sundries

[rm]

Gaylaxicon 2010 has been canceled.

An article on comment policies on news websites completely misses the value and middle-ground offered by ongoing pseudononymous identities, while also grasping that yes, comments on news sites are waaaaaaay out of control.

feyandstrange offers us a guide to traveling while living with a disability in the wake of one person's completely fucked up treatment by United Airlines.

I am, at the moment, listening to UK political announcements. Their politics are more grim and more like US politics than I would have suspected. On the other hand, seeing that even your conservative party is willing to praise art and literature (and then not denigrate it later) as the opening of a speech is bewildering to me. These things are seen as terrible to at least 50 percent of the US electorate.

My friend Kristin is in Italy right now, studying art history. This is her blog. If you like the idea of private pilgrimages, you should read it.

Awesomecakes Torchwood set pic I've never seen before.

My mobile is back amongst the living.

And, yes, I know the "blip in time" line is actually from the most recent of the radio plays and not the death scene. I was flustered. But hey, look, I really was in Cardiff

Comments

[elisi]

Oh photos! (Loved your post yesterday btw, sorry I didn't comment.)

I am, at the moment, listening to UK political announcements. Their politics are more grim and more like US politics than I would have suspected.
I think the main difference (other than that our Right is waaaaaaaay to the left of your Right, as you noted) is that everyone is deeply cynical about all the parties, and politics in general - if the conservatives win, it's only because Labour has become utterly hopeless. (Although we do get magazine covers like this, which is nice.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

They just referenced Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes in one of the political speeches. Quite odd to me.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

They're just trying to pretend they understand popular culture. Both our leading parties currently are really centre parties - one slightly left of, and one slightly right of, but essentially centre, at least in public. Our recent history - Thatcher, strikes, sleaze, bumbled socialism, winter of discontent - rather ensures that anyone who takes a harder line on either side of the political spectrum renders themselves an object of huge public mistrust. That Cameron's entire campaign is based on the premise that, look, the Tories have changed, honestly, much like Blair's was when he brought "New" Labour to power, is kind of a glaring indictment of the mess both of them have been making in recent decades.

As such, in the run up to the election, neither side wants to risk alienating any portion of the electorate - so the general public, it's a game of shifting through the bullshit and lipservice for what actually might happen. The Tories might be praising art and literature out loud, but they can't be trusted to value it when they're gunning for the BBC behind the scenes. They're the same on gay rights, making public flowers-and-chocolates gestures to the LGBT community, but behind the scenes not actually making it count.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got that part. I mean, I'm staying round the corner from the Tory billboard that got splashed with grafitti to make it look like it was covered in blood.

That type of art and literature lip service -- even that we can't have in the US. Education beyond a basic "our schools should be good" is seen as immoral, and art and literature are viewed as unmanly and therefore unacceptable for anyone running for office to acknowledge. Saying a political leader reads here is pretty much code for accusing him of being gay.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

That is fucked up.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Don't forget shrieking "NEEEEERRRD!!!" at anyone mentioning a love of SF/Fantasy.

But on the other hand, I can safely presume that David Cameron believes that the planet that he is standing on it way more than 6,000 years old, right? To Yankee ears, a politician calling themselves "Conservative" but OK with science seems like a massive contradiciton.

The widespread meme of "Proud of Being Ignorant" currently infesting the GOP over here in the US makes me worried that we will soon see reading beyond an 8th grade level being cast as a elitist affection.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I feel like it's already like that. I learned about the Cultural Revolution in China the same year Dan Quayle started ranting about the cultural elite and, being a somewhat overwraught teen, became convinced that someone would come and beat me an break my glasses because I was studying Latin.

I'm less crazy now, but I felt safer then.

[malle-babbe.livejournal.com]

I see your Cultural Revolution, and raise you one Khmer Rouge roaming the countryside killing everybody wearing glasses, on account of them being too educated for the Shiny Happy Fun Worker's Parardise / Death Camp.

Which it why I am surprised that Sarah Palin wears them rather than get contacts or get LASIK instead...

I was in London in the last week of 1997, first of 1998. Your discussion of how fiction and the city overlap reminded my of the fun I had reading Gaiman's "Neverwhere" while in London.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Even when the Tories were a real right wing party, they wouldn't have been spouting creationism stuff. They've never really been anti-intellectual, they've just tilted the system in favour of the already privileged. If anything, historically, it's been the hardline left in this country tending to be disparaging of the intellectualism as a bourgeois or upper class pursuit, but then our strongest leftist influences have been more socialist than liberal until very recently.

I can't get my head round pride in being ignorant, it's just beyond my comprehension how anyone could aspire to that :/

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

everyone is deeply cynical about all the parties, and politics in general

Over the last year, I happend upon three cases in media where someone from the UK portrayed government politicians as Neutral Evil -- as in, keep the law or break it as long as damage gets done. I wonder if that's a trend...