Only I could start a bitchfight in a spa called Tranquility. I see nothing has changed from my AI days. Here's the lowdown:

My appointment was for 7 p.m. last night but I arrived at 6:30 in case they could take me in early, which they did. After analyzing my skin, they decided I should get a glycolic facial for my oily skin and open pores, oh and why not try to con gently persuade her into getting a microdermabrasion treatment package for $149 while you're at it? And here I thought there was some kind of sophisticated instrument they use to get rid of blackheads/pimples...Hell to the N-O. Girl used her fingers to dig (rather painfully, I might add) into my nose to get the blackheads out and a lancet (the pin that diabetics use to prick their fingers)to pop a pimple--which she made WORSE since she couldn't squeeze fully without poking her thumbs into my brain. I mean, seriously? I could've gotten better, less painful results with a Biore nosestrip.

So after she gave up trying to drill her thumbs into my skull, she started to apply the clay mask. I asked her if I could have my pedicure done while I'm waiting for the mask to set since it takes 30 mins and the pedicure is 1 1/2 hours. Keep in mind that it's already almost 8 and the mall closes at 9. She said, Oh no, the pedicure takes too long and by the time the mask sets, we'll be closing. The voice in my head (the one I rarely listen to) is asking why they booked the pedi and the facial for 7 if it wasn't possible to accomplish both in the timeframe, but as usual I ignored it and agreed not to do it anymore. She led me into this room, told me to lie down and started playing some New Age nature music crap that did nothing to relax me since all I could think about was how boring it was and that I could be having my pedi done instead of just lying there doing nothing. Just when I was about to get up and leave, the door opens and another woman asks me if I had booked for a pedicure. I told her yes, and gave her the reason why. She was all, "Omg, I've been waiting here for you for a half hour now. I could've been giving you the pedicure while you're doing this."

THANK YOU, Common Sense Girl. Your powers of deduction haven't lost anything due to working around idiots all day.

So we rush into the pedi room where my shiatsu massage chair worked for all of five minutes before it bit the dust. The other girl walks in while we were bitching about her and tried to blame me for the misunderstanding by saying that I was the one who decided to rebook the pedi in the first place. The other girl and I told her that she was the one who wouldn't let me do the pedi at the same time, and then the two of them started snarking at each other. Me, I was just like "Solve this later, I just want my toenails to look pretty. NOW.". Since the mall was gonna close, my 1 1/2 hour pedicure turned into something that was a little over 30 mins.

Wtf, yo? I paid $131 for this shit and I got about $40 out of it. This birthday present to myself was an EPIC. FAIL. It was anything but tranquil and the results? You can hardly tell I had anything done. Someone's gonna get a letter about this.

The past few days in summary:

( Because you were just dying to know )

So that's my boring life in a coconut shell. I wish my cubicle were higher so I don't have to see all these people all the time...

Um, I don't even know how to begin this. It all started about an hour ago when I heard an ad for Evercleanse over the radio. Being the curious creature that I am, I Googled it, which led to websites of "medical experts" reviewing other colonic cleansing products and giving advice as to which products are the best. I got bored with the matter so I navigated away from the Google page, but before the page changed, I saw a link in the sidebar that said "That's in my Gut?"

So yeah. I think you guys know by now where I'm going with this. By the time I processed the info, the page had already changed. And instead of leaving well enough alone (omg, I wish I had!), I hit the back button and clicked on the website before I gave it another thought.

And omg. There were pictures not only of crap, but of the people whose crap it belonged to. I mean, seriously? If, for some crazy fucked up reason, you decide to take pictures of your shit and submit them to a website, why would you include your picture too? At first I thought the pictures were of people who accidentally crapped out their intestines but nope, it was all literal crap. I guess the product binds your shit together so that it comes out in one long hose-like...okay, I'm gonna stop now. These considerate people also kindly included testimonials on how well the colonic cleanse product being advertized on the website worked. Now, keep in mind that there was the option of hiding the "results" pictures but for some reason, I not only didn't exercise that option right away but I changed it back when I did. I know, I'm crazy. And now I'm traumatized. Because I'm aware that not everyone is as curious as I am, I'm not even going to link you guys to this fuckery.

Oh and look at that, it's lunchtime. Yummers.

For two days in a row, the subway car that I rode in on the way to work smelled like fried onions. That, coupled with people who don't bathe regularly, just makes for an unhappy me for the rest of the day. It's summer, people. Heat + small, enclosed spaces + sweaty people = a world of stank. Bathing regularly is just good practice, not just in the summer but all year round. I'm convinced that conflicts can be solved if world leaders just learned the value of a good shower.

So in conclusion, please not be leaving your home before taking shower. Especially when you're going to take public transit. Kthanx.

I would've posted this yesterday if it didn't get to be so long and if my browser didn't freeze up like a deer caught in the headlights, forcing me to close it and lose the one paragraph everything I had written down. Read it after ( le cut... )Yes, I know it's long, but I haven't updated in three years so I have a lot of lost time to make up for.

Jennifer Lopez gets a smackdown from America

Ahahaha, so true! The comment about Selena's contribution to JLo's career made my day.

Well, I'm off to the post office to send a few contracts by registered mail. Then I think I'll take the scenic route back. Anything to get the hell out of here for a while.

Wow, three years away from the fandom and this blog and you'd think, after all this time, that my return is the result of me wanting to get something important, something deep off my chest right? Sadly, while I could go through every event that's happened in my life since I last updated this blog, the real reason I am dusting off this wonderful LJ of mine is because I'm bored.

Yes, that's right. Ever since I started this job as an admin assistant in one of the slowest, most inactive non-profit agencies EVER CREATED a little over a year ago, my life has been ever-so-slowly grinding to a halt. Each day that I'm here, a little piece of my soul dies. I hate this job. HATE! HATE! HATE!!!

I have done shit-all for two weeks. That's right, two weeks. And everyone knows it. It's not that I'm overly lazy...it's just that I have nothing to do. Our CEO and one of my immediate bosses are on vacation. My other boss is always "working from home". My ass you're working from home but that's another story. This is about me...ME! Anyway, I've been surfing the celebrity blogs so much while I'm at work that when I get home, I'm pretty much done with the Internet for the rest of the night. Every time someone walks by my desk, I switch to a "working screen", meaning some random Word document or Excel spreadsheet that I've opened up to throw them off my trail. (Tip: I've found that spreadsheets go more towards trail-throwing than Word documents simply because they look more work-related. And if I frown at the screen and lean towards it a little more, that just adds to the illusion of hard-working and concentration that I'm trying to generate.) I've come to realize, however, that it's even harder to pretend to be working than to actually be working.

You'd think that working in an organization that doesn't have its own funding (i.e. we need to fundraise for our salaries and pretty much everything around here), our phones would be ringing off the hook because so many donations are coming in, right? Well...*stares at phone that hasn't rung in about two days*

The sad thing is I'm getting paid very well for the nothingness that I do. It's not a big salary, per se, but it is compared to a lot of people my age. My bank balance wouldn't be winking slyly at me and blowing me kisses at random intervals of the day without this job. I wouldn't be in a position where I can quit right now and be able to live job free for a year without this job. But despite the financial benefits that come with this job, I really, really REALLY want to quit and start my own business. As in right now. As in, I'm already composing my resignation letter in my head. As in, I'm visualizing myself buying a plane ticket to the Philippines and living there for three months so I can lay the groundwork for my import/export business.

I want this pipedream so bad, I can almost taste it. I want out of here! When can I stop being a slave to my bank account and just quit already? This week? Has been the longest week EVERRRRRRR. Friday, when will you stop being such a cock tease and declared an official weekend day?

*pokes flist* Are you guys still there or am I just talking to myself?

I know it sounds crazy, but I've always wanted to have someone plagiarize my work. Not because I advocate plagiarism, but just to see what an actual plagiarized copy of my work is like. What would my reaction be as I read it? Who discovers it? Is it any good, or better than the original? These are all questions I've asked myself in preparation for this moment and yet, when it finally happened, it was sadly anticlimactic.

As it turns out, I was the one who discovered it through self-googling, an activity I enjoy partaking in when boredom strikes on the Internet (which is quite often). You might laugh as you read this, but I decided to pit Yahoo and Google against each other by using the same search terms, and see which one 'won'. I think the previous paragraph already establishes how much of a geek I am so hush, puppies. Anyway, I decided to Google the terms Serena "physical therapist" fanfiction and found this: Serious Help by Yuki Arashi, the bargain basement version of Wounded Souls by crystal_rose aka ME. This story was published in FFN on November 2002 while WS was first published there in June of that year.

To give her some credit, she didn't exactly rip the entirety of my story off, just some identifiable scenes and the starting premise of WS (male protagonist's parent suffers from a stroke and needs female protagonist's help to recover as she is a physical therapist). No mention of child molestation, no illegitimate child. But then again, the story's not finished yet, although I think it's been abandoned.

Here's the review I submitted to that story:

From your author's note: Hope you all liked my first chapter!! R&R, otherwise I’ll never continue. =)

Actually, I liked MY first chapter of Wounded Souls much better, probably because it's the original version. Oh, you didn't plagiarize word for word--you're too sly for that--but I DO recognize a lot of scenes from my story, including the majority of this first chapter. Chapter six of "your" story, in particular, is a cheap copy of a scene in chapter three of WS.

I think it's safe to assume that this story has been abandoned given that its last update was in 2003. Nevertheless, I'm still reporting you to the administrators of this website, and making a note of it in my LJ where I and several of my friends can mock you at will. I still haven't decided whether I'm going to email you personally or visit your Xanga site to leave my mark. Wouldn't it be your bad luck if I did both?

It took a few years but karma has finally caught up with you. I'm going to check your other stories and compare them to the ones you've listed as favourites in your profile to make sure that you haven't plagiarized those too, because why stop at one when you can copy another?

My only complaint against this story is...why is the plagiarized copy so crappy? I mean, she had the finished product right there--why didn't she just use it? She took my story and turned it into the Cardcaptor Sakura fandom's equivalent to PD's Spin the Bottle in that it's practically all dialogue. Figures that my first experience with plagiarism turns out to be a half-assed job.

Which, I guess is the very definition of plagiarism, isn't it? That it's a half-assed job?

After I saw three reviews in a row for Princess Destiny's craptastic Spin the Bottle, I started to get suspicious. I mean, she hadn't updated that fic in a few days while other fics have, so why is she getting so many reviews all of a sudden? When I saw the fourth review, in which the reviewer boosts up PD's flagging ego by telling her that everyone who reviewed her "negatively" will soon be eating their words, I knew something was up. So I joined her mailing list, and this is what I saw:

Sent: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:38:15 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [Moonlight Sonata] STB at Aria's Ink

Hey Princess,

Someone is posting STB at ariasink. Is that u or some
plagerist? Do we have to hunt them down?
Also, the story is getting lots of not-nice reviews...
those guys just can't apreciat a good story.

Watto.

PD's reply:

Hi Watto,

Thank you for the concern; that's very sweet of you. Yes, it me posting there and yes, I'm getting
some quite nasty reviews. O.o And I got a recommendation that that was a nice place to post!

Hey, I'd appreciate if anyone (Who enjoyed that Fanfic) could spare a moment to go write me a good
review there? Oh and for me vote me too. It takes annonymous reviews or you can get an account
and sign in, which would be preferable since some people have accused me in the past of writing my
own reviews because they were marked 'Annonymous'. Yeesh.

http://www.ariasink.com/supload.php?sid=m_princessdestiny~2767&op=reviews

Guys, I'm working on getting you a Chapter of something Sailor Moon out tonight!

Hugs,
Princess Destiny

( So, of course, I HAD to reply )

Normally, I would've privately contacted her to bust a cap in her ass, but I've had enough of people like her. I really don't care who sees this, be it her detractors or her Rabid Kamikaze Fangirls. She's a BIG reason this fandom is in rapid decline and her fanwhores are another. Seriously, the ego on this girl is unbelievable. I'm pasting my message here publically because I know she has a history of altering posts that don't add to her hype.

She's in the middle of a shitstorm of her own making. And unfortunately she insists on spreading it around to the rest of us.

If only I could bitchslap her the way Sango did to Miroku in my icon. Alas, I have to settle for a verbal bitchslap instead.

Yay! I managed to write 1,668 words today--far exceeding the 713 words I needed to get caught up to my daily quota--bringing my total word count up to 12,617. That means I only have to write about 955 words tomorrow to maintain my minimum daily requirement--not that I stop as soon as I reach it. I write as the mood suits me and if my mood says to keep writing, then I'll keep writing. Okay, I'll stop blathering and give you the part I wrote today.

( Pushing the limit )



Now keep in mind that all this is unedited work so please excuse any grammar, spelling or narration fuck-ups. As much as I'd love to shrink LS down so that I could stick her in my pocket and have a full-time editor with me wherever I go, I realize that it's just not possible. Let me know what you think about the chapter so far, will you?

Total word count so far is 10,949. It's a bit lower than I had wanted it to be, but I think I'm still doing okay. Anyway, here's the next installation of chapter one. It follows where the other excerpt left off, so you might want to consider reading that first. Oh yeah, the copyright from the prologue extends to this, and any subsequent chapters I post.

( Where do we go from here? )



And that's all I've got done for now. I have to admit that I'm flying by the seat of my pants here--I've changed the plot around so many times and I'm only on the first chapter! I had outlines and character profiles but it's all gone out the window because I was feeling so stifled by the rigidity of it. Anyway, I think I came up with the perfect way to tie everything in so I'm not going to worry about it anymore. I'll just take it as Alice and I go along, and whatever happens, happens.

Oh, I was going to update Six Degrees yesterday because LS sent me back an edited chapter, but it was only when I was going to upload it on AI that I noticed that she edited Chapter Six instead of Chapter Five. Stupid of me not to notice, eh? Anyway, it looks like we may have to wait a little while longer for the update.

For some reason, I keep thinking that 1300 = 1666, which is why I usually stop writing at around that point. Well, I never claimed that math was my best subject, despite being born to two accountants. *sigh* My word count is now 8412, and I'm pretty happy with that. Nanowrimo's actually getting me to write this story which has been festering on my disk for ages; every month should be NaNoWriMo! As promised, here's the excerpt of chapter one, of which I've got about five pages.

( Chapter one, under the cut )

What do you guys think?

...and I have to admit, I haven't started writing anything new. But that's not to say I don't have anything written. Let's just say that I got a head start on NaNoWriMo...about six months, give or take. It's not much, just 5,619 words, but shhh...the NaNoWriMos don't have to know that. Since 50,000 words divided by 30 days equals to about 1,666 words per day, I figure my writing laziness is pretty much covered. Anyway, here's the prologue of The Secret Ingredient. I'll be posting it in its entirety, but the following chapters (when I've written them) will just be excerpts.

( The Secret Ingredient: Copyright R.M. Ramos, 2004 )

Well, that's it. It's a new style for me--first person, present tense--but I think I can work with it. Remember, this story's an original so it's mine. Anyone that steals this is so gonna get his or her ass kicked very soundly by me.

*dusts off LJ* Wow, it's been a while, eh? I've been hoping that the next time I updated here, it would be because I had just released a new chapter, but, alas, it's not meant to be. LS is really busy with school--so busy that I haven't seen her in weeks...*sniff sniff*--and on top of that, her computer downloaded some Trojans (no, not the condoms, unfortunately) and she lost the disc that had my edited chapter there so she had to start all over again. *sigh* On top of the update-less status of my story, I haven't been able to write anything more than a couple paragraphs in a long time. I blame a number of things: a renewed interest in reading fanfiction (although not Sailor Moon), a preoccupation with procrastination, and a general disinterest in writing anything. I'm not blocked, just not interested, although I do find that once I buck down and force myself to write, I can't stop. But that hasn't happened lately so I won't force it to happen. Crap can only result by doing so. Anyway, to proceed with the point of this post...

I've been reading many fanfics from the Witch Hunter Robin, Inuyasha and Harry Potter fandoms in order to add them to the C2, and I've noticed that these fandoms still look shiny new in comparison to the Sailor Moon fandom, which now looks like a used whore at the end of her career as a result of the constant ass-raping it's gotten from crappy authors who don't give a damn about the stories they write. But, as with any fandom, the WHR, IY and HP fandoms do have their fair share of badfics, although I don't think that they're as badly off as the SM fandom. *sighs* Give it time, though; the fangirls need time to regroup and rethink their strategy. It's already starting to happen to the WHR fandom, and it's a relatively little-known anime!

The following is a list of things I've come across in badfics that truly bug the crap outta me.

-The ever confusing 'then' and 'than'. Why the distinction between the two is so confusing to some authors confuses me. 'Then' is meant to show time; 'than' is meant to compare. Gah.
-Over emphasizing phrases with ?! Omg, why?! Why must people use this combination of punctuation marks after dramatic questions? Don't they know that over-using exclamation marks, they de-emphasize the sentence and make it melodramatic?! And, when they absolutely, positively need to use this evil punctuation mark combo at the end of a question, don't they know that the question mark (?) should go before the exclamation point (!) because it is a question, after all. Why must they torture me with badpunctuation!? Why?!111!!
-Reviewer shout-outs. One sweeping statement to address the "OMG UR STOWIE IZ DA SHIZNIT!!1 U'RE MY HERO DON'T STOP WRITEING EVAH!11" reviewers should do. There is absolutely no need to address every last one of your reviewers in each chapter, unless you want to piss me the fuck off because I didn't get a shout-out of my own. If you get a review that you absolutely have to reply to, then keep it short or better yet, just email the person. But if you rub that shout-out in my face, then it had better be something read-worthy; I don't want to read your reply to DarthVaderChick's question about Inuyasha and Kagome's upcoming sex scene or Moonrawkergurl's comment about Darien's cuteness. I. Don't. Care. I know that I can always just scroll down but God, you inconsiderate author--just get on with the damn story already, will ya?
-Mini-chapters. When your author's note is longer than the actual body of the chapter, there's something wrong. when your author's note is more interesting than the actual chapter, then something's very wrong, but that's not the point of this point. In my opinion, a decent length for a chapter should be about 1000 words, with a maximum of about 20-25 pages. You can't get good character and plot development with less than a 1000 words, I don't care what you say.

And that's all for now because my uterus says so. *stabs crampy uterus* Why are you making me suffer like this!?!?!?!

ETA:
-Guys giggling because that is SO. DAMN. GAY. They can chuckle (the preferred adjective for the manly equivalent of a giggle), smirk, chortle, guffaw, snicker, whatever--just not giggle.
-Needless yaoification. Why do fangirls love to see their bishies make out with each other? Is it such a turn-on to see two hot hetero guys make kissy faces, cuddle up together in bed and have one of them miraculously wind up pregnant with the other's baby? Seriously, I'm not against gay people or gay pride or gay rights but I draw the line when it comes to some clueless fangirl forcing my anime boyfriends to have boy-sex with each other. I do not need to see Sesshoumaru and Miroku holding hands under the Goshinboku; or Amon and Sakaki doing it on a desk in STN-J headquarters while Michael watches on the side; or Prince Endymion exercising his royal privileges on his generals in the stable--that just ain't right. It just kills the thrill of fanfic reading for me and leaves me with haunting mental images seared into my mind's eye. Sure, if the characters are canonically gay, like Michiru and Haruka, it's okay to portray them as such in a fanfic, but please, for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the anime/manga, don't yaoify my hetero boyfriends.

I finally finished my songless songfic for the AI challenge after two failed attempts at writing one. It took me just a day to write it, which just goes to show that when you love what you're writing, everything will just fall into place. Below are the first two unfinished versions (the first using the same song as the end product, and the second using a totally different song by Neil Diamond) to show everyone the progression from crap! fic to funny! fic.

( Untitled Songfic Malfunction #1 )

---

Blah blah blah. It took me at least a couple of weeks for me to write just five pages of forced humour as opposed to the few hours it took to write Bathing Beauties. I think the problem with this version was because I tried to follow the song too closely, which just totally defeated the purpose of the challenge, I now realize. I was limiting myself and the story and as a result, I couldn't come up with an ending that suited me.

And so I gave up on the humour. I swore to myself early on in my fanfic writing career that I would never do an angsty self-reflection just because there's so many of that type of fic around the fandom already. But when inspiration fled, guess what genre I turned to?

( That's right, an angsty self-reflection )

While I absolutely love this song and Neil Diamond even more (sue me, I was raised on his music and the sequined jackets he tends to wear), I just couldn't make it work because there really wasn't any plot. I don't know how people can do this type of story and I salute everyone who can pull it off successfully. My heart just wasn't into it, and I couldn't relate to Inuyasha's pain. So I figured that I'd give the humour one last try but this time from a different perspective. And I'm so glad I did.

Bathing Beauties on FFN.

Read it, review it, make me happy. ^^

Read below entry before reading this one. Without further ado, here's...

( Six Degrees Chapter Four, Version Two, Part Two )

This chapter is by no means an alternate chapter; the plot will go forward following the events in the official published chapter on AI and FFN. This is merely a "deleted scene", if you will, in the "author's cut" version of the story.

To be honest, I kind of liked the ending of this version just a little better than the first, although I have to agree with LS that the Jerry Springer scene needed to be cut out due to extreme levels of WTF-ishness. That's what happens when you write into the wee hours of the morning with little sleep from the night before.

Since LJ apparently has a limit on the length of a single entry, I've decided to post Chapter Four, Version Two in two parts, this being the first half so READ THIS FIRST. The second half will be the entry above this one, and the half that contains the major difference from the official version of this chapter.

( Six Degrees Chapter Four, Version Two, Part One )

Now, on to part two!

I'm very glad that I watched the Sailor Moon anime when I did nine years ago (has it been that long? *gawks*), because if I started watching it now at the Stars season, I would be so turned off I never would've given it a second glance. I think each season of Sailor Moon got progressively worse, the exception being the R season (which I think was the best one). Thanks to the Anime Expo I went to a week and a half ago, I got my hands on the entire fan-subbed Sailor Stars season and got the fan-subbed Inuyasha movies (the first two) for free. I finally got the time to watch the first two volumes of Stars and, I hate to admit it, if I didn't love Sailor Moon that much, I wouldn't bother to watch the rest.

( Pros and Cons of Sailor Stars )

How can such a great manga be so different from the anime? When I started reading the Inuyasha manga, I was amazed by the similarities in both the manga and anime. There are some anime scenes that are directly taken from the manga, dialogue and drawings. Why couldn't Naoko Takeuchi retain that same control over her own work? I know I'm bitching a lot about the Stars, and the anime in general, right now, but at the same time, without the anime, I never would've discovered the whole fandom so for that, I'm really grateful. :)

---

Fucking LJ almost deleted my entire post but I was smart and copied it when I realized that it was going to pull a "Cannot find server" on me. *rubs LJ's face in it*

( Aglaia's SD review )

I'm not mad at the review--it's one of the most in-depth ones I've ever received. Most of what she said made sense--at least from a reader's perspective. I have to remember that no one (well, with the exception of Claidi) can read my mind so they'll look at the ambiguity in some of the scenes and characterization as a kind of negligence on my part. So with that in mind, I'll take this review in the true spirit that it was given and be grateful that someone took the time out of her day to give me some pointers/observations. Thanks Aglaia!

Isn't it funny how you're sometimes not in the mood to write so you just stop and waste your time on other things, but when you are in the mood, you can't write because you're at frigging work (or any such place where you don't have your files with you)? Because right now? I really want to continue writing my challenge fic. *bites nails anxiously* And it's only 11:30--I'm here 'till 5:30. *wibbles and cries* I guess I'm going to have to email the story to myself and work on it in Hotmail if I want to write from here. I don't know why I didn't think about doing that before--I used to do it when I wrote WS and SD. *facesmacks*

So, are you guys writing any challenge fics, or thinking of writing one? I have a sneaking feeling that a lot of the submitted fics are going to be TAFF just it's in the nature of songfics to be as TAFFy as they could possibly be. I, myself, am writing a comedy because after WS, I've had enough of writing TAFFy angst. I'm serious, WS just sapped all the angst out of me. I can read TAFF (and angst) but as for writing it? I guess I could, but I'd have seriously force myself to do it.

What genre are you guys most comfortable writing in? I would have to say that I'm most comfortable writing comedy and drama. I know, I know, opposite ends of the spectrum, but I like being able to switch from one genre to another when the writing's getting monotonous. Sometimes you just need a bit of drama to balance out all the silliness in a comedy, you know? One thing I can't write is science fiction, although I think I was on the verge of doing that in RTH. It's just too technical for me--even though I'm a closet Trekkie myself (I'm just waiting for the day when food replicators come into reality. The first thing I'm going to replicate is salmon sashami--endless supplies of it).

Anyway, back to "work". ^^;;