a big thank you to everyone who offered to donate to the ebay auction-- however it seems the listing has been taken down. i'm not sure why; the blog site i got the info from originally doesn't have an update, so idk what happened. but thanks anyway, you guys, it's appreciated!

♥

x-posted from my other journal, sorry for those of you who are seeing this twice.

knitmeapony linked to this on her twitter today.

Heterosexual woman puts her right to marry up for auction on EBay.

Jamie Frevele says "I’m an unmarried heterosexual woman, and since I probably won’t be using my right to get married, I would like to give it away. I would like to sell it to the highest bidder and donate the proceeds to an organization that supports LGBT rights since the government designed to protect all of us is picking and choosing based on what they think is icky, weird, or unknown to them."

i really, really want to donate to this, but sadly if i win i don't have $150 to give all at once. and so i was thinking, a lot of you lovely flisters might be in a similar situation. and wouldn't it be awesome if we all chipped in a bunch of money and bid as a collective to give to this cause? it would kind of make my day, actually, not to mention my holiday season.

i know it is the holidays and a lot of you guys are probably a little strapped for cash. but if thirty of you gave ten dollars that'd more than double the current bid on the auction (you can track it here : on ebay). i won't do this if i don't get a bunch of responses, like, enough to really make a difference, but if enough of you say you're willing to chip in, i'd love to do this.

i'll go ahead and say i'll put in $50 of my own money, and if i can get pledges up to $300 (to be paypaled within the next three days-- the auction ends 12/12) i'll do it.

it's not often i see someone acting out in such a creative and positive way to fight for equal rights-- i really want to support her if i can. so comment, flist, and let me know how much you'd be willing to chip in. :)

as of yesterday i have been single and free for one year. free; it sounds melodramatic, i guess, but i've never stopped feeling that's the best word to use. a year of being actually myself, of breathing easy, of not second-guessing or doubting everything i thought, said and did. feels like freedom to me.

i owe you big, flist. i haven't been around a whole lot, i know, but i've been getting my shit together and a lot of you are part of the reason why i had the courage to get away in the first place. so thanks for that; i really needed it. :"}

i've finally figured out what it is about jack nicholson that freaks me out so badly-- one of the main things aside from the crazy-eyed intensity, that is. it's his diction-- he has such precise diction and he speaks so clearly and correctly, it can come across as really, really eerie. and then when he uses certain casual words ("don'tcha" comes to mind cus he just said it on the tv) it's so super creepy, it's like he's *trying* to be casual in a way that's unnatural to him.

this came up b/c i'm watching kubrick's version of 'the shining' for the first time; i've always avoided it because of how creepy i find nicholson, but i guess now i was ready for it cus i'm really enjoying it. it's shot really brilliantly and while nicholson's really not who i think stephen king was picturing when he wrote jack torrence, i think he's playing the character well. i do still prefer the miniseries, because it's more faithful to the book, but this is enjoyable. :) though oh my god, all that nails-on-the-chalkboard screeching music is giving me a headache, lol.

i had pondered writing a post about coming out day, but then i read a bunch of posts that said everything better than i could have. for your consideration :

+ "fear, loathing and 'coming out'" by azurelunatic
+ elorie discusses the sexuality quiz show.
+ a lot of you have probably seen the heterosexuality questionnaire, but it's worth reading again, i think.
+ pondering the 'unified theory of gay' by thingswithwings at dreamwidth.

another friend had a really interesting post, but it's flocked, sadly. but she made what is, i think, the best point so far which is that we often don't think of ourselves as being on the front lines of any kind of equality struggle, but we are. we have to do the hard work of coming out now because unless we do, there likely won't ever *be* a world in which no one assumes anything about anyone's sexuality, a world in which there's no need to qualify "i like girls" any more than there is need to qualify "i like brunettes" now. my friend also linked this youtube vid in which a guy who makes greeting cards shows off some coming out cards, and at the end thanks the gay friends he had in school for showing him that gay people were real people too. that's why we have to do it (to paraphrase my friend) to build a world where people know we exist.

i've also been having really, really, really messed up dreams lately. not nightmares, just like, dreams containing people i haven't seen or thought of in years, really random and sometimes disturbing (in a where-the-fuck-did-that-come-from way) situations, and just a lot of stuff that leaves me waking up going "what the everloving fuck, yo?" i woke up this morning from one such and it kind of put a weird spin on the whole morning. sigh.

but i just cleaned and organized my room and vacuumed, which always makes me happy. i'd love to know what the gene is that codes people to take comfort from cleaning, b/c it definitely runs in my family, and it's very strange. rearranging furniture, too, i get such a kick out of that.

it's time for lunch. ♥

i am now officially an employee of LUSH, motherfuckers. hello, real job. hello, fifty percent discount. and yes, i do take bribes. :"D :"D :"D

the other best thing that's happened to me in the past few weeks was mainlining season two thru the current episode of supernatural. i watched season 3 in a DAY last week, lol, i'm caught up in time for tonight's ep and i cannot even talk about how fucking pumped i am about it. i love this show more than i did back when i was marathoning season one, and that's saying quite a bit given that sekala and i sat down and pretty much did the entire season in a week. i can't wait til i have money to buy the other seasons-- this is definitely a show i want to own all of. idk, i'd been spoiled for a bunch of what happens later on and i was still completely into it. castiel is one of the best additions to the show i could've imagined, i love the way he plays off both the winchesters and cannot wait to see more.

( musings on flash forward, cut for spoilersCollapse )

the next show i introduce myself to is probably going to be big bang theory. i have the first bunch of episodes DL'd and have been told repeatedly that i need to watch it, so, yeah watch out for that. :"D

that's it for now really, just still riding the high from the job thing and freaking out about spn in half an hour. for more fannish-type updates you can always check betweenthebliss, though there's not much there at the moemnt besides tweaking about the giant-ass fic i'm turning in two weeks from today (oh holy god) lol.

<3

this is definitely the black death. or something. i'm miserable. except i'm thrilled because not only did i get a second interview with lush but this is my last day at the terrible horrible no good very bad placement full of conservative homophobes. HOO FUCKING RAAAAAAAAAAY. so, okay, money might suck a little for a few weeks, but i did get all my bills for september scheduled and paid, and i don't have any plans to travel for a few weeks which is insanely lucky. so i can just kind of lay low for a while. which, NGL, will be really nice. i've been killing myself at this place for months and could use some time to refocus myself and figure out like, the loan business, and how i'm going to go forward with a job search. tonight i'll check postings at colleges and stuff, and maybe the providence journal job postings too. an application to best buy and borders are also in my future-- something that can transfer when i move.

in any case, i'm optimistic. i feel awesome right now (emotionally, lol). now to finish out this day and go home and celebrate. \o/ and WRITE, oh my god. :"D

First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string
With feathery sorcery; muzzle the note
With hurting love; the music that they wrote
Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing
Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing
For the dear instrument to bear. Devote
The bow to silks and honey. Be remote
A while from malice and from murdering.
But first to arms, to armor. Carry hate
In front of you and harmony behind.
Be deaf to music and to beauty blind.
Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late
For having first to civilize a space
Wherein to play your violin with grace.

–Gwendolyn Brooks, 1949

this poem showed up on my AP english exam in the spring of 2001. i loved it so much i sat there after i'd written my essay and committed it to memory so i could write it down later. (yeah, i'm kind of like rain man sometimes, not the point, lol). i wrote it out that night in my journal and would go back to it fairly often. it moved me; i was continuously struck by the quiet fierceness in it.

september 11 happened during my first week of classes at mount holyoke. i said this on twitter this morning, i'll say it more expansively here. my mom has often said she will never forget exactly where she was when she'd heard JFK had been killed-- i know for the rest of my life i will have a vivid memory of standing in the kitchen of my dorm, dressed for dish duty, listening to an old mix tape on the little radio when the cook ran in frantic. "turn on the radio," she said, "a plane just flew into the world trade center." i don't think of this every day, or even every week. but writing it right now i'm choked up, actually close to tears.

i didn't cry that day, or at least i don't remember doing so. i was too scared. i have family that lives and works in the city. my uncle got out of the second tower fifteen minutes before he collapsed. i found out later he'd called my aunt from inside, while he was stuck in a stairwell with hundreds of other people trying to get out. he said he might not be coming home. i can't imagine what it must have been like to get that phone call-- i heard him tell the story months later, i hadn't even known it was that close until then. i don't think he wanted us to know. my roommate also was from long island, her best friend was at MHC as well. the three of us spent the entire day switching off on my roommate's computer (neither of the other 2 of us had our comps yet) signing into aim, IMing family, asking if there was news. there wasn't any, not until later at night. we crowded into the dorm common room to watch the tv; i'll never forget the clips they showed on repeat, the plane flying into the first tower, the first tower collapsing, then the second. when we left the tv and went back to our rooms we had the radio on from time to time, but after a while it was too hard to listen and not see, too hard to see and not know.

it was that, i think, that hit me hardest. the not knowing-- beyond the simple desperation to know if our families were alive, we-- all of us, everyone i spoke to, from my mother to my roommate to the cook-- were full of anger, burning to know who had done this to us, and more importantly, why.

we have answers to those questions now. i don't know if i'll ever shake the feelings of doubt, guilt and frustration they left me with. it's been eight years and i still get angry-- not only at the people who enacted this horrible vengeance and forced us all to pay the price for america's perceived wrongs-- but at the knowledge that those wrongs are not entirely imagined, that we are, in many ways, the self-entitled greedy careless nation that extremists believe us to be. that we could be doing better. and we're trying-- i'll give us that. we're definitely working at it. but i get even angrier at the knowledge that this attack only strengthened the resolve of so many people to see america put its foot down and say this is what we are and we're never going to change. i'm against war on principle. but even if i weren't, i don't think the past seven years of bloodshed were the right response to what happened on 9/11. i actually can't think of any situation where the past seven years would be an appropriate response. brooks's sonnet is about fighting for peace, sure, but it's about finding your *own* civilized space, kicking ass so you can do what you love and live without fear. it's not about starting a war because you're furious that someone kicked sand in your face, and it's definitely not about staying in a war you can't win and shouldn't even be waging in the first place.

in december of 2002 i sat in the movie theater across the street from mount holyoke at midnight to see the opening of 'the two towers'. i don't think i was the only one in the theater who had a different set of towers on her mind. i remember being struck right through the heart near the end of the movie when theoden turns to aragorn and helplessly asks, "what can men do against such reckless hate?" i still don't know. i don't know what to do, and it scares me to admit that. i don't know what anyone can *do* that they shouldn't already be doing in the name of becoming more consicous and responsible citizens of the world.

i haven't yet read art spiegelman's book "in the shadow of no towers", but from the first time i heard the title it stuck with me. i didn't lose anyone on 9/11. i don't even know anyone except in passing who did. but i still feel that way sometimes, like i'm living in that empty space of doubt and dread and terror. it's not every day. but it's often enough that when the anniversary comes around i still find myself rocked with grief and asking some hard questions i still don't have answers to, and i don't know if i ever will.

if you lost someone on september 11th, or if you've lost someone in the war, or if you're just someone like me who experienced that day as a reminder of everything you stand to lose-- my heart goes out to you.

an actual update in the form of a list because that's about all my brain can handle right now. XD

+ been writing a lot, mostly fannish stuff but i'm getting in the habit of writing something just about every day, which is really a good habit to get into. even if it's just silly little drabbles, they're fun and it flexes my creativity muscles, which is never a bad thing.

+ have some really good plot going on TR that's making me insanely happy. especially the stuff with jon; it's been so, so, so long since i was genuinely jumping-out-of-my-seat excited about him, and i am SO fucking thrilled that i got my groove back (or his, lol). dropping edgar is going to suck, but it's the right decision. and fred, phedre and sandor are blissfully easy as always. phedre's going to get a weird EP next month, idk what it's going to be but i want to do something that's not just having her hang out in the compound or at the house. i am loving every single thread on fred's EP this month, and gilead homeplot has officially slain me with awesome.

+ making my friend's wedding dress is a stress bucket. i really love how it's coming out but i'm afraid she won't, idk, i know it's crazy since i'm following the design we agreed on, but fmeh. also time crunch; need to do a fitting this weekend and i'm not done tweaking some things yet... idk. i need to stop thinking about it, but that's difficult. >.>;;;

+ third appt w/my counselor this week. i really like her; it's a different kind of focus than i'm used to, everything relating back to thought processes and stuff, but i can tell it's really going to help me. plus it's nice to have someone to talk to. :3

+ i do not know what to get rinlage for her wedding. :E the registry is a dangerous place because not only do i want to get *her* one of everything, i want to get *me* one of everything. someone propose to me please, so i can have a party where people buy me stuff for my kitchen. XD

+ it's getting to be autumn, the season of birthdays (3 of my friends, me and my grandmother all w/in 6 weeks!) and leaves changing and halloween and everything i love best about living in new england. i'm so excited; i want to take a drive up to western MA in october sometime just to look at everything, because i know i'm really going to miss that. :3

that's it for now. i'm feeling really good about things, which is an awesome feeling to have, feeling like i'm mostly on top of my life and the things i'm not on top of, at least i'm getting there.

xoxo.

flist, lend me your memories, and/or your google-fu.

we got to talking about movies we'd loved in childhood and becky mentioned one where a kid got sucked into a vortex to another world through a greenhouse, wherein the flowers were actually people. she can't remember anything else about this movie, including the title, and it's driving her (and consequently the rest of us) totally insane. help, oh children of the eighties, if any of you can remember what this movie is. :"D

also vacation is fucking amazing. see sekala's lj for an update on what we've been doing. XD
<3