All I remember is basically we spent most of the night awake and in bed together. I do remember very vividly touching her skin, her back, just under the nightie or shirt she wore to bed. I remember looking at the clock, her clock, said it was 12:30 PM, (daylight her time) and my clock said like 9:30 AM. And I had to go to school...that's when I touched her.

Next dream involved me being at my ex's again, only I was just staying there. I had just gotten out of a shower, was trying to get some writing done, then go smoke a cigar. That's odd for me cause I don't shower then smoke, usually in the reverse. Some woman and teenager came to the door but the people they wanted either weren't home or I wasn't free, not sure. Then I saw Jan's ex Harold, he was listening to some lame ass 80s hair band shit.

My brother came in and picked on the song cause 80s hair metal sucks.

I remember something yellow. A cover or sheet or something.

By every indication, Rob Ford’s world is crumbling. He is eluding the media like a fugitive in his own city. The 24-hour news channels that run silently in the corners of bars and dentists’ offices loop random clips of Ford being chased around by packs of TV reporters. Here’s Ford trying to order something through a thicket of microphones at Tim Hortons, a forced grin on his face. Now Ford peeling out of his driveway in his Escalade. Now Ford crossing a parking lot, mob in tow. Behind him in the last frame, the sign on the gas station, over his shoulder: “On The Run.”

Two days ago, the city’s Catholic school board announced that Ford been sacked as the coach of a high-school football team. Sometimes it seemed like the highest office he ever held, the one appointment he could never miss. (Last fall, things got to the point where Ford was rescheduling his court appearances to coach football.) But students and parents chafed at the way he’d boast about how destitute they’d be if it weren’t for him. Officially, the school board’s decision officially had nothing to do with the drug allegations, yet they chose this week to make the announcement. The Globe quoted a source saying Ford was “shattered.”

One day ago, Ford fired his chief of staff. Mark Towhey was a true believer in the cause, a member of Ford’s brain trust from the very beginning, an unblinking champion against every charge so far. He was escorted out of city hall by security.

By midnight, every news outlet was running more or less the same anonymously sourced account of what had happened: Towhey had confronted the mayor, demanding he go to rehab, and the two fell out. The final straw, according to these accounts, was Ford’s demand that his staff organize a pizza party for his former football students at his house. (Ford’s penchant for appropriating city staff and vehicles for football purposes is not a new thing.) Towhey is said to have refused, and that was that.

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It was 1:40 in the afternoon by the time I finished this post; I began at 1:09.
I woke up at 11:30 only because my husband roused me and put a can of energy drink to my lips while helping me lift my upper body, right before my cat Rose sat on me and licked my whole face, until I managed to fall carefully off the edge of the bed, hobble to the bathroom, and take a hot shower while leaning against the wall. Wrapping my hair in a towel at least helped stretch my neck and shoulder muscles. I stumbled back to the bedroom, got partially dressed, swallowed my morning drugs and supplements (Trileptal, Klonopin, Ultram, Picamilon, L-Tyrosine, Guarana, Hyaluronic Acid, Ashwagandha, Devil's Claw, DMAE, Raspberry Ketones, Sea Buckthorn) with coffee (made with cocoa, milk, cocoa, sugar, and cocoa). I got fully dressed fell onto the bed, struggled back upright, performed very gentle exercises reminiscent of certain basic yoga poses with extreme modifications, pulled some muscles in my lower back, applied heat massage, complained to my cats out loud since they couldn't tell me that my only limits were mental, bad attitudes, set by myself, because my cats loved me without telling me how to do things.
And so now I am sitting at my work desk with my cocoa coffee, Futurama via the Roku box on my 20 inch flat screen TV, the fish tank full of happy serene fish doing happy serene fish things. The codeine and baclofen I just took have taken effect, and I feel human. You know what it's like to not feel human, or normal, or easy, right, internet? Are you sure? Because I see so many articles about how easy it is to break limits, or not even have limits by - get this, ha ha - pretending you don't have limits. I just wanted to show you what my days are like. Because it's going to continue. Soon, I'm going to take afternoon supplements (MSM, Biotin, Inositol, Noni, Mangosteen, Goji, Pau D'Arco, Shilajit, NAC, and the drug Soma - and if you worry that I take too many pills in a day, I am going to laugh very loudly and point to all the people who take even more pills, by which I mean prescription pharmaceuticals alone because supplements don't work for them).
And then I will gently exercise some more, and have I mentioned that through all this I write and edit fiction stories, that novel I sent to a major publisher and agent, blog posts, and long discussions with beloved online friends? And I will read three books at once, maybe four, bit by bit, and since my husband is actually home from work I will spend time with him. And then in the evening, I will take my nightly medicine (Ogestrel-Hi, Trileptal, Zoloft, Soma, Apple Pectin Fiber, Chia Seed, Passion Flower), and crawl into bed like a bruised person, hopefully make fantastic love with my husband and have a wonderful, pain-relieving orgasm or four that will help me sleep blissfully (because sometimes it hurts too much to have sex but I do it anyway because it counts as medicine). And then I will wake up, either to see my husband off to work or to rouse myself, probably not until after 10:00 AM or so, and it will all continue, probably with additional errands and house chores.

There it is, internet. You have now seen my daily disabled life. I got lucky when I was approved for SSDI in 2012; I am lucky that I get enough monthly payments to keep me going alongside my husband who works himself bruised. I am lucky that all my limbs actually work, even if they hurt constantly in various ways. I am lucky that I haven't been to a hospital since 2007, and that was for a concussion and seizure. I have a lot of luck on my side. I also have a lot of limits. So, dear internet, please do not tell me what I should do with my limits unless you mean to help me move those limits a little higher so I don't need to push, I just need to move up more. Pushing my limits is fine, but I would rather move those limits up more so I have more room to go before I run up against those limits again.

Ah - I forgot to add that on the days when depression and anxiety attack, I am often physically unable to do much for several hours. But nobody needs to hear about that. Clinical depression is still stigmatized so severely that I still feel very uncomfortable discussing it. Also, I didn't mention the tiny complex moments when the cerebral palsy trips me up in many ways, because that would take forever. And I didn't mention the specifics of epilepsy, or fibromyalgia, or any neurological and neuropsychological conditions like ADHD Inattentive and OCD and Dyscalculia. Nor did I mention the specifics of fibromyalgia or various nerve issues, because who cares? That's boring. But it is all there.

Also, for those wondering why I take raspberry ketones, which have been touted as some sort of weird weight loss miracle:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Raspberry-Ketones---6-Health-Benefits-Of-This-Natural-Remedy-Now-Revealed&id=6875845
They are actually highly antioxidant, a brain tonic, an anti-inflammatory, slightly analgesic, full of good omega fatty acids, and good for digestive health, with some research showing that it can slow cellular aging.

And I didn't mention the daily skin moisturizing. If I don't apply specific healing oils and extracts to my face, neck, chest, hands, arms, and legs... it's not a happy day.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/99942639/sale-41-marshmallow-and-manuka-soothing
http://www.etsy.com/listing/84293185/2in1-manuka-honey-amazonian-body-butter
http://absilk.com/ssbodylotion.html
http://absilk.com/extremecream.html
http://www.etsy.com/listing/111067887/beauty-by-brazil-all-natural-amazon
https://store.abbeystclare.com/skin-care/rice-olives-cleansing-and-facial-serum-amazing-skin-treatment-melts-away-eye-makeup.html
http://www.skinactives.com/EMUlator-Oil.html
http://sweetsationtherapy.com/item_339/LumiEssence-Body-Organic-Advanced-Brightening-Repair-Treatment-with-Kojic-Acid-Arbutin-Vitamin-C-5oz.htm

One of SWTOR's Senior Producers (Bruce Maclean) made a post on the forums this morning outlining their plans for this summer and the next three releases.

( c&p versionCollapse )

So--anything you're excited about?
 

California judge cites “Star Trek,” stuns copyright trolls
Sci-fi-lover Otis Wright quoted Spock in his ruling against a group of lawyers laying claim to a single porn video

As someone who made a certain amount of my reputation by using the Star Trek universe to illustrate the dangers of strong intellectual property law, I feel obligated to comment on the recent court decision against the entity commonly referred to as Prenda Law. The case combines copyright battles, Star Trek, and pornography — if I can slip in a picture of a cute animal, I may be able to construct the Platonic ideal of a popular Internet post.

The case, decided in the District Court for the Central District of California, concerns a group of lawyers engaged in a particularly egregious form of copyright trolling. Their strategy was to file a large number of lawsuits accusing individuals of illegally downloading a single porn video, the copyright for which was apparently assigned to one of the lawyers’ groundskeeper on the basis of a forged signature. The basis for these lawsuits was quite flimsy, but the firm had no real intention of winning the lawsuits in court. Instead, they would offer to settle — and as the court decision notes, the offer was “for a sum calculated to be just below the cost of a bare-bones defense.” This, combined with the embarrassment of being publicly linked with downloading porn, was apparently enough to extort money from a significant number of people.

The tangled organizational web woven by the trolls is shown in the image below, taken from the court decision. It won’t shock anyone who followed This American Life’s story about patent-trolling front companies. In this case, though, the strategy of obfuscation ultimately contributed to Prenda’s undoing, as the judge concluded that its only purpose was to “shield the Principals from potential liability and to give an appearance of legitimacy.”
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STUTTGART, Germany — Soon after Pete McCollaum received word that the government was going to cut off his housing allowance and seek repayment for all past subsidies it says it paid him in error, he wanted to know how many others were in the same bank-busting boat.

“Do you know how to start a Facebook account,” McCollaum, a retired Special Forces officer, asked fellow Army civilian Rik Thibodeau, who received word last month that he too was losing the allowance due to government error.

Now, just two weeks after launching their Facebook page, the Vicenza, Italy-based civilians have more than 300 members on the social media site, which is proving to be a rallying point for Defense Department civilian workers stretching from Germany to Japan as they try to figure out their next move.

“People are finding out about it by word of mouth,” Thibodeau said. “We’re finding strength in numbers.”

Nearly 700 DOD civilians, almost all of whom are based in Europe and the Pacific, were flagged during a Defense Department’s audit of overseas housing allowance allotments. As a result, those who were erroneously receiving the benefit are now in debt to the government for all past housing allowance payments, which can be as much as $50,000 annually.

( The other night, when my oldest daughter asked me ‘Daddy, are we going to be OK? Will we be poor?’ I couldn’t look her in the eye.”Collapse )

My mother is actually affected by this mess and it is making me so angry! It is written in her (and everybody else's) contract with the government that she is entitled to LQA! Apparently, contracts mean nothing anymore and the government can just say say "oops, our bad but you're going to have to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars because of a mistake WE made".

If you are confused about what exactly is going on or you just want more information, here are some helpful links.

LQA (Living Quarters Allowance): FAQ

http://www.stripes.com/news/error-could-force-civilian-employees-in-europe-to-repay-housing-allowances-1.193274

http://www.stripes.com/news/annual-housing-allowance-survey-for-germany-to-begin-friday-1.209825

http://www.stripes.com/news/dod-civilians-notified-about-housing-benefit-error-1.219246

http://www.stripes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/must-keep-housing-allowance-1.220040

http://www.stripes.com/news/some-dod-civilian-employees-to-get-waivers-on-lqa-repayments-1.203201

And PLEASE sign the whitehouse.gov petition!

• BLOG!: From Twitter 2013-05-22 http://t.co/LkF87jvFue 08:00:41, 2013-05-23
• @dane Argh, I'm too far to get fusion from you guys. I would totally pick this up if I could. in reply to dane 09:38:52, 2013-05-23
• And so it begins… #kosh #fanime #fanimecon (@ FanimeCon 2013) http://t.co/08d4qysBfn 14:59:32, 2013-05-23

Mirrored from jetblack's place.

Okinawans angry with Hashimoto say sex services don't curb crime

Citing the failure of similar attempts decades earlier, Okinawan residents have criticized Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto's recent suggestion that U.S. military members use legal sex services to curb sexual assaults.

According to public documents, the number of rapes did not decline after "special entertainment districts" were set up for the U.S. military 63 years ago, and local activists say the only solution is to move the bases off Okinawa.

In 1949, Koshin Shikiya, who was then the head of the civilian government in Okinawa that was still under U.S. control, asked U.S. military authorities to create facilities where soldiers and sailors could buy sexual services. Shikiya made the request because of the frequent sexual crimes committed by U.S. military personnel.

Arguing that such facilities were "a realistic social need," the request followed the reasoning that, "If consideration had been given by the military authorities for facilities where young military personnel could satisfy their sexual urges, it might have been possible to prevent these crimes."

In 1950, the civilian government played a leading role in setting up four special entertainment districts, and civilians were allowed to operate brothels aimed at the U.S. military.

( In a published history of Ginowan city, local residents described what the situation was like.Collapse )

--

This seemed like a really interesting article, looking how the people of Okinawa felt about what Hashimoto said, and a bit of history.

The thing with Hashimoto is still unfolding; just today two former comfort women who were supposed to meet with him today cancelled, saying they basically didn't want to be Hashimoto's insincere photo-op apology (Hashimoto said this was "regrettable"), Hashimoto backpedaled some more and said he wanted to apologize to Americans and American troops for suggesting the US military people in Japan use sex services to curb their appetites so they wouldn't go around raping people, and a group of lawyers in Osaka called for him to be recalled as mayor. Yesterday, a member of his party withdrew their candidacy for an election they were running in, citing what Hashimoto said, and one of the parties the Ishin no Kai had an alliance dissolved their partnership and said they would not help the Ishin no Kai, or accept help from them, in the upcoming elections.

Basically, Hashimoto screwed himself and his party BIG TIME with this.

Hi, I'm currently about 8 days late for my slightly irregular period. My cycles are 30-32 days long, and I should have started between the 15th and 17th. I did take EC roughly mid-cycle (last period was April 16th-21st) on the 27th (I think, give or take a couple of days). I bled mildly for a couple of days, with no cramping or nausea or anything like that. My boyfriend and I had sex again roughly May 10th. We try to use condoms, but occasionally use the pull-out method. We know the risks. We've discussed that it's not a perfect system and that there is a chance of pregnancy. My body does not react well to any HBC I've tried, and I don't have insurance right now to get on anything anyway.
IF the bleeding after taking EC wasn't a period, it should have come around the 16th, making me over a week late.
IF that bleeding was a "period", resetting my cycle, my period should be starting within the next few days here, making me not late yet.
I don't want to take a test if I don't need to, I've thought of just waiting until the first of June and testing then, just to be sure. But I also don't want to be pregnant and not taking care of myself the way I should be. I've had baby fever for 5 years now, and I also don't want to get my hopes up (it's not the right time yet, but I want to be a mom so badly). Can anyone help me out here? Does EC (the brand is Next Choice, if that matters) reset your schedule like this? Am I currently late, or not there yet? I've taken it before and not bled afterward and had my next period like normal.

X-Posted to Ask Me Anything.

Worse than Watergate. That's the refrain coming from the Obama administration's critics as it scrambles to tamp down a growing pile of scandals. "The Obama administration's cover-up of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack surpasses Watergate," states Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). The IRS-tea party scandal "is far worse than Watergate," according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). And Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Paul Babeu maintains that Fast and Furious "is a much larger scandal than Watergate." And of course there is a hashtag: #WorseThanWatergate.

Comparing the scandal du jour to Watergate is an easy way to score political points. (Conservatives aren't the only guilty ones here.) But if you're interested in making a more subtle and perhaps accurate comparison, you need only refer to the United States' long history of White House scandals, starting in the first days of the republic.

To help you keep track of them, we've plotted more than 25 on this matrix, organized by their relative seriousness and their place in our current collective memory. (The current crop of Obama scandals aren't on there since it's not yet clear where they fall on the continuum between, say, Billygate and Iran-Contra. See a missing scandal? Suggest it in the comments.)
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Source has links to all the various scandals

What are you reading/playing/watching right now? What do you like about it, and what do you dislike? Would you recommend whatever it is you're currently consuming?

Alternatively, if you're searching for recommendations, ask here! Whether you're in the mood for a feminist friendly science fiction read or a good survival horror game, other members of feminist_geeks can provide some suggestions.

(Photo: Tony Gutierrez, AP)

(CNN) -- Openly gay youths will be allowed to join scouting, a historic decision the Boy Scouts of America says will keep it unclouded by "a single, divisive, and unresolved societal issue."

More than 60% of the group's 1,400-member national council voted Thursday at an annual meeting in Grapevine, Texas, for the change, which takes effect Jan. 1.

"No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone," says the resolution.

The BSA, however, will maintain its ban on gay adult leaders.

"The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting," the 103-year-old organization said in a statement after the vote.

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Source
So at what age do they take away a boy scout's merit badges?

I'll be in San Antonio at the end of August (going to World Con and doing a bit of sightseeing), can anyone recommend any plus size shopping destinations?

I’ve never been one for big cities. In some ways, I think of it as an extension of my introversion. Big cities = too many people, too much going on, and I get twitchy just thinking about it.

But I’ve watched my fellow authors do the occasional New York trip to visit with editors and agents, and it’s been strongly advised by a number of folks that I do the same, especially with the relative success of Libriomancer.

So when I received an invitation to moderate the Adult Book Bloggers Panel at Book Expo of America in New York, I was happy to say yes. I’m even happier now that I’ve been chatting with my panelists, including Sarah from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books — the woman responsible for making me do this — along with Mandi from Smexy Books and Rebecca from The Book Lady’s Blog.

My BEA schedule, excluding meetings and such, looks like so:

• 5/29, 11:15 a.m. – 12:05 p.m. — Book Blogging Panel.
• 5/31, 3:30 p.m. – 4 p.m. — Signing at the SFWA table.
• 6/1, 12 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. — “Meet the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America,” with myself, Jeri Smith-Ready, and Leanna Renee Hieber.

I am both excited and a bit intimidated. I’ve been to NYC once in my life, helping a friend move, and that was more than a decade ago. On the other hand, I’ll be spending time with a lot of great people, and attending an event devoted to the awesomeness of books. How can you not love that?

So blogging will be light to nonexistent next week. This will be my first time at BEA, and my second time in NYC (the first was more than a decade ago, helping a friend move, and I didn’t see that much of the city). My plan is to try to have fun, hopefully collect some books, and shamelessly gawk at everything.

Wish me luck, and if you’re going to be at BEA, then I hope to see you there!

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Still stuck with phone only.

Memorial Day weekend. The smell of smoke and meat, the firecrackers and occaisional gunshots. The guy who was arrested by tge cops a while back from next door is back----and had a showdown in the street with four extremely loud women who coukd be heard at least a block away. My neighbors next door do not have inside voices. They also seem to think that claiming it's....simething something day means it's get out of jail free and they can do whatever they want----including parking a vehicle ten feet from my front door and turning the stereo up so loud it ceases to be a sound and becomes instead something like the blast wave of ...something.

The neihhbors on the other side, by contrast, let me know they were having an engagement party. I missed it. Their idea of talking does not involve doing so so loudly that it blasts through my house. A group of guys gsthered in front of the house, passed a bottle or can discreetly, and.....their voices could not be heard at all. Not one syllable. There were was no garbage ir litter the next morning either.

I'd like to clone them.

Got out one of my swords last night and sharpened it, then put it back beneath my pillow. Very therapeutic.

Someone lijes to burn leaves around here, even though it's been illegal forever. There's going to be an awful lot of drinking this weekend, and nothing memorial about it, except perhaps by my neighbors on the one side. They obviously care about their behavior.

Maybe I can get stuff done. Back hadn't been hurting too bad. I have laundry to do, maybe I'll plant some stuff. When the neighbors aren't around. Loud Stereo People will adk you if it's too loud, and even tell you gaily to just ask, but strangely enough, they apparently never notice the volume at which the cops get called. They do, however, get offended when you shout to be heard over the bass, because that is SO rude. They're very sensitive like that....but they think that their music is somehow contained inside the flimsy drywall that makes up the badly-renovated walls of this latest rental. I've had some neighbors that let slip they'd been booted from two places already that year. They always leave holes in walks and huge piles of garbage. One neighbor set fire to what looked like a couple of rooms of the stuff----which she had dumped on someone else's property, so the city could fine them and not her.

I need to get out of here.

I hope this post is allowed, as it features sucky customers, I'm just not actually serving them.  Or anyone else for that matter.

I had a landline put in at home about 6 months ago.  It turns out though my 'new' number last used for a local pub, the owners of which didn't bother to go online and change any info on websites when they changed it. It is also nearly the same as the number of ANOTHER local pub, just two numbers swapped round (theirs end 274, mine ends 247).  So this has lead to some interesting calls.  I spent all day a few months back going through every result on Google that had my number listed as the number for the first pub, which has helped somewhat, but I still get mis dialed calls for the other pub.  I find it all kind of hilarious as I work for a totally different local pub.

Now on most calls I get the people are nice and polite about it, but this morning I had a real humdinger.  I was in the bathroom, when my phone rang.  I didn't make it down it time, and it went to my messaging service.  When I checked my messages it was a call for the pub with a similar number to mine, and as it seemed an important call about accommodation for tonight, I called the lady who had left the message back to tell her she had mixed the number up.  It went straight through to her voicemail, so I left a polite message telling her she'd dialed the wrong number and pointing out she'd called '247' not '274' and left it at that.  My good deed done for the day, right?

Wrong.  About ten minutes later she calls me back and yells at me that I need to have my number changed as it's MY fault she called the wrong place.  If my number wasn't similar it wouldn't have gone through and she'd have known there and then her mistake, not ten minutes later.  And how dare I call her personal number, I must be a weirdo.  I simply told her I wanted to make sure she didn't turn up to the pub tonight to find she didn't have accommodation after all and I thought I was being helpful.  Which according to her I wasn't, I was just being weird.

I don't think I'll be helpful anymore.

A minor annoyance about this whole issue though is when people calling for the pub that used to have my number find out it's changed they ask me what the new number is.  Which I don't know.  And they can be a bit snotty about that.  I should find it out I guess.

And in case anyone is wondering why I don't have my number changed, it would be more of a pain to inform everyone with my number that it's been changed than it is to get these calls a few times a week.

http://youtu.be/u9HMhSvnbmk

An ad for Samsung's Smart TV is creating quite a furor on the Internet.

The video, "Evolutionary Husband?", which was uploaded to the brand's YouTube page on May 14th, shows a woman fantasizing about what would happen if she could upgrade her husband as easily as she can upgrade her television.
( Read more...Collapse )

source
Links to reddit/youtbue stuff is at the source. NHFT shit so I didn't link it. Also here is an argument on my facebook because I posted a male tears gif along with the video. It continued long after that... such an agonizing discussion.

Dear Blizzard,

- The amount of XP required to level between 85 and 90 has been reduced by 33%.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

Signed,
From 85 to 88 in one session. Instead of a week. Seriously, this change is incredible.