I have a statue of a dragon playing a guitar on my desk, and you (most likely) do not.

Having finished my sixth semester, I feel it is my responsibility to update you on how my studies are going. Primarily to ensure that my "blog output" for this month does not come out to null, even if my attempts to keep up with other people I know who keep blogs (read: Kathleen) have been laughable.

I got to write a paper about John Woo for my Hong Kong Cinema class. I got to talk about The Matrix, Reservoir Dogs, Equilibrium, gun kata, Samuel L. Jackson, Cowboy Bebop, and assault weapons all in the same paper. I finished the class with a perfect A, but the instructor has a reputation as an easy grader.

I got to make a joke about Jack and his giant beanstalk when asked to analyze a fairy tale with Freudian psychoanalytic methodology in the Literary Theory class. I ended up with a B for this one.

All in all, a 3.5 GPA for the semester, which is the best I've managed in a long while.

Tentative schedule for Fall 2010 goes like this:

MONDAY/WEDNESDAY
9:30 - 10:45 English-372 Folk Literature
11:00 - 12:15 English-400 Intro to English Linguistics

TUESDAY/THURSDAY
2:00 - 3:15 English-233 Creative Writing (mostly taken for shits and giggles - the instructor is friendly to sci/fi and fantasy, so it should be fun)
3:30 - 4:45 English-452 Shakespeare

ONLINE (SO WHENEVER THE HELL I FEEL LIKE IT)
Commun-350 Human Communication and Technology

If I feel like it? I don't have to be awake until 1:30 in the afternoon for half the week. The other half, I can go home when most people are starting their lunch breaks. Be jealous.


But onto things of slightly more import.

Cody and I managed to score both Red Dead Redemption and Heavy Rain without even having to pull out our wallets. Or indeed, anything else we typically store in our pants.

I haven't had a chance to play either, but I've watched my roommates' initial forays into Red Dead Redemption, and I can tell you that there is no satisfaction quite like that to be gained from shooting a man off his horse with your revolver while maintaining control of your own horse while racing alongside a speeding train. I'll be speaking in Wild West-isms for a good week straight once I play this.


Saw Iron Man the second and was well-entertained. The first film is probably the stronger one, but so long as Robert Downey Jr is going around being smarmy, drunk, and shooting missiles from his wrists, I'm happy. Sam Rockwell was fun to watch as the hapless Justin Hammer and Don Cheadle is more or less an improvement over the apparently-a-douchebag Terrence Howard.

Also, I try to avoid using this blog as a venue to tell you which women "I would totally do", but jeez, Jon Favreau made the right decision to choreograph all of Scarlett Johansson's fight scenes as Black Widow in mostly slow motion.


I was really pumped for Star Wars: Allies, the midway point in the Fate of the Jedi book series. Grandmaster of the New Jedi Order Luke Skywalker and Sith Master Gavar Khai, are forced into teaming up to take down a malicious Force-using creature called Abeloth awaiting in the Maw, a cluster of black holes. What I had hoped for was 350 pages of just these two guys, Jedi and Sith, kicking ass and taking names across the galaxy, saying stuff like "I like your moves" and "I like your style". The cover even suggests that this is the case.



I did not get this. What I did get was their two kids, Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker and Sith Saber Vestara Khai making kissy-faces at each other and dance around the issue of whether or not they want to go to prom together. And then the battle with Abeloth takes, like, four pages.

I'm very glad that I work for a place that lets me borrow these books instead of paying money for them.


And I'm sure you want my thoughts on the House finale. It was pretty great. I just hope House and Cuddy manage to stay together this time around.

Allow me to leave you with this:

Whatever you do, don't blink.

I'm boxed in here. I seriously have trouble driving anywhere, because literally every single road is under construction. Excessive roadwork on every one of my typical routes to work. I'm seriously out of ideas other than saving enough money to by myself one of these and just flying to work.

On Wednesday I got called into work. We were playing host to the famous romance novelist Debbie Macomber. She writes books about God and knitting, so you may be able to guess what the audience was like. Three hundred plus 50-60 year old women all filling up the cafe area. Every chair in the store had been reassigned to the event, and there still wasn't enough room. The author herself seemed like a fairly nice old lady, but the evening was not terribly fun. Complaints that were lodged to me:

- They managed to miss the handing out of wristbands marking their position in the signing line despite having them at the top of the stairs before heading down. Fortunately, most people just got into line wherever they felt like it. A fight or two might have broken out, but most of them would have had to sit down and catch their breath after the first punch.

- The fact that Macomber started at about 6:40, when the event promotion clearly stated that she'd be starting at seven. She wanted to get started and get started she did - these authors have a certain momentum. She spoke for only about fifteen minutes anyway and started signing books. The whole decision process was out of my hands you could say, so yell at her.

- We did not account for the large amount of people with standing/walking problems. They were ushered to the front to the best of our ability.

We went an hour past close so that everyone could get their book signed. Got paid for essentially standing around, but still. Crazy old women. There was a particularly patient gentleman who had been somehow (and I don't want to think too hard about how) roped into getting his wife's book signed as she couldn't be there herself. There's a marriage that is either on shaky ground (speaking from a masculine standpoint) or fucking ironclad. When he finally got his wife's books signed, the old ladies behind him assured him that he was a great husband and that the good Lord would bless him.

I don't know, maybe God's a fan of the books.


And speaking of patience paying off, I finally got to register for classes next fall. I've only selected one so far, but it's an important one. ENGLISH 452 - SHAKESPEARE. Required for every single English major basically, this is the first year that I've been able to catch it - indeed, harpooned it like some great thrashing sea beast. I dunno how the class will turn out, but at least I'll finally have it behind me.

brb, seizing the means of production

Thank God the Daily Show is back today. Now I know what opinions I should have about politics and the SOCIALIZT NAZI HELTHCARS. I need him to help me think of snappy comebacks for people who are trying to talk politics on Facebook of all places. I really don't need to know every time someone joins a "obamas stupid lol" group, but there it is, clogging up my newsfeed.

Okay, so the newsfeed shows me a lot of stuff I don't need to know.

In any case.

Nothing happened over Spring Break. My hours at work shot up which is nice, but deprived me of most of my free time. Spare time was spent bumming around Brewing Grounds, which I believe is where Cody sleeps these days. I wish I had something of substance to write about on the subject of Spring Break, but the material's just not there.

I did learn that when we're talking retail, customer loyalty is proportional to the size of the discount you're offering them, and customer civility is inversely proportional to same.

I also learned through a new contact that the English major program is actually super easy. Take the classes and you're done. No thesis paper, no speech, no nothing. I'm kind of disappointed in a "is that all you got?" sort of way. My History Major Friend has to apparently write a whole textbook and my Art School Roommate I guess needs to have a portfolio of his work stretching all the way back to finger paints in kindergarten. I just attend a seminar and, I assume, go to the alley behind the Open Pantry at Oakland and Hartford and take from a dumpster the manila envelope that contains my degree.



The vast majority of you should probably just leave now.

I went to a gaming tournament over the weekend. For a collectible card game that I haven't played in years. Didn't win a single game, which is about how I expected it to go down. It's way easier to swarm the field with monsters now. Time was, it was a miracle if you had even three cards on the field at once. Stardust Dragon showed up way more than I expected it to, because people are now packing Starlight Road, a mechanic which would never have been used in my day.

Some kid with a Different Dimension deck even muttered "newb" under his breath. I was top-decking Fissure to destroy a Jinzo, finally allowing me to use Call of the Haunted to take back my Summoned Skull while you were still wetting the bed, kiddo.

But I did some decent trades. And the fact that I own a copy of Archlord Kristya, which in addition to being one of the best cards in the game right now is also worth INCREDIBLE amounts of cash on eBay right now helps me sleep at night.



Most Gundam fans are familiar with the Gundam Wing series above all others, and many of my readers are no different. Bandai is finally gracing us with a high-end 1/100 scale Master Grade model from the series, in the form of the titular machine, the Wing Gundam.



It's lovely. The Wing is probably my favorite After Colony design and this is the first time that the series has gotten a Master Grade model, not counting the Endless Waltz Wing Zero which Adam has or the Katoki Redesigned Wing which is just a "what-if" sort of thing. Someone buy it for me.



It transforms and everything!


/Post for post's sake.

It's like going to a birthday party for someone you don't even know or acknowledge the existence of.

Christmas has been lovely so far. Forced my family to watch Up on DVD for Christmas Eve, which of course was an excellent time investment. Tomorrow I return again to the homeland for a rare gathering of mother's side of the family, given that they are mostly not incarcerated or haggling over divorce papers this year.

Oh, what's that? You want to know what Santa brought me?



Not pictured:
-The Collected Achewood Volume 1: Worst Song, Played on Ugliest Guitar
-hardcover copy of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
-Some paints and paintbrushes
-A book on ancient Japanese gaming
-some cash
-a package filled with snacks and candy and various junk food

The three model kits are substantial time investments. I've gotten a small start on the Gundam F91 (Harrison Martin custom) in the center, but the Unicorn and Sinanju are probably not getting done until the new year. The cavernous box of the Sinanju and its contents reflect this:



That's 22 part trees there - the gray ones are for the inner mechanical frame, the red and black ones form the exterior armor, and the remaining pieces form equipment like the shield, fuel tanks, and Beam Tomahawks - easily 400+ pieces that each have to be delicately cut out with cutters and trimmed with the hobby knife or sandpaper.

In other news, grades have slowly but surely made their way online. British Literature is an A-, which means she approved of my making fun of the 1930s-era English elite and general cynicism. You and me, Dr. Nygaard.

I have to work both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Grumble grumble. Not that I think I'd be doing much any way.

You should probably go

As I started writing this entry, I went and checked PAWS to remind me what my class titles were. And one of the closed classes totally opened up! Real lucky timing here. Shakespeare teacher basically said that he was so awesome and had too many students looking to get into his totally kick-ass class, so too bad, you snooze you loose. Which is fine I guess, but you guys should really offer more sections of a class that is required for EVERY ENGLISH MAJOR. Schedule for Spring 2010, semester the sixth, looks like this.

MONDAY:
12:00 - 1:50 ENGLISH 316: World Cinema - "Hong Kong Cinema"
2:00 - 3:15 ENGLISH 366: Non-Fiction Prose - "The (Not So) New Journalism"

TUESDAY:
9:30 - 10:45 ENGLISH 378: Survey of Current Literary and Cultural Theory
11:00 - 12:15 JMC 214: Advertising in American Society
2:00 - 3:15 COMPSCI 150: Survey of Computer Science

WEDNESDAY:
12:00 - 1:50 ENGLISH 316: World Cinema - "Hong Kong Cinema"
2:00 - 3:15 ENGLISH 366: Non-Fiction Prose - "The (Not So) New Journalism"

THURSDAY:
9:30 - 10:45 ENGLISH 378: Survey of Current Literary and Cultural Theory
11:00 - 12:15 JMC 214: Advertising in American Society
2:00 - 3:15 COMPSCI 150: Survey of Computer Science

And I'm totally in the same class as my roommate! I have a guaranteed friend in Computer Science! This sort of thing never happens, as all my friends are in lame majors like History or Art. I am way excited.

All my papers are done. One was on dead babies, another was on House and how everyone lies, the third was on the inevitability of death and the final one was on LGBT people. One of these things is not quite like the others. All that remains are two traditional exams on Monday and then we're done.

I beat Assassin's Creed 2 (the rest of the sentence is spoiler country), and I've gotta say that it is possibly the best game I've ever played that let's you both hang out with Niccolo Macchiavelli and assassinate Pope Alexander VI.


So I ring up three copies of the latest issue of Shonen Jump for this guy, and I know full well that the only reason you buy the magazine in bulk is to sell the free Yugioh card at ridiculous prices. So I casually call him on it. He confirms this and proceeds to tell me that they're "finally making the God cards".

HOLY DAMMIT CHRISTMAS WHAT THE FRICK.

It's been a while since I was on the Yugioh "scene" (this would be about High School), but I remember the God cards. They were introduced in the show as the most powerful cards in all existence and while they were printed for the actual game, they didn't have the actual effects and abilities written on the card and were thus not tournament legal. But the cards they are giving away now are totally legal and the effects are totally listed in tiny 5-point font. What the hell, Konami? You used to be cool.

The blog is free, nobody's forcing you to read this.

If you say you never wanted to go to school at Hogwarts, you're a liar.

I think it would be really cool to live in jolly ol' Britain. A proud nation, they invented the cat and have had running water for nearly ten years now. You can get "crisps" and smoke "fags" and hang out with Ian McKellan and have tea time. They'll let you say "fuck" on TV and won't even think it's weird that you like football (you Yanks know it as soccer).

My British Lit professor, who is from some region of Europe, threw us all a very British Christmas celebration for our last class. (I can't place her nationality, but I know she says "right" the same way that Simon Pegg does, kinda like "roight") We had Christmas Cake, Christmas crackers, Stilton cheese, and even Eddie Izzard on DVD. She hung up a Union Jack and everything. It was actually way fun as far as English courses go.


I got hired at Borders about 2 1/3 years ago now and since then, I have been the only person added to the Inventory Processing Team - nobody has been hired since me. Clearly this is because they knew I couldn't ever be topped, but they had to resort to drastic measures and hire a new guy to help deal with holiday shipments this season.

You cannot imagine how long I have awaited this moment. The chance to take somebody under my wing, to show someone the ropes, to work with someone who doesn't go to bed at seven in the evening. The new hire turns out to be about as old as my dad. I do not feel comfortable educating anyone who is more than twice my age, so my dreams were somewhat dashed.

Which is not to say I don't like the new hire. He's attentive, eager to pick up the job, and has a last name for a first name, which is considerably badass. Do you ever see anyone named, for example, Remington or Dobson? No, because they're all outside getting into car chases, stealing jewels, and making out with gorgeous women.


I really want to see The Princess and the Frog, because I am a little girl consider myself an amateur animation aficionado. But I need someone to come with me because there are too many uncomfortable connotations to a grown man with long dark hair sitting by himself in a theater filled with little children.

Of course, this is why we have DVDs.

For watching movies in the comfort of your own home, I mean.

Not the other thing.

Gun = Jumped

Woo half snow day!

Even though here on the East Side, it was very unnecessary! I can look out my window right now and it's perfectly fine out.

I would have used the time to write my TV Studies final paper, but the professor extended the deadline. By a week. So yeah, won't be working on that for a while. I was supposed to do a presentation on my Film Paper today regarding Christian Metz, semiotics, and the Seventh Seal, but that's not happening either! So I could have actually gone to my morning class instead of cutting it to work on said presentation. Frustration.

So I spent my snow day lounging on the computer, taking roommate to his school that didn't close down, and buying groceries. Will probably play Assassin's Creed 2 tonight and maybe read what is sure to be the worst Star Wars novel ever.

I did work on my schedule today! As predicted, most of my classes are filled, but hopefully I can whine enough and they'll let me in. It's starting to look like Spring 2010 will be going a little something like this.

Monday
12:00 - 1:50 ENGLISH 316 World Cinema - "Hong Kong Cinema"
2:00 - 3:15 ENGLISH 366 Non-Fiction Prose - "The (Not-So) New Journalism"
3:30 - 4:45 COMPSCI 150 Survey of Computer Science

Tuesday
9:30 - 10:45 ENGLISH 378 Survey of Current Literary Theory
12:30 - 1:45 ENGLSIH 452 Shakespeare

Wednesday
12:00 - 1:50 ENGLISH 316 World Cinema - "Hong Kong Cinema"
2:00 - 3:15 ENGLISH 366 Non-Fiction Prose - "The (Not-So) New Journalism"
3:30 - 4:45 COMPSCI 150 Survey of Computer Science

Thursday
9:30 - 10:45 ENGLISH 378 Survey of Current Literary Theory
12:30 - 1:45 ENGLSIH 452 Shakespeare

Five hours straight of class on Monday and Wednesday, but easy Tuesday and Thursday.

Does anybody know if it affects or part-time/full-time status if you enroll with only 6 credits of open classes and 9 of closed ones?

It's rude, it's unprofessional, and worst of all, he's neglected to introduce me!

Borders? Not a decent substitute for a singles club. In case you were wondering.

Apparently hiring out family/friends/hobos off the street to assist with the dishes for you has become a matter of course in the Butschli-Zentner-Dhein household. Perhaps next I'll go out and get help when it comes time to do the laundry.

This time could be used to study for the impending Intercultural Communications exam, but there is slightly more appeal in complaining to the Internet (mostly Facebook, which is a territory of the Internet).

I really like my British Literature class, and I really like the instructor, but she changes her mind far too much. I was doing decently well with Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight, but then she up and decides that we're going to read Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust instead. I do not actually possess that novel, and my adventures between yesterday and today have failed to yield it.

Between the UWM Library, Boswell Books down the street, the Shorewood Public Library which I don't have a library card for, Downtown Books (which is otherwise an amazing place), and the East Milwaukee Public Library which I don't have a card for either, there is not a single copy of A Handful of Dust available. And there's no way I'm going down to work to buy it.

Please.

So I'm going into class armed with nothing but Wikipedia (and maybe Sparknotes, if I'm feeling dedicated enough). Wonderful.

On the Season DVD Box Set that is my life, you could probably safely skip this episode. Three stars, at best. Really just filler.

This post brought to you by the magic of the INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY

Continuing in the grand tradition of entries written after 10 in the evening.

Both roommates are out of the house at this late hour. Josh to God-knows-where and Cody to some concert for a band I've never heard of (which speaks more to my music knowledge than to his taste) and here I am alone on my stupid computer in my stupid apartment, and I could probably be doing way cooler things right now.

It's almost time to register for Spring 2010 courses and, as it always happens with class registration, it's going to stress me out. I'm almost always given a late appointment so I don't get my first choices of classes and I freak out because what if this class isn't going to help me at all in becoming a real, functioning adult?! It doesn't help that my Letters and Arts adviser's catchphrase is "I don't know anything about that" or that the English chair thinks I might be slow and/or annoying. I haven't met my specialized English adviser yet because I am lazy and intimidated haven't had the time but he's into TV, Film, and Queer Theory which is all very exciting. Also he kinda looks like Zachary Quinto.

While browsing the English major page, it occurs to me that I've had far more classes with the preeminent English faculty members than I realized. Of course, one thinks I'm a good-for-nothing because I may have fallen asleep in his class once or twice (honestly, I do think John Donne was kind of cool, but boy do you like to hear yourself talk), one was pretty cool but probably doesn't remember me (even if her TA remembers me BY NAME), and one thinks I'm just quiet despite my good essays on early film criticism, so we'll see where this all goes.

Jon Stewart's impression of Glenn Beck made my entire week. Linked for your convenience. He's got the whole thing - right down to the cognitive dissonance and random taking on and off of glasses. Al Gore visiting both Stewart and Colbert was pretty hilarious too. I like how our nation basically has two choices as far as vice presidents go - you have either the freewheeling guy with a wacky sense of humor like Gore or Biden - or the evil, shapeshifting master of darkness like Cheney or Agnew.

"I don't know what this even is!" "Drink it, you'll be fine!"

So there may have been drinking last night. But only because our dear friend turned 21 and I found it unacceptable that I be sober when I went out of my way to not have to drive to the venue. I will neither confirm nor deny the possibility that Karoake was involved. There was, however, an expedition to meet this guy. Also I can tell you that the threat of public urination was a very real threat for a little bit. I may have been overenthusiastic as I did not really get the traditional 21st birthday blowout due to circumstances beyond my or anyone's control and I'm really susceptible to peer pressure.

At work, I found that some customer, in their own little "Fuck you" to the Democrats, turned around the faced-out copies of The Audacity of Hope and then further obscured them by putting this book in front of them. I know creative book shelving is how I deal with all MY problems. And, increasingly, alcohol.

My roommates are having fun and talking, but here I am on the computer by myself. I've only been at work for ten goddamn hours and important news may have happened on THE INTERNET! Like the fact that the Unicorn Gundam apparently only comes with its bazooka, so you have to buy the Unicorn Gundam Destroy Mode too, if you want the Beam Magnum - I ask you, IS THAT JUSTICE?

In other news, I interrupted my reading of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake so that I could read this. I'm the worst English major ever.

That's Futuristic Imagination Industries, offering you more links-per-paragraph than the leading brand.

The moral of the story is that, um, love... conquers... all... ?

So I was at work right? And I have a cold, so my head's all stuffed up and that makes me interact with customers weird (like referring to a lady and her young daughter as "dudes", or being kind of an asshole* to that customer in the Children's section)? And I had to rearrange graphic novels again because corporate keeps changing their minds?

And then I saw these things.

Oh yes. Those are taglines alright. "Edward and Bella's favorite book!" "The original forbidden love!"

As much as I love the Bard, I'm almost certain the concept of forbidden love had been around for quite a while before, gosh, 1590-ish. And if there's one thing the kids are really into, it's Bronte. And that's just the beginning of my problems with this entire... thing.

brb, mourning the next generation's appreciation of literature





*Not entirely reliant on me having a cold, admittedly.