In retrospect, I probably should have asked this before ComicCon while everyone was still around. Oops.

Men! And people who drink like men! I need beer advice! My brother is turning 21 on Tuesday, and I don't know what to buy for him. A request for Mike's Hard Lemonade has been made, but I want to get him something else in the beer family. The closest I get to beer is hard cider, so I don't know what to grab. Any recommendations?

It would be wrong to leave this section of the newspaper open on my mother's desk, yeah? Alas, I'm afraid that since I don't have a husband, the point will be lost on her.

Oh fandom, my disappointment runs deep. How is it possible that people are just now realizing that the owner of the fanhistory.com wiki is a grudge wanking psycho? People, the site was created so she could try to control what the internet has to say about certain fanfic authors she likes and doesn't like. I thought that was common knowledge. *facepalm* Consider yourself learned folks now.

(Also, don't worry if you have a page there. Unless you're a BNF who's annoyed the wiki owner, having a page at FanHistory won't give you any more publicity than FF.net will.)

So, since someone keeps asking for pictures...

( My two current knitting projects. )

HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion - this link has been getting passed 'round my flist all morning, as it should be, but I'm putting it here in case anyone hasn't seen it yet.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is the misleading aspect of the title. The Department of Health and Human Services doesn't have a problem with contraception as a whole - no no no, their problem is with birth control pills, and any other method used to get rid of fertilized eggs that haven't been implanted. You know, all the methods that women use for birth control. But condoms, the primarily male method of birth control, would probably be considered all right, since you can't say you're murdering a precious little egg baby if the fertilization never happened.

Yes, it's atrocious that they're trying to change the medical definition of pregnancy based on the stupidity of a country failed by abstinence-only sexual education programs. But the fact that their method of going about this is designed to once again drive the point home that people don't think women should have a choice in whether or not they get pregnant is the most appalling thing to me.

ETA: Yes, I know, I've gotten things mixed up while working on too little sleep, but my basic rant of "Rawr, why does our government hate women?" still stands.

Dear People of the Internets,

Please stop watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog so the server will recover and I can get the page to load.

Please?

*pokes website* Looooooad! :(

So, I woke up, went downstairs to have a bowl of Cheerios and an english muffin for breakfast, and proceeded to get yelled at by my mother about how I need to stop overeating and how the reason no one's hiring me is because I'm morbidly obese. *sigh* This is so not a good sign for how my day is going to go.

So, furina_1975 made a brilliant point in my last post.

Do any of you who are especially computer savvy know how to check for parental spyware on a computer? I'm not talking NetNanny programs that will block sites - that's way too obvious for my dad. I'm talking about programs that will do something like e-mail him every night with a list of the websites I've gone to during the day, and I use that as an example because I know for a fact that he installed such software on my brother's and sister's computers when they first got them, because my then-16-year-old brother has discovered that the internet has free porn, and my then-14-year-old sister was going on emo teen websites of which my parents didn't approve. It never occurred to me that he'd do it to me, but then, it wouldn't surprise me.

So, my dad and I upgraded my laptop today. Now I have 2GB of memory...and Windows Vista. *flail* It's so similar, and yet so different. I'm still playing around and getting everything loaded - of course I got Firefox and Trillian working first, since those are my daily lifelines. We'll see if the laptop gets thrown across the room for annoying me any time soon.

I have got to stop waiting to eat lunch until my blood sugar is low and my hands start shaking. *facepalm*

Epic fail, television! Turner Classic Movies is the only station showing 1776, and not until 11pm? Woe to you all.

Happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans! May your picnics be plentiful and your fireworks fantastic.

Well, I survived the funeral. *boogies* I will have many more rambling thoughts tomorrow, but for now I am home and alive.

So, I haven't been talking about this much to many people, but my aunt died on Friday. She was terribly sick - she had cancer that wasn't caught because her doctor was a moron, and it spread like crazy - but she got to say a lot of her goodbyes, and they doped her up like crazy, so she passed in her sleep, in no pain. I haven't seen my aunt in years and years, so it hasn't really hit me that badly, and I keep feeling like I should be more upset than I am. What I'm most bothered about is having to go to New York for two days and spend time around family members I can't stand (like, 90% of my father's side of the family) while worrying about all the things I was supposed to do over those two days that I'll somehow have to squeeze in when I get back. If I make any gurgling phone posts while I'm gone, just take them as a sign that I've gone crazy.

I have a five hour train ride tomorrow to go north, so tell me, what songs are really floating your boat right now? Good music will make things at least a little better.

A blanket apology to anyone I share Google Docs with - I'm switching to a new gmail address, and when I went into Google Docs and shared all my documents with my new address, it made it look like all the documents have been updated today. *facepalm* Sorry about that, I wasn't expecting it.

Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday yesterday. :D It was a pretty good day - I got a new battery for my laptop, a new headset for WoW, and dinner at my favorite seafood place. Getting older definitely leads to less fun and more low-key birthdays. ;)

I'm sad about George Carlin dying particularly because he was going to get the Mark Twain Prize this year, and while they're still awarding it, it's definitely going to be a more somber evening than if he got to be there and swear at everyone.

One thing that I'm finding particularly entertaining today is this video, which I got from darkmattr. You don't have to have sound to listen to it, but the song is quite pretty, so it's worth it if you can hear it.

So, remember how my dad set up a camera to keep an eye on me when he and my mom went out of town? And my mother totally spied on me and thought it was the coolest thing ever?

Well, my dad's been doing more business traveling lately, but this time he's been going alone. Imagine how surprised my mother was when she noticed that not only is he still using the camera, but he moved it so that instead of just spying on the family room, he can see the family room and kitchen now, where she is most of the time. Now it's creepy, she says. Apparently, she didn't realize that you can't tell when you're being watched (to which I explained, hello, spy camera) but she doesn't want to ask him to stop using it, because "he's only doing it because he misses us."

dfkjfd;lkjfdkl;jsfdjskal omfg what? I can't even. *facepalms* At least she understands now why I flipped out when she said she was spying on me. That's slight progress?

So, I survived con_txt! The whole weekend was as awesome as I expected, from the panels, to the people, to just getting to be around fellow fans. I got to see some old friends, put faces to some of the other names on my friends list, and meet new people (if I've recently friended you, hi, I met you this weekend and I think you're kind of awesome). Plus, I think I managed to make it through the whole weekend without getting pimped into anything new! Any new fandoms, that is. New knitting projects...well, that's a different story.

So, I failed a test this morning, and now I don't think I'll have enough undergraduate credits to be licensed until December, which means I might not be able to teach in the coming school year. Yeah, epic fail, party of me. I'm in that kind of hazy state where I know I'm completely screwed, but there's nothing I can do about it, so I'm not freaking out because it's not going to make anything better.

I finally went to see Indiana Jones, to have Shia LaBeouf's pretty face ease my pain, and oh my god. Seriously, what was that? I don't think I've ever had my suspension of disbelief stretched so far in a two hour period.

Then I went to Barnes and Noble, because I couldn't remember if the new Coldplay album is coming out this week or next week, and when I asked, the guy behind the counter gave me a blank look, and asked if Coldplay was one word or two. I think someone needs to not be working in the music section anymore, but that might just be me.

After taking up way more of my day than I expected, I have now sent my resume to every middle school and high school in Fairfax and Loudoun County with the exception of about six that are located in gang territories. *passes out* Any positive thoughts that could be sent my way to make one of these end in employment would be greatly appreciated.

I blame this entirely on nameitlater because I was avoiding this song altogether and she saturated me with it and made me like it.

I'm looking for covers of Rihanna's "Umbrella." *facepalm* If you can upload the song, great! If you just know an artist who's covered it, that's fine too, because I should be able to find it then. Bonus points to anyone who can find me a copy of the Manic Street Preachers cover.

*facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm*