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Sales Over
All of the IJ holiday sales have ended and prices are back to normal. We will be putting Permanently Insane accounts on sale for their regular price before Christmas.

Reminder: Black Friday Sale
ETA: and it's over!
( Old text )

OD'd on tryptophan
The post I wrote last night and didn't send 'cos I'd just posted something else and I always feel ridiculous making two posts in an hour:

I like the dressing. Rob makes the best turkey dressing in the world. He makes croutons from sourdough bread & italian dressing, and it's got sausage and ground beef and celery and onions, and chantrelles & crimini mushrooms and cherries and water chestnuts.

And Blossom came down from Wolf Creek and made cranberry relish; yaaay! and I made mashed potatoes, and Gail made apples-and-sweet-potatoes with the recipe Rob got from the WitchesWithBrains yahoogroup, and we had brussels sprouts and candied carrots, and pumpkin pie that Rob made yesterday. And turkey. And gravy made from the turkey drippings.

Mygods I'm stuffed. It's all really, really yummy food. And we'll have leftovers for daaaaayz. Including enough cranberry relish to make piroshkis tomorrow and maybe to have to take to work next week.

And I'm, like, DRUGGED. From the tryptophan. I want to sleep now and wake up... Tuesday. Instead, we have four extra people in our room who are watching the movie "Crowley" while I try to find new fanfic.

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284746.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far: comment count unavailable

Black Friday Sale is here
I have turned on today's special Black Friday sale.

Until 4:00pm(EST) we will be holding a sale on Permanently Insane accounts, Permanent Extra Userpics, and Insane Userpics the prices are as follows.

Permanently Insane account - $30
Insane Userpics - $70
Permanent Extra Userpics - $5

At 4:00 today all prices on IJ will go back to their normal amounts.

Pagan terminology meta
I put together a list of Pagan terms for use by nonpagans, specifically writers, at

writing_religion: Pagan terminology for nonpagan writers.

It's about 2700 words long. I'd welcome any feedback or questions; part of me thinks it's okay, and part thinks it's about 1/3 done and needs at total rewrite--but if I waited until I thought it was "finished," I'd never get it posted. And there really isn't enough info available *about* Pagans that's not written for people who are joining/members of Pagan religions.

And incompleteness is not necessarily wrong, in this case. It's more important to me that nonpagans understand the complexity of the issues than that they learn the details involved.

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284671.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far: comment count unavailable

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone here in the U.S. is eating enough to keep them going for a week or two. After all, as my roommate told me today, it IS against the law to not overeat on Thanksgiving Day, right? So keep that American spirit going, guys, and eat until you pop!

I have a few more pics for the NC17 crowd coming up next, so check back after you get another slice of pumpkin pie, okay?

Enjoy!

art by Joe Phillips

Alert: R Rated for Nudity and Sexual Situations

( Happy Turkey Day! )

Current Mood: full
Current Music: Gobble, gobble, gobble...

Weekend Update 2009.11.24
Saturday I got a pleasant surprise – A1@, who I haven’t had a chance to hang out since early 2008, was unexpectedly free after work. Pouncing on the rare opportunity, I picked her up after work and we went to Gallagher's Pizza to hang out and catch up. We wound up talking for six hours, catching up and telling stories of our misspent youth. It was a great time, and I’m hoping next time it might be only maybe six months ‘til we can do it again.

Sunday morning I slept late at Jero’s. I got up only when it was time for me to go to derby practice. Sunday’s practice was the hardest so far, and I was reminded I need to work on my lung capacity if I’m going to be doing athletic activities. After practice we had a meeting for the men’s league and discussed the first season of the Race City Rebels. It looks like if I get my skills up to par I’ll be skating with them after all. After the meeting I stopped by Nivagi’s for dinner, and then went to spend the night at Jero’s.

Monday I had off work since I’m on a Tuesday through Saturday shift, so I hung out at Jero’s house and journalled while she went into the office. When she got off work we went out to dinner and then I got onto the MUX. I had an interesting time playing both Good and Bad Buster at the same time in different windows with Good and Bad Spike. I also got in some other fun RP with Carly, Deadline and Temera, and look forward to getting back on the MUX tonight.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: AT&T Hold Music

More
Hmm. I'm not finding a couple of the blog posts I'd spotted yesterday, that aren't related to the adult privs checklist but were about child agency and the concept that kids, acting like kids, in public, is something the public should just deal with--kids are people, and age-appropriate behavior isn't something that should be kept out of sight of nonparents.

Some of these have fascinating comment threads. And by "fascinating," I mean "soaked in privilege and offensive as hell."

Related but not necessarily connected posts:
Nov 3, Noble Savage: On Child Hate and Feminism "Participating in child-bashing is participating in the oppression of a vulnerable group. … admitting that motherhood went from overrated to undervalued in 40 years flat isn’t something many of us want to acknowledge."

Oct 23, Look Left of the Pleiades: People who dance between tables "Having a need for age-specific support should not make anyone any less human."

Apr 23, Have A Lovely Time: I'm sorry, does my children's presence offend you? "HOW do you cope when your arrival leads to an immediate and sharp intake of breath from the other customers?"

Aug 8, Syracuse.com opinion blog: Discrimination against special needs is unacceptable "They had just as much a right to patronize that restaurant as anyone else. They deserved to be welcomed with respect and kindness. This was not the case." (Does not mention whether younger children without disabilities would be equally accepted.)

Adult Privilege Sound-off:
Nov 24, Dr. Helen: Your right to bring your screaming child on a plane ends where the rest of our ears begin. "If a kid does not understand how to act in certain settings, teach him or her or don't put them in that setting until they are older. The world will be a better (and quieter) place."

Nov 24, Tim Cavanaugh at Reason: No Child's Left Behind "here is (very unscientific) evidence that spanking is poised for a comeback" (With special bonus racism in the comments!)

April 8, Guardian: There comes a time when you want to live without children "To buy a property in the village, you have to be 45-plus with no dependent family in tow, and you must sign a contract agreeing not to sell property on to those with children."

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284210.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far: comment count unavailable

Adult Privilege Linkspam
I may or may not find time to make a coherent post about this anytime soon. This one's important to me; the way we treat children in this country ranges from atrocity to tragedy. But it's late; I have to be up in five and a half hours (because, heh, one of my kids does not mesh well with public school). As a placeholder, have some linkspam:

Nov 16 @ Shut Up, Sit Down: Adult Privilege Checklist

Reading a post by Elena Perez at California NOW made me think about privilege checklists (like the Male Privilege Checklist and the White Privilege Checklist, for example) and I came to the realisation that, as yet, nobody had written an adult privilege checklist. So with some help from my good friend Jenny, using some of Elena Perez’s ideas from the aforementioned post, I set about writing the Adult Privilege Checklist.

Background; older posts:
April 13, Mothers For Women's Lib: You’ll never truly be “child free”

Oct 22, Raising My Boychick: Dancing between the tables: on the personhood of children

Nov 11, California NOW: Feminist Parenting: The Larger Picture

Nov 4, Left of the Pleiades: Dear Kate Harding

Reactions:

naraht: Adult privilege

hl: The Opression of Chilhood. In which I try for emotionless and hard analysis (and fail)

sqbr: Intersections of youth and other aspects of the kyriarchy

Saraspeaking: Mind. Blown.

flourish: Adult Privilege

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/284122.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far: comment count unavailable

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes
Thanks

mandebooks for linking this:

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Alone (Glee Cast Version) - Glee Cast

Issue #121
Help & writing resources

In an untitled post,

bridgetmkennit explains the tags system and the four different types of warnings at the Archive Of Our Own, and how to use them.

lore: BloMo18: Tis the season of saving stories....: tips on saving fanfic stories "in a format that can be easily transferred to most reading devices without losing the author's intended passages of emphasis".

There have been a few posts on BDSM, community rules and terminology, intended as resources for writers and to clear up some common misunderstandings. In Hi! My name is Minxie…,

the_minx_17 talks about general rules and some stereotypes.

irana wrote On BDSM, Part I to explain the abbreviations SCC and RACK, and to talk about consent. On BDSM, Part II covers negotiation (both Scene and Relationship negotiation).

InsaneJournal

An InsaneJournal Holiday Sale just started. Self-Committed (i.e. paid) accounts and Extra Userpics will be available at reduced prices until November 27th. Friday the 27th will also have a short sale on Permanently Insane accounts.

das_dingsi: Updating habits: "The interesting part is how it made me view the update page more closely than usual and I consciously noticed all the things I don't use [on InsaneJournal]."

Other

bitterfig: where do they make subtext?: "I always wonder where stuff like (i.e. homoerotic and/or incestuous subtext) this comes from, is it intentional or just a quirk of chemistry?"

lilithilien: Why do we do it?, a short commentary on an AfterElton.com article titled "Why are Women Interested in Gay Men? It's Not Because They Want to Sleep With Them!", with discussion in comments.

novembermond: has a question about friending meme[s]: "[W]hat are the dos and don'ts ... ?"

[Supernatural] ep. 5x10 meta-ish reaction posts - SPOILERS galore!

the_shoshanna: Supernatural 5.10, "Abandon All Hope...": "Thanks SO MUCH for making women just the underbrush to be cleared away before the real stuff happens."

musesfool: lacrimae volvuntur inanes: "I would like to be able to talk about the episode on its own merits, because I thought it was a fantastic episode emotionally and a great way to go into hiatus, but I am SO FUCKING SICK of the way this show treats female characters."

yourlibrarian (in

mind_over_meta): SPN 5.10 - A sign of hope: "There's nothing there right now for an audience to cling to, any more than a clear plot direction for Sam and Dean."

Wicca: still not a race.
In today's "Activism: Ur Doin It Wrong" department, we have accusations that slurs against pagan rituals are racist. Set aside, for the moment, that said slurs don't actually exist. That... give some insight into the mind of the commenter, but isn't, in fact, relevant.

What's relevant is that she thinks Wicca's being insulted, and she's "calling" the supposed insulter on her "racism." (In a community about public transportation. So, um, more than rather severely off-topic all around.)

I don't have an icon that's halfway between "facepalm" and "headdesk." (And I don't want one; that would mean I expect to find *more* stuff like this to post about. Which I'd really rather not.)

Oh, and the comment threads hit Godwin's law, ablism, classism and childfreekiness. And NEVAR AGAIN TEH BURNING TIEMS! A glory of fucktupitude all around.

(I got this from

dot_pagan_snark, and it's been on

stupid_free, so apologies to people who already know about it. Sharin' the pain, folks; sharin' the pain.)

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/283818.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far: comment count unavailable

She is too fond of books
Hi, my name's elf, and I have a reading problem.

When most people say "reading problem," they mean "the letters look blurry to me" or "I've been assigned more pages than human eyeballs can absorb this weekend" or "ack, my comprehension of Russian is too low for me to get the right concepts out of this physics paper." It almost never means "I think I've been neglecting other parts of my life for reading."

Because reading isn't considered a dangerous addiction. It has no physical side-effects. It doesn't make the mind slow or incompetent. At no point, in the throes of reading, is one incapable of driving or performing surgery, should one's skills go in those directions. (Well, save for the "must put book down" part. However, after that immediate shift in awareness, one's reflexes and attention are both available to whatever tasks might be at hand.)

And it's not expensive. Nobody sells off his car and formal clothes to get books. Nobody hocks her wedding jewelry. Books--really good books--are available everywhere at prices ranging from "cheap" to "free." And the internet hasn't made that any less true. Entertaining content, informative & educational content, useful, delightful, important content, is free by the terabyte.

And oooh, I want to read it ALL.

( I read a lot. I could read a lot more. )

IJ Holiday Sale
We are starting this years InsaneJournal holiday sale. From now until the end of the day Friday, November 27 we are going to be holding a sale on Self-Committed[paid] accounts and Extra Userpics.

The prices are be as follows

Self-Committed[paid]
1 Month -> $5
6 Month -> ~~$15~~ $10
12 Month -> ~~$25~~ $18

Extra Userpicx
6 Month -> ~~$10~~ $5
12 Month -> ~~$20~~ $15

Then on Friday November 27th from 8am until 4pm (Eastern US time) we will be running a very special sale on Permanently Insane accounts.

REVIEW: Tunnels of Blood (Cirque Du Freak #3)

Tunnels of Blood by Darren Shan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Well, I've stuck it out for three books with Darren and I'm actually enjoying the ride. While I don't normally enjoy whiny main characters, there's something about Darren (perhaps his keen intellect) that keeps you coming back for more.

Summary: Darren Shan, the vampire's assistant, gets a taste of the city when he leaves the Cirque Du Freak with Evra the snake-boy and Mr. Crepsley. When corpses are discovered drained of blood, Darren and Evra are compelled to confront a foul creature of the night who may prove to be the end of them all.

What I liked about this book: Darren is an enigma. He hates his lot, his likes his powers, he hates Mr. Crepsley, he likes Mr. Crepsley. He likes Madame Octa, he hates Madame Octa. In other words, he's your typical teenager with a see-saw of emotions that are now heightened by his vampiric powers. In this book, we meet Murlough who in the movie was kind of creepy and scary but wore the pirate-looking costume that Darren wears throughout the book. Darren meets his first crush, learns about the Vampaneze and comes face to face with evil. I love that you're on an adventure from the get-go and while the book paces along quickly, you don't lose yourself in the characters or the story.

My favorite parts, of course, are those with Darren and Evra. Best friends who pretend to be brothers traveling with their "father" Mr. Crepsley into a city that gives them an opportunity to bond, be teenagers and meet more humans. Of course, that also means danger for the pair but it gives them an opportunity to test that friendship too. Instead of a girl coming between them, an evil psychopath does. But hey, what's another monster in a world of freaks, right?

I'm enjoying the series so far. I will say that if I'd read the books then gone seen the movie, I would've been really pissed off! LOL

View all my reviews >>

Current Mood: busy

Five Random Things
Hair is on its way to being its proper color again. Just have to sleep on it and rinse it out in the morning. (Brr. We often don't have hot water in the morning; our unit shares a hot water heater with two others.)

Windows Vista apparently doesn't come with an unzip program. I can't unlock ZIP or RAR files. (Somewhere in my portable apps collection is a nice unlock-anything program; I've forgotten the name of it and can't be arsed to figure it out right now, since I can unzip the comics tomorrow.)

We got Dish network. 250 channels, although I gather that some of those might be music channels, and too many of them are sports. Still, lots more than we've had. I watch DishEarth a lot, which is a satellite feed of the earth, with classical music. I like it, but I miss the snow channel.

It's been cold enough recently that both Rob & I wake up with our shoulders tense and knotted in pain. It doesn't go away. I'm taking drugs for pain (erm, Advil; I'm a drug wimp) and it bothers me--I hate taking drugs to alleviate symptoms instead of doing something about the base cause.

Phoenix's school counselors suggest we should get her some philosophy to read. (Her reading skills are off the charts, which I find entirely unsurprising. Also, she's prone to getting randomly existential at her teachers, which disconcerts them.) Any suggestions on good philosophy texts for a 14-year-old who loves Pokemon fanfic and the Poltergeist movies?

This entry is crossposted at http://elf.dreamwidth.org/283213.html. You can comment there with OpenID from your LJ or IJ account. Comments so far: comment count unavailable

I Do Not Understand the Heterosexual Attraction
A recent Girl Chat post by Dissident, a hebephile—a person primarily attracted to adolescent girls, got me thinking—thinking about something that once bothered me. What once bothered me was that I did not really understand the heterosexual attraction, or the heterosexual orientation. I should note, that I no longer think it is important for people to understand others sexual orientations. I am not sure we can ever really understand an orientation that we do not share. I mean, how many genuinely heterosexual men can understand the allure of having another man's penis in their anus or of swallowing another man's semen? I do not. Of course I am sure most people, including many Girl Chat posters, do not really understand the erotic allure of a toddler girl with a pacifier in her mouth and a diaper around her waist. On the other hand, I feel adamant that we should all be tolerance and accepting of others orientations—anything less is just bigotry.

I've been busy and exhausted. Dunno why I'm so tired, I just am. I slept most of my two days off away. I meant to write. Heck I meant to get to the library to borrow some of my suggested reading. Instead I made a cake for my sister, slept, and started a knitting project (which does take hours for me cause I keep starting and restarting it until I have something halfway decent on the sticks).

Somewhere I found the energy for reading posts and internet games. I responded to a few, but meh. I'm in a mopey tired mood for no reason. Hopefully this week at work won't be as hard as last weeks but since we're swinging into Christmas season I don't hold out a lot of hope.

I feel like my brain has been fried.

About me - now with photo links!

Well, I have failed NaBloPoMo already. Damn colds and busy working weekends! But, I shall continue on as best I can with the rest of the month, posting as often as I can.

Let's see... what can I blather on about today? How about a little "Get to know Minnie" meme since some of you are new to my journal and others likely know little else since most of my posts have been twitter horoscopes. Sorry about that!

I am Puertorican. Born in Aguadilla and raised in Ponce. Moved to Orlando, Florida in 1984 at the age of 11.

Though I am an island girl, I'm not fond of the beach. I may go and sit on the sand and read but it would take an act of God, and several hot, gay men to gawk at to get me to stay and enjoy it.

I used to love the beach as a child. Especially when we went as a family and my cousins got to go with us. We'd play mermaids and pirates in the water, eat crabs by the water and pretend to fish while we talked about who we kissed and who we wanted to kiss.

My husband is a Newyorican. He was born and raised in the city (born: Manhattan, raised: Bronx) and misses it terribly. He doesn't miss the cold, but the pulse and life that is New York City, I know calls to him as much as Las Vegas does.

My husband is a poker dealer with All In Poker Series and is a damn good poker player. If we could get him into one of the local tournaments that award the buy-in to the World Series of Poker, he'd get in. I'm sure of it!

We have three kids; girl - 15, boy - 13, boy - 11 and they keep us well-entertained! Their sense of humor is amazing and they're at the perfect age to enjoy them! :D

We live next door to my Mom. We rent a 3-bedroom house, she has a 4-bedroom house. It's easier to live next door in a smaller house than it is to live in her house (which we did for over 5 years). We get along so much better this way too!

I work in textbook publishing and really love what I do. I just wish my bosses would see me for what I am rather than what they think I should be. Lots of politics and well, Latina women are not at the top of an Irish-owned company. Not stirring the waters, just stating facts.

I just completed my Bachelor of Science in Management from the University of Phoenix online. I planned to go straight through for my Master's but without the guarantee that the company will help with tuition reimbursement (which they've balked at and made it damn near impossible to get) I figured it wasn't worth the aggravation. I'm proud of finally achieving a degree I set out to complete as soon as I finished high school. Now it's time to get my kids ready to achieve theirs.

My daughter has been in martial arts with my father (a 10th degree black belt and grand master in Iaido) since she was 3 years old. She's a jack of all weapon trades. She's a good marksman and she wants to be a Marine. Did I mention I'm a democrat in a family of right-wing, conservative republicans? Yeah... it's never a dull moment at my house!

I have a Min Pin named Dobby who thinks he's human. We've never put a pillowcase on him, but I did get him in drag for Halloween.

I'm a founder and captain of the Harry Potter fanfic archive, The Quidditch Pitch and am extremely proud of our staff, authors and members. Their generosity, dedication and determination have been a great strength to me and the other Captains.

I'm a Mac Girl (though I wish I looked like her!). I love Macs and only use Macs. I do not like PCs. I do not like them with a mouse, I do not like them in my house. I do not like them here nor there. I do not like them ANYWHERE! But seriously... I have several Macs in the house (most of them laptops) and I won't own a PC for many reasons. The first being, I don't like viruses. I've been a Mac owner for over 5 years and have yet to lose a laptop to a virus. Yes, they're more costly but no, I don't have to replace them every other year.

I've learned not to argue with people over politics, religion, income, GLBT issues or Mac versus PC. I value everyone's opinions and welcome opposing viewpoints. I draw the line at preaching, personal attacks and rants that lead to wank on my journal or any of my friends'. If we agree to disagree, life will be much simpler for us. Live and let live as my friend joesther says.

My car's name is Sevvie (2000 Black Mistsubishi Galant), my husband's car's name is Wheezy (1996 Red Buick Regal) which I owned first then gave to him when Sevvie came around. Both cars need major repair-work and since I married neither handyman nor mechanic, they are being run into the ground, the poor dears. Well, not really into the ground, we just can't replace the rear shock absorbers on Wheezy just yet and are waiting to get the CV joint for Sevvy at a price we can afford.

I love to slash all pairings. I do. I can slash pretty much anyone, though I had trouble with Neville Longbottom because I really just don't see him as sexual at all. Sorry coffee_n_cocoa, it's just been tough to do. But I will say, Neville's growing on me and I've been able to slash him recently in a trio with Harry and Remus.

Well, that's me in a nutshell. You can find me on Facebook playing Farmville, Treasure Madness and Vampire Wars when the muse is not cooperating. Come by and say hi.

Current Mood: calm

REVIEW: The Vampire's Assistant (Cirque Du Freak #2)

The Vampire's Assistant by Darren Shan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
If I had read the books and then gone to see the movie, I would have been very disappointed that Sam never made it to the big screen and that he was replaced by a monkey girl that so far, does not exist in canon (mind you, I'm only 2 books in).

Summary: Darren Shan was just an ordinary schoolboy - until his visit to the Cirque Du Freak. Now, as he struggles with his new life as a Vampire's Assistant, he tries desperately to resist the one temptation that sickens him, the one thing that can keep him alive. But destiny is calling... the Wolf Man is waiting.

What I liked about this book: The story picks up right where A Living Nightmare left off. While I'm still a bit miffed about a few editorial misgivings in the book, these didn't keep me from reading, which is always a good thing.

As Darren struggles with his humanity and losing his childhood in the process, he's faced with more blood and gore and a tragedy that forever changes him. I like that death is not masked at all in these books and when the proverbial ~~crap~~ blood hits the fan, it's done in vivid technicolor and Darren Shan spares no one from it!

The story is definitely keeping me intrigued. Hopefully it does so for the full dozen.

View all my reviews >>

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Some show on Food Network