hrafn

Updated Feb. 2017: I don't know if I will ever be able to read dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction again. It is all far too realistic, even more so than when I first got into it.

(Re-dated so I can more easily find the damn thing; started 3 Dec. 2009.)

Broken down by various categories; to be updated as necessary and as I remember.

( lists, and if you don't want anything resembling spoilers, not even 'this book is bleak, this one is not,' then don't click the damn cut tag )

I've read a lot of books this year; here are some I found particularly noteworthy:

"Dishonourable" Mention:
KJ Parker's Scavenger trilogy. Getting this one out here first because it was the most unpleasant thing I've read in ages. It's fantasy, but I think it also works as psychological horror, hence a great deal of the unpleasantness. The narrator is a very bad man, not that he knows what he's done, because he has no memory of his past, but everyone who recognizes him wants to run away or kill him or possibly seek revenge in some other way, and they won't tell him his name or what he's responsible for, but it must have been pretty fucking awful.

He's not sure he wants to know his past and keeps trying to avoid bloody conflict and do the right thing, but he can't: People keep trying to kill him, and he's very good with a sword. There's a lot of blood, in small conflicts and in the bigger picture (political intrigue, invaders, horrible people engaging in horrible tactics all over). Also, he may be the harbinger of doom for civilization!! Psychologically intense, though often lightened by what I recall as frequent, almost flippant writing/character thoughts about the horrible things going on. I read it because I was going through 15 Epic Fantasies That Stick the Landing; it's deserving of its place there.

It's hard to recommend this because I don't want to be the cause of others' pain, but I can't say it was badly done. (Also: Author likes to lovingly detail things like how charcoal burners make charcoal; this seems to just be a thing he does, 'cause in another series, featuring a fencer and a siege, you get technical details pertinent to those things. I didn't find this tedious, and in the Scavenger trilogy it was a nice bit of relief from "oh no what terrible thing will happen next" and "oh no what terrible bit of history is about to be uncovered o h N O.")

That one is going to stick with me for a long time. ANYWAY.

Books I can more easily recommend with a clear conscience:

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time and Children of Ruin. First contact stories! Obsessed scientists!! Non-human sentients who get big BIG chunks of plot!!! Explorations of "how do communication when we're so very different"! I loved both of these a lot. (I tried reading one of his other books and could not get into it, alas.)

SA Chakraborty, Daevabad trilogy (3rd book out next year*). Fast-paced, interesting characters and plot, very witty, set in a city/world inhabited by the djinn - and their part-human descendants. I really have no idea how things are going to get all sorted out in the third volume and I can't wait to get hold of it. (There are a lot of books coming out in 2020 I'm eagerly anticipating.)

John Scalzi, Interdependency trilogy (3rd book out next year*). Fun space opera, with political intrigue, family history posing a problem for the lead character who really didn't -want- to become Emperox but here she is, and some serious problems to sort out. One of the protagonists says "fuck" a lot. No, really, /a lot/. (She's fun.) I think this is the first year I've read any of Scalzi's novels, and I've found them all enjoyable, but this trilogy is better than Old Man's War or Redshirts.

Ann Leckie, The Raven Tower. This probably deserves to be top of the list for "Books I want to make everyone read, it's just so good." I enjoyed her Ancillary trilogy - this is nothing like them, in plot, setting, or writing style. It's amazing writing storytelling.

Yoon Ha Lee, Machineries of Empire series (3 novels, plus short stories). I've seen people raving about the first book (Ninefox Gambit) for a while, but because I tend to be skeptical of hype, I put it off. I was wrong in my skepticism, but the upside to that is that once I started, I didn't have an agonizing wait for the 3rd volume. One of the only books/series/anything where once I finished, I immediately had to find some fanfic, because I wasn't ready to move on to anything else and say goodbye to those characters, or their peculiar world/universe/calendar. Could fight The Raven Tower for first position in "favorite of the year" (and might win, if only because most of the characters are amoral bastards who know how to get what they want; otoh, the [redacted] in the Tower knows how to [redacted]).

Jeff VanderMeer, Dead Astronauts. I'm cheating because I haven't read this yet, but the other novel set in this world, Borne, is on my "top books" list, along with his Southern Reach trilogy. (I expect to have a copy in my hands on Wednesday.)

Garth Nix, Abhorsen books. Yes, I really hadn't read these until now. I think I got him confused with some other author of YA'ish fantasy novels who people said was overhyped, so I kept passing them by? Again, I was wrong to do so! These are great!

Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys. Surprisingly intense. Not sure where the story is going, which I like. I read a couple of her other books before starting this series, and have been pleasantly surprised. (The other books weren't bad; these are just better/more to my taste.)

Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth. A lot of people don't like the casual modern writing that is apparent in the first chapter, but it seems like a completely appropriate way to write, given the attitude and personality of the teenager who is the title character. She was a really fun character to follow around her very strange and fucked-up world. This book hurt me but I'll read the sequel when it comes out (next year*).

Kate Elliott, Crown of Stars series. This was a big investment in time - 7 books and all of them pretty hefty. I've never enjoyed a medieval setting more; there were so many details, and the characters in the Catholic Church-equivalent were actually fully rounded people rather than some kind of basic nun/priest stereotype put in because In This Setting You Have To Have Them. (Most of the characters were, but I found it particularly noteworthy for the religious protagonists, and there were several.) This ought to have a place in "15 Epic Fantasies That Stick the Landing" because I didn't feel like it was a slog to get to the end, and things got wrapped up pretty well. (I also read her Crossroads trilogy, which was very good, but broke my heart in several places, and I haven't gotten over that.)

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven. A lovely, beautifully written post-apocalyptic story.

Also worthy of mention but I am running out of steam:

Seanan McGuire, Middlegame
Samantha Shannon, Priory of the Orange Tree
Nick Harkaway, Gnomon and Angelmaker
Martha Wells, several non-Raksura books (binge-read those a previous year)
Harry Connolly, Twenty Palaces books (am I mad they didn't sell well enough for there to be more? yes)
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake trilogy
Rachel Hartman, Seraphina & Tess of the Road

(I kind of want to make an "Actual Dishonourable Mentions" list, for the books that I read because they were hyped as good and/or amazing but not deserving it, IMNSOHO, there are REASONS I distrust hype, but that feels mean, so I won't.)

*NEXT YEAR'S GOING TO BE SO GOOD!! Also coming up: The third volume in Kameron Hurley's brutal, bloody fantasy trilogy, and I have to make the tough call between putting myself through All That again, or avoiding the horrors and going into the conclusion without much memory of who any of the characters are and what they've been up to. I've been worrying at this decision for a couple of years now and I think I may be coming down slightly in favor of "All That, again."

Holy shit I just learned NK Jemisin has a book coming out next year, too????

Well, obviously: find a new job, because I hadn't found one before I quit, but I couldn't stand the notion of spending one more day in that place, even when the boss would likely only be there 1 out of every 5 days I was.

I'm so tired. I knew I'd hit a nasty level of burnout in late May, and then things slowed down in terms of sales, which was very good, but then the boss got on my case for several things, which was extremely upsetting/exhausting, and I only quit last Wednesday so I haven't had much time to relax, nap, sleep late, etc.

I don't know what kind of work I even want to do at this point.

- No retail, that's for damn sure. Fuck that. I never want to talk to another person again. (99.9% of the customers were benign to pleasant, but there were just SO MANY for a couple months!)

- No other garden centers, in part because see above but worse is that everything I've heard about most of the other local garden centers contains Enormous Red Flags. Why do so many of these business owners/managers have tendencies towards various kinds of flagrant abuse?? (Also: low pay, and very few year-round positions.) The one I've heard good things about is unreachable without a car.

- No Admin Assistant positions, despite all that shit on my resume, I will want to throw myself off a bridge the first week on the job, those positions are so. fucking. tedious. and I can't stand being bored unto deep depression like that again.

- Landscaping crew - probably not. They start at 7:30 in the fucking morning and doing physical work early in the day works badly with my metabolism. And they're mostly seasonal positions.

- Take another look at architecture has come up with a fucking vengeance lately and part of me wants to but.

So I went to visit my parents after absconding from the job. My dad, and then several of my mom's friends, all said, "Hey what about looking architecture again?" and

First of all, I haven't touched CAD software in ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm years so even if they didn't throw my resume in the trash immediately for a completely lack of architectural experience, it would come up in an interview and basic competence with current software is expected so much I assume it is a given.

Secondly, there was that whole situation 5, 6 years ago where a god was all "Stop looking that direction, no really, STAHP" and I agreed (and somehow was able to put off crying about it for a couple years, but it will probably never stop breaking my heart), because around about that time I realized that architecture would always be disappointing because what I -really- want to be involved with is land work of some kind.

And I could avoid mentioning the weird spiritual stuff in an interview but I'm still going to have to find a way to not-lie about just what the fuck I've been doing the last several years, especially since I -did- work for an architecture firm for a while (as a proofreader).

"Well I realized my real passion is landscape work which is why I quit looking and so I'm looking for work in your lovely architecture firm because uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

It's not that I have a firm stance against lying but if I'm going to come up with something not-entirely-true it still needs to be true enough I can say in and believe it myself. "I need a job and have some vestigial design skills" or "I figured hey, why not try" isn't good enough. (What the fuck interviewer would hear that and go "yeah, -that's- the candidate we want.")

- Other landscape-ish jobs. Hey so all the postings I find working in other industries for landscape restoration/monitoring/design/whatever require education and or certifications and or many years of previous experience that I don't fucking have and maybe someday I might but in the immediate future I need a job that doesn't require it.

So anyway, my last job, which was the only job I've ever had that was mostly not-boring and that I mostly enjoyed AND that I was (mostly) good at, has kind of crushed my hopes/dreams/beliefs that going some plant-flavored direction was a good idea (I realize that "one terrible boss at one job" is insufficient data but all the obvious moves from here seem like dead ends), and that on top of my previous career aspirations going nowhere at significant expense leaves me feeling like there is literally nothing I want to do, or care about, and why bother finding a new passion or firing up an old one, it will all end in tears, and what now.

How do I play the interview games right when all I want right now (and feel I can reasonably expect, maybe) is to not be bored and make a decent income at it.

We are now rarely having nighttime lows below freezing, which is nice, but there have still been far too many days for my liking that don't hit 50F. I'm very, very tired of it being chilly outside.

Most of my outside plants seem to have survived their first winter here! One of my roses is in rough-looking shape - after I pruned off all the dead-looking branches, there is only one left. However, it's normal for roses to send up new branches from their crown/below-ground parts, so we'll see how it is doing in another couple months. On the other hand, the rose that was in the worst shape after being dug up last spring has LOTS of new buds on it! I need to get several of the roses bigger pots, which is easy to do because work always many, many, many large black nursery pots lying around; the real challenge is getting big pots home via bicycle.

Some of the pots that looked like they had nothing surviving in them - and had no labels, because of course I'd just remember their contents! - are just now showing signs up having been planted with sedum bits last fall. Assuming deer or some other villainous wildlife don't dig them up, like they have one of the other sedum pots, they should fill out nicely this year.

I'm going to Portland at the end of next week, primarily to get to the orchid show. I miss those folks, and I really really miss having access to the diversity of plants available in Portland generally. There are some shops I want to visit, too, including one that I am pretty sure is new since I moved away, and the owners of which stock with less common varieties of aroid-family (philodendrons, etc.) plants!!! Definitely want to check that out. I really truly I mean it this time have little space for new plants at home but.

I am feeling very sad in advance of the trip, because I still miss Portland, a lot, and it's going to be too short a visit to see everything I want to and I know it will never be enough because Portland can't be my permanent residence, but my god I wish I could visit much more often.

Work is still a demoralising horror show in many regards, and I haven't yet found a better place.

It occurred to me just yesterday to ask The Powers That Be, and then see about confirming via divination, if it is necessary for me to stay at the current job in order to get to Whatever Better Thing is next.

It seems the answer is "no."

This is comforting and really awfully tempting because . . . I could just decide I'm 100% fed up and quit and probably be financially ok (or at least: not run out of money) until Next Thing comes my way.

I'm not sure what I'd do with weeks (?) of free time, though. If I had a car, the answer would be obvious: I'd get out of the city A LOT and go on many, many day hikes. I don't feel all that inspired to explore the city itself, though, either on bike or by bus, and I don't have a big list of projects at home that I want to devote hours and hours and hours to, so I guess I'll keep going to work, and trying to not let it get to me (the eternal struggle!).

In the meantime, I have one 4-day work week, because the fucking owner STILL has me on only 4 days a week, and then next week is a 2-day week because of my Portland trip, so there isn't too much hell in between now and a lengthy time away.

When I got outside for errands yesterday, I went to a part of town I never have cause to visit, and it was lovely to finally see spring flowers popping up. I wish I'd taken pictures of one group of them, because I'd never seen such before, and assumed they're a native species, but are they in my guidebooks? They are not! They reminded me of crocus - though I can't be sure they have the correct number of petals, only that they were cup-shaped - purple/magenta, but fuzzy. There were also some lovely little claytonias growing in another bed just down the street from that, and those I do recognize as native species.

I miss being places there are more wild plants. My neighborhood is very limited in that regard. I felt strongly compelled to buy a sweet little native shrub from work a couple weeks back - "fernbush" or "desert sweet" because of the shape of its leaves and its fragrance (both foliage and flowers). It's a pretty small plant right now, and reputedly a slow grower for its first few years, so I probably don't need to put it into a bigger pot until next year. Maybe by the time it needs to be repotted, I'll be living somewhere I can give it a more permanent, in-ground home.

Is it just me/my computer/browser/something or has anyone else suddenly lost their old style?

I checked my reading page and it's all in completely different colors and fonts and stuff and what it is NOW hurts my fucking head. The same stuff has been ~magically~ applied to my journal as a whole, it seems, not just the reading page.

ETA: godssssssss it appears that it is JUST this one theme ("Night Sea" for Tranquility III) that is suddenly broken. It won't preview in the theme-finder thing :( but other themes built for the same basic style show up right, so I've been thrown into some default theme (which doesn't appear to be what the FAQ claims is the default theme) with eye-killing fonts & etc.

EATA: I've found other journals using my same (old) theme and they load up right without being saddled with misery, so what the actual fuck is going on with my journal?? (I am using some other almost-as-good theme in the meantime but :|)

Aaaaaand it's working again here.

. . . I don't know why. I just tried reapplying it and magically it is unbroken now.

It's hard for me to summarize the last year the way I easily could do with other years. My recollection of it is emotionally flat in a lot of ways.

That's not inappropriate considering my baseline mood/emotional state for the last 7-8 months.

Unlike many previous years, which were characterized by near-constant angst/despair/longing-to-be-elsewhere, I've felt fundamentally at peace here in Bend. Yes, there've been weeks, even months, where I was profoundly unhappy about my job, dealing with some more intense kinds of anxiety about it (well: less "the job" than "the boss"), and some other periods of extreme emotion, to say nothing of occasional wellings-up of grief over missing Portland, but despite all that, I have peace here, like I haven't had any other place I've lived in at least 20 years (though I didn't really become cognizant of the lack-of-peace until around 2008).

Some of it has to do with the place, the land. Perhaps most of it. Some of it is probably due to having a job where many of my tasks are enjoyable and meaningful - although the times when I do feel the old traditional longing-to-be-elsewhere, it is often doing some of those tasks, because I know that job is not where I most need to be, I can't find the kind of fulfillment I want there.

But that is a major thing: this is the first job I've had where I enjoy significant parts of my work, I'm not constantly, chronically bored out of my fucking mind, and that is a near-match for a lot of my overarching values.

Bonus: I don't know when the last time is that I came down with a cold. Not since moving here. I've had some mild congestion a time or two, but never got whacked with fatigue, aches, hideous congestion, etc. (I was hoping for a response like this to the place; Denver was similarly good to me - whether it was the place or what I was involved in (or a combination) I don't know.)

I think I am largely recovered from my previous job, though I am still running into the same mental blocks about cooking, just less bad than they used to be. I haven't gotten back whatever energy it is I need to bake bread - that fell by the wayside less than a year into the job - and when it's time for dinner and I don't have leftovers, I almost always feel a quiet kind of despair because I'm going to have to cook and oh gods. Why. The effort! I don't want to!! (Breakfast poses no challenges. Breakfast happens on autopilot, takes about 10 minutes, and I always look forward to it because it's always good.)

I am not sure if this is going to correct itself as long as I'm still dealing with the stress from the current job, though if I were clever enough to find some very simple recipes using stuff I always have around, that would go a good way to overcoming the mild blind panic of "I have nothing tasty to eat! And I must cook /something/! BUT WHAT. WOE." and end up with something edible but not delightful. I'm sad that I am a worse cook than I used to be.

(I cooked a pot of beans today in preparation for making a bunch of frozen burritos - another big cooking task I used to do regularly but lost the energy for along with the baking. There's hope!)

I haven't yet done any year-ahead divination; tomorrow, probably. I thought that maybe I should look back at what I got from last year's divination. A couple things stood out.

One was a tarot spread I did looking for an overall theme, as well as insight into different areas of life. The theme I got from that one was "loss," and at the time I knew it had to be referring to leaving Portland. And that has certainly been on my mind, a lot. More recently, I've lost (more like, had taken away/redirected) a set of devotional practices I'd been keeping up for about 6 years. It's getting easier than it was the first few weeks, but I still feel vaguely out of sorts about it.

Related to that, I'd done another reading looking month by month, and some of those seem to line up pretty well with the move and settling into things here. The month of August also had an interesting note, that there might be something happening that would shake things up on a "foundational" level - and late in August was when the new pantheon showed up, and that's what lead to the redirection/shake up of my old reliable comfortable devotional routine. sigh

It also brought good things! It is on the whole good and I'm glad! But those are much more subtle and less obvious than the physically-oriented aspects of the whole mess.

There were a couple other major spiritual things that happened late in the year, both having to do with accepting/stepping into my own power.

The one was just one more step in a process that's been going on for years. I finally reached a(nother) point of accepting some things They've been telling me, and the most recent bit of that - was good. Not merely confusing or weird or yet-another interaction with the primary deity involved that leaves me feeling hurt (again) and confused.

The other was horrible and harrowing with a good outcome. I didn't realize until after things cleared up that I'd really had anything to do with that outcome - I'd called on my closest Powers for help, and when it was clear things were ok, I thought, well, They fixed it. Then one of Them told me, "You did that." What. "You did that." Well; along with asking Them to please help, I'd made a few general statements to the effect that, if I really do have power in that particular place, which They keep telling me I do, then things were going to go this way, and that's just how it was going to be. And that's how it ended up.

I don't do much magical work. I've read a lot of theory, but I'm fundamentally lazy and also fundamentally ok-enough with things to just not bother, though of course I ask the Powers for help with lots of things.

So this result - I've actually been kind of freaked out by that ever since. Gods fixing things because I asked? That's as it should be! Me having the ability to . . . fix . . . things. Just. Like that?! That's unnerving. (Do I know just what I -can- influence? No. That would require more experimentation, and also, desire. ... Yes, I really probably ought to try influencing things at work to be more pleasant, in ways other than panicky pleas to the Powers to keep the boss out of the office, or at least away from me.)

I think I have felt fundamentally powerless, or afraid of pushback, for so long that I really don't know how to deal with anything that suggests otherwise.

Anyway. 2018. I achieved a major goal - a couple major goals, even! yet my overall reaction is that, well, *shrug* that happened. I still feel like I'm in limbo a bit, like I'm here but I haven't quite settled in place, haven't quite found a groove. I'm still largely holing up at home when I'm not at work. Going out anywhere takes extra effort, and there's little within easy reach that I find appealing enough to make the effort for. That's not what I wanted when I moved here, I wanted to be getting out of the city regularly to spend time with the landscape outside of the city, and is one of several things I hope will improve in the next year whenever it is I get a better job.

I'm done for the year. I won't be back at work until at least Jan. 2. (I was assuming I -would- go to work on the 2nd but at work today one of my coworkers said she wasn't sure when we actually ARE open again, so IDK. I know we have an all-staff meeting on the 4th, and based on what else my boss had said, I was assuming we'd be open on the 2nd as normal, but now I am not sure! ISn'T THIS GREAT.)

I'm not thrilled with a week+ of not having paid time, largely because this job pays me the least of any job I've had other than that one data entry position in 2003, and I'm just barely making enough to cover basic expenses, but on the other hand, having a long stretch of time off is really appealing.

So at the meeting our first Friday back, we're supposed to come with ideas for the upcoming year, like big projects we want to do, changes we think might be good, that sort of thing. I don't really have anything particularly major to bring up - some things to do with signage, but *shrug* No truly big projects, or changes in how we do things.

But today at work one of my coworkers said maybe I ought to get more involved with house plants, take over some major parts of that work, because I know the most about house plants of anyone there - maybe I could take over the weekly buying, and do some propagation, things like that.

It's nice to get that kind of recognition, and I . . . I would really love to do that. BUT. Two hesitations: the person who already does most of the house plant work seems to really like it, so I don't want to do anything that would take it away from her - and she doesn't do much else with plants, that's her one "plant care" outlet (she also orders all the garden art, fertilizers, tools, things like that, and keeps the main retail building orderly and nicely set up).

Secondly, I hope/expect to not be there more than another 5-6 months, so how involved do I want to get in making significant changes? Not very.

However, I've already got the beginnings of plans in place to get us to start selling orchid potting mix, finally. We used to, then we stopped, sometime before I started there. But we get 1 or 2 people in a month asking about it, and it's not like it will go bad sitting in storage, and there aren't that many places in town that sell it, or even just bags of orchid bark.

Anyway. It would be a kind of a dream come true, to get to really be in charge of the house plants there, but. I don't want to take on a lot of work and then leave and have all that effort gone to waste, or left for others to pick up . . .

I got to pick plants off the weekly truck last week, and it was GREAT. They had some really cool stuff!! I wanted to get more but with the holidays (and not-being-open-for-business) I restrained myself. Already some of my picks have sold - also some of my suggestions to our buyer from a few weeks back have gone out the door! Some of my choices were based on "these plants have sold well in the past" and some were intuitive "YES THAT" grabs, but it's really gratifying when my ideas (or: my following those weird nudges) work.

I pulled some tarot cards the other day to see if I could get an intelligible answer to "when am I likely to be leaving this job?" and it was - clear and not clear. Well; there was an answer that looked very clearly like "change in February" BUT ALSO the signs looked more positive for later in the year. That's the same pattern I got when I asked a few weeks ago. I haven't tried to pry more details out, to figure out WTF -is- likely to happen in Feb, and why that won't immediately turn into leaving my current job, but given how many times I've been told to NOT put more effort into things I'm doing there, I think it's reasonable to expect I won't be there another full year.

Yesterday was not so bad at all.

The event during the day was somewhat lightly attended, which was nice because it wasn't hard to keep up with, but not so good because it meant we didn't many people in, and the whole point of having an event is to get more people in during the slow season.

At the end of the day, my boss told me that having a December event really has to happen earlier in the month - last weekend would have been best - since we're already busier then.

Well, when we first discussed dates, I said I thought the 8th would be good, and he'd agreed, but when I said I would be out of town that day and could not change my plans, he said it'd have to be the 15th, because "events are your responsibility so you need to be there."

I think this is basically nonsense; there was very little if anything I did yesterday that couldn't/wouldn't have been handled by someone else.

(Part of the low turnout is possibly pretty directly my fault - I put off listing the event in many places online while I was waiting on details to get finalized, and then I kind of forgot to post it, and then it was real close to the date and at that point I shrugged and said "fuck it" and also ". . . I don't want to deal with a crowd anyway." You know what this job is teaching me? Dereliction of duty, that's what, and reveling in it. I could write a whole lengthy essay on how my attitude and work ethic are being affected here, and the weird mix of feelings I have about it all.)

The party also went fine. My boss and his business partner buy a bunch of things for a gift exchange, and over the course of the exchange/gift swapping/stealing, I had my hands on the following items: a box of ammo, a rather nice folding knife, and $100 worth of gift cards to a growler station.

I outright traded the ammo for the knife seconds after unwrapping it, and then had the knife stolen back by the original person when the ammo was stolen from him. Then when I went to unwrap something else, one of my coworkers (and assorted "intuitive" feelings) sent me to a really lightweight box, which was full of empty packing material - the gift cards were taped to the inside of the box flaps.

I half expected someone to steal those from me because beer (or cider), but at the end, I still had them. I might have held onto them, because that would get me a lot of pretty tasty hard cider, for quite a while, but:

The way they run it is that if anyone is unhappy with what they have at the end, they can get another chance: take something someone else didn't want, go for something still wrapped (some employees didn't make it), or go for . . . whatever my boss held clenched inside his hand. (I missed the first couple exchanges; it turned out he was just giving people cash, but in a half-assed sneaky manner.)

My spooky senses guided me to another lightweight box, one my coworker had almost opened herself (she went for another one which had a g.c. to a local spa/massage place), and that was $100 worth of iTunes. I'm not thrilled with using an Apple service, but once I've got the music on my hard drive, I don't have to keep using Apple/iTunes.

I think this is probably better than the straight-up cash option I didn't know to take. I've found some really good music recently via Pandora, since I needed a new playlist to go along with the new pantheon, but I don't have my own copies of any of this stuff. Yet.

I also came home yesterday with a rather sad-looking poinsettia. Earlier in the day, one of my coworkers grabbed a bunch of tired/dying plants and hauled them to the compost heap. I saw a few poinsettias on it, and since I've been coveting some of them for weeks, I headed to the compost heap a little later in the morning, and salvaged this one. It's one of the orange/peach ones, really lovely. (Why didn't I rescue the others? Because whoever/whatever guides me with plant rescues gently dissuaded me, that's why. If not for that I would have brought home so many other plants already.)

I've also been bringing home poinsettia branches - they're pretty fragile, so many of the plants have had a branch or two snapped while being handled over the last few weeks, and leaving wilted stems on plants looks bad. (I've also put many into the compost buckets because how many cuttings do I really need? You know what, it hurts to put those cuttings in the compost because do you know what that is, it's a potential Entire New Plant!!)

I have 9 stuck in a pot of damp perlite; poinsettias can be grown fairly easily from cuttings - I think this is actually how the big growers do things - so I thought I'd give it a try and maybe I'd end up with one of the lovely peachey-orange ones. (Or one of the others, I've lost track of which colors I have cuttings of.)

I've been assuming that surely, they wouldn't all make it, and this morning I took a closer look at the pot, since 2 of the cuttings are at least half-withered.

One of the half-withered stems has a pretty healthy looking leaf bud on it, below the withered section, so it might yet survive. The other withered one is probably a lost cause.

There are three other cuttings with developing leaves, and the other 4 might yet start developing new foliage . . .

I don't know just what the fuck I will do if I end up with uh *counts* 9? oh my god, potentially 9 poinsettias but um. I guess I'll have to live with my life choices.

It got off to a bad start. The people who usually work weekends are off on vacation, so Sunday it was just me, my boss, and the high schooler scheduled. I was Not Thrilled about my boss being the other main person there, not at all. The previous weekend he'd indicated he was only coming in on the weekends so someone would be there who could drive the tractor (to move big trees) - but then last Sunday one of the wholesale people was there, and he can drive the damn thing, and then the high schooler was using it later on, so, IDEFK. Considering that the morning started off badly, I'm especially aggravated by the boss being there when he didn't fucking need to.

( detailed description of shitty boss behavior across multiple days blah blah )

Then to make the week even more emotionally horrible, the assholes at Verizon who own Tumblr announced they're going to ban all "adult" content, including "female-presenting nipples" (but not, of course, art or nudity used for political protest, or etc.) and uhhh it looks like my favorite hangout/home on the 'net these last few years is probably going to be fatally wounded by this. Not because we're all posting porn all the time, but because Tumblr's bot is flagging as "explicit" all KINDS of things that aren't remotely near X-rated, and of course because bans like this always hurt queer communities pretty badly, and most of my circle there is very, very queer.

Apparently they believe they cannot make money off advertising without destroying all the "adult" content.

It fucking sucks. One of the people I've known there longest is already gone, by choice, not by Tumblr banning their account. (I have their contact info for other sites, where I am only minimally set up.)

That's the place that has been there for me since my life took a turn for the Weird 6 1/2 years ago and while I'm sure many of the people I know there will stick it out until they DO get their blogs banned (for probably ridiculous reasons) - it's -

It's just bad. So bad, in so many ways.

I know I'll be able to keep in touch with at least a handful of people I've gotten to know, but the whole culture/style of the place is unique, and it's been delightful, and I don't know how the fuck I'll cope without it. Lengthy personal blogging is great for what it is, but I can always rely on spending time on Tumblr to find something absurd and hilarious, maybe mixed in with something that hit just the right spiritual notes, too, along with pictures of birds and plants and other things that are just nice.

. . .

Well anyway. Depending on how this all goes I may be writing more excessively lengthy religious/spiritual stuff here, and possible more in public? I can't even remember now why I switched to making all my posts non-public to begin with, I started off with most things public on LJ, but at some point I got weirdly more private here (weirdly because Tumblr is all public). But right now I feel like I just don't give a fuck about filters of any kind but that may because I'm really exhausted.

(Folks who followed me over from Tumblr, I would like to recommend to you siderea for interesting essays and commentary and twistedchick for great link round-ups and other commentary. I think I've been following both of them since the old old LJ days. Most of my other contacts here are friends I knew offline before online.)

I actually went Out and Did Something: there's a big art show here in August, Art in the High Desert, which I know about because my workplace loans some plants to help spruce it up a bit. It was a nice couple hours looking at incredible art, outside, in a variety of media. I bought a print of one piece that went in through my eyes and whacked me upside some feelings I can't adequately describe. The artist doesn't have a website, alas, so I can't point you-all at it (without taking a photo of the print and then posting it here) but it's a digital piece, with some ancient ruins as the setting, and a number of animals around the floor - and the two primary figures are humanoids with bird heads, who look like they're playing table tennis, except there are moths instead of ping-pong balls. The work is incredibly well-done, realistic/surrealistic in the best ways. Most of the work he had featured these "bird men," as the artist statement called them. He said this piece he calls "Mothball" . . . the BIG print on display had a quote from Tom Robbins next to it, something about imaginary friends.

There was also some landscape photography - multiple artists - that was so incredible I almost cried, and definitely wished I had money (and wall space!) to buy things like that. One artist puts multiple layers of gold paint onto metal, and prints the photos on top of that; the layers of paint add depth and color behind the photo, and viewed from different angles, the light is really striking.

On my way out, I found some dodder growing on some flowers in a nice big flower bed. I've never seen dodder in the wild, as it were; it's kind of creepy stuff. It's a yellowish parasitic plant that winds around and around and around its hosts, making it look all wrapped up in vines.

.....

I usually try to avoid pointing out ignorant things people say, but at work yesterday I overhead someone ask if pumpkins are squash - this coming from someone who's worked there for 3 or 4 years, primarily growing plants, like the vegetable starts we sell, which yes, includes squash of various kinds, including pumpkins! She's pretty knowledgeable, too, so I'm completely boggled that "Is pumpkin a squash?" was a serious question she asked another coworker. (She was unclear about how cucumber fit into the category, too.) I suppose it kind of depends on whether you are asking from a botanical position or a culinary/cultural one.

I met up with my former coworker at the beginning of the week - so far, she's pretty happy at her new job. Her new boss is nice, she's got what she needs to do her job well, the benefits are good . . . I'm hoping I will get to move on to something with all that in the relatively near future myself.

.....

I miss having a social circle. Or even friends in the same city. It took a while to get to this point - really /missing/ social connections - but here I am and it really sucks!! I pinged an old high school friend via FB, because the last I knew he was living here, but he doesn't login to FB very often at all, so, heck, it could be months before I get a response.

I've looked around to see what sorts of clubs and meetups exist here that meet my interests and the options are not what I'd hope for. There's very little plant/gardening related, and none of the paganish things I've found at this point are my kind of thing, either.

I put out a bit of a request in this realm to some of the gods, etc., so I have some (nervous) hopes there'll be a positive outcome. Eventually.

.....

Other things I am really fucking fed up with include portions of the leftish pagan community. I want a divorce. I also don't want to lose touch with friends, so I am making some changes to how/what I read in those places but I am afraid it might not be enough. (I was warned, by one of Them, that there were things I needed to do for my own well-being, and that it would cost me ... but it's not nearly as easy to make those cuts as I'd like it to be.)

.....

I need to write up a longer post on books I've read in the last several months, but I recently finished a reread of one of my favorite series, the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I read them twice in 2011, and it's taken until now to feel like I could cope with them again - the first times through them, I cried /a lot/, there's a lot of really awful, heartwrenching scenes. And some good heartwrenching scenes.

I didn't find them quite as amazing as I did 7 years ago, but they're still really impressive, and have really got under my skin and into my head in some weird ways. I don't often have dreams influenced by books I've read, but I've had a few this time.

Weirdest side-effect (if that's what it is) is that I've had another god show up using the name of one of the gods in these books and . . . yeah, that's not unsettling at all. I suspect it's a convenient way to convey some characteristics of the Power who showed up, rather than that the fictional deity is real, but what the fuck do I know.

.....

I am tired of the workplace difficulties (that is, always fearing my boss is going to be an asshole), and the "community" stuff - and the lack of physical community, and of still being in looking-for-the-right-place mode. BUT most of that doesn't feel like it's exhausting me the way my last job did, and not feeling thoroughly, constantly worn out is a nice solid good.

I worry sometimes that no matter where I am or what I'm doing, I will find a way to be unhappy - but then sometimes I check on what, precisely IS making me unhappy and I think "Well that's reasonable."

Like, I would be ready to leave my current job at any time now, not because it's soul-sucking tedium like my last one (it's not, I have lots of variety and I'm active and that's great!), and not because the pay is low (though it is, and finding something that pays more is important) or because I'd really rather not do some of my duties (though I would - but it's a mixed bag there and I don't LOATHE any of my duties), but because my boss is kind of an asshole sometimes, unpredictably so, and that's a thing I'm unlikely to be able to make any sort of peace with. (Though I would leave because of the other reasons, too, especially the low pay aspect. This isn't workable over the long run.)

One day back in June while I was having lunch, and feeling particularly awful about some interaction with the boss, out of the blue Loki says "Not for much longer" and excuse me, what does that mean?! I won't be upset much longer? I won't be at this job much longer??? BUT I JUST GOT HERE.

But - given other hints from Others and so on - it seems that was the meaning implied.

In June, that actually made me upset - I liked my coworkers, and most of the work most of the time, and enjoying my job was so novel and wonderful I hated the thought of leaving, even if I could be leaving for something even better.

Well now I've got more honest with how much I (dis)like some of my specific job duties. And have gotten annoyed with some of the coworkers. And the boss is, well. Like he is. (I'd probably dislike some of my duties less if I didn't have to coordinate things with him and risk a random moment of WTF why the fuck is he like that?! and then spend the next several days on edge and kind of depressed.)

I'm also eager to be able to get out of the city more often, and I can't really afford to do so.

Ideally, I'd find a job that had me out there. Or a residence. Or, most ideally, both.

I love the landscape here but this city is, well first of all a city but - it's. It's okay, I guess? I miss Portland. I don't hate Bend, and I'm not uneasy-to-hateful with it like I was the Boston area. But it's - I just don't feel much of anything for or against it. It's just not really my place, I guess.

So I'm ready for whatever's next, any day now would be great! (she says, having no damn idea what it is or where), and despite it being reasonable to want to GTFO of a place with a shitty boss, I'm still a little disappointed in myself for being ready to move on after only 2 months full-time here.

Because this made me laugh so much:

How To Look Good At Forty And Overthrow Your Government

Anyway, anyone who has read women’s magazines recently or looked at the internet with their eyes will know that 40 is great and older women are fierce and powerful, and they should also worry a lot more because their husbands are probably going to leave them. It will be ok though, because then they can go on to run their own ethical business wearing a capsule wardrobe made entirely from inspiration. The aim is to undermine the mechanisms of an oppressive patriarchal capitalist state (women’s magazines are so feminist and intersectional now! Go girrrrrl!), but also to look young, but not like you are trying to look young. Never forget that the aim is to look effortlessly chic. EFFORTLESSLY. For Christ’s sake don’t look like things require effort.

...

Everyone dreads the ‘smart casual’ event. But we should all remind ourselves that anyone who objects to you attending a school event smoking a cigar and toting a machine gun is probably just as worried about their own outfit. ‘I love it when a plan comes together’ you will say, reaching for another tombola ticket at the Christmas fair prize draw.

A couple months ago I finally broke down and bought a tablet, for easier reading of PDFs . . . and ebooks, because the library has LOTS of ebooks, including a lot of books they don't have in hard copy, or at any rate, don't have at my preferred branch. So I've read A LOT of ebooks in the last couple months, which has been great except for spending too many hours in my reading chair, and getting sore muscles and a tension headache as a result.

It's also been not so great because too damn many of the SF novels have had kind of pessimistic worldviews and/or plots and/or aesthetics. For example:

Alastair Reynolds' "Revelation Space" books
Kage Baker's "Company" series
Charles Stross' "Merchant Princes" (and I was NOT expecting them to end up leaving me feeling emotionally scarred)

I've also read several of CJ Cherryh's novels - I finally started the Foreigner series, which kind of annoy me (they spend SO MUCH time on internal dialogue and the protagonist overthinking things), but at least Cherryh's got a generally more optimistic aesthetic. And most of The Expanse, which I got into because I watched the first season of the TV adaptation earlier this year while I was totally fried.

I've been using Goodreads to help me determine whether I want to give the library books a try, but it hasn't yet helped me avoid books/series that leave me wanting something nice and fluffy or at least optimistic and not dystopic.

In other news, I'm still living in Portland, still not working, and still looking for plant-related work in Central Oregon. I think early next month, I'm going to try to find some short-term temp work here, because it would be nice to have money going into my bank account, and I'm running out of time to just hope the C.Ore. thing happens before the account hits 0.

I'm also finally feeling like I'm recovered enough from my last job to do any kind of full-time job. Like, I thought about baking something the other day, and the thought didn't immediately make my mind blue-screen. (Having mental energy for baking died off years ago; an early casualty of the job.)

I got back the energy to do other kinds of creative work in September - started catching up my mending, then learned some embroidery and messed around some with watercolors, and then got back into jewelry work. (None of that felt the least bit appealing while I was at that damn job.) I turned the Etsy store on again, and vended at a local craft fair a few days ago - sales were not very good, which . . . is how craft fairs have always gone for me. (It was not a very busy craft fair, which is a tiny bit of consolation.) It's frustrating to be unable to sell much, because I really enjoy the process of making, but I don't need or want to keep it all myself!

Otherwise, things have mostly been pretty quiet.

I went out to the desert in October, doing some volunteer work that required driving around some BLM land. The roads were terrible and that made for very stressful driving, because I have so little experience with that shit and therefore don't know when I'm actually doing something dangerous, and when it's totally reasonable for a 4WD vehicle to take on. The 2nd day out, I backed into a rut and got stuck, and then hiked out several miles to where my local contact could retrieve me.

In my defense, the rut was shallow for about 40 or 50 feet, which is why I hadn't noted it as a threat - except for about 10 feet of it that were just deep enough to trap the truck's tires. I could not have done so well if I had deliberately aimed. I was trying to avoid going down some (more) really gross, slippery, rutted sections of the road when I planted the truck in the rut, because I'd really Had Enough of shitty roads and the anxiety they were causing and was going to turn around and GTFO (slowly, because the roads were Terrible). Anyway, my contact had access to an even burlier pickup truck, and we went out the next morning and pulled out my rental real easily and then I had a long drive back to Portland.

I feel torn about going into such terrain again - I know the only way I'll get comfortable on those roads is by driving on them, but the sheer terror I felt at times is going to be hard to work past. (Terror because sometimes rutted roads have 1 shallow rut and 1 deep one and if there's too much vegetation alongside the road, and you're forced to drive down the ruts rather than straddling them, one side of the vehicle ends up higher than the other, and that's fine when it's the driver's side going up, but when it's the passenger side, well fuck, part of my brain is CERTAIN the whole thing is going to TIP OVER. So there were many sections where I had to get out of the car after navigating some of that and just have the shakes for a minute so I could calm down.)

On the other hand, it's gorgeous landscape, and if you want to camp far away from anything like civilization - which I do - well.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to find a living space not really inside a city when I move out there, but that would require great good luck and also most likely buying a car, and that sounds like a lot to add onto a major relocation.

So there was an actual real news story about Jupiter getting hit by an asteroid, thus saving Earth from terrible things.

Tumblr got hold of this.

The fanfic was inevitable, really. And the fanart. And the everything.

. . .

I think Tumblr has finally broken me.

I can't stop reading.

So.

Tumblr.

Tumblr, or at least some subcultures of it, if you go to the right places, I mean wrong places, I mean I don't even know what I mean anymore but I want to write the most random tags on EVERYTHING now, is like watching psychedelic ferrets high on an unholy mix of meth and ecstasy.

And I'm pretty sure you can get a contact high.

So I've now got accounts on most of the major "social media" whatevers.

I'm sure you're all shocked - SHOCKED - that some of them I use for very little actual "social" interaction.

Like Pinterest, which is great for categorizing images so that you can quickly scroll through a collection and find that one hilarious one of the bird standing on the other bird which I know I grabbed a long time ago but can't easily find. For example. I don't use Pinterest for anything approaching "social" reasons. It's a source of eye candy, and a useful tool.

Anyway, I was thinking about this the other day, and figured I would write it all down, because that's what this journal is for! Twitter-worthy banality, but expanded to fill the space! Aw yeah.

- Twitter: for keeping up with the current state of various things.

Also useful for communicating w/various Occupy Boston people. I like Twitter a lot.

- Pinterest: for storing images. Mostly birds.

Also for finding additional eye candy. I really really want an export/backup feature, like, now please.

- Tumblr: for . . . what the fuck is Tumblr.

I don't know. Tumblr is weird. No, really. I use it sort of like Pinterest, for all the random crap that amuses me that doesn't quite warrant a pretty arrangement on Pinterest. But there's no easy way to really communicate with other users. Tumblr is /weird/. By following one or two people who posted some stuff I liked, I have ended up seing things there that I just. *blinks* Yeah. (You want insight into fannish behavior in pictorial format? Get thee to Tumblr.)

. . . I spend a lot of time there.

- Facebook: for posting things about how awful Facebook is, how Google will steal your soul and make you like it, and how fucked up computer/internet security is.

Also for picking fights with former high school friends; causing my mom to wonder if I have died due to lack of posting; cementing my hatred of people and their general vapidity, much of which I blame on FB's asinine forcing of status updates to be too small to be meaningful. I don't use FB much at all, and I loathe it. I have sporadic moments of great reconnection with people there, but I hate the system so much - it's so ugly, too - that I don't want to use it for real, ongoing communication. It is easier for me to have a useful conversation with people over Twitter.

- DW/LJ: for substantive updates, lengthy writing, etc.

Real communication/connection with people I care about. Awwwwww.

- Diaspora: for . . . um.

Still figuring this out. I haven't had many people to communicate with, so it's mostly been stagnant, but finally - FINALLY - some of the Occupy Boston folks are signing up, so it may end up being a mix of activisty/political ranting that doesn't fit on Twitter, plus Real Life Updates I don't want to post on Twitter because hello? That is All. Public.

---

Hello, I seem to have bored myself to the point of pain. I'm sorry.

Commodification: the essence of our time

The dominant process underlying the transformation of life in all societies, since at least the mid-nineteenth century, is the conversion of things and activities into commodities, or commodification. . .

Competition forces employers to maximise profits or go under.

From Hammer to Nail: What We Lose When We Lose Video Stores. Some parallels to losing book stores to places like Amazon (Netflix being the Amazon of movies), but with some key distinctions:

ARP: A movie like that, the way to watch it is on tape. Why do you think that is not important to people? Do they just not notice or have we been conditioned through advances in technology to think it is better?

JM: As if clarity in picture is the foremost thing we should look for in filmmaking, this extreme reality. People don’t want reality. When people go to see movies with special effects, they certainly aren’t seeing reality. There’s something about the look of VHS that adds something. Like vinyl people love to hear the crackle of the needle. There’s something about hearing the hum of the VCR and the somewhat blurred look of a horror movie or a film noir that really adds a depth. We have a really not good version of "Detour," the Edgar Ulmer noir, and that movie looks like the movie makes you feel. The warped quality with blurred edges.

ARP: DVD was sort of the start of that. Throw away your tapes. Here is a widescreen, crisp image. And that just keeps going. I reject so thoroughly the idea that anything needs to look better than DVD. I understand how Blu-ray or what theaters are projecting now is different, but I don’t understand why that matters to people. So 1080p feels smart to people in a way that they don’t even understand.

JM: The studio jargon just clings to people, and they go out and want that.

ARP: . . . With streaming or Netflix, they’ll never be told to pick one thing.

JM: It’ll be, ‘Let’s watch it for five minutes, and move on to the next thing, and the next thing.

If you're not already familiar with naamah_darling's work, you may wish to check this out (it is a list of her work & where to find it).

You may also wish to read that link if you want to learn of yet another way Paypal is fucking people over, and not in fun ways.

I have read none of her porn/erotica myself, though I've been reading her on LJ/DW for years, and her ranting (and non-ranting writing) there is excellent.

(Please note that the 'assholes' tag is referring to Paypal, because apparently I don't have any better tags for this kind of entry.)

. . . What brought people out there was anger. But what made them stay put, what empowered them to break away from the convention of leaving once the ritualistic demonstration of their discontent had been showcased, was a different matter altogether: in the gigantic assemblies, in the endless discussions lasting late into the night, a new realisation started to sink in. A realisation that this struggle was much bigger than any single demand or any mere attempt to slightly re-figure the plexus of power. Against an all-out capitalist assault, any meaningful response could only be as complete, as all-encompassing as as the assault itself. If there was to be any meaningful change, there would be no more separation of struggles - every single struggle is my own.

From the essay "A funny thing happened on the way to the square," from Occupy Everything. This specific essay is about the protests in Greece; most of the essays were written before OWS got going.

Most of them are focused on the root problem underlying all of this: capitalism, as it is currently being practised, which, the more closely I look at it, the more I want to recoil from in horror and have nothing to do with.

I can't say that much of what the essays cover is really new to me - it's been obvious for a long time that the focus on money as the most important thing, on profit as the greatest good, is a completely fucked up way to conduct civilization - but seeing numerous other people address different aspects of it, all put together in one handy book, hit pretty hard.

And it's not like there's a lot of serious criticism or even examination of capitalism anywhere but "fringe" media.

It's good reading, although the essay "Do the entrepreneuriat dream of electric sheep?" which critiques corporate culture, nearly caused me to commit serious violence to the document. Not because the essay was bad, but because of the way it described that horror show.

1. I have dyed a (small) portion of my hair green, and I am inordinately excited about it.

2. I have almost all of the bottle of dye left.