Contrary to popular opinion, I am still alive. I am doing well. And I will tell you all about my time at the Russian School and other university-related things on Wednesday, since my Japanese lecture was canceled.

Fortunately, I was able to finally make a new header and layout for momoizumu, and have 92 icons ready for the next set. You can see a grainy preview of some of them below -- please tell me what you think!



Moving on to more important things: here are some links you've most likely seen already, but should be spread as much as possible: Aid for Pakistan via Azuire on Dreamwidth and help_pakistan, as well as la_vie_noire's own post on the Western press's fixation on death and suffering in Third World countries.

Also: if you're from the United States, or care about our political system, this article by George Packer on the dysfunction of the Senate is worth a read. Loosely connected to both the Senate and the recent leak of 76,000 military documents on the war in Afghanistan/"Operation Enduring Freedom" by Wikileaks is this piece from The Washington Post, the somewhat-tackily-named "Top Secret America". It details the U.S. government's massive intelligence and national security branches.

And I'm sure you all know that, following over three months of crude oil flowing freely into the Gulf and causing massive, still not fully measured, and possibly irrecoverable damage to the area's ecosystems, B.P. has finally succeeded in sealing the well responsible the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Or perhaps it hasn't.

I can't focus on my work. This calls for shutting the laptop down and getting started on my Japanese drills--and possibly the Russian dialogue I have to memorize, which entails me being a helpless American who can't find her friend's house in Saint Petersburg.

It's interesting how the Голоса (Golosa, or "Voices") textbooks are structured: while our grammar studies proceed at a well-designed pace (the simple prepositional and accusative cases came before the more complex genitive plural, for example), it took us a while to learn how to say things necessary for every-day survival. We knew how to say "I study international relations and the Russian language" and "I saw an avant-garde artist at the bookstore" long before we knew how to say "I'm cold" or "Where is the hospital?". We just reached the imperative, so we can finally call for help!

( Holy war is on the phone,/Asking to please stay on hold. )

I'll postpone the meme results until I get some more questions, so please consider taking a look at the post below!

More importantly, here's some more information on the recent 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile. The death count is in the hundreds, there are many more people wounded or displaced, and damage costs will be anywhere from 15 to 30 billion USD. Thank God the expected tsunami only left minor damage; I'm amazed that the shock of the quake was strong enough to send 2.5-foot waves to the Kuril Islands, well over 10,000 miles (over 16,700 km) away.

Quake, tsunamis kill more than 700 in Chile (Reuters)
"2 Million Displaced After Chile Quake" (The New York Times)
"Officials Breathe Sigh of Relief as Tsunami Passes" (The New York Times)
Photographs of the damage (BBC News)
Eyewitness accounts of the quake (BBC News)

If ever I have come through on anything, it has been providing carefully-arranged screencaps of works in progress.

( «Я вам написала...оперу!» Or, the completely expected yet dramatic entrance. )

Also!

Happy birthday, mairenn_k!

I'm so sorry I missed it! I'm glad your birthday turned out well.

First, here's an icon meme from ju_jei! (I would've translated it into Russian for you, but it's beyond my ability at this point. I'm sorry, I should be keeping up with my Russian more!)

( I'm sure you've all seen this before. )

And here's another meme, taken from mairenn_k, which I'm sure you've also all seen before:

Give me a fandom and I'll tell you:

1. The first character I fell in love with.
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do.
3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t.
4. The character I love that everyone else hates.
5. The character I would shag anytime.
6. The character I'd want to be like.
7. The character I'd slap.
8. A pairing that I love.
9. A pairing that I despise.
10. Favorite character.
11. What my five favorite things about the fandom are.
12. What my five least favorite things about the fandom are.
13. Who my five favorite characters are.
14. Who my five least favorite characters are.
15. What my five favorite pairings are.
16. What my five least favorite pairings are.
17. Which character I'm most like.
18. What my deep, dark fandom secret is.

Finally, I have 85 92 icons ready to go. Unfortunately, I've fallen short on my promises--this was supposed to contain a much larger number of Fay, Kurogane, Fujimoto, and Eriol icons than it does now. I'm thinking that I'll set up a requests post soon to make up for it...

...regardless, the next post will definitely be the second icon post.

( Concerning the progress of the next icon and tutorial posts, a visual meme, Tsubasa, and a day at the Arboretum. )

I thought it would be best to keep this outside the cut--I haven't written much about myself, so we can consider this my introduction of sorts! (That is, if you take the time to respond. Respond, you bums.)

So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me, something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about, or something you've always been curious about but have never asked, or something completely silly that you'd like me to answer for kicks. No limits on the range of questions, either: ask me anything you want to know about, whether it's a fannish opinion or a question about a fic of mine or trivia about my real life or my thoughts on events in the offline world.

Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you!

The personal bit is behind the cut, so you don't have to read it.

( A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,/Along the briny beach )

Finally, I'm at a loss as to what to do with these two icons. The one with Clow and Yuuko just looks...unfinished, and Sakura's eyes look like something out of a ridiculously sappy shoujo manga. Also, do the flower petals look like flower petals, or something else entirely?

Any help would be appreciated!