wickedqueen.net

The post title is really only funny if you have seen my father perform a public service announcement from his childhood concerning the inadvisability of touching blasting caps on construction sites, imitating Willie Mays, with metacommentary by his schoolmates (”You could lose an arm or a leg… which you may need in later life. If you see them, call the police, or a fireman. Let HIM lose an arm or a leg… he doesn’t have as much later life coming to him as you do.”) Maybe someday we can put it on YouTube, along with my Scottish great-great(?)-grandfather’s admonishment that son, you’re going to college, and if you’re gonna drink, JOHNNY DEWAR.

However, the general thrust of the title does work with today’s topic, which is: Your Health & Safety.

1) Carry condoms. If there is any chance that you think you might be going to have sex with someone with whom you do not have a long-standing association, an explicit contraceptive arrangement, AND credible assurances of a clean bill of health, you should have condoms with you. Sometimes people do not want to admit they are planning to do something like this, because they think it is immoral, and people prefer not to plan behavior they think is bad even if they are likely to do it anyway, because they’d rather pretend they’re not. The morality of casual sex is basically your own concern,* but try to think about your past behavior (which is a way better predictor of future behavior than attitudes are) and just, you know, be prepared. Just because you have them doesn’t mean you have to use them. And you know, maybe someone ELSE will need one, and then they’ll owe you. Think of the backlog of favors you could accumulate. To this end, you might also want to carry around tampons, pain killers, and a hip flask.**

2) Wear a bicycle helmet, for the love of god. The other night I stopped at Trader Joe’s for a few odds and ends and the cashier, who I think was trying to be ingratiating, commented that, gee whiz, you don’t think about helmets and lights and stuff until you have a bike accident and then you sure realize that they’re a good thing to have! Actually, I have never been in a real bike wreck, various near-misses with idiotic motorists and that time I flipped over when I was 10 and still learning to use hand brakes notwithstanding. However, I do FEAR DEATH, and so I wear a bicycle helmet.*** Just recently frippy was in a bike wreck that cracked her helmet; as she remarked, she didn’t realize how bad it really was until she realized what it did to her helmet. She got off with a deep contusion in one leg, instead of a concussion or worse, because she was wearing a helmet. And of course there was that UW-Madison grad student who got hit by the UPS truck. As frippy points out, there are people who would never drive without a seat belt or stick their hands out of fast-moving passenger trains who blithely pedal around town with no helmet. BAD IDEA.

2b) If you are on a bike, do not ride the wrong damn direction in a bike lane. If there is any justice in the world, you will be hit by lightning, and also I will scream at you if you do it near me.

2c) If you are driving a car, follow the damn law and don’t try to turn left over bicyclists who have the fucking right of way because they are going straight through the intersection. I am talking to you, stupid woman at the intersection of Regent and Monroe with whom I had the misfortune to meet some time between 8:15 and 8:30 am on Friday, October 5th.

2d) But also, don’t try to politely yield the right of way to bicyclists when you have it. It makes me nervous, because you know, it’s never entirely clear if that’s what you’re doing or if you’re just momentarily distracted and about to hit the accelerator again and also, you do not control everyone else on the road! Just follow the law! We all (theoretically) know what it is, which cuts down on the potentially fatal misunderstandings, okay?

3) If you need help, do not be embarrassed to ask a stranger. Pretty much everyone would rather call 911 for you when you can still provide some relevant information than have to report finding your non-responsive or lifeless body. And in many situations, they may not realize you need help (and are not just, say, having an emotional meltdown in the ladies’ room) unless you tell them, so SAY SOMETHING. Embarrassment is generally not fatal.

4) Do not use Mr. Clean Magic Erasers on exposed skin, even if you are covered in pink stains. You will get a rash, which is arguably more unsightly than the pink stains and definitely more painful.

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*Readers, long-term and walk-through, may draw their own conclusions about my opinion on the subject.

+Some local legal restrictions may apply.

I know it’s because a lot of the early literature focuses on them, which makes sense because they were actually a new and vibrant online community when the early research was being done, but at this point I don’t think they’re terribly relevant unless you’re trying to explain the difference between hard core internet geezers and everyone else, which hardly anyone ever is.

So anyway, I got back from ASA and I’m tired because my internal clock thinks it’s midnight and the margaritas from happy hour at Compadres to celebrate my triumphant return have worn off.**

I met a lot of cool people doing interesting work, and I thought that our presentation on third places in virtual worlds went quite well, especially when you consider that it took place at 8:30 in the morning on the first full day of the conference. A more substantive post may or may not follow in the next few days; please recall that I now have 10 days to pack all my shit and move back to Wisconsin. And there’s a poster presentation at PARC in there somewhere, too.

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*Year chosen because that’s the year I started playing MUDs, but I was sort of late. And they didn’t really take off at my junior high, although I did inspire a few fellow orc slayers.

**After the conference, I felt it was best to gradually reduce the alcohol consumption rather than abruptly cutting it off.

My friend Crystal is fond of citing birth order research. Most of it has been discredited, as I always point out, particularly that bit about the authoritarian mindset of the firstborn,* but it’s hard to deny that children tend to get treated differently within the family depending on it. When my sister Sophie came to visit Hannah and me in Boston, she and Hannah both came over to my apartment one night for macaroni & blue cheese** and drinks. As I was grating cheese, the two of them freely admitted that as the eldest child, I was required to do absolutely EVERYTHING, and they never had to do anything, especially Hannah, who was barely even ever HOME for the last two years of high school.

Apparently this bias is not just limited to the home environment, but universal, because for some reason Hannah is able to get contacts from 1800contacts.com on an expired prescription that, in fact, she has UPGRADED ON HER OWN AUTHORITY in some kind of attempt to become the Bionic Woman, and every damn time I try to order contacts from them, my order gets flagged and I get a bitchy phone call*** about me needing an eye exam–which, of course, I have to pay for myself since I’m in California and my Wisconsin HMO won’t cover it. And naturally there is no cheap-ass department store Vision Center (WalMart, Target, Sears–anything!) within 10 miles of my place, so I’m stuck with the place with which 1-800-Contacts has an agreement.**** If $69 is not a good deal on an eye exam, I do not want to know.

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*For some reason, people always remark that I myself provide strong anecdotal evidence in support of this theory.

****”Site for Sore Eyes.” There’s a confidence booster.

Seriously. I counted, and I have moved five times in the last twelve months. It is FUCKING CRAZY.

Right now I am bleaching the shower. I have to do this every time I move, because I am basically a big reddish pink contaminant, and lately I keep getting these unbelievably bitchtastic landlords as if to punish me for the SAINTLY landlord I had for two years in Madison (Bruce at SRM; he is awesome).

A friend is giving me a ride to the airport tomorrow, thank god; I spent today running around doing last-minute errands–like shipping my bike, which as it turned out really shouldn’t have been a last-minute errand, but it’s done.*

So: I fly to San Francisco tomorrow. It’s a direct flight, which I guess is sort of nice, except it means I’m in the air for six hours and I don’t have an aisle seat and I have to get up every 45 minutes or so for a little turn around the cabin, lest I get a blood clot and die. The last time I tried to use this little factoid to maneuver the old guy in the aisle seat into switching with me, he just made a face at me and told me to get over myself. So at least I didn’t have to feel bad about making him get up every 45 minutes.

I will be wearing my anti-clotting prescription pantyhose, and taking aspirin, and possibly drinking heavily. I picked up four trashy paperback thrillers at the library sale table today for a grand total of $1,** so at least I don’t have to pay airport bookstore prices like I did on the way back from Chicago***–$35 I paid for TWO BOOKS, although I admit one of them was a hardback. It was the only thing that looked good to me. The books from the library sale should be better than staring at the back of a fellow passenger’s head for six hours, anyway.

Then a friend is picking me up at the SF airport, and I’m hanging out with her and her fiance (with whom I went to junior high, so I actually knew him first) over the weekend, and heading down to Palo Alto on Monday, where I have a motel room for the four nights until I can move into the room I’m renting in Mountain View. I start work on Tuesday. Oh, this whirlwind life I lead.

So you can understand why I may well not post for another ten days. But eventually there will be pictures of the Bay Area to make up for it.****

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*Let’s just say it’s probably a good thing I was wearing that wonder bra when I set out to talk the bike shop guy into packing my bike in an afternoon instead of, like, three days.

****And also of my empty Boston apartment, in case at any point in the future I need evidence that I did not, in fact, wreck the joint.

So apparently my father is feeling too elderly to produce a real Christmas tree this year.

Traditionally, we get a tree that fills the available space (as you can see from the photo in Dad’s entry). Since we have 12 foot ceilings at my parents’ house, this means a 10 or 11-foot tree. Otherwise it just looks tiny, and also we can’t use all of our many, many ornaments. But SOMEONE’S back hurts, and apparently this justifies getting an eight foot tree, barely visible to the naked eye.

He could have rented a couple of strapping high school boys or something to do the heavy lifting. Mom has lots of them.

Admittedly, he is driving to Wisconsin tomorrow to come get me and my various remaining possessions. Maybe we can put the tree on top of a stack of books or something.

I’ll be pretty busy, though, since I originally planned to be back in Missouri by the 16th, and consequently did not wrap ANY Christmas presents before I left. I will, in fact, be returning on the 23rd. Maybe Hannah will help me. She’s good at wrapping.

For instance: on Monday night, I snuck INTO the gym.

I didn’t really PLAN to. For the past week, my student ID has been working perfectly at the Serf, the campus gym that I favor. I figured it was because my re-entry paperwork had been processed* and, since they’d reactivated my MyUW and netID and stuff, facilities privileges were just included.

Then, on Monday, the first day of exams week, my ID generated a “not student, faculty, or staff” error when the kid at the Serf ran it. I have no idea what the hell happened. Anne says that IDs tend to work for stuff for a period of time after you’re not technically enrolled, so maybe it was working ALL SEMESTER and just finally got deactivated on Monday; I don’t know. Anyway, I looked pathetic and pointed out that it had worked on Saturday and didn’t officially admit that I know damn well I am not technically, CURRENTLY enrolled, and the kid at the desk said I could just go back to the office and talk to the people there.

Since the office is well within the Serf, past the locker rooms, I interpreted this as permission to sneak into the locker rooms, which is what I did. They’ll rent you a lock in there for a quarter and your physical ID; no scanning to reveal that you are scamming them.

So I got a decent work-out, but I am disinclined to keep trying my luck all week, and anyway, am now doing plenty of heavy lifting and exertion at home, what with packing up boxes and trying to scrub sticky residue off the walls and, this afternoon, moving most of my furniture into Carly’s basement. She’s a brick. Sal** is driving the truck, a task into which I weaseled him by looking pathetic and explaining that I have not driven ANYTHING since 2003, which is incidentally when I got my license in the first place. He is a brick, too.***

I hate moving. I really hope I like Boston. I shipped a bunch more crap to my storage unit there last night, but I am still worried about how much I have to cram into whatever vehicle we end up taking from Missouri. Of course, if I DO like Boston, I just have to move back in less than six months. Blargh.

I wanted to make this a more coherent entry with some kind of upshot, but all I can come up with is this: It’s a stressful way to end the year. Thank god I’m pretty. And smart. And can lift 190 pounds with my inner thighs even after a semester away from the thigh-specific weight machines.

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*The graduate school, apparently unwilling to spring for TWO SEPARATE WEB FORMS, does not distinguish between new and re-entering students. As a consequence, I have been receiving all kinds of mail, both postal and electronic, welcoming me to the UW, inviting me to gatherings, and… suggesting that I might like to live in the dorms. So I’m not even sure if they’re distinguishing me from the undergraduates, actually.

***Apparently the phrase “s/he’s a brick” is not well-known to many of the people with whom I regularly communicate. All I can say is that I learned it from reading Victorian era romances, and lately I have been very fond of it.

The good news: Unlike at least 95% of US airports, the Las Vegas airport does, in fact, have free wireless access.

The bad news: This is particularly relevant to me now that I am stranded at the Las Vegas airport until midnight.

Basically, America West dicked me out of making my connecting flight by running 35 minutes late and never issuing me a boarding pass for my American Airlines connection, which meant that when I arrived in Las Vegas, they were already putting standby passengers on the flight and there was no way in hell to get my boarding pass, even though I had IMMEDIATELY tried to check in at one of the automated stations–or as immediately as possible, since the gate agent who the flight attendants assured me would be able to tell me where to go to make my connecting AA flight just stared at me blankly and said, “Well, you’ll have to go back through security… I don’t know.”

The moral of the story is FUCK AMERICA WEST. Do not fly them. The American Airlines people were very nice and it is not their fault that the only thing available was an 11:45 flight through Chicago that will deposit me in St. Louis at 8 am tomorrow, with a real possibility of me falling asleep on the plane, getting a blood clot, and dying.

Don’t worry, I will ask the flight attendant to wake me. And I plan to drink heavily as a preventative measure. (Alcohol is a blood thinner! It is medicinal!)

Also, I have only been here for an hour, and I have already won $13.75. I have a system.

I’ve never understood people who got depressed about their own birthdays. Birthdays are great. For one thing, you get loot, and people pay attention to you–I have always enjoyed having people pay attention to me–and “Getting Old” was never a particular concern of mine, probably because I was so used to being two years younger than everyone in my immediate social reference group and mostly I just wanted to be of legal drinking age already, dammit.

That said, I am turning 25 on Monday and I’m depressed about it.

I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m Getting Old, exactly, but there are definitely aspects of my life that are Not Going As Planned. 24 was a very up-and-down year. Also it turns out I can’t have a “Probably Not Schizophrenic” party because women are typically diagnosed later than men.

And I have to move two weeks after my birthday, and I don’t know where I’m going to live in Boston, and I haven’t been able to find someone to take over my Madison lease yet, and I worry about money and logistics and my cats. I hate not knowing what’s going to HAPPEN.

I don’t even like the number 25. I dislike even-numbered ages, but I think being divisible by 5 is just as bad.* 27 will be a good age, and then at 28 I can have the “Older Than a Rock Star” party. 29 is prime; I like that in an age. I’m hoping my 30s will just be light on emotional turmoil, for the love of god.

At least there is going to be karaoke. Also Indian food. These things are good. I am going to get ripped and sing a lot of songs–I have a list, in fact, gleaned from the King of Clubs’s full karaoke catalog, which was available as a PDF on their website until said website started having issues. Bolded songs are those I have sung before; those marked with a star are songs I would particularly like to sing:

(more…)

Recently I’ve been having trouble sleeping. This happens periodically, when there is stuff occupying my mind. I am something of a brooder by nature, and so sometimes I end up lying awake for hours worrying about things, including, sometimes, that I worry too much and can’t sleep.* It probably doesn’t help that for the past few nights I’ve been reading that Al Franken book I got at the library booksale right before I try to sleep, as it angries up the blood, but novels with complicated plots are worse because once I start reading a story, I really don’t want to stop until I’m DONE.

Several people have recommended melatonin, which I plan to try. I’ve taken valerian in the past but I don’t know if it really did that much for me, although it certainly makes the cats all hopped up crazy, worse than catnip. My friend Laura said that melatonin helped her with pretty much precisely the same sleep problem, namely, having a brain that refuses to stop winding itself up over insoluble issues great and small, and if nothing else, a placebo effect might at least help me relax.

Last night, however, when the landlady’s carbon monoxide detector sounded its THIRD FALSE ALARM this week at ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING and the fire department came because the detector automatically summons them and so of course the landlady’s dog, who distrusts everyone,** went batshit crazy barking, so the landlady kept yelling at him to be quiet to absolutely no effect, and then I had to get out of bed and get dressed and let the firemen in to check MY room for carbon monoxide, which of course wasn’t there, either, just like it hasn’t been anywhere in the house any time that the alarm has gone off this week, and meanwhile, the separate security alarm kept emitting low battery (I suspect) beeps EVERY THREE MINUTES just as it had been doing ever since I first got home around seven–last night?

Probably melatonin wouldn’t have helped with that.

ETA: And it’s like CNN is reading my sleepless mind…

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*I’ve heard that this is the point at which you should worry about your worrying. That doesn’t help, either.

**I have been here for well over a month now and he still freaks out every time he sees me, although he did finally stop growling.

My new favorite song, thanks to Pandora.com radio, is “Nuclear War - Version 2″ by Yo La Tengo. It’s call and response with an adorable-sounding kindergarten class or something.

They push that button
They push that button
Your ass got to go
Your ass got to go
…
You can kiss your ass
You can kiss your ass
Goodbye goodbye
Goodbye goodbye
…
They push that button
They push that button
Your ass got to go
Your ass got to go
Whatcha gonna do?
Whatcha gonna do?
Without your ass?
Without your ass?

I find it particularly satisfying while studying for prelims, for some reason. Probably the same reason that for my opening number at sociology karaoke on Friday, I selected “King of Pain” by the Police.

There’s a butterfly trapped in a spider web
That’s my soul up there…

Yeah. Three more days.