this is a fascinating and wonderful idea. you should spread the link, i think. (not work safe, btw.)

also, the jason nevins remix of taylor swift's love story is AWFUL. makes me so sad.

also, hey everybody!

occasionally, i find myself compelled to answer these stupid questions.

book: lord of the rings. for christ's sake, i've tried to start that damn series approximately 49,326 (p < 0.05) but i find them just horrible. also, the first movie, the only one i saw, was awful. just awful.

movie: well, aside from lord of the rings? mostly people just assume i've seen tons of movies that i never have. because i am an uncultured fuck, apparently? no, but it's true. i AM an uncultured fuck. it suits me fine. i think some people would be surprised that i didn't like high school musical 3, considering how devoted i was to the first 2. also, kevin smith movies. god, i hate kevin smith movies.

food: sushi! most people know this, but they continue to give me crap about it. i don't mind the fish, really, but i'd rather a nice tuna tartar if i'm forced to eat it raw. there's a reason we discovered fire, people.

tv show: well, huh. i like most tv shows. i feel entirely uncompelled to watch american idol, and i think the very idea of dancing with the stars is kind of dumb. also, survivor and amazing race. two shows i couldn't care less about.

band: oh man, considering that i love everything, i think people would be more surprised by what i DO like than what i don't. currently, i have kanye west, lil wayne, taylor swift, miley cyrus, tim mcgraw, britney spears, casting crowns, and joss stone in heavy rotation. BUT maybe a few i don't care to listen to (that is, i'm just uninterested): the beatles, jimi hendrix, david bowie, bob dylan, lou reed. also, anything that you might call "R&B." man, i hate r&b.

that was really cathartic. thanks guys.

i am so angry i could spit.

professor x and i have had some conflicts already, and i find half of what she says patently unreasonable, so i guess i shouldn't have been surprised that she'd find a way on the last day of class to make me so intensely angry. but i was! i actually was. i guess that's my fault.

she made a quick comment, as she was leaving, about the final drafts of our term papers. she said (a semi-paraphrase, as i cannot recall the precise wording), "i'm treating you as professionals, so i expect you to tell me why you don't take my suggestions. i noted that on your second drafts, i was making a lot of the same comments i made on your first drafts. so either take my suggestions or tell me why you aren't, one of the two."

i blinked. said, "um, how would you like us to tell you?" she said, "oh, you can just send me an email." and then she left.

uh. EXCUSE ME?

i own my writing. you own your writing. writing - academic, fannish, scribblings on the back of a napkin, new york times best seller - belongs to the author who penned it. it does not belong to her editors, her friends, her betas, her publishing house, her professors, her peer reviewers. it belongs to her, totally and completely and without exception. that's why we cite when we draw from a source, why we don't plagiarize, why we put an author's name on the cover of a novel.

we don't refrain from plagiarizing or infringing on copyright just because it's bad form and will have people yelling at us. we don't cite the works we used in our writing because we're trying to be nice or because we're trying to take the heat off of ourselves (that is, "don't blame me, she said it first!")

we do those things because to do otherwise is to steal, is to be intellectually fraudulent, is to break the careful agreement drawn between writers and readers. i, the writer, will give you, the reader, my work, but in return, you won't claim it as your own. you can criticize it, burn it, laud it as the best thing ever written, but you can never own it, because i own it. i made it. i thought it up, i put it on paper, i did the work.

it's mine.

in academia, we get the advice of professors to improve our writing. we can choose to take that advice or leave it, knowing that we might get a worse grade if we refuse. but that's our right, because we own our own minds.

we get the advice of peer reviewers, and we can choose to take it or leave it, knowing that a journal might refuse to publish our article. but that's our right, because we own our own minds. it's the same for editors (who might not publish our books or articles), our bosses (who might fire us). there are lots of good reasons to take the advice of people giving it, but there is no way to hold a gun to our heads and say, "you must do what i say."

we get the advice of beta readers because we want to improve, not so that we can give our writing away. we get advice and we think about it and talk about it and we argue about it, but in the end, a beta reader cannot blame an author who does not take her advice. she can believe that the work would have been better had her suggestions been followed, of course. she can tell the author that, straight out. but she cannot, cannot, cannot make the author do anything, because the author owns every word that she creates.

a beta might ask, "why didn't you change such-and-such as i suggested?" the author might reply any number of ways: "i didn't think it was in keeping with the character." "i didn't think it maintained the tone of the story." "i felt that the suggested grammatical changes made this section more difficult to understand."

she could also reply, "because i was partial to the way i wrote it. i liked the way it sounded and felt in my head and in my hands as i wrote it. i put part of myself into that sentence or paragraph and i could not give it up, even to make it easier to read." she needn't apologize. that's a perfectly acceptable answer. if this is ALWAYS the answer, of course, she may need to rethink the way she uses her beta, or why she has a beta, or whether she wants her work to be shown to the world if it is so precious to her.

but in the end, she can always respond, "thank you for your help. i really appreciate hearing what you have to say. but in the end, this is mine and i like it the way it is." because she owns it. because it's hers.

there is often talk about the reader's privilege. i think that's great. i think reader-response theories are fantastic. i think stanley fish's interpretive communities are fascinating. i think hermeneutics are the bee's knees. i stand by the fact that readers have enormous leeway to read a document as they see fit. if an author is unwilling to have this happen, then she should keep her writing locked away. publication and distribution give readers many interpretive rights.

but not ownership.

to ask a student to justify every suggestion not taken (or every author to justify every suggestion from a beta not taken) is to suggest that the professor (or the beta) has ownership of the text. is to suggest that the reader is so privileged that she can choose to obliterate the author's ownership of the text. is to assume that the answer to the question cannot be, "because it's mine and i own it and i don't want to change it."

and that, my friends, is unacceptable.

some days i have a fine day, and then suddenly something little will completely destroy it. presentation review by one of my professors that was snide and unhelpful. no particular sentence was particularly rude, but since i know her, i know the tone, and now i want to cry.

( cut for angsty whining. feel free to skip. no really. )

sometimes i notice that my friendslist is perhaps not as eco-focused as one might expect. maybe this is because we all avoid politics, or (even better) because it's just taken for granted.

but yeah, dudes. when it comes to the environment? we're fucked.

interesting environmental news: reid is hoping to get a climate change bill to the senate soon, and something signed into law this year. you may not quite understand how emissions trading works, or what global warming potential is, or why you might want to prefer a cap and trade program to a carbon tax (though, feel free to ask me if you'd actually like the answers to any of these questions), but you should definitely be interested and aware of global warming legislation getting out this year.

even if congress can't find its ass with two hands, it looks like the epa might finally act on the endangerment finding it was supposed to have dealt with under massachusetts v. epa two years ago. if it makes such a finding, it'll be obliged under the clean air act to regulate co2. and then things will get REALLY exciting.

reasons you should be watching fox's Lie to Me:

1. it might get canceled! experience tells me that good shows get canceled. this is just history. right now, it's running about 9/12 in the ratings, and i think it needs to do better. it has american idol as a lead in (though it might be changing to lead in to american idol? i can't remember) and that can't hurt, but really!

2. it's got a cool concept! it's based off of real-life guy paul ekman, a psychologist who has been pioneering in emotions and their relationship to facial expressions. and you'll learn a lot about the facial action coding system! which is really cool. you can think about phrenology and wonder what the relationship is. OH. and they do cool clips of pictures of actual people doing the things they're talking about. IT WILL MAKE YOU THINK!

3. it's a procedural, which means it can hit your bones/csi/l&o/whatever kinks! THERE ARE MYSTERIES TO SOLVE, PEOPLE.

4. it's got cool people in it! AND THEY ARE ATTRACTIVE!

( cut for the PRETTY )

5. I HAVE INCLUDED CLIPS!

( seriously! instead of working! i found clips for you! )

6. there are hot women!

7. it's got snappy dialogue!

8. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!


the first four episodes are up for your viewing pleasure at hulu.

this is a really stupid question. that's all.

you know what i wish? i wish that the blood tests i had yesterday would just say that i was hypothyroid. then i could explain everything wrong with me without having to take any personal responsibility for fixing them. oh, and laziness is a symptom of hypothyroidism, too, so i could even explain my lack of desire to fix anything. IT WOULD BE PERFECT. instead, i believe, i have neither thyroid problems nor anemia and my sleep is just fucked up because of anxiety and my anxiety is high because i'm depressed and i'm depressed because... well, i guess if i knew that, i wouldn't be depressed?

school is school. done in two more years, but some days that feels like forever. other days, like not long enough, and i wonder if a phd would make me more hireable? phd in sustainable development from columbia? in law and society from nyu? in government from the new school? maybe i should do something totally different and go to rabbinical school and spend my life writing on law, environment, and religious ethics? (the most interesting option by far.)

but for the moment, it is just this stuff. don't even have the interesting things other people do, working on their theses and dissertations and such. i am just doing problem sets and having tests and making presentations.

this week, i've learnt: how a heat pump works, how the electrical grid is monitored and managed in the US, how public benefits funds work, how to use excel to solve simple linear programs, what postmodernists think about conflicts of interest, how CERCLA was developed, and what the bali action plan says (it's boring, don't read it).

mayhaps i should have gotten a social science degree instead of this one? damn.

oh, and hey, i thought that teleflora commercial was funny. i am, apparently, an idiot.

first: you should vote for what hubble looks at next!

second: saw dar williams last night at cat's cradle. cat's cradle was surprisingly underwhelming, considering its reputation, but dar sparkled, as always. especially awesome renditions of: mercy of the fallen, the babysitter's here, february (!! my life may now be complete), after all, and spring street. good times were had by all! lots of shouty fangirls, which was annoying, and a Person Who Danced Excessively and so embarrassingly for the people around her that they finally left. also, two people who may have thought they were making porn and not, y'know, at a concert.

so this is an odd question. i am editing an article for a journal i work on and need some grammatical advice. anybody around to help?

a list of things:

1. i am sitting in the divinity library. i work here. it's a methodist school and there are a lot of methodists here, even though i still don't know exactly what that means. one of my coworkers is considering 'converting' (do you have to convert to move from one denomination to another?) to anglicanism and i told her that sounded like the really boring christianity.

2. the other day, i do believe i was the first jew anybody had ever met. i still find this shocking.

3. i'm in my second semester of my masters in environmental management and in my fourth semester of graduate school. i am taking one of the most spectacularly boring courseloads i could have imagined.

4. while i hate microsoft office 2007, i just got a set of three licenses for $75 and you really can't beat that.

5. i am in love with kate spencer and manhunter. also barbara gordon. i want to be a superhero and it really bums me out that this will (probably) never happen. probably for the best, i don't look great in tights.

6. current love: root beer. currently reading: understanding and responding to climate change from the national academy of science. big plans: bull mccabe's on saturday night, despite the cold.

7. current sadness: law firm rejection letters. boo.

(eta) 8. go do thelittlebang. no, seriously.

oh hi. i've been thinking about coming back here?

what do you think?

so the not-so-well-kept secret is that law school sort of sucks. i mean, there are parts i really like. contracts class is actually genuinely fascinating, and we spent a whole day on the theory of promises, with no case law at all, which left many of my classmates totally irate. i, however, really liked it and immediately went out and ordered roberto unger's "critical legal theory." my torts class sometimes rises to the level of actual hilarity, even if i haven't learnt anything about torts. and civil procedure is perfect for me, with its obsessive attention to detail and obscure rule cross-referencing.

but the reading is slogging. i feel no compulsion to brief or take notes or do anything other than thake copious marginal notes. writing assignments are tedious. legal research is less exciting than it should be.

and i have no friends yet. which is the hardest part for me. so all my brain wants to do is get depressed and have me cry a lot and lay in bed and get sick so i can't eat. but of course i can't do that, because it's week three of four years of this stuff, and i've got to suck it up.

sometimes, i think of ljing about the stuff i do every day, the individual cases we talk about and such. but then i figure, if it's kind of boring to me, i'm sure it'd be REALLY boring to you.

far more exciting is that we now have TWO bunches of kittens. harry, hermione, draco, and ron are settled in beautifully. draco and ron are on their way to adoption, even though ron is literally brain damaged, poor thing.

in our bathroom, we have our new litter. they are shy and hissy and still a bit feral. i hope they will socialize well. their names are schroedinger, tesla, barton, and nightengale. the last three are all black and schroedinger's a black/brown/cream tabby.

if anybody wants pictures, we have a million. and nothing says YAY like pictures of kittens, right? if you live in the triangle and want to come socialize our kittens, come on over!

FINALLY. our house has the internetz.

also, law school homework is really boring. nobody told me that?

i have the most hideously dull schedule ever. if there's something opposite of section 4 pride, i would like to assert it now. though after our big presentation about professionalism on the web, i guess i shouldn't say things like that.

correction: LAW SCHOOL IS AWESOME. I CAN'T WAIT TO DO MORE READING. IT IS THAT GOOD.

in case anybody was wondering, i successfully moved! well, at least, i made it to NC. we're staying at my parents' house for a couple of weeks...

but we also got a house! i signed my first lease and the place has a big backyard and a washer/dryer and won't make me pay extra for my cat. it's $750 a month and it's beautiful.

anyway. if anybody was curious, i'm fine!

yeah, i don't even watch SPN. but i'm just... i dunno, baffled. at the amount of wincest. what the hell is up with that, somebody who watches the show? 'cause, the thing is, no situation in the world could make me bang my sisters. why is their situation so special that all the societal norms and taboos are thrown out the window?

i have been thinking about so you think you can dance. i thought the dance with anya and danny was incredibly... well, i guess i'm just too delicate. but it was so... sexist? danny strutting around (danny being, it seems important to note, almost overly-obviously gay, as i see it) and anya throwing herself at him and being tossed away. and seriously, when he grabs her wrists they seem, well, it looks like he's hurting her or trying to. it was awful and made me really upset to watch. other than that, i liked the dances in this episode. i voted for sabra and dominic, though i considered voting for sara.

ALSO.

to all the people (including my doctor) who told me that the colposcopy wouldn't hurt:

you are all. fucking. LIARS.

i was literally crying. crying. the doctor laughed at me a little because i guess other people are calmer. i am still having cramps.

do any of you have something about your body that makes you physically... uncomfortable or sick just to think about? like, some people can't think about things touching their eyes or about things going in their ears. i cannot cannot cannot cannot stand the idea of anything touching my cervix. this may be one of the weirdest things ever, but there's nothing i can do to change it. so the fact that she wielded this long metal curette and scraped the inside of my cervix. this was one of the most painful and awful things that's ever happened to me, and i got a fuckin' TATTOO.

oh well. it's over and she said it looks okay; mild dysplasia probably. paps every 3-4 months. more cervix-touching: great.

it's so sad to be leaving this place. i mean, i'm happy. law school will be awesome (hesychasm -- DO NOT TELL ME DIFFERENT, KAY?) and i love north carolina and i miss my family like crazy and i cannot WAIT to watch the baby (who is now 20lbs! the fuck?) grow up (by the time i graduate, he will be nearly 5. wtf?). but i will miss this place. i'm sure i'll write some kind of sadsap post in the next couple of days about it, but for now. just, yeah, sad.

yesterday was our moving sale. we sold a lot of bizarre things. it's good though -- a lot less stuff to figure out what to do with. still, a LOT of stuff and i'm going to be out with people a lot this week (saying goodbye and such) and. yeah. i feel bad leaving thenewhope with it, but she's pretty resilient and i'll find some way to make it up to her. or something.

wednesdazy, i'm going to my gyn for a colposcopy. i had an irregular papsmear. i am freaking out. FREAKING OUT. pretty much, i'm terrified that i have cervical cancer. hopefully, in reality, the worst that i have is some kind of cervical dysplasia. even if it's really bad dysplasia, the treatments are not the worst thing ever (electrocauterization, cryocauterization, laser vaporization...). i figure the worst that happens wednesday is they take a few swabs or, maybe, a cone biopsy. which, while kind of gross sounding, isn't terribly awful.

meh. just what i needed the week before i move.

i have been thinking idly for weeks about the diversity in fic meme that was going around.

you remember, the one where you tell everybody how many of your pieces of fic feature a character of color, a character with a disability, etc. i really wanted to do it. but there were two things i think were missing from the meme, and they're two things i think are disingenous (at best) to disregard when it comes to a statistical endeavour like this one.

( 1) the difference between a 'character of color' (COC) and a 'character played by a person of color' (CPPC). )

( 2) the meme ignored the availability of COCs (or CPPCs) (or people with disabilities, or people of marginalized genders) on a certain show that you might write for. )

finally, and almost tangentially, i wonder what other characteristics of marginalization might be considered. should we consider characters of religious minorities? how about ostensibly white foreigners (like ziva david on NCIS)? how about members of marginalized economic groups? or marginalized age groups?

i'm just curious. i might still do the meme. but it got me thinking.