Moving

So I'm moving. Not far, but it's a change.

The problem is that I'm not going to be here when I'm supposed to move in. I'm going to be away until a few days before I move...and I need most of my things OUT until I leave. I have no way to pack about 90% of what I have here because of that fact.


Also, on Customer Service. Notably, Verizon.
I have one of my best friends coming to move in with me. I won't be there, and I need someone who is on my account, authorised, to be there to change over/accept the router and box. This is not good.
Apparently, no one gets the concept of moving from a one-person studio with barely room for a bed and a desk to a two-bedroom with a roommate. Also a difficult concept: NOT BEING THERE WHEN THE FIRST PERSON MOVIES IN! I've been asked if I want to CANCEL my plan and WAIT THREE MONTHS TO BE ABLE TO GET A NEW ONE. No, I do not. I want to move, move my plan to the new address in the same city, same coverage area...but my roommate happens to be moving in well before me, due to a very extended vacation. She needs to be in before Christmas. I'm not coming back til almost January. I have no way to be there, and she needs the internet at the very least.
Is that so difficult a concept?

Also, apparently I have been on the phone to someone who says they're in Seattle. Sure, okay, but can you at least TRY to speak English in a way I understand? I mean, it's one thing to claim to be in Seattle, but another thing to claim to be in Seattle in a very strong Mexican accent speaking broken English, and passing me off to someone else because "I am sorry, no understand."
Next guy claimed to be in PENNSYLVANIA. I have nothing against the state, probably a great place. I do not believe, however, that someone in Pennsylvania works at a Verizon call center. For one thing, Pennsylvania doesn't HAVE a Verizon call center. Nope. There's one about five miles outside of Seattle, apparently. The closest Verizon TV/net call center to Pennsylvania is...about three states away, I believe. So that's one strike. The second? Your accent, Ma'am, is not even American, let alone North American. That's not exactly so bad. All sorts of accents here. Yet I can barely understand you through this accent and you seem to be using words that I've never heard. A lot. Passed off again.
Finally! Someone who speaks English. Hello, Mr. Canadian Guy! But you say your call center is in Texas?
I was in Texas for five days and I couldn't stop myself from picking up the accent. Your accent is CLEARLY eastern Canadian. Okay, whatever. I need help........and hours later?
"I'm sorry, I have no clue what you're trying to do."
"I have been saying this. I am moving to a two-bedroom apartment up the street. My roommate is moving in well before me. I need to add her name to the plan so that she can accept the new box and router, as I will be away when she moves in."
"Why do you need a new one?"
"I was told that the ones I have are tied to this building. That I can't move them from here."
"So you can cancel your plan and get a new one in three months."
"I don't HAVE three months!"

And so on. That was pretty much the conversation.


Don't you LOVE when that happens? Nope, neither do I, but it happens.

Oh, dammit, I need to change my ID again when I get home. Three times in as many years. They're gonna LOVE me.

I belong to a group of people online. They're going through this upheaval. The leaders are AWOL, nothing gets done even when they DO show up, and we've now initiated the process of picking someone. I've already chosen.
There were two favorites, but only one has any real talent for leading. He was the one who CALLED the meeting in the first place. He chose group leaders for minor events that make the whole group more active, things they wanted to do.

Isn't that what a leader is? Someone who can see what needs to be done, what wants to be done, and can step back and say, "This is something better done by someone else. This I can do. This I can do, but this one has a better grasp of this particular thing. This I can do. This I need to do." and so on? Other people agree he already leads our group, whether he realises it or not. This is something that our group NEEDS. This is something that will make our group stronger, more active, more fun to be with and do things with.

Now let me tell you something about the other guy. He can be a real sour pickle sometimes and has the name to match. Oh, he's personable, he's nearly always with the group, but somehow, he's...lacking. I don't think this guy can handle leading. Maybe sub-leading...maybe. But this guy...he has his friends, and then he has..........those other guys in the group. He knows of the others, maybe a hi, hello, oh, heard about that thing, great for you!

But the clear choice? He has his friends, and then he has his other friends. Maybe they're not as close, but he cares about them just the same. He takes the time to make sure they're doin' okay, maybe do they need help with this or that or the other thing?

So what do you all think? Who's the better choice?

Yeah, me too.

Fulya out.

Fulya's Music Time! THINK! (Aretha Franklin)

I love music. I love it to death. Sometimes I have no words for something, but there's a song.
A lot of my emotions can be expressed more accurately by song than by discussion. A lot of the songs I feel express emotion aren't really about what I project into them. But isn't that what Music's really about? Taking a song, a song someone put their emotions, their energy, their feelings into....and FEELING it, making it...no LETTING IT be about something in your life?

Let's take this song: Aretha's Think. The original one.

To me, it will forever be my way to tell one person...
"Think! You're trying to push me into a box I don't belong in! You're taking who I am...no, who you SEE me as, and you're trying to make me "better" by making me just like every other stereotypical popular girl!"

You see, she thought I, the perfectly happy person, would be made LESS MISERABLE as she told me everything I was and loved being was WRONG, and that if I just acted like everyone else, I would be happy and have friends.

And to this day I have never been able to really tell her this:

If you had stopped to THINK about things, you would have seen that I was happier BEFORE you started your crusade to make me be just like everyone else. I was depressed, yes, but through no fault of my own. I wasn't unhappy, I was FUCKING DEPRESSED! It's a medical condition, not an emotion, and it cannot be FIXED by taking the things that make me happy and labeling them as "bad behavior", "bad habits", and "bad parenting.
Yes, bad PARENTING. She wasn't, and still is not, even my mother. Or my aunt, or my grandmother, or my older sister, older cousin, or any other sort of family member. She was someone who, having the opportunity to as my father's girlfriend, took a look at the girl with the Game Boy, the tee-shirts, the jeans, who considered any day where she wasn't outside doing something a total loss, who loved who she was. She said, "Oh, she is depressed, which is another word for unhappy(no, lady, it's a medical term, too, and you SAW me having fun, too, and took your OPINION and it didn't fit, so you threw the FACT away!), and I must fix that! Look at her, she's like a boy! She's in the woods, climbing, running around! She'd be happy to have more friends, and to get more friends, she must look and act like a popular girl!"

Now, here's my thing with popular girls. I don't like 'em as a general rule, because as a general rule popular girls in schools of any type are self-important bitches who think everyone should toady to them. I had a....very personal experience with one of those bitches.

Her name was.....hmm...let's call her Rachel. Rachel was my best friend since before we could walk. For the first four years I was in the school system I was in private school. And then, in fourth grade, I started at the local public school. Of COURSE Rachel went there. So the first day, when all 20 of us kids were waiting for the doors to open, I saw Rachel. So of course, I did the smart thing and waited to see where she was socially, right?

Nope. I was stupid. I was a MORON.
I didn't know any better.

I went up to her, said hi, and hugged her. Stupid in hindsight, but really, it was my first time setting FOOT in a public school. And of course she took me aside and explained popularity, right? Because she was one of my best friends, the see-every-weekend kinda best friends, right?

Nope. She pushed me onto my butt and said, "I don't know WHO the HELL you think you are, FREAK, because I've never seen you before in my LIFE."

And so it continued, and that's why I was miserable. The Head Bitch decided that I was a bit of gum on the sidewalk, and so I was treated for almost three years. Sure I went to her house, she invited me after all. But I got pushed around both physically and verbally, and her mother, my mother's friend, looked away and pretended it didn't happen as I was pushed down stairs, called freak and moron and idiot.

And so while this was going on and everyone knew, this BITCH girlfriend of my father's decided I needed to be taught everything about being a girl. Being a girl meant being popular, I was told. It meant wearing things I wouldn't wear now to go swimming in to beach parties when I was 10! It meant treating others like so much lint on a white shirt.
And it meant giving up my game boy.

That was IT. NO ONE TOOK MY POKEMON GAME AND THREW IT INTO THE TRASH!
So she learned that was a Limit. I actually physically attacked her for that. So she learned one thing and I learned one thing.
She learned that NO ONE MESSES WITH MY GAMES!
I learned to keep my games away from her.

When I was nine I got an iPod Mini. You know, those big clunky things in pale colors, metal, old-fashioned LCD screen?
I'm pretty sure it was never more than seven inches from my person until finally, after replacements and replacements of replacements, it died. That is to say, Apple decided to drop it from its supported devices.
From that time on, I had an iPod. The longest I have NOT had an iPod was....March to June.

But still, all that time, she was trying to change who I was, who I couldn't NOT be. I watched Wolf's Rain. She called it kiddie and a cartoon, and why was I watching it? She never saw one frame of it.
She said video games were for little kids and slightly older boys and I shouldn't be playing them, because I was one: too old and two: a girl. She didn't get why I liked sci-fi(and it wasn't really. Star Wars was great and Doctor Who, and Stargate was amazing, but I couldn't STAND anything else.), she called it over-hyped and stupid. I forgot to mention how many fans Stargate and Who had/have. She could NEVER understand why I went around with headphones glued to my ears. She thought my interest in Japan was "inappropriate" and once even ripped up my homework because it wasn't in English. It shouldn't have been...but I thought she knew the difference between Spanish with Japanese in the margins because it helped me remember a couple words and Japanese. I mean, there's no letter e in Japanese...it's all kanji and kana, no Latin lettering at all. Still...to her mind...

And so that's how I lived. Being accepted by more and more people for who I was, and going home to someone who never gave me an opportunity to tell her what I thought, because she was too busy criticising my decision to buy a period tunic dress...with my own money.

And where was my mom? There. I lived with her for the most part. She had to go to Florida my senior year because of Grandfather. I was kept out of the loop, my dad decided I'd do better being told lies and half-truths as my grades got so bad I almost didn't pass, though they.....that's another story for another day. But I was told everything was fine, they could come back at any time, while my mom had a heart attack and Grandfather couldn't walk on his own.

And through this all, that BITCH was the one who told my father to keep it from me.


My mom was always there to say that I was who I was and I should be proud. Grandfather was there to be my dad in a lot of ways. He was always there, and he didn't have to work through Ms. Girlfriend saying that she would do better talking with me when I was "being inppropriate". So she was the one to tell me that no one wanted to hear about how I was doing in Japanese when the person I was talking to asked. She was the one to tell me no one listened to music and hummed while doing homework. She was the one to tell me that I needed to start wearing miniskirts and ruffles because I was 12, and not a little kid who wore jeans and tees to school. That I..........and on and on with the bad crap that I knew wasn't true.

And that all brings us back to the song.

"Think about what you're tryin' to do to me!"
And think: why should your laws of how a girl should be apply to me?
Let your rigid mindset go, let yourself be free to accept the differences in people.
We are not all how you think we should be! We have the FREEDOM to chose who we can be.

And that is how that song makes me feel, that is what I put into it.
Someone for years trying to make me who I am not, who, if she had just thought instead of putting me into a box and trying to cut out all of who I was that fit into it.
If she had thought, who knows how our relationship would have turned out, instead of the barely0civil thing we have now, where I pretend to like her just a little.

Opinions

My first post was about pop-culture being about sex, drugs, money, and violence, not necessarily all at once. It was about how consumers accept what is thrown to them, and rarely question how the RIAA got so big, so powerful, and controls so much, while pushing out 20-minute hits. I said make your own opinions. I said don't just pick your opinions up off the floor that the RIAA and the RIAA-controlled radio threw them.
I said, "Think for yourself."


I again go to that girl who was so wrapped up in her own opinions that she refused to let fact in. Why did this happen? When did it start? How many kids are we raising to think that way - that fact has no room in our bubble of opinion? Can't they realise that fact and opinion are just two parts of the same idea?


Some examples for you all:

FACT: The Beatles were the most popular band of their era, with dozens of hits on dozens of charts in countries all over the world.
OPINION: You don't like the Beatles.
BAD THINKING: You don't like the Beatles, so anyone who does is an idiot, or a liar, or just plain wrong. You don't like the Beatles because the Beatles suck.
BETTER THINKING: I hate the Beatles. I don't want to listen to the Beatles. I won't listen to the Beatles. Some people, however, do like them, and just because they do doesn't mean they are wrong, stupid, or idiotic. It just means they like something I happen to hate.

FACT: The Twilight Saga is a series of books written by a housewife who had never seen the town she was writing about. Some aspects of this series match the popular young-adult writing fad of the time, which was to write about vampires, usually with romantic overtones. Its cult following ranges from very young to older adults, and can be irrationally vicious when defending their books, but has also been known to be rational and accepting.
OPINION: Twilight books are the best books ever! No one could ever write better books!
OPINION 2: Twilight sucks. They were badly written and rather boring.
BAD THINKING: You don't like them!? How DARE you! You wouldn't know a good book if it hit you on the head! Well, maybe you would! I'll hit you on the head with a good book until you get it!
BAD THINKING 2: You're an idiot for thinking they're anything but trashy vampire romance novels and they should be taken off shelves and burned!
BETTER THINKING: While I like these books, like is subjective. People might like books I hate too, but does that make them wrong? I'm pretty sure an idiot couldn't read all those long backstories by the guy who wrote about Legolas...or learn to speak whatever language that is. Books are books are books, and Twilight is just another bunch of books.
BETTER THINKING 2: They're trashy vampire romance novels, but they're good for trashy vampire romance novels. They're not up to the literary standard of, say, Tolkien or Lewis, they won't ever be assigned in a high school literature class, but there are people who like trashy vampire romance novels, good for them. Not every book is for every person, or why would there be so many books?


See? That's better! But yeah, no one's going to think like that unless that sort of thinking is ENCOURAGED. And that's the problem. They see their parents trash-talking someone's right to choose, as if that's not a right at all, as if choices of entertainment, music, books, friends, attitude, places...as if they are wrong? That's going to be what they do, too! Kids learn from parents.

But perpetuating the cycle of hate, of marking opinion as fact, and fact as opinion...when will that stop? Because eventually it's going to blow up in our faces.

Politics, a game of opinions, of choosing the person who you, personally, think would be better for the office they run for, has become a battleground of hate. No longer are we voting for people. Now the majority are voting AGAINST a candidate rather than FOR. And candidates, too, are dealing in factual opinions.
Romney is going to take away a right to CHOOSE for yourself something that should only ever BE your choice, ladies. Those who don't want an abortion shouldn't be able to say, "I don't want one, I don't believe in them, so you shouldn't be able to choose to have one."
Another Romney thing: taking away the right for same-sex LEGAL marriage. So what if you think it's disgusting, so what if you think it's wrong, that it's mandated by God as sin? That's between you and your RELIGION.
Tell me if I'm remembering this wrong, but I thought that our ancestors decreed that there be separation of church and state. Forgive me, and again, feel free to point out my potential wrongs, but I thought that meant that just because the federal government says that this is what is, what has to be, that you guys, you religions, didn't have to follow it? Well, unless you were into human sacrifice because I'm pretty sure that's murder and I'm pretty sure murder isn't covered by the excuse of religious reasons.
But am I? Am I right or wrong? Because if I'm wrong, then okay, my bad. But if I'm right, then you have your right to deny religious marriages to anyone you want, gay or not...but it's not up to you, not your choice, not your CALL, to deny legal marriage to anyone save active clergy, and then only in some.
I can't call to mind anything Obama has denied as a right that is an opinion, but if you want me to find out, sure, go ahead, tell me, and I will look it up. That's your RIGHT, to have an opinion.

But when your opinion is flaunted as fact, as what is, what has to be because you think it so, you want it to be so? That's where you should take a good hard look at your "fact". Go ahead, do it.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Is my fact universal?
Is my fact something that can be PROVEN?
Do other people have an opinion that directly contradicts my fact?
How many other people believe my fact?
Does my fact have anchors in real life?
Do people call my fact "controversial"?

Those are not be-all, end-all questions. All I can say is that if you get into a yelling match or an argument over something you believe is true, you've gone too far. Opinion or not, the only way we're gonna get back to things that matter, things that need to be addressed rather than things you want addressed, is to agree that everyone has a RIGHT to CHOOSE, and that no one has a right to PREVENT that choice.
But remember, things can go so wrong as soon as you neglect what is for what you think is.

As for my name

This serves as my intro.

So what's up with the name, and what's that text at the top? FULYA_ANSUL_SOL=HYMME

First we must go to the game Ar Tonelico

Reyvateils are bio-mech girls who can sing and interface with the Tower at the center of the world to produce various effects like explosions, freezing someone, etc.

Magic. Song magic.

These Towers, there are three, require an Admin, a Reyvateil who does not age, does not die.

Shurelia, admin of the first Tower, Ar Tonelico, has said many times in her game that she has seen too much, seen the world change in the greatest ways....and the worst.

Similar things have been said by the other two admins, Frelia and Tyria.

The Origins, for that is what the Admins are called, are named after Norse gods.

Eoria(Shurelia) is the only one that's REALLY hard to get, she's Eir.

Tyria and Fureria(Frelia's straight transliteration)

Freria

Tyr and Freya

So I took the name of a Norse god and modified it, Fulya

The way a Tower knows what Reyvateil is accessing it is by their Hymn Code.

It goes [NAME]_[RANK]_[TOWER]

My Tower would be Sol Hymme, the Tower of Manifesting Song.

the rank of an admin is ANSUL

FULYA_ANSUL_SOL=HYMME

Taken just by what I said earlier, "Fulya, who has seen too much, she of manifesting song"

A very long way to say that this blog is what I think has gone wrong with the world, and that I love singing.

I will update at least once a week with a song, and hopefully once a week with another post.

This scares me.

I'm sure you've all heard that story about the Twilight fan insisting the Lord of the Rings movies were the original format, and I'm sure that you laughed, haha, Twilight fans can be such blockheads. But has something similar ever happened to you? I can say it has.

A few days ago I was in my local sub shop, minding my own business, waiting for my food, humming "I Want to Hold Your Hand". The Beatles are awesome, right?

Well this kid, couldn't be more than fifteen, she comes up to me and plants herself four inches from my face and says, "I'm sure you're having a great time with it, but it's bugging me. That song's supposed to be much slower."

It took me a bit, but I managed to choke out, "Not the original!" Then she said something that made me think, and even feel a little sad for kids if this is really how they think.


"I don't know what Helium-speed version you're listening to, but Kurt did the original." At this, I really did choke.

"Have you, poor thing, never heard of the Beatles?"
"Who are they?"
"Four guys from the UK, they were so popular so fast they called it Beatlemania, and let me tell you, I wish I could have seen it. News, televised concerts, screaming fans. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon. They were amazing. There's one album cover that no one will forget. Four guys walking across Abbey Road, on that striped crosswalk..."
"Lady, I don't know HOW old you are but I never heard of no Beatles."

I admit it, I asked for help. I asked the guy at the next table, "Hey, you ever heard of the Beatles?!"
"Sure! I remember it like it was yesterday...they were sure somethin'."
"Now, could you tell me some of their most famous songs?"
"Sure! Hey Jude, Yesterday, I Want to Hold Your Hand...my wife and I got married and that was the second song."
"Thanks."

She looked at me like I was crazy. Then she did something that I will never, ever, in my worst nightmares, want to believe.
She denied it.

"I don't know who you two are, but it's not nice to go around tellin' people about a band doesn't exist." And she walked out.

Is this what American pop culture is now? Is this what we're leaving behind? Five-week bands, songs about domestic violence, sex, guns, and money chanted by people who couldn't sing if you paid them? Songs needing six writers and four producers for sixteen words rearranged every which way? Kids who don't bother to look past the next big thing? The way things are going, Sinatra will be just another name. No one will remember the BeeGees. No one will have HEARD of the BeeGees. It'll be what crazy thing this person did and OMG! A teacup kitten I want one! and "Did you hear what happened to [Name]?" No one will recognise good music. No one will know any better! Already we have rabid fans who DON'T RECOGNISE OPINION! I almost had someone ATTACK me once because I said that, a few years back, the Jonas Brothers "aren't my thing". Not, "I hate the Jonas Brothers with a passion and hate their fans too!", just, "Meh. They're really not my thing, but go ahead and listen if you want." I got SCRATCHES down my ARMS for DARING to say that I, personally, didn't like this band but it's great you like them, opinions rock. I now am SCARED to say ANYTHING to a Justin Bieber fan because even the worst Jonas Brothers fans had NOTHING on the rabid intensity of the vast majority of Bieber fans I have come into contact with.

This isn't what we want to leave behind! This isn't what pop culture should be! Why has this happened? Pop culture shouldn't be about rabid fans and denial of things that you didn't know before. It should be about things that are great, things that are popular and going somewhere and.... Not dresses made of meat and what this rich girl bought for six hundred million, or this newest rap song with swearing and allusions to domestic violence and drug money... Not what the music industry puts in front of our faces, not what the RIAA shoves at us until we're so used to it we just accept that whatever they say is good is amazing and awesome.

It's time to try making opinions, instead of buying them.