{"id":456,"date":"2004-04-05T16:35:47","date_gmt":"2004-04-05T21:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/04\/05\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-19T20:06:29","modified_gmt":"2005-10-20T00:06:29","slug":"at-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2004\/04\/05\/at-school\/","title":{"rendered":"At School"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Down at school now. Should be grading assignments, but I’ll write an entry here first.<\/p>\n

I was searching for a particular entry last night, so was going through my archives skimming through what I’d written before. I was struck by the fact that a good deal of it was still interesting to me — not all, by any means, but enough. This is good. It makes me feel like this is somehow worthwhile to be doing. I’ve never managed to keep up any sort of diary for a long time, though I have tried at various points in my life to do so.<\/p>\n

When I was 10 or so I began a diary, but as so often happens, began to feel that it was a chore to keep up. I felt that I needed to keep track of a good many things on a daily basis (I had an extensive system of symbols to represent the day’s weather and to grade the day’s overall quality for myself) and soon began slacking off. It kept up sporadically for a little longer and then tapered off altogether. I should dig it out and look it over.<\/p>\n

When I was 14 and went to England for a month, I kept a journal to record the experience. It was not a spontaneous decision on my part; the exchange program I was on required it and we had to hand our journals in at the end. But I was glad then and am glad now that it was a requirement, else I’d have to rely on my memory and my spotty picture taking for details of that trip. <\/p>\n

The summer I turned 17, I went to St. Paul’s advanced studies program, and there again we were required to keep a journal. I wrote in it extensively — there was very little else to do in the evenings other than read, as I had no television and these were the days before a computer and internet access were ubiquitous at any sort of educational facility. At the end of the 6 week session, we had to hand in the journals. We were supposed to get them back at the end, but when I went to pick mine up, I found it had not yet been looked at. And so I left it there. I will always regret that now, because I never did get it back and now it’s gone.<\/p>\n

And so now I have this. Diary, journal, blog, whatever you want to call it. So many people have such different definitions of those terms, I can’t even begin to identify it for people.<\/p>\n

It provides a fairly accurate surface representation of what’s going on with me. Enough for me to read between the lines and remember what was really going on at the time I wrote things. But surface it is, and surface it will probably remain. <\/p>\n

I’m undecided as to whether that is a good or a bad thing. The things I don’t write about are the things I don’t talk about either. Would they be more compelling? Would it be good if they were? If the goal was to be gritty and open, to shock people with honesty and truth… but is it? I’ve read journals, both online and offline, where this seems to occur. And I appreciate the intimate glimpse into someone else’s thoughts and emotions. But I don’t think I’m that kind of person. It’s not the audience or the public revelation that matters so much as I feel intensely silly writing out words highly charged with passion or pathos.<\/p>\n

I’m always reminded of this quote from Anne of Green Gables<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Ruby Gillis is rather sentimental. She puts too much lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too little. Jane never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she had to read it out loud. Jane’s stories are extremely sensible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Call me Jane.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, musing over and back to your regularly scheduled random crap.<\/p>\n

Bob and I went to see Movin’ Out on Saturday. I knew very little of it before we went. This was partially purposeful and partially laziness. It was not quite what I’d expected; yes, I really knew so<\/i> little about it that I did not know that it was all dance and no dialogue. But it was good. One of the two women sitting behind us found it confusing — she couldn’t follow the story or figure out what the characters were doing. I’m not sure if this was because she had not read the blurb in her program or if she had read it and still did not understand. I had, so unfortunately I cannot say if it was followable without that small guidance. I can say definitively that it was very easy to follow with. Out of the main cast, Eddie was definitely the most charged up (I think it was the understudy, but I’m not entirely positive.) and excited, so came off the best; Brenda came off worst, but was not really bad. There were a few costumes which I absolutely adored, especially this one dress which was about knee length and sort of a pale blue and yellow mix. I want a dress like that!<\/p>\n

This weekend I’m going to have to go see Ella Enchanted. From the previews and the general sense of outrage from the book’s fans (I’ve read it, but it’s not a passion) the script bears as much relation to the book as, well, the Princess Diaries did to its source, but Hugh Dancy is in as Prince Charmont and he’s a new obsession. (He’s also in the new Arthur movie coming out later this summer.)<\/p>\n

I also finally downloaded and watched the first episode of the J-Dorama Long Vacation. It is generally recommended as the gateway drug to that particular addiction, and it did start off quite promising. (A bride running down the street in full outfit is always good for a dramatic beginning.) I’ve still been looking here and there to see if anyone has Bewitched in Tokyo, but no luck so far. My hope is now that it’s out on DVD there will at least be Chinese fansubs floating around. I’m not sure if my Japanese knowledge is good enough for it or not — watching Sailor Moon R over the weekend made me realize how very far I’ve come in my understanding, but I still have a long way to go.<\/p>\n

Marathoning through SM and SMR was a nostalgic experience, even though the vast majority of both seasons I had never seen in the original Japanese. I hadn’t really watched any Sailormoon (not counting the live action) at all since 1999(?) or so (When the S dub was first broadcast on Cartoon Network) and none of the first two seasons since well before that. But it made me remember coming home from Middlebury to watch the tapes that had recorded while I was away, watching that ‘Best of’ tape that Amy made in the basement with everyone, and holing up in one of the TV rooms at the New Dorms to watch Mimi’s raw episodes and get the end of SMR after DiC had stopped dubbing. Those were the first unsubtitled anime I watched; at that point I was still so unused to listening to Japanese dialogue that I had a great deal of trouble separating out any of the words. By the end of it I could identify all of their names as well as a couple of words\/phrases (ie, Minna, henshin yo!) and absolutely nothing else.<\/p>\n

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Down at school now. Should be grading assignments, but I’ll write an entry here first. I was searching for a particular entry last night, so was going through my archives skimming through what I’d written before. I was struck by the fact that a good deal of it was still interesting to me — not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,1,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}