• Mood: hungry
• Music: The Who - 5:15

more control and discipline, plz

Fought with my new pants this morning and lost; clearly the pants were not with me, and so I went to work wearing the old cargo pants again. This afternoon I found out exactly why they didn't fit: I have tacked on 15 pounds in the last few months since my departure from PCM, which makes pants that would have been snug then unwearable now. Shit. I knew I'd gained weight, but fifteen pounds?* It's time and past time to get rolling on the diet and exercise thing that I'd told everyone I'd be able to do now that I wasn't trying to do seven impossible things before breakfast any more. Going to start small this evening by taking a post-prandial walk up the block and back, after which I shall assemble and load a bookcase.

And speaking of fat, the whole Rachel Moss/Wiscon/Something Awful mess makes me wonder (as I so often do) if the notion of respect and common courtesy is something that's mostly dead in American society. Don't get me wrong, I've flamed a few people that I thought had it coming in my time, but I never went out of my way to intentionally embarrass and humiliate a bunch of random strangers like that. It would never cross my mind to do that to Wiscon (or Minicon, or [insert convention here]) however much I might not agree with what goes on there, mainly because it's none of my damn business. People want to go to Madison every year and talk about feminism and SF/fantasy in a semi-academic environment? Fine. More power to them. They're not coming up to me at Detour or Convergence or Balticon and getting in my face about it, so what do I care? So I have to wonder WTF is wrong with Rachel Moss that she'd consider doing what she did just for the lulz. Sure, I'm a Goon, and we do hassle people in EVE and other games, BUT THEY'RE FUCKING GAMES, PEOPLE. Messing with people IRL like this is just...juvenile and shitty really doesn't begin to describe this. I can totally understand some of the rage that's been expressed over this; it's hard enough to be fat or a minority or LGBT in most places without having one of the places you've come to consider safe violated like this. I don't have any useful suggestions for people on how to deal with the aftermath of this crap, and I wish I did. badger2305 is right, though: a thoughtful, measured response is going to be a lot better in the long term than just flying off the handle.

In other news, I'm permanent at Wilbar Truck Equipment as of today, or maybe next Thursday depending on how the length of assignment/severance fee situation works out.

*For those of you scoring at home, I now weigh 440 pounds and some inconsequential ounces. Oy gevalt.

UPDATE: Hey, we've attracted some anonymous cowards from SA or /b/, not that I really care which. Bored now, so comments locked.