sundries

[rm]

We had an AWESOME day yesterday.

I took my mom to Costco and then Patty and I went down to the Farmer's Market. She went to meet a friend and then I sat in the little plaza by Madison Square Park wherein I got the picture of the stripper pole pedicab.

Then Patty met me at my office and decided she wanted to go to a crafts fair in Brooklyn which was much smaller than anticipated. But I declared I knew the neighborhood really well so we walked all over Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill and then on to the Brooklyn Bridge to get ice cream and look at lots of people doing wedding and prom photography.

Then we walked all the way back to Cobble Hill so we could eat at my best kept secret sushi restaurant ever, which I haven't been to in years. Eventually we headed back home and watched Angel, to which you can see my total freak out in last night's post.

There was quite a bit of World Cup madness about, but most of it seemed forced and sort of stupid, like guys covered in red white and blue being drunk on the subway at noon with open cups of beer (the sun is most decided NOT over the yard arm at noon) while hassling some poor bastard in an England jersey.

We also saw a couple where in the guy was wearing a Wales jersey with a girl wearing a Boston Red Sox shirt.

"That," I said to Patty, "is fucking perfect. Wales and Boston. Both mad about sports and sort of blue-collar second cities --"

"And really fucking white?" she added.

"Oh, yeah, that too."

The challenges of choosing to wear the veil in America.

The Singularity Movement. I read about this and mostly I cringe thinking of how close we also thought the science fiction future was back in 1991 because the Internet was going to make everything just like Neuromancer. Yes, I was guilty. I also had a defense: I was 18.

Merit badges for grown-ups. Is it just me or is the relationship between this phenomenon and the reason a lot of us read D/s porn on the Internet really obvious?

I am torn about the degree of scrutiny that continues to be directed at the Malawi couple, now broken up, that had been imprisoned for homosexuality. If we're looking at it to look at the level of anti-LGBT oppression in the country, that's useful. If we're looking at it to see if the cause was really worth our emotional investment, which is how the tone of a lot of these articles read to me, I am very, very uncomfortable.

Clear Channel resues Pride billboards. It's the usual double standard: a het couple in bathing suits on a beech kissing, AOK. A queer couple? And it's filthy, filthy porn.

Ages ago I wrote about a night out where Prince Poppycock performed. Apparently he was just on America's Got Talent. The really amazing part? He made it through to the next round! I'm incredibly happy for him. via alumiere

I have booked my hotel for my other night in London. I am perhaps even more excited about this one than the first one. Now I just need to resolve Bristol and my internal issues around Cardiff.

I am always fascinated by which of my fics people really respond to. It's never the ones I expect.

Comments

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

Your merit badge link has an extra double quote in the url.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Actually, it was apparently missing one, but thank you for the catch! Fixed now.

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

Ooops, sorry!

[austengirl.livejournal.com]

A friend in Boston got similar harrassment for wearing her England jersey yesterday. She's actually Anglo-American, but part of the crap she was getting was about how she was 'pretending' to be English. *rolls eyes*

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

I have an (somewhat Anglo-influenced, due to having academic parents - AU academics desperately ape Oxbridge in any way they can think of) Australian accent, influenced *somewhat* by having been Stateside ten years this August.

More than once, I've been accused of "faking a British accent." Um. No.

Love this country, not quite so fond of the cultural illiteracy level so many people here have when it comes to matters international.

[austengirl.livejournal.com]

Love this country, not quite so fond of the cultural illiteracy level so many people here have when it comes to matters international.

So true, though I could easily imagine the same type of harrassment taking place for wearing a USA jersey in certain parts of England yesterday.

My friend's accent is mostly American, and I'm guessing she didn't have her British passport to hand to prove her identity. And I cheerfully admit to being rubbish with accents, but I have learned Australian *and* New Zealand accents are in fact different than British ones. I would imagine many, many Americans wouldn't know an Australian accent if it smacked them upside the head.

[weirdquark]

Oh, come on, Americans have seen Crocodile Dundee! Well, maybe not people under twenty-five. Australia is where they say "G'day, mate!" ::ducks::

There was an exhibit at the Boston Science Museum about accents -- they had people from different areas of the world who spoke either English or French, and they all would say something like, "Hello, I'm from [location] and this is how I speak [English/French]." The idea was to demonstrate that it was much easier to differentiate between accents when you knew the language; I don't know French and sure enough, the six different French speakers sounded the same to me. The six English speakers sounded completely different. Though I admit I don't know if I could have matched all of the accents to the speaker's country of origin had they not said where they were from -- just been able to tell that they weren't from the same place.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I read the merit badge thing and this must be a cultural thing, because I don't get the connection to kink, unless you're being obscure about the praise/punishment thing...

[rm.livejournal.com]

I doubt it's cultural. It may just be me. But I think lots of people like tests, and knowing they're good and knowing where they stand. Adult society in America doesn't offer that. Silly nerd merit badges and some D/s scenarios both do.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

This. People want feedback. I've heard it said that adults have "nothing left to graduate from" and the merit badges/D/s likely address that need on some levels.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

"I read about this and mostly I cringe thinking of how close we also thought the science fiction future was back in 1991 because the Internet was going to make everything just like Neuromancer."

Yes, exactly! May I quote you sometime?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Sure thing.

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

I love the story/fact that when he wrote Neuromancer, Gibson said he knew nothing about real computers. He presumed they ran on crystals and light, and was disappointed to find out they had spinning clunky metal parts like hard drives and fans.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

The Singularity!

That was a facet of the TW Bigbang I never did; Owen's consciousness uploaded into mainframe and by extension, the internet.

As much as the drive to survive forms humanity (and individual humans), I don't think "digital immortalists" have really thought this through.

Dammit, plotbunny.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

You need to come here and take a better look at Boston - it's about as 'white' as NYC is. ;) Somewhere around ten thousand Brazilians in Allston-Brighton, and I understand non-whites in the city proper outnumber whites by a pretty considerable margin. Maybe not in Southie or the Back Bay, but pretty much everywhere else...

I *have* noticed that white-American soccer fans do come across rather as the posers you describe. They think it's "exotic" or some such. The Brazilians (and, surprisingly, the Koreans) take it far more seriously and seem to display it far less affectatiously.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've actually spent a good deal of time in Boston, clearly merely in the wrong neighborhoods. But as a non-P&G person, I have historically felt extremely uncomfortable there.

[sethg]

IIUC “Red Sox Nation” is much whiter than the general Boston population; one of the prosaic explanations for “The Curse” is that previous generations of Sox managers were reluctant to hire qualified black players.

[weirdquark]

I read about this and mostly I cringe thinking of how close we also thought the science fiction future was back in 1991 because the Internet was going to make everything just like Neuromancer.

I read that and kept thinking, yeah, I've read that science fiction story. Hell, I've thought about writing a story wherein humanity is working on teleportation technology which looks at all the other things that one can do with the ability to upload a version of a person, from fiddling with the data, to make "improvements" to using it as an immortality technique. And who has the control over who gets to do what with it.

I also noted the bit near the end where it said Kurzweil "acknowledges the possibility of grim outcomes from rapidly advancing technology but prefers to think positively" and thought that that was all well and good, but wondered whether any of these people who are working on making science fiction into reality are also working on how to address any of the social or moral problems that the science fiction brings up along with the creation of technology.

[airspaniel.livejournal.com]

That article on the singularity annoys me. I don't know if it's just the way it's written, or if the "movement" itself has really become so romanticized and dramatic, but I was far more interested in it when it was presented in more matter-of-fact terms; as the point at which our technological evolution outstrips our biological capability to do so, and certain concepts (sentience, immortality, etc.) would need to be re-evaluated.

Now it's all glorious future techno-utopia vs. robot overlord hell of extinction, and people doing flashy things that don't really advance tech much, but look really cool. Which maybe it always was, but I liked the actual science best.

The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil is a really fascinating look at the science behind all this, even though it's pretty dry in places. Man, he really wants that friggin' singularity.

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

I thought the red/white/blue people were for the Puerto Rican Day Parade? A slew of them were on the boat, and kept blowing whistles.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Today, probably.

Yesterday, totally not. These were very, very P&G dudes hollering about soccer.

[misch.livejournal.com]

You've probably seen this already, via Wil Wheaton.

Patrick Stewart, presented without comment.

He wore this shirt today at Comic Con in Philly. Greeted with cheers as he walked into the room, then both jeers and cheers when he removed his suit coat revealing the jersey.

The jersey was autographed and auctioned off after that session.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

That CRACKED ME UP. His beaming face, and then the classic facepalm. Kudos to the photog.

ETA: Hang on, is that last image 'shopped?

[misch.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was shopped.

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

The Singularity is way, way, way too much a part of my life these days. My boss is a believer, I'm not. But it does mean that I have to read the Kurtzweil newsletter on a daily basis.

[sethg]

A character in a Ken MacLeod novel refers to the Singularity as “the Rapture for nerds”. It’s true! It’s so true!

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Huzzah for Prince Poppycock! Alas, I'll have to wait until I'm at work to watch the clip (for some reason my home computer has gone mute).

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I can't tell if I'm really broken or what, but the adult merit badges are probably something I should stay the hell away from.

Unless I'm doing NaNo. Oh gods.

[rm.livejournal.com]

We are broken in similar ways then dude.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I just can't tell if it would be a good and wonderful thing or just encourage the most terrible things about my personality.

The crazy. We can has.