sundries

[rm]

It's best to just say I'm a little crazed today and leave it at that. Lots to do in lots of different arenas and I'm trying to not flip out about any of it.

Last night, at the seder, not only did my mom give Patty and I both 5 pound notes for finding the matzoh that she decided we shouldn't actually bother to search for, she forgot to put out the glass for Elijah. So when she was cutting the sponge cake and the platter part of the crystal cake stand just snapped right off, she blamed him and then hurriedly got on that. Yeah, go my family!

bodlon, for whom I have any number of peculiar descriptors because he is awesome, is rapelling down the side of a historic building to benefit the Special Olympics. He needs to raise 1K to do it. Go team Internet.

Meanwhile, my former roommate is jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to raise money for SOAR, Speaking Out Against Rape. Aside from the "hey, this is a good cause" factor, megan is a good cause. She's done some awesome stuff this year, and if you can contribute to this project, it would be a nice recognition of that. Go team Internet some more.

More students have been expelled from school in the wake of the case in which a bullying campaign led to a girl's suicide. Additionally, a tenth person may be charged in the case (currently nine are charged).

This is for Patty: Tomatoes!

A remarkable opinion piece from Sinead O'Connor on the ongoing Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals. It is remarkable not just for it' content, or, to some eyes, its author, but because its structure and cadence is quite elegant.

I was eighteen or nineteen years old when she ripped up the photo of the pope on TV. I remember watching it at home with my parents. Maybe I was just finishing high school or it was the last time I came home during break in college; I'm not sure. What I remember was a sense of dismay as it happened, because even though I didn't really get it, I knew there was something there to get, and most people wouldn't and wouldn't try, they'd just be angry.

Sinead O'Connor's first album, which was a sort of ubiquitous thing in queer and lesbian and feminist circles if you were eighteen or nineteen at the time, sounded like nothing else anyone had ever heard before. I remember having it waaaaaaaaay before anyone else I knew, because I'd read about it in British music magazines I had to hide from my parents. It was so angry and primal and I spent an endless amount of time listening on repeat to "Just Like U Said it Would B" and thinking I knew things, even though I was a virgin.

Sinead O'Connor taught me women are wrath with the unprettiness of much of her voice, and it's slightly peculiar now to be regarding her commentary on the Church with admiration for her skills as a memoirist.

Finally, Matt Smith has the experience every Whoniverse fan worries about, at least on their way to cons. He got stopped by airport security for carrying a sonic screwdriver.

Comments

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Thank your for the signal boost! I'll be sure to keep the world posted with how things are going.

(Argh. That was meant to be two carriage returns, not a tab and a carriage return. *shakes fist at cognitive map*)

I've been spending a lot of time reflecting on the bullying case. A lot of it is...well, a lot of it is rage. And I should probably take the time to write about it, but the overall point I keep coming back to is that somebody shouldn't have to die before a student's genuine distress is acted upon.

Seriously. Rage.

O'Connor's thing is beautiful, and I am glad to read it, and will more than likely link it around. It's funny, because I'm seeing it in the same week I've been having these very intense and deep conversations about pagan theologies, and how one relates to deity, and consent, and so on. One of the things that's come up in it is Ireland's Brehon laws -- the legal system from the Gaelic period -- and the ways in which one is compensated when wronged by a higher authority, and how one can negotiate with someone far more powerful in the appropriate way. O'Connor's piece is very much in that vein, and I think that makes her triply correct: she's right to fight, she's right in her reasons, and she's got that right by the laws Patrick used to get God to let him judge the Irish. Not a Catholic, but I stand by her.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Relevant to nothing, check out the link I just added.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Dear Airport Security,

Listen closely, because I shall say this only once:

Don't fuck with Elevenses.

Best,
Me.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

''I've broken four of them ... I like to have it about my person at all times, just twirling it around and flicking it. It's all part of the magic, isn't it?''

See, it's this and the writing fanfic and various hilariousness that makes me love him already. Okay, I know I'm easy here, but the man isn't exactly making this a hard sell for me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

HE WRITES FANFIC?

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Yup! And him not even much of a fan before he got the part.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

YOU DIDN'T KNOW?!

In the article about S5 costuming that's going around:

“I think [the costume] has to be an extension of me. We had three huge fittings that went on for hours. I was originally going to have either a black leather coat or a blue swashbuckly one. I was always very keen that the element of the professor would come out. I was reading loads about Einstein at the time. I wrote loads of stories, actually, about the Doctor and Einstein, in Egypt. And that’s how the pyramids were made, because the Doctor rocked up. Because I had six months to prepare it was the only way I could get in contact with the Doctor.”

[melebeth]

Gosh. I kind of love him now, on principle, and I really didn't think I would.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Hee, icon-cousins. And rock on Matt Smith for putting his own stamp on things.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I confess, I saw yours and got excited since I hadn't seen anything since The Oncoming Streak/Time Pants/Temporary Naked Eleven ones.

It's all about preparedness for the weekend.