The Thessaliad Redux

Kermit pulls a Johnny Cash.

My friend ethangilchrist posted this directly on his journal, but I tend to avoid that on the NSFW principle and size issues.

I may be traumatised by this. I'm not sure, though. It's too early in the morning to tell.

Well, there is some good news for today. cleolinda is back with a vengeance. Or possibly with a vendetta. Well, she did V for Vendetta in 15 Minutes, anyway. Look, forgive the lame-arse attempt at wit; I'm so damn sleep-deprived I missed my mouth with the coffee mug just now. I will wake up, honestly; just five more minutes...

(Incidentally, speaking of V, guido_was_taken reminds me that I loaned out my V for Vendetta graphic novel to nadriel, which was a relief because I could not for the life of me remember who borrowed what (turned out that guido_was_taken had the household Transmetropolitan collection). One of my work colleagues wanted to borrow it, y'see, and I didn't remember that I'd loaned it out. Neither did I know that I wouldn't get it back for a month instead of for a fortnight because of Glasgow-related scheduling conflicts. So now one of my work colleagues still wants to borrow it and I'm not going to have it back for a week and a half but at least I know where it is.

In other news, I got some alternate referee suggestions as a 'to-do' for today. One of them is supposed to be going to a Dr Gordon. Apparently, the universe has a movie theme for me today. However, it does mean that a) I have this sudden bizarre yen to watch Saw again (though we watched it just the other week, I only saw it in snippets because I was working on Sims architecture) and b) I now have the creepy voice and the equally creepy theme music (want the soundtrack. Want. WANT!) stuck in my head.

Waaaaah wanna go home and go back to bed...

I did this chibi avatar thing days ago, but with everybody else posting theirs, I figured I'd redo mine and actually post it this time.

So, here we go: ChibiMe.



dodgyhoodoo says mine is more convincing than his. He should have gone for the emo glasses, IMHO.

Right. Smellies for the Hoodoo, then writing writing writing!

This is the mad season.

Predominantly for weaselbitch: Jin Wicked has finally started selling her rattie hammocks. And she ships overseas.

I have copy typing for the first time in nearly a year. Wow. Not that it's a hard task or anything; it's just been so long...

I don't want to go home. Too much work waiting, plus tired, cranky dodgyhoodoo who I can't lavish with attention because I don't have the time. Which might almost be able to slide out of my head for awhile under the morass of "Too tired but must work" if it weren't for the NaNoWidow stuff. Don't believe he's still doing roast dinner thing when he's as tired and hacked off as I am.

NaNoWriMo is rapidly losing its charms. I don't want to feel bad about this. I don't want to feel perennially knackered, or pressured to let people read the bloody project when they're done, and I really don't want to ignore my boyfriend on and off for a month. Right now, all I really want to do is curl up under the desk and cry. But I suppose it's just fatigue; that tends to fuck with the emotional control.

But I'm not going to curl up under the desk and cry. Frankly, I don't have time. I am going to finish my copy typing, try to get some other work done while I'm here, nap on public transport on the way home to try to get something resembling a second wind, and then get back to work, breaking for dinner at some point. There's not a whole lot else I can do.

I'll be glad when this is over.

Oh, this is just creepy.

In other news, James didn't do a damn thing while I was away. Not. One. Thing. Oh well, at least it's not that bad but seriously, I did kind of want to take a couple of days off next week and now I'm kind of afraid to. Well, I'll see how far I get on the backlog today. I should know by lunchtime if I can go on holiday or not. I'm guessing so, seeing as most of it was piddly stuff anyway (so why couldn't he have just filed a few things? Guess since that's my job now, he doesn't have to. 'Cover' apparently means 'I'll only do it if it's really urgent').

First glimpse of the Metro for two days. The weather has gone intensely screwed, hasn't it? We barely have time to wring the last drop of media interest out of one hurricane before another one comes along and flattens some other part of the world. It makes a nice distraction from, I don't know, weeding out the corruption and incompetence that made the devastation caused by Katrina so much worse than it had to be. And, in fact, every other piece of crap that happens in the media. Oh, people apparently want to see heart-rending tales of people suffering a long way away so that they can put a few quid into a charity somewhere and feel like they're Good People. And don't get me wrong -- they are good people, or at least they're better than the people who don't give at all on some weak-arse premise like "Well, most of the money's not going to the needy people anyway". Because some of it is, and a half a loaf is better than none (though I suppose I can understand not wanting to give money to bureaucrats who couldn't manage money if their lives depended on it). It's a combination of schadenfreude and a ploy to make themselves feel all generous and prosperous.

I want real news. I want to know why the government's still pushing these ID cards when they're expensive, supported by a buggy system and generally useless. I want to know why anti-terrorism laws are being used to keep dissenting but overall peaceful voices out of the Labour party conference and keep pedestrians off cycle paths. I want to know why people are being arrested for wearing T-shirts, be they Cradle of Filth ones (two people on record as having been arrested for wearing these under anti-hate laws) or anti-Blair sentiments. I really want to know why all the money that could be used to promote reduced emissions, better healthcare, better anti-drug campaigning, better education and generally a better standard of living is going to fund that unsanctioned bloodbath in Iraq. I want to know all these things, but no one who really knows will tell me. Why? Because they're ashamed of the answers, probably.

I want the answers anyway. I want, just for once, for these people who run our world to own up to what they're doing. I want them to be held accountable. I want them to either stand up and give the people valid reasons for what they're doing -- ones that are open to debate, thank you -- or I want them to admit that what they're doing is wrong. Even if they still refuse to back down from the idiotic mess they're making of society as a whole, the very least they could do is admit to us why they won't do the right thing. People have a right to answers like this.

Yet they don't think they do, because the people in charge tell them that they don't have the right to those answers. We don't have constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech (though fat lot of good it's doing the Americans); the only place we have a voice is in the polling booth, and what happens after we get out of it and discover that we have been lied to? Do we rise up righteous and demand to know why the hell we were lied to? Do we use the mouths and brains we were born with to pry the truth out of these eejits so that we can make an informed decision about who runs our country? Do we take down the lying, warmongering, borderline dictatorial regimes and replace them with someone who will, at the very least, not lie, cheat and backstab at every opportunity without giving some kind of reason?

No. Instead, the vast majority of us accept that our news is going to forever consist of natural disaster coverage, the occasional blurb about the horrible things terrorists are doing and celebrity gossip like Sarah Jessica Parker allowing her wardrobe to be held hostage by her four-year-old Beatles-obsessed entitlement brat. Oh, and sport. Can't forget the sport. Bah fucking humbug to the news. There need to be more Spider Jerusalems on newspapers.

Right. Have ranted. Feel better. Back to work.

From the desk of yuki_onna comes this helpful little first-thing-in-the-morning post: Thirty-two Statements About Writing. She is fabulousness personified, and makes some good points.

Must actually do the goddamn writing. I set myself up a little Excel sheet with all the half-finished projects I've got, and it's shameful, really. Of course, a couple of those aren't strictly speaking writing projects, but they are projects of a creative nature and they do belong there. The ones that are strictly speaking writing projects, I'd like to submit something else to TTA before the summer months.

So it's my last day at work, then home briefly, then Angel. I should probably stuff some of those writing projects I've been talking about onto a disc and take them to last day of work with me so I can actually do something about the total lack of work I've got done during my last day of "there's never enough work to keep me busy but I can't go home because someone's gonna need me".

I am in such a crappy mood.

Because I know he only reads metaquotes over my shoulder, here's a link for dodgyhoodoo. I'm trusting he's at least seen Mary Poppins...

Trying another agency, this one focusing on the medical side. It looks like I'm stuck with med sec until judgement trump. That's kind of depressing, when you think about it.

Sentaku. Lots and lots of sentaku. I'd like to get everything clean before the packing. I figure today I can pack the sourcebooks and the like. Maybe weed out all that crap on my end table. But for the time being I'm just waiting for the first load of laundry to finish up, watching "Conversations with Dead People" and downloading Sims stuff. Ugh. I need a life.

The Committee to Protect Bloggers declares this to be Free Mojtaba and Arash Day. These two men were apparently arrested by the Iranian government for what they put on their blogs. (Intense oversimplification, but hell, if you want details, read all about it.)

The site says that free speech isn't a cultural or partisan issue. I think what they meant was that it shouldn't be. I used to get into arguments with my mother's SO all the time about whether we had any inalienable human rights at all. He claimed we didn't; only privileges the government gives us. According to him, if the government decides that we should not be allowed to speak, we should accept that.

I think anyone who knows me will know how much of a crock of shit I think that is. I'm with Voltaire on this one; I may not agree with what you say (hell, in the case of the Iranian gentlemen, I might not even be able to read it), but I will defend to the death your right to say it. After all, I'd expect the same to be done for me, and I'm a Golden Rule kind of girl.

Of course, that kind of thing does cause its own sets of problems. What about the people who use their rights to free speech to spread hatred, bigotry, antisemitism and terrorist sympathies? Should hatemongers be accorded the same rights as the rest of us when their messages are so detrimental?

In my opinion, yes they should. Because we have the right to talk back.

Good ways to start your morning: Tiramisu & coffee.

(I said 'good'. Note I did not say 'healthy'.)

Disturbing ways to start your morning: 'Erotic' Smurfette. Also, Papa Smurf gets a rim-job.

Some people have too much Flash ability and way too much time on their hands.