05 December 2015
The Trials and Travails of Julie Shopping for Foundation.
1) Get to store.
2) Freeze up, as she usually does, at the mad number of lines to look at.
3) Start shopping.
4) This one's too dark.
5) This one's too dark.
6) This one's too dark.
7) This one's too dark.
8) This one's too dark.
9) This one's too dark.
10) This one's too dark.
11) This one's too dark.
12) This one's too dark.
13) This one's too light...wtf?
14) Oh crap, the right one is out of stock.
15) Proceed to next line, taking info from previous failed expedition.
16) Oh crap, the same name in this line is too dark.
17) So is this one.
18) And this one.
19) Come on, this isn't funny anymore.
20) Oh, this one is a match.
21) Look at price.
22) Oh hell no.
23) Go to the third line.
24) It's a match!
25) Look at price.
26) This is reasonable.
27) Then see that the whole thing is a mess.
28) Sigh.
29) Move to fourth product line while female store employee is watching.
30) 'Can I help you find something?'
31) Strongly consider telling her 'Yes. Less alabastery skin. So I can buy some fucking foundation more easily.'
32) Shake head, continue trying to work with skin tone.
33) Find one that works.
34) Price is reasonable.
35) Packaging looks good and not damaged.
36) Grab it before someone comes in and steals it out from under me.
37) Grab my damned skittles and a Coke and check out before I find out this has all been a hallucination.
And that was my day.
How about you?
02 December 2015
Julie's Vlog #4: Discussion, Dualogue, Diatribe, and other words with a D
Hello everyone, and welcome back for the fourth installment of my vlog!
Today we're talking about words and labels and respect and other Big Thoughts and Big Ideas.
(tm)
We're also talking about transphobia and what happened to me about a week ago.
And comic books. Just to lighten the mood.
Like last time, I'm providing some links below to good resources to check out. Also please...no matter your age, young or old...if you are so hurt by the world that you are contemplating extreme measures, please reach out to the first info I have below. Please. I don't ever want to have to say your name.
I love you all. Ayv gvgeyui nihi.
http://www.translifeline.org
Trans Lifeline is a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to the well being of transgender people. We run a hotline staffed by transgender people for transgender people. Trans Lifeline volunteers are ready to respond to whatever support needs members of our community might have.
https://community.pflag.org/transgender
http://www.glaad.org/transgender/resources
http://www.hrc.org/resources/resources-for-people-with-transgender-family-members
Nota Bene
I've not forgotten about all of you.
I have been seriously under the weather, dealing with med changes, and a very not good arthritic flare up.
I have a Doctor Who review to write, plus Tuesday was vlog day...but it was too hard to talk, so it actually got done today. I wrote this yesterday and forgot to post it, so...yeah.
Who review to come.
Soon, lovelies.
Soon.
(tm)
I have been seriously under the weather, dealing with med changes, and a very not good arthritic flare up.
I have a Doctor Who review to write, plus Tuesday was vlog day...but it was too hard to talk, so it actually got done today. I wrote this yesterday and forgot to post it, so...yeah.
Who review to come.
Soon, lovelies.
Soon.
(tm)
27 November 2015
Without music, life would be a mistake
Let's talk about growing up, you and I.
It's not a subject I touch upon with any frankness or comfort. This is not to say that my growing up was horrid, simply that I tend to look at it from a subjective fictional standpoint. Julie never had a childhood, strictly speaking...it all gets very complicated and quantum. And meta. I'm not a fan of meta. Suffice to say, when I write about my childhood, I tend to do so through a fictional lens...or a poetic lens, more accurately. Still fictional.
But this story is not.
If there is one thing I return to time and time again as the great healer, the balm for deep wounds, the life preserver (in literal terms at times), it is music. It speaks to me and for me when I have no ability to find the words I need.
I got my first stereo as a present for graduating elementary school. Combined with the fact that I finally had a room of my own, this was a pretty major development in my life. I could listen to records and tapes in my room, create mix tapes back when mix tapes were totally cool (and chicken out at giving them to anyone) and discover more music than I knew was possible.
Looking back at that, 28 years later, I laugh, because there was even more out there than I knew. But at 14, radio was the great wide open. And combined with the fact that my listening had shifted radically from pop stuff to the Doors and Frank Zappa and the Dead and so on, I was able to find stations that (at the time) sated that need. I mostly listened to WZZO out of Bethlehem...and this was in the day when their play list was significantly larger than it is now, and you actually heard deep cuts on air. So WZZO was my station.
Except for Sundays.
Sunday was for WYSP.
Early evenings were spent with Ed Sciaky on the Sunday Night Alternative. I never knew from week to week what I'd hear...ad that was the best part. I can't even remember everything I heard there for the first time...Spirit for sure, before Randy California passed away. Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival. Loads of other old concerts...probably early Genesis. It was magical. And one of the most magical parts was the opening, when everything was quiet and then an acoustic guitar would start playing an amazingly gorgeous melody...Jorma Kaukonen, Jefferson Airplane, and Embryonic Journey. To this day I can't hear that without being transported back to that youth sitting in their room, trying to figure themselves out and why they felt the way they did, and finding the most comfort and understanding and companionship in music.
The second best thing on Sunday nights was also on WYSP, and that was the Sunday Night Sixpack...6 albums played in their entirety. This was generally blank tape time for me, and I probably recorded a hundred tapes worth of music that I eventually bought when I got older. I discovered King Crimson, and In the Court of the Crimson King. I discovered Yes. And Emerson Lake and Palmer. And so much more.
So much of the foundation of my listening and appreciation and love of music came from those days and nights. Late night listening on headphones...moving the stereo and speakers to the other end of the room so I could slip out the window, lay down on the roof of the 1 story addition that had been built onto our house, and watch the stars while music played, always careful not to fall asleep out of fear of waking up very very suddenly.
It's not the fall that hurts, it's the sudden stop at the end.
Those days were the first days music saved me. Without it, I wouldn't be here to blog, for one reason or another. But I found solace, and understanding, and a lack of judgment in music. It asked only that I listen with an open mind, and that I gave in abundance in repayment for the gifts I received in return.
It's not a subject I touch upon with any frankness or comfort. This is not to say that my growing up was horrid, simply that I tend to look at it from a subjective fictional standpoint. Julie never had a childhood, strictly speaking...it all gets very complicated and quantum. And meta. I'm not a fan of meta. Suffice to say, when I write about my childhood, I tend to do so through a fictional lens...or a poetic lens, more accurately. Still fictional.
But this story is not.
If there is one thing I return to time and time again as the great healer, the balm for deep wounds, the life preserver (in literal terms at times), it is music. It speaks to me and for me when I have no ability to find the words I need.
I got my first stereo as a present for graduating elementary school. Combined with the fact that I finally had a room of my own, this was a pretty major development in my life. I could listen to records and tapes in my room, create mix tapes back when mix tapes were totally cool (and chicken out at giving them to anyone) and discover more music than I knew was possible.
Looking back at that, 28 years later, I laugh, because there was even more out there than I knew. But at 14, radio was the great wide open. And combined with the fact that my listening had shifted radically from pop stuff to the Doors and Frank Zappa and the Dead and so on, I was able to find stations that (at the time) sated that need. I mostly listened to WZZO out of Bethlehem...and this was in the day when their play list was significantly larger than it is now, and you actually heard deep cuts on air. So WZZO was my station.
Except for Sundays.
Sunday was for WYSP.
Early evenings were spent with Ed Sciaky on the Sunday Night Alternative. I never knew from week to week what I'd hear...ad that was the best part. I can't even remember everything I heard there for the first time...Spirit for sure, before Randy California passed away. Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival. Loads of other old concerts...probably early Genesis. It was magical. And one of the most magical parts was the opening, when everything was quiet and then an acoustic guitar would start playing an amazingly gorgeous melody...Jorma Kaukonen, Jefferson Airplane, and Embryonic Journey. To this day I can't hear that without being transported back to that youth sitting in their room, trying to figure themselves out and why they felt the way they did, and finding the most comfort and understanding and companionship in music.
The second best thing on Sunday nights was also on WYSP, and that was the Sunday Night Sixpack...6 albums played in their entirety. This was generally blank tape time for me, and I probably recorded a hundred tapes worth of music that I eventually bought when I got older. I discovered King Crimson, and In the Court of the Crimson King. I discovered Yes. And Emerson Lake and Palmer. And so much more.
So much of the foundation of my listening and appreciation and love of music came from those days and nights. Late night listening on headphones...moving the stereo and speakers to the other end of the room so I could slip out the window, lay down on the roof of the 1 story addition that had been built onto our house, and watch the stars while music played, always careful not to fall asleep out of fear of waking up very very suddenly.
It's not the fall that hurts, it's the sudden stop at the end.
Those days were the first days music saved me. Without it, I wouldn't be here to blog, for one reason or another. But I found solace, and understanding, and a lack of judgment in music. It asked only that I listen with an open mind, and that I gave in abundance in repayment for the gifts I received in return.
26 November 2015
A century of words and allsorts...the 100th post
This is my 100th post on this blog. I feel like it should be something special, and if I say 'this is just another collection of my random thoughts' it'll feel anticlimactic. But this is just another collection of my random thoughts. Hopefully in a day or so I'll be feeling better enough to offer something of more substance.
Yesterday I wrote about my mood issues. Oh, let's call it what it is. Yesterday I wrote about my depression and panic disorders. I wrote about the fact that I've stopped taking my anti-anxiety meds, under doctor's orders, and I'm physically fine with that. The part I didn't mention was the mood stabiliser I am on, lamictal, hasn't even come close to reaching therapeutic levels in my system. All I know, as I don't have the results of that bloodwork accessible through my patient portal thing, is that therapeutic levels are generally between 10 and 15 somethings per something, and I'm sitting right around 1. So my mood is still incredibly rough, and there are a lot of crying fits and heavy downs.
I'm not at risk of anything. I don't want to do anything to myself, or hurt myself. I just hate how I feel right now.
I haven't written in 2 days, which makes it sound like I'm being hard on myself. I'm really not, though. I'm fitting together in my head the penultimate scene for one story, and figuring out if I need to show or tell in the other at the point I'm at.
Lemmeth Plains got a slight adjustment to it's title, as I found The Incident at Lemmeth Plains to not only be a more evocative title, but also perhaps a better descriptor of the events. Besides, there's a story to come that will need a 'The Battle of' title more than this one, so out it went for another time and another tale. TIaLP is sitting at just shy of 7600 words, and I'm wagering we break 10K by the time we're done, between the last sequence and the epilogue that it'll need.
I did my most recent work on After the Ordeal 2 days previous to the above. And I know I wrote about the fact that the two pieces that I was unsure of being together or separate stories got resolved. This is really a massive character piece for another OC, who got about 4 or 5 lines of mention in a story I wrote over a year ago. I'm getting deep into back story for her, and thus the show or tell like I mentioned above. It's just over 8700 words, and again, over 10K by the time I'm done.
It's likely once I am done with all of the so-called 'Tessa Tales' I'll have invested more time and words on her than I did in my Madame Vastra/Jenny Flint novel In Her Absence (which finished at around 67K words...180-ish pages, so a short novel, but a novel nonetheless. Early/mid period Michael Moorcock length, as a lot of his novels were in the same range in the 70's). I believe there's likely five more stories to be written, but we will see.
The nice thing about stories in this range is that I can break up a character's arc into pieces, have each story a nice 'bite size' piece for people to read, and yet still have meat on the bones...substance and exposition, not rushed and bare, nor dense and languorous. There are stories that need that...I'm reading one and it's absolutely brilliant in its world building and plotting. And it's dense, and in a very good way. It's dense the way good fantasy novels are...not dense for the sake of being clever.
Tonight's listening is Alexander Scriabin.
If you're not familiar...and I would understand, as his works are often overshadowed by those of his Russian compatriots, here's some info from Wikipedia:
"Scriabin was one of the most innovative and most controversial of early modern composers. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia said of Scriabin that, "No composer has had more scorn heaped on him or greater love bestowed." Leo Tolstoy described Scriabin's music as "a sincere expression of genius." Scriabin had a major impact on the music world over time, and influenced composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Nikolai Roslavets. However Scriabin's importance in the Soviet musical scene, and internationally, drastically declined. According to his biographer, "No one was more famous during their lifetime, and few were more quickly ignored after death." Nevertheless, his musical aesthetics have been reevaluated, and his ten published sonatas for piano, which arguably provided the most consistent contribution to the genre since the time of Beethoven's set, have been increasingly championed."
I'm listening to his piano works right now, after spending a good bit of time with his symphonic works...mostly his 3 numbered symphonies and the 2 orchestral tone poems considered to be his 4th and 5th symphonies. I love the orchestral work, and I'll know more about his piano work soon-ish.
I'll leave you with a piece of his as I sign off.
Dodadagohvi, osda svnoi.
Ayv gvgeyui nihi, sidanelvhi.
Ayv gvgeyui nihi, adageyudi.
Yesterday I wrote about my mood issues. Oh, let's call it what it is. Yesterday I wrote about my depression and panic disorders. I wrote about the fact that I've stopped taking my anti-anxiety meds, under doctor's orders, and I'm physically fine with that. The part I didn't mention was the mood stabiliser I am on, lamictal, hasn't even come close to reaching therapeutic levels in my system. All I know, as I don't have the results of that bloodwork accessible through my patient portal thing, is that therapeutic levels are generally between 10 and 15 somethings per something, and I'm sitting right around 1. So my mood is still incredibly rough, and there are a lot of crying fits and heavy downs.
I'm not at risk of anything. I don't want to do anything to myself, or hurt myself. I just hate how I feel right now.
~~~//\\~~~
I haven't written in 2 days, which makes it sound like I'm being hard on myself. I'm really not, though. I'm fitting together in my head the penultimate scene for one story, and figuring out if I need to show or tell in the other at the point I'm at.
Lemmeth Plains got a slight adjustment to it's title, as I found The Incident at Lemmeth Plains to not only be a more evocative title, but also perhaps a better descriptor of the events. Besides, there's a story to come that will need a 'The Battle of' title more than this one, so out it went for another time and another tale. TIaLP is sitting at just shy of 7600 words, and I'm wagering we break 10K by the time we're done, between the last sequence and the epilogue that it'll need.
I did my most recent work on After the Ordeal 2 days previous to the above. And I know I wrote about the fact that the two pieces that I was unsure of being together or separate stories got resolved. This is really a massive character piece for another OC, who got about 4 or 5 lines of mention in a story I wrote over a year ago. I'm getting deep into back story for her, and thus the show or tell like I mentioned above. It's just over 8700 words, and again, over 10K by the time I'm done.
It's likely once I am done with all of the so-called 'Tessa Tales' I'll have invested more time and words on her than I did in my Madame Vastra/Jenny Flint novel In Her Absence (which finished at around 67K words...180-ish pages, so a short novel, but a novel nonetheless. Early/mid period Michael Moorcock length, as a lot of his novels were in the same range in the 70's). I believe there's likely five more stories to be written, but we will see.
The nice thing about stories in this range is that I can break up a character's arc into pieces, have each story a nice 'bite size' piece for people to read, and yet still have meat on the bones...substance and exposition, not rushed and bare, nor dense and languorous. There are stories that need that...I'm reading one and it's absolutely brilliant in its world building and plotting. And it's dense, and in a very good way. It's dense the way good fantasy novels are...not dense for the sake of being clever.
~~~//\\~~~
Tonight's listening is Alexander Scriabin.
If you're not familiar...and I would understand, as his works are often overshadowed by those of his Russian compatriots, here's some info from Wikipedia:
"Scriabin was one of the most innovative and most controversial of early modern composers. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia said of Scriabin that, "No composer has had more scorn heaped on him or greater love bestowed." Leo Tolstoy described Scriabin's music as "a sincere expression of genius." Scriabin had a major impact on the music world over time, and influenced composers such as Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Nikolai Roslavets. However Scriabin's importance in the Soviet musical scene, and internationally, drastically declined. According to his biographer, "No one was more famous during their lifetime, and few were more quickly ignored after death." Nevertheless, his musical aesthetics have been reevaluated, and his ten published sonatas for piano, which arguably provided the most consistent contribution to the genre since the time of Beethoven's set, have been increasingly championed."
I'm listening to his piano works right now, after spending a good bit of time with his symphonic works...mostly his 3 numbered symphonies and the 2 orchestral tone poems considered to be his 4th and 5th symphonies. I love the orchestral work, and I'll know more about his piano work soon-ish.
I'll leave you with a piece of his as I sign off.
Dodadagohvi, osda svnoi.
Ayv gvgeyui nihi, sidanelvhi.
Ayv gvgeyui nihi, adageyudi.
25 November 2015
Wednesday Evening, 11 PM.
It's been a very long day.
I saw one of my doctors today, who wanted to take me off one of my medications out of concern it was contributing to some memory issues I have been having. I'm OK with this, because it's been negatively impacting a lot of things. However, now I have no emergency medication for my panic and anxiety attacks. I'll just have to either crawl under a blanket, hide, and cry, or figure out coping mechanisms.
Work was perdition in extremis, with my boss there all day, micromanaging and sniping at me like a snipe hunter. I like what I do, he's just hard to deal with and one of my biggest sources of stress. I try. I truly do. But many days I just want to run home and get away from it.
I had to hit the grocery store for the free turkey. Yay free turkey, for real. But the store was packed (I expected this), the people were horrible, running into me, often on purpose, hitting me in the back with their carts. Stopping and blocking entire aisles, cutting in front of me...and I was growing so upset by this point that I just kept my mouth shut because I didn't want to lose it in the store and collapse to the floor crying. I give the cashiers a pass...they were dealing with hell, so their less than cheerful attitude I accepted.
Other personal stuff too. Stuff that hurt me, and upset me, and really was the capper of the day. From unexpected sources. Stuff I was not at all equipped to parse or process. I'm still not. And it puts tomorrow in a kind of stasis, and I may just stay in bed and hide.
I wanted to write about my writing, not a long list of negativity.
I'm sorry.
It's what I have :-(
24 November 2015
Thoughts on the new titles I picked up at my FLCBS
The Mighty Thor 1: Well, let's just dive into the mythology straight away. Dr. Jane Foster is still Thor, now with incurable cancer, and there is a war between the realms of Alfheim and Svartalfheim. Odin hasn't been seen in a long time. Foster is seen as a traitor. Freyja is imprisoned by Odin. And Loki shows up on the last page. Wow.
Ms. Marvel 1: She's an Avenger now, which is cool. And she has typical high school problems, like losing her boyfriend and stuff. Also, Jersey City is being taken over by something mysterious, and someone has appropriated her image on billboards everywhere. Neat art...very stylised. Enjoyed this one.
Red Thorn 1: VERTIGO! Loads of Scottish history, and I am blown away by the opening phases of this story. Mystery, mayhem, lots of the red, and a woman who has powers and no idea how she got them. I am way interested in where this is going...
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