I grew up around Fanboys and have been a self identifying Fanboy for many many years. For me Fanboy has always been a gender neutral term. People may insist that Fangirls are the same as Fanboys but female...but they're not. They may be equal in devotion to a given subject, but the outward expression of geek is entirely different. So much that I'm even willing to go so far as to say that Fanboys are from Mars and Fangirls are from Planet Sparkleypoo.

For example The 501st. Fanboys.
And compare it to this footage of Robert Pattinson post his Comic Con debut at the Twilight movie panel.

That reaction right there? Can only be caused by Fangirls.

Do Fangirls have to be Female? I don't think so. For me both terms are gender neutral.
But doesn't that imply a rather healthy dose of misogyny? Yeah...it really kind of does, and to be honest I'm not really comfortable with the tone and picture that these terms create. I'm totally open to using new terms for the same ideas, but haven't really found much in the way of alternatives.

Thoughts?

There's something about a full day of manual labor that leaves my brain feeling all cottony and disconnected. I don't know what is, but it's both a blessing and a curse. Blessing because I'm a constant worrier with an ever present ball of anxiety living dead center in my chest, so this no-mind thing I've got going on is kind of a nice change of pace. On the other hand it's a curse because I'm rather useless at the moment when I know I should be doing things.

Still though, it's kind of nice to just sit and be.
Blessed decompression.

Still though, these things need doing and as such a list must be made:

- Put away laundry
- Vacuum room
- Balance check book*
- Make sense of finances*
- Clean aquariums
- Feed turtles
- Eat dinner
- Watch more Eureka*
- Purchase airfare for December
- Purchase airfare for October
- Construct Dork*Con costumes*
- Sleep*
- Reserve hotel room for the night before November's wedding

* = ongoing processes.

Today has been a day of consumerism.
HOORAY CONSUMERISM!

Purchased today:
- Two pairs of shoes
- Two button down blouses
- One pinstriped vest
- Two seasons of Eureka (used)
- One season of My Name is Earl (used)
- One "Cable & Deadpool" trade, volume 4
- One apple and brie crepe
- One Berry Blitz smoothie
- One medium hand cut fry from Fanuiel Hall.
- One Snapple Lemonade

There are at least three additional pairs of shoes that I would very much like to own, but they're going to have to wait until either next month, or for me to win the lottery.

( D*C Blather )

Bing: oh god
Bing: okay....so , miss_s_b, one of The Brat's friends on lj
Darth Rami: *nods*
Bing: is having a blog awards for some reason
Bing: and The Brat nominated me for : female blogger I would most like to have sex with
Bing: and now there are banners
Bing: *facepalms more*
Darth Rami: ............................
Darth Rami: I'm sorry I'm laughing
Bing: no you're not!
Darth Rami: no. no, I'm not

So without further ado:


I'll uh...I'll just be over here....hiding.

People who have just started getting into The Wire might be interested to know that Amazon is having a Gold Box deal for the first four seasons of the show. You can get all four for $95.49.

While Supplies Last.

Indeed.

Things that also happened this weekend:

- bought a suit.
- was bitten by a meerkat.
- passed my class.
- was defeated by the x-box 360.
- left myself out in the rain.
- started reading Treasure Island for the first time.
- have begun making plans for my fall and following spring semesters.
- learned that it's insanely easy to schedule an appointment for the GRE.

Since I'm already in a "grit my teeth and sneer at the world" mood, could there be a little more outrage in the popular media about this.
link goes to an OP Ed piece about the new rule drafted by the Department of Health and Human Services that renames birth control pills as a form of abortion.

I have decided:
Today is a good day.

Yeah I know, you probably think I'm saying that because there's no more math for me today, which I can't deny plays a role in the declaration...but that's only a small part of it.

Today is a good day because we lost power around seven this morning, and not seven yesterday morning. See, losing power this morning means that when I woke up at 9 and rolled over to look at my alarm clock there was no panic about OH CRAP! I'M LATE TO MY FINAL!
That right there...is a good day.

What also makes a good day? Having your spur-of-the-moment Amazon purchase arrive at your doorstep. YAY FIREFLY AND FREAKAZOID!

And let's not forget the given: Taking a Personal Day from work.

Such good things, and it's not even Noon yet. Who knows what other good things await me?

I emerge triumphant.
Or...well, at very least minimally unscathed.

There are comics and danish and now there will be much dorking out online.

Well...I think I understand logs, and I certainly understand functions more than I did six weeks ago. With the exception of a very minor arithmetic error I have three-variable linear systems kind of down. I'm about half way through my post-its/cheat sheet construction.

Things that I still don't understand.

- trigonometry
- non-linear systems
- why I can't seem to transcribe things without messing something up.

It's going to be so strange not carrying my textbook on the bus tomorrow morning. I'm willing to wager I'll have a panic twinge round abouts Packard's corner when I realize my bag isn't anywhere near as heavy.

And now, time for bed.
Catch you all on the other side.

In equivalent news:

I had my practice final today.
It was both horrifying and helpful at the same time. Or rather it is now, a full five hours after the fact. During and shortly after it was a trial by fire that threatened to break the dam of my resolve.

You should have seen the look on my face when she handed it back to me with a bright red 16 on the cover page.
So sticker shocked by this red 16 was I that I didn't realize it was set in the grading section of Part one: Multiple Choice. I also didn't realize that only the multiple choice section was graded. For some bizzare reason I thought that everything I had written elsewhere on the exam was so wrong that she didn't want to waste the precious red ink it would take to parse out my meager partial credit. I spent a good five minutes trying to figure out what 16 out of 75 possible would give me for a percentage grade.

This, my friends, is what happens when you can't shut a perfectly average mind off. You get a brain that does nothing but fixate on one leaf of one tree that just happens to reside in a gigantic forest.

Good news:
- I got 16 out of a possible 20 on the multiple choice section. One I got wrong because the answer couldn't possibly be no solution, because why would someone put a no solution on a final? Clearly I'd done the calculations wrong. Surely that was it!
Seriously, my brain needs to chill the fuck out.

- There was one question about perpendicular lines that I got 99% right by just going with my gut and watching to see where the numbers got me. What killed me at the end was that I forgot a negative sign. So instead of getting the 5/2 that I should have, I got 11/2.

- There appears to be minimal Trig.

- I know know what to study. Or rather...what not to obsess over quite so much.

I'm going to do my damnedest to not stress over this. I'm going to do what I can with what I have. I'm going to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I'm going to give tomorrow's exam everything I've got. I may or may not earn myself $5. I'm going to leave the class with my head held high.

And then I'm going to the comic book store for the newest issue of Buffy.

Ever sit back and think on the Stones' lyrics:
Can't always get what you want,
But you get what you need.?

That's kind of where I am at the moment.
I had a plan, and for the most part I stuck to it, but in spite of all my best intentions things are just not going as I'd hoped they would.
In an effort to not let that get me down I'm trying my damnedest to shift my focus from disappointment to opportunity. I might not be getting what I want, but I might just be getting what I need.

It'd be a whole lot easier if I knew what I needed.

Well that could have gone better.
Or...no, let's try some optimism here: That totally could have gone worse. There could have been rendering of clothing to go along with my gnashing of teeth. I could have fallen into fits and foamed at the mouth.

So while my bombing that second quiz on chapter 6 wasn't good, it could have been much much worse.

Today I'm going to attempt to plow my way through the first half of the class by looking only at the questions we were assigned as homework.
Then I'm going to try my hand at chapter 9 again, and see if I can't make heads or tails of it.

Tomorrow I have a practice final which may, or may not, count towards my grade.
I'll worry about what I need to study tomorrow night after I see how much I can get through today.

Two days left.

Yup, still not getting the trig stuff.
Consolation? The fact that everyone else seems to have had the same issues.

I hope that tomorrow's quiz goes better than the last one, but honestly there's only so much a brain can take down at a shot.
Tomorrow I'll hopefully go over more of chapter 9, the newest in a long line of chapters that are kicking my ass, as well as go over chapter 2 a second time.

Three days.


In retail therapy news:
Firefly is on a 63% off sale on Amazon. So if you're one of the few out there that loved the show and doesn't already own a copy you can pick one up for $18 plus shipping and handling. Well, that is until they run out.

Or, you could be like me and purchase season one of Freakazoid in order to get free shipping.
The math works, trust me.

In more Bing's Not Studying news,

Remember how before I was stoked that Neil Patrick Harris was in Dr Horrible because now it would mean that Whedonesque would be keeping track of his movements? Well today that realization bore fruit! Mr Harris gave a very interesting interview to Out magazine. And yes it was interesting in addition to him being photographed in leather pants...though that helped.

I take a lot of things for granted, living where and when I do, and so it's very sobering when I'm presented with how the real world really works. Sometimes a little too sobering, but I digress. This article gave me a lot to chew on, and I'll be over here chewing on that for some time to come.

Of course the real reason I brought all of this up in the first place was not to give you all a window into my ruminations on queer identity and politics, but to squee because in this interview I learned that Sara Gilbert is gay.
Darlene from Rosanne.
:-)

Growing up Bing meant growing up with crushes on Neil Patrick Harris, Reese Witherspoon, and Sara Gilbert.
Think: Bing-ilocks and the Three Childhood Crushes.

Neil Patrick Harris? Noooo too Gay.
Reese Witherspoon? Nooo Too Straight.
Sarah Gilbert? Juuust riiiiiiight.

I'll be in my bunk.

I hate to jump to conclusions, but I really do think I kicked the ass of today's quiz. I had actual answers and even finished early. Heck, I was the first one to hand in their test! Even before Overachieving-White-Girl and 16-Year-Old-Asian-Kid.
What does this mean?
That either I'm awesome, or that there were additional pages to the quiz that I didn't get in my hand out.

I...actually kind of knew what I was doing, and the fact that all the necessary equations were up on the board helped out immensely. I think I even heard the instructor say we're allowed to bring in a cheat sheet of formulae^* to the final. Which you know, I have to say I agree with. I mean, the point of the class is to know how to use the damned things, and if you don't know how then having them there on a cheat sheet won't really help you in the slightest now will it?

Good gravy!
Two classes until the final.


*Is the plural of formula, formulae? I...I honestly have no idea? OH sure I could look it up, but...meh.

Quiz tomorrow.
Do-over of a previous quiz on Tuesday.
Review Quiz on Wednesday.
Final on Thursday, after which there will be much geeking followed by much beer possibly resulting in staggering.

Friday finds me meandering around Province Town and hopefully enjoying the waning summer weather.
Saturday? I'm not entirely sure what's going on Saturday, but I am sure that it will involve something outside of my house, preferably starting sometime in the late afternoon.
Sunday I'm back at the Museum.

And that, my friends, is my next week in a nutshell.

Today I have:

- Showered
- Dressed
- Skyped with The Brat
- Eaten well balanced meals
- Snacked on wholesome and healthy snacks
- Swore a whole lot
- Recorded my rehearsal tracks for the D*C Buffy Between the Lines show
- Listened to my required tracks three times in preparation for the Official D*C Dr Horrible Sing-a-Long
- Fed my pets

What I did not do:

- Finish my homework
- So much as touch chapter 9
- Learned my lines enough to be considered off book for the D*C Buffy Between the Lines show
- Cried
- Blamed it all on the rain

I have just two things left to say:

Jason
Statham