Fire in the Hole

Okay. I think the LJ people really lost it now. Apparently, according to this article, us longtime users are worth shit to LJ. They don't care about us, the people who've been paying their goddamn salaries with our fucking money for years and years because... I don't even know why. Why are we of no interest to you, LJ people? Whatever did we do? Whose asinine idea was it to actually say that out loud and then fucking share that article proudly to all your now seriously pissed off longterm users? I can't believe anyone would be so dumb as to do any of that, and here you are doing all of it.

So, how about we all tell theljstaff what we think about their big coup here? Let's give them a reminder that we are actually capable of reading and understanding when someone is trying to bullshit us (or, as in LJ's case, being a goddamn idiot openly). They said they like freedom of speech. Let's give 'em a piece of that.

And now I'll go back to channel my ever growing aggressiveness towards LJ into writing Brad Colbert and Laura Cadman. Thank God for Generation Kill and SGA.

My nemesis-sis-sis, I mean. Apparently, she deemed it was safe to go back to her idiotic ways as a registered user. Or maybe she needed so long to figure out how to set up a new e-mail address, one never knows.

Anyway, she managed to get at me in her second forum post. What is her goddamn problem? She pissed off a mod, not me. She got banned for a reason. Let's see how this plays out. I foresee a lot of fun in my imminent future...

That is to say, mackenziesmomma and I didn't. Instead I was at the airport three hours too early because I mixed up mac's departure and arrival times (don't ask...) but at least I could start translating the newest Minor Characters chapter. It then took us at least an hour to actually get to our rental car (apparently, today, everyone who arrived wanted to rent a car at Hertz) and another half hour to get to our hotel, the Rosewood Sand Hill. I was a little...erm... crept out by OMG HOW FRIENDLY everyone was but I guess it's a German thing (we don't take well to someone being friendly to us... no, seriously, we think it's impolite if a sales attentant for example asks as how we are when we enter a store. The best way to treat us is to completely ignore us until we get to the cash out, purely for research purposes of course (I will get into that later). And it's... err... amazing.

We also went to Stanford - mostly in search of food but we also would have taken a couple of undergrads or probably grad students in my case - but they didn't like us there (mac says there were rude hand gestures involved which unfortunately I didn't see, seeing I still didn't have sunglasses at that time). In the end, we found food at the local shopping mall. Also, I found sunglasses there. Yes, seriously, I did. I will now be able to walk through San Francisco without constantly having to shield my eyes and look weird. Yay! I did not, however, get either tea or a coffee mug that said "Fear the Tree!" (not joking here) because mac kept me from spending money on those items. Thank you, mac.

The evening ended at the Rosewood's restaurant, the Madera were we spent *mumbles unintelligibly on a really good dinner. No room for desert, though. But enough time for a dip in the pool and the hot tub by the pool. Can I please just stay here for the rest of the trip? Yes?

Oh, wait, I nearly forgot. Research purposes. We actually stumbled over this when we did research for a wedding in the Protect and Survive 'verse that was supposed to be really fancy and ended up with the Rosewood. Mac was so nice as to give me a night here for my birthday then and this is how we ended up here in person and now we're, you know, having a closer look at it for that wedding. And lo and behold, the bunnies are multiplying by the minute. Can anyone say "shower smut" and "How is it that someone who's able to fly a million dollar plane can't open a simple bottle of champagne?"?

Until I'll touch down in San Francisco, I mean (and a week until I'm going to meet mackenziesmomma \o/). I'll set off first to Heathrow and then on to SFO on Monday morning and touch down on late Monday afternoon at SFO. I don't want to think about the jetlag yet but it'll be total fun, just like it was last time (2009, Seattle and Vancouver)... oh, okay, the jetlag in the US was a lot less bad than the one I had when getting back (but then again, I'd been awake for 36 hours and had to spend a couple of them at fucking Charles de Gaulle which is, I'm sorry, probable the most terrible airport of the entire western world when I arrived back home...) but... err... let's really not think about any of that yet.

However, do any of you US citizens know what fun things us non-US citizen have to do when we want to visit your beautiful country? No? Check this out.

I'm especially fond of these three questions that we all have to answer (sometimes even twice, depending on whether the respective airlines are part of the programme or not... if they aren't, we have to do this in hard copy, too...):

A) Do you have a communicable disease; physical or mental disorder; or are you a drug abuser or addict?

B) Have you ever been arrested or convicted for an offense or crime involving moral turpitude or a violation related to a controlled substance; or have been arrested or convicted for two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentence to confinement was five years or more; or have been a controlled substance trafficker; or are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities?

C) Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?

Who, in their goddamn right mind, would ever answer any of those questions with yes? Seriously. Anyone? Also, on an even funnier note, that entire thing now costs $14. $14 so that the Department of Homeland Security (thank you, Stargate, for making me always start typing Homeworld Security) can grab all our data and hog it to do things I honestly don't want to think about. Yippy.

Oh, and before I forget it: don't worry about the big bang story. I'll take my mom's netbook with me and I think the hostel has free wi fi (otherwise, there will be thousands of coffee shops) so I'll be good. I'll also be available, so if any of my flisters are in the vicinity, just drop me a comment or a message :) And if there are any of the European flisters interested in anything US they'd like to have - small, non-electronic, non-perishable stuff - just do the same. I'll see what I can do :)

Ha! 12,555 words which means I'm now at seven finished chapters and that I've written a little over the half of the required word count for het_bigbang. I honestly didn't even think I'd get this far so phew, maybe this is actually doable. If I stop pushing my word count for other stories and start actually churning out words and words and words for the Big Bang. But, me being me, I just discovered another issue that I keep having with the story. I start to get the ugly feeling that Evan Lorne is way, way, way OOC in this one and I'm starting to panic again and can please someone have a look at it? Not beta it, just look it over, see if he strikes them as OOC and if they can find what's actually causing that anxiety over him being OOC. Someone? Please?Anyone? PLEASE?

*runs around in panicked circles like a headless chicken

So.

Now that we all made our (justified) anger known... there's an apology from shahar81 and I thought it would only be fair to translate it as well maybe without comment, since, if I'm not mistaken, some of the commenters were English speaking.

( I really TRIED not to comment on it, I SWEAR! )

On a side note: arielen posted an older article (she said it's from1998) on sexual orientation in fantasy that's a little outdated but still well worth reading, seeing as it's well-phrased and logical. Unfortunately, it's in German and a trifle too long to translate (but take it from me, it really is much more logical than... that other thing). Sorry, guys :S

What I mean? Oh, just roughing up things in forums. Or rather just one forum. Yeah, it's that Stargate forum again (and quite seriously, if they keep annoying me, I'll have to give names after all).

( What do you mean, you think I LIKE roughing up things OVER THERE? )

PS.: Thank you so much, asugar for another year of paid account (and, susequently space for five new userpics)! You totally susprised me :D You rock!

Yeah, yeah, I'm pissed off again. What's gotten her in a snitch now, you're thinking and well, I'm telling you: censorship. No really. I'm not exaggerating.

( Art. 5 Abs. 1 GG is what some people should really read again. And again. AND AGAIN. )

Because, see, I'm kind of tired of pussyfooting around in a certain part of German Stargate fandom. Yes, I think that "Oh, but it's just a hobby!" and "If i'd have to write realistically, I could only write about what I know and that would be boring." are stupid bullshit excuses for laziness and a lack of interest in the sujet you're writing... which is kinda weird because uh, isn't writing something you need to be passionate about, in every aspect of it (i.e. from your characters to the setting, the plot and the language)?

( Not for the faint of heart... and those who think they can only be my friend when I'm being all nice. )

or there's just bad news, depending on where you're standing.

( Something that was probably inevitable and something that came out of the blue... DELICIOUS IS BEING SHUT DOWN OMG! )

On a wholly unrelated note: I think I probably listened to the Pearl Harbor main theme one time too many because for a few days now, this has been haunting me:

You stand there on the dais and you look into the water. Your eyes see rusting steel and salt water but in your head, you see something else. You see blood and chaos, soldiers, sailors, everyone and no one, lipstick on foreheads, markings that don't make any sense and decide who's to live and who's to die. You blink and then there's just the sea and the ships underwater again and you only hear the soft wind and the little waves against the dais. You know it's impossible but you think you also hear the faint echo of banging against ship walls and men screaming in agony. You resist shaking your head because you know you're just imagining it and you can keep it together without the headshaking. You could keep it together even back then and you will still keep it together. You never lose composure because nurses never do. But you remember. You remember that it was the end of the world as you knew it.

Oh. I think I wrote my first real drabble. Huh.