jmtorres: (hide)
2011-12-01 06:13 am

it's december

it is now officially december

fuck my life

i am apparently one of those people who doesn't bother with capitals or punctuation anymore, but i console myself that i have become like lady gaga in the Lady and the Captain fic.

Meanwhile: i keep trying to capitalize "i" and it doesn't go through. dear keyboard: wtf.

Things I need to do in order of priority (oh hey i found the fucking shift key... or not. what.)
--scramble through my classes
--or gtfo of my classes
--cap_ironman sesa (the good news is I've started on it, the bad news is I should probably check something with the mods and the worse news is I'm going to need to do ~research~, wtf is up with my formatting I BLAME TUMBLR)
--yuletide (to which end, I need to review some source, and would like some company)
--the pinch-hit I picked up, fml
--probably the escapade vid should get higher priority than treating for festivids
--DID I MENTION I STILL HAVE TO PACK ALL MY CRAP UP AND MOVE
--maybe I should go put a load of laundry on. In, in aid of that.

Also, my hours at work are doubling due to we're hitting a busy stretch and we have no shipper/receiver.

I think I have managed to work more daily on the Assembly Con fic than on any of the above items. Oh god.

Everyone keep calm and imagine Steve subbing for Pepper. (what? it's my happy place.)
jmtorres: movieverse Steve Rogers with dorky grin. Text: The future is awesome! Who else is a robot? (awesome)
2011-06-14 01:04 pm
Entry tags:

FWEEEEEEEEEE

I have survived my quiz. Quite well, actually.

What shall I do for another two and a half hours before work?
jmtorres: (scream)
2011-06-13 09:25 pm

WHITE PRIVILEGE AHOY

My lecture on movie musicals says they started with stories about African-Americans and Irish Americans and German Americans etc, leftover from Vaudeville. Then the lecture produces this:

Eventually, Hollywood and movie musicals in general would move away from this kind of ethnic-based narrative, as the heroes of most movie musicals are usually generic "American" types without any ethnic markers.


CAN ANYONE SPOT WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS SENTENCE?
jmtorres: Quinn from Sliders asleep with book open on his chest. Text: Sweet dreams. (sleep)
2011-05-30 03:30 am

SLEEP WHAT IS THAT

I really thought I would be asleep right now. Or at least fallen over contemplating my various aches (the elbows kicked in about an hour ago: driving-related, I assume). Instead I am... cursing that I cannot access my online class early and contemplating rereading Warrior's Apprentice in aid of wee Secret Agent Ivan fic.

ETA: can anyone recommend/disrecommend/share? Vorkosigan audiobooks?

ETA2: Novel-length podfic, I can find. Audiobooks, I am failing.
jmtorres: Electric Mayhem: the Muppet Band's bus. (music)
2011-04-26 04:00 am

Song lyrics

Have you ever been listening to the radio and suddenly felt like the song was written for you personally for five seconds? When I was putting together this list I found myself realizing how much it says about my psyche and maybe also my generation. Like, I almost wish Imagine or something was on here, it seems loftier than *cough* some of these, but I grew up with Imagine, I never had a paradigm shift on it, it was just always there for me. These? These were really personal moments of impact.

Three song lyrics that meant the world to me:

I was made to believe there's something wrong with me, from Cold War by Janelle Monae

This was the line that made me want to write this entry. I wish I'd heard this years ago. I wish I'd heard it years before she even wrote it. I wish I'd heard it in high school. I don't know if I would have understood it, if I would have had the objectivity to get it, but this was something I struggled with, as a queer girl growing up: the sense that there was something wrong with the way I was, that didn't actually come from something being wrong with me but from something being wrong with society, that society was telling me you don't fit, you're a broken cog but it wasn't true, it was society being a broken machine. It's hard to see it the first time but it's so liberating when you do. If I could send this song back in time a dozen years to tiny me, I would.



I'm Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance

Okay, don't laugh at me, you folks.

I first heard this song--saw the music video, actually--during Lost Year II, The Flunk Out of Every Institution in the State Remix. We'll call it the Geographically Challenged Year. It was bad, but not quite as bad as my Lost Year, and part of the reason was this song.

I have chronic clinical depression. The Lost Year was the year I just went under to it, the Geographically Challenged Year was the year that I could admit--to myself, if no one else--that something was wrong. I burned some bridges figuring that out, but. It was better. A little.

You see, clinical depression is, 95% of the time, invisible to other people. You're tired or you're cranky or in a bad mood or whatever, you should just buck up and get over it. (You can't get over it, it goes on and on.) And it's so ingrained in our culture that the answer to "How are you?" is "I'm fine" at the best or "I'm okay" at the worst. If you say "I'm awesome!" people look at you kind of pityingly, like "I'm so sorry your company is asshats, at least they don't also make you wear flare?" If you say "I'm terrible," you really had better be bleeding to death, and even then, the temptation is to brush it off as "Just a flesh wound." And if anyone has any reason to suspect you're not really okay, that you're just giving the socially acceptable response, the thing to do is in fact to promise, to assure them that you're okay. Even more for women, I think, there's a negative stereotype of a the woman who complains, what a nag, what a hag she is, and no one wants to be that, right?

So for ages and ages I told everyone including myself that I was okay, when I wasn't, because I didn't know how to say anything else. It seems like such a small thing that this song deconstructs but I don't think any more sweeping statement would have had the same impact--if they had said "I'm depressed, my life sucks," well, that would have been the sort of sentiment you can get away with in emo music, right? But "I'm not okay, I promise," takes the thing you're supposed to say, with all its trappings, and says, "That is a social fiction. That is a lie."

Seven years later I can admit to myself when I'm not okay, and sometimes even to other people.



Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears, from The Cool, Cool River by Paul Simon

This is off The Rhythm of the Saints, which may be one of my favorite albums of all time. What this line encapsulates for me is how the creative process comes out of deep emotions--for him, it's music; for me, it's fiction or film. You don't know how many times I've been jarred to realize that I'm putting myself down on paper at the safe distance of a character in a story. Sometimes it's enough, sometimes you can work through your issues at that distance and write something that's interesting to other people and we call that being inspired. And sometimes it's not enough, sometimes putting things at the safe distance of fuel for the creation engine is putting them too far away, sometimes the only way you can actually process is to own it in yourself. Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.
jmtorres: TOS Spock leans face on hand, has mild eyebrow raise. Text: seeking internally consistent logic since 1966 (fanhistory)
2011-02-13 01:11 am

Montage, Kuleshov, and vidding

I want to shove this chapter of my textbook on Soviet montage at every vidder I've ever met. While I was watching Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) I kept being struck but by how vid-like the editing was, how he kept using metaphors, matching images like sewing and film editing or the human eye, the camera lens, and window shades opening and closing. But I had no idea how much early Soviet editing WAS vidding.

See, immediately post-Revolution Russia had an epic shortage of raw film stock to shoot new material on, and they were actually frequently using the tail ends of reels from films shot in the era of the czar. But the Kuleshov Workshop didn't have film to be wasting on student projects at all--they were learning and experimenting with editing entirely with clips from pre-existing works. IE, vidding.

(Ugh, [personal profile] traykor, I finally found the exact thing I was looking for the other night--the Mozhukhin Experiment. *facepalm*)

I was about to say, vidders, do yourselves a favor, if you don't know about Soviet Montage and Kuleshov and Eisenstein and Vertov and Pudovkin, look them up, but I just came up with a terrible idea--if I were to go to Vividcon this year, would anyone be interested in a panel on the subject? which has already been done.
jmtorres: Teachers from film Donnie Darko sitting next to each other in auditorium. Text: "Donnie Darko." "I know." (teachers)
2011-02-08 12:38 pm

What.

My TA called me "Connie" like, five times today.

This would be like you all calling me Jenny.
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
2011-01-28 01:32 am

i feel like there should be some catching up in the fannish doings of me

My festivid is a hit. I am refraining heroically from answering comments, which are awesome. (I also keep seeing my gift, the awesome Marion from Indiana Jones vid, on recs lists, which brings me glee.) [personal profile] niqaeli is collecting an entry of quotes from the vid mines that I wouldn't let her post at the time because they're spoilery, but the schedule on festivids is so stretched out that we're reaching the point of losing context. "Why was [char] a vampire?" I found myself asking regarding one of the quotes that was hilarious at the time. I remembered eventually. It's spoilery.

Today I discovered a new portmanteau for [personal profile] niqaeli's favorite SPN pairing: Casquatch. We died and died of laughter.

Last week we went to see Red at the dollar theater--that being the flick where aging ex-spies (Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren) are on somebody's hit list and being pursued by up-and-coming spy (Karl Urban). We found it hilarious and adorable. It almost but not quite passed Bechdel. I'm not sure I would find it as charming on second viewing because violence against women )

Watched the last two episodes of White Collar. My memory for the one last week is full of holes. Oh wait, it's coming back to me. Burke's Seven. Right. Did you know [personal profile] niqaeli and I have a pet theory that El totally was a con and Peter figured her out in a way he couldn't arrest her for (among other things I like this theory for decreepifying the surveillance photo courtship: it was legitimate case surveillance!) and either she knew Neal and lets Neal think Peter doesn't know this for hilarity or Neal has only recently discovered her shadowy past and recognizes her reputation and is all OMG HOW WHAT YOU WERE SO AWESOME I DON'T EVEN. Anyway, with that theory, most El scenes get an extra twenty points of sweeeeeet.

So the most recent episode had the potential to joss the vid I'm working on, and I've been expecting to be jossed since--okay, no, I was expecting to be jossed last November but I've since given up on it (my attitude at this point is SHOW, PROVE ME WRONG! JOSS ME!)--but far from jossing me, this episode provided more fodder for the vid. my thoughts on this week's episode )

In other news, Ivan quietly went under and waited out Yuletide and Festivids and this week resurfaced. Bits of three of my four active Vorkosigan novellas of last year are once again taking over my brain (and the fourth is waiting for Bel to come out of hibernation). And I haven't even reread the books again or read any fic lately (except for [personal profile] dira's this evening, which made me cry at the sweet, and I would link but I'm on bit and I can't be bothered to deal with the annoying screenness to hunt down the URL ETA http://dira.dreamwidth.org/561801.html /ETA). So I decided to try for 300 words a day all year on one of those four plot bunnies, which at this point in the year would give me 100K by December 31, and hopefully enough pieces to string together a whole postable story or two and a lot of hilarious outtakes. Those of you on my WIP filter will get to watch me muddle through out of order!

Work: my hours are getting cut stupid low sigh.
School: I have another nominee for the "film class from hell" tag.
Cope: Hahaha what is that. At least I am still to some extent getting shit done?
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
2011-01-06 10:30 am
Entry tags:

ugh

I hate university, kind of a lot, I'm very tired of the bullshit advising, and they've made it next to impossible to get into online classes just when I've decided I hate looking people in the face.
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
2011-01-03 03:22 am

Progress

I am 2/3 of the way through my class, and 38 seconds (plus intro and topper) done with my festivid. I will not stay up another three hours for either of those. I did write some notes down on the vid to help keep track of which bits go where in sequences since I've decided to vid out of order...

I'm about 24% done with the vid by timeline so maybe by Wednesday or Thursday I'll have a full draft, which will at least give me a day or so for beta? Oh my god, I'm terrified I'm not going to have enough footage. Must finish throwing what I have at the timeline before I freak out about that, because honestly, so far ACTUAL problem has been "OH NO THIS INSTRUMENTAL STRETCHES ON FOREVER wait what do you mean that's only about five clips worth? I can't do that amount of story in five clips!"

*FLAIL* OH MY GOD VID

Raise your hand if you want to be on a festivids filter and be in the know about my subject matter so I can flail more specifically.
jmtorres: Aya from Weiss Kreuz undercover as a teacher. Text: Is it any wonder the kids call him 'Miss Fujimiya'? (school)
2011-01-02 02:27 am
Entry tags:

dear school: why do I have to participate in regular semesters?

Clearly I would be able to handle five classes a semester if they were consecutive 3-wk courses instead of concurrent 16-wk courses. Binge is my best learning mode. Same as fannish consumption, apparently.

I'm taking a winter session class that started on 12/28 and though I have until 1/14 to complete it, I am already halfway done. I am zipping through by listening to lectures while driving or playing Bejeweled. And I'm getting 100%s on the quizzes. And the fact that I am yawning is the primary reason I am not opening up another lecture right now. I had been planning to get through a lot of the class this weekend, but um, where I am now is a sixth of the class ahead of where I meant to be right now, and roughly where I meant to be tomorrow night. I think my main problem is going to be that I can't actually take the final until 1/13. Because I will clearly be done with all the class material well before then. I guess we'll see what my retention actually is!

Ugh. Seriously. I think everything I can take in compressed mode, I will, because jfc. Why has it taken me this long to figure this out? Oh right, because a) college kept telling me if I couldn't handle it over a semester there was no way I'd keep up with the workload in a summer session and b) I occasionally try to take two compressed classes simultaneously, which doesn't work nearly as well.
jmtorres: animation: Supernatural 4.09, Ruby gasps as she wakes up Coma Girl. Text: COMA GIRL LIVES! (wake up)
2010-12-28 11:52 am

productive, but in unexpected ways

In the last week I:

--finished my yuletide
--finished a pinch hit
--embroidered oven mitts for a coworker
--celebrated a friend's birthday
--got all my holiday shopping finished
--got all my holiday baking finished
--got all presents handed or sent to their recipients
--worked
--survived Christmas Day with a usual amount of breakdown
--helped a couple of friends get all the crap out of their apartment for moving
--sold them the king size bed
--got them awake and actually heading towards Cali
--went to Ikea for sofa bed
--built, with niq, her giant table and my sofa bed (we have conquered the Ikea!)
--saw Tron
--did not kill my family
--registered for a winter session class

not necessarily in that order.

I did not, however, work on my festivid. I was not expecting the moving and Ikea'ing to be part of my weekend, so.

I am considering going back to Ikea just now actually...
jmtorres: the cover of the Joni Mitchell best-of CD "Hits," featuring two batter cars and a woman lying on the ground. (wry emo)
2010-11-18 09:08 pm

my depression is worn and familiar

A couple of weeks ago, I told [personal profile] niqaeli, partly surprised and partly not, that getting out of school for the rest of the semester hadn't cured my depression--but I was not heavy of heart when I said it, for all that it was true. It took me longer to identify this part of it, but what did go away when I called it quits on the school was guilt. It's interesting that guilt is not endemic to the depression, it's a secondary feature: when I fail at school because of my depression, I have guilt. I do not have guilt purely for having depression, I do not feel like a failure as a human being, except when I manage to redefine human being to mean student as apparently occurs some of the time.

So: I have lethargy of spirit and of body, I have insomnia, I have depression. Right now it's just a weight I carry, not a wall I hit. I go to work and eat and anything I do beyond that in any given day counts as a bonus. I maintain.
jmtorres: Quinn from Sliders asleep with book open on his chest. Text: Sweet dreams. (sleep)
2010-10-07 12:23 am

welcome to insomnia

The "you went to bed early? that's a punishable offense" edition.

I think I am doing better. I got up early, went to class, though I didn't make anything up, and I wrote--I can't get any of the Glee crap out of my head, which is too bad as I am starting to annoy my nearest and dearest retelling them bits, but I wrote down some of Amita in space (on a hunch; the empty page was staring at me and wouldn't take ink for the stories of in-many-ways-normative white dudes, so I started writing Amita and got like, four pages down and only stopped for time). It's been a while since I wrote, this is good. Also I made a cheesecake and used up four of our multitude of apples (two more for the topping when I get around to it).

And that was my day. I am back to putting "going to class" in my list of accomplishments, which sucks, but I hadn't been doing it and I did it, which is good.

And: quiz due by 2:30 on Friday. Very doable.
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
2010-09-23 09:39 am
Entry tags:

getting through the day

I will now make myself attend class one and class two but skip afternoon lab as a bargain with myself.
jmtorres: (hide)
2010-09-14 02:39 pm
Entry tags:

Dear school

I hate you, I am very tired, I slept eleven hours last night which was three more than I meant to which made this paper very very last minute and I am still tired and argh *collapse*
jmtorres: Teachers from film Donnie Darko sitting next to each other in auditorium. Text: "Donnie Darko." "I know." (teachers)
2010-09-08 09:34 am
Entry tags:

*grumble*

For one class I have, the prof requires both digital and hard copy of papers (for submission to anti-plagiarism websites, and for her to use red pen on). Fine. Whatever.

The deadline for turning in the digital copy of your paper is midnight the night before class. The deadline for turning in the digital copy of your paper is TWELVE HOURS BEFORE CLASS.

Professor mine, you don't think anyone uses those twelve hours to get homework done? Or you just don't think anyone should? And what the hell business is that of yours anyway?
jmtorres: (flee)
2010-09-01 12:32 pm

argh

Well, that sucked.

Make-up class still does not believe in cold cream, which I swear to god is the only way to get stage make-up OFF, so I didn't take my bruise make-up off before I left class, and in fact, class encourages you to go out with your make-up on, which, the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off, because in a class that's 90% women, sending us all out with bruises and scrapes on our bodies and bragging about how previous students have successfully fooled people--well, great, let's go on and normalize the idea of violence against women some more! *headdesk*

Right, so I went home, where I still can't find my cold cream nor about half my kit, and because I didn't want to go out still looking beat up I washed off with oatmeal soap, and I am not colors anymore but my skin feels wrong and I really want some goddamn cold cream and how I wish the department would buy into COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF THE THEATRICAL WORLD and get some damn cold cream.
jmtorres: From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance music video; the peach-haired, wide-eyed iteration (Default)
2010-07-17 04:45 pm

in the interim

My real life sucks so hard right now that even though I was really really looking forward to White Collar, it took me until today to find the time and energy to watch it. I am so stressed out by summer school and the stupidest thief on earth at work that I'm having crying fits over things as idiotic as my sister asking me if I want to watch television.

So the amazing thing is not that I haven't finished drafting what I want to say about Vid Review, the amazing thing is that I still care enough to want to say anything. I have a lot of emotion and intellectual interest invested in vidding, in Vividcon, and in Vid Review, and I want to talk about it--at some point. Right now I am officially taking a break from writing that essay to give myself the space to stop freaking out about it. It will probably be a better essay for my trying to have some sanity about it.

But since I won't be posting that essay in a timely fashion, I want to make one small statement on the discussion so far:

I am sorry that our having had an interest in playing Vid Review Bingo hurt you. We did not mean to be hurtful, nor to be disrespectful, nor to break Vividcon's rules. If I had realized how hurtful other people found the idea of anyone playing Vid Review Bingo, I would not have wanted to play in the first place, because it was never our intention to hurt or to disrespect people. Please accept this sincere apology.
jmtorres: Revolutionary Girl Utena: Utena sandwich with Touga and Saionji for bread. (merry threesome)
2010-07-16 06:09 am

musicals

Singin' in the Rain hits my OT3 buttons so hard.

(Good mornin', good mornin', it's great to stay up late...)