HAPPY NEW YEAR'S everyone.

May 2010 be happier, more prosperous than any year we've ever had.

And a toast to good health for us all in the new year (I figured we needed this one too)

I can not believe it's 2010. Where in the hell did this decade go?

So when did they switch writers for the holiday specials? This shit is actually funny! And relevant! And offensive (but that's standard)! If I see one more Obama-getting-the-nobel joke omg. BUT YES OMG FUNNY. I'm using to laugh AT not laughing WITH. Wow.

I swear it's not just the booze talking.

OMG DO WANT: crash, read fanfic, wake up to presents.


HAVE NEW YEAR EVERYONE I LOVE YOU

ETA: AHAHAHA OMG "DED MOROZ ANSWERS LETTERS" AHAHAHAHA

"Dear Pamela Anderson,
I'm sorry I could not grant your wish this year, but you could at least be grateful I haven't granted the last seven wishes of Rustan from Novosibirsk."

"Dear Vladimir,
I will not be granting your wish, and if I'd known what you wanted the video camera for I wouldn't have granted your last one either!"

"Dear Yulia T. from Kiev,
I will gladly grant your wish to be the citizen of a country whcih is the biggest supplier of fuel in Europe - I am enclosing a Russian passport."

AHAHAHAHA OH SWEET JESUS.

ETA2: OH MY GOD SERIOUSYL 2 BOTYTLES OF CHAMPAGNE IN LESS THAN AN HOUR

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You all suck.

Old lady in Wal mart who tried to slam your buggy ahead of mine saying I'M IN LINE NEXT and when I said didn't you see me there, you reply 'no,' go to hell. I'm 5'9" tall in a bright red coat. Fine, take my spot, the next aisle over went twice as fast, haha


Bitch in the SUV in the Wal Mart cross walk. You don't get to yell at me. It's a crosswalk with STOP signs everywhere. Guess who had the right of way. Me, walking. Shove your SUV up your ass.

To the couple in the Barnes & Noble, if you have to act like idiots get the hell out of line and don't glare at us when we call you on it. We don't give a shit who spends more on whose parents, who makes more household money and no on needs to hear you have this much drama over buying a fucking monopoly game.

To the bitchy server in Star Bucks, you're so lucky I didn't call the manager on you. You slapped that spoon so hard back into the dirty water bucket that it splashed me over the counter and went into my coffee so yes, you get to remake it because I'm not drinking a 4$ drink with god damn dish water in it.

Barnes & Nobles, why is your manga selection down to 2 shelves and your new age/eastern religion section equally small yet you have a Twilight section bigger than both of those combined. This is why I shop Borders

Giant Eagle workers, I pity you. New Years Eve + massive snowstorm meant every human in the world was in you at one time.

ETA - Screw you too Panera bread. The bagels you boxed up so nicely for me were BURNT.

Also Dad you need to be more specific when you send me for things. You said get wild bird seed. I saw it and got you two bags. don't whine, you now have 80 pounds of seed. Be happy I lugged it around

Here's hoping.

Now to get out some chalk, and start drawing. Just read somewhere, not a resolution, a revolution.

So, it's 11:15 and hence only 45 minutes left until the holiday, but:

-there is a tree, decorated and sparkling with shiny lights in our living room.
-my mom is on her way home from the hospital.
-there isn't as much food as there usually is, but there are a few of my favorite holiday dishes as well the essential Novi God ingredient - champagne.
-there is hilarious Russian programming on TV.
-I am sitting in the study, where it's quiet and warm, and updating my LJ/DW.

I will take this, universe. Thank you.

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So, I had a lovely pity party yesterday, I wish y'all could have come. Today I woke up to realize I'd written 500 words of the original novel last night, which is terrifying and awesome, as all original work is, at least to me.

So, this has been a year marked by changes and by growing up and by dealing with things and by adjusting and by coming into my own.

Yes, shocking, I know.

I shall try to ramble on this for a while.

In January was the first meeting of the StandWithUs (SWU) Fellowship program I got accepted to. The first meeting was basically 20 of us in a room talking about life and politics for 2 hours. It turned into a giant fight. Afterwards Ophir, the director, said summed up the entire experience that was to follow, for better or worse: "we are ALL that annoying person in the room. You were chosen because you're the people who always question, always nitpick, always have to have their opinions heard and their agenda taken into account. So yeah, working together is going to be an experience."

( More about the SWU experience and IPRiDE - coherent thoughts I'd never managed to put together until now, with links )

( A few select posts from February - December of 2009 )

So, like I said, this year's been full... stuff. I switched majors again, I settled on my current program. I finished my novella! My first original full length work! I went to a Madonna concert. I met lots of really cool people, on and off zee intrawebz. I wrote about things that were not easy to write about. I am happier now than I was last year, in the general life-direction sense, if not in the more short term sense of my grandmother possibly dying in the hospital and my family and myself struggling to cope.

This year begins on the cusp of a change, for me. A pretty big change. This year my family situation is changing - the holidays are spent differently than we spent them last year, and not just because of my grandmother's illness. Next year will likely be more challenging and in any case, my family life will never be the same. These are all things I have to accept. I also have to accept my grandmother will likely not live to see 2011.

2010 is my year. And by that I mean that I was born in the year of the tiger, which happens once every 12 years, and 2010 is once again "my year" - the year of the tiger. In a week, I will turn 24. I want to make the best of this year. I want to get the maximum things I can out of what's left of my school career, I want to write. I want to feel like I'm doing something, going somewhere, and not just wasting time standing still. I want to work hard. I want to take care of my health.

I want to have fun, I want to laugh. I want to make new friends and continue to hang out with the new friends I've made in the last few years. I want to deal with things I've been meaning to deal with. I want to write things that will the world a little easier to live in, for me and for others. I want to continue working, striving, getting better.

I love you, 2009. I love you because I don't believe in hating years, or months or days, not really. I love you because I love every day I get to be alive and have my family and friends and choices and above all the opportunity to make myself happy.

I recently told miarr, on her birthday, that every year life gets a little better. It's just how it is. It's a fact. And while I have all kinds of issues with MY birthday, I will stand by that statement now, at the beginning of the New Year. I will say that life gets better, every year, because we're alive longer and we get to learn and love and lose and change and grow. Because, while there are circumstances beyond our control and things that happens to us regardless of whether we're ready for them, we are better with every passing year.

I wish you joy and happiness. I wish you challenges - rivers and mountains and deserts. I wish you to feel stronger when you've crossed them, to learn and better yourself as a result. I wish you excitement and fulfillment and good health. I wish you life.

S Novim Godom.

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according to the stars

( Year 2010 Overview -Gemini )

( Year 2010 Overview -The Sheep )

Good morning. Last day of this damned year, and it certainly didn't get here fast enough for me.

Speaking of time once again, check out this link from jaylake. Look at the little people, and Where's Waldo the horseless carriage. Clicking through embiggens. Is that word in the dictionary yet? Should be.

I won't do a round up of this year, because it doesn't deserve it, and I've certainly said enough about it already. Goodbye, so long, glad to see you go! LOL

What's it feel like being in 2010?

It's snowing here. Bad. For like the next 5 days.

The good - I love snow

The bad - I'm trapped in my house with my parents.

My aunt threw a texas hold 'em party which went much better than I expected. Especially since Mom decided that she wasn't talking to me. I'm not sure what the hell I did.I was still asleep when she left this morning and when she got back she ordered me to take something to grandma's. I said not now ( i was washing clothes). Apparently that pissed her off. She didn't talk to me until after dinner. Didn't even want to hear all the phone messages I took. Shrugs. Half those people were going ot be at the party so let her be embarrassed.

My 11 y.o. cousin brought his Wii fit so I could check it out. Those are really really slick. I want it. Then again tomorrow, if I can't move, I might change my mind. My cousins were shocked. I doubled my score on the second try and just kept getting better (i DO have good hand/eye coordination)

Lots of good snacks and wine and poker. So it turned out decent. Now if i could only get past my block on that Pompeii story. I have a week now. EEP.

This is a good summary of my life. Music, lyrics, and Russian poetry combined. Of course, I wish this was the summary of it instead, but. Internets, life has kind of sucked lately, on a deep and overwhelming level barely phased by the small ways in which the universe has been kind to me recently. Sigh. Self, please remember to act your mature best when you're done with the pity party.

Also, today I found out J will not be able to make to my birthday :( She'll come over at some later date and we'll go out for drinks or something, but... she won't be there as part of the group hang out thing I'd like to have going, and that is going to suck so, so bad.


So, recently I've been struck by how much music in Hebrew I actually like. This was not the case 5 years ago! This will not be a post about current Israeli music I like though, in this post I will briefly reference the Israeli songs that hold a special place in my heart. They combine something I think of as so essentially Israel - embracing fucked up situations and themes and finding new ways of coping, of making fun, of looking at things differently without denying the essential fucked upness of the situation. In other words, these songs are full of delicious crack. They have all, also, been pretty huge hits.

(My translations of the lyrics are extremely literal and not literary - not much of the meaning is lost, but the lyrical qualities of the rhymes are.)

( Read more... )

And of course, I don't feel like any post about Israeli music is complete without a link to Ivri Lider's gorgeous cover of Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl".

Everyone whose comments I haven't replied to: I am so sorry, I am dealing with some stuff right now and that makes me less than 100% OK. I promise to get back to you asap. &hearts

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Back in the 20th century, decades were easy to name. "Eighties," "Nineties," etc. But what do you call the first decade of the century? The "Zeros"? And the upcoming decade...is that the "Teens"? At any rate, a decade is changing, and we need to give the one that is passing a name so we can make sweeping generalizations about it. One old-fashioned suggestion is the "Aughts." Other folks have suggested the "Naughts." But I like the guy who suggested the "Naughties."

Now before I wax sentimental about what Life in the Naughties was for me, let me throw my two cents in on the issue of whether, in fact, the decade *is* actually changing. There is a contingent that thinks 2010 falls into the Naughties, and not the Teens. They're the same group that thinks the 21st century started in 2001.

What?

Any computer programmer will tell you, you don't start counting at 1, you start counting at 0. When a child is born, we don't instantly declare him or her one year old, we wait a year. For the first year of their life, they are 0 years old. Likewise, the first year of the century is 2000, and the first year of the upcoming decade is 2010.

So, about those Naughties. I don't know what people will say about "America in the Naughties" or "the World in the Naughties," but the Naughties for me began shortly after I left academia and moved to San Francisco. I lived in SF for another seven years, worked at the same job, moved a few times, bought my first home. Then, in 2007, I moved to Arizona and bought my second home.

In the Naughties, I entered my forties.

In the Naughties, my writing was hit and miss. I worked hard with a writing coach to finish the novel I started in 1993, then buried it away on a computer disc and spent the subsequent years writing and completing a "tour-de-force" website (not my words) and a couple fan fiction epics (my words, hee).

In the Naughties, there were dates and girlfriends, but no one really special, which was disappointing. I gained a sister-in-law, a nephew, a niece, a grandnephew, and lost an aunt, a cat I had for nearly two decades, and my father. My sister became estranged from the family.

And in the Naughties, I made a lot of friends. When I contemplate what was different about life before the year 2000 and life now, the one thing that seems to characterize this decade for me was ATPo. ATPo was officially born on Jan. 1st, 1999, but it sat on the interwebs for another year and a half before the discussion board was added (June, 2000). After that came the ATPo Posters, and then the Move to Live Journal, and then the Gatherings. There were kerfuffles and our patented Takeovers Of Threads Started By Trolls, essays on the shows that were actually (Long) when warned to be so, group fan fiction and Scythe-Murders to initiate new members.

When I think of the Naughties, I will think of spending entire weekends on ATPo episode analyses when I should have been dating, and wonderful spaghetti dinners cooked by midnightsjane and washed down with fresne's wine. I will think of atpotch skipping through Queens. I will think of the train ride I took one August to get from the ATPo gathering in Chicago to my brother's wedding in Denver, with a stop-over to visit ann1962. I will think of friends on the internet wondering where I was--and how I was--the night "Origin" aired. I will think of a lo-tech website I created ending up on a cable television show.

When this decade started, there was no such thing as an ATPoer. In 2006, I was hanging out with "old friends I had met for the first time" in England and France (like londonkds, ninerva, and etrangere). Today, I am thinking about how life can take odd left turns that change everything.

For the first time ever no one left me a prompt. Either everyone is busy or no one trusts me to finish anything (both highly possible). I really still could use one.

From midnight to 2 AM me and kitty tried to find whatever the hell it was dancing on the roof. In the light of day, there are no prints in the snow so it must have been a night bird or something up there. I thought it could have been a raccoon or opossum.

I still can't move on my writing. Gah. Hate this.

The Morning After
Author - cornerofmadness
Disclaimer - not mine, all rights belong to Arakawa
Rating - PG-13
Timeline- Post series
Pairing - Roy/Riza
Summary - He has just the thing to cure her
Author's Note - while technically a stand alone, this can be considered a sequel to bob_fish's Everyone's a Critic (Bob_fish dared me to write it)

* * *
( You look awful )

God I did not sleep enough tonight.

And now, I am off to meet Americans! Last year this turned out quite well. This year my choices are between hanging out with them at a bar or something later tonight and giving a tutoring session thereby making money.

Hanging out with visiting foreigners is always more fun and exciting than tutoring but... money. I AM TORN.

We'll see after I meet them. Although honestly I'm sure they'll be ADORABLE and I will not be able to help myself.

(Thoughts this morning: "meh, I don't look pretty enough." followed by "Oh well, Michael [the other SWU attendee] will look pretty enough for both of us". Seriously that boy, gorgeous does not begin to describe.)

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could hardly move on my story at all. this thing is killing me.

At least dinner came out good. I cooked up smoked mozzarella/artichoke ravioli (from costco) with a lemon alfredo sauce and served it up with Sebeka's chenin blanc (a bit dry for my taste, good with food, not so good to sit and sip)

Mom wanted me to play a game with her. no problem. I played and just when i usually come back on the computer, Dad, who hasn't moved from the couch in four hours comes sprinting back to make sure i can't get on (i mean he was watching nothing on tv and whining about it, why didn't he come THEN)

I get on finally and someone has changed the password to my email. bah.

1. I got a check from SWU for that time I helped them out with screening candidates! This is very happy making, except that they managed to misspell my last name. After I wrote it for them in an email and also THEY HAVE IT ON FILE because I was part of the project last year. Another case of Russian surnames and vowelless languages getting along so well.

2. In semi related news, I've been thinking lately about why I was so bothered when Ophir, our campus director last year, made an offhand comment in my presence about how most girls at the group were not exactly the wild partying type - implying they were ~squares~. If it had been any other girl from the group standing there, they would have laughed and said "yeah" and made some semi insulting joke about Ophir right back at him, because our group was totally awesome like that.

But the point is, with any other girl Ophir would have good reason to assume things, because all the other girls were Jewish native Israelis, and so was he. So after interacting for a year, he could deduce their personalities and backgrounds. But me? Uh, not so much.

And I kept thinking it was silly. So what, what do I care if he assumed I was someone who'd never gotten trashed and made out with random guys and slept on a park bench? What was this, junior high? I don't need to prove my ~coolness~.

But recently I've finally been able to articulate why it bothered me so much. Why it always bothers me when native Israelis (again and again) take my behavior and analyze it as though it was coming from people THEY grew up with (a luxury I don't have) and using it to deduce my personality.

Because it's another symptom of "you don't exist". Your experiences never happened. All that exists in our understanding is how it works in us - in our school, in our neighborhood. We don't even bother to ask if any of that applies to you - we assume it does by default.

I grew up Russian Israeli. That meant a lot of things such as that I had different responsibilities towards my grandparents, different expectations in terms of my grades, different ways of interacting with authority. It also meant that I had no curfew, that I started smoking and drinking hard liquor at 12-13 years of age and that I spent most of my junior high years (grades 7-9) getting trashed at parties and making out with random people I had different levels of acquaintance with. It meant that as far as my parents were concerned, it was more or less expected behavior for someone my age. I got in trouble if I got 95 instead of 100 on a test, I got in trouble if I treated my elders disrespectfully. I did not get in trouble for getting drunk, getting high or indulging my horniness as a teenager - that's what being a teenager is for.

These are of course generalizations - they don't apply to everyone - but they are, generally, true. I feel silly saying this, because really, who cares, and plus it's not like I can sum up How My Experiences Are Different in a paragraph, but... saying it at least makes me feel better, I don't know.

I remember after a year in the military, my friend Alina and I compared experiences - we'd gone through the same training, though we were in different cycles as she enlisted 6 months after I did.

Me: God I am so fucking tired my my commander and every other Israeli on base treating me like I'm some girl who's never done anything but sit home and do her math homework on a Friday night. It's like they're afraid to make dirty jokes around me because I might disapprove, WTF! Although, I do like that they give me so much credit, assuming I'm little goody two shoes who would never do anything against the rules. It's mind boggling how much I manage to get away with.
Alina: Hahaha! You know what's really puzzling to me about your stories? You keep talking about how they always perceive you as this uber prude, whereas during my training everyone kept assuming I'm some kind of nymphomaniac who's fucked more guys than the average prostitute and would be the first to go violate any rule. They kept treating me like I was ~so wild~ which is SO RIDICULOUS considering you and I had the same exact experiences in highschool! You were actually way more into parties than I was! What is up?! I didn't even sleep with a single guy the whole time I was in training, either, so it's not like I was telling them all about my wicked ways 24/7.
Me: Oh, babe, but it's simple! We're Russian, so there are only two options for how we're perceived, for the categories we fall into with native Israelis. You're blonde and petite and social and so you're the whore. I'm sarcastic and chubby with brown hair, so I must be a total geek. That's it - there is no third option.
Alina: But... that's so stupid.
Me: And yet there's no category so far, in my experience, for native Israelis to classify a girl as bookish, sarcastic and yet social and up for anything. Like, it wasn't an automatic category in their highschools or something, IDK.
Alina: But... what are you saying? That either you were shoplifting, getting drunk, brawling and getting high or you got straight As, liked reading and classical music?
Me: THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I'M SAYING.
Alina: But... THAT MAKES NO SENSE. HOW CAN THOSE CATEGORIES BE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE? Why aren't you supposed to be doing ALL OF THE ABOVE?

Ah, truly a question for the ages. Heh, seriously, I had so many of these conversations in the first years after we graduated highschool and my friends started really dealing with Israeli mainstream society. It was like, "wait so... they're actually NOT LIKE US?" No, as a general rule, they're really not.

3. At Svet's birthday the other week I met his Mythological Ex. Or rather, the girl he's been hung up on for years now who's been very on and off with him during that time. Or, well, she dumped him over and over and he kept coming back for more hoping it would work out this time. I've only spoken to her for a brief time but my prediction is: it will never work out. Of course, that was also my prediction before I met her.

He met her a few years ago when he was selling crap from carts in some mall in Virginia, making enough money to travel for a few months afterwards and save up for Uni. Apparently her Uni was really close to the mall and they hit it off (I keep imagining paper_tzipporah's laughter at this story). She's Jewish and her parents are crazy or something wanted to immigrate to Israel (~make aliyah~) so she told him she was planning to move here. He, like any average Israeli, assumed she wasn't serious until she convinced him she was at which point he assured her she'd regret the decision as soon as she went through with it.

She hasn't regretted it yet, having lived here for almost a year. It's making everyone very O_o, let me tell you. She bought an apartment in Jerusalem for her family; her parents are immigrating this week or something. She volunteered for the IDF 5 months ago, went through combat-training bootcamp and now works as a photographer. Her baby sister enlisted last week.

(With the whole enlisting to the IDF thing, according to her people were also like: "WHAT?" followed by "...BUT WHY?!" followed by "Oh honey trust me, you'll want out in a week". EVEN THE IDF refused to let her enlist for the 2 years she asked for - she had to bargain them up from 6 months to 18 months. She doesn't want out yet. This is also causing everyone (me included) to go very O_o. Israelis are apparently terrible at understanding how foreigners work. This is not news.)

And Svet is HUNG UP on this girl. Like, when we were hanging out in NYC (Svet and I) when they were originally dating, he'd tell me about how, if they had babies they would be SO GORGEOUS since he's white and she's African American. I was like A. *facepalm* and B. ...tell me you are not already thinking about babies with this girl after BARELY MONTHS.

Currently she's working out of an office in Tel Aviv which is close to Svet's apartment, so she's basically living with him (she's offered to pay rent) as she can't go back to Jerusalem every night and sleeping in the office sucks. Svet is like OMG IDK DO YOU THINK IT WILL WORK OUT THIS TIME and I'm like bb, she's using you - very politely - as a convenient place to crash and a pretty face to wake up to in the morning. PLZ do not be reading any more into this.

Anyway, apparently I made a very good first impression as Svet called me the other day to tell me that she liked me so much "she said that if she were gay, she would want to marry you". Hey, listen, I am stocking up on those hypothetical marriage proposals. This brings the count up to 2.

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Scary Little Christmas
Author - cornerofmadness
Disclaimer - not mine
Fandom - NCIS
Characters Timothy McGee & Abby Scuitto
Word Count 948
Rating - PG
Summary - They know each other so well.
Author's Note - this was pretty much off the cuff, written for the 12_daysofficmas

( Nuns make me nervous )