I just did a quiz to find out how I'd get reincarnated. They said I don't fit in any new lives and so I'll have to stay in hell.

Well. That's nice.

My dog is currently in Montana. I really, really miss my dog.

1) I registered for classes today. That doesn't have to mean anything final, but then, I have a good deal of forward momentum for someone who is purportedly waffling.

I am both excited, and worried. I'm less happy when I'm focused. That doesn't make sense.

I am going to be a librarian? :D ?


2) Also! By the by. Whosoe'er decided that "it's just like riding a bike" can function as a metaphor for the ease of picking something up after a long absence was talking out of his ass. I spent a half hour riding bikes around Toys R Us on Saturday. I never regained a proper sense of balance in that whole interval.

I'm considering buying a bike.

A copy of Othello came in at work, and (because I missed feeling smart? I don't know) I checked it out. And I'm mildly amused.

I've only ever heard Iago hailed as the consummate villain. But I find him boring - inconsistent, not in a fascinating and complicated way but in a way that doesn't make story-sense. Scholars debate his Murky Motivations, and if I were still an English major reading this for a class I would be doing the same thing, and reading everything about Iago I could get my hands on, and formulating a thesis, and convincing myself of my argument in the process of bullshitting writing a paper, but you know what? I think he's a construct used to poke the plot around; a device not allowed by his author to be a person. And that's lazy writing. It's also possible I may have argued that instead, were I feeling recalcitrant, but this is far more fun -

I now have the luxury to say wow this is dumb, and leave it at that. And it's kind of awesome.

I may change my mind by the end? I don't know.

I am also reading Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman, which is making me want to read The Graveyard Book and also making me want to befriend a few ghosts.

(swine fluuuu! swine fluuuu! I hear it as a jingle in my head whenever someone mentions it. I don't know where it came from)

So Egypt decided to cull every pig in the country.
- Whoo hysteria.
- Last I heard, they haven't had a single case.
- You can't actually get it from just any pig. The disease is now human-to-human transmitted.
- This is stupid.
- And possibly discrimination against people who eat pork?

I heard somewhere (caveat emptor) that the normal flu has killed more people, in the United States alone, just from the beginning of this year, than swine flu has killed the world over. I know it's not the same, that it's at least somewhat the rate of spread that has everyone paranoid, but why doesn't anyone care about that?

And if I see one more person get relieved after finding out the child who died in Texas was not American I am going to scream. Hello! MEXICANS ARE PEOPLE TOO.

The last hypothesis I heard concerning the origin of this thing was that two children in California had swine flu - and recovered - in March. Which would mean that we contracted it, sent it over to a country with densely populated cities and a populace of often-compromised immune systems, and are now bitching at them. To quote a friend: "We're bastards."

(swine fluuuu)

I DID NOT BEEP. I went on my family shopping vacation this past weekend, and nary a beep did I hear when going through the metal detectors. I was prepared for a drag, I had my note out, I was vaguely stressed, and then: nothing. Overwhelmingly anticlimactic.

I am applying to grad school, unenthusiastically.

Life is grand. My job continues to rock, as far as minimum-wage paying retail jobs with no benefits go. And we elected the right president. And I had a donut today.

Win!

I broke my collarbone! It was the first of October. Windy and I were running and I flew over her head when she tripped. She is fine. She is also amazingly patient and wonderful and didn't step on me while I tried to figure out why I was looking at the sky. I love my horse.

Then I had surgery, about three weeks ago. It went really really well, and now I'm to the point where I feel like I have a normal and usable arm that just gets really really tired and sore too fast. This is a dangerous feeling and I've been told to resist it. No matter how usable my arm is, I am instructed to remember that I will be a cripple until bone growth replaces the metal plate. Though I did go without my sling for half of Halloween. I was a gypsy.

The funny thing though is that there's this tiny point of nerve damage above my armpit, right below the outside edge of the incision. There's just this quarter-sized patch of skin that can't feel anything - I mean, I can feel the pressure if I press down, presumably because there are layers of flesh or what underneath that still feel fine, but I can't feel my nail if I scratch. It's awesome.

And I have a metal plate holding my collarbone together! For now; I may or may not get it removed when the bone is all knit together again - that'll be elective. In the meantime I'm going to beep going through airport security when my mother and I go to her sister's in December.

Also, I am getting a Wii. I am torn between Mario Galaxy and Mario Kart for my first game. Guitar Hero and/or Rock Band will come at some point, but that will require more saving and I don't want to wait that long for my Wii.

Doctor Who!

Hah! I am hired. It was less an interview than a "can you start Tuesday? Would that be alright?"

I guess frequenting a bookstore for ten years really helps with the interview process.

I am smiling right now.

1) One of my favorite independent bookstores called me today! It was while I was with the horses, so I missed it, but I shall call back tomorrow, because they have part-time openings. YES.

I have glee. It is working in a bookstore, but without the Big Business evil and the stranger-than-strange corporate policies. And the part-time is perfect, as I will still have time for the scary hitmen job and the library volunteering and the violin lessons that I am getting I swear to God as soon as I get a full paycheck. (Unless it is a different instrument. I am still undecided. My options are currently limited to the instruments I actually own, which means violin, guitar, or piano). And also, it is one of my favorite bookstores.

2) My horse still likes me. This was very good news. I hadn't known. At times I wasn't even certain that she remembered me all that well. We like our new round pen. And Dusty and I are getting on fairly well, too. She prefers Mom, but that's fair; she's never really known me.

3) I have decided to be a Rodgers fan, inasmuch as I can be any sort of sports fan at all. The decision was largely based on my annoyance at all the announcers, and their talk about the shoes he now needs to fill. Although there is still something approaching cognitive dissonance when I think of Favre as a Jet. It does not compute.

4) I'm good. Working, and waiting for it to be time to apply to graduate school. I don't actually know that I want to go, but hell, it's something to do, yes?

I hope you're all happy. That things are going spiffily. That the roads are rising to meet you.

(smile)


P.S. I have a sudden urge to do one of those memes that will tell me what kind of animal spirit I have, or what's my totem animal, or something. I have no idea where to find these things anymore.

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.