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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in teenybuffalo's LiveJournal:

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    Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
    3:13 am
    d-u-n, DONE!!!11!

    Finally finished my last exam in my last course.  I'm not completely done--I have to e-mail two assignments in this week, and go to one more class meeting.  However, I'm finished with the hard part.  Oh, God, it feels so good to have that over with.  

    In my other class, the one full of loud obnoxious people, the other students were saying last week, "Tuesday is the last day of class!  We should bring food on Tuesday!"  Everyone was promising to bring pizza and fried dough and lots of wildly inappropriate foods to eat at 9:30 in the morning.  As it worked out, though, I was the only one who remembered to bring food.  *smug*  I brought blueberry muffins.  Fortunately, they all got eaten, and I don't have to haul them home. 

    Me: Can I bring my chocolate fondue fountain?
    Chick in third row: Can I go swimming in it?
    Me: No, that would be insanitary.  You can pour it over yourself.  

    By the way, the girl who sat next to me in that class sneezes a lot, and she has this really cute little sneeze.  It just doesn't stop.  She sits there going "Choo!  Choo!  Choo choo choo CHOO!" like a kitten, until her nose finally gets tired.  

    Guy behind her: I heard that if you sneeze ten times in a row you automatically have an orgasm.  
    Girl beside her: Is that why people used to take snuff?

    Bureaucratic frustrations abounded when I tried to sign up for a CLEP exam.  They used to take only cash.  Now they won't even accept cash--I have to get a money order for the initial $35 deposit and pay the remaining $65 by credit card when I get there to take the exam.  *puts forehead through the wall*  Fortunately I have a sort-of-credit-card now, so I can take care of the entire exam without having to go to my mother for money.  

    This past weekend was wonderful.  I spent Saturday on a road trip with 

    [info]redcolumbine to a great big gem show.  Highlights include a table with a sign reading PEARLS $2, with giant heaps of freshwater pearl strands of all colors.  We dug through it with our bare hands.  The lady who ran the place said something like, "I hope you don't mind having to dig around in that heap for what you want," and we shook our heads.  Columbine gave me a lot of cute little wooden boxes she doesn't want any longer, some Tiffany glass drops, a bag of dress clips, and a present for the people who attend Sail into the Sunset.  Now all I want is some free time to sit down and model and string and make stuff.  Also, we went for Ethiopian food.  It was fantastic.  My favorite dishes were the Mushy Yellow Lentils and the Acres of Soft Flatbread.  (True story: the first time I went to Washington, DC, my mother and I were trying to decide where to have dinner.  Mom said, "There are all these choices, we could go to an Ethiopian restaurant where they eat with their fingers, we could get vegetarian sushi, we could go for tapas..." I said, "Mom, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed and not up for anything really out of the ordinary.  Let's leave all the foreign places for later, I want to get something like we'd eat at home."  So we went out for Indian food.)

    --Oh, by the way, regarding SitS: I was worried they were raising the hotel rates on us, but it turns out that was a false alarm.  All is okay, and I won't have to find us another hotel or take a stick to the desk staff. 

     

    Monday, May 12th, 2008
    11:31 am
    Story of my life
    humorous pictures
    more cat pictures

    Proper update later. I love you guys. If flame wars are going to inspire the kind of brilliance you have demonstrated, I ought to host one every week.

    *charges off through the pond, hauling a giant batch of willow twigs*
    Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
    12:13 pm
    It's Flame War Wednesday! Subject: dessert preferences.
    [info]lemonlye created the idea and original post several weeks ago.  I hope she'll forgive me--I have stolen it because once was not enough.

    From her original post:

    It's Flame War Wednesday! Let's make some comedy.

    Your assignment is to choose a side on today's topic and defend it belligerently and obnoxiously. You should also rip apart your opponents with as much rancor and condescension as you can manage. Use absurd and rude personal attacks whenever possible. Ready? Okay.

    Your topic:

    Bananas vs. sugar cookies.  Their tastiness, usefulness to society as a whole, moral righteousness, statement about the character of the consumer, ease of consumption and contribution to overall health and well-being.

    Example arguments to get you started:

    --Bananas are for phonies who want to go all "Look at me, look how healthy I am, I'm eating a banana".  Give me a break.
    --Oh yeah? Well, the only people who eat sugar cookies are trailer-park trash who sit in front of the TV all day long rotting their teeth and can't be bothered to take care of their health.  Or their children's health.
    --Ah, but every time you buy a banana you are in fact giving your money to the South American produce and coffee cartels which are destroying the Amazon rainforest at a rate of 200 acres per banana.  Sugar cookies are in fact the choice of conservationists.
    --DO YOU KNOW WHAT ALL THAT REFINED FLOUR AND SUGAR IS DOING TO YOUR KIDNEYS?!  I pity you, you poor slob.

    Okay, your turn.
    Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
    11:25 pm
    On plausibility
    Suppose you were writing historical fiction. Your setting is the Age of Sail, but all your main characters are completely imaginary. Now, suppose you wrote a book where the hero was an English sea captain who got killed and eaten* by some of the locals in an island chain in the Pacific. Are you supposing all that? OK, great.

    Now, as to plausibility... would you dare to name your hero Captain Cook and have him be eaten in the Sandwich Islands?





    *The jury is still out as to whether they actually ate him. Most indigenous Hawaiians are offended and upset by the notion. I can understand why they feel that way, goodness knows. Cannibalism is used as a slur against half the world by the other half. But I still think Captain Cook was eaten by the people who killed him, back in the day. Not that I have any better clue than the historians. It's just that the idea of their not having eaten him seems like a real letdown, to me.
    Sunday, May 4th, 2008
    11:31 pm
    As [info]sparky_darky posted one year ago today...
    May the fourth be with you.
    Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
    9:31 am
    Death by Water
    Posting from class:

    This past month was apparently National Poetry Month.  I missed it myself, because last year I posted a poem every day all through April, and I got burnt out.  I've enjoyed reading everyone's poetry posts this month, though, and I was starting to feel left out.  Here is one part of The Waste Land  that I like.

    Also, I've been reading and writing too many business plans lately.  


    Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
    Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
    And the profit and loss.
    A current under sea
    Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
    He passed the stages of his age and youth
    Entering the whirlpool.
    Gentile or Jew
    O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
    Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
    1:15 am
    Sail into the Sunset 2008
    This June 5, 6, 7, and 8, Sail into the Sunset is coming to Boston.  It's a mini-convention/raiding party/informal booze-up/weekend slumber party for Pirates of the Caribbean fans and Age of Sail buffs.  It's been held almost every year since the first PotC movie came out in 2003, and this year I volunteered to be host.  As there are a lot of people on my flist who (a) like piracy and (b) live in the greater Boston area or could drive in for the day, I want to spread the word. 

    We are going to spend the weekend going out and swashbuckling in the daytime and watching pirate movies in the evenings in my hotel room.  There are presently about fourteen people coming.  There is no entry fee.  I'm renting a projector, though, and we're going to pass the hat to pay for that (no more than $15/person).  Right now, it looks like we'll be going on a day sail out of Boston Harbor and spending an afternoon at the US Constitution.  Movies include: all three PotC movies, the Disney Treasure Island, Master and Commander, and possibly the Hornblower miniseries. The SitS livejournal community is [info]sunset_sailors, and my overall explanation post is here.  Go join up if you'd like to receive update posts.  Feel free to link this on your own LJ. 
    Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
    2:29 am
    Ring ring ring ring ring ring BANANAPHONE!
    [info]redcolumbine came out for a visit this weekend.  We went to my parents' singing party, we walked to a graveyard, we took a day trip to the Norman Rockwell Museum.  We listened to Jez Lowe.  We sang a bit.  I had a great time.  I didn't want the weekend to end.  Oo oo oo!  I almost forgot the neatest part.  Columbine taught me how to write HTML!  The world is my oyster, which I with sword shall open.  

    Does anybody know where the subject line comes from?  I don't, but:

    Me: It's a beautiful day!  The sun's out!  RING RING RING RING RING RING BANANAPHONE!
    [info]redcolumbine: That's some powerful meme you've been smoking.

    Real life resumes with a vengeance: I've got to finish this business plan and get it in by Thursday. 

    I've been trying to convince myself to get to bed on time, and failing.  My common sense knows that when I'm failing to get any good work done, I should just turn in, get a good night's rest, and go back to work early the next morning.  My body is convinced that it should just sit idly staring at the computer screen until 2:00.  That's been happening way too often of late.  I seem able to get a grip of my other bad habits--how much I eat, whether I exercise--but not this one.  I know it's a bad idea, but I just sort of helplessly watch myself do it.  Gah. 
    Saturday, April 12th, 2008
    12:27 am
    Whew
    The crew of the yacht captured by pirates are safe and sound.  The yacht's owners paid a ransom, the prisoners were released, they're being repatriated, and all's well that ends well.  The French military made a helicopter raid on the pirates, and apparently captured six of them--or five--or something.  The reporting is kinda sketchy at that point.  I find it hard to work up much sympathy for the pirates.  I'm just glad their prisoners are fine.  After my glee over last week's headlines, I had a nasty feeling that something awful would happen, such as the pirates trying to cut their losses by killing their prisoners, and I'd regret having talked lightly about it.  But no--this time Murphy's law didn't strike.
    Thursday, April 10th, 2008
    1:08 am
    Life as she is lived good
    I went to another club tonight.  I didn't like it as much as the Goth club, because it was a little chilly and nobody danced.  Still, it was deeply exciting just to go there, because it was at an old ballroom with a bad reputation for brawling college students.  Nobody brawled tonight, either.  We all just stood around in the semi-dark, listening to an overamplified band.  I'm glad I went just to say I'd done it.


    In semi-related news, I've been reading the Cain Saga: Godchild manga.  They're pretty good, even though I can tell I'm just coming in after volumes and volumes of backstory.  In the first story I read, in one single story, there were a cursed household, a medium, a seance, a lightning storm, a dysfunctional family with a dead foreign first wife, a little boy who practices self-harm and collects butterflies, and a girl who goes mad and eats live sparrows.  Clearly this is more Gothic than the Castle of Otranto and forty giant helmets.  That's fine with me.  Does anybody know the best place to start in the various Cain series? 

    I bring it up here, because I was paging quickly through the first volume and came upon a scene where one character is shrieking at another, "You will die ALONE and UNLOVED!", and for a minute there my eyes read it as "You will die ALONE and UNEMPLOYED!"  Shows you where my head is at these days, all right^_^
    Monday, April 7th, 2008
    11:09 pm
    Humorous Pictures
    see more crazy cat pics

    In other news, rest in peace, Charlton Heston. I liked you a lot. Usually Brave and Manly (TM), sometimes dorky and knobby-kneed, always cute. Also, you were cool for having the longest marriage and most evidently functional and loving family of any Hollywood actor I can recall offhand. Okay, admittedly actors aren't the crowd to beat here, but you were cool nonetheless. I'm going to rent Ben-Hur again sometime soon.
    1:07 am
    Pirates seize yacht
    According to international news reports, a four-decker French yacht was seized by pirates on Friday.  This is going down right now--apparently the pirates have taken the yacht to a small Somalian port.  They're probably going to wait for a ransom offer from the yacht owner or the French government.  I am very sorry for the kidnapped crew members, and I hope the French government manages to negotiate for their return without any deaths or injuries.  However, at the same time, I'm sitting here with a big, unseemly grin on my face because I was able to head this post "Pirates seize yacht".  Stone the crows!  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  These guys are almost certain to be a bunch of dirty, unromantic thugs with AK-47s, but if you brought Blackbeard forward in time 290 years, he'd be a dirty, unromantic thug with an AK-47 too. 

    My mom's friend's sister owns a passenger-class sailboat and makes her living taking people on sails around the world, to the Christmas Islands, etc.  She has a permanent sunburn and has circled the globe at least twice.  I've only met her a few times, and she is always a rakish, intriguing figure to me.  One thing I clearly remember her saying when I was younger.  "Every so often, someone disappears at sea.  Then years later their boat sometimes turns up, stripped and floating keel-upwards."  

    Current Mood: gruesome
    Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
    12:37 pm
    HAAIIII!
    I have a new hobby.  Today I went in to school for a meeting of the Anime Club, and it was brilliant.  We just sat around and watched a few episodes of something called "The Peacemaker", which was pretty good.  Definitely something I'll make sure and do every week.  The rest of the crowd seem kind of nutty, but in a comfortable way.  You know, I never check out anime and watch it by myself, because I wouldn't know where to start (okay, I've watched My Neighbor Totoro and the rest of the big famous movies by whatshisname, but that's about it), but this is the perfect way to get into it.  And all my other hobbies are really demanding and creative and need a lot of effort.  It's about time I found something where we all just sit around and act goofy and watch stuff.   

    There was a friendly girl sitting next to me, and we chatted for a while between episodes.  She's a longtime club member and she does the same thing as me--she goes to Barnes & Noble and reads whole books of manga and then just puts them back on the shelf, unbought.  Nice to know I'm not the only one.  Did you go to Animecon?  I said.  No, she said, she has a baby and can't afford the time or expense.  "How old is your baby?"  "Nearly a year."  "Caught up on your sleep yet?"  "Nope.  I got two hours last night."  

    Did you ever have one of those times when you couldn't say anything right?  That's what happened to me.  Just out of friendly curiosity, I proceeded to say every goddamned thing that she hears all the time and finds aggravating.  Not that she said so; I could just tell, from the glazed expression on her face.  It was awful.  I couldn't find a way to stop myself.  I just paved the road to hell with good intentions.  I'd say, "Oh, my next-door neighbors just had a baby, I love kids," and she'd give me this old, old look with her pretty young eyes.  Then I'd try to make it better, and say "It must be a huge lot of work.  You must be really capable, I bet you can handle it really well," and she said quietly, "That's what everybody tells me..."  It was a relief when they put the projector back on, I can tell you.

    Apart from anything else, talking to her was like being hit with the Mallet of Perspective.  This girl was barely eighteen.  My jaw just about hit the floor when she told me--I'd assumed she was in her late twenties, not because she looks prematurely aged but because she has a tough air.  She had to drop out of high school to have this kid, and now she's at community college trying to improve the quality of life for her and the kid.  I'm twenty-six.  And you know, I may gripe about how tough life is for me, how I can't find a job and this sucks and that sucks, but really?  A lifetime where I'm not a teenage single mother trying to get through college and work AND bring up a kid by myself is a good lifetime.  

    Apropos of nothing much, it's amazing how little things can affect my mood.  Yesterday was damp and muggy and periodically misting rain, and the air felt stale and used-up.  I felt lousy.  My head ached, my muscles ached, my stomach twinged and I felt lower than a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of silent seas.  I loathed the world.  I actually had a nap when I got home in the afternoon--and I never take a nap.  I just needed to get away from everything.  Then I went out to help my parents at a road race.  While I was out there, the wind picked up like mad, and there was a battle of the elements in the sky.  First the clouds raced away north, then they raced away south, and then it started to clear and I could see the red radio-tower lights on the mountain.  (I like those lights.  I remember seeing them when I was a kid, and they make me feel calm and reassured.  When I was tiny, I'm pretty sure I went to sleep watching red radio tower lights blink on and off in the distance, while my mother rocked me and sang.  They're like the Eye of Sauron, only friendly.)  Well, my mood picked up instantly.  The harder the wind blew, the better I felt, until I was feeling fantastic by the time we went home.  Apparently high-pressure zones agree with me.  I'm still feeling great, as irrationally happy as I was irrationally miserable yesterday.  Proof?  I've got to do the vacuuming later today, and even that doesn't get me down.  ^_^  I wish high-pressure zones to all of you guys.
    Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
    11:20 pm
    I think I may be able to metabolize alcohol
    Whoever recognizes the subject line gets 100 points for Griffindor.

    Thursday, March 27th, 2008
    5:34 pm
    Apparently I am a self-loathing tool of the patriarchy...
    ...for enjoying slash.  Who knew?

    Link goes to a long blog post about how slash isn't really feminist and how we fangirls are not the openminded, world-changing, paradigm-shattering force for Good that we claim to be, we're actually dupes and running dogs of the conservative heteronormative phallocentric male establishment.  I have spent the last half-hour reading phrases like that last one, except that the author was in complete earnest.  If I see the word "patriarchy" one. more. time., I will utter a loud shriek and fall dead.  



    Current Mood: Neener, neener, neener
    Monday, March 24th, 2008
    12:01 pm
    Calling all subscribers to Glamour and Seventeen

    I've got a couple of questions for Dr. LJ.  

    1.  I read somewhere that "You have to start using a moisturizer after you're twenty-five, or you'll be wrinkled by the time you're thirty."  Now, that makes me ask:

    a. Isn't your skin bound to wrinkle anyway because of ordinary facial expressions, no matter what you do to it?  And isn't this just a big plot by the cosmetics companies who run the fashion magazines, in order to make us feel insecure so that we'll buy more products?  [If so, IT WORKS.]  And the cult of youth is stupid anyway, and normal facial aging is normal and charming and attractive and adds character, so isn't it my duty to declare as much to society at large, instead of becoming an assimilationist pawn?

    b. What kind of moisturizer?

    Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
    12:20 am
    Frosty night and thawy day makes the maple pulses play
    --One day away from LJ and already I have opinions coming out of my ears.  (Did anyone else have the urge to shout "See you on the other side, old friends!"?)

    --[info]asakiyumehad a bunch of us over for a storytelling party on Thursday.  It was a blast and I had a great time.  I haven't laughed so much or spent so much time just sitting around being silly with my friends for weeks.  As far as I'm concerned, it was the event of the season.  Everybody there was brilliant and a charming raconteur.  I met [info]wakanomorifor the first time and drew him and [info]heyesout on the subject of sumo wrestlers.  There was a theme to the afternoon, though I didn't realize it till later--Deeply Wrong Things In Cemeteries.  Pity I didn't think to tell the story about the girl who stuck the knife in the grave.  

    Favorite you-had-to-be-there dialogue: 
    heyes: "And the place was run by a mother, her daughter and granddaughter."
    grayheyes: "Did they toss cows?" 

    We ate a lot, too--the little tofu pocket things were unusual and nice.  I'd definitely make them for myself.  

    --Wish tonight's party could have been the same.  Instead I spent this evening at a long boring parental get-together where the last guest Would.  Not.  Go.  Home.  He hung out for an hour and a half after the other guests had gone home.  He sat and sat and talked and talked in a piercingly loud voice, and every few minutes there would be an awkward pause that any sane person would take as a sign that their hosts were a little tired and wished to retire for the evening.  However, Guest was not a sane person.  He just drew breath and burbled onward.  I had horrible visions of him sitting there as the hours passed, getting himself yet another drink, ten, eleven-thirty, midnight...  Thank goodness, he went home at a quarter past nine.  It just seemed like an aeon.  (Unfortunately not even a Strange Ian.)  My ears are tired.

    --Tomorrow morning we're going to take a couple of other friends of Mom and Dad's to a pancake breakfast at a maple sugaring house.  I like that.  Being atheists as well as not big candy eaters, we've never done a lot on Easter Sunday and it always feels a pointless holiday.  Yay, our own little ritual!  The beginning of maple syrup season feels holy to me.  Isn't there somewhere in the world where they have a whole giant festival when the first (grapes, walnuts, citrons, wheatsheaves?  Somethings!) are brought in?

    --There's a karaoke night at the Station Hotel tomorrow evening.  I've been meaning to do that for weeks now, but something always comes up--I'm too tired or I have an early morning next day or I've got a sore throat or some other excuse.  Perhaps posting here will ensure I go.  I love performing, and I think I'd like karaoke, but the problem is that it's probably going to all be pop songs and I'm way, way more into traditional music.  *reassures self*  You don't even have to try singing with the canned accompaniments, for starters.  Just have fun, get a drink, look sophisticated, and watch people horse around.
    Thursday, March 20th, 2008
    10:58 am
    Boycott the Beijing Olympics
    More information here, thanks to [info]redcolumbine.   I've been trying to keep up with the news lately, in the interest of forming some opinions on the world, and you can't open a paper for the last few days without reading about the Tibetan protests of the Olympic games.  The Chinese government is imprisoning people left and right--as if China needs an excuse to give the Tibetans hell.  "Because we can" seems to be the usual reason.  

    In Australia, hundreds of shouting protestors surrounded the Chinese embassy, yelling "Shame, China, shame!"  In New York, a man was arrested while trying to drape a Tibetan flag over a highway billboard.  In India they flung rocks at the embassy--and I hate violent protests, but this one time I can't say I blame them a huge amount.  

    And, in my little town of ___, Massachusetts, fourteen Tibetans and several American supporters waved flags from street corners and took signatures on a petition to the Olympics Committee.  It made me really happy to see that.  I didn't even know there were so many Tibetans in the area till yesterday.  There was even a family with a very small baby.  The only person I'd seen before was the Red Monk, who I sometimes meet walking down the road.  He is a Buddhist monk who wears a brick-red robe, and yesterday he was also wearing a brick-red American sweatshirt to keep warm.  

    Lots of people honked as they drove past.  The thing about our town is that it's a haven for dissidents.  There's a protest on Main Street practically every weekend of the year.  If people aren't lighting candles on the steps of City Hall for one thing, they're parading up and down outside the courthouse for another thing.  Usually it isn't anything that I care much about, and I just nod and smile and walk by.  This, though, is different.  

    Sign a petition.  Read up a little on the background.  I'm going to write an angry letter to the Olympics committee.  Yeah, I know--drops in the ocean, bugs on the windshield, why should they listen to me, or a hundred Americans, or a thousand protesters out of the whole world?  Well, from a purely selfish standpoint, I wouldn't feel good about myself if I didn't say something. 
    Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
    3:24 pm
    Meme question #2: for [info]linaelyn
    Linaelyn asked why I named myself [info]teenybuffalo. Mostly, it was because of this song. I started posting in my LJ in September of 2006, when I had this song stuck in my head. My Very First Post Ever:

    (To be sung with a lisp, making galloping gestures with hands:)
    Big Buffalo comes from the mountain, far far away.
    Big Buffalo comes from the mountain, far far away.
    Far Far Away, hee hee hee!
    Far Far Away, hee hee hee!
    Big Buffalo comes from th' mountain, far far away.

    (High-pitched voice, making little galloping gestures with fingers of one hand:)
    Teeny Buffalo comes from the mountain, far far away.
    Teeny Buffalo comes from the mountain, far far away.
    Far Far Away, hee hee hee!
    Far Far Away, hee hee hee!
    Teeny Buffalo comes from the mountain, far far away.

    (Change to a key as deep as you can sing. Do the "hee"s really deep, like Jabba the Hutt.)
    Humongous Buffalo comes from the mountain, far far away.
    Humongous Buffalo comes from the mountain, far far away.
    Far Far Away, hee hee hee!
    Far Far Away, hee hee hee!
    Humongous Buffalo comes from the mountain, far far away.

    ...I really should learn to make voice posts so you all can hear how this sounds live. The tune is sort of like "The old gray mare", only different.

    Also, I guess, I chose "teenybuffalo" because most people in fandom give themselves such tremendous, important names. Royalty. Trendy animals. Pagan gods. Lady Moonray. Lady Starfyre. Lady Sunfruitflowervineleaf. Raven Queen Freya. Princess Dolphin. The Unicorn Maiden. Countess Solaris Estrella Snowdrop Swan of Faerie, in extreme cases. This just cracks me up, not least because I would totally have done the same thing when I was thirteen.

    Buffalo (buffalos?) are good to be around. They're sensible, they're straightforward, and no one has ever tried to put them on mystical pseudo-Celtic T-shirts or given courses in speaking the Language of the Buffalo. The only mystical woo-woo that I've ever seen attached to a buffalo was when a white buffalo calf was born on a reservation out West, and there was some American Indian tribe with a prophecy that a white buffalo was a sign of the end of the world. The world hasn't ended yet, however, and I hope that the white buffalo is living a quiet, happy life, tended by the Shoshone elders or whoever own it.

    Also, I identify with buffalos. I didn't really think about this when I chose the name, but it's dawned on me lately. They're vegetarians, they seem good-natured and fun to be around, and the one in my icon is even cute and cuddly. But at the same time, they're strong creatures with big powerful bodies and a sense of a huge suppressed energy. If they ever took it into their heads to go out for a gallop, no owner could hold them. As with all zoo animals (tigers and big cats, especially), I secretly want to see them smack a bitch and thunder off into the sunset. There is a buffalo farm on the road out of town, and every time I drive by it I admire the animals. They're big, and they enjoy being together, and you have the uneasy feeling that you had better not cross them.

    [info]purplegryphon made me the icon. It's going to be my default icon forever and ever and I love, wuv, and adore it.
    12:44 am
    Livejournal strike on Friday, March 21st
    Frankly, I'm all for it.

    Friday, March 21st, there is going to be a Livejournal strike, in response to two recent administrative decisions. One day of silence, from midnight to midnight. No posting, no commenting, nothing. The idea came from [info]beckyzoole; see her LJ for a fuller explanation. Please spread the word to anyone you think should hear about it.

    The strike is happening because of two things. One: LJ has ended the "basic account" service. Anyone starting a LJ from now on will have to either look at advertising or pay for an account with all the bells and whistles. That's the big thing, for me. They've managed to remove the reason I felt comfortable using LJ in the first place. My sense of cynicism tells me it was too good to last, but still--I thought LJ was better than that. Two: the admins have been removing popular interests from the popular-interests list, for no reason that they've seen fit to explain. Could be innocuous reasons, could be targeting fandom as undesirables. The thing what really gets my goat is that they didn't announce either of these changes in advance. They just went ahead and did it. It takes a lot to make me join a protest, but this has done it, all right.

    *snarl* It's been pointed out that the LJ/SUP administration doesn't even want fandom around, and would be perfectly happy if we all got the hell out. It's even been suggested that these are moves intended to drive fandom users away from LJ. The way the owners have been acting, I even find that last part plausible. The current head of SUP was quoted recently:

    In this situation, where they ["they"=strikers] attempt to blackmail and to intimidate us, threatening to destroy our business, there is a business-reason not to reward this behavior. This is not the simple reaction of being more resistant the more pressure is applied. The fact is that through history no successful enterprise runs by being subjugated by unfriendly forces. No change, even the most correct one, will not experience some resistance.

    It would probably be best to reconsider the recent changes. But from our point of view it is now necessary to wait until after the boycott has faded. Let it pass and have the voices of protest fade. Then we can consider changing this policy.

    Short version: "We have no need to listen to our customers, because it is good business sense to be as stubborn as a mule. Also, we're the poor oppressed little guys, you should pity us. LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU." The sad thing is that this is about par for the course, as LJ admins go. As I've said elsewhere, it's funny (in a not-really kind of way) how the LJ company manages to act as though we the fangirls are simultaneously (a) not at all important--why, there are hardly any of us, and (b) we're a giant, all-powerful international conspiracy of evil perverts. That's wot you call a dichotomy...

    I'm going to make accounts at other companies, but that's only a stopgap measure. The best solution would be a fan-run journal service--I believe that [info]astolat is working on something of the kind, and I'm going to see how I can help the efforts. Not that I know a blessed thing about coding, but perhaps I could go and bake muffins for the programmers while they design it...

    People have questioned the efficacy of a protest against owners like the windbag quoted above. I guess I'd reply: maybe so, but we owe it to ourselves to make a protest. They're never going to change if we stay silent and put up with crap, so we should stand up and show them how we feel. It's up to them what they do with the knowledge after that.

    In other news, I'll get to the next meme question tomorrow--my word, this is a fun one. I'd no idea everybody liked word posts so much, or I would have made them much more often.
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