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

[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.