A meme lifted from barry_king: The Rules: Go to page 77 of your current MS. Go to line 7. Copy down the next 7 lines/sentences and post them as they’re written. No cheating.

It's not really that "current" of an MS at this point (last touched August 2011, before I moved to DC for grad school), but it'll have to do.  It's Junction Rally.

“Hey, Rodriguez,” said Paul when Team Gold paraded past.  “Thanks for switching with me.”  He grinned crookedly and ran to catch up with Jason, who was wearing the flag like a cape and staring straight ahead with the focus of a bullet.  Other people just slid off Jason like water.  Sam knew that the smart thing to do would be to get in Jason’s good graces, because that kid was clearly going to inherit everything.  Marcus hadn’t done that and he was treading water, always getting the shittiest assignments – taking the injured to the clinic, disposing of corpses.  And Sam, being the idiot his sisters always told him he was, had just traded in a spot on Jason’s team for a chance to be around a demon.

Last year I read this sweet little article on Jezebel, "How Tragic Kingdom Saved My Life," about the writer's therapeutic "relationship" with the No Doubt album, and I remember thinking, hmm, I'm so obsessed with carving albums up into patchwork playlists (and leave the dregs behind!) that I don't really have any especially meaningful albums.  I think that's started to change a little - I can't imagine carving up The XX (The XX) or Loveless (My Bloody Valentine) because they're like 40-minute songs - and now I have discovered The Birthday Massacre's fourth album, Pins and Needles. 

The Birthday Massacre is one of my guilty pleasure bands - they're so ridiculously Hot Topic with their Goth!-Alice-in-Wonderland aesthetic that they seem kind of embarrassing for a 24-year-old pre-professional - and I can't say they're musical geniuses by any stretch.  I would not have discovered them had it not been for Pandora, which suggested to me "Lovers' End" and "Happy Birthday" off Violet.  Today Pandora suggested "Two Hearts" off Pins and Needles and I was instantly in love:



Obviously I was particularly drawn to the lyrics: "Two hearts beating, one beats the other while the other just looks away."  Yesterday I admitted in therapy that I'm attracted to people that seem damaged - instead of wholesome, normal, well-adjusted, generally sane, like they could go live in a little box made of ticky-tacky and be satisfied - because I see myself as damaged and dangerous, and at least if they're already messed up, I won't feel so guilty about the inevitable damage I will do.  This is what I was thinking about while dancing (painfully sober) at a bar/club in Farragut North on St. Patrick's Day (the song I declared to be "my song": a techno remix of "Somebody That You Used To Know.").  My friend Alicia was ecstatic as we left because she hadn't gone clubbing in a while - whereas I went to Pure and The Bank in Vegas this past weekend, and besides which I feel no great difference between a silver-glitzy club and a bar with a dance floor, so there is zero novelty for me - and I just ended up feeling claustrophobic and anxious to get home, which is I guess what happens when I go clubbing sober. 

So anyway, Pins and Needles.  Is very listenable, to start with, and has TBM's trademark sound, which I cannot describe as anything other than like, deathpop, although wikipedia calls it synthrock (they say that about almost everything I like, though).  They are named after Clive Barker's Imajica, which tells you something.  They go with Jack Off Jill/Scarling and Kidneythieves in  my head-catalog.  And this album in particular sort of perfectly describes the contrasting elements in my life - the high-pitched pop of everyday tasks and my "upwardly mobile" trajectory and my happenin' friends and contacts, vs. my melancholy, downward-sloping heartbreak.  And the words.  Even the title Pins and Needles pretty much accurately describes my existence. 

From "In The Dark": "I'm in the dark, I'm alone around you.  I've never been here before, nobody here to get me through."

From "Always": "Repeating words until they're true: it slows the breathing.  Pretend they never came from you: it kills the feeling.  I'm not what you want:  you said what I never could."

From "Pale": "I'm looking at a face, a pointed chin towards the sky in arrogance./  Imitation, a fabrication, a pretty fake, but counterfeit, an empty carcass behind the artist, is there a trait of innocence?/ And much to our dismay, they're ignorant.  The more that we make up, the more it fits./  This doesn't feel right, feels like everything's further away.  Dead as the nightlife.  Hindsight, watching another mistake.  We never feel right."

From "Control":  "Two-faced, too poised to shed a tear/ A new trend: indifference."

From "Shallow Grave": "She was always good for nothing when the good broke bad.  All she's got to lose is everything she never has.  Every back turned to her./  She never fooled us because she could never fool herself."

From "Sideways": "How can you criticize when you're not here to compromise?  Words fade as time goes by without you."

From "Midnight": "I can't decide which one of us will leave here alive.  Your fingers breaking as I place them over mine.  The only thing I need is time to change your mind, I said./ I can't decide which one of us is dreaming tonight.  I'm just a shadow in the light you leave behind.  The only thing I need is time to change your mind, I said./  It's always darker at the end of every answer, like a finger down the back of your throat."

From "Pins and Needles": "It's been so long, feels like pins and needles in my heart.  So long, I can feel it tearing me apart./ It's always a nightmare, it's never a dream."

From "Sleepwalking": "Wait, dear, the time is getting late here.  I'm all washed up and graced with feigned applause, dressed in a cheap facade.  I'm looking for a place I'll never see again.  A night turns to a day, a street I've never walked on.  I was never here, just a faint reflection.  A day turns to a month, a second of affection./  Faking, there's nothing here worth taking.  Just my reflection fading on the wall, not the fairest one of all."

From "Secret": "I woke up as I waited.  Bleeding slow, there was no way to make all this blow over, so I started writing the ending.  I said too much.  And you just kept on pretending for both of us.  I could never speak anyway.  What you wanted to hear, I couldn't convey./  All the days that I've counted, you'll never know."

I don't know if Pins and Needles will save my life, but it certainly gives my inner turmoil some voice.  It's alienation in a busy city, it's walking back to the metro at 2 a.m. alone, it's being "pre-professional" at all in this city of berserker networking, it's the pure sadness of unrequited love, it's the chase.

A couple weeks ago (during the pre-break work crunch), I left the Graduate Research Center around 9 p.m. and decided to catch the shuttle back to the metro near the undergrad dorms.  There were four girls in the bus shelter when I got there - it was cold, but they were going out - teensy dresses, leather jackets, jesus-christ-heels, flat-ironed hair, mascara so thick it looks like feathers, gum.  The uniform for going out, especially in the under-21 set.  All white, all at least trying to look loaded.  The undergrads at AU have a reputation for being dumb rich kids from Maryland and the surrounding area whose parents were like "ohhh-kay, I guess you can go to college in DC but be careful sweetie" - the grads, by comparison, are like the underdog team in any given sports comedy (Georgetown, GW, and Johns Hopkins take turns pointing and laughing, but the price is wrong, bitch). 

These girls would have intimidated the shit out of me when I was an undergrad, by sheer virtue of looking like they knew how to dress, knew how to be cool, had friends, were going "out," etc.  They crowded around one iPhone watching the "Rack City" video like it was some kind of scandal that they were watching it at all.  Then other girls, and one guy who was clearly trying to play the pimp role, joined them - by the time the shuttle got there, there were about two dozen of these little rockstars ready for their big night out.  They took up nearly the entire bus, and treated the thing like it was their personal party limo.  Everybody preening in the window. 

And then there was me, and one other grad student in the class I'd just gotten out of - both of us had our earbuds in and gave each other customary curt nods - and at the back of the bus, by herself, one lowly undergrad who was not invited to the Party.  And she wasn't ugly, or frumpy, but she was still wearing makeup junior high style and her hair was unkempt and her clothes weren't cool.  I looked at her and the gulf separating her from the Cool Kids and thought, "there but for the grace of God go I."  In fact, that was me as an undergrad, and it was awful.  I remember trying to get the look right everyday before class - because I sure didn't go to parties - and just failing all over the place.  Just never got there.  I had the chance to be part of a preppy-cool clique early on in college and I simply could not keep up appearances.  Because when it doesn't feel natural, it feels like you're trapped on some hideous piece of gym equipment, climbing up but slipping down and under so much strain. 

I have no clue how I got out of it (a similar thing happens on the Law & Order episode "Quit Claim," when Connie shows the judge a picture of her in college to show how women's appearances can change, and the judge is like, "point taken").  Time, maybe?  Finally going to a school that I feel fondness and "spirit" for?  Those two years in Nebraska getting drunk in a more "low-key" environment?  A year pretending to be a presentable date for a normal Nebraskan boy?  Is it wearing jeggings and bandage dresses, God help me?  I don't know.  I don't know how I fell in with the popular crowd in my program, how I became one of the girls that "brings the party," someone who "knows people."  Natnari always jokes that you have to schedule a social appointment with me two weeks in advance.  There is much closer correspondence between professionalism/competence and popularity in grad school - it's actually a very good thing to be friends with the faculty and staff; the resident bombshell of SIS is staff.  It's definitely a good thing to have a white-collar job - the more networked, the better.  But the art of Being Cool is also much more intense because we're that much closer to adulthood, and I'm not falling off the StairMaster this time, and I just do not know why. 

So I kind of wanted to go up to that girl on the bus and tell her it'll get better (I feel like I shouldn't use that phrase anymore, but how else to say it?).  But it's not like I don't get imposter syndrome either - imposter at my job, imposter as a student, imposter as a popular girl most of all - it's not like I don't half the time feel like "inside every Chris Hargensen and Sue Snell is a Carrie White clawing to get out."  I'm just trying my best not to let the two "sides" merge.  I do not want to be a Mean Girl, which is why I maintain my effort to be (almost) everyone's friend - a goal I originally set up to just not be unpopular again, for the love of all that was good and holy.  But I can see how easy it would be, to be a Mean Girl, especially when you've always been on the wrong side of the bleachers and you're on this nouveau-riche high.  Especially when being on the wrong side of the bleachers in your teen years graced you with a constant, consuming sense of resentment (ressentiment?).  And especially when, like Gatsby, getting rich didn't get you what you really wanted all along. 

Katie is my favorite character of the Paranormal Activity franchise.  For a while I had a default icon that was called "because she looks like Katie."  She was the reasonable one (compared to her boyfriend Micah) in PA1, with a delicious darkward turn as she becomes possessed and kills Micah, as if telling him in the most ferocious terms, "see, this is what happens when you don't listen to me, dumbass."  PA2 reveals that she became possessed because her brother-in-law Dan "sicced" the demon on her - it was to save his wife and son, but still - and Dan gets his comeuppance and "Katie" gets "her" revenge when she comes to their big fancy house, demon-possessed, to kill Dan and Kristi (his wife/her sister) and take Hunter (the infant son).  In PA3, Katie is a child who gets dragged (literally) into Kristi's bad-idea-of-the-year "friendship" with the demon - she and Kristi both end up at least somewhat possessed and in the care of their evil witch grandmother Lois*.


I really love PA1, enjoy PA2 mostly for the big "Fuck U" it allows Katie to give, and am not such a fan of PA3.  I think this is because I didn't like the story that the creators (who changed from movie to movie) eventually laid out to explain what happened in PA1.  Witchcraft - especially of the matriarchal "coven" variety - in horror always sets off an alarm in my head: "this is a women-are-evil story."  That's accentuated in the Paranormal Activity franchise by the special importance given to the firstborn son, who everyone will go to extreme lengths to protect and who is apparently Blue Moon rare (girls in this family are basically throw-aways, especially if they can't be broodmares).  By contrast, Katie is sacrificed by her brother-in-law because she's nothing to him - she is an expendable, mother to no one.  Dan's teenaged daughter from a previous relationship, Ali, is the only one who says "hey, this isn't fair to Katie," and Ali is also safely tucked away on a field trip during Katie's rampage.  And while I liked the potential that Paranormal Activity had to be Katie's Good Girl Gone Bad (kind of Laura Palmer in reverse) story - even if witchcraft and a special son had to be involved - PA2 and especially PA3 show that there's nothing unique about Katie.  The same thing happens to her sister.  They get possessed and go bad because they're women (and I will note that the possession scenes always read very "rape-y" to me), the end. 

There's a perspective shift too.  In PA1, Katie and Micah are both leads, and you're in each of their headspaces; because the "paranormal activity" revolves around Katie and she's an adult, she might be more the main character than Micah.  PA2 is very decentralized - it's also very shallow in the sense that it's in no one's head in particular, and all the characters are ciphers.  In PA3, the boyfriend of Katie and Kristi's mother, Dennis, is the lead.  Katie and Kristi are children and not especially emotive ones, and their mother Julie is a non-entity.  The next closest thing to a character in PA3 is Dennis's male videography buddy.  It's interesting that in PA3 Katie and Kristi are basically there to be "creepy little girls" with incomprehensibly creepy behavior - "little girls are creepy," as my roommate says - whereas there's nothing creepy about Hunter, the baby boy in PA2, and the audience is simply meant to feel protective of him ("that poor baby boy," etc.).  PA1 sets itself apart from its sequels because we actually get to be in the headspace of the eventual-possessee, to see her as a three-dimensional human being instead of just a "creepy little girl" or a blank mother-type placeholder (in Kristi's case - who is Kristi?  God knows!). 

Men are do-ers in the Paranormal Activity franchise.  Micah is dense and foolish, but he is the macho take-charge investigator - and this trait of his is sort of mocked in PA1 as Micah bombastically insists that "no one comes into my house and fucks with my girlfriend" and Katie's just like, "you don't have power here" (his defensive reply is something along the lines of "don't tell me I have no power").  In PA2, Ali is the investigator, but she's not an actor, and she apparently wields zero influence over any other character, making her relevant only as an info-dumper.  Dan, the brother-in-law, is the only actor, and shows piss-poor decision-making - firing the maid for saging the house, ignoring video footage that he himself arranged, and ultimately transferring the demon to Katie.  Dan is actually absent during most of the movie (when the women of the house are being afflicted with paranormal activity), and it falls on him to make up for his failure to be the responsible man of the house by saving Kristi and Hunter and sacrificing Katie to the darkness.  Dennis, Katie and Kristi's would-be-dad, is neither a dolt nor an asshole, and is more of a protector for Katie and Kristi than their own mother.  He's heroic and self-sacrificing, a sensible investigator, and the good-guy foil to the human villain, the evil grandmother (there are no human villains in PA1 or PA2, and I think this does change the dynamic of a horror story - just ask Stephen King).  And of course then there's the biggest do-er of them all: the demon.  With all the marriage talk in PA3, the demon is definitely male.  But whereas the human men of Paranormal Activity all (arguably) mean well as they try to fix this situation that their women thrust them into, the human women are either corruptible to the extreme or just irrelevant, and in all cases unable to even try to protect themselves or their loved ones.  Their bodies are the battlefield for the war/pissing contest between the human men and the male demon. 


The demon always wins, and it's through the demon that the human men are killed by the women in their lives.  The visual effect is different, though: on screen, it's psycho bitches on the loose (with the only really affecting death, at least for me, being Micah's at the hands of "Katie").  It's too bad that Katie's actions at the end of PA2 probably aren't Katie's at all.  I would have preferred her to be taking revenge on Dan and Kristi - if only subconsciously, if only with the last smidgen of Katie that still existed within the bloody Katie-shell - but it was probably just the demon being demonic en route to obtaining that precious little boy. 

"Jennifer's Body" - Hole
"Arsenal" - Kidneythieves
"Climbing Up The Walls (Radiohead cover)" - Sarah Slean
"Behind Blue Eyes (The Who cover)" - Sheryl Crow

Dear F-list, any recommendations for a place that might be receptive to a story that is: (a) minimally "fantastic," and definitely not science fiction, (b) dark, (c) contemporary?  It's also political, but you probably could have guessed that.  And while I wouldn't call it "experimental," it's not really traditional and straight-forward either.  It's a little ~obscure~. 

Fata Morganas (responsible for "The Flying Dutchman," UFOs, etc., named for Morgan Le Fay): "Fata Morgana mirages tremendously distort the object or objects which they are based on, such that the object often appears to be very unusual, and may even be transformed in such a way that it is completely unrecognizable."

For example:

In 1818, Sir John Ross was on a voyage which was an attempt to discover the long-sought-after Northwest Passage. Ross's ship reached Lancaster Sound in Canada. The Northwest Passage was straight ahead, but John Ross did not go in that direction because he saw, or thought he saw, in the distance, a land mass with mountains, which he believed made going any further simply impossible. He named the mountain range of this supposed land mass "Crocker Mountains". He gave up and returned to England, despite the protests of several of his officers, including First Mate William Edward Parry and Edward Sabine.  The account of his voyage, published a year later, brought to light their disagreement, and the ensuing controversy over the existence of Crocker Mountains ruined his reputation. Just a year later William Edward Parry was able to sail further west, through those non-existent mountains.

Ross's second mistake was to name the apparent mountain range after the First Secretary of the Admiralty. Naming what was in fact a mirage after such a high official cost Sir John Ross dearly: he was refused ship and money for his subsequent expeditions, and was forced to use private funding instead.

By an odd coincidence, during a 1906 expedition 88 years after Ross's expedition, Robert Peary gave the name Crocker Land to a land mass which he believed he saw in the distance, northwest from the highest point of Cape Thomas Hubbard, which is situated in what is now the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut. Peary named the apparent land mass after the late George Crocker of the Peary Arctic Club. Peary estimated the landmass to be 130 miles away, at about 83 degrees N, longitude 100 degrees W.

In 1913, Donald Baxter MacMillan organised the Crocker Land Expedition which set out to reach and explore Crocker Land. On 21 April the members of the expedition saw what appeared to be a huge island on the north-western horizon. As MacMillan later said, "Hills, valleys, snow-capped peaks extending through at least one hundred and twenty degrees of the horizon.”

Piugaattoq, a member of the expedition and a Inuit hunter with 20 years of experience of the area, explained that this was just an illusion. He called it "poo-jok", which means mist. However MacMillan insisted that they press on, despite the fact that it was late in the season and the sea-ice was breaking up. For five days they went on, following the mirage, until on 27 April, having covered some 125 miles (201 km) of dangerous sea-ice, MacMillan was forced to admit that Piugaattoq was right. Crocker Land was in fact a mirage, probably a Fata Morgana.

Song for tonight (for the line "I still dream of Dad.  Though he died."  Although today I was dreaming mostly about Silent Hill and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, of all fucked up combinations):

I published two stories this year that were "the kind of thing I want to write," by which I mean, more in line with my mission of being informed by socio-political concerns: "Princess Courage" at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and "Absolute Zero," in Creature!  Thirty Years of Monsters (reprinted in Fantasy).  Francesca, thank you for your thoughtful emails.  I'm just very bad with emails, and online communication in general, these days.  If I see that an email is not related to work or school, it goes way on the back burner.  I did really try to make "Princess Courage" not about "imperialists = bad," although of course I do think imperialism is a scourge upon the earth.  Reading Charles Glass's interview/list of books about Americans abroad yields this wonderful-yet-simplistic truism:

So what is the fundamental error of colonialism?

That’s another subject and not really literary but I suppose its fundamental flaw lies in telling other people what to do in their own countries.

When I was writing "Princess Courage" I had a whole playlist called "Current Story 2" that I never got a chance to share - I'd like to do so now.  Here are the songs, in actual order (I don't think the zip file put them in order, because it's awesome/I can't be bothered to figure out how to fix this):

• "Das Tor" - Faun
• "Proven Lands" - Johnny Greenwood (There Will Be Blood OST)
• "Runes and Men" - Death in June
• "Lament for the Wild Geese" - Cruachan
• "Death and All His Friends" - Coldplay
• "Violet" - Hole
• "The Quest I" - Tomandandy (The Hills Have Eyes OST)
• "Scar" - Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica OST)
• "Yesterday's Hymn" - Queen Adreena
• "Low Five" - Sneaker Pimps
• "Take Your Time" - Low
• "Horrorshow" - Bat for Lashes

I didn't make a playlist for "Absolute Zero."  But this is the song that I quote in the beginning:



In the interview that I did for "Absolute Zero," I mentioned something about being biracial, I believe, contributing to how I wrote this story.  I totally stand by that, and this song reinforces that.  Of course I don't want to imply anything so pathetic as one-of-these-cultures-is-monstrous (jesus christ), but the sense of belonging/un-belonging, the where-the-fuck-did-I-come-from, the hiding in plain sight in Nebraska, the if-I-join-your-kingdom-can-I-feel-less-bad... that's all there.

There is also a playlist for "Current Story (1)" as well - that story is "Endless Life," which I recently sold to Laird Barron at the new mag Phantasmagorium (huzzah).  I'm doing edits for that beast now.  Just like "Absolute Zero" was inspired by mishearing a terrible SyFy movie, Carny (yes, really), "Endless Life" was inspired by the rather terrible SyFy program Ghost Hunters International - specifically, the one where they go to South America in search of Hitler's ghost.  A lot of my stories seem to be an attempt to explain/extrapolate from some absurdity on SyFy.  "Endless Life" has a fantastically appropriate playlist, if I may say so myself - either that, or I have creepy/disturbing/sad taste in music.  These are probably the most appropriate songs off that playlist:

• "Now Now" - St. Vincent
• "If I Had A  Heart" - Fever Ray
• "When I Am Queen" - Jack Off Jill
• "Bela Lugosi's Dead (Bauhaus cover)" - Nouvelle Vague

"Endless Life" is kind of set within the same world as "Intertropical Convergence Zone" and "Red Goat Black Goat," even though those two are much more obviously set in Indonesia and refer - in passing, in the case of the latter - to Suharto's regime.  "Endless Life" isn't really identifiably Indonesia, and I name that General, but it does fit into the whole critique of authoritarianism. 

Speaking of Indonesia, I'm working on a new novel (yeah...) about a group of young Indonesianists called The Crew.  Trying not to put too much pressure on myself to make it perfect this first time around.  Trying not to falter under the weight of my own expectations.

"The Prisoner's Dilemma differs from the Stag Hunt in that there is no solution that is in the best interests of all the participants; there are offensive as well as defensive incentives to defect from the coalition with the others; and, if the game is to be played only once, the only rational response is to defect."

"The fear of being exploited most strongly drives the security dilemma; one of the main reasons why international life is not more nasty, brutish, and short is that states are not as vulnerable as men are in a state of nature."

"States that can afford to be cheated in a bargain or that cannot be destroyed by a surprise attack can more easily trust others and need not act at the first, and ambiguous, sign of menace."

- Jervis, "Cooperation Under The Security Dilemma," 1978.

My experiment with Mad Men is now over - it just got too depressing for me.  I have started devoting my couple hours of free time between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. (seriously) to Nip/Tuck, which so far I'm enjoying a lot more.  It's interesting, because they're ostensibly very similar shows - main characters are male professionals, there's a lot of emphasis on objectifying the female form and shallow facades (advertising, plastic surgery) - but whereas my reaction to Mad Men was "oh my God, I hate you all," my reaction to Nip/Tuck is "yeah, that's pretty much the way it is," and even though neither Troy and McNamara are anyone I want to know, I give them more leeway than I do anybody in Sterling Cooper.  I think it's a generational thing, though.  Like, which set of men and women are we taught to consider normal, or something like that.  Once again, I don't really like anyone (but ugh to McNamara's teenage son in particular), although I do have a strange fondness for Kimber and Julia.

I must say that I also enjoy the insanity and grotesqueness of Nip/Tuck.  And the music.  This is the full-length version of the opening theme - unsurprisingly, there's a ton of thinspo videos set to this song, but there's also a bunch of thinspo shit set to Radiohead's "Creep" and Fiona Apple's "Paper Bag," so whatever.  It makes me think of... well, grad school, but life in general if you're living in Go Getter World.  And I realize now that I am back in that world, and deeper in than I was as an undergrad because the emphasis now really is on becoming a full-grown yuppie, not just getting hot drunken pictures of yourself on Facebook (which is, I think, what it was in undergrad).  I kind of consider myself lucky that I fell into this job, even though I hate it and am fairly bad at it, because it hooks me up to the two professors who can connect me to anything/anyone in the very narrow field that I want to enter.  Hilariously I apparently decided to wed myself to this field in a matter of, oh, a month.  But I've sworn off government work as an option, so there you go.  I am left with think tanks.  I think I'm just kind of like, "okay, fuck it, Southeast Asia politics it is, fuckin' good enough."  My point is I don't necessarily feel like I have to struggle as hard as other people I know who are just starting to feel out a direction.  Of course, there is more to life in Go Getter World than having a well-connected job, as we all know, and I still feel pressure - "perfect soul, perfect mind, perfect face" - like whoa. 

Added: I think this pressure is also there for men in the grad program - obviously.  But it is different for women.  It's like we have to impress fucking everyone, all the time.

Also: It reminds me of whenever I'm asked "where else did you apply?" and I say that I chose AU over George Washington.  Even AU people don't get why I would, sometimes - why wouldn't you go for the better name, regardless of anything else?  And when I explain that GW didn't click with me, and AU did, I tend to get blank stares.  I usually have to add "well, AU is giving me way more money than GW would have..." before I get the "oh" of understanding.

Also, I'm totally going to write a story based on Germany's so-called "recognition" of the Principality of Sealand. Google that shit. Micronations. And I think I will call it "The Democratic Peace."