sundries

[rm]

I now have an AO3 account (where I am "arem" because they won't take two-letter names for accounts, but publishing my stories under "rm" as a pseud. It's sorta annoying) to upload my still not done yet Yuletide story to. I'm also going to upload my solo work there over the next couple of weeks so it has another home other than my badly tagged LJ. Co-written stuff obviously needs to be discussed, and probably needs a quick comma check. Mostly though, uploading IHNIIHBT or Descensus anywhere is a huge project.

Dear fucking god, Yuletide. On the plus side, it's finally achieved a tone and a mass I like. It's about 60% done, and I'm going to pop out in a bit to finish it. I think it's fun. I think it reads like a pack of neurotic puppies on E. I'm not joking.

Speaking of a pack of neurotic puppies on E... sanginmychains wrote The Dog When the Bell Rings which managed to make me both very nostalgic for Bad Things I Did in My 20s and very glad my life doesn't look like that anymore. Even when I was fucked up out of my mind, I was usually Ianto in that story, and I was a lot less gracious about it than him. And that's all I have to say about that.

Airplanes cannot sit on the tarmac for longer than three hours with passengers on board.

The Auschwitz sign was found cut into three pieces. I'm not actually feeling less creeped out by this. If you cut stuff open, stuff can get out. I dunno. It's hard to explain. I'm weirded out.

Brittany Murphy died of natural causes. The immediate assumption that it was drug-related (and that she or people who knew her therefore did not deserve sympathy) on the Internet was immediate and awful. This was then followed by "maybe she was anorexic." Sometimes people just die. And people of the tall, skinny sort are more likely to have undiagnosed heart conditions than most. And neither addiction nor eating disorders are a moral failing.

Yesterday I saw Young Victoria with marchek and co. It suffered, as biopics do from lacking narrative tension or even recognizing what it wanted to be the central conflict of the film (Victoria's struggle with her awful mother and her advisor/lover? Victoria's struggle to decide on a suitable spouse? Victoria's struggle to wield power once it was hers?).

On the other hand, the performances were very good, and the costumes were luscious and remarkably accurate. The film was also erotic, both in normal obvious ways and in ways that I tend to assume was just me (because hi, how many close-ups did we really need of various people winding or unwinding neck-scarves?). Unless you really care about weird historical geekery this is a rental, but we care!

Also I did not know, but after Albert's death, Victoria had his clothes laid out each day for the rest of her life; for a moment, I could not breathe. I am living in a strange country with this Bristol paper.

The big charity post is probably coming tomorrow night.

Comments

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Your twenties sounded fun :-)

I'm pretty irritated by the bruhaha surrounding the AMF sign. Yes it's symbolic, yes it's creepy, but no - people stealing it are not out to desecrate a memorial, the gate is a gate through which I walked and thought of Hollywood, not my dead great grandparents.

Maybe I'm cynical, but it pisses me off that a sigh-hunt is more successful over a weekend than most murders and/or rapes.

[annablume.livejournal.com]

This. Also, it begs the question - are they going to rehang it? Because I think that creeps me out even more.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that it'll be polished, rehung and molded tightly to those gates.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Brittany Murphy's death is upsetting to me in ways I didn't expect.

It's crass to wonder about the cause of death with a value judgement. I do wonder, however, about drastic weight loss and arrhythmia.

People who say she "deserved" it in any way nauseate me.

[chickenfried-jo.livejournal.com]

I do wonder, however, about drastic weight loss and arrhythmia.

This is what I thought, too. Women in their middle years need protien or they loose too much heart muscle. It's a problem for vegans and vegetarians. But mostly vegans. Especially if you cut out soy which is really problematic for women over 30.

I just wonder if she lost too much heart muscle to live. Which is even sadder when you look at responses to her death mostly saying how big hearted she was. Not big hearted enough for her self.

[6-bleen-7.livejournal.com]

I don't think so—if her death was ruled a heart attack, it's much more likely that she threw a blood clot, which got lodged in her coronary arteries, or something similar. Insufficient heart muscle would not likely cause death with such an acute onset, but would rather present as congestive heart failure (her lungs filling up with fluid, for example).

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I am somewhat interested to know if food restriction/starvation was a contributory factor to Murphy's death, just because it's so widely encouraged/enforced in the US entertainment industry, especially for women performers. There are lots of doctors in Hollywood making a good living by telling women performers that a 500-calorie-a-day diet is perfectly healthy. If that nonsense played any part in her untimely death, it's a scandal as well as an individual tragedy.

That said, if that is the case, it's up to her family to choose whether or not to speak out on that, at their own discretion and on their own timetable. I've always admired Karen Carpenter's family, for example, for speaking out about her anorexia at a time when it wasn't widely discussed.

[sihaya09.livejournal.com]

Though I am not going to speculate on what caused her death, when a coroner notes "natural causes," it generally only means that foul play wasn't involved and that it wasn't a tragic accident. IE, she didn't fall to her death, nor was she murdered. In the preliminary rulings before an autopsy, there are a whole host of things that are covered under "natural causes" that could (again, not speculating, but just stating for clarity's sake) include drugs, an eating disorder, diabetes, a heart attack, or any sort of virus that could lead to cardiac arrest.

I agree, though, that a lot of the speculation about what caused her death has be nauseating.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarification. I've also been hearing rumors it was the Hamthrax.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

' "Airline passengers have rights, and these new rules will require airlines to live up to their obligation to treat their customers fairly," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. '

I wonder if the government is ever going to express the same sentiment regarding those jackbooted assholes at the metal detectors.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I did not know, but after Albert's death, Victoria had his clothes laid out each day for the rest of her life; for a moment, I could not breathe.

I did not know this, either, and I'm so glad you posted it.

As re: Brittany Murphy's death - I know that some people were saying that she didn't deserve sympathy, but I think for many, trying to guess what could have caused her death is a way of trying to deal with someone so young dying of a cause that is completely unexpected. A 32-year old woman dying of cardiac arrest is not typical, and it comes as no surprise that so many are speculating why she died. People don't like to think of "the young" being struck down by death. I noted this morning that there are some who said she was quite ill but a few hours before she died. I just feel terrible for her family and friends. Losing someone is heart-rending, and it only makes it worse when it's around a time of year that's supposed to be about family and love and joy.

[missdeanna.livejournal.com]

I think people are scared of the fact that random bad things can happen to anyone. Speculating on the cause can make it seem less likely that something could happen to you or someone you love. It's not necessarily true, but it's comforting. I'm certainly guilty of that thinking, myself.

I do think, sadly, that this thought process can then lead to justification and blaming sometimes, and is partly responsible for some of the stereotypes about people who suffer misfortune.

[norda.livejournal.com]

1] Speaking of a pack of neurotic puppies on E... sanginmychains wrote The Dog When the Bell Rings which managed to make me both very nostalgic for Bad Things I Did in My 20s and very glad my life doesn't look like that anymore.

This really seems to be the week / month for people to be musing on Bad Things Done In One's Twenties... I know I'm culpable that way too. The holidays, perhaps?

2] If you cut stuff open, stuff can get out. I dunno. It's hard to explain. I'm weirded out.

Believe it or not, I get this, although I can't explain it, either.

3] Also I did not know, but after Albert's death, Victoria had his clothes laid out each day for the rest of her life; for a moment, I could not breathe.

I *did* know this, and it resounds with me every time I am reminded of it. It sounds like something I would do.

[marcmagus]

How many close-ups of people winding/unwinding neck-scarves do we get? Are they well-researched and do they show us anything interesting? Is it weird that this sentence, more than anything else, tempts me to go see the thing?

They wanted to sell the sign? I feel ill about this. I was sort of entertaining a vague hope that it was some misguided desire to purge the evil it represented. I suspected, as I think many did, that it was an effort by deniers to silence the truth. I have no way to process the idea it was for profit, like it's a famous work of art and we live in a heist movie...with protagonists too stupid to realize cutting the damn thing reduces its value.

[rm.livejournal.com]

The neckscarves show us nothing interesting of practical value, other than perhaps length of fabric and texture, but that's a big maybe. Really, it just hit my kinks. Save it for DVD.

[marcmagus]

Heh, ok. One of these days someone is going to trip across a well-written how-to manual that isn't a satire, and it will be a thing of beauty.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

This book is currently in off-site storage but if I can get a hold of it I'll let you know. It doesn't appear to be satirical but I don't know how much practical knowledge it contains. It was also written 100 years after the regency so don't know how useful it might be:

http://library.metmuseum.org/search/?searchtype=X&searcharg=+by+James+R.+Keiser+&searchscope=1&SORT=D&SUBMIT=Search

[marcmagus]

Thank you. That sounds like it could be worth looking at. [And it seems you have the most likely accessible edition...there don't seem to be many]

[l33tminion]

Wait, someone stole the sign from the front gate of Auschwitz? Perhaps some jet-setting thief in a red trench-coat and fedora?

More seriously, those are some dumb thieves if they planned to sell the sign. At least, I'm pretty sure there's not a thriving black-market in stolen historical landmarks.

[don-negro.livejournal.com]

There is, sadly, a thriving black market in anything that Nazis ever touched. For some collectors, it's morbid fascination, for others, it's... something worse.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I now have an AO3 account (where I am "arem" because they won't take two-letter names for accounts,

Buh. Still, I suppose you can be "arem" like there's "enyce" - it's all fonetik.

And yes, I hadn't ruled drugs or eating disorders out as possible in the Brittany Murphy case, but she still had my sympathy because sometimes things are effed up like that, particularly when there's a pressure on people like her to Stay Pretty. And sudden death syndrome is just as likely in an otherwise ostensibly hale and healthy person in the prime of life. Alas.

[unrund.livejournal.com]

Around me the most common theory about the Auschwitz sign is either Scrap Metal, ordered by a collector or they got really drunk and weren't satisfied with stealing a traffic sign.
Whatever it was, some people are just stupid :/

[frodo-esque.livejournal.com]

When I initially heard about the sign at Auschwitz being stolen I felt enraged, but the more I pondered on it the more it didn't matter much to me. It was a symbol of evil created by the Nazi's. I understand that it was a horrible symbol of the millions who walked under it, but at the end of the day, the sign created by the Nazi's won't lessen the sadness and tragedy of the event. No stolen sign ever can.

[karjack.livejournal.com]

And neither addiction nor eating disorders are a moral failing.

This. A young woman is dead, and even if the culprit is an eating disorder or drugs, it's a tragedy. Those who parcel out compassion and basic human decency only for those they find 'deserving' needn't look so hard in others to find moral failing. A simple glance in the mirror will show them an abundance.

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

Agreed on Ms. Murphy.

I had a friend die a a few years ago of a massive heart attack. She was a dance teacher and was at the time at the gym working out. She was also diabetic.

Heart disease is massively underresearched in women. Early symptoms include the non-specific ones, you know, like "fatigue" and "shortness of breath". If I was at the gym I would be concerned if I *wasn't* fatigued or short of breath.

My heart goes out to Brittany's family and friends. I might watch "Clueless" tonight with my friends.

Ekatarina

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Even if it were drug related or there is a contributing issue like anorexia behind her death--how do her loved ones deserve less sympathy for their loss? I don't think too many people said Heath Ledger or his family didn't deserve sympathy for what happened to him. I don't understand how people see women in very weird ways a lot of the time.

[i-amthecosmos.livejournal.com]

Every time I felt myself start to speculate if Brittany Murphy's death had anything to do with drugs or an eating disorder, a voice in the back of my head would say "Dude, Stephen Gately". And then I would remember that young people sometimes do die of heart failure due to undiagnoised conditions.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

Seen this yet? Pregnant soldiers could face court martial.