right now, I’m sad, though. I’m trying really hard to be my usual self, and some of you know me well enough to know that my reactions require reigning in more often than they require an effort at enthusiasm, so this is strange for me. but I can’t not be on the internet. because what happened is that a friend died. an “online” friend. a week ago tonight. but I found out about it Friday, as some of you know. this weekend has been tough. my thoughts are with Mac’s family and friends. and, yes, I include his online friends in that. (there will be another blog post someday discussing friendship and the internet. we’ve already talked a bit about it on Tumblr, but I feel like maybe there’s more to say.) so, I’d like to try to wrap my head around this a little, try to put some thoughts in order. if I can.

I was introduced to Mac Tonnies via John Cabrera, as I often have been, this year, to the people in my online life. Mac was a writer, a blogger, an intellectual with a brilliant sense of humor… and after several Twitter conversations that could not be contained in 140 characters (most often on my end, as will surprise none of you, I’m sure) we began emailing. we talked about life… about cities we like and music and relationships. we certainly weren’t what I would call “best friends”, but he was someone I cared about and communicated with, and counted on seeing every day online. he posted things that made me laugh, that frightened me, and that intrigued me. I noticed his absence immediately, it’s difficult not to notice when something you usually see daily disappears. but I knew he was busy- he was writing a new book, had a potential new relationship, and there were other possible projects on the horizon that he’d mentioned- so I tried not to worry. after a few days, though, I was getting concerned. I sent him a message, saying how odd it seemed not to see him online for several consecutive days, and that I hoped all was well with him. of course, I got no response. it was two days later that I learned he’d died.

Mac probably knew, if it was something he thought about, how much I admired him, and that I enjoyed his sense of humor, shared much of his musical taste, and took a lot of pleasure from our communications. I’m not usually one to miss an opportunity to express appreciation for the people in my life, so I think that was already said. I don’t feel like there was anything unfinished there. but I still feel a tremendous sense of loss… I miss him. I miss seeing his posts every day, and wondering whether or not I had the courage to click one of his links, not knowing where it would lead. I miss knowing that he’s somewhere on the other side of a computer, accessible. an email, a tweet, or a comment away. most of all, I’m saddened to think of what the world will miss out on without his contributions. but I also am so glad to have known him while I did. and I guess that’s the most important thing to focus on, now.
xoxoxoxo

I am a frequent user of the following sites:

LiveJournal (listed first because I’ve been with it longest, though I only ever read my friendslist, and almost never actually post there anymore) there’s really not much I would change about LiveJournal, in terms of usability.

Twitter

Tumblr

Blip.fm

Facebook (I’m not going to bother with my list of things to change about FB because they are many, and are things that others would not necessarily appreciate, depending on how they use the site.)

so let’s start with the simplest.

Twitter- all I would really like is a way to ‘like’ Tweets, not it a “bookmark” sort of way, but in a ‘I agree/approve/enjoyed this but have nothing to add/it’s too long to RT/it doesn’t apply to the rest of twitterverse” sort of way. in a way that will be shown to the original poster, similar to an @reply. that’s really pretty much it. you can customize the colors and background, which I love. and there are clients/applications and affiliated sites that will do pretty much everything else I might want to do. EDIT! okay, thanks to @adnauseam, I now have another request/suggestion/thing: a group tweet option, to reply to multiple users without using up your 140 character limit.  and/or usernames not counting against your character limit. EDIT the 2nd! yeah, the other thing I forgot has been my main complaint from the beginning. my twitter is protected. I like this, it makes me feel more comfortable. but! no one can see my tweets unless they are following me back. THIS I don’t like. I don’t want people to *have* to follow me. I want to be able to follow people and have them automatically be able to see my tweets, at the very least, the ones to them. besides, having me approve people following me, who I’m already following, that’s silly! (and also a very badly written sentence, but moving on…) if I didn’t approve them, how stalkerish would that be?! do we really want to be encouraging weird stalking/lurking behavior, Twitter? I didn’t think so. so, how about you follow LJ’s lead and make my protected account accessible to anyone I’m following, as well as people I’ve approved who I’m not following, eh?

Tumblr- I want something for Tumblr like Twitter’s @replies, where you can go to see all of the people who’ve liked/reblogged your posts. also, I want a more accessible comparison of followers/followees. something like Twitter Karma for Tumblr. I want to know my Tumblr karma.

Blip.fm- I really really want there to not be a limit on props. omg, that irritates me SO MUCH. also, I would like SOME sort of order to the way they add listeners so that it’s chronological or alphabetical, or at least not completely random as it seems to be right now. and, again, a way to compare listeners/listened to. especially since I only actually get emailed a fraction of the time when someone starts listening to me, so I hardly ever know who it is to see if I want to listen to them, too. so, I want to be able to give props to any songs I want to (maybe only 1 prop per song, if there has to be a limit on something. but don’t limit how many I can give to a certain DJ and please especially stop limiting how many props I have to give! arrgh.)

what do you think? like/dislike my ideas? have more??

hm, okay. I think that’s it, for now. back to work. xoxoxo

over the next 4 weeks, for Eng 399 I’ll be rereading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, reading Sometimes a Great Notion for the first time, as well as two books discussing Ken Kesey’s writing. (plus writing a weekly assignment, a (blessedly short) 5pg term paper, and taking a midterm (next week) and a final two weeks later. the workload for Eng 468 is a bit lighter. lots of reading, though nothing I recognize, a midterm, a final, and a term paper.

(for anyone who saw this earlier and is confused… yes, there was a long, boring ramble here about random stuff, which I have now deleted. you’re welcome!)

in other news, there will be a blog about Cody’s and my recent trip to California (with photos, of course) and I think I have one or two others started, but probably not til after my graduation!

xoxo

I spent approximately the 1^st hour of the show hanging out with a good friend of mine who I rarely get to see. totally worth missing the openers! quite frankly, I debated about going to see the show at all, in favor of hanging out with B, but I love me some comedy! so B went to get some dinner, and I went to the show.

Dane Cook is a man who loves what he does, and I have such huge respect for that. it’s the best thing ever to see someone having such a good time doing what they do. he was so funny, and so obviously enjoying himself… and even when he told the audience to shut up a lot because he wanted to finish his story, it was more like, “guys, c’mon, you’ll like the next bit even better, and I just can’t wait to get to it!!” which is endearing.

objects may be closer than they appear

in every comedy show I’ve seen (or pretty much every one, there may be exceptions.. can’t think of them at the moment, though) there’s bound to be a joke or two that makes me uncomfortable, or that I just plain don’t think is funny. That happened a time or two with the show- the first  ¾ I could barely breathe for laughing, and am certain that my mascara is now a mess due to crying with laughter, but the last quarter was just a little less fabulous, still mostly hilarious, but some kinda ‘eh’ moments.  the question always is, can the comedian come back from the unfunny moments, or will he lose me for the rest of the show? and Dane Cook can definitely come back. he’s good, and like I told B, I think people are generally going to be great at anything they actually care about.  he obviously cares about making people laugh.  and I can’t fault that at all.

this screen is a nice feature, it enables us to see actual expressions.

today was full of laughter… and it was much needed.

xo

anyway, this morning, after going to the wrong courthouse at first, I arrived, right at 9am. (I’ll allow a moment here for you all to catch your breath. I know.)

so, we hand in our questionnaires about, y’know… who we are, where we live, who we live with, etc. and then we go sit in a room and wait. there are, I think, 15 of us at this point, and I’m thinking, “a jury has 12 members, right, so only 3 of us get to go home??” well, we all get called in for selection (no one has even spoken to us directly til now) and we file in and sit down… then they just start calling names and of course, I’m picked. here’s the thing, though: I’m a terrible liar. terrible. if I were to say that I was somehow biased, they’d ask me to elaborate, and I’d be screwed, and then I’d probably be in trouble. besides, I figure, I’m a pretty fair person. maybe it’ll be good that I’m on the jury. also? there are only 6 of us?! the whole time today, I was like, “but… 12 Angry Men? Jury Duty? To Kill a Mockingbird??! I… don’t… get it?” anyway, yes. only 6.

then there’s a list of questions they ask to make sure no one needs to be excused. one person is excused because the defendant’s lawyer’s represented her before. another is excused because she doesn’t feel she can be impartial, with a pretty valid & emotional explanation attached.

the case is this (simplified): a guy got caught soliciting sex in an undercover police operation. he admits to the conversation, even talking monetary amounts and offering to trade drugs as well as money, but he claims that he never intended to go through with it, and was just saying “ok” to get her to leave him alone.

we unanimously voted guilty, based on the evidence. frankly, even though I have not the slightest doubt that it was the right decision to make, it was a little heartbreaking for me. I don’t like to judge people harshly, and I know we all make mistakes, and the guy’s married (which is, I’m guessing, why this ever even came to trial) but I couldn’t in good conscience say he wasn’t guilty, when presented with the evidence. absolutely, beyond reasonable doubt. *sigh*

the funniest part was when we had deliberated & had the verdict, we went to give it & everyone had gone to lunch. so we had to wait, like, 15 minutes to find someone to let them know we were ready.

the worst part was after we left, when I was talking to the clerk about submitting for a dismissal on a ticket I got a week & a half ago… the guy and his wife came out of the courtroom, and she was pissed. he didn’t look at me. but she yelled about injustice and swore about undercover operations. the clerk said, “look, if you’re a married man and a pretty lady starts talking to you about sex, point to your ring & take off. and she should be mad at HIM, not at the police.” that pretty much covers how I feel about the situation.

at least it was quick. and there was tea in the deliberation room. and, presumably, I won’t have to do it again for a long time? I don’t really know the rules there, actually.

xo

this, combined with my highly developed ability to procrastinate, lots of personal stuff going on this term, as well as some work issues, have me so much farther behind than usual (coming into the last week of the term for me) that I’m seriously stressed.  still, early in the term, I developed a process that has helped with some of these things:

this is how I write papers, this term...

I take a bath. I print out the essays/articles I need for background on the paper, print the instructor’s requirements, and I grab my tape recorder.

see, staring at a blank document on the screen intimidates me. I’m already feeling idea-drained after 7 years of higher learning… “how much more do I really have to say?” I’m thinking, and that glowing white rectangular idea-vacuum agrees, and mocks me from my laptop’s screen.

well, those of you who have interacted with me at all, ever, know that I have a lot to say, on most topics. especially ones I care about. maybe not a lot to say that’s relevant, or helpful, or coherent, even. but I talk a lot, nevertheless. and I definitely care about psychology.

so here’s why this strategy works well for me: because I’m not staring at a blank screen… I am relaxing in the tub, reading articles on a topic that I (usually) find interesting and pertinent to my career goals. and talking, which is something I do extensively, if not well. I just record my reactions to the articles, read through the instructions from my teacher, and try to touch on all the points I’ve been asked to cover in the paper. this way, my thoughts flow naturally, (mostly) uninterrupted by my self-editing.

by the time I get out of the bath, I not only smell like pomegranate and mango (or apple and pear, depending on my mood) and am refreshed and relaxed, but all I have to do is type up my “first draft” of ramblings. for sure, I’ll have editing to do! I’ll need to remove the ‘um’ and ‘uh’ moments, as well as a bit of tangential rambling, being me… but I’ll do that editing, fill in a few gaps, and have a decent draft. just a couple more read-throughs, and my paper is good to go.

the key is to start the process early enough, which I didn’t do today, unfortunately.  but, hey, at least I smell good.

xo

I can’t fully explain it, but it makes me extremely nervous to know that people are hearing me speak… this is, I think, partly because I don’t particularly like the sound of my own voice, and partly because I know that if I was to listen to these things later I would spend the whole time wondering *why* I decided that anything I had to say was worth sharing with strangers (this is, amusingly, true of my writing as well, which is why I feel kind of ridiculous having a blog, along with all the other social networking sites I belong to. the fact that more than 100 people are following me on twitter is indescribably baffling to me. but I really like my followers, so I am definitely not complaining! just confused.) and would quite possibly just delete every phone post immediately after listening.

umm, that was a bit of a tangent. my *point* is that I recently found my old tape recorder & a bunch of blank tapes (along with a half-finished recorded letter to a friend that I started 3 or 4 years ago and never mailed, which now has Cody intermittently saying hello on it since he discovered how to work it.) and I had the brilliant idea that since I was stuck on this series of essays I had to write, I would just record my ideas verbally and type/edit them later. well… that could’ve been a good idea, except for that part where I can’t stand to listen to my own voice, and I heavily criticize everything I say. so now I’m working on the awkward task of transcribing the tape and if there was a repetitive-motion injury one could get from rolling ones eyes at oneself, I would have one by now.

in other news, I have been uncharacteristically active socially, lately. I’m naturally introverted (I just have a sieve-like filter system, so I talk a lot) and being in groups of people is actually exhausting for me. so I don’t really do much, nor do I have time to do much, in the way of entertainment. but there’ve been a flurry of musicians and shows that I really want/wanted to see, so I’m making an effort to be a little more… extroverted. seeing Spamalot was worth every ounce of that effort, and I’m sure Indigo Girls next weekend will be, also.

I was hoping to be able to catch a Terra Naomi show when I’m in California this summer, but she just sent me a message (and despite the fact that the message said I’m not likely to see her perform while I’m there, getting a message from her made my whole day, let me just say that now) saying she’s not scheduled to play in LA while I’m there.

I have a feeling I’m forgetting a lot of what I was originally planning to say, but it’s time to brave the downpour and run some errands.

xo

How about a new post to start out the week?

Firstly, I am not a completely materialistic person. I like to own books and DVDs that I know I’ll want to watch or read at a moment’s notice, but that’s more because I like my escapism. Still, there are a few shiny things that I would like if I had the money. These include, but are not limited to:
a) an iPhone, mainly because it makes it so so easy to use your phone for *so* many things… every time a new iPhone app comes out, I get a little jealous. I love my Voyager, don’t get me wrong. I just really want an iPhone. heh. EDIT: I totally didn’t know how awesome the Blackberries are. AND they’re not AT&T! I would definitely like a Blackberry. I think I might prefer it over the iPhone, but I want to play with both to compare.:)
b) Kindle. Ohhh, man, what I wouldn’t give for a Kindle. seriously, a lightweight, back-lit, transportable way to read hundreds of different books on one device that fits into my purse? Are you kidding?? Nothing will ever replace holding an actual book in my hands, the smell of the ink and the pages, the weight of it… but having something like a Kindle would mean (among other things) that I don’t have to carry several books in my purse all the time, making my purse weigh about 10lbs more than it needs to.
c) A mini laptop! One of my classmates has one of these, and I am *so* jealous. It’s small enough, again, to fit in the world’s cutest bag, fully functional, and would just make life easier. Plus, it’s adorable.

random other thoughts:
I recently had a visit with my doctor. He asked me, “So, are you getting enough sleep?” I may not have been able to stop myself from looking at him like he was crazy.  “…6 or 7 hours a night, then?” he asked. “More like four,” I responded. I didn’t add that that’s on a good day. Still, at least I usually can make up for some of it on the weekend.

Did you ever used to think, when you were little, that you’d go to all those places you wrote reports about? States, countries… I vividly remember writing lengthy reports on Oklahoma, Florida, Thailand, Italy, and Mexico… and I’ve been to none of those places.

In 15 minutes, it’ll be another Monday. This weekend went by way too quickly! Maybe the week will go just as quickly.

G’night!

xo

However, as the conversation continued, neither of us were able to think of a single story of this type with a female lead.  We both agreed that pretty much every story we could think of with a female main character ends up being a romance.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this– the tendency for female characters to end up in romances, even if that doesn’t really seem like it was the plot the story started out with. Why does this happen? I can think of a few different reasons:

1) Traditionally, the female’s “heroic quest” has always been love/marriage. A woman’s success in life was determined by her relationship status. This is, for the most part, still the case. Oh, we like to think it has changed, and maybe it has– a very little. But most of the time, single women are still judged,  and even pitied, no matter how other aspects of their life are going. If you don’t think this is the case, I’d love to hear your opinion… but I’m not sure you can convince me otherwise.

2) It could, of course, be the usual “paternalistic society” argument, where female characters, and women in general, simply don’t have the capacity to participate in epic stories except as the sidekick or love interest.

3) The reason that I am leaning toward, however, is this one. The idea that women, in general, are more relationship-focused. I’m not just talking romantic relationships, I’m talking about family, friendships, relationships with themselves, pets, children… women, as a group, orient their lives around their relationships. Is this because society has decided that women need to care more about relationships than any other aspect of their lives? I don’t know. I do know that this doesn’t describe every woman everywhere. Generalizations never do. It does describe most of the women I know. Amazing women. Powerful, intelligent, funny, thoughtful, ambitious, intense… and caring.

Maybe authors just can’t write a story about women without involving relationships because that has always been their experience with women. I’d like to see an epic with a female lead that doesn’t turn into a romance, and I’ll keep looking for that….

But at the same time, I don’t mind that my own life revolves around all the various relationships I’ve developed, and how they interconnect. And I don’t mind reading stories about incredible women who find different types of love in whatever way suits them.

What do you think? Can you come up with more reasons? Can you think of examples of Epic stories with female main characters that DON’T end up romances?

I’d love to know.

xo

Almost 8 years ago, now, I got an invite to join livejournal.com… this was back in the days when you needed an invite to join. My son was about 6 months old, and I had very little contact with the outside world, being a 19 year old single mom.  This friend of mine from high school thought I’d have fun with livejournal, so she invited me, and I spent days trying to come up with a decent username, with very little success.

Then one day, those email surveys were going around, the ones that you send to your friends that ask them how well they know you and they try to remember your middle name and things like that. Well, one of the questions asked for two words that you think of when you think of me (only probably in a more eloquent manner, I just can’t remember), and the same friend who had sent me the invite to LJ answered “glitter” and “bubbles”. And, since those are two of my favorite words, a username was born. Thanks, Treva! I have used it on nearly everything since, when it was available.

And now you know.

xo