she was preaching revolution when she talked in her sleep
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Sunday, July 17, 2005
9:13PM
I think I used to write some pretty damn good rants on the stupidity and pointlessness of condemning people merely for having "weird" or "unusual" beliefs.
Somewhere along the line, I guess I lost that spark, and I can't quite figure out why. Did I let complacency and the nagging fears of "but what if I'm completely wrong?" erode it away?
Current mood:  confused
Friday, July 15, 2005
I'm tired of having to act in ways that always make sure I don't disappoint people who *think* they know who I am. We always seem to keep letting ourselves get put in boxes, even when we think we've learned better.
This applies just as much to people in here as to people outside. Actually, if anything, it applies *more* to people in here.
Monday, August 9, 2004
Hi, this is Shiu, posting in Anthea's journal. ;P I normally respect her desire to have a personal space online and don't generally post in or reply to this at all, but I felt I ought to at least mention that there might not be many posts here for awhile because Anth has gone MIA. This isn't anything to worry about, despite how it may sound-- it's happened to lots of people in our system, to me, to Ruka-- but now that Anth has managed to establish enough of a separate online presence that people might ask about her, I thought one of us at least ought to take the responsibility of dropping people a line about what was going on.
And I won't steal anyone's journal again, I promise. ;P
Wednesday, August 4, 2004
Wednesday, July 7, 2004
2:44AM
Lots of rain tonight, and the past few days. Rain is good.
Shameless plug, I know, but: we've agreed to help Astraea with their jewelry-making business, and it would really help to have some extra cash on hand when we move. Would anyone like a necklace, bracelet, earrings, whatever-- we can get just about any kind of stone you want. (Prices are also negotiable.)
On a completely different tangent, does anyone know what happened with the case in Maine where a town banned an autistic boy from a playground? I haven't seen any followups recently on how the legal case was going.
Current mood:  calm Current music: Fleetwood Mac-- "Illume"
Tuesday, July 6, 2004
Just a thought:
I wonder how often it occurs to people who hide behind hateful words with "the fact that you get upset means you know I'm really right deep down," that people may, equally validly, get upset because they're being slandered and misrepresented, and the offender is a wilfully clueless jackass who is completely wrong. I don't recall when it was decided that every time someone spat obviously untrue insults to your face and bandied lies around about you, the most natural reaction is to grin and enjoy it, not to get upset. Considering that a great many people online (and off) seem to specialise in being so inflammatory that it takes a superhuman will of effort to not respond to the bait sometimes, no matter how confident you are in your truth-- the worrisome part is that other people's view of you can be swayed by the words of jerks.
And seriously, honestly, if someone has the stupidity to claim that the reason their target gets upset after having bile spewed at them is entirely because they "know it's really true and the truth hurts," they are more fucking delusional than they accuse their targets of being, and far more out of touch with observable reality and the behaviour of people in general, to the extent that one wonders how they ever get along with anyone at all.
Current mood:  awake
Saturday, July 3, 2004
There are mice in Astraea's house. Again. One of them just ran over my bare foot.
They are kind of cute. I just wish they didn't shit so much.
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Saturday, June 5, 2004
We finally took our car down to the mechanic today because it was becoming very obvious the brakes needed work, and because we couldn't stand the air conditioner being broken any more. You do NOT want a car with a broken A/C in a Southern California summer. Also, the shoulder belt in the front seat is broken, which is not exactly the safest thing. So, yeah, it needed some repairs done. (I am seriously considering taking out some manuals on car repair myself.)
First mistake was to take the 91 freeway down there, because we knew the shop was right near the freeway. We try to avoid going on 91 if at all possible because the interchange onto 91 is ALWAYS clogged with traffic unless it's like 3 in the morning. This is not only annoying, but very scary and potentially dangerous, because you will probably end up in a spot where you are at a total standstill with 18-wheelers roaring past you on either side at 60 miles an hour. Even the cars screaming past are scary enough. It's like physics in action-- on the freeway itelf, you have no measure to gauge exactly how much damage a car going at that velocity can cause. Standing still and watching, however, you have enough of an idea to be afraid of how much destructive potential is carried by an object going that fast, even if it were to be 'just' a car that slammed into you. We started panicking in the traffic when a truck went shooting by sounding off its horn-- we were half-into crash position and expecting to be engulfed by a giant fireball if it slammed into the car in front of us. As it happened, I think they must have just been honking at a bad driver or something, because no accident was forthcoming. Looking at the heat rising off the pavement and the mass of one-occupant cars glutting the freeway, though, I couldn't help but find sympathy with the sentiment that the internal combustion engine was an evil invention. >_<
We spent about 20 minutes looking for the shop because traffic was heavy and it wasn't 'just off' the freeway as we had been told. Then had to walk eight blocks in 92-degree heat, having forgotten our hat, so we could catch the bus back home. Halfway through the ride, the seats behind me were occupied by two young men who made me feel really edgy, because you couldn't help but be acutely aware that these were the kind of young males who can only see women as mothers or as whores, and you know what category you fall into, and the whole time you have to listen to them talk loudly, your skin is prickling because you keep thinking they're about to make some derogatory comment about women. (The closest it got was one of them saying that if he was a woman, he'd give his class instructor a blowjob if it meant he could get an automatic A. In retrospect, I almost thought I should have turned around and said "Wow, you like sucking cock that much, huh?" Or asked if he would go down on a female instructor for an automatic A.)
Anyway, the Greasy Things Who Make Ruka Apologize For Their Existence On Behalf Of All Men got off right before our stop, so we just barely got free of them. We caught the shuttle bus home from the university because we didn't feel like walking half a mile in the heat, which had gotten even worse. Turned out the air conditioner on the shuttle bus was broken. x_X Got to look at a cute Asian boy in a tanktop sitting near me, though. Er.
Then we realised on the way home that when we gave our keys to the guy at the shop, we had forgotten to take our apartment key off them. x_x Fortunately, the manager was in her office and we were able to get the spare off of her. Now I'm all paranoid because of stories I've heard about shop employees who have duplicates made of customers' house keys so they can break in. I suppose it's unlikely, but just in case, I'm going to start sleeping with my door locked, I think (since I only have another week in here anyway). At least I have my Big Stick of Thwapping in here with me if anything at all happens.
Thank Eru for air conditioning. If it didn't exist I would have invented it myself (and whatserface who said women don't invent can go sit on a cactus. a pointy one that sticks up).
Current mood:  blah
Friday, June 4, 2004
I was inspired to write this by an essay by Two Courts, who, I must add, say it better than I'm about to, but it inspired me to spin off some thoughts of my own.
Contradictions-- yes, contradictions are innate in sharing a body with others, such that you come off looking like a hypocrite when you pose as a single person: a vegetarian one day, an enthusiastic meat-eater the next; cheerful and bubbly one moment, bitterly sarcastic another; professing dislike of something you just recently claimed to enjoy; turning angrily against someone on one day when you disagree, and the next offering no more outward discontent than chewing a lip in frustration, holding an olive branch and saying you are sure we can find common ground. Moody? Manic-depressive? Eccentric? A hypocrite, a liar, to those who know you only as one person bearing the body's name?
Pick ten people at random, or even ten people who profess alliance to a similar political or religious philosophy-- do you get along with all of them? Are there some you adore, some who begin crawling on your nerves within a matter of seconds? The group as a whole does not come under condemnation for being 'hypocritical,' but people sharing a body are judged by different standards. If an external person finds someone in our group so dislikable, or offensive, that they swear off all contact with us, and decide they want nothing to do with us any more-- is that our error, our sin to take? Should we have tried to make sure that the only frontrunners allowed access to the earth world had near-identical philosophies and temperaments, so that no one would stand out as particularly vitriolic or bothersome, so that we would not make others feel we couldn't be trusted?
But then we would fall under condemnation again; there would be those who would stand to criticize us on the count that we were -too- similar, that we 'weren't different enough' and thus 'faking.' Oh, but if we -are- vastly different, have a wide array of loves and hates between us, then we are 'faking it' too because the extent of our differences means we must be 'caricatures,' or 'naming different parts of our personality!' There is no happy medium, nothing against which at least some people will not rise in protest. The best we can do is to try to minimize discontent from people around us.
So there might be one among us who wants nothing to do with you, one who tolerates you, and one who enjoys your company. Is it then 'not safe' to talk to us because there is that person (or persons) who doesn't want your company, even if they keep to themselves, or stay totally aloof of earthworld affairs? Can the words and actions of the ones who like you be believed, and trusted, and taken at face value? Is it even possible to make the statement that someone in our group doesn't want to talk to you, without feelings getting hurt in the process? Ah, but too often, burned by one member of the group, people external of us will capture us all in the net of 'untrustworthy,' watch us all with a wary and jaundiced eye, with the assumption that the most negative feelings among us are what 'really' represent all of us-- that no one in here can act and reach their own conclusions independently of another's negative opinion.
Too many people have felt free to assume that an opinion expressed by one person could be assumed to represent all of us; if another person backed that opinion, even more so. That therefore, they need not ask "what do you think of this," but assume Azusa or Ruka or Shiu had spoken for the entire group when they gave their opinion on it, or that they had such a dictatorial hold over the rest of us, that we could not be expected to form our own opinions at all. Is the fact that two of us may be completely sincere in totally different viewpoints, an unforgivable hypocrisy in itself, rendering us all untrustable? Is one to be taken and judged as more 'real' than the other? (Ah, but when we ask to be taken as a group of separate individuals, we can give no evidence which satisfies; for we ourselves have mistaken the voices of some of us in here for the voices of others in the past, not realised someone was a separate individual when they were, so can we really be trusted at all?)
Current mood:  anxious
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Do people whose only justification for not believing in something is "I don't need it" or "I don't need to believe in (x) to lead a happy life" realise how bizarre their reasoning is?
I don't disbelieve them when they say they don't technically NEED the existence of such things to lead happy lives. However, it's awfully anthrocentric, for lack of a better word, to assume things exist or don't exist based on human need (and if anything harkens more to fundamentalist ideas that everything on the Earth was put here for human use). Do people consider that maybe, just maybe, these things they say they don't need may exist independently of whether we need them or not, whether they contribute to our happiness in life?
Oh, for instance... my life isn't directly affected by the existence of the planet Pluto. It may be interesting to me; indeed, it may be intriguing to me; but the fact that it exists does not contribute substantially to my happiness in life, give me a reason for living, or bail me out of emotional troubles. It's just there; it existed for aeons before I lived on this world, and will exist for aeons after. It's a force of nature. But I'm not about to decide I disbelieve totally in it, despite having never seen it firsthand, merely on the basis that I don't -need- it in my personal or emotional life. It's there anyway, whether I want it or need it or not. I do have the choice to believe whether or not it has any direct bearing on my daily life (astrology, etc) but that's a thing quite apart from merely saying you believe in its existence, whether or not you get anything out of that belief.
Not all beliefs are held out of need. Many personal beliefs are held merely because they seem to be most consistent with the available evidence.
Current mood: relaxed
Sunday, May 23, 2004
8:45PM
I was thinking of writing something about Otherkin/Human interaction and how in the end it really comes down to just another version of "we are/they are" mindset, but then I re-found this essay on Two Courts' page, which says everything I had been meaning to and says it better. ^^ It's not anti-otherkin or anti-human, just points out that it's essentially the same thing as a lot of the other divisions people draw up for themselves in society.
"Quite simply, it was a problem that was made worse due to the revival of an Us vs. Them dynamic."
There's also this, which is written from an Otherkin perspective and certainly interesting reading even if you don't agree, about the possible advantages of experiencing life and learning humanity through a vessel that isn't 'you.'
And the only thing I would really add is wishing more people would just slow down and -think- before throwing themselves into issues of intense emotion with verbal guns ready. (Yeah, pot, kettle, hi.)
Current mood:  thoughtful
Thursday, May 20, 2004
The 'colour of your name' meme that's going around is somewhat puzzling to me. It is very obvious to me that the colour of my (LJ) name is a deep maroonish brown. (my real name, OTOH, is sort of a pinkish red.)
Current mood: quixotic
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
9:48AM
Oh, and additionally, to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) oloriel and anyone else I may have blabbed about it to: I finally got the faux-parchment and pens I needed so I could start working on my handwritten copy of Akallabêth. Or start working on the draft, rather. Or, um, pretending to start working on it. Actually, right now I'm trying to figure out some way to combat the fact that my letters all slant downhill when I write on unlined paper, and I'm not exactly a master at writing in uncial scripts (I decided finally to go with Uncial based on its resemblance to tengwar).
...I also want a new template for this livejournal. I'm starting to feel somewhat lame looking at the same prefabricated one all the time.
Current mood:  artistic
1:23AM
Note to self: Do not get large gash in finger on a day when you are planning to do a reasonable amount of cooking, gardening, and housecleaning. Ow.
Sunday, May 9, 2004
3:29PM
Sorry for not being around lately o_O I've been -here-, fronting, and certainly having enough thoughts for what I've wanted to post, just never able to get it into words. (Always the problem...) I owe a lot of comments, and a couple emails.
I'm just afraid somehow, maybe irrationally, of disappearing from people's remembrance if I go too long silent. "Now who were you again?"
Current mood: quixotic
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
6:34PM
All Cats are Autistic (According to the DSM-IV criteria, that is.)
(OTOH, if you talk to ^Ruka, he's certain that all, or at least most, cats are multiple. Maybe they're both.)
Though, I might question the idea that cats don't exhibit spontaneous sharing, given the number of little dead furry things that have turned up on our doorstep... Although half the time she was just giving us a look of "What do I do with it now that it's dead?"
Current mood: silly
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