seperis

Today was supposed to be amazing and I'm irritable, as I have three financial hobbies; shopping for computer equipment, buying stock, and entertaining myself on slow days reading financial blogs that predict doom, doom, and doom. I had live quotes on. I was very excited about this because honestly, Facebook causes me nothing but stress and I feel it owed me an exciting day of watching people go insane over a site where you can read about other people's toenail clippings and recent convenience store robberies.

However, dude, Facebook was supposed to be like, epic - it was supposed to IPO and then immediately leap to the highest possible price (estimates $54 to $68) and also distract us from that pesky issue with the Euro and the entire country of Greece. The financial sector carried on with near-orgasmic bliss at the the third-largest IPO in U.S. history (sometimes they bolded that as well!). It also was supposed to break the market or something (there are like, graphs and everything). Definitely it was supposed to do something, make millionaires, end civilization, something

Short version of events:

IPO: $38
Opening: $42.05 (twenty minutes late, btw, thanks NASDAQ for driving us all crazy hitting refresh until our fingers hurt)
High: $45
Current: $40.01 (1:54 PM CST: Google Finance)

It also caused Zynga (creators of Farmville) to spiral hard enough to call a halt to trading here, which is weird, you'd think, the company that went public and became valuable due to its relationship with Facebook having a death spiral that again, made them call a halt to trading.

And in case you're curious, the Down, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 are all in a downward skid as well.

I've been trading since the glorious economic death spiral of 2008 since I feel as if the economy is going to make me lose money anyway, I should have the fun of losing it myself. However, this is the first time I canceled a trade (within an hour of making it) and then called my mom to cancel hes because I couldn't remember her login.

Anyone know more specifically about the market that has any theories? I've done enough reading to kind of guess at a couple of the reasons this went wrong, but I'm still honestly shocked that Facebook, the freaking social media IPO grail, failed to garner mass amounts of idiotic market hysteria and become bloated and overpriced while short sellers made fortunes.

Yahoo headlines tracks the entire slow, boring journey. I feel betrayed.

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While rewatching Queer as Folk vids so as to carefully select the ones to send to norabombay and , it hit me how very much you could be stockholmed into thinking some really surreal things were normal. I'm not even talking about like, the sheer amount of drug-fueled sex; I'm talking about Brian's stint as private investigator of a murder with Hunter as taking one for the team so as to get DNA that Brian then uses to solve a murder. In his batmobile.

(It was totally a batmobile.)

Explaining the season three-four plotlines were possibly the closest I've ever come to an identity crisis. Even more annoyingly, all but sisabet's vids are absent from the net; I am staring at Blue Room in Archway with the horrified realization there are people that have not seen it and will never see it and mourn like whoa.

I'm sorry, all of you; it and Acid are like, the pinnacle of late season two/early season three Brian Angsts With Stoned Orgasms Like You Have No Idea (But Does Not Kiss on the Mouth) to a beat with clever use of the color blue to symbolize his manpain. Sometimes in group settings.

God, I miss that fandom.

ETA: On rewatch, Acid should come after Blue Room in Archway, or the entire sequence of repeating glimpses of Justin looking turned on and freaked out in a brick red hoodie does not penetrate as a seminal Brian/Justin moment (well, less semen that one might think, so semi-seminal?) of Great and Terrible Significance, not to mention wondering what the fuck Brian's nasal passages are made of, fucking titanium? The man snorts cocaine from twinks' asses (I swear this happened in the show once. I mean, everything else did); his sense of smell is epic.

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I'm worriedly doing my monthly attempt to organize my music; worriedly because I always end up feeling uncomfortable with my top twenty-five. I'm a repeat-one-er when I need to concentrate on something, but seriously, who the hell repeat-ones goddamn Saliva?

Music new and old; it's been a while since I seriously updated my collection. Links to youtube when found.

It's Hard to Say I'm Sorry - Chicago, The Very Best of Chicago - I honest to God don't know. I'm not really a Chicago girl; I like their music and everything, but it's more music I listen to at other people's houses, not on my laptop.

You're the Inspiration - Chicago, The Very Best of Chicago - Okay, this one was on a show I like, so...I don't know? I mean, it was also like, 69 cents. So. Yeah, I'm not sure what's going on here except I really like to sing along to it.

Santa Monica - Theory of a Deadman, Gasoline - I finally started checking this 2005 album, since I'd been skipping it; I don''t know why. It's very--mellow? I have no idea why I love this like air, but I do.

To be fair, when I'm writing, I start to love the most ridiculous mixes. Also, to be fair, Child and I are at war over music. Child's going through a hard rock (read: one guitar should be destroyed per song) and looks down on any band that isn't property destruction galore; I mean, he looks down on freaking Tool, okay? Currently our meeting of minds rests on Korn and A Perfect Circle. I'm rebelling by making him listen to people with guitars wailing about love lost and whatever. This is hurting my soul.

Say Goodbye - Theory of a Deadman, Gasoline - I buy this band in pairs I think. I'm actually really attracted to this entire album, but not enough to get the rest of it yet. I can't tell if I just like the genre right now or them specific. This, not so mellow.

Airplanes - B.o.B featuring Hayley Williams - I could listen to this forever. I love Hayley's voice.

Losing Your Memory - Ryan Starr, Songs from the Eye of An Elephant - I watch a lot of youtube SPN vids. I don't know how surprised you might be to know how many use this one with the effectiveness of a blunt force instrument, but again, it works. A lot. Just--Jesus.

From Where You Are - Lifehouse - I kind of have loved them since Smallville in general, but I surprisingly don't like them enough most of the time to buy them. This is very easy to listen to.

Everybody's Wrong - Hinder, All American Nightmare - Okay, the thing is, they've become a lot like The Fray in that they are nearly bulletproof now (with the exception of Frays' last album, still bitter). I usually pair them with One Less Reason, but not so much now; I love, love, love their explosive bridges, I love that they tap almost entirely into my perfect writing playlist aesthetic, and I love that they're incredibly consistent on both.

What Ya Gonna Do - Hinder, All American Nightmare - see above. Also, I wonder, what do you do when the whiskey stops working? It's a very zen question.

I Will Not Bow - Breaking Benjamin, Dear Agony - SPN vids. Fucking SPN vids on youtube. It's ridic how much I can learn to like a song if it's set to Castiel killing things. I mean, what can you do?

I feel like I'm in a musical rut.

( for my own bemusement, iTunes stats )

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Alphas, Betas, Omegas: A Primer by norabombay - all you ever wanted to know about A/B/O'verses, in detail. If you could only see the conversation this came from.

( the social issues hit us: twenty hours of knotting and nothing to do )

You see this is a complex issue that should be explored very fully. I'm stuck on teh laundry sitch. I mean. Dear God. Rubber sheets?

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Moment of hideously painful self-awareness while reading Dean/Castiel fic on AO3 (which I do like it's my job; it's getting scary in there), via goddamn svmadelyn:

Seperis: I find [REDACTED AUTHOR]'s [REDACTED TYPE] AU is hitting a lot of my really unspeakable kinks.
Seperis: Like Dean Is Sweet Woobie Perfection, and Everyone Loves Dean, and Dean Bottoms Like a Pro, and Seriously, Everyone Loves Dean.
Seperis: These are my embarrassing kinks.
Seperis: I mean, knifeplay mpreg with mind control non-con I can admit to.
Seperis: But God strike me dead the moment I admit those.
Madelyn: and yeah, the only kink that is wrong there is that dean is sweet woobie perfection
Madelyn: knifleplay and mpreg with mindcontrol noncon are A+++
Madelyn: and I approve of those
Madelyn: but the first one, sicko freakjob.

I also made norabombay break down A/B/O (no, not bloodtype) dynamic for me and Quinn. It was--enlightening.

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The Avengers is leaving me confused on my OTPness. I find this upsetting.

Then again, my initial reaction to the movie was surprisingly eh--this is why I waited a week to talk about it, as I don't want to be attacked by my titular friends or anything. Four or five more viewings, oddly enough, did the trick.

( not really all that much )

( for people who may or may not have problems with 3D, i need validation )

Today was a not so great day, so it involved pizza hut for lunch. I'm pretty sure their garlic dipping sauce involves addictive substances; I am literally holding myself back from just licking the tiny container clean.

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Avengers midnight showing with Child tonight! School is every day, but midnight showings are forever = geek parenting 101.

In honor of Avengers: 6 Ways Iron Man Is Objectively Better Than Batman complete with fairly traumating pic of poor, poor Captain America. Dear God, why.

6 Classic Kids Shows Secretly Set in Nightmarish Universes

I have never felt less hopeful for the future. I mean, even Scooby. Even Scooby.

For anyone interested in upgrading to an SSD, Newegg has OCZ Agility, 120 GB on sale for $114 ($99 after MIR). I'm only using a little more than half of mine for my OS and all my programs and program settings, so if you use two hard drives, this is a primary will totally change your life.

For reference, this is the model I ordered for svmadelyn and for my server to take over as primary hard drive. Server is also getting a major RAM upgrade finally before I upgrade the OS sometime this month due to weird speed problems I've been having.

I feel very good about the world atm.

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Workish

Friday I discovered that our sharepoint individual sites at work have their own wiki-esque thing, where one can paste in entire Excel test scripts and create tags for them. To say that was the best thing to happen to me since January says something.

Okay, almost the best. Third best, let's say.

The second best thing was that this build is over and the next build is light. To combat this, the next build is light because the build after that one is going to be like this one, and God help me, I am going to be testing the arrival of IE 8 as the state browser of choice for eligibility programs.

Note about the wiki, however; my supervisor wandered over and I excitedly showed her wikiness, because I've really wanted a way to organize the last four years of tests and yeah, this will take a while. She stared at it and then at me.

Her: Will people see this?

Me: No? *realization* Oh, no, I'm not blogging on this. This is to organize my tests.

(Note: there is also a sharepoint blog for each employee. Hilarious.)

Her: You're sure?

Me: If I blogged under my name in public, I'd be nice.

Her: I've read your defects. They're also public in the agency.

Me: No, no worries; when I blog in public, I never do it under my real name.

As you can probably guess, everyone felt so much better hearing that.

Monday

So far this morning svmadelyn has been receiving offerings of depressing CNN news from me in lieu of staring at the wall vibrating with impatience.

I've felt super distracted for a few days, and I can't really explain why except for the fact I apparently skipped out about a week of thyroid medication somehow, which even for me is strange, because--and if you have a thyroid condition, you know this--going off for too long is like an instantaneous attack of Famine combined with the attention skillsets of a magpie and hard insomnia fighting the good fight against wanting to sleep all the time.

Okay, that last part is new; I didn't know my body could do that, or do it so bizarrely, combining periods of half-sleep with unbearable awakeness with some kind of near-coma that covers a period of time long enough and still enough to wake up with everything--and I do mean everything--hurting, especially my back.

It's not that I have ever modeled healthy sleep patterns--my very first bout of depression in my teens means I still don't trust sleep entirely and I'm not even going to pretend at least half my insomnia problem is pretty much entirely subconsciously training myself to ignore it until I can't anymore.

I'm saying, I feel very, very weird.

So Yeah

So this is going to be very cute, so I need you to brace yourselves before clicking. Because it's been four years, okay, and I can do this.

( so my mom was at this place and found this thing )

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Okay, finished prelim testing. This'll be a snap. No, really.

Amazon Store
1.) Click on Apps->Store. Search for Skifta. Download it.
2.) Click Open.

Skifra
1.) You get a screen with 1, 2, 3. You'll get this choice every time to decide what you want to connect to. Just connect with something and stream!

PC
1.) Windows 7 - Media Player - Open Windows Explorer, click on Network. Under Media Devices, you should see "[your name] Amazon Kindle Fire". If you click on it, you can opne it up in Media Player and play files!
2.) Windows 7 - VLC - Open VLC and navigate to View->Playlist. Under Local Network, click on UPnP. Your server should show up there and you can play music and media.

So that was surprisingly easy.

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Mobo Player

So there is finally an Android app I can run that plays avi and wmv! (Yes, wmv, so not kidding.)

Moboplayer - For Android Devices - For Kindle Fire. Tested with .avi and .wmv files.

For Kindle, this may be complicated, so please follow these instructions precisely.

On your Kindle Fire Settings
1.) Go to Settings.
2.) Go to Device.
3.) Allow Installation of Applications - change to yes

In your Kindle Browser
1.) Go to the link above on your Kindle Fire browser.
2.) Click on this file: MoboPlayer 1.2.179.apk.
3.) Download it from rapidshare.
4.) Agree to install it.

Add Video to Kindle
This assumes you do not use ES File Manager; if you do, then just transfer directly.
1.) Hook up your kindle fire to your computer and transfer one avi and one wmv. I used two older SPN vids, but damned if I know where they came from.
2.) For testing purposes, grab one wmv and one avi file and add to your Kindle Video folder.
3.) Disconnect Kindle from computer.

Moboplayer
1.) Go to Apps->Moboplayer
2.) Open it.
3.) It's going to ask to scan. Let it do that.
4.) It should show a list of videos. DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING.
5.) A menu shows at the bottom. Click on the icon that is three dots (...).
6.) Choose settings.
7.) Scroll to Playback.
8.) Checkmark 'Default Using Soft-Decoding.'
9.) Click back.
10.) Now choose an avi or wmv and play.

I've uploaded a zip file with the vids I tested with for baseline. Download it onto your computer and add to your Kindle.

Link to Test Vids: Test Folder

The following extensions work:
1.) .avi
2.) .rmvb
3.) .wmv
4.) .flv
5.) .mpg
6.) .mp4
7.) .mkv
8.) .divx
9.) .rm
10.) .mpeg
11.) .mp4v

The following do not (yet):
1.) .ram
2.) .mov

It's supposed to be DLNA able, but aVia is also DLNA able and will share with all yoru Android devices. More on that when I've tested it.

FanfictionDownloader

If you are using the Calibre extension and it seems to be giving you the title Hide this banner for eveyrhting at AO3, yeah I know, it's the X-Path pickup of the first match. If no one has a temp fix for it (TELL ME!) I'll be trying to work on one tonight. Python is not my language, but I did manage to get it to recognize Relationship custom column in Calibre and populate it, so I feel brave.

ETA: Extension .mp4v also works.

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Wow, so this is something I never thought I'd have to say:

Do not post anti-choice, pro-verbal-torture bullshit as a comment in my journal. It will not be responded to and it will be screened and/or deleted.

Also, fuck yourself.

In the spirit of that, from my earlier entry:

synedochic - Fundraising for Texas Planned Parenthood -- with a twist - syne is raising money for ipod nanos for PP for the women who are currently being verbally tortured before they're permitted the right to exercise dominion over their own bodies. We shouldn't have to go through this to own our bodies; those women should not have to listen to this to be allowed--to be allowed, not entitled by virtue of the fact they were born in that flesh and bone, not practicing natural ownership of themselves, to be allowed--to get an abortion.

The goal has been met, but Syne is contacting other clinics. She has also linked to several resources for those who would like to contribute in other ways.

This has been a very bad week for the most part, so I didn't get a chance to say this earlier to Syne, but thank you. My state is actively, personally destroying women's lives. One hundred and thirty thousand women were affected by the defunding of WHP. The state budget itself was gutted on women's reproductive health care. I'm a public servant for a state that is committing an atrocity, openly, happily, righteously, against women, and I'll be honest, I'm not dealing with this well and I do not see a time in the near future that I will be.

So you know, if you have feelings about women's bodies, they better start with the word absolute autonomy. I live in the state that is fucking women over actively right now. I will not deal with people doing it with words here as well.

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Fundraising for Texas Planned Parenthood -- with a twist - syne is raising money for ipod nanos for PP for the women who are currently being verbally tortured before they're permitted the right to exercise dominion over their own bodies. We shouldn't have to go through this to own our bodies; those women should not have to listen to this to be allowed--to be allowed, not entitled by virtue of the fact they were born in that flesh and bone, not practicing natural ownership of themselves, to be allowed--to get an abortion.

She's met her goal, but please continue to donate if you can.

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So a week ago, we got word that the deployment would be delayed an extra two weeks, which one might assume was because it doesn't work, and boy I wish I had that kind of faith. At this point, I feel it's more likely that it was ordered by the Illuminati than anything reasonable like rationality was involved.

( the benefit of the doubt )

My work related rant for the week.

Interesting, I realized it's been about four months since my last episode of hard depression; I'm frustrated and tired and angry about work and everything, but that's actually a positive sign.

It's been two years and three months since I realized it was happening, and ten months since it began to lighten, and four months since the last time I couldn't even breathe deeply because the effort seemed wasted.

( whatever, this is just a cut )

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Sherlock the Laptop

After nearly a year with my backlight on my keyboard broken (and the backlight on the strip), I went in today to Parts-People, who are All Dell, All the Time, and after talking to the guy at the front desk about the problem, I replaced keyboard and palmrest and my backlight works!

I have also discovered the following:
1.) My old keyboard sucked very much like whoa.
2.) My old touchpad sucked very much dear God like whoa.
3.) Seriously, I had no idea my keyboard was that bad.
4.) Every day is a good day when you get to disassemble your laptop.

( internal debating )

SSD

In other news, svmadelyn finally broke beneath the strain of my whining and so I get to upgrade her desktop with a solid state drive in the primary spot next time I'm in Chicago. I can't emphasize enough if you have space for two drives, an SSD is like magic when it comes to access speed. Currently, it holds the OS and all programs and the cache and still only takes up less than 70GB of the 120 GB drive I installed, which argues I could have gotten a cheaper 90GB and been fine.

The only downside is you really need two drives because of the size; the 120GB on sale is about $109.00 if you know when to buy from newegg (and get a free jump drive!), but to get to 512 start value is $500 and up.

Honestly, I'm not convinced that having everything on a single SSD or multiple SSDs would be much faster than the split I'm using now. The SSD (name: OS) holds everything that requires processing power; my 500 GB regular hard drive is split between D (Castiel, 100GB) and E (Dean, 369GB) (please, you had to have seen that coming) and D holds docs, fic, ebooks, and my music, and E all my media, graphics, and programming (and backup) so I don't lose anything. SSDs also aren't easily recoverable (I know they can be, but not like a regular HD), so in case of dramatic failure, the only things I lose are my programs and my firefox settings, and most of that is easily backed up. The only big difference I can see is for either vidders or heavy graphics/photography users for accessing their projects from the slower drive using the program on the faster drive, but once accessed they move into RAM or cache anyway, so I'm honestly not sure if performance speed would increase dramatically enough for anyone to notice if the processor and RAM can keep up.

After five months, I can honestly say the only time I've had slowdown has been when I haven't paid attention to overheating issues, which would be less problematic on a desktop than a laptop.

Watson the Server

Using samba to create network drives means that I've been able to move pretty much all my media off my laptop and onto the server and can play from my desktop. The access time is limited by my LAN speed, which honestly is not all that limited until I hit bluray rips, which are a problem. I'm not actually sure if it's the drives or the processor or the LAN that causes streaming issues yet.

What I want to do is find a program that can automatically mirror or move my files when I'm ready to move them instead of how I do it now, which is open two windows (one for the samba shares on the server, one for my laptop folder) and move between or command line SSH move files, which is irritating and also, boring.

(Weirdly, using MSOffice and three macros, I can autosave to several locations at once, including to the server. I can also, even more weirdly, index all my files on the server fro Excel with macros. VB Macros. It's just weird.)

But mostly, I want to build a multi-server Cloud environment myself, because well, I can't work out a reason not to except I have nothing at all to do with it, one, and two--I mean, seriously, what would I do with it? I feel like one of those people that collect cats or something; when I die, I will be surrounded in servers and hardware, but on the upside, my body won't be partially eaten (unless technology advances in disturbing ways).

Ubuntu Help

I need to upgrade my server, but I cannot find my notes on how to disable a package from updating. Mediatomb still breaks if I upgrade past the OS version it is now, and I don't feel like spending weeks making miniscule program changes and recompiling and failing to get the JavaScript customization functions to work, so I want to lock mediatomb as is so when I upgrade everything, it won't make me cry. Does anyone remember how to completely disable package updates and any dependencies so those stick around? I know someone (synedochic?) said that would keep it from breaking when I jump a number, but for the life of me I cannot remember how.

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Podfics of Crimes Against Humanity and A History of Violence read by reena_jenkins. That's like--seven hours of reading. Dear God.

Anyway, happy. But also this. Here are the warnings for the podfic:

A Note Of Warning: This is A Dark Universe. As such, the following warnings apply to the first story specifically, as well as the series as a whole: dark themes, violence, bloodshed, knifeplay, torture, implied rape (offscreen), non-consent and dubious consent issues, drug addiction, drug withdrawal, power hierarchy and imbalance (in both sexual and non-sexual situations), prison, medical experimentation without ethics, murder, mayhem, assassination, explosions, brainwashing, piracy, verbal and physical abuse, political uprising, self-harm, situationally-aggravated insanity, voyeurism, exhibitionism, possessive behaviors, and canon-AU.

For the record, if any fic showed up anywhere with these warnings, I would avoid the hell out of it. There's something really deeply hilarious about that, because this part of me just wants to explain like "But it was only indirect torture" and "But you never directly see what Carson is doing with those people!" and "One finger, okay, he has nine more." Which isn't--really a defense.

All warnings apply for all parts pretty much constantly, and I'm still bracing myself to try the verbal medium with this one.

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This is one of the reasons that Kindles' are dangerous; I'm finally getting around to reading all those books that I always meant to but forget about. Now I can do it instantly when I remember!

While still reading:

I'm actually much more freaked out by the unproven retaliatory murders committed after the Manson Family's arrest. Which is partially because I didn't realize that was happening, but the list of people who died and had a connection with Manson is goddamn chilling.

One of the things I like about the book is the author's skeptical but growing understanding of the hold Manson had on his followers. Even cult theories don't encompass what he was doing, and the author being the prosecutor and interviewing the different members of the Family, his impressions of them, both defense and prosecution witnesses, showing his uneasiness with them without being self-conscious about the fact he's narrating things in a way that sound crazypants neo-mysticism is refreshing. And he knows that's how some of it sounds. There's a really strong impression that he also wants to add If you had been here, you'd get what I'm saying.

Being sentient, I still find it bewildering (it could never happen to me!) and extremely unsettling (remember ages sixteen through twenty-one?) and oddly frustrating, the same way I feel about Jonestown and the millennium group suicides for the coming of aliens and Scientology. I know it's slippery slope--very few people dream of the day they will be drinking down poison in South America after killing a Congressman or embracing a movement based on the secret meaning of Beatles lyrics and committing mass murder--but there's slippery slope and then there's the chasm between the moment you aren't a murderer for a truly bizarre reason and the moment you are (assuming you are neither a sociopath nor a psychopath nor a variety of clinical sadistic narcissist).

Slippery slope is often more about giving away more than you thought you were--aka personal freedoms or rights--and realizing suddenly the dangers. In general, murder is an action taken where realization is kind of hard to miss when you're holding the weapon and there's a body in front of you: I don't get that. Even suicide--which is understandable to me, considering--kind of throws me, but part of that is I have clinical depression, and suicidal thoughts are weirdly enough my sharp inner line that is literally the one thing that forces me into some kind of frantic activity, even stupid activity, until my baseline misery isn't on that level; if something that can hold me hostage for two years in a morass of utter self-inflicted misery cannot make me do it, a person telling me to would probably make me laugh hysterically.

It does feel like something that you have to be there to understand, very literally.

This is interesting reading; I'm glad I saw the article on Manson's parole hearing tomorrow and remembered to go grab it.

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I have to admit, the recent spamming of DW has been weirdly mesmerizing, with at least two times receiving what could have been a semi-relevant comment if the subject line wasn't random letters both lowercase and capital.

Truth--it's been a very long time since I received interesting spam, and yes, in a perfect world, we would be spam free, but work with me here, if there's some mystical burden of required spam that is our sacrifice to the tech gods, would it kill them to make it interesting or at least, not hideously boring that even the subject line breaks my heart? Once upon a time, I had both British housewife heiresses and Nigerian princes offering me money if I sent them money first for Obscure Banking Reasons We Know Not.

This is annoying, yes, but there's a kind of wistfulness to it, and is it just me, or are these comments from other people's LJs? I'm actually most weirded out that some felt rather like an AI was responding to my entry after a terrible mistranslation or something.

Tablet

Name: Castiel
Brand: Asus Transformer
Model: TF101-B1
HD: 32 GB SSD
RAM: 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
Mini HDMI, microphone, camera, micro sd (>= 32 GB size)

( short review )

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I feel I should be clear that I in fact do support Your Kink Is Okay as a fandom and social movement as it strives to make us all better at a.) accepting other people's kinks or b.) flocking and filtering the hell out of our secret horror, y'know, whichever, it's only provable hypocrisy if someone sees it who doesn't agree with you. I approve of this.

But I realize now there are what we might call drawbacks when you are unashamed about your particular kink(s); before, due to, well, shame, you didn't actively seek it out, or at least you were kind of crappy at it because every so often you'd have to see the keywords you typed into google and/or an archive full text search and close the browser abruptly in terror, and while secretly you thought there was nothing wrong with it, you could also convince yourself that the reason there was so little of it was twofold:

1.) you weren't looking due to shame (false, google history doesn't lie)
2.) shame is what kept people from writing the shit out of it (oh God, false)

Two is going to kill you. Because as you may find out, you now proudly surf the kinkmemes of the world and realize either internalized shame is a real problem and:

a.) sulk
b.) rant in your journal (recommended!)

Or realize, hey, perhaps it's just this is rather specialized, and now that you're unashamed, your appetite wetted, and there is nothing out there, which what the hell, people, free your mind or something.

This is in some ways worse when all your kinks are very to fairly common, which is Yay! but not so much together, and not that this happened to me or anything, you are surfing along and suddenly The Fic of Five Common Yet Strangely Rarely Combined Kinks (FCYSRCK for short) appears, like a miracle, and you realize you were wrong, it's out there, and this is a sign that the world is a better place, and thank God that entire shame thing ended.

You may forget, however, to read the warnings, which--to put it bluntly, if you need to add extra warnings to a FCYSRCK, read the fuck out of those first because you might say--hypothetically--each of those very common yet rarely combined kinks qualify as a warning in themselves, so when the warnings are a paragraph long in addition to the tags blazing unshamefully across livejournal, I feel that's something that one should pay attention to, because seriously, a paragraph of warnings on FCYSRCK.

Let's say one did not do that, and the FCYSRCK proceeds along apace until you are blindsided by one of those ignored missing warnings. Which you stop there and backbutton forever--lie, it's FCYSRCK and it may be the only one in creation, so you deal, and also, let's face it, the author definitely surprised you with that one, and it doesn't occur to you that surprises are bad and also, this has two parts and you haven't finished part 1 and yet again, when you weren't looking at the header, the number of lines for warnings was greater than or equal to six in what seemed to be very small print.

You also still completely neglect to read the warnings, even though you realize you should, because at this point, you want to be able to work with plausible deniability--you had no idea!--and not that you were just that goddamn desperate.

You will later go back and look numbly at the warnings that spelled out all the reasons you will never sleep again, in your life, or look at existence the same way, then check them off as reasons nothing will ever surprise you again, or that could be the fact you have burned out your finer feelings during part 2, which you remember in a series of perfect flashes that narrate a kind of wistfulness for the days you were ashamed, because wow, what the hell was that.

So how was everyone else's weekend?

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My Asus Transformer tablet came today, so basically I've been, you know, getting to know it, letting it meet the family of electronics it belongs to, easing it through its transition stage. Also have the dock for it, which when docked on its wee keyboard is netbook sized, and immediately bought Quickoffice Pro, as a lot of the reason I wanted it was for work. And for other stuff, but dear God, I am excited to clear out years of notebooks and put the files on a card already.

So far, happy.

For the record, my electronics naming officially covers about six fandoms; Sherlock, Watson, Charles, Arthur, Benton Fraser, Sheldon, and Castiel. More recently, I've started naming my hard drives, which honestly sounds weird until you realize I like to yell at them encouragingly, and yelling DRIVE C or UUID 035e8a97-130p-4ead-b6x9-3df543b0e6b4 is really odd and also, a lot of syllables.

Happy. It is a good tablet. Will review when I'm, you know, able to talk about it without helplessly wondering how it can be so perfect.

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I understand that, in reality, no matter how many times I refresh tracking on the UPS site, that does not actually cause delivery to speed up. There's just a part of me that thinks, I could be wrong and why take that kind of risk? I want my tablet now, please.

*hits refresh*

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Work

Code freeze is Monday, which means that it should be a weekend of some kind of breakdown, because dude, prime time ready it is not. I can always tell my stress level by whether or not I voluntarily ask a coworker for a condescending or sarcasm check when filing defects; when I have to do it three times in one day because I genuinely can't tell how normal people argue that a scrollbar should scroll, being its functionality (you would think that wouldn't even need a defense, wouldn't you? No, I had to actually explain this when they were trying to withdraw it).

( malice for high quality job performance )

Worrisome

I'm staring at 110,000 words of fic that has come to the point of worrying me. To be fair, I usually don't have a really hard time with length because by this point, the end game is in sight, or at least, telescopically viewable, and I'm writing toward a defined goal. I'm really not right now. Right now, I'm writing toward diy solar panels, which I tricked Child into researching for me pretending he would do his next science fair project on them. Which I suppose two for one?

( I'm just weirded out by this )

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Snow White And the Huntsman - five minute extended trailer. No lie, I am watching the hell out of this on midnight opening. There are swords and fighting and Thor (okay, not Thor) and Bella (yes, shut up, I know) and an epic war. And possibly that is a unicorn, right? I don't actually require this to make sense, though strangely, I'm seeing weird signs this may be actually be good, but swords. And Thor--I don't care, he's always Thor to me--does things with an axe that make me really uncomfortable about myself on a fundamental level if had any kind of personal insight; thank God I don't care.

Happy.

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This may sound, on the surface, like laziness, but you have to take into account that Child is a.) within the first flush of reading a new pairing and is b.) fifteen, so when he demands Dean/Castiel recs, I am not required to hysterically evaluate for quality lest he judge me not so silently (he is not silent, ever). Or even read it, really, because, and I say this with love, he is a teenager and I've seen what he's reading; he does not know the difference between Godiva and Hershey, or even perhaps Godiva and brown colored substances that may or may not even be chocolate, if I can be blunt here.

Also, I'm pretty sure though not entirely that he may or may not be writing it himself, and because I value his privacy, I am not checking any word doc with a suspicious title but dear God I want to.

Parenting is hard. Like, drugs, alcohol, knocking people up, bullying, etc, those weren't too bad for parenting decisions, but honestly, do I or do I not read his fic is my big ethical dilemma. I suspect my ethics will deteriorate if he doesn't change his password soon. He's got to learn the magic of using ones with more than ten characters and throw some numbers and special characters in. I mean, if you think about it, it's almost like a life lesson in passwords. That's a very--parental duty, really.

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I will be talking about work when I have words that aren't exclusively used in a famous George Carlin routine; having said that, and with the understanding that I do not approve of shoddy programming, I have to admit that there is nothing quite like writing up one line defects because they are so painfully obvious I can literally say "See subject line for details". I was told that is condescending, so yeah, I'm back on condescending watch by sympathetic coworkers so I do not accidentally tell a developer that as a child, I collected eggs from the henhouse (no, I really did, we had a short affair with chickens that ended in coyotes) with a higher level of sentience.

The thing is, you have to know your audience when you make sassy remarks.

Example: early in Child's development, I decided that the only way I would be able to deal with asking teh hard questions (are you sexually active? Did you build a bomb in teh bathroom? What the fuck is with all those carefully filled holes in teh backyard? Why for the love of God do you have cream of tartar in your bedroom?) by effectively reversing lifelong conditioning to filter. The growing pains of doing this did lead to our first sex talk with Child worriedly wondering about the eggs in the refrigerator and nesting (no, really, I wrote about it here; I made a lot of LJ parents feel really competent), but since then, my social conditioning has effectively been compromise, which is how I end up with a condescending-checker when I send certain emails to certain people or file certain types of defects. Once you have forced a meaningful talk on your child explaining the ways and means of condom use, offering demonstrations on various vegetables, and forever codewording raincoat so he never, ever feels entirely comfortable when weather is a conversational topic, pretty much everyone is fair game.

Which again, why I have coworkers check my email in case I am truthful about my feelings in metaphors not entirely suited to conversation or possibly, anatomy.

More people need to try this.

In general, it is far more likely that you can get your frankly medically dangerous, not to mention fucking ridiculous bill on requiring women to carry a stillborn child after twenty weeks because it's natural to be listened to if you don't phrase your concerns at any time by comparing it to the time you helped cows and pigs give birth.

“Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”

This is equivalent to the Republican candidate of a few years ago who expressed his own wild and woolly days actually getting down with that which owns wool and baahhhs. As apparently, he was of the opinion this was something men do when they are young, carefree, and that ewe was gagging for it (metaphorically speaking).

(Note: no, really.)

My point is, know your audience does not, in general, possess four legs and give birth in straw in a barn like structure; they will not feel this is the best method of achieving your goal of a.) literally killing women due to medical neglect, b.) promoting anti-abortion, but it may achieve c.) reminding me we have enough bacon for a sandwich because I'm starving. Which yeah, that hit the spot.

The War on Women is being fought across the country by people who, quite literally, need the equivalent of a condescending-checker. Do not tell them that. I see no reason to refuse them weapons with which they so brutally shoot themselves; admittedly, it's the equivalent of watching a SAW marathon being carried out in the public forum (messy!), but think of all the comedians whose careers are being made by this, the comedy club revenues, the expansion of the economy, and any hope this particular spate of legislation will last.

The free market in action. We are living the dream.

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After many grueling years, I have (somewhat) narrowed down the time period in which my period will strike (sometime within a twenty-eight day period, more precision is needed, but this is progress, I promise you), but on rare occasions, I actually realize, with dawning shock, that this thing that has occurred monthly for over half my life (minus one year for Child) is indeed on the horizon, and I add it to the list of random-ass observations about Myself and My Body I'll forget about until next month.

(To be fair, my thyroid for the last few years did a serious number on me when I'd tentatively nailed down that my abrupt interest in Breakfasts #2 and Lunch #3 and sleeping like an Olympic sport as indicators; when I now get a I Must Eat Until Something Breaks and Rip Van Winkle My Life Away, I call my doctor and get a medication adjustment, so you see how this isn't my fault. Sure, that's only in the last five years, but go with it.)

I am suddenly, for no particular reason, terribly, terribly attracted to genderswitch. Like, I am completely uninterested in what fandom; I just want that label. And I'm going to be blunt and say it's not the exploration of the complexities of sexuality and gender and privilege; even if the storyline never explores it at all, somewhere in my mind is a soft, quiet satisfaction that these characters will have a moment while buying tampons thinking that taking the entire store hostage for some goddamn Ben and Jerry's is a legitimate life choice. Hell, just taking the store hostage sounds like a pretty good idea.

Recognizing that the cliche of PMS for women is a cliche and perpetrates harmful stereotypes about women is there, I know that; I also know living it changes my perspective on this phenomenon dramatically. Example, one may or may not be standing in the freezer section realizing in dawning horror that they are out of chocolate covered cherry ice cream and torn between tears and assembling an army; I am not saying this has happened to me, but so far, HEB has not run out of chocolate cherry covered ice cream either. I cannot promise that I wouldn't start an Occupy: HEB splinter group that will lead a bloody revolution down the frozen food aisle. I may outfit everyone in Vendetta masks, like Anonymous and Occupy got very drunk and had some seriously unprotected sex by the frozen vegetables (where else?) and the monstrous offspring grew to maturity reading feminist literature authored by Vlad the Impaler's sister who paid attention to his penis issues and didn't like it (work with me here).

A friend sent me an email about PMS being added to the DSM V, which I was thinking about in theory until, you know, today and it hit me that I will not, in real life, admit to PMS to save my soul, even though I totally acknowledge it exists for other women. Admitting the cliche isn't entirely false sets up the really strange dichotomy of perpetrating a harmful stereotype (and boy, I have actually read blogs that made me feel guilty about the ice cream, fuckers) while also betraying the entire my body does these things and that's okay. Far easier not even to address it at all than be torn between worrying what I'm doing for all women by admitting homicidal urges (crazy bitch) and worrying I'm like, denying a legit medical condition that I have literally minimal control over other than embrace ibuprofen and time when I will write the scenes that involve blowing up shit to intersect (fantastic stuff).

Combining this with all the nightmares occurring right now with women's health rights, it hits me all over again that every woman is a living, breathing ambassador for her gender/sex, all the time, with every breath they take. I was horribly, bitterly upset with legislation women's rights as introduced by women in a way I'm just not when men do it, because my expectations of men that I did not personally give birth to (read: one) is something less than sea-level. This is because I continue to look at this as just a feminist issue, and I think I need to remember intersectionality because the women who introduced this legislation and most of those who perpetrate it will never be affected by it. And it just hits me all anew how much of this is perpetrated specifically on women to make sex itself an economic issue.

To put it another way; in some states, they are trying to pass the my religion require me to check the state of your vagina and fuck HIPAA, prove your birth control is about anything but preventing pregnancy. Looking at the FPIL (Federal Poverty Income Limit) and doing some quick math assuming basic hormonal birth control, a family needs--very, very roughly--2 to 3 times FPIL to (probably) afford it (I am leaving out so much here it's not even funny, but I'm using my state's median average income and the income limits for Medicaid and Food Stamps to work out a rough equation on how this would work). I don't think any legislation worries about middle to upper class women, who seem to surprisingly not have a child a year; women in middle to upper class also don't have the same problems getting an abortion.

To clarify this, no man or woman who has the power to introduce this legislation will be affected by it. Even a little. Minimum income for legislators is usually well within the buy as you go zone, and I bet you don't know this, but after reading the bill, I don't think it applies to the health care of the actual legislators, which just shocks me beyond words.

Again, all this legislation is about women's reproductive health, which is sexism, no question, but there's this weird current that keeps making me wonder if there's an actual, if unspoken, idea that sex should be--I have no idea how to put this--a reward for personal economic prosperity. Like, you have to work to afford food, shelter, clothes, and the idea that there's an entire facet of the human experience that you can do for funtimes without attaching some kind of tax to it is just wrong. Rush Limbaugh's queries for Sandra Fluke to webcam her sex life was beyond words creepy-creeper sexist, but for me, reading through the transcripts and staring blankly at the destruction of WHP, of Arizona's birth control nightmare, of everything to do with the attack on reproductive rights and I wondered why a party that lip services religion would want, in any way, to institutionalize de facto prostitution, that sex, like shelter, food, clothing, should be something that you have to, in a capitalist society, meet a minimum income level to afford to have.

In related news, AZ Central Political Blog reports that HB 2625 (Jesus says I have a right to know about the state of your uterus) has been pulled from the Senate Rules agenda as of 12:40 AM today. Can anyone confirm I'm reading that as something that happened today?

ETA:

On a more personal note, this has been a very, very bad few months in my vocation, which possibly may have shown up here a few times; the shootings at HHSC local offices, the legislation, watching my former clients, my friends, my family, my community, the working class, single mothers, the poor, being fucked over.

My mother has been a lifelong moderate Republican. This week, she told me today, she changed her party affiliation at the demise of WHP. My mother has never voted for a Democrat in her life; this year, this election cycle, she is voting for Obama.

Last week, I told svmadelyn that I needed just one good thing to happen now; I didn't care what. Arizona tabled a birth control bill that violated human decency as well as women's rights; my mother, born and raised in an intensely conservative Christian household and married to an intensely conservative man, will vote Democrat in the fall.

So I got two.

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Recycling Tip from gmail: You can make a lovely hat out of previously-used aluminum foil.

Every time I try to imagine life without gmail, I kind of twitch; no where else on the net freebases me spam recipes, literally. I don't even like spam (the food or the email), but it's just comforting to know that someone, somewhere, really did think Spam Jello Salad was a good idea. It wasn't, but still. Human imagination. Terrifying.

The first week of testing didn't formally start working until much later in the week due to testing things that aren't working, environmental failures, etc; you may not know this about me, but when something starts cascading in its failures--literally, me and K started competitive filing of defects--I hit a state of mind not unlike giddy, where I wandered through the cubicles whistling Taps (I have been told my whistling could wake the dead with its piercing quality) and singing Billy Joel, because We Didn't Start the Fire is so appropriate at that moment (we didn't REM until early afternoon when we started getting server errors). A developer and I did a high-five in my boss's cubicle when we got the very mother of defects; we lost all our web services.

(For the record: I hate web services. Everyone uses them, and they are just evil. One code problem there takes everything down like a house of very unstable cards. I mean, they are cards made of jello, that's where this is going. It works badly even in the ideal.)

Music

Currently checking my top five and then my last twenty-five (nothing like iTunes for useless statistics to stare at blankly), I notice two key points; one, even if I was amnesiac abruptly, I would know I'm writing, because nothing says your creativity is awake like a mix of Pucifer, Switchfoot, Gregorian Chant, Dido, and the complete Linkin Park (don't ask). To be fair, thirty percent of my musical choices come from what vids I've been watching--that is how I ended up with a Dido album once upon a time, not to mention Britney Spears--but even that cannot excuse how Michael Bolton made my top fifty in a surprisingly shoot to the top of the charts. Fucking Jack Sparrow is screwing my stats.

Most recently, for various reasons, music purchases of the past month or two:

Scars and Stories, The Fray - to say I am beyond irritated is to understate the case. I like one song on here, and can listen to three without being overly annoyed, but Jesus, I was at eighty percent on their earlier albums and I bought their live tracks just to complement it. In general, I do not have those kinds of odds with any band, so I find it more than a little unsettling that this album isn't clicking. But I am grimly determined to learn to like it. The Fighter so far is my only repeater, and not that dramatically.

Trekka, Pucifer, V is for Vagina - they continue to be the band that I literally hate all of their music, then one day they come up and I listen and no matter how much I hate the song, I suddenly love it and need it like air. Yes, I do mean this is vidding's fault. Goddamn it. I did a twenty-five repeat and feel like I may or may not have had some kind of quasi-religious experience, but oh, so worth it. You know, when I stopped mourning the fact I will never have a universe beneath my heel while I gleefully conquer plants and blow up anything that doesn't bow to my will. It's that kind of a song.

The Unforgiven, Gregorian chant, Masters of the Chant V - not easy to find, but svmadelyn sent it to me so I wouldn't break into hysterics when I realized both iTunes and Amazon were failing me. Yes, vidder fandom, damn you all. Seven minutes and it's on one hundred repeats. The math is scary. The thing is, I like Metallica's original, but there's something just beyond unsettling about the translation into chant. This holds true with a lot of their famous covers, to be honest; I still feel deeply uncomfortable with the Bad Romance one. It should be funny; mostly, it feels vaguely dangerous, and makes me really wonder about monastic orders. Just saying.

Recommended: these two cut with Linkin Park. Very something. I'm not sure what.

Empty, Neverbetter, Still Feels Like You're Here - the best I can figure from my Genius six degrees, this is because of Theory of a Deadman and Absence of Concern (and 10 Years and 32 Leaves). Apparently, they're in the same family of semi-generic post-grunge return to no way is this classic Rock; it's more Rock that got its heart broken by emo and is using its guitar to express its pain in ways not necessarily compatible with the chords they're expressing, but. Unlike One Less Reason (Someday, let me show your lifeless body locked in my closet when you try to leave me because I love you too much), I'm not vaguely worried about anyone cutting their wrists with their guitar strings, so I can nod along and enjoy the not-emo. Also, I like this one.

Dare You to Move, Switchfoot, The Best Yet - this just makes me happy, mostly. Yes, vid fandom, this one I am happy to listen to like a lot, and not worried when I want to start breaking guitars with a whiskey glass because I don't have any eyeliner left to cry into smudges.

Jack Sparrow, The Lonely Island featuring Michael Bolton, Turtleneck and Chain - it is possible that this may be the greatest song in the history of vocal music. It has Jack Sparrow and Scarface. I mean, where do you go after that?

Any musical interludes to report? I need more now.

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So this is awkward, but there's a certain word count at which I have to admit I'm actually writing something that may one day be a story. I passed that, so I need to ask, nicely, if anyone would be interested in reading through for me. It's currently at 60K, and I estimate it'll be around 120K before I'm done, the fandom is Supernatural. Please email if you have time. I do not promise this is like, good, but I promise there are many words and they fit into sentences pretty much constantly. Email at seperis at gmail.com or I'm online, whichever, and thank you in advance.

In what I meant to post here before I suddenly realized I was writing again like, for keeps, Child and Sister's Ex-Husband #1's son got thrown out of a movie theater after trying to sneak into an R movie. This is because they didn't take my advice. So I was right, and I win forever. Sort of.

This is terrible parenting, but I'm not sure on what level.

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Update:

On March 14, 2012, Texas will effectively strip one hundred and thirty thousand (130,000) women of baseline health coverage with the end of the Women's Health Program. This is after the October's slash and burn that stripped 2/3 of the budget devoted to women's health. The federal Title X is barely hobbling, and I'm not sure, but I think we had a woman called a slut on national radio and told she should broadcast her sex life publicly if she wants subsidized birth control.

I wouldn't characterize this as a war on women. This is more what I think we'd call a 'rout'. In fact, hands up, on a glance, I think we're tragically unaware we have already lost.

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I have decided that there is no project on earth, professional, open-source, or non-profit, that is at all professional, ever.

As of today, I have written no less than sixty and no more than seventy and change tests for the massive redesign that I have been working on off and on since December. We started system tests (pre-tests) in january. We start primary testing Monday.

As of Tuesday, they 1.) randomly changed the driver flow in a very key place, 2.) randomly changed up the titles and text and 3.) pdfs stopped working for no reason and tasks arent' being created. All of my tests--that took me months to write and rewrite and polish--have to be rewritten.

For the record, I have owned archives, worked on archives, worked on projects, both in fandom and professionally and as a side thing when I got bored. Today when they told me of the horror that is my life, I asked "were they drunk?" and meant it. There is no godmod in fandom who can hit this level of loss of sense.

Then I said, "They are doing it worse than LJ." I have never, ever felt such existential horror as realizing that livejournal's ongoing breaks with reality are less utterly insane than the vendors writing our code. My four spent half the day talking me down, and I have spent the day writing up epic fucking level novel-length defects for this, I am so not kidding, and testing hasn't even started yet.

And they are still better than the previous vendor, so I just--here is what I have learned. Privatization sucks. I have yet to see any benefit at all whatsoever from paying someone to fuck up or letting us hire in house and fucking it up ourselves. At least if it was in-house, there would be a shitload of accountability both professional and also, us showing up to hate them. Accountability as far as state contracts go is more "Did Perry think you were really cool?" which is so fucked up this hurts me.

I have literally spent quality time trying to get my other BFF's husband to take a job with them and take over the project.

There is no excuse and no reason and no possible justification. The tests we write are to protect and help the most fucking vulnerable populations in Texas, people who cannot and do not have the power or even the chance to fight for themselves, and this is tiny, it's such a tiny part of it and not just in the scheme of things but in anything, but it's huge when it works because it's one of the few things that does and let's not lie to ourselves, we are living a Randian utopia and the only thing I am getting satisfaction from is the fact they hit seventy and medicaid is gleaming on the horizon, they have a goddamn religious experience with the value of the safety net. Our net is not a great one, and honestly none of them are all that sturdy, but a whole bunch of shitty safety nets means there's a better than average chance you can get a fingerhold in one of them before you hit the ground, or at least break your fall enough so you can stand up again. It makes all of so much less than we are that this is the best we can hope for. Rome pulled off this shit better.

It does not help that it takes them facing vulnerability to admit it exists; I do not forgive that it is not and never will be about others but always about themselves. I do not on a fundamental level of my existence get how anyone can decide that another person's pain is just not worth even the pretext of caring on the basic survival level of food, clothing, shelter, medical care; I am not even rarified enough at this point to imagine they would understand feelings here, I'm asking remedial level ability to work with the human experience of living; I don't forgive that lack within them either. I have this horrible, uncomfortable feeling that these kinds of breaks is how you get fanatics, and people, I am happy being lazy, but a fire could motivate me to move, and the metaphorical equivalent seems to be getting a lot larger these days and inertia is goddamn dangerous when motion is involved.

So my week, not good. There is the possibility that I will be taking cities in the name of a working social safety net program, so I'm taking applications for followers. Must have a working empathy, a strong desire to do good, and a fanatical desire to burn every copy of Atlas Shrugs you come across. I'm open to further suggestions on method, but I think I got the goal down cold.

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I am kind of currently looking for a way to get customized stress balls for my unit that are like some kind of computer-related shape, are very squeezable and able to bounce without harm off walls, windows, or posibly other people's heads (by accident, of course) with our unit name on it. All the places I'm looking at require at least a minimum number of 100 or so or are really expensive. Does anyone have anyplace they've used or have heard good things about that have a much smaller minimum?

Help is appreciated, thank you.

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Child and I try to limit our tandem media watching due to the fact that breaking out in a ship and/or character war in the middle of the night without access to a keyboard is kinda awkward and not a little surreal. We recently discovered that the thing people say, you would never say to someone's face what you wrote in that double flamey comment? Yeah, no, we do. But it's still half in netspeak and fanspeak, so I'm ruined for talking to normal people for hours.

I have been very wary about watching Supernatural with him; I mean, Stargate Atlantis, he was more a Sheppard/Ronan shipper, but that was my secondary ship, so I could roll with that. Torchwood we were fine, but the Due South period of our lives, for those who remember that, was not pretty at all. But this is different, okay? There are all kinds of people, and I'm totally accepting and everything, but if he turned into a Sam OTC, I might have to give him up for adoption, which is kinda tricky at his age and everything.

(Not that I do not love Sam and everything, my best friends are OTC Sam and apparently ship Sam/Lucifer, but Child is what you might call an evangelical OTCer, and this wouldn't end well for anyone, and I do mean anyone. Like, this is how supervillians are made, okay? It will be the stolen Due South box sets all over again and the Vecchio stanning and dude, he's like, five nine, I can't duct tape him in his closet. Not that I ever did that, but I'm saying, that option, permanently off the table. Now the best I can do is block his wireless and change his X-Box login. And he's going to work out how to fix this when he realizes I locked the router login page to my laptop's IP. I feel bad about that, though; he's really good about leaving comments at AO3 on fics he likes and a good feedbacker is not to be trifled with.)

Child skipped backward to refresh his season one and two, barrel through season three with a faintly shell-shocked expression, and emerged with me for season four viewing with a faint trace of horror. Finally, near the end of season four, he says, like he just can't stand not to say it:

(this is a paraphrased summary of a really deep and meaningful set of conversations about the Pain of Dean Winchester. It was beautiful. I honestly wish I'd recorded it. It was magic, okay? Magic.)

"Why does Dean always suffer so much?"

(At this point, we are around 4.19 or so. Before this, he was exploring agnosticism. I explained this is TV. He wasn't convinced.)

My heart swelled like, fifty sizes, but apparently my silence was like, an indictment or something because he said, "Jenn--" because apparently, I lose my mom title when I'm fannishly traumatizing him.

"I'm with you." But I hate not get it all out there. "I'm kinda a Castiel girl, too, though. Seriously. He's magic."

Child thought about it for most of the rest of the season (read, forty-eight hours give or take) and at the end of 4.22 while we were discussing whether or not Dean goes off to silently cry like, all the time and why people who judge him for that should be smited like whoa, he says, "So Castiel and Dean--"

I'm getting him a rec list.

(He has a subversive love of Sam/Ruby that he won't admit, but I checked his cache and I know things. I don't even think he liked her until 4.22, when suddenly he was all OMG (it sounded just like it looks) and I mean, from his point of view, it makes sense.)

ETA: Child finally set up his AO3 account and gave up pretending that his cache is a lie, so I'm feeling a strong sense of parental accomplishment right now.

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Friday I had the combination annoying and gratifying experience of helping a coworker out and then utterly killing my faint thoughts toward looking into an iPad or work (currently my Kindle is doing double duty to hold the design documents when I script tests; even having two monitors no longer cuts it when I have to be able to script on one screen, use the second screen to hold my original plan for a script, and need a third to look the original requirements. Dude, we need like, four screens at this point; there are so many changes in workflow that I have to actually create entire cases from scratch so I can see how the hell this is supposed to work.

Note: if you live in Texas and may be applying for benefits or know someone who is, I will be posting a tutorial on how to use this way of submitting your application. As a tester, it's driving me nuts, but for clients, I think this will eventually turn out to be a hugely good thing. What I don't know is how to do that without the upping the risk of someone eventually noticing via google that seperis sounds like Certain Employee With Opinions. I'll get back to that after this release, along with some further updates on welfare policy and what you need to know. Keep in mind when I do post, the information is Texas specific, but policy is federally mandated, so there is crossover in different states.

Anyway, one of my coworkers has an iPad and a Toshiba both, and wanted to transfer her music to the Toshiba and was getting absolutely nowhere. She brought them to work for me to do after some coaxing, because like most people who have to deal with competing OS's, in her heart she thought the entire thing was because she was just, you know, tech challenged in a bad way. This is a program tester by the way; I always want to coax my coworkers into a seminar titled "It Really Isn't You; It Is That Fucked Up" with a side of "No, Really, This Is Because They Designed It to Make It Harder for You to Do This So You Will Buy Their Products and All Companies Do This". I am still working on this seminar.

Teh only Apple product I use is iTunes, for various lazy-related reasons, so I'd almost forgotten that iTunes purpose when combined with objects (iPod, iPad, iPhone) is to drive me nuts. I explained about computer authorization and DRM and did a search to see what she had that was locked (nothing, thank God) and the waited patiently while iTunes took an hour to complete a synch operation that takes me ten minutes with a direct sd card move, and while doing that, I stared at the gorgeous iPad and realized that there was no possible way that it wouldn't send me into conniptions trying to use it with my spreadsheets and docs that I need to update now; when I want to move a song, I want to just move it.

I'm not any happier with my experience with the Toshiba tablet; my Kindle and my phone both use android and I broke them to my will as far as getting root access and setting my organization up even if the limits can be--frustrating, but working with someone else's tech means I can't spend ten minutes getting the apps I want to make life simple, and it was a revelation all over again that dealing with my server's ubuntu in various forms comes in stupidly handy at the weirdest times, and how much I depend, literally, on workarounds I don't even think about anymore. Moving music of all things--legally goddamn bought in the iTunes store music free of DRM--should not have been this kind of production that took a computer authorization, a full synch that took forever, and then finally the sd card transfer.

I really want a tablet now after using my Kindle to hold my work docs and finding it a lifesaver to be able to flip through the pages and search and even edit directly there and carry it around with me to meetings--it's hitting me how stupidly useful this would be for reading design documents and screenshots and being able to make notes directly during meetings instead of having to jot things down and hope to God I can read my own handwriting later--but the iPad and the Toshiba both did not encourage me to think this will be a painless process on par with using my home laptop regularly. The only one that seems like it might meet my requirements is the Motorola Galaxy, but now I'm suspicious that the ability to do more complex work--and what I want to eventually do is use it so when our design documents update, I can add te revisions in without losing my notes--also means it will be more stupidly complex work to make them do something that should be very simple.

I am feeling technologically cynical, I think.

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Posted on ff_a (I find in general news gets there faster than pretty much anywhere):

I suddenly find my interest in CBS's Elementary, the Sherlock reboot, going up. Like a lot. I would likely watch Johnny Lee Miller as Holmes because I'd watch Miller as Man Who Watches Paint Dry for two hours because I had a deep and meaningful experience with Hackers in a movie theater at a formative age. Lucy Liu I have loved since she first showed up on Ally McBeal and managed to be super, super quirky and abrupt and fun in a show where everyone doubled down on quirky like a lifestyle choice. And I really can't talk about my feelings about that show because for the life of me, I'm still confused, and I watched it to the bitter end.

(Short version; it was brilliant and annoying and stupid and I loved it and it made having a soundtrack and background singers to your life perfectly normal. I can honestly state it did a lot to make me a lot more comfortable with the fact that certain points in my life I walked into meetings comfortable that hearing Eye of the Tiger as I stared my presentation was a-okay. Hearing Bodies Like Sheep during other meetings, however, might be more questionable. And I admit that it was unnerving to test programs to the complete Eminem collection even when it pretty appropriate, all things considered. I have feelings on Ally McBeal. Like a lot of them.)

It'll be annoying if they try to force her into the mold of Person Who Keeps Genius Grounded, but her general work outside of Ally McBeal tends me toward the idea that she's a skilled enough actress to make it far more nuanced than it would seem to be.

I may actually end up watching this really enthusiastically just on the strength of this casting and how Liu and Miller will interact with each other.

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Thank you to amireal who sent me the link to the article.

New Texas rule could end Women's Health Program

This is why, paraphrased from the article:

Last year, the Republican controlled Texas Legislature passed a law that made it illegal for the state to provide Medicaid funds to a doctor or clinic that is affiliated with an organization that provides elective abortions, even if the institution receiving the money does not provide them.

This directly contradicts federal law which makes it illegal for the state to pick and choose which qualified health care providers receive state funding.

This was signed on Thursday by HHSC Commissioner. So you know, we're screwed.

As of now, Texas will lose its funding for WHP and the WHP program will effectively cease to exist.

I'm going to tell you a not-secret; there is literally no way to win on this one. Even if the Federal government buckles, most poor women use Planned Parenthood. Sometimes, it's the only clinic available in an area. So you know, it's kind of cut off most women in Texas if the Feds okay it, or cut off all women if they don't. It will cut off most women in the country if the Federal government does buckle, because I'm pretty sure the word 'precedent' can be invoked at this point.

Y'know. Republicans screw women, must be a day ending in a y. Carry on.

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Person Who Will One Day Become Warlord-Ruler Of What Was Once Nebraska Born In Omaha Hospital

Okay, I'm torn; it's not like I want to spend my undead existence in a pink vat miles below sea level dreaming of my own voiceless screams of horror while Child fruitlessly tries to clone me in his skull-shaped Pacific Island headquarters surrounded by mindless minions (some of whom will have such colorful names as The Murder of Crows, The Albatross of Despair, The One Without a Cool Name, look, he's fifteen and plays Magic the Gathering after school; what do you expect?), nor am I entirely comfortable with his plans to create a hybrid human-reptile army (or a cockroach-human hybrid army for radiation survival purposes).

But. I am his mother, and he brings me coffee when I want it. Should I tell him about this Nebraska threat or not?

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For very irritating personal reasons that do not need to be explored at this juncture--or possibly ever--I ended my self-imposed ban on Supernatural and started where I left off in season four, which amounts to watching the entirety of season four and the beginning of season five in less than forty-eight hours. Even for my media consumption habits, that's like, a lot, and I feel as if I should like, be slouched in some kind of bean bag chair talking about the colors man. The colors.

I also didn't realize fanfic really understated a few things.

In other news, Child got the first of his three HPV shots and whined like he'd been beaten with sticks that his hip hurt while I stared into eyes that are exactly level with mine, because that shit only works when you aren't officially 5'9", except when seconds later you lose control of your limbs and fall over your feet, at which time fine, I shouldn't have laughed that hard.

My medication was adjusted again and I have an appointment in two months to check again, which may be a warning that Thyroid Bill (ie, my thyroid, new name!) may either not be long for this world or is at least going to embrace sloth as a lifestyle choice more and more.

That reminded me of the debate ongoing between using Temporarily Abled or Currently Abled for the able bodied that pops up every so often; sitting in the doctor's office after the last couple of months of slowly growing lethargy that took off like whoa a few weeks ago to the point where it would take hours to completely wake up even after I got up and went to work, constantly starving and constantly freezing and sixteen hours of sleep didn't ever seem to even touch the huge well of exhaustion made me think my stance on CAB as a working term. Hypothyroidism isn't disabling at all until it is, and even knowing the signs to look for, it still took me literal months to really believe this shit was happening again, that my body lost that little skirmish and I lost a tiny bit of functionality that seems so stupid because it's so small a thing, but it touches everything; how I sleep, how I eat, how I work, how I interact, how I feel, my ability to think. I really should have sat down and played sudoku a month ago; when my speed drops and I can't hold the numbers in my head, it's time to visit the doctor.

Links!

From comments in a recent sf_d post, The Itch, Its mysterious power may be a clue to a new theory about brains and bodies. - advisory for about half of paragraph of very mild squick on page two.

The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning. We see a friendly yellow Labrador bounding behind a picket fence not because that is the transmission we receive but because this is the perception our weaver-brain assembles as its best hypothesis of what is out there from the slivers of information we get. Perception is inference.

I'd not sure how to summarize this; using several accounts, they put together an intriguing theory that may cover problems as diverse as phantom limbs and obsessive scratching as a problem not with nerves or a mental illness, but a misfire in interpretation of sensory data. I need to research this more.

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Cat's in the Cradle by daasgrrl - House/Sherlock/Fortysomething

From her summary:

Summary: In the beginning, there was Sherlock Holmes. And Holmes brought forth the brilliant doctor House, embodied by the lovely Hugh Laurie. Who prior to that in Fortysomething played a slightly less brilliant doctor, Paul Slippery, who begat three sons, the eldest of whom was played by the equally-lovely-if-somewhat-peculiarly-named Benedict Cumberbatch. Who of course grew up to play Sherlock. And the Universe looked upon its work and pronounced it good. And then my head exploded.

In a variety of ways, this is like, a metatextual moebius strip of awesome. The echoing scenes between House and Sherlock interspersed with the fortysomething clips (I have never seen the show, but good God, I kinda want to now) with good flow and just--I love it. There's so much to chew on.

Yes, it's 4 AM but one, I have tomorrow off and two, Friday's dr appointment was both stressing and relieving. I leave it to you to make that excuse hold water.

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Dear Uncanny Valley,

Seriously?

No love,
Seperis

I'm saying, when is the time we pull out our I, Robot, Bladerunner and Terminator to treat them as the necessary survival documents they are? Maybe when the android gets to star in its own play about itself? You think?

It's so weird to watch that; even knowing--scientifically, or at least, wikipedially--the nature of my reaction, it does not change my instinctive kill it with fire in any rational way. There are reasons a lot of horror movies are about things that shouldn't be moving that suddenly start moving, you know? Wax figures, mannequins, androids that blink and turn their head in ways that make me want an axe. You know. The usual.

I'm curious; the uncanny divide threshhold is different for everyone; does this hit yours, or what does hit yours?

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Note for the future--I could watch Castiel's acts of violence set to Set Fire to the Rain for the rest of my life. Youtube is kind enough to supply a lot of those. Okay, three so far, but then there's Rolling the Deep and it's like, I want more fire and finger-snap death and you know, bloody trenchcoats.

I'm so glad I'm in fandom right now or that entire paragraph would be terribly, terribly worrisome.

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Sometimes, you find a line so perfect you don't even really need context; in fact, you realize in your heart you will never understand the context. Or like, what the hell. Because it's just that goddamn perfect line.

One:
I'll even accept people hating on Gamzee for his murderclown spree, despite the fact that he's my favorite, because Juggalo junkie murderclowns making out with their boyfriend's severed heads are admittedly not to everyone's taste, but seriously, Tavros?

Two:
Granted, I read a lot of incest and bestiality, but Nazis are where I draw the line.

Both I ran across on fail-fandomanon and saved back to read later in a spirit of wonder. Recording here for later moments where I feel the universe sucks and then I remember murderclowns and anti-Nazi bestiality and it's like, I love fandom like a lot, because these are kind of beautiful.

(One thing I regret about my job is that all our one-liners involve levels of bureaucraticese that aren't available to teh sane, mixed with tester-specific programming slang and acronyms referring to the Medicaid hierarchy and spend-down. Oh my God the hilarity, if you are one of thirteen people in the world. The Medicaid hierarchy only makes sense if you actually own the powerpoint explaining it and memorized it, or your mother helped design it so you were brainwashed, and oh, the jokes I could tell. That make no sense. Unless you'd like to read the powerpoint? It's in color!)

Currently googling on the murderclown. It makes me happy.

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I didn't realize that listening to Adele at work was the ticket to getting her to work for me. I liked her okay (you have svmadelyn as a friend, you learn to like or oh my God the judging) at home but suddenly I was listening to Set Fire to the Rain during a particularly irritating test and I understand. I'm not sure if it's the implied violence (setting fire to something seems like a really good idea right now, tbh) or what but I am there.

However, for the record, Someone Like You is hairdryer in the bathtub with a handwritten note type song. Which I suppose means it works for me on some level. The level that has a playlist with this classification, after all. It is, I will reluctantly admit, a really long playlist.

I'm still working on The Fray's latest album. I honestly think I like one song out of the entire album (not including covers) and I find that deeply disappointing. Mostly because I honestly can't deal rationally with the idea that the last entire album I enjoyed may or may not have been released by My Chemical Romance or Kings of Leon.

I'm told at some point my musical tastes will settle and I'll stop feeling betrayed by iTunes for not having more, more, more and getting bored with everyone by their third album. I'm starting to look forward to that. It would save me a lot of money.

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*thoughtful* And to think there were times in my life at work where I was bored. Tentatively, I do not have that problem now. Sometimes I dream of spreadsheets, and you know what? I like it. This development is under review for incipient worry that I'm penciling in for real consideration in Julyish. Maybe early September at the latest.

In other news:

CBS casts its Sherlock Holmes and SPOILER ALERT--it's Jonny Lee Miller, which is a problem since I don't feel this interpretation will end well (in New York, even, Christ) but I would watch Miller and find it riveting television if he were watching paint dry, see the problem here? I even watched a truly hideous and terrible Mansfield Park interpretation (we shall never speak of this again) just to see him trotting around in knee breeches. Hence, you can imagine my reaction to the latest Emma (knee-breeches, horse, walking with finely muscled thighs and whatnot) has pretty much left me panting, and I am not one to pant unrequited. Again, I watched that awful Mansfield Park and that's like, one step off rabid-fan territory for me.

In really other news:

If I asked nicely, could someone direct me to The West Wing Josh/Donna fics? Yes, I read Speranza's, and that was like, only a page and hello, fangirl, I need more.

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This Is War by dreadnus - All Treks - it took me a couple of watches to really get into it, but even the first time it was a powerful vid on peace and the wars that are supposed to secure it.

Everything You Want by spookifbi8 - Star Trek Reboot, Kirk/Spock - this Vertical Horizon song is one of my always-watch in vids. It helps that it's an excellent Kirk/Spock.

What Do You Want From Me by caserox76 - Star Trek Reboot, James Kirk - the vid is an interesting watch, but I can honestly say it's the fact this song is so completely Jim Kirk that drew me in. Some nice cuts, a little muddled but some great pov and direct object shifting.

Running Up That Hill by gin1119 - Star Trek TOS, Kirk/Spock - technically, this isn't the strongest response I've seen to the Closer vid responses, and it's not entirely consistent, but some of the mirroring is genuinely unsettling when watching it as a response.

When You Call My Name by juicy1111 - Supernatural, Dean/Castiel - I really don't need to explain why this one kills me.

Not Enough by michaelvm92 - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cast - contains both text and speakover, but very powerful season six vid of the cast.

After the Fall by pinkpaperclouds - Sherlock BBC, General - SPOILERS FOR ALL SERIES 2 - Wow. Gorgeous.

The Weight of Us by tomorrowsrain - Sherlock BBC, Sherlock/Watson (esque) - SPOILERS FOR ALL SERIES 2 - Kinda broke my heart.

Sherlock and Lust by deductism - Sherlock BBC, Sherlock/Irene - SPOILERS FOR ALL SERIES 2 - Very nice cutting, really appropriate song.

Don't Be Dead by deductism - Sherlock BBC, Sherlock/John - SPOILERS FOR ALL SERIES 2 - Again, heart, broken, thanks series 2!

Hallelujah by hotandcoldcollision - Sherlock BBC, Sherlock- SPOILERS FOR ALL SERIES 2 - I need to find out who is singing this one so as to add to my Hallelujah playlist. Soft and a little haunting.

I Would Have Died, I Would Have Loved You All My Life by JateCharaireFATE - Sherlock BBC, Sherlock/John - SPOILERS FOR ALL SERIES 2 - beautiful Sherlock/John, and pretty much heartbreaking altogether. I especially like the scene choices here, they're pretty much flawless.

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I put this one off since I've been in a Gellis and Heyer mood for a while and there's no use switching in genre between styles because you just end up confused. Also, Gellis' A Woman's Estate just put me in a bad mood.

However, Loretta continues to be awesome. For context on why I love this author, earlier review here.

Silk Is For Seduction

( silk is for seduction )

Again, not her strongest book by any means, but a fun, fast read.

Kindle sales on books by Loretta Chase:

Isabella - $2.99 - the prequel to the Carsington novels, this being the Earl of Harcourt himself and his courtship of Isabella, they who spawned several novels about their sons. This is one of her earliest books and it shows big time, but it's not terrible, one, and if you are a completionist and were curious about the entire backstory of the Carsington men, it's a good read. And it's stuffed with Surprise Revelations! a anti-hero (Loretta just loves to make sure her villains could be redeemable in a future sequel) and to be fair, it's not her weakest work.

The English Witch - $2.99 - this is her weakest work. See what I said above about the redeemable villain? Yeah, this is his story. It's weak, and it drags occasionally, but it also is, I think, her first attempt to play with imperfect, rather unethical heroes and heroines that aren't evil, just, you know, unethical and manipulative but still good people. But I do not deny that this one I got through only because of what she was trying to do here and nails in her later books and I was curious to find out where it started. It could be considered the genre spiritual predecessor to Silk Is For Seduction, Last Night's Scandal, Captives of the Night, and the rather inexplicable Your Scandalous Ways. (For the record, in Regency trope, Last Night's Scandal is the best of them; Captives of the Night is, again, not Regency at all; I'm honestly not sure what the hell it is, which is why I love it beyond reason.)

Lord of Scoundrels - $3.99 - this is an update that apparently was supposed to fix typos. I didn't notice typos before, but this update did not help, but if you can stand a few times early on that paragraphs repeat--and near the end, a page repeats--this is one of my favorite books. It's probably the closest Chase comes to a classic regency in so far as boy marries girl and lifts her into wealth and ease. How they go about it is about as non-classic as you can get, up to and including; pornographic watches, Russian icons, blackmail, extortion, ruining reputations, bloodsucking lawyers for Greater Justice, a shooting, a psychosomatic injury, and possibly the first time I've seen any novelist tackle, with sympathy, a parent's desertion (I would almost recommend it just for that bit; I've never seen any Regency romance both subtextually and textually address sympathetically the motivations that might surround a mother who leaves her child; hell, half the damn plotline is built on it).

Coming in June: Scandal Wear Satin which I am going to say is either going to be about Clara and her newly discovered fashion sense and backbone, or Marcelline's sister Sophie the scandal-rag spin artist. It's a toss-up.

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West Wing, Season Two, Ep 1:

No matter how many times I watch and brace myself for it--I know it is happening!--when Toby finds Josh, I completely break down. Every time.

I love this show. Also, ouch.

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I just discovered Roswell for free on Amazon Prime. The only reason I was ever interested in watching it was to get context for jengrrrl's Michael/Maria, and that was in the day that you could not download episodes or stream them so I had to watch current episodes and read summaries.

...God, how did we survive? I mean, there were mailed tapes, but I just realized I don't own a VCR anymore. Okay, digression, moving on.

One, I'm weirded out by how many of my favorite songs are on here. I mean, I resigned myself to a terrifying amount of SV and Dawson's Creek related playlists, but there's a really uncomfortable realization that the WB was far more insidious than I ever expected; I have a horrible feeling that if I were to check soundtracks for WB shows from when WB opened until, oh, today, a terrifying amount of my most played music was played on one of their shows or introduced by them.

Also, Max and Michael are ungodly hot. Are their cheekbones made of razors or something?

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Okay, after staring at Amazon's terrifying variety of versions of Downton Abbey seasons one and two, does anyone now which version I should get>

Link to Amazon's variety

There's the following:
Season One
1.) Downton Abbey - Complete Series 1 (Original Uncut British Version) [Region Free U.K. Import] [Blu-ray]
2.) Downton Abbey [Blu-ray]
3.) Downton Abbey Series 1 [Blu-ray] Region 2 (UK edition)

Season Two
1.) Downton Abbey: Season 2 (Original U.K. Edition) [Blu-ray]
2.) Downton Abbey - Complete Series 2 (Original Uncut British Version) [Region Free U.K. Import] (Season 2) [Blu-ray]
3.) Downton Abbey - Complete Series 2 (Original British Version) [Region Free U.K. Import] [Blu-ray]
4.) Downton Abbey Series 2 [Blu-ray] (2011)
5.) Downton Abbey Series 1 [Blu-ray] Region 2 (UK edition)

Both
Downton Abbey Series 1 & 2 [Blu-ray] Starring Maggie Smit and Huge Bonneville (2011)

Does anyone know the difference? Or you know, which one to buy? Help?

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Currently watching iconic Darcy Swims! scene from Pride and Prejudice. There is still nothing funnier than imagining the period of time between bravely running away in his wet breeches and running after her in an excess of really fast dignity. Mostly it was probably his manservant desperately trying to make sure he wore clothes that matched and didn't sprint down with his pants undone.

The more I watch, the more convinced I am that had Lydia not intervened with her--adventures, Elizabeth would not have made it out of Derbyshire unengaged, possibly not even unmarried.

This entire review is brought about by Linda Berdoll's novels, which are fanfic of this version of Pride and Prejudice in so many ways. So. Many. Ways.

When I recommended them before, I hadnt' finished re-reading and forgot that the books, though uniformly of the light hearted melodramatic variety (that I love), there are some parts that are not that at all.

Warning for triggering content below: specifically, the death of a child and sexual assault. If you have these particular ones and plan to read the books, please consider the below, as the rest of the books are far lighter and more humorous, so it might come as a shock.

( spoilers for all three Berdoll novels )

Right, after finishing all three, more generally.

( three novels of intrigue! )

Also, these are a romp. A rompy-romp.

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When I opened iTunes this morning, I was a little surprised to find myself flinching when I started going to the Store to stare hopefully at The Fray. I mean, I get precisely why this is bothering me, and where it's coming from, but it just hit me all at once that SOPA was partially funded by every song I legally buy, every movie I legally buy, every show I legally buy. It's one thing to in general know that this happens with all purchases, but it's also the fact that if I want this show/song/program legally, my only options is to pay people to hold me in contempt for my purchase and then use it to bribe politicians to take away my rights to use the product (and um, the entire internet).

I mean, yes, it's self-evident, don't get me wrong, but--there really isn't an alternative to the entertainment industry monopoly, is there? I can't buy anything that won't be paying for the giant legal stick to beat me with later. And when worse comes, terrifyingly, I will have funded it.

And my answer still stands.

If I had to choose between music and Wikipedia, music and the internet, music and the infinite breadth of human imagination and innovation that is pretty much what the internet is all about; that's not even a choice. That's what I would call breathing.

Okay, obviously, I have not had my recommended dose of watching things blow up. It may be a Die Hard night again.

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