(not cross-posted to Facebook just in case)

I just got the BEST news at work this afternoon: MY PEOPLE ARE RETURNING!

I was really bummed out when one of the guys I worked closely with had to leave the company earlier this year for personal reasons, but his replacement was awesome too. Our company has been growing and reshuffling things like mad, and I just found out that My People (the affectionate name I give anyone working that particular position) will be returning to the job and my New People is getting promoted into another department. YAY! The guy who told me actually stopped and laughed at me because I looked so excited, but this is seriously so awesome – I’m beyond delighted for Returning People because I know he didn’t want to leave, and I’m thrilled for New People because he’s kicked all kinds of ass while he’s been here and he deserves the promotion. I AM HAPPY FOR OTHER PEOPLE! What an awesome way to start my weekend!

I do not know what I am eating.

Tech Support ordered food in from Memphis Blues BBQ, and as I couldn’t escape to get lunch, I scavenged a meal from the leftovers. There were random chunks of disturbingly anthropomorphic meat that clearly came from different animals in a large pan, but no one could tell me what they used to be. I was too hungry to really think about it, so I grabbed the least-offensive looking meat and made off like a hobo.

Back at my desk though, I had a chance to really look at what was on my plate. I peeled off a strip of what I thought was chicken, but .. it wasn’t. And it looks like it came from a hoof or a leg. I am no vegetarian, so I have a passing knowledge of what most meats taste like – but I can’t place the flavour, and that worries me. Don’t most things taste like chicken? This doesn’t taste anything like chicken. Oh god, am I eating people?

That’s it, isn’t it. I am totally eating people. People taste very gamy – not even the BBQ sauce is masking the oddly bland and chewy eau du flesh. This is no good, both morally and flavourly.

OH SHIT I turned my plate – my piece of people is on BONE. I see cracked bone and marrow and what is quiet possibly the charred remains of pants! Oh, this is terrible. Whoever my god is, he or she probably doesn’t look too fondly on cannibalism, even if it was by mistake. I’m doomed! DOOOOOOOOMED!

While I am worrying about my mortal soul and the ethics of eating really, really locally, I invite you to look at this:

It’s from some silly looking app called “Spice Booth“. Enjoy!

I’ve thought a lot about whether I was going to post this, but since I don’t have anything else to talk about, I’m going for it. I’m not one to really censor myself anyway, although I do make an effort to keep the more toxic thoughts offline – the thought of hurting someone’s feelings intentionally or otherwise appalls me, so I try not to do it. Someone’s mother somewhere must have said “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” (my mother said “do you want mayonnaise on your pizza?”), but silence just isn’t in my nature. Good thing there are ways to express yourself without intentionally being a dick – snotty and arrogant for a laugh yes, but not mean. This isn’t high school.

I spent most of yesterday wanting to throw in the towel and skip not only TEDxVancouver, but also BarCamp, Got Craft, the Scott Pilgrim party at my house tomorrow night, and the internet all together. In my brain, three people yelling at me is pretty much the same as three thousand – and if three out of 500 don’t want me at the event, then clearly the other 497 people feel the same way. I know this is ridiculous, but I didn’t choose my particular brand of social anxiety – I just live with it. It definitely didn’t help that two of the yellers (one of whom has since apologized) were friends – if people who claim to love me can hate on me so publicly, what must The Others think? No one is rushing to defend my honour, so I MUST be a horrible person!

Another pickle in the bathtub were the people who didn’t get invites expressing disappointment that they didn’t make the cut. I honestly figured the only reason I got in was to fill up wasted space, and the thought that I would be displacing someone else – someone “more deserving” – really fucked with my head. I really, really, really wanted to back down; to ask for a refund so that someone else could go. After all, I’m not wanted there. A random stranger told me so.

I ran the idea of running away by the shoulders I leaned on, and they were all unanimous: are you crazy? You need to go. Don’t let the haters keep you down. You deserve to be there, you WANT to go and learn what all the fuss is about, and I thought you got over that whole “chicken shit fraidy cat” business anyway. Just because no one else is publicly throwing their two cents into the ring doesn’t mean everyone agrees with the negativity aimed your way – and what about all the emails and DMs of support you got? Why can’t you focus on the good instead of the bad?

So, that’s what I’m trying to do. Thank you to all the people who have my back on this, and I will try to keep a stiff upper lip and not hide. I’ve done a lot of work to fight my social anxiety, and I’d be doing myself a huge disservice if I let a few nasty comments keep me from going outside. I don’t know for sure if I’ll be successful – the main event is still 8 days away, and that’s a lot of time for my brain (and random others) to tell me bad things – but as of this writing, I don’t intend to back down. I’ll start small – BarCamp tonight – and test the waters. I’m not really important enough to warrant flaming pitchforks and angry villagers, but you never know.

If you’re planning on being at any of the events mentioned above (especially the one in my living room), please come say hi so I don’t feel as though the entire world has turned on me. It sounds like such a small silly thing, but it’ll help my anxiety a lot.

Here is a picture of a sign:

do not go above medium pitch, or else

And yeah, this is a little bit of a pathetic pity party – I know that. Don’t care, though. I blog the good, I blog the bad, I blog them both and there you have Delicious Juice Dot Com.

There’s nothing worse than having plans when all you want to do is go home and hide under the covers until spring – except maybe having boring plans that you can’t get out of. I’m having a pretty bad day, and I’m fighting a losing battle with my instinct to flee. I would cut a bitch to be able to go home, grab a cat or two and have myself a good old fashioned naked mopey evening complete with a tub of ice cream and sad songs, but I can’t – I have to go to a strata meeting.

This will be my first ever strata meeting. Everything I know about these things comes from TV – I will be sorely disappointed if there are no loud women in bedazzled holiday sweaters, small dogs in costly outfits, enraged bald men and old nosy women with lists of everyone’s transgressions. Perhaps there will also be cookies; the kind that come in the blue tin. We’ve been asked to bring our own chairs, which doesn’t bode well – our lobby is already kind of a sauna; I can’t imagine what it’ll be like after an hour or two of every tenant yelling about rules that they and no one else should be allowed to break. I would sorely love to skip the meeting and do something more constructive with my time, like nap or write letters to Santa, but instead I’ll be downstairs trying to look like I care whether the siding is pressure washed twice a year or three times.

Good times.

.. and it’s FREAKING ME OUT.

Not because of the gameplay, although growling zombutants (um, that’s zombies + mutants; not zombies + debutantes) jumping out at you is kind of scary – but because the game is HUGE, and now I have less than 10GB free on my phone.

In what I affectionately refer to as “iOCD”, I am constantly afraid of running out of free space on my phone. This would be a valid worry if I was down to my last free GB, but I don’t do things logically around here: it was bad enough when I went below 11GB free, but BELOW TEN?! Oh god, I’m going to hyperventilate. Why does Rage have to be so BIG? I went from 10.3 to 9.1!

nightmares!

I was only partially kidding about getting an iPod Nano so I could a) wear it like a watch and b) remove all my music from my phone, giving me an additional 9GB to install apps, but now my fancy may have to become reality if only to ease my ridiculous panicked mind.

All that being said, holy CRAP Rage is astounding. Check these out:

intro scene - click to embiggen

start of gameplay - click to embiggen

a sweet little southern belle (who wants you to click to embiggen)

These pictures are from my PHONE; a fancier version of the device I was using 5 years ago to play a pixelated and chunky knock-off of Centipede. The game itself plays beautifully without a hiccup or stutter in sight, and it’s just .. incredible. I know I’m on record as being disappointed in Rage at PAX10, and while it’s the same series, my previous words can’t be held against me: Rage the Big is a PC/Console game that happens to look identical to Fallout 3, whereas Rage on the App Store is a new experience – just LOOK at this.

I know this isn’t my App Blog, but Rage is available for the iDevice – $0.99 for the non-HD version (537mb; suitable for the 3 or 3GS) and $1.99 for the HD version (944mb; plays on the iPad and is reportedly passable on a 3GS). If you’ve ever played an FPS and have fond memories of Doom or Quake, or simply want something to blow your mind, you should be getting Rage today. The future may be a post-nuclear wasteland, but it sure is pretty!

*: admit it – you thought this post was going to be about something else entirely, didn’t you. something, say, related to the post below? and the resulting comments? nope, sorry. :)

There’s been controversy on the Twitters lately about the TEDxVancouver conference coming up on the 27th of November. The majority of the hullabaloo comes from the registration process – access to the TEDxVancouver event is by invitation only; only the best and brightest and most interesting will be allowed to pay the $40 attendance fee to get into this one-day workshop. They’re looking for “thought leaders“; people who .. um .. lead thoughts, and stuff. I am uncomfortable with this, so I piped up in my usual way to bring life to my malcontent.

Every other social media conference is first-come-first-serve – if you want to attend, you fill out the form and pay the admission fee and off you go. This conference is, for lack of a better term, screening the people who want to attend: are you a thought leader? If not, then you aren’t welcome here. And I think that really sucks – what happened to the “social” part of social media? Remember that whole presentation I gave on people being no better than anyone else; that we’re all valid, interesting people with something to say?  How can this screening process between the can-do chickadees and the can’t crows lead to anything other than trouble between the “valued; has something to say” and the “omg Becky, look at her butt”?

This makes me an asshole, or something.

I was accused of being a destructive force; someone who actively wants to “tear down” [ideas] instead of building them up. I’m full of “haterade”, and complain about every event I’m not personally invited to. It’s so easy for me to moan and bitch; if only I’d use that energy for social media GOOD. My criticism of TedXVancouver has no value because I’m not actively trying to find a solution to the injustice. I’m a butt-sitter; one who sits on her butt instead of going out and DOING attending conferences. I’m just plain wrong, have no interest in learning, likely smell bad and should probably go kill myself. How dare you use words like “elitism” and “keeping out undesirables” when you clearly have no idea and are stupid. I’m not the target audience anyway, we only want people who can report back to a WIDE audience, so nyah nyah nyah – we want real thought leaders who are exciting and full of piss and vinegar about social media, not .. whatever you are. Go away!

Well then.

Maybe I AM wrong. Maybe my views – as obviously invalid and stupid as they are because they’re not what everyone else thinks – are way off base. Maybe I AM being too negative, and I just can’t see the beauty in a world full of thought leaders because I’m too mired in my boat-rocking, nay-saying ways. Marching to the beat of my own drum – when that drum is not the same drum that the OTHER people are using – clearly makes me a thought FOLLOWER, not a thought LEADER.

So, teach me.

After that conversation, I applied to attend TEDxVancouver. You’re asked a series of questions to prove your worthiness judge your usefulness cull the herd demonstrate your interest in the TED series:

• If a friend were to describe your accomplishments in three sentences or less, what would they say?
  
• What are you passionate about? (work, creative output, issues, communities, etc.)
• List at least one website that will help us understand you better. (This can include personal blogs, photos or sites you just generally love to check out).
• What do you hope to get out of this TEDx event?

I filled out the application honestly, saying that I had issues with the way the ideas were being presented as Vancouver’s Social Media scene is notoriously cliquey and snobbish. I gave my own website as a reference, listed my passions for video games and porn, and quite literally dared them to prove me wrong: allow me to attend the event to learn if this is a viable way to get the cream of the crop in to share ideas. Being accused of being closed minded really irritated the piss out of me, because I’m not – I think information should be shared openly, to all who seek it and NOT just the elite few deemed worthy enough to partake. Am I wrong? I might be. By giving me the chance to attend this event, I’m giving YOU the chance to educate me and change my mind. Will you take me up on it?

They did – I’m in. I’ve purchased my TEDxVancouver ticket, and while I may not be a “thought leader” or the right type of person they’re looking for – no one wants to hear what I have to say because I’m a shit-disturbing wrongie wrongerson with no good ideas – well, this might sort me out, or something.

People say it’s “so easy” for me to be critical and disruptive, but I disagree (obviously, lols): it’s very easy to be smug and superior when you’re on the inside, drinking the Kool-Aid; it’s actually quite difficult to have a valid dissenting view based on an informed opinion (and not just sour grapes).

I’m looking forward to this event, actually. Show me what you’re all about, Ted. Maybe we can learn something from each other (assuming I’m not shunned and made to sit in a corner).

Brazil is on to me:

hail satan! on my leg!

Heather pointed this out to me on Twitter, and it is glorious. The article goes on to say:

The evangelical cult “Paz do Senhor Amado” (“Peace Beloved of the Lord”) in the interior of Brazil forbids its followers to use any USB technology by contending that it uses a symbol that makes apology to the devil.

According to its founder, the “Apostle” Welder Saldanha says that this is just a symbol of Satan, is always present in all Christian homes.

“The symbol of that name (he even likes to pronounce) is a trident, which is used to torture souls go to hell. Use only a symbol of those shows that all users of this technology pífia are actually worshipers of Satan” – explains the” Apostle”.

Measures were taken so that all the USB connections of his followers were exchanged for common connections and even the Bluetooth (sic), which according to Saldanha Welder is permitted, for “Blue was the color of the eyes of our savior Jesus Christ”.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Jesus born in the Middle East, meaning he would resemble people in that area? I don’t think there are many blue-eyed people in Israel. Then again, these could just be the words of SATAN in my MOUTH. Take that, logic!

So, yes. I got the USB symbol tattoo’d on my leg not because I am a giant nerd, but because I am a giant Brazilian Satan worshipper.

Now you know!

It’s no secret that I have a lot of stuff. There’s no real way to categorize it; it’s just .. stuff. Piles upon piles of stuff. I try to keep it under control and I do a fairly good job of it, but every now and again I find myself envious of those with minimalistic living areas – like right now. I’m going through all my stuff and sorting it into four piles: garbage, donate, recycle, pawn off on friends. It’s very slow going, and it doesn’t help that the majority of my stuff is awesome. It’s almost impossible to part with books (although I’ve been very, very good about not acquiring any new ones); you’ll pry my various video game swag from my tiny dead hands, and I actively use the rest of it. What’s left to get rid of, other than the people who complain about the clutter? Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong – my stuff is FINE. The people who complain about my stuff? THEY’VE GOT TO GO!

I do need to clean out my cosmetics mountain, though. I donate all of my barely-used makeup and lotions to WISH once a year, and it’s about that time.

I’ve been trying to make my workspace a little less cluttered, too. I took down all my tiny little pictures and stickers, and classed things up a bit with some prints:

now it is classy!

The Autobot, Decepticon and Alice in Wonderland prints are by Dave Perillo; I love his stuff and bought them off his Etsy page. I’m going to get some mats for them this weekend, but wanted to put them up now because they’re awesome. The Hunter S. Thompson print (which is usually shortened to HST, making for some confusing conversations) is from LTD Tee; it came with the t-shirt I bought for Josh. I think this new wall says a lot about the things I am All About: Transformers, contempt for authority, and literary nonsense likely fueled by drugs. Oh, and video games. I love video games.

I just realized that I can’t wear my plaid Docs until my tattoo heals up. Damnit! Oh, these first world problems will be the mild irritant of me!

I don’t often feel like anything I ever do is wrong, but I’ve got some guilt going and I don’t care for it one bit.

Ed is in Alberta on business, and he left two days early to spend some time with his friends and family and/or away from me. From the brief conversation we had via MSN last night, I gather that he didn’t get to see as many friends as he’d have liked – they’re all busy having babies and shit. Most of me is reacting as expected (“ewwwwww, why”), but there’s a small part of me that won’t shut up that wonders if I did the right thing.

Not having babies is the right thing for me; there’s no question about that. However, every once in a while I wonder about Ed: is he truly on board with Team No Babies, or was he simply caught up in the ferocity of my convictions?

It seems as though everyone from Ed’s Alberta life is having kids – best friends, the cousins he grew up with, the people he hung out with daily. There are babies everywhere, except for in or around us. I’m ecstatic about that, but is he? Have I trapped him (for lack of a better word) in a life he doesn’t want? Am I denying him his right to procreate?

This thought kept me awake last night, because it’s a hell of a thought to have. I don’t tend to dwell on the consequences my decisions have wrought, but every once in a while – like now – I seethe with guilt because of my unwillingness to be a vessel of life. As far as *I’M* concerned, everything is super – I don’t want kids, and my mother doesn’t want grandkids (but even if she did, who cares) so that’s that. But .. Ed’s an only child too, meaning not only will HE not get the chance to raise children, I’ve denied his parents grandchildren. I feel .. mean.

Part of the problem is my inability to take people at face value. You can sit me down, look me in the eyes and say with every ounce of conviction you can muster “Kimli, I do not like mayonnaise”, and I will always wonder if, deep down, you don’t actually like mayonnaise but are saying you don’t just to spare my feelings. Ed has told me that he doesn’t want kids .. but is that true? Or is he just telling me what I want to hear? Do these visits home make him sad? Are his friends leading the lives he was meant to have; one that he’s being kept from because of me?

I am a selfish being, and I’m okay with that. If Ed came home tomorrow and said he wanted children, I would let him have them .. just not with me. I’d let him go; let him find someone to have children with. There are some things that are too important to simply “put up with” if there’s discourse in a relationship, and this is one of them. I’m not going to change my mind, but he’s allowed to change his – the price just happens to be me. It would suck great heaping gobs of suck, but part of being pro-choice is allowing people to CHOOSE what’s right for them – and if he CHOOSES to want children, I’m not going to stand in his way.

Yeah, this is a really crappy line of thought for a Monday morning: cutting your husband free if he decides he wants the one thing you won’t give him. I’d do it, though. I have a secret fear of being resented, and I’d rather let him go than think he’d be secretly hating me for the next 50 years.

Now I have a sad.