the new 10 things i hate about you tv show or the gymnastics-based teen show Make It or Break It? Are they recommended? I like the occasional teen angst-fest, but it depends on the characters involved. I still kind of like Gossip Girl, and I liked Kyle XY for the first couple seasons, but those involved either such ridiculously wealthy teens that it almost feels like fantasy or actual sff elements.

In semi-related news (but only because it involves a teenager), Gilmore Girls is repeating its run from the pilot and it took me about ten minutes to fall head-over-heels. It wasn't anything I was interested in when it originally ran, but now I get an episode every weekday, and I can tell it's going to be a Happy Place.

Other happy spots: New eps of Better Off Ted! First season The Big Bang Theory on dvd, third season reruns! And So You Think You Can Dance, which I'm enjoying and look forward to more than I thought possible. Yes, I've nabbed s1, although watching that is slow, as it's not exactly something I can watch while doing anything else. That, and the dance eps require rewatching most dances at least twice.

Dada is a state of mind. That is why it transforms itself according to races and events. Dada applies itself to everything, and yet it is nothing, it is the point where the yes and the no and all the opposites meet, not solemnly in the castles of human philosophies, but very simply at street corners, like dogs and grasshoppers.

Like everything in life, Dada is useless.

Dada is without pretension, as life should be. --tristan tzara

I've apparently lost the habit: of posting, of writing, of being very fannish at all in demonstrable ways.

Well, okay, I still watch a hell of a lot of TV and read a lot of books.

I'm trying to keep up with a core group of LJ/DW folks, but I forget. I don't know if this is the usual summer-heading-into-VVC distraction, or what.

My car saga ended up a mixed lot: after some confusion as to whether they'd asked me to get estimates or provide bills for reimbursement and a period where it looked like the clock&radio might have to be replaced, Wal-Mart paid for all repairs and gave me store credit for what I paid them for the original battery and oil change, so I came out ahead there.

Unfortunately, the trip by the dealership to see about replacement costs on the clock&radio (which turned out to just have a blown out fuse link) led to discover of the probable need to replace the timing belt, flush the transmission, and possibly replace the... axle cap? I learned new vocabulary, but have already begun to lose it.

There was no direct compensation for the running around like crazy that I had to do, the waiting around, or the time I had to make up at work. However, I had several really interesting and/or odd conversations while waiting that compensated me:

( Stories of ordinary folks )

I ended the day missing my mother a great deal. This is part of her legacy to me, one that never fails to surprise me: she was the one who chatted up strangers, who listened to them, whose genuine interest elicited stories and revelations. I tend to think of myself as much more like my father, a bit closed up, unconnected, contentedly insular and self-entertaining. And it does take specific effort to put forward my welcoming face, to encourage people; I'm much more likely to stick my face in my book while waiting and ignore everyone else.

So over the past week or so I've found myself returning again and again to these conversations, to thoughts of my mother, to how she continues in myself. On the way back to work that day, I saw this gorgeous woman coming toward me, her hair just so, her spring green top contrasting beautifully with her lovely skin, and I thought of my mother again. So I put out a hand, and stopped her, and said, "This may seem odd, but I just really wanted to tell you how gorgeous you are."

"Thank you so much," she said, clearly startled, but smiling a wonderful smile. "I'm going to be smiling about that all day."

My mother taught me that. Whenever I look around, and I'm surrounded by the physical legacy of my father, and wish I had more from my mother, I remember this: whatever small ability I have to connect with people, to make them feel good about themselves, whatever makes me interested in them and their ideas and their lives, that comes from her, and I carry it with me everywhere.

If I could, I would trade a thousand years to hear my mother's laughter. - Tran Trung Dao

From tonight's Daily Show, in a segment about Gov. Sanford, they showed a clip of a SC state senator saying "If he would just shut up!" and then Stewart says, "Well, maybe that's what the common man thinks, but they can be unforgiving. Clearly we need to appeal to a higher power..."

Father Philip Linder, Trinity Episcopal Church: "Many of us are praying that he...goes into a more silent mode."

Stewart: "That's actually Episcopalian for 'Shut the fuck up.' By the way, you know you're in trouble when someone spiritually bound to hear your sins? Wants you to zip it."

I think I scared the cats. Hee.


Car update, and Amilyn, I think you cursed me! *g*

I got the car back yesterday after three hours that included a new battery, a new battery cable, waiting for a new fuse to be delivered, a later-aborted call to AAA to come tow me to my actual mechanic at the point the Wally World* guys were able to get the car to go click-click-click but not actually start, until one of their guys who knew more came back from break and managed to get it fixed.

So I drove to work, and noticed the clock wasn't working; I check the radio, it's out, too. I figure maybe another old fuse blew with the new one in, I'll go back by after work, whatever. I get there around 1:00p or so, so I worked until 9:00p or so to make up the time. Whereupon I walk out to my car...whose tail lights shine brightly to light my way! With me fifty feet away, the car off, key removed, all lights physically turned off. I note I do not have a car with remote anything. O.o

They were still on when I stopped in my garage, and I ended up having to disconnect the battery to get them to shut off. o.O Fortunately the new battery has a wing nut on one side, so it's fairly easy, if tedious. It was easier than trying to figure out which fuse to pull...

This morning I go by Wally World again, and son-of-a-gun, they remember me! Imagine that. One guy mutters something about the electrical harness, and an hour or so later one of the other guys comes in kind of sheepishly and says they probably are going to have to have me take it to a full-service mechanic, because their diagnostic tools aren't up to it, but they'll pay for it, since they screwed it up. Whatever it is! He just has to talk to his manager. A few minutes later, she comes up, looks at the two women in the waiting room and says, "I'm looking for...?" I waved my hand, and she says, "Are you the one whose battery was put in backwards?"

"Oh, was that what happened?" *facepalm*

So, yeah, anyway. I can take it wherever, anything up to $350 they can directly reimburse, anything over, it'll take a little longer.

Then I find out my mechanic is on vacation until Monday. So I drive to work, pop the hood, and disconnect the battery. Tonight, I drove home, and my car is in the garage, battery disconnected! Fortunately I can still take the short trip I planned, as I was going to carpool anyway, and my friend can drive.

*I note, I'm not interested in bashing of the guys at Wal-Mart, as I've used them fairly often for the quick and dirty stuff, and never had a problem. I'm not crazy about Wal-Mart itself, but I'm also not well off, and screw-ups happen all over. Who knows, maybe whatever caused it to die out of the blue is at fault, and getting the new battery just allowed it to show up.

The whole episode did allow me to read Austenland, wherein a 30+ Darcy-obsessed woman gets to spend three weeks at Austenland, where she can experience the England of Austen, totally in character, along with a 50+ woman who for the purposes of the place is playing age 22. *g* It was frothy and charming and fun! I did wish the ending had been different, in much the same way I wish Circle of Friends the movie had mirrored the book, but still, fun!

It (the episode, not the book) also reminded me that by and large, I'm a woman of sanguine temperament, for whom things like this are minor irritations which don't ruin my day or more; I'm fortunate for this, and that I can pay the part I do have to cover, and that my boss is understanding. Very understanding.

My fingers all have leftover drunkeness. The rest of me is sober but my fingers are all "Bloody Mary! Woohoo! Absolut Dyslexia!" --copracat

Ever since I arranged with work to come in late so that I could meet my contractors when they showed up, I've been seemingly unable to get to work before 9a at the very earliest, often closer to 9:30 or even 10a. Mind you, the contractors finished their work about 20 months ago. I keep promising myself I'll get in earlier, but then suddenly it's late o'clock at night, and I'm late to get to bed and late to rise.

Same story this morning: I suddenly realized it was after 1a last night, crawled into bed (and did not open a book! This is progress!), set the alarm for 7:30a, and tried to sleep, which was slow coming, although not in a bad way. So when the alarm went off, I whined and complained at the cats, who were snuggling, and didn't make it up until going on 8:30a.

I possibly need a nanny.

Anyway, so then I hurry around, mollify the cats, throw lunch together (pre-made, but requiring finishing touches), set water to heat for coffee, shower. With one thing and another, I'm not ready to leave until 9:30, but. I go out to the car, turn the key, and--

--nothing. Dead, dead, dead. I was going to get gas this morning, but it's not that, the electronics won't even turn on. So now I sit here and wait for AAA to show up or call. There are worse ways to spend the morning, but man, do I hope it's just the battery, or something simple. The workmate who took my call wanted to bet it was the starter, and why even curse a person like that! *g*

So, annoying, but this is why I've kept paying AAA, because when I need it, I need it. They'll either start it, and I'll go get a new battery, or they won't, and they'll tow me and it to my mechanic, who'll take me to work. Bah!

And see, this is the kind of post you get when something finally happens to disturb my happy rut. Mostly it's just get up too late, rush around, go to work and work, probably stay too late, go home, and either watch TV and read until way too late, or get on the computer (rarely most of the year, more common this time of year and towards August), and then stay up too late because... that's what the computer is for. At least I haven't had any more all-night pursuits of cartoon porn.

I also take this moment to recommend Drop Box, which creates a folder for you on your desktop, and anything you drop in it will automagically be synced up with any other computer you put it on, and share any files you choose to share with someone else. It's something that makes me happy, because finally, I can sync up my sigfile folder and not worry about reusing an old sig!!!

Small things are v. important to me.

If anyone is interested, comment or drop me a line at elynross at gmail.com, and let me send you an invite! Purely out of self-interest, they increase my free space allotment a bit with each person...

*brief pause while our heroine checks out a faint beeping sound*

And happily, the standard 45 minutes to an hour wait shortened to less than ten, the car is bopping away crankily in the garage, and I ran back in just to sig and run!

SIX: Original Question, found at: Organizational Structure, No. 11 - Who is welcome to use the OTW services and to volunteer?

We welcome everyone who wishes to discuss sources (shows, bands, sports players, anime, etc.) and fandom; we welcome everyone who creates or enjoys fanfiction, vids, fanart, and other kinds of transformative works.

Shiny and New Translation: LOLCAT, by bethbethbeth

U CAN BE USIN' OTW SERVICES? U LIEKS 2 HELPS?

HAI! WE WELCOM EVRYONE - CEILING CATS, KITTEHS, WALRUSES - HOO WISHEZ 2 DISCUS SOURCEZ (SHOWS, BANDZ, SPORTS PLAYERS, ANIME, BUCKITS, ETC.) AN FANDOM; WE WELCOM EVRYONE HOO CREATEZ OR LIEKS FANFICSHUN (NOM NOM NOM!), VIDZ, FANARTSEZ, AN OTHR KINDZ OV OSSIM TRANZFORMATIV WERKZ. KTHXBYE!

So, very shortly after my last post, about how things were wobbly, I realized things were better. Seriously, I went from one day where I was thinking that maybe I should consider going and talking to my doctor about depression to the next, feeling fine and back in my normally fairly optimistic outlook. So, I'm good, but I'm still not feeling like saying much about much of anything. I just... feel like I should announce this from time to time, I guess. *g*

One thing that hasn't really changed is that I can't seem to do more than kind of skim my flist and reading page to make sure how people are doing. I was blindsided by Minotaur's death, not only because it was in itself shocking, but because I wasn't keeping up with folks, and ran into it when someone mentioned his name in a list of "bad things happening," and I had to ask what had happened. I want to know if people have good things happen, if they need help, if they're in trouble, so I try and keep up at least a bit.

Part of it is possibly VVC; I sometimes wonder if my not reading much fic most of the year and not watching many vids most of the year are directly related to being so involved in the mass output of same at two points during the year. But overall, neither Yuletide nor VVC are terribly stressful for me at this point; it's more a matter of keeping all my ducks in a row and making sure they quack at the right times. Um. And that's not a reference to my staff. *g* There are things I don't like to do that I have to, and I whine a bit about those now and then, but given that it's roughly the same drill each year, I've got it down to a kind of slovenly science at this point.

I'm having the same trouble keeping up with non-fannish current events and blogs and such. It's like I hit information overload post-Escapade, with Racefail, and I find myself veering away from engaging... in much of anything, but particularly emotionally-charged things (hence why I still haven't answered all my comments wrt Mammothfail).

I will say that I spent some time reading primary postings in the latest iteration of the Warnings discussion, and recognized that my opposition to so-called warnings over the years was almost entirely theoretical, while in practice I have actually warned in the one solo story I think contains possible triggers. And so I find my mind changed, such that since it appears to me fairly simple, given the tools I have now, to both provide the most common content information to help those who want and/or need to protect themselves and allow those (such as myself) who don't want/need that level of content information to avoid it. I'm particularly looking forward to the AO3 options to let the person signed in control the level of information they're provided.

I'm watching a lot of TV, and reading a lot of books, but I just don't seem to have anything that I feel like saying or talking about. It's an odd space. I don't believe I'm gafiating; it may just be that one step further in limiting my fannish participation that has been progressing for a while. In part I've been focusing more on my work, rather than frittering away my work time reading DW&LJ&blogs&news&what have you.

And maybe it's just a recognition that I Can't Keep Up. Trying to follow Racefail, following links that people post, trying to keep up with all the people I know as they post -- I get further and further behind, and feel more and more stressed. And it's not unusual for me to hit a point of maximum overload and just core dump, which may be what I'm doing.

When the news reporter said "Shopkeepers are opening their doors bringing out blankets and cups of tea" I just smiled. It's like yes. That's Britain for you. Tea solves everything. You're a bit cold? Tea. Your boyfriend has just left you? Tea. You've just been told you've got cancer? Tea. Coordinated terrorist attack on the transport network bringing the city to a grinding halt? TEA DAMMIT! And if it's really serious, they may bring out the coffee. The Americans have their alert raised to red, we break out the coffee. That's for situations more serious than this, of course. Like another England penalty shoot-out. --jslayeruk, about the London subway bombings

I'm posting mostly to say I'm not dead...yet. Things are wobbly lately, mentally, physically, only a bit environmentally. I'm pondering the possibility of mild depression, or possibly just time of life crap.

I first wrote "things are hard," but then I think of a number of people I know, or people I've read about or seen reports of, and I think, yeah, it's not hard. It's cranky, whiny, and more than a bit teary, but it's not hard.

Having watched a couple of modern dance programs, I was in the mood for more dancing, and so I find myself in the odd position of watching and really enjoying So You Think You Can Dance. Enjoying it more than I thought I would, actually. It does lead to a lot of tears at times, but it's cathartic! And while I don't really care so much about the reaction of judges while people are dancing, because I want to see them dance, the whole process is interesting. It's the first judged reality-type show I think I've ever watched, and the first reality show, period, except for Ace of Cakes, I think.

I've kept the pilot of Glee on my Tivo, and I don't even know how many times I've watched the Don't Stop Believing bit. Nothing else, just that. I saw a number of people posting almost apologetically about how much they enjoyed it, but I have no apologies. The very sincere, earnest tone of it makes me entirely happy! I don't want realism, I want unadulterated gleeky happiness with a piquant bit of woe, ultimately winning against the forces of brawn and cheerleaderhood. With a song number each week.

I watched the pilot of Mental, and I think I'm going to like that, as well. It's in the vein of Lie to Me and House, in the psychiatric wing of a hospital, only the lead isn't just brilliant and quirky and annoying to those around him, he's cheery and nice for a change. And it has Jacqueline McKenzie, from The 4400, whom I like a lot.

Um. Mostly I'm working, watching a lot of TV, dribs of ending shows, drabs of new shows, and reruns of things I haven't seen before. For instance, I'm 29 episodes short of having rewatched the entire run of the original Twilight Zone; this makes me feel oddly like I've accomplished something. Oh, and I'm in the last season of Da Vinci's Inquest, which I really love. It's so different from American procedurals. It's very disturbing how much I want Major Davis to DIEDIEDIE, though. Soon.

I'm not feeling very fannish about anything, or doing much fannish (outside of the the obvious: VividCon). Has anyone else ever hit a point where the more fannishly popular something is, the less you want to participate in it? There are things I really enjoy that are hugely popular, and I find myself almost avoiding anything about them. It's been going on for a while now, but it's still disconcerting.

My state of mind lately, I cataloged this book:

Border crossings : transnational Americanist anthropology

I thought it said "transnational Americanist apology," and that it was about our invading and occupying and "helping" out other countries.

I'd have rather read that...

Leo: You got a little hole up there?
Rose: Yep.
Leo: That's a squirrel's nest. And all these squirrels? They're all of English descent.
Rose: What do you mean?
Leo: Well, I mean, when they first opened up this park, they shipped 'em all in here from England.
Rose: Huh, is that right?
Leo: The swans in the lagoon? They were delivered. That's why all the animals here look at you funny. They don't know where the hell they are. --Da Vinci's Inquest

arduinna (aka_arduinna on LJ) tells me that pnh has shut down the comment thread responding to the review of Thirteenth Child "temporarily ... while everyone cools off." Apparently one poster got abusive, and another said those critical of Wrede's book were engaging in "essentially a lynching," and those comments have been deleted.

I wonder if the "lynching" comment was used with intent. And even if this is "temporary," I agree with Arduinna that it will essentially kill it. Shut it down just before the weekend, problem solved! I'm reminded of E. Bear suggesting everyone take a time out to cool off. And I wonder how many people at Tor think this is more "targeting" of them, rather than people associated with them having their own personal pantsless moments.

LMB made makes an apology here. It's unfortunate she didn't make this in the original Tor thread. And okay, it's not really begun as an apology. She tries to explain what she meant, and why she thought as she did, and it ends with an apology to "... any and all Readers of Color I have so clumsily, and unintentionally, wounded." I think it's good to apologize, but I'm not sure prefacing it with all the explanations helps. And she's called on posting this in response to someone who wasn't trying to engage with her directly, while ignoring people who have been trying to do so.

Nothing ever goes away. --Barry Commoner

marycrawford told me about this thread on rec.arts.sf.composition.

Back in early February of 2006, Patricia Wrede was planning "a book set in a very alternate mid-1800s U.S.-equivalent-with-magic." As part of her research, she asked the members of rec.arts.sf.composition to help her come up with "plausible alternative names" for various European countries.

Someone asked her whether the magic was the major difference, or was there also "an important historical difference"?

She replied:

The current plan is to have the primary difference before 1492 be that the various pre-historic attempts to colonize the Americas were unsuccessful; thus, no Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Mississippi Valley civilization, or Native Americans of any sort.... The absence of an indiginous population in the Americas is obviously going to have a significant impact on the way things develop during the exploration and colonization period, and I'm still feeling my way through how I'm going to finagle that to get to where I want.

Which is, basically: A North America in which the threat of Indians was replaced by the threat of un-extinct megafauna...

She goes on to say that with no Sacagawea, Lewis&Clark never return and asks for "[s]uggestions for place names that can substitute for Indian-language-origin names." There are quite a few posts about naming alternatives, and responses by Wrede, including this and this where she says she wants to keep a certain "feel" and that she doesn't want "to have to change history very much just to get a name."

She says that she's eliminating any attempts at settling or exploring prior to 1492, and that she abandoned her original idea, to just eliminate the land bridge, demonstrating her awareness that the earliest settlers didn't just travel over that bridge.

Early on she thought that she would have African slaves, possibly even more than there were historically, because, and I quote:

...since there won't be any Native Americans to have already done a certain amount of prepping land for human occupation, nor to be exploited later.

Emphasis mine, and nobody called her on it. No wonder entire races were easy to eliminate; they weren't human. I don't think she was even listening to herself, having a cheery convo about her new book idea among friends and fans of her work.

She talks more there about some thought she's given to differences in South America, without the indigenous people to provide the easy gold that the Spanish went after, and says:

Most of this stuff is important mainly for background consistency, but I think there are likely to be at least a couple of school scenes, which will give me plenty of opportunity to showcase the really cool bits.

Someone asks her what language is the main language in the book, to which she replies:

English, so yes, pretty much anglicised. The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I'm not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won't get the right feel.

So... eliminating Native Americans isn't "wildly divergent history," apparently, and there aren't any alternatives to writing them as savages or as a gentle, spiritual people in harmony with all living things that are better than getting rid of "the problem."

Someone finally, gently calls her on this... sort of, by saying they'd rather write them as "just plain folks."

Her response in entirety is: Well, that's your book. This one's mine, and I'm doing mammoths and wooly rhinos and no Indians.

Then she says something about how to deal with migrations of people. Someone had suggested that maybe they were "interfered with" by previously-mentioned critters, but Wrede feels that:

I definitely have to do something about migrations, but since they come from both directions (trans-Pacific *and* trans-Atlantic), I think I need to kill them off after they arrive.

Someone then suggests endemic disease, and Wrede says:

I'm not fond of the disease-or-parasite solution; it raises too many other questions...Being eaten on arrival is a nice, effective, tidy solution without much in the way of additional complications.

She also goes on to mention a few things that will be different without natives, including how she's "looking forward to a mention of the land-grant colleges experimenting with wild native strains" and how "the history of the colonies will be substantially different without the Indian wars of various sorts. And the fur trade will be *much* more difficult...but also more exotic."


If there are objections to my quoting sections of the original texts, I can take them out and just use the links. Note, I'm not posting this to argue that Wrede was being overtly and intentionally racist. I think she had an idea she thought was cool, and she wanted to play with it, and it quite probably never even occurred to her that eliminating entire races in order to solve the "problems" that interfered with her achieving her goal was at all problematic. After all, as has said during this latest conversation, authors change and rearrange history all the time to suit their ends! If it occurred to anyone else on rasfc, they didn't say so, beyond the one mention of writing them as "plain folks."

I find it disheartening and... eye-opening makes it sound like it's something new, which is isn't, but my eyes did widen a bit reading through the whole thread, so -- I guess what fascinates (and nauseates) me in a really horrifying way is the blithe way in which the natives are planned out, the problematic language throughout, laid out for me to read through and boggle, as I see that in some ways, it isn't that Wrede never considered the ramifications of writing out an entire people: she planned for it. They were a problem, so they're gone. She considered that there were multiple migrations that had to be eliminated, that there would be a "labor shortage" and things wouldn't be all "prepped" for "human" occupation. We'll bring in more slaves, have some nice anecdotes! I gather that the slavery angle didn't make it through the full planning stage; I don't know how she ultimately dealt with the "labor shortage," or if she even addressed any, many, or most of the issues that were brought up in the conversation about how things would be different.

I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say here. The blindness was complete; writing out the Indians wasn't seen an issue, merely a clearing of the way to get to her story.

Luminosity and I had several conversations in the last week or so about creative license, responsibility, and truth. About whether what other people may think or how they react should impact the creative vision, should make an artist hesitate to put their vision out there. I don't know if we reached any concrete conclusions. But I don't think that creativity can be divorced from morality, from empathy, from the "real" world. I don't think that creators have license to create whatever they want, devoid of responsibility for what their creation says or implies or evokes. Creation is power, it has impact in the real world. And I don't creators/artists (putting aside the issue of what art is, and whether this book is art) have license to do or say or create whatever they want, or can evade responsibility for the echoes they loose in the world.

Posted here to DW, so three might be some comments there


We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives which produced them. --Duc de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)

I had a Luminosity visiting me over a long weekend, and I didn't read online at all for a few days. Thanks to lanning I did read Jo Walton's review of Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child and about the first 80 comments, and my first thought even before reading any comments was "Oh my God she erased Native Americans." I was sad to see that this hadn't even occurred to Walton when she read; I thought at the time that she responded fairly well to this being pointed out.

I also read Bujold's initial pantslessness and was appalled, in a weary sort of way. Little did I know I hadn't seen anything yet. I don't think I've ever bought a Wrede book new, just because it's only fairly recently that I started deliberately buying new books for authors I wanted to intentionally support (what can I say, I never thought about the obvious fact that hey, if I want writers to continue being able to write, maybe I needed to splurge a little, instead of always going used).

Now I've caught up a little, and I have to stop, both because I'm behind at work, and I don't really want to explain why I'm crying at my desk.

While I reject Bujold's contentions about the internet making more chromatic fans (any more than it makes any other kinds of fans, at least), I do celebrate that it makes it harder for people to conceal the fact that they aren't wearing any pants, and increasingly makes it less comfortable for them to continue in their smug, self-satisfied belief that they aren't the problem.

isilya has a summary of mammothfail, and naraht is doing a links roundup. And if you haven't, you should read ciderpress post on rejecting being defined by someone else's perceptions.

I didn't really join in the discussion because my class is full of people with crowded mouths and empty brainpans... --agentotter

I, too, have multiple DW invite codes, free for the asking! Comments are screened, if you want to leave an email address. I'll unscreen anything that doesn't have an email address, and you can always email me at elynross at gmail dot com.

It feels like it has been gray and gloomy here for weeks, and though we needed the rain, I am so done with it. I think there was sunlight yesterday when I came to work, but it was gone again by work's end, and I had to ask someone if I'd imagined it. They claim not.

If you get a chance to see A Bronx Tale, it's kind of adorable. It's a one-hour documentary about a group of kids from PS 59 who learn Irish dancing from their Irish teacher, and end up performing in front of the President of Ireland and on an Irish TV show.

NBC announced that Heroes, Southland, Parks and Recreation are returning, they're ordering six new half-hour eps of SNL Weekend Update Thursday, and they're ordering six new scripted shows: dramas Trauma, Parenthood, Mercy and Day One and comedies Community and 100 Questions

Of these, only Day One appeals. I'm not really into medical dramas (Trauma, about first responder paramedics, Mercy, the nurses PoV), I'm not sure Peter Krause is enough to get me to watch Parenthood, and having now seen longer blurbs for the two comedies, oh, hell no:

Community: a smart comedy series about higher education -- and lower expectations. The student body at Greendale Community College is made up of high-school losers, newly divorced housewives, and old people who want to keep their minds active. Within these not-so-hallowed halls, "Community" focuses on a band of misfits, at the center of which is a fast-talkin' lawyer whose degree has been revoked, who form a study group and end up learning a lot more about themselves than they do about their course work.

Emphasis mine. That sounds just like your life, doesn't it, ?

100 Questions for Charlotte: provides hilarious answers to 100 questions about love. Charlotte Payne is looking for love and has rejected multiple marriage proposals -- but she has yet to meet Mr. Right. When she joins a popular online dating site, she gets a little help from her dating counselor Ravi, who requires her to take a 100-question compatibility test. Each question requires her to recount a poignant and humorous time in her life with friends...The test becomes a journey of self-discovery for Charlotte who begins to realize what she truly wants in a relationship.

It's like they know me! And then said, "So, what can we develop that she absolutely will not watch?"

Supposedly no firm decisions have been made on whether Chuck and Medium are coming back; Auseillo says that the latter is supposedly renewed for 13-16 eps, and he's moved Chuck from "Could go either way" to "Safe bet," which is AWESOME news! I hope he's right.

Ausiello's Fall Cheat Sheet: What's in, what's out, what's up in the air.

You know, one of the most entertaining things about sigs is when you've completely lost any context they may have had. I... have no idea. *g*

Margie: no moose and squirrel sushi bondage!!

elyn: well, it started as a discussion of Killa's upcoming trip abroad...

By way of bossymarmalade and glockgal, all but one of the protest-related items in glockgal's racebending.com Zazzle store were pulled because "[they] contained content in violation of Viacom's intellectual property rights."

You can see the images/text in question here. All images were drawn by glockgal. As she points out, "this means not just images, but WORDS."

And just to emphasize how pointed this is, she also includes links to Zazzle items that are still available, in spite of using actual images and words from the Avatar cartoon.

bossymarmalade asks the following, which I have done:

Go to the Viacom website. Fill out their comment form. Tell them how much cowardly bullshit this is.

And glockgal asks people to take a short survey on the racebending comm to compile some stats on demographics.

Dear my coworkers:

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there is in fact a difference between "repricing" and "reprising." One applies to money and one does not, unless you have a dollar bill and a quarter singing a love song to each other, for the second time, with slightly different lyrics and emotion than in their earlier performance.

And if that's the case, I would like tickets please. --Celli

Why Women are Leaving Men for Other Women

Choice excerpts:

Actress Lindsay Lohan and DJ Samantha Ronson flaunted their relationship from New York to Dubai. Katy Perry's song "I Kissed a Girl" topped the charts. "The L Word," "Work Out," and "Top Chef" are featuring gay women on TV, and there's even talk of a lesbian reality show in the works.

Certainly nothing is new about women having sex with women, but we've arrived at a moment in the popular culture when it all suddenly seems almost fashionable -- or at least, acceptable.

Emphasis mine.

FLAUNTED. ALMOST FASHIONABLE.

Lohan FLAUNTED Ronson!! You know, by appearing in public with her, and even holding hands and kissing her, and not being ashamed and hiding it away. And that's why women are doing it -- another woman on your arm is the latest fashion accessory. It's almost acceptable!

A telling quote from feminist philosopher Susan Bordo:

Of course, we shouldn't imagine that we're living in a world where all sexual choices are possible. Just look at the cast of 'The L Word' and it's clear that only a certain kind of lesbian -- slim and elegant or butch in just the right androgynous way -- is acceptable to mainstream culture.

It goes on to talk about sexual fluidity:

"Fluidity represents a capacity to respond erotically in unexpected ways due to particular situations or relationships. It doesn't appear to be something a woman can control."

And then:

"We found that women's sexual desire is less rigidly directed toward a particular sex, as compared with men's, and it's more changeable over time," says the study's senior researcher, J. Michael Bailey, Ph.D. "These findings likely represent a fundamental difference between men's and women's brains."

I wonder if anyone's considering that women have been more socialized to associate women's bodies with sexuality than men have the reverse. Not that I have any issues with the probability that women are more emotionally and sexually flexible than men, but it seems interesting to me that while orientation is seen as being increasingly impacted by all sorts of factors, genetic and otherwise, people want to pin this particular aspect down by gender.

If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false. --Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

Next week our Governer is going to sign into law that the Flaming Lips' 'Do You Realize' is the official state rock song. I heard about this yesterday from my friend A at work, but that was because our Senate had voted it down... because "Lips member Michael Ivins's decision to wear a shirt with the communist logo on it at the state's Capitol was inappropriate."

He wore a yellow shirt with a red sickle on it. I have absolutely no opinion on the song as the state rock song. I sort of think the whole idea of a "state rock song" is silly, although if you're going to have one, picking one from a home rock group is a good plan. But good grief. *rolls eyes*

Apparently Governor Henry is going to ignore them. *g*

Killa: anybody feel like coming up with a cute Sith-related thing to put on the lunch tickets? do Jedi eat? *g*
tzikeh: You could do "But I'm not hungry!" "Heh. You will be. You *will* be." LUKE: Put that down. Hey! That's my dinner! YODA : How you get so big, eating food of this kind? Or you could have Darth Maul, but instead of a double lightsaber he could have a double spork. May the snacks be with you. A SNACK OF THE CLONES. Now I'm going all Battlestar with Commander A Llama. Obi Wan Cannoli! *cries* --in the weeks leading up to VividCon

This is apparently advertising for a new Nestea product, Red Tea.

I. Whut?

*pigeons - quick question: trafalgar square, london - paying fine of £50. your opinion???

*I think fining pigeons is always a doomed enterprise. Most of them have no fixed abode, and very few of them even have bank accounts. --Neil Gaiman

ABC Renewals: Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, Grey's Anatomy, Dancing With the Stars, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The Bachelor, America's Funniest Home Videos, Ugly Betty, Supernanny, Wife Swap, and Private Practice. Lost had already been renewed through next year. Not mentioned: The Unusuals, Scrubs, Cupid, In the Motherhood, Samantha Who?

( Summer Renewals )

And some casting news for Doctor Who and True Blood.

( BET Upfronts )

What I learned from "The X-Files" is quite simple and easily put: Alien sightings are never a good thing. You do not want to be Fox Mulder. --sisabet

Yes, that was sarcasm you heard in my subject line.

The important part of the (very short) article: NBC is picking up a new comedy headed up by Debra Messing, according to The Hollywood Reporter... The pilot will see the former Will & Grace actress star as a laid-off CEO who struggles to be a full-time wife and mother, while her husband finds it difficult to provide for the family.


I liked the first season of The Starter Wife, but only made it part of one ep into the second. So, first she makes her name playing the man-hungry BFF of a gay man, then a thrown-aside-for-a-trophy-wife Hollywood wife who spends a lot of time bemoaning her lack of a man, and now a woman who leaves her high-powered job for home and husband. I've enjoyed the eps of Will & Grace that I've seen (and I ADORE jarrow's vid for it, but... these don't strike me as the most empowering types of rolls to play.

I think I'll give this one a miss.

With the Female Bodybuilders series I am offering a proximate challenge. We all operate within narrowly constructed ideals of the good, the right, and the beautiful, all subject to the countless influences that swirl around us. The athletes presented here are no different in this regard, they are as vulnerable as any other person standing in front of a camera. So what is it that provokes our admiring, conforming, outraged, or confused response? If a subject is proud of the way she looks, whose discomfort are you feeling? --Martin Schoeller

Remember that thing I ETA'd last post about frequency of posting? ...Yeah.

So, I don't generally watch shows on the Food Network, except in a hit or miss, an ep here and there kind of way (except Charm City Cakes). I like cooking shows, love recipes and cooking, but I'm not generally attracted to most of the shows in any ongoing way.

I may have to make an exception for this (from Futoncritic.com):

WHAT WOULD BRIAN BOITANO MAKE? (WT)

Premieres: August 2009

Everyone knows Brian Boitano won an Olympic gold medal in figure skating. What they dont know: Brian is an accomplished cook who loves to entertain! In this new series, Brian takes viewers on a reality cooking adventure as he creates amazing food for a new event in each episode. Funny, knowledgeable and irresistible, Brian brings himself and so much more to What Would Brian Boitano Make?

*flails* I DON'T EVEN KNOW. What I do know is that my most recent nonfiction purchase was a behind-the-scenes expose of the figure skating world, and that the period when Boitano was most actively skating corresponded with my first love affair with ice skating, and... I have to watch. *g*

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself and all the while a great wind is carrying me across the sky. --Ojibwa text, quoted by Peter Matthiessen in Nine Headed Dragon River

So, I've been crossposting away to LJ and DW through semagic, the only real problem being that it doesn't assign the same icons to each entry: DW seems to select one at random. If necessary, I just slip in and edit that by hand.

What I didn't realize about the DW crossposter is that having set up LJ as a journal to crosspost to, DW would blithely crosspost anything I posted to it, without me selecting any option to do so.

I just happened to glance into my DW inbox after I posted my last post, only to see a happy little "crosspost successful!" note there -- and to find that DW had happily posted a second copy of my semagically-posted post, only without the LJ cut. *g* Whoops! And then, when I edited my DW post to include a sig (horrors, I forgot), it happily edited the one it posted to LJ! Happyhappy DW! *g*

However, apart from the to-be-fixed "cut doesn't show up on LJ," it worked nicely, and does select the same icon, so I may be switching to posting through the DW interface. Although it feels very odd; I haven't used a journal posting interface in years, I don't think, and there are some nifty things to using semagic I may miss.


Lots of people are talking about DW, pro and con, clearly stating their policies about crossposting, directing comments (or not), granting access, or saying that they haven't thought about it yet, or have no idea what they're going to do.

I'm still betwixt and between, and any "policy" is likely to change depending on the direction of the wind at the time. I don't automatically reciprocally subscribe/grant access. I did that for periods of time at least twice on LJ, and that way lies madness. I either have to filter the crap out of my reading (which I do anyway, but usually just to regulate feeds/comms), or feel overwhelmed.

Like many, I rarely lock posts. I used to now and then for some kind of rant, but I don't think I've done that in quite a long time. When I do lock, it tends to be actually personal crap/seeking advice that I lock down to people who I feel close to in some way or another (whether they reciprocate or not! FORCED intimacy for me). So, in theory, my granting access on DW will be limited to those folks, which may or may not be a source of discontent/angst/momentary sadness/whatev on the part of some of you. I know that the reverse is true for me, heh. Yes, I will experience momentary pain if you're someone to whom I grant access, who does not grant access back. And then? I'll get over it.

If at any point you remove access from me (because I haven't returned it, because you realize I'm a freak, whatever your reason, it's not my business), I will again feel a pang, often completely irrational. Hell, I feel it when someone unsubs from me that I don't even know. And then, again, I get over it, usually with a lot of eye-rolling and self mockery.

I sub to people I find interesting and/or "know," from F2F meetings or simply from online communication. I don't sub to all of those, and the reasons vary widely. Sometimes I sub to people I don't know who sub to me first, because... that day the wind blew that direction. Sometimes I don't. Mostly I don't.

That's the thing, though. All that above is the "theory"; in practice, all bets are off. Some days I'm all "I love everyone! I want to know what all the people who are interested in me are interested in!" And a week later I'm all "Oh, my GOD WHAT WAS I THINKING." Usually more to do with feeling overwhelmed with information than any particular person.

So, sub to me, grant me access, friend me, or don't, and I'll do the same, as the mood and wind takes me. I won't promise not to feel some injury if you go away or take access away, but neither will I expect you to be completely unconcerned if I do the same. I never can quite say "it's not personal"; I mean, I have to make a decision to change things, and I have to make that decision about each person. I can say that any change is not necessarily about anything you've done, or said, or who you are, or any of that. I ebb and flow, feeling more and less social in waves, and that's generally reflected in either my actual practices, or in my reading filters.

Um. Is that vague enough?

ETA: I will be crossposting to both journals indefinitely, and have no intention of directing comments to a single journal at this point (although I may do so for particular entries that seem likely to generate much discussion, in order to not split up conversations). I have no issue with people who choose to direct all comments one direction or the other, however. And when I find that people are crossposting consistently, I'm simply moving them off my default LJ reading filter to a DW-specific one, rather than culling my flist).

PS: I also go through the same ebb and flow about being outwardly social through posting. ie, sometimes I'm wordy as hell, and then I'll go days, even weeks, without posting. If I do that "ten things about me" thing, that will be one of my things. *g*

I have to admit, I've never put an instant's thought into how subversive I was being. I'm in fandom to push my own buttons, not to stick it to the man. ... er, The Man. The Guy. some of the men, they get stuck. --Margie

Ah, spring, when a fan's thoughts lightly turn to cancellations, upfronts, and what she'll be watching in the summer and fall! Sad as I am about various cancellations and rumors of same, hearing about new shows that sound interesting/like fun always makes me happy. I seem to be doing a really good job of implementing my "If it gets four eps, I'm happy, if it gets a season, very happy, two seasons, ecstatic" rule of thumb. I no longer expect any show to last any particular length of time, and I'm pretty happy looking at series that are ended after a 9 to 13-ep order as basically mini-series. Mind you, it helps that I'm not really fannish about anything I'm watching at the moment.

I've been wandering through various entertainment news and futoncritic.com's listings of shows "in development," some of which are at the script stage (and will probably never make it out), some of which have been ordered to pilot, a few of which already have committed orders. Canada is becoming quite popular as a source for new shows, along with the good old UK. As Variety reports:

"ABC also has the miniseries "Diamonds" and "Impact" this summer, and "Ben Hur" next year; Fox is airing the series "Mental"; NBC has "The Listener," "Merlin" and "The Philanthropist"; CBS has "The Bridge" and "Flashpoint"; and more are likely to come."

I've seen Merlin, and I have the eps of The Listener so far, though I haven't watched yet; it and The Philanthropist have been on my radar (and Tivo wishlist) since last spring. The former is about a telepathic paramedic, the latter about a billionaire playboy turned vigilante philanthropist. I think the latter caught me, because how can you not love the phrase "vigilante philanthropist"?

Anyway, as I'm wandering through I find mention of a new series, Copper, about a group of rookie cops, just out of the academy and on the job:

COPPER is a youthful, heartfelt, one-hour, character-driven workplace drama about five rookie cops plunged into the high stakes world of big city policing - a world where even the smallest mistake can have life-or-death consequences. The series follows them just out of the police academy where they bonded together, fought together, drank together, worked together and slept together. And now they're on the job together. They're kids with guns, learning firsthand the hardest kind of policing there is. They are first responders and they are about to learn that no amount of training prepares you for life.

Emphasis mine.

I know that "slept together" probably means men and women, but my encultured sexist mind hit that and went "...?" *hangs head* Well, and one can always hope. *kof*

Futon has an upfronts calendar here. BET is today, NBC is 5/4, Fox is 5/18, ABC is 5/19, CBS is 5/20, TBS & TNT 5/20, and CW 5/21.

( Various TV shows I'll be checking out this summer/fall )

These are just the ones that say they're going to series, and only the ones of those I've seen mentioned so far. There are a number of concepts that have pilot orders that I'd really love to see developed, some of which look more likely than others (have names attached, etc). Wanna know now!

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work. --Gallagher

Glee, which is from the creators of Nip/Tuck (which I haven't seen, but. *g*)

Here's a link to a promo for the show, which is a Fox show (I know, I know):

...an uplifting series with biting humor that features a soundtrack of hit music from past to present. The show follows an optimistic high school teacher, WILL SCHUESTER (Matthew Morrison), as he tries to refuel his own passion while reinventing the high school's glee club and challenging a group of outcasts to realize their star potential. It's not an easy task when the pitch-imperfect club includes MERCEDES (Amber Riley), a forceful diva-in-training; ARTY (Kevin McHale), a geeky guitarist; KURT (Chris Colfer), a dramatic soprano; TINA (Jenna Ushkowitz), a punk rocker; and self-proclaimed "star" RACHEL (Lea Michele), a perfectionist firecracker. McKinley's cruel high school caste system prevents the glee club from flourishing, so Will recruits FINN (Cory Monteith), the quarterback with movie star looks, to join the group even though he wants to protect his reputation with his holier-than-thou girlfriend, QUINN (Dianna Agron), and his arrogant teammate, PUCK (Mark Salling). With harsh criticism from everyone, including Will's tough-as-nails wife TERRI (Jessalyn Gilsig) and McKinley's egotistical cheerleading coach SUE SYLVESTER (Jane Lynch), he is determined to prove them all wrong and lead the glee club to the greatest competition of them all: Nationals.

Yeah, it looks stereotypical, sentimental, emotionally manipulative, and quite possibly filled with embarrassment-inducing, squirmy moments, and I'm such a sucker for this kind of thing. *g* I'll have to wait and see how they handle Amber, the "I'm Beyonce!" and so-called "diva in training," but... the promo just kind of filled me with...glee.

ETA: Fox is planning to air a special preview of Glee on May 19th during American Idol.

He looked at me, shook his head sadly and said, "You never had a chance, did you? When you were born, the doctors said, 'This one's gonna be a geek. Put her over in that room and give her a calculator.'" --Barkley

From Central Station Antwerp (link goes to youtube). As I'm normally annoyed when people post youtube links without either identifying that's what they are, or what they contain, I feel odd not telling you what it is, but I also feel like it's better if you don't know! At least it was for me. *g*

Thanks to giandujakiss for the link.

I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human. --Oriah

I'm reading through the upfronts for various networks -- like Nick, Syfy, Oxygen, Animal Planet, etc.; the primary upfronts start in May -- and I hit the Cartoon Network:

Cartoon Network unveiled 19 new programming ventures, including three new action-adventure and four new comedy animated series; six live-action "alternative" half-hour series; three original live-action and one all-new CG-animated movie specials; and two hour-long original, scripted live-action pilots. Coupled with 164 new half-hour episodes of returning comedy and action-adventure animated series, today's announcements represent the largest commitment to new content development in Cartoon Network history.

So I read through, because hey, Venture Brothers, but since Avatar is done, maybe there'll be a new cartoon that is adult-me-appealing, as well.

Reality Shows: 5 ensemble, 2 male leads

New Animated Series: 4 ensemble, 3 male leads

Movies: 1 ensemble, 3 male leads

Live-Action scripted series: 2 male leads

Returning Animated series: 1 ensemble, 1 family ensemble with only 1 male child, 3 male leads.

ETA: 52% male leads, 48% ensemble.

And that's not counting the cartoons on Adult Swim, which can vary, but from what I've seen, tends to fall almost entirely in the ensemble/male arena.


I keep forgetting that like comic books, cartoons are really mostly for boys -- unless they have princesses.

Dan: I remember what you were wearing. Do you remember what I was wearing?
Casey: I remember not thinking at the time that you were a woman. -Sports Night

Not to say Susan Boyle and Amazon. *g*


Someone at work showed me the clip of Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent shortly before it started popping up all over my flist. I love her, for her courage and sauciness and willingness to endure in the face of potential cruelty and mocking, and I love the clip, all the way through, and I admit that part of that is the vicious feeling of "UP YOURS" I get when the judges and audience are clearly stunned at that voice coming from that middle-aged, unbeautiful, unglamorous, never-been-kissed woman. It's as if it doesn't even occur to them that such an unprepossessing figure could actually have talent.

I think it's accepted wisdom that MTV/videos have had a tremendous impact on who can "make it" in music, ie, the idea you didn't used to have to be pretty/beautiful/glamorous to have a career. I'm not entirely sure about that, and I think even now it varies, depending on which area you're in, what kind of career you want, etc. MTV success is not the only kind of success, and most of the female singers I can think of from the last however many decades (outside of the 60s, possibly) are pretty attractive and/or glamorous, and the exceptions tend to be those with extraordinary voices/talents.

I think it's harder on women than men, but I suspect that even in her time, Cass Elliot had her detractors, and even before music videos, it was easier to get ahead if you had a more generally pleasing appearance. Maybe it could be argued that TV, in general, is a culprit, but I don't think appearance only became an issue once you could be seen more widely. I think our standards have shifted, but that it's always been an issue in one way or another, and not just in entertainment fields.

Someone gave me/pointed to this post by jacinthsong that talks about the implication from the reactions of the BGT judges and audience that Susan's appearance was something that needed to be "made up for," that if she hadn't had the gorgeous voice to "make up for" her appearance, it would have remained a completely humiliating experience, and she would have remained a joke.

jacinthsong in turn points to this article in The Herald that gives more background about Susan, and talks about human expectations towards those considered less beautiful, less glamorous, that we see them as someone lesser, when we have no idea what might lie behind their appearance, and whether we do or not, how we patronize people when we view them this way.

Susan Boyle should have had our respect before she opened her voice. Perhaps the shock shouldn't have been that such an unglamorous woman had such a beautiful talent, but that such a supposedly untrained singer had such a talent. I'm sure some of it was that, and her desire to have a career like Elaine Pagels (HEE)Paige -- but why not aim high?



And via Amireal, an afterellen.com article that says that the "hiding" of LGBQT books has been going on at least since early 2008, without much notice, and that perhaps that led Amazon to be complacent and assume that expanding the practice wouldn't be a problem.


ETA: If the link above goes down again, you can you can find the full text here. Thanks to for pointing me there.


My position on him being on television again has been swayed a bit upon seeing how cruel the show seems to be.

Based on the footage, it’s not so much a survival show as a will-you-let-us-put-spiders-on-your-eyeballs show. I still won’t watch, but it will be good to know he’s there. --afterellen.com, on Rod Blagojevich’s possible new gig on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here

This poor little code has been rejected a few times by those who already have one, but it's eager to please, plays well with others! First comment gets it, no adoption fee or references required.

ETA: Adopted!


Husband and I are united in our fear of having pets. We anticipate their deaths in twenty years and it freaks us out in advance. Why bother, we say, they'll only die. No, we don't have any children, why do you ask? --Ces

SPIKE TV PRESENTS THE HIGHLY-ANTICIPATED TELEVISION WORLD PREMIERE OF "ZOMBIE STRIPPERS!"

No, wait, you really need the full article:

Described as a combination of "Citizen Kane" meets "The Godfather" meets "A River Runs Through It," Spike TV presents the world television premiere of the sweeping epic "Zombie Strippers!" on Sunday, April 19 (10:00pm-12:00am ET/PT).

Cinematic legend Jenna Jameson gives an Oscar-worthy portrayal of an angst-ridden exotic dancer in Nebraska who becomes infected with a deadly virus and morphs into a supernatural, flesh-eating zombie. In her tour-de-force performance, Dame Jameson spreads the virus to the unwitting customers at the strip club. Renowned thespian Robert Englund, famous for his critically-acclaimed role as Freddy Krueger of "The Nightmare on Elm Street" films co-stars in "Zombie Strippers!" Jameson's real-life paramour, former UFC fighter Tito Ortiz, makes his eagerly-awaited big-screen debut as a bouncer.

"Zombie Strippers! is a movie that will air next Sunday at 10:00pm on Spike TV," triumphantly declares John Griffin, vice president of programming, Spike TV.

*cracks up*

Okay, I know there's a lot to loathe here, with the strippers, and the diseased strippers infecting their customers, and all, but. It still makes me laugh.


Interestingly, two of my three zombie-specific sigs also contain mention of marsupials. And yet, I am using the third one.

When people ask me what I want for Christmas, I tell them "I want the whole world to be just like the world in Dawn of the Dead. Remake or original, it doesn't matter. Precious little would change with 95 percent of the population, the crowds at the local shopping malls would be smaller, and the IQ of the average American would go up by about 50 points. And I'd be allowed to use chainsaws in my daily duties." --sclerotic rings

So far it's nicely spooky, kind of Kingish in its way. I'm not far enough in to know how good I think it is, but I forgive a lot for horror/supernatural/sffish.

And though I didn't actually know it was shot in Vancouver, it didn't take long to figure it out. I didn't go in expecting so many familiar faces:

Richard Burgi: TS, DH
Gina Holden: BT, FG, SV, Psych, SPN, DZ, L Word
Amber Borycki: L-Word, Psych, BT, Eureka, Kyle XY, SPN, DZ,
Jim Beaver! from Deadwood and SPN
Cameron Richardson: Entourage, Point Pleasant, House, Skin,
Katie Cassidy: 7th Heaven, SPN
Christopher Gorham: O5, Jake 2.0, Medical Investigation, Ugly Betty
Nicholas Carella: O5, 11th Hour, Little Mosque, Eureka, Kyle XY
Julia Anderson: SV, SPN, Reaper, SGA, DZ, Tru Calling
Matt Barr: OTH, Bones, OC, GG
Victor Webster: NCIS, Mutant X, Charmed, Moonlight
Ben Cotton: SGA, Kyle XY, BT, BW, FG, BSG, SPN, Psych, DZ
Alex Farris, who was young Sam on SPN
and wee Ryan Grantham, who was also on SPN

Yes, I should be working. And I'm starting to remember the downside of regular (ish!) posting. *peers at inbox*

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Fear, and negative equity. ... The two things we have to fear are fear itself and negative equity, and the depleted capital of financial institutions ... Amongst the things we have to fear are fear itself, negative equity, and the depleted capital of financial institutions. --xlorp

Amazon 'Glitch' Removes Sales Rank From Gay Books

Blogs and Twitter Coin “AmazonFail” has the update:

Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says in a statement: “GLAAD has reached out to Amazon.com and they indicate this was an error, so we expect to start seeing evidence of its correction immediately, and any loss of visibility of gay-themed books as a result of this error will be made right by Amazon … When people learn about the lives of gay and transgender people and the common ground we share, the culture changes and advances. It is so important that stories about the lives of our community are available, and that companies like Amazon promote these titles in an equal fashion.”

If it is a true glitch, and gets fixed, here's hoping there's a decent apology.

When I first started reading slash, I sent...fiction to a friend...and the first thing she said was, "Men aren't like this!" and then, "Gay men aren't like this!" I mean, it's a little bit like complaining to people who love Watership Down that rabbits aren't like that. --Calista Echo

So, my Tivo watched Southland for me before I changed the settings, so I figured I'd take a look, just in case something really appealed.

Within ten minutes, there was one female detective of color, for a few seconds, but I decided that I didn't need another grim, gritty look at LAPD where a non-gangbanging black boy is shot in a drive-by by a car full of Latino gangbangers in the opening minutes, even if a cop or two are going to turn out to be gay.

That, and...it was kind of boring. Maybe it's not a fair shake, ten minutes, but usually if I'm going to like something, someone or some aspect is at least intriguing from the get-go.

I'm still thinking on Krod Mandoon. It has its moments, but I have to agree with the afterelton review that pointed out that the gay character (Bruce, no less) and the free-spirited, mind-of-her-own pagan woman are painted as being mostly, if not all, about the sex. When I hit the sacred rite of the raccoon, or whatever it was, where a woman of 300 moons "celebrates" by spreading her legs for 300 men? Yeah, that's all about her celebration, there, particularly when it starts with her doing a scantily-clad pole dance.


On the other hand, I'm liking Independent Lens more and more, and I wish I'd known about it years ago. Oh, yay, I see that they're offering some full-length films at Hulu, and a few other places! This weekend I watched Lakshmi and Me, where a Mumbai filmmaker started recording the daily life of her maid, and Arusi Persian Wedding, where the Iranian-American filmmaker Marjan Tehrani filmed the trip her brother and his wife took to Iran to meet his family and have a traditional Persian Islamic wedding.

Earlier I watched March Point, a film by three boys from the Swinomish Indian tribe who helped make a film about the refineries that are on Swinomish treaty land, and Order of Myths, about America's oldest Mardi Gras celebrations in Mobile, Alabama, which are still almost entirely segregated.

What's most interesting about most of these films is that they make no real commentary, themselves; they just put the images and information out there and let you absorb it.

mirandir: Is there a word for shows that make the token attempt at showing girl power while still fundamentally undermining any feminism they have at every turn?
Lucy: "Television."
mirandir: I hate you a little right now.

You can sign the petition here in protest of Amazon's new "adult" policy.

You can read about the policy here, here, and here, and probably all over your journal reading list.

Amazon.com’s customer service department told YA author Mark Probst:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

This apparently hits a number of romance writers, GLBQT themed books, and erotica.

Amazon Rank

Pizza Delivery God: What, no tip? I got it here under thirty minutes.
Joan: Like that's hard for you.

elyn: I sigged this just so I could type "Pizza Delivery God."

Judging by what kali921 has to say here about the racism bingo in it, I don't think I'm going to bother. She didn't care for The Unusuals, either, and I can't say any of her comments are unfair. It did pass the Bechdel test, at least, and has another female detective who looks to be pretty kick-ass. I'm going to give it a few eps to see how it shakes out.

On the bright side, Texas state Rep Betty Brown's co-legislator, Rep. Trey Martinez, offers up the Betty Brown Name Generator

"Is your name too hard to understand? Pesky Asian heritage got you down? Representative Trey Martinez Fischer is here to help!

Try our "Betty Brown Name Generator" guaranteed to give you an American name ANY Poll Worker can understand."

You can now address me as LaVerne "Apple Pie" Brown.

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything. -Confucius

I don't know if it's peri-menopause or not enough sleep or a mix of both, but I'm tearing up at the very mention that someone might drop their hat.

This time? At Abby teaming up with the sick old fogie on NCIS to rescue lab bunnies. I mean, sure, it's warming and heart-touching! But this isn't exactly Bless the Beasts and the Children.

Okay, and now I'm tearing up again, thinking about the song. Pardon me while I go search youtube.

omg it has pictures of aminals. *cries*

She had the most beautiful voice.

Hi, it's random Friday.

swmbo: There is no logic in this thing you called logic! Spock would be crying now. CRYING! And it takes a lot to make a Vulcan cry.

arundhathi: I think you're wrong. If what it takes to make a Vulcan cry is a lack of logic, then surely what fandom teaches us is that Vulcans are big crybabies.

I watch too much TV. No, really, I do. I either need to start getting home earlier at night, or watch less -- or get a bigger Tivo -- because I push myself to stay up waaaay too late so I can keep from getting even more behind. *facepalm* But hey, I've seen over a hundred of the original Twilight Zone eps in the last few months...

I watched Life last night, and wow, do I love that show. It made me ponder which shows I watch that I love mostly for the relationships between the characters: Life, Medium, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Chuck, Fringe (that and the little bald guy), Better Off Ted, and As Time Goes By, which I've only just started watching on our local PBS.

I think No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency' is going to fall into that group, as well.

Russell Simmons presents Brave New Voices (HBO, I think) tracks the coming together of teams of kids from all over the country for competition at Brave New Voices, a national youth spoken word poetry competition produced by Youth Speaks. The quality and calibre of voices is amazing. I'm not very familiar with contemporary spoken word, apart from some pointers garnered from my flist here and there, but I'm planning to educate and expose myself to more of it.


I never really hated Tom Cruise. I thought he was weird and disturbing, but I didn't much care. Now he wants to remake Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid... with himself as Sundance, and John Travolta as Butch. *weeps* Obviously it's time to strengthen my "remakes do not change the original" philosphy. It's just... it's not like I'd automatically dismiss any remake of the movie. But Cruise and Travolta? *shudder*

Then there's the writer of the Topper remake, who opined that the original didn't have "much of a story to it, so we updated it." Steve Martin is playing the Cary Grant role, and he's "a big marriage counselor." The director agrees that his "lifelong favorite" was "terrible...just nothing."

Funny, I still love the original, and I guess I like stories that have "no story," as long as they have people like Cary Grant, Billie Burk, Constance Bennet, and Roland Young.


I'm taking a look at Amber Tamblyn in The Unusuals, which apparently has a streak of magical realism in it. She still doesn't look old enough to be a homicide cop to me, though! I'm also going to look at Southland, although I haven't heard anything about it yet that distinguishes it from any other generic LA cop show. One comparison to The Shield; I'm not sure I need something like The Shield in my watching life right now...

Harper's Island starts up soon, with Chris Gorham, at least for the first season. It sounds like an "And Then There Were None" TV show. And for those who haven't already seen it, SciFi is starting to show Primeval from the beginning, on Fridays, I think. Parks & Recreation starts tonight; it looks like it might be entertaining. The crazy world of local government!

And Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire starts this week! I originally was going to look at it solely based on the title, but the teasers have been fun.

And in spite of myself, I'm getting sucked in to season two of In Treatment. So far I don't care about Mia, but April, Oliver, and Walter all intrigue me, and I'm curious to see how Paul's actual therapy with Gina will differ from what they had before. I still find Paul unappealing, particularly in his own blindess as he talks to his patients about self-awareness, but he is a nicely complex character.


Tahmoh Penikett will star in the Riverworld miniseries, which is finally going to happen, and they're doing a new movie of Stephen King's It. I like both of the source texts a lot, so it'll be interesting to see what comes of them.

Kings is probably going to be cancelled, but at least they're going to play the remaining eight episodes -- on Saturday nights at 8p Eastern, starting April 18th. They're replacing it on Friday nights with a second hour of Dateline. I hope that works for them; it certainly frees up my Sunday night.

Similarly, it looks like Reaper won't be back, unless it continues without the original creators, who have signed a new deal with Fox.


And apparently the final Pushing Daisies (May 30th), Dirty Sexy Money (July 18th), and Eli Stone (June 20th) episodes will air this spring. The Eli Stone eps are already airing on SciFi UK, so they're findable.


With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist there is not such thing as progress. -Ransom K. Ferm

Lawmaker defends comment on Asians

Call for voters to simplify their names not racially motivated, Terrell Republican says
By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
April 8, 2009, 8:43PM

AUSTIN — A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”

The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes.

The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.
Easier for voting?

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie said Republicans are trying to suppress votes with a partisan identification bill and said Brown “is adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments.”

Brown spokesman Jordan Berry said Brown was not making a racially motivated comment but was trying to resolve an identification problem.

Berry said Democrats are trying to blow Brown’s comments out of proportion because polls show most voters support requiring identification for voting. Berry said the Democrats are using racial rhetoric to inflame partisan feelings against the bill.

“They want this to just be about race,” Berry said.

I really don't have much to say about this; I think it speaks for itself. Gee, and she looks like such a nice white lady.



/earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.

I recently subbed to the feed for Sociological Images: Seeing is Believing. It "is designed to encourage all kinds of people to exercise and develop their sociological imagination by presenting brief sociological discussions of compelling and timely imagery that spans the breadth of sociological inquiry." ie, it takes imagery from pop culture and highlights the sociological implications in terms of things like sexuality, class, race, gender, etc.

( Privilege and Poverty in Fashion Spreads )


And for added interest, via delux_vivens, an article about a group of Burners who decided to throw a "Go Native" party, and the reaction in the Native American community about their cultural appropriation. Here's a page with the original invite including this bit:

Come dance to 20+ DJs in an 1870’s bordello complex built in front of the ancient Ohlone Indian gathering ground in Oakland. There will be a discount for Native costume, and the four rooms themed to the four elements:

Water: Island Natives (Maori)
Air: Cliff Natives (Anasazi)
Earth: Jungle Natives (Shipibo)
Fire: Desert Natives (Pueblo)

So much fail. And from what little I looked at still going conversations, the patterns of comments are just as you might expect, right down to accusations of over-reaction and hysteria, and comments on tone.

House: This doesn’t bother you?
Wilson: That you were wrong? I try to work through the pain.
House: I was not wrong. Everything I said was true.
Wilson: So…reality was wrong.
House: Reality is almost always wrong.

If you like cartoons/anime, I can't recommend Avatar: the Last Airbender highly enough. It's smart and sharp, with great male and female characters, set in an Asian-influenced world that draws on (at the very least) Chinese, Japanese, Shaolin/Tibetan Buddhist and Siberian Yupik/Inuit cultures.

Unfortunately, in casting the movie, Paramount Pictures has gone with Caucasians for the main heroic roles, casting various ethnicities only in supporting or villanous roles, or as background/non-speaking characters.

Racebending has a petition about which they say "This is the official petition of the Racebending/Aang-Aint-White/Saving the World with Postage movement. It will be delivered to MANAA, EWP, and one of the leaders of AAW will personally see that it physically makes it to the Kennedy/Marshall production office in Santa Monica and to other desks at Paramount."

Here is more about the petition, including the letter to Paramount in full.

So far they have about 4,000 signatures, but they'd like to have 10,000. If you're at all unhappy about this type of casting, please take the time to sign.



(image hotlinked from glockgal with permission. See her posts about Avatar: The Last Airbender movie casting

Check out aang_aint_white, too.

"You know, aside from the fact that I'll never again experience joy in my life, I don't think it had any negative effect on me." --Crow T. Robot, MST3K

Yesterday I decided to go ahead and create an OpenID account on Dreamwidth, so I could start getting used to it. Lo and behold, this morning I had an invite from Denise! \o/

So now I have cleared out the subs to actual DW journals on the OpenID account and added them through my elynross account. Sorry for the confusion, those of you I added. *g*

If you have an account on DW or an OpenID account, go ahead and add me! I don't know exactly how I'm going to transition, whether I'm going to do what some are, and post to both, but I'll figure it out.

I think if I didn't like something I'd probably take the Thumper (from Bambi) option and not say anything, unless I felt the world needed to be warned, and then I'd have to choose my words carefully, unless I really really felt the world needed to be warned, in which case I'd warn everyone as best I could, probably standing out by the entrance to the freeway shouting "Don't go and see the Anansi Boys film! They've made them all rabbits! It's now a caper movie set in a chocolate factory!" at the uncaring people driving past. --Neil Gaiman, on whether he's contractually obligated to not talk about whether an adaptation of his work is crap

Airs on ABC on Wednesdays, 7:30p central time. The second ep aired this week.
Basic setup: Ted works as head of R&D for Viridian Dynamics, "a large unscrupulous multinational corporation that values profits over morals," as wiki says. He's the problem solver, the one who gets the things done that the company, by way of Veronica (Portia de Rossi), his humorless boss, want to get done. Say, weaponizing pumpkins, or finding an alternate use for a scratchy fabric invented as a byproduct of some other project. Ted breaks the fourth wall to give commentary about his job and his increasing sense that perhaps they are not as moral as they might be, and their objectives might be a leeetle bit questionable.

( Spoilers behind the cut )

I like the quirky humor of it, the cast dynamic, and the cultural commentary. Also, it just makes me laugh. *g*


You know you have spent too much time around slash fans when...

You are watching Smallville. There is a short filler scene involving two guys at an observatory looking at a radar screen. Guy #1 points out unusual activity to Guy #2. Guy #2's hand breifly touches Guy #1's shoulder as he peers at the monitor.

Your first thought: "Oh my God, they are so doing it." --Jackiekjono

...when you're taking one of the Harvard Implicit Association tests, it really helps balance any tendency to subconsciously favor white folks when one set of tests have John McCain v. Barack Obama.

I usually test with a 'slight' to 'moderate' preference for white, but this time I tested with a STRONG AUTOMATIC PREFERENCE for black people and for Barack Obama. It was very, very hard to hit the "good" button on anything McCain-related.

I suspect this says more about my politics than anything else.


Mind you, I am curiously disturbed by the uncanny resemblance I see between General Staal of the 10th Sontaran Fleet, and my late father (the head, you understand, rather than the leather-and-metal uniform). Huh.

My dad was tiny, too.

OMG. WOW. JUST WOW.

It would explain why he was away so much, during my childhood. -parthenia14

jadelennox let me know that she and fox1013 made a two-part children's lit recommendation post about books by authors/illustrators of color, or by white authors/illustrators about people of color:

nonfiction, Picturebooks, graphic novels.

fantasy/sci fi and realistic for children and young adults

There are additional recommendations in the comments, and pointers to various relevant award and recommendation sites.


helsmeta also pointed me towards:

Black Books Galore! A Guide To Great African-American Children's Books

Black Books Galore! A Guide To More Great African-American Children's Books

Black Books Galore! A Guide To Great African-American Children's Books About Girls

Black Books Galore! A Guide To Great African-American Children's Books About Boys

She says: "These both contain about 500 recs, from infant to young adult, and contain an index on theme as well as notes about whether they're award-winners, or whether they contain potentially troubling content (ie, they warn for use of the N word, which comes up in books such as Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, as well as differing forms of dialect)."


In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. --Albert Schweitzer

So you can get the full 41-disc set in the nifty carrying case for $82.99

I always planned to get it someday. But I'm supposed to be saving money. But it's only $82.99, when it's regularly $169.99! AAAARGGGGGHHH.

I never should have signed up to have the Gold Box specials emailed to me.

ETA: Dear reader, I bought it.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. --Henry David Thoreau

I catalog books at a university library, so we get a lot of academic texts through. Sometimes they have really great titles which seem wasted on the topics. Then you have the scientific works that are trying to be provocative and sexy! Like.... Calcium: a Matter of Life or Death.

Calcium... just not that dramatic for me. *g*


This morning I brought Donuts of Deliberate Lateness to work. A few weeks ago I told a coworker that I really needed to work on getting in by at least 9:00 am in the mornings. I'm usually in by 9:30, but some days it was drifting closer to 10:00, and while it's not a huge deal, it's a little frowned on. "You should bring us donuts any day you're later than 9:00," she said. "Oh, good plan!" I said. I can't afford to bring donuts every day, so it was a bit of incentive. It's not like I'm not up early enough most days, I just... putter. So that week, I was on time every day, and brought donuts on Friday in celebration.

This week, there were donuts on Monday, heh. Then I was good the rest of the week, but today we have Donuts of Deliberate Lateness! Also in celebration of the last, lovely day of Spring Break before the ravening hordes return.


...and now I'm looking up "horde" to make sure I have the right spelling, and genuinely wondering if it's culturally insensitive/inappropriate to use it, as the first definition is "A tribe or troop of Tartar or kindred Asiatic nomads." And since the term is one that the Turkic groups used themselves to refer to clans or tribes, while the colloquial definition is "a great company, esp. of the savage, uncivilized, or uncultivated," I think it might be.

However appropriate that seems for groups of college students.

Note: I'd ask you not to take time to tell me I'm being too sensitive or PC or what have you. I like being aware of my words and what import they might have, and taking time to use words deliberately. I'm not necessarily likely to offend anyone specifically by any given word usage, but I'd rather be too sensitive than not sensitive enough.

For instance, I never would have imagined how difficult it is to purge my language of ablist pejoratives. "Made of fail" has become very useful as a substitute for "lame," but it sometimes surprises me how many metaphors rely on comparisons to mental illness.

And don't worry, we're not going to treat you differently just because you're lost in a strange alternate universe of your own making. --Dorinda

I don't feel I have anything necessary to add to the ongoing Cultural Appropriation/Racefail '09 imbroglio that wouldn't be making it about me and further derailing things. There are many good things that have been and are being said, and many links to all of it through rydra_wong's Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom '09 linkspam. Suffice it to say I was appalled by coffeeandink's repeated outing, the pseudonym idiocy, and E. Bear's retraction of what had originally seemed a small lack of fail in a sea of it.

I lost my "place" in the ongoing postings leading up to and during Escapade, and while I'm still working on catching up, I figured what might be most constructive on my part would be to share some titles and information about various children/YA-related books that have come across my desk (I catalog for our Curriculum Materials library).

This is only a handful, as semagic ate the post I was adding to, and it will take me a little while to reconstruct. And these aren't strictly recommendations, as I haven't actually read them all. The criteria I'm using are simply that it be related to PoCs/diversity, or that the "cast" of the book contain more than token portrayals of PoC.

( Eight picture books, bios, non-fiction )

Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but dead hieroglyphs. --Henry Miller

I told the folks in the Escapade "Attraction of the Con" panel that I'd post the intended air order in the con LJ, and I thought I'd post it here, too. This is from a post on Kung Fu Monkey, a blog John Rogers contributes to. I got the info from Dorinda, who had already pieced together a fairly accurate order based on things said in the blog before Rogers posted the intended order.

Rebecca: Although we've talked much about episodes being aired out of order, I don't think I've ever seen the explanation of WHY that was done. Is it always a clearance issue, or sometimes something else...like, what, for instance?

Well, the network often has a different idea, based on their knowledge of their audience, for what episodes will most effectively hook viewers. Sometimes it's tone -- they wanted "The Wedding Job" to go later, as it's an off-speed ep. Sometimes it's audience-building -- they felt "The Two Horse Job" was a more "typical" episode, and helped getting new viewers introduced to the style and content of the show, so it was moved earlier in the run. Considering our success, I'm not going to argue with TNT's judgment.

The intended air order, which should be the DVD order (the actual air order is noted in parentheses (elyn))--

1.) The Nigerian Job (1)
2.) The Homecoming Job (2)
3.) The Wedding Job (7)
4.) The Snow Job (9)
5.) The Mile High Job (8)
6.) The Miracle Job (4)
7.) The Two Horse Job (3)
8.) The Bank Shot Job (5)
9.) The Stork Job (6)
10.) The Juror #6 Job (11)
11.) The 12 Step Job (10)
12.) The First David Job (12)
13.) The Second David Job (13)

The entry in the blog contains more discussion and information, if you're interested!

"I fwded this note from a private list to a friend who fwded it to a private list and who then fwded replies to me which I fwded to a smaller private list which you will now fwd to the bigger private list." I love fandom. --member of the cabal.

You must run, not walk, to dualbunny's LJ to watch her BB vid to THE FRIENDS THEME.

I pause here for a moment while you digest the awesomeness of that juxtaposition. IT'S PERFECT. No, really!

If you have not see Black Books, and you have any love at all for hilariously misanthropic snarkiness, you need to see it. The vid will give you the merest taste of the wonder that is Black Books.

Bernard owns a small independent bookstore in London. He hates people, especially people who want to buy his books. Fran is his oldest friend, who early in the series runs an unsuccessful boutique, and is subsequently unemployed and often found hanging out at the bookstore, berating Bernard and trying to get him to shape up, when she's not pursuing disastrous relationships. And Manny, poor, sweet-natured Manny, who, after Bernard hires him while in a drunken stupor, does his best to actually help customers and sell books, contrary to Bernard's wishes.

And there just happen to be a baker's dozen of BB stories in the Yuletide archive, some of which I know capture the rhythm and humor of the show very well (I won't say all simply because I'm not sure I've actually read all of them yet...)

Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.

...of a good cup of coffee made just the way you like it. If you like coffee. *g* Particularly when it's your first coffee in well over a month. No intentional denial involved, I just haven't wanted it for a while. It's odd, because when I want coffee, I like it strong; I've even had coworkers "warn" new employees about my coffee. What's funny is that I make it pretty much according to standard instructions (1T per 'cup' of water).

So, I like it strong (I tend towards espresso, or a Red Eye/Shot in the Dark/shot or two of espresso with added coffee), but then I'll go weeks without. I broke my French Press Monday morning after last year's VividCon, and I didn't get it replaced until earlier this year, and I only made coffee at home 2-3 times during that period (I no longer have a drip pot at home, so I had to improvise). We have a coffee pot at work, but it's hit or miss whether we make it on any given day.

I'm fortunate that I don't seem to have any particular reaction to having quite a bit of caffeine for a while, then going for periods without, and my only real caffeine intake is when I drink coffee, or the occasional cup of tea. I seem to have gone off soda in any sustained way, although if it's around, I'll drink it.


Yes, I am just this boring. *g*

In other news, I can tell I'm back to normal(ish) health, after several weeks of sustained cough, then respiratory infection, then recovery, because I didn't just lie about on the couch all weekend, reading and watching TV. There was some of that, of course, but there was also cleaning and dealing with crap that needed to be dealt with, which hasn't happened so much at my house.

In other news, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency finally debuts on HBO on March 29th. I've been looking forward to this for over a year, I think.

And the Black List Vol. 2 (HBO) premieres February 26th. People profiled include activist and artist Majora Carter; activist and academic Angela Davis; producer Suzanne de Passe; actor Laurence Fishburne; Anglican Bishop Barbara Harris; Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick; pastor T.D. Jakes; physician and academic Valerie Montgomery-Rice, M.D.; filmmaker Tyler Perry; singer Charley Pride; fashion designer Patrick Robinson; actress Maya Rudolph; musician RZA; filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles; and artist Kara Walker. Volume 1 was fantastic, and the style of it, where you're just seeing the people talk, without seeing or hearing anyone interview them, is great.

New and returning shows I'm interested in:

Saving Grace is back March 2nd (TNT)

Reaper is back March 3rd (CW)

Castle (Nathan Fillion), starts March 9th (ABC)

Kings (Ian McShane) starts March 15th (NBC)

Cupid starts March 31st (ABC)

The Unusuals (Amber Tamblyn) starts April 8th (ABC)

Harper's Island (Christopher Gorham) starts April 9th (CBS)

Krod Mandoon & the Flaming Sword of Fire starts April 9th (CN)

In Plain Sight returns April 19th (USA)

Leverage's last ep (this season) is tomorrow, which makes me sad, but it's already renewed for a second season later this year, which is good. I've been watching Trust Me, but it's no Mad Men, either in style, substance, or characters, and what attracted me in the relationship of the two leads as they showed it in the teasers hasn't really shown up in the show so far.

Something I may take a look at is Dark Days in Monkey City (Animal Planet, starts 2/24-tomorrow!)

Through a unique combination of live action and graphic novel-style animation, this new series descends upon the magical isle of Sri Lanka in the deserted city of Polonnaruwa, where large populations of gray langurs and toque macaques live on the streets. Once ruled by Buddhist and Hindu kings, the temple city is now home to a myriad of gangs and troops that fight to survive in this abandoned city where food is scarce and drama is plentiful. Revealing intense tales of love, treachery, betrayal and triumph, their stories are all part of the Smithsonian Primate Project, the longest-running study of primates in the world.

On my to-do list this week: "Shoot man in Reno; watch die." --Norah

There's also Яolcats: English Translations of Eastern Bloc Lolcats.

ETA: I have confirmation that the translations aren't actually translations, which kind of spoils the impact on me, but explains why they felt familiar in content and structure (if they're actually a Western caricatures, which it feels like). They're still funny or lyrical, but it feels more like mockery of a culture. Sometimes I'm just kind of naive...

These are WONDERFUL. From the few I've looked at so far, Яolcats tend to be wordier, and sometimes more lyrical, but many of them are hysterical. I don't know if the original Russian is bastardized the way Lolcats are; the translations are in straight English. It's hard for me to describe my reaction, somehow. I get a very strong impression of some of the cultural differences, and the cadences and content are echoingly familiar from various things I've read and studied about Eastern Europe.

Anyone familiar with Russian, I am interested as to whether translations are roughly accurate.

I do carry a notebook, and scribble down the occasional key phrase or line of dialogue, but most of the time, I don't take a lot of notes, period. This means that I forget a lot of my ideas, and others mutate radically. I think of this as natural selection. --torch

Princess Peacock: tales from other peoples of China, retold by Haiwang Yuan ; foreward by Zhang Chunde. (ISBN: 9781591584162, Libraries Unlimited)

Back blurb:

Did you know that China, the world's most populous nation, is home to 56 officially recognized minority groups? In addition to the majority population of Han Chinese, China is home to Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchus, Zhuangs, Dais, Gaoshans, and many other ethnicities. Unfortunately, the folklore of these minorities is often obscure and difficult to find, as is information about the people, their cultural histories, and their traditional customs.

This book changes that.

Within these pages, you'll find more than 50 tales, such as "Princess Peacock," "A Golden Deer," and "The Toad General." The stories are organized by type--Animal Tales, Moral Stories, Tales of Deities, Legends, and so on--with the group of origin noted for each tale. The book also offers background on the minority groups, as well as recipes, games, crafts, a map, a glossary of terms, color photos, and black-and-white design motifs.

It's from the World Folklore series out of Libraries Unlimited, which includes:

A Fire in my Heart: Kurdish Tales
The Flying Dutchman and Other Folktales from the Netherlands
Folktales from the Japanese Countryside
Maya Folktales/Cuentos Folkloricos Mayas
The Flower of Paradise and Other Armenian Tales
The Magic Lotus Lantern and Other Tales from the Han Chinese
Brazilian Folktales
The Seven Swabians, and Other German Folktales
English Folktales
The Snow Maiden and Other Russian Tales
From the Winds of Manguito: Cuban Folktales in English and Spanish
Tales from the Taiwanese


Then suddenly he plunged into a nosedive of sadness as reality reared its ugly head.

The Episcopal Church makes topical insert pages available for churches to print up and put in the weekly service bulletins. For February 15, the insert is in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth.

The theories put forth by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species rocked the scientific and religious world 150 years ago. Episcopal Life Weekly bulletin inserts for February 15 mark the 200th anniversary of the scientist's birth and outline his contributions to 20th and 21st-century ideas about God, creation and the beginnings of humankind.

The bible doesn't support evolution, so evolution must be wrong, you say? What an odd idea. The bible isn't a science book....

Fandom is always evolving - I, for one, remember the time before livejournal, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. --Andraste

They've extended the deadline for suggesting panels until Sunday at noon Pacific US time.

You can go hereto nominate panels . I suggested on the mailing list that people might browse the panel ideas nominated for Muskrat Jamboree to see if anything sparks an idea. I don't know if anyone would be bothered by the idea of poaching panel topics, but you could always email someone who had an idea you like and ask if they mind.


Always remember and never forget, YOU do not get to decide on boringness or pointlessitude. Being the author, you, in point of fact, are the LEAST QUALIFIED PERSON to make any of those judgments.

So you must utterly ignore any and all surly mutterings from the internal-editor-voice, who is not your friend and not helpful whatsoever. In fact, why don't I engage said editor-voice in some singlestick fighting over here, while you get about your actual business, which is Holmesing till the cows come home.

(EN GARDE, Editor-Voice! Have at you! {whapwhapwhapwhap}) --Dorinda

Awesome luck: Thanks to a post from adonnchaid that United has flights to the West coast on sale, I am now the happy possesser of a ticket towards Escapade not so much cheaper (although a bit!), but much shorter (by a factor of 3), also non-stop, do you KNOW how hard it is to get non-stop out of Oklahoma? Officemate A says she can't even fly to Little Rock non-stop), and definitely more convenient! I'll get in at 4p on Monday, rather than closer to 10p, which, since I'll have to work the next day...

OH HAI, faos, how shall we spend the day until falzalot gets in that night? *g*

Accepting blame:

tzikeh: I'm blaming elyn for the fact that I'm imagining the dude who plays Sam Winchester, in a pink bathrobe, singing "Blame It On the Bossa Nova.
Ami: ...
tzikeh: it all makes sense, I promise. Jared Pachyderm or something. Passamaquoddy.


(to those who may have friended me recently: you are currently experiencing something common to elyns. We will go weeks, nay, months! without posting, and then try to make up for it within a matter of days. You will probably shortly be returned to elyn's normal posting lethargy)


tzikeh: Also, when is Norm Coleman just going to give up, already? Now he's calling for a complete do-over election. wtf.
Lydia: Why doesn't he just call takesies backsies and get it over with?