sundries

[rm]

Okay that deal with Australia and A-cups? Not quite true (and the female ejaculation ban still stands). Thanks to lilacsigil.

Murder isn't activism. But terminology issues aside, Dr. Tiller's killer has been found guilty.

Out of Auschwitz, a survivor reflects on the liberation.

I was thinking in sort of an off-hand way the other day when I saw someone comment in regard to a couple of Doctor Who episodes (sorry, can't remember which of you it was) about how Britain is never going to get over WWII, that better that then... well, the US. I feel sometimes, that all we can remember is the Cold War that came after and our paranoia. Everyone is out to get us! If we approached the global threat of terrorism through the lends of WWII instead of through the lens of the Cold War, would we be behaving better? Would Gitmo be closed? Would we stop trading civil liberties for a false-sense of security? I don't know, but over here, I think we could use a lot more WWII memories and a lot fewer Cold War ones.

bodlon adds his voice to great slash debate. Since he's a transman who writes fanfic and pro material some containing what we call slash or m/m romance, he has a somewhat unique horse in this race. Also, thinky thoughts in comments.

Today's XKCD made me cry. Like, actually cry. Not a metaphor or exaggeration. I cried.

So John Barrowman is going to play a villain on Desperate Housewives. Shooting starts in march, apparently. I really only have two things to say about that, neither of them rational: 1. DH is my mother's favorite show, and having to deal with her getting obsessed with JB and deciding to watch Torchwood again (which she sorta likes but anything alien upsets her and she has to look away) is more surreal than I want to deal with it. 2. Surprise Naoko Mori!

gement points us to the worst ad campaign in ages. And it's for bus travel. In Cardiff. No, really.

John Lithgow, gossip columnists and scandals in the pre-Internet age. via redstapler.

lord_whimsy reminds me that I had wanted to mention the death of Louis Auchincloss who, as the New York Times obit says "was best known for his dozens and dozens of novels about what he called the 'comfortable' world, which in the 1930s meant 'an apartment or brownstone in town, a house in the country, having five or six maids, two or three cars, several clubs and one’s children in private schools.'" He was a chronicler of the dying world (although he felt strongly it was not) that long-time readers know I grew up peering into.

jonquil ponders to what degree gender has a role in whether people like Salinger's work. Despite leading with the Salinger news yesterday, to quote her poll, my feeling was generally "Eeeeeh."

Patty and I are going to try to go to Dances of Vice tonight, but she has a cold and I'm beat, so we'll see. If we go, you may be seeing the tux,since I have this thing going on where I have to wear it for something before Gallifrey or I'm going to have issues.

Boston people. Tonight, tonight, tonight! I know it's cold, but these ladies will be wearing less clothing than you and are smoking hot. Also, seriously, my love for this troupe has little to do with nudity and everything to do with the ridiculous amounts of charisma they have on stage, which isn't limited to the traditionally feminine archetypes that are a staple of burlesque. They're also my friends.

In planning for my new headshots, I've discovered something interesting, and that is that one of the images I'm selling makes me more of a romantic-lead type than I've ever been. Most of my acting career has been about being the sharp, dark-haired woman, which means VILLAIN. In Australia though, at every class it was "you're a romantic lead, we swear!" and I was like "Not in America! In my country I am evil and villanous. I only get cast as the undead and people who steal husbands!" (which was 100% true at that time). But in Australia, even my Lady in Macbeth was played like a romantic lead, you know, despite the crazy. And now I get it. Short hair, cute tight top, shiny pink lip gloss and a little bit of mascara and a huge smile. I'm suddenly unlikely, sweet, tom-boyish (something that's a particularly weird identity for me in a way that may not seem to make obvious sense) and not, not as hard or awkward as Miranda on Sex in the City. I say this a lot, but only in certain circles: Severus Snape taught me that everything I thought was ugly about myself is actually smoking hot. Jack Harkness taught me to stop pretending I'm the quirky not so cute best-friend next door.

Comments

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

OH! ok :)

[moizissimo.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome view of it all.

On a similar note, my grandfathers fought on opposite sides in the same area of Italy. Yep. One day they got to talking and actually figured out where. That was an interesting conversation. :)

[bluejeans07.livejournal.com]

At least we can hang out at the bar T_T

[better-late24.livejournal.com]

Today's XKCD made me cry. Like, actually cry. Not a metaphor or exaggeration. I cried.

Have you ever seen that movie AI: Artificial Intelligence? That comic sort of reminds me of it. And that movie ranks up there with some of the most disturbing I've ever seen for similar reasons. It just quirks something in my head.

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

Lithgow's an interesting dude. There was a list that you could probably still find floating around of old-style gossip about various celebrities, much of it gakked from other sites like Bitter Waitress and the like, and in the preface the author noted that Lithgow had actually mentioned the list on Conan O'Brien.

I saw the xkcd strip as mostly riffing on Wall-E, but it was still quite touching.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm pointing everyone who was upset at XKCD at tamnonlinear's why that comic was wrong post.

They are tough and they are brave and they are courageous. Don't insult them by portraying them as homesick creatures that have been abandoned. They have impressed the hell out of everyone who followed them. See them as curious, stubborn, resourceful explorers who have gone out to do the best job they can and done better than ever expected.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Dr. Tiller inspired me to become a clinic escort. I took the first class after his death, and the room was *packed* with people who were joining the clinic defense task force in his memory.

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, and yet another line that separates Canadians from our southern neighbours, the war that we can't seem to get over is WWI. It is not overly uncommon to even hear some people my age (mid-30s) refer to it as "the Great War". I couldn't tell you off-hand what battles Canada was involved in in WWII, but the names Dieppe, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele are tattooed on my brain.

When I grew up hearing about war, it was about muddy, rat infested trenches and friend's corpses left in no man's land because they couldn't be retrieved. It was about gruelling boredom interspersed with abject terror, trench foot, lice, inedible food and "going over the top". It was grim pride in the fact that we did things that no other country had managed no matter how many times they tried, but without ever forgetting for a moment what it had cost. There's no Memorial day in Canada, it's Remembrance Day, renamed from Armistice Day; still commemorated at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month. Needless to say, it's short on picnics but long on tears and ceremony.

Maybe the really scary thing about the cold war and "war on terror" being what occupies your countrypeople's minds is that so few of you have actually been touched by it. 9/11 was a horror, of course, and the country was rocked to its roots, but even with the subsequent war in Iraq, as a culture you are too far away from it. You have not watched every able-bodied young man of a generation walk away for four years. Too few of you are directly involved; too few of you that really understand why "glorious war" is such an oxymoron. You all get fear, you just don't necessarily have the horror embedded in your culture the way some do.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've gone back and looked at your comment, which I presume was this one: British friends, please don't be offended when I say that you guy are never gonna get over World War Two, are you? and to be honest, yes, I am going to be offended by it, however "flippantly" you may have intended it. We finished paying you back for Lend-Lease (the profit you made out of us being bombed) in 2005, our war memorials for WWII begin in 1939 and our war memorials for WWI begin in 1914, as opposed to 1941 and 1917, respectively, for yours and you may find the deaths of all my countrymen, relatives and those who might have been my friends and the fathers and mothers of my friends funny, BUT I FUCKING DON'T.

[sociallyawkrd.livejournal.com]

He was amazing. Seriously.

I don't get to talk about it often because obviously this means I had a late term abortion. And unfortunately that puts me at risk. We ended up having several other reproductive woes on our way to getting our now 9 year old son.

He was on my Christmas card list. I wanted him to know that by being who he was and being kind and compassionate I eventually was able to have my son who is now 9.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

The xkcd really messed me up too and I had to scroll it off the screen fast and remember not to mention xkcd (or the rover) to anyone for a while so that I don't socially-awkwardly choke up.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I can imagine. Grandfathers is definitely awkward; my family have friends in a similar position but not us, fortunately.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I found everything else by Raymond Briggs unreadable because I came across When The Wind Blows at a particularly sensitive time (my parents and elder sister were CND fundies; this was how we were going to go, and no way of stopping it).

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yes. YES. I know most people hate AI, but that movie had the potential to be the greatest film ever made. It wasn't, but it's profoundly disturbing. I can barely watch the first third, and the second third has left me with a lingering question (what personal pains would something like Gigolo Joe have to be programmed with in order to have sexual compassion for others)

[better-late24.livejournal.com]

I have issues with the idea of forever vs. the end of life (they're both terrifying), so to me, it was INCREDIBLY disturbing. And it was marketed very differently. People brought their kids to it, and it was so incredibly creepy. I saw it once in the theatre and will never see it again.

[miep.livejournal.com]

um, what?

she's his DAUGHTER!!!!

carry on.

[miep.livejournal.com]

bumper sticker!!

[miep.livejournal.com]

THIS!!!

OMG. This.

This this this.

this.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your son and I'm sorry about your troubles before having him.

[better-late24.livejournal.com]

Is it not the CREEPIEST movie ever?

[miep.livejournal.com]

THE POOR TEDDY BEAR!!!

[delchi.livejournal.com]

I can only imagine. I've only had brief exposure to CND and groups like them.

Growing up I lived very close to a military base. They would test-blow the air raid siren every day at noon. The Saturday afternoon after watching The Day After on Friday night when it went off I was completely freaked. Shortly after that I started a VHS collection of every nuclear war movie I could find, and related material. I was riding the bus to school reading CD ( Civil Defense ) manuals while others were dancing to Duran Duran.

Still, nothing I have found is more disturbing than "Threads". Anyone who is sensitive/triggery to such things should avoid it.

[kargashina.livejournal.com]

No, maybe not embedded. What war we think about is diffferent person by person. I grew up in the cold war, but what think about is Nam. I also realize I learned more about modern history in school than is normal for the US.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I'm Australian, and the Great War is pretty embedded here, too. We have Remembrance Day *and* ANZAC Day, both about remembrance. A British friend of mine was astounded that a NZ friend and I could both sing WWI marching songs that we had learned at school. WWI is in our culture, WWII is in our history.

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Couldn't have put it better if I'd tried.