channonyarrow

Dear SJ crusaders:

Fuck off. Thanks!

See, here's the thing, and here's why you're really not getting the places you'd like to think you are, at least in my world.

1) You're making assumptions based on no evidence.
- I can, in fact, claim that something proves someone is a "real boy" without ever having in my thought process the contents of their pants. Because guess what, I don't care in the slightest what's in your pants. I can, in fact, be referring to Peter Pan, or to simply the humour found when someone who is godlike-pretty (Geeface, I heart you!) does something stereotypically "boy", or even using a sarcastic grammatical construct for humorous effect.

2) You're asking people to prove a negative.
- What would it take to prove that I'm not "a transphobic creep"? Do I need to get a letter signed by graeae's partner stating that I'm not? What about my friend J who's not on LJ? What about the coworker I had at my last job who was trans? What about the person I knew in college who was trans? Will it suffice if I contact everyone I've ever had any sort of social relationship with, ever, and get a sworn statement indicating whether I'm a good person or a bad person in their minds? Should I talk to a counsellor about the periods of gender dysphoria I have and get them to state that I don't hate myself, therefore I don't hate trans people? Basically, until and unless you catch me in my KKK robes, please refrain from making unfounded accusations, particularly since whatever provoked this person was not me saying "OMG THERE IS NOTHING BUT CIS EVERYTHING ELSE IS HORRIBLE AND AGAINST GOD." And I can say that with categorical certainty because I have never said or thought that.

Do gay people count to prove that I'm not an asshat? There's a reason that McArcus was my token straight minority for a while - how many gay people in my social circles prove that I'm not actually queer unfriendly? Or can I just state that I'm bi and canvas LJ for anyone who remembers my relationship with srichard for proof that this is true?

But there's the rub: there is no way whatsoever for me to prove that I don't think that thought, because ... you're firing from the hip without waiting to find out whether I'm actually sending out emails about the n****r in the White House to claim that I'm racist. You're not asking me about my stance on social issues - you are, instead, coming in with an accusation. And you don't know me.

3) There's a world of difference between "this bothers me" and "this is what you are".
- I made a comment a while back in theferrett's journal about how I frequently feel third-sexed because I don't behave like "a girl" but I don't feel like "a boy". roniliquidity pulled me up short by pointing out, politely, that doing that is a way of avoiding the issue of demonstrating that "femininity" is beyond simply what the religious right would have us believe, and she was right to do so. I haven't made that claim since.

Strangely, however, when someone takes the time to contact me off-thread and make accusations, I'm a lot less inclined to listen to your bullshit.

4) No one speaks for anyone else, even if you are a member of the group. Frequently, you are not.
- This was most pronounced with Racefail a few years back, where a bunch of white people critiqued other white people about not including characters of colour in their works (and yes, I am very well aware that there were participants in that who were not white; I'm only speaking of a section of the population that had that argument). I don't, actually, think that it's your business to come riding in and tell me that, as another white person, I'm using terms you, as a white person, don't like. Tough shit. I pick terms of respect with the best information I have, and I will alter them if I find that people in the group I'm speaking of don't like them, but I find it twee that you think I'm not being PC if I say, for example, that someone is black rather than someone is a person of colour. Are you, then, the sole arbiter of what people in that group prefer to be called? I should tell you right now that I utterly dislike being referred to as Caucasian, but have no problem with white, and think that, in my particularly mutt-genetics case, "Scandinavian-American" or "Italian-American" are misleading, particularly since they are the least true about my genome. "White American" makes me want to throw up a lot. So there you are, that's the term to use for everyone who shares my skin colour!

However, and this is key, I won't actually kill you if you call me Caucasian. I'll just point out that I don't like it, but I won't die, and nor will anyone else.

Because it is not possible to find out what every single person in the group being spoken of would prefer to be called, I find it utterly offensive that people try to define other people's language for them. This isn't so much the intention argument as it is the respect argument. Unless I start hauling off and calling trans people chicks with dicks or whatever the fuck the insulting group terms are (I literally have no idea and I cannot possibly be arsed to google for it) maybe you could do me a favour and step the fuck down until I do something that egregious? You're not going to get me to adopt your standard if you come at me with "OMG BIGOT" as your opening salvo, and personally, I don't think I or anyone else deserves it until and unless you have an actual pattern of behaviour to work with.

I am also fairly sure that the people who know me would, in fact, not hesitate to yank me up short if there was something I was saying or doing that gave the wrong impression of me, and from them, I'll listen to it, because they actually KNOW ME.

5) Whatever happened to living it?
- I cannot, literally, fathom the mindset that says "If I just yell loud enough, frequently enough, everyone will change their minds!" First: no, they won't. Second: if I really were shopping for a new thought system, what about yours is more compelling than anyone else's? I don't really like shouting at total randos about the impurity of their thoughts, and I also like having the asshats self-identify by continuing to espouse their anti-Semitic bullshit or whatever - I don't actually believe that anyone's going to change their mind if I just shout at them for a while, and certainly not if they're actually a bigot.

But here's the thing: you can do a LOT more to help your cause if you cultivate relationships with people first. Or if you just LIVE it - I've said for a long time that the one factor that makes me want to be Catholic is the priest that I had as a child at Catholic school. It certainly isn't the current Church leadership, and it certainly isn't the evangelicals - it's seeing that man live his faith, and I really mean live it. It was a far more compelling argument in favour of faith than, literally, anything I have seen before or since.

Coming around and levelling off-thread insults at me won't change my mind about anything (except that not only are you a crap writer, in my professional judgment, but you're also a crap human as well) and it certainly wouldn't make me change my mind if I really were a transphobic creep. Maybe my problem is that I don't have enough white guilt and whatever else guilt to care that everyone thinks and speaks exactly the same way I do?

WAIT. Maybe my problem is that I don't assume everyone else is a goddamn dick! Yes, I think that might be it!

No love whatsoever,
Cass

I am getting REAL tired of being told that my experience with X product is obviously false because it is not the speaker's experience. I am also getting REAL tired of explaining that I have no interest in Y product because it doesn't work for me.

I'm not actually sure how people can hear me say "I want X product" and think that I have said "I want a testimonial about the wonder of Y product because I don't realise that Y product is ever so much better, as I have only recently crawled out from under my rock." (For reference, I crawled out from under this particular rock while the speakers were still in grade school. Literally.)

In other words, I crawled out from under that rock FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. I'm very aware of the options, I've tried most of them, and I've made a decision.

Y may be great. It doesn't work for me. I want people to stop trying to sell it to me, because trust me, I have heard it alllllllll before. (Last Friday, in fact. Last Friday was the last time I heard it.)

I feel like I've just announced that I'm pregnant and now I'd like to hear all the disaster stories disguised as "funny" stories, every time I try to buy this stuff. Or, you know, talk about it in public. Or in private. Or say the words of the name of the product in some order or in pig Latin.

It's kind of like saying "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice!" apparently.

Maybe the next time this happens, I'll just stare intently at the speaker and start singing the Star Spangled Banner, because that would make about as much sense.

Okay.

This is something that has bugged me for-fucking-ever, and that most authors, I think, don't actually, consciously think about. Hell, I don't like to think about it, if only because anthropology as a discipline has gone so ass-over-teakettle about identifying potential ~influences on one's work that you practically can't get to the essay without reading about how the author was once bitten by a moose or some shit, so obviously that influences their understanding of the natives of Bongobongostan, who cover themselves in paint and feathers pretty much solely because they don't live in a place that moose find very congenial. Yadda yadda yadda, it's important that we know that EE Evans-Pritchard wasn't ACTUALLY living with the Nuer when he wrote his umpty jillion books about them, WHATEVER, DONE.

However, as we all know, the internet is srs fucking bzns. The internet may even be Sparta, for all I know.

So let's all take a deep breath and realise something.

You are reading this through Livejournal. I am writing this through Livejournal. We are communicating via the medium of the internet, and the internet is preeeeetty fucking stratified by class. (It's also stratified by age, but unless someone wants to introduce me to a granny slasher, I don't care about that.)

We are communicating about a subject that I think is pretty fucking firmly the purview of at least the middle class, whatever that means nowadays. The internet, in other words, has become our leisure time.

And this would lead to what logical conclusion?

That we all are at least middle class, relatively privileged people.

We have the education, the skills, and the time to learn to negotiate the internet and use it where past generations used visiting the sick. Fine, so far as it goes, but all of that is the setup for what I wish to bitch about today, so if you're not following, reread the above paragraph. We are all privileged fuckers here.

I'm having trouble with voice in this, actually - this could easily be a dear author: die rant, given how much time I had to spend making some works social-class appropriate. We're gonna go with the fannish context, but know that there is significant overlap with ~real authors here.

So. We're all privileged fuckers, so obviously we invest all our time in figuring out new ways to stick Tab A into Slot B and go UNF UNF UNF as we do it. We are not fighting off cholera, bandits, police repression, censorship, we are not concentrating solely on finding food, shelter, clothing, our missing loved ones, etc. When something is for porn, you know that that thing is about the most decadent of the cultural elaborations since the Kwakiutl were tossing shit off the side of a cliff as a potlatch. In fact, the internet could be considered the willful destruction OF a civilisation, since so few of society's mores actually apply to it.

Why, then, in our pursuit of porn, do we not consider class when we're writing porn? I am not asking this because I get off on fucking Marxist-Leninist theory, or because I want everyone to have pity on the working man (ha! see what I did thar?), I'm asking because it is a reasonable fucking question.

I think that the assignation of bandom-villain status is classist. Here's why.

The three most common villains I've run across, where there is some other information to suggest that, you know, that might possibly be the tiniest bit of a misclassification, are Bert, Gabe, and William. Bert's the skeevy weird dude who - put your tinhats on with me - broke up with Gerard, Gabe's got creepy eyes and an intense personality and seemingly takes nothing seriously, and William is occasionally overly friendly with dudes, so he's obviously a slut.

These are the gimmes of bandom, and I am up to here with them.

Let's take 'em one at a time, shall we. We shall, because I fucking say so.

Bert: Okay, seriously, I kind of want to give him cookies and a hug, but he'd totally get lost in my cleavage. Bear in mind, this is one of the biggest assholes in MCR-centric fandom. He and Gerard were REAL close on Warped 2005 - REAL CLOSE. His mom, I think it was, gave him a picture of the two of them. BEFFIES 4EVA, at the very least. He is little, he is dirty, he is an ex addict, he is possibly slightly crazy in ways out of the norm for bands, who tend to be more than a little off level as it is. His girlfriend died of an overdose while pregnant with their child, his parents threw him out when he was a teenager for not adhering to their faith (Mormonism, BE SURPRISED) and he panhandled and lived at, I think, Quinn's house when he wasn't being homeless as fuck. He is possibly semi-openly bi; I seem to recall this, at any rate, but it's Bert, so who knows. He's pretty fearless about - well, about everything, but about stuff like labelling based on sexual orientation he makes all of FBR look like the shyest straight boys to ever walk the earth. He loves puppies, and his friends, and small children, and he tends not to do the very Scandinavian NO TOUCHY thing. Obviously, Bert is a skeevy dude who broke Gee's heart and deserves to hang, because his other pastime is curbstomping puppies.

Gabe: Conflicted dude. Don't believe me? Go read the lyrics to Being From Jersey Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry and come back. Done that? Good. Gabe wrote that song, so far as anyone knows, and this is a theory that flies to me, as a goodbye to the Jersey hardcore scene when he started Cobra Starship - and the scene, like it or not, is not really a place to float major, groundbreaking work. This song, for example, would not fly in the scene. He takes EVERYTHING waaaay too seriously (almost as seriously as William, actually) but is better at pretending like it's all bullshit, life's a game, and he's throwing the party at the end of the world. He started a band to change the world, for fuck's sake, and he's not shy about saying that - but unlike MCR, who also started a band to change the world and are deadly earnest about it, he hides it by saying that he had a vision of a cobra, who told him that humanity was fucked, and in the time left to us Gabe had to start a band to teach emo kids not to be such pussies and hipsters not to take themselves so seriously. He's not in this to save your life - except he totally is, he's just not saying it the same way. Obviously, Gabe is a creepy rapist because he wrote a song called "It's Warmer In The Basement" and also "The Church Of Hot Addiction".

William: This dude is a hider. Seriously. Don't believe me? Watch TAITV - there are very few shots of William where he's not acting like he's completely and totally aware of the camera even though he's TRYING not to be. He has no ability at ALL to forget that there's a camera in the room, and he comes off super earnest when he talks to the camera. He's a smart dude - 4.0 all the way through high school - and he's eloquent (sometimes I wish he would stop, actually, because it makes me a little bit nuts). But he is, from all I can see, simultaneously a nice guy - no one has ever said he was a fucking dick and they're not shy about saying that about Mike Carden, his bandmate - and a very shy one. So when he opens up physically, it's with pretty much three people: Gabe, Travis McCoy, and Nick Scimeca, who is not in a band. He's not even particularly touchy-feely with his band - unlike with MCR, or Panic, or FOB, some members of whom cannot get through a very short interview without touching. William also left home as a high school senior to live with Mike Carden and play music because his family disagreed so intensely with his choice of music as a profession that they wanted him to stop. He was working part time at the Gap, playing music part time, and going to school full time - and still making straight As and, for all I know, still playing on the baseball team. Obviously, William is a slut and never has had a problem in his life that couldn't be resolved by, basically, being white and pretty.

Now that I've proved I can regurgitate sufficient portions of the work other people have done, there is a point to this. The backgrounds and the crimes have been listed. Bert: skeevy because he broke Gee's heart. Gabe: creepy rapist because he's got weird eyes (I am never making this up). William: slut because he's shy and takes comfort from three very specific people.

Let's toss a monkeywrench in there.

Brendon: I don't like Panic, not one tiny bit. I will never like Panic. There is literally nothing they could do to get me to be a fan of theirs. As such, I am a lot fuzzier on the timeline of events here, but you can't be in scene fandom and not pick up a few things, so I'm gonna go the fuck ahead and hope that I have gotten this right. Brendon was also kicked out of his house for being not-sufficiently-Mormon and wanting to play music instead of going on mission. Brendon also worked part time and went to school. Brendon and his parents have, evidently, reconciled since it became obvious that playing music was the right decision, though everything I've seen suggests that relationship is a touch bit strained (I also expect it to fly apart if Spencer does any more ground-laying work for Brendon to come out as bi or gay.) Personally, if it were me, they could crawl on fucking broken glass to grovel at my feet and I'd not have shit to do with them, but that's me.

Brendon, however, does not get a bad rap in fandom. Brendon's a spaz, he's a musical prodigy, he looks hot in girl jeans (he has, I think, actually SAID that he HAS to wear girl jeans because of his butt, which is, uh, womanly at best) and he's VERY pretty, if you're into that sort of thing. I will never not want to slap Brendon in the face with a haddock, so I won't judge you, but I also won't judge whether he's hot. I don't even care if he is. But he is not a rapist, a slut, or a generally-all-purpose bad guy; in fact, when Brendon is characterised as a slut, the times I've seen, it's entirely more positive than it is when it's William being labeled.

Normally, I would throw my hands up in the air and stomp off and say "FINE, FUCK YOU ALL, BE WRONG IF YOU WANT," because there is nothing I can do about it if someone is wrong on the internet, short of stalking them, caging them, and gradually brainwashing them into believing MY point of view, which is obviously correct. (Yours is wrong.) But! Two more MASSIVE points to introduce, in case you've lived through the wall of text so far!

The Gimme: A writing "technique" wherein nothing needs to be explained, it merely needs to be accepted.

Social class: Remember what I said above about the internet and its users? Yeah. We're all privileged, and presumably, in the sectors of fandom I've interacted with, we all have someone in our family who loves us without reservation and supports us. Few, if ANY, of us, have dealt with the things that Bert and William and Brendon have. Few of us have seemingly felt so strongly that we would be mocked for doing something that we felt was necessary that we had to hide why we were doing it, like Gabe.

Your social class informs your vision of the world. If you don't think that's true, let me rent you a $500/month apartment in South Park for a few weeks and we'll see how you function, living in Seattle's version of fairly extreme, ethnically-based poverty. I don't think that's gonna go well.

I think - and this is where I sound deadly earnest, PLEASE SHOOT ME - that because of social class there is very little credence given to Bert, Gabe, and William's situations. I think that they are very abstract at best to most writers, and completely alien at worst - so it's easy to demonise later actions rather than placing them truly into context. So WHAT if Bert and Gerard broke up? Isn't it possible that Gerard, whose life more closely mirrors the middle-class ideal, could have been the one to say "No, this isn't working"? The pretty one is not always dumped by the skeevy one, people! Isn't it POSSIBLE that Gabe isn't actually a creepy rapist, despite his eyes? That he actually DOES want to save your life and maybe his own as well, with his music, and that he DEFINITELY wants to see a fucking change in the world? Isn't it possible that William is so overwhelmed by the stardom that he also courts that he takes refuge in comfort with a very small group of people, yet is not, actually, fucking all of them, much less anyone else whose path he crosses?

Brendon didn't make a choice, true. But it's a lot easier to accept what's happened to him, and to empathise with it, because he did not go on to become a fucking junkie. Bandom is an amazingly virginal place, and I don't mean that physically; for all I know, everyone in bandom goes to an orgy every night of the week. But in terms of extrapolating from what is known to what could be, there is an AMAZING sympathy gap, and that gap happens the moment that someone exhibits behaviour that is difficult to reconcile. What would you like Bert to have done, while living on the streets? SHOULD Gabe never have formed Cobra? If William had a choice in the matter now, do you think he might choose to be a baseball player instead of a musician?

No. You think - you have decided, through your lens of privilege and comfort, that hard choices equal easy answers, and the answer for those three people is that they are demons, sometimes very, very fucking dangerous ones. But you have not faced the same choice. You can't extrapolate what YOU think should have happened into what IS because you don't know what happened, what the motives were - all you know is that Bert is not nearly as pretty as Gerard, and that Gabe can't take a reasonable picture to save his life and that William likes to very, very openly grab Travis or Gabe whenever they are performing together - and three quarters of the time, "grab" is the wrong fucking verb. The actions you judge are not placed into the context of where they came from; I think that's because, for much of bandom, where they came from is literally unthinkable, unsympathisable, and not understandable.

You have, through lack of empathy, turned these peoples' very real lives and choices into a fucking gimme.

Take off your fucking glasses the next time you decide who your villain is. Don't go with a fucking stock character just because you don't understand how they came to be where they are, and who they are. Find someone who's really a fucking villain and use them instead.

Don't let your privilege inform your work. Don't let your privilege keep you from trying to see and understand what might really be going on, rather than whatever the hell construct fandom is fucking playing with today.

None of these are new. However, they evidently bear motherfucking repeating.

If you design a website or middleware site, stop making the font be a different iteration of the same fucking colour as the background. I have seen one too fucking many light-grey-on-dark-grey/lavender-on-violet/light-blue-on-dark-grey sites today. Actual contrast is okay.

Additionally! If you are using a middleware site and you are posting to a comm, quit fucking breaking the font overrides I have set. I have set my overrides to generate a page I can fucking read, and you know what? I don't think it's particularly cute when you break my overrides so that your tiny, tiny text can come through in your comm post. Either you've set your screen resolution far too low or you've got the self-esteem of a bug. Knock it the fuck off.

If you wish to use an idiom that contains a homonym in it, you might want to check the idiom. It is "deep-seated", not "deep seeded". It is "spitting image", not "spit and image". This, in particular, pisses me off. I cannot take someone's deep seeded fear seriously, I really can't.

*****

Today, I am going to wash my car. It's been over a year.

This is why I buy gray cars.

I also need to clean it out so that I can a) find my Fall Out Boy tickets and b) put graeae into it. It's getting to the point where there's not even room for me.

I may even vacuum it.

ETA: Apparently, I will be taking a hammer to the fuse box. I have no power in part of my kitchen, and I know why this is. It still pisses me the fuck off - and I really wonder what was being done in the apartment below me to make the fuses blow, but since I have more fuse switches in the off position than I have verified should, in fact, be in the off position, I have no urge at all to just randomly flip switches.

So apparently I get to chase down Every. Single. Fucking. Circuit. in this place before I call the landlady and tell her what's going on. Yay!

Today, I feel like ass. I have a headache, caused by falling asleep without a pillow, I slept ten hours which generally means something's wrong, I have a cold coming (on the slow train from Siberia, where they keep the toilets) and the brief burst of energy this weekend that allowed me to find four interesting jobs I'm qualified for has completely drained away, leaving me fucking annoyed at myself that I am not returning emails, making trip plans, turning in applications, or even mailing my fucking Visa bill. This is on top of shouting about the election, about the latest rumour about John McCain, about whether or not Palin is qualified to FIND the office of Vice President, and generally feeling fucked off about the whole economic situation, up to and including the bailout.

There. That's my day.

Note, please, that I am not blaming this on my period. Note further that I DO NOT CARE if you are having yours, I REALLY REALLY REALLY FUCKING DON'T.

A) I have no idea what relevance that has to anything. I can only imagine that it has relevance to me if you are about to get blood on me. As we're not in a position to do that - see above about lack of care.

B) If you are trying to indicate that it is a reason for why you feel like shit...are you not paying attention? The economy is lodged in the U-bend, the jobs (which I haven't got one of, so there, I'm worse off) are going goodbye, credit is going goodbye, food and gas costs continue to rise, and the government has just bulk-ordered fiddles and zippos.

If you are not upset by any of this, then you are not paying attention.

And finally, C) that's a fucking copout.

It's a very female copout, too (obviously) because what it says is "Sorry I'm being a bitch! I'll be sweetness and light next week again!"

Now. As the lit-crit people say, "Let's unpack that."

What it means is "I'm not willing to articulate my very-reasonable worries and concerns for some reason, because I don't think they're okay." And if you agree with me or not, YOU are the one making the EXCUSE. Actually, maybe it means "I'm not willing to claim responsibility for my very-reasonable worries and concerns because doing that would mean I was a bitch, and I don't want to be seen that way."

Why the fuck not?

And my god, what state have we come to when the condition of your underwear is better than telling people that you're unhappy? That you're fed up, frustrated, worried, and possibly even scared? JESUS SHIT, people! There really, really is nothing wrong with that, and blaming your period for why you're being all "weird" (as if I would fucking KNOW, I only know the part of you that you choose to present on the internet) is just. fucking. annoying.

Self-actualise or whatever the hot fucking buzzword is! Admit that you are legitimately unhappy! Do not blame your period for everything!

That turns out to be a subject that you can get surprisingly less out of than you would think, so I'll stop, but SERIOUSLY. Shut the fuck up with the excuse of your period. No one is paying you to be on the internet, so I don't think your "job performance" is going to be off if you feel like crap and go die in bed for a day. And you know, I notice NO difference between 'you with your period' and 'you without your period' so there's that for you. You're not actually radiating period-vibes so broadly that they've entered Alaskan airspace.

Only tell me these things if you are about to get blood all over me. Otherwise, I totally fail to care.

Dear Yahoo. Hell, dear Livejournal, dear MySpace, dear everyone:

I don't like upgrading the interface I have with a website. It bothers me a lot. If I wanted to be able to flag my messages (what the fuck, Yahoo? The first person to send me a flagged message is going to be the first person I NEVER reply to) I would have upgraded to the new Yahoo, or I would have gotten a different mail service.

I don't like spending, you know, 10 years with one interface, only to find out that you're driven so crazy by stick-in-the-mud Luddites like me that you HAVE to change things. The old system worked. If I wanted the new system, I had the option to upgrade to it!

I find your changes unnecessary, annoying, and really fucking frustrating. Changing for the sake of change is never a good thing.

If I could consistently find the compose screen in Gmail, if it didn't automatically come with Gchat, I would consider changing to Gmail, I hate the new Yahoo so much.

No love at all,
Me

This is not hilarious, really.

I need an archiving application of SOME SORT (I don't even care, seriously) and I HAD ONE. Then I got a new computer. I no longer have one.

But wait, it gets better.

I can't DOWNLOAD one, because I can't open them.

Because I need an archiving application to open them.

THIS IS THE DEFINITION OF STUPID FUCKING RECURSION.

I am having a shittacular time of it lately, given that my iPod is missing, and I swear to god something has been motherfucking amputated from my soul. I hate Portland, which is the last place I saw the iPod, and I hate driving home at two in the morning, which is when I drove home, and I hate the cold, which made me wear gloves, so maybe I dropped it outside and the skinny methhead across the alley stole it, and I hate the fact that I had no-fucking-pockets because of this insane skirt kick I have been on for, like, five months now, and maybe I dropped it in my apartment, but if so it's not exactly turning-the-fuck-up, and I am pissed off, and it's like someone kicked my puppy and broke my windshield and graffitied my front door and killed my sixth grade teacher. Even though I have food and shelter and clothing and a job, I have no iPod, and it is worse than death.

Also, my car, which I just spent $575 I DO NOT HAVE on it needs to learn to not be an ungrateful bitch and NOT MAKE SCARY BINDING NOISES WITH THE STEERING COLUMN RIGHT NOW, OR, IN FACT, EVER. Shut up, I can totally order my car to put out in exchange for a meal, even if I wouldn't do that to a person. My car needs to shut the smack up and fucking work already. It just got more money spent on it than it EVER has, so why is it making this noise, and if the noise persists, can I make the garage that repaired it repair it again, for free?

And you know what's actually WORSE than winning ten cents in the lottery? Going to Portland to go to Powell's to exchange books (because for serious I have NO MONEY, I realise this is not an uncommon state in this world, but it is for me and the IRS and the car can both bite me, and then give The Holiday Season a spaghetti breakfast) and getting there, seriously, three minutes after they stopped buying books for the evening so that I could not buy anything. Or rather, I bought two books, via a payday loan from one of the people I went with*, and now I think they were both Really Bad Choices. One's on fashion of the last 40,000 years, but not, like, serious examinations of fashion, more like "sidebar on using poisonous lead makeup you crazy Old Kingdom bimbos" and things like that, and so far I have found that just about everything they have to say about A) Queen Elizabeth; B) farthingales; and C) bustles are pretty much, um, categorically-fucking-wrong. And the other book, god help me, I don't even know why I fucking bought it (and there's a scary story there!) but it's a book of "Street" fashion (from 2006) and even though I thought "Ooh, these two outfits are awesome and I will recreate them because for serious what is NOT TO LOVE HERE," A) the book is dated and B) I want to punch every single person in it in the face for being a total fucking prick, basically. All you art students and fashion models in Paris, you people who just, like, wrap a vintage dress around your neck and call it a scarf, or cover yourself in what you describe as "a tablecloth" (sidebar: SO NOT KIDDING) and who have extremely bleeding edge haircuts - yeah, I want to shoot all of you. WHAT IS UP WITH TWENTY YEAR OLDS WHO BUY DESIGNER JEANS THAT COST TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS? Do they not have educations to get? Mutual funds to invest in? Houses to buy? Drugs to purchase? WHAT THE FUCK?

Oh, and C) the book does not get into what makes up the aesthetics of ANY style, though it seems to be "wear whatever you want as long as you look ironic and deeply uninvolved while doing it," and I already have that part down, though I admit I got rattled in DC. But telling me that I should really just completely bag the retirement fund and fly to London to shop at Camden Market (why? Nothing would ever possibly fit me, because nothing EVER DOES WHY DO YOU THINK I SEW?) is...yeah, I'm not into that. And having the other half of that manifesto be "and if you are not shopping at vintage stores you suck SO. HARD." is completely useless advice. There are just SO MANY kicky 1950s-era cocktail dresses and shoes for someone who's, let's just SAY, 6'4". In the 1950s, women who were that tall were probably euthanised. So, clearly I had an attack of dumb brought on by late-night consumerism.

But the worse book - and this will teach me to hang out in the Orange Room, hoping against hope to find, like, a Janet Arnold I want - was Misshapes, which I was into, at first, because it was introduced by Jarvis Cocker (what is not to love?) but then it fell open to pictures of MIKEY WAY and it was like "Wow, I do not need to be stalked by my own fucking obsession IN THIS CONTEXT THX WORLD BUT NO THX." So I put it back. Because it was TOTALLY not a logical place for that book to fall open. Oh, and the book itself was shit, it was just all pictures of kids who go to this Misshapes club in New York and, um, are weird about things. WHOOPDEFUCKINGDO. And, sidebar: do not credit "My Chemical Romance" on the back if, like, TWO OF FIVE show up in the book. SERIOUSLY. TWO OF FIVE DOES NOT MAKE AN ENTIRE FUCKING BAND. Credit "Gerard and Mikey Way", dicksmacks! That's like if Shirley Manson showed up in the book (probably) and they said "Garbage" was in it (which they probably totally did). No!

So, I'm dissatisfied. A LOT. Fuck you, life, get the fuck better.

On the bright side, I'm thinking about bleaching my hair all out tomorrow. Victorian horror and bleach - an awesome combination.

*When I cannot even let myself buy books, that is when I have no money. OMG. Plz to be Friday. Plz to be Friday.

In seven minutes it will be Saturday.

I'm still at work!

I always THINK that I'm totally not squickable. I mean, I know myself pretty well, I know that I'll try just about anything once, and usually two or three times to make sure I didn't like it the first time. I read voraciously, in many genres, and I pretty much only don't read sports and biographies. I read horror, I read splatterpunk, I read stuff that makes your spine want to crawl out of your body and find a new home, and not because it's badly written. I only don't watch horror movies because I have a morbid imagination and I get nightmares.

Anyone who can get nightmares for a solid week from the ep of Transformers where they brought back Optimus Prime has problems.

I have things I don't like, sure. I don't like mpreg, I don't like badly-written or overdone incest, I don't like women-as-eternal-victims-in-need-of-saving, I don't like plots that involve everyone wilfully not telling anyone in authority what's going on so they can FIX it, I don't like lots of things - but I don't think of those as squicks, any more than I'd think of walking into an ice cream shop(pe) and deciding that I had to leave because I really don't like rum-raisin ice cream (or raisins in general, in fact). It's a like or a dislike, not a squick.

Obviously, if I had once been viciously raped with a carton of rum-raisin ice cream by a hillbilly axe murderer, I might then legitimately have a squick about ice cream.

But I do still think of myself as someone not squicked by sex or violence or language or imagery, and generally when I run up against a wall and find myself going "Oh, yeah, squick, hey," it's a brickwall...topped with razor wire. And patrolled by an Unfriendly Patrol. Armed with guns. And guard dogs.

In other words, when I do find a squick, it usually makes me want to vomit.

So congratulations, person on bad_rpers_suck who has the icon of someone slitting a woman's throat with a straight razor. You've just found a squick of mine.

Thanks. Have some vomit.

And it's not that I'm not into freedom of speech (my inclination to that alternates with my inclination to buy a gun and shoot everyone I disagree with), it's that I'm not into an icon that I have to watch - carefully and repeatedly - to determine that it is, in fact, as disturbing and disgusting as I thought it was. So now I've overconsumed something I never wanted, and maybe it's the fact that I feel a little full of disgusting that is making me want to vomit, but I tell you - that icon's a winner.

In some strange alternate universe where using a graphic murder icon in a community is okay.


ETA: Okay, so it's her eye. How is this different? I don't care how marvellously arty it is, I find it disturbing (though admittedly a lot less so than when I thought they were cutting her throat). I don't like being an icon nazi, but that's REALLY the sort of thing best left in a personal journal.