11.29.08

Lori Drew, hand of Darwin.

Posted in Ethics and morality tagged , at 6:42 pm by kyrias

I suppose it’s truly bad for me to think “Darwin wins again” when Caesura told me about how Megan Meier killed herself because her online boyfriend suddenly turned mean on her, telling her that she was a bad person and everyone hated her and that “the world would be a better place without you”.

What makes things even more interesting is that said boyfriend, Josh Evans, was impersonated by Lori Drew, mother of Megan’s ex-friend, Sarah Drew. She had created the MySpace account with her daughter and her assistant at work Ashley Grills, who actually allegedly was the person to sent the last message. It’s not clear who came up with the idea to impersonate Josh in the first place - Lori is taking full responsibility at this point, but considering that Megan and Sarah had already impersonated a “hot” girl to mess around with boys earlier, resulting in the revoking of their MySpace privileges before — I’m not too sure that it was all Lori’s idea, frankly. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that Lori Drew was peripherally aware of what they were doing, but wasn’t the primary instigator.

This was done because supposedly Lori wanted to know what Megan was saying about Sarah after the two of them stopped being friends.

What’s just as retarded was that Lori Drew tried to take the Meiers to court because the Meiers destroyed a football table the Drews stored at their place after the death of Megan because the Meiers had found out that Lori and her family were behind what finally caused Megan to snap and hang herself.

What’s even more amazing is that Lori Drew and her husband were put out of business partly because Internet vigilantes found out her RL name and her husbands and started calling her business associates and the company her husband worked at. Lovely hypocrisy — it’s ok for you to kill a family’s income via Internet harassing but it’s not quite so ok for Lori Drew et al to say nasty things to Megan online?

Note, I think that what happened was pretty reprehensible. No matter whose idea it was, the fact that Lori Drew got involved in it without trying to end it in a good manner makes her morally culpable. However, I think it’s stupid to just blame her as a murderess. That’s way too simplistic. Kids bully kids all the time, it’s funny how just because she’s a grownup, suddenly it makes things so much out of proportionally worse. I’m not saying that her being the adult here doesn’t make it worse — but I am saying that people perhaps should re-think their “kids will just be kids” mantra when it comes to between peers.

I wonder if this entire thing would still be as news-worthy now, a year after the fact, if it turned out that the main culprits were Ashley Grills and Sarah Drew and Lori was just the scapegoat?

11.28.08

NaNo — Losing steam with 12k to go

Posted in nanowrimo tagged at 11:42 pm by kyrias

Somehow, I’m losing steam.

There’s 12k to go and I’m sort of just sitting here, thinking about leveling my character in WoW or even just running around the house screaming rather than what my character in my NaNo could be doing.

It’s that sort of anti-adrenaline thing where I know I’m behind and I’m almost sure to be doomed and yet I’m oddly just not that worried.

Part of it may be that my mother is honestly just burning me out. The woman is like the Energizer bunny on crack. We’ve been up and on the move without respite since 9:20 AM today and she’s still going.

Me, I’m sitting here watching while she runs around and washes things in the name of having to finish NaNo. I just managed to persuade her that I really needed to be writing and not washing more pots a few minutes ago.

I’m almost hoping that OfficeTeam won’t find me a job for this coming Monday because I really need a break.

11.27.08

Wanted: Someone sane to share apartment with…

Posted in Future at 11:26 pm by kyrias

I think it’s pretty much settled at this point that Kell is going to move out next year. It’s really a pity, because now we get to start thinking of what we’re going to do once he moves out.

Any takers? Someone sane? Who doesn’t mind living with four other insane people? :)

To be honest, I don’t know how things are going to pan out. Part of why Kell is moving out is because his girlfriend is going to graduate come May and they want to live together. Part of it is because my kitchen habits drive people bonkers. :)

I sprawl. Shamelessly and endlessly. If you care to call me up on it constantly, which understandably no one wants to do — I can try to curb the sprawl — but there’s been limited success. :(

I think I’m going to try and limit the sprawl more and see what I can do. Because honestly, if I clean out the food that’s been sitting in my freezer and just try to live off that for a while — I think I can stop just storing Pyrex in the fridge. There might or might not be three huge containers of spaghetti sauce there right now along with one huge container of broth — which might or might not have all gone inedible because of how long I’ve ignored them.

My sins aside, it’s going to be an interesting few months.

Kell’s going to have to make a decision regarding moving out soon, or relatively so, since if he’s no longer living with us, we’re going to have to take his name off the lease. Then if someone else is moving in to take his place, we’re going to need to put that person’s name on the lease.

Zora, is Mr. Procrastinator moving in with us come his graduation?

Then if we’re not putting someone else’s name on the lease, then we’d be going into the murky realm of subletting — which is sketchy business. So there’s fun.

It’s going to be a fun trip…

11.26.08

NaNoWriMo - 4 days to deadline!

Posted in Writing tagged , at 10:08 pm by kyrias

Yikes.

It was nice to get a pep talk email from Chris Baty stating that he was still stuck at the low 30ks a couple of days ago — but I’ve no more room to be being smug.

What with helping my mom move and stuff, I’m seriously, seriously behind on my word count.

I have 35k right now and so I need to get 15k more in 3 days. I don’t really want to count today because I’m feeling really under the weather and will probably go to sleep early today like I did yesterday. So close and yet so far!

I’m probably going to be concentrating on upping my word count tomorrow. It’s Thanksgiving, so I don’t think we’ll be doing that much around the house.

I think I’ve really sketched out on NaBloPoMo also — there was a lot of last minute posts that were really short.

11.25.08

Jails in Taiwan = FTW LOL

Posted in culture tagged , at 11:56 pm by kyrias

I just found out yesterday that jails in Taiwan use Buddhist mantra music to wake their inmates up…

And then right before bedtime, they’re lulled to sleep with songs with names like “Need to love fighting upwards to succeed.”

I kid you not.

On a less funny note, the embezzling ex-president of Taiwan is talking about committing suicide, the rat bastard.

11.24.08

This is why I don’t much read MSN money anymore…

Posted in Frugality, Uncategorized at 11:23 pm by kyrias

I still do, on occasion, but I no longer seek it out the way I used to.

There’s a relatively old article on there about the idea of having a “spend nothing month”. This is when you don’t buy anything except for the absolute necessities each month and see how you do.

Frankly, I can see how it would be useful to those people who use shopping as a form of therapy, but for those of us who are barely scraping by on monthly utility payments — it’s not too useful.

Sure, it’s a cool idea, and I suppose if I really wanted to look at my finances, I could cut out the odd chocolate bar and save myself 2 dollars once every two weeks — but 2 dollars every two weeks is hardly going to break the bank. That isn’t exactly my “latte factor”.

It’s interesting, how retail therapy works. It doesn’t even seem like a particularly new concept, but I wonder when it went from buying the odd trinket to keep the missus happy to the addiction to the new and shiny.

Bah. I feel kind of like a grinch. After all, it’s not their fault I’m not their target audience. But it still rankles, it really does.

11.23.08

Tax-evader — are you one too?

Posted in Ethics and morality, Uncategorized tagged , at 12:38 pm by kyrias

I didn’t realize before I started doing my own taxes that you had to keep all your receipts for Internet purchases so you could tally them up at the end of the year and retroactively pay sales tax.

So, I didn’t — because I had no idea how much money I had spent. About that keeping tally on purchases idea..

I know there a good number of people who like to buy things online because they don’t have to pay sales tax. To be honest, I can see the appeal — especially when buying large ticket items.

So, I guess my question is, how unethical is it to “forget” to pay your sales tax at the end of each year? And which one of you lovely people do it?

11.22.08

Personal objections to New York City

Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged at 11:56 am by kyrias

I keep having people ask me: “Why Boston? Why not New York City, if you’re going to be on the East Coast?”.

All I can say is, I really, truly, hate New York City with a passion.

You’d have to pay me to live there, and I do mean pay me. On top of a well-paying job with all the perks and benefits, there’d have to be an additional stipend specifically ear-marked “For living in NYC”.

Of course, I know that there’s enough people mad enough about the Big Apple that I’ll never get that, which is a good thing as I don’t think I ever want to be lured into living there.

I just have a very visceral reaction to it. It’s dirty, has that distinct “city smell”, and the people are unfriendly more often than not.

I don’t even care that I’m making sweeping generalizations.

After all, this is the city known for “if you can survive here, you can survive anywhere”.

My only reaction is, but why would I want to survive there when I can just go somewhere else and not be compelled into being a Type A personality?

To be fair, this outpouring of hate is mostly because of my recent visit. I didn’t really have fond memories of it from when I visited Zack in NYC twice before — but it was more of a neutral “I don’t like cities” thing. But after my most recent visit — it’s just turned into full-blown hatred.

Cue the rudeness, the unwillingness to help, all things nasty and bad.

Meh. At least I’m not the only one. Nora said to me that she nearly got right back on the train when she arrived in Time square.

11.21.08

NaNo update - 11-21

Posted in Writing tagged at 12:15 pm by kyrias

I don’t want to write today. I’ve been reading Patricia Briggs’ Dragon duology, written partly in first person, and all I can think is: “Compared to what she’s writing, I’m writing crap. Crap, crap crap crap.”

Broke 30k yesterday. I need another 5k today and I’m good.

But I’m feeling demoralized and irritable. *sigh* 

Nora, how’re you doing on your NaNo?

D-mannose is good for UTIs, or so I hear.

Posted in Alternative healing tagged at 1:07 am by kyrias

Or perhaps I should say, D-mannose is bad for UTIs, by which I mean they get rid of them.

I got the hint from an E-how article where comments said what alternative therapies they used for UTIs. Supposedly D-mannose is the active compound in cranberries that give them their UTI fighting powers, so taking it direct works better than just taking cranberry supplements.

I’ve been getting more than a hint that one is about to flare up and I know Zora has been oddly plagued by them lately, so I think I’m going to hit up Harvest when I’m off work and see if they have any D-mannose so I can carry out a scientific query with a sample size of one. I’ve been pushing liquids all day, to the tune of 16 oz of tea every hour, but I still feel twinges.

Supposedly if you take a spoonful every day, it will keep your UTIs away. Worth a try, at any rate. I’ll report back on whether it works if I can find any and if I can’t, I suppose I’ll have to settle for cranberry tablets and if even that fails, I suppose buying fresh cranberries and blenderizing them will work.

Squick.  

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