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Totally not feeling good. I was all funked out at work, and I took off an hour early, thinking I would be able to work on translating the text I'm going to be quizzed about tomorrow (no, I am not expecting a passing grade in Chinese this term, why do you ask?).

So I'm walking home from the bus, and this pickup truck comes barrelling down the street, a guy driving and this woman in the passenger seat is screaming for help out the window. I mean, she's fucking terrified, and I still hear her screaming when the car is three blocks away. I call 911 when I get home and tell them what I saw, and a policeman magically appears (it was fucking amazing how quick they came) at my door. I tell him as much as I could about the truck, which admittedly, is not much. I couldn't even tell him if it was an Oregon or Washington license plate. I did all I could, but I still can't shake the feeling this woman's not all right.

And it's more than that, really. Every woman walks around knowing, intellectually at least, they're never really safe. It's not easy to think about, and so you just do your mace-in-hand look everywhere walk in bright spots and hope you don't become a statistic thing. And you do it, but don't really think about what it would mean if something really did happen. Until it screams down the street you walk once, twice, three times a day, and you're forced to confront that reality whether you want to or not.

Um. So this post doesn't end on a downer, go find a copy of Neil Gaiman's Adventures in the Dream Trade. It's a delightful collection of miscellanea (introductions, bits of poetry and short stories, the American Gods weblog) from Neil's career as a writer. It's quite lovely.

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Ass has been resoundedly kicked by oral exam in Chinese. Wouldn't have been so bad if I actually knew what the text was talking about, but thankfully that comprised only half of the exam. Still going to fail this class, still going to have to take it over next year. Hopefully nine months away from Chinese will not make me want to shrivel up in a corner and die, or give me a queasy feeling in my stomach when I think about flashcards and grammatical points (Have I ever mentioned that I still don't know half the grammar points from first year? I need a Chinese grammar book. And if you know any good ones, please recommend them).

Honestly, I think the only way I'm going to learn this language is if somebody gives me a dictionary and throws me off a plane at Beijing International and tells me, "You're on your own, chickie." I suppose it's something to consider.

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Hmm. So I hear Miyazaki is making a film of Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle. If it is half as good as Spirited Away was, I will be happy.

I'm quite surprised that Miyazaki is doing an adaptation, as the only other thing I've ever heard of him adapting was his own Nausicaa manga. I guess that testifies to how much he likes the story. And how I should probably give Diana Wynne Jones another chance. The only book I ever remember trying to read of hers was something about magical cats with their own language, and I found it horridly incomprehensible. This was, of course, before I read that story in Sandman about the cats who ruled the world.