Time Travel Made Easy

Glass, enameled copper wire, lock washers. Experimental nonsense that looked much better in my head; I wanted to add some dark red swarovskis to it, but that didn't work out.

Good lord, when did it get to be the tenth. I really, really don't approve. :(

It's looking like I'm going to have to wrestle with school bureaucracy in order to register for classes before the freshmen do; I'm extraordinarily displeased by this, because there are classes that I need to take to graduate, and classes that I desperately want to take, and they're all likely to fill up once the juniors start registering. I emailed the dean this morning, but I still haven't gotten a response. *frustrated, mildly concerned*

Glass, silver plated wire, and a base metal ship charm. 8 or 9 inches long, depending on where you clasp it; I think I'll pick up some chain tomorrow to make it properly extendable so it isn't quite so long. (Although I confess I don't actually know how long a bracelet should be; I have tiny wrists, and I don't wear bracelets as a rule, anyway- I have a tendency to lose them.)

Very fond of the colors in this one; glad that I have more of these beads. They (and the ones in yesterday's earrings) came from a friend's destashing endeavor, so I have a gigantic bag full of odds and ends and assorted unsorted beadery. I'll have to sort them all eventually, but it's something like three pounds of beads, so the task is a little daunting.

Silver, swarovski, and some mystery stones. Kind of meh on these, but at least I churned something out; today was an unproductive day all around. (These have been sold.)

I got a little bit carried away today. Two pieces! (Technically three but I forgot to photograph one of them so it'll get put up later.) One of which is a necklace! I've never successfully made a necklace before!

( Shiny things! )

I need to find a better photography set up; right now I'm relying on a single full spectrum lamp that shines at a really awkward angle for picture taking. It's certainly better than the alternative, which would be relying on the insufficient incandescent lights around my worktable, but I'm not exactly pleased with any of the pictures I've taken this month. I'll have to do proper pictures of things at the end of the month, I guess. Photography has never been my strong suit, so this, too, is a learning experience.

I think I may start having the problem where I spend too much time at my work table. >_> Two pieces today:



To go with yesterday's pendant, lampwork glass and sterling silver (not silver plated) wire. (These have been sold.)



Zinc alloy lock washers, enameled copper wire, and swarovski crystals. I imagine I'll be making a whole bunch of similar looking gear-y earrings this month.

Pretty much everything I make is up for grabs (including all the stuff that's already up on my flickr) so, uh. If you see anything you like, let me know. Pricing is sort of on a "what are you willing to pay me?" scale, and I'm more than happy to barter.

I have a Kindle! And yes, normally I make angry hissing noises at devices that don't support non-DRM formats, but um. I'm shallow. And the latest-gen Kindles are pretty. I've done more reading in the last week since I got it than I have in the last month, which is lovely. (I can read on the bus! And it doesn't make me nauseous! This is so awesome for me.) I'm also finding it incredibly useful for doing my class readings, since reading .pdfs on my computer always makes me dreadfully irritable.

She has no name yet, but I'm working on that. So far I've read The Scarlet Pimpernel, thanks to Project Gutenberg's lovely supply of classic trashy adventure stories. (I have half a dozen Rafael Sabatini books, too!) And Baen.com is offering all of the Vorkosigan books except Memory for free in various formats! I'm rereading them from the beginning, since I can't remember where in the series I left off before. Free books! Free books make me so happy.

And Catherynne Valente's new novel, The Habitation of the Blessed hits dead tree stores on November 1, but Amazon released the ebook two weeks early- and since I am the biggest Valente fangirl ever, this felt a bit like the internet was giving me a birthday present. I'm about halfway through, and it is delicious.

Also reading The Cross and the Prodigal because of a comment thread on Slacktivist (one-click book buying: seriously dangerous). I've read through the exegesis-y parts, but the rest of the book is a one act play that I am somewhat less interested in. And I picked up the first book in N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy because, well. One click book buying. *hangs head in shame* Haven't started it yet; I will once I finish Habitation, because if I start reading too many books at once, I will suffer crushing book anxiety and stop reading altogether.

You know what else is awesome? The fact that AO3 lets you download fic in ebook format. So my Kindle is not only full of books, it is also full of porn. Porn that I can read on the bus between classes. Life is good. >:D

So. This hit the news today: Rutgers Student commits suicide after webcast of sexual encounter. This is my school; the story was all over the evening news when I got home from class today, and the president sent out an email to the student body, expressing condolences and reiterating the university's commitment to fostering diversity.

I am kind of surprisingly fucked up by this. I got into a shouty argument with my father over it, and that's two things I never do: raise my voice, and talk back to my dad. (His stance was that, of course the students who took the video were in the wrong, but Clementi had no right to be having sex with another boy in his dorm room. Because clearly, blaming the victim in this situation is somehow appropriate, and dorm rooms are sacred spaces that should never be sullied with gay sex. Had I been able to produce a more coherent argument than "What the FUCK are you FUCKING TALKING ABOUT," I might have asked how he'd have felt if Clementi had been straight.)

I suppose this is hitting me harder than I feel like it should because I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about how frustrating it is to constantly feel like I'm the only queer person in any of my classes. Statistically, I know I can't be- but the feeling is there all the same, and every time one of my teachers wants to do a "thought experiment" where he jokingly compares marrying someone of the same sex to marrying a turtle, or when one of my classmates offers to help me find a boyfriend, I just. It's tiring, and it's exacerbated by the fact that I go back to my parents' house at the end of the day. It's the only thing about my alma mater I really miss, now- and today was Mountain Day, which feels a bit like a slap in the face at this point.

My father did eventually backpedal and rescind his argument, to a point, after he remembered which of his children he was speaking to. He decided to blame the university for not being more careful about pairing up compatible roommates. Because the issue here is obviously that some people just can't be trusted to live with a gay roommate. Obviously. It's a better stance than "he got what he deserved," but it doesn't really solve any problems. It isn't the university's responsibility to coddle bigotry- particularly not when Rutgers makes such a big deal out of being the most demographically diverse school in the country. The rooming assignments are not to blame; putting a bully or a bigot in a room with someone they aren't likely to victimize doesn't make them less of a bully or a bigot. It just means they have to look a little further afield to find targets.

It's the university's responsibility to create an environment where bullying and bigotry will not be tolerated- but the blame still lies with those fucking abhorrent pieces of shit who thought it would be fun to out and publicly humiliate this kid, just for shits and giggles.

I don't know. I am just- so incredibly, deeply upset. That's it, that's all I've got right now: rage and sadness.

In the interest of not losing the ability to count the number of times I have been literally blinded by rage on one hand, I am going to swear off watching televised news programs for...eh, lets give it until the end of the year, I think. Not that I watch the news terribly often anyway; when I need to partake of mainstream media news sources, I go to nytimes.com, and even that doesn't happen with great frequency.

( classes classes other stuff classes )

Had Persian and Arabic today- the classes are on different campuses, and less than an hour apart, which is going to be fun when it gets colder and the buses are even more overloaded than they already are. Also, going from thinking in Arabic to thinking in Farsi gives me brain cramps, and my words keep coming out in the wrong order. >_<

( om nom nom languages )

Hey, remember when I used to post here? ...or anywhere that wasn't Twitter? ...yeah. M-me neither.

I'm probably going to offer a pair or two of earrings for auction on help_pakistan eventually, once I dig out a camera to photograph some of my newer stuff. I finally bought some silver wire, and it's been a bit nerve wracking to work with (expensive!) but good; it's very very different from the copper and bronze I've been using, and I like that. I also have some antiqued, dead soft bronze to play with. It'll be fun for more steampunky stuff, but I'm still fond of the color of my full hard industrial bronze, and I like the way it looks as it develops a natural tarnish.

I have a bag full of polymer clay that I still need to do something with; it's also nearly crocheting season again, and I've afghans to finish. I am not going to start putting together bootleg silkscreen apparatuses, no matter how much I want an AssCreed t-shirt. I'd never wear it, and I'd inevitably make a mess with the paint.

Been watching True Blood, and I'll probably have some thoughts to put together about it eventually; ditto Royal Pains and White Collar, although I've been more of a casual "brain in the off position" TV watcher this summer than an analytical one. I'd been planning to watch Warehouse 13, but S2E1 left a terrible taste in the back of my mind; I do adore a well done female villain, but I take a very real and very personal offense at the "angry feminist" trope.

( blathering and minutiae; school stuff, mostly )