Ruminations and Random Thoughts
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Monday, April 13, 2009
So, yes, full confession - I joined Twitter mostly because of #amazonfail. I'm probably not the only one. That said, some thoughts on the matter running to slightly more than 140 characters...
I'm not a big GLBT reader. Despite being female, I don't read a lot of feminist texts. I don't typically read any of the genres being targeted in this - my faves are pretty much fantasy, scifi, historical fiction, and occasionally classic literature. But it wouldn't matter if they were targetting birdwatching books.
The thing that makes me furious is that it's censorship. Restricting access to what others can read is the wrong here, and while in this case certain communities are being targeted, the people who should be offended, who should be rising up in force, are the readers, the writers, the thinkers, anyone who believes in the free expression of thought.
Fortunately, it seems that is indeed the case, if #amazonfail on twitter is any indication. Sure, the mainstream news media has yet to take notice, but it's been a while since I've thought the mainstream news media had much relevance to anyone who was interested in thinking.
Some have pointed out that maybe it's not amazon itself behind the book derankings - that maybe some fundie group, or some group of hackers in it for the lulz, decided to go in and spam the "adult content" button to get the books' rankings removed. As far as I'm concerned, that doesn't improve my opinion of amazon one bit. Putting machinery in place for users to decide to censor books? How is that better than amazon deciding to censor the books themselves? I don't want "the masses" or "public opinion" to decide what I'm able to read anymore than I want a corporation making that decision.
And yes, I fully believe that what's happening is censorship. They're not putting a little "Warning! Adult content!" flag, or even a big one, next to the book's search results; they're just making the search results not there any more. Removing the books' places in bestseller lists is a lesser crime, but still, it's pretending the books don't exist. It's the digital world equivalent of pulling the books off the shelves and putting them in a back room, where you have to know the secret password (exact search string in this case) to get to them. Censorship.
I was planning to buy a Kindle with my tax return money, since I'm running out of book space, but no more. I'll wait until some company that doesn't censor books comes out with a reader.
Current mood:  irate
Yeah. Never have time to update anymore. Stupid work. Just got home from another 12 hour shift.
So, logically, I joined Twitter! Username there is delordra, shockingly.
Current mood:  tired
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Hooray, it's my vacation! Here I am in exotic, warm, sunny Ohio...well, it is sunny. I'll be here for a week, so if anyone wants to get together let me know.
I've been playing Sims 2 like a madwoman, ever since discovering the Apocalypse Challenge (not linking so as to save the sanity of any fellow Sims addicts). So that's probably what I'll be doing for a significant portion of my vacation. (Yeah, and the Nano is officially kaput - was a while ago, really. There was just no way I was ever going to catch up after two weeks of being sick.)
Current mood:  happy
Thursday, November 13, 2008
This site is hilarious, and possibly slightly educational too.
I think I may have to abandon the Nano. If I didn't need to sleep twenty hours a day, it might be doable, but I'm already hitting a conflict with the fact that I work ten hours a day.
Current mood:  exhausted
Monday, November 10, 2008
So last week I was sick - I basically spent Tuesday evening through early Friday afternoon sleeping interspersed with an occasional few hours of consciousness. Friday evening and Saturday I still felt draggy, and ended up playing Sims and not doing much else. Sunday I had to work, but fortunately it was phone room and I just had to sit around telling people that no, their kid wasn't going to die of their fever of 102/runny nose/one or two bouts of diarrhea. I also started to develop a sore throat and a cough, which are still there today. The cough is worse, but fortunately the throat isn't.
I am prone to throat stuff - massive horrible sore throats - so my main hope with this is that it just stays like this and doesn't turn into the "OMG fiery burning fire burning in my throat burning must commit seppuku if I cannot reach my Chloraseptic for more than 15 minutes" kind of sore throat. Because I have to work, and I don't think carrying around a bottle of Chloraseptic in my scrubs pocket and spraying my mouth every 12 minutes would go over too well with the NICU nurses.
I thought my Nano was doomed, because I didn't write Monday through Saturday last week, but then yesterday I was actually able to get over 3000 words in, a pretty major coup considering I had budgeted no writing at all. So now I just have to write 1900 words a day. Really, if I can meet my word count goals this week, I should be good, though, because Saturday is another phone room call with no words budgeted but probably time to write.
Current mood:  sick
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
1:11PM
Happy belated birthday  Emily! Happy not-belated birthday Bardi!
I'm sick. Possibly the flu, given that I feel like I've been hit by a truck. I actually called in sick to work today, which you have to be half dead to do in residency (never mind that you can't appear to be anything less than 100% well while you're there). Nothing like a nicely timed attack of illness to derail the perfect Nano schedule. I didn't write anything Monday, and then yesterday I had big plans for catching up, but I ended up coming home, going to vote, and then going to bed at 6 pm. I'm going to try to get a little writing done today while I'm sitting around drinking tea in between naps, but I don't know how much is actually going to happen. *sigh*
Current mood: sick
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Expect many more posts than usual this month due to the hallowed tradition of Nano procrastination.
So I went to a write-in today, but nobody else showed up, so I wrote-in by myself. Then I went to Linens-n-Things, which is closing (all of them! Boo hoo hoo!) and bought stuff on sale. One of the things I bought was a teapot, complete with diffuser and tea lights to put in the bottom. I already drink a lot of tea, using a tea kettle and tea bags in the cup; with this, I'm up to about 85% on the Tea Drinker Snootiness scale. All I need to do is get some loose leaf tea, linen napkins, and tea biscuits, and I'll be up to 100%. So while the rest of you are fueling your Nanos with coffee or magic wine, I'll be fueling mine with tea.
I've been a shopping fiend lately; I've been shopping every day since Thursday. This is incredibly abnormal for me. Usually I can go weeks at a stretch without buying anything but food and toiletries.
I cheated today. I got an idea in my head for another story (that's always the way it goes), so, since my MC wasn't doing anything anyway, I used the Donovan trick (Donovan being one of the Long Island MLs): I had her pick up a book and read, and wrote my other story as what she was reading. I actually was going to have her read a book anyway, it was just going to be Dracula, so I can just change it and separate out the two stories in edits.
Anyway, back to the writing. Less than 1000 words to go today!
Current mood:  pleased
Saturday, November 1, 2008
So it's November 1. Let the insanity begin!
Per my usual routine, I started the story I planned to write, got about five hundred words in, and decided it was complete and total crap and could never possibly work. So I switched to something else which is also complete and total crap, but at least it's something I think I can get 50,000 words out of. I'm 2152 words in so far, which gives me a little less than 1,000 left to write tonight according to my weird schedule (it involves math and an Excel spreadsheet and different goals for days I'm off, days I'm working something like normal hours, and days I'm on call, and is probably far too complicated, but it worked for me last year).
I'm thinking of posting my ramblings under a filter, if anyone would be interested in reading them. Since it's actually not fanfic this year, I figured someone might be interested. So if you would like to follow along (keeping in mind that I'll just be posting everything in its raw unedited form), please let me know and I'll make up a filter.
Heading out to a write-in tomorrow afternoon. I'm hoping to make it to some Cincy write-ins when I'm back in Ohio for turkey day, or possibly some Dayton ones, since I don't know how much writing I'll get done at home. In fact, I generally have so much trouble writing at home that I may have to take the laptop to a coffee shop somewhere every day to get my daily writing in.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
You guys, it's been so cold in my apartment lately that Sarah Palin came over Saturday night looking for moose or some shit to hunt. (I told her she probably wouldn't like my moose, me being a member of the liberal elite and all. So she said she'd like to sit down at my kitchen table and talk about the issues, and I said I don't have a kitchen table. She seemed kind of confused about that, mumbled something about "maverick", and wandered off. Of course, it could have just been Tina Fey playing a joke.)
Anyway, yesterday the magical gas truck of warmth came, and today at last I have heat! It's totally sucky heat, but whatever. It's almost as warm now as it is with my space heater, meaning I'm only slightly frozen in fleece pjs, a heavy cardigan, fuzzy socks, fuzzy slippers, and a blanket wrapped around my waist. And I don't have to put up with the noise of the space heater or carry it from room to room.
Night float sucks, by the way. I don't know what day it is, my body can't figure out when I'm supposed to be sleepy and when I'm supposed to be alert (wide awake right now even though it's bedtime), and I can't remember what time I'm supposed to feed the cats, which the little buggers are milking for all it's worth. They're each going to weigh 50 lbs by the end of the week. But the good news is, only 2 more days! (I think.) And then, 4 weeks until vacation!
BTW, for the Ohio folks, I'll be in Dayton for a week and a half around Thanksgiving (Monday before Turkey Day through Wednesday after), and will hopefully be making my way down to the 'Nati at least once depending on vehicular availability. So let me know what's happening. I think I'm still a far east side member of the Cinci Nano group.
Speaking of Nano, I have the basic Idea, but still no names for my characters, nor do I quite know where to start. So I need to work on that. Keep meaning to do that during night float, but I think they call it that because your brain kind of floats away.
Current mood:  weird
Friday, September 12, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Today when I arrived home, I noticed that my brake lights were not turning off, even with the car off and the lights off and everything off. (The parking brake was on, but I always set the parking brake and it doesn't make the brake lights stay on - although I unset it just to be sure, with no improvement.)
Since I'm a total idiot about cars, I headed into the house to ask Google why my brake lights wouldn't turn off. Google informed me that there was a little blue pad under the brake pedal that sometimes fell off, and I could stick the pad back in place for a temporary fix. Back out to the car, where I indeed found the little blue pad and its little blue stem. So I stuck the pad back in and all was well, for now, but Google also told me that I'd have to stick the little blue pad back in every time I drove the car unless I superglued the little blue pad onto the little blue stem and put the whole thing into place.
So tonight I went to Wally World and bought some superglue. When I came home, I put a couple of pennies under the brake pedal in lieu of the little blue pad, which worked just like Google said it would. I brought the little blue pad and stem inside and glued them together. Of course I got glue all over my fingers; Google tells me that it can be removed with acetone, but I don't have any acetone (non-acetone nail polish remover doesn't work), and I'm not going out in the hurricane again, so I'll just have to live with it.
But the good news is that the little blue pad is now reunited with its stem, and tomorrow when the evil daystar is shining I shall go out and put it back in its place, and all shall be right with the world. Hoorah!
This has been your random post for the first week of September.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
SCENE: A suburban apartment. HUMAN is deep in blissful slumber. ALARM CLOCK shows current time of 5:45 am; it is set to go off at 6:45 am.
Enter BLACK CAT.
BLACK CAT jumps on HUMAN's head, waking HUMAN from her peaceful sleep. HUMAN sits up frantically, tossing BLACK CAT across the room.
BLACK CAT: Meow! Meow! (imbued with the sense of something-is-very-wrong-oh-God-fix-it-now)
HUMAN (blearily): Whazza matta?
HUMAN stumbles out of bed and into kitchen.
HUMAN: You have food and water. What's wrong?
BLACK CAT: Meow! Meow!
HUMAN notes that LEFT WATER DISH is completely empty, while RIGHT WATER DISH is completely full. HUMAN switches water dishes, placing the full one on the left.
BLACK CAT attacks the full water dish, lapping water as if she had been wandering in the Sahara for forty days and forty nights.
HUMAN: Stupid cat.
HUMAN goes back to bed.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Today's predicted high: 95
Current temperature (at 10:17 am): 99.1 (with a heat index of 106).
My landlord really needs to come install the window air conditioner. I might be considering violence, but it's just too hot. Perhaps this is his strategy: keep the tenants to hot to care that you're screwing them over.
Current mood:  hot
Friday, June 6, 2008
So it's the first night of my vacation, and I'm thoroughly miserable thanks to a nasty sinus infection that won't go away, despite antibiotics. Now I'm on steroids. Joy.
So I bring you a meme from Gojiro and myopia2000:
You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
One weapon
One song blasting on the speakers
One famous person to fight alongside you
Weapon can be real or fictional, you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.
Weapon: One of those Hanzo swords from Kill Bill. Not that I would know how to use it, but if all I have to do is chop off heads, I could probably manage.
Song: "It's the End of the World As We Know It" by REM
Person: After considerable debate, I'm going to have to go with Angel. Besides being a kickass fighter, I have a sneaking suspicion that a zombie bite would not actually turn him into a zombie, since he's already a vampire. And the zombies would be too stupid to know how to kill him.
Current mood: sick
Thursday, April 10, 2008
I've decided to make a spy agency (for the charming little Facebook game "Spies") and am debating between "Ladies' Espionage Association" and the rather more deceptive "Ladies' Knitting Club".
In other news, I spent way, way too much money getting my car registered and inspected today.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
I just got some great news: I'm moving to Mars! See, Google and Virgin Airlines are launching a colony on Mars called Virgle. Of course, as soon as I heard about it, I had to apply. I figured it would take a long time to hear back, but I just got the call a few minutes ago; I guess they're snapping up doctors. I'm going to be the first pediatrician on Mars!
Current mood:  ecstatic
Sunday, March 23, 2008
12:04PM
Happy Zombie Jesus Day!
Today, the legends say, after three days of being corpsified, Jesus woke from the dead. With his now superhuman strength, he rolled the stone away from the opening to his tomb and went looking for something to eat, preferably the nice juicy brain of that Judas guy. Unfortunately, Judas was dead, but what Jesus founded instead was a religion.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
I rearranged furniture today, including moving my One and Only Bookshelf (because I could only afford one when I moved in, and now have no one to go to IKEA with me to get more and am unwilling to pay the massive shipping fees). Moving a very large number of books (it's a big bookshelf) off the bookshelf and then back on is surprisingly tiring. (Moving the bookshelf itself, once empty, was quite easy, because it's IKEA, so I simply removed the shelves, moved the now light bookshelf frame across the room, and put the shelves back in.) If I moved my bookshelf every day, I'd probably actually gain some upper body strength. Unfortunately, each move would increase the likelihood of my books getting out of alphabetical order, and that would make me Cranky. 'Roid rage is nothing compared to Bookworm Rage when faced with improperly alphabetized titles.
In other news, the cats continue to be afraid of the vaccuum (the Beast). Beatrice (the black cat, the yin, Mistress of the Windowsill, Drinker of Blood, featured in icon) has come to terms with it; she hangs out across the room, acting all chill and watching it carefully. Then, when it gets too close to her, she gets up and wanders into another room with an attitude of "I'm moving because I want to, not because of the Beast". Ingrid (the white cat, the yang, Queen of the Cardboard Box, Devourer of Souls) is just plain terrified of the vaccuum. She dashes into the bedroom and hides under the bed as soon as I get it out of the closet, then streaks out to hide under the couch as soon as the Beast gets far enough into the bedroom to give her an opening and its back is turned. I exacerbate the situation by singing "One Way or Another".
I have a long weekend this weekend (Friday off for Good Friday) and need to get out of my apartment and do something. Yet I have been so busy for so long that I find myself without ideas.
Current mood:  busy
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Happy birthday Sherry! Hope it's a great one!
Current mood:  cheerful
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