|
[27 Nov 2009|11:01pm] |
7857 / 15000 words. 52% done!
Grurgh. Not the satisfactories progress ever. Have exactly two and a half weeks to finish.
Methinks will be spending a lot of time drinking foofy coffee at B&N.
|
|
| Starbuck Tells It Like It Is |
[24 Nov 2009|09:30pm] |
So a couple people have told me that I'd enjoy The Big Bang Theory, and I didn't really listen because (a) I don't like sitcoms that are not by the BBC (b) if I wanted to watch nerds be painfully nerdy, I've got Clark for that and (c) the dynamic of the central three characters apparently relies on a binary opposition between "nerds" and "hot chick", and I was extremely skeptical that this could possibly go well, considering that it's a false binary in the first place and that I tend to get stuck in the "anomalous category" between them. Being an anomalous category blows, so this has developed into Major Pushable Buttons for me.
So when I finally saw an episode (or the second half of an episode, anyway) last night, I was pleasantly surprised at how it actually acknowledged two bits of typical nerd misogyny that tend to stick in my craw: the "real women v. pictures with big boobiez" issue and the "having standards goes both ways, get over it" issue.
Also, KATEE SACKHOFF. Yaaaaaaaaay!
|
|
|
[22 Nov 2009|12:11am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 anxious |
] |
All this job-hunting network-building selling-oneself business is bloody daunting.
Really need to write cover letters and actually apply for things this week... but I feel like I don't know what I need to know to do that, even. (Mostly salary stuff. I have no idea what's a reasonable entry-level salary for what industries in what locations... and I hate asking for money. I hate asking for money from people who already actually owe it to me, even.)
Also, learning to hate LinkedIn already, mostly because I seem to be failing to learn to use it properly. Sigh.
Tomorrow involves more of the fun bit, though--building a shiny grown-up-person wardrobe (and throwing away all the disintegrating faded crap that makes up my current one!).
Then I should probably start my comm paper that's due on Tuesday...
This entire idea of graduating makes me want to cryyyy. I could get promised a job as Queen of Awesomeness of the Universe, at a starting salary of a billion dollars a day to do whatever I thought was awesome, and I would still be pitching a fit at the notion of having to leave Clark.
|
|
| Writer's Block: Book review |
[18 Nov 2009|06:44pm] |
I would only ban a book if I thought it was so extra-special fabulous that everyone should read it, because anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that the fastest way to make kids hellbent on getting something is to tell them they can't have it.
|
|
|
[11 Nov 2009|11:31pm] |
Have finally worked up the nerve to bring Ceremonial Closure to this whole Moby-Dick business. I was Officially Done with it two days ago, but am only now watching the movie version and drinking rum out of my beautiful black leather and stainless steel flask (with its ultraclassy faux scrimshaw frigate) from the Whaling Museum.
Then I will be TOTALLY THE FUCK DONE WITH WHALES FOREVER in style.
|
|
| Today in "Anti-Choicers Are Stupid"--too good not to share |
[10 Nov 2009|10:37am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
dEd of laughing |
] |
Just in case anyone is still laboring under the misconception that anti-choicers are nice, reasonable, not-viciously-woman-hating people, who just rilly rilly love babies, and think babies start being babies at 1 cell because THEY LIEK TOTES UNDERSTAND SCIENCE--I bring you two absolute parody-of-themselves gems from the religious loony "understanding" of science. In the Pandagon thread I posted previously, one of the anti-choice trolls claims the following:
Anti-Choicers Totes Know Science 1: "Plants do not reproduce sexually."
"Suppose that, say, oak trees reproduced in pairs, by creating together a new, single organism."
(Pro-choicers point out that they do. Explanation involves something about apple seeds being embryos.)
"No, it’s not. It [an apple seed] is analogous to a sperm. The manner in which human beings and apple trees reproduce is entirely different and disanalogous."
(Pro-choicers explain about pollination.)
"They do not combine and form an entirely new and distinct organism of the same species in the way that human beings do. There is no such thing as a “seed embryo”! The best analogy (which is what you want if your position is correct) would be a plant that reproduced by combining two seeds together, which resulted in the formation of an entirely new organism. Such a seed would be of the same genus as the two trees that produced it; if oak trees reproduced this way, the product would be an oak."
(Pro-choicers: "Learn to botany, dumbass!" Painstaking re-explanation of pollination and gametes and such.)
"When a female plant fertilizes a male seed, all it does is put biological material on top of the plant seed. It’s like sprinkling salt on your food. When humans reproduce, they create an entirely new, living organism. They don’t put fertilizer or some other material on top of a seed like plants do."
Yes, you read that right. This dude was supposedly about my age, and does not understand the difference between fertilizing an egg and winding up with a fertilized egg, and putting fertilizer on soil to wind up with fertile soil.
Then:
Anti-Choicers Totes Know Science 2: "There are special magic birth control pills that don't function as birth control."
Setup: Dude said something about Natural Family Planning. Pro-Choicers/Actual Woman Who Have Woman Bits And Know How They Work pointed out that NFP only works if you have regular and predictably cycling (along with about twelve hundred other mitigating factors).
"Irregular menstrual cycles are treatable."
(Women: With hormonal contraception. Which you just said you were against.)
"I know that. However, hormonal birth control is used only to regulate irregular menstrual cycles. When it is used to regulate them, it does not make you infertile like the ordinary use of OCPs usually does. It only regulates your fertility cycles."
I know magical thinking shouldn't surprise me, but... "If you take the SAME pill with a different INTENT, it WORKS DIFFERENTLY!!" I mean, I know that a lot of teens go on BC for the dual purpose of period regulation and BC, and tell their parents/whatever nosy patriarchs ask questions about it that they're only doing it for the period control aspect, but I'd never heard that they also pretended that it wouldn't work for the bc aspect anyway. And that any dude anywhere over the age of nine could really be so damn terrified of Teh Laydeez Have Bodies!!!11!!1!!!1EWWW!!!!11!1!!1 that they would actually let themselves believe it just blew my lobe*.
I know it's only funny 'cos it's not me--if this dude has a sister, or a mother, for that matter, her life is probably hellish--but since it's not me, I laughed myself into a cramp, and felt obligated to spread the hilarity and feeling of superiority.
*Obstreperal lobe, to be precise: the part of the brain that detects and resists oppression and evidence of oppressive structures. It is made-up science, but I reserve the right to use it anyway, because I fucking know it's made up.
|
|
| Not quite NaNoWriMo |
[10 Nov 2009|09:14am] |
4945 / 15000 words. 33% done!
Progress for Novel Writing 1/Capstone Project requirements. One more month to do about 45 more pages... plus prewriting and reflective essays (I still always want to call it "metacognition") for Capstone.
Should be fun, with the whalez outta the way now. =)
|
|
| Today in "Men Hate You" |
[08 Nov 2009|10:27pm] |
You have no rights
Shared via AddThis
Gyaaaaaaaaaaah.
Pandagon also has a good discussion on why this sucks.
I also saw that Bridgestone Tires ad that aired last Superbowl for the first time yesterday: the one where Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head are driving down the road (Mr. Potato head is the one driving, like in every media representation of a couple driving somewhere that I have ever seen in my entire life), and Mrs. Potato Head is talking, and then Mr. Potato Head brakes really suddenly and Mrs.' mouth flies off and bounces down the mountain so she can't talk to him anymore, and Mr. looks really happy. So the tires have served their purpose as tires to... make the wife shut up! Because, as everyone who's been around those chatty women BUT HAS NEVER EVER EVER FOR A SINGLE MINUTE IN THEIR ENTIRE LIVES BEEN IN A PUBLIC OR SOCIAL SITUATION WITH A MAN knows, those wimmins sure do talk a lot!
Sure, it's not really quite as important as the idea that, if the wingnuts keep managing to get their way because the Dems will throw half the population under the bus at the slightest indication that said wingnuts are up for another fun game of Lucy-pretending-to-hold-the-football, I may one day lose coverage for my not-getting-cramps-and-bleeding-and-dying pills and start having to pay upwards of a hundred dollars a month instead of thirty (assuming I stay exclusively in states with pharmacists who usually don't have religious objections to doing their jobs, which I plan on doing) just because some insecure old d00ds are afraid that some woman, somewhere, is being a slut!!!1!!1!!1111!!1!11ohnoez!!!!! But that "women talk more than men" meme just drives me completely motherfucking bananas. I don't know what men these people think they're hanging out with, but pretty much all the men I know are loudly opinionated pompous windbags. Sure, some don't have "pompous windbag" be the very FIRST thing you think of to describe them (although plenty of them do), but they all talk a lot, usually loudly. Half of the dudes I know never even developed the "inside voices" that they try to teach you in kindergarten. I mean, most of the women I know do talk a lot too, but NOBODY'S PRETENDING THEY DON'T. It especially drives me bananas that pretty much EVERY SINGLE stand-up comic in the history of standup comedy, except Eddie Izzard (who is awesome), has at least one spiel about how their wives or gfs sometimes try to talk to them, and that's really stupid and obviously they don't understand anything about Teh Menz, because Us Mens Do Not Talk, because they Do Not Think About Stuff, and Don't Have Opinions! Which is why the standup comedy industry is over 90% dominated by MEN MAKING ENTIRE CAREERS OUT OF TALKING FOR HOURS AT A TIME, TELLING PEOPLE THEIR OPINIONS ABOUT SHIT.
(Ordinarily, that would look like a massive failure in logic. However, that is impossible, because Men Are Logical. If the logic in question is "circular" or "faulty" or "does not remotely resemble" logic, that is still a type of Logic if men think it.)
(Yes, because I did need to put in a dig at my #2 Least Favorite Sexist Trope Ever as well. If I'm venting, I'm gonna vent out as much of this shit as possible, dammit!)
Women should band together and start our own political party called the It's Getting Fucking Crowded Under This Fucking Bus Party.
Anyway, I need to go finish my paper on a three-hundred-page novel with a cast of dozens, in which there are three female characters total, exactly one of whom has any lines at all (fewer than six, though).
Anyone who can name me a three-hundred-page novel with a cast of dozens, in which no more than three of said characters are male and no more than one of them talks (total lines must equal one page of text or less), gets cookies.
|
|
|
[04 Nov 2009|07:59pm] |
November is National Novel Writing Month!
...Which is quite convenient, since I have approximately 48 more pages of novel to write this month anyway!
*ditches Moby-Dick research paper 'til the weekend*
|
|
|
[02 Nov 2009|03:48pm] |
So today I did something that I should have done, um, at the beginning of sophomore year, and dropped my French minor. Not because I don't love French, but because trying to actually schedule the classes to complete a French minor with our tiny little French department has been nothing but a headache since freshman year when they placed me into the wrong level.
Dropping my obligations to French has also freed me up to take a history class on Pirates and Smuggling in the Atlantic. This will probably be much more pertinent to my writery career, anyway.
In other news, I'm still sick, I *did* miss Halloween and all its associated awesomeness entirely (I keep feeling like next weekend will still be Halloween, and when I realize it isn't, I want to curl up and cry like a fucking baby), but I have an appointment with Health Services tomorrow morning and maybe they'll give me something to fix me. And when I'm all fixed, I can get cracking on writing cover letters for job applications. Woo.
|
|
|
[30 Oct 2009|11:22pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 sick |
] |
| [ |
music |
| |
mah Halloween soundtrack |
] |
So, since Halloween is my favorite holiday, the universe has apparently decreed that every single one of them is going to get fucked up, usually with some sort of super awkward social situation (the sophomore years take the cake for that... high school, the people in my group costume were all lame and didn't want to go and generally cranky and then we ended up just hanging out being crabby, then I fell asleep at the Jacoby's and didn't get home until way after curfew, which meant I was in trouble for *weeks*, and college, I had another group costume where the group was incomplete, plus unrequited love troubles, mono and two stalkers). In the absence of something awkward socially (also sometimes not in absence thereof), I'll get sick.
I was really looking forward to this weekend (and I'm trying to still do so!). Today was watching zombie movies all evening, and we were planning on going to Drag Ball. Tomorrow is (supposed to be?) volunteering at the Higgins Armory all day, in costume, and a party at Clement street in the evening, and Nicole is having a Day of the Dead brunch Sunday morning. I have no particular social drama going on; there is nobody seeking my company I am trying to shake, and I have enough people who seem to want my company who I *do* like that I'm not wandering around awkwardly trying to find something to do without imposing.
And so, of course, sometime between eleven o'clock and eleven-thirty this morning, I got sick. And so I skipped classes, and have spent all day drinking tea and watching movies, and I'm going to load up on meds and go to bed liek right now and hope I can (a) sleep and (b) get all the way better by tomorrow.
Gyaaagh.
|
|
| Hilarious Moments in Feminist Criticism |
[27 Oct 2009|06:18pm] |
From Johns Hopkins' article on second-wave feminism (the 1960s and 70s):
In "What Can a Heroine Do? Or, Why Women Can’t Write" Joanna Russ inverted the sex of protagonists in order to demonstrate that plots were gendered: "A young girl in Minnesota finds her womanhood by killing a bear" and "A young man who unwisely puts success in business before his personal fulfillment loses his masculinity and ends up as a neurotic, lonely eunuch" (3).
I would just like to say that I would TOTALLY read a book about a young girl killing a bear.
|
|
| scenes from a fun and exciting life |
[25 Oct 2009|11:29pm] |
Scene 1:
Saturday afternoon. It's raining. I am at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which somehow manages to actually smell like whale. Note that I do not really know what whale smells like, but the museum smells some sort of fishy/dead-animal-y so until I actually smell a whale, I'm going with that.
Flasks are half-off at the gift shop, leather and steel one with scrimshaw ships on them. Metal Adam and Professor Neuman get red leather ones with schooners (I think. Two-masted, fore-and-aft-rigged). I get a black one with a three-masted full-rigged ship (a frigate?). Mine is prettier.
Scene 2:
Later the same day. There are six of us at a lunch table. All of us get fish and chips. (Stephanie doesn't actually order but winds up eating half of Kaytie's.) I have a glass of hot spiced apple cider with Johnny Walker Red in it, which isn't quite as good as it sounds like it should be.
Scene 3:
Today, I am sitting in my room reading Heat Wave and feeling dreadfully embarrassed about it. I question whether or not to booklog about it, but decide to spare you all. It is number fifty-three of my hundred-book challenge for this year, which I am so not going to complete.
In other fun and exciting news, this weekend's Dollhouse was mind-blowingly creepy, and also I am almost out of oxycore FUCKIN' FINALLY OMG.
|
|
| a post that is not about moby dick, yay |
[11 Oct 2009|12:34am] |
| [ |
music |
| |
battlestar galactica music |
] |
This is a tripartite post!
Part the First: Stuff that is not actually happening in my life
This means this part of the post is about television.
Season 3 of Dexter was exponentially better than season 2, because Lila wasn't in it, also because Deb's taste in men gets somewhat better with each season (season 3 dude is a drug dealer, but is not a serial killer, or older than her dad, and she doesn't throw over anyone who is actually awesome to be with him). Despite the OMG Pregnancy And Marriage subplot, this season is not about le awesome power of romantic love, and is only about as much about le fucking-you-up power of family, but is very much a Power of Friendship season, which is a type of relationship that has really not had much show time in Dexter so far. Of course, Dexter's BFF winds up being just as frakked up as he is, but cuddly new cupcake-wielding LaGuerta definitely showcases the positive transformative power of having cuddly cupcake-wielding bestest friendses. Rita still awesome, in her soft-spoken cute-little-mommy way, and handles falling headfirst into A Pregnancy Plotline with maturity and grace. I give this season an A for massive personal growth on the part of everyone who doesn't die.
Dollhouse: I don't wanna spoil things for people who haven't seen this week's yet, or who did not know season 2 had started because Fox sucks and seems to be allergic to actually advertising the damn show, but: I think Joss Whedon is a Man on a Mission to get every single cast member of Battlestar Galactica on the show. Tahmoh Penikett's been on it since the beginning, obvs, and the weird cockney lawyer dude was on it sometime in season 1, and then Jamie Bamber was on last week, and this week has another Special BSG Guest. Here's to hoping Tricia Helfer and Katee Sackhoff show up soon!
Also: last week's Dollhouse and this week's Castle totally both used the word "frenemies." Which I had previously heard, like, once, several years ago.
Castle: Last week's fantastic. Really exciting for the upcoming week's. This week was about models, but it was an episode of Castle, which means it'd be fabulous if it were any other cop show and I was thoroughly entertained by watching it, but the moment the mystery was solved I stopped caring about the main plot. Hopefully they won't subject us to multiple "because so-and-so was/I thought (s)he was cheating on me"-motivated murders in a row again, like the beginning of season 1, because even as non-predictable as those plots manage to be when they're still unfolding (this is Castle, after all) they always leave me feeling like That Was Totally Unoriginal, Sheesh.
On the movie front: Today I watched Soylent Green. Some bits of it were surprisingly good, especially compared with how bad some other bits of it were. Overall it was better than I expected.
Unfortunately I am not having much time for reading outside of school. Northanger Abbey awesome, as Austen usually is. Am about halfway through A Long Fatal Love Chase (the NEW Louisa May Alcott book!) and so far it is a hell of a lot better than the front or back covers would have you believe.
Part the Second: In Which I Annoy Everyone I've Ever Met By Being Really Cranky
Mega uber super crackdown on club sports procedure and paperwork this year. Like, they used to be like "handing in your med forms is nice, and here's the deadline for financial stuff" but now they have gotten utterly fascist about it. All forms must be in by Tuesday or they freeze the club! They are sending people to observe us, so that if anything is being done not by the book they will freeze the club! Tuesday we are still on motherfucking break, but the forms still need to be in by five o'clock or they will freeze the club! Grad students cannot practice with us, or they will freeze the club! I asked, what about the loopholes to the grad students policy me and Shay and Shihan discussed with Mike McKenna last year? If we jump through those hoops, can they stay? No answer. I asked, if people want to join and get me their health forms after Tuesday, can they still do that, since karate club often has people join at weird times in the semester? I was told... get all your forms in by Tuesday or we freeze the club! So I'm not sure if that's a yes or a no, but apparently it is very threatening to ask them complicated questions so they needed to threaten me back. Aaargh.
Part the Third: Why I Should Totes Not Be Writing This Entry
It is the holiday weekend and I have a ten-page novel synopsis due next Friday and I had very little plot development in my head, just the premise and ending. So now I am home, in a nice empty house (mom is out of town til tomorrow evening), so that I can actually figure out what the frak happens in my story.
I spent all of today worldbuilding, and outlining my plot mountain (yes, I plan stuff in on a visual of that 'plot mountain' shape they teach you about in sixth grade), and wrote the first page or so of the actual synopsis, in addition to going to the gym and drinking wine (Gnarly Head is on sale at Gary's, whee) and hunting centipedes (ew) and a few other things that were not actually writing. Oops. But I did get some stuff done.
Tomorrow needs to be more productive, though, so I's going to bed now.
Goodnight!
|
|
| Full speed ahead! This is American fun |
[08 Oct 2009|12:12am] |
"The first one to stop him gets this gold doubloon/Now excuse me while I go be melancholy in my room!" Hilarious... well, hilarious if you're in Capstone.
Capstone is considering buying matching t-shirts. These t-shirts.
Also, field trip to the New Bedford Whaling Museum in a few weeks!
Studying this book has been the most bipolar experience ever. And I have experience, like, being bipolar. It's boring, but then it's hilarious! It's action-packed, but then there's a chapter on rope! Whaling is fascinating and bloody and dangerous, but snuggling in the Spouter-Inn is adorable! Queequeg is awesome, but Ishmael is a pompous windbag who thinks he's funny! And then sometimes he *is* funny! And then Ahab is emo as shit! And then there is random sentimental temperance literature, and then there is an absurdist sermon, and then there is a play (actually I think I got those three backwards). The actual Epic Story of "we sailed around a bit and stabbed a whale but then he eated us" does not involve enough stuff to make a real Sprawling Epic about so the book just goes everywhere. Like a whaling ship.
|
|
|
[23 Sep 2009|04:03pm] |
I have to write a 5-paragraph essay.
No, seriously. A 5-paragraph essay. One of those things that is still kind of the basis for every essay but that I have not outright had to write since Mrs. Occhiogrosso explained that it was a myth, sometime in fall 2005.
This would be hilarious if the prompt didn't consist of, um, six questions. Trying to figure out the least stupid way to cluster them. If this entire assignment takes me more than two hours I'm going to be severely displeased with myself.
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
agentclaudia's journal