A couple of my acquaintances from Seattle just got into town tonight, and are taking me out tomorrow night. Apparently there have been promises made to Pete that they won't get me in TOO much trouble.

Is it a character flaw to be amused when people call me a hypocrite? I can't judge. But there's two particular Tumblr types who are affronted by me, my being a "goth role model", my hypocrisy of making mildly snarky comments about people I've seen, and of my legions of fans who kiss my ass. Look, I've made people upset by existing and having opinions, yaaaaay!

Existing is a huge crime, Jilli, especially if you get in the way of someone's fantasy images--of you, of themselves, or of some third party. Why aren't you more considerate of them???

Dammit, I just realised that by unfollowing that tumblr, I won't get the weekly "Oh fandom! Let's be nice and not do that to Jeff Davis!" posts. If this were SPN fandom, there'd be a Wolfbitch anon meme/site/journal/tumblr where people would toss invective without fear of reprisal. It's pretty damned shitty, but informative as all fuck. But I guess to balance that, there'd have to be an anon space dedicated to Tyler Hoechlin and Dylan O'Brien's torrid love affair, including junior stalking efforts and all that...

I love people. We're so fucked up. Vicki Vantoch's (Misha Collins' wife) threesome book came up today, and I was trying to be helpful and looked it up on Amazon, at which point I had to go see what people who bought that also bought. Stonehenge Apocalypse was the only book in the list not overtly about sex, and I can't unsee the spank bank scandalous nature of the juxtaposition, even though it's just keen fans grabbing everything with everyone's name on it.

Unrelated to all that, but related to chocolate...I got a test subscription back into Cook's Illustrated world, and they rank supermarket cocoa powder. Results?

DO: Hershey's Natural Unsweetened, Droste, Hershey's Special Dark, Valrhona

MAYBE: Ghirardelli Natural Unsweetened, Scarffeberge Unsweetened Natural, Nestle Toll House, Equal Exchange

They don't recommend against anything, which these articles sometime do, and they mention Callebaut as the splurge cocoa.

Okay, to bed, Saturday ER is making me nervous.

Oh! Another thing! Here's the travel mag's writeup on my sister's birthday villa: [link] She didn't actually write any of that--flip through a couple pages to get to it.

I'm not in any of the pictures, but more importantly, at least two of them were taken by me, on my tablet, which I totally vote for as a useful camera, no matter how lambasted the poor awkward things are...

Shit, I want my $60 back IT WAS A SIX DOLLAR PURCHASE. So pissed, and I doubt I'll see shit. I don't understand how it happened, so how will they? But I definitely recalculated the order with cheap ground shipping. Definitely. And them having the default be 2nd day UPS air makes me sure I'm not the first person to make that mistake, but I caught it! I cancelled the order! THE SECOND ONE WAS DIFFERENT, I SWEAR.

Right. Bed.

a root beer float with my dad.

Iced tea on the deck with my Aunt Juanita. SO much love for that woman, and we never got to see each other frequently.

Jilli, for wretched excess there's no better casino than Luxor. You'll swear it was designed and built by the Goa'uld! I wish it still had Isis/Sacred Sea Room or the cathouse-themed burlesque lounge/restaurant to recommend to you, but at least the spa/salon is still there.

So, Bay-istas, how are things in the CA university system these days? There's a Berkeley opening that looks exactly like what I want to do, but not if I'm laid off before I can even get unpacked.

So, Ellen's doing her holiday thing where she gives away a shitload of stuff to the audience, and they always set it up with some ridiculous fake segment. Earlier this week, she had Drew Barrymore on, and they were going to come back from commercial and Drew was going to cook dinner for Ellen. I was so sure that was the fake one! But no, she actually made a nice pasta sauce. Hilarious. Drew Barrymore the mom is as adorable as Drew Barrymore the anything else.

Shit, I want my $60 back IT WAS A SIX DOLLAR PURCHASE. So pissed, and I doubt I'll see shit. I don't understand how it happened, so how will they?

Call them and bitch. Especially if that's their default, a lot of people must get caught up by that.

Calli, things are tight. We've had all the layoffs we're going to for the foreseeable future (knock wood), but the upside to the layoffs is that all the laid-off people are now preferential rehires -- the HR system automatically submits their applications first for anything they qualify for, and they pretty much *have* to be interviewed. And they usually do get hired, because most of them are perfectly capable people with lots of UC experience who were let go purely for budget reasons.

The downside to this for everyone else is that if you're *not* laid off you're automatically second-tier. And if you're not laid off and working at a different place altogether, it's ferociously difficult to break in.

I'm totally certain you would rock the job, and it would be awesome to welcome you to the Bayistas, but, truthfully, the odds are long. If you know anyone there - even just someone you met at a professional meeting and have exchanged emails with - ask them to put in a word. Without someone advocating for you from the inside, it's a very, very tough nut to crack.