Hi, folks. So you've found my livejournal page, or perhaps you've added me as a friend and are wondering what I'm all about, and why this journal is locked down when you've already read a fair bit of my writing (*cough* fanfiction *cough*) with my name on it elsewhere.

This is my personal journal. It is where I keep in touch with far-flung friends (close-flung friends, too). I also use it to post stupid memes, whine a lot, process (usually to filtered groups), rant about political and social injustices, whinge about how slow my writing process is, and post information about upcoming concerts I or my siblings are in. I sometimes write about my jobs.

If you are looking for the fanfic-y goodness, feel free to pop on over to songquake_fic, which is pretty much all-public.

If you are looking for what I was thinking about theology in 2006 and 2007, you can add songquakebuilds to your friends list, and PM me to let me know to add you to that journal (it's almost entirely f-locked, as it was the support journal for my Masters' thesis, and I wasn't sure whether I'd ever want to publish any of it).

But if you're interested in reading pure, unadulterated, neurotic as hell me, then songquake is the place for you.

NOTE: I will not add you back unless I know who you are. So comment or PM me and introduce yourself if you don't think I know you by your LJ username, or we haven't had a conversation in somebody/somecommunity's comments. And really, since this journal is now Friends-Only, there's really no point in friending songquake without introducing yourself.

Also, I request that readers of this journal refrain from using the feature LiveJournal has allowing your comments to be cross-posted to services such as FaceBook and Twitter. Consider this a room in which what is said here, stays here.

NOTE TO RANDOM STOPPERS-BY:
After getting a series of spam comments, I am now not only logging IP addresses
but employing CAPTCHA technology for anonymous commenters.

I dislike doing this, and hope that people will continue to participate in
discussions here. But random ads that are in languages I don't read aren't cool.
In fact, advertisements aren't cool at all; that's why I spent the big bucks
to get a permanent account.

IP address logging and CAPTCHA only apply to anonymous commenters.
If you're willing to own your words, then I won't hassle you
or invade your privacy.

Love, songquake

Well. I have just modified my flight to Houston on Wednesday to fill it with accommodations. Who knew that there was a standard for accommodating peanut allergies? I didn't, until I decided to take a Friend's advice and book myself a wheelchair.

The wheelchair. It's...strategic? I mean, I need my cane for uneven terrain, but I mostly can walk around for the long distances airports require (though it might tire me out, which is why the Friend in question suggested it). But. I can't take off my shoes easily. My balance is okay, but not so good as to make it workable to take my shoes off to go through a metal detector (which would, you know, go off because of the metal in my ankle now). They mostly don't have benches for removal of shoes at airports despite having benches for re-shodding. And I am still having enough pain/swelling that I need to wear my high tops when leaving my house, so.

The reason I'm going to Houston is for the annual conference of the Association for Professional Chaplains. Looking ahead, I'm wondering why I thought the first flight to Houston on Wednesday was a good idea (it probably had to do with peanuts). I don't have any workshops to attend until Thursday morning and there's not much going on Wednesday. I need to call the hotel tomorrow and see about whether I can get an early check-in. Or if they can at least hold onto my suitcase while I hang out somewhere?

(I don't stay in hotels much.)

I just looked at the events. It looks like I'll have all of Wednesday free. Which I suppose means I'll have time to go for a swim, maybe get a massage, maybe write some...and go to mid-week Meeting for Worship at Live Oak Friends Meeting. It looks like they've got worship-sharing at 7 and open worship at 8.

I just...am feeling really insecure. Like I booked this conference without really understanding the logistics of what was going to happen. And...it is a good idea to get there the day before the conference begins because there's no way I could have managed the stress otherwise. Or made the first professional intensive I wanted to attend (which starts at 8:20 on Thursday, on Meditation as a Chaplaincy Intervention). But a whole day of nothing much to do? I hope the folks at the registration table can help me meet folks! Because there's something about being at a conference that makes me feel anxious both about being with new people and about being alone.

My field trip made me cranky

Since I remember I can do it, why not post twice in a day?

At my last visit, my surgeon suggested I get some high-top sneakers for the purpose of "weaning off the orthosis." So I went on zappos.com and bought a pair of high-tops. They were cute and provided good ankle support. But they weren't wide enough, not by a long shot. They were okay to wear for an hour of PT, but the 3-4 hours/day my physical therapist suggested I wear them (at work, because flat linoleum surfaces) left my feet feeling really squished and achy. Not good--especially since diabetes means it can cause more damage than it would most people.

I decided that to fix this problem, I would make a field trip to Manhattan to Eneslow. Mind, I've been making weekly trips to Manhattan whenever choir meets. But I decided that, since I had been on the subway at off-peak times twice this week, I'd try taking the subway.

Well. I missed a subway at about 2:45 because I was slow (and waiting for elevators and the like). But whatever. The F train had lots of seats, and I took it to Broadway-Lafayette to change for the 6.

The 6 train was, of course, crowded. Some jerk knocked my arm off the pole as he got on and then had the temerity to claim he hadn't touched me when I told him he'd been rude, especially since I'm using a cane.

Nobody on the 6 offered me a seat. At all. Everyone avoided looking at me.

The 33rd St station has neither elevators nor escalators, but I was expecting that. And at least nobody showed exasperation at my slowness on the stairs.

After I'd bought new sneakers (the most expensive shoes I've ever owned, I think), I decided to hail a cab home. It takes a minute, but a cab sees me and turns on its "available" light. Except there's a woman in it. But she gets out. Other cabs pass, but I've made the fabled "eye contract" with this one. So eventually I get in, tell the cabbie where I'm going.

"Oh miss, I'm at the end of my shift, I can't go to Brooklyn."

"You have to if you've let me in the cab; you can't refuse to take me to Brooklyn." This is actually a law in NYC.

"My shift is over at 4, and i have to get the car back by 4:30--there's no way I can get to Brooklyn and back in time."

It was 4:11pm. His shift had already ended, but he'd put on the "Available" light.

"If you can't take a person where they need to go, you shouldn't let them in your car."

"Well, but--"

"No. Fuck off. I missed other cars because you had your light on." I got out of the car. I should have gotten his hack license number, but was too flustered to think of it.

The next cab that picked me up took me to Brooklyn, but both needed directions and didn't want to listen to my directions. It blows my mind.

At least my new sneakers are cute.



(They're an H-width, and high-tops are not as popular as they once were, so there was only one model in my size--three color choices--all $358 after taxes.)

My Banging Birthday gift at Daily Deviant posted today, I just read it, and UNGH. People. I prompted with a Tom Chapin children's song and I got a stunningly gorgeous ode to sapiosexuality.

I reckon it's also down to my own tastes that I got turned on by the title of the first section: "Epistemology." As I commented, there's nothing hotter than a new episteme.

Title: Sesquipedalia
Author: A Masterful Member
Characters/Pairings: Hermione Granger/Minerva McGonagall, Parvati Patil, Ron Weasley, OCs
Rating: NC-17
Kinks/Themes Included: sapiosexuality
Other Warnings/Content: cross-gen and um, sushi?
Word Count: ~7000
Summary/Description: The story of Hermione Granger's relationship with Minerva McGonagall is polysyllabic



(at some point I might have a Real Update, but yeah, I have no social energy beyond work and Quaker this week, and I've also got a guerilla choir performance on Friday, so...)

chibitoaster is in danger of losing her home, and is seeking help to keep it. I don't know her well, but have admired her work in the HP fandom for years. Her story isn't one of poor budgeting, but of her family home having been in probate after her mother's death and the bank demanding the balance of the mortgage as a lump sum.

The donation page is here: http://www.gofundme.com/ranas_house

There's also an auction for her at fans4fans: http://fans4fans.livejournal.com/501.html Several of my flisties have put items/services up for auction.

This is an issue that's been getting so much space on my flist this week that I thought perhaps I'd just be adding to the noise. But I also know that there are folks on my list that are not in the HP fandom (or the same parts of it). And a signal boost never hurts :)

I think I'm going to aim at NOT festing this year (or, at least, not festing unless I can prove to myself that I can actually Get Shit Done In A Timely Manner), but that said...too many friends were posting their Trope Bingo cards, and I got envious.

Doing some of these, maybe even doing a standard one-row bingo, should be possible, given the extraordinarily generous timeframe over at trope_bingo.

friends to lovers / friends with benefits	poor communication skills	trapped in a dream	deathfic	fork in the road
locked in	handcuffed / bound together	character in distress	snowed in	rites of passage / coming of age
au: college / highschool	futurefic	FREE ★ SPACE	sharing a bed	amnesia
role reversal	bodyswap	in vino veritas / drunkfic	indecent proposal	au: fusion
au: royalty / aristocracy / feudal	food porn	au: alternate gender norms	immortality / reincarnation	chosen family

If you are looking to get the word out about fantastic holiday-themed fanworks, please clicky on the banner below:



(I've been dreadfully off my game for the past month, and haven't posted a new theme since November, so here's hoping lots of recs come flooding in!)

Charles M. Blow wrote in the NYTimes yesterday about how huge percentages of Republican Americans believe demonstrably untrue things about President Obama. Following is a graphic of some of the recent polling:

( Cut because of size of image )

Never mind that John McCain (President Obama's opponent in the last election) was born in Panama. Being born on an American military installation renders him a "Natural-born Citizen of the United States," and really, though there was a question about how this would be viewed legally, nobody on the other side made a huge deal of this once the Federal Election Commission ruled that he was eligible to run for President.

But what really confuses me is how the president's religious beliefs remain up for question. Hell, not just his religious beliefs, but his fundamental faith alignment. Astonishingly (to me), very few Americans remember that his faith was controversial in the 2008 election—not because of a question of his being a Christian, but because of the kind of Christian he is. Nobody seems to remember how our electorate required Obama to distance himself from Jeremiah Wright and to leave Trinity UCC, where he had been a member since the late 1980s.

While he distanced himself from Rev. Wright and quit Trinity, the fact that he was a member there for nearly 20 years indicates that he agrees (or at least agreed) in the congregation's basic philosophical/theological/political stance: that God is on the side of the poor and oppressed; that God does not desire the suffering of any human, but stands with and gives strength to those who are oppressed; and that it is important, as an African-American megachurch, for Trinity UCC to remain "Unashamedly Black, Unapologetically Christian."

It's a church built on Liberation Theology. It's built on a Christianity in which Christ redeems the slave by showing the possibility of resurrection. Jesus, having been poor, itinerant, revolutionary, and subject to torture, has more in common with Harriet Tubman than with Abraham Lincoln. (This comparison has probably been used before, but I can't cite by whom; it seems like an apt one, though.) This Jesus calls for the oppressed to continue to struggle against injustice, and for those who oppress to give up our sinful ways and become like the lilies of the field who are satisfied with the blessings God's already given us. Those who are well-off have a responsibility to stand with the poor.

I should acknowledge here that Liberation Theology (by way of feminist theology but quickly expanded to Black Liberation, Mujerista, Womanist, Queer, and Disability Theologies) is the reason I have become able to call myself a Christian, and the root of my activism and ministry. I've met Rev. Wright a couple of times, briefly, and have heard him preach. And while I found myself convicted by his words, while his rhetoric can be very "inflammatory" for those who do not believe in God's primary identity as liberator, I have never found his words to be untrue. Unpopular, yes, but not untrue (with its history of oppression, the archetype of America does deserve damnation rather than blessing, though Wright's cry of "God DAMN America" was particularly ill-timed). And hell, Jesus was never really popular, either, especially among the privileged and ruling classes.

America is known as the "land of opportunity," but it has never been, is still not, a land of opportunity for many descendants of slaves as well as for modern-day slaves (victims of labor and sex trafficking), for many women, for many queers (particularly queers of color), for many with disabilities. What Liberation Theology does is promise that this lack of opportunity is not divinely-ordained and give those who subscribe to it strength to struggle against racism, sexism, ablism, ageism, homophobia/heterocentrism and so on.

Okay, that was a nice little digression into Liberation Theology, but I think it's important to describe it because of how far outside of popular Christianity it is. It's controversial stuff, this claim that God is on the side of the poor rather than the rich, that it's Christ the tortured rather than Christ the King who is a model for humans.

A lot of Americsns were pissed off by the media descriptions of Liberation Theology back in 2008. Pundits called it a "heresy."

What I'm saying is that the actual beliefs about God that President Obama likely holds are controversial enough, even though they are Christian. In fact, it's likely that if Obama acted more on the tenets of Liberationism, the percentage of people offended by his religious affiliation would be higher than the percentage who think he is Muslim right now.


...It's been a long time since I have subjected my F-list to a theologically-based discourse. Since I have so many new readers since I finished my Master's Degree in 2007 (friend songquakebuilds if you want to read my Master's Thesis), I expect there will be some dissent. I encourage conversation, though I think I have exhausted my brain for the moment. Am actually a trifle nervous about posting this, but hell, if this is what I believe...

If I hide my light under a bushel basket, I'm likely to burn the house down.

Well, my mom cracked the whip today and I finally finished revising my applications for residency. I'm hoping that I haven't missed the boat on all counts. But just in case, I decided to apply to every CPE residency program in NYC (including one on Staten Island) and one in New Jersey. The programs are:

-New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn (my first choice).
-New York-Presbyterian Hospital System in NYC (though there are also placements outside the city, I don't want to commute to Westchester).
-Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn.
-Eger Health Care and Rehabilitation Center on Staten Island (a very cool program, but on SI).
-VA New York Harbor Healthcare System in Manhattan (though it's unclear as to whether they offer residency at this time).
-Robert Wood Johnson University Center in New Brunswick, NJ (again, a cool program, but fuck, that's a long commute!).

We'll see, we'll see...

And now back to my regularly scheduled panic about fic-fests.