It's Friday! Five PM and I've decided to stop working. I really want to write but I'm running into an issue. I'm opening up all of my documents and. . .nope. My brain just doesn't want to write them. I'm not bored with any of them or anything I just feel. . .tired. I'm just off a really structured project, and all of the projects I have going and the ideas I have seem to really lack structure. There are prompts that are interesting to me also in these prompt collections but it's just ugh brain stop saying nope! I have many great ideas - why can't they go on paper?!

Maybe I gotta go back and revisit some really old ideas. Something with a simple plot that has an end. Considering reopening 'Beach House Living.'

Wish me luck, friends.

"every woman in the world has experienced being catcalled, harassed, etc. from the day she started to look like a woman!"

no i haven't? please consider that as similar as much of the western world has become, our societies and cultures are not identical? i haven't experienced these things and you don't get to lie about me for the sake of your argument. you're a really fucking awful feminist if you actually only care about women who have the same experiences as you. (another part of why i don't respect present-day feminism.)

So it's been a hot minute since I've been here. Hi. Hello. Sorry.

My mental health still isn't brilliant but it is improving. I had my 6-week review for being back on the meds last weekend and definite improvement but not as much as Doctor would have hoped. On the same dosage for another 6 weeks, then another review and we'll take it from there.

Last Saturday was a Raintown gig down in Shoreham by Sea near Brighton. A lovely little venue and a sold out gig - which considering it was their first time playing down on the south coast was bloody amazing! And so many people seeing them for the first time. I had a little reserved sign with my name on the front-row centre seat and I got a little shout-out from Paul at the end of the gig for how much I travel around to see them.

MONDAY I had an interview for a permanent job in Birmingham. The back end of last week, an agency I used to work for called me out of the blue to see what my situation was. We chatted for a while - and apparently, there's a desperate lack of experienced purchase ledger clerks in the West Midlands right now and they wanted to send my details over to this client. I met with the client Monday afternoon (I had the day off anyway) and I got feedback yesterday. They want to see my for a second interview - they're calling back two of the five interviewees and specifically said they want to see me first. AWESOME!

Like I said to both Facilities & Finance bosses; I don't want to leave. I love this job, I love the team, I've worked really hard to build up relationships with my suppliers. But there is currently no opportunity for a permanent position and I would be an idiot to turn down a potential permanent job when it literally came knocking on my door.
I'm not actively looking for another job and if this doesn't work out, I'll keep coming in til they tell me not to.

I think there was something else but I appear to have lost like... an hour and a halfs time somewhere this evening. I started writing this at 18:33, its now 20:12... I'm zoning out quite badly still. ugh.

This is the first of two installments about saved comments from January 2016.  I was traveling during the first two weeks of the month, so I saved my comments on my laptop, then transferred them to my desktop.  Good thing I did; apparently the video card on that has failed.  On the one hand, it confirms my feelings of urgency about posting my saved comments here, as they were driven by anxieties of hardware failure.  On the other, I was hoping the laptop would remain functional longer so that I could post the comments I saved on it.  Sigh.

I'm going to keep my comment on "Link round-up for 3 January 2016" at Infidel 753 above the cut, as it has a wider appeal for my readers here on Dreamwidth than the comments behind the cut.  That's because it's about all three trilogies of the Star Wars saga.

The New Republic is right about the Star Wars saga being a multi-generational tale of a dysfunctional family. However, I wouldn't call it bad parenting, at least in the first two trilogies. I'd call it absentee parenting combined with bad foster parenting (except in the case of Leia; I think the Organas were actually good parents). Obi-Wan screwed up with Anakin and was supplanted by Palpatine, who was even worse. Lars tried, but he wasn't suited to deal with his nephew by marriage, who had the family curse of being destined for greatness.

It wasn't until the current movie that a combination of an unruly child with parenting not up to the task became apparent. Leia, Han, and Luke all tried with Kylo Ren, and all failed. Smoke (sp.?) took over the Palpatine role and ended up being the evil foster parent. Thank you, J.J. Abrams for making crystal clear what George Lucas only implied.

The good news is that the foster parents can redeem themselves. Obi-Wan, with Yoda's help, succeed with Luke where they failed with his father. Anakin himself finally did the right thing by his son, although it took Palpatine doing his best to kill Luke to do it. I wouldn't be surprised if Luke and Leia do the same for Kylo Ren and Rey by the final film of this trilogy. There is a formula to these films, after all.

( Comments from Kunstler's and Greers blogs plus the old Michigan Liberal about energy, the economy, and the election behind the cut. )

"if men were the ones who got pregnant, there'd be abortion clinics on every corner!!"

no, if men were the ones who got pregnant, society would've developed in such a way that they would've had fewer rights for a long time due to extreme protectiveness towards those members of society who are capable of bringing new human beings into the world...

Dear writer or artist! Thank you for offering to create a fanwork for one of my requests. As long as you generally stick with things I like and avoid things I dislike, I will love your story or artwork even if it doesn't take on any of my prompts, which are only suggestions. I am Isis on AO3.

( Some general stuff about my tastes: )

( Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types )

( Alpennia Series - Heather Rose Jones )

( Dragon Age - All Media Types )

( Crossovers: Arya Stark (ASOIAF)/Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon (The Witcher), Éowyn (LoTR)/Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon (The Witcher), Irene (Invisible Library)/Tina Goldstein (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) )

Thank you so much, dear writer or artist! And if you have any questions, please do go through the mods - I promise to answer.

man, i sure would love it if someone designed more coherent-looking evolution lines for the digimon adventure partners. like, "what would their evolution lines look like if they'd been newly introduced for digimon adventure 02, rather being fairly randomly thrown together from the bunch of digimon that were originally invented for the v-pets". i'm not nostalgic enough about the original anime to feel that that's the one and only true way, we could honestly do better than the random shit that is palmon's line...

5. A song that needs to be played LOUD [Let's Dance (InFiction String Remix) by David Bowie]



This is one of my favorite Bowie remixes and I just happen to always listen to it LOUD. Especially around 3:40.

I should probably be doing these when I more fully awake...

(skipping Day 3 until I can think of something that isn't a cop out)

4. A song that reminds you of someone you'd rather forget about [Take Me Anywhere by Tegan and Sara]



This doesn't remind me of someone I want to forget about exactly...it reminds me of a situation with a person that I severely fucked up. That friendship still limps along, but its never been the same and this and a few other songs are like hyperlinks to memories of that situation, so I listen to them rarely.

“The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition.This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.”

A day late here because of browser issues with this site I still don't understand. HTTPS Everywhere wasn't active, because apparently I turned it off without noticing. So I only had HTTPS on some of Dreamwidth, but not the pages I use most; and I don't know why. And my browser would log me out when I came to post here.

I changed my antivirus.

naamahdarling:

the-real-eye-to-see:

Jerry Drake Varnell, 23, of Sayre, Oklahoma, is accused of trying to detonate a 1,000-pound vehicle bomb in downtown Oklahoma City, an attack he wanted to claim with a Facebook message proclaiming that “the time for revolution is now.”

Pretty sure he has “mental issues”, was teased at school and emotionally abused by his parents, who refused to buy him a new gaming system.

I live in Tulsa and remember the OKC bombing very well. How horrifying it was to see the firemen and other rescue workers carrying dead and dying CHILDREN out of the rubble.

So this is really frightening.

I want to point out a couple things though.

From what I understand, the feds were on to this guy, the bomb was fake and thanks to the feds, who DID do their jobs here, there was never any risk to the public. He was under close surveillance all the way and only picked up after he pushed the button he thought would detonate it, so that he can receive the maximum sentence possible.

That said, he didn’t actually blow anything up, and so the crime carries only a five to twenty year sentence, meaning this meth-fueled sack of shit will be back on the streets pretty quickly, so … that’s not great.

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onegirlintheback:

365daysofhalloween:

bundyspooks:

reblogging for the sheer Halloween ambiance of these pics

!!!!

@indigoumbrella

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Thirteen sessions - unlucky for some, I suppose.

We made it out of the caves! Finally.

The "incident" with the warlock and the monk was sort of glossed over, thanks to Modify Memory, and Kaz is choosing to believe the problem is settled. The joys of Chaotic Neutral - if it doesn't directly affect me, it can be safely ignored. The monk player really sold it too, which made for some awesome funny moments.

Anyway, before we started off, Kaz tried to convince the orog with us that the best use of the humans we rescued was to clear the way of traps, but unfortunately I couldn't convince the dwarf cleric so we've still got them hanging around.

It also turned out that we'd been misreading the map in our heads, so the DM set us straight and we followed the path less travelled - and ended up in the cavern with the roper - again. Rather than fight, we decided to sneak past it, which worked fine, until the warlock decided to take a parting shot at it. And that led to a massive fight, with Kaz being pretty awesome and finishing the beast.

(For reference, a roper looks just like a stalactite - right up until you get close and then a horrible mouth opens and tentacles grab you and pull you in).

So we finally found the exit, but the dwarf and I convinced the others that we had to go back to where we fought the dragon - the dwarf wanted to destroy the horn controlling the dragon, and I wanted to save Gundark. We got into the room with the invisible walls, and it looks like someone has been raising the dead again, because the baby blue dragons were back, but now undead clockwork monsters. About midway through the battle with them, the evil gnome illusionist showed up and tried to make things worse for us (and the DM suddenly realised that his NPC build was too strong for us to actually overcome). Funnily, the monk decided that a better option would be to dash out of the room and make a break for the horn to summon the dragon - and that freaked the illusionist out. We all barrelled after them, but when the gnome realised the monk had got to the horn first, she bamfed out, crying that we had ruined everything (seriously, this should be our motto).

Our looting commenced and we discovered that Gundark was dead (sad) but Kaz got back the head of the half-dragon (happy). We still have to get through the desert and continue our journey - this side quest took about two weeks longer than the DM thought it would, and I don't think we're getting paid for any of the stuff we did (EVEN THOUGH KAZ HAS THE ROTTING HEAD AS PROOF).

Fidele (113534 words) by misslucyjane
Chapters: 25/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Additional Tags: Romance Novel, Paranormal, PTSD, Hauntings, Kid Fic, Drug Use
Summary:

A house full of ghosts is no place to fall in love.

Malcolm Carmichael has been coping with his post-war trauma by taking lovers, teaching art to schoolboys, and trying to ignore the ghosts he sees everywhere. At the death of his mother, he realizes he wants more than just to coast on by, and leaves the exclusive school in search of something more.

Caleb Thibodeaux was so traumatized by the death of his parents in a fire that he hasn't spoken a word since. His uncle Noel hires Malcolm to be his tutor, and Malcolm discovers that Caleb is not the only Thibodeaux son with secrets. The plantation house Fidele is beautiful but haunted, and Noel is much the same.

Soon Malcolm is absorbed in protecting Caleb and Noel from threats both living and dead, and in uncovering the story of Fidele.

Read at AO3, or at JennaLynnBrown.com

it is sad to watch The Defenders trailer (I KNOW WHAT I AM DOING TOMORROW, WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF YA'LL MOTHERFUCKERS) and see so many Youtube comments asking who did the original song....

Nightmare Week has rolled well into a second week. The trigger this time....I can't write about it directly, because what more is there to write about it after so many years??? So we will do what writers are best at - we will circle the issue, fortify it with words, drown it with words, and see if it helps.

The question isn't "Do you want to write about this?" The question is "How deep do you want to go?"

And the truth is...not very deep. How many more years can I write about the same thing, saying the same things? Decades, paragraphs, prose and badly writ days, rolling over into nights and weeks where I wake up screaming, again. And again. And again.

For over 25 years now.

I am tired of writing about them. How many more times can I say they are insane? How many more ways can I tell myself that I am strong for having escaped, how many more words can others use to say that I am strong for it? How many more nightmares from just hearing about it do I have to log before the Universe deems I am done with it?

How long do I have to be strong before it is finally over? How long do I have to be separated from it, away from it, before it finally, finally assimilates and my mind no longer finds significance enough to dream about it?

When will I stop being afraid of them, even if that fear is buried so deep that it only comes out in my dreams? When will my terror be considered paid in full?

When will it be enough?

The answer is "When it is enough." And that is not now. As I woke up twice screaming last night, it is not now. I spill nightmares that were shoved into my chest by other hands for 25 years now and it is still not enough.

Vindication is so hollow. I didn't want this, no matter how much I thought I wanted it in my youth. This entry is hollow - I write about how tired I am of it rather than writing the words that sparked the nightmares, hoping it will be enough.

It won't be. But maybe it will be enough to let me sleep tonight. That's all I want.

    

and apparently i had to reach age 31 to successfully raise some brine shrimp (aka sea monkeys) to maturity. i used to get them as a gift with kids' magazines occasionally and they always died a few days after they hatched. who would've thought that the little bastards were actually this picky when it came to water quality? (well, relatively. they don't like hard water, they prefer a slightly alkaline pH, the salt you use can't contain iodine, flouride or anti-caking agents, but on the other hand they apparently don't care that their water is yellow...) and on the other hand they're far less picky when it comes to food than i was led to believe, they'll eat the powdered spirulina that's usually provided as their food, but also anything else that is small enough and remains suspended for a while, like dry yeast or wheat flour.

as i was saying, i'm completing a lot of old projects.

and now i'm considering the fact that i have an empty 10 litre tank i rescued from the trash (no leaks or anything, already checked that) and wondering what i could do with it. the possibilities are either triops or a small group of atlantic ditch shrimp (the species that's usually sold as live fish food). there isn't really anything else that'd be alright with a tank that small. i'd definitely need a filter in either case, though.

"[Kevin Pratt-King] had asked McCain for help after being diagnosed with the same form of aggressive cancer, glioblastoma. Instead of offering aid, according to Roy’s tweet, McCain advised them to move to a different state."

"Social workers began going door to door in San Juan housing projects, explaining that a pill could be taken daily to prevent pregnancy. Once women were told what the pill did, they signed up by the hundreds. However, these women were not informed that they were part of a clinical trial or that the treatment was experimental."

"Side effects [of the vaginal implant] can range from chronic pain and loss of sexual function, to major complications like the implant protruding through the bladder, or bowels, even necessitating removal of organs ensnared in the mesh. It can shrink inside your body, slicing through nerve endings, tissue and organs."

"If someone makes the effort of going to doctor after doctor, and all they are given is a pat on the head and told, 'Oh, sweetie, you'll be OK—you just need to smile more,' that is a failure of the physicians." Article covers both social biases (like doctors assuming a woman's problems are psychosomatic instead of doing tests) and biological ones (like researchers only testing on male mice, leaving them with huge gaps in knowledge regarding biologically female humans).

"The Gay Men’s Chorus posed to illustrate the impact of AIDS. Those dressed in black, with their backs turned, represent those who had died." This 1993 photo is a punch in the heart.

"The military spends five times as much on Viagra as it would on transgender troops’ medical care."

And for something more hopeful:

An experiment, recounted in comic form: If you put rats alone in cages, they'll addict themselves to morphine. If you put them in an enriching environment with a bunch of other rats to hang out with, they'll avoid it.

Gisella Perl, the "Angel of Auschwitz" -- who got that title by providing abortions, so the Nazis wouldn't have pregnant Jewish women to experiment on.

"As what was thought to be the largest referral service in the country, which referred an estimated half million women for abortions in its six years of existence, the [Clergy Consultation Service] had significant market power that it leveraged to reduce the going rate for an abortion." The name isn't a euphemism. It was literally a coalition of Protestant and Jewish religious leaders.

"Intersex advocates are rejoicing at a paper released by three former US Surgeons General. The surgeon-generals called for an end to forced medical surgeries on young intersex people."