thessalian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thessalian) wrote2011-10-08 01:05 pm
thessalian) wrote2011-10-08 01:05 pm
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This Post Brought To You By The Letter...
It's been awhile since I did memeage, so a doff of the hat to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kelemvor for providing me with one. The idea is, comment to say that you want to take part, and I'll give you a letter. Then you post 10 things (±5) that you like beginning with that letter. I received the letter J, so here we go:
Janet: Let's start simple, with ... my name. I am not a terrific fan of my name, but I guess I've got used to it. Plus there's a bit of a funny story connected to it. Yes, with a derivative of one of the most common female names in the Western hemisphere. See, when my mother got pregnant with me, my dad was adamant - I was going to be a girl, and I was going to have blue eyes; blue eyes because all his kids had blue eyes, and a girl so that he'd have four of each (from three marriages; Mum was wife number three ... eventually. But that's a different story).
Anyway, this meant that he would not in the least consider boys' names. (I often wonder what would have happened if I had turned out to be a boy. Anyway.) You'd think that'd narrow it down, but it didn't stop the arguments. My mother had just about caught the tail end of the hippie era as a kid, and wanted vaguely hippie names - Dawn, Joy, Crystal, stuff like that. Dad hated all of those (Joy predominantly because that was his sister's name and the rule was once that you don't name kids after family members unless the family members in question are dead) and wanted Nadine. *shudder* Mum hated the name about as much as I do so she just kept chucking names out, and Dad kept saying no to all of them. She finally, in all due exasperation, got to, "Janet!"
The response: "...Maybe."
Since they couldn't come up with anything better ... my name was a 'maybe' last resort because my parents couldn't agree on anything. So technically, the name I got is a perfect example of why they got divorced.
Jobs: I ... have not had good luck with jobs. It's not that I'm not good at these jobs when I get them; generally, it seems to be that the jobs aren't good to me - worse than the average, I mean, because I know all jobs pretty much seem to suck. Most of my work has been NHS, and I've had to leave those (all but the one I'm in, which is probably saying something given how long I've worked there now) for such various reasons as 'the office manager has it in for me and is accusing me of things I did not do and could not have done to human resources', 'they're making me type letters in a darkened X-ray reporting room all day every day - thus sparking off the mother of all migraines to which they all know I am prone - refuse to move me to a better set-up and then threaten me when I mention going to occupational health over the problem', and 'they've damn near crippled me with an ergonomic nightmare of a desk chair and will not under any circumstances whatsoever give me a new one'. Outside the NHS, there was the little medical publication I used to work at as an editorial assistant until they got bought out by a larger company and replaced me with a computer. There were two separate stints with a medicolegal firm that ended because they kept hiring temps they didn't need (if I'd known where I was going the second time around, I'd have asked them to find me somewhere else). There was the contractor firm that hired a PA when they needed an office junior, because the other PA would not give me any work at all bar little stupid diddy bits of nothing. None of these have been strictly speaking my fault, but the fact that the fault didn't rest with me didn't make quitting any more necessary to save my physical and mental health in the cases where I quit, or didn't make me any less made redundant (with no redundancy pay because I hadn't been in any of those jobs long enough to get it - clever little shits, no?) so it's still a bummer.
Y'know, looking back at it? I guess my current job doesn't seem so bad after all.
JusNoctis: The fourth World of Darkness online RP site I ever got involved in. The first that, when it ended, didn't end because of unseemly drama or that I didn't leave because it sucked. My first stint as a ST (andmitchy still giggles over my posts going from "They did WHAT to the XP?" to ".......I'm a ST now, apparently.") Run by the inestimable mitchy, the site was awesome while it lasted, and it's one of the ones I remember most fondly. I made some great friends, had some great RP and I regret nothiiiiiiiing. Not even the many, many times that I ended up staying up waaaaaaaaaaay too late so that I could play something or run something for people in the North American time zones.
Jove: The platform upon which most WoD RPs are run these days, it seems. Coded by the inestimablelithiumdoll, it kicks the arse of SeAChat or whatever it's called - the one that was running on the Charleston site, anyway. Way easier to keep logs on, anyway, and while there are occasionally refresh issues, you take the bad with the good (and half the time it's probably my connection being a pain anyway). Still need to talk to lithiumdoll about that, as I have finally come up with the WoD setting I want to run with when I start my own site, but she's busy so it can wait.
J'aime Lire: For those of you who don't know French, it means "I love to read". No, I am not cheating (although J is a bitch of a letter for stuff I can actually post about); this was a programme that ran every year in my school in Montreal. It was supposed to promote reading and I don't entirely remember what-all it involved - something about stickers when you'd finished a book comes to mind - but I do remember that I more or less ignored it and still ended up reading more than anyone else in school. This probably surprises no one.
Jewellery: I don't wear much of it, despite the two holes in each ear. I think it's awfully pretty but generally speaking, I hop out of bed, into some clothes and out of the house so fast that things like putting on jewellery just takes up time I could be spending in bed. I do have a silver-and-moonstone pendant that I've been wearing continually (bar one trip to the hospital where they wouldn't let me keep it and a couple of spa massages) for the last eleven years or so. I'd feel really wrong if I stopped wearing it now, I imagine.
Judo: I tried it once when I was a kid, but I had (and probably still have) some contact issues and being grappled by people I didn't know was a recipe for all-out cringeing. Seriously, I still have a problem with colleagues patting me on the arm when uninvited (my friendly French co-admin has taken to doing that; I let her because I'm fond of her and don't want to bite her head off but it still makes me cringe), and it wasn't any better when I was a kid - probably worse, given butt-loads of therapy. So I quit after the first day. I'd have been better off with tae kwon do, probably.
Jim Butcher: One of my favourite authors, for the Dresden Files (I only skimmed the first Codex Alera book but didn't find anything to grab me so it went back on the shelf). There's been a lot of controversy over him recently, mostly to do with his reported misogyny, sexism, racism and general misunderstanding of Chicago's geography. Which I don't entirely get; I mean, yes, Harry Dresden as a character is one of those guys who will always go to the aid of a 'damsel in distress' - even when that damsel isn't necessarily in distress and he knows she isn't and he also knows that he's probably having that part of his personality used against him. And yes, he talks about areas with 'gang colours flying'. I don't see where this has anything to do with Jim Butcher's views on things. Of course, if the people complaining read past the first book, they might understand a bit more where that stuff in Harry's personality came from; he was raised from a young age by a complete bastard, and in his teen years by an old party in the middle of Arkansas farmland. Ebenezar McCoy, Harry's second (and, in my view, best, Blackstaff notwithstanding) mentor was likely at least a hundred years old when he started teaching Harry, and who knows how old Justin DuMorne was? As to protecting women? Think about what happened to Elaine, his first love. You're seriously telling me that such a thing when combined with Ebenezar's teachings wouldn't bring up a chivalry impulse too deep to eradicate? As to the 'gang colours' thing ... y'know, Harry wasn't born in that city. Everything we're told about his background indicates that he spent a lot of his life in small towns and farmlands. People have a hard time getting used to things and do tend to take a blanket view. The point of this rant is that while sometimes the bare-bones ideology of a writer shines through in his work and makes it kind of ... uncomfortable to read, the protagonist's views are either subverted straight to hell and back (hello, teeny tiny blonde Murphy who could kick your arse six different ways) or so much background information that it only really matters if you let it. Which doesn't speak to me of author prejudice at all.
Jonesing: Slang term for craving. Things for which I am currently jonesing: True Blood S5 (not 'til June 2012 AAAAAAAAAAAGH), Eureka S5 (not even sure when that one's coming out), Sims 3 Pets (two weeks), coffee (not until I go shopping and get some sugar in the house).
Jill: I don't talk to her often enough, but I still consider her one of my best friends ever. Miss you, girl. Really need to get to New York sometime.
Right. I've wasted enough time. I really need to throw some clothes on and go shopping. Well, really I just need to throw some more clothes on; it's got nippy, which is good but probably not great for sitting around in one's nightshirt with the window open. Then I can settle in the house and just not leave until work on Monday. WOO!
kelemvor for providing me with one. The idea is, comment to say that you want to take part, and I'll give you a letter. Then you post 10 things (±5) that you like beginning with that letter. I received the letter J, so here we go:Janet: Let's start simple, with ... my name. I am not a terrific fan of my name, but I guess I've got used to it. Plus there's a bit of a funny story connected to it. Yes, with a derivative of one of the most common female names in the Western hemisphere. See, when my mother got pregnant with me, my dad was adamant - I was going to be a girl, and I was going to have blue eyes; blue eyes because all his kids had blue eyes, and a girl so that he'd have four of each (from three marriages; Mum was wife number three ... eventually. But that's a different story).
Anyway, this meant that he would not in the least consider boys' names. (I often wonder what would have happened if I had turned out to be a boy. Anyway.) You'd think that'd narrow it down, but it didn't stop the arguments. My mother had just about caught the tail end of the hippie era as a kid, and wanted vaguely hippie names - Dawn, Joy, Crystal, stuff like that. Dad hated all of those (Joy predominantly because that was his sister's name and the rule was once that you don't name kids after family members unless the family members in question are dead) and wanted Nadine. *shudder* Mum hated the name about as much as I do so she just kept chucking names out, and Dad kept saying no to all of them. She finally, in all due exasperation, got to, "Janet!"
The response: "...Maybe."
Since they couldn't come up with anything better ... my name was a 'maybe' last resort because my parents couldn't agree on anything. So technically, the name I got is a perfect example of why they got divorced.
Jobs: I ... have not had good luck with jobs. It's not that I'm not good at these jobs when I get them; generally, it seems to be that the jobs aren't good to me - worse than the average, I mean, because I know all jobs pretty much seem to suck. Most of my work has been NHS, and I've had to leave those (all but the one I'm in, which is probably saying something given how long I've worked there now) for such various reasons as 'the office manager has it in for me and is accusing me of things I did not do and could not have done to human resources', 'they're making me type letters in a darkened X-ray reporting room all day every day - thus sparking off the mother of all migraines to which they all know I am prone - refuse to move me to a better set-up and then threaten me when I mention going to occupational health over the problem', and 'they've damn near crippled me with an ergonomic nightmare of a desk chair and will not under any circumstances whatsoever give me a new one'. Outside the NHS, there was the little medical publication I used to work at as an editorial assistant until they got bought out by a larger company and replaced me with a computer. There were two separate stints with a medicolegal firm that ended because they kept hiring temps they didn't need (if I'd known where I was going the second time around, I'd have asked them to find me somewhere else). There was the contractor firm that hired a PA when they needed an office junior, because the other PA would not give me any work at all bar little stupid diddy bits of nothing. None of these have been strictly speaking my fault, but the fact that the fault didn't rest with me didn't make quitting any more necessary to save my physical and mental health in the cases where I quit, or didn't make me any less made redundant (with no redundancy pay because I hadn't been in any of those jobs long enough to get it - clever little shits, no?) so it's still a bummer.
Y'know, looking back at it? I guess my current job doesn't seem so bad after all.
JusNoctis: The fourth World of Darkness online RP site I ever got involved in. The first that, when it ended, didn't end because of unseemly drama or that I didn't leave because it sucked. My first stint as a ST (and
mitchy still giggles over my posts going from "They did WHAT to the XP?" to ".......I'm a ST now, apparently.") Run by the inestimable mitchy, the site was awesome while it lasted, and it's one of the ones I remember most fondly. I made some great friends, had some great RP and I regret nothiiiiiiiing. Not even the many, many times that I ended up staying up waaaaaaaaaaay too late so that I could play something or run something for people in the North American time zones.Jove: The platform upon which most WoD RPs are run these days, it seems. Coded by the inestimable
lithiumdoll, it kicks the arse of SeAChat or whatever it's called - the one that was running on the Charleston site, anyway. Way easier to keep logs on, anyway, and while there are occasionally refresh issues, you take the bad with the good (and half the time it's probably my connection being a pain anyway). Still need to talk to lithiumdoll about that, as I have finally come up with the WoD setting I want to run with when I start my own site, but she's busy so it can wait.J'aime Lire: For those of you who don't know French, it means "I love to read". No, I am not cheating (although J is a bitch of a letter for stuff I can actually post about); this was a programme that ran every year in my school in Montreal. It was supposed to promote reading and I don't entirely remember what-all it involved - something about stickers when you'd finished a book comes to mind - but I do remember that I more or less ignored it and still ended up reading more than anyone else in school. This probably surprises no one.
Jewellery: I don't wear much of it, despite the two holes in each ear. I think it's awfully pretty but generally speaking, I hop out of bed, into some clothes and out of the house so fast that things like putting on jewellery just takes up time I could be spending in bed. I do have a silver-and-moonstone pendant that I've been wearing continually (bar one trip to the hospital where they wouldn't let me keep it and a couple of spa massages) for the last eleven years or so. I'd feel really wrong if I stopped wearing it now, I imagine.
Judo: I tried it once when I was a kid, but I had (and probably still have) some contact issues and being grappled by people I didn't know was a recipe for all-out cringeing. Seriously, I still have a problem with colleagues patting me on the arm when uninvited (my friendly French co-admin has taken to doing that; I let her because I'm fond of her and don't want to bite her head off but it still makes me cringe), and it wasn't any better when I was a kid - probably worse, given butt-loads of therapy. So I quit after the first day. I'd have been better off with tae kwon do, probably.
Jim Butcher: One of my favourite authors, for the Dresden Files (I only skimmed the first Codex Alera book but didn't find anything to grab me so it went back on the shelf). There's been a lot of controversy over him recently, mostly to do with his reported misogyny, sexism, racism and general misunderstanding of Chicago's geography. Which I don't entirely get; I mean, yes, Harry Dresden as a character is one of those guys who will always go to the aid of a 'damsel in distress' - even when that damsel isn't necessarily in distress and he knows she isn't and he also knows that he's probably having that part of his personality used against him. And yes, he talks about areas with 'gang colours flying'. I don't see where this has anything to do with Jim Butcher's views on things. Of course, if the people complaining read past the first book, they might understand a bit more where that stuff in Harry's personality came from; he was raised from a young age by a complete bastard, and in his teen years by an old party in the middle of Arkansas farmland. Ebenezar McCoy, Harry's second (and, in my view, best, Blackstaff notwithstanding) mentor was likely at least a hundred years old when he started teaching Harry, and who knows how old Justin DuMorne was? As to protecting women? Think about what happened to Elaine, his first love. You're seriously telling me that such a thing when combined with Ebenezar's teachings wouldn't bring up a chivalry impulse too deep to eradicate? As to the 'gang colours' thing ... y'know, Harry wasn't born in that city. Everything we're told about his background indicates that he spent a lot of his life in small towns and farmlands. People have a hard time getting used to things and do tend to take a blanket view. The point of this rant is that while sometimes the bare-bones ideology of a writer shines through in his work and makes it kind of ... uncomfortable to read, the protagonist's views are either subverted straight to hell and back (hello, teeny tiny blonde Murphy who could kick your arse six different ways) or so much background information that it only really matters if you let it. Which doesn't speak to me of author prejudice at all.
Jonesing: Slang term for craving. Things for which I am currently jonesing: True Blood S5 (not 'til June 2012 AAAAAAAAAAAGH), Eureka S5 (not even sure when that one's coming out), Sims 3 Pets (two weeks), coffee (not until I go shopping and get some sugar in the house).
Jill: I don't talk to her often enough, but I still consider her one of my best friends ever. Miss you, girl. Really need to get to New York sometime.
Right. I've wasted enough time. I really need to throw some clothes on and go shopping. Well, really I just need to throw some more clothes on; it's got nippy, which is good but probably not great for sitting around in one's nightshirt with the window open. Then I can settle in the house and just not leave until work on Monday. WOO!