The “American Empire” is ending, and I’m ok with that - because it’s all happened before, and will happen again. Emipres rise and fall, history repeats itself… and sometimes there’s even good poetry to be had.

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, –
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring, –
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, –
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, –
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, –
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless — a book sealed;
A Senate, — Time’s worst statute unrepealed, –
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
- Sonnet: England in 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley

To my new upstairs neighbors -
Forget about banging around at all hours and playing your radio too damm loud, the fastest way to piss off your neighbors is to start fucking with their parking spots. In the future, do not park in any spot where the number on the ground does not equal your apartment number. It’s a bad idea and will not improve your karma.

Y’r ob’dt,
Me.

And it wasn’t even my spot that got nicked. The guy two doors down is mighty un-thrilled right now.

My upstairs neighbors, it seems, had some problems paying the rent for the last few months, and have decamped with haste. My landlord is tromping up and downstairs now removing their worldly belongings from the building. It’s a loud and bangity bumpity process, and the cats are not at all amused.

I’ve realized that I have undiagnosed Dyscalculia for several years now, but I never bothered to do much research on it. I never thought it had anything to do with much other than my very annoying tendency to flip numbers around (makes dialing the phone a pain in the ass sometimes) and my lack of ability to do math in my head. (makes tipping a pain in the ass)

So, poking around Wikipedia last night (not what I’d call the definitive source, but a good enough place to start…), I was amazed to discover that it covers a large number of symptoms, most of which I have to various degrees, many of which I just assumed were little “Julie is weird” quirks. Some highlights:

(more…)

So, I had to stop by the grocery store on the way home from work last night, and Will decided to come in with me. No big thing. We’re going down one of the aisles and a woman roughly our age looks at me and (with no irony, and barely a glance at Will) asks me if she can borrow him to get something off a high shelf.

“Well, you could ask him yourself.” I say. Will, being the decent sort, didn’t make too much fun of her. He even got her bottle off the top shelf. He did, however, ask me (mockingly) for permission for everything for the next hour.

Maybe the lady was just trying to be polite, but if the situation were reversed, with a strange man asking Will if I could help him with something instead of asking me directly, it would be creepy. Acknowledging someone’s existence only as an appendage of someone else (instead of as an autonomous entity) is rude, Y/N?

And I do seem to be abusing parenthesis today.

Georgia: We broke away from Russia a while back. Yay us!
Russia: Still impressed with that, are you?
USA: See? Democracy prevails. Georgia is good.
Georgia: *sucks up to Washington*
Ajara: We’re part of Georgia. We think that sucks. We’re gonna break away too.
Georgia: GRRR
Ajara: Er, maybe not.
South Ossetia (SO): We’re part of Georgia. We think that sucks. We’re gonna break away too.
Georgia: GRRR
SO: Russia, some help here?
Russia: Sure, we’ll send in some peacekeepers to keep the Georgians off your backs.
SO: YAY - freedom now!
Georgia: Allright, we’re cool. Here’s a nice shiny peace agreement.
SO, USA: YAY - go team democracy!
Georgia: Just kidding… *invades*
Russia: Oh Georgia, remember how proud you were about that break up?
Georgia: err….
Russia: *kicks Georgia’s ass*
Georgia: RUN AWAY!! Help us USA!
USA: *whistles and looks away*
SO: Thanks Russia! We’re free now!
Russia: Yeah, about that….
USA: Maybe eroding the rule of international law wasn’t such a good idea.

For a longer breakdown that doesn’t run like a vaudeville routine, check out Exiled Online.

The Pre-Raphaelites are getting the BBC drama treatment! Personally, I’m all for this. Not everyone’s too happy about the proposed sexy treatment though: (more…)

But I can’t. It breaks my heart that she just wouldn’t get this. Because it’s completely *true*.

My first batch of Stafford loans has been paid off! (And it took slightly less than a decade.)

Of course, there’s the other batch that I’m still paying down, but I’ll take my happy where I can get it.

I think I’d make a lousy reference librarian - intellectual laziness is one of my big peeves. If someone’s asking me a question that they could easily figure out on their own, I have this desire to beat them over the head. So, figuring that, it probably wouldn’t take too long to for me to go from a raised eyebrow to lobbing out of date* volumes of the readers guide to periodical literature at folks, which I would keep around just for that use.

And now I’m thinking about my ultimate fantasy library…

*I dunno if they even issue the hardbound volumes anymore, what with everything being electronic these days.