I've been locking things more and more recently, so in case you want to friend me here are some things you might want to know!


( Facts about the common (or garden) Ish, updated as necessary. )


That's all for now. Friend away!

If you hate the taste of wine
Why do you drink it till you're blind?
And if you swear that there's no truth and who cares
How come you say it like you're right?
Why are you scared to dream of God
When it's salvation that you want?
You see stars that are clear have been dead for years
But the idea just lives on.

Comments are screened. IP logging is off.

Tell me something. A memory, a secret, something that's been bothering you, your favourite song. Anything you like.

This is what it is like to suddenly start taking antidepressants again after being off them for a few weeks:

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

That, combined with a massive headache. Ow.

To make it better I am watching this video on repeat.

I fell for this movie when I was seven years old. I saw the cover at a friend's house one day and noticed there was a pretty lady in a ballgown and a pretty... person (man? woman? I wasn't sure, oh David Bowie YOU HAVE RUINED ME FOREVER) in a velvet jacket on the cover, along with a bunch of monsters and castles and things. I decided then and there that this was the Best Movie Ever. Fourteen years later I haven't changed my mind. (Fuck Gone With The Wind. Did Gone With The Wind have David Bowie ballroom dancing in a wig and a codpiece? NO, NO IT DID NOT. It was also low on Muppets.)

kylieq posted something very lovely today about the things she wants. Because I am a self-centered SOB, it made me start thinking about the things I want. And, well, I want a lot.

I want to graduate, first of all, and leave my parents' house sooner rather than later. I want to move someplace in a city that is wide and warm and loves me- I think there are a few different places in the world where I could live and be happy, and I want to try all of them, one by one. I want a few little rooms that I can fill with myself, my words, my music, the things and people that I love. I want pictures and colours. I want to be in a band. I want to write books and stories and nothings. I want to buy a bicycle and ride it on the streets in summer. I want asphalt and old trees. I want to sing. I want late nights spent drinking and late mornings spent dreaming. I want to read about UFOs and poets who lived beautiful lives. I want to wake up at 3AM and hear people making art in the living room. I want to be a librarian, the cool kind that helps kids find the good books their parents don't want them to read. I want a kite. I want to wake up next to somebody who makes me feel safe and strong and happy. I want to hang Chinese lanterns up to catch the wind and nail a horseshoe to my door for luck. I want to dance secret sacred dances in the dark and I want to watch my shadow spin under streetlights. I want to be in and around groups of people who know what it's like to lie in the grass and count the stars. I want paint under my fingernails. I want at least two cats and already have names picked out (Schrodinger and Desperate-For-A-Shag-Giles, Schrodie and Giles for short). I want to be brave. I want more ink and metal in my body, more dye in my hair. I want change, sunshine, rainy days, graffiti bright as bits of wrapping paper. I want to walk down the street and smell bread baking. I want to be the kind of person I'd like to hang out with.

I want to do great things, and I don't want to compromise.

I want a park with flowers in it.

( Longquiz is long. )

ANYWAY. What I really logged in to ask: can anyone rec any rock/metal-esque bands who play (or are influenced by) traditional Celtic music? I ask in the name of NaNoWriMo SCIENCE!

(Extra imaginary Internet points if a fiddle is involved.)

This weekend, I...

... wore a schoolgirl outfit and claimed I was dressed as a victim of tentacle rape.

... helped someone shop for an anniversary gift.

... went to a house party where I drank delicious purple punch and danced like a mofo to "Living Dead Girl" and "I Love Myself Today." And was slightly molested by a drunk gay boy. (This same boy tried to teach me how to waltz. It did not take.)

... had one of those interesting two-in-the-morning walks that involve Deep Discussions and many lols.

... made cupcakes.

... was a riot grrrl. ( She's got the hottest trike in town. )

... went trick-or-treating for the first time in years, with a Glinda, a Victorian vampire, a cat-girl, and a Jack Skellington.

... sang "Bohemian Rhapsody" at a bus stop.

... attended another house party that involved psychedelic ceiling projections, Shiva, and being renamed "Flatchest."

... went to the gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar and saw an old friend from Corner Brook in a dinosaur costume.

... tried to keep track of Drunk Gay Boy (yeah, same one) while grooving to the Veronicas.

... saw a guy dressed as Dr. Horrible.

... was smooched by a drag queen.

... was smooched by a lady.

... slowdanced.

... met a boy with a green mohawk dressed as Frank-N-Furter and got angry at him for saying that women can't write. (He argued that since he likes the Slits it's okay that he thinks this and he's not sexist. Which, um, no, dude.)

... slept on someone's floor and snuggled. :)

... celebrated my famjam birthday and requested "Oasis" instead of "Happy Birthday." (They sang it for me, too! At least Little Brother and Sister did- Mum and Dad just kind of stared in horror.)

And now I'm writing a take-home exam. (Theoretically, at least.)

Tomorrow I will be twenty-one. I am trying not to freak out too hard about it, and fully intend on buying Hedwig tickets as a birthday present to ME. And maybe a tattoo as well. \o/

20 Websites From Before The Internet Was Invented. #9 is my favourite. Oh, Oliver Cromwell, you were such a dick.

Lyn-Z and that nerd she married. ♥



(Also, Ellen DeGeneres and that nerd she married. ♥♥♥♥♥)

Man Called Zombie While Ordering Food, Punched Twice. There will never be a greater headline than that. Ever. Read it over a few times and savour its AWESOME.

'Skirt boys' make waves in wild world of Tokyo street fashion. I was going to make an anime joke here but then I decided it'd be a little too obvious.

The Kindest Cut: In Colorado, a surgeon helps restore feeling—and so much more—to victims of female genital mutilation. This whole article made me tear up a little. Especially this bit:

A California nurse, Ngozi, who was circumcised as a newborn in Nigeria and also had her labia entirely cut away, came to Bowers in August. She is already feeling results, she tells NEWSWEEK. "Before, I would look at my textbook and look at myself and they were two different things. I wasn't even human." Bowers performed not only the clitoral operation but also plastic surgery to create labia for Ngozi, 34. "Now when I look at myself I feel like a woman," says Ngozi, who says she has even experienced orgasms for the first time in her life. "It's beautiful, I just love it, it feels like you're melting. Before it irritated me when my husband tried to touch me, now I reach out to him."

♥______________; GUYSSSSSSSSSS

( Going to school in boymode. )

This video about how science is magic.



The world is just awesome. <3

In unrelated news, since it seems I will be in university for a good long while yet (this is because I transferred and dropped a class and also God hates me), I am considering getting a certificate in Library Science as well as a diploma in Creative Writing. That way I will nourish both my lifelong dream of being a ~writer and my need to eventually support myself and any cats I may choose to adopt. Good idea, y/n/you're going to be in school until you die, aren't you?

I love Sady Doyle for many reasons. One of them is her fantastic Bitch blog about women in the music industry, She Pop, which includes a kind of amazing essay about how female artists are set up to fulfill the virgin/whore dichotomy instead of presenting themselves as well-rounded human beings.

We can talk about [Taylor Swift] as an "alternative" to Katy Perry, but what that misses is that the system is built on dichotomies and alternatives. Wife and mistress; the girl you sleep with and the girl you respect; the hot girl and the girl with substance; the smart girl and the sexy girl. The Media Image of Taylor Swift isn't creating a new alternative to The Media Image of Katy Perry; it's just stepping into the "alternative" role already provided by patriarchy, which has a vested interest in dividing women against each other and against themselves, in keeping them from being whole people, who can be smart and sexy, who can sleep with people and still fully believe that they deserve respect. These two images need each other; they couldn't function without each other. The girl in the white dress is nothing without the girl in red. And vice-versa.

Read the rest of it. You might like it.

i am so drunk

i love everyhtoinh and everyone and i used the rest of the wovkda/

theat means viodka

vodka

yeah that

i was wathcing angel but now im not and i have a glass with a straw in it

WITHVODKA

sooooooooooooooo happy right now everything is coming up gerald

also girls are very very prity

ETA: LB says:

"LO0OK AT HAT YOU TOOK@ RAP METAL RAP METAL WHIYTNEY HOUSTON"
"IT'S FOR MY GIRLKSFRIEND OKAY"
"SURE IT ISZ"





"STOP CALLING ME WARREN MYT NAME ISN;T FUCKINGWARREN"

ETA 2:

seriosuly you guys

i love the universe in a hxc john lennon kind of way

strawberry fields forever

I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi

Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each of you to confess

- "What I'm Doing Here," by Leonard Cohen

Can anybody recommend any books, sites, etc. on Dianic Wicca that aren't either all "look at these manhaters hatin' on the menz!" or "KILL THE DICKS"? I've been interested in paganism for years- even had a brief, kind of embarrassing ~*~sparkly Wiccan~*~ phase back in junior high- and I've found myself increasingly drawn to Goddess worship lately, at least in theory, but some of the resources I've found on the subject have been... er... sketchy.

(This is one of the few exceptions. Oh, Monica Sjoo, I love you despite your weird anti-BDSM tirades.)

There's a pagan society at MUN that I've been meaning to check out as well, but they're more oriented towards more mainstream Wicca, with the sacred dualities and the Horned God and the Maiden-Mother-Crazy Cat LadyCrone thing. Which is fine and good and more power to them, but doesn't appeal to me as a genderqueer person.

Dear world in general:

Roman Polanski's talent as a filmmaker does not change the fact that he drugged and raped a thirteen year old girl, Jesus fucking Christ what is WRONG with you.

Kill yourselves,
Ish

Alex Fountain, a boy I knew in high school, committed suicide on Saturday. He jumped off a bridge.

He's the second person from my graduating class who's done that. It was the same bridge each time.

Alex was in most of my classes for three years and was the only other person in high school who appreciated Brand New. He played guitar. He did an oral presentation in French on Tell All Your Friends by Taking Back Sunday. He made a special graduation playlist that included Modest Mouse and Sigur Ros because he was sick of everybody playing Vitamin C and "The Sunscreen Song." One of our teachers called him Freddy for a whole semester once. He was partly responsible for this. He wasn't a close friend, but he was a good guy and funny and smart and more passionate about music than most people are about anything. I wish I'd known him better. I guess that's what people always wish when things like this happen.

And he's fucking dead. I'm never going to talk to him again, not even in that "how's life since high school" way.

He made me a mixtape once. I still have it.

OH SHIT LITTLE BROTHER'S GOT AN LJ.

Everybody: Go read lake_inmycake's profile page right now. It is the BEST. (Then add him, because it is okay to be creepy on the Internet!)

Songs I heard on the radio today that just happen to be my favourites: "Welcome To The Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance, "No Rain" by Blind Melon, "Load Me Up" by Matthew Good Band, "When I Come Around" by Green Day, "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M., and "Sex On Fire" by Kings of Leon. And not a single Simple Plan tune! Good show, radio, good show.

(A lot of those songs have really specific memories attached to them for me, which is why I like them so much. The one that strikes me most is "Load Me Up"- I listened to that on the long drive to Corner Brook for my first year of university. In my head it's all dark roads and bright lights and sleepy holding hands. Naww.)

I am starting to hate my job! That took... longer than I'd expected, to be honest. :/ It is partly because of the insaaaaaane gender segregation there- and the fact that I have apparently been relegated to The Girl Table, which, yeah- but mostly it's because people keep telling me things.

FYI: there are some things I do not want to know! For example, I don't want to know who you think killed Kurt CObain. I do not want to know how badly you want to bang Robert Pattinson. I do not want to know about how precious your grandchildren are. I do not want to know which Jonas Brother is your favourite.* I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHEN YOU LAST HAD SEX WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND AND WHETHER OR NOT HE CAME IN YOU JESUS CHRIST NO. And yet, these are the things people have been gleefully filling my ears with for the past few months.

Honestly, it makes me worry that I come off as friendly and approachable. I am NEITHER. Clearly I need to work on my glower. For the moment I will content myself with decorating fruit pies to look like colourful vaginas.

In news that does not involve me being a misanthrope, I've got my classes mostly picked for the upcoming semester. Mostly. I am taking Victorian Literature (requirement- I am not a big fan of the Victorians), Logic (another requirement, I'm not a big fan of logic either), Philosophy and Contemporary Issues (I expect to defend the ethics of abortion at least once a week), Contemporary Religious Movements (filler class), and Utopias and Dystopias. I'm only waitlisted for that one, though, so I may have to take something else to fill up the time slot. I'm thinking either a class on the Greek gods or a History of the Roma in Eastern Europe course.

God, I love college. (And women. And drinking. And blah blah blah.)

( Links and things. )

I've spent the last week or two working, dressing up as a goffick person and hanging out in grocery stores, riding in shopping carts at midnight, talking about books, watching musicals, pulling poetry out of hats, and refusing to clean my house. Being me is kind of really enjoyable right now.


* PLEASE NOTE: This is a lie.

Little Brother is currently sitting across from me reading the Bible, because he found one under his bed and thought it might be lulzy. (He kind of ran out of things to read.) A minute ago he started scowling at it, and then:

Little Brother: No! NOT ABOUT FEMINISM.
Ish: Hm? What is it, hon?
Little Brother: It says, "To the woman he said, 'I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth. In pain you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.'" THE BIBLE IS SHITTING DICKNIPPLES. >:((((

And then, about Noah: "Blah blah blah I'm a Mary-Sue."

The Littlest Atheist has spoken.

I have made a Very Important Decision.

Since I'll likely never be able to support myself by writing fiction- who reads fiction these days anyway? it's not even real- I have decided to write a self-help book instead! Not just any self-help book, though. Oh, no. My self-help book will be all about the dudes and the ladies, and how they are CRAZY DIFFERENT and need to read books (LIKE MINE) in order to live in the same world and breathe up the same oxygen without trying to stab each other. It will feature handy tips to smooth the rocky road of gender relations, such as "REMEMBER, GIRLS, IT IS NEVER TOO EARLY TO REPRODUCE" and "DUDES: BELCH IN PUBLIC, THE LADIES TOTALLY DIG THAT." And I will call it... something snappy, I'm leaning towards Men Are From Mars, Women Suck My Penis but I think there might be copyright issues, and I will go on one thousand talk shows to promote it and tell the world all about the dudes and the ladies, and the crazy differences between them. (For example, the dudes are all about the sex and the cars, while the ladies are all about the shopping and the tiny dogs!) IT WILL BE SO ENLIGHTENING, LJ, LET ME TELL YOU. And I will stir up a MEDIA FRENZY wrt: my amazing (NON-FICTION)(THAT MEANS FULL OF FACTS INSTEAD OF LIES LIKE ALL THE OTHER THINGS I WRITE) dude-and-lady book.

And then it will be published at a whopping 500 pages, and the very first page will read:

What the fuck is wrong with you?

No, seriously. Why are you even holding this book? What sad fucking sequence of events led you to conclude that the opposite sex is a cunningly disguised race of space aliens sent to this planet solely to confuse the shit out of you? Why the fuck do you think you have to read a goddamn book in order to carry on a conversation with someone who may or may not look different in the bathing suit area? Like that is such a goddamn astro-fucking-nomical deal, like the genitals are the seat of the personality. "Men are genetically programmed to fuck everything that moves while solving algebraic equations and eating steak. With their dicks." "Did you know evolution means women are naturally inclined to weep over Lifetime movies and covet expensive shoes?" "Oh, but, you know, chromosomes and-" FUCK. OFF. THAT IS NOT THE WAY HUMANITY WORKS. Women are people! Men are people! (Those of us who are neither men nor women: also people!) We're all just goddamn motherfucking people, and none of us really get each other, and maybe if we all put down the fucking wanky "help me understand the opposite sex without actually having to talk to them because ew cooties" books and tried to relate to each other as INDIVIDUALS instead of Mysterious Ambassadors of Testosteronia and Estrogenia everyone would breathe a little easier. We've got to stop putting so much effort into the battle of the sexes, maintaining these stupid boundaries that define who does what, to who, where, why, and how. It's a sham and it's a drain and it takes away precious time and energy that could be spent laughing or singing or falling in love or making something beautiful or, Christ, taking a nap. Go do one of those. Any of them. All of them. Trust me, you'll feel better about everything.

And for fuck's sake, stop reading self-help books.

The remaining 499 pages will be blank.

I am going to make a frillion bazillion dollars.

1) redheaded_itch is here! She is currently on a beach taking pictures of ~nature. I am currently inside sitting at my kitchen table because I am a fascist who hates the beach.

2) I got a haircut on Friday. ( It's pretty fab. )

3) Does anyone else on the flist read Tiger Beatdown? Because if you don't you definitely should. It is both hilarious and insightful and, dammit, there aren't enough funny feminist blogs out there. One of my favourite posts: Shut Up, Cunt! The Cultural Logic Of 97th-Wave Feminist Band Millionaires.

4) "What A Catch, Donnie" made me tear up hardcore. ;_______; GET ON THE LIFEBOAT PETER WENTZ YOU ARE NOT EDWARD J. SMITH.

5) I just tried to eat a mini Reese's cup without taking the tinfoil off. Legally I am considered a responsible adult and that scares me more than I can ever say.

John Hughes dies at age 59.

He was a righteous dude. His movies really pumped my nads.