Insights of a Chicken

12:08am: Call for Players!
HP Dungeons is one of the longest-running HP RPGs--now running since 2003!

2003-2007 on livejournal here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/hp_dungeons/

2007-present on insanejournal here: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/hp_dungeons/

While we have occasionally accepted new applications and replaced retiring authors, The Dungeons is having its second ever call for new players. Please note that Dungeons canon is JKR-compliant up to The Order of the Phoenix, when we started the game, and diverges in some small and some large ways from Rowling's canon after that book.

The game is moderated by Femme. Basic information and the current cast list can be found here: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/hp_dungeons/profile/.

REMUS

We are especially looking for a new Remus Lupin since Cluegirl retired. While all new players must be willing to play into existing Dungeons canon this is especially important for Remus, who has been a very central character in the game and is in an existing established relationship with Sirius Black. Before applying for Remus you should probably know more than that about Dungeons Remus so, if you're not a dungeons watcher, please email Femme (femmequixotic @ livejournal dot com) as moderator for some information on Remus.

OTHER HIGHLY DESIRABLE CHARACTERS

At this time we'd be happy to take on a couple of other new players. We would be especially interested in:

Ginny Weasley - Ginny has some well-established Dungeons canon but has not been an active player character for some time so there is some flexibility for a new player. Contact Femme for more details about Ginny's history.

Percy Weasley - Percy has some well-established Dungeons canon but has not been an active player character for a couple of years so there is even more flexibility for a new player. Contact Femme for more details about Percy's history.

Dolores Umbridge - Has never been played in Dungeons except as a minor NPC so we are interested in any ideas for her characterization although it is important to note that in Dungeons canon Umbridge has never been at Hogwarts at this time.

Rufus Scrimgeour - Has never been played in Dungeons except as a minor NPC so we are interested in any ideas for his characterization, although it is important to note that in Dungeons canon Scrimgeour has never been Minister of Magic at this time.

Padma and/or Parvati Patil - Neither of these characters have ever been played in Dungeons so we are interested in any ideas for their characterization.

Lavender Brown - Has never been played in Dungeons so we are interested in any ideas for her characterization.

HOW TO APPLY

For an application form please email hp.dungeons @ gmail dot com. The form will ask for ideas, writing sample and references, but people who have never written in an RPG before are very welcome to apply.

2:26pm: In 1994 then mayor Rudy Giuliani gave a speech on crime which included this excerpt (full text available <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D9173CF933A15750C0A962958260">here</a>:

<em>We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

[ Interruption by someone in the audience. ]

You have free speech so I can be heard.</em>


Now, don't get me wrong, freedom is a very difficult thing to define.  The entry at dictionary.com takes 17 different tries at it.  None of these tries, however, mention anything about <strong>"ceding to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."</strong>

( The definitions of freedom )

Link courtesy of allyscully

2:36pm: Hrm.  Testing Deepest Sender for crossposting and managing multiple accounts.  I'm not sure what it says about me that with claiming this name on IJ and GJ, I now have 12 accounts that I have access to and post in on a semi-regular basis.  And 5 of them are Dungeons related. 

Anyone out there use this extension and if so, how do you go about crossposting?  I'm starting with the good old copy and paste, but it does seem like there ought to be a quicker way.

I need some icons over here...

5:33pm: Just posting to proclaim my hatred of 1) everything microsoft related and 2) the damn tutoring session which I spent an hour recording on Thursday and which now appears to have recorded without sound. I've tried three computers. One wouldn't even play the thing and the other two played without sound. Everything else on the computer was quite happy to beep and blurp at me, just not the fucking sound for my DVD which I somehow have to watch, analyze and turn in a self evaluation for by friday. On top of two more paintings, several spanish tenses, stat homework which was supposed to be done last wednesday, 10 articles on the epidemiology of ebola to read and take notes on and a repro test to study for.

EDIT: Got it!! I love my roommate:D

1:02pm: Shenandoah Shakespeare
I'm glad I got the chance to take this trip before my forum semesters ended. Everyone always says it's really good and I have to agree with them.

( We left Friday at 3:30 )

1:48pm: I'm on a roll with chapter 7, you guys better finish reading chapter 6!! Anyone know of a good site regarding copyright law (using song names, lines from poems, books, etc) in independant works? I ought to at least have a general idea of the legalities of this if I ever decided to publish it...

12:33am: Sigh... Contentment
I finally had the chance to write for a couple of hours today, for the first time in almost three weeks. I didn't realize how much I missed April and Alexi until I returned to them. So now I have the first couple of pages of a new chapter and hopefully I will be able to write more this weekend. I can fall asleep content now, I have done something more than homework and lab today:)

6:14pm: happy happy happy
I'm going to make a totally useless post to announce the fact that I am happy!! This is big news, I haven't been happy in more than a week. Big thanks to Alex for taking me out yesterday and the cool new skirt and tops that I got:) And I've decided that I don't care what happens for the moment, I've spent enough of my time obsessing over things I have no control over, I am going to enjoy my life and my classes and the fact that there's a pretty sky and a breeze right now. Anything negative can just go take a flying leap over the 9th floor balcony for all I care:)

10:23pm: Los Hombres Calientes
Wow, this group is absolutely awesome!!! They're a jazz group based in New Orleans, and this was their first concert since Katrina, done all on borrowed instruments. They do a mix of jazz with beats from Africa, Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, all over the place, with lots of interesting plays with chords and different instruments. I think I counted two trumpets, a slide trombone, a full rock drum set, four different african drums, a cowbell, a gourd, windchimes, a tambourine, a base, a grand piano and two sticks. Add in some vocals in several different languages and a beat that you can't help but move to, and you have a contagious combination. There were people dancing in the aisles with their umbrellas open (now this is in Stewart Theatre, remember) and everyone was up on their feet by the end of it. My hands are still tingling from clapping and it ended a half an hour ago!! I'm going to go try to find some CDs now, I think they said that if you download from msn.com the proceeds go to hurricane relief. Seems like a good deal to me:)

11:13pm: Oh hell, what's the point
of it all anyway?
Nothing means anything,
everything is a should have or
could have
or a lost opportunity.
I'm tired of second guesses
and studies and light.
I'm tired of feelings
so conflicting and
incomprehensible.
Call me, tell me,
ask and I will come
but I will not act
alone.

9:06pm: The Bible and Abortion
I'm glad I went to this lecture- it brought up some interesting thoughts even if I didn't particularly like the subject. It wasn't a pro-life or pro-choice, but a philisophical examination of why the assumptions made from the precious few bible verses dealing with the subject are incorrect. I find it interesting that the Bible is so vague on the subject of abortion when the laws of other civilizations of the time were quite explicit. The Syrians, for example, stated that any woman found to have willfully aborted a pregnancy was to be impaled on a stick and denied a proper burial. And the theologians up until 100 years ago didn't oppose abortion on the grounds that the fetus was a living being- many of them thought that a fetus didn't become a person until between 40-80 days after conception. They opposed abortion because they thought it was humanity's duty to go forth and be fruitful. So it's really only in the last century that the idea that the fetus is a person from conception has emerged.

The majority of the lecture was a rather mind numbing list of philisophical arguments against the way the pro-life groups use the Bible to back up their arguments. The debate focused mainly on the definition of a person, defined by Dr. Endicott as a rational of immaterial being. For example, the assumption that X is sanctified and therefore X is a person is invalid, whereas the assumption that if X has committed a conscious act of sin implies that X is a person would be a valid philosophical argument. This went on for about 35 minutes and was the bulk of the lecture, each X did this and therefore X is a person argument pertaining to a different Bible verse. The main thought I had was that you could argue this until your face turned blue, but the majority of the public wouldn't give a flip about it. There is such a thing as being too intellectual. This showed itself quite starkly in the difference between the questions asked afterwards by professors and students. The professors argued with the lecturer by pulling quotes from different theologians and different bible verses, a lot of which went entirely over my head. I want to learn, but god, I hope I never turn into one of those people. And the students asked questions about the realities, argued with him over his definition of person.

There was someone standing outside afterwards with pictures of 10-day old fetuses, yelling out for us to come and look if we had any doubts about when life started. That little blob of cells is not a person, I'm sorry. That blob has the potential to become a person, if all the cell replecations and specializations and environmental factors fall correctly into place. I don't know when life begins. My thought is that life is embodied in the concept of self, that you become a person on the day that you realize you are one, when you think of yourself in terms of "I". This could take up until the age of two or later. Up until that point you are a life with the potential to become a person. Does potential have rights, inside the womb or out of it? I don't know. It's not something I particularly want to argue either, since discussions on this subject always seem to end with my damnation to hell. Does potential override the personhood of the mother? I don't know. To sacrifice potential is sad, scary and painful, but that is a choice to be made by each individual person and not by the government. I would have to think long and hard if I were ever to be in a situation where abortion was an option. Just because I consider myself to be pro-choice does not mean that I am an awful baby-killing woman. It means that I consider my personhood to be just as important, if not more important than the potential of any ball of cells that may happen to grow inside me.

2:49pm: Crazy hurricane...
Hurricane, tropical storm, Ophelia can't seem to make up her mind. Insanely appropriate and amusing. Especially as she seems to be unsure in the less destructive direction. Watch me eat my words now, she'll become a 5 and head straight for NC...

2:52pm: musings with smoothie
The world is beautiful. I wonder why I don't stop to notice that more often. Everything is so colorful and real, especially on days like today when the sun is out and the clouds are high in the sky and the temperature is just right and there's just enough of a breeze to make me feel as if I could jump into it as it passes me and be carried along like a dandelion seed. I want the wind to tell me of the places it has been, the people it has passed and the events it has witnessed. This world has so many individual lives, each with its own needs and wants and desires. The wind weaves between us all, riding the mysteries that bind us to the earth and to each other. I want to come along wind; I want to see what you see and gain the wisdom that comes with observing and understanding. I want to be something, to do something worthwhile with this life I've been given. The world is worthwhile. I want to understand the world and the people and animals and plants in it, know the nuances that separate the colors and the ties that connect them. I want to save it, preserve it, return it to future generations with a path for restoring it to its original condition. Because if the world is beautiful now, when we have covered it with our trash and pollutants and erased so many species forever, what must it have been like before? If our generation takes the first step, if we can begin to guide humanity to take care of the world, what will it be like 1000 years from now? Much has been lost, but so much more can be saved, if we just try. I want to be someone who tries. I want to save the world.

9:25am: Weddings and Relatives
Ahh, so much fun. A trip to florida made without air conditioning. I would have paid the 10$ we saved in gas prices by the end of it.
Oma and Opa are living in yet another cookie-cutter neighborhood, down to the same cream stucco and white mailboxes with black bands on the cross-pieces. Take away the color and it could be a scene from The Giver. I just don't understand why anyone would give up their individuality to live in a place like this. Yet this is the fourth identical neighborhood they've lived in since they moved to Florida, so they must get something out of it. And now Opa's talking about moving to North Carolina. Do we have those scary cookie cutter neighborhoods too? I suppose we must, but I've never seen one. I trust Opa will find them though.
The wedding. Very nice. It was a beach wedding, at sunset, very casual and pretty. A civil ceremony, with the bride in her bare feet. And it all seemed to fit somehow. I think the last time I saw Lindsay was when she was 16. And now she's 22 and married. Wow. Weird thought. This makes the second person close to my age to get married, and I'm sure it won't be the last. And I think Oma expects me to go next, which is even weirder. She made some comment about how I was the next, age wise, to go. Not until I get out of vet school, that's for sure! And then there's the small issue with not having someone to marry at the moment. Never mind that though, I'm going to be the next to get married!! Whee! Oh yes, sarcasm, a lost art in this household. They just don't get it. Sigh.
All for now, I have 4 people waiting on this excruciatingly slow dial up. One more thing though. Reinquist died. God help us.

3:19pm: I set out...
I am setting out on a journey to Florida. My trip shall be made in a 1991 toyota previa which has been heavily loved by my family for 10 years now. My time shall be occupied by homework and April and Alexi. The way shall be frought with high gas prices, irritable family members and relatives unseen for several years now. Wish me luck as I descend into the abyss of 12+ hours in the car with my family, a trial from which I may not return.

12:14am: We appologise for the delay...
April and Alexi are being long winded, and I don't want to stay up until 2 am typing them again, so my promised update will hopefully happen sometime tomorrow of Tuesday. Lo siento, pero este fin de semana era muy hectico y yo necesito me sueño.

Editied because Spanish grammar at midnight- no.

1:02am: Whee, meme!
( What a great distraction from April's breakdown!! )

Ok, back to April. She's about to start crying, how the hell do I get her from the breakfast table to somewhere private where Alexi can give her a hug? She really needs one, she needs to know he's real and there for her.
Maybe I should ask itunes...
Gray Seal: Elton John
That doesn't help me much...

12:10am: Green Day
( OMG THAT CONCERT WAS SO FUCKING AWESOME!!!!! )

In other news, I am no longer a kennel worker! Yay, I will have weekends again!!! And I don't have to work this weekend which makes me even happier!!

6:21pm: I feel smart:)
And it's not related to Jeopardy! Though Erin tried out and apparantly did well for herself- yay Erin! She says she won't be on the show, but Jennifer is moving onto the next round- yay Jennifer! But I got a problem on the Webassign that my SI leader couldn't get, so I feel smart:) Hmmm, contentment.

7:08pm: It's interesting, sitting here in the corner on my bed. I haven't left the suite at all today. Lots of homework, ick. I'm now caught up to tuesday, so I think I'm going to write some tonight. None of what I have to do is particularly hard, just time consuming. Lots of reading. But when there's quotes like this, I can hardly complain:

"God save England, God save the King, God save this and God save that and God save that other thing.
'Good God,' said God, 'I have my work cut out."

Quite amusing.

Hmm, it's 7:15. I'm not particularly hungary, but I guess I should eat something. I can read some of Laocoon's Children while I eat and then move on to writing for the rest of the evening. That should end the day with a nice balance of school stuff and me stuff, about 6 hours each. I feel quite productive. It's rather fun to sit here and watch everyone go past to the elevators and wonder where they are going and why. I don't feel isolated as much as I did friday, but I think there were other emotions at work friday. I'm just comfortorble and content, and very amused at the person who is walking up the stairs singing random scales. Probably because I've been known to do the same thing myself. I wonder if anyone thinks about how other people view the little random things that we do. I wonder if anyone ever thinks about the little random things other people do.

Our suite smells like bleach right now, I think Caroline cleaned out the bathroom. Probably a good thing, though I think Anne (our cleaning person) does a decent job. She's really nice to talk to. I don't think many people do, which is sad. We have a tendancy as a society to treat anyone who works doing jobs that we don't want to do as if they were invisible. The difference between the way I was treated when I was working kennel and when I was working assistant was pretty startling, even though I hadn't changed at all. I certainly heard a lot more while I was working kennel, since people tended to ignore me unless they had something for me to do.

Ok, the bleach smell is dissapating. I'm going to go brave the bathroom to get some water and make myself something to eat.

1:33pm: Boo
All the tickets for Rob Corddry are sold out! GRRR, I really wanted to go to that, and this is the first time I've actually been able to be around for a weekend event. Damn. Maybe I'll go down at 7 and see if someone wants money for their free ticket... not sure if I want to go that bad. I could watch the Daily Show instead, that would be cool too. Or write. Or do the mountain of homework that is already building up. Or simply revel in the fact that it's friday and I don't have to go to work.

8:00pm: Class impressions
Ok, I've gotten through all my classes at least once. Thoughts? There's a certain reality to taking 20 hours. I still want to do it though, and I can't think of any particular one that I would drop. But having reading assignments from classes on the first day still sucks.

( Here's a class by class breakdown: )

And yes, I'm taking 7 courses, 20 hours, I am crazy and looking forward to it. No more staying up until 2 am though, that just makes me sleepy during the last class of the day. Though Erin and I talked about a lot of things that needing talking, something that I haven't been able to do since Governor's School, really. All those nights Mary and I stayed up until 2 or 3 and sleptwalked through classes the next day. I'm glad I have a roomie that I can talk to again:)

On the work front, the manager is apparantly out for the rest of the week, so I'm left to wait and hear my potential duties until she returns. Sigh. At least I don't have to work tomorrow. The person I talked to tried to say that there was a lot of overlap between kennel and assistant, so I should stay for that reason. Yeah. The only overlap is when they get so busy up front that they have to pull me from the back. The kennel has it's own set of duties, you're really sequestered in the back with the way the building is designed. Just to give an example of how separate the two are, a couple weeks ago I went back to do kennel at 3 and came back up at 5 to help hold a dog. The girl I was working with had a big bandage on her arm- in the time since I had gone back to kennel she had been bitten, gone to the emergency room to get stitches and come back, and I'd had no idea.

5:58pm: I'm a too sweet dsyfunctional faerie:)

You scored as A Too Sweet Faerie. So sweet your totally sugared up! Has there ever been anyone so nice. Quick to forgive and quick to forget, everybody wants to know you! You've just got to make sure nobody takes advantage and tries to use you, don't be afraid to say no sometimes! See All Results/Comment </td> A Too Sweet Faerie 65% A Too Astral Faerie 50% A Too Sporty Faerie 50% A Too Lazy Faerie 40% A Too Evil Faerie 35% A Too Serious Faerie 35% A Too Depressed Faerie 30% A Too Silly Faerie 20% A Too Kinky Faerie 5% Which Dysfunctional Faerie are You? created with QuizFarm.com

Hmm, it doesn't seem quite like me somehow... good waste of a few minutes though:D

12:35pm: Testing out my new icon...
I like this one, it's the only one I made myself (sort of) instead of stealing it from someone else!! And I'm making it my default. This really doesn't deserve it's own posting, I'm such a dork. Let's come up with something else to talk about. There's not much. I walked all over campus for 1.2 hours yesterday, trying to get forms to where they need to be with the signatures they need to have. I know it was 1.2 hours because that's how long the playlist that I was listening to was. And I made the mistake of wearing my shower flip-flops, and not taking the 5 minutes it would have taken to go back and put on tennis shoes when I realized what I had done. Now I have lots of blisters:(
Hmm, let's see, what else. Classes start tomorrow, I'm excited about that. I wouldn't mind if they started on monday instead, but I'll deal with it. I hear from my boss tomorrow about where she wants me for the fall. Assistant, I stay, kennel, I go. I sort of want to go anyway, I don't want to have to spend weekends at home this semester. We'll see. Tomorrow is a big day, I guess.

5:58pm: Letters to my co-workers
As this is very likely my last weekend as a kennel worker, possibly my last weekend period, I would like to take this opportunity to send a few messages that my co-workers and clients will never receive.

To the owners of the four extremely geriatric dogs that were boarding this weekend: Your pets are in pain. You are not doing them any favors by keeping them alive, only serving your own desires. It’s time to let them go. It’s not normal to have bed sores the size of oranges on your dog’s elbows, or for him to walk with his back arched and not be able to bend his knees. He looks like a wind up toy. And to the owner of the dog with a watch on him: just because he bit you does not mean that you should leave him with us indefinitely. He has arthritis, bladder cancer, eye problems and god knows what else, let him go. And to the owner of the neurological dog- we are not a nursing home. If you do not want to deal with your animal, find it another home or have it put to sleep. Do not dump it at our office to board every other week, where it will walk in circles in its cage and bark incessantly and soil multiple cages in each day. We don’t want to deal with it any more than you do.

To the groomer: You’re such a hypocrite. You badmouth us to the founding doctor when you loose a client because of the state of the kennel, which we can’t do anything about. We keep it clean, with no help from you. It looks like shit because it’s 37 years old. We can’t do anything about the permanent stains on the cement, the fossilized clumps of hair in the chain link runs, the ever-clogging drains, the air circulation, the mold or the lighting. I am not going to start folding the towels into thirds because it won’t make any difference as to whether the cupboard doors stay closed. If I could venture to make a suggestion, it might do more good to fix the doors so they’re actually attached to the sides of the cupboards. But of course, I’m just a lowly kennel worker, no one listens to me. And you cannot bitch about the kennel not being clean when you leave your workspace covered in hair at the end of a day, and I have to go in behind you and spray it down after you leave. And I’d better not hear anything about the water and your precious instruments. Oh, and the neurological dog is not poor and misunderstood, it’s just pathetic and annoying and I refuse to feed the damn thing by hand when there’s 10 other dogs waiting to be walked and fed. And Rebel was overweight because you persisted in feeding him multiple treats a day, and Mary Jane was very aggressive. I was there when her owner brought her back to us to be euthanized, she had bitten his daughter. Just energetic and cooped up too long, she has a great personality, eh?

To the assistants, techs and doctors who bring their animals in for the day and leave the cages dirty: It is not my responsibility to clean up after your animals. I have this from the top-level management. You are supposed to clean up the messes your dog makes, so do it! And do not leave the cage dirty with a note to leave for Lexi, Lilly, Major, Gorpy, etc. We do have clients that come in and their dogs need cages too sometimes, which doesn’t work if the cages are being held for your own animals.

To the night staff: Your job description does include cleaning occasionally. I know that your primary purpose is to be there when emergencies come in, but that does not mean that you have to sit there twiddling your thumbs for the rest of the night. Please, if a dog shits in his cage, do not simply move the animal over or just leave it where it is. At least take the time to spray the area down with parvasol, so I don’t come in to shitty cages that have had 8 hours to solidify and have to be scrubbed off. The same goes for mats. Contrary to popular belief, I do not like dog shit any more than you do, and 10 seconds taken by you at the time of the soiling saves me 10 minutes of hassle in the morning. The same goes for blood- the longer it sits on the floor the harder it is to get up.

To the mid-level manager who rescues bulldogs: Your dogs are annoying. They are aggressive and they bark constantly, and on the rare occasions when they are not barking you come back and talk to them in that annoying high-pitched voice and they start right back up again. They’re not even that cute, they look more like demented bats.

To all the staff who never move when I am trying to vacuum or mop: Please, take a second to step aside. Given the number of animals that pass though this office in a day, you are almost certainly standing on something that I need to get up, and clean floors are in everyone’s best interest. And I am not invisible, by the way. I do listen to what goes on around me. Some of you seem to think that if I have a trash bag or broom in my hand I may as well not be there. I have heard a lot of interesting conversations because of this, including some that you probably wouldn’t have wanted me to hear if you had realized I was there.

To everyone who took the time to appreciate what I did while I was there: Thank you. There are precious few of you, and if there were more I would have enjoyed this job a lot more. You have no idea how nice it is to simply be acknowledged, to have someone say “Thank you” and “Excuse me.” Even the worst parts of the job become better when someone recognizes that it sucks and thanks you for doing it. And to Tami and Drew, the only tech and assistant who ever took the time to help me out when I was running behind, you guys are awesome. You have no idea how nice it is to come out of the kennel at 6:30, sweaty, covered in hair and running an hour behind, to find that the treatment area has been swept or the dishes have been done. I wish there were more people like you working here, the whole place would run a lot more smoothly if people would take the time to notice if someone else is running behind, and help them out if they have spare time.