Queer by Choice

Because I had nothing better to do am weirdly obsessive about collecting totally useless statistics.

Most people who list me as a friend will find their names listed somewhere in this entry, unless they have less than three friends or almost never update their journals, in which case I didn't bother including them. Also, people who I list as a friend but who don't list me back will most likely not find their names listed here (because if they don't promise to read my journal, I don't promise to prevent them from feeling left out if they do read it).

One-third or more of the journals on the following people's friends lists are also on my own friends list:

dlfke: 10/10 friends = 100%
emilys: 21/25 friends = 84%
inkstained: 15/22 friends = 68%
monkeyinboots: 4/6 friends = 67%
lentrot: 13/25 friends = 52%
soulmyst: 5/13 friends = 38%
frankepi: 19/53 friends = 36%
princesswitch: 9/26 friends = 35%
roguebear: 6/17 friends = 35%
dragkingvenus: 2/6 friends = 33%

Poor dlfke - she has absolutely no life outside of mine! No wonder I adore her.

Also, I observe a definite trend here: every single one of the people listed above is a member of my Queerchoice Mailing List.

Statistics for other people are listed below, in order of what percentage of their friends are friends of mine.

seemingly: 2/7 = 29%
legolastn: 8/36 = 22%
marcelduchamp: 2/9 = 22%
rabidchilde: 2/9 = 22%
ksuzy: 3/14 = 21%
compound: 19/93 = 20%
joxn: 4/20 = 20%
moistgrrluk: 5/25 = 20%
now: 6/30 = 20%
pomobarney: 3/15 = 20%
revel: 3/15 = 20%
24hrheartattack: 7/36 = 19%
eve_l_incarnata: 6/31 = 19%
arsenothelys: 8/44 = 18%
cityskyline: 7/40 = 18%
heiwalove: 10/56 = 18%
herpuppet: 4/22 = 18%
asrai_d: 6/36 = 17%
jwitchbaby: 10/58 = 17%
rlj: 7/42 = 17%
transientdyke: 8/48 = 17%
fyreharper: 3/19 = 16%
humanx: 11/72 = 15%
jkatj: 6/40 = 15%
cd332: 3/21 = 14%
misterkrista: 4/29 = 14%
redrider: 10/73 = 14%
theobscure: 5/36 = 14%
theself: 1/7 = 14%
xenopsidal: 5/36 = 14%
fashionvictim84: 2/15 = 13%
groovycat: 11/88 = 13%
heavyleg: 11/82 = 13%
roxann_ireland: 3/23 = 13%
secret_agent: 21/165 = 13%
infidel: 3/26 = 12%
spee: 4/34 = 12%
starfishsarah: 12/98 = 12%
twowayfreaks: 11/91 = 12%
braveowl: 3/27 = 11%
illscientist: 11/98 = 11%
ohandrea: 10/93 = 11%
whadda: 8/72 = 11%
( Collapse )
In terms of sheer absolute numbers of friends in common, disregarding the percentages, the top 5 are:

emilys: 21/25 friends = 84%
secret_agent: 21/165 friends = 13%
frankepi: 19/53 friends = 36%
compound: 19/93 friends = 20%
inkstained: 15/22 friends = 68%

P.S. People with paid accounts should definitely try this out. It's fun! And people with free accounts can, well, try it out on the accounts of their paid user friends . . .

If there's any creepier way to be awakened than this, I haven't experienced it yet.

I stayed up till 4 a.m. last night. Not for any very good reason, but it was a Saturday night and I didn't see any reason why I couldn't sleep till noon on Sunday morning.

Today at 9 a.m. sharp I awakened to the sound of someone pounding the metal knocker on my front door. Since my apartment is essentially all one room, this pounding was extremely close by and I jumped about 3 feet straight up at the sound of it and woke up instantly. I couldn't answer the door because I naturally wasn't dressed for that, but I went to the front door to peer through the glass peephole and ensure that it wasn't some kind of surprise apartment management visit. (They're supposed to give me written notices in advance, but when you're sitting around undressed and you know that complete strangers own the key to your apartment and may very well be knocking on your front door preparing to enter, it seems wise to keep an eye on them so that if they take out anything that looks like a key and start inserting it into the lock on your front door, you can frantically apply your weight to the inside of the door and scream at the top of your lungs for them to let you get dressed first. For anything short of that, though, I just pretend not to be home.)

There were two guys standing outside, but they didn't look terribly official or anything, and they didn't take out a key. After a few minutes they left. I went back to bed, but after the adrenaline rush of being awakened to the threat of a home invasion, I found it hard to go back to sleep immediately. (Normally I fall asleep instantly within less than 30 seconds of making contact with the pillow.) Then about five minutes later a loud hammering began somewhere on the same wall that my bed is pushed up against. At first I thought it was just a momentary thing that would soon go away, and it sounded like it was down on the first floor somewhere, like maybe my downstairs neighbor was hanging a picture on the wall. But it didn't go away, and I couldn't possibly hope to sleep with that racket going on, so after a while I peered through the blinds to find out what was going on.

TWO MEN HAVE CLIMBED UP ONTO MY BALCONY AND ARE GOING AT IT WITH HAMMERS!!!!

They've been at it for 45 minutes now and they're still there, not ten feet from me as I type this.

I so much hate my stupid apartment management people for doing this first thing in the morning on a weekend and not even notifying me that they were going to.

Through a weird stroke of actual good luck, last night I actually remembered to close and lock the sliding glass door that leads onto the balcony before I went to bed last night. I'd had it open for hours to cool my apartment off since at night it's coooler outside than it is inside. Otherwise the situation would be even creepier.

The abortion stories community is extremely worth reading. Anyone who's had an abortion can post their experiences there, regardless of whether the experiences were positive or negative. There are many negative experiences (women who've been pressured into getting an abortion more to please other people than to please themselves), and many positive ones, but even the women with very negative experiences are usually pro-choice. If you're as sick as I am of hearing abortion discussed by people (both male and female) who obviously have no firsthand experience with abortion, this community is a huge relief. There's no debating over weird metaphysical questions - just real life stories of all different kinds of experiences.

It's also a rather useful chronicle of the failures of pretty much every method of contraception ever invented, other than abstinence and exclusive homosexuality.

Okay. I may not be at chat today (#QueerByChoice on DALnet) because I'm possibly arranging for my dad to take me car shopping at that time. Though I'm unlikely to buy anything for a month or so, as that, apparently, is the sensible way to handle evil used car salespeople.

My mom says my dad's Nissan pickup truck cost $14,000 brand new and that Nissan Sentras are "about the same price." That doesn't make any sense to me. The truck is huge! My car is tiny! How can they possibly be the same price?

Maybe I can get some miniature thing with two doors that gets 50 million miles per gallon?

My fellow Sacramentan lm has written an entry about the ever-fascinating (*ahem* at least to me . . .) subject of, yes, choosing to be queer!

Apparently I'm having some kind of 100-Live-Journal-entries-per-hour kind of day today. Hopefully I won't annoy you terribly with them. I mean, I could combine them all into one and make it look like less, but they're not really related in the least so I'll just make you put up with the fragmentary nature of their naturally occuring state. Anyway, here's another fragment I couldn't resist posting: a rumination by the one and only Arsenothelys, who is, to the very best of my knowledge, the absolute most adorable person in the entire country of Belgium.

I just finished writing out a check for $12,372.18.

And I brought my new car home with me!!!!!!

I had not planned to actually buy a car today. Only to look. We went to three dealerships, my dad and I. But at the third one, my dad said the price I was asking for was really good and he'd be surprised if I got it. In fact, he said I shouldn't even look at the car that I ended up buying because it wasn't realistic to expect that we could talk them down to my price range. But I took it for a test drive anyway, and I said, "Yes, I like this car very much but you're asking $16,000 for it and I can't pay any more than $12,000 so we'll just have to look at something else instead." But they didn't have anything else similar so they had to keep trying to sell me that one instead. I asked for the Kelley Blue Book retail price (it was $13,500ish) and I told them that was still way to expensive so I'd just go look elsewhere, and I got up to leave but they made me sit down again and kept bringing the price down and down and down, until then they said they'd just charge me $12,661 out the door (including tax and license and fees) and I said no, I couldn't go a cent over $12,000 so it just wouldn't work. So my dad and I left and got in his truck to go home, and I was sad because I really liked the car and I knew that technically I could afford it and I'd probably end up going back to buy it anyway, but I wanted them to lower the price. I asked my dad what the odds of them calling me with a lower offer were, and he said he thought it was about a 50/50 chance. I was terribly sad to have to leave it behind but then just as he turned the engine on and started backing out, they came running out to ask me if $12,300 would be okay, and I still said no, not a cent over $12,000, and they said hold on, let me go back in and maybe I can get you $12,100, we just can't do $12,000, won't $12,100 be low enough, you can get an extra $100 from your dad, can't you?" and my dad said, "no she can't, she's 25 years old and it's her own responsibility to pay for her own car," and the saleslady said, "Boy, first-time buyers aren't supposed to be this tough," and the salesman said, "She's not going to be a buyer at this rate, I don't know if I can get permission to go as low as $12,100 and she won't even give me that," and I said "I'll give you $12,050" and he went back in and came back out and he wasn't smiling so I thought all was lost but then he said:

YES! The car was mine for $12,050 out the door. (Although I didn't actually quite get out the door at that price because then they managed to sell me a $300 security system somehow (not an alarm; it's a thing that prevents the engine from starting unless it senses the presence of a little thing on your keychain). Grr. But they wanted to sell me more than that and I turned them down on most of it so I think I'm okay with that arrangement. By the time they brought that up my dad had decided his duties were properly fulfilled and he went home to have dinner and left me to take care of the rest by myself.)

Anyway, I got home, and the car is mine mine mine mine MINE!!!

It's a 2001 sort-of-silvery-with-a-tint-of-gold Nissan Sentra GXE with 20,755 miles on it. And I am terrified to drive the thing because it's so expensive and so unfamiliar and so much beyond anything I've ever dared to drive before.

Now all I can do for the rest of the evening is pace the floor full of my adrenaline rush and peer obsessively out the windows every three seconds to re-admire my shining new $12,000 acquisition.