A Little Bit of Anarchy (But Not the Hurting Kind)

I'm certain that everybody here with US citizenship and of voting age will already be going to the polls. However, your friendly absentee voter is here to remind you to do so!



Pink Raygun reminds us why electing good leaders is important... their examples, Presidents Baltar, Roslin, Luthor, Clarke, plus the meteoric rise of one senator.

( One more political image and one bundle of unspeakable cute. )

Bonus, B-Day month meme.

RULES:
• Pick your birth month.
• Strike out anything that doesn't apply to you.
• Bold the ones that best apply to you.
• Italicize those that sometimes apply.
• Copy to your own journal, with all twelve months under a lj-cut.
• Tag 5 people from your friends list. I'm not going to tag anyone; do it if you want to.
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*tears hair* I WILL NEVER, NEVER, NEVER MISS ANOTHER CITALOPRAM DOSE AGAIN.

So much easier said than done.

AND PEOPLE SAYING ANTIDEPRESSANTS ARE UNNECESSARY CAN ALL GO JUMP IN A LAKE.

*reason for title=listening to Placebo on repeat. No actual sex involved. :P

Take a picture of yourself right now. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editing. Post these instructions with your picture.
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Self-medicating with YouTube and candy. 'S good stuff.

Okay, the cutting jokes? The emo jokes in general? Are OLD. I would rather hear that god damn "That's what she said" joke (to which I always want to respond "Are we thirteen now?") multiple times per conversation than hear another one.

I'm tired of "that's what she said" and "your mom" and people making fun of my penchant for studying in the library.

But all of that would be fine if I never had to hear another joke made out of cutting or someone saying "that's just retarded" again.

Yes, I have been doing these for the past month, but posting them will probably help.

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The SFF group has the best people ever in it. It's the first place here where I've been able to sit down and feel totally comfortable, not self-conscious, not afraid of tripping up or making social mistakes or looking bad in their eyes. I think it's got something to do with flouting some of the Mundane conventions - once you've had an in-depth discussion about which Star Wars novel one should start with, you've already bared soemthing that you hide most of the time, don't have much shame left. It's glorious. And, I think they like me.

The novice debate tournament on Sunday was kind of awesome. We won two cases and lost one. Unfortunately, it left me feeling like a burnt-out lightbulb for the next day and a half, and it was two rounds shorter than a normal tournament. As much as I enjoyed it, it took up a lot of time/energy/stress, and I'm not entirely sure I can make such a big non-academic commitment this year. OTOH, it was SO FUN! And I think could really help me think on my feet, argue better, speak in public better, etc. OTOH, I got a lecture from no less than two of the Varsity members on the importance of making eye contact with the judge - because supposedly if you don't s/he doesn't pay as much attention to you - and know for a fact that that just ain't happening. Basically, I'm staying in for the BU tournament in October, and then making my decision.

Also, watching Babylon 5 and it's awesome. Episodic, which is a detriment in my book, but it does politics and worldbuilding really well, and... oh hell, I LOVE RUBBER ALIENS. :D

When I was coming home from the library last night I stopped by the common room because they were having an amusing discussion about dumb people in their classes (e.g. someone in a 300-level History seminar on WWI who asked the professor which years it began and ended. Their textbook was called "The Great War, 1914-1918). But then it turned, somehow, to pharmaceuticals. Everyone started talking about how drug companies are the new cigarette companies, drugs are all really bad, and they don't even take Tylenol. And, okay, they have a point - doctors overprescribe, like say, antibiotics for a cold, and this is dangerous and leads to immunity. However, to be able to bash on this and say, "I don't even take Tylenol," is something that you can only afford from a position of relative health. They go on and on about how everyone takes too many medicines, and should all just be more natural. But I take four pills every morning, and I don't regret it. One makes me not be a wreck. One lets me breathe even when I run or climb stairs. Another lets me breathe if I walk by a tree or sit in a room with wall-to-wall carpeting. Another masks the pain from sliding knee caps and headaches. Without these, I would have a miserable, restricted life. Right now I'm glad I'm not on a nebulizer any more, but when I was on it it allowed me to have a relatively normal childhood, to be able to go out and play or ride a bike if I wanted to. I guess this is a form of the spoon theory - people who have never needed medicine for an extended period of time don't even consider the possibilities - but it made me feel simultaneously uncomfortable and angry.

Concerned Women for America lauds Breaking Dawn for its "strong abstinence message."

Hm. That may be so, but if the audience is absorbing all the messages from the book, they might want to just reject sex altogether and be spinsters (or be like Charlotte Shaw). Because, "Abstain! Then have good sex!" is one possible message, but "Get pregnant, have a vampire baby who nearly kills you in the womb" is another.

Okay, I have one debate case – about ENDA – written. I just need a second.

PS
Runaways 1 was gross, y/y?

( Explanation for my absences. )

Will be on chat hopefully with regularity.

I thought I should finally make A Post From College.

In brief: I really lucked out with my roommate. She's an effervescent computer nerd, and we get along really well. She also drags me out to be social (in a nice way).
I've met people! Like, new ones! No doubt this will lead to another installment of that continuing series, I Don't Understand How To Get Close (Without the Internet), but for now it's working out.
My premajor adviser seems very nice. She gave us a very reassuring talk about not worrying too much yet ("Study what interests you – it will work out"), which helped me calm down after the dean of first-year students' anxiety-making speech earlier that morning.
My orientation group was crumbier than I thought, but I met some nice people.
One of the hardest things to adjust to is eating at prescribed times and not cooking your own food. I'm really used to making one meal a day, minimum, so this is... weird. May have to make popcorn tomorrow to combat this. Also because I am a popcorn snob, and consider microwave popcorn highly inferior (same with store cookies).

This is the first time I've been online for a good amount of time in a while. I will try to be around more – have been super-busy or worn out these last few days, and then our Internet connection was totally borked for a while.

To be honest, I'm still getting used to the fact that there are Queer People My Age who exist in spaces other than the Internet, and it kind of blows my mind.

Go to my userpics and then pick;

1. Your favorite.
2. Your least favorite.
3. One that makes you automatically think of me.
4. One that you think I should TOTALLY use more often.
5. One that you don't get/needs more explanation/you have no idea why the hell I have it.

:D

Come on... would this lot get banned from Argo?

Karl Urban as Bones? I'm sorry, but, personally, I'll probably spend the whole film wondering what Éomer's done with his hair. Chekov, Kirk, and Uhura also get the WTF, Uhura with a side of "oh hell no." The rest of them look okay, though. At least this one looks fun, as opposed to the TRAVESTY that is the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. And any film that has Simon Pegg (probably) saying that the dylithium crystals canna take it any more is good by me.

(If anyone's wondering about the link text, see Banned from Argo, by Leslie Fish).

My parents got back from the hospital at about two AM. Everything's fine, Dad's on some residual painkillers but it's mostly cleared up (until next time, of course...). Thank you all for the good vibes! At about 11-something a thunderstorm came through, whereupon Godzilla went frantic and tried to climb vertically up me, and when she saw that nobody else was home she insisted on running through all the rooms looking for them. Poor girl. *cuddles*

For any other SF writers – or just SF fans – there's a site called Atomic Rocket Ships of the Space Patrol that has answers to a lot of basic questions about the mechanics of things like artificial gravity, interstellar empires, FTL/STL travel, space wars, aliens, and, of course, atomic rockets. They're definitely basing their examples on hard SF (Heinlein! I fucking love Heinlein!), but even if you're not writing that kind of thing, it's useful for fact-checking. I found it looking for verification on my artificial gravity system and ended up getting delightfully sidetracked. Oh, and their common misconceptions page is hilarious.

Also! Meme from sasha_lilyrat.

Pick a fandom and I will tell you who:
1. I would bake cupcakes for:
2. trust with the keys to my car (if I had a car):
3. put thumbtacks on their chair:
4. have a crush on:
5. pack up and leave if they moved next door:
6. vote for President:
7. pick as my partner in a buddy movie:
8. pair up:
9. vote off the island and into the volcano:
10. wheedle into fixing my MP3 player:

Mum and just rushed Dad off to the emergency room with kidney stones. I've never seen them get this bad so fast. It took two of us to get him down the stairs and into the car.

Fuck.

I'm gonna see Ned tonight!


Translation: Local indie theater is showing Lawrence of Arabia. C and I are going.

Fact: I am up far too late, but cannot sleep.
Fact: If you are up far too late, lovesick, and cannot sleep, reading A Deeper Season is a really bad idea.


I am currently enjoying A Deeper Season more than Komarr. This is probably because the former has more explosions and Cetagandan death squads (and I have the mind of a twelve-year-old boy!). In fact, I think romance in general needs more Cetagandans. Made a macro to this effect. ADS is also a good example of fanfiction "doin it right" – there's some objection to the main characters getting together, but it mostly comes in the form of "The Imperium will eat you alive," "Security will be a nightmare," and "But, heirs!" rather than "But it's a man!"

Um, no, sense I do not make this evening. I have class downtown at eight tomorrow.

So, the combined effect is that I'm awake but my brain is too fizzed-out to really work properly. Bgah.

Give me a pairing you don't know my opinion on and I'll tell in 100 words or roundabouts what I think of it.
(If you don't know whether I know the fandom, just ask. ^_^)

Um, life update later.

Love to all of you!

I was getting dressed when I head Mum in the yard yelling for Godzilla to drop something, then that she needed my help. Naturally, this translated to My baby is in peril!, and I charged out in jeans and a pajama top. She had killed one of the wild rabbits and was refusing to let it go. We eventually got her to drop it, but when I tried to pick it up in a plastic bag, she grabbed it by the head. Finally, I went inside, got a liver snap, and waved it around tantalizingly (Godzilla following me with corpse swinging from her jaws – it was not a small bunny) until she was overcome and dropped the rabbit in exchange for treats. Rabbit bagged and in trash can, Godzilla still sniffing around the garden for more. There are at least two living wild in the neighborhood. The Nextdoors, who grow a lot of vegetables, will be pleased.

I was reading this piece on queer characters in BSG and "Razor" in particular, and was intrigued by it until I got to the phrase "produced, queerly, without a heteronormative parental structure," and my eyes crossed. I really do think that the author is reading way too much into this. Yes, BSG is not exactly exemplary when it comes to queer characters - I mean, they actually have some, but why'd it have to be Admiral Batshit and a cylon? Criticism on that level I do not dispute. I'm also not sure why Kendra had to die, poor girl. It made the whole thing kind of pointless. Nor have we been terribly good with gender issues (S4 Starbuck, WTF).
But Pegasus was supposed to be Galactica in a dark mirror. There was no way it could be allowed to turn out wall, and that was established before Cain/Gina. If Cain represents anything, it's the danger of a military without a civilian authority to counterbalance it. Remember, Adama wanted to go on a war of revenge, too, and he would have if Roslin hadn't stopped him. There has been some analysis (elsewhere, can't find the link) of this being a heterosexual thing, and that Cain's queerness denotes imbalance, and I think that's a load of crap. Yes, there is a mother figure/father figure thing going on, but so far (thankfully) they're not "actually" together.

I got a very handsome hardback of Miles, Mutants, and Microbes today, along with Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties, which I am enjoying immensely, Farthing, and The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, which gives me more Lawrence James. (A heck of a lot of Lawrence James – it's an enormous book). Anyway, am happy for a while.

The Project Of Doomous Death for Fiction is complete and handed in.
We had a sub in Poetry last night. He kind of liked the sound of his own voice.
Last Music Theory and the Chamber Chorus end-of-year concert are tomorrow. Some people are planning a post-Chorus party, and I baked vegan cupcakes today so that CKS could eat something. S keeps bringing baked goods to class and I always feel bad that she can't have any. Plus CKS is the object of my strangled affections.

I... really find myself unable to look at any news for fear of coming across the Burma cyclone. As if the initial death and destruction weren't terrible enough, it happened in a country that doesn't provide support for its citizens or allow much foreign aid in. Within a few days, waterborne illnesses are going to start kicking in, along with starvation, AND so much of the rice crop was destroyed that the surviving population is going to start starving, too. And nobody can do enough about it.

Wendy and Richard Pini are putting ElfQuest online. It's free, and in (as far as I can tell) the original watercolor coloring, as opposed to that awful digital stuff. It looks like everything except the Wild Hunt, Dreamtime, Worldpool, and Wavedancers will be going up.

And now I'm off to read all the subtext I totally missed at twelve. Though even then I was smart enough to tell that Cutter and Skywise are basically married. :P

I've been thinking of picking up either Hellboy or Hellblazer, to fill the void left by Y: the Last Man and – sorta – Runaways. Only I'm a bit conflicted. Hellboy seems shorter, is rather steampunk, and I really like the art. However, Vertigo=<3, and Hellblazer would scratch my urban-fantasy-and-horror itch.
Speaking of Runaways, when the frak is the next issue?!?

I put in an order for The Man Who Saved Britain (a book about James Bond's cultural function) for Dad's birthday at the Coop, and as the lady behind the counter was taking my number down, she said, "Now, I bet you're from Europe." I denied this fervently – Bostonian, by way of California – so she asked if I had European parents, which is again a no. I get this reaction a lot. I think it may be a combination of enunciation, saying things like "lovely" a lot (plus slightly arcane grammar and extensive vocabulary), and having a deep voice. Next time, I'm half-considering saying my mother is Welsh or something. She is Welsh, only fifth generation or so, but it's partially true.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga has eaten my brain. I read Cordelia's Honor in about a day while furiously procrastinating for my music theory evaluation. Now, that was my kind of romance! Daring do, space battles, deposition, and absolutely no swooning. It also made me cry at one point (not the romance, something else), and contained a 'Ship of Absolute Win. Koudelka is, I think, still my favorite character, though he hasn't appeared since the very beginning of The Warrior's Apprentice. Am lending the first book to Imouto as soon as I see her.

In academic news, kicked ass on my theory evaluation, and finished Policy. Fiction final project kicking my ass.

In health news: medication does naught. Change coming.