This is my new favorite icon.

Everything is smiley Tosh and nothing hurts.

The first episode of Doctor Who I ever saw all the way through was "School Reunion."

Actually, that's not quite true. I saw at least two other episodes around that same time - "The Age of Steel" and "The Satan Pit" - and my memory is hazy enough that I might have seen them first. Also, I didn't see "School Reunion" all the way through that first time; I turned it on just after Mickey discovers the cupboard full of frozen rats, by which time they'd finished setting up the premise of the episode, so I should have been pretty lost.

But I wasn't, and I loved it, and it made me want to watch more. I saw "School Reunion" and that same day I went on Wikipedia to get an episode guide, and then I found "Rose" on YouTube, and by the time that was over any illusion I'd had of not being a massive sci-fi geek was long gone, because I was in love.

Except that's too long a story for most people when I'm trying to explain why I love Sarah Jane Smith so much - as if anyone ever needed a reason!

So: The first episode of Doctor Who I ever saw all the way through was "School Reunion."

And I knew who the Doctor was, of course, and I knew who Rose was, and I may or may not have known who Mickey was - again, depending on whether or not I'd seen "The Age of Steel" first - but Sarah Jane was new to me.

So I was a bit surprised when I got to this scene and started crying:



"My Sarah Jane," indeed.

I hadn't realized how much of Doctor Who was about loss and moving on. I loved that. I still do.

And I could never pick a favorite companion, but if you forced me? I might have to say Sarah Jane.

She was a journalist and a feminist and yeah, sometimes she screamed and needed to be saved, but she was also clever and tough and didn't take shit from people. She didn't quite know what to do with herself after the Doctor left her in Aberdeen, but she went on and had a fantastic life anyway.

I've never met a Doctor Who fan who didn't like her, at least a little bit. Do you know what a big deal that is? Doctor Who fans can't agree on anything.

From every account I've ever heard, Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane, was an utter sweetheart.

Elisabeth Sladen died today.

It's been a long time since I've been this sad about the death of somebody I'd never met. I don't really know what else to say, except that the universe was a much cooler place with her in it.

Goodbye, my Sarah Jane.

I am an avid player of the Great Name For A Band Game. You know how it works: You're out with a friend - or maybe you're alone, but it's always more fun with someone else, I think - and you come across an odd phrase, or perhaps a vandalized sign, or one with half its letters missing, and you go, "Cop Fondle/Starfucks/Diptheria would totally be a great name for a band!"

"I am definitely going to start a band and name it that!" your friend agrees. And you both chuckle for a minute, and then forget the entire thing and return to your conversation.

(Incidentally, torchbaby and I really are going to start a band called Glitteroo. We have Plans and everything; they involve dressing up like large animals and busking. AWWW YEAH.)

I have been doing this for as long as I can remember. My dad and I used to come up with big long lists of them; one of us would choose a name for the headlining band, and the other had to think up two related names for the openers, and sometimes a name for the tour based around the same theme as the band names. A lot of them were cheesy metal bands named after grotesque-sounding diseases.

Anyway, I was looking up...something, just now, I don't remember what - and I had the following realization:

Somewhere, there is a band called Great Name For A Band.

And you just know they're a bunch of douchey frat boys, or trustafarians, or bro-types of some other sort. Maybe they're giant hipsters.

It goes without saying that they're terrible.

And now every time I come across the right sort of ridiculous band name, this is all I'm going to be able to think about.

...I feel like I'm caught in an endless loop of losing The Game, or maybe like I've reached the end of the internet.

I WANT MY GAME BACK, YOU GUYS. SOMEBODY HOLD ME.

NOOOOO WHY IS IT SNOWING

VoicePost 706K 4:09

(no transcription available)

Say These Words: Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting Image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught

Now answer these questions:

What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

ETA: Having listened to this again, I have come to the conclusion that I am actually William Shatner. I. Have. The best...cadenceeveryouguys! Oh, man.

The White Stripes announced they were breaking up today.

Some of you will know why this matters to me. For those who don't, I don't even know where to begin, except: they're one of those bands.

They were the first favorite band I ever had. I was twelve years old and obsessed with Top 40 radio, and one day I saw this video on MTV. Not long after, I sneaked my mom's copy of White Blood Cells into my CD player and listened to "I'm Finding it Harder to be a Gentleman" and fell deeply, madly in love.

They were creative and sexy and soulful and strange. They gave me the courage to embrace my nerdiness in middle school, a time when I was lonely and isolated and needed that pretty damn badly. They were the reason I began playing guitar and collecting records (my 45 of "The Big 3 Killed My Baby" is still one of my most prized possessions). They led me to discover more bands than I could ever name, both directly (the Von Bondies, the Dirtbombs, Blanche) and indirectly (Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth, Pixies).

Maybe more importantly here, they were one of the first things I was really, properly fannish about - and while I was already online somewhat at that point, White Stripes forum the Little Room was the first place I ever made friends on the internet (and also the place where I learned just how wanky fandom could get, but that's another story). I'm still friends with most of those people today, people of all ages from all around the world. They were the reason I joined LJ, back in 2003.

They were my life for pretty much all of my teenage years. I saw them twice, traveling to Portland the second time, where I met up with people from the Little Room - still the only time I've met online friends in person. I was supposed to see them again, in 2007, but they canceled that tour due to Meg's anxiety. The band places great significance on the number three, and I always hoped I'd get a chance to see them live for a third time, even as Jack took on new project after new project and another White Stripes tour began to seem less and less likely.

The White Stripes haven't released a new album in almost four years, and aren't in my thoughts nearly as constantly as they were before then. That's at least partly why I'm not as devastated by this news as I was when I found out that my other favorite band, Sleater-Kinney, were breaking up. Still, I'm the person I am today because of them, and I couldn't let news like this pass by without comment.

( A few of my favorite Stripey things )

So: thanks for everything, Jack n' Meg.

Rachel Maddow's high school graduation speech. I have all sorts of amused and flaily feelings about this, but my favorite part (other than her classy socks-and-sandals combo, naturally) might be the very end, when you can hear the voices in the crowd:

"She's going on to Stanford."

"Someday she's going to do something memorable."

Aww.

I've been kind of dreadful about cooking actual food for myself lately (I went to goddamned Arby's last night, WTF is wrong with me), but I just had a giant plate of chicken katsu on a bed of spinach and it was awesome. I thought about taking pictures, but I a) am no good at making my food look pretty, and b) ate everything too quickly. OM NOM NOM FOOD.


I made me a dinner, but I eated it.

In other news, and in a continuation of my tendency to jump on bandwagons way way late, yesterday I watched the first episode of Being Human, which: oh. AlonsoGeorge! George! CheenAnnie! George! Annie! Vampire Dude! Annie! George! I am attempting, for once in my life, to be good and not just mainline the entire thing when I have an orchestra concert in three days and finals in a week, but damn if it's not proving tricky.

In conclusion, The Beatles at Hogwarts. ♥

I am now twenty. My response: blueberry pancakes on my Mickey Mouse plate. OM NOM NOM.

Apartment-hunting can bite me today.

1. Project Hell-Year-At-Community-College is now complete.

2. I GOT A PELL GRANT!

3. bachlives and I are writing a musical about our nonexistent love lives (we are nerds without girlfriends! Film at 11!).

4. Did I mention I got a Pell Grant? THAT'S RIGHT.

Today I went hiking in the mountains, and when I was done stomping around in my borrowed Jack Harkness-y boots and climbing up the sides of great giant slabs of rock, I stopped and stood very, very still.

And I saw trees and trees and trees and more sky than I knew what to do with, and felt dust and sun and smelled plants and snow and deer shit and dirt - but I didn't hear anything, because there was nothing to hear.

It was perfectly silent.

I don't think I thought that was possible anymore.

When professors say "Study this, it's on the final," and then it's not on the final.

Bonus points if something totally esoteric is on the final in its place.

Oh, school. I wish I knew how to quit you.

So I should be asleep right now, but - surprise! - I'm not, because I elected to watch the Oscars instead of doing my homework. Self, meet bad decisions. Oh wait, you've met? More than once? You run off and have totally skanky liaisons every chance you get?

Okay then!

Granted, the homework is not as urgent as it could be, but I do still need to tidy up my room and pack my lunch and get my shit together for class tommor- uh, today. If there's one thing that being diagnosed with ADD has taught me, it's that I can take my pick between Anal-Retentive and Dysfunctional Hot Mess, but only one of them's going to consistently get me out of bed in the morning, and there's not as much room for compromise as I'd sometimes like to think.

ANYWAY, in order to motivate myself to Get This Shit Done Already, I have gone through my Torchwood DVDs and put "Fragments" on as background noise.

AND I HAVE COME TO THE FOLLOWING CONCLUSION:

The cheesy intro totally should have ended with "The 21st century is when everything changes. Now make me a croissanwich."

...I'm just going to leave that there. Whatever. You all know I'm right.

Also, I forgot how hot everyone on this show is goddamn.

IT IS TOO EARLY, IN BOTH THE DAY AND OUR ACADEMIC CAREER, TO BE WORRYING ABOUT GRAD SCHOOL.

SERIOUSLY.

Love, and affectionate eyerolls,
Me.

HELLO LIVEJOURNAL! *waves* I'm not dead, just busy and writer's-blocked!

So, uh, who wants to take my Precalc final for me?

You know, I shouldn't even be worried about this. I'm not a Math Person, exactly - I'm a little too inclined toward language for that to be purely true - but I love math, and I'm good at it. What problems I've had in math classes are largely the problems I've had in all of my other classes: namely, with motivation and focus (because, as I've had confirmed this year, my brain is made of ADD), magnified by the cumulative nature of the material. I'm a clumsy bullshitter, much to my dismay, but what I can't bullshit in an English class I've probably read about somewhere; math doesn't quite work that way.

But, again, that's not the problem here. The ADD is within managable levels thanks to counseling and Taking Pills for Breakfast, and I understand the math. I understood it when I did it in high school (no thanks to the teacher, sadly; fellow Roosevelt alumni can probably deduce who it was), and I understand it now. I understand it even better now, in fact, because between my once-sloppy algebra falling into place and the myriad ways we've played with the concepts in class, I finally feel like I grok what we're doing, rather than just knowing how to regurgitate it. I'm enjoying it so much that I registered for 142 next quarter, and was profoundly disappointed when I realized I couldn't take it.

I'm on track to get an A in math for the first time since my freshman year in high school. I've never gotten less than an A on anything in this class, I have notes and a study guide, and I don't get test anxiety. Everything should be fine, right? Right?

WRONG. You see, dear readers, I am here to tell you that I sat down at my very favorite library carrel with my practice final and my now-ragged notebook (which, amusingly, is one I recycled from high school, much like I'm doing with this class; the first ten-or-so pages are a mishmash of journalism notes, kanji practice, explanations of what we're covering right now in math, and review for a chem final), chomping merrily away on my Study Gum, so confident I would kick this thing's ass, as I've been doing all quarter, and then:

WHERE THE ZOMBIE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM? THE ANSWERS I HAVE DO NOT MATCH THE ANSWERS IN MY NOTES! HOW HAVE I SUDDENLY FORGOTTEN HOW TO FIND A SLANT ASYMPTOTE (there wasn't one; crisis averted)? WHY DON'T YOU GRAPH THE ABSOLUTE VALUE OF THIS EQUATION IN TERMS OF YOUR FACE?

That's right. I have a math final in fifteen minutes, at a point in my life when far too many things hinge on my grades for all sorts of frustrating reasons, and I have forgotten how to do math.

Did I say fifteen minutes? Make that twelve; the computer decided this would be a fabulous time to let my session expire and LOG ME OUT.

HOMG. *breathes* It's okay! It's okay! I know this shit! I can replace my Study Gum with Test Gum! I'm going to be fabulous! I'm going to leave the library and head over to the Science and Math building (I refuse to call it the SAM building, despite its best attempts, because one, that's the art museum, and two, I hear the name "Sam" and think of copperbadge, whom I doubt would really want his name associated so strongly with math. ANYWAY), and I'm going to line up Cara's calculator and my mechanical pencils and my giant eraser, and get my test sheet and all that glorious blank scratch paper, and I'm going to SHOOT THIS FINAL IN THE FACE and get an A and all will be well.

Really! Because I said so! Oh god.

I was reading this when my mother walked through the door.

I try, as a rule, not to greet people with political outrage, especially when I can tell they've had a long day, but I was still reeling from the OMGWTFBBQ of that ad. ("APPARENTLY A LOT OF AMERICANS ARE RACIST." Uh, no shit, and way to derail.)

So I told her about it, and about Rachel Maddow's response, which was suitably brilliant, and she got a funny look on her face. "Do you have any friends on Facebook who just post total right-wing rhetoric all the time?"

Apparently she's friended an ex-boyfriend of hers from high school, who updates his status every few minutes with your standard Teabagger Tea Party fare - or, as Mom put it, "Clearly someone's been drinking the Limbaugh juice." He repeatedly refers to those who disagree with him as "asshats."

Her response, via her own status: "I believe in social justice, clean air, civil rights, and compassion for the downtrodden. Apparently that makes me an asshat. Nice."

We had some fun with that one.

MOM: Okay, I have to go be an asshat somewhere else.
FERN: See ya, asshat!
MOM: Can you lock the door behind me?
FERN: Sure, asshat!

One minute later:

MOM: This asshat forgot her glasses.
FERN: You mean your GLASSHATS?

Yes.

1. FACT: I AM BEING EATEN ALIVE BY PAPERS.

2. I JUST TRIED TO CITE THAT IN MLA FORMAT.

3. I THEN REALIZED I SHOULDN'T DO THAT - NOT BECAUSE THIS IS A BLOG ENTRY, RATHER THAN AN ACADEMIC PAPER, BUT BECAUSE I CANNOT CITE IT AS A FACT BECAUSE I AM NOT LITERALLY BEING EATEN ALIVE BY PAPERS.

4. I THEN HAD A FLASHBACK TO MY 10TH GRADE AMERICAN LIT CLASS, AND MY SOUL DIED A LITTLE MORE INSIDE, BECAUSE THOSE WERE BAD TIMES.

5. SERIOUSLY, YOUR MOM IS A BIASED HISTORICAL TEXT AS;LDKFJDLS;KFJSL;DKFJSDL;KJGSDFL.

Ohhh, school. ♥

R-71PASSED.

Politically, there's a lot to be upset about right now. Even this victory is an imperfect one; it was a close race, it's an "everything-but-marriage" designation, and it's still something we shouldn't have been voting on in the first place.

But it's a step forward. It's kind of a major step forward, actually - for the first time in any U.S. state, we saw a gay-rights measure up for popular vote, and then we APPROVED THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

...;asldkfals;kdjf WE DID IT. ♥

I spent my Halloween sewing feverishly until I was a giant cranky mess on my floor, blurry-eyed from too-thick new contacts and the fabric's grain imprinting itself until, no matter how much I blinked, there was nothing else.

So I went outside, and I was a wild-haired boy-king in fleecy wolf pajamas and a paper crown. It wasn't the magic I wanted it to be, but I was alone and I was proud.

I'm prone to agonizing over my work. Amidst my very human relationship with self-confidence, I've always had enough of an arrogant streak to believe that I can do exceptional things - not all the time, perhaps, but here and there and someday, with effort and thought and the odd luck of the universe. I want to show the world my best, out of respect for whomever has assigned me my task, and out of hope that this here, this could be something special.

Which is to say: I have trouble starting things, and even more trouble finishing them, and while my rational brain can accept that it's common and move on, the rest of me nitpicks and squirms and, too often, gives up entirely. At best, it's a reminder to relax more. At worst, it's a stomachache of bad hair, failing classes, worrying about money, and forgetting to take my meds on time, growing and growing until it's encompassed my entire life and I swear to god I can't do anything anymore, much less anything of merit - and shit, guys, that's heartbreaking.

And it's become something of a theme for me over the past year or so. I've neglected posting because I've been trying to find a way to talk about it - about school, because that's been such a huge component, but also about depression, and ADD, and finally feeling like I'm starting to grow the fuck up, and how melancholy and frightening and oh-shit-exciting that can be.

Except, of course, it's a long story that I want to do justice, and it's one more unfinished thing gnawing at my gut.

So: that story is coming, when I know how to tell it. I know because you're reading this, and I've pushed forward despite having too many clumsy words - and I've done that because on Saturday my hood was too small and my shoulders were a crooked mess and I wanted to cry, but I walked away and became Max, and it was more than good enough.

I'm going to go back and fix the sleeves until they're something lovely, mind you. I just wanted to tell you that I'm learning how to work again.

Also, I just remembered that everything's going to be okay.