I might be getting square eyes

Signal boost: What to remember when someone comes out to you: A Five Point Guide

rhythmia — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:51:26 GMT

Still not dead! \o/ So Gyzym is one of those lovely people who I enjoy following because she writes delicious fic, posts ridiculously funny things, and writes heartfelt and damn useful posts when the mood strikes.

So, via Gyzym on tumblr:

so! here are some things to keep in mind when a friend or loved one comes out to you as queer, because someone apparently needs to say them somewhere!

[a quick note: i am using queer as an umbrella term to encompass the various and assorted different variants of gender and sexual identity. for more information on those variants, feel free to check out this website.]

1. this is not about you.

certainly—certainly!—it may feel like it is. you may be thinking of how this information impacts your life, or how you feel about it; you may be remembering your own experiences with queer perceptions, or queer people, or queer pamphlets, for all i care. and you know what? that’s just fine. on your own time, you may feel free to pour yourself a large cup of tea and work out how you feel about this new development in your life! that’s natural and normal; we, as human beings, have feelings about everything from our families to our favorite brands of cereal, and none of them are wrong.

however! when you are with the person who has come out to you, especially in the immediate wake of that conversation, you must swallow that down, because it is selfish! talking about your feelings on someone else’s coming out is like talking about your feelings on someone else’s loss—and i should point out, at this point, that i do not in any way mean to equate coming out as, or indeed being, queer with any kind of tragedy. it isn’t, and we will get to that in a second. i use loss only because it is the clearest parallel in terms of depth of feeling; the person who has come out to you, let’s just call them Person A, has done so against the weight of a thousand coming out stories that resolved badly, against the negativity still in our media and politics, against the fact that, just to use one example, as recently as 1973, “homosexuality” was listed as a psychological disorder by the American Psychiatric Organization! even if you are a deeply tolerant person and have made that known, there is still, always, the fear that your tolerance does not extend to Person A specifically! thus, the loss parallel makes sense, in the sense that some part of Person A is more emotionally raw than usual—the same way you would not respond to someone’s discussion of the loss of a family member with all the ways that loss was negatively affecting your life, you should not respond to someone’s coming out with it’s negative effects on you. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. maybe, at some point, when Person A is in a less raw place, you can have that conversation, but that is their call, because, again, not about you.

2. being queer is not a tragedy.

one of the things my mother said to me over and over after i came out to her: “i’m just worried about your safety.” and you know what, that was, in its way, incredibly sweet of her; she, as my mother, loved me enough that the idea of me being hurt for who i was kept her up nights. that warms my heart! but it also made me feel small and scared and wrong every time she said that, and it took me a long time to figure out why.

Click the link above for the whole post. Worth the read, as it may come in handy for just about anybody.

Hope everyone is doing well! ♥

Wot, still alive?

rhythmia — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 05:53:16 GMT

Hahah, long time no see LJ-land. ^_^

waxrose just reminded me that I ought to post something and prove I aten't ded yet.

Thing one: I have a new car! A 2010 used Toyota Yaris, purchased on Mole Day (10/23) :D Pictures to follow. It's cute and looks like a blue jellybean.

Thing two: I do surveys with this group called Pinecone Research (associated with Nielson) from time to time and they're doing a round of open memberships. I originally got into it because mousapelli posted about it a while back, and I've been doing it for a couple years now.

You fill out a detailed product survey maybe once, twice a month, it takes 20 minutes or so, and then you get three dollars. It's cool, and sure, it's not much, but three bucks is still three bucks. ;P You can click on the referral link below if you'd be interested. Only one registration per household though.

www.pineconeresearch.com/signup/linkPink152.htm

And for more info, http://www.pineconeresearch.com//about.HTM and http://www.pineconeresearch.com//policy.htm

Thing three: How are all you lovely people doing? ♥

A quote today for your amusement

rhythmia — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 06:06:21 GMT

Via acentric @ tumblr:

What I picture when people say "I don't swing that way":

So, the heterosexuals are on the swingset, swinging back and forth like most people do.

And then there are the homosexuals swinging, like, side to side or something.

The bisexuals are sort of alternating between the two, and the pansexuals are just twisting their swing up in a knot and crashing into everyone like “fuck the police i do what i want”

And then the asexuals are just chilling out in the sandbox all alone, like: HEY GUISE, LOOK AT THE CASTLE I MADE GUISE, LOOK GUISE IT HAS A MOTE. GUISE. LOOK.

Ahahaha best analogy ever y/y? XDD I'll be over here in the sandbox, going, "Dude, swings are cool but hey, lookit my awesome artsy fartsy sand castle, it's got a turret and I found a cool leaf for the flag and there's a moat, c'mon guys come play with me!"

Brb crying with laughter XDDD

ASL! \o/

rhythmia — Sat, 21 May 2011 20:15:52 GMT

Just posting to say that I'm happy. I have the day off, going to visit Husband and her new baby, get some chores done.

Yesterday night I went to another Deaf Coffee social at Starbucks. I've been going almost monthly for the last couple of years, and usually when I meet people I just fingerspell my name, which begins with an H. You know how usually when you learn a foreign language, the teacher will give you a name in that language? I had a French name, my classmates got Chinese names (I already had one), and a Spanish name.

In Deaf culture, someone gives you a name sign. Usually it's based on some attribute (not always flattering), kinda like the way in some parts of Chinese and other cultures you'll get nicknames based on some attribute (Chubby Yuan, Little Yu, etc), or a guy I know called Tall John.

Anyway, for the last almost two years, I fingerspelled my name. I figured at some point, I'd meet enough people, and maybe a friend would give me one. So last night one of my friends introduced me to another Deaf friend of theirs, and he asked me what my name sign was when I introduced myself. I told him I didn't have one....and he gave me one! *dances* Haha my classmate dragged me out to show our teacher.

What is it? If you look up the way to fingerspell "H", it's with your index and middle fingers together, fingers held parallel to the ground, but the palm is oriented vertically (perpendicular to the ground). For my name sign, hold the H at the corner of my mouth, because apparently I have a dimple when I smile really big? Yeah. :D

Hope all is well with everyone~ what are you lovelies up to? ♥

My brain, I turn it on sometimes

rhythmia — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 07:38:30 GMT

Musings that have been floating around in my brain for the past several months re: fic and changing bodies and identity and gender and how that plays out in different fandoms.

Okay, so you know those fics where X character wakes up or gets zapped by an Ancient machine or magic or what-have-you, and a previously female character ends up in a male body, or a male one ends up in a female body? (I've never read anything where the author tackled intersex people, so I can't speak for those)

It kind of varies between fandoms, but I've been noticing a spate of it in the Japanese/Jpop and Korean/Kpop fandoms I'm in lately. And it happens a lot where when, say a male character wakes up in a female body, suddenly everyone around them is awkward and treats them like they changed genders, and switch pronouns, and that character starts trying to display traits marked as "feminine", and usually somewhere in there we have a party of describing their new appearance (and clothes) and somehow sex ends up getting involved in the name of exploration.

...honestly I am guilty of some that in one fic I wrote, but that fic gave me so much trouble because I was adamant about keeping the pronouns, because in my head I *knew* the characters still thought of themselves as male, they were in essence borrowing the bodies for a while, and deciding to try performing a different gender as part of the experience. But I still felt kinda icky at myself for putting them through that gaze experience of "hey, let's dress you up girly and describe every bit of how you look for the audience now". Sorry for putting you through it, lovely betas! ^^;;

And honestly I should have known better than to call it genderswap, given all the stuff I've done in school about sex and gender not being the same thing. But that was the term available, and I didn't think to try a new or different one. And then I hit Kpop fic and the pronoun-switching was going on all over the place. On second thought, it might with a stretch be considered genderswap because the authors were making their body-switched characters think of themselves as a different gender, and perform a different gender. It still kind of bothered me that the sexswap caused the person to suddenly change their behavior and thought-processes so much, because in most cases I'm not sure the author was trying to discuss issues of gender identity at all.

Anyway, I'd hesitated to post anything about it because while I like being kind of androgynous, I mostly identify female and I don't think of myself as being trans, so I didn't want to speak for that experience.

*****
Luckily! And the point of this post! Iambickilometer made a post called Five+ Ways Being Transgender in Fandom Really Sucks, and Why I Stick With It Anyway and gyzym linked to it and had some interesting discussion of her own here.

I'm curious about your thoughts? .____.

...love to you all, I'm still alive. ♥

Movie mini-reviews: Let the Right One In, Trainman (Densha Otoko), The Hangover

rhythmia — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 07:16:40 GMT

I will never get back the last 1 hour and 40 minutes I spent watching The Hangover, so I figured I will relieve my feelings and at the same time write about things that give me joy. ^^;;;

Let the Right One In

On my flight to Hong Kong three weeks ago, I flew on Singapore Airlines. I was coincidentally talking with artemidora about Yuletide before I left, and I vaguely remembered her mentioning this vampire movie to me that she wrote for for Yuletide fic. And lo, Singapore Airline's movie selection is wondrous, and was showing Let the Right One In, a movie about a bullied young boy Oskar, and how he befriends Eli, who turns out to be a vampire.

Love and revenge and quietly creepy and just the right amount of gore. It's in Norwegian with English subtitles, and mood of the movie is kinda beautiful. It's a lovely mix of the feelings of friendship, blossoming first love, dealing with bullies, sweetly sociopathic behavior, coming of age, and vampires. Eheh. The ending hit me kind of the way I felt at the end of The Talented Mr. Ripley, not that I'm sure that quite makes a helpful reference for anyone else. :P

I completely recommend this movie, and also the fic that artemidora wrote for Yuletide once you've had a chance to watch it, What Eli and Oskar Do on Their (First) Summer Vacation. \o/ ♥

Trainman (Densha Otoko 電車男)

I watched this one on the flight back, because I had heard of it a while back, and had seen a copy of the translated novel at the bookstore. I need to go find and read it now. Train Man is based on a supposedly true story posted on the 2chan message forum/community by a Japanese otaku (geek) who is socially inexperienced, spends all his time in Akihabara (the anime and electronics area of Tokyo) who has never had a girlfriend.

He's on a subway when a drunken man gets on and harasses the female passengers, and though Train Man is shy and nervous he is the only one to act and try to stop the man long enough for the other passengers to get a conductor. Everyone else tries to ignore the disturbance. Afterwards the female passengers thank him for his intervention and ask for his information, and one passenger sends him a very nice gift. Train Man posts this to the boards asking for advice, and he gets the courage to call her back. The movie follows his trials and tribulations trying to be himself and also get a date, how members of the forum help him with advice from where to take her on dates to how to dress and conversation tips.

Some secondhand embarrassment because Train Man is super awkward, but I found the side characters who are users on the boards to be pretty adorable. Overall I found the whole movie adorable, and though if I were the woman finding out about the help-via-chatroom thing afterwards that might be kind of awkward, honestly I can empathize with the finding help via friends and even anonymous strangers on the internet. I value my relationships with my fandom friends as much as my offline friends, and it's all about the human connection, how even these anonymous strangers become friends and cheerleaders, and gather courage and hope from the struggles of Train Man. I can be a socially awkward geek at times ~~all the time~~, so I gotta say, this movie is really human and strikes a chord with me. Watch it, it's adorable! And apparently Eita is the recluse with the bunny!

The Hangover

Okay, this movie I watched tonight because my group for ASL class wants to re-enact scenes from it for our final skit, and I had never watched it. So one of my groupmates is a sweetie and lent it to me.

So I watched The Hangover so I would understand what was going on when we picked scenes for our skit.

Doug is getting married, so his two best friends Phil (pretty boy/bad boy teacher) and Stuart (worrywart dentist with controlling girlfriend) and his brother-in-law-to-be Alan (kind of...off, the kind of outrageous character that Zach Galifianakis plays in that Due Date road trip movie with RDJ that I saw trailers for during Inception) take him to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. They wake up the next morning to find that they've lost the groom and have utterly no memories of what happened the night before. The movie basically follows the three as they try to retrace their steps from one 'hijink' to another to try to find Doug.

Honestly, The Hangover is not the style of comedy that I like (well, most US comedy isn't). The situations are supposed to be funny, and I suppose they are in a schadenfreude kind of way. But really, I didn't find any of the characters barring the stripper remotely sympathetic. She was sweet and owned her sexy, and had a cute kid, and tried to be helpful. Everyone else was kind of a hipster-ish over the top stereotype that I guess was supposed to be funny in a "hey we know this is racist or whatever-ist but we're doing this ironically and if you don't find this funny you're taking things too seriously" and just...completely not my cup of tea. In the I-could-feel-my-IQ-points-dropping-as-I-watched kind of way. The cops and their taser demo was kind of super-horrifying to me.

Just another sense that I don't get mainstream US culture despite being born and growing up here, I guess. Because as my classmate was handing me the dvd, several other classmates saw it and gushed about how funny it was and how they really liked it. Anyhow we're just going to do a couple of scenes from the beginning and a slideshow at the very end, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Yes, so I am alive! The movies I did recommend are worth spending a little time on, I think, and I am going hunting for the Densha Otoko novel once I have time to go to the library. At some point I will do a post about my trip to China for my cousin's wedding, and have pictures. Here's hoping that will actually be before New Year's, haha. Love to all you darlings! ♥

Fic prompts please - Going off to China for a couple of weeks

rhythmia — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 05:15:33 GMT

Still alive, I promise. I hope all of you are doing well, or at least tolerably. ^^

-Going to China (Guangzhou, specifically) for my cousin's wedding, so I'll be gone from November 5 in the evening until I come back November 20. Whoo, 13-14 hour flights.

-Which brings me to my next point. Fic prompts please! So I'll have something to do while I fly alone for so many hours, since I can't bring my knitting. I'm kind of rusty but I'd like to get some practice, since I was re-reading that one Valentine's Day challenge I wrote waaaay back that suddenly got new comments on it, and totally wincing my way through it. Ehehehe. Part of it was the premise was executed kind of poorly (really, I should have known better, but the idea hit me while I was delirious and I just went with it) and part of it was just the writing quality. >.>

So fandoms I will attempt to write for: Arashi, I'm willing to try my hand at Skip Beat!, Ouran High School Host Club, and maaaaaybe Inception (I think I'd like to explore Ariadne, Yusuf, and Saito, but I'm scared of writing them wrong despite having seen the movie twice, hehe). Possibly Super Junior M but I think my impressions of them are too strongly influenced by fandom. I want to write more girls/women! :D

Hit me with your best shot!

<3 to you all~

Signal boost. Dammit, now I can't read Elizabeth Moon anymore.

rhythmia — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:39:12 GMT

I refuse to link Elizabeth Moon's lovely (*sarcasm) rant about Muslims and assimilation and how WE MUST ALL BE ASSIMILATED (read: erase our own cultures to fit into WASP-y middle class US culture) for immigration to succeed. Yeah, um, no.

However! I'm doing a signal boost because shweta_narayan is a beautiful, brave person and wrote out her own experiences trying to assimilate. The comments are also kind of amazing, and unifying, because issues of assimilation and immigration happen world-wide, and history is cycling around again and things are getting a little hairy. *gives Arizona the side-eye*

Anyhow, love to all of you dears, this is me shaking a little and venting in the middle of the night when I really ought to be in bed.

Request!

rhythmia — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:05:56 GMT

This...should probably be obvious. Please to not be cross-posting any comments and what have you on this journal to facebook or twitter. Not that I'm all that crazy anyway, but just in case. :P

Hope all you lovelies are doing well. ♥ Day 3 of new job, still haven't managed to blow anything up yet.

Work! and other stuff

rhythmia — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:59:54 GMT

First day at the new job, administrative assistant, aka glorified receptionist. Learned shiny new things, so far so good. Didn't blow anything up.

It's still the 30th here, so I figure I'll join the bandwagon and wish Jun-face a happy birthday. ;P No matter how far I range in fandoms (even though I'm currently neck deep in Inception fic and playing around in Super Junior M and various other Korean groups), Arashi's proved to keep their hold on me. ^_^

Hope all you lovely folks are doing well, I'll try to be better at, um, being alive. <3

Drive by Inception fic rec

rhythmia — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 06:43:19 GMT

Still alive, will update on RL stuff eventually.

I just had to rec this fic: Leading with my heart by acidpop25.
Inception fandom, Arthur/Eames, and hands down one of the best portrayals of an asexual character that I have ever seen in fic. It totally resonated with me, thus, reccing it!

Related: my delicious bookmarks page is where I keep links to all the lovely fic I've been reading. I need to go through my livejournal memories and input them and tag the heck out of them. >.>

Signal boost: Survey on how one's culture and that of source material affects fandom

rhythmia — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:35:26 GMT

Still alive. At some point I should probably post about life.

In the meantime! I found this via friendsfriends and it's very interesting to me. gnine has this to say:

"As you may or may not know, I’m currently working on my MA in Critical Media and Cultural Studies at University of London, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies). For my thesis, I’m delving into the question of how culture, one’s own, as well as that of the source material one is fanning on, affects how fans identify and interact with said media and the fandoms surrounding them.

I am very aware that academic scrutiny of fandom has at times been…less than pleasant, shall we say. With that in mind, I’d like to make clear that it is not my intent to place fen or fandom under the microscope, but rather to use them as one concrete example in the broader investigation of culture’s impact on the field of media studies."

Here is her survey, and I figure my flist is an interesting spectrum of people, who may also be intrigued by her topic. So. Have at! I already did my tl;dr thing on her post.

I'm curious to see what people say, because I've had interesting experiences being in both Western fandoms and East Asian fandoms and RPF and books and whatnot. Heck, if people want to have discussion here, I'm always up for it. :D

Love to y'all~

Franken-hand. Aka adventures of the sliced melon. And fun links after for recovering from squick!

rhythmia — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 06:38:40 GMT

I am totally a 12-year-old, endlessly fascinated with things like mutant teeth and getting stitches. So this is totally cut for the easily squicked, and to spare erjika's sensibilities. :D

I got my stitches out on Wednesday, so I just wanted to share the pictures of my fingers with stitches in for posterity. :D?

Here they are with my hand in the position it was when I found myself catching the blade. Cue a few seconds of dumbfounded "Oh wait. What?" before copiously dripping blood everywhere. :P

The ER doctor was all, "Hmm, yeah, the ring finger's pretty shallow, so Steri-strips are fine. But the middle finger you can see finger guts, so I'll stitch that up." I thought they'd be the 'dissolve-in-you' kind, but no, they were like thin plastic thread, reminds me of very thin quilting thread.

Mr. DeVille, I'm ready for that close-up~

When the stitches were taken out, I filled out paperwork and waited around for about an hour, reading my copy of Journey in the DEAF-WORLD for my ASL class. And then the doctor saw me. Unfortunately, the ER doctor had done her job well and made the stitches pretty tight, and the doctor at the worker's comp clinic only had a slightly larger pick/scissors/clip tool at hand. So she had to dig around the cut quite a lot to be able to get under the stitches to cut them and pull them out. Bleh.

And then I got a tdap tetanus shot, since it's been over 10 years since I had one. So sore arm for the last couple of days. Hoping the feeling will eventually come back to the tip of my finger. ^^;;

And now a safe space for people who just want to read the stuff below and comment on it. :D

I just think it's so cool. And I get the BEST stories from customers about their sliced finger adventures. The gal at the bank told me a story when I was making a deposit. XD

Thing 2: http://www.strindbergandhelium.com.
My freshman year of college, my awesome roommate and I randomly surfed to the Sundance film festival page, and watched a bunch of animated shorts. This set of entries changed our lives. In the sense that I have spread it like a virus among my school friends and it continues to inform our conversations to this day. :D And after 8 years, there will be more!

...I pride myself on my Helium voice. :DDDDDD

Thing 3: @erjika: BALLS. :3

Thing 4: Going to the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley tomorrow! Deaf event for ASL class, and first time going to that museum. Awesomeness.

Thing 5: Hope all you lovelies are doing well. ♥

SJSU said no.

rhythmia — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 03:45:19 GMT

400 applicants, only 38 accepted this year. So full speed ahead finding a new full-time job, and I'll definitely reapply next year. Here's hoping SJSU's financial situation will be better next year, ehehe.

So now I have to break it to the professors who wrote my letters. Urg. On the bright side, this means I'll likely be more flexible about being able to go to China in the fall for my cousin's wedding.

In other news, the stitches are coming out tomorrow! So I'll post up pictures of my Frankenstein-monster fingers. :D

Hope all of you are well~ ♥

Pluses and minuses - an exciting weekend indeed

rhythmia — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 05:44:11 GMT

+ Survived the CBEST test!
- Frustrated the hell out of myself because I did the second essay first, but wrote it on the sheet for the first essay. D: So I had to transcribe it to the proper sheet and erase the wrong part. Wasted about twenty minutes, so I didn't finish essay no. 1.

+ Made a new friend at the test!
- Because the officials who collected all our cell phones at the beginning couldn't find hers!
+ But it turned out later to have been in the wrong box. Phone recovered! I basically spent time lending her my phone so she could call her ride, and we swapped stories. She told me about being a teacher in Colombia and coming her, learning English, and testing to be a teacher here. I told her about trying to be a speech therapist.

+ Found a recipe for Amazing and Easy Lentils and Rice. It really was that easy. Used some frozen lamb stock I had in the freezer for flavor, garlic, onion and tomatoes, and it was delicious.
- (?) Mom said that everything in her bathroom smelled like it afterwards. :P
+ Food porn at Queen's house! Photographs to come! Poached pears, cake, and my lentils and rice, and wine/sparkling cider. All to try the burnt caramel sauce I bought when Queen and I went to the SF Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building. Guys? The term 'foodgasm' is utterly appropriate here.

- Work was so boring because of the rain. Pretty quiet.
---Murphy decided to liven things up. I'm not sure if I was klutzy, forgetful, or the machine just went haywire. We have a stack cutter for cutting edges off photographs. Very low-tech, a bar for holding the photos in place and a blade on a giant handle, like a giant cleaver. Usually I'll cut, then put the handle back to vertical where a little catch keeps it in place. This time as I was getting the cut photos out, the handle fell down. So I caught it -- blade-first on my fingers. UM, THE EASILY SQUICKED MAY WANT TO SKIP THIS PART WHICH SHALL BE BEHIND LJ-CUT

Cue a comical moment of 'wait what?' and then the blood started welling up like crazy. ^^;; Ran for the bathroom, dripping big fat drops all the way, and dripped in the sink while my coworker went through a first aid kit. I just washed it off, couldn't tell how deep it was, and wrapped the whole thing in quadruple folded gauze and put a tight rubber band on it like a tourniquet. Had to hunt around for workers comp paperwork DX but then off to the ER.

Lucky I got seen pretty quick, hadn't even had lunch yet because this happened right before I was going to go. I told the nurse checking my breathe-in, breathe-out that the funny noises would be my gurgling tummy. :P Turned out that I did decent with the pressure bandage and keeping it elevated, because the bleeding had stopped, and actually most of the pain. Tingly fingertips from cut off nerve endings. So left ring finger only needed steri-strips to hold the skin closed (ugh so glad the slices were all in the fleshy part of my fingers, nothing majorly important, hehe), and the middle finger needed stitches, because 'finger guts' were visible since the skin gapped pretty wide. It looked really cool though. Mildly impressed the ER doctor with my high pain tolerance, and got three stitches. And a ton of paperwork, of course.

+ Birthday dinner for my grandpa, turning 79! Uncle and aunt came in, there was cooking of delicious food like corn soup, steamed fish, eggplant, mushrooms galore, and more tasty veggies than you can shake a stick at. :D And awesome cake from my aunt's friend's bakery in Chinatown, spongecake with fruit and this awesome light frosting, not heavy like buttercream (I can't stand American desserts because of the heavy frosting).

+ Bro showed me this hilarious video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JruqUIjl5Sw
The Muppets doing Bohemian Rhapsody. You have not lived until you've seen this.

Okay, long enough! Hope all you darlings are doing wonderfully! ♥

Yet another post to prove I'm still breathing.

rhythmia — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 06:18:49 GMT

Taking the CBEST tomorrow. Not going to be a teacher, but the speech therapy grad program requires it. So I need to prove that I can read, write and do math at the high school level. Fun times include being at the testing site from 8am-1:15pm. Keep your fingers crossed that Murphy doesn't have it in for me. :P

Reward to self afterwards: episodes 4-6 of Oh My Lady kdrama fluff. :D Provided I get the technical stuff sorted out on viikii.

They found my car!! \o/

rhythmia — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:01:03 GMT

I'm so happy. I got a call about 2pm today, it was in the parking lot of a 7-11 convenience store about five blocks away from where they stole it. And apparently it had been dumped there the same night. The guy who owns the 7-11 was going to get it towed, but thankfully he called the police first. All the stuff (including all my textbooks) are still in there! \o/ The person(s) who stole it rifled through the glove box, but all they ended up taking that I could see is the third of a roll of quarters I had in the little cupholder thingy for parking meters.

*sighs with relief*

I still need to check with a credit monitoring agency or something, in case they took a copy of the registration papers that had my old address on it and tried to do some identify theft though. But the car is in essentially the same condition it went missing in, I just need to get some gas (luckily it was already in need of a fill-up when it was stolen, so less incentive to joyride?).

Yaaaaaay~ Off to class now~

ETA: Thanks so much to all of you for your good wishes. I gotta say, this past week, I've got awesome friends and co-workers. ♥

AAAARGH. FUCK MY LIFE

rhythmia — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:49:09 GMT

My car got stolen tonight.

I studied at Borders with the Queen, then drove to the Starbucks for the once-a-month Deaf Coffee Social. Got there at 11pm, it was full of people, chatted until 12:15, and went outside with a friend to take a look at his camera. Car was gone. We walked all around the parking lot in case I was delirious and forgot where I parked. No go.

Friend was so nice and stayed with me through calling the police to take my statement. Woke up the Queen, she came and picked me up.

AAAAAAAAARGH. I don't even really care about the car, and luckily nothing life-or-death left inside it. I had my purse with me. But ARAARGH. My bag with my school stuff and a rented textbook was still in it. >.< I'm still in shock, I guess, because emotionally I'm kinda flat, though that's not unusual. Friends cheered me up, at least. ^^;;;

AAAAAARGH. That is all. Life: 1, the fruit: 0. Queen's giving me a ride to work tomorrow/today, 8:15. It's currently 2:47, since she just dropped me off back home. I am NOT looking forward to telling my mom and grandma about this. >.

Still not dead

rhythmia — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:09:46 GMT

A day late and a dollar short, as the saying goes. But anyhow!

I wanted to wish all you lovely dears Happy Lunar New Year!

I only know a few 4-character sayings, so I'll trot them all out for you, hehe. ♥

新年快乐！(Happy New Year!)
恭喜发财！(Most people know this as Gong Hay Fat Choy in Cantonese, aka lots and lots of prosperity to you!)
万事如意！(May all your affairs go smoothly in the way that you wish! *snerkaffairsIamtwelve*)
身体健康！(Good health to you!)
学习进步！(May your studies improve/go forward positively etc.!)

Hope you're all doing all right; feel free to bitch with me about the stuff that's being a pain.

On the personal front!
1. I applied for grad school! Communications Disorders and Sciences, to be a speech therapist. I should hear back sometime in April.

2. I'm learning to cook more! I made fried rice with fish cake for my family's new year dinner.

3. fandom-wise I'm currently going between my old love of Arashi and a new obsession with Super Junior-M. A canon in which I can actually kinda-sorta understand when they're talking. primroseshows is laughing at me, I can tell. The fic is good and the primary characters I read fic for remind me of Nino/Aiba/Jun in their various permutations.

4. There is no four? But I'm slowly changing my life in small steps, trying to get out of this rut. We'll see how this goes. My to do list includes unpacking more boxes from the move, replying to people's emails, finish my taxes so I can do the fafsa, and find a new job. Small steps, ehehehe.

5. All my love to you! I fail at being around, but I deeply appreciate your presence online, sharing the fun, the depressing, the crazy, the silly, the gamut of human experience. That's all for tonight. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Re-enactment of the Prop 8 Trial coming to a youtube page near you!

rhythmia — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:22:46 GMT

For those of you who haven't heard yet, last November California put civil rights up for a vote. Marriage equality. And it lost. Yeah, I know, and this is my home. >.<

This January, Proposition 8 was taken before a Ninth Circuit (Federal) judge to challenge it's constitutionality. Judge Walker took public comment and was going to allow the trial to be publicly televised and also broadcast on Youtube. Defendants (pro-8) appealed to the Supreme Court, who said nope, can't do it.

So! There are transcripts at a variety of wonderful places, such as http://prop8trialtracker.com, www.firedoglake.com (there's a few people writing there in several different posts, but there's always someone at trialtracker linking to the relevant posts in the comments), the San Jose Mercury News (My home newspaper! The link is to day 6, but just check out the sidebars), and the ever informative KQED public tv station.

And from the transcripts, the awesome people at http://marriagetrial.com/ will be putting up a re-enactment of the courtroom. Starting Wednesday, I believe. An article about what they're doing can be found here!

Dr. Meyer at the Prop 8 Trial: Stigma and effects on gays and lesbians

rhythmia — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:46:22 GMT

Parts one and two here.

Reading these two parts of the liveblogging, and then the *comments*, goodness the comments. It's making me want to cry.

Dr. Ilan H. Meyer, Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health is up. He will testify about the stigma and prejudice gay and lesbians individuals face in society.

The testimonies, the sociological and mental health data, the arguments are staggering. And then the community of commenters that have grown up around this liveblogging is just amazing. Different peoples' stories make me want to cry and cheer and rage, and everyone is so supportive of each other.

Prop 8 liveblogging - and the marriage equality debate rages on

rhythmia — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:00:38 GMT

So the Prop 8 trial in my good ol' state of California started Monday. Supreme Court ruled against allowing live media coverage. So much for transparency.

to try to make up for that, the Courage Campaign is doing live blogging from the courtroom.

http://prop8trialtracker.com

Please check it out.

ETA:
Reading through the first couple of days of courtroom summaries is amazingly edifying. A couple of the expert witnesses give us a crash course in the history of marriage in the United States, history of LGBT discrimination in the US, and lots of sociological tidbits. Also the folks commenting on the liveblogging are building into a thriving community, and people are sharing relevant links left and right.

Also! A hilariously relevant flash animation as SF Gate.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/01/13/fiorewhose.DTL

Enter the Koreans~

rhythmia — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:39:05 GMT

Well, sort of. :D They jokingly refer to themselves as the oldest kpop idols currently in existence. Four member male vocal group Sweet Sorrow!

I discovered them last summer because someone on omonatheydidnt posted a video of them doing an a capella version of something by Super Junior. Their music is gorgeous.

Case in point: 5 minutes of music that is sexy and completely dorky by turns. :D

You may want to check out part 2 as well, if part 1 is interesting!

In other news, my computer is slooooooow. So flange5, I'll get to your chili post eventually. And tomorrow the Queen is coming over, and teaching me to cook Arabic food. So I'll be learning to make hummos (garbanzo beans with garlic and spices, mmm), a potato and cilantro salad, and kefta (beef and parsley and spices). *rubs hands together gleefully* I need to get up early and buy a mortar and pestle.

How are you darlings doing? <3

Hey all

rhythmia — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:46:54 GMT

Happy Christmas to those who celebrate it. It's basically just another excuse to get together and have lots of tasty food in my family, since we're not in any way Christian. :P

Even if we don't talk much, even if we haven't known each other very long, I appreciate you lovelies being who you are, and your presence in my life. All the best to you and yours, a safe and happy holiday, and good health and a prosperous new year. <3

Also! The offer is still open for anyone who would like snail mail! It wouldn't be a holiday card, but I am in the mood to write letters with little sketches and suchlike in them. International (i.e. outside the US if you need a point of reference) is not a problem, just a bit more stamps. :P So please PM me with your address if you'd like a bit of mail.

<3

In other news, I'm glad this townhouse has a home warranty on it. The ground floor ceiling underneath my bathroom is leaking. DX I think the previous owner was never here enough, so he didn't notice that maybe when he had the master bathroom redone so pretty, the seals on the pipes or something weren't so good...

Helloooo gender fail

rhythmia — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:39:50 GMT

Following links around, but the main points are from ilyena_sylph here and synecdochic on dreamwidth here.

Basically, for targeted advertising reasons, LJ intends to implement a requirement that you pick one, male or female. No more unspecified option (which I originally chose because I don't want to get ads) and no option to be other.

Yeah, a world of NO.

1) Reinforcing a gender binary, which is hurtful to anyone in the trans, genderqueer, that whole spectrum of people who just don't identify with one or the other.

2) Makes it easier to target crappy ads. Partly why I started out with basic all those years ago and never upgraded. Who wants to identify female and get bombarded with dieting ads?

The blogs above have links to where you can leave (politely worded please) feedback and show how you can change your current settings to unspecified before they implement.

I'm open for discussion or ranting or whatever in the comments.

Edit: The backpedaling has begun!

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns. We understand that gender is not binary, and intend to respect that understanding for our users.

At this time, the code you reference is not live on the site, and will not become so in the future. We know that you, and many other users, have serious concerns about any requirement to specify gender, so we'd like to take a moment to explain events and our position further.

The intention of this code was to change the sign-up process to include a field for the selection of gender; that the code would completely disable the "Unspecified" option at the same time was deemed unacceptable. While the code in question had gone to our beta (testing) server, it had not gone to our production server, and will not do so due to this problem. Furthermore, we'd like to clarify that code posted to the changelog community is not always final, as such code must then go through the beta testing process and can often be changed before actual implementation.

Additionally, some erroneous information has been spread regarding the potential public display of the gender field. We would like to clarify that gender is not currently publicly displayed on the profile, nor anywhere else on the site, and there are no plans to change this behavior.

Regards,
LiveJournal Community Care Team