What. The. Hell.

I have been a little worried, lately, what with all the overheated rhetoric, that some asshole would finally be pushed over the line and assassinate Obama. It may be time to drop the "a little" from that statement.

Seriously, when the hell did my country become one where "jokes" like that are possible?

Bill O'Reilly was SLAMMING Ted Kennedy on his show tonight. I suppose it's not a surprise, after his reaction to Dr. Tiller's death.

I wish I lived in a world in which I could know less well that I don't need to be surprised to be appalled.

GIP, courtesy Rep. Barney Frank.

Explanation:

So I have been on a nostalgic-media kick lately—replaying PSX games from middle school, rereading X-Wing novels, etc. It is probably part of some complex psychological reaction to the stress of moving and exams and omgeleventyone. Anyway. That is the frame.

"Be a Man" from Mulan just came up on shuffle, and all asudden I got the strongest flash of memory. chibikaijuu and reservoir and white_howler were in someone's basement, and I think rosegurl and annalee might have been there too? Anyway, we were singing along to Disney CDs, and when "Be a Man" came on we all started belting it at the top of our goddamn lungs. Right after, someone, I think Kat, made a crack about our very deep and manly singing voices.

I am not a person who glorifies her high-school days by any stretch of the imagination. But sometimes I understand why other people do.

http://naamah-darling.livejournal.com/410499.html

USPS is likely to close as many as two-thirds of its offices within the next few months. Mail service will be in some cases replaced with private contractors, which realistically means that mail coverage will shrink and that prices will rise. Not to mention, I trust USPS with my rent check. I don't trust some fly-by-night private operator.

This will also mean that quite a few postal workers will lose their jobs, in This Economy. Now, the friends I've had who've worked for USPS have not precisely liked those jobs--they call it "going postal" for a reason. Nonetheless, postal work is a hell of a lot better than no work. We've got a huge fucking stimulus package that was, theoretically, about boosting jobs by paying for infrastructure--but a few government branches over, they're gutting infrastructure and cutting jobs?

My totally uninformed gut feeling, honestly, is that UPS has made a few select campaign contributions lately. Or FedEx. They're seeing the health insurance industry making its noises about it being socialism to be forced to compete with government-backed orgs, and they want in on that action.

I mean, what else could explain so monumentally fucking stupid an idea?

A groupmate just posted an extension of someone else's section and decided to submit the whole thing to our prof without waiting for pan-group review. I am trying desperately to edit before our prof notices because the new section contains sentences like:

here are four nuclear families that consist of one married couple and they are the families of Luis Curandero, Juan Milpero, and Samuel Pescadero--unless you count his son whose wife died then they would be considered an extended family.

There really is nothing better than capable literary bitchery.

"The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella was quick as its beginning had been warm, and they passed so rapidly through every gradation of increasing tenderness that there was shortly no fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or themselves. They called each other by their Christian name, were always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other's train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel." Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss—?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it."

--Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen

I was at home all day, aside from a brief walk to the Asian market for moar ginger. (It is slowly going out of season and is therefore now just cheap there, instead of obscenely cheap. Sad!) I was therefore nowhere near the Metro, and especially not the east branch of the Red Line.

So far a lot of people have told me they're okay. This is good.

The pictures are hella scary though.

Mrargh. So, for a few weeks before last, I wasn't eating well--or rather, I was eating okay by normal-people standards, but not by people-with-gut-disease standards. The stress of holding everything together with work and school and etcetera was getting to me in a major way, and so I spent a lot of time either eating out or eating at my parents', neither of which is gonna give a girl lots of whole grains and veg.

Since my work schedule last week was Monday-Tuesday-Thursday, I had a nice long weekend to eat properly in, which was good because on Friday the past weeks' reckoning hit. By Sunday I wouldn't say I was feeling awesome or anything, but I was feeling pretty okay. This morning was great. I had oatmeal and then I brought in a salad for lunch.

But one of my co-workers brought in pizza, and in a moment of weakness I decided to have pizza instead. Ohgodbadplan. I feel icky and logy right now, and I'm downing some of the shitty work coffee even though I know it'll just rebound on me later.

Goddamnit. Can't eating like a total hippie half the time be enough? Does it really have to be all the time? This is not okay.

I read things like this and I just don't know how to cope. We didn't do that. We can't have. We're America, right? We're better than that....

Except we're not, and I can't bear it, and sure I can yell at my Congresspeople some but nothing I can do will ever change the fact that America did that. Nothing will ever change that.

I think right now I need to say, fuck art. Or rather, to make sure all the emphases work, I need to say "fuck Art."

I stopped writing when I started doing theater, and part of that was time. I'm still not writing in more than bits and drabs, even though I'm out of theater, and part of that is time. But let's face it. Time is not the whole reason. The other one is, I got too good at reading.

Back in junior year AP Comp when Fleischaker was making us close-read, I could only see what she was driving at if I concentrated. Somehow, though, in all my attempts to write better, everything gestalt-ed just before college. I turned into a prose snob. I grew out of that, but never out of the expectation that I was failing at writing if gold wasn't flowing on the page.

Two days ago I picked a book back up. Lizbeth lent me Survival and Migration, both by Julie Czerneda, forever and ago—Millie-summer, I think. I bounced at the time. Survival starts slow, and the prose is a tad clunky, and I just wasn't in a hard-SF mood. But I'd just read Falling Free, and I had a hankering for more books about scientists and engineers doing their jobs, and they were on my shelf... and it turned out that barely fifteen pages after where I'd put them down the first time, Plot started to happen in a big way. I raced through the remaining 400 pages that night, started Migration the next morning, and was so fucking hooked that when Migration ended, I bought the e-book of Regeneration (last in the trilogy) right then and there, because I needed to know what happened next and I didn't want to risk Borders not having it in. Even though the e-book had DRM.

The prose was still clunky, and there were a lot of other ways in which the seams showed—but I was still breathlessly reading along. Some of the characters were cardboardy and I loved them anyway. (Especially because even though many characters are a touch sketched-in, the relationships between them get very real and complex and interesting.)

I like Jenny Crusie, too, and Sarah Mlynowski. I like an awful lot of books that, to put it mildly, are not the kind I put in the "what have you have been reading lately?" section of my Hampshire app. (Though I had read all of those lately, too.)

So why, when I sit down to write, do I beat myself up for not writing the next Oh Pure and Radiant Heart?

So screw that. This was my dream and I'm not letting any more of those go. It would me nice to make Art. But it's not essential, and perfect is the enemy of done.

This entry has been crossposted to http://ungemmed.dreamwidth.org/1420.html. While I love and adore all comments, I want to encourage them there instead of here.

So, my dad (who has a government job) is always always always bitching about how his co-workers are incompetent dregs of society.

This morning, we were arguing politics. (My father is Reaganite-non-religious-libertarian, more or less. I am... me. We argue politics a lot.) Specifically, he was claiming that the public-service unions bankrupted California. I was simultaneously pointing out that it's a) it's a LOT more complex than that, and b) why the fuck shouldn't we pay teachers well?

He said "no, if you go into public service you make your choice!"

I don't understand, quite, how he can reconcile his dim views of his fellow public servants with the idea that public-service salaries SHOULD be as non-competitive as they are now.

This entry has been crossposted to my dreamwidth account. I'd like to encourage comments there rather than here.

When I was little, my parents had these terrifyingly ancient, picture-heavy Time-Life books about the history and function of computers. They were fantastic. I read them over and over. It wasn't solely, or even mostly, about the technical stuff. They had that bizarre, reverse-science-fictional quality characteristic of outdated futurism.

They were where I first learned about Charles Babbage, and the ahead-of-its-time Difference Engine. They were also, naturally, where I learned about Ada Lovelace, steam-age Woman of Science and the world's first programmer. Nine-year-old me thought Ada was AWESOME, and twenty-two year old me still does.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a day dedicated to celebrating the women of technology. I started working as a web designer/junior dev six months ago, so I guess I count as one now—but I'm not tacky enough to write a post celebrating me. Instead, I'd like to talk about (read: shill for) the Organization for Transformative Works, which (among other things) organizes the world's largest woman-run open-source project.

See, 90% of what I use at work, every day, fandom taught me. HTML-formatting my fanfic, Photoshopping anime wallpapers: all of that's what's saving this theater major from data-entry hell today. When the OTW held their last volunteer drive, I realized that it was only right to give back to fandom.

I joined AD&T, the committee responsible for the Archive of Our Own. I've only been a member for a few months, but even in my first meeting I was stunned by how incredibly open and welcoming everyone was. I was also incredibly happy to find that the Org's philosophies about design, accessibility, and coding standards matched mine, in ways that the Corporate World's didn't. So far I've only really worked on documentation and feedback-summarizing, but this week I'm starting to branch out and getting set up as a coder. I'm really excited about it. It's a chance to learn Ruby, and grow as a dev while getting something useful done.

And yeah, it helps that the OTW's a female-dominated space. In both my (tech-oriented) high school and my theater career, I was the only girl in the room an-uncomfortably-lot; it really does change things. I wish it didn't, and I look forward to the day when it doesn't—but it does. (Similarly, at work, it's really nice to work under a lead dev who's a mom rather than a snotty libertarian dude.) It's just harder, as a woman, to work in spaces where crude jokes about hookers are okay, and your boobs make people look at you funny 'cause they make you different. It's nice to know that in the OTW that'll never happen.

What I'm trying to say is that, even though I've only been there a few months, the OTW's definitely done right by me. I'm really enthusiastic, not just about their goals, but about the process of working for the Org. So if you've got spare time, and either coding skillz or the desire to learn, join me in it! It's awesome. We want you.

Am in scenic collegetown of Amherst. You can totally tell whether or not any given cafe (and there are a lot) has free WiFi by the number of people in it.

One of them has a fermented red tea that tastes exactly like Irish Breakfast, but does not have nearly as much stomach-killing caffiene. I am in love.

Common sense, however, was as chilled and bewildered as all my other faculties, and it was only under the spur of an inexorable necessity that she spasmodically executed her trust.

Ahahaha oh Charlotte Bronte I love you.

Confession: I feel that way all the time.

Yeah, I know, what a surprise.

1. A few years ago, I was reading The Bonfire of the Vanities as part of an attempt to read The Modern Classics. I started to bounce off of it early on, for a number of reasons: one was Wolfe's seeming belief that male characters were worth complex interior monologues and female characters only worth descriptions of their appearance. Still, I told myself that it would be silly to give up on a 900-page book before the 100-page mark—and around page 100 I got so! excited! because ohemgee there was starting to be a plot and one of the female characters was just placed into a conflict that would surely involve characterization beyond her clothing!

Then that characterization was "because she is a woman, she panicked and ran over a black kid." Book met wall with extreme prejudice.

I bring this up to illustrate the profound visceral reaction that can attach to encountering icky shit in books—even icky shit that you were half expecting. This visceral reaction needs no justification. Indeed, I believe it overpowers academic reactions to books. In doing so, I'm not privileging emotion over reason, or any such nonsense. I'm simply observing that a) story is a force of nature* and b) most academic critics got into litcrit out of love of books, and love is certainly more visceral than rational.

Because of this, even though I do not necessarily agree with all aspects of** Willow's initial reaction to Blood and Iron, I will defend to the death her right to have it.

2. I am profoundly upset that so many people that I admired in 2008 have spent so much time wandering around pantsless. I, selfishly and with an amazing sense of fannish entitlement, wish that they had not voluntarily placed a thick layer of tarnish over all their good qualities. It's always so messy when people step off the pedestals you've placed them on. (Whenever I see a post by someone new to the conversation but known to me, I hesitate, because I don't know which side they'll fall on.)

However, while I'm unsure whether to stop reading them or not—I read a lot of skanky things—I am sure that I should redirect my financial support of their work elsewhere—to people like Nalo Hopkinson and Tobias Buckell, who I've been Meaning To Read for ages, and to places like verb_noire.

3. I quote seperis, who's already said this and has probably done a better job than I would:

Speaking for myself, sitting here in comfortable privilege and mulling how much new material I have to read, I'm ashamed that in this, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain and I've profited immensely by way of clicking links like some progressive online course. And I have to be grateful, and sickened by it.

Somehow, this became about me, about white people, about our need to understand and our need to be explained to and our need to be better because from the start, with that single sentence, everything said and done was, apparently, supposed to be about teaching me to lie to POC who criticize me. Like I haven't had a lifetime to learn how to do that.

It's upsetting that this fail had to become all about educating whitey, rather than about knowledgeable conversations regarding real dilemmas. But, since it has, I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn that it's provided both myself and others. I'd like to thank everyone who has so thoughtfully and kindly provided that education, including-but-not-limited-to deepad, shewhohashope, and oyceter.

*Yes, I do see the irony in quoting tnh here.
**In the interests of perfect clarity: I agree with some. While I ultimately think that Whiskey is deconstructed enough to work, the way he's initially presented is definitely "oh shit! scary! run! bind him before he kills you!" If you're reading him as black first and a Kelpie second, being offended? Totally rational! I happened to read him as a Kelpie first***, but I hardly think my reading is the only valid one.
***Because I'm white, and to my shame the other way didn't even occur to me until Willow pointed it out

e: to add many footnotes

e2: 4. I suppose it is true, for very narrow and special-case-y values of true, that PoC have the "privilege" of knowing racism firsthand and therefore getting to tell the subset of white people who are willing to listen to PoC's experiences all about racism.

However, if one thing only has become clear in this failsplosion, it is that that subset is damn small.

However the second, I think that any "privilege" one acquires from experiencing racism firsthand is probably canceled out by the experiencing racism firsthand.

So, one of the classes I'm taking this semester (it's required for one of the UMUC certificates I'm going for) is called "Information Systems in Organizations." Sadly, in practice, the course only pseudo-matches its title and description; it's as much or more a business course as one about the high-level organization of information systems. This means that it is... not one of my favorite classes. (This makes me sad, because although the professor tries too hard to be funny he's the first prof I've ever had who plays to an online classroom's strengths rather than treating it as a physical classroom's poor cousin. Also, I know that if the class had more than the occasional token nod to public-policy uses of the material, I would eat it up like delicious cake.)

However! Although, ninety percent of the time the material either creeps me out or is actively Not My Thing, there is a ten percent that is AWESOME. And, true to that ten percent, I just learned:

Ben and Jerry's has a supply management system that tracks which pints of ice cream various suppliers' milk, eggs, cherries, wev end up in. So if a lot of customers call in to say "the ice cream from this pint tasted skanky, wtf," and all of the pints' milk came from the same supplier, Ben and Jerry's can say to that supplier "you suck and we are not giving you money any more." Better ice cream: totally a positive aspect of living in the future.

Q: is it acceptable to use the phrase "wretched hive of scum and villainy" in an academic-style paper?

(in context: "[Measure for Measure] portrays a Vienna which has become a wretched hive of scum and villainy under the lax rule of Duke Vincentio, who’s let anti-fornication laws go unenforced."

Also, am I the only one who was a touch underwhelmed by the Coraline movie? I mean, it was super-pretty, but I think it got the whimsy-to-creepy ratio wrong and I hated the pointless dude character who was tacked on just so that Coraline could be saved by her pseudo-love-interest at the end.