My professor read from the LOLCat Bible today. In class. Out loud. In his perfectly-enunciated lecture voice.

...

Oh, my strange academic life.


Back at the apartment for lunch and Internet funtimes before heading to work (in case I forgot to mention it: I'm the official Communications Lab Tech Monkey three days a week). We finally worked out my hours: Tues. 4 - 6 pm, Wed. 4:30 - 6:30 pm, and Thurs. 4 - 8 pm. In which I sit in the lab, stare at the walls, and help the occasional confused student who wanders in wanting to use one of our shiny MacBook Airs or needing directions to the bathroom or something. Mostly I put my feet up on the desk and read.

Not a bad gig at $10/hr, all told.

Back to school in about twelve hours. A fond farewell to winter break.

And now, to keep myself mildly amused and stave off what appears to be the rapid onset of psychosis, a meme:

Ask me one fandom-related question in the comments. This can be fandom specific, general, or about fandom/lj stuff/fic writing/etc. in general. Favorite character, favorite moment, unpopular opinion, something about a fic of mine... whatever. Wackiness encouraged.

You know those 'Safe Space' stickers they post around universities? The ones that indicate that the university is committed to providing an environment free of sexual intolerance? Most of my professors have them on their office doors, which, given that I go to a Catholic school, is kind of a non-verbal signal that the professor in residence will not look at you with open disdain or start venemously spitting Church doctrine in your face if you aren't completely silent about your LGBTQ status. All of the super-awesome English profs I love have them, which makes me incredibly proud and happy.

At the risk of sounding naive and shallow... I want something like that for fandom. Something like, "I pledge that, in my fics, my Livejournal, my author bios, anywhere my presence as a fan is evident, I will not dismiss your OTP. I will not give you my thoughts on yaoi. I will not say het is better or slash is better or gen is better. I will not say your pairing is impossible. I will not say your kink is not okay. My personal corner of fandom is a Safe Space for Fandom Sexuality and Interest. You are free to be yourself."

It's my unofficial policy anyway. Seems like a lot of fandom drama could be avoided if we were all more inclined to live and let live.

...except with bad OCs. Those I will continually snark in private.

(Some of those bitchy ways are just too deeply-engrained, you guys.)

I really started thinking about this yesterday when kamitosis asked me to come in and help her with two French fans on DevArt who spent some time debating the plausibility of Raph/Sieg v. Raph/Cass (thank God it didn't morph into some kind of Super Shipping War with members of the Raph/Amy and Raph/Ivy ranks... Raph is so the fandom bicycle, you know that?). I think what I wrote over there says it best:

Back when I started writing Cass/Raph, it barely existed in the fandom; I spent far too much time trying to convince others that it was even remotely plausible, let alone that it could actually work and provide its own kind of mythos and fanon. Because of that, it raises my hackles a bit to see another pairing dismissed with the same kind of logic, that it wouldn't "work". I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything other than the crackiest 'ship possible that couldn't be made plausible and, really, make for a damn good fic in the right hands.

I really, really don't want to see this turn into a crazy Cass/Raph v. Sieg/Raph debate. Some people like Cass/Raph. Some people like Sieg/Raph. Some people like neither. Some people like both! And that's okay.

Again: I want Safe Space Fandom. Your pairing's cool. My pairing's cool. This shit is supposed to be fun, so let's all kick back and discuss why all the men in SCIV appear to have no genitalia.

Priorities, people.

To call it a "political issue" is to run the risk of dangerous oversimplification, but if you either a) don't believe in the equality of the sexes or b) think feminism is evil/horrible/violating "men's rights", I will forever take everything you say with one serious grain of salt. Even if you're family.

My sister has enlisted me to be her partner in a Biggest Loser tournament amongst her friends (and friends' friends). Given the pounds I've packed on over the holidays, the timing's pretty perfect.

(We had a lot of trouble coming up with a team name until Carly asked me to think of something Hey Arnold! related. Thus we were christened "Wheezin' Ed... and Some Other Guy". Props to those who get the joke.)

My mother's pissed, primarily because I told her I'm not going to be eating much over the next twelve weeks (there is prize money to be had, people). But, hey, whatevs. Once the semester starts and I'm back up in the city, it's pretty common for me not to eat very much (and exercise liek whoa, given that it's the city and everyone walks). And I've still got those lingering body issues, so it's probably good to get back on a pretty strict diet, anyway.

...yeah.

Ah, 2009. What to say? It was unkind to me. It was unkind to damn near everyone.

2009 didn't teach me to be strong, but it reminded me that I am. And I'm grateful for that.


Keeping it quiet tonight—this is the first time since 2004 that I'm not with Ben for the two weeks after Christmas. It's a very bittersweet feeling. Mom's taking me out to dinner at Bonefish, and then I'll be back at home, in all likelihood practicing on bass for the rest of the night (my index fingers got a bit bloody last night—I'm all excited, in a very, very strange and unsettling way). Bryce says this is "the mark of a true artist". I certainly hope so.


And now, the traditional end-of-year meme. I have a feeling this one will be substantially more subdued and melancholy than usual, but that's been the general feel of 2009.


( 2009 in review. )

I'm a repetitive type of person. I'll listen to the same song over and over again. I'll watch the same movie until I can recite the dialogue verbatim. And I do so without ever getting tired of them.

Books are different. I frequently re-read my favorite books, but I have to let them sit for a bit, at least a few months. I never finish a book and immediately head back to the beginning.

Of course, I now have to amend that to "almost never," because I stayed up until five in the morning finishing Heart's Blood, the latest offering from the utterly brilliant Juliet Marillier, and I'm already back on Chapter Three. For the first time, I'm just not ready to let this world go. I love all of Marillier's works dearly, but this one is special. It's not Sevenwaters; Marillier's flagship series has a kind of dreamy, fantastical air that I love, but Heart's Blood is somehow darker, grittier. At its heart (no pun intended), it's a very loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast (score one—Marillier and my favorite fairytale ever? Oh, man, let's do this), with all the darkness and despair and hope and beauty and love that goes with it—plus some Marillierian fantasy and a uniquely-rendered ghost story.

One of the main things that keeps me coming back to Marillier's work is her characters, and nowhere is her brilliant characterization more evident than here in Heart's Blood. I loved her Belle, the wandering scribe Caitrin, who's running from an abusive past and learning that she's stronger than she ever thought. I loved her Beast, the disfigured and prickly chieftian, Anluan, and his cursed legacy, his irritable stoicisim and his wounded heart. I loved the servants, each with his own expertly-developed backstory and reasons for staying at the cursed fortress. By the time I finished the book, I had grown to love the cast of characters so much that I couldn't bear to see them go—and so I immediately went back to the beginning.

That's a rare thing.

This is a slightly different spin on Marillier's standard: the heroine isn't a member of a much-beloved family with a storied history—at the book's start, she's in desperate flight from a history of cruelty and abuse. The love interest is arguably the darkest Marillier has ever included, crippled, angry, and in a continuing crisis of confidence—the closest parallel would be Bran of Son of the Shadows, but Anluan is even more isolated and shut in on himself. As the novel develops, they both learn to trust and hope, and the whole process is, for my money, one of the most beautiful stories Marillier has ever told.

Go. Read it. Bring tissues for certain parts. Take notes. Share with others.

So, Christmas was awesome. Got tons of amazing books (Comic Book Tattoo? Unbelievably gorgeous) and DVDs (Coraline and The Great Dictator!).

And James got me an entry in the Lenox Beauty and the Beast line—something I've wanted since I was, oh, five years old. My mother promised me that she'd get me the full line as a wedding present, but, well, that fell by the wayside along with my starry-eyed plans of a BatB-themed wedding. When I opened that box, I almost burst into tears, but I settled for launching across the small mountain of gift wrap and tackling James in a fierce bear hug of gratitude.

...I planned on writing a more eloquent entry, but my fingers are not cooperating today, thanks to my "big" Christmas gift...


My shiny new cherry-red Ibanez bass guitar.





Her name is Shirley, and she is beautiful.

I'm a complete and total n00b when it comes to music, though, and so I've spent the past two days getting used to finger position, plucking, and playing scales ad nauseam. Saying that I'm actually quite enjoying the slow, tedious process will probably make me sound like a total loser... but I am. Enjoying it, that is—the loserdom is eternally up for discussion, albeit primarily in terms of degree.

I've got the very beginnings of calluses on my fingers, and my joints are a bit sore. Ah, the learning curve. So looking forward to it.


Hope you all had a wonderful holiday. :)

Grades are in.


Shakespeare: B
Latin: A-
Philosophy: A
Visual Rhetorics: A
Communications: A


In spite of everything, in spite of everything...


Dean's List.

I have to go celebrate. I don't know how, but, dammit, I'll figure it out.

Just in from my last final.

Grades aren't even in yet, but I'm still sitting here crying—the hitching, choking kind of crying.

Because I can't believe I actually did it. I can't believe I succeeded. After everything that happened, after how far I fell, after how certain I was I would never pull through, even as everyone told me how strong I was... I stayed in school, with a full courseload. And I successfully completed every one of my courses.

The day Ben left me, my mother took me to our old family church nestled out in the farms of Pittsgrove Township—my great-grandmother's church. I remember sitting in the passenger seat, crying uncontrollably and staring out at the farms surrounding its simple white-washed frame, and after a little while, I pulled out my Blackberry and wrote the following:

"Fuck...this...noise.

I am a survivor. I wiill not merely weather this storm into which I have been thrown--I will conquer it. I will thrive. And I'll hurt. Quite terribly. But I won't falter. I won't break. I'm so much better than that now--and maybe he won't see that.

But I will. And that makes all the difference."


Sitting there with a broken heart, utterly devastated, I didn't believe a word of it.

And yet, today... I proved it.

I did conquer it.

And I thrived.

I hurt. And I fought.

But I just won.


Hence the crying. I'm crying because I'm overwhelmed. And more than a little shocked.

Because, for possibly the first time in my life...

I'm proud of myself.

Four finals down.

One to go.

Close. So very close.


Will be unwinding tonight with the lovely folks from Rifftrax, courtesy of their Live Christmas Shorts Extravaganza! It's a streaming broadcast, since the guys themselves (Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett) will actually be snarking live from Escondido, CA (so much envy, m0ny!) and I'm in Philadelphia, but the show should be awesome nonetheless.

Plus, I get to see it with Carly, my sister and fellow MSTie, whom I sadly haven't seen too often over the past few weeks thanks to the hectic end to my semester and her shiny new job in accounting at TD Bank. But tonight, we shall ride. We shall ride again!


...oh, finals, what damage have you wrought.

I'm out.

Stolen from one of my friends on Facebook -


For 24 hours, I will be completely and totally honest. Ask me anything.


Anonymous commenting enabled, IP logging off.

This has the potential to go very badly, but what the hell.

Go for it.

I'm so insufferably whiny today—I have an essay due tomorrow at noon (just a five-page deal, nothing to lose much sleep over), but all I can think about is curling up in bed with a good book, all warm and toasty, while mentally whining, "I don't waaaaant to write my essay!"

Instead, I've just spent the day watching movies (today's spread: The Breakfast Club, Watchmen, and Stardust. I'm all over the place), reading fanfic, and eating peanut M&Ms. And, of course, running some half-assed searches for academic sources while going "bleeeuuurrgh".

(It's not easy being a super-lazy English major, you know. It takes both a tremendous amount of intellectual energy and mad wordplay skillz to successfully make the bullshit arguments required of us, and today, I have neither. It's like my brain heard that there's a break coming up and just said, "Fuck it, I'm making this a long weekend" and didn't bother to get up with the rest of me this morning, leaving me with barely enough literacy skills to formulate basic sentences.

Watch your step, brain—I am easily given to thoughts of vengeance, and there is a well-stocked liquor store a block from my apartment. Your move, bitch.)

---

Just realized that I never posted the answers to that movie meme way back when. Not that anyone particularly cares, but...

#3: "Goddamn, I love working on American soil. I haven't had this much fun since Woodward and Bernstein." = Watchmen

#4: "I think violating fire codes and endangering the lives of children would be unwise at this juncture in your career, sir." = The Breakfast Club

#12: "Oh, right. That makes perfect sense. Turn right to go left. Yes, thank you! Or should I say No, thank you, because in Opposite World, maybe that really means thank you!" = Cars

#14: "Tons of men in this establishment would love to be harassed by you!" = Le Placard, a.k.a. The Closet, a.k.a. The Single Funniest French Comedy Ever (so unfair, since a) it's a foreign film and I don't really know anyone who's seen it, and b) the quote's in translation.)

#18: "Gentlemen, thank you very much. I think I can guarantee you... that you'll both be in Southern Russia before the end of the month. Good day." = Schindler's List

#20: "I just can't bring myself to hate people. The worse they behave, the sorrier I feel for them." = Paradise Road (movie about European women in Japanese prison camps during WWII. Another one most people haven't seen. It's a little schmaltzy at times, but it's still a good watch.)

#23: "You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake, well, this could be it, sweetheart." = The Empire Strikes Back (I'm sad no one got this.)

#24: "I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said 'yes' to a divorce." = Apocalypse Now

#25: "Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle—you are men!" = The Great Dictator (I love this speech so much that I linked to it for Sharing is Caring! - Day 5.)

I am super-grumpy today and I can't even discuss why, largely because said grumpiness is likely the result of my acting like a petulant toddler. I think I'll sublimate my annoyances through cleaning my apartment, because God, does it need it.

But first... pressing questions!


From the lovely freya_sacksen:

1. What would your last dinner be? - My Italian grandmother's homemade raviolis and meatballs, because a) cheese ravioli is my personal ambrosia, and b) if left to her own devices, she would undoubtedly feed me enough food to cause a fatal stomach rupture.

2. Your life is an audio drama! Woohoo! Who would your narrator be and why? - Tony Jay. I am willing to painstakingly cobble together old audio clips into something resembling a cohesive narrative to make this possible.

3. You're given the choice to spend a month in the canon of your choice. Which one do you choose and why? - Ooh, this is a tough one. Hmm... It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, especially if I could bring friends with me to hang out in South Philly at Paddy's Pub. I'd be able to augment my normal, dull Philly existence with The Gang's amusing antics.

4. What do you wish really existed but doesn't? Fairies, dragons, griffins, sphinxes? - Fairies would be kind of cool, especially if they got into the traditional Seelie/Unseelie details and courts and all that and I'm showing my geeky stripes liek whoa so I'm going to stop now.

5. You're given unlimited tools, workers and the world's best architects. What do you make? - A fully-functional and failproof teleportation pad. Also, the Resurrection Technology to make #2 substantially more feasible.


"Now to play along just type GUREITO in the comment box and I will ask YOU 5 questions."


(Fair warning: they *will* be very strange.)

Week before Thanksgiving = academic suicide run for college students.

Sharing is Caring!
For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six : a quote
Day seven : whatever tickles your fancy


I'll share the reason that Day 7 is two days late: my highbrow academic project for Communications, which centers around old-timey LOLcats.

I am a very strange student.

(Late. But as I haven't gone to bed and the sun hasn't come up, Jersey rules = it's still technically Sunday.)

Sharing is Caring!
For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six : a quote
Day seven : whatever tickles your fancy


An excerpt from what I consider to be one of the single best pages in existence: "Yes, You Are"

feminism n (1895) 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests — feminist n or adj — feministic adj


Above, the dictionary definition of feminism — the entire dictionary definition of feminism. It is quite straightforward and concise. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist.

Yes, you are.

The definition of feminism does not ask for two forms of photo ID. It does not care what you look like. It does not care what color skin you have, or whether that skin is clear, or how much you weigh, or what you do with your hair. You can bite your nails, or you can get them done once a week. You can spend two hours on your makeup, or five minutes, or the time it takes to find a Chapstick without any lint sticking to it. You can rock a cord mini, or khakis, or a sari, and you can layer all three. The definition of feminism does not include a mandatory leg-hair check; wax on, wax off, whatever you want. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist.

Yes, you are.

The definition of feminism does not mention a membership fee or a graduated tax or "…unless you got your phone turned off by mistake." Rockefellers, the homeless, bad credit, no credit, no problem. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist.

Yes, you are.

Do yourself a favor and read the essay in its entirety (it's short but incredibly powerful). Memorize it. Share it. Give quizzes.

I love Saturday—it's the only day where I get to laze around and not do a single worthwhile thing.

As such, we interrupt today's Sims 3 marathon to bring you the following:


Sharing is Caring!
For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six : a quote
Day seven : whatever tickles your fancy


I'll give you two: one funny, one moving.


First: the funny.



George Carlin's famous abortion argument. We just finished our lengthy abortion debate in my philosophy class, and I was amazed at how much I kept mentally getting called back to this. Not only is Carlin brilliant, but he manages to make excellent points while being funny as hell. I love stand-up, and there are countless comedians on my iPod who are amazing, but no one will ever quite live up to Carlin's genius.


Second: the moving.



The climactic end speech from Charlie Chaplin's 1940 tour-de-force, The Great Dictator. If you haven't seen the film, don't worry—most people haven't. But if you get the chance, you really should. Written and filmed when the US was still officially neutral towards Germany, it's basically a WWII-era send-up of Nazism and Nazi policy, in which an aggressive and infantile dictator ends up trading places with a humble Jewish barber who bears a striking resemblance to him (the latter is the one who gives the above speech). And if that sounds like the most offensive and horrible concept for a movie you can think of... watch the clip. I've seen it more times than I can count, and it still gives me goosebumps. It's an emotional powerhouse, one that's still incredibly relevant nearly sixty years later.

Had a good day today. I think I really, really needed that bitchslap yesterday; it was kind of my callback to reality.

I'm ridiculously tired, though, so straight onto the meme!


Sharing is Caring!
For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six : a quote
Day seven : whatever tickles your fancy





I love showing this to site to 'Net-un-savvy friends and associates as a way to kind of welcome them to the strange and wonderful world that is the Internet. Basically, it's a list of all the most popular memes, viral videos, and Internet phenomena that everybody and their mother has probably seen by now, including Charlie the Unicorn (#6), Yatta! (#12), and The Evolution of Dance (#87). Now, as 'Net-savvy folk, you guys have probably seen and re-seen most of these, to the point that they're not remotely cutting-edge or funny anymore (however, I firmly believe that The Sneezing Panda [#76] will never get old). But if, like me, you're a lone Internet vet amongst a sea of newbies, this is a great reference guide to show said n00bs if they ever come to you and ask about this "Chocolate Rain" (#3) thing they've been hearing so much about.


**I move away from this post to breathe in

We're just going to disregard my last entry for now, because explaining just why the events described therein made me so angry would require me going into a lengthy discussion about what I used to be like a few years ago (a few of you know this already, and I really, really hope I've made some amount of progress in your eyes), and I'm just not going to do that.

Also: no more Ben stuff. I promise. Consider the case officially closed.

---

Sharing is Caring!
For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six : a quote
Day seven : whatever tickles your fancy


Book: Anything and everything by Juliet Marillier, one of the single best fantasy authors out there. Marillier is an expert storyteller, and every one of her novels delivers an exquisite tale in the tradition of centuries-old stories of quests and magic, love and loss, all wrapped up in beautifully-written language and painstakingly accurate attention to historical detail. If you don't mind getting pulled into a series, do yourself a favor and pick up Daughter of the Forest, the first installment in her acclaimed 'Sevenwaters' series, and enjoy (my favorites in the series are actually the last two, Child of the Prophecy and Heir to Sevenwaters, but if you're anything like me, you'll tear through the first two so quickly that you'll arrive at them soon enough).

Fanfic: "The End of Days" by dansemacabre (Labyrinth, M, Romance/Adventure). This one gets a nod because a) I'm re-reading it right now, and b) it's one of the single best fics I've ever read in any fandom. It's that good. "End of Days" takes the standard 'Labyrinth' fanfic trope (i.e. "Sarah goes back to the Labyrinth") and gives it a darkly original spin. There's magic and death and danger around every corner, and the author is amazingly deft at weaving elements of mythology and subtle symbolism into the story of a perilous journey and a fight to save the Goblin Kingdom as it stands at Armageddon. I don't know if anyone on my FL reads for "Labyrinth," but if you do, this one should definitely be on your reading list.

I really, really love my Mom. She came up to visit after calling and finding that I was having such a hard time, and we spent an hour riding around the city and talking (well, she did most of the talking, in her attempts to cheer me up and make me realize that I can't possibly blame myself for all of this). Afterwards, she went back out to pick up some take-out for us to eat.

About an hour later, there was a quiet knock on the door.

When I opened it, my mother was almost entirely hidden behind two dozen roses.

"Just to remind you that you're special and I love you," she said.

If I weren't such a hardass, I think I would've started crying right there.

As it was, I took them from her and thanked her, trying and failing to suppress a smile.

There's currently a dozen fire-and-ice roses next to my TV and a dozen pale-pink roses—my absolute favorite flower—right here next to my computer monitor. I don't care that it might be considered sad that the only flowers I get are from my mother. They're still adding a hint of much-needed brightness to my life at present.

I also keep re-reading the comments all of you have left...not just in the past twenty-four hours, but since my world tore apart at the seams on August 7th. Again, hardass, so I'm limited to my expression, but still...

Thank you. All of you.

---

Sharing is Caring!
For one week, recommend/share:

Day one: a song
Day two: a picture
Day three: a book/ebook/fanfic
Day four: a site
Day five: a youtube clip
Day six : a quote
Day seven : whatever tickles your fancy





Philadelphia's Fairmount Park system is home to Belmont Plateau, which boasts arguably the single greatest spot from which to view the Philadelphia skyline. Mom and I chilled out up there for awhile tonight and watched the ubiquitous deer wander about. I love that contrast—look up, city skyline and sprawling urban landscape. Look down...deer in a field. If there is a single more fitting metaphor for the Delaware Valley, I'm hard-pressed to come up with it.

(Photo—of course—courtesy of my sister Carly. [source])