No package STILL. XP Rather than be nervous, I am beginning to get a bit pissed off. It seems that our payment did get through, and everything was okay from there ... But according to the USPS website, it should have been here days ago. It's not that I have a problem with waiting, because about two weeks would have been quicker than I expected, anyway. But if it was likely to take longer, I would have appreciated being TOLD so I wouldn't sit around worrying it was lost, or at least inexplicably delayed. Ugh.

So ... yes, that thing I said I was going to type yesterday. Um ... I don't really know where to start, or how much to write; the lesson was spread out over two classes, and I'll have to compact it a lot. But I do want to share at least the most important points; it's useful information, and, as it looks like the people who read this are all female, I want you dearies to all be safe. ^_^

Well, one of the most basic things is what an attacker (by which I'll be referring to a rapist more often than a murderer) looks for in women. The first is lack of awareness; it seems pretty obvious, but there are lots of things that we do that make us seem like potential victims. Remember to walk confidently, head up, looking around, so it's apparent you notice what's around you. If you are alone in an elevator with a man, make eye contact and say something about the weather. It won't make an attacker notice you -- it'll make him know *you* notice him, and he can't surprise you. Also, rapists will look for women with long hair, especially in a ponytail or braid, that they can grab them with; wearing clothes that are easy to remove, like skirts and especially overalls. Not that having any one of these will make you an instant victim ... but try not to combine them all at once. ^_^;

Most women are attacked in parking lots. I think the top spot is supermarket/mall lots, then office building parking garages. (As a side note -- if you're in a tall building, don't take the stairwell alone because it's too isolated.) If you're driving, have your keys out before you leave the building so you won't be rummaging in your purse while you walk; then you can do the confident, aware walk. As soon as you get in the car, leave -- if you're sitting there making a list or balancing your checkbook, someone can just hop into the car and point a gun at you. Even if your doors are locked, they can point it at you through the window. If you're parked next to a van, get in your car on the side away from it; it's very easy for someone to slide the door open and yank you in without anyone noticing a thing. If it's dark or you see someone suspicious around your car, ask a security guard to walk you out; or, you can also wait inside until you see a group of 'safe' people like a family or a group of women, and walk out with them.

Always trust your instincts. Don't be afraid to ask for help or tell someone you're uncomfortable if you feel really nervous. If you're alone in the elevator and a guy gets in who makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, get out when he gets in. Or if he's already in there and you're waiting to get on, just say that you're waiting for someone and wait for another elevator. If you're in the parking lot and you see a man walking directly towards you who makes you really uneasy, tell them to stop. I don't mean be paranoid, but just trust your gut.

Of course, not all bad guys *look* like bad guys. Always remember Ted Bundy, the serial killer from several years ago. He murdered possibly hundreds of women because he was clever. Good-looking and charismatic, one of the ploys he would use was to play off sympathy by putting a cast on his arm or leg and pretending to drop something (usually books, and usually at a college campus) in front of a potential victim. The woman would help him pick up the stuff, and he would ask her to carry it to his car. Instead of taking the books himself, he would open the door; when the woman bent down to put them in, he would hit her over the head with his cast or something else, shove her in, and be off. It's simple. I'm not saying not to help people, but be thinking. They may not be out to get you, but you can still say sorry, you're late for class, and you'll get security to help them. Also, think about why they're asking you specifically; one woman was in a parking lot and a man asked for help shutting his car door, because he was handicapped. The woman noticed three things: a pair of older women were walking ahead of her, closer to the man; a police car was nearby; and all the handicapped spaces were empty. Why wasn't he parked there? Why didn't he ask anyone else for help? She walked away -- and heard the man swearing after her, and, after she told people inside the store about him, saw him close the door himself and drive away. It's okay to risk being rude; if the person is legit, they'll understand your nervousness and should be perfectly happy if you get them help from a security guard. Other common ploys include a person (man or woman) running up to you and saying they're baby is choking, and you have to go outside and help ... Don't go. Get security, offer to call 911 ... ask why the hell they left their choking baby alone, outside! Another one is the "you look like you could be a model, come outside so I can take your picture and get you an agent," blah blah blah. Fairly obvious. Ask for their card, and tell them you'll call.

If: you're ever walking alone on a street at night (which you shouldn't be, but ...), walk on the sidewalk, closer to the street. In the daytime, the opposite is true; you walk away from the street so you can't get hit by a car jumping the curb. At night, you want to stay away from doorways and alleys. If your car breaks down on a lonely road at night (which you should try to avoid by keeping your car in good shape, and trying not to drive alone at night, and keeping a cell phone), get away from the car. Attackers will drive up and down those kinds of roads looking for vulnerable people to "help" -- and rob, rape, or murder. Get out, grab a blanket, and hide off the road, in the bushes, several yards away. (No, there are no dangers in that -- no attacker is hiding in the bushes because he knows your car will break down on that spot, at that time; the attacker is driving up and down the road.) Only get out if you see someone definitely trustworthy -- meaning, a cop -- drive up; otherwise, wait until light so you can walk to a phone or gas station. If you're ever dumped into a trunk, kick out the taillight and stick your hand out. The person driving behind you will know a waving hand out of a taillight means someone's in trouble, and will call 911. (Newer cars also have levers that open the trunk on the inside.) If someone ever hijacks your car, don't leave with them. Attackers will have another location they want to take the victim to for their crime; don't get to the crime scene. Offer your purse, your car, etc. for them to let you out. If you're driving, crash your car when you're still going at a low speed and get out. If they're driving, wait for a chance to poke their eyes or give them a hand chop across the throat to stun them, and get out.

Always fight back. Most rapists will not have a weapon, because a charge of rape carries a lesser sentence than rape and attempted murder. Even if they do have a gun, you can and should run (if you aren't under their control, as in being held down). Trained police officers supposedly hit only 4 shots out of 10 on moving targets, because of stress; attackers typically hit 4 out of 100. And it's not likely to be in a vital area. So run (and do it bent down, in a zig-zag motion, using obstacles to block their shot).

Okay, that's freaking long already. Tomorrow I'll write about actual fighting, and whatever I may have forgot. ^_^v;;

/// neji no togireta yume wa doko ni mukatte yuku? ///
07:13 p.m. on Saturday, March 9, 2002

My mom and I just finished watching a Dateline special on the disappearance of a teenage girl from Texas. Those kinds of stories interest me, but they also usually tend to scare the crap out of me. o_o I really shouldn't watch them, especially since they come on at night. But, seeing it reminded me of something important. My Aerobics teacher likes to give her students self defense lessons/instructions; she does it every semester, so I've heard it three times now. I think it's really important -- not only how to defend yourself physically, but also how to avoid dangerous situations, what makes a woman a target, etc. Things that may not be readily intuitive, but are really valuable to know. I'd never heard this information from other places (for instance, not online), but I think it's important, so I think I'm going to write in here everything that my teacher told us. I'll do that tomorrow, when I'm feeling less tired and also less paranoid. XP

/// neji no togireta yume wa doko ni mukatte yuku? ///
10:08 p.m. on Friday, March 8, 2002

For her Senior Project, my friend is trying to bring a production of "The Laramie Project" to school (or perhaps just edited chunks). It's a little more ambitious and socially impacting than mine, but, well. ^_^; Anyway, she lent me a copy of the play yesterday. The basic setup is that the members of Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, WY, several times in the two years after the murder of Matthew Shepard, conducting interviews with various residents and people involved with the investigation. Bits and pieces of the interviews were sort of melded together in a mosaic of the town itself and the aftermath of October 1998. It's a really powerful piece that jerks you in all sorts of directions -- and a movie version is going to be playing on HBO tomorrow, so could you tape it for me, neechan?

Reading it made me think of something I wrote about a year and a half ago, in Health class junior year. It's something I still firmly believe in; and with a bit of an addendum, I feel the same way after reading "The Laramie Project":

If I could come back as anything, I would want to be, in a sense, a superhero. Not necessarily the well-known image of a person in spandex, but the essence of a superhero -- someone with powers that can fix problems normally beyond human limits. I want to be able to just snap my fingers and make corrupt world leaders care about the suffering people struggling to survive while they are absorbed in politics and quests for power. Or to wash away the centuries of destruction we've inflicted on the earth. Sometimes there is so much pain in the world I just want to be able to wipe it away.

The addendum comes in my response to hatred, to prejudice, to ignorance -- I don't wish I could fix the world by erasing all the people who exemplify these things. Reading the play, I got a sense of the tangled paths between good and evil as it applies in real-life stories; a sort of driving home of the concepts I already knew from reading fiction. My overwhelming desire was to be able to take hate -- to pick it up and hold it in my hands like something physical. I wrote a poem about it and uploaded it (yay, update to my site ^_^;), along with another poem I wrote a while ago and forgot about.

Tomorrow I'm going with some friends to do a walk/run benefit for the little brother of a guy in my class; he had a brain tumor, though I think the surgery successfully removed all of it, and the event is to raise money for his medical bills and such. (I'm walking though; I would not be able to run 5km. O_o;;) I hope it doesn't rain, though ... with the way the weather's been all week (with even some off-and-on snow), it looks like it'll be cold and icky, but I just hope it won't be too bad. (This means I probably won't be able to talk to you tonight, neechan; I need to get up at eight tomorrow morning. ^_^;;)

Uf. I think I'm getting sick. Or rather, I'm still sick. o.o;; I held it off through the week, but I never really took a day off, which I think is catching up to me now. -_-;; Maybe I won't go to the showing tomorrow -- it's new stuff that doesn't really interest me -- or D&D on Sunday ... And yes, I realize that a couple of hours walking in the rain won't necessarily help either. XP

And, just because it would be completely out of character for me to not say anything about this: no, the package didn't come. T_T I'm trying not to think about it, neko-chan, but it's hard. I ... can't ... stop myself. ^_^;;

I didn't really know what else to do with this, so here. Check it out, it's worth your while:

/// neji no togireta yume wa doko ni mukatte yuku? ///
06:10 p.m. on Friday, March 8, 2002

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

Quote from Brave New World. It's actually the first sentence that interests me the most; it is, in a nutshell, my current ... what can I say, favorite philosophical idea? XD;; It just seems like I've been somewhat enamored of the concept of contrasts, especially for use in writing papers -- like in character foils, situational irony, and most importantly, happiness as contrasted and bolstered by struggle. Appreciating things. When I read that passage, I just thought yeah, that's what I mean. The idea itself first struck me, I think, when I was reading Les Mis (yeah, yeah, it all comes back to Hugo XP) and there was that line when Cosette told Marius she loved him, and they were described as words "never more enrapturing than when they come through tears." I mean, it was like YES. THAT'S TRUE. You know when you read or hear something and it just clicks with you, and you can *feel* it's true? I mean, that's why we get 'absence makes the heart grow fonder.' Or how you never appreciate what you have until you lose it, or are in danger of doing so. Heck, that's why the percentage of voting participation is higher in countries who have recently won democracy than in America. o.o In a way, suffering occasionally keeps you from doing something stupid because you don't realize how good you've got it right now. It's why I would *never* want a 'perfect world,' as the concept is understood -- one without any sadness or inequality or conflict. We'd blow it all to hell as soon as it became long ago enough that we'd forget it. 'Perfect,' to me, would be some struggle, but just not so much that the damage is irreparable -- minimization, but not complete elimination. At the very least, we need struggle for art, as Huxley also says. Writers are quite aware of that -- not that I say we're all brilliantly perceptive philosophers, but we can tell, if only instinctively, because it's so much a part of what we do. Says William Sansom: "A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all." Amen to that.

That's why, even though I'm mildly freaking out about the package not having arrived yet (I'm *not* worried, though), and I have the emotional maturity of a four year-old and want it nownowNOW, I appreciate the wait -- makes me appreciate the end result more. There really is no fun in instant gratification, ne?

"Love makes us act like we are fools ..." Hai hai, it's definitely national anthem material. XD And ooh, I so hope those rumors are right about Ewan McGregor as Lupin~~ ^o^ (Long hair ... *drools*) Though I must say, I'd never thought about Hugh Grant as Lockhart. I was just sparkly when I found out Kenneth Branagh was going to be playing him -- you've seen him in Much Ado About Nothing, right? I mean, he's got to be good. XD

Clara-san, glad you like the layout. I never told you, but I love yours, too -- the photo is gorgeous. ^_^

/// neji no togireta yume wa doko ni mukatte yuku? ///
06:16 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6, 2002

Feeling somewhat headache-y, but less so than yesterday, and without the general tiredness and nausea. A 24-hour flu? o.o Anyway, also feeling lots better after chatting with neechan for awhile this afternoon. We're both such anal worrywarts, but it seems like when we talk we cancel each other out and everything's better. ^_^;; I'm much less worried about the doujinshi not having arrived yet -- because really, of course the USPS site is going to tell you the idealized time frames for their services, and international mail of all things is most likely to be delayed. I'd be perfectly ecstatic to receive the package late, rather than not at all. (Not that that's going to stop me from obsessively checking the mail everyday. XD;;)

In Drawing today, we spent the period drawing old towels, draped on paint bottles. It was rather relaxing, actually. ^_^;; And there *was* a point -- tomorrow we're starting still life with green peppers and onions, with a draped background. I hate drawing from real-life. Not that I don't see the value in it, because I do; it's just that I suck horribly at it. >_< Ah well, at least I've got a chance to learn.

Also today, we, as the senior AP class, began planning for a party at the end of the year for all the AP and pre-AP block classes (hopefully to start a tradition to bind the AP family together XD;;). Of course, being the anal nerds we are, we won't be satisified with merely throwing a party. We're going to actually *plan* it. With committes. XD;; Among the scheduled events is a senior AP variety show ... I challenged my friend to give a rendition of "Out Tonight," to which she responded with an offer to duet "Take Me or Leave Me." We'll see. :3

/// neji no togireta yume wa doko ni mukatte yuku? ///
06:37 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, 2002

And who knew I'd be on a Noir kick when I made this layout a few weeks ago? ^_^;; So, yeah. Here it is. Mireille's eye. o.o;; Simple, and yet I managed to screw up so many times my computer's nonexistent ears were blushing from the vulgarities I was spewing from it. _o_;;

Um, not much to tell. I'm sick, and stressed from various things, school-related and not. Mondays are a bitch. Don't worry about me; I'm just venting. I'll be fine by tomorrow. ^_^;

/// neji no togireta yume wa doko ni mukatte yuku? ///
08:04 p.m. on Monday, March 4, 2002