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*

...when you realize how much of your fragile little psyche was shaped in childhood by commercials? Yep, had one of those this morning when I put The Preciousssss on random at work and Bobby Darin singing "Mack the Knife" came up near the top of the list.

"Mack the Knife" is a pretty awesome song. It's kind of a gateway drug into the messed up little world of Bertolt Brecht, if you're inclined towards interesting pockets of music geekery and not so much into pop/jazz standards of the early sixties. The problem is that if your brain was at a certain stage of malleability/development around 1989 (which mine was) and you watched probably too much TV than the experts deemed healthy at the time, this is probably the first thing you think of when you hear it:



A big scary moon face wearing sunglasses that's only slightly less creepy than the Burger King. Who can't lip synch to save his life. (RuPaul would be telling him to sashay away after three bars.)

I have similar problems with Beethoven's "Für Elise" because of yet another steller ad from Mickey D's.



I still know every single one of these words. There's a fleeting wish for a little brother included with that so I could spitefully deny him french fries. Hands off, they're mine, all mine ALL MINE!!!!!

Well, I suppose I have cell23 now, but he buys his own goddamn fries.

You know what else I still know all the words to after all these damn years?



Man, the McDLT, talk about taking a person back. :P I remember having the little plastic record of this back in the day and thinking it was just CRAZINESS that they could etch things on a skinny strip of vinyl and your record player would totally PLAY THEM. CDs were still expensive space tech at the time.

I suppose a greater comment about the impact of advertising on children can be made here considering how far up into the delicate nooks and crannies of my brain the ads from one company in particular (and one pushing fast food at that) have lodged themselves and remain long after I've grown up, but I'm not making it right now. Instead I just amusedly shake my head (and my fist) at how McDonalds has warped my fragile little mind and to some extent my music taste.

I will note, however, that I now have a POWERFUL craving for McNuggets.

Safe for work (and the sound ain't necessary), but probably not safe for the cohesion of your brain.

I finally figured out a use for my Christmas Kindle* that does not make the baby Kal-El** cry:



Who doesn't need her sheet reprinted tonight? THIS TIEFLING PSION BITCH, that's right.

Already planning on tossing my WoD character sheets on here too, as well as some other game related PDFs I've got laying around that I don't feel like reading on my computer. Why hello there, NERDBOX3000***, how are you today?


* Insert usual rant about my irrational luddite hatred of e-readers. But since the gods have a sense of humor, I ended up with one for Christmas.

** cell23 and I watched Superman: the Movie last night. It was a lot better than I expected, but that may have been because I was watching cell23 react to it more than the actual movie, which proved just as interesting.

*** aaaaand name acquired.

( a meme that thinks entirely too much about how contraversial it is when it isn't really )

So OMG you guys. I got the Netflix disc for wii yesterday and IT IS AMAZING. Like I said on Twitter, I've had no reason to actually use Monstervision since the DVD player locked up and LOST ended. Now? well, I'll just say half the shit I was gonna watch on my computer I can stream to the TV. Which is awesome really. Doctor Who I think requires a bigger screen. Also I do need to occasionally give EPEEN a break you know? Shit. Now I'm actually looking FORWARD to ditching the cable. We seriously won't need it post move - Netflix even has Thomas the friggin' Tank Engine for a certain obsessed youngster. THE FUTURE IS CRAZY YO.

Looking forward to the first kid weekend in a while where I will be around for all of it instead of half or none of it. May take Kidzilla to see Despicable Me at some point, as I want to see it myself. A little boggled that there are only two or three of those left before the move. Eeeep.

Click these guys eh? I am super psyched about scoring a random gold off the AP earlier in the week (turned out I'd caught a trade by mistake, but the people trading saw I only had one other gold on my scroll and the original recipient of the trade had like 10 already so they were all like "you know what, keep it") and yesterday I swiped another vampire egg. Still working on replacing the inbred dragons I released a couple weeks back cleaning up my scroll, hopefully breeding or catching a Bluna and completing my Legendary Trio (Icicle and Magma dragons are hard little buggers to find, I tell ya.) Hoping to have all that done by Halloween, where hopefully there will be a new holiday release and also hopefully people will be breeding up last years pumpkin dragons so I can grab one of those. YEAH YEAH I KNOW IT'S A DUMB INTERNET GAME BUT SOME OF YOU PLAY FRAGGING POKEMON DON'T JUDGE ME, K? K.

Hat tip to nounsandverbs to posting this.

So do y'all remember the "You Will," ad campaign from AT&T in the early 90s? I used to LOVE LOVE LOVE these commercials.



I'm a little floored by the fact that we can do about 95% of these things now. Not quite as depicted, but damn, CLOSE ENOUGH.

Guys, the future is awesome.

It's been a long while since I got a pang of "Wow, I wish I could talk to Mom about this." Having just fully caught up on Mad Men, I really find myself wondering what she would have thought of it, seeing as most the characters are pretty contemporaneous to her and Dad. I suppose I could call Dad and ask him... just wondering how close they got to nailing it. I don't know if I'll be watching season four over the summer. I might just wait until it's all wrapped up, seeing as I'm keeping up with too much as it is. Thank goodness The Tudors is ending next week. Speaking of which, Jonothan Rhys Meyers, I love you baby, but your old man impression is laughable at best. And hats off to Sarah Bolger for effectively foreshadowing how fucking scary Bloody Queen Mary is gonna be after all this is said and done.

Local Burger in Northampton's been open a year and a half today. 'Cause every region needs at least one solid burger joint. On a related note, Amherst Creperie opened last weekend. Here's hoping I'll have money enough to try it out by the weekend. Also as I lamented to chirping_monkey yesterday, it's been way too long since I've been to Baku's.

Time keeps on slipping slipping slipping... into the future. Just one of those moments when it's too quiet around me, and all I can really do is wonder what the next half a year will bring in terms of blessings and trials. Or will it just be more of the same?

Still on the upswing today. Staying home from work as a spoon conservation/just in case measure, but feeling in general better enough to not have to go back to bed every four hours. Which is good cause as always I have Shit What Needs Doing.

Had a intensely weird dream about a train that, if you went to bed on time, picked you up and whisked you off on a whirlwind tour of Dreamland and Nightmare. There's a story idea there, I think. I suppose I'd better write it before Neil Gaiman does.

My head's been full of stuff lately, not all of it nice. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster week in the headmeats what with having a super depressed moment on Sunday and Monday and being sick, and money stress and all. But at least it's interesting, and chewing over it is yeilding up some good realizations about myself that need further working on. Mainly my issues surrounding control and other people. Big stuff.

I keep forgetting that I actually like black coffee. It somehow tastes more... I don't know, honest, than if I hop it to the gills with some dairy product and sugar. Which is pretty much exactly the same reason why I stopped taking anything in my tea years ago.

There will be short people this weekend. Another good reason to stay home and make absolutely sure I'm better today.

I had another thought I wanted to put down here, but it's eluding me at the moment, so I guess it's music meme time.

Day 07. A song that reminds you of a certain event



It's not what you think. :) This song actually reminds me of the first time I heard it, the day I met _kyri IRL in 2007 (jesus was that three years ago already?). I was in Cincinnati over Labor Day weekend for my grandmother's funeral and I stayed for an extra couple of days so I could meet her. (alas, I failed to meet up with bellarisa that weekend... next time) anyway, I had spent the day at Ohio Renaissance Fair (she's in the cast every year) pretending to be a Lady slumming it with the plebs for the day. (Also had my fortune told for shits and giggles and WTF in retrospect that shit totally came true even though it sounded super out there at the time. Jennings still around, _kyri?) and we were driving back in her car with a couple of her friends and passing King's Island (eeeee, Kings Island!) and this song came on her iPod and I about pissed myself laughing. ("Soaking in the hoisin of your lies" still fucking flattens me with giggles)

Also see icon. :)

I'd like to note that I really wanted to post Toga Party Improv Catastrophe's "Don't Get Plague" instead regarding the same event, but I couldn't find them on YouTube anywhere. So you get Bill Bailey carving his lover's name into his forehead with a math compass instead. FEEL PRIVILEGED.

I think a good portion of today is going to be spent meditating on the sage words of the Rolling Stones. While part of my brain is trying really hard to pipe up with bits and pieces from "Sympathy for the Devil" (which is a meditation for another day), I'm actually planning to be mostly focusing on "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Especially the bit about "If you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need."

Yeah, it's the needs vs wants thing again. But yeah, today especially I want to see what I need to do to get myself taken care of - financially, emotionally, medically - and trying to shy away from the attitude that everything will fix itself once the finances stop being stupid (it won't, seeing as the finances and the health are intertwined). Also need to pretty much focus on getting my big girl panties on and taking care of business on a few fronts, but also to cut myself the appropriate slack if I don't have the spoons to get it all tied up today cause beating myself up about things isn't going to help get it done any faster. Process, not quick fix. Need to remember that. Also have to try to stay positive about fixing my own mess and keeping on top of it. Being responsible for myself isn't a bad thing. Really. It's honestly not the worst thing in the world to have to be the kind of princess that gets her own ass down from the tower. Sitting in it being pissed at other princesses being pretty and helpless and getting rescued and taken care of without having to do a blessed thing isn't getting me out of the tower any faster. And I can hate those other princesses just as hard when I get on the ground, you know?

I found myself thinking about my second planned tattoo yesterday on the way back from Boston and being a little sad that I didn't manage to get it when I wanted to. I was supposed to get it done when I came home, when I returned to the Valley, kind of bracketing my experience of self-imposed exile and return. Thing is, when I did get back I wasn't actually ready. I'm still not ready now, I don't feel like the "This" in This too shall pass" has actually passed yet. I'm still working through shit and putting to bed other shit and now there's this money crap that needs to be dealt with and ugh. I'm still... transitional. I'm still going to get it, but definitely once things settle out and down and I have a handle, direction and place in life again. That could be this fall. That could be this time next year. That could be the fall after that. I don't know. We'll see.

Also thinking of doing a big list of 100 things I want to accomplish in the next 10 years, just as a sort of eye towards finally developing some long term planning skills. Not exactly a bucket list, but yeah. Where do I want to be at age 41.5? What do I want to have done by then? Ten years becomes shorter and shorter of a space of time as you get older... but I definitely want to feel a lot better about how I spent my 30s than I did and still do about my 20s, which in a lot of ways feel very... squandered. I know, the more I talk to people about that the more I realize everyone kinda feels that way unless you're one of those people that did manage to miraculously Get It young, but that's less common than they'd have you believe. Wish I'd known that sooner, though knowing what I'm like, I doubt that would make me feel any less behind in the game of life. (Not the game of lice. Typos are fun.)

I started my last musing on this with a quote from The Princess Bride, Wesley's last spoken line. Inigo Montoya's realizing that now that he's accomplished the goal he spent twenty years of his life focusing on, he has no idea what's next. I can relate to that pretty hardcore right now... and I'm realizing oddly enough, that I'm at the right age for that sort of thing, not behind the game. Hell, to draw out the paralell, Inigo is exactly 31 in the movie. I don't know. I don't feel like I accomplished anything gigantic, like avenging my father's murder, but there's still that sense of one book closing and another opening, and being in charge, for once, of how the story goes from here. I guess I'm still waiting for a signpost, or someone to suggest piracy to me as a life direction, or something, but as the last of the ex-relationship BS gets laid to rest bit by bit (and I'm still not completely through that either) I admit, it's kinda nice to have a wide open compass available to me. Once I get my damn feet under me enough to pick a direction and walk, anyway.

Which is kinda my goal for today. Well working towards that anyway. Wish me luck.

• Usually "Your Daily Twittascope" annoys the hell out of me. Today's for Libra seems fairly on point though:
  

  You could easily go overboard today while attempting to remain objective in your interactions with others, but it might be wiser to just express how you feel. Holding on to neutrality sounds like a good idea at first, but hiding your perspective also suppresses your passion, making it harder to inspire others. Getting your true feelings out into the open now can prevent a more intense meltdown in a few days.

  
  Looks like the whole live out loud versus not question is rearing its ugly head again. Well, it did kinda last night, actually. Apparently I'm still having trouble with the whole concept of if you choke something down one way, it's gonna come out another.
  
  
• HAPPY BIRTHDAY jaicat. Not that you read LJ much anymore, but figured the shot out needed to be made. :) And hopefully we can get together this week?
  
  
• With any luck, I may have my Hanzo today. It all depends on whether I like the Corolla captainlove is having me test-drive tonight.
  
  
• I am determined to make this a good day. I rather need one at the moment.

Work nau.