sundries

[rm]

I really loathe April Fool's Day on the Internet. I've already been taken in by that horrible report about an order for 13 eps of Torchwood US, involving Gwen's cousin. Yesterday, a whole mailing list I was on fell for something that Patty debunked via Snopes. I will not even address the legion of surprise pregnancy posts. I AM DOUR AND FORMAL AND NOT FUNNY, AND I HATE APRIL 1 ON THE INTERNETS, AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME CHANGE MY MIND.

In other delightful Torchwood news, there's a contest to have a TW short story pbulished in Torchwood Magazine. You must have never received payment for fiction in the past and you must be a UK resident, which rules out nearly everyone I know, which means I can pop popcorn and kick back over this baby.

Werewolves are almost done. And they are good! Tonight, it should be FINALLY off to the editor. I'm thinking I should be done in time for Project Runway.

Hey, Anna Paquin's bisexual, although I feel like I already knew that.

Can animals be gay? Also, is this good or bad for queer humans and will the whole debate eventually drive scientists out of their minds?

Comments

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

Yay. I just wrote a long rant about a day that celebrates unreliability, but I figured I was the only humorless codger on the internets.

[ab-n0rmal.livejournal.com]

What's the female equivalent of codger? I'll join you.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

Codgerette?

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree with April 1st. I watch too much news - which includes a lot of awful and stupid things people do every day. The April fools? Hard to parse out.


And I thought same sex coupling among animals was well documented?

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

I know dogs will. Learn that when I was a kid and we had three male dogs.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Do you have a link for the TW fiction contest? I know a couple people who might qualify.

I am so glad that more people seem to be coming out as bisexual lately. I've always known we were out there, but it's still nice to have that extra reassurance of not being alone. Hopefully, it will help dispel the myth that all bisexual people are hyper-promiscuous.

I agree with you about the April Fool's thing. Aside from being able to grow nachos on Farmville (which amused my kids to no end) most of the stuff going on is really uncool.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've seen no link for the contest -- it's printed about in the magazine. A bunch of us badgered bodlon into picking it up to see if we were eligible.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I like clever April Fool's jokes (loved the Guardian's today), but I think there's a real knack in doing good April Fool's jokes and too many people who try don't have it. There has to be that slight air of implausibility, those little internal clues of something being off that are there within the thing itself. If you just go around telling people something that's really plausible but happens not to be true, that's not really how you funny.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, on that score, the Torchwood US thing was prettty genius. And I think if I hadn't been all "WHY IS MY CASTING INTEL FAILING ME?" I might have appreciated it a little more.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I must admit there were some notes in there I quite liked. But I was forewarned.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why the whole thing about animals -- espeically pair bonding birds -- having occasional same sex pairings is such a surprise ... over and over again. I see these articles every few years.

Animals with complicated courtship behaviors court via instinct driven call and response ... both males and females can recognize both sexes responses (otherwise they couldn't complete their half) and if a quirk in behavior, accident of coloration, or even an accident of movement triggers the entire display between two of the same sex then the birds are going to pair bond. They don't have any way to determine the actual, physical sex of another animal.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

And just like humans, there can be intersexed animals who may be one sex or the other chromosomally but who have developed secondary characteristics or behaviors common to the other sex because of hormone imbalances, environmental influences, developmental quirks, genetic changes, etc.

[gement.livejournal.com]

And, y'know, they might just be into it because it feels good and is a fun way to spend the afternoon when their food and protection needs are met.

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

Especially since they don't have TV or sports bars. (Now has image of a bunch of seagulls in a sports bar watching basketball on a big screen TV.)

[moljn.livejournal.com]

My first reaction was "That's so 1990's", but the article isn't your typical sensationalist write-up. It actually asks some interesting questions about how to interpret homosexual behaviour in different species, and mixed signals isn't the only (or even primary) cause. For instance, the Laysan albatross f/f pairs apparently don't mate with each other, but with outside males.

Anyway, thanks to rm for the link. I'm glad I decided to read it.

[hughcasey.livejournal.com]

April Fools gags can be fun, as long as the perpetrator isn't a dick about it. So ThinkGeek's pranks... FUNNY! Telling people you've had an accidental pregnancy... NOT FUNNY!

Of course, that's just me... YMMV.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I also hate April 1 on the internets.

Random unrelated question - I heard a long conversation last week about the differences between upper/lower east/west sides of NYC, and it made me wonder which section you're in. Seems lately when I hear anything about NYC I think of you. :)

[rm.livejournal.com]

I live in Spanish Harlem, which is not any of those neighborhoods. It's north of the Upper East Side (which is wealthy and where I grew up) and poor.

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

I AM DOUR AND FORMAL AND NOT FUNNY

I'm the same way about April 1. I don't think its not so much lacking a sense of humor as having one that's evolved past the juvenile HAHA FOOLED YOU humor.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

...you must be a UK resident, which rules out nearly everyone I know, which means I can pop popcorn and kick back over this baby.

I am incredibly relieved about this, because I think I would have been tempted to do it and just frustrated myself.

I like writing fanfiction that's fanfiction, not for publication. :)

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I briefly considered wearing my Dali mustache to work and seeing how long it took for someone to say anything.

This line from the Times article on same-sex pairings by animals cracked me up: "One primatologist speculated that the real reason two male orangutans were fellating each other was nutritional."

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've read that fanfic, and I vote no.

[pin-drop.livejournal.com]

Have you heard of bonobos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sexual_social_behavior)?

[sethg]

From the gay-animals article: The point of heterosexual sex, Vasey said, no matter what kind of animal is doing it, is primarily reproduction.

O RLY?

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Obviously. That's why CONTRACEPTION WAS NEVER INVENTED.

[gement.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy April Fools on the Internet, but I've never liked anything that felt mean-spirited. Jokes about harm in general don't do it for me. Making a coworker's life difficult by stealing their computer? Not cool.

The article saying they caught the time traveler who's been spoking LHC? Funny. Google saying they've done something utterly absurd? Funny.

But then, my favorite April Fools things on the Net aren't really fooling people, or at least not very many for not very long, and not about anything important. It's more a chance to do a neat trick and show people without damaging your credibility.

Vittana.org (a microlending site) is published all in LOLspeak today until you get down to the actual people who need loans. (They haven't been tampered with.) XKCD has a command line interface to navigate the comic. Dinosaur Comics archives are all done in birds instead of dinosaurs, which is a very cool technical trick.

But actually fooling people about things? Not my bag, baby.

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

"The article saying they caught the time traveler who's been spoking LHC?"

Doctor, get your fingers out of The Long Hair Community! NOW! Dagnabbit...

[gement.livejournal.com]

TWEED, they said. BOW TIE. http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49305387,00.htm?s_cid=33

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

Oh, LHC was Large Hadron Collider. (lol. I'm a member of the Long Hair Community. snerk.)

But hey, thanks for the link. And that so has to be a Doctor Who bunny. Or is it a descended/ascended Daniel again?

Hmmmm Kit-kats for everyone in the future... do they have dark chocolate?

What other bunnies could be spurred by this article? (I keep picturing Stargate, and Jack saying "Oh fer cryin' out loud" when they bring Eloi Cole in.)

[delchi.livejournal.com]

I always thought that This (http://api.ning.com/files/8fil5gmLgTbnvHiB9qe7ZlP*PesdnleY89Wa1XSwTN2VJOF-MRR*27IOl5yulIJ9a4-EFM6xPdeCTe4IvZZRdFoRF1G9upzR/GordonFreemanSpottedAtCERN.jpg) was the reason the LHC was not quite working right.

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm lost... Xfiles fandom?

[delchi.livejournal.com]

It's a video game called half-life. The guy you see in the picture is Gordon Freeman, who takes part in an experiment that creates a rift in space/time and allows alot of bad nasty creatures to come to our side of the fence.

[phaetonschariot.livejournal.com]

I hate April Fool's too, not because I ever fall for anything because I'm hyper-conscious of the date, but because it's fucking April 2nd.

eta: which of course means it's after noon, so everyone playing pranks sucks.

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

'I AM DOUR AND FORMAL AND NOT FUNNY, AND I HATE APRIL 1 ON THE INTERNETS, AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME CHANGE MY MIND.'

Good to know Snape still lives in your head, safe and sound. Haha

[ghost-light.livejournal.com]

A few years ago my sister-in-law sent out an email on April 1st announcing her (real) pregnancy. On the 3rd she started calling us to find out why no one had responded to it.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

God, ditto on the April Fool's, I nearly called my Uni in fury for a stupid prank our union pulled. Fuck, I hate them.

Animal same-sex coupling... this is new?

I've been hearing about this since I was a kid. It debunks the whole both the whole "unnatural" thing and the notion that we all exist to have biological offspring, which I'm very happy to never have.

[sanat.livejournal.com]

My husband proposed on April Fools Day. For real. He had kind of forgotten what day it was, so we decided to wait a day or two to tell the folks.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

I really loathe April Fool's Day on the Internet.

Thus why while I did consider releasing your BBC link, I did not. :)

[missdeanna.livejournal.com]

Shame the Torchwood contest is UK only. Otherwise, I'd be sorely tempted. Then again, perhaps it's a good thing.

Re Paquin: It seems like there's about a 90% chance that a female celebrity whom I find attractive in some way will eventually turn out to be lesbian/bisexual/queer. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as well with women I actually know.