I have been called twenty times (literally, a proper twenty times, as in, "I counted the missed call list to see if it was really as many as it felt like, and it was nineteen prior to the one that came in while I was complaining to my mother about it"), from roughly ten different numbers, in the past nine hours. I have had no sleep because of it. Every time I even started to drop off, I'd get another call. In some cases more than one. It's worse than it was last year when I was getting ten and twenty calls a day from the same number, because even though that went on for days, eventually I got so fed up with it I answered just to bite someone's head off and once I told them whatever it was I told them, that particular company stopped. I finally had to break down and put myself on the Do Not Call list because it was getting so bad in general, though, and I still go through periods of geting telemarketer calls and text messages. Which I have to pay for even if I don't read them. But the only one of these that has a proper area code is from Mexico. I can't even figure out what's going on with the rest, and if they really are international calls, obviously I can't be answering them, because I also have to pay for both outgoing and incoming calls (why no, Virgin does not have spectacular options for prepaid cells that way. -.-)

I don't know what to do about it if it keeps up, because my phone doesn't allow numbers to be blocked or the ringer to be disabled - if I turn the ringtone volume all the way down, the vibrate function automatically activates, and if I turn the vibrate function off, the ringtone automatically comes back on. If I just turn it down, everything else (like the alarm clock) is turned down, too. On my mother's phone, apparantly the alarm clock will still work if the phone itself is off, but on mine it won't, and it's the only clock I have. Except for, you know, getting called every hour on the bottom of the hour.

It's the walk! Horses and trainers, on their way to the paddocks to saddle up.

Creative Cause's jockey, Joel Rosario, is having what must be the worst Preakness day ever. He just got word that his brother, a cop in the Dominica Republic, was killed in a traffic accident this morning. They asked if he wanted to take off the mount (because who would blame him, right?), and he said, "No, I'll ride in memory."

Sooo nervous. I really like IHA. We haven't had a Derby/Preakness double since 2008, Big brown - and you know how I started feeling about him going all the way once I found out about his trainer and the steroids. O'Neill has some past violations, too, but they're all for theraputic medications, not performance enhancers, and he just seems...so much less sleazy.

I'll Have Another, blanketed in green and yellow. Pretty on that red.

Handicappers are arguing back and forth on Bodemeister. He's run five times this year and run 'big' in the last two; he might not have enough left in him. IHA has only run three times, but he's won them all and he acts like it was nothing. He's been a monster in his practices over the Pimlico track. Not even real workouts, but he's impressing people left and right.

Jockeys on their way!

Hasn't happened since 2008; it's time again! We need something to really look forward to. We need - Well. I won't say it; it's still too early for that (like I haven't been dreaming it every night already, right?). Whoever's doing IHA's Twitter has made him into this sweet little thing that says Hi and Thank You to all his fans, and we're just going to take it one race at a time.

Bodemeister and I'll Have Another out on the grass; Gutierrez and Smith getting last-minute talks from the trainers. Mario Gutierrez, now there's a story. He was no one - small-time rider, thinking about leaving the States and going back to his old track, and Reddam and O'Neill said, "We like this guy; let's give him a chance." And he just clicked with IHA, won his very first Derby the first time out.

Riders up! Call to the post! At the Derby it's My Old Kentucky Home; here it's Maryland, My Maryland.

Horses on the track, post parade. Teeth of the Dog just had a little fit, something must have spooked him. Pretension has pink leg wraps. Little group of Creative Cause fans right where the cameras are. Here comes IHA, and he wants to run!

"At the mercy of the pace." (Bob Baffert, talking about Bodemeister.) I like that. I need to find a way to work it into a conversation. Or just use it as a title next time.

Lava Man! -shakes the poms- ("Lava Man, almost as famous as I'll Have Another." roffle roffle roffle.)

The sound of closing gates behind the odds screen. I'll Have Another's in, smooth as silk. Here comes Cozzetti, last to load -

Let's go!

OH MY GOD IT'S THE DERBY ALL OVER AGAIN! But he's done it! He's done it! It's going to be ONE OF THOSE YEARS!

...I will be insufferable for the next several weeks now, won't I. I'm sorry. ^^'

Oh, but it was beautiful. Bodemeister didn't set the same super, super-blistering pace the way he did in the Derby, but he was right out on front the whole time. I'll Have Another just set back in fourth, and then he moved up to third, and then they came around that last turn - came down the stretch - and he just kept creeping up - and OH, it was close, but he just kept on, and that head pulled past, that neck -

I LOVE THIS HORSE.

...I know what time it is. Shush. ^^'

The sun is shining. The track is fast. I've got my fantastic hat on.

Bodemeister's the favourite again, but I'll Have Another is right there behind him. 2-1 and 3-1. Everybody loves that big red beast.

Five horses back from the Derby. They're saying Bodemeister's the one to beat. There aren't so many speed horses this time around, so it'll be a different running style. But they're saying I'll Have Another can do it, too.

Can he build it? Yes he can!

(...why do I even know that? ^^')

It's turning out to be One Of Those Years, and we haven't even run the Preakness yet. ~_~

I can't find the damn thing now, but I saw the most gorgeous picture of I'll Have Another earlier. When he's not under tack and jockey and covered in track dirt, he's this hyooge gleaming chestnut. So naturally the first thing that popped into my head was, "Oh, ha ha, Big Red."

(Big Red = Nickname for both Secretariat and Man O War.)

And then I spotted something on his Twitter that got my brow up, and I had to go pawing around in pedigrees to check it out.

I'll Have Another by Flower Alley. Flower Alley by Distorted Humor (so he's also related to Funny Cide!). Distorted Humor by Forty Niner. Forty Niner by Mr Prospector. Mr Prospector by Raise A Native, and Raise A Native by, of course, Native Dancer, but more importantly - in this case - OUT of a mare named Raise You.

Point is, you follow that "Raise You" line back just three more generations, and you hit...

Man O War.

Take Man O War back far enough, to the Thoroughbred foundation sires, and it's the Goldolphin line. I don't even have to look that up. I've known it forever.

The very, very grand majority of modern Thoroughbreds trace back (primarily) to the Darley line. But I have a soft spot for the Godolphin line, because when I was a pony-crazy little girl, one of my favourite books was King of the Wind, by the same woman that wrote Misty of Chincoteague. Total out-of-the-ass story, mind you (though I do believe in the cat; I believe in the cat SO HARD), but that's not the point. The real point is...

...I WANT THIS HORSE TO WIN.

(One day I will write a real entry again, I swear. -sigh- What's keeping me is that some of said entry needs to involve pictures, and that's where I'm falling down on it, because it's so much more work for me to tweak post pictures in Photoshop than it was my ancient copy of PSP, which I cannot get cracked on this computer. Photoshop = fucking fantasic for RP graphics, but not so much lazy work. And then I keep letting it go and go and go, and now I've got four months of entry saved up, and can't remember the relative timeline on some of it. ;_;)

My mother came in for the NCIS finale because her TV (well, her cable box) isn't working.

We had to go look up spoilers as soon as it ended. ;_; (It was not entirely successful. We did figure out that they ( probably didn't... )

So, to recap: YOU SONS OF BITCHES.

That is all.

([ETA:] No it's not. I'm not sure if I'm linking to an individual tweet right, but AHAHAHAHAHA. From Dinozzo/Michael Weatherly: McGee and Dinozzo! Love them together- fanfic please! Oh my fucking god what the hell, MW, I love you so much right now.)

...that deep-sea critters are fuckin' freaky. And awesome. =D

http://youtu.be/-E-8_wDgN7c

(The crackpottier guesses have ranged from 'whale placenta' to 'alien trash bag', but ( it's really a... ))

Deep Sea News will tell you all about it, and has extra pictures!

Less than an hour to go. Maybe even more like half. Horses are on their way to the paddock.

Union Rags is still the favourite. His owner bred him, sold him, and had a dream that convinced her she had to buy him back. She had to pay three times what she sold him for, but - Look where they are.

She asked Matz, "Michael, what do you think of him?" and he told her, "Barbaro didn't work like this as a two-year-old." To which she said, "Aren't we getting a little high, comparing him to Barbaro?" XD

He ran second to Hansen in the BC Juvenile. Creative Cause ran third. Eight of the horses from that race are back today. Crazy.

I'll Have Another is named for cookies, not booze. XD

Bodemeister is named for Bob Baffert's son. He didn't race as a two-year-old. Baffert had a huge heart attack not even two months ago, while he was in Dubai for the World Cup.

Record attendance. 160-some thousand. 165.

Gemologist has won twice over Churchill's track already, and has also won at four different distances.

The past few years, they've done this thing where they pick a random fan, hand him $100,000, and send him to make a win bet, one horse only. This year's guy just put it on Alphan. 20-1. If he wins, he'll go home with $2 mil.

Jockey's photo's been taken. Horses are being saddled. Jockeys are coming down.

Dry and blue, the track is fast.

Prospective's the long shot, 53-1. El Padrino throws fits in the paddock.

RIDERS UP! CALL TO THE POST!

And they'll come out like they always do, like they've done a hundred and thirty-seven times before, led down that path from the paddock while the crowd sings My Old Kentucky Home. The track ponies have flowers in their manes and tails.

On the track. Post parade. Creative Cause is pretty - dapple with dark points. He's flopping his tongue around. Hansen stands out among them all, of course. He looks a little damp, unless there's just some dirt sticking to him. Looks more like damp, though.

Oh, it is damp. They said he got really worked up during the commercials, broke from the post parade. Union Rags is a little wet, but apparantly that's just the way he always is. It's hot. Bodemeister couldn't have cared less about the band or the crowd.

Gleep! We're loading!

Go! Go! GO!

I'LL HAVE ANOTHER, THE COOKIE HORSE! Bodemeister was insane, right up there at the front all the way, but I'll Have Another crept up on there on him coming down the stretch. Trinniberg was the other early speed. Hansen held close, third, most of the way. Take Charge Indy down the rail, like you'd expect. Union Rags was caught in traffic, boxed in, too far back.

Bodemeister to place, Dullahan to show. Went The Day Well, Creative Cause. Union Rags was seventh. Hansen ninth. Take Charge Indy fell to 19th.

(Hahaha! Lava Man was supposed to be the track pony for I'll Have Another, but he got so worked up in the post parade thinking he was going back to the races that he had to have a pony!)

I'll Have Another - $11K as a yearling. I believe that makes him the cheapest horse in the field. Love that stuff! I could go for another. You know what I mean! XD (Just heard in the post-race interview: "MARYLAND HERE WE COME!")

Derby day hat!



(And I don't think you actually get the full effect there. The door at the side of the house has a box behind it that keeps it from opening all the way, and... Well... The hat does not fit through it without turning one's head sideways. ^^' )

I am soooo not a Twitter person, but...

It's LAVA MAN! (He's a track pony now!)

And I'll Have Another!

(They're not actually the only ones, but they're the only ones that are actually cute. Or keeping up with it. XD )

Nice day at Churchill. Hot. Training was cancelled for the morning because those storms were still rolling through, but right now there are just some big puffy whites in the sky, and over the spires, over the track? Nothin' but blue.

Humana Distaff going off now. After this, it's the Woodward Reserve Turf Classic, and then...

It's raining at Churchill again. As long as it's not thunder and lightning, though, we're good to go!

Grace Hall is kind of a witch! She's tossing her head around and trying to get over the neck of the pony. Little bit wet in front. Javier looks good, he's chatting up the pony rider and looks completely at ease.

Broadway Alibi's won her last four starts handily. Believe You Can is trained by Larry Jones (Eight Belles), which I remember now I knew already and had somehow forgotten. I like him; he's almost always a happy guy in a cowboy hat.

And Why Not is Michael Matz/Julien Leparoux, same combination as Union Rags tomorrow. She belongs to Matz' mother-in-law. Talk about pressure! XD

Coming up to the gate - Karlovy Vary and Colonial Empress are nervous, getting worked up. Colonial Empress is a maiden, what the hell?! That's some Ambition right there.

One more - all in - let's go!

IT'S BELIEVE YOU CAN! She was right there with Broadway's Alibi all the way, running second right up to the stretch and then she pulled ahead - a duel all the way - so awesome! Rosie Napravnik, who lost by a neck last year and whose Derby mount for this year was pulled and pointed in a different direction, just became the first female jockey to take the Oaks. Grace Hall was between horses part of the way, made her move and managed to come up to third, but she just couldn't catch Believe You Can and Broadway's Alibi. (Colonial Empress gave a pretty strong run at the start, too. I was impressed.)

Best. Oaks. In forever!

Tonight, they'll be weaving roses at a Kroger in Louisville. People will come by at all hours just to watch those roses be woven. Tomorrow - one more horse will wear those roses. Even here, I'll wear my fantastic hat, and we'll run be it dirt or mud and raise our glasses high.

Storm at Churchill. They've evacuated the infield, and the Oaks has been tentatively reschedulled for 6:20. But it's clearing, and the other race that was postponed will go off in a few minutes. Grace Hall is favoured for the lilies, but just on a name, I like Believe You Can. Because I've always wanted to name a (race)horse I Want To Believe.

Storms tomorrow, but it'll be okay. It was awful in 2004 - I think that was when the infield turned into a mudflood, and the craziest of the party people were splashing around like it was a swimming pool. It even washed out part of the track, but no one remembers that except the track crew. Or so they say.

Union Rags is the favourite. Mine, theirs, everyone. He's trained by Michael Matz, and of course he's being compared to Barbaro - but he's a nice horse all on his own. He lost his last prep, but everyone makes too big a deal of losing one or two races these days. There've only been a handful of undefeated Derby winners, let alone the Crown (Seattle Slew, yes, we're all thinking of you).

I like Hansen, too - he's the grey who made a habit of winning his two year old races wire-to-wire and took the BC Juvenile the same way. He's had a loss since then, but - see above. His connections have been getting into some trouble because he's all but whited out completely, and they want to dye his tail for the races. They sound like fun.

(Oho, the infield's been reopened and the horses for Race 10 are on their way out!)

Creative Cause is another grey, and I do so like a grey. His owner bought him sight unseen on the word of his stock agent. Never run worse than third. There are rumours flying because he shipped in late and did the Lightest Workout Ever, but his trainer swears he just had to have a show replaced and they always work him that way.

Dullahan, just for the name (DRRR, what now? ^^' ). He's a half-brother to Mine That Bird (2009), but out of the dam side, not the Birdstone/sire side.

Take Charge Indy has Calvin Bo-Rail up. Gemologist is undefeated. Bodemeister was originally the morning line favourite after the post draw, but Union Rags has knocked him out of that spot. Alpha's supposed to be good. Went The Day Well is the same connections as Animal Kingdom (last year's winner), and is coming in the same way, via the Vinery Spiral. El Padrino. Most of the others I'm not as familiar with - two that are Daddy's boys (Daddy Long Legs and Daddy Nose Best). Liason and I'll Have Another, I vaguely recall hearing about. The rest are pretty much the, "Where the fuck did you come from?" horses? (That's the problem with awarding slots based on graded stakes earnings - you can pull in a good amount winning a big-money race on a fluke, and then you're in the Derby and a horse who might actually be a better runner isn't just because they took a different route to try and get there.)

Post parade for the American Turf. A little less than a hour to the hopeful time for the Oaks. I am beginning to get appropriately a-flap - the fields are so deep and evenly-matched, this should be an exciting year!

([ETA]: Oh gleep. The jockey for Gemologist and Grace Hall, Javier Castellano, was just thrown from his mount in the American Turf. The horse seems to be okay, but Javier didn't move for a long time after he came off (it was pretty damn scary, actually - he was just lying there crumpled with his face in the dirt). He's sitting up now, but they've packed him onto the stretcher and are loading him up, and he was clutching his leg. He did manage to limp over to the stretcher, with a bit of help...)

([ETA2]: The horse has vetted clean. No word on Javier yet, but he got out of the ambulance on his own power, and he's being checked at the track. The racecasters have watched the replay a few times, and think he just ducked in and wobbled weird and that knocked Javier off-balance. As they put it, "...he had to try and step off, and there's just no graceful way to step off a horse going thirty-five, forty miles an hour." BOY DON'T I KNOW IT.

Aha, it looks like he's been cleared to ride! He says the horse did get bumped and that's what caused him to slip, and once your foot comes out of that stirrup - yep.)

Dynaformer's death came on what would have been the ninth birthday of his most famous son, Barbaro.

He was retired from breeding earlier this month, after he had a heart attack. No more La Ville Rouge babies by him, no filly to carry on that line...

(On a related note, the Derby is next week. I have not seen a single prep race, thanks to none of the networks wanting to carry them anymore, and yet I probably know more about the runners than I have in years. ~_~)

We've suspected for a few weeks now that we might have mice. Or rats. Holes have been chewed in things, we hear suspicious rustlings, the cats are extremely interested in certain corners, etc.

For the record, it's rats. X__x

I am also extremely ashamed of myself now, because I shrieked like a girl when I saw it. (The first time I ever saw anyone do the screaming-at-mice thing in real life, as it happens, was out at Marlene's old trailer, behind the pastures, back in November, when Lynn and Cosi went down to clean it up for Thanksgiving and it turned out that Cosi is Terrified Of Mice.) I'm not afraid of them or anything (hell, when I thought it must be mice because how the hell could anything bigger go unnoticed, I wasn't bothered by the idea at all); it was just...I wan't expecting to see it scamper across my clothespile, and I wasn't actually expecting it to be a RAT.

It wasn't one of those horrible giant naked-tailed things, at least - it was maybe six inches long? Little brown thing. If I'd seen it anywhere else, I would have thought it was sweet. :/ Layla was gnawing on a chewy stick just under the pile and she went right for it when it hopped down, and I shrieked and jumped up and pulled her away, because rat or not, I really don't want to watch it get torn apart (and I don't have any doubt that's what she'd've done - if I was going to let a mouser go after it, I'd pick Pie-cat before Layla, because I suspect Pie would actually be LESS vicious. Pie-cat was in here earlier, in fact, and she spent some time nosing about in that same place, but I wrote it off as gecko-hunting because, yay, I think my geckos are back too! They have a very distinctive chirp. I like my geckos).

I may be a tiny bit freaked out now. For which I am also ashamed. X_x On the up side, it shouldn't be able to get too close to, say, the bed, because Layla is a Mighty Huntress who will fend it off. (And no, I am not going to let that live in here the way the geckos do. ^^' It's just one am, and there's not much we can do about it until tomorrow. It'll have to be humane traps, though, because I really can't stand the thought of murdering the poor little thing.)

-eyes them some more-

...

Pottermore is like fucking Facebook for wizards, isn't it.

And it put me in Slytherin.

-dumps a half-brewed potion over someone's head and goes home-

Eight of Wands

Four of Cups | Death | Five of Pentacles (Reversed)

The World (Reversed)

(In case anyone's wondering, I read my cards using the same layout as my runes:

Advice / Coming Help

The Past | The Present | The Future

What Is And Must Be Accepted)

So... One way or the other, I'm boned. I could have told you that without the cards. It's been going on so long, and so long, and so long, and just never gets any better; what am I supposed to think? (And you know, I know Death doesn't mean death, but being someone who's...em...well, I really wonder sometimes if all those damn doctors I saw shouldn't have pinned some sort of ASD diagnosis on me, but the point is I Do Not Deal Well With Change... Yea, every time I pull that card, I just laugh a little. In the way you laugh right before you snap and go up the clocktower with your crossbow.)

Super Mare Now a Mom; Zenyatta Delivers Colt

PICTURES OMG PICTURES WOULD YOU LOOK AT HIM

HE IS TRYING SO HARD TO GET UP. I miss foals SO MUCH right now. ;_;

(Little plushie, omg, how did I miss this? So much monies though! X_x)

He's a Bernardini colt. Bernardini, won the 2006 Preakness.

I'm just sayin'. /whatcouldhavebeen

...except when you don't.

I am loaded up with Ativan and Benedryl, but it hasn't kicked in yet. I hope it does at all, because I've been taking both it and the Phenegren way too regularly of late and there are probably addicts who have less tolerance than I do even when I'm not doing that.

Also, I flopped around in bed most of last night not because I was tired, and don't remember actually sleeping, but just because I couldn't be bothered to be up. Been doing that a lot lately, too.

Saturday morning, I was planning on shutting down the computer as soon as I finished a Photoshop project, because storms were getting ready to roll in, and just as I was posting the graphic to the, "Hey, does anyone want this?" boards, a tornado warning scrolled on Weatherscan. ~_~

Wasn't for here, but close enough to make me unhappy. I thought about putting the boys in their bag just in case, but the location forecasters had been saying they didn't really expect it to be too bad here, so I let it go and went to bed.

I doubt I was out for even an hour before my mother was in the door telling me to get dressed because the sirens were going off. >_< The only warning at the time was for the coast and it expired not long after, but obviously I wasn't going back to sleep at that point. They went off twice more before the afternoon was over and we never could figure out why, because by then there weren't any warnings at all.

We played half-assed Lord of the Rings Monopoly (which she got secondhand but had seemingly never been used, yet somehow Frodo was missing) for a couple of hours, and she had one of her things where she couldn't grab the word she wanted, except that it wasn't that she couldn't get the word at all and something else came out instead, it was that the word she wanted wasn't the right word in the first place. What she said was, "I guess that's why they call it Monotony."

...then we realized she was right after all. -cough- We were mostly playing to see what came up on the 'People' and 'Events' cards (the LotR equivalent of Chance and Community Chest), so after, "New rule! Whenever someone lands on the Free Parking space, we get to pick a card from either pile," didn't get us anywhere and I landed on Mount Doom (which I already owned) for the third or fourth time, I declared Sauron victorious and just turned all the cards over at once. Heh.

The One Ring that came with it is really nice, though. I'm going to swap it for the one I used to wear that came off a bookmark.

Other things I learned this weekend: Either sixteen years is long enough to get over a soul-crushing bishounen death, or I really have burned out all my human emotions.

Either way, now I'm depressed because I'm not depressed enough. ~_~

Also: The better of Phase's long black wigs - which, as previously established, is too long and the wrong colour - has Nephrite's bangs exactly. Which is to say, it doesn't really have bangs so much as strange wisps in the center:



...yes, right? And of course it's some brandless thing of unknown origin I bought off DoA forever and a moon's age ago. I think it's the one I had to take up, but I can't be bothered to reach over and check.

(Phase says, "This is my, 'I am Sexgod, and yes, you may worship me,' pose. I use it often.")

Related tangent: Endymion needs better clothes. Mostly, he needs to get out of the half-assed pleather pants I made for Andha before he got his skins. What do girly little fairy servant boys wear, though? (I'd really wanted to try and avoid having two that go around in skirts, but I'm beginning to think it may not be helped. Phase is just a delicate man that looks good in a dress, but Endymion might as well be a girl with a cock. Maybe I should just neuter him. >_<)

Apparantly, it's to summon bad dubs out of thin air. Because that site I was watching Sailor Moon on, that I said was supposed to be subs and wasn't?

Well, that day I just picked a random episode, for a Specific Bishounen Fix. But now that I've started properly from the beginning, it's subs. It's all subs. Including the episode that was dubbed.

What. The. Hell. X_x (ETA: Aha, it depends on which mirror I'm watching. The second night, I couldn't get the default video to play properly, so I switched to another. That's where the subs are!)

Oh well. No complaining about surprise subtitles here!

I figured out that if I watch five episodes a day (let's see how long I actually keep up with that, heh), I'll finish the entire series in...slightly under a month in a half, I think. Of course, tonight I watched...em...let's not talk about that! But it's only because I'm into the Nephrite arc now. ^^'

I have to make myself stop before I get to that episode, though. I'll be lucky if I can sleep as it is. Right now it's because I'm all hyped up, but somehow crying for three hours just doesn't knock me out like it used to. ~_~

(Oddly enough, that was one of the very few episodes I'd seen in Japanese before this. Mostly because I seem to collect friends who like to torment me for fun. "Sure I'll send you some of the original episodes! Why don't you have this one, and here's one that wasn't aired in America, with male!Zoisite, and oh, HERE'S THE ONE WHERE YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTER DIES HORRIBLY!")

<3 Smllady.

S'kind of fun only watching them again after so long, though, because there are all sorts of incredibly cracky little things I'd forgotten. Like Tuxedo Mask driving the bus to hell. And Nephrite is totally playing with ball-jointed dolls (...that have no actual ball-joints, but it's obvious where they're supposed to go).

Also, Nephrite's true power seems to be to turn whatever he touches into a skeevy tramp. X_x I actually sort of remembered the evil bride, but even the corrupted elementary school girl starts running around in whore-red lipstick (that disappears as soon as the influence leaves her, of course. Obviously the answer to my makeup problems is that I need to become either a magical girl or a magical victim girl. Make these things happen now, prease?)

Ish. Jadeite's an asexual misogynist, Nephrite's a pimp, Zoi and Kun are gayer than rainbow unicorns...and that's just the stuff that (genderswap notwithstanding) got shown in the States (because I so very do know what sort of weirdness goes on later). I'd say it's no wonder I turned out the way I did, but I'm pretty sure I was already like this. ^^' )

I was going to post a picture back at Christmas, of the Most Important Things I got for Christmas, but I'm lazy and my camera batteries are apparantly so old they won't hold a charge anymore.

But I knew, well before I got the Things, that they existed. I just hadn't done any looking for them, because I figured we'd never get them here and we probably couldn't afford them anyway.

And I might have known slightly beforehand that I was getting them, because I saw one of them and swore up and down I hadn't. I could not figure out what box they were in, and the more things I opened without hitting them, the twitchier I got, because I knew they had to be there somewhere but I couldn't say anything if they weren't.

But finally I did get to the box with THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES OF SAILOR MOON in it, and it was all I could do not to stand there and cry, because that has been my holy goddamn grail of manga for so long. They cut the run of the English dub partway through R, and by the time it finished up on video, we were well into 'Buying Anime Is No Longer A Real Option' time. Mixx Zine, of course, was a total bust. Even after I got online, I was so out of the loop I didn't know about streaming/download sites, and we had dial-up forever and ever anyway. I did manage to find and read the first few chapters of the manga, but never any more than that.

I ended up having to order Volume 3 off Wal-Mart's website, and when they say Site to Store orders take 7-10 business days? They mean, "We're going to take as long as possible, and not bother to update your package tracking in any useful way." It just got here the other day, at which point I made the mistake of sitting up all day (well, I couldn't sleep anyway) reading all three volumes in a row, while listening to the soundtrack.

I'm horribly depressed now. ~_~

Because, this? This was my first real ani-fandom. I'd seen other series before it, even had the fanfiction going, but Sailor Moon was the first thing I remember being completely rabid for. I taped it every day. What's funniest about it is the first few episodes I watched, I thought it was so cheesy - but it was anime, so what the hell, and somehow it got me hooked.

So it was my first proper fandom. It was my first magical girl anime. And it was the first time I fell in really serious animaginary love. There'd been other crushes, sure, but this was husbando-level stuff. And you'd think, out of the original series, it would have been Kunzite I was crazy about, right? The silver hair, and all that. But it wasn't.

So it was also the first anime I had an Incredibly Horrible Experience with, because damnit, when you convert to the side of good, you get to lure your horribly underaged girlfriend back to your mansion in the woods like the creepy pervert playboy you are, and live happily ever after until the police show up. You do not get impaled through the heart by the woody death tentacles of one of your ex-comrades. I cried for hours.

(I'm sure at least One Person on the flist will find it hilarious, if we haven't ever talked about it, that for many, many years, there was no character I hated quite like anime!Zoisite. Admittedly, at that point, I'd only seen the godawful genderswapped dubbed version and had taken a serious dislike to himherit already, but that was unforgivable and I never really let go of it. It took Wonderweiss to make me want to kick someone else in the teeth that badly.)

The manga doesn't do that to me quite as hard. Maybe it's just because the Shitennou get shorted in it - not that their deaths aren't equally depressing, if you think about it enough. But it mostly affects me in...other ways. Because, I never could figure out which of the senshi I fangirled the most. I waffled back and forth with Mars and Jupiter, but somehow neither of them were ever quite right. All I did know was that it couldn't possibly be the hyperactive bunnybitch with nothing but air between her buns.

So coming to the conclusion that it is her was...odd, heh. But it's not Usagi, and it's not Sailor Moon. It's specifically Princess Serenity, and I probably wouldn't have realized why back then even if the anime had delved as deeply into the Silver Millenium as the manga does. It's only been in the past few years that I figured this out about myself -

But I am...completely infatuated, I guess you could say...with the idea that if we don't get it right in this life, we'll die and be reborn until we do - and by 'we', of course, I don't mean humanity in general, but whatever Prince it is I've been stalking through the shadows and the sea. If we don't find each other in this world, we'll keep looking in the next - and if not there, the one after that. It's the eternal blessing and the eternal curse - because if we don't manage it this time around, at least we'll have another chance, but if we don't, it won't stop until we do. So all the threads of rebirth and destiny, and suicidal sacrifice, are just kind of twisting the knife in the hole where whatever I had that passed for a heart used to be.

(Utena does a similar thing to me, but oddly not to the same extent. Maybe because it just wasn't the first?)

And this on top of not only not sleeping (or not anything worth calling sleep) for weeks, but other standard sort of bullshit as well. So I am now having nostalgic fandom revival mixed up with new fandom revelations, and it is doing...things...to my head. ~_~

(And I remember, back then, when the most wonderful thing in the world was getting a piece of mail that had a piece of Japanese fandom in it. Because that was so foreign and so mysterious, like it was made of magic. Moon magic. Because it belonged to something we'd never know and never see.)

I expect Phase will be cosplaying at some point. I've always meant to, but the need is...much stronger now, heh. I swapped him into the black wig last night because it's the closest I've got (too dark and too long, but we do what we have to, King of Stars).

And Endymion is not named after...you know...Endymion, really he's not. I just like the name!

Though one of my cats is named for Luna, so there you go. And it was my mother's idea!

I got cravey enough after I finished the manga to go looking for the anime, too. Of the...er...two sites I know of that stream anime and don't load my computer up with virtual STDs, one didn't have any working videos and the other...claimed its episodes were subbed.

They were not.

Somehow, I'd forgotten how truly, truly godawful the English dub was. omiguh. X_x (I've actually seen a handful of Japanese episodes, two or three from the original series, and a few from the beginning of Sailor Stars - all raw, so Comprehension Was Limited. But damn, I'd give a lot to find that tape and have a working VCR right now. ;_; )