Go back from wence thou cometh!!!

DAI-KESSEN!!
Deadly Phallic Symbols and Imbecilic Presidents Versus
Car-hating Tree-huggers and PMS-Relieving Electrodes!!!

[October 8, 2002] ::fuu~~:: [Just in case you're confused, "fu" is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a sigh... You know how in anime the characters sometimes puff out little "light bulbs"? Well, if they were doing that in a manga, odds are kana for "fu" (or "fuu" or "fuu~" or something) will be floating around nearby. Then again... maybe I'm just pulling this out of my arse... For some reason, in the "Evangelion" manga Gendou does this little "Fu...", but it's more like an evil "Heh...". Me confused...] WELL! I just sat down to write something and that bird (Donald) starts screaming... ::runs to get him::

::finally comes back:: Well, that didn't work out too good... I go to check up on the bird, and I get him to step up for me (Rachel: "Donald, step up." Donald: "Step-up! Step-up!" ::walks back and forth on top of his cage without stepping up:: "Step-up!") and I take him over to a chair in the bird room to play with him. But he was rather nippy today, but perhaps that was due to the fact that I have this bad habit of exploring his head and neck for the new feathers that sprout out of his skin... They're covered in this white casing, which, normally, he'll break off whilst preening, but, obviously, he can't reach his head and neck with his beak too well ::}, so perhaps I am to take the role of the other birds of his flock that might help him preen in this manner. However, I must admit, breaking that white casing is strangely fun, with the result I am all too zealous to find new feathers on him that require the treatment. Poor Donald must get terribly annoyed with me, but he has every right to be, and I deserve all of the nips I get from him.

After I left the bird room because I was pissing Donald off, I bumped into my mum in the kitchen. Because of my unusual proclivity to say strange and elaborate things with the primary intention of making people go "WTF?!", I recited the set of lines from that silly NGE image accompanying this banter: "No...! Can it be...!! The Ginormous Phallic Symbol of Death!!!" My mom is used to this sort of behavior, but she naturally wanted to know what I was going on about phallic symbols for. So I took a moment to explain to Mutti this bit I learned from the English EVA movie commentary, some info on the Pointless Religious Symbolism (TM) in NGE a guy named Taliesin-something was reading from his notes whenever Amanda Winn Lee wasn't saying "amazing, amazing" or her hubby Jason Lee wasn't mistaking Bakelite for LCL, or whatever: About how the Lance of Longinus (make sure you say that with a hard "g", otherwise you're letting the Japanese pronounce Latin better than us!) is basically the masculine equivalent of the feminine Holy Grail, because they're both artifacts with Christ's blood on them (the gender-typing of the two presumably drawn from the fact that a lance/spear penetrates and a cup is filled... >_<). So, essentially, the Lancea Longini is a giant phallic symbol, and, opposing the Grail's reputed ability to grant eternal life, the Lance can kill anything. Now, I haven't confirmed any of this with my own research yet, but it all seems reasonable enough, ne? Any rate... At some point I thought about the part in episode 22 when Naoko (EVA-00, if you must call her that...) launches the Longinus no yari at Arael (the angel "set over birds")... I took a screenshot of the moment right before the yari pierces her (Arael's) core [not that you can actually see her core in the shot, but another screenshot confirms that it is there, just really dark save for an almost indiscernible rim of red], and my demented imagination thought of her crying out those lines... Hence the text-overed snappy that accompanies this banter for absolutely no good reason at all except for my own cryptic personal amusement. And, BTW, "ginormous" -- presumably a combination of "gigantic"/"giant" and "enormous" -- is an Amanda Winn Lee sound byte (least that's the first place I've ever heard it) that I was inexplicably corrupted with from the aforementioned NGE commentaries. Curses... She can't even pronounce "Kaworu" or "Aoba" right, what right does she have corrupting me like this..!

It's about 6:40 PM, and I haven't done the things I was supposed to do today... yet. Earlier I was downloading stuff online (there are so many video game remixes, you see, and the only way to find out which ones are good is to DOWNLOAD THEM ALL!!! ::D for some reason, yeah, vgm remixes are one of my "things" right now... for a short time I had the strange ambition of making my own, but I'm going to forget that notion unless I take a music theory class or something...), and while that was going on I sat down to be a good girl for once and do some STUDYING! This is for my Environmental Concerns class, which is nicely undemanding for the most part, except that now we finally have our first exam (tomorrow)... Looking at the study guide graciously provided by the teacher, I likely don't have enough of a grasp of the material to conquer the test with mAd sKiLLz, which leads to pre-test anxiety, for which the only remedy is some good, self-assuring studying... Reading, taking notes, quizzing myself, making stupid cartoons, whatever, until I feel like I know what the he11 I'm talking about.

Now, I would have studied uninterrupted and been a good girl and all, but the whole thing was interrupted by a biofeedback appointment that I had to go to. "Biofeedback?", you say? Ah, it's just something my psychiatrist started me on, once she got a biofeedback person working at her office, to help me concentrate on my schoolwork and get me motivated and stuff... I sit in a comfy chair in front of a computer running this DOS program, Jane puts little electrodes on my scalp and collar, and the computer makes this funny "Ommmm..." noise while a graph or a rainbow-colored pattern or something is on the screen to show me whether or not I'm balancing these three types of brainwaves "right". If the tone stops or the picture freezes, I'm "screwing up". The goal is to get this so-called "balanced brainwave" (if you want more technical terms, look it up, because I really have no idea myself -- just pulling this out of memory) above a certain level and the "busy" and "sleepy" brainwaves below certain levels. If you're tired or doozy, it shows. If you're frustrated or tense, it shows. If you're mellow and groovy, it shows. I'm supposed to aim for the latter. ::} Well, technically, I'm supposed to try to feel "relaxed", which is basically the same as "whooaaa, duuuuude..." mellow and groovy, except that I don't do drugs like the types of people [or angels... "SACHIEL!!!" -- sort of an inside joke, apologies...] who stereotypically say "whooaa, duuuuude...". But you get the idea, hopefully... I don't completely understand this whole biofeedback thing, then again, I haven't exactly tried to read literature about it, so it's completely my fault. I just keep going to it because my folks and all think it's a good idea, and I guess it must be doing something good... For one thing, supposedly, the type of "training" on this one part of the brain I've been getting helps reduce, for whatever reason, the symptoms of the terrible evil known as PMS, both physical and behavioral, and, based on my own experience since I started this training, I'd say that would definitely seem to be true. Not that anyone needs to know that... [But, heck, that sort of thing is, for physiologically normally-functioning female hominids such as myself, an everyday (well, every-, ::cough::, -month, maybe) stupid-mammalian-biology part of the human experience, and there's nothing I can do about it so I've just accepted it, and if you squeamish males don't want to even hear about that sort of thing you can go and get flogged seventeen times by a dominatricial slavedriver for all I care because I'll talk about whatever I durn want to here! ::phew:: But, anyway, if a half hour a week of having electrodes on my scalp keeps me from morphing into an ill-tempered, cramp-disabled demoness 13-odd times a year, hey, who am I to complain...!

After my appointment, I drove on over to my favorite local mall because I had a number of things I needed to do there. This mall, which is in a town roughly east of here (hopefully, there will never be a mall in my actual town -- malls are evil, and even though I'm not paying any taxes yet and I'm thus not one to talk, tax deductions resulting from the building of one be damned because traffic is evil and malls breed), is my favorite of the various outlying mall-ridden towns' malls to go to because it's close, on the road I use thrice a week to get to college, and has a CVS. [And, as of my visit today, one of the empty shops has graciously transformed into a GameStop that will open tomorrow! ::dances happily::] Now, another mall, in the town roughly north of here, has a CVS as well, but recently that town has scared me. Sure, that's where my older sis's apartment is, but the place suffers from complete mall overkill... There's one indoor mall on the main street (and the ruins of an abandoned mall project), and an outdoor one on the outskirts, and there was another outdoor one not far from main street -- except that, quite recently, this latter one essentially quadrupled. I'm not quite sure what happened, but the Jamesway went out of business, was replaced with a Clear View Cinema, and next thing you know the cattle field across the street is paved over (::cries::) and another outdoor mall, and a Wall-Mart, and a Weis, and a Home Depot, pop up on both sides of this original one.

When I first saw it (and I evidently hadn't gotten out in a while, so it came as a big surprise to me), I was totally reviled... All of these stores and their giant ugly parking lots already occurred at least once within a thirty-minute radius of our home, so why, WHY...!!! Taking these green fields and covering them with blacktop, I cannot help but view it as a suffocating tar of overgrown, out-of-control "algae" smothering the earth below. The stores themselves are tolerable, but it's the pavement that kills me... These stores sing like sirens for the masses and their overnumbered automobiles: Come! Come to our stores! Clog our streets, crawl through the gate system of traffic lights, and park in our oversized parking lots that we have made just so you can visit us and spend your money here!! Your town gets a tax reduction because of us and has so much to gain on an economic level from our presence, who cares about the noise and the pollution and the hassle and the complete lack of eye-soothing, life-giving green?

Ah, see, here is a side of me that has not emerged on my webpage nearly enough... The side that unapologetically scorns big business and their political bitch-whores (can we say "GWB"...?), noise, pollution, pavement, automotive vehicles, pampered lawns, bright lights, clusters of oversized houses on miniscule pieces of properties... The person who lusts for green, vast open fields, deep forests, random stands of shrubs and trees, the non-human entities being allowed to perpetuate their existences and as a result make this planet truly wonderful. This is not to say that I am a human-hating green-preaching tree-hugger, because, well, the first part at least is not altogether true... I must say, though, that many of the things humans are doing, collectively and individually, to this planet make the part of me that holds great unyielding reverence for it cringe... In my eyes, the "American Dream" is a glorified nightmare, the complete lack of respect and integrity caused by greed and power is one of the most destructive forces known, our president is mad (or, at least, has very many of his priorities in the most asinine places -- such as the proverbial beds of those who would rather endorse grossly outdated and heavily impractical energy sources than simply adapt to tap the potential of newer and brilliantly superior technologies). And malls and parking lots are damn ugly and you can give me the comforting aroma of some low-scale dairy farm any day.

See, see, this is what "Banter" is all about...! [Being really opinionated and likely making myself tons of enemies? Heh, maybe... ::> ] But in giving some idea of the way I view the world, I have inadventently deviated from whatever the he11 I was supposed to be talking about...

Oh yeah! Well, I might as well end this entry sometime, as I have things I ought to be doing besides writing this stuff, so I'll just say a couple of things about what I did today. Because, hey, you never know... When I'm an old senile fool (assuming I get that far), I might wonder at some point or another what the heckles I did on some random day in my twentieth year. Personalized anecdotes that capture a moment of time, no matter how insignificant, prove to have some sort of sentimental/retrospective/historical value years later, because we are only humans and our brains give us this great illusion that something called "time" exists that we are constantly "losing" or leaving behind, and little things like writing stuff down that we can do to preserve time, in some way, is just... something we do. So...

Once I got to this mall (which is better than the wasteland I previously mentioned, but I will likely hate soon because there is a big sign and bulldozers in the giant plot across the street from which a great new evil will likely surface soon... ::groan::), I had a couple of things I needed to do. First, I dropped off a couple of prescriptions (because we the little Clark family are a bunch of screwed-up tootsies and require many biochemical supplements to function optimally and be the great human beings we are ::}) and proceeded to do a few little errands while the pharmacists processed my "order". I headed over to the pet store there, which my older sis once worked at even though she thinks the owner is insane, to get ten arthropod sacrifices for my brother's gecko "Mrs. Lincoln" [Why's her name that...? Erm, I think originally my brother got a male gecko from one of the music teachers at our middle school, and maybe it was around President's Day or something and that's why he was called Mr. Lincoln...? I can't remember. But anyway, Brian -- my brother -- eventually got a girlfriend for him at a petstore, thus calling her "Mrs. Lincoln". But Mr. Lincoln tragically died when the heat lamp unexpectedly blew up, and the little grasshoppers in the "cage" nibbled on him a bit before Brian finally noticed the poor gecko's carcass and removed it... So now Mrs. Lincoln is a widow. "Oh, yes, kind sirs, very tragic story of gecko who drown in hot spring three-hundred-thirty----" Erm, nevermind...] Basically, I picked up ten "tinies", which are a type of grasshopper or something that they sell at the pet store specifically for purposes of feeding hungry reptiles. YUMMY!! While I was there, I saw the guinea pigs and began to miss all of those crazy piggies I used to have, so I asked the guy if I could pick a couple of them up, and it was cool, so I did, and I had a short, nice little chat with the guy about how most people don't pick up guinea pigs the right way (one hand behind the rump and another beneath the belly! how hard is that!?) and the two girls (I sexed them with but a glance ::}) hadn't been getting out enough and all. One of them was decidedly more friendly than the other, but my piggies had, naturally, appreciated my attentions a bit more than these two... ("Who is this strange hyoo-man? Why is it touching me? Just put me back in the cage, dammit!")

After that, I went to Staples, because I needed more foam board for this project I have to finish by Friday ::ugh...::. It ended up being, like, 10 bloody dollars for a pack of three, because they didn't sell the intermediate size any other way, which seemed like an awful lot to me, so I walked to another store that sold some art supplies to compare prices, and they sold the same board for $4 a pop, with the result I purchased at Staples after all. Also picked up some cartridges for my Canon S600 color printer, because while the rest of the family (including me) went up to Massachusetts at summer's end my sis stayed behind and kidnapped my printer to use it for CD labels and other evil purposes, with the result all four ink cartridges became severely depleted and have recently started threatening to become empty on me. (That's right... I blame it all on her. >::}). I figured, hey, I was at Staples, might as well, eh? Except the price of the cartridges was astronomical (over $12 each...! ::gulp:: Not too bad compared to non-Canon brands, tho...), but, er, my parents will understand... After that, I picked up a few things at Shop-Rite (bagels, soy milk, cereal, hot dog buns -- necessities of life ::}), and then I got the meds from CVS, and hit the road for the short ride home.

And my poppy just got home, so I'll end this here and go say hello! [And, ah, good ol' "Pleasure Principle" from NGE is currently playing... The latter half of that is nice and inspiring in a vaguely Olympian sort of way, though they only used the intimidating first half in the series. Oh well.]

Senaka ga itai desu yo!!!

[September.27.2002] What? My unfinished last "post" was from the 9th? Where the he11 has this month bloody gone? My life is just rotting away before my very eyes! What's wrong with me?!? Okay, okay, maybe I should stop panicking and just write something... I felt like writing something, that's why I opened Dreamweaver up... ::breathe-breathe::

Ouch, my back hurts. Serves me right for spending too much time in front of this infernal machine. And with a number of bad in-front-of-the-computer habits, as well. Evidently, my mouse and my keyboard have been up too high. Now, with my desk, there's not much I can do about that at the moment, though it does make me regret having Dad remove the keyboard tray when I first got the desk all those years back, before I had a computer in my room and the keyboard tray was thus a mere annoyance. I think I kept it around somewhere after he took it off, though, so hopefully we can put that back on and make my keyboard-mouse situation a little better.

But, anyway, about my back... This morning, I was doing some art projects for 3D Design (evil, evil 3D Design), a couple of hours before the class would begin. [The best possible time, of course. >_<] But there was the possibility that I would get them done and go off to class and everything would be good. Except I got up to stretch out a little bit while I was working, and then, out of the blue... ARRRRRGHHHHH!!! I pulled something out of place on my right upper back, and it hurt. No counter-stretches made it any better. And, determined as I was to finish my projects up, sitting back down to them simply wasn't fruitful. I had screwed myself up and I had to go lay down or something before I totally lost it.

With the end result, I got myself totally screwed over in terms of my class that day... After a lot of wincing and careful body shifting, I managed to fall asleep. I was basically waiting for my Mutti to come home from this library work she's been doing, so she could take me to this new chiropractor she'd found and adored and basically gotten everyone else in the family to go to. Because, you know, with my driving record (hah-hah) and my back the way it was I certainly couldn't trust myself to drive safely, and I didn't know where the guy was besides, and it's too scary for me to go someplace new for the first time by myself because I'm only 20 years old so I need my mommy there with me (some slight sarcasm in that last statement...). But, anyway, I waited for her to get home, and then I waited some more because my appointment ended up being at 7 PM. Least they could take me today at all...

But, dang, this chiropractic place was a lot different from the other one we had gone to... With that guy, you basically just go into the room, lie on your belly on the table, and, after some snap-crackle-pop, you're all done. But these guys, they were thorough! I mean, first thing I had to do was fill out a questionnaire that seemed more appropriate for someone who had a real chronic back problem, not a stupid little malady like mine. Was that a pain to fill out... And then, when I finally get in, the assistant does this scanning thing of my spine (which has a talking computer program to go along with it, saying "C4" and stuff like that). I had to wear one of those robes that opens in the back, but I didn't really mind, because the assistant was a chick; it's just when she had to scan some of my lower vertebrae it was kind of weird, because I'm really ticklish down in my tailbone-rump area. (Rump, mind you.) It's as if the skin covering my spine get brushed down past a certain area, my whole bottom get "inflamed" with tickly sensations -- it's quite weird, and I'll bet no one reading this wanted to know that, too. And before she did the scanning, she used rubbing alcohol all over the skin -- made me think she was going to stick a big needle into my spinal cord or something (::shivers at the thought::).

Eventually I was visited by the actual chiropracter-dude, who asked me a lot of questions, and observed that my back was really tense in the area where it hurt (makes sense, right?) and also, oddly enough, that was spine actually had a bit of a curve to it that made one of my shoulders higher than the other. So I got X-Rays!! (Ooo, exposure to cancer-inducing wavelengths, yipee!) And the X-ray machine was from the front, so it had to go through my chest and all. The resultant X-ray was quite interesting, being as it had my little dolphin-jumping-through-a-heart necklace just sort of hanging in front of my various innards -- a translucent blob that was heart, more opaque blobs that were my stomach and liver, and, of course, my spine, all the way in the back. The doc could see a bit of curvature from the X-ray, but not as much as the disparity in my shoulders seemed to have suggested. He thinks that my posture and general in-front-of-the-computer habits may have something to do with it, which is why I mentioned it earlier. When I actually think about it, I do sit in my chair kind of funny at times -- I sort of sit on the side of my hip without really thinking. Maybe it's something I did subconsciously to enable a better position for my right arm on the mouse? I dunno, but it's something to think about. In any case, whatever I did has weakened the muscles on the right side of my back and strengthened those on the left side -- that can't be too good. So before my session ended they put a bunch of therapeutic pads on my back to stimulate my muscles with a mild electric current for five minutes -- felt kind of funny, but I guess good in a way. (Maybe I should just lift weights like the weakling I am. That must be why my back sucks so much. Well, one of the reasons.)

But, at any rate, I'm supposed to do hot-cold therapy for my sore area at home and go back to the chiro for a check-up tomorrow. Except tomorrow, I have a big fiELd tRiP day for my class Environmental Concerns. Basically, I get up really early (any time before 11 AM is early) and go meet up with the teacher and the rest of the class at a water treatment plant near the college. We get to see how the plant works and do a bunch of water-testing procedures there (with these meters and chemical-based kits and stuff) to investigate the cleanliness of the water before and after treatment. After that, we meet up in an hour and a half at the Great Swamp (one of NJ's wildlife reserve places) and test the water there (to compare the effectiveness of low-tech wetlands-based water treatment versus the high-tech sewage plant type, I suppose), after which we get to go to the Raptor Trust and learn a thing or two there. Well, raptors are always good, even if they have permanently injured by the follies of humankind and are doomed to dwell within caged enclosures for the rest of their lives... ::sob::

I'm actually not saying anything bad about the Raptor Trust -- I'm berating the various human-caused things that have made associations like it necessary (in order to rehabilitate and release back into the world as many of those feathery beauties as possible). I rather relish a chance to see the great avians close-up (or at least closer-up than I normally would). Actually, earlier this week (Wednesday, I think), when I was walking around the campus during the three-hour period I purposely allotted myself between College Algebra and Enviro, I happened to pass a big window I could see one of the college's large satellite dishes on the rooftop (same building I was in, but the building "projected" outwards a bit, which is how I could see the roof), and what would be perching atop the dish but a red-tailed hawk! ::D Technically, they're the most prolific raptor aren't here (the local vultures withstanding -- but they're not really raptors, least by my reasoning...), but I'm a loser and I stay inside too much and I'm not in the local Sierra Club or anything so I don't get to see Buteo individuals too often. (Except there was this time I was driving on a road to my shrink, and a bird dove like right in front of my car, and in the little time I had to divert my eyes off the road the bird had landed on a nearby tree, and it seemed to be a red-tailed hawk with a freshly-killed rabbit or something. Wish I could've gotten a better look, but, still, thought that was pretty cool...] And this one was reasonably close, and it was a killer view. The hawk was sitting there, with its back to me (so I could see the red tail quite clearly), just kind of chilling out, doing a little preening. I watched it for a while, but eventually had to tend to some, ::ahem::, natural duties, and a couple of minutes later when I was finished the hawk had left. Aww... shucks.

At any rate (I need to stop using that as a paragraph transition...), getting to see some raptors might make tomorrow worthwhile. Well, I guess the whole outing should be pretty interesting and educational, making it pretty cool on the whole, though what with the dismal weather lately and my back getting screwed up the field trip's timing could be a bit better... And it also means I can't get that chiropractic check-up tomorrow. Rather annoyingly, psychologist/psychiatrist appointments and school make Monday another no-go... Argh, I like being carefree and laidback, what the heck am I doing with crowded days like that?!?! That's life, as people would certainly tell me, though I'd probably rather be dead than endure a life packed to the brim with appointments and engagements, with no time to wallow in solitude, chill out, and let my mind wander... It's worth noting, though, that too much solitude and life-without-school-or-other-such-scheduled-dedications-of-time makes me go a little crazy, which is one good thing about this summer ending and all. It's just that too much makes me go insane. And even though, technically, I haven't even begun to see "too much", I have this feeling that I'm just going to lose it all, any moment, all the time anyway. Or maybe I'm just exaggerating just a wee bit. I can't really tell right now.

I'm kind of losing my will to write any more here, so I'd better end this here. Maybe someday I'll feel like telling the rest of my "brush with the law" story -- till then, I'll just upload this as it is and leave my very limited audience hanging by the seat of their pants (well, I sort of doubt that) about exactly what did happen to me. It's not really that big a deal, I guess... Basically, I already went to the municipal court once to plead "not guilty" on the four charges they've given me, and my case has been rescheduled for some time in November (better find out the exact date, I should...) when they'll either reduce the charges or make us pay a lot of money and take away my liscence for two years or something. I can sure suck sometimes, can't I? And my poor folks... I'm such a lowlife and can't get my arse out there into gainful employment, so they end up paying for all the trouble I get myself into (which technically isn't that much, but still...).

But I said I was going to shut up, and I WILL! Besides, I feel a headache coming on... ARGH-NEED-IBUPROFEN!! >_<' And in the manner of my own tradition: Playing right now, we have "Life is a Magic Thing" by Johnny Clegg, which I originally heard via "FernGully" -- cool movie, mostly because of Batty ::} -- and picked up online because it's fun and catchy and stuff and makes me think of scary little imps that look like "Ren & Stimpy" rejects riding beetles. Kay... ::}

BTW, I added the deformed Yui to the banter as an afterthought... Just needed some image to liven things up, so I looked through my stuff for something to color in that befit my mood in some way. Yui here just kind of spoke to me -- sure she's dodgy-looking, but she's rather expressive in a nice and crazed sort of way (though, thankfully, everyone except poor Morgan-kun has the benefit of not knowing exactly what Yui is really expressing ::cough-cough::).

A Somewhat Uncharacteristic Brush With the Law

[September.9.2002] I remember 9/9/99 being the release date for "Final Fantasy 8" all those years ago... (Well, only three, but still...) Every time I've written down the 9/9 part on stuff today, I've thought about FF8 and that very memorable release date it had. Sad, isn't it? And, speaking of video games (not like this has to do at all with FF8), I'm going through a bunch of "sample" MP3s I downloaded (because after a while they just pile up, unsorted), and this track "Withered Earth" from "Genso Suikoden 2 ~Orrizonte~" is very catchy... Very Celtic-like, very groovy... Methinks I'll try out a few more tracks, and, if everything comes into play, maybe I'll get my grubby meathooks on the album itself one day...

But now, onto the real meat! What the he11 have I been doing lately? Well, ever since last Wednesday, I've been back in school. Back at the good ol' community college, commuting, doing my slow-but-steady 3-classes-at-once deal. Except I ended up going in last Tuesday simply because my mum noticed I had signed up for "Basic Algebra" or something... Now, this seemed rather silly to her. I took that Scheiss back in High School, didn't I? Well, I guess I did, methinks, but this is college, and I didn't think my high school classes would count worth poo. And this "Basic Algebra" seemed to be a prereq for whatever math classes I ought to be taking. Except there was really this catch that I wasn't aware of, and you didn't have to take a non-credit course [whoa... if I'd realized it was non-credit when I signed up for it...] like that if you passed some test or got a certain score on your SAT. So, anyway, Mama basically got me to thinking maybe I ought to hurry on over to the school and try to get myself into a more appropriate class last-minute.

I had a double psychiatrist-biofeedback session-thing that day (they're both at the same place, so I try to schedule the appointments back-to-back), and going to my college from there was a quick jaunt, so, just like Mama had recommended, I headed on over to County. Just do it, Rachel, it'll be better than sitting through a class all semester relearning stuff from high school and not getting any credits for it. So I did, without having the slightest thought I'd end up getting myself into big@$$ trouble.

The way I was getting to the college was one I didn't usually take. You know, just a shortcut via a major NJ route in the event I happened to be going to the college from a location other than home, which I was. [MUSIC INTERJECTION: Reviewing some version of "Suteki da ne", an FF song I'm not really acquainted with... First thing that comes to mind is that that chick's voice really grates my ears. But nevermind that. <<song change>> Ahh.... David Lanz.... ::happy ears:: Now I just need a Dr. Pepper to make everything perfect.] I wasn't thinking this would give me any problems, because it usually doesn't, but... I was on a exit, going right, off the highway, and on the following road the driveway for my college comes up really soon after that, on the left-hand side of the road. Except for some reason, I got confused. The first stupid thing was that I didn't get into the left-hand lane (I stayed on the right-er of the two). The next stupid thing was that all of a sudden, the appearance of the college driveway didn't compute in my head... I went past the exit and got myself all confused about where the entrance was, and in my little head I decided I had missed the entrance and that I would drive ahead aways to find some place to turn around. Except right after that I spotted the actual entrance for the college, and, it was like, Whoa, I better turn into it right the he11 now! So I hastily make a turn... then I hear a loud horn, push my brakes, feel a bump, somebody drives angrily past me, and then it finally computes: Oh crap, I forgot I was in the right hand lane, what the he11 was I doing making a frelling turn like that?!?!, and, damn, did I just hit that person?! I crane my neck, don't see anyone pulling over to the side of the road, and figure, Ahhh, I sort of bumped into somebody before and they honked at me real loud, but nothing actually happened, maybe this was sort of like that? Well, I'd better get out of the goddam road and into the parking lot or something, check out my car there... Stupidly enough, it did briefly occur to me to maybe try to "follow" the peeps I collided with, just to make sure, but... I didn't.

Like the ass I was, I finished my lousy-turn-that-made-me-hit-a-car and went on my merry little way to find a place to park. [Isn't it sad how the amount of space they give people to park their cars is like five times bigger than the area of whatever buildings they're taking up all this space to park their cars to get into? If that makes any sense... Parking lots are one of the many things I dislike about cars -- just so many lousy things about them.] Got out of my car... Lo and behold, nary a scratch! Oh... wait... What's with that sidelight? Say what? Oh crap, this means I hit them after all, doesn't it? As it turned out, my left sidelight was totalled. Well, technically the bulb was intact and all, but the glass covering it was in pretty sorry shape. Not much to complain about, except it meant that the perceived "bump" had been a bit more than that... In fact, it meant I had caused an accident and ran away like a yellow pansy, or something, and people would probably be coming after me sometime or another. Of course, it didn't occur to me to hop back in my car and find those people I had hit pulled onto the side of the road as they probably were calling the cops on me and make up some story about why I'd run away for a little while but decided to come back, and maybe make things a little better for myself in the end. No, of course, for some reason, at that very moment, the matter of me getting in trouble didn't seem to vex me a whole lot, and I was a lot more worried about having to put up with Basic Algebra for several months. Talk about frelled-up priorities...

So, of course, that's what I did. I ran off into the college, and spent a considerable amount of time figuring out such things as exactly whether or not the whole reasoning behind me being able to skip that Basic thing and go straight into College-level was correct, and once I found out that it was so, wasting even more time looking for any stray pen that had been dropped on the ground being as I had left mine in the car, and then giving the projected list of closed courses many-a dirty look as it seemed that every College Algebra course had been closed except for one at the worst possible time! Morning, time when Rachel should be sleeping, and on the two days of the week I hadn't scheduled any classes! Oh well, it was better than nothing, and anything inconvenient that could possibly happen to me must be all my fault, so I got in line to drop the one math course and add the new one. Except when I finally got to the end, it turned out that one College Math class had been dropped, too! But this ended up for the best... The lady recommended that I go off to the math department and ask them to sardine me (well, "sardine" being my own verb, not hers) into the class. But, ooo, I could just ask them to sardine me into a class that had the same meeting times as the Basic Alg class I hadn't dropped yet and not have to go to the college five days a week after all!

And the quest for College Algebra continued... I journeyed far from the Student Center, to the third floor of some other building where the Math Department was, and waited once again. Happily, I could be sardined into one of my "ideal" time slots in the end, and while they fought with the computer not giving this one lady clearance to add students to classes or some Scheiss like that I strained my ears and managed to hear the "Lord of the Rings" soundtrack playing from one of the computers. [Ah... Another CD I need to get... And it's domestic for once!] Yo-shi, so I was added to one of the "closed" courses, now I needed to go back to the peeps at the Student Center and have them drop me from the other course! ::sigh:: So, I do, and it's no problem, until I get to the bursar folks... Evidently, because I had been signed up for four classes at once -- you know, after they added me to the College Alg and before they dropped the Basic Alg -- the computer had elevated me to a Full-Time student and added some Full-Time Student-only health insurance thingie to my bill, which was of course a load of Scheiss because I wasn't Full Time!!! And it took the Bursar people another long while to figure this out and convince the computer that I was really Part-Time after all... And, meantime, the Law had caught up to me.

Except I had, once again, been an impervious dolt at first and not thought that the security dude that was walking around the Student Center was looking for me. I mean, I remembered the guy, he had been the same one that helped me a while back when my car went kaput in the parking lot and needed a lil' jump-start. Yeah, I can really be that naive -- just because the security guy who jump-started my car a long time ago is snooping around the Student Center, I naturally don't think at first that he's looking for me. Until he walks up to the Bursar where I'm at and asks me, "Are you Rachel Clark?" "Well, when you're done here, my boss needs to see you..." Uh-oh... The onset of panic. "Uhh... this is about me running into someone, isn't it...?" Can't remember what he said next, it wasn't yes or no, just a restatement of the last thing he said, basically. A zillion things flash by in my head as things at the Bursar finish up... and then I follow the security guy outside, to the little college security car, to my doom. My stress threshold cracks.

I can't remember much except getting into the car next to the Boss, and heading towards the parking lot where the cops are presumably waiting by my car, and the guy asking me in a somewhat determined tone, "What happened?" Except I was at that point where soon as you try to say anything, you've condemned yourself to start crying (you know, you can keep yourself from actually crying until you try to talk, and then it just doesn't work anymore -- you just have to cry). So I say, "Please give me a moment", and salty drops of last-resort stress relief squirt from my lacrimals. I remember him saying something about them spotting beer in the back of my car, which at once strikes my brain as complete absurdity (talk about uncharacteristic!), but stresses me out even more as to how they could think such a thing to begin with. Oh well, I cry (really, I don't do it because I'm a wussy little beets and I'm trying to make people feel sorry for me -- I just can't help it!! crying is natural stress relief! and I was REALLY stressed out!!) and try to be cooperative at the same time.

And... what the he11 was I saying? Guess I fell asleep or something before I could finish retelling that one... That's the problem with being so long-winded sometimes.

August.05.2002 -- No actual entry, but I just wanted ya'll to know that I'm a bit better than I was when I wrote the last real entry, so worry not. I'll write something new soon as them juices be flowing again -- with some luck, it shouldn't be much longer now.

2-2-5, or, How I Really Suck Right Now

May.31.2002 -- It's been a while... Not that I have anything really interesting to say...

Well, my life has been "nothing" for far too long. If I thought I had "no life" before... right now, I really don't. I have next to nothing to talk to my shrink about aside from how much isn't going on. Is it just depression of some sort? Is it pure lethargy? Is it persisting anguish from the aftermath of my trip to Wales last August? (I'm not even going to get into that -- never know who might be reading this.) It seemed for a while that I could blame everything on my Zoloft seemingly losing its effect, after so many years of fine service restoring some semblance of neurochemical equilibrium to my noggin. But now I'm off Zoloft and on something else that's supposed to have the same effects, albeit with renewed vigor. There's no evidence that it's not doing what it's supposed to. The meds can only do so much, I know that. The real problem lies elsewhere.

There's something I should be doing that I'm not. Something happened, somewhere along the line, to leave me in the sad state I am now. Probably the worst thing about my current condition is that I have no confidence whatsoever. Sure, I know my self worth, but it doesn't seem incredibly obvious right now. I'm inclined to feel badly about myself more often than I'll feel good. Art. Yeah, I'm supposed to have some sort of artistic ability, aren't I? Where the hell did it go? Sure, I've made a couple of cool things in the past who-knows-how-many-years, but this barrier's popped up between me and my artistic ability. It used to be that art was the primary way I could express myself, but now... It feels like a jaded medium. I can draw stuff, but I don't get the same kind of release. Something in me holding back? If so, I wish it would stop. I wish I could get the same satisfaction from drawing that I used to, but it isn't happening. It doesn't feel natural. It doesn't feel fun. It doesn't feel me. It's a wholy frustrating endeavor. I can hardly get beyond twisted doodles anymore. Nothing good is emerging. The connection just isn't there.

And I'm just bouncing all over the place. I can hardly focus on just one of the things that's been bothering me lately. One thing leads to another, now that I'm writing about it. So I'll forget about my art right now, talk about something else.

Oh yeah. I'm getting fat again. I was worried about it a while back, when all of a sudden my hefty 225 pounds started dropping off. "Hey, there must be something wrong with me!" Maybe there was, but it did feel good when I eventually got to 190, maybe even a little under. Not anymore! The number's skyrocketed back to goddam 210, and I'm not happy about it. What better reason for this to happen that, like I've been suspecting all along, I simply don't do anything! But then how the heck did I ever get down to 190 to begin with? It seems futile now to even think about dieting and exercise regimens -- I feel really hopeless about myself in general right now. Seems like I'm going right back to where I was, fat ol' 225, maybe even higher, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I remember when I was at my fattest, that was when I actually got some sort of regular exercise. I remember being at the gym and entering 2-2-5 on all of those machines that require that you do so. Cripes, I was going to the gym and all, and I was still fat, then when my great lapse of doing nothing starts, the weight starts to fall off! This was sometime last year, and I remember being scared in some way, like I was deathly ill and my weight was going to plummet to nothingness. Just for the heck of it, I'd do all sorts of dietary no-nos and do stupid things, like eat an entire gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream in one day or something, and guess what? My weight would still drop. And now all of a sudden ice cream is doing exactly what it's supposed to and making me fat again. Just when I'd thought life had given me a lucky break or something, everything turns around again...

Wonder if there's any truth in my thinking that I'm going to get fat again no matter how much I exercise and no matter what I do or do not eat. Whatever the case, that's only one reason why I suck right now. Only one reason.

I'm starting to make myself upset again, writing about this crap. I want to cry -- thinking about how pathetic I am right now always makes me want to cry. Like I said, I'm a really sad individual right now. Not quite broken yet, though. I want to do something to help myself, but I'm not quite sure what. Maybe things'll get better when fall comes around and I'm back to my taking-a-measly-three-classes-at-once thing. Then again, I doubt it, because I thought the same thing about last fall or spring semester possibly being able to help my condition back then... Fall 2001 ended theoretically well, but I was really sore from the work I'd put into two art classes and, even though I'd gotten A's in both of them, I was really disappointed in the way both had turned out. Spring 2002, which somehow ended up having no art classes at all, was a complete disaster and I dropped two courses, my two required ones, and keeping Japanese, which would do nothing to fulfill my degree requirements. Last semester just set the stage for my current awful phase... What's the chance that next one will make things any better?

Right now, I'm doing nothing. No school. No employment. No social life -- I only have one person I can really call a friend (like a socialize-with friend). And I'm bored with all of the stuff I do at home that used to keep me happy and busy and content but just seem to be frustrating and boring me at the moment. The obvious answer is to just get out and do stuff -- isn't it? I've been thinking maybe that's the answer. I need someplace to go, someplace where I can spend some time away from home, someplace where extrapersonal conflicts can develop. I've been wallowing in myself far too much. And home -- home has always been my sanctuary from the rest of the world, but it's not a sanctuary if I don't go anyplace or do anything that I might need to take sanctuary from. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it makes some kind of sense to me.

So objective #1 for me should be to, assuming classes aren't going to cut it, get involved in something around here. Volunteer work or a job. Or maybe some kind of group, for people with something in common. Something that takes my focus away from myself, because the more I sit here and wallow in myself, the more I'm going to get sick of it and feel sad and stupid and helpless.

And I'm sick of writing for now, because I'm crying by now and all tense and I'll probably get a headache soon. Is it really a good idea to put this up for people to read? Really, why the heck would I want anyone that I don't know to know about how much I suck right now? Well, as far as I know, nobody goes to my crappy little webpage anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Maybe I'll have something cooler to write about next time.

Neurotic Neurons, Banterous Brains, and Eden-based Erotica

Feb.11.2002 -- These entries seem to be completely sporatic, random, and perpetually unfinished. As I like to say: "Oh well."

I've got two classes tomorrow that I still haven't done all of the work for. Blast. Makes perfect sense that I'd be writing "Banter" at a time like this. Call it 'procrastination', but I think of it this way... I feel like writing at this moment. Certainly, I have other things I could and should be doing, but odds are I'll get them done sooner or later (more'n likely later... <<sigh>>). By putting them off and writing on a whim, I am recording a line of thought that, had I waited until my first-priorities were completed before entertaining, would exist as a mere memory of something I had intended to babble about but, given the transience that best characterizes that thing in my brain called "line of thought" (that could be the wrong term, though...), it would certainly have been supplanted by whatever the frell my brain's current preoccupation was and lost in the deepest abysses of Everything My Neural Pathways Couldn't Commit Themselves To™. Basically, I am preserving, completely at random, a snippet of my brain's current patterns of cognition, etc., ideas that that would, given an indeterminate amount of time passage, be gone forever.

And my brain goes on to prove its own point by promptly losing a grip on whatever the frell (that's another one of my current 'favorite words' -- a little earlier today, I suddenly remembered how I was rather fond of saying "Garbage!" as an explitive, only a couple of years ago, but this tendency has been extinquished from my current behavioral patterns) I originally sat down to babble about... I have noticed how fond I am of parentheses (and ellipses that tend to appear randomly at the ends of sentences without one specific function of usage, certainly they don't seem to correspond to 'proper' grammatical usage... Hey, look, more ellipses! and this random thought just happens to be enclosed by parentheses, too! All too often, I prove my own points about myself without even trying...) but I'm not exactly sure why. I can certainly eliminate them in my 'formal' writing, but in instances such as on this personal webpage of mine I like to be 'refined' but not 'formal' in the sense of 'post-graduate-thesis-paper-formal'. That make any sense?

I like to write for TRS as close to the manner that I think as possible, for the primary reason that I want to. I'm not going to color my thoughts to appease imaginary 'others' -- I, generally, speak my mind (hey! that relates back to the previous sentence! nifty), with the degree of modesty and restraint that is, essentially, characteristic of my personality. Be true to thyself. And, er... what was I talking about again? <<sniffs around for a can of Dr. Pepper>>

Times like this (though I lack a more refined label for such times), I find myself unable to think clearly. Thoughts shoot through my head far faster than the poor little centers of my brain for transmitting-thoughts-into-language-and-transmitting-that-as-motor-information-to-fingers-doing-the-typing can keep up. I don't even know why I'm trying to write about what I'm thinking while my thoughts are so muddled and cluttered. Then again, they might always be like that -- I can't remember. No, I can give my brain more credit than that -- sure, it's rather quirky, but it's served me rather well. I certainly wouldn't want to trade my brain for anyone else's -- not that anyone would want my brain (with all of its neurochemical-equilibrium problems) and there are too many ambiguities about where the essence of existence really lies (i.e., how much of the 'self' lies in one's DNA or what's been recorded in the brain via an unreplicable chain of experiences or maybe it boils down to something thusfar scientifically unprovable like a 'soul'), so what the he11 am I babbling about?

One of my 'favorite' reasons for writing babble is that it's so interesting to read over some time after I've written it and can look back on whatever-the-heck-I-couldn't-decide-I-was-really-thinking in a new light, with new insight (ooo! they rhyme!). No matter when I write this sort of non-formal stuff, though, there are those oodles of tendencies that I can never seem to shake off. To prohibit myself from my liberal ellipses, parenthesized and bracketted side-thoughts, my big-chains-of-words-connected-by-these-little-dash-things, my typical afterthoughts 'or something' or 'whatever that means' and their variations, etc., would be prohibiting myself... in some way or another...

Not that I couldn't take to writing in a more formal and less banterous style, but, far as I'm concerned, that sort of change happens on its own, as I inevitably change as a person, because "to live is to change" (can't remember who said that quote, drat). My writings, much more so than my art as far as I'm concerned, provide the best medium for trying to comprehend and understand myself and this crazy-$#i+ world I happen to exist within. Well, actually, my writings and art almost always interconnect somehow (to varying degrees, it always depends on what I might chose to use as an example-- language failed me there, no existing words seemed able to express this thought very well), but that's beside the point (oh, there's another 'afterthought' I forgot to list earlier...). Or is it...? I'm confusing myself again...

Okay, back to the point. I actually do write a frell of a lot, though nearly all of my writings are so heavily 'personal' in nearly every way, I hesitate to expose any other living being to them (unless I set about with the purpose of writing in a medium, such as this page, where I know from the beginning I intend on sharing such rantings with whatever eccentric folks want to read it). I mean, the whole point of most of my writings are for my psychological benefit, to explore the deepest recesses of my mind, to leave no stones unturned, to be honest and open with myself and no one else. True enough, I'm like nearly all humans in that what I 'talk about' is restricted depending on who I'm talking to, but when I'm 'holding counsil' with myself this is not an issue. Unlike some theoretical others, though, I wouldn't be utterly broken or devasted if, for whatever reason beyond my control, my insane personal writings somehow made their way into an 'impersonal' domain (like the Public Domain or any of its subsidiaries). I certainly wouldn't be at all happy about it, because that sort of exposure is very cruel indeed, but, ahh, I'd get over it, wouldn't I?

Indeed, I would, because I have this thing about being comfortable with who/what I am -- that is, might as well, because there's no point or use in not being cozy with myself. Sure enough, I have lived life perpetually immune to 'what others think' -- 'what others think' can make me temporarily emotionally distraught or lead me to consider some aspects of my behavior or whatever, but in and of itself it's hardly an impetus for change and in the end I do what I want. Now, how this applies to the manner of 'exposure' I was just babbling about... If I'm all genuinely self-satisfied (whatever that means and 'cozy at home' (assuming that the only permanent home I have is myself, or...something), then what bloody difference does it make if a bunch of hominids that probably don't count for too much (let alone anything) in my book employ my cryptic but nonetheless intimately personal scratch-handwritten blatherings as some twisted form of pleasure reading? So what if somebody finds out that one of the ways I explore my sexuality (which, for the record, has thusfar elluded manifestation into anything that actually involves another lifeform -- oh well) is by writing bizarre dialogues between imaginary characters involved in the sort of interpersonal entanglements I have (thusfar) no firsthand experience with? That's not going to say who (or what -- mwahahahahhh!) those imaginary characters are or exactly what I have them doing or talking about, which, needless to say (so why am I..?), is not the sort of thing I generally want others casually perusing.

Ah, and while I'm at it (and that paragraph was getting too long, anyway), since I just revealed that potentially-embarassing tidbit about myself, I don't consider myself to be living in a pitiful loner's fantasy world. Certainly, it's a fantasy world, but what better, safer, and healthier way to explore one's own feelings on the real world? It took me long enough to get over the inevitability of puberty and finally admit to myself that, 'yeah, this weird sex stuff is a part of life now, so I might as well get used to it' -- and the first step of that was coming to terms with my own sexuality. Nowadays, I accept it surely as I'm a Homo sapiens, but, far as that weird interpersonal stuff goes, I take my bloody sweet time. And... what better way to bide that time than by exploring a demented 'fantasy world' and the full range of weird (weird) interpersonal stuff that goes on in it? Writing, whether for oneself alone or with the intention of having an audience, is, far as my Literature text for English Comp. II seems to be telling me quite persuasively, is one of the best ways of investigating the endless intricacies of human nature. I find the book's essays persuasive (glad I've been reading them ::>) in part because they ring so true with what I've been doing all these years. Even if I am doing it with made-up characters and not with myself directly, by writing pages of insane chicken-scratch for myself I am exploring the nooks and crannies of human nature-- and how it applies, in countlessly differing ways, to me and everyone else.

(I'm starting to like this train of thought... ::>>) Those who have also read all of the babbling on my Gallery pages (specifically, Concepts and EVA) should know about 'WRH' and "Holy Shito!". WRH is sitting on the backburner once again, but odds are I'll come back to it -- but, er, back to the point... Of the oodles of weird stuff I've scribbled up for WRH's conceptual body, a lot of it has to do with the weird sexual side of human nature -- they, in fact, are definitely included among the very personal writings I've been speaking of. Some of them are situations borrowed directly from my own impression of what's going on out there, while others are 'scenarios' of my own fabrication that one wouldn't (expect to) find in the Real World. The most notable example of this is of the chemistry between my characters Sha'loon and Paarin, both of whom belong to non-existent 'races' of humans and thus, in their own unique ways, seem a little strange to many 'Real-Worlders'. Well, Paar's all right, because he's just a little strange-looking, but Sha'loon is a hard concept for most people to swallow -- she belongs to a race where the females are in every right female, but they are 'masculinized' in many ways that 'normal' people (whether in the story itself or Real Life) find bizarre, disagreeable, or downright repulsive. [Those wonderful spotted hyenas provided a lot of the inspiration here; Sha'loon's character emerged some time before I first saw "Evangelion", though there are some vague similarities between her race and EVAs that I couldn't help but take note of, but most of you probably have no idea what those are, so I'll end this thought here...] As much as the very concept of what Sha'loon is meets with resistance in Paarin, he finds himself nonetheless drawn to her -- and, likewise, Sha'loon to him, even though she knows things about him that many others would find repellant. Their relationship is probably the most unique in WRH [and, in comparison to some of the other characters' interpersonal affairs, extremely innocuous and wholesome] and, in spite of whatever my intentions when I originally conceived of it, covers a very diverse array of 'human nature issues', including some that probably get very little attention in the literary world (aha! my key to fame!).

As if short, scrawny, bi-colored dudes with freaky eyes finding their better half in towering, wavy-haired, broad-shouldered, flat-chested, well-muscled, incessantly grinning chicks wasn't weird enough... In the universe of "Holy Shito!", the only entities that are technically female at all have really broad shoulders, perpetually flat chests, and are elegantly well-muscled and completely devoid of body fat no matter what their lifestyle. [Sha'loon does, in fact, have breasts, but they resemble the human male equivalent unless she is lactating.] These femmes are, of course, the Evangelions (if you haven't read every last commentary on the EVA fan-art page, you'd be best off skipping this part..), and, together with the multitudes of 'angels' that populate this place called Eden, are the characters by which I currently find myself exploring the intricacies of human nature. This works because, in the mythos of "Evangelion" from which "Holy Shito!" got its essential inspiration, the term "human" has been expanded to include other forms of entities -- we are merely the 'Lilim' ("human" in a traditional sense) and share our 'human' status with such beings as Lilith (progenitor of Lilim), Adam (progenitor of the 'Angels'/shito), the Apostles (literal translation of shito, as Adam's angelic brood are commonly called in "HS!"), and Evangelions (quasi-angelic beings bioengineered by Lilim). Who the heck knows what any of this human/angel/Apostle stuff really means (does Hideaki Anno even know?), but for all practical purposes the Evangelions, Apostles, and other beings (i.e., angel characters that I made up) are all considered 'humans without human form'.

That statement is probably kind of cryptic (borrowed from someone's translation of a statement Misato made in EOE, so go fig), but that doesn't matter. One of the 'goals' in "HS!", far as characterization goes, is to explore this very idea of what being 'human' is really about. The Evangelions possess the souls and memories of human mothers whose original lives were abruptly cut short so their essences could empower the 'slaves of the Lilim' in SEELE's grand schema. In my scenario, their days of servitude on Earth over and new existences in Eden begun, the EVAs face the monstrous task of coming to terms with what they have lost, what they have become, and what they can hope to expect from life now.

The EVAs, in possessing the experiences of humans (meaning 'Lilim' here) and still having largely human forms (with a few... uniquenesses), are the characters by which I can closest explore the 'human condition' as we know it. The Apostles and other angels, on the other hand, vary greatly in how in touch they are with their "Inner Human" -- at least, that's what shito Arael tells Yui at one point. (Arael is HS's 'angel psychology expert'.) Some, like Sachiel and Zeruel (my favorite shito and, consequently, the ones that get the most 'screen time' in my preproduction-stage 'fan manga'), have inadvertently opened 'that door' -- looking past their bizarre appearances, they are every bit human characters -- but all of the characters, not just the 'acquainted', are all essentially human, whether they realize it or not. Differences do, of course, emerge due to the environment (Eden resembles a human metropolis only superficially -- its basic workings are completely, innumerably different) and the separation of the human self from the limitations/influences of the human body.

Now, this is an idea I really find interesting... It's basically a takeoff on that 'humans without human form' bit. I don't really explore the concept in a tedious scientific way, rather, I plan on going about it rather loosely, and not always seriously. The Angels, by virtue of their forms and environment, are guaranteed a limitless, ageless, deathless existence. Each individual contains an indefinitely self-sustaining energy source (super-solenoid) that spells the non-necessity of food and drink. There are no elements to take shelter from, not a single source of disease or bodily disorder. The Angels also, while possessing cellular structure and DNA (which, if Ritsuko's cryptic babblings are any indication, somehow fall within the 'human pattern'), lack a biological sex, do not produce gametes, and are thus fully spared from procreative distractions. And being as the Angels take on an endless variety of forms, appearance doesn't mean a whole lot.

In any case, I'm straying too far from my line of thought again... Back to the point. The Evangelions are (in HS!, remember -- I have to make a lot of stuff up to fill in the anime's data gaps), in a world of sexless entities, as I mentioned earlier, the only things with X chromosomes. (No Y chromosomes in all of Eden...) Their inner workings, as related to their XX, are rather, erm, different than when the EVAs were but Lilim. But, still, for whatever reason, they, spiritually and physically, crave contact with others. (Who can blame 'em, though, after being plastered with wires and armor plates and other random 'restraint' kripp, not to mention all of the other garbage they had to put up with.) Fortunately for them, there are angels out there in touch with that part of their Inner Human who feel the same way or otherwise wouldn't mind giving it a go. Hence, the basis for HS's 'sexual' themes -- or would that be pseudo-sexual? Beats me. Whatever it is, it'll be bizarre and twisted, but the NGE fan world seems suspiciously devoid of such 'obvious' (to my sick mind, anyway) pairings as Yui + Zeruel, Naoko + Barb (er, EVA-03), etc. "Holy Shito!" is a story that simply must be told, by me, some day... [I'm rather looking forward to the challenge of how to graphically handle EVA/Angel 'slash' -- oh dear.] I'm not afraid to put my innocuous conceptual perversions out for all to see! HAH HAH HAH!!

What a long and bizarre entry. Wonder if anyone's actually read the whole thing... -RKC

And if you really want to read more... Here's the 'older' stuff.

rachel.k.clark@comcast.net

 The Raptorian Sector -- Banter. All original content © 1996-2003 Rachel K. Clark -- All Rights Reserved.
Screenshots from "Evangelion" copyright © GAINAX/Project Eva.