Ernie's Amazing Emporium of Total Bargain Madness!

Omg you guys I CANNOT get over how much I liked tonight's glee episode. Like, I cannot even. EVENING ABILITY DESTROYED. But in all seriousness, other than a few minor things, this is like everything I wanted in a Glee episode, and reminds me of what Glee COULD be all the time, if it could only avoid making me want to throw things at the screen every other line.

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So in conclusion, this episode had probably the fewest instances of making me want to throw things at the screen probably all season, and was good on top of it. I suppose this is the part where I out myself as a squealing Glee and Klaine fangirl, who's been following this fandom pretty closely for awhile now (though not anywhere near as closely as my sister oh god), which I guess I have just never mentioned because I've been too busy doing complicated moping and ignoring Livejournal. But even though I may have VERY mixed feelings about Glee as a show, it really does have the greatest fandom ever. I feel like I have to say that it's worth getting into Glee for the fandom, because it's true!

Omg you guys, this is so good I can't even. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more views! It's just so satisfying when you watch mediocre videos, whatevs, and then just suddenly come across something subtly brilliant.

Also, totally brings me back to when EVERYONE was doing Brokeback Mountain parodies of EVERYTHING. Lolz those were the days (maybe.)

As I said in my comment to the news post, "must be Tuesday." Basically they are trying to connect livejournal with facebook and twitter. NOT ON. This means that, if someone sets it up, their comment to a friends-locked entry will appear on facebook or twitter - the f-locked post itself won't be visible, of course, but if you are friends with someone on LJ and facebook, and they are friends with people that you don't want to know about your livejournal, then that friend has effectively outed you, without even meaning to, b/c when it comes to the internet, people don't think a whole lot. This comment explains it a bit better than I did. (And even though I am lolling at some of the examples, it is pretty serious.)

The problem with livejournal (among many other things) is that the people that work there don't seem to realize that the people their service use it very differently than they think they do, or than the LJ people do, maybe. Anyone that's been on these sites knows that twitter and facebook were started initially with the idea that you use your real name. So a lot of people do; these are basically people's public profiles, and as such often connect to family, local friends, and maybe even former or current bosses and/or coworkers. Livejournal is not like that - from the beginning, you had a username of some random thing of your choosing. This pseudonymity is part of what draws so many fandomers, and so many women, to livejournal, compared to the rest of the internet. (I have read a couple things on this.) It is why I am able to laugh at this trope so much, b/c my experience from the beginning of my internet days (even a bit before livejournal!) has pretty much been the opposite: assumed female unless told otherwise.

With all the changes livejournal is implementing, I can tell what they're trying to do: they're trying to become more like a mainstream blogging site, like blogspot or something. With the implementation of pingbacks and now this connecting to facebook and twitter. However, that's not what their users want, or how their users are using the site. It's easy to see why: the f-locked entries and friends lists, and various degrees of privacy settings. People came here because they wanted to use livejournal like a JOURNAL not a BLOG. That right there is basically a key difference between them.

This is why so many fandomers came here - they could read and write fanfiction without anyone in real life knowing what they wrote or read (well, unless they told them specifically, or had a backstabbing friend, or some bad luck.) Now this pseudo-privacy has a huge likelihood to be compromised. It seems like for awhile Livejournal is trying their best to remove themselves from their fannish association, b/c it would "tarnish" their reputation. Since this is a good portion of their userbase, it's showing even more they don't care about their users at all.

So, Dear Livejournal:
Livejournal is not Blogspot. It never will be, no matter how much you try, and the more you try, the more it will drive users away, b/c they don't want it to be.

I have been ignoring the jivelournal. This is... not new. I guess I thought that I'd have alllll this free time and so I'd post all the time, but yeah, apparently not. I did think I ought to post though, b/c I'm going on a trip tomorrow! It's like so sad in an "I'm spoiled" kind of way, my summer has been trip after trip, and this one isn't the last one, either. Why not go crazy after you've graduated? I'm thinking that's my plan here.

Anyway, said trip is going camping in the Sierras! ...Where I just was last week. Oops. Er, more or less. This time it's a volunteer trip where it's going to be trailbuilding (lots of physical labor, like the CCC again!) for three days, but the exciting part is that as long as you get yourself there, they are paying for the campsite and food. And I'm carpooling, so it's really not much of an expense at all.

Last week I went to Yosemite with my sister, so it's not even all that far from where I'm going to be tomorrow. The crux of that trip was to hike Half Dome, and I was fairly excited that my plan for that trip - just after reading the website a bit - worked out so well. Basically, first day drive to the forest, stay in a campground just outside of Yosemite, get up at 6 in the morning, drive into Yosemite Valley, get in line at Camp 4 (a walk-in campground) to get one of the few coveted spots, then stay the next two nights, with going to Half Dome the next day.

Half Dome is 7 miles up, and 7 miles back, so a pretty legit day hike, and I didn't feel very tired or out of it until the last mile or so on the way down, when my feet started hurting like crazy. However, getting my sister to accompany me up and back is another story, holy crap. Whenever we're shopping, she is rushing ahead of me while I drag my feet, but in hiking it's the exact opposite, and I have to practically drag her up a mountain. If you read Hyperbole and Half (and if you don't, go read it, EXCELLENT ARCHIVE BINGE EXPERIENCE), I kept seeing her as "giantly frowning Allie" the whole hike. (This amused me greatly, I assure you.) Really, it's amazing that she made it sort of to the top (by which I mean, the base of Half Dome. So close.) It is legitimately really cool being on top of Half Dome, I have to say. Like, by the time I got to the cables, it was 5:30 or so, so no line and I got to scramble right up them, and it changed from dusk to super sunny right then. It's like, sharp, deep caverns all around. I know it's like, supposedly not as cool as other stuff, but I was fairly mesmerized by the view for awhile. Then of course, we had to hike down in the dark, practically by ourselves, and my sister went from completely silent to chattering. And of course, the most often subject broached during the four hour hike down (read: super fast compared to earlier progress) was "OMG Bears they are going to eat us!" And then of course, when we were getting a ride back to our campsite from a ranger, he's like *shrug* "They're harmless" in a totally bored voice. Oh man. I don't know how long I'd have to work in a national park to think like that; probably a long long time.

*****

In an unrelated note, b/c my LJ needs to be about more things that "hey guys guess what I had for lunch today!" , this blog is pretty great. It is called "My Fault; I'm Female" and is lots of stories about women who get lots of silly things said/done to them because of their gender. I'm sure everyone has some of those! (Oddly enough; though you'd think most of mine would be women-in-tech related, actually most of my stories in that vein would be the zomg-you're-a-girl-you-couldn't-possibly-lift-that variety. SO MUCH. ALL THE TIME. Especially when I was younger and had about twice the upper body strength I do now, which was a fair bit.) But this puts it conveniently in one blog. I spent all Saturday archive binging the entire thing, I shit you not. So, I don't suggest doing that per se, but it is a good read.

Lolol, so my sister has apparently started watching Star Trek. And apparently is making it her life's mission to make me watch it. Note that this is almost entirely due to her obsession with Wil Wheaton (which I never hear the end of), rather than any sort of legitimate interest. She helped me fold clothes for like an hour yesterday, b/c I said I would watch an episode with her if she did. Nevertheless, despite being mock-appalled at me when I suggest it's so terrible as to not be worth my time, she concedes that it is alternatively cringe-worthy, boring, and/or narmtastic, and thus not worth watching if not also simultaneously playing iphone games. I have thus been loudly proclaiming my preference for Star Wars any time Star Trek is brought up (frequently, this week.)

This opinion is, of course, completely unfounded b/c I watched so little of it, but still! My sister tells me I just have to remember strongly that it was made tons of years ago, and appreciate it for its So Bad It's Good Qualities. Geek cred, I guess? That's the only reason I can legitimately find to watch it.

I know, I know. I've been spoiled by space shows like Firefly. That's what my sister says. Now I can't watch anything else.

(And I know this post is totally unfair, so I'm now going to go back and actually watch Star Trek legitimately, m'kay? Well, maybe.)

Also, you know what is a bad idea? Eating almost nothing but buckets of fruit all day, and then eating dinner as my only legitimate meal. For two days. And you know what this leads to, right. 11 at night, sudden desire for chocolate! But there is no chocolate in the house! So, went to grocery store and have now promptly eaten a whole thing of Ben and Jerry's. Totally terrible, but it was soooo good. Mmmm, why do people drink alcohol when there is chocolate? Chocolate is on like a separate plane of existence that no other substance could possibly hope to ever touch. This is just fact. Okay, that is all.

Woo hoo I am back home. Er that is to say my parents' house. That means you should all come visit me, and stuff. Er, those that want to and are in the area. Which putting those together may not be all that many. But you are offered, certainly! Not that I mind hanging out with my parents and sister all the time, but it'd be nice to branch out.

I've had a pretty hectic past few days, but they've been good. But some miracle or other I managed to get rid of my bed, and move everything out of my apartment into my car and the car my mom was driving by midday Saturday. And we did most of the packing up of stuff (and selling my desk) on Friday. Meanwhile my roommate's been slowly moving out all month. I guess I just do things at the last minute? Anyway, despite my best efforts, and unexpected traffic, I ended up being half an hour late to my concert. Frustrating b/c I thought I left at a decent time. But I still got to see most of said concert, and it was so much fun. One last time to see my socal wrock friends. The 10 or so of us regulars singing and dancing along to every song, while the majority of the room (let's call them 'muggles') got to experience wizard rock for the first (or so) time. Let's just say that watching muggles listen to 'Brotherly Love' for the first time next gets old, ever. So many lulz. And with plenty of kids in the room. It occurs to me that wizard rock in general is a big Getting Crap Past the Radar fest, and no one ever notices, b/c "it's about Harry Potter; it must be for kids!"

And then, I was planning to drive all night to get home, but one of my friends invited me to come hang out at her house, stay the night, and then drive back the next morning! And I couldn't refuse, of course. We made Harry Potter cookies ( by which I mean, sugar cookies in the shape of witch hats or lightning bolts scars ) and then spent three hours, I kid you not, playing the following game:

It went like this: there were seven of us (to start out with), so we each got one Harry Potter book. Then we would each open to a random page (so this is a variation of Potter Diving), and each read one word from our page, and go around the circle continuously. This was a bit slow, so eventually we switched to phrases (that is, 'to first punctuation'). And let me just say, if you play this game long enough, it's amazing how many dirty-sounding mini-fanfics you can come up with. Or just in general, it's amazing how many perfectly innocuous phrases sound totally dirty (or at least strange) out of context. Or how many "said X person" you will get in a row. I think my favorite that I remember was: "Ron stayed up all night giving Harry advice like" "that's a girl's bathroom Harry!" The first is from PS/SS, Quidditch practice, the second from one of the Moaning Myrtle bathroom scenes.

So yeah. That's just how nerds party, I guess.

And then I came home, and yesterday I had the most harrowing dentist appointment I've had since I got my wisdom teeth out. I should mention this is the first time I've had cavities since I was five, so I didn't have much basis for what it would be like. Two hours of my mouth being drilled while my jaw was held open, and I had a hard time breathing b/c my mouth was covered and my nose is like permanently stuffed up. And swallowing my spit, which invariably had whatever kind of weird stuff they were putting into my mouth by loads. I don't even want to KNOW what I ingested. Ew. So I kind of did nothing yesterday after that. I came home, took a nap, and started reading one of the free books I got at comic con.

So now, I guess, is when my summer-of-nothingness kinda starts. Or rather, now is when I have a giant block of time to get stuff done, and not much scheduled. These things are the following:

1. Finish my last class of school. I should be done by the end of this week. I hope.
2. Go through allll my stuff from college and alllll my stuff at home, either recycling papers or giving stuff away to Good Will. Not looking forward to this, ugh.
3. Find a job. The biggie. Won't be going anywhere till I do this.

Other than that, I have little things to do, like fix my bike, fix my ipod, and try to find a way to clear off my computer harddrive, but those are the main things.

*hides in a corner* Omgggg, when did my life get so busy? I think somehow I thought I'd just have sooo much time this summer, conveniently forgetting that I'd be going on two week long trips, plus comic con, plus doing a class/project, plus lots of little things. And now, I am moving out. In TWO DAYS. Holy crap. I have to be out of my apartment by midday Saturday, because it is the last day in July, and thus the last day I have my apartment, and also b/c my mom probably doesn't want to get home at crazy o'clock in the morning (she is coming down to help me pack and drive up all the stuff that won't fit into my car), and also b/c uh. There's this wizard rock concert in LA on Saturday. Including a band that never comes to California. So you see that I clearly must go see them, and it doesn't make sense to drive down to San Diego if I'm just going to have to drive back up, so I am doing the crazy thing of going to a concert on my way home. What, it'll totally be awesome. Multitasking! Of what I excel at.

Meanwhile, what I'm supposed to do in the next two days: finish entire class/project (urgh), pack up entire apartment, sell/give away bed and desk, pick up car from my mechanic. Oh and I guess picking up my mom from the airport and doing some laundry would be nice too. And little things.

Gah. Basically what's not going to happen here is the finishing of the class/project thing I'm doing. I mean, I could do it, probably, but it's just silly to rush through it when I could spend a little more time and do a good job of it rather than a rush job of it - the only rush here to finish is that I'm not going to be in San Diego after this week, but really, this is something I could easily finish by email. And of course, the only reason that it's not finished by now (besides the usual millions of cons and trips) is that I was given some wrong information about something rather integral to the project, and now that I proved to my advisor that this was the wrong information, it's now fun guess and check time. Oh well, at least my project doesn't need to be accurate or anything, and isn't being used for real science. Flah.

Oh, and for bonus points I'm sick. Gaaaaah, I swear I will catch up on LJ and post about Infinitus and Comic Con and upload pictures and stuff... next week. Now I'm just going to sleep b/c that's all I want to do lately being sick and all. Somehow I always seem to forget how high my propensity for sickness is after cons. It happens like every time, what. I always forget this.

Omg you guys, I seriously just slept 21 hours straight. I guess it is nothing short of a minor miracle that I managed to stay up all night monday night working on my project after an extremely sleep-depped week, and function on tuesday for the duration of meeting with my advisor. It is so sad this project - it has been mostly worked on through weekly all-nighters, rather than working on it steadily a bit every day, which is what I'm supposed to be doing. Oh well, don't regret going to Infinitus AT ALL. Except that, oh look, I'm about to do exactly the same thing next week, b/c this week is comic con! For four days, and then I am meeting with my advisor on monday morning. So I guess I better get something done today. But I have so many things to get done before comic con, I don't know how that will happen either. Clearly I am having way too much fun this summer. *nods* Somehow in a week and a half, I have to be out of my apartment and done with school. I was going to add "and find a job" but let's be realistic now. I guess, despite my lofty goals, I won't be starting the job search until august. Oops.

But ANYWAY. I had this conversation with my roommate, after coming back from Infinitus:

Me: Look at my totally awesome swag that I got from the Universal Harry Potter park! I got a Ravenclaw hat, a Ravenclaw scarf, two Ravenclaw shirts, a Ravenclaw luggage tag, a Ravenclaw keychain, and a Ravenclaw patch for my robe.
Roommate: ....Oh, so I take it you're a fan of Ravenclaw?
Me: Oh no *laugh*, I'm in Ravenclaw

...And then it just occurred to me how silly that sounded. To like, everyone not in fandom. B/c you see, in fandom, especially wizard rock, it's a common question to ask what house someone's in, and they always have an answer for you, even if they have to grimace and admit that they're a little of two houses (and then they will give you a detailed explanation as to why, and ultimately pick one in the end.) Strongly identifying with a house is also extremely common, as is liking a band because of, or making a band strongly themed around a particular house. People will often use their house as a reason why they are good/bad at something. This is why Hufflepuff is so popular in fandom! That would just never be the case among laypeople who just like harry potter rather than love it. (Also, did you know that Ravenclaw is the house that's losing in the castle on the way to the Forbidden Journey ride? I object!)

Because picking a house isn't just something I did on a whim, either. It actually took me quite awhile to come up with Ravenclaw definitively. It took me awhile to understand (whether or not other people also use this metric) that what you value and how you approach the world is more important for picking a house than what you are per se. The sorting hat in the book doesn't really use this narrative, but I know it to be basically true anyway. Because who knows what they are or has done amazing things at age 11, anyway?

And then I totally had a long description for why I'm in Ravenclaw here, but decided to delete it b/c I have a hard time describing it without feeling like I'm either bragging, putting down myself, or putting down others. Maybe later I'll try again.

I guess I will have to make posts about Infinitus in more than one post. Because it was long and awesome! And then upload pictures too. Though I don't have time to do all that before comic con. Agh!

So, I am like totally behind on posts I want to make, and even more behind on my project, so I guess that really has to come first. I am just totally stuck on map projection stuff, ugggh.

But anyway. I AM IN ORLANDO. Otherwise known as "who cares what else is here; harry potter park!" I am totally excited omg. All of my harry potter fangirlism coming right back okay. And I've only seen like a million ads for it too, all over the airport. So I'm pretty sure that everyone visiting Orlando thinks the same thing (or so it would seem.) I'm at the airport now, waiting for my friends' flights to come in, so we can all take a shuttle to the airport together. That may give me a couple hours, all things told, and since it looks like there won't be internet at the hotel and any sort of decent price, I may have epic difficulties working on my project during the week. Whyyyy didn't I work harder last week?

Also, why would an airport have free internet but no places to plug computers in? It makes not of much sense. I finally found a plug, and it requires sitting in a seat made for someone half a foot taller than me. Probably have terrible posture now.

So I can't decide what to think about this video:



At first premise it does seem to be full of lolz and good possibility - it's a parody of Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl but about nerds (and/or geeks, natch), has a very good match-up of parody lyrics, and in some senses, is a celebration of nerd culture. But it's also full of nerd stereotypes (full of them - make this a drinking game), and still seems to be in service of the stereotype that "nerd" = "white dude" (with various stereotypes attached of course.) People in the comments were like "the girls were too nerdy" and I'm sitting here thinking "they weren't nerdy enough."

And seriously? B/c I like this nerd guy, I'll "learn how to factor?!!" I learned how to factor in something like 5th grade! This is not exactly an uncommon or difficult skill okay!

On the other hand, if I take this as from the perspective of one girl, who is not very geeky/nerdy or interested in those things generally, liking a geeky/nerdy guy and that being unusual for her, then it's just that one story, and I can take it as it is. But, while you could argue that from (well most of) the lyrics (which were written by Dr. Demento, not actually the girls in the video), you can't really argue that from the video of it, which is a few different girls, with multiple men with varying degrees of nerd stereotypes. (And then at the end, with the two girls in bed together - is this meant to imply that they're nerds too? I'm not sure. Or is it just introducing much needed gay content to a video that was otherwise seriously lacking?) I guess it just ends up bugging me because it's a bit male-nerd gaze-y, and the overall premise is quite plain from the youtube tags: "hot girls like nerdy guys." Yeah. *sigh*


In any case, I have a much more geeky parody of that song I'd like to write/sing. It will be called "I wrote a script in Perl and I liked it" and would feature me being nerdy about programming, with no gender or nerd stereotypes, because they are simply not necessary. Too bad parodies of this particular song are a bit old meme at this point.