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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
pandoradeloeste's LiveJournal:
| Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | |
| 10:33 am | |
| Friday, June 12th, 2009 | |
| 8:43 pm | On a happier note: Moar kittenz! (I don't know how much longer we get to call them kittens - they're about a year old. Whatev. They'll always be kittens to me. Just like the Freshman will always be the Freshman, even though neither of us has been a freshman for six or seven years now.) ( The power of cute compels you! The power of cute compels you! ) |
| 3:33 pm | Unemployment It blows chunks, naturally. Lack of money and being a useless lump most of the day are not desirable states of being for me. (I fall into lumpitude with frightening ease, which is why I need to put a stop to it ASAP.) However, there is one thing I am enjoying a lot: being a kitten pillow. Kittens don't really care why mommy is home a lot more these days, all they know is that they have a pillow available throughout the day. Laila in particular has taken to curling up on my lap and kneading whatever she can - stomach, boobs, arms, thighs (my legs have permanent little scratches near my hips now, and so does the crook of my arm) while purring like a little motor. It's annoying when I'm trying to type up a cover letter or transcribe stuff, but the rest of the time it's very sweet. Hobbes climbs into my lap a little less - often he does it en route to some other place. Usually when he does, it's because I'm holding a thin cylindrical object like a pen or knitting needle. For some reason these fascinate him endlessly, and he climbs into my lap purring like a much louder rusty motor and trying to paw whatever I'm holding closer to his mouth so that he can gnaw on it. (Freud would have interesting things to say about the nature of his oral fixation.) I will be very very happy when I have something more intellectual to do, something that isn't hitting "refresh" on my friends page or writing cover letters for the requisite >2 jobs per day. Also something that pays a little better. However, I'm going to miss doing it with a small, warm, purring animal on my lap. Current Music: anemic alternative pop that would make Dean Winchester facepalm |
| Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | |
| 5:02 pm | Boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse! I already tweeted about this, but I have some contract work to tide me over until I get a more permanent job. I'm transcribing things for a company that does wireless voice-activated pagers - most of the employees have them too. They're like clumsy communicators from Star Trek, only shaped more like an iPod mini than a Starfleet, and not as good at recognizing utterances as the Star Trek communicators are. (They're working on that, which is part of why I'm there transcribing things.) They can also locate people, which is incredibly cool. The company is in a fairly new building, and I guess someone decided to have some fun and give them a Star Trek-themed floor plan to go with the "futuristic voice-activated intercom system" product. Their meeting rooms are called Kirk, Uhura, and Observation Deck. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Picard and Sisko somewhere else. Their R&D department is colloquially known as Engineering. There's a room marked Sick Bay, but I'm not sure what's in it (probably not actually a medical facility - it's got double doors, which implies a pretty big room). The cafeteria is called Ten Forward. Ladies and gentlemen, I officially work on the Enterprise. \m/^_^\m/ (Unrelatedly: thinking ahead to Halloween, how would one dress up as an internet meme? I'm thinking black pants with an "all your base" T-shirt, a hat that looks like a pancake, a stuffed snowy owl perched on one's shoulder, and possibly a Guy Fawkes mask. I'd like to work in a rickroll somehow - maybe passing out candy that has a label stuck to it marked LOL RICKROLL?) |
| Thursday, May 28th, 2009 | |
| 11:55 am | Flying through "Avatar" like a six-legged bison (or a bat-lemur) (40-odd hours of free time has its advantages, like being able to check out large amounts of "Avatar" and consume it in a matter of hours.) Zuko didn't scare me much (even before he became all anti-heroic and complex). Azula scares me some, but not that much. Ba Sing Se, on the other hand, gives me the creeping willies. Babylon 5 S4 Earthgov, 1950s CIA brainwashing creeping willies. If a fastidious guy with a corned-beef sandwich shows up in Jet's cell, I might throw my laptop across the room. |
| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | |
| 10:19 am | . . .okay, three, two, one, let's jam I shall be spending my first evening as one of the unemployed masses at a Prop 8 rally. As beginnings go, I could do far worse than reaffirm that even though one might not be surprised anymore by some of the craptastic things one sees (I wasn't surprised at all at the outcome of the appeals) one can and should expect more. Quoted for emphasis from the above link: I'm not ironically detached, I'm not apathetic, I'm not resigned, and I'm not contemptuous of bleeding hearts. I am a greedy bitch with voracious expectations, and I dream long and lustfully of a better world that is both my muse and objective. I want it like the cracked earth of the desert wants rain, and I will neither apologize for nor amend my desire because of its remove from the here and now; its distance encourages my reach. Don't bother asking me what I expect. You already know the answer. ---------------------------------------- Once again I'm sure I don't have to remind people of this, and I expect I won't have to enforce it, but wisecracks and stupid comments = instant bannination. Current Music: The Future Soon - Jonathan Coulton |
| Sunday, May 17th, 2009 | |
| 2:40 pm | Because it's not a Savs get-together without a comfortably sketchy quote sheet: (even if it's a memorial for a fallen comrade) "We're talking about oily bondage!" - Greg |
| Thursday, May 14th, 2009 | |
| 9:17 am | I think it's time we blow this scene - get everyone and their stuff together It looks like I'm going to be joining the ranks of the unemployed in two weeks. O rapture. (At least I won't have to worry about taking the morning off the next time we visit Rabbi Mychal, I guess.) |
| Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 | |
| 2:22 pm | I've had this song (and the accompanying video) stuck in my head for like a week, and strangely I don't mind one bit. There's something about a whole mess of kids smiling and saying "fuck you" and happily giving haters the finger that makes me grin like an idiot. Rainbow-scarfed older lady (1:25) is my favorite. Her and the girl with the emo bangs (0:17), and the kid in the purple T-shirt (0:42), and the kids with the Popsicles of Non-Compensation* (0:26, also in the preview frame in the embedded video) and I'm developing a serious crush on the girl in the green tank top (0:52). . .you know what, they're all good. Shine on, you crazy kids. (Wouldn't it be great if we could rickroll homophobic threads or comments or whatever with this video? Only instead of a rickroll we'd call it a gayroll, or a collabroll.) *Is anyone capable of saying "X of non-compensation" without thinking of Keith? Damn. Way to buzzkill myself. |
| Monday, May 11th, 2009 | |
| 2:13 pm | In which Pandora gets angry for three reasons. 1. My laptop is out of commission - the internet connection is screwed up. Fry's sent it to the manufacturers, and they're going to futz around with it for some unspecified length of time. Oh, and possibly wipe the hard drive. That's fun. (I've never backed up my hard drive; I didn't even know one did that sort of thing with personal computers until a year or two ago.) This, as Dawn Summers would say, is the source of my gladness. 2. You thought Alaska charging victims for their rape kits was bad? Try Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Arkansas. Because placing the onus on the victims of a heinous violation to have their own crimes solved is awesome! (Illinois? Seriously? WTF is that about? Get it together, guys.) 3. I feel the need to say something about the recent spate of states approving same-sex marriage, and strangely that thing is not "OMG SQUEE". Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to death that the homomentum is building and a full 10% of the country thinks we deserve full and equal partnerships, and I hope that sooner rather than later the other 90% will realize that they're missing out on a fun party. But we need to remember that LGBT rights don't begin and end with marriage. Before anyone can get married, they need their basic human rights - life, liberty, equal pursuit of happiness, housing, employment, everything on the lower steps of Maslow's hierarchy - and we're still coming up short. We've got transwomen being murdered and the laughable defense that her killer couldn't help himself when he discovered that she was biologically male. (Which the jury rejected in gratifyingly short order, but still.) We've got kids harassed to death while being called "gay" and "fag". We've got gay couples in Florida and Arkansas unable to adopt, at a time when our adoption and foster care systems are overtaxed. And somewhere in Congress (I forget their name) is a representative who still believes that Matthew Shepard's death was a robbery gone wrong. (Doesn't everyone who dies in a mugging get tortured and left for dead tied to a fence?) Don't Ask Don't Tell is still around, despite the fact that DADT was something that Obama promised he was going to fix ASAP. I could go on, but do you see what I mean? If you're a kid who is suspected of being gay (whether you actually are or not) and your school blames you for being bullied, if your gender presentation is left of center and you can't find a bathroom to take a leak without getting thrown out (or beat up), if you and your partner can't find housing together because every landlord you talk to is a homophobic jerk and your state doesn't have laws protecting you from same-sex housing discrimination, if you can't interact with a cissexual person without wondering if they'll get violent if they find out you're biologically another sex, the centering of (the public face of) LGBT rights on marriage is going to feel very alienating. Same-sex marriage is a very good goal, but we're focusing on it to the exclusion of everything else related to LGBT rights, which is extraordinarily unhelpful. Long story short: same-sex marriage rights are indeed quite shiny, and I'm glad they're finally happening. Now let's take some of that homomentum we're building up, look at the other injustices we have, and keep going. Miles to go before we sleep, and all that. Bonus round: 4. I got to work early mainly to watch the season finale (hopefully not series finale) of Dollhouse. I watched about 40 minutes of it before my coworkers came in. I still haven't finished it, and I probably won't be able to until tomorrow morning. It's very aggravating not having my laptop. |
| Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 | |
| 9:58 pm | Oh my god, Saint Christopher! Look at her butt! OK, I really just wanted to title an entry with that. (I'm surfing the youtubes and getting my nostalgia on Fleet Street style.) But as long as I'm here. . . ( I just can't help it - look for yourself! It's soo-oo-oo biiig! ) And in the less NSFW category: HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH DOLLHOUSE. I have this problem where if I see an actor in a nice fuzzy happy role (like, say, Wash on Firefly), even though I knew several weeks ago that he was going to be in this episode it creeps me out extra when they flip out and slice up people's faces. Also: having gotten halfway through the first season of Avatar, I have concluded that cabbages serve the same role that manure does in "Back to the Future". And I'm still flummoxed that anyone can read this world as anything but ZOMG ASIAN. Current Music: Greatest Hits of the 1590s - Fleet Street |
| Friday, May 1st, 2009 | |
| 10:39 am | For kicks I googled my grade school. Found out that they moved to a bigger building, their basketball team still sucks ass, and the principal left. That's not an entirely bad thing (the principal chased out a good teacher, so I'm not sorry to see her go). But the woman who taught fifth grade is still there. Still teaching a homeroom class, still teaching social studies/history, still openly counting down the years until she retires, and probably still taking the entire class period to yell at the whole class for. . .whatever pissed her off. Dollars to doughnuts she's also still boasting that she knows how to reduce each and every student to tears. . .but won't because she's too nice. This aggression will not stand. (Mr. O'Connor is still there, too. Poor Mr. O'Connor. I hope teaching Latin and art are kinder to him than trying to teach math was. And the gym teacher - there's another one who needs to drop off the face of the earth into the lowest circle of hell. Oddly enough none of the teachers I remember with any fondness are still there.) On a different note: kneel before thy master, DVAP grant, for I shall make thee my bitch. After lunch. |
| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 | |
| 2:36 pm | Surprise! Hey, so everyone who said that there's no alternate sexuality in Star Trek universe? Totally lying! Bisexuality exists. You just need to be in a bizarro alternate universe where the Klingons and Cardassians are allies and Kira is a slightly crazy despot on Terok Nor/Deep Space 9. Also apparently you have to be a villain. As they say on Shakesville, lolsob. I'll have to content myself with Janeway/Seven and Garak/Bashir subtext like everyone else. (OTOH, I'm fairly sure there's humanoid asexual reproduction, since Bashir and Sisko talk about a baby shower for a male worker who's budding twins. Not sure if this counts as a representation of asexuality, though.) On an entirely unrelated note, I'm waiting for Morn to reveal himself to be a pirate ninja spy of awesomeness during the last episode. He's chilling on the promenade while DS9 is on the verge of exploding and/or being overrun by Cardassians/Jem'hadar/gooey Changelings, and suddenly he gets up and displays badassitude at levels previously only reached by Mr. Rogers in a bloodstained sweater. Sort of like Kosh on B5, but far more unexpected. Current Music: Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny - in my head |
| Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | |
| 4:40 pm | oh FRAK Keith just passed away due to a heart attack. I don't have tons of details - I suspect those will trickle in in their own time. Savs, if you have any info, go ahead and post it here or send it to me - metostad [at] gmail.  Keith always had a smile for us, and despite his penchant for playing dour roles in the chorus was one of the happiest people at Savs. I'll miss him holding court at cast parties and rehearsals and hearing his signature booming "Mini-Frau!" ::pours out a Hansen's soda for Keith:: Rest in peace, sir. You've earned it well. Atrica bless, and may your next journey be as exciting as the ones you sought out in life. ETA: There is a memorial service soonish (TBA, details when I get them), and at some point an address to send cards, condolences, etc. to his mother (again, details when I get them). . . .what do you say to a mother who has to bury her child? I don't even know where to start. Son of ETA: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} senea has the email sent to the Savs list here. I also found a Stanford Report article from today that remembers Keith. Memorial service is in the next few weeks (in Mem Chu, I'm guessing). Current Mood:  sadCurrent Music: Raise Up A Glass - Seelie Court |
| Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | |
| 10:31 am | Bonus round! Vermont overrides a gubernatorial veto to legalize same-sex marriage So now that's Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Vermont. The last two in as many weeks. Holy crap, they are falling like dominoes. And how excited am I that one of those states is in the Midwest? REALLY FUCKING EXCITED. Everyone expects those damn hippies on the coasts to be crazy and radical and allow same-sex marriage. When a state in the Midwest does it, that's a whole different ball of wax. The Midwest is notorious for being conservative about things like homosexuality, and when they legalize gay marriage, that means that we don't have to sit down and shut up and wait for all the old homophobes to die - our culture can adapt, people can change, and equal rights won't be just a legacy to pass on to our kids. We'll get them, not just in our lifetime but really fucking soon, because holy fucking shit it's happening right now, as we watch. Of course, this means that California officially loses the mantle of "progressive state". We were already dangerously behind the times with Connecticut and Massachusetts, and when Iowa and Vermont managed to pull its head out of its ass before us, ya estuvo. But it's OK! We can get the consolation prize of "not jackasses anymore" if we hurry up and overturn Prop 8 soon! I'm going to buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's after work to celebrate (they're still based out of Vermont, right?). That or some maple syrup - the real stuff, not the reconstituted Aunt Jemima crap. Maybe those maple sugar candies, if I can find them. Now I'm making myself hungry. **************************************** I'm sure this is an unnecessary warning, but the first person to complain, bring up appeals processes or activist judges or "will of the people", or otherwise be a jackass and rain on my parade right now will get your asses banned so fast it'll make your head spin. I got four hours of sleep last night after Death Guild and I'm riding high on caffeine, so you have to ask yourself one question: do you feel lucky, punks? Current Mood:  hopefulCurrent Music: This Is My Rifle - Combichrist |
| Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | |
| 11:14 am | Two Holes in one year? No one can live at that speed! Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. I fed my colleagues love philtre and now they won’t stop speaking in Cockney accents or being lovey-dovey with each other. THIS IS NOT GOOD. WE HAVE GRANTS DUE IN LESS THAN 72 HOURS. Background: this week we’ve all been running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Remember how I said all the recovery money was going to be allocated soon in the form of competitive grants, and how they were all going to have due dates of, like, yesterday? We have eight we’re working on. EIGHT, motherfucker. Three of them are due on Friday. (Are they done yet? Of course not – what do you think we are, organized?) The rest are all due before April 16th. And a lot of them are collaborative projects that require signatures from our partners (original signatures, meaning we can’t fax things back and forth, we need to either go to them in person or get really good quality scans). So yesterday I was out getting signatures from one of our collaborators out in the boonies of Contra Costa – I was in a rush because it took me forever to find 72 St. Mary Axe (Google Maps kept trying to send me to 72 St. Mary Ave, which is across town) and I bumped into a guy coming out of the building next door. He dropped a bottle in the collision but he ran off before I could give it back. I went to get the signatures, and while the director was busying signing things I took a look at the bottle. It was from a joke shop called Wellington and Wells (why is a joke shop named like a law firm?) and it claimed to be a love philtre. Fairly standard one, I think: puts people to sleep, they fall in love with the first person they see upon waking up, married people are immune, etc. I put it in my pocket and forgot about it. This morning we had a staff meeting and I was helping make coffee since I’m usually early to work. I’m not sure how the philtre ended up in the coffee, but it did. (I do remember sticking some creamer packets in my pocket because I was running out of hands – maybe it got mixed up with them?) Anyway, about halfway through the meeting everyone passed out, and about five minutes later they woke up speaking in Cockney accents and making googly eyes at each other. Including my colleagues in development – they don’t normally drink coffee, and I’m not sure why they did today, but they chose one hell of a morning to start. The label claims that married people are immune. Let me tell you, that is a dirty lie. Maybe it’s an old label, or maybe someone fucked up the formula, I don’t know. The finance guy is married with grandchildren and he’s all gaga over the HR director, also married with grandchildren. Also, the bottle didn’t warn us that when they said “the first person they see upon waking up”, they don’t discriminate based on gender. This shouldn’t weird me out – I’m a progressive 21st-century feminist Bay Area resident who cried bitter tears when Prop 8 passed – but it’s jarring nonetheless. ::shrug:: ARGH. At least nobody’s singing, or doing anything more physical than holding hands and kissing each other chastely on the cheek. Still, three grants due in less than three days. I’m a n00b and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I'm putting all three together on my own while everyone professes their love to each other in Dick Van Dyke accents. God help us all. edit: Fuck me gently with a chainsaw some more. I didn’t realize it at first but I was the first person the executive assistant saw when she woke up, and now she’s banging on my office door trying to get in. It would be funny if I didn’t have to barricade myself in. I can’t work with her yelling outside. FUCK MY LIFE. Current Mood:  stressedCurrent Music: Carol crying outside - I'm a cold bitch, I know |
| Monday, March 30th, 2009 | |
| 1:19 pm | The fiercest hat to come from South Central Fierce of Fierce City I have found instructions to make my own ( fierce Aretha Franklin hat ) My life is now complete. This shall be finished and make its debut at some point in the near future. This is the one. Stops time. Tell your friends. (I have a half-finished entry on street harassment that I keep preempting to make these all-important posts about things like fierce hats and Abney Park. Seriously, it's been in the works for like six months. I need to stop dicking around and finish it, because in the grand scheme of things it's probably more important than fierce hats and steampunk.) Current Music: Night Surgeon - Repo! (in my head) |
| Monday, March 23rd, 2009 | |
| 9:20 pm | Humans vs siphonaptera, part who-the-frak-knows Background/update: we Advantaged the cats and fumigated the apartment but we're still seeing some fleas. According to my boss and coworker (both have had cats and dogs for ages and have dealt with fleas multiple times) it's normal to see some fleas for another month or two. We've been keeping the kittens out of our bedroom for now and killing every flea we see, and between that and some heavy-duty vacuuming I think they're starting to recede a bit (knock wood). Anyway, on Sunday morning I woke up with a bizarre phrase in my head: "We nuked the Twelve Colonies but we forgot about the fleas still living on Galactica and Pegasus, and now they're trying to recolonize New Caprica." A few hours and some MS Paint-shopping (it's like photoshopping for cheap people who don't want to buy Photoshop) later: ( Warning: large pictures of insects and a horrific pun ahead - not for the squeamish or those who don't like bad jokes ) Now for something completely different: Dollhouse. Word on the street was that episode 6 was where the story finally got interesting, and/or FOX turned the "less talking, more T&A" filter down a notch. Episode has come and gone, and my thoughts are behind a cut just in case (I think ra1330 and I are the only ones watching, though): ( sex, lies, and agency ) |
| Sunday, March 8th, 2009 | |
| 9:46 pm | Inspired by RaceFail '09: Two questions for people: 1. When playing in systems that have races analogous to our own (not D&D, for example) do you have a race/ethnicity you commonly make your characters, and if so does it match your own? 2. How comfortable do you feel playing a character of a different ethnicity? 2a. For that matter, do you feel comfortable playing characters of your own ethnicity? I realized this evening that most of mine have been of unspecified race, but if you'd put a gun to my head and forced me to choose one it would have been Caucasian. The only exceptions were Henry, who was half African American, and Lorena, who was Latina by way of [wherever in Mexico the La Llorona legend comes from]. I was fairly comfortable playing Henry mainly because I was juggling four characters at once whenever he was in play, which meant that I had a bad habit of forgetting who I was at any given time, let alone what race I was. Lorena made me horribly self-conscious mainly because of her accent, but also because I was playing working-class Mexican Stanford worker from the perspective of privileged middle-class (if not exactly rich) Mexican-American Stanford student. Better informed than your average Mexican-American Stanford student perhaps (in freshman year I had an unpaid internship with SEIU 715, where I interviewed a lot of Mexican workers about their lives and working conditions), but still vastly different. Why haven't I played more characters of different races? Primarily I'm a lazy, lazy gamer who doesn't put a whole ton of effort into her characters - I can count the number of times I've put serious thought into a character's background on one hand, and even fewer times when I've actually written the backstory. (I think Edna from "Friday's Fortune" was the first time.) Gaming is far more social activity than deep sublime introspective life-changing experience for me; my tendency is to put in enough effort to make a character capable of participating in the game, and stop there (I'm working on this). More often than not, however, it's for the same reasons that there are few protagonists who aren't white, male, and straight in all media: 1) white, male, straight, and able-bodied is highly privileged in our culture and thus is the default; if there's no "compelling" reasons to make a character anything else, it doesn't happen; 2) I'm afraid of backlash if I get a character wrong. Playing a white character saves me from having to think too closely about the ways a character of color would interact with the world (if I can't be bothered to think beyond "boggan who mothers everyone on the ship", chances are I won't think too closely about what happens when a character walks down the street at night), even if those experiences are my own. (Note to self: if I play a Mexican character again in the future, have several people assume ze can't speak English, even if English is hir only language.) Neither of those is right, and the only one I have a prayer of fixing on my own is #2, since it's the only one in my direct control*. The prevailing theme of RaceFail '09 has been "try, fail, try again, fail better". (That and "sit down, shut up, and listen to the POC when ze tells you ur doin it wrong, because chances are ze has a better idea than you of what it's actually like to be a POC". Also "don't be a douche and out people's online personas to their bosses".) So I should put on my big girl panties and get to work on it.** * That doesn't excuse me from working on #1, of course. As some Jewish dude (Maimonides?) said, just because the work won't be finished in your lifetime doesn't excuse you from your obligation to work on it. ** That means someone needs to run another campaign. Someone should get on that. |
| Friday, March 6th, 2009 | |
| 9:29 am | Blug. Because I have smart friends who like debates and whatnot, I should probably preface this by saying that my mental capacity right now is at "fire bad, tree pretty" level and not likely to budge from there until, I don't know, Shabbat. (Hopefully it'll budge by Shabbat - we have company coming over.) Even if I weren't in "fire bad tree pretty" mode I don't know how interested in debate - I'm taking this issue very personally, and the intricacies of state law, federal law, constitutionality, legal precedents, and Ken Starr's apparent hatred of anyone (gay or straight) having sex lose their fascination for me when I feel like I'm getting punched in the gut repeatedly. I'm not interested in debating whether legal precedent allows someone to keep punching me in the gut, or whether it was OK to get punched because mob rule says it's OK, or whether I should have expected to get punched because society currently endorses people punching me, or whether I shouldn't worry about being punched now because it'll be illegal in a few years, or whether I should or shouldn't even be angry about getting punched because I have all the legal rights of that other guy who didn't get punched but it's called something else (the metaphor's breaking down, sorry - fire bad, tree pretty) - all I care about for the foreseeable future is BEING PUNCHED FUCKING HURTS AND IT NEEDS TO STOP NOW. Teal deer summary: no debates plz. There are probably a lot of other entries on your f-list that endorse other opinions and/or are open to debates on this subject; I encourage you to go to town on them, and I might even pop over and lurk to watch the debate if I have some brain-cycles to spare. This one, however, is rant-space only. ( now that we've got that out of the way ) |