Rattenforum

The whole premise of Harry Potter, starting from book 1 chapter 1, is that most people are just Muggles, while some people are Wizards.

The tension in the series comes from its insistence that discrimination - arbitrary and cruel - against a wide range of groups is wrong, wrong, wrong. E.g. you should not indiscriminately murder Muggles, much less Muggleborns, and you should even (maybe) have a more egalitarian attitude toward other magical beings like goblins and house elves, even if their True Nature is to be greedy Jews or servile servants.

And yet, Book 1, Chapter 1: There are Muggles. And then there's Harry Potter. Who is as special as special can be, aka a very powerful, special, and chosen Wizard. And the egalitarian impulses of the vision are never actually realized, except in something like equality for Hermione the mudblood. Because the inherent superiority of some people over other people is the basic premise of the book.

So when some fans were savagely angry at Harry/Hermione shippers for thinking that some people were better than others - the exact hope/fear that haunts Ron in Book 7 -, they were kind of ignoring the fact that that was THE central premise of the book.

To step back into a more meta position, I think this was one of the biggest and most fundamental things that ever happened in HP fandom, and I'm not neutral about it, though I don't really have a stake in it either - that is, the trio was never the center for me, and I was more of a slash fan anyway. But I got H/Hr, and found the ship wars kind of poignant.

(Another note, re H/Hr - of course there's also the genre confusion that I among many others succumbed to, that expected a different sort of novel to be lodged in there than the one that was actually there. In fact, I'm still not sure I understand what genre HP's teenage romances belong to - how it makes Ron/Hermione central while keeping Ginny/Harry peripheral. Shouldn't it all be secular, by which I mean Platonic, at the center? I get an allegorical reading - Ron and Hermione represent warring opposites that must be reconciled for happiness - but I don't see what genre it belongs to, unless Ginny is made more central, as she would be in a more conventional teen ensemble piece.)

Dear Internet,

Halp!

I would like to buy a new TV. I am reading a lot of "how to buy a TV" columns, and yet I feel like I keep getting more and more bewildered.

Let's assume that I can figure out what size to buy, how much to spend, and whether to get plasma or LCD - I think I can handle those questions, more or less.

The problem is how to watch the content I actually watch, which does not come from a cable box.

DVDs are easy. But that leaves Netflix streaming, Hulu, and - if possible, and the one that worries me most - avis. I watch all these on my laptop, but I would really love to watch them on a TV. I've read articles about hooking up your computer to a TV, but the last time I tried I spent $$ and struggled and researched and ultimately failed completely. I am willing to consider either a device like a Roku box or an internet-capable TV - neither of which solve the avi problem, I don't think, but would at least let me watch streaming video on the TV.

Do any of you know anything about any of this and feel like hooking me up with some free advice? I will be grateful indeed. I will even drabble for you, if you have a fandom I know.

Rat Love,
Rat
Rat New York

Warning: I didn't love it as much as you did. (But this is about taste, not criticisms).

( Spoilers, sweetie. )

( Spoilers, sweetie )

For some strange reason, I don't seem to have an Eleventy icon, or a River icon. Slacker!

ETA: As you may have noticed, a while ago I changed my settings so you can comment on LJ. But changed them wrong, so the last few posts haven't included the link back to the original post (on DW). Which, if you're looking for it on this post, is here.

( 1. Missing person )

2. So I coped with this trauma by having an extraordinarily indolent weekend in which I attempted to ward off loneliness with talking people in the electronic box. I happened on this article about films and TV shows (unjustly) killed by competition, and one of the first examples was Studio 60, killed by 30 Rock. I thought it was a very smart read on what was wrong with Studio 60, which I had actually liked quite a bit, namely that Aaron Sorkin couldn't write SNL sketches, like, at all. Just not funny (in that way), and they took up a lot of time. Anyway this prompted me to sit in bed and stream all 22 episodes consecutively.

( Studio 60. Spoilers for the last few episodes, with Jordan's pregnancy and the hospital and Brad Whitford, on the remote chance that anyone cares. )

3. Speaking of ER, I saw Anthony Edwards at BAM last week, when we went to MacBeth at the Harvey (which was good, though I didn't like Lady MacBeth). Not acting - he was in the audience, and I passed very close to him and there were smiles. He hadn't really aged at all; he looked great, very relaxed and like he was enjoying himself with his pals. I saw John Leguizamo last week, too, in Central Park. And then a week later I was on the same walk in Central Park, and I sat on a bench in this pretty area up near W 96th, not far from where I'd seen him, and overheard this woman saying, "I've got to go - John Leguizamo tonight!!" (He's in a play on Broadway now).

( 4. Chrome Snaps )

( 5. Obligatory LJ - Russia comment with obligatory DW code offer )

So, on the one hand, we kind-of sort-of have spring(ish), with fairly warm weather in New York and blessed Daylight Savings Time. On the other, we have a weekend where - for me, anyway - it's been very hard to turn away from the horror, sorrow, astonishment, fear and uncertainty of the news from Japan.

Plus, I have a cold. And there is a brand new Jane Eyre movie, and I did not go see it yet, see also cold.

And, to be brutally honest, it's still kind of winter and there are still many things wrong all around, and television just ain't what it used to be. (Series of associations: Sunday night > Masterpiece Theater > Upstairs Downstairs - the original one > how much I disliked Downton Abbey > how can anyone stand it???)

So, for your Sunday night infotainment, allow me to link bowdlerized's hilarious and super-smart, crazy in-depth reviews of film and television adaptations of Jane Eyre -- all of them. Well, not all of them yet. But she will get to them all! So far, you get to choose from:

2006: "At once intemperate and unchaste"
Most Suitable Viewing Situation: Kind of in the mood for a classic novel, kind of in the mood for porn, but can't really commit to either.

1944: "On the shore of a darker stream"
Joan Fontaine, like everything and everyone else, gets swept up in the wake of Orson Welles's epic charisma.

1983: "Why don't you tremble?"
If you have never understood St. John or feel like the Moor House part of the book is random or pointless, I recommend watching this amazing performance. This is what it is to be both frozen and burning.

All the posts have the same structure, so you get to compare productions on important points throughout, e.g. pie charts on Time Spent Per Location; Rochester's Bed on Fire; Thornfield Stand-in; Pilot (I will be a little surprised if Pilot ever gets a negative review. She likes dogs, and who can argue?); and of course the burning question, does Rochester say, "In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?" And you also get to look forward to crucial features such as "Most suitable viewing situation" and, of course, "Ultimate Judgments."

You'll love it. Go.

Happy New Year, folk of the journalling lands!

As mentioned previously, I participated in Yuletide for the first time this year. ( My fic )

I also want to mention two other fics. ( One by Bow )

Finally, the best Yuletide fic I read - my favorite, anyway - was this Monty Python RPF, already recced elsewhere but deserving of much, much more love:

READ THIS ONE FIRST (3872 words) by trifles
Fandom: Monty Python RPF
Rating: Not Rated
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Alison Telfer
Summary: Anne Durham: What it is to be married to Clive.

I'm going to give slightly different advice on reading this one than ellen_fremedon did when she recced it. There are two AO3 files that are part of it (the other is We would skip this one, if we were you...). The story is in hypertext: it's full of links, some of which go to the second "story" file, and some of which go to other pages and files - some of which, in turn, contain further links (labeled "back" but not always going straight back). It's a fantastic ride, completely appropriate to Monty Python, but the core story is fantastic also. I recommend first reading it ("READ THIS ONE FIRST") straight through, and taking it at face value in that mode. And then experience it as quite a different story by reading it through again and following all the links, watching the vids, etc. It changes what the story is about, and it works both ways, so I advise that you do yourself a favor and experience it both ways. And one of the Easter eggs made me cry.

I do think this is for lovers of Monty Python with an affection for those boys, but it's so ingenious, moving, funny, and original, and the characterizations and the sense of time and place are so acute, that if you have any fondness for Monty Python then I recommend this story to you in the highest terms.

I played Yuletide! And I got two (count 'em!) stories, both in Mad Men:

A Lie Agreed Upon, which feeds my great love of Sally with a story about Betty & company set before the start of the first season. Improper use of Barbies = love. :)

and a vision softly creeping, a short fic that looks at Blowing Smoke (S4 episode where Don meets Midge again) from Midge's point of view. Full of insight, and the intersection of art and commerce - all sorts of things I love and wonder about in the show.

My heartfelt thanks to both authors!

I am a slow reader, but have read quite a few fics today nonetheless. All were enjoyable, and I have a few definite recs:

Whatever You Want to Call It: Absolutely brilliant, flawlessly executed, inventive, and hilarious, for anyone who likes Shakespeare, 16th century England, crack, and oh yeah Doctor Who. I never quite got what the huge magic was of the rare fandom element in Yuletide, but I do now. This made me so happy.

So We'll Go No More a-Roving: If the last one left you in a Stoppard-y mood, I recommend this Arcadia fic, beautifully written and capturing the mood and tone of the play.

Were We Not Four?: Speaking of beautifully written. A powerful series of tiny vignettes about four women in Jane Eyre, all reflecting on one another from very different perspectives. Four worlds in one house. Don't let the brevity fool you - take your time with this one.

Bound and Determined: An upbeat but unsentimental little Mad Men fic about Peggy and Pete at work. Full of sharp insights and perfect characterization.

Indiana Jones and the Standard of Dishonor: Indiana Jones/Casablanca crossover. The dialogue and tone is perfect, the union of the two canons seamless. The fic feels maybe a tiny bit unfinished, no great surprise given the mad dash that is Yuletide (there is, perhaps, a little meta-nod to this toward the end, and there are some definite proofreading glitches). It sparkles, though - smart and thoughtful and witty.

But if you're in the mood for crackingly perfect 40s movie dialogue-- or zombies-- then really the one fic you must read today is An Inside Look at a Mainline Society Apocalypse. Everything Pride and Prejudice and Zombies wanted to be, but wasn't. I'm not kidding. This is really good. ETA: Oh, yeah, er, the fandom: The Philadelphia Story. And zombies.

I got that last rec from bowdlerized, and I direct you to her journal for more suggestions, including several I definitely second.

For all your bowdlerized news needs...

She has drabbled. Twice. (First is Echo Bazaar; second is Little House on the Prairie.)

And stay tuned, because I happen to know there's a big story breaking there very soon. Elfin governess caught in freak storm! Read all about it! The saga begins tomorrow, early edition!!

Very exciting here, folks.

I just made this ultra-long comment to a friend on Facebook, and it's important enough to me that I decided to post it here.

My friend had linked this blog.

( Thoughts on the discipline of Philosophy )

Note: I now note that yes, I can make it bigger - must have been a browser glitch. So those comments (the "QED" was ironic, anyway) are obsolete, and I can now actually read what I already nominally responded to. Please do treat the "response" as only nominal; what I said about philosophy and my experience is about those two topics and not about the blog. I am eager to see (now that I can see) what the blog is up to.

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Dear Yuletide Author!

This is the first time I've ever signed up for Yuletide! What has possessed me? I don't know. But I am most grateful to you for writing for me. I hope you find my request fun to write- what I want most is for you to write the story you want to write and think you can write well. But here are a few thoughts and preferences. Please poke around my old posts (some even have tags), interests, and whatever else you can find if you want to know more about me.

( Bewitched, Mad Men, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy )

Well, that was vague - I truly can't wait to see what you do.

xox
Rat

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Um, hello.

So something is kind of burning a hole in my brain about last week's Mad Men. So sorry to waltz in unannounced, but I must speak with you a moment...

( Spoilers don't kiss in public )

And how have you been lately? Is it time for Doctor Who yet? Did you see Dreamwidth on the xkcd map?

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Seen it yet?

( Big honking spoiler )

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that your life doesn't make any sense?

I need an icon. There must be an icon. I need it.

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Just popping by after, what, a six-month absence to do a little squeeing and a spot of speculating/question-asking re that outburst of fannish awesomeness that is the New New Who.

Gratuitous exposure of my cluelessness and yay: I had the great and totally random luck to watch all 12 episodes in the last week, due to a bout of extreme fatigue that demanded TV. I didn't realize I was one week from the finale, or that I'd care. I also didn't realize that the guy who wrote "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Blink" and the library ones -- in other words, the one who wrote for me -- was even a guy (that is, that the same guy had written all the eps I'd liked best), much less that he had taken over the helm from Russell T Overblown (who, yes, some good stuff, but not quite my thing). Team Moffat yay! And I like Matt Smith, too.

So here's my observation/question going into the finale - references "The Eleventh Hour" & last week's ep:

( Contains spoilers for The Pandorica Opens )

Would love to hear your thoughts or follow where you point - but I don't want to be spoiled, just speculate.

Oh, and, you know, if you care... me, and the state of the world - the latter is just so unbelievably awful, and I'm more or less OK, though things aren't easy. And you?

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I seem to be coming out the other side of a pretty depressing bout of depression. I think it started around early December, and one of its first symptoms was poor sleep (which is still bothering me). It got really bad, and I realized I was definitely depressed, around the second week in January. As part of my blue mood, I felt very uninterested in shopping for and cooking food. I'm also short of dough at the moment, and in some of my recent moods delicious restaurant food would be wasted on me, so there have also been severe cutbacks on the Dining Out front.

I have lost some weight - this was one of my intentions in going off anti-depressants, and in fact I've dropped a size without any conscious effort at all. But I still need to eat, and I definitely still need to feed the HDGF. She expects regular snacks, OK! So I did That Thing You Do and made the big trip to Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's is not an NYC tradition. We've only had it here about 2 or 3 years, and AFAIK there are only 2 branches in the whole city, and neither is close to me. So I brought my big wheely backpack & IKEA sack and chose a weekday when I was off from work and really stocked up.

I haven't eaten everything I bought yet, but I'm ready to do some ranking and rating. The immediate impetus is having attempted to dine on the very worst thing yet. See item 18. But some other things have been very good. Opinions below the fold:

( Trader Joe's product ranking )

I'd love to get your TJ's recommendations and dis-commendations in comments. I can't go often, but I will go again. We need our gyoza!

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What have I been up to lately, you ask? Well, I hated Avatar a lot! I have some thoughts to add to the various posts I've seen - many of them saying some of the things I'd want to say, but there's more. I want to talk about this movie as the alleged "next step" in big-budget fantasy filmmaking, and its relationship with other films in that tradition (specifically Jackson's The Lord of the Rings).

( Read more... )

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I've gotten into a bit of a conversation about Roman Polanski on Twitter, and I'm realizing that this is one of those few topics that can't really be covered in 140 characters. Hey, I'm no Twitter h8er; I think it's pretty amazing what you can do with 140 characters - or 100 + tinyURL. But this discussion, it seems to me, is suffering from a failure to actually discuss - an impulse to dismiss, to resolve, to set aside - both from those who want Polanski to go to prison and those who don't. A lot of things are being said that I don't think are quite right, and I think people are talking at cross purposes.

I'm going to put this rest of this under a cut tag because I recognize that part of why it's hard for people to discuss this is that it's triggery. ( Loose, non-expert thoughts about this case and cases that bear a family resemblance to it. )

OK I didn't really mean to have 10 but I must stop.

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where I often park odd bits of things, thoughts, notes...

I keep stumbling over this and see no reason not to park it here instead:

Fandom = Brooklyn

I don't live there, but I did for a couple years a long time ago, and I go there often

When I go there, I know how to make myself at home. I have where to sleep, where to eat, where to get coffee or beer. I have close friends there - even my gf.

It's big and diverse. I know parts of it very well, parts of it not at all

It's not infrequently the site of confrontations. Among other things, it's always full of immigrants, and the long-time residents don't always like that.

---

I owe people comment replies from their great comments on my last, somewhat cryptic post. I'm just not up to it yet - I have a lot of emailing to do this week, and I barely understood what I was saying myself. But big <<33s to you, fellow h8ers!

---

There is a fan out there right now with a sick rattie. She is so sad she put up her crying icon and turned off comments. I am really sad for her and her rat. It is so hard when ratties reach their last illness - it's very hard to make end-of-life choices for them. They are so vulnerable and they don't live so long, and you can feel alone - it often seems like other people don't really understand. My heart really goes out to her - I'm actually crying writing this. A toast to her rat, poor baby.

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A couple of weeks ago, on Twitter, I called Sarah Palin "the Plebefic queen of US politics," citing this line (copied character for character) from the transcript of her farewell address to the Alaska governor's office:

*((Gotta put First Things First))*
But thinking about it again yesterday, I realized that Sarah Palin isn't the plebefic writer, she's the Mary Sue.

How can a real person be a Mary Sue, since she is by definition impossible? On the other hand, how can a Mary Sue not be a real person, given that the whiff of self-insertion is one of the tell-tale properties of the Mary Sue?

A number of years ago I read an old book by a psychoanalyst named Heinz Kohut, who did some very smart and influential writing on narcissism back in the '50s. One of his preoccupations, which isn't terribly surprising coming from a mid-century European, was narcissism in public and political life. He wrote about demagogues and cults of personality of his era, when hugely powerful autocrats turned the world upside down trying to remake it in their own images (e.g. Stalin and Hitler, but there were tremendously larger-than-life figures on "our" side also, including the US's only 4-term president).

Kohut wrote about the personal narcissism of public figures based on his readings of their memoirs (Churchill, e.g.). But he also wrote about how citizens (members of the cult, so to speak) participated in the narcissism of leaders and invested their own narcissism - their own sense of self worth - in identification with them. The metaphor he used for this involved the idea, common in discussions of narcissism, that the narcissist experiences other people as extensions of his or her own body, like limbs, and thus expects to be able to command them, control them, and expects them to be dependent and available. If others participate in this fantasy, that's how the narcissist gets his/her power. He argued that members of the public experience the grandiose leader as part of themselves, as enhancing their identity, especially if they feel weak or vulnerable.

Certainly, I think Sarah Palin is a narcissist, in fact more or less crippled by her narcissism. But that doesn't make her a Mary Sue - a Mary Sue is the fantasy, often noticeably different (e.g. in eye color, name, & telepathic ability) from the fantasist. That's where the narcissism, or the narcissistic lack, of the public comes in. Most of the credit for "Sarah Palin" goes to the talented fantasist "S," from Wasilla, AK. But she/it only came into being as we know her when other people started participating, when sparks flew into Bill Kristol's pants or whatever it was, when thousands chanted "Drill baby drill" and a million AP photo pool photos started appearing in gossip magazines.

This sounds like an etiology of either Sarah Palin or Mary Sue, but I don't mean it that way. I don't think "Sarah Palin" begins in Sarah P's mind or in the minds of her admirers. Her origins have a longer, more complicated history, in which the textual and the material are interwoven. I guess I'm asserting a negative and/or tautological ontology. Sarah Palin is a Mary Sue. And neither is wholly textual, or wholly fantasy, or wholly real.

--
Realized when writing that this relates to driscoll's eloquent, and differently formulated, recent post on identification and on mourning celebrities - Remembering Farrah Hair". Highly recommended.

PPS: I went through a spate of picking up icons when I joined DW because I had space for them, and I'd lost all my own. I didn't expect to use this one more than once or twice a year, in comments. But I seem to use it all the time - it is amazingly appropriate for the kinds of things I post about.

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For a_hollow_year, who has been conducting some research in the area of green eyeliner.

This isn't so much a translation, by Pound, as a reconstruction of a great classical Chinese poem by Li Po (8th century CE, aka Li Bai) from Japanese translations and notes (and Pound didn't know Japanese very well). In the department of appropriation, it's worth noting that Pound seems to have felt a strong identification with Li Po, particularly on the themes of exile and migration and being tossed about by the whims of mighty governments and their wars. The notes are Pound's, I believe - I think they always appear with the poem in exactly these words. Anyway it's very awesome.

Happy internet, thank you for making this available several places, including here. Happy July, firecrackers are going off with lovely sounds in the park.

( Exile's )

I was just thinking of getting rid of this icon (along with "rat fu"), which represents some very idle appropriation, but I like it here, for now. China acknowledges the heavenly role of the rat.

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Rundown of astonishing number and variety of racist stereotypes in Transformers 2. My favorite Little Wonk Boy Blogger Ezra Klein, who has also seen it, writes:

wow, is it racist. Much of the movie's comic relief comes from a pair of Autobot twins named Mudflap and Skids. They look like monkeys. One has a gold tooth and satellite ears. The dialect is a parody of ebonics with words lifted from gangster rap, complete with frequent threats to "bust a cap" in this or that character. At one point, they're asked to read a symbol. "We don't much like reading," they say. They're not Autobots. They're Minstrelbots. As Ty Burr smartly said, "it's the first known example of robot blackface."

Note - both of these posts are by white dudes. Haven't looked at ABW yet, e.g., but sure they are on it. This is, as I said, a drive by.

My question, as I recently said to mulberryfields, is: when and how did this become "OK" again? This OTT "retro" racism, of the kind found all over the later Star Wars movies, or the very essence of Peter Jackson's King Kong, is a sentimental throwback to film making in the age of Jim Crow. Star Trek: Reboot, while not a cartoonish colonial romp, still did way, way worse than the original show on race, and it's 40 years later. Did some memo go around saying they have permission to do this, saying that now we're "past" racism, (homophobia, sexism), we can all have good, tongue in cheek, "of course WE'RE not" fun with it?

New Memo: NOT OK. NOT. O. K. !!!!!!!!!

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My main purpose in posting is to link to this post by amadi on Warnings & How To Do 'Em. Amadi shares a new and improved approach to creating the "optional warning" (the one you don't have to look at unless you choose to). Her innovation is in making it more accessible to people with certain disabilities. The problem with highlightable warnings is that, if you use a screen reader, it will read the warning text whether you want it to or not. Amadi's code will give you the option to skip the warning, even if you're using a screen reader. I don't know from ingenious code, but comments suggest this code is ingenious! It's certainly a kind, thoughtful, and considerate gift.

Which, I guess, tells you what I think about this "debate." Look, I don't love reading warnings - when I was first reading fanfic, I resented them, felt like they were spoily, and had no understanding of their purpose. But after the conversation that's gone on this week, with survivors sharing their stories so that people can see what is going on here for them, I think the core of this discussion has lost pretty much any content beyond "being nice" vs "being a dick."

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I basically never do memes, at least not of this type. (BTW, remember when everyone posted quiz results all the time? I haven't seen one of those on eljay/DW/etc in ages. I guess everyone just does them on Facebook now.) But something impelled me to ask isis for those "5 words you associate with me," and she obliged.

If you would like 5 words I associate with you, on which you may comment or expand, please comment! If I don't know you too well I may have to pull them from your interests/username, but you won't mind that at all. :D


isis picked ( rats, New York, HDGF, IKEA, Judaism )

This will fit on DW - let's hope it fits on LJ.

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At 6:00 I was on YouTube, looking for a clip of Michael Jackson singing "You Can't Win" from The WIZ. I wanted to post it to Facebook, because I am going to see The WIZ at City Center tonight, and everyone needs to know that, and I love that song.

And then I posted it, with a note about soba noodles.

And then, the next *second*, Twitterfox told me that TMZ was reporting that Michael Jackson had died.

And then I changed my post a bit, because I thought the noodles were no longer appropriate.

But I am just weirdly weirded out about it. How often do I go to see The WIZ? (Never). How often do I think about Michael Jackson? (Very rarely). How often do I post about him in any forum? (Never before.)

I attribute no supernatural anything to this, but it does weird me out, badly. The dropping of 70s icons doesn't help either. Mortality can, as we used to say in Boston back then, blow me.

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But first, a little fannish content.

lizbee is watching Babylon 5, and she remarks on something that really, really irritated me about BSG:

It is, in fact, worrying to realise just how much of BSG was shamelessly nicked from B5.

It's not the re-use of ideas that bothered me, but Ron Moore's commentary on it, which was repeated a lot in the media. ( Read more... )

Anyway, no one will read this screed who isn't already a B5 fan who knows more about it than I do anyway, so /nerd!fit.

Of greater general interest - don't know if you caught the dw_news yesterday, but they gave updates on two topics of urgent interest to many users and potential users: reading filters and styles. They write:

mark is actively working on a big project: the long-awaited reading filters. ( Read more... )

and....

this week the dw_styles team is pleased to announce that they're ready to start accepting themes for addition to our system styles. ( Read more... )

...
A while ago, I posted a list of a few kinds of people I think DW is especially good for, but almost at once I realized I'd left off a key constituency that I have every reason to remember: people with disabilities. Not every disability makes it hard to use LJ, obviously, but DW makes accessibility a major goal - read about it on their Wiki.

Visual disabilities (e.g. blindness) do pose challenges for using these sites. I've been meaning for a while to clarify a DW feature that a lot of people don’t seem to use or don’t seem to use as intended – the description field on your icon page. (Here's mine.) I've seen a number of people ask, "why is there both a 'comment' field and a 'description' field," and a lot more ignore one or misuse it.

The "description" field is for use by technology called "screen readers" – even if someone can’t see your icon very well, they can still get the flavor (or the icon-referential joke in your post) from your description. So use the field to describe your icon to someone who can't see it, or not very well.

And now that I've whet your appetite for DW all over again, come 'n' get 'em: I have spicy, fragrant DW codes and lots of 'em, locally grown by sexy young gourmets. They’re almost at their peak ripeness now. Make sure to commit to your local CSA (code supported access) early to make sure this year’s crop is a success.

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I feel like there is something missing in the popular online outpouring of support for the people of Iran, especially from the US. There's something that feels a little off about it to me. It's not that I disagree, it's just that there is some acknowledgment that I feel is on the tip of everyone's tongue but is not getting spit out, at least not in my hearing. So if you have seen good articles or posts on this, point me in the right direction.

( The Greening of Twitter and the right-wing narrative )

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Nominations underway for "Head Bitch In Charge of the Entire Universe." I haven't even voted for a favorite nominee yet. Who's running this shit, Irina? Adelle? Dana? Laura R? Mrs P? You KNOW if Starbuck was in charge things would be looking a damn sight different.

[mystical transition]

Ack, lost all my BSG and Alias icons in the purge!

[mystical transition]

I know there are rat elements in a lot of fannish texts that I could capture from DVD if I could remember where they were and make the time. There's a great one on Caprica that I was going to use for a "[squeak]" icon (that's what the subtitle says, my hand to god.)

[mundane transition]

You all ready for the weekend? I want to go to a goat roast sponsored by the Greenhorns (young farmer movement) in Brooklyn tomorrow, but it's supposed to be all thunderstormy as part of the ongoing "climate calimity whatever." Aren't the Greenhorns exempt from climate change? isn't that covered under cap and trade?

[mystical transition]

I have been thinking of doing an experiment where I go a whole day without using an exclamation point (in typed discourse, which is like 90% of my discourse). Maybe I should add question marks. It will not be easy.

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Following mecurtin's lead and reposting a comment I made on a blog - that of Matthew Yglesias. Great blog, but like most liberal blogs, full of asinine comments. Like this one, by me!

I think it's easy for well-off, urban, educated people to belittle the interests of the kind of people who rely on broadcast TV in receiving it. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, though I do see it in the comments. But I think we should ask "for whom?" instead of just focusing on "Goods" when we examine questions like this.

Yes, I am more interested in loading Think Progress quickly on wireless than in watching snowy Golden Girls reruns, but I can imagine that if my life circumstances were different I might feel differently. In general, class snobbery among liberals is not only offensive but a huge trap, as the politics of the last 30 years have helped show. We advocate for policies that support the needs of the less-well-off - there's no need to be snotty about their tastes, difficulties, or desires on the side.

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that was smart:

The political/legal problem about gay marriage in the US has to do with the fact that marriage is the greatest weakness in the American church-state divide. It's the one major institution where church and state are completely combined, almost without challenge. One wedding satisfies both your pope and your Internal Revenue Service.

Religious institutions, like Reform Judaism or the Episcopalians, are supplying a major challenge to this broader fact by allowing gay marriage. Because it's one thing to ignore the church-state divide in a general way, another for the state to advance one church over another.

Go religious people! Smash marriage! (I know that is not the intent, and I mean no disrespect - though a bit of irony & glee).

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Hello, hello.

I feel like posting. So here is a Thing, the which I have thought about lately.

Several things recently have reminded me about sexism. About, er, well, that it exists. And that it makes me [sic] hysterical. About how much grief it caused me when I was young and for many years after.

I have always thought a lot about gender. But for a pretty long time now, I'd say 6 or 7 years, it's been mostly without the sense of imminent, choking sexism all around me, hurting me. Brief bouts, like the ones I mention below, reminders - but not constant.

Now, you may say, what is the matter with you, you dumb rat? Where have you been?

Well, I'll tell you where I've been, since I just recently realized the answer. These recent things that have made the blind sense of helpless hurt and rage well up in me - e.g. the stats crypto posted about how men mostly only tweet back to/friend other men on Twitter, or the fact that of Pixar's 10 films, not one has featured a female protagonist, and the first that will, in December, will star a princess - have made me realize that I have managed to rebuild my life, over the last 15 years or so, as an overwhelmingly female-dominated space.

What a fucking relief.

How did I create this miracle? What steps can you, the home viewer, take to live in as boob-rich environment as I do? Well, I can't say what will work for you. But here is what I, after a few moments quick reflection, realized I had done:

*when I went to grad school, I changed my field from Philosophy (mostly dudes) to English (more than half women, at least among grad students, and almost half - I think - among faculty where I was)

*I got involved in fandom & attendant female-dominated online spaces

*I got a girlfriend. #1!! Never had a girlfriend before. #1!!!

*I got a job in a female-dominated workplace. I work with 4 women and one (young, gay) man.

I must really not have liked sexism very much.

OK, gotta go!

Oh, and in case I don't get online tomorrow - happy birthday yahtzee!!! Many Trekky returns!

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Add Glitter to Pictures



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If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere.

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For instance:

Where Does the Canadian Government Get the Money from to Keep Making Super-Soldiers?

In the Marvel Universe, Canada is responsible for creating some of the most deadly super-soldiers in history. Wolverine, Sabretooth, Deadpool, Kane, and Agent Zero were all deadly assassins who were empowered by Canada's Weapon X program. This secret division of the Canadian government went to great expense to create nearly unstoppable weapons (and in almost all cases, allow them to escape shortly thereafter). This gives rise to a single question: WHY? [con't...]

They also explore career choices of mutants and their likely economic consequences, supernatural disaster insurance, etc. I don't know enough about comics to take full advantage, but it looks like fun for those who do.

Full disclosure: this post mostly brought to you by my desire to try out new Firefox extensions. (Autocopy and ... only for links)

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or Meditation for a May Morning

1.) Things that are soothing to say to yourself in the evening, at the cusp of summer: Justice Sotomayor. Sonia Sotomayor. Sonia Sotomayor, the Justice of the just.

2.) As you say it, you hear a faint, insubstantial crinkle. It's that other clump of fools, withering into irrelevance. Repetition has made them meaningless - rich, white, business, man, white, abortion, rich, fool, man, business, business, strict, fool, man, abortion, rich, white. For now, they seem like indistinguishable memories. Let them go.

3.) O, Antonin Scalia, why are you still here? Wither into the crinkly heap of Rehnquists past!

[BREATHE]

4.) New York City. Puerto Rico. Citizen by birth. Free to wait tables and shine shoes. Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Chosen for empathy and the common touch.

5.) Obama. Yes, he can be. Wise and kind. President of the United States. Wise and kind President Barack Obama.

6.) Justice. Fair, compassionate, and firm.

7.) California has a court. And a government. And a constitution, and a system of laws, and an economy. And giant sequoias, movie stars, Chez Panisse, Harvey Milk memorials, the lost coast, Fresno, Orange County, East LA, the Golden Gate Bridge, Naval Base San Diego, Rick Warren, zillionaires (some), undocumented workers and their families (lots), pot farms (some), processing plants (lots), millions of Chicanos, Asians, African Americans, churchgoers, gay men, lesbians, transgendered people, sunshine, a terrifying fiscal crisis, a faulty experiment in direct democracy, a crippling property tax structure, one of the 10 largest economies in the world, time.

8.) Best wishes, California. Justice is coming. New York loves you. Justice Sotomayor.

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Racefail with prom gowns. Photo essay about a high school (in a town in Georgia that seems to be racially composed of whites and African Americans) with "private" segregated proms. Guess the race of the kids who authoritatively explain that it (SEGREGATION) is not about racism, it's fine, "at our school it's about who you are and how you take care of yourself, not what color you are." Now guess the race of the kids who say it's hurtful and that their town has even bigger race problems than this.

I posted this here because of that all too familiar language. What makes white people such huge authorities on what is and isn't about racism, especially when (a) it obviously is and (b) the people pointing that out are POC? Oh, I know! I know! History, power, privilege. Auctorite (that's Chaucerian English for authority, in both the "power" sense and the "authorship" sense)!

But then, that line presumes that these kids really believe some fraction of what they say, which I'm actually dubious about.

............

Most of the texts I'm fannish about are funny. Buffy, B5, Star Trek TOS & TNG, Firefly, Harry Potter - all very funny, even when also dishing up extreme drama etc. LotR isn't *that* funny, but it's sometimes funny. BSG isn't funny, but then I stopped caring about it/finding it sexy sometime in S2.

I just watched the first 6 eps of Sarah Connor Chronicles: it had 1 mildly funny line. I actually ff'd through excess action scenes and gross stuff. I watched 1 ep of Chuck on Hulu. It was clearly meant to be funny, but I didn't get it. I have no doubt it was a bad episode, but I'm skeptical.
............

My weekend plan isn't going well. I can't seem to get enough sleep. I don't really feel well, though not a dire situation. Just a stress/fatigue cycle, and I don't know what to do.

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