at night I can't sleep

I toss and turn
candlesticks in the dark
visions of bodies being burned
already found a blog saying Jessie Pinkman from Breaking Bad isn't a villain and has a heart of gold.
I'd like to point out Jessie shoots a guy in the face in cold blood at one point in the series.
But, you know, just a lost soul otherwise.
The guy probably (arguably) had it coming but you know.
Still.
Here we go. Brony?
Girl? Who knows.
Let's take some bets.
Grill or guy?

I picked up the cake after work. It almost didn't happen. I was on the verge of maybe getting an apple crumble pie, but how do you write "happy harmony day" on an apple crumble? Whatever, all Elements deserve cake, even if it's in the middle of the winter blah season. So I ordered this cake at the last minute. Tomorrow my coworkers dine on cake! No if's and's or buts.

Pumpin' in the clip
so I dunno this blog is apparently about My Little Pony cakes.
I have to go to school tomorrow.
A way far away school way up in the frozen north in the middle of a horse field.
It looks like a prison.

Apart from the immortality of cancer cells puzzle (yadda yadda yadda), there's the 'how does this cancer manage to avoid detection by the immune system?' thing.

I'm thinking of the potential of avoiding rejection of transplanted tissue!

If you could get the cells to differentiate (and not be dependent on an outside source of mitochondria), could you get a viable, immortal dog? (Mayyyybe not.)

Are you retarded?
Like what the fuck am I reading

It took several naps, but I think I'm awake now! That doesn't leave much time for drawing, or checking that union collective aggreement for errors. Let's see, which is more important, combing a temporary document that's probably fine, or drawing something that will last forever? Foreverrrrr! Well, duh! here you are.

So I drew small and then traced that drawing via Wacom 

You own a professional artist's tablet to produce this shitty My Little Pony art?
Talk about a waste of resources.

Sunday, back to the furry nerd-fest for discussion panels.

Where all the cool kids are hanging out, huh.

In one week's time I will be driving to Bronycon, held this time at the Meadowlands exposition center in Seacaucus, across the water from Manhattan. There will be over 3,000 people attending.

Ah, damn. Used up my "where all the cool kids hang out" joke.
I mean, uhhh--
WHERE ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE HANGING OUT, AM I RIGHT?

I was up before the dawn and again at dawn, but the sun rises behind a whole bunch of trees and a low rise several kilometers away, so I went back to bed.

DAWN'S BEAUTY, CORRUPTED BY MORTALS AS TAMRIEL, THE REALM OF LORKHAN--
can you believe how fucking shit Elder Scrolls Online is?
I was hoping for a train wreck on par with The Old Republic where I could at least laugh at it but no dice.
Just sadness and misery.
Like look I get that Molag Bal wants to pull Tamriel into Coldharbour but that doesn't mean you actually have to torture me about it.

But yesterday I ordered a cake with Princess Celestia's butt symbol on the frosting so today I picked it up and carried it (while riding my bike) to work to fatten up my coworkers.

I learned from another brony blog that's called a cutie mark.
Excuse me while I fucking kill myself.

Apparently I have a hickey. "Oh! You have a hickey on your neck! Had a hot date eh?" Yeah, with a horse. "Is he or she cute?" Yeah, real cute, I really like her mane. "That's some hickey." A horse! A horse nipped me! Not hard...

Uh-huh yeah that's right you horse fucking weirdo I'm on to you.
Burn him alive, I say.

I have an ♪♫idea!♫♪ I shall call henceforth this winter gift exchange thing we do every year Hearth's Warming! The date is variable, it happens whenever we can get all our dispersed bodies in the same place, this year it's the 29th. 

Oh you mean Christmas?
December 25?

We've been calling this unfortunate wallow in consumption of consumer goods Giftmas for ages (we've sworn every year to reduce the bulk and expense with little success). But ponies makes EVERYTHING better. Hearth's Warming Eve has a nice ring to it, and NO ONE SHALL KNOW that it's a MLP reference. Mwah ha ha ha ! Only five more days until Hearth's Warming Eve!

Yeah better burn him out.

Speaking of getting the boot, one of the sites specializing in compiling and redistributing episodes of MLP:FIM, called the Pony Archive, got shut down yesterday. They weren't very pleased about that. Instead of being loving and tolerant, or at least showing grace and absolution, the remaining maintainers of the P.A. gave Hasbro the finger. And there was much debate on Equestria Daily. It's possible that Hasbro was required to show that it was protecting its trademarked intellectual property (or risk losing it again) and P.A. took the fall. I doubt these actions will go much farther as the show, like the Budweiser spots during the Superbowl, is merely advertising for Hasbro's toy line. Hasbro benefits enormously from the free redistribution of the show and the buzz it's generating. The target audience, young children and their guardians, are the least likely to scour the internet for free downloads of the show.

>target audience is small children
>primarily 20 something nerdlings
welp.

Last night I had trouble sleeping and all day I've been bubbling over with excitement. Why am I so excited? I DON'T KNOW! I'm not nine. It's just that over the weekend someone offered to order a batch of custom pins showing Rainbow Dash's cloud-and-lightning-bolt cutie mark (butt brand) and Equestria Daily picked it up. I ordered five. I got my invoice on Sunday. I decided I would illustrate the envelope and the card with ponies. So Monday evening I planned out what I would write and draw, hunted down the pictures I would copy and got out my sketchbook. And erased a bunch of 30 second nudes I'd drawn last year at a "life drawing" panel at a con.

Nudes of ponies more like you fucking pervert.
Also have you guys noticed I'm copying a large amount of this fuck's text just to make a complete thought for him?
Like scale that shit down, son. We gotta write the My Little Pony blog slowly.
HOLY SHIT THIS BLOG IS FUCKING BORING I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE HIPPOS AT THE ZOO WHERE YOU WORK YOU BORING SHIT
FUCK
SONG OF THE NOW.

DEJA VU

This blog seems familiar to me. I don't think I've reviewed it, though?
I could check but let's not do that. I think it's best to let me go until I catch myself.
Pantryslut.
This seems so familiar--

1. I found my copy of Les Miserables. For some reason I feel compelled to note here that I am not a fan of the musical and that's not what inspired me to pick up this tome -- I have been meaning to read it for decades, actually, since before the musical became popular. I think I say this partly out of reflexive "I'm not trendy" punk attitudes, but also partly so you all know I am not going to be disappointed that it takes a full novel's worth of words before we even meet any of the more famous characters. And that's before the digressions about the sewer systems and such.

>1200 pages
>takes decades to read
just admit it's boring and you don't like it and you don't have to like everything classical just because academia tells you to.
I don't like Shakespeare. I think he's overwrought, his plays have serious pacing issues and all of his underlying ideas are ripped right from Dark Age writers with barely a thought given to adapting the underpinning philosophies of them for a then-modern audience.
He was a competent dialogue writer.
Know who else writes competent dialogue?
Stephen King.
I don't like Stephen King's writings either but he seems like a decent enough dude. I don't have a problem with him.
But to call him the Bard and devote high school classes to him?
I think not.

3. I love that Les Mis can be considered lightly abridged when one leaves "only" 100K words out of it. (I am reading the whole unabridged enchilada.)

For the record: 120-130k words is considered a full length novel.
You can omit an entire novel of text from Les Miserables and it's still considered only lightly abridged.
So clearly Victor Hugo had trouble getting to the fucking point.

A zillion and a half of you have probably already seen S. Bear Bergman's article in Slate today, on "gender-neutral" parenting and suchlike; if not, it's here.

Link cut because not on my blog--
and clearly EVERYONE is up on the latest gender-neutral parenting techniques.

In my very early 20s, I was deep into fairy-tale revisionism. Especially feminist fairy tale revisionism. Back then it wasn't as popular as it soon became, and most of the examples of what I was interested in were poetry. Lisel Mueller. Sandra Gilbert. Olga Broumas. Anne Sexton, of course. Of course.

Of course.
Rape rates in India?
Nah man, we're about women's rights here. Revising 3000 year old stories.
The amazing thing to me is how I'm an asshole for not caring about this shit while feminists ignore actual issues women have.

I've talked about this a little bit before, about how fairy tales offer both an alternative logic to organize stories around than the usual narrative thrust, and how fairy tales teem with ordinary girls being active. I was constructing my alternative canon, even though I didn't know it at the time.

Many of these texts -- and the spec-fic stories that were soon to follow, which I also read a lot of, hello Tanith Lee I still heart you like blazes -- liked to posit what happened after "happily ever after." What happened after the end? What really happened?

Also in my early 20s, I ran across a magazine called On Our Backs. I was smitten. (I blame photographer Phyllis Christopher, mostly). I was struck with a dream. It was a silly dream and I didn't take it seriously -- not to the letter, anyway. It was meant more symbolically. Someday, I would move to San Francisco. I would move to San Francisco and I would work for On Our Backs.

(I also thought I would go to grad school. I won't tell you here how many times and types of programs I've applied to. Just to put a pinprick in the way this is about to sound.)

Yes the heavy hitting issues.
I'm going to be a bigger women's right activist than almost every individual blog on Dreamwidth today:
I think rape in India is a serious problem that needs intense scrutiny and assistance from watchdog agencies and human rights organizations.
I know I've shit on raising awareness before (because it doesn't do anything) but at least I've actually talked about a serious issue women face and shouldn't and it has reached more people than read an average Dreamwidth.
Me: 1
them: 0

I moved to San Francisco in 1996.

In 1998, I went to work for the newly revived incarnation of On Our Backs.

In 1999, I quit after they failed to promote me.

Here's where the story ends.

What next?

Well, at the time, I got picked up by Black Books and spent five or so happy years doing lots of different tasks for them, from proofing manuscripts to editing anthologies to tons of publicity work. I also ran sex parties, which were our main fundraiser.

I ran sex parties for a while even after Black Books went bankrupt. And then I got pregnant and stopped. And the world changed, and the world moved on, and the owner of Black Books jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge last year, and I am still here, once again trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. With my time. With my talents.

"talents"

5 Must-Haves for Absolutely Fabulous Sex

Turkey baster--

1. Easy and Affordable Access to Reliable Birth Control

It's no coincidence that the so-called Sexual Revolution debuted shortly after the invention and dissemination of the Pill. And don't think social conservatives haven't noticed this, too, and this of course is behind their attempts to roll back access to birth control of all sorts. Pregnancy is only one of many health perils associated with partnered sexual activity and it's only a risk if you engage in a very narrow – but very fun – range of sexual acts with parts that are biologically compatible for facilitating human reproduction, but still. Even if you don't have any cause to use it yourself, birth control, cheap and easy, means more fun for everyone. A rising tide floats all boats, as it were.

THE MORAL DECAY
OF AMERICA
>implying societies didn't have (relatively) sophisticated forms of birth control since the Roman days
someday people will finally learn that there really is no new idea.

2. Affordable and Accessible Child Care

So, you used those anatomical parts of yours to facilitate human reproduction anyway; that doesn't mean you're not still entitled to a robust and varied sex life. As many people in this room already know, I am a parent of twins and thus this issue has particular relevance to my life at the moment. But seriously, folks. Child care. 

So you didn't take the cheap birth control effectively and now it's the state's fault?
Take care of your own fucking kid you spoiled prat.
That's a British term I am desperate to shoehorn into American language, incidentally.
That and poofter are the two terms I regret not being able to say unpretentiously.

So you can go see the gynecologist when something's up down there or you can get to the imaging lab when it's time for your annual mammogram. Actually I think my mammography lab does have a little waiting room with coloring books off to the side. But it also has a quiet room with waterfalls and plush white robes and lots of oversized photo prints of flowers and butterflies. You know. In case standing around half-naked without your bra on doesn't make you feel feminine enough. But I digress.

But while I'm digressing, how about number three?

That's not child care.
That is prenatal care.
Hey I'm not about to tell a mother what's what on birthing babies but you know you probably should check your terminology a little.
I've learned in these past few weeks that to a feminist words can mean whatever the fuck you want them to mean and dictionary definitions are for the patriarchy but seriously child care and prenatal care and neonatal care are different things.

3. Universal Health Care

Because being able to pay for annual mammograms and trips to the gynecologist and a little prostate probing and whatnot is really quite handy when it comes to maintaining a long-term healthy and happy sex life.

Hey, I can hear you thinking. Isn't this mission accomplished? Didn't we just get that, along with a buggy government web site and an ugly and stupid Congressional tantrum and all that? But no, dear listeners, I am not referring merely to the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. I am talking universal health care. I want single-payer and I want the death of insurance companies and their metaphorical heads mounted on pikes. Yes. I want well-funded public health initiatives and I want vaccines and I want everyone to get equal coverage because I'm a radical like that. You were starting to get that clue, right?

Good, because number four is…

>Metaphorical heads
WHY NOTHING WILL EVER CHANGE IN THIS COUNTRY.

4. Guaranteed Minimum Income

Because nothing is quite the bone-killer as economic insecurity and anxiety. Except maybe actual poverty. So yes. Food stamps help you get laid, but they're not enough. A guaranteed minimum income would relieve so much misery and allow us some of the leisure time needed to pursue truly fulfilling sex lives. Or at least practice masturbation until we've really got it right. Right? Because nobody should have to choose between lube, and food.

That just leaves…

What does this have to do with sex, again?
I can't believe it took me until #4 to realize this but what the fuck am I reading?

5. An End To Rape Culture

Not, please note, an end to rape – although that's certainly helpful too – but an end to rape culture. That is, a social culture which defines some of us as sexual actors…and some of us as sexual objects. And you don't have to be concerned with objects granting consent, see? They're objects. What's more, only some folks even get to aspire as high as objects – if your body or your gender or your personality is nonstandard – or you're old -- forget it. So. An end to a culture in which it's OK to say something like "I'll donate a hundred dollars to breast cancer awareness if you let me motorboat your boob." Does that not seem like a clear-cut example of rape culture to you? Think it through. 

Surprising fact about this entry bullshit non-entry about sex but is really just a thinly veiled attempt at pushing an agenda: I've cut about 2/3 of it out.
Oh yeah she goes on.

The hardest thing about Simone's gender identification stuff is dealing with stereotype threat. God, how I loathe the mere idea of being seen as one of "those parents." Forcing her whacko ideals onto her poor defenseless child. It would be so much more humane to tell the dear, "no, you're just a girl," or at the very least, to pick one and stick to it.

So do that?
If it's humane, you know, she's like 5 or 6 so she might need some guidance.
If you just say "do what you think" then how will that go when she can't do what she wants?
As a kid I had all sorts of weird thoughts.
A part of growing up is getting a better perspective on life.
Along with killing all sense of childlike wonder.

The second hardest is dealing with gender policing from other children. Adults are no sweat. Other kids -- especially kids older than mine -- are tricky. A&S look up to older kids. They believe what older kids tell them. They're more skeptical of adults.

Yesterday it was April's turn to get gender policed. She was wearing Spider-Man shoes and a boy on the bus told her those were for boys. She laughed like it was the funniest joke in the world. Dodged another one. So far, so good.

No light up shoes or shoes with roller skates in them. If I can't wear anything that awesome you're not allowed to either.

1. My father has been reading Proust as part of his "now that I am retired I can Read All The Great Books" project. However, it turns out that Proust is the perfect example for my father of why hewing closely to the canon is not always so rewarding. He reports that he finds Proust a great stylist, but he is repelled by the author's nostalgia for a petit bourgeois upbringing that shows no awareness of the suffering of others such a life is predicated upon. I am laughing up my sleeve, dear readers. 

COME
LET US ESTABLISH A NEW CANON.
So we've got Homer, of course.
Dante--
Dumas--
Machiavelli--
Marcus Aurelius
Julian--
Musashi.
Luo Guangzhong.
Wu Cheng'en.
Julius Caesar.
Virgil.
Cao Xueqin.
Herman Hesse.
Frank Herbert.
William Gibson.
George Orwell.
John Milton.
Eiji Yoshikawa.
Jorge Luis Borges.
Yukio Mishima.
Catallus.
Ludovico Ariosto.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Gore Vidal.
Robert Graves.
Bram Stoker.
Arthur Conan Doyle.
Edgar Allan Poe.
Dan Abnett.
Robert E. Howard.
H.P. Lovecraft.
Robert A. Heinlein.
Isaac Asimov.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
There we go.
I think that's a solid basis.
Yeah that's a fairly multicultural list, even. Should keep the pussy sensitives happy--
No women, though.
Well they'll be happy for a second until they realize that.
Got a few modern (ish) writers.
Oh this blog.
I did review this. Turns out the person is some kinda gender something or other I can't keep this shit straight.
Well welcome back. There are about 15 people who regularly post to Dreamwidth so expect to encounter them.
Blogging is dead as dead.
There's the other entry.
Not even that long ago--
Fuck.
2 of you kants already read this so you'll miss where I go back and edit it because I forgot the song of the now.
Unless you're diligent and reread.

MY BROTHER

This is a Dreamwidth run by a retard named Tim.
I'm also a retard named Tim.
We're like brothers.
Let's see what my wayward brother has done with his entire existence.
Brotherhood is not lessened when one brother is foolish.

Saturday, four days ago, I flew from Vancouver to Minneapolis, spent my layover chatting with my dear friend ADB who had come out to the airport to meet me, and then flew to London on a red-eye. (But not before ending my 31-month streak of never getting either groped or pornoscanned in an airport; there was only one checkpoint open at MSP that Saturday night, with only a scanner option. I had been planning to opt out if that happened, but at the last minute I decided I didn't want a random cis person touching me.

Holy shit
why is every Tim on the internet a complete twat?
Did I drain all of the coolness out of my namesake?
Well I'd be sorry, other Tims, but I feel you'd just be wasting it anyway.

Sunday, I arrived in London feeling like a zombie, since I'd only slept for about four hours on the plane, if that. Plan A had been to go to a coffee shop for a few hours and noodle around pointlessly on the Internet, I mean catch up on work, I mean... In any case, my laptop was almost dead and the power adapter I'd bought at the airport wasn't grounded, which of course I didn't notice when buying it, in my zombified state. So I collected all my belongings and headed down the road to the Superdrug, where I bought another adapter. Nope, that one wasn't grounded either, and so I embarked on a long, long journey to the Apple store in Covent Garden to get the "world traveler kit". 

And he owns an Apple.
And says cis unironically.
I know I said brotherhood isn't lessened when one brother is foolish not five minutes ago but I really feel this man is in no way related to me.
I have no biological siblings, in fact, so this wouldn't be news for me.
No any other kind of sibling either.

I've got a new blog post up at geekfeminism.org about structureless organizations and whether or not they are good for people experiencing marginalization in the tech industry. You can also read my past posts on geekfeminism.org.

Bro come on
writing for geekfeminism
that's a website?
You can write
for geekfeminism
Geek
feminism
feminism
+ geek
= get out immediately before I call the police.
My brief stint for writing for other websites included writing for another blog about how shit video games are.
Then it shut down before they paid me my money.
This fruit cup works for Mozilla.
I didn't know Firefox didn't have to check its cis privilege but apparently it doesn't.

I succeeded at moving to Vancouver! A bit of culture shock. (Feel free to come up with a joke about moving out of a mutable reference or something.)

I'll be sure to think of a joke once I figure out what the fuck that means.

Over on Twitter, I wrote: 'Cis people have sexes, trans people have "gender identities"! Men are from Mars, women are from Venus!'

And a friend who is cis asked, in response, 'Suggestions for (gently?) correcting cis people who're under the impression that "gender identity" is what trans people prefer?'

HELP ME FEMINISM WHAT DO I DO

One thing that I, and many other trans people say, is that if you're cis, and care about trans people, you should call out cissexism when you hear it: for example, if someone in your presence uses the t----- word (and is not a CAMAB trans person), or makes a joke whose humor is contingent on it being ridiculous or pathetic for CAMAB people to wear or do anything coded as feminine, you should inform them of your displeasure. 

Your rights end where my feelings begin.
MUH FREEDOMS

There is no need to do so diplomatically or politely unless you think that is the most effective way to send a message to the offender, and anyone else present, that this behavior isn't acceptable. Rules don't have to be polite -- stop signs don't say "stop, please". As an ally to trans people, you assert a boundary when you say "it's not okay for you to use slurs around me." And there is no need to be particularly nice in stating that boundary.

Fuck you, buddy.
I'll say whatever I goddamn well please and if you snowflakes don't like it you can fuck right off.

To me, though, use of the term "gender identity" -- which is, in my opinion, almost always part of a stealth tactic to invalidate trans people's self-affirmed sexes and elevate cis people's identities to the status of "biological" -- 

My sex is biological.
I was born with a big swinging dick and roguishly masculine good looks.
Nothing I think about myself will alter this glorious reality.

First and foremost, some trans people do prefer the "gender identity" terminology; some trans people do say things like "my biological sex is female, but my gender identity is male". It makes me cringe to hear that, and when I feel like I can, I'll try to let people know that there are other ways of talking about our lives that are more honest and accurate.

I've been putting a lot of thought into this lately.
So if it's all in your head--
all this shit--
and as we all know in my head I'm a space marine--
what else counts as reality despite being just in my head?
Like in real life I'm a single guy but in my head I'm banging all 9 members of Girls' Generation.
Transrelationship.
Yeah that's right.
All 9 of them.
At the same fucking time.
Check your fucking privilege cisrelationship scum.

But it's not a cis person's place to have that conversation with a trans person, and likewise, it's also not a cis person's place to claim they know what set of terminology is right for all trans people.

Especially that one that dyes her hair blonde.
I'd give her a spanking for that shit.
The High Lord Zeus has given you flowing, silky black hair.
Why you gotta dyeing it blonde like that?

Here's what I suggest you do instead if you want to call out terms like "gender identity", and you're either cis, or being seen as cis: shift the focus to cisness, instead of transness. For example, you could ask: "Do you have a gender? Or do you have a gender identity? Do you feel you know what your sex is? If so, how would you feel if someone else told you they know what your sex is, and the sex you know you are is just a 'gender identity'?"

I dunno about this but I'm banging all 9 members of Girls' Generation in spirit.

Even using the terms "cis" or "cissexual" bothers some people because they would just rather be called "normal"; if "cis" and trans" are adjectives of equal status, neither one marked as the "default" state, then it's almost as if being cis isn't any better than being trans.

What would Aurelius think of this bullshit?
I don't know if he'd even know what the fuck.
I'm not sure I'd want to subject a guy fresh from the year 170 to this.
You have like 2000 years of history to catch up on so here's a horseless chariot, a magic slate and a giant bird made out of metal and it's all downhill after that.

By getting cis people to understand that they are cis, that the way they relate to their body and to the labels they were coercively assigned at birth are not universal but are simply their subjective experiences (no better or more real than anyone else's subjective experiences), you can encourage other people cis people to step off the pedestal, and relate to trans people as equals rather than superiors.

What the fuck are you talking about?
I literally haven't read a single word of this until just now.
I'm not even sure what I'm talking about anymore.

If you can name yourself as "cis", that's one step towards realizing that trans people are not flawed versions of yourself, but rather, people who are different from yourself, just as you are different from us.

My favorite member of Girls' Generation changes pretty much every week.
Right now I'm big into that one that speaks English.

In my opinion, "gender identity" serves a similar function to language that marks "trans" but leaves cisness unmarked. The language of "biological sex", being "born a man" or "born a woman" (which sounds painful for the individual giving birth), "chromosomes", and so on, all sound scientific, but in this case they're serving a decidedly political function: to lend legitimacy to the idea that people whose sex is different from the sex they were coercively assigned at birth do not exist.

MUH CHROMOSOMES.
Apparently this person was born a woman and became a man.
I dunno.

I've mentioned obliquely that I've been dealing with some money issues this past year. I'm paying off a large amount of debt for health care (both emergency and planned care). Though I've been covered by health insurance the entire time, because as a trans person, I'm considered a second-class citizen, my insurers can arbitrarily decide not to cover my care. So a third of my net paycheck every month goes to paying off those debt. I'm about to move to a place without indoor plumbing just so I can pay back that debt faster and waste less money on interest.

Where the fuck do you live?
Saudi Arabia?
No indoor plumbing, what?

I donated to TAI because I benefit from sexism, and I donated to TAI because I benefit from having a more inclusive and more egalitarian work environment. Paradoxical? Not if you're familiar with intersectionality. Because I'm male, and have conditional cis privilege (that is, it's rare for people to question or invalidate my sex and gender unless I choose to mention that I have a transsexual body), unearned privilege accrues to me that makes my life and, particularly, my career easier.

Muh privilege

The other side of it is that I'm a queer man and a trans man, and a man who's not comfortable being in environments that subordinate women. I find homogeneous groups to be toxic. While TAI doesn't focus specifically on addressing homophobia and transphobia in open-source, what makes the environment safer for women is frequently also what makes the environment safer for queer men, trans men, and non-binary-identified people as well. The same kinds of "humor", "jokes", and political comments that get used to mark a space as unsafe for women are also used to marginalize those who are seen as men who aren't doing masculinity well enough: queer men.

Actual programming?
Irrelevant.
As long as we're PC about this shit.

Maybe people who can keep all that state in their heads are better programmers, I don't know. But when it's just in someone's head, it's not available to someone else who might want to work on the project. A friend wrote recently about the ways in which lack of documentation excludes new contributors from open-source projects, particularly new contributors who have plenty of ability but aren't comfortable joining an often-frat-boyish IRC channel to get documentation. Some people need documentation more than others, depending on their social placement.

"depending on their social placement"
there you have it: women need more help than men.
I feel like this asshole is very verbose, too. Rereading my post I am quoting huge blocks of text just to get the semblance of a point.
Have you ever heard of editing?

But reading the code often brings up an intolerable amount of performance anxiety for me. I can't understand it because my brain is going "you ought to be able to understand this better". Comments would help because it would remind me that the person who wrote this isn't omnipotent, and had to think hard about it in order to get it right. That they went through a process in order to create it, and the product didn't suddenly spring fully formed from their brain.

The point of a program isn't to function.
The point of a program is to make me feel better about myself when I figured out how it worked.
Hey if you want to do a good job maybe figure out why the latest version of Steam is causing Skyrim to throw up runtime errors.
Maybe figure that out and we'll talk about muh privilege.

I'm in need of both some advice, and some help. I'm currently living in downtown San Jose in an apartment that I'm paying $1600/month for. I like my apartment a lot, but the rent is (too damn) high, and I'm in a situation where I have so much medical debt (thanks to being a second-class citizen!) that I have to pay off to the tune of around $2000/month that I have very little money left for any expenses after all that is paid. It's not a sustainable situation, since I keep going over budget.

Second class citizen raking in three times what I make.
I guess that makes me about a sixth class citizen.
Oh right but I forgot I have cis privilege and all that fictional crap.

When asking people -- especially geeks -- to use less ableist language, "intelligent" tends to be a sticking point. It's one thing to accept that r----- and even i---- are words that stigmatize people with intellectual disabilities when used as insults, much as calling an ugly sweater "gay" stigmatizes queer people. But geek culture is centered around the valorization of intelligence. It seems even harder to stop using "intelligent" as a compliment than it is to use "stupid" as an insult (and let me be clear that I'm still working on doing both in my vocabulary).

I have two new vocab words for you that I want you to start applying immediately.
"Fuck"
and "off".
Here are some words that you could use to describe a person, instead of "intelligent":

• curious
• hardworking
• well-read
• knowledgeable
• thoughtful
• open-minded
• creative
• attentive to detail
• analytical
• careful
• collaborative
• empathetic
• articulate
• good at listening

I'm an English teacher and based on my extensive qualifications I can tell you none of these are synonymous with intelligent.
None of them are even near synonyms. These are unrelated qualities one would believe an intelligent person might possess.
I can tell you that the assumptions you make about intelligence based on what you think is synonymous with intelligence is pretty breath taking.
1. You don't have to be curious to be smart.
2. I was born intelligent. Fortunately my (sometimes) laziness hasn't dampened this.
3. Your book learning has nothing to do with your overall intellect. Plenty of people are intelligent an uneducated. Just like there are many idiots (yourself) who are educated but not intelligent.
4. See above.
5. Insight, again, is a mark of intelligence but there are plenty of people who are thoughtful about simple tasks.
6. Unrelated to intelligence. Whether you are open-minded or closed-minded says nothing of your capacity for reason. There are many reasons to be closed-minded on a topic. Closed-mindedness is not an outright insult. I doubt many people are open-minded about pedophilia, for instance.
7. Plenty of people are intelligent while being totally uncreative.
8. As someone who is not always attentive to detail I can tell you once again this is no indication of intelligence.
9. Again, analysis is a skill intelligent people possess typically. Having this skill does not make you intelligent.
10. Now you're just getting silly. Carefulness? Really?
I could keep going and do all these but I think I've made my point.
Look at how many times I've just had to outright refute your word choice because these words mean entirely different things.

Of course, these words don't all mean the same thing,

More importantly, 1984, none of these words have even a close meaning to the original word.
Words aren't just some putty you can use to create whatever meaning you want. Words have a set definition that might change over time but you can't just decide that "good at listening" means the same as "intelligent".
What if you're intelligent and not good at listening?
Is that person branded stupid?
Meaning comes from how you arrange the words into thoughts. Doing this bullshit makes language less concise and clear and just makes it more difficult for everyone else.

This should be a sign that "intelligent" is a vague word. So why not use a more precise one?

"Leonardo da Vinci was a genius" vis a vis "Leonardo da Vinci was articulate."
SEE HOW THESE HAVE TWO ENTIRELY SEPARATE MEANINGS?

One thing these words have in common is that unlike "intelligent", they don't suggest an innate quality that a person is born with that can never be added to or subtracted from. A person who is not well-read (for example, a baby) can become well-read, given enough time.

I was born intelligent.
I'm not about to apologize for it. That is the way it is.
Fuck it it's time for bed but I'd keep reading this bullshit.
Maybe Friday?

HERE I GO

I know before I said I'd do that ONTD_Feminism thing but I really think I need to tease that further.
Besides I clicked on this by mistake and it's way more entertaining.
Monday for ONTD_Feminism, I promise.
This is Lair of the Dragon Lady.
When I hear the term "Dragon Lady" I think of a mysterious and hot Chinese woman.
So imagine my surprise when she's a black woman.
I guess you can just call yourself whatever the fuck you want. Whatever.

Comments disabled because this is not open for discussion.

I would like to make a general announcement to anybody who comes here as a guest of this LJ.

This is MY space. As long as it's within the terms of service, I can do and say here whatever the fuck I want, and I don't owe anybody shit. If you can deal with that and post here like you have some home training, you're welcome to post.  

K.
I'd prefer just to post about your space from my space.

It may come as a surprise to some people, but I'm actually very forgiving. It actually takes very little to earn forgiveness from me.

Can't say I really care.
Why am I posting about this?

Which brings me to social justice and the culture of self-flagellation and/or grovelling as apology.

I'm sure you've seen it before. Privileged person shows ass, gets called out, then follows up with an apology that is less about acknowledging a mistake and moving on and more about how they feel oh so guilty about their privilege.

I'm not sorry for being a white guy.
If you're waiting for that apology from me I suggest you stop holding your breath.
There's this pattern of behavior I notice in White men that really has to stop. It goes like this:

• I say something critiquing or poking fun at White privilege, male privilege, and/or straight privilege.
• White man decides that I'm hostile and angry and personally attacking him - as though he knows me and my thoughts/feelings/beliefs better than I do. And certainly those feelings matter less than his own because Black women are (to coin a phrase) "rhino-hided she-beasts" until proven otherwise.

This is cross-posted from another blog but as near as I can tell she wrote this.
So what I'm already getting from this is you're someone who can dish it out but can't take it and because you can't take it everyone else is somehow an asshole.
Maybe he's just critiquing the sensitivity of black women.

• White man decides to verbally put me in my place by attacking my intelligence, my sanity, or my morality - as though I must be stupid/crazy/evil to say what I say. They have learned the lesson very well - Black women are intellectually and morally inferior.
• I shut up and keep my pain to myself because it's no use talking to the person who does this. I've been trained very well and know that I am supposed to remain silent in the face of White/male anger and disapproval.
• The person who does this walks away with no clue how fucked up this whole thing is. They too have been trained very well and know that there's no point listening to that Angry Militant Black Bitch about anything.

In fact, there isn't a good reason to listen go an angry, militant anything because when your goal is to engage in a dialogue then by definition you're looking to change someone's mind about something. Know who isn't doing a lot of critical thought?
Angry, militant anythings. 

Over the past few days, I've been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting, and I'm starting to believe that POCs need our own movement that comes at social justice from our ways of doing things.

What is your way of doing things, exactly?

White folks just don't know what they're doing, and our time is better spent empowering ourselves than trying to convince them to use their power correctly.

You're right. White people have accomplished relatively little in history.
Wait--
No, really. Let's make a short list of what white people have accomplished:
Rome
space travel
computers
antibiotics
the Haber Process
cars
trains
video juegos
Dire Straits
but you're right.

This is not some Black militant separatist bullshit. This is people who know what's up understanding that if we want freedom, justice, and equality for all, we have to do it the right way, not the White way. 

Where we do things the right way, not the black way.
See how racist this shit is when you just reverse it?

I'm going to speak about my people, Black people, African Americans. Chattel slavery was the most complete system of dehumanization ever designed. Slavery did it's damndest to take everything from us: home, language, family, history, religion, freedom, life, happiness. Slavery inflicted every conceivable violation upon the body and spirit on a scale unprecedented before or since. It's nigh unfathomable for any of us living today to comprehend what that was like. It tried to take everything human away from us.

Well not you because you were born in the 20th century but please, do go on.

I'm a tough nut to crack for a variety of reasons, not the least being that I have a very strong weeding-out process. Apparently I can be pretty intimidating to a lot of people. Not sure why. It's not like I have a history of violent outbursts or something. Then again, it's possible I can be hard on fragile egos.

Watch out, internet badass over here.

I think the issues with nerd culture and fandom boil back down to intersectionality imho.

Intersectionality.
Of course.
That's a thing, is it?

And as a black man whose lived in the south his entire life, THAT should tell you something.

This is a guy--
what--
Apparently this is a woman?
I don't understand.
Nor do I care.
Anyway this blog kind of devolves into her (him, whatever) just linking me shit I'm supposed to read and then me promptly not reading it.
So it's a belligerent black woman trying to get me to read bullshit I won't be reading. Just like my college years.
Anyway this blog was kind of a dud I'm really sorry.
Goodbye.
STAY TUNED FOR MONDAY

Gender Dysphoria

I really like the term "dysphoria", actually. Just like utopia, there is dystopia. Just like euphoria, there is dysophria. Interestingly, Firefox only recognizes the positive terms as words.
Anyway, I'm sure you can guess what's coming.
... I don't think this bears further introduction, really.

If you could ask the leader of your country anything, what would it be?

What's it like knowing you are inept and weak?

"How do you plan to do on living with this knife jammed straight through your heart?"

All right take it easy. He's inept, but unfortunately that isn't a crime worthy of death.
It should be I'll grant, but it isn't.

No, not really. Few things are worth killing over, and I don't think this is one. Besides, killing a politician for being corrupt and morally bankrupt would lead to either a lot of work or (accurate) accusations of hypocrisy when you didn't do all the others.

Very true.
I've often thought that killing one politician for being scum would necessitate a lot of killing.
Then I read that samurai would often obliterate entire familial lines for similar reasons, as did the Romans so I can't say it isn't impossible.

I feel slightly sour, tonight. As though I've had a couple of drinks, and maybe not enough to eat, and then the drink has soured inside me and made me the same.

It's not to do with events. I had a really good night on Thursday, a nice night in a pub on Friday, and exciting trip to Newcastle on Saturday to do vampire roleplaying, and a fun afternoon at a munch today. I don't remember much of today, I was too tired, but it seemed fun at the time.

... Is this the second blog in a month that has prominently featured vampire roleplaying?
I hope?

What was/is your favorite class?

Pffffft I dunno.

Paladin.

Oh, wait, is that not what you meant?

LOL
Idiot.
Who has paladin as their favorite class?
I had an awesome paladin planned out once in the long ago dark time when I did play D&D like a nerdling, speaking of. Wasn't allowed to run it because he wasn't "lawful enough".
Cue 2 hour debate about the definition of law versus chaos.
Then they later added the class I really wanted to be to the game after I quit. Thanks a lot.
Grey Guard.

Apparently this is a thing I do now.

The entry is entitled "passing", incidentally.
As in passing for-- man or woman, as the case may be.
I'm guessing man passing as woman because it's the safe bet.

My appearance and mannerisms are acceptably within cis norms, and therefore I am no longer instantly read as trans by everyone I meet. I can tell, because in addition to the torrent of abuse dying down (several months ago) the torrent of whispers has also died down, and men keep hitting on me.

Yes, I am awesome.
Man, I am so good at this bullshit.

Other trans people have written about this like it's the holy grail. Like once it happens, everything will be perfect. I've heard the phrase "it's just so validating" chucked around with varying numbers of exclamation marks after it. I don't understand this

You're not fooling me. No deception survives my sight.

It's nice to be less visible. I enjoy that.

It's sort-of-almost flattering to be chatted up by men, until you realise they'd do that to anyone they believe to be in possession of boobs and a vagina. Then it stops being flattering and starts being irritating.

DECISION YOU MADE.
It's like in FFXIV when I advertised the fact I could fix your shit.
Then I got pissed when people started asking me to repair their shit.
No, I didn't. I just started charging.
I do like the people who think I'll fix their shit for nothing, though.
I'm not running a charity, buddy.
"But I have no money!" someone seriously argued today.
Well, come back when you do.
Goodbye.

It's not validating, not for me at least. I know what the general public think of me - I remember them shouting it at me. Now they've stopped shouting. So what's changed? They've suddenly stopped being cruel and cowardly?

Cruelty can be a positive trait--
I think--
cowardly is never good, though.

No. I've stopped being a despised target? No. I've merely stopped being perceived as a despised target (in a trans sense. There's still that whole "sexism" thing going on). They're still cruel and they're still cowards and they're still hostile to people like me, it's just that now I'm demonstrating that they're also relatively easy to fool.

Lord knows I wouldn't be half as rich as I am in FFXIV if people weren't easy to fool.
Is there a real life situation that the parable that is FFXIV can't be applied to?
Of course not.
Made some high quality horn glue today.
Another 600,000 in my pocket~
That was such a fluke thing, too. Just grinding some out to sell no quality. Make a little money on the side but mostly in it for the experience when bam, horn glue +2.

It's not validating for me to know this. It's not validating to know that I'm only considered a non-target because I am successfully lying (about being cis).

I'm sure there are people who would call me insensitive for calling her deceptive earlier but she just admits she's successful at lying.
The definition of deceptive.
Actually I guess success has nothing to do with it but the lying part does.

I can't place any trust in people who are only being polite because they don't know what I am, and I can't build any sort of friendship or relationship on that.

So you don't give them a chance to prove they wouldn't be polite knowing the truth--
Even if a guy were sympathetic to this situation and would still date you he has to know that taking more hormones than a pregnant won't make you an easy person to deal with.
Personally I don't think anything at all about this although I do question why a heterosexually geared man wouldn't follow my plan, but then again as I've demonstrated time and again most people aren't as smart as I am.
Common birth, common man.
This does raise an interesting point, though. If this person was born a man but can pass as a female so convincingly no one can tell (I don't buy it but let's assume for the sake of this deep, philosophical issue) and a guy knew this person was born a man but still chose to hit that, would he be gay?
I mean ultimately he was originally attracted to features that are feminine--
I don't know, honestly.
I just want to know why you'd mess with that when there are DBGs about.
One thing I'm willing to admit is from a philosophical standpoint I have a very narrow range of interests and this isn't one of them so I'm not equipped to answer whether or not being attracted to traps makes you gay or not.

was trying to describe myself physically the other day, and I couldn't work out how. There are plenty of words that I could use that are accurate, but they're only accurate in a literal sense, not in a contextual one. I could say that I'm "big". this is literally true. I am larger than the majority of women my age.

Of course, that is assuming this person is so feminine as to fool me, which has already been established as so unlikely it's almost impossible.
I'd say practically speaking being attracted to traps at the very minimum makes you kind of gay.

But if I describe myself as "big" then contextually that could also be phrased as "distinctly chubby". I don't think I am. I'm over a BMI of 25, but that's more down to muscle than fat. I could describe myself as "heavily muscled", but that conjures up images of body-builders.

... SOOOO FEMININE SHE FOOLS MEN!
You have a BMI that calls you fat but you aren't fat, it's all muscle tone.
I can literally only think of two people who are like that and they are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
It's difficult to think of two less feminine people than those two.
In fact, Sylvester Stallone is one of two people injected straight into the grim darkness of the far future without changes.

I have obvious muscles, but that's not what I look like. I could say I have an "athletic" build, but "athletic" is (contextually) carrying less weight (both muscle and fat) than me. I could say I'm "lean", but contextually I think that implies, well, a narrower figure.

No. I've seen athletic people and none of them have a BMI of 25.

I'm wide in the shoulder (and as it turns out not that small in the arse). I could say I'm "toned", and that's sort of true too... but it's the same problem as "athletic" - it implies an "I do lots of jogging" figure, which is not what's going on here. I could say "curvy", and that's true too, now... but I'm back on "big".

How about this? I'm a trained and highly qualified litfag who came from natural talent in the field. Show me your image and I will describe you.

I could just give some numbers, but what do those mean?

... A lot, actually. Numbers exist to eliminate subjectivity.

So I'm at a bit of an impasse. The two most common adjectives used to describe me are "cute" and "scary", neither of which is helpful.

No, those are the words I use to describe my FFXIV character and I guarantee you don't look like her.

I'm tired of being told my muscles will shrink. I'm tired of people telling it to me semi-gloatingly. I'm tired of people telling it to me "as a warning". I'm tired of people telling it to me as though it's a good thing. It isn't. I don't want less muscle and I don't want to have to work harder to maintain the stuff I've got. I'm not going to stop taking hormones, but that doesn't mean that all the effects are good and pure joy.

Yes they are. It's a marvel of technology.
If there's one undeniable positive of this entire thing it's that this is clear proof that the mastery of the technology of man is so complete it even extends as far as our biology.
No Space Marines yet, though.
Born too late to be a Knights Templar, born too soon to be a Space Marine.
WHY.

I don't want to lose an inch in height if/when my cartilage shrinks.

But these are things women are. They have less muscle mass than men (on average). They are shorter than men (on average).
Though I have met women both taller and more ripped than I, paragon of manliness though I am, so it does it happen that way but I'd hardly think someone trying to "pass as a woman" would consider losing muscle mass or height a negative.

I don't want to lose a shoe size while I can't afford to replace all my shoes (though if I could, fine I suppose).

Jesus, does this really happen?
There are drugs that decrease things as fundamental as height in an adult and it isn't somehow draining all the calcium in your body?
Why aren't there Space Marines, again?
I need one legitimate reason that isn't boo-hoo ethical nonsense.
I am starting to feel a little persecuted now. On the inside I feel like an Imperial Fist Space Marine and yet there aren't miracle drugs to make me look how I feel on the inside.
Some people might see a bit of difference between a man wanting to be a woman and a man wanting to be a nine foot tall genetically engineered killing machine who can spit acid and breathe underwater but I consider the issues the same at their core.

I don't want my cartilage to shrink at all if it means an increase in my joint problems. I don't particularly want a lack of erectile function - as long as I have this penis, I want to get some use out of it!

In fact, I'd say my desire to be a Space Marine is purer than your desire to be a woman. I would be willing to risk the incredible metabolic strain that claim so many initiates.

Futurama. A programme I enjoy, usually. Episode from season 7 (or possibly 6), titled

"Neutopia". The episode was basically wall to wall sexist stereotypes, with a pro-male bias. Also obviously the usual utter lack of acknowledgement that anyone trans or non-binary could exist. It hurts because I expected better, I think.

Futurama is a great show.

The only bit I could even half agree with was the romantic line that I might be paraphrasing: "I don't care what bits I've got, as long as it's you I'm sharing them with."

Nice line, cis writer. Now fucking try it. Come back when you've found out how dysphoria feels.

... Except that doesn't make funny jokes.
Leave the comedy to the professionals, please.

Today is one of those days. I'm not part of this society, I just happen to live in the same place.

I'm not part of society, using electricity and the computer and the internet and living in shelter.

Today I had one of those thoughts that seemed utterly revelatory to me, but which I rapidly realised would probably seem axiomatically obvious to anyone who'd already had it. Is there a name for those?

Common sense?
I don't know.
I'm still debating about how redundant the phrase "axiomatically obvious" is.
An axiom, by definition, is something that isn't proven (mathematically) but is so evident it doesn't need further proof.
Logically, shit like a + b = b + a.
Or, to make it even clearer, shit like a = a.

This is it: some people consider the definitions of words to be personal things - they consider that their definition is their and only theirs, and they don't mind that other people use the same word to mean something different.

I certainly fucking do mind when people have different definitions for shit than me. I've spent a great deal of time to make sure my speech is as clear and concise as possible and here you retards come along and fuck it all up.
Unless I've been defining a word incorrectly (unlikely) our definitions should agree. I hate to be narrow-minded about this but I can say with confidence that if our definitions don't agree there is a fair chance you are mistaken.

The slightly more surprising (to me, anyway) thing is this: from personal observations it seems this viewpoint difference is somewhat socially gendered. That what we might call the "personal" viewpoint is correlated with being raised female, while what we might call the "standardised" viewpoint is correlated with being raised male.

Call me a woman but I willingly acknowledge my viewpoint is often atypical.

This fits strangely with trans politics I've observed. Trans women (generalisation alert!) seem to argue more over the definitions of words, while the trans men seem to just make them up (or use them how they like) as they go along, and then get offended when you point out that they are nowhere near the usual definition.

I'd appreciate it if people would stop using bionics and cybernetics interchangeably, incidentally.
Cybernetics are an attempt to make an artificial living system (artificial intelligence, for example) versus bionics, which are an attempt to integrate man and machine.
They are both very important to the future of man but they aren't the same.

A troll on fetlife started a thread about having a munch for "those of size 12 and under, and admirers".

Fetlife.
Not the first time I've run into Fetlife thanks to Livejournal, you know.
Not sure what a munch is.
Dare I Wikipedia this?
Oh, let's.

A munch (short for burger munch) is a low-pressure social gathering for people involved in or interested in BDSM, usually at a restaurant.

Or "lunch" as we normal people call it.

He did this because he's a troll, looking for an argument, and some guy he was arguing with before had been in favour of a BBW munch. The thread was unpleasant in places. Most people who commented did not recognise it for trolling.

One common theme is expressed here:

"I'm inclined to agree that if BBW munches are perfectly acceptable, then this is perfectly acceptable too, though I'm undecided as to whether either is desirable, as I'm not keen on anything divisive.

I'm inclined to agree there are drugs that can decrease height and muscle mass but there aren't any to increase them. I'll agree some of the Space Marine implants are a little far off and perhaps a bit impractical but there should at least be proto-Space Marines if what I'm reading is correct.

But accepting one and not the other amounts to double-standards, on the usual basis that political correctness sides with the 'oppressed minority.' I wonder how many of the people who are objecting aren't actually over size 12 themselves but feel driven to do the right thing on behalf of those that are."

I don't want to date any fat women.
I don't care if that makes me a sexist pig but I'm not fat, I don't want my lady friend to be either.
That's probably what this guy is thinking, too. He just likes different things than I do.
I feel for you, brother. You have a difference of opinion and suddenly you're a troll.
Not really how trolling works, guys.

If we accept that group X are discriminated against, then we don't need to provide a service for not-X. We do not, for example, need a cis-people only munch to balance the trans-people munch that some misguided cis person set up in London. The point of equal opportunities is not to give everyone the same stuff and call that fair. It's to give people who are disadvantaged more stuff in an attempt to make up for the acknowledged disadvantage.

Yeah, that was pointless. But I'm grumpy about it.

So let me see if I can keep this bullshit straight: you're a man who passes (sarcasm quotes) as a woman and is indeed transgendered and you're into the bondage thing.
And there's a thing called a munch and bondage people do this, because--
Anyway, there's one for fat people (or skinny people) and so the other group wants one and everyone is butthurt.
Do you people post on the FFXIV boards, by any chance? Because all I'm reading is a lot of nonsense.

Also, in order for your description of yourself to be of any value in conversation, the words you use have to be understood or at least decipherable by the people you're having a conversation with. The phrase "kinky sex-positive polyamorous heterodemisexual queer panromantic femme genderqueer transsexual man" has some problems with it

Has a few problems, really?
Just a few?
"Polyamorous" is just fancy for "slut" in my book.

"heterodemisexual" I had to look up, and I'm not convinced it warrants a word.

I'd have to look that one up too but I assume it means attracted to the opposite sex-- demi means half.
Half attracted to the opposite sex.

Apparently "demisexual" means you're not sexually attracted to people unless you're romantically attracted to them (which doesn't really seem to need saying),

On the contrary, you can easily be sexually attracted to someone without being romantically interested.
This is where the Greeks have this shit right: erotic love doesn't automatically imply romantic love.

and since "hetero" is in there presumably you're only sexually attracted to women? All told then, I don't think this word is doing anything useful.

I will agree it is a bullshit word.
In fact, I'm refusing to classify it as a real word.
Anyway it's late and I'm going now.
Bye losers.

Video Juegos

I can't believe there hasn't been a good game in like 6 months and then all of a sudden DOZENS OF GAMES IN THE SAME WEEK.
Why can't you chucklefucks pace your releases at all? Where's the consideration to me, the player?
Anyway, welcome to the most confusing blog in history.
She (?) claims to be asexual but as actively seeking a relationship (that is romantic in nature), she claims she has a job error checking for a newspaper because her Aspbergers (seriously) allows her superior grammar skills and yet I've caught at least two grammar errors since I started reading.
I haven't been reading that long.
Also gotta be 18+, yo.
What's your favorite Queen song, and why?
Today's writer's block. I don't know why I include it because, in fact, her answer was blank.
However it wasn't on the Livejournal front page:

You're my best friend- cheery, upbeat song. Killer queen- because a lyric in it sums me up in a nutshell (guess which lyric I'm referring to), I want to break free, don't stop me now, bohe

That's her entire answer. Based on the words we do have it seems like the entire Queen discography is her favorite.
They are good.

I love my job. Due to asperbers, I've been deemed 'unemployable'.

Pretty sure jobs can't discriminate due to disability by Federal law.
Are you sure you're unemployable due to Aspbergers (proper noun) and not due to the fact you lack any useful skills?

So the fact that I have a job goes to show otherwise. Well that & my obsession with pointing out and sometimes even fixing typos in newspapers, magazines, even books & correcting peoples grammar.

Peoples grammar.
Definitely not People's grammar.
Possessives are tricky.

And I still haven't got an email confirmation from AsexualPals. Hmm, maybe something or someone is conspiring to keep me single after all.

But oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for my next life to experience romantic love (without sex, of course).

Oh I see.
You're still attracted to people romantically just not sexually.
You know I can accept this. This is far less confusing than an average blog.
One might wonder the purpose of a romantic (specifically romantic) relationship instead of a platonic one of sex isn't part of the equation but whatever.

For quite some time, I had been struggling to figure out just what the fuck I am in regards to religion/philosophy. And I finally found the right religion for me, Pantheism. (Dualist Pantheism in particular).

>Blogger has atheist in their name
I'd think one would have to be pretty comfortable in their status as atheist to include it in their username.
The username that everyone sees and can't be changed.
Ha, ha oh wow. User Ludicrous comments:

That's kind of Wiccan.

Kind of Wiccan in that it isn't Wiccan at all, sure.
Wicca. You know, soft Paganism for girls?
Whatever.
NEW RELIGIONS.
Well I gotta give her a bit of credit: she has a tag that's "YIKES LONG POST!" and the post is exactly thee paragraphs (actual paragraphs, not blocks of text masquerading as paragraphs) so I guess she did consider her reader at some point in this.
Oh, but that's where her consideration ends because the first paragraph is completely tangential to the rest of the essay.

I don't know why, but the weather seems to have an effect on how often I post here in my personal journal. For instance, my very first post was in December '09. Made a total of 3 posts that month (one of which I made completely private, so you'll only see 2 entries from Dec '09 if you actually bother with looking at old entries).

Yeah--
What?
This isn't the whole paragraph but I'm skipping to the next one--

Having said that however, there is another reason I haven't been posting as often lately as I did before: I've been an editor of Asexual News for the past five months as of today & co administrator for the past 3 weeks as of tomorrow. It was two weeks ago as of Tuesday that I started writing for Ace News (not sure why I suddenly decided to write after all that time, I mean, I could've written an article while as just an editor if I wanted to)....

Having said completely irrelevant shit about the weather, let me tell you about how Aspie and asexual I am. I'm so asexual I'm am editor for an asexual newspaper. Which exists. Honest.
Why would there need to be an asexual newspaper? Are you fighting for your rights not to get married?
Are you facing brutal discrimination at all the asexual bars that exist?
Why does everyone need their own newspaper now?

Last night, I signed up on AsexualPals.com, well actually, I never got that far. I typed in my email address & next thing I was a message that said 'email confirmation sent' or something like that, can't remember the exact words. I then immediately checked my email address, since email confirmation/verification arrive immediately, or almost immediately at least.

Whoa I've never heard of a website doing that before. That's really weird.
Have you never signed up for anything before?
Why do I have the sudden urge to go to asexualpals.com?
Let's do it!
Ha, ha, ha wow-- this website looks like it was made in 1996.
This is not the slickest front end for a dating website.
Pal website, whatever.
Can't even view the profiles without signing up. This is not good advertising. Who knows what kind of hot asexual pussy a guy could not be landing but just entering a romantic/platonic relationship with?

I checked my email a couple of hours ago, still no email confirmation from AsexualPals.

Seriously, if I didn't know any better (and if I believed in conspiracies), I'd think someone or something is conspiring to keep me single.

Did you check your spam folder?
Commenter Ludicrous has this to say:

If you found an asexual pal, wouldn't you still be single anyway, technically?

Technically, literally--

Not if it turned into something more... Strictly Romantically speaking, that is.

NOT IF IT TURNED INTO SOMETHING MORE (qualifying) STRICTLY ROMANTICALLY, OF COURSE. Remember that blog from a few months ago where the person was a female to male transsexual and she was talking about cuddling and having girl time and there was a moment where I asked if I was sure she wasn't a lesbian (to no one because no one reads this)?
Suddenly reminded of that for some reason.

I'm a non smoker and if I were to find someone, romantically speaking, I'd hope they'd also be a non smoker as it's my biggest turn off & as such, is not neogitable.

I'm seeking a romantic partner and I have turn ons and turn offs. I am asexual!

Lately, there's been talk in the media (especially in papers) about organ donation. I find it interesting that those that favor presumed consent use appeals to emotion, such as 200+ people die waiting for donation. As though death is so horrible, though I suppose it's just me, but I'd rather die than get an organ donation and die years later. I mean, why prolong the inevitable? After all, no one lives forever.

Hey 8 year old kid waiting for a kidney, no one lives forever.
You lived a rich, full life anyway, yeah?
After all, anti-rejection drugs are a complete pipe dream so assuming the organ even takes you'll live at most a year extra anyway, so why prolong the inevitable?
Oh what, those drugs exist?
And the transplanted organ can live as long as a normal healthy one that was always part of your body?
Whoops.

Anyway, about presumed consent, currently as it is, people choose to donate, basically opting in. Presumed consent is the opposite, that is, you'd have to opt out. Or in other words, compulsory organ donation.

And I say: Screw that, people shouldn't be forced to donate if they don't want to. I mean, last time I checked, there's something called bodily autonomy, or does that not matter to proponets of presumed consent?

Yeah but on the other hand if they're harvesting my organs I figure I'm a bit beyond the need for advocates and bodily consent.

Have you ever desired something, then no longer had a desire, then, suddenly found yourself desiring it again? It could be anything, (for those of you who think I'm refering to sex).

Sounds like typical woman think to me-- HAR HAR HAR HAR.

I ask, because that's how I am with relationships. Back about 5-7 years ago, I wanted to be in a relationship so freaking badly... Well, actually, even 2-3 years ago I still yearned for a relationship. Then, about 13 months ago, I no longer wanted a relationship, figuring I'm better off single anyway. But yet, within the past month, I've been finding myself thinking, "It would be nice to be in a relationship" & asking myself if I really want to live my life without ever having experienced romantic love at least once. And, the answer is, no, I don't.

Am I weird or what?

You sure think a lot about yourself.
I don't know why I was suddenly reminded of Super Metroid. You know how Samus has that ship that's shaped like her helmet?
She must think a lot of herself, Jesus.
Get in your little you ship and escape the exploding planet. Again.
"I WANT A SHIP THAT'S SHAPED JUST LIKE ME~"

I'm the editor of AsexualNews.com, anyway... There's an article about a New Zealand airline offering 'cuddle class'. Which, while not exclusively Asexual, would make Asexuals feel less left out. All fine and dandy, right? Well, not exactly, you see...

Can't you assholes just stay in your fucking seats?
This is why the terrorists will win.

The 'cuddle class' is designed for either two adults or two adults and one child.

Uh-huh-- wait, one child?
I don't know what kind of shit is legal in New Zealand but I know here in AMERICA that shit's illegal.

Furthermore, a guideline is that passengers are expected to leave their clothes on, due to the presence of children.

Which shouldn't be a problem with asexual people--
Am I just not clear on what asexual means?
Let me check Wikipedia (fuck):

Asexuality (sometimes referred to as nonsexuality),in its broadest sense, is the lack of sexual attraction and the lack of interest in and desire for sex. Sometimes, it is considered a lack of a sexual orientation. One commonly cited study placed the prevalence of asexuality at 1%.
So why must you be getting naked on an airplane?

Why does there have to be an area designated for sex in an airplane? Can't you people keep it in your pants for (at most, I assume) 18 hours?

Because, of course, seeing nudity is oh so trauamatic for kids to see. Even though I'm sure there are worse things for kids to be exposed to.

What was the point of this? What does this have to do with being asexual (or anything at all, for that matter)?

Back on January 12th, I found out that the case that I had been summoned for jury duty had been cancelled. The Moon was at 21 degrees of Aries, my natal Mercury is at 20 degrees Libra. So the Moon was opposing my natal Merucry & the Sun was squaring it at the same time. Earlier today, I tried logging into an asexual website I'm the editor of & I couldn't. I even clicked on the activation link in my email, that didn't work either. The Moon opposed my natal Mercury earlier today.

WHAT THE FUCK?
Is this like some sort of aborted poem?
Am I dying?
Let's not even dwell on this. I'm going to go do something more productive with my time. Like kill myself.

The past is always with us.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh boy.
Girl blogger this time. I'm pretty sure. Almost positive.
Ok so it might be a guy.

What are you studying or did you study in school? Is it related to what you want to do for your career?

English education and probably not.
Using it for the cred, or that's the idea, anyway--

I majored in Media & Theatre Arts, aka movies.

Whew, I made a dumb mistake majoring in education but at least I didn't do something that stupid.

I originally opted for the major for two reasons: a.) scriptwriting is one of my few talents, and b.) I have this... I don't know if it's a type of synesthesia or what, but I seriously can't hear music without images and movement springing unbidden to my mind, little "movies" if you will, and I figured that filmmaking could help me translate those images to a more tangible medium.

You're making that shit up, knock it off. Synesthesia is a serious neurological condition where sensory signals literally get interpreted by the wrong part of the brain. Imagining your music being a backdrop to a movie is something most people do anyway.
In fact, neurologist Richard Cytowic made a handy list to tell if you have this rare condition, one of criteria is:
"Synesthetic percepts are consistent and generic (i.e., simple rather than pictorial)."
SIMPLE RATHER THAN PICTORIAL.

About two years into my major I realized it really wasn't what I wanted to do for a career (largely because it requires things like "working with other people" and "moving to LA" and other things I'm not fond of) but I finished out the major anyway because I couldn't think of anything else to do.

You probably sucked at it anyway.

A few weeks back I dropped a couple of hints about a potentially major change happening; well, it seems to be fairly set in stone so I'll detail it here. It... really isn't as exciting as I probably made it sound. xD

xD xD MY LIFE IS BORING SO I'LL MAKE SURE TO WRITE FIFTEEN PARAGRAPHS OF NOTHING--

I worked on adding a new scene to my book yesterday... I didn't finish, because I wasn't particularly happy with how it was turning out (as I'm fond of saying: I ALWAYS hate my first drafts, no matter WHAT), but I got an okay start. Here's what I'm adding:


Basically I'm adding a scene toward the beginning of the book where Windshifter is wandering around Faradan City upon just arriving and winds up at a traveling carnival. There are a lot of interesting mechanical and Amparium-powered devices here, like rides, fortune tellers, mechanical arcade games and the like. Anyways,

ANYWAYS
ANYWAYS GUYS
ASPIRING AUTHOR
ANYWAYS
I don't understand all these people who hate their first drafts. You know what that says to me? Shit idea. Also this is the fifth blog in recent memory I've read where they say "I don't reread my drafts because I'm afraid they'll suck."
GEE. Better finish it blind and just living in ignorance then~
I reread my last few pages as a matter of course and I always think "YES THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANT TO READ ALWAYS" and if I don't feel that way time to find a new idea.

Windshifter rigs one of these up so a little kid can win it, which impresses Profferlink, who is there on business and has a weak spot for little kids.

For being such a short scene, I think this will go a long way to improving the overall story, as it will include such improvements as:
- Showing (rather than telling) Amparium's ubiquitousness in society

Showing instead of telling.
Something all bloggers have a problem with.
Also let's take random stabs at what this story is about. I'm guessing crotchity Dr. House-type character with magical (possibly mechanical) powers who goes around a steampunk setting solving crime.
That is the stock of 99% of all bloggers' books.
In the history of writing has there ever been a published steampunk story?
I guess that Neil Gaiman had one but he's basically fanfiction that hit it big--

Adding a bunch of flavor to the setting in general (that's one of the things the publisher advised I do in that one rejection letter)

I'd like to mention she's trying to get e-published. Vanity presses are telling you to go screw.

I spent some of my long weekend working on a cover for "Windshifter" ("The end of the month" is still my goal), but I was unhappy with the results, so I scrapped it. The truth is, I'm just not a graphic designer, and my art skills are niche at best.

I had no idea authors had to do their own covers.
F. Scott Fitzgerald is a pretty good artist too, then--
Oh that's right. If you're not a hack people will be lining up to do your cover for you.
Sorry, got confused for a second there.

My self-esteem has really hit an all time low over the last couple of weeks/months. I've never felt so terribly insecure about myself and others' thoughts on me before.

But you have WINDWAKER under your belt.
Windshifter, whatever.
Windwaker was a Zelda game.

A psychologist would, I'm sure, have a field day with me. He'd probably point out that I was ripped from a job I was an expert in and dumped into one where I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, resulting in me essentially being paid to feel useless 30 hours a week for months on end.

Feeling useless for 30 hours a week?
Working for the federal government?
HEY-OH

And he'd probably also point out the double whammy of a.) my parents breaking up/my family "factionalizing", and b.) my relationship of six years ending, both of which were tossed at me at nearly the same time, meaning that I've watched every important familial or near-familial relationship in my life prove itself as tenuous and temporary. "No wonder you feel like you can't trust anyone, including yourself!" the shrink would say.

And you know, he'd probably be right.

I know what I'd say: "ever consider that you think about yourself too much?"

I'm really getting hit hard with the self-doubt bat again. See, my goal is to have "Windshifter" e-published by the end of the month, right? Right. Except that I want to give it one last read through before I truly call it "final", and I can't bring myself to read it, because I know it's going to suck.

I reread a short story I wrote recently with the intention that I was going to read it like I read most things (I.E. "this is shit before I even start") and by page two I was convinced I was awesome.
No one is more down on shit than me so clearly I'm just good at this shit and you might suck a little.

For example! Today I was going to start reading it, so I picked up my e-reader and... promptly started reading something else, because I couldn't bring myself to drudge through my own drivel.

I was amazed at my own level of vocabulary and yet it still read easily. HOW ON EARTH DO I DO IT?

I feel like I need some encouragement, but then I also feel like said encouragement would be useless, because I have some sort of railroad switch in my brain that routes all complements I receive into the "Well, they're just saying that to be nice" category.

Awful, no?

I just need to finish an anthology and then PREPARE YOUR BUTTS.

Just once I want a browser that doesn't go all Pac-Man on my RAM, but until then~

>Pac-Man on your RAM
What kind of 1999 computer are you using?
Man. Let's see how much Firefox is eating currently (too much I'm sure but I don't give a shit)--
almost 300MB.
But I have 6GB so it's okay.

I'm about 99.9% sure that e-publishing is going to be what I do, instead of traditional publishing. I went from being about 50% sure to about 75% sure to about 90% sure and then back down to 75% sure, but now I'm... well, yeah. I'm pretty convinced. The more I look into it, the more I think it's worth what risks there may be. It's not as glorious and romantic as traditional publishing, no, but I think for me and the way I tend to operate... it's the right thing to do. I really do think so.

k

"Windshifter" moral: The future may look kind of scary, but we should be optimistic about it because it's actually going to be awesome. Also, technology is pretty great because it was made by humans anthropomorphic animals, who are pretty great.

OHHHHHH BOY IT'S FURRY.
Well anyway I think I'm done with this nonsense.
Good luck selling your gay furry porn online.
Loser.

Zzz

So there's this thing called "National Novel Writing Month" or, comfortably, NaNoWriMo. I'm dead fucking serious. That's the acronym they've chosen. Rolls right off the tongue.
This is a clearly misguided practice for a number of reasons not the least of which we'll highlight in today's blog.
Also: today's writer's block.

How would you describe the last decade in one sentence?

A lot of people didn't follow the directions carefully and chose to answer in one word instead of one sentence but I guess they can't be blamed for working smart. Or maybe they're just idiots. Anyway my summary: "it was pretty mediocre."

Computers and the Internet have changed the way we live and do business.

As opposed to the 90s where we had no internet.
A lot of people also whined that the decade ends on a 9 (errrr) to which I have to say:
THERE WAS NO YEAR 0 YOU FUCKING MORONS A DECADE ENDS ON A 1.

This month we read Eragon by Christopher Paolini, who was only fifteen when he wrote the book.

I'm sorry.
What, have you read every other book ever written?

Eragon is a fairly straightforward fantasy adventure novel with a few original twists. Given the young age of the author, this is fairly impressive.

"Fairly straightforward" now translates to "fairly impressive" I guess.
I guess it is fairly impressive considering the 15 year olds I work with can barely work a pencil, let alone write a coherent thought.

I'm sitting here on the last day of being 36, looking outside at threatening gray skies. I'm supposed to be coming up with plans for my extended birthday weekend, but forecasts of freezing rain make me want to hide in my apartment instead.

36 years old reading Eragon. Isn't there a point where you develop taste? I guess not.
Isn't there a point where you decide fanfiction really is kind of daft and juvenile?

I finished reading Eragon for my book club today, but I'm not completely sure what to say about it. I've got a paperback copy of it released around the time of the execrable movie, and the book has eight color pages of "exciting" stills from said misbegotten production.

And I know Eragon isn't technically fanfiction (it is though. Lord of the Rings fanfiction set in an alternate reality) but I'm pretty sure anyone who would seriously write a book club review of Eragon probably thinks fanfiction is interesting and fun to read.

I wonder how the raven-haired elven beauty with pointed ears became a blonde girl with perfectly-rounded ears,

Those Elven girls though. All hipster bitches.
High fantasy hipster bitches, but hipster bitches nonetheless.
One of my retainers in FFXIV is an Elf (or no, my mistake: ELEZEN. THANKS SE) and she somehow manages to be haughty and pretentious despite the fact I own her.
I OWN YOU HOW CAN YOU BE THIS ABOVE IT ALL?
Oh yeah, FFXIV: the game where you're a noble, erstwhile adventurer and yet you can own two people.
I know they're technically "retainers" (which were historically soldiers and not shopkeeps but what the fuck ever, SE) but I have yet to pay their wages and the fees I incur on any sales they make are explicitly "taxes" and not "wages" so the impression I get is they're unpaid retainers who must listen to my orders.
Also there is kind of a slavery ring to retainer despite being paid but they were part of a larger system entitled "bastard feudalism" that describes the political and social structures in the late Medieval period. I don't know about you but when I think "bastard feudalism" the word "freedom" doesn't immediately spring to mind.

I just got through dealing with a very obscure question for my favorite problem patron, which I had to answer with a lot of fruitless searching, one "a-ha" moment, and a bit of reasonable conjecture. He seemed to like the answer, so hopefully it's the right one ^_^;;

Let's not even bother explaining what we're talking about.
Let's go back to the story I just told. Notice how I begin "in FFXIV" so it sets the context so people can know what the fuck I was talking about?
Imagine if I set it up like this bint. "Just got told telling my Elven slave to sell some goddamn cloth."
I'D LOOK FUCKING CRAZY.
Well I probably already do but whatever. Crazier.
And here she's declared "NaNoWriMo" winner because she wrote an entire book that is 51,000 words.
Doesn't matter how good the words are or if they even form a coherent narrative, sheer word count is what makes you a winner.
Dante and Homer would be proud of this fine literary tradition, I'm sure.
"Yeah you know all that technique and shit you guys worked so hard to maintain? Doesn't matter. Just muscle through 50k words and you win."
Also the concept of "winning at writing" is pretty perplexing to me. I know of a lot of people who got published and yet fell into complete obscurity within their own lifetime. Are they winners?
History doesn't really pick the winners based on any real criteria you can determine within your own life. For every writer who stands the test of time like Dante or Homer there are thousands upon thousands of Elizabeth Stoddards (although my own point falls apart under any scrutiny because Dante and Homer wrote awesome shit and Elizabeth Stoddard wrote some fuck) but you get my point.

According to the NaNoWriMo website, OpenOffice's word count algorithm may be inflating word counts. This means that my 50,421-word total may actually be less than 50,000.

OH WELL EXCUSE ME! IF I ONLY HAVE 45,000 WORDS I AM NOT A WINNER, NO MATTER HOW GOOD THEY MAY BE.
Hey J.D. Salinger? Sorry bro, Catcher in the Rye only weighs in at about 47,000 words. Get that fuck out of here you hack.
George Orwell? 1984 is only about 49,000 words. Sorry man. You can't be a good writer.
Oh and don't even get me started about Farenheit 451. Ray Bradbury you fucking hack. 41,000 words is all you could do? That's, what, only 82% as good as 50,000 words.

Apparently it has something to do with how it interprets "smart quotes" and other punctuation separated by spaces.

Wow I must be a shitty writer. I've been at this for years and I don't even know what the fuck a smart quote is. Is that when Open Office goes fucking apeshit and adds a ton of unnecessary spaces to my dialog?
Also I don't know what "other punctuation" means because I only use periods and commas, pretty much. Also dashes. Big fan o' dashes.

As I've been doing ellipses in the preferred method (space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space), this could have added a considerable number of words to my total.

I just went through three stories I wrote (not 50,000 words so they're garbage but that's not my point) and the ellipsis never even appears. I am a bad writer.
I guess by this logic Leo Tolstoy is about the greatest writer ever because War and Peace is an epic spanning several thousand pages.
But it tells the story of several characters with no real connection between them except they might be related to other characters and they all kind of lived at the same time-- I'm not sure you can even count it as one story. It's kind of like the Bible. It's a lot of stories with a recurring motif or connection.
Does that count as one book?
I'm not sure.

Then again, my 2008 novel was typed in OpenOffice and the final word count wound up being higher than OpenOffice estimated......

I'll find out at midnight when the NaNo word count validator goes live......

EDIT: I found an independent word count page here which informed me that my total was a rather less-stunning 46,647 words, or about an 8% overcount.

INDEPENDENT WORD COUNTER.
I just wanna get done, really. I don't care about the quality of what I write.

As of tonight, my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel Flame of Justice: Elemental War is finished!

Flame of Justice: Elemental War.
You might as well call it "flame of cliche: cliche cliche".
Seriously what the fuck am I even looking at? Can I read this masterpiece of 46,647 words?

It weighs in at 50,421 words, and flows a lot better than my 2008 effort to which it is a sequel.

Lost a couple thousand in a day. Guess that was some strict editing.

(That book is currently undergoing heavy revision, so for those of you who've read it it's going to be much improved!) My villain has been almost-irrevocably eliminated, but he does have a "Get Out of Limbo Free" card should I choose to bring him back.

"Eliminated", meaning you cut an entire character just like that?
I mean it does happen all the time but wow. Usually that happens when you rewrite, not when you edit.

As of right now, I'm at just under 47,300 words on this year's NaNoWriMo effort, and have just finished the Climactic Final Battle with Yamigumo, my antagonist.

Yamigumo.
Onigumo sounds more sinister to me.
Or if you weren't an illiterate fuck and you were doing some kind of animu pastiche the most obvious name for you villain would be "Oniwakamaru" because that was a popular name for a menacing, demonic figure in Ukiyo-e works.
You know, based on the historical figure Saito Benkei?
Died standing?
Fuck.

That leaves me 2700 words or so for escaping his Evil Lair and wrapping things up satisfactorily.

The obvious question in my mind would be "what if you need more than that?" I hope it just ends mid-sentence.
Also maybe I don't understand how this whole writing thing works but I'm pretty sure when your heroes face off against the villain "Yamigumo" in some sort of JRPG-esque final battle at the end (hopefully with Dancing Mad or some other Final Fantasy classic playing) only to escape his crumbling layer you've fucked up in ways I can't even begin to imagine.
I don't know I just have books I've read and stories I've written to go off of but going off my last three things I've written the villains have been, in order:
nothing
a political entity
nothing
You can get conflict from things other than super villains, you know.

Given that somewhere in there I have a conversation or two, I think I should make my word count even without the eerily-foreshadowing epilogue ^_-

And in one of my stories the protagonist isn't even named. Maybe this kind of shit and fanfiction is good and I'm just wrong.

What can be done to promote tolerance and stop bullying in schools?

You cannot stop bullying. It has always, ALWAYS been around.

Stop treating kids like they're going to break if you even touch them, and bring back corporal punishment.

Smart. Hit the maladjusted kid.

The greatest impediment to writing a novel is being distracted by reading someone else's.

Is being a fucking hack more obsessed with word count than quality.

While I should have been preparing for NaNoWriMo, I instead spent some time the past couple of weeks completing a set of character sprites in the style of the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo Final Fantasy IV/Final Fantasy II

See what I mean when I say you just told Final Fantasy in book form and fucked it up?

It's obviously not a standard MMO, given its all-ages rating and its emphasis on building and problem-solving rather than killing enemies.

PROBLEM SOLVING INSTEAD OF KILLING?
I'M OUT.

My new computer is doing very well, for the most part, and now that I have a new monitor capable of taking advantage of its capabilities I'm quite happy with it. Except for one small problem.

It has a habit of unexpectedly bluescreening when I try doing something graphically intensive.

Gee I wonder if your graphic card/chip/whatever is overheating.
Fuck.
Anyway I'm bored of this.
Leves reset in 3 hours and I BETTER GET SOME MORE BUFFALO HIDE AND GIGANTOAD SKIN THIS TIME.