Some college kid emailed me a while back (a year or so?) because she wanted her name removed from one of my LJ entries. Problem was that I a) couldn't find the entry in question and b) I didn't really care all that much. I wrote her back that she'd have to be more specific because I couldn't find the entry in question (it was a press release about my short story Mudo being published in the Santa Clara review that included mention of one of her poems being in there as well). Mind, I didn't write the release - just c/p'd it from the website that ran the story. Anyhow - my likely guess is that she is either 'zomg so embarrassed by the poem now that she's 'gotten so much better' in the past four years or she wants to claim that it hasn't been published before so she can resubmit it somewhere and claim to give them first time rights. Whatever. So not my problem either way. She never wrote back.

Now, fast forward about a year later and she suddenly sends me this charming email. Yes, this is what they teach you in college!

Hi charisma:

I emailed you a long time ago about the Livejournal entry where you mention my name (Some Annoying College Chick) in the news where your poem was accepted to the Santa Clara Review. I can't remember what your response was, and I tried to access it on my Livejournal account (which I have since deleted) in order to reread why you didn't immediately do what I asked. I am writing to you again to ask that you please delete the post, or edit my name out. Since the request doesn't affect you in any way, I can't understand why you wouldn't honor it. A quick response would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Some Annoying College Chick

Oh yeah. That's going to make me care so hard right there. Then I noticed because I didn't respond to this IMMEDIATELY (I was sleeping, kid) - I got a message on my facebook. No, she isn't a friend or anything- she just estalked me to make EXTRA SURE I got her VERY IMPORTANT MAIL.


Subject: follow up

I don't mean to be annoying but I just wanted to make sure you got my email about your livejournal post with my name in it. I am asking that you please edit it out. This is not the first request.

Thank you,

Still Some Annoying College Chick


Guess what? You ARE annoying. In fact, by now, I'm more inclined to go in and edit the entry to make your name stand out in three inch tall sparkly glitter text than I am to remove it. I gave her the following reply:

Why I didn't immediately do what you ask? Oh well let's see ...

If you could link me to the entry, I would edit it -last time you mentioned this I tried searching for it and can't find it and that was the end of it because you didn't contact me again until now. I really don't have much interest in digging through 10 years of entries to do a silly thing like edit out a name - especially since the tone of this message is rather rude. I'm under no obligation to do so, and it's hardly a top priority. You're the one who wants something here, so I would suggest asking politely and providing a link to the entry that you want edited - and an apology wouldn't hurt either. Might make me more inclined to honor your request as you are quite right and it does not affect me in the slightest.

Is this response quick enough for you?

--L


I suppose she figured she better tone down the condecension a bit if she wanted her PRECIOUS NAME to be preserved, so I got the following:

L:

Didn't mean to come off rude--the reason why I probably did is because I didn't think it would require the digging you said it does, and with no access to the reply it's hard for me to understand why someone wouldn't, yes, honor, another person's request for privacy. I found the entry with relative ease, but perhaps because I was looking. The entry can be found here: http://charisma.livejournal.com/683883.html.

Thank you very much for replying quickly, and thanks in advance for doing me this favor.


Making excuses for your behavior for the win! Oh, this is probably why - it's not that she was being snotty about it, of course not.


Dear Annoying College Chick,

I guess there's one thing they don't teach you in college - if you're going to ask someone to do you a favor, great or small, a little politeness goes a long way. Being a right bitch about it earns you a scathing live journal entry, with your precious name removed of course - but you sure as hell know who you are. Let's hope you actually learned something today - even well-educated academics (like you undoubtedly are) have to crawl out of their holes to deal with the public every now and then. Also.. you're not exactly attending an ivy league school there.

Also x2, re-reading my Santa Clara review - your poetry kind of sucked. Googling your precious name - it still does. Oh and by the way - there seem to be about ten or more other people with the same completely generic name that you have - so unless you go on a little quest to hunt down each of them to preserve the sacred purity of your name - you're still nobody special to the internets.

No love,
Me

Tonight
we don't have a lot to go on
but that's not how it lives in my head
no, not at all
blind times
thought we were matching weight
we pulled
sometimes it was you and sometimes it was me
but where are we
you say "don't take it all so hard for now
there's so much space
and there will always be later for that"


Matching Weight - Trespassers William


I like this - those little bit of lyrics above, followed by about eight minutes of ambient noise and instrumental. That's what my life feels like right now - little speaking, a lot of tangentially related sounds. Apologies to everyone I am currently uncommunicative with right now - yes, I am avoiding quite a lot of people at the moment but it's nothing personal I am just in one of those periods where talking to almost everyone is overwhelming. There's too much pressure and screaming and all the bad things around here and I can't stand for there to be more online. Sorry. We bend so much and then we drop out of sight before we break - it's just the way of things. I've also pretty much had enough of the petty things - all the jealousies and the flouncing and the drama. Enough of so many things. I'm rambling so just suffice it to say that if I am not talking to you it may-or-may-not-be you, but it probably isn't you it's more-than-likely-me. Dig?

It'll all wander back again eventually. Always does.

Oh, for heaven's sakes... can't the internet stop being lame once in a while?

I like to play games - so I went looking for some game communities on LJ. I found one for the Match Game, one for Wheel of Fortune, and one for multiple games. "Cool!" I thought to myself, as I often do, because talking to myself while I am alone is kind of lame. "I think I will join these communities and play games." So I did.

I only got to enjoy like... one round of each game before LJ DRAMA struck. The guy that was running two of the games was going on vacation - which, y'know no big deal. Okay, games will continue when he gets back, no problem. So then there's a post saying that other members of the communities have taken over to post things while he's on vacation. "How nice," I thought again (still not doing the talking to myself thing), and was ready to play games again. Only then there was a post saying that the two communities were closed, and that the games were being moved to the third community (the one that has like... five different games a day).

So I was like "Well, alrighty then" and figured that they'd just worked something out that I wasn't aware of, and I'd just enjoy playing the games from the big multi-game community. Right? Wrong. Apparently, the two 'friends' had hijacked the Match Game and Wheel of Fortune communities while they had the opportunity, and brought them under the totalitarian rule of the big-multi-game-community (which apparently, eats smaller games in a soviet-pac-man like fashion.)

"Well, that's pretty shitty," I thought to myself and joined the guy who had his stuff stolen's new match game community, figuring I'd play there and the big game community because let's face it- I just want to play a damn game. Then I read a few posts in the guy's personal journal and read that they not only stole his communities, they also brought his personal sex life into question. Um... yeah. The drama goes on from there. I'm sorry, but I don't care if someone is a freaking furry humping llamas in Peru (that wasn't what it was, but y'know) - all I care about is that they update the game regularly. Who cares who is fucking whom? I certainly don't. I just want to PLAY A DAMN GAME!

So.... I posted a link to the guy's new match game community here in my LJ, figuring that I'd see if other people want to play with me , 'cause you know... I still want to play a game. Then the Super-Mega-Many-Games community notices that I have an ad for the other guy's comm- and they kick me out of their community without so much as a 'fuckyou,goodbye.' I reapplied to make sure it wasn't an accidental deletion, but no- it was a case of them being dicks.

I give up! There is just no way to play a game on LJ.

Apparently, yes, this is my position in our family. And frequently, elsewhere. I love to help people.. don't get me wrong. It is, after all, my calling in life. But sometimes, like tonight, it saddens me and drains me. If you know me at all or have read my journal at all, you know who Jolene is. She's my niece, who is like a sister to me, whom I care about deeply and happens to have schitzophrenia. Despite this.. she tries very hard (and usually suceeds admirably) to lead a normal life.

It doesn't help that her roomate is an alcoholic drug addict slut.

That doesn't really help at all.

Last night my daughters were staying over at Jolene's house. They'd had a pleasant day planned. Jolene and her boyfriend Jay were taking them to go skating, and then they were going to see a play (You're a Good Man Charlie Brown) that the kids would like. It all went very nicely. They all had a lot of fun, and things were great. Then they went back to Jolene's house, and put the kids to bed.

Jolene and Jay were going to head to bed, but since the kids were sleeping in Jolene's bed, and they were taking the couch, they had to wait for her druggy-slut-roomie to get off of it. Which she didn't- instead, she thought it was a great idea to start drinking tequila with my children in her house. She then figured it wasn't enough to get stinking drunk by herself, she'd might as well get Jolene and Jay drunk with her.

Now.. they could have, of course, been responsible adults here and refused , and told the little druggy slut to just stop drinking. But peer pressure being what it is, Jolene started drinking wine, and Jay started drinking tequilla with the slutmonkey (yes, in case you haven't noticed, I don't usually call those I don't like by their real names. Go figure.). So.. Jay starts getting a migraine, and Jolene says it's about time they stop drinking and go to bed (a smart idea). But the little sleazeball roomie says that more tequilla will help Jay, and proceeds to try and make him drink even more.

Now.. at this point Jolene (who had had about four glasses of wine which is still about four glasses too many while my children are at her house) headed out to sit on the couch, disgusted. Slutty started whispering to Jay about something or another, which made Jolene upset, and she walked back into the kitchen just in time to see the girl giving Jay drugs. A tranquilizer named clonopin (I can't spell that), in fact- which she had gotten illegally, of course. Now.. I would think that anyone with half a brain could realise that tequilla is bad enough- but tequilla and tranquilizers certainly don't mix. If I ever see that girl, I am going to slap her. Period. And I do mean that.

Sooo.. Jolene starts arguing with them (because it was very wrong of La Bitchwench to give Jay the tranq to begin with, and very stupid of him to take it). The girl says she's going to out to the store- then tries to get Jay to go with her, which he agrees to, which pissed Jolene off more. After all, Jay is her boyfriend for one- and for two, after you've just had a bunch of tequilla and a tranq is not the ideal time to walk across the street and into a shopping place.

Then Jay got mad, called Jolene some names, and walked out. Jolene followed him, yelling, because she'd told him before not to walk out on her. Then he tried to make up with her outside, and she turned around to ignore him and walk back in, and he grabbed her jacket to try and keep her there and kiss and make up. She got very angry, and told him that he should not touch her in that way, and he stormed off, and she stormed in.

Now... the next morning, when they were sober, Jolene got up with the kids and started getting ready to go to the Art museam with them. Jay came over and was going to apologize, but Jolene kept telling him that he "didn't respect her bounderies" and made a huge issue about the jacket grabbing, rather than getting at the heart of the problem. Fortunately, as they were sober, they had enough sense not to do this in front of the kids.

She wouldn't compromise on the issue - and he got mad and said "fine, have a nice life then". Then he stopped on his way out to go into the other room where the kids were, and said goodbye to them and hugged them and all.

So Jolene came over tonight to bring the kids home, and told me all this. I wound up scaring her and my mother a bit- I do get scary when I'm mad, so I've been told, even though I didn't even need to raise my voice. I get this clipped, strained tone, and my eyes look very dark. I explained to her than none of them had any business drinking -anything- while my kids were around, and it would not happen again. She made the mistake of trying to explain it off, saying that the kids hadn't seen it, and that she wasn't driving while drunk or anything.

I asked her what would have happened if one of the kids got hurt, and had to go to the hospital. Or what if one had a bad dream, and wanted to talk to her or Jay about it, and came out and saw him all stinking drunk and stoned like that, and her a bit impared herself? She apologized then and said I was right, and she wouldn't let it happen again- and I let her live, as Aus puts it. Later she said that she felt bad that she had let me down, and thanked me for forgiving her. I told her that it was alright, becuase she hadn't sold the kids into white slavery or anything, and they came back unscathed- but it -would not- happen again. My family knows that tone means business.

I spent the next three hours or so talking to Jolene about her problems with Jay, and about the pseudobreakup. It seems that their relationship is just fine when they are by themselves, but when they get around people with issues like le slutmonkey, they both seem to fall into the vices that are in the environment around them. When Jay and Jolene are alone together, they'll play games of Trivial Pursuit for entertainment, and do nice things with each other. But when someone like that wench has drink around and offers it, they fall into doing what she's doing, and it makes things bad between them.

What my advice to her was is that she should move out of her apartment and find one on her own, or stay with Jay until she can find her own place, and stay away from that girl. If you only have a problem when you are around a certain person or situation, you avoid that person or situation. I also explained to her that she couldn't have everything in the relationship her way, and neither could Jay. They each have to compromise. For example-- she gets very angry when he leaves, and tries to grab him, or make him stay, and that makes him mad, and escalates the problem. I suggested that she might compromise and let him leave- and return to talk about it when he is calm again- and he could compromise by leaving in a polite manner, not storming out - even if it's just to say "I can't talk about this right now- I'll just get more angry. I'll see you tomorrow".

Most problems between people stem from lack of communication, and from the misinterpretation of motives- both one's own internal motives, and the motiviations of a partner. Jolene said that I should go back to school and become a therapist. Heh. Aparently, I'm really good at this. I agreed to talk to Jay, too, if he wants to talk to me, to help them work stuff out. She wrote him a letter so that she could calmy write out her feelings without getting frustrated or angry, and is going to give it to him.

And as for why she was making a big deal out of the jacket- I finally got to the bottom of that problem. It was not because he didn't "respect her boundaries", it was because he had startled her by grabbing suddenly at her jacket- and because he was drunk, he was less predictable than normal Jay. She knew that the normal non-drunk Jay would never hurt her, but there was the risk, however imagined, that drunk Jay might become abusive. Jolene has been in abusive situations before- and I recognize the whole struck puppy syndrome. I spent a lot of time being that way myself. I still do the occasional cringe at loud noise or sudden movement. But by recognizing the problem, hopefully, she'll be able to work things out with Jay, and explain to him why she was extremely disturbed and focused on that one little issue, instead of the much larger problem.

And yes, had it been a case of actual domestic abuse, my advice would be much different. I have been bothered lately by roleplay we have going on at the moment that involes an abused character (my heart always goes out to them, no matter how fictional). I hope that someone is able to help the character out of the situation. I still feel bad when I see abused people on TV, even if it's a fictional program, and especially if it's news or Cops or some such. Just a little note out there for anyone who may be reading this and wondering- it's never alright for another human being (even if it's a human being you love) to hit you, hurt you, or emotionally batter you in any way. If someone is abusive to you, no matter how much you love them, leave. Period. No "I think they'll change" or " It only happened because I did this..." or "It's my fault". It isn't. And remember- that there are abused males out there too. I think our society focuses too much on women as victims sometimes- to the point where it becomes almost an embarassment and a social taboo for a man to admit that he's been victimized and seek help. Abuse knows no gender lines, racial lines, poverty levels... it can happen anywhere, to anyone- and everyone has the right to live free from it. If you are in a situation like that, you have to choose not to be a victim. You may think that nothing will ever be better, and that if you leave the person who is abusing you, you'll never have anyone else to love.

I thought that, when I left my ex husband. I worried about those things- yet, I knew I wasn't going to stand by and be victimized. No matter how scared I was at the time- I had to leave, and I did. It took almost a decade for me to find love again.. but the love I found made me realise that I had never known true love before. True love is never having to be afraid to say what you think, and true love is being happy in the morning just to wake up beside the man you're married too. Not a day goes by without me thinking how lucky I am to have escaped from that situation, and then to have met Aus, who made every litttle bad thing that had happened to me in the past not matter, because the present is so beautiful.

So never give up hope, and never stay in a hopeless situation. It does get better, though sometimes, it is a long haul.

involved disfunctional family stuff as usual.

My dad called my mother and I bitches for not having the turkey done when he wanted to eat it, which made my brother Ron (who is like the most gentle person on the face of the earth usually) yell at him, and my brother Joe (who had been taking a nap) leave. Sort of the "sucky relative causes holiday problem" chain reaction. Those of you from dysfunctional families who recognize this holiday pattern, raise your hand.

And damnit, Joe even got me a decent present this year. I was pretty happy with his existance- we've worked out a lot of the problems we used to have with each other when he was rich married and unhappy and I was poor and happy and he resented it.

Heh.. so it goes.

We did, however, have a lot of good food. Which is the point of most holidays, I think. Good food and presents.

After Joe left, Ron went outside to smoke a cigarette and I went out to talk to him about why Dad was such an asshole and why Joe left. Ron meantioned that despite dad having mental issues and such, that we didn't know how many Christmases we'd have left with dad. I kind of felt the same way, but I still got upset that he called my mother a bitch. I can understand why he doesn't like me, but my mom is always there for him, despite how nasty he's been at times.

Today he seemed a lot better. He doesn't really like Christmas for some reason, I don't know why. He's always been more mentally unstable around the holidays.

Presents I got are a more cheerful subject:

Mystery machine candy holder/bank from Aus
Scooby Doo Dvd
Lime Green N64
A grand total of 140 bucks cash (some of which was shared Aus cash, hehe- thanks to Kara, Krista, Aus's Grandma)
A slinky
Puzzle book
Sewing kit
Angel statue
Pin
Snowman candle thingus
50 buck gift certificate to Wal-Mart (shared with Aus =) )
A peach warm blankey
A Weird NJ magazine
Cordial Cherries
Assortated chocolates
A humidifier
A book
A LoTR goblet
A sulsa dagger

I think that's everything.

Today, we got some after Christmas sale stuffs, a second controler for the N64, and Pokemon Stadium .

Heh.. apparently miss Claire has been fine and well, moving on to be the potential betrayer in the lives of many more people. Seems to be a pattern with her, after all- first her friend Erin was no good, then it was us, now... who knows who's next? People like that make me sick. Aparently, she'll never change, and hopefully, as some form of karma, will die alone surrounded by broken memories and about 590 cats.

I opened my rarely used AIM to talk to Moonchilde and noticed Nomi was on, so I messaged her to tell her that her and Claire could have just come to play their characters and ignored me.

Poor baby complained how I was harassing her by messaging her (its called... ignore. If you didn't want to be available for messaing, I'm sure you could use it. You're not that stupid, are you?). I was trying to be nice. Heh. Which as we all know, when applied to stupid people, gets you nowhere.

I tried to explain to her that I had messaged to be nice and tell her that, and she was of course her usual hostilely bitchy self and responded with she didn't want to talk to me, and "you get what you deserve in life". Which of course prompted me to reply "if that was true, you'd have been dead years ago". Which is true, because I don't know a meaner, more hostile, more manipulative being than her. Fortunately for her longevity, though, it would seem that karma doesn't always work.

So here's my tips for the day:

1) Never try to be nice to known bitchy people.

2) If you don't want to be messaged by someone, use that happy little ignore/block function. That's why its there. If you don't, and do get messaged, don't whine about harassment. It was your responsibilty to do the ignore thing if you didn't want to be bothered, now wasn't it?

Nomi had the nerve to reply to Kara's post. Yet, lacked the guts to be mature and responsible about leaving, as did Claire. I despise falseness so much in people, damn their black hearts, both of them.

Of course, it was just to try and shift the blame to someone else. Ever this, to blame someone else for their own actions. Never their responsibilty, of course not. Always "We felt we had to do this" or "You made us..." in that sick little symbiotic plural that has come to symbolize their lives. They should just screw and get it over with.

Or grow up. Or both.

Still, it is disheartening to know that people you once cared for are so vile and craven as to sneak off and leave everthing unclosed, from what happens to all their characters who were with other characters in the roleplay all the way right on down to the "hey, we once trusted you so much that you have a lot of our shit, and we'd like it back now".

Shallow, nasty, craven little cowards.

If I believed in hell, I'd almost wish for you both to rot in it.

But of course, I don't. And from my estimations, if I did, I'd say you were both already there.

So what changes?

Nothing.

The sun still rises. Spring still follows winter. None of this will matter in a hundred years, which is like a blink of an eye to the universe.

Betrayal has been a part of humanity since Cain and Able (and I'm quite sure, since that's a Christian myth, in civilizations that went before it.)

That doesn't make it hurt any less.

Its amazing that even though you know humanity sucks in general, the pain is still fresh evertime you're confronted with the fact.

Well, the little bitch has finally done something to impress me. I hope she's proud. She's managed to sink to lower levels than even I thought her capable of.

Worse part is that now we have to change all our passwords for almost everything, and restructure our matterials to take stuff off the domain that she was paying for. This is our repayment, for years of kindness, for making her the maid of honor at our wedding, for spending the summers with her every year.

This is why one should never trust another human being , friends, because when you do, its only a matter of time before they rip their claws into your back and tear your heart out, smiling all the time.

Heheh.. I've never heard of super chicken, but Bri's character is reciting the themesong. I wonder if I was a deprived child? Now he's going on about a secret squirel.. heh. I'm feeling sort of melencholy. I'm having fun playing sci-fi, and the new cycle party was nice, too, but I missed a few familar faces. Kara was feeling blechy and didn't want to play, and Claire said she would, but as usual, was just BSing and totally blew off playing in either place to bugger off for points unknown. Lately she's been so snobby and self-absorbed, its really hard to be around her sometimes. And you know, no matter what she says, she's just going to go back on it and bugger off on more of her self-absorbed little things, and have nothing to do with us (other than telling us about whatever she's doing that's infinately more important than anything we want her to do with us). I really wonder why she bothers being here most days. If she doesn't want to RP anymore, she should just write her characters out. If she actually wants to interact with us, she should ask us how we are, and what we're doing, instead of barely listneing to anything we say, and prattling on for hours about her life, her story, etc. About the only time she talks to us about something that's not what she's doing is to ask for help on what she's doing, or to talk about some song. Then she buggers off, and comes back the next time she wants something (0r to hang all over Nomi, but don't get me started on that). Its sickening. Nothing pisses me off more than people that lie, and are only around when they want something, and don't know you the rest of the time. I don't know. That just ruined the whole day for me.

I am so pissed off right now about things that I can't even begin to express them. Sometimes I wonder if Claire has a soul.