Well, look who decided to show up and pay child support.

DEAR GOD, IT'S BEEN WAY TOO LONG SINCE I'VE DONE ONE OF THESE.

Look guys, okay? I know that I've been gone a while, and, in the best traditions of drunken deadbeat fatherhood have abandoned my spouse to care for our child alone in this cruel, cruel world while blithely going on my epicurean way. To be fair though, I did try! I bought some presents with my gambling money and tried to buy back her love with them, only to forget to bring them four consecutive times..

AND I DID WRITE OUT A PRETTY EPIC BLOG ENTRY. One of them. Once. Somewhere...

AND I'VE BEEN PRETTY BUSY, OKAY. THOSE APPLE JUICES DON'T JUST DRINK THEMSELVES, Y'KNOW. But I mean between school and my epic(ly embarrassing) graduation dance performance and studying abroad (IN THE NETHERLANDS WHY DID I EVER CHOOSE TO DO THIS) it's been tough even getting my own stuff together. For a year. With breaks. And three months off.

....

Okay, okay. You got me. I guess I just wasn't ready for the responsibility, was afraid of what our child would pick up from me. Maybe I just wasn't ready to give up the drinking (of apple juice. Or any other juice who are we kidding here).

BUT NO LONGER, MY FRIENDS. I AM TOTALLY TURNING OVER A NEW PAGE. I WILL GIVE THIS BLOG THE ATTENTION THAT IT NEEDS AND DESERVES. Plus, I'm in the NETHERLANDS SOB FOREVER EMILY I NO LONGER SENSE YOUR PRESENCE which means that this is the perfect opportunity to congratulate myself occasionally for staying alive. BASICALLY WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY IS. GET READY FOR SOME BI-WEEKLY UPDATES PEOPLE.

Yeah, you heard right. I said bi-weekly.

Bi.

Weekly.

And not in a curious-about-my-weekly-orientation way.

Look, I know what you're saying right now. "Hey, Sameera," you say.

"Yes," I reply.

"This sounds an awful lot like you are making a foolhardy attempt to make up for lost time, which, coupled with your absence and a childhood lacking a stable parent makes the blog ripe for hating and rejecting you, then wearing eyeliner and writing death-metal songs about the bourgeoisie."

With which I can only agree.
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SPECIAL! TWO-FOR-THE-UPDATES-OF-ONE PROACTIVITY POST!
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So I guess the best place to start is the beginning...

After three weeks of being extremely excited for my semester abroad and another two weeks making my last visits with friends (WE NEED TO PLAY THE LAVA LEVELS EMILY I C U) and subsequently extremely regretting my semester abroad I WAS FINALLY ALL PACKED UP. TOTALLY HAD EVERYTHING TOGETHER AND FORGOT NOTHING.*

*This is a lie.

Because my parents know me and herded me with extremely specific directions through customs all the way to security, I had little trouble at the airport. At least the one near my house. I mean the only uncomfortable thing was the full-body scanner. Oh yeah, and my suitcase was too heavy to check in so we had to step out of the (crowded) line and take out all my stuff in front of everyone. It was actually pretty comfortable.*

*This is a lie.

And then it was an hour flight to Georgia for the eight-hour flight to The Netherlands THE EXCITEMENT. By around hour seven I was pretty certain I was going to die on the plane. Especially since the two people sitting on either side of me were dangerously close to sleeping (and drooling on) my shoulder and also they were like fifty year old men. I know what you're saying though, you're saying "Sameera, couldn't you have just taken a nap or watched TV?"

To which my reply is HAVE FUN DOING ANYTHING WITH THIS ON EITHER SIDE OF YOU:

It suffices to say that nine hours later (arriving at 6:00 AM Netherlands time) I wasn't exactly working at optimal levels.

Which really isn't an excuse for what happened next.

I'm going to blame it on hearing a Cyndi Lauper song the second I stepped out of the gate and went towards the baggage claim. I wasn't expecting the Dutch national anthem or anything BUT I MEAN CYNDI LAUPER? FLAWLESS TASTE AIRPORT I AM NOT GOING TO LIE BUT YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST HAD THE DECENCY TO PLAY SOME EUROTRASH DISCO BEAT. I wasn't disappointed for too long though as there was the appropriate displays of tulips, waffles, chocolate, windmills, tulips, wooden clogs, tulips, and waffles. All. Over. (The waffle stand was when I realized I made the right decision in coming here.)

I mean despite everything being in Dutch it was actually pretty easy to find my way to the train terminal, where I would depart on the third leg of my journey down to the very southern tip of the Netherlands to Maastricht (where I'm at.) When I googled it before leaving (and this is important - I googled it without actually look at the routes or printing out the way to get there. I honestly arrived in Amsterdam with no idea how to get to my university. And lo, I still have no idea how to get to my university, but that is another story for another bi-weekly post.) It honestly seemed simple enough. I mean, pfft, pffft, how hard is it, really, to take a train, pfft.

Pfft.

After asking the same ticket attendant five different times how to get to Maastricht, how to buy a ticket, how to board the train, and how to get to the train station, I finally managed to get both a ticket and an itinerary (trying to endear myself to the ticket attendant with my quirky ways but mainly succeeding in doing what I've consistently done since coming here: convince other people I am not a functioning human being). Now all I had to do was go down the escalator to the underground train station located directly under the airport.

On paper it sounds really easy.

But over there, being all weird and abnormal and..European, the escalators aren't escalators. They're ramps. Pointing in the same direction. That don't move until you step on them. "Well," you say. "That sounds like a perfectly understandable and effective solution for European populations who do not have the room to accomodate your gigantic capitalist American escalators. "

And my only reply is that if you're going to put two escalator-ramp things next to each other and facing the same direction, at least give people a sign. So that they don't see the weird population-control bars in front of the one and think that means not to use it to go down step on the remaining ramp realize it goes up fall backwards onto your suitcases try not to make eye contact with any of the people in the airport and go down the right ramp only to find that everyone at the train station was watching you from below, staring hungrily up at you like a European, cave-dwelling species of Trollz.

After getting on like five wrong trains I finally made it to the station in Maastricht, except I had to take some time and recover from how ABSOLUTELY UNFORGIVABLY QUAINT everything is. Being the responsible and prepared person I am (see above) I completely neglected to bring a camera so I coudln't show all the great train pictures I got of the adorable Dutch countryside. I mean, there were lush meadows! Flower farms! Linden trees! Fields of Shetland ponies and sheep! WINDMILLS! And the most adorable little houses you have seen this side of the Sound of Music.

Oh, yeah, and a random gigantic Chinese palace in the middle of Dutch dairy countryside.

HOPEFULLY NEXT TIME I WILL HAVE PICTURES. And a phone. And a bank account. And an ability to find my university.

Fallout (3) of Contact With The Outside World

Well, it's been summer (at least as far as college is concerned) and I have been home since May 18th, and so I really don't have any excuse. That is, for writing nothing new and leaving the same picture of Sameera up as e-flypaper in the hopes that she would sense a disturbance in the blog force and come here to post her apparently already done and long overdue entry. (I mean, hers is already done. I've got nothing here. Or, I had nothing - I promise, I have an idea. I've once again turned my insomnia into gold something.) To her credit, she's got a big [personal thing of hers that I am afraid to mention without her permission] coming up and has been put on house arrest to practice for it, as it is very important, so she is therefore excused. Besides, I can handle this on my own. Right? Right. You're always so supportive, suspiciously-silent-non-subscription-holding-and-or-comment-leaving audience.

 

As of late, since my birthday has come and gone, and I have lost the start-of-summer energy which propelled me to let my parents propel me into getting my driver's permit and cleaning my room, the bulk of my days has been spent playing Fallout 3 for around the tenth time through. This, combined with the early hour (3:20) led to the train of thought, "Man, I would not make it in a post apocalyptic, radioactive world." That is, in essence, the plot of Fallout 3. In intense, first day on the job layman's terms, there was a big world war, and the world went kaboom. People survived in underground 'vaults', and when it was over some came out and repopulated. Other vaults stayed closed. Now the world is a death trap and you're just an escapee from one of the closed vaults, looking for your father (who left, and is the reason you had to leave as well) trying to survive. Of course, radiation is a part of everything now; the water, the food, some of the people, the-

 

..Ugh. Bugs. They're all giant and junk. Radioactive. And it isn't as if they just run innocently around your kitchen, eating up the scraps - or, since they're so big, demanding a place at the dinner table and their own plate. No, no. They actually attack. For what reason, I do not know, but can only assume that they want me for food.  I find this hideously terrifying and would probably perish from a heart attack before a bug would ever come near me. They don't exactly have ambulances or functioning hospitals anymore, in Fallout universe.

Of course, there are certain bugs that can hurt you FROM a distance, but..why don't we just move on. There may be working hospitals in the universe I live in, but that doesn't mean I want to end up in one, and my imagination is liable to send me there if I let it run too far.

I love crab, but I have never been a fan of Maryland crabs, for some reason. Maybe it's because whenever I eat them, I'm forced to pick through dirty organs to get to the delicious meat I want. Too much work, and a little disgusting. Believe it or not, the Fallout universe managed to come up with something crustacean related that is more disgusting than the dirty innards of a regular Maryland crab - the clean outside of a mutated Maryland horseshoe crab. One day, on my first play through of the game, I was strolling along through the wasteland robbing the skeletal remains of pre-war homes when I saw something heading for me from the direction of the nearest water source. It was walking in a strange sort of way, kind of hopping from "foot" to "foot" and snapping fat claws as it neared me, fixing me with a menacing stare from a little circular crab-face in the upper middle of its gray armored torso.

 Of course, the first thing to cross my mind was, what in the holy hand grenade is that. And it wasn't just standing there looking angry, like in the badly drawn picture. It was hop stepping toward me at a manageable rate, but in an alarming fashion - and when it would get close enough, it would lower its armored head and charge at me like a determined football player.
This was when I decided that the wasteland was not a place to be taken lightly. I'm pretty sure that the first time I went up against a mirelurk (the technical term for crab demon), it killed me dead pretty quickly. All I had at that point in the game was a hunting rifle and a 10mm, with a lack of ammo and hardly any way to heal myself. I'm rather sure it was a bug that made it attack me that early on anyway, because I was right near the second suggested location. Either way, I learned a hard lesson, and this just reinforced the idea that I would not be alive in Fallout universe. Like I said, I hate Maryland crab. And I've decided I hate radiation, too. After all, it is responsible for almost every single animal that attacks me in the game as well as some humans. Radiation gave us the mutated mole rat, the radioactive bear and the fire breathing ant. And it's tricky.

After meeting up with some of the other critters running around the Fallout universe, I was actually kind of relieved to see that I was fighting an ant. I'd already fought other mutated bugs, so I was like, big whoop. But that's only because unless you have the good fortune to meet up with the right people before you get to the town of the fire breathing ants, you pretty much get no warning as to what it is they do. There's only a small chance you'll meet someone who will tell you about them before you get there, (in fact, I couldn't find the information kid  when I actually went looking for him in a later play through) and there's a good chance you will stumble upon the town without realizing it. It looks just like any other place. It's a serious mistake to make, because unless you're strong enough for them, the fire breathing ants will..well, end you. Frankly, if this were a reality, the fire ants would end you no matter what. I don't see how you could handle being repeatedly set on fire unless you were massively irradiated, and that's keeping in mind that I don't really know anything about the science of radiation. Not only will your character put up with being set on fire, but they will do it without screaming, and while firing whatever weapon it is you've chosen. That is just fantasy. But hey, I'm not here to disparage the realism of the game. (I do love it, after all.)

Let us move on to something other than the creepy crawlies and non-crawling creepers. At this point you might be thinking that the animals and insects are enough to prove my point (that I'd be super dead in the Wasteland). ..Well, that would be true, but I want this post to be long. So we're going to talk about some of the people you meet there.

The Talon company are a group of for-hire mercenaries that some jerk has hired to kill you, if you're a good person in the game. They're supposed to be hired by someone, anyway, because you can often find the contract on one of the attackers, but when they first attacked me, I don't think I had done anything of major importance yet, and was highly taken aback by someone's interest in my immediate death. It basically went down like this:

 

 

I don't remember if I escaped with my life or not. But I think it's safe to say that if I had somehow survived the bugs, I would have died then in reality. I don't know when the Talon company starts to attack your character, but once they start they'll never stop showing up. You could collect infinite copies of your own death contract. It's a document creatively entitled "Kill [Your Name]!". It seems funny to me that they're sending group after group of Talon soldiers who never come back, and that doesn't seem to bother anyone at Talon central. I suppose the game does that because it's kind of helpful if you want to sell their armor or tape it together to make a stronger version of the Talon armor. And it does make me laugh to think of myself sitting on the ground taping together pieces of used armor, and then slipping them on somehow. I don't think I would be that crafty or keen on sitting alone in dangerous territory for extended periods of time. More would probably come for me if I did.

The Fallout Universe has its own answer to the issue of racism (not to solving it, but to showing that it exists without making the game so depressing). People seem to have advanced beyond racism as we know it as far as I can tell, which is nice, but that's only because a race of mutated humans has taken the place of the minorities. Which is, of course, even more ridiculous than modern racism. That's like hating disabled people. Hell, that IS hating disabled people. They were mutated by radiation, so to normal people they look like zombies from old movies, with their skin falling off and such. Personally, I love the ghouls in the game. For the most part they're nice and hardworking, determined. Freedom fighters, even. They kind of have to be. I mean, of course there are a few bad eggs..there's one that asks you to kill human bigots by shooting them in the head like an old zombie movie.  And then you find out that not all of them are bigots, they just have keys to another location that he wants. But for the most part, I actually really like the ghouls - I'm just afraid that in real life I wouldn't have as much charisma as my character has, and they'd kill me before realizing I was a friend. I'm pretty inept at social situations.

I don't know why people waste their time hating ghouls when they could be hating, excluding and killing the real mutated-from-human assholes. They're big, yellow, muscular and terrifying, with loud hateful voices and a bloodthirsty attitude that nearly all of them share. (I've only met two that don't.) They have the ability of "intelligent" thought, though it doesn't mean they're particularly smart, and make the conscious choice to kill humans or turn them into one of them. People would say that they hate ghouls because the "feral" variety similarly attack humans - but their brains have been scrambled by radiation, and they haven't the cognitive faculties to make the choice. They just kill whatever isn't themselves. Without getting too political about it, I can see that if I could manage to make it past the ghoul hate lightning I just made up, they would be my allies in the wasteland. And there are plenty of people besides the yellow death and the talons that you would need to be allied against. Slavery is a thing again. With electronic collars. No thanks. ..This keeps almost turning into a review of the game rather than an explanation of why I wouldn't survive if the game was reality. I'll just need to try harder.

Something that I noticed while I was running around was that everyone in the Wasteland seems to be skinny. Maybe not fit and healthy, but skinny. One would say that this was because everyone is living in a time in which food and water are scarce and need to be scavenged from old vending machines and the like, or hunted and killed - and everything is irradiated. But think about it; your character in the game comes from spending a lifetime in the vault. An underground safe-house where there is barely room to run around and there are a variety of snack foods, and little old ladies to bake you sweet rolls. In other words, you live in your house and you can never leave it. If you don't actively pursue good health, you'd be fat. In other words, I would be fat. But in the game I didn't see one overweight person in the vault, and of course, there were none outside. You have to take the clothes you wear off of dead people, or find someone who can make them for you in the vast desert of near nothingness. This fact alone proves that I am not fit for the Fallout world. (Hey, I made a pun.) I would come out of the vault as a fat slob and waddle my way down to the first city I found, if I didn't meet any irradiated animals along the way, and then have a heart attack once inside when I found a giant roach in my house. Isn't that a romantic tale? Hell, I don't even know what I would do if I could manage to survive. What I would do is hunker down in a safe town and never leave it for fear of dying, but if you do that, all you can do for entertainment is talk to people, unless you manage to find a magazine to read from some vendor (to scavenge them yourself you'd have to leave). That means there is no television, and certainly no internet. Could I even make it without the internet? This blog post alone proves that answer to be a definite no. Not to mention the fact that I'm watching television while writing it. But, you know. If you did decide to go out, you could always go and visit the DC ruins, around which Fallout 3 takes place. You know, if you're not me. I grew up being constantly shuffled to DC to see the monuments and museums and all that in an educational setting, and I think the child in me is sitting on the ground with her hands over her ears and her legs crossed. Still, I do find them a lot more interesting in the game, where it is necessary to shoot your way through.

 I'd just like to have a combination of the two worlds, with the adventure and heroism from Fallout 3, and the safety and familiar comforts of my life now. But, seeing as that is most likely impossible, it seems I'll have to stick to playing the game. Ah, well.

Sameera is an enigma wrapped in a riddle and covered in apple juice. Also she is very hard to get a hold of.

I need to get a Machete elastic wonder.
[5 points for understanding the reference.]

"Dear God, It's Been 4 Months" Quick and Dirty Update.

My goodness, my Guinness.
(I don't actually drink that, it just..felt natural to type it after 'my goodness'. Blame the media.)

It's been three four (I wrote the first part of this a month ago. ..Sorry.) long months, nonexistent readers. Did you miss me? Us? I hope so. Because we-..well, I, missed you. I'm sure Sameera hardly thought about you. She's neglectful. You know how it is.

Yes, I thought about you on many occasions, but was too busy to properly update you. I didn't want the post to be crappy. But this one is going to be anyway. I'm not even planning on drawing any pictures in Paint. I won't even go that far for you this time, baby blog. Sorry. But at least I'm here for my visitation. 

I was thinking that what I would do this time is go back over the posts I've already made and give you an update on them. (The ones that were events, not lists of all my idiosyncrasies.) So, basically, on what's been happening in my life.

LIFE UPDATE 321GO.

Artemis and Apollo: So, one day my friend Claudia was over at my house, and we were carrying out our general weirdness. She had a pet fish that she was very attached to, so I told her that she should check out the fish I bought at college, but had brought home for the long winter break. (If you read the blog, you know which ones I mean.) I was in the kitchen making myself some sort of snack, and she went over to get a look at the fish. A moment later, she goes, "..Apollo looks dead." After dropping the silverware I was holding in a clattering pile on the hard wood floor and running over to her side, I saw what she meant.

I changed my mind about drawing pictures for this.

He was..pretty much floating in a grayish haze of his own death particles.

Artemis, however, was fine.

I'm about 80% sure that she killed him.

[Since I started writing this, Artemis has died as well, and been replaced by my mother's new Beta. Lucifer.]









Disney qualities I possess: This morning, I rolled out of bed and my hair resembled a tumbleweed. If the wind had come and taken it, I think it would have looked more like a circular box kite than a tangle-free flowing curtain of hair goodness.

You know, looking back over the blog, most of the things that I post are..not..events that I can update you on. Oh well. Who needs organization when you have no readers, right? And when it's 6:52 am.



Bye! I'll yell at Sameera to post. I think she's had one in the works for six months now.

I can't decide which is worse: Sitting up and coughing, or lying down and not breathing.

I hate being sick. Being all stuffed up in the sinus region is markedly uncomfortable, and it becomes even worse when I am forced to lay down so that I can, oh, I don't know, SLEEP. It reminds me of when I am using a cheap headset for my computer/music, and one of the ear pieces breaks, forcing me to move and tilt my head this way and that, trying to find the location that makes the wires go back into place and gives me regular sound. Only, you know. I'm moving and tilting my head to restore the breathing function. Which is a little bit important. And I can't just abandon that pursuit halfway through. I always just imagine myself falling asleep without finding the proper breathing position and just..dying.
That's silly though, right? I'd wake up if I was about to stop breathing forever, right?

..Right?

Oh, I really don't trust my body to be smart that way. I should probably wait to think about that when I'm well again, though, because being sick just heightens my paranoia. Okay, happy thoughts. Think of happy things. When I'm sick I think about and do a lot of the same things, regardless of what the illness is. I'm going to do a blog cop-out here and just make a list of those things in no real order.


1. Call my mother to complain.
My mother is a geriatric nurse practitioner, and she is also two hours away, but despite the fact that I am not living in her house and readily accessible to her, nor am I over 75, I still believe that repeated phone calls to her will somehow make me heal faster. The phone calls usually go from something actually helpful, like:

Me: "Hi mommy, I'm sick, pity me."
Mom: "Aw, poor baby. Are you drinking plenty of liquids? Getting lots of rest? Keeping warm?"
Me: "Yes, no, no.."
Mom: "Well, I'd like you to cover up and drink some water, okay?"
Me: "Kay."

to something like:

Me: "Hi mommy, I'm si-"
Mom: "Sick. Uh huh. Did you get a blanket and some water?"
Me: "..No."
Mom: "Why not? I told you to do that like an hour ago."
Me: "I was too busy drowning in mucus and having a pity party. By the way, dad says hi."
Mom: "You bothered your father with this nonsense, after I told you what to do?!"
Me: "..No."
Mom: "..I don't know how you expect to get better if you don't do what I say."
Me: "..So I was thinking I'd pour myself some water."


You know, she tells me stories about the elderly, and they sound a lot worse than me, but her patience wears thin a lot faster with me.The other day we were eating breakfast with one of her friends and her daughters, one of which just got accepted to the University I'm at (which is why I was dragged out of bed at 9am on a Saturday.), and she told me a story about this old woman who talks shit about her to her face and brandishes her middle fingers at her without restraint. And she was all smiles about that woman.


2. Take my temperature. 
Taking my temperature is a novelty that hasn't worn off since childhood, like it should have. I'll take it like four times a day, rubbing my forehead and moving it around in my mouth a lot to try and heat it up and fool it, as if it's still the only device keeping me from going home. I think I just want some validation of how bad I feel. When I'm at home with my parents, this will also manifest itself in the form of asking them to look inside my throat with a flash light and affirm how red it is.


3. Whine pathetically to whoever will listen. Two days ago I went grocery shopping with my friend. I feel bad for her. But that's what she gets for refusing to do things alone at night.

4. Listen to all the musicals I have on my iPod, including any and all Disney songs.
I mean, it's not like I don't usually like musicals, they're all on my iPod after all, but for some reason, when I am sick I just have the desire to..open my arms wide and run through a green, green field and sing about how I want more. This is why I think that any hidden cameras that are in my room are getting some great footage. Viral video worthy footage.

5. Watch these exact movies and television shows, in this exact order.
Shin Chan
Friends
Addam's Family Values
Revenge of the Nerds
Wendy Meets Casper
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Van Wilder 2: Rise of Taj
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Hocus Pocus
Family Guy

Don't ask me why.

6. Abandon all intellectual pursuits.
Writing this blog entry is the most work I really want to do right now, but I've gotten sick at a very inconvenient time. Finals are coming up, and I've got two essays to write and three finals to take before I can relax without a care. I know that's less than most people in college have to do, I just got lucky this time, but I'm sick, so I expect to be expected to do less. Haven't you learned by now that you're to pity me?



7. Write in a blog?
I don't think we have any stick-around-read-every-entry fans yet (and if we do, geez, you guys need to be more vocal, I still feel like I'm just doing this for no one's benefit but that of my own ego.), but if you notice, the last time I was sick (with strep throat) I wrote this entry. Back in the days when livejournal.com was popular, I used to go there and write a bunch of crap whenever I got sick. I had a bunch of friends reading those posts, though, and they weren't half as good as these, so..I don't know how to feel about that.

8. Read the Harry Potter books over again.
I've been sick about eight days now, I'm on book five.

9. Talk to myself.
I tend to give myself pep talks a lot, because I have very low self esteem, and when I get sick I have to keep myself from doing things, or force myself into doing them. Two days ago I got home from class, and I murmured to myself, "No. No. We're not going to throw up. We're not." And I didn't. I did throw up in the middle of my CritLit class the next day though. In the bathroom. Not in the classroom. Then I went back and took a test. Look at that dedication. I must have looked awful too, because before class the professor was all "Maybe I'd better go easy on you today." and I just kind of sniffled pathetically to punctuate that point.




10. Feel like a slob when I notice the state of my room for the first time but feel too weak to clean it up. Normally I don't care about how messy my room is, mostly because I have seen rooms that look worse than mine, I can still see my floor, and I have yet to see a bug in here. But somehow, when I'm sick, I suppose I expect a sterile hospital environment in some unconscious part of my mind. Even though in reality I hate hospitals. They freak me out.

You know, when I think about it, number ten sounds a lot like a symptom of depression. Ah well, I've had a miserable sick-filled eight days, can you blame me?





At this point, these are coming to me less and less quickly, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up. My posts always end so abruptly when I'm sick, I just kind of leave with a little note about how I don't feel good, and you're just expected to deal with the shitty ending.








..


I'msickbye.