escalate

escalate
One entry found for escalate.
Main Entry: es·ca·late
Pronunciation: 'es-k&-"lAt, ÷-ky&-
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -lat·ed; -lat·ing
Etymology: back-formation from escalator
intransitive verb : to increase in extent, volume, number, amount, intensity, or scope "a little war threatens to escalate into a huge ugly one -- Arnold Abrams"

Thats copypasta from here.

It's the word my mother uses to shut down any argument with me. I'm sick of it. I never want to hear it again.

For those of you in the know, I brought up the Friday Incident, and explained that I was hurt by the excuse offered; that I'd been duped, and how.

Evidently, I should be happy I was even allowed to go, and that some other excuse could have been given, and that I am wrong, that the excuse wasn't really one since we really did spend time together. You know, in the car.

This is impossible. I can't even talk about this, because I've been "sworn to secrecy" for all but a select few, and I'm keeping my word. Because...

I'm not even sure. It matters to me, though. It matters to me that I keep my word, and as much as I'm not always sure about my own feelings, I'm certain I'm right in being angry, as much as I can't show it right now. I feel incandescent with it. Warm. Sometimes, even lethal, like someone who's become immune to the poison they've been eating.

And since I'm upset, and I won't just drop it, I'm "escalating" the problem, and that I "always do that", and that I "have blinders on" if I can't see what's really going on.

No apology, of course.

I do wonder who's really wearing the blinders though. And I'm glad this isn't five years ago.

blarg

I woke up feeling rotten this morning. Or maybe it was the part where I was forced to wake up. At nine. After going to bed at four AM.

I have trouble sleeping at night, and I'm more susceptable to insomnia when I'm upset. Some of you may know why I'm having trouble sleeping, but I've got a restriction on who I talk to about that...

I still feel rotten.

I... I should probably stop starting everything with "I" too. But anyway, earlier this week I found an ad on craigstlist.com for a lego collection someone needed to get rid of, and I got the set. 26 pounds of legos. When I was little, you know, doll-playing-with age, I remember begging my mom for this new Lego set, some kind of underwater science fortress. I still remember standing in the KB Toy's at Perimiter, her asking me if that was what I really, really wanted? Didn't I want a new Barbie or something?

No. I what I wanted was this. I had to look it up online to find the name and picture, and just looking at it brought back all the memories of assembling and disassembling it. Ah, Legos. There is a set of that same kit for sale on ebay right now and I want it.

So, new collection of legos aside, since school got out things have been pretty miserable around here.

First, that whole fiasco last Friday, which I'm not supposed to talk about. I'm sure that's mostly what the insomnia is coming from. And the worst thing is, I can't be properly angry about it, because... Arg. I can't talk about it. *bangs head against wall*

And the other thing, which I can't really talk about in here either.

And the last thing, which is this costume I'm working on for a friend. She's going to the red carpet release event of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and she wanted the champagne colored dress Elizabeth wears. You know, with layers and layers of lace over satin and god knows what else, and while I do know how to sew, there are limits to what I know how to do, and how much can get done in a certain amount of time. So we settled on the Plum colored dress from the dinner with Barbossa, since there's an easy way to mod the dress I wore to the Pirate Fan Event. But my friend doesn't know how to sew, so I'm kind of coaching her... Which is a stress in and of itself, because it's a sewing machine, not a magic wand and there are certain ways to do things...

Oh, and Script Frenzy starts soon. But right now I feel too rotten to really pester anyone into doing it. So go look at it, if you want to.

I think I'm gonna go crawl back in bed now.

Ice Cream, Princesses, and Camwhoring: All in one night.

So, since Facebook kindly reminded me of the date, I went to Baskin Robbin's 31 Cent Ice Cream night with a pocket full of change. I got the pocket full of change while cleaning house, a chore that I loath, and have put off all semester with the excuse of reading textbooks and surfing the Internet (for class! I swear).

Actually going to get my cheap ice cream was more of a challenge than the above paragraph implies. The first one I went to, there was a huge line that I waited in, and then skipped out of (without even getting inside the bloody building) so that I could make it to Work Dinner, one of the highlights of my week. There, Brett did number magic (read: math) and told me I could have SIXTY scoops of ice cream for my twenty dollar bill. SIXTY. Isn't that the best?

Really, I had three once I located a Baskin Robbins not overwhelmed by the masses. Some kind of two-chocolate chocolate mousse, Reece's Cups, and PeanutButter-Chocolate Ice Cream.

While I was cleaning, I found a Barnes and Nobel gift card from my Uncle which I suspected still had money on it. Toting my faithful ice cream along with me for the ride, the nice lady at the store told me I could buy nine dollars and nine cents worth of books with the card I gave her.

So, of course I picked twenty dollars worth of books. Bought two mangas that started with the word "Princess". (At one point I realized I was standing in the Romance isle eating chocolate ice cream, and I just suddenly knew this was a very bad thing) One book was "Murder Princess" (something about bodyswitching between a Princess and a bounty hunter) and the other was "Princess Resurrection" (dude, she has a chainsaw and a princess dress right on the freaking cover. i love it).

/me makes chainsaw noises.

Right. So. Princesses.... Which leads to me coming home and looking for my tiara. Because I have one, somewhere. I found it, and it was all bent up, and then it wouldn't sit on my head right, and I looked like a drunk prom queen in a t-shirt which I thought was perfect for camwhoring. And then, I remembered I have WIGS. WIGS are even better for camwhoring. In fact, I have the exact same wig as the guy on the "How to become an obnoxious Internet camwhore in five easy steps" site. Warning: That site is a little coarse, but quite funny.

And now, I proudly present to you, for your viewing amusement, Bento-chan Camwhoring!!1!

Rofl all you want. I laughed too.

And because the two go hand in hand, like peanut butter and jelly, here's my

My friend Mal was even kind enough to look over my wishlist and offer me help with it:

[01:10] Bento: does it work? are you buying me something?
[01:10] Bento: i added a book thats worth 70 dollars. is that sort of like something that costs 300? or is the $199 replica of Jack Sparrow's compass better?
[01:11] mal: No, like.. a camera or fancy juicer or louis vitton handbag
[01:11] Bento: but i dont' like louis vuitton
[01:12] mal: Not relevant
[01:12] Bento: oh
[01:12] Bento: ok
[01:12] mal: It's about looking presumptuous enough that an admirer would buy it for you
[01:12] Bento: search: porche
[01:12] mal: There ya go, tiger
[01:14] Bento: so it has to be threehundred or more?
[01:14] mal: Yeah, at least a couple things
[01:14] mal: Like a 600 dollar camera
[01:14] mal: Or a really fancy bread oven
[01:14] mal: Or something
[01:14] Bento: er. crap.
[01:15] Bento: i don't know which one is a good camera
[01:15] mal: Something that costs that much
[01:15] Bento: ROFL
[01:15] mal: It's not that it's 'good', it's that it's expensive

Such a nice guy. Still, I couldn't find an expensive camera I liked, so it's all books and movies.

*wishlist fixed thanks to cliff 5-5-07*

The World's Oldest Profession.

This isn't a very work safe entry, especially where it comes to the links, so be forewarned.

I was surfing an imageboard last night when I noticed dozens of people enganged in a thread about... A Sailor Moon Wallscroll.

Sort of odd for an argument, so I opened the entire thread. It turns out that thats not just a wallscroll for sale, but two girls. Two girls who are acutioning a date with the both of them, where you can take pictures, chat, discuss costumes, ect, ect. Except, several people on the imageboard knew the girls for having done this before, and dinner and a date wasn't all that was included in the package deal.

In a sort of horrific curiosity I went to visit their website which is mostly about cosplaying and modeling pictures they've both taken. In a good deal of the pictures the girls are... underdressed, and in that state it's quite easy to see that they really need to eat more. I'm not sure which part bothered me more, that someone a year younger than me was selling herself and a friend (I assume) for the paltry sum of $354.99 (any sum is wrong, in my mind), or the fact that this girl, only a year younger than me almost stands to my height and weighs... 40 pounds less than me.

Granted, sometimes I think I'm fat and I gripe about it the same way other girls do, but when I say she weighs 40 pounds less than me I mean it with horror and revulsion. A few more pounds gone and she'll quit looking cute and start looking like a skeleton dipped in wax, hipbones no longer sharply defined but protruding, arms like sticks, face gaunt.

This bothers more than the rest, I think.

I didn't realize this till I flipped back to her page, but we share a birthdate.

How to Overthink Things

Dragons are pretty cool. All of them. But today I'm referring to the classic European kind, the ones hunted by Knights for the rescuing of Fair Maidens. That kind.

And I was thinking earlier, about a plot for a (maybe) short story about a Dragon and someone who might need rescuing (or so other people think) from him.

And it got me thinking, what exactly do Dragons want with Princesses (or Fair Maidens) anyway?

I'm trying to remember what story (if any specific one exists) I'm wanting to reference for this... But you know the general idea, don't you? The Dragon shows up, sometimes demands a sacrifice to appease his hunger, and some pretty local girl winds up chained to a post in the woods. Sometimes there's no demand, it's just that the Dragon has been eating your sheep and the girl is supposed to be a bribe, I guess. (That seems counterintuitive to me, but that could be because I grew up in Florida and when you live there you're instructed NOT to feed the Alligators, because then they learn to associate people with food, and when Alligators get big this is a serious problem). Now, if the Dragon (and there's two kinds in my mind) is a big dumb vicious animal, you're teaching it that "food can be found right here, easily" since the girl can't run, and now you're encouraging it to hang about. If the Dragon is smart (and likely talks, since the two traits run together often) you're still giving it free food and encouraging it to turn to menacing villagers as a way to get fed, and to hang about in hopes of more maidenly offerings.

Usually, there's a Knight in this kind of story and this is where he comes in. Now that the Princess has been staked out, and the Dragon has come for her it's the Knight's job to go save her...

Save her from what? If they're going to eat them (which I think we're supposed to assume they want to) why don't they just eat them there, at the stake? She's not going anywhere, and she's holding still, so the dragon could just cook her or eat her, pretty easily, but when the Knight goes to save the girl, she's always back at the Dragon's Lair.

Which is where this gets weird. At least for me. I mean, if he's gonna eat her, he might as well have already done it, right? So what is he bringing her back to his Lair for? Does he need her to use her small, human arms to reach something he can't get to? Is he making her clean his Lair for him? Is there some weird Dragon etiquette about only eating Maidens inside the Lair? Whats going on?

I'm not sure, at this point. It just seems really weird.

The best I could come up with, is that Dragons are probably reptilian, and that they can't produce their own body heat (which sounds hokey when combined with breathing fire). Now, if you've ever been to the pet store, you've seen those miniature electric blankets that you can get for your reptile pet's cages...And once your pet iguana lays on that thing, he's not moving. Ever. I had a friend who had one and the iguana just stayed there, forever, basking. I'm thinking, the Dragon kidnaps the Princess, not to eat her, but as a source of warmth. Maybe he has a nest, and he puts the Princess in there, like she's an electric blanket.

Of course, the first time he rolls over in his sleep he's gonna need a new Princess, which explains the Dragon going back to where he got the first one, and the repetitive sacrifices that draw the Knight's attention.

Rereading

Oh god. I'm rereading part of that previous Nanowrimo Novel, from 2004. It's archaic! The writing...it's...wow. *cringe*

At least all the period clothing is right. "Surcoat" is such an awesome word, don't you think? Surcoat, surcoat, surcoat. Surcoat!!

And I quote:

"Besides, without the mask he had given to them that night by the fire the whole ventrue would have been impossible."

Right. I've been a White Wolf fan too long.

Taking a break...

Well, I've been working on "For the Glory of Rome" since November 2006, and I think I'm finally getting to a point where the characters want to take a break, or I want to take a break, but basically we've been stalled at the same place for a few weeks now, and despite the fact that I've had the Dedication to Mars scene written for about a month I just can't get the characters to hurry up and get there... And there's so much else to do before the story is over.

On top of that Rourke and Shula came to visit and pestered me, since I never finished the sequel to their first book, which was also my first Nanowrimo. Had to go dig out my rough draft of the book to find the art a friend of mine did... Here's Rourke and Shula, from one of the final scenes in the book, and here's the prerequisite Fantasy Map. If you're wondering about his ears and feet, Rourke is actually a WereHyena. And the High King.