I haven't posted a driving story in ages, and boy have I got a fun one from today!

( angry asshat ahoyCollapse )


Anyhow, stay away from the crazy people, and I hope y'all are having a lovely spring! *starts popping allergy medication*

~Psychic

Music: Inner Ninja is stuck in my head gah tags: driving

guys why is Mewtwo being voiced by a woman
why
why


Nintendo knows the new fans will go in knowing little about Mewtwo, so instead of showing them "hey, we created this guy 15 years ago and this is how awesome he is" they figure "the kids probably won't care about Mewtwo unless we give it a new form or something, so uh somebody go do that. And hire whatever voice actor you want." Apparently it's way more important to appeal to the new fans than the old ones, so I guess they're hoping the old fans will be blissfully unaware that they're shredding their childhood.

Hey, Nintendo? Stop it. Just stop. It's enough. Go home.

tags: awful things, mewtwo

Though it's currently unconfirmed, it was just revealed that Mewtwo has a new form that will feature in the Genesect movie.

Guys, not gonna lie - I was alone in the house, and my first react was to bellow "no" in a surprisingly deep, anguished voice I didn't know I possessed.


If the new form is the result of something happening in the movie - like merging with Genesect or being captured by Plasma or something - maybe I can live with that. But if it turns out he had this other form all along, I am going to be upset.

Guys, Mewtwo is one of my favourite Pokemon. He has a good, developed backstory, and adding shit like this just seems so gimmicky and frankly unoriginal at this point. Just because Gamefreak has a hard-on for new forms right now does not mean they should fuck around with the classics.


Ugh. Just ugh. I'm still hoping they don't fuck it up entirely, but who even knows. Can this just be a belated April Fools' Day joke? Please?

Feeling: distraught tags: awful things, mewtwo, pokémon

I made Pikachu cupcakes today. The boyfriend alternated filming and lending a hand. I am content.



To give some context, when I briefly visited home from Israel in December, I found out via Facebook that during the exact time I’d be in Canada, a friend of mine would be in Japan. Though we’re not very close, I said it was a shame we’d miss each other, and I suggested we get each other something from our respective foreign country. I got him a bunch of random/weird Israeli junk food, and when he asked what I wanted I of course said “Pokemon!” So this is what he got me.


I pretty much died.
I love baking. Most people who know me know this. So this was pretty much the perfect gift. Also I don't love Eeveelutions, but I love plushies and I've cosplayed Umbreon, so that's pretty awesome. :>

So today as thanks for the awesome gifts, I made cupcakes, including three batches of Pikachu heads, and brought them over to his house when the bf and I went there to hang. He was very happy.
I've still got some leftover Pika heads to give to friends, too. Next time I'll try using a recipe that won't result in such an uneven surface, though. Unless I make zombie Pikas for Halloween. Which I now want to do.



Blah blah blah looking for a job in my field, hopefully that works out.


I'll just end this entry with Pikachu staring into your soul.

No, this was not intentional.
No, I do not know how this happened.
Yes, I intend to eat it.

tags: baking/decorating, pokémon

So apparently the new Pokemon movie is called Extremespeed Genesect and the Reawakening of Mewtwo.

My thought process:
1) OMG MEWTWO IS COMING BACK?! WHOEVER THOUGHT OF THIS IS AMAZING
2) They'd better not fuck him up or throw half the anime canon out the window.

I'm a little petrified. Seriously, they had better not fuck this up. Also I am surprised that they didn't announce this on the 6th on his actual birthday. (Which I wanted to celebrate that this year but didn't quite know how to, as usual. :<) Also this should mean more Mewtwo merchandise! :D



Oh yes, and I'm home in Canada! My last few days in Israel were really nice. I met up with StellarWind, an internet friend whose artwork I've admired since I was 14. I hung out with my friend Daniel, who had visited the day we arrived in Israel.

I took the train into Haifa and visited John, an American friend I made through one of the guys on my program. We visited the Bahayi Gardens and walked along the beach. That evening, we had our official program good-bye dinner, including a slideshow, "paper plate awards" and drinks at a nearby bar. The next day we had our last Shabbat potluck dinner on the roof.

In my last hours in the country, I took a friend and tried (and failed) to liberate some Digimon plushies from a Pokemon-themed claw machine, then had soup and sandwiches with my friend Carrie. My five-month stay ended well.

Packing up my Tel Aviv apartment was strange and sad, but I happened to be on the same flight to Toronto as one of the guys on my program, so we travelled together. It even turned out our seats were right next to each other, so that was a lot more pleasant. It was a 1am flight and I did manage to get some sleep. Then I just had to wait for my flight from Toronto to home, which I was very lucky to get on since the plane ended up being smaller than expected (due to backups from this week's snowstorm) and some people got bumped off the flight. Yeesh.

But now I'm back home and pretty much unpacked and over the jetlag. My boyfriend and I made our relationship ~*Facebook public,*~ so you know it's official, haha. Now to catch up on the past five months with all my friends! And also find a job and decide what to do with my life, I guess.

But for now, sleep. <3

~Psychic

tags: israel, mewtwo, travel

My flight home is exactly one week from now. Jeez.

I'm excited to be going home. I miss my boyfriend. I miss my friends. I miss my city. I miss my family. But Israel's really been an amazing experience, and I'm sad that it's already nearly over!

Tomorrow is my last day of work. First I'm going to interview the owner of a candy shop I found the other day, where they package candy in pill bottles and syringes and test tubes with cute "prescriptions," which will be for my last article. Then I'll go into the office with some cupcakes I just made tonight as thanks to all my awesome coworkers and supervisor.

Hopefully my stomach will be better by tomorrow - it's been acting up since Wednesday and it has been very much not fun.

Tuesday/Wednesday we had our last big group trip, where we went to the south of the country into the desert, the Negev. We were on two absolutely gorgeous hikes (the latter including tremendous heights) and got to meet two very different families who live in the desert (one a small farm with a modest bed n breakfast, the other a Bedouin family). Really nice way to end our stay in Israel.


I mostly just hope to explore Tel Aviv a little more, hopefully visit a friend in Haifa and maybe see another friend in Jerusalem, and maybe my internet friend from Holon one last time. I have to take another walk along the beach, bargain at the market, and go to a restaurant or two before I leave. Also buy some fun Israeli junk food to take home, like the chocolate bars with pop rocks in em!

I'm going to miss Israel. I'll miss these crazy people, the weird weather, the way-too-young soldiers walking around on their days off. I'll miss my apartment and my room, my independence, and some of the cool people I've met.

Canada beckons.

~Psychic

tags: israel, sick, work

Well, I was kind of hoping for an R/S remake, but maybe those will finally come later. Interesting that gen V didn't have any remakes.

So Pokemon X and Pokemon Y! We're finally shifting away from colours and towards...chromosomes?

It's in 3D, which looks pretty damn cool, I will say. The attack animations look pretty bad-ass, too. I guess this means we won't ever really need another Pokemon Stadium game! (Dang.) People are speculating that the new region is based off France/Europe, which could be neat.

I was surprised that they straight-up revealed the new Pokemon this time without bothering with any of that silhouette business. The titular legendaries were a bit harder to get a good look at, but we got to see the starters in battle and everything. So we have:

Chespin: another...otter...thing? With a hat? All right, okay.
Fennekin: another fire fox, okay. But it seemed to use some kind of psychic/ghost/dark attack in battle, so I'm hoping for a cool dual-type THAT ISN'T FIRE/FIGHTING FINALLY. Also will likely be the most popular.
Froakie: aaaaand another frog. Meh.

I'm more curious about what they'll each evolve into - that's half the interest, after all. Hopefully they'll be original enough.

The legendaries look okay. The Y-bird seemed to get a bit more screen-time (and badassery), but I usually like elegant Pokemon, so we'll see about the X-deer.


Overall, this looks like it will be an interesting generation. The 3D aspect really fascinates me, and I'm curious to see what else they'll do.

Also, I'm going to have to buy a 3DS. Damn.

~Psychic

Music: Pokemon theme music in my head tags: pokémon

It's good to be back in Canada! I'm surprisingly getting reverse culture shock - I didn't have any problems getting accustomed to Israeli culture, but there are some things here I find so weird. For instance, having to go from speaking to Hebrew to French. The toilets here use an unnecessary amount of water. People are much more polite. (A bus driver let me and another passenger ride for free today!)

( Long description of my flight homeCollapse )

Being home is weird - everything is familiar, yet feels almost a bit bigger or smaller, like the toilet or the sink or the doorknob. And it feels like I’m in my second home, because my apartment in Israel is also home, my room in Israel is also my room. There’s so much luxury here – a full kitchen, a full closet, a fluffy bed.

I've had some cool opportunities to see friends thus far - went to a free fireworks show in the freezing cold Saturday night with some friends, and tonight we had a formalwear "I-survived-the-end-of-the-world" Christmas Party, where I got to wear my favourite fancy dress, and I had a very handsome date. <3 Also, people played Twister, and it was hilarious. Other things I have planned are a vintage/burlesque-style photoshoot with friends (yay for my first Groupon purchase) and a small vacation with the family in Lake Placid, a place my parents have been raving about most of my life.


Anyhow, it's great to be home with friends and I hope I can see most of them in the short time I have. The weather is pretty unbearable next to what I've been dealing with, but that's what poufy winter jackets and sweaters are for. XD

~Psychic

tags: vacation

Sunday was just a matter of waiting until after Ricky's meeting to find out if we were going back home to Tel Aviv or not. In the morning they organized a group trip to a museum, but I wanted to sleep in and explore myself a little. I awoke around noon, packed my things and went to a neat street and grabbed schwarma for lunch and wandered around, accidentally wandering into a sex shop and later grabbing ice cream. My friend Carrie then called to tell me it had been decided that upon returning from the museum, everyone would have half an hour to pack and we'd return to Tel Aviv.

We arrived in the late afternoon, and it was decided that our lecture that evening about gender in the middle east would still happen as scheduled. I was actually quite excited for this one, but before I was even down the street I heard a very distant siren call. Unsure if it was indeed the rocket siren, I looked around to see how the Israelis around me were reacting. Store owners stood in the doorways of their shops, people continued walking, drivers didn't even pause. I was quite confused until I heard the distant boom. That was it.

Interestingly, a few other people on my program who were also walking at the time did run for shelter along with the Israeli civilians nearby. Huh. Also the lecture was interesting, though one of my roommates said multiple things in the presentation were false. Weird, since the lecturer (who is also my Hebrew teacher) majored in the subject in university.


We got the day off from work on Monday to do laundry and grocery shopping and whatnot, so I did just that. Nothing exciting.


On Tuesdays we have weekly trips, and I'm so glad this one wasn't cancelled because we went to the Dead Sea! First we did a hike in the desert near the Og River, which was very cool - I love any landscape with mountains, so I enjoyed myself greatly. There were some parts where we had to scale cliff faces using metal rungs in the rock, some of which were kind of scary because it wasn't just straight up.

We then went to the Dead Sea, and I wasted no time getting in the water and floating in different positions, all the while avoiding getting my hands and face wet. One of the guys had been before, and he knew where to get the mud that you put on your body to make your skin smooth. I and another guy swam-followed him there, since the beach was less sand and more sharp rocks that kill your feet. It was fun smearing the stuff all over, haha, but you're supposed to let it dry before washing it off. As a result, we had to walk for 15 minutes down the oh-my-god-my-feet-are-gonna-fall-off shore, which was less than fun, but we did it in the end! (It also helped that the guy who took us there has calloused feet and was way ahead of us, and while we were five minutes from our things he was heading back with a sandal-clad group, and he thankfully gave me his flipflops for the rest of the way.) It took ages in the sulfur showers to wash off all the mud and salt, but it was worth it!


And that brings us to today, Wednesday. Many people have been saying a ceasefire is imminent, while others fear for their loved ones who were called to potentially do a ground operation into Gaza. But things have been mostly quiet.

But here I was, back at work for the first time in nearly a week, and during an editorial meeting for the magazines we heard the news. A bomb went off on a bus in Tel Aviv. Shit. No deaths but ten casualties at the moment, and nobody I know has been hurt, though that is the bus one girl on my program usually takes to work. It has been called an act of terrorism, but it's unknown whether or not it was a suicide bomber. A search is now being conducted.


Hopefully this is only the first and the last. It's still absolutely surreal. As I said in the previous entry, suicide bombers are would be something that would send me back home, but I don't know. I was speaking with my supervisor, who said that though it would be good to remain indoors now during the search, we can't let our lives be interrupted and come to live in fear because of this. I don't know, it's just so, so strange.

Hopefully this won't continue.

Location: Work tags: israel