anagram of brat

So I mostly "wrote" this post with the Dragon Dictate app on my phone. I downloaded it at the recommendation of Ruthy, who apparently uses it for everything. Since she swears by it, I figured I'd give it a go. It'll be interesting because I speak very differently from how I write... I sense there will be a lot of editing in post. (ETA: Oh dear gods yes wow my spoken rambling makes NO sense written down, lol.)

So, what's been going on... Ferguson. *sigh* It's been really upsetting me, for reasons that should be pretty damned obvious. I don't really want to write too much about it, honestly, both because upsetting, and also because people out there and on the ground have already written, tweeted and livestreamed quite a bit about it in the past couple of weeks as everything unfolded. But yeah, it's... it's been bringing me down, so much that I can only take twitter in small doses now. It's also deeply affected Drew - the other night we had a talk about how he came to the realization I'd been kinda carrying since Trayvon Martin was killed - that if by some miracle (or if we accepted Nuke's still standing offer on paying for a vasectomy reversal) we had a kid, that one day it could be them dead in the street for little to no reason at all. Needless to say, it threw him for a loop, and he got further thrown realizing that I've lived with this constant threat all my life. It's funny, almost anyone else I'd be all *raised eyebrow* yeah, welcome to my life, have a T-shirt, it sucks. Not so much this time - I guess what I'm feeling regarding that discussion is less the usual racial schadenfreude and more of a "ohh, he actually really gets it." I mean, yes it sucks major balls carrying the knowledge of just how much the world sucks around. They're not kidding about ignorance being bliss. (And judging by some of the shit I've seen online, there are a lot of very blissful people out there.) At the same time, it's on some level a relief knowing he does think about it and understands some of it. Not going to lie, it's a nice change from several years ago and him being irritated by the very idea of privilege and how it applies to him.

In other life and adulthood suck news, lol... actually I have some reasonably good news on that front. Reasonably because money still sucks and is going to temporarily suck a bit more than usual, but the suckage will be in service to money ultimately NOT sucking in the reasonably near future. I know, that was clear as mud, and how about I say reasonably a few more times? I guess lets just say I'd been avoiding handling a particular chunk of financial stupid and it had been feeling like an anvil about to drop on my head, but I finally gathered my gonads and dealt with it this week. Again, the dealing with it is still gonna make life annoying for a little while, but at this point I will willingly take being slightly annoyed and inconvenienced over the weight I'd been dragging for the better part of two years. So go me? I guess? Ugh. After rolling around in the relief of finally getting that handled I fell into a sulk about the various little ways my life has been slowly spinning out of my control lately. In slightly less melodramatic turns, even before this week I've noticed there's been a gradual uptick in anxiety/avoidance/self-sabotaging behavior on my part this year. Well, really since about when Dad passed, but its lately gotten to the point where if it hasn't already, its gonna start marching up my pants leg to bite the inside of my ass. So I need to get a firm handle on the plates I already have spinning, safely remove a few, and then seriously sit down and start looking for therapists again. Because fuck this shit.

There has been Massive Monkeyspace Drama on Facebook this week too, which got to such a patently ridiculous level that it looped into hilarious. I'm sure modern incarnations of the purity tests we used to forward around in college have a question concerning "have you ever lost a friend in an online fight?" and I'm also sure I'm down that point as of Monday night, but honestly considering how things fell out I'm okay with that. While the actual drama itself was eyeroll-worthy at best the aftermath seems to be causing some old previous relationship scars to flare up again which just adds some delicious flavor to the mild suck soup that is my head right now. But, eh, it will pass and I will deal with it. I don't really want to get into it much further than that.

It's not been all suck either, but a lot of the not sucky things I can't put into a public post and I also have to go put the laundry in the dryer and return to the massive pile of work that still needs to get done tonight, boo. So I will just leave you with the high point of last weekend, which was cosplaying Carmen Sandiego for Bon Appetit Burlesque's "Around the World in 80 Twirls" show:



I can't remember the last time a costume made me so fucking happy. I've been a Carmen Sandiego fangirl since the game show used to air on PBS and I'd watch it with Roy Jr when he was wee tiny. Hell, I can still sing most of the theme song from memory, but that might have more to do with me also being a Rockapella fangirl. If the wig and the hat weren't so bloody hot I'd just be Carmen Sandiego all the damn time, though I am woefully incapable of pulling off national landmark level heists. I got a lot of compliments on the outfit. Desrvedly I think... I apparently can rock a red trench coat. :)

But back to life, back to reality. *sigh* *hatred*

Today is definitely shaping up to be one of THOSE days. Not necessarily bad things are happening, just, I don't know today has that certain je ne sais quoi that comes of oversleeping by an hour* and finding out amidst predictable new/returning student insanity that the still-handsome, elderly Guyanese gentleman I call Dad has joined facebook.

Oh, and I now work with a girl that counts among her summer activities swimming across the English Channel. Whut.

Yeah, I'll be over here being all "wait, what?" and seriously rethinking that whole giving up morning caffeine idea.

In yay news, Dunks is selling cider again. FALL IS COMING! In dubious lean-away-from-the-screen news, Dunks is selling cider again. That's got to be some nasty apple gel + hot water shit right there. I'll just take this as an indication to swing by Atkins Farms for some of the real stuff later. Not to mention fucking cider donuts. Mmmmmm Atkins cider donuts...


* I still made it in on time. Thank heavens for PVTA drivers willing to radio your connection and tell him to wait for your dumb late ass for a couple minutes. Oh and for being the driver cheerfully willing to idle a couple of minutes so you can get to work on time. Sheesh. Be glad when regular schedule starts up next week!

Cleaning out my iPod notes, found a quote I'd overheard at Christmas:

"Well, of course it's gone! You bought one bottle of orange soda, and you have a house full of Black people? What did you expect!?"

Heh. I should give them a call tomorrow.

NGL, I giggled.

Also it's now in your head. You're welcome.

Also also I may have only posted this so cell23 would comment with the GOB icon.

In other news, dear GODS how did we generate FOUR LOADS of laundry kill me now kthx

Guys, I think I've found my calling in life, or something, because I apparently throw bitchin parties. 'Course with the crowd of people that showed up to our house to properly usher cell23's fourth decade in last night, it's quite hard to have a bad party. Hell even the people that couldn't come but sent well-wishes via twitter (you were there in spirit, Mr. Berube!) helped, so yeah. There were also Muppets, Batman, Castlevania, and Mario Kart assisting. :) Special guest stars: cell23's now infamous Gay Bar Dance while he beat the shit out of his princess pinata (aersi helped). The terrifying pin the tail on the donkey game that oneforellis brought that looked like a donkey staring worriedly at his ass as red liquid appeared to pour out of it (it was supposed to be a target painted on, but it looked way too much like severe intestinal damage). THE MOTHERFUCKING INDIANA JONES CAKE WITH WORKING BALL. That's right you heard me. That cake was BOSS.

But yeah, you know how you know it was a good party? 2 reasons: 1) I just stumbled downstairs in search of breakfast (by the way, aersi? you're a motherfucking genius, thank you for the bagels) saw the horror my living room and kitchen are after everything... and grinned my face off. 2) The part where towards the end of the evening, cell23 (who tends to detest having a big thing made of his birthday, so yes, I threw him a party cause I'm a bitch like that ;) ) was being glomphed by all the remaining ladies present, and while cackling maniacally, declared that he should turn 30 every year.

I clearly win at everything. Including hangovers. I had quite a bit of "kool-aid" (hawaiian punch, sierra mist, tangerine vodka and slushed ice make great punch, btw) and then another_murray brought over pomegranate liqueur and i was just done for afterward. but I only have a bit of a headache this morning and that may well be because I forgot to make/get coffee. Yeah, I know.

But yeah, thanks guys. And happy birthday cell23. I love you, and I think it's safe to say so does everyone who was in attendance. :)

I need to play Shakespeare's Pants with someone (and by extension, Star Wars Pants). Y'all know that I consider 'pants' to be the third funniest word in the english language; this just makes that better. I has a Riverside Shakespeare, this could be an entertaining evening.

I always forget that after going away for a couple days, especially with the drive there and back, that a day or two later I have one hell of a crohn's attack. The last 24 hours have been fun.

I love summer nights when it gets cool enough to actually warrant a sheet and a blanket.

We watched Penelope the other day at Ladies Night. It was cute, though a little disconcerting seeing Older Octavian from Rome cropping up. Also I've actually started paying attention to Peter Dinklage, considering he's been cast as Tyrion in the Game of Thrones movie. And we luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuve ourselves some Tyrion, yes we do. Incidentally? I do find it rather interesting that two of my ranking favorite literary characters have some form of dwarfism. *sigh* I do need to finish picking up the rest of the Vorkosigan Saga, but I've hit that special point where I'm aware I have to move in 2 months, and maybe I should think about getting rid of stuff rather than acquiring it. Still, now that I'm done with Westeros until GRRM finally delivers book 5, I do need some kind of Miles fix. (As an aside, does anyone else kinda picture Miles as a short version of Ferris Bueller?)

Speaking of movies, I know my flist is already full of wonderfully race/privilege aware folks (yes, there are like five of you for whom that statement will read as extreme sarcasm) but even so, read this post on the upcoming Last Airbender movie. Because, I don't care how cool the trailers look, just no.

Work goes. I have enough to keep me busy when my brain decides to actually work. Which, annoyingly enough, it hasn't much this week. :P Which sucks. Getting paid is nice.

I've had a request to uncut my twitspam. I usually cut them out of respect for the people on my f-list that are either already on twitter or don't really want to read the sometimes copious blather I spit into there, but considering I actually filter out the @replies and the retweets, I don't know. I suppose if y'all don't feel like reading them you can scroll right? I kinda like the tidiness of cutting them... maybe I'll uncut them for July and see how it goes. Might be good incentive for me to stop blathering so much into there in the interests of making those posts shorter. It's not even so much that me tweeting is cutting into my LJ posting, I've found that I've gotten MORE verbose across the board with multiple outlets, lol. Cause you know what, sometimes I have more to say about something than 140 characters.

Speaking of which, I keep meaning to write my own post regarding the alleged death of LJ in the wake of Twitter, Facebook and dreamwidth... I don't really see it happening. I could see its effect in getting new accounts, maybe, but I and most of the people I associate with/follow here have been on LJ since the long ago dark ages of invite codes, and just because we've invested so much of our time and our words and in most cases our money (grrr, speaking of which, my paid account and userpics expired last night, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah) I don't see us leaving (though a lot of you lurk a lot more than you used to). Several of you have gotten DW accounts, sure, but you either crosspost or use each for different things; I've only had a couple of you completely ditch LJ for it, and one of you came back after three months. I made several hardcore friends out of complete random strangers here, which I can't really see happening on Twitter or Facebook because you can't really get to know a person through 140ish character blips, but when you read pages long blather about their dogs, cats, kids, cars, finances, romances, marriages, divorces, deaths, dramas, hobbies, dreams, terrors, fears and plain old ordinary ives every single day... yeah. So I don't know about the reports of LJ's slow demise, but I have a fair amount of confidence that me and mine will still be here until whatever end is rumored to be coming, and really, that's all I care about. I suppose what'll happen is that having an LJ account will become a mark of Old School Internet, kinda like how I used to be incredibly proud of having a seven digit ICQ number and still occasionally am, even though ICQ has gone the way of the dodo. It's kind of a "damn internet kids, get off my lawn" statement. We were here first. We saw it all happen. We remember when Twitter was even more pointless than some people still consider it being. We had to blow on our goddamn Nintendo cartridges to make them work and leave the console on all night if we wanted to save where we were. We are officially the Old Geeks. And you know what? Not a thing wrong with that. :)

It's Wednesday morning. Time to nut up and get on with the business of today.

Like everyone else and their mama, I seriously consider giving up Facebook about once every 72 hours. But I end up not really bothering. a) I know it's horrible, but I could really give a rats ass about my own privacy. b) ...eh. I can't really bring myself to care much about it one way or another.

And then every so often I'm reminded of why I'm glad I have it. Namely when people I lost track of way the ass long ago and still occasionally think about randomly pop up and are all like OH HAI I REMEMBER YOU. And I'm all "HOLY SHIT HI HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU?" Like the girl I went to this summer program with at Downstate after what, my freshman year of high school, and we were totally inseparable all summer and then lost track of each other over the next school year? Yeah she just looked my ass up. I'm agog to be hearing from her again... and happy. :)

In other news HEY it's Saturday already I can do this now.

Day 08. A song that you know all the words to



Guster, "Fa Fa" This one made the cut because not only do I know the words, I can sing it well. And out of the songs that meet that criteria this was the only song that actually had some semblance of an actual video. If I had a choice between posting this one and "Two Points For Honesty" I'd have posted the latter, but hey, "Fa Fa" has hula girls.

I also know all the words to both "It's the end of the world as we know it" and "One week." Trufax. I will admit, I will be a little disappointed if no one answers this question with "Rappers' Delight." Just sayin'.

Act I.

[LOVEBUG and GOOSE are sitting on the couch. LOVEBUG is playing (what else?) Thomas on GOOSE's iPod.]

GOOSE: [giggles and gently tickles LOVEBUG]

LOVEBUG: [squirming and cute 2.5 year old giggling]

GOOSE: [makes gentle pinching motion on LOVEBUG's cheek] I gotcher dimple!

LOVEBUG: [giggling] No you don't! Gimme it back, it's mine! [grabs the "dimple" out of GOOSE's hand and "sticks it back on"]

GOOSE: Tee hee. Tickle tickle!


Act II.

[cell23 has joined LOVEBUG and GOOSE on the couch]

GOOSE: hey Lovebug, I bet this works on Daddy too. [starts tickling cell23]

cell23: WTH? This is weird! Stop it! [smiles a little in spite of himself]

GOOSE: [swipes a "dimple"] AHA! Got it!

LOVEBUG: Nooooooooo Give it back! [grabs the "dimple" from GOOSE and puts it back on cell23]

cell23: Quick! gimme a kiss to stick it on!

LOVEBUG: [giggles and does]

GOOSE: [dies of cute]

FINIS.


I think out of a day spent at cell23's parents', the playground across town from them and watching the parachutists from the ice cream stand (with the gargantuan servings of ice cream - I shudder to think about ordering a large there!), these two little moments were my absolute favorites.

So I'm waiting on the last 2 books on RoyJr's list to arrive, right? These books, btw were notoriously annoying to obtain - three are out of print and took forever coming to me. Anyway, I ordered the last two last week so I could finish that project up... did it through B&Ns so I could apply my member discount, and ordered them used, so the orders were routed through resellers.

Anyway, I get this email this morning from one of them:

Hey Andee,

We're just checking in to see if you received your order ( No Sweetness Here and Other Stories ) from Better World Books. If your order hasn't blessed your mailbox just yet, heads are gonna roll in the Mishawaka warehouse! Seriously though, if you haven't received your order or are less than 108.8% satisfied, please reply to this message. Let us know what we can do to flabbergast you with service.

Humbly Yours,

Indaba (our super-cool email robot)


The very idea of being "flabbergasted with service" is making me gigglesnnrrk like hell right now. (Also made me think of 11th_letter.) I always appreciate people not being boring with their email bots.

ETA: holy crap, yesterday's drunk post was epic.