rm | sundries

Elena Kagan has been nominated to the Supreme Court. She's Jewish. She's also widely speculated to be a lesbian. Any bets on just how unpleasant this confirmation process is going to be?

ebonypearl informs us that all the hair your cats (and other beasties) shed finally has a purpose: it can help clean up the oil spill!

Lena Horne has died.

Cynthia Nixon talks about life in the public eye and coming out.

From the art about death department: Clothes and a Claw.

Ten days in a carry-on. This is awesome. This is also harder if you wear men's clothes. Suit jackets say no.

While it makes sense that certain employees of any service provided should be able, under certain circumstances, to access locked and filtered posts, it looks like staffers at LJ have abused this privilege/tool and then subsequently refused to take the issue seriously. I have outrage fatigue.

ETA: Whatever happened there is clearly more ambiguous. A test done by the folks at Dreamwidth (which uses the same base code) says that what the user says happened couldn't have happened, which means that the ratio of code glitch/bad behavior appears to be different than the user who had the negative interaction with LJ staff (reasonably, considering history) assumed.

Don't forget

debsliverlovers. If you could boost the signal, that would be awesome.

We're back from Essex. And I no longer have the agonizing headache I woke up with on Sunday morning. Rule of the universe seems to be that no matter how comfortable seeming, if I'm not sleeping in my own bed, I'm in agonizing headache pain within 48 hours. It happened yesterday; it happened in London; it happened in LA. It really sucks, and I increasingly suspect it's whatever industrial cleaning stuff they use on hotel-room laundry. I may start packing my own pillows to see if that helps.

Essex, however, was awesome.

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Essex, the town, was about what you'd expect - unbearably charming, ridiculously white; it has the most profitable Talbots in America. That should tell you everything you need to know. It was also a true experience in heteronormativity. Not once did I feel any hostility for being queer, but people not getting it (and being deeply puzzled by me in menswear at the ball, but too polite to inquire) was pretty high. But an excellent event, and we'd totally go again.

Over the weekend Patty and I managed to finish S2 of Angel and S5 of Buffy. For me, there's really no way to watch those without it being in dialogue with Torchwood: Children of Earth. And my, that's a clinical way to say "it made my hands itch and I felt like I had to get up and pace and NOT COMFORTABLE."

The Buffy side of that equation is particularly difficult to talk about without looking like an asshole. I mean, I get it, and you want Buffy to be a hero, and Buffy (unlike Jack) has her own life available to put on the line. But seriously, I've kinda got to be with Giles here -- everyone can die a horrible death, including Dawn OR Dawn can die. Of course, there was option C, which still involved a sacrifice, and I'm relieved we got through the episode without it being "everybody lives!" because there's a lot of value I think in showing that both options A and B fail.

As usual, it's sort of the Angel side of the equation where I live. Which is to say, Wesley being put in charge, and being incredibly solemn and grave about it. The episode kept hammering on that idea that if you try to get no one killed, you'll get everyone killed. And, because the performances are so good, instead of rewarding the audience with a sense of pride for agreeing with the pragmatism of it, it some how leaves you going "I really, really don't want that job, EVER."

Also in Buffy and Angel related news, I finished and submitted my essay on the subject, so hopefully that'll work out well. Now I've just got to focus on Bristol. Ugh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, why , oh why, do people give a damn about other people's driving histories if no accidents were involved?! I swear, I get some of the weirdest reactions when I tell fellow Tennesseans that I never got my license and only have a permit. I'm 23; I lived in Boston for 22 years, and we had cheap, easy public transit. Yet somehow, people still can't wrap their minds around the notion and think that my not having a license reflects negatively on my maturity/level of dependency/driving skills. Down here, the only thing it affects is my level of mobility and my commuting time. I'm disgusted that something like that is considered newsworthy.

Hell, I'm 42 and still don't have my license. And I'm on the West Coast.

Because they've never lived anywhere that someone without a license could be independant?

I lived in rural SC a few years ago and dated someone without the ability to drive. I ended up driving him everywhere because he really was a shut in without the ability to drive.

The problem is that they're extrapolating their experiences onto others without realizing that there are other ways to live. *sigh*

I guess it can be kind of hard to imagine. Here in Nashville, we do actually have public transportation, but it's very poorly planned and it's unreliable in extreme weather. Case in point: the recent flooding put the buses out of commission until last Thursday, and they were only running on a weekend (reduced) schedule. Or if you were unable to walk or bike to a certain location maybe five or six miles from you, you'd have to take two buses to get there and your travel time would be approximately two hours. Not kidding.

I suspect, among other things, it reflects some sort of delusional belief that it's unpatriotic to neither own a car nor directly contribute to our national oil dependence.

That, or they are freaking out over that fact that she might be a frequent user of public transportation, and knows that in a major metro area, it is really convenient way of getting around.

Sadly, that is possible.

Do people really believe stuff like that? If so, people suck even more than I've given them credit for.

I'm 34 and don't have my license yet. I'd like to work on getting it, seeing as now I'm living in the Midwest, but hey, everyone's got their reasons for things. Driver-centric culture does really annoy me though; like how everything is set up to expect a driver's license and nothing else.

sundries

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