Spandywear Plus

I don't have photographic proof of it just yet, but today I drove by the heavily graffitied wall of a house that is more an eyesore than anything remotely artful or inspiring and I noticed that amongst the rubbish is a Banksy! England's own precious artistic commodity Banksy in San Antonio?! yeah! It's a little like finding a Shepard Fairey in your neighborhood at the height of OBEY fever. It's probably been there for years and years and I only just noticed it.

Anyway, I had one of those "I'm with stupid" days today, the kind that you get in trouble no matter what you say or think or do. I have a gift for verbal bumbling and bulldozing, it seems. Bumdozing...yep.

I really hate it when you arbitrarily think of somebody from the dark chewy center of your past and then they indecently pop out at you when you're alone or shopping for baked goods at the grocery store. This happens to me A LOT, but thankfully not always while alone or doing the shopping. Most recently it was during an outing at the cinemaaa with my boyfriend; I was immediately seized by a strong urge to joyously reach out to my old friends before something finally clicked in my brain and a crushingly vindictive bitterness urged me instead to pummel them about their heads with my shoe. I emerged from that incident with my dignity intact, barely. Since then, I have been seen by no fewer than four of these perversely blighted people, I mean, old friends...no no, I mean fucktards...

On the bright side of all of this, one of these people is my cousin whom I missed dearly after the stupid fallout of breaking up and friends choosing sides, et cetera. I grew up with her and consider our reassociation a great boon. Maybe I had taken our familial bonds for granted, after all, just because we're related doesn't necessarily mean we have to be good friends like we were, but I really hope that it does.

Boring overly-emotional blather tonight, sorry.

I didn't even describe how my man came to the rescue and whisked me away from that frightening situation. He did! However, I don't want to rely on that happening again so I'm trying to sort it all out in the meantime. All God's creatures suffer when Lucypants gets a visit from the past.

Isn't Ethiopian jazz just the best?
Photographic proof of a Banksy tomorrow, I promise.

I am scared of bugs. I know that I am bigger than bugs and that I've got the upper hand what with the opposable thumbs and semi-evolved brain and all, but they still manage to scare me most of the time. I will give over and say that I even like some bugs like ladybugs or mayflies or lighteningbugs, roly-polies and whatnots, but let me get to the point here: there's big bugs in my swimming pool that will attack and bite humans. I looked it up and they're called "giant water bugs" or "toe-biters" and they completely freak me out!

I used to work at an outdoor pool within short distance of overhanging cyprus trees, flora and fauna as opposed to the usual concrete vastness of outdoor pools. Anyway, this pool used to get these big water bugs that would attack people and there was nothing we could do about it. The bugs unfortunately enjoy living in chemically treated water. We cleared the pool several times but we never caught the offending bug. It was a big sucker too, I saw it swim and attack from way up in the lifeguard chair some 7 feet above pool level! Anyway, old toe-biter is the bug that I hate right now.

I'll swim in any lake, river, ocean, or pool but these bugs really scare me because they seem to prefer to attack instead of simply coexist. Terrorist bugs... And forget it if their larvae find a way inside your skin...*shudders*

In a completely unrelated line of thought, have you seen the picture of the guy who supposedly inspired the character of Snape? He could be Rickman's brother! Weird coincidence of similarity, no?

I didn't like my high school chemistry teacher either but, in all fairness, she wasn't deatheater material (even though I thought so at the time). She was nice enough I suppose, I just had some sort of aversion to her class in general. O well.

Undesirable #1


John Nettleship a.k.a. Snape??

http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/swanews/display.var.1559519.0.jk_rowlings_inspirational_teacher.php

And I'm back! I actually came home the day before yesterday but today I'm back on Texas time, sorta. Alas, tomorrow I go back to work, but the good news is that my intentional sobriety in Amsterdam has paid off: I got the full time librarian job I had interviewed for before I left! Hurrah! Benefits! 40 hours a week! ALA membership! It's a fairly legit career now!

I was very pleased to receive this news in the midst of an unexpected post-vacation funk. I actually miss London and Amsterdam! Well, I kind of disliked London because it was so freaking expensive and kind of dirty and entirely too trendy, but here I am feeling nostalgic about British bacon and getting around town with my Oyster card. sigh.

I racked up three separate trips to the Emirates Stadium, one of which left me slightly cockeyed after I went to the Gunners Bar and hung out with Paul, the manager for a few too many rounds. He was great though and told me all kinds of stuff I was curious about with respect to the Arsenal. I did a guided tour of the stadium and took many silly photos of seemingly important things like the locker room and the coach's seat.

If you don't already know about the artist known as Banksy, I hope you will google him soon. I came across a Banksy while walking around (read: lost) in Islington and I still feel like I'm the only person to have stumbled across it so far. Anyway, good stuff, guerrilla art...

Amsterdam was the best! We went to the Anne Frank House which was incredibly moving. If you ever consider a trip to the Anne Frank House, I hope you will buy your tickets online because the line to get in was hours long unless you had an eticket. We saw lots of very cool things around town; I nearly got hit by bicycles, trams, and cars every time I went near the streets; and we ate deliciously inexpensive food the entire time we were there.

I got the chance to chill with my friends' friends at their lovely house, and we went sailing the day after the wedding on a beautiful wooden boat that was 100 years old! Seeing Snoop Dogg at the airport on my way home was just the perfect ending to the very cosmic trip that was my first visit to Amsterdam. My only gripe with Europe: what's the deal with the public toilet fee? Harsh!

I don't know what this is all about either, but all the kids in Europe are wearing tight pants and white plimsolls, it's like 6th grade all over again. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that 1980's styles are back in fashion again...gross.

Also, I don't listen to the radio much nor do I have MTV so I don't know how to gauge popular music, but while in London I discovered a few artists that I kind of love. Lily Allen and Kate Nash are singer-musicians who sound to me like a breath of fresh air. They've got strong voices but they aren't trying to sound like American Idol clones. Me likee. Check them out on myspace why don't you:
http://www.myspace.com/katenashmusic
http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic

The Dutch wedding party


Smug and content in Amsterdam


Getting my football freak on in London


Random Banksy in Islington

I gots Pounds and Euros now! yay!
Here's to Texas, America, and puppies. Prost!
See you in two weeks! ^_^

I am stuck in a strange loop of Potter-world, Rick Steves travel tips, and waiting to hear back regarding grad school/full-time employment. I am constantly talking about one of those things to everybody, even strangers, and it's making me a dull girl even to myself. Time to break the cycle? Maybe not just yet.

I haven't even gone so far as to reflect on the opus magnum that is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I've been too worried about spoiling loved ones or really anyone within talking distance. I actually got the "Harry" eyeball the other night at a local bar while discussing the book with a friend! Hm! Are clandestine meetings the only way to celebrate the book until everyone has enough time to finish it? Is it to be done only in the shadow world of livejournal? Double hm!

I've read some reviews and I've seen that JKR is doing interviews already so I know there's the expected critique buzz, but it's just not leaning in the direction that I want it to. People are reviewing it with too scholarly an eye, comparing it to whatever "great" literature that somehow never got read in the last year. Evs on that. I loved it and all of it's freakish coincidences of plot. I never liked Harry Potter as a character, I only ever saw him as a device for us muggles to learn about his world; it's that world and the playfully dangerous tone that JKR created which had me at hello. Hence all of the fanfic reading that I do. Yeah... I'm shipping Snevans pretty hard now.
Anyway, I loved it, but then again, I wasn't expecting Tolkien or anything.

And emo-wise, I do notice a peculiar sense of "sadness" that I don't suspect is due to anything but reading the last book. I can't quite pinpoint it, maybe the loss of particular characters is to blame. I've gotten the same feeling after meeting someone I click with only to find out they're dating a friend. Feeling is there, regret or something, but then again it was never really a possibility. Weird. Is there even a word for that?

Well, it took me a few weeks, but I think that I'm mostly over the disappointment of the Thierry Henry transfer. It still sucks, but like another team's manager has said, no one player is worth more than the team. Or something very like that. So, on that front, I'm still trying like mad to procure tickets to the match against Fulham on August 11, but my hands are basically tied until my supporters' membership card arrives, which will be after I arrive in the Netherlands. Bleh.

My other mighty obsession, that of the ever-foxy Alan Rickman is gaining momentum again. Fueled by impressive news that soulsista Catsplay relayed unto us wretchedly uninformed fans, that Mike Binder (once a very cursed name, now karmically righted in mine eyes) has at last decided to sell The Search For John Gissing on dvd! And a Gissing/Rickman-focused poster suddenly makes everything ok to my inner petulant girl; no longer will I point rude fingers at his website or mock his reputation! Long live Mike Binder! From reviled to respected in zero seconds flat, so scary is the loyalty of my peculiar fandom. Oh well. At least it has a happy ending for me.

Boy, yesterday sucked. Worst 4th of July on record yet to date. Naaasty weather coupled with that utter wiener-crammer who exhibited a book 7 spoiler during his intro, a spoiler that is probably untrue, but still, his general assheadedness continues to piss me off. Ug. That was the beginning of quite a lame day. As a warning to my fellow fans of Die Hard I and Die Hard I only, do not go to see Die Hard 4. It sucks. Pretty much all of it sucks, and I still can't figure out what purpose Kevin Smith's role served except to show that he owned a cb radio.

I did not expect to see so much gratuitously nerdy crap in this action movie franchise. Color me shamelessly Texan, but I missed the guns. The bravado was a bit much for me though, even for a Die Hard movie. He wasn't *supposed* to be a total badass in the first one so the humor came from a desperate place and at the hands of doofy FBI agents, but this time it was just lame and flat and just lame. In my desperate boredom, I decided to create a drinking game for myself, so every time somebody said the word "download" I would take a sip of beer. Oh the horra...

So, oh yeah, we did see a pretty good movie the other day called Once. I liked it but it was kind of lacking script-wise as well. Which is something that makes me look forward to getting my copy of John Gissing all the more. Actors need to sparkle like little tear-filled anime eyes, and nothing makes this happen like good writing does. So, Hollywood, if you're reading this for some odd reason, less money for crap computer effects and more for writing camp. Sheesh...

Oh, it breaks the heart just a little. It was posted online this morning that Thierry Henry is transferring to Barcelona even after swearing up and down and sideways that he will stay with Arsenal, and so it follows that today we are stuck with the worst hangover a functioning person could ever have. And by we I mean me. Who knew that the local VFW could be a fun place? I certainly didn't.

Well, now I'll have to go find new icons because I've got too many of Henry in Arsenal kit. I hope they tap Gilberto Silva to take on the role of captain. I hate this small man named David Dein for the bad taste he's left at Arsenal; he's upset the balance by leaving the organization just because he was getting muscled around the boardroom. Hellfire. What an eejet. With any luck he won't find a job and he'll have to watch his millions of pounds get frittered away through his similarly misguided lifestyle. Obviously. If Arsene Wenger quits as well though, I'm setting a price on his head.

Thanks for the memories, bon chance in esthpana...

An ambiguous subject to most everyone who doesn't know me, it combines the interests of my past with my present, but mostly it refers to my upcoming trip to the UK, or as my fellow Americans lovingly call it, the "UcK".

I feel that I am on the verge of greatness. A sense of destiny that I haven't felt in a long time. I never really wanted to travel as a student, I've never been particularly good at it or enjoyed it enough to "rough it" for extended periods of time, but now I'm looking forward to a slightly civilized two week long vacation in Amsterdam and London at the end of summer! A wedding to take place in Amsterdam is the primary catalyst, my friend is getting married to a Dutch boy, but getting the chance to go to London in time to catch the EPL opening match is a joyful coincidence for me. I really hope to get a ticket to the match, but I'd settle for a tour of Emirates Stadium in a pinch.

Getting out of Texas will be good if only to have something to look forward to coming home for (fajitas and gallons of sweet ice tea), but at this time I feel that I've come out of my shy shell sufficiently to be able to have a good time in a foreign country without making a spectacle of myself or worrying to death about little things.

I read somewhere that the excellent writer Jeanette Winterson has a cafe somewhere in London. I would very much like to meet her and shake her hand. She wrote one of my favorite fictional characters; I dress up as Villanelle every year for halloween. Except last year when I felt the need to be a superhero, but most every year I dress as her and carry around a mason jar with a gory bloody heart in it and leave it at somebody's doorstep at the end of the night. That was a large digression, but meeting her is high on my list for London. Probably not going to happen, but I must at least put forth the effort.

Also on my list are smaller, more accomplishable missions: eating chips and curry, visiting platform 9 and 3/4, Portobello Market, museums, Lush bath products, souvenirs, stalking Neil Forrester (kidding, sorta), Harrods, London aboveground and underground, um...Arsenal, music, kebabs, well that's all I got right now but I haven't properly focused on it yet!

Well, that's about it for now. Enjoy the weather, swim, don't forget to wear sunscreen!

And one more for the pinky, papi!


Holy crap! I was rolling silverware at work when I started to hear the car horns going nonstop up and down Broadway. That was the most fun ride home ever! Everyone is honking and dancing in the streets.

Partaaay up in here, everyone's invited! ^_^

Lucypants updates are imminent! I can't stop to talk just the now, but I'll give you this: I'm making plans to go across the pond in August and seek enlightenment in as many chips n curry as I can take. A personal haj to the Emirates Stadium and Platform 9 and 3/4 is at the top of my "to do" list...I might just burst from squeeing until then.

I usually admire the Utazz for their plucky spirit and morally upright fans. There's quite a few tall blonde folk up in there. The fans and the team all seem like fairly decent people. Usually. I don't necessarily think that the downfall of our world will come from guys from Utah. But Utahites, Jazz, you've just got to talk to this kid, Deron Williams. Seriously, somebody's got to sit down with him and have a big boy talk about the nature of sport and winning and losing...let's call them fundamentals of the game...I think you know what I'm talking about:
there's no crying in basketball.
There's NO crying in basketball!!

When is there even time *to* cry? Even so, this dude has for the last two games, cried like a kid with a scraped knee on (inter?)national television! I don't care if you drank a gallon of expired milk and feel icky or if you got racked in the nards or poked in the eyeball, there's just no crying. Ever.

Did that gridiron football guy who got his leg broken cry? Perhaps, but that might have been a justified moment of weakness. Losing is a fact, and the sooner he comes to terms with it, ugly game or no, the sooner he'll become a useful player again instead of what he's starting to look like which is a big ol' baby.

I'll not say one word about stupid fans throwing shit onto the court during and after the game because that's delinquent and violent and just not Utah's style at all. Maybe LA or Detroit, but not Utah...wherever it is the Jazz call home...SLC? Provo?? Whatever.
Sort it out fast, Utah.

I still can't believe that we lost to Utazz last night. We exhibited a shocking lack of game in both courts. Crap! Crap, I say! (crapscreamer!)
Some said it was inevitable, but I thought those days were well behind us; it would seem that some spots do not fade...like tumors.
That's all, I just wanted to comment on the game, I think "tumors" just about says it all. Nobody's to blame except that everybody is to blame, if you follow my meaning. Cuidado, Spurs...


Utazz going old school on Timmy D

Caaaan Youuuu Diiiiig Itttt?

Go Spurs Go! We sweep in 4, the series. We will win the West, oh yes.

It starts out kinda cool, goes into kinda weird, then it just gets ghetto lame...which is the SA legacy. We do tourism, military, and ghetto lame all at the same time. Love us, don't judge us.

As we should be! We played quite a game tonight. Well, at least the last two quarters were entertaining. Much props to my boy Bruce Bowen, the karate kid, for playing such amazing ape-index power defense that it drove Steve Nash to apoplectic fits of rage. I thought it was incredible that Nash was not hit with a technical for his Beavis-like yelling after losing the ball or kicking the ball or otherwise sucking at basketball all night. ha HA!

WELL, good riddance and bye-bye to the Phoenix Suns! And that goes double for that crappy web blog that pissed me off so much earlier today. To quote a genius,"You can all formally kiss my fine white ass!" ^_^


The Spurs will win the West.

So, tell me about the world that we live in because I think that I missed a fundamental memo or two. Is it wrong to think that just because somebody blogs about something we have a duty to read it? If a tree falls in the forest...no seriously, one of the basic operating tenets here at Spandywear Plus is that maybe three people choose to read my rants about Arsenal, Spurs, life, and Harry Potter/Alan Rickman goodnesses. I cater to nobody in particular and would probably want to quit the lj business if I began to.

Operating on that premise, I will go out of my way to *not* read some blogs out there, especially harassing ones with comment snipers circling in the periphery. Like any for Man Yoo, Tottenham, Chelski, or bitter people who attack the fans of a particularly hot British actor.

Working at a library, I have come to understand that people are largely crazy and that maybe 40% are what you and I would call normal. Before this, I would blame the demographic that I served, when I worked at a gourmet grocery store for instance; they were also crazy but in a different way.

Today's inner city library has lots of people with extremely disturbing problems walking the stacks every single smelly day (parents, do NOT leave your children there!), but they are not the ones I choose to call crazy. The crazy ones are the ones who think they deserve more but have forgotten common courtesies or even the tact to ask nicely. They demand things as children do, and have no understanding when our machines break, they are also petulant about it even after they get what they want.

I love my job, but thems the breaks. Public service to people with no tact. My other job is no better. I am only a waitress to them, not a student librarian. I wait tables, so that must be all I want out of life. No thought involved, just their own instant gratification.

Anyway, what I'm on about today is the outstanding stubbornness of some people to never have the good grace to admit when they've offended or done a wrong to somebody, even if it is only a perceived wrong. For instance, if I had insulted the entire Phoenix poopulation (sic) with my last entry, I would apologize and even consider removing the offending words. The opposite side of the coin however is that we can read *other* blogs.

I enjoy free will and I use it to the max. Life's too short to bother reading insulting blogs. Inadvertent attacks will be made by the occasional hater, people aren't infallible creatures and our writings are not nearly as good as we believe them to be. Just pick up your pack and keep moving on. Live and let live. If we can't manage to be civil to eachother in the real world let's at least pretend to be little Grace Kellys online, to eachother.

Except during game 6. Then it's on!

Holy fackin hell, that was a right great game tonight between hometown heroes the San Antonio Spurs and the dastardly Phoenix Suns in Game 5 (series is goin back to SA, pinches!).

Never mind that a legacy of years of playing good, team basketball means 100% pure class to us and "boring" basketball to everyone else in the media; forget that we haven't accrued a single flagrant foul in, like, decades; add the fact that we didn't blow our wad in the first quarter of the game nor fritter away our winning points with congratulatory chest-pounding. Somebody should tell the Suns that we've done this a few times by now and that we actually do know how to play better than them, even with the refs so deeply in their pocket.

I used to respect Steve Nash. I admired his plucky attitude and terrier-like frenetic energy. Used to. Past tense. Liked. He really needs to change professions and become a full-time actor after this game. The man has spent more time lying on the deck in the last few games than any 10 players put together, including 10 Manu Ginobili's! That's it, I've said my piece against little Stevie Nash. The bulk of my newly acquired spite is reserved for one man, and one man only...Amare Stoudemire.

I'm venting my spleen because of all the suddenly bad press the Spurs are getting soaked in, for absolutely no reason other than Amare Stoudemire decided to open his big fat mouth and call us a "dirty" team. This is infuriatingly silly of him to say and I am embarrassed for him and his teammates, but not for the fans of Phoenix who appear to have bought this unusual drivel hook, line, and sinker. In fact, the SA Spurs are such an exceptionally class team, there was really no way that they'd end up losing the series to a bunch of whining, cheating upstarts like the Phoenix Suns.

Phoenix, why is your mascot a gorilla?! Why is that? Are there black mountain gorillas living somewhere in Phoenix's 102 degree weather? Wwwwha?! Clearly, these delusional people need weirdo mascots to get them through another season of hating themselves and playing crap basketball. Most of it, on the floor...



Yeah, we're "thugs" now apparently. Give me a fuckin break...

Reposting the end of an entry from January for expansion purposes on a rainy and hungover Sunday:

Now, you may or may not know that I like Snape a whole hell of a lot. In fact, I particularly fancy his chances of being a horcrux over that whoresnake, Nagini. Hear me out, people: Snape has antagonized and dutifully instructed Harry for six long years, and because of what happened in Book 6 Harry *hates* his guts more than he currently hates Voldemort and would have absolutely no troubles pulling the killing curse on our boy Snape. This would save Harry from resorting to becoming a cold-blooded black-and-white villan-esque killa because he would unknowingly or not be helping Snape to redeem himself through some old-magic sacrifice, and then Harry could go knock-off Voldy in the heat of some bad-ass righteousness! Neat, huh? This is my favorite pet theory and I'll be sad to see it fade into time immemorial, so I'm putting it up for the whole world to see and ponder for the next few months.

If Spiderman 3 has taught us anything besides a dancing and emo-haired suit-wearing Peter Parker is the superior Peter Parker, it's that vengeance-seeking isn't all that it's cracked up to be. I'll be very happy to see Harry get over this particular character flaw of his (mostly stemming from events detailed in The Lightning-Struck Tower), but I really hope he doesn't have to take Snape out permanently in order to do it.

In my wildest fantasies of how it could potentially play out, I see Snape taking the rap for what he did to Dumbledore without telling Harry the truth of what "Severus...please" meant; Harry either knocks him behind the veil or AK's him. Then, within a small window of time, Harry would be able to finish off the suddenly soul-less Voldemort (who of course becomes less powerful with the destruction of each horcrux). Harry would instantly regret his earlier rage-fueled murder and a powerful love sacrifice on his part, perhaps at the inevitable "Deathly Hallows" would bring Snape back to life. Snape would immediately receive the Order of Merlin, first class, and Harry and Ginny later attend Hermione and Snape's wedding. Somehow. I haven't figured it *all* out yet. ^_^

There's always the possibility that Fawkes' blood or dragon's blood could have restorative properties, so as long as they remain unexplored I shall hold out hope for magical death-defying potions to save the day in lieu of Harry's greatest weapon.

It is my dearest hope to hear that Snape is ok at the end of the series, but the reality is that it's probably going to go very badly indeed for Snape and we his many lovahhs. I hate for Snape to get such a raw deal, after the traumatic episode of the greying underpants and all...and I don't really like Harry all that much but if he got all slash on us all of a sudden at the end it wouldn't be so bad. O_o

What a day! There was a flutter of coverage on Saturday regarding the premiere of Nobel Son at the Tribeca Film Festival, and then the flood gates opened today! What a treat for the earthbound rest of us who very stupidly and inconveniently forgot to plan ahead for any/all stateside appearances of his stone foxiness! *headdesk*
Anyhoots, my love for most rad high lj sister Catsplay http://catsplay.livejournal.com/ has just grown exponentially for this new play-by-play of her personal experience at the red carpet and movie! Very exciting and amusing details in her account, I must say; I only just hope to be able to see him in person at least once before I die. Luckily for me, my current love interest is very understanding of my few focused passions in life and is willing to email me sweet links to all Rickman-ly things. The poor chap knows not of my mania extending over several years and rampant exploration of most web sources; aww, but ain't he a nice guy? ^_^
My thanks to Gawker at Flickr for getting Rickman to smile at him this way and for Catsplay for finding it. Cyber finders fee props! Te adoro, senora...


http://www.flickr.com/photos/gawker/tags/nobelson/

"People always say that Arsenal play a Brazilian style of football, but I think Manchester United are more Brazilian in their way of playing than the Arsenal players are."
Kaka is out of his freaking mind. And I absolutely hate that razzle-dazzle showy crap that Ronaldo does with his approaches, if only somebody would just stick a foot in...if only it could be my foot!
Ok, updates are in order: I have been to the Fiesta Oyster Bake and I loved it. All my life I have been hearing horror stories about this event and how gross it has gotten through the years, but it was great! I had a blast, but I also arrived within the first five hours of the opening and I wasn't dirt poor this year. This way, I had money to buy the necessary tickets to get overpriced beer and the delicious oysters and roasted corn and churros, and funnel cakes, and aguas frescas...it was a great time.
Whaddelse? Oh, I'm on my own again which means I am available to Alan Rickman or any Alan Rickman sound-a-likes. Oh, and to that end, there was an interview on NBC's Today Weekend show for Snow Cake, of all things! I'd be tickled pink if this film got a domestic theatric release. Plus, hey, more Rickman in '07! Can't wait for those occlumency lessons, professor...

Ironically, I have been annoyed by this 6-minute long, seemingly arbitrary chant for most of the season, but I only just bothered to find out what it was about tonight. Turns out, it's a shaking of a finger and a "shame on you" to a variety of people for what happened on April 15, 1989. Of all the nights (this is the ironic part) for me to exert my curious nature, this is the eve of the Hillsborough tragedy, when 96 Liverpool fans got crushed to death due to poor crowd control. Bad, black day.
I remember it, but it was reported here with all the venom and distaste that all stories of hooliganism manage to accrue on the trip across the Atlantic, so I didn't think much about it at all until today when I stumbled upon the phrase "Justice For The 96". As I understands it, the need for justice refers to the mess the British tabloids made of things following the disaster, and then the resulting inquiries and blame and lies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster But I can be and probably am all kinds of wrong about that.
Anyway, I sure hate to be a downer, especially after an increasingly *rare* Arsenal victory today (hooray!), but it is a day to remember these fans who were as young as 16 years old who died needlessly and horribly.

I'm in a job funk. I'm starting to have doubts whether or not I'm even meant to be in this line of work. Although I can imagine nothing more civilized than being a librarian, it's the very wolves at the gates that are now threatening to rip me up. And I don't even do this full time yet.
It's mostly yer basic office bullshit-- politics, rude patrons, backbiting coworkers, boring gossip, etc. and it's all just beginning to get to me after almost a year at this job. The good part of all this is that I'm able to take a day or two for perspective and work at my other job; but none of my full time coworkers can, which makes me doubt my wanting to deal with them on an everyday basis. I've been getting a lot of pressure from well-meaning higher-ups to apply for full-time status, which I really *do* want if only for the sake of getting benefits, but not at the risk of hating my job and my coworkers. I've quit crap jobs for lesser reasons in my more immature years, but the thought of being miserable at my dream job haunts me and keeps me very reluctant to own up to any ambitions whatsoever. Which is dumb, I know, but still...
Plus, I just got turned down for grad school again.
And my boyfriend is turning gay.
I need a hug.
O_o