Pawprints in the Aether

So yeah, insomnia. And a quick thought before I go to sleep: (or to bed and not sleep, anyway)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Twilight Blade. It's a movie where Buffy and Blade meet Edward Cullen from Twilight. Bella ditches Edward and has crazy hot witch sex with Willow. Giles and Blade's Scooby (the old guy) have awesome banter. People, this movie NEEDS TO BE MADE.

Another thing that middle schoolers rather unexpectedly like:

The history of fashion.

Even the boys. Especially the boys.

Between this and the general rejection of the crap pop (just typed 'poop' -- freudian slip, much?) music being pushed on everyone now, I actually have a lot of hope for this generation.

If you have StumbleUpon on your computer, uninstall it. I should have thought of this a long time ago, and I'm a moron for not realizing it, but there's nothing in the system that stops you from being directed to websites with malware on them. Indeed, it makes all kinds of sense for people who want to spread their malware around to link it to StumbleUpon.

Anyway, my desktop has picked up the virus that it got last time (I don't know where it came from last time, but StumbleUpon is probably a good bet, since I have Web of Trust to warn me against malware sites that I'd navigate to normally) , the one that I had to wipe my hard drive completely to get rid of. It's seriously resisting being removed this time, too. The special tool that's supposed to remove it can't even -see- it. Avast can't see it. (As an aside, I'm really disappointed with Avast. It has been all but useless, easily outclassed by Spybot.) MalwareBytes saw some of it, but didn't get it all, same deal with SpyBot. I'm running AdAware right now, and it has found a couple of things, so I'm hoping that between the three of them, they'll get it all. We'll see.

Anyway, something about the virus alerted Microsoft that my hardware has "significantly changed" (I updated my graphics card a while back), and it wants me to re-register Windows. Because I updated my graphics card. So that's going to be ANOTHER hassle. Joy.

In other news, nickel brought home yet another cold, which I promptly caught. Which means that I'm going to miss the first non-drinking New Years party that I've been invited to in YEARS. And also means that the cold is probably going to move down into my lungs again and leave me coughing and unable to breathe for weeks YET AGAIN. It was absolute hell last time. Last time was like a week ago. I may also miss yet another D&D game, which means that I will fall even farther behind in experience. I'm almost a level behind everyone else at this point, because one of the days I was sick, I missed a major fight.

nickel has been congested, which is making him snore, which means that I wound up sleeping on the couch last night, and I may do so tonight, as well. Which sucked, because being sick is already making me sore.

In other, OTHER news, something is wrong with Cordelia. We don't know what it is, but her purr has gotten raspy and has lost its deep reverberation, and she sometimes sputters out and coughs while she's purring. I took her to the vet ($50 so far), and he told me that it could be three things: Throat irritation, an infection, or fucking cancer. I've been told to run the shower in the bathroom until it gets hot and put her in the steamy room for a while every day to see if it's just throat irritation. If she's not better in two weeks, then we have to take her BACK to the vet for antibiotics (probably way more than $50), and if that doesn't work, they'll have to sedate her so they can see if it's cancer. Whee!

Between us getting sick over and over and Cordelia having something wrong with her, I'm wondering if maybe the heating ducts for my apartment have mold or something in them. I'm planning on asking the maintainance guy for my apartment complex to come in and take a look.

Oh, I also discovered that someone I had a serious falling out with in college is playing on the only MUSH I play on right now, in the same sphere as me. And she knows who I am. She opened up with the fake 'Oh, let's be friends' bullshit. I don't play games like that, so I made it clear that I still didn't want anything to do with her.

She's the person who pressured me not to tell a friend that she'd started dating a guy that my friend was in love with. Their relationship was complicated, but he'd told her that he wasn't ready for a girlfriend yet, but that when he was, that girlfriends would be her. And then he turned around and started dating Tory. And not only did Tory not tell my friend about this, she actually talked about 'her boyfriend', asked advice about what she should wear around him, what she should say to him. And I caved under the pressure not to tell by cutting off relations with my friend so that I wouldn't have to lie. It was a despicable thing to do -- the decision that, of all of the bad choices I've made in my life, I most regret. I try to talk to nickel about this, but he doesn't understand why I still regret having done it.

I did try to make it right by finally telling my friend what was up, and while I'm glad I did that, it turned into a 'shoot the messenger' thing. After that, she was polite to me, but blew off my attempts at talking to her and didn't seek me out. I don't blame her, either, because I was a shitty friend -- except since then, I understand she's made up with everyone else. Just not me. The person who told her what was going on, the one person who refused to actively lie to her.

So anyway, Tory has turned up again, she's mad at me for still wanting nothing to do with her, and I have no faith at all that she's not going to take her feelings IC, because she's done it before.

So life pretty much sucks right now.

(Oh, and Tory, if you're reading this -- you really have no business being here after the last comment you posted on my journal.)

So I just watched the results show of Dancing With the Stars. In case any of you haven't yet, I'll put my thoughts after a jump.

( So here's what I think )

Don Francisco has decided that the door from the hall to the computer room is an awesome toy. He'll nudge it open, then reach around, catch it, and nudge it closed. Or he'll sit inches away from it, STARING at it with big eyes.

I've been kicking around in my head lately what the price of our behavior is going to be.

I'm talking specifically about my state, CA, where we all expect to get everything for free from our government, and all taxes are bad. As a result, the poor are taking it up the pooper, and our infrastructure is -still- crumbling, our schools -still- underfunded, and our services -still- going to shit. Something's gotta give. What will it be?

Food shortages caused the French Revolution. When people don't get the very basics -- food, shelter, safety -- they become dangerous. A perceived inequality thrown into the mix makes it a powderkeg, and that's what's going to happen in California. The poor are going to get poorer, with no benefits to cover them. People aren't going to have health services and are going to live in increasingly violent neighborhoods. They're not going to have enough to eat as we increasingly slash welfare. And they're going to be able to look at the palace-houses built on hills, glittering in the sunshine, above the rabble. Society takes pretty damn good care of the rich...

And something's going to happen that puts match to powderkeg, and the riots are going to start.

If I lived near a big city, I'd be very nervous. Hell, I'm a little closer to Sacramento than I'd like. If things get so bad that people decide to march on the capitol and show their elected officials exactly where they can shove it, Davis, with its tidy affluence, will be right in the way.

BTW, I'd also be nervous if I lived in the South or any conservative state in the midwest, because militant groups are on the uptick, and ammo makers can't keep ammo in stock no matter how fast they make it. People are stockpiling. Not something that's likely to boil over here (although there are some places in the middle of the state where I might worry about it), but in other parts of the country, it might become a problem, especially if we get an administration down the line that starts 'slashing the deficit' by cutting down on/cutting out services to the poor.

We're in for Interesting Times. And honestly? We're only going to reaping what we all collectively have sowed.

ETA: Maybe next year I'll take a more political bent on 'blog like it's the end of the world'.

nickel says that middle schoolers like Journey now. Not 'like in order to be ironic', but honest to god like Journey.

I was reading 'My Life is Average', a single topic blog frequented by a lot of middle and highschool students, and I see this one: 'Today, I was on the computer late at night blaring "Don't Stop Believing" and I was rocking out, until my dad came out in his underwear. He looked angry and he's a big man so I turned it down. He said, "What are you doing, turn that shit up!" We then proceeded to rock out to Journey, me on vocals and him playing air guitar. He then proceeded to go back to bed without a word. Best. Dad. Ever. MLIA'

Of course, his dad was rocking out because he was like 'what the fuck? Is my kid really listening to MY MUSIC?' On a similar note. nickel's kids are horrified when they discover that he was listening to the stuff that they like now when he was in highschool.

I'm tired of being called 'eccentric' (or variations thereof). People pretend it's an endearing term, but really it's just a way of reminding me that I don't belong and pressuring me to conform.

I'm tired of being outcast because I won't play the hypocritical 'Oh, BFF!' game to satisfy people's self-esteem.

I'm tired of being seen as 'cold' or 'hating' because I don't gush with pretend warmth.

I'm tired of being passed over and ignored because I'm too proud to be whiny and needy.

I'm tired of being looked at funny and made ashamed of my education, just because other people are a bunch of morons who'd rather watch reality TV and piss their lives away with their thumbs up their asses.

I'm tired of not being able to connect with people without hiding everything of who I am.

... Someone who's wise enough that when he talks, I listen said to me a little while back that I play the parts I play, and I play them so well, because deep down, I don't feel that the person who I am is worth anything or acceptable. I think it's just because I can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of people who haven't lost interest, ignored me, pushed me away, or set me on the fringes when I stopped playing stupid-ass games of pretend.

I don't want to pretend anymore.

So for those of you who haven't been following Dancing With The Stars, Kelly Osbourne made it into the finals. Which means that she's among the top three dancers out of something like twelve or fourteen. nickel said that he saw an interview with a former winner of the show who thinks that she's going to take home the trophy.

(For those of you who're like 'I can't believe you watch that!', watch it sometime before you judge. The dancing, especially this late in the competition, is absolutely gorgeous. I love watching people dance ballroom. You can find old episodes at the Hulu show page, here. It's not like one of those reality shows where people laugh at and trash each other -- you can tell that everyone wants all of the contestants to do well, including the audience, who boo the judges when they give out low scores.)

Anyway, when it was revealed that she was moving on to the finals, I'll admit it, I started screaming and jumping around. But let me explain why.

I've always sorta rooted for Kelly Osbourne. Not because she's Ozzy's daughter, but because everyone else was always trashing her, calling her a fat pig and ugly just because she didn't succumb to hollywood pressure to starve herself to oblivion, insulting her taste in clothing just because she didn't dress like a clone of Paris Hilton. Heaven forbid that someone in the public eye have a personality I know what it's like to be treated that way, and I've always just wanted her to do well for no other reason than to make the losers who talk shit about her eat their words. When it was announced that she was a contestant on Dancing With the Stars, I remember reading the stuff from people who said she was so fat that she'd never make it through a routine, that she'd look hideous without extreme camera blurring to hide how ugly she was, that she'd be terrible, and so on, and I thought -- 'You know what? Fuck them all. I want her to win.'

... But I honestly didn't think she'd win. Everything I've heard about her in the past told me that somewhere along the line, the pressure would get to be too much and she'd flame out. I thought this right up until I saw her dance. Because oh my god, she was -good- at it. She had worked -hard- to get good at it, you could tell. She was probably intended as one of those throwaway people to attract viewers in the early weeks of the show, like Tom DeLay, but I think she's surprised everyone. She has a core of inner strength that's unbeatable. No matter what happens, she bounces back. And while technically, she isn't the best of the dancers, you can see her heart and soul, her personality in her dances. There's a vulnerability there; she's baring it all for a huge TV audience, knowing what the assholes out there are going to say, knowing the way that she's always been a subject of ridicule.

So I want her to win it. She's up against two very, very good dancers, but I don't care. She's not quite as good as they are, technically, but it's not all about technical precision. It's about how the dance makes you -feel-. I want her to win it all and really show the people who said she'd bomb that they're fucking idiots. She has really begun to embody the 'princess' part of 'punk princess', and I want to see her in a diamond crown.

GO KELLY GO!

Earlier today, I posted about saving California, and I mentioned that one thing that we should do is turn schools into centers of the community. I said that I'd post about that later today. Well, it's later, so here you go.

First, my argument for why we should turn schools into centers of the community: As many of you know, nickel is a teacher. He has discovered that he can increase parental involvement not just in his classes but in -all- classes by calling the parents often, not just to report problems, but to praise students who are putting in the effort and doing well. What this suggests to me is that parents don't check out when it comes to schools because they don't care. They check out because by not communicating with or reaching out to them on a regular and frequent basis, teachers and administration discourage them from being involved.

Think about it: Because of fears of OMG TEH PEDOS RAEP OUR CHIIIILDREN, our schools have become places that are closed off and locked away. It's no wonder that many parents see them as places where their kids go while they're at work, not thinking about what goes on there.

So how do you turn a school into a center of the community?

( More after the jump. )