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So, I'm still not married and I still don't have enough money to study in China. I will never have enough money to study in China. crying

Also, it's odd how I pick up other people's personality stuff so easy. I take a class for six weeks, I say things like the professor. I visit someone's journal, I'm talking all fancy... for a bit. Is that a glaring sign of the weakness of my own personality, to take so easily the traits of others? D:
In similar news, I still haven't been able to incorporate certain British things into my speech as well as I want to. My only consolation is that my spell check hates how I spell theatre.

Also, this is secret, but I've secretly started looking around for Elite Four slash. I blame Kame.

I want to put this here, because I had a lot of fun today. Funny things from D&D freeplay:

"A: I think I would play a warforged artificer. Gender neutral so you couldn't flirt with him.

B: I don't like genderless characters, I like sex too much. I want my characters to be able to have sex if they wanted to.

A: Well, you could play one and then play it discovering gender and sex.

C: Could you imagine that? Go in and be like 'I want to commission a masterwork v****a. How about adamantium?'"

Stupid Al, whining about how horrible I am for making him get the squeezy flea control. Stupid jerk. STUPID JERK!
I can get other guys you know! I used to have a lot of interested men before he came along! scream

All right! Today was exciting. gonk
I took my boyfriend with me to my parent's house for my birthday, apparently I shouldn't have. Now neither him nor my family have good opinions of each other. Great. Al felt offended about a remark my mom made, my mom and sister feel he's too sensitive and maybe he has something against women and that he doesn't like my mom because he doesn't like his mom. Now they're warning me that he probably thinks poorly of all women, and they probably think that I would be miserable if I continue to stay with him. Also, they're offended because apparently they caught him rolling his eyes at them. It's a mess, I don't know what to do. I should have never brought him over, but they'd not like him still because he doesn't come over much at all. Truthfully, he doesn't like my mom too, because he thinks she is always laughing at the expense of his family.
Why can't things go well for me? I know Al's an a*****e, he'll even admit it, but I would like for them to get over their initial disagreements and get along now, because chances are I'm going to marry him and they'll have to get along anyway. Ugh! stressed

So, apparently my boyfriend's humor scared away a fan of his at a comic convention. A girl came up to his table and told him that she had used his Booster Gold-Blue Beetle fanart in her Gaia sig, and he jokingly told her to take it down. Unfortunately she got away before he could let her know it was a joke and give her a print. Later on he got a note from her on DA apologizing and she hasn't checked her account since. So, PointyEaredBastard, or Eridani as the account says, if you ever see this, Al says he's sorry and he didn't mean what he said.

Well, in other news, it's a good thing I wasn't able to go to China, wasn't it? My dad had said they were shipping kids back because of the swine flu scare. That would have been so disappointing. sweatdrop

I'm not going to be able to go to China in the summer, how disappointing! I didn't have enough money to cover both airline tickets to and from and extra expenses. It is more expensive than I thought. Instead I might go ahead and console myself with a MacBook Pro and more noob RP profiles.
I just hope I don't forget my Chinese before I can actually go. Maybe I'll do an entire semester abroad.

China China China China China! heart
I am looking into applying for a summer overseas study program. Can you guess where I want to study? That's right! Japan! surprised

No, it's China. Ha! heart
Maybe Guangzhou to study more Chinese.

Even though the internet and Gaia is an incredible source of distraction for me, it does have several good things that have affected me for the better.

My parents signed us up for AOL when I was in eighth or ninth grade, when the internets were new and they charged a crazy sum, about $3 an hour in AOL's case. Having been used to BBS door games before, I immediately gravitated to chat rooms and the crazy role-playing that occurred there. Since they were almost always text, one had to quickly develop quite a few writing-based skills and a willingness to be outgoing in order to have a fun time there. I was a young teen back then, so I am not ashamed to admit that I was an ignorant noob for several years, but I did manage to eventually get that all out of my system. But after that, I managed to improve my ability to write as well as the speed of my typing. It was during those years that the distractions of online chat games caught up, and unfortunately, I dropped out of college after just barely graduating high school.
I spent about six years doing nearly nothing, I would hold jobs for a few weeks and maybe go to school, only to drop out again. I wish now that once I had gotten my act together that I could have those years back, but some good did come from them. I spent a ton of time online in chats on AIM, Neopets (yes, really), and Gaia. That time actually taught me several things that I now hold very important.

First, I actually became quite a bit more outgoing and cheerful, mostly in part to the considerable anonymity and faceless interaction that the internet provides. I had been very introverted and kind of depressed before. Interaction with others who I could not see and who could not physically harm me helped me come out of that shell quite a bit. I learned social skills that were unavailable previously and gained confidence in my opinions and myself.
Second, I improved the quality and diversity of my thought in my exposure to others with different opinions and ideas. Characters that were freely developed and shared with others along with art distributed by others opened up new areas for creativity to be channeled. I was able to accept the diversity on the internet easier because there was no face-to-face pressure to conform to one idea or another.
Third, I improved my ability to communicate well. As I joined more role-plays, the standards the expected increased. Once my friends on AOL got tired of my chat-speak, I improved my basic spelling and sentence structure. After that, I built up my ability to better communicate my thoughts clearly in order to prevent misunderstandings. After that, I refined my words so that they would flow well and so that I wouldn't be left with short, hard to read sentences. I still have trouble with paragraphs today though, as not many RPs require long posts that need them.

It was after those six years that I also realized something that was the most important. After all those years, I realized that I was completely alone. I had people who I could call friends on the internet, that was sure, but they were mostly faceless. I could not interact with them physically or spend time with them away from the computer. It was that realization and craving for real human interaction that finally gave me the motivation to get out of my house and get to know others. That led to my finding a job in a warehouse, which then gave me the motivation to go back to school.
These days I finally have friends, a boyfriend, and a purpose in life. I have the drive to succeed that I had severely lacked before and the means to achieve my goals. I don't know if I would have reached this state had I not wasted those six years online. Even though I know I can't have those years back, the internet has actually changed me for the better.

But you know where I was actually going with this? It's funny, really.
Ever since going back to school, I have been getting a lot of complements that my writing in papers is really good. A professor even told me that my writing was Honor's quality, a pretty big complement. It's all because of the internet, especially Gaia. Thanks guys. surprised

Wow, I just saw someone's journal fanfic that was just. Wow. It was a horrible train wreck I could neither peel my eyes away from nor read without having to skip most of the words. Wow. Really bad.
But I still wish that people could tag their journals as ones that contained character descriptions or fanfic, because they are all very interesting. Some of them even inspire me to doodling, even some of the horrible Mary Sues.
I enjoy a story. heart

But not the ones with horrible rape or sex scenes in them. Ick. Ick! gonk