Gardens at Bellvue

yesmeansyes - Anti-rape/sexual violence blog
blackandmissing - Blog that focuses on highlighting the Black missing & murdered ignored by mainstream media

Hello! I'm Jessica, I live in Massachusetts, and I'm 19. I'm a vegan atheist, but I don't impose my beliefs on other people; I'd hate it if someone did that to me. In fact, I rarely talk about religion. My philosophy is, "live and let live." Gay guys are my best friends. But don't think that because I'm an atheist I have no morals or values; honesty is the most important thing in any type relationship. I'm loyal to my friends and I hate liars and backstabbers. I try my best not to be superficial.

I'm a dancer. I especially love ballet and hip hop. I also love listening to hip hop, e.g. Atmosphere, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, Immortal Technique, and The Roots. I also love madlibs, HTML, goosebumps (the feeling, not the books), snow, texting, nostalgia, and hello kitty.

Sometimes people misjudge me, but those people are missing out!

I try to comment as much as I can, but even if I can't think of anything to say, I still read my friends page.

This day is going all right. Very weird.

* My doctor was in and approved my new round of antibiotics over the phone, which he never does. I guess he has shopping to do too.

* My pharmacy hacks weren't lazy, useless !()*#!(*s they usually are and actually called and filled the 'script, along with another, older one. *is slightly amazed*

* The Bob Dylan Christmas album isn't as incredibly awful as might be imagined. It's almost ... enjoyable. *is wondering what planet I'm on*

* My girl is doing the grocery shopping, getting my meds and finishing the laundry. *is not as amazed, but it's very nice of her to carry the extra load. Not easy being with MS. I'MALWAYSSICK*

* Yuletide fic is done and if I actually get a response from any kind of beta, I'll be able to upload later today or tomorrow morning. *gasp*

So, what's 2 feet of snow compared to all that? NUTHIN, I SAY! NUTHIN!

ETA: Okay, I'm now listening to Dylan's version of "Silver Bells" - it's as awful as might be imagined. Good. I'm back on Earth.

sarah, turning 21 this christmas. i live in south texas. i am a future nurse, pomeranian lover, and an "as seen on tv" product collector.

things i like: hgtv, lady gaga, ryan adams, 90210, glee, hard-fi, dolly parton, hello kitty, disney shit, twitter, nintendo ds, victoria's secret, juicy couture, maury, flipping out, my leopard snuggie, bad girls club, the wendy williams show, the clique (it's so full of lulz, watch it), cupcakes, keeping up with the kardashians, baking, texting...

things i dislike: cock-roaches, people who tYp3 LyK3 d!s, fake bitches, driving...

i'm just looking for friends. i don't post here very often as i am more active on lj, but i will try to.

Yes, I'm old, my memory is shot, etc. I've searched all through yuletide and can't find the answer. (I've been shopping since 9:00 am - I'm toast.)

What is that last possible day/hour we can upload our Yuletide stories? I'm mostly done but this weekend is going to be hell, as is most of next week. I'm going to carve out the time for this with a knife, if I have to.

PLEASE, FLIST, HELP ME!

As a result of the Nor'easter that is forecast for tomorrow, there actually is a pretty good chance of SE Virginia getting snow tomorrow night. (Much better than I thought last night, goldy_dollar.) Cue Virginians freaking out variously: "YAY SNOW! Let's get out the sleds!" or "ACK, SNOW! Stock up on supplies!"

*facepalm* Oh, Virginians. Y'all are so cute.

ETA: Note that, even if it does snow here tomorrow night? It will almost certainly melt by midday on Sunday. If we even get so much as to actually cause problems driving (although that's not really that much for folks around here).

Somehow I'm not in my usual holiday mood this year. December is zooming by at a truly ridiculously fast pace, and I haven't had time to do most of my usual things beforehand. Also I am physically ill and feel like crap. Bleh.

Two things I found myself reading this morning, both resulting from zvi's signal boost:

marina about Russophobia and who is Russian. And branchandroot While we're at it...

thete1 "I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!"

(Full disclosure: I was trying to learn how to date again around the time of the Transformers film this past summer. That's how I ended up seeing it, along with Wolverine and a couple other films. I'm not proud of this fact, but there it is. And only one of the many reasons that one particular guy from last summer and I are not seeing each other any more is that I tried talking about why the Transformers films were problematic... I'll leave it to your imagination as to how spectacularly well that went. *eyeroll*)

Short summary of something that could turn into a huge tl;dr post, because holy crap this year has sucked: If I wasn't angry, I wasn't paying attention.

Here, have more links:
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/the-last-airbender-primer/
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/the-last-airbender-film-cast-in-60-seconds/
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/do-children-see-race/
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/yellow-face-a-documentary-on-the-last-airbender-film/
http://www.racebending.com/v3/interviews/sdcc/

I'm thinking I may need to get my hands on DVDs of the Avatar: The Last Airbender tv series, because I haven't seen it. I will not be seeing the Avatar movie. ETA: To clarify, I will not be seeing EITHER of the movies; see comments below.

In completely, completely unrelated news, I've now got a draft of my Yuletide story that doesn't make me cringe, so at least I'm on the ball about something.

This entry was originally posted at http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/1020844.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I've gotten a nice case of Norovirus after caring for a friend's baby who had some severely acky diapers. What a hellish 48 hours I've just had.

Did you know that in England they call it 'the winter vomiting'? Isn't that quaint?

(british accent) Why, yes, I had a spot of the winter vomiting last week. Quite dreadful. Tea, anyone?

Is it any wonder that we're all Anglo-philes over here.

By way of temve and jamie:

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/the-new-facebook-privacy-settings-a-how-to/?em
http://gawker.com/5427077/the-valleywag-guide-to-restoring-your-privacy-on-facebook
http://dotrights.org/what-does-facebooks-privacy-transition-mean-you

For the record? I really, really, really, really, really, really, really dislike Facebook. But I'm there with my RL identity helping family members stay in touch with each other, and attempting to teach them about online privacy and security issues. The whole site leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I feel like I'm being online-stalked by most of my high school graduating class most of whom apparently couldn't be bothered to Google for me for nearly twenty years. Ugh. The things I do for my extended family...

This entry was originally posted at http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/1020419.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Are you still following the Victoria Bitter/Thanfiction/Andrew Blake HP drama?

If you are, there is a second F_W post here

and ...

... there is A POST OF UTTER AWESOME WANK HERE.

*covers mouth with hand*

Srsly. It rarely gets better than this. MsScribe is feeling the slight heat of competition methinks.

i need friends plz

The removal of the 'unspecified' field in the gender area of LJ's sign-up code was an error and will not go live, according to LJ's management.

From Anjelika Petrochenko, US general manager

"We were going to add a gender field to the sign up user flow, which is fine, but by mistake it became a mandatory "female/male" field for everyone. This is why this is not going live. And this is what beta releases are for, to see problems and solve them before any user faces a problem."

Nice deep breath, everyone. There.

Now, where do I go to find out the requirements for Yuletide uploading?

We oughtta have an initiative constitutional amendment to ban 7:00 finals. 8:00 classes are hell enough. *got up at 4:00*

I've just made the following as a post in my LJ:
---
LiveJournal is removing the Unspecified option for the gender field. That's right: you get to be male or female. Period. That's it.

Details here: http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/366609.html

This journal has been, in my user profile, "Unspecified" gender for a long time, because gender is not binary. If/when I am unable to decline to state my gender, or if/when I am forced to declare my gender along a binary division, here on LJ, I will be deleting this journal.

I have Dreamwidth invite codes for anyone who wants them, just provide me with the email address you want the code sent to. There is also http://dw-codesharing.dreamwidth.org/ as well, which does not require you to provide your email address to anyone.
---

Dreamwidth, I adore you. <3

ETA: And now I've added the following to my LJ post:
---
ETA: The code has now been rolled back and will not be pushed with the next codepush.

After seeing some of the reaction to this entire situation from my LJ friendslist, however, I will be deleting this journal later today. elkes_obsession is already gone. I had been committed to trying to do everything I could to keep unbroken links, to retain memories categories, to not delete entries, even though so many things about LJ's ownership bother me. I'd tried to retain the human connections across the multiple sites. But apparently plenty of the folks I've felt I was making the effort for are sick and tired of this sort of thing. I'm getting a 'don't let the door hit your ass on the way out' vibe, and damn, that HURTS. And so now I'm just DONE.
---

So.

elkes_obsession is gone, as it was a navigational tool to organize my views into various LJ communities, and I'd left it up in case others were getting benefit from it.

And elke_tanzer. Created on 2002-04-13 12:36:18 (#527447), watching 515 friends, communities, and feeds. 19,435 comments received, 19,512 comments posted, 2,880 Journal Entries, 204 Tags, 16,918 Memories.

Done.

This entry was originally posted at http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/1020320.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Victoria Bitter is back and this time's he's a Harry Potter BNF with a mysterious past and months left to live.

OF COURSE YOU ARE, SWEETIE.

I am both jealous and disturbed at how easy it is for some folks to churn out a quarter million words of fic and gather minions by the score in less than a year's time. *pouts* I am simply not trying hard enough, damn it!

Man, if I weren't so lazy I'd so rule the world.

BTW, I'm dying of laughter so send me lip gloss.

--

This is an interesting discussion on Dreamwidth about Dreamwidth and how it's lacking the social development some people thought we'd see by now.

Don't get me wrong, I like DW, but for various technical aspects. The conversations aren't happening here and that's fine as I personally get enough out of the service to make sharing content here worthwhile. I think part of the problem is that a few folks assumed that everyone on LJ was just dying for a better platform and that DW was the answer to their prayers, even if they didn't yet know it.

Unfortunately, most people like (can tolerate?) LJ and hate change. This is a deadly combination for anything that isn't so revolutionary, so very, very different and better, it can't be resisted. DW is nice and had good stuff, but it's not different enough.

And LJ isn't evil enough. Or something like that.

Thank you to wolfshark, ingridmatthews, glimmergirl and a wee quiet anonymouse for the snowflake cookies on my old LJ profile! And thank you to gblvr for the ridiculously-adorable holiday octopus-Cthuluclaus there as well!

This entry was originally posted at http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/1020136.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I'm not the most knowledgeable person around, about a bunch of stuff, yeah. And I try not to talk about stuff I don't know about... if I haven't earned the right to talk I try to Just Shut Up. I'm privileged in some ways and not so privileged in other ways. I sometimes say stupid shit without realizing it's stupid shit and then I try to learn and apologize and never make the same mistake twice. And a lot of the time, for me, it's easier for me to see how something is stupid hurtful shit when it comes out of someone else's mouth or keyboard, because when it comes out of my mouth or my keyboard it didn't immediately sound stupid or hurtful to me.

Stuff I have learned lately (not just from the latest shitstorm going on, but lately in general)...

1. When someone says they prefer a specific gendered or nongendered pronoun, I JUST DO IT. I just need to respect that preference.

1.a. If I screw that up once for someone? Please, anyone, give me a gentle reminder. If I screw that up twice for someone? Please, anyone, KICK ME.

1.b. This is not just related to whether or not I respect the person being referred to, but is also related to whether or not I respect everyone's right to have a personal pronoun preference.

2. If I don't have a clue whether someone prefers a specific gendered or nongendered pronoun, chances are that using 'they' as a singular, or zie and zir, will not piss them off or hurt them.

2.a. (I'm not sure about this, but so far it's holding true...) If I use they, or zie and zir, in reference to someone, and they distinctly do not prefer that, they can easily correct me without too much trauma or drama for either one of us.

2.b. There are folks who prefer they over zie and zir (or sie and hir), and folks who prefer zie and zir (or sie and hir) over they.

2.c. There are folks who do not self-identify as trans* who prefer non-gendered pronouns. There are folks who do not self-identify as cis* who prefer non-gendered pronouns.

3. It is awkward as hell for me to ask if a friend or acquaintance prefers any specific pronoun. That doesn't mean I should ever assume that they prefer she or he or zie. I should NOT ASSUME, even if I know them offline, even if I would probably tend to assume one pronoun is more likely than another based on my own personal history and the name they've chosen to use in any given setting, or any physical characteristic they've presented to me or kept private from me, or any attitude they've said or typed about any topic under the sun.

3.a. Awkward is not necessarily the same as hurtful. And if I can get myself through an awkward situation to prevent myself from hurting someone? If I realize the awkward situation is an option, I'm darned well choosing that rather than knowingly hurting someone.

3.b. It's really easy to be hurtful unintentionally if I don't know what I'm talking about.

So.

All I can do right now? Is offer virtual chocolates, and try not to mess this post up, because I just can't be silent right now. I'm sorry that people suck, and I'm sorry that folks I care about are being hurt, and I'm sorry that I've been unintentionally hurtful in the past.

And I desperately hope that I'm not being unintentionally hurtful now, especially given the current state of the latest shitstorm (which I am trying to avoid, actually).

ETA: And yes, this post is from a me-centric place, because when I tried writing it any other perspective, I came across even to my own eyes as megapreachy and talking about things I haven't earned the right to and ICK ICK ICK. I feel mostly-OK about talking about myself here, so yeah, I did. I wish I could do better, but I feel like this is better than silence, because I can't be silent when something is Not OK By Me.)

This entry was originally posted at http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/1019761.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

... all I'm really in the mood to post is this video of Catguyver. Adorable cat antics. Check under the cut for the embed. ( Read more... )

Thanks to midnitemaraud_r for the link!

My brothers are chasing each other around the house, fighting over who gets to practice running in high heels next.

It would be much more impressive if the only pair of heels we have weren't so short.

name; Sam
age; will be 21 next month
location; New Bedford/MA
love life; recently got with my ex's best friend ( its a long story. Don't judge.)

likes; reading, music, spending way to much time on my computer, tattoos, piercings, drinking, hanging out with friends, making an ass out of myself, making people smile, animals; to narrow that down i love canines, i like to collect random stuff, i collect anything and i mean anything with a wolf on it,

dislikes; drama that I'm in involved in, being lied to, onions, people that drive like asses

anything else; well, first and for most I'm a lesbian so if you're not okay with that then you probably shouldn't add me. I recently broke up with my ex of two years because well...she was a controlling bitch and all my friends told me she treated me like crap but I didn't want to hear it. Our last fight ended with her punching me in the face and me moving back home to my parents...so that's pretty much where my life is at right now. I ended up some how some way dating her best friend...not to get back at her or anything, I've actually known her best friend longer then her and we just...clicked. So yeah. I don't suggest added me if you can't deal with the occasional grammar error I wasn't the top student in English class, and over all I can't spell for shit, thank you spell check for being my BFF. When I write, I'm listening to music so don't get confused if there are some random lyrics thrown in somewhere in my posts. I bitch a lot about my lack of money, my crappy job, and how my cat hates me. But other then that I'm pretty interesting if I do say so myself. So go to my page comment and add me. I need friends. Bad. =]