anonymityblaize | Entries tagged with bleargh

Reposting this pic as the Twitter joke trial reached the High Court appeal today. It's utterly baffling to me that this nonsense has got this far without someone doing anything remotely sensible. If you have no idea why I made a cross stitch of a criminal and "clearly menacing" tweet, you can read more about this Orwellian nightmare here and here.

And on a lighter note, here, have a stitched Star Trek coaster.

( More pics... )

Current Mood: angry
Crossposts: http://anonymityblaize.livejournal.com/60947.html

So. When a grown adult finds herself running away from her life to go hide at her parents' house for a week then it is time for her to admit she has a problem.

And I can no longer hide behind my belief that things can't be that bad if I'm not moaning about it on the internet when, in fact, I allude to all the stuff that is making me whinge in nearly every post. So full disclosure time - tales of my inability to acknowledge depression in the present tense, my feelings about my home turning on me, and my desire to murder all the builders.

( Feel free to skip my tl;dr of woe and angst )

On the upside of life, I saw X-Men First Class and it was every bit as flail-inducing as everyone had said. It gave me FEELINGS. And many thoughts. Some of which I shall post soon (probably when I have seen it again because I so need to see it again). For now I'll just perpetrate a drive by gif dump before I run away to spend the rest of my life watching McAvoy/Fassbender interviews on youtube. Such a chore...

( gotta love an insta-fandom... )

Also, Community fen, please help a girl out - where does this pic come from and are there more? Because, WANT.

( NSFW if your boss won't approve of girls in lingerie spanking each other )

Also, also, I am giving tumblr another try (as it provided me with most of today's pics!). Tell me who I should be following!

Current Mood: anxious
Crossposts: http://anonymityblaize.livejournal.com/50055.html

Having another very weird week.

Today is Day 365 of my tenement building's renovation hell. A renovation hell that was supposed to take six months. They are currently claiming it will be finished in June but I refuse to believe anything they say anymore. I'm trying to stay upbeat about it all but sometimes I just feel like murdering all the builders. Le sigh.

And then the fact that my geeky lamp went halfway around the internet and back was awesome and also a bit strange in that I am now completely insecure about the next craft project, the next blog post, the next whatever, and have retreated from the internet somewhat. Which is a bizarre response to people being really nice. I am messed up in the head.

In lighter news, this may be of interest to any other fans of the Wire and/or Victoriana out there. ETA: That site's servers are clearly having their arses handed to them after so many people have linked to it. Here's a gawker article about it, and my favourite page under the cut.

( Mr Moreland and Mr McNulty on the hunt. )

And in even lighter news, kittens make me happy, so, here, have some kittens:

( KITTEHS! )

And, finally:

Don't forget - bidding ends on the

help_japan auctions on Thursday the 31st. And, if I do say so myself, both of my offerings are still a total bargain right now! Have a look around - there's loads of amazing stuff on offer. Also, my fellow Inception fen should check out

knowmydark's post here because I am far too lazy to compile something similar right now!

Current Mood: weird

Feeling a bit blue today. The obvious solution - trawl tumblr and google images looking at pretty things and then make a picspam. Hurrah!

( pretty people post )

Feel free to picspam me as you see fit!

Current Mood: blah

Having intermittent internet issues due to crappy phone line wiring (I think that's a fair assumption to make when wiggling the wires at the landline socket makes the internet come back from wherever it was hiding) and so my ability to get anything actually done has plummeted. It is incredible to think that in a little over a decade I have become as dependent on having an internet connection as I am on having electricity. I've got about two dozen things on my to do list that I've started but not finished. And I'm a bit behind on replies to all web based communications - will get caught up soon!

And now my computer in general, and Firefox in particular have decided to join in with the not-working-ness. Aaaargh.

One thing I have managed to get done, however, is putting up a cafe press store for my Star Trek doctor definition t-shirt. I intend to add a few more products yet, I just need to work out different dimensions for different things, and work out how they deal with printing on dark t-shirts. And then I'll move on to getting stores up for each of the other definition shirts. I'm just moving at a snail's pace so far!

Anyway, you can see that here (it should default to your own currency, but you can change it in the top right hand corner if it doesn't) and please let me know if there's any particular product you'd like to see in there or if there's something you reckon I should change.

And I'd like to add a big thank you to everyone who posted happy things the other day - it was much appreciated.

If I could make photobucket bend to my will right now I'd add a pretty picture (probably of Tom Hardy, as per) but I can't, so just imagine something beautiful here instead.

Current Mood: aggravated

I don't usually post about serious stuff, preferring to blog about fannish glee and my varied experiments in crafting. But this is really gnawing at my brain so I feel the need to share my thoughts.

So, you may have heard about the #TwitterJokeTrial - a trial about a joke made on twitter, but also a joke of a trial that could have serious consequences for the British justice system and how we use the internet.

Long story short, earlier this year a guy posted this tweet:

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!

And got himself arrested for "sending a menacing electronic communication" and fined over £3000. He lost his job, and yesterday, lost his appeal against his conviction. This is beyond ridiculous.

This article gives a much better account than I could manage of why this conviction is so very problematic (although every time he uses "English" I would have substituted "British") and this article does a great job of breaking down why exactly that tweet is a joke (and I'd add - it has two exclamation points on the end. This is clearly internet-speak for "joking!!". He might as well have put !!11!eleventy or LOL at the end).

We don't have a legal protection for free speech in Britain, mainly because we thought we didn't need one. Speaking freely has always seemed like an enshrined British right. Certain newspapers *coughDailyMailcough* may start campaigns against things or people, but usually in an attempt to get them sacked for whatever "offensive" thing they have said, not have them prosecuted for it. We let deeply offensive, bigoted people go on Question Time to defend their hateful views because we thought they had the right to say such things (and we the general public had the right to argue against them and call them Dick-sorry-Nick Griffin). But this ruling says that we don't have free speech in Britain, and that we can be prosecuted for things posted in spur of the moment anger.

But we're an angry bunch in Britain! (Well, maybe grumpy would be more apt.) Our language is full of hyperbolic, violent imagery which we use when frustrated, hungry, or stuck in queues or on hold for customer service.* And the internet is even more fair game for taking a fairly small amount of ire and posting about it in an extreme and over the top fashion.

Any reader of this journal may well have worked out that I adore hyperbole. It's usually used in a positive sense (I've lost count of how many things are the "best thing ever" to me) but I did recently attempt to torture the metaphysical concept of a week. What if I'd threatened the people and buildings that had caused that grumpiness? Would I have been guilty of a criminal offense? It scares me to think that I may have to start considering the legal ramifications of venting my frustrations on the internet. Isn't that one of the things the internet is meant to be for?

If you're on twitter and are as angry as I am at this, then please join me in the #IAmSpartacus protest - and tweet (not retweet) these "clearly menacing" words with that hashtag. Let them try to prosecute all of us.

* As a kid, when I was naughty, my father would threaten to rip off my arms and beat me to death with the soggy bit. Even at the age of seven I understood that this was a joke and not a genuine threat, making me then smarter than our judiciary now, apparantly.

ETA: A helpful round up of the whole shebang here. And a very good article on the precedent this is settinghere.

Current Mood: angry

Progress: Still slow, but moving at least.

Sanity: Hanging in there.

Times stabbed self with needle this week: Only twice.

Times flung across the room in despair: Just the once.

Profanities uttered whilst cross stitching: All of them. Many times.

Current Mood: aggravated

I want to fire this week. I want to disown this week. I want to dump this week in a tank of evil mutated sea bass. I want to remove this week's heart with a rusty spoon. I want to build a time machine, go back in time, and kill this week's grandfather. I want to fight this week to the pain. (Its ears it'll keep, and I'll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing this week's hideousness will be its to cherish. Every babe that weeps at its approach, every woman who cries out, "Dear God, what is that thing?" will echo in this week's perfect ears. That is what "to the pain" means. It means I leave this week in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.)

Does this perhaps begin to hint at the fact that this week has not been a fun week?

The world at large is being very depressing right now, and my own life is just full of little annoyances adding up to major headaches. I cannot escape building work. There are builders outside. There are builders inside. The dirt is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE, people. No kitchen for four days makes Ms Blaize go something, something. (And it'll be five days before they're actually done.) And mopping the hall every night for four days is also with the crazy-making (although we have concluded that it's way less hassle than giving a cat a bath). I will be spending most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday actually, literally cleaning ALL THE THINGS, but right now that is an exciting, happy weekend to look forward to. I may well be losing my marbles here. I am so behind on every single thing I was meant to get done this week. Grr argh.

Also, some bastards have stolen

rooferrocks's magnificent Wireopoly idea. I like hers better.

On the brighter side of life, James Franco continues to be fascinating to me:

And Tom Hardy now has his own tag at ONTD. I may never need to visit the mainpage ever again.

(Side note: James Franco and Tom Hardy NEED to make a movie together, yes/yes? The promotional interviews alone would be the most randomly hilarious things ever.)

Right, the last time I was grumpy and in charge of a keyboard and a photobucket account I made a Tom Hardy picspam post and it made me happier, so I'm gonna try that again. (See, any old excuse...) Please picspam me mucho in the comments - it will make me less likely to post more emo nonsense "woe-is-me" pity party type stuff!

( cut for hotness )

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Location: a building site

I think it's fair to say that I have seriously lost momentum with this project. Progress is sloooooo-ooooow. I will not list the things I blame for this, for fear of sounding like a broken record. But one of the best things about this blog is that I can look back at previous large cross stitch projects and know that I always do this. It flies along really fast and easy, and then it gets hard and I start anthropomorphizing colours and threads and getting into arguments with things inanimate, and then somehow, somewhere, I find my sanity and reach the home stretch and it starts getting easier. And then when I finish, I love the project and seem to forget the moments where I nearly tore it apart. So hopefully that third stage will kick in soon. And at least this time I have outside influences to blame rather than just shrieking about how pale colours are evil.

Here's how Serenity looks today:

And here's a close up where you can actually tell that I've started putting in some of the darker colours:

And while I'm here, my TLDR bag got featured in a green and purple themed treasury over at etsy. I'd always encourage y'all to check these kind of things out cos there are so many amazing crafters and artists on etsy (so much better than me!) and you never know what you might find over there!

Current Mood: blah

Aaarrgh. It's been just over a month since I last posted on Serenity's progress. And there's not actually been that much.

It would seem that no matter how much I love the subject, or feel like I'm enjoying the project, there will always be a point where one of my cross stitches of doom just starts to annoy me and makes me want to be violent toward it. I am currently blaming my sore shoulder issues and the new shiny fandom of distraction for my lack of progress, but it won't be long until I start taking it out on Serenity herself and fling her across the room in despair.

Bloody hell, I'm a melodramatic cross stitcher, aren't I? Shall shut up now...

Current Mood: frustrated

I return, ashamed of how little I've done on this piece lately. Admittedly I did have a big family get together (short version: lots o' booze, awesome food, fabulous time had by all) and my final exam ever (short version: yay to questions on Citizen Kane and auteur theory, yay to questions on allegory in science fiction, boo to narrowing the choice of British films upon which I can do a spot of textual analysis to a pathetic list of four. Bad question, bad! /End not-so-short version). So, when the going gets busy, the busy abandon their Petrellis, apparently.

It seems like the less I have to do on this project, the harder it gets. And the finishing line never actually seems to get any closer. Is this normal, crafty peoples? Cos it seems somewhat counter-intuitive to me. Or maybe I'm just cranky.

Messy picture ahoy!