Cupid Bow Mouth

It's only Monday and it's already up my ass with annoyance.

There are people making errors and doing shit, ignoring the fact that they have been advised MULTIPLE times NOT to do the thing who are now in their feelings about the fact that other departments who are impacted by their shenanigans have been consulted on how to rectify the errors they have created. The phrase being used is "thrown under the bus." I'm unclear as to how you can be told three or four times not to do a thing and still feel thrown under the bus when I ask IT about what to do with the shit you did.

Three or Four times (THREE emails, at least two phone calls, and a training).

BAFFLED! This is me BAFFLED.

And now because they are all in their feelings and sensitive, they're trying to bitch and complain that I'm a terrible person with no people skills because I don't pussy foot around AND, apparently, my vocabulary is too big. Which sounds more like jealousy then anything else.

Like WTF. How, at 45 years old, did I end up back in middle school. Look, I am always professional and direct and clear. Like they are so fucking sensitive that the Managers decided to stop the monthly audits and just let the internal and third-party auditors pull the data which means there is zero opportunity for correction or re-training. It's legit going to be what it's going to be. I am so over this shit. SO OVER IT!

A few things worth nothing:

1. Finally got around to seeing Star Wars, Episode 7: The Force Awakens. Congratulations to J.J. Abrams for re-making Star Wars, Episode 4: A New Hope without really telling anyone. I am a Star Wars fan almost from the cradle (it came out May the year that I was born) and I enjoyed it immensely.

2. Considering, I do not understand how Mad Max: Fury Road has been nominated for Best Picture. I enjoyed it. I really liked the story that was being told (re-tread of other things though it was), but I remember there were some weird inconsistencies and not that an action movie can't be a Best Picture, I don't remember that I was all that impressed with the storyline. Charlize Theron's awesomeness not-withstanding.

3. Fury Road was also NOT a Mad Max film. Not really. It was Furiosa's story.

4. Projects: AO3 upload of ye olde archive. OG Writing Project (yeah, still babysitting that one but more excited about it everyday).

5. Books to read: Chaucer to Spenser: a critical reader, Carnival of Souls, The Girl with All the Gifts, and

6. I am in deep lust with Spotify. Send me your ID if you have one and I'll totes link ya! My Starred playlist is on total CRACK!

7. I work like I'm stupid.

8. I think that may have really given up on The Walking Dead. They burned me out and broke my soul, yo. And I haven't even finished the last part of the first half of the season. I'm like five eps behind. Jeez.

I am so tired, I don't even know what to do. PMS not helping. Turned in the EPIK app and I have revisions to make. I'm so sick of this process and it just barely started. Part of the issue is I have doubts about teaching English LANGUAGE. I love LITERATURE. I love love language as an extension of literature, but teaching them is not the same battle. I am really, really, really tired right now.

On the plus: Walking Dead. I'm trying to get back into LJ cause I misses it. Maybe I start write ups again, even though it's dead around here. I started the LJ to really get into writing, developed an awesome community, and then fell off. Things change, transitions happen, we can't stay stuck, yes?

Okay.

I'm stuck on my EPIK application, waiting for letters of recommendation. I really should be writing in the meantime. I finally cracked my laptop open and I have all of these unfinished pieces that I don't even remember starting:

An inter-steller Sleeping Beauty story that I just barely recall. There's a circus and a witch, and sleeping beauty has become a sideshow attraction.
She had dreamt the world into near ruin, once upon a time. That is why the man has come.

Impossibly, the start or what I remember was going to be a romance novel:
Counting stars and mistakes from last year and the year before that, and five years past makes Kat want to cry. Her eyes burn, but she hates crying. She's not a pretty crier. She is queen of the ugly face cry, so she steals herself, buries her nose into the fuzzy warmth of a heavy blanket and breathes deeply. In and out and in again. Controlled, deep, and she shakes her head to clear her eyes and the melancholy fog in her brain. Leaning her head back against the chair she goes back to counting stars, the streak of the Quarantid meteor shower, determined to enjoy it because she called out Friday just for the opportunity. And now she's sitting here, the reluctant and sleeping Lilla at her side, staring at the sky.

A million and one bits and pieces, starts and finishes to the Briar story ...
Briar dreams of Mary Angel with cellophane wings, her skeletal beetle arms and bent, too long fingers reaching and gathering. Curled beneath her wings, crouched low and hunched over, she spins silk from the regurgitated blood and viscera scooped from the body stretched at her feet.

Something about werewolves. Clay's story; it started with a birth.
He would swear, later, after the shock wore off, that she growled. A low animal sound deep in her throat right before she lunged up off the ground, her mouth wide, and snapped at his face. Her teeth clacked together hard as he jerked back. All he recalls is an impression of teeth, elongated canine, and something shifting beneath her skin, something wrong in the bones of her face.

The boy jumped back hard, slamming into the shelves behind him, a rain of bows and ribbons falling around him in a flurry of color. The woman was heavy and slow with her pregnancy and just like that she was back on floor.


*sigh* What to do?! OMG ... what to do ...

Totally put off signing up for the Affordable Care Act because I knew that I wouldn't be able to afford the affordable plans. Entered the information in today and, of course, can't actually afford it even with "Premium Assistance." I'm all for universal health care. I believe in it wholeheartedly, but if you're going to force people to carry health insurance, then you have to pay for it. It can't be something that individuals are forced to pay for because for various reasons they may not be able to do so. It's been my major caveat with the ACA. With the plans in place as is (with deductions dully noted), I would be left with $84.00 for food and expenses for the month.

I mean, I didn't sign up for my company health insurance because, even though it falls within "affordable" limits, it would have meant an extra $54 out of each check. Stressing out right now. Totally stressing out. I guess I'll be taking the penalty this year.

Caffeine detox is a son-of-a-bitch.

Today at Ye Olde Work Place I came damn near close to delivering a karate chop to my Boss's (and I use that term very loosely) throat. I won't go into the dirty details, but the end result was that he talked over me after demanding an explanation and then hung up in my face. I am so over that place and the idiotic people who work there. Over. It.

Please, new job. Please hurry and get here!

As I sat there trying desperately to control my temper and not call him back and cuss him out or call him back and hang up IN HIS face, an errant thought slid across my brain: what could I possibly take to calm my nerves and help me to deal with this idiot and all the people like him who both work here and call in. And BANG! There it was. I was a sane thought away from self-medicating myself so that I can make it through my work day. WTF. That is really low.

To be very clear, I'm pissed the hell off. Grow the fuck up, mr. Learn to listen. So, I, acting as the adult in this situation, opted to send him an email instead. I expressed my sorrow that I had used my brain to think a little too much. Instead of accepting the fact that his instructions made no sense, and instead of repeating my request for clarification since his response to my initial inquiry for clarification still made no sense, I used my brain and made a decision. I let him know that it wouldn't happen again. Cause you know what?! They don't pay me enough and to avoid any further conflict, and to help me manage *my* stress, it's just as well that I learn to just do what I'm told in this situation. I'm REALLY good at documenting and being VERY precise with language. So, blame will always be appropriately assigned where it is due. The short explanation will be, well, "he told me to." With diagrams and quotes. At work, that is a-ok. At least in "my line of work."

Voila! Problem solved.

Now. Off to do other, infinitely more interesting things. Like job hunting, maybe a spot of blog reading!

I've never been super aware of colorism. It's a concept that I've only *really* become consciously interested in this past year after seeing the documentary Dark Girls (I highly recommend it). My family contains a spectrum of skin colors from very light to dark, and with the exception of those middle school years when adolescence hits and we all learn to hate ourselves and yearn for something different, I've never been uncomfortable with my skin color. I am the color that I am, and I am black. It is probably the least interesting, least informative, yet most readily identifiable bit of information that you could possibly gather about me. Me being the me that I am, I'm always curious to hear alternate perspectives. I think that difference is amazing and fantastically important. Many voices.

This video was super interesting simply because of the terminology used by the speakers themselves. It really touches on the differences between race and culture and the way the two are conflated in America and shoe-horned into existing in the same place. From the outside looking in, these people look black and are boxed as black; however, from the inside looking out, they are Latino. Understanding that to be so also means that they can be black, as well. But the difference is that from where they sit culture trumps skin color.

"Black and Latino" (Watch on YouTube)

Hello?

Hello?

Is this thing on?

[yelling into the ether] ...my life sucks without you...

Do you believe me?

Ok, so maybe sucks is a bit of an exaggeration. My life doesn't suck, exactly. It is a little rough around the edges, but we're working on that. Working on that means re-connecting with the things that make me happy. Things like the participatory culture on LJ and DW. I miss all the writing and the conversations, the deep-thinky thoughts, the not-so-deep, not-so-thinky thoughts, the art, the creativity, the exuberance. I miss all of it. My fannish activity was always rooted in the Whedonverse and Farscape (to lesser degree) and my participation in LJ has been waning with the absence of a strong show that just got me "like that." Agents of Shield held my attention for two whole seconds. There's plenty that I'm still watching (The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, Sleepy Hollow), but nothing has quite made me dive into fandom the way that BtVS did.

Other things ... other non-fannish, meatspace things also threw a monkey wrench in the works. 2012 and 2013 were difficult. My world fell apart a little bit in 2012 and 2013 was all about recovery. Bloody, sweaty, tearful, 15 extra pounds worth of recovery. Part of that recovery included a self-published collection of short stories titled All This and Love. I worked from October 2012 to September 2013 to get that thing completed and out in the world. It consumed all of my time. I even put the job search on the backburner to get that thing done. It's success is...really, anybody's guess. I have all of 2 reviews and although they are good, there's only two of them. The book has sold maybe 16 e-copies (at least 2 for sure not to anyone that I know personally) and still...2 lonely little reviews on Goodreads. One of the key things for me to focus on and remember is the types of communities that I am moving from with LJ and fandom and into with the free-for-all of masses at large. This is not directed at anyone in particular or even, really, in general. It's a brief vent and it's something that's largely resolved within myself.

I am thrilled to have actually sold copies and I am thrilled to have the reviews that I do have. I do not want anyone to think that I'm complaining too heavily here because there's no real reason that I should have sold anything or that anyone would have anything to say about what I had written. I was thrilled with the first sale. Which just so happened to be from a complete and total stranger!! I do struggle with the lack of feedback but then so do all authors in all mediums. But what I am learning is that they are hard to come by in general. And it's okay. It's not necessarily a commentary on the manuscript or the author. I'm learning. I'm growing accustomed and the process has been a fascinating one. I'm still glad that I did it. And you know what? I'm planning on doing it again! Huzzah!

( Read more... )

Seriously .... someone should ...

OBG Adventures is hosting a giveaway. Free flight and transfers from San Francisco International to Charles DeGaulle, and back again. Once you're in Paris, you get an adorable, teeny tiny apartment to stay in. OMG, how awesome is that?!

For more details click on the linky-link:

Why Not Drop Everthing & Come to Paris

Enter, you guys, enter!! Got to Paris! Why the Hell not?!?!?