River of Illusions

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:03:36 GMT

No one saw fit to tell me that HRH Princess Tinkerbell fell of a roof and broke himself.

TINKERBERLL I MADE YOU AN ART GET BETTER SOON OK

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:51:37 GMT

The big problem with the Elder Scrolls is that if you leave it for a while and then try to come back, it can be nigh impossible to figure out what the fuck you were doing last time you played. So I uninstalled that solely on the basis that I shouldn't spend longer trying to figure out what I was doing last time I played than the total play time so far, which was a thing that happened.

It's a kind of computery springclean, I guess.

Yesterday's post was a bit abrupt, wasn't it. I was going to waffle more about whatever, like how "Instant Queue" sounds like it should be a playlist but is actually just a bookmark list, but then heartburn from a nasty pasta sachet, so I just posted what I'd already written and tried to sleep on my left side.

I don't think this is me coming back to LJ in any serious way.

To my sweet lovely strangerfriend who sent the wonderful note earlier in the week, I hope you got my reply. It was all nice things, to say thank you with love. I was actually thinking of making a backup of this blog and deleting it and moving on, but you may have changed my mind.

"It's all good things, wrapped in pastry and baked, then thrown on the floor. That's the recipe."

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:03:25 GMT

I made an amazing pie last night and dropped it getting out of the oven, so the dog got it and I ate a burger patty. Then I set my mind to finishing a bunch of games I bought on Steam that have been taking up hard drive space, so in about the last 24 hours, I finished Blueberry Garden, Machinarium, and Cthulhu Saves The World. I probably would have made it through another by now but there's a bug with the save files for Machinarium, so I had to start from scratch twice, once because didn't realise I was affected by the bug (despite my save from last play being lost) and saved my game for sleeping reasons, and again when the damn thing froze up, which naturally caused me to develop a kind of spiteful determination to finish it and then uninstall it with rage, as quickly as possible.

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:05:34 GMT

I'm moving to Kilkenny in the Summer, when the lease on the Zooniverse expires. I haven't been to Kilkenny, but it looks beautiful on Google Maps, and the important thing is it's not out of range of work, so I can keep my current job (which is actually really excellent, with benefits and prospects and security and all those grownup things) whilst studying.

Hence, today I started looking at flats and apartments close to where the course is, so I don't have to buy a car somehow before September--though I do need to get my license before June, which is when they change the rules and make it harder, and if the rules were that *now* I wouldn't mind, but I'd rather do it while it's easier, because I can. Anyway, the lease is up in June, so I don't have to actually find a place for a while yet, but I'm trying to get an idea of what the rent is like and figure out areas I'd like/can afford to live in.

Work have started encouraging me to persuade them to give me more money, which is a damn good quality for an employer to have. My perception of their reputation as an employer was undeserved, they are ace to work for. I don't want to stay in customer service forever, but they're already asking me about what kind of areas I would like to move into within the company. So yay corporate job, also yay medical insurance. I don't actually know how that works, but since I now live in a country where I basically need it due to the somewhat perfunctory (but at least extant) state of public health care, I don't want to give it up.

I was planning to get my broken teefs fix'd soon, but I guess now I have to pay for driving lessons and save for moving, so that can wait. At least there's no course fees, assuming that I get into the jewelry and goldsmithing course. If I don't, which I suppose I have to accept as a possibility, I am going to do Dick Smith's special effects course and work on my jewelry portfolio for another 2 years. Truly, I don't believe they are so completely different.

Everything is contingencies. Always.

The evil direness that is Being Me In January has manifested itself very mildly. Mostly difficulty sleeping, lack of interest in most foods, and a short temper. Also reduced spoons, but that's probably due to the food/sleep thing as much as anything else. The quietest and nicest January-In-My-Head that I can remember.

This is for unknownbinaries and wolven, for Joker to find his way:

Biter and Beater!

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:43:58 GMT

She logs into LJ! You know why she logs into LJ? Because she just saw the Hobbit and wants to pontificate like a wanker about it.

I'll do the bad first. Of course there was bad, you didn't think there wouldn't be bad, did you?

As I pointed out to someone at work who called out "no spoilers please, I haven't seen it yet!" during a conversation largely between the people who saw it the instant it came out, the whole of LoTR is spoilers for the Hobbit, so no spoiler-cut for you.

A tiny formatting issue, to begin with. I missed the reasonable-time-of-the-afternoon 2D screening, and with it being somewhat a rather long film I declined to begin watching it at nearly 9pm for the sake of seeing it all flat and normal, so I went to the mid-afternoon 3D screening. On some level I naively thought "it won't be *that* bad, 3D is so ubiquitous now, surely they're getting over that whole gimmick of *throwing shit at your head every few minutes to remind you that hey, just in case the depth of field wasn't totally unmistakable and you forgot, it's in 3D!* Right?" No. This is not the case. Peter Jackson, I have forgiven much when it comes to these films, but dude, YOU THREW A BURNING PINECONE AT MY FUCKING HEAD. Not cool.

That aside, unfortunately the film hangs on a dismal line where one could remove oneself from ones expectations of what it should be if it didn't keep reminding one of them exactly enough to dissappoint one. From the outset it was pretty much a steep slope of this is all out of order, pretty sure that's not how it happened in the book, pretty sure that wasn't in the book at all, CHRISTOPHER LEE WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, with exactly enough lines of dialogue lifted directly from the text to seem less like attempts to stick to the text than aggressive and deliberate reminders of all the ways this isn't that. There was actually a moment where Cate Blanchett vanished into thin air (Elves can do that now) and I almost stood up and yelled "WHAT THE FUCK WAS ALL THAT?" and I am not even exaggerating.

Christopher Lee and Cate Blanchett were, as ever, perfect, which I think lends some dignity to their completely unexpected and inappropriate appearance.

So this is to be three films, of which fact I confess I was unaware until chatting with the nice boy at the cafe afterwards. I went in thinking it would be one, and left thinking it was to be two. Now, the first ends at the Eagles' eyrie, in sight of the Lonely Mountain. If you've read the book, you can probably understand why I might assume that it would be two, particularly given the amount of extra stuff that was added to fatten that not-quite-half-of-the-story out to 3 freaking hours, largely without developing most of the major characters. But that's not the great unwholesome WTF of it. PJ & Co. have filleted a whole lot of stuff that was in the Hobbit, in order to add in a whole lot of stuff that was in the others or in none at all. Of the entire 'verse, the one book that can most successfully stand on its own, without sequelling or footnoting from the Silmarillion, this is where it is deemed pertinent to shove an omlette of footnotes and retcon.

This is not pertinent, Messrs. Jackson and Del Toro. This shat me, and as representatives of the LoTR fandom go I am a very, very casual example. And why, instead of making the three really long books that could endure footnoting into, say, two films each, did you decide to make the one reasonably short book that stands alone into three?

Then we have the dwarves. They could have been a little more dignified, don't you think? Maybe a little less constantly slapstick? Thorin was the only one who really had any sense of gravity to him, and given that it doesn't matter how many times I revisit the Hobbit I spend the first half hating him because he is such a sour dude (which actually makes everything more tragic in a weird way) I hope it would be impossible to make him into the kind of buffoonish figure the other twelve were here reduced to.

Almost lastly, the dialogue. Up its jaxie? Really? This is consistent with which particular representation of the character and attitude of Tolkien's dwarves, exactly? And that goblin king death scene, what was with that? That was more Meet the Feebles than Middle Earth, seriously.

Lastly, there's this tiny issue where the titular character should be getting a teeny bit more screentime. There's all these lengthy, meandering diversions where you end up mildly surprised to see him at all, so far removed do we become from his telling of the tale. Like, I came to see the Hobbit, you can't imagine the amount of fucks I don't give about all this other stuff.

And now the good. I wish I had more good things to say about it, but right now I am not in a forgiving mood.

Elrond was, still, of course, perfect, even if his actual part in the story so far was mangled. I confess that my very first impression of that particular casting choice, all those years ago, was not favourable, but Hugo Weaving is utterly Elrond.

Gandalf, too, was still perfect, but of course from the moment I saw the first picture of Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf there was never any doubting it. Gandalf is a little less himself in this than he was in LoTR, which I suppose is consistent with canon, so he's more grandfatherly and softer.

Fili reminded me a whole lot of Bear, which was sweet and made me almost homesick. Not quite, though. Can't look at Kili and not see Mitch though.

Martin Freeman makes a splendid Bilbo. I knew from watching Sherlock that he'd be good, but he was so perfectly, adorably disoriented and uncomfortable. Maybe a little too much so, at points, because Bilbo does gradually get the hang of the gig.

The rendition of "Far Over the Misty Mountains..." was breathtaking. Abridged, but magnificent. It gave me chills.

The three named swords of the tale, Orcrist, Glamdring, and Sting, are beautiful. As weapon-porn goes, or indeed prop-porn in general, it's all gorgeousness all the time.

Rivendell in 3D is almost worth the price of admission. Oh, and it's perfect. That's a thing that Peter Jackson's entire treatment of Middle Earth gets right on target every time, the world itself. So very very perfect.

I am of course going to see the other two films as they come out, and I shall probably bitch about them a lot because a hot mess will continue to be made, but I'm looking forward to Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug, Lee Pace as Thranduil, several other bits of casting, and all the eyecandy landscapes.

Anyway, here's a gif set because reasons:

I think I would have been less annoyed if I had gone into it expecting The Gigantic Prelude To The Existing (And Also Gigantic) Films rather than an adaptation of The Hobbit as such. Because it is the former thing, not the latter, and as the former thing goes it is perfectly magnificent and wondrous. As goes the latter, which I frankly should have known better than to expect, it's a complete hatchet-job.

Now I need to go and find the Nicol Williamson reading to make myself feel better about all this. Oh look, here it is on YouTube.

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 02:58:42 GMT

Another drawing:

Mask.

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 02:09:13 GMT

Another drawing:

Bubblecat.

I am SO fucking high on Sharpie fumes right now.

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:49:43 GMT

Another drawing:

This is all going somewhere.

Also, I posted a story for All Hallows Read. It was one I wasn't planning to trunk, but as it happened, it was really hard to find a market for it. The responses were all "I love it but it's (too weird, not Weird enough, too read-aloud-y, not scary enough, etc)", it was just a bit awkward. So it goes. It's there if you'd like to read it.

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:35:34 GMT

I don't have anything in mind to post about, so here's a drawing:

I'm ok.

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 22:02:42 GMT

Perfectly, uncomplictedly, nice days are a rare blessing. I had one today.

A while ago I sent a message to Neil Gaiman, thanking him for the advice in that speech he did for those art students that time, and told him if it had come from a remote authority figure instead of a friendly man whose wife has always been kind to me, it wouldn't have been so reassuring and stuff, and then yesterday I finished and finally posted a long-winded tumblr post about all that, and messaged him to tell him about it.

When I woke up this morning, there was a reply from Neil Gaiman in my inbox.

And I burst into tears.

As Tiger Girl said when I told her, I pretty much never want to sleep again, because it will mean waking up not being told by Neil Gaiman that he is proud of me.

I checked my RB and had sold another shirt, which pushed my balance over a certain threshold I've decided is a Cigarette Victory. I scaled the victories, so a Jam Victory was the smallest threshold, because jam is fairly inexpensive and lasts a long time, and I think maybe the highest threshold was like retire on an empire of t-shirts or something. Actually, come to think of it, this might be the next rung down from Cigarette Victory, but in any case, the point is, I gained the next rung on my Eshirtladder or whatever.

Then I made pancakes for everyone, and we all had a nice pancake breakfast with laughter and happiness.

Then I did the weekly wrap for the Shirt Derby, and had a nap. When I woke up, I kept looking at origami diagrams and papers and such, and the sun went down, and out of the darkness Tiger Girl appeared with some really nice (expensive) white pudding that her parents gave her (they visited on Friday, I had to clean my room and they're not even my parents), with toast, because I hadn't ever tried white pudding, and that was really good. After I took my plate downstairs, I went for a rummage to find my tobacco, and found some cigarettes I'd not realised I had.

When I shouted OH. MY. GOD. because that was pretty much the tipping point of today is so good I have to shout about it, Tiger Girl called out to see if I was ok. So we went and had a cup of tea together.

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 22:35:29 GMT

I've been getting an unprecedented amount of shitty LJ spam so I'm shutting down anon commenting for a while. Though really, I only had the one occasional anon commenting friend of non-lj ownership, and he's not said anything here for months. So it's not a big rude thing or anything.

Homestuck A6I2, I was SO CERTAIN they were gonna hatesmooch, you guys have no idea. I'm almost up to now, more or less, and I'm dragging my feet because of the whole erratic update thing.

Feels like about a decade since I caught up with random_thots.

I'm four days behind on shirts, because even though work hasn't been particularly difficult, integrating work into my life has been kind of this big thing. Right now would be the stupidest time to abandon the shirt project, sales are ticking steadily and I can't afford to lose that momentum if I want to gain anything lasting.

I had all this other stuff to say but then I was startled by a large and hasty spider, which I had to ask Third Zoomate Etc to evict. It wasn't OMFG IS THAT A TRACTOR large like the huntsmans (huntsmen?) in Nambour, but large and hasty enough for me to require a certain amount of rescuing from.

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:05:42 GMT

I spent the WHOLE day up to my eyes in Amazonian legalese and some kind of stumpfucking retarded third party background checking system that's broken, as in doesn't work, as in spits out some error codes and demands I phone America any time I try to do anything at all, and I'm like...

No.

Couldn't if I wanted to. And I don't. If a company wants me to enter all kinds of sensitive personal data into a webform so they can snoop on me and tell my employer that I've never been arrested, I really don't think the expense of international dialling should fall to me when said technological marvel fails to function.

So at around 10:30-11ish I dragged my laptop back up to my room, tidied some, stuck the photo of my Mum that ghymoreids_mum sneaked into my bag, and also the Cat Madonna card she gave me, on the wall, and read a bit more homestuck.

Do you see where "did art" appears in that description of my day? Or maybe "wrote some"? I actually feel very much like I got nothing done, at all, today. And as it's nearly 2am, I'm fairly confident I shall get no more done before I sleep.

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:28:29 GMT

I've more or less redirected all my blogging spoons to tumblr.
http://boneidlehands.tumblr.com/ is where the art goes, and http://jellyfishdirigible.tumblr.com/ is where the other stuff goes, all the things I reblog from other people and whatever. This is still my journal of journal stuff, but post volume can be expected to remain pretty low. Tumblr is good for the stuff that it's good for, and LJ is not so good for that stuff, and that's why that stuff is there and this stuff is here.

So now I'm alternating days, with the shirt derby. Today is an originalish content day. Yesterday and tomorrow, fandom & pop culture. Wednesday, original content. And so on. I'm not making it a hard-and-fast Rule, but it helps keep the flow of stuff steady. Sales are picking up pace, hopefully a decent snowball will ensue.

I had a nice dream that Amanda Palmer retweeted one of my designs and I woke up to find 120 euro in my RB account, and then I actually woke up and was disappointed. Then the internet went out for a few hours. The day made a good recovery, though, as money from my mum had cleared into my bank account by the time the internet was restored, and now I have cigarettes.

When I went to get them, there were these Aero biscuit things marked down, so I grabbed a packet, despite the fact that I had them once before and described them as "little individually wrapped fingers of disappointment", possibly because there's a golden ticket promotion running and my packet was not a winner. The point of this is that I took two out of the pack, and ate one, and it tasted of letdown, and the second is just sitting here and I don't much want to eat it. Which I think is good, for both my health and my budget.

As it turns out, new job pays on a monthly basis. Kind of annoying, but I'll learn to cope. I've been anxious as a very anxious girl can be for days, about starting with them. I've had way too long to think about it, and just not thinking about it isn't enough to stop the anxiety from happening. So that's all kinds of horrible.

However, tesco do these chicken, bacon and leek pies, I got two on excellent markdown last shop, and I'm having the last one for dinner tonight. They are AMAZING. At full price they're a bit of a spendy luxury, but I will never not buy ALL OF THEM when I see them on markdown. Unless I go veg again, in which case I suppose I will not buy them at all.

THE MOON UNDER WATER by Kali Black

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 22:01:57 GMT

The bathwater is the milky colour of moonstone. The tap drips slowly and Ashcan Mary catches the droplets on her toes. Water swirls between long fingers, steam crawls over long legs. She rubs a warm, moist cloth over her face and body, sinks deeper into the bath, tilts her head back to gaze at the cracks and grey mildew patterning the walls and ceiling. There she rests, uneasy, the water slowly cooling. There is a soft

...click...

from the stairwell, almost inaudible but she's heard it and she rises, reaching not for the towel draped over the radiator but the long knife resting in its folds. Naked she steps through the shattered door, into the dark stairwell, down the filthy stairs. Naked she steps through the shattered door, into the dark outside world. Her wet skin prickles in the cold air, her breath billows pale.

The deep winter night is broken into chaotic chiaroscuro fragments by a circle of bright white streetlights, piercing white, visible beyond the rooftops. Their stray beams fall bluish across her skin and flirt with the ice crystals drifting through the still air. She notes that the sky is clear, the lightcaught snowflakes and the wan stars all part of the same spray of some old blood god's lunarcold semen.

It is a myth that snow is silent. Snow falls with a soft fizzing sound, sometimes hissing, sometimes howling, sometimes screaming, it cracks and crunches underfoot. It warps sound so that Ashcan Mary can not hear the subtle notes of silence. Each sliver of sky that lands on her skin is a whisper that turns to a confusing kiss, disorienting, disarming. There is glimmer of purposeful movement away down the street and she stalks after it, spiderlike, between condemned buildings and slowfalling snow.

A chrome shudder rushes through Ashcan Mary, climbs up and down her spine. Her veins stand out blue and dark. Straining to see, to hear, to sense anything in the gloom, she clenches her teeth so that they do not click. She feels a sense of wrongness in the liquidslow moment, and longs for her warm, opaline bath, for the safe heat stolen with squatters' cunning, for the dry and double-glazed flat that has held her safe since gentle Autumn.

Ashcan Mary always knew they would come, so many pursuing her, so much to hide from. She knew they would come because they always come, and it doesn't matter who it is that has lured her from the wrecked flat to walk the icy darkness, it doesn't matter which hunter or stalker or tracker has found her first, only that she do away with him before she is captured. Ashcan Mary knows what will happen if she is captured. She knows the endless white rooms, the blurred days bleeding into each other, examinations, interrogations, strange drugs and stranger dreams, and she knows she must never be caught.

Ashcan Mary doesn't belong here, on this Earth, in this Now. She doesn't know how she got here but she knows she doesn't belong. Once she believed she was born here, until she realised she had no reason to, no memory that she had or had not, just an assumption that she, like everyone else she had met, was born here in the usual fashion. Until then she thought she might be a mutant or an anachronism, but since then she has dreamed of ghosts, of others like her, who left her behind and will one day come to show her the way home. The dreams never show why she is here, alone - some mission, some experiment, some oversight - and sometimes she fears they will never come.

Sometimes she feels her utter differentness in her very flesh, in tissue and sinew and cell, and she knows that the ghosts must come, that she could call them to her if only she could remember how. It brushes snowflake soft at the edges of her memory and she strains to remember who she is or where she belongs. The stalkers and the trackers and the hunters don't care but they work for people who know, and it's they who want to pull her to pieces, pick her apart to see how she works, destroy her one way or another - assimilation, internment, or death. The ones who know will not give up until they have her pinned under glass like a rare ivory moth, and even then they will fight over her, or whatever is left of her.

Another shudder runs through her, less from the cold than the troubling paths her wandering mind has taken. She focuses on the present, the stretched and strange moment and the demands of the now. Her unease is growing inexplicably, so she presses her back to the wall and the rough red brick comforts her the way the knife handle should, but doesn't. A tiny bat flits by, close and low, she hears its high squeaks bounce twisted off the snow and it sounds like a warning. Ashcan Mary notices then that she has seen no other living thing in the bleak night. She stirs the powdery snow with an outstretched toe and finally realises what is wrong. There are no scuffs or footprints, either lost in the snowfall or...

The thought hangs unfinished and too dangerous to ignore. She slips beyond the end of the street and steps out into the open, utterly exposed under the ring of harsh lights. Staring out from the bright lit centre she can see no sign of disturbance in the snow. Nobody has walked this way.

Above Ashcan Mary the circle of lights begins to spin and fall, snowflake slow towards her. She realises each light is a blinding globe as wide as she is tall, and when they settle to the ground she is in the centre of a ring the size of houses. Her eyes fight to adjust to the light, clenching pain roars through her face and skull. She barely notices that she can't feel the knife in her hand any more, barely notices that she's dropped it, barely notices that she doesn't know when. All she registers is the swirling, searing motion of the light slipping and streaming through her body.

Deep in the light she sees the others, ghostthin, ghostpale, drifting ghostslow towards her, someone, something, some living, moving lightghost shapes. She feels them squirming in her cells. The world pulses, the ghosts in the light resolve. Six spiderthin people, their skin the colour of the moon under water, eyes as black as madness, and when they speak their voices are the howl of the space between stars. The ground falls away and the light consumes her, the ghosts have come to take her home.

I actually thought I'd already destashed this one at you, but it seems not. Or, if I did, I forgot to tag it, and it's lost somewhere under a pile of uncertainty and ill-fortune, so I don't care to search for it.

I'm still no more certain of the actual order these were written in than I was when I destashed Ink and Shadows a few months back, but I don't think it's all that important. I did a ridiculous amount of reading about hypothermia to write this, and used almost exactly none of it. The comments have been generally to the effect of "it doesn't do enough with what it has" and I can totally see that.

It will never be a whole or complete thing, except insofar as its incompleteness is part of the wholeness of it. It's never had editorial suggestions made, so except the occasional tweak and retweak (usually gramatical) over the years since I wrote it, this is it as it has always been, and most likely ever shall. This was one of those pieces of writing where every sentence was wrestled into perfection before the next allowed to approach, so I'm insurmountably unlikely to notice any flaws other than the glaring technical variety that involve punctuation and the like.

It's also a brilliant example of why I need to not do that. Because, really, after all that effort, it's not much of a story. It's pretty word-art, word salad, almost.

I haven't completed an Ashcan Mary story since Manchester, and not for lack of them suggesting themselves. Maybe the timing hasn't been right (I almost typed write), or they all fell to the same fate said to have befallen the second half of Kubla Khan. Who can tell. My life has been full of Porlockian wankers, that much is certain. Most of the time I just try to work through them, if I can, and should the interruption be an actual person and I seem rude and inattentive, I don't much care any more. If I'm not curmudgeonly at an interruption, the interrupter should recognise that for the politeness it is.

imma just leave this here

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 19:08:23 GMT

"Predator Theory." Interesting numbers. Strong conclusions. Read this, pass it on.

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 19:55:59 GMT

My copy of greygirlbeast's Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart arrived today, with The Yellow Book, and they are beautiful. There was a whole thing where it shipped either during or a couple of days before the whole homeless bit, and I didn't know if I'd ever get it, if the book showed up at Y's place or, worse, if a delivery card was left and I didn't get it in time and it was returned. I got the delivery card, put in a redeliver request on Monday, and there was (as the nice man at the An Post call centre described it) a breakdown in communication. But after I called this morning to politely WTF at them they hastened to drop it round immediately, which was good, and it's here like a sign from the sea that shit is Not So Fucked.

I wish to reassert that I don't believe in astrology. There are two recurring coincidences in my life that can be referenced in astrological terms: 1. Piscean men shit me, especially living with them; 2. When Mercury is in retrograde my life is anything from a clusterfuck of irritation to a shistorm of catastrophe. So it didn't surprise me to learn that Mercury was in retrograde from July 14 to August 7/8. Fucking jerk of a planet.

I've discovered that the key to this whole shirt derby thing is fandom. I need to make ~2 topical fandom designs and/or ~3 cult fandom designs per week to grab attention, and find arbitrary ways to connect my original ideas to various fandoms. So that's kind of a pain, but only because I'm an outrageous snob.

Random gross thing, I have this bra that I realised today makes my cleavage smell like cheese after about an hour, from clean on. I'm clean, the bra's clean, no vigorous cheese-oriented exercise undertaken, nevertheless BAM! Cheesy boob stank. Imma throw that one right the fuck away, and have a shower.

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 01:15:04 GMT

The head of the nail of why this Julian Assange stuff has been wearing me weary has been struck. Read this now: Laurie Penny: If you really believe in WikiLeaks, you must want Assange to face up to justice, and something of a follow-up piece by the same author.

It's been bothering me for months now, that just because he built a radical website, he is somehow held to be above reproach, as if someone who builds a radical website couldn't possibly rape anyone. As if anyone in the universe is so straight-forwardly Good Or Evil that once having done anything good he is intrinsically proven incapable of holding someone down and forcing himself on them. And it bugs me, it really fucking bugs me, that there are millions of people who would rather assume the worst about the women than let a court establish the man's guilt or innocence.

From where I sit, it seems equally--nay, considerably more likely that the man is crying persecution, than that the women are "crying rape." Because in my wholly subjective and anecdotal observation, you're far more likely to be believed if you are a man claiming that some nasty lying women are persecuting you than to be believed if you are a woman. About anything at all, but especially about rape. It's demonstrably true that men lie about rape more than women do (insofar as men say they didn't do it, when they did, far FAR more often than women say they did it when they didn't). But that's all another rant for another day and I'll not have it here and now.

It's not that I believe he's guilty, it's that I flat out fucking REFUSE to leap to the assumption that the women are lying. I refuse to pre-empt the process of establishing whether he's guilty or not.

Prosecution without persecution. It has to happen. I can not see any ethically consistent way to advocate for freedom of speech and information at the cost of women being silenced, negated, vilified, and undermined. Hell, it's not even just ethically impossible, it's simply logistically and logically impossible.

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:27:02 GMT

VICTORY!!!!!!

I actually just did a sock-slide across the sitting room floor announcing to Third Zoomate Etc. that I GOT THE JOB!

Just now. Like, just now. Right while I was emailing my mum.

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 08:31:10 GMT

I don't definitely not have the Amazon job, or have it, yet. Still waiting to hear back, which I suppose is a qualified yay of they didn't immediately reject me out of hand.

So this morning, I checked my surviving bank balance, having done grocery shopping and bought cigarettes, and then made a small donation on behalf of myself and my Mother to the Pe' Sla: Help Save Lakota Sioux Sacred Land campaign. It was a small donation because that was all that was there, I'd've made a large donation if I had large amounts to donate.

All I would have used that money for is cigarettes. And just because the universe decided to take a shit in my ear recently, doesn't mean other people don't deserve help too.

Make of it what you will. I know it was right.

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 12:24:30 GMT

Odd.

First time I tried to read Homestuck, I gave up. It didn't hook me.

Second time, I pushed onwards, through power of resolve, due to the incessant insistence by both unknownbinaries and xsophiax that it gets good. And it did, and I loved it, and then I stopped at the end of act something-or-other because the next one hadn't begun.

Today, I started at the beginning for the third time, and I haven't stopped laughing. Seriously, how did I fail to find this shit utterly fucking hysterical from the outset on my first and second readings?

three probably unrelated things

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 03:54:06 GMT

Last night, I saw a fox wander past the kitchen window.

Today, I thought, with a sense of arrival, "I made it. I finally made it."

Tonight, I did a shirt that made me particularly proud, Jellyfish Dirigible.

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 20:35:33 GMT

Irony! After all the stress about finding a job, not having interview-suitable clothes, and resulting feelings of doom and possible organ detonation, Amazon got in touch about a position I applied for a couple of weeks back, customer service from home. Basically the same job as Pizza Hut, but with less pizza, a system that has actually been updated since 1976, and I can do it in my pyjamas. The testing process was all online, my colours flew, I have a phone interview on Friday morning, and actually I think I'll get it. At no point in this process was a shirt with buttons required, or indeed any shirt.

Hail Eris.

Amazon don't have the best reputation as employers, and I would have rathered work for Google, but this has the perk of not being a ~1-2 hr commute each way. It is 8 hour days, which will eat horribly into my art time, but I should be able to start on part time and reign in my active projects before going on to full time for the seasonal rush. And I'm pretty good at CSC (whereas I suck at sales like you can't even begin to imagine), given my fondness and aptitude for mutual gain/everybody wins type problem solving, so it's a decent fit til I find something better.

I suppose I'll need to get a desk, chair, and headset out of my first pay, and I think they pay monthly, so things will be tight for a few weeks yet, even assuming that I do slay on Friday and get the job.

So I texted my optimism and gratitude to Baron Awesome, who sent me the application link after I stayed at his place that time. He's just lost his job so I let him know their process is easy as piss if you've ever worked CSC, which I'm pretty sure he has. Though he does have options I currently don't, and the luxury of being a bit selective (he hates customer service).

Preliminary victory dances have been danced. Cautiously, and only applying to my victory at slaying the online testing and getting the interview. I shall not do a victory dance of job-having-ness until I slay the interview and get the job. Counting chickens and all that.

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 01:02:07 GMT

Y has finally gotten back to me to say he's back in town and has bundled up some stuff for me. So I feel a bit less like I'm going to die. Prospective New Housemate Who Isn't hasn't appeared yet, which fact does not currently come as a big fucking surprise. Tangerine showed up last night and startled me and Tiger Girl, and is in the process of packing his stuff and moving out. So Third Zoomate And Tiger Girl's Boyfriend Who Still Doesn't Have A LJ Nickname and I are going to have a chat soon about whether and/or for how long I can take over Tangerine's room and on what terms.

----

Ok so some time has passed since I typed the above. I now have most of my stuff back, I still need to go round and get my coats and bathroom stuff, just a few things Y missed. Tangerine finished clearing out his room scant minutes before Y arrived, the timing couldn't have been more fluid. Also, Tangerine's Lady (she'll get her own name too) saw a Subway putting up a help wanted sign, so I'm checking which one it was and I'll be in there tomorrow in clean, neat clothes to get that job. The feeling that my organs would all explode and I would die has eased significantly. I've had a preliminary chat with Third Zoomate Etc. about the whole situation, and I'm welcome to stay while I get on my feet, and a while beyond to generate some stability, the stipulation is at this time "just not permanent." Which is all kinds of agreeable for all of us.

So I've stuck my signed AFP poster on the door of the room. I suppose I can sort of think of it as my room, now. I'm getting there.

It was the Subway in town, so a bus ride instead of a decent walk, but that's ok.

I have my tarot cards back, so I can wave them about at bored middle-aged women. I have my Dremel back, so I can carve things. I have my tooth powder back, so once enjobinated I can get a few other bits (monomer, dappen, brushes, casting things) and make fangs. I might have a chat to Dnash about how he does it, which is probably a more efficient way than how I do it. It was the helplessness and the waiting that made everything seem so bleak yesterday, but now I have my tools and props back, I feel like I have some a little more power to do something, to unfuck the mountain of fuckup.

Excellent timing for mood bost, at some point suring the writing of this post, someone bought another shirt. I should email my mum, she's probably worried.

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 03:25:42 GMT

Fucking. Just... fuck.

I've been trying to get hold of Y for the last two days, to get him to drop round some interview-suitable clothes this weekend, and the fucker isn't replying. I need a fucking job or something fast or I'm back to square one, again. And that's a bit hard when I have one pair of jeans, one skirt with a load of holes, and four witty t-shirts.

I've been trying not to stress out, but Prospective Future Housemate is not a prospective future housemate anymore, so even though he's dropping the key to me tomorrow, he will also be giving me the details for the landlord so I can start renting the place myself. Which, at 625 euros a month, I really can't do, with no fucking job. I can't even wave tarot cards and pretend to be psychically gifted through ostentatious earrings, because my cards are at Y's place.

I've been trying to stay focused on working on shirts and Catastrophic Utopia, and comfort myself by figuring out how to build a wee house on a trailer or an old caravan chassis for under about 2 grand. It's not working. I kind of want to scream. I don't know how long I can keep breathing.

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:47:04 GMT

Ok then, I'm all caught up with the 99 Day One-Artist-Shirt-Derby-Royale. And someone bought one today, so I did a victory dance around the Zooniverse.

Not all the designs will suffer permadeath if they don't survive the derby. Some will, but some will just be stunned and dragged round a corner til the event is over, and then released back into the wild.

It transpires that there was almost certainly a mixup with that key I've been kind of waiting on, and it was in fact posted to the same address it is meant to access. This would stress me out a lot more if Tiger Girl and I weren't so busy being awesome at all times, together and separately.

She drew me as a Pony, I'm a slightly cranky-looking blue unicorn with a leg holster, coffee cup, laptop, and cigarette, and my cutie mark is a scroll and brush. It's AWESOME.

A new petrol station opened just down the road today, so when I get some Job Applying Suitable clothing back from Y imma go be all cute and Australian at them (and every other business within walking distance) and ask for a job. Really, "Australian" is a job qualification over here.

I've started work on reviving Catastrophic Utopia as a serial, and with my relevant prior experience I have a decent shot with the Beeb. Well, good shot insofar as there are many hoops I should be able to skip straight past instead of jumping through. Anyway, it won't be much like the old Catastrophic Utopia at all, indeed almost completely unlike it, and if anything I'm just using Catastrophic Utopia as a working title.

And yeah, the pipes banging is still making me flinch and my cash supply is basically down to shrapnel, but I have accommodation, food, tobacco, and a sense of future.

Sometime in the next few days or so, I'm going for a walk around the estate to pick rosehips for jam. Or possibly for something other than jam, since bottling jam for actual storage is a hassle. There are brambles all along the roadside on the way to Tesco, though of course they're not ripe yet. There's bound to be yew trees around somewhere, and I'd love to try my hand at yewberry jam.

Apparently you can get a bus from here to Manchester. It takes about twelve hours and crosses on the ferry, and it's expensive, but charmingly absurd.

A thought I had last night, that I should probably put on a t-shirt: You are full of secret, magical worlds. Don't try to hide them to keep them safe. They keep you safe.