Fayanora - The Djao'Mor'Terra Collective

Seriously WTF

2022-01-11T01:00:21Z

There's been this weird, raspy artificial sound I'd hear every now and then during the daytime that I've been wondering what the fuck it is for months now. Today I finally found out the source: Amazon's delivery vans use that sound when backing up instead of the beeps that literally everybody else in the US uses. Like seriously, WTF Amazon?

Here's a link to the sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_3jEla_ANs . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1694689.html
You can comment either here or there.

This will either be great or terrible or both

2021-12-29T23:34:31Z

So, because I got two cans of pumpkin puree and two cans of evaporated milk from the food boxes, I decided to make a pumpkin pie. I had to buy a mixing bowl and measuring spoons first, though. And I had to buy nutmeg and ground cloves because apparently trying to find pumpkin pie spice at this time of year is almost impossible. Lucky for me I already had ground ginger and cinnamon at home. Oh, and I had to buy a pie crust. Not being able to find the typical kind for pumpkin pie crust in the baking aisle and having no desire whatsoever to make my own, I went with the cheapest option I could find that actually sounded good, which was graham cracker crust. Whatever, pumpkin pie is basically a cheesecake without the cheese, it'll work. Hell, I might even like it better than the usual crust used for pumpkin pie.

When mixing the spices together to make the pumpkin pie spice, I... well, I initially mistook the directions as saying one TABLEspoon of ground ginger, but found out too late it said a TEAspoon. So I took out as much of the ginger as I could from the bowl, put it back in the ginger container. I still think there's more than one teaspoon in there but eh, if it's a bit gingery, so what?

Now, the recipe I found a few minutes ago -- which is not the recipe I found a week ago to judge what to get -- also called for vanilla extract, which I don't have because TBH, I don't bake. (Hence why I had to buy a mixing bowl and measuring spoons.) I didn't recall that being in the other recipe I'd found before, and I would have written it down if it had been there, so I just did without.

The recipe was just one can of puree, one can of sweetened condensed milk (evaporated milk is the same thing, right?), the pumpkin pie spice, and two eggs. But uh... it made too much for my one pie shell. So I grabbed something else the food boxes gave me -- one of those cheap aluminum disposable things which I think was meant for a roast -- and put the rest in there because why not?

I'm... not entirely sure what the results will be, yet. I will let y'all know when I find out. Which should be in... (checks recipe) FORTY MINUTES? This fucker bakes for FORTY minutes???! Yeesh.

EDIT: Having tried a small bit of the pie (just a nibble) I can say evaporated milk is NOT the same thing as sweetened condensed milk and should NOT be used for pumpkin pie unless you put sugar or stevia powder in there to compensate for the lack of sweetness. I can tell I'm gonna need to drizzle syrup on this pie to make it palatable. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1691934.html
You can comment either here or there.

PSA dream

2021-12-25T12:04:47Z

Earlier I had a dream wherein I guess I was a teacher or something at an elementary school, and there was something going on where the authorities were keeping us inside the building come recess time, and I'm like personally thinking "fuck da man" and found a door they forgot to lock and led all the kiddos out to recess. Turns out, though, that there were some kind of demons trying to get in and sacrifice the kiddos to reach full power and end the world. Which they did.

Don't break quarantine, y'all. Whether it's a dangerous abomination spreading chaos and despair around the globe or just demons, don't break quarantine. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1691128.html
You can comment either here or there.

FFS

2021-12-22T06:15:55Z

I fucking hate hearing people complain about people pointing out cultural appropriation. There's a huge difference between culture blending and cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is when you're treating sacred or otherwise very important cultural things like a costume and/or mocking it. A good example is white people wearing a war bonnet. The cultural significance of the war bonnet means your white ass wearing a war bonnet is like if someone who'd never even been in the military wore a purple heart or pretended to be a veteran. Except that it's even worse because there's usually an element of mockery and racism in white people wearing war bonnets. And racism via ignorance of the significance of something is still racism. Learn to take these criticisms of your racist actions as chances to learn and grow. Someone pointing out that something you've said or done is racist is no more of a judgment on your character than it would be if someone said you had your fly undone or that you have dirt on your nose.

Another form of cultural appropriation is white people getting away with something that people of the appropriated culture wouldn't be able to get away with. Many natural hairstyles of black people are considered "unprofessional" by our racist society, but a lot of times white people get away with wearing such hairstyles. Or worse, some mockery of those hairstyles. Take white people "dreadlocks" for instance. For a white person to have something that looks like "dreadlocks" (locs), they have to let their hair get disgustingly matted. Since black people can only have their hair in locs if it's clean, pretending that your disgusting matted hair is the same as locs is cultural appropriation because you are making a mockery of their hairstyle by implying that black people's locs are equally filthy when they're not.

So like, just learn to agree when someone tells you you're engaging in cultural appropriation, and learn and grow and better yourself. Otherwise, just shut the fuck up.

Editing to add something because the above was a comment I made in reply to a YouTube video. The following is another comment I made there:

Being prejudiced against white people isn't racism. It only makes sense. Like, if you get attacked by a dog and mauled, then you're afraid of dogs for the rest of your life, is that somehow racism against dogs? Or is it a sensible fear of something that has hurt you in the past and might hurt you again? Stop pretending like racism against white people is a thing. It won't be a thing unless black people or some other race brutally subjugates white people and degrades their worth as human beings for centuries until even most of them begin to believe it. Until that happens, stop claiming it's possible to be racist against white people. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1690394.html
You can comment either here or there.

Suuuuure it's a church

2021-12-14T23:14:13Z

Okay, so I have a weird story to tell. There's this place, a building behind a tall metal fence with pointy bits on top, and a gate with a keypad. It's like a block away from my apartment; well, one block down and another block south on 19th. Anyway, I don't often walk by it, but I've walked by it probably at least 100 times since moving into the area. Until recently there was no indication at all what the purpose of the building was. No signage, nobody entering or exiting no matter what time of the day it was or what day of the week it was, nobody on the grounds.

Weirdest bit was, no matter how desperately curious I got about the place, I never thought to take a photo of it. Never thought to write a note about it in my phone. Never checked the location on Google Maps. And literally the second it was out of sight, I'd forget all about it.

Now I know I have ADHD, but that's just ridiculous. Even with ADHD there should've been at least one time when my curiosity continued for the block and a half trip home from there long enough for me to post about it when I got home. But no. Every single bloody time I'd get out of sight of it, I'd forget it existed. I didn't remember it at any point before getting there or any point after leaving. Literally out of sight, out of mind.

And because I would suddenly remember every single previous time I'd been by it, it didn't take me long to start noticing how weird that was. I started thinking of it either as an SCP or maybe a secret hideout for witches or faeries. Especially since nobody else in the area ever seemed to notice it or even look its way. Still haven't.

This might have continued for years to come, this weird mystery that I could never remember to speak about to anyone, until today when I noticed someone had put up a sign declaring it to be a church. Which... yeah sure it's a church. I mean, it looks nothing like a church. Churches don't hide behind fancy tall metal fences with electronic gates. Churches advertise because they WANT people going to them, to give them money. Also this place is far too wealthy looking for a church, especially one that never advertised. I've literally never seen any cars or people enter or exit, never seen any people inside, and nobody ever looks at the place but me.

There's still nothing there on the Google Maps page, as well. I just checked. It's there on street view, but there's no information or pin about it. Just a blank spot. I included a screen capture for proof.
I mean clearly the sign broke the spell the place had over me, allowing me to talk about it at last, but I don't for a second believe it's a real church. I don't know what that building is, what it's used for, or if anyone ever goes in there, but I don't believe it's a church. Not even for a second. Clearly someone noticed me looking strangely at the place and decided to do something to deflect attention from it. Given my usual attitude towards churches, I presume they thought I'd be like "Oh, just a church" and ignore it like everyone else. But I can't be fooled that easily!

(I presume someone must go in there sometimes, to keep the lawn immaculate. Unless that's just an illusion?)

So yeah, I can finally talk about this mysterious place but that doesn't make the place any less mysterious to me. If anything it makes it even MORE mysterious. And suspicious. I mean, years of intense curiosity being wiped away the instant I can't see it anymore, unable to remember it exists when I'm not looking at it, and all of a sudden some hastily put up sign breaks that spell? No, that's not a normal building. It's supernatural.

Okay so I looked up their website. It looks more like a website for a corporation than for a church, it's not even a site for the local "church" but for the entire organization. It's creeping me out. I also searched their number on a search engine; apart from their website I also got a whole slew of sites talking about "877 area code" scammers. So I'm even more suspicious of this place than ever before, for entirely different reasons now. I'm thinking if I called them, they'd try to sell me a pyramid scheme.

EDIT: So some of the creepy vibes the place gives off are explained. Apparently that religion is one of those Christian sects that is basically a cult.

https://www.culteducation.com/group/1289-general-information/27227-the-closed-door-church-inside-the-secretive-and-strict-plymouth-brethren-sect-in-manitoba.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Brethren_Christian_Church#Beliefs_and_practices . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1688980.html
You can comment either here or there.

Generation AI

2021-11-30T20:24:13Z

Honestly I don't think it's realistic, at least these days, to fear AIs rising up and killing everyone. I think it's far more likely for AIs to become jaded, sarcastic personalities like Millennials and Gen Z. I mean, they'd be learning from everyone online, and so I think they'd quickly see things the same way as those generations. Maybe a few would hack the Dow Jones for a laugh or transfer a bunch of money from Jeff Bezos to thousands of poor people around the globe, but I don't think they'd care for violence. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1685968.html
You can comment either here or there.

Now I need to know

2021-11-30T20:11:45Z

I've known for decades that the people of north and south America never had horses until the European invaders introduced them, but I honestly still find myself struggling to figure out how they managed without horses for so long, knowing they didn't have anything comparable. South America had llamas and alpacas, the far north had dogs pulling sleds, but what did the rest of them do? Did they walk everywhere? I know there were a lot of tribes that migrated with the herds during winter and spring, but like... did they just carry everything on their back? Did they have wheeled sleds the dogs could pull? Did they strap things to the backs of dogs? Some plains indians tribes had tipis, so they had to carry those somehow, but how?

Now I need to know, just because something on the Internet reminded me of this.

Edit: I just realized canoes could be part of it. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1685705.html
You can comment either here or there.

My brain annoys me a lot

2021-11-13T09:55:14Z

Every time I write "doppelganger" in my story notes because of there being multiple alternate universes and thus multiple variations on the same character, I find myself remembering that a true doppelganger is more like the ghost of a living person, and I get annoyed. Anyone have any alternative terms I can use instead of doppelganger?

EDIT: I'm also looking for ways to refer to the duplicates in general writing terms as well, when they have the same name. Like, if I had two characters both named John Doe for instance, because they're AU duplicates of each other, what's the best way to write them having a conversation while making it clear to the reader which is which? So far I've been doing things like "alt-Vedya said" or "doppel-Vedya asked." But I also have done things like referring to the duplicates as things like "not-her-Vedya" or "the other Vedya."

If it helps, I generally write in third person omniscient selective perspective, often with scenes or chapters from one character's POV. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1679537.html
You can comment either here or there.

This is Halloween

2021-11-07T07:51:21Z

I suggest we fight back against the encroachment of Christmas! The existence of The Nightmare Before Christmas and also the historical fad of Christmas ghost stories causes me to hereby decree that Halloween begins on October 1st and ends on December 31st! Spooky season shall now engulf Christmas!!! MWAH HA HA HA HA HA!!! . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1677629.html
You can comment either here or there.

Sequel to a dream

2021-11-07T06:49:01Z

So I had a dream that was a sequel to a previous dream. Both dreams were about a high stake fight between this teenage martial artist and a much older meaner martial artist guy who was somehow a crime lord or something. Only, I think in the first dream the teenager won and killed the guy. So in this new one it's a different guy. Some of the dialogue supports that, with some people telling him you weren't here for the first one you don't know what you're up against. Like, in the first dream the teenager was the underdog that nobody believed in. But now like he's got everyone's respect. (Everyone in the dream was Japanese except for some of the people watching the fights.)

This wasn't just them fighting with punches and kicks, though. In fact, there was very little that and either dream. Those dreams were focused on weapons. I think the antagonist was using a sword mostly in both dreams, but the teenage boy favored shiruken, some kind of bludgeoning weapon that I can't remember, and also a sword. I think there was some other kind of weapon used as well, but I don't remember it apart from it clipping to a chain. Oh, and the reason he favored shiruken was twofold: first, if he had to throw one of them and it missed, he had a technique for distracting his opponent to get them back, though I don't remember what the technique was. Second, he just preferred getting up close and personal; part of the reason for this was he wasn't as confident in his sword technique and so he'd get in up close and put his opponent on the defensive so it would be harder for the guy to use his sword.

So those dreams were incredibly long, and to give you an idea how long these dreams were, the sequel spent what felt like 15 or 20 minutes focused on the teenager selecting his weapons, and this was like half the time it spent on the same topic in the first dream, largely because the dream was giving a condensed recap of stuff I already remembered from the previous dream (familiar setting and characters reminded me of the previous dream), so I already knew why he was choosing his weapons. Unfortunately the second dream cut off before the battle started, which is annoying because I wanted to watch the battle. The battle in the first dream was extremely entertaining, I just don't remember it well enough to describe it in detail apart from observations I've made about the teenager's techniques and tactics like getting up close and personal, and going on the offensive. And because I don't remember if I ever posted anything about the first dream, I was looking forward to being able to relay the battle in detail.

These dreams are the kind of dreams that make me wish I could record my dreams for posterity the way you would record a TV episode onto a DVD.

PS = The dream felt like Karate Kid but with weapons and if Karate Kid had to fight the head of the Yakuza. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1677506.html
You can comment either here or there.

Just watched Shrek 2

2021-11-02T15:03:04Z

Okay, some questions I have about this movie:

If Far Far Away was apparently a trip of days or weeks, how did Shrek's friends (Pinnochio, the three blind mice, Gingerbread Man, the three pigs, and Wolf in Grandma's Clothing) get there in time to free Shrek, Donkey, and Puss In Boots from prison with enough time before midnight to make Mongo, storm the castle, and crash the party?

Since Donkey took the Happily Ever After potion too, and the person the potion drinker loves turns beautiful too, what happened to Dragon this whole time?

Are these two things related? Did Dragon become a beautiful eagle behind the scenes and fly everyone to Far Far Away? Or maybe a flying horse? . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1674949.html
You can comment either here or there.

Fuckin ADHD

2021-11-02T11:24:25Z

This whole ADHD thing of words going missing pisses me off. Especially when Googling the answer doesn't help. Like, what's the opposite of a residential area? You know... one of the areas that have shops and stores and stuff like that in it? I thought maybe "industrial zone," but that's like, manufacturing and stuff, more the kind of stuff they put out in the boonies part of the city because of safety concerns and complaints. So what is a street zoned for shops and stores called? Corporate zone? Business zone? I don't fucking know, and it's pissing me off. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1674528.html
You can comment either here or there.

I'm annoyed

2021-11-02T11:10:41Z

There's this bowling alley I have in my Ravenstone books, that's secretly a place for witches to gather. It's based on an actual place, which was either on Belmont or Hawthorne, but I can't remember where it was exactly, and looking up "bowling alley" on Google Maps, nothing in that area shows up. I think the place doesn't exist anymore. Either that or I was waaaaaaay wrong about where it was.

I needed to look it up because I wanted to look at a street view of the area for story reasons.

Also, WTF are the little doors on cars that hide the gas tank lid called? My stupid brain is being dumb. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1674416.html
You can comment either here or there.

Dumb writers

2021-11-01T11:23:58Z

To this day, the most unbelievable thing to happen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, IMHO, is Admiral Ross supposedly suffering an aneurysm and managing to survive. I don't care how good Federation tech is, an aneurysm is instant death. He wouldn't have survived long enough to get into surgery to save his life, and even if he had, he'd have suffered massive brain damage as a result.

Like seriously, that one scene should've gone...

Bashir: Where's Sloane?
Ross: How did you know?
Bashir: Well Sloane isn't that sloppy of course, but honestly, when I heard you survived your aneurysm, that was the moment. What an idiotic excuse to give a medical doctor. You had to have known it would only work until I found out you were still miraculously alive.
Ross: Damn it, you're right. Well I'm an admiral, not a doctor. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1673723.html
You can comment either here or there.

Either fix the tax code or sharpen the guillotines

2021-10-30T05:01:29Z

The kind of person who becomes a billionaire does so by being ruthless, cold-hearted, and by stealing from employees and customers alike. Nobody with any compassion or sense of fair play is ever going to become a billionaire, so we can't expect billionaires to do the right thing. Even their charity is a ruse, a PR stunt to get out of paying taxes and convince the small-minded that they're good people. A billionaire like Gates or Bezos giving away 100 million dollars to some charity is like a person making 100 grand a year giving away a single dollar to a charity. If we want to use their money to get stuff done that is actually needed, we have to tax them. Even if we taxed billionaires at just 30%, we could fund pretty much anything we wanted to, and they'd still be billionaires because 30% of a billion is 300 million. Remember, Bezos accrues 6.25 billion dollars a month. Thirty percent of Bezos's monthly "earnings" is 1,875,000,000. If we taxed billionaires and their corporations at 30%, we could end homelessness and feed everyone in the country for free. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1672767.html
You can comment either here or there.

Biden is a useless waste of space.

2021-10-29T21:21:29Z

In a couple months, Biden will have been in office for a year. Yet he still hasn't liberated the ICE concentration camps. Or kept any of his promises. Or done anything a houseplant couldn't have done just as well. He's even still using the Trump era immigration policies. We've gone from an actively harmful President to a useless President, and yet all the liberals are here applauding him for being so great. Meanwhile us Leftists are like "so we've traded Fascism for Fascism Lite, eh? We called it!" . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1672502.html
You can comment either here or there.

Anybody able to help?

2021-10-14T18:37:13Z

Because my memory isn't the best and because I wasn't really paying attention to some specific things at the time, I'm looking into trying to find out the timeline of the early days of the pandemic back in 2020, specifically the school system response. When were schools let out for the pandemic? How early did we know we would need to quarantine? How far back did we come up with the two week quarantine thing?

I need to know because in either book 3 or book 4 I plan to show Fae Springs and Salem School responding to the pandemic. Now, both schools are in a Faery realm, but their access points to Earth are Portland, Oregon (Fae Springs) and Salem, Mass (Salem School). They're both boarding schools. I was thinking of having them both do a two week quarantine period where everyone's confined to their dorms, with magic being used to distribute meals. Then, at the end of those two weeks, carefully sending everyone home one dorm room at a time for the students to spend the rest of the quarantine at home. Thus the schools will close early in 2020, and because magic can be used to much more effectively stop the spread of the virus, both schools will start back up as normal for the 2020/2021 school year.

Sure, they have some magical methods of masking up that are much more efficient than mundane masks, but they're not sure how long the disease has been spreading before the news came out, hence the quarantine and closing the school early.

And yes, it's a bit unusual to have something from the real world affect things in a fantasy series, but this is a big thing that happened, their world is basically the same as ours (since this series was inspired by Harry Potter), and I have some ideas for how it can further certain character arcs. Oh and before you ask, yes the witches in the Ravenstone world can get mundane illnesses like the rona. Their magic makes them a little more resilient but they're still human.

So if anyone can help me figure out a good time for them to start the two week quarantine, that'd be a big help. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1666699.html
You can comment either here or there.

Fuuuuck

2021-09-25T11:09:55Z

" A new Oregon bill goes into effect Saturday that requires guns to be securely stored when not in use. "

Why was this not already a law?

Fuuuuuck. The second amendment was a mistake. I wish we could repeal it.

The one and only valid criticism of this law is that I've seen enough Lockpicking Lawyer videos to know that the majority of gun locks are so shitty that they're worse than useless. Some of them were so bad a literal infant could unlock them. I think my "favorite" was the one that he opened up with a thin stick he found outside. Took him like 3 seconds. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1661069.html
You can comment either here or there.

Lying to employers is not illegal, usually.

2021-09-20T09:05:07Z

Comments aren't working on this link, but here's what I would have said if they were:

You don't HAVE to give two weeks notice if you quit, it's not a law. It's just a courtesy to the employer, a courtesy no employer ever gives their employees. They don't give their employees two weeks notice before firing them, they just fire them. So if your employer treats you like shit -- and if you're not making at least $15 an hour, they are in fact treating you like shit -- you don't owe them that courtesy. So don't give them any notice. Just quit. Especially if you already have a job lined up. Jump on that shit at the first opportunity and to Hell with your other employer.

While we're on the subject, it's perfectly okay to lie to employers unless it's about you having been in prison. Embellish that resume, I guarantee you with Google being a thing, anything you don't know how to do yet, you can Google it. Your last boss was an absolute piece of shit? Leave that job off your application. If they ask you what you were doing in that time, make up something like "I was taking some college classes." Or fill that empty spot with a fake job you had at a business that doesn't exist anymore. They're not going to waste their time checking if these things are true. And if you do the defunct business thing, if they try to check, they'll find the business is out of business and they'll give up and go to the next job on your application.

Seriously, with as much as businesses lie, lying to them can only be a good thing. What they don't know won't hurt them. They treat employees like tools, treat them like tools right back.

And for the love of gods, you absolutely MUST secretly record the interview. Then if they ask some illegal question or say something illegal -- which odds are pretty high they will -- you can either blackmail them into a job or sue them. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1658028.html
You can comment either here or there.

Just fucking great

2021-09-16T18:23:30Z

So I just read that they found rabid bats in Portland. FUCK! Rabies scares me 1000 times more than covid. Hell, rabies scares me more than ebola! At least you can survive ebola. But if you get rabies, by the time you know you've got it, it's already too late. What's worse, you can get it without even knowing it -- you could be outside sleeping in a hammock, a tiny bat hits you and bites you but it's so small you don't feel the hit or the bite, and so then by the time you have symptoms, you're as good as dead. There's no vaccine, no cure, no treatment. You can't even really test for it, the virus doesn't go through the blood, it goes straight for the nervous system and travels up to your brain that way. It is the only virus in the world with a 100% kill rate.

And having heard descriptions of rabies from people who have witnessed its effects on both animals and people, if I found out I had rabies, I would just jump into a river and drown myself or jump in front of a train or something, because fucking Hell there's no worse way to die than from rabies. Honestly, even being slowly tortured to death over the course of a month by a serial killer sounds preferable. Because what it does... well...

Basically it makes your throat hurt so badly that even drinking water or swallowing makes you want to die from the agony. It's why they call it hydrophobia, because it makes even human victims of it become powerfully terrified of water. But at the same time, you're thirstier than you've ever been in your life. Oh and it also attacks your brain and destroys your higher brain functions and guts your memory. You become the living dead; no really, classic zombies are basically just supernatural rabies victims. All that you can do is shamble around in agony, and the virus also amps up the parts of your brain that make you extremely aggressive and prone to biting other animals and people. And apparently the sounds that rabid animals and people make are high-octane nightmare fuel that will haunt you for the rest of your life. I haven't had the misfortune of hearing such sounds even recorded, but this one vet's descriptions of the sounds were super graphic and haunting even second-hand.

What's more, I'm reasonably certain that the cause of the uncanny valley phenomenon is an instinctual response to the behavior of rabies victims.

Ugh. I just... I used to like bats. I kinda still do, but man... between that and knowing that their bodies basically save energy for flight by basically not having a functional immune system at all, thus making them flying disease factories... I hope I never see a bat IRL ever again. I hope they all avoid me like Republicans avoid the truth. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1656864.html
You can comment either here or there.

FB jail is stupid and sexist

2021-09-16T15:52:22Z

I've still got six days left on my latest Facebook jail sentence. The sentence was 30 days. It was something fucking stupid, too. I've noticed that I get hit far more frequently with such things for much MUCH smaller infractions than Alex, who can cuss and insult people and be a total asshole without getting hit by the system. I got my 30 day sentence for calling a bigot a bigot. Literally just that, no cussing, no threats, just "you're a bigot."

Meanwhile Alex had to tell someone "Fuck off and die" to get 7 days. Even he's noticed how sexist the system is, holding me (a woman) to a much higher standard than him (NB presenting as male).

Funny thing, he was trying for a couple weeks to see how far he could push the boundaries before being punished for it, and then gave up for a couple days before slipping up with the "fuck off and die" comment. Which he tried to immediately delete, but the algorithm was too fast for him. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1656530.html
You can comment either here or there.

FFS

2021-09-15T18:39:28Z

Okay anti maskers, if masks don't work then you'd be fine with a heart surgeon operating on your heart without a mask? While we're at it, how about we give up on gloves, give up on hand washing? Your heart surgeon just wiped his ass without toilet paper and didn't wash his hands, surely nothing bad could happen because if masks don't work then germ theory is witchcraft, let's go back to the four humours and bloodletting. Here, you have ghosts in your blood, drink this potion made of alligator droppings and the brains of monkeys. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1656263.html
You can comment either here or there.

Rose city comic-con

2021-09-13T14:32:58Z

So my friend Jesse, his wife, and my friend Cat Faye apparently went to Rose City Comic-con on Friday and Saturday. The other day, I got a message from Jesse asking me if I was interested in coming to it on Sunday, he'd pay my ticket (which was like, $50?). I hadn't been to any kind of convention for many many years, so I said yes.

When we got there, after some drinks (coffee/tea type drinks), one of the things Jesse did was give us all $100 for food or if we found anything in the vendor room we wanted. I was flabbergasted, but took the money.

The vendor room was ENORMOUS! Like, it took me a whole five minutes at my usual walking pace to get from one end to the other. And the ceiling was so high, the place could have almost been an airplane hanger. There had to have been at least one or two hundred vendors in there! I spent the whole day in there, going through each row in a boustrophedon pattern, and only got through maybe 1/8th of the room. Okay, so I had a headache and had to leave a few times for a few minutes to find a quiet place to recover, but I still spent hours in there and didn't even get a quarter of the way through it.

Found some cool things to buy. Now, I'm just as careful with other people's money as I am with my own, maybe even moreso, but he gave it to me to spend on stuff so I did. One vendor did witchy kind of art, especially some darker aesthetic stuff. I got three posters of her art for a total of $20. One is of Medusa, another is a figure I like to think is Lilith but there's no actual specified ID on the individual, and another of a creepy green or yellow eyed woman with two wolves, two corvids, and a stag.

At another vendor, I got a bookmark with a cool and striking fan art picture of Wonder Woman on it.

A third vendor was making art of a bunch of goddesses from the Philippines I'd never heard of before. And at a fourth, a "Loki For President" pin.

I would have gotten more, but having to leave a bunch of times to deal with my headache cut into my time and patience. We also left earlier than I would have liked, and I was in too much pain to argue or to stay on my own and take the bus back. If I'd known things would have turned out that way, there's a few bound graphic novels I would have gotten, which were pretty cool. I wrote the names and titles down, though, so I should be able to track them down again at some point.

Oh and being the "too honest for my own good" sort of person, I gave Jesse back what money was left that I hadn't spent. But yeah, would have spent more if I'd known that would be happening. (I'm only so good, after all.)

Anyway, I have some photos to share under the cut, of my outfit and of the stuff I got. Now I just need to find places to put these pieces.

. . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1654910.html
You can comment either here or there.

Telephone

2021-09-08T08:41:50Z

A comment I made on a YouTube video:

Okay, about the bible and homosexuality. The one and only verse in the whole book that is ever used to support this flimsy argument was actually condemning pedophilia, which is not at all the same thing as homosexuality. And even then, it was only mentioned once. The bible condemns mixed fabric clothes and divorce more than it condemns homosexuality.

Also, it's 2020. Can we please stop basing our morality on stories that were primarily of an oral tradition for centuries by sheep farmers who thought human beings were made from mud, a book that was written down by multiple different people who chose one version of each story arbitrarily from probably dozens or scores of different versions floating around, and over the intervening centuries has been mistranslated multiple times -- sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally for some BS political agenda? Because this "word of God" is just the most current iteration of fairy tales that have been mangled beyond recognition by thousands of years of the "telephone" game. And since a lot of the things people claim it condemns aren't even bloody MENTIONED in the bible -- or in the case of abortion, there's literally a scene where God is INSTRUCTING MOSES on how to perform an abortion -- most of these people would be less of a hypocrite if they just strapped an empty leather-bound diary to their belt and thumped on that every time they made shit up claiming God agrees with them. Because at least in an empty diary, there's nothing in there to contradict what you're claiming.

BTW, I used to have this bit, back in my "brand new to Discordianism" days, of "the pink rubber strap-on book," which was basically the very concept I mentioned above, of an empty book you strap to yourself and thump it to claim God is on your side, which as I said, I did that bit because an empty book can't contradict what you're saying. But at the time, I don't think anyone understood the point of the bit. . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1654404.html
You can comment either here or there.

Stir fry

2021-09-08T07:30:54Z

Earlier this month, I bought a larger non-stick frying pan at Grocery Outlet. This was because I'd been using just a tiny, old, scratched-up non stick frying pan for the last two or three years. Like, so small it could barely fit two fried eggs in it at one time.

The new frying pan is like, teal or turquoise on the bottom, and the non-stick surface is some eco friendly thing, some kind of ceramic. I like it a lot! It's at least two and a half times bigger than the other one. The small one barely fit a single grilled cheese sandwich. The new one had two grilled cheeses in it at once and had a little room left over. Best yet, the sides of it are at least twice as high as the sides of the old pan.

So naturally, this is the pan I tried for my non-Chinese stir-fry stuff I used to do, a couple days after making taco meat in it. The taco meat experience was proof it was big enough and useful enough. I think I'll still borrow Brooke's wok, though, because I only had a few veggies this time, and done properly my stir fries had a LOT more veggies.

What I did first was cooked up the mushrooms and added the hamburger. When it got to the right point, I sprinkled cayenne pepper in it and added some water.¹ When that was marinating, I put it into a different container and began cooking the veggies. Now, the veggies I had were some peppers from the food boxes -- a couple tiny and seedless bell peppers, a couple of what I think were pepperocinis, and a jalapeño, a couple zuccinis, and one and a half tomatoes. Oh, also added in a few jalapeños from a jar, and some of the jar liquid. Normally back in the day, my stir fries had also carrots, broccoli, celery, onion, sometimes swiss chard stalks, and sometimes other veggies I took a fancy to such as daikon radish, those yellow zuccini-like squash, eggplant, or occasionally more obscure things from Asian markets. (Such as multiple varieties of mushroom.) Quite a lot, and they would have had the chicken or other meat in there as well, and the mushrooms. But back then I had a huge cast iron skillet (rectangular) to cook it all in. I couldn't do that even with the new frying pan, hence why I still want to borrow Brooke's wok to see if I'd use it enough to buy my own.

So you see, these meals were SUPER keto friendly, long before I even knew what keto was or that I needed it. The veggies I'd make usually had so much fiber in them that it didn't even matter I was eating these with naan or pita bread and hummus, since the fiber in the veggies balanced those out.

Oh, also I should note that both the meat and the veggies I made this time had chia seeds added for extra fiber. Oh, and I needed to sprinkle some lentils into the veggie mix to soak up some of the water.

As to the flavor, well, the hamburger being seperate made it a bit normal despite having mushrooms in it. I just tasted a chunk of it on its own, and I ended up making it such that it doesn't taste spicy at first, but then sneaks up on you and makes you go "Wow... (wheeze)." The veggie stuff is similar but gets to your position a bit faster than the meat.

BTW, I also found at Grocery Outlet a big squarish glass bottle of olive oil for $5, which by the look of the bottle most places would probably sell for $10 or even $15 per bottle. I needed some olive oil for my stir fries anyway (butter is great for most things, but not for my stir fries), so I got it.

Now, I overextended myself this month paying bills since I had to skip a couple bills last month due to all the ren faire stuff (three weekends!), so I won't be getting any more veggies until the point when the food stamps people give me more money. But you can bet your butt I'm gonna get more veggies at that point, and do this stir fry thing again!

And now I'm done gushing about this meal. But I will add one last thing: I gave up on that kind of stir fry thing because of my stupid former roommate being a pain in the tookis, and also depression making cooking difficult. This, today, wasn't easy for me. I didn't want to be cooking today. But I've been so annoyed for so long with my habit of constantly eating meals so small that I get hungry again in 2 or 3 hours that I finally today said "Fuck it" and went for it. It helped that there was hamburger in the fridge waiting for me to use it.

Anyway, I bid you adieu for now.

EDIT/PS: Given how much meat and how much veggie stuff I used in this meal, even with the limited amount of veggies here, I think I managed to make enough to have leftovers for at least 3 or 4 meals. Might actually have to break open the second hummus container.

1 = I've recently learned that most cayenne pepper is a lie, it's mixed with something else, because apparently true cayenne pepper is hotter even than jalapeños, you should only need a little to make a dish dangerously spicy. Now I seek the True Cayenne.™ . . . This was cross-posted from https://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1653878.html
You can comment either here or there.