The Internet Never Lies!

By (sort of) popular demand, here is one picture from Halloween. I should wear this wig more often, y/y? Full costume pic is over on Facebook for people I trust irl not to spread it around the internet at large and call me fat. =P

(click to embiggen)



Some day I will make a real post again; do not despair, LJ friends!

Kids, this are some real life serious business here.

If I link you to my journal of linguistics notes, can you keep it on the DL and comment without being a-holes or telling any trolls or jerkwads about it? I really, really am trying to write my thesis about internet linguistics and I really, really would like to have input from you guys on my random journal entries, since everyone has different internet experiences and whatnot and I'm dead sure you guys will know stuff I don't and be able to tell me about really interesting things I could look at, but I am going to tell my honest to god real life thesis advisor about it so he can look at my ideas and notes and quite frankly I don't need jerky internet people getting me in trouble over this and endangering my topic. And I don't want to f-lock it either, because I don't want to force my advisor or anyone else in the department to make LJs just so they can read it and comment (frankly I don't know how tech-savvy they all are to begin with, but it strikes me as maybe a tad rude anyway).

So, let me know if you want to read and can refrain from being a jerk, OR if you have any advice about how better to handle a public journal without craziness let me know about that too. =/

Hey kids. I have been gone for about 2 weeks, and since my home computer is now off getting a new logic board I'm not doing a great job at catching up on the ol' flist or s_f or sf_d or sfd_ot or anything. I mean I skimmed, and Jerry's puppies are so goddamn cute, but then I saw this and pretty much ran out of tolerance. You guys know I generally don't ask you to do shit, but if you happen to run across any more useful info or [legitimate] petitions or whatnot opposing this idiotry, link me, would you? Some assholes somewhere might think it's fine to classify contraception as abortion, but as a woman and a linguist, it's my professional opinion that those assholes need to get some dictionaries and some sociology books and cram them up their fundie colons.

Also, since I am feeling pretty crappy about a number of things thanks to the efforts of several individuals who really seem to think I need even more reasons to mope around, here is a shameless fishing meme. Answer it to make up for these jerks or you're excommunicated. (Just kidding, ilu e-friends. But please feed my ego a little.)

One little compliment can make you feel amazing. So give me a compliment, anything in the entire world, even that my shoelaces are pretty. Put this in your journal. And once you get some comments, put that entry in a memory or tag and when you are feeling down, just go to that entry and this will remind that you're not so bad in other people's eyes after all.

A thought occurs to me: I have a brand new digital camera, and also a lot of brand new LJ friends and other people who have not yet been exposed to my (incessant, ridiculous, completely irritating) whining about not knowing what to do with my hair any more! LJ MATH IS FUN, Y'ALL. You are hereby recruited as my hair dye consulting team.

( Here be some pictures )

( And here be some perseveration over options )

I also need to cut some off. Tell me how much and I'll probably take the average of what you guys come up with. =P

Help me, flist, you're my only hope! Or something.

Oh hey, Internet Friends. I am apparently slow in the head and just noticed a bunch of you friended me when I wasn't looking, probably from previous rounds of sf_d Friendocalypse or something. Well, hello, and rest assured I will be this batty pretty much all the time. Anyone here from the current round of Friendocalypse... I guess I'll try to do better this time. =P

Someday I will post something remotely substantive. Today is not that day.

Post a reply and I will:

A) tell you why I friended you,
B) associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc.,
C) tell you something I like about you,
D) tell you a memory I have of you,
E) ask something I've always wanted to know about you,
F) tell you my favorite user pic of yours,
G) in return, you must post this in your LJ.

Fun times?

Since the flist is so busy today I feel like I should say something.

Dear LJ, yesterday while walking entirely too far in the heels I wore to work, because of my stupid flat tire and my need to get to class anyway, I saw a fluffy squirrel happily eating a cigarette butt. Apparently, it was delicious.

Love,
Carolyn

*

Reply to this post, and I will list three things I love about you. Maybe more than three.

Then repost to your own journal and spread the love.

*

#1.

Dear Michigan "Feminist" Community,

Sure, OK, you're "empowered" and whatnot. Fine, congratulations on your little vagina mafia, continue patting yourselves on the back. But the transphobia has GOT TO STOP now. It's seriously not cute anymore and your utter lack of a sense of irony is more than a little embarrasing, as are your childish exclusionary tactics, which might be rivaled only by The Simpsons "Society of No Homers" in terms of membership definitions even a kindergartener would feel constituted cheating. You can't have it both ways, especially if you continue insisting on viewing gender as social construct. The past, present or future status of other people's genitals is not and has never been your business. Oh and by the way, if you keep spelling "women" with a "y" I will beat in your motherfucking skulls with an etymology reference.

No love,
Carolyn

P.S. You owe my sister an apology too, for your reputation making me say mean things about her group's most likely harmless vagina cheerleading party even though she isn't like you at all. (Sorry sis.) (Unless you're secretly a transphobic jerk too.) (In which case gtfo.) (But I know you're not.)



#2.

Dear White People,

No, your dreadlocks do not look ok. And no, not everyone can really have "natural" dreads, and no, your natural dreads ESPECIALLY do not look ok. They look like you need a comb and some scissors, and I actually LIKE dreadlocks. Even most black people who keep dreads, who have MUCH BETTER HAIR for dreadlocks than you do, go to someone to have them locked up and fixed every so often so they don't look like a ratty junkyard dog (and yeah, you DO look like a ratty junkyard dog) or at the very least do more maintenance than "just not brushing." Even Komondors need help to get nice-looking cords rather than gross mats. Your lack of irony is almost as hilarious as the feminists above, since you keep complaining that everyone thinks people with dreads never wash them, but YOURS are almost always the ones that make people think that, since they're usually the nastiest-looking (and smelling) ones. If you insist on keeping up with both the inane whining and the cultural appropriation (yes, it is. Arguing will only make you look stupider.) at least try to minimize the shame you bring to the rest of us and get your dreads locked up in a reasonably expeditious manner rather than spending 3-4 years walking around looking in dire need of a personal grooming instruction manual before you even get any felting at all. (Sorry Shan, but I know you're done with them now anyway.)

Grow the hell up and look at yourself,
Carolyn

Living with a lot of flashes of old dreams lately. A smell, a color, my hair brushing across my face. The way the light looks. A certain gesture. Air moving in a becalmed room.

No songs, though: the songs are all new. The last scene of a movie, the protagonist pauses for a memory, the soundtrack is something nobody's ever hear of; just haunting enough for effect but not catchy enough to become popular, thus ensuring the viewers see that scene behind their eyes whenever they hear the song. You know the formula. My ghosts have gotten themselves a producer.

Which is the better version of "Little Wing"? Hendrix's has... well... Hendrix, and that easy, magnetic looseness you can't look away from. Derek and the Dominoes do a good job, but of course they do, because how are you ever going to tell Eric Clapton and Duane Allman they did a poor job on a fundamentally great blues tune? Stevie Ray Vaughn's is polished and clear, and it's instrumental, so if you like a good guitar here's one that sings admirably - but the song has a strange edge from SRV that nobody else seems to give it. It's a free sort of song and he makes it seem a little deadly. Neil Young, for the record, has a song of the same name but it's actually a different song entirely [and hugely inferior]. All other versions really don't matter, I think. (Concrete Blonde? Sting? The Corrs? They have their [completely different] strengths, but bitch, please.)

I still haven't got anything to say, really, but here's a meager offering anyway. At least it's a start? I might be back soon. I was too amused at the idea of poetry I sort of but didn't actually write not to subject you all to another mundane LJ toy. Creativity by proxy. An interesting jump-start, perhaps.

( ahoy thar, meme )

Okay kiddies, here is the final tally:

Good Friday - the man I love calls me while I am about to start making dough for home-made Easter bread to take to his mom's house on Sunday and, instead of confirming plans to eat lobster ravioli and go dancing, says he doesn't love me any more, would rather make a tragic mistake than to be with me any longer and doesn't even know how long he hasn't loved me but apparently stayed to take his stress out on me anyway, all instead of just taking a week off of work to relax.

Saturday - family does their best to eviscerate me for not talking that much at Easter Brunch. Awesome.

Easter Sunday - for the cruelest joke possible, I am asked to come pick up my stuff from the boyfriend's apartment and leave my key and beat my head against the wall talk some more. (There was no miraculous resurrection this time.)

Monday - numerous disasters at work, boss out sick, found out I am terrible at linguistics when I cannot stop crying (will be a while yet before that gets fixed).

Tuesday - same as above except instead of ling problems I found out the union and the university are combining to fuck me out of half of my next paycheck.

Wednesday - boss returns, says she will not support [lengthy problem I am having with my job classification which means I am not getting the money I deserve].

Thursday - car stalls on the freeway on the way home from work, computer dies a spectacular tragic death (this post coming to you from a borrowed machine).

Friday - take the day off of work only to ruin my precious, beautiful hair, entire last week sinks in and a revelation slightly after midnight leads me to the inevitable conclusion that it doesn't even matter how upset I get over any of this, because nobody I can get upset at will give a shit and it will not change any of these outcomes. This still does not change how upset I am and in fact makes me even more upset over my ineffectiveness in controlling the events of my life.

What's next?

You were supposed to come to lunch today. I almost still feel like I should call your mother and apologize for not coming tomorrow. You never took me to see that movie, the dancing movie, I don't remember what it's called but I'm not brave enough to go see it alone so I don't suppose it matters. I don't know when I'm ever going to eat lobster ravioli again either.

...

It hurts the most that you're not even going to miss me.

I drove home in a terrible mood today. My office is being buried in ridiculous shit and I've been limping around with a burning pain in my hip after hauling heavy luggage all the fuck around Boston coming home from the conference yesterday, so I turned up the radio and did 90 most of the way up I-75. I usually say that I can't drive less than a V-6 because it would disgrace my family and community of auto-workers; the truth is that it's because of my temper. I also punch the radio buttons compulsively and hard, because Detroit radio blows and a full year later I'm still not used to driving a car with a CD player. My shiny, almost new, non-broken car actually makes me pretty miserable most of the time. It is fairly stylish, which I of course appreciate, but it has no character and teaches me nothing. I like driving old cars. I do not like the fact that I have yet to meet an honest and personable mechanic in the place where all the cars come from for fuck's sake, though, and I can't very well do all the work myself, so I do what is smart instead of what I prefer.

Anyway.

Somewhere around 9 mile the sun flashed orange on the side of a building and for half a breath I could smell it - I don't know what exactly, some flower or the perfume I used to wear, roses or gardenias or something hopelessly, pitiably sentimental - and for one perfectly encapsulated flash of light I was right where I smelled it last, looking into the face of the same person, feet in a fountain and hands in the sky, celebrating. In the wrong part of the state and at the wrong time of year I could smell that moment, and it was gone as fast as I knew it was there, and I almost rear-ended the ugly Civic with the comical erector set spoiler braking inexplicably in the wide open left lane in front of me.

I'm not happy and I don't know what to do any more. This is, for the most part, because I have convinced myself that I deserve what I have and I don't deserve what I don't have. Academically, I can write the syllogism proving it's absurd to think that I am not entitled to lose the weight, become a real dancer again, repair my nose, dye my hair, move to a beautiful lively city, have friends who live within 50 miles; this does not matter in the slightest. My brain does not accept the fact. I can foster any or all of my friends and I am very, very good at helping them to be happy; I am the mender. I collect broken people and I patch them up, I can fix you, I can make you strong. I'm not complaining - I like doing it and I want them to be well. But those skills just never have been self-reflexive. I will fight for anyone except me.

I need a direction.

Let's call this post an experiment.

Insta-poll: whoever happens to read my journal in the next 60 120 (update: time bonus due to lateness of driver) minutes can vote.

1) Should I go to the LX this weekend?

2) Is the Secretary of State's office's incompetence a good reason to have sobbed as hard as I can remember doing in my lifetime?

3) Are you even out there anymore?

I am not the first person to make this observation, but:

This stupid LiveJournal is not indicative of my personality or my outlook as a whole. It may have been long ago, when I had the free time and the active will to document my life on the internet, but as happens with many things, I've lost interest for the most part and I mainly keep it around to a) post in others' journals and b) vent when I feel like I can't do anything else. What this means to you the readers is essentially this: individual comments of mine may or may not be reflective of my "normal" state, but journal entries are almost always going to be a result of extreme boredom (memes) or a particularly violent mood swing (everything else).

Things here in the journal may or may not stay that way, but for the time being, it really behooves noone to criticize me for anything written here. Comments are welcome, as always, and if they weren't I'd lock the post; but if you're out to "snap me out of it" through denunciation, either you're going to catch me still in that mood and likely to shut you out altogether, or your comment will come when it's no longer applicable, in which case I'll ignore you for being irrelevant and hostile anyway.

This is still not the entire story, but I'm ok with that. If you wanted the whole story, you'd interact with me in some way other than through this journal in the first place.

So, in conclusion, accept that you're reading only a small part of me, or shut up.

-C

My car was stolen while I was at work today. My rusty, half-painted, sticky-second-gear '91 Spirit is not worth $1000 chopped up for parts, but it is gone. It had about 5 good years left in it though, and I was going to drive that thing until it died; I will probably not be able to buy a new one for a while.

I lost the bag my mom gave me for Christmas and the scarf I was almost done knitting for the boy for Christmas (now is not the time to tell me I am late). I lost my amazing first aid kit that took me years to put together, with all my various braces and ace bandages, and my neat tool set. And my big ass flashlight, and my big ass blanket, and the oldest frisbee known to exist in the free world. No more Albert the Wonder Chameleon, no more Mongolian baseball, no more quarter machine toys or random pink spoon. All my old, useless MMB parking permits, which I could never possibly need again but which I love more dearly than I can explain.

This is exactly why I stopped talking to you. Very Sartre, I know, but I have yet to be proven wrong.

Apparently, some clarification is necessary.

Of course you thought the blood was a metaphor. It is hackneyed, emblematic to even the coarsest intellect. Like all of my writing is to you, vulgar, rough, ugly, the cause of that metallic taste in your mouth. The taste of blood, of violence, of distaste itself. You do so hate when these things pour forth from my sorry, low-hung head.

The blood is not a metaphor. The blood is real, physical, coagulant, red-black. It flows in spurts, aching when it comes. I am never far from a chair, or a restroom, or a change of clothes. It is not an ulcer. There are deeper things than the stomach. I do not have a disease or a polyp or a cancer. It is what I said. The crying tore a hole in me. It is melodramatic, but it is the truth, and I can't be faulted for the shabbiness of the truth. I do apologize for my shabby little life, though, for parading it in front of you as if it made any sort of reading material.

(I picked the ugliest word I could remember, the one my mother used to use to insult people she felt weren't worthy of an outright put-down, an underhanded little dismissive that is not grand or dramatic or prone to draw attention. Do you like it?)

I believe this journal should sink away again, for a while.

In the past, you children have had difficulty distinguishing between things I write about myself in the third person and things I write that are fiction, prose poetry, about random other people, etc.

To clarify: this one is about me.

...

You have your neat little life all packaged up: concern yourself with the things that affect you, never go out of your way to read over your friends' troubles unless you happen to be awake at odd hours with nothing to say to the two people on your buddy list who still spontaneously IM you, therefore the only two you ever speak to, again because you shouldn't go out of your way. After all, nobody else does. That's why you can only read over your friends' troubles, and only the ones on your list of journals, isn't it? They've stopped coming to you, or did you stop first, you can never remember but you feel righteously abandoned anyway. And never mind the contradiction, never mind the never minds, because they'll only unravel more things for you to chase after. Keep on writing your snatches of poetry on ATM receipts and losing them; you don't want to see that balance anyway, let alone follow up on a metaphor that won't capture what you mean without some doing. Extra work you know, too extroverted for you. Was it juggling you thought apt last time, or knitting? Do you remember whether you're balancing or weaving? You lean toward the latter, clearly, to indicate a sense of purpose and old-world wisdom in the same breath, but to imply planning and agency would leave one to wonder why you spent today staring at a pile of unfinished yarn work from under a pile of machine-made blankets and finding any excuse to stay there, warm, inert, invisible. You are too deliberate. You are hiding from the things you want to find you. You are wasting your time. You know what to do and how to do it. You are keeping yourself in this state. You have to stop waiting for good things to happen to you in spite of your efforts to prevent them. You are the reason you hate to be alive. Nobody is doing this to you. Get out of bed. Shower before 7pm even when you don't have to work. Call your friends and get them back. Make friends with your enemies. Meet new people. Remember new people's names and make them into friends too. Get a real job, get money, buy yourself some clothes, move out, lose 40 pounds and buy yourself all new clothes, go to grad school, get a better job, buy better clothes, get married, buy a house, buy a dog, raise a family, stay happy, stay thin, stay happy, send your children to college, stay happy, retire, die. Happy. Stop crying. Fucking stop crying. You can't stop crying even after you realized it was the crying that burst that hole in the deepest thing inside, you cried so hard you bled, you're still bleeding and you can't fucking stop crying. You are doing this to yourself. Wash your face. Put on some makeup and some nice clothes (well, do what you can). Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Nobody likes a sad girl. Why don't you even try to make a good impression? Stop clicking through those stupid sad songs, they're not going to help you. Words are not going to help you. You've had quite enough of those and look where you are, 7am and you haven't slept, just cried the night through wishing you were different. Wishes are not going to help you, even if you keep holding your breath every time. Stupid children's game. Grow up.