sundries

[rm]

Someone stole the sign from Auschwitz. With what intent is unknown, but I'm not sure I can think of a creepier artifact on the entire planet to have gone missing.

CNN legitimizes the War on Christmas "debate" by treating the whole thing as if it's an actual discussion or, for that matter, actual news.

Judges in Oklahoma are deciding whether the general public should be able to look-up online whether you've had an abortion. The implications of this one are terrifying and include the potential for a lot of job discrimination.

Tiny gingerbread houses! That perch on your mug of cocoa! via schpahky

Look, this isn't really a spoiler for The End of Time, but there are a couple of production stills in the article. John Simm. As the Master. In a gag. I could look at that picture ALL DAY.

Patty is safely in Ohio visiting her family, despite epic traffic last night that made us wonder just a bit if she'd make her flight (friends were less lucky). I won't have her back until New Year's Day and miss her already (it is cold in our bed!) but this isn't a very long time for her to be gone considering what digs are like.

In the realm of "2009 is completely stupid" the door to the office in our apartment came off the hinges last night. We were not, in fact, having sex up against it at the time.

It's supposed to snow tomorrow. And snow a lot. I am almost excited.

But meanwhile, did I mention it's fucking cold? I've been resisting breaking out the great coat because even though it's the warmest thing I own, it weighs about ten pounds and isn't really fun to wear on the subway. Also, it's a little weird now that Americans have actually seen Torchwood -- I mean those ads were all over the buses for _months_.

There is now tinsel up on the Ianto memorial at Mermaid Quay.

Comments

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Someone stole the sign from Auschwitz.

...

Well that's horrifying and creepy.

I can't wait to see where it turns up.

ETA: I showed Josh the Simm picture and he looked at it for a moment, grimaced, and said, "Yeah. There's nothing subtexty about that image at all."

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahahaahahaha. THAT PICTURE IS SO HOT. Also OMG, wait 'til you see my fucking Yuletide story.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

The snow is supposed to start here this afternoon. We're supposed to get a FOOT! We don't get that much snow down here.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

As someone who has walked through that gate I agree on the creep factor. *shudders*.

The BBC has no idea what they have done to million of fangrrls and bois the world over with that pic.
*Stares*

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

I know, right?

[iamradar.livejournal.com]

OTOH, maybe they totally know.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

- Who the fuck steals the Auschwitz sign?! Just...jawdrop. I can't even decide what the best case scenario there is other than you don't steal the fucking Auschwitz sign.

- You know what makes me want to finally break down and declare war on Christmas? People treating my non-observance of Christmas like an act of war.

- OTOH? Those houses are made of pure awesomesauce. <3

- Considering my list of possible cosplans for Gally, that John Simm pic is alarming. And really, er, distracting. I'll just be over here, confusing my roles some more.

- We might get snow today!

- Nothing says mourning like tinsel.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

OTOH? Those houses are made of pure awesomesauce. <3

MTE. I can see why the blogger is fond of the candy-cane-dust-topped ones.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

John Simm. As the Master. In a gag. I could look at that picture ALL DAY.

UH. HUH.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Tiny. Gingerbread. Houses.

Perched on cups.

Those are so marvelous! *flails* And I love how detailed the blog post is!

[magicwoman.livejournal.com]

I can't believe someone had the balls to steal the Auschwitz sign. It's the first news information I heard as I was waking up this morning.

What can I do to protest to the judges in Oklahoma regarding making public searches for abortion.

I'm not excited - it's supposed to snow starting Sunday. Probably. Maybe. It's been so cold that I don't want to see any flakes. Period. Today it might get into the double digits.

Susan

[rm.livejournal.com]

re: Oklahoma -- because it's in the courts I don't think there's anything we can do, other than inform people that this is the sort of thing going on in America today.

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

Those little houses are incredibly cool! We usually make a gingerbread sukkah for the table during Sukkot (a tradition which started several years ago when it stormed through all eight days and we only managed a couple of soggy eat-toast-under-an-umbrella kind of meals in the actual sukkah).

I may have to adapt these into tiny thyme-topped sukkahs to perch on top of cider mugs!

[humascot97.livejournal.com]

I may have to adapt these into tiny thyme-topped sukkahs to perch on top of cider mugs!
YES PLEASE!

[marcmagus]

Someone stole the sign from Auschwitz.

WTF? Just reading that gives me a chill.

Staver keeps a "Naughty & Nice" list that shows which retailers include references to Christmas in their advertising and which do not.

Am I the only one who had to read between the lines to figure out which were naughty and which were nice [and whose initial thought was wrong?]

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

My first thought was, "Good, now I can shop at all the naughty ones guilt-free!"

[aviv-b.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say that any of this surprises me, but sadly it doesn't. Staver should do well to keep a list of all his fellow legislatures who have been caught in naughty situations over the last year.

What possible reason could people have wanting to know someone elses medical issues (or as we have seen in the health care debate, has abortion suddenly become something other than a legal medical procedure?). Public interest? No, don't think so. Harassment, firebombing of property, yeah think so.

As for the sign...I'm speechless. That's all.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine, who is incredibly, devoutly Catholic was at the grocery store a couple days ago. The checker said to her "Happy holidays, since you probably don't celebrate Christmas." We can't decide if it was just general weird passive aggressive crazy or because my friend is Korean. She gets a lot of evangelists who assume her race makes her a heathan.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Let's see, clerk was being racist and passive-aggressive about her internalized fear of the war on Christmas all at once. That's halfway to BINGO at least.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Fwiw, the OK law would not allow you to check people's abortion records by name. It's a horrible law and I completely oppose it, but data will be arranged by demographics (age, race, county, etc.) and not people's names.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I do a lot of work with data protection and data security issues in the UK and given the law as described the anonymising of data claims do not reassure me at all. Also, it's worth bearing in mind that laws like that directly harm the US's economic interests with regard to doing business with the EEA countries; there's an additional cost of doing business with the US because you have to treat personal data transfers as "third country" transfers. Canada, otoh, is recognised as protecting data to equivalent standards as the EEA, so other things being equal it's cheaper and legally safer to do any business where personal data may have to be transferred with Canada not the US.

[fruitsgrow.livejournal.com]

"Naturally, the abortion industry wants to block this, because they know the more information the mom has, the less likely she is to abort her baby," Newman says.

...what.

fixed it

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Translate that to, "The more chance of public exposure and humiliation a woman has to go through to get an abortion, the less likely she is to choose it."

[cozzene.livejournal.com]

someone needs to be selling those tiny little gingerbread houses. I have no patience for such things.

[torenheksje.livejournal.com]

Those little gingerbread houses are awesome. I'm passing that one along! :c)

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

Judges in Oklahoma are deciding whether the general public should be able to look-up online whether you've had an abortion.

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK? DOES THAT NOT FALL UNDER PERSONAL MEDICAL RECORDS??? ARE THERE NOT LAWS AND POLICY AND OTHER SHIT ABOUT THAT? WTFF???

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my reaction exactly.

[queenfanfiction.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain that the picture of John Simm in a gag (which is admittedly very OMGWTFBBQ) is cropped in such a way so that we can't see David Tennant's head below. ;)

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

I'm an agnostic; I don't care one way or another about Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/what the hell ever. (I live on the edge of the heavily-black Boston neighborhood of Roxbury. A couple of days ago I was wished a "Joyous Kwanzaa" by a black convenience-store clerk. "And the same to you" was my response - these things are really just one form or another of 'best wishes', and the specific form doesn't matter to me.)

That said, this "debate" comes up every bloody year and it's really, really damn boring. I do wish the serious media would stop indulging the far-right's persecution complex; it gets tedious.

Just checked my weather, since I'm not too far north of you. 24 hours ago it was just looking at cold, which is bad enough. Now weather.gov's talking about 3-7 inches of snow Saturday night... which is actually kinda cool, I hate the cold but I don't mind snow. Assuming I don't have to go out in it. Note to self, go shopping ASAP.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I propose a law that people who want to look up other people's medical records have to make every aspect of their personal and medical history public and searchable. Equal treatment, y'all.

I also propose a law that resolves that the Christmas Warriors must keep Christmas in the same way as the founders of Massachusetts did. I'm willing to bet that 90% would knee-jerk vote for it too... without looking up the inconvenient fact that Christmas was banned in colonial Massachusetts.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I don't wish people Merry Christmas or any other holiday greeting, but I smile and say "Thank you, same to you!" when others say it to me.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

WTF about the abortion thing. Abortion is a medical procedure, medical stuff is supposed to be confidential. ALL medical procedures are supposed to be confidental: that's what HIPPA is all about.

Why hasn't this "case" been thrown out on its ear?

More Master pics

[elionwyr.livejournal.com]

http://blogtorwho.blogspot.com/

Re: More Master pics

[rm.livejournal.com]

Can't. Stop. Staring.