Promises to Keep

I had a dream I want to write down before it fades.

I was some sort of journalist, sent to cover this old school I used to go to, and the fact it was being renovated and revamped. It was a nostalgic assignment, I thought. When I got there, though, it was more familiar than I suspected. The hallways were long and arching, the ceiling was very high. Even though it was decorated differently, it didn't take long for me to recognize it as Balamb Garden. It kind of blew me away both because it was an FFVIII thing that really existed, and because now I realized that I'd been there, myself. ( It was a real thing, and I was part of it. )

So...yeah. Tumblr.

I've seen a bunch of people talking about offloading onto DreamWidth, but I'm not sure exactly how prevalent that exodus will be. I tuned up my profile and icons here a bit, so maybe (hopefully?) I'll be using this site on a more regular basis. I'm just not quite sure yet what that will look like, if it comes to pass.

Anyway, I'm still here, never really left, I just haven't had as much reason to say much here as I have in the past. I'm still on Tumblr, too, but if you're done with that site and came here instead, hello, glad to have you!

Hmm...so this place is still here.

I guess I am, too. Hello. Just came to have a look, see if the site was even still up. I don't have a lot of time for journal-ing these days, but this is the last place I remember seeing certain friends (is it fair to use that word now?), and I was feeling oddly wistful tonight.

I might be speaking to an empty room now, but I wanted to say I'm here, even if I'm the only one listening. Or at least, I'm out there. I'm not hard to find. My name never changes. Sorry for wandering off.

I’ve been thinking about this recently: there’s a sort of buzzword in self-identified media critic jargon that gets tossed around on occasion. “Emotional manipulation” is a turn of phrase I usually dislike, largely because it “sounds bad” and is often used in the context of passing off something about a story, character or scene that made the viewer feel something they didn’t expressly want to feel, condemning it for engaging in cheap neurological trickery to bypass one’s more critical thought processes and shoot straight for that pesky emotional heart that no-I-swear doesn’t usually so much as flutter for what is obviously tripe below my wine-swirling sensibilities.

“Manipulation” is blamed for making us cheer on characters we patently disagree with, shed tears for the character who we lambasted in our last blog post as deserving all the hardship they got, or heaven forbid, choke up at the end of a story we went into with the full knowledge it was supposed to be a tragedy (or have a particularly poignant happy ending). It’s a way of saying, “I was prepared! I know better! I don’t really feel that thing I just felt about that stuff I just saw! It wasn’t me, it was my stupid brain responding automatically to targeted stimulus!”

(…I’m a tough, rational person. Really. *sniff*)

This isn’t to say I have never been angry at media for making me feel things. I think most of us have, if we’re honest about it. I’ve turned off certain horror movies because while I enjoy a good evisceration now an then, sometimes I’ll find that one scene that wow, no, really, I can’t take that, it’s too gross or upsetting (but I’m not a wuss I swear). I’ve had to swallow some rocks when The Dog Dies in any given G-rated movie I have no business even watching given my demographic. It’s embarrassing to admit that a supposedly uninspired dime-a-dozen flick, cell phone game or airplane novel can find its way past one’s rational mind and trigger unsolicited and involuntary sensations, especially if they’re ones that make us feel vulnerable. In some cases, it can even be deeply violating; that’s why the advent of trigger warnings, and ratings as a whole.

But to say the work itself is “manipulative” is to ascribe intention and personality to an artifact, rather than a person. The deeply disturbing reaction I have to, say, animal abuse, which keeps me from being able to watch certain ostensibly G-rated films (hello, Black Beauty and Dumbo) is, let’s face it, all about me, rather than the critical craft of the work. While many people may share my aversion, there’s no magical formula about those films that is guaranteed to induce the urge to vomit in every human being. There are just ideas I have a difficult time dealing with that happen to be a significant part of those stories. It’s not personal, and there was no tee-heeing or evil cackling while the writers deviously wrung their hands between page breaks.

So when people pull out the “emotionally manipulative” line right before describing a scene that was…well…emotional, my inclination is to roll my eyes and click away, because more often than not, the phrase speaks to the injury or embarrassment of the critic, rather than the intention or talent of the creator. It might be a useful warning for someone else with the same sensitivities, but critique, it is not.

That said. (You knew there had to be a “but” in there somewhere.)

Something that seems to be cropping up more and more in popular media nowadays is plot structure with points taken directly from the advertising industry–an industry dedicated to, if anything can be guilty of it, manipulating viewership–and infusing the story at every possible turn with a system shock that’s all but guaranteed to either delight or disgust. Nearly every popular TV show strives to be some combination of Hell’s Kitchen and Game of Thrones, grooming you to love people you want to hate before breaking your heart by putting them to the rustiest axe allowable on prime time just when you decided you were committed.

And that’s valid. That’s not a bad way to write anything. It’s not “cheap,” and in fact it’s difficult to pull off with any consistency. Bravo to those who can. I don’t want to knock the method per se.

However, the constant roller-coaster of oxytocin and adrenaline leaves little room for any nuance beyond the cunning wit of social politics. There’s plenty of intrigue to go around, but very little introspection. The viewer is almost never invited into self-reflection, or to ruminate on a grey topic, the significance of which depends on context and personal/cultural relevance. There’s only just enough of that so they can say “we did so get deep and philosophical, look here here and here!” But it’s never the primary goal of the media, anymore.

Most of my favorite pieces of media have long stretches of relative peace, where the intricacies of an idea are set up and explored layer by layer without direct emotional engagement, but creative pacing and brilliant scene craftsmanship keep the story from ever getting old or dragging. The resulting conclusion is a heavy payload that you can spend the rest of your life carrying and coming to terms with, and the beauty of the emotional impact, while it may (or may not) be acutely powerful in the moment, is that it continues to churn slowly in the undercurrents of your consciousness for a long time to come. It changes you; even guides you. And maybe most importantly of all, your understanding of the material matures as you do.

But taken on its face, there are certainly more gripping pieces of media out there. More gripping, simpler, and ultimately shorter-lived, in terms of their affect on the lives of their viewers.

I think it is worth pointing out the difference between what’s gripping and what has staying power. I also think I prefer the latter over the former, not just because I dislike feeling things “against my will,” but because I do like complex ideas that take time and personal growth to fully appreciate. I don’t think that kind of media gets the credit that it should, often because it isn’t recognized except in retrospect, but even so, I do hope we veer back in that general direction as an artistic community, someday.

So...

Owen needs hip surgery. Over time, he's been dealing with increasing pain shooting through his hip and leg, and after several (expensive) scans the doctors found he has some torn tissue that can't be repaired without invasive surgery. We have a really good surgeon but the costs have turned out to be pretty steep. We cannot forego this surgery and have things be okay; if we don't do it, it will get worse until he can no longer sit up and we must do it. Right now Owen makes more than I do, and if we lose him as a source of income, we are completely fucked.

Even with insurance paying for 80% of it, the cost of the surgeries will be in the realm of $5K-$8K, depending on whether or not they will cover anesthesia (still waiting to hear back on that). This is largely because the hospital care for a single night is $10,000 before insurance. We have to foot the rest. Ahem. Setting aside my rage, this leaves us with few options but to ask for outside help or go into painful amounts of debt that could take a year or more to pay off (while other important goals, like my own healthcare, take a backseat; I also need surgery to fix a chronic problem I've been having, but not as urgently as Owen does).

We have set up a GoFundMe here: http://www.gofundme.com/cwtxcw

Even if you can't donate, signalboosting would be a great help. Owen and I are both struggling with health problems that are slowly eroding our ability to work 40 hours a week; my job is in danger because of it (I've taken too many days off already), and he's in danger of not being able to work at all despite being self-employed.

I'd say that I feel horrible for asking, but the fact is, this is the reality that many people with chronic health conditions in the United States face, and this is just one of many steps along the way to avoiding Default. It'd be irresponsible not to ask.

Thanks for your consideration and take care of yourselves out there...

So, this week my husband, a freelance digital artist, is having trouble filling his commission slots. We rely on these commissions to pay the bills and mortgage, so we need to get them filled ASAP (meaning before Friday).

He draws anything. ANYTHING. People, animals, dragons, still life, pr0nz, your obscure D&D character, whatever you like (as long as it isn't child porn or animal abuse or something gross like that). He livestreams commissions so you can watch him draw your art for you, also!

His FA gallery is here: http://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/aggrobadger/ (Yes it's very furry-heavy but he will be very very very VERY happy to draw something that is NOT furry art!)

And his commission submission information and link to the application form is here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/4733464/#cid:34180378

Commissions are $24 per character + $6 for extra stuff like wings, complicated tattoos or whatever. You can ignore the $1 fee for e-mailing you the finished piece, he's dropped that fee for this week.

There are no limits on the number of commissions. You can order up as many as you like!

If you have any character or scene from a story you would like drawn, please consider a commission. Even if you can't afford it or don't need a commission, please spread the word so we can pay our bills.

Thank you! ~<3

So the owner appears to have noticed that the dogs are starting to prefer us to them. Every other day, they've kept the dogs inside. Which is good. They still don't appear to be feeding them properly, which is bad. Right now, the dogs are inside the owner's house. Good, since it's 17F outside right now. I'm still keeping the shed open, in case they kick the dogs out.

I learned that the blonde mutt walks very well on a leash, and the puppies don't like to stray far from her. This allows me to take them for walks! Yay! aldersprig was kind enough to chip in a few bucks for food, so I got them a bag of Puppy Chow, a couple toys, and some treats. It should be enough for now. We'll see how things go from here on. Progress is good, even if it's minimal. With any luck, no one will have to get the authorities involved.

Owen went to the doctor yesterday. She thinks, like I do, that his sciatic nerve is pinched, and is hoping it's just from an inflammatory response from pulling a muscle. She prescribed him some prednisone and a muscle relaxant. She also showed him some stretching techniques. Hopefully that will work, although at the moment he still feels terrible.

My transcripts are taking their damn time getting to Wake Tech. They still haven't received them, although all my schools tell me they've sent them. Mrf. Will call again on Tuesday to see if there's any change.

I'm really, really pissed at NC right now because although their website insists they took 30% of my unemployment out for taxes, my tax forms say that NO money was taken from my unemployment and I am going to owe over $1000 in taxes as a result. So. Angry. I confirmed with the unemployment office that they did NOT in fact withhold anything, so I WILL owe money, even though I showed them on the website where my account says they were supposed to withhold the money. They fucked up, I have to pay, and there's not shit I can do about it. SO ANGRY. I don't mind paying taxes, but geez, would it kill you to make sure your automated system actually WORKS? If it doesn't, I don't think it should be on me to make up the difference for the machine's mistake. RRRRGH.

Oh well. One thing at a time.

So today while the dogs were out playing with the neighbors, the owners drove by and picked the dogs up. They carried them inside their house and I didn't see them for the rest of the day. Then, just after sundown, they kicked the dogs out again and the three of them proceeded to run all over the neighborhood terrorizing other dogs. There was no peace for three hours.

Finally, the dogs came into my yard, no doubt hoping for love and food. I closed the gate. I fed and watered them (I still feel really uneasy about doing that, but seriously guys they're just so thin), played with them for about an hour, gave them scritches and went back inside. I watched the owners' house, wondering if they'd ever come out and call the dogs in. They didn't. They went to bed, I assume, all the lights in the house are out and I haven't seen any sign of life from them for over an hour now. Apparently they just intended to let the dogs sleep outside.

Except for a little barking here and there, they've been pretty okay in my yard and have been snoozing in my shed. The smallest puppy whimpers sometimes. They don't seem terribly annoyed that they're fenced in though. Not trying to dig out or anything, at least not so far.

I'd worry more about their barking keeping my neighbors up, except the noise they're making in my yard is significantly less than the noise they make while roaming free. Honestly, I'd love for someone to call the cops on me. I'd tell them all about it and have them go talk to the dogs' actual owners. The only reason I'm not calling them myself is I want to explain that I'd rather the animals not go immediately to a shelter, and if the owners can be talked into building a fence for them and getting them some basic obedience training, I'd much prefer that. We've tried to talk to them several times, and they just won't answer the door. If a cop came knocking, they'd have to.

Hopefully the dogs won't be up all night. Hopefully, if the neighbors come out and see their dogs are fenced in someone else's yard, they'll get the point that everyone's sick of them running free. If they'd talk to me about it, that'd be wonderful.

For what it's worth, the owners can come get the dogs any time they please. The gate has one of those U-shaped pole latches, but it isn't locked and it's super easy to open. So I'm not preventing the owners from reaching their dogs at any time, and if they come to my door and demand I return them, I will tell them the gate is unlocked and they have permission to open it. I'm not in the business of starting fights, but I do want to get these people to pay attention.

If they just plain don't give a damn and never come for the dogs, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, I guess. This is the quietest this neighborhood has been in weeks.

So I talked to a couple of my neighbors about the dogs. I caught them eating birdfood out of the birdfeeders today, so I went out and checked on them. Upon closer inspection, I could tell they were all rather skinny (I could just see their ribs and spine without stretching their skin at all, and their sides were slightly sunken). So I worked up the courage to go around ringing doorbells until I got someone who was home.

Apparently I am indeed not the only person who has been feeling sorry for them. Apparently the owners have not been feeding them regularly (if at all) and NEVER let them inside, ever. The only reason they weren't in worse shape was because a few people took pity on them and fed them from time to time. While talking to this neighbor, two others came up to us and we were all thinking the same thing: what the hell is up with these people and why aren't they feeding or housing or fencing their dogs? I pointed out (to everyone else's horror) that the puppies are getting to be old enough to have their own puppies and did not appear to have been spayed, as there was absolutely no hint of a recent scar on their undersides (I know modern methods don't leave as much of one, but they still leave something, and you could clearly see the puppies' bellies and there was nothing, so I think it's a safe assumption). The last thing we all need is more underfed puppies running around the neighborhood. None of us had the immediate space or resources to take care of them, though, and we had all tried to talk to the owners, but either were unable to get them to answer their door or got a very evasive, shrug-so-what attitude from them when they did.

No one wanted to call animal control or the SPCA, either, because although the puppies are super cute, appear to be full-blooded (or close to it), and might stand a chance of being adopted, the older dog was clearly a mutt and has a bit of a hip issue. She's also slightly food aggressive towards other dogs (although not to people, who can take food away from her without so much as a growl), and we're afraid that would get her automatically put down in a shelter.

So this is what we worked out: since the owners don't seem to give two shits, and I'm the only one with a fenced-in yard, I will be providing shelter for the dogs in my shed. I don't have money for food, toys, and collars/leashes, so my neighbors will provide those things weekly, and since I cannot be outside most of the time, one of the other neighbors will come let them out to play for a few hours daily and then bring them back to my yard. One family in the house across the street will be moving into a big house with a large fenced yard soon, and when they do, if the owners still haven't said anything, they will take the dogs and foster them until an actual responsible home can be found. So hopefully there will be a happy ending to all this.

It's one more thing for me to deal with, but I feel like it's necessary. You just can't leave your dogs unfed, unsheltered, and unfixed 24/7 in extreme temperatures.

I cleaned out the shed of anything dangerous or vulnerable to chewing and put down aspen, tarp, and a bunch of old blankets. I made a makeshift dog bed out of an inflatable sled. I'm going to buy an adjustable infrared lamp for heat on cold days/nights, and a poop scoop for the yard. The dogs are in the shed now, have been fed, given water, and they are super asleep. Just. Dead fucking tired, all of them. I can't even imagine. I don't think they've had a safe place to sleep in a really long time. Poor things...I'm so angry at their owners for neglecting them, I can't even. I used to just think they were shut-ins and maybe a little ignorant. Now I think they're jerks. Thankfully, most of my other neighbors are not.

I'm open to any other suggestions, though keep in mind my funds are extremely limited. I have to make do mostly with what's on hand, and will have to budget for anything extra.

Hmmm.

• Took first dose of new BC. So far so good. Only mildly queasy, which is way better than the last one.
  
• Filled out application to Wake Tech. Could not apply for FAFSA because my High School isn't listed in their online application. Will have to call.
  
• Paid for a replacement registration for one car, which I discovered was missing when I, uh, got pulled over for speeding. Thankfully the cop was really nice about that and let it slide because I did have the correct sticker on my tag, but I wasn't able to find the updated registration when I got home, so--bought a new one.
  
• Ankle started feeling better today after much rubbing and warming.
  
• My study is almost clean. Just have to organize some books and put up a few more pictures.
  
• Annoyed that the expensive meat grinder attachment I got Owen for his KitchenAid mixer rusted in a place I can't get to with brushes and DOES touch the meat. I will probably need to get steel pipe cleaners to get it out. There are these little holes in the grinding blades you can't quite get at with the towel. Might put a cheap hair drier in the kitchen to deal with them.
  
• Found and successfully removed a weird virus from my computer. It was a .dll that was somehow being called on every time WinAmp started, despite not being in the WinAmp directory, and was using WinAmp's streaming capability to connect to the Internet through the application itself, undetected by my antivirus. Clever. There's no memory-resident loader that I could find, so that probably means something messed with WinAmp's registry entries. I removed the .dll, uninstalled WinAmp and all its pieces in the Registry, then reloaded it and put all my plugins back where they were. So far so good. I'll have to try and hunt down where the little nasty came from, later. Never seen a WinAmp exploit before.
  
  
  I'm trying not to think about having to go to court in February. There's nothing I can do about it, but the worst possible scenario is that I get my license suspended for a truly aberrant mistake. I'm terrified of authority and am constantly convinced that every little thing I do wrong will be met with excessively punitive punishments for the purposes of making an example out of me. I know it's unlikely but I can never completely get the fear out of my head. I'd be more than happy to just pay a $300 fine--for first-offense speeding--if it meant I could forgo the court date. Ugh. What if they ask me to explain myself? What do I say? "I don't have an excuse" is the only thing I can think of. I don't. I was just dumb that day, probably because I was stressed as fuck.
  
  Owen's still in a lot of pain and I'm not sure what to do for him. His appointment isn't for another week. I feel like he's killing himself forcing himself to work, but I also know it's the only way the bills get paid right now. Hopefully it gets better soon.