I'm getting a tattoo next Monday. I'm very excited, and completely freaked out about. This is not because this is somehow new (see also: I have five tattoos right now) but this is the first one that will not be easily covered up by clothing. And also, it's one of a pair.

So on my left wrist, as of next Monday, in a band around my wrist, it's gonna say "Live each day as if it's your last". On my right wrist at some point it'll say either "I am not afraid to keep on living" or "The sharpest lives are the deadliest to lead". This is not because I am either that emo or that suicidal but because what I really wanted was "Heaven help us" but I decided I didn't want to spend the rest of my life explaining that I'm not religious, and fuck me if I can pull a line out of "Heaven Help Us" that'll go around my tiny wrist (seriously, I have big hands and feet and delicate little wrists and ankles (wrists moreso than ankles, in fact)) and that doesn't require three more lines just to make it make sense.

Like this:
I'm at this old hotel
But I can't tell if I've been
Breathing or sleeping or screaming
or waiting for the man to call
And maybe all of the above
Cause mostly I've been sprawled
On these cathedral steps
While spitting out the blood and screaming

Make sense of that.

So. Famous Last Words = not my favourite song, but "I am not afraid to keep on living" is really something worth saying. "The sharpest lives are the deadliest to lead" also works for me.

I've decided I like Optima as a font, and I also really like the artist, who reminds me of my brother in a lot of ways. And I really, really like the symbols I'm using. The left hand is the subconscious, the right hand is the conscious, and the left hand is instinct, while the right is logic. I didn't know that until I googled hand symoblism right now, but I felt it important to consider the left hand the heart hand and the right hand the head hand, and maybe I just picked those up somewhere else. There's also lots of symbolism in rings and circles that I like, and since most peoples' first question has been "Why don't you just get it on the inside of your wrist where you can see all of it," that's the answer. Because I don't need to see it. I just need to remember it.

Because you know, the things I need to remember right now are not to panic and that whatever else happens, I really have an obsimpson. And those are places I've been. Getting tattoos of things that change doesn't bother me - whether I would be in the same relationship with the really ex if I met him now or I'd be shoving him off a cliff doesn't change that I have two tattoos of his art, and they're mine, made by him, and that's fine. That's where I was, and I don't regret being there, nor do I want to forget being there. So even if MCR releases an album of polka standards, even if I have another six-week-long panic attack, I will have my wrists to remind me:

Live each day as if it's your last.
I am not afraid to keep on living.
channonyarrow: (writers are liars neil gaiman // refche)
( May. 24th, 2008 08:42 pm)
Dear self,

Okay, you know what? This is absolutely fucking ridiculous, that's what. So. Sit down, shut up, and fucking just live each day as if it's your last. STOP trying to make contingency plans for what you'll do in 2013, STOP worrying about the death of capitalism (you don't like it all that much anyway) and STOP rerunning issues of Transmetropolitan in your head.

Because you know what?

There is nothing you can do about it. You can't. You're not a city planner, you're not an automotive engineer, and your only involvement in the process is to make sure that the city planners and automotive engineers have really good books to read while they're figuring all this fucked up shit out.

Stop and think about it, self: on balance, you would prefer to see the end of oil. You would rather see culture become far less mass-culture, you would rather see peoples' carbon footprints disappear, you would rather see a lot less overconsumption. The sight of a stack of 300 pairs of jeans at the store does not fill you with joy.

And you know what else?

If push really, really comes to it, you will have warning. You will have warning, and you will be able to throw it all over and go buy a fucking farm in the Midwest and raise your own food. You may never leave that farm again, but you'll at least have that option. You will not starve. You will not be naked. You have skills, and you will survive.

You can do nothing right now, except be prepared. It's a porcupine; you're not going to reach into it and get anything other than spikes, no matter how hard you try.

And you know what else, else?

You're a pessimist. Humans are inventive creatures. You are an inventive creature. You will not live your life to a normal span and never see your friends again or be able to take that trip around the world you're thinking of: it will be bad for a while, but people are willing, always, to go with fast and expensive, in the end, and if America is faced with the end of oil, America will figure its shit out really damn quick and do something else. You are discounting the billions of people in the developing world who are also thinking about this problem; America itself may be too tied to Big Oil to be able to think straight, but there are millions of people out there who want American lifestyles, and don't have Big Oil.

Remember all that. Keep breathing, and remember that. Remember that you make the changes you can, and that you support the changes you need, and that as long as you are alive, tomorrow is another day.

And someday you will have that again, that feeling of driving with the top down and the radio up on the way to nowhere except that you can go.

You do not live in an age of limited choices. You are an American, and quite frankly, Americans will not stand for limited choices.

You live in an age of decisions: how much, how long, and what's the tipping point?

But not limited choices. Not yet.

Remember, also, these things:
Live each day as if it is your last. Plan for the things you can see happening, but do not try to lock in plans contingent upon the apocalypse happening. Have some grace. Remember that every empire falls, and that is not always a bad thing; by the time it falls, the empire is rotten. Remember that you can make the future, every day.

And remember to breathe.

Breathe.

Do not borrow trouble. Trouble will come, with interest, regardless, but borrowing it makes it that much worse.

Remember to breathe.

Everyone faces a world-shaking catastrophe; the question is getting through it with grace. Do not assume no other changes to your life than the increasing cost of oil: you have no idea what you will be doing, what options will be available, in five years.

And remember that even if it all goes to shit in five years, at least we'll have stopped global warming, and that's not a bad result to have.

But remember: every year, every winter, we get better and better, and we refine who we are and who we are becoming, and who we want to be, and how we want to be those people, and the main thing, the absolute main thing, is to do it with grace.

Live each day as if it is your last.

Love,
Me
channonyarrow: (never come back // vormav)
( Apr. 22nd, 2008 04:08 pm)
You know what?

You can say anything you want. You can espouse any belief you want, you can argue anything you want, you can be a total nutbar, you can be a Nazi, you can be a furry. You can even be a nutbar Nazi furry. If I disagree with you, I don't really think that I have the right to censor you - because you still get the right to your opinion, and me censoring you isn't going to change your mind. It is, in fact, quite likely to cement it even further into your head.

And yes, I do feel more strongly about censorship than I do about pretty much anything else. I feel a lot more strongly about it, in fact, than I do about politics, knowledge, awareness, or the Open Source Boob Project. I will defend your right to fuck up your life in many interesting and varied ways; I will never, ever support you if you choose to censor others.

That's my line in the sand. Censorship is wrong; there is no justification for it whatsoever.*

There is absolutely no justification for it on LJ unless both parties have agreed that a comment thread was mutually non-beneficial and both chosen to delete it. Choosing to leave the parts of the conversation that make one party look rude and deleting the parts where they were tripping over themselves to apologise is amazingly, breathtakingly rude.


*With, since I'm grammar-nazi-ing elsewhere, the exception of harmful speech, such as shouting fire in a crowded theatre when there is no fire. That's not censorship - that's harming others, which is something to be prevented at number one, on my priority list.



ETA: You know what else? When I was in college, I had a teacher who recounted the times he'd won arguments about his "hippie ways" by pointing out that not only did he fight in Korea, he'd volunteered, and he'd become partially disabled as a result - that that somehow gave him a free pass to criticise America.

This is not a true statement. Anyone has a free pass to criticise America. You and I and everyone else have a responsibility to decide what criteria we want to place on who we care to listen to critique it, but that doesn't mean that someone can't critique. And saying that someone can critique because they have volunteered to be part of the US military during a war but they couldn't if they hadn't is wrong.

That doesn't mean that my teacher didn't volunteer: that meant that my teacher did not walk into arguments saying "Well, this is wrong and this is wrong and that's wrong, and by the way, I fought in Korea, motherfucker," and expected to win. What I really don't like about the OSBP, aside from how it's taken over my flist, how it's only "okay" to feel one way about it (and I dislike [livejournal.com profile] theferrett's retraction of the post and project from that standpoint), and how it's directly led to me being censored which pisses me off, is the fact that I could win some of these arguments if I said "Yeah, yeah, you think I don't know that women can get groped on the street by primitive screwhead assholes, but I've been groped by random strangers (and nearly broke my leg falling over in surprise), I've been whistled at by ill-mannered pigs, and I have been raped," but I can't win them by saying "Look, all I want you to acknowledge is that by phrasing what you have in that language, you're saying that I don't have the right to choose what happens to my body."

What's more fucked up here? The OSBP or the fact that's revealing really, really deeply-entrenched reflexive overcorrection of politically-correct behaviour from intelligent people who should know better than to say that no woman should be touched like that because the person saying that doesn't want to be?

What if I said I did, assuming my total control of the situation, and my right to refuse even if I said I wasn't averse to being asked the question? Does that make me not worth your support and protection and care because I don't see my body the same way you do? Would you refuse my support and protection and care because I don't march in step with you?

Why are you trying to protect me when I don't know that I want to be protected like that? I want people to see the difference between two things:
- Politeness and the Law argue that no one is touched without their consent. No one. I firmly, and wholeheartedly, and even violently, believe and affirm this.
- Choice argues that I get to decide what happens to me, and everyone running around making blanket statements about how no woman should be touched like this has made my choice for me: I now cannot make the decision that I would be intrigued to be asked that question without, evidently, abrogating my right to consider myself a woman.

I cannot possibly be the only person who sees the distinction here.

If you say that "No woman should be touched like that (implying the OSBP) without her consent", that follows politeness, the law, and choice, and is absolutely what will have me cheering you on for. If you say that "No woman should be touched like that (implying the OSBP)," that only follows politeness and the law, and does not acknowledge my right to choose.

Oh the irony of it, that we as good liberals have finally overcorrected the Right To Choose so far that there is no right to choose. When did we become Republicans?

What I believe - and I will defend you for it - is that you, me, all of us, we all have the right to choose, and there is nothing whatsoever about the right to choose, in any circumstance, that says your choice has to follow the law. The law says that, in America, abortion is legal (broadly speaking). I may or may not agree with that law, but I can make a choice that allows my morality to not infringe on your morality. The law says that, in America, homicide is illegal (broadly speaking). I may or may not choose to murder, but I can make a choice without needing it to fit the law (though if I don't, I run the risk of punishment). The law says that the speedlimit is 70 mph near where I live; nothing in the law compels me not to drive over that speed, though I admit, again, that I run risks.

The law says that no one has to put up with being touched in ways they find unwelcome. I can still make a choice that allows the law to stand and does not abrogate your right or my right or anyone else's right to choose differently under specific circumstances.

The point is not that it is women whose breasts are primarily being focused on here, not for me. The point is not that, clearly, men are all asshole pigdogs who just want to touch boobies and not one of them has the sense or socialisation god gave a goat, so the OSBP is just an invitation to rape, and will concomitantly increase the number of rapists in the population. The point is not even that I feel that our culture is overly non-touch-oriented, with bad results, and that destigmatising some things, with consent offered, may improve life for us all.

The point is that there are plenty of people out there willing to take away my right to choose because they don't agree with one side of the choice. I don't agree with "wet" reservations because of harm to residents; do I have the right to use my Caucasian access to power to decree that all reservations will now be "dry"?

No. I think we all can agree that I do not, not even if it is to prevent harm to a group of people I don't represent. You have to make that choice for yourself. I will support your choice to the extent of my ability: I will never, ever let you avoid making it.
channonyarrow: (writers are liars neil gaiman // refche)
( Apr. 4th, 2008 11:05 am)
I rant too much for some people. *happyfaces*

I want a little icon of someone, like an AIM smiley, with a big thumbs up that possibly says ++GOOD! on it, but that's because I'm basically mean, and also completely bulletproof today*. I had an awesome day (despite the weird previously-ranted shit) that culminated with espousing my philosophy of "Everybody wins and my job is to make the world a little weirder" to my mother and feeling very positive about how all that went down, though I did refrain from directly quoting XKCD to her. So today I'm pretty happy.

I'm a little annoyed and frustrated that I haven't been able to replace anger as my motivating device, but I think that will change over time (or else I'll get completely pissed off and regress to being an angry teenager and then it's all moot). That's really the biggest age-related change I've experienced (at my mighty age of 912 years in cynicism) and it's kind of disheartening, but also: I could be going bald, and I'm not. Neener neener!

I am amazingly sane according to every therapist I've ever seen. I think about that sometimes. It's kind of awesome: it means I'm not being weird because God said I should, it's because I want to be. That's a good place to be, though I would like a time machine to go smack myself up as a teenager. On the other hand, I survived high school, so I guess I don't need to. Making that self be like this self would be blood in the fucking water, believe me. I'm sort of glad we hadn't invented emo back in the dark ages when I was in high school.


* The world needs a functionality like AIM icons or LJ icons where I can just have something like that hanging around me all the time and I can change it as needed. I suppose, if you want to be technical, that would be my face, but I'm not writing ++GOOD! on my face for a one-off. I'm still waiting for Life 2.0.
channonyarrow: (blow up animals sex)
( Mar. 30th, 2004 09:45 pm)
A note to all concerned:

I do not operate on emotions. I operate on logic. When I feel emotions, it is with intensity that scares me; consequently I try to avoid feeling emotions at all.

Yes, I am a Vulcan.

Additionally, I am an opportunist and a pragmatist. I take what I want, when I can get it without undue hassle on my part. This is a consistent pattern of my life. The concepts of monogamy, morals, and fair play are alien to me. Life is about doing what I want, how I want, and to hell with the hindmost.

So, to sum up, do not give me your heart. I am just as likely to squeeze it to see how compressed it gets, or to vivisect it to see what happens as I am to do anything else.

I am not, generally, a depressed individual, nor is this some goth pose. I am, somehow, a slightly defective human being. Overly educated, very intelligent, and emotionally afraid and/or nearly dead. I don't commmit to anything beyond fun - my fun - and emotions scare me, but logic is practically an orgasm on a page.

Surprisingly, all my metaphors are about sex. Clearly, I need graham crackers.

Fair warning. Do not give me your heart as I will just watch to see what happens when I break it.
So. Gender has been much on my mind lately. Possibly because of discussion with the crew, not to be confused with Lzz's Buccaneer Crew, the topic has come up a lot lately. Fortunately, I studied it last year and have an Informed Opinion.

Basically, the next time someone confuses "sex" with "gender", I will tear their liver out with a spork. "Sex" is the physical, and "gender" is the mental, and you can get even more elaborate and start adding on preferences in partners, whether those partners are sexual or otherwise. But to go back to the previous sentence, they are two very distinct concepts, and ones that do not need to correspond, whatever society says.

In fact, I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that the notion of gender is fundamentally flawed (so speaketh the female who genders male and can't quite figure out how to cross-dress...). Although people have an identity, there is no reason that that identity should be (or can be) bound up in terms of gender - which are, essentially, specific notions about how people behave.

Those notions are defined by society, which, as we all know, is a stable and rational institution, dedicated to making life easier for all of us, correct?

Wrong. Society is merely the notion of a group of individuals collectively identifying with each other and generally speaking occupying a specific area of land. It has nothing whatsoever to do with nationality, government, or any other institution. Society is a collective process, defined by its members. Or, to look at it another way, society tends to make decisions based on what's shoved under it's nose.

Consequently, society's default response setting is to do nothing. Once something - gender, in this case - is shoved under society's nose, the response setting is division by zero. We live in a time when gender and sexuality are fluid concepts, at least for a percentage of the population (I sometimes have trouble remembering that not everyone cherishes their one straight friend as an aberration). Society's response to this has been to overwhelmingly define "acceptable" gender and sexual roles, and this is done through fairly insidious techniques.*

Look at the proposed marriage amendment. Society is reacting, via division by zero, to any idea that it is possible to be in a satisfying relationship, one of permanence and that is not a phase, with a same-sex partner. Society has decided that, by and large, it likes its relationships to be opposite sexes, thanks, and it's going to mandate that.

This is, of course, muddled by Bush's need to make political hay, but the point remains - this was not an issue until someone tried to get married to their same-sex partner. Or, to look at it from an even more fundamental standpoint, until the word "homosexual" was created, "heterosexual" did not need to be defined. It is, etymologically, the newer word and was defined solely on the basis of the recognition of "homosexual".

Consequently, I have lost interest in society's notion of gender. I think it's time to start redefining (if it's possible to escape labels, another thing I hate) gender and sexuality. Hell, we can even redesignate sex.

There is no reason to continue to conflate sex with gender because the concepts are transitory. They are being redefined on a larger scale than ever before, a fact that warms the cockles of my heart when I stop to think about it.

I admit, I'm biased. I live in my own little bubble of a world, filled with like-minded individuals, or at least ones who are coherent in defence of their positions on such matters. And I've no idea what The Public thinks.

But I stand by what I've said.

*A further explanation of this concept can be found in either Backlash or Stiffed, both by Susan Faludi.
.

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