Ree’s musings

"Will somone explain why Christian fundamentalists never quote Jesus?" Talk about questions that beat you over the head. Wow. It's a simple enough answer, though -- because Jesus would have hung out with the gays. He was friendly to hookers and tax collectors (who commonly stole to line their own coinpouches).

Jesus said, "Love thy neighbor as they self."

Jesus said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."

Jesus said stuff that contradicts the so-called "religious right". That's why they don't quote Him; He's too good for their hatemongering.

Some self-proclaimed "Christians" make me ashamed to confess my love for God. I'm not like them at all. They offend me. I rather think they offend God too, but I can't claim to speak Him. Neither should they, but they keep trying.

---

In other news, Webmonkey, my long-held pot of website-help gold, is dead. A lot of things I had thought would be around for me to fall back on are vanishing from beneath my feet lately, the last week or two. Ah well. *prints a slew of articles* We'll miss you, Webmonkey. No other site has your wit and playful friendliness.

I am on my third Mountain Dew of the night after having none of my favourite piss-coloured beverage since November. At the same time, I'm attempting to kludge up CSS skins for several things, despite having left my all stylesheet references in the next county.

Yup.

I don't recommend the Dew for actually getting anything done. It and the sleep deprivation it causes sure make my myriad mistakes that much funnier, though.

I feel sleepy. Must chug Dew with greater alacrity. Also must read back posts and attempt to find a good entrance.

Found while trolling archives:

"Do you consider yourself a writer or a role-player?"

I'm sorry to say I giggled. I'm sure the question was asked in earnest, but -- it's funny! I laugh at the funny!

Seriously, that's a very blurry line, too much so to be broken into a categories A and B with no other choices. Ugh. I'm squarely on the fence on that question, as usual. (I'm a total fence-sitter. Good thing I'm not male or that would really pinch.)

My start page (uh, do I want to link that? No. No, not really) is divided into rough categories. The one where I spend the most time bears the heading "write/play", because heck if I can figure out which is which.

The way I understand things, writing tends to be a solo effort. Occasionally it's an organised collaboration geared to produce a publishable work. Roleplay is "Let's Pretend" with hella rules, strict character sheets, way too many numbers for my language-based brain to handle, and dice that get lost because the cat likes to curl up on top of them and knock them into the heat vents.

What I do online isn't traditional writing. It's not the usual roleplay either -- there's far too much advance organisation of plot to think that. (This is where Sin would pipe up with that damn "role"-player / "roll"-player argument. That was cute the first three times. Now it disgusts me. If I never hear it again 'twill be too soon. I hate that phrase! Argh!)

I don't have a good name for what it is I do online. "Writeplay" sounds kludgy and unwieldy. I can say this much with certainty, though:

I thrive on it. By times I have lived for it, though I'm a bit better-rounded now. I still strongly adore it.

Whatever anyone calls my joy, may it never die.

I really hate when I get like this. It's three in the morning and I'm in desperate need of sleep. My body likes to remind me when it's naptime by getting cold. I'm chilled and shaking in my sweater.

I can't believe I got this worked up over a movie. It was even rated a meager PG! Who the hell gets spooked sleepless by a PG movie? Disney makes PG cartoons!

Of course, it was the Twilight Zone movie, and I had just finished my fifth Mountain Dew when...
(...something very mildly spoilery happened.)

After the movie, the bro and I looked up the movie's hype-producing behind the scenes story. The page from which I first learned of it has vanished (in perfect TZ fashion, leaving me to wonder if it ever existed), but try using your search engine of choice (Cthuugle! No.) on the the string "twilight zone" movie Landis Morrow and something should come up. *shudders*

So: got wired, watched the movie, recalled the story, and ended up online reading about Vic Morrow's death. Somehow perusing top 100 scary movie scenes ended up in there too. If I turn my head too quickly, I'm afraid I'll see blue gnawing things, Samara Morgan from The Ring, a Giger Alien with taut-condom membranes and K-Y Jelly drool, Freddy Kruger, Sadako from the original Japanese Ringu with her god-awful eyeball of doom, the TZ floating eyeball, and Burgess Meredith with broken glasses. (I have some strange fears. My brain has latched onto the image of a cartoony Alien spitting prophylactics and lube, so it ain't all bad. *g*)

I want to read something lighthearted and cute now, so it's time to see how well I formatted this bugger.

Known anxiety disorder + copious amount of caffeine + being forced to attend an old lady home decorating party + way too much horror, both fiction and non = one quavery ReeToes who just wants to cry and go the hell to bed.

But I have four different blog systems on which to read updates from a bevy of blogs, plus the independently-hosted blogs, plus the newsfeeds, plus the boards I never manages to get to daily.

I hereby call in dead, cancel everything I ever joined on the computer, and resign from the modern world. I'm going to live in a cave in the hills.

....

You're still here? Oh fine. I'll be back after my nap. (Blighters keeping me from throwing it all away. Never know what gets into 'em. *g*)

I've been listening to this fellow (call him Sin) tell me about myself. He says that tobacco smoke makes me miserable only because it's psychosomatic (meaning he thinks my brain makes it up). He says I don't try enough to get out socially, ignoring my general anxiety disorder diagnosis.

The boy has a psychology degreee (or so he says) and still tried to tell me that bipolar disorder is NOT the same as manic-depression.

Bipolar.com begs to differ: "Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic-depressive illness...."

Jackass. He thinks he knows more about computers than I do, too, just because he he claims a degree in computer science. Nevermind that he's past thirty, still hanging out with undergrads, and guess how old his computing degree must be?

Yeah. God, I hate people who think they know more than I do about a subject I've had stuffed into my knowledge base. I don't claim I know computers, mental illness, or anything else better than the general public, but I know the limits to my knowledge better than that chappie ever will.

Today I am amused that several of the RP boards I have been reading reprint RP etiquette from the Grey Company. The GC happens to use a rather bastardized variant of Elvish. It's based on Tolkien's Quenya, but -- um. It's not Quenya. If I say more, I'll come off as elitist. I don't mean to be -- I just think Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin are more elegant than anything created for a video game.

So these boards use the CG etiquette, but Tolkien's Elvish (for instance, useing Quenya terms for family members: mother, father, brother, and so forth). There's also the fact that the elves on the boards are largely outgoing, libidonous, grinning, horny, curious, and takers of many bondmates. It's like a pointy-eared soap opera (which really ought be attempted on the telly -- I'd watch!).

Meanwhile, there's the GC guidelines for roleplaying Elves.

I'm just cracking up here. The way the boards draw on different sources without being of any particular source intrigues me. *reads more*

On another front, I am quite sure that if I should be deemed of insufficient merit to enter Heaven, Satan will be waiting for me with a shovel and a blizzard. *tears out frozen hair*

Air Force policy on tattoos and piercings. A snippet:

Females in uniform, or in civilian clothes while on duty, may wear one pair of small, spherical, conservative, diamond, gold, white pearl, silver pierced or clip earring per earlobe; the earring in each earlobe must match and the earrings must fit tightly without extending below the earlobe.

My earrings would work (since I only have tiny studs in one hole each per ear, though I have four holes total), but my mom wears earrings that are too big.

I ought poke around, see if I can find Marine regulations for tattoos. Dude and I were watching Justice League last night and noticed that Green Lantern (John Stewart) has the letters "USMC" in black on his right upper arm. It stands for United States Marine Corp, of course; he's ex-Marines. Didn't think the Marines would let tattoos fly though.

*squiggles in place and cries in joy* See this book? I want this book. It will help me get stop kludging up templates and start doing something with genuine efficiency and skill. I hope.

Alas, it's a luxury item I can't afford right now. As usual. Goddamn. Even so, onto my wishlist it goes.

"I can just picture a pair of pooka where one was a booby and the other was a dik-dik." -Ree

I can see that randomising my brother's lengthy quotes file may not have been a bad idea, but it's certainly an embarassing one.

"Yes! I got up to zero!" -Ree

Re: a James Bond game, and now I am ashamed to even attempt another randomisation. It would mention Buffy or something of similarly cult following and I would be forced to confront the dark side of geekhood.

Oh hell, one more.

"I am going to kill that little black fuck if I have to start shaving my legs with RAID." -Ree on how to stop spiders from crawling on her legs.

Oh dear Lord I'm leaving now.

A clever man has invented (and patented) a uniform font that renders Arabic more simply than the traditional calligraphy. It can be written right to left or left to right and uses one shape for each letter (written Arabic letters change shape depending on their placement within a word).

Cool as heck. One question: Why has it taken this long for anyone to simplify the language? It's not like all things Arabic aren't a sticking point in America right now. With this new, simpler alphabet, perhaps more people will learn it.

Once again, Monique of Sinfest mirrors my mood. Thanks, 'Nique. Thanks, Tatsuya Ishida.

Not that anyone who reads this cares, but -- Jody Davis quit the Newsboys. Nobody tells me these things. His daughter developed some serious medical problems, so he quit the band to care for her. It doesn't feel real.

Holy frack. I only have two things to say: that people with depression should be watched regardless of medication, and that I am gritting my teeth at seeing superficial cutting once again lumped in with suicidal behaviour. Because, y'know, a strange pull to see the proof of one's mortality, flowing blood, is obviously a sign of wanting to end that life.

*swears until all the air in the state turns blue* People effing suck and I'm going to go read comics or watch cartoons or something now. Anything beats this supreme idiocy that we call "news".

I have to start this with:

Holy shit, Jane Yolen thinks Jane Austen Doe needs to shut up.

I'm going to assume for clarity that most of you haven't been keeping up with the letters lashing out against "The Confessions of a Semi-successful Author" on Salon.com. I sure have. I read the article and had something of a crisis of faith in myself. I have wanted to write for a living since I was a little girl. This article sank my hopes. If Ms. Doe thinks she's poorly paid and hanging on by a thread, then I am, in short, screwed.

Then Jane Yolen -- Jane Yolen of the stories that stick in my mind a dozen years after the fact -- wrote in to tell Ms. Doe to "[s]hut up, stop whining, and write." With that and other letters, I'm finding that hope is a phoenix.

I woke up from a dream-part, one of those things that leaves but a single symbol in your memory. In this case, all I remember is that my skin was neatly -- it was "unseamed" almost, or surgically opened without any blood -- and there in the openings I could see lime green. It looked like the Chinese I'd had for lunch, only flattened and under my skin. There were other colours, but I only remember the green, which was the most prominent anyway.

I actually had to examine my arms when I woke up. I couldn't be certain they weren't hacked and peeling away from my flesh.

I don't know what the hell that was or what exactly brought it on. I just know that was very disturbing, even to me.

I didn't just laugh out loud at the blog of He Who Was Wesley Crusher. I swear to Buddha. No-one heard me do it. You can't prove a thing.

Hee. *shiftyeyes* Yu hurd nuffink, ja? Gut.

OMG, I feel so cool. I got an actual Nigerian scam e-mail! I'm used to weeding out pen|s enl@rgement ads, but this has actual sentences and attempted plot. Bwee!

*reads; deletes* Prince James from Nigeria, huh. Well well.

So I dropped off the face of the planet yesterday. So what? (I've proven there are towns so small that they get lost in pocket dimensions, that's what. Or not.)

Sorries on the RP, but I'm prioritising. There's a job halfway between my house and my mom's that sounds real promising, so I got an app, filled it out, and will return it after my momma feeds me Subway. Hehehe. Please excuse the hick lingo; I mentioned small towns, right? *bg* If I can get that I will be very happy, and there's not much competition so far because it's in another of those itty bitty towns. I like it there. I sometimes loop through that particular town just to slow down and look around and miss the highway. I love the highway, but I can't take it all the time.

Anyway. I have a good feeling about this job. If I get it, I already know one of my co-workers from college. Hung out with him last night and was plied with books and food, thereby ensuring a round two of me hanging with them and the wife, another college buddy. My mom's impressed with me because I count change properly -- she asked me to "roleplay" how I would do it, so I took the total cost she gave me and counted coins and bills into my hand until I reached $5, which was the bill she gave me to "pay". She used to work in a restaurant chain and says there are tons of high school kids who can't count change correctly -- but I can. We are both very happy with this realisation.

If I don't get this job, I'm dying my hair red in retaliation against Fate. Murr. One way or another I will have something good.

Subway time.