Yey! A new look for my blog!

Purple/fuchsia/pink layout that's just so kikay. Hey, it isn't everyday that people are treated to my kikay side ^_^

The cute demon girl here is Etna from this cool PS2 game, Disgaea. I started playing it but now I don't have time to finish, and it's one of those games that takes, uh, quite a long to time to completely finish. My brother, though, never seems to tire of playing it--the characters are around level 100 now, I think, which entails a lot of hours to achieve.

Anyway, I fixed my guestbook layout and made it etna-themed as well, and i would so appreciate it if people would sign it. Apparently SignMyGuestbook.com now has a one-time sign-up fee of $1.99; but since I signed up ages ago when it was still free, I don't get to pay. Sayang naman kung hindi magagamit, so people should drop me a line or two--just scroll down the side bars to get to the guestbook link (hahaha, I post this after nagging U to get a tag-board).

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I need moolah. I have to buy books for my classes, not to mention the readings. Professors expect MA students to actually have money because they assume we have jobs. Um, duh, if we had jobs we wouldn't be enrolled in classes that are scheduled on weekdays and at regular office hours.
Argh.

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When will the Extended Edition of The Return of the King be released? I'm suffering from LOTR withdrawal symptoms.

Speaking (writing!) of LOTR, one of my classmates from last semester encouraged me to submit my essay on The Hobbit as children's literature to a journal (I forgot which). But the problem with that essay is that it doesn't have complete bibliographic entries--I just used a couple of readings from my Children's lit class, readings I can't trace anymore. Unless I ask my former professor for the correct source. And that essay is just not fit for publication--if I wanted to publish it, I'd have to revise it, maybe even contextualize it to the Philippine setting, and I have too many things to do already.

Oh well *shrugs*

Grad Student at full throttle

Yup, that's what I've become.
I feel like such a blockhead.
I always get first-day-of-school jitters but this is getting way out of hand, it being almost a month after classes started. Maybe it's because I've been shocked out of my self-induced summer stupor--i enrolled a day after classes officially started, completely clueless, as always, about the goings-on in the university. Apparently I still have some charm, because I got the classes I wanted, even though they should've been closed (thus my name is last in all the class lists I enrolled in). But now I wonder why in blazes I was so desperate to get them. Everyone who finds out that I have twelve units ("twelve units?!!") this semester thinks I must be suicidal.
Besides this feeling of being slightly but uncomfortably out of my element in my classes, I suddenly find myself wishing I'd never enrolled, or I should've just enrolled in some IT course or something like Web design or 3D graphic animation. I'm surprising myself with thoughts of futility with my chosen field, i.e. "I don't want to be a 'cultural worker' anymore" (We are cultural workers, we that belong to the academe and the literature and the arts because what we do is supposedly preserving our cultural heritage).

I hope it will pass.

I'm not really so windang. I met new friends... (how long has it been since I actually got excited about the concept of meeting new people? have I ever been excited?) I try and have some fun, and not sit under my cloud of anti-social tendencies. But I do wish I could see the old gang more regularly--Apwil and I have been trying to meet up for so long, but there's always one thing or another cropping up out of no where, and its getting really frustrating.

Oh well, back to the grind. I have a ton of readings to plow through. Hopefully I can change this blog's template to give it some freshness. Even if my entries aren't fresh at all.

Things have come to a sorry pass...

Well, at least I think so. I've been having strange dreams lately. They're not exactly recurring dreams, but they do have recurring themes--it's me always trying to run away and/or hide from someone pursuing me. Maybe it's the games I've been playing—my recent dream consists of being chased around by genmas, murdering mutant-like monsters, no doubt brought about by playing Onimusha 3 Demon Siege (which is a great game--Samanosuke never looked so good ^_^). But whatever brought them on, there's still the same thing over and over again, me running and hiding. Oh yeah, it's pretty obvious what the dreams mean, it's probably just simple fear--of doing something, or accomplishing something, of trying and failing, of being nothing more than a potentiality and never an actuality. That's why I run, that's why I hide (ugh, doesn't that sound like a Britney Spears song?) instead of facing whatever it is I have to face.
Or maybe I just don't want to see people right now, because I quite remember a running/hiding dream where I'm running away from a familiar, friendly presence, and there was no fear, just plain--irritation.
I'm supposed to meet some friends by the end of the week, and I just don't want to, I just don't. I don't think I can handle even a handful of people who will probably ask the same things they asked last time we saw each other, and my answers won't be any different from my answers then.
But I think, "Why not?" Why do I always have to look at things in a way that'll aggravate me? Why don't I just enjoy their company, which I know I will, anyway? Why am I turning into such an effing (closet) drama queen?
I should go and meet them, especially since there's something in it for me (ha!), and because, well, social relations could drag me out of the darkness once again.
I'm turning twenty-three next month and if this year's been hell, I shudder to think what my unloved year will bring (You know the Blink182 song that goes "Nobody loves you when you're twenty-three"--hence, twenty-three is one's unloved year, as Gem & I used to joke).