Same · as · a · Wildcat
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I shall be hanging out with my family, eating grilled hamburgers, and watching my son and nephews play with explosives. Good times! |
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I feel a bit testosterone-ridden. That is to say, belligerent and oversexed. Must be PMS; it's a scientific fact that women do produce testosterone, and the levels go up at that point in the cycle while other, girl-type hormones drop off. I have a theory that women suffer from this not only because it's harder to keep your balance on a shifting surface, but because getting angry is Not Allowed. I don't believe in suffering, so I drink tequila and pick fights with people instead. *smirk* |
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I haven't been sleeping well and am in a peculiar mood. Have been playing with the Google Oracle by entering phrases such as "suspicion of cultural relevance," "garden of miscreant toys," and "noncombustible haberdasher" and hitting "I'm feeling lucky." There are other elements of my peculiar mood, but I do not feel inclined to discuss them in public. Think about that. |
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Mercy
A response to the “Where No Woman Has Drabbled Before” prompt, “Ex-Mrs. McCoy, dead on arrival” Warning/summary: Death. Addictions. Neo-Calvinists angry at God. Excessively grim. **************************************** “I'm sorry, Jocelyn. I'm so, so sorry.” “No,” she said firmly. Her baby sister. Couldn't be. “Dammit, Joce, don't make me...I was the doctor on duty when they brought her in. She wasn't breathing, had no pulse, no brain activity. I tried to revive her even so, but the....She wouldn't have been your sister any more. It was too late.” Leonard's eyes looked glassy and a little wild. He would have saved Jennilee if he could. He'd have given his right arm to save his wife's wild, crazy, self-destructive twenty-two year old little sister, who'd lived through a hundred gut-wrenching scrapes. Not this time. She couldn't see it. The wounded, guilty look in his eyes was invisible through her own haze. “No, no, no. No. No.” Leonard McCoy wrapped his arms around his wife, who bunched up as small as possible with her head bowed. He breathed in the scent of her hair, two shades darker than Jennilee's bright blonde. “I'm so sorry, darlin'.” She broke away from him. “Leave me alone,” she hissed, and stumbled to her office at the back of the house. He started to follow, then sat down on one of the living room chairs. He was exhausted. He would wait until Jocelyn came back, and then they would talk. Jocelyn jittered back and forth in her office for a little while, pacing off the first blind rush of rage and grief, then turned to go out of the room, back to Leonard. Comfort. Her eye lit on her personal comm. A message light was blinking. “Hey...hey, Jocelyn. I, uh, I'm having a little trouble here. Pick me up? Yeah. Call me. Love ya sis.” Jocelyn threw the comm across the room, where it hit the wall and smashed into many pieces, well beyond repair. She folded into a heap on the floor, and stayed there as if turned to stone. Out in the living room, Leonard fell asleep in the chair. At the funeral, one of her father's Cooperative Baptist colleagues, an austere woman with a gentle voice, spoke of God's mercy. “We do not know the mind of God. We know only that His love is infinite, His forgiveness likewise. No one who turns to the ever-flowing fountain of healing will be denied. We need only proclaim forgiveness likewise to our brothers and sisters on this earth and among the stars, that we are redeemed.” Jocelyn listened in stony silence, her fingers twisted together in her lap. If she'd answered when Jennilee called. If she'd interfered sooner. If she'd told their father all she knew about Jennilee's behavior. If she hadn't given Jennilee money, which had surely been spent on the ethanol and pharmaceutical cocktail that the toxicology report had revealed. Jennilee had told Jocelyn she needed the credits for rent. If time ran backwards. Time was unforgiving. It was the clink of the whiskey bottle that set her off. “Drinking again?” she asked, acid in her voice. Her throat hurt. “Just settlin' my nerves, darlin'.” His gentle middle Georgia diction, which had always charmed her, grated on her nerves. His drinking, which was not excessive, had never bothered her before. Now it did. He came close, and she could smell the whiskey on his breath. Whiskey and death. “Get away from me,“ she spat, and realized she meant it. She was supposed to love her husband. She was supposed to forgive him. He would not believe she wanted him to leave until she served him papers, wouldn't believe she really wanted a divorce as she hired a vulture in the shape of a man. He kept talking about reconciliation and counseling until the vulture picked him clean. Then he finally went away, and took her failures with him. Jocelyn sat alone in her empty house. She could not forgive Leonard, could not forgive herself, and there was no mercy from God.
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In response to a discussion elsejournal: I personally abjure a definite model of the universe, because I think the universe is large, irregularly shaped, and incomprehensible in completeness. I think that there are lenses through which one can understand parts of it better...and therefore have no qualms about switching from full-on woo-woo animism to the scientific/empirical approach as it seems most useful. I think both of those approaches tell me something about the world, but reserve judgment about knowing what the world is. In practice I'm a pantheist, but am agnostic on alternate Tuesdays. Full-time weirdo... |
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Was at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} thinkmonkey 's house last night for dinner. One of the people there opined that the future space tourism industry would be driven by women, because of improved perkiness in low gravity. And that was the most repeatable conversation of the evening.I should throw a dinner party... |
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Sita Sings the Blues An animated re-telling of the story of the Ramayana from Sita's point of view, interspersed with a modern break-up story. I think it's beautiful and interesting and definitely worth watching, but have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I get the feminist critique...why are you putting up with all that, honey? and how those images of feminine virtue (which are inevitably longsuffering) fuel real-life tolerance for things that women maybe shouldn't tolerate. On the other hand...it's a myth, it has the same kind of epic quality and teaching tale character as fairy tales like "The Twelve Wild Swans" or any other story where someone's ridiculous virtue, patience, and noble suffering in the face of injustice saves the day and is vindicated in the end. It's a tale told to make a point, not illustrate how real people actually behave. I tend to come down on the side of accepting such stories on their own terms. At the same time...there were already different versions of the Ramayana, and many retellings of it in different media, as the narrators make reference to. The way they argue over the correct version of the story is hilarious, but it also allows the original version of the story (which is supposed to be all about virtue and duty) to have some space in this re-telling. |
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On strict constructionists and the Constitution: "Anyone who believes that they know the original intent of the framers of the Constitution are obviously jocks because, A, they hate hippies, and B, they neglect the fact that the Constitution is perhaps the most geeky document of all time. It is essentially the Frequently Asked Questions list of the United States, that was written by moneyed, sickly, bookish, bifocal-wearing nerds, who believed that God was a distant uncaring dungeon master." Hee, hee. Hee, hee, hee. |
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This is one of the songs played at my brother's funeral...by a live band. One of the musicians used to work with both my father and my brother and is a fairly well-known local bluegrass musician. This version is by Bill Monroe: |
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1) Am going to postpone my graduation to this fall because all my deadlines are this week and I just can't deal. Have already cleared this with my major professor and the head of my program. I will take the opportunity to volunteer to help my other siblings deal with Sib #4's stuff. 2) In far more frivolous news, I have decided that any clothes I purchase from now on will be from travel specialty stores, because I don't ever iron anything anyway. |
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My brother is dying. Having failed him in every possible way for the last 37 years, the US Government canceled his service-related disability due to their paperwork error, just in time for him to get liver cancer. The which it is likely he has due to one or more of their other fuckups. Blah blah blah support the troops blah blah blah. You want to know who supports the troops? Look where the money goes. Does it go to medical care, pensions, wages, supplies they actually use, or does it go to contractors? Talk is cheap. |
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True Grits Star Trek, in the new movie's AU though it helps if you've seen The Final Frontier Leonard McCoy decides to show some friends around his home town. McCoy, his Mama, Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and the Tree That Owns Itself. The Tree is real, as are the various musicians referred to. Everyone else is fictional. (One of my professors told me last week that DeForest Kelley was from Athens. It would be more accurate to say that he spent time here growing up, but since they never say where in Georgia McCoy is from, I decided Athens was as good as anywhere. I meant to play this for laughs, but then it got all seeeerious and character-studyish. It might still be funny, if you live in Athens.) |
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Sara Robinson tells it like it is: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2009/05/je I want to clarify a couple of things here: 1) My views on abortion have become if anything *more* vehemently pro-choice over the years, as I have learned more about what it really means, for example, to be faced with a late-term abortion. 2) People do not get late-term abortions for the hell of it. They are extremely rare, and are *always* a matter of life or death...a fetus that is not viable, or a direct threat to the mother's life. The fact that there is so much blatant lying on this subject should tell you something. 3) Murders of doctors and bombing of clinics are acts of terrorism. The people (like Bill O'Reilly, Operation Rescue, any number of others) who misrepresent abortion and spout rhetoric like "Tiller the Baby Killer" are fostering terrorism even if they stop short of directly advocating it. 4) At this point in life I have scant sympathy and zero patience for people who want to argue with me about abortion. Don't. This is the only warning you will get. |
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Have reached the point where I am having to write notes to myself about the plot, in order to keep everyone and their clashing agendas straight. This is Good, because it means that there is a story that has gelled and now I'm just working out the consequences. Lots of complicated double-crossyness, overlain or subverted with apparent double-crossyness, mixed with plain old confusion and people being contrary. And a mystery. Yay! Am watching Humphrey Bogart movies, because my protagonist is a 25th century Bogie fan and has a tendency to quote or paraphrase him at odd moments. She's particularly fond of the Rick Blaine style of avoiding a question by tossing back a question, saying something oblique or puzzling, or otherwise generally letting the question slide off her back. (I realized this after I had written down a few exchanges of hers. Such are the wendings of my subconscious.) Some examples of what I mean, from Casablanca: Annina: Monsieur Rick, what kind of a man is Captain Renault? Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca? Captain Renault: Rick, do you have those letters of transit? I am not as clever about that kind of dialogue as the writers of Casablanca. But I aspire to it :) |
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"Gangsta" culture is alive and well at my son's high school. There's no telling how serious they really are...it's not that big a town, but it's also the poorest county in the state, and when I was growing up Cleveland, TN was the local center of drug and gang activity (and the location of the headquarters of the Church of God of Prophecy). Be that as it may, he just told me that when the kids at his school ask him to "throw up a gang sign," he does the Vulcan salute. |
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Reacting to the news that conservative Theodore Olson and David Boies are joining forces to fight Proposition 8:
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