Fluke! - Sounding Dive

Ok, I have never ranted about politics here. But this, it... is just disgusting.

Republicans are simply refusing to let ANYTHING get done until they get their Bush tax cuts continued.  And there are bills waiting in the Republican thumb-up-their-ass queue about immigration, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and PASSING HEALTHCARE FOR SEPT. 11TH FIRST RESPONDERS.

Jon Stewart opened The Daily Show with the issue on the 13th.  Just watch it.   I dare you not to be appalled.

Daily Show, Dec 13

He is livid, it's obvious. 

And let me just say this again.  People that went immediately to the rubble of the World Trade Center, to help people with no thought for their own safety, the way that police and fire fighters and EMTs do on a regular basis... running in when everyone else is running out... are being denied a bill that will help take care of medical bills for injuries (things like cancer, heart and lung diseases) incurred at Ground Zero. 

This bill will not even be discussed until Republicans are assured the richest of the rich don't get a 3% tax hike.  The tactic of grinding the Senate to a halt until they get their way... is utterly juvenile and infuriating.  What about all the "adult conversation" campaign talk?  It's disgusting!

Tonight, Jon Stewart brought the issue up again.  None of the major networks have covered how this breakdown in the Senate over tax cuts is holding up the Zadroga bill.  There were first responders from New York talking about their health problems, how their medical bills are not covered because their issues "might not have been sustained in the line of duty."  Throat, lung and face cancers from the dust, and these people are being denied the medical coverage.

I was in tears. 

And for some strange reason, ABC, NBC, FOX (*snort*) are not calling the Republicans on the carpet for ignoring important issues in favor of ensuring more money for people that arguably have enough, already.

I'll add the link to tonight's Daily Show when it goes up.  Daily Show Dec. 16

I mean, personally.  I was in Boston at college where I could see Logan Airport on 9/11.  About a third or more of my school was from the NYC area and I spent the day with a friend who could not get in touch with her family because all the phone and cell line overloads.  And many in my family have been firefighters in the New York city, Rye, NY and New Jersey area.  I have many friends I grew up with that are police and fire fighters.  So on some levels I am personally touched.  All that aside, I think this bill, the immigration bill and repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell should be addressed immediately, if not sooner.

But just as a person with a soul, this filibuster shit is sick.

Stolen from a bunch of people on my flist.

1. Comment in this post with a pairing, a character, or theory.
2. I shall write you back a paragraph explaining what I think about it (good, bad, indifferent) and why.
3. Repost in your own journal if you want.

So, I started today really really grumpy.  For a large variety of reasons that mainly revolved around my own ideas / self / etc. being utterly inconsequential.  I'm much happier now.  (Torturing / teasing / smutting Lennox always helps.) 

But anyway.  Ask me stuff!  It might not be immediate, but I'll answer.  ♥ ♥  Or pull something semi-plausible out of my aft.  >3

Title: IMMD
'Verse: Post Revenge of the Fallen
Characters: An Army Major, his toddler daughter, and a huge black pickup truck
Summary: An amusing end to a total stranger's day.
Rating/Warnings: PG (mild swear)
AN: Slightly random bunny.   Little inspiration note at the end.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

( Dear Journal... )

Dear every credit card ever,

I just want to activate my credit card.  I want to deal with the stupid menu in monotone computer voice saying "If you would prefer a credit card in sea foam green, press 34.  If you would prefer a credit card in sparkly pink, please press 35..."

I just get credit cards for travel, airline tickets, big purchases, or strange things/emergencies.  Or to buy a lappers with no interest for a year.  Other than that, everything goes on the debit card.

I want to activate the card, have it so I can use it, and hang up the phone.

I DO NOT want to hop around the kitchen for twenty minutes, with the landscapers using heavy equipment, the dogs barking at the landscaper, listening to a bored Indian dude and trying really really hard not to pull a Will Lennox "NO!  I DON'T WANT a PREMIUM PACKAGE!"  

*rawr*

I know the poor telephone dude in Mumbai has a script, it's fucking long.  It's meant to bore and berate you into signing up for the damn protection coverage or whatever.  But damn.  When I say I don't want it, once should be enough.  Eight times, having to literally talk over the dude is a pain in my ass.

Watch, I'll still get the stupid package in the mail and have to call again to cancel it.  ]x

Credit card companies are smarmy bastards.

No love, Me

I was tagged by [info]spacegarden. ♥ Thank you, darling.

If you’ve been tagged, you must write your answers in your own LJ and replace any question that you dislike with a new question.

Tag eleven people. Don’t refuse to do that. Don’t tag who tagged you...

oi vey, i'm always last to these parties, so there's like no one left to tag. *sadness*  Hey you, random dude on the street!  Do this!

What song are you currently addicted to?


What's your favourite season?
Fall, and in New England it's divine

What’s the latest movie you watched?
Latest like most recently released? Despicable Me. Last movie period, umm. Valkyrie.

What is the one skill you wish you had?
I do wish I could draw more than stick figures.

What’s your current fandom/obsession/addiction?
Transformers, Burn Notice and Royal Pains... (I have made my family watch a lot of USA in the last few days...)

What's your favorite musical instrument?
I adore the sound of marimbas and tubular bells. And the Irish in me loves uilleann pipes.

What web sites do you always visit when you go online?
gmail, yahoo, google docs, LJ

What was the last thing you bought?
A new set of outdoor cushions for my parents

If you won 10,000 bucks today, what would you do with it?
Pay off credit cards and what my sis has loaned me, toss a bit at student loans and maybe start on a car.

Favourite time of day?
Sunset

What's the last thing that made you happy?
Sitting around with my sister trying to get the parents to NOTICE the new deck cushions we bought them.

Do you want to learn another language?
I could polish the Spanish. Japanese might be cool.

Five things you can’t live without.
Dogs, computer and internet, online buddies, access to the ocean, books (even a trashy romance novel will do)

Phew.  Day two of stalking the Transformers 3 set was a go.  I thought I might have burned myself out yesterday, but muses and buddies and self were all rather demanding of more mech hunting.  So back downtown I went.  ♥

I took a different train line, one that runs aboveground (the Elevated bit of Chicago's "L") parallel to the set.  I saw something worryfull... they were starting to clean up the rubble from yesterday... oh dear. 

But!  I got off the train (Wow, at a damn sketchy station, not shocked I had never gotten off there before...) and headed back to the set.

That sinking feeling did continue a bit.  There were the same fleet of Paramount trucks along the edge of the set, but everything was really, really quiet. 

I zigzagged the blocks becoming more and more sad panda...  until I came to the spot of yesterday's Bay-splosion.  And I see brooms.

Now, a thing I have learned, this might not be universal, but Bay likes his kabooms messy.  And I doubt actors like just random dirt thrown at them.  So at least on TF3, the explosions shoot potting soil at the actors.  I saw carts, full of bags of potting soil.  And come to think of it, I remember shots in the first movie of Lennox with dirt all over his ears from an explosion.  So yeah.  Movie guys, apparently go to home depot, and use the gardening section for movie props.  Now you know.  ♥

So they are sweeping up all that massive amount of potting soil, and I think I am out of luck.  But I recognize the crew guy that had been really nice yesterday during waiting for the Bay-splosions, so I ask him what the deal is.

Me - "Are they done?  They're cleaning up, huh?"
Nice Dude - "They are cleaning up here, but they might be doing more filming somewhere else."
Me - *fangirl perk*
Nice Dude - "I can't say specifically where *POINTED LOOK TO HIS LEFT* but if you wander around, you'll find the excitement."
Me - *bounces and starts trotting off*  Thank you!

~*~*~

( Finding the excitement... )

Flying out the door to stalk mechs downtown.  OMFG  Wish me luck!

Things I like and don't so much like about the TF fandom-
There is a huge, huuuuuuuge variety of things to find, conflict, spies, intelligence.  But there's one thing that is constant in all the universes.  War.  Battles are either impending, current, or they are trying to rebuild from the aftermath. 

Each of the Transformer characters, usually Cybertronian and human alike, may have started as something else, but they are always forced into the mold of soldiers. 

So I don't get people that try to divorce the characters from that.  What is Ironhide without his cannons?  What is Soundwave without his espionage?  If you want to take a giant robot soldier character and reduce it to a bouncy, squishy whimpering fluff ball... why aren't you working in the Disney fandom?  There's Wall-E.  Which I adored, but I'm not doing fandom stuff.  Or if the 80s has some appeal, there is Care Bears, there is My Little Ponies.

Yeah. some of the Transformers are either fanon or canon said to be young.  Sure.  Some are old, too.  But all of them have been dealing with war for thousands of years.  Look anywhere on Earth that has has even a few years of war, that has a tendency to mature even the most naive simpering little kids.

I also like that gender, for the most part is taken out of it.  The characters refer to each other as HE.  And damn, most of them are uber masculine by human definitions.  I like that.

I don't want pink.  I don't want sparkles and Lisa Frank.  I don't want chick, lacy, tea party and snuggle-squee-12 year old girl stuff.  I am a tomboy.  I like gruff, no nonsense, warriors.  And if someone takes someones characterization and warps it into a sparkly princess, I just want to know what in the source material they saw that written in.  You remember they are soldiers.  You know that they have fought and killed and watched how many of their comrades die?  Really? 

Again, you want pink little sparkle bunnies, there are more than enough fandoms that have it without forcing it in this awkward shoehorn into Transformers.

There is so much conflict, plot, character development in being an old war horse , which is what nearly every character in the TF universe is.  If your plots are coming from making a choice of the blue blankie or the pink blankie... what... are you doing in this fandom again?

General fic (and RPs are just writing a fic with multiple authors)
Please, please please, for my psychic health, do NOT have your character swing from being a 10 year old wide eyed wibble fiend to a pole dancing whore licking over the Johns.  Within the same day/chapter/post.  Please.  Squick liek woah.

Characters have arcs.  They change slowly over time.  They can have mood swings.  But 'GLEE, sulk, GLEE, sulk, GLEE, sulk' constantly... is... back to the 12 year old girl thing.

I come from a line of Celtic warriors and women that carried swords.

My mother's side of the family is Ferris, meaning Iron and Steel.

...trying to remember this as I get on the train to go to the unemployment office.

/drama

*hugs for everyone that supported me during a freakout*


[[edit: i got the boot at 10:30.  and was miserable.  but once work got out, almost to a man, everyone from work called or texted or came over to drag me out of my cave of misery.  and everyone is being so supportive that i can't help but actually cry from being touched.]]

GUESS THE MOVIE! Stole'd from aprilravengirl 

The Rules:
1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it correctly and the name of the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb/Wikiquote search functions for those of you guessing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

1: A: Do I have to do this now?
    B: Yes, now; while it's still fresh.
    A: Okay uh... location: shack.   Avatar - __wilderness__ 

2: Nonsense! Name a shrub after me. Something prickly and hard to eradicate.

3: A: They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all.
    B: 'Whales Weep Not'... D. H. Lawrence.   Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - aprilravengirl 

4: A: Wait a minute! You can read?
    B: I can read? That's right, I can READ! Finding Nemo - crazedwolf  and shadow_ribbon  in a photo finish ♥

5: I got no spit.  Jaws - aprilravengirl 

6: Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now.

7: Goddammit, you bitch! You never backed away from anything in your life! Now fight!  The Abyss - aprilravengirl 

8: A: What are you doing here?
    B: I'm looking for a dead guy named Nash. He died at birth in Syracuse, New York.  Highlander - __wilderness__ 

9: It's a cake! I know! Thank you! Thank you very, very much. ...There's a hole in this cake!  My Big Fat Greek Wedding - aprilravengirl 

10: A: Wait! You can't come up here!
      B: Whatever you don't want me to clean, better hide it now!
      A: Save my room for last, OK? Howl's Moving Castle - __wilderness__ 

11: If you have the tooth of a whale, you must have the jaw of a whale to wield it. Whale Rider - cubicality 

12: A: You really send him under the ice? He isn't a slave or convict or anything, is he?
       B: My dear, science is a cruel mistress.
       A: How is he going to breathe?
       B: He isn't.

13: A: They're trying to placate you with a sacrifice!
       B: Oh, now whoever gave them that bright idea?
       A: Never mind! Just get rid of her!
       B: How?
       A: Eat her!
       B: Oh, please. YUCK!   Dragonheart - spacegarden 

14: No. And they won't say nowt about your personality neither. Which is good 'cause you're basically a bastard. Bollocks to your personality - this is what they're looking at, right? And I'll tell you summat, mate. Anti-wrinkle cream there may be, but anti-fat-bastard cream there is none.  The Full Monty - missusmandy 

15: Day 11, Test 37, Configuration 2.0. For lack of a better option, Dummy is still on fire safety. -If you douse me again, and I'm not on fire, I'm donating you to a city college.  Iron Man - aprilravengirl