forchancookie: (Grrrrr!!)
OMG Livejournal! WTF! For the last few days, when I hit back to go back to my friend list, I get a freaking log in page. I'm already logged in! I use ljlogin and I'm pretty much always logged in and never log out. It's like Livejournal is ejecting my cookies or something. I shouldn't NEED to be logged in to view my f-list or half of the pages it insists I need to be logged in for. Fandom Secrets is an open community with no restrictions that is crawling with anons, but you want me to log in to view it? WTF is your problem? It's driving me nuts! And even once I refresh my log in, it won't let me go back beyond the point that the page appeared. The log in page will just keep popping up and it's driving me INSANE! RAR! Cut it out!
forchancookie: (Angry Chibi Viral)
Usually, when a recipe fails, it is because the person cooking/baking didn't actually follow the recipe. Every once in a while, you run into a recipe that just sucks. This is a story about one of those. A week ago, I was flipping through some Southern Dessert compilation magazine and they had a recipe for teacakes. Teacakes are not actual cakes, they're cookies. I guess they're a Southern thing. The only time I can ever recall having a teacake was when I worked at Cou-yon's. Our boss traded a guy a plate of BBQ for the teacakes he was selling. And they were good. They weren't crunchy, a bit soft, but still crumbly. I remember commenting at the time that it'd compliment a sweet potato filling really well. So when I saw this recipe, I had that in mind. However, the recipe called for seven cups of flour and I thought that'd be a bit much to make for this house hold with two people in it.

I looked for another recipe and came across Paula Deen's Southern Teacakes. When I look up recipes online, I always like to read the reviews, see who didn't follow the recipe, see how many reviews there are. I mean, a recipe with one five star review isn't necessarily as good as a recipe with 50 reviews adding up to 4 1/2 stars. I always poke around and look at alternatives and compare. I decided to stick with Paula's because of all the "It tastes like my grandma/aunt/church lady's teacakes" comments. I was hoping I'd get similar results.

Well, I didn't. I should have been suspicious of the brevity of the instructions. They're barely a paragraph long! No mention of creaming the butter and sugar. It reminds me of asking a kid to write instructions for a peanut butter and jelly. Put the peanut butter and jelly on bread and you have a sandwich. Ok, but how?

The recipe calls for two sticks of softened butter, 2 eggs and a half a cup of buttermilk and only four cups of flour. It mentions that the dough will be soft. More like completely unworkable for what comes next. There was just no way in hell that soft sticky dough was going to be turned out on a floured board, rolled, cut with a cookie cutter and put on a pan. But, skeptical as I was, I tried it anyway. The dough stuck to everything. I floured my cookie cutter, it stuck. I criscoed my cookie cutter, it stuck. I wasn't even able to get the excess dough from around my shapes because it was too soft! Clearly, it needed either more flour or to be chilled in the fridge and with that much butter. Though, I still couldn't see it working well after chilling without more flour.

Now, the funny thing is, I went back to the Southern baking magazine and do you know what their recipe calls for? Everything that's in Paula's recipe with the exact measurements, except it calls for 7 cups of flour instead of 4. I should have gone with that one to begin with. I had to work in more flour and stick it in the freezer and I'm still not sure if I will have anything worth eating. I wasn't very thrilled with my test batch of sticky dough. The two cookies I had came out so gooey. The flavor is pretty much standard sugar cookie. Basically, it's disappointing in so many ways. It's not like I changed any part of the recipe. I did add a bit of nutmeg, to attempt to get that spicy taste I remembered, but that's it.

I'm baking up the fortified dough that I had in the freezer now, but I'm already so disappointed with these teacakes, I don't know if I want to eat them. I hate it when a recipe falls through. The last time I had this happen, it was also a cookie recipe and also had issues with the butter. Basically, it was all butter and a ridiculously small amount of flour, and the cookies, if you could call them that, turned into melted puddles of butter in the oven. I had never been so pissed at a cookie recipe before. But now I'm having similar feelings of disgust. Now I'm going to mope around being grumpy all night. Stupid teacakes. Now I'll be stuck on the hunt for the perfect teacake recipe. The "perfect" recipe of anything can be so elusive!
forchancookie: (Five More Minutes)
Dear Birds,

My window ledge is not a good place for you to perch and hang out. Nor is it an ideal location for a nest. Yes, I realize that having the air conditioner in the window provides quite a bit of room for you to hang out on the sill, but you really shouldn't. One of these days, I will catch you and bake you into a pie because your infernal flapping and chirping in the wee hours of the morning is immensely annoying!

No Love,
For-Chan

Crop Job

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 06:15 am
forchancookie: (Hotei)
I was just in a community and someone had posted their icons with a note that "textless icons are not bases". You know what I have to say to that? Bases are not textless icons! ZOMG What?! Yeah, if you took a screenshot and cropped an image down to 100x100, it's not an icon. It's just a base. With no border, no text, no personalization, it's just a 100x100 picture, but I don't really think it's an icon just because you cropped it. I know everyone's thoughts on this stuff is different. It's like going "What is art?" except it's "What is an icon?" To me, an icon is something you took a little time on that expresses your personality in some way, be it through how you tweaked it to what you wrote on it. If you didn't make it, your choice of icons still says something about you. Ah well, I guess I'm just something of an icon elitist. But really, don't get your panties in a bunch when you make a 100x100 picture that isn't even a good focus or crop job and someone else feels the need to fix it up.
forchancookie: (Nametag)
Hi, my name is For-Chan and I'm a girl. I have a vagina and boobs but, I am not a sexual object. I am a woman and I have sexuality that I can choose to apply in certain situations, but on average, I am not a sexual object.

I take issue with people telling me that I must be a sexual object. I take issue with people telling me "That's just how it is." Ok, so that's how it is, but why does that mean I have to put up with it?

I'm one of those girls who subscribes to the idea that I can do whatever the hell I wanna do. If I wanna rage against the sexism inherent in the system, I'm damn well gonna. And the sexism is inherent in the system.

Let us take these recent outcries from comic book land. Mary Jane with her pearl necklace being a good house wife. Heroes for Hire being strung up and threatened with tentacles. Some of the details in these pictures, taken alone, I can handle. I understand that the Spidey suit probably needs a good hand washing and doesn't do well in the dryer. I understand that MJ wants to be comfy while doing laundry. Hell, I will even forgive her come hither stare. After all, women are allowed to be sexual. What really puts that over the top, for me, is her pearl necklace. A pearl necklace, symbolic of semen, symbolic of claiming. That's what just pushes it over the line. Without that, I would think "Hey, that's ridiculous and porny." With it, I think "Wow, way to convey a skeevy message about a woman's place."

As for the Heroes for Hire cover, again, it's the details that add up to take it over the top. Tying people up is just an old super hero standard. There's no getting away from that. Man or woman, at some point in their career, a hero is destined to be bound and restrained in some way. Being threatened by monsters, is again, an old standard. That's not really my issue here. It's hard to do the hero bit without some peril. I take issue with how they're threatened. Rather than be given some sort of expression of anger or any little spark of fire to portray the kickass girls they are, they are stuck with these stupid helpless drugged up expressions. They are bursting out of their clothes while slimy tentacles ooze on their skin. And how we're not seeing Misty Knight's crotch and pubic hair, I will never know. With pants that low, you're gonna see something right?

If this were a naughty hentai doujinshi, fine, but it's not. If I picked up a hentai doujinshi, I'd expect boobs and tentacles and fluids and "No. Stop. Nnn! Ha! More!" Last time I checked though, I wasn't looking at the cover of doujinshi. I thought I was looking at the cover of a super hero comic. I thought these girls were Heroes for hire, not hookers. The nudity, the passivity, the chaining, the tentacles, the overall sexually charged image just sits wrong. Why must these powerful women be stripped of their dignity? You can have dignity while chained to a pole and threatened by tentacles. A few looks of outrage on their part would help to quell my own.

I am not saying "Women cannot be sexual ever!" I think women can and should be sexual whenever and however they chose. I don't think this sexuality should be thrust upon us. Yes, these women are just drawings. They're characters. They're not real. They are simply pieces of art. But art is an expression of many things. Beauty. Desire. Values. So many things. I have to stop and question what ideas these people are expressing. I have to ask myself "Is this how you see us? Is this what you want us to be?" And then I say "Fuck that!" Because I am not a sexual object.

I'm a woman and I am more than a pair of tits and a vagina. I have feelings and opinions and I'm damn well going to express them. I don't care who likes it or who doesn't. I refuse to sit idly by and be content with "my place". My place is where I chose to put myself, not where other's chose to file me away. I am not going to be satisfied with a few little token freedoms. I want it all. I want to be seen as more than just a women with a big mouth. I want to make more than what they'll let me. I want to be more than what is acceptable. I want to do what I want to do. Because I'm a woman, and we're fucking stubborn like that.

If you're satisfied. Ok. Everyone's different. Everyone's desires are different. But for me, I am not content just to be what I should be. I want to be what I want to be. If I want to be loud and obnoxious and feminist, I'm gonna be. For me, feminism isn't about girl power or reclaiming female sexuality or being a manly feminazi. For me, feminism is just a belief that females are just as good as males and that I am worthy enough to walk as an equal. I am good enough to be more than a sexual object. I am woman, hear me fucking roar.
forchancookie: (Not an Artist)
Dear F-List,

This post is wanky. This post is a rant directed at a person who is a liar and a thief. Please feel free to skip this post and any wank it might generate. Should you have a taste for wank, please grab a bag of popcorn while I outline the situation for you.

I haven't talked about my RPing in this journal a lot. I'll tell you about it now, enough to explain this situation. Daeva and Drake initially came up with the character of David. He would be Archer's son with a female Kimblee. From David, the universe began. Roy became Reine, Jean Havoc became female and Hawkeye became a male and they had kids. Alex, Paige and Ryan were their names. Dae and I began to RP David and Ryan. Our wacky high-jinks inspired others. Phishy and Yuriko did some genderswapping and came up with Clara and Damien and various others. Worlds collided and it was random insanity and it was fun. Complicated, but fun.

Into this mix stepped Broken_Envy and Invidia1988. They had also been inspired and created a genderswapped universe. There were kids there as well. Lots of them. It got a little weird. They wanted to invade our universe, but Dae warded them off. It was ok, just weird. Then it got weirder. Suddenly their characters were popping up with our characters' names. Their characters were using the image songs that the others had carefully picked out. Hell, their characters resemble the art that Daeva and Phishy drew! Basically, something a little more than inspiration was going on.

But you couldn't bring this up. Oh no, you couldn't mention this. You see, Broken's been working on a novel for ten years and those characters are hers! She has rock solid proof of this!! Or so she claims. And when more characters pop up with more of our characters' names? Her sister made them. And when yet more characters pop up? Well we need to STFU up because we're big stupid bitches and you can't copyright a name. That may be so, but we're tired of these childish shenanigans. We're just a little too old for this kind of bullshit, and here is where I finally put my foot down. Cue an open letter to [livejournal.com profile] broken_envy.

Cut for sanitation and sanity )

September 2011

S M T W T F S
    123
4 5678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930 

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags