Dragonblink's · LiveJournal

If you've instant messaged me in the past couple of days, and I didn't respond, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm ignoring you.

My laptop has picked up the naughty habit of waking itself up randomly (while still closed, no less!) which automatically logs me into various IMs if I left them running.

I've turned it off and it gets to sit there and think about what it's done. >:(

Well. On the heels of yesterday's day of fail, I am now PMSing like WHOA. As in "crying for no damn reason and can't stop." (Currently typing without my glasses on -- I always take them off to cry)

It is on of the most FRUSTRATING things in the human condition to have the logical part of your brain knowing why you're all fucked up and yet still unable to do anything about it. I mean, I can open up my Pill package, point to where I am in the month, and say "There. That's why I'm upset. It's just hormones, and I have nothing to cry about." And at the same time, here I am, still crying.

I've experienced the same frustration in my struggles with depression. I can enumerate what's wrong, lay it all out, bring up positives and solutions -- but it doesn't help. It's frustrating and it makes you feel powerless. This is why telling someone with depression to just "sack up and deal with it" is the opposite of helpful. It just reminds them that there is no rhyme or reason to how they feel or their difficulties dealing with it. You aren't telling them anything they haven't said to themselves a thousand times a night. I wish depression was better understood so the illness could be treated better, and the people dealing with it could be treated better.

Holy tangent, Batman.

I spent yesterday completely unproductive because I was near-catatonic on drugs and unless I can pull myself together I'm not going to get much done tonight either. I just want to sleep for a week.

It has been a day full of fail.

It started at 7am with the fire alarm. My right ear is still ringing from it.

Then as I was vainly trying to get back to sleep I realized I had forgotten to take my pills (insomnia meds and Pill) last night. Normally I'd say "eff it" but the insomnia meds are of the "don't stop these cold turkey" variety so I got up and took em and went back to bed.

My hypothesis that my migraines are hormone-related continues to hold, because delaying my Pill dose = migraine. Didn't have time for meds when I woke up tho, because I had to take the cat to the vet because his mouth is acting up again. At my vet office, going in during their walkin hours can mean anything from walking straight from the desk to an exam room, to sitting in the waiting room for three hours (both of which I've done) so I had to get there as soon as the walkin hours started. Kitty now has a shot that will hopefully last him till his next dental in a month and a half.

Now I'm trying to get some food in me so I can take migraine meds, which are likely to leave me unable to focus for the rest of the day. And Teh Girlfriend is feeling very poorly as well. Whee.

I am sometimes asked why California's "Domestic partnership registry" isn't enough. Why people like me insist on gaining a legal right to marry who we want to marry regardless of race or gender. Why I'm not overjoyed that my state has oh-so-graciously allowed us faggots to marry.

You know why? Because this.

I am still not a human being. I am not family to my girlfriend in the eyes of the law no matter how long we are together. Any pissant legal privilege this state grudgingly grants me vanishes at the border. America voted that nobody can make you treat queers like people and soon our government will vote that the judicial branch cannot even review whether anybody can make you treat queers like people.

So no, I'm not going to settle for a Mutant Registry and I'm not going to rejoice because I can get a piece of paper that carries no more weight than a Vons club card at Ralphs. And I won't be happy while the majority of this country votes that I am incapable of being a consenting adult human being.

A typical screenshot from a hair shop in Second Life. It's generally filled with skanktacular avatars, mostly played by men or fourteen-year-old girls, with the occasional furry, historical RPer, and the rare person who's dressed like a regular human being.

Guess which one of these five avatars is me. Go on, guess.

Second Life has really spoiled me. The whole "completely change your hair with a click of the mouse" thing is so addictive. So, at the suggestion of J-dawg and Sooz, we hit up a costume shop in Hollywood and I picked up this adorable thing for thirty bucks. If it weren't for their "two wig try-ons per visit" limit I woulda got more -- as it is I'll be going back, since I want a more natural color wig, as well as a blonde one for an unspecified future project.

-- My doc suggested I taper down my insomnia meds over the summer. Because of that (and because I wanted to put off heading to campus to refill my bottle) I took half-pills for about a week. The experiment was not a success, and it reminded me just how anti-productive I am with my normal, undrugged level of sleep.

-- If you're not following Phoenix on Twitter, you should be. The name is MarsPhoenix and 20,000 people are following it as it narrates its daily activities in the first person.

-- Teh Girlfriend got me a new monitor for my birthday and it is extremely awesome. The difference between an aging bargain bin 17" CRT and a nice new multi-input USB-jack-having 20" LCD is ownage.

-- I hate Javascript and I want it to DIAF.

I never thought I'd utter these words, but ...

Quick! Turn on C-SPAN!

Edit: A helpful link for the C-SPAN impaired. Currently that link only has documents relating to Kuninich's introduction of a resolution to impeach Vice President Cheney. He is currently talking about impeaching President Bush. I'm hoping those documents will be added soon for easier perusal.

It has been hard to find any info on non-biased internet news sources. this is as close as I've gotten.

You know what sucks donkey ass?

Regular expressions suck donkey ass.

Since when is "end of input" NOT a goddamn word boundary you goat-raping motherfuckers?!

Had to share this photo with y'alls ... the awesome and talented J-dawg was kind enough to snap some shots of me awhile back, and while this isn't the best photo out of the batch, it's the photo that I think is the most me.

If I ever publish a book, I want this to be my "About The Author" photo.

My style of "cooking" generally involves a few basic framework recipes in my head that I adapt to whatever we have on hand. It usually boils down to "throw things in a pan, make them hot, and stir". Sometimes this works out really well, sometimes the results are a little meh.

Eating some leftover coconut rice from last night made me realize just how well last night's version turned out, so I'll share it with y'all.

Ingredients:

-- A shitton of cooked white rice (I put two Japanese cups of uncooked rice in the rice cooker, I think that's about a cup and a half American)
-- One package smoked tofu (golden teryaki style), diced
-- One piece of fake choriso, diced (I don't know the brand but they sell it at Whole Foods and it's surprisingly good)
-- half of a red bell pepper, diced
-- about two cups roasted corn (I get it frozen at Trader Joe's)
-- one can light coconut milk
-- one package of Del Taco's Del Scorcho taco sauce
-- garlic salt, veggie pepper, and onion powder to taste

Throw the tofu, "choriso", pepper and corn into a bigass pan with a little oil and cook it till everything's heated through. Add the can of coconut milk and the seasonings (including the taco sauce) and stir like crazy. When that's heated through, dump the rice on top and mixmixmixmix until everything's nice and mixed and warm. Commence nomnomming.

You can monkey with this recipe a lot, since it's one of mine -- the ingredients are flexible. I've made it with chopped shallots as the only vegetable, I've made it without the chorizo ... every time it turns out delicious (although a couple times it was a little bland, which is easily corrected).

And, surprisingly for a rice dish, it reheats really well. Make a crapton and have some for lunch the next day!

Sure, you may have seen this picture of Phoenix descending toward Mars, as taken by the Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera. But have you seen this one, with a gigantic crater in the background?

The MRO has even found where everything landed.

What is the Wii Fit you ask? It's a controller for the Nintendo Wii that's shaped like a small, low platform. The idea is that you stand on it and do things to play the games that come with it.

Now, they marketed it fairly heavily as a way to get in shape and be healthy, and I was dubious. Sure, it looked like fun, but as a piece of exercise equipment? Whatever.

We pre-ordered one here at the Fortress of Geekitude (we wanted one since the first footage of gameplay was released on the intertubes), and lemme tell you ... yes, it is designed as exercise equipment, and pretty well at that.

So there's four different categories of activity for the Fit: Yoga, Strength Training, Aerobics, and Balance Games. The Yoga section is actually more fun than regular non-Wii yoga, I find, because it challenges you -- you get points based on how well you keep your center of balance within a certain area. The Strength Training stuff is similar, with lunges and planks and stuff. The Aerobics activities are pretty good at being fun enough that you want to keep going, even if you're out of breath -- you can "run" around a virtual island, spin hula hoops, do a stepping game that's similar to DDR, etc. And then the Balance Games, like snowboarding and stuff, require pretty challenging control over how you tilt your body.

It talks a lot about posture (which is similar to the Pilates idea of core muscle control, I think), but also suggests warming up, when to take a break, helpful tips for nutrition and energy, good form on the exercises, etc.

It keeps track of how well you do at everything, so you can work on getting better and beat your high scores at, say, the Tree pose or the ski jump game. It also keeps track of your weight, estimated BMI, and how long you do things for. It gives you encouragement and advice, and is downright cute.

And, unlike most games with an "unlocking" element, unlocking new activities doesn't require you to obsessively master every game on the disc. Instead, it rewards time spent using it -- each activity is worth a certain number of minutes. And not having everything unlocked at once helps keep people from overdoing it all at once and burning out.

My main complaint is that it takes too long to switch between activities -- there's score animations, your "trainer" giving feedback and advice, etc, then you have to go back to the menu to pick another activity. I really wish there was a mode where I could put together a list of what I want to do and have it automatically go from one to the next.

So the Wii Fit encourages steady, slow improvement at physically challenging (but still fun!) activities, and really does reward good workout habits. It's not cheap (about $90, not including the Wii itself), but it's cheaper than a lot of exercise equipment and it strikes me as the kind of exercise machine people are more likely to stick with, rather than just hanging their laundry on it until they need space and Craigslist it away. I recommend it if you've got the cash and are looking for a way to get your butt off the couch more often.

So, you've heard about this Second Life thing but never had a reason to try it. Or maybe you've tried it, but want to learn how it can be used for something other than furries and porn.

Now's your chance! Download the client, make a free account, then head over to JPL's Explorer Island and watch live streaming NASA tv and a simulation of the Mars Phoenix Landing as it happens, today around 4pm Pacific!

Spaceflight is one of the academic/educational uses for Second Life that has actually gotten nicely developed. The International Spaceflight Museum is one of my favorite places to wander around when I'm in SL. I'll be there (as Blinkie Evelyn) to watch the event and show support for real-life events being brought to a wider audience in Second Life.

So I'm wasting away in migraineville. My third day of off-and-on migraineowie and drugs.

At least I've finally figured out what my mystery second trigger is -- these migraines are, shall we say, a monthly occurence.

And I pissed off the monthly migraine gods mightly.

( Cut for all you TMI pussies. Haw! I made a pun! )

Blargh.

Given that our state supreme court has finally conceded that I may in fact be a real person as far as long-term responsibilities go, I'd like to address California's "separate but equal" non-marriage for non-people: Registered Domestic Partnership.

Or as I call it, the Mutant Registry.

Were I to become a Registered Domestic Partner, I would gain a few rights. Hospital visitation, wrongful death lawsuits, and the ability to jointly file state taxes, basically. And to be honest, I would not bet the farm on the relevant parties actually honoring these rights unless taken to court. Oh, and I get the right to take my partner's surname. Except that you can take pretty much any name you want in California just by using it, as long as there's no intent to commit fraud, so big whoop.

And most importantly, those rights end at the California border. Were Teh Woman to be hospitalized in any other state, I would be SOL. If we got jobs in another state, we would not be eligible for any kind of family leave relating to each other. If I had a kid in another state, Teh Woman would not legally be a parent. Full Faith and Credit my ass.

From what I understand, we'd be far better off giving each other Power of Attorney, because there's no genital-based restriction on that and it's good anywhere.

Plus, RDP is not available to straight people unless one is over the age of 62. Non-elderly straight people cannot become RDPs. So ... basically it's a big list of queers and a few old people, and that's it.

But whyyyyyyyy do the big mean faggots have to try to steal the Sacred Institution of Marriage? We let those homos have civil unions and domestic partnerships _{in a few states, void where prohibited or just plain icky}, why do they gotta keep demanding special treatment?? And by special treatment, we mean the same treatment straights get?

Laws banning interracial marriage were on the books until the year 2000, despite Loving V. Virginia in 1967. Only 59% of Alabama voters supported taking those laws off the books, too. The exact same arguments being used today against same-sex marriage have been used for many years against interracial marriage, including "It's an abomination in the eyes of the Lord" and "Won't somebody think of the children!". Given this atmosphere of shortsighted bigotry, I do not expect to be able to marry like a straight person anytime soon. And I am willing to bet good money that the Faggots Caused 9-11 Act passes, and the Nobody Can Make Us Treat Homos Like People Act remains in effect for the foreseeable future.

Apparently nobody listened when the Supreme Court said:

Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. (Loving v. Virginia)

Well, what d'you know. Prop 22, the Queers Aren't People Act has been overturned.

CNN.com seems to be suggesting that the overturning of the Act means that gays can get married in this state just like real people. I don't think it means that, yet, it just means that there's no longer specific language in our state constitution enforcing Separate But Equal.

Lemme set the scene. I'm on the Gold Line, heading to campus to finish The Paper That Wouldn't Die. There's a dude sitting near the door -- a middle-aged white guy who I'll call Conversation Man. The train is half full. Conversation Man starts up a conversation with me. I respond in a friendly way, but I don't much like carrying on conversations with strangers on the train, so I wait until there's a lull and go into my "There's something urgent on my phone that I must attend to by pushing buttons" routine.

At a stop, Psychobitch gets on, pushing a covered stroller and carrying a two-year-old.

Conversation Man: Would you like this seat?
Psychobitch: No, I'll stand.
Conversation Man: Are you sure? You don't wanna sit down with your kid?
Psychobitch: No.
Two-year-old: (drops bottle)
Me: (looks for where it fell to see if I can reach it)
Conversation Man: I'll get it. (gets up, retrieves bottle, hands to Two-year-old)
Two-year-old: (drops bottle)
Me: (reaches down, picks it up)
Psychobitch: She's upset, just leave it.
Me: (puts bottle in cupholder on stroller)

Conversation Man: Got another one in there? (points to stroller, which is covered with a blanket) They're a handful, aren't they.
Psychobitch: (turning around to face him) WHY DO YOU CARE? DO YOU HAVE KIDS? DID YOU BEAR ANY?
Rest of train: ??
Conversation Man: I was just trying to make conversation ...
Psychobitch: WELL DON'T FUCKING BOTHER. YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALL RIGHT?
Rest of train: ?!
Conversation Man: Well excuse the fuck outta me ...
Psychobitch: SHUT THE FUCK UP! YOU SHUT UP! WHY DON'T YOU LEAVE US ALONE? YOU DON'T HAVE ANY RESPECT!
Conversation Man: Why don't you just turn around, then?
Psychobitch: DON'T YOU FUCKING TELL ME WHAT TO DO, ASSHOLE! YOU STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY GIRLS, YOU FUCKING SICKO!
Rest of train: !!
Conversation Man: (gets up and moves to the other end of the car, muttering)
Psychobitch: YEAH YOU BETTER WALK AWAY, ASSHOLE! FUCK YOU! YOU GOTTTA LEARN SOME RESPECT FOR A LADY! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A LADY IS?!
Rest of train: (thinking as one) Well, now we sure as hell know what a lady isn't!

(pause)

Psychobitch: (to rest of train) WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT? ARE YOU ENJOYING THE SHOW?! MAYBE YOU SHOULD FUCKING STARE SOME MORE! YOU DON'T HAVE ANY RESPECT!
Random guy: You're the one who needs to learn some respect, lady.
Psychobitch: (goes OFF for another five minutes in the same vein)
Rest of train: (decides not to even look at Psychobitch anymore, lest we all get accused of wanting to molest her kids or something)

It was ... surreal. It should have been in Webster's under "Overreaction". Conversation Man seemed like a nice enough guy. Sure, he could have been a child molester, but so could anyone else on that train. He wasn't rubbing himself, he wasn't leering, he wasn't popping a chub as far as I could tell ... he didn't do anything to make a rational person assume he meant any harm to the kids. He was just chatting with whoever was near him.

I feel sorry for the little girls. They're not gonna trust ANYONE when they grow up.

Upon viewing YouTube footage from the China earthquake, I feel the need to once again give this PSA:

If an earthquake hits your area, DO NOT RUN OUTSIDE. Inside, you mainly have to worry about a few things falling over. Outside you have to worry about glass, bricks, building facades, trees and parts thereof, people driving their cars off the street, power lines coming down, transformers exploding, etc etc etc.

So unless your building is VISIBLY COMING APART and about to fall on your head, stay inside until the shaking stops!

_{PS this includes you guys in the South and Midwest too.}

So last night Teh Woman and I were at a party, and there was Wii-ing. And the birthday boy got Guitar Hero 3. So naturally all the guys ine the crowd who had played it had to show off their chops (only one of em could do stuff on Hard mode). Then they offered the controller around to people who'd never played, to try out Easy mode. Which they did, with varying degrees of booed-off-stagedness.

When it got to me, I had someone explain the controls to me, then tried out the first song ("Slow Ride"). Hit 88% of the notes and had fun. Thought to myself "Hmm. Perhaps this should be added to our Wii collection."

Thanks to my awesome girlfriend and the Game Stop across the street, we now have our own copy. And uh ...

Okay, PSA time. If it's your first day owning the game, and you have shitty wrists ... don't beat easy mode in a single sitting. Cuz uh yeah it's pretty painful.

But on the bright side ... Tom Morello is my bitch, I owned Slash, and I kicked the devil's ass out of Georgia. Also I want to kick Slayer in the nuts.

One thing I don't get is, all the guys I watched playing this game were standing pretty much still when they were doing it. I, on the other hand, amd moving around almost as much as my little character on the stage. I'm totally getting into it and rocking out with my bad self. How can you stand still doing that? Then again, I've been told I play Wii bowling "like an anime character", so maybe it's just my tendency to flail.