Birthday Madness in the Emerald City

So much to say, so little time...  Where to start?

Well, I'll start with what everyone is probably wondering about -- My celebrity crush is gone. I'd like to thank God in his mercy, and also dead week (which allows no time for trawling youtube for more talk shows and interviews). So that's over. I still like his music, but I've moved on to more edifying activities like writing, reading my bible, and listening to the Worldview Academy podcast (which just happens to be hosted by my two favorite speakers, Bill Jack and Jeff Baldwin. (and because I know that Jeff Baldwin and Bill Jack always mock argue about whose name should go first, I've just alleviated that problem. Ha!))

Okay then. Glad that's all cleared up. I also breezed through my finals - Japanese, International Relations, and Intro to Communications. I'm registered for my new classes, and I'm excited to be heading home for spring break. The house where I stay has the girls switch rooms and room mates every quarter, so I'm currently sittin in my room at a super-clean desk with only a laptop and a desk chair. It no longer feels like my desk. There are no knicknacks on the windowsill, the desk lamp is gone, my printer has been packed out, and I no longer have snacks in my desk drawer. So no roasted almonds while I study. Of course, since I've finished with school for the quarter, I don't really need the roasted almonds anymore...

Additionally, I have been plotting all the many -- EH??

Sorry for the outburst, but the mildly depressing rain that had been falling from the ubiquitous Seattle grey skies has just upgraded (downgraded?) to slushy snow. If that causes any problems with public transit tomorrow I will be most dissatisfied, since I have a bus to catch home.

Speaking of public transit, I'm glad that I didn't have to take a bus back down to Vancouver to celebrate the birthday of a good friend of mine -- because he came up here instead! Besides, I had enough bothering me as I attempted to craft a unique birthday present. It didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted, but... well, shall I start at the beginning?

The Righteous Empire of Brendan was turning 21, and being awesome (because all of my friends are awesome), he wanted to spend his birthday with me and a couple other close buddies of whom I also happen to be fond. So, he stuffed his car up with Kristi, Jirah, and my little sister (who is doubly awesome since she is not only my friend but also related to me by blood), and drove all the way up to seattle. This involved waking at an early hour and driving up to get here by approximately 10 AM.

Tragically, I stayed up late the night before and into the early morning hours trying to finish the lovely birthday present for Brendan the awesome. So I overslept, had to quickly finish up the present by printing it, and then take a shower. However, having overslept, I didn't get a chance to blow dry my hair before they arrived. Kristi, Jirah, and my sister came up to get me, and we headed out into the blustery wetness that is Seattle during the winter months.

Here's the birthday present that gave me such trouble:

 

 ...yeah. It doesn't seem like it would take awhile, but it took a really long time, and I didn't even get the chance to color it. I'll probably redo it, which will involve fixing the resolution (which I wrote at, like, 3AM and so it is not particularly coherent), coloring it, and making the speech bubbles and text size bigger so that it is more readable. My friend Brendan was the United States, I was Norway, and Kristi was the United Kingdom. The rest of the people were all caricatures of the people from our Model United Nations team/class/club/thing at Clark College that we were closest to. It was sort of like a big group of buddies that did Political Science-y things together and went on awesome trips, and that's where Kristi and I met Brendan, and there are a lot of inside jokes involved with it, which is why I chose this for the present.

Anyway, after the excitement of completely bombing the present by trying to print all the panels on one page (rendering the text so tiny that it became unreadable) and racing out to the car with still-wet hair, we took off for downtown Seattle to explore. First we parked and wandered into a food court area near the Pacific Science Center, and had Subway sandwiches. I also had a small mango peach fruity drink thing that probably had way too much sugar to qualify as a smoothie. After that, we walked towards downtown-ish, with the intent of wandering around pike place.

 It was freezing. The wind chill factor was remarkable - and not in a good way. So our first stop ended up being a random Starbucks. Which isn't too bad, I suppose, since they have hot drinks and started in Seattle. Then we headed out again, and I believe (it's been awhile so bear with me, my chronological order could be all shuffled about) we ended up finding an awesome military surplus store. It had a bunch of gas masks, flight suits, bomber jackets, and some fun parachute bags and also medic bags. 'twas fun to check out all the stuff in there, look at the dress uniforms, eyeball the camouflage, attempt to read the Japanese scribbled (calligraphy and scribbling in Japanese are not all that different) on an old flag, and then duck back into the freezing cold, where we saw some people from UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) casing the street. 

Being foolish and susceptible to pitying folks who are standing out in the freezing cold, I was like "Hey! UNICEF! :D" to which they replied "Yeah! we are UNICEF! let us talk to you for half an hour about UNICEF and what we are doing to help the children in Somalia!"  Which, admittedly, is not a bad thing, but the only person who could actually sign up for their "ten dollars a month" deal was Brendan, because he was the only one of us over twenty...  

I felt pretty ashamed that I'd somehow roped Brendan into standing on a cold street for half an hour and then getting guilted into giving them ten dollars a month... ON HIS BIRTHDAY. On the bright side, the UNICEF people were friendly, and also funny. So after that, we went about another block and leapt into yet another Starbucks because it was (as I said) freezing outside. So then we bought some more drinks, and then ended up wandering over to Pike Place market. We looked at the flying fish, saw some funny t-shirts, and then after some interesting ventures into clothes shops (Brendan was thrilled at this development... not), we found a really awesome sci-fi comic book shop of awesomeness and probably spent a good hour looking at all the stuff there and posing with the life-size cardboard cutouts of Spock, Dr. Who, and Darth Vader. It was fun!

It was probably more than an hour, but time flew and it's been so long that I really don't remember. So after that, it was time to head back. So we wandered back to the car, stopping by the food court-y thing on our way back to find restrooms and possibly more Starbucks. Then we headed back to my house, and then go to dinner because it was the Women's social and we were supposed to take all the guys from the guy's house out to eat, so I dragged Brendan and Company along. We went back after dinner instead of going roller skating and hung out talking until around 10 PM, which was when Brendan and company departed.

All that to say, it was tons and tons of fun, and I hope that Brendan had a good time because I know I did. And hopefully they will come up and visit me again, because I miss all my friends from Vancouver. While it's nice to make friends up here, I don't have a whole lot in common with most of the girls here. I'm a political science and international relations nerd who likes to learn foreign languages, make stupid jokes, read sci-fi and would rather watch an action-adventure flick than a chick flick any day. Romantic comedies are nice, but I'd rather see some action. (Not to say that I don't want plot, but really... how much more plot does a romantic comedy have?)  I guess technically it would be more accurate to say that I would rather watch a Disney animated feature more than either of those, and I also watch anime and read manga. And American comics too. I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one who reads comics between both the girl's AND guy's houses.

But I digress. I miss my friends, and I hope they come visit me more often. Maybe then I won't have time to develop celebrity crushes. (Yes, I just blamed their absence for my momentary lapse of sanity. I prefer to think of it as "deflection"...)

Well, since my hand is cramping up from typing so much, I should probably call it quits. Hope you enjoyed this post more than my last one. (Which I might be tempted to delete but... well, it's real, it's me, and I guess it's a good way to keep me humble. Even if it is a total embarrassment...)

So long, and fare well! Or should I say...

Live Long and Prosper!

The Infamous Ailment Known as "Celebrity Crush"

Seriously, they need to categorize celebrity crushes as some sort of psychological disorder, or at least a disease - because I want a cure. They should put that at the top of the list, and bump down the "find a cure for the common cold" down to #2 on the 'priorities, but not really priorities' list of diseases to cure. It's driving me nuts.

As I rock out to The Phantom of the Opera (easier than one might imagine, I assure you), I decided that with my newfound freedom that is Friday night, I would write in my blog again since I did promise to do so. See, the homework crush really hits home on Saturday afternoon of the weekend for me, so I have to find my freedom early in the weekend or I'll end up not having time to happy dance over a lack of homework. So consider this post my happy dance. I could spend more time youtube stalking my celebrity crush, but I'm really trying to avoid it since it's a total embarrassment to me.

In fact, why don't I just talk about that for a bit. I thought it was silly and a little bit cute when I found out my Japanese professor had a celebrity crush on Johnny Depp. But you know what? AT LEAST THEY WERE THE SAME AGE! That's what really bugs me about having a celebrity crush-- most of the time celebrity crushes affect young people who are not yet old enough for a serious commitment and so they have these sort of far-off ideas of romance and stuff that keeps them afloat until they are old enough to realize that most celebrities are creepers and not very nice and it would be better to find someone who makes a decent wage rather than trying to find that movie star -- especially since they'll probably just end the marriage before too long, since most of them are really messed up by Hollywood.  (Apologies for the run-on sentence, I don't want to go to the effort of fixing it since this is basically just a brain barf on a page kind of blog)

 The way I see it, you can't find fulfillment without Christ, and that probably hits home the hardest when you have everything but feel like you have nothing. Which is probably why so many celebrities have such messed up lives, because they're going crazy trying to find that thing that is missing from their lives, but they can't find it in other people. As a wise man once said, "Sorry Hollywood, but one needy person plus one needy person equals two needy people. The only way to true fulfillment is through the perfect love of Christ."

But I digress. Most celebrity crushes seem to be an affliction for 13-year-old girls, causing them to fawn over 30-year-old (or older) movie stars. And that, my friends, is just creepy. So of course, I always prided myself in never having fallen for one of those silly celebrities, especially since they were all like 20 years older than me. And then... GACKT (who happens to be 38, making him exactly twice my age... eep!).

It's really frustrating to have a celebrity crush, since I'm not exactly sure how it developed. I've been trying to make it into a good thing, but that's only made it worse. Now I know that there are people out there who will go look this guy up if I don't provide some sort of reference for you guys, so I'll go grab a few of the videos/photos I found while internet stalking this poor guy.  (Poor guy because he's a celebrity, stalked, non-christian, etc. Not poor monetarily -- the guy is loaded.)

Aaaaaaaand, did I forget to mention that he is from Japan? Ahaha, I have to laugh at the irony. My Japanese teacher wanted to teach Japanese in America and has an American celebrity crush. I want to go to Japan and help lead people to Jesus and also teach English, and I end up with a Japanese celebrity crush. It's a painful irony.

But mostly I like his voice, because he has a great one. So now I shall show you what I mean. (Warning - he sings rock music, and some of his stuff is pretty heavy.) Seriously, he has a really good voice. I'm posting a live video to prove it, because if you can sound good live then of course you can sound good in studio. I love the strength and clarity of his tone, and I love his vibrato. He stylizes occasionally, but I also just really like the overall sound of his songs too. I tend to like stuff that's on the almost metal-y end of the rock spectrum, so I really like listening to his stuff.

He also dances! (and he's way better at it than I am)  (PS: the following song is one GACKT did for the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. The song is about being a cyborg and how he doesn't want to be controlled by the machines in him)

And he acts! He recently played in a movie that was done here in the states called "Bunraku." It was rated R for violence (and I think 1 swear word), but I thought it was a really, really well written movie. I've only ever seen 1 other rated R movie, and I liked this one better. Then again, the other R movie was Black Hawk Down and it did not have a happy ending, so maybe I'm just doubly biased into thinking this movie was better than it really was. However that works, the fact remains that I was impressed. They managed to hook you and keep you interested in a story that had two protagonists, and you never even learned the name of one protagonist. (It's like a huge no-no in movies to have more than one protagonist - it confuses the audience. it's also a big no-no to have a protagonist that's hard to relate to - ie, a guy with no name) But it was still a great film! Plus it had an interesting premise - Post-apocalyptic world where guns are outlawed so everyone fights with fists or swords (hence the violence - it's a lot more up-close and personal).

But I digress. Or, I could show you a movie trailer...

 

And I just really loved this scene in the movie. These guys come in right after Yoshi (played by GACKT) has showed up at his uncle's Japanese restaurant. They're messing up the place, threaten the uncle, and then make a pass at his cousin. Yoshi (GACKT) has had enough.

 

 (Oh, by the way, JIN is one of the 7 ways of the samurai. It means trying to keep from fighting until it becomes necessary.)

And I mentioned earlier that this was a celebrity crush that I was trying to turn into a good thing that just turned into a worse thing, right? Yes well, I was starting to get really interested in what was going on with this singer GACKT dude but I didn't want to get too obsessed because I have vehement distaste for the whole celebrity crush thing. It's childish, in my opinion. So, in an attempt to keep myself from turning this into a crush I decided to pray for him, since he is not a christian. Now, I don't know if God has decided that GACKT will be an 'object of mercy' (Romans 9:16-ish and onward) or not, so I'm just praying that if Gackt is one of the people whom God has selected, that God would just put people around him who would lead him to a relationship with our savior. But to my dismay, I discovered that apparently praying for someone is not a good way to stop thinking about them, and so I ended up just liking the guy more -- and praying for the guy just makes my feelings stronger. NOOOOOOOOO!!!! So now I officially have my first celebrity crush, and it's all because I decided to pray for him. I'm not going to blame this on God, but I am a bit disgruntled that this happened.

Oh well. Who knows? Maybe my prayers will end up working, or at least get something moving in the heavenlies. I mean, even if God can get some christians into Japan's music industry I would be happy. They have no christian music, which makes it sad for me because I would like to listen to uplifting, christian Japanese songs but they don't have any of those, unlike in the US. Besides, God knows the Japanese people need all the prayers they can get. Their country has the highest rates of Manic Depressive disorder in the entire world AND they have the highest suicide rate of any country. Only 5% of the population claim to be christian, and the culture is very, very secular. So lately my prayers have gone a little something like this:

"Dear God this is stupid but I have a stupid celebrity crush and I pray that you would bring people who know you around GACKT, and that if it is in your will that you would soften his heart towards you God, and I pray for the rest of the people of Japan that you would bring more of them to you and that you would strengthen and encourage your believers in Japan and lastly if you could help me a little with my stupid homework I would appreciate it..."

I'm just glad that God isn't a grammar freak or I would never make it past the pearly gates. I swear most of my prayers are mental run-on sentences.

So there you have it, folks. Another filler chapter (update? post? whatever these blog thingies are called) that I wasn't planning on writing. But hey! It's the weekend, and I'm FREE TO WRITE (blogs or otherwise) for another few hours and then I will disappear into the abyss that is sleep and then I will get up, do some writing or drawing, and about mid-afternoon Saturday I will reluctantly begin my homework.

...really? Wow, I just have no life...

...Sorry. Sometimes I just look at myself and laugh at how pathetic I am. This, my friends, is one of those times. Well, this unfortunately celebrity-crushed girl is going to try and find something to do that does NOT involve youtube stalking a certain celebrity for more of his talk-show interviews... 

Yeah. Definitely not.

At least, not for TOO long...






...'cmon guys, that was a joke. You're supposed to laugh, not stare at me and "heh" awkwardly.

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