paperheroes.net

OMG Training.

Nissie — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 02:32:06 +0000

I could probably teach a course in this.

Odd Things Found in my Room

Nissie — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 04:10:03 +0000

I clean my room about once every four months, not necessarily because it’s dirty per se, but because there is no longer enough space to fit half the things it already contains, so cleaning usually involves me carting things from one end of the room to the other, and still achieving the same crowded effect. Since I also make it a habit of turning the bedroom into my quasi-workshop, where resin fumes, paint thinner, and photo emulsion abound, I also tend to sometimes get very bug-eyed crazyhigh from the cocktail of poison despite my attempts at air circulation and open windows.

In this particular incarnation of room-cleaning though, I have found some odd things in it that I don’t even recall having / buying / stealing, though given my terrible short term memory this isn’t all that surprising.

1. A sack of coal – either I have attempted to barbecue something here, or Santa Claus really hates me

2. A bundle of black chicken feathers – I think I got this originally for some obscure project, but apparently it’s so obscure that I’d forgotten what it is.

3. A collection of naked plastic trolls – I remember collecting these when I was younger, though I’m not exactly sure what I still keep them. At closer inspection, I realize that they are kind of pretty ugly, and might enforce the belief that trolls are hideous. (Some of them aren’t, they’re all just rather stupid, especially at internet forums, which are their spawning grounds.)

4. old Vanilla Ice CDs – don’t ask.

5. my old Quina Quen cosplay costume. Picture says it all.

Don’t worry, I finally got rid of it.

6. A billion bags, only three of which I use.

7. Several size four and a half shoes – because I have the typical tiny Chinese feet – but with half or all the straps broken – because I am an inveritable heavy stomper.

8. I have two bookcases in my room primarily for books, stuffed and piled up with far too many paperbacks and novels and hardcovers that there is little space for more, the overall effect resembling a dingy book sale at a secondhand shop. I found an additional three dozen more books, now all piled up on one corner of the room. Deciding which book should be consigned to the attic / garage sales / the salvation army can take weeks, so the attempt has been abandoned for now.

9. Eight yards of bubble wrap. With two yards already popped.

The nice thing about having horrible short term memory is rummaging through all these weird things I have accumulated over the months and wondering what I was high on back then.

Technology is against me.

Nissie — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:06:47 +0000

I have a certain kind of superpower. It’s not enough of a decent ability to make me eligible for either the Justice League of America, or the X-Men / Avengers, but it’s something that, I think, makes me stronger and better and smarter than the average bear.

Everyone has these minor superpowers. I have a friend whose special ability was always being able to find parking spaces at all times, even during rush hour. It would be Sunday noon, hot outside, shopping malls packed with people seeking airconditioning, ridiculous traffic, and he’d still be able to find an empty parking slot within minutes.

“God,” He said. “You gave me this power….. is that all?”

Another friend, until recently, had the ability to make it rain simply by putting a skirt on. Her boyfriend, who is originally from Canada, brings horridly strong storms and typhoons with him every time he flies back to Manila. Typhoons Milenyo and Ketsana / Ondoy were some of his works.

One of mine (and I have a lot – my fingernails regenerate three times as fast as anyone else’s and sometimes simulate the same constitution as adamantium, my sometimes eidetic memory that nowadays only seem to work with teenybop song lyrics and Bible passages, and let’s not forget my innate ability to hurt people’s feelings) is the ability to keep track of five different trains of thought and work on them simultaneously. This is like a budget computer with pre-programmed functions which, when you think about it, makes me better than the iPad. This could be the supposed Gemini personality, or an additional incentive to enjoy the one thousand and one hobbies I seem to have, but I can do about seven different things all at the same time. I write, I check mail, I crochet, I make pendants, I’m nifty with chase hammers, I do web design, I paint (traditionally and digitally), and I have done all these at some point in time while riding on a bus, and have done at least three all at once during the rides. Unfortunately, the multitasking capability has to involve the computer in some part. Which brings me to my kryptonite.

Everyone has their kryptonite, too. I have a lot of kryptonites – my inability to wear high heels (my surly temper increases exponentially according to the angle of my foot against solid ground, and doubles considerably on rocky terrain), my fear of roaches (although this also becomes a superpower in some way, because I seem to run twice as fast, punch people twice as hard, and am able to shatter the eardrums of everyone in the vicinity) – I can go on and on. But the most obvious one is technology’s aversion to me. Technology hates me. This is odd for someone who first started out deciding she wanted IT for a degree, but yes. Possibly this could be a genetic mutant trait, as one of my sister’s super-abilities seem to include being able to destroy or misplace technology (games, boombox, laptops, etc.). Once, several years ago, I absolutely believed she was able to cause my Sega game console to stop working just by looking at it. Mine is widely different from hers, because these work when anyone else is using it. It’s only when I’m using it that it chooses not to.

My desktop PC has hated me almost from the day I got it. It automatically boots back up five minutes after I’d shut it down. The cooling fan particularly despises me, and chooses to commit suicide rather than work properly. My graphics card barely works with Plants versus Zombies. My flatscreen monitor started spewing green Matrixesque lines and squiggles three days after I bought it. At the first signs of sunlight my whole system immediately shuts down – which means it barely functions during the summer months which, in the Philippines, means about half a year.

It’s not always limited to computers, either. Television sets / flatscreens in my possession seem to have an incongruous way of working again as soon as I’d given it away to someone else. Personal electric fans I’d thought have broken down sputter back to life under someone else’s ownership without repairs, mostly the miniature variety.

Technology loves my boyfriend though, even when he claims to hate it. My boyfriend is that type of lovable geek who doesn’t need to study to ace a math or programming test, and had been fixing hardware since his early teens. He’s not a big fan of programming, and is more of a tech writer than anything else, though he would succumb to freelance web projects if the money’s good.

My desktop loves him. His walking into the room is all it needs to suddenly and properly function. It purrs like a little kitten when he starts it up. Nothing breaks down in his presence. The instant he walks back out though, it reverts back to bitch mode (Windows users probably know what this means).

My laptop works in conjunction with my desktop pc. When I switch to the former as an alternative, it responds by crashing Firefox successively. When I switch to Lunascape, the whole laptop, shocked by my audacity, responded by shutting down for no reason other than that it thought I was doing something important.

Case in point: the desktop pc shuts down five minutes after I try to start it up. This happens ten, twelve times. He walks into the room and gives it a try, and it works for the whole day. He’s not doing anything that I haven’t been doing, save that it’s his finger doing the button-pushing, and not mine.

My boyfriend has technopathy. He becomes One with the motherboard.

Shortly after my boyfriend leaves, I shut the computer down. Two minutes later, as I am getting ready to leave, it boots up again. Puzzled, I shut it back down. It responded by restarting. This happened about five more times, before I gave up and pulled the plug.

There is really nothing much to this post, save that my desktop hasn’t been working again after trying to start it for the umpteenth time, the same desktop that has some files I need for later in the day, and my boyfriend isn’t here for it to flirt with. So, two possible reasons: desktop technology must really, really, REALLY hate me….

…or there’s an invisible leprechaun living inside the computer.

A History of Philippine Independence

Nissie — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 03:57:32 +0000

Filipinos celebrate Philippine Independence Day every June 12 since 1898. Since then, we have had government corruption, an aborted tiger economy, several succession of presidents all belonging to a dynasty that most of its gullible people are unaware of, and a 90% population living below the poverty line.

Oh yeah, and also FREEDOM.

Which only serves to show that democracy only works if you’re not the one in the minority.

Here’s a compilation of videos about Filipinos that should make people feel better despite this.

Dogs.

Nissie — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:51:20 +0000

We’ve got two dogs in the house: Cookie and Princess. Cookie, my half-retriever ad half-spitz, was named for her fur color, which is a sortof light cookie dough. Princess, a chowchow pedigree, was named for the manner my parents planned to treat her as, and eventually, also for her attitude towards life.

I was heading off towards work one day; Princess toddled after me, as per her usual. Princess spends most of her time lying sprawled on the floor pretending to be a hearth rug, and one of the few times she chooses movement over inertia involves waddling after me as I leave the house and peering out at me from beyond the gates, in the improbable event I ever decide to take her with me.

On this particular occasion, she waddles into the garden to pee first. She scrunches up her nose and sneezes, twice.

Shaking her head from the unanticipated head exercise, she walks back towards me.

Then rubs her nose against my pants until, I suppose, she’d gotten all the boogers out.

This is how the dog world in this house views me – either as a walking handkerchief, or their personal tummy massager.

Princess

Vampires love Fangirls.

Nissie — Sat, 15 May 2010 08:53:53 +0000

My Dog Isn’t Voting Because She’s a Bitch.

Nissie — Mon, 10 May 2010 08:26:15 +0000

Hello Kitty: The Mark of the Beast

Nissie — Sun, 09 May 2010 05:39:39 +0000

Back from the Atmosphere, With Drops of Jupiter in her Hair.

Nissie — Sun, 02 May 2010 01:21:05 +0000

Inspired by my favorite song “Drops of Jupiter” from Train.

You know I’m stressed when I start doodling random weirdness for no reason in particular.

Miiiight be making prints and shiz.

Superhero Stupidity.

Nissie — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 01:38:13 +0000

Making Gary Busey look sane in comparison, one demotivational photo at a time.

And my personal favorite –