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*

I had amazing day today up until 11pm when I turned on my phone after Burlesque (and four hours unplugged from the internet) and read the Zimmerman verdict.

FUCK.

I'ma just link to this post I wrote back in March of last year. I don't have any more words than that. Anger, sadness, resignation, frustration, the desire to hug my nephews (and I will next week when I see them) yes. Words? No.

My squee about the rest of the day can wait.

I'd heard in passing that Nora Ephron had died yesterday. It wasn't something that made a huge blip on my radar - I enjoyed the movies she'd done that I'd seen, but that was about it.

Someone posted this quote to Goodreads to mark her passing this morning. Needless to day I found it rather apropos.

I married him against all evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn't work, that love dies, that passion fades, and in so doing I became the kind of romantic only a cynic is truly capable of being.

Yeah, that works.

I'm honestly kinda bummed to hear Eduard Khil passed away. If you are unsure who that is, well, "Trolololo lo lololo lololo hohohohoooooo" should give you a clue.



He seemed like a sweet old guy that seemed to be genuinely amused and a little touched by his sudden, late in life Internet fame and was even having fun with it.

Interesting Fact/Cool Story Bro Time: the song is actually titled Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой which loosely translates as "I'm very happy to be returning home at last." I hope he is.


At some point where I'm not freezing and cranky and headachy and overtired, I should post a ramble about how one of the many reasons I have ladyboners for Russian classical/choral music is that instead of the emphasis and melodies being placed in the higher registers like most Western European music, Russian exquivelents tend to skew towards the baritone-bass range instead, which leads to a completely different sound and flavor. And I do dearly love me a warm, rich lower register. May also explain why any song sung by Leonard Cohen, Paul Robeson, Johnny Cash or Peter Steele (among other people) will get my attention rather... quicker... than other vocal ranges.

Apparently the Beastie Boys have lost one of their number today.



Aside - whatever happened to that spot-on "Sabotage" video cut from Battlestar Galactica footage? Couldn't find it anywhere.

The weathermen have said to expect 1-4 inches of snow for the last three days. Other than a sprinkle that was gone by 10am? no snow. Temperatures dropped and errthang, but nothing fell from the sky. At least it sorta feels like winter out there - other than the freak snowstorm around Halloween we haven't really had any winter weather of note this year.... which of course means we're going to get five feet around beginning to mid-April. I'd not be surprised if we got snowed into PAX.

Anyway. So life, not much really to report at the moment. I've been fighting off a chest cold for a little over a week; today I'm ready to declare the battle lost. Mostly because I can; I'm done with today's bell performance (which went much better than previous ones) and I've got nothing planned for the rest of the day. I did want to get productive things done with the time, but considering how I feel right now, I'm declaring fuck it and reserve the right to hide in my nice warm bed with library books and the iPad relentlessly consuming media and occasionally whining pathetically at cell23 to get me things so I don't have to move. Considering what the last couple of days have been like with regard to social, family and wedding stuff commitments, I'm not too surprised my body is all "No, seriously, bitch, lay down and rest a spell."

Course, I can't complain, other than being punctuated by coughing the past couple days had their really good moments. Friday I spent running around doing wedding shit (more about that in a separate entry because there is a LOT of blathering to be done about that) and yesterday I spent first up in Athol at cell23's uncle's birthday brunch, and then later we went to Moti's for dinner and all I can say is oooooooh, Persian lamb stew nom nom. After that there was the Bon Appetit Burlesque's Love/Hate Show and, well, boobies. Also there is something incredibly happy about ending your day by being sassed (and then hugged) by an adorable drag queen in a wedding dress. I seriously have more than a little bit of a crush on Hors D'Oeuvres, I'm not even going to lie.

It was during the second half of the show that I (and indeed, everyone else in the audience) heard about Whitney Houston. ( this got long. )

Anyway. About that lying down, resting a spell and feeling miserable... Waiting to Exhale has been on my Netflix queue forever, maybe today's a good day to actually watch it.

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

--Steve Jobs, 2005

I'm not a big one for celebrity death, but considering Fisher Price® My First Computer™ was an Apple IIGS, and I am alamngly dependent on an iPod Touch to keep me organized, on task, in touch and entertained, not to mention I've been watching Pixar shorts long before anyone had heard of Woody and Buzz (and i totally mean that in an "I'm old" sense, not in a "I'm a disgusting hipster" sense)... This one's hitting kinda hard.

I'm sure personally he may have been more than kind of a dick, and Apple's "walled-garden" approach to controlling their brand makes me shake my head (this is the company i affectionately refer to as iCult, after all) but you can't deny Steve Jobs has left a huge and impressive legacy behind, and for his contributions to personal computing, portable media and film, nothing but respect and gratitude here.

Also yeesh. Internally they had to know the end was near - cancer, in addition to all its other fuckery, is by no means a quick death. I have to give the higher ups at Apple mad props for going on with the iPhone event yesterday like nothing major was wrong. That takes panache.

Anyway. Shit. As i posted elsewhere earlier, in my minds eye i see multitudes of iPods, iPhones and iPads, all jacked to full brightness, all running a variety of virtual lighter apps, all raised in tribute. May they light his journey into whatever afterlife there may be.

Thank you, Steve.

Posted, appropriately enough, via ljapp, from my iPod Touch.

(sketch by booksavvy)

I heard yesterday like everyone else, but somehow, seeing as I've only just jumped on the whole Doctor Who bandwagon a year ago, kinda felt like others on my f-list who'd been fans longer had the RIP posts covered. Course then I saw this this afternoon (sniffly hattip to kshandra) and kinda went all over with the bawling so I figured I'd note Elizabeth Sladen's passing and share the image.



OH CRAP LATE FOR BELLS

I'm sure I could find something else in Elizabeth Taylor's long career to quote in her memory, but the main thing that comes to mind is a commercial from my childhood that I swear was still airing as recently as last Christmas:



Since I'm sure TCM will be pre-empting all of its programming for the next week in favor of her movies I have a feeling Dad and I will be doing that tonight. Hopefully there will be some Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf action there, but hell, I have no shame, I'll be equally happy if Cleopatra comes on. Yes, I like that movie a lot. All 4+ gloriously over the top melodramatic hours of it.

Rest in peace, Lady Liz. You were a legend.

Something I ran across elsewhere on LJ alerted me to the fact that space officially lost its cool factor a quarter century ago today.

I very clearly remember Challenger, it was actually the first national disaster of sorts that I was reasonably sentient for. Enough to be affected by it, anyway. I was seven, in second grade, all excited because we all had been reading those Scholastic kids' newsletters about Christa McAuliffe (holy shit, I still remember her name) being the First Teacher In Space! and like most kids, thought her class was the luckiest in America. (Yeah, no.) Dad was also all excited about it because one of the crew was Ronald McNair, who happened to be a member of Omega Psi Phi and in the fashion of all black fraternities and their brothers, this was a Very Big Deal. I mean, regardless it was still a Big Deal, McNair being only the second African American in space ever with his previous Challenger mission in 1984.

Me being seven and still hazy on racial politics/dynamics (attending an international school where being American of any stripe/color was the minority you got teased about tended to blunt that a bit) my focus was on the teacher. One of the random little details mentioned in the newsletter profile was that she always carried a stuffed frog for luck, for some reason this is the one thing that still sticks in my head, even though I've seen it mentioned nowhere else since. Little things about a person tend to get lost when they perish in a space accident.

Thankfully I wasn't one of the kids instantly traumatized by watching the launch live. But I do remember my teacher being called out of the classroom by our principal for a few minutes during Reading Time, then coming back to tearfully announce that there had been an accident and all seven of Challenger's crew were dead. I remember one of my friends at the time started crying hysterically at that point and I hugged her until she stopped, but I don't remember crying myself. Just sort of went through the rest of my day kinda of O_o and not really believing it until I got home and saw the disintegration footage on the news. Even so, I still thought that it kinda looked like a big bit of orange cotton candy and it was hard to realize that I had just in essence watched seven people die. I had the same problem a decade and a half later with 9/11 footage, something that didn't get fully brought home until a conversation I had with cell23 at Ground Zero a couple years ago. It's not so much you yourself seeing someone die on national TV - the fucked up part is everyone seeing it.

I always had this crazy fantasy that the stuffed frog somehow survived and went on to have adventures of its own, either at sea or in space. Mostly piratical ones. Occasionally I get it conflated with Cartman's Clyde Frog on South Park, either as the same frog or as some sort of slashy gay frog crossover romance. Yeah, my brain is weird like that.

Anyway, that's my tl;dr "where were you" moment. To Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair and Christa McAuliffe, you are missed, and you are remembered.