Fuck New Year's, too

Let's find a blog that isn't about fanfiction.
I will not review a blog if it involves fanfiction.
Well this is impossible.
Uhhhhh
Fuck.
Well time for a New Year's Resolution, then: I resolve to update on schedule more.
This has been the worst year for updates.
And fuck fanfiction I'm dead serious let's read Dear Annie instead.

Dear Annie: I have two grown daughters. I don't know what I expected as we all grew older, but it certainly wasn't what I got.
Here's the problem with my older daughter, "Bethany." The three of us had lunch together, and afterward, Bethany said she was bored and had taken on part-time work as a phone sex worker.

Haha oh wow.

I was stunned and thought she was making it up. She is notorious for lying. But she swore she was telling the truth. Annie, she and her husband both have good jobs, and she certainly doesn't need the money. It made me furious, but we have not mentioned it since. 

Your daughter is a whore.
What's there to say?
So basically her daughters are shitty and she doesn't know what to do because she raised them right.
I kinda doubt it but maybe.
Maybe they're just shitty people.
I mean the one already has a kid. Damage is done, I say.

Dear Annie: I am a married mother with two children, both in high school. But I am in love with a man who is not my husband of 21 years. "Harry" is my first love, and he came back into my life unexpectedly. He is also married.
Neither of us is passionate or loving toward our spouses anymore. We both feel that we are growing apart from them. I am waiting for my children to finish high school before I make any final move.
My husband still seems to believe we can be a happy couple, but I don't agree. He is unaware of my affair, but I can tell that he feels that I'm growing more distant from him every day.
An additional problem, however, is that Harry seems to go through fits and starts about leaving his large family for me. But his marriage is based on a lie. Do you have any suggestions on what we should do? 

THE REWARDS OF MARRYING WHITE WOMEN.
"I'll just stay married to him so I can suck the last vestiges of life from him."
Do I have any suggestions?
Stop being a lying cunt.
Also kill yourself.

Dear Massachusetts: Yes. You should stop lying and cheating and being disrespectful to each other and to your marriages. If you are unhappy with your husband, get counseling or get out. But do not rely on Harry to "save" you. We suspect he enjoys the affair more than he would a divorce, and that you enjoy the romance and intrigue more than working on the day-to-day responsibilities of a real marriage.
You've invested 21 years and have two children. Please see whether there is something worth salvaging, and if so, take the energy you are giving to Harry and put it into your marriage. You'd be surprised what a little genuine effort can do.

No fuck that.
End it.

Dear Annie: I plan to ask my girlfriend of seven years to marry me. I put the ring I wanted on layaway. It's a nice simple band with a big stone.

Whoa easy there, slugger. Read the letter above yours to make sure you're doing the right thing first.
Also you put a ring on layaway. You can't even afford the entry fee to marriage.
White women are expensive to keep and as you can see you're not getting much in return.
You have to ask yourself: what would baby Jesus do?

However, when we were talking about rings, she mentioned that she'd love a giddy, girly ring with smaller stones and a lot of design. She doesn't know about the ring I've already picked out.
Since I'm the one who has to buy the ring and do the asking, I feel I should get to pick the style. We can choose the wedding bands together. And if she changes her mind about marrying me, she doesn't get to keep the ring, right? — A Little Help 

You haven't even asked her and already you are hopelessly, irredeemably fucked. Don't do it.
You should get to pick the design?
You should pick something fashion related over your girlfriend?
The thing she, not you, is going to be wearing, no less?
You better fly home from Mars and unfuck yourself, pronto.

Dear Little: No about selecting the ring, but yes about returning it. Your girlfriend, not you, will be wearing this ring for a long time. If you're smart, you will let her pick the style she prefers. Otherwise, she may resent wearing it. 

Even if she likes the style you picked she'll still resent you because you took her choice away.
I don't think you understand how juvenile women are about marriage. It's their day to be the Disney princess.
It's like when men see movies involving giant robots. There's no rationalizing it.

You get to decide the price range. And if she breaks the engagement, she should return the ring. But as your first lesson in marriage, please learn to listen to the other person and be accommodating when you can.

Yeah. Get ready to, uhhh, "accommodate" a lot.
But don't expect it in return. Just lie down and die, really.

Dear Annie: I am an 84-year-old woman in love with a 92-year-old man. Since I'm rather old-fashioned, I do not believe in living with him unless we are married. However, marrying him could change our financial status. Is there any service that could be performed so that we may live together legally and not impact our children's legacy? -- In Love 

Wait 6 months and one or both of you will be dead.
Problem solved.

Dear Annie: I am responding to "Not Unsympathetic," whose granddaughter's birthday parties are "ruined" by a 6-year-old autistic stepgrandson.
I am the mother of a child on the autism spectrum. While his autism is very mild and would not ruin family gatherings, I am sensitive to his issues. Many times, autistic children have a meltdown because the stimulation is too much for them. The sounds, smells and noise produce a fight-or-flight response. That is not the same thing as a tantrum, in which children become unruly because they aren't getting their way.
The stepgrandson isn't going to the party with the intent of ruining it. Try to imagine a situation in which the noise is too much, the colors too bright, the smells overwhelming, and there are some alien rules of behavior that you don't understand. Try to hold it together under those circumstances at the age of 6.
When we're out with our son, we do our best to anticipate what might cause a meltdown and try to avoid it. But sometimes we don't know what's going to trigger it. Your advice to have a separate family party sounds like a good start. — Not Unsympathetic to the Child

Look I get it. I get your kid is autistic.
Can't this be about the other kid for a day, though?
If your kid is going to have a fight-or-flight response to birthdays maybe skip that one.

Dear Annie: I'm a 26-year-old female and have been engaged to a wonderful man for the past year. We had plans to marry after he graduates in June with his master's degree. 

Oh boy here it comes.

The problem started when on several occasions my girlfriends and I went out to the bars and danced until the wee hours. During one of those nights, I had a few too many drinks and ended up kissing one of the guys I was dancing with. My fiance found out about it from a mutual friend, and now he wants to break off our engagement. He feels this was cheating and that I have betrayed his trust.
Is this cheating, or is he being unreasonable? — Heartbroken 

Smart man. You're not even married yet and already you're acting a fool.
I believe Julius Caesar makes this patently clear when he says "a Caesar's wife must be above suspicion."
If you want to be happy in life this should be your first, second, third and maybe fourth and fifth consideration.

Dear Heartbroken: While it may not be as serious as sleeping with another guy, that kiss was still a betrayal. And if you enjoy going out to bars in order to dance with other guys and drink so much that you cannot control your behavior, it doesn't sound as if you are ready to get married. Imagine how you would feel if your fiance behaved this way.
You owe him a sincere apology and a promise to curtail your drinking. We hope he is willing to give you another chance. But if you cannot understand or admit that your behavior was inappropriate, please let him find someone else who shares his values.

Please let him?
I think he'll do as he pleases. He sounds like the first reasonable person I've come across in these letters this evening.
Here's someone writing in with protips and the letter ends with this sage advice:

But I have no other answers. Life is complex, and sometimes you limp along as best you can.

Thanks for that I guess.

Dear Annie: I recently lost my driving privileges and have been getting a ride from a co-worker twice a week. I am right on her way to the office, so it's not at all out of her way.
This co-worker recently blindsided me with a demand to pay her gas money.
I don't feel I should pay her, because she already drives there. Do you think I should pay? How much? I already pay another person to take me to and from work on the other three days because it is definitely out of the way for him. I can't afford to pay a second person. I work the third shift and am the main provider for my family of five. — Broke in Ohio

Should've thought of that before losing your license, I suppose.
Also yes. She's doing you a favor you selfish fuck. Float her 20 bucks.

Dear Annie: My stepdaughter has announced that she will be getting married next year. She would like a destination wedding in Tahiti.
Her father and I do not have a lot of money. We told her we could give her a certain amount toward the wedding, but we could not afford for both of us to attend. Her response was, "You'll figure it out."
My husband is two years away from retirement, and we refuse to take out a loan. I'm afraid this is going to cause tension in the family.
Please help. — Not Going

How about you get married in a small, local ceremony then buy a house?
Or don't because real estate is a losing roll of the dice for idiots.
How about you save that money?
Just kidding. Can't tell a Disney princess that.
Only solution: "fuck off and die you worthless sack of shit."
And I'm up to the point where I last left off on this grand adventure.
Wow.
Fuck fanfiction, man.

Oh my God help

Things I do not care about:
shitty fanfiction
shitty original fiction
why you're mad at your friend because he may (or may not) have said something that hurt your feelings
your opinions on TV shows
not wanting to read any of those four things has left me without much in the way of blogs to review today.
Luckily I found this garbo. Time to play guess the gender!
One might think the name "Owlboy" would indicate a man but I'm ready to be surprised.
There is a fanfic master list so--

I love hearing writers talk about their process, especially when they're as obsessive about detail/know their subject as well as Steven Moffat, Bryan Fulller, or Dan Harmon.

Writers that say things like ''merrr, I don't want to affect the audience's perception, meeerr'' suck. Give me perspectives I couldn't have considered on my own or GO HOME.

CROSS POSTED ON LIVEJOURNAAAAAL thanks for that waste of my fucking time you pretentious faggot.

I feel like 500 metric tons of arse today, I hate travelling to the city for psych appointments and my rosary broke and BLEAH. 

Good.
I hope it's brain cancer.
No fuck the guy I hope it's brain cancer.
I know that probably makes me an edgy faggot but I don't care. My desire for his misfortune is greater than my need to not seem edgy.
A post about "Fetlife" which is a disturbingly common occurrence on Livejournal and Dreamwidth.
Fetlife, for those of you who venture outside once in a while and might even have a job, is a website where people can talk about fetishes with each other.
Usually revolving around a bondage or domination/submission thing.
How do I know about this?
Well the reason is simple.
I am a charter member.
No the reason is because it comes up constantly on these blogs.
So you know even if you are into domination I doubt seriously your interest extends as far as fat people who write My Little Pony fanfiction.
You're probably looking for a harem of brown girls.
Or is that just me?

No INTJ looks at a TV remote control without wondering what it would take to turn it into a stun gun. No INTJ can take a shower without wondering if some sort of Teflon coating would make showering unnecessary. To the INTJ, the world is a toy box full of sub-optimized and feature-poor toys.

laughing out louds

INTJ is a personality type part of a personality matrix that is very popular for deep and edgy faggots on Livejournal because you take it and it makes you feel like you're a mastermind.
INTJ is probably the second most common result after INTF. INTJ for men, INTF for women.
I'd like to point out even if you genuinely are INTJ (which a cursory scan of this test tells you it is the rarest personality type and less than 1% of the population genuinely conforms to this standard) it doesn't actually indicate any ability with technology or even interest in technology.
So I think anyone who finds that amusing might not actually be a person like this.

Te = uses external structures to manage the inner world; seeks objective rules/laws; respects [earned] authority

Ni = Constantly trying to tear down established structures; finds all the exploitable holes in things; challenges authorities/prevailing wisdom by blurping out alternative perspectives/playing devil's advocate

the push/pull between these 2 things is how you get your standard bratty sub, I think - people [like me] who will dutifully do the housework and bring you your slippers, then spend the next 3 hours gleefully tormenting you to distraction

So typical white wahm, then?
Here he is~
It's at this point I'd like to mention that I call you a faggot because of what you say and how you act, not because of any sexual orientation you have.
Because, you know, clearly.

Deer Princess Celestia: today I assembled an entire camera from scratch because i'm a fricken genius, what what. Who needs friends when you have a soldering iron and a little ambition?

See?
My Little Pony shit.

Out:

Ministry for science
Ministry for climate change
Ministry for disabilities
Ministry for aged care
Ministry for higher education
Ministry for youth
Ministry for children
Ministry for workplace relations
Ministry for mental health

In:

Ministry for sport
Ministry for border protection
Ministry for ANZAC Day [SERIOUSLY?????/ IT'S ONE DAY A YEAR??? WHAT'S NEXT A MINISTRY FOR CHRISTMAS??/?]


Also there were 7 women in senior cabinet for the last 3-4 years. There is one now. :|

In:
Department of Economic Development.
Have you ever heard a more sinister name for something in your entire life?
Department of Assessment.
Departmento Munitorum.

God help I seem to have developed a fan club on Tumblr ?? ????

I'd stop using the internet if that happened.
I
I stopped writing this post for about an hour. I just left "I".
I wonder what I meant to say?
Well I certainly don't remember now.
Who am I?
What was I writing?
HELP ME

Ebin

Wahm who writes fanfiction about comics and knits--
Listen to me.
This is shocking new content.
Some of you may think I cherry pick to find this garbo but I promise it's a first come, first serve basis and this is usually first in line.
I don't want to say it's typical because it is possible that I'm just that unlucky but this is typical.

Permissions:
This is also posted elsewhere, but I hereby give blanket permission for podficcers to record my work. Please notify me if you do so I can squee over it and tell people!! Also, if you give me advance notice, I'd be happy to correct any elisions or awkward phrasing in the story BEFORE you record it. *g*

Are you fucking joking?

I have 2 yarny things in need of an art/sculpture beta. Can anyone help? Knowledge of crochet isn't required but might be helpful. I'm looking for feedback and suggestions. Thanks! :)

... What?

the ground is not the floor. the floor is not the ground.

Thanks?

do not get this error. At all. But it's all over the place lately and it boggles my mind because it's not hard.

The floor is indoors. They both have OOR.

The ground is what you dig in to plant a garden. They have Gs.

The ground is made of dirt. Indoor floors are usually not made of dirt in my part of the world. If I drop my keys inside, they fall on the floor. If I drop them outside, they're on the ground, even if there's an outdoor surface like a deck or concrete. Because FLOORS are INDOORS.

Apparently we spent like a whole day on this in elementary school because it is hardwired into my brain. The ground is not the floor. The floor is not the ground. Indoors, the kids sit on the floor. Outside, they sit on the ground. I can still HEAR us chanting it. I can feel the old elementary school carpet under my hands. "FLOOR!" we said, only without yelling because we had an open-plan school. Because this was that long ago. Remember open plan?

Floor is not ground. Ground is not floor. I just. It's a thing.

That's some serious CIA mind control shit right there.
If they say the right word to you you'll fly off the handle and murder someone.

Texas Lt Gov Dewhurst & Republican cronies caved at 3am and admitted the defeat of SB5. This also meant the victory of Wendy Davis' awesome and inspiring filibuster. Dewhurst is a jackass and I would love to see him removed from office, tho I fear Perry would appoint someone even more conservative. (For those of you outside Texas, here the governor's powers are limited to appointing people, signing/vetoing, and kissing babies/show-ponying to raise money. The Lt. Gov is the one with the power to shape legislation. He (sic) also governs the state senate, and if you detect a conflict of interest there, you're onto something.)

>sic
>the current lieutenant governor of that shit eating pig farmer land is a man
NICE TRY FEMINISM.

Would you be interested in seeing a post on writing better medical care, first aid, and hospital scenes? (This would be a resource and discussion post, NOT a place for tearing apart fics/authors for their apparent mistakes. This is a bashing-free zone.)

Got it, thanks.

1. So, today is my 11th LJ-versary. My 4th DW-versary is in 2 1/2 weeks. How time flies! What a lot of my early LJ-life (before fandom) I don't miss AT ALL.

Wow.
11 fucking years wasting time.
I hope to not be doing this in 11 years.
I hope blogging isn't around in 11 years.
And to think I started this shit July 10, 2008.
So many years shitting on blogs.

I have watched ALL the Elementary that has aired and this is me making grabby hands for MORE. MORE! Because I suck at episodic television. Having to wait a whole week?

Man. TV is for women. Do you ever read about men who watch TV?
Maybe the few men who blog do watch TV and just keep it to themselves.

Is there any good fic? Preferably gen like canon?

Gen like canon?
What the fuck does that even mean?
Legalize gay weed!
That's my new ending incidentally.

Blogs are gay

and boring

I private-lock the boring stuff after a while. It's nothing but my desire to keep my journal clean.

AND YET I SEE WORDS.

EXPLAIN.

seriously guys, i feel like, stylistically, fanfic masturbates to itself.

Wow when did you make this shocking discovery?
I haven't even read any fanfiction and I knew it was an exercise in verbal masturbation.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



It's a solid ancient Greece fanfic. It has semi-legal teenage gay porn, genderswap, wifeswap. I'm not saying that as a bad thing - just not my cup of tea, so I'm not going to finish it. Anybody who has read the Iliad knows how he dies, anyway (Achilles throws a fit).

>The Song of Achilles
Also known as "The Iliad" you illiterate plebeians.
Holy shit
this blog is boring as fuck.

I pee a lot. A LOT. The reason for this is because I have super intense allergies and I try to take at least 3 grams of vitamin C a day. My allergies are so bad that if I don't take meds before bed, I'll throw up from the drainage when I wake up, ESPECIALLY if I drink something quickly and on an empty stomach.

This has changed my morning drink from coffee to tea because coffee burns like hell coming back up, but tea kinda just tastes like sweet tea. Hoorah!

Would you believe this is by far the most interesting thing in like 20 minutes of reading?
Her bitching about allergies and vomiting?

So last night I was all ready to Zen into sleep and get up early and go walking and all kinds of really good and productive things. Cos I listened to the Miracle of Self-Discipline, a little one hour audio by Manesh, and I was MOTIVATED to get off my ass and stop distractions!

Then Pope called me after the wedding and was like, "I NEED TO DRINK. ON MY FEET FOR TWELVE HOURS. BRIDESMAID DRESS WAS NOT OF BREATHABLE MATERIAL."

So we did rum & the Green Hornet, and I lent her FEED & DEADLINE, as well as the Manesh audio, cos that's how I roll. 

Oh my God what the fuck am I doing
is this really what has become of my Wednesday?

I would have updated with something earlier, but my life has been pretty decent in the last week (since I found out about you-know-what, the stress levels DROPPED and I could stop feeling shitty about myself). I guess I'm in the "fuck it all!" stage of grieving a relationship? Oh I love this stage except last time I dared myself to be strong by showing up at a party where he was at, and I guess he dared himself to be strong by showing up at a party where I was at 2 days later, and basically, he's much stronger than I and I was set back a freakin' MONTH.

*phuh*

Man Dragon's Crown is such a good game
if you have a PS3 and hate fun don't get it.
Otherwise do.
It's like everything right about video games rolled into one thing.

Why do I not find any super cool apps for Android Market for Dreamwidth&LJ? I would be on Dreamwidth SO MUCH MORE if there were super cool apps. You know, where I could read like at least TWO PARAGRAPHS of my friends page, not just get an RSS feed of titles that I have to click and open.

Yah.

First world problems, huh?

Can I loofah in the shower the morning after I apply Jergens natural glow (fake tan lotion)?

I seem to remember, in high school, that I didn't like Jergens because it came off in the shower. But it could be because I didn't let it set.

I *must* loofah. I epilate my legs & arms every other day (electronic tweezers for the win for Polish/Irish/German/Mexican granddaughters!), and so I *must* *must* *must* exfoliate. There's no getting around that, unless I want to spend an hour inspecting my body looking for ingrown hairs with tweezers.

But I really would like to get a Jergens glow. But I must loofah really hard.

Oh to be consumed with such nonsense.

I have 14 unusued Dreamwidth invite codes if anybody is interested.

Oh my God this piece of shit used to be invite only?
Holy shit man.

SUCKER PUNCH.

SEE IT.

and then explain to me what happened.

omg i don't even think the filmmakers knew.

hashtagILOVEDIT

I'm going to start a new hashtag called #whitewomen
let's do this shit.

Made a mocking comment on how such-and-such a thing was "too mainstream." Nobody got it. Was afraid for half a day that I might actually be a hipster. Looked them up and, hey, I'm way too gangsta for a hipster!

#whitewomen
maybe I shouldn't because that's all this blog would be.

with the invention of twitter lists, I do believe it is possible to have a twitter-based RPG. This would be EXCELLENT. Make a master account, follow the people, make a list, and let others subscribe. Now if ONLY I were, like, more into RPGs. Bwa

think about it! there could be TAGS and all!

Sounds stupid and also gay.
Fuck blogs, man.
This is so fucking boring I can't even pay attention to it.
It's the anti-attention equation.

Rattle that coffin

see what falls out.
Oh look: it's this.

So Nora and I were chatting away and the topic of older couples sharing an email address came up. I scrabbled around for an (in)appropriately awkward and personal comparison.

"Would you rather share a personal primary email address or poop in front of them?" 

What the fuck are you talking about?

Background: So there's a current up-in-arms regarding really skeevy crap on Twitter. It goes like this:

Someone (often female) says something that gets the attention of abusive asshats.
Abusive asshats (often male) say things on Twitter that are entirely possibly legally actionable.
Their target complains, usually to Twitter, with screenshots and links.
Support volume being what it has to be, it takes a while to get notice.
The abusive asshat cleans up their account in the interim.
Twitter comes back and says that Abusive Asshat's account is "not currently in violation" of Twitter's terms of service.
This is remarkably unhelpful to the person who's been the target of all this abuse. 

I POST SHIT ON THE INTERNET WHERE ANY CREEP CAN READ IT.
THIS IS TWITTER'S PROBLEM.
Look I'm not trying to blame the victim here but goddamn if I walk around in the hood with my wallet filled with 600 dollars I'm expecting to get mugged.
Incidentally this is unrelated to the "would you rather share a personal email address or shit in front of a stranger?" dichotomy.

Last night was a professional development meetup for my actual job, the assistant bit. One of the A-Team, "Trouble", forwarded the invitation.

I made a crucial mistake, which was a drink before dinner, instead of the other way around. I got stomach pain for my troubles, which continued off and on into the afternoon. So by four I was curled up around a mug of peppermint tea and chewing on ginger.

In this state I went down to hang out with the small and elusive LGBTQ* contingent. 

They had to star because there's an infinitely expanding list of snowflakes that demands to be included.
"Because you totally have a magic wand," Trouble said, rolling her eyes.

"Actually I do, but it has nothing to do with work," I said, and then realized what had just come out of my mouth. "Oh god. I'd meant pagan, and then it came out Hitachi."

Hilarity.

Smooth talking as always, Reverend Lunatic. :D
Pagans are known for their wands.
Protip, dipshit: Harry Potter doesn't be real.

Many "this is a tiny thing that has been annoying/worrying/otherwise Bothering me but I'm oversensitive and it's too small to disturb the People In Charge of Making Things Right" things can be prevented from growing into The Problem That Laid Waste to the Shinjuku District (Again) if addressed while still small.  

This post was labeled "An intermittent reminder about Things".
Imagine if real reminders were worded as incoherently as this.
People would be a lot more self efficacious. 
10,000 posts that are just her Tweets--
a post about how she has crotch rot--

If, say, your company's motto is "don't be evil", and you find yourself defending the company as a whole or any of its parts with arguments that boil down to "they're not evil, they're just misunderstood", on a monthly or more frequent basis?

Maybe it's time to sit down and re-evaluate your priorities and your exact definition of evil.

You could always join my EVE Online corporation: Gibson Consumer Products.
The logo is an unblinking eye.
"We probably don't look evil, at least," is the motto.

So a bunch of people I know have been reading Alternity, a piece of Harry Potter role playing game and collaborative fiction. Reader, I have been drawn into reading from Year One.

My brain latches on to the weirdest things, and even though it's only related because Harry Potter, it's been circulating a phrase.

Why my brain thinks "mimbletits mimbletonia" is so funny, I haven't the foggiest.

IDEK.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAR.
Seriously what the fuck was that?
Is that humor?

If male warriors in video games were dressed like the female ones: http://t.co/4exrLZe54J 

Latest armor set for FFXIV.
No really.

Small child: *shrieks earsplittingly & cheerfully*
Azz: *flinches*
Parent: *something at a soft-normal volume, inaudible from my position*
Small child: *second, louder, more gleeful shriek*
Azz: "Are you all right, young man?"
Small child: *was not expecting the schoolmarmish attention of a stranger*
Parents: *shush and hustle* 

Reminds me of my one and only time substituting for an elementary school.
Kid starts shrieking at some girl--
DANG SON GIRLS LIKE A GUY WHO IS COOL AND COLLECTED.
Really?
HECK YEAH.
Bad behavior stops immediately.
MILF who showed up to help gets a little wet.
Man I'm the greatest.
Also: never again.
Second grade is the fucking worst thing.
A girl broke her arm at recess--
No shit--
and then a kid walked into a coat rack and almost put an eye out.
I can't handle that kind of stress.
Kid almost fell out of a window once in high school too.
That I can handle. If you're enough of a dumbass to perch yourself in a desk in front of an open fucking window then good luck to you, brother.
18 years old. We're basically peers only they for some reason trust me enough to keep you alive for a week.
Maybe it's that edge factor where I'm exactly one life stage ahead of you.
Opposite sex relationships are banned because a "Nice Guy"gets a passive-aggressive monkey's paw.

Attempting to imagine the expressions on the faces of my various librarian friends if anyone tried riding a Segway in their library.— Space Marine Azz  

Nothing says "space marine" more than that.
I'd just like to point out the opening quote in Helsreach is "we are judged in life by the evil we destroy" so if you want to compare quotes that sound like actual space marine sayings versus this shit then get that book.

This is not an hour that should exist. On the other hand, I see email incoming.
— Space Marine Azz

Yeah.
Usually when a space marine says that it's punctuated by cutting cultists in half with a chainsaw.
You whine about email.
Fuck you.

My new definition of 'hipster':

See also: faggot

Someone, usually young/adult and white, who is pissed off that their formerly handcrafted and artisanal culture is being mass-produced for profit by an exploitative corporation.


Related: and just like that, 'hipster' has fallen out of my automatic-eyeroll category, except as it intersects with 'pretentious douchebag'.

 Or that works too.
Pretentious douchebag is a good c/f.

It's useful for me to know that anything that smacks of Other People Dictating Things still makes me explode.

Even when it's not meant to do that.

So there's a love meme; one of the things about this love meme that's meant to be helpful is pronoun listing. And I've got pronouns posted in my profile. 

MUH PRONOUNS
Apparently this is a male-to-female transgender or something--
I don't know, m8.

Mama doesn't need to know about the STD scare I had in college while banging Shawn and he had collected a new partner.

It is none of my co-workers' business whether I am on the Pill or not. 

Apparently not.
Anyway fuck blogs.

Fuck off

Fuck off I mean goddamn
First of all look at that travesty.
I'm going fucking blind trying to read it.

The new henchboss turned out to be just like its predecessors, and will always kowtow to incompetent users rather than supporting me. Note to myself... Stop caring, dammit, and be content with the paycheck. Pride in work well done does not pay grocery bills.

Punk motherfucker

If I can, I'll leave work early and do a bit of 'carpentry' in the garage.

Jerking off in the garage.
Got it.
Protip, dipshit: don't put inverted single quotes around a word if you don't want it to sound filthy.
I'm going to get some 'reading' done in my room later.
SEE?

I tend to put quotes around the word because saying that what I do is carpentry would be the same as my sticking my hand inside a sock to make a puppet of it and then pretending I'm the equal of Shari Lewis.

Hey man I don't judge.
Hand puppets to jerk off.
Whatever.

All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

IN HELL
no I dunno.
This is a guy incidentally.
In case you couldn't tell.

He says he has a wife but uhhh I think he's lying because as we all know: all guys with blogs are gay.
My wife says the best word to describe my body type is 'sinewy'.
("Hah!")
What? Are you trying to insinewate something?

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

On Friday, when I told my cubicle neighbor that, for the 2nd day in a row I'd be leaving at 3:30pm instead of 4pm, a discussion ensued about it'd then be better to describe my reputation as soiled or tarnished. We decided that 'tarnished' sounded better since it suggests there's something like silver under it.

Is it possible to be this boring?
Jesus Christ.
Say something interesting.

I've seen vehicles with a Christian Fish with sharp teeth eating a Darwin Fish. Yesterday I saw a vehicle where a T-rex is eating a Christian Fish. I don't really care much fo either sentiment and I'm an atheist.

You know what throws me right the fuck off?
Those family stickers on cars.
You know the kind that shows exactly the contents of the car so I know who to hate while I'm driving behind them?
Mama cunt and a daddy cunt and three little baby cunts and I HOPE THEY ALL DROWN IN AMMONIA.

Last night, Sue and I went to Albuquerque's Kimo Theater for the premiere of documentary "Justice Denied". Co-directed by her friend Geri Lynn Weinstein-Matthews, it was a followup to "The Invisible War". While "Invisible War" was about women in our military who'd been raped by others within their ranks, "Justice Denied" was about men who'd suffered the same fate.

So a casual Friday out, huh?
If you want some military drama that doesn't involve gay rape might I recommend "Labyrinth of Sorrows" by George Mann?
No rape but there is almost two hours of traitorous scum getting stabbed in the throat by space marines.
Remember a few entries ago that woman was whining about a werewolf show involving murdered women?
Well like ten people get axed in the first five minutes of this fucker.
Cranking the hardcore dial up as high as it goes.

"Hope for the best, plan for the worst."

So I said today to one of my former minion's own minions.
What *do* they teach kids these days?

Death to the traitor and the heretic.

One lesson I need to teach myself is to avoid telling the higherup that his/her plan won't work. That's probably the nerd in me that makes me act that way. It's best to say nothing and then let the higherup find out as the brilliant idea's implementation turns out to be anything but.

Petty office politics HUH HUH HUH

A co-worker just said I'm a gem.

"no need to be a sarcastic cunt."
Probably the reason I try to avoid my fellow man.

I went to Barnes & Noble tonight and was taking a look at the new F/SF books when one of the employees approached me. 

I'm thinking of getting the book "Flesh of Cretacia" because it's about the Flesh Tearers and I kinda like them but the Space Marine Battle Books are very hit or miss.
It is written by Andy Smillie who I've never even heard of so that tells me nothing.

Cut too many corners of a square and you wind up running in a circle.

Actually if you cut even one corner off a square you don't have a square.

It becomes a triangle. 

 I finally fulfilled one of my many missions at work today.
'Tis a heady feeling.

Twat.
God why is Youtube so shit lately?

Sue is writing a novella prequel to her fantasy novel "Mist" and she needs a name for her heroine's horse from when she was living in Asgard so she'd been researching on the net. She's found quite a few posibilities so far but I don't think 'Gufi' or 'Barmi' will be among the finalists.

Hellghast is a cool name.
Horses are kinda gay so they need cool names to make up for it.
Wow this blog is fucking boring. I had another false start today for a similar reason.
People: get your act together.

Lessons in Boredom

The sign of a great author is ability to use dull things to bring about profound ideas.
Welcome to just boring shit.

So, I'm having a crappy week. Most of it is not really my crap; I have a friend whose dad just died, so I'm worried about her and her family. I have another friend who is leaving her husband and I'm worried about her. 

Wait, your week is crappy?
It sounds like these other people are having more problems.
Especially the dead guy.
Or is that a problem?

There's a couple of other random crappy things happening too, including waking up this morning with an epic headache and food poisoning to top it all off, AND, to be really petty, the fact that the only way I can watch Bollywood movies in Jamaica (other than maybe asking my India-located friends to pouch them to me...?) is with Spanish subtitles. I know enough Spanish to understand them, but it breaks my fucking brain if I try for more than 15 minutes. 

Oh fuck the girl with the dead father--
Bollywood movies with Spanish subtitles?
Fuck this gay earth.

What's really ruining my week is that E's school situation is going downhill again. We had to have a teleconference with his teacher and the principal yesterday, and that didn't go well. The teacher's perception is that Elliot gets up from his seat during work time and beats up on kids for no reason. I told her that I didn't find that creditable at all, but apparently she believes it. 

These fucking parents, man.
Yeah you're right. I'm clearly wrong when I'm watching your shitty kid hit another kid. Clearly I'm in the wrong here.
"I don't raise my kid but that's your problem."

When I talk to Elliot, he says that there are four kids in his class who tease him, calling him a girl and a lady-boy and all sorts of other bad names and that they take his stuff and untie his shoes and kick and punch him in the back and head and arm when the teacher isn't looking, and that they tease and tease and tease him until he loses his temper and hits them and then they tell the teacher and he gets in trouble. He, of course, doesn't tell the teacher --and I can't really blame him, given the experience he had in Minneapolis with telling the teacher and having her join the bullies on their side. (Fucking bitch. I'd still rather cheerfully ring her neck.)  

I had a kid once say "HEH U MAD BRO?" and do the troll face. I promptly informed him no, I wasn't, and more importantly he didn't want to see what happens when I get angry.
He shut up.
It's all in the tone of voice because at that age they're complete chickenshits.
What happens when I get fucking angry in school?
I don't know I make it patently clear they don't have that power over me.
Once you've properly demonstrated that and, more importantly, are around enough to note all these little dipshit bully things you can get control over the class.
I mean shit if I can get partial control over an 11th grade class that had kids with arrest records for a week then I imagine any elementary school punk should be easy.
So I'm trying to get a grip on this woman's life. Apparently she lives in Jamaica and does some sort of mission work?
But not like cool mission work, like the Amarr are rearming the Amarr-Minmatar border and need you to support the war effort and will pay you in illegal cybernetics but some sort of--
I don't even know. Social work?
So, Jamaica has a VAT --
That'd be a Value Added Tax.
AKA "how can we fleece our flock even more?"

 a value added tax -- which is like an American sales tax on steroids. It's 16.9% and they add it to every dang thing you buy. However, as Diplomats we're tax-exempt because no one wants their own country's diplomats to have to figure out taxes in 187 different foreign countries, so the proverbial they got together and decided to exempt everyone everywhere in order to save diplomacy and a lot of time and also civilization as we know it. (No, not really. But it's in the Vienna Convention, I think)

Why does America need diplomats to Jamaica, really?
What is in Jamaica of strategic or economic value?
 I guess you want to keep tabs on your neighbors but goddamn it's Jamaica.
Even the Taliban wouldn't bother--
well, maybe.
But I seriously doubt this woman would stop anything Taliban.
Have you read her blog?
There's my argument against her value as a diplomat.

ANYWAY. Being tax-exempt just means that while we pay the VAT when we buy things we can claim it back from the Government of Jamaica in a process that sounds a lot like that line about Vogons and orders from the Hitchhiker's Guide. (To whit: it involves paperwork that must be ...signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.) Really it's not actually that bad, and you'd expect them to want a process when they're giving a bunch of foreigners money from the public fisc. But it is kind of a pain in the arse and occasions much whining around Embassy compounds here in Kingston. (It's like the ex-pat icebreaker of choice, so really the Government of Jamaica is just being helping us all get along, right?) 

So let me see if I understand this properly.
The government of Jamaica trusts you enough to have you file claims on a value added tax that is upwards of 20%?
What's stopping me from buying 20 cars from an accomplice and having you pay 16.9% on 50,000 dollars 20 times?
These cars don't exist but we're both claiming they are.
I doubt sincerely the government of Jamaica is organized enough to stop me.
I'm suddenly reminded of the story where Piso, a diplomat from Rome was bitching about the weighty gold crown Germanicus, Caligula's father, received during a visit to Syria.
Germanicus was also some sort of diplomat.

Back on the Non-Immigrant Visa line this week (we rotate. There is a highly complex and very, very awesome rotation schedule that is too tedious to explain here. We keep track of it with magnets, I'm kind of in love) which seems to lead me to post more. Maybe because I have more interesting conversations with people? Today I had a 20 minute chat about pig sperm where both myself and the applicant were yelling at one another because my mic was broken. I'm still not entirely sure that the pig-sperm lady wasn't lying to me about why she wanted to go to the US, but if she legitimately knew that much about pig sperm and wasn't actually planning on traveling to buy some of it to breed her pigs with, chica kinda deserves a visa anyway for lying convincingly to me about it at high volume in public with a straight face. 

That's the fucking standard we're working with to let people into the US?
You seem to know a lot about pig spunk or can at least lie convincingly enough about the subject for me to let you in?
And there's an institution that America pays for to allow this to continue?
There's this game called Papers, Please where you work at a border crossing for a communist country and I suck at it because my gut reaction is to deny every single application that I'm given.
Also the game gets increasingly complex and you have to like look for forged visas and it's way more involved than you'd ever want but whatever my point is the default stance for letting people in to America should be "no and fuck off and you're lucky I didn't turn the space marine armed with a flamethrower on you."
Oh that's comforting.
I'm playing EVE Online and this guy paid my character in a datacore.
This is the same psycho bitch that manufactures nukes. Are you sure you want to just hand sensitive test technology data over to her?
She'll probably make something with it, you know.
I wonder what I do with these anyhow.
I kinda wanted to get into research but I only got as far as acquiring datacores.
No idea what the cores do.

Four day weekend in a heavily Christian country over a major religious holiday basically means a four day weekend in which we do nothing and don't go anywhere. I'm half kicking myself for poor planning, since this would have been a great time to get up to the north side of the island and play on the beach and I'm all "Ugh, why did we not make a hotel reservation? Why?". Then I remember that it's Spring Break for the college students so while we'd get to spend 5 days at the beach, we'd be doing it with Homo Collegicus Barficus, which is not my favorite animal to spend a vacation with. So then I'm all "Ugh, we could have found a villa somewhere in Port Antonio or Black River..." and am at least sensible enough to kick myself because really? For a first trip outside of Kingston?

This is what she's complaining about.
Not booking a villa for a four day vacation.
I'm reading a book right now called Caligular: Corruption of Power by Anthony A. Barrett.
It's a lighthearted romp about the character of one of history's greatest tyrants and one of the rhetorical questions it answers early on is "why didn't the Romans see this coming?"
and the only response is "why would they?"
I feel like living in 2013 and hearing what politicians do the Anthony A. Barrett of the year 4013 will be saying the exact same shit about the American Empire.
"Really? The Americans paid third class menials a king's ransom to do nonsensical paperwork in some second world, meaningless backwater? And they wonder why they had 0 dollars?"

We're starting to be able to feed ourselves better and more consistently with the food that is available here. This was a big, big challenge for a while because I'm a midwestern girl at heart and my food-related tastes run to braises, grilling and big chunks of meat. Jamaica, broadly, does not do big chunks of meat -- a 2-3 pound grocery store pork roast is, I kid you not, $37. Beef is significantly more expensive than that.

Yeah, welcome to the world, American.
Shit works different in the rest of the world.

(But, according to my visa applicants, a full-grown live pig is only $50 and we have a freezer. I'm hoping we can work something out here, but I can't really be like "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but according to U.S. Immigration Law you don't qualify for a tourist visa today. But hey, give me your number 'cause I'd like to buy one of your pigs." While that is not actually malfeasance as long as I pay full price for the theoretical pig, it sure does look like it from 5 feet or so and therefore is very, very much Not Okay. Sadly, I don't meet many pig farmers socially, so I'm not sure what to do yet.)

Holy shit between that kinda thing and the VAT I'd be walking off with a king's ransom x 7.
No honor among thieves, etc.

Nathan and I are also having a fight about whether we should hire a 'helper' while we're here. (Jamaicans DO NOT call anyone your "Maid" or "Nanny", because that's insulting and demeaning. It's "helper", as in the person who helps you clean or helps you with your children/elders. I quite like that, actually.) Nathan's point of view is that he sees cleaning and keeping the house as his contribution and worries that he'll feel useless if someone else is doing it (It's a valid worry -- I know it's something that's happened to male spouses before) and he really wants to become less of a slob and learn how to clean things up and he won't if there's a helper.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS, HUH?
This woman is seriously debating hiring a fucking maid
she works as a clerk in a fucking embassy.

Why the fuck does she make enough money to even entertain the possibility of doing that?
And that jeeze-louise, we're in a position where we CAN hire someone to clean the floors and the bathrooms and run dishes and stuff, let's take full advantage of that because they'll probably send us somewhere like Brussels next, where we can't afford a pot to piss in, much less household help.

We both have totally valid positions. However, Nathan is winning if only because I go to work all day and haven't got the time to make calls and interview and hire someone so if he won't do it, it isn't getting done. Which means I have to go downstairs and scrub my kitchens once I'm done with this, instead of staying in bed and enjoying my replacement Kindle with an eye to deciding if I really should have bought the Paperwhite instead. (Current odds run 60/40 for.)

I seriously hope
in 2000 years someone finds this.
I mean this entry of my blog. I hope in 2000 years somehow somewhere someone finds this and says "ah, see, there were Americans who knew!"
I'm left with that thought from 1984: why bother writing anything down for posterity?
Either the future will be largely the same as this in which case I'm wasting my breath or it'll be entirely different and no one will be able to relate to this.

 My job, in it's infinite federal wisdom, actually gives me two days off in order to unpack my things. (Note to any future Foreign Service folks out there: you actually get two days of admin time when your HHE arrives in order to have delivery happen and unpack. No one will tell you about this, until you're sitting around on the bus and someone asks why you're here today if you got your HHE yesterday and you're like "Bwaaaah? What do you mean I could have had two days off?" Which has the upside of making your boss look very, very sheepish and avoid your eyes for the rest of the ride. Poor dude. Given our current workload If I were in his position, I wouldn't have told me either.) 

It has been a very long time since I hated someone this much just from reading their blog.

Anyway, once Nathan found out that admin days were a possibility he basically threatened to walk out and join the French Foreign Legion if I didn't take them. So I did. Because although Nathan is a wonderful, wonderful person, he doesn't speak French and would make a shitty legionnaire. 

Considering the French Foreign Legion is routinely considered some of the most hardcore special forces on earth I don't think anyone you'd marry would be good for it.
Also the French FOREIGN Legion, you might be surprised to learn, doesn't require you to know French. It'll teach you French.

 Before this, there was always a big 'next' in my life. Getting through college, getting in to Law School, joining the Foreign Service, and then finally the long hard slog to get to post and actually DO my job.

Now I'm here. I've arrived. I am livin' the dream, as they say. And it's honestly -- apart from the day to day job-ness of it -- really, really awesome. The people I work with are great, Jamaica and the Jamaican people are awesome, it's everything I thought it would be at least most of the time. 

Well she did go to law school, so.
You know.
Fuck it.

2deep4u

Blogs that are too deep for my feeble brain to fully comprehend
The 18+ label is rightly used for once because if someone under 18 was exposed to this much existential angst they would immediately commit suicide.

I keep having this conversation with people. I find myself exploring what is so good about life. Uncovering the absence of horrible things and long-hated influences. Making time to be in the space where there is room for the possible.

Be in the space where there is room.
Fucking
whoa
man

I probably have time and money to take care of my responsibilities. I probably have the energy to keep up with commuting by bike and starting out a work out practice with Kate. I believe that I have focus and ability to keep caring for myself.

This is probably a 40 year old woman like seems usual for recent blogs.
40 year old woman speculating that she's finally grown up enough to take care of herself.

I am not overwhelmed by happiness or oppressed by sadness, but there is room for both to happen and hit me full and hard before moving along, like standing in a wave pool and letting each wave come and knock me and not having to devote every bit of my experience to dealing with the wave. 

Welcome to the most tortured metaphor you will find this week.
Like a shitty blog suspended over the precipice of the internet quagmire begging for the sweet release of oblivion I must bend every solitary scrap of will to not diving over the edge.
How'd I do in comparison to hers?
I think mine still somehow worked out better and I was trying to make a shitty one.

There are bad things and stressors on the horizon. Paying rent and bills and getting food and rebuilding my tattoo fund in time. Hoping that I can do not have to choose between ink and other commitments that fall between bills and ink.

Gotta get tatted up.

It's not that I've made life good. It's not that it's good because things are only going well. It's not that it's good because I've learned how to use tools to fix it. It's not good because of any reason other than it was already good to start with and I am presently allowing there exists goodness and I am present allowing there to be willingness to accept the space and the goodness being.

And the hurt being.

And the distraction being.

And pretension being.
Seriously why in the fuck are you writing like this?
Arrange your words, Christ.

And while there are no words to push away the fears and the known undermining structures still leave me hanging out over a nasty potential fall... this is not falling.

No words to push away the fear?
There was that internal monologue thing in Dune when Paul Atreides has to submit to the Gom Jabbar.

I had a real interesting moment today this morning during my work out.

I've been working hard at being present inside of my body and accepting and paying attention to the things that I feel.

GHOSTS
REFLECTED IN YOUR EYEBALL

Suddenly I became aware of how much sensation I pick up from outside of my skin. That kind of awareness of presence, of electric/magnetic field perception. The sort of awareness I have of the space around my person that leads me to think about things touching me as being touching the outside of me.

DEEEEEEEEEEEP.

My first response was to want to shut off completely all of the outside feeling and try to be "right" with only the inside feeling. I held that for about forty minutes, but slowly came to realize that my goal shouldn't be one or the other, but a balance between both. Feeling from the outside as needed and feeling from the inside as needed and not trying to squash or focus only on one.

It is a strange strange thing, and curious. Something to note and let be without studying it to death.

Now I must change and grab lunch and head out to work. Tonight there will be pie and sleep, and tomorrow I take Graham's pants home.

I had something to say to this but I don't even know what the fuck it is anymore.
What is happening?
What am I doing with my life?

I work in a very rough environment. In the office the most common joke is based on the fact that in many other workplaces any language or attitudes that we display would result in termination.

Haha yeah I bet.
We're soooooo fucking edgy in this office!
Someone even said shit once!

It can get very uncomfortable at times when things hit close to home or brush up against historical fears or shameful labels. It can get very uncomfortable at times when I really listen to the things that others talk about and hear how they objectify people and reinforce harmful patterns or say terribly racist or sexist things. It can seem very hostile. It can seem very... bad. 

 I bet your office is just edgy as fuck with you working there.

Today I got to thinking about how these guys would be so appalled at the idea of having to be PC because it is stupid to have to tip toe around other people's feelings. People like us don't get offended at rude stuff aimed at them, we can talk like this around us because we understand. Only they get upset when we talk about them like this. 

I'm a white woman your rights end where my feelings begin!

There are days when I do wake feeling like I've slept in the lap of Cthulhu.

I call those days "workdays".

Today I'm having a little breakfast.

I have a pretty blue bowl and I put six cherries, 15 blueberries, five raspberries, and a mini babybel cheese into it. I have a four ounce yogurt cup, a banana, and a little pot of tea with a little tea cup with a little sloth painted inside the cup. The tea is a mango Ceylon and the cup holds just about an ounce of tea at a time, letting each bit cool just right for sipping down. 

Let me bore you with my entire routine in minute detail.

The cherries have pits and stems, some of the blueberries have little stem bits, and the cheese is wrapped in plastic and wax. There is fiddling to be done here and there are no big bites to be taken or too much to eat. I can read along and pause to take a bite or spit a pit. I ate the banana while assembling the rest of the food and I walk back to the kitchen while assmebling the tea and throwing out bits of trash and stem.

Each tiny cup of tea is a fresh cup with heat and flavor. Every berry is its own texture and flavor and the yogurt is tart and the cheese is smooth. There is plenty of room here for fears and worries today, plenty of thoughts of anxiety and sadness to keep me company. Each fear has its own flavor and textures. Worried about getting the brakes fixed on the car, nervous about biking in to work, terrified that I'm not learning work fast enough and even more terrified that I'm doing better than anybody else has in my position before. 

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I am afraid that I am not lovable, that I'm not good enough at living my life, that I'm too forgettable or worth nothing more than the last useful thing I've done. I'm afraid that I'll never get any sense of stability and I'll never be even and level and nothing I do will ever ever ever be enough. And I eat each of these fears with a blueberry or a cherry or a raspberry or a bit of creamy dairy. I wash them down with a sip of hot tea feeling the hint of honey sweeten my tongue. 

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I'm sure it's not the most boring blog I've ever reviewed but it's certainly the most boring in recent memory.
Like those last 50 blogs that were all the same woman yet she somehow is different people?
That woman blows the lid off this shit in terms of intrigue.

This way, when the fears become walls that stand in the way of my love and compassion I can see where the wall must come down. I can see where the wall gets in the way of doing what I can do. When the fears are right in my fingers I can put them in my mouth and accept them as they are and eat them whole. 

LET THE PAIN WASH OVER YOU.
WHEN IT IS GONE YOU ARE ALL THAT REMAINS.
Man Dune was awesome.
It captures all this bullshit existential fear and pain and doubt in one paragraph and it's totally awesome.
Unlike this.
I guess because in Dune there's a point to it
and it, you know, stops.
Dune captures the mindset of like 3 people in the same space this dumb bitch explains what she's eating.

The blueberries of suffering teach us how to eat the buffet of life. Little bites, well tasted and chewed, swallowed with hot sweet tea. Taken as nourishment and consumed gratefully.

What the fuck was that
are you fucking serious?
That is the douchiest thing I have ever read in my entire fucking life.
That is entirely unacceptable.
BLUEBERRIES ARE SUFFERING TO TEACH US HOW TO EAT THE BUFFET OF LIFE.
Blueberries suffering what?
Buffet of life?
That is so a typical American attempt at spirituality, too.
Only Americans can work an all-you-eat buffet into what's supposed to be like a Zen moment.
You know, Americans, a major part of most religions is self denial.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, most Pagan traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism--
all have a component of self denial.

“Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally into it.”

I think the Japanese kind of have the right of it when it comes to meditation.
It's fine to stop and take a breath once in a while but you're always living in the world.
You can't really
you can't really remove yourself from reality.
You should be living your life so you don't need to remove yourself from it.

I've been reading things lately that praise the heroism of teachers who physically protected their young charges physically when a tornado hit the school building. Then there is the guy who interfered with a guy who was trying to stab a pregnant woman and got stabbed himself. There are regular reminders of the heroes who serve in the military, who serve communities as first responders, who live life in service to cause and community. 

I think most people would try to stop the man about to stab the pregnant woman.
I know I would.
Unless she was really annoying.
Then I might let fate take its course.

Not because I doubt the value of the acts of service. Not because I doubt the sincerity of those who post such praise.

Because, I think, labeling those who do heroic acts of service as heroes serves to set them apart from us and serves to set us apart from the scary circumstances in which those who serve shine brightest.

A choice made in a heated moment can leave us labeled hero or coward, villain or victim. How do we prepare for unexpected heated moments? How do we get ready to act in accordance with our values and priorities even when we are over tired, hungry, hurt, injured, afraid? 

Speaking of meditation and Zen:
Zen stresses not thinking about shit too much and when it comes to garbage like this blog you can really start to see where they're coming from with that statement.

It's not unusual for me to feel down around my birthday. It's not about getting old or something like that, it's just a renewal of the conviction that I am essentially worthless and useless. 

This blog sure is worthless and useless.
Have you ever read something this awful in your entire life?
If there's a purgatory and I'm sent there it'd just be an endless library filled with shit like this.
All the covers are black and blank and the only thing inside is this kind of shit.
And my task is to somehow understand and sort it.
How would you even begin sorting this shit?
Could you even separate the shit from the truly shit?
Am I going insane?
Oh God can you believe I've been reading this shit this long?
I should get a gold star for enduring this long.

Part of my mind has been nesting very hard. Nests are cool shapes, being images of comfort and safety even though they are often depicted as the kind of nest that is essentially a bowl with no cover or walls.

And other shit that makes sense to me.
What?
Fuck blogs.

Words.

Words.
Words.

When meeting with a new client the first time, often the first question I hear is "how much life insurance do I need?" While that is a key question it usually can't be answered until certain information is known. A common guideline in the industry is 8 to 10 times your annual income. 

End of article.
No, I kid. It goes on for 3-4 more pages.

OK, let's say your annual income is $50,000, so your coverage should be $400,000 to $500,000. 

Yes that would be in the neighborhood of 8-10 times.
Thanks for breaking it down for me. I forgot how to multiply by 10 for a second.

OK that makes sense but what if you are a stay at home mom with no income? Does that mean mom doesn't need insurance?

That's why the dad remarries.
Sorry that was insensitive.
That's why--
No fuck it statement stands.

On the contrary, we know moms are the most under paid people out there because of everything she does for our family and we would be totally lost without her. Yes mom needs to be insured for sure, so forget the 8 to 10 times rule and read on. 

Insure her for 100000000 times her present income.
Wait, no--
that's still 0.
a trillion.
STILL 0.
0.
THE NEMESIS OF NUMBERS.

The only way I believe you can determine how much insurance you need is to share certain information with your insurance agent.

All that for "ask a professional."
If I make 500,000 a year (har har) then she's getting insured for that much as well because I'm not marrying someone less valuable than me.
Caesar's wife must be beyond reproach, etc etc.

If you don't know the name of an agent, ask your friends and business associates who they use and trust.

Just find the most Jewish sounding name on the list.

The five reasons you should learn to can your own food are:

1.) Save money 

2.) Ensure the quality of your food 

3.) Preserve family recipes 

4.) Become independent of grocery stores 

5.) Utilize excess produce from your garden

>excess produce from my garden

leaves and dog shit. 

This blog really sucks so I'm going to start linking some songs you should be listening to along with this entry to keep the intrigue up.

Here's first.

 The first reason you should learn to can is to save money. It's true that canning requires a modest investment to begin, but the equipment quickly pays for itself. 

Out of the Cellar is seriously one of the best albums ever. If you don't have it you're a FAGGOT.

Round and Round

Wanted Man

WHAT THE FUCK MORE DO YOU IDIOTS WANT?

WELL THERE ARE MORE SONGS ON IT THAT SOUND EXACTLY THE FUCKING SAME.

FUCK YOU RATT IS AWESOME.

Are you discouraged about America today? Do you think that we have lost our way?

No more bands like Dire Straits or Ratt--

What happened to the world?

Do you despair that we will ever get government "by the people for the people," or do you think that it is slowly perishing from the earth in favor of power elites who can buy elections and then do whatever they want?

Honestly in my daily dealings with people I think we have the government we deserve.

We don't really deserve someone badass to lead us out of the dark ages until we can prove we're not complete twats.

I see no reason not to keep with the theme of hair metal.

The Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4th, 1776, has become one of the hinges of history, in America and all over the world. In these magnificent words, this nation began:
"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they were endowed by Their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

AMERICA INVENTED FREEDOM

FUCK YOU LEAGUE OF GREEK STATES YOU CAN EAT A FAT DICK.

Do you know that most people start to lose the experience of their Authentic Self shortly after they are born?

Authentic self?
Are you saying I front, bitch?

Wow there's a term no one has heard since 1995.

You're welcome, white middle America.

Do you know the Authentic Self slowly goes underground as it is replaced by a "false" self that attempts to survive and adapt to an often inhospitable social environment where true self expression is prohibited?

People couldn't handle what I really think. Let's be honest.

Do you know this means that most individuals wind up "living" false or inauthentic lives often associated with unexplained feelings of emptiness, purposelessness, depression, confusion, pessimism and despair? 

RATT.

I don't know how you can listen to that song and not be in at least a slightly better mood.

Let me start by reminding you that the experience of the Authentic Self is one in which one feels confident, self assured, loving towards themselves, worthy and deserving, peaceful, empowered, free, in charge of one's mind/body and life, strong, self validating, emotionally independent and self sufficient, self directed, in full ownership and authority over themselves, centered, grounded, joyful, resilient, creative, spontaneous, alive, present, clear, discerning and much more.

Yeah if you have a job half that shit is right out the window. 

I think Dante had about the right of it: other people are hell.

Was that Dante?
I don't know if anyone reading this has noticed but if I like a quote I'll just attribute it to one of about a dozen people.

Half the quotes I quote aren't really said by these people at all.

Most people experience this "opening" in their Heart region. That is because what I refer to as one's Life Force Energy (LFE) which is the energy/wisdom from which the Authentic Self is sourced "enters" (or "re-enters") the mind/body at that point and then spreads like a wave throughout the rest of the being.

... What?

So how does LFE, and hence your Authentic Self, get depleted/separated from the mind/body in the first place?
Well, as mentioned, when one is born here they begin to experience events that prohibit, prevent, inhibit and undermine the LFE's right to remain in the mind/body and therefore in control of it. This is equivalent to losing one's freewill and becoming a pawn to external societal pressures.

Well thanks for that. I guess I'm all fixed now.

Oh, I know what time it is:

Motherfucking Scorpions time.

When isn't it Scorpions time, though?

A trip to Burma (also known as Myanmar) is a once in a lifetime travel opportunity, which means that vacationers want to make sure that they're able to experience everything the country has to offer.

>Going to Burma

Yeah, cool place to go if you like military dictatorships.

Located between Thailand, Laos, Bangladesh, India and China, the country is officially called the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. 

AND ANYTHING NESTLED BETWEEN THOSE WINNERS IS A PLACE I GOTTA SEE!

Anyone with children who can move around on their own has felt the sinking feeling that your child is lost. Most of the time the feeling only lasts a split second before you realize your child just moved to the other side of the shopping cart, or stopped to examine a toy just before you turned into the next aisle at the store.

But every so often (and I personally have a couple memories from my own childhood) a child actually does get lost and for the next heart pounding minutes everything in the world stops except your need to find your child again.

If my kid ever gets lost--

I feel sorry for anything in their way. 

Line of Sight - This one works best when the density of the crowd is minimal. 

Gotta break up that LoS.

Shopping centers, department stores and parks are good examples. Basically I just tell my kids that they can't go behind things or around corners from me. The key to this is establishing some kind of signal which means "come back now". If the signal is ignored by the child, instant revocation of independence occurs, usually accompanied by some other punishment like a time-out.

Stealth. 

If you're spotted do everything to break LoS.

Plan enforcement comes in the form of restricted freedom should one of the kids break the rules. One minute per year of age seems to be enough time of forced proximity or hand-holding to convince our independent minded kids to stick to the rules. Usually we don't have to actually get angry or shout at the kids for them to stick to the rules, simply removing privileges is enough to reinforce them.

Hand holding?
If they break the rules?
Yeah if you want to raise pussies who will be murdered instantly in the coming apocalypse.

Man this blog is fucking boring.

Time for the best band there is.

You know, their other big hit.

I was going to go for something obscure but nah don't want to be hipster about it.

Besides, name 15 better songs than this one.

Hear that opening riff?

Finally, in each situation, I try to give my kids a plan for what to do should the worst happen. Depending on the situation, we lay it out -

Basics of CQC.

Ohhh.

Anyway I'm up to the start of this shit so I'm going to get going now.

You people suck

Jesus Christ post something interesting in your blog for once so I don't have to seem like I'm phoning it in with this bullshit but anyway it's ONTD_POLITICAL MONDAY :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Nils Pickert's five-year-old son likes to wear dresses, and given how closed-minded people can be, Nils wanted to make sure that he grows up with a strong, positive role model. So he did what any mind-bogglingly incredible dad would do: he started wearing skirts himself.

Of course.

I didn’t want to talk my son into not wearing dresses and skirts. He didn’t make friends in doing that in Berlin already and after a lot of contemplation I had only one option left: To broaden my shoulders for my little buddy and dress in a skirt myself. After all you can’t expect a child at pre-school age to have the same ability to assert themselves as an adult. Completely without role model. And so I became that role model...

Personally I'd teach my kid to blend in and be like the water so he could grow up to be a badass Imperial Assassin but I guess teaching him to be a preening drama queen is an option as well.

And what’s the little guy doing by now? He’s painting his fingernails. He thinks it looks pretty on my nails, too. He’s simply smiling, when other boys (and it’s nearly always boys) want to make fun of him and says: “You only don’t dare to wear skirts and dresses because your dads don’t dare to either.” That’s how broad his own shoulders have become by now. And all thanks to daddy in a skirt.

Needless to say the comments are an insufferable mix of smugness and SQUEEE GLOMP bullshit that makes me want to murder.

Here's an interesting case: black woman running for Congress as a Republican.

She's also anti abortion and all this other crap--

can ONTD_Political root for her?

On one hand she's their beloved POC rainbow but on the other she's at odds with their politics.

Always makes me sad when people of color are republicans. Just doesn't make sense.

Bitch is probably tired of losing money.

Like even if I, somehow, agreed with policies that were actually detrimental to me as a minority, there is no way in east hell that I could join a party that values their minority members more as tokens than as legitimate politicians and activists.

This is why you're whining on the internet and she's going to be in congress.

Both parties had something to gain from this arrangement and could set aside their bottom sore.

I can't repeat it often enough:

morality has no relation to politics.

ANN ARBOR – Sticks and stones may break your bones, but a new University of Michigan study shows words can wound for life.

Apparently calling someone a faggot will make him kill himself.

Man this blog has a body count, then.

I'm basically a serial killer.

The study found the commonly used phrase “that’s so gay” to describe something undesirable can have negative consequences for gay, lesbian or bisexual students.

that's so "EVE Online character with more skill points than ISK".

Although subtle, such language is hostile, and can be harmful to sexual minorities, said study author Michael Woodford, an assistant professor of social work at U-M.

I can't even remember the last time I heard the phrase "that's so gay".

I can't even say that and sound angry. I need something with some teeth to it.

Here's a post about some Russian guy who was keeping these Vietnamese women as slaves in a textile factory--

barely got a response in the comments, naturally--

There's something really fucked up about ONTD_Political's priorities. Some guy calls someone else gay?
CALL THE NATIONAL GUARD!
A literal slave trade?

Fuck that who cares--

whatever, I'm tired and whiny--

Tens of thousands of Ontario teachers will likely see their wages frozen and their benefits cut this fall as the province's cash-strapped Liberals swung a legislative hammer Monday to battle a $15-billion deficit.

Yes, that's certainly what caused a deficit.
Education.

Why would you want an educated workforce?

Ehh.

It's not just teachers. All public servants, provincial and even federal are getting wage freezes or getting laid off. It's because of the economy.

How about you get rid of all the bullshit?

A New Jersey city often described as the most dangerous in the country will no longer have its own police force, as a crunched state budget has intensified an effort to reduce costs by busting the local police union. Camden, New Jersey ranks among the most crime-ridden cities in America — in 2008, it had the nation’s highest crime rate — and this year, it is on pace to set a national record for shootings and murders.

The city, however, will lay off its entire police force by the end of the year.

Awesome.

Hey, Eidos I think I found a great setting for Deus Ex 4.

And, inexplicably, ONTD_Political blames this on the Republicans even though the deficit has ramped up since Obama took office.

Well, he is one of their fabled "person of color" and therefore is blameless according to ONTD_P so I guess--

Hunter Spanjer says his name with a certain special hand gesture, but at just three and a half years old, he may have to change it.

"He's deaf, and his name sign, they say, is a violation of their weapons policy," explained Hunter's father, Brian Spanjer.

Grand Island's "Weapons in Schools" Board Policy 8470 forbids "any instrument...that looks like a weapon," But a three year-old's hands?

There should be a law against naming your kid Hunter.

There, crisis averted.

 A Taiwanese minister has caused widespread debate on hygiene by suggesting that men should sit down while urinating instead of standing up.

Stephen Shen, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) minister, said that sitting on the toilet like women do creates a cleaner environment.

This has generated a lot of online debate, says the BBC's Cindy Sui.

Come on bro be serious.

Might as well cut your dick off while you're at it.

The comments, unsurprisingly, mostly agree with the assessment that men should sit down.

Apparently society is just completely keen on emasculating all men now.

How fucking dumb are men, though? We're just putting up with this shit.

Boring bullshit no one cares about--

Jesus Christ, Livejournal. Liven up a little. I feel like I have one foot in the fucking coffin reading this crap.

Even your sweeping ignorance on every subject known to man fails to stir. 

Usually this is good for a laugh but I really feel like I'm just going through the motions with you today.

I feel like I ask for relatively little from you, Livejournal.

My criteria for a successful blog from you is tremendously low.

Tremendously low, and yet we're still here.

Here, having this conversation.

Anyway let's hope for a better Friday.