You know, you take a long weekend to do necessary RL things like reconnect with your parents and read a book before you go out of your mind, and in the mean time everyone and their mother starts putting the queer (as in BIZARRE) back into sexual orientation discrimination.

First is that Times article from Sunday, which just, I can't get started on this. Every girl in that suite is a sweetheart and my support lies firmly with them and my college. The horrible part is that in any other circumstance I would support an article exploring the changing role of gender, but knowing some of the underlying facts of this particular matter, I'm incensed instead. Fucking Alissa Quart and her conformation bias. The entire article seeks (rather ironically, I might add) to cast all transgendered people into the role of the misunderstood pioneer and every gender conformist in the world into either the role of oppressor or confused bystander. Like jerks don't exist in every frequency on the gender spectrum.

Second is the lovely news that LJ has censored "bisexuality" out of its popular interests, as well as other sexuality-friendly words, ranging from "hardcore," to fucking "faeries." FAERIES. I ASK YOU.

I kind of feel like climbing a tall building and announcing to the world that things don't have to be black and white. Some people even enjoy a healthy tour of the grey area every once in a while! Look at the freaking Best Picture nominees this year and it's like getting bludgeoned with a neon sign that says "AMBIGUITY IS THE NEW HOLLYWOOD BY-WORD."

Taking the quote slightly out of context: Climb out of your holes, people!

It's days like today when it really hits home that I am going to an all girls school.

My roommate and I started talking about how sad and shocking and terrible Heath Ledger's death is, and as our conversation went on, my roomate pulled down her copy of 10 Things I Hate About You. She brought in a couple of friends from the hall, and we all started watching it.

This movie defined the beginning of our teens. I wasn't lying when I said he was my first idol crush. All of us love this movie and love Heath in it. The first time he came on screen we gasped a little and groaned and were so aware of his every movement, but then the movie took hold. Before long, we were laughing and groaning at everything, simply and plainly enjoying ourselves. It became less of a thing of mourning and more of a celebration of his life and his work.

As this went on, other girls stopped by, realized what we were doing and stayed to see the movie. At our largest, there were about sixteen of us in the room. About twenty filtered through for different portions. Twelve finished the movie with us. And throughout, we shared trivia and stories and thoughts about the movie and Heath Ledger. We all came to terms together.

I'm sure we weren't the only group of girls who did this, but I'm glad I was a part of it. Heath Ledger was one of our generation's greatest heartthrobs, and he was a wonderful actor besides. He will live on as Patrick and Cassanova, as Ennis del Mar and Gabriel Martin, as Sir William Thatcher, and the speculation surrounding his death can never taint those characters, or his stellar career. He figured prominently in my adolescence. For being that person in my life, I'm grateful to him.

WE KNEW IT WAS COMING. A SERIES WITH THAT MUCH HOMOEROTIC SUBTEXT, SOMEONE HAD TO BE GAY.

Congratulations, Dumbledore, you're finally out!

*rolls on the floor in triumphant laughter*

The thing that makes me just die, though, is that it's Queer Awareness Month here in the Columbia University community. I cannot wait to spread the awareness. Oh, this is amazing.

EMO MOOD ALL GONE. XD

I was just linked to a rather terrifying article. Apparently, Sony has been selling CDs that contains hidden installation software. This software activates invisibly while you are playing your CDs to install digital rights management (DRM) software. This software can negatively affect your ability to burn CDs or to play them. It can even affect the CD-players in cars! It is virtually undetectable and one person who found it and tried to remove it reported utter devastation to his CD drive. This is one step too far in the fight against piracy. I doubt I'll buy a CD from them ever again.

More info in the article here.

I don't know why I used that subject. I really don't.

Anyway, I haven't touched this thing in forever, have I? I suppose part of the problem is the fact that I really am still adjusting to not having 8+ hours a day to dedicate to my computer-related hobbies. But goddamn, this thing could use an entry or two couldn't it? And there's no better time than the present.

So, if I must talk about anything, I suppose I should talk this past week. And so…

I believe that every once in a while, life sends out a reminder of its malevolent nature. It's like an obnoxious memo that reads "HELLO! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN I AM A VINDICTIVE COSMOS AND LIKE TO SCREW WITH YOU AT VERY INOPPORTUNE MOMENTS?" in big bold letters.

Life decided to send me one of those this week.

First let's talk about history. I blew a test on Monday. Blew. I'm claiming "temporary insanity" and having at it. For whatever reason, my brain decided to fudge with me and I didn't study two and a half of the five chapters the test was on. I knew I fudged it the minute someone clued me in on my sheer idiocy. And of course, it didn't help that I was so unnerved -- by the time I finished the bulk of the test I blew the essay because I couldn't think straight through the nervous breakdown I was very close to having by the point. 77's are not destructive grades. With a couple of hundreds you can bounce right back from them. But the thing that continues to screw with me is the fact that I honestly studied those other 2 and a half chapters. I spent a good hour studying and was very confident and had the dates all fixed in my head. And then it all decided to go to pot. I think this was about the time the Cosmos pulled out the popcorn and said, "Let's screw Elizabeth over this week. She's pretty solid, but her absolute inability to deal with states of crisis could prove quite amusing."

And so came Wednesday. Oh yes. The day Cosmos decided to prod my father into doing the most potentially harrowing thing anyone can do.

He messed with the computer.

He bought a router. A noble sentiment, I assure you, as I have been whining about my laptop’s lack of Internet for god knows how long. But somewhere in the process of installing the router on the computer, he decided the computer sucked a$$, which really, it did. He got some spyware bustin' program and ran through it and all seemed well in the world.

But the Internet stopped working. God only knows how he managed to become so delusional that he convinced me it had something to do with that Spybot. Here is the quick rundown of how these last few days progressed.

Wednesday

• Elizabeth comes home to find a VPOed father who has apparently been squabbling with several Trouble-Shooters for most of the day.
  
• She quickly discovers her computer no longer has Internet access.
  
• All hell proceeds to break loose in the form of lengthy arguments about the best way to proceed.
  
• Elizabeth barely avoids death by hyperventilation when she realizes that
  
  a) This problem cannot be solved in one day and
  
  b) She will be without Internet for an indefinite period of time.

Thursday

• A tense calm settles over the house.
  
• Elizabeth begins saving things to CD-R because she is "evacuating" in much the same way the wealthy evacuate sinking ships in that they
  
  a) Get the hell off, but
  
  b) Insist on saving their 30+ pounds of luggage.
  

  More hellfire and damnation as the CD-Rs run out and withdrawal symptoms set in.

Friday

• Elizabeth resolves to retreat temporarily to the library for Internet access if computer problems are not solved within 10 minutes of her arrival home.
  
• She gets the ingenious idea that perhaps the problem is not with the SpyBot or the router, but with way the USB cable has been re-stationed.
  
• She proceeds to test her theory, despite negative utterings from the male parental.
  
• She finds she has to re-save the username and password for the DSL connection-thingy.
  
• Father-thing is senile and tries to tell her the wrong password.
  
• Elizabeth ignores him and puts in the password as she remembers it.
  
• Lo and behold, the Internet is restored to the household!
  
• Elizabeth considers doing a face-palm, but is too busy Halelujah-ing at the top of her lungs.
  
• There is much hugging and kissing all around.
  
• Elizabeth proceeds to drop everything and just revel in the Internet
  
• Father feels so bad about the whole debacle he only protests once.

This is about the time when I think Cosmos ran out of popcorn and reluctantly allowed reason to set back in.

The other quick thing I'd like to touch upon:

The Patriot Act v. sucks, like heck. I've just read this article where this poor lady was researching for a spy novel she was writing that had to do with terrorism in Cambodia and the FBI and crap raided her house for it.

"The raid took place last fall, pre-dawn, and it lasted three hours. They banged at my front door first, damaged it coming in, displayed weapons and threatened to kill my dogs. After that, imagine everything you've ever seen on TV, only worse. There were six male agents. One was in the "bad cop" mode the entire time, trying to intimidate me, yelling at me, threatening me. When I had to use the restroom, he sent an agent along to the bathroom with me. It was a multi-agency raid: Postal Inspectors (for the Web site/e-mail end of it), the FBI, and three officers who would only identify themselves as Federal Police. They took so much -- computers, photocopier, files, books, discs, computer programs, CDs of the music by which I write, contracts, absolutely everything I had connected to the writing world. They took pictures off my walls, my office television, pens, a case of paper, postage stamps ... even now, after all these months, I still go to get something only to discover it missing." Full article available >here<.

Christ. And people ask me why I'm none too happy with the Bush administration.