So our homework assignment for webdesign class was to do something with CSS Zen Garden.

I'm rather pleased by [ how mine turned out. ]

(Can you guess what movie I watched recently and found absolutely hilarious.)

I WAS SICK is my excuse.

I JUST WOKE UP though so yesterday I had half a kettle of hot water, a bunch of cough drops, some honey, half a bowl of beef and broccoli (yay for cheap Chinese takeout), half a kettle of citron tea and some more cough drops. I hate being sick because all the snot makes me even less hungry than usual ughhhh.

Okay, sure.

My dad's name is Keyyup Lee. (Anybody who's not Korean tends to have problems with that name.) His dad (my grandfather) was some sort of governmental person during the Japanese occupation of Korea and was thus a massively strict and stodgy old person. (My grandfather scares me still.) My dad grew up with three older sisters and sort of ended up having this massive 'you need to be the best!!!' mentality. He was academically pretty good, and got a scholarship into Seoul University, which is the most prestigious uni in South Korea -- so you know, he's pretty proud of being smart and stuff, and thus has high expectations for just about everyone. He was also apparently academically brilliant enough that he was excused from the mandatory military enlistment time (all Korean males have to serve in the army unless they have amazing excuses) and just got 13 months (I think) instead of the usual 21 months. After he graduated, he went to University of Chicago where he got a Ph.D. in economics (I think). Now he teaches Marketing (mostly) at Hongik University, where he has tenure.

He's sort of massively elitist in terms of studying and intelligence, and since I was little he's been saying things like "I'm smart, but you can be even smarter than me, so you need to be successful." He used to teach me math when I was younger but he was really strict and harsh, so I hated learning from him. (He also wanted to teach me two or three grades' worth material further ahead than I was learning at school.) He can be really nice and derpy at times (he used to stack like 20 Lego heads on a Lego body to make me laugh), but he also get angry really easily and really badly, and then he's just scary. He also used to beat me lolol but that's sort of general Korean culture so there you go.

My mom is Moonkyung Choi, she kept her last name instead of taking Lee. (Also a problem name for non-Koreans.) Her dad, unlike my grandfather on my dad's side, had a more posh lifestyle after the Japanese occupation, so my mom had a more comfortable lifestyle. There's some sort of nasty business with my mom's siblings that I still don't really understand. I think she has a sister and two brothers, but her sister (my aunt) got disowned by my grandfather sometime when I was in elementary school (???) so I haven't seen her in ages. The younger of my uncles also got disowned for a while when I was younger before being accepted back into the family, and currently the older uncle is disowned so I haven't seen him in ages. It's sort of weird and I'm not allowed to ask about it. Aaaaaanyway, my mom graduated high school and studied at Boston College, and then did her Ph.D. at University of Chicago (where she met my dad and then they got married and had me). After returning from the US, she took care of me for a while and then started teaching sociology at Kookmin University for a bit before transferring to a research project.

My mom's way more softhearted than my dad, and is a lot more sympathetic to me being a bit of a retard by the family's academic standards, haha. She's actually really really sympathetic and is the type of person to buy little gifts for the apartment security guards and give money to homeless people. (She enjoys stationary with pink bunnies and Peter Rabbit and tries to press them on me. I make so much fun of her for it.) She's also immensely intolerant of violence and such, haha. She can be pretty scary when she's mad (she's like 5-foot-nothing but you'd be surprised how scary a pissed off little Korean woman can be), but she's pretty good at controlling herself until she eventually explodes.

All in all, I've had a pretty lucky childhood. I had a pretty stable home and didn't have any huge crises. I guess my only gripe is that I have a really hard time connecting emotionally to either of my parents, since they're both huge academic (as well as most of my extended family) and I'm a bit of a black sheep in terms of my 'I wanna go write and draw, derp derp' feelings. I can't ever show them any of my creative works (my dad still wants me to be studying something 'smarter' and my mom wouldn't be able to stand any violence/brutality/cynicism) so I guess I feel a little bit unsupported emotionally speaking but I can live with that. I'm just complaining a bit pettily, really. My mom and dad are cool people on the whole.

Also my dad like five-foot-ten while my mom is like five-foot-two. Unfortunately, I got my mom's shorty genes. Sigh. ):


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SERIAL POSTING AW YEH, it's to make up for how long I didn't post at all okay or something I don't even know. Either way, I have a plurk now, because vore wanted me to get one, so I'm there as databomb. I still have no fucking idea how it works so I guess I'll just lurk like a creeper.

Also for anyone who was interested in my writing, I'm going to post that shit up at squadrons because I don't really wanna spam this journal with endless drafts. Go friend it and I'll friend back and you can ogle what I write or something like that I guess.

Hughablughablugh.

My first love was when I was in second grade. I had a crush on one of the few non-Korean boys at our school, this kid called Marcus. I think he was German-something?

Either way, I liked him but never did anything about it until Valentine's day, when I made a little valentine card (it said "Bee My Valentine" or something and had a doodle of a bumblebee on it, haw haw, do you see how clever I was back then) and left it under his desk for him to find, but he never figured out it was me.

And then my crush for him withered away after a few years so that never went anywhere. How exciting.

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JUMPING THE MEME BANDWAGON AW YEH. Because why not.

I'm Miru. My surname's Lee, my given name is something incredibly girly and, as a result, rather embarassing, so I never go by it online. (I'd love to change my real name to something like Alex, something nice and androgynous.) My Korean name's Sohyun Lee. It's also a fairly girly name, sigh.

I was born in Chicago (August 19, 1989) while my parents were Ph.D. students at University of Chicago, and I lived there until I was five, when my parents graduated and we all went back to Korea. I grew up there for most of my life, although I went to an American school within Korea -- Seoul International School -- so I speak English a lot better than Korean and don't really have any sort of Korean accent. (Which is why it always startles people when I say I grew up in Korea.) I was pretty smart through elementary school before I had a magnificent middle-school-rebellion crash-and-burn and sort of became the brooding, antisocial, pseudo-goth-brat up through high school. My grades weren't that hot, and I disappointed my parents by failing to get into an Ivy League. Ah, well.

I'm currently a senior studying at Carnegie Mellon University, with a double major in Professional Writing (basically journalism and the like) and Creative Writing, and a minor in Communication Design (basically graphic design). I first came to college planning to study Electronic Engineering, as per my parents' wishes, but soon gave up because I realized that it just wasn't the thing for me. I wandered through Engineering, and then Computer Science, before landing in the humanities department. If things go well, I should graduate sometime in May. I'm not really sure what I'll be doing after I graduate, but I've been studying for the GRE in my free time with the intention of applying to the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center and a few graduate design programs. (Haw haw, maybe I stand a chance.)

I enjoy drawing and used to want to do it for a living before realizing that's far too lofty (read: impossible) a goal, so it's been demoted to a hobby, pretty much. I drew a comic for a while but I've been distracted lately. My creative writing professor's pretty supportive of me attempting some sort of short comic to submit for publication, so we'll see.

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Nice to meet you.



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OUT OF NOWHERE, SCHOOL-RELATED POST because fuck, why not.

Okay so I'm taking this one Advanced Fiction Workshop class that's basically us trying to write the first 40 pages to a coherent novel over the course of the semester. I wrote the first four pages, took them in for critique. Took them home, edited them. Took them back for a second critiquing round. Got this incredibly flattering but still frustrating comment from one girl: "Okay, so when I was reading this, I got this shiver down my spine -- and I only feel that for like, my three favorite books, but I felt that for your first draft. But I don't know about for your edited draft."

Tbh I kinda liked my original version too but I can't take a workshop class without working with the critique I get aaaaaaa idk what to do the critique people gives me is so hard to fix while sticking to what I originally have in mind. /throws everything out the window.

Here is the first draft, because why not:

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Oh yeah I'm also working on a senior thesis which entails writing a post-apocalyptic novel (aw yeh I love it) which means I get to do lots of reading as "research." So I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and holy shit it is like the most depressing novel I've read in so long what the fuck. But it was good. Recommended! (Considering checking out the movie.)

Now attempting to read The Stand, in all of its 1100+ page glory. (/scream.)

I hope I can draw this good someday.

databomb: it's so beautiful
databomb: i can't stop watching
vore: my new favorite music video

On an entirely unrelated note (no, really), fuckyeahterribleart is my new favorite tumblr.

ETA: Upon looking at the comments for that vid:

databomb: YOU DID A FANTASIC JOB!!!!!!:D p.s. who made rhe amines 2:13 and 2:17
databomb: AMINES
databomb: AMINES
databomb: PHAE
vore: LMAOJDSLKFJLSKD
databomb: LET'S WATCH SOME
vore: SDJFKLASJDKL
databomb: AMINES
vore: LMAOJDSLFKDS
vore: FUCK
vore: amines

I was gonna post tl;dr about my life but I thought this would be more entertaining:

vore: Recently, Tsundere Cafes have been opening in the Otakuland of Akihabara. Similar to Meido Cafes, the waitresses there are young attractive women, each acting tsundere-ish towards their patrons: very rude and impatient at the beginning ("Here, sit." "Am I supposed to wait for you, or what?" "Have you decided on your order yet?!") but getting increasingly more apologetic and dere when they are about to leave ("I'm sorry I said all those things to you... you will come again, won't you?.."). Witness reports say that this change is irresistible. The waitresses apparently enjoy their jobs immensely, too, but, heck, getting paid for being rude to customers? A dream job.
vore: I would work here
databomb: ..... LMAO
databomb: LMAONJFKJWENEKF
databomb: i want to see a
databomb: yandere cafe now
databomb: where the waitresses start out all sweet and nice and moemoe all
vore: "FINE, JUST LEAVE ME"
databomb: "hello! welcome~~ please tell me if there's anything i can get for you~~~"
databomb: but as the time passes and the customer
databomb: is about to leave
databomb: they have this
databomb: mean glint to their eyes
databomb: and when its' time to bring the customers the check
databomb: they hand it over while holding
databomb: a butcher knife
databomb: in the other hand
vore: LMAOSJDLKFJKLD
vore: glaring so hard
databomb: I WOULD GO TO A YANDERE CAFE OKAY
databomb: IT WOULD BE
databomb: HILARIOUS
vore: we need to go to these cafes
databomb: /posts this to lj

Aw yeh I am an year older and am legal to go get drunk now or something. (PS I am not dead.)



On a completely unrelated note, here's a gorgeous close-up picture of the kakkoiiiiii Edowaado-sama~*~*~ barbie I took at FAO Schwarz, since I never get bored of wandering around that place. (Yes, his skin actually has glitter on it.) Christ he looks like a douchebag even as a barbie. (I would have gotten a close-up of Jeikobu-sama~*~*~ too except that one wasn't as funny.)