AnnieModify

“Hello! I am a developer. Here is my relevant experience: I code in Hoobijag and sometimes jabbernocks and of course ABCDE++++ (but never ABCDE+/^+ are you kidding? ha!)  and I like working with Shoobababoo and occasionally kleptomitrons. I’ve gotten to work for Company¹ doing Shoobaboo-ing code things and that’s what led me to the Snarfus. So, let’s dive in! 

About this tutorial

I first started doing Very Simple Thing² with Snarfus, but the more I used it the more I saw the potential! Despite the jaggle of the chromus, it’s really multi-purpose. And that’s what led me to argyling the pintafore with the quagmire instead of the hoobastank! I know, crazy. But it was kind of working, and actually a lot of fun… Until I hit a big roadblock: the fisterfunk will NOT talk to the shamrock portal or even send beep-boops back to the Snarfus! Of course, you know what that means³ — Now the entire hoob-tunnel is clogged with gramelions. Unacceptable. 

I almost gave up but then I realized: If I connect the backside Snarfus stagnator to the backside shamrock Klingon troglodyte emulater, it’s good! Everything beep-boops and ding-dongs and I get the Actual Topic of the Tutorial, which lets me do the Very Simple Thing the way I want after all! Pretty cool⁴.

So here’s how to set it up: 

1. In the terminal, ajkl;gawgor;iqeg;iJLkqen.  wl;R aw;oeiga 4648664 arjarwgj;llj;ja fadgfgajkljl; wlj;sdjk;lfas

2. Next go to folder/hidden/deep/in/the/file/system/surprise!.file and copy the contents of the file. If it’s not there, it might be in library/library/library/llibrary/liiiiiibrarrrary/llllliiiiibrary/hidden/hidden/hiding/you can’t find me/hidden/nope/never/hahahahereiam.file.

3. Now go back to the terminal and paste in the file contents, then type in 64A786AGR45JAR; rdja;jg [[]][[]][[]][[]]][[]()()()()()()()()(){{}{}{}|{}{|}{}{|}{ ////////////////!! !!!! !! //// !!! agjlkargji;lwej;OI [ASRGASG[]ASGDASG[]EAEadgasg[]EAGE[edaga][]ahgr-0-0=-0-=0-=0=0-0=-0-=0=-0-=0=-0=-0!!!

4. Boop!⁵

5. Open Snarfus and upload the file you just made. 

6. Just for shits and giggles, you can de-sham the chronostatiomatrix by running —()()(]]asdg a=-do —cd go cd stay —sususudododo baby shark—][] but that’s optional. 

7. That’s it! 

Let me know how it goes for you. I’d love to hear if anybody uses this approach with GewGawGamma or ometer2.7.”

1. I probably should recognize Company because it seems illustrious but I do not recognize Company or know what they do. 

2. It is not simple. 

3. I do not know what that means. 

4. It is cool. I don’t really understand how, but I believe it. I’m glad you know how to do it. 

5. The first 3 steps will take me approximately 7 hours and 193 internet searches to complete. When I finally get to Boop! it will be really satisfying.

   This is meant in good fun. I really appreciate the folks who take time to share their knowledge and write up tutorials and give tips and so on. 

Many see that in this nightmared land, language has no meaning and the work of the writer is ruined. Many see that the triumph of authoritarian consciousness is its ability to render the spoken and written word meaningless — so that we cannot talk or hear each other speak. It is the work of the writer to reclaim the language from those who use it to justify murder, plunder, violation. The writer can and must do the revolutionary work of using words to communicate, as community. 

Those of us who love reading and writing believe that being a writer is a sacred trust. It means telling the truth. It means being incorruptible. It means not being afraid, and never lying. Those of us who love reading and writing feel great pain because so many people who write books have become cowards, clowns, and liars. Those of us who love reading and writing begin to feel a deadly contempt for books, because we see them vending their tarnished wares on every street corner. Too many writers, in keeping with the Amerikan way of life, would sell their mothers for a dime. 

To keep the sacred trust of the writer is simply to respect the people and to love the community. To violate that trust is to abuse oneself and do damage to others. I believe that the writer has a vital function in the community, and an absolute responsibility to the people.

—Andrea Dworkin, writing in 1973

I made a small informative zine about tacos to help! It is made out of Taco Bell wrappers because why not?

We begin with the essential questions: Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? 

Right away we have the answer: TACO. 

Then we tackle all essential facts and important questions about tacos.

TACO.

I have a lot of glue on my fingers!

I need a better pair of tiny very sharp scissors!

I used this tutorial to draw a taco. 

May the Great Taco smile upon you. 

Sometimes you just don’t get to feel good about things. 

Anyway a good rule I read somewhere long ago is something like Never trust how you feel about your life after 9pm.

I’ve found it helpful to expand the rule a bit. 

Never trust how you feel about your entire life….

• when you’re hungry or have eaten only crap lately.

• when you’re not getting enough sleep.

• when you’re in pain.

• when you just made a mistake.

• when something big is happening especially if it’s a bad or scary big thing.

• when you’re in an argument or fresh out of one.

• when you haven’t seen the sun in 24+ hours.

• when you’ve just gotten bad news. 

There are many more situations where this advice could be helpful. 

When something is off, imbalanced, scary, upsetting in some part of your life, the rest of your life will tilt toward that angle. Or at least will feel like it does.

Remembering this helps me to not take my own feelings so seriously. 

I hope today is a good day for how you feel about your life, but if it’s not, tomorrow might be better.

For the record, I feel good about my life right now, this very minute. I wrote part of this post a few days ago and another part of it a few years ago. I survived both the years and the days. You will, too. 

there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.

—Charles Bukowski, The Laughing Heart

Rules are not valid because the Senate passed them, or because heroes once played by them, or because God pronounced them through Moses or Muhammed. They are valid only if and when players freely play by them. 

There are no rules that require us to obey rules. If there were, there would have to be a rule for those rules, and so on. 

—James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

My kids go to public school. I have no idea what that’s like.

I was homeschooled myself, all the way from kinder through 12th grade. I went from homeschool to university. All my ideas about public school came from movies & shows like Saved by the Bell; which is to say, I know nothing about the actual experience of going to public school (or private school, for that matter).

I’ve been, for the most part, pleased and I feel incredibly grateful for the education my kids are getting and the people who work really hard to make it happen.

But sometimes there are such dumb rules. 

I get a lot of school emails. Many are about rules. Reminders of the rules, usually. For example, every year about this time there’s a rule reminder email for (parents of) seniors: We strictly prohibit waterguns on the school grounds.

OKAY? FINE? I DON’T CARE?

I understand there are reasons. 

Rules don’t spring up, full-grown, from the earth. Rules don’t grow, they are instituted. Rules are considered and constructed. They get put in place because something happens and we don’t want it to happen again so we make a rule to prevent it from happening. We usually require a committee to agree on the wording of the rule. We vote on it. And then: It’s a rule. 

And we trust the rules to do the job! 

Even if, perhaps, a rule is not the best way to deal with “the situation,” whatever it may be. Even if a rule, perhaps, prevents a lot of good things from happening in the service of potentially maybe hopefully preventing a singular unwanted thing from happening. 

Anyway, maybe it’s because I was raised to be both 1) a really conscientious follower of one set of rules (“the truth,” handed down from GOD via the church) and also a 2) conscientious objector to a whole other set of rules (“the world” aka Jezebel aka Babylon aka The Devil himself), but at this point in my life I have a lot of trouble taking any set of rules seriously. 

Well that’s not quite true. Some rules I take very seriously. These are the rules I try to live by. 

But all sets of rules enshrined by any sort of institution are laughable. 

Consider this one, from the schools: My children, when in school, are required to ask permission to go to the bathroom. Any teacher, for any reason, could deny any child permission to use the bathroom.

This rule is ridiculous.

This rule might make sense for children who are quite young. Even then, I have my doubts. (If a child is young but potty trained, is it a good idea to limit their access to the bathroom? Proooooobably not!)

My children are in middle school and high school. They are teenagers. They understand their own bodies well enough to know when they need to use the bathroom.

Oh, but! The teens! They gather in the bathrooms! They smoke! They skip out! They make out! They avoid class! They they they they they they they 

SHUT UP. 

Are you kidding me right now. Are you serious. Are you actually—you, an adult, charged with the education of hundreds of children—looking at me, another adult, and telling me that because some of these children abuse the “privilege” of going to the bathroom, all of the children must be closely and carefully monitored re: bathroom usage? 

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW. 

Absolutely not. Absolutely 10000000000000000% not. No. And let me stress again, just in case I was unclear, NO. 

Here’s what I tell my kids: “Hey. If you need to go to the bathroom, sure, ask the teacher. If they say Yes, great. Do your thing. If they say No, tell them you need to use the bathroom and you’re going to do so and then walk out of the classroom and go to the bathroom because you are a person with a body and you are the one who knows what your body needs.”

And here’s what is understood in those words (and also, articulated clearly from time to time):

Sometimes as a person with a body, you might use your “what my body needs” as an excuse for “what my mind needs” or “what my emotions need” which is, maybe, a short break from a boring-ass teacher droning on in a monotone voice about the history of a war in 1812 or whatever. 

Sometimes what your body needs is a way to get away from a classroom full of your peers because you’re young and nervous and shy. Or maybe you’re on your period and having cramps and you don’t know what to do. Or maybe you have a lot of anxiety and need a few minutes to catch your breath. Or maybe you have a lot of friends but you haven’t learned how to say No and you need a minute to eat your granola bar without sharing it. Or maybe you broke up with your SO last night and you need a second to feel some feelings; or maybe or maybe or maybe or maybe or maybe or maybe or 

What I tell my kids is: Break the dumb rules. I will back you up. 

What I tell my kids is: If you need to use the bathroom, that’s what you do. I will back you up. 

What I tell my kids is: If a teacher yells at you, you walk the fuck out of that room because nobody has the right to treat you with disrespect. I will back you up. 

What I tell my kids is what I tell myself is what I tell my kids is what I tell myself is what I tell my kids is what I tell myself is what I tell my kids is what I tell myself is what I tell my kids is what I’m telling you 

you can trust yourself

I believe in you

I will back you up

you are good

I trust you

you can trust yourself 

I believe in you

I will back you up

you are good

What I read about last month: Mysteries in the woods! Stories! Kind-of-not-really pirates! Ireland! Friendship! And saying no!

In the Woods by Tana French 

Gorgeous writing. Good plotting. It unraveled slowly, and I got impatient, but I don’t think the pace was wrong. It fit in with the main character’s own unraveling. Heavy themes, violence, trauma. Sadness bordering on bleak. I was frustrated with several plot choices, including the resolution, but saying more will spoiler it. I’m also not sure they were wrong choices. In terms of doing what fit with the characters and themes, they worked, perhaps too well; I just hated what was happening (or not happening) because I wanted better outcomes for people involved. I want to read the next book in the series, I think. I don’t trust French enough to know where she’s taking me and if I want to spend the time to get there. But the writing is so good I’ll risk it.

An easy sidestep from Louise Penny to Tana French but with French, the cozy element pulls you in so the subsequent shattering of it hits even harder and all is not necessarily restored to order. No neat bow and calm conversation in a sunshine dappled garden at the end. Instead you’re left with pieces of a mess too great to be undone and forced to see justice and closure and neat endings as fantasy; reality itself is something layered, darker, still beautiful, but grim.

The Story Collector by Evie Woods 

Sarah had grown weary of trying to make things palatable for everyone around her.

Lovely and cozy while dealing with grief. Some difficult themes which are touched with a light hand. Magic, friendship, light romance, Ireland.

The Sea-Wolf by Jack London 

Ships! Storms at sea! Sailors! Hunting from boats! Not pirates but kind of like them! A larger-than-life villain whom Jack London not-so-secretly adored and wanted to kiss! A hero who transforms from weak and timid to competent and pretty okay! A fair maiden of unparalleled beauty and virtue and intelligence whom Jack London also not-so-secretly adored and wanted to kiss! She has to lay down all the time because she is so fragile and becomes very fatigued! It sounds like she has a chronic illness but to Jack London it is a mark of her unparalleled (white) womanliness! Her eyes are so luminous and warm and her skin is so fair and her hair curls just so! But she really does try hard! At least he lets her be quite smart in addition to being so very very small and fragile!

Despite this review! I did enjoy the book! Even though I snickered a lot! While reading it! Jack London you’re a silly guy! And you clearly wanted to be a pirate! But only a white one, cuz you’re pretty racist!

The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

“But the guilt of outliving those you love is justly to be borne, she thought. Outliving is something we do to them. The fantasies of dying could be no stranger than the fantastic of living. Surviving is perhaps the strangest fantasy of them all.”

If we’re talking Mississippi writers, I’ll take Welty over Faulkner every single day. 

Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy 

Binchy is a great, easy, warm feel-good read, always. Ireland, again. An appropriate if unplanned theme for the month when we all pretend to like Guinness and corned beef. 

Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher

You ever get 317 pages into a 653 page book before realizing you have, in fact, read this book before? Cuz I did. Bits of it felt familiar before that point, but sometimes when you read a lot of a genre you get that. When I got to this particular chapter, though: Oh yeah. I remember this. Because it’s awful.

I won’t describe it really because spoilers, I guess, but mostly because trigger warnings: SA, grim and extended.

All the SA was completely unnecessary to the plot of the book. The necessary plot points could have been accomplished with similar obstacles (imprisonment) and interactions (to provide means for the two imprisoned characters to bond). Like, that could have happened without the weirdly over-developed psychologically twisted SA parts being woven into it.

Annnnnd that’s why I didn’t read the rest of this series, first time around, even though I enjoyed the book, mostly, with the exception of these particular scenes. There’s a good amount of political structure that is integral to the plot, but it was woven in well: My eyes didn’t glaze over while I read paragraph after paragraph about royal families and warring groups and bloodlines and blah blah blah. There was some exposition but not too much. The magic system left me with a few questions about the mechanics of it all but, okay, I can overlook that if it’s not major. I liked the characters and would like to know what happens next in their stories.

But the gratuitous and creepily detailed SA scenes are, well, gratuitous and creepy. So I will once again not continue the series. This time I am logging the book at least so I can remember I’ve read it and not give it a third try.

The Last List of Mabel Beaumont by Laura Pearson 

Read this in one day, a lovely sweet read that was perfect for a long train ride. The big reveal wasn’t really a big reveal—not surprising—but it was still satisfying. Love and romance are examined, are important, but the big theme of this book is friendship and I loved the group that came together as the core characters, their different ages and experiences.

Spoiler: My only quibble is that the primary cause of the decades-long separation between two characters (the resolution of which is the major plot line of the book) was (drumrolllllll) a miscommunication. Essentially. The whole thing. And the miscommunication itself didn’t quite add up, to me. I mean, okay, I guess? But also?? Not really??? That felt a bit lazy and just didn’t quite make sense to me. But worth overlooking to enjoy the rest of the story. This really isn’t a book that’s focused on plot mechanics, anyhow; it’s about the characters and the connections they form, and how those connections change them.

The Art of Saying No by Damon Zahariades

This book could have been a blog post. Maybe a series of blog posts. Actually I’m pretty sure it was a series of blog posts that got turned into a book, judging solely by the chapter titles. Also there’s a whole Bonus! section reeking of gated content for lead generation. (Oh my god I hate saying those words.) 

Anyway, I tried to be a productivity blogger once, too, many moons ago. So who am I to judge (more than I already have, I mean). If this guy managed to do it and afford health insurance, good for him. 

Good stuff mostly but very basic stuff. Would have been helpful if I’d read it 15 or 20 years ago.

Some of the scenarios were wild, like, “If your friend gets mad and curses at you because you won’t help them move, here’s how to defuse the situation.” Um, I’ll tell you how I would defuse the situation: I would not be friends with that person anymore. Easy peasy. No thank you. I can’t begin to imagine a single one of my friends ever yelling at me because I say No to something they ask. Who has friends like this, and do you understand that you can make different friends?

Helpful bits:

• I liked the description of assertiveness as

  • A learned trait

  • Candid communication that leaves no room for confusion on your position

  • Clear, courteous, and thoughtful expression of your needs, wants, points of view (without worrying whether they will be approved of by others or not)
    

• Identify what you don’t do

“…make ‘I don’t’ statements. These statements are a declaration of what you choose not to do…When you resist temptations with declarative statements that begin with ‘I don’t…’ you become the architect of a life built upon healthy intentions.”

This is a nice little way to work on building identity-based habits.

• Say no by category

"When you begin turning down requests based on a particular attribute, you reset others’ expectations of you…This strategy also streamlines the process of saying no. You no longer have to consider each request individually.”

This is a way to make one big decision which eliminates a thousand tiny decisions. Good approach. It’s covered in a lot of productivity/self-help books because if you actually do it, it works really well. 

DNF

Tracker by Indy Quillen

Annoyed by the third paragraph. Nope. 

If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie

Interesting, but was due back at the library and I have other more interesting books waiting.