Getting work done at work this week.

Good appointment with therapist Monday. After which I went somewhere I hadn't been before, got a Ms. Marvel trade and Squirrel Girl #4 and ate frozen yogurt, and eventually managed to find Good Vibrations. Treating myself and also being a quality person who does things in the world.

Hurt my neck as a direct result of GV visit and woke up with nasty headache. Unsure of cost-benefit here as both make strong cases.

Had an adventure with rushthatspeaks. After being confused by inferior maps and displeased with the hot soupy weather, we did find our rose-garden goal, and then there was a convenient and free train, and ice cream for dinner. Then showering. I remain very grateful for such an excellent partner and also for the central air at my apartment.

Getting real work done really, like, I did PCR today and ran it on a gel and all. Still working out some damnfool crap from my botched reappointment, but mostly doing well right now.

Spate of fun hectic planning on dragon game, unfortunately spurred by bad news of cool people leaving our subgroup. But I drew a trout with which I am pleased.

Tumblr being delightful:
http://phantom-quantum.tumblr.com/post/88958704427/sad-disappointed-draw-offensive-bunnies
http://fuckyeahhardfemme.tumblr.com/post/97751139760/broken-gaydar-starrygraveyard-andr3wdost

Funnel webs on top of the yew hedge.

More nerdy taxonomy lookups. Too much computer-staring, but the reasons were still fun.

Walking a labyrinth at the Divinity School.

Relaxing dinner out.

Read a comic with the President of the United States in it, and was like, whoa, it's a white guy. (Strong Female Protagonist: it's the point of AU divergence, so the President is specifically GWB, but that wasn't clear in the first frame where he appeared.) Yay for whiteness as a marked condition.

1. Walking outside in the dramatic pouring rain!

2. In the rain's sunshiny aftermath, a sodden and bedraggled black fuzzy moustache stuck to a rock in someone's front yard.

3. Packing books led to squealing in delight over my paper copy of Maka-Maka v2, as ever. Such the best adorable queer girl porn. (Except there is MORE now, like in Smut Peddler! We live in a wonderful world.)

4. Sold furniture! Accomplished other important moving-related tasks!

The eternal malicious disappointment of the modern uterus

Photo by me of an excellent portrait of the Maxx
(Sam Kieth has not been around his blog recently, but I gave him the link and hope he liked it!)

In which milk is more revealing than fabric

Lisa Wade saying just the right thing about the patriarchal bargain (via ladybusiness!ana). Avoid if you are Just Done hearing about Miley Cyrus, I guess, but this makes a good last word even so.

Hypnotic math gifs

I remain incredibly amused by http://critiquemydickpic.tumblr.com/. Read from the beginning to develop an understanding of the jargon.

Redden is a lovely, short, creepy webcomic based on Red Riding Hood.

Matt Fraction says eloquently why suicide is no good

All of the Disney Princesses dressed up for Halloween are great, but MULAN AS XENA!

Korra book 2 fan comics! I should probably watch the show, huh?

PIPETTE TIP DRESS (from Wim, who knows how to hit multiple buttons at once)

1. Grad student government is going along fine without me, and they're coming up with good new stuff to work on.

2. I realized today that I have Sakura Kinomoto's haircut right now. Something adorable will have to be done about this.

3. Milk chocolate with hyperapricots.

4. Bonus sweetie time!

5. The best interpretation of Bi Day!

1. Honestly I quite enjoy getting a bit eccentric and monologuey in the privacy of my own home. Not sure what the cats think about it.

2. Burrito day and Freakangels.

3. Survey on "phenomenologies of dildo use" was a little frustrating in places, but worth it for that phrase and question 47: "If you have named a dildo, please state the name(s) here."

4. The Pope continues to be great. Weird. (Phone calls and all.)

5. Tasty dinner with sweetie and picking up things I made.

1. Managed to go back to sleep this morning after the inevitable early wakeup and had a really great dream.

2. Gone Home is wonderful. Avoid all spoilers! Even the Riot Grrl trailer may be too much.

3. Little Hachiko axolotl got a salt bath today for her fungus problem and seems better already.

4. Lying around reading Alanna. Someday I may have less of a need for very comforting reading, but this and Aoi Hana are where I'm at right now, and I get to read them if I want.

GRUMPY:

1. Why do people think any software except Sequencher is acceptable for evaluating sequence data? IT IS NOT, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS, BUY ME THE GOOD ONE.

2. Heart of Thomas is so boring, people. So, so boring. I gave up.

3. I am at the stage of ongoing gut badness where I'm like, I already feel sick as hell, I'm going to eat whatever the fuck I want. This is obviously not a great idea... except for the part where sometimes I feel completely better after I do that. Intermittent reinforcement argh.

4. Terrible things happen that make people I love feel bad, and I can neither protect nor avenge.

5. My grumpy items' importances are all out of scale with each other.

Happy:

1. Cool caressing morning with the lake like metal. I love that.

2. I was taught that Plantago lanceolata was wind-pollinated (though note that that paper actually says its own thesis is not well supported). Well, life will find a way, because I've seen honeybees on it the last three days.

3. Finally got to see Pacific Rim at Pacific Place last night! But why in this movie are everyone's lips so very pink? It's not the presence of a dimensional portal for alien invasion; that lipstick would clash with the Iron Man suit terribly.

4. I am a POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLAR whose diploma was mailed today.

5. One girl at the bus stop was reading Le Guin, one was reading Best Science and Nature Writing. I made sure to stand colinear and equidistant as I read my own rather pulpier SF novel.

Because I am contrary and can overanalyze ANYTHING, I am doing anti-happiness posting today!

1. My lunch was not good so I wanted to eat everything in sight all afternoon. Because clearly I hadn't had any actual lunch, only that soggy wrap that said it was tofu teriyaki and was really sweet and sour rice or something. I am a big fan of vinegar, but acid and gloopy should never be the only traits of food.

2. PI doesn't understand that I'm hot, and this bothered me today. She was all skeptically asking for clarification that large breasts are considered decorative in American culture. Seriously? Have you been to America ever? Also I can personally attest that they are much appreciated by many!

3. I was WRONG about a THING in semi-public.

4. E-reader battery is dead and must be replaced.

5. Gotta get up at five for early-morning experiment and probably won't have time for a nap before family brunch.


Eh, who am I kidding, I am still like 90% happy.

1. staranise said what is so great about Silver Spoon and incidentally some things I hadn't detected were so great about Fullmetal Alchemist. Also extremely valuable career counseling stuff, mainly in comments. (Wim, I thought of you.)

2. Fixed an erroneous lack of serial comma in a previous entry! Consistency is restored to my writing universe!

3. I love how nonce-hashtags can be used on Twitter as equivalent to the little muttering text from outside the word balloons in manga.

4. PI's younger kid drew a picture of me on the dry-erase board, but erased it when she caught me looking. She's pretty good, as far as I could tell.

5. So I got a bra caught on my toe last night, and Wim decided to tell me that if I had one for each toe and both thumbs I could be in Shakespeare.

... what?

"Fourteen bras!"

"You are the worst AND you miscounted."

6. This tweet from Seattle Center ‏made me laugh and laugh:
@seattlecenter
They're still sick and they still want you to touch them! MT @kexp @_Mudhoney TONIGHT @SeattleCenter! FREE! #CATM! http://ow.ly/nZTlH

(because of this song, which possibly non-Seattle people don't know as well?)

It was a good week for hearing about queer webcomics. Really like Decrypting Rita so far. (Don't tell me if it's like anything, okay?)

Things about Malindo Lo's Adaptation that worked for me:
- Girls kissing girls. This part here, it worked, yes it did. I was texting M-pig as I tried to read it over lunch, to the tune of, "jeez, Malinda Lo, I am trying to eat teriyaki here, not combust." It spoke to my experience as a bi girl, is I guess what I'm saying.
- Modern kids having conversations about queerness. This is what sold me on the book, and there are three sentences about the literal use of the term queer, but my favorite was actually the formerly straight-ID'ed protagonist talking to her gay best friend about how their "best gay" friendship was supposed to work and him saying "I wouldn't know, my best friend is not a straight girl!"
- Creepy foreignness of one's own body and mind. Not unusual for character-as-guinea-pig plot, but well done.
- Protagonist is legitimately bisexual in my humble opinion, and I am still holding out hope for a triad ending.

Things about Malinda Lo's Adaptation that did not work for me:
- Terrorist birds.
- Government-alien conspiracy.
- Basically all the thriller elements whatsoever barring the scary car chase at the beginning.
- Not concluding the story completely. Such novels are just always annoying, there's no way around that.

Reading Arakawa's Silver Spoon in scans, finding it cute. The closeness of the character designs to the FMA ones is pretty disconcerting, though.

Susan Sontag on camp was interesting, and I don't agree with most of the specifics. Things have changed in fifty years.

I finished the Star Rigger omnibus by Jeffrey Carver a while ago. Actually only the first book of this was the appealing Menolly-narrative; the second is wall-to-wall dragons and not enough human-type people, and it becomes impossible to ignore that the dragon society is annoyingly gender-essentialist in ways that reflect human sexism. (Warrior males, passive visionary females: it could all be much less annoying if those were swapped or there were a Sif or something.) Also, insufficient parrot.

Looking forward to One Girl Goes Hunting!