Truly. Deeply. Madly

Windows ate all my work of today.

(Wait for it...)

Twice.

And in such close succession that, upon my recovering all but a few paragraphs of the work in the first reboot, that recovered document was expunged in the second siezure. Of that recovered document, there is now no trace. I am... well, how to put this decently... I'm not at the screaming and throwing things stage, but it is only through an effort of will on my part, and because I already have a headache brewing, and don't want to turn it into a migraine by way of elevated blood pressure.

Thing is, the work I lost, I wasn't all that attached to. It was good, but it wasn't stellar. I'd have been far more upset to learn that I'd lost the stuff I wrote yesterday, or the day before, but what I was working on today was the actual BEGINNING, see? The hook, and the reel-in. The setup, the sketching in of the relevant details the reader needs to be going on with... and it was going okay. No, you don't understand, it was going OKAY! I didn't hate it! Do you know how huge that is for me?

Only now it's gone, as had I never done any of it. So I've got to go back and either rebuild it, or figure out something else to get the ball rolling with.
And what's more, it also means I can't trust Grainne anymore now, than I could do before I gave her the format C lobotomy. I can't afford to take the laptop out to the porch (as I'm doing today,) or to a coffeehouse, (as I did yesterday,) for fear that it'll sieze again, and rob me of more work. What the hell good is the thing if I can't even trust its backup software to function properly?

Comfort me please, oh flist great and puissant. Sure, if you think you can guide me through the windows labyrinth to the missing files, a clue would be great, but really what I'd like to have right now are a few headpats and some consolation over sucktasticness. Or maybe some good news from YOUR days.

What's going right in your lives then?
Share the non-suck?

Please go and read this.

It won't spin you up, or make you angry -- as it's so easy for things to do in this politically charged time. No, it will ask you to think in the best of ways. It will ask you to really think about what you WANT your community to be -- what you WANT to see when you look around your home, your office, your street, your neighborhood, your town, state, nation, and world. Who do you want to be your heroes, and how many more heroes are standing right in sight while the nasty, smelly apes clog up the news with their hooting and poo-throwing.

It's about heroes. You should go and read it.

And listen to a couple of Ceili's Muse songs whilst you're doing so, if you'd like.
Heroes

Mothers, Daughters, Wives.

(As usual, these are on my utility site, so if you're downloading them, please right-click and save, so my bandwidth doesn't go all splodey. They'll be up for a week or so.)

And in the meantime, go read it!

Is it Halloween yet?

It must be Halloween. I came home from my writing field trip to find six boxes of Halloween waiting for me on my front porch -- like Christmas, only cooler!
I know we've got the back half of August, and also September (Ia! Ia! Dionysus Ivohe!) to get through first, but man, I am SOOOOO in the mood to start setting up all the cool spooky shit now!

The trouble is, of course, that if the financing for the porch rebuild comes through, the work isn't likely to start on it until October, which means we'll not really have the leeway to decorate safely out there at all, and we might not even be able to open the front door on Halloween to greet the wee goblins properly. (Of course, if this turns out to be the case, I might very well just put my theatre construction experience to good use, and build a temporary facade of appropriate spookiness with which to greet the little beasts properly, halfway up the walk, and well shy of the construction zone.

And hell, there might well be a party too, because it's been awhile since we've had a good Halloween bash in this house, darnit!
Who wants to come?

It has begun!

Three pages so far today, but there will be more. The prose just jumped me when I was intending on fleshing out the outline a bit more, and I decided it would probably be better to just roll with it rather than to let it get away. So I did.

And y'know what?
It's good, too.

So... umm... that's all the news that's fit to print.
I'll let you all know how I get on.

( Went to Faire today. )

( The jester's cowl of awesomesauce. Cut for the bandwidth-impaired... )

So long as the dogs are around to take care of us, we just might be all right...

*Humanity - 0, Dog - 1*

I might have failed my save versus Stewarts' roll on the way back from my chiropractor's today...

There might have been four pints of various ice cream in the bag I brought home.

The whole pint of Death By Chocolate (dark chocolate ice cream, chocolate covered almond bits, and chocolate truffles in,) might be... erm... gone now.
*Belch*

Or Hilfy might have eaten it all.
Unless someone can prove otherwise, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

In other news, firestarter333 and I are making the kick-arsingest jester's cowl ever seen in any mortal plane.
Yes, there will be pics, because it is TOTALLY happening.
*Gets back to work and pretends not to be aware of two and a half more pints of ice cream in freezer...*

If you use Gmail, you need to make a change in your Settings...

Apparently, someone's intending to release a hacking tool specifically intended for use against Gmail's web tools sometime in the next couple of weeks. The above article gives simple directions to a fix that will protect your accounts.

That's me, spoiling the fun with my public service announcements again...

Thanks to the fucktard who sicced their spambot on my art archive, I have had to disallow non-member access to the gallery.

For those of you who requested access, but it wasn't processed at once, I've admitted you all, so you'll be able to go in and see all of the galleries now. For those of you who had just wanted to click over, poke around the generally available galleries, and see what was what... well, I'm extremely sorry that I have to make you pay for that arsehole's activities. I do add every request that I can verify as soon as I get the notice though, so if you choose to log in, you won't have to wait more than a day or so to see what's new.

member log-in for Cluegirl's art gallery

Thanks for your patience, all, and I'm sorry about this.
I'll see if I can't work out a better way to scrape the bots off. Maybe I'll be able to uncover it again in a month or so, once the wee fecker has buggered off somewhere else.

Omnivore's 100 Meme
Instructions:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating, or will never eat again.
4) italicize ones you haven't eaten but WANT TO TRY
5) Leave the ones you haven't tried, but are indifferent about

( I'm really more of a humanitarian... )

At long last, We Shine Like Stars is DONE!
And what's more, it's posted at hp_tarot, on both Livejournal, and InsaneJournal.

Here's the link to the first section on the LJ comm: We Shine Like Stars

And Here's the link to the first section on the IJ comm: We Shine Like Stars

I know it's long -- around 38,000 words, -- and I know it's not a top flight favorite pairing -- Ginny/Luna, -- but I'm quite pleased with the story, and I think it's some really good work. And I'd be really pleased if all my friends who are inclined to read such things might hie on over there, read it, and tell me how you liked it please? Because I worked very hard on this, and posting it was a stonecoldBITCHcookie this evening!
And I could use some flist luv, really...

BOOYAH!

*Spikes baby in end zone, and does a little victory dance!*

And I still have time to clean the kitchen before venivincere gets here from the train station!

Go me!

venivincere, and her spawn are on her way to my house RIGHT NOW!

*Runs in circles*

I has two more scenes to finish in this story before they get here!

Ohh, I so need to be two or more people right now!

*Slams a pot of coffee and cranks stereo!*

* I am on a break from reading journals. At least until I get this story done -- however I'm pleased to report that it is proceeding apace, and it oughtn't even to require a really big push to get it ready to post by my (slid-back-thanks-to-Mod-Of-Graciousness,) deadline. In the meantime, though, some bytes have been piling up.

* You can’t love a crowd the same way you can love a person.
And a crowd can’t love you the way a single person can love you.
Intimacy doesn’t scale. Not really. Intimacy is a one-on-one phenomenon.
Hugh Macleod, How To Be Creative: 26. Write from the heart.

This came up in my Morning Coffee today. The Quotation Station often seems to read my mind, but this is particularly timely for me.

* As is this lolcat: Zombies, man; they do pile up while you're not looking, don't they? Like weeds. You smash a few heads, pull a few up by the roots, and you think you're doing all right... then half a dozen more spring up behind you. I blame unclesiko.

* We sent the last of the contrractor estimates to the loan guy last Friday. It was manifestly terrifying. If we get what we've asked for, the repayment will be something of a feat... but the state of the porch dictates that we've no choice, really. We must get the work done, and it cannot be corner-clipped without damaging the worth of the property, and making us repeat the effort in another couple of years. We have to do it. And somehow, we will pay for it. I'm not sure just how as of yet, but I'm actually pretty certain something unexpected will come through. It's taking all my willpower to stop myself obsessing about that, but I'm doing pretty well, I think. Not a single anxiety attack yet, in fact. Go me!

* We got whalloped by a Tucson-style Monsoon on Monday. Hail, 0 visibility, water four feet deep in the gutters, the whole shebang. While it was going on, the roof of the turret in the bedroom sprung a leak. Imagine my joy... Oh. And, I've just noticed, the electrical outlet for the front porch has burned out. What luck! That means we'll not be wasting electricity on porch decorations and lights until we can afford to get an electrician in to fix it!

* Today, however, is beautiful. Clear blue, sunny but cool under whispy clouds and fresh breezes. I'm working outside in it, so as not to waste the day entirely.

* I have always had a problem with people telling me I should count my blessings; mainly because when someone tells you that, they nearly always tack on the implication that, as part of that accounting, you should also stop expecting anything more. It's usually a tacit way of telling someone to shut up and cope. But there really is, I am finding, a strange power to the practice of intentional gratitude. Especially since gratitude and ambition are NOT mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible to be truly grateful for the meal you have just eaten, the clothes you wear, and the roof over your head, but still want to know that you can eat again, replace your clothes when they do not suit, and keep that roof in good repair. Intentional gratitude is not a 'shut up and be happy with what you've got' command, it's 'don't let what you haven't got make you unhappy.' By nature, I'm something of a jaded, pessimistic creature, so I have to work at it to maintain the semblance of optimism, and to intentionall react to the world as if it IS as it ought to be, even when I know that it's not. So stopping and actually looking for the beneficial aspects of the things that crop up in my life is something I expect to be a challenge. Happily though, I think I'm going to find I'm up to it, as well.

* And I'm low on battery now, so it's time to go and find an electrical outlet that will keep Grainne going along. Y'all be good now, y'heah?

Or; Why Catt's Asking Weirdly Personal Questions Of Her Flist.

( First, I was given this 'homework' assignment... )

( So then I got to thinking: Well... how DO I see myself then? )

So that's why I asked what I did.
Before I decided that my world/self view was inherently dysfunctional, I thought maybe I should find out how a few other people saw things in the safety of their own heads.
And honestly, from the replies i've gotten, it seems that quite a few people aren't very solid on their looks without the aid of a mirror. And that's aside from body dismorphia, which I think tends to be a bit endemic in our society. It seems as though people generally fix a 'self' icon at a time when they feel they look their best, when they feel the fittest, and when they have the most confidence in their body's strength, durability, and attractiveness. Also at the height of the breeding age, perhaps? Who knows. Not me.

Still, it was a very interesting social experiment. Thanks for helping me to construct it!

I'm curious about the concept of Self Image.

When you think of yourself, do you SEE yourself at all? Or do you have to intentionally build a mental image of you in your head -- say, when you are considering whether this or that cut of skirt, blouse, or dress might look good on you?

Do you know what your face looks like? I mean really? Or do you only know the generalities of basic description -- eye colour, hair colour, one or two distinguishing notes about bone structure and/or skin quality, and that's about it?

Does your face and body feel the same to you as the one you see when you look in a mirror? Or are you taller, thinner, fatter, paler, sumpin, in your head than the glass shows?

Or do you basically know what you'll see when you meet up with a mirror, and any surprises are more likely to be details of grooming than anything drastic?

I have personal reasons for asking this, but I don't want to say what they are just yet, because I don't want to influence anyone else's answers -- I really do want to know what it's like for YOU, if you can tell me.

I'm truly curious about this, and though I know the better part of my flist -- those who actually read my blog instead of filtering and waiting for something to show up on an HP watch list, that is, -- are at Terminus and therefore out of pocket for awhile, but I'd really appreciate getting a sampling of answers here.

Grisly.

And from me? That's sayin something!

All opinions expressed herein are subjective to the state of actually being the Cluegirl. The management assumes no responsibility for the views of anyone not the Cluegirl, including, but not limited to the author, his friends, family, agent and editor, the French, anyone who draws a paycheck for work done, people with contact lenses, agoraphobics, Eddy Izzard and the President of Burundi. Also, you.

Quoted from this story on the execution of a Mexican national who was convicted of murder.

Medellin's case dates back to 1993 when two girls, Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, were raped and murdered by six gang members in Houston.

Medellin, who was born in Mexico but moved to the US as a child, was convicted of Miss Pena's murder and did not deny that he killed her. *Commwentator's note: Please don't suppose that I am saying this person should not have been removed from society of all kinds. His guilt or innocence is not my point here.*

But at the time of his arrest, police did not tell him that he could request assistance from the Mexican consulate.

In 2003, Mexico, which does not have the death penalty, filed a lawsuit at the ICJ on behalf of Medellin and 50 other Mexican nationals on death row in the US, saying they had not been informed of their right to consular assistance.

The court ruled in Mexico's favour, and ordered that their cases be reviewed.

Earlier this year, President Bush directed Texas to comply with the ICJ but the Supreme Court justices decided 6-3 that he had overstepped his authority.

Texas acknowledged that Medellin had not been told he could ask for help from Mexican diplomats, but argued that he had forfeited the right because he never raised the issue at trial or sentencing.

State officials also argued that it would not have made any difference to the outcome of the case.

Did everyone see that? The Prez told Texas to comply with the International Court of Judges' ruling, and NOT execute the man. Texas said "nuh uh. You're not the boss of me!" However Texas was more than ready to polish the needles every time Governor Bush said 'what's this slimeball still doing breathing? Git him outta there so we can fit another one in his room!" Don't believe me? Check the stats. G Bush set a record for executions in the state during his tenure. So it's not like the state prison board had reason to think he was some kinda pansy ass bleeding heart liberal or anything.

However, it gets better. Read on.

Last month, in response to an urgent request from Mexico, the ICJ ordered the US to "take all measures necessary" to halt Medellin's execution.

But Texas judicial authorities said in response that the law in Medellin's case was "clear".

"Texas is not bound by the World Court but by the US Supreme Court, which reviewed this matter and determined that the convicted murderer's execution shall proceed," a statement from the attorney general's office said.

In other words, 'Here on Planet Texas, we kill whoever we want, and the rest of y'all can jest suckit. If you don't like our policework justice malfunctions, then we'll shoot you too, most likely -- that's jest how we roll."
They only follow the President's directives about killing inmates when he tells them to go ahead, it seems. Telling them NOT to kill an inmate just doesn't register.

As I said above, I'm not making any statements here about whether Mendellin should still be polluting the gene pool or not. Without having seen his case file, or been on his jury, I can't say whether I think the world is better off without him. My amusement is solely for the antics of the Texas board of executions, and their frontier justice addiction.
Whacky, I tell you.

What's next? Paris Hilton running for President in 2008?

Goodbye, ter369
I'm so glad fandom gave me a chance to know you a little.
I just wish I could have shown you what you inspired me to. Because yes, I was writing it for you.
In fact, I still am.
I'll send you a copy of the first draft when it's done.