| My way: by Michelle Grissom, formerly ani Dechen Drolma |
[Aug. 14th, 2020|12:35 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | ani dechen drolma, bill c, christine, cult allegations, jetsunma ahkon lhamo, jinpa, julie g, kpc, kunzang palyul choling, nydia, rick, the buddha from brooklyn | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  relieved | ] |
I'm cleaning up my relationship with my teacher, Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, and temple, Kunzang Palyul Choling.
In order to do so, I need to post my clean-up confession just as publicly as I once posted my criticism.
To some of you I've alluded to my past Buddhist associations. Maybe three of you I've told in detail. If you've been curious all these years, well ... here you go. Some of you might read this and go, "Wow, I want nothing to do with this person."
I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't worried about that. LJ and fandom have been a refuge from the rest of my life. But here goes.
Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
( The truth. ) |
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| Thanksgiving |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|09:39 am] |
Thanksgiving.
I was just informed that mom and her roommate were expecting me to do the Thanksgiving turkey. Along with pumpkin pie (crust from scratch) and my cheesecake.
Whut-?
This is going to be one of those weeks, isn't it?
Good thing it's 9am. |
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| 500,000 animals being slaughtered right now. |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|02:58 am] |
My mom has been talking about this for weeks:
500,000 animals to be ritually slaughtered?
On Tuesday, November 24th the Gadimai animal sacrifice festival will take place in southern Nepal. It is said that 500,000 animals including buffaloes, chickens, goats, pigs, rats, and birds will be tortured and slaughtered during this Hindu festival.
Write to the Nepalese Embassy: info@nepalembassyusa.org
In India, the ritual slaughter of animals in such rites as the Agnicayana has long been replaced with effigies. There is no religious reason for this throwback. Despite the detailed instructions in Leviticus, Judaism no longer sacrifices the fatted calf. Like that. |
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| What no one will tell you about college. |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|12:42 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | school, work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | happy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Skid Row | ] |
I'm tutoring high school students, prepping them for the SAT.
I think what they need as much as good SAT scores are some good college strategies. Share yours here.
So here it is:
What no one will tell you about college (until you get there).
1 - Want to increase your scores 5% without doing anything?
( Sit in the same seat every day )
2 - Talk to your professor outside of class.
( Disagree with your prof? Good! Take it to her/him at the end of class. )
3 - Bored? Ask a question.
( Every time I found myself zoning out during a class I would raise my hand )
4 - Avoid clock-watching.
( Avoid the clock-watching tick by sitting where you can't see the clock. )
5 - High school is for taking the classes you hate. College is for taking the classes you love.
( Don't be a masochist -- if you can avoid that hated math class by taking a much more interesting astronomy class, do it. )
6 - Know thyself. Work with your habits rather than against them.
( If you suck at mornings, don't take that 8:30am Japanese class. )
7 - Avoid schizophrenia and be efficient: Take related classes at the same time.
( You can use your readings from Indian history as sources for your Indian lit class and vice versa. )
8 - If the class you want is booked, show up anyway, books in hand, and participate vigorously.
( The professor would rather have you as an extra student than the disinterested slackers in the back. )
9 - Give yourself flexibility: Plan, plan, plan.
( When you're not sure of your major, take classes that apply to all three of your most likely majors first. )
10 - The one I learned too late: Build a relationship with professors who are top in their field by taking more than one class with them.
( If they're a bit of a name, their opinion carries weight. ) |
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| Muse and SGA: a perfect combination. |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|04:00 pm] |
Muse has totally infected my latest ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) sga_santa story.
Or at least that's my explanation for why I have a space battle in the middle of a fic that's supposed to be about fantasies and letting them run away with you.
Knights Of Cydonia is totally a space battle. One where the good guys win. You can hear the barrel rolls and diving under the Hive, firing at its underbelly. |
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| Women ninjas. |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|08:22 pm] |
The music awards:
Shakira has women ninjas! |
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| Quantifying a life. |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|04:47 pm] |
Good news on the work front: My tutoring job is going to give me 16 hours a week as of Dec. 1, which is great. It's an improvement.
The pay rate is good, and it gives me the required experience I need for teaching. (90 hours is the magic number. I'll have it by the end of December. Then I need a year of school for the teaching certificate.)
Unfortunately, it's not quite enough to live off of.
I don't have a car in car-dependent Maryland, so I'm having to ask "mommy" for rides to work, to interviews. I have all the time in the world to write -- yet can't find the space because I have to write around other people's schedules.
It's been four months and I'm getting the feeling she's burned out. As am I.
I want my life back.
Quantifying a life.
( When I drove across country to Seattle in 1996, I had a car. )
Aside from the degrees, how did I end up with less than when I started? |
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| Mousie report. |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|03:35 pm] |
Mousie report.
Some of you may recall this post wherein a family of mouse babies took up residence in one of my fleece jackets (in a box that happens to be outdoors). I discovered this when I pulled my jacket out of the box, scattering mouse infants everywhere. I removed my other jackets, packed the box with newspaper, and used newsprint to scoop the littles back in the box.
A week later I discovered I'd missed four mouse babies, who'd fallen into a box I took inside. Noooo....
Then the temperature dropped and I thought the outdoor mousies were history.
Three weeks later ...
I'm happy to report that the mouse babies survived, and have moved on. But the nest is clearly there, and there are no apparent corpses.
Proof of life: the fleece jacket was not so lucky, sacrificed to the cause. The Mousies chewed a few holes.
Unless Rainy Pass can fix it. |
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| Buddhism questions: passing the buck. |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|03:11 pm] |
People always ask me about Buddhism ... and I'm caught flat-footed. You should ask a good Buddhist!
Well we're in luck. And online, too.
Tulku Orgyen has offered to help anyone with any questions about Buddhism: http://twitter.com/TulkuOgyen
Retweet, tweeters.
And thank you, Tulku Orgyen, for letting me pass the buck. |
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| The Olympics are coming! The Olympics are coming! |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|03:02 pm] |
The Olympics are coming! The Olympics are coming!
If you're like me (in years past) you probably tune in to these winter sports, oh, once every four years. You get a general sense of who the favorites are from the announcers and interviews, roll your eyes at the inspirational life story clips, and root for the home team.
Now you don't have to be in the dark. You can be knowledgeable long before the Olympics hit.
At least about figure skating. (Everyone, feel free to correct me. I'm not an expert, I've just been following skating to the best of my ability for a couple years.)
Right now the horse race is on. It's the Grand Prix. As we speak, world class skaters are competing in a series of competitions Russia, France, Canada, the U.S., Japan, and er, I think elsewhere. Right now they're trying to earn points to get to the Grand Prix final -- and prove themselves worthy of the Olympic teams.
You see, last March at the World Championships each country won the number of slots they'd have at the Olympics based on how their skaters did. (The max is three.) China was very disappointed to not win any for men's figure skating. In a real shocker, the U.S. women's figure skating only scored two slots as our current National champ fell apart.
But our men are doing fab. Evan Lysacek won the gold at Worlds and we have a "deep field," namely, many guys running neck and neck for the same titles.
Let's have a look at our boys.
The Americans.
The ever-hot gentleman, Evan Lysacek. (The belt buckle is Batman, with cable and bat-grappling hook.)
( Evan has the quad. He has the fire. He's a skater who starts pouring it out in the last 30 seconds of his performance.... )
Finally, there's Mabanoozerabadahblbrghf. Graceful, fluid, fun to watch. I don't know if he'll keep moving up, he's still inconsistent. But he has a musical sense that makes him figure skating eye candy.
Only three will make it to the Olympics.
Which three? We'll know at Nationals in Spokane, January 2010.
Tomorrow: those other guys, yeah, them foreigners. |
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| SGA Santa |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|03:52 pm] |
Dragging this SGA Santa story out of me, one sentence at a time.
I whimper at every NaNo post I stumble across. I stalled out early. Too much going on in RL, from temple, to work, to the job search, to WG not sending me my things, to the difficulty in finding time to write, to being several months out of the writing vein from having my life turned completely turned upside down.
This doesn't stop me from hoping that I can write something on this story once I get my mental pen to work.
Working tonight (yay!). I've also received my first paycheck. Hey. They pay me to do this. |
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| Meme: Post your fanfic B-sides! |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|02:27 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | meme | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  awake | ] |
The B-Side Meme:
Musicians know when they have an A-side song and when they have a B-side. It's not that the A-side is better. It's just that the A-side has a certain kind of hook, a certain arc, a quality they know will grab people. A signature sound.
The B-side song is that one that's a little weird. A little soft. One that sneaks up on you. Or isn't like what you usually do.
We all have our A-side stories. Our novel-length fics. Our signature pairing and styles.
If you see this meme, post a few of your B-sides.
A '57 Vincent And A Red-Headed Boy
"What's that?" Ron shouted over the noise. It was long, sleek and black, and purred like a wildcat... it was beautiful. Male-bonding, motorcycles and bad boys.
The Ron/Sirius pairing alone makes this a B-side. That and the fact that it can only sort of be called slash and I'm usually known for slash -- often explicit slash. Even with my darker stories I resolve them. This one is character focused, focused on the relationship between Ron and Sirius and the way they bring out the worst in each other ... and doesn't resolve with a neat little bow.
Quick Bird On Hot Sand
Teyla always wondered at the Atlantean planet designations. Could they not call each planet by its name?
This one's a B-side because it's Teyla-centric. People expect a male focus from me. Certainly they don't expect an openly feminist fic. But one Valentine's day someone commented that it was odd that for the 14valentines challenge people were writing slash for a feminist cause. I agreed and vowed to only write female characters for 14Valentines -- preferably neglected ones.
Liar's Chair
Rodney's report: The planet was a tropical paradise--if your peculiar idea of paradise includes no technology, sinus-killing allergens, and stinging bees. But the real mission report pertains to how Colonel Sheppard ended up, from there, in a frozen wasteland....
This one is pure sci-fi, from me, a writer who usually focuses on the characters. It's the only character whump I've ever written (I usually write humiliation, not physical whumping), undertaken as a birthday gift to Oatmealfairy. And man, I could not have whumped any harder.
Self-Sufficiency
John likes to be self-sufficient, even when it means he has to battle Dean.
Supernatural is not a fandom I usually write, nor do I usually write kids. This one is short and sweet domesticity between hunts with the wee!chesters. |
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| Blast from the past: More HP stories uploaded to AO3 |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|02:16 am] |
Uploading more HP fics to AO3 --
Far Too Personal
"Student, tall, beater's build.." Okay, maybe not quite beater's build, but he was close enough. Ron Weasley places a personal ad and lies shamelessly about himself and his 'assets.' Unfortunately, his date did the same.
A little history: Late one night a friend posted about how explicit gay personal ads are. With quotes. She wanted to see one in fic. Comment after comment, all night long ... as the sky turned pink ... I posted this to her giggling replies.
Two Men On Top
Pure PWP smut. What happens when you have two natural tops in the bedroom. A follow up to 'Far Too Personal.'
History: Arguably the hottest thing I've ever written. People wanted more of 'Far Too Personal.' Ask and ye shall receive.
Sweet Hypocrisy
We've all had that blind spot, where we knew something but couldn't admit it even to ourselves. Severus Snape has no patience for such, and Percy is convinced he has not a drop of compassion.
More history: A very, very early fic, written right after Primer to the Dark Arts. This is where I fell in love with Percy. I meant for him to have a comeuppance. But then he surprised me with actual depth.
ETA: Before I forget, I have an invite code to AO3 for anyone who'd like it. |
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| Three out of control kids.... |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|12:01 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | still laughing | ] |
Worked in the G'town tutoring office today. They gave me all the little kids and I didn't give myself enough time to prepare --
-- okay, technically, mom wanted to watch Oprah interview Sarah Palin, which was worth seeing --
But:
#1 - I love my job.
#2 - Today, I needed leashes.
#3 - I still love my job.
If it's this cool teaching three out-of-control kids, what would it be like with a whole classroom full? When I'm like, you know, prepared? |
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