(no subject)

Aha! It pays to be an underpaid arts grunt!

My hookup at another box office came through for me, and I have a mid-theatre centre-of-row ticket for OotP at the Navy Pier IMAX theatre for the July 10th midnight showing.

Now I just need to figure out how to get home at 3am. :D

(no subject)

I went through all my online bill-pay websites this morning, removed my old ATM card (I lost it; a new one is winging its way to me as we speak) and added my checking account instead, paying as I went and updating addresses, phone numbers, and email. Some of them still had my old St. Nowhere address from first year of grad school.

There are way too many serial numbers, passcodes, passkeys, logins, and pin numbers in my life, considering I have one bank account and one credit card in active use. Bank of America, who bought my credit card company (fuckers) now requires a login, password, and image "passkey" before you can pay them. The only upside to the seriously pages long list of passwords and logins I have is that I don't get any paper bills anymore, which is kind to trees and also cuts down on the amount of filing I have to do. I'd like to set them all up to be auto-withdrawal, except that I'm living close enough to the razor's edge that auto-withdrawal could regularly put me into over...drawal...if I don't choose when and how I pay them.

Direct deposit still eludes me. I was very much against it in grad school, because again, if one deposit failed I'd be looking at a handful of $25 overdraft charges. I decided to bite the bullet and try it out when I got the box office job, but somehow my application never went through, which I felt was a sign. Besides, there's a bank a block from my El stop, so it's not like it's a huge deal to go make the deposit.

It's amusing, isn't it, the idea of direct deposit and autodebit. All these numbers flying around, things appearing and disappearing without effort or hard items of value changing hands. The concept of money becomes less and less tangible as all this combines with the near-ubiquity of debit/credit machines. I remember when you could ask a fast-food cashier if you could pay with plastic and they'd laugh at you. Now, every morning, I walk past a bank of soda machines that take credit cards.

(no subject)

I wrote this about three weeks ago and I've been dithering about posting because when anyone posts any kind of strong opinion to a forum with 1800 people it can get...edgy. Besides, the piece itself is a bit tl;dr.

But you know -- not only do I feel strongly about this, I want to know what other people feel and think. Between Howard Hendrix repudiating the internet Sci-Fi community ( http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1072475.html ) and an editorial article about "a month without internet" in this month's Poets & Writers ( http://www.pw.org/content/surviving_month_without_internet ), I wanted to say something. So, I'm posting. Intelligent discourse and debate is welcome; please be aware, however, that I am home for the rest of the day and at the first sign of trolling or wank I will shut down comments.

This is my manifesto about Writers On The Internet (be grateful I have no thoughts on yaoi).

( Writers on the Internet )

( Comment conservation )

(no subject)

Rain has come to Chicago.

Among the tribes of Northside, none are so wretched as those with no A/C, the household deity which is said to dispense cool air and be a calmer of troubled spirits. When the rain comes, the tribesmen who are not wealthy enough to possess one of the square white totems representing the "Cool God" open their windows, and there is much rejoicing.

I am going to go take a nap next to an open window in the middle of the afternoon while it rains. This feels...strangely exotic.