A decade ago, I did an entry on why I read advice columns and that it was for the crazytrain: the people in insane sitches who seem to be asking the entirely wrong question. I have been on that train, and I like to get updates from people still there.

Okay, so I still hold by the four types of people who write to advice columns (excluding most fake letters):
1.) ones that want confirmation of something they already plan to do (and will do even without confirmation) or already did (and want reassurance)
2.) people who just really want attention
3.) really dumb.
4.) WTF people. They aren't writing in due to being stupid, wanting attention, or just confirmation, though they can be all of that. They are literally stumped on how the fuck they got to this, because they feel this isn't normal, but they don't know at what point they boarded the crazy train, because they've just been on it that long.

I was in group four: no, I never wrote an advice column, but man, I probably should have. But not for the columnist.

Ask a Manager is more or less universally right, mostly because she's advising for sitches related to work and never deviates from using professional metrics and strict professional ethics. Which is an accomplishment, honestly; very few people can keep that kind of ethical standard to their advice that consistently; her only weak point is marijuana use (she's very pro, and honestly, so am I), where some of her advice felt--not wrong, it wasn't, but not my 100% sure reaction. Her, I trust absolutely. She also differentiates clearly between 'wrong', 'bad idea', 'prob not recommended', 'should be fine but be careful', and 'cool'. I literally can't think of a columnist who does that, but there may be a reason for that.

Dear Prudence, Captain Awkward, Dan Savage, et al: not so much. All have a moral standard and relative moral standard: none have a consistent ethical standard. When they talk about ethics, it's only when it matches their morals (as of, apparently, right this second). Which is actually my biggest problem; even in relationships--maybe especially--morality is in flux constantly, is a spectrum, and can be squiggly as hell, but ethics shouldn't be. Something can be immoral (by some standards), but it can still be ethical. And honestly, I'm not sure most of them know there's a difference or care.

(It's not that there aren't good reasons to be unethical--there are, many of them--but the first step is to admit that and then why the deviation is necessary compared to other actions. That's kind of the basis of being a thoughtful person that does more good than harm. It also helps to have an ethical framework, yeah.)

However, that's not about that: this is about the reason I dropped Captain Awkward to 'maybe read if I'm really bored and want to re-read favorites' from 'sometimes when I'm bored': her comment section. Now granted, she already heavily moderated against any dissent whatsoever (any kind, even the kind that agreed in the wrong way which is apparently dissent?) to the point I felt like I was reading what she said over and over and over and over (and over, dear God), so she wasn't on my regular list, but she started closing comments at random on most posts, and I don't read for the columnists, but the comments and discussion. Why?

Well, its like reading a hundred advice columnist who don't need to worry about ad revenue, but also, the discussions are where I see the ethical--again, not moral/immortal nonsense--hashed out in detail. What is ethical in general --> what is ethical to this situation --> what is ethical to this person. And that's where you see the best advice come out; sometimes, it agrees with the columnist, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes, I don't agree with columnist or commenters, but the arguments and even individual comments as a whole do a really good job of chasing down the bits and pieces that define right versus wrong. And as a normal human being who struggles like a lot with differentiating 'this is right', 'this feels right', 'this feels right to me right now', it does help solidify my own internal action check and often adds nuance.

Also, they're funny as shit.

Just as good: communities that comment on those columnists like agony_aunt.

In closing, my favorite Captain Awkward post of all time and an example of how the crazytrain gets you: My Partner Keeps Inviting His Ex Girlfriend to Stay With Us

I can work out how this happened and around that age? It could have easily happened to me. I, however, would be asking shit like "should she be paying like, rent for the time she's here?"; this woman is doing better on that front.

(Yes, I deliberately left out part of the title: I wanted it to be a surprise.)

Spoilers if you haven't watched, but for the record ,I have yet to work out what that title is supposed to refer to.


( another life: a brief slightly spoilery intro if you're on the fence )
( another life, warnings, spoilery )
( another life, really spoilery about ep one but up to ep six )

I'm not willing to promise anything--The Magicians broke me of that shit--but it's definitely interesting sci-fi and I'm liking the characters. If you're jonesing for some spaceship disaster, this is for you. And you know, the earth stuff might get interesting? It could happen.

jesse_the_k posted: Nifty Neti: Why & How I Rinse My Nose

For anyone who has heard about neti pots or thought about using one: really good breakdown, read it. I also actively recommend it; it is not woo nor is it an instantaneous fix. You may notice immediate benefit in feeling clearer for a short time, but don't worry if that seems transient the first few times; this is accumulative. It becomes really noticeable in your daily life after about three to five days of use and you're noticeably less congested. I was still on the fence about it being more than a nice few hour solution until around the fourth or fifth day when overall improvement was obvious in my daily life.

(You may also notice this: your gums and teeth are less sensitive/swollen/sore/weird, the roof of your mouth is less randomly sensitive/less sore, your mouth may taste less crappy in the morning, and your overall sense of taste may change somewhat for the better.)

I need a sanity check.

Anyone else with an 4K TV really notice the make-up everyone is wearing on TV shows from the eighties and nineties? I mean, the skin tones are eerily solid and way too flat (consistent?) for Troi, Guinan and even Worf, whereas Data and the Borg now really look like they're wearing pancake makeup.

...or am I going crazy?

...right, so if I appear in your entries capslocking like a crazy person, it's--you know when you're at a party and then you realize everyone there is all your best friends you haven't seen in years and want to cry and hug them?

I'm doing that. I'll calm down, like eventually, I guess?

For anyone who is new to DW or only knew me in Tumblr; I don't keep such tight control over my DW as I do my Tumblr, so I am opening access to more people here. It's a slow process, because I curate like fuck as that is my way. However, if I have you added on Tumblr, there's a better than good chance I'll want to add you here, so tell me. If you changed names, seriously, tell me; I will not catch onto this on my own.

...seriously, tell me. I am slow about this because un-Accessing/unfriending makes me so deeply uncomfortable I used to create entire filters around people I didn't want to read just because I was terrified of hurting their feelings by unfriending them. I don't pretend that's not crazy, but it is my way.

I feel like I should post fic here. Like, obscure fic from a fandom that barely exists for a super problematic and creepy pairing or something, idk.

OH GOD I FORGOT I HAVE LIKE SO MANY ICONS TO EXPRESS MY FEELS.

Fortunately, my job and how television portrays it (Quality control, aka program testing) isn't a subject for television because generally one hour drama doesn't focus on the minutia of a company building a program step by step because come on, that can be a multi-year process.

....with one exception.

I once ran across the dramatization of the dev process (montage-like) on TV and watched because it's kind of soothing to watch developers suffering (they're like a floor away from me and I've had a bad week, okay?) until we got back to real time and I promptly lost my mind.

A Summary of the Horror:
They're like "almost there after weeks of (montage) work, oh noes there's a null character mcguffin plot reason thing must get it out like right now tonight no waiting!" or something like that, how do you even know this you just finished the last line and haven't compiled it...hold up, where are the design docs, I haven't seen any since this started, how are they--and they're all scanning the source code--scanning a million lines of source code with their eyes ON SINGLE MONITOR WHY, not even using a search algorithm--who does that, what kind of fucking IDE are you using, why don't you have color enabled to make this easier, wait, that looks like microsoft notepad with the background painted black-- "OH FOUND IT FIXING IT NOW" wait, no, did you erase something and then hit enter that's a new line, but go back, problem, the mcguffin wouldn't be in there, that's in a class file, why are you--hold up, what language is this-- "Okay, compiling now!" holy shit did you just-- "Almost done!" wait, what, no, you can't do that, you don't fly edit your code (that did like magic or word processing, they weren't clear) have you ever heard of debug or like-- "Okay, done, send it--" IN TEN SECONDS REAL TIME THAT WASN'T A MONTAGE "--to whothefuckever we can start distribution like next week awesome going to hawaii!" WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING YOU DIDN'T EVEN RUN IT-- "Everyone go on vacation now bye!" NO NO YOU UNIT TEST SYSTEM TEST USER ACCEPTANCE LAST HAS TO CHECK FOR MEMORY LEAKS AND LOAD AT LEAST RUN SOME AUTOMATED SCRIPTS WHAT ARE YOU DOING DID YOU EVEN CHECK TO SEE IF IT EVER WORKED IN A REAL-TIME ENVIRONMENT BECAUSE YOU MACHINES ARE SET TO IDEAL CONDITIONS NOT THE WILDS OF PRODUCTION--

I'll spare you the rest--they say when the trauma becomes too much, the memory's blocked so sanity can be retained--but one thing's really just bothering me here.

In this ultra-tech, totally pro too many coffee cups suspiciously unstained and without chips or being shattered against the wall and no crumpled up design documents because the analysts are sadistic fucks and will give you three contradictory rules and don't understand how to use Visio or the concept of driver flow...all the super-cool computers only had one monitor each.

I get it now.

This is about a desperate dev team torpedoing the project due to hideous working conditions, inadequate equipment, lack of support personnel, and no design documents because they were set up to fail by an evil CEO who wanted to cut corners and get rid of the entire dev department to bring in an alien design team from Mars (who secretly plan to conquer the world because even aliens wouldn't agree to this nightmare unless they had another motive entirely) and now it all makes sense!

( this is totally what happens next )

Expectation of the Week: I will get through the day without sending a group of mobile developers an email stating my fucking cat could do a better job at integrating web services. It's not true; my cat would fuck it up deliberately, rather than by sheer incompetence, because he's a goddamn cat.

Also, would it kill them in some unspecified way to have error messages that have meaning? All of them have the same text because they're still working on creating pop-up error messages that say what's actually wrong, and do it three times in a row sometimes. I'd take a goddamn random-ass number-letter code.

Playlist of the Week: May Kicks Ass, created from the songs used on several Women of Marvel vids on youtube. Setting May kicking Ward's ass forever to empowering music does things for me.

Note: All the TMI. I'm posting this at one thirty in the morning after three days of work related wtfery and pretty much nothing is a bad idea at this point.

( so, about your masturbation habits, menstruation, and tmi like it's the end of the world and why not )

In closing: yeah, I shouldn't have stopped when I was writing this post (around playlists, to be specific) and checked my dash. That never ends well, though to be fair, it's not like anyone sane saw this coming.

Personal and cultural awareness thought, via FFA:

I was a cultural awareness class (nothing to do with Poles specifically) that had an example of the 'spaces' differences leading people awry. There was a hotel that had people constantly falling into their flower beds, till they investigated some and found out that it apparently occurred when persons accustomed to wide space interaction and persons accustomed to small space interaction met. The wide space people backed away to get more space and the small space people kept following to maintain the close connect. Eventually the wide space people ended up in the flower beds. - Nonny, FFA

I'm trying to decide if I'm Person Who Falls Into Flowerbed or Person Who Pursues Person Into Flowerbed and it's a toss-up. I think I would be Falls-Into-Flowerbed, but social anxiety can and does nail me into position every so often (it's random) where an earthquake wouldn't move me and you might crawl in my lap (not that I'm against this) and I won't move to save my life.

I'm also from the South, so I'm used to small space interaction to the point I have no idea if I naturally like it only that my body automatically assumes that position and God help me. The South (or Texas) also has the time-honored tradition of gossiping at the correct decibel so the person beside you (ie Gossip Subject) cannot hear, so there's that.

Currently, I'm breaking into hysterical laughter at the idea of watching this in action at this hotel. It's like everyone's in an unwitting horror movie lead-up, and half of them don't realize they're Michael Meyers slow-stalking the person who has no idea they're the latest victim until flowerbed dive.

So are you Flowerbed Michael Meyers or Flowerbed Victim One (or are you the Flowerbed of Retreat??????)? It's Friday and I literally cannot think of anything more useful to do with my time than get an answer to this pressing question.

I got the most realistic, coolest, most meaningful spam ever and it had everything; atrocities, evils of wealth, illness, dead husbands, life insurance, cancer (ovarian, even), children, one of the south Africa country (yes, really), and adoption (ha! didn't see that coming, did you?).

At my work email. So no penis enlargement today.

My duckling at work is from Cameroon, and every once in a while he breaks into evangelism on his country of birth, and therefore we look at Google World at every inch of Cameroon while he finds youtube videos because he thinks it's funny to start me off with Cameroon English that unexpectedly breaks into French (I automemorize lyrics and he told me once I was the best he'd ever heard at mispronouncing French so well that it sounded like a whole new (very sad) language, so you know, I win for that).

This is related; this is neither talent nor skill, I've mentioned this before, it's not even useful, but more like having the ability to spit Guinness World book record--I realized the probable reason why I never had a problem spelling anyone's names on our work board if I saw it once (our developers are from India or Nepal generally, so very few Western-oriented or Korean or Vietnamese, the latter two were communities in the right zip codes for my office to handle when I was a caseworker, yes, it's that random) or--historically--always got my written Russian homework flawless in class even if Russia itself might cry if it heard me speak the language. Also, given a list of any number of words and meaning once, I could use them perfectly in context and never miss spelling them by a letter, but if you do not tell me right then how to pronounce them--I mean right then--I will never pronounce them right in my head and this will follow me forever when I say them.

Not many of you probably know or care much about the education of children in the US being a thing that is debated hotly when it comes to teaching them to read; or you might, so you know every few years, they switch between Fun With Phonics and whole word learning. You want to watch a bloodbath, get any group of educators together and throw that out; if these were the days of duels, gloves would be slapping everywhere and dawn would be the new prime time for drama viewing.

My class was very Fun with Phonics (this changed and changed back every few years) and because of that I will shove a glove in your ass if you say it's not the best forever, but there's a price to be paid for teaching kids to sound out shit first.

1.) You learn adults are fuckers who fuck with you very early with 'the'.

That's the thing about phonics as reading; almost all the word at primary level are fine, but that's an article and you cannot get away from it. A lot of teachers roll with it, and some have to have taken that into consideration early on, but my most vivid memory of the kindergarten education process was going over and over to my teacher because I trusted her and I couldn't believe she meant it when she said 'the' did not sound like 'tuh-huh-eh'.

She just told me the entire alphabet, letters have sounds, sounds have meaning (there was a blackboard and a pointer), this can be expressed on a page beneath the cute picture of a girl (blonde, always fucking blonde) playing with a dog (brown, very). I nailed that shit, and it was true, all of it...except 'tuh-huh-eh' was not 'the', what is this bullshit?

Once I accepted 'the' into my heart as my phonics betrayer (it took a full year and we won't talk about how much that delayed literacy but again, a year), it got better; all the 'th' and 'ch' were allowed in my soul and eventually silent 'e's would join them along with all the others, but the scar of betrayal never really healed, Mrs. Figueroa.

2.) Your spelling will forever be fantastic except for all the ways it won't be and it's because of France.

Spelling was easy kindergarten through third grade, because again most words are phonetically consistent at that level, or so close that visual plus audio once and you're fine. Except.

You meet 'beau' and fuck everything ever. Buh-eh-ah-uuuuuuuthefuckisthis that is nothing like 'bow', that's buh-oh-wuh and we have one of those b-o-w bu-oh-wuh not b-e-a-u buh-eh-ah-uuuuuutheydon'tdothis, Mrs F didn't lie that much, did she?

...French, you say? Really.

Xenophobia is terrible and American exceptionlism is very wrong, but ask yourself; how many kids were perhaps influenced by getting a 99 but not a hundred because the French language exists and didn't get a golden star but a silver one--a silver one--on the paper when they got it back and an 'x' by that word? Not that I'm still bitter, just saying.

It might be the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066 causing the English language to be supplanted by Norman French, not even real French because fuck French we got the discount edition, causing only the lower classes to use English for centuries while French, being so very (discount) French, stuck its words helter-skelter into every conversation until Chaucer existed, married John of Gaunt's sister-in-law, and set the world right with many tales, and French--fucking French--eventually went away but those words stuck. English needed those because its development had been slowed, we had to catch up fast (German was mocking us with its vocabulary and Spanish was grinning very Catholicly), so we needed words and fast. What to do?

Fine, English said, picking up a sword, righteousness, a Revolutionary War, and a future Webster's dictionary, unrevised: shit just got real. Time to level the fuck up.

English takes all the words, all of them, the ones you wanted and the ones you didn't, sorry, but like a wolf who tastes the hot blood of a fresh kill for the first time (language is tasty indeed, nothing like it), it wants more.

B-o-w and b-e-a-u are 'buh-oh-wuh' and discrete plus discreet because Latin or Greek same meaning different context mostly, watch English laugh at your protests, bring it on, we have the 'c' and the 'k' and we like it, same sound but sometimes not, a-e-i-o-u and sometimes y because fuck you English does what it wants with consonants and vowels. Fish and fiche sound the same but mean different things, you want more? English does, too. Did you see phonics is ph but sounds like 'f'? We even have 'q' right there in the alphabet and it needs to get laid by 'u' to make a sound but fuck if we care, it's our letter and have fun with it. 'X' took many sounds for its own and uses them all and we let it because we like rebels.

Also, Latin? I split an infinitive every day just for you. And English told me to say 'hi' and fuck you.

Silver star. One. Word. Wrong.

3.) You will realize quite early that writing is better than talking for a lot of reasons and fuck everything.

Phonics works for many words and most kids will roll with it, but that doesn't change the severe cognitive dissonance that will haunt some few. Among that group will be those that can deal, and then there's the ones that have to live life with oral readings where you will be constantly translating b-e-a-u to 'buh-oh-wuh' because William the Conqueror was a douche but with many different words and that wears on you and sanity may not hold out long.

Reading and writing become havens of wonder because pronunciation wasn't fucking with us, which is why certain essays are college level vocabulary (content hilarious) while long division is still a mystery Mrs Young stop fucking with me you want me to carry what?

Writing is the perfect medium when you learn sarcasm as well (once you learn the definition of subtlety and forgive the b for being inexplicably silent and even now often forget), and a generation met the internet--all text, all the time--with the advanced tools necessary to troll the fuck out of it.

So I can spell anything I see at most twice (three times over five syllables, phonics is fun but also set to a four four beat to learn), but English/French youtube videos autolyric memoriation means I will sing things I can't pronounce and my duckling French speaker thinks it's funny because I can't pronounce fucking French.

People say they want to go to Paris all the time; oh, so do I, you have no idea.

I fly into that country, mispronounce 'Bien' awkwardly beneath pitying smiles, tell a cab driver three times where to go while he rolls his eyes at Americans because I took French while in Finland and I still couldn't get it right, go to the Eiffel Tower and climb to the very top.

And I will say: "William the Conqueror was a douche, I will split every infinitive I see, and b-e-a-u is not fucking 'buh-oh-wuh'!"

And give myself a gold star.

Next: Normandy. I can't wait.

In case anyone missed this:

Satanic Temple seeks Hobby Lobby-style exemption from anti-abortion laws

Thank you, yahoo news; I can state with perfect honesty that I didn't see this coming.

Currently reading Top Ten Most Venomous Snakes, where in an unsurprising turn of events, Australia holds five slots including one and two. Because Australia.

(Africa wins as Most Terrifying Snake I Have Ever Obsessively Read About My God Twenty Minutes????? WTF Evolution WHY?)

My only real comfort here is that, should I be near one of these snakes at any time, I don't have to worry about dying within twenty minutes or less (thanks, Black Mamba!); I will have a heart attack right there and die. So you know, there's that.

The Coming Gay Marriage Witch Hunt - this really is nothing new at all, but hilarious quote from worried homophobe:

Same-sex marriage is, of course, not the first issue to divide Americans. Slavery, segregation, and abortion led to civil war, vigilante violence, and massive protest movements.

But opponents of same-sex marriage say that even in those instances there was détente after passions cooled. One-time segregationists remained in the upper echelons of American public life through the 1990s. This time, opponents of same-sex marriage fear that supporters will not be happy until their side has been run out of polite society and forced to retract their previously held views.

I want to go on the record here, correct my interpretation if I'm reading this wrong: segregation/racism was a much better social movement because racists got to keep their social and political power for, count it, over a fucking century (according to the article). In polite society.

Jesus Christ, this is a crisis; people may not be invited to fucking tea because they're obnoxious. Let me weep.

Something struck me about this that's bothered me: it's the much touted right to be heard. It appears most often when people speaking Bullshit-esque are pouting about the language barrier that prevents people from caring what they have to say.

Much like the rights of trees who fall in the forest to make a sound, there is no fundamental right to be heard, because that would necessitate violating my God-given right to not have to listen. Free speech your ass out among the leaves, sunshine; I'm not hanging around the forest to listen.

I've spent the last two weeks learning Medicaid policy for the aged and disabled in which a sample case I worked allowed a man to enter a nursing home facility and receive Medicaid without even having to make a copay despite the fact his resources were upward of two hundred thousand dollars, while a woman who receives less than 1100 in RSDI total has to pay nine hundred dollars a month for the same thing.

When rich politicians talk about cutting welfare, they talk about welfare queens and single mothers and eighteen thousand kids each, but for some reason, they're very silent, very silent indeed, when it comes to the legal basis of how the wealthy can hide their money using special clauses in policy created specifically for them so when they need nursing home care or community care, they don't have to pay a thing toward it while a man or woman who have worked their asses off all their lives sometimes get denied the help they desperately need at the most vulnerable and fragile point of their lives.

Is this polite society?

You know, sorry, I ran out of tears; see, I'm worrying about actual real things, like my kid having the ability to get married and not be killed for being who he is, my mother being safe and well in her old age if God forbid she becomes fragile or ill, the current nightmare that is the job market, paying down my student loan and my credit report, and unnumbered elderly, disabled, and poor people who get denied help.

I don't understand the priorities of a life lived that can possibly, by any stretch of hte imagination, give a flying fuck about what a woman does with her own body to the point of trying to outlaw their access to it, about what people who you will probably never meet who may or may not be of the same sex entering into a legal union, how the color of someone's skin, their ethnicity, their country of origin, or their sex has any bearing whatsofuckingever on what kind of person they are, much less care so much that PACs and societies are created to combat it.

But all of that--all of that--makes more sense than an article where a homophobe is deeply, sincerely worried they won't get invited to the best parties.

Find a fucking forest and talk until you go hoarse, I don't give a shit; you want to be heard, say something worth breath.

Note: This has been a very enlightening two weeks of my life.

As my nieces got Frozen, I've involuntarily watched it about three times due to the fact that, as kids do, that goddamn movie was on repeat on the bluray player for like a week. Which is why against my will, Let It Go ended up on my playlist so I can massacre a C above high C when automemorization kicks in. Luckily, only the neighbors have been the victims of my need to express my freedom to create ice sculptures (in my mind) in the far north while actually living in Texas at ninety-one degrees in the shade. Because that's how I roll these days.

Other news: my other repeat-one song of the month:
UNKLE ft Moby - In a State/God Moving over the Faces of the Waters - it was part of a documentary vid on youtube and I hunted it down to get a clean copy, which this one is, for downloading-related purposes.

Training tomorrow. This is my idea of decompressing: sitting outside while surfing youtube and Wikipedia. If I end up reading about the cat genome project again something's gonna give.

Question for the masses: does anyone know what in Firefox would cause Dreamwidth's expand function not to work in threads?

It works just fine when I'm at work, where I have Firefox installed. At home and at work, I'm using the same version of Firefox, Adblock and NoScript are installed and disabled, and yet, Expand works there and doesn't when I'm on my laptop. I've done everything short of bursting into tears--and trust me, it's a close thing--to work out the difference.

Anyone have any idea? Seriously, this is annoying.

Also, and not ashamed--I am totally playing Farmville 2: Country Escapes now that it's on Android and I don't have to access Facebook. I would hate myself, but there are acrobatic pigs and sheep who bellyflop in sync. Who the hell resists that? If anyone else is playing, I'm signed in through Google+, not Facebook, and seriously, acrobatic pigs. In sync.

ETA: Tentative solution that so far is working: disabled Greasemonkey, disabled "LJ Thread Expander" enabled Greasemonkey again, and problem solved. So far. Will update if that changes.

I need to get my rant out because why not.

I am so tired--beyond words--not of Polar Vortex Marks I, II, and III (so far), but of people who mock the South's reaction to the truly radical weather change we're experiencing. Yes, it's a mistake to read comments on any article on a news website, but when someone from fucking Buffalo explains how people in Atlanta are just stupid if they're taking this cold thing badly because where they're from they don't even notice snow at six feet uphill both ways, something snaps. Advice from those who live in an area with regular, consistent subzero temperatures during winter is blessed--seriously, you people are wonderful--but those who seem to think it's just a matter of wearing a few extra layers and everything's fine, no, it's not.

Note: okay, I had no idea how much resentment I had built up to need this many words. Huh.

( Here's the charming personal anecdote to explain why I want to set things on fire and not just because I'm tired of being cold )

( How does this relate: let me short version this. )

Dyeing hair deep copper. This is the lightest I've ever tried, as I've never been tempted by the blonde spectrum. Hoping for the best.

Interesting note: after svmadelyn said something, I started back on prenatal vitamins and omega-3 tablets.

The first visible sign is always my fingernails and how fast they grow and how much stronger they are. Context: I type a lot, so I have to cut them or end up breaking them, but usually it take a while to get to that. This week, I broke two nails typing, because it happened about twice as fast as usual and I wasn't expecting it. (I have all my life had very, very slow-growing nails except for pregnancy and the year after Child was born.) It was both annoying and also nice, as well as a quick reminder to do a physical survey and see how I feel.

Noted by me: I feel more alert, less grumpy in the morning, and not nearly as tired during the day even if I didn't get much sleep the night before.

Noted by coworker: I'm making terrible jokes again at eight AM and talk more and am more responsive to questions and finishing things more quickly and efficiently. I also have more energy and am more willing to leave my desk to talk to people.

I know--at least semi-objectively here--that I am better in general when I take my vitamins regularly. It's like taking my thyroid medication or my ritalin; it's something that makes life better. But for the life of me, I can't figure out why every few months, I suddenly stop with the vitamins for no particular reason and then forget until something reminds me to go buy them and start taking them again. It's weird.

This has been a message from my day off to go pick up my prescription (because goddamn schedule two's are like this) and buy hotdogs from Taylor Meat Market, which have a bright red casing and are so delicious they make all other hotdogs sad and tasteless in comparison. Also, if you are a fan of macaroni and cheese with cut-up hot dogs in them, they turn your macaroni a delicious yellow-orange.

My dogs are addicted to coffee. More specifically, my coffee.

Originally, this was a crime of opportunity--ie, the coffee was left on the floor or some low place and being dogs, sure, anything on that level is potential food, fine. Then it became a 'on the coffee table' and 'on the kitchen table' (via chair) and 'when I get up for a minute to go to the bathroom without my cup'.

This week, it escalated because I upped the ante and they need a twelve step program.

My McDonalds caramel mocha--with lid--was left on a low table outside and ran to the bathroom. I returned, cup gone, but a small white head bent down. Circling the table, I stared down at the topless coffee cup, a shrinking puddle of coffee, and crack dog stared up at me smugly with a whipped cream mustache.

Top was fine. No teethmarks. I have no idea how they did that. Whipped cream mustache.

The Hill Country is under warning for Winter storms which hits Austin around 2 tomorrow.

To those living north--pretty much north Texas and up--this is probably fairly normal, though generally I don't think south of the Mason-Dixon it's a November thing, either, or at least, not that often, though admittedly, I could be wrong about those right on the line, no idea. So you can guess that currently, the Apocalypse is coming down on Austin, or at least, what I assume it will be like when it actually happens. You can't? Interesting, so I probably need to explain; the Apocalypse is coming, and this is why.

When someone says "tornado warning" we say "I'm gonna run to the convenience store, but I'll make it quick" in hopes of seeing it and being terribly disappointed by the lack; it won't be quick, because we'll wander around the entire area trying to find it; we were promised that by implication with the word 'warning'. Basically, until the neighbor's trampoline flies by, it's pretty much okay. Or your own trampoline, but it only got like, three feet off the ground before it hit the fence, and for me, it's not worth getting up from the porch for less than six and over my head, or an airborne cow. Because dude, who doesn't want to see a flying cow? Then it's hallways and blankets and doom, but at least you know by sight what's trying to make the house a pile of substandard confetti. Fine, yes, that's a little disconcerting for everyone, happy? Dude, I wasn't even verbal the first time I was in a house between the two houses that the tornado decided to blend, setting frappe; I have special pillows for hall napping these days. Apparently, I like sleeping through imminent death and it started very early.

Tornado Watches are a six month period of the year; to not be under a tornado watch for a certain number of days is weird enough it's worth talking about, wary and deeply unsettling to everyone. Like, what the hell, they have something better to do? Drought, been there, lived with the constant wildfire smoke drifting north and settling over Austin. This last one was longer, don't get me wrong, but the only reason anyone even noticed drought was a thing was finally, someone somewhere, probably high or really bored, did the math and holy shit, it's been a while since rain, check this out, weird huh? Anyone else notice? And everyone said, wow, that explains why the lakes are so much lower. Who knew?

Our relationship with rain is about the same; I live on a hundred year flood plain, but once I lived within a quarter mile of a small yet ambitious lake. Before the city did something with limestone out back, the first time the creek became a river--seriously, I was really pissed we hadn't kept the boat and oars from when we owned lakeside property as a kid--we all contemplated it about five inches below our gate--it was high, is what I'm saying--and figured we could sleep for a few hours; it'd be like, at least a day before it got to the patio, but come morning, there would definitely be work to go to and bosses don't like naps at the desk.

Ice, that's different; that's not wind--we know wind--or water--liquid, in cups, falling from teh sky, refusing like hell to do just that, swim in it during summer. Ice isn't water--we know it is in theory, because it's how ice cubes are born, but this shit--ice, you say? Okay--ice anywhere in nature, free and predatory and coming toward you, is terrifying. We don't really understand it; that shit goes in tea and snowcones and to put in structures containing beer to keep them cold. We make it from water--water, we get, I explained that, right?--which is fine, we all go to Schitterbaun during summer, you're telling me Schlitterbaun. a water park can be a death trap below zero? You don't mean drowning? Really? How interesting. How much have you had to drink? No, I'm not getting you another beer from the cooler; apparently, you've had enough. We're going swimming tomorrow, and you're gonna scare the kids with that kind of shit.

Water + freezer = ice = beer cold, ice tea, snow cones. Water + nature = ice = you're fucking with me, water can do that outside a freezer? The world can be the freezer? Do you know how much water there is in the world? Holy shit it's the end of the world!

As I said, Apocalypse; now you know the math behind it. Don't make us admit it out loud, but we really really can't conceptualize this in any meaningful way; our summer temperature is above one hundred and it's barely worth noting that until it's been seven days of it, at which time it's more a reminder about remembering our electric bill is going to suck so fucking much so you don't freak out when the three digit total may or may not border on four. Right, you tell yourself in the breeze of air conditioned bliss; fuck the goddamn heat. And get a popsicle from the freezer, a magic place we also get ice, and here's where it get tricky; if you have an ice maker, an entire revelatory step in the water to ice process is totally lost right there. We never even see the water in non-ice form and melting it's indistinguishable from it's tea surroundings, or something that mysteriously needs to be dumped from the ice chest. You buy ice for those from giant freezers at the store in bags; the watery remains should give us a clue, but dude, we need more ice, and the water's gotta go to make room for it, because the beer is getting warm. I don't even drink beer and I know how this works.

We can't possibly be blamed for this. Technology is working against us here; my place is not to question why, but to do and get the goddamn ice already. It's hot.

Now the world as we know it is suddenly a freezer--you're fucking with me, it was seventy two days ago--where ice--Jesus Christ, ice? Really?--forms from water--you realize how much water there is out here? It's everywhere! I HAVE IT IN MY HOUSE!--may fall from the sky--IT IS IN THE CLOUDS? OH GOD YOU MEAN RAIN CAN BE ICE, TOO--and not only that, oh no. It's November, and it just dawned on everyone to air out their sweaters, hunt down their coats from wherever they left them last March or so--that was a while ago, okay?--and get excited we can finally wear our boots again.

This isn't bad--this is goddamn traumatic. Let me explain why.

We have turkey to defrost and relatives to loathe coming over to eat food with us and horrifically pleasant mundane conversations to have so we can all avoid saying "Oh God I hate we're related to each other; I die inside just knowing you exist, much less we share a common ancestor who honestly, what the fuck great grandma, may God grant her rest soul" or by sheer accident forget to carefully pretend you know all about their new significant other and hope to God they stop calling them 'honey' so you can get a name already and pray that goddamn turkey is done yet because eating would be good here. Love turkey, but right now a boot would be fine, this is Texas and we got Southern manners grafted onto us hard; no one talks with their mouth full, and everyone is very motivated to keep their mouths very, very full.

At it's best, Texas is a wonderful mix of various cultures and it's nice to look at your family tree and contemplate how many different people you came from, it's a warm feeling to think of all these people getting along and getting married and sprogging their hearts out; at it's worst, it's an unholy nightmare of the most terrifying parts of the deep South, second through fourth German background, Hispanic culture, and in certain circumstances, all of it expressed in two languages that at least two people in any given room only know one of them, half know enough to be hilarious when speaking or answering questions (read: oh God), and in my case, a single representative of speakers of Czech who spoke English but didn't really like anyone enough to want to (when I was a kid, we had first language German in the mix. No one really wants to talk about what that hell was like; apparently great-grandma had quite a mouth on her and didn't mind it expressing it in both languages in the same sentence, and they were long ass sentences. Great grandpa was unclear on boundaries as well. There are scars). It's not that navigation can be hard; it's more that there's no navigation; it's survival of the fittest and last man standing, fueled by desperate faith, hope, and sincere prayer for the turkey to finish cooking before someone cries, bursts into argument, or oh God help me, emanates Stoic, quietly miserable acceptance and forgiveness (of what? WHAT? IT WAS A JOKE) which is like--God, guilt forever, goes well with stuffing and cranberry sauce, thanks. We are Southern enough to desperately need to be polite; we're just terrible at figuring out how to do that well because it comes secondhand. We know that we're just making it worse, but we can't stop.

(If we do, it's actually can get worse; try dealing with a family wake. You drink to stay sane. And not question your paternity and maternity because oh God, Aunt Frances, don't go there. I don't know what that means in English, but no one should turn that color hearing it. May I get you more whiskey? (Whiskey is how we start a wake to warm up; margaritas are when we finish blending the ice from the freezer and keep the pleasant blackout portion of the night at bay between shots. There will be two runs to the liquor store; there will be two more but no one remembers them, so those don't count.) Hell is drunk relatives surrounded in a billion dying flowers and several trays of cold cuts and cheese in a house that exceeds the per capital number of guns per Texan and trucks with gun racks where the guns apparently came standard at purcchase; it's an adventure of potential homicide or hangovers that make you desperately prefer the sweet oblivion of murder one.)

(Admittedly, I have an advantage with Child; he lacks rudimentary shame even as a concept, and like my middle sister, uncomfortable, probing, utterly point blank questions are the rule, not the exception. You can't control them--you can't, you know what you're risking here, you too will be a victim--but you can subtly guide their efforts in productive directions. People are usually too polite--or too utterly shocked--to not answer. Yes, this is dangerous--you will be the next victim, or the next--but not quite yet. You get to listen until then. It's worth it. Mostly. What you cannot change, you must accept and enjoy it while you can. Secondhand embarrassment and appalled horror are inevitable; the trick is to weaponize politeness--you can't not be polite--so everyone shares it. Then at least you're not alone.)

Dude, we don't need this stress, okay. It's November, we just found our boots--and hey, my coat was under the dog, better get that cleaned or something?--and are still deeply bewildered at the entire cold air thing happening outside--the world has air conditioning? And we usually have to pay for that kind of thing--instead of inside, where it's right and natural. Turkey to defrost. Deeply uncomfortable meal to have with people we have to see because great grandma got laid like a lot, thanks great gramps for that shit. Ice? Outside?

Apocalypse, we hope; otherwise, we might have to live through this in inexplicable weather conditions where our roads are layered in what goes in snow cones, do we look like wizards or something? You tell me how to deal. And I still don't know what happened to relative's apparently no longer husband or where this one came from. This isn't ending well for anyone. The Apocalypse can only help.

6 Real Serial Killers More Terrifying Than Any Horror Movie - to my everlasting horror, I only recognized two of these, because seriously what the fuck giggling granny? So you know--just for the record, why do we not now do a standard arsenic check in everyone during their check-ups? Blood pressure, pulse, reflexes, make sure you aren't being fed arsenic regularly. It just seems to happen way too much and everyone's always totally surprised by the mystery of their mysterious sickness being solved. By their post-mortem.

My Life

More awesome than anything atm; we are having a building-wide Halloween party and the food is endless. Currently have visited the Nacho bar, the Cold Cuts bar, the All the Fried Things bar, and the Indian and Nepalese testers have an entire endless All the Deliciousness You Can Imagine (And Also Very Hot) table, though I missed the samosas. There are several All the Desserts bars, and a few All the Chips and All the Crackers bars. And this is just in my section of the building; everyone is currently girding themselves for a full scale exploration of the first floor and a hopeful invasion of the second today.

When we can move again, which is questionable. All the Fried Things is a lot of fried things, and chickapea, dumplings, eggplant and pepper mixes are much closer, as are the fields of tortilla chips, stretched as far as the eye can see, and mountains of naan rising from everywhere.

Relevant to Your Interests

FAA loosens rules for e-devices on airline flights - can I get a yeah!


Someone just brought curry chicken. I need to go.

Update to yesterday's post regarding the Roma child, Maria, being taken from her parents for being too white for dark people, I guess:

DNA from Roma girl 'Maria' matches that of Bulgarian couple - it's been confirmed that Sashka Ruseva and Atanas Rusev, a Roma couple living in Bulgaria, are Maria's birth parents.

I just want to throw this out, because it's weird when I was clicking around desperately for news that someone sent Maria back to her family--I live for impossible optimism:

CNN:



This is a picture of World tab on CNN in the US edition and also appears in the international edition. Note the title used for the link.



This is the actual article it linked to. Note the title of the article and perhaps, what it's about. I'll give you a minute, it's my first link here.

It's almost not a lie. At the very end of the article, they mention an entirely separate case against a Greek couple who are on trial for buying a Roma baby, unrelated in any way to this one except Roma and Greek and baby and trafficking...wait, Maria's case has no trafficking or proof of child selling. Weird.

I could be overthinking this. CNN wouldn't deliberately completely mislabel because reasons, would they?

I want to one day create a Class Jar, in which every day that I don't see at least one completely idiotic and almost painfully wrong argument regarding benefits programs, SSI, disability, or ACA I put in 25 cents. In ten years, I will have enough for a taco at taco bell (plus tax). It makes me want to create a requirement that to graduate from college, you must do the following:

1.) work in food service (6 months)
2.) work mid- and low-end retail (6 months) and/or mid- or low-end grocery store
3.) clerk in a public service/welfare office (6 months)

If you run for congress, you are required by law to do all of those things in double time and as your only job. Because people have wildly--and I do mean wildly--hilarious ideas of how they'd do at minimum wage in theory, and even funnier memories of how they used to do it when they did.

( observational on the effects of low income life; I am having a day, okay )

Question:

On my phone and tablet, when I'm googling for something, it's changing my search terms when I start at the google homepage, enter the terms, and hit search. Sometimes, if I remember to put a space after my last search term, it doesn't do that, but that's kind of touch and go. This is new, at least for me, and so frustrating I want to scream. This is only happening on my tablet and phone, not when on my laptop.

Anyone else have this happen and how the hell do I switch it off?

In honor of astolat and cesperanza's challenge to post once a day for a month....

Things I Resent Like a Lot:

English not stealing accent marks along with the actual word itself.

This is just because I found a fun app to practice my Spanish, and it keeps beeping up with a friendly reminder that I'm missing my accents, and I blame English for this, because really, what the hell.

Though to be fair here, we could have had them before the Conquest, or centuries having to listen to Norman French before English brutally fought it's way into the common parlance and ate and killed all language nearby (if you look at it as English having a massive, massive overeaction to being almost smushed by the Normans, a lot of its rules make sense) we rejected all things with accent marks, thus creating Fun With Phonics, where any given letter in the English alphabet can and will unexpectedly decide to change how it sounds just because when we stole it from someone else, those fancy accent marks, what are they for again?

This was really brought home to me at work a few weeks ago, where one of the testers said something--I don't even know what--and I stared at him blankly for a while, then asked what he just said, then had him write it. Reading it from a purely non-native speaker view, there was no possible way to connect the written word with it's correct (English) pronunciation even by accident. It's one of the few--very few--benefits of being ages five through now living life text based; half the words I use I couldn't pronounce correctly, but luckily, my online social group is of the same type and they can't either, so it evens out.

When I pronounced it for him (to give some context, it's a word that shows up specifically in testing jargon, so I wouldn't have remembered it past my SATs if I wasn't a tester), we looked at each other and that piece of paper with probably the same familiar expression anyone, native speaker or not, who has to deal with English gets probably once a day: English, why are you like this? To cheer us both up, he introduced me to Ram Bahadur Bomjon, who he swears up and down he totally saw meditating once and interpreted bits of youtube for me, which I assume was to console me for having to be a native speaker of a language that's clinically insane. He's nice like that.

But I digress. This is what makes it hard; I know why they are there, but for the life of me I can't remember them. They're painfully useful, they tell me how to pronounce the word correctly, but it's like I don't even see them until the program reminds me cheerily Careful of your accent marks and I think of English and hate a little inside.

About Why I'm Interested in Trying This Challenge:

Habit is powerful, and one of the things I did first when I started at diaryland was make a deliberate effort to make an entry every day to force the habit, and for the last eighteen months, I spend at least three out of four days writing fic, because for a long time I stopped hearing the things I would later write. I've talked about this before, and last year, before my father died, I started to write again, and it was a nightmare, not to start, but the effort it took not to stop when I thought the story did.

Here's the stupidest thing I never considered; the problem might not be in lack of inspiration but the loss of the habit of expression. To write what I think is to express a thought, and that tends to lead to more of them, not less. Thoughts breed in captivity poorly, but they thrive when given form and sent into the world to be fruitful and multiply. It might help, I thought, staring at MSDoc's mocking blank screen, to consider this an exercise in free range breeding. Which is not a sentence I ever thought I would not only write, but rather kind of like. Seven hundred thousand and chnage words later (including cut sections), I can state with some certainty that this seems to have worked pretty well, and sometimes I sit down and all at once, from nowhere, there's an entirely new idea, newborn and very loud, waiting impatiently for my immediate attention, and then I notice it's not one, it's an entire litter of them, all brand new and loud and demanding my attention until the words I write give them their very own form.

That's what you can do with the power of a habit.

In a lot of ways, for a lot of people in fandom, including me, to write in public, be it fiction or not, is something we've been doing for so long that we don't think, don't remember, don't entirely comprehend the memory of the first time we did it, on a messageboard, a mailing list, a journal, newsgroup; it was so hard, even to write a sentence, a single word and send it into the nameless, faceless vastness of the internet, because a lifetime of training had told us if we had nothing to say, be quiet, what makes you think what you have to say is important, no one cares what you think. To presume to write and post on the web where it felt as if the entire world was watching and judging your words to see if they were important enough for attention wasn't easy, but easy stopped applying altogether, since the world's judgement of what qualified as important had nothing to do with writing a single word.

Cat macros, what you had for breakfast, and that weird growth on your toenail are important; the macros were cute, breakfast meant you were less grouchy at work, and hey, that doctor you saw was kind of hot, it's the life you live and by definition that makes it the most important thing you will ever do, being the medium by which you do anything at all. Human memory is volatile, we lose so much of our lives to background beyond recall and our lifespan is approaching the century mark, and in that time, we will be many different people, dozens, sometimes a couple of different ones every day, but I won't remember it the same, memory is volatile, but when I read my journal, I get to meet every woman I've ever been again. She was important, all of them were; they made me. And years from now, when I read this, I'll read this entry, by the woman I am now and I won't be then, and I'll be able to remember her. My mind is a container for all the people I've been, the people I am, and the people I could one day be; its a world entire in there, and that's the world who judges what is important enough to write.

Survey says; everything's important, habit is good, and the idea for the latter half of this entry began newborn and squalling with these words as I wrote them: Habit is powerful. Three words by the clock one hour ago, when I thought of astolat's challenge after answering a comment she made in my journal, when I started this entry and had no idea what to write except that app I just downloaded, and God, those accent marks, that thing at work, hey, about that challenge, I should mention it, Habit is powerful and just think, an hour ago, an hour ago, I stared at a blank entry page and had no idea what to write.

The experiment in free range breeding is going very, very well, thanks for asking.

I'm also not sure I'm glad I did.

I Want to Clone Your Hand: Strange Effort to Clone John Lennon Moves Forward - man with John Lennon tooth send it to lab to see if viable DNA can be extracted to clone John Lennon.

In general, I don't judge people's hobbies. If you're into collecting teeth from deceased musical superstars, go for it. If you're interested in cloning, more power to you. If you have some strange thing for finding out if teeth have extractable DNA, awesome. I don't, however, feel that these three hobbies should at any time belong to one person, because the end result is a major sci-fi plotline for a reason (hint: rarely ends well. For anyone).

This lined up with cracked's 5 Billionaires Who Are Making Awesome Sci-Fi Come True, with the very first article about Dmitry Itskov, who is currently in a terrifyingly detailed and uncomfortably timelined effort to make all our William Gibson dreams (read: nightmares) come true; to wit, make us all robots. Not just the rich, either; he's altruistic in making sci-fi horror a reality.

Very soon you will stare into the soulless eyes of your robotic self who knows neither compassion nor mercy (nor in my case, dress sense, which means I'll be killed by someone wearing a olive green hoodie with a purple t-shirt, God), and also knows all the places you would hide and the soundtrack you would like for your funeral so they can play it while slaying you to become the One True [Enter Your Name Here]. Or--far worse--they take over your online identity and start posting and since they don't need sleep or food or fresh air (I'm working on this), are better at you than you are and after a protracted battle for your identity (using a common cold plus a virus and then maybe a machete and an EMP weapon of some kind you built in your bedroom while they finish up their Dean/Castiel epic in front of you to tons of feedback, the fucker, that's it, this is sledgehammer time) you come back, everyone's terrible at hiding their disappointment and all your friends unfriend you quietly and it's just not going to work, and also, I need to buy a sledgehammer. That timeline doesn't give me a lot of time to work with here, and I'm not sure how to build an EMP weapon. Are there blueprints for that anywhere? With instructions?

God. It's like, when I think about what I have to worry about generally (global warming, social justice, weird looking toenail, why is my hair like this, alien invasion, dolphin conquest, nutella existing, SNAKE OH GOD RIGHT THERE, wait, that's a leaf, uh, life stuff blah blah blah), I honestly think there should be a limit, and I don't have time (or a how-to on pulse rifle building for killing your robotic clone) to put this one on my list.

Couldn't he make robotic ponies for everyone? Robotic. Ponies. For. Everyone. Dude, I'd be all over that. Why are no billionaires making us robotic ponies? Though granted, having said that, it just occurred to me how very terrifying that would end up in certain hands that will not be named but start with 'b' and end in 'onie' and if plural, 's'.

It's like there's nothing good in the world.

We had our second sighting of the Blotched Water Snake, a totes harmless slithering maw of evil that was first glimpsed by yours truly dripping down the side of my niece's kitchen playset like someone had turned on a faucet set to 'pure evil', at which time I learned to levitate, balancing on the edge of the patio couch to throw myself bodily at the glass door and bang on it until God himself wondered what the hell and leaped across the space separating me from safety, because--and I know this was subtle here, so you might have missed it--I really don't like snakes.

The only time I claim to be a Creationist is to an evangelical Reptiphilist, because God knows they don't take "slither", "scary", "faucet of evil", or "did I mention slither?" as arguments, but "the Bible told me so" is like magic and they go away. Recommended to deal with anyone who loves snakes trying to convert you: it works.

The upshot is everything that moves in my general vicinity, including dogs, cats, rats, cicadas, squirrels, frogs, and wind, is a Potential Snake and generally my evenings are shot-full of enough adrenaline that a twelve-step program may be in order, either for me or for the poor creatures that deal with my reaction to their existence before I verify they are Not Snake, since dude, they probably have a pan-species alert out for me at this point, "Approach with caution, kinda jumpy", and if we're lucky, a collective bounty on the snake because seriously, their lives were better before when I didn't react to leaves falling like they were coming after my ankles with (a thousand) fanged (non-venemous) teeth and bear live young by the thousands (dozen or so) that could be anywhere, or rather, near me, because I don't have a problem with anywhere, but more here.

Which is why I have bichon frise of questionable courage and bitter animosity sitting outside with me hating me so much right now.

In Other News

( many things, none terribly interesting )

My world, in short, is snake-filled and strange.