Warhead On Legs

( Русский язык )

Okay, I take it back, I can't come up with any more sentences for Russian. I also need to do a double dose of Japanese tonight, among other things, reviewing the grammar point I botched last time. I'm not sure what I'll do for all that review other than lots and lots of physical description, but there really does need to be a lot of review. Till it is embedded in my brain. The whole random dizziness can explain some of the mistakes but not all.

It's about 10 degrees here. 10-15. It's supposed to get up to a whole 40 degrees in a day or so, but right now it's officially fucking freezing. And I'm in the middle of the US. Fear our chilly winters.

So... something. Saw Harry Potter last night! It was fun, there was a lot of me making faces at the screen and wondering where I'd seen that guy before. Turns out I'd seen at least a couple of Voldemort's mooks in Guy Ritchie films, which just makes me conflate the two in my head. Those of you who are familiar with Voldemort and Guy Ritchie films may now kill yourselves laughing. For those of you who aren't, it's kind of like bumbling cops and criminals with a lot of violence and swearing. And bumbling. The man's made two very successful movies off stupid criminals. The tone is similar to Sherlock Holmes, a bit.

Almost done with the first arm warmer for the Elf Lord, thanks to having very little in the way of actual work yesterday. Once I get that done there will probably be Fifth Doctor Arm Warmers, and then maybe Fourth if I can get the right colors of yarn together.

Also, XKCD today speaks a funny truth.

I wanna go pass out until it's time for Human Target tonight. Sadly, I have to get dressed and go to work. Which is kind of like passing out only less interesting.

( Deutsch )

This is about as coherent as it's going to get at the moment. Earlier today I read a news article (A local newspaper in TN) about how a non-profit organization calling itself the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation paid somewhere between 3 and 4 million to the for-profit SAE productions (not sure what that stands for). This is nearly all of the IPTF's income. Both companies are owned and run by the same person and located at the same address. The non-profit generates funds by telling people they're in danger from Muslim terrorists and the owner of both says and seems to believe that 80% of the US mosques are run by terrorists. He also cites as proof of the evil of Islam their treatment of and denial of rights for women, and that it has no music and no art. Or that it denies both to its followers. This is apparently outlined in a book he wrote. A representative for SAE says it does not discuss its financing, but at least one foundation that only gives money to non-profits has given money to the Investigative Project... on the presumption that it was going to non-profits. There may also be tax-fraud involved. My extent of the law on this is fairly thin.

My original point from the earlier post was that when I read this article, my response was less of shock and more of oh, this again. Jerks. I wasn't surprised. I wasn't shocked so much as mildly surprised that they haven't been brought up on charges, either because there are no charges to bring or because no one can find the evidence. Which wouldn't surprise me. I certainly wasn't surprised to find vitriolic anti-Islamic sentiment based on incorrect presumptions connected to shady financial practices.

Which led me to wonder, why doesn't this surprise me anymore? Why doesn't this shock me? Why do these people, the bigots and the conservatives (social more than economic I think), provoke this response at least in me if not in others of, oh here we go again. Why are we no longer surprised or shocked when one of the loudly anti-gay religious/political/both figures turns out to be carrying on a sordid affair with a person of the same sex? Why do we react with more disgust to a Democratic senatorial candidate telling Obama to shove it than a Republican?

Do I just think this because I'm tired? Magic 8 Ball says It Is Very Likely.

It feels like liberals or Democrats or or people who are seen to hold these positions are held to higher standards because we're supposed to be the idealists. We're supposed to be the ones who are better because we believe people can be better. Or we believe in peace and love and everyone holding hands and loving each other. It feels like we don't get to be corrupt. We can be stupid or erratic, we can be tired and emotional (heh) but we don't get to be corrupt, greedy, or just plain bastards.

I don't know. Maybe I'm tired. Maybe there really is a liberal media bias, unless you're talking about the national (?) branch of Fox News, and they don't want to believe that their own can do wrong. More probably I'm tired.

Really, I think I'm just tired of being disappointed over and over again by humanity. And I need to go sit in my cave with my spinning wheel and be an old witch for a little while.

Oh, someone explain to me why football has opening credits, complete with music. I mean, really. Why?

( Русский язык )

That icon is all the more hilarious if you picture it with Raymond Watts, this 6'lots" 140lbs soaking wet scraggly haired Sorcerer-musician plonking one foot down on a guitar stand. With boot on. Big boot. The man's a beanpole, even if he's an adorable beanpole I want to throttle half the time. My understanding of bandom got a lot more visceral when I started following KMFDM. Even haphazard and half-assedly.

Someone explain to me why I can't spell пожалуйста today? It's a simple damn common word. After everything I've been doing (yesterday I did all three languages, did my exercise, picked up no less than three damn projects at work, did my shipping, did some writing, finished a Big Bang, made dinner, and boiled the fuck out of the tiedyed shirts. And then I wonder why I'm so tired) you'd think I'd learn... something. Not to take on so many damn projects. With deadlines, that's the problem. Oh well.

Today's chores: Writing in the Desert, editing Martine, brainspamming on the First Book. Spinning and cooking the damn curry. Surviving work, which shouldn't be as hard as it sounds considering I don't think there's going to be so much to do. Fuck! And the bank. Depositing rent check. Why is being an adult so hard? It didn't look this hard when I was a kid. At least the store projects, one of them is simple, requires printing up something for data collection and putting it out, which I can do today. And the other one is slightly more complicated but not going to start until November, which means I don't have to start working on it until the weekend. The sheer amount of discussion, processing, and infodump that happened yesterday was fucking exhausting, though. I keep forgetting how hard it is to organize all these things and keep them straight in your mind, and process all the little bits of information, until I'm trying to do it.

Hey, though, my to-do list is shrinking. At this point I almost think I want long swaths of things to have to write. If only because I'm not boiling things, lifting vats of stuff, working with chemicals, lifting and carrying, running around, trying to process things. I'm writing. That's it. That's familiar, that's something I know I can do. Bleh. More sleep, I needs it. Maybe I can take a nap at work.

( Русский язык )

Argh. Brain no worky. And translating to Russian is definitely more difficult than translating back. Which means it needs more practice.

Today, apparently, we need to get more felting pads from a local foam and fabric store, which means I get to peruse fabrics for my steampunk skirt! Yay! I don't know if I'll actually get anything but I get to look at least. Looking at fabrics is always fun. And I have the pattern with me so I know exactly what I need. Which is not 3 1/4 buttons, Jag, what the hell. Oi, brain needs to get online sometime soon.

Did manage to get most of the shit off my to-do list yesterday, at least. And get to bed early, even if I didn't get as much writing done as I wanted to. Today, working on more of my to-do list! And attempting to drag my brain back to the projects I need to be working on. Writing long fiction is hard, yo. I keep losing the thread and not being able to resume it. Most irksome. On the other hand, hopefully... Yes, the UPS widget says today will be a relatively light day. So if no major orders come in, it should be pretty good.

Writing. I need to get back on Sandstorm's Daughter. I'm slowly getting back on International Relations. And apart from that, mostly, it's just much much smaller side projects. Never, ever doing a non-original big bang again. Never. Or at least, never until the next time, because we all know me, yeah?

( Russian )

Okay, seriously? The random rampant asthma can stop anytime now. Any time it wants to.

Not a happy kitty. Well, sort of a happy kitty. But the asthma started last night, provoking an early bedtime (that I didn't get, we can blame the boy for that, but I got to bed on time and it wasn't that early anyways) and apparently stretching into this morning, where every fourth or fifth breath feels impossible. Woo. Fortunately I still have a couple months left on my inhaler although at some point that prescription really does need to get renewed.

Ugh. Didn't want to do my exercises as a result. Did, but didn't want to. Full range of stretches, at least. No running/walking for me, it's raining out. Maybe when I get home from work. Which, while it's kind of nice that I'm not coming home from work too exhausted to go walkies, I do wish it'd get more busy.

Part 1 of Project Craft Pass-Along (Also known as Project Gather Up All The Random Crafty Crap I Accumulated Meaning to Do Something With It And Never Did) is going pretty well. I still have no idea what the hell I meant to do with a frillion and one copies of the same five or so Egyptian deity statues, but what the hell. This is going to be a big, randomly assembled care package that probably would only make sense if you knew me for years. Or maybe it will make sense! Who knows. Either way, it's off my shelves and in the hands of someone who might actually make use of it, which is the important thing. Everything to someone who needs it or at least might make use of it. Otherwise they are sad, purposeless things.

Come to think of it, while I'm cleaning out crap, I should throw away my Mage Knight figures (unless they're wanted for crafty purposes) because really, does anyone play Mage Knight anymore? And these were used for mini painting practice, so they're useless as collectibles anyway.

Urgh. Well, at least I'm feeling better post-inhaler. My bank books are balanced, some of my birthday gifts to me have arrived and my new laptop battery should arrive today, hopefully that will actually be the right battery (it claims to be, but I have dubiousness until it's actually in my computer and working) and in another day or two my BPAL should be here. Already. I ordered it just the other day! I have an Amazon Gift Cert now, trying to think what I should get with it, which means I may end up sitting on it for a little while. And other than that, bleh. Too tired to think properly about all the crap I need to do. At this point, I need to either get my prescription for an inhaler refilled or go to the doctor to get it re-upped. Something. Something something. I'll figure it out on the way to work, I guess.

Oh, right. I need to type up my recipes for orange chicken stir fry and some kind of Hungarian Paprika chicken. (The hungarian chicken has onions! And may be cursed. And makes a fuckton of food.) I'll do that at work, I think.