hoveringsombrero | Recent Entries

As many of you may know, I've had issues the majority of my adult life with food, which is to say usually I do not eat enough/regularly. I've been particularly bad about it the past few months which became sort of glaringly clear because I spent several weekends away from home, in which during this away time I was eating properly. So weight was yo-yoing something awful, down when I ate properly, back up when body thought I was starving myself.

I've thrown in the towel on the idea that I'm ever going to master this by conventional means. When I get attacked by depressed or a bad flare I do set food and med timers, however that's just not a sustainable thing for me long term. For years and years I have also tried various ways of preprepared meals so there's always something easy to grab, that also has not been sustainable. I kept labouring under the assumption that I was just going to eventually get a handle on it. That I'd magically turn into Mary Poppins or something, I don't bloody know. So I've developed an alternate plan.

I'm supplementing with protein/fruit shakes. Had a package of Soylent to try given by friend and that's AMAZING, so I'd love to get my hands on more of that. However the goal here is STEADY FUEL INTAKE, no more "Eh, I don't feel like eating today." The shakes aren't quite as satisfying and OMG FEEL GREAT as the Soylent (except tastier), however they are much better than what I was doing and are being a serious help and I finally feel like I have a sustainable solution.

Eat foodfood in proper intervals when I can/want to. If I can't/don't want to SHOVE SMOOTHIE IN FACE AND SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

This has apparently led to noticeable weight loss, allegedly. As housemate (who is leaving in a few days) keeps complimenting me on such. I have repeatedly explained that weight loss isn't, and never will be a high priority for me. The priorities that are at the top of the list, however, will have that side effect which is nice. Yet she continues to specifically compliment just that, and it's become uncomfortable.

As my close friends and family, when you see me I'm sure you will be happy if I'm noticeably feeling better, look more alert, have more energy, and an obvious marker to point to this may be my weight. I understand this is the easy thing to compliment. However I am asking you please not to do so. Since I am doing nothing specifically for that goal, and it is not a priority for me. Better quality of life, more energy, being able to keep up with niblings and hopefully eventually foster/adoptive children: THESE ARE MY PRIORITIES.

Thank you.

This was a bit amazing. This was on fb (natch) in response to a friend posting the first of the two sexodus articles

The actual thread is much, much longer, as our dude highlighted here was (thank glob) actually a small fraction of the commentors, and notice there are no likes on any of his comments. You'll have to take my word for the fact that nearly every other comment was filthy with likes. Our OP appears as "D" in the first entry, and that's just a small amount of his wonderful comments. Some of OP's replies to T were larger than I could even screencap in one go.

While I normally try to highlight the wonderful rather than yet another mansplainer, these were just sort of amazingly beautiful textbook replies, as if there's a playbook he's just copying out of.

At one point I gave up and simply replied with the recent chainsawsuit which references more the racial issues in current news, but seemed ridiculously appropriate to this.

And our 'splainer T actually replied almost identical to some of the hilarious sarcastic comments actually on Straub's site to that comic itself.

I said I was done and just pasted some of the particularly relevant sarcastic comments, which resulted in the final comment in which he calls me out for being a weak woman who needs coddling. Which is so hilariously beautiful that I can't even reply even if I weren't already done encouraging him to wave his arse about. What's extra brilliant is our OP is one of my super long term friends from the early 90s, so there's levels of amusement for me there.

The False Correlation Between Polyamory and Better Relationships:

It has been often said, in emulation of the Fight Club rules:

The first rule of poly is communication.
The second rule of poly is communication.

It is a tendency among some who prefer non-monogamy to see it as a higher evolved relationship form. I could easily digress at this point into several paragraphs about how this can end up being harmful and problematic when one doesn't live up to the ideals one thinks one should. However that is not the point here.

It comes back to that first rule. A more accurate way to put it is The first rule of a successful *ship is communication. I personally think it's communication and healthy privacy/respect. Which is another digression on which I could ramble for paragraphs.

The other side of this is those who dismiss the idea of polyamory specifically (while not always dismissing non-monogamy, oddly), firstly due to social stigma, and secondly due to anecdotal evidence. I myself have removed poly/polyamory as a self identifying label in part due to said stigma. I really prefer responsible non-monogamy; so for brevity let's put poly, swinging, open relationships, et cetera under that label for this ramble and shorten it to RNM, shall we? Yes, okay.

All *ships are complicated, each addition of something adds more complexity and more potential problems. Starting with the base of friendship. This underlying *ship can be complicated and sometimes rocky as it is, though we must accept it is the simplest of the *ships. Think of everything that can cause strife in a friendship, add sexual activity of any level to that causing it to evolve into relationship. I would posit that this doesn't just add a few more possibilities for strife, but at least doubles it. Then add any or all or anything in between of the following toppings:

long-distance
religious differences
cultural differences
ethnic differences
age differences
long distance
kids
co-habitation
marriage
income disparity
health problems

And this is to seriously simply name a few and not even get into the possible sexual toppings on your *ship sundae.

For lack of a better term, each of these things are complications. I am struggling to find a word that means the same but without negative connotations, alas it eludes me. So for the duration of this let's assume there are no negative connotations to this word, as I do not mean any implicitly.

Each complication comes with another whole set of benefits and potential pitfalls. Let's take a reasonably neutral one like kids. Kids are a life complication. Things as simple as driving a car now come with specific seats for the small ones until they're of a certain size to not be dangerously harmed by air bags. Even though there are public toilets everywhere, these miniature people cannot use them for quite some time and this requires supplies to be brought along. They also don't always eat at convenient intervals so those supplies need to be brought along as well. They add numerous complications to your life that did not exist before. And doubtless a great number of parents would agree that these are absolutely acceptable, and sometimes enjoyable, complications given the benefits that also come with it all.

To get back to the topic of effects of complications on *ships, they also add a whole extra set of things that can cause strife. Please do not read this to mean that kids themselves are to blame for any damaging or ending of their parents' *ship. However, now extrapolate this to any other *ship topping on the list or not mentioned here or yet.

Therefore there are many more things that can go "wrong" in a ship when has the added topping of more than two people. Or even if it still only contains the original two with temporary, or semi-permanent other individuals involved on any number of levels.

Which brings us back to the idea that RNM is inherently either a better relationship form due to ostensibly more communication and honesty, or that RNM is clearly flawed and doomed to failure due to the exponentially larger amount of possible issues that can arise.

And now we digress our way around to the point. When I was young, dumb and full of .. bad ideas and overwhelming idealism, I was admittedly one of the RHM is OBVIOUSLY BETTER FOR MOST PEOPLE! And while I abandoned this nonsense at least a decade ago, some vestiges of it remain. I've come to realise, however, that it's become drastically simplified to *ships with healthy communication and healthy boundaries/privacy/preservation of individuality are BETTER FOR EVERYONE. This then encompasses every.single.bloody.permutation of *ships and does not posit any particular form as superior or inferior.

This is a result of a several months' long background brain noise ponder. In which I have been noticing *ships that I would not unnecessarily participate in myself still having a lot in common with my own personal code of ethics. Which led me face to face with the fact that they have absolutely nothing to do with RNM, but rather simply contain the same behaviours which make any form of RHM successful.

This just simply scales. A friendship is going to be better if you consciously employ good communication, respect of boundaries, honesty, reasonable privacy, and a general willingness to confront any issues rationally and calmly. Though sometimes some of us who strive to practice this (pointing the finger of blame at myself) will still explode into a dramaball prior to said rational, calm discussion, it's still eventually arrived at, or at least noted to attempt to improve upon later.

We're divorcing societal impact entirely from this, simply because that's again more paragraphs, and there's no real conclusion or point; it's a separate thing, it informs every aspect of our lives and is either something in which we find a comfortable niche or just constantly learn to live with/around. Additionally the idea that a specific form of societally acceptable *ship is better on the macro level for society as a whole is irrelevant to having productive, happy, and healthy individual relations with other persons. I don't believe that there's a natural progression of healthy relationship to RNM, because that circles us back to holding RNM up as an ideal. When it comes down to it we only have a *ship with one other person at a time, even if they may end up happening concurrently, each is a separate process. Much like computers don't actually multitask. AND I'M ALREADY DIGRESSING EVEN FURTHER, moving on.

In conclusion, and in another HUGE SIMPLIFCATION, the *ship configuration or lack thereof doesn't enter into this. There's no secret formula about one configuration that makes it more or less successful than another, any and every *ship is improved by even the attempt at better communication and respect.

And lastly, to mitigate this potentially sounding like I've achieved the nirvana of *ships, which those of you who know me personally know is patently untrue (see aforementioned dramaball), it's a process. Nobody's going to be a good communicator all the time. We're all inherently selfish, we're all the center of our own universe, everything really is about ME/YOU. Just that the attempt and the process is goddamn worth it.

If it feels good and hurts no-one, do it.
Be excellent to each other.
Don't be an asshole.

This is sort of a meta-scam, here.

A secret little (mostly naughty) group on fb had a discussion post regarding jealousy today, as in how do you deal with it. I put a lot of thought into my replies and thought that they needed to be saved in journal.

Though I have opined at length on this subject before, I don't believe I have written out the exact steps I use to deal, and sometimes I ignore the process and just be a dramaball and start a fight. So this will also serve as a good reminder to self.

My first comment:

I had serious jealousy issues when I was younger (17-25), and at the same time that I was attempting my beginning foray into responsible non-monogamy. I decided jealousy was a character flaw that I just needed to be stronger than, or tough guy it out. Which made things fester, which made me feel worse, which contributed to the erosion of more than one relationship.

As I aged I came to realise that when these feelings were felt I needed to confront and dissect them. And discovered (for me at least) that jealousy is always creative excuses for insecurity (excepting when it turned out not to be jealousy at all but me sub-consciously noticing something was going pear shaped).

So by most outward appearances I haven't a shred of jealousy about me. However, the reality is that I've just gotten good at acknowledging/confronting the feels and finding what insecurity is spawning it and address that.

tl;dr: Early 20s me thought that If I ignored it long enough it'd go away, older me has accepted it as being human and developed ways to address it.

And then ...

Rereading my own comment I also notice that my summation makes it sound as thought it was easy. It wasn't; it isn't. It's never easy or comfortable to grab a bit of your own insecurity and interrogate it. Though many people have told me that they believe I'm a master of this skill, it's probably an ongoing process. Maintaining self-awareness requires work and uncomfortable realisations.

The above applies to a lot of things; it has recently been a bit of a topic of discussion with some friends about being objective regarding political or ethical/moral issues. I am guilty of sometimes scoffing and those unable to see multiple sides of an issue or put themselves in another's shoes; forgetting that this is a hard learned skill that requires constant maintenance. And which also involves a lot of uncomfortable self-confrontation.

And finally, I wrote out my steps:

My personal process:

1. Admit what I'm feeling, stop ignoring it because it's uncomfortable and I think it's silly. This is the worst part for me, like purposely poking an open wound, every instinct wants me to just shy away from it, avert my eyes.

2. Identify the incident or action from which this feeling spawned and determine whether the source is external or internal. As in was there an actual slight that occurred, or did my insecurities translate something benign into an issue? Possibly because it was similar to a real issue in the past and insecure brain likes to wildly jump to conclusions.

3. Based on conclusions above, TALK TO SOMEONE. If there was at least a slight external factor then talk to the person with which I'm involved. Tell them, "When you did this/when this happened, I felt this." Acknowledge that while the bulk of the responsibility is on me to decide how I react to a thing, I'm not the only one in the *ship, other person likely cares that I am hurt, even if irrational.

If it's absolute, complete crazy brain, possibly still tell other party "I'm having an insecure moment, can I have a hug?" and then find unrelated close friend to vent to.

When it's something that is entirely my fault, like I reacted to a completely innocuous thing, I feel like it's counterproductive to tell the other party "I felt like an ugly, ignored cow because you used the word 'the' to someone other than me!" Because how are they going to stop saying "the"? That's preposterous and MY issue. But I find it still incredibly helpful to express the "I felt like ___ because ___" to someone because it completes the process which began in #1. These are my feels, though they may be crazy and illogical, they're MY feels, I felt them, I can't unfeel them, I have to deal with this now.

I should possibly print and laminate these steps and keep them in my wallet to remind myself, maybe.

One of my best friends had an unexpected medical emergency with her kitty Shiloh which was happily resolved without complications by surgery, but left a painful bill.

Please help and/or pass this on if you can.

GoFundMe link

Hello all my journals, this is what's going on.

I am sorry livejournal, you had your place and time, but I don't think you're long for this world. I have a bit over A DECADE of history in this journal, and it was recently pointed out to me that if the issues in Russia escalate and the lj servers are borked, I'd lose it all. I managed to import a fuckton into deadjournal with a third party thing some years ago, but a lot still got lost in the xfer. So I finally up and did the import to dreamwidth thing

Deadjournal, we cool, I'm sorry I haven't kept up on xposting to you but I think I've fixed that issue now.

I intend to keep putting content into livejournal until it dies but I'm likely to not visit the actual site as much. I'm user #2 on deadjournal and have a lot of loyalty to its masters. Dreamwidth was the easy to import to thing and I managed to hook up a chain xposting dealy so I can just post once in semagic and it goes to all three. If you're my friend on lj then you can openID sign into dreamwidth and you'll see all the previous things you could before, I'll try to figure out how to do that with deadjournal friends as well.

I'm a little sorry I didn't jump ship when dw first came on the scene because someone took eris, and her dw account is full of entries that are NOTHING like me, alas. But having eris accounts EVERYWHERE doesn't really matter to me like it once did, so I'm fine with that also.

This means I may start posting more, as I've recently re-noticed how much this bloody journaling thing helps my memory stick together. If anyone can tell me how to make semagic automatically insert a footer on each post that'd be briliant. For now the thing below is simply

(Cross posted on dreamwidth/deadjournal/livejournal)

This is a follow up on a prior entry in which we discussed a Grand Unified Theory of Female Presence. DW link

Recently in my local IRC channel a question was posed, or rather a challenge; to name a piece of SciFi/fantasy/speculative fiction in which the lead character is a mother. I posed this to the ama community but I didn't elaborate properly and several people missed the point. But I wasn't about to jump all over that because of the aforementioned lack of elaborating, and because there is absolutely value to discussing the presence of a definite mother character in any entertainment in any role (as in lead vs supporting/member of ensemble cast).

I shall now elaborate. The point being the character not just be a mother, but it is an integral aspect of her character. Not just tacked on to further the plot or to add angst points.

A great example of a male gendered version would be a movie I recently saw because I'd never see it all the way through and the lead's recent passing made me aware. Hook. The fact that Peter Banning (Pan) is a father is absolutely integral to his character and the story. As much as I loved the film, it is a terrible example of female/mother characters in the supporting roles. Peter goes back to Neverland, risking his life to save his kids. Mother simply wilts and mopes whilst they're away. This is rather faithful to the source material in style though, so it's all right. But I digress; the point being that if Peter had been female, this would be a good example.

I'd LOVE to accept Ripley of the Alien franchise, as she's an amazing strong female lead, but the fact she's a mother is throwaway backstory and doesn't inform her continuing life.

The TV show Once Upon A Time is a good example which was mentioned in comments to my ama post regarding this. I hate that it is simply out of spite, because I think they're shitty mothers. But yes. Whatsernamme's entire purpose of being in CrazyTown was to find her son. Additionally the evil queen being said son's adoptive mother is also an integral part of her character.

On a logical level I understand this disparity in female representation as a parent simply being part and parcel of the disparity in strong female roles being in existence as compared to the glut of such male roles. However it boggles me in that females are the ones who (usually) contain the damn baby factory. Dramatic fiction often uses this to portray a stronger relationship between mother and children than with their fathers, but when the woman character is fully developed and/or an ass kicker, the mother factor drops off to near non-existence.

I haven't a particularly good way to end this except in that I think this is a valuable addition to said grand unified theory, and it will definitely be something that I will be noticing/looking out for in future entertainment consumption.

on-my.tv simply pulls from advertised schedule feeds, so this appears to translate into THEY'RE ALL AIRING TODAY in regards to streaming shows. I'm incredibly easily amused, okay. Also RIGHT CLICK OPEN IMAGE IN NEW TAB FOR LIFESIZE FOR YOUR PIXEL VIEWING PLEASURE.

[x-posted from imgur]

I've been deeply distressed by the Elliot Rodger thing, which is a strange experience for me. These large tragedies are always sad, but they don't tend to affect me personally if I haven't got any connections to anyone remotely involved.

I've got trauma in my past, starting at 4-5 years old, and again at a few points in late teen and early 20s. For a while this made me incredibly wary of a certain type of man (tall, light hair, light eyes) due to associations. But I've never felt particularly unsafe being Female In Public. I get hit on or hassled at least once every time I'm out alone, but it's never been super aggressive. Men have occasionally gotten very rude and insulting when I ignore them or turn them down, but then they just walk away. As such this hasn't been a thing about which I've worried overmuch.

I read the entire 140 page manifesto and watched several of the videos. I was distressed, but mostly sad. It seems to me to be a clear case of a domestic terrorist who did not accept the mental health help he sorely needed.

Then I read THIS. Logically I realise that these scary men are likely just an incredibly vocal minority due to the magic of the Internet. But it's incredibly disturbing.

Initially I'd hoped that similar men would read Rodger's screed, see themselves in it and have an epiphany of "I'm being an idiot" or "I need help!" but after reading that Jezebel thing I'm now more than a little terrified of those who are looking up to him as some sort of hero, and very worried that the next hassling dude that I ignore is going to decide to To Something About It.

I'm not sure how to deal with this. Do I arm myself when I go out alone, or do I just get over it? I don't know. I've never experienced this much fear simply for being female, and I don't like it.

So, yesterday I discovered something odd. People are apparently disturbed when you lug about a large pack of toilet paper with impunity.

It was after doctor appointment, which was right next door to a shop which had inexpensive TP. I grabbed me a 24 pack, and checker didn't bother trying to bag it, which was fine, it's already wrapped in plastic, right?

So I shoved that fucker under my arm and walked over to jack to grab me some cheap foods before hopping back on bus to continue my errands.

Counter guy snickered and commented that I wouldn't need napkins, a mother with small children honestly gaped at me in naked horror, not even hyperbole, it was crazy.

Whatever weirdos. I consumed my foods with my giant TP friend sitting in the booth next to me and then continued on to the bus.

The strange looks, snickers, and silly comments followed me via other people waiting for a bus, the driver, and the people I sat near.

Now, I would like to note for the record that I have a tendency to mutter to myself, occasionally snicker when something funny enters my head, or when someone messages me something funny, and I like to talk along to the bus announcements. And NOBODY PAYS ME ANY MIND. I'm just another bus weirdo. But apparently daring to carry around a giant pack of obviously butt wipes crosses this line!?

After settling on that first bus, I gave in to annoyance of this silliness and retrieved a plastic bag from inside my backpack and managed to shove the TP package into it. Either this solved it or everywhere I went after that did not have this strange aversion to little old me carrying around 24 rolls of toilet paper.

After my review about Revolution, I got to wondering if it passes the Bechdel test and I sez to myself, I sez, "Self, this is the Internet Age, surely there's a website which complies these things and I can just look it up."

Well, there's a decent one at the obvious url bechdeltest.com but it only lists films, and it doesn't seem terribly active. So I went back to my friend Google, and stumbled upon this very well written critique of the Bechdel test. It honestly hadn't occurred to me that people would be using the Bechdel test as as a strict of a pass/fail as it was in the original comic by Bechdel from which it originates. I see it as a good point jumping off point and way to draw attention to problems with women in entertainment. But upon reflection it doesn't surprise me that some would cling to it as a very strict measuring stick of the worth of a piece of entertainment.

As for myself, noting or learning that a piece doesn't pass the Bechdel test isn't the sole hinge on which I base my decision on which to consume said piece of entertainment or not. If you know me, you know that I consume a lot of objectively horrible television/film/books, and oftentimes I enjoy picking them apart as to why they're so horrible as much as I'd enjoy something objectively great. Especially when I've a few like minded friends with which I can do said picking apart/bashing/ranting. But I digress.

The aforementioned article was a good spark to my current rumination on this topic, which led me back to friend!Google.

To re-cap for the link-allergic. The Bechdel test requires three things of a piece of entertainment/fiction:
1. Have at least two named female characters in it.
2. Who have conversations with each other.
3. In which the content of said conversations include something other than men/relationships.

As I said this is an excellent jumping off point, which led me to the discovery of other "tests" which have come into being along similar lines, which I will sum up:

The Ellen Willis test:
If the genders are swapped, does the story still make sense?

The Sexy Lamp test:
Does the story still work if you replaced your female character with a sexy lamp? This is the outlier in which if it passes it's not a good thing. It means the female character has absolutely no substance and contributes nothing to the work.

The Mako Mori test:
1. Has at least one named female character.
2. Who gets her own coherent narrative.
3. In which said narrative does not exist solely to support the story of men/a man in the same piece.

The Tauriel test:
1. Has at least one named female character.
2. Who is good at her job.

And lastly, an incredibly excellent one which deals specifically with women in the scientific field. This one is another unique one in that it doesn't refer specifically to fiction, this should be applied to articles/news items about women in the scientific field. And back to fiction, this works brilliantly for any SciFi.

The Finkbeiner test:
States that any of the above must avoid including any of the following items/wording

* The fact that she is female
* What her husband does for a living
* Her child care arrangements
* How she nurtures/is nurturing of her underlings/employees
* How taken aback she was by the presence/level of competitiveness in her field
* How she's such a role model for other women
* How she's the "first woman to ..."

Now, combine all these tests together and we have something approaching a Grand Unified Theory of the Female Presence in Entertainment/Fiction/Society. While the preceding tests are concerned solely with fiction, Finkbeiner bridges that gap and really points out (to me, at least), where the issue in entertainment/fiction is coming from.

Fiction isn't written in a vacuum. While it may be wildly different to reality in content and scope, it is still informed by the authors' experiences, interactions, biases, et cetera. And so when you're living in a society that still insists on focusing on gender when writing about a female scientist but does not do the same for a male, it's not even something many writers will notice that they've even done, because That's Just The Way It is.

But on the flip side, this is changing. It's simply being slow to reach the fields of harder science. Even a decade ago you might not have batted an eye when someone said "female doctor" referring to an MD. This has all but disappeared from the common vernacular unless you're in a very small town or are over 60 years old. Also true about "female lawyer", "female judge", and so on.

Yet you will still hear/see the gender modifier of female being attached to scientist, physicist, engineer (all types), and so forth. The tacit point being that the fact of her femaleness takes precedence over her accomplishments/worth in her profession. To a lesser degree this is an issue on the other side of the page. Male nurse, male babysitter, male hairdresser, again and so forth, et cetera, et al.

Herein lies the issue, for some reason a person's gender is still often seen as more important to their worth than what they are actively contributing to society.

The chicken or the egg conundrum comes into play at this point. If we treat genders equally in entertainment/fiction will that lead to a shifting of societal perception? Or does societal perception need to shift in order to inform our fiction?

Revolution

I am a SUCKER for anything even mildly SciFi, throw in post apoc or dystopia? You cannot keep me from watching it. That being said, this is not one of the worst shows this obsession has led me to. It's a weak 2/3 on the eris!Scale of ratings, but I am incredibly entertained. Now we shall proceed in list form.

The things I LOVE about this show:

GIANCARLO ESPOSITIO: He is such a bloody magnificent bad guy. He has presence, he lends gravitas to dialog that would sometimes otherwise fall flat. He QUIETLY DOMINATES.

Twilight!Dad. Billy Burke is FUCKING WASTED on the Twilight series. This man is talented, he's sexy, it's possible he has a limited range but he owns it. Also he is incredibly good at displaying a wide range of emotions, excellent manly tears and angst.

Geekboy/former Google Millionaire is great. He starts out as a one note character, but they really flesh him out. He's obviously the character that a bulk of the audience is meant to identify with, but they do it well.

They walk the line of what defines the good guys and bad guys. Espositio has a family, a wife, a sympathetic back story. Head bad guy Monroe is a beautifully broken man, while still being incredibly dangerous and scary. I will forgive my fiction many a fault for the blurring of the Us Vs. Them and taking the time to point out they're all humans.

The science is almost great.

The things I HATE about this show:

The female lead. Sweet bleeding Christ on a cracker is she awful. Please note that "The day the power went out." is 15 years prior to when this show is now taking place. Her younger brother, who is younger to her by 2-4 years is 18 at the time of the first season, which makes her at least 20. However, she and her brother are written as if they're 12 and 16. They BEHAVE as if they're 12 and 16 most of the time, the rest of the characters treat them that way.

After some thought I am wondering if the reason why children are so usually universally awful in moving pictures is because writers cannot write them. Because even if the characters WERE 12 and 16, it's still badly done. And in retrospect I've noticed writers, across the board, seem to have trouble realistically writing characters of 17-23 unless the show is entirely set from their perspective.

About a third of the dialog is pretty weak. However, all the adult characters slowly get good fleshed out back stories and the character building itself is pretty solid, AND the majority of the actors really do well with what they're given.

THE SCIENCE IS ALMOST GREAT. The backstory seems to be that a group of scientists were working on wireless electricity generators, and somehow accidentally manufactured a null electricity field generator. There are pendants (which are little usb thumb drives enclosed in some sort of super strong metal) that then nullify the null field. However, in the script they speak of these pendants as GENERATING/BROADCASTING energy.

Now the thing which is blocking the electricity from working looks quite like a giant super collider (I'm only halfway through season one so this is my understanding of what I've seen), and it seems to me that it would require much more effort to BROADCAST/GENERATE power in the presence of this null field than it would to simply cancel out the null field. So, I hope they're simply dumbing this down and it's intended to work as I am understanding it.

Also, I'm not sure why simple combustion engines don't work. Perhaps the null field negates spark plugs? I don't know enough about how those things work to pick that apart, I will have to pick somebody's brain about it.

But that's it so far, I'm really enjoying it despite its faults.

A public entry because fuck it it's 4:00 am.

Some years ago I lived in an amazing condo in Spring Valley. It felt like home. I had this thing I did where I stuck every sticker from fruit or veggie onto the handle of the freezer section of the refrigerator. This was silly but it was my thing, it was MY HOME, so that was one of the things I did.

Then the roommate guy let an old friend move in, who did things like try to commit suicide with all my prescription meds.

Said person did a lot of things to appear helpful that really weren't. She would regularly go on sprees in the kitchen in which she appeared to be cleaning, though she'd rarely clean anything but the counter, and then just rearrange a bunch of shit. In one of said sprees she "cleaned" all my stickers off the freezer handle.

It's a little thing, but it was erasing something that was MINE something that meant it was MY HOME. And, honestly, by that point it really wasn't anymore, but it still hurt.

I have recently been given a minifridge by my mother's husband. I haven't been able to get it in a location in which to plug it in though I am assured it worked fine when last used. If it is broken I will just relocate the stickers to some other possession of mine.

But for now:

It is late, I have screwed up my body clock by some overexertion the other day, I am having an apples and cheese snack, I PUT THE STICKERS ON MY FRIDGE. Because it is my fridge, and this is MY HOME.

=D

Wikipedia entry

I keep stumbling upon these strange dark comedies at the top of NetFlix's comedy section, perhaps influenced by my watching choices? I don't know. I knew nothing about this film other than its NeFlix blurb and info. I figured written by Goldthwait and put out by Darko Entertainment sounded up my alley, so I gave it a go.

If you liked Natural Born Killers and Lolita but hated all the sex and also hate stereotypical Americans you'll love this movie.

The first approximately 24 minutes of this film could have been edited into five minutes and keeps crawling up its own ass in self important, high horse preaching. After that it picks up speed and gets quite enjoyable, though it never quite revs up to full speed and really good pacing like Natural Born Killers. It starts getting up to a good speed, and then they pause and crawl back up their own asses. However, the characters they want you to hate are really easy to hate. Our heroes are very likable despite their occasional obsession with crawling up their own asses. The soundtrack is great, I was incredibly entertained. But I felt like there was a brilliant movie in here that I could have edited from the existing film.

For anyone who feels like stereotypical Americans and American reality show/pop culture bullshit is 95% of the country, and that somehow nobody seems to notice how vapid and materialistic everybody BUT YOU is, this movie will hit home. You will really relate to our heroes. But instead we have a sad middle aged man who has been dealt a lot of shit hands and feels overwhelmed by the vapid shit around him, and a teenager who probably would have grown out of it once she found a world outside high school.

All that said, after another ham handed monologue the movie finds the balls to give a simple and clean ending.

It is at this point that I should probably explain the eris scale of movie ratings, as I don't know if I have before as I usually only do this sort of ramble in person.

It's a x/3 rating in which x is how many of the three points it hits.

1. An interesting or engaging world/universe. It doesn't matter why, just that you enjoyed the world or premise that the film exists in. This can be something as overarching as the universes of Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Firefly, et cetera. As evidenced by the mass of fan fiction that exists in these universes, they clearly earned that point for many people. Was the universe engaging? Was it believable? This is a point that is often flat out earned or gained by default in movies based in something almost identical to our reality, and is more of an important point in larger fiction.

2. Well written. Did the characters talk like real people? If not was it sufficiently entertaining as to not matter, or if not did it fit the universe (see last point)? Did it flow well? Did the story make sense?

3. Likable or hatable characters. Did they seem like fully realised characters. Did you adequately love or hate them as intended by the presenters?

As much as I enjoyed this movie, I was torn on whether it was a 1/3 or 2/3 for me. It really only firmly hit the last point. I really liked the characters despite their occasional forays up their own ass. The flow was hitchy, the points were ham handed and preachy. Therefore I sadly had to settle at 1/3. Which I feel bad about because Bobcat Goldthwait. I don't know if it was the fault of the original script, or if something was lost in the direction/editing. But it never quite got up to speed. And the reason it didn't default earn the first point despite not being hugely fiction, is that it was still more of an Idiocracy universe, which panders to those who feel they are above or better than the vapid idiots they see or think they see around them.

In the end, it just made me want to watch Natural Born Killers again. But I do not at all regret watching God Bless America, it was entertaining.

I did this a bit over a month ago, and promised pictures to a few people, never got around to it until now.

As a couple of you may already know, I have a thing where I cannot sleep in a room with a mirror. So (as you will see in pictures) I had it covered by a blanket. I tried to just GET OVER IT and deal, I lasted 2 and a half days after moving in, and I just kept getting more and more anxious and uncomfortable. So up went a blanket. However, blanket pinned up is incredibly ugly and such, and the frame of the mirror is gorgeous and it was just a waste of space to have big blanket pinned up there.

So my first idea was to turn it into an art. That is, get a nice solid colour of contact paper, put down a base, and then cut out shapes and stuff of other colours to make it some sort of abstract art thing. Whilst I was looking at contact paper colours, I DISCOVERED THAT CONTACT MAKES BLACKBOARD PAPER. So plan changed to that.

Most of the pictures make it look a lot more perfect than it is. There are a few wrinkles in the upper left, and after some use the seam in the middle is obvious, but it's not nearly as obvious/annoying as I had anticipated.

In short, I LOVE IT TO BITS. The last picture is a just now picture, clearly I need to edit my calendar and put something up other than Mr. Jack-o-lantern.

Covered in blanket.

The naked mirror, showing messy desk and end table, READY FOR CHALKBOARDING!

First side in progress.

First side done.

Another view of first side done.

All covered, a close up view showing the pretty scrollwork up top.

Full view of all done.

Priming the chalkboard!

Priming the chalkboard another view!

I was explaining to a friend the purpose of said priming, and he had suggested that I shouldn't have done so and had just initially drawn a penis so that would "burn in", so I drew this for him. AFTER priming, though.