Ree’s musings

I don't usually post memes in my personal journal anymore, but this one says scary things about me and I simply must.

The 25 Cult TV Hits meme.

Watched obsessively? Bold them.
Watched regularly but not obsessively? Italic them.
Watched at least one episode but not regularly? Do nothing.
Never watched? Strike them.
Never heard of? Underline them.

25. Freaks and Geeks
24. Absolutely Fabulous
23. Forever Knight
22. H. R. Pufnstuf
21. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
20. Twin Peaks
19. Dark Shadows
18. Doctor Who (when I was very young -- I *think* it was mostly Fourth Doctor, but I barely remember any of it now)
17. The Avengers
16. My So-Called Life
15. Quantum Leap
14. Beauty and the Beast
13. Babylon 5
12. Family Guy
11. Mystery Science Theatre 3000
10. Pee-Wee's Playhouse (Sue me, I was a kid.)
9. Xena: Warrior Princess
8. The Twilight Zone
7. The Prisoner
6. The Simpsons
5. Monty Python's Flying Circus
4. Farscape
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. The X-Files
1. Star Trek

What have we learned, class? "Ree likes camp way too much!" Very good. Now go play tetherball.

I am having serious trouble not laughing hysterically. This week's class slideshow is on the Renaissance. It contains a lot of art. This is very cool.

I was placidly clicking through a statue of David (not the most famous, but a similar nude) when this little green guy sailed into view over the statuary and I hurt myself laughing. Specifically, after several images of sculpture by Donatello, a certain Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle whizzed on-screen, his bo tilted toward David's crotch.

HEE.

I must continue slogging through classwork, since I have to get two weeks' worth done this week. Besides, the outline lists Leonardo, Michaelangelo and Raphael as next up, and I'm madly curious. You know.

I need to figure something out because this is not working. I'm trying to relax between units of history class and I just --

It pisses me the hell off that if I say what I saw that has me all in a tizzy, then I would be a bad person. I should just not go to that particular site at all because I can never offer comment without my brain warping it. God, I hate being this oblique.

This then, another bad memory. I was thumbing through racks of necklaces at K-Mart, seeking something that would not have deep personal meaning for me. I'm going on a trip shortly and I don't want to take anything of sentimental value, in case it gets misplaced while I'm far from home. This means no jewelry my sister gave me, not ankhs, no gifts from my parents... which is all but one of my good necklaces, though I have several pieces of cheap crap.

So I glanced over some overdone Gothic crosses and then found the oddest thing. It was a rectangular shape with a long, jagged slot down its middle. A cord was looped around each end, through opposite ends of the slot. I stared at it for a moment before realisation dawned, at which my stomach lurched and I almost dropped the damn thing.

There in my hand, inches from plain goldtone chains, was a stylized razor blade.

I couldn't figure out if it was meant to be a bracelet or choker, but really, there's no place you can wear that to make it better.

I just -- that is not artistic or pretty. That's worrisome. That's a cry for help worn by girls too far gone to verbalize their deep need for a better way to cope.

I'm shaking. I can't believe I'm shaking. I know I talked for hours after seeing that, rambling over and again about how wrong that was, but shaking? Maybe it would work for a costume, perhaps, but even then it's horrible -- and this was not Hallowe'en stuff. This was everyday "jewelry" if one can call it that.

I'm still shaking. Stop it, me. My whole torso, not just arms anymore.

There are places online where I would look in fascination at images of razor blades and consider it provacative art, and enjoy it because I know what I'm in for when I go there. There are stores I love that carry this sort of accessory, and because I know this, I am not stupefied to see it there. But being blindsided by it... I don't know if my emotional defences suck or if society rightfully should keep such things out of everyday view. That scares me so bad, that I don't know if I'm weak or if the world is mad, but something is clearly not right here. There ought to be warnings, at least, so that fragile flowers like me can be protected form grim realities.

I need to go play a video game or something. Something fun and not bloody at all. I need to flush this horror out of me and then get back to class. I shouldn't have been traipsing the Internet at all, even for a small break. I was just hoping for something that wasn't there, some quick refreshment and fun before delving back into the Age of Exploration.

Now I drag myself to bed
To rest my leaking, weary head
My day is done
And rest I've won
No rhyme have I; I'll end instead.

(It is my great burden in life to be somewhat skilled at writing awful limericks. Such poetry is unpopular outside of public toilets, yet I am cursed to excel at it. Therefore.)

There once was a blonde mercenary
Who stood all imposing and scary.
She acted untoward
And talked to her sword
When grabbing all gold she could carry.

(Scribbled that when aboard a vehicle, but I forget which. Possibly a bus?)

Dooce makes my day once again. Yum.

I have to tell this to somebody so I will tell it to everybody who will listen.

Night before the last, my mom and I were heading home. It was very late and we had been awake for far too long. The highway had barely any civilisation around it, but when we finally found a hotel, we jumped at the chance. This was still not even in our home county.

The next day, it had snowed quite a bit. The conditions were terrifying at times, nearing total whiteout for a mile, followed by a mile of perfectly clear road.

One of the bad spots had a truck in the ditch. It had snowed quite some time since, because I could make out only the faintest tracks behind the vehicle. It was the same kind of truck and the same kind of trailer that my daddy drives. I checked, as I do under any circumstances, to see if his company's name adorned the truck; I couldn't tell what it was, but it was almost certainly not the right name to have been my dad's. The truck seemed fine, upright and undented. The only damage visible was the fence, which broke when the 18-wheeler entered the ditch.

Well, the news today said that the truck had hit a man who lives in the same town as me and my mom. He died. The collision occured just before my mom and I would have been there, if we hadn't found the hotel on the way.

It's fucking with my head pretty badly. Oh, I'll be fine. I'm just operating on high stress still from the last crazy week. I haven't figured out how to let myself down off the stress high or to resume my normal daily routine. But in the meantime, my brain is just fucked.

Must do something class-related, as I'm already behind and it's priority. Then I think I will blow off all you lovely bloggers, just for one more day, and do... something fun. Not sure yet what.

Being the rude thing that I am, I love typos. I've seen some doozies lately in my history class:

Jesus Christ

• born about 4 B.C.
• died 33 B.C.

Apparently if you're God, you can die before you're born. Never knew that one before. Or the dates are supposed to be A.D./C.E, which would make Jesus about 30 when he died -- much more plausible, don't you think?

The [Dutch] resistance to [the Duke of] Alva included ... the opening of the dykes....

Wow. History really is exciting once you get into it! Or perhaps my good teacher meant the Dutch opened the dikes, which would indeed flood the Netherlands to "frustrate ... the Spanish armies". However, that's a less porny mental image!

There's also been "to unit France" and an array of lesser errors, but these are the ones that make me giggle on a regular basis.

Oh give me a home, with a bus line to roam
Where the trains and the taxis convey.
Where seldom is heard a hard R in a word
And the skies are not rainy all day.

Happy Thanksgiving to me, all alone in my dark little basement. I wanted to see my cousins, but they wouldn't want my fever cooties. I have quizzes due Sunday night for a chapter that I haven't even looked at yet, what with the sleeping more than I'm awake and feeling groggy all the damn time.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, readers -- if you're not sure what you're thankful for, being not a) alone and b) garroted 'round the head by a terrific illness make good starting points. Don't you agree?

I really fucking hate November. December will be better and soon, but I still hate November.

Sorry to be sad. You want happy, go look at the blamed sky or something. See? Pretty.

A couple years ago I ran a roleplay board. I wasn’t much of a story leader but I loved dorking around the layout and wished I could dirty my hands in the software guts (it was a hosted piece of shite, though it served its purpose until recently).

In the last year I have discovered RSS. I currently read 217 feeds through Bloglines, plus a few more in My Yahoo (if I don’t care to catch absolutely every update, just the current stuff) and Livejournal (so that I read blogs from specific groups of friends together and can sort of follow patterns in their posts).

Logical conclusion (to my mind)? I want to run a forum and I want it to do RSS!

I’ve found two systems for this so far and they both have aspects that leave me biting my lip.

Drupal looks exceedingly capable, though doing feeds with it requires a taxonomy setup or just following user blogs. It’s also hella easy to get lost with a large Drupal site, which puts off new users — including me with an old RP haunt of mine that moved to Drupal. JesusGod that’s big. It appears Drupal’s index does not default to the forum (which makes sense in software that can also run one or more blogs without having a forum at all) — I personally think that would be bad for my setup. I think a site based around forum interaction should have the forum on the main page. However, this may be possible and I just haven’t seen it done.

BBpress, from the makers of WordPress (huzzah!), is tiny where Drupal is fucking huge. It does not have avatars, much less the kerfluffle of many board programs with sigs and detailed profiles and crap. While I like the idea of a stripped-down board, I’m not sure many roleplayers would appreciate having to part with their beloved bigass sigs and weekly-rotated avatars. (It looks like once they get the plugin structure going, there will be a plugin to use Gravatars with BBpress. However, that could be some time from now. Gravatars are only 80x80 pixels, less than the 100px some may be used to from Livejournal and other sites. I wouln’t want to start a pixel mutiny.

There are doubtless other systems out there that can do forum RSS that I just haven’t found yet. I’m particularly drawn to Drupal for the ability to share databases with other Drupal sites — the roleplayers now getting used to setting up their characters on their Drupal site could easily use that login data at another Drupal site. If I set up a Drupal roleplay site, they would be much more likely to come by, I think. They’d have to set up their profiles anew but that seems minor.

Enough babble.

I've been spectacularly sick all week. Winter, how I hate thee; thy draining chill and the way in which thou dost breed all manner of infernal contagins.

I may need to pull my head out of post-Elizabethan England. Just a little.

So I missed big family Thanksgiving, which particularly sucked because my dad's wife was laid up at home where I wouldn't have to see her or put up with her. Dammit. Mom and Squirt came by after though, so I had a turkey sandwich with them and felt generally loved. I never did care for pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce anyway.

My throat having stopped sandpapering itself, I went along to visit my grandpa the next day. This was spectacularly stupid of me. I'm extraordinarily sensitive to tobacco smoke (it stings my eyes and throat with a tarry passion) and hey, do you wanna guess what had hurt most while I was sick? Saharan throat first, then insanely itchy eyes! Let's go sit in Gramps' yellow-with-tar living room!

I'm a dumbass, in case you didn't get the gist yet.

Did I mention how, being sick, I put off my schoolwork (due Sunday midnight each week) until this evening... and then the power went out?

Yeah.

Bright side, my sister's face did light up when she opened her birthday present, and I now possess chibi R2-D2 that can display Princess Leia on my white bedroom wall. This makes a half-dozen Artoos in my room, including the one wearing fishnet stockings.

I may have a problem.

Dammit. I hate getting jumpy over things that I know would never bother a normal person, a person with placid neurons and still nerves. It's one more reminder that, no matter how sedate I manage to be, I will never achieve the serenity of a person who lacks my rampant anxiety. It's an ingrown thought, unable to tear free of my mind, burrowing deeper and causing problems instead of making a clean break.

In short, my brain festers. *waits for someone to respond "gross!" or "I was eating, dammit!"*

Lack of sleep doesn't help, of course. My own hacking cough keeps me away from deep sleep. And bellowing along to punk music doesn't help the throat heal -- but it soothes my weird thoughtstream, and that's vital too.

*runs about the internet, warns strangers off of visiting the World's Only Corn Palace, and gleefully grabs a bottle of Mt. Dew*

Eh. I'm doing pretty good for being me. I know this. It just doesn't stop me from wanting to be even better.

Major snowstorms in eastern South Dakota (my part) and surrounding areas. Power has been out today twice as much as it's been on. Panicky like whoa over state of online classes. Rolling blackouts expected for several days yet -- major power connection was damaged in storm.

Internet requires power for computer and cable modem so cannot be online much at all. Am very sorry, will check email, board, etc. when can but must be quick now for fear of another eight hour outage.

Missing you all horribly.

Feel awful for hating power outage; belongings are safe and dry, home is undamaged. Hurricane survivors had it much worse and am heel to complain of boredom and chill. (Furnace has electric starter. Am wearing four shirts layered.)

Must post to not lose everything written.