sundries

[rm]

On the one hand, I wasn't there and you weren't there and none of us know what happened. On the other hand, I sure do travel enough and have had enough weird and slightly unnerving experiences to find this to be completely plausible. This sort of thing is what you get when you have power in the hands of people without enough training in a fear-based culture where no one takes a bloody civics class anymore.

Houston elects openly gay mayor. CNN notes she "has never shied away from, nor made an issue of, her sexual orientation." This sentence makes me want to punch people in the face.

Poor children likelier to get antipsychotics. This could mean a lot of different things, none of them good.

Casual sex doesn't harm self-esteem, just you know, the crap people say about it does.

There's not succinct catchy way to encapsulate all the fail found in these supposed breast cancer awareness t-shirts (via shehasathree). "Take care of yourself or I'll sexually assault you" is only the most prominent of the offenses in them.

You can order Idol Musings now. I know the prices are high, and I haven't got my contributor's copy yet so I cant give you my theoretically objective opinion (about a volume I have five essay in), but one factor in the price is certainly that the publisher is in NZ. Anyway, there you go. I'm in a thing. Buy a book.

Last night we went to parties for marchek and hofnarr. Both were totally excellent and I had more fun than I usually do at such things (parties and I aren't always so good for all sorts of reasons). That said, 2009 still managed to demonstrate that it's Not Done With Us Yet (I'm glossing over what went down here, because it's not my story to tell, but it cast a long shadow). So while I may have started working on my end of the year recap, I'm probably going to wait right until the end of the year to post it. A decade thing might happen sooner.

Are you a university student who wants to do journalism in Africa? Win a trip.

Ginerbread TARDIS with Shooty Dog Thing. (via tsarina)

Comments

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

The people who figure out how to keep raising breast cancer awareness in non-fail, non-creepy ways are going to make so much money. Or at least deserve to.

Hello, those people! Don't get too distracted by how your job is to think about breasts! That's something lots of us like to do, but it's no excuse for shirts like those! That's lazy at best, sleazy at worst. Stop making people feel bad about breasts!

There will be a sweet spot found, helping people stay aware of breast cancer in a way that makes them smile, that is person-positive and breast-positive. Maybe someone's found that already. There are probably many ways. But this fail kind of tires me out, and I'm not dealing directly with breast cancer.

If I'm making no sense in this comment, tell me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Nope, all good.

And yeah, as someone who has a major family history of breast cancer, has a friend who lost her mom to it this year and has another friend who had to fend off a rape attempt last night, my patience for those shirts is pretty extra spectacularly low right now.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Nope, all good.

Phew.

And yeah, as someone who has a major family history of breast cancer, has a friend who lost her mom to it this year and has another friend who had to fend off a rape attempt last night, my patience for those shirts is pretty extra spectacularly low right now.

Very understood, and very understandable.

This wouldn't be the funny way to approach the subject, but it could be another approach: An announcer saying "What if breast cancer affected the head? What if part of your head were at risk of going away? Like your mouth? [image of someone with blank skin where the mouth should be] Like your eyes? [same with the eyes] If part of you were at risk of being taken away, you'd take it seriously.

"Breast cancer. It's serious. You don't want to miss the people who have it."

I can imagine a symbolic approach like that: something may have to go missing because of cancer, whether it's part of someone's body or that very person herself or himself. (As I'm aware that men sometimes get breast cancer.) You'd have to choose missing body parts carefully so as not to squick the general audience: I doubt having the person in the ad appear with no left torso would get the point across. (And you don't want it to look like an injury someone's likely to get, like missing part of the lower jaw or a hand.)

This is a challenge. Fail like in that link still shouldn't have happened.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

I find "Fuck C*ncer" to be the best of all.

(I may be the friend rm is referring to.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

That would be you. (Man, I hope no one else I know lost their mother to breast cancer this year. 2009 is FIRED).

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Gotcha.

I was confused because technically it was pneumonia from the lung cancer, but she had breast cancer in 2000, and they never entirely sussed out which cancer it actually was this time around...

BLAH BLAH BLAH FUCK C*NCER.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but when in doubt I BLAME BREAST CANCER.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Absolutely.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

Nobody else you know *well*, since - while we've been at a couple of the same cons and have almost certainly interacted in person a couple times - I doubt we could pick each other out of police lineups.

But yeah, 2009 *sucked.*

[rm.livejournal.com]

I am sorry to hear that. 2009 has not been kind. At all. It's been rather statistically freakish.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

There will be a sweet spot found, helping people stay aware of breast cancer in a way that makes them smile, that is person-positive and breast-positive. Maybe someone's found that already.

I'm a member of Team Wench, and our biggest fundraiser every year is for breast cancer in the form of a Privateer feast. As you can guess from the name, we're a bunch of the Rennfaire people, so yes, a lot of double-entendres (and, to quote Pratchett, single-entendres and proud of it) are flying around and the mascot is a blue-footed booby. But the money comes from ticket sales and raffles of items aimed at both genders... and we've donated over $50,000 to breast cancer research.