asimplechord | Entries tagged with hell in a handbasket

+ Write Bradley Manning a birthday letter. Seriously, the dude's been essentially in solitary for almost two years for allegedly sneaking classified data to Wikileaks. Send him some positive thoughts.

+ Rec: In good times and bad by rsadelle. Hockey RPF, Boston Bruins. In which Tyler can no longer play hockey and ends up as Segs' househusband. It's cute, and it made me smile.

- Work today. But if I work today I'll feel less guilt about taking off early later in the week. Plus, trying to get replicate experiments finished before the holiday break.

+ Followed by Aeros vs Peoria at the TC. Hackett was strong in goal the other night, and Zucker scored his second GWG in overtime. Hopefully the winning streak will continue.

Current Music: Freshmen - Verve Pipe

Today I:

1. Missed the 7:30 bus by approximately 30 seconds. I watched it pull away from the stop as I parked.

2. Took the later bus, which sat in traffic for 1.5 hours, instead of the normal 40 minutes the commute should take. Late to work. Of course.

3. Spilled my ice bucket all over the place in my rush to get my experiment going in the time I'd signed up for the tissue culture hood (9-11am; great except for how the traffic delay meant I got to work at 9:30 :|)

4. Fixed cells for 10 minutes too long because a fire alarm went off, requiring building evacuation. It was nothing, in the end, just a waste of time.

5. Sat through an excruciatingly boring seminar. My boss sat next to me, so I couldn't even sneak out when the speaker went well over the scheduled time limit.

6. Rode a stationary bike for 40 minutes tonight instead of running or doing something else more strenuous, because DAMN my quads are sore. The trial gym membership included a session with a trainer, so on Saturday I lifted weights and used muscle groups that apparently don't see much use when I jog. But I didn't realize how hard they'd been worked until Sunday, when I ran three miles and then cooled down and stretched. Post-shower I sat down and could not get back up. Getting older sucks, I don't recommend it. Also, getting lazy about daily exercise makes it worse. Self, DON'T DO THAT AGAIN.

6. Ranted for a full 10 minutes after receiving an email from my congressional rep (a member of the GOP) about Obama forcing the fiscal cliff and being unrealistic and assuring me that "House Republicans will continue to ensure that the power remains with the people." I was under the impression that the American people had already spoken. My impression was that the majority doesn't want Medicare/Medicaid/SS cut and are perfectly cool with the idea of letting the Shrub-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire. THAT'S WHY OBAMA WON AND THE MITT-BOT DIDN'T. It made me RAGE.

*deep breaths*

Right.

Now I'm gonna go ponder the next fest fic to be written.

Or maybe I'll do a meme:

Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing and I’ll tell you something about the story I’d write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write).

1. space!AU
2. pretending to be married
3. mistletoe kiss
4. game night
5. handcuffed together
6. snowed-in
7. next-door neighbors AU
8. fantasy AU
9. day at the beach
10. celebratory kiss
11. apocalypse fic
12. sharing a bed
13. road trip
14. genderswap
15. kissing to save the day

Crossposts: http://asimplechord.livejournal.com/557980.html

+ The new washer has been installed. It's supposed to be more energy and water efficient, but it takes longer to do a load than the old standard. Whatever, I really appreciate not visiting the laundromat on a regular basis. The nearest one was pretty sketchy.

+ The Aeros played the first of a four-game home stand Sunday. They lost in a shoot-out, but that's better than I expected. They looked tired and flat in the first two periods, like the back-to-back-to-back with a seven-hour roadtrip in between had done them in. And apparently they called up another D-man from Allen? He dressed and warmed up with them, but was a healthy scratch (along with Granlund, Brodin, Scandella, and multiple other scratches D:). Also, holy crap, it's one thing to see in his stats that Baldwin, the guy they called up from Orlando on Saturday, is 6'5" and it is something else entirely to see him up close and personal. And that's not even talking about when he lays a hit on someone right at the glass. GIANT. Also giant? The brand new video screen scoreboard at the Toyota Center.

+ Pizza with green peppers and extra cheese.

+ Early voting, accomplished! GO VOTE! I don't care who you vote for, just do it. (OK, that's a lie: I care. And if you are female and vote Romney/Ryan I don't understand at all, because one of the bases for their platform is about making people who were were born with a uterus second class citizens. But it's your vote. USE IT.)

+ After tomorrow, all the horrible adverts on TV and auto-dial phone calls and emails bombarding me with pleas for donations of time or money for political campaigns will stop. Or at least slow down until the next election cycle.

+ Spencer Smith's tweets are making me happy right now. You are a gentleman and a scholar. (And probably a really good older brother.)

+ Nathan Fillion trolling Firefly on tonight's episode of Castle: A+++++++

Crossposts: http://asimplechord.livejournal.com/553670.html

I've been feeling sort off, had a fever last night, so I emailed my boss that I wasn't feeling well, took NyQuil, and meant to go back to bed. But instead I'm trolling the internet.

a. Fuck yeah, Ecuador.

b. Darling husband, please don't make me argue about how the Nike "gold digging" t-shirts are sexist bullshit. Don't tell me that the gold-medal beach volleyball team has diggers on it, so that makes them okay. That's not who this is marketed for.

c. ;__; Rafa.

d. They're everywhere - I'm glad I saw them before they got this big, really - and it's still a creepy song (it's totally on my "this song is not as cheerful as you think" playlist, with Every Breath You Take, Pumped Up Kicks, and Make Damn Sure, but here's fun. doing We Are Young the other night on the Colbert Report. DAMN, JACK. Also, that smirk on Nate's face at the end, when the crowd is singing the lyrics. Like, "Yes, this is how I expect crowds to be: knowing ALLLLL MY LYRICS.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

e. LOL, Yardbarker making me all cranky. PK Subban is not a "pretty dirty player", he's not any cockier than any other NHL player, and fuck you for making the unspoken but obvious comparison to Chris Pronger. I didn't realize I hadsuch strong feelings about RL!PK until I read that in my news feed.

Seriously, if one of my other fandoms doesn't start making news soon, I am going to drown in NHL preseason angst. Will they lock out? Will the NHLPA and the owners come to an agreement? Will the Habs come to their senses and make PK Subban a better offer? What are the Pens and the Devils going to do to fill the voids left by their off-season losses and machinations?

Crossposts: http://asimplechord.livejournal.com/542373.html

Corporations are not persons, at least in Big Sky country.

(Thanks to J for the heads-up!)

Crossposts: http://asimplechord.livejournal.com/526356.html

Originally posted by

gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting ~~very little~~ no attention in the mainstream media.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.

What to do?

- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.

- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.

***********

I've been following what's happening in TX and with Planned Parenthood, but this is infinitely worse. Thanks, B, for reblogging this and bringing it to my attention.

+ There should be a countdown on my phone:

11Oct - PWTs, Houston HOB
18Oct - Panic/Patrick, San Antonio
19Oct - Panic/Patrick, Austin
20Oct - Panic/Patrick, NOLA
21Oct - Jack's Mannequin, Houston HOB
22Oct - Buzzfest, Houston (Bush, Evans Blue, Chevelle, Filter, etc.)
28-30Oct - Voodoo Experience, NOLA (28th - Soundgarden, My Chem, Fitz & the Tantrums, the Wombats, Mates of State, Ani DiFranco; 29th - Social D, blink-182, Snoop Dogg, Girl Talk, XX; 30th - The Raconteurs, TV on the Radio, Fatboy Slim, Cheap Trick)
31Oct - Panic/Patrick, DC
3Nov - Panic/Patrick, Philadelphia
4Nov- Panic/Patrick in Sayreville OR Frank Turner in Philadelphia

Theoretically, I should be completely done the last round of experiments for a paper by the Texas Disco dates, but I guess we'll see. Things never work out quite the way I hope, in terms of timing. I'm taking off for them and for Voodoo + a trip to the east coast for Discos and family-time whether or not the paper is submitted. Already requested leave.

- How does a president who has received the Nobel Peace Prize justify continued support of a government that sentences its health care workers to years of imprisonment for doing their jobs? Oh, yeah, the Fifth Fleet. That explains that. /cynicism

(On a related note, holy hell, the twitter sniping going on at Jeremy Scahill for his critique of the Awlaki assassination... O.O)

- A teeny, tiny fire ant bit me on the foot at BestFest last Saturday. (I squished it viciously in retaliation.) It itched for a few days, but that subsided. Now a purply-red welt the size of a penny surrounds the raised, darkened spot of the original bite. This cannot possibly be normal... Is it?

+ GameDay for ESPN is in Madison this week for the big red battle. It is entirely possible that we will be homebodies on Saturday night so we can watch Wisconsin play Nebraska at Camp Randall. I cannot even IMAGINE what the stadium will be like - it was crazy enough for the rare night game (I think we played Purdue and Oregon at night while I was there) but for it to be such a good match-up, ranking-wise, and for GameDay to be there (I think they only came to UW for the Michigan game back then)? State St will be soooo rowdy, OMG.

+ Sign-ups for

yagkyas are open! Go on, you know you want some.

+ It's been that kind of week at work. I believe I am going to go drink some Stone 15th Anniversary Black IPA. Mmmmm.

That high-pitched shriek you heard a couple of hours ago? That was me, realizing that Patrick Stump is going to be in Texas on his tour, 26-28 August. SMALL VENUE AWESOMENESS. :D :D :D

In other news:

1. Sasha is back in my possession. I love my car. I live in the 'burbs, and I drive an unfortunate amount, and I MISSED MY iPod DOCK AND MY DECENT GAS MILEAGE AND MY EZPASS. Now I have them back, and Sasha is pretty and shiny again. My commute time is halved. I am marginally less cranky at the end of my work day now. Marginally.

2. Finished Tropic of Chaos. It's an interesting read, examining what Parenti calls the "catastrophic convergence" of climate change and political/economic policy of the Global North as applied to the Global South. [For GK fans, you'll be amused to hear that when citing The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, a product of CNAS & CSIS, Parenti says that it was produced by "the most scientifically literate of the lot" of DC think-tanks.]

3. Is anyone else planning on going to the Empires show in Austin on the 18th?

I have opinions about the news that's in the headlines, but all I'm going to say is that I hope that everyone who lost a loved one on 9/11/01 or when the USS Cole or the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were bombed feels some closure. I'd like to believe that this means we'll extract ourselves from the untenable, unsustainable military conflicts in which we embroiled ourselves in the name of capturing OBL, but I have sincere doubts on that subject.

IN HAPPIER NEWS.

pjvilar posted a picture that makes me FINALLY feel the urge to write, for the first time in months. If I can squeeze it in around my work hours, which have once again grown to encompass far more than the 40 for which I am paid.

AND. Seriously, did we magick Panic! At The Disco into being with our will, bandom? Because this video. SERIOUSLY. It's a half-dozen different musicals and Disney movies for a single 3-minute song, and I LOVE IT. I cannot wait for June. Or for the autumn tour with Black Cards and Neon Trees.

Current Music: Panic! At the Disco - Science Fiction/Double Feature (Cover) | Powered by Last.fm

In October, Joao Silva reminded us how dangerous it is to be a photojournalist or journalist in a war zone.

Today in Libya, Tim Hetherington reminds us again. RIP, sir. I had many issues with Restrepo, but your cinematography was stunning, and it took great courage to go where you went.

ETA: And apparently, Chris Hondros, who was injured in the same incident, along with Guy Martin and Michael Brown, died as well.

Deliberately not talking/thinking/posting about work. It'll make me too cranky. Instead, here. Have some random babbling and a few songs.

So, I've flailed all over the place (mostly twitter, but also here some, obvsly) about PStump and Discos, but I haven't really talked about Rise Against's new album, Endgame, even though it came out almost a month ago. ~~Why oh why aren't they coming to Houston? The only TX dates on this tour - with BAD RELIGION! - are midweek dates in Austin and Corpus Christi. Which, you know, I'll go to at least one of. But anyway~~.

I love it. I love the music, and I love that every song hits on an issue near and dear to my heart. I was thinking about this earlier, b/c on one hand it's good that there was a compromise to keep the federal government running, but the cuts being made and the tax code that's been signed into law are just widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the US, not just in terms of income, but in terms of social benefits and opportunities. I feel like a lot of people of my generation and younger are disaffected: we keep trying and nothing changes. And nothing I see in mainstream media speaks to me on this issue.

But maybe other forms of media pick up the slack? IDK, I go back and forth on this, wondering if the US can have anything approaching the "facebook/twitter revolution"s of north Africa/the middle east. So many people were galvanized by the 2008 elections, but I wonder if the last couple of years have dulled their enthusiasm.

So I open the PDF/liner for the download of Endgame, & see that Rise Against suggest that their fans read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine (I have some issues with Klein, but not with this book), and watch Capitalism: A Love Story and Collapse. They used to suggest Zinn's Peoples' History.

They close with Steinbeck's When property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away.[...]

This band could not resonate any more in my ears and brain and soul if they were aiming directly, deliberately AT ME.

Here. Their Architects, along with I Was A Teenage Anarchist by Against Me! (no, really, one is a response to the other) and RATM's cover of Ghost of Tom Joad.

1. I think Henry Jenkins has an interesting point here, and I'm really pleased with the examples of White Collar, House MD, and Castle that he chose to illustrate his point.

2. *sigh* Wanted to go see Guster and Jukebox The Ghost tonight, but I'm still grumpy about LiveNation & HOB, so no. Not giving them my money.

3. I sorta love that JScahill won the Twitter Fight Club final round against Andrew Exum. The sockpuppet twitters of AbuMuqawamaPMC and ExumRangerBeard were clever and hilarious.

4. Anthony Shadid on Democracy Now this morning. I didn't have a chance to watch the TV interviews he'd done the past few days, so. I'm glad he's still going back, to stay the head of the Beirut bureau.

5. The

we_pimpin Spring Fling fics were posted on Sunday! I decided to ration them: one per day instead of reading them all in a fit of gluttony. But then LJ started being wonky b/c of the DoS, and I got busy, so I have only read one, ONE of the fics.

6. LOL, random: for some reason my TV was set to one of the Spanish-language HBO station, so when I turned it on this evening, Avatar was on in Spanish. But it was at the point when they're speaking in the natives' language, so I couldn't really understand the audio, and I was even more confused by the subtitles being in Spanish. *facepalm*

Current Music: Rise Against - Make It Stop (September's Children) | Powered by Last.fm

+ Jeremy Scahill and Josh Foust on Democracy Now this morning, in the wake of JScahill's piece on Yemen. IDK, as someone who'd sort of forgotten about Yemen's place in military/foreign policy strategy after the USS Cole until the Wikileaks revelation that Petraeus had verbalized a deal with Saleh, I found it educational.

+ The Sony Ericsson Open has a Roger/Rafa match-up in the semi-finals in the offing, if they each win their quarterfinal matches today. In any case, my plan for this evening is to watch Rafa's match against Tomas Berdych, which ESPN2 is scheduled to broadcast.

+ Work. \o/ /o\ I spent yesterday going through a bunch of old data, for the project that was mine before the Chief decided that we really needed to get the Idiot's abandoned project consolidated and shipped out for publication. A year and a half later... yeah. I'd completely forgotten some of the experiments I'd done. I did a metric fuck-ton of work on this, and it links to the Idiot's stuff, so that time was not wasted, but I'm still angry that I had to stop working on the biochemistry that interested me to finish his shit. Beyond that, we've sifted through a ton of mass spec data, and I feel like there's SO MUCH that could be done, if only there were more hours in the day. Or I could clone myself.

+ Trying to decide if I feel up to dealing with the crowds at the Discovery Green two days in a row. I don't care so much about tomorrow's headliners, but The Hold Steady are playing a set at 7pm. Ditto for Saturday: I've seen Kings of Leon, but I'm totally willing to get there early enough for a good spot to see Panic! At The Disco.

+ CHRIS CORNELL. Saturday. (Really, I don't think that requires any more commentary.)

+ A's birthday Monday. He can't decide what sort of birthday cake he wants, or where he'd like to go for his birthday supper. Suggestions for a restaurant that will not require travel anywhere near Reliant Park during the NCAA Final?

In a single commercial break switching between Meet The Press and Fareed Zakaria's GPS, I saw ads for Boeing, Bank of America, and the oil & natural gas industry.

And people think mainstream media is impartial?

Right.

Oh, hey, Tom Ricks is on MTP, I guess I won't turn it off just yet.

ETA: Aaaaand, in a second commerical break, ads for:
Dow
Northern Trust, wealth managers who seek to minimize taxes (their words)
America's Natural Gas organization

a. LJ is still not sending comment notifications. This sorta sucks.

b. The manuscript is OUT. \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ (We'll ignore how angry I was that the Chief waited until last night to ask me to re-analyze every data point from four replicates of an experiment, which involved requantifying pixel intensities for at least ten cells for each of the four conditions tested.)

c. J is the awesomest. (That is totally a word. If you look it up in a dictionary, I'm fairly certain her photo - or one of a woman ducking away from a camera - will be in the entry.) She sent me photos of the practice courts at Indian Wells today. Nole! Rafa! :D :D :D

d. I am going to go have the world's biggest margarita, and then I am going to sit upstairs in the balcony at the House of Blues and laugh at whatever jokes John Oliver tells, because it has been that kind of day.

e. It is entirely possible that there are two tickets for the final show of American Idiot in my name. :)

f. I'm assuming there's going to be a

help_japan set up, if there isn't already? In any case, I hope everyone's heard from any loved ones they might have in the vicinity, and my thoughts and good wishes are with them/you/everyone in Japan.

Current Location: gettin' the hell outta Dodge

Have y'all been watching the situation in Wisconsin?

Go, Red.

I was a member of the UW TAA, the Teaching Assistants' Association, when I was a grad student. Generally the Chemistry Department treated its TAs well, but that was not the case university-wide, and with the TAA's help and collective bargaining, we had the best health care I have ever had. Ever. (I have since worked exclusively in medical schools that are physically located in or contiguous with a teaching hospital, so that's pretty sad.) We were also able to have tuition waived as part of our salaries, paltry though they were, rather than having additional monies removed after taxes. Honestly, I have no idea how I was able to pay my rent when I look at my tax records from my first year, where we had to pay tuition out of our $12k/year pre-tax salary. I remember some months where my take-home pay was $545, and my rent was $425. The rest had to cover all utilities, food, and other needs for the month.

Teaching assistants and research associates couldn't have done that without the TAA. Individual students and departments wouldn't've have had enough leverage with the university. Fair pay for fair work, with some social benefits. That didn't seem like too much to ask.

It is my understanding that at this point, the unions have agreed to many of the salary and benefits restrictions that Walker has demanded. The only reason for him to continue to force this issue is to deny public workers the possibility of collective bargaining, to break the unions.

I've heard the argument that public employees are getting health care and salary on the public dime. But the amount of money a public defender or a public school teacher makes in comparison to what they could make in private practice is a pittance. These are the people teaching and taking care of (y)our children for 8 hours a day, responding to health emergencies, making sure (y)our streets are clean. Surely they deserve the ability to negotiate as a group for issues relating to compensation and work-place environment conditions.