1.Take a picture of yourself right now.
2.Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3.Post that picture with NO editing.
4.Post these instructions with your picture.



Also I got yellow pants! (and an awesome green pair too)


The pants are a part of my plan for a girly version of Six's outfit in The Two Doctors. Too bad they aren't pinstriped.

Random:
I found out that, according to Big Finish, I take my tea the same way that the Sixth Doctor does (milk, no sugar). I am amused by this.

( Comic and art under the cut... )

My last entry was all emo, so here's Eddie Izzard talking about Star Trek:

I had a nice time at my Grandma's yesterday for Fourth of July. I'm not big on symbolic displays of firepower as a celebration of patriotism, but they were pretty. We watched the nearby fireworks display from the back of her place. My favorite was the one that looked like red ash flicked from the tip of a giant, invisible cigarette.

I really like my Grandma. She's an amazing woman, but tonight she totally broke my heart. We were talking about how she and I are both introverted and she talked about something her husband (who died when I was little) said to her once:

"And Pop said, 'Rosemary, I'm a loner, but you're more of a loner than I am. You're okay on your own. You don't need me.' ...I did, though."

And then we went on to talk about something else. God, but that hurts. I'm not good with emotion in general, but I understand that.

I've been pretty disjointed and detached lately, and I'm not sure exactly how to fix that. I don't really do much and I don't do anything with people besides my immediate family because I've not had friends since I left high school three years ago. Usually I'm alright with that since I'm pretty introverted. I can amuse myself and I get my dose of human interaction here and elsewhere, but sometimes it just doesn't seem like enough.

I watch the SciFi channel all the time. Lately they've been running ads about how they're changing the name of the channel form SciFi to Syfy. At the off, it seems like a ridiculous thing to do, and seems even more ridiculous (and insulting to their audience) when I looked up just why they're changing the name.

In a re-branding move, the SciFi channel is aiming to lose their "geeky" image by renaming the network Syfy. That name was chosen out of three hundred different possibilities, because it sounds the same as the old name, but also supposedly distances itself from Science Fiction and allows them to branch out into new genres and attract new audiences, especially young "tech savvy" people and women.

"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,” said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network."

One of the comments on the article said this, and I agree with it:

"Thank you, idiotic executives, for finally making overt what your programming choices have implied for years: that you hate your core audience.

I might (and I emphasize might) have considered watching the new channel, despite it's absurd and meaningless name. Not, however, after I read this article. It's full of quotes that are not only stupid, but actively insulting to the very people who should be your most loyal supporters.

You continue to perpetuate the very stereotypes from which you wish to distance yourselves. Instead of acknowledging what the literary and academic worlds have known for at least two decades, that SF is more than just "space, aliens[,] and the future," you'd rather continue to sucker audiences in with lowest-common-denominator drivel and derivatives of ideas that intelligent audiences were calling inane ten years ago.

Thank you for letting me know that I am not welcome in your new, hip channel. If you need me, I'll be spending my money in my local bookstore, exploring the real, thought-provoking cutting edge of SF.

-- Jason Ramboz"

It makes me wonder just how stupid they imagine women are. It's like their old ad campaign for Battlestar Gallactica which promoted the show as sci-fi that women can like, as if no woman has ever enjoyed a science fiction television show before. It's especially insulting to a woman like me, who grew up on SciFi and genre in general. A cheap re-branding of the network name is not what's going to draw anyone to the network. What draws people to a network is good programming.

Dave Howe, advertising executive for the channel said “It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise.”

Well, you know what, Dave Howe? FUCK YOU.

___________________________

EDIT: studyofrunning has posted her own response at her journal. If you're interested, that's worth a read as well.

I've messed up my sleep schedule again, so I spent most of today asleep after being awake all last night. Also, I was highly productive and got tons done messed around with Windows Movie Maker and clips of Mark of the Rani. Our house guest is gone for now. she's gone to her mother's in Arizona and will probably be back in a month or so...and stay for who knows how long. Oh joy. But I have been relishing having the house more or less to myself again.

__________________________________


Stealing a meme from oldstarnewshine:


1. Pick a number or two between 1 and 2040.
2. I'll find the corresponding track in my iTunes library.
3. Said track will be uploaded for your listening pleasure.
4. There is no four. Do it too! I wanna hear your music.

Just want to show off my new (old) dictionary:



From the spine:

Webster's Twentieth Century Dictionary.
Unabridged.
Many Supplementary Vocabularies
and Articles with Atlas of the World
(This dictionary is not published by the original publishers
of Webster's Dictionary or their successors)



Very unabridged.



My grandmother gave it to me today. She got it in 1942, the year it was published, from a door to door salesman. She had to buy three magazines to get the dictionary, which is what she really wanted.

In the front it has pictures of soldiers, fighter planes, and the "television apparatus". In the back are histories, an atlas, names from mythology and scripture, and quite a lot more.

It is pretty much the best gift I've ever received.

First, a question: Do you think that a story can be successfully written from the POV of a character's stream of consciousness? I was playing with the idea, but I'm not entirely sure if it works. I don't mean just first-person, I mean actual head-speak if you will. Maybe this would work better with an example? ( Here's a bit of what I've started writing for my fic in which the Sixth Doctor thinks he has a secret admirer: )

_________________________________________________________

And speaking of Six, I've just started RPing him over at brb_gallifrey. It's a fun community, and neat to have a character interacting with real people as well as other characters. Everyone should stop by, especially since I'm running the Six weeks in the Classic Who watch-a-thon! No treats to anyone who guesses which episode I'm picking first - it's too easy.

_________________________________________________________

And a meme:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me!"
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will post the answers to the questions (and the questions themselves) on your blog or journal.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. And thus the endless cycle of the meme goes on and on and on and on...

( My interview... )

Was going to make a sandwich for lunch, but we didn't have any sandwich meat, so I had a fried egg chili chutney sandwich with tomato, cheese, and hot sauce. It was yummy.

Plan to do some writing today, as well as some Big Finish listening. Maybe I'll go through and fix my photo files... See, when I transferred all of my photos over from the old computer, for some reason all the file folders disappeared, so now I've got to re-organize everything. O_O
EDIT: actually, I just re-transferred them and everything looks alright now.

Also, somebody please tell me that I look nothing like the new Doctor Who companion so that I no longer have the desire to dye my hair red...again.

( Is this a spoiler? I dunno. Pictures under the cut. )

Forwarding from elsewhere:

one_hoopy_frood has a post about what's happening in Iran. You should read it.

And John Green's video on the same subject:

I'm copying the updates John has made to his video:

UPDATE: Poll out showing pre-election support for Ahmadinijad, but with caveats. More at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com

UPDATE: Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has ordered a probe into the allegations of vote fraud.

UPDATE: The twitter link has been shut down. Gchat and yahoo chat have also been shut down in Iran. I'm still getting good updates from http://www.twitter.com/persiankiwi and http://www.twitter.com/tehranbureau Also worth following: http://www.twitter.com/y_shar and http://www.twitter.com/iran09

UPDATE: Dozens of moderate clerics and reformist political leaders in Tehran and around Iran have been arrested. Mousavi himself is apparently not under house arrest, although he is "being closely monitored by police," which sure SEEMS like house arrest. Ayatollah Khameni has restated his position that the election results were fair.

UPDATE: There seems to be significant violence going on at universities around the country, as well as hundreds of arrests and reports of tear gas in the dorms.

HONESTY MEME
And...
Pick a character I've written, either in RP or fanfiction, and I'll tell you five things from my headcanon about them.

___________________________________

I didn't get the job at the casino. Not even a second interview! Ah well. They sent me a very impersonal form letter that hadn't even been signed by anyone. :/ Maybe I'll throw myself around to the local bookstores and see if I can get a job in the basement selling books to fine customers.

For the past couple weeks we've had a woman staying in the house. I've known this woman my entire life. She's the one who, upon my birth, convinced my mother to switch my intended first and middle names - much to my later dismay, and now she's staying with us while she does some work. I'll say briefly: this woman is all the things that annoy me about my mother turned up to eleven. She's extremely extroverted, incredibly tidy, snores like a dying yak, and says things like "libary" without notice. She's also incredibly nice and does the dishes, so I can't complain, but I have tended to stay up later at night or hide away in my room so I can get some time to myself. This has totally whacked out my sleep schedual. I suppose I'm just not used to it yet. ...And I don't know how long she's staying, so I may have to.

In more pleasant news, my new laptop is supposed to show up tomorrow. Yay.

Also, I've been reading through the EDA's with Fitz in (I figure that I should read his canon if I run a comm for the guy!) and would just like to say that Unnatural History is complete and utter crack. I can no longer say I haven't read a book in which someone has been mugged by a unicorn on the streets of San Francisco.

Stolen from urchinmoppet:

Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- The first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes.

01. Manxmouse - Paul Gallico
02. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
03. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard
04. The Hitchhiker's Guide (and sequels) - Douglas Adams
05. The Shooting of Dan McGrew and Other Poems - Robert Service
06. Prufrock and Other Observations - T.S Eliot
07. Dragon's Blood - Jane Yolen
08. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
09. Hamlet - Shakespeare
10. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
11. Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein
12. Mad Dogs and Englishmen - Paul Magrs
13. Short stories by Edgar Allen Poe
14. Calvin and Hobbes in its various volumes - Bill Watterson
15. Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams

Heh. Poetry and genre, mostly.

I cleaned my room! My goodness, it was getting so you could barely walk about in here, and forget about seeing the floor at all. But now it's clean! And I organized papers! Woo.

Also I added the art and comics I currently have on my computer to my DeviantArt page. So that's cleaned up too! I've got a bunch of stuff that hasn't been scanned in, but that'll have to wait.

-Ah, it's so nice to have tons of things to do and no pressing issues at the same time. I'm enjoying it.

-My mom's computer has been acting up and I fixed it! Hurrah. Also, I've been thinking of taking some computer programming-type classes in the fall. I figure that it might be prudent to have experience in something other than analyzing literature.

-Speaking of computers: Wah my new laptop will never be here ever ever. EVER! And by ever I mean 'till about the middle of the month.

-I've got some icons in the iconsofrassilon competition, so go vote! You don't even have to be a member of the comm.

I passed all my classes this semester! Yay.

Today I went through my closet, cleaned, and got rid of tons of clothes that don't fit or which I don't wear any more. There's still much in there that sort of fits, so that stays. But really...I had stuff in there that I've been carting around since middle school and probably hasn't fit since then. Going to move on to cleaning the rest of my room either tonight or tomorrow...and going through and organizing all my papers. If I haven't completely burned out by then maybe I'll go through my books. Eep.

Since I'm not sure if I'm getting that job, and I'm not taking any summer classes, I think that I'm going to devote my summer to actually doing things I've been meaning to do.

As always, however, I'm interested in doing too many things. I'm sure if I was able to fully devote myself to one thing, I'd be a master of whatever it was. But if I budget my time, I think that I can do some of what I want to do. I'd like to renew my interest in piano and in juggling, to write a thousand words a day, work on more comics, and research for a couple things I've been interested in. Also, I should be studying German so that the whole of what I've learned doesn't fall out of my head.

And if I do get the job I'll have even less time, but I want to be productive! And, I figure, if I at least try to do all of those things, I'll get a lot done along the way.

My finals are finally finalized. Won't know my grades for a few more days. I'm not expecting outstanding grades, as this semester was me taking all the classes which I got Ds in in previous semesters, but I'd say I've squeaked by.

Went in and took my algebra final today. I'm not sure why the teacher liked me so much. He either had a huge crush on me or was glad that someone intelligent was in his class, but either way I'll definitely be passing. It might be to my advantage to take a math class with him in the future, since he does like me, and knows that my knowledge of math is pretty limited. Math does interest me, but it's frustrating that I can't just jump to the parts that interest me the most because I have to get down all of this basic stuff first.

I really don't want to take the next level of German, because I'd have to take it with a teacher that I don't like. He's very pretentious, and he doesn't think on the same wavelength that I do, so my questions to him often don't get answered in the way I'd like them to. I wish my current German teacher was teaching German three. *grumble* Maybe I'll write some LiveJournal posts in German as preparation. (I apologize in advance to my Flisters in Germany. My grammar is beyond terrible.)

No call yet from the casino, but they did say a week or two.

I had my *first* interview yesterday for the position at the casino. I showed up, looking nice in my slacks and jacket, and chatted with the other applicants for the position. There were six people scheduled, but only four showed up: Me, a ditzy girl, an attractive guy, and a dumpy looking but clever guy. There was also some other guy there who said he was there for the interview, but he wasn't on the list and wasn't dressed nicely, so the guy wouldn't let him come in. Very strange.

As a group we were taken through the old casino, now empty, and I was able to throw in my piece of info that the new one was built in 2003. It really was quite neat, though. Huge rooms with nothing in them and only a few spotlights. It felt very Outer Limits. One room, the lights even came on when we walked through.

By and by, we came to the interview room, which had been set up with the tables in a square with a few people from the casino on one side and us on the other. One of the interviewers informed us that it would be a speed interview format "just like speed dating, if you're up with that scene."

But first! An activity! Now, I was prepared for this part, since my mom mentioned that something like it might happen, but here's how it went:

There was a piece of paper with a bunch of generic nouns written down: Fruit, vegetable, dog, store, shoe, etc. etc. The instructions were that you had to choose three and use that as a metaphor for yourself. i.e: If I were a drink I'd be 7-up because I'm sweet and have a bubbly personality. Whatever. Given that sort of format, it's hard not to be trite and unimaginative. But here are the ones I used:

1. If I were a fruit I'd be a pineapple because I'm sweet, reward patience, and work well with a variety of different things.
2. If I were a flower I'd be a hibiscus because I have a colorful personality, and I work well in warm, sunny environments.
3. If I were a department store, I'd be Macy's, because I'm nice, but not so high class that I exclude people - and I like parades!

Of course, most of that's complete bullshit. The parade line got a laugh, which I was hoping for. The other applicants did well, except for ditsy girl who seemed to not know what a metaphor is and answered with things she'd like to be.

Then we moved on to the actual interviews and I moved around the table talking to each person, getting asked typical interview questions. "why do you think you'd be good for this position?" "why, because I'm a people person!" etc. etc., I lied. I lied about myself and my enjoyment of other people for most of the interview, actually.

My only trouble was with the last guy, in his twenties with boy-band frosted hair, who's job it was to ask about my past employment history and my problems with past bosses. I was more fidgety around him, and I was making gestures with my hands until I saw him watching me gesture with my hands, at which point I fidgeted more. Since I don't have any past employment history, we talked about directors I've had and "how did you resolve conflicts with them?" Now, I'm pretty sure I answered satisfactorily, but the truth is that I'm usually not aware I'm having a conflict until it's already over. What I told the backstreet boy was that I usually don't find myself in conflicts at all and that I'm generally good when dealing with upset people.

Overall, I think I did alright. If they like me enough I'll get a second interview where I'll have to present some sort of script on stage in the casino. And they'll let me know in "a week or two." Yeesh.

Also, I've got a big blister from my heels. Not cool.