hopelessly recursive

Because I just don't know how to be normal, I just decided to go on tour with my friend in the fall. If you knew this friend, you'd be very afraid for the continuation of life as we know it.

Fuck it, I almost died a couple months ago, I'm totally going on tour in October! You will be at the shows.

I wonder how much of this happened because the journal owner knew who the commenter was? Several people remark on the coding of it being a white person defending a white person--and wouldn't argue that--but how much it was also favor currying? THAT is what I hate about published authors crossing over into fannish spaces if they aren't fans themselves--it causes a power dynamic that really bothers me.

Two things my family finds of interest that never caught me: gardening and birds. I fucking hate birds, man. They make a racket and wake me up and are generally a nuisance. The only bird call I can identify is a cardinal, and that's only because my dog has a cardinal toy she wakes me up with (I hate that damned toy so much, but this will tell you everything you need to know about me: the dog terrorizes me with this damned Audubon toy, but I can't take it away from her because she looks so pathetic when I hide it--yes, I sacrifice my own serenity for the dog's psychological well-being. Whatever, you suck somehow, too.) Gardening I mostly find tedious. Sadly, I seem to have inherited generation upon generation's worth of gardening acumen, however, and am very good at it. I wish I had a black thumb and could get out of gardening projects--and there's some weird social system where when people find out you're a decent gardener that you end up in THEIR gardens planting bulbs or explaining how to take care of a berry bush. ??? How effin' hard is it to put coffee grounds on a rose bush?

I hate gardening, but I appreciate the fruits of other people's labors. Case in point: I spend all year waiting for tomato season. I think real tomatoes (which can never be found in a supermarket) are a gift to humanity. Every year I gorge myself and become anxious like an addict who realizes their heroin is only available in a three month window.

Why do I mention this? Who knows. Mostly because it looks like my mom and aunt are going to buy their house RIGHT in a window where mom won't have any tomatoes this year. For this, they will die.

I think for a while I will continue to use this journal as a space where I blather on about nothing in particular and post fic and fannish junk on my lj. That may change, idk.

Last week I was in Chicago. I really enjoyed myself. I love Chicago even though it's in the Midwest. Don't get all pissed off, Midwesterners. It's a very strange place to me, America if you will. I know that most people think television and film represents California rather than middle America, and I would say that nowadays that is truer than ever, but when I was growing up all I understood was that media presented a world I didn't know at all and I associated that with the middle of the country. This was perhaps more true of English class where we read books about Iowa and poems about broad shoulders and so on. It was all pretty alien to me. I never saw snow until I was 18. I never rode a bus or took public transit in America until I was 17 or 18. Your world was not mine. That's fine, I'm not complaining because I think I got the better end of that deal. I grew up where you vacationed, and that was not a horrible life.

My point is simply that the Midwest has always held a whiff of privileged Americanness that I can't quite access for me. So Chicago appeals. If only it wasn't so fucking cold there. I promised myself when I left Canada that I was done with digging my car out of the snow and wearing four layers to go outside. You do realize there are places where you can go barefoot in January, right? I hate winter! *smash* Anyway, now you're wondering what my problem is. I'm looking for a day job and considering what new insanity I'm going to get up to. Yes, moving again.

Crap, I was going to meditate on that, but now I have to grab a shower so I can meet Bone to see Wolverine.

There was like a cluster bomb of what I think of as stalkerish behavior on my lj fl this morning. Here I am trying to pour coffee down my gullet so I can spend a day of grumbling over summer clothes buying and forced family togetherness and BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! WHOOOOOOOSH! like five posts or so displaying casual stalking behavior that people clearly find to be ok enough to post about on their lj with NO CAVEAT or anything saying "I know this is a tad...ott...but I have mental health issues..." or SOMETHING.

I know this is a rather permeable filter, what people think is normal and ok and what they don't. I have a whole list of things that bother me. Acquiring information about people's family/friends/grade school activities and all that really bothers me, for example.

My opinions on this are probably colored by my feelings in general about invasive behavior--for example I find it strongly morally wrong to read other people's mail (were you raised by the Stasi, this is not ok!), email, text messages, or to listen to their voicemail or anything of this nature. For some reason people think there are exceptions to the wrongness of these acts--such as when you suspect your SO is cheating--um, no, you were always someone who would read someone's email, you just took that chance because you had an excuse. If you can't just say, "Dude, are you fucking her?" and expect a truthful answer, break the fuck up. Or have an open relationship, whatever, but don't sneak around committing acts of espionage. This is a girl culture thing that I just don't get--I know chicks who do these things together, like you get a wingman to read the emails/listen the voicemails. ???

At any rate, internet stalking is on my list of no-nos. As are many other things. I wonder if I have hit some kind of wall on this where I'm going to have disengage. That will be too bad since I need to finish my fake!Misha story (but his fans are some of the worst--woe).

( One more thought about SPN 4.19 (plot arc spec) )

God, I feel like crap today and I'm going to the symphony tonight, so I'm going to lay down with an afghan and the dogs. (And NOT WRITE this speculation as a manifesto fanfic.

So I have horrible cramps and want to kill people today. That's just a warning, if you annoy me and I fly off the handle, I might even apologize in a couple days.

J just linked me to this: SGA fans continue to win the dumblympics. I annoyed her by saying that I think this is just the logical outcome of his online behavior. What?

Now I will state some wanky opinions:

I think the convergence culture where David Hewlett feels like fandom is his personal advertising space for his indy joints and venture capital firms and colonies on Mars produces a feeling of community that he fosters that leads to certain fans feeling that he's their actual friend. This has troubled me ever since he got a Twitter. At that point Twitter hadn't tipped over into the ubiquitous marketing tool it is now. (If that sounds like early adopter bitterness, that's because it IS.) Suddenly Twitter was flooded with people friending David Hewlett and talking directly to him and my embarrassment squick made me weep into my qwerty keyboard. I knew then that David Hewlett on Twitter would not end well. I did not tweet him about that.

So basically what I'm saying is that David Hewlett just got an object/abject (the jury's out on that turn of phrase like saying one's peace/piece) lesson in what can happen to you if you get too friendly with your fanbase. I think this sort of thing will happen more and more as "celebrities" (he is not one except in fandom) interact overly familiarly with their fans. On the one hand, direct marketing is an invaluable tool for artists, on the other they show up on your fuckin' doorstep!

(Obviously, I do not condone this behavior. How did they get his address, is it a matter of public record?)

(Who did this, are you reading this? Don't get into Supernatural, we have enough problems as it is.)

I think there aren't any conversations going on about the acceptable level of falsely familiar interaction that objects of fans (whether that be writers, actors, directors, what have you) have with their fans. I mean, DH erased the permeable boundary with his Twitter saturation and he's hardly going to be the last one to do it. So do we have to set up the ethical limits on THIS side of the boundary? Fans shaming other fans into not stalking because the objects of fannishness are too stupid to actually remind people they aren't their friends?

I mean, do we have to explicitly state over and over again that showing up on someone's doorstep is WRONG? Is this the logical outcome of RPF fic and Cons? (Meaning, is this actually MY fault at least in a very tiny way? Woe! I'm glad I could make this all about myself somehow.)

How does one leap off from "oh, David Hewlett answered my twitter" to "I think I'll go to the Hall of Records and get his address because clearly we're totally buds!"? I mean, is this a function of mental illness of just an outgrowth of fan culture?

(Please, please, Jared, I hope you bought your house in your cousin's name or something.)

( Supernatural (duh) )

And now the sexass that is Southland, sweet!

I see, as per usual, people are not reading between the trees in the forest: So SPN has an episode where they directly TELL YOU they monitor fandom, then Misha and Jared do interviews where they say "our fandom hates girls, so we went the boy route," uh, that's a PR directive not, like, Misha Collins being a feminist (Jared, a feminist? ER??). They are saying "we gave up on women, but check out how hot/cool/smart/awes Misha is!" That is to say, they're blaming the fans rather than acknowledging any fault.

Sometimes I really do think I live in a completely different reality than people I interact with. I thought I'd gotten over to solipsism at like 20.

Whatever, it's not like people are still harping on the Ruby/rape thing even when they went out of their way to handle that--oh, wait! Whatever, I give up.

Check out this cockatoo. (Yes, I am linking to a cute vid, deal with it.) Whatever that dog is saying is very emphatic because both of my dogs went NUTS when they heard it. Then they ran into the room and stared at the video doing that head tilt thing, back and forth, back and forth, that dogs do when something wacky happens.

I guess I should post come cute animal pics here to really settle in.

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE AFFILIATED FOR THE CW IN ANY CAPACITY.

I had a little soul searching about this story, whether I could bring myself to keep working on it, for obvious reasons. But then I realized that the people who can't separate reality from fiction were going to exist no matter what I do, so fuck it.

I guess I should link all the previous parts of this here for convenience--but I'm not. Click the tag. There are a bunch of other parts to this.

( CWrps: Remember to ask salient questions before you agree to go )

No song this time, as I have once again lost my entire iTunes library! Yes, I am a gerbil on the wheel of life repeating the same permutation of stupidity over and over again.