rm | sundries

A bit ago I posted about an individual who was given a non-specified gender designation on their Australian identity papers. That designation has now been taken away from this person.

The five most ridiculous things LGBTQ have been blamed for and/or compared to. from

montrealais, via

gwyd.

The Washington Post's ombudsman defends the paper's coverage of marriage equality again.

So Patty's home (and we had a great night, stopping at Murray's Cheese and eating at Risotteria and coming home to watch Angel and then going to bed early).

Granted, that episode of Angel was kinda eh. It's the one where he gets the ring. And I thought the episode does pretty well in trying to convey that experience of sunlight for him, but Boreanaz's acting is not quite up to the task, and I thought the point of Angel destroying the ring is muddled between his desire for self-punishment, his monologue about helping the forgotten people of the night as opposed to the people in daylight (that, in fact, annoyed me, the fact is many very normal, successful people who look like they have support systems often find themselves in situations where no one is on their side -- domestic violence, one of the themes of the episode, being a case in point), and the fact that the episode showed it was pretty easy for people to get the ring off people who had it, invincibility aside and therefore the thing was just dangerous and could easily slip into the wrong hands.

The ring needed a longer arc or a clearer arc or to have just not been there at all. It was such an obligatory "vampire comfronts sunlight" episode. Blah. I did like Oz showing up though and the way he was in the van with the crossbows reminded me of the Oz of the Wishverse, and I thought that was clever.

Have not yet gotten to White Collar 1.12. Maybe tonight. Patty loves con artists, so she might get into the show, but is 1.12 a good one for showing someone why the show is awesome or not?

Speaking of, I have a prompt idea for

lgbtfest, but I'm not sure how to phrase it in a way that comes off as assholish in a way I totally don't mean.

Also, for people doing White Collar fic in general: if you think Neal & Peter (or Neal & Peter & El) are doing it in S1, when do you think they get together? Or are they all still dancing around each other? It's weird, because there are a couple of major shifts in all those relationships in S1, but I'm still not sure where I would place that in my own stuff yet.

Finally, on the White Collar front, it's about to do a number on my wardrobe. I can feel it. Because wow, I want the 8 1/2 in the shiny silver cashmere liek woah. And I'd have to have the shoulders as narrow as can be and the waist lower to hide my hips and the jacket a little longer than it generally is for that style, so it doesn't break across my hips, I think, and I'm still not sure it would work (my hips are really big for the rest of me), but I want it soooooooooooooo bad. And it wouldn't even be a huge investment, considering that I have a gift certificate to Duchess for recent referrals and the two piece (jesus fuck, do I really want a two piece suit?) is only $500 (meaning, I could order this RIGHT NOW, but I'd have to get some shirts for it too, because I'd want a different collar height/spread on shirts for that suit I think). Speak to me people. Can my hips be hidden in something so skinny? *bangs head against nearest available surface*

Oh, Barrowman on Desperate Housewives (which I don't watch) tonight. Trying to decide if I care.

NYC'ers: Elephant Parade!

Have received registration materials for the Bristol conference. They are being very good about celiac issues and soon I'll have a website to point you folks to, as I know a few people in the area have expressed an interest in maybe attending.

The tea party movement is racist. I figure we all know that by now. But what I want to talk about is the very visceral reaction I'm having to the latest shenanigans. Shenanigans is the wrong word, though. It makes all this sound frivolous - hateful, but ultimately unimportant. But it's not.

Look, I'm one of those people who's really sensitive about bullying. I've been bullied both because of things that I am (i.e., queer) and just because I was one of those lucky winners, not just as a kid growing up, but also as an adult. I'm a nail that sticks up and I'm sensitive; I am both obvious and vulnerable. And when I'm the target of this shit, it freaks me out pretty bad. It freaks me out enough that it's hard to be around me for some people, because I will start ranting with a rhetorical and emotional passion about how the perpetrators want me dead and simply don't _yet_ have the nerve to smash my face in with a brick, but I know, I know they want to.

And some of that is me being the wounded, self-hating child that's never really healed from playground taunts and the assurances of my mother that people were just jealous (assurances that when expressed to others just made them hate me more). But some of that is also being the peson who's had beer bottles thrown at her for being gay, who's been threatened with rape for it, who's sat in emergency rooms with friends who have been gay bashed (Nik got 19 stitches to his scalp).

It's not rational or healthy, the way I re-victimize myself in the need to understand the hate -- sometimes based on bias, sometimes merely based on human nature and the cruelty of crowds, but it's how I am. I do my best to suppress it for everyone's sake. If you've been reading this journal for a long time, or know me, you know I don't always succeed.

But here's the thing about the tea party movement. There's a shitload of people and types of people they want dead. And they mean it. And they're gleeful about it. And they feel entitled to it. And it needs to be called out. And not just in liberal blogs or LJ ramblings. Yet the mainstream (not Fox, not MSNBC) news is largely silent. And whether this is a matter of being complicit or afraid, it enrages me.

What's happening in this country is not about mere differences of political philosophies and ideas, and the more we say that it is, the more we legitimize hatred and the desire for death of the other as a perfectly valid, rational opinion that members of our theoretically polite society are not only entitled to hold, but are entitled in some manner to act upon.

This doesn't lead anywhere good. This doesn't lead anywhere that isn't bloody. And what I feel, overwhelmingly, isn't fear; it's despair.

And now changing gears, man, I love this shitty song. (I write ConSweet to it on repeat, which tells you way too much about me and that book, I think, but the song is the embodiement of dumb shitty stuff people think makes them super cool when they are trashed and ConSweet is way about that).