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yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh
Oct. 31st, 2010 04:08 pmThe rally was SO AWESOME! It felt so super great to be part of something so big, even if we couldn't see anything and we could only hear the loudest bits. ^^ Definitely one of my top ten experiences ever.
So much driving though, ugh. Seven hours each way. I dislike super long car rides ;; especially when the driver is kind of erratic (suitemate's friend from Syracuse switched off with her on the driving, and her turns and decisions in D.C. traffic had me clutching a pillow and speed-whispering the rosary at one point because I was concerned we were going to CRASH AND DIE. Obviously we did not crash and die, though. ~OR DID WE???~
Pumpkin carving with roomies later today! And then church, and then WEEPING because I got no work done this weekend and I will hate myself come Monday morning. I REGRET NOTHING.
....oh, and shit, NaNo starts tomorrow.
/weeps
So much driving though, ugh. Seven hours each way. I dislike super long car rides ;; especially when the driver is kind of erratic (suitemate's friend from Syracuse switched off with her on the driving, and her turns and decisions in D.C. traffic had me clutching a pillow and speed-whispering the rosary at one point because I was concerned we were going to CRASH AND DIE. Obviously we did not crash and die, though. ~OR DID WE???~
Pumpkin carving with roomies later today! And then church, and then WEEPING because I got no work done this weekend and I will hate myself come Monday morning. I REGRET NOTHING.
....oh, and shit, NaNo starts tomorrow.
/weeps
I Will Always Be a Librarian in My Heart
Sep. 9th, 2010 02:20 amI have an anecdote from my first summer working at the library.
It was a sunny day, midsummer. A woman walked in, someone I recognized by face as a member of my church. I had no books to shelve, and so struck up a short conversation with her as I checked her books out. I don't remember if I got her name. I don't remember it in any case, as I am notoriously awful with names. If my memory serves, she asked something like what books I had read recently. I told her I had read The Stand, by Stephen King, in all its one-thousand-page-plus glory.
She said, and I will never forget the offhand way in which she said this, as if it were completely normal and non-heinous, "Oh yes, I remember burning that book once."
I flinched as if physically struck. I remember my mouth working for a couple seconds, like a nutcracker with no nuts in it. But, I asked, but why would you burn it?
She gave me a look as if I had asked a childish question. "Well, because it was evil," she said. She took her books, her apparently fine, non-evil books, and left, not in a mood or anything. As if that was a perfectly normal conversation to have.
I felt disquieted and jacked-up for the rest of the day.
When I told a friend about it after my shift was over, explaining it almost in a blank daze, I remember saying, over and over, that it wasn't even that she was a member of my church that disturbed me so much. Nor was it even that it was a book by my then-favorite author. Or the fact that she was denouncing a book in which light triumphs over the forces of ignorance and darkness as "evil."
No, what disturbed me the most was the fact that she seemed so okay with the concept itself. Of burning a book. Any book. She had told me it was at a large book-burning. Like a party. I didn't know they existed in a civilized world.
The only sentence I remember saying word-for-word was a simple one. One I kept repeating to myself, once I had triangulated the purest, most naked form of my disquiet and horror.
"Books are not for burning."
Keeping those five words in mind, my thoughts on the Dove Church's movement for this September 11th should be crystal clear.
But just in case they aren't, have this video:
It was a sunny day, midsummer. A woman walked in, someone I recognized by face as a member of my church. I had no books to shelve, and so struck up a short conversation with her as I checked her books out. I don't remember if I got her name. I don't remember it in any case, as I am notoriously awful with names. If my memory serves, she asked something like what books I had read recently. I told her I had read The Stand, by Stephen King, in all its one-thousand-page-plus glory.
She said, and I will never forget the offhand way in which she said this, as if it were completely normal and non-heinous, "Oh yes, I remember burning that book once."
I flinched as if physically struck. I remember my mouth working for a couple seconds, like a nutcracker with no nuts in it. But, I asked, but why would you burn it?
She gave me a look as if I had asked a childish question. "Well, because it was evil," she said. She took her books, her apparently fine, non-evil books, and left, not in a mood or anything. As if that was a perfectly normal conversation to have.
I felt disquieted and jacked-up for the rest of the day.
When I told a friend about it after my shift was over, explaining it almost in a blank daze, I remember saying, over and over, that it wasn't even that she was a member of my church that disturbed me so much. Nor was it even that it was a book by my then-favorite author. Or the fact that she was denouncing a book in which light triumphs over the forces of ignorance and darkness as "evil."
No, what disturbed me the most was the fact that she seemed so okay with the concept itself. Of burning a book. Any book. She had told me it was at a large book-burning. Like a party. I didn't know they existed in a civilized world.
The only sentence I remember saying word-for-word was a simple one. One I kept repeating to myself, once I had triangulated the purest, most naked form of my disquiet and horror.
"Books are not for burning."
Keeping those five words in mind, my thoughts on the Dove Church's movement for this September 11th should be crystal clear.
But just in case they aren't, have this video:
Tags:
So I was on today's RP!S, and there was a secret about someone doing coke. It could have been true, or a troll secret, or whatever. But I found myself really disturbed by several replies. A lot of people replied condemning drug use, which is what I would have replied with if I weren't too chickenshit to reply to anything in rp!s (lol). But then a lot of people replied to those people to tell them to "stop being so judgmental" and that they were naive and stupid for saying "omg drugs are bad" because apparently, thinking that abuse of dangerous, illegal drugs like cocaine makes one a naive, stupid person.
I came away from that page disturbed and angered, mostly by a lot of people's cavalier attitude. I mean, I didn't reply after I read the secret because I was too busy rolling my eyes and thinking what idiots some people are, but it disturbed me that a lot of people seemed to condone illegal drug use because "it's a life decision" and something about "human experience" or whatever and just. no.
Drugs are bad. They aren't funny. They ruin lives. Not just the health of the people taking them, for whatever reasons, but the people involved in the actual drug selling process. People in Third World countries die every day for every gram of coke/heroin/whatever that rich suburban college kids buy and snort/smoke/inject for shits and giggles.
It's one thing to be on drugs and be out on the streets, with no other option, or in a dangerous business where that kind of thing is done. Honestly? I feel terribly over every memoir I read of people who made it out of the inner city and battled addictions to all kinds of substances, people who were depressed or felt they had no option. But affluent people doing drugs recreationally? For fun? Illegal, damaging, addictive drugs? That people die for? Even pot, which seems so harmless - pot, which funds the black market in all kinds of ways, the black market that also specializes in prostitution, human trafficking, other drugs, general life-ruining? Those people? I have no fucking sympathy for them. And to see people laugh something like that off and cast aspersions on people who try to speak up about the, you know, illegality of such actions? Fuck them.
I am probably betraying my inner sheltered white girl, and if so, please, speak up and tell me where I have spoken wrongly or insensitively.
I came away from that page disturbed and angered, mostly by a lot of people's cavalier attitude. I mean, I didn't reply after I read the secret because I was too busy rolling my eyes and thinking what idiots some people are, but it disturbed me that a lot of people seemed to condone illegal drug use because "it's a life decision" and something about "human experience" or whatever and just. no.
Drugs are bad. They aren't funny. They ruin lives. Not just the health of the people taking them, for whatever reasons, but the people involved in the actual drug selling process. People in Third World countries die every day for every gram of coke/heroin/whatever that rich suburban college kids buy and snort/smoke/inject for shits and giggles.
It's one thing to be on drugs and be out on the streets, with no other option, or in a dangerous business where that kind of thing is done. Honestly? I feel terribly over every memoir I read of people who made it out of the inner city and battled addictions to all kinds of substances, people who were depressed or felt they had no option. But affluent people doing drugs recreationally? For fun? Illegal, damaging, addictive drugs? That people die for? Even pot, which seems so harmless - pot, which funds the black market in all kinds of ways, the black market that also specializes in prostitution, human trafficking, other drugs, general life-ruining? Those people? I have no fucking sympathy for them. And to see people laugh something like that off and cast aspersions on people who try to speak up about the, you know, illegality of such actions? Fuck them.
I am probably betraying my inner sheltered white girl, and if so, please, speak up and tell me where I have spoken wrongly or insensitively.
I am gravely disappoint.
Jun. 19th, 2010 03:25 pmI'm sure most of you guys have heard by now, but a whole bunch of manga distributors have teamed up to start cracking down on scanlation sites. They've already hit Mangahelpers, and Onemanga is soon to follow.
I think this is a really bad decision on their parts. Without online manga sites, a good three-quarters of my current manga collection (which has grown to easily over one hundred volumes) would never have been purchased. Manga is expensive, and that makes it hard to justify buying on faith. But being able to read series beforehand and decide that this is worth spending money on definitely has gotten me into the vast majority of the series I currently am purchasing.
I understand the concern over people just reading scanlation sites and not buying volumes at all, believe me. But what they should be doing is what Viz and other animanga distributors have already begun doing with anime - put it online yourselves. Viz now offers many anime series, both dubbed and subbed, for free streaming on their site. Why can't they do the same with a manga viewer? Think about it - going page-by-page refreshes ensures that they can make a hell of a lot of money in on-screen advertisements. And they can make this online manga available for download to a Kindle or iPad or hard drive for a lower price than buying the volume itself. And there will always be people willing to buy the print volumes. I love manga volumes. They're very visually AND tactile-ly engaging.
Don't shoot yourselves in the foot, manga distributors. Work with new media, not against them.
EDIT: shit mangafox took down all its Pokespe oh my god no I need this to survive work this summer oh my god fuck no
I think this is a really bad decision on their parts. Without online manga sites, a good three-quarters of my current manga collection (which has grown to easily over one hundred volumes) would never have been purchased. Manga is expensive, and that makes it hard to justify buying on faith. But being able to read series beforehand and decide that this is worth spending money on definitely has gotten me into the vast majority of the series I currently am purchasing.
I understand the concern over people just reading scanlation sites and not buying volumes at all, believe me. But what they should be doing is what Viz and other animanga distributors have already begun doing with anime - put it online yourselves. Viz now offers many anime series, both dubbed and subbed, for free streaming on their site. Why can't they do the same with a manga viewer? Think about it - going page-by-page refreshes ensures that they can make a hell of a lot of money in on-screen advertisements. And they can make this online manga available for download to a Kindle or iPad or hard drive for a lower price than buying the volume itself. And there will always be people willing to buy the print volumes. I love manga volumes. They're very visually AND tactile-ly engaging.
Don't shoot yourselves in the foot, manga distributors. Work with new media, not against them.
EDIT: shit mangafox took down all its Pokespe oh my god no I need this to survive work this summer oh my god fuck no
