I am not really into the Asian culture/fashion/stuff as some of my friends, but I do admit to loving Asian music. I discovered this gem - Zebra Queen – on Jennifer’s wall on FB and I love the two songs that have been released. One had embedding disabled, so you get only one: NAMIDA～ココロアバイテ. Enjoy. :)

Lady Gaga, watch and learn. This is how you do weird sexy. Zebra Queen is a character in a Japanese movie, Zebra Man 2, so she’s not an actual artist as such, just a char played by an actress, but still. Catchy. :)

I finally got myself (read: I made Jani get it and pay for it) a new CD-DVD burner after making my previous one stuck. It wouldn’t even respond to the emergency opening procedure nor would the aid of a sharp kitchen knife (or nail scissors) do any good — it was stuck beyond stuck. I don’t really get exactly what I did to break it that badly… swapping discs 20 or so times while installing The Sims 2 with all expansion & stuff packs is probably the act that made the drive head for the equivalent of Hell for computer parts.

The new one is a Samsung (a brand I’ve always been happy with), so far seems to be quiet & co-operative enough. I’ve yet to taste the burning process but since I have to back-up the Champions Online installer (…I just can’t stop mentioning that game, can I? While I’m on the subject, check out the hero cards I made for Preah Lha & Pepper Dew!), I believe I’ll be doing just that in a moment. The best part? It has Lightscribe! ♥ ♥ ♥ I’ve wanted a Lightscribe drive since ‘07 but they’ve always been hellishly expensive. This one was marked down to 35€ so breaking the previous POS drive couldn’t have come at a better time. ♥

And now, the main reason I was inspired to write in my exhausted state of mind are two questions I’ve been posed in the past week that’ve left me all kinds of …

1. Why do you objectify women? All your art has skimpy-clothed and provocative women, and your game characters follow the same theme. I’ve also seen you post pictures of yourself in very little clothing? Why? Have you no shame? How can you call yourself a feminist?

First off, I don’t objectify women for the sake of objectifying women, if that’s what the question is. I enjoy & appreciate a more burlesque view on female beauty and I don’t see a reason as to why women should wear turtlenecks and ankle-lenght full skirts all the time. I think the female body is an extremely beautiful creation in all its forms and should be appreciated as such. I don’t see women as objects, nor do I see men as objects, nor children, nor pets, nor your next door neighbor’s goat. If one wishes to display their body in a provocative fashion, one should damn well be allowed to do so.

Second, I have never, under any circumstances, claimed to be a feminist. I’m not, and never will be. I think that’s something for other women, but not me; I’ve always been a tomboy and think of myself as a (very gay) guy, pretty much. I think the world needs feminists, just like it needs schauvinists, but I’m neither. I consider all creatures on Earth equal.

And no, I don’t have any shame on this issue. I don’t feel I need to apologize to anyone for liking the necklines plunging and the skirts short as far as women go. You got it? Flaunt it.

But on the subject of feminism… every time I state I’m not a feminist (GASP. HORROR.), I get someone screaming my ear off about how I’m pushing all women back to the middle ages. How am I doing that? I don’t act against feminists, do I? How do I harm other women by simply not choosing to fight that in particular war? Women’s rights, amazing stuff right there, but there are plenty of women who take the ideology of feminism way too far and I feel like feminism in general has slowly turned from seeking equal rights to somehow trying to make the female out to be better than the male which is just bullcrap. I believe we’ve all been made for different purposes, not to compete with each other over every little thing so we can be “equal”. Yes, women and men have different innate abilities and men are more drawn to physicality while women are more emotional and are generally more physically frail — why is this considered wrong and why does it need to be changed? If thinking that every single creature is equal but different for a reason makes me a threat to all women everywhere , fine. So be it. I’d rather represent the entire human race rather than just the gender I happened to be born as by wild chance. Being female does not automatically make me a feminist. Please do not draw such conclusions. Thank you.

2. Why do you blog about gaming so much? It’s annoying.

Um, because I am a… hardcore gamer? o.O What should I write about, butterflies?

You’re in a gamer’s blog… you can expect to see gaming entries a-plenty. Logical, no? I don’t see a reason in having a blog that I pay for every month just so I can discuss things that don’t interest me in the slightest. Fashion? I know jack shit about that. Make-up? All I know about it is that I have a lot of it and wear a lot of it. I’m not even going to try to come across as an expert on a subject I know absolutely nothing about. I know about gaming, so I write about gaming.

So just… get.. over… it…?

…why do people have this constant need to try and get people to be exactly like they themselves are? Why must everyone fit a certain role that’s being spoon-fed to them? Just so the world can be easier to understand?  *sigh*

♪ Zebra Queen ~ NAMIDA ~ココロアバイテ

Three days of physical work. I know. A fancy panty princess like me doing construction-related work for three days. Impossible! I’m sure no one’s surprised to discover my feet are covered in blisters and every well-hidden muscle in my body screams for mercy, my nose and mouth are having a hard time coping with the dust stuck in them and my hands have difficulty keeping hold of anything because they’re so tired. :D But hey, at least my hair still looks ☆★ kick-ass ★☆! <3 (And thus ends today’s worship of Jojo’s hair.)

So, you know how I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pull my own (considerable) weight at the renovation site? That was a silly fear, tbh. Although I didn’t work 12-hour days like the guys (because despite the rumors stating otherwise, I’m not into self-harm), I spent six hours on the first day, four + three hours  (with rest in between) on the second day and two hours on the third day working my generous butt off as well as spending the entirety of the first three-hour viewing at the house baking buns and serving coffee & treats to the guests. I damn well pulled my weight. Naturally I’m a wee bit worried this will come bite me in the ass next week when my body realizes it’s been under stress, but I’ll worry about that when and if that happens. *nod*

As far as the following picspam goes, ignore the overall quality. My camera lens got its share of the construction dust so that fucked up with everything. Will need to give my baby a serious cleaning job after this… pictures & a lot of boring text after the jump.

(Click for more!)

Say hai2u to Pepper Dew, my new & improved Champions Online character. I sent Equilibria and Curata packing once I had a clear view of the kind of character I want to play — a gunslinger who’ll kick you in the nuts if you get too close, so here she is… my very first custom-build baby! Her energy builder is Gunslinger, and her basic power is Thundering Kicks which, so far, seems to be a kick-ass combo. Her innate characteristic is Quick Trigger. The name comes from the vile, evil Dr. Pepper and the sweet, yummy Mountain Dew. Since she’s evil.. but yummy. You know…? And yes, at 5 am, after hours of hard physical labor (which I shall write about soon, so prepare for a long, uninteresting post instead of  a short, picspammy, uninteresting post like this one) and absolutely no sleep whatsoever last night, introducing Peppy to the world seems like the best idea ever! Wheeeeeee!

Since the majority of today will most likely be spent remodeling the house that Jani & his family are selling (I think they’re sticking me in painting duty), I decided to get in the swing of things by revamping the site a little bit. As much as I loved the black-based one, I’m at an age where the cutesy trinkets just feel like too much so I scrapped all the unnecessary crapanoodle off the sidebar and made a very simplistic, almost mature (I said almost) layout. I guess it’s a definite sign of aging when one chooses convenient over flashy. *sigh* As you are bound to notice, should I choose to scribble this entry into a ramblatudous one, I haven’t slept much tonight which is our running theme this month so far. It’s not that I’m not tired — Hell, I’m exhausted — it’s just that I’m not sleepy and going to bed would just result in frustration and fatigued whining. Of course, common sense states that I’m forced to go sleep within the next half hour if I’m seriously going to spend all day painting walls. I mean, fatigued effort is cool if one is looking for a more bohemian look, but I really don’t think that’s what is expected. Sleep. I need it. Give me it. Not sure if it would help with the exhaustion, since despite occasional napping and a full night’s rest here and there, I’m still wandering around in a semi-zombiefied state, but I’d like to at least take a shot at it, see where it leads me. Even if the end result is just a 1/10 increase on my energy bar, I’d love to have it. Shame my brain disagrees. I suppose, if all these aforementioned plans go up Santa’s imaginary hairy ass, I’ll be clicking “take it easy” on my job performance bar and hope folks will cut me some slack. The wonderful gaping hole in my armpit has been misbehaving for a while now and we don’t have the time to go see a Doctor until next week, so I’m probably going to take things at a leisurely pace.

On that note, I really hate asking people to let me have less to do than others in any given project. I want to make the same effort as everyone else. I suppose in a lot of ways I’m never going to accept the fact that I am somewhat faulty and while others run their bodies on a well-oiled system, I’m the rusty back-up plan people use only when nothing else is available. I will continue to try putting in the same hours and subsequently I will continue paying a high price for my good effort. Once a Cleric, always a Cleric — high WIS & INT don’t help one bit in a melee fight… and so far that’s all my life’s been, a huge big battle meant for the plate armored and here I am, a clothie with a whopping 2 allocated for STA and a permanent Curse of Weakness debuff, standing there with pee trickling down my leg, clutching my makeshift staff in horror as the events unfold without much input from Yours Truly. Who shoved me in this instance without a tank to keep aggro off my flabby butt?! Anyway. The sooner the renovations are done, the better, as the house sales can start then and we can put this project behind us and move onto the next (which would be a ladder-bed for me & an outdoor enclosure for the petsies).

Speaking of the petsies… I am in desperate need of three cat carriers. I’ve been looking at pet supply store websites and I found one that carries a nice model, a Pet Cargo Cabrio. Does anyone who happens to be reading this have any experience with said carrier or similar ones? It looks luxurious and easy to use but are plastic carriers overall a good investment? At almost 50€/carrier, I’d really not like to discover that they break apart when you breathe in their general direction. I’d also like to know if carriers like that are safe when traveling in a car — in the odd chance that there’s a crash, the cat can’t fly out of the box, right? It won’t open on its own, right? Is there a way to somehow ease the wobbliness of the carrier, since Rosa gets very carsick? And since we’re on the subject of la furry ones, I am having all my cats chipped and perhaps tattooed — neither is  a painful procedure, right? The last thing I want is to cause my cats any pain. :(

On that note, I think I need to hop skip to bed. Gnai moonkins. Behave!