rm | sundries

Last night we got home to signs all over our building that someone else's apartment had been burglarized Saturday night much in the same way ours was some time ago. Both of us found this a little disturbing, not in the "I'm scared" way, since we now have appropriate security measures, but because our first thought was to wonder if someone was home at the time. Of course, we eventually figured out that since the burglary, according to the signs, occurred sometime between 11:30pm and 4:30am, someone was clearly out at a bar at the time. Poor bastards, and I hope they catch the fuckers.

This morning, we were awoken abruptly by sounds of people on the fire escape around dawn. We couldn't see anything though, and there were non-nefarious things it could be, but I think we were a little startled, although so asleep Patty and I just looked at each other and said "Hi." before passing out again.

Cajun culture and the oil spill.

Making the city more friendly for the elderly.

A significant number of deaths (17 last I saw, with 18 injuries) have occurred at an LGBT party in Mexico. Whether it's a hate crime or related to the war on drugs, no one is yet sure.

Of course, there are plenty of hate crimes and/or government sanctioned violence against LGBT people elsewhere. And not just the places you might expect, like Iraq and Dubai. Nope, also New York City, Atlanta and Helsinki. via

sparkindarkness.

I survived another round of WIAD. I'll put my story up here eventually. It was a hard week; I think the prompt frustrated everyone (I was soooooo aggravated while writing mine and think what I mostly produced was a passable outline for an actual story); I think the stories were largely cracky and weird, and they were frustrating to me as a reader. And I think it's clear a lot of people felt this way just by the sort of silence in the feedbacking we normally do for each other.

I am struggling, more than a little, with the Jack/Auggie fic. I can see the whole fic in my head, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Part of it is too much lead in -- it's PWP in the sense that there is plot and character development, but in the porn, so why don't I just skip ahead?

Part of it also that I'm having trouble temporally locating it and locating it for the reader.

Part of it is that the fic comes with a lot of problems to solve as is, most of which I have solved (the issue of Jack as foreign national, for instance).

Part of it is that I don't know Auggie's voice yet, and I think the fic works better if it's from his perspective, because Jack's issues distract from what I want the story to be about, which is Auggie.

Anyway, it's aggravating the hell out of me.

I don't follow True Blood closely; it's Patty's show. I missed most of last season, and have already missed one episode this season. But OMGWTFBBQ, it's like crack!fic come to life. Are they fucking serious? Should they be? What is happening? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND!!!! Best characters are totally Lafayette and the boyfriend; Eric; and Jessica (oh, all my love for Jessica).

About a week ago the occasionally useful, often offensive and regularly bizarre The Art of Manliness did a piece on men's magazines from the 1940s and 50s.

bodlon, with whom I regularly discuss many things (including the ongoing WTFery of The Art of Manliness), and I had the following awful conversation in response:

rm: These covers of men's mags from the 1940s and 1950s are all reading like Torchwood plotbunnies to me.

bodlon: I am particularly fond of "I BATTLED A GIANT OTTER" and "SEX STORMS LASH OUR PRISONS." OTOH, Hemingway's private war with Hitler? BEST PROMPT EVER. Let's get some Harkness up in that crazy.

rm: I want Ianto to discover that Jack used to write trash for such magazines mainly just to be spiteful while he was kicking around the Hub and billing them for his bad attitude.

bodlon: "The Strange WWII Fate of Yank Captain Hogan and His 69 Turncoat Nazi Butcher-Girls?" Ianto read aloud, eyebrows raised. "Captain 'Hogan,' is it?"

"There were actually only twenty-three of them," Jack said. His feet didn't move from their spot on his desk, nor did his eyes stray from the novel he had in his hands. "Sixty-nine just had a better ring to it."

"Ah."

rm: "You know," Ianto said conversationally, "I'm starting to see why every person than ran this place pre-1970 tortured you when they were bored."

"Only because they couldn't kill me," Jack said cheerfully.

bodlon: We really should do some kind of fic challenge with these some time. The results are bound to be ridiculous and potentially offensive as hell. Jack heading up a small unit of resistance fighters/traitors and punching his way through the enemy torture castle, followed by a crazy-ass uniform orgy? BRING ON THE BAD ACCENTS AND SEXY HATS.

rm: It's like Torchwood as directed by Quentin Tarantino.

On a similar, but less utterly sketchy note, Jack Harkness vs. Ben Franklin is totally the best conversation on the Internet today.

Torchwood fic rec: Debris by

heddychaa. Go read. Right now. It's like pressing your thumb into a bruise and feeling the better for it.

One more picture from Governors Island.

From our friend Marilynn. There's something about my physical tension/hesitancy in this combined with how present I am that I really, really like. Which is nice, because I've been hating pictures of me lately.