I've got five days left of
vacation and I'm milkin' it for all I'm worth.
It's good to be back on E2. I haven't missed three days since I first became a noder here, and it's weird how little changes can freak you out. I missed being here, but it was nice to have a change. I was in Atlanta at AWA (Anime Weekend Atlanta), for those people not obsessed with my life and following every daylog I write.
Not much has happened yet today (I rolled out of bed, got a really good backscratch from my ex-boyfriend, ate some food, and gave up on cleaning my apartment), but I have a lot to node about for the last three days at AWA.
First of all, we went in two cars, with a total of three guys and two girls. The other girl was my ex-roommate Ammy, and we dressed up as Sae and Nanaka from Maho Tsukai TAI. We entered the costume contest but we didn't win anything--not surprising, since our costumes were made with crappy Wal-Mart fabric and held together with fabric glue. But we still looked kawaii. (Pictures available to those who request, I hope.) I got a lot of compliments on my hair made out of sponges.
Because we are cute girls (assumingly), we were given the information about the "con suite," where they had free food. We gleefully kept the secret from the boys we were with. It was fun. At one point in the con suite, right before rushing off to the costume contest, someone was talking to Ammy about the symbol on her costume. We hadn't known what the symbols meant, but one girl was claiming it was a "Wiccan letter." I had never heard of any Wiccan alphabet, and though I am not Wiccan I know quite a bit about the religion since it is derived from what I study and practice. The girl actually said to me, "You didn't know there was a Wiccan alphabet?" Um, there isn't. I said there hasn't really been time for a written language to develop considering the religion was invented in the 1920s. The other girl with her said that Wicca wasn't "invented" in the 1920s but that that was just when they gave the practice a name. That is also bullshit and I told her so; the religion was basically invented by Gerald Gardner, and though he pulled a lot from old books and actual Pagan traditions, he invented a lot of stuff, collaborated with people to create other stuff, and basically stole the rest from Crowley, which is a bit strange. One of them said that it was a secret alphabet that was mostly passed down through families. I could not stay to discuss this with them because I had to run to the contest if I wanted to be in it, but I was telling Ammy all the way about how there was no way there could be a "Wiccan alphabet" that pre-dated Wicca considering most of the people who practiced the Craft in the rural Pagan days were freakin' illiterate and didn't know their OWN language, much less some other mystical one, and therefore it's a bit unlikely that there's a widespread underground language used for Wiccan purposes. High Magick and Ceremonial Magick, maybe (they're always full of codes and glyphs and whatnot), but not the simple country stuff Wicca was derived from and professes to be today.
I looked it up online today, by the way, and what she was talking about is far from being a "Wiccan" alphabet. The symbols they were talking about were simply adopted from Theban lettering, which is ancient, but there were no equivalents in the Theban alphabet for certain letters, so they were simply invented . . . yes, around the time of Gerald Gardner, for the purposes of encoding "secret" documents. I found it funny that those girls tried to treat me like I was all clueless about something well-known, when it's just one of many letter-by-letter encoding systems. (Incidentally, the symbol on my cape was the cipher for "S," for my character's name Sae, while Ammy's had the symbol for "N" on it, for Nanaka.)
Ending that rant, I ended up seeing some good anime music videos and having my picture taken like a hundred times (even a couple random people tried to take my picture when I wasn't wearing my costume--I guess I look like I'm in costume even when I'm not). We saw some really amazing costumes, and out of like 90 people Ammy and I were chosen--at separate times, randomly from a hat--to be in a game show. I didn't win shit, and she got a consolation prize. Fun.
On the way back I had a Chinese dinner and whoever made my fortune cookie had no concept of English grammar: "You love of life will be happy and harmonious." At least I know it's authentic.
I'm annoyed and I have a clogged e-mail box, so now I'll stop blathering. Thank you, thank you.