channonyarrow

The Avengers made me realise that Civil War (and registration) didn't go NEARLY far enough.

( Cut preemptively because probably spoilers )

( Irrelevant postscript to the whole business. )

And so the great cycle has turned again; I have the sudden, urgent need to have a Mat Devine gracing my living room. This is based on the latest blog of his, which I find even more fabulous than usual. I'm sorry, Gerard, Bill, Gabe - I'm going to have to forsake you all. Don't forget not to write.

I'll keep him next to the shamrock plant, by the little bookcase. I think he'd look fab there. He can even wrap himself in my silk afghan.

In other news, I'm debating getting my other wrist tattooed because, well, I want another tattoo, I can probably do it for about $150, and I kind of really want to post to literarytattoos to point out that I am not an English major, and I do not read such high-flying literary works as produced by authors such as Toni Morrison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or William Faulkner and think "God, I need a tattoo of THAT," nor do I think that I need to demonstrate my logophilia by going absolutely bugfuck nuts with tattoos of really ludicrous things that are going to look like ass in five years.

Literary Tattoos: the latest "female bisexual college student".

But I tell you what - as soon as I have a job again, my dragon tattoo (which I have FINALLY decided should go on my upper back in all its glory) and the mice tattoos are happening. I have a list of things I get to buy when I have truly disposable income again, and they're on it. I probably would be smart to start pricing for going over all my other ones, all of which could use some cleanup and support now that I'm older.

It's sort of freaky to realise that I've had the tattoo on my back for TWELVE YEARS. HOW? But from everything I hear about it, it could use some touchup. If that's even entirely possible; apparently it's done some stretching. Alas, when I was twenty, I thought I would remain the same size essentially forever, unless I got pregnant.

I'm working on a wikidot theme (by working on it I mean I've now cleaned the bedroom and just need to make the bed and vacuum, and cleaned the kitchen except for cleaning up the sewing table, sweeping and taking out the recycling, and made coffee, and then pizza) and I am NOT working on a statistical analysis of what everyone who did that meme in my last post says in theirs, but rest assured that I find it absolutely fascinating and unsurprising that there is so much similarity between responses, and not least of all because there's no statistical outliers there - every person who's done that is friends with me (obviously) and also with apiphile so there's a lot of common personality there, but still. It's pretty interesting to me, in a casual-research-method sort of way, to see how similar we all are, and to see what I think of as the elegance of the answers.

ALSO. apiphile is recommending that everyone read Watching The English, which I intend to pick up since it's at Borders and I have a $5.00 credit at Borders and because the subject sounds fascinating. I recommend, in some sort of weird internet-reciprocal book exchange, The Cheating Culture, which, as I said on Twitter, is punching me in my relationship to America exactly as Three Cups Of Tea did. After the long drudge that was Nature's Metropolis and the success of Little House In The Big Woods, which I actually read because it's an extant biography of a time period and place that I'm deeply interested in currently, I was starting to fear that I actually had no more ability to read, but The Cheating Culture is making me think that this is an untrue statement.

Reminds me: I need to go poke Square 1 Books about whether they can get The Great Peshtigo Fire in or not, and decide whether I want to replace Under A Burning Sky, because all I will do is reread it and continue to be absolutely horrified at the fact that when human beings inhale superheated air, their vocal chords squeal from the contraction of the muscles as they cook. Evidently, it sounds somewhat like rubber bands. Right now, "late-nineteenth-century fire disasters in the upper Midwest" are like an immediate literaturegasm for me, evidently. "Nineteenth-century upper Midwest" is a little like porn, I guess - it'll get you there, but not without some help.

Apparently, I feel better today. I would like to quit losing bits of Italian sausage down my cleavage, though.

WOW. I am SO FUCKING SMART that I HURT MYSELF THINKING THIS BRILLIANTLY.

I am SERIOUSLY pissed at myself right now. I seem to have lost something completely irreplaceable that was in my email at WotC that I THOUGHT I'd copied (or forwarded) to my personal email when I was laid off, but EVIDENTLY FUCKING NOT. GO ME.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Team Supergenius, that's me!

ALSO: FUCK MY LIFE.

I've been having this craving for chocolate lately, which is actually kind of a nice way of saying "For about the last 32.6 years, I've wanted chocolate," and there was, in an appalling lapse, none in the house. So when I went to the drugstore today to pick up a scrip, I accidentally found out that the Easter candy is in. I also found out, less accidentally, that the Valentine's candy is on sale.

I have now committed great crimes against humanity and have two things to report.
1) Circus peanuts in a different colour and shape still taste so shockingly bad that I cannot believe I just ate that and must confirm that I did immediately, by having another.
2) Eating most of a box of chocolate in approximately 2 seconds means that I will feel like almighty death. Also, I still find maple chocolates need to be warned for, as they are gross.

So there you go.

Fortunately, tea came to the rescue, and I feel much less like I want to throw up, but probably moving isn't really a great idea right now, unless I would like to throw up. As I've never been bulimic, I'll pass.

This is only bad because I went to the grocery store and my milk is sitting out, getting to a happy room temperature, because obviously that's ideal for milk. If it comes down to it, I'll take somewhat warmer milk for the foreseeable future over vomiting over my favourite outfit, but I have to admit, it's a close one there.

I need to get off my ass and order my official transcripts, since I'm apparently registering for classes next Weds, despite having no idea how the fuck I'm paying for this, though the phrase "work study" has happened in my hearing, and that's fine with me. I have no aversion to working, I just am having trouble convincing anyone that me working is not a bad plan.

The dude in charge of my program NEEDS to quit arguing with me about whether I have any math credits; I'm just going to let him read that and weep, because NO, I have NO quantitative credits whatsoever, and by the way, IF the state law applies now, it didn't THEN. Part of the joy of Evergreen was that there WAS NO MATH REQUIREMENT. Right now, I have set this on "incipient comedy" when he realises that I'm telling the truth, not only do I have no math classes at ALL in my, um, six years of extremely-higher education, I don't even get to roll over any IB credits from high school because I FAILED my IB Calculus test, and I failed it in such a way that probably I actually knew what I was doing. This is how bad I am at ANYTHING involving geometry. I can find X all week long, but I cannot do geometry at ALL.

I suppose I'm excited about this. I mean, I want to do the course, and I know that it's not going to happen, largely because I'm unsuited to online learning in any event (I am so not a self-starter) and because most of these courses are not available online, if I'm not full time in school. I'm just nervous about figuring out how the fuck to pay for it and live at the same time; my unemployment benefits do run out in June (or possibly October, depending on the stimulus package) and I don't, right now, really want to start this and be unable to finish it. I would love, actually, to have a flexible job where I could work, say, three days a week and go to school two or three days, though I have a feeling that would have me building webpages in my sleep and living on coffee. On the other hand, I'm bored out of my fucking skull right now but not motivated to do much to rectify that, so I can put up with a couple years of too-busy-to-shit, really.

Also, a meme. I want to do this, but I am LAUGHABLY bad at sending anything out in a timely fashion AT ALL, so.

The first five people to post here will get something made by me. It might be a photo, short story, whatever. You don't get to choose, however. You will get it some time in the next year. You have to post this in your journal and do likewise.

I may have actually injured myself laughing when I was listening to The Phrase That Pays (Nashville Version). Some things just should not be. Other things still shouldn't be, but have the redeeming quality of giving me something to laugh about.

I really, really, really have no idea why the hell I code, much less why I think I can actually make it in a Web Media course. I lack the patience to actually get an understanding of CSS, which means that I pretty much spend my time looking for specific solutions to specific problems without bothering to see how it fits into the larger scheme of things. The only reason I have any understanding of HTML at all is because I coded my first website back in, like, 2000, so at this point I've pretty much done everything you can do with HTML, in some form or other.

On the other hand, maybe a Web Media course will teach me some degree of patience, and I'll be able to reassign win conditions based on smaller targets: instead of the win condition being an aesthetically-pleasing, custom coded, non-stolen layout that does specific things, maybe the win condition needs to be "get links and background to be a colour where you can actually see both."

If I'd played video games as a kid I might have that thought process: defeat level 1, great, but you haven't won the game. But no, I read books. They're pretty straightforward. You get to the end of the book, you've won, you move on. (When you read as fast as I do, chapters are not win conditions.)

Sadly, the only thing that kept me from buying a book on Silverlight, one on Web Design, and one on Asp yesterday was the thought that I really did not need $120.00 of books I wasn't going to read and comprehend. It wasn't anything so logical as the fact that I don't need to know Silverlight (yeah, I know it's new, it's now, it's so hot right now, we might as well just call it Hansel) and I HAVE books on Web Design (that I don't read). And there is no conceivable universe in which I will ever need to know Asp as I understand what it does, so there's that. I just like books, quit judging me. Also, if that universe ever changes, the Web Media course will teach me Asp, so.

I do not, however, like the current cover of Different Seasons. Man, that's assy. It almost looks like they've changed the name of the book to Apt Pupil. I shouldn't have bought it, but I've needed to read Shawshank Redemption for a while now, and the book was there, so.

When I was putting the music into the box, I thought "Oh god, I've completely lost it, an MCR song I don't know the name of immediately!" Then I realised that I could identify that it was off Three Cheers, so I felt moderately better, and then I realised it's probably one of my least-favorite tracks of theirs (it's a fine song, I just don't really like it, though I dislike some of their others a lot more) and then I felt okay again.

Also, it's probably bad that I am actually considering, on the encouragement of some people, writing something that would be just a clusterfuck walking. I have good reasons for not writing RPF (if I've ever spoken to you, for instance) and ... I don't even know. My life is very hard.

But!
- I can't do short writing. I think my shortest complete work is 25,000 words.
- I can't write at least five major figures in the main characters' lives because I've spoken to them, and that's just my personal no-go.
- I am scared to death that given my personal preference in writing (dark, with a side of dark, and one of extreme violence) writing RPF would be a terrible, terrible, terrible idea. Other people can do that, and do it well. I just think I would be in the category of people who cannot do it, let alone well.

So why won't my brain stop thinking about this?

Also, yes, the shifting morality here is just HILARIOUS. Trust me, I KNOW. *stabs brain* I remember a time, a long time ago, that I said I wouldn't ever even READ RPF, and it's just been all downhill from there. Apparently, next week I'll be kicking puppies.

Interactive preference sets creep me the fuck out. I only say this, of course, because every fucking time I go to YouTube, my "recommended" selections are a) boys in bands doing weird things; b) video of assassinations.

And it's never the right video.

I may have mentioned this before. I also may have started to mention it and abandoned it, so whatever. I remember the Sadat assassination, but I can't find the footage that matches up with my memory. And you cannot possibly convince me that, at a time when the head of Egypt was sittin' in a reviewing stand, chillin' out watching the troops parade, no one had a fucking camera on Sadat, only on the parade.

I know they did. I saw it. It's just not on YouTube, or the National Archives, or any of the other places I've looked.

I am highly peeved.

Also! This genuinely baffles me, it really does. You have a mission: you have decided, because God Said So, that you have to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

You work to achieve this.

In the end, it comes down to you driving a two-foot-long spike into the Prime Minister's side, having leaped onto the podium from side-stage and tackled him. You are immediately lost in the scrum of bodies as people converge on the stage.*

Things to remember while you plan this:
1) You have one shot. You will not get a second one because you will be in prison forever, and also, he will be better guarded.
2) Aside from only having one shot at the Prime Minister, you have to hit exactly the correct spot so that he'll be killed. If you spit him through the arm, that doesn't really matter.
3) Famous people can be tricky to get hold of.

So, you go for the aforementioned leap from side-stage. Or you set up shop in the Texas Book Depository. Or you trust that security at the Atlanta Olympics will be so lax that no one will notice you sitting in the stands, rifle on your lap, moments before the President of the USA and several other world leaders are due to arrive for the opening ceremony.

Why - seriously - does no one ever just sneak up on their house at night and kill their target in bed? Does that not make it assassination? Is it just that the whole point of assassination is that it's done in public, sort of a citizen-sanctioned version of a state execution? (I need to work on that, but there might be something worth keeping there.)

I mean, maybe it's that God Does Not Tell Me Things, but if I really, really, really wanted someone dead, I'd much rather try to infiltrate their home than shoot at them in a situation where I would have Secret Service agents coming out my ears seconds later. I do know that they're very well guarded, but there's also the possibility that they're not quite as alert, and other things good for the would-be assassin.

Then again, I've never been suicidal. Maybe it's the same thing. Assassination is the elimination of the possibility of your return; murder is the definite desire to come back alive.


* See also the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma.

EDIT: Okay, nope. I'm gonna have to break up this playlist. Do You Know What I'm Seeing makes me want to actually vomit. I am not even exaggerating. I hate this band so much.

ITunes deciding to "randomly" play Behind The Sea (also from the same playlist) next just cemented it. I AM STILL MYSELF IF I STILL HATE PANIC, THANK FUCK FOR SMALL FAVOURS, I WAS STARTING TO WORRY. I mean, I like The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Cover...

Wow.

My life is not usually that surreal.

That's....yeah, that's really fucking creepy, is what that is. I'm going to go away for a while.

The Phrase That Pays has 85 plays on my iTunes. I have no idea how many it has on my iPod now. A lot. I really like the song.

I find myself, at best, puzzled by the existence of a "Nashville" version, however. It is country-ish. Country-esque. It's kind of scary. But it was a lot scarier before I started writing this post and iTunes clicked over to the next track on The Academy Is...'s From The Carpet EP - which is actually a cover of Working Class Hero.

It is not the worst cover of WCH I've ever heard, I'll give it that - that honour is reserved solely (as is a special place in hell) for Marilyn Manson's cover - but it is definitely...odd. I think that William does not get the wonder that is Working Class Hero, quite frankly; he sounds rather dismissive. Which is probably an interesting commentary on someone's sense of privilege, but the track that has such power when sung by Lennon and Lanegan kind of loses it here. I don't think this EP ever really needed to exist, though it pains me to say it.

On the other hand, this version of Down and Out is pretty cool, so that's in the whole thing's favour.

What has been heard can never be unheard.

Also, I amuse myself: when I tagged the icon, it looks like Beckett's laughing so I tagged it that way. A few days ago I finally saw the video, which does, indeed, feature the sign saying "Laughter". I rule.

I can't decide if I'm being genuinely critical or if I just hate everything and it's rubbing off, and combining with previous dislike. I think I'm going with the former, because the structure doesn't fucking work and makes me want to dust off my "This Is What A Story Of Any Length Is" essay that I back-burnered like, fucking ages ago, and then got un-pissed-off and forgot about it and finish it and post it for everyone's edification, and have it on hand to send to authors, and generally sort of rappel around and ninja it into people's faces, right after they say some variation of "Ooh, I'm writing a book, you know."

Seriously, yes. The structure doesn't work. It really, really doesn't work, and you should have more than one reason for telling a story, any story, I don't care if it's flash fiction, fan fiction, published fiction, random scrawling on the wall. I. Do. Not. Care. There must be more than one reason for a story.

And not only do I judge, I'm paid to judge.

So, you know.

In other random news: I now know of two people in the wide, wide world who use "done" where they mean "did", and I don't know how to comment on that, because part of me wants to say, politely, "I've seen that before, and I never asked her, why do you use done like that?" but most of me wants to slam the writer up against the wall, my arm over their throat, and lean real close and hiss "Repeat after me, motherfucker: 'did' is a perfectly valid word. It is the past present tense, singular, second, third, and plural, of 'do'. Why the fuck are you using a past participle like done instead?" And then I will slit the offender's throat and leave their body in a dark alley for the grammar wolves to find.

Or, to put it another way, "The more he done it, the better he got," makes no fucking sense unless your last name is Clampett. "He done this at some point (in the past)" also makes no fucking sense, and probably not even if your last name is Clampett.

And now I have to go done some stuff. It'll be marvy, fab, and far-the-fuck-out.

Things to do today:

Make sure that this list of potential authors for top sekrit book is composed entirely of people who are still alive. People who are dead sort of suck for writing.

And...that's about it, really.

In case anyone has forgotten, I am channonyarrow at GJ as well.

ETA: I'm not likely to leave LJ at the moment. I am mainly mirroring this journal on GJ (no, I have no idea how I'll do that, whether I'll just use one to read and one to post, or what) because of the most recent round of Strikethrough. And yes, I do actually give a shit about that. What my reaction will ultimately be, I can't say, but I don't like that a private company thinks it can dictate what is or is not free speech and what is obscenity by values that range from "someone said they don't like it" to the Miller Test, without consistency, when even the United States Supreme Court cannot define what is and is not obscenity and what is free speech.

It doesn't help that the latest round of "to catch a predator" shows seems to be focusing on LJ. Because god knows, I'm totally a pedo and so are the people I know in fandom.

I am, however, not likely to be looking at anything other than an inconvenience in terms of my own journaling, and a weird one. It is more convenient to keep my journal on LJ. I have many non-fandom friends who are not going to be affected by this, and who are not going to move as a result, and those are connexions I value. I'm not going to be deleted any time soon, since I don't do anything that's going to target these idiots who think that the internet should be sanitised for your protection. However, in light of some of the conversations going on, I felt it was appropriate to reiterate my location on GJ.

As to what it will mean in terms of "supporting" Livejournal - well. The thing I've learned is to wait and see. Do I have a sanguine hope of a happy ending? Not really - they've never responded to all the comments addressed to them when they changed the rules the weekend that Deathly Hallows came out and Sectus was going on. Do I have a fatal hope of an unhappy ending? Not really - they backed down, ultimately, on Strikethrough, and their policies are so flawed that I can't imagine that a lawyer would actually let them stand (and they DO have lawyers). At this point, I'm calling the odds fifty-fifty. Whether I will continue to give them money I don't know. I like having a paid journal, but I don't like supporting people who wish to police what I can and cannot look at as long as no actual child is being harmed.

I am an editor. Words are sacred to me (and yes, I wince every time someone on cranky_editors posts that they work for a POD publisher because I hate POD) so the right of free speech is up there even higher than most other values and liberties I hold dear. I don't like that LJ/6A is choosing to use the worst of two systems, the public and private systems in America, and is not choosing to think about this. They are bodging together their right as a private corporation based in America to dictate the content that is hosted on their servers, because they would be named in a lawsuit about child pornographers, since such images would be illegal under American law, with their wish (I have no better term) to support freedom of speech by not censoring unless it is called to their attention.

The problem with this is in the execution of that. Yes, every single Snarry work is now ToS-able, since we know that, canonically, Harry was not eighteen when Snape died. Child porn in the US.

Except! US law has never judged a work of fiction as child porn! Case in point: The Colour Purple. Well Schooled in Murder, by Elizabeth George. I KNOW I have other books on my shelves that qualify to SOME as being child porn, but the US has never found a work of fiction that I know of to qualify as such. As well, the US has never found an image of fictional people to be child porn as far as I know - I am on shakier ground here, but it makes sense. To be child porn, it has to hurt a child, and there is no child hurt if there is no child involved in its making. What happens to the porn after creation is an entirely different issue; I'm speaking of its creation.

I personally think that they're misreading "child porn", as used by Warriors For Innocence and other groups, to mean "child porn" when WfI means "teh gay". I have no take on the predator crap, other than to wonder whether shows that got a lot of watchers and eyes by finding actual pedophiles on MySpace will get the same watchers and eyes by looking at people on LJ who like looking at pictures of people having sex, regardless of age.

I also think that their execution of this policy is flawed in the extreme. I realise that we live in a happy country (for those of us in the US, which is where LJ's servers are located, so everyone ON LJ lives in the US) that believes that we can dictate what other people do and don't do, but we should NOT encourage that. It is behaviour that is not right, in my opinion. It is even higher than freedom of speech and sacredness of words, in my opinion - I have the right to do anything that does not hurt another person incapable of consent, in my opinion.

You click on a link marked NSFW, you get what you deserve. If you don't like teh gay, stay out of fandom. What LJ is doing with this policy and its execution is encouraging anyone who has a grudge against someone to go rat them out (and I do wonder how long it'll take before daily_deviant is ToS'd). With the "guidelines" that LJ follows, the main one being the Miller Test, which presupposes a community standard so that what is obscene in Podunk, GA is not necessarily obscene in New York, NY, there is nothing to stop this sort of abuse from happening.

Note, please, that LJ is not claiming that the works that have earned ToS's are copyright violations. They are offensive to someone.

So. We have a system ripe for abuse. You have a grudge? Great! ToS me! You can do it, you really can. I write about incest in a fictional relationship where one of the participants is underage. If you do that, however, I will come after YOU.

This seems to be where LJ stopped thinking. "The Miller Test" sounded sufficiently awesome to them and they didn't stop and think about whether someone could or would actually rat someone out on the basis of the fact that Person A and Person B did not get along. That's not upholding freedom of speech, in either of the manners that LJ has the right to do so. I personally believe that they are better served by going with the widest, broadest definition of free speech possible, before they shrink, and that things that are actual depictions of children in sexual situations should be prosecuted to the fullest extent, but that's not how LJ chose to roll. They threw words at a problem that weren't good enough words and that didn't do the job they wanted them to, then got scared when the fanartists didn't just disappear and started ToS-ing. They could have done something really good; they chose not to.

I don't want to support that, but it's a bit like my car. If I give up my car for the good of the environment, I give up a LOT - like being able to see my parents regularly. Like being able to do anything, five days a week, other than work and get to and from work. Like being able to go out with friends. If I give up LJ for my principles of free speech, I lose a LOT of my friends. I am now supporting something I don't agree with for the ease of my life, and I don't like that. But I don't have better options right now.