Love In The Asylum

You've probably already seen this on the rest of your flist, but in case you haven't, Livejournal is implementing a change to make the gender field a required fill on new account creation, and limiting your choices to male and female. No other, no unspecified, just the binary points. If you are trans or genderqueer or intersexed, or if you don't want your gender out there because you don't want to be judged/dismissed/hit on/assaulted, or if you don't want to be targeted by intrusive, sexist ads, well, that's just too bad for you. Because Livejournal has advertising to sell, dontcha know.

synecdochic has a much better post here about why this is stupid and offensive, and how you can contact LJ to register your protest. I'll...just be over here, wanting to punch the whole world in the face.

I am...cautiously optimistic about this term thus far. Still two more classes to go to tomorrow, and it's hard to make value judgments based off one day of lessons, BUT.


My English prof seems kind of fantastically cool. Really nice, really enthusiastic, and really Canadian *grins*. The reading load is pretty heavy (I have to read 150 pages of Jane Eyre by Thursday, EW), but the work load's pretty reasonable. Two papers, a 6 page and an 8 page, plus a bunch of non-graded reading responses. I can totally handle that. I think the topic - how contemporary literature functions as an extension of, a reflection of, or a rejection of older literature, has the potential to be facinating. So yay for English class.

I love my Japanese class so much so far! It is really tiny! Only 7 people counting me. And the sensei is extremely nice and easy to understand. The best part, though, is that I feel like the class, both in terms of what we're learning and the other people in the class, is a lot more on my level than my class last term. A lot of what I learn is going to be review, but I'm okay with that since I don't feel I grasped it that well before. And everyone else in the class is at a similar level of flailing around trying to remember words and how to end their verbs, which is such a nice change from last term, when I felt like I spent the whole time apologizing to people who were better than me for sucking so much. And having it only 2 days a week is going to make my life waaay easier. So yeah, good class is good.

Re: that whole thing where LJ laid off some of their staff and everyone is freaking out because this is LJ and what are we here for if not to overreact and blame people - I'm not all that worried, really. But in case LJ does go down in a flaming pile of wreckage and internet memes,  you can find me on insanejournal and journalfen, both under the name masterofmidgets.

So I maybe possibly have a job. Maybe. I filled out the application, and the hiring person said she'd call me next week for the interview and orientation (that was more or less verbatim), which to me implies fairly strongly that my being hired was more or less a given provided they don't find out in the intervening time I lied about not having blown up that bus of elementary school children. I mean, it's a job at the movie theater, not exactly the most demanding of all careers - presumably the same hiring standards as most of New Mexico, which is looking like you'll show up vaguely on time and mostly sober. So yeah, job. At the movie theater. Joy. Could be worse? Could be better, but could be much much worse. Money is money, I suppose, and there is that tiny thing where I have to pay tuition next year.

Lj-wise - new layout! I was getting kind of sick of the old one, cute as it was, and it was way too narrow for the long ranting posts I tend to make.  And this one is really really pretty, I couldn't resist after telyanofcelore showed it to me! Which means that she and I now have the same background, which is also the background we have on the community we just started for the  sons_of_don- the Torchwood AU where Ianto, Rhys, and Andy start their own paranormal detective agency/crimefighting group. At least we have a different background on tw_postsecrets - which is off like gangbusters by the way! We've made I think 5 posts so far, and had one post by someone not us, and about 20 people joined/watching since we started up last week. It's exciting!

I'm not the only person who sometimes wakes up and randomly wants opera, right? I just, yesterday I realized I didn't have any opera at all on my computer and it made me very sad. So now I am raiding my grandma's stash for opera CDs to rip so that I can have opera any time I want it when I go back to school. Puccini ftw, people.

Why is it so hot here? Honestly! I mean, I get the "it's the desert, it's the middle of the summer" thing, but still, this is ridiculous! I was out with telyanofcelore this afternoon and when we passed the thermometer on the mortuary it said it was 104 degrees! DO NOT WANT. Esp as my grandma keeps turning the cooler off because she says we don't need it. Arrrrrrrgh hooooot.