On West Egg

GUESS WHAT, Y'ALL.

No really, guess.




Have you guessed yet? No? I guess I'll give you more time.




Oh, well now that's not terribly kind. But I guess it counts as a guess.

Well you're wrong. IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! I am now a quarter of a century old. It was a pretty uneventful day, though. I worked both my jobs, which didn't really leave time to do anything much else (I've been working part time at a college bookstore during their rush on top of full-time at my regular workplace, btw).

Oh, and I work eight hours tomorrow.

BUT THEN TWO DAYS COMPLETELY OFF FUCK YEAH. :DD

In other news, I have moved across town from the two-bedroom apartment I'd been in to a room in a townhouse that I moved into July 30th and has only juuust stabilized as far as residents overall go. (OMG SOON THE KITCHEN CABINETS WILL MAKE SENSE AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS.)

So, my rent is up but it includes cable and heat and electric and internet and water and and and, so my bills are actually down. Working 40 hours a week (up from the 38 I had before getting the new position mid-July) has given a slight-but-noticeable increase to my income, and when I officially get the position in payroll, I'll be getting about $1.50/hr more, plus benefits.

OH HEY I FINISHED THAT PAPERWORK TODAY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME.

Also, last week the super uncompetent manager got fired, and while the new one is young and over ambitious and kind of on the fast-track to burnout (AND TOTALLY NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT VENDORS AT ALL OMG, though he does at least outwardly acknowledge that I know what I'm talking about and if I say "don't do that again because" he probably won't do it again), his lofty goals are at least good goals, and he's still probably going to be better than the old one after burning out.

OH AND HEY. After like one-and-a-quarter years I have finally stopped being and Ohio licensed driver and got my PA one, and transferred the title and got a new insurance policy and everything.(Oh and I registered to vote, which I have been FAILBOT at for a while. Uh.)

I live here. With growing savings.

And I can probably go off food stamps soon! (Should, even. THAT IS MY GOAL FOR NEXT WEEK.)

(I set goals and follow through now. Soon there may even be lists. Because I'm a MOTHERFUCKING ADULT WTF.)

Oh hey, two days off. Maybe I'll finally get caught up on my currently releasing toku (well, the old stuff. I watch the weeklies and will miss OOO dreadfully) so that I can get back to the completed series I was in the middle of and last watched/live-tweeted at least like two months ago?

Or I could finish PONIES. They are starting up again soon...

(Also at some point over those days I intend to finish the scene where [redacted] from the ridiculous powerless HS AU Samurai fic I haven't worked on at all since starting. Maybe this time I won't get distracted by the internet.)

Sorry, you guys I just have SO MUCH to catch you up on.

...OH YEAH. I got (hopefully the last time ever) texted out of nowhere by Awful Ex about how he's so glad I'm still in this town and how he hopes I succeed at life and blah blah blah "I'm still in love with you."

I have two exes. How many "I'm still in love with you" messages have I gotten? TWO. WHAT THE HELL. :| At least Awful didn't wait THREE YEARS to send that one.

Also, he says he's deleted my number but AHAHAHAH EXPECTING HIM NOT TO LIE.

Oh, and he tried a "remember me by the good times" thing except the "good times" he chose were A)after he broke up with me B)a thing he was doing on his own that just happened in the same room I was in sometimes, and C)was a series he was marathoning six seasons of with the tv set loud enough that I couldn't sleep well. GOOD TIMES, MAN.

And then he misspelled my name. (And, correcting for spelling, used my birth name and not the one I go by, which is just a dick move.) (For those wondering, he didn't misgender me, I just... don't go by my birth name much anymore. It was still totally disrespectful and dismissive of my wishes, but there wasn't dysphoria or anything triggery. Just what would have been major annoyance if I had any fucks to give about him anymore.)

I think that's everything but IDK.

tl;dr: Life has been steadily improving. With health care in three months! \o/

So, when I'm not mainlining Japanese kids' superhero shows, my media intake tends to be queer cinema, because it tends either to be awesome, or to be awesomely bad. (And even when it's just mediocre, the pandering tends to be towards those who like their eye candy male, so there's at least that.)

Those of you who follow my twitter feed will already know, though, that I just encountered the most miserable piece of shit to ever call itself a movie. I have suffered the Star Wars Holiday Special. This was ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE WORSE.

I really don't even know if I can put the horror into words. Although, those of you who follow my twitter feed saw my attempts throughout. While there are some understandable descriptions of some of the ways in which this film is awful there, it's by NO means comprehensive. Merely scratching the surface.

The worst part is... you know what, scratch what I was going to say. The worst part is ALL OF IT. (Except the one actor, who was at some point in post-production, someone tried to make changes to make us think the movie was about him. It only made things worse, because then the movie WASN'T, but they'd gone out of their way to make sure we were wondering "what if?")

I don't even know, y'all.

(Someday, I hope to inflict this on a mass of people so that I'm not the only person I know who has suffered it. So no, you're not getting the name of it. Nyah.)

Let's sum up the fears he's instilled as of the latest episode of Who:

-Look behind you so that you don't get killed by the creeptastic alien whose existence you forget as soon as you don't see it.
-Don't look behind you, because The Beast will kill you and possess your corpse.
-Don't turn out the lights to avoid seeing or being seen by the nasties, because if this doesn't let the Angels move to get you, the shadows themselves will devour you.

Real cheerful man, isn't he.

ETA: Every single tag I used on this post not only already existed in my tagging system, but has its own distinct flavor of what I use it for. They all apply.

Instead, I've gotten two textbook derails, plus at least two-and-a-half "SEMANTICS" derails specific to the issue from someone I know isn't a troll, over on twitter.

GODDAMNIT.

(And this isn't even getting into the sexism from the show that started this.)

ETA: My crushing letdown is noted. How magnanimous.

So, something went weird with one of my drivers, and I had to factory-reset my computer.

I've lost everything, including the sonnets, which is a major loss. Even moreso than the mass of music that disappeared, and it's more upsetting than that I'll have to redownload my power rangers and sentai and the other series I was in the middle of.

Plus, I've lost all my bookmarks, so. Recommend sites?

ETA: YESSSSS I HAVE MY SONNETS. My laptop isn't actually networked to the printer in the house, so I emailed them to m'self to open on the computer connected to the printer and didn't delete the email. :D

Okay, so I'd heard of Fosse for ages as I grew up - you don't have to be a theatre queen to have heard of him or even be able to say he's a choreographer - and even saw a bit of his choreography in high school when PBS aired their Great Performances recording of, well, Fosse. (It's a plotless show that's basically his best dances restaged with no context.) Being me-in-high-school, I didn't think much of it. I can be forgiven, I knew little of dance and even less of theatre (despite my involvement in two shows a year, half of which were musicals).

It wasn't until a couple years back, when I finally saw the film of Cabaret that I was able to see any of his work with a mind that could appreciate it, and it was blown. Every time I come back to that film, I have a better understanding of what movies are and can do, and how director functions, and every time I come back to that movie, I can look deeper, and every time I come back to that movie, I find no flaws, and every time I come back to that movie I learn something new about the art.

But that was him working with a story and music that were not originally his, no matter how much effort and adaptation he brought. It simply proved that he was an artist who could build his own great things from other people's work. Which is in no way an insult - that's exactly the job of a director, and damn did he do it.

And there's some more here about his choreography, which I first really appreciated with Cabaret as well, and then learned the style of in workshop, and then started trawling youtube for - see a couple posts back to see where that's led me lately, but that's another post entirely. It was that post a couple back, though, that finally tipped the scales on me seeking out All That Jazz, which I just finished watching. (With Portuguese subtitles because of the torrent. Heh.)

First off, TvTropes is right when they describe the first real scene as "proving Fosse can do A Chorus Line in six minutes with no dialogue." (Paraphrased, as that site isn't being friendly right now.)

But the rest of the movie is something else entirely, and when Fosse gets to build from the ground up, he blows my mind in an entirely different way. The man knows exactly what he's doing, and it was amazing to see the evolution of his techniques after Cabaret. The man had style and I'm amazed that I don't see more of it in movies that have come since.

Strangely, the first movie that comes to mind that even begins to feel like Fosse is Hedwig, and even then it's only a few scenes.

I need to find the rest of this man's filmography and marathon it hardcore. Who's up for it? I feel like this should be a group event.