Ree’s musings

*hurts herself laughing* I wasn't going to do this yet, but now that I've been handed a reason, why not?

Howdy. So some of you folks know that I keep a blog three different places. Now, my LJ and my Xanga have pretty much the same stuff (different only in protected/friends-only content), but my Tabulas has that plus some poetry, writing prompts, other randomness that I didn't see fit to crosspost.

I also write some character journals for Jaina Jade and Ma'atkara Pasht, my two major online roleplay characters. I'd been keeping them friends-only, but recently decided that's no fun. Jaine's been chatty lately and has made a quite recent public entry, which has me laughing at her.

I think all Pasht's stuff is friends-only, but that will change once I figure out what I can make public without feeling like an idiot. She's discovered Internet quizzes. Now can a sensual vampiress take your standard "What colour is your soul?" quizzes? Oh no. No, she starts in with "What kind of flogger are you?" *headdesk*

They do it all to spite me. I just know it.

1. Taking sides:: unfair
2. Couples:: closeness
3. Right of refusal:: indignance
4. Marla:: Maples
5. Multiple:: personality
6. Trinity:: Matrix
7. Sneeze:: ow
8. Sweatpants:: scuzzy
9. Steve:: Jobs
10. Fabulous:: Gabriel

I'm going to kill the makers of K-Fee commericals, whoever made that bloody evil maze game, and that goddamn "don't press this" button. I will destroy them all and then -- only then -- will the world be safe for people with anxiety disorders.

I am getting goddamn sick of people pulling this shit. You want to email a buddy a link to a shocker, fine, whatever, I don't care. You start introducing those horrible things on mailing lists and stuff as "really funny" and I will flay your goddamn ass and fly it as a flag of fucking war.

I do not understand why people are so inconsiderate. It doesn't amuse me to feel blind panic, and seeing me in that state should not amuse any good-hearted person.

Buwahaha. I am a lucky student. Slog through singing along with movies for class, and get rewarded with an essay on a topic I covered in my first essay of the class! Hee! Okay, so it's a weird kind of joy, but that's what makes it my joy y'see. It's a small enough class that I would bet money every classmate will take the opposite side I will (if I dared bet in the classroom, which I don't, teleclass or not). So la!

Been hanging onto this quote forever, so I'm sharing it. Bram van Helsing is the best part of Dracula. Not that my Dutch ancestry biases me in the least, you understand. Anyway.

... I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.

Ahem. So. I live in South Dakota. I take online classes out of Iowa. These are relatively rural areas inhabited by less than forward-thinking people, in general. Many are afraid of things like anal sex and religions that are not their precise brand of Christianity. I am trying to understand and tolerate this, if not accept it.

I fear it's a lost cause.

My history class is having a grand flaming row about whether or not women should be allowed to serve in combat roles in the American military. A recurring thought among the detractors of women in combat is that for a woman, the risks are greater if they are captured, because women can be raped. Implicit in this statement is the idea that men cannot be raped.

I am trying to behave myself. I am responding to everything except the rape thing, because I don't trust myself to respond to it without calling the entire class fuckwits. That would be bad. It would get me tossed out of the class and possibly the whole school.

I don't know if I want to cry or scream or emigrate, but oh there's frustration running the whole length of me.

ETA: And now they're claiming that women in combat would distract the men. See, I think that can be spun for the good. I have a superhero roleplay character whose primary superpower is that she has great tits. She flashes them at bad guys, the bad guys are stunned, her partner uses the distraction to win the day, and thus crime is fought. Yay.

I wonder if the Amazons of Greek lore ever flashed their enemies from a distance. It seems like it would be an effective tactic, or at least fun to watch.

I should probably not write at midnight. Makes me nuttier than a cashew.

(Guess where I've been reading!)

I'm a full-on pixie princess
And I have a favourite drink;
It's lethal to imbibe it
Unless you're me (I think).

My eyes have all the colours
Of that fellow Joseph's coat.
It comes to transportation?
Just step aboard my boat!

Yes, I'm mystic and magic,
One of a kind, it's true,
My story's dark and tragic
Or my name's not Mary Sue.

I've almost got URLs working the way I want them! No more visible query strings -- tuck those buggers away! Hee.

This ties into MoonBurnt stuff, weirdly enough. Most any web trick I try to learn has a possible application to MoonBurnt if I just think about it a minute. In this case, my URL rewriting means I'm finally getting regular expressions to work. It's going to take regex to correctly link Mbt usernames to the corresponding wiki pages (to turn spaces in usernames into underlines in the wiki page URLs) and that's something I'm quite keen on, so that I got something regexy to work is most excellent.

Most of the other Mbt stuff is on hold. I really want to get an uber custom style going there, but a new release of PunBB may be released at almost any time and it's going to have a new style structure. I'm not sure if the old styles will even work or not, and I'm not going to bust my hump tweaking something that may work for just a week or less if the new release comes early. I also want to get the archives formatted to match the live PunBB forum pages, but again, the HTML and styling is due to change and I'm not going to do something just to redo it later.

I'm itchy about it though. I want to tear through the templates right now, modifying avatar handling and profile styling and pretty much everyfreakingthing.

But at the moment I am more hungry than itchy, so it's time for sloppy Joes (which quickly end up as sloppy Ree-shirt) and then I suppose I should write the essay that's due tomorrow.

Have you ever crawled under a table to retrieve something, and solidly thwacked your head on ther lip of the table because you misjudged its position?

That, to varying degrees, is how my head has felt since three this morning.

I have another fifty pages to read and three to write, all by midnight. I also have over 500 unread email messages. (Somebody's sure to think I'm joking. No, but I am on a high-volume mailing list.)

I think I shall call in dead, or at least pained and distracted beyond my usual scatterbrain. Murrphle.

I've been looking at these Johari windows going around, so I finally poked around 'em a bit. Here's mine , though it's somewhat borked -- I would never describe myself overall as calm or confident, ever.

But ah, there's a negative one! Now that's juicy. I know I need to work out my bad points more than I have been, and I know that I often miss just what those bad points are. So do tell! Make up a name or something if you like. Use the names of my own roleplaying characters if you want; I think it'd be a hoot. But do tell me my flaws. (Though if someone says I'm intolerant, I'll be most vexed. I try to work on that one quite a bit, though I know I'm not 100% past it yet.)

I should cram my textbook into my forebrain now, in the grim hope of absorbing data through osmosis. Mleh.

I just wrote a screenful of text to my world religions class discussion. The topic was whether Christianity had been a good or bad influence on Western civilization. The unanimous opinion was that Christianity is a good thing, because churches have soup kitchens and are generous, or some such drivel.

I have a headache. My temples are attempting to explode with each keystroke. I have been awake and uncomfortable since three this morning. Worst of all, I have a deep dark love of playing devil's advocate.

So I responded at length, and I'm pretty sure I'll spend the rest of the semester utterly vilified. Some small part of my brain is screaming in distant horror, wanting to be friends with everyone instead of driving them off. But the rest of me is satisfied. Perhaps someone will take my questions seriously and start to think about the points I brought up. Just one would be a victory.

In true smartass form, I closed with an apology, not for the content of my post but for the length of my reply. I have the distinct feeling that, once I have slept and somewhat recovered, I may regret what I've done. I hope not. Somebody had to, in the interest of simple fairness, and good may come of it yet.

1. Unorthodox:: method
2. Skate:: park
3. Hold on:: tight
4. Europe:: kickass
5. Reminder:: oops
6. Gold:: ring
7. Calcium:: supplement
8. Rated R:: hurray
9. Saturday night:: movie night
10. Tell:: poker

I feel like shit. There's a long gruesome story behind it, but the upshot is that I am a peon. I was watching TV and realised that the episode was going to hit my most vulnerable emotional spot. Did I stop watching? Oh hell no. Fuckwit that I am, I thought I could handle it. So I end up crying all through the rest of the episode, well into the next, and many more times since, while looking at old pictures and old gifts.

It's so stupid. This stuff started before I even knew it, when I was about sixteen, and I'm so far from over it that it's crazy. I'm so susceptible to seeing my fantasy resolution play out in fiction and then screaming at the universe, why? Why didn't it go that way when everyone thought it would end pretty much okay? What the fuck went so very wrong?

I'm shaking again. Crap. So anyway, I'm going to find something really kiddish to do to try to unwind and then I have got to study. That'll be hell all over again, since one class overlaps uncomfortably with my damaged history and my shakeup yesterday, but what's there else to do?

Little Nemo. Yes. Little Nemo on the Nintendo, and Disney soundtracks, and something sweet, fruit juice or something. I should be able to turn up "Gaston" from Beauty and the Beast if I dig a little, or else "Warthog Rhapsody."

Fear the flammable!

I feel better now.

I wonder how weird it makes me that I can only find my Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack if it's in its usual place: sandwiched between my Johnny Cash stash and my dc Talk block. *blinks*

And it's a two-line post kinda weekend.

I've been bitching right and left about my classmates and their narrow beliefs, so I had to report some non-bitching: a fellow world religions student read one of my posts (this one saying that Christianity is often claimed as an influence in modern society, but is rarely actually drawn on for major decision-making) and said it's true. My classmate agreed and said that it was a nice ideal, but not often realised.

It's a small victory but I'll take what I can get. Yay.

This is not to say that the idjits have stopped yammering that OMG how dare I say that, Christianity is important in America and that's why people are generous! *shudder* But that's gotten replies on defrauding charities, so at least some people are seeing things from roughly my perspective. Oh, and OMG the death penalty is good because it sends criminals to God so that He can judge them more quickly!

*headdesk* You know what, I'm just going to not check into class any more tonight, or I'm going to have another nightmare of being gunned down for believing that one religion should not govern a self-claimed democracy.

Mmmm. My brother Squirt had the day off from college classes, so we got together with our friend and GM Arak for a rousing round of Star Wars RPG. Yeah, baby! Woot! I got to be an extra-smarmy badass rogue and we have a new villain who actually got me wide-eyed and shaking (as a player!) at the realisation of his destructive capability... and Arak says we haven't found his true power yet. Sweeeeet.

Last night I got Squirt quite drawn into my oddities. I ran some weird astronomy ideas by him until it fanned his interest. He ended up helping me look up various planetary and satellite rotations and basically geeking out. I have an abolutely nutbar idea that will only work at a limited range of orbital tilt for each celestial orb, and I'm not sure it will actually work at all. However, we did get something determined with relative certainty: the moons of Uranus (crack your damn jokes, people) pretty much go right around the planetary equator, not evenly on the celestial plane (if that's the right word). This is most excellent, as it means I can have crazy unusual orbits, so long as I keep the science sound.

Hee. And then I mentioned that the planet is not suitable for human habitation at all, but does have a native race. I started explaining about the composition of the planet and how it affects gravity, and what features the natives evolved to safeguard themselves from the hostile environment, and I think I actually pulled a bit of my high school astronomy class into it. That's quite a feat, as my astronomy teacher spent more time on football plays than on the heavens. (No, really. He was the football coach and it was a fall semester. I once took a three-page test and left two pages fully blank because I fell asleep in class, and I still got a C.)

Hmmm. One o'clock has me babbling.

Copyright on written works lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, if I recall aright. The Bible was written by God, who is eternal. Therefore?

*should stop putting off religions classwork until late....*

*curses wordlessly*

I hate this religions class now. I'm trying to get my assignments done, and I read the instructions so I do them right (unlike my classmates, some of home incorrectly post their work, which happens to let me notice that they're doing it wrong), and I'm trying to be thought-provoking and they will. Not. Listen.

The radio is playing Harper Valley P.T.A. How appropriate.

And then some nit whose understanding of Christianity is "what one of the more bigoted preachers in a short-sighted denomination tells me to believe" has the wretched to gall to take my own words and invert them, attempting to use the same Scriptural reference as me to arrive as precisely the opposite conclusion because she just couldn't be arsed to actually read the glossary for the class to realise that that word, it does not mean what she thinks it means. And I can't even quote her idiocy to y'all because that would violate my student contract!

I'm getting fed up. I am trying to expand my horizons, to express viewpoints (some of which are my own, and some of which are not) in a way that makes me palatable to students who were not required to take this class, and so must have chosen it for some reason. And they're getting on my last nerve.

I just don't want to be here right now, in this backward state of a backward nation. I don't like being told that I'm a bad person because I have piercings, books of Egyptian magic, or friends who are not Christian. I put myself forward in class -- I know that part's quite my fault -- but then I'm getting shit outside of class too. My brother drowned me out when I tried to read some of my classwork to a mutual friend. And then my mother told me (in response to my curious query) that, if I came out as gay, she would try to put me in counseling to put me on the right path. Because clearly that would work, right Ma? Oh wait, she doesn't know anything about it other than it exists and is Christian, and it's not like I have any issues with counseling in the first place... Feck.

It all makes me feel alone and cornered. I know I'm not alone in the world, but I'm beginning to think I'm unique in my part of the Heartland. I resent being labeled "unChristian" for any of my alleged crimes. Let no man call unclean what God has made clean, yeah? Not that you can actually tell the wankers that and have them understand.

I am this damn close to converting to Discordia. Its belief system and followers are so much more sensible than those of Christianity.

There is absolutely nothing quite like a good Wikipedia trawl to cheer me up. From the entry on the Stargate film:

Daniel Jackson deprecated the original translation, saying it was wrong because it relied on the work of E. A. Wallis Budge.

That just -- hehehehe. Budge does have that effect on accuracy. *snickers madly*

Also, just FYI -- "wiki" is not an acceptable abbreviation for "Wikipedia." "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau name made by combining "wiki" (the type of software powering the site) and "encyclopedia." Many sites operate their own wikis; thus "wiki" can refer to any such site, not just Wikipedia. Sorry to be pedantic, but I keep seeing this mistake all over the place, and it's irksome because when I think wiki, I think Twine Encyclopaedia first and Wikipedia second.

Did I really say "not acceptable" in my last entry? Piss, I did. I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I meant that using "wiki" to mean "Wikipedia" isn't quite true and regularly confuses me. My intent didn't stop me from being a pompous arse about the whole shebang.

It was all quiet in the woods when Pasht spotted Lady Knight. She wrote bad love poetry and a session of naked mudwrestling made the male audience very, very happy.

Generator scripts are loooooove and so is really good caffeine.

Jaina was delighted when she wolf-whistled at Suitov. She wrote him a poem and eventually they moved in together and lived happily ever after.

Awwwwww.

Oh sure, now my online classroom loads all zippy-like. Last night I had a quiz due and I'm not even sure it got through. When I rule the world I shall smite them, or something, but first I have to cram a week's worth of Islam reading into today. Yaaaaaay.