channonyarrow

I have comprehended a new thing.

I get really uncomfortable the very rare times that someone says, essentially, "Are you married?" as the follow up to finding out my name and clearly as the preface to asking me out. For a while, I figured that it was because my skeeve radar goes off - I am not the sort of person you just ask out, ask anyone who's seen me - and I distrust why you would ask and assume it has something to do with a lifelong desire to have someone you can debase and abuse and rah rah, my self-esteem is showing again.

But now I get it. (Yes, it bugs me for several hours when it happens, because I get annoyed that I evidently project "easily victimised" on all spectra.)

It bugs me because you don't even care to know me.

When the sum total of the information exchanged is "Hi, I'm so and so, I was watching you across the room," (or similar) and I say "Nice to meet you, I'm thus-and-such," DO NOT FOLLOW THIS UP BY SAYING "So, are you married?"

Hand to god, I will start responding to this with "No, and obviously we're totally compatible, because we are both carbon-based."

I like to laugh at the relationship surveys as much as anyone else, I really do. I like to mock Cosmo and the rest of them just like I like to mock cheerleaders, Oregon, and the colour mauve.

But dude, let me tell you: asking me if I'm married means that you don't even care. Srsly. If you really, truly, gave a shit (and didn't want someone you thought you could beat into catering to your filthy fetishes and living in your basement wrapped in only a burlap sack) you might want to try asking ... oh, maybe about ANYTHING I HAVE INDICATED I CARE ABOUT, given that I'm standing in the tech department and acting vaguely teacherly today. There are THINGS THAT COULD BE DISCUSSED HERE.

We could: find out that we're in a similar course for a similar reason! That we both really like X, Y, and Z! That we've both had Access/Visual Basic/Web Servers/Underwater Basket Weaving, and that we both found it fun/challenging/bloody impossible/ticklish! That we think the weather is being awfully crappy lately, but it looks like the sun is coming out! That I don't like X cuisine, but you know a fantastic X restaurant, meet you there at six? (Okay, whatever, I know that sounds like dialogue from a lame seventies movie.)

Apparently, Cosmo actually got it right: women like to be friends first.

In short, saying "Are you married?" when ALL YOU KNOW IS MY BLOODY NAME, is saying "I don't care about you as a person AT ALL," even if you don't think it is. You may think it's the most pragmatic statement ever, because it indicates that you'd like to ask me out, and it might even be that you choked in the clutch and said the wrong thing.

However: it reeks of desperation. If I were the sort to accept desperate offers, I would be living in Pakistan with some guy I met in a gay club in Valencia years ago. It's also REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING, because I am fundamentally tempted, every fucking time, to say "No, but I only got out of jail a week ago." Or "No, but only because I ate my husband." Or "No, but I'll marry you if you'll be my getaway driver - I think the cops are on their way." Or even "No, how big's your life insurance policy?"

At least ask me out, first! It's my job to say that my husband/wife/god/dog forbid it! That's how you get to know people!

I do not negotiate with terrorists, I do not pay with only pennies at the store, and I do not cater to desperation.

I also totally love the double shot of looking racist when I turn people down. "It's not your race I object to, it's the fact that you want it to rub the lotion on its skin that I object to."

I also have trouble believing that I'm discoursing on the art of getting a date. Let's take off the eau d'desperation and talk about other things! Like that you should not ask YOUR INSTRUCTOR (ie, me) whether I know X person at Hempfest. I hate to say it, because I LIKE hemp (hemp, not, not, not (infinitely fucking NOT) weed) as a concept. I think we should use more of it! I think it's awesome, ecologically friendly, and makes fucking durable paper. I also like hippies! I AM a hippie (in designer boots).

But, and I hate to say it because it turns me into my mother, I don't think "Ah, Hempfest - a joyous celebration of the miracle of hemp, which is totally ridiculously and arbitrarily mistreated by the government."

Instead, I think "Ah. You're one of the dicksmacks who ruins every fucking music festival I ever go to, you stoner bastard. Let me take your totally private and personal drug and jack it up a totally private and personal region of your body; I still haven't forgiven you for the business about looking for the cops under the fucking bed."

Bonus points, of course, if you also tell me that you've designed LOTS of web pages already, and you TOTALLY know what you're doing, even though you:
a) cannot put your style code in the right place;
b) cannot use the right fucking code in the first place wtf (wtf because I had LITERALLY WRITTEN IT ON THE BOARD);
c) cannot figure out how to upload an image to your server;
d) do not listen when I explain the somewhat complicated process;
e) do not even realise that I explained the process;
f) clearly cannot hear me over the sound of your own awesome ... which is obviously why you're taking an evidently (supposedly) remedial course in web design and I am instructing it. Like, for money and shit.

I am just on a tear today.

Oh, and other!dude? If you come back to my lab again and sit there and play games, I will throw you out. I haven't forgotten that you're Broken USB Drive Guy, and I hate you.

Aside from all that, I failed to file my unemployment today because I was in so much pain I forgot, I have like WAAAAAAY too many fucking textbooks to read this weekend (I get to do remedial networking AND remedial Operating Systems because I don't have the slightest clue what a kernel is, or a web garden, but the one makes me hungry and the other makes me think of bees, because dude ... worker processes? Yes, I AM a Mac.) and I need a Sherpa for Fridays because hauling 2 computers, FIVE textbooks, a calendar, and my files/power cords/etc around really sucks.

Seriously. I picked my purse today because I could put two of my damn textbooks in it. This apparently triggered the textbook gnomes, and my bossish person gave me four fucking more.

To read over the weekend.

Last point: I hate pirates, I hate Simplicity, and I hate sleeves, and I want to finish the fucking coat so I can post the pictures of it, but I also want to NEVER finish the fucking coat, because the fucking coat is fucking evil. I may buy a camera, but I also may save that money and pour it directly down my throat, in the form of bottles of gin, because that would be less painful.

How are you?

Of all the totally irrational ideations in my brain, I think the one I would most like to see met is the one where I have a device (remote cracker? tiny x-ray machine? slave? don't care!) that examines eggs for me and ascertains that they do, in fact, all contain eggs, and not, you know, rotting chicks.

Seriously. Back before 9/11, I used to SERIOUSLY CONSIDER going to the airport to get them to run my newly-purchased eggs through the scanner. There is no cost too high for avoiding this!

Even typing this up kind of makes me want to throw up.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA, someone called Evelyn Evelyn "ableist".

Post of rage to come soon. Expect the resurgence of the warning wank! Expect me to be An Asshole On The Internet! But remember, it's not an act, because I'm also an asshole in real life!

I mean, if taking an art project that purports that the creators are conjoined twins who lived in the circus until recently as NOT a statement of ableism is being an asshole in real life, then yes, I am a goddamn asshole.

Hurrah, four day weekend! And, oddly, it looks like it MIGHT ACTUALLY BE A WEEKEND. Holy crap, y'alls.

Monday, I bought 9 bottles of beer. I added it to the approximately 10 already in the fridge, and thought to myself, "no more beer until you DRINK SOME." I did not have enough ROOM for all the beer.

Today, I went to get groceries for my portion of Thanksgiving dinner - minted beetroot salad and challah and maybe Turkish Delight if I get really excited. I also bought a sixpack of Smirnoff Ice, because I like to drink girly drinks for Thanksgiving and Christmas, because if I'm not slightly drunk, there will be blood on the track, and it won't be mine.

I forgot: a) no more room in fridge; b) the yogurt I need for the salad.

GO ME.

Also, I seem to be stuck in an infinite loop of Lady Gaga, and I have really got no explanation for this, except that I think she might actually be quite skilled at putting music together. I'm not into the weirdass clothes (though I do like the McQueen Alien Hooves) but ... the music, it does not make me bleed.

I'm thinking I might do some furniture Jenga in the next while. No idea where I could move ANYTHING to - it's pretty crammed in here, but maybe I can swap a bookcase and the chinchilla cage - because Spencer STARES AT ME WITH HIS MAD, RED, BEADY EYES.

And finally, I seem to have fallen into a pit of Monty Python, Alan Rickman, Eddie Izzard, and Terry Pratchett, and I CANNOT FIND MY WAY OUT. I'm not sure I WANT to, really. But it IS mildly disturbing.

Lizard-brain is squealing that it wants to sew something awesome and Victorian, so I guess I'm doing Mrs. Lovett for Halloween 2010? I haven't yet decided on a dress, though I kind of like the "main" dress she has. Also, it has red bloomers.

Ladies and gentlemen, today I will commit cosplay.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The dress is the wrong one, because I have procrastinated long enough on the right one that there's no way it's getting done, so I'm buying one, and I'm still open to better suggestions, but that said ... tonight, I go as aspiring mobster Vicky-T to a birthday party.

Everyone will know that it's my baseball bat that hit them.

Okay. The massive The Academy Is... music spam. Based on my experiences with the Massive MCR Post, which, btw, I keep updated, though I'm not reuploading files except on request, I am not defaulting this post to include mediafire links. I'm lazy, what can I tell you? Ask if you want 'em.

Again, same rules apply. I make judgement calls based on whether I know you, the age of your LJ, the interests of your LJ, and what you request from me. I reserve the right to refuse to upload anything if I don't like the way you look.

There is a lot less here than there is there; I've never really seen a live recording, for example, and TAI doesn't really seem to get kind of all over the place the way that MCR does. That said, if you have something I don't have here, I'd love to swap for it, and if you have everything I have here, talk to me about other songs. Right now I'm pushing 9000 songs in my iTunes.

The fact that I have noted that there is only one song I know of that I'm looking for doesn't mean I know them all; if you know of something I don't, please let me know even if you don't want to trade.

( Under The Jump )

This weekend, I need to clean up some bits of my life.

I found out yesterday - because my mother found out the day before - that a woman who abandoned their friendship about twenty years ago died last year. It's been really strange to realise that we've been talking about Berkeley without knowing that - even two weeks ago we had a conversation about friendship that included my mom saying that if Berkeley called her tomorrow she would be able to speak to her, that the pain of the severance had eased enough that she would want to know why. This was provoked by my saying that when I have a friend who abandons me (or who I suppose I abandon) I want to know why. I won't fight you for the right to maintain a friendship you're not interested in, but I want to know why you've decided you can't be my friend, because otherwise, there are just unresolved bits of me out there in the world.

This is something like the mouse tattoo, I suppose, for those who read that post, ages ago.

So I have two plans of attack. One is to write letters to people that I am no longer able to contact - an excellent example is Evil Chris The Ex. The idea came about when I found a love letter in a book in the Pitt-Rivers library. My theory is, if you write a letter to the person who is no longer part of your life, you take it to a library and put it in a book. It will, someday, get where it needs to go, wherever that is. The person who finds it may ignore it, but you have to assume that they were where it needed to be, and maybe they'll know something from your letter.

The other is to write letters to some people I know who are currently being out of contact. I do require certain levels of interaction to assume that we have a relationship, and if you're being unwilling to go to lunch with me, call me, or get coffee with me, I have to assume that we no longer have a relationship. If that's in error, I want to give these people the chance to know that this is what I think - without judgement, but it's not a friendship if it's been eight months since you've initiated contact with me. I learned that a long time ago - there are too many people in the world who are willing to let you contact them but with no invested interest themselves, and I can't have time for those people any longer. It's too hard, and it's too pointless. I'd rather find out that the relationship should be severed, because then at least we can wrap things up on the same page.

I never want to find out that someone's been waiting twenty years for me to pull my head out of my ass and in the meantime I've died. Never. I can't conceive of voluntarily doing that to someone; that's what the unresolved nature of one-sided friendship-cancelling does. I promise: I can hear that you no longer want to be my friend without killing myself.

I can't believe that this has happened - it is so much more painful than my grandfather's death, and that's one I thought was unresolved. But I knew him, I know that he thought that if it was meant to be, it would happen, and I know that my mother had the chance to see him before he died. For her, that situation is resolved, and for me, I have to trust that someday, wherever we are, I'll have the chance to talk to him again and he'll know why I didn't take the time to come visit this month.

Though if he hadn't died, I'd be writing this from Montana, "almost" only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades.

It's time to get this cleaned up.

Dear brain,

Shove it.

No love,
The rest of me

*****

Okay, yes, I get that I am not a designer. I get that I have the actual creativity of a lemon drop. I get that I do far, far better copying someone else - I am FAB at that - but cannot possibly create an original idea to save my ass.

I realise, further, that this is why I am having trouble with this class - this is creating out of whole cloth, not drawing what's there or what-the-fuck-ever - and that THAT is why I am going to be two fucking assignments behind in approximately 7.5 hours, and the class is over next week, and each assignment should have 10-20 hours of work evident in them.

I am going to fucking fail. And this is not a class *I* paid for, no, it's one that Washington State paid for, and so not only am I trying to shove a fucking idea out of a creativity spout that is currently not even wide enough for the lead from a pencil, I am having a guilt attack about it. And on top of THAT, I am trying, in theory, to fucking design a logo for something IMPORTANT, and therefore, I'm having a total freakout about THAT.

So I'm too busy freaking out to actually do the work - as I write this, I am getting physically sick from all the freaking out - and that's not helping EITHER.

Fail. Massive, irredeemable fucking fail.

I think I'm just preemptively going to quit school and go live in a fucking box, because obviously that's where I'm going to be if I'm relying on MY design abilities.

New concept: internet feminism.

This is not, as internet Asperger's is not related to real life Asperger's, related to real-life feminism, as the goal of Internet Feminism is not equality in all its munificent facets. No, the goal of Internet Feminism is "to be taken so incredibly seriously."

This leads to humourlessness. This leads to insulting other women who "aren't feminist enough". This leads to all kinds of incredibly-insulting behaviour to both men and women, all justified under the label of "I'm a feminist."

I am not now, nor will I ever be an Internet Feminist.

Things I will continue to do: make fun of people regardless of gender and without gender as my basis for humour; find rape and abuse jokes hilarious; not conflate MY feminism with only listening to Internet-feminist-approved music (and consuming other media with the same criteria); refuse to take Internet Feminists seriously; find multiple genders and sexualities attractive, without regard to the latest Internet Feminist Manifesto.

You know what? If you gotta defend it that hard, it ain't worth having. If you gotta talk smack about how other women aren't feminist enough, rather than talking about how access to healthcare is being denied to women in far vaster proportions than to men, then you're doing it wrong. If YOUR LIFE is personally threatened by the existence of someone like Millionaires, or the Pussycat Dolls, you need to GET a life.

You know the worst thing about Internet Feminism? It's the sort of "activism" where all you have to do is bitch about it in your blog, you don't have to do anything about it, because Christ knows, it's easier to whine about the Millionaires than it is to write to their parent corporation and suggest that publication of such music is distasteful and you will not be consuming any of that company's media in any form until such acts are off their label.

Except - I forgot! - that the main point of Internet Feminism is that you don't actually have to follow through and curtail your own life - you just have to bitch about it to prove that you're an awesome feminist. Follow through need not exist.