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| Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 | | 4:05 pm |
I just bought an awesome pair of boots, with money that I personally earned in my real life grown up job that my parents only kind of got for me. I am very proud! Not that I haven't bought a lot of things with money that I earned, but somehow it's just striking me now. Perhaps because I love these boots so much. This is my boots. Yeah, it's probably just that the boots are awesome. In a related question, does anyone else have that compulsion to know things about their purchases? Like, one of the ways I decide where to buy stuff is what store gives me the most info on the product. So when I'm trying to improve our website, my instinct is to cram as much info in there as possible. But do other people feel like that? Goddamn, I was hired for my computer skills, not my advertising knowledge. This is hard. | | Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | | 12:32 am |
Nnnngh. In my ongoing Adam Lambert obsession I've been reading archives of some AI comms, and I just ran across a conversation about how some people are nasty to Adam/Allison shippers. I see the first comment, and I'm like, "huh? I guess it's a little incesty, but get over yourselves, have you even seen Supernatural fandom." But no. That's not their problem. Their problem is that you can't write about, in fact shouldn't even fantasize about, an openly gay celebrity being straight. Because it's really hard for gay people to come to terms with their orientation, and they're oppressed, and it's hard to come out of the closet. And it's OK to write straight celebrities as gay because they don't have these difficulties. I. My head. It may explode. EXPLODE. I think I actually turned red with rage for a minute. For god's sake, Adam Lambert has described himself as bi-curious! And kisses girls when drunk! And obviously does not feel it threatens his gay in any way. Perhaps because, oh, oh, wait for it, it doesn't make him not queer anymore just because he kissed a girl! No one even called any of these people on it, not the slightest bit! I shouldn't be fucking surprised, there are some real morons on these communities. I love the people who talk about how brave Adam is for being like the first openly gay musician ever! Jesus fuck, people, Placebo is on tour RIGHT NOW. If you paid any attention to the music world. This would also help with your myopic hatred of Adam/Allison. Oh, and the best part of those people is that Adam SANG BOWIE MATERIAL on the American Idol tour. The first thing we saw him sing on television was Queen! I mean fine, be ignorant of the rest of the music world, you are in AI fandom, but pay some fucking attention to the fandom you're in. How can people be Adam Lambert fans and think and talk and BE like this? How can they talk about GAY RIGHTS and be like this? I feel like I should be raiding their comms with pictures of Brian Molko, but what I really want to do is go to their houses and shove pictures of him down their ignorant throats. Fuck, I hate that this makes me so angry. I can handle all kinds of prejudice with total calm, but the utterly thoughtless way people treat bisexuality, I can't even pretend to fake levelheadedness. God, I'd rather have the people who talk about how bisexuals are all attention seekers than the people who don't even remember we're there. It's just cruel, and they don't even know they're doing it. And I feel so blindsided when it comes from people who are for gay rights, even though we get it a lot. Traitors. I'm so stupid, using language like that seriously, but it is, it's treachery. I'm so, so stupid. Fuck, I hurt. | | Thursday, January 21st, 2010 | | 3:20 pm |
The topic of today's post is Have You Accepted The Love of Adam Lambert into Your Heart Today? < /obscure fic references> I assume the answer is yes, anyway, because I spent roughly eternity being Too Cool for someone who'd been on American Idol and who everyone was talking about, but I finally got over myself and looked him up, and I'm so glad I did, and now I'm going to gush at you, and you'll read all the way through this post because you already love him, right? First, go watch this video of him inadvertently scandalizing Good Morning America. Skip to like, 1:37. That was when I decided I liked this man. Then, I admitted that I've never been cool and never will be and watched season eight of American Idol. If you haven't, even if you're already converted to the Church of Adam, you really should. He made that show everything it always should have been, and he broke that fucker into glitter-sized pieces in the process. You see, one of the things I hate most about AI is how it short circuits the process. Making it in the entertainment industry is hard. You're overworked and underpaid and spend years in the chorus even though you're better than the leads because they have a reputation and you don't and it sucks. And it should be that way, because that's how you earn it, the awesome bits, the screaming crowds and the adulation. Getting humiliated on a reality TV show is not enough to deserve singing in front of 30 million people, it's just not. But Adam was in the industry before he went on the show, he was a stage actor. And that's part of why he's better than the rest of them, because he actually fucking practiced beforehand, they're reality TV show contestants and he's a professional, and it's also why he deserves it and I'm happy for him. And I am so fucking happy for him. What I think AI should be is a leg up for the people who've worked enough to deserve it, and this guy spent ten years in the LA theater business and now we have video footage of the moment when he realized he'd finally made it, (I'm arguing for when they're gushing all over him after Black or White) and he nearly cries on national TV. It's so wonderful. He's so happy and so talented and he's going to be David Bowie and they caught it on tape. He is mad talented! I feel like I shouldn't like his voice, the timbre is a little grating, but I shouldn't like his face either, it's downright unfortunate, but I have a giant folder of pics of him on my computer. He makes me like songs I actively hated before, I don't know how. I'll stop trying to explain with words, because they're useless here, and start linking videos. 1. This is what he did on country week. On American Idol. With his mother in the audience. His family is awesome, they're always in the audience and stuff, clapping proudly. If I saw a blood relative do that I would need electroshock therapy. 2. This is when we learned that he could also sing. It was hard to tell before. See previous link. His voice is fucking incredible, though, Andrew Lloyd Webber probably has a poster of Adam taped to his ceiling over his bed. 3. This is when he realized exactly how much power he had over the audience and decided to see how excited everyone would get if he just sat in a chair in the middle of the stage and sang the song. People went nuts, of course. Listen for the screams when he stands up. He just stands up and you're practically expecting Paula Abdul to throw her bra at him. Simon Cowell gave him a standing ovation. OK, so that's why we all love Adam. I personally also love him because he's from musical theater and so am I, in a way. It's funny, a lot of people say he's like an alien, but when I hear his speaking voice nostalgia hits me like a sledgehammer to the back of the head. The people my dad worked with while I was growing up were just like him, so while I get the crazy glitter alien vibe from his performances, interviews and such make me feel like the seven year old running around backstage in rooms that all felt packed full no matter how many people were in them, because everyone had oversize voices and oversize personalities, everything pitched to fill up the stage until it hit the back row of the audience. Sometimes I feel like I grew up in the circus. And I don't live there anymore, but I see the circus on TV sometimes, in people like this guy laughing and doing his makeup for stage even though he's being filmed with HD cameras, and, you know, nostalgia. Feels good. | | Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 | | 1:06 am |
You know what's way, way more fun than it should be? Drinking brandy and smoking a cigarette while listening to my most depressing and angry playlist on a weeknight. Another cigarette is a mistake. So is another brandy, actually, so I'm switching to sherry. Thank god I'm so obsessive about my hair, or I'd wake up looking like Pete Wentz after losing a fight with a lawnmower. | | Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | | 9:13 pm |
http://ticklishmalecelebrities.blogspot.com/An alphabetical list. Great blog or greatest blog? She tries to post pictures of the guys, particularly barefoot, and she is dead serious about it all. I love people who are totally serious about ridiculous things. | | 11:39 am |
My mother's buying me Christmas presents of the list she got me to write, and she keeps wandering through and asking me questions, like, "what size shirt?" and "do you want that movie in blu ray or normal?" And, a week and a half before Christmas, I put the stupid but catchy trance song I'm listening to on pause, pull my headphones off with nails still painted chipped black, and tell her what size I want the xkcd shirt in. The mystique, she is gone. | | Saturday, December 12th, 2009 | | 3:08 pm |
I think my email might be broken, but I'm not sure. There was that debacle with me and my boss not getting half each other's emails a few weeks back, but he has hotmail and I have gmail and I was sure it was his fault. But sometimes I wonder. I write people things, and don't always get responses, and I don't know if it's because I've trained all my friends to be as lackadaisical about correspondence as me, or because you aren't getting stuff. Fuck, when I'm not sure my email is working, I feel like I'm not sure I'm real. I've gotta spend less time on the computer. | | Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | | 5:26 pm |
I would like to apologize to anyone who I ever called a lightweight or even just quietly rolled my eyes at for having weird reactions to caffeine. I've started doing that passing-out-in-response-to-caffeine thing. Not always; but if I get a strong dose late in the day, it usually puts me right out. Also, if I have too much alcohol too late, that keeps me up. Body! What is with this backwards shit? | | Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 | | 2:15 pm |
A new sign of how grown up and boring I've been getting lately: things I have charged on my debit card. When I first got my own bank account with my own charge card and all I was so excited. I could buy whatever I wanted! High tech vibrators and family sized bags of jelly beans! Pretty, useless little bowls in rock shops and yet another pair of knee high black boots! Fast forward to now. In the past month I have bought concert tickets (to rock concerts, so that's OK), medication for my thrilling array of illnesses, and underwear. It was cute underwear! Ten percent of the purchase price went to some environmental charities, and they're 95% organic cotton! No, that's depressing again. I'd race off and buy some Doc Martens, but that would be a waste of hard earned money. I did spend all my tips on chocolate covered marzipan the other day. Go me! | | Sunday, December 6th, 2009 | | 12:26 am |
Every Christmas season I run into this problem. You see, start listening to classical Christmas music as soon as Thanksgiving is over. None of your wussy Frosty the Snowman shit, I mean medieval songs about the baby Jesus. Sometimes they're in Latin, that's how classical they are. And all year round, I read a lot of pornographic fanfic. Slash, usually. I just let whatever music I'm listening to run in the background while I surf the internet. Usually this is no problem. But every Christmas season, well. And I can't bring myself to break either habit, so I just have to live with the cognitive dissonance. *sighs* Well, not like I was getting into heaven anyway. Current Music: The Holly and The Ivy | | Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | | 3:22 pm |
My job at the tea shop is actually kind of fun. That's their website, which it's my job to manage, and if you look at it briefly you may notice that it's, well, hilariously amateurish. And this is after I've started fixing it up a bit, I couldn't bring myself to write this post until I'd done a few things to it. It used to be dark gray, like, entirely, and there was stuff that wasn't lining up right in the frames, it was ridiculous. I'm going to have to do a real makeover at some point, but I'm going to do things like spellcheck all the content first. No point in a pretty outside when the content still looks like its apostrophes were applied with a shotgun. There's also a tea blog, which my boss is more excited about, although I'm not sure how much he knows about blogging. He keeps trying to give me advice, and he certainly knows a lot more about selling things than I do, but I kind of want to pat him on the head and tell him to go off to play when he starts talking about more web-focused stuff. I think I'm the only person who works for the teashop who can routinely recognize html. There's a web designer who's kind of affiliated with the shop, but he doesn't work for it, and I don't have his contact info. I don't think I need it, though, I can figure everything out. If half a dozen people with only basic computer skills and no time to spend on the web end of the business have been running this for three years, I think I can take care of things. I hope my boss finds another new project to distract him soon. He gets in my way a little. But the job itself is so much fun I almost feel bad about taking money for it (seriously, they're paying me to fix their mistakes on their site and blog about tea, I'd do that for fun if there weren't so much fanfic I need to get to first), so I suppose I can think of it as being payed for listening to him blather about people's attention spans on the internet or whatever for half an hour every shift. | | Thursday, October 15th, 2009 | | 1:04 am |
I just got a job. A real job, for money and everything, with this little tea shop that I love a lot. They're going to pay me to write a blog about tea and hang out in their lovely little shop that smells like tea and cardamom two afternoons a week. I feel so weird, though, maybe I've done too much this week. Overstimulated, overexposed. I don't think people who have broken down and gotten a prozac prescription should feel like this, like my brain's all sharp angles that aren't put together right and don't fit into my head. Sometimes I feel like all my problems are totally normal, everyone feels like this sometimes because life is hard, but there are ways to work on it and make a happy enough life and mind and everything. But sometimes, I feel like there's something fucking broken in here, and I'm really crazy, I just control it well. Why can't I feel good for the whole day after I acquire a job I like? I think I'll feel better in the morning. And when I start working on their/our/my tea blog and website I will link you guys to it and you will say nice things and I'll love you all and love my job and feel happy. And for now I'll go to bed and maybe have nice dreams. | | Sunday, September 6th, 2009 | | 6:22 pm |
I'm going to get a tattoo! I went to this studio today and talked to the guys there, and handed my little sketch over to a guy who probably has more skin inked than un-inked and who promised to make it look nice and artistic. It's based on tattoos that characters in the book I'm going to write are going to get, and I'm really excited. Different things freak me out about this than I thought would. Turns out I can walk into a tattoo studio and ask a couple of strangers to permanently scar me in a way that will involve me stripping to the waist without the slightest flutter of nervousness, but when people say "what is this design supposed to be" I'm mortified. It seems so personal. This design, these characters, they've been in my head for like a decade now, these people were my friends when I had absolutely no real friends, this fairly simple design took me years to come up with and I just handed it over to a stranger who is going to redraw it to look nicer. And he will, too, we stood around in the shop for twenty minutes and talked about it and he came up with at least one suggestion that was a)a brilliant improvement on my design and b)totally obvious. I feel like I'm peeling my skin off in front of people. And every person I have to explain the tattoo to I have to explain my book to as well, and fantasy novels sound so, so much sillier when you're briefly outlining the plot to a non-fantasy reader than they do in your head. I'm peeling off my skin and revealing Star Wars footie pjs underneath. Oh, and I mentioned what I was doing this afternoon to my father, and I think I actually physically transformed into a sullen fifteen year old for a few minutes there. My parents would never tell me not to do something, but they can exude "you're a lunatic" in a way that makes my fucking teeth hurt. There's a little voice in the back of my head that wants me to get a full sleeve just for him saying "well, she's an adult now, she can do what she wants" in that tone of voice. Parents. Jesus Christ. But overall, excited! I need this tattoo, it feels like. I want to draw it on in ballpoint pen every day until I can get it done. And even if it's scary as hell to tell people about the book and related things, it also feels, honest, kind of? Like I've been hiding the part of myself that meant the most to me for years, and now it'll be marked on the outside of me, a physical manifestation, so this isn't just in my head. I hope they aren't busy at the studio. | | Sunday, August 30th, 2009 | | 11:02 pm |
I'm in a holding pattern right now, I know that. Moving back in with your parents is like going into limbo, sometimes you're not even sure you quite exist. The phrase "get a life" actually means something for once. I feel like I'm observing the world from a distance, thinking about how I could fit into it, dipping a toe in occasionally, but not going for it. I can't stay here, spending too long not being real can't be healthy, but it's hard to step out. I feel like I'm waiting for something. I don't know what, though. A decision, maybe? I think I've made one though. Faith in my decision, then. It's so easy here. I'm reading some of the books in my To Read pile. I'm getting my drinking under control, again. I'm sorting through my thoughts at my own lethargic speed, processing information about the world that I've had for a long time but never managed to make sense of before, prevented by immaturity or stress or just not having had enough time yet. Some timer in my head is ticking down, though. The twitch in my eyelid is coming back. That's a sign of stress, even though there aren't exactly a lot of stressors in limbo. I think it's my body or my subconscious telling me to get moving, get a life. A daunting thought. It isn't optional, though. I have to do it, one of these days. If it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth doing. I feel like a little kid jumping off the high diving board. I never got used to the high dive. | | Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | | 6:11 pm |
Placebo just postponed their North American tour, by which I mean cancelled until further notice, because the singer's sick! Really sick, he fainted dead away on stage last week. I was hoping that not hearing anything more since that happened meant he'd gotten better, but I guess not. He has to take six weeks off, by doctor's orders, and that means the show I'd been so excited to go to for the past month is cancelled. And someone I like is really sick. This sucks. I have to stop getting attached to real people. | | Saturday, August 15th, 2009 | | 10:12 pm |
Watching Lost with friends was kind of fun. Watching Lost again, listening to my family argue, is less fun. Less fun to the point that I am going to freak out and start screaming at them. Then I would insist on switching to a show that a)I haven't already seen, or at least b)that isn't full of characters that are even more infuriating than family members. Why are these people so stupid? Jack supposedly went through medical school. How did he make it when he has all the sense of a five year old with a head injury? And why doesn't the plot ever advance in the first season? | | Monday, July 20th, 2009 | | 11:35 pm |
Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart is totally my OTP, but it's taking a real beating from Brian Williams/Jon Stewart. Oh, the tension! | | Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | | 11:04 pm |
Things That Make Me Happy: paperback sci fi/fantasy books written in the last ten years two to three drinks exactly the right song reading good fanfic writing fanfic getting comments on my fanfic friends fandom* *in related news, I am in love with Dave Lister. LOVE. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND OUR BOND. Tragically, this means that Rimmer will surely be paying ninjas to kill me any day now. *runs off to indulge in delusions of grandeur* | | Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 2:15 pm |
Life has been spinning around me like a hurricane for, roughly, ever, but I woke up today and it's gone still. After I decided to skip yoga class, of course. Why do they have it so early in the morning? By which I mean, before noon at all. I do not approve. I'm not applying to any more master's programs. I'm not going to be getting into anything in this economy, and a terminal master's program was always an odd idea in my field. So, now what? Start improving my app materials for the next round of doctorate program applications. God, I don't want to do that. I don't think I could open the file with my writing sample in it without hammering back a few shots. Maybe if I give it some time I'll be more comfortable working on that stuff. I have time, now. I have months and months until the deadlines come up. And many more months after that before a program starts, if I even get into one. I could come up with enough work to do to improve my apps/ general grad school prospects to fill up that time, probably. I never put in the raw library time I should have. I don't know if I have the will power to walk into a library and start reading through it. It's somehow stressful, somehow terrifying. I tell myself to get up and walk over to the pile of books just sitting in the corner of my bedroom and my legs don't do it, I just keep staring at the wall. I wonder if I even should. When I ask professors how I go about getting their job, they ask me if I'm sure I want it. If I've tried anything else. I hate that. I picked a career, I want to zoom full speed ahead for it, doubt-free. I am anything but doubt-free, of course. There are other things I'd like to do. I want to front a band, be a full time professional paperback fantasy writer. But I can't write music, and while I can write fantasy, novel length publishable material is damn hard to come up with. The longest thing I've ever written was a hundred pages, and it was bandslash. No, I cannot do find and replace on the names. It's healthily based in the canon, which is several wealthy people who live in a country with strong libel laws. And when I sit down to write my own personal novel I stare at the blank screen, hating every idea I come up with. I should get a real job. Living in my parents' house waiting for my life to start again makes me such a loser I can't decide whether to laugh or cry. Not to mention, they've spent enough money putting me through school, it's time for me to pay my own credit card bills. So, barista job, then? My resume is built for classics programs, by classics programs. Not to mention, the odds of me upending a hot cup of coffee over an innocent passerby within a week are uncomfortably high. So many choices of what to do with my time. Read or write, study or work, hell, I have about a million hours of TV to watch and so many books in my To Read box that they don't fit in the box. But I'm sitting here and not starting anything. It all seems horrible. I don't want to do anything. I've always had too much inertia. You'd think I'd have learned how to handle it by now. | | Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | | 9:54 pm |
No matter how long I spend on the east coast, I'm never quite used to it. Or maybe, not as used to it as I am to Seattle. I come back here and I'm like, o hai, way the world is supposed to be. Little things, people speaking Vietnamese in the grocery store, visible mountains at least half the time, rain. I miss the rain, I swear. When I go anywhere else I feel like a plant that's drying out. Makes it awfully tricky, since most of my friends are on the east coast. OK guys, here's the plan: all of you move the Pacific Northwest. Yeah? Yeah? |
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