User Profile
Add Friend
Add Note
Track User
Send V-Gift
Renegade Folk Hero
Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night
Created on 2002-08-03 22:09:30 (#655370), last updated 2009-11-23
4,995 comments received, 4,395 comments posted
Paid Account [Gift]
1,258 Journal Entries, 216 Tags, 1 Memory, 0 Virtual Gifts, 18 Userpics
| Name: | Liz |
|---|---|
| Location: | Michigan, United States |
| Website: | Rylie & Liz |

That is my cat, Rylie.
He is a total asshat.
To read more about Rylie, visit Rylie & Liz.

![]() The Brief I'm a relatively high spirited Michigander who aspires to one day publish amusing things while being an ass-kicking and subversive librarian. I grew up in a small town in all of its glory: apple fest; the number of churches equal to that of the bars; rabid conservatism; and countless nights filled with driving around in the hope of figuring out what to do for entertainment. Most of my adolescence and life has a lot to do with butting heads with authority figures, and I'm sorry (pleased?) to say that not all of my battles were entirely reasonable. My journal is a splendid combination of social commentary and autobiography wrapped in a fine purple paper of bitchiness and a little flourish of class -- 3 years ago I decided British spellings were for me, because they are correct. At one time I was a student at a university, but they got rid of me by presenting me with a B.A. in history. Presently I am employed as a substitute teacher, which is hilarious considering that the one thing I NEVER wanted to do with my degree was become a teacher. Unsurprisingly, I enjoy knitting scarves (it's the only thing I can actually knit...), my cats and dog, reading, tea, plotting my "witch/cat lady/spinster" days, comedy, ghost stories, and contemplating the best way to annoy the neighbours (they have it coming -- you have to imagine that being said in a very level voice subtly wrought with justification for the act). ALSO: I collect witch hats. The Exposition Presently I am a substitute teacher in the school district I was a part of in my younger days. Yes, it is hilarious. Not only have I been given access to impressionable young minds, but I have been given this fantastic opportunity by people who should know better. One of my loves is reading -- it's on the top ten pleasures list, probably somewhere after being
Eventually I hope to continue my education by enrolling in an information science (because apparently "library science" is an out of date term) program. It was that or law school, and I don't know that I want to deal with the frustrations of practising law day in and day out. I also don't know if I want to spend half of my salary on bail after being held in contempt of court. However, I do want to do good while planting seeds, so naughty librarian it is! My rebellious streak does the backseat in one situation: driving. Road rules: rules that are around purely for the purposes of safety and to prevent IDIOTS from crashing into me, resulting in the loss of one of my limbs, are a-okay. Other than that, it seems like a lot of authority is kind of ridiculous and some of society's structures are based on notions I do not support. At all. My father's family takes a lot of issue with the radical aspects of my personality, but in all fairness they're total Reagan-loving tools. The family members on my maternal side aren't terribly rebellious at first glance, but a lot of them are subtle in their little and occasionally unexpected rebellions. I am loud in rebellions, mostly because I think butting heads with authority is fun/funny/worth shouting about. Even as a child I would proclaim to my parents, babysitters, other adults, "YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME." Once a teacher complained to my mother that I had circumvented her rules, requesting that my mother punish me. My mother refused to punish me for being intelligent enough to outsmart the teacher ("Well, they're your rules!"). Awesome. In the prior, semi-historical vein: I'm the child of two "foreigners" in my home town; which is to say, my parents were originally from the Detroit area. Another marker of "other" was the divorce my parents (thankfully) decided to get in the mid-80s. There were obvious drawbacks to my family's newness and status of "stranger" in the area, most notably getting bumped from kindergarten to begindergarten in favour of letting the younger children of long-time residents into that particular class. However, there were advantages: I have never hit on one of my cousins, unwittingly or intentionally; what inbreeding there is in my family tree was left in the early 19th century. I don't really believe a lot of long-time residents of this area can confidently AND truthfully say that. Finally: about the British spellings. Occasionally people wonder why I choose British spellings over the spellings favoured by the USA despite being a Michigan resident. The answer is simple: I greatly dislike Noah Webster; he was a dick. He's right up there with Avril Lavigne. Just because you're trying to rebel by changing a spelling, doesn't mean it's clever or even sensible. What the hell do you think when you see "boy" spelled as "boi?" Noah Webster is no better than Avril Lavigne. I hear he didn't play his own guitar, either. Networking My friending policy (which sounds completely pretentious) is pretty simple: I will usually friend a person who has friended me. Just, please leave some kind of note SOMEWHERE (messages, comments...) so I know. If you just friend me without saying anything at all, I will probably think you're friend collecting/trying to sell me something/attempting to sneakily get me to read your novel (see: "trying to sell me something")/creepy. I will not freak out if eventually you decide to unfriend me (unless it's via "friends cut," because get validation somewhere else, seriously), just like I hope you won't flip your lid if I decide to unfriend you. Sometimes journals/people just aren't what you expected them to be, and that's perfectly fair. I also won't feed you some bullshit line about how we're not "meshing." I prefer not to make a big deal out of altering my friends list. Also: I kind of hate LiveJournal for making "friend" a verb. Layout credit | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interests (150):
30 rock, adventures, agnosticism leaning toward atheism, amy poehler, anarchism, angela carter, animal rights, annoying door-to-door fundamentalists, anthropology, anti music-elitism, artie, atheism, autumn, big band music, blooregard q. kazoo, bold colours, books and cleverness, breezy scarves, bright side of life, british history, calvin and hobbes, celtic mythology, cemetery exploration, challenging social conceptions, chemistry, chicago, chubby pseudo-emo guys, colouring books, communism, crisp october mornings, dark humour, david wain, democratic socialism, detroit, doing science to things, dust, environmental sustainability, equal rights, euro dorkiness, fair trade, fairy tale analysis, faux-emos guys making out, febreezing smokers' faces, fellow bold bookworms, fire personalities, folklore, frequently using "totally", general asshatery, ghost hunters, gingahs, gob's chicken dance, grammatical experimentation, gryffindor inclinations, gryffindor-inspired varnished toenails, halloween, hark a vagrant, high spirits, home movies, human rights, humour as defence mechanism, ian mcewan, insulting noah webster, irish history, irish literature, jane austen, jumping in puddles, lake michigan, leftist rage, light switch raves, lightning and thunder, magic, magical realism, making baby jesus cry, margaret cho, marxism, michael ian black, michael showalter, michigan, mocking racism/homophobia/sexism/et.al., monty python, museums, natalie portman's gangster rap, native american folklore, neil gaiman, newt the cat, non-traditional punk, october, old fashioned tea cups, oxford english dictionary, paranormal activity, passion, patrick stump hats, personally applied cinematic scope, pete and pete, philip pullman, picturesque moments, pirates with conscience, post-modernist literature, pretending i'm (generally) european, pretentious introspection, proletariat, punk, purple, pushing daisies, pushing limits, rabble-rousing, rage, red, red fraggle, reddish purple, revolutionaries, rhetorical composition, roaring 20s, romantic liaisons in libraries, rylie rupert the cat, sass, sassy purple librarian glasses, seamus heaney, secret passageways, shark hugging, silly walks, skye the dog, small town childhood, snogging holmes and watson, snow, socialism, stardust, stella, stockings, surreal humour, tcm, tea, the 1940s, the cheat, the last unicorn, the midnight society, the muppets, throwing knickers to tesla, tom servo, vegetarianism, vernors, vlad the plymouth acclaim, walter & perry, wanderlust, wendell memorial society, whimsy, windswept hair, zelda belle the cat, zoobing, zorak
Friends [View Entries]_puchula_, beatonna, beauty_muse, beckyib, blakebonics, chii123, darthdw, downwardlashes, fishmonger, flavoredcat, fozziewaca, harowiin, kawaii_not, kdtb, l_anana, labonnegrace, leenk, likeawoman, lilliah, meaning_making, notabadcat, nothingbroken, orchid75, satin_glimmer, shellspark, sterling_sky, winkingstar, xo_taradactyl
_puchula_, beauty_muse, beckyib, blakebonics, chii123, darthdw, downwardlashes, fishmonger, flavoredcat, fozziewaca, harowiin, kdtb, l_anana, labonnegrace, leenk, likeawoman, lilliah, meaning_making, notabadcat, nothingbroken, orchid75, satin_glimmer, shellspark, sterling_sky, winkingstar, xo_taradactyl
Communities [View Entries]bookish, chuck_chic, enchanted_a_a, ghostbusters, green_future, halloween_fan, haunted_tales, holidayshares, irish_history, jumpingpictures, lolhistory, lolscience, sharkfans, snarky_haiku, the_tea_garden, topfive, vegetarian, wtf_history
Feeds [View Entries]