sundries

[rm]

Check your freezers! Ground beef recall.

You can still help the fight for marriage equality in Maine. If you are a Maine resident, you need to vote. In fact, if there is a local election in your area today, please be sure to vote. These elections tend to have very low turn-out and its how extremists get weird referendums passed and anti-science people onto school boards. It's always good to vote.

What makes an American? Or, let's watch people be anti-immigrant racists about the guy who just won the New York City Marathon.

There's been another arrest in the Richmond gang rape.

Amazing environmentally friendly alternative to a converted van for those who use wheelchairs. Of course, it just seems to be in Europe right now, and the top speed is relatively low (so no going on a highway with this!) but it looks great for getting around a city.

Asperger's as a vanishing diagnosis.

This guy was almost Han Solo. Works for me. Check the smile.

Who you share a hotel with can be why cons are often unexpectedly funny.

Look, I saw this on 5251962's journal, and now you need to know too, just because: Bats have oral sex.

DAVID TENNANT, YOU LEFT DOCTOR WHO FOR THIS!?!?1?!!?!?!??

The things I learn on Twitter: there are lesbians on the 90210 retread.

hughcasey has an alert for the dino-obsessed!

Missing Sky Harbor baggage found.

Comments

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Of course, it just seems to be in Europe.

*sadface*

On the other hand, with the resurgence of the small car in America, maybe there's the possibility of a niche-market for these things. They certainly look a lot more fun than the Reliant Robin...

And what a pity that Glynn Turman lost out. He certainly could've played the space-rogue, I agree, and if anything he seems to have aged rather better than Harrison Ford.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Almost-Han-Solo is fabulous. I love the roguish grin. And wasn't the Luke Skywalker character originally supposed to be female? Or is that a nerd urban legend?

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I think that probably is urban legend.

Skywalker/Starkiller was supposed to be older at the start of the trilogy in Lucas' first draft, though.

[5251962.livejournal.com]

:D Everyone should know bats have oral sex.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

"It was difficult to provide some hypotheses for the function of the fellatio behavior," Zhang said. "We held many meetings to discuss the functions."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what's funnier, that the guy can't figure out the purpose of blowjobs or that there were meetings about this knowledge gap.

[idunn.livejournal.com]

re: the article about that runner, oy. France actually has a website (http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1103/p06s04-woeu.html) up asking that question.

[sociallyawkrd.livejournal.com]

So I have a question for you because obviously you have more stake in this than I do and even when I don't always hold the same opinion I find your take is very thought provoking.

I was listening to CNN this morning while getting ready to go to work and they mentioned that the new owners of the Cubs includes an openly gay woman making that a first.

I find myself torn on this. I think the openness about sexual preference is a good thing and has helped change minds and feelings over the years but at the same time I often feel for the person being identified so much by their sexual preference. No one would ever refer to me as the openly straight whatever. I can't decide how I feel and what I think the right feeling is. I just know it bothers me the same way it bothers me when the media identifies children who are adopted every single time. It makes it feel to me that it is still a less than. Less than biological children and less than straight.

Anyhow, slapping this here as it is sundries and your take would be really interesting to me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

No one has to refer to you, or anyone as an openly straight person because it is assumed that most people are straight. Additionally, no one has to come out as straight. When a woman introduces her boyfriend or her husband no one blinks or pauses or asks what she means. All of those things happen when I woman introduces her girlfriend or wife -- often even when the people she is introducing them to are queer-allies.

What defines a person? Our jobs? Often when we meet someone new and have nothing to say we ask what they do. I think this is a terrible measure of a person, few of us are fortunate enough to have jobs we love or jobs that define us in ways that we choose. Is defining someone based on who or how they love really worse than this? I can't think so at all.

The other day there was a big LJ drama with some woman who didn't think gay people existed 100 years ago. Existing and being visible is really, really important. Especially when a disproportionately high percentage of teen suicides and runaways are LGBTQ. It's important for gay people to be seen in the culture in every which way.

Finally, I think you stray into (unintentionally) dangerous category when saying "why does this have to be so front and center" since so many bigots use the "you can be gay, just don't shove it in my face" argument, but which they mean, don't put pictures of you and your partner on your desk at work or acknowledge them in any way. I know this is not what you mean, but it needs to be acknowledged since you did ask.

I agree with you, I think, about the adoption thing, about how that seems non-normalizing, but that's not a topic I have any personal frame of reference on and would defer to others about.

[dsudis.livejournal.com]

Well, god dammit, NBC, now I am going to have to give up my DIE IN A FIRE outrage over your programming decisions and watch this.

I mean, if you had asked me: how could NBC make another show that you would risk watching knowing perfectly well they will cancel it and break your heart, I would say, David Tennant? And he's scared and upset? Ooh, and he's a lawyer? IN CHICAGO? OKAY FINE LENO NETWORK FINE I WILL WATCH.

[ayoub.livejournal.com]

He would have made a great Han!

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

I wonder why he didn't get to be a great Lando.

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

The only good thing about David Tennant being in the new show is that maybe they'll film some of it in Chicago. Hey, I keep seeing Brian Dennehey around whenever he's in town, and he does nothing for me.

Cubs - interesting point. I'm of two minds about this. In an ideal world, you shouldn't have to say anything about someone's race, religion, sexual orientation etc. But given that there is so much prejudice surrounding these issues, sometimes it can serve a purpose as a role model etc(e.g. a black President, openly gay senators, etc).

But in this case OK, so she's gay. What's the point? She's a business owner. Does that make any difference to us Cub's fans who want a winning team? Not me anyway...I don't care if a Weevil owns the Cubs as long as we get a decent team. But I'd hate to think if the Cubs continue to lose that people will be blaming it 'on that GAY owner.'

[meirion.livejournal.com]

But if people are told they should be evaluated for autism, he went on, “they will say: ‘No, no, no. I can talk. I have a friend. What a ridiculous suggestion!’ So we will miss the opportunity to assess people.”

Unfortunately, I have been at the receiving end of the opposite of this. I asked a shrink who assumed I was just depressed to try to evaluate me for an autism-spectrum disorder (yes, Asperger's, as it happens) only to be told "you have friends, you are part of a community, obviously you don't have an autism-spectrum disorder". I tried to get him to come and visit said community which is entirely full of people with an autism-spectrum disorder, and which (largely because of that) has been billed the most unfriendly church in Cambridge, but did he?

Instead we are working, through our Social Responsibility Group, to make more contacts with the autistic community in Cambridge (which is quite large, and increasing).

I hope this will work. I don't know what else I can do, as someone who in person isn't obviously autistic unless life has gone so horribly wrong that I can't stop myself from avoiding eye-contact and rocking (which happened most recently when a friend killed himself at the end of September).

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Five years ago, I mentioned to my shrink that I thought I might have Aspergers, and he said "No, of course not, if you had Aspergers you'd be in an institution!" A couple of months ago I was diagnosed with Aspergers, and he was STUNNED.

Shopping for a new shrink now obviously!

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

My local con, coming up this weekend, is sharing a hotel with the Jehovah's Witnesses. Boyfriend to clerk: "If we say we're Jehovah's Witnesses, can we get their room rate instead?" (He is coming from out of town, so we're getting a room just because.)

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

That's weird. I've seen rats have oral sex. I've seen dogs have oral sex (69 no less). If they define it to ejaculation ... maybe not but what I've seen was certianly genital stimulation with the mouth because it felt good.

[riverrocks.livejournal.com]

The electric car for wheelchair users is pretty awesome (and double points for the places that provide them free as part of healthcare). It also gets extra points for being designed and sized such that it can be parked in a regular parking spot, thus not limiting the user to the one or two allotted specifically "accessible" spots.

It does suffer, however, from the assumption that the only thing a person using a wheelchair will need to transport in said vehicle is themselves. Single occupancy is somewhat typical with the smaller electric vehicles, but unless I'm missing something (which i might be, since there are only a couple of pictures and those focus on how the chair fits into the car) there is no compartment for storage of things like, say, a backpack or a bag or two of groceries. This assumption, even in the development/provision of devices that provide better access, that basic tasks like grocery shopping and other self/home-care tasks will be done by someone else (often an unspecified, invisible, unfunded someone else) is a barrier to access/inclusion/participation that gets missed a lot.

[weirdquark]

My roommate and I have been watching Foyle's War; at one point David Tennant turned up in one of the episodes as a pacifist. It was extremely distracting.

If you're not familiar with Foyle's War, you should check it out; it's really excellent.

[wynkat1313.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the Asperger's link. My youngest is an Aspie, though technically with the diagnosis PDD NOS, and in an Asperger's inclusion program since 5th grade. He is now thriving in an amazing High School. When he was first diagnosed he was so out of control I couldn't imagine him getting through any HS let alone one as demanding and dynamic as his current school. The shift came because he was folded into the Aspie program and given both skill sets and assistance appropriate to his needs.

It will be interesting to talk with him and the program teachers about this change in the diagnosing system. He knows that he has Asperger's and that it makes how he thinks different from other folks, but thats about as far as he seems to take it. He is who he is in his head and in his life (for which I am immensely grateful), its other people who choose to label him.

On the one hand, having a more whole body approach will be a very good thing, on the other, I can definitely see problems for people reacting to how we have used "autism" in the past. Maybe this will help. Certainly seeing my son in action, talking to him and watching him interact with people blows the doors of what most people think "autism" spectrum means.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

- Okay, that Euro chair conveyance? Made of high-grade awesome. On a similar note, there's a chair-bound guy on campus who's got a very lightweight chair that he can disassemble and re-assemble when he gets in and out of his car. I've never seen another like it, and suspect he may also use it for wheelchair athletics.

- I could totally see that man as Han Solo.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

On that ground beef, no surprise. I've been following stuff like this for a while:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html

My take on it: if you must have ground beef, make sure it's ground fresh at your grocery store. Do not buy it already processed. Because the story of the processing of that meat patty they trace in the above story link will make your hair stand on end, curl, and turn gray.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Ok, re that dino thing - one of my favourite places in the the world is Crystal Palace park in London, where they have all the old dinosaur models that were made for the Great Exhibition in 1851 (and wow, I remember that date because of a song we learned in primary school. Education actually worked!) and they basically stand now as a testament to hey, here's how wrong we were about what this species looked like. Still pretty fucking awesome though. I am going to miss the nanotyrannus.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Particularly funny for me is the evolution of the imagined Iguanodon - from a hulking lizardlike thing with a big old horn on its nose, to something that fulfilled the equivalent ecological niche of some horses or cows, with a spiky thumb.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

I don't get the runner story.

"Having immigrated to the United States at age 12, he is an American citizen"

I mean hello? He is a citizen. He immigrated legally. What's the issue?

Oh yeah, stupid people. :)

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Dude, if someone born in Hawaii has difficulties being accepted as American, so can someone born in Eritrea. Documents make no difference.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

We shared a hotel with the Southern Baptists Gospel choir convention in Chicago at Terminus, and IIRC they complained about people wearing witch costumes about the hotel. They complained. LOL.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Wait. Wait wait wait. I was at Terminus. Have we met? Am I suppose to already know this? WHUT?

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

the dog grooming convention was especially lulzy when gdl was late to panels b/c he was outside playing with Sparkles the tiny puppy

[rm.livejournal.com]

Please, please tell me it was really named Sparkles.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

David Tennant, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

*weeps*

Re: the runner; hey at least you guys have got immigration laws :P

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Having that actor as Han Solo would have been very cool, it's sad that this never happened. As for David Tennant, I'm ready for both him and RTD to go. He was never as good as Eccleston (which is hardly surprising given how brilliant Eccleston was as the Doctor), and while I've enjoyed many Tennat episodes, I look forward to the new guy and to seeing what Moffat will do with him.

[axejudge.livejournal.com]

RE: interesting sharing of hotel

WAY back when, I was in St. Paul interviewing for a college scholarship. We were sharing the hotel with:

a convention of Sweet Adelaides (female barbershop quartets, if you're not familiar with the name)

the Vice President of the United States, Walter Mondale (I *told* you it was way back when)

The Secret Service made sure no one went onto the VP's floor. The Sweet Adelaides practiced in the elevators. And everyone freaked out when a body was found under a park bench across the street from the hotel (some poor homeless person, probably died from the cold).

[coridan.livejournal.com]

Hey Rachel, you going to Philcon? It'd be nice to gather some folks to drink and talk Who (me) and Torchwood (you).

CB