Responsibility

For the first time I'm going into a field where it really actually matters how badly I mess up at my job. In the grand scheme of things the likelihood that my forgetting you said no lettuce on your taco will have serious ramifications are pretty small. But missing something when I'm doing an examination on someone before we get them to the hospital or giving them too many doses of a medication, that's serious. This time it's literally a matter of life and death that I do things right. Thankfully I'm able to forget that most of the time and just focus on what I need to do. See problem, fix problem, simple. If you concentrate hard enough on what you're doing you can forget all the things that can possibly go wrong on your watch and you always have the "do no further harm" thing floating over your head all the time. All the things I have to learn reach far beyond just remembering them for the next test like I can with every other class I've taken. After all, by and large the things I had to learn in school never had any practical application whatsoever. Ever. I do not use trigonometry in my daily life. Never will. But all these things I'm learning in school, it's actually relevant! Important even! This is a new and fascinating concept and totally awesome. I actually love what I'm doing and love the job I can have when I'm done. I look forward to going to school and not only that but I'm actually doing well in school. This is totally foreign territory here. Even when I was studying English I liked it a lot, but it didn't excite me like being an EMT does. Plus editors don't get to ride in fire trucks and how many people can say that doesn't fulfill every childhood dream? Plus no matter how long my shift is and how tired I am and how many awful things happened I can know I did something really important for someone. I can directly see that I made a difference and that's pretty cool. Of course I'm still a little worried that I won't know enough or I'll completely freeze one day in the field and my partner will have to save me, but hopefully I'll be all right. I've got the lights and sirens to make me happy if nothing else. 

Awesome nerdom

I bought myself a nice new flash drive last week since the one I already had is almost seven years old and is so old school it only holds 128 MB. So I set out to find a nice new one and settled on a 2 gig that can pretty much hold the world. Naturally, I couldn't just buy some boring, plain black one that so many people have, I had to get a special one. So I found a R2-D2 flash drive that is totally awesome. Does it look awesome? Ohhhh, yes it does. Is it practical? Not really. Doesn't fit into the USB ports on the PC, but does just fine with the laptop. But if I cared about things like that I wouldn't own about half of my possessions. It's just fun to look at him sitting there on my desk. I nearly lost his head once, that's the downside, but I found it again sitting on my blue bed sheet. See the problem? Still, I love the thing and I'd love it more if I could figure out how to get rid of the infernal PDF files that came with it full of coupons I don't want for idiotic Star Wars Clone Wars merchandise that I will NEVER buy under any circumstances. George Lucas is busy puking all over the franchise, I don't want to get that on me.

You'll Thank me Later

I've noticed something interesting in the course of my EMT training. Saving people involves a great deal of discomfort and awkwardness for both parties. Putting a K.E.D. spinal immobilization device on someone, for instance, isn't on right unless the person feels like they're wearing the most horrible corset ever invented and the straps around the legs are so tight that they can't stand up. Naturally, we do this for your good. Same goes for the collar. If it feels uncomfortable, it's on right. Basically, most everything is designed to keep you from moving and unfortunately that usually involves very tight straps and things jammed where you'd rather they wouldn't be, but since your leg is broken you have more important things to worry about. In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter that all the things are uncomfortable since that's what's keeping your spine, broken bones, or whatever from getting even more messed up than they already are. I just find it funny that everything that is designed to keep us safe, from seatbelts to spine boards, is uncomfortable.

Cumulation

Lately I've been thinking that my body holds a grudge against me. It's either that or it's lazy and wants to get everything over with at the same time. I only get sick about once a year, sometimes twice, and always around the same time. Last year it went for broke and I had a cold for three weeks and a small dose of pink eye that went away in roughly 24 hours. This year though, my body decided that just wasn't good enough. This time not only do I have congestion as per usual, I'm not sure if it's allergies or a cold yet, but I'm leaning towards cold, there's a cough too. But in addition to this I got a raging case of pink eye from who knows where, it's not like I hang around people with pink eye, I hate it, and some nice throbbing pain all along my left jawline up to my temple that gets poignantly worse when I blow my nose or dare to bend over. My mom suspects this is an infection of some sort, so I get to to to the doctor tomorrow. I'm sure it'll be really fun too.
Me: "Hello, Doctor, nice to see you again so soon. You know how last time I came it was for a physical and I was in perfect health?"
Doctor: "Yeah..."
Me: "Not so much this time. What do you have for throbbing pain in my face and nasty goo pouring out of my nose and eye?"
Doctor: "There's an app for that."

We are not amused. Just for once, can I get sick like a normal person? Or even just one illness at a time, that would be nice. I do not need a side order of pink eye every time I get sick, thanks. And keep your rotten whatever-it-is infection. The upside to this is that my dad still had some medication from the last time he had pink eye, so I used that and it made my eye stop covering itself with goo and generally throwing a tantrum. The medicine mixed with some rinsing my eye with salt water really made it a lot better. Now can I have something to fix everything else? Please and thank you.

Post Grad

This movie came out a while ago, I know, but I just saw it. My verdict?

BULL.

At first it was doing just fine following the whole "I graduated but now I can't get a job, so now what?" thread but then it kind of careened off a cliff. She works for so long to get a job period, never mind getting the one she wanted and then the writers totally toss it out of the nearest window. Maybe if it weren't for the fact that the main character has MY DEGREE and MY DREAM JOB, but I think it was just ridiculous. Hey, guess what chick, you've got a job. Not just any job either. THE JOB. Your dream job, my dream job, the job you went to school for and worked to get, remember? And you take off to go chasing after some guy you just decided you liked five minutes ago? I don't even know what the point of the movie was at all. It sure wasn't "work for your dreams" or something like that since she throws away her career and her future thirty seconds after getting everything. Might have been something about family, but they were ridiculous and last I checked having an income and a place to live is important, not deciding to drop everything and fly to New York on a whim and throw all your work down the toilet and salute it as it circles the drain. If they wanted to create a sympathetic character they suck at their job. Perhaps they wished to convey the message that success means nothing when you're alone and lonely and sitting on an inflatable couch in a pool, but if that was the case there was a lot lost in translation. I had no reason to care whether or not she ended up with the nice guy/guy next door/childhood friend who's been in love with her for years, whichever cliche we wish him to be guy because there was so little chemistry between them to work with. He obviously likes her, but she's too busy trying to decide what the plotline is to figure out she's supposed to like him back until nearly the very end of the movie. It would have had far greater emotional impact if they had managed that at least.

So my verdict still remains: BULL. Get back to me when you've figured out what it's really like to graduate and have all your hard work flushed down the toilet because no one will hire you. No number of Eskimo Pies, or whatever the crap that ice cream bar was she kept going on about, will fix that.

Back from the Dead

Lately DC Comics has been bringing everybody back from the dead, usually after killing them off a short time before, though lately they've gotten into this irritating habit of bringing back people who have been gone for years and no one was upset about it. Take Jason Todd for instance. He was killed of in the 90's after readers voted for him to die. Why bring back someone like that? Granted, now he's older, but that doesn't mean he's any better. Same goes for Stephanie Brown, A.K.A Spoiler A.K.A. Robin, who died during a giant gang war that she started. I didn't like her then and I don't really like her now as Batgirl. Who said I wanted that annoying girl to come back from the dead? Bringing Batman back, fine, I'm more than OK with that, but Stephanie? No. We didn't need that boomerang dude back either, send him back. Maybe they' just got too excited with the whole black rings thing they've got going on and now they just want to bring back every dead hero they can think of. Not OK, DC, not OK.

You didn't tell me you could write like that

I'm a fan of Dave Barry and an almost fan of John Connolly. It's safe to say I'm a fan of Dave Barry, because I've been reading his work since middle school and I really like it. He's one of the funniest writers I've ever found and his stuff is great and I've read tons of it. John Connolly I can't say I'm a true fan of, I think, because I've only read one and a half of his books and I don't think that counts when he's written six or seven of them or something. See? I don't even know how many books he's written. What kind of a fan does that make me? Anyway, what I've read I've really liked so I'm likely to read more and become a real fan, not the one and a half book "I'm casually interested" fan. But the thing that I found interesting today while I was busy reading John Connolly's book, The Gates, is that it really isn't much like his other book I read, The Book of Lost Things. They're both really good and I really like them both, but while The Gates is funny the majority of the time and is intended to be, The Book of Lost Things was largely serious and made you think deep thoughts in a great way. I loved that about it. Now, Dave Barry writes hilarious things all the time and that's why I've always loved his work. But after September 11 he wrote an article about it that was very serious and was some of his best work I've ever read. So both authors have proved they can write both very good serious material and very good humorous material. So I was wondering to myself as I was laughing at Connolly's book describing the demon of stale biscuits and crackers, which is better: to read something serious by an author that's very good and then read something equally good by them that's very funny and be pleasantly surprised at how good they are at being funny when you didn't know they could be or the other way around. Maybe one isn't better than the other, but I wonder. Which is more fun or more satisfying as a reader? Either one has an impact on you because you weren't expecting it, but it's an interesting thought because other authors I've read, Tolkien for instance, only wrote one particular kind of thing so you have no idea just how funny Tolkien could really be or if C.S. Lewis could write science fiction. Maybe they couldn't and that's why they didn't, I don't know. But there's something about an author giving you that happy surprise with their work that I really like. Obviously both Barry and Connolly have proved they're capable of writing whatever they like but naturally chose one or the other for certain reasons. Dave Barry happens to like writing humor, so he does. I have no idea why Connolly writes what he does because I haven't actually joined the "I'm a fan" club yet, but when the bandwagon drives by again I'll jump on. So, I'll just leave this fun thought to be chewed on for now, since I'm not too worried about finding an answer. I just like contemplating it. Good to be pleasantly surprised, whatever the case.

Never Forget

There seems to be this poetic mantra people have for 9/11, either "never forget" or "always remember" or some variation on the two. There are editorials saying it's time to move on, heal, forget, whatever. Well, maybe they've moved on, but the rest of us are having a little trouble. It's hard to say what it is that makes it so hard to let go of 9/11: maybe it's the fact that we're still fighting in the middle east, or because it took so long to build the memorial or just the simple fact that it was civilians that paid the price this time. Whatever it is, we're not letting go any time soon. And as for "never forget" how could I? I remember perfectly where I was and what I was doing when I found out about the WTC, as does everyone else. Psychology calls it a flashbulb memory. Beyond that, my whole world got turned on its head and suddenly words like "terrorist" got shoved into the everyday vernacular. I'd never heard of terrorists and I couldn't have found Afghanistan on a map. And, however it may sound, all this wrecked my childhood. My childhood, adulthood, all of the above. I was fourteen when this mess started, so it's safe to say I really grew up with all of this and it's a lousy way to pave the way to adulthood. At least people know how police officers and firefighters have always been the selfless heroic people that they are, but thanks to 9/11 they proved it in an incredible way. Innocent people died that day because some crazy loons from a country I'd never heard of wanted to prove some sort of point about capitalism or something. As if flying planes into buildings is going to make people sympathize with you. My life continues to be made miserable and difficult, people die, and everything is a mess because of this one act by a small group of horrible people who seemed to think that just because they were willing to die thousands more should have to as well. They never did anything to offend these Jihadists and neither did I. So, they can take their precious cause and shove it. Fact is, I'm not interested. You don't murder innocents and wreck my life and expect me to sympathize with anything, I don't care what it is. So, I'm still angry. Thanks for the offer, but I won't move on, I won't forget, I won't let it go. I don't care if that makes me petty or anything else. As far as I'm concerned, terrorism is one of the highest forms of cowardice and I'm not letting it go. What I will do is remember the courage, sacrifice, and lives lost because of all this. I'll never forget that.

The End of all Things

Well, I decided a while ago that I would do this when everything was done, so here I am a week after the fact finally getting down to it.
Last week I graduated college with my very own bachelor's degree and I think I should make a tally of things like I did after my huge entomology project. It puts things in perspective nicely and I like that. So, it is as follows:
I graduated precisely six years and one month from the day I arrived on Rexburg to start college.
All told, I completed 12 semesters, and about 4 1/2 years of actual time in school and 150 credits. -_-'
I lived in three apartments and one house and had a total of roughly 45 roommates, including people I lived with more than once, they got counted twice. :P
I slipped on the ice and fell about four or five times, a feat in and of itself, considering most people did it more often or broke bones in the process.
It has been twenty years since I started my education, beginning with preschool.
I have now attended six schools in two states and have endured temperatures ranging from -20 degrees to 116 degrees. I have endured rain, snow, sleet, hail, thunderstorms, floods, snowstorms, blizzards, ice, and mud. I've been sunburned and walked through knee-deep snow and had ice form on my eyelashes and my legs go numb from cold.
I have had the best roommates and some less than the best.
I have had the best professors and the best college experience I could have had.
I have learned many, many things, but I think the most important is this: everything happens for a reason and it will work out alright in the end.

So farewell childhood I'm now off to explore the real world and kick it in the face.

Oh, you don't say

I was looking at the calendar yesterday and came to an interesting realization: school ends next Friday. I don't know when or how this happened, I know it didn't ask my permission to close the gap so quickly like this. After all, if school ends next week that means that graduation is a week after that and after that, I'm done. If that's not a scary thought, nothing is.
Uh-oh. That's all I've got to say about that.

Trade offs

Colds have a way of making you realize how you prioritize things. For instance, I first decided I'd rather be coughing than have the sore throat, persisted to think I'd rather have the cough over the stuffy/runny nose, but now I found myself ranking all three of them according to which is more tolerable. I decided that first comes cough, then stuffy/runny nose, then sore throat. Since the sore throat causes constant, horrible pain, it had to go after not being able to smell or taste. Even though those two make me pretty unhappy as it is. I happen to like food a lot, and now I just don't care what I eat because I can't tell what it is anyway. Coughing is usually so straightforward: you cough until you've expelled the gunk clogging your lungs, then you go on your way. Simple. So, can I trade in my stuffy/runny nose for just a cough, please? I've been tolerating this nonsense for a week now, give me a break here. And if I could get a medicine that actually alleviates my symptoms, that would be really nice too.

Smallville

I am a huge fan of Superman, he's my favorite superhero and quite frankly I've been in love with him since I was nine years old. So, of course, when Smallville started I was really excited about it. With someone like Tom Welling playing Clark Kent how could you not like it? So I happily and faithfully followed the show for years until I went to college and didn't have a tv anymore. When I did get a chance to watch it again I was very unhappy about what they had done with the story, bringing in characters that shouldn't be there, creating a storyline that was miles from feasible, things like that. So, I gave up on it. When I heard they had done the series finale I thought that it was worth a shot. Maybe they had done something really good to make up for the fact that the Justice League wasn't supposed to exist yet and yet they put it in there anyway. I found the episode online, settled down, and started to watch Tom Welling for about an hour and a half. I have to admit, they outdid themselves this time. I knew the previous seasons were terrible, but somehow I thought that the series finale would be something spectacular. Why wouldn't it be? Clark Kent is supposed to become Superman, that should be epic! And yet, instead I got something cheap, corny, and insultingly bad. The plotline was so ridiculous it put the others to shame. Clark and Lois married? What's that about? It was bad enough they introduced her into the story too early. The effects were so bad it looked like some cheap SyFy show. Worse, at times, especially Darkseid. And the music, oh, the music was so bad it almost hurt to listen to. They went through the effort to put Clark in the Superman suit by the end, of course, but never bothered showing him completely while he was wearing it. Just some vague shots of his torso here and there. The whole episode was an embarrassment to Superman and all the people who made the Smallville series. How do they expect to generate interest in Superman when they shovel crap like this at us? This is why I stopped watching Smallville in the first place: if you have any notion of what the storyline is supposed to be, the whole thing is a travesty and quickly becomes unbearable. My favorite thing to say while watching the finale was "someone got paid to write this?" So, we can add horrible dialogue to the rest of their shortcomings and blatant mistakes. The sad things is, they put effort into this, and I must say, it does take some serious effort to screw up my favorite superhero this badly. Wake up, people, and give us something decent. So, here's to having your hopes and expectations trampled on. Well done.

Negligence

I have somehow fallen out of the habit of checking Deviantart every single day as I used to. I used to be in the habit of checking it several times a day, in fact, more than I bothered to check my email. But lately, since I'm using a shared computer, or whatever the issue is, I haven't been checking it as often. When I do remember to check it, however many days it's been, I find my inbox stuffed full of messages and notifications. Somehow I still haven't learned my lesson and started checking my Deviantart every. single. day. Why is this a problem? Quite simply because when I logged in today I had over 1,600 messages and notifications demanding my attention. The last time I left it alone for a week it had over 2,000. This is why I need to check it more often, so I don't have to sift through a single set of notifications numbering roughly 400 all stacked together. And that's just for Bleach. Nevermind Naruto, the people I watch, etc. This requires copious amounts of clicking that is bound to be irritating and distracting to those around me. They really need to make some checkboxes for those things so I don't spend all morning clicking over and over and over again. 400 messages takes a lot of clicking! And then I have to do it seven times over, or however many it is today, to get through all the other stacks. Come on, this BEGS for checkboxes! Of course this just boils down to me checking my messages more often. I'll get on that.

Irony

I write quite a bit, usually nothing terribly serious or anything, but I like writing. I don't much care for writing papers for school, but I do it anyway, and I do get some satisfaction out of it when I'm finished. Approaching these things, papers, short stories, much longer stories, I don't feel very apprehensive. With the papers it's more of a feeling of "another one? uggghhh" more than anything. With stories, it's not relevant what feeling that is beyond "yay, it's actually fun to write this!" However, for my assignment this week for my oh-so-exciting rhetoric class is to create functional and chronological resumes as well as two cover letters. Faced with writing a cover letter leaves me with a sense of "graggpoiahsn;fwneio;ah*^OUIHfa@#&#!!" Basically, complete gibberish going through my head. Complete and utter gibberish mixed with panic. A cover letter? I can't write a cover letter, prospective employers read those, they scrutinize them, I have to *shudder* convince them to hire me! This, ladies and gentlemen, is scary. Give me a twelve page paper on psychological resilience in literature, I can do that, a ten page paper on heroic archetypes and human society's need for them, piece of cake. But a cover letter, oh no, that's just... gyuhhh. Sound it out, it's a very descriptive word.
Somehow the challenge of actually talking about myself rather than cut and dry literature is far more challenging. Nevermind the daunting task of trying to convince someone I've never met how marketable I and my job skills are. Last time I checked working random jobs to pay for my textbooks and spending the rest of my time in school doesn't portray much skill in the real world. Real world, what's that, have I been there? Hire me and I promise I can do the job, it's not my fault I haven't actually done the job before. Blame the employers who demand experience for the job but don't hire you so that you can actually get said experience. It's quite the circular and pointless little dance. All in all, I hate cover letters. But, I doubt I will ever be able to escape them.

Spring Cleaning

I decided it was time to clean out my closet, since I haven't done that. Ever. Mostly I just shove more stuff in there. But on Tuesday I decided it was time to clean it out and start boxing up things. This seemed like a simple endeavor, but I've spent three days on it and I'm still not completely done. It turns out I still had most of my old high school notes and I think the combined paper probably murdered an entire forest. I did decide to keep about two pages of my government notes, but only because one had funny pictures and the other had an old doodle of mine that I find fascinating. Why is it fascinating? Because it was the very first doodle of its kind, of course. I like to consider it a historical document. The rest of it all, I recycled, saved another forest. Cleaning off my dresser was easier as it involved more simple throwing stuff away and now I can actually see the top of my dresser again. Some day I might actually clean out the drawers and see what they look like too.
In the course of all the cleaning though, I came across old notes from people and birthday cards and whatnot. Trouble is, I have no idea who the people are who gave them to me. Clearly it was important once, since I kept them all, but now I have no clue. I suppose the logical thing to do would be to label things, but who thinks of labeling birthday cards from a decade ago? Even the ones I do remember who they're from end up in a box anyway and it'll be another ten years before I look at them again. And who knows, maybe the next time I'll end up throwing them away too. In the mean time it's nice to read them again. Also, it's very dusty up there in my closet, makes my hands very dirty. I'd clean that too, but let's be honest, it really doesn't matter. Besides me, I don't think anyone's going to go poking around up there. If they did they're be very unhappy with how their hands would be afterwards, and not just because of the dust. I'm sure there's a spilled soda up there too and it's nasty. For the record, it's not my fault either. The thing managed to do it by itself and I didn't even know the can had soda in it. I might break down and clean it up eventually, but not any time soon. I'm not in the mood for that kind of thing. And there is still the lingering matter of my bed. Who knows what's under there? I refuse to cross that bridge for a long time. It's dusty under there too and I hate dust, it makes me sneeze. Obviously.
So, there it is. The great crusade against my cluttered closet that is still in progress. I probably have all sorts of odd things hidden in there just dying to be dumped in the garbage. On to the next!

Thought for the day

"Good things never last, Mr. Denham."

Pandora

I pulled up Pandora a little while ago, because I have yet to get iTunes on here or my music, and if you don't understand that, read my last blog. We're not going there. Anyway, Pandora. Occasionally, I admit it does get on my nerves, but I was willing to forgive it when I found one of the greatest stations ever created, the Film Scores station. But then it kept trying to slip in some sort of new-age nonsense in there as if I wanted it. But overall we get along.

I felt a need to go looking for old-time 1920's style music today, and in the process I found an entire station just for opera! I had already been going through the trouble of trying to build one the hard way, working my way from Luciano Pavarotti, because the man was amazing. Well, that was a lengthy process, and now I have a handy ready-made station for it. But, since I wasn't looking for opera in the first place, I continued my search for nice 1920's ragtime, having already found a nice Early Jazz station. This time, I got distracted by one called Choral Music. I admit it, I love choral music almost as much as I like good opera, better, sometimes. So, naturally, I added that station too. Having satisfied my curiosity in that field, I resumed my search for what I actually intended to find, only to be waylaid by a station entitled Showtunes. Generally speaking, I'm not obsessed with showtunes or anything. I'm probably classified as a passing fan, only truly interested in Wicked and Phantom of the Opera. But, I added the thing anyway, and it pulled up Chicago and we became friends. This made me quite happy, and I went back to finding that ragtime again. Finally, I found that there is no ragtime station and this was disappointing. Not to be deterred, I asked it to make a station centered around Scott Joplin. I think Pandora must be trying to increase its good karma, because it instantly gave me a string of perfect ragtime songs, just like I wanted. So, as of now, Pandora and I are very good friends. This will last until I go back to my Train station (funny, isn't it?) and it decides to pull up a live version of a song. I hate live versions, but does Pandora let you tell it that? Of course not. But until that or a new resurgence of new-age I-wish-I-was-music pops up, we shall remain on good terms.

That'll do, Pandora, that'll do.

Goodbye, Clark

I named my laptop Clark, or rather nicknamed him that. It's like racehorses, they have a real name but everyone refers to them by their nickname because let's face it, PioneeroftheNile is a mouthfull. So, Clark's official name is Superman, but I call him Clark. We've been together for a long time, nearly six years. He was a birthday present my senior year, about a month before I graduated high school. We had our ups and downs in our relationship and I gave him a good smack more than once, but I still love the guy, he's reliable. But now, after all the grief he's given me, he's really topped himself this time. This time his entire motherboard may be shot, in fact, it probably is. It's not exactly the end of the world because I can still use the computers on campus and I was planning on replacing Clark as soon as possible after this semester anyway. But, for him to die now, in the middle of the semester, is really horrible timing. I can't afford to replace him, much less fix him, and I've lost that ever vital connection to the outside world. When we lose our tv at the house I won't even be able to watch DVD's anymore. Granted that doesn't sound very dramatic, but let me tell you: IT IS. Me being deprived of DVD's, of my anime, that's a BAD THING. I do not like it. The next worst thing would be to lose my books.
And, since all bad things must happen all at once, my watch died. Both of them. Both of my watches' batteries died at the same time, so now I am watchless. For you to understand how horrible THAT is, let me explain: I have had a watch since I learned to tell time in first grade. I have never been without one since. We're talking nearly twenty years of wearing a watch here, and now it's gone. This week is turning out really lousy. Piled on top of all this was the various papers I had due this week, tests, quizzes, etc. The only upside to all of this is that it's a long weekend. What I'm going to do with it, I have no idea, but at least I get more sleep. Hurary for small favors.
So, goodbye, dear Clark, I'm going to miss you. You almost survived college for as long as me, and you earned your retirement, even if you were a pain in the neck most of the time. Farewell, my friend.

Winter

Winter is such a nice unique sort of time of year. The only time of year when your hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows will freeze along with your nose and everything in it. The snow drifts are growing larger, like some diabolical monster from one of my video games. It just gets bigger and bigger and the only viable way of killing it involves a healthy dose of flame-thrower. The only upside to all of this right now is that there isn't any ice. Ironically enough, it's too warm. Cold enough to snow every day, just not enough to create the usual layer of ice hiding under the snow. That's nice and all, but now instead of the cars sliding on ice they just get stuck in the snow. It's an interesting trade-off and I don't know which one I'd prefer. But for now I get to deal with treading my way through the snow piling ever higher and measuring how high it is today (about to the knees now). It's more fun to look at it from the comfort of my living room. The couches are nice. :) And I can sit here and think about the fact that I don't have to walk to school in the dark and the snow until Tuesday. Happy Weekend!

Epic

I have read more than a few manga ever since I discovered just how awesome it is but there are few that have really made an impact. But, the other day when I was stuck on a shuttle for a few hours I was reading some and I came across another one that just makes you sit back and go "whoa..." Now, that doesn't happen very often. Bleach and Naruto have had a few moments that get a close reaction to that, especially recently. But I think that there are only a few that can really say they had the "whoa..." factor going. One would be One Piece. Not the whole thing mind you, just a handful of chapters when Luffy's brother, Ace, is captured and the Navy tries to execute him. Luffy comes to save him, and the chapter after Luffy has set Ace free and the two of them are trying to escape was good enough to deserve the "whoa..." in addition to a "holy...." I just stared at it for a while. And there haven't been very many manga chapters that have done that except for Ichigo's Mugetsu chapter and the flashback chapter about Naruto's wicked awesome dad fighting Madara. But it's important to remember that those are only about one or two, possibly a handful of chapters within the entire series that's good enough to warrant that. One Piece has so many chapters now I don't even know how high it is. Just the epic chapter that had serious "holy..." going on was number 574 and it's still going. So, I have to wonder if Naruto and Bleach can pull it off again. Bleach has failed to seriously interest me or impress me since the Mugetsu chapter but Naruto is making a noble effort to see how many characters can have epic boss fights and that's good, but still lacking the "whoa..." or "holy..." factor in any degree of significance. At the top of my list for any manga and certainly for the "whoa..." factor would have to be Fullmetal Alchemist. There were plenty of chapters that had the "whoa..." or "holy..." factor, but the final chapter had both with a generous dose of "gggpoiehpotviutpjqoklpaojkmnkaoerhggppyyytthhhickkk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" It was just that good. I was at a loss of words and that does not happen often, anyone who knows me can tell you that. But the last chapter of Fullmetal Alchemist was just so epic it reduced me to gibberish. Rurouni Kenshin had a pretty epic ending too, but didn't have the "reduce to gibberish" factor. Still, overall, Kenshin and Fullmetal Alchemist are the best shonen manga I've ever read. As for shojo, well, I rarely read it and usually grow very tired of it. But, still, there has to be a best of what I have read, and I think that's Fruits Basket. It has good balance between the romantic comedy/drama without getting melodramatic. And it ended the way I wanted and that gives it serious brownie points. Some day I will finish reading Tsubasa and make a call on that one, and I get the feeling it will get some serious "whoa..." "holy..." and "oh wow..." points. At any rate, it's pretty much one of the best shojo just because there are so many swords in it. Can't go wrong with swords.
Now, I understand I've left some out, more than likely because I haven't read them yet, but this is my take on the ones I have read. Death Note doesn't make it up there just because it was more of a mind trip than anything. Plus it ruined the ride when L was gone. So, there it is. We'll see where the chips fall after this.