZOMG
JK who cares, lol.

]]> ~SenoritaRin