Aeryn-sama

So, there are these guys who often park outside the mall. They all drive pick-up trucks, and they park them together and generally cause a ruckus until mall security comes to run them off. So today, security got a call about a bunch of pick-up trucks parked together behind Dunham's Sports, and, knowing that the group usually disperses as soon as they see the security vehicle's lights, sent a guy out there in the Jeep.

The security guy radios back to the command center a few minutes later that the group didn't disperse when they saw him, and that it probably wasn't the usuals and he would have to approach. The next comment on the radio is that they have some kind of animal in one of the trucks. Lo and behold, what he finds is a group of guys cleaning a deer in the mall parking lot.

Welcome to Redneckia.

Stolen from hagane_no. Proof that I spent too much time in the house in my teens.

( Rules and List Under Here )

A final parting thought for the night/morning.

It's a very weird feeling to go back and read your own fanfic when you haven't written fic in years. It's all the more unsettling to be surprised and pleased by your own cleverness, and subsequently to realize that none of the "real, legitimate" writing you've done since then compares.

Sometimes, I miss fandom. I miss shamelessly writing unauthorized stories about other people's characters. I miss the uplifting and encouraging comments. People are so grateful for good fanfic. They enjoy it, and they tell you so. It's a much more heartwarming response than anything you ever get posting entirely original work.

I'm not sure if I got too busy for fandom, or if I grew out of it, or if I just got snobby and started believing that writing fanfic was an inferior craft that no intelligent person took seriously. And if the latter was the case, I've never taken anything seriously in my life. Why did I have to start then?

I guess that this is my confession that I miss it. I miss making new friends. I owe most of my online friendships- many of which have now existed for an excess of five years, some of them as long as eight- to fandom, and I wouldn't trade those people for anything. I also miss the ego boosts. I miss being told that I was good at something. I miss having a reputation for good characterization or witty prose or being able to make people like subject matter they usually hated. I miss the mental exercise of fic-writing, of creating new scenarios and blending them as flawlessly as possible with a canon world.

Maybe I should get back into it. But do I have the time? Do I have the energy? Do I still have the skillset of a fic-writer? Or should I just let it lie in my past, alongside memories of a possibly misspent youth that I don't regret in the least?

Is what I really miss just the attention? Do I just miss having other people tell me I was good at something? I know this whole post probably seems like ego-stroking... "I used to be popular," "People loved my portrayal of X," etc. But I don't mean it that way. I guess I long for a time when I was validated. When I poured my heart into something and was rewarded for it. Being a grown-up doesn't have those moments. Nobody in your classes tells you you're smart. Nobody at work tells you you work hard and are an asset to the company. Nobody in your friend group tells you they like your cooking, your singing, your writing, or anything else you might have once considered a talent.

I was having a conversation with bexhet about how I kind-of wish I'd come across a meme to spread that had a question on it to the effect of "recommend to me a band/artist I've (probably) never heard of."

Obviously, there will be at least one of you who has heard of all of these, since somebody who has me on LJ introduced me to all of these, and some of them might be more popular than I know. Anyway, I'll list my top ten and link each one to a YouTube video of my favorite song of theirs. Maybe you'll encounter something new! And, given my eclectic taste, this is going to be a smattering of genres.

In no particular order:
1. Blackmore's Night
2. The Ditty Bops
3. Jump Little Children
4. Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew ("Broadside" is my actual favorite song, but it doesn't appear to be on YouTube.)
5. Alana Davis (singing an Ani DiFranco cover)
6. The Hush Sound
7. Celtic Woman (I've seen them live. Their music is beautiful.)
8. Lorene Drive (Screamo in their early days, more alt rock/punk now.)
9. Petra Haden
10. The Lemonheads

This.

I want to do the lyrics one again, but this seemed fun, less time consuming, and likely to spark some text for my NaNoWriMo project.

Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
Click random article again; that is your album name.
Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

Band Name: Paula Green
Album Name: Margaret of Brabant

Album Tracks:
1) Harlow Council election, 2006
2) Craig Lewis (cyclist)
3) Theodor Curtius
4) Allodecta
5) Joseph S. McCallum
6) Bastø Fosen
7) The River (Breed 77 song)
8) Randall J. LeVeque
9) Oakington railway station
10) Bristol, Connecticut
11) Brad J. Lamb
12) Long-term Predicted Excitation Coding
13) All Saints Catholic School, West Wickham
14) St. Lucie Mets
15) Mungo Lake remains

I'm going to imagine that this album is a progressive trance/techno concept album about a politician who goes on an acid trip where a dead German queen serves as his Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

Just saw 2012 with my mom. Despite some scientific and cultural WTF moments, it was actually a really good movie and I liked it, largely because it met many of my requirements for good movies.

[x] Death and Destruction
[x] Family WAFF
[x] Unnecessary but Noble Sacrifices
[x] Positive View of Human Nature
[x] References to Things I Am Familiar With to Make Me Feel Smart and/or "In the Know"
[_] Alan Rickman

Though, to be fair, some of John Cusack's facial expressions are decidedly Rickman-esque.

Also, managed to have a night out with my mom with no fighting. This is good. (Dad is pissed that I got a tattoo, though.)

Today, at the age of twenty-two years, six months, twenty-nine days, and not-quite-four-hours, I got my first tattoo. It is a rose, and it is on my foot.

See it here. The photo was taken less than an hour after it was done, so the skin around it is still pink. I may take a new photo tomorrow and add it to this post. Also, pardon my hairy ankles.

Occasionally, Texts from Last Night has texts that seem eerily like I am gazing into my own future. The following is one such text:

(416): you came home covered in oatmeal wearing a tutu holding a stolen wrotting pumpkin and "its a girl" balloons tied around your neck.you were whispering the lyrics to aaron carters 'aarons party'. i think the real question was what DIDNT you drink last night

So. Was talking to shokora_kukki and had a random idea. A lot of the people on my flist are RPers, current or present, in some form of another, and I miss RPing with a lot of you. So... let's do a small-scale mutliverse, anything goes, pseudo-dressing room right here. You don't have to use your puppet accounts (though of course you're welcome to). Play any character you want. Do anything you want. Make up anything you want.

For the sake of this experiment, my headspace is now a bar. Not super seedy, but not exactly the bar at the country club either. There's a stage with a band playing, some high-top tables designed for big groups of people, some smaller tables clustered in front of the stage, shadowed booths along the back wall, and a door leading to what is probably the infamous "back room."

The people here don't look like the kind of people who would normally even be in the same bar, and they are distinctly segregated into groups as follows:

At a high-top table near the stage, three women are sitting, laughing and having a good time. One of them is dressed all in pink with perfect golden ringlets. An array of glasses in front of her reveals that she has probably had one of everything tonight. The woman to her left has auburn hair neatly braided and hanging down her back and is swathed in long green robes, though the circlet of leaves on her head is easily her most noticeable trait. In front of her are two bottles that look from a distance to be beer bottles, one empty, and one halfway there. The third woman wears a bright red trenchcoat and a wide-brimmed hat of the same color. She doesn't appear to be drinking, but she does seem to be having a good time.

At one of the low tables, though it is the one farthest from the stage by obvious intention, a man and a woman are seated. Both of them look out of place because of the way they are dressed- he in a magenta suit and her in a long-sleeved shirt and miniskirt, both he and she with an excess of ruffles. They are speaking to each other in low tones in what sounds like German, and neither seems to care much for the location.

In the dimmest of the back corners at a booth, two women and a man are seated. One of the women has her back to the room, but even seated, it is clear that she is tiny, with slight shoulders and petite stature. Her hair is pulled up in a bun and she wears a black robe with a red collar. A broken, but still deadly-looking black sword occupies the booth beside her. Across from her is a woman who appears to be in her early thirties, yet has long silver hair. She is dressed in purple, and a silver dagger with a purple opal in the hilt lies in front of her on the table. Next to the silver-haired woman is a man with messy auburn hair. He is seated on the edge of the booth, as far away from the woman beside him as it is possible to get without sitting elsewhere. His clothing is black with purple trim, and a sword is sheathed on his hip, the tip of the scabbard dusting the wooden floor. The table is littered with empty shot glasses, though their arrangement makes it impossible to tell who has had how many shots of what.

A few booths away is a man who looks identical to the man sitting with the women, at least in the face and hair. His clothing, though, is white, and he carries no weapon. He watches the door as though waiting for someone.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

I am an extreme geek, apparently, as I scored 57.59369% on this test.

Here is my nifty button, even though that doesn't technically prove it, since you have to get the button yourself after finding out your score.

I have two questions of a very important nature.

1) Who is Eric? (Erik? Arrick?)

2) Why was I moaning his name in my sleep?

I got 9 out of 11 on this. Would have been 10, but I couldn't stop myself from picking an obviously wrong answer on the Germany one because it made me giggle. I remembered most of those from some kind of magazine I had as a kid that had a feature on "weird" food customs.

Also, I dropped my external hard drive and now it makes a terrible noise when I try to turn it on. There goes my vast collection of porn legitimate and tasteful photography.

My beloved father somehow managed to get me hooked on The Big Bang Theory. I'm watching the first season of it now, and I'm kind-of in love with Sheldon. I'm also anxiously awaiting a new Glee next week while being somewhat secretly baffled, since I'm not really in the habit of watching TV at all.

My NaNo is never going to get done. I'm at 4000-and-something words at the moment, less than half of where I should be by the fifth, but at least I'm writing on it every day, plus I have a weekend coming up to catch up.

Good news, everyone! I have now consigned myself to wage slavery.

I'm working at Spencer's, which means that I get to fulfill my lifelong dream of peddling offensive t-shirts, dildos, and things with boobies on them to college students.

So far, I really like it. As wage slaving goes, there are many, many worse things to be doing. It beats standing in the same spot and moving items over a scanner all day for damn sure. I also get to curse and tell dirty jokes (as long as the customer does so first). Basically, this is the most perfect job for me ever.

Put in your requests for Christmas gifts now. Shot glasses, stripper poles, Family Guy Trivial Pursuit, Jingle Boobs... whatever kind of utterly irreverent and/or nerdy thing you desire, I can probably acquire it. Unless you are shokora_kukki, in which case I already know what I am getting you and you do not get requests. (Don't worry. It doesn't involve a penis, simulated or otherwise.)

But... new job plus homework plus NaNoWriMo means not a whole lot of Internet time for me. LJ, Facebook, DSL, and all of my other usual pursuits have fallen notably by the wayside. Try not to miss me too much, 'kay?

Reason Number 848 That I Love Halloween: Costume contests.

I won second place in one on campus with my ouija board costume and got an iPod. I am okay with second place, as there was zero chance of me out-cuteing an eight-year-old kid dressed as a bunch of grapes.

It's a shiny black 8 GB 5th gen nano, and its sound quality is beautiful. I've been happily discovering new layers to songs I thought I knew for the past hour.

Definitely not going to lose any sleep over people finding out I said something about them by googling themselves, especially not when my readership is approximately eighty people, seventy-five of whom skim. Nothing on the internet is private anyway, so who cares?

Also, have you all seen the new LJ header bar for Halloween? I wish my real house looked like it was going to eat anyone who knocked on the door. There would probably be fewer impromptu parties.

EDIT: For brief entertainment, go to Google and type in 'i want to buy' and look at the first suggestion. (It's TFLN's fault.)

Dreamed that I was getting married in a traditional Jewish ceremony and, as per tradition, the rabbi brought me three packages of kosher ground meat as a wedding gift, wrapped as they do in grocery stores. The package of beef was large and it was welcomed, but I was not aware that they sold ground raccoon, or that it was kosher, or that it was quite that color of brown. Ditto for oriole.

I mean, I know my brain was stuck on psychobunny07's sister's wedding, but, seriously. Ground raccoon?

FWIW, I am aware that raccoon is not kosher, and also that it is not traditional to give raw meat as a wedding gift.

Having strange dreams that you can only vaguely remember the next morning can be a little unnerving, depending on which parts of it you manage to retain minus the details that give it any kind of logic.

I remember, for example, that the poor parents were trying to protect their lizard children from a(nother) monster by putting them in a cabin, and that the world reset every time one of those lizard children died while trying to move them from cabin A to the much smaller cabin B. But context? Anything that would make any sense of that? None. I only know that it was essential for me to protect eight little lizards. Go figure.

Fundies Say the Darnedest Things is a bit of a double-edged sword for me. On one hand, the frequent blatant cases of Did Not Do the Research are entertaining, if not sad. But it makes me uncomfortable when things that are simple explanations of a religion's doctrine make it up there right alongside the "Obama / gays / atheists / Masons / Catholics / liberals / feminists / Mexicans / Swedes / snakes with legs are the signs of the end times" crowd. "Barack Obama is a homosexual because his wife was born a man" belongs on the crazy train. "Muslims believe that Allah restores the virginity of the 72 virgins between encounters" does not. Depending on your own worldview, they may sound equally preposterous, but I think it is still clear that one of those is a religious belief and the other is a political agenda, and those two things ought to be very separate.

I'm anti-stupidity, but I'm not anti-religion in regards to any religion. Even though I don't like the aggressive, antagonistic approach typical of conservative Christianity, I have to admire its adherents for the complete certainty with which they regard their faith. Yet that idea quickly becomes a slippery slope. Which side do I take when arguments are being made that express a strong ideology about a subject, such as the Rapture, which I do not believe has substantial basis in scripture to support it? I don't want to reject anyone's faith. I don't want to invalidate anyone's belief system, regardless of its similarity or difference to my own.

This is mostly just a rambling about my discomfort with myself. How open-minded can I really claim I am when I occasionally visit (and enjoy reading) a website concerned with mocking the statements of religious people? Is my oft-stated belief that all belief systems should be able to stand up to having a bit of fun poked at them an inappropriate application when the object being displayed for the sake of humor is a real person's belief rather than a satire or commentary written by someone of a similar ideology as mine?

No need to comment unless you feel particularly inspired. It's mostly something for me to publicly chew on.

As a sidenote, the content of RSTDT (Racists Say the Darnedest Things) tends to be more universally deplorable.