ALLAHU AKBAR

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OH BOY

So I've been living in South Korea for a month and I haven't gotten my regular dose of insane white girls because of it.
Instead I get my daily of Korean insanity.
I dunno girls here seem saner over all. They just carry their intensely homsexual dogs in slings like the dogs are little babies.
At least this doesn't come from them.
How do I know this?
When was the last blog you saw in Korean?
Defense rests.

STICKY POST: About Me, Policies, Other Stuff

You know you're in for quality reading when your blog has a post about policy making and isn't related to what the fuck it is your government is doing.

I'm M, or Marwen, but I'll probably remember to answer to "M" more often. You'll see other names pop up places from people, but these are the tags I'd rather people use.

You'll probably remember to answer to M?
If I'm posting on your blog (har har not gonna happen) I'm probably addressing you, dipshit.

I'm mid-twenties, Canadian, queer, single, cis-female, Gifted, ASD, and possess the pure joy that is MDD (major depressive disorder) for which I am in treatment, and a fun case of PTSD.

You know what gets me about these people? They'll bitch about you labeling them but then their entire life is spent endlessly affixing labels to themselves. It's part of the special snowflake disorder. You can't just be a fucking person. You have to be special and unique and you can do that by saying you're Canadian.

I'm also a polytheistic pagan of a private bent, which is to say I am religious, I don't talk about it in specifics very often, and you wouldn't recognize my gods if you met them. 

... Have I reviewed this blog before?
Or is it another one of these?

Which is, I think, all of the necessary warning labels: if you've a particular objection to any of the above, you might want to toddle away. 

I object to you being Canadian.

I'm a writer, and have a BA with a double-major in English and History. I write original stuff, but I keep that kind of locked up on an outside chance of publication. I do a lot of secondary world fiction, which means a lot of worldbuilding, especially since being a history major with an interest in anthropology/etc makes one very picky about such things. I have, at this count, more than half-a-dozen completely secondary worlds, along with a couple of urban fantasy worlds; it's crowded in my brain. 

Sounds like a bunch of shit.

Additionally, I work with tarot, and I do a monthly three-card draw, and am also available to do readings with one of my three decks (7$CAD) or from all three interacting (16$CAD) month-round.

Do you know what 7 Canadian dollars would buy you in South Korea?
It's like 1950s pricing here. That's a ludicrous amount of money to piss away.
You could buy like a week's groceries, a taxi ride to get it back to your apartment and still have enough money left over to go to the movies and buy a popcorn after.
Speaking of, here's my first picture from Korea.
A great picture of the cityscape or something?
No fuck that look at how faggoty this dog is.

- I have a general blanket "dark and ugly content" warning. That means that dark and ugly shit is under the cut, and that it's designed to be disturbing, caveat lector; I'll use this warning when a) being more specific would wreck the story and/or b) when I'm really not sure how to warn for what's there, but am pretty damn sure it's going to be distressing

- I'll generally warn for non-con, under-sexual-maturity*, graphic harm done to the human body
Bitch I read Warhammer books I think whatever you can cook up as "dark and ugly" pales into insignificance. 
Also in my down time that isn't the weekend I've gotten back into Skyrim and I've modded the game to be an apocalyptic nightmare of difficulty and maddening survivalism.

However you are at all times welcome to email me and ask whether your trigger is in a fic. I don't care if it's clowns, rape, daffodils or haircuts, you don't have to explain all about why, all you have to do is send me an email or a PM saying "does X fic contain Y?" and I will say "yes, it contains Y" or "no, it does not contain Y" or, in rare cases " . . . possibly. Does [explains situation as delicately as possible] count as Y? If so, yes, if not, no." 

You know this whole trigger warning thing stemmed from some kinda psycho
ylogy convention that was being attended by victims and they decided it would probably be polite to warn the rape victims that what they're talking about might trigger some kind of flashback. This isn't supposed to be you attempting to monopolize my ability to speak with your incredibly sensitive feelings.
Does anyone remember that blog where there was a trigger warning for a picture of a gun but the picture was so huge there was almost no conceivable way to have the trigger on screen without at least part of the gun on screen too?
To me that summarizes this shit perfectly. Like that's all you have to know.
Also of course in her attempt to placate all of her childish women reading her blog (all none of them) all entries are hidden beneath cuts so it makes actually predicting what's "offensive" and what's banal nonsense impossible.
You might as well not have any cuts at all since it's all just hidden beneath the same bullshit.
You want a trigger warning?
Here's my trigger warning:
grow the fuck up.

- it maintains no real traceable connection to him as an actual person, but Bucky's tumblr-persona gains a reputation as "this guy who mostly reblogs art, history, some news and random photographs, and every so often goes into a truly epic rant".

Yeah this is the character from Captain America branded the "Winter Soldier" who fought Hitler and then was kidnapped by super Nazis, had his arm turned into a robot and was brainwashed to fight against Captain America.
I don't think this guy would have a tumblr.
This is literally the dumbest shit I've ever seen. These aren't complicated characters.
Captain America is free as fuck. That's the entire character.

Maybe more later. I should do some housework.

Yeah maybe stick to that.

Also oh wow do I have a bad knee-jerk reaction right now to the implication that complex trauma shit is a "stage" that can be "moved past" and does that ever mean that I need to stop trawling my network and cut down on the tumblrs I elect to read. 

Look I know being Canadian is impossible to move past but you can get over trauma. You don't have to spend your entire life as a victim.
I know feminism tells you otherwise and simply by being born with a twat you're a victim and oppressed and raped daily but that's not actually true.

4. Two people (one anonymous, the other knows who zie is) were sweet enough to send me DW points! So now I have all my icons back for six months or so. Wheee. *spins* OH I CAN UPLOAD MORE NOW. 

Who zie is get the fuck out.
Christ all mighty.

2. The baby is almost walking. I want her to walk so bad. She's already as fast crawling as she could be walking and right now she's a serious impediment: she HATES being in her stroller or carseat if we're still at all, but she's only crawling which means I can't just let her out and slowly pace behind her because she will eat EVERYTHING. 

You have a kid?
Why is that allowed?
Here's a post entitled "I normally love Sephora" which man.
If only she also said "I also love the iPhone and pumpkin spice lattes and Victoria's Secret clothing" that would round out the white girl stereotype.
Oh and uggs.
and yoga pants. Not that I'm complaining about yoga pants.
I am disappointed to report the yoga pant fad hasn't quite caught on here.
Those tiny shorts that are kinda split up the side have so I'm fine.
Maybe it has. It's been too ass humid to wear any of that shit anyway.

if people came with warning labels, what would mine be?

Remember that fake label that used to come on Cheetos?
DANGEROUSLY CHEESEY!
That'd be yours.
DANGEROUSLY CUNTY!

1. I was going to write tonight but then I managed to have a bunch of little triggers all heap together into a larger one and had to deal with feeling like a bear was trying to eat me alive for a couple hours instead.

I need a trigger warning in Skyrim now for "sabercat has been stalking you for a mile and a half and is about to maul you and startle the fuck out of you"
This isn't like vanilla Skyrim, either. A two ton sabertooth tiger mauls you and it's not like oh you take 5% damage.
That's it, man. Reload from previous save.

1. Current adventures in goalpost moving attempts by my brain: "it doesn't count if [popular person] or [other popular person] or even [person I just see a lot on my network] hasn't read it/liked it/recced it, because clearly then it's not as good as the other stuff they have." *throws up hands* REALLY BRAIN, THAT IS JUST FUCKING RIDICULOUS. WE ARE WAY TOO PUNK ROCK FOR THIS SHIT AND WE'RE NOT EVEN THAT PUNK ROCK.


2. In the car after work I realized that the brain-resonance to "Abraham's Daughter" by Arcade Fire is actually for Herself, which makes everything including the iconography make a fuck of a lot more sense. Because one of her themes/domains is sacrifice, but she's intensely hardline: sacrifices cannot be demanded, or taken, or owed, or even asked for. They are given fully freely or they're just theft/murder/whatever. Which: if you trace her storylines, it's an element, greater or lesser, in all of them.

You'd better let young Isaac go. 

These are words arranged in an order resembling the English language but much like the papers I grade daily I imagine they were either translated from a foreign language using Google Translate or possibly just a complex algorithm that outputs words in a pattern resembling what a real person might say.
Like I try to tell them don't use Google Translate.
I even give the Google Translate demonstration.
Here's a news story in English
Here's what it looks like in Korean
no human
not even a complete new speaker
will say shit like this
so I can tell instantly so don't do that
THEY DON'T GIVE A FUCK
CALL THE COPS

4. Ugh there is World Cup stuff everywhere. One only barely escapes hockey to be hammered by the World Cup. 

Yeah that's been fun ducking around here.
British people and Korean people pissed at me simply because my country 1. doesn't give a fuck about soccer and 2. is obliterating all the world's nations at it.
FUCK YOU, WORLD. AMERICA KICKS ASS.
In fact, world, you're welcome America doesn't care about soccer. If it did they might as well rename the World Cup to the America Cup because that's apparently who would take it every year.
Apparently England is sucking hard and Korea is doing better than anticipated but still pretty shit.

1. Guys, I love Natasha as much as anyone, but: that moment she fakes out the Winter Soldier with the phone and then jumps him? No. No she's not even remotely an actual threat. The thing that impressed me and is scariest about that moment is how unfussed and comparatively leisurely his movement to block her garrotte is and how easily he throws her off. (And that he's by no means convinced it IS her on the other side of that car: note that he rolls a grenade over, as compared to later when he knows EXACTLY where she's hiding and just goes for the shot.) Natasha is incredibly impressive in that scene, don't get me wrong: she is fighting with the equivalent of a knife at a gun-fight, and she's amazing (the actual REALLY amazing and actually-posed-a-threat moment is when she fires based on his shadow and nicks his glasses) and still completely, terrifyingly outclassed.

Seriously, he's like "ah, a garrotte", blocks it, and then tosses her like a doll into a car. Then shoots her through the shoulder while running with a relatively inaccurate firearm. Until the moment Steve breaks out the Psychologically Compromising Recognition, both he and Nat were totally gonna die. 

That movie was pretty sweet but can we please stop talking about it?
Also of course he shrugs her off like a bad cold. She's a 110 pound woman and he's like a 180 pound man WITH A ROBOT ARM.

My sister said this morning, "What's a Deadpool?"

The last Dirty Harry movie.
Or a comic book character retards will not shut the fuck up about.

I have a migraine, the kids are whiny,

PAY ATTENTION TO THEM YOU SELFISH CUNT.
FUCK.
I'm going to eat lunch.

FUCK

Took a little longer to get the internet than I expected.
I was supposed to inherit the guy who owned the apartment before me's internet contract but he decided to be a standup dudebro and sold it to a friend instead.
Fortunately I managed to break into a neighbor's router because they didn't change the default router password and they were blockbusting it anyway.
So between the jet lag and adjusting to not being a citizen of Freedom anymore and doing other shit with my time there has been a lull in updates.
But it's okay because I made a hiatus post so there's no problem there.
So here I am sitting in my underwear at 12:30 in the morning just in South Korea instead of America now.
How much changes and how little changes.
South Korea is quite a trip, too. I could spend an entire post just talking about that instead of some bullshit blog but I imagine people come here for blogs so let's just do the thing where I post around blog entries and barely acknowledge them.
Yeah this'll work.

Guys, I can't even tell you how much I love Speed. I watched it every night for a month when it came out on tape (yes, VHS). I have what you might call a Keanu Reeves situation and this movie only exacerbated it (I also watched The Matrix every night for a month and also every time HBO showed it when it first came out). I mean, I still think the extra bit at the end with the subway is overkill and unnecessary, but generally speaking, it is an excellent action movie, and while not quite at the top tier of the pantheon with Die Hard or the Terminator movies, it's definitely in my top five. Also, I kind of totally ship Keanu and Sandra Bullock because of this movie. I am just saying. 

Yeah you go ahead and ship the hell out of that movie you fucking weirdo.
So anyway I left the US of Freedom on the 21st I think of May and proceeded to ride on an airplane for what I understand to be the next 127 years.
First I left at 2 AM with my dad to drive up to Raleigh Durham International Airport. This was after not sleeping at all, so already I'm down about 24 hours of sleep.
I proceed to fly to New York which takes, what, an hour and a half or so?
Then there's a five hour layover at JFK.
Then I fly the next 13 hours from JFK to Incheon-Seoul International.
I catnapped what I suspect is 5 hours but when you're flying over Canada, the North Pole then down into Russia and China and around North Korea and you cross about 17 timezones and the international dateline time sort of stops having meaning.
This wasn't all at once, of course. I'd sleep about an hour then wake so violently one time I actually found myself standing up before I was fully awake.
Definitely not a nervous reaction, or anything.
So I land at Incheon.
At this point I'm so delirious and not thinking I see a distant island and assume it's Japan.
It's technically possible to see Japan from Busan but, of course, Incheon is on the other side of the country.
So then I meet the lady what got me this job.
She's pretty much my first introduction to what Korea really be like.
So we chit chat, catch a bus ride where I thought we were going to die about ten times (turns out it was very tame compared to later trips in transportation)

- I've been thinking a lot about Bucky lately (um, even more than usual I guess?), because the thing is, the thing is, Bucky's recovery should be hard and it should be heartbreaking at times but it should also be hopeful. The whole point is that he comes back from what was done to him. He's not the same person he was, but no one who lives any significant amount of time remains exactly the same person they were at 18 or 24, even if they haven't been sent off to war or had unspeakable things done to them, and it's not that Bucky is 'fixed' or whatever, it's that he survives long enough to be able to start living again,

Yeah I'm sure you can characterize better than the fucking people hired to do that for their job you fanfiction writing zero.
Anyway so we ride in the bus and chitchat a bit then it's time to go to Gimpo airport.
For the record I like Gimpo airport. It reminds me of the airport I lived by in North Carolina.
As in they built a way better airport not an hour away and it's sort of struggling for a use in 2014.
So you probably know the purpose of an airport is to milk you for as much money as possible so I've officially had to check my luggage twice at 100 dollars a go and I'm about to do it a third time.
I walk up, put my bags on the scale.
The lady looks at the reading and starts saying words.
I don't know what these words mean but I know instinctively as a citizen of the USA that means it's time to get my wallet out.
So I get my wallet out.
The lady who got me this job grabs my wallet from me.
She looks at the lady demanding money and there is a tense argument in Korean for about 3 minutes.
Finally a manager walks over.
He looks at the lady wanting money
He looks at the lady who got me this job
He looks at me with this look in his eye that says "oh God just kill me"
He shrugs and waves my bags through.
No baggage fee.
She hands me my wallet back and I immediately know the gift I bought her for getting me this job was a wise investment.
Like we talked about books and I said you know she's the one person you know so maybe make sure that stays cozy.
I kind of suspected she was an operator but I didn't know--
and that proved a correct assessment.
So she puts me on the airplane to Gimpo and this is my second lesson in how not America Korea is.
After a scary moment of trying to find the baggage check station because they suddenly got suspicious of shaving lotion I go to the place where they put you in the airplane.
But hey wait a second we're going downstairs.
Oh ok now we're just in the airfield.
Oh now we're getting on a bus and driving out to the middle of where airplanes live and they're loading us on it like it's the 1950s. Complete with the stairs.
There's literally no one stopping me from just bolting down the runway.
They'd never find me.

snapshot from the life of a fangirl:

Why is this story so terrible? AND WHY AM I STILL READING IT?

It's funny 'cause it's true. *hands*

Fuck me.
So at this point I realize it's approaching 6 PM some vague time in the future and I've slept maybe 5 hours not all at once in the past--
3 days?
4 days?
For me it has felt like 3 days but it has actually been 4 days going by time changes.
It's slowly catching up to me but the adrenaline is still screaming through my veins at a million miles an hour.
At this point I'm so out of my element that I'm not even sure I had an element.
So I'm on an airplane to Busan and I realize this journey is finally nearing the end.
The pilot spends what I suspect is the entire flight talking about baseball in English.
He saw the entire 30 or so people on the plane. I'm the only round eye so I'm pretty sure he was just talking to me.
About baseball.
I'm 30,000 feet over the middle of South Korea listening to a pilot talk to me about baseball with no way of responding.
I haven't slept in 3 days.
If you notice me saying "I suspect" a lot it's because, well, as I said the entire journey was such a blizzard of insanity, hustle and not fully grasping the situation that it might have been weeks for all I knew.
I'm glossing over the 13 hour flight, incidentally.
Let me back up and say there's a point about 8 hours in where you realize you have to be on this airplane for another 5 hours where you start hoping it just quietly drops into the Arctic.
No survivors.
So I land in Busan and there's supposed to be a man with a sign.
Of course he doesn't have a sign. He just looks for the one American exiting the airport.
So he helps me load my shit into his van and I get in.
It occurs to me this could just be a kidnapper and I could be on my way to North Korea. He just walks up to me and grabs my shit and I just go with it.
At this point I don't care I just hope they make it quick.
So I'm informed Busan is about an hour away from Changwon so I dig in and let the haze settle over me.
It's twilight, there's some kind of 80s music on and this guy seems chill so I'm thinking hey, this isn't so bad.
I need to get a radio and enjoy the smooth sound of 97.1.

Last night, I rewatched "Curahee" and "Day of Days," which I feel make an amazing 2 hour movie, even if you never watch the rest of the series, though I of course highly recommend (re)watching the whole thing, especially since all the HBO shows are now on Amazon Prime for free.

[I might finally get around to doing a Wire rewatch, because I won't have to unplug my Roku to plug in the blu-ray player, which is annoying. Why does my new television, bought in September 2012, only have two HDMI inputs? one of which goes to the cable box, so the other two have to switch out (yes, I could get a splitter or whatever it's actually called, but I'd rather just complain, especially since it's easy enough to unplug on cord and plug in the other when necessary, and also so much is available streaming now that I don't have to actually do it that often.)]

Wow she likes The Wire.
That's not a show you can "ship" easily so I figured it'd be a bit above her.
Also it's really gritty and not at all cute.
It's pretty violent and grim, in fact.
Oh but that black guy who was in Pacific Rim is in it. That's probably why she likes it.
Fuck.
So anyway after about 20 minutes we're just there.
Welcome to Changwon.
This guy is there to meet me. He grabs my shit and we go up an elevator.
I haven't slept in 47 hours at this point, I feel like I've been fired out of a cannon and already I know I don't like this guy.
My legendary snap judgment of my fellow man hasn't failed, at least.
So we go upstairs. I meet the boss who doesn't speak English. He tries to give me food and at this point I'm not having it. I just want to sleep and not die.
Or maybe die.
I don't even know at this point.
So after a weird 10 minutes?
50 minutes?
Who knows?
I get in the dude who I reckon is an asshole's car and we drive to the hotel.
The hotel is like nothing I have ever seen. Firstly it exists on only the 10th floor of this 12 story erection of a skyscraper.
So I take a shower (first in two days wooo) and I realize oh
hey
showers don't come in stalls in Korea.
Whatever.
So I go to sleep and pass the fuck out.
It is 8 PM.
4 hours later I wake up and I'm pretty sure I'm dying.
I somehow go back to sleep about an hour later and I wake up, whamo, at 9 AM.
I'm supposed to meet them at 1 and I figure this is a getting to know you bullshit exercise.
So I dick around until 1. I watch the TV.
The TV is fucking surreal. I'm watching what I assumed was 3rd string girl band Ladies' Code and some flamboyant homosexual watch video of other fags ambushing guys on the street and asking them about what it is they're wearing.
Then Ladies' Code talks about what losers they are based on this information.
It's at this point that time dilates and I have about 10 minutes of thoughts in 10 seconds.

I also wrote 1000 words last night! Shocking! 

So I get hopelessly lost. My phone, naturally, doesn't work.
Despite promises that it would it doesn't make outgoing calls. It can text oh, it can text if you pay.
Thanks a lot, Verizon.
My data was turned off.
Thanks a bunch, Verizon. Sure am glad I paid 100 dollars a month for this wonderful service.
Now they're emailing me about renewing my contract. You could piss up my leg that's how pissed I am over this phone fiasco.
So I go to the phone in the room. It doesn't work.
It just doesn't work.
If it works I don't know how to make it go.
Numbers resemble American numbers. It's a set of three then a set of four numbers.
No area code though, that's weird--
so this shit ain't working.
So I go outside the hotel and I see a guy about my age and through desperate looks and elaborate pantomime I manage to signal my desire to use his phone and he just hands it over.
I can't imagine that happening in America where a basically non-verbal foreigner emerges from a seedy hotel and just asks to make a phone call and the hapless dope roped into this just goes "yeah ok."
So I call them and say holy shit I can't find the place.
OH BUT I SHOWED YOU YESTERDAY says the asshole I talked about before.
Dude you took me in a car
at night
showing a man with severe jet lag who hasn't slept in a week.
Yeah I forgot.
I know it's straight up the road and a left. I don't know which way I'm going though.
Well get a taxi, click.
FUCK THAT GUY.
So I manage to enlist an entire street corner in Changwon--
like 15 people--
to help me solve where the fuck it is I am and where the fuck it is I work.
Somehow through elaborate pantomime and broken English we figure it out and they hail a taxi for me and tell the guy what I need.
Thank the fuck Christ the people on the street are so nice.
That's one thing you learn pretty fast in Korea. People are super nice.
They'll walk up and start talking to you.
You tell them you don't understand and they'll keep talking to you.
I talk back in English.
No one understands shit but we're having a conversation.
It's like Ghost Dog. Ever seen that movie?
Anyway so I get to the job and this manager is a real asshole luckily I don't have to deal with him too often.
Owner seems like a nice enough guy though.
I wind up staying until 9 PM that night because I need trained.
Trained how to give kids a test.
Is this real life?
Yes it is.
So shit goes and goes forever and I think time dilated again.

 I have looked at a lot of condo/co-op listings over the past few weeks, and man, people are terrible at taking pictures. Eventually - I don't have a time table but eventually (and hopefully before interest rates go up too much) - I'll progress to looking in person, and the pictures won't really matter, but for now, at least, I've figured out what my priorities are and what would be in my theoretical price range. I'm reconciling myself to leaving Manhattan, too.

Haha cool enjoy sleeping in a hallway in Manhattan with the rats
So anyway at this point they send me home because I was looking a little haggard and a visiting parent apparently took offense that they weren't letting me recover a bit before throwing me into it.
So the first week is pretty uneventful, honestly. Just go to work
see training that I don't need because at this point I'm not even sure what it is I need
Friday rolls around and I go out with one of the western teachers and her friends.
So it's three American, 3 Brits, a girl from Scotland and an Australian girl.
The Australian girl is like 7 foot tall and natural blonde so needless to say she got stopped on the street.
It was quite a spectacle all around.
Had my first drink of soju which is Korea's experiment into how dangerous they can make alcohol.
It costs 1,200 won at a 7-11.
Yeah they sell hard liquor at 7-11 here and you can drink at 7 AM if you want.
There are no laws.
There should be a couple of laws.
1,200 won for those of you who don't know is about a buck fifty.
A dollar and fifty cents.
What does soju taste like for less than the price of a Big Mac?
It must be like motor oil, surely.
The answer is it tastes like water.
It goes down like water.
You are drinking water, basically.
Except it will fuck you up.
So I had to say no to that because that's how alcoholism begins.
That was only later, in fact.
At this point in the story I've already shotgunned a bottle of it.
So everyone is very impressed with my ability to not be dead at this point and I start thinking apparently all that visualization that I'm a space marine has paid off.
So now it's time to go to norebang since it's this one grill's birthday.
What the fuck is norebang?
Well nore is Korean for noise
and bang is room.
It's karaoke.
It is fucking karaoke but we call it norebang because that's just what we call it.
So me and Adam--
this British engineer who has lived here for 3 years--
we get separated from the party and wind up going to the wrong floor.
This is norebang too but this is sexy norebang.
What the fuck is the difference?
It's hookers.
Obviously, come on.
So I'm standing there
at 3 AM on a Friday
after alcohol like water
this hooker is trying to talk to me
I look outside and it sinks in: I've finally done it. I've eversed (that's barely a word fuck off, Firefox spellchecker) and I'm in a William Gibson novel.
The lights
the fact this hooker, in South Korea, is just trying to have a casual conversation with me because we just happened to hit the wrong floor--
I'm here.
So we say no, in fact, we wanted the boilerplate norebang experience and not the sexy norebang so we leave.
Some time later we leave and it's time for sleeping.
It's 5 in the morning.
Anyway great next morning. Woke up around noon.
No hangover because I don't get those.
So then--
Jesus.
Stuff on the weekend.
I spent something like 9 hours trying to buy a radio to listen to that smooth 80s. I finally find a place that sells radios basically directly behind where I was staying so that was good.
I get it.
It's a piece of shit. Picks up like 3 stations including the University of Changwon's station which mostly just plays The Beatles, weird shit I can't identify and English lessons.
So, you know, typical college radio.
I don't remember Sunday. I'm pretty sure I watched TV all day.
Tried to figure out what the fuck Tasty Road was and why those girls were famous.
Working--
get my apartment.
The lock doesn't work very well so I just leave my door unlocked.
Have to clean it because it's been uninhabited for 7 months and wasn't very clean to start with.
Bizarre stain on the floor I can't get out.
Except it covers a lot of the floor.
Basically at least once a day I feel like I'm in a David Lynch movie. Shit is happening around me that's so surreal I can't even begin to explain to you what's in front of me.
Like you can't even make quality judgments about this shit. Is it good? Is it bad?
All you can say is that is a thing in front of me that exists, somehow, on the same material plane as me.
I think I figured out why, too.
It's because if it was totally alien to me I could just call it that.
This is unlike what I'm used to and be done with it.
But no, of course, there's always one tiny detail that informs me that no, normalcy isn't far away.
Like last Saturday I'm going to Daiso to buy bowls and I see a man and a woman having a screaming argument with each other and the people around them are just walking around them not paying attention-
and I don't mean like trying desperately not to stare because it's rude like you've just seen a retard or something. I mean they don't give a single fuck about this. "Yep, same shit as always" seemed to be the general emotion.
So I've stopped to watch this because what the fuck and that's when I notice they're arguing outside of an Olleh mobile dealer (that's a cellphone provider here) and Olleh has a bad habit of playing music that's too loud outside their store.
What's on the radio?
Is it Kpop like it usually is?
No, it's Careless Whisper by George Michael.
Something about the situation, because of George Michael, just made it too weird.
That was the touch that it needed.
So to get away from it all I wander in a direction I hadn't gone yet.
I come across this building.
It's an apartment complex.
But not just any apartment complex.
This thing is like a hab block from Warhammer or Judge Dredd.
The size of this building is fucking mind boggling. I'm going to get a picture this weekend.
Just the sheer logistics of this thing had me reeling. The people that lived just in that building were like a small city.
Then I look down and I see a middle school and I realize that entire school probably only takes kids from that apartment complex.
Then I look to the left of it and to the right and I realize oh
there are three of them.
Then I start to walk to them because I'm still not sure if maybe my mind is playing tricks on me and I see a city map.
There are 26 of them.
I'm sure this is just a big city thing and I'm not used to it because I lived in fucking Maryland and North Carolina but something about those buildings made me dizzy.
So anyway I guess to get to my assessment of the situation I'd have to say so far it has been overwhelmingly very positive.
The job is a job but it isn't so bad.
The people have been very friendly.
The sights have certainly been unique and always interesting.
I handle the surreal elements very well since that's basically my interest and aesthetic but I can see why people might struggle to adapt to a foreign setting like this.
All I can say is about 4 years ago I applied for a job in Japan and almost got it but didn't and I'm really glad because I doubt I'd have been able to hack it.
I needed to know things I didn't know then.
So that is the story so far.
I'll probably go into details about this shit more later--
probably not here, though.
I'll see.
Anyway I gotta go to bed. It's 2 AM.

Based Korea

North Korea is best Korea.

i sleep in the most distorted positions and wake up to confused stares too fucking often. last night i fell asleep on my stomach with my right leg completely tucked under my body and my left leg normally and somehow didn't wake up a paraplegic. 

Do a lot of people watch you sleep or something?
How do you wake up to confused stares (plural)?
OOOR ARE YOU SOME KINDA FUCKING WHOOOORE

i regret plenty of things, i'm grateful that none of them involve other people. jesus christ, the last thing i need on my conscience is to owe anyone anything, especially something as essentially meaningless as an apology. i have already apologized to everyone for everything. sometimes rebounds happen before the relationship is over, i should know this better than anyone. (those two statements are not related.) i'm actually not in love with myself, despite what everyone else thinks. 

So you just act like a cunt, you're not actually a cunt?
That's some Zen logic I guess.
Zen logic in reverse. Jesus Christ.

i miss you, but not like everyone else misses you. - yana (this is the most echoed sentiment in my ears lately.)

my new favorite color is green, my new favorite season is spring. a long time ago it was red and fall. i'm okay with things coming back to life.

i wonder how many car accidents there were today.

Would you believe these disconnected sentences about nothing are in fact the same post and I haven't edited anything?
Also how many car accidents were there today?
One fewer than there needed to be if you're still alive.

the fact that i've seen what staph looks like under a microscope and still have it in me to stick my hand in my mouth, all my face holes inches away from where several other people's asses live, finger fuck the flap of skin at the back of my throat until i have nothing left in my stomach either says so much about one thing or so little about another.

ANOREXIA/BULIMIA BLOG ALERT!
I didn't know otherwise I would have not read this.
Fuck it I'm going in!

there's something sick and sad about someone who has spent the majority of your time together taking you for granted saying to you one day 'you deserve better'

ha ha ha
ha

no, really. i appreciate the sentiment but coming from someone with such little regard for my feelings it means almost nothing.

there's something fucked up about the man who cheated on me asking me why i'm angry and then when my answer is 'because you made poor choices' he feels "bashed". he keeps telling me it's the way you're saying it. and admittedly i have been trying to tiptoe around his feelings, cry more quietly, feel more softly. because i love him and always will despite this. i may not be in love with him anymore but i will always love him.

but then today i thought. holy shit, you cheated on me! why is how my pain makes you feel the most urgent issue here?

piece of shit, all of them

"I make shitty life decisions and date assholes"
"all men are therefore assholes"
White wahms

when he first broke the news i sat in bed, rocking myself back and forth crying and involuntarily repeating the words oh man. in the days following, i broke down in tears over a peanut butter sandwich, in the bathroom taking a piss, staring at myself in the mirror, numerous times in bed and in showers, driving to and from work, tying my shoes, grocery shopping, walking to my car from my car.

"Walking to my car from my car"
Errr--

i didn't immediately leave and then i did and he said, 'i will fix this, i will fix it, i will be the best man that i can to you for the rest of your life because you deserve it', and i thought about it, and about why it hit so hard. then i remembered a similar jarring realization i'd had about 5 years ago regarding my parents, and the fact that even though i had spent so many years looking to them for truth and guidance and love, they are not infallible mutants. they're human with human wants and selfish needs, he too is human. i put all of my faith in his perfection that did not exist.

so i says to him, i says: i love you so much and i forgive you. neither one of those things means i am coming back.

UHHHHHHHH

i danced today and rediscovered some of my favorite music. i shaved my legs for the first time this year last night, climbed into clean sheets, pulled the curtains open, listened to the cars drive on wet pavement and watched the sky turn from grey to black to pink. i woke up this morning still feeling good. i masturbated and did not cry. 

>Shaved my legs for the first time this year
>post made: March 28
I'm not excusing his shitty behavior but I think I see why he's cheating.
Make
an
effort

merry christmas. i fucking hate myself.

I hate you too.
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE FUTURE.

6AM narcissism and mania is the best tasting thing in the world next to the blood in my mouth from chewing my face. after being the best daughter ever and eating all the mashed potatoes in the world, the whole thing, I came back to my apartment so I could be naked everywhere. i lie on the couch naked, eat my fingernails naked, fold the laundry naked, watch the Dow plummet naked. I wish it was December so I could sit on my boyfriend's face and contemplate things like genetic algorithms while concentrating on his muffled sighs and imagining the way I'll sign my name after we're married.

Lol so deep and poetic
Protip: he's cheating on you.

Also the fact you "wished it was December" so he'd dig out your blood-streaked spam sandwich with his tongue tells me it's a long distance relationship and as we all know those are doomed to failure.
my internal thoughts never leave the confines of my interior mind or any part of me, and the only parts of me that exist outside of myself are content, lost in the woods and staring at stars. i am concerned with little else. i'm proud of myself, everyone else is too.

I'm not proud of you in the slightest.
In fact, after getting up at 11, gawking at my Korean visa for a while, then playing video games all day this is probably the single most disappointing aspect of my day. Knowing you have to exist..

three years ago i wasn't eating or talking and my free will to make grown up adult decisions was being threatened by my dad trying to become my legal guardian. as if his authority over my right to do things, had anything at all to do with my mental state or the condition of my psyche.

CLEARLY YOU SHOULDN'T BE MAKING YOUR OWN DECISIONS.
This blog is rapidly updating itself as I read it.
These entries are from 2012 and there are now about 7 more since I started from later dates.
I guess she's porting over from Livejournal or something.
Because, you know, one copy of this brilliance isn't enough. I need it in at least 5 locations.

the 60 degree weather at night has me excited for fall. i bought my huge water bottle two months too late. i'm turning 26 in nine days. i feel completely detached from almost everyone. i'm not sure how i feel about ghosts. sometimes the removal of a part is beneficial to the whole.

Oh huh I'm 26 and I'm going on a great adventure in a month. What's it like knowing your life is a dismal failure?

i've been contemplating suicide lately. in a completely non-dramatic let me just weigh all of the options kind of a way. this october is the worst one in four years. after the ssri's, ambien and benzos i mostly forgot about 2008's october so i can't fairly compare 2012 and 2008. i'm lucid this time around but only until i schedule a doctor's appointment. i don't feel shame in self-sedating when it means that i'll get to emerge in the spring, alive and breathing and at least live long enough to see if this ever gets easier.

that being said, if any of you click the comment link to tell me that yes, things get easier, or to "hang in there" i will delete you. i'm not kidding. obligatory sentiments however well intended only make these instances worse, for the record.

I can't believe anyone cares enough to even comment.
You're a fucking mess and not a fun one either.
You know evolution is just the creature most adapted to its environment. Increasingly, humanity is turning inwards so as humans become more and more connected and social the reality of needing to be socially graceful will be met and therefore I contend drains on the spirit like this need to be selected out of the gene pool.
There's an interesting idea for a story, in fact.
Also this is probably the fastest I've ever reviewed a blog. This is being generated as I review it.
UPDATES MIGHT BE SLOW NOW BUT NOTHING ESCAPES MY SIGHT.

today is the first day this week that my pupils have been dilated past the size of the point of a number two pencil. i'm not as concerned as i should be about all these lateral moves to nowhere or if i'm fulfilling a goal or becoming better or worse every day. the transitioning from warmer months into the colder ones always takes a toll on me. and for some reason i always emerge in the spring less than i was in september.

Hey
I got something to say
it's better to buuuuurn out
than fade away

i know too many people who have too much to say about fucking nothing.

Yeah and I'm reading one of their blogs right now.

i'm listening to john denver, opening windows, cleaning, simplifying my simplicity. i'm making yana write a book with me. i want to buy a telescope and travel to jordan. my favorite sound this week is the phlegm loosening from my chest. i'm writing my brother's senior thesis because i'm bored.


i enjoy spending time with myself more than i used to.

"Oh but," I'm sure she'd argue, "this is just a little bit about nothing."
Yeah well that's a moot argument. When there's something at all about nothing you've wasted my fucking time.
Fuck you.
70% of my time is spent studying in my underwear and drinking alcohol with getting drunk not being the ultimate goal. the other 30 is equally split between thinking about irrelevant bullshit and what i'm going to be for halloween. i feel incredibly mature though. i'm turning 24 in 2 weeks and hitting the 2 year mark with carson, and paying 15k to sit in a class and stare at power points in my designer prescription glasses while i think about fucking my boyfriend. sometimes i think everything's gonna be okay.
I'm having difficulty imagining anyone would put it in her.
Like that is seriously
genuinely flooring me right now.

my life amounts to nothing outside of masturbating, assorted pills, tvland, and shopbop.com. i'm such a selfish piece of shit. i came three times tonight and bit my lip hard enough to draw blood. i fucking love the taste of blood.

Well that's a thing someone wrote and I read.

if you attract people like me, something is wrong with you.

Fortunately I'm sure you'd hate me so I think I'm ok.
Apparently this blog has existed since 2010.
How is it she's posted 123 times today from different dates?
Maybe she's just now making these public.
Well whatever.
No new posts and I'm officially out like shout because fuck this.
Song of the now.

What

So I was rereading the comments I got and one of them that I swear didn't have a link now has a link to a Youtube video.
What the fuck is even happening--
Also yeah I reread my comments periodically. There's like 10 of them so it doesn't take very long.
Anyway here's today's blog.
I think we're dealing with some kinda tranny.
Probably.
Isn't that a safe assumption?

So you found a cat on the internet. You're not surprised, not even by the fact that they seem to communicate with you via text verses silly faces and jumping in and out of boxes.

You're curious and want to know more, or at least bored enough to keep reading.

This is what you need to know:
- This cat is trapped in the wrong body. Human fingers and toes never sat well with it, they make it twitch and long for claws and a tail and ears that perk up at the smallest sound.

Or maybe a furry?
For some reason I interpreted this as a metaphor.
That's a dangerous thing to assume with all the weird shit on the internet. Like why, necessarily, does it have to be a tranny and not someone who honestly believes they're a cat?
Why does one seem saner than the other?

- The cat is not male or female, it is both and neither and prefers they/them/their pronouns. It pronouns also work assuming it knows you and trusts you are not doing it offensively.

Oh.
Should have kept reading.
I got into an argument with a person of unique gender description recently.
Apparently I should bend to their wishes even though I refuse to use "they" to refer to a single person outside of a royal context because it's mean if I don't play exactly how they want me to.
I don't think the real world works like that.
You know I want to be referred to only as Lord because I am, in fact, a Space Marine but unfortunately that's not the actual case in reality.

- The cat has a strange belief system cobbled together from life experience and what it's gathered in books. It will not shove it's beliefs on you if you don't shove yours on it.

In before shit about elves in a parallel dimension that you can visit if you have brain damage.
Remember that blog?

Me neither.

- The cat is polyamorous, demisexual and kinky. These topics may come up at some point but any sexual talk will be warned for.

Demisexual.
That's a new one on me.
That's a new one on me and I frequently substitute for schools designed for special snowflakes.

 A demisexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone. 

Or "hopeless romantic" as we say.
Also that rings a bell now that I've read it.

- The cat is mentally ill. It's just a part of who it is. It has bad days just like everyone else and it tires to not express them too often but this is it's space and it does what it likes.

Yeah no kidding.
Hey here's a picture.

Writing slumps suck. I've been having trouble braining for any sort of word type things since like...Wednesday. It is problematic. 

Ever have a tumblr social justice warrior tell you something you said is "problematic"?
Nothing evokes a primal 'kill' instinct from me faster.
 I feel like that's a cheap way to get me to default lose in a debate.
You lose a debate when you call someone a name.
How does that make any sense?
If you act like a twat
I'm going to call you a twat.
I mean I guess "fuck you the noises coming out of the stupid face in front of you fucking head are problematic" might be a grounds for a ban from a chat group
I GUESS
One question I get when I say I'm moving to South Korea is "aren't you afraid you won't fit in?" to which I respond "I've made two friends after living in North Carolina for almost 8 years. I don't think If it in very well here either."

I am tired and twitchy and feel horribly disconnected from everything. I don't even know why I just don't feel like I am braining right. I want to sleep but I can't manage to do so and just....nrrrrg.

"tired, twitchy and disconnected" sounds like a typical Wednesday substituting at any of the 5/10 schools I go to.

 So, I was up for a good long while today. From seven PM until now (about 3:30 AM) and that was...not what I was planning to do but I can't really sleep anymore, even after I've taken drugs. it's a problem.

Everything is a problem or problematic for you.
Maybe there are no problems. Maybe it's all in your stupid head.

So, I was up for a good long while today. From seven PM until now (about 3:30 AM) and that was...not what I was planning to do but I can't really sleep anymore, even after I've taken drugs. it's a problem.

You know Zeus says you shouldn't pray for solutions to your problems. You should only pray that you should be equal to the problems in your life.
Worth thinking about.
You know to me that says Zeus is more legit than Jesus. Jesus is supposedly all powerful, all wise and benevolent yet he doesn't fix really grievous problems in peoples' lives because he "works in mysterious ways".
Zeus might not be all powerful (allegedly) but he is powerful enough to basically do what he pleases.
But that doesn't mean he has to please you, idiot.
Got a problem?
Figure it the fuck out, Jesus.
Yeah he might be the god of the gods and the elemental god of thunder and lightning but he has nothing better to do than fix your headache.

You know when you have something stuck in your head and you can't get it out? Words echoing through your skull and they refuse to get out? Yeah, that's what this is.

Also known as, the cat committed poetry again.


The gods said "Give us an anthem."
And all I could do in reply is laugh.
"I only have one language." I said.
"Twenty six letters and some syllables."

But they smile at me
Not with faces but the bending of the world
And they say, with the sound of birds,
"Give us your letters, your stresses, your tenses.
And we will love them no matter what you'e done."

I smile, not with the world but the turning of my lips.
And put a pen to paper and see what happens.

I give them twenty six letters and some syllables.

And all the while, I hear the birds sing.

Then there's this garbage.
Once again I have to take the Roman view of this. If there are gods then their attention is toward far greater things than us and if they turn to a human it is only the especially great and even then it is only the merest fraction of their attention and only then for a few seconds, relatively speaking.
And assuming all that who even knows if their attention is something you want to invite.
Do you know how many people end up turned to dust or animals in mythology?
Like you better seriously know what's up if that's what you're courting.
Or, you know, it could be like Julian or Pythagoras says. Maybe the gods aren't even conscious as we conventionally understand it.
You know that's kind of the beauty of what we call cognitive dissonance. You can hold two contradictory views at once and understand they're contradictory.

Feel like I am falling, feel like I''m cracked and broken and sick and stupid and gross and wrong.
So, I am entertaining the thought of acquiring a Wordpress.  

It's free. Just sign up for it.

- You can say whatever you'd like here but I do ask that, if its something trigeery, you warn in the subject line. 

Hey can I get a trigger warning for trigger warnings?
They really make me irrationally angry.
Like how fucking thin skinned are you that you need warned that something might bother you?
No one gives me a fucking trigger warning when I turn the radio on and Lorde is on for the millionth time that day.
I'd like one, too, but I don't get one.
Like why can't Ryan Seacrest say "hey we're about to play Lorde so change the channel if you don't want to taste blood" before he starts playing it?
Your radio show is already shit, Seacrest. You can only improve it by doing that.
His entire show is just masturbation at how famous he is and how he can't even believe it and then Lorde records.
In fact, can I get a trigger warning for On Air with Ryan Seacrest, please?

So, I've put a lot of thought into this, talking to people, fussing over it in my head, all that jazz.

I'm no longer going by Charley.

It's a name that has served me well over the years. One that I've grown very fond of. However, I find that, while I still am attached to it, things aren't the same way they used to be when I first picked out the name.

I'm a different person now, with different tastes, views and experiences I have learned more about myself and grown over.

Names, to me, are like clothes. You might have worn something perfectly for a long time and it was wonderful but you eventually outgrow it. That's what happened with Charley, I outgrew it. I found that it didn't fit right anymore.

So, what's the new name?

Mallory. Or Mal. The full name is Mallory Bowen Tam

Real life is a lot like a foreign language class where you pick a name to better get into the mindset of that culture.
In German I was Heinrich after Heinrich Himmler because I was in high school and we all thought giving ourselves Nazi names was funny.

 So, I am taking a writing course, right? I needed a plot and Mor and I were sitting here batting around ideas.

The one I a going with? Is basically The Life And Times Of A Shared Headspace.

Your mind isn't a space. It's not a physical location.
It's a series of bioelectrical impulses your brain arranges into your senses.
Have you considered this is part of your problem?
None of the shit in your head is there objectively. It's all what you make up.
Whatever 'you' even is.
Basically what I'm trying to say is everything you see, think or do could be part of your or someone else's imagination and there's absolutely no way for you to ever discern the truth.
So the sooner you accept the crushing hopelessness of your situation the better.
That's therapeutic to hear, I think.
Fuck

Oh Jesus just kill me

Allergies are so fucking bad
bad
bad
I'm praying for the release of death at this point.
Anyway let's read a blog that deconstructs comic book movies.

Many thoughts, in no particular order. Lots of niggly logistical complaints, but I am not unhappy, except for a couple of issues endemic to Hollywood film-making.

Who

cares

here's my thoughts on the movie (because my opinion will be more concise and probably less douchey)

competent action movie. Won't waste your time. Some of the better fight choreography I've seen if you're enough of a fag to care about that sort of thing. Don't see it in 3D because the 3D is so shallow you won't even know it's 3D in half the scenes.

I am getting too old or too sentimental to accept with equanimity the casual way in which this movie, like so many others, shows me the horrible deaths of thousands of people uninvolved in the action of the film. Especially when it's the actions of the supposed heroes that lead, directly or indirectly, to those deaths. Was everyone in the Triskellion or on the helicarriers deserving of being crushed or burned to death in that catastrophic collapse at the end of the film? I rather doubt it. This leads me to wonder about the easy way in which volume of casualties is equated with seriousness of purpose in popular film. I can't actually accept that, and I wish that someone in Hollywood would begin to challenge that equation. 

Who cares?

Firstly if they hadn't blown up the helicarriers (which are basically flying doom fortresses) then half of humanity would have died.

So your options are a few thousand or a couple billion.

Which will you pick?  

Also as I recall it the movie depicted the doom fortresses exploding harmlessly over the ocean surrounding DC.

You know.

The ocean around DC.

The landlocked city of DC.

2. It was pleasant to hear some gasps from the audience when the Winter Soldier's identity was revealed: that was nice, and proof that even open secrets aren't always all that open.

Errr, that was a plot twist?
I thought that was dramatic irony where the audience was supposed to know but Captain America wasn't.

I guess people are really that retarded.

3. Lots of familiar faces, but the unexpected ones gave me more pleasure because unexpected. So, bravo Danny Pudi and Jenny Agutter. (Danny Pudi! I flapped my hands at that point.) Pity that wasn't actually Agutter's character taking down the Hydra folks in the conference room: I had a moment of sheer glee before Natasha revealed herself. Why couldn't an older woman have been involved in the storyline in such a powerful way?

Why couldn't a politician pushing about 75 pirouette kick 5 burly special force types into unconsciousness?

I know we're on about feminism on Dreamwidth but I think Scarlett Johansson being able to take even one special forces dude down is a bit of a stretch.

She's like a 100 pound woman versus a 220 pound brainwashed killing machine.

She doesn't even have a super power as far as I can tell.

But a 75 year old woman apparently the same size with no special training?
Sorry, not happening.

I can't even suspend disbelief in a super hero movie to believe that.

4. I liked the subtext about PTSD, which was not very subtextual, and the recognition that women soldiers were fighting overseas as well. I also liked the recognition of the Rescue Squadrons, even if Sam Wilson's team didn't actually use helicopters to perform their rescues.

"the subtext that wasn't very subtextual" was a topic directly covered by the movie. The term "PTSD" even came up like 5 times.

That's not so much a subtext as a scene in the movie.

I mean we couldn't very well have a movie called Captain America and not cover how much the soldiers of the US military are suffering so America can suck down more oil.

I mean fight terror.

I mean look for weapons of mass destruction.

I mean free desert people from themselves.

5. I liked Sam Wilson, although I couldn't figure out how his suit worked (are the wings controlled by thought? How could he shoot a gun while flying?). But I would have liked to see him have more of his own agenda: he was positioned pretty much entirely as a sidekick, and it would have been nice to see him question or argue some points with Steve.

Wow you're right. The man with the fucking hover pack is really unrealistic.

 9. There were the usual violations of physics inherent in such a movie: both Steve and more normal human beings flying through the air, falling from great heights, evading flying bullets, and being knocked against hard surfaces without apparent injury.

You're bothered Steve (CAPTAIN AMERICA) could fall from great heights with no injury?
He's a fucking super soldier. What'd you expect?

So you want to see a 75 year old politician defeat Navy SEALS in hand to hand combat but a super soldier surviving a 30 foot drop is too much?
Are you out of your fucking mind?

And other violations of plausibility: like the presence of a major military installation under the Potomac. My bureaucratic heart quailed at the thought of the reaction of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service to the construction, operation, and destruction of the Triskellion and Project Insight. But clearly this is an alternate universe where such things are easily ignored. (Although actually filming at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum was inspired.)

Oh so that's the body of water the carriers crashed over.

See?
No humans harmed.

Also yes, that's the movie I want to see in a movie called "Captain America: The Winter Soldier": a bureaucratic nightmare fight between all the different branches of the Virginia local government.

Brilliant.

10. I'm bothered that Nick Fury ever thought Project Insight was a good idea. Is this a universe in which The Minority Report was never made? It's one thing to believe that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty for the greater good; it's another entirely to sign on to preemptive murder from on-high because someone might someday be a threat. That's ludicrous, and I'm baffled that even a HYDRA-tainted funding/contracting/construction process didn't get any pushback from anyone in an oversight position. It's not like multi-billion-dollar projects don't get a lot of review...

IT WAS A COMMENTARY ON AMERICA'S USE OF DRONES AND THE THREAT TO USE THEM ON THEIR OWN PEOPLE YOU FUCKING TWAT.

How fucking thick are you? This was not a complex narrative.

How did you not recognize the giant, unmanned flying robots as a stand in for the UNMANNED FLYING ROBOTS IN THE REAL WORLD

11. The idea that Tony's experience in The Avengers gave him ideas for propulsion systems that could have been designed, tested, constructed, and integrated into the helicarriers in less than 2 years is one that would be reasonable only to someone with no experience in federal contracting and engineering. Heh.

Yeah because a movie involving a dream team involving a super soldier, a Norse god and fucking Iron Man really should contain federal government red tape, and lots of it.

12. laurashapiro and I both chortled at the idea that computer banks from the 1970s could ever be used for the purpose to which they were put in this movie--among other reasons, the magnetic tape on all those spools would have long since crumbled into uselessness. (And they would have gone up like torches when the missile hit.) And the amount of memory in that room probably equalled no more than that on my Android phone... But then, it's the movies, where all tech is nonsensical and basically magic.

...

Yeah.

That's the obvious thing to note in that scene.

reel to reel machines from the 70s would have had crumbling tape.

Not that, you know, they were used to STORE THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF A NAZI SCIENTIST or anything.

13. Speaking of phones, if SHIELD was so comprehensively compromised, and all networks were being searched for evidence of Steve and Natasha, how did Natasha get her phone to work, to track down the file?

... She owns her own iPhone?

This is the woman who can hack into government files using a display kiosk at an Apple Store. I think she's probably clever enough to keep a throw away backup phone not snooped out by the SHIELD network.

This was by no means a masterpiece of storytelling but your criticisms are knit-picky enough even if they were right which, as I think I'm demonstrating, they're not.

What I didn't like (aside from the mostly-petty bits above): too many fight scenes, too long. Too many civilian/bystander deaths, and too much destruction in general--seriously, you can ramp up drama without having everything blow up.

Are you complaining about action in a comic book movie?
Are you fucking crazy?

I don't give a shit about comic books because I'm not 14.

I don't care about feminism or whatever shit you normally whine about.

I liked it. I thought it was an enjoyable and effective (notice I didn't say good) movie.

Like many of y'all, I'm severely disappointed in this week's Agents of SHIELD episode, which for the SG-1 folks I will merely describe as a rehash of "Hathor". Gender essentialist, heteronormative, rapey, predictable, cliche'd, stupidly plotted, and DULL.

Oh my God not gender essentialist!
I don't even know what that means.

So I was poking about in my LJ archives and found an old post, and decided it was time to revisit it:

What's the last book you read that just made you squee? Just filled you with joy in the way that you didn't want it to end?

I've never squeed in my life because I'm not a massive crying vagina but the last book that I enjoyed was The Unremembered Empire by Dan Abnett.

What I'll be reading next:
Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad

Oh, good Christ.

Hey, remember that triumph of the human imagination, The Odyssey?
Ever wonder what Odysseus' wife spent her life doing while Odysseus was off having adventures and nailing sorceresses on the side and pissing off Poseidon?

NO?
WELL GUESS WHO GETS TO EAT SHIT, THEN?

Also for a book that's supposedly feminist (I've covered how not feminist Margaret Atwood is in the past) I don't think the book has particularly good things to say about either gender.

Apparently all women are vicious backstabbers and manipulators and all men are basically thuggish, lying brutes with penis envy of any man who they perceive might have a bigger dick than them.

I'm not saying this is necessarily inaccurate of the human condition but for a woman held as a saint in the feminist circle this isn't exactly the ideas I'd expect to be espoused.

 Fortunately for her, Atwood herself says she doesn't consider it a feminist book. Just a book with a female protagonist.

So at least she's not guilty of writing bad feminist stories.

She's just guilty of writing bad stories.

Why is it bad, in light of it not being a feminist book?
Well, much like the Star Wars prequels, it's a story that didn't need told.

Who cares what Penelope did during the 20 years Odysseus was absent?
Homer pretty much covers it. She raised Telemachus and spent the rest of her time trying not to get forced into marriage by a bunch of freeloading suitors.

Which she succeeds at doing and then Odysseus murders all the suitors with an axe.

Great story.

This blog has just devolved into her linking me shit to read.

I have enough people linking me shit to watch and read in an average day. I don't need help on this front.

John Scalzi attempts to define the advantages of being a straight white male in western society without using the "P" word. The comments are... well, they're better than they would have been three years ago. (But that's not saying much.)(On later revisiting, no, they're not good at all, since apparently the post got linked by some MRA site. EW. Happily, Scalzi is wielding the Mallet of Loving Correction with some authority.)

Oh I remember that.

Wherein John Scalzi talks down to me for 10 minutes and doesn't know how video games work so his analogy falls apart right out of the gate.
Great job otherwise.

Basically he says being a white man is like playing a video game on the easiest difficulty setting.

Which makes about as much sense as you think it does.

I'm moving to South Korea in 1 month. Will being a white man be easy mode there?
Can I bitch like a ponce then or is it still easy mode?

Logically, being in South Korea, an industrialized, wealthy, high tech society filled 99% with ethnic Koreans being Korean would be easy mode.

Or would it?

How can you quantify a life based on difficulty settings?
When I was student teaching at the shitty high school I student taught at my life was on basically the highest difficulty it'd ever been on.

For me that was like Dante Must Die mode.

Does that make it easier or harder than a starving African's life?

Can't really say, can you? I doubt, if we were suddenly thrown into each others' situations Freaky Friday style, we'd endure in either setting.

Is a life one consistent difficulty?
There was a white girl who, despite dealing with what I am sure was the incredible oppression of the patriarchy on a daily basis, went to the best high school in the county to student teach.

Was she on hard mode then?

Oh but hang on a second. This analogy is becoming dangerous for the white girls on tumblr who espouse this garbage because lo and behold we, the student teaching class, divided ourselves more or less along how good the school you went to was. So for all our privilege checking professors supposed non-racism it was basically the white kids in the front and the black kids plus me in the back.

So now I'm in regular contact with this black chick.

She was in a school as bad as mine.

Surely her life at that moment was hard mode.
Bad school.

She was black which as we've established in our pussy sensitivity is an intense social disadvantage because of racism aaaand she's a woman so therefore grappling with patriarchy.

In that situation, by John Scalzi's august logic, her life would truly be hard mode such that whatever little issue the spoiled white cunt teaching other spoiled white cunts should shrivel away into irrelevance.

But that's not really how life or, more accurately, our perception of life works, does it?

When you're a spoiled white cunt student teaching at Northern High the worst thing you can imagine from a class is getting some sass about a cellphone being confiscated. You cannot fathom what dealing with a PCP-induced psychotic rage episode is like.

Does that make me better for having endured it, though?
Well yes it does, actually.

But was I playing on easy mode and she on hard mode in that long, long, long, nightmarish 8 months?

If the answer is yes I was then the only logical conclusion is white women are therefore playing on mostly easy and have nothing whatever to complain about either because clearly if "life difficulty" is just an escalating combination of color and gender then white women have it second easiest.
You know I hardly think playing Civ 5 on chieftain instead of settler when there's warlord, prince, king, emperor, immortal and deity ahead of it is worth bragging about or martyring yourself over.

The only RPG I can claim to have played in any detail was first Diablo and then Diablo II, some years back. (I'm no good at FPSs, they make me motion-sick.) So I read The Mary Sue's rundown on the female characters in the upcoming Diablo III with some interest.

Oh boy.

Stay Awhile and Listen: Diablo III’s Female Character Models Are A Step In The Right Direction

YOU MEAN MASCULINE AND CLAD IN TOO MUCH ARMOR?
BECAUSE BOY I SURE NOTICED.

If you’ve never seen an armor set disparity like this in WoW, that’s because the female armor has improved considerably throughout the expansions. Midriffs and hot pants were common when I first started playing back in 2006, but by the time I quit three years later, most armor sets were identical between genders. Blizzard, it seemed, was finally taking their female players into account.

Japan still isn't giving a fuck so just stick to Japanese MMOs if you want waifus I suppose.
You know who is currently attempting to set gender relations back 30 years, though?
Korea.
You can literally see nipple in some of the armor in Tera.
Not that I was complaining but all right, calm down, Tera developers.

So while it’s too early to say how Diablo III will measure up, the female character models shown thus far have me feeling very encouraged. For starters, they are all wearing plausible armor. Their stomachs are covered. The only one who looks a bit waifish is the Wizard, which makes sense, and even she looks like she can tear it up. But the best of the bunch, in my opinion, is the Barbarian. She’s broad-shouldered. She’s buff. She’s got big, muscular thighs, which is exactly what you need if you’re going to be swinging an axe all day. And before you scoff at her bare legs, take note of what her male counterpart is wearing.

There's a bizarre amount of puritanism running through modern feminism too.
What if a woman doesn't want to dress in a burqa?
Also why does the wizard being waifish "make sense"?
Is it because she's Asian?
FUCKING
RACISM.
The monk and the demon hunter are pretty waifish, too, why not include them?
Is it because they're Russian and a stupid scene/emo slut, respectively?
Actually the witch doctor is pretty waifish, too, but it's hard to tell because of her poor posture.
In fact the only character powerfully built is the barbarian which if we're talking about not-overly sexualized I'm going to argue she is because despite having powerfully built thighs and midsection she also has swaying hips.
She's clearly some body builder fetishist's spank fodder.
I know she wasn't out at the time of the writing but the crusader is just a tall, blonde Aryan with huge tits. Clearly an unrealistic expectation for women players to aspire to.
Because, you know, when I play a video game I aspire to be the character.  Not just pick one that looks neato.
None of them are fat. None of them are ugly.
Also let's discuss briefly how hypocritical this bullshit is.
Here's my demon hunter.

Not a single inch of exposed skin.
But what is prominently on display:
form-fitting armor where her generous tits are well noticed.
Impractically tall high heels in a bitchy "I'm in charge" kinda pose--
for all the supposed genderlessness this article bangs on about that is clearly still a thin, attractive woman under all that.
Just as long as no skin is exposed.
So really feminism is on par with extremist Islam in terms of gender relations.
Good work, everyone.
In fact I can argue in many ways the above character is more exciting than one in skimpy armor because this leave much more to the imagination than otherwise.
For a jaded internet warrior sometimes having clothes on is more exciting than whatever the latest extreme form of porno that's popular at that second.
Also there's another, practical consideration in all this: the point of Diablo 3 is to slowly amass better gear as you go.
It's hard to make essentially nude armor seem better than the last set of essentially nude armor so they just heap plates on top of plates until, well, your waifu looks like a mismatch of armor from about 10 wildly different aesthetics like the above.
Really the thing that has me most perplexed is now armor comes dyed by default so you're better off just buying 100 of those dye remover potions and scrubbing any armor you think you'll keep for a while.
But before level 70 everything is replaced with such regularity you might as well not bother. So your character is just a constant kaleidoscope of gayly colored spikes and sloping, baroque plating.
Anyway wow, fuck.
This was a blog filled to the brim with bullshit. I'm going to sleep.