sundries

[rm]

In Philly? Help some toads cross the road.

Students face charges in cyberbullying case:

According to court documents (pdf), a 15-year-old Harvard-Westlake High School Student created a Web site in 2005 to promote his singing and acting career. When fellow students discovered the site, they were reportedly "offended and put off by its ‘I am better than you’ attitude and its blatant bragging and self promotion."

Several of the students began posting threatening remarks such as “Faggot, I’m going to kill you,” and "If I ever see you I‘m . . . going to pound your head in with an ice pick."

I'm going to refrain from drawing parallels to adventures I've had as an adult with other, mindbogglingly, other adults on the Internet, mainly because it's so obvious, I don't need to.

A court has ruled that a school that canceled prom because a lesbian wanted to wear a tux and bring a female date violated that girl's rights. However, they were also within their legal rights to cancel the prom.

Tragically, Rachel Maddow is apparently not running for Senate.

Had I the time, I'd learn to vid just to do a White Collar vid to Marc Almond's "These My Dreams Are Yours."

Buffy 4.7: Okay, I have about a bazillion questions about "The Initiative," most of which Patty assures me will be answered later, so you shouldn't spoil me. But:

1. They're doing experiments on demons and they don't know about the Slayer?
2. Where's the funding coming from?
3. There weren't that many built guys on my college campus, what is up with that?
4. So are these really college guys that have been recruited to be agents... or what?
5. Jesus, X-files much?

Meanwhile, I was all "rapetastic episode #973" and then it was "oh, Spike's the angry impotent rapist!" and then it was "god help me, this is sort of hilarious" and I still can't decide if Wheedon is very, very savvy about his issues as a writer or if he's very, very oblivious to them.

Angel 1.5 and 1.6: Not bad. Not great. Still waiting for it all to gel, also, very Torchwood what with the coming back to the office covered in slime. I had a fanon!Ianto = Cordelia moment re: slime and condition of clothing. Just sit with that for a moment, will ya?

Eleven becomes the first Doctor to grace the cover of a gay magazine as Matt Smith is the cover story on this month's issue of Gay Times.

Last night Patty couldn't find her phone before bed, so I called it for her, leaving my phone on the kitchen counter I poured myself some juice. But then she started talking to me on the phone, so we had a five minute or so conversation on our cellphones, standing ten feet away from each other, looking at each other. And then we got closer, we could both hear ourselves in both phones at once and it was really screwy and weird and cute.

This weekend I have to remember to do two grant applications. One is for a pretty small amount of money, but it will marginally help defray the cost of Bristol. The other is for a much more significant amount of money (although still nothing more exciting than an international plane ticket) to help defray the cost of research on an ongoing project. The first one, is easy, and I can just bang that out. The second, I'm still formulating, and is complex, but I'd be stupid not to apply.

Comments

[elisi]

Buffy 4.7
Dunno if anyone's mentioned this, but episode 7 on BtVS is always a big one that deals with all the themes etc and pushes the story forward.

And your questions...

*clears throat, and says in best Doctor-voice*: "I'll explain later."

No really, it'll all be explained. Well except #3, which I'll put down to TV reality.

Meanwhile, I was all "rapetastic episode #973" and then it was "oh, spikes the angry impotent rapist!" and then it was "god help me, this is sort of hilarious" and I still can't decide if Wheedon is very, very savvy about his issues as a writer or if he's very, very oblivious to them.
That's a beautiful summary. People *still* argue about that scene. :)

[offbalance.livejournal.com]

3. There weren't that many built guys on my college campus, what is up with that?

I don't know where you went to school, but my University, SUNY Albany, had a huge sports program, and there were many built guys (and very big ones) on campus, who played for the various teams. Football and baseball especially. Some of those guys were very large.

(and pretty. Very, very pretty.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

My school didn't have a football team, but we had a top basketball team at the time and a NROTC program, but still, people did not look like that!

[offbalance.livejournal.com]

Different sports, I guess. I agree that the basketball players and ROTC guys were not as beefy. But the Football players? HUGE. Like walking walls. And the baseball players were also big (tall and broad-shouldered), but not so wall-ish. But they had huge arms, and chests, and...I'll be in my bunk.

[paulshandy.livejournal.com]

Actually, there is an explanation for all those built guys. They are actually soldiers undercover as students, not students recruited to be soldiers. There's more, but those would be spoilers, so I'm shutting up now.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Football school campuses are filled with terrifying giant-necked men.

[abnormal-apathy.livejournal.com]

Can someone please explain the correlation between "owning a large dog and claiming to be gay"? I, uhm...don't get it.

With that said, I'd totally stump for Rachel and her big dog if she decided to run here in MA.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Ugh at least the courts have caught up on the dangerous and toxic nature of cyberbullying like this - it's terrifying


What is trhe court actually going to DO about her violated rights then? It seems very... empty

[karathephantom.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that she can now proceed to sue for damages, but I might be wrong about that.

[marcmagus]

Tragically, Rachel Maddow is apparently not running for Senate.

Yeah, I was really disappointed. I'd vote for her.

OTOH, if she leaves to go to the Senate, would anybody step up to do her job? That would be a tragic loss.

[thunderemerald.livejournal.com]

:: I still can't decide if Wheedon is very, very savvy about his issues as a writer or if he's very, very oblivious to them.

Both, I think. Which I find endlessly interesting.

[dulcinbradbury.livejournal.com]

On a follow-on to the prom bit, apparently a hotel owner in New Orleans has offered to throw the prom for them: http://www.kcra.com/news/22830974/detail.html

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I love, love that Maddow segment. It's relevant and almost fan service all at once. Which, not necessarily ideal on a news program, but kind of awesome. If I didn't already love her work, I would now.

Grants: are you aware of this?

N'aww, phones.

I am not at all sure how I feel about that ruling in the prom case yet, but I think the precedent is...interesting. I'll want to think this one through. It's good because it shores up students' civil rights, but I think a lot of school districts are going to feel empowered to take their bats and balls and sulk off home (or encourage private parties in lieu of school-sponsored ones) in the future, which doesn't exactly help, and may increase a bullying risk.

And I'm in favor of the cyberbullying case because, dude. Threats? Not okay. Not. Okay. NOT OKAY! Who doesn't understand this?! ARGH.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, I was all "rapetastic episode #973" and then it was "oh, Spike's the angry impotent rapist!" and then it was "god help me, this is sort of hilarious" and I still can't decide if Wheedon is very, very savvy about his issues as a writer or if he's very, very oblivious to them.

This is an issue that keeps on coming up on Whedon's work, most recently with Dollhouse (which I personally think is really clever and subversive -- though I have yet to finish S2 -- but many disagree with that). I think that Whedon is generally very savvy, but he still has the occasional moment of dire fail that just makes me go "BUH?"

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to hear what you make of Dollhouse. I've yet to see it; it's on my list (so... about 2015 I'll be getting round to it) and I've heard such mixed views on it. I've seen lots of people say it's faily but I'm never clear if they're turned off by the very concept, or whether it's a problem with the execution, or both.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

I think that a lot of people find the concept of the show inherently faily, but personally I've always felt that whole point of the show is to undermine notions of human commodification, rather than to glorify it, and I think it does undermine those ideas in some pretty powerful and potentially radical ways (although it's never allowed to really fulfil its radical potential).

Of course there are individual moments of fail on the show, where it fails to live up to its potential, or where the fail comes from somewhere else entirely (misrepresenting certain professions, etc), but overall I think it's really well done (up until episode 6 of S2, anyway -- I haven't watched past that yet :P).

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

It's good to hear that, because I was really hoping that was the case. I've no problem with the concept as long as the point is, hey this is fucked up, not hey, this is awesome. I know Joss has his moments, but I hoped I could trust him not to be that person.

[missdeanna.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much how I see it. I also think that Dollhouse is a show where the payoff is in sticking with it and seeing how it unfolds.

I think another problem some people have/had with it is that we're really forced, even from the beginning, a lot of the focus was on the people who ran the Dollhouse. Personally, I liked that aspect and how it was handled.

The Initiative:

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

1. That part was pretty silly. But then again, they also didn't know a lot about demon lore, or bother to peruse any of those books in Giles's collection. It's possible.
2. If I keep going with this list, I really will spoil it for you. So I'll suggest that you follow Patty's advice. :-)

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

I watched a whole bunch of Angel yesterday (on my 12 hour date...) and starting at 1x10, the series starts to suck WAY LESS.

[paulshandy.livejournal.com]

Joss Whedon's shows always improve dramatically after the first season, in my opinion, anyway. I think he uses the first season to figure out what the show is going to be about. That's what makes the cancellation of "Firefly" so heart breaking. If the first season was that good, I can't imagine how good it would have become.

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

The caption "Maddow has said "dude" when discussing politics" during the segment was way too cute for words.

[missdeanna.livejournal.com]

I had a fanon!Ianto = Cordelia moment re: slime and condition of clothing.

Heh, I love that, because with all the similarities I see between Torchwood and Angel (and really, they only grow as the show continues, in my opinion), I've tried to think about the parallels between the characters. I tentatively lean towards Cordelia being Ianto.

[redfiona99.livejournal.com]

Several of those do get clarified later on, except I can't remember if question 1 ever is. The built guys hide in the gym. I swear to that one, because it's annoying every time I have to put the weights down because they can all shoulder press me.