Here are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in yes, *that* Dawn person's LiveJournal:

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Monday, July 13th, 2009
8:15 pm	inferior customer service: Ty's Toy Box If I get a non-trivial response, I will update this entry or comments to reflect it. The following is a message I have sent to the customer service mailbox at Ty's Toy Box, which currently has the contract to run the VIZ media store. To quote http://www.tystoybox.com/pages/Customer_Service: At TysToyBox.com, we are committed to providing a superior shopping and service experience for every customer. Our Customer Care team is always willing to help you with any of your toy needs, from personal shopping assistance to questions regarding your order or return. We are here for you and look forward to assisting you! ... Ty's Toy Box prides itself in being one of the fastest shippers on the Internet. On June 10, 2009 I placed an order through the VIZ store associated with Shonen Jump magazine for merchandise totalling USD$[NUMBER] plus USD$[NUMBER] shipping "US Postal Service Airmail to Canada". On June 10, my credit card was charged the amount of USD$[NUMBER] and I was sent an email from customerservice@ttbmarketplace.com indicating "Most orders ship the next business day, but please allow 2 business days for order processing. You will receive another e-mail from us when your order ships." On June 12, CUSTOMERSUPPORT@TTBMARKETPLACE.COM sent me email stating "We are happy to report that your order, #[NUMBER] was shipped on 2009-06-12" and "International orders take between 6-10 business days for delivery. " On July 1, significantly after 10 business days had passed, I sent email to customersupport@ttbmarketplace.com to inform them that the expected arrival date of my shipment had passed and inquiring about the possibility of tracking. I received the response quoted below, which states that international shipments can be expected to take 14-21 days for delivery, and I should "allow this time to elapse." Why was the "standard procedure" expected international delivery time not accurately stated in the original shipping notice or on the company web site? When the package finally arrived, I noted in the packing materials that it had been sent from Sweden Post with dispatch note [NUMBER] on June 19, 2009: a full week after your email indicating the product had been shipped and 9 calendar days after your company charged my credit card. Why was I, your customer, informed that my order was shipped (from a country other than the one listed in the order confirmation and shipment email messages) one week before the documented shipping date? I periodically receive shipments from figleaves.com in the UK, which pass through the postal system and customs and typically arrive with duty assessed in 4-8 business days from the time I place my order. Needless to say, I find your pride in being the fastest shipper on the Internet sorely misplaced. I am not favourably disposed to Ty's Toy Box, nor affiliated companies Brand Performance and AllAboardToys.com. I shall ensure that not only VIZ Media but my friends and associates are made aware of the details of this incident, including any response from officials of Ty Simpson's companies. Sincerely, [NAME] Current Mood: disappointed (1 Comment |Comment on this)
7:53 am	Monday pride thread Mondays, every week, let's celebrate ourselves, to start the week right. Tell me what you're proud of. Tell me what you accomplished last week, something -- at least one thing -- that you can turn around and point at and say: I did this. Me. It was tough, but I did it, and I did it well, and I am proud of it, and it makes me feel good to see what I accomplished. Could be anything -- something you made, something you did, something you got through. Just take a minute and celebrate yourself. Either here, or in your journal, but somewhere. (And if you feel uncomfortable doing this in public, I've set this entry to screen any anonymous comments, so if you want privacy, comment anonymously and I won't unscreen it unless you tell me it's okay. Also: yes, by all means, cheer each other on when you see something you want to give props to!) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
9:00 pm	my, what big vocal folds you have I learned today that I have an instrument which is physically capable of multi-octave coloratura. I repeatedly, comfortably managed a D6 in warm-ups with enough room that E6 should be in reach with some work. Making the sound seamless and beautiful, well, that's what the training montage at the dojo does. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
9:00 pm	hair, hair I recall a friend describing me to one of his friends as "the furry girl from [redacted]", once upon a time. He liked my body hair's natural growth, as did (and do) I. Unlike many (I'd say "most", but I haven't looked for non-anecdotal proof) identifiable-as-female adults in North America, I don't remove my hair: no plucking, no shaving, no sugaring, no waxing, no Nair, and you'd bloody well better not get one of those torture devices called an epilator anywhere near me. I trim the hair that grows out of my scalp when it starts looking ragged at the ends, but that's about it. I haven't always been an unrepentant hairy-legged feminista who looks lustily on other women. When I was in high school, a female friend told me at a pool party that having pubes that showed outside my swimsuit was gross: I took to trimming the sides of my generous hedgerow. In the change room in gym, also in high school, girls with visibly furry legs like mine were belittled: I started shaving my lower legs and the patch on my thigh where the hair grew in dark and thick, then using chemical depilatories when I found they lasted longer than shaving. I was still in high school that I was staying in a group "camping" bunkhouse and the conversation came around to how Baptist girls let their armpit hair grow and it got so long they could -- ew -- braid it: I started trimming my armpit hair very close with scissors that weekend, and tried shaving it a few times but gave up because anything I tried other than carefully wielded scissors left me with a nasty rash that looked bad and felt worse. I plucked my eyebrows once, at the urging of my older sister and Seventeen magazine. Fortunately, there was this model named Brooke Shields to point to as a reason to wear sensible brows. Over the years, I intermittently started and stopped trimming and removing hair on my legs, armpits, and pubic region, depending on my self esteem and my perception of the desires of the people I wanted to like me. Of people who have seen me without clothes, it's only been men who have asked me to pluck hairs on my chest or down the line of my belly, or to trim or shave my pubic hair. Men have also been the ones who wanted to dictate the style of my hair and the height of my heels in uncomfortable shoes. I see society's encouragement of hairlessness for women -- and not-too-hairy-ness for men[*] -- as strange. Sometimes it seems like infantilisation; sometimes like a mass fetish; sometimes a fear of the human body being the body of a mammal. I don't know what it really is. I don't mind what you do with your fur, though I may privately think it a bit odd. I tend to hide my armpits and lower legs in clothing so I don't cause reactions of disgust in people I largely don't know. Perhaps some day I'll be brave and eccentric enough to wear leg- and armpit-baring clothes in public without worrying how others perceive me. Beats wearing purple with a red hat that doesn't go, since I'm not fond of some of the people who've taken that image and suited it to their taste. [*] D's wonderfully hairy back, J's solid mass of belly and chest fur all the way up to the start of where beards grow, and R's overall coat of dark hairs come to mind: I've heard each of them described as ugly. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
10:58 am	Monday pride thread Mondays, every week, let's celebrate ourselves, to start the week right. Tell me what you're proud of. Tell me what you accomplished last week, something -- at least one thing -- that you can turn around and point at and say: I did this. Me. It was tough, but I did it, and I did it well, and I am proud of it, and it makes me feel good to see what I accomplished. Could be anything -- something you made, something you did, something you got through. Just take a minute and celebrate yourself. Either here, or in your journal, but somewhere. (And if you feel uncomfortable doing this in public, I've set this entry to screen any anonymous comments, so if you want privacy, comment anonymously and I won't unscreen it unless you tell me it's okay. Also: yes, by all means, cheer each other on when you see something you want to give props to!) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 5th, 2009
2:35 pm	sundry Lately I haven't felt moved to take the time to write up posts about my life and my thoughts, though I've had potentially interesting bits of both. I've been on vacation, mostly spending it noodling around with Boy, the past week. I could have written something up about the musical we saw at Stratford, or the trip we had to Toronto to check out the ROM (first visit since the new architecture), or the good day we had chilling with Grl, or the Black Cat anime we've been watching together, or the little things about his growth and development that teach me humanity. I also didn't write about Grl's leaning towards research librarianship, which I think is damn cool in addition to being well suited to her personality and skills. I read Barbara Hambly's Darwath book Mother of Winter. I really like the way her characters grow, change, and interact with each other and their environment. I discovered what an innocent time sink vpnwars can be, especially with the minigames. It has much of the nature of little games that I find hard to put down. It may be worse for me than Dwarf Fortress is for Boy. We purchased Rock Band 2 and are enjoying working together in various combinations on the new sets of songs. S and I are also working our way through an Arc the Lad adventure, when we find chunks of 1-2 hours of leisure time. I've had recent unpleasant customer service experiences with the online stores associated with Best Buy and Shonen Jump. I don't think my expectations of accuracy of information on web sites and civility in email are exceptional, but I am over the age of 30 and therefore subject to fits of "in my day". There is music I need to write, so I can perform it. I also recognize I need to develop a repertoire of music I can perform at open mike nights and coffee houses. I won't pick up a guitar again, though. It is more difficult for me to find the motivation to do creative work when I'm basically content. Looking back at the more wretched, creatively productive parts of my life, I'd rather not be spending a large amount of my time in fear, worry, depression, and anger. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 29th, 2009
9:30 pm	Monday pride thread Mondays, every week, let's celebrate ourselves, to start the week right. Tell me what you're proud of. Tell me what you accomplished last week, something -- at least one thing -- that you can turn around and point at and say: I did this. Me. It was tough, but I did it, and I did it well, and I am proud of it, and it makes me feel good to see what I accomplished. Could be anything -- something you made, something you did, something you got through. Just take a minute and celebrate yourself. Either here, or in your journal, but somewhere. (And if you feel uncomfortable doing this in public, I've set this entry to screen any anonymous comments, so if you want privacy, comment anonymously and I won't unscreen it unless you tell me it's okay. Also: yes, by all means, cheer each other on when you see something you want to give props to!) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 28th, 2009
10:52 am	Bollywood kung fu I picked up Chandni Chowk to China at the library recently because I was intrigued: I like chop-socky flicks, I've had a vague interest in Bollywood cinema for a while, and combining comedy with action generally works well for me. We found the movie thoroughly enjoyable. I would correlate enjoyability of it fairly strongly with that of Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which is a full hour shorter. It is also reminiscent of Jackie Chan movies in the way it combines plot, action, comedy and a gentle tip of the hat to romance. On second thought, it had a more coherent plot than some of Jackie Chan's stuff. At two and a half hours, I would only want to see Chandni Chowk in a situation where I could pause the action to take a break to pee. I didn't find the pace particularly dragging, but I was so absorbed in taking in the new-to-me elements of Indian cinema culture that I may have been more forgiving of the movie's length than some. I found the female characters particularly noteworthy for their curviness, confidence, and independence. I liked the humour in the song and dance numbers. I could have done without the Quentin Tarantino shots but there weren't many of them and they did occur at reasonable moments. Gordon Liu did a fine turn as the villain without overplaying it. I need to hie myself down to KPL, where the movie selection leans much more heavily to the multicultural than WPL, and check out some other Indian movies. I wonder what I'll find. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 27th, 2009
9:53 am	Weep no more Three celebrity deaths over the past week (Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson) and Measha Brueggergosman's emergency open heart surgery put me in mind of John Fletcher's poem Weep no more. Each of these four people has inspired me in some positive way. Their names are known to millions of people. I've reflected over their influence on me, each in turn, in a way I would not have been drawn to do without the sharpness of the changes in their existence. And yeah, I'll probably be among the crowd that buys up some back catalog of favourites I'd never gotten around to owning a copy of. But I didn't weep for them, nor will I. If I am confronted with the death or serious illness of someone I know, what would make me weep? I wept when my father was dying, especially on the bus ride home from what I knew in my belly was the last time I would ever see the shell that was left of his body; I held myself composed at his funeral so my family could weep. I wept and raged when Gorgeous, my friend and secret beloved of years, killed himself because he believed he could make no other choice; I kept my sorrow to myself at his funeral, for his family's sake. I have wept myself dry in the years since my mother's massive stroke; I am prepared when the time I'm expecting finally comes. I have not truly wept in the past few years, though even now I suffer losses that sting from time to unpredictable time. I don't know what would make me weep. Perhaps I am lying to myself when I believe the days of my weeping are behind me, that I have forgotten how to be overwhelmed with incapacitating grief. When the time for weeping arrives, I suppose I will find out. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
8:05 pm	it ain't barefoot When I was growing up, my favourite shoe was nothing. I went barefoot as much as I could get away with, enjoying the feel of everything from grass to tree bark to asphalt under my feet, toughening my soles on stones and concrete. Why wouldn't you want to have life between your toes? If I had to wear shoes, absolutely must, I'd prefer whatever running shoes my folks had got if I was running a lot and cheap Chinese mary janes for everything else. Those thin-soled canvas shoes were as close as I could get to no shoes at all, letting my toes splay like nature intended, bending with the contour of whatever I was walking or climbing on. I spend a lot of time walking to get where I'm going and, as a person who's supposed to be grown up, I usually couldn't truck it barefoot if I wanted to. Like I'd want to anyway when most places I have to walk are boring flat concrete and asphalt. I still kick off my shoes and socks a lot, and I'm glad to still have thick calluses on my soles. This weekend, I got some new shoes that don't totally suck. I have a history of not spending money for myself on good things, so over the years I've worn out a lot of crappy shoes with all my walking. Some good points: they're light, at 191 grams a shoe in my size (compare with one of my usual walking shoes at 479g) I can feel the ground I'm walking on through the sole: there is no intrusive support the soles are hard enough to be durable the soles are flexible enough that I'm not likely to crack the sole in the usual place under the ball of my foot my feet feel better when I'm walking properly, which it's easier to do in these shoes than most they feel good for short sprints I can spread my toes a fair bit in the shoes Some not so good points: they cost a lot more, even from the local "high end shoes at low prices" store, than I've spent on shoes for me in a long time the seam rubs when I'm tired and don't walk properly they won't stand up well to tromping through water or mud the zipper is slightly fiddly, especially for taking the shoes off they look kind of dorky, not that I'm a fashion plate I can't spread my toes as much as I want, but I'm a monkey man Yeah, I'm happy with them. So are my feet. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
8:01 am	Monday pride thread Mondays, every week, let's celebrate ourselves, to start the week right. Tell me what you're proud of. Tell me what you accomplished last week, something -- at least one thing -- that you can turn around and point at and say: I did this. Me. It was tough, but I did it, and I did it well, and I am proud of it, and it makes me feel good to see what I accomplished. Could be anything -- something you made, something you did, something you got through. Just take a minute and celebrate yourself. Either here, or in your journal, but somewhere. (And if you feel uncomfortable doing this in public, I've set this entry to screen any anonymous comments, so if you want privacy, comment anonymously and I won't unscreen it unless you tell me it's okay. Also: yes, by all means, cheer each other on when you see something you want to give props to!) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 21st, 2009
6:27 pm	it's finally strawberry weather around these parts I heartily endorse this sentiment written by some guy named Neil: When I am king I shall make out of season non-local strawberries illegal. They don't taste like strawberries. Every year in June I have to remind myself that actually, I like these things, and that sun-warmed strawberries fresh-picked are one of the heavenly delights of the world. It's those big red things called strawberries that turn up the rest of the year I dislike. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
9:51 am	The only cure for litter is you Sometimes when I am walking or cycling on the trail, I see Three Flowers Woman -- or the man I assume is her husband, or both of them -- with her gloves, bag, and tongs. She is a small, agelessly old woman who seems to always wear white from her hat to her shoes. She seems to prefer being unobtrusive as she diligently cleans up the trail and the lands on either side. I call her Three Flowers Woman because I imagine three water lilies sedately dancing on top of her head. I don't understand all the motivations behind people creating or cleaning up litter. I have created a set of patterns in my categorizing mind. There are the people who clean up litter in the way of a vocation. They are usually older people, done with the business and workaday world, able-bodied and quiet. For all I know, some of them may be retired from jobs where they had to pick up after other people. There are the people who pick up litter intermittently, perhaps only in their neighbourhood or when they are close to a receptacle. I think of my aunt picking an empty vodka bottle out of the gutter on the way home from church and carrying it several blocks to the closest garbage can as a somewhat extreme example of this group. There are community clean-ups, typically on Earth Day, where the folks who tend to get together in neighbourhood association activities come with their families to do their once a year work. They may or may not litter the rest of the year, but they clean up once a year the way some people attend to the form of their professed religion once a year. There are people who carry their own refuse with them until they get to a place to dispose of it, in the vein of "take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints" hikers and campers. There are people who throw their garbage in the general direction of a can and don't fuss about whether it actually goes in. After all, if there are public garbage cans, somebody must be cleaning up so they're providing them with a reason to work. There are people who drop their trash when they're done with it. I'm lumping the smokers leaving their cigarette butts on the ground with the droppers of coffee cups and food wrappers on this one. They don't want to be carrying garbage around: it's garbage and it's inconvenient. One group I find particularly curious is those who choose to leave their garbage in out of the way places. Often it's hidden in bushes, but sometimes it's in unusual places in plain sight, like on top of a wall. Regardless of their motivations, which may be more than simple shame or pride, they deliberately choose to dispose of their garbage in an odd, somewhat inconvenient way. I imagine gangs of garbage taggers and skulking, trench-coated litter secreters who work under cover of darkness. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 15th, 2009
7:19 pm	thoughts on UP (comments screened) We went to see UP this weekend. First, I would like to mention a couple of the trailers. In the trailer for the forthcoming Ice Age movie, there's a scene where the fur gets torn from the chest of the comic relief proto-squirrel. In my happy place, squirrels -- even heavily anthropomorphised ones -- have either no nipples at all or anatomically-simplified squirrel nipples on the abdomen along the milk line. I found the human nipples on the squirrel ... somewhat disturbing. Another trailer was for a movie called The Princess and the Frog. Good on Disney for making what look like reasonable, representative choices on the races of the characters and voice talent. Pity about the female lead being apparently another princess or princess-surrogate. Then came the short feature (about which I won't say anything just now), followed by UP. ( It's still out in the theatres. Maybe you don't want to read about it. ) We'll consider getting the disc of UP at some point in the future: in spite of the flaws I found, it is in my experience a good bit of entertainment. Since I wanted to make this entry public and I have touched on a subject that has previously sparked discussions generating more heat than light, I've elected to screen comments until I take the time to read them and decide whether I'm satisfied the possibility of a fight breaking out in a thread is low. Anything I perceive as personal attacks, rants, and meta-discussion will not be unscreened. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
9:37 am	Monday pride thread Mondays, every week, let's celebrate ourselves, to start the week right. Tell me what you're proud of. Tell me what you accomplished last week, something -- at least one thing -- that you can turn around and point at and say: I did this. Me. It was tough, but I did it, and I did it well, and I am proud of it, and it makes me feel good to see what I accomplished. Could be anything -- something you made, something you did, something you got through. Just take a minute and celebrate yourself. Either here, or in your journal, but somewhere. (And if you feel uncomfortable doing this in public, I've set this entry to screen any anonymous comments, so if you want privacy, comment anonymously and I won't unscreen it unless you tell me it's okay. Also: yes, by all means, cheer each other on when you see something you want to give props to!) (1 Comment |Comment on this)