sundries: "baby, your fandom has problems" edition

[rm]

Subject line: What Patty said when we watched the video of Gareth David-Lloyd riding a mechanical sheep. Video from dr_is_in. There are also stills of the thing over on the Casimir Effect website.

The story of the pilots who overshot Minneapolis gets weirder. They say they weren't arguing and weren't sleeping, but had gotten involved in a covo and hadn't heard the radio. So what they hell were they doing? Arguing about healthcare reform? fucking? I am confused.

Tonight we are going to see Where the Wild Things Are.

Heard back from the Center for Fiction Writing. I'll be going in next week to settle on space and stuff.

Our wireless router, which has never worked wirelessly, suddenly is. Internet in bed!

Because we both come from fandom, Patty and I call each other OTBaby -- like OTP (One True Pairing) but with the fact that we call each other "baby" among other things. So we just ordered matching OTBaby necklaces from Wyrding Studios.

CNN has more details on the girl who doesn't know who she is including another picture and more evidence of possible fanishness. Please contact the authorities if you have information. I know there are at least two theories going around fandom about who she is -- someone needs to make the call.

More as it happens.

Comments

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should send him the message from our high school FFA - always use protection, no matter what species, or you might get a nasty fungus.

Seriously, mechanical sheep? Sheep? Is that like the step before the bull?

[rm.livejournal.com]

He is Welsh.

But please tell me the FFA thing is a joke. PLEASE.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Haven't I told you my high school sheep story?!?!? (It's almost as good as the monkey story)

[rm.livejournal.com]

NO.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

OMG OMG

So, my high school was full of the FFA crowd raising prize animals for show. This one boy had intimate relations with a sheep my freshman year. Apparently, he did not use protection and caught a fungus of some kind and had to go to the doctor. *HIS MOTHER* told her church group, in order to get some prayers for her poor boy losing his way and being seduced by prize winning sheep. The story of course got out everywhere, spread all through school and is now something of an urban legend. The joke became to always use protection, no matter what you fuck, to avoid the fungus.

[rm.livejournal.com]

THAT IS AMAZING. YOU ARE SO AWESOME. FUCKING TEXAS.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

WE ARE SO FUNNY!
(I've always wanted to a Soviet Realist style poster of a man and a sheep with that slogan on it.)
It is one of my absolute favorite stories to tell, though I have hard time not cracking up through it.

It really does bring the whole "junior college sheep fuckers" insult to a whole new level!

[kargashina.livejournal.com]

DO THE POSTER!!!!!

and share please please please....

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I love it how people of Stereotyped Ethnicities utterly and completely LIVE UP TO THEM!

WE LOVE YOU GARETH!!!!!!!!!!

(Also, I think it's nice seeing him act his age... and less :D)

That is hilarious, and it's not the fandom that has problem it is society that does not recognise awesomeness :P

Have fun at the film, I'm dying to see it, it's one of my favourite books (of any genre) though I haven't looked at it in a while.

Internet in bed is the shit.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hey, did you get the Snape stuff I sent you?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I did! So interesting, I have to say I hadn't considered that perspective when it comes to Snape.

Thanks.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Oh! Dunno if you've seen it on f-list, but something to add to your Sundries (I'm interested in your opinion: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6268426/Cross-dressing-cage-fighters-turn-tables-on-yobs.html

[rednwhiterose.livejournal.com]

Where the Wild Things Are is awesome! I was crying by the end mostly because it kinda punched me in the gut with the intensity but it was worth it and I would definitely go see it again.

Also, thanks for that video of GDL, I'd seen people mention it but now that I've seen it I..I wish I had words but the funny is just to much.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've added a link to stills now, which are oddly funnier.

[rednwhiterose.livejournal.com]

How can it get any funnier?

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Tell her it's not the FANDOM's fault our actors are freaks! XD

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think that's pretty debatable. In fact, being seriously minded for a moment, I think Torchwood fandom in particular is perhaps the best example of fandom enabling bad behavior I've ever seen. Not that that applies to the sheep.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Seriously, this is true. There's a lot of sort of I-dare-you attitude, and our actors know that they will get lots of positive attention if they live up/down to expectations.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think even "positive" is debatable (although I've now gone cold turkey on the meanie parts of the Internet), but man if there's one thing being a professional performer does it makes it really hard for your brain to differentiate between good and bad attention: it either confirms the shitty instincts you've always had in that regard or slowly erodes your good ones.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Don't take this badly (I'm sure you won't) but this is very much like dogs. Many dogs (including mine) love to be scolded, because wow, excitement! attention! mom's barking!!!

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Last I heard, word was that the pilots were discussing the flight industry and FAA policy. Or at least, that was what they were saying they'd been talking about. And considering the state of the industry and regulations affecting flight crew, I find that almost as plausible as the hypothesis that they'd been asleep (which was the instant take of every pilot I know).

If you've got the radio tuned to the wrong tower frequency (say, because you've been involved in this intense conversation since leaving Denver airspace), I would think it would be all too easy, in a plane that pretty much flies itself, to get so wrapped up in the discussion that you lose track of time. And without anything coming in from the ground, you might not notice until a member of the cabin crew gets worried enough to buzz you over the intercom, and fellow pilots try you on the frequencies you're still tuned to. It's a classic instance, if true, of the problems with machinery that essentially runs itself: how do you keep alert when there's nothing for you to do for hours and hours on end?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Good point. But so stupid. Not just on the part of the pilots, but just in terms of what modern aviation has gotten us. Have you read that AMAZING piece New York Magazine did after the Sully thing about how modern aviation technology and training makes most flights safer, but means there's very few folks left in the cockpit who can really pull out a save when something catastrophic happens? It's interesting stuff.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I did see that New York piece. Also his testimony to Congress.

It's all symptomatic of the problems of (i) complexity (bad enough, given limitations on human brains), combined with (ii) the political process and the people running it. It's devilish hard in the first instance to predict the collateral effects of things like improvements in aviation technology, such as the astonishing abilities of our autopilot systems. And the problem is compounded by a political process that privileges the viewpoints of those who don't know how a set of technologies and systems works -- that is, the broad voting public -- and those who profit by keeping a system in place and making it run as cheaply as possible -- that is, the airline businesses. Put them together and you have a disaster that's been building since the twin hammers of deregulation (probably a Good Thing, but badly implemented) and the Reagan destruction of the flight controllers' union set us all on this path.

(I am so sick of the Cult of St. Ronnie. If I were Ayn Rand, I would write a long preachy novel in which a whole planeload of lovingly-described characters who'd all gone along with or benefited from deregulation crashed and burned as a result of some minor official on the plane insisting that the airline put it into service so he could get to an important meeting in California. In fact, if I didn't have chronic writer's block I'd be tempted to do it even without being Ayn Rand, as a kind of public service. Grrr. Arg.)

Re: GDL on a sheep

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm grateful I'm not the only person who noticed that for the sheer WTFery.

[1-mad-squirrel.livejournal.com]

Is it just me, or does there seem to be a dick on the sheep's back?

And also, do steampunk fans dream of mechanical sheep?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

It's the handle, to rodeo it without falling with the first buck.

But yeah, it looks like a dick.

[1-mad-squirrel.livejournal.com]

I knew it was a handle, but was having too much fun with the idea that it was a dick, what with Gareth holding on to it that way. ;-)

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I know :D

[rm.livejournal.com]

Conversation I just had in my head:

"But why does the sheep have a dick on its back?"
*shrug* "Torchwood."

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

The dreaded Rift Sheep!

[gement.livejournal.com]

Strap-ons can go anywhere!

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

YAY for wireless! :D

[timelady.livejournal.com]

Makes me wonder if they were playing a game of poker or something. Or even if this is an experiment on how the FAA reacts since they have changed their story (one said they were arguing, another said they were not arguing).

As for the missing girl, it sounds like she might be an anime fan (based on that birthday message on her arm -and she's the average age of the anime convention attendees -the camoflage fatigues also make me think of several of the popular animes and video games). Someone should ask the local anime group there.

[exbentley]

Oh gosh that missing girl. There aren't that many people in Hobb-fandom, I hope someone recognizes her from the little bits of info and helps out, I imagine having an LJ or something to read through would be an incredible help in that situation.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Apparently she's a Washington girl, and her family's picking her up.

[shay-writes.livejournal.com]

My vote is for fucking or something equally embarrassing that they can't come clean and tell the truth.

[curriejean.livejournal.com]

That sheep vid -- so hilarious, yet so... anticlimactic.

[misch.livejournal.com]

The young woman has been identified.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Wow, she's from my state, and I almost didn't look at the link when everyone started posting it due to Too Far Away. That'll show me.

[st-aelphaba.livejournal.com]

looking forward to hearing what you thought of WTWTA.