1. I passed Contract with a B- and Torts with a C. I'm incredibly relieved by both of these things, although not very impressed with myself.

1A. However, as people keep reminding me, I do work full-time and these are not easy papers: from my budget-style analysis of the grade range for Contract, for instance, I was, with 62%, in the 69th percentile; a fifth of the class failed.

1B. This does not excuse my Torts grade. However, as people keep reminding me, the subject is practically irrelevant in NZ law and I should concentrate on knowing ACC law instead on account of that being much more awesome.

2. All of the free and paid Christmas-related gifts one can virtually post to another person's profile on LJ are Northern Hemisphere related.

2A. I feel wronged by this. Seriously.

2B. Why can't there be a fucking, I don't know, shrimp kebab or something? Or a little Santa in board shorts with a penguin on a surfboard. There aren't any fucking snowflakes here and I resent the assumption that there should be.

2C. I think 2–2B tie into my general feeling of disconnect with the Rest Of The World, which may or may not have something to do with New Zealand being, like, a series of islands in the middle of the fucking ocean where there are more sheep than people, and which may or may not also have something to do with the fact that I am a cantankerous cow.

2D. No, but seriously, it's summer and Christmas for me has always been a summertime thing, and. Yeah. It's not that I think winter Christmas is wrong or that the Northern Hemisphere is full of fail, but that—generally—an individual or group's experience of a thing does not constitute the whole of humanity's experience of that thing.

2E. I'm really fucking bad at remembering that last point.

3. thesane and fiance were here this weekend and it was awesomesocks even though I was all grumpy and depressed for most of it on account of my fucking parents and their fucking inconvenient separation.

4. I had this whole big rant I was about to post about how replication of a thing is not the same as theft of a thing, and that while replication may have its own set of ethical issues attached that set is not the same set as those that apply to theft of property. But then I realised that (a) my argument was not as well-formed as it should be, (b) I should at least attempt to grapple with the set of ethical issues that apply to replication myself before I post, and (c) I don't really want to open that can of worms.

5. I went to a really interesting seminar at work today about plain language use, the most interesting point I took from which was that in order to get clear language (in formal writing) there must first be clear thinking. This is kind of blatantly obvious, but at the same time explains why a lot of policy documents put out by Govt (and big business and and and) are so bloody difficult to explain. It's not that the policy wonks et cetera can't write; it's that they can't think. Alternately, and more probably, they themselves are getting stupid ideas pressed on them by some bloke up high and can't do much to turn it into a sparkly diamond of literary merit.

seriously vodafone why so hard to contact? SERIOUSLY. IT'S THIS FUCKING BIZARRE, DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW MAZE OF "PRESS ONE FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE. TO CONFIRM YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO A CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE, PRESS ZERO NOW."

YES, YOU CUNTS, I WANT TO SPEAK TO A CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE. FFS.

So I cocked up, right, and accidentally paid one bill the amount that I was supposed to pay for another bill, so I called up vodafone to say, hey, I have cocked up, please to be giving back my fucking money now.

And ended up speaking to some jaded disaffected youth who was all, what is your bank account number? And, it'll take one to two weeks to get back into your account.

FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS, VODAFONE. It transfers from my account to yours overnight; you are a modern business; what do you MEAN it's going to take UP TO A FUCKING FORTNIGHT to return my fucking money to me you fucking asshats!

... is what I did not say to the customer service rep, because it's not her fault that the system design is so fucking poor.

Anyway, am home sick with a headcold, tired and cranky and still reading Star Trek: the AU. *facepalm*

The concept of possession—in the property sense—is such fucking bullshit, man, I can't even. Having said that, I'd be pissed if anyone stole my shit, because it's MY SHIT.

My dad was made redundant almost 2 years ago, and has been unsuccessful in finding suitable replacement work. He's in the worst demographic for finding work: in his late fifties, an experienced middle-management type with a couple of breaks about 10 years ago for serious depression. He's smart and very good at what he does. I think he's now been made redundant 5 times in his working life. They're about to sell the house.

There is absolutely nothing I can do. And I hate it; it's been making me (periodically) sad for the last two years and obviously that's worse now. That's their chance of a semi-comfortable retirement gone; the pension is a pittance and there is no other money. My 18-year-old brother is autistic and there's little-to-no chance of him being independent in the usual sense of the world. My mother works, but makes less than I do. My 20-year-old brother has chronic fatigue syndrome and is slowly getting around major depression.

I told dad that he should call UNITE on Monday, see if he can volunteer or something because it pretty much exactly meets his political views and he's really good at explaining things like "why you should be in a union" and "why you should, if you strike, strike to cause the maximum damage to your employer as you can". I hope they have something he can do.

I just feel completely overwhelmed.

And. Like. Why do we feed power structures even when they are clearly not to our benefit? Why does a struggle over who has what property rights and what they are allowed to do with them turn into a struggle to get recognition of diversity and the difference between the sexes? Why are we okay with Rich People Owning Stuff just because they willingly follow (and believe in the worth of) the Human Rights Act? Why the fuck do left-wing parties put up with this shit (and I'm not only talking about mainstream parties here)?

Humans are hierarchical. We form power structures the moment we meet; we constantly evaluate our position in the pecking order. I don't think any governmental structure can realistically work without hierarchy (and I include the state in that) and any attempt to bypass a formal hierarchy will only end up with an informal one without the checks and balances that a proper system could (theoretically) bring.

But. Our hierarchy—the hierarchy of New Zealand and New Zealand's place in the global hierarchy—is totally fucked-up. We have a couple of billion people who subsist on less than a dollar a day; we have a few thousand people who have more than a billion dollars each. WE OUTNUMBER THEM. Why the fuck do we put up with this shit?

We let Rich People Who Own Stuff label themselves: entrepreneurs, wealth creators, the finance industry, exporters, executives, businesspeople. We give poor people who are systemically screwed over by the hierarchy (and, you know, nothing is a more reliable indicator of how far up the hierarchy a child will get than the income of that child's parents or guardians. Nothing.) labels: dole-bludgers, benefit frauds, slapper single mums, useless lazy bastards, foreigners, those people in that other country gosh-I'd-like-to-visit-but-I-wouldn't-want-to-live-there. Those people—the people who subsist, the people who eat almost entirely off what we send them in care packages even though we allow Rich People Who Own Stuff to set up businesses in their country to, you know, pay those of them the Rich People choose to employ far, far less than would be allowable in our own gracious nations—vastly outnumber us. We're fucking lucky they're not constantly coming to our countries and blowing shit up.

Everything about the hierarchy is designed to make ourselves aim to be a Rich Person Who Owns Stuff, and to treat the people who are in exactly the same position as us or slightly worse off as our enemies rather than our allies: and, in many cases, not to see those people as people at all. And it fucking sucks.

It pisses me off that New World (the major supermarket chain in NZ) charges for plastic bags now. And. Okay. It does not annoy me that, say, Borders does; if you're buying a book or four, you can normally carry them or swallow a 10c charge. But. But, like, while I appreciate that a charge on a bag may be a good disincentive for people who are buying 3 items, it is an absolute pain in the ass for people like us who go grocery shopping once a fortnight after work and dinner and do not own a car. Because carting around the 15-or-so reusable bags to work and then to dinner and then when we walk to the supermarket is... actually not that practical.

I also hate the vaguely disapproving air we always get when we say yes, we want a bag for the toilet paper and we want a bag for the 8-pack of coke. We want bags for these things (and, by all means, stuff other stuff in those bags if you can) because (a) we do not have a car, and (b) we live up a fucking great hill with an uneven path and bad lighting and trying to manage a 12-roll pack of toilet paper along with other groceries soon turns into a game of "where did that tin of cat food go?" I don't know. I appreciate the environmental motive and know that it does act as a pretty good disincentive, but it also seems to make a number of assumptions about people that are not always in practice true.

... I'm also cranky that they're stuffing the bags as full as they can now, and that makes them more prone to splitting, less easy to balance between hands when you're carrying several, and generally less manageable up our uneven, badly-lit path. Woe, et cetera.

From a comment I left on someone else's blog:

Anyway. My bugbear at the moment is that I live in a city in the southern hemisphere and it is winter at the moment and, although it doesn't snow, we do get strong southerly winds and frosts and heavy rain. And, despite this, the 2 major stores that sell plus-size clothing (and the 4 or 5 boutiques) have apparently all completely independently decided that long sleeves are unnecessary evils contributing to the oppression of fat women everywhere, and that knitted jerseys that close at the front are another great wrong. So it has been like 3 winters since I've found a single warm long-sleeved work-appropriate top in my size. No, seriously. No, seriously. And I fit into the plus-size range; I don't know what the hell women who are significantly larger than I do.

... the not-long-sleeved/doesn't-close-at-the-front thing extends to 4 out of 5 of the winter coats. I don't even know.

DISCUSS*

For the record: I am about 5'9" or 175cm. I weigh about 130kg, last time I checked, or about 290lb. I wear between size 20 and 24 depending on brand (usually a 22 or 2XL). I have been this size for the last 5 years. I do not have any major medical problems except asthma in the winters and a distressing tendency to ear infections, both of which I have carried through baby plumpness, childhood and early-teenage slenderness, and late-teenage and adult obesity. My eating philosophy is simple: if I want to eat it, I will eat it. My exercising philosophy is simple: I get bored easily and like walking places with headphones, so I walk round town a lot and to and from the bus stop but do virtually nothing else.

I'm don't feel guilty about this. There are a number of things—my intellect; my inability to concentrate on my studies; my laziness; my being a massive, massive cow to a lot of people—that I can and do feel guilty about and may or may not feel moved to apologise for. But I am not going to apologise for the size of my fucking waistband.

* You are totally welcome to tell me I should learn to sew. I even have a sewing machine! What I do not have, however, are (a) design skills, and (b) patience. Alas.

I rode halfway home tonight on a bus that did not like to go up hills. It broke down—and didn't start again—just past the Northland shops, and I walked round the corner and ended up getting a ride from a lovely woman on the same bus whose partner came to pick her up.

Now I have cramps. It's pretty awesome, for a definition of awesome that happens to include NOT AWESOME WHY GOD UTERUS I HATE YOUR STUPID FACE AND YOUR STUPID TUBES I WOULD CUT THEM OUT IF I COULD HELL IF I WANT KIDS AND THEIR STUPID LAMER CRYING FACES ANYWAY.

Question: if I change my lj name to sadiesays, would you think I'm a lamer? I'm looking at you, jessikast.

( talk of abortion and ethics )

I have to write Opinion #3 for LRW today. Ahaha ha ha.

So I got Opinion #2 back today, and I got an A for it—which (a) I would not have got if one of the lawyers had not told me that all my reasoning was shitty; and (b) was the highest mark, at 82%, of all the opinions my particular tutor marked.

I asked him what makes a good opinion; not my opinion specifically, because I don't really think it is that good, and also because rules cannot really be extrapolated from one example. And he said, you know, it's getting the issues right and arguing well and writing well generally, and that there really aren't any rules. Except, sort of, IRAC.

I. Just. There is this weird assumption that goes along with decent marks—namely, that you know what the hell you are doing. And I don't. And, oh. Pity me, for my life is terribly difficult, et cetera.

I have always, always, always felt that my writing style is incredibly unsophisticated; I never manage the tricks of phrasing or the neat turns of argument to argument, folding and twisting over one another, that other people seem to write (whether or not that is with effort is outside the scope of this whine). I write in plain, short sentences and misuse commas horrendously; I edit myself compulsively; I—I, god, I want to understand the rules.

I do not, however, think that law school is the be-all and end-all of education. And I don't, despite being told so at every opportunity, think that a degree in law provides anyone with a good general education. It teaches a certain kind of analysis, and I think a certain kind of cynicism (though that may pass with age), but—for the love of heaven, Torts is taught with one eye to cutting everything but the bare bones out of every case and the other to learning a set of rules which we are then told are, hey, not ever applied like that in real life. And that is so weird—it is bizarre that we grapple with huge concepts like justice and freedom and fairness without ever looking at them as more than a public policy argument to win or lose our tutorial examples. I wish we looked at, as a starting point, some of the background to the bastardized version of the Socratic method; that we looked at basic reasoning and fallacies and actually considered what we mean when we throw around terms like law reform. But that might be my own bias showing.:|

THIS IS A POST IN UPPERCASE BECAUSE THIS IS A POST OF RAGE.

SO I WROTE MY LRW ASSIGNMENT LAST NIGHT. AND THEN I SHOWED IT TO A LAWYER AT WORK. AND SHE WAS ALL "... YOUR LEGAL REASONING IS CRAPPY!" AND I WAS LIKE "... I KNOW. *SHAMED*"

AND NOW I AM REWRITING IT. AND I DON'T IN FACT UNDERSTAND THE THINGS I THOUGHT I UNDERSTOOD. AND I USE THE WORDS "ACTUALLY" AND "IN FACT" AND "THEREFORE" AND "RELEVANT" WAY THE FUCK TOO MUCH.

... I MAY BE D/LING AMERICAN IDOL TO CHEER MYSELF UP.

THIS POST HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY UNIVERSITY STRESS AND TOOTHACHE AND MY RIDICULOUS HABIT OF WRITING THREE WORDS AND THEN CHANGING TWO OF THEM.

... I have now reached a point in my life where I stop reading fics if they miss the comma in sentences like "Judy, do you want to go to the movies?"

This is a tragic thing! Commas are hard—I misuse them all the time, I know—and, like, this is FREE INTERNET FICTION. I should be less judgmental. I should be less judgmental of everything. *sadfaced* I had to look up the spelling of "judgmental" at dictionary.com.

I still have to write my opinion. I did do a rough draft of it on Monday, spent about an hour thinking about it as I was trying to sleep on Monday night, and then have failed to add to it since.

PEOPLE.

Seriously. I cannot understand how so many people manage to post fic searches in a fic community, all claiming that (a) they've just finished watching/reading the canon and now they have to find fic! and (b) they have no idea what's out there.

I know there are new fandom types all the time! I was once one of them. This was in 2000, which means that (a) I am old, and (b) I am crotchety.

HOWEVER

I refuse—REFUSE—to believe that a person can be capable of—
(a) finding and signing up to LJ; and
(b) operating a television and/or computer long enough to view an entire season of something; and
(c) finding the relevant fic communties for the porn-slash-true life love stories of their hearts—
... and yet be totally incapable of—
(a) googling "name/name slash recs"; or
(b) finding the appropriate FIC RECS TAGS FFS of said community THEY HAVE POSTED TO; or
(c) stalking delicious like anybody else; or
(d) hitting up ff.net out of desperation.

HELLO. IF YOU CAN FIND THE FANFICTION, THE LINKS TO THE GOOD FANFICTION ARE ONLY A GOOGLE AWAY.

... I'm saying this as someone who went round rereading old Spike/Xander fic yesterday afternoon for want of something better to do—and, my god, fandom has changed since I was a young lass! If there were small children in my yard I would yell at them!

It's so sad that I already had a "crankypants" tag.

So currently I'm suffering from some kind of period-related ragetastic voyage into the heart of why my back hurts and my life sucks and contemplating taking to my bed with a hot water bottle and, like, the trashiest fuckin' romance novel I can find in this house—which, like, dudes, this is MY HOUSE and there are like eight hundred romance novels of varying levels of trash from which I can pick.

I'm totally not even kidding about that number, either.

I don't know. I generally feel that, like, the reason I thought the stupid fucking tutorial I had to sit through yesterday was a complete waste of my time is because it was all shit I have to know for my actualfax job, and maybe I should be more sympathetic to the nineteen year olds who haven't themselves ever had to format a fisheries regulation. And I think the other reason why I thought it was a complete waste of time is that shark week is coming and that makes me angry.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to be a dude and all, except I have this kind of hazy belief formulated by what I've seen on television and in slash fanfiction that dudes don't generally have social norms in their friend circles that allow them to, like, lie down on their flatmate's thighs while watching Dancing With The Stars and demanding headrubs because (a) their lives are, like, tragic, and (b) they're about to start bleeding from the crotch.

I have a lot of fucking ridiculous Angry tags to choose from. My life: source of amusement to at least me and hopefully other people too.

I am having a Day. Lots of people on my flist have also been having Days, which: SUCK, guys, wtf is even up with the 12th of March?

My brain is so tired. Lectures take mental energy, and work—specifically, testing—takes mental energy, and I'm kind of feeling like I have no room left for anything else ever. I can at this point pretty much format legislation with one arm clutching a can of coke and the other stuffing maltesers into my mouth, talking to a drafter about the latest tragedies of gofugyourself and planning out my next game of FreeCell. But testing—man, that shit is hard. I'm really fucking glad I don't do it fulltime.

It's. Like. For every single defect or change request, I have to read the documentation and learn what the problem was and therefore what I should be looking out for; I have to also keep an eye out for any other defects which might be impacting on how the fix for this one operates, and index whatever decision I make to whatever those other defects might be; and sometimes I have to report new defects. And there's a whole lot of other shit as well. And I have my period. And I'm broke. And fucking Vodafone keeps fucking calling me to talk about the way in which I am receiving my bill, which (a) I am in fact receiving my bill, and (b) I am also PAYING IT, so I don't even know what the hell they're talking about and their messages make no sense and.

*cries*

I get so, so pissed off when I see people saying that fandom, or the internet more generally, isn't real life. Seriously. SO PISSED OFF.

If fandom/the internet isn't real life, what the fuckery is it? The only reasonable definition of "real life" is the things people in fact choose to spend their time on; and if that's six hours on the internet most evenings then so be it. It's absolutely ridiculous to think that the things we say and do here don't count because we're not saying and doing them face to face, or that if we're hurt by something on the internet we only have ourselves to blame because this is a public forum and people can say whatever they like.

Yeah, this is a public forum - so are streetcorners. But free speech doesn't stretch to everything a person would conceivably want to say. Sure, people can, do, and should be able to engage in whatever discussion makes them happy - or whatever discussion they want to engage in, whether it makes them happy or not. But that rule is a different rule from one which would, say, allow us to stand on streetcorners shouting "you are a wanker! And you! And you!" - um, we could, but it wouldn't be surprising if the cops turned up to move us along. And this isn't even as open a forum as a streetcorner - I suspect a lot of places on the internet ARE, but this is more like, I don't know, my backyard? Don't shit here and expect me to take it with good grace, thanks.*

I do think a lot of people draw a sort of curtain around their online activities and don't let people who don't participate in said online activities know what they're about - I'm one of those people - but I think a lot of people draw curtains around many aspects of their life and the way they choose to spend their time. I don't say a lot about my job to anyone: I describe the people involved but not the work. I would be absolutely horrified if someone on this journal (that doesn't already know, with my permission) found out where I worked. I would be equally horrified if someone at work found out about this journal. That separation doesn't make either my work or my online activities not real... it makes them separate.

My life consists of many things, including, but not limited to, sleeping, working, eating cereal in front of my computer, having ardent discussions about fic and romance novels with my flatmates, watching bad tv and skipping the bits I don't like, texting people with pictures I've drawn about the tragedy of my life, reading an awful lot of fic, reading an awful lot of romance novels, eating french pastries, talking about my shoes, gardening, bitching about sunlight, swearing, and failing to get dressed on the weekends. All of those things are my real life - they are what I choose to do.

... possibly other people have different interpretations of "fandom/the internet is not real life". I am interested in hearing them!

* Uh, this rant was not sparked by anything anyone has said to me. Just so that's clear.

So today I bought a Snapper card.* And, let me tell you, it was vastly annoying:

1. Many of the dairies and other shops around Wellington that sell bus tickets do not sell Snapper cards (yet). This includes the Card and Mag shop on LQ, Kirby's, and the StarMart on the Terrace. I ended up buying mine from the City Stop on the Terrace, which was a hike away and also hugely irritating as I had visited all the other merchants in the same half-hour lunchbreak.

Presumably tofulope bought hers at the dairy at the Railway Station. This means that of the 6-8 places which sell 10-trips within a 2 block radius of my work, TWO sell Snappers. This is NOT COOL.

2. You can't top your Snapper up with your credit card unless you buy a Snapper Feeder to do it at home. This costs $25 plus 2%.

3. All the cutesy references to "your Snapper swimming out of money" are making me want to STAB. STABBITY STAB STAB.

4. While I think most buses have Snappers now, not all do. I still have a few clips left on my 10-trip, but if I am caught out more than those few times I will have to buy another 10-trip this fortnight, despite the $55 I have spent on transport ALREADY — because, despite having purchased something which CLAIMS to be THE WAY OF THE FUTURE and WHAT ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE DOING, there is no guarantee that my little red card is an acceptable form of money on the transport I use EVERY DAY.

WAY TO PLAN FOR YOUR THOUSANDS OF BUS COMMUTERS, WELLINGTON CITY COUNCIL. YEAH. NICE GOING.

* New ticketing system for Wellington City buses - introduced late July, no sales of current 10-trip system from late August, completely compulsory (except for cash fares) from late December. See Snapper.co.nz for more details.

Tonight I have been productive and culled books - I think around 50, mostly trashy romances that don't have the saving grace of good characterisation, good writing, or good sex. Also all I had of David Eddings, because I haven't read them in about 8 years and it doesn't look like I'm going to again; besides, if I do get a craving, both of my flatmates have full sets.

I also spent about an hour at work reformatting one stupid Word document - and, god, I hate Word. WordPerfect - hell, xml and html - have the great advantages of being able to see (most of) the coding and therefore you can SEE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE DONE. And it wasn't especially tricky reformatting - making sure the font size and the paragraph spacing was consistent, making sure that tables all had header rows and at least one body row on each page, making all the bullet points the same kind with the same indentation, and this is the kind of shit I do every single day, except much more precisely and with legislation.

But. Fuck Microsoft, basically. GRR. Because it has so much automation I couldn't just undo one little thing or create a bit more indent; oh no, I had to fuck around with left tabs and highlighting text and moving things and I've got so many hard returns in there that aren't even the same font size as the body text because I couldn't see where the formatting ended for the headings and I had a devil of a time trying to get my page breaks on the right lines because NOTHING IN WORD MAKES SENSE. WAH. And track changes is STUPID.

Also:

I am fat.

This is a rant about fat.

( Cut for size. And size TMI. And because I'm quite anti-diet, personally, and that might be triggering. )

... looking back on posts for the last couple of months, it is fairly obvious that I post a lot more often when I have major things in my life that make me angry and/or stressed. My last ten posts or so are all whiny; the whine is broken by me, like, talking about my cat or something; and then I whine some more. I hope at least they're kind of funny. Yeah.

Yesterday being the last truly free day I have until c. 4th January, I spent it playing computer games, listening to music, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, and generally pottering around my house and talking to my flatmates. Also, we decorated the Christmas tree, and lo! it is a fine work of trashy splendour:
( Oh, Christmas Tree! )

I have to buy a secret santa present for a workmate on Wednesday, and I've got no idea what to get her - she works on the other floor, she's not part of my team, life is a tragedy and all I can think of is tea. But what if she doesn't drink loose-leaf?

My parents called today and Dad and I had a good rant about politics, employment, and life. I complained about all the people on nzherald.co.nz who seem to think the sun shines out of John Key's bum, and he reassured me by saying things like "John Key is not an entrepreneur. He's a speculator. Speculators don't create wealth, and if he ever made lots of money out of it that means that other people lost theirs. Really, he's a kind of social parasite." And then I wailed that he was probably going to be the next PM and he told me sternly not to write off Labour, because all of National's policies are pants and/or unpopular.

IDEK, I really want another left(ish) term - and another, and another, because although most of the time I can't stand political theory without practical implementation I do feel that we the people have a right to education and healthcare and not to be arrested without a warrant and that we the people therefore have a social duty to provide these things as far as we are able - and I feel that right-wing policies (which inevitably have some element of market economics in them) inherently deny some people those rights. Because the moment you bring market forces into the provision of a good or service you price some people out of access to that good or service - that's one of the functions of a market, after all.

One of the constant annoyances to me in all the furor over the Electoral Finance Bill was all the crap about the average, hard-working New Zealander no longer being able to voice political opinions because of the caps on expenditure and the fact that you can't make large donations without registering with the Electoral Office - which, I checked around, and it is in fact free to do this, basically you ring up and say "Hi, I am Joe, and I want to give X to the X Party!" I don't know enough about how the bill affects MP and party expenditure to comment on it at all, but as for it making it trickier for ordinary people to donate - that's bullshit. Ordinary people didn't have thousands to donate anyway. Even more frightening are the comments, few and far between, about how wealthy people normally get that way by being talented! And hard-working! And therefore they SHOULD have more political say, shouldn't they?

And this is why I should not read the internet.

Uh, to jessikast, laputain, tofulope, and darthsappho: we were thinking of having a thing here on New Years Day at which we would exchange any Christmas presents that hadn't already been exchanged at Christmas proper, and have a lot to eat and probably a lot to drink. I haven't made any plans for New Years Eve yet, but nishatalitha and tamarillow have. Does this seem vaguely reasonable, and/or the sort of thing that people would be interested in doing? We can provide at least three kinds of hard liquor.

Sunshine! All around me! Feeling groovy! Like I should be!

That's about it, really - I slept badly last night and was all zombiefied this morning at work (which wasn't really a problem as the good thing about having my own little office space is that I can just gaze open-mouthed at my computer screen without anyone staring over the cubicle wall and laughing at me). Work is insane: less so than last week, but given that I worked three days of overtime last week that's not saying much.

I think I have about 19 days of work left before it is summer break. When I write it down like that it doesn't seem like very long at all! And I've only bought one christmas present (a Duke Ellington cd for my dad)!

I really really wish I had any kind of musical talent at all. I listen to Sidney Bechet and Gene Krupa and Fall Out Boy and the Beatles and the Beach Boys and Amy Winehouse and Benny Goodman and Nina Simone and various recordings of Vivaldi and Beethoven and Mozart and dozens of other musicians and composers spread over almost a century of recording technology and I am BLOWN AWAY all of the time by how fantastic sound is at its best. I have over 17000 tracks on itunes at the moment, which is an absolute shitload but is also bugger all: there are hundreds of thousands of songs that I have never heard, most of which I will never hear, and that makes me inexpressibly sad. There are songs I have listened to - or tried to - a dozen times without getting all the way through, songs that I think I should get or should like or should find something redeeming about and I just don't. And I think sometimes I should cull my itunes but the thought of getting rid of something that I may find brilliant in ten years time or in three days time or in the next five minutes is terrifying.

I'm much less picky with fiction; I get thrown out of things quite regularly and I'm fairly good about getting rid of books I won't read again. I've got about 500 books at the moment and although probably sixty of those are going in the next cull the solid core of Books I Am Keeping No Matter What is growing. A lot of the comfort books I'm buying are still teen romance type things with rambling heroines and no sex and I find them guiltily in Borders and wonder if people think I'm mad to be standing reading Margaret Clark in my obviously business attire. But I've gotten frustrated with almost every Literary Novel I have ever tried to read, so now I mostly stick to romance and sci-fi and fantasy and YA. I think what bugs me is that in most of the litcrit I read (very occasionally, and I'm probably not looking in the right places) tropes and plot points that would be considered retarded and/or overdone and/or cliched in genre fiction (although they are still often very well played in genre) get played up as new and original and totally cutting edge if they're on a different set of shelves in the bookstore. So often when I've flicked through these things with admittedly beautiful cover-art the prose has made me want to stab things with a fork.

Also what pisses me off a lot is the huge amount of porn out there which gets called EROTIC and SENSUAL in the tagline because it's sold to a (mainly) female audience and which has a vastly older male lead who has been waiting possibly CENTURIES to be redeemed by his one true love and despite the two leads not seeming to have anything in common or shared values or shared ideas of how a relationship should work or to even like each other they still fuck a lot. Which would be all good - god only knows I approve of sex on paper - if they were. I don't know. More like fanfiction, which regularly manages to be mind-blowingly hot and funny and sweet and not wanting me to take a red marker to the adjectives. Maybe, again, I'm not looking in the right places. I remember thinking Jane Feather wrote excellent sex back in my late teens; I think there's about ten of her books in the house; I should go DO THAT and quit whinging, good lord.