sundries

[rm]

We had a very nice weekend that mostly involved hiding in places with airconditioning and Patty singing the Batman theme to the cats a lot ("CAAAAAAAAATCAT!" instead of "BAAAAAAAAAAAATMAN!"). It was awesome.

This is the final week to bid on things at graduate_maria. I'll be putting up some new items tonight. For those that missed it Maria (theotoky is a long-time friend that I helped get out of an abusive relationship many, many, many moons ago and is now trying to finish her last semester of college but has run out of funds, (this after supporting her abuser through school when they were together). Maria has just, on top of everything else, lost her job and so needs our help more than ever. Projected fundraising total is currently at about $1,200, which means we've $3,800 to go to get her tuition bill paid. Can we do it Internet?

lucylooo died over the weekend. Her work was familiar to many in fandom, and while I knew her stuff but not her, I get the impression she was pretty awesome. Fuck cancer. Do what you can to fight it. This snuck up on her fast and took her quick. My condolences to those who knew her. I saw this multiple times on my friendslist yesterday, so my impression is that there are a lot of you out there hurting.

While there aren't plane tickets or anything involved yet, yeah, it looks like I am heading back to Switzerland in October, which I pretty much already knew but it just got more official.

At least a partial Dragon*Con schedule this week, I'm guessing, since one of the tracks that has the biggest impact on my schedule has promised me "before the end of the month." And hey, tsarina will be attending too!

30x30: dance in the streets of New York.

Scuzzi the cat.

I got this from eumelia who is in Israel about something going on in the UK: but "Brokeback Coalition" what? I assume this is the further, and increasingly less amusing, outgrowth of the whole "let's write slashy RPF about our incredibly disatisying coalition government"? Anyone who can fill me in here?

Peripherally on point, I suppose: xtricks's hilarious guide to teh buttsex! which was linked yesterday is now, among other things, serving as a listing of the worst things we've ever read used as lube in fanfiction and pro erotica. Current entrants (ha!) include chocolate, peanut butter, alcohols and guacamole. Can you add to the horror? I bet you can.

Where are all the lesbians in UK TV?¹ The article asks (I'm over-simplifying their oversimplifying) if we are invisible because we're not about men the way UK TV is. I ask how slash does or does not factor into an attempt at visibiity by queer women in fandom by making it about the dudes, since femmeslash remains fandom's arguably least visibile component. via andrewducker.

A letter to patients with chronic disease has been making the rounds, largely to very positive reviews. I've had a profound problem with it, however, as, despite containing useful, pragmatic and even illuminating information, read as one long, condescending tone argument to me (and I may be the most allergic to the tone argument of everything, because I'm loud, and I don't strive to take up as little room as possible, so I get it a lot).

firecat has a good, brief critique that hits at that sideways by talking about the inherent doctor/patient imbalance in the system and the implications of what that means when a patient has to expend lots of energy reassuring the doctor that he's still the most powerful guy in the room just to get their condition dealt with.

Have not seen Sherlock yet. Will get on that ASAP, which probably means like next week, schedule being what it is.

For those of you who don't read the Internet on the weekends, I wrote a looooong thing about marketing online. Stil owe you a post about Inception, though, that's other than "Suits, pretty."

Okay, I'm only like 20% through the Jack/Auggie story, but it's finally working.

---

¹ Maybe Buffy stole them?

Comments

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

The whole Clegg/Cameron thing has, to my eyes, always been coming from an uneasy giggle-behind-the-hands kind of place rather than a slashy RPF one (excepting the fandom people who are actually writing slashy RPF here) - David Davis's comments just reflect that edge of hostility rather more overtly than previous commenters.

[rm.livejournal.com]

For me it took a while to track on it, because there was actually a bit of mainstream Clinton/Gore stuff that wasn't meant as hostility (it was meant as "woah, young, reasonably attractive politicians, when did this happen?") back in the run up to '92. So the nastiness with which that has been intended slipped under my radar, both because I'm not in the UK and miss the nuances, but also because my expectations were otherwise quite outside of fandom.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

verasteine and I were talking about this a while ago, and between us we just kept unpacking layer after layer of stuff that makes the joke bankable currency to do with our attitudes to the gay, and to class, and presentation, and manliness, and Europe - and this interplay between modern acceptability and a lingering sense of taboo and risqueness. Which, in many ways makes it the most bombproof of snidy comments you could possibly make, because no one can find the analogy offensive without opening themselves to the accusation of being uncomfortable with the idea of being gay, while anyone making the analogy has the perfect defence in insisting they're not being rude because it's okay to be gay. It's one of those jokes that thinks it's post-homophobia but falls down because, um, we're not.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

As one of the slashy RPF people this really depresses me.

The whole coalition thing is the big chance for change in UK politics. It's a whole brilliant new world we could have. But we're not allowed to have nice things, so it won't happen.

Why won't it happen? The Tories currently have 44% approval rating and the LibDems 13%. Contrast that with the opinion polls leading up to the election.

There are a lot of left-wing LibDems who say Nick Clegg has sold out. They've defected to Labour (more fool them) or the Greens (which I actually suggested to someone who was railing on about how 30 years of LibDem membership counted for nothing when they got into bed with the Devil). There are a lot of floating Tory/LibDem voters who no longer feel so ashamed of being Tory that they have to hide it when talking to pollsters.

LibDem support probably isn't that low, but a lot of the party faithful took a battering over this, and it isn't going to be helped by Nick only being present for a bit of the time at the party conference in September.

Me? I'm a left-wing LibDem in favour of the coalition. I don't want nanny-state Labour and I don't want the unbridled excesses of the Tories on their own.

In the final analysis, I'm a pragmatist. What we have is the best we could possibly have got given the current circumstances.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

My A-level history teacher (a dedicated and battleworn socialist) used to lecture us for many long hours about not being able to deal with pragmatism was the great weakness of the left, and how it was prone to split and destroy its own foundations as soon as it got any power and found that, actually, you have to be pragmatic in power, or else be totalitarian. I'm a left wing pragmatist too, but I always thought he had a point.

For me, I think the thing needs to be given a shot and a lot of the flailing going on strikes me as slightly entitled and doom-mongering. We wanted a hung parliament and a change in the way we do politics, and that's exactly what we got, and now we don't like it and it's frightening and we want it to go away.