LJ Idol Presents:

 I'm not sure where this one came from.  I just googled it, and it came up as a "French proverb", but only when I put the quotes around it. 

It's a cliche, but aren't most things?  ;) 

It's definitely true for this competition though. There is only one path forward - and this is it:

Only those who do nothing never fail


The deadline to link your entries back to this thread is Sunday, December 15th at 7pm ET. 

Have fun!

A few words from clauderainsrm:

5 writers are left. All extremely talented and deserving of making it to the end. But that isn’t going to happen. (Sorry, but that’s not how this works)

So YOU, the voters, have the decision of who isn’t going to get to 4.

Read the entries. Comment on them. Let them hear what you have to say about their work. Who doesn’t love feedback?!? Vote for your favorites! It’s pretty straightforward. Then - let other people know about what is happening here and what you’re reading and enjoying! That’s how new people find us after all, you tell them about it!

The poll closes Tuesday, December 10th at 8pm ET. The writer with the fewest votes will be eliminated.

Good luck to everyone!

I’ve closed the poll early because erulissedances  opted to sacrifice. There is. No telling where what would have happened if that hadn’t occurred considering that when I closed it, this Write Off was down to a single vote difference!!!

If it wasn’t clear, she was the one that I was talking about when I said how delighted I was to see that people were enjoying this mini season. It was an exciting surprise to see her knocking on the door of the Top 5! With a smaller field there are more chances for people to get noticed. It was an incredible run and I’m so happy that you came out for this mini season!!! I hope you enjoyed yourself. (I know your schedule might make it difficult to home game, but there aren’t very many weeks to to that anyway!)

 Last week results are in, and it's another Sudden Death Write Off!!! (in retrospect, this mini season should have been called "Sudden Death Write Off") therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1175899.html

The new prompt is up though for those who want to get started. therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1176122.html

How was your Thanksgiving? ( For those in the US who celebrate. )How was your Black Friday? (For those who celebrate.) How was your weekend? (For those who celebrate? :D) 

Anyone looked up the definition of the new prompt yet? Any ideas flowing? 

I've been checking in on the results and every time I looked, they were a little different. That teeter totter of death kept moving, finally landing on... you guessed it, a tie.

Which means we another Sudden Death Write Off! This time between

erulissedances andlittlebitofearth (We came within a SINGLE VOTE of half the field being in a Write Off)

It is an Open Topic, which means you can write whatever it is that you want, as long as you bring your A-game. This is the difference between the Top 5 and falling a short. But it is also an opportunity to get a little more attention just before that final sprint to the finale!! So use it wisely.

The deadline to link your entry back to this post is Tuesday December 3rd at 9pm ET.

Have fun!

 The deadline for the prompt is TUESDAY the 26th at 7pm ET. therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1174967.html

I'm mentioning this because there are currently only 2 of the 6 contestants who have posted. So unless you WANT these to be the final two, if you are one of the others, I'd highly suggest getting your entries in tomorrow/today/time is an illusion and also depends on when you see this post!

How is your week going so far? 

There is some more foolishness happening this week. 

Toe be more specific, the prompt this week is 

Fool's Errand 

The deadline to link your entry back to this post is Tuesday, November 26th at 7pm ET. 

Have fun!

 The poll closes Thursday night, and it's really close. So if you've been holding off making your voice heard, now is definitely the time to do it!!
therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1173701.html

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Funny coworker story. Well "funny"... 

Of course there is one who irritates me now. Because that's how it works.  :) 

This morning she was talking about all of the problems with the country, and how she loves her son "unconditionally" but she just has a problem with him being gay.  She was also angry that one of his friends called her "cis-gender", which she said with an over the top shocked voice that obviously expected everyone within earshot to ALSO be amazed that "the kids" were using words like that. 

But those weren't the things that *really* shook me.  Those things I'm used to from her. 

No, it was later in the day when she was talking about how bad music was these days, and talked about how when she was young that she loved all kinds of music. For instance she LOVED when Mick Jagger and Run DMC recorded "Walk This Way"... sort of puts the rest of her opinions in context...

 I kept meaning to post a Green Room, but honestly right now I'm not really sure what to say to people. 

I've been posting a lot more of my thoughts on my Facebook, but it's mostly been about politics and I'm not even going to pretend that I don't know that there are some pretty "diverse" opinions on the subject here, the same way there are everywhere.  :)  So I really haven't wanted to wade into that here. 

I will say though that up until Friday night, even though I've been posting things pretty frequently, I hadn't had a single person unfriend me. Sure, maybe they "hid" me months ago. I don't do that with my feed... but I completely get why someone else would. I *might* need to do it at some point because one of my friend's husband tags her in *every single thing* he posts. Some of it is political (very right wing) and some is what he ate... the joke with his daughter (who I also know) is that he tags her when he goes to the bathroom.  It's become a running joke but it does mean there are a LOT of posts from someone that I *didn't* friend and I've never met. 

I say "until Friday night" because that's when my brother unfriended me. It wasn't over a political post, but he thought it was... and he was getting tired of the posts I was making. (One of his comments was that I should "concentrate on my life/career and I'd be more happy"... I should point out that he was CLEARLY drinking heavily, alone in his apartment, on a Friday night. Whereas I was sitting on the couch next to my wife. But that might be petty to point out. :D) 

The post?  "I wonder which rapist is going to win the fight tonight? The old rapist or the young rapist?" 

Which was a reference to the Mike Tyson - Jake Paul "fight" and about how both of them have multiple accusations against them, Tyson actually went to jail for it. (and *still* has more accusations since he got out) Which was an angle that I haven't seen a lot of people talking about in terms of the excitement leading up to what turned out to be (from people I've seen reacting to it after the fact) more of a marketing stunt than an actual boxing match. 

Clearly my brother thought at least one of these rapists I was referring to was a political figure that he admires. (I did point out In the comments to that post about how, being a Steelers fan, I *completely* understand. I ended up having a rapist on my favorite team, as one of the main figures/leaders and had to come to some sort of peace with the idea of if I could still root for the team, and had to decide - for myself - that it was bigger than one guy. So I "get" how you might try to separate those two thoughts into separate categories.) 

All of this got me thinking about what I found out about my brother from my Dad and Step Mom back in the '90s vs what I found out by hanging out with him for the first time as an adult about a decade ago. 

(For those who don't know, I moved away from Ohio as a pre-teen, pre-internet days and pretty much lost touch for the entire side of the family) 
My stepmom actually called me in the mid-90s to let me know that my brother had been discharged from the military because he threw a party, and someone underage showed up to the party, got drunk, fell off the balcony and died. There was an investigation and my brother was being kicked out of the Air Force as a result. 

Which seemed weird, even at the time. But saying "Your brother was responsible for some kid dying" is a lot to wrap your brain around. I felt sorry for him, but again, we weren't close so there was never really a time to talk to him about it. He had other people he would go to to talk about serious stuff. 

It wasn't until we were able to hang out a decade ago that the subject came up and he looked really confused. He literally didn't know what I was talking about.  When I explained, he got a disgusted looked on his face and told me, no, he was discharged because his commanding officer found out he was gay during Don't Ask, Don't Tell. 

My Dad and Step Mom would have rather me think that my brother had been responsible for a kid dying than the reality of him being gay. Think about that for a moment. Let it sink in. 

It's pretty much when I realized how grateful I was that I *had* moved away and wasn't close to that side of the family.  That sort of "love" and "acceptance" was what helped lead him to the point where he's sitting alone on a Friday night, drinking heavily, and defending the people THEY love, because he IS close with them,and he DOES want them to love him... I can't quite understand it. But I do know it makes me sad to think about. 

Anyway... how is YOUR week been going?  

I'm bad at these transitions.  So here's this week's poll: therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1173701.html

The new prompt is up  therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1173190.html

and last week's results:  therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1172882.html

***

How have YOU been? 

***

Btw - I saw the comment. If people want to post their Home Game entry in the comments of a poll, they are welcome to do so. I just don't want to confuse anyone by having them in the *actual poll* post itself.