Mangela Lansbury

My old roommate would flip out if I cooked something she didn't like for myself. If she could smell it and see it, that was just an assault on her because of some long story from when she was young that any normal person would have gotten over. I couldn't make, like, baked beans from a can, sauerkraut, certain egg dishes... I could keep wheat bread in the apartment, but toasting it would lead to a tantrum. I don't mind people eating what they eat, but there's a point where it's a bridge too far. I do catch myself making condescending remarks sometimes and that's a problem that I'm working on, but some people just take it to a ridiculous degree and I don't feel too bad for rolling my eyes at them.

I thought the Pokemon aspect and aesthetic would get me through, but yeah, it was a snoozefest in every way. The only JRPGs I can finish anymore are Shin Megami Tensei games. They're the only ones that don't seem to end up with combat where you just mash X until everything is dead.

PCR tests for HIV RNA, which is one of the two main tests. The other tests for certain antibodies. PCR is usually for earlier detection -- it's not perfect, but it's pretty dang accurate.

There's a flowchart for the FDA guidelines that I looked at. It seems like generally their questions have some qualification, but I'm not sure that "have you ever had sex with someone from Africa, but if they left the continent before 77 you're totally cool" is any better. The problem they have is that you might have an exotic strain of HIV that they can't test for. I have a feeling that's bullshit, but I'm not an immunologist so who knows. And you can get paid for donating, but only at private blood banks, I think? I know there's a place in town that pays for plasma donations, at least.

I used to have a friend whose food preferences all had ridiculous stories with them. Things like, oh, I can't eat wheat bread because one time when I was 10 I was sick and the taste reminds me of that time. She had a lot of things like that. I don't really pick on people who are willing to just say, "I don't like that," but I've known people like that who just have to have a reason or a story to go with it, and boy do I condescend to them.

Sorry, Apple is already working on that as an upgrade to heartbeat sharing. I don't think it would be a wise investment.

I was halfway paying attention most of the day, and those games got ridiculously long sometimes! I like this, it's good.

Can we change millennial to snake people too?

A friend of mine was followed home from a bar and beaten and robbed as he got out of his car last night. Hooray for gay life in a small town. Guess I won't be going out anywhere for a while.

The questionnaire still includes the question "Have you ever been to Africa?" because yes, having ever visited a continent might mean you have HIV and your blood is dangerous. They also include the question, "Have you had sexual contact with anyone who was born or lived in Africa?" because the FDA is fucking gross. I've been watching Star Wars Rebels today.

Doris Lessing is a good sometimes-scifi feminist writer who won the Nobel! Renata Adler is a good writer too. Sei Shonagon, Banana Yoshimoto, Simone de Beauvoir, Robin Hobb, Mira Gonzalez, and Chloe Caldwell are all good writers too. These are all very different writers. Sarah Jeong writes good coverage of the intersection of tech and law -- maybe take some time on a Thursday to read 5 Useful Articles, a copyright law newsletter she co-writes. It's interesting, promise.

Now I'm just imagining a story about a cowboy who has a can of beans for dinner, then the next day farts so hard he breaks the horse's back and has to put it down to end its suffering.

I've been reading The Familiar: One Rainy Day In May by Mark Z Danielewski. I'm about halfway through and I'm really enjoying it on one level and really not on another. It's really good to see Danielewski playing with the way text is put on the page in interesting ways again, even if some of it is a little literal. There are a lot of good ideas too, and they're being explored in interesting ways. I'm interested in all the disparate stories, even if sometimes there's text in Chinese with no translation and I don't even know how to Google that. But the stories all feel too separate. I guess I have to have faith that they'll come together in some way, but I'm starting to flag a bit. I enjoy the stories independently, but since they seem so disconnected it's hard to really feel any momentum in the book. I get into a story set in LA and suddenly I'm in Singapore with a different character, different text layout, different voice, different themes... Just different everything. It's jarring, and it keeps taking me out of the story. Is anyone else reading it?

This will be revolutionary for me. Why is that not a main selling point???

It's gonna be a hot destination spot for the American Christian right.

I was told to apply to a backdoor job posting at the place I'm temping at today -- one of those job postings where they don't post it publicly, just give you a link for it? It's basically just for the temp position I'm in now, but the woman I'm working for wants to just pay me what she's paying the temp agency. I don't have a contract with the temp agency I'm with, just a regular employee, but I'm still not entirely sure it's kosher? And I don't really want to sour my relationship with an agency that's treated me pretty great. Double and, even absent a contract on my end, I know the agency has a contract with the organization I'm at now and don't want to get bitten in the ass because of contractual terms I might be helping to violate? The whole weird conversation/email chain has just made me uncomfortable, but I'm not really in a position to be picky -- especially considering the money I'm being offered. EDIT: I checked out what I signed 3 years ago, and I'm technically in breach of a 1 year contract that I signed then. I kind of just... was lazy and didn't re-sign it back then when it expired? I was living about 30 minutes away from the office then, so they forgave me for it and said it was fine, and I feel like doing this now would be taking advantage of some forgiveness that's become clerical oversight.

I've met a few people who need an answer to the question of if he's a replicant. The question isn't any leaping off point for anything about class or memory or identity, it's just a question of internal fact. I guess my beef is that lore tends to look inward when more interesting questions tend to be outward facing -- what a work says about the world outside of itself, not just about itself. Those questions are fine to start at, but there are people who start and stop at them. Deckard Cain is definitely a replicant though. Look for my tumblr with a 10,000 word essay on how this is justified by the lore of both Blade Runner and Diablo soon.

I had a conversation about lore the other day that clarified for me why lore obsessed people bother me so much: They let questions of fictional fact or history trump a deeper reading of a story. People who are obsessed with questions like what caused the apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy's the Road or is Deckard Cain a replicant will try to derail discussions of the themes of those works with those questions. That kind of preoccupation with lore is counter to deeper readings because all you want is more superficial information. I don't think an interest in lore necessarily means you're incapable of more meaningful readings of things, but I think those kinds of questions act as barriers to more interesting questions. Edit: okay, maybe the question of whether or not Deckard Cain is a replicant is pretty interesting, but I meant the other Deckard. The Blade Runner one.

That's true for a lot of nutritional health writing, which is why I usually try to find someone who's done it or just try it myself and see how I like it and how it makes me feel.

My sub-$3 meals are pretty lacking in nutrition (noodles tossed in olive oil, grits with parmesan, rice and whatever's around), so having something cheap with more nutritional value around wouldn't be a bad thing.

Has anyone tried Soylent? I'm trying to think of ways to save money on food, and I've heard about it enough that it popped into my head. Also trying to be as insufferable as possible

Letterman revolutionized early listicle technology by popularizing parodying top 10 lists. He basically made Buzzfeed, but on TV and in the 80s. His latest bits of fame have been heartfelt monologues about 9/11 and a heart bypass surgery, and for coming out as having had multiple affairs with women who worked on his show because someone was trying to blackmail him over it. These are things I gathered from a Fresh Air interview. I don't think I ever watched a full episode of his show or really paid attention to him.

I interviewed for an administrative position at a law firm a year or two ago. They tested my typing skills, gave me a spelling test, had me type a letter from dictation, and called me back in for a first and then a second interview. They hired someone with a law degree. The job market is fucked up.

I think there's a very valid reading of the show that advertising is an empty commoditization of humanity (and how it's in direct opposition to real emotion, which is a possible reading of the Hershey's pitch especially), so I don't see the bleak reading as inconsistent with the show. Weiner's is just his interpretation of the ending. His is far from the only input on the show, so while he's an authority on the show, he isn't necessarily THE authority on the show.

It looks like it's an ad from 3dfx. I really hope it came out after Sega took them off Dreamcast development and went with a different graphics card company. It makes sense as some bitter kind of "I'm doing great! I never loved you anyway!" breakup letter.