The Last Bastion Of Absurdity

So, Australians! I am organising a Collective For The Dispersal Of Ludicrous International Shipping Rates with regard to http://www.topshelfcomix.com, which is having an excellent sale until Friday. I've got two other people in so far, but a couple more would be perfect :) (shipping is like $50, whereas some of the individual items are marked down to $3 YOU CAN SEE HOW THIS IS SLIGHTLY RIDIC) so check it out and see if there's anything you want. (I am making use of it to remedy the sad absence on my bookshelf of Alan Moore related items.)

Also, I have written a thing for this zine and I could do with someone who knows anything about christian mythology and/or the punk scene to give it a quick once-over and make sure I haven't written anything egregiously dumb or unrealistic about either. I'm trying to pawn this task off on my boyfriend but he has like sixty books to read about lady anarchists in spain or something, so yep :P

IN CONCLUSION

I think I have some sort of persistent opportunistic flu infection that pops right up as soon as my immune system is compromised by stress or leaking or lack of sleep. grah. hate. Also I have had a weird skin reaction to this lotion my gran brought back from Israel. Fuck you, dead sea! However this resulted in hilarious twitter conversation yonder:

jk_rockin: you're allergic to the Dead Sea?
me: Apparently so! This does not bode well for any undead israeli boys that want to sweep me off my feet in the future!
fishmouse: Better a vampire than a zombie anyday.
me: yeah I'm pretty sure EVERYONE is allergic to zombies :P
me: oh man, imagine if you were allergic to the kiss of death! talk about adding insult to injury!
me: MOOHAHAHA, NOW YOU ARE VUN OFF USS! ...and svellink up somesink awful. Armand, is zis supposed to happen!?
jk_rockin: ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US

Further such hilarity occurred IRL last night, when I showed up at Jenn's Batcave (a warehouse full of amazing giant piles of junk, omg I wanted to put on a snorkel and wade in) for adventures with hairdye! But first, a scenic detour to the Shire. "Hey Jenn... I think I am on the wrong train. Where is Panania?"

Anyway I have a red skunk stripe now. Oh did I mention I got a superdykey haircut last friday? I did that, yes. It is. Interesting. I can never quite impress upon a hairdresser that MY HAIR IS A LITTLE CURLY and they keep giving me styles I have to straighten bits of otherwise they look ridic. But anyway I have a red fauxhawk with an S-curl and brown lady-sideburns with almost-shaved cut-outs behind them. I like it but I don't think short and rectangular is really my thing in general - next time I will let my hair grow out much longer before I go in, give them something to work with. On the other hand, it looks excellent under hats! :D

A meme I tagged long ago and forgot about:

Reply to this post asking for words and I'll give you five I associate with you, which you then talk about in an entry on your journal!

From amber!

slam poetry: hahaha I am not sure why you associate this with me? I have done it all of twice. I find it interesting how rhythms are different when you're writing poetry to speak aloud, than to look at on a page. It's a matter of long and short beats, internal rhymes and consonance. Whereas book-poetry is less about how the words sound aloud and more how they look on the page, what kind of beats a space, a line break, an indent create. I think the best poetry combines the two, really, but I can't quite express the process.

Russia: ZE MOTHERLAND. lol. I identify as Russian without any particular tie to the place we call Russia, I think that's common to a lot of immigrant kids like me. It's about the language, the food, some little customs and cartoons. Family history plays a part, too, anyone whose family spent a few generations in the Soviet Union generally has a fairly russo-unique set of "grandpa stories" and interesting familial neuroses.

The actual place is by all accounts a corrupt racist alcoholic winter wonderland, but I'd still like to go back there some time just for the novelty of getting by in a language other than english.

neutral_omens: Ahh that old game. A Good Omens based "let's throw some characters into a place and see what happens" roleplay, albeit much smaller than ones like CFUD and la. We actually got together in OOC-chat and worked out bits of plot :P also, it was HILARIOUS (or maybe I just thought it was because I was sixteen). Angels, wizards, demons, an antichrist and some random bewildered humans in a hotel that used to be a satanic nunnery cum paintball retreat? OH yeah. I played Newt Pulsifer, toying with a proto-accident-field-superpower that has inspired a comic book character who now lives in my head. At some point I will script the first issue and find an artist for that.

Here are some of my favourite threads I was in: John Constantine and Newt Pulsifer vs. the Cellophane Beast was fun times, as was American Gods character Loki prodding Newt's Special Fail Powers. That one also resulted in a hilarious AU drawing based on what else could have fallen through the ceiling (hint: there was nudity).

Amanda Palmer: lol this list was given me before Evelyn Evelyn drama drama went down. I should have done it then, I could have gone on about her voice and lyrics and audacity and ability to connect with people instead of her privilege and public relations failure. And after all I said in the last post I STILL ended up arguing about it with strangers on the internet. God, both sides, too! I guess I am just one of those CAN'T SLEEP, SOMEBODY IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET people, regardless of whether that person agrees with me or not. Well, you know, you don't want people who agree with you to be wrong, do you?

Honestly I am more disappointed in the way Amanda has handled this whole fiasco than with the concept of the record. Like, sure, that was problematic, but as an initial provocation on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is accidentally saying "stand up for yourself" to a wheelchair-user and 10 is Spartan social darwinism, Evelyn Evelyn is maaybe a three. She could totally have salvaged that situation, but instead she's managed to make everyone who started off going "amanda I love you but I feel a little uncomfortable with this" feel like she sees no difference between us and people who tried to censor Oasis/think her photography is "goffic snuff porn"/hate her for dating Neil Gaiman (disclaimer yes I know those are all different people). For somebody who has cultivated such a feeling of closeness with her fans that just feels like a bit of a betrayal.

Also I am a little disappointed in the manner in which many people pursued this complaint against her in the first place, but that's a whole essay on effective privilege-checking that I want to save until tempers are less frayed, so that I can use this as a specific in the general case without putting people on the defensive.

And speaking of defensive don't even TALK to me about the people jumping in with "it is your responsibility if you feel offended because we choose our feelings" (more or less verbatim from one) because OH MY GOD. Alternating fury and motts at those people, why must you remind me that just because somebody likes the same stuff as me does not mean they are not a douche? (also mottsy because it reminds me of times when I have leapt to the defense of something without thinking, although I can't recall specific instances right now, but that just makes me paranoid!)

talking-really-fast: it's. a thing I do? XD I think out loud, and thoughtspeed is always faster than we are physically capable of forming words, so sometimes I trip over myself. Also sometimes people say "okay now say that again only use a spacebar" (not in so many words). Aside from that it's not much of a thing one way or another. Now talking really LOUD is a real problem I have, whereby I forget that I have a volume setting that can be adjusted until someone goes OMG STFU MAGGIE. (I feel that is a good note on which to end this post.)

So I typed up a long post about sparring bruises and the Time Travellers' Convention a few days ago, but the internet ate it? Firefox crashed, and when I next went into the post window there was no draft. IDK. I want to just use Chrome but it doesn't appear to support tabbed browsing, which, you guys, I have like thirty tabs open right now :P

One of which contains:

Perry was working on a knee-high, articulated Frankenstein monster built out of hand-painted seashells from a beach-side kitsch market. They said GOD BLESS AMERICA and SOUVENIR OF FLORIDA and CONCH REPUBLIC and each had to be fitted out for a motor custom built to conform to its contours.

“When it’s done, it will make toast.”

Cory Doctorow's Makers. So far, I like it :P

What've you been up to, internets?

Aha, I knew it! The yuletide unfilled prompts list has been updated and I'm on it. If anybody's here from there, here's my dear santa letter :)

Oh man, I hope I get the Something Wicked one - not that I don't love all my prompts but I have literally never seen a good fic for that fandom. I'll definitely resubmit it next year otherwise. Oooh, also I will nominate Kelly Link and Janelle Monae! I cannot believe I forgot them this year. And do a massive Doctor 13 picspam! Ahaha I have been bitten by the yultide bug but good haven't I :P

I'm currently trying to get a couple treats done in time for christmas - I'm pretty much just chillin' at home till saturday (whereupon i will suddenly have a social life for four days straight again XD it is like a sine wave or something.)

Merry Chrismukkah everybody!

Today I googled myself and made the SHOCKING DISCOVERY that I am not the only Captain Oblivious on the internet! The more well-known one is Rob McDonagh, who doesn't sound all that oblivious to me! *pouts*

This makes me sad. I liked that nickname. I even made an urban dictionary entry for it. And the whole reason I googled it was because frostickle claimed I was contagious :P so I decided he would be my sidekick, Awkward Lad.

*shakes fist* MCDONAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Anyway, the upshot of all that is I need a new Internet Moniker. Suggestions?

Augh, that was a week. DONE. SO DONE. My planned Week Full Of Stuff finished and then there was more stuff. I was just at Stan's farewell party because he is my bff and he is fleeing the country to be a Microsoft corporate whore for the summer, but THAT WAS THE LAST THING. from now on I am just going to vegetate. VEGETATE. VEG-E-TATE.



*cough* hey internets. Have some Things Wot I Found.

( Cut for images. Bands, gloves, shoes, The Shat )

Of new comms I've found here on dreamwidth I'm really liking audiphilia, the song-sharing community. I just posted some songs there for Happy Week. Last week's theme was covers.

I've been reading Star Trek reboot fic and it's making me want to watch the movie again. Mostly because Spock is such a woobiiiiie. I just want Kirk to handcuff him to something and hug him for about six hours straight. I don't even care whether they have sex afterwards! (okay that is a lie)

Okay, NOW I'm posting the writing exercises :P

Assignment done done done! Yay \o/ I think that was the very best last minute shop job I have ever done. I realised I had not done the print ad with about twenty minutes to go, found a random picture of a house (er... a swiss chalet, but the swiss countryside and the Aussie countryside are SURPRISINGLY SIMILAR, YOU GUYS), deleted the sky, stuck in a gradient in the company colours and slapped my headline in the middle. Also I photoshopped a solar-panel-covered roof onto the swiss chalet. IT LOOKED REALLY GOOD, WTF. Then I dashed around trying to find a print shop that was open that late, lol. I don't know if I've actually described this project here - the ad was part of a massive report in which I evaluated some sustainability-themed ads, picked the worst one, explained why it sucked, and then fixed it complete with creative brief and media plan. Oh, and with a linked online ad (that turned out pretty well too YAY CLONE TOOL *glomps it*) but my point is, IT WAS MASSIVE. The print guy took one look at it and said "We're going to need a bigger stapler." And he got out the industrial sized stapler (which was really cool) and charged me fifty cents extra, but by that point I was just like GET ON WITH IT I NEED TO NOT FAIL THIS PLZKTHNX.

In other news... uh... in... I'm very annoyed, I distinctly remember thinking "I'm going to write a blog post about this and it is going to be awesome" and now I can't remember what "it" was. COUGH UP, BRAIN.

Fine, instead have a really cool short story, a really freaky game and something SLIGHTLY wolverine-spoilery that made me lol here.

My internets continue capped until tomorrow! Oh my gosh I am so tired of this snail's pace, how did we ever get anything done back in the days of dial-up??

I keep getting twitterfollowed by randoms :/ a couple of them are interesting, one is a decent author who's just slightly annoying because of spamming us with links to his stories, and the rest are porn/marketing spammers and a Republican. I'm slightly baffled about that last one, where on earth could he have found me? He didn't say hello. Who the hell does he think I am? All of his posts appear to be "man obama's doing stuff :(" and "who does that olberman guy think he is bagging out teabaggers" and WHYYYY DID YOU ADD ME OH MY GOD.

Today the internet has brought me fluorescent puppies, kaleidoscope and cupcake awesomeness, and this.

Have a meme from perfectdays: The first TEN FIVE TEN ACROSS BOTH LJ AND DW people to comment in this post get to request a drabble or a poem or something of any pairing/character/misc of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

PS this is also awesome.

Pheeew. That essay was more of a bitch than it really ought to have been. Thanks, weird psychological issues!¹ Anyway, now I'm done done done and I washed my hair and it is a lovely day and I have another week of holidays left to actually be holidays!

B3ta's weekly newsletter is out and hilarious as always. I am particularly amused by We Didn't Start The Flame War and of course the Question of the Week has some great answers, mostly involving alcohol. I'm Captain Oblivious over there, incidentally.

I got a Dreamwidth invite code! Random draw of validated OpenID accounts, it turns out.

[Poll #1386096]

I'm sort of sick of maggiebloome since it was my preferred pen-name circa 2002? But changing it might make me harder to find. On the other hand I intend to post a link to my dreamwidth account on LJ and vice versa anyway.

Judicious research already has me going :/ because the read-LJ-flist-on-DW feature is still in "figure out how the hell we can implement it" stage. I really don't want yet another friends page to check all the time, so if that comes online I'll probably shift over there permanently, provided of course that a significant portion of my flist is there. Until then I'll just use it the way I'm currently using my OpenID, except with icons and a profile and stuff. Speaking of which, how do I cross-post? I totally intended to figure out how to do it back when I got an insanejournal (...I don't even remember what my username is there now, I just use LJOpenID) but my computer was sort of dying at the time and I didn't want to install software and figure out how to use it only to have it collapse on me.

Anyway, upshot of which is I am not abandoning you, LJ people! I'm just hedging my bets :P

Also I'm totally pwning at Facebook scrabble, but the site hangs up at inconvenient moments. Like, say, for the first minute and a half of my two-minute turn. STOP IT, FACEBOOK SCRABBLE.

¹Goes something like this: Wow that sure is a lot of work to do I might fail it ADRENAL RESPONSE OF DETH oh look solitaire OH SHIT DEADLINE now I really will fail it MOAR STRESS HORMONES OF FREAKING THE FUCK OUT ahhh calm relaxing solitaire. Rinse, repeat. In a further delightful twist, there is a peripheral system in which I cannot, while in the throes of alternating frantic typing with desperate stress-avoidance procrastination, do anything ELSE that might actually be useful or even particularly fun, beause that is like admitting I give up. If I'm just playing solitaire I COULD STOP ANY MOMENT and go back to the work I'm avoiding.²

And that, boys and girls, is why I have not updated my livejournal for a week and this morning I found a spider in my shower. It went "running water?? In the SHOWER? WTF WHY WOULD THAT HAPPEN THAT NEVER HAPPENS AAAH" and then ran up the wall and glared at me.

²Weirdly enough knowing exactly how my issues work does not actually help me not have them does this happen to anyone else?