EYE POPPING EXCITEMENT

Prepare.
PREPARE FOR ENDLESS BOREDOM, MORE LIKE.
This is unceasing tedium: the blog.
Incidentally in picking through the responses to today's writer's block I happened across a response from my old buddy Victorygreywolf. He didn't really have anything new to say (despite still leading me to believe he has several women buried in his mother's backyard) but otherwise I believe that stone is tapped.
Today's blogger I assumed was a woman until just this second when I noticed the name was "Brother_Dour" which is an odd name considering what we're about to experience.

What was the last political scandal that got you all riled up?

I was rather fond if the Chinese revaluing their currency (in another move, I assume, to permanently cripple the US economy) meanwhile the president is on vacation in Hawaii.
I'm sure I'm probably supposed to speak against the Chinese here but if the US is willing to roll over and die on this then it is the right of the Chinese to pick up the mantle of the strong and go.
I reckon they shouldn't be able to take it without a fight but hey, apparently they're getting it without one so whatever.
Then there's the ongoing bullshit of the debt ceiling which is just another bid to avoid having to actually do something. I refuse to take sides because the problem is spiraling out of control to the point where these meetings are just a blinder to the real issues.

I'm riled up about one, now, actually: Operation Fast and Furious.

For those not familiar with this fiasco, it should be called Operation Stupid and Embarrassing. basically, BATF decided to allow some firearms to be purchased in the U.S. by suspected or known drug felons in order to track their use in Mexico; BATF even has a term for this: letting the guns 'walk'.

Hey that's a great idea.
Yeah, that's really a smart idea.

It amounts to, and quite frankly the Mexican government should treat this as, U.S. support for terrorists in their country- because that is essentially what the drug cartels are. Mexico should be complaining to the U.N. about this- I'm pretty sure it violated some international accord;

Probably but if the Mexican government wants to get upset over this perhaps they should put a lid on their own border.
The U.N., bah.

BATF are jackbooted thugs with no accountability as it is- letting them get by with yet another example of bad behavior in the interest of protecting the public will only encourage them to continue their heavy-handed tactics;

And that's who you need if you want results. When you're trying to stop drug cartels a bunch of hippie-dippie bullshit rhetoric will get you nowhere. If you want to fight thugs you have to find some thugs of your own.

Ok, guys. I know you love to hate Sarah Palin and you Liberal types get excited every time she opens her mouth and says something stupid. Hell, I do and I'm right of center. She makes it so damn easy. But there's a MUCH bigger threat out there that you should focus on:

Michele Bachmann.

Partisans.
This all just contributes to the great spectacle that is politics. None of this shit even matters.
I don't even like to get involved in this nonsense because it's so completely irrelevant to anything.

Question: if someone really, REALLY upsets you and later apologizes, with 'buts' involved, is it really a sincere apology?

I think not.

Perhaps you should examine your own actions.
Everyone is sooooo quick to pin blame.

Musings inspired by something that happened in class today. During a group presentation, one of my classmates made the mistake of confusing equity and equality.

OH GOD NO I'M FLASHING BACK TO PUSSY SENSITIVITY AAAAAAAAAAAH.

I would like to propose something controversial: there is nothing inherently bad about being poorer than someone else.

And yet everyone who is poor has elaborate fantasies about what it's like to be rich and I've yet to meet a rich person who thinks about being poor.
Although wealthier people do go camping in what's basically pretending to live in the 9th century so whatever.

The lives of poor people are no less meaningful than anyone else's for being poor, and their contributions to society are not necessarily related to their actual salaries. For example, think about what would happen to society if all the garbage collectors were to drop dead tomorrow.

Gotta have poor people so there can be garbage collectors, got it.

I am also suggesting that income is not directly tied to quality of life-

Oh that is where you are painfully mistaken.

and that's where equity comes in. When I was a kid, we didn't have much. I never went to summer camp- mom and dad could never afford it.

This is exactly like a pussy sensitivity class where words cease to have meaning and you just have to let it wash over you.
We might come to a point and we might not. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader whether or not we get there.
Oh God we have a meandering story about summer camp and rich kids and how they were starved for affection so they'd probably trade their wealth for affection and now we come to this:

Equity is absolutely vital. Equity is what society needs much more focus on. A lack of equity is why urban poor live in floodplains, or near industrial areas, or downwind from wastewater treatment plants. Because that's where real estate is cheapest, and that's their only choice

But you just said lack of money isn't a factor in quality of life and here's a perfect example of where money would increase your quality of life.

(or else, these facilities end up near existing poor neighborhoods because the residents tend to be less educated and less aware of their rights. Or else, they're so disenfranchised that they don't believe they have a voice).

What's the implication here? They should build sewage treatment plants in rich neighborhoods?
Rich people wouldn't live there because they have money to elect where they live.
But thanks for pointing out life isn't fair. Praise be to pussy sensitivity.
Ohhhh fuck it.

Excuses are the refuge of the weak

I'm guessing by this blog's title ("Yip") and that the avatar is a fox I've stumbled into furry territory. I guess that's just how it has to be, then.
I just noticed the name is "Three Tales" which sounds like a Tyranid you might have to fight in Dawn of War II. Right next to Old One Eye and that other named Tyranid whose name I suddenly forgot.

I now have a full pay period over with, two full weeks of fairly grueling training behind me.

Things are finally starting to click, although being a lifelong non-gamer and having not worked much with databases in the like in the past, this job does have a fairly steep learning curve for me.

The implication (though I can't quite tell yet) is that this person has a job working for VIDEO GAMES but doesn't actually play video games.
I don't see a problem here.
Actually it goes a long way to explain why games as a whole have started to suck.

Sure, the pros are obvious—but what are the cons of having a friend with benefits?

Today's writer's ('s's's's') block.
Pfffft, I dunno. Bitch might have a disease?

To be blunt, you can't always count on a FWB being totally disease-free, unless you're absolutely sure they're only your FWB and not someone else's too.

Yeah, there you go. The writer's block today is kind of a dud.
Oh boy, here's an idea for a video game.

Since I'll never have a chance to develop this, I thought I'd throw this out there.

The game would be called "Amnesia," and the premise is simple: you wake up one day, somewhere you don't recognize, as someone you don't know. You then have to collect clues as to who you are, where you are, what you do, and why you're there.

Only the situation you've been dropped into is anything but an easy one to adapt to. You've been dropped into a web of intrigue and one false move could mean you die before you even know your own name. You have to gather your clues about your own identity without letting your enemies figure out who you are first.

...
Surely you're fucking with me.

I mean you do know your name in Amnesia but otherwise it's the same fucking thing.
As for the visual style? Well, a nice noir story set in a crumbling art deco megalopolis might be interesting. I'm thinking a cross between "Bioshock" and "L.A. Noir" would fit nicely.

>Bioshock
>Noir
Ohhhh goodness.
I think I see why video games are shit now. This is who's designing them.
For the record, Bioshock is decidedly Art Deco.

Then again, the idea could work just as well in any setting. It might be interesting to set this in the 23rd century aboard a spaceship bound for a colony in the Pleiades system (hmm, sequel, anyone?)

You're seriously describing every survival horror game ever made. There's an entire genre devoted to "wandering around looking for clues while trying not to get killed". Your only contribution is "oh you have to figure out your name" which has been done before I'm sure.
Really original game design isn't even that hard. You just have to pretend you're on acid.
I mean think of the most endearing game icons of all time: a stocky Italian plumber eats mushrooms to power up to rescue a princess from a giant lizard?
A blue hedgehog and his sidekick, a twin tailed fox who spins his tails really fast to fly, run really fast in multicolored land?
ALL OF THESE PEOPLE WERE CLEARLY ON HARD DRUGS.
Like I got one. A train conducting otter has to rescue his girlfriend, a flying squirrel, from a demon-infested skunk by summoning his steam train through a dimensional pocket.
You can use the DS stylus to draw train tracks and run enemy pigs over.
THIS SHIT ISN'T HARD, PEOPLE.
Oh and then for the sequel (because it's Nintendo) we can do more of the same but you also control the girlfriend in a point and click adventure every other level in what reviewers will call "that part you wish you could skip."
Incidentally resume inquiries can be sent to--

Today Kobi and I went out. We hadn't actually done this in a couple weeks, so I was eager to take in some new sights and sounds (and new flavors).

Kobi is a dog, right?
Kobi has to embark on a quest of knowledge to learn what hiiiiiiiiiiiis (?) owner's gender is.
Pansexual furry cysgender transsexual furry community feminist--
He does this by leaping between the regular world and a multicolored psychedelic world.

First we went to the art supply store and I got Kobi a sketchbook. I'm going to try to prod him into doing some work in colored pencil, which he's very good at and really should do more often. *pokes Kobi*

... That he controls with his sketchbook.
I am good at making video games.
Apparently someone named their kid Kobi or Kobi is a very talented dog.

It was fun, too, looking at some of the more conceptual modern pieces in the gallery and trying to wrap my mind around what made them noteworthy.

Bunch of junk pretentious twats sit around and think is deep and meaningful.
Excuse me I like it when my paintings look like shit I recognize.
Like people or midgets or people with migraine headaches.
The implication there being midgets and migraine sufferers aren't people.

There are so many words that have been hijacked of their meaning and turned into ultimately hollow sayings by the media and politicians.

I say this not as a pundit, but as a writer. I feel like the language becomes poorer any time we run a word or phrase into the ground by parroting it mindlessly.

I can't wait for you to tell me your great proposal for a book where we all live in a dystopian, bureaucratic society run by communists and it's all set in the grim, far future of 1984.
I'm serious about that Amnesia thing from earlier. That was widely regarded as one of the best games released in the last 5 years and you hadn't even heard of it.
HOW CAN YOU MAKE VIDEO GAMES WITHOUT PLAYING THEM?
I'M GOING TO BE A WRITER WITHOUT READING BOOKS.

At least purpose-made buzzwords, like "synergy," "e-commerce," and "Islamofascist," can be abused in earnest because those words exist for the purpose of being repeated mindlessly.

Might want to look up "synergy". I said something similar once and found out it entered the English lexicon in the year 1295.
I think that's bullshit though because I have yet to read someone running around in Chaucer's time saying "Sir Gawainne hadde muche synergey..."

What I can tell you is that I'm training as customer support for a popular game console.

Ohhh. Answering the phones.
Also Microsoft.

Today was the first day they actually let us out onto the service floor to listen in firsthand on service calls, and I think I understand now why we are going to spend so much time training. This job is honestly 90% knowledge, knowing the system and company policies inside and out. The rest is having a good stomach for tedium and stupidity from customers.

Stupidity from customers.
Usually I'm very quick to blame people before technology but this is the exception that proves the rule: 9/10 it is that piece of fuck Xbox.

I have to say, after 27 years as a non-gamer, it's time to bow to progress and get a console and a few games so I'm not totally in the dark about my line of work.

Join a game of CoD
get called a faggot by kids
Fuck, I RROD'd.
I just wrote a haiku.

I'm still waiting on word from Furplanet. At this point I cannot project a date for its release.

On the off chance that they don't think they want it, I may go ahead and release it free of charge on FA and SoFurry. This would be a huge disappointment since I spent many years on it as my first book, but I've moved on to other projects long since. As my first book, it isn't quite up to the same standards as "Basecraft Cirrostratus" and it certainly isn't up to the standards of my most recent work.

WRITING A BOOK CALLED FURPLANET?
That's all I have to say.
The joke is you wrote a book called furplanet.
You topped yourself, man.

Anyone who considers me intelligent, erudite, intellectual, or otherwise of any sort of higher level of functioning should really look up those terms.

I am a charlatan and a pseudo-intellectual.

Hey look it's the first blog post that has my response built in.
I mean it's way douchier than I'd put it but I can't fault it for working twice as hard.

A true intellectual is well-read. What have I read of any substance in the last six years? Really, nothing.

Stop valuing my opinion. It means nothing. There are many others who know so much more than I do because unlike me, they haven't lost the ability to sit and read an entire book beginning to end without losing all concentration and wallowing in profound disinterest only to be distracted by something inane.

Yeah man--
Anyone reading this should value my opinion because I am literally superior in every meaningful way to 90% of all humans who have ever existed.
Now take these two views, combine them, and you have a normal person.
What opinion have you offered me outside your opinions on what makes a good game (Amnesia) and words are losing their meaning (crisis experienced by every litfag ever)?

For the last few months I've been thinking hard about the work of B.F. Skinner and the behaviorists.

Skinner's position- as one who had studied the relatively predictable way people and animals behave under given conditions- was that there is only so much choice in anything we do, and that simply by modifying exterior conditions, people can be made to do anything as if acting on their own free will.

True.
And you can.
Unfortunately most of the time you can't modify the "exterior conditions" to get the kind of reaction you want.

Skinner went further, by pointing out that, from a purely rational standpoint, free will cannot be shown to exist and that it amounts to a homunculus fallacy.

The disturbing thing is, I can't really find any good argument to debunk this from a purely rational standpoint.

Oh this is such a bullshit argument and you know it. It's like saying "well your brain is made of atoms and atoms behave in a predictable pattern so freewill is impossible."
This may be the case but you're talking about how many trillions of atoms? Eventually the structure collapses into chaos.
It's like Skinner. Yeah you can modify stimuli to make a kid cry at a white rabbit but there's so much sensory input in the real world you couldn't possibly hope to control all that to successfully mind control someone.
I'm sure you could readily argue that all the stimuli adds up to create what you are today and that was inevitable but you can't really say that's born from a lack of freewill.
At some point in your life you decided to be a douchecock is what I'm driving at, I guess.

I really do have an irritating, off-putting personality, no social skills, and a shrill squawky voice like a hyperactive 12-year-old. Also, I bet I smell like day-old cabbage and jock straps because bathing once a day isn't nearly enough to cope with my horrendous, antisocial stench from my hideous, freakish body.

Also, there isn't enough booze to make me stop thinking of how horrible it must be to be around me.

I agree.
And yet you admitting this about yourself is probably one of the more insufferable things about you. I bet your friends have to prop you up and cheer you up and all sorts of shit.

Today I'm 27 years old, and I'm just trying to make sense of what I've done so far.

And yet, as much as I've accomplished, I still feel like there's so much to be done.

Let's see what I've done in my life:
faced the slavering hordes of Chaos in real life and not only survived but endured long enough to keep my sanity intact.
There is little a mind steeled to the horrors of Chaos cannot achieve.

Comparing passages from the first chapters of his books to books I've written/worked on, I've noticed a definite trend.

My current work is rising in Flesch-Kincaid readability scores, but to date my highest is just over 60 (for my most recent work, the upcoming "Cirrostratus" sequel). All in all most of my work averages in the high 50s.

I wonder how readable my writing is.
Nope don't give a shit. I have enough of a sense to know what's good and what isn't. Dante and Homer didn't need Flesch-Kincaid readability scores and I sure don't either.
TAKE THAT, FANFICTION WRITERS OF THE WORLD.
TAKE YOUR WORD COUNTS AND BULLSHIT AND FUCK OFF.
Anyway this guy really is pretty boring so I think I'm going to go.

Oh God.

I knew I was in for easy pickings when I saw today's writer's block:

Do you think there will be a cure for AIDS in your lifetime? Why or why not?

This question has all the warning signs. We have a complex issue (pandemics and biology and logistics and economics oh my!) and we have liberal white people wanting to seem tolerant (typical Livejournal user) and we have misinformation about what a disease is and what drug research is (again, typical Livejournal user and not knowing shit about fuck).
Ohhhhhhh boy.
I don't know this person but I've met him a thousand times in my pussy sensitivity classes.

I'm undecided on this one. On the one hand, people are still working on it. On the other, it has moved from being viewed as a disease which affects queer folk and drug users to being viewed as "That thing over in Africa."

Let me answer this question for everyone: AIDS is an unusual virus in that it evolves at an incredibly rapid rate, due to the way its RNA duplicates. You see, most creatures have something that error checks for recombination mistakes and such but AIDS, due to a quirk of evolution, doesn't have this.
This means that most of the new viruses spawned from a single AIDS virus are completely useless and will probably die shortly after they're spawned but AIDS also has an incredible turnover rate. It reproduces so fast that this isn't much of a problem and occasionally an especially strong virus is created.
Hence why AIDS tends to become drug resistant quickly.

If it began affecting heterosexual white people in large numbers, a cure would probably already have been found.

Cancer affects a large number of heterosexual white people (men especially).
Sure glad a cure for that has been found.
Hey--
Incidentally never compare cancer to another disease as a reason for why just because it affects white people a cure won't necessarily be found. I pulled that in a pussy sensitivity class once and you'd have thought I primed a live hand grenade.
All right fine, if it affects white people a cure will be found overnight.
Whatever.

Sideburns are coming along, slowly and weirdly. And the rest of my face is nicely shaven now. :D I figured out a method to keep the sink from being filled with hair - not an ideal method, but one that works nonetheless.

I'm seriously not about to read a post that contains shaving tips, am I?
Oh, no I'm not. That was just an FYI I guess.

Heading out to buy some shoes later with Tod and our new roommate, Milo. :D SHOES. Shoes that are waterproof. WOW. I'll also be on the lookout for some 80s trinkets, to wear with what will hopefully be an awesome 80s outfit on Tuesday for work. The theme is "Your Favorite Decade."

Suddenly I'm not so sold on the 80s as I have been in previous posts.
This is a girl, right?
Oh right he was talking about sideburns so I guess not.
Well have fun buying shoes with your guy friends I guess.
Faggot.

I want to pass this out far and wide, because not a lot of people know about it. There are free cell phone programs for people who are low income. The top two are Assurance Wireless (via Virgin Mobile) and SafeLink Wireless (Via Tracfone.) Apparently the government has been subsidising parts of wireless bills for years, but now they decided just to provide programs specifically for people who would otherwise be subsidised for bills.

subsidized.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz, friend.
Unless you're English which I'm guessing you aren't.
Also I wish I got a free cellphone.

Please pass this on to anyone you know who is low income, and who either can't afford a phone anymore or couldn't afford one in the first place.

I don't associate with peasants.
Okay, so his next post had some sort of symbol that for a long time I seriously thought was a Chaos symbol from Warhammer but upon further study of it it's the male symbol and the female symbol overlapping and there's a third point jutting out from the end where there wouldn't be one if you were to interpose those two symbols (if you can dig it) that looks like a smaller version of the male symbol with a flat end.
Incidentally it's all green.
I have no fucking clue what this is supposed to represent but I'm guessing it has the taint of Chaos on it.
I reckon if you overlap those two it's supposed to represent fucking because as we all know the girl symbol is the mirror of Aphrodite and the male symbol is the lance and shield of Ares who most definitely got it on and unleashed some of the most malevolent gods you can imagine.
It makes sense. You have bloodlust and destruction breeding with lust and desire.
Of course nothing good comes out of that.
So yeah, symbol of Chaos and prepare to be purged, scum.
The post, inexplicably, is about toilets.
Oh but wait:

I was going to rant about transgender rights legislation being labeled as 'bathroom bills,' but I got tired of the idea pretty quickly. I spend a large amount of energy when in public keeping an eye out for transphobia and homophobia.

I spend a large amount of time and energy in public pretending I have a Russian spy stalking me.

Hearing people tell me that my actual need to urinate needs to be set aside because hypothetical boogeymen will dress in drag in order to rape people is getting quite old.

The few times I have to use a public bathroom I try to have several escape or combat contingency plans in case someone tries to mug me while my pants are down.

Can we learn from the whole fiasco of assumign terrorists will somehow use altering gender markers as part of a nefarious plot? In my own informal study, I've found that no straight person will consider using the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy to get out of the military because then they would be labelled as gay and someone else might find out.

I wouldn't use that because I am no coward and wouldn't try to weasel out of military service if I were drafted.
That said I'm definitely not signing up because there is no honor to be gained in modern conflicts.

Egyptian women are now labelling spots where they have been harassed along with the incidents that occurred.

Brown girls of Egypt, I have an out for exactly one of you.

And some republicans offering to give the President the power to raise the debt ceiling - WOW. Thank goodness.

THANK CHRIST LET'S SPIRAL OUR DEBT FURTHER OUT OF CONTROL.

Oh well. I am hoping someone on the magical Ubuntu forums will be able to help me. I'm thinking also of switching to another Linux system, because I can't update to the newest thing, and for some reason most of the programs...

Anyone else surprised this yahoo uses Linux?
I'm not.

Ubuntu, you have made me sad. :/ For some reason, I was no longer able to open any jpegs on my computer after my last update. This...is totally not working for making the art.

Bet it's furry art.
How much you wanna bet?
I will bet all the money I have. I am going all in.

So I finally now get why some people go on a tirade about surgery and therapy and bad decisions when someone they know comes out as trans. These people think that, "I am trans" actually means "I am getting surgery." It didn't occur to me until now that people would actually think surgery is the only thing involved in being trans.

(And no, not the surgery. There is no such thing as the surgery.)

Yeah there is. Getting your dick cut off is the surgery.
There might be other surgeries but that's the thing everyone is thinking about when it comes up.
So here's a question: are you transsexual? If not, shut up about it.
If you are, shut up about it.
No one gives three fucks.

If one is lucky enough not to live in a very homophobic and/or transphobic environment, then coming out will at most be irritating. Even with well meaning, nice people. Inevitably, someone will make a weird comment out of nowhere, because this is the first time they've thought about what someone who doesn't fit the gender binary goes through. This is essentially the same as loudly announcing every thought one has in their head.

Here would be my response: "yeah good luck with all that shit."
Someone told me recently I'm not the most understanding person ever.
No, I understand my own problems very acutely. Did you know they're fucking leves up with tomorrow's patch?
I can think of no greater injustice currently. Because it affects me.
A lot of people would say that's pretty callous of me but I'd say at least I'm being honest.

And the number one comment I have ever received from anyone at a workplace:

What can lesbians do for each other?

Haven't you seen porn? Quite a lot, really.
(probably incriminating myself here)

I kid you not. I was asked this while I worked at a Pizza Hut down south. Most of the employees were waiting for one person to finish their job so that we could all go home at about 1:00 AM.

You're working 3rd (4th? I don't know) shift at Pizza Hut in the South. You should be lucky the people involved could form words that resembled a language.

I feel so tired when it comes to telling anyone what's what anymore.

So stop doing it.
I don't explain leves to people anymore. It's a year in and you have a rank 45. You should know how this shit works. Just follow my instructions and don't fuck them up (which is still nearly impossible) and we'll get through this.
I can't believe the number of people that need reminded when it's time to drop leves.
There are three things you have to do to do leves: you have to successfully link them when it's your turn (made simple because I keep a chart handy and I tell them who links what when it's their turn and remind who doesn't have to link and who has already gone) you have to fight the monsters (made convenient because I often mark which target to attack) then you have to drop the leve before we kill the last enemy so you can get it again next reset.
The only thing I haven't done for you in this process is control your character for you and process the oxygen you breathe.
I have made it so if you are playing this game you can succeed and somehow people still fuck it up.
They are beyond redemption.
Oh right, transsexual business.
Whatever.

The other day someone called to see if there was a man in the house who wanted to take a survey about health care. Yeah, I very much wanted to take a survey about healthcare. It matters to me that views like mine get put out there.

Ew you like taking surveys?
"Get the fuck out of my house you social parasite" would have been my response.

However, several months ago, maybe a year ago, someone else called to give a survey to the 'man of the house.' I said that was me, and he proceeded to argue with me. I then explained that I was trans, that I had had my gender marker changed, so yeah, I am totally legally male. I opted not to go into further detail about birth certificates and selective service because this ought to have been a short phone conversation.

Ahem, men do have to register for selective service.
As a man have you done that?

So when a new survey person called up for a male respondent, I stood there without saying anything for a bit. This person thought I wasn't there, so I finally just said 'no.' I'd really prefer to have said yes, but I feel very tired.

Something resembling a woman is looking at me (apparently) so whatever, lady (or man, I guess, I don't know).
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS ENTRY?

The local famous drag queen is a member, so it seems everyone's ideas about genderqueerness come from her. There are also gay members, and I'm sure there are bi members. But other trans members who aren't cis people that dress in drag? I don't think so. Never heard of them.

Trans members who aren't cis that dress in drag what?
Are these words?

And I'd prefer to have no problems at work. I'd prefer just announcing it to everyone right off, "Yeah, I'm male, yes I use masculine pronouns and I expect you to do so as well."

I will if I remember but surprisingly my job and my day aren't consumed by trying to remember which pronouns to call everyone so if I slip up excuse me.
It should be kind of obvious but I've long since given up on that argument.

I'm planning on asking my boss whether it would be alright if I just e-mail everyone, because the method I worked out with him talking to people privately doesn't seem to be working. I don't know who has been talked to and needs correcting, or who hasn't and needs an explanation.

Look, whatever you are, I'm trying to teach in this shitty high school. Can you please leave me alone so I can explain to 9th graders what a comma is?
I'm having a time preventing the 7 foot tall known felon from assaulting this other girl.
See, look, I've had to call the office. I need you to stop running your yap and impose yourself between the two parties in this situation. I can't because my phone has a cord.
Or you can use the phone and I'll do it. Either way it needs doing.
(this really happened but fortunately the backup I had in the classroom at the time was also a large black gentleman).

Also, after his taking me aside to suggest, "Hey, have you considered whether or not wearing conservative clothing would help you pass more?"

"Yes I'm trying to prevent girls from getting raped and one of the ways I know to do this is to not wear a skirt with no panties. I know that's sexist and whatever but I need you to go to the office and change, thanks."
Oh my God my life.
What has happened?
She had to know there was a rule that girls can't wear skirts that short and she had to know I was going to notice. Why does she even challenge me on this? Like what, I'm going to let her slide?
If I let her slide then I lose all control and then everything goes to hell so no, march your ass down to the office.
Fuck.
Then she tries to play hardball like I'm not on a first name basis with the enforcer of the school who was an ex Navy SEAL.
You can do what I say now or we can play it the hard way but either way guess who's winning in this situation?
She saw it my way.
Oh, yes, blogs. Sorry I just had what I assume is a flashback.

while I was dealing with the potential of being fired if I couldn't concentrate harder on my work and work faster. I have no fear of being fired now, but dealing with this nonsense is tiring.

Hey there's a thought. Doing your job.
By the end of the year 95% of my kids knew what a comma was and knew how to use it.
Proud moment.

I am apalled. And I wrote a better earlier post, but it was eaten by the Asus EEE PC 1001X and its really awful control functions.

I have one of those and I just don't use control functions.
I know it may seem like common sense but, you know, it's not.

I'm going to write down what the choices are here a bit later, but I don't have time to do it tonight. Anyway, this is all because North Korea released a 'happiness index' in which it was ranked the second happiest nation in the world.

Ha, ha, oh wow.
Now there's an entity I'd feel comfortable fighting.

The first two times that this happened, I simply smiled and went on. She insisted that they never did this - that they were well behaved. The third time I mentioned how many times this had happened, and tried to enter into dialogue with her about how she needs to follow the leash laws. She proceeded to tell me that I was stupid, and that standing still rather than continuing to walk was a dumb idea - that I needed to learn how to deal with her snarling angry dogs.

See this is exactly what I'm talking about. You give people an inch and they take a meter.
I'll tell you exactly how I'm going to deal with your dogs next time you stupid twat: some cayenne pepper will fix your dogs right up, I GUARANTEE.
That's right. Threaten to mace her dogs. Your goal in life is to look five times crazier on average than they are on their worst day.

There is no recourse for me. Leash laws are extremely ineffective around here. In order to have them enforced, I would need the person's name or other information.

Or you could stop being a victim and act like the man you think you are and man the fuck up.
I'm not saying mace her dogs (that is kind of extreme even by my standards) but you could do something.
Get a pitbull and let it run around without a leash. See what happens when they meet each other.
That sort of thing.
So earlier when I said "oh right, sideburns so this is a guy."
Heh, memories.
I'd like to get one more dumbass blogger moment for the road, though.

E-zine articles is continuing with more weirdness. I messaged them about an article on transgender pagan people, because whoever or whatever did their spellchecking didn't recognize transgender or magick as properly spelled.

MAGIC IS SPELLED WITH A C YOU DUMB CUNT.
Fucking witchcraft and sorcery.
THANK YOU.