sundries

[rm]

Patty has been experimenting with heirloom beans. Last night she made some which, hand to god, taste like baked potatoes with a hint of bacon. Sadly, the texture of beans still squicks me deep into my soul.

supergee is offering a scholarship to this years ICFA. Any over-21 PoC who cannot get university funding to attend ICFA is eligible. This includes airefare, hotel share, conference entrance and meals. More info at his journal.

Pets can get the hamthrax!

CNN asks if you could become a celebrity stalker.

New York's women-only residences.

Wait, wait, WHUT? There's a former Miss California "opposite marriage" Carrie Prejean sex tape?

Waters of Mars! Annoyingly this is airing in the UK when I am in Zurich, and I'm not sure how I'm going to manage to see it, as I'm missing the DWNY viewing gathering. Actually, can anyone get this video to play past the first ten seconds? Anyone have a better link?

Girl Number 9: I'm currently a day behind. So far my verdict is Day 1 = awesome; Day 2 = terrible; Day 3 = good energy, but I don't care. The thing continues to interest me for form and participants, but it's not really my bag. I'm curious if it will pull out something interesting for us in the end. As copperbadge so smartly said, it really is a cross between Law & Order and Saw. I loathe the mere existence of Saw.

Time for a funny story: A few days ago, someone who is in the same fandom as me, and therefore knows or at least meets some of the people who work professionally in that canon, was twittering about posting a new story of hers featuring a character with the same first name as a pro I know. Based on the places I thought she said she was going to post it, I assumed it was RPF about this guy that I'm friends with. Now, I'm totally pro-RPF, but you know, if I saw that, I wouldn't be able to un-see it, and I don't want to think of the dude that way, so despite curiosity, I was resolutely ignoring the issue and even stopped myself from asking her about it. EVENTUALLY, I ran across the fic by accident. It totally was NOT about the guy I know, but a fictional Torchwood character and a gerbil or a hamster or something! When you assume, kids, you make an ass out of U and ME. That's the lesson for today.

So, the new V series. First, confession. I went to college thinking I wanted to be a war reporter because I had convinced myself of that back while watching V when I was twelve and thinking that character Mike Donovan was just the bomb.

Anyway, it's not bad. It's not really good either. Alan Tudyk's Q rating must be off the charts. He's so funny looking, but I watch him and I smile.

I thought the show did a great job of punching the emotional "aliens have arrived and this is what you've always dreamed of" buttons. I hate, as much as I expected, that they've changed the WWII allegory to post-9/11 stuffs. But even more than that, omg, can we not call the Visitors "the V's?" First it's confusing if you also watch True Blood where "V" is vampire blood taken as a drug. Secondly, it has an ugly, awkward cadence. Third, the first time the V gets spray-painted in the original series that means something. But, oh yeah, right, the Resistance metaphors have all been changed. *sigh*

Meanwhile, out in the real world, there's this serial killer situation in Ohio. I feel like it's been getting less media attention than past serial killer things, and I'm curious about in this in a "race in the media" way as the perp and the known victims (only one has been identified so far, and only some of the bodies were recent enough to be demographically identifiable) turn out to be African American. Conventional wisdom says that black serial killers are really rare (this may not be true, however, as a Google on the subject brings up webpages about a ton of different serial killers all listed as "the only known black serial killer"), but while supposed rarity often excites the media, that seems, unsurprisingly, not to be true when it comes to race. I've never worked a crime beat though, but I know some of you have. If anyone can shed light on whether this coverage is as different as I think it is, I'd be interested.

Via reannon: Apparently women make men stupid, but men don't make women stupid -- science says! I can see people extrapolating from this in all sorts of really ugly ways.

Apparently the Yankees won the World Series last night. Normally I pay at least marginal attention to these things, but I didn't notice until this morning.

NaNo! I'm still a bit behind on quota, but I got over a stumbling block last night that was slowing me down, so I'm relieved about that. I also realized that the one critical thing I hadn't done in my advance planning was really lay out when specific things happen in the time line. This is critical in this book, because the timeline is so condensed -- it starts on a Thursday at 6am in L.A. before we move to Chicago, and other than the denoument (which really, could be a lead in for a sequel set in L.A., god help me!) is done by 3pm the following Monday. Time is very precise in this shit.

On the other hand, I have established 3 distinct voices for my girls. News that particularly excites me: Hope is no longer coming off like a ditz, and Jean is just totally amazing and a surprise to me. Ashley I nailed a couple of days ago, so I'm not even worried about that. Several minor characters have also been established, including the 22-year-old gay secretary in Jean's department, and a recurring "fat guy in a dragon suit" who may be my new favorite person in the whole thing; I want to hug him.

Various backstory things have also been resolved, including the origin of Hope's email address (people, I just created a fictional B-movie called Con Vixen 77; god help us all). Also, I'm winding up with way more character diversity than I thought I would which is fantastic, but seeing as it's set at a con in 2010, I think I'm actually going to have to mention RaceFail in passing in the book.

Yesterday, I registered email addresses for Ashley, Jean, Hope, Evan and Stacey, which means that I will soon switch all those to the right thing in the text and will be putting up an excerpt (some of which you've seen a rough version of) on the NaNo site.

Additionally, my plan is to spend December editing and then send it to willing critical readers to look at while I'm away in the first half of January (so I'm not around to bug you). If you're willing to be a critical reader, let me know. I have a few people I already want to ask because they have skills in calling my shit on specific key issues (i.e., Jill, you're on comics duty; Sam or Sharon, if you'er willing you're on Chicago duty). Any fannish PoC who's willing to read for and call me on any RaceFail on my part (I already do have at least one reader who can address these things from personal experience, although our long-standing writing partnership means she's more likely to yell at me about my sentence length, hence the desire for more eyes on this issue) in this thing would be particularly desperately appreciated, since two of the three main women are PoC, and I would prefer to refrain from showing my ass and making people unhappy. I realize, of course, this is the Department of Not Your Job and my asking is potentially intrusive and privileged.

I'm probably going to try to keep my initial reader list down to about ten, but if you're interested in a hardcore way (as opposed to "gimme book now!" -- which you know I love too), please let me know.

I can't believe I'm getting this done. I can't believe this is happening.

Building with whole trees.

I'm trying, very hard, not to be politically angry today, as I found it unenjoyable yesterday, both because I literally felt my own blood pressure go up, and because the whole sorry affair involved lots of assumptions that were sort of irrelevant and unhappy-making, so I'm going to cover a few of them below and then let it go, although I'll probably have some more generalized thoughts on queerness in America right now sometime vaguely soonish.

1. Actually, I support the right to bear arms pretty strongly. I've been hunting more than once in the past, and I'm going to a shooting range with some folks in L.A., and I'm looking forward to it because I haven't been in ages. I've probably forgotten almost everything I know. I am also pro-choice, and, although I don't talk about it much, aggressively anti death penalty. The assumption that one political belief or fact about my life means that the rest of my views can be easily and obviously predicted isn't accurate or fair.

2. I give a great deal of money relative to my income to a number of organizations each year. These include Lambda Legal Defense, various political campaigns, and specific Donors Choose programs. Some of my Holiday gifts this year will probably be from Heifer International, and I am also planning on donating to Clitoraid and a few others. I go to protests and work for causes I believe in when I can, which is less than I would like. The idea that I am just whining in my journal and not doing anything about the issues I care about, when I give money and time in addition to speaking on these topics on panels and such when I have the opportunity to do so is ludicrous. Also, this journal is a platform. Maybe not a very big one, but I know it sometimes mobilizes people to take action when they might not have otherwise. So hey!

3. I'm not sure how to even address the whole "you're lazy/poor/use your disease as an excuse" thing when it's also put up next to "you're a horrible elitist" thing that also goes on around here. Look, I had a fantastic education, in large part through luck, and got out of college without debt mostly through hard work and a good scholarship. I'm privileged not to have certain financial burdens and to have parents that took risks to make my life different from theirs. I'm old-fashioned and arguably conservative in my feelings about tradition, language and even clothing in ways that I am coming to recognize can sometimes feel fail-y to other people. I am trying to stand by who and what I am, which is something very complicated and something I'm very proud of, while also trying to fail better. I resent a society that measures my worth by how much money I make or what professional success I have, and despite how much I brag here, I largely don't talk about the fact that I work hard and make money in a way that really should preclude some stripes of Republicans from saying I don't count because I'm not self-reliant. If this paragraph is intensely confusing, that's because sometimes I'm intensely confused by people's assumptions about me.

Yuletide sign-ups are open; I need to get on that.

In less than two months, Patty and I leave for our cruise.

Which reminds me (since Patty asked for cruise book recs yesterday), does anyone have any YA fic recommendations in Spanish? I'm doing a lot of Spanish-language reading for my job lately, and I'd like to continue to develop that skill. Without a dictionary, I think my reading level is probably at about the 8th-grade level, but that's not really easy yet. So I think that's sort of the level of thing I am looking for.

Comments

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I'd like some discussion in the media of why the police might have decided, in that particular neighborhood, to ignore complaints about smell and assaulted women. I'm betting race is involved. I'd also like somebody to acknowledge that when women of the street disappear, NOBODY CARES, which has a lot to do why many serial killers (Green River!) go so long without serious investigation.

[rm.livejournal.com]

We live in a neighborhood where we see a lot of missing persons signs, clearly made my hand, all the time. It seems like a fact of life here, and I think people just assume you know, people aren't around because they've chosen not to be, but I think it's a hideous assumption and it worries me, not for my own safety, but just for the many possible implications.

[vichan.livejournal.com]

In the case of missing women, I'm kind of split down the middle on that. There is an absolutely insane number of missing women (missing people in general, really) in Cleveland - black, white, Hispanic and more - and I think the lack of effort put into searching for them has more to do with their record and less to do with their race. I definitely can't say that for certain, and I'm also not saying that makes it any better, but missing persons cases tend to get pushed to the back burner in Cleveland, especially when the person in question has disappeared before.

Our police department is usually responding to the daily calls of domestic violence, gang violence, shootings, stabbings, discovery of dead bodies - all the usual stuff. In fact, when I first heard the news last week of "two decomposing bodies discovered in East Cleveland house," I didn't even really bat an eye. I hear about it so often that I've grown numb to it (which disturbs me on a personal level, but that's a different story).

Point is, the police department stretched beyond thin in a city that has a crime rate four times as high as the national average. We have incompetent officers on the streets. The city is pretty damn broke, and there was a lack of funding for hiring and training new officers. Their solution? They moved what essentially amount to rent-a-cops from Cleveland Hopkins airport to the streets.

I'll refrain from getting into the corrupted city government, which I think has trickled down into public safety. It's a shame, because Cleveland really is a great city; it's just that there's nobody looking out for it.

What sets off my hackles it the fact that the smell of a cadaver is not like the smell of a sausage, and you'd think the police would be trained to recognize that smell. Considering they were at the guy's house the very same day he assaulted another woman (and only a few weeks after another woman jumped out of the friggin' bedroom window), what's the reason for the lack of suspicion? Seriously, how many red flags does it take?