The Girl in Black

Well, maybe it's time to give up the ghost

2006-05-26T00:50:00.000-05:00

I haven't been posting all that much, as I'm finding less and less that I want to blog about with the rest of the known world. I have my LJ account, and that is enough. If you are a friend of mine that has my email address, you are invited to hop over to LJ and read all about my daily adventures. Just email me and I'll give you the name.

I don't think I'll be deleting anything just yet, there's a significant chunk of my life in here, but I'll be redirecting www.thegirlinblack.com to something else. Archives, if you care, are still at http://thefabulousmissrose.blogspot.com.

Happy thoughts: People whom I don't know have actually read and commented on my posts! The nice ones are awesome, and the fact that someone took the time out of their busy life to post a negative comment is kinda cool too.

PS - I quit my job and moved all the way from Orlando, Florida to Colorado. I've been here about a month, and it's quite awesome. I am happy. :-) I hope you're happy wherever you are too.

Thank you, Sarah

2006-03-17T12:49:00.000-05:00

Sarah commented on my last post, and I found her charity called LifeSIGNS, a UK based awareness group that gives information about what I have always called Self Mutilation, but is also called Self Harm. I've added LifeSIGNS to my blogroll, and I will be looking for other online resources to add (hopefully on this side of the Atlantic).

Also, there's a LifeSIGNS blog that you can read for information and updates.

If you want to understand why anyone does it, here's a good answer:
http://www.selfharm.org/what/invalidation.html

Thanks to anyone who has read my previous post and given it honest thought.

What the hell kind of idiotic survey question is this!?

2006-03-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

So I'm looking at a friend's MySpace profile, and she put up one of those convenient surveys to tell everyone a bit about herself. Everything's pretty silly and benign, except the last question. The last question, casual as "Have you ever kissed someone?" is "Do you cut yourself?"

Pardon my French, but WHAT THE MOTHERFUCKING FUCK!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

This is a subject that has become more and more irritable to me, and today it is the last straw.

CUTTING YOURSELF IS NOT "COOL" AND IS NOT A QUESTION TO BE CONSIDERED CASUAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF.

Why is this pissing me off so much? Because I've done it. I still think of doing it sometimes. At twenty-six. I didn't grow out of it. It's still a gut reaction to many forms of stress, and I'm having to retrain my thinking.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that now that it's being talked about by adults it's considered so disturbing that any coverage about it in the media barely scrapes the surface of the subject, or that apparently it's now considered some sort of teenage fad.

Shall we add other questions to these surveys now? "Are you an alcoholic?" "Do you have an eating disorder?" "Have you attempted suicide?" "Do you shoot up smack?"

It makes me laugh, this public wringing of the hands. "Oh, what's to be done?" The fact that our children are doing this is disturbing enough, eh? Do you know what it's like? Do you want to know?

The disturbing thing isn't that it's done. The disturbing thing is how it feels when you're doing it. It's not the physical act. The pain, the blood, all of it is part of the fact that when you're doing it, it feels good. Good in a way I can hardly describe. It's not a high. It's not a positive, happy feeling. It comes from a dark place that only those who have been there really understand.

It's about wanting control over something when you think that you can't have control over anything else in your life. It's about expressing emotions that you don't feel you can express any other way. It's a want for attention. It's a want for self destruction. It's something you do when you don't know what else to do. And instead of acting out on others (like a school shooting) it's acting out on yourself.

And hey, maybe I should be glad that people are finally talking about it, huh? Maybe I'm upset because no one was concerned about it when I needed people to be concerned. Not that my mother wasn't. It sickens me how she won't say that I was cutting myself. She would always say I was "cutting on myself." She couldn't ever bring herself to say exactly what it was.

Heh, it's even got a new term now. It's not "self mutilation." You're a "cutter." How fucking quaint.

This isn't a tattoo, or a piercing, or even something connected to the spiritual. This comes from a bad place, and while it needs to be seriously talked about, it should be seen for what it is. Not some "inhuman act." Not something all the other kids are doing. It's a silent pleading for the bad things to go away.

You're concerned? Get over your fear. Get over your "that's so cool" mentality. This is not a rebellious act to be proud of, and this is not something unspeakable to gloss over in hopes that it'll stop.

You don't know the disgusting shame that you're left with after the fact either. For me it wasn't just the sense of having to hide it rather than explain myself and fear becoming a pariah. The worry of having to explain it to boyfriends and lovers and be forever shunned. It was the self-criticism that it was all an immature cry for attention. Attention I didn't deserve. I knew it while I was doing it. The good feeling never lasted.

The deepest and most permanent of my scars I have are on my left arm in full view. Scars that I've had since I was nineteen, when I woke up the next day and realized that I couldn't hide them under long sleeves forever. I think about how proud I was of my perfect, pale skin, and how it'll never be so perfect again. I'll have these scars my whole life, no matter how much better I get. They're always there. A constant reminder of darker days. A slight panic of having to explain it to people who notice. The concern with noticing the signs of others doing it, and knowing that they don't feel safe talking to me about it. How do you bring that up in conversation? "By the by, I used to cut myself. Is that what you did/have been doing too?"

Few people ever seem to notice, though. It's easier to look the other way when you don't understand something. People often see what they want to see. And somedays even I forget that they're there.

But they are. I'll show them to you. Just ask me. How cool is that?

Oh. My. God.

2006-03-14T20:25:00.000-05:00

I. Am so. Embarassed.

But first, backstory: I have left my job and am moving to Colorado Springs. In the interum between job disruption and vacating Orlando, I am sorting through all of the stuff I've carried around with me for aeons. This is the third night of my work.

And yes, now I'm embarassed.

I finally sorted through a box innocently labeled "papers" so as to hopefully throw off anyone who might want to go through its contents. Obviously, this box contained "art" and writing (a.k.a. teenage poetry) that dated all the way back to middle school.

Oh, there is no way in hell anyone is going to look at this stuff. I'm the only person in my apartment and I'm blushing! Gods.

I actually threw some of the poetry most offensive to me away, as well as a few drawings that were remnants of my habit of copying other people's art. (I kept some of it. Fond memories and all.)

I could've thrown everything away I suppose, except for the little voice telling me to hang onto it all "for posterity."

Okay. Stop.

How could anyone look at this stuff and think me a credible person ever afterwards? I was no "budding genius." Just another misunderstood and angsty kid who tried to vent through sappy poetry and bad drawings (and I knew it at the time too). Although, I suppose it could possibly be of interest to the psychological community as examples of ways that angst-ridden teens act out?

*laughs* Okay, so yeah, I'm embarassed. But I'm keeping all the important and special stuff. And only I will know exactly what is actually important and special.

And no, you can't see.

A Brief History Of All Things Miss Rose - Chapter One

2006-03-11T15:16:00.000-05:00

Well, not so brief. A conversation with a friend of mine has caused me to actually break down and analyze the path that has led me to my current way of processing reality, and my choice in spiritual thinking. What follows is the first installment, which outlines some of my background. There will be more to follow...

I'd like to make mention of my earliest days, because it is a part of my background after all. It's so far removed from me now, but I suppose at one point you could have called me a Christian. I don't consider myself "raised Christian" so much as immersed in an environment where it was constantly around me. I don't remember where I first heard of God and Jesus, it was always something I knew of. I wasn't exposed to anything else for a long time. My parents never took me to church unless I wanted to go. I had no denomination, and didn't even understand the differences between churches until I was a teenager. The only "evil" I learned from Christianity was a sense of being self-effacingly humble. How could I know better than God? How could I do better than him? How could I be so audacious to tout myself as a good person when I should be asking God constantly how I can be better? These thoughts fit in well with my personality, and exacerbated an already flailing sense of self-esteem and self-confidence.

Ironically, it was this same lack of self-esteem that caused me to stop attending the church that I had been. Due to a bad experience with some of the kids my own age at the church's summer camp (who actually weren't a part of the regular youth group), I became paranoid and thought that everyone in the youth group hated me. So why bother going? Since sin wasn't so much a part of my world, there was little sin in not attending church. But I still considered myself "Christian." There was still God and Jesus. What else could there be? I didn't ever really think anyone was wrong for having different beliefs, and I didn't think much on it at all. It's entirely illogical to think that someone born into a different culture who would have no possible way of knowing what the "right" religion is should be punished.

Another amusing aside is that the idea of reincarnation made sense to me ever since I heard of it in childhood. Eternity just didn't make sense. There's no balance to living a mortal life for eighty-odd years and then living in heaven or hell forever after.

So for the record I suppose I can state that I have always been open to some sort of spiritual thinking, and have always had an open mind to different concepts. I just didn't know the history or culture of anything but the small swatch that I had been exposed to until high school. Education opened my world even further. And beacuse of this, I know well the tragedy of people trapped in a narrow-minded culture. When you aren't exposed to anything but what those around you "know," it can be difficult to break out of the frame of reference you have developed.

This is why I believe in good education for all, and am absolutely horrified by fundamentalists who insist that their way of thinking be taught in schools. Schools should teach us how to think, not necessarily what to think. The exposure to as many different ideas as possible is paramount. In all facets of life, not just religion. Science, math, history, english, music, art, etc. When we are taught how to form our own opinions, rather than rely on dogmatic thought, we have so much more of an ability to get along in the world. And I suspect there would be a significant decrease in the amount of fundamentalist thought running rampant these days.

The Fallout From Introspection

2006-02-25T17:19:00.000-05:00

It has been suggested to me by a certain person (who is very silly and refuses to be a part of the online community) that I shouldn't be nearly so introspective because it leads to a lifetime of being nothing but an angst-ridden individual. I find this to be true at times, and very prudent advice. However, I know better than to apply this philosophy to my behavior at all times.

The only problem is that there are side effects. Namely a wish to share my newfound revelations with just about anyone who will listen, and an anxiety that honestly no one really wants to hear it.

Fuck you, voices in my head. I want to share. But I will try to keep this brief. It seems that most people become uncomfortable when someone wants to share what's on the inside, because they don't know what to say and quite possibly don't want to hold up the dark mirror to their own selves.

All of the words I have just written are a defense.

In fact, most of how I am with other people is a defense. Not everything. There is honest laughter, excitement, and joy that is shared between myself and my friends. There are honest moments late at night where we tell each other what we really think and what is really going on. There is teasing that is honestly good-natured. But therein lies a conundrum.

How much of joking around with others, talking about other people's problems, and bitching about life in general is just a defense against what's there that we don't want to see? Myself, I am constantly talking. Explaining, defending, stating negative or absolute opinions. "You can't tell me anything that I don't already know, so fuck off." This is how I have learned to get by.

The truth of the matter is that I am a sensitive, caring soul. I never understood why others around me were so mean. Or why they could never take the time to ask why I was crying when I was younger. I've been telling concerned and curious friends that I have been going through "childhood issues," but I honestly abhor that term. It's quite cliche, and doesn't really express the catharsis that I have recently had.

The truth of the matter is that I have been a passive aggressive person for most of my life. The truth is that I was taught how to be this way. In one aspect, there is the argument that I chose to continue this behavior. But in thinking about it more, this is not something I can blame myself for in the past. Now that I have held up the dark mirror to my own soul and seen myself for what I am, and seen why I have been the way that I have, now in this moment if I choose to continue with this behavior I only have myself to blame.

My formative years were frought with misunderstanding, lonliness, and a lack of emotional support from those whom I depended upon for it. Frankly, it was a really shitty way to grow up. And that's not okay. It never was, and it never will be. What is "okay" about it is that I can recognize now that it was not intentional, and that I'm not that person anymore, and I am safe to be myself.

I've lived with this pain for so long that it became an underlying part of my every waking moment. Even when I thought I was "fine" I found people to reinforce the negative experiences that I had. Even if the people I found really weren't reinforcing my negative experiences, my mind made sure that I thought they were. I built up a lot of walls. So much so that I thought these walls were myself.

Despite my intelligence, I never learned how to think. I submerged myself in the personalities and thoughts of others. I never knew what to do until someone told me what to do. In the back of my head I had my own opinions and thoughts, but because of a constant reinforcement that these thoughts and opinions didn't matter. I held my tongue to the people that I needed to say things to, and instead said things to "safe" people who had no stake in my situation.

I knew I was doing this the whole time, but I didn't know how to stop until now. So now I'm stopping.

I'm laying all of this out for two reasons. The first and most important one is that I am saying this for myself, taking responsibility for all that has transgressed by my own hand regardless of blame. Not that many people would notice, but I am writing with a different voice than usual. I am being as honest as possible, and the words are coming from a different place within me.

The second reason is that I have a hope that my insights and my experiences will help others in the same situation. Not that I can help them completely, or force others to "wake up" when they would rather not. But I want to tell others that it's okay to admit these things, and that it's possible to deal with them. I want to hear from others who have been through what I am going through, so that I can learn and feel accepted myself. I can't stand to go along in life with things left unsaid, especially when I feel that they should be.

And if no one else is going to say anything, you can bet your ass that I will.

YESSSSS!

2006-02-17T07:13:00.000-05:00

News so awesome, I had to get out of bed early:

Dada comes to America

Just in time for the road trip I have planned up to D.C.! I am sooo excited!

*does happy dance*

We should all write intelligent quotes in glitter text

2006-02-05T13:51:00.000-05:00

-Manic Street Preachers

I made this with the Glitter Word Generator. You should go there and make your own intelligent glitter quotes. I quoted Neitzsche earlier on MySpace. I wonder if they'll get annoyed with all of these long quotes...

carcasherdotcom seocontest - watch Google work!

2006-02-02T10:20:00.000-05:00

So what the hell does "carcasherdotcom seocontest" mean?

To you? Nothing. Unless you're into SEO. (That's Search Engine Optimization btw.)

To me? Mild interest and amusement. Except for this:

The Lactivist is involved, and "lactivism" is cool.

The Lactivist is a hot mamma on a mission! She's a donator to and an advocate for milk banking, a process wherein nursing mothers donate their breast milk to organizations that give it to babies that need it. It sounds strange, true, but this is apparently real. Sometimes there really are babies out there who aren't getting breast milk from their moms, and I'm not all that down with the idea of "baby formula" myself. If I were ever to be a mom, I wouldn't want to use formula unless I absolutely had to.

But this is where the cool factor comes in. She has some of the funniest shirts about breastfeeding! This is why I give the woman props. Anyone who has a sense of humor as irreverent as my own earns my admiration and respect.

So I want to help out her cause. This is where carcasherdotcom seocontest comes in. See, there's this silly little SEO pissing contest out there to find out who's Kung-Fu is better. There are prizes involved, including cash offerings and an iPod, and The Lactivist (whose "day job" is SEO) has vowed to enter the contest and donate the winnings to milk banks. And as we all know, the best way to mess with the search engines is to link to web pages using certain phrases.

So here's the deal. If you wanna help her win, link to this page: http://thelactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/carcasherdotcom-seocontest.html.

Use one of these eight phrases:

"carcasherdotcom seocontest"

"carcasherdotcom seocontest for milk banks"

"carcasherdotcom seocontest for milk bank awareness"

"carcasherdotcom seocontest milk bank fundraiser"

"how carcasherdotcom seocontest helps babies"

"carcasherdotcom seocontest for premature babies"

"carcasherdotcom seocontest funding mother's milk"

"carcasherdotcom seocontest helps breast milk banking"

Leave the link on your site for the whole year. Post about it, add it to your blogroll if you have one, put a link somewhere on your personal site, whatever. (If you follow the "carcasherdotcom" link that I have in this post, or the link above my blogroll, you'll find more details about the contest.) If you know anybody else who wants to help out, get them to put a link on their website too. And then occasionally you can type the phrase into Google (or Yahoo or MSN) to see how she and everyone else in the contest is doing.

Or if you're really bored you can hit some SEO forums and read people talking about a) the contest b) SEO stuff. I happen to think it's really neat (aside from the fact that it's a good thing to know for my job).

PS - ***removed because I think this is cool and other people don't so whatever.***

PPS - Hey Carpetblogger, I keep meaning to put the Jooglebomb link on my site. Wouldya remind me if it doesn't happen today? Danke. :-)

Warning: Silly, girly rant to blow off some steam

2006-01-27T20:40:00.000-05:00

So everybody who knows me knows that I ♥ Lush. A lot. So much that I was willing to drive to the Orlando International Airport (that's MCO for those who aren't in the know) to shop in the only Lush store in Orlando (as shipping from Canada is a bitch). It wasn't so much trouble really. It's about 10-15 minutes away from work, so I'm already out there every weekday. Plus there's the added benefit of inside knowledge about "Terminal Top Parking" which makes it a lot easier to get into the terminal than than regular parking garage parking. Sure airport parking costs a buck or two when you're in there over 30 minutes. *shrugs* Big deal. I'm already spending money, what's a buck or two more?

But then, Lush got smart.

They opened another store (finally!) in one of the malls in Orlando. Unfortunately, the mall they chose (or got stuck with, I'm not sure) is the Florida Mall. Have you ever been in the Florida Mall? It's dark, claustrophobic, sprawling, hermetically designed to keep you lost and wandering, and is full of tourists and people who apparently have nothing better to do with their lives than dress in what passes for urban fashion these days and be seen at this mall.

This mall has a hotel in it. A hotel.

What, is that your "Orlando Vacation?" Rather than be encouraged to spend money on trinkets and souvenirs at the theme parks, you'd prefer to be barraged by the crass consumerism marketing techniques of all kinds of retailers from high-falootin' department stores down to the cheesiest of kiosks? Well, I don't suppose I'd blame you. Theme parks overcharge you on the pretense of giving you "happiness" rather than a tangible product. At least in shopping malls you know that all they really want is your money, and they're not going to pretend otherwise.

But then again, if you're staying in the Florida Mall hotel, you're probably spending money at the theme parks anyway, and are expecting a lot of shopping to be done over your vacation no matter what. A hotel in a mall. It just doesn't make sense...

But I digress.

Anyway, after the "claim my new glasses on Black Friday" fiasco last year (the parking lot is perfectly laid out to ensure the same driving experience one gets when departing a concert or sports event in a motor vehicle - I have been to other malls on Black Friday and I have seen much better) I had sworn off of this mall for the most part. I deigned to only visit Nordstroms, as I don't care about the other department stores and can go in and out without having to set foot on the rest of the premises. (Although I did come to the important realization that Nordstroms doesn't sell a damn thing I want to buy.)

A guy friend of mine knew of this chink in my anti-Florida-Mall armor when he told me about the Lush store that had recently opened there. "It's by Nordstroms," he said. "And it's in the nice part of the mall. It's not that hard to get to." I was wary at first, but on the day I needed to go I was tired and wanted to get home faster. By prevailing logic, the Florida Mall is actually fairly directly on my way home, as opposed to 10-15 minutes out of my way. So I said "what the hell" and decided to give it a shot.

He lied.

He lied deliberately and maliciously to get me to wander around the mall. And I'll even go so far as to suspect that he knew I'd be walking by the Ann Taylor Loft right when they had a huge "sale" sign in the window. He made me buy those clothes that I absolutely adore. I know he did.

But all in all it wasn't the worst experience in the world. Once I figured out which department store Lush is actually close to I thought that perhaps getting in and out would be much easier. Until today when I went back. I had my game plan. I was focused on my mission. No Ann Taylor Loft would distract me today. In, to Lush, and out. It would be a piece of cake. And in a sense, you could say that. But from the department store I entered all the way through the corridors with the claustrophibically close ceilings and the pathways crammed to the gills with tacky, gaudy, ritzy stores and kiosks which caused the drooling hordes to stop and slow down wherever I wanted to get to until I finally reached my destination, my only thought was "God I hate shopping malls." But then I thought of other places that I do like to go to on occasion and I realized: I don't hate malls. I hate this mall. It represents everything that I feel is wrong with capitalism today, and has facilitated some of the most abysmal shopping experiences I have ever had (sometimes just by the effect on my psyche alone) and drains my spirit of the will to live.

By contrast, the Lush store in the mall is laid out a little nicer than the Lush store in the airport. It's a little brighter and less cluttered. It doesn't matter so much to me though, the aesthetics of both stores work just fine, and the products are so cool that I don't really care. And you know what? After the soul-dirtying experience of having to wade through a sea of psychic sewage of information overload and too many people, and having to fend off inescapeable, overly large and brightly lit attacks to my eyes of "BUY NOW," I think I'd rather take the extra 10-15 minutes, pay the 1-2 bucks in parking, and have a much quieter and more pleasant experience in the airport.

A quiet and pleasant shopping experience in an airport? I think that says a lot.

Feeling sad and powerless

2006-01-25T13:06:00.000-05:00

Alito confirmaiton seems all but assured.

There was talk of a filibuster. They said that they could. But They're not going to.

He wants an up or down vote, because He knows He will win. He doesn't care.

Does anyone?

The people who are supposed to represent Me are failing Me. If They had teeth and balls They would put up a fight. They would at least try. They aren't.

We created systems to keep any one person from becoming an emporer. We were supposed to be fair and balanced. No one is to be above the law.

But He doesn't care. He wants to play Jesus and Cowboys. And so He will.

I am but one, and small in large matters. I set My charge upon Them to protect Me, My rights, My freedom. That is My power, the power to ask of Them to do good for Me. And with a smile and a lie He and His people moved in, telling Us They care from one side of Their mouths, and damning Us with the other.

What does "Pro-Life" mean save that a child must be born whether a mother can give it a good life or not?

What are checks and balances of power in government if not a farce to keep Us quiet?

What is "fair" and what is "balanced" save empty rhetoric on a one sided ruse of objectivity?

And who will stand up for Me now? If You will not go to battle for Me, than who will You go to battle for? If You will not stand by the principles You say You have, what principles will You stand by?

I am but one, and My voice feels so silent.

Do You feel as powerless as I?

Yay! I learned stuff about Canada today!

2006-01-23T21:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, yeah, so I got caught up in someone else's election hijinx, but this is really funny.

Note: All links in this post will open in a new window unless you're using Firefox and select the "open in a new browser" option when you right click.

I heard this on All Things Considered today. Go here, scroll down a little, and on the left look for the link that says "liberal attack ad about Harper and military presence." Watch it. Doesn't it make your skin crawl? Attack ads suck.

Okay, now go here, and watch Rick Mercer's parody of the Liberal attack ad about Harper and military presence (courtesy of cbc.ca, who is nice enough to put up clips from the Rick Mercer Report).

Now that is funny. At least, to me it is. It made me laugh more than anything else today, and that's what counts.

And to be fair, Mercer did a parody for the Conservative Party too. At least, that's all that I found in my little bit of Googling. Well, that and The Subliminal Party, who have a very well written note about how voter apathy and television has shaped politics (and then you can watch some more parody ads. They're all over the net). Yeah, they're talking about Canada, but in relation to America I couldn't have said it better myself. Guys, you go with your bad selves!

What I learned today:

Canada's House of Commons is cool. There are 308 seats that can get split up between four parties:

The Liberal Party - They've been in charge for the past 13 years, and are more slightly-to-the-left of moderate than what I think we would classify as "liberal" in the States. (And no, the Democratic party doesn't really count as "liberal" like the right-wing propoganda machine wants you to think.)

The Conservative Party - The guys jockeying for power right now. An American living in Canada told me that they're more moderate than the "conservatives" that we have down here. Apparently in a recent poll about 90% of them would have voted for Kerry?

The New Democratic Party - Socialists. Dirty, pinko socialists.*

Bloc Québécois - Quebec. You know, the province in Canada that speaks French and wants to be its own country? Yeah, apparently this is the party of Quebec, by Quebec, and for Quebec. People running for the entire country's Parliament campaign and get votes only in Quebec, a party that exists only in Quebec, and yet it gets 75 seats out of the 308 in Parliament. Sure, they're left-wing like the NDP. They're labor-friendly and all that stuff. But their main focus? Sovereignty for Quebec. So, um, why do they want to participate in the government of a country they don't want to be a part of?

The neat thing about all of this is that since your party needs 155 seats to make up a majority, which can be tricky, you wind up with "Minority Governments." Rick Mercer explained it best today when he said "Okay, so imagine if George W. Bush is president and can do whatever he wants...so long as Ralph Nader agrees."

Some people argue that in a multi-party political system (where more than two parties have actual power in the government) nothing would ever get done because the government would be constantly overthrown by votes of no confidence and the like.

Um, what did I just say about the Liberal party being in power for 13 years?

I would have to say that in Canada, things have gotten done. Am I wrong? I mean, you know, there's a country up there that seems to be doing pretty well for itself. They make policies, they meet with other foreign officials in a "hey, our countries should be buddies" sense instead of an "oh god, please help us" sense. They've got plenty of laws and policies. And they've only been on the continent as long as we have. I wish we had more than two dominant political parties too.

I know I'm glossing over a lot here, so if anyone has a dissenting opinion or wants to point out anything I've missed by all means have at it. I'm just a person who uses Google and Wikipedia to do backup research on the fly while writing posts. In the immortal words of Radiohead, "I might be wrong."

* PS- I mean no disrespect to socialists of any stripe. I believe I have some socialist leanings myself, and would definitely place myself left of the middle.

I...I'm writing comic strips again?

2006-01-18T12:56:00.000-05:00

Don't get your hopes up, but I got a jolt of inspiration last night, and realized that my life really is funny enough to make comic strips out of. This was fueled by looking at my old strips and going "You know what? I was pretty good after all." (Curious? They're over here.) And a random writer/stranger making the effort to contact me didn't help 'neither. (Which reminds me, I need to write him back...)

And now, instead of having an amusing boyfriend, I have a whole group of amusing friends to write about. I may even branch out to four panels instead of three... Woah. I'm gettin' kinda crazy here. Maybe I should settle down. *grins* I still wish other people thought that they were as funny as I do. That whole "Cathy" comment from a few years back still bugs me. And it's very frustrating to get "they're so cute" comments more than anything. Grr.

I also got myself a sketchbook like I used to have years ago. It feels good. I've even done some drawings in it! I didn't realize how much I missed it, and I have the Batgirl Meme to thank for all of it.

Thank you, Batgirl Meme, for giving me the inspiration to draw again.

Is there anybody out there to tell me what went wrong?

2006-01-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

So I've been listening to the news on NPR a lot lately. I even finally became a public radio supporter during the last drive. I saved public radio! Yes!

I've always preferred the NPR news shows to any other format. I found it refreshing to not be constantly bombarded by television's talking heads and advertisements. I rarely find reading the paper to be interesting. And I've always felt that most of the media has some sort of agenda. But more often than not I've found that NPR is just good background noise. It's better "company" than television, and occasionally I can pay attention and learn something about what's going on.

The "background noise" concept has bugged me on and off, though. It's important stuff they're telling me (usually), and I just let it float through my head half the time. Why didn't I get as drawn in as I had with television?

This morning it hit me. Public Radio isn't telling me what to think. There aren't any adjectives describing how "horrible" or "wonderful" something is. Judgement and opinion are reserved for editorials and interviews. The anchors let the stories and the guests do the talking. They do run little music clips in between stories that sometimes reflect the mood of the piece, but unless it's a particularly and obviously sad story the clips tend to be more amusing to me than anything else. Their listeners respond with their opinions on the news coverage, and these opinions get voiced on the air! NPR wants me to decide what I think about what's going on!

Only, I've been so used to the usual flash and trash of the television news media that I don't know what to think about anything anymore.

Did I ever? Does anyone anymore? How many people really make up their own minds? Most of us succumb to suggestion. Just look at how many people honestly believe that Fox News is "fair and balanced" simply because they tell us so. Look at how any television news anchor throws in opinions and descriptions for the sake of having a personality on the air. It has the same effect as canned laughter in bad sitcoms.

I don't think we don't know anything anymore unless someone tells us what to know, and this is a travesty of human accomplishment. It's the blind leading the blind for the sake of a little more entertainment and excitement to compete with all of the rest of the razzle dazzle media out there. It's become a mental prison of our own making, and I'm making a break for it.

And just to make it clear, "liberals" aren't the only ones getting their news from NPR either. Two of my respected family members are Republicans, and they listen avidly to not just the news, but a lot of the other shows as well. They donate money too, more than I have. I don't think it's just the "liberals" listening, I think it's really the "smart people" listening. The people tired of all the rest of the crap out there, the ones tired of being beaten over the head. So you know what? I'm going to sit back with my french press coffee (because we don't all drink lattes you know), and I'm going to listen to my public radio, and I'm going to start thinking for myself again.

The Batgirl heard 'round the world!

2006-01-15T01:13:00.000-05:00

I dunno if you heard, but everybody's been drawing Batgirl! :-D

I already did it and stuff, but I'm gonna share it here too, 'cause I'm proud of it and this has been a fun thing to be a part of. So there! *grins*

It's Batgirl! Yay!

Unsolveable Philosophical Quandires

2006-01-12T19:41:00.000-05:00

I was talking with a friend of mine last night about gaming. He was telling me of a myriad of political systems (or somesuch) that could be involved in their setting, and how their characters would relate to them all. Ultimately, it got so complicated that they said "Screw it, we'll make our own damn political system."

To which I replied "Sometimes the most complicated things are ultimately simple."

He paused for a minute, and then said "That's a very Buddhist thought."

Amused by this, I then painted a visual picture for him that I have had in my mind's eye for many, many years (as I am wont to do with people on occasion).

"Take a dot," I said. "Put a few more next to it, and then add more. It doesn't matter, maybe horizontally, maybe vertically, maybe diagonally." My eyes lit up, my expressions went manic and wild. "But keep adding dot after dot after dot and suddenly you don't have dots anymore, but you have a line. And then you take that line..."

I finished it there, but it's how I see things a lot of the time. Infinite complexities leading to infinite simplicities leading to infinite complexities again and so on. And when I apply it to human existance, things get very complicated indeed.

The talk of "feminism" yesterday and my apparently Buddhist thought patterns have conicided in my thoughts again, and I am reminded of the difficulties of reforming society. We as "women" want to be seen as "just people," you see. And if I expand that thought further, to encompass all other cultures and demographics, when it comes down to it we're all "just people." We have a lot in common, and we all want to be treated with respect (however we tend to define it).

To me respect means nothing short of being seen as an equal, and being given no special or restrictive social treatment on the mere basis of gender, skin color, immediate cultural/class background, etc. Now, granted, respect must be maintained. If an individual wants to take out a loan on a house, for instance, and they have an absolutely horrid credit record of their own making, they should be treated as someone who could be termed a "deadbeat bum." And conversely, if an individual has been a loyal and stellar customer with a meticulously spotless credit rating, they should be given the best terms on a loan possible.

But everyone should be given a fair chance at the start.

However, the problem with everyone being "just people" is that we have the potential to lose certain important parts of our identities. Diversity is the spice of life, and such a wonderful thing to have. And certain "just people" have grouped together over time to form little divisions of identity separate from the whole of all the other "just people" people. I have mentioned before, I think, how poignantly this hit home when I began to learn more about Jewish culture from my ex boyfriend. I was completely flabbergasted at how there was an entirely different culture and way of life living conicidally with my own, and that the general way I was raised (with a somewhat Christian backing) was very much not the way that this other culture existing comfortably in our society raised their children. I felt terrible that I had never truly understood what it is to be Jewish until then. At times it's a very special thing.

And how could I expect anyone to give up the culture that they have been born with, that has shaped them in some way whether they went with it or against? Or the societal subculture that they identify with? More than that, there are certain inherent differences in gender that I fully believe are naturally occuring (only unfortunately exploited and exacerbated by societal conditioning). There are things that make me different from men both physically and psychologically that I want to be recognized, not ignored.

If we take away the larger structures that we identify with, then who exactly are we?

But back to the infinite complexities again, each culture is made up of lots and lots of "dots." And each overlaps with gender, causing so many other complex patterns of dots. And sometimes these larger cultures and genders want to define other entire categories of people as inferior. Women are placed on pedestals. "Minority" cultures in every country have to deal with debilitating prejudices against them. Misunderstood subcultures are sneered at by the mainstream, and vice-versa. Why can't we just forget about all of that and be people?

But some people don't want us all to be "just people." When women fought for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1980's, those who were against it started making statements of "Oh, women won't get any separate treatment at all! You'll have to share bathrooms with men and everything!" And like most of us raised in American society, we recoiled at the thought. Surely, because of the differences of our genders we should have "separate but equal" bathrooms!

But now I look at it, and I find that I think that because of how this culture brought me up. "Men and women are different. We should not have to deal with each other's basic bodily drainings/excretings, because that involves 'private parts,' and 'private parts' are bad." Why did we have to think this in the first place? What's so wrong about men and women pissing and shitting in the same public restroom? And yet, because it's been twenty six years that I've held this conditioning, I am loathe to change it midstream. (This also brings into question many, many notions and definitions of "privacy," which I won't get into here.)

If I am not a "woman," what am I?

If I am not a "single woman living in a one bedroom apartment with two cats," what am I?

If I am not an "artist," what am I?

If I am not a "Marketing and Media Coordinator," what am I?

If I am not an "American," what am I?

If I am not "mainly from Florida," what am I?

If I am not "forced to live in Orlando," what am I?

If I am not a "regular patron at a certain local coffee shop," what am I?

But if I am not a "person given the same equal treatment and basic opportunities that every other human being on the planet deserves," what am I then?

Where does it stop? Where does it begin? What point on the moebius strip did I come in on? At what point to I get off? And does it just keep going on and on like that? All that exists has always existed. All that is born has always been there and has always ceased to be. And yet we have taught ourselves to see time as linear, that our actions have purpose and are means to an end. The segments we see are framed with "start" and "finish." But in reality we're all just the same amalgum of energy, forever moving and still, doing what it does constantly, no linear purpose in sight, simply there.

And with a philosophical view of existance like that, it's really hard to get anything done at work.

"Feminism" yet again...

2006-01-11T18:16:00.000-05:00

I put that word in quotes because all at the same time I find it both limiting and empowering. But anyway...

Thanks to Scott McCloud's LJ feed I read about a recent sexual harassment issue in the comics industry. He chose to link to a thoughtful summation of the discussions that followed, rather than any news itself, and I find that somewhat interesting.

Heidi MacDonald links to many takes on women in comics, and women's portrayal in comics, and the outrage and disillusionment therein. She makes comments on it, but then she takes it to a much larger scale and makes the valid point that it's not just an industry specific problem, but an underlying societal problem.

Still, I wonder how productive it is to disperse a group's focused outrage and spread it out over the whole of modern culture?

The problem is indeed overwhelming, and it's gone underground.

"I've been reading a lot lately about the 'failures' of feminism. A New York Times article on women who got a top-notch education just so they could to be homemakers raised many questions, including this long round-up that suggests that in some ways, women are going backwards. Maureen Dowd actually has a point, I fear."

The "long round-up" is a link to a column by Linda Hirshman about how many well-educated women are making a choice to be a mother rather than a professional. It touches on a lot of things that I look at and shudder in my own life, and ultimately feel bad for. All the girls I know who are around my age who are married and/or have children. Something about them, what they chose...it bothers me. Something about any woman my age who has a child bothers me. "I'm too young to have children!" I think to myself. And yet, my "childbearing years" are getting into full swing.

But MacDonald's linking is a blessing and a curse to me. On the one hand, Hirshman's column is important. It has outlined in sharper detail some of the things that have been bothering me about being a woman lately. But it also distracts me from thinking about the apparent lack of respect for women in comics.

But even that apparent lack is something I've not witnessed firsthand. The closest I have come is reading a book by Dave Sim that rants and rails against women and portrays them as evil things who eat the brains of men. It disgusted me, filled me with rage, made me question the motives of my male friends who enjoyed Sim's work after having read the book in question. But I never met the man in person.

I could use the example of my college professors' advice when I mentioned that I wanted to put together an anthology of female sequential work. They suggested that asserting myself and others as "women in comics" made us just that, "women in comics" not cartoonists devoid of any special treatment due to gender. In a way it made sense. I didn't want to be a "woman cartoonist" I wanted to be a "cartoonist that is a woman." And despite my current lack of productivity, that's still how I see it. I don't want to be a "woman doing something" I want to be a "person doing something."

But thinking on it, their argument diluted mine. I gave up on asserting myself through my gender, and that is a very fine line to walk. If I assert my "minority" status too much I risk being a zealot. But if I don't stand up for what's right, I risk losing all respect from my peers.
The internal argument became too much for me, and I got down off of that specific soapbox.

And now I must ask again, by taking a specific problem and widening it to encompass more than the initial focus, will these injustices get the attention they deserve? Or is this a holistic problem that must be attacked from all angles?

The war for my individuality is still being waged from without and within...

So this is the new year...

2005-12-31T15:05:00.000-05:00

And I don't feel any different
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance

In the distance...

So this is the new year
And I have no resolution
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogues bleed into one

I wish the world was flat like the old days
And I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes or speedtrains or freeways
There'd be no distance that could hold us back

There'd be no distance that could hold us back...

So this is the new year...

"The New Year" - Death Cab For Cutie

It's been one hell of a wild ride. Here's to hoping the next one's a good one for us all.

Cheers. :-)

exasperated sigh

2005-12-26T01:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I finally found out why the sudden fuss over the semantics of saying Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays.

Jesus Christ on a crutch people! WTF???

By raising a stink and insisting that one must say Happy Holidays? I know, I know. The "Jesus is the reason for the season" stuff bugs me too, but come on! Can't we show a little more tolerance than insisting on empty, blanket statements?

It makes me happy to say "Merry Christmas" to people who celebrate it, just like it makes me happy to say "Happy Chanukah" to people who celebrate it, just like it would make me happy to say "Happy Kwanzaa" to people who celebrate it (if I knew any), just like it makes me happy when people wish me a "Happy Winter Solstice."

Atheists? I dunno what to say to them, so I guess maybe "Happy Holidays?" Or I could go the ThinkGeek route and say Have a satisfactory Non-Denominational Capitalist Wintertime Gift Giving Season.

If they even celebrate, that is.

But this goes with my earlier sentiment. It's dark, it's fucking cold, why not throw a party? Does it have to matter who "owns" it? It's not entirely about Jesus, or a tiny bit of oil lasting far longer than expected, or the Seven Principles, or the rebirth of the sun. It's about people getting together and enjoying each other's company. Family, friends, the community. Sheesh.

So, in honor of this, I'm reviving my old line:

That's it, I'm moving to France.

And how was your morning?

2005-12-23T12:21:00.000-05:00

I've only been up for two hours and have already been having adventures...

Well, I suppose the adventures began last night. I invited myself to see King Kong with a friend (I'll maybe review it later, but holy hell that movie is over three hours long! Doesn't anyone know what editing is for anymore?). I got home quite tired and went online before bed to check the status of the ThinkGeek package that should have arrived at my apartment yesterday. (It's an Xmas present for my dad from both myself and my brother. If it didn't show up on time, we'd both be screwed.) I looked up the tracking number only to find that for some reason ThinkGeek let me update my billing address, not my shipping address, and the package was delivered to my old apartment from two years ago! Christ on a crutch! WTF??

I sent a frantic email to customer service (Um, if I can't get this package from wherever the hell it went, would you send me another one? Pretty please?) and went to bed knowing I would probably have to knock on some stranger's door the next day. But the thing most worrying me was that DSL claimed that someone "signed" for it, so all kinds of worst-case-scenarios were running through my head. "They sent it to the post office, and is the post office even open today... They just took it for themselves and won't give it to me... They sent it to the complex office and is the office even open today... They just sent it back to where it came from and there's no hope of getting it in time..."

Since I have today off, though, I decided not to wake myself up early. However, my cats decided to try, licking my nose, pawing at me with just a hint of claw. I fended them off until about 9:30, when I dragged myself out of bed, groggy, sinuses clogged, and into the kitchen to make coffee. I was greeted to the sight of black ants throwing themselves a little ant party all over my sink, counter, wall, and wherever else they were hiding. Why, out of all times, did they choose last night to launch their offensive? I had just cleaned all of my dishes, mopped my floor, and didn't have any chocolate slivers or jam stains lying about. Why??? Why now??? But I had to do something, my home was being invaded.

And thus began what I have termed "The Great Ant Massacre of 2005."

Did you know that 409 Orange Clean kills ants instantly when you spray it on them? Plus it's already a kitchen surface cleaner, so it's not like you're spraying Raid everywhere. As the orange-ish chemical rain fell upon them, I could hear tiny shrieks in my head. "Oh god noooo! It burns! Mommy!" I spent the better part of an hour battling these little beasts; spraying, wiping, putting away the clean dishes so as not to get 409 on them, cleaning up the other half of the sink which never gets clean because the dish drainer lives in it, hunting and squishing lone survivors with my fingers and washing them off... I had finally gotten around to getting water boiling for coffee when it hit me. "I need to go find my package. Now."

I threw on some clothes, tied back my hair, and ran out the door, sleep/sinus fuzziness still plaguing me, the inklings of a caffeine headache creeping into my head. Fortunately this apartment is five minutes away from my current one, which was enough time to hear the entirety of "Until the End of the World" by U2 and not entirely enough time to smoke a cigarette. I pulled into the parking lot and seemed to get some funny looks from a guy on a golf cart, but I ignored it. As I got out, I saw a piece of paper in the window with passages highlighted in pink. "Oh god," I thought "something's wrong..." I walked closer, my breathing getting tense, not knowing what to expect...

The paper was a little "For sale by owner" notice. (The apartments went condo last year. I found out when I tried to move back into them after I left the two bedroom my ex and I shared.) It was uninhabited! And there, in the little garden by the door, secluded from the parking lot view by the little wall out front, was my package! It had stayed there all of yesterday, and overnight, and was waiting for me to claim it, unharmed! My brother and I were saved!

I grabbed it and hurried back home, wondering if anyone had a) noticed me running off with it or b) noticed it was even there in the first place. But it didn't matter, I had my father's Xmas gift safely in my minivan, and I was speeding home to finally have my precious coffee.

Now I just have to finish waking up and get ready for the rest of the day...

On the longest night of the year...

2005-12-22T16:50:00.000-05:00

the sun is reborn!

Only I had to go to bed early last night, because I wasn't feeling well after eating two holiday meals in one day (company lunch, dinner with friends).

Anyway, happy Solstice everybody! :-D

And merry Xmas, merry Christmas, happy Kwanza, happy Chanukah, happy non-denominational commercial winter holiday, and happy Christmahanukwanzakah too!

Little lights in the darkness

2005-12-12T13:32:00.000-05:00

Over the years, my taste in holiday lighting decorations has changed.

When I was a child, I loved all different kinds of lights. The simple, elegant "gingerbread" houses. The gaudy, tacky "as many lights as possible" houses. The trees and candy canes on lamp posts. The oversized toyland decorations in the shopping malls. Christmas was wondrous and magical to me. I wanted it to last every day.

This childlike wonder lasted through high school, but throughout my college years I became disenchanted. Christmas Day with my family was suddenly something more to be endured than cherished. I was all at the same time depressed, and establishing myself as a person separate from my family, and realizing that I didn't really care for my grandparents all that much. Holiday decorating lost its charm. Christmas became empty and commercial. I wasn't even a Christian anymore, and the "festive" displays seemed more like a desperate ploy to distract people from the hopelessness of their everyday lives.

Goodwill shouldn't just be seasonal, should it? And why spend so much time and money on decorating trees and houses and wrapping presents if it's all just taken down or wripped apart and thrown away later anyway? What's the point?

At the same time, though, I learned of other, older holidays. The ones the idea of Christmas is based on. There's a common thread of a celebration in the wintertime, and of a birth (or rebirth) of a "god-type person." The ones I know of are Mithras, and the sun itself. I'm sure there are more.

"Christmas" with my family has gotten better. We meet my grandparents for dinner the night before, and I've come to appreciate the time I spend with my parents and brother. And I've always loved gift giving. And wrapping presents is something fun and creative to do. We always play little "guessing games" with some of the tags we put on our presents. It's cute.

But a lot of the "magic" is still absent for me. All-day Christmas music-a-thons on the radio just aren't my taste. And "Jesus is the reason for the season?" *sigh* Actually, Jesus wasn't born in December, it was a ploy by the catholic church to stop the "pagan" festivities that the people in England insisted on having. Before they made it official, the church really wasn't into an all out bash to celebrate the birth of the messiah.

So I went out to run some errands last night, and I drove by city hall (or what I'm fairly certain is city hall. It's the building that the infamous "giant asparagus" is in front of). All of the trees in the plaza were lit with cheerful, white lights. In the lobby of the building, which you can see through huge plate glass windows, was a giant tree just as tastefully lit and decorated. The entire scene looked so warm and inviting. And it hit me.

People need to celebrate in the winter. The days just keep getting darker, colder. Whether it's religious, spiritual, natural...whatever explanation you want, that's what's happening. And on one specific day, the darkest day, it all reverses. The sun is "born" again, and we all know everything's going to be alright.

But in those dark, lonely nights, when the world is dying for a time, we need light. We need people, good cheer, and hope. Some people get that through the Jesus connection. Some people get it through some other spiritual means. Some people choose to ignore it altogether. (And interestingly enough, Chanukah is apparently the least important Jewish holiday, and is mainly celebrated so that the Jewish kids don't feel left out when their goyish counterparts are a partying.)

But I think that there's a common, subconscious thread.

Or maybe just that all those Western Europeans got it right. It's dark, it's fucking cold, why not? And although I still don't go for the tacky displays as much, or the crass manipulation of the emotional reasons behind giving of gifts and family togetherness, I feel a little bit warmer inside. For me, there's a light in the darkness. There's always hope that the sun will come back. Everything's going to be alright.

So I say unto you: light your lights, your luminary bags, your gaudy blinkers, your candles! Let's celebrate.