Not Anonymous

Good evening.

It's the night before Erev Rosh Hashana (New Year's Eve) and I'm freakin' exhausted.

Those of you who follow me and are active on twitter will know of the saga of the window that has been haunting me since Friday morning.

What is the saga of the window you might ask? Let me tell you from the beginning.

My bedroom had carpeting put approximately 20-odd years ago. It was brown. In the late 1980's early 1990's I assume this was he height of floor fashion. I was a mite too young to appreciate it. Nevertheless it was brown. My parents decided my room needed a renovation and put in parquet. It looks lovely, really it does and it makes the room look bigger and lighter than the god-awful brown wall to wall carpeting - a thing I will never do in a home of my own, it is a horror to clean (when one bothers to do so) and collects dust and hair and insects.

Insects.

If you've been reading me for long enough, you know I have a terrible phobia of cockroaches. You see, last summer the humidity and temperature were ideal for these cretins to spread their wings and fly. And so father put a mesh net over the inside of my window as an attempt to keep the creepies out. It worked for the most part, but looked ugly as sin and it was a bitch to clean my shutters and window panes.

And so, along with a brand spanking new floor a new window was installed.

Only on Friday when everything was supposed to have been done at the same time, floor and window, there were malfunctions.

The window workman brought a torn net panel that was designed to be on the outside of my window to keep my mortal enemies outside my domain. So... it was decided he'd come back on Sunday.

Only on Sunday he decided he couldn't make it.

So he came on Monday. Only when I got back from work that evening I was told that he'd torn the mesh net again.

I swear, I felt like I was going to have a tantrum that rival my 2.5 year old niece! You see, all my stuff, all my property was in a pile in a living room while we waited for this incompetent ass to get his act together. I spent my nights in my childhood bedroom, where my nieces and nephews sleep when they come visit. It wasn't bad, but I was stressing out because it was taking so long and on the Saturday when I started cleaning up the floor and rearranging my bookshelves a baby cockroach flew on me.

It was creepy!

But this afternoon my mother sent my a text in which she told me "Tonight's the night!"

My reply was "Hallelujah! :)"

Yes, smiley included.

So tonight I sleep in my own bedroom, in my own bed, with all my stuff clean and tidy.

It was a rough week because as I said, I was stressing out and I everything was going wrong and my mom was resenting my bad mood, which made me resent her and her bad moods like fucking whoa!

But we got through it and it's now over.

Tomorrow the whole entire clan is coming over to celebrate Rosh Hashana. I'm so glad alcohol is a mitzvah.

Good morning. I've decided to try entering journal posts on the move, considering the fact that I'll be travelling extensively over the next two weeks. And yeah, I'll be taking my tablet Officer Kalakaua with me, I thought it would be fun to try to chronicle the vacation in long form and not just tweet randomly.

I don't know what my connectivity is going to be like, so this may all be for nothing, but it's worth a try.

I'm still laptop deficient, relying on my phone and tablet for most things, but seeing as my work is Internet based and the access to my mother's guest account on her desktop, I am most certainly not offline.

I do, however, miss the reliability of a pc. My tablet isn't capricious as all that, but the amount of DYAC that come from this little touch screen keyboard are too comical, not to mention that my go to websites tend to be a bit borked.

Still, it is a lot, I'm aware.

Here's to being around here more during my holiday!

I know everyone, their cat, dog, toad and owl is on this thing, but I don't care!

I have a wand!

And I was Sorted into Slytherin!

Finally!

EEEEEEEEEEEE!

Please excuse the late night stupidity.

I'm running a test to see who's reading my posts. So, if you read this, leave me a one-word comment about your day that starts with the third letter of your DW/LJ USERNAME. Only one word please. Then repost so I can leave a word for you. Don't just post a word and not copy - that's not as much fun!

My word is "mire", because I am slow going this morning.

This post touches an important pan-fandom subject and as such I think it should be read far and wide, so please, spread this link around! Thank you in advance.

verasteine has written a parallel post of her own regarding being straight in fandom.

Something has been weighing on my mind for a while now.

It’s not a new thought, in fact I’ve written and discussed this before, because it is a pervasive issue and it touches me again and again in fandom.

Slash fandom is not a place without problems, this we all know, as fans, but this one particular issue is one which I’m finding harder and harder to let go as time goes by and I’m wondering if other fannish queers and/or queer fans feel it as well.

I’d like to state that I’m very aware of how problematic the use of “queer” is as a word – because while I personally identify with it strongly, it is a word with a traumatic past and not every QUILTBAG person sees it as a reclaimed word, as such, please bear with me regarding its use in this post.

Things are not as they once were, over the past decade the media landscape has changed in a way I still find hard to describe, I’m sure you who are older than I feel this even more acutely.

I don’t want to talk about the canon queer characters, relationship and storylines, because you can critique those from here to high heaven from our perspective and that has been done.

I want to talk and ask you, my fellow queer fans, about the ambivalent feeling I get from slash fandom as a queer fan.

Slash isn’t queer fiction, but it is queered fiction and a lot of the time, the idea that gay people exist within a larger cultural context is either forgotten or exploited. Forgotten in the sense that a lot of stories write the two men as though there isn’t an entire gay history and culture that informs on how these relationships are constructed.
And they are exploited in the sense that some aspects of gay culture are used to differentiate these two guys from those other queers, because they are the strange and the freakish, whereas the two guys are in love.

There are of course the instances in which authors try to be inclusive of queer culture, but due to the stereotypical way it is depicted in the media the image of effeminate men being “less than” masculine men gets perpetuated in fic.

The coming out process and the whole notion of being queer in public is, at times, reductive and lacking in the narrative complexity that informs our own queer identities. Not to mention the use of the work “queer” itself without any acknowledgment that hey, for a lot of these guys, it would as bad as the f-word (no, not “fuck” or “fellation”).

There are times where I will be thrown out of a fic that deals with homophobia, but succumbs to gender stereotypes, because the relationship becomes yet another reflection of heterosexual and heteronormative models, only with two dicks.

And of course, the ever popular of putting “slash” or “m/m sex” in the warning part of the header.

There are other issues and other instances, some of them too numerous to recount, and yes, fandom can’t but reflect the larger straight assuming culture from which it emerges. But QUEER PEOPLE EXIST in slash fandom and I’d like to hear our voices with regards to how these narratives and stories are written. Because even though this isn’t gay fiction, I am a part of this creative and transformative culture that takes from my sexual culture and doesn’t seem to realize that that is what it does.

Do other queer fans and/or fannish queer fans feel this way? Are there areas in slash fandom you feel more welcome and included? What other issues have you felt that corresponds with being queer in fandom, if at all?

It's been a week since I moved into my own apartment.

I happen to be spending this weekend without [Sexy!Roommate] but that's all right, because I met with friends last night. A friend from Uni (previous, not current) invited me over for Friday night supper and it was quite glorious. A close-knit group being so warm and accepting towards a "stranger" and excellent food - there were not enough people to eat it all.

And today I work up so very late and had breakfast for lunch.

Apparently I moved into a neighbourhood with quite a dodgy reputation, which I understand where it comes from, it is quite neglected (despite the fact that many of the neighbourhoods, other than the tourist traps and historically restored ones, are equally neglected by the city) and what you'd consider "low class", I can't really tell you if the reputation of dogdiness is warranted. Maybe once I've lived here for longer.

Right now it's raining buckets while the sun is shining. My parents always said that there's a monkey wedding when that happens.

I don't really understand that idiom, but it's something that stuck on my mind, because I can only assume it means monkeys get married under a rainbow.

My room still doesn't feel like it's mine. There are too many things missing and there is still so much to be done in the flat itself.

Maybe you're all bored by all this writing about the changes I've gone though over the past few weeks...

So, is there something you want me to write about? Something you miss reading on this LJ/DW? Are you all busy writing NaNoWriMo?

*Deep breath*

Hi guys.

It has been... a long summer. Putting it mildly.

A lot has happened and in fact not that much at all.

But the main thing that happened to me today was that I handed in my final papers and I have officially finished all the academic obligations for my BA in Literary Theory and Women & Gender studies.

Four years.

I can't believe it's been four years. How does that happen?

Soon, I'll be starting the Library Science program at a different university and I'll be going flat "shopping" with my future room mate who is going to be studying along with me.

I am so sleep deprived, I have no idea if any of the above is even coherent.

Suffice to say, I'm back after a summer of way too much on my plate and I'm here to stay.

I hope you all find a reason to stay as well.

Thank you for sticking around.

<3

My Library is undergoing renovations.

As we speak my brain feels as though the drilling is actually happening to it, rather than the floor and plaster walls!

I do not do well with loud, continuous noises. Beyond mere irritation, it feels like my ears are bleeding, because once the noise gets to a certain pitch, my ear drums are telling me to GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE NOISE!

Add to that the dust, the schlepping and hauling of books in the general reading room (my job is in the reserved reading room, which is much smaller and more pleasant) and my general bitterness at having to work in these conditions and you may imagine what my mood is like.

Trying to get people to complain with me is no good, all they keep telling me is that it'll get worse before it gets better.

Has no one heard of any solidarity complaining!? Making the bad things appear worse so that we're ready for the truly gruesome nonsense to come?

And on top of that, I watched a truly depressing movie the other day and my appetite has still not returned. That's what I get for watching a movie about a hunger strike.

Oh my god, I've only been at work an hour and the noise will never end!

When it comes to hierarchy in the Library of those who actually deal with books, I'm pretty much the lowest.

Being a Library Page, I get books from the return box, register them as "returned" and push a trolley to put them back on the shelves. Being that I work in the Reserved Reading Room (i.e. the books that are lent out for two days, rather than two weeks or a month) lots of students who, for some reason, either don't know how to use a computer or don't understand the system (Dewie-Decimal, which is numbers and alphabet) will come to me and ask for help.

It's a good feeling.

I pretty much know where every book is in my little Reading Room (it really is little, because as I said it's only reserved books) and if I don't, I can pretty much find any book if I know the general subject, if the number + name are absent.

The knowledge I have obtained and will hopefully retain feels special to me, though probably anyone who loves Libraries or is an academic who uses them on a regular basis has obtained a part of this magical ability to find one book between these walls of information, bursting, all them calling "Read Me" (except the Econ books, sorry dudes, you're too boring, unless you're about the sociology of economics, or economics and class disparity, but then, you're not really about Econ).

I arrived this morning, about half an hour before I was meant to punch in, because yesterday the Library was closed, but the return box is always open. It took me an hour an a half to sort through all the books students returned yesterday, I'm surprised the box didn't burst.

My foresight served me well, as by the time I was done sorting with the first batch, the second batch consisted of a sane amount of books (5) as opposed to an fucking insane amount of books I had to deal with on my own (well over 50).

So, I'm feeling pretty accomplished and good at my job.

Too bad my back disagrees with me. Ow.

An anecdote, regarding how one shouldn't have supper, if you please.

Last night, after a long day at Uni and Work, I came home, showered and was picked up by a friend in order to spend time with my, um, posse, I guess.

They'd been meeting the past few weeks to (re-)watch Battle Star Galactica and I'd decided to join them yesterday evening.

As is common when all of us meet up, we all decide to order take out. This time, we ordered from a burger place called Moses. I've been told it's a good place. I wouldn't know as the only things I eat that used to be alive are fish and sea food.
They have a veggiburger, called "Missouri" which on paper looked decent enough, though the only really good veggiburger I ever had was about three years ago from a burger place called Black - they call their veggiburger "Bridget Bardot". I like that.

Any way, the food was ordered.

I'd had no idea the burger I ordered was a "health" sandwich.

Woe was I.

The bun was not a nice fluffy white bread bun, oh no, it was a brown whole wheat (which can be nice, damnit!) bun. When I bit into the burger I couldn't tell the difference between the burger and the bread. They were the same colour and texture. Yes, really. I added some mayo and tomato sauce and took a bit sans bun (it was gross) and while there was a slight improvement, it was still not edible enough.

I grumbled. There was much bitterness.

One of my meat eating friends took a bite and said "I really can't taste any difference between this and the cardboard it came in".

I ate the chips and some of the mashed potatoes that someone else had ordered. There was also chocolate cake, which should have cheered me up, but merely mocked me. Yes, the chocolate mocked me, I kid you not.

I declared "we are no longer ordering from "Moses" or indeed any other burger place when I with you!"

They grumbled, but said "fine".

Thus my rights as a minority prevailed.

We also renamed that burger "Misery".
We are a punny bunch.