Monkeys and keyboards aside, one Random + CSS still doesn't make poop.

So I got hit by a bus today. :P

I am alive and unsquished, and my shiny silver Steve is drivable if significantly dented. The bus lost some paint. Basically I was trying to get from the left lane to the right, the SUV in front of me slammed on its brakes, I slammed on my brakes & fishtailed a little (and missed the SUV by inches at most) and the bus clipped my passenger side. I haven't tried to open my passenger door and probably won't try anytime soon.

I'd like to think it won't, but I ph34r this shall end expensively.

Way back when, I mentioned the manager who'd gone insane. She's back, is still insane, and is feeling juuuust a little vindictive. (I can tell this because she's taken my hours from fifteen and twenty a week to four, then tried to tell me that my hours had to go instead of any other part-time person's because I was management.) She's currently trying to tell all of us that the dummy cameras the company tacked to our ceiling are really live-feeding to the home office.

We're gonna ignore how I know they're dummy cameras . . . Okay, we're not. They're dome cameras with a red blinking light. Google that and you'll find fakies. They're also a different size and shade than the single real camera (which live-feeds, with no recording, pausing, or replay capabilities, to a highly visible tv). Also, in relation to how it would cost thousands of dollars for one store alone to hook up a transmitting network (a wireless one wouldn't work with our terrain) to an office with limited hours (so we'd have no chance of catching any shoplifters that came in after office hours) when our company is so damned cheap to begin with that it won't even get us a new scanner for our register, attach the credit card machines to the registers to cut down on human errors, or hook up any kind of internet access for real-time, non-faxed intercompany communications--and especially in relation to how a handful of $20 battery-operated plug&play fake cameras costs a hell of a lot less than a handful of installation-required $80-$300 cameras--and my suspension of disbelief has given up completely.

She tried to tell me the live feed story, I asked who told her that one, and she refused to answer.

I started to wonder if she really thinks we're that stupid.

I bounced her stats off a psychologist/social worker colleague and got BPD back: Lying, paranoia & attempted fostering of paranoia, addictions, more lying, (attempted) setting people against each other, starting rumors, smiling while backstabbing, believing a person to be all good or all bad (and idealizing/demonizing them accordingly), so forth. BPD is rough to work with. You can't rationalize with the person (as they tend to believe the lies they're telling) and there's no real slowing them down (note: not "fixing them") without liberal application of psychologists and drugs. The only thing we can really do is much documentation and damage control.


I do not like this.

I read Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain a few days ago and appreciated it much more than the first time I tried it out--which was on my break during an overnight shift somewhere towards the end of a seventy-hour week. Before the minimalism was a little too much--this time I meandered on through, noted the basic brutality of the human condition, picked out the turns of poetic phrase that are basically like crack to me, and liked it better.


I also got into Anne Bishop's Tangled Webs, another book set in the Black Jewels Trilogy 'verse, and liked it way, waaay better than Dreams Made Flesh. Basically, one of the side characters from the BJT (Surreal) gets tricked & locked into a death trap of a house, & has to find a way out without getting herself, her friend, or any of the accompanying kids killed.

The story plunks along pretty slowly in the beginning and somewhat predictably towards the ending, but premise-wise it's a thing of shrieking hilarity. A raging Stuthor gets pissed off that people don't like his book and decides to take it out on the people he hears making fun of it (Surreal, Surreal's male friend), the person who "snubbed" him by not sending a thank-you note or dinner invitation after being given a book (Daemon), indirectly at the person he claims stole his idea for a haunted house (Jaenelle)(when it's mentioned that he snagged his "human with talking animal companion" story from another author after seeing her popularity), and . . . Lucivar. Apparently Lucivar's just guilty by association.

Does this sound like anyone we know?

No, seriously: I know Bishop is a snarky someone, but is she snarky enough to be pointing the finger at a particular author or authors? Her characters in the BJT have names that tend to indicate something about them. Landry Langston (the Stu's name) might just be a play off of Landen, the term for non-magical humans. Maybe. And Jarvis Jenkell (the Stuthor's name) . . .

Meh. Could be anything--though it would probably be good form of her to bury the reference so far in that only a few people would get it.

Otherwise: Bishop's characterization is much better here. Saetan gets fleshed out a lot more; ironically, he's more human a character after he's left the human world to become an especially heckled & cranky librarian. Lucivar becomes more sympathetic; Marian becomes a little less the stereotypical romance novel heroine (but only a little). Daemon . . . is Daemon, but shows some insecurities, gets rumpled by his new duties, and is run over by Jaenelle a few times. And Jaenelle is no longer all-powerful and has to deal with that. There's some logical/plot/wording things left to question--No one knew where the house was but Marian and Jaenelle? Why were so many demon-dead aiding the person who'd killed them? Dear God, do you really think people speak like that? Don't tell me you snarked the infamous weeping cock but left "milking" in a supposedly serious sex scene! And plz, plz stop using the phrase "chained sexual heat"--but by the time Lucivar went into action I was too busy cackling to care. Much.

Overall: Don't go in expecting literature--this is pure, unrepentant fluff. It's better fluff than the previous fluff but it's still nothing spectacular or really serious. If you go in with low expectations, looking for just a few hours of fun read, you'll be set.

ETA: The short story at the end was a different flavor than the rest of the book and would probably be worth reading even if the rest of the novel doesn't appeal to you.

My journal looks like Easter threw up. D:


(One day I shall defeat this customization thing! One day!)

ETA: It's not so horrible now. And I kinda have some of the features I wanted. Is the world ending? D:

( We're having a midnight release party for What?! )

New icon courtesy of katrinaswift, who put a big pile of 1" square Twilight snarkery up here.

Sorry to the Lj people: I know this won’t be under a cut there and it’s rather long-winded (as many of my link-heavy rants tend to be). I think I covered all bases here but I’m always open to additions. Direct rational feedback to the original post at Ij and any shrieks of UR RONG U AWFUL H0R to here, please.

●●●


( My thoughts on the Open Source Boobies Project, let me tell you about them. )

Four hours of sleep, six pages of rant, a foot of cowry fall, three cranky customers, and a baked potato later, and I . . . want a nap.


I sometimes wish other people didn't annoy me so.


It's the damndest thing. Sometimes they make you worry--about the kids that are being raised, the adults with their entitlement complexes, the possibility that we're creating a culture of future victims with the popular twisted ideals while we attack those that may mean well for potentially offending someone's delicate sensibilities, and the lack of willingness of so many people to think for themselves. Then you sit and listen to a group of young religious guys who talk openly about reading both anti- and pro-religious books; guys who don't fear ideas, who don't find them threats to their faith, but who try to understand them. Then you watch a group of unsupervised young children, none any more than seven years old, flip through the classic The Giving Tree and talk about how "It's a good book, except for how the tree dies at the end." And you start to wonder if things might be okay after all.

So yeah, the Tekko '08 Artists’ Alley wank report. This is my experience, the info I’ve gleaned from others, and my big ol’ cranky nature.

( Wank wank, wankity wank wank. )

Back in January, Smart Bitches Trashy Books brought Cassie Edwards's plagiarism to light. Her publisher Signet finally dumped her today. Here's to them doing the right thing.

I wonder if we get to pull all of her books now. I wonder if I can be the one to do it. :D :D :D

~~

A teacher was recently found dead in a lake in Texas. His arms and legs were bound, he had tape over his eyes, and the Austin police are ruling it a suicide.

For future reference: If you're gonna kill someone, do it in Austin.

~~

Crafting is coming along decently. I'm still waiting on the normal cowries but am working with some super-shiny acrylic ones which are lighter and more even than the usuals. I have yet to see how they react to blacklight.

But here comes the fun part . . . finding a close-to-close hotel for ANext. Jeez, they sold out fast this year. If we weren't moving in a group of four this wouldn't be so rough.

Missions for today/tomorrow sometime:

start sewing another coin bra/panel skirt combo (eeeew, sewing)

mow some of the yard But not while it's raining

finish ch3 (original work)

play with fic

find eye pins for hair sticks

paint more hair sticks, general craft mess

play with yarn/make more cowry falls

Tekko wank report

work on dreadfall mess

garden $10 at Lowe's got me pond plants, two good-sized lilies in cream & rose, a six-pack of blue flowering annuals, and eight unbloomed tulips in red and orange. I am the best bargain shopper evar.

change fishtank water

mod the bunny cages into one

So how many of you have been at ff.net for the past few years?

If you have, go check out fanhistory.com and look for yourself. purplepopple broke out a bot that basically takes inventory of the people there and the fics they've written. So there may be an article on you. And it may need cleaned up.

Granted, the bot only got through about 20% of the people on fanfiction.net before it crashed. But that's still a lot of people.

I'm sure there's some koan about what it means if you go to find yourself and you're not there.



In the meantime, the wank at Tekko's forums is a thing of lulz and . . . well, more lulz. The mods are trying to keep things under control but that doesn't stop outright stupidity--like the people going in and saying we from the Artists' Alley broke an invisible contract and could be sued, or that we shouldn't be upset at how we were mistreated because they personally had a neighbor call child services on them. And the mods' idea of "under control" means "banning in-the-know people for talking about what might happen to the guilty parties."

And I keep wading in. Shame on me.


Further explanation of what went kablooey will turn up once I get the post-con post done.



Chances of me going to ANext keep growing exponentially.


PS: Kabuki and Hydra are up at icanhascheezburger.com. Go look at (and vote for!) them!

Okay! Tekko. There was good, there was bad, there were lulz and there was cockery. There's also a bunch of pictures and there's me with a fistful of money that I didn't have before. :D

(How much of the money is already spent? Shush.)

So yeah, long rambly post is coming. :D

Also! Thoughts for next con:

Moar cowries (They seem to have done well)

have dreadfall how-to & accouterments on hand

Full table!

Lots more hair sticks


(Cowry problem shall be fixed by mail soon, so world is soon to be more rattly.)

So I ran into the damndest thing in the world yesterday: A YA book that didn't blow. I also kinda crushed the entire thing in a few hours before realizing (at about 3am) that I needed to sleep.

( Say it ain't so! )

. . . I went looking for that Luke I Am Your Father link and just spent the past hour trolling about tvtropes.org. That site's like internet crack! D:




ETA: Of course, I had to go ruin the post-good-book feeling by cracking open the Clique tie-in book Massie. That piece of shit features an unrepentantly shallow twat of a main character who gleefully spends the novel making money (stereotypically) selling ridiculous amounts of cosmetics to tween & teen girls--of course, by making them feel like shit about themselves & turning them into consumer whores. And I mean blatantly making them feel like shit about themselves--at one point she drops a line like "You need to use this kind of moisturizer, and that's why people call you this behind your back!" Followed promptly by the character thinking about how helping the "less fortunate" made her feel good.

Me, I wanna know why none of the girls she trampled over didn't promptly beat the shit out of her. If someone tried to talk me into a makeover by insulting everything about me, telling me that "everyone" was talking shit about me behind my back, and insisting I had to stop having fun so I could "look like a girl," I'd give them a fucking icepick lobotomy with their eyeliner pencil.

We have ridiculously adorable seal puppets at work.

We also have crying small children.

So when a small child started crying today, I whipped out a seal puppet . . . and proceeded to spend the next ten minutes lying to and playing with a four year old who sincerely believed the seal was real.

This is not the first child I've misled in this manor. It will undoubtedly not be the last.


I think I feel a little bad. But he stopped crying?

(YTD: Four children have believed the seal was real, and most parents initially think I'm walking around with a small dog in my arms.)

~~

I'm sleeping enough to dream again. Now only if my dreams weren't so severely OMGWTF ones. Though keeping the plot ideas for some sounds worthwhile.

~~

It seems the US government's been taking lessons from Livejournal's SUP.

US-funded health search engine blocks the search term "abortion"

A few days later, the official backpedaling apology and fix: "I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction."

Versus . . .

The list of interests Lj has censored--including but not limited to porn, depression, yaoi, faeries, and bisexuality.

A few days later, the official backpedaling apology and fix: "(I)t was a mistake and not meant to convey any company opinion."



Ohh, Lj and Bush administration. Plz bring the funny instead.

Tags: livejournal, wank

Good day:
Going to work, then getting to sit for half the shift and hand out free candy to people.

Better day:
Finding out that work's brought in a massage therapist, and that you can test them out for free.

Even better day:
Spending your time in line introducing the people around you to your Eeepc--and to journalfen. And to the wank report of the soulbonder chickie who's made five-foot dolls of her "spirit guide" (who happens to be a webcomic's character) so she can have carnal relations with him.

Then watching their faces when they see the pics of the dolls. I thought my coworker's boyfriend was gonna fall off his chair.

Then introducing a manager to rickrolling & getting into a discussion with a friend over which is weirder: the soulbonder doll-fucker chickie or Zoltan, the self-proclaimed technosexual who has married his sex doll with built-in AI. And who posts decidedly WTF transcripts of their sex.

Best day evar?
Finding a way to spread the disease to readers here. You know you wanna look. :D

My first attempt at a fully constructed coin bra is almost done. I'm pretty proud of it. I'm also trying to crack down on the dreadfalls for Tekko. I'm not sure I'll have as much stuff to bring along as I'd hoped, but something's better than nothing.

~~

My meanderings a few days ago took me on a drive this time, following the general direction of the train tracks in an attempt to figure out what other nearby mining locations I've missed. I now have four places to try to research/get into. I also have pics of what happens when a flooded mine spills into the local waterway.





There is absolutely nothing left alive in this creek.

I never thought Blade of the Immortal would ever get animated. And I'm still kinda worried (Manji's outfit's half white?). . . but here's to hoping that it's awesome. :D


Here's also to hoping not too many people pull stupid shit today.

The coal company that owns the remains of the old mine nearest to me put up big yellow Keep Out signs all along the railroad tracks closest to the colliery. The people who ride their bikes and ATVs there still don't seem to care. This wouldn't be so big a deal, too--except for how I saw these exact same big bright yellow signs on the side of the turnpike a few days ago. Instead of effectively telling me to keep out, the company's just told me where to look for more neat things.

Is this new neat spot within walking distance? No. Does it have big visible-from-space shale piles like the one nearest me? No. Sadness. But examining google's maps & satellite pics of my immediate area showed a strange sort of change to the nearby creek, maybe a mile or so down the tracks from me. The creek around here meanders. When it suddenly goes in a straight line, something's up. And the area surrounded by this oddity didn't have big gray visible shale piles . . . but it did have some weird treeless spots and a complete lack of houses, roads, etc.

It might be a mine; it might not be a mine. There was only one (fun) way to find out. You know me: I grabbed the dog, the camera, and my cell phone, and started walking.

( A few big pics, some prattling. )

More specific research tells me this little guy ran for around thirty years in the 1800s, topping out at about twenty thousand tons of coal a year but ceasing function as a mine right after the Civil War. It also tells me that the "little" mine down the road from me, started about a decade before this one's closure, likely mined the rest of its coal.

Seems my "little" mine isn't nearly as little or one-directional as I'd thought. D: That's a hell of a lot of undercut and definitely goes under fun things like homes, playing fields, the creek, and possibly the railroad.

The company that put up the yellow signs supposedly has a center nearby. I shall be in their base, pokin' them have to go visit sometime for more information.

Kids' toymakers have re-set their sights on the animal kingdom, and are looking at horses in a whole new way.

Or Whoreses, as some of the viewers are naming them.

Go look and ask yourself what this is setting the younger generation up for: Stilt-legged, tiny-headed "horses" with floofy skirts, tons of jewelry, built-in coy expressions, and hideously malformed legs because they're wearing gigantic high heels.


I like horses. Real horses. Snuffly stinky dusty ones that love dandelions and ear skritches; ones that come without accouterments like oversized saddlebags purses and scoop-neck tops; ones that'll roll in the mud right after you wash them and that can make you a severely unhappy puppy if they step on your foot. Not a disfigured semi-ethnic deer with its own matching purse and bad anime eyeballs. So where is the black one, anyway? But apparently normally-proportioned horses (or even My Little Ponies!) aren't good enough anymore--at least, not when a three-and-up kid's playthings can be hypersexualized in this manner.




Insert Paris Hilton & furry jokes here, plz. (Bonus points if you get both at one go!)

Everyone knows that I hate my one job. That's kinda a given. But I still need it to pay bills.

Long story short: Last week I called the home office to ask why I was still at the base rate for management. They basically told me that they couldn't (read: wouldn't) help me out.

This week my hours were cut down from the teens to six.

I came in to work today and found that no, it wasn't six--it was four.

Next week? I was up for nineteen. Nope--four.

And another manager was transplanted from a closed store. She's full time and needs full time hours. She also needs keys. My keys.

"Are you guys tryin' to tell me something?" I said.

They insist that things will get better, but I have no reason to trust this company.


But I have reason to hope. I stopped at the gas station on the way to my other job. I was at the pump, being grouchy--how the hell am I supposed to pay bills, now? One job just doesn't cut it, and etsy's been quiet lately. Then I started paying attention to the overhead music.

Bobby McFerrin, singing Don't Worry, Be Happy.


Ever get that sort of cosmic pat on the head? It's a funny experience.


Borders is gonna fill in some of the space, but in the meantime . . . Hell, I don't know what I'm doing. But I'll figure something out.

I sorta got stuff done today. The fishtank is clean, the bichir is playing with his feeder guppies rather than eating them, the bunnies are clean, the garden is watered, most of the bulbs are planted, the laundry is being folded, and I got myself a tube of E-6000 (industrial-strength glue) so I can make sure my pins from my hair sticks won't budge. Ever. (I hope.) I can also set bails in the new pendants I'm making from . . . well, whatever's handy.



A customer knocked over an entire (faulty) shelf of ceramic bathware a few days ago. She started apologizing profusely. I took one look at the shards and started laughing. Then I brought about a third of them home. A few minutes with a grinder wheel and I'll have (and do have) some big clunky neat ceramic pendants. I'm not sure how I'm gonna hang them on anything yet--the silver wire sticking out of the top of the little acrylic one above doesn't really do it for me, but I'm not sure how well a sculpey one would hold up. But by their powers combined . . . Hmm.



I really really need to organize my crafty & shiny stuff. It's absolutely everywhere. D: