Chaos Theory: Geekitude

What's Going On

Advent Calendars 2015
A list.
I won NaNo 2014
NaNoWriMo 2014
I won NaNo 2013
NaNoWriMo
2012 Ravellenic Games!
Camp NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo
2010 Ravelympics!
My Swurl page
Aggregates a bunch of journal-y blog entries together. Convenient!
Ravelympics
Knitting and crochet and all kinds of projects, competing to be finished within two weeks and change!
National Novel Writing Month
Saturn Return Can Bite Me
My beta test blog over on Vox, astrology-related.
Knitting Olympics 2006
I was a gold medalist!
The Spanglemonkey Awards 2005
Best Internet Variety Show (and Good Luck Getting Anything Done, Ever) in 2005!
My Bloglines blogroll.
Fine. There you go.
I am the Minister of Chaos
Like you were surprised to hear it. Heh.
My Blog Threat Level Is:
The Feminist Valentine Blog Awards.
The Spanglemonkey Awards

* Spanglemonkey's Best Site From Which to Steal Links Shamelessly in 2004
* Best Blog Title Based on Ian Malcolm's Dialogue in Jurassic Park, in 2004
BugMeNot
Be a rebel. Screw registering. Read stuff.
Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled
My new craft blog, to give the "Craft Projects" photo album a bit of purpose.
Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews
Yes, I started a booklog, mostly for summer reading. Eventually, I'll even add reviews to it.
My NaNoWriMo Novel Site

If you're interested in that sort of thing.

Quotes

mightshould:
"I'm coping. That's a major accomplishment. Anything else is bonus."
Mary Rodgers:
"So I asked the shrink: When you're depressed because of actual things that are depressing, are there any drugs that can make you feel better? And he said no, which was even more depressing."
David Sedaris, Happy-Go-Lucky:
"I figured my post-college life would be pretty much like the one I'd been leading for the past decade: work some little job I didn't have to put much into, then come home and do my own stuff. It was the life that most of my friends had, and half my family." "It's a consequence of putting stuff out there--you're going to get reactions."
Kristina Marusic:
"There likely aren’t a ton of people on this planet—let alone within your geography or social circles—whose moral compass, sense of humor, Netflix addictions, dietary restrictions, and idiosyncrasies sync up with yours closely enough to make you want to hitch your wagon to them for the long-haul (and the internet is making us all even picker)."
John Oliver:
"Let this be a lesson that you absolutely don’t want to fuck with someone who has the patience, attention to detail, and sustained anger to crochet their resentment into a handmade garment."
Gail Donovan, quoted in "Knitting Yarns" in the essay "Knitted Goods"
"I love taking what is basically a long string and constructing a three-dimensional object. I love thinking about how somebody figured out how to do that!"
Amber A’Lee Frost:
"It’s not just bad for a person to rely on their weakest skills for survival; it’s unsustainable and immiserating."
Michael Che:
“You know what else makes you do crazy things? Crazy,”
August and Annie/Isaiah, "One Last Stop."
"Does it ever, like...I don't know. Make you lonely? To love somebody who can't meet you there?" "Sometimes. But, you know, that feeling?" When you wake up in the morning and you have somebody to think about? Somewhere for hope to go? It's good. Even when it's bad, it's good."
Katie Brennan:
"The Office taught me that love isn’t always an immediate burst of rainbows and butterflies; sometimes the best kind of love is a quiet, enduring, and steadfast process. When you really love someone, you know they are worth putting in time and effort. Even if you entertain the thought of someone else during the process, i.e. you get yourself a Karen, you know they can’t compare to your person. No amount of time can make that connection fade, so whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, you wait for your stars to align. It might take your company casually hosting a Casino Night, or a heartfelt post it note attached to an Office Olympics “medal,” but eventually your time comes—and when it does, it’s pretty much the best thing ever."
Jane Tyson Clement:
"We don't notice the strange way things come about while they are coming about. It is only afterwards that we see the pattern..."
"Candace Kahn," Almost Romance:
"You can't blow off a good story just because it's challenging."
Nick Cave:
"I prefer to say that I have made, for reasons of survival, a commitment to the uncertain nature of the world. This is where my heart lies. I suspect it always has."
Ted Lasso:
"I love meeting people's moms. It's like reading an instruction manual as to why they're nuts."
Ask Amy:
"My point is that you can lay out your plans, but the world might have other ideas."
supercrayon:
"But I kept thinking there’s a future me a week or a month or a year away that is through this. That future me is not plagued by uncertainty, they know what happened and they’re looking back at how things played out. I liked to think that future me was sending strength and love to present me. Sometimes now, present me in fact does send strength and love back towards past me. Your future selves know what happened. The you of a week or a month from now knows, and has already started to plan your next moves. I hope strength and love are rippling up and down the timeline between yourselves."
Christina Long (Washington Post)
“WHY ARE NONE OF MY INTERESTS WORTH ANYTHING IN DOLLARS,”
Michael Diamond:
“People get frustrated when they can’t see the future,” says Diamond. “The future looks scary if you’re telling them it’s just staying at home for the next 12 to 18 months. You shouldn’t really be that surprised when at least a fraction of them get angry."
Seanan McGuire:
"Please stop trying to solve me. I'm not a problem."
Morrie Morgan, in "Work Song" by Ivan Doig:
"I don't know any cure for being myself. The lotion for that hasn't been concocted yet."
Jason Mendoza:
“Sometimes you just gotta huck a Molotov cocktail at a drone and see what happens.”
Augusten Burroughs:
"But impossible is a concept that makes one's heart laugh and throw peanuts at the television."
Augusten Burroughs:
"Even if things aren't catastrophic now, catastrophe has always followed me. Life unfolds, right? All the time, it's unfolding, and I'm going to follow it."
Augusten Burroughs:
"My life has never really been “happily ever after.” I’ve always had conflict and disaster follow me around like a shadow, and I can’t really believe that will suddenly stop now that I’m happily living in Connecticut with three dogs. We’re just going to have to see."
Jacqui:
“If you have a job where you’re not coming home with stories, it’s time to leave. That simply is our qualification. Healthcare helps. Benefits are nice, but oh my god, how do you not come home with stories? It is the easiest qualification, but it’s true. My feeling is if you don’t have a story, it wasn’t a good day."
armeowda:
"Many people can cast their affections broad and bright as floodlights, but others of us are laser beams, and when something actually trips our attraction/affection sensors it can feel like a certain kind of instant precision strike, and it can leave a mark forever."
Stan Tatkin
"There's actually nothing more difficult on the planet than another person."
Lani Diane Rich:
"What doesn't kill you makes you stranger."
Heather Havrilesky:
"Do they let me write these words because I’m good at it, or do they let me do it because I’m an entertainingly crazy person who is slowly but surely unraveling before 50,000-to-100,000 sets of eyeballs each week?"
Justin Peters:
"The simple lesson that Millionaire taught me is that if you want to change your life—either by winning a lot of money on television or by some more prosaic means—at some point you are going to have to take a risk. Unless you are John Carpenter, you will eventually have to step into the unknown, bet on yourself, and hope that you are making the right decision."
Leslie Jones
"Women are the same as humans."
Anne Lamott:
“If you’re paying attention and making your own life as beautiful and rich and fun as it can be, you might just attract someone who’s doing the same thing,” she said. “You can give up on tracking someone down with your butterfly net.” “Never give up, no matter how things look or how long they take. Don’t quit before the miracle.”
Seanan McGuire:
"If what I say doesn’t help you, ask someone else, until you find the person whose reply tells you how to kick the damn door down."
Grangousier:
"It's 2018. There's a realistic chance of pretty much anything happening if it's ridiculous enough."
Joy:
"I feel a constant low level of stress every day, just by virtue of existing in my environment,"
Fancy Feast:
"When she was on a bad date, she would go to the bathroom, hit her nose until she got a nosebleed, and excuse herself, because it was easier to punch herself in the face than suffer the consequences of rejecting a man."
Ber:
"Get your freak on, screw the powers that would deny you."
Lee Bradford:
"Lee? Why does all this weird shit only seem to happen to you? Well, disembodied voice from nowhere-statistically, it has to happen somewhere."
David Neal:
“Nobody told us that our ‘15 Minutes of Fame’ would include shaming, insults, threats, etc. And that we might not have even asked for it.”
Debbie Harry (???)
“Chaos is a great factor in making art happen."

March 24, 2017

No one eats like Gaston

Let's calculate the science of where those dozens of eggs are coming from.

Posted on March 24, 2017 at 08:09 PM in Geekitude, Science Dorking Goodness | Permalink | Comments (0)

The return of Blanky McBlankFace naming convention

‘Footy McFooty Face’ on track to win fan vote to name potential San Diego MLS team (Washington Post) OF COURSE IT IS.

"The ownership group bidding for the team apparently didn’t learn from others’ mistakes and have decided to leave the responsibility of picking a name up to the masses. With more than 2,000 votes as of Friday afternoon, Footy McFooty Face was light-years ahead of the other contenders, including the San Diego Bad Hombres.

“Note — Soccer Club or Football Club can be added to names, and similarly, a nickname or mascot can be added to traditional names,” the San Diego group posted to Facebook. “You, the fans, will help us decide on that later!”

What could possibly go wrong?

Lots, actually. Just ask Mountain Dew, the U.K.’s Natural Environment Research Council or the Philadelphia Zoo, all of which turned to the masses for help naming something and all of whom got burned.

When it asked the masses to name a new apple-flavored version of the sugary soda in 2014, Mountain Dew wound up with this doozy: “Hitler did nothing wrong.”

The Natural Environment Research Council asked the masses to vote to name a new $288 million research vessel last year and ended up with “Boaty McBoatface,” Footy McFooty Face’s inspiration.

And when the Philadelphia Zoo tried to crowdsource a name for its newest baby gorilla months later, they got “Harambaby,” in reference to Harambe, the gorilla that was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child fell into its enclosure.

No surprise, none of those names stuck."

Posted on March 24, 2017 at 08:08 PM in Current Events and News, Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm still delighted by all the bad reviews of Iron Fist.

As Caroline Siede continues to take the iron fist for many of us, the delightful reviews continue:

"Plenty of superheroes live by a code. Superman fights for truth, justice, and the American way. Spider-Man knows that with great power comes great responsibility. Captain America just doesn’t like bullies. And Batman believes we fall so we can learn to pick ourselves up. Eight episodes into Iron Fist’s first season, “The Blessing Of Many Fractures” finally manages to articulate Danny Rand’s own superhero philosophy: “It’s a long way to China, I’ll figure it out before we get there!”

I also was cheered to find an end review and three other articles that will tell you what you need to know to watch The Defenders without actually watching the show. THANK YOUUUUUUUUUU.

"The Iron Fist Has One Job Which Danny Rand Decides to Not Do: The Iron Fist has one job: to defend the passage to K’un L’un, the magical monk land, from the Hand, that group of evil ninjas that kept showing up in Daredevil. Danny decides this is dumb and he would rather return to New York to run a company he hasn’t set foot in since he was 10 years old. He complains whenever someone points out this makes no sense and generally makes terrible decision after terrible decision as the leader of a business—presumably because while others were learning math and science and how to do their taxes Danny was learning how to punch ninjas instead."

Yeah. There's also this horrible bit of news:

" In other words, Danny Rand is a weak Fist. But that just means he has room to grow. (Finn Jones has said that won’t happen until several seasons in.)"

SEVERAL SEASONS OF THAT SHOW?!?!?! OMFG IT WOULD TAKE YEARS FOR HIM NOT TO SUCK?!?!? NOBODY WANTS TO WATCH THE FIRST SEASON AND YOU'VE TAKEN BUZZ OFF THE DEFENDERS! PLEASE, NO MORE!

The 7 Strategies for Defending Your Problematic TV Show or Movie—and Why They Don’t Work

Posted on March 24, 2017 at 08:05 PM in Geekitude, Non-Whedon, Non-Reality TV | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 23, 2017

Are Disney Villains Going Extinct?

Good points from Lindsay Ellis.

Posted on March 23, 2017 at 06:09 PM in Geekitude, Quarterlife Crisis | Permalink | Comments (0)

Songs from The Flash/Supergirl "Duet."

I loved these.

Posted on March 23, 2017 at 05:25 PM in Geekitude, Non-Whedon, Non-Reality TV | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Beauty and the Beast”: Disney’s Long, Slow Evolution From Gay-Coded Villains to Live-Action LeFou

They're improving.

Posted on March 23, 2017 at 06:02 AM in Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 22, 2017

Good revenge-ish story

When someone asks you to stop flying your drone in the face of a large dog, PAY ATTENTION.

"Turns out, him suing me was the best thing to ever happen. When we got to small claims court, the judge basically laughed away his claims that I had intentionally trained my dog to attack his drone. But little did he know I was prepared."

Posted on March 22, 2017 at 06:52 PM in Geekitude | Permalink | Comments (0)