| Am I Internet Famous now? |
[Feb. 22nd, 2010|09:58 pm] |
So! Following Digamma's sensible advice, I shall be friends-locking in the future. I wonder if the screaming morons who responded to my random gun post are connected in any way to the screaming morons who objected to my support of marriage equality post from a while back. I got a set of awesome cut-and-paste YOU'RE GOING TO HELL splutters then, and these clowns are pretty similar.
I have your IP addresses, anonymous commenters. Default friends-lock from here, comment to be added! |
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| Law & order and I'm really angry lately! What's up with that? |
[Feb. 18th, 2010|05:37 pm] |
I was reading a blog post last night about Virginia loosening their gun control laws. They currently have a one-handgun-a-month rule, which seems completely reasonable to me. What legal activity could you need more than one handgun a month for? Apparently Virginia is the source of a lot of the guns used in crimes in NY and the northeast in general. Drug dealers and others pay 21-year-olds with no criminal record to buy a gun every month and send it north. Crazy!
Virginia has excitingly lax gun laws already. They issue concealed-carry permits for non-residents. There's no registry for guns, so you can't, say, pick one up at the scene of a crime and look up the registration number to find out who owns it.
( Random rant about Virginia gun laws, woo! ) |
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| Olympics! |
[Feb. 18th, 2010|09:30 am] |
The next round of hockey games will have US vs. Canada. Woot! That's going to be a tough one, because there are two NJ Devils on the US team and one on the Canadian team. I can't root against Brodeur! So far none of the scattered Devils players has lost their game - US, Canada, Russia, Czech Republic and I'm counting Sweden because Johnny Oduya got traded only the week before the Olympics.
I love Olympic hockey. I love that players all over the world take a break from their teams and travel back home, and then come to Vancouver to play in the tournament. It's so awesome, and gives me a feel for the international competition and Olympic spirit like no other sport. Are there any other sports like this? Maybe soccer. I don't know if professional soccer players compete in the Olympics in the same way.
Apparently the NHL is trying to figure out whether they'll take the Olympic break in 2014 and let their players leave for the Games. I really hope so. It would be pretty awful if they prohibited NHL players from competing because they'll lose a few weeks' worth of money. |
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| Terror trials? |
[Feb. 11th, 2010|06:31 pm] |
I'm listening to today's Brian Lehrer show. It's been so discouraging lately! I lvoe knowing what's going on in the world, I love the show, and I love Brian's solid public radio progressive-ism (?), but man, some of the people calling in lately! Especially the Superbowl ad show, where some dude called to say that the misogynistic nature of the ads is totally okay because lots of men are angry that women are taking over. LOL? As Samantha Bee said, it's true that men are only in charge of 485 of the Fortune 500 companies, and are the majority of just three branches of government. He also claimed that women make more than men. I wish.
Right now I'm listening to the show about the Kalid Sheikh Mohammed trial, and whether he should be tried in NY. I can't see the name of the male guest in iTunes right now, for some reason, but he's concerned about a civil trial because a) we can't be certain of a conviction and death penalty if he's tried in NY and b) he'll be able to make public statements during the trial, which we don't want anyone to hear. This reasoning is raising red flags all over the place in my head, holy crap. He truly does not believe in due process.
Seriously, I wish I could think of something productive to do to make us a better society. It's so frustrating and scary to see what's happening to us as a country, and to feel like there's nothing I can do about it except move away somewhere else. Maybe all those socialist countries in Europe would like to have me! And some cats. I think you can take cats to Europe. |
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| Achievement time! |
[Feb. 7th, 2010|10:08 pm] |
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It's the Love is in the Air festival in Warcraft! I am going to be glued to the computer every spare minute until I get the achievement. The Lunar Festival overlaps it by a week. Argh. I'm so stressed by world events, which is completely ridiculous, because it is NOT REAL. |
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| Facebook continues to make me hate people |
[Feb. 4th, 2010|12:39 pm] |
I have hit a point of too much information. Facebook community, I do not wish to know the color of your undergarments, or how much you drank this weekend, or who doppelganger.com or whatever thinks you look like. Most of all, I do not want to see the idiotic groups you join, because it makes me hate you.
There are groups for every single universal human emotion and/or American experience. It's boring and generic and pointless and Facebook insists upon telling me about it. I've been rearranging my friends list lately so I don't see most of the kids, or indeed some of the adults. I'm glad that its crappy interface permits that, at least.
Yesterday I deleted four friends over the groups "I never realized that 'woman' spelled backward is 'kitchen'" and "I'm the boy, you're the girl, make me a sandwich and then we'll talk'". I paraphrase. I was Aq about it on Warcraft later ("I thought it was an empty threat", he said) and he said "What does that teach them, when you delete them?"
Nothing, actually. It doesn't teach them anything. It just spares me having to think, whenever I see their updates, "this person doesn't respect me because I'm female." Some days it's just not worth the conversation. This is about me being sick of seeing that bullshit all the time and having it passed off as just a joke all the time, and sick of having to educate every male friend who makes a rape joke or a "like a girl" joke and doesn't even think about it. I'm so tired of explaining to guys who should and do know better, but have never thought about it. I generally get a positive response, and when when I get around to talking to these tools in person I'll explain and they'll probably drop the group. But argh. So, so tired of having to justify why it's not okay.
I did end up educating Aq, which was annoying, but I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. He's smart. We also had the talk about inside jokes that are offensive to third parties, with the whole "but we're not really mean, they just don't understand our humor/past/whatever" thing. WHICH IS WHY INSIDE JOKES NEED TO STAY INSIDE, because you look like a jerk. Which is a talk I don't mind giving to the high schoolers, but grown men should know better, for serious. However, optimistic.
An announcement:
Hey, dudes! I am totally going to judge you by what you say, what social groups you belong to,and the way you act, and what you put on Facebook. It's not my job to pry beneath your behavior and learn to understand you. It's your job to present yourself as a decent human being. This is not difficult. And when you say to me "I think you're being judgmental" I hear "waaah, you just don't understand how my assholery is a special case, because of my internal sensitive nature. And anyway I was only joking." You're not funny. You're stupid and mean. Stop it. |
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| iPad |
[Feb. 3rd, 2010|05:41 pm] |
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I was listening to the Brian Lehrer podcast earlier, and there were guests analyzing the iPad! There was a general consensus that it was really directed at dudes, since the commercials for magazine reading were men's publications. There was also a strong implication that it was going to be used to watch porn in bed. Thanks, Apple? |
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| Strangely, everything isn't simple |
[Feb. 1st, 2010|04:14 pm] |
I'm discovering that state board of education web sites are hilariously unhelpful. Especially considering that they represent people whose careers are based on conveying information! Yikes.
So this teaching thing. Tricky! I'm trying to figure out whether I should just go ahead with the masters' degree, because it looks like the alternate route takes the same amount of time, and I'd have to go back for my masters later anyway? I think? At Monclair, for example, there's a 3-credit difference in the MA and the post-BS alternate route program. It'll still take two years to get certified using the alternate route. I'm wondering what the point of alternate route is.
The nice thing about the masters program idea is that I don't have to make a long-term-future decision for a while. I can work on getting into grad school and getting the MAT, and THEN worry about what state I want. Argh. Once I'm driving I'll go visit my first choice in each state (Western Connecticut State, SUNY New Paltz, Montclair) and have them explain everything to me in small words. It's funny, I thought that once the decision of a career path was made, the next steps would be easy! Now I'm mostly working not backing out because my undergraduate grades sucked. Summer classes, here I come! I'll haul up the GPA and get some of my requirements knocked out. |
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| Moonviewing |
[Jan. 24th, 2010|01:08 am] |
Airman and I went out to this awesome taco place tonight for a sibling dinner. On the way back from post-dinner coffee we passed a guy setting up some equipment next to his car. We made eye contact, and he said "do you want to look at the moon?"
They were telescopes! He had them set up on the street and was offering to let people look at the moon. It was wonderful. I haven't looked through a telescope in years. I had one when I was a kid. I loved astronomy. This was a powerful model, and the moon filled the entire field of view, and it looked like the dust would puff up if I breathed too hard. I asked the guy if he did this often, and he said no, usually they were in his living room looking out the window and annoying his wife, so he brought them out. I bet they were glad of a new persepective also. I love that there's a person in the world who takes his telescopes out to share them with people.
So my brother and I looked at the moon up close, and wandered back to the car bumping into each other because we were looking up at it again while we walked. I don't think I appreciate the moon as much as I should. It's been a very good day. |
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| My love for Watson is inexpressable |
[Jan. 23rd, 2010|01:22 pm] |
I saw Sherlock Holmes again last night! It was the next of the movies on my "acceptable" list to start, and I needed to be home in time to raid at 10. There were new previews, and TWO of them were Nicholas Cage movies.
In one, he's a knight escorting a prisoner to be executed, and she's a WITCH. A real one, calling wolves and wreaking havoc and for some reason not busting out of her little cage? I don't know. I don't care enough to look into it. His wig was funny. It's no "MY HAIR IS A BIRD", but amusing. (Thank you, Fatesmith, for reminding me of that! I looked it up again last night and cracked up. WHYYYY.)
The other one is The Sorcerer's Apprentice! From Disney. It appears to be a live-action interpretation of the Mickey Mouse segment from Fantasia! There was a quick cut of a scene with mops and buckets and a ton of water all over the floor. And Nicholas Cage in a slightly different wig, explaining to a bland white kid that he's going to be a powerful sorcerer some day and save the world, but for now, he's going to be an apprentice.
I did really enjoy the Cage throwing powers around! It made me think happy thoughts of what it looked like before the CGI.
Sherlock Holmes is just as excellent the second time! I really love Watson, so much, for the first time ever. I never liked him in the books - too much "MY FRIEND THE GENIUS!" Jude Law's Watson has personality, and his impatience and irritation when Holmes is annoying are fantastic. Also, I noticed in the second viewing, he called Holmes "old cock." HA! Excellent. Holmes responded with "mother hen". I do not blame you, Sherlock, I'm also in love with Watson. |
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