I love my friends... is it possible for someone to survive without friends? i don't think i could.

Friends take hold of threads and tug, and together weave a luminous tapestry in the dark of night - A net of kind acts to catch the one who falls into despondency.

Loneliness can be vanquished with a hug ...and when one feels like an island, he ought to remind himself that he's part of an archipelago. Distance is meaningless, even though it rides heavy on my shoulders.
It does feel lonely here, but i know you're out there, and sometimes you think of me.

Love

So, i guess someone has recently been convicted and will soon be sentenced for possessing porn. "Child porn?" you may ask? Well, not exactly. Actually it's not even real porn at all.
Here's the article about guy getting convicted for buying and possessing pornographic comics.

That's a bit worrisome. Though, he pleaded guilty... which is odd. I wonder if there's more to the story? (There usually is.)
But nevertheless, if someone can go to jail in the US for having explicit drawings, that's pretty fucked up.


BTW, this is sort of relevant: In the US people are WAAAAAAY fucking obsessed with demonizing anyone showing any indication of having sexual thoughts involving children. In case you hadn't noticed. ...It's like the american obsession. We blow it way out of proportion. I'm not saying it's particularly acceptable or healthy to fixate on pedophilic thoughts if one has them - but that also means the rest of our society ought to fixate a little less on this subject. Kettles and pots, people. Goddamn.
While fixating on pedophilic thoughts can be a problem when it manifests in behaviour (i.e: when it results in harm to others, especially those who cannot protect themselves) it is NOT all that abnormal. The roots of this are built into human nature, and it's one of those things that only becomes stronger when pressure is applied to try and squash it.

As the voice of the child-predator battling public-safety crusade becomes louder, all it will serve to accomplish is lock up people who are innocent of any crimes, save thinking sinful thoughts. That, and to cause people to live in fear. (Can't let your kid go have fun at the park anymore, nooope! there might be a predator lurking...*) In my opinion, if someone can control their urges well enough to be a contributing member of society and to harm no one, then they are not a criminal. Some people can't help the urges they feel, that's why it's a compulsion. But if they can control them and not hurt anyone, they ought to be praised, not locked up. That's better discipline than most americans have, cramming their faces with BigMacs until they have to upgrade their pants-size...


* This fear is a symptom of a widespread societal mental illness, and this is the disease that's been eating away at our freedoms for a decade now. The media and and the public mindset encourage us to all live in xenophobic fear of terrorists, too... because they're all out to get us, dontchaknow.
Terrorists and child predators: Not as big a deal as the TV tells you. Wake up.
Just because someone has porn with something taboo in it doesn't mean they're a criminal.

So, Skulldog reminded me that there are only 6 weeks left before anthrocon - which really means that i have a mere 12 work-free days remaining, to get all my shit done.

Which in turn means that i need to stop spending so much time getting fucked and eaten engaging in cyber roleplay, and actually be productive. !!

So, let's see. I'm going to make a list... from memory of course, so it might not be 100% complete. In the next 6 weeks i need to:

-Get new tires
-Decide what work i wish to display in the art show to fill my 8 (!!) panels
-Once chosen, get that art prepared, which includes:
---purchase mats/matboard and mat each piece
---decide how exactly i want to frame a few of the 'main attractions'
---purchase cut plexiglass, backings, and any other required parts for those frames
---profit!
-make prints, including assessment of what i have too much of and what i need more of
-decorate a box or something for my table to hold all my stupid crap i want to get rid of at bargain basement prices (prints of old shitty art, sketches, old originals, etc)
-Consider getting more plastic page protectors, i can never have too many of those
-make a few fursuit adjustments, which include:
---fit and sew the bottom of the legs
---figure out a better way to clip head onto body when wearing it so that the gap doesn't show
---cover rear zipper somehow
---glue fabric inside undersuit to keep the padding from getting damaged, if i have time
-make frightening skull-horse mask to wear for less intensive costuming, and to force involuntary lower-body evacuation in mortified onlookers
-buy or make a new skirt
-buy rations and drinks to bring (preferably close to departure time)
-make a new badge if i have time
-get that ebow and a pocket amp (and some rechargeable 9v batteries) to play weird spacey guitar music. Maybe an Air-FX if the price has gone down on those in the last few years.

I think my room is the one having the wine tasting :o ...i bet if i told my mother about that she would practically force me to take some wine with me. Hmmm. But i don't even like wine. XD
...I think that's all my list, for now. I'm sure i'll think of other things though. It actually doesn't seem that bad.
6 weeks is PLENTY of time. (Someone please kick me for saying that)

THIS is awesome.

Go look. And just in case you don't notice, everyone has wiki links. Thus, i've been looking at it for hours :P

Hyundai Equus

Maybe it's just me... but i think this is a strange name for a car.



...Damn, my Livejournal gets no love these days :-/ I hope no one misses me!



EDIT: Oh yeah, and llamas (and their undomesticated kin) are totally amazing. In case you didn't know. I'm becoming obsessed with them... i need to find a place where i can meet some.


...And they have weird feet!

This is awesome, oh god XD

So, i got my car fixed... it was only $300 to fix the coolant problem as well as do a few other things that needed to be done - which is a relief. I'm definitely going to be monitoring the coolant level for a while... keeping an eye on it for signs of sub-hood mutiny.

But anyway, that means i saved a bunch of money in the short term, because i didn't buy a new car. I know eventually i'll have to do that, and eventually i'd like to have something more economical... but i can put it off longer. Maybe i can put it off until next year.

I still need to get a pair of tires for the front, as i'm still running the spare - and the other one is bald as a vulture's head...
But as long as nothing else goes wrong and it truly is done overheating i should be able to drive it to AC!
Wow, can't believe AC is only a little over 2 months away. Hellyes!


It seems to be getting summery. This is good... the last few years i've noticed how much the seasons affect my behaviour... i really do kind of become dormant in the winter. I don't really feel depressed or anything, but... i don't really go outside or have much motivation to do things... i just kind of hibernate in my cave.
But during spring i feel things stirring... urges to feel sunshine, desires to hear the rustle of leaves in the breeze, the need to nuzzle a horse's neck and smell that wonderful equine scent... it all comes out of stasis around April.
I do want to do a little bit of highway driving to make sure my car is up to the job of sustained high speeds - maybe i'll go to the beach. Soon, before it gets to be peak season and the place fills with disgusting apes...

Oh yeah, the other thing i still need to fix is my sunroof - it shouldn't be hard, i just need to drill a few holes in the plastic latches so i can wire them together, and therefor apply pressure on the seal so it won't leak or whistle while i'm driving. The noise it makes is pretty loud, and it makes music listening difficult, which is definitely an undesirable trait for a long drive to Pittsburgh.


Oh yeah, and yes, i am still alive and kicking :D i just don't bother with LJ much these days. But it still serves a porpoise!

It's raining outside, and there is thunder.
And last night when i was leaving to go to work i heard the soothing drone of peepers for the first time this year!

Winter is fucking OVER! I am so glad.




Actually now that i think about it, it was droney enough that it was probably just crickets, it still seems too early for amphibians. But still!

"As a visitor throughout Afghanistan and Iran in the 1970s I put on a chadoor and burkha voluntarily to be around mosques. As a woman (from the USA) I found it a refreshing and liberating experience to be able to move around in public without being eyed as a sex object, which is the way I was brought up in a liberal westernized society where the size of my bottom and the shape of my chest determines my social worth." - Dr. H. Lauer


Just a tidbit, before i run off to work.

So, in regard to my previous entry... a few nights ago i was scrawling notes and idea in my notebook, and somehow i managed to arrive at a place that seems to make sense... a story where characters' entwined motivations are logical and do not seem contradictory.
I reconciled the "big picture" with the story of the characters within it.
(This was difficult, due to the nature of the world... the fact that none of it is real kind of makes finding motivations tricky for the forces who are on the borderline between actual reality and constructed reality.

I still need to type up an outline on here, but i think i might have the biggest problems figured out.

Also, Iatro, in case you didn't see my reply... do you have any IM things on which you'd like to discuss ideas? we could be mutually helpful to each other!

...

I mailed in my application for the artshow at AC, this year i requested 2 general panels and 6 adult panels... which is... a LOT. I'm hoping since i chose 6, they'll give me a whole 'cubicle' of my own, instead of splitting it up.
Anyhow, this means i have a lot of matting and framing work to do. I am going to try and frame some of them... from looking at what's there each year, framed pieces just look that much better and more professional. Will it help them sell? I don't know. But it will look great!
Michaels only sells glass frame panes, but the requirement of the show is that they be plastic, so there won't be any shattering accidents. (due to incidents in the past.) However, the girl in the framing department (who seemed to actually know her stuff, which is an unexpected bit of pleasantness) told me she gets stuff for her own framing work at Lowes... they sell plexiglass or something similar apparently, and they will cut it to size. She said it's not very expensive. I'll look into that... I'm going to have mostly 16"x20" pieces. (whether framed or just matted... that seems to be the best standard size for displaying 11"x14" artwork, which is what 85% of my stuff is.

...

I'm finishing up my tax return form... looks like i'll be getting a little back, yay! That's always a relief. Nothing pisses me off like having to pay even MORE of MY fucking money to a useless entity that doesn't give a damn about me.

Hurm, "occupation"... i wonder what i should be this year. Last year i was a druid, and the year before that i was coffin fodder *thinks*
I wonder if i put terrorist there, i'll have feds showing up at my door in a few days... haha. Dunce-ish, paranoid suit-clad dupes, they are.

OH, i know! This year i'll be a Tree-herder. :D

So... i'm again inspired to attempt to create my comic/graphic novel. This time, i'm going to try and plan the story out first, instead of drawing it with no idea what's going to happen. (fail)
But, i have this problem coming up with ideas for a story. I have this elabourate world... and i can grab any handful of events that i wish to include in the story, but i can never seem to link them together, or to find a 'believable' reason for one event leading to another... in other words, cause and effect is a problem. I can imagine these really amazing things... but when i try and figure out why they happened, i draw blanks.

I think part of the problem is that i have my idea of what i want to happen too well defined... it's like building two ends of a bridge... but forgetting the build the span itself. What good is a bridge that doesn't bridge anything?
Anyhow... So here i'm going to ramble. Probably a lot. Writing the ideas and developing them sequentially as i write seems the be the best way to do it. If i just do it inside my head they stay jumbled up...
This way i can find gaps in story and try to devise ways to repair them.

DANGER!! May contain spoilers, for anyone that even cares!! (can there be spoilers for things that haven't officially been written yet? heh.)
( MASSIVE WALL O' TEXT behind the cut )

...Done for now, need to try and sleep. The last part is bugging me, but maybe i'll figure out what to do when i'm rested. I don't expect anyone to read all that, or to care... but hey. if you did, wow! You must be really bored. :D

This would ideally be better suited as a post in the relevant journal, but eh... i'll wait until it's ironed out i guess.
Also, tonight i'm going to practice drawing expressions. I suck at them.

This looks like it might be worth seeing. Good anthropomorphic films are not terribly commonplace, and one that is serious - about war - well, that's pretty interesting.
Then again, it can be hard to tell a whole lot about a film or series from a trailer...

I'm not sure why they chose the name they did... but i'll bet it'll become more apparent after seeing it. Well, i guess the US release is going to be called "Apocalypse Meow" Heh.

Still haven't slept... but by now it's too late.
I'll have to crack my knuckles, tighten my sash, and prepare to weather the storm... I can hear them closing in, like vultures to an unattended carcass - the crack of a twig or the subtle rustle of leaves revealing their presence just enough to keep my adrenaline pumping, but not enough to really allow me to get a good fix on any of their locations as they stalk and slink closer like the inevitability and unwavering certainty of a tide. Five more hours and it'll begin getting dark. Once the sky's light ebbs away to deep blue, that's when i'll have to be at my most ready. They stay concealed in the day. Like lepers they shy from sunlight, not out of modesty or shame but simple physiology and instinct. Nevertheless, i've seen what they do... i know they hunger for my flesh.
I've cracked open a can of liquid caffeine and am consuming pizza to keep my senses keen as i wait. My knives are honed and sheathed at my sides and my flintlock sits next to me on a stump, loaded and itching for the action it knows peppers the winds of fate like the melange of a coming monsoon. This rain will be red.
My human comrades may be gone, their juicy flesh undoubtedly the pizza of these unholy beasts, but i know my remaining companions - those made of unfeeling steel - won't part company with me until they're pried from my cold, dead hands.



* Wholly unnecessary dramatization brought to you by sleep-deprivation and the reading of dark graphic novels.
Pizza is good.

Guh, can't sleep... clowns'll eat me too active. ;_;

I need to get up at a reasonable time tonight, because i've announced my ustream broadcast as officially set to air at 8pm every tuesday :P ...oh, commitments, how you mock me!

...Though i have to say, reading Watchmen is not helping. I can't put the damn thing down. Heh. It's a really good book, i'm quite impressed.
However, this means that if i go to see the movie at some point, i'm bound to be disappointed. A 2-hour film can't possibly live up to this... Um, at least, not since Kubrick's passing.

*yawns*

So, there's this picture here of everyone at Eurofurence 14 last summer (at least most everyone - i'm sure there are a few people who didn't make it into the photo) and i'm amused because... well... scanning the crowd, i see like maybe a dozen females XD Haha. You know, the gender ratio at US cons i've been to is fairly balanced. Probably a few more males than females, but there are plenty of both... anyhow, in Germany it's like an armada of tall ships. XD

So... there are people who want me to go to this years EF... and i'd certainly like to! I'd love to meet and hang out with my friends (and perhaps a few of my fans) out that way who don't generally get the chance to come state-side. I'm going to ask my boss straight-up if he would have a problem with me taking my vacation in the beginning of July for AC (which i've already submitted the request for) and then taking another weeklong+ trip at the end of August. EF is sandwiched right in the middle between Anthrocon and Furfright, with about two months in between each... but at least for Furfright it's close enough to where i live that i can manage to just shove my regular days off for two weeks together for it instead of taking extra time off... but yeah, two long vacations in two months... a little more to ask for -.-
I've got a spot in a room if i determine that i am able to go, which takes care of the biggest hurdle (besides finance) ...I would like to see UV again, too...

When i was getting my yearly evaluation, my boss's only real complaint about my performance as an employee was that i "take too many vacations" ...lol. What, am i supposed to not enjoy my life for the sake of my dumb minimum-wage job? The hell with that!
And like... hey, i haven't called in sick once since i started working there last summer. That ought to count for something.

...

Anyhow, Anthrocon is only like 3 months away. Wow... that came up fast, eh? I'm not sure how i'm going to get there... my car is not capable of any long-range travel in its current state... not when i have to refill the coolant every 50 miles because it leaks it all out -.-
So i have to figure out what to do about that. I'm pretty sure i know where it's leaking from - there's this place toward the front of the engine behind a big spinning wheel that looks really corroded, and the metal plate that's bolted on is like... WARPED. Everything beneath it is wet with coolant.
It's in a rather hard to reach spot... and engine work as it is seems to be pretty expensive... so i anticipate this being a costly repair. On top of that i need to get a new pair of tires, because i'm still driving with my spare on the front.

I've actually thought that maybe it might be time to get a new vehicle... i've had this one for over 3 years now, which i think is the longest run i've had of any vehicle so far. (I think i might have had my Mercedes for the same amount of time, but it might be a little less, i don't really remember exactly when i got it)
All things come to ends... and it would be nice to drive something smaller and more fuel efficient anyhow. That and it's a bit more difficult to criticize idiot yuppies in their passenger-free SUVs when i am driving a small SUV myself.
I've never been to a car dealership... but i wonder if that would work. I don't know if i could get a new car, due to having no credit, but maybe i could swing a used car. The thing is, it looks to be pretty much impossible to sell a car these days if it's not a desirable one - especially if you want to get anything for it. If i could trade in my current car toward the acquisition of something newer it would save me the hassle of having my car sitting there for months on the side of the road with a for sale sign, deteriorating further with each passing day as well as take a bite out of the new car's cost.

The best car i ever had overall was my first, a subaru - i'd really like to have something like that again. It's small, easy to drive, handles well in all weather, and is (comparatively) cheap to maintain. As cheap as any american car, but better made. The mercedes i had was the most reliable car i've had, but FUCK was that thing expensive to get parts for. Goddamn. The subaru i had blew out CV joints every few months, but they weren't very expensive to replace. (it was a common problem with that model i guess)
The mustang i had i only had for a month before it got wrecked, so it's hard to say if that was a good car... Though i can definitely say it was like driving a brick strapped to the shell of an uncooperative turtle... :D It could be said that it was quite thoroughly gelded. (It was the LE 4-cylinder model from the early 90s... it could barely do 80mph, and seemed to do 0-60 in oh... like about 20 seconds!) It was like driving a banana slug across fly-paper... ON A HOT DAY IN THE SUN. Also, the axles shook all over the place at 'high speed.' It's almost like it was assembled by starving, trembling children in a Nike sweatshop. On second thought, no, it was not a very good car.
And the ford f250 truck i had, well... let's not even talk about that. >.>

I've been driving for almost 8 years now, and i'm only on my 5th car... i guess it could be worse.


So, i shall be considering my options for cars. I need to do something in the next few months, otherwise it will be a long walk to Pittsburgh.

...

Human bean juice.