Mythistoria

...and I finally looked at my evals from last quarter. I usually do that the moment they're in; this break, I was trying to finish CurrentFreshly Done! Project (a touchy emotional place, as I had no real idea what the hell was going to happen), I was exhausted, and all I wanted was 3 weeks of Dragon Age and mostly-solitude. And even though I thought the classes went great, well, sometimes the little buggers surprise you. Seeing straight ones on an eval--a bit of an ass-kick, especially when you are not sure who did it. Anyway.

No, that didn't happen this time. Damn close to perfect scores, yay for the students. My step-class thought I was damn near infallible. My original lot had a few more criticisms, but they're legit and right and things I knew I needed to work on. It's always rocky, the first quarter on new material, when I'm worried that the novel won't work or the students will hate X movie or how the hell am I going to talk about that freakin' article and why did I think it was a good idea to do zombie haiku again? oh god! --But it all worked out. I am... if not enthusiastic about the new quarter starting tomorrow, at least I am comfortable going back into the classroom.

Of course if the evals had sucked, I'd be drinking hard right about now. Or trying to leverage sympathy-time on the 360 (I get days for Dragon Age. He gets evenings for Mass Effect. Eventually I will play Mass Effect, too, but for now I'm getting a preview.) I'm on my second run-through of DA now, which is... excessive, yes, I know. I had to try with a different gender/culture/class, just to compare NPC reactions and how the story changes and all that. Really. It's an academic interest. Really. I'm not all into the role-playing/relationship part, or anything. I mean, if I were, I'd tell you that I just trashed my relationship with Morrigan, stopped short of starting one with Leliana (who is sweet, faithful, and just a little bit too much like a devoted hound for my liking; but Morrigan's relentless snark was getting to me. Christ, lady, leave Alistair alone, can't you?). And I'd confess that I feel... guilt? for the way the relationship ended, but really, it wasn't going anywhere, and it wouldn't, so why be sentimental? But I'm not that obsessive, so of course I am not telling you those things.

I do have fun, though, putting the grey in Grey Warden. Double-cross delusional religious fanatics, steal, dabble in dodgy magic, poison your blades.... Just be honest with your friends, even if they (Disapprove -23) for hurting their pride and the feelings they pretend they don't have. They'll forgive you. They're your friends, after all.

Internet's back, as of late yesterday afternoon. The man responsible for our systems installed new software and left town, refusing to answer phone or email. I get that. I do. But then you leave someone else with a pager and the keys to the server. Especially when campus IT, who does not generally handle our tech support, had fielded 60 calls in an afternoon about this. There were between 100 and 900 people offline by the end of it.

I am not sure how things were resolved; I know that a different branch of IT got involved (the campus-wide folks who have someone on-call 24/7, like real professionals), as did our housing director. Our neighbor has friends in high places. So do her/our friends. There were many phone calls and string-pullings and wheel-squeaking. And a personal phone call from said director saying "it's fixed, but check with people and make sure they've got it" while we were all still in the pub, frantically trying to work.

So. All's well, and whatnot.

It remains to be seen if you will ever see this post.

As I write this, there is no internet. It is a sign of the apocalypse of the privilege which we First World citizens enjoy, that this is the major trauma of the day. So, no internet. There is, however, electricity, heat, and running water. These things are not guaranteed in this apartment. We are grateful for what we have.

Cough. No. Not really. Internet's not a gift. It may not be a necessity, but it is a service that we pay for. It's also the official mode of communication for this campus, which means nothing comes in paper anymore. Of course, this may be the universe's way of telling me to leave off with compulsive checking of (work) email. More likely, it's a sign of budget cuts and the first hint of what will be a major PITA if it's not resolved today. The People Responsible for Campus Housing Internet are off until Jan. 4, you see. Budget cuts. And the nice receptionist in the housing office told me that she'd start trying to get this resolved if a third person called to complain. Apparently two calls from opposite ends of the complex do not constitute rousing the dude on a pager to reset the servers. Maybe that's part of the budget cuts, too.

This is a problem; while I am not paid to work between quarters (haha, seriously, that's how the administration views my job: teachers only actually work when we're in the classroom, right?), I need to have my classes set up by then (course websites online), and welcome emails sent, and nevermind the personal correspondence. I am given to understand internet not a finite resource, however, and I can probably solve these problems by seeking them out. There are cafés. And campus itself, which, if I can nudge up close to a wireless hub and don't mind sitting outside (mark one in the column: Reasons SoCal Winters Do Not Suck) for a couple hours, or the life of my battery.

These are all things which can bloody well wait until Monday, however.

In the meantime... hm. The Current Project, which badly needs some revision, requires no internet at all. We see how hard I am working with that right now, don't we? (Think of this as a warm-up, like breathing and stretching before yoga practice, so that bound side-angle pose doesn't tear shoulders from sockets). Not that I can get to at least some of my yoga practices, which are online. But nevermind. See above, re: privilege. And I have podcasts.

I also have Xbox, redux, with pure heroin Dragon Age: Origins, which gi_jules and reytheist sent to me (thanks, guys!), waiting on it. That game, my friends, is addictive. And time consuming. And I have about 65% of the world explored, including the downloadable content (which, HA! I acquired before the Great Internet Famine of '09). ETA: finished!

And yet here I am, writing a post which, as I said, you may never see. You, absent audience, who might be the people on my f-list and might be the internet at large and might be... no one. There's a school of thought out there that says all (written) texts require an audience. I think I may be my own audience in this case. This is the literary equivalent of talking to myself, muttering and scrubbing my hand through my hair and drawing nervous glances from the passersby.

........

Obviously you are seeing this, but not because the internet's back up. No, that's still MIA and not expected back until Monday...the day classes start... this, the server that's running the dorms, as well as the grad students. First day could be fun, if the students can't download their schedules.

Anyway, you're seeing this because our fabulous neighbor is the manager of the campus pub, and although it is closed, it has internet, and we've all migrated over there. There are currently five of us in here, and it's quieter than most libraries I've been in. For the past four hours, I've been getting my classes ready. Now they're done. Maybe I can get some sleep tonight.

In any case--I've missed LJ posts since 12/23, and am likely to keep missing them until 2010, so--Happy New Year, everyone!

So, I have a cursed tea towel. Really. I'm not just saying that because I already have ghosts in my oven (although I'm starting to think my kitchen has a flare for the supernatural). But really, honest to gods and ancestors, I think this towel is cursed, which sucks because a friend of mine needlepointed it for me, and it's cute.

Hm. Maybe that's its problem.

Anyway, cursed. How, you ask (or if you're not asking, just bloody well humor me, yeah?), does a one know if one has a cursed tea towel?

Answer: it tries to catch itself on fire.

See, this is one of those uber-long, filmy, cottony tea towels, and as such it's damn near perfect for shrouding bread while it (bread, not towel) is busy rising. So, like, the second time I employed this towel for shroud-the-bread duty, it somehow (and here's where the oven ghosts might play a part) managed to fall allll the way down one side of the baking sheet and brush, ever so gently, on the heating element. Which was on, because while the humidity in this benighted place is good for rising bread, the ambient chill in this crap-hole apartment is not. So bread rises in an oven set on warm, or it takes 8 hours. Seriously.

The heating element, set on warm (which means I can touch it bare-skinned and register "huh, that's warm" but not snatch my hand back screaming or anything) totally crisped the edge of my tea towel. Like, blackened it. And it did so stealthily, because there was no smoky-WTF-is-burning smell coming out of my kitchen. I know. I was sitting not five feet away the whole time.

So that's the first incident. Yes, I said the first. Because in the last 24 hours, that same towel has tried to self-immolate two more times. Yesterday evening, another bread rise, only this bread was on the stove-top because the kitchen was already hotter than hell and I had dinner in the oven and anyway. The top of the stove, when the oven is on, gets way hotter than the heating elements do on warm. As in, touch the stovetop and jump back swearing. Which means it's hard to tell when a burner's on.

No, this is NOT my fault. I swear.

Anyway, burner on warm (which is, yeah, just like oven-warm, which is to say cooler than the surrounding stove top at the time) and the tea towel sneaks off the edge of the bread tray and cuddles up to it. And next thing I see, big-ass black gaping charcoal hole in my tea towel, right next to the first one. Again with the no smoke or warning. Sneaky ass towel.

But this morning, there was another stovetop incident. This morning, there was smoke. Okay, FINE, I shouldn't've left the burner on, and I didn't, I turned the wrong one to low and left the wrong one on high and the towel was squarely on top of the low. Under a cookbook. Which, might I add, was not at all scorched.

The towel has more than one gaping charcoal hole in it now, lemme tell you. So I'm thinking this poor thing is cursed, like, it has some supernatural compulsion to seek out heating elements and crisp itself.

But now I'm thinking maybe it's not a curse, maybe it's, like, charmed or something. Because had that cookbook caught fire... well. Let's just say the little diva cup incident would've paled in comparison. Raining ash, fire departments, crackling blaze of destruction, and all before the second cup of coffee.

Or maybe the tea towel's curse is why I left the burner on those two times. Yeah. That's it (which doesn't explain the diva cup incident, but nevermind that, gods, quit bringing it up.

Or it could just be the ghosts in the oven. That's probably the simplest explanation.

It was a Chinese curse sorta week. All goin' nice and quiet-like, me thinking "Holy hell, I might, like, finish Current Project before Thanksgiving" and otherwise eyeing my free time with some suspicion.

Then Thursday I inherited a second class, 2 weeks into the 10-week quarter. The TA withdrew from school altogether. I'd seen her in class on Wednesday, and by Thursday she was just gone, and 21 students were instructor-less. And as to how I ended up with them, well, let's talk budget cuts, and a shortage of lecturers (TAs can't teach more than one class, you see). Full-time is 8 classes in a school year, so 3-3-2 or some variant thereof. Assistant Course Directors, such as yours truly, teach 5 classes and get 3 course releases for our admin duties. We have this series of first-year writing classes. One of them is a 6 hour class, rather than a 4 hour class; you teach two of those, you get credit for three classes on the quarter, and as non-TT, you can't teach more than 3 classes. Everyone else is teaching those except yours truly. and what lecturers we do have already at capacity. Except yours truly, because I was supposed to be taking on more mentoring stuff this fall and giving the other two assistant course directors a little bit of a break while they teach their high-load this quarter. Then they'd do the same for me next two, when I was teaching 2.

Ha. So much for planning.

So I got this new batch of students, who had been doing a course themed around beauty--a theme for which I have no interest whatsoever, and a bunch of texts with which I was utterly unfamiliar--and I turned them into zombies. I think it's a cooler theme, but then, I would.

And then, THEN, same fucking day I got the Abridged Zombie class--we get notice that our shithole apartment will either be leveled or renovated in 2010. So we're moving next year, like it or not, with one year left (please, o gods) in the state. At least we can leave most of our crap boxed up for the year. What worries me is whether or not they'll move us into another family housing unit, or decide that since we've been here 6 years (!) already, we've gotta go live in the local economy.

And that's another political pile of toadshit. Normative time to degree in Nous' program is 7 years, see, but housing decided that everyone who moved in after a certain date (which happened to be 20 days prior to when we moved in) could stay for normative time minus a year. So, you know, you're writing your diss and job hunting AND tossed out of housing all in the same year. Great fucking idea, housing admin! There's a decent chance, what with the hit to university enrollment and the massive emptiness in family housing that they'll let us stay for the 7th year. They need the rent. But they might equally well say "get the fuck out." We won't know that until... oh, 2010. I think they're required to give us 45 days notice.

So yeah. Not the finest week ever. OTOH, I have confirmed what I long suspected: I write most prolifically under high stress and pressure. Yay for self-discovery.

The new issue horror/SF of Crossed Genres is out. I have something in it. Probably what I think of as my best story, which is either saying a lot or not much at all, depending on whether you like it. I will say it took me several years to hammer it into this particular shape, and it started out very, very different. I'm pretty proud of it.

So I have a black belt.

I used to be pretty proud of that. Getting that belt was one of the hardest things I'd ever done, not because I had to be some incredible physical badass, but because I had to really work to get there. I'm not a natural jock. I was, at the time, pretty damn insecure about my physical abilities. I was terrified of forgetting the forms, or fucking up, or looking stupid. I remember a brown belt test in which I'd just blanked on a form, recovered, and finished--my hands were shaking, I was halfway to tears, the World Was Ending. And (Master) Sharon said to me, "You need to have a little confidence in yourself, you know?" with that cool stare that said she had no doubt I could handle the material, so what the hell was my problem?

She made me better, in that moment, in a way that I still carry with me.

Then Life happened and we moved to SoCal. The nearest affiliate school was waaaay up north, and I didn't go back. Of course I still heard things. Impossible not to, when The Rat was attending the school up in L.A., and her partner was, too. Holidays involved what Nous and I called "The Shaolin Crowd," and a lot of kung fu talk. So when this shit first went down, I heard about it. One of the women quoted there in the article is one of my good friends. She told me when the assault happened, over AIM, while we were both at work.

She didn't know what to do. The other students (men, incidentally, who'd devoted a lot of their life and energy to the schools) she'd told didn't, either. She wanted it to be a one-time incident. So did they. And I was a long way from Boulder, so all I could do from here was say, "Okay, well, whatever's best for you."

You gotta understand. These people were our teachers. They're extremely charismatic. You want to please them. You want to make them proud. You want them to respect you, and you try to earn that by doing the best you can with the material they give you. And in a lot of cases, they became your friends. But at the base, these people are scary badasses. They're physically formidable. You don't even think about fighting back, because you know you will lose.

So I got why she didn't report it. She was still there in Boulder. She was about to get a school of her own in Seattle. They had power over her, and she really wanted to think it was a one-time incident. I get why the guys didn't say anything, either. But when the other reports came in--more and more women, before and since her--she got upset. The guys who knew about it were too. They took it to David directly, expecting a sexual predator to suddenly rediscover his honor and make it all better. They wanted to give David a chance to repent, or some shit.

I said then--and kept saying--it's not about YOU, o men. It's not about HIM. It's not about protecting the fucking grandmaster or the fucking art or the reputation of the fucking schools. It's about. Protecting. The. Women.

Luckily the Boulder D.A. figured that out. And my friends, male and female, did what was right and pursued the case, even though they knew they'd catch hell for it. And they have. Hell hath no fury like a lying pair of roaches, and all that.

So now David's disgrace is all over the news, common knowledge in the schools themselves, and the masters are busy kicking people out of the art who spoke against them. They're making silly legal threats (like no more practicing the art in your own backyard). They are pretending the women asked for it, wicked homewrecking bitches. They are, in short--and I say they, because Sharon's enabling David, and because she has been the nastier of the two when it comes to retaliation--still proclaiming their own victimhood. They're still going after my friends, slander and libel and malice, oh my. But this little verdict is a victory, however grim and Pyrrhic.

I've been watching the fallout for months now, and trying to square the arrogant but basically kind man I remember, and the tough woman he married, the one who encouraged and inspired the rest of us women, with the vindictive, mendacious people who've made my friends' lives hell in recent months. I can't. I don't mourn my memories of them. I am simply angry--at teachers who abuse their students, at men who hurt women, at people who excuse that behavior for any reason at all.

I want to cut the CSC patches off my gi, and burn them and my testing certificates and hell, maybe the whole fucking gi, too. Maybe I'll send them the ashes.

I have had a four day "vacation" with my parents which, while a great deal of fun*, was also exhausting. So while I am overall in a pretty good mood--because we had a lot of fun, because they always do these touristy things that Nous and I would never, ever do on our own (read: can't afford), and so we all get to experience new stuff, like wild sea lions piled up like kittens in the sun some 15 feet from the edge of the boat--I am a little out of sorts from sheer Too Many Hours on The Highway. We spent 45 minutes at a dead stop on Friday night on the 5, while emergency services cleaned up a massive wreck. That's 5 lanes of parking lot. The nice young man behind us got out of his Jeep at one point, announced loudly to the trucks around him he "had no problem doing it", and proceeded to take a piss silhouetted in his headlights. I am glad we were facing uphill. The couple in the Cooper Mini in front of us was having a grand time. Her head kept disappearing out of view. Up. Down. Up. You get the idea.

But the real problem is not the SoCal traffic or my parents' politics. No no. The real problem, and the reason my mood is iffy, is that a woman died 400 feet from our house last night. Her ex-husband, a graduate student in astronomy and physics, followed her out of his apartment when she came to retrieve their 4 year old, of whom she has full custody. There was a shouting match. He shot her. She died.

We were not home when it happened. We were out, having a really good dinner with my folks and saying goodbye, which was why I didn't see the text message on my phone from my neighbor until we'd already gotten back. Every cop on the campus was lined up along the street. There was yellow police tape across our parking lot, across a major access road, across some of the pedestrian walkways. We came round the back way, and a very nice officer advised us to park our cars in the only uncordoned lot nearby, and to walk to our apartment. We'd been unsure if we'd be allowed in at all. She wouldn't tell us what had happened, only that there had been "an incident." My neighbor, on the other hand, was home last night. She was one of the first 911 calls. She said there were shots, 8 or 10. That there were screams. That the cops, when they'd shown up, had seen her and her roommate on the porch, asked "Where?", and run around the building with their weapons drawn.

She was pretty rattled. Her roommate went somewhere else for the night. Nous and I talked to her, and watched the cops come in, and speculated. The incident wasn't on the news until this morning. The campus info-service said nothing for 2 hours, and what it did say was spotty. Facebook was the best source of info we had. The suspect was in custody. The woman was in hospital. People reported having bullet holes in their walls, and broken windows.

Helicopters hovered for an hour last night, looking for gods know what. This morning, the newsvans came, and more police, and the streets were closed again.

Now it's quiet.

This is the first murder on the campus. This is, however, not the first domestic violence incident here. Our neighbor downstairs is involved in a custody battle and a divorce at the moment. She says, he says, check the bruises. And even if this is the first such incident on this campus, it's nothing too unusual. Women die all the time in domestic violence. (Men do too, of course. But this isn't about the menz.) It's legal in 9 states, in fact, to deny classify domestic abuse as a pre-existing condition.

There was never a documented case of domestic abuse between this student and his ex. Not one. But nevertheless, he emptied a clip at or into her last night. I wonder, if we'd been in another state that allows clip capacity over 10, if he'd've fired all 15 rounds instead. I wonder what we'd've done if we'd been home--if we'd've stayed inside, or if we'd've gone out to see what to do about the screaming. Some people did try to help the victim. Others restrained the shooter. And then I'm kinda glad we weren't here, after all, which feels a little like cowardice.

I'm not sure how I feel, except holy shit, someone was shot to death 400 feet from our home. Not less safe. Not outraged. Mostly sad, I think, because it's such a fucking waste. Her life is gone. His life is essentially over. Their kid is fucked. I'm annoyed beyond words that the neighbor from downstairs is yapping outside on the phone about how brave she was last night, by not freaking out, and how omg! I can't believe this happened to our campus, doesn't that figure!

Lady, it's not about YOU. It's about a dead woman.





*there was only one out-loud-and-in-public argument, which took place on the San Diego harborside, and involved more than a little profanity (not from me, for once). Much of it was directed at my father, who was foolish enough to try and tell my mother that this public venue was not the place to get into a "discussion" about abortion with her pro-choice-on demand-between-the-woman-and-her-doctor-and-no-one-else daughter.**

**this is not an invitation to share with me your views on choice/antichoice. See the subject line. I don't care.

Louhi purrs so hard that she drools. It's kinda cute, except when she has also decided that your face is too close to her face and omg! you just brushed her whiskers and so she should shake her head as hard as possible.

Spit flies.

I thought it'd missed my eye, but ha! No. The growing itch and undoubtedly spreading redness indicates otherwise. Cold water has failed me. It should be gorgeous by pilates this afternoon. Like a zombie eye.

Heh.

I am in denial about school starting in a few weeks. Not denial in the sense that I haven't done any work on it, no no, I am Type A and the syllabus is plotted and planned and wanting only study questions to complete it. This is denial in the sense of mamma don' wanna! and kicking my feet and turning red in the face.

In my syllabic preparations, I have discovered what some of you probably already knew: the original Romero Dawn of the Dead is kick-ass. Not for the effects, but because it's smart. That excrescence of a remake from 2004 (which I watched twice, just in case I hadn't been fair to the first watching) shoulda warned me what to expect out of Zack Snyder movies. All action! No smart! Wait, did I show you the CGI? You're gonna love the CGI!

Bah.

Other kick-ass movie: District 9. It's what scifi should and could be, without the stripped-to-stupid Hollywood plots and some name brand star to throw wisecracks and save the f-ing day. Yeah, it's violent. But it's violence with consequences, not that oh-hey-100-soldiers-just-died but nevermind LOOK AT THE ROBOTS! crap from Transformers 2. People die. It's supposed to be disturbing. Be disturbed.

And on that profound note, it's time to expose nous_athanatos to that aforementioned Dawn of the Dead and eat homemade fresh blueberry tarts before we go watch (gods help us) another episode of True Blood online. I swear, I'm only watching for Eric.

Next time someone tells me there is no sexism in publishing, writing, the world, etc, I will point them at this post right here.

And then let me add that someone (my age, more or less) did tell me once he'd only read CJ Cherryh's Faded Sun trilogy (and loved it, might I add) because he thought she was a man. He didn't believe women could write men believably...Cherryh was an exception, clearly, to that rule.

Had I been less gobsmacked at the time (or older: now, in my jaded later 30s, I've got an arsenal of responses to this kind of shit; in my 20s, I could still be surprised), I'd've asked him if he thought the reverse was also true. Then we might've had a nice long discussion about assumptions, sexism, about men who think they're perfectly fine authorities on women, but that there's something so enigmatic about the male psyche no woman can grasp it, about the stupidity of dividing the world into "this is male" and "this is female" and--hell. Who am I kidding? I'd've told him to get his head out of his ass. As it was, I think I said "that's crap" or something equally eloquent.

And to think people ask me why I use my initials when I submit stuff for rejection publication.*


*with the exception of the latest story, which is going out under the name by which my friends, co-workers, and students all know me. Call it an experiment.

Dear lord, hulu has episodes of 21 Jump Street. I wonder if I can get Nous to watch it with me. I'll probably regret it, if I do. What is cool when one is not yet old enough to drive rarely holds up well over time, unless you are one of those Glory Days people for whom high school was the best time of your life, in which case... god, are you serious?

Just finished Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Not my usual genre (thriller), but when I hear things like "it's bleak" and "it's got fucked up gender norms" and "the heroine is a bisexual punk hacker" you know, I just gotta check it out. Also, it's Swedish. What fascinates me, among other things, is the variation among the titles in translation. In Swedish, the book is called Män som hatar kvinnor, or Men Who Hate Women. In French, it's Les hommes qui n'aimaient pas les femmes, which is pretty much the same thing. And then we've got the English translation, which is focused entirely on the body of the female lead as subject and object of the novel. An interesting translational choice. The book's about disappearing heiresses and some pretty nasty fucked up violence against women, and the title is reduced to... a woman's body. Ah, irony.

Anyway--smart book, well-plotted, very aware that noir-thrillers are often built on women's corpses. It never falls into sensationalism. The morality is grey to the last page. Very Scandinavian. Reminds me of the (original, Norwegian) Insomnia (not the Christopher Nolan remake, which americanizes the story, and not just geographically).

I think I'm so enamored of Scandinavian fiction right now because it is COLD and DARK in the stories, and it is neither one of those things here.

Now onto George Alec Effinger's Budayeen Nights, which Nous picked up for $3 from an online used book store. The copy is pristine, hardback, a former library book published in 2003, one of 3000 or so copies. It was never checked out. I could go on at some length about my suspicions as to why not, but if you're familiar with Effinger and When Gravity Fails, you can probably come to the same cynical conclusion on your own.

Perhaps it's that I'm rereading Dune for the oh-god-I-have-no-idea time, and knowing before I read the next sentence what it will say, and remembering, vividly, how I felt when I first read it. Or perhaps it's the anniversary of the Moon landing--not that I was alive when we took that one small step; but I grew up breathing and eating science and space and knowing that was possible; I saw Columbia lift off, and Challenger explode (and later, Columbia, too). The point is--I'm feeling a little nostalgic, which is rare; and I'm going to indulge it, which is even more rare.

I wasn't alive when Star Trek first aired, either, but I grew up on its reruns, and spent high school with TNG and college with DS9. I have a book on the table, with a 40 Year Anniversary stamp on the cover, that's a collection of novels I remember loving in my high school and college years. I am alternately pleased and chagrined that I still love them.

Twenty years ago this winter, I played my first tabletop RPG. It was Star Trek, under the old FASA system. The Rat talked me into it--having caught my attention with some intricate doodling on her astronomy notes: this guy who looked like someone off Next Gen, climbing up the margins.

"Who's that?" I asked.

The Rat, who I'd known for two years at this point, and who'd never suffered from an excess of verbal enthusiasm, proceeded to tell me for a good five minutes--without taking a breath--about this character she was playing, who was security on this starship, and, and, and. I waited through it. Then, when she stopped to breathe, I started asking questions, in the way she usually did: methodical, logical. "What's this about a role-playing game? How does it work? Is it like D&D?"

I was trying to be cool, but the enthusiasm must've showed. Sensing weakness, she pounced. And sometime shortly thereafter, she talked me into a game--I was easy to persuade, but I think she had to work hard on her boyfriend. He was the GM, and one of the true nerds at school: smart and a total Trekker. He drew these little hilariously brilliant fanfic cartoons and posted them in his locker. He was part of this gaming group in which there were real adult GMs, and females were not only allowed to play (the D&D playing crowd at school was all boys, adamantly and by choice), one of them actually ran the games. He didn't like me much, but I know The Rat, and I know he didn't have a chance once she decided I needed to be in that game.

It didn't last long. One session, maybe two, because I'd come in close to the end. But The Rat, having found a kindred spirit, wasn't about to let go. We played together (the core of a shifting group) until she moved out to SoCal; and when we came out a couple years later, we started playing again. We're now a dedicated trio, her and me and Nous, with occasional participation from her partner.

She and I've been tangled up in each other's fiction and creativity now for 20 years.
That seems... significant. And thus, I think it's fitting that this fall, twenty years after she sucked me into RPGs, she's going to run another Trek game (DS9, this time, which was my favorite of the series). We're all stupid-excited, wading through this ungodly number of sourcebooks, nattering about Vulcan mating habits and citing Memory Alpha and various episodes as evidence.

The point of all this isn't a paen to Star Trek. The point is--The Rat got me into gaming, and although I've been writing since I could hold a pencil, gaming helped me with narrative and pacing, character and plot. And because it's interactive and collaborative, gaming uses different bits of my brain than writing. It's a creative refresher, when the writing warp-core is offline (or in serious need of Mr. Scott's attention). The pursuits complement each other. And if I scratch out some fanfic about a character no one else will ever know--my equivalent of drawing in the margin of my notes, these days--well, who the hell cares? It isn't "real" writing (whatever the fuck that even means), but it helps me remember why, and for whom, I bother writing at all.

There is a Romulan Warbird on my desktop. I am rereading Diane Duane novels. And I am generating wordcount on a very much not Star Trek project and, for the first time in a long time, not worrying about whether or not I can sell it when it's all over. Fuck it. I'm writing because I care about the story, and finding out what happens.

Now I remember.

Exception to hire came through, and I am unleashed on another generation of first-year students. This fall, we shall be exploring the rhetoric of the horror of human consumption, which is to say zombies and vampires, in addition to Weird Science.

Work-related Project Of Perpetual Delays and Stress is also finished. That which does not kill us (nor compel us to homicide) makes us vow never, ever to be that stupid again. One of my friends inquired whether I was drinking mimosas or bloody marys to celebrate this morning; I told her neither, but only because I have to walk/stagger the CD of all the files up to campus later, and because I can't start drinking before noon.

Probable Harry Potter movie screening tonight, through a friend's husband's work contacts. One of the advantages to living out here...you get invitations to stuff like this because your friends have spouses who Know People. Although HP is not my favorite franchise, I have high-ish hopes for this movie, especially since it will be free, and Michael Bay has not come anywhere near it.

And now... to deliver that CD of files, so I can get on with the celebratory drinking when I get back.

No word on my maybe employment for next year, but seeing as my contract died yesterday, and there is not a new one forthcoming (yet), I applied for unemployment. Fun times. Of course I am still working on Tasks Yet Unfinished* from the job-now-known-as-former, because if there IS a job next fall, then said task must be finished. Behold my optimism. And if I hear before said Task is complete that no, indeed, no job--then fuck it. I'm done.

And so, in all likelihood, is this program. (Which is not to say I, personally, am the most important element, but rather that I, and the others like me, are necessary to the program's basic function, and without us, there will be no oversight, no administration, no mentoring, no curriculum development, and many fewer classes. Also, I will not be able to teach my Human Consumption: Zombies and Vampires class this fall. Quelle tragedie.)

I am now composing cover letters. Not my favorite genre. And looking for private health insurance, since the graduate student plan here is over-populated by Randian assholes pretending to be Marxists single people reluctant to extend dependent benefits. Plus de tragedies.

There is the possibility I will get a reprieve and an offer in the next week or so from Old Job. There is also a possibility I will find something else (more stable) and move out of teaching. That sucks. I love teaching. Thrive on it. I'm good at it. But the uncertainty of the part-time (read: no benefits) adjunct's life is not for Primary Breadwinner, especially in this economic climate.

There is an upside. I am going to take my enforced vacation and read books, paint little tiny model horses, and write things other than cover letters for large parts of the day. And do a lot of pilates. Fear my washboard abs.




*which should have been some time ago, and would've been, had it been up to me**, and about which I have not spoken here, and will not, because that fucking thing gets enough of my energy.

**which it is on paper, and is not at all in practice.

Job's on the chopping block. Budget problems. This is irrespective of (unpaid) hours worked, or (unpaid) extra duties, or the (unpaid) activities, which, were I still in secondary school, would be known as "extracurricular", but as I am not in secondary school, are instead called "professional development." There is no room for merit or effort in the cold cold world of numbers on spreadsheets.

This is why I am not grateful for the job. I am lucky. We shall see if my luck holds.

Once, when I was 17 or 18 or some age where drama seems a lot more appealing, my beloved and I had an argument. One of us--I don't even remember which, but it was probably me--decided to storm off in mid-argument. The other, predictably, had to chase her down. I think the intended effect was, "See now, I'm offended, come make much of me. And bring your apology." I suspect that's what happened, sadly enough. I remember reading, hearing, otherwise absorbing, a phrase shortly thereafter: If a woman stomps off, she expects to be chased. And I realized that's what'd happened.

Which is, mes amis, total toadshit. It's manipulative. It's dramatic. And it doesn't anything to solve the original problem. Somewhere in my evolution from drama!teen to no-drama!not-teen, I developed an acute intolerance for the other party storming away in an argument. If you're so pissed off you have to go cool off. But then you come back, and we resume working our shit out. If you leave an argument--or, my real favorite, announce that something has offended you, goodbye--and hang up, log off, slam doors, whatever--do not expect either pursuit. When you're ready to be rational, we can talk again. Also: never ever ever storm off and then say, oh, I was sick, I didn't feel good, I was upset about X, or otherwise roll out the excuses. That sounds like a cheap plea for sympathy, and as we all know, I am woefully short of that.

(That's totally unconnected to the job thing. It's just something else that's been pissing me off at odd moments over the week. Someone I'd thought better of pulled it on me. I hate surprises. The job issues are not a surprise.)

And to complete the trio of random: silk scarves. To whit, the acquisition of one earlier this week, which is an amazing combination of wildfire orange and a vivid, saturated olive green. I'm not much of a scarf wearer, but this one's big enough to be a wrap. nous_athanatos stared at it, and made that oh you can't be serious face, but he was too wise to mock it aloud. He's got an electric lime green club shirt with magenta flames and lighter green skulls on it. And y'all thought we just slouched around in black all the time.

I did not love Terminator: Salvation. I did not love it profoundly, in the same way I did not love Chronicles of Riddick. Which is to say--I wanted to, but couldn't. It took me awhile to realize that this world on the screen bore little resemblance to the one from previous Terminator movies, that hinted at some dark and apocalyptic future. I mean, in a world where marauding robots are out to get everyone! right! now! -- I was a little puzzled by the huge aircraft hangars full of military surplus, and the casual use of ammo and equipment, and the ready scrambling of A-10s (and people trained and capable of flying them!) and the even more puzzling communication ability of what should be a ragtag resistance. Global satellite communication? Cool! ...but not particularly terminatory.

I could've lived with that, though. It's like expecting Star Trek to have real science in it. That's not why we watch. You come here for the characters. And that's where T4 failed utterly, for me. ( come with me if you want spoilers )The whole movie was not a story so much as an excuse to move characters from one exploding set to another. And I love explosions and cool CGI. That's why I like Transformers so much. But that is not why I like the Terminator franchise, which is supposed to have characters and actual human tension. We're supposed to be, you know, hunted and desperate. Didn't get that much. They should retitle the movie Terminator 4: How Connor Got His Scars and pretty much cover the most important contribution of T4 to the Terminator arc.

Which is not to say I hated the movie. It was entirely entertaining. I just didn't think it was very good Terminator. It's fine for your basic CGI-and-explosion fest scifi dark future story, in which the important parts are not plot, characters, or continuity. But I'm supposed to believe John Connor's the person who's responsible for saving the world from the machines--then I gotta say, man, we're fucked.

*muttered by nous_athanatos somewhere during the second motorcycle terminator scene, which was a bad place for me to giggle

I'm taking one of those--wait, what's the word? You know. That thing you do when you're not working for a little while, before you go back to it again? B..brr.... break! Right. That's it.

I'm taking a break. A coffee break, even.

And because I do not smoke (which, if I did, would be a solitary, brooding event), and there's no one else to be social with (cats: asleep. nous_athanatos: ostensibly disserting. various chat buddies: MIA), I post during said break, and try to avoid spilling coffee on the keyboard.

I rediscovered Pink Floyd last Friday. The venue at which we saw Opeth was playing it before the show. Mostly they were playing The Wall, which was a major staple of my angsty high school existence (so was Dark Side of the Moon and it's arguably a better album, but it didn't resonate as much with me--read: I don't know the words to every fucking song on Dark Side). I owned both of those albums on... cassette tape. Ouch. And while I managed to acquire Dark Side, Division Bell and Momentary Lapse of Reason on CD, I haven't gotten The Wall in a 21st century format yet.

This will not do!

And now I am wondering why some of the tracks on The Wall cost 1.29, while others cost .99, over at iTunes. I suspect a CD would actually be less expensive, which offends my spoiled-brat need for immediate gratification. I shall cogitate upon the economics of patience. I shall almost certainly yield to patience, because I am a miser who just canceled a somewhat lucrative, if mind-numbingly boring, commitment because I'm too stressed to deal with travel right now. I can't afford to be profligate just now.

[This coffee break interrupted to report yet another fucking earthquake. Have I mentioned yet how much I hate those things? No? --I hate those things.]

And speaking of lapses of reason, I can't say I am surprised that The Sarah Connor Chronicles were canceled. Disappointed, sure, but not surprised. Ah well. It lets us put off a DVR for another several years, or until someone coughs up a show we give a damn about. Given the offerings I've seen so far--it'll be a while.

And finally, since we're kinda on the subject of things from my youth... Star Trek: The Total Reboot. Saw it with trepidation, not because I'm a purist or a hardcore TOS fanatic, but because... gods, the last few movies were so awful. And the last few series, for that matter. And So, with the Rat's report ("It's not Wrath of Khan, but nothing is, and it's better than the whales... just see it") firmly in mind, we went. Gods help me. I liked it. There were plot holes as big as the Enterprise, and some wicked-ugly science (something I try not to notice in scifi, but sometimes it's just too fucking obvious to ignore), and I hated the student-teacher romance, not because of who it was, but because students and teachers fucking each other is... bad. Not sexy. Just bad. Also--what I see as an essential character violation, for at least one half of that couple. But even with all that--I liked it. Didn't hurt that the Kirk actor reminds me of Ben Browder. It got the essence of the characters right. And I don't mind one whit about the reboot. I just wish we could get the women out of miniskirts. For fuckssake, people, it's a military. Can we dress like it?

Okay. Break's over. Back to work...

This is not so much of a news-post as a "not dead, no really" post. And a "woke up with the same headache I went to bed with and it didn't even buy me breakfast" post, combined with a "just waiting here for people to give me clearance and go-ahead on projects already behind deadline" post. I even tried to file an out-of-network claim with insurance, only to discover that the receipt I need is the only one missing from the sheaf of papers the optometrist's office gave me. I need to go back over there anyway to pick up contacts. Not the end of the world. Minor annoyance. One more thing I can't do because of shit beyond my control at the moment.

There's a lesson in here someplace. Maybe "start drinking earlier in the day."

Segue in a phrase I've heard frequently of late, that is on its way to becoming a new pet peeve: You Should Be Grateful(tm) You Have A Job, usually followed by some comment on the current economy, etc. (usually uttered by my mother, whom I love, but who has not had to hold down a job outside of the home for 38 years. One gets tired of hearing "how things are" in the job market from someone that far removed from said things). And you know what? I feel lucky to have a job, but not grateful. Grateful is for things unlooked for and undeserved. You know. Like gifts. My paycheck is not one of those things.

Had fire-safety apartment inspections the other week. Apparently, candles (and incense) are contraband now. As are grills on the deck. If you have a ground level patio, though, you can have a grill. You just can't use it fewer than 25 feet from the buildings. Of course, everyone who lives on the first floor, who keeps a grill on their patio, is diligent about walking out that 25 feet. Right? Right. Furthermore, these rules are only for campus housing that does not belong to faculty or professors. Grad students, no matter how old, or how many offspring, or how many years living on their own--count exactly the same as undergrads. The housing office, who knows very well that we're all grown ups, more or less, figured--give the residents a list of what's forbidden, and the residents will make sure the inspectors see nothing in violation. Which is what nous_athanatos and I did. Forty-five minutes to hide all candles and shift the grill into the closet. Two minute inspection. Another twenty minutes to shift everything back out again. Tonight, we shall have steak. On the grill. And burn candles. I feel so transgressive. --Actually, I was pretty pissed off at the time for having to play this stupid game. In retrospect, I'm kinda amused. Besides. Having contraband in my dorm apartment makes me feel young(er) again.

Final irritant to report: a binding issue with a recent paperback purchase. This is galling because I so rarely impulse-buy novels in brick-and-mortar bookstores. So anyway, nab the book and its sequel, start reading, and then lo! I discover on page 249 that the next 33 pages were missing. Bookstore's going to do an exchange as soon as the replacement book comes in. I kept reading anyway, and I'm a little sad to report that the missing bits don't seem vital to the plot progression so far.

And to end on a happier note: I have basil and yellow bell pepper seedlings in full sprout mode in pots on the deck. They're very cute. And very heliotropic. And they don't seem at all bothered by the contraband grill.

...that I love nous_athanatos: he has an amp. It's not a big amp, but it does not need to be. This is a smallish apartment, and the walls are thin.

More proof: This is the week after we got our "fix it ticket" from the CHP for tinted driver/passenger windows. We got this ticket in part because we (read: I wasn't driving) passed the CHP. GRANT that the cops have this tendency to go under the speed limit to freak people out, and we honestly did not think we were speeding. And we did not get a ticket for those whole 8 miles over. No. He nailed us for the window tint. Because of the tint, if you want my opinion on it, which you do or you would not be reading my LJ. The car look(ed) badass. The CHP must've thought we, the driver and passenger, were equally badass. Imagine his disappointment when he saw that no, it was only two middle-aged white people in varying stages of flu. Seriously. You could see the "aw, crap" look on his face. So we came away with this fix-it ticket, after the officer seemed to fail to grasp that we got the fucking car in another state, from a dealership (used, but still) with that very tint on it, and that no one in California had bothered to tell us the car was illegal. So we fix, we prove it, we don't pay a fine.

So now my car has naked windows. It makes me sad. He likes it better. Something about "seeing better at night" and "better visibility all around." Men. I tell ya. Concerned with practicalities instead of aesthetics.

And still more proof: he is getting his (first) tattoo Real Soon Now, having made his consultation appointment. Our artist has moved to a place that does piercings. Maybe I'll pass the long inking wait by getting some more holes in my head. I'm out of earlobe, but I have still have cartilage. ...EAR cartilage, people. Getcher heads out of the gutter. I don't pierce below the neck.

And this has nothing to do with Nous, but! Rosetta Stone, the mighty learn-it-with-our-program foreign language people, does not have Finnish. Why Finnish? Call it current research interests (which have, in the past, gotten me literate Latin, barely functional Irish --teaching yourself is hard, and the program was not Rosetta Stone -- and tolerable French). And a deep curiosity to understand the stage banter from Amorphis and Swallow the Sun when they're at home (or, for that matter, the table chat from Swallow the Sun when/if we end up sitting next to them in the bar before their show again).

Alors. C'est tout. Time wasted, fingers warmed up, time to write something.