| (no subject) |
[Jan. 4th, 2010|09:07 pm] |
Have you thought about picking up The Lost Symbol for its inevitable badness, only to balk at the prospect of reading 500 pages of Dan Brown? Not to worry! Maureen Johnson has slogged through the badness, and her summary is the funniest thing I've read in months. This, my friends, is how sporking should be done. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 4th, 2010|04:17 pm] |
The babykeets are getting fuzzy and their tails and wing feathers are coming in. They're still deep in the nest and I can't get any pictures without disturbing them, but they look something like this.
Since I probably won't be working for a while (more on that later), and will have lots of free, at-home time, I may decide to hand-feed the chicks. It makes them more friendly toward people, and helps them bond with you (or makes them worth more money if you decide to sell them). I'll need a cage and some things like that, but I think Daniel and I could swing it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 3rd, 2010|02:21 pm] |
Found funny from one of my mailing lists:
It's all going to be okay anyway, just ask Santa Claus for a new Mayan calendar in 2011. Sorted. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 3rd, 2010|09:36 am] |
It's back! My game is back!
The Nethernet is a FireFox add-on that turns the Internet into a game: leave mines, stash goodies, create portals to interesting sites. Surfing the Internet turns into a social affair, as players leave traces for each other to find. And the community is full of really great people. It's not at all time-consuming, unless you want it to be. It's just fun to see that other people have been to the same sites you have.
I'm not recruiting people for the in-game rewards. I really do love this game and I'd like to play it with my friends. HOWEVER, if you do decide to join AND want to help me earn some rewards, please use this button:
 |
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| Racism triggers |
[Jan. 2nd, 2010|01:11 pm] |
Having heard some people sing the praises of Charles De Lint and his Newford novels, I did some research, took the author's advice about where to start, and checked out The Dreaming Place from the library. It was kind of remarkable: I haven't been this angry about a book in a while.
It started around page thirty, where one of our plucky teenage heroines is having a spiritual crisis, and runs into her friend, a black fortune-teller with a bad Caribbean accent and a tendency to refer to any and all magic as "juju". Hey, a Magical Caribbean Black Person! That's original! At this point, a combination of optimism and train-wreck syndrome spurred me on: I was hoping it would get better, and wondering how bad it would get. Friends, it got bad. Magical Caribbean lady takes our heroine to see a man who is better at magic than she, to help with heroine's haunting problem. Magic Man is Native American: you can tell, because he's got a tipi made of sticks in the middle of the abandoned room he squats in. Oh, and we're told he belongs to some tribe "in the Angonquian language family". The police come to oust the squatters, and Magic Man gets them out by transporting them to the Spirit World - by putting magical herbs in his magical Indian pipe. His pipe, people! A ritual object used by Plains Indians is being used by this man who, the author made sure to tell us, is not a Plains Indian.
It was at this point that I threw the book down. I'd have thrown it across the room, but I wouldn't do that to a library book. In short: Charles De Lint writes ignorant, racist crap. The end. |
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| December's Books |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|01:15 pm] |
48) Greywalker, Kat Richardson
49) Down To The Bone, Mayra Lazara Doyle
50) The Lone Ranger And Tonto Fistfight In Heaven, Sherman Alexie
51) Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown
52) Ash, Malinda Lo (Cinderella adaptations can be boring, but Lo puts a different spin on it. The "fairy godmother" is a quiet, Edward-Cullen-esque fairy man who captivates Ash and gives her gifts in exchange for her life. Ash, meanwhile, does the masquerade and the coach and the ball, not to win over the prince, but because of her growing love for the king's master huntress. A short book, but I enjoyed it)
53) A Great And Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray
Graphic Novels:
Ex Machina vol. 5-7
So that's 53/50 for the year. I did pretty poorly on my subject goals, as always, but I don't really care. I'm calling it a win, anyway. |
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| 2010 Resolutions |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|11:25 am] |
Continue to eliminate oppressive language from my vocabulary. I've had good luck with woman-centered insults like "bitch" and "whore", and I was able to remove "lame" pretty easily. This year, I'd like to work on removing all gendered/sexed insults: "dick," "prick," etc. I'd also like to eliminate trans*-exclusive language. In discussions of sexism, it's tempting to take a shortcut, to highlight the absurdity of sexism by saying things like, "yeah, these tits really inhibit my ability to drive" or something - but that kind of phrasing equates "woman" with "female." Similarly, it's tempting to talk about, say, "female characters" or "male authors" - but while "woman characters" and "authors who are men" look awkward, they're more inclusive, which is more important. I've gotten to a point where I say "female authors" and then correct myself; by the end of the year, I'd like the more inclusive phrasings to be second nature.
Own my classism. I've been in denial for the longest time, figuring that since I grew up on food stamps, I couldn't possibly be classist. I even resent the rich, like a good wage-slave! But I've internalized the belief that if I could get a higher education and "better myself," then so can anyone else. 2010 will be the year of educating myself on class privilege.
Stop picking fights with Daniel. I do this all the time. It'll probably involve therapy, working on my insecurities so I don't attack him every time he doesn't coddle them the way I want.
Join some kind of club or MeetUp group, and attend regularly. So I'll have no excuse to whine that I don't have any friends.
Stay sober. 2 years, 5 months so far, and almost half a year without AA. I will try to find a therapist who deals in substance abuse, or maybe a non-AA support group.
Speak Spanish more often.
Spend less money. I may take ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) radioobscene's suggestion and start a spending diary. I'm hemmorhaging a lot of money on meals, coffee and snacks, books I could get from the library, stuff like that.
Apply to Simmons
Get a new job
Learn to drive. Get my permit by the end of January. Log all the necessary road time by June, provided the pain in my shoulder goes away on schedule (by the end of February). Have license before it starts to snow.
My biggest problem is remembering that I made resolutions. So I'll post every month with a status update, if only for my own benefit. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 29th, 2009|06:00 pm] |
I did not get the receptionist job I was up for, sadly. To add insult to injury, I went back to CraigsList today and applied for four jobs. Two of them responded almost immediately, and both turned out to be ID theft scams. So in addition to submitting my résumé to a million places that might not even get back to me, I now get to waste time on places that aren't even real. And I'm angry. What convinces people that they're entitled to other people's money, as long as they can con them out of it? Look at who falls for these scams: the elderly, the young and trusting, the undereducated, the unemployed who are excited to finally have a job prospect. What makes a person think that it's OK to steal from the disadvantaged like that? Seriously, HOW IS THAT OK?
Bonus: my lower back spasm is back, so it's not like I can even work at the job I've got.
I hate everyone. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 28th, 2009|09:42 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | meme | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sore | ] |
Is it too much to hope that this is the meme I started a few years ago? Probably. Either way, I'm glad to have the chance to play again:
Leave a testimonial for me to put on my userinfo page... a few short lines advertising why I'm a good LJ friend/RL friend/internet buddy or what have you. Then repost this so your friends can do the same. |
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