Sprinkles Around the Web: Big O’ Link-ing

Sprinkles from around the web

So it’s been a while — too long — since I’ve made one of these posts, which means, I’m going to just do a link dump without my usual explanations so I can hurry things along and get to the new stuff. As always, what I like, you may not like.

Me
by me

quoted / photoed me

Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web: Big O’ Link-ing”

Sprinkles Around the Web 1/14-1/27/11

Sprinkles from around the web

A collection of interesting links that I found around the web. Read and enjoy.

Me

Erica in her new dress
Because sometimes, I just need to buy and wear a pretty red dress.

Environment

Polar bear swims for nine straight days in search of ice Polar bears swim, but they don’t swim as far as this one. Why did this bear swim so far? It couldn’t find ice. Yep, the real effects of global warming.

Squirrels Around the World There are some freaking adorable squirrels out there.

Fandom

The Rape of Inara: On heroines, consent, and women’s sexuality

I am now gleefully happy that “Firefly” got canceled. Not that I wasn’t before, but now? I can almost forgive FOX for canceling all those TV shows if it means that Inara was never raped. Also, TV, can you stop having the women with sexuality be raped or otherwise punished for having it while pretending to be edgy for having women with ‘unconventional’ sexualities?

Resistance, a Star Trek: The Next Generation fanvid I love this video so much. It’s amazing.

‘Dark Knight Rises’: Anne Hathaway will be Catwoman, Tom Hardy is Bane Okay, she’ll actually be Selina Kyle as who knows if she’ll be Catwoman in this one… Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 1/14-1/27/11”

Dreams of Jobs and ‘Real World’ Skills

Even as a child, there weren’t many jobs that I wanted to do. No, there weren’t many jobs that were possible in this plane of existence and at this time.

A lot of my actual work came by accident. I was an English major in college, not because I set out to be one, but because I took too many English classes. I am a web designer, not because I decided one day I would be, but because I had too much time on my hand as a teenager, Sundays at home by myself, and have always been a self-learner. Instead of going to school with a purpose, I graduated, looked at my list of practical skills, and then started applying to jobs. Sometimes, I think this is a little backwards.

My childhood dreams jobs were largely short on practical skills. A Magical, Fairy Princess just needed to be born into it. No one went to school to get a degree in being President of the United States. Likewise with Ruler of the Universe. As far as I’ve been able to tell, even Writer doesn’t mean you have to know anything or been any good at it. Starship Captain hasn’t been invented yet. Veterinarian was the only occupation that required schooling, and well, I gave up on that when I saw a veterinarian put on a very long rubber glove and stick her hand up a cow’s woohoo.

In school, I liked reading and I liked writing. Science was okay and math was alright to a certain point. I hated spelling, and I’m thankful to have grown up in the era of the spellchecker.

(My maternal grandma always told me that a poor speller was a sign of a genius. Which greatly illustrates the point why grandmas should not tell small children they are geniuses or that they have good signing voices. I am tone deaf and posses a horrible voice, which makes me wonder what else my grandma was exaggerating about.)

While I grew up on a farm, I sadly lacked a entourage of singing forest animals. Though sometimes it was better that neither my cats or my rabbits could talk. Several times, I questioned my mother on my paternity, secretly hoping she’d tell me that my real father was actually a time-traveler who was going to take me away on my 18th birthday to travel to lands unseen. My mother gently reminded me that I have my paternal grandma’s jawline.

Even as my 25th birthday approaches, I haven’t settled on a “real” job. Web design fits me for now. It pays the bills and there are many aspects that I find enjoyable. After all, I did learn on my own time. Being creative is fun and a little showy to my creative friends who are doing data entry. (Which is a wise and noble profession when we all need to pay bills.) Even taking into account for industry changes, I don’t expect I’ll be doing the same thing in 10 or 15 years. Or maybe even 5. I might accidentally pick up some new real world skills.

To this day, I think part of me holds out hope that someone will revel that we’ve been secretly building giant interstellar spaceships and now they need captains.