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?

So given that my job is, like many, made of stress, I'm thinking about taking a vacation.

Do I take normal vacations? Hell no.

See, what I'd do would be piggyback it onto the trip to Portland to see MCR on April 8. April 8, stay in Portland, April 9, drive to Cline Falls State Park (near Redmond, Oregon) and to Prineville Oregon. April 10, depending on vacation time actually available (ie, the time I do not have to devote to this crap job) drive home OR drive to Salt Lake City to see MCR April 11. Drive home April 12-13.

But see, the thing that makes this not normal is WHY I want to go to Cline Falls State Park and Prineville.

Cline Falls State Park - in 1977, the attempted axe murder of two young women, as documented in the book Strange Piece of Paradise and other sources, took place here.

Prineville, Oregon - home of the Hot Shot fire crew that lost nearly half (9 of 20) members to the South Canyon Fire (official name, but it actually took place on Storm King Mountain) as documented in Fire On The Mountain and probably other sources. There is a memorial both in Grand Junction, CO, and in Prineville, and, of course, there are the granite crosses on the mountain itself. It's sad that I'm actually really pleased to hear that the crosses are granite; the concrete crosses in Mann Gulch (Young Men And Fire), as of that book's writing, were crumbling from the harsh weather conditions of blizzards in winter and near-fatal heat in the summer, so even though the Fire Service has said they will replace the crosses in perpetuity, let's start with something a little better to begin with. However, I have no time to go to Colorado at the moment, and I suck at hiking, so I think I will settle for going to Mann Gulch (in Gates of the Mountains Wilderness, Montana) to go see an actual fire sight because somehow that will be better.

Though, looking at the map, if we go in April to Mann Gulch, we may not be able to get a boat down the river. Because it is not accessible by car!

All irrelevancies aside, I am not quite sure that this is a normal sort of vacation to take, particularly given that I really, really doubt that I will be able to sleep in Sisters, Redmond, Bend, Terrebonne, or Prineville, and there just ain't that many more towns in central Oregon.

But it will be the one I take, and that is what counts. And if I had more time to throw at it, I'd totally drive down Utah to near St. George and go to the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Relatedly, I've been trying to do the Seven Habits/Facts/Quirks meme that sparkfrost tagged me for in, like, January, but somehow I got confused and thought it was Seven Things About Me That I Don't Journal About Much, which may or may not be an actual meme. Now that I have clarified it, I have no trouble with doing it, but the version I thought it was was damn hard, because things I don't journal about are, de facto, hard to journal about.

But I came up with some good ones, so you might be getting some short essays, if I can type them up. Which is, you know, the number one reason I want cybermods. I want to implant a jack directly into my brain that connects to the computer via Bluetooth and have it command Word or other documentation programs to write down my thoughts.

Or else I need an intern. Again. One that takes dictation.

I absolutely hate the phrase "scholarship" when what it means is "charity". Seriously.

A scholarship is money awarded for a course of study. Whatever the YMCA and various religious organisations think, a scholarship is not money awarded to go on a religious retreat or attend exercise courses. I realise that we're supposed to be all PC and all up in that, and not offend people who are fucking poor by saying that they're "on charity" or "receiving welfare" or "getting subsidised", but when it comes to bastardising the language this way, I am not in favour.

Besides, refusing to talk about poverty, in the sense that "some people are living below the poverty line" (by which I mean a lot of people are living below the poverty line) does nothing to solve the problem, it's just another way of sweeping it under the rug. It's a fake ego boost ("I'm not on charity!") when what would be a lot more useful would be a living wage.

PSA: Do not drink gin and tonics in very large glasses. Do not mix equal parts gin and tonic. Do not lather, rinse, and repeat.


ETA: "< !-- LiveJournal ExpressLane: You received this page before 23 free users! -- >"

Really? There were twenty three free users clicking on view source on that layout at the SAME TIME? Holy shit, that's a popular layout!

Dear LJ:
You confuse the ever lovin' shit out of me. No, really.
No love,
Me

Sometimes I realise I really do lead a charmed life.

Case in point: I took an assload of books to Powells in...February, I do believe. Beginning of the month. In those FOUR FREAKIN' BOXES of books were two copies of Thirty Years of Adventure, which I have actually got five copies of in total. Both copies were sealed.

I know this because I checked.

See, one of those books was the one that all my coworkers signed for me when I left WotC at the end of 2005, the one that was really more like a yearbook than anything else, the one that meant so much to me. I've never had coworker approval anywhere that counted as a serious job before.

The other day I was discussing with someone how I got hired (long story, but it Involves The Book) and realised: I had no idea where that copy of the book was.

I went home.

I did not have it.

I did have another sealed copy of Thirty Years of Adventure, however.

I did not panic, because I never panic. I calmly called my parents. They were going back down to Portland today to finish clearing out my grandmother's house and to take my aunt to Powell's. She's never been before.

I gave them explicit orders, but even as I did so, I thought that the odds I would ever see my book again were around nil, and I had better damn well resign myself to that fact because it wouldn't be back.

And then I got a call this afternoon, stating that, actually, the book was there, and it was now in my parents' possession, and life was made of awesome.

So, as I say. Charmed life.

I'd just like to mention that I have managed to work out the competing impulses in my brain (divided between, basically, sew! write! read! everything else!) and figure out the timetable they are on.

Doing this has allowed me to write a WHOLE LOT in the last few weeks. I have +/-30K to go on my first draft. Sort of creepy, really. It feels a bit like, you know, the ground just slid out from under me.

Yes, jkivela, when I start posting new stuff, you'll be able to read it. *g*

In the mean time, I am on an organisation kick. So this is me organising.

I'll put up another post today in which I start keeping track of the books I've read for the year, because basically I do a lot of reading (some of it of tripe that would make your eyes bleed, believe me, but enough about work) and I never know what I've read at the end of a year (...or a week...) and I want to start getting through the backlog of books I own but have never read. Conveniently, that's around a hundred books. Assuming I can tolerate mostly non-fiction on subjects ranging from the Intifada to the physics of dreaming to feminism to religion (my god I have a lot of religious books, why?) that should be, like, a couple years to read, assuming I could conceivably manage one book a week.

At this point, I am struggling to finish Kim, mainly because I read one page and pass out from exhaustion. So that two years of reading is overly optimistic.

Also, as you all know, I never finish anything, so I figure I'll put a link to the list on my userinfo page just so I can see how little progress I've made.

And the other part of my organising: things to rant on. Not entirely sure what to put here except that I had a brilliant idea and now it's gone. So the two that remain are being an elitist and why Virginia is not part of the known world. Also, there's a work rant in there too, but that would devolve into actual violence right now so we'll just say that I'm leaving that one till I'm done with my current project which is making me break out in Gnats.

I think I'll be breaking my writing streak real soon, though, given that I have a new urge to go home and wrestle with my coat and with my corset. Not necessarily a happy plan, given that I want to finish the first draft by the end of April at the latest (and right now thirty K feels like a sneeze, considering that there's one hundred and thirty K on the other side of it), but mine own, so there it is.

I really never want to do sewing as a business, I think. Not that I wanted to before this, but the experience I'm having with sewing is something that's solidifying my lack-of-interest in making a living at things that I enjoy (granted, I love my job, but there's definitely a world of "I wouldn't read this except for the money!" in there). But most people hear that you sew and think that means you repair things.

No. If it meant that, I totally would not have holes in the toes of almost every single pair of socks I own. I totally would not have ripped the lining out of a skirt because I didn't want to sew it up again and the only reason I did that was because the tear hung down past the hem of the skirt. I totally would sew ten goddamn hooks on my coat that I started over a month ago and ONLY need to do three things to to have an entire outfit completed. I would totally not have shirts that I put on and think "Oh, right, I meant to fix that hole"...forgetting that it's been there since I bought the shirt and was, in fact, the reason it was a buck at goodwill - someone opened the box with a boxcutter.

I do not repair things. I create things. I am happy as a pig in shit sewing new stuff.

Most people do not want new stuff. They want old stuff repaired (even if it's totally not worth it) or they want it altered. Alteration I can almost handle.

Being given a pair of pants that were too tight when purchased and told that it "only needs a quarter of an inch" (not according to my tape measure, dude) to fit? Not my idea of a good time. I have to take off the entire waistband, which will then not even fit onto the trousers because you can't just magic a quarter inch out of nowhere! I am not readjusting the goddamn seams all the way down the damn leg just so you can buy pants that don't fit!

Being given a dress with a tear in the underarm seam (by another person!) and asked to fix it? Not my idea of a good time, either. I don't WANT to have to deal with re-serging the dress, then sewing it, then hoping to crap that it holds together. Buy a new dress, since that one only cost fifteen dollars!

So that's the thing for me.

And that's what very few people seem to get. I'd get more joy out of fighting with a pattern to make someone an entire finicky outfit than out of spending the ten minutes to fix your damn seams.

And that is why I will never a) tell anyone that I sew and then allow the comment about doing "sewing" for them (for I have learned that this means "alteration" or "repair") and b) run a business of sewing in an environment where people can just ask me about it.

Before you ask, the only reason I am doing alteration/repair work for one friend is because, basically, he's saying that he wants to get something made, which I am happy to do. The other was...well, it was complicated. But never again.

And I'm totally giving the pants back without working on that waistband if I can't move the hook (unlikely). It's not worth it to try to get the damn material to cough up that "quarter inch". I'd rather make a new pair of pants. From scratch. By hand.

*****

So far I've picked songs pretty much at random - stuff that might be interesting to people. Or at least that I am not prepared to share the sekrit code on. But these are ones I've been listening to a lot lately. It's a fun ride in my life!

Bonus: You get lots of songs.

Sometimes I have a great notion / Jumpin' in into the river and drown

I'm just waiting on that dream / Because the fast ones always ride for free

In their '62 Vette / Sharing one cigarette

And the faders move / And the music dies / As we pass over / On the arc of time

El-Funoun: Tulbah

Lost / it slowly went away / was gone without a trace / I'm tired and I can't remember

And ever since I figured out / That I could control other people / I've had trouble sleeping / With both eyes closed

If you weren't so wise beyond your years I would've been able to control myself

So there are some things we all know, right?

1. If you are a corporation! Do not ever put personal information on a laptop!
Why: It will be stolen.

2. If you are a political figure! Do not have gay sex when you oppose gay rights!
Why: You will be denounced as the hypocrite you are.

3. If you are a political figure! Do not send emails indicating your sexual preference OR your affiliation with lobbyists!
Why: In this day and age, it is possible to trace emails and verify them.

4. If you are a celebrity in any arena! Do not do things that offend your fan base!
Why: If you demonstrate that you are racist or a hypocrite, you will be eaten alive.

5. If you are the US Government! Remember to protect all the computers, not some.
Why: Viruses don't only attack the better-quality computers and being vulnerable is not really the image Homeland Security wants to send.

These are things that everyone knows. Except for the people who keep getting caught by them.

I want an icon that says "You people are morons."

This post brought to you by Starbucks, who just lost a couple laptops.