Below please find the LJ of Jenny Rowland, who fears no Google.

Dateline mid-April '09:

Free userpics here. Credit anyone who I note the art as belonging to.

Four Panels is still on hiatus. I know, you are all so sad and such. Meh.

As of July 2008, I am working at Epic Systems Corporation, outside of Madison, Wisconsin, as a software dev. You can Google Epic if you want, and read all the horror stories, but if they're all accurate then I guess I must've gotten hired in an alternate reality. I'm well aware that we individual employees are mere resources, to be used for the good of the company as a whole at the expense of our own personal time and lives; that we are expected to work ten, twelve, and occasionally, if we are useful enough to our evil overlords, even 24 hours straight with a smile and see a plastic-framed award certificate as full compensation; but, um, hello and welcome to the entire software industry? Next perhaps we can complain that sure, water keeps us from dying, but GRR IT IS WET I HATE THAT. Every morning I get to go to work in a t-shirt; every night I get to go home knowing that I've helped in some teensy-tiny way to help millions of people get cared for a little better by their friendly local doctor types. I guess what I'm trying to say is, neener.

I've also totally found the Nerd Mothership. It's like being raised by wolves, and then finally being rescued by your tribe, who on the way back to the village proceed to talk about how this is totally like that one episode of Star Trek. Then they ask you if you have your towel.

We gave up on fixing my old computer, and now I have a monster of a laptop and wilsonator's drive in an external drive housing dealie. My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite named Osterman. Naming a Satellite "Osterman" is a two-layered reference that you probably have to be me to get. Hint: one half is musical, one half is a major motion picture. But anyway! I now have access to all my old files and things! This is good, even if I do have to put up with Vista on Osterman. But I guess it's worth it, since now I can come home from my job programming healthcare software and spend my evenings programming hacked objects for The Sims (that would be The Sims I). I fully intend to get a working set of bunkbeds in the game eventually!

There, that should take care of the twice-yearly-if-you're-lucky top-of-the-page update. Dash dash dash. Dot!

(Simon Pegg was the best thing about the new Star Trek movie, but his hat was a pretty close second)

Actual search terms mecha just put into Google: "merciful stake burning"

So THAT'll look interesting in their search statistics.


Finally, last Friday I was struck by a flying beer bottle while in a bar! It smacked into my shoulder and missed my glasses by about two inches. The person who threw it was grappling with someone else at the time. This makes my night sound much more adventuresome than it actually was, but it's kind of boring to admit that I just went with mecha to see his friend's band, said friend being up from Indiana so they got to see each other for the first time in like eight years, and the band that went on before them was a punk band, two members of which seemed unable to hold their liquor and were prone to rambunctiousness to start with. Oh wait, I just admitted it. Dammit.



THIS JUST IN: according to mecha, there is a stakedamsels.com. Rule 34 indeed...

So if his name was Seamus MacGillicuddy, would they be investigating whether he was Catholic?

Oh. Oh, wait, that's right. We only have to be concerned that someone has an imaginary friend who tells him to do things when that imaginary friend is named Allah.

I mean, yes, I understand, there is some history of some individuals of a certain belief liking to make Americans go dead, so it's not entirely an irrational thing to look into. It just cheeses me off how nobody looks for racial or religious motive when it's a white dude sending mailbombs or driving fertilizer-filled trucks into government buildings or whatever, just when it's one of tham thar funny brown people.




Coming eventually: a post about Freakfest! Short version, it was awesome and a bunch of people took pictures of us. Mecha has a thing about it if you're interested.

Some unknown person posted a link on the ZRC blog. It is a link to this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/18/zombie_plague_paper/

Oh. Em. See. (for Cthulhu.)

Basically this guy wrote a serious mathematical paper where he concludes that, in the event of a zombie outbreak, humanity's only option is to shoot on sight. Here is an actual quote from the actual paper:

Human-zombie coexistence is impossible... Since all eigenvalues of the doomsday equilibrium are negative, it is asymptotically stable. It follows that, in a short outbreak, zombies will likely infect everyone.

Okay, so I didn't actually go far enough in math to know what the hell an eigenvalue is besides something to do with matrices (and I hate matrix math so that's about as much as I care to know. Seriously. Matrices are jerks and probably they kicked my puppy at some point, even though I've never actually owned a puppy.) But... something about that excerpt just fills my blackened heart with delight. It's the combination of erudition and zombies, I think. "Blah blah blah math blah. Zombies will likely infect everyone."

This isn't sarcasm, by the way. It's hard to tell with me sometimes, because I fall in love with the weirdest shit, but today it's this paper that some dude in Canada wrote. Also, he changed his legal name to Smith?, which is awesome even if it does lead to questions of how you pronounce it. I think I'd always pronounce it as a question. At least until he punched me.


Unrelated: who is going to Freak Fest as a zombie rights protester tomorrow night? It would be nice if it was you! Probably it's just me, though.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/22/maternity-leave-survey-work-forbes-woman-time-vacation.html

Um.

You have made a decision, of your own free will. You presumably know that this decision will result in a great deal of inconvenience, even difficulty for you over the years, and presumably you have decided it's worth the trouble.

Why, then, does anyone else owe you something?

Why should you get extra time off just to deal with the results of a decision you made? Can I make some other, different decision, and get to take off work because of it, in addition to the "regular" vacation/sick time I get?

No?

Only childbirth counts for that?

Well, then. Thank you for doing us all such a favor then, I guess. Carry on being a protected class with extra rights and privileges that you deserve because, um... something.

This is a topic I've gone on about before, and I know it's just screamin' into the wind and all, but... yeah. I understand that giving birth to and caring for a new baby is a lot of work and physical trauma and all, but I'm not sure why you should expect your workplace to make it up to you. From what I heard, raising a kid meant making sacrifices... whether it's not trying to drag a ten-month-old to that new action flick that you really really want to see, or not trying to get your job to subsidize your having added a family member.

Of course, I've never had kids, so I could be wrong.

So mecha and I have had this little pet project for a while, and now it's finally ready for primetime. (I think.)

I have previously mentioned The Zombie Rights Campaign, mainly in the context of the Dark Carnival. The thing about the Dark Carnival is that, in addition to being a great way to see a ton of awesome horror movies and sideshow events, it also functions as a fundraiser for the Bloomington, Indiana-based Cinephile Film Arts organization, a nonprofit group that basically gives indie filmmakers money and support to help them create more awesome movies. They are lousy about keeping their domain names registered, but there is an entry you can peruse at something called Bloomingpedia.

The ZRC, at its heart, is another fundraiser for the Cinephile. Assuming we ever make any money.

In the interests of actually making said money, we have now launched the ZRC store. You can buy stickers and t-shirts! Please buy stickers and t-shirts. All those hungry indie filmmakers are counting on you! Not to mention all the horror movie fans who are tired of lame Hollywood horror movies and want another option. Sure, Zombieland is awesome, but come on people, we're up to Saw VI? How much big-budget torture porn do you need?

That's it! You may now go about your day as previously scheduled.

Dear mainstream radio:

I listened to you for about two hours today. During these two hours, I heard approximately one billion commercials for Sweetest Day. Please stop pushing this ridiculous fake holiday before I hunt you down and kill you.

Yes, I am aware that you are a medium, a concept if you will, and thus rather difficult to be hunted down and killed per se. Somehow I will manage.

Hate,
Jenny.

PS the student station is a trillion times better than you, except for the three or four hours of my work week where they run stupid talk/sports shows. SO THERE.

I keep picking up wacky new blogs to read and it's getting to the point where I can't remember them all off the top of my head anymore, so here's a list I can refer to. I'll probably stick it somewhere more logical later.

In approximate order of when I came across them:
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
http://thereifixedit.com/
http://thatwillbuffout.com/
http://lovelylisting.com/
http://itemnotasdescribed.com/
http://emailsfromcrazypeople.com/
ETA oh lord now i have to read this one too: http://probablybadnews.com/

Probably others that I have forgotten (see first sentence).

Totally unrelated to blags: there is a little shopping center about two minutes' walk from the apartment, and one of the stores had some nice potted plants outside this summer, including a number of riotously bushy coleuses. For a few weeks now we've been meaning to steal cuttings, and yesterday we finally got around to it! Seeing as it's started getting to/below freezing at night and the poor plants looked varying degrees of dying, I say it is not even theft anymore since they're just gonna get tossed out wholesale to make room for next years' models come May or so. So, yes, now we have cuttings of six unknown coleus variants in cups of water by the window, and they've perked up nicely so at least a couple might survive long enough to root. It's guerilla horticulture!

Dear local easy-listening station:

Please stop playing music that was on all the "today's awesometastic new music" stations when I was in high school. It may be that, with the passage of time, No Doubt and Matchbox 20 have indeed fallen by the wayside enough to be classified as "easy listening" (and not in the sense of "well, compared to Gwen Stefani on her own..."). My rebuttal is: DAMMIT STOP MAKING ME FEEL OLD.

Thanks,
Jenny.

I took off work last Wednesday through this Monday, and we went down to Bloomington for Dark Carnival, which is, of course, THE BEST FILM FESTIVAL IN THE ENTIRE WORLD EVER. Or at least the best horror film festival. Five days of horror movies from all over the world, hand-picked by a team of people who love horror so much that some of them dress up as monsters every single Saturday to entertain delighted fans at Atomic Age Cinema.

Wednesday night was the last showing of a grand guignol performance called Bloomington After Midnight, which was basically about how there are horrible things that go on and a creepy monster dude in a kickass top hat watches it all, and shows it to the audience to make them complicit in muuurder. It was really neat, but my description sounds lame.

Thursday night was an outdoor showing of the original Night Of The Living Dead, so we brought down picket signs and protested this shameless perpetuation of anti-zombie stereotypes on behalf of the Zombie Rights Campaign. Some total strangers done up as zombies helped us picket, which was awesome. There was also a little girl of about seven who begged to be a zombie too, and one guy had a makeup kit on him for that very purpose, so then we had a towheaded urchin running around being happily undead.

Friday and Saturday were lots of movies, some of which were painfully pretentious and arty, but that's always the way with Dark Carnival, and some were INCREDIBLY FREAKING AWESOME. Among these: George's Intervention, about a zombie whose friends are worried about his addiction to eating people; Thirsty, about a guy who's dying for a Slushy; and The Landlord, about a guy who keeps having to find new tenants for this one apartment in the building he owns, because they keep getting eaten by two demons, one of whom seems to favor bowling shirts. I'm not sure why all my favorites this year seemed to be the funny ones, but they were! Caution Sign was pretty good, and it wasn't a comedy, but the concept behind it amused me, so I guess it half-counts maybe. And of course there was Sculpture, which might have a trailer but oh my fucking god MySpace how I hate it so I can't be bothered to look. Sculpture is about an artist who decides to create the perfect man by utilizing the customers and employees of the gym where she and her brother work! We had to see it because it was Marv Blauvelt's big movie this year, and Marv is a pretty awesome dude. He is also a bodybuilder who has now made at least two movies about bodybuilders being serial-killed. We worry about Marv sometimes.

Sunday were more movies but we kind of had to get back to Madison at some point so we didn't stick around for any. We did go to McCormick's Creek State Park and get staves, though! Some guy (I assume) takes tree branches, sands and varnishes them up smooth to show off the grain of whatever kind of wood it is, and sells them as walking sticks. A couple years ago we bought a really nice one to turn into a voodoo staff for Baron Mardi, who had a little plastic prop walking stick for his act, which did him little good since it's like two feet tall and he's like six and a half. Over the course of... yeah, about two years... we collected beads, feathers, leather straps and a resin cast of a sheep skull, and worked him up a staff that we found pretty damn spiffy. There are pictures that I will post eventually. But anyway, we got our own sticks! We will decorate them up as well, though not as fancy as we did the Baron's, because his is a working prop for his weekly live performances, and ours will be to just walk around with and be cool. Mine is oak! I call it my +2 Oaken Staff Of Walking.

At some point during the week I also got a sort of zombie lightbox. It is difficult to describe, and I already took it to work to put on my desk so I can't take a picture of it now, but I wouldn't be posting the picture now anyway so it hardly matters! It is awesome and orange. Also, a poster of an adorable mutant zombie urchin by the same lady. I would link to her DeviantArt but there's not really anything on it as neat as the stuff she had for sale.

Monday I basically did laundry all day.

And today I showed you this, made with the Hero Machine, which has come quite a ways since the last time I played with it.


See what I mean when I say "all things fabulous" in the post title? This is one fabulous dude and/or lady. I dig the bow.

Now to watch Children Of The Corn.

Next week is UGM week at work. This stands for User Group Meeting. Every September we have a week where customers descend upon the Verona campus and take part in various educational meetings, focus groups, and networking opportunities with other customers; we employees take part too, and are even required to attend some things, although we're not allowed to do the "fun" stuff like, this year, cowpie-throwing. (You mean I can spend my lunchtime playing with cow feces? Where do I sign up for that?!)

It's slightly less fun for Epic employees than for customers, for various reasons, and one of them is that it's the only time we're required to dress up just to come on our own campus. Sure, if we're going onsite somewhere else we have to follow their dress codes, but at home we can wear shorts and flip-flops if we want -- and lots of people do. UGM week, though, is "smart business". Which was kind of an unpleasant surprise to me, as I'd thought for some reason it was "business casual", and the "what is 'smart business'?" picture on the intranet left me with no doubts that "polo shirt I picked up at Wal*Mart" might cut it some days of the week, but not, say, when I am on stage in front of a couple hundred customers talking about upcoming HIM development plans. Or helping register customers at the front desk in Voyager Hall. Or, well, you get the picture.

So today we went to the mall.

Now I do not like shopping for clothes, okay? I do not like it at all. My idea of shopping for clothes is hitting Wal*Mart every once in a while to grab underwear, or a couple more pairs of Dickies in the same size and style I was already wearing, then buying a bunch of t-shirts from Topatoco. Even before I discovered the trouble-free combination of Dickies-and-the-Internet, I was not much for the whole mall clothing process. A big part of that undoubtedly comes from the fact that most of my malling involved no actual purchasing at all. I do not come from money, to put it mildly. Or, to put it the way I usually do, my family didn't actually live in a trailer till I was 18, but when we moved there it was a slight step up. And have you ever noticed that the clothes you can buy in cool-kid mall stores are very expensive? It's true! They also tend to be smaller than I am, which is of course a secondary concern to being out of my budget in the first place. So they were always off-limits, and hence boring.

We entered the mall through the JC Penney, where I found a fairly nice gray sweater-with-fake-collared-shirt-under-it thing, and it was on sale, so that was awesome. However, I didn't really feel like letting my whole team see me wear the same shirt three times in one week (plus I don't like doing laundry that much), so after determining that there was nothing else of interest in the JC Penney's women's department, onward we went.

Sears did not have a women's department that I could find! They did have a misses and a junior's and a petites, though, so, uh, that's something I guess? Anyway, to hell with you Sears you get no money from me.

Lane Bryant was tiny and the only halfway "smart business"-y shirts I saw were either cut very wrong for me, or had enough ruffles to choke a horse.

That was it for anchor/plus-size clothing stores at the West Towne Mall! I was disappointed, because as previously stated I was not looking forward to wearing one shirt three times in one week; so mecha pointed to a store as we passed it and suggested I try that one. "They're not gonna have anything that'll fit me," I scoffed, but he insisted so we tried it anyway.

And that is how I wound up buying a sweater and a white collared shirt from the Gap.

I was going to say that I was confused as to why the very sky itself has not ripped apart in a maelstrom of earth-ending fire at the sheer insanity of me buying something at the Gap; but it's started raining now, so maybe that earth-ending fire will be along shortly.

My Trip To Work Today, by Jenny Rowland

This is my usual route to work!

"A" is the approximate location of work, and "B" is the approximate location of my apartment. B's actual location is the middle of a major intersection, and obviously I don't live there, but that's my major cross-streets.

Today I had to go to the office to do something -- something that wouldn't take but ten minutes, but I needed to actually physically go there to do it. I hopped in my car for the twenty-minute ride over there (30 with workday traffic, but today be Sunday). I bid mecha farewell, told him I'd see him again in about an hour. I had no expectation that things might go terribly, terribly wrong.

Do you see those red dots along the marked route?

The single dot is the intersection that was basically shut down for the Ironman Wisconsin triathalon.

The double dot is where traffic was backed up to.

The intersection between the dots? Well, that's the way I needed to turn. Only it was completely shut down. One half coned off for bikes, the other half blocked off by parked cars. Was it supposed to be blocked off to cars? I'm not sure. Sure as hell weren't any signs saying so, today, yesterday, or all last week.

Do you want to know how long I spent between those dots?

Forty minutes.

Were there signs saying "delays ahead, seek alternate route"? No there were not. Not last night when we happened to be out that way, and not today either as I sat with my car in park for five to ten minutes at a time because traffic was not moving an inch. Most of the movement we did get was from cars -- three in every five, I'd say -- giving up on waiting and doing illegal K-turns to get back to civilization and away from the madness. I actually would've done that myself, except the asshole behind me kept closing up all the distance between us every time I shifted into reverse. So I sat there, waiting to be allowed to go through the intersection where bikes now had the right of way, for forty minutes. When I got close enough to the intersection, I actually got to see the cops directing traffic, and letting through about three cars going east for each one going west. Traffic was only backed up about ten cars on the other side, while on our side it was only illegal turns keeping the blockage from going all the way back to the major thoroughfare of the M. Why the disparity? I do not know.

Here is the route I actually took to get to work today!

I bet you were wondering why the last screenshot had all the empty space to the left, eh? That would be why. I could've tried one of those county roads going north-south between 18 and the PD (the long east-west road marked in the screenshots), but I figured I wanted to make as big a circle as possible around the race madness. All the way to the terminus of the PD and then onto 18 seemed safe enough. So I got to work safely, did my ten minutes of stuff, and then left.

But aha! I thought, I'm sure as hell not trying the PD back! I'll take Verona Road. It's a pretty major street, and while I guess I can see them shutting down a chunk of the PD, I can't see them shutting down the PD and Verona Road, all with no signs or posted notice of any kind. Verona Road curves back up to hit the PD, and from there it's my usual simple route. So I headed that-a-way.

Here is my approximate route home!

The green dot is where Verona Road was closed! For construction, I think. I didn't see any of those accursed bicyclists, anyway. So I turned south, figuring if I had to use small roads, I wanted to go away from the madness. Make as big a circle around it. Escape, if at all possible.

The red dot near Verona is where another intersection was backed up waiting for bicyclists! At least this one had a sign saying EXPECT LONG DELAYS. Sure, it was placed after you had passed all possible alternate routes, but at least there was a sign here, unlike the PD.

The blue dots are intersections I would've gone north at, except they were backed up waiting for a break in the flow of bicyclists!

It isn't marked, but at some point during this nightmare journey I actually wound up driving ON THE RACE ROUTE! The unlabeled race route! I went about a mile having to drive on the left side of the road and praying that I hadn't died without noticing, descended into hell, and thus embarked upon an eternity of being unable to escape this fucking race!

The red dot at the far right was another intersection backed up waiting for bicyclists to go through! It was, however, my last chance to get home without perhaps detouring all the way to Oregon! (The town, not the state.) Thankfully there were no bicyclists once I made that last turn north or else I probably would have snapped.


Total time to make two twenty-minute trips and a ten-minute pitstop? About two and a half hours.

Signs seen marking the race route? Two, both small, in Verona proper.

Responsibility for letting it be known whether public roads that are accessible today will not be blocked off for a private entertainment function tomorrow?

Well, I guess that belongs to everyone who might be driving anywhere south and west of Madison. Sure, we could expect, you know, signs to be posted, but I guess it's much more reasonable to A) expect everyone -- Madison residents and those just passing through alike -- to keep abreast of biking events in Madison; B) expect those same everyones to check the Ironman website -- regularly, since as it says on that site, "Courses are subject to change"; and C) oh wait no that is retarded it's not my job to visit the website of an event I'm not even interested in just to find out whether I will be allowed to drive on a public street to get to WORK.


So in conclusion: Ironman, I hate you. Please at least put up a sign by the road you're shutting down, preferably before I've passed the last free intersection and am now doomed to sit and wait for your fun little racey-wacey that's okay I didn't have work to do or anything and boy howdy sucks for the people who live on that road you shut down who might've needed to call 911 for ambulances or something but that's okay 'cause they're not bicyclists so they can just die I guess. Perhaps you could even put up the sign the night before! You don't have to, though, it's always nice to keep us big stupid driver types on our toes.

In conclusion of my conclusion: Ironman, I HATE YOU.

Such a-doings that I have not been bothering to post! None are really that exciting, though. I mean, for instance, on August 31 we got another datapoint for gas purchases, at uh $24.38 I think.

I had a business trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan August 31 through September 2. The airport code for the Grand Rapids airport is GRR. This delights me. My luggage was growling at me when I picked it up!

I got back from my trip really late Wednesday the 2nd, and then went back in to the office on Thursday. I got free pizza for lunch on Thursday! Yep, I was gonna pay for it, but I got it totally free. So lovely! Truly the high point of anyone's day. Oh, and I got a raise, which is nice too I guess. PIZZA HOORAY

We just saw 9. Mecha's titular quote sort of sums it up. You could make a real drinking game out of playing "spot the videogame cliche" with it. I mean, it's pretty to look at, and I sincerely dig the post-apocalyptic vibe -- even if it's such a cliche post-apocalyptic vibe -- but, well. Maybe I can sum it up ( in a slightly spoilery way... ) It's a pretty movie, but there is little actual substance to it, and I doubt I will ever want to see it again. Although it does make me want a little burlap sack person of my very own. I'm not sure what he would want to eat, but I would happily feed it to him, and he'd have a little bed to sleep in and everything. He could read my books and stuff while I was at work.

This morning I checked my yahoo for the first time in a few days and found an email from some total stranger. Story time: since the mid-90s, I have derived great joy from this cassette tape of music I got at the Brea Mall. There was this little store called I believe Mayan Imports, and they had your standard selection of Latin American/Indian gewgaws... clothes, worry rocks, beads aplenty, whatever. And one day when I was at the mall with a friend there was this band performing in the mall, right near and courtesy of Mayan Imports. You could buy their music on cassette or CD. I was so taken with that gorgeous music... panpipey type things and guitars and rainsticky doodads and what-have-you... that I had to have it. But I didn't own a CD player, figured I never would. So I got a cassette.

That was my first and only experience with Los Angeles Incas, and forever after did I curse my lack of foresight, as the number of CD players/drives I owned grew and my cassette grew increasingly worn. Attempts to rip said cassette, of course, met with less than perfect success. And did you know Los Angeles Incas do not exist and never did? It's true. Just ask the Internet. Oh, sure, there's some outfit by that name that occasionally shows up at outdoor fairs and suchlike, like musical ninjas who fade away without nary a trace save the ghost of a gently wafting melody floating on the faint summer breeze. But can you buy their CDs anywhere? No you cannot.

Except this total stranger, who apparently is in the same old-cassette boat as me, emailed me to tell me that you can, and on Amazon even. It's just that, like I said, Los Angeles Incas do not and never have existed. But Echos Of Incas do.

This is the album I have quested after for years, more or less. The band name is different, the cover art is different, the album title isn't Huayras Puncco anymore, a couple songs are missing, one new one has appeared, and three suddenly have names completely different from what they were on my cassette... but the audio samples, one hopes, do not lie. I've purchased a copy from a third-party seller, so by this time next week I should know one way or the other whether I have finally found approximately three-quarters of this particular Holy Grail.

I replied to the Emailing Stranger this morning, but while I'm on the eljays: a public thank you, Emailing Stranger, if you happen to see this! You are still my best friend for the day, although in my time zone the day is only two and a half hours from being over.

Now to finish watching Frost/Nixon yay Netflix.

The radio just told me that Disney is buying Marvel.

I'm hoping for crossovers that make Archie Versus The Punisher look *sane*.

Box!

Box full of surprises from Kurt Brunetto to meeee! Okay, so actually not surprises, since I had to actually, y'know, order and pay for them. But it's a box for meeeeeee! And it doesn't even have a head in it! I checked.

More details to follow, along with instructions on how to make one of these surprises your own, if you desire!

This is a post that I have been meaning to make for a couple weeks or so now.

I was doing some testing of stuff in an internal environment at work, and I wound up logged in as one of the sort of generic users that are present sometimes, looking at their patient list for... something. I don't even remember what anymore. Anesthesiology, I think. Just a list of test patients, probably most or all created by the same person, as evidenced by the initials in the names.

Here is a portion of that list.


I think I love this person now. Even if she (the initials match up to a Ms. Cxxxxx Wxxxxx in the employee directory) spelled "Susannah" wrong.


You may not get what it is about several of these names that tickles me so, but that's okay. You've just missed out on reading possibly the best cycle of fantasy/horror/sci-fi/western fiction EVER.

Also, since I forgot to note it: on Wednesday the 5th we gassed up the car again, and it cost $23.53. SUFFICIENT DATA POINTS TO DETERMINE ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING, HERE WE COME

ETA: I explain myself very slightly better in a comment to a comment to this post, so if you do find yourself wanting to draw a tiny mustache on me, you might want to read it before making your final decision. I guess what it boils down to is, are there really exactly two points of view on the subject? Do I really either have to be in full support of this particular country or else I hate it and desire its end? Can I really not be against its current governmental and political actions and climate without also hating the people who live there, even though you'd never accuse a guy who hated Parliament and the Queen with bitter bitter loathing as hating all British or Anglican people? Why? Just because you feel that way? Who wrote that particular rule, was there a vote, and are we just not allowed to ever again discuss it?

Now back to the actual post.

Ouch. Why did no one tell me that TxtLJ chops your posts into tiny pieces? Fixed now.

Explanation for previous post: I wanted to record this commercial on the Mike, so I decided to suffer through the Ed Schultz show instead of switching back to my mp3s right after Stephanie Miller finished up. This guy Norman Goldman was subbing. At one point a twelve-year-old girl called in, making a fairly confused point about I think the government wasting money on things like illegal wars? Goldman was with her until she said we should stop giving aid to Israel, and then when she said that Israel shouldn't even exist he called her an anti-Semite, declared that she needed to get a lot more education before trying to talk about these things, and hung up on her.

Israel shouldn't be there, though, not really.

Look. You probably have a home. Chances are you like this home, at least a little. Now see this guy here? This is Bob. Bob has been oppressed all his life. He's had a horrible time of it, through no fault of his own. Some asshole even threw him in a concentration camp, can you believe that? He barely escaped with his life.

From now on, the southeast corner of your living room belongs to Bob.

What, you say you were there first? You say that was YOUR living room, goddammit? Well, sure, but Bob has a right to exist too. Bob's suffered more than you ever will. Are you some kind of anti-Bobbist?

Yeah, the Jews have been putting up with assholes for centuries, and they absolutely did not deserve it. But kicking other people off their land to make up for it? That's your answer? You've decided that two wrongs make a right? Really?

The Jews should exist, absolutely. They're people, and once we've determined that much, any further modifiers probably aren't needed. But a COUNTRY is not PEOPLE, and being against Israel DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE AGAINST THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE. And I just can't get behind a government that sends armored bulldozers into the residential neighborhoods of their slightly browner neighbors, folks. I just can't.

Just like for eight years, so very many Americans kept pointing at Washington, D.C. and saying "I swear I'm not with them."


So there you go. Norman Goldman is an idiot, and the nation of Israel can bite my shiny metal ass.

Swastikas, anyone?

Dear Norman Goldman:

Being against the state of Israel does not mean -- DOES NOT MEAN -- you are an anti-Semite.

Country/government != people. Remember? Guy named Bush? Had this country doing things that maybe everyone didn't like?

Moron.

Love,
Jenny.

The problem with having half a terabyte of storage, of course, is that when you find yourself saying "hey, whatever happened to the files from that one thing I did four years and two computers ago...?", it becomes... rather an exercise in perserverance. I found most of what I was looking for, though, which was nice. It was on the H drive! I'm glad I decided to click around in Windows Explorer instead of just waiting for Windows Grep to turn it up for me, because I would've gone alphabetically through my drives one at a time starting with E, and that would've taken like three days.

I also found this, which I had totally forgotten... ahh, memories. For those who weren't around at the time, years back there was this Puzzle Pirates forum contest where you could write and illustrate a piratey children's tale, and the prizes were various trinkets, various rare or special pig-themed things, and, as grand prize, a pink octopus familiar. I have no idea if things have changed now, since I haven't played since maybe three months after the contest ended (somehow whenever I pick up YPP it's in the summer, and then in the fall when all the kids go back to school it gets boring so I quit), but back in the day familiars were very rare. I won him, though. That was pretty awesome.

I kind of miss being Fenestra, and since I shelled out for dubs on her account then I assume she's still there (along with Dearic, who was on the same account). But it wouldn't be the same, plus I dread trying to go back and finding that she and her beautiful rare octobuddy Blaine HAVE been deleted. Far better to imagine them having wonderful pirate adventures together, without my interference. I'm strange that way.

(Note that, given a pink octo, I came up with the name Blaine. Some will get this reference; others will not. And that is the truth.)

There are of late a couple other "children's books" ideas tickling my brain, and I should really get around to working on them! They probably wouldn't pass muster with a panel of six-to-eight-year-olds, but the ideas for them amuse me to no end.