I've had bird flu or plague or what-have-you for the last week and a half. It sucked, the end.

I am graduating in two weeks (problems all cleared up!). I have no plan for the after. It's very loser-like.

I'm halfway through a Peace Corps application that will almost undoubtedly be denied on medical grounds, but I pretty much went "fuck it" and decided to try anyway. Progress is slow, because I only actually want to join the Peace Corps about a third of the time. When it gets denied (or I abandon it) I am going to apply to master's programs in the fall, provided I can get a personal statement written. This I want to do a little more reliably, except for the part about accruing further debt and the very real possibility that I cannot get in anywhere, anyway.

In the meantime my plans look like staying at my parents' house. I will need to find employment that does not include interaction with people, and really all I want to do is clean out the barn, find the hole in the liner to the garden fountain, and help train up Dusty. (She's doing better with the saddle! There are pictures. She doesn't even look bewildered anymore.) I find this very odd and alarming.

I have two essays due next week, and I am not worried about them, not panicking, and not doing a great deal of work yet. I may want to savor them.

I don't want to spend my life writing essays, so I suppose I don't want to be a career academic. But I'm going to miss them anyway.

And three of my professors seem to think I am not stupid, that perhaps I am even marginally intelligent. They seem to think this to a stronger degree than is actually warranted. If I wasn't reasonably certain they'd forget me (they have large numbers of students and small attention spans), their regard would make me feel a lot more queasy than it already does.

---

I sympathize with the dragon in Beowulf. He is my favorite character. I would like to be a dragon. You could coil around treasure for a few centuries and take lots of naps.

I am...a little inarticulate right now. Christ on toast.

So I've been gone from LJ for awhile. I get back, and I check metafandom, and I fall into an incredibly huge and unbearably stupid explosion of idiocy and the (thankfully intelligent) discourse which followed, all prompted by The Open Source Boob Project.

Yes, you read that right.

I wouldn't recommend reading it, actually, but it seemed stupid to mention it without linking. It's rather hilariously stupid and dismissable, except that he's serious. Anyway, I got sucked into this, and into all of the various replies I could find, approximately four hours ago. I now feel as though I've just woken up, and am wondering why I just wasted the last four hours of my life. I really didn't want to read any of that, although I'm glad to have found people who could be articulate and mean about it (and, because I've subjected you to the crap, I shall also provide quick and easy access to my favorite responses, for those who may be interested: I Want A Great Big Stick And A Large Can of Whoop-Ass, The Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project, and The Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program).

I'm not really hung up on this anymore; I think the past few hours got it out of my system. I just - what a worthless four hours it was. I feel I need some kind of record, to prove those hours actually existed.

I just...what the fuck? What the fucking fuck. Seriously?

I've been torn between (vaguely hysterical, I'll admit) laughter - because I still cannot believe the stupidity involved, or that it got so huge - and wanting to bang my head against the wall. Repeatedly.

21st Century!

Please answer!

It's actually relevant to something I'm doing right now.

Poll #1151411
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None

Do you get déjà vu:

Do you get dizzy:

This poll brought to you by the temporary uglification of my layout and my principles, as I have upgraded to a Plus account to do it.

Today I accidentally became a member of Greenpeace. They attacked me with pictures of polar bears, who are cute and also endangered.

I didn't stand a chance. Polar bears inexplicably became popular last fall, so there have been posters everywhere, and I have absolutely no idea why but whenever I see a picture of a polar bear I want to cry. Borders was a really uncomfortable store around the holidays. I wanted one of those stupid plush polar bears so badly.

So anyway now I am saving the polar bears and also the whales and also ending global warming.

*headdesk*

(Although, of organizations to join accidentally, it could be far worse. Yay Greenpeace.)

I am watching the fourth annual Puppy Bowl.

I went to work yesterday, which was really quite stupid, and am going to work today, which should be fine. Then I am going back north (again! I have been doing a lot of traveling these past two weeks), for a last hurrah for a friend who is going to India (India!) in February.

That book review assignment was disastrous for my bookfund. I've been meaning to read more books that aren't guilt-ifiers lately, so the books I was looking at were quite in line with my current tastes, and once I had a few recommendations I was off and running and now I have four piles of books on my floor and I really have to return three of these piles before my credit card bill comes in but I do not want to. (Also! I said I was posting my request at a few bookish communities, yes? At one of them, Ellen Kushner left a comment. I mean, Ellen Kushner commented on one of my posts. And then I realized it and turned dork, and only barely restrained myself from leave another [more squealy] comment :D)

I don't have anything else to say. Fair winds and following seas.

Heath Ledger is dead

I almost can't believe it. What the hell. My God.

Yesterday the world fell apart, and this morning I put it back together. With a mitten. I just thought I'd share.

I just figured out why Brad Pitt is attractive: he's symmetrical!

When you think about it, there's nothing particularly outstanding about any of his features, though none (of course) are ugly. Pretty average, really. It's just that they line up perfectly.

Hah!

Also, (1) my job still sucks, but (2) I like being back, anyway. I have history, now, or what have you (which isn't something 2/3s of the employees have), so it's kind of recognized as "my" dishroom. It's a crap job, but at least I get to be a tyrant.

A warm welcome to the new year! Don't suck, okay?

There was originally more substance to this entry, but I cut the lot of it. I don't really feel like reflecting at the moment, so suffice it to say that 2007 did not suck, which can be adequately if not wholly measured in the fact that I did not once need to start contemplating seaside resorts, let alone more exotic locales.

I'm signed on to AIM right now. I don't feel up to actually opening a conversation window at the moment. Too scared, I suppose. I don't know how to talk.

Well. I can talk quite well, obviously; I simply can't communicate. Not lately. Not without a previously-established purpose to the conversation and/or a set time to end it. This is part of why I always feel like I've insulted my professors when I leave office hours. Not that a conversation with a professor is particularly comparable to one with a friend. Er.

But I'm signed on. I feel like I'm hanging out in comfortable silence with the other people who are signed on. I don't need no stinking talking. Er.

I'm looking through communities for a new layout (as I don't feel like making one myself). Time for a change.


P.S. Every time I watch Pushing Daisies I want to make a pie. Then I watch Dexter and no longer feel the need.

1. You shall put your music player on shuffle.
2. You shall press forward for each question.
3. You shall use the song title as the answer to the question even if it doesn't make sense. NO CHEATING!
4. You shall tag 5 people and rain hell upon humanity.
5. You shall give your own comments on how it relates to the questions.

( My answers )

I tag anyone and everyone who's been mostly lurking of late, but is definitely about and looking for an excuse to post. Yes, I mean you.

Dammit. I used to like being a liar.

This is the Week of the Dead Flags. By which I mean it is War Is Bad Week. Or something; I'm not sure what they call it, but they fork university lawns, only with flags instead of forks. White flags represent Iraqi dead; red flags, American military casualties. Every year there are flags completely covering every square inch of the east campus. When they started this, every flag represented one person. This year, the white flags represent six.

I just called in sick for tomorrow. I am not sick at the moment, and probably won't be tomorrow.

I have a lot of homework to do; I want to get the backlog cleared up so I can move into Finals Season prepared.

I feel like shit. I will very likely not be able to concentrate on my stupid homework tomorrow, because I will feel like shit then, too.

I was going to do it Saturday, too, but now I think I'll go to work on Saturday and bitch in my head about how much I wish I was doing homework instead, because at least then I wouldn't have to be such an obvious faker. I'm going to be super-efficient on Saturday, too. NO ONE WILL GROWL AT ME.

I'm trying to write a philosophy essay. Or rather, I'm not trying, at all. I keep sitting here feeling vaguely uneasy because I haven't started the essay due Wednesday, but feeling uneasy isn't enough to make me stop sitting here. Every so often I bake something new, to feel productive. Yesterday evening and today I have made:

1/2 batch cinammon rolls
3 batches cookies
2 coffee cakes (small loaf pans)
1 batch croutons
1/2 devil's food cake mix, extensively doctored and baked as cupcakes, and frosted with
1/4 batch chocolate ganache and
1/2 batch marshmallow frosting

I have to stop. I have to wrap things and put them in bags so they can go in the freezer.

Perhaps I will procrastinate by doing other homework now. At least that is somewhat productive.

I just calculated how fast I'd have to be moving if I wanted the next eight months to seem like just nine hours. I'm sure relativity's a lovely theory, but I can't move that fast. Doesn't do me much good.

It's always something or other. We all know there's always something tearing you apart, and etc.

I am tired and also currently sick and would like to be done with this part. Not that I know what the next part is.

--

In other news, I am a little surprised at the negative reactions to the Dumbledore-is-gay-and-loved-Grindelwald revelation. I see their point - yes, it could/perhaps should have been in the book itself (in Rita's book, probably, when she was talking about the friendship), but honestly, I kind of consider that it was there, subtext everywhere, and as it was there was a lot of exposition in that book. And given the cute white-picket-fence heteronormative epilogue to Deathly Hallows, this is still big.

The blow-up yesterday was amusing to watch. And I haven't seen much of the bigoted kind of negative reactions (yet), which is awesome, though I expect the book-burning right will have something to say at some point.

You believe the truths you are presented with.

Also. I am very, very easily amused.

Medieval Britain is fun, the literary crit class is easy but interesting, and philosophy is incomprehensible, but I'm fairly certain it's supposed to be. I had a fourth class, but I dropped it, because it was when hours were available (for the dish gig, la).

The last week has been...problematic. I think I'm in trouble, actually, but it's not something I have to worry about for a year or so, so I'm going to put off said worrying as long as possible. I don't really want to talk about my week, so I did this meme instead:

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk* to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

( the books )

I just took a break from reading Beowulf to rant about Beowulf.

Yes, I am reading it again. I'll have to read it Spring term, too.

The post more or less went like this: this poem's relevancy has been disastrously overblown, and it's very nice that all these people think it's important and momentous but they're wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. The post was much much longer than this one, but its central claim was basically that using Beowulf as a historical document to reveal a true perspective on pre-Christian Saxon culture is exactly like researching nautical warfare during the Napoleonic Era by reading Her Master and Commander:



When I saved the entry I made it private because I got really long-winded about why its use as a historical document is a total crock, and I just didn't want to legitimate my own ravings by making them even remotely public.

So I made these ravings public instead.

I have to go back to rereading Beowulf.