sundries

[rm]

There is a new enemy, and it is the new upstairs neighbors.

They play their music loud, and you know, that should be hard to notice in our neighborhood where everyone is having some sort of outside shindig with Mexican or Puerto Rican pop at most hours of the day, even, it seems, in this weather.

But the new upstairs neighbors? They play their music even louder. And it's just thumpy thumpy club stuff. And at 2 AM, Patty was up because she couldn't sleep because of it (that takes some LOUD shit, especially after a week with the level of exhausting that we've have). Luckily, Patty hammering on the ceiling with a walking stick brought results, but I have a bad feeling this may be an ongoing battle.

Somehow, this all led to my having dreams in which Patty, me, and Captain Jack Harkness were being chased by zombies. And you want to know something? Jack was fucking useless. It was like herding fucking cats.


"Maybe we should get off of Manhattan, Jack; the concentration of people is going to be a real problem when they all start turning into zombies."
"Oh, hey, shopping mall, maybe the zombie virus isn't here yet, and I need a new shirt."
"Jack! Have you ever been to the cinema? The two things you don't want to do to survive a zombie attack are HAVE SEX or GO TO THE MALL. YOU ARE FAILING."

Then there was this thing where the three of us along with three Filipino girls (they kept talking about how they were from the Philippines and vacations weren't supposed to go like this), stole a taxi cab. One of the girls was driving and Jack being pissy about that. I was bitching about Jack's leadership skills and one of the other girls was like, "but he's a reassuring presence isn't he?" "Well, he is nice to lean on," I said, squashed as we were in the vehicle.

Ultimately, we ditched the cab, lost the girls (Jack's fault, involving another fucking mall) and Patty led us all to safety over some roofs. When we were thwarted by corrupt police aiding the zombies, she opened a metal fire safety door and slammed it into their corrupt police faces. It was awesome. Then I kissed her, while Jack was all "hey, look at me, sulking on a roof."


So because Patty is awesome I am not dead of dream zombies. The end.

CNN article about coming out later in life.

Some Ugandan embassies are now the site of protests of their proposed anti-gay law that (there is some noise that this particular provision will be removed) calls for the death penalty in cases of "aggravated homosexuality" and for those found to be HIV positive. American pastors continue to be linked to this mess, although a lot of them are now doing the too-little too-late dance of "well, it wouldn't be Christian to execute them." Meanwhile, I feel that too many LGBTQ activist groups are ignoring this thing through some mix of incredulity and racism.

newsbean points us to the New York Times's Color Style Guide, which claims to be a gift-giving list for your PoC friends (seriously, the lead implies that you, The New York Times reader, are white and do not know how to shop for PoC you may know, but it's easier than you think!). Um... I'm really struggling to find words as to how this reads to me, but mostly like some random white person wants to show you how to ask for a cookie for trying (with bad results) just a little bit, but not too hard. Or something. Seriously, I don't know about you people, but my friends who are PoC already know how to apply makeup and don't need me giving them random inspirational books (some of which make some really offensive assumptions just by being on the list) about their PoC-ness. This is yucky! redstapler tells us Shapely Prose has ripped the NYT piece apart wonderfully. And Yahoo! News is also covering the negative reaction to this gift guide.

It may be more in the Gay Tragedy genre, but it's based on an Isherwood book, and so A Single Man does at least look interesting.

I sort of want to see The Lovely Bones but only because Saoirse Ronan is in it.

Saturn's moons always interest me because of Gattaca. A mystery of Iapetus has been solved.

As far as anyone can tell, SF/F fandom began 80 years ago today in Harlem. Really. So all that bullshit we've been hearing during RaceFail and before about how PoC don't care about SF/F and aren't part of the culture? Yeah, not so much.

i_am_schizo posted this really funny thing about being the pink sheep of her family

Last night I stumbled, entirely by accident, on a dissertation on Harry Potter that might have some useful stuff for my Bristol paper. I also made a quick list of things to investigate further off of some shit I Google Scholared (how do we verb that?) for half a second.

I'm having some mental aggravation about the apples and oranges problem of comparing TV shows to books. Do I equate episodes with chapters? Scenes with chapters? Do I just say hey, apples and oranges or do I do what I'm unfortunately starting to think makes the most sense, but my be utterly impossible, which is to do a full statement count for all the properties I'm discussing, thus allowing me to produce a percentage of death-related content. As horrifying as the thought of counting the number of statements in the entire Harry Potter series is, doing that work for TV programs is infinitely more annoying and time consuming.

Tonight, Patty and I are hoping to have an evening where we are both well-rested, not stressed and not ill. Man, we are so going to be ready for our trip!

Comments

[ex-adarog.livejournal.com]

Saoirse Ronan--now there is a marvellous Irish name. The Celtic languages, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, all fascinate me. How does she pronounce her first name, do you know?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Swar-see is what I've been told.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

I don't know how she pronounces it as a name, but the way I would normally pronounce "saoirse" (the Irish word for "freedom") is SEER-shuh.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Happy Hannukah!

Are you two like the crotchety old couple now? Banging on the ceiling to shut up them darned kids?! (I'm not judging, the image is funny!)

A Single Man does look interesting, I like books and movies that take place over a day (I'm still reading "Ulysses"), one of my fave books is "Mrs Dalloway". I may pick that book up for this movie.

If anybody in my extended family hasn't realised I'm the "pink sheep" they're oblivious, that story made me laugh!

[newsbean.livejournal.com]

Do not miss this amazingness: http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/colorstyleguide/list.html

[rm.livejournal.com]

I am looking at it right now! I don't even know what to say.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

That got ripped to bits on Shapely Prose yesterday. Yiiiikes.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you watch Rachel Maddow, but she's been doing some really great coverage of the Uganda mess. I'm sure she has clips available online.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yup. I feel like she's about the only personal reliably covering it right now.

[abnormal-apathy.livejournal.com]

We have ridiculous upstairs neighbors, but banging on the ceiling for months seemed to get the hint across...especially when I'd do it at random times (4 AM on a Tuesday night, for example).

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I'm having some mental aggravation about the apples and oranges problem of comparing TV shows to books

I haven't made a formal argument about this even in my mind, but what I've been thinking for a while now is that you compare them via time: how much time the show takes versus how much time it would take an average reader (there's the rub) to get through the books.

Looks like the average reading speed is about 200-250 words per minute.

So, if one of the bulkier HPs is 200,000 words, that's maybe 1000 minutes, which the length of 23 43-minute "hour long" TV shows, which is almost exactly one season. That's for a slower (younger?) reader -- for an average adult, it's probably the equivalent of half a season of TV.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I was wondering about this approach too. That's useful for me to think about.

Suggestion...

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I would take the time to actually read the Isherwood book. It's far from his best work, but it's still pretty amazing.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Tonight, Patty and I are hoping to have an evening where we are both well-rested, not stressed and not ill.

This (with appropriate name substitutions) is beginning to look like the holy grail. GAH.

I ♥ your dream.

THE STYLE GUIDE. What are you getting me?

I will say that finding makeup (although I know how to do it) is fucking hard.

[rm.livejournal.com]

We're pretty sure we're getting that particular holy grail tonight, and WE ARE EXCITED.

That dream! I woke up sweating and freaked out and looked at very asleep Patty was like "oh thank god it's her and not the useless one," and then cracked myself up.

I KNOW YOU WANT SOME BOLLYWOOD HENNA.

[ciel-vert.livejournal.com]

The coming out story you linked above, plus some stories I saw on their TV channel yesterday, all have me wishing that CNN understood the difference between the words 'gender' and 'sex'. I have seen them used interchangeably in all of those stories, which, NO. I tweeted them as much in the hopes that some lackey reads the @cnn account's @replies and will take the suggestion into consideration, but I doubt it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah. CNN is very much in the department of "tries, but not too hard" and therefore FAILS all the damn time on that.

The Color Style Guide

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Aside from being offensive and tin-eared, this seems full of things that white people would buy other white people to make them feel like they live diverse lives or some horseshit like that.

I can especially see that happening with the "Bollywood Henna."

Re: The Color Style Guide

[rm.livejournal.com]

Word. Like go down to sixth street and just buy some damn henna.

counting statements in TV shows

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

The SO is fond of searching the closed-captioning data when he wants to look up some particular thing or other. Like which episode of Good Eats had which weird factoid. He's using some sorta Tivo or Myth or one of those sort of things, which automagically stores all the CC data (assuming it's there to begin with).

Re: counting statements in TV shows

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh good point. That might save me the stop/rewind misery.

[pocketmouse]

*snort* That sounds like exactly the kinds of problems you would encounter with Jack if zombies invaded.

...do you think Jack can become a zombie, or does the healing set in before the zombiism takes hold?

[rm.livejournal.com]

We were all discussing this in the dream, mostly because we were wondering if the zombies, after having consumed all other living humans, would know to shoot Jack and wait for him to revive as non-zombie to eat his brain again for all eternity. Jack was very alarmed about this and being all "hey, you think you're traumatized? I'm traumatized!" and I'm like "actually, we're trying not to be dead here."

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

beccaelizabeth has created transcripts for the first two series of Torchwood, and the first three episodes of Children of Earth.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

Wow ... I can't even begin to get the taste of that 'gift guide' out of my mouth. Is there really a way to shop for PoC that differs from how you shop for other people?

The last few times I bought gifts for PoC in my omniverse it was really tricky. One of them is a top gun poker player ( plays in tournaments ) - bought him a custom set of poker chips ( not the k-mart kind. clay full weight ) printed with his name as the casino ( Bill's poker room ). The other is a 80's music fanatic like myself. Rhino records box set of 'all' the 0's music was a score on line. There was no " special PoC " edition or guide needed. Know your friends, know what they are into/interested in, and go from there. It's not rocket science.


This "guide" is just another sad sad story of " buy this worthless shit because WE say it has value " brainwashing that people need to liberate themselves from. This is the social programming that mass media advertising is jamming into our heads and it's offensive to people both on an intelligence level and on a personal level when it focuses like this "guide" has.


Also : The Obama book ... wow. People are seriously treating him like he's Prez Rickard. Don't get me wrong, I like the man, and what he is doing .. but it amuses me to make the Obama / Prez comparison as far as the one true hope thing goes.

[queenfanfiction.livejournal.com]

Your dream! OH THAT WAS HILARIOUS *dies laughing*

[austengirl.livejournal.com]

That gift-giving guide sort of overwhelms me with the amount of fail. I mean, some of those things can be good gifts for the right person, like the fashion things, but why they need to be categorized and 'othered' in such a way is beyond me. And also, just because my uncle's PoC wife is an ex-service member, doesn't mean I would ever dream it was appropriate to give her the 'Mocha Manual to Military Life'. Not to say it can't serve a purpose, but the assumptions underlying its choice...um, yeah, awkward.

When I was in high school and college, the NYT was my primary source for news, opinion, etc. I loved the Sunday Times magazine. As I've got older, I don't know if it's the paper going downhill or me living abroad and getting my news from elsewhere, but the Times seems more and more disconnected from anything that resembles 'real life' of most people I know. I mean, if I just wanted to read elitist lifestyle/fashion stuff, I'd get Vogue.

[missdeanna.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the neighbors. It seems like upstairs neighbors have a large capacity for being annoying.

I like the zombie dream. I haven't had any really intricate/interesting dreams in a while, which is kinda sad. The useless Jack thing reminds me of a dream I had where I joined Torchwood and the whole team was worthless. They made me thwart an alien apocalypse while they sat around the Hub doing nothing. I liked the dream where I got kidnapped by Ianto and Katherine Heigl better.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hee! I almost never remember my dreams and they are very cery rarely worth posting about when I do, but you know, Jack tends to come through with the dramarama.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

Somehow, this all led to my having dreams in which Patty, me, and Captain Jack Harkness were being chased by zombies. And you want to know something? Jack was fucking useless. It was like herding fucking cats.

!!! that was the bestest thing ever

[rm.livejournal.com]

The dream was sort of the bestest thing ever in its own odd way. Patty was awesome and Jack was actually pretty nice to lean on when he was being a complete idiot. The zombie were really fail though.

[virginhuntress.livejournal.com]

The Iapetus article was AWESOME. Thanks!

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

A Single Men definitely falls in the Gay Tragedy genre. It's a beautifully written book, but not a happy one. I also don't know how the dramatic tension (which is all internal) will translate to the big screen.

[pwac.livejournal.com]

Since I had neighbors who did not respond well to being asked to turn their music down and my landlord is useless...I found that a white noise machine did the trick.

Pretty cheap on amazon, takes up way less room than a fan and did a good job of drowning out their noise.

Good luck.