sundries, really random evening edition

[rm]

Today, I am a real actor. I am holding my first residuals check. Which seems like as good an excuse as any to email my publisher and find out where my royalties check is that I think was already supposed to be here. I suppose I should use the teeny tiny sum to actually buy a copy of the movie that earned me the thing, yeah?

Can I just take a moment to say how utterly fabulous Keith Olbermann's suit and tie combo is tonight? Yes, yes I can. And yes, yes it is.

I am working on my entry for America's Next Great Pundit RIGHT NOW.

One of the reasons I haven't posted at great length about healthcare and healthcare reform and the utter fuckery of insurance companies and everything else is, to my great shame, the simple fact that I am overwhelmed with rage and horror on the topic, so much so that I don't know how to talk about it.

What do I address first? That my mom had to pay for her own MRI to be sure her cancer was in only one breast because the insurance company didn't cover it? Or that my health is permanently fucked because our system doesn't believe in preventive care or take auto-immune diseases seriously? Maybe I should talk about how as a woman I have to pay higher insurance premiums because of the assumption I'll have children, but when I explain to my carrier that I'm gay and not planning to inseminate, they still won't let me drop that part of the coverage, because apparently they know more about living my life than I do. And none of that comes even close to this, which really encapsulates the utter fuckery of everything right now:

Chelsea Caudle began signing her text messages this summer with a countdown. At 14 years old, she knew no better way to express what was coming. Day Zero was to be Oct. 7, the day Dad left for Army basic training in Fort Jackson, S.C. He was moving 950 miles from their home in Watertown, 950 miles from Mom.

He was leaving, even though Mom was sick with ovarian cancer. Even though he had been at her side through two long, miserable rounds of chemotherapy. Even though she now faced the likelihood of a third.

In fact, Dad was leaving because Mom was sick.

In March, he was laid off from his job as a raw materials coordinator for a plastics company called PolyOne, where he'd worked for 20 years. His severance package had provided several months' salary, but by August the paychecks were winding down. Soon the cost of his family health coverage was going to triple, then a few months after that, nearly triple again. They needed coverage so Mom could fight her cancer.

Dad's solution: a four-year hitch in the Army.

Are you following the equal marriage rights fight in Maine? If you're not, I don't blame you, as this shit is ugly and exhausting and isn't something we should even be having to deal with. But, alas, you should be paying attention since right now the vote looks tight and we don't have enough election history or polling data on this stuff to have a good sense of who misrepresents what to pollsters. What can you do? Visit Protect Maine Equality and donate or give or spread the word as you can.

A similar situation is brewing in Washington state, which is basically a "marriage in all but name" thing, but is waaaaaay better than nothing. darthhellokitty says get your info here.

Everyone else had already commented on these Ralph Lauren photoshopped ads from hell, but I need to comment too. Look, I'm skinny as hell for a number of reasons including a genetic disease, and more or less that means I have privilege because our society treats skinny people better, and that's its own problem. BUT WHAT THE SHIT IS WITH THESE ADS? It's like someone sat around going "Okay, you know those people with skinny privilege? We need to make sure they hate themselves too. EVERYONE MUST FAIL." WHAT THE FUCK?

Okay, so now you're depressed and miserable about the horror of American politics and culture now. I understand. Go read tw_babiez instead. It's just been updated. (OMG, the Jack/Ianto moment on page 36! OMG, so cute!)

That too saccharine sweet for you? Here, have some utterly filthy porn. That's a link to Endotherm a Torchwood fanfic by curriejean. It's Jack/Ianto. It's porn. And it involves an enema, but like Ianto Jones, this fic is discreet and uptight in all the right ways, meaning it's really, really, I promise, not squicky AND totally hot. Just trust me, okay?

Mere text porn not doing it for you? Or maybe you jsut don't trust me because I rec'ed an enema fic. Anyway, regardless, I ask you, do you know about Male Submission Art? Someone or other in Torchwood fandom turned me on to this site, and I love it so much, mainly because it's so eclectic: photography, art, M/F, M/M, threesomes/moresomes, and everything from fully clothed relatively subtle images to really, really naked porntastic, OMG DO NOT LOOK AT THIS AT WORK, stuff. There could be more diversity on the site in terms of race and body types, but there's some and hey, they take suggestions, so if you send them stuff... anyway. Yay Internet.

Hey, does anyone have a link that sums up the various facets of the SFPA fail going on?

Comments

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

maymay - the man who runs Male Submission Art, will take submissions (don't have to be original work), guidelines here:

http://malesubmissionart.com/submit?type=photo

He won't necessarily republish it, if he doesn't feel it fits with what he's looking for but it's a definite option to increase the variety of work presented. Also, I can't recommend looking at his April 1st 2009 images with their associated essays highly enough. They're a perfect example of what's wrong with porn these days and maymay commentary is a cogent and a good way to begin teasing apart the meanings in porn.

Finally, you may find this interesting, he is one of the developers of the ‘kink for all’ conferences/activities - you can find a link on the site, I belive. They are sort of DIY kink conventions; everyone who attends is expected to participate in some fashion. The last one was in NY.

It's been a real pleasure looking at the porn being written in Torchwood, the willingness to explore the erotic in things that are traditionally looked on with disgust (and to also look at the different meanings sex can have for people). It's also been very interesting to me to look at the huge discrepancy between what (mostly) women are doing in fandom - hey, we need more pervy porn! let's start a comm just for that! - vs. the common cultural ideas of what women (mostly) like. I have thinky thoughts about that, somewhere, mainly on how it's changed my perceptions, and tolerance, of our public distain of sex vs. our private fascination with it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I totally know about those Kink for All things, but they're always when we're out of town. Eventually we will get there, and that's good to know. I feel like all the blogs I tend to check our regularly somehow connect back to that event.

And yay, thinky thoughts!

[maymaym.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words on MaleSubmissionArt.com and for mentioning KinkForAll (http://wiki.kinkforall.org/). The next KinkForAll unconference will be on November 21, in Washington DC. Check it out at http://tr.im/kfadc (http://wiki.kinkforall.org/KinkForAllWashingtonDC) and/or read the KFADC press release (http://kinkforall.org/?p=84). I would love to see more discussion like the type that I'm reading on this comments thread. We've even had some presentations about fanfic and erotic writing in the past that were really fantastic (http://isaacsapphire.livejournal.com/10443.html). Doing a google search for one of the event tags brings up loads more information. For instance, here's all the videos from KinkForAll Boston on Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/tag:kfabos).

[rm.livejournal.com]

You're wellcome, and thanks for dropping by. My partner and I are in NYC (and I'll be flying back from Switzerland during the DC event (I used to live there, so it's always vaguely plausible that I visit)), but I will make a point to try to get to the next one around these parts.

I shall add the links to my growing NaNoWriMo procrastination list.

[maymaym.livejournal.com]

The best way to make sure the next one happens at a time when you can participate is to participate yourself. At the very minimum, you can propose a date for the next one on the mailing list (http://wiki.kinkforall.org/UsingTheKinkForAllMailingList) that works for you. ;)

Hopefully, I’ll see you there!