If you are looking for my Cyberfeminism blog...

You've come to the wrong place but feel free to look around anyway!
My Cyberfeminsim blog is actually over at http://arachnetwopointoh.blogspot.com
Sorry for the confusion.
Have a totally awesome day!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I still miss her...

Today I was going through my photos and found my collection of pictures from the campaign.

In looking back not only are the final three weeks of the campaign a complete blur but in retrospect I know we worked so hard that we shot past all expectations. It was mind blowing.

I couldn't tell you what happened on any given day but I still smile when I remember the way she looked when she was exhausted and the way she insisted on sleeping with her glasses on. I laugh when I remember her enthusiasm and joy at every little thing. She was like a small child in her wonder. She is still amazing. It still hurts a little to remember saying goodbye.

I can't bring myself to tell the people who want to keep pushing and working to make for political change that I was never in this for them. I was never in this because it was my cause. I was never in the fight because I believed Obama mattered that much. I was always in it because I was hopelessly, painfully in love with her.

I gave up so much of myself because I loved her and believed in her. I still love her and believe in her but she's gone. She exists somewhere only in my memory and some far away place. She's off saving the world. A world of which I am not a part.

I know that everything I felt was unrequited and I'm childish for holding onto these memories and emotions but every once in a while I just miss her. I miss the way she believed in me with such unwavering conviction that she stood up for me against my superior and her subordinate.

I miss what she was to me not what she was in reality. I haven't seen or heard from her in months. I wish her all the happiness in the world. She deserves all that and so much more for making me believe in so many things.

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

if i lose my lottery because i fucked up my WS class...

then i give myself full license to have a crisis.

This will be the first semester i haven't wanted or tried to kill myself since i left high school.

I would like to hang on to that shred of pride.
I'm okay for now.





Miss Allison, I still miss you like crazy...

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Did i get drunk and watch "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoons until the sun came up?

Yes, yes I did.

and you know what? It was fucking awesome.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

some days...

some days i'll forget to take my meds. sometimes i run out and forget to refill them and i go without for a few days.

things they don't tell you about SSRI's like cymbalta: if you miss even two days your body will spiral into withdrawal symptoms. You will shake and be dizzy and out of breath and it will feel like needles are pricking every inch of your skin. You will feel like you are being shocked electrically. it will start in your brain and traverse your entire body, down to your feet and all the way back up. You will want to convulse your body will be exhausted and if you relax your muscles will twitch like you are seizing. You aren't. You are fine but your body will twitch. Once you take your medications again it will take two weeks of consistent daily dosing before they are working fully.

This is all legal. All of it is FDA approved.

I never come off of my meds into a manic episode. I always plummet into depression. I don't have a reason to be sad or cry. It doesn't need a reason.

I feel like there is a weight on my chest pressing down and making it harder to breathe. Harder to care. I want to curl up in the corner and be left alone forever. I feel so alone already. I cry over nothing. I cry about death.


It's summer.
May 18, 1996: the day my Grandpa Hart died. His was the first funeral I ever cried at. I was 8.

May 2nd, 2003: the day my Grandpa Dan died. I was in San Antonio on a band trip. I got the news from my cousin. The last time I saw my Grandan I had forgotten to say "I love you" as he was leaving; I thought it was no big deal and I would see him again. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever known.

June 28, 2006: the day my Grandma Hart died. She actually passed away while I was literally sitting on my Grandma Wink's couch saying how she was a fighter and she might make it.

June 21, 2007: the day my Grandma Wink died, less than a year after my Grandma Hart died. I was holding her hand when she died. I was alone in the room. The nurse asked if I was okay. I stared at her and said "No, I just watched my grandmother die. Of course I'm not okay." I sometimes still don't feel okay.



Maybe these are all excuses but I'm in a bad way right now.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

You're still here

Sometimes, when I'm really exhausted
when I haven't slept in what feels like days
and my nerves have been worn threadbare
I remember you.

I remember the way you laughed and scrunched your nose.
I remember how your favorite word was amazing
everything in the world was amazing
and I remember asking you what you were like
when you saw something truly amazing
and you told me you thought everything really was amazing.

that was amazing.

I miss you but I can't tell you that because you weren't You.
You were an idea. You are an idea.

What you are to me is something that doesn't really exist
but this fallacy is born of your reality.
I want to thank you but I can't thank you for being
the symbol I needed, the sign, the light, the thing you never saw.

I'm so proud of you.
You've changed the world.
At least my world.

And now look at you. Standing atop the hill so many struggle to climb.
so far ahead of where I would even aspire to be,
You rarely seem to look back.
I often wonder if you lie when you mention missing me.

I can't open my eyes because the sun is too bright but I try.
the tears stream down my face as I struggle to see you clearly.
eventually I'll stop.
eventually I'll give up.
eventually I'll admit you're gone. That you don't remember.
That it's over.

But now, when I close my eyes tight
when my breathing evens and I am finally still,
in those moments I lose track of the line between
those things that are real
and those things that exist only in my dream.

and then I let myself believe
You're still here.







It's always a bad sign when the name Maude Gonne comes to mind.

Friday, March 20, 2009

The Alegria Allegory

This just in: I want to watch Kooza. You should too.


I've watched the DVD of Cirque Du Soleil's show "Alegria" at least 6 or 7 times now. Partly because it has amazing music and acts, partly because Francesca Gagnon is freaking ADORABLE, and partly because there is a bare thread of a storyline or the appearance of related events running through the whole show. It's not a cabaret like Zumanity and it's not a difinitive story like Varekai but there's something there tying it all together. This story line has resulted in hours spent at IHOP tables at 3 AM trying to decipher the underlying meaning of the show.

Is it about power and a crumbling kingdom?
Is it about the homeless youth struggling to yell loud enough to have their cries heard at the top of the heirarchy?
Is it about conflict between religion?
Is it about generational conflict?
What is the purpose of the Singer in White? Who is she supposed to be?
What about Tamir and Little Tamir? Who are they supposed to be?
Should I know something more about life coming away from this show that I did when I first started watching it?

The thing I love most about all of these questions is that, in the tradition of Cirque, there are no real answers. You can watch it again and see something different. And again the next time, and the next.

This time I took away the idea that there are few things better in life than watching someone who is utterly batshit crazy run around and set a stage on fire using a Fire-Knife.



fuckitty fuck fuck

This is my personal blog so I can title my posts whatever I want.
If you're looking for my cyberfeminism blog try http://arachnetwopointoh.blogspot.com

The gist is I'm still confused about my cyberfem class and didn't know we were supposed to read ALL of the readings. Are we? I don't know.

I'm in that lovely state where I'm kind of terrified and panicky. My bipolar has been getting a little worse of late. Meds and all of that are still the same. It's just that with all this stuff about my gender and the PCOS and having gotten the final dose of Gardasil which has resulted in some rather excruciating pain in general life feels awfully teh suxorz.

I'd have to argue the worst part of it all is that I'm so crazy close to sucessfully finishing the semester and I feel like I'm falling apart. I would like to not feel like this plzthx. Right about now I would love a cigarette but my lungs are shit to begin with so it strikes me as a somewhat bad idea to take up smoking again.

I will be working graveyard shift tonight and am not really looking forward to it mostly because I feel very sick and confused. At least I'll be making an extra $0.40 an hour tonight. That should help considering comcast jacked up my bill out of no where.

Fun fact: I was the first girl to ever request to work the graveyard shift at ICT.

Next week: Online dating and why it sucks

Sunday, March 15, 2009

This just in:

I don't understand WebCT courses AT ALL.

So I'm sad to say I ended up dropping my cyberfeminism course because I didn't understand how it was supposed to work and I don't know how to ask questions. It's disappointing but I tend to roll that way. I'll keep up my blog as a personal one.

Not gonna lie, I was totally intimidated by the fact that I don't know what "feminism" is or "feminist theory" for that matter. I hope some department somewhere picks up the cyber-activism concept and start teaching courses about it. There needs to be a major. Seriously.

If you are hardcore into the ideas of cyber-activism I highly recommend "Taking On the System" by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga who is the founder of the Daily Kos, one of the most popular blogs on the net. It gives basic outlines how to make arguments and win them and generally wage activist web-wars in general. It's much better than I make it sound.


This just in Part II:
I don't understand paragraph breaks or grammar rules in general anymore. Stay in school, kids.

Techtosterone?

*awesome techno-woman link of the day*
GenderIT




My Rant about My Lappy: The Lappia Beta Coupe

I hate Vista, just like everyone else in the world. Absolutely hate it with a fiery passion but I usually enjoy that it gives me just a little bit more information and control than either Mac or XP does. There is, however, a problem with giving me this control. I don't know enough about Vista or computers in general to be able to really successfully fix anything. I just know enough to royally fuck them up. It's kind of amazing. In the first two months I had this computer I had to wipe it and completely re-install Vista at least TWICE.

Today I was given the ultimate insult. I was shown the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. I didn't even have time to read the text on the screen so I have no idea what happened to trigger the dreaded BSoD. Based on my wholly uninformed opinion I'd say registry errors of a rather Hardcore kind. We're talking XXX registry errors. Not that I know what a registry error really is, but still.

The point of all this is: I need to get my computer fixed but there's a small problem. I don't agree with the way technical support is done. I've worked in Technical Support and customer service with Apple computers before and consistently encounter two problems.

  1. Most people prefer to work with technical support agents who are men because they feel that men are more adept at mechanical things and logic and will therefore fix your computer faster.

    My main argument against this is that, as a woman, I achieved the highest customer service satisfaction rating of anyone, man or woman, in my department and it wasn't just about talking people down and keeping them happy either. I managed to resolve technical problems 94% of the time so I knew what I was doing. Why then, was I often treated like I didn't know what I was doing?

  2. This question brings me to my second point which is that a majority of technical support agents are males and inherently treat female customers as slightly inferior and assume they don't know what they're doing. I expect some people to argue that I'm biased and have no basis for this opinion. On the contrary, I worked full time on the floor of my call center and as my customer satisfaction was so high I was asked to help train other employees in how to improve their customer service satisfaction. The single biggest problem I identified was a lack of respect for the customer especially in the cases of male support agents and female customers.

    Is it wrong to have to explain to a customer service agent that they work for the customer regardless of age, sex, location, religion, or supposed intelligence?
    Because it should be.

I want my computer to work but I don't want to have to fight with the people who fix it. Maybe I'll just buy a new one. Again.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Welcome to the Jungle

I would like to send a shout-out to all the 3rd graders at Gladys Wood Elementary
make that a shout-out to all the folks from W S 450: Cyberfeminism!
Welcome to the world of Leftisting!

In case you hadn't guessed, I like exclamation points and dislike grammar and fight with spelling- and often lose.

I'm a government major who still hasn't gotten over how awesome the 2008 election season was. I am very, very progressive in my politics but have a strange place in my heart for the 2nd amendment and think people in the army should be respected and recognized for their humanity. I thought they were ruthless, heartless pigs until I read "My War: Killing Time in Iraq" about an army grunt deployed to Mosul, Iraq who starts blogging about serving in Iraq.

My first real exposure to blogs and blogging was the blog feature on Myspace at least 5 years ago. I used it to post random wibblings and angst-filled poetry. I kept this up until I switched to Facebook during my senior year of high school and essentially stopped blogging as Facebook doesn't really have that feature.

My blogging was sporadic until I took English 211 and our special topic was 'Zines and Blogging. We dedicated the second half of the semester to building up and using blogs as a way to express ourselves and our opinions in a valid and somewhat public way. I loved it.


*Notes on my actual blog*
I apologize in advance for poor grammar or spelling. I have dysgraphia which makes it difficult for me to sucessfully express my thoughts while still obeying the rules of grammar and punctuation.

As I have had this blog for several years and used it as a personal blog some of the back-posts may have coarse language in them. I apologize if you are offended.

I am aware that because I have interests including gender and sexuality some of my material may not be "appropriate" to some people. I would ask that people try to keep a sex positive attitude and an open mind.

I am also keenly aware that not everyone will agree with my politics, I welcome a lively debate including all viewpoints but ask that you not flame me or anyone else. If you do flame your comments will be deleted.

Other than these things I hope you enjoy!

Let's Rock!!

Friday, March 06, 2009

Butch Hair Uber Alles

Listening to "California Uber Alles" by the Dead Kennedys after getting an awesome haircut.

After having fought with my gender of late I was having a really tough time understanding where I fall in the gender/sexuality spectrum and it was really depressing me. I felt really happy identifying as just a "lesbian." Well, I suppose not happy so much as comfortable. But after reading some of the articles in my Contemporary Sexualities text book I began questioning what I am.

Am I bisexual? Am I a gay man trapped in a woman's body? Am I a straight male in a woman's body? Am I butch? Am I femme?

Why does gender have to fall into this strict dichotomy?

Unfortunately for me my copy of "My Gender Workbook" has been eaten by the vortex of life and I won't get paid 'til the 15th. Even then, I still have to pay my cable and electric bills but I digress.

So I'm having a horrible gender/sexuality crisis and my hair is in my face so I get my hair cut by my favorite gay stylist in the world. The only hair stylist in my entire city who understands what I want when I say the word "butch." Previously I've been scared to go very short but this time I said fuck it and hacked a bunch off and by the time it was over I had this super butch faux-hawk and strangely felt relieved and happy.

It's amazing how profoundly a haircut can affect how one feels about one's self.
I'm so much happier with who and what I am and love my new hair. It's a strange sense of calm and excitement. You should try it.



Yeah, I took Myspace style pictures but whatever. I was all excited and there wasn't anyone else around to take the pictures for me.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Note to self

Methylphenidate is a stimulant and will keep you awake if you are dumb enough to take it at night.
Hello walls! I will be staring at you now.

Also, if you haven't heard it, you really should listen to the Manic Street Preachers cover of Umbrella. It's lovely.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

An Argument on the Ethics of Fan Fiction and Characterization

(It's a long one; go pee now.)
So, I've rejoined the world of literary analysis through that scuffed, broken, and much ignored window in that literary bathroom known as "fan fiction."

Having caught up on my "Grey's Anatomy" it was slightly inevitable that I would return to my old 'shipping haunts to see what the still bitter fans had churned out. I come from the short lived shipper-dom of Callie Torres/Erica Hahn of "Grey's Anatomy" generally referred to as "callica" which is, altogether, not a bad name.

Not much has been produced that is of any notable quality save a few people who tend to always do solid work. Mostly the stuff out there seems to be from people who decide to force their own style and characterizations on characters that have already been created and solidified over the five seasons this show has existed.

I suppose I'm nitpicking but I feel if a character is not yours but you choose to utilize this character in your writings you have an obligation to the creator of the character to do some form of justice to the original characterization and style. If you are going to build using a base of Legos do not take selected Legos and then use them in conjunction with Polly Pockets. A Lego is a Lego. (I'm almost positive that analogy made far more sense in my mind than it did on the screen.)

That behavior annoys me. It annoys me but it does not annoy me nearly as much as people who do not do their homework. (Is it wrong to be angry at fanfic writers for not researching the characters and situations they are writing about?)

There was recently an introduction of a character with Asperger's Syndrome and someone included a segment from this character's point of view in a fic. I would not normally oppose this sort of thing but the writer in question showed a painful lack of understanding about this character and the particulars of her Asperger's and instead chose to write it as though the woman had a small tick like a stutter rather than a fundamental limitation of the understandings of social-emotional folkways and simple human pragmatics.

The character does not understand human emotion and has trouble recognizing and identifying emotions and has no concept of sensitivity to them but instead operates through complete logic and understands the world through strict inductive and deductive reasoning. It's the only real way she communicates but the fanfic author chose to approach her as someone who has actions driven by emotional connections and human understanding and empathy when that's just not accurate.

My point is that people should have more respect for the authors and creators from whom they so often borrow. It is not enough to credit the creator in a disclaimer. There needs to be a recognition that if these characters are not yours then they are not yours to alter at will and if they are altered then they aren't really the character that originally belonged to the creator you first credited but neither are they fully yours. Instead you end up with a literary chimera which is never good for anyone. It's almost as bad as alternate universe, original character, or slash.


I'm sure my arguments have huge holes in them and are very preachy and have no solid basis but after reading so many crap fanfics I feel a need to express how I really feel about these things.

Don't even get me started on fanfics about real people...

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

State of the Funyuns Address*

*Rachel Maddow's quote, not mine.

So watching the so called NOT the State of the Union or nSOTU was amazing and moving and I rather feel that the whole world needs to go watch it.




Jindal's response makes no sense and I won't bother finding it because it's hideous. I'm sure it's out there on YouTube.
Sadly I am unable to find a clip of Rachel's "ba blblaba gah" response to Jindal. It's slightly legendary.
Will update if I find that clip or the "State of the Funyuns" clip.

Have a happy Mardi Gras.

UPDATE!! found the "ba blblaba gah" response to Jindal clip!

From the front lines of stupidity.

Ben Bernanke is fucking INSANE!

Will probably fail my govt test today but doubt I'll be the first person to fail something like this.

Going back on methylphenidate (read Ritalin) despite how much I hate it as a substance. Let's hope it doesn't kill me this time.

This just in:

I suck at college and still want to move to Siberia. I have a Political Research Skills test in less than 12 hours and am grossly unprepared and procrastinating like a fiend!
...More details at ten.

Also, did you see the Oscar acceptance speeches by Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn?
If you haven't you fail at life.

Final note: Rachel didn't host her show tonight which is slightly devastating but one less distraction from not studying.