Saturday, February 24, 2001

Ooh... This is where I live. Okay, so I live about 8 hours driving-time away from the mountain, but I -can- see it on a clear day. *Grin*

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:30 PM |

At least Joy Enriquez can sing, even if she can't be bothered to have any fashion sense. Skin-tight white leather (or leather-look) really -should- be illegal... Ugh.

Watching FoxFamily's music whatever-they're-doing-today. Caught their Music Mania 2000 rebroadcast last weekend, which was pretty cool... I just wish they'd let/made PYA perform acapella, 'cause it would have been _so_ much more gorgeous... And I'd -wondered- what had happened to Bill Bellamy. Kind of. In a 'hey, I remember -that- name from my childhood... Wow, that seems like a million years ago...' sort of way.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:32 PM |

Speaking of childhood... Some days I feel like such a baby, like I've never done anything and won't ever be a grown-up... And other times (very, very -rarely-) I'm this ancient adult. Yeesh. I hate being me, sometimes...

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:34 PM |

I love Pink's hair. I want hair that stands up like that... In blue or orange or something.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:35 PM |

Dammit, why doesn't anyone understand that a 4/4 backbeat is, sometimes, overkill? Particularly when it comes to -talented- vocalists.

And I am _dying_ to know which female popstar has to have every note of her albums engineered 'cause she can't sing all that well... I have it narrowed down to Spears or maybe Aguilera (sp?)

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:36 PM |

Okay, skin-tight clothing of any kind is really just... ugly. If I wanted to see -that- much of these poptarts, I'd go looking for nude pictures of them...

S-club-7: Arctic Fashion Tips:

1) Zip up your coats.
2) Wear pants.
3) Hats are a -must- in snowy conditions.
Idiots.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:37 PM |

Robo-Chi? Chirpychi? Meowchi? Poo-chi? Gack. I'm holding out for cybogs and/or cloning. Preferably cybernetic tech -combined- with cloning. I wonder what the copyright laws will be on that front...?

"Hey, what's with this five-hundred dollar surcharge on my Lauren Dixon?"

"Look, lady, ya gotta pay licensing fees. Says so in the brochure. 'The use of the likeness of other people may result in a surcharge, not to exceed ten million dollars.'"

"Oh. Okay, then. Sorry."

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:39 PM |

Ooooh... I'll take Pink _and_ her dancers in their Goth-Skater-Punk regailia... Oooh... *Blink* Heh.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:40 PM |

P>I moved my computer out to the living room, for the curious. I think I'd much rather have cable in my room, though... Ah well. Not like I have -room- for it.

I need more space... Which I will, of course, fill up with a bunch of stuff that I -don't- really need.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:46 PM |

Note: yogurt, liquid or not, is no substitute for water or electrolyte-enhanced drinks when it comes to staving off dehydration, particularly at the beach.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 12:50 PM |

n

*Snicker* Every time I see an ad for Bon Jovi's Crush tour, all I can think of is the ESPN commercial about how great New Jersey is. Well, that and the 'Don't underestimate the drawing power of the Garden State' line from Dogma.

Nat'nl Geographic had an article about the reclamation of the Meadowlands that actually made me want to visit NJ. Not like I didn't want to go anyhow, 'cause everyone should visit the 'States at least once in their lives, right? It's my country, I should see it.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 3:29 PM |

The Great Cellular Phone Debacle

So we just got home from teying yet AGAIN to switch from analog to digital cell service. Apparently, how many ever days it is between the 9th of February 'til the 24th is -not- long enough for AT&T wireless to A) create a new account B) switch two users to it and C) add a third.

Kisoks are vastly different from the stores -- to the point where (again, apparently, since I have no idea if it's true) the sales people are Not Authorized to do anything beyond starting new accounts.

However, we -did- _finally_ get the problems sorted out and decided on our new phones -- Motorla 2793s or something. However, we won't have them until next Tuesday.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:13 PM |

I guess I'm not as reasonable a person as I think I am. I mean, I care about all the wrong things; I want the world to run in a logical, pleasant and relatively sane manner; I want people to be, y'know, -polite- to each other. I want Mac users to get a little consideration.

As usual, all of that is waaaaaaaay too fucking much to ask for. Really. What's up with the publish and post & publish buttons not displaying unless I drag the window a third of the way off-screen and then resizing it? I'm -using- NS 4.7, 'cause I can't post from IE 4.5, I _don't_ think it should be this difficult.

But then, I'm a Mac user. What the hell do -I- know, right?

Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:13 PM |

I wanna see the Ed, Edd & Eddy marathon tomorrow, but I'll probably only get to see about half of it. Hockey comes on at 4, y'know.
Posted by: Shannon M.: 4:15 PM |

Friday, February 23, 2001

Yesterday....

So what's -my- spiralling shape? I have no idea. Actually, that's probably not true... It's just that I'd rather not think about it.

'Sfunny... I spend a lot of time avoiding avoidance, 'cause it's all unhealthy, and it turns out that avoidance is just what I need to bring harmony to my working life.

 

Recently, all I felt when I got to work was the overwhelming desire to say "fuck the job and fuck most of y'all" and scram. Yesterday, I got yelled at (kinda... Not really.) by my direct superiors (both of them... Sigh), kept the kids out of class for a half-hour (it was 1:15 by the time we got back to work -- that's a _loooong_ time around ECA), and generally -really- wanted to go home.

Today, I accomplished one thing: giving an asshole free reign to be a slacker. The kid is -so- nasty that I can see Dom just adoring him. Or at least his sense of humor. It's not a good sort of nasty, either... He says the most horrid things, to people that don't deserve it... In class, one day, he was asked what he thought about the writing that another student had shared. He said "I don't know, I wasn't paying attention." I wanted to slap him sooooo hard... But I couldn't, of course. So I sat there and felt sorry for Lynne, and myself, and tried to figure out how to kill him in a way that wouldn't get me caught.

Anyhow. Today I tell him he can play dominoes if he wants to, as a senior priveledge. I don't think it's right. I don't think it's right at all to give him _any_ priveledges, 'cause he already flagrantly disobeys rules and policies and violates any number of laws. He doesn't deserve any more freedom. And I don't think that letting him, that giving him permission, will make it any less palatable of an idea.

But that was the only thing I did. I sat around, I checked my email, I wrote a little bit... I've been having a little bit of a block, which is annoying, 'cause I have a new guy I wanna write.

I answered a couple of questions, fixed a few problems we've been having, got annoyed with the phone company... But otherwise, I did nothing.

This sort of grates on my work-ethics nerve, but it's great for my sanity. Who cares what's going on? Who cares if they're doing their work? Who gives a damn if they're getting Fs or As? Not me! Well, okay, so I do. For some of them.

And I know I have to let them make their own decisions and fail... But it irritates me that this is a -school- that apparently doesn't want to take them to task for not learning something. That's what you come to school to -do-, right? Learn something?

Of course, I'm a freak, and I see the world so very differently from everyone... It's all just me being me. I have to learn, somehow, that I am the only one in the world that sees things the way I do. And it's one fucked-up viewpoint I've got, lemme tell ya.

But... If I had the opportunity to be in high school -now-, at a time in my life when I would actually -learn- something, and enjoy doing so? I'd go again in a heartbeat. I could probably convince people that I was born a few years later than I was... Of course, I couldn't go to Polaris, but I could maybe go to Stellar.

I don't know what I'm trying to say, really. On the one hand, I don't feel like I'm earning my keep if I'm not 'doing something', but on the other, it's nice to sit around on my butt and not 'do things'.

Maybe I should count my blessings and keep my head down, eh?

 

Linkage... No, not the automotive type, fortunately.

Virtual Finland for Virtual Finns!

I want to go to Finland someday. I need to learn Finnish and/or Swedish before I go, but I want to do that anyhow.

Actually, I have a number of places that I want to go. Japan, FInland, Germany, France, Britain... And probably others that I've forgotten. I don't tend to think of Canada as a foriegn country... Probably because I've lived next door to it my entire life. I do wanna go there, too, though.

And, as a step toward learning that... A Finnish-English-Finnish dictionary! Besure and click on the sponsor links (But keep the dictionary handy -- you'll need it.) *Grin* This site told me that Tikka's name (which I had pulled out of thin air) means 'dart' or 'woodpecker'. I think 'dart' is more appropriate, since I've yet to envision any scenes featuring Tikka eating bugs. (I don't want to, either... He's making faces at the very idea.)

Suomi Pop! Finnish pop/rock/alt/whatever... I can't understand most of it, but I still wanna buy some. 'Hilija' by Väärät Vieraat is pretty fun...

Careful... The Radiomafia might be watching you. Okay, so they probably aren't. Yet another of my 'I like this site despite the fact I can only understand the three English words on it...' finds. (I think it has an English version, though.) Um, okay, so there are band names that I can read, too.

 

I'm not too big on most multimedia uses for the net. I'm too impatient, and I lack the bandwidth and CPU speed for video and MP3s... My one weakness, and my one truly -accessable- exception is music. Well, internet radio, anyhow. I have AMP Radio, and I love it. I just wish I had something faster to run it on...

Sadly, no one is broadcasting Finnish pop (or Finnish anything) on a Finns-only station. At least not yet... And I may yet find Finn pop (or rap or industriogrunge, or Goth Polka) on some Scandinavian station. I should go back to the IceCast site and check up on new stations...

 

Gah... Tired! It's late! Must go to bed despite desperate desire to stay up and force myself to write -some-thing, _any_thing...

Posted by: Shannon M.: 6:15 PM |

Monday, February 19, 2001

02.10.00

No smut yet, but I found something -else- to waste my time on... Kisses. I think one of the reasons the Japanese culture appeals to me is that they have the -coolest- toys for grown-ups. (At least, for those of us that feel no need to be totally somber and serious all the time, anyhow.)

 

*Blink* *Blinkblink* I have to say that I feel that more than one of these pictures are utterly fake. But maybe they aren't. Yes, it's somewhat sick and morbid, but I feel better after running a search for people like me. Or maybe it's not at all sick and morbid -- after all, there are zillions of other people out there who want to know they're not the only one that (fill in the blank).

They _are_ fake: This article says so. And manages to piss me off a little at the same time. Grr. They don't call it 'beard envy' or 'hair envy', you know...

 

*Blinkle* Okay, so the pics are pretty much fake. And the guestbook is just weird... If all of these people are so...Well, the ones that post in english, anyhow, if they're so pro-hair, why are they wasting their time playing with pictures of celebs? Why aren't they trying to make safe havens in their communities, or online, or...whatever?

 

And -here- is a woman that... I think she gives me hope. I haven't filled out her survey, and I haven't e-mailed her, but I'm seriously considering both. I hope she gets her book published, if it's a legit operation... I can't imagine that it wouldn't be.

 

This makes me furious. There should NOT be an ALaska Native Women's Sexual Assault Prevention Coalition, because there should NOT be any sexual assaults. There should NOT be a STAR, Standing Together Against Rape, group. There should not be a string of five rapes over seven months that has gone unsolved. This should not be happening in my city. This should NOT be happening! This is Anchorage fucking Alaska, this shouldn't be. We should not have to have an ad campaign that begs people to respect their own wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and nieces.

This is abominable. This is sickening. This makes me want to go hunting for humans, to dispense a highly frowned upon vigilante justice. This makes me want to stand around downtown in the cold looking little and cute and vulnerable, until I put a bullet between his eyes. Or into whatever other body part is handy...

You know of course that I won't do it. That I couldn't. That I _can't_. I can do nothing, partly out of my own helplessness, and partly out of fear, and partly because I'd probably go to jail for killing someone that should be put to death anyhow.

I think I do support the death penalty for rapists. They undermine the morale of the women in society, they add to the view that women are vulnerable and good for little more than fucktoys. Women are vulnerable, yes. So are men. Men are just as suceptible to utter bullshit.

The thing is, we don't have to be. What If women decided to band together and take over? What if, one day, all the men in the world woke up to discover that women had overthrown them?

Can't you see it? There are plenty of women in the position to topple the government. Every wife of every politician, every general, every admiral, every nuclear scientist. A slit throat here, a smothering there, an ice pick off yonder... Et voila, total chaos. And in step the missuses, ostensibly to continue hubby's work... And then what? Whatever the ladies damn well please. In my mind, this includes full control of their reproductive rights (up to and probably including castration for certain members of society), equal rights, and probably some sort of child-care something.

My problem is that I don't think women are better than men, or men are better than women. We all just -are-. We're here, we have to live with one another, and we should -really- start treating one another as if we're all civilized human beings before someone decides to make the war of the sexes literal.

There was an ad on TV, the other night, for a Peter Jennings-led special all about female atheletes and whether they can compete with men blah blah blah sexistcakes, and -I- said that women have always had to compete with men. My mom and my brother looked at me and said "-What?-"

Isn't it true? Women have historically had to 'prove' that they're at the very _least_ as good as a man at certain things, if not _better_. And we still do, to some extent.

Did you know that the ERA has not yet been added to the constitution because too few states have ratified it? That is ridiculous.

I don't even know what I wanted to say. I guess this was just my inner feminist coming out to have a fit. *Blink*

 

Today in art, we drew cartoons for display during our huge fancy dinner-and-auction fundraiser thing we're doing. The theme of the cartoons is 'Laughing At Dyslexia', and I drew a guy at the grocery store, holding a bag of noodles, saying "What the heck is enerched pasta?", and a store employee telling him "That's -enriched- pasta, sir."

I also drew a guy with blue hair reading the instructions on the back of a box of hair dye: "Do...not...mix...with...peroxide. Oops." and 'Reading the instructions all the way through: A Very Good Idea.' at the bottom.

My third contribution features a pair of Krushers, one in a white jersey and one in a red jersey. WJ: "Nice try, but you scored on your own goalie." RJ: "I -always- have that problem... Are you wearing the home jersey, or am I?"

Lynne thought that one was just bad, but then -she- was the one that drew a guy out front of a church with a sign proclaiming 'The House Of God'... The guy was protesting that he didn't want to go into the dog house, and an angel pops up to tell him that it's -God-. "Oops, my mistake..."

Ev drew a dyslexic Dirb, but you _have_ to see it to appreciate it. I think Gail wants to scan them all, so I may get a chance to upload them or get the links, sometime in the near future.

Other people's weren't nearly as funny.

 

Speaking of the near future... I guess I'd better figure out what I'm going to do in a number of areas.

-- Headgasket(s). I have to get that fixed...

-- Do I want to take Aikido or not? I don't relish the idea of cramming more into what feels like my already overstuffed life (yeah, like I do Sooooooo bloody much, all the time...), and I _really_ am NOT excited by the idea of getting bruises and mat burns and the like. But... I need the exercise. I probably need the human contact. My mother has offered, very kindly, to split the cost of doing Aikido... And eventually you get to use bokken! I like swords, and ritual, and what could be better than ritualized swordplay?

-- My blinking bloody blasted job. It's not so bad, when I get to _do_ my job. When they're all just being sullen and horrible, it's no fun at all. I think I'd really rather be doing something that doesn't depend so heavily on human interaction, 'cause between that, my fucked-up sleeping patterns, and my already mercurial temperment, it's just no fun to go to work, most of the time.

-- My room is an armpit again. Sigh.

 

Speaking of my mother, she's very odd. And rather amusing, most of the time. I sent her the link to the NHLPA's When They Were Little scrapbook site, she sent me a Saku Koivu postcard. (The 'Patrick' she refers to is Patrick Roy, with the Avs. *Rolls eyes* We have this running joke about me getting married to him... It sort-of stems from the day that I looked up my horoscope on some silly site and it said 'Act surprised all you want, but you know damn well why hockey great Theo Fleury is on your doorstep with flowers and candy.')

 

Um... I love Lauren Dixon. He is -so- dyslexic, and -so- funny... I'm adding him to my clone list, even though I don't think I've ever -seen- him. (Er, he's the program(-ing?) director at KNBA.)

 

Okay, this -- Gays Of Our Lives, ep 127 -- is bizarre. But it made me laugh, so... *Shrug*

 

You know, the phrase 'nipple clamps' just makes me want to cross my arms over my chest and run away. Same with 'nipple piercing'. It's just NOT my idea of a good time. Owie.

 

I'd really rather not discuss Valentine's day, because once again I was given lovely things and neglected to get anything else for anyone I know. Kind of. I've got stuff in the works for Scrubby-chan and co, but I'm trying to figure out what I can get-- Ooh. *Giggle* I have to go to The Look this weekend sometime... I had an Idea. It'll be late, but it's a combination birthday-Valentine's day thing. And it's from _me_, so it's traditional for it to be late.

 

Looking for an Internet Appliance to go in the living room so we can surf during hockey and do mail and stuff. Also, the DSL guy came to school today! *Bouncebounce* The poor guy probably thinks I need to be on Ritalin or something 'cause I babbled at him until we got halfway through Room 3, when I finally remembered that he needed to know who I am... *Rolls eyes*

We're all hooked up at school, and it's a beautiful thing.

 

The server still sucks, both figuratively and literally. It's a freaking bandwidth hog and it really pisses me off. -I- thought, and so did Jack, that switching to DSL was going to help. Didn't. Mercury Datagroup said the server's NIC is fine fine fine on their network, and that it (theoretically) should be good on ours.

I'm really puzzled. We've got everything we need -- the right drivers, the Wintel-to-Mac network interface software, all the RAM and HD space we could ever need, a free CatV cable (actually, we have a number of cables, in fact, we even have a number of ports free... Generally, we only have 7-8 computers on the LAN at any one time, and sometimes less. Our hub has like, 16 ports on it, so that reeeeeally shoooouldn't be a problem, if you ask me.

Well, 8, plus the printer, which makes nine. At any given time, we have a handful of little black squares on the face of our 3Com hub. (I was really impressed with the hub -- we unplugged it, plugged it back in, took away its InterJet, and the thing performed marvelously. People were printing while DSL Guy and I were wrestling with cords and stuff.

 

Random Popculture Thoughts:

*Snerk* Watching the Daria Sarcastathon... I always forget how much I love the show.

Okay, I'll admit it. I have a weakness for 2+gether. It's so snarky, and subtle (mostly)...

Heinekin's Surprise Party commercial is great. It helps if you listen to the lyrics... "I'm in a bad place, but I'm havin' such a good time..."

I don't really like Janet Jackson.

Kurt Loder is still looking good... Rick's avatar is againg gracefully. *Snerk* Yeah, I know.

Posted by: Shannon M.: 8:08 PM |