Dear World (but mostly just LJ)-

I haven't checked my flist in a few days, and apparently that was cue for you to all jump on the Crazy Train with a one-way ticket to CrazyTown, located just south of LazyTown and all those scary plastic people/singing pedos with plastic mustaches. Seriously, world. What the fuck.

( CrazyTown isn't just for LiLos anymore. )

I'm sure there are other things I should be talking about, like placenta facials and how I actually have a social life now and also how you are ALL FIRED (I hate when people write that, but it's fun to say and also, to be a hypocrite) for not telling me how awesome The Venture Brothers is. I mean, I have to get high to understand it, and I totally thought that the Monarch was a bee for forever, but still. It's pretty much the gayest show on Earth, and I want to be Dr. Girlfriend when I grow up, minus the lame boyfriend.

And that's it, that's all I have, unicorns kill ponies and "best of the aughts" lists are already pissing me off.

xoxo-
Andrea

I need someone to read what I have for my Queen Bitch fic and tell me honestly if it sucks or not. It's NOT finished and I have no idea how much longer it will get, but I don't think I'll have time for a trufax beta as it's already 4000 words and I haven't gotten anywhere close to the point yet.

I just need a status check--what's working, what isn't, can you see what direction I'm going in, is it a worthwhile direction to head, etc.

It's Adam/Brad, and it's from Brad's POV. And since it's me, nothing actually happens.

Comment here with your email address and I will send you a googledocs invite if I get it before I leave work in 30 minutes. Comments will be screened for your protection.

(Please, someone say yes. OMG.)

ETA: I got people, thanks!!!

Someone finally uploaded some Halloween pics and I'm so excited that there are actually pictures of me this year. I'm still waiting for other people to upload theirs, but here are a few just to show off how awesome my costume was:




( Let's have some fun, this beat is sick! )

musicboxgirl tagged me, and I haven't posted in ages and I don't want to do any more data entry right now, sooooo.

PHABALLOLOGY

THE RULES: Once you have been tagged, you are supposed to wipe out my answers and supply your own. After, choose at least 10 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If you were tagged, it's because I want to know more about you.
Love,
Andrea ♥♥

Let others know a little more about yourself! Re-post this as your name followed by "ology".

( marcia, marcia, marcia! )

I'm supposed to tag people, but I need to go home now, so oh well. Stay tuned for Halloween pics. I've seen some of me as Lady Gaga and they are freaking AMAZING. I've never been so happy with how a costume turned out. People told me they didn't realize it was ME in the costume. I do look really different with blond hair.

Plus, bonus surprise costume of awesomeness on Saturday night, which you will all find vastly amusing and, I suspect, understand a lot more than the people at the party did.

This is going to sound really weird but... does anyone happen to have the diagram I made for Fairy Tale? The one from the Handbook, showing the ungestion sack? Because I made my photobucket public for like 5 minutes and some fucktard reported that pic as being in violation! I don't see HOW, but whatever. And I made the manip at work, and didn't save it because, well. It's my work computer and a weird manip of the fairy reproductive system is probably not appropriate for the work place or whatever, so I have to get rid of the evidence.

So please, if you happened to have randomly saved that pic, can you send it to me? I would love you forever.

xoxo

Contrary to popular belief, I am still alive!

Things at work have slowed down from the OMGOMGOMG pace of the past month or so, but I still have more to do than usual and not a lot of time (sadly) to spend on the internets. I'm improving, though! I am caught up on my flist (helps that I took ontd_ai off) and I even started writing both my Queen Bitch and my Donors Choose fics. I WIN AT LIFE, YAY!

( Blah blah boring work shit. )

On the other hand, I found out that if I apply for Income Based Repayment on my student loans, I can reduce my payments by $25/month and as long as I continue to work for the government or in public service, even for a non-profit, the balance of my loan debt will be forgiven after 10 years. Which I think will end up being at least $10,000, so I will TAKE that, fuck yeah.

Geez, this entry is boring. Sorry. Um, oh! So I heard this story on NPR the other day about New Athiests vs. Old Atheists, and how there's this new trend among atheists to basically attack religion and religious people because they think religion and the ideas involved therein is dangerous. Which makes me go o.0 because like, as much as I don't believe in God and have been an atheist since the age of 8, I still have respect for other people's beliefs. And okay, I've seen Jesus Camp, and I know that religion can have some scary scary ideas that can genuinely be harmful and enhance ignorance and hate. But isn't it just as ignorant and hateful to assume that ALL religion and ALL people who practice even the most evangelical or radical forms of religion are somehow evil and setting out to destroy All Things Good?

( Ranty McRantpants. )

I know lots of religious people, and I only know a few vaguely scary ones (my aunt, ha), and I'm pretty sure none of them are setting out to destroy modern society as we know it. Do religious fundamentalists fly planes into skyscrapers? Yes. And atheist anarchists bomb federal buildings. So who has the more dangerous ideas? Whose brains should we be attempting to control?

While you all ponder that, I'm going to eat some carrots and work on my Queen Bitch fic.

So, yesterday I got an email from the University basically demanding that I declare my race and ethnicity. Here's the poll I was forced to fill out:

The federal government requires all employees to provide ethnicity and race data. Beginning fall 2010, the University is required by the US Department of Education to report ethnicity and race data of employees using new ethnicity and race categories. Please find the required the two-question format below. Please answer both questions below to indicate your ethnicity and race identification using the new categories.

Your current identification is: White (not Hispanic)

The university will continue to report information about employees using the current ethnicity categories until summer 2010. To change your current identification, click on Personal Information in the left navigation bar.


Ethnicity and Race: Question One:
Are you Hispanic or Latino? (a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central America, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race).
Yes
No

Question Two:
Please select the racial category or categories with which you most closely identify. Check as many as Apply.
American Indian or Alaska Native: origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains a tribal affiliation or community attachment

Asian: origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Black: origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.

Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands

White: origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.

Now, to give them credit, the second question is a checkbox, so you can choose more than one, since most Americans are a mix of something. My issue with this poll that I am being forced to take is:

a) Why is there a separate question about Hispanics/Latinos? Why are we singling them out for data?

b) Why is 'black' defined as of African decent? There are blacks originating from South America, just for example.

c) Let's talk about 'white' as a race/ethnicity. Because they've included Europe and the Middle East there (I guess because you can't call all Middle Easterners 'Arab'?) but WHAT ABOUT RUSSIA?? I'm 50% Russian. My grandparents were Russian Jews who were forcibly displaced after the revolution. Yes, from my mother's side I also have roots in Hungary and Germany, but most of me is Russian Jew, and my father was 100% Russian Jew. Russia isn't part of Europe. Technically, it's part of Asia, isn't it? But the US government doesn't consider Russians to be Asian. They don't consider Russians at all, actually, OR JEWS OMG.

d) How can they just ignore Jews as a race?? I know a lot of people would argue that being a Jew isn't a race but rather a religion; however, I really really disagree with that statement. Jews have physical attributes in common, we have names/naming schemes in common, we have a culture and a society and TWO languages, and all of that exists regardless of religion. Because of millennia of matrilineal definition, we share common blood. And isn't that the definition of a race?

Anyway, I'm incredibly annoyed. Incensed, even. Also, I drank my whole mug of coffee on the way to work and I admit I'm shaking a little right now with the adderall + caffeine rush, so that's probably part of it, BUT STILL. Can someone explain the US government's definitions to me? Because I'd rather not be so annoyed. Grrr. Arrrgh.

Here is a list of things that are happening with me, aka Why Andrea Is Having the Best Week Ever (Yay capes!):

1) An episode of House with lots of Chase, OMG. (He's so beautiful.)

2) Finally feeling comfortable talking openly about being bisexual with someone.

3) Tuesday happy hour; hanging out with girls and getting drunk off one margarita. Getting to know Brooke better, discovering that she is, in fact, 100% made of awesome.

4) Last night I had the best date ever, I'm pretty sure. 100% worth missing Thursday TV. YEAH. It was that good.

5) Seeing Rhett Miller at Antone's tonight, OMG.

6) Tomorrow: stancasting, racquetball, getting high with my friends and watching Baz Lurman films. FUCK YEAH.

7) GOT MY NETBOOK!!! And it's awesome and I will be writing on it on Sunday :) Because...

8) I finally know what I'm writing for Stars Go Blue (Rescue Blues sequelish thingy.) It's weird to have a title, but I mean, gotta stick with Ryan Adams on this one. And I maybe don't know like exact plot things, but I know what it's going to be about and I'm excited to write Adam's POV again, because it's been a while. I'm excited to write again, period! And then I can continue with my Queen Bitch fic, which I am already in love with and is going to be A++.

9) So, question. The person I am ~seeing (Catsilo--no, not his real name, but yes, that's what we call him) wants to do a cultural exchange with me in which we each choose 10 movies that we get to make the other person watch. My list right now is: Velvet Goldmine, Mulholland Drive, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Paris Is Burning, Heavenly Creatures, NSYNC Live from Atlantis, and Bad Education. I have a few more to go, but I'm sure I will think of them easily enough. What would be on your list of 10 movies you think everyone should watch?

10) In conclusion: \0/

Hey, remember when I said I wanted to do a television podcast where I maybe got a little drunk and talked to people about all the awesome shows we watch? Well, I finally created a community for it! So go join

stancast

omgomgomg! I even made a welcome post right over here which, while not terribly informative or clever, basically says what my plans for this thing are. Go, read, comment, join, follow, stan. WOOT.

Today on the way to work, I listened to this past week's podcast of This American Life, which was actually an old episode called 'Books that changed my life.' I really liked the episode and you should all go download it for free (yay free shit!), but it got me thinking about which books have changed my life. So obviously, I made a list.

5 Books That Changed My Life

(in no particular order)

1) Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
This was the first book I read that I really truly studied and teased out as many meanings as I could from it. It's also the book that introduced me to psychoanalytic readings and to my mentor in college, Lisa Ruddick, who I was half in love with, but mostly her brain and her talent and her hilarious lack of desire to read Durkheim. I've read Mrs D so many times, there are entire sections I could quote. It's not a long book, but it's so beautifully written, both entrenched in the late Victorian era and all the historical and cultural mores of that time and place, but also transcendent of all of that, because at its heart it's about people's desire to cling to their illusions even as the world/society/culture itself forcibly strips them away. It's also about the ways in which people, particularly women, but others as well, participate in their own oppression in a last-ditch effort to maintain a crumbling world view that, while regressive and oppressive and oftentimes horrible, also somehow brings comfort and guidance in a fast-changing world. I think this is something I really connect to, because I like to know my place in the world and how I relate to others; I like to be in control of that, even if being in control actually means giving up autonomy for the benefit of understanding my place. Here's my favorite part:

It was her life, and, bending her head over the hall table, she bowed beneath the influence, felt blessed and purified, saying to herself, as she took the pad with the telephone message on it, how moments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darkness they are, she thought (as if some lovely rose had blossomed for her eyes only); not for a moment did she believe in God; but all the more, she thought, taking up the pad, must one repay in daily life to servants, yes, to dogs and canaries, above all to Richard her husband, who was the foundation of it--of the gay sounds, of the green lights, of the cook even whistling, for Mrs Walker was Irish and whistled all day long--one must pay back from this secret deposit of exquisite moments, she thought, lifting the pad, while Lucy stood beside her, trying to explain how.

How beautiful is that? Moments like this are buds on the tree of life... secret deposit of exquisite moments... and she's talking about this every day thing of reading a phone message and how that simple thing basically encapsulates her entire life, and how she both revels in it (exquisite moments) and is oppressed by it (bows beneath the influence) and how it makes her feel thankful for her own oppression (one must repay in daily life) because after her act of rebellion (Clarissa said she would buy the flowers herself) it gives her a sense of her place in the order of the world, which she needs because she has to believe in something, if not God, and she's chosen to replace God with this cultural paradigm of Victorian British culture and history. I guess I just really relate to that.

...anyway. Moving on.

( More rambling about books. )

...omg that was so much writing. And way too much information. How uncomfortable have I made all of you, now?? HA. Well. Tell me the 5 books (or just 1, whatever) that changed your life. (I'm telling you stories. Trust me.)

PS - Just got my netbook OMGOMGOMG.

Poll #1466777 stars go blue
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

For the Donors Choose charity auction, I agreed to write at least 4000 words of Rescue Blues amnesia fic. WHEN should this fic take place?

Let's talk about sex, baby.

Let's just say I'm going as Lady Gaga for Halloween. Give me outfit suggestions.

OMFG you guys, I can't even tell you how much this MAKES MY FUCKING DAY!!!



And now I think I need to go read Shiny Shiny Pants and Bleached Blonde Hair aka the One Where Jeff Tweedy Writes Britney/Lance fic, because YES! God, I love them.

(Wow, I just remembered that I totally wrote Britney/Lance for remix once, omg.)

In other news, just a heads up to make sure to download this week's This American Life--they're doing a follow-up to last year's "Giant Pool of Money" in conjunction with the guys over at Planet Money, and if you ever wanted to understand how the sub-prime mortgage crisis happened or why we had the economic catastrophe in the first place, "Giant Pool of Money" explains it really well and is available right here for free.

And finally, I am going to create a community this week to host the TV podcast thingy I talked about last week. The name I've thought up for it is a bit retarded though, so give me suggestions! I really really suck at naming things. (The true reason I don't write original fic. I can't NAME anything.)

Had an awesome weekend. Polvo's tonight for Eric's birthday, which means margarita and fajitas for me! YUM.

Ugh, you guys. Work is fucking KILLING MY SOUL.



( A tale of how I feel almost like I'm back in college, but I'm actually working MORE and writing less. Urrrrggghhh. )

So anyway, that was lamecakes. And then the bus didn't come for 30 minutes and I got home just in time for Dollhouse and I didn't get to plan my TV podcast thing at all this week because I got home and just fucking crashed. I'm so drained, you guys. There's way too much shit going on. I like my life to be boring. I can only handle one exciting thing at a time, and right now everything is WAY too exciting.

Dear Life-

Please to be getting better, and also to be calming the fuck down. I know you're excited and Imma let you finish, but Andrea had one of the worst weeks ever, and now she's talking about herself in the third person.

Never a good sign.

no love-
Me

PS - Make something awesome happen this weekend, and forgiveness is in your grasp. Free tickets to Fame would be nice, just for example.

No idea who these people are, but I am in love with that chick OMG. She's hot. Fuck yeah.

HI PEOPLE HI!

So yesterday, I forgot to take my adderall and it was awful, mostly because the night before I had taken ibuprofen PM to quell the feeling in my uterus like Edward Cullen was trying to eat his unborn child out of me. Plus it was a huge work deadline, so yes, totally insane and awful and BLECH.

Today I remembered to take my pill, and WOW, it is kind of like the first time I took it, which is to say, I feel very energetic and awesome and like I could run a race and solve the global financial crisis and end world hunger all at once. Instead, I will work on annual reports and other boring work things and think about the fics I need to write, which are all going to be awesome and I CAN'T WAIT OMG.

But with all this excess energy burning around inside me, how about we play a game. ASK ME QUESTIONS. Whatever you want. Personal, politics, fandom, something about my stories, what happens next in them, what do I think about Germany, why hockey >>>>>> football... WHATEVER. Ask me stuff. And then we can like, have conversations! I will ask you stuff back. We can get to know each other. It'll be fun.

OR WHATEVER. Someone put drugs in my drugs! I need something to occupy my brain while my hands make files.

So, while downloading some NPR podcasts onto my ipod yesterday in preparation of the work week, I decided to look for amusing podcasts about TV, because I watch pretty much a fuckton of TV and since I don't get to see Jacob very often anymore, I have no one to geek out about it with. But listening to TV Addicts, which seems to be a pretty popular TV podcast, I was just getting frustrated by the whole thing where they NEVER TALKED ABOUT THE SHOWS.

And that got me thinking about how I could do a MUCH better job. And how podcasting is actually super easy. And I kind of miss doing slashcast, but mainly I miss doing metachat because it was fun to torture my fellow metachatters with my ridiculous ideas. And then I did that thing again on Friday night at a party, where I get drunk off bad jello shots and tell everyone about the One Where Justin Timberlake Lays Eggs, because seriously, I have to.

(Which reminds me, Catsilo told me he had a friend who used to write John Mayer fic. WAS IT ONE OF YOU? Do people even write John Mayer?? He's so douchey, I could totally see him having his own little elitist fandom of like 10 people with a locked community that only the authors can belong to because they're ~special and not like the rest of us internet freaks. Hello, tangent!)

So podcasting! I am considering doing a podcast about the week's TV. But I feel like I need a partner, so it can be a discussion? So if there's anyone out there who watches ridiculous amounts of TV and wants to talk about it on a podcast probably no one will listen to with me, email me or comment here or whatever. You don't have to live here. We can totally do it over Skype. And I think I will probably like... make a rule that I have to be drinking during it, because I mean... sober!Andrea is just going to be like, all serious and themes and important social commentary and shit, but kind of boozy!Andrea would be like, who cares about the allegory to the Iraq War, let's talk about how they should be fucking and I bet Helo has a huuuuuge dick. (Just saying. If Athena is so attached to it, it must be good. She's ALREADY a machine.)

And now I need to work. But I'm thinking this would be an early evening Friday activity, for anyone who's interested. I could even rotate co-hosts if there are lots of people interested in just doing it once or twice or whatever.

YAY.

So on Friday (or really, at 4am on Saturday), mostlikely2 was asking what music I'm listening to nowadays, and I couldn't think of anything except Lady Gaga, which even for 4am, is just sad. And I remembered that wendy does this thing where she posts a mix every month of things she's listened to that month. So I decided to do that, too, and try to remember what all I'm listening to. WOOT. Thank god for lastfm.



( Track listing! Is here! )


Let me know if you have any issues with the download links. Also, I'm going to see Kelly Clarkson in November and I am SO FREAKING EXCITED. November is going to be the best month ever because:

1) KELLY
2) Kris's album
3) Adam's album
4) getting my netbook (fianlly!)

Now it's time to watch The Office and eat breakfast. Mmmm.

...this one is actually something useful.

The Concrit Meme

My thread: Located here!

Give concrit, anon optional, on any or all of my work in fandom! Or just come participate.


You know you want to tell me how much you actually hate that I've written like 40k words of mpreg. Go do it.

I hate doing recs on Saturdays because everyone is off having fun and living lives and not bored at work or school so I think people never see them, but since I'm actually super freaking busy at work now, this is the only time I have to do them, and OMG I need to make recs or I feel like the awesomeness from this fandom will explode my brain.

+LA's Gonna Eat You Alive: The Diary of Matt Giraud by fakeplasticsnow (adam/matt, anoop/megan) // OMFG you guys. Even if this wasn't written FOR ME OMG, I would still be completely obsessed and in love with it. Ever since JC's Diary, I have had a major thing for the Bridget Jones trope. Dear fakeplasticsnow knew this, and rewarded me for fucking around with one of her fics for a few weeks with this piece of total awesomeness. It's hilarious and adorable and someone, despite the total unreality of it all, she STILL manages to nail the characterizations so perfectly. Especially Anoop. ESPECIALLY MATTYG, AND WHY DON'T MORE PEOPLE WRITE HIM OMG??? You see? This fic has me capslocking like OotP Harry. It has me talking in internet acronyms like I've swapped brains with my mother. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

I hate Kris Allen.

I mean, he spells his name with a K. What the hell kind of retarded twinkie trend is that? Maybe I should call myself Zmatt Giraud and tell people the Z is silent, it's French. I could even put an apostrophe, so it's edgy. Z'matt Giraud. Or Giraude with an E for added stylishness.

So today, Hi-Def Records' latest hitmaker Kris Allen walked into the office with his stupid angelic face and perfect sculpted body and unbuttoned-to-AWKWARD plaid shirt (plaid, what the fuck, who wears plaid in the real world), and every time he smiled, a choir of angels sang. Fucker.

( I got it, you want it, something something WHATEVER IT TAKES! )


And that's all for recs for now. I plan to spend most of this weekend catching up on fic (so many fics in my "to be read" file on delicious, EEEP, but also YAY!!) and I owe some people some betas.

Also, does anyone know when we're supposed to hear about our auction stuff? I'm pretty sure I know what the people who won me want, but I need specifics! It was so lovely to see how much 'The Rescue Blues' means to people. I want to write something really amazing for those people, something even better than the original. I hope I can do it. Eeeeep.

And now, I need to go shopping. Please remember: if you read a fic, LEAVE THEM FEEDBACK!!! All of these fics are so amazing, and the authors deserve to know it. Also so they will become addicted to the love and attention and write more. *beams*

Thank fucking God it's Friday. Seriously. I know I haven't been around much, and I want to apologize for that. I have a bunch of y'alls fics open and I really want to read them, but freaking work is so busy right now, and by the time I get home at night I just want to watch Big Brother and collapse in a pile of exhaustion.

I did the Ask the Author thing over at idolmeta and it was actually really entertaining and fun. For me, anyway! I got to answer questions about my writing (non)process and pimp my favorite books and talk about myself a lot, which everyone loves to do, no matter how humble we pretend to be, KRIS ALLEN.

(Just kidding. Kris is humble for reals, yo. He's like the anti-Timberlake.)

If you're a member over there, though, I highly suggest signing up, because it was a lot of fun. I like that people asked me about how my different fandoms have compared, and my own perception of my fandom status and the whole BNF phenomenon. Someone asked me if people really don't know when they're BNFs because a lot of times she's seen BNFs act surprised when they're told they are BNFs. Which is a really interesting question to me, and I'm wondering what you all think. I think that the people who work hard to become BNFs in a conscious way know exactly what they're doing and what they hope to accomplish. They have this idea that BNFs are like Queen Bees--they're the Plastics of fandom.

But true BNFs--ie fans who become popular based on talent and charisma and just by being interesting people--they are often unaware of the status and could give a shit less about it. I know this is kind of a ~thing in AI right now for many reasons, but I wish people wouldn't sweat it. Just do your thing and be happy and don't worry about any of the rest of that mess.

Stuff I Need to Do This Weekend
+Catch up on BB for the finale
+Catch up on ABDC ie find a download (does anyone know where one might be?)
+GO SHOPPING OMG. I need new jeans (mine are falling off) and bras and maybe shirts. I don't know if I actually have money for it, but I need it. Siiiiigh.
+Sleep forever
+Go see The Big Gay Musical at the Drafthouse ♥

And that is all. Back to work. *sadface*