let's hold on to each other above anything else

[aruan]

My new job began this week, but I use that sentence lightly. Getting used to the new 11:30am start time has been the hardest part, as half the editors I'll be working with were either still doing their old newsroom jobs or just started in their Weekend Edition capacity, so there was no actual copy. Basically, I spent a leisurely week pretending to publish my own newspaper, editing and designing a 24-page section. There were stories about the Chinese converting 'night soil' into biogas and the French left gloating about the current financial crisis and dead mothers coming out for hurricanes. It was an entertaining but overall depressing exercise, like reading the news tends to be these days.

But mostly, any free time I've had the past month or so went into the abyss that is the Twilight series. Should anyone feel the need to find out what the teenies are going crazy for this season, ask me about it. I've read all four books, seen all the trailers and have promotional photos. Also, very complex feelings, most of them some variation of [blech]. The first book was fun, actually - if you like high school romance and vampires, but also have a high tolerance for repetition and stupidity like prismatic skin and basing relationships on the way your significant other smells - but the rest is just insufferably stupid without any emotional payoff. Also, the series enshrines codependent, abusive relationships, not to mention that Bella's only characteristic is that she loves Edward - no hobbies, no friends, no motivation other than being with him. All of which, of course, begs the question of why I'm still here: pretty icons, the promise of incestuous bloodplay fic (still searching for that), and Robert Pattinson's magical hair.

Other things I've been doing:

- Smiling randomly that Lance is on Dancing with the Stars
- Cheering on the Tampa Bay Rays, as Brandon is a St. Petersburg native. One of the photo editors, Mike, is from Tampa, so we've been exchanging gossip and shaking off losses and sharing "Whoo, World Series!" fist bumps
- Mainlining 30 Rock
- Learning keyboard shortcuts for everything
- Counterbalancing my love for Winston with the worthless brick of an iPod that Apple sent for my birthday
- Partaking of the zombie silliness in World of Warcraft. Also, discovered shamans, possibly never going back
- Drinking lots of tea because my mom handed off TWO giant tubs of biscotti to us in Europe
- Shaking my head. The barista Alison spoke with about getting a piece of pumpkin bread for our Dubai road trip two weeks ago shook her head and said, "Pumpkin season is not until January!" [dies]
- Playing Rock Band again. Short story: A dear friend, at all of 25 years old, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma back in July, and he's been getting treatment in New York. It didn't start well, but he finished chemotherapy with two fewer rounds than expected and is in total remission. His plane back to the 'Dhab landed on Thursday and by that evening we had gotten the band back together. It's so fucking good to see him again.

You don't want me to do the controversial meme. I believe in choice, the death penalty, gay marriage, gun control, social programs, no bailouts beyond guaranteeing bank deposits, letting any establishment whose foundations were shaky collapse, mandatory emissions standards, decriminalizing marijuana, not giving carte blanche to the government in the name of national security, a living minimum wage, no tax breaks for religious institutions, giving productive law-abiding immigrants - legal or not - a way to stay with a path to citizenship, universal health care, stem cell research. There's no political party for me, but my lower-middle-class family's lives were better under Clinton than in the last eight years. Obama's got a lot to fix, but I've got more confidence in him than a warmongering coffindodger and his ignorant pandering sidekick.

Comments

[aproposofnothin.livejournal.com]

Hi, we are very nearly political twins!!! xoxo

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

Hee! It's so, so hard to find someone who doesn't nod through maybe the first three or four things, then starts in on me on the fifth. Good luck to us today!