sundries

[rm]

Yesterday was full of misadventure beginning with getting from Naperville to Union Station (and stopping at the French Market for Patty to buy the coolest pasta ever) and then getting to the University of Chicago from there (it wasn't the long train ride or the sketchy neighborhood, it was the ENDLESS walking) so Patty could go to the Oriental Institute Museum.

Coming back, we saw what looked like a better public transit option on a map, but that turned out, to be a rail platform that we entered through what seemed an abandoned, over-sized janitor's closet and I swear we could have been murdered by monsters and never discovered EVER it was so desolate. We sat on this totally abandoned platform for about 30 minutes until there were signs of other people, and even then we thought we might be lost in the twilight zone with them. It was truly fucking freaky.

Patty took a picture of me down one end of the platform that sorta conveys how desolate and awful it was, but actually looks about 100x less disturbing that it was, and that's saying something as the pic is called rachinahorrormovie.jpg



But eventually we got back, ate at P.F. Chang's, bought lots of Fanny May candy (I hate their gluten notification policy which is all wrong), and sat at the man-made stream in Millennium Park (we did not get on the lawn because of a concert, we're planning that for tomorrow after or during hanging out with People in Chicago Who Conduct Themselves Differently Than Me) and in fact started swing dancing in it at once point. While it was a day often filled with misery, we were really, really happy by the time we got back to the hotel, not because the day was over, but because we actually had a great time.

Today is the wedding we are here to go to. I have just shaved my legs and yesterday I bought expensive shoes since I decided Chicago in the summer is too hot for menswear. I'm not really sure that was the best decision, but it is what it is, and the shoes are really great.

Look, I don't live in Europe and so I don't know if France offering to pay gypsies to leave is an annual and apparently unremarkable event. However, I've been INCREDIBLY disturbed by the discourse I've seen about it around LJ. So there you go. I have friends who are Roma, including those who read this journal, so don't be an asshole when discussing this okay? (And, btw, I shouldn't have to say that. You should just not be assholes whether someone who might get upset is watching or not, but since that request tends not to work, I'm trying this one).

Now 25% of Pakistan is underwater. China is having mudslides. tammypierce has a brief roundup of how you can help. There is also an lj auction at help_pakistan.

Hey, lindalee_ makes cool jewelery. She also has some crap going on in her life right now AND is having a sale at her Etsy store. Check it out if you're in a shopping place.

Double-rat sighting. Have I mentioned I love the Union Rat? LOVE.

Remember how Target said it was going to give money to some pro-LGBT candidates to make up for the $150K donation to Emmer? Yeah, well they changed their minds. Even shorter version: Target = still bad. via jiawen.

Apparently, women who want equal pay to men just have "a fetish for money" and need to "choose the right partner at home." I can't even describe the depths of my rage.

Hey, I volunteered to write a thing in the next 24 hours, but I can't remember some things about CoE I need to know, so Do Jack and Ianto have the argument and confession about Jack's family before or after the beans incident? Where is the place they are hiding out (i.e., how long of a drive)? Do we have a sense of time of day for when they go marching into Thames House as related to time of day for whatever scene we see them previously? Thanks!

azn_jack_fiend has a great thing about Jack, Torchwood fandom and slut shaming and you should read it. And, while she doesn't share her reasons and mentions it only in passing, I'm going to say I completely agree with her about the phrase "sex-positive" being problematic. My reasoning in super brief: it creates unnecessary pressure on everyone to be sexual in a certain way at a certain level and some people have perfectly good reasons not to be sex-positive or sex-focused (which is often what sex-positive is used to mean) and that doesn't make those people less awesome or in any way wrong. So yeah. Totally. Read her thing.

Covert Affairs has been renewed for a second season.

I have mosquito bites. They hate me.

Comments

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Covert Affairs has been renewed for a second season.

Drat! There goes Fiendish Plan 2.0!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahah, I know.

As Christian said to me "HOW DO YOU CAST THAT?" and I dunno. I mean, I could write paragraphs about why it's hard and what you're looking for and I still don't know.

[tjs-whatnot.livejournal.com]

help_pakistan

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Oh! The Oriental Institute! You were in my old neighborhood. That platform looks and sounds pretty darn familiar, too...

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's the 59th Street Metra.

[snakeling]

France offering to pay gypsies to leave is an annual and apparently unremarkable event.
Not annual, though it's been done before, usually more discreetly. The reason they're publishing it right now is because one of the major ministers is embroiled in a corruption affair *and* Sarkozy's opinion ratings have never been so low. So he falls back on his favourite scapegoat: them there brown people that drive up crime, never mind that his politics haven't been helping any.

I can't wait for the next presidential election, and I hope that the Left can get their act together before. :/

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd say that about sums it up. I'm just ... a little dubious about the Left's chances of getting their act or anything else together.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

The current government seems to be intolerant of everyone but convicted child molesters.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I have only been to Chicago a few times, but that platform looks very familiar to me when I went on my GLBT Bookstore Adventure.

EDIT: OR maybe because desolate Chicago El platforms all look the same.

[mercurybard.livejournal.com]

Only those that volunteer to leave get paid. The rest are evicted without compensation.

So far I've quelled the urge to yell "WHAT ARE YOUR COUNTRYMEN DOING?" at my French coworkers, but only just.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's completely, completely fucked in my book. Most of the discussions I've seen around LJ are, however, "people are overreacting; Europe just pays them so they don't bother the tourists during the summer, then they come back and live on welfare" which pretty much makes me want to start screaming.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

Oh, French Market! I love getting pistachio cake at Vanille! And chocolates from Canady, YUM!

I took Younger Monster there a few weeks ago, when we were in the city for the Bon Jovi concert, and he was just fascinated. We don't have such a thing here in Toledo, the closest we get is our tiny little Farmer's Market. He had such a hard time picking out lunch, but was thrilled that what he essentially did "eeny, meeny, miney, moe" for turned out to be really good. (Huge, crusty sandwiches from Chicago Organics).

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

Not sure about the family and the beans, tried to look for transcripts and have found days 1 to 3 here - http://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/tag/transcript - cannot find days 4 and 5, but that can just be me being blind. The place they hide in is a warehouse in London (previously owned by Torchwood 1 - hence Ianto knows about it)

hope this helps

[beccaelizabeth]

the comm with every transcript is
http://community.livejournal.com/tw_transcripts/

if people are finding my tag first I should post something that points to the comm

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

CoE answers:

1) after
2) The warehouse? I don't know.
3) The beans discussion takes place during Day 3(see Day 3 transcript). Then, the confession happens during Day 4 ((see Day 4 Part II transcript). Then Jack immediately goes off and tries to menace Frobisher, at which point it's still day. The attempt on Thames House happens during the day. It's a bit confusing.

[rm.livejournal.com]

1. Thank you!
2. Okay, I have "London" but "London" is huge and they apparently needed a car, so, I can put that far away.
3. Oh! That's useful. I have more wiggle room in there than I thought. And shit... right, that day is WAAAAAAAY too long (although I can confirm that the the entrance to Thames House moment is afternoon light from my own skulking about).

[firefly124.livejournal.com]

Remember how Target said it was going to give money to some pro-LGBT candidates to make up for the $150K donation to Emmer?

I'm not sure that would've been enough to get me back as a customer anyway, though it would've been a start. It is heartening to see that their shareholders are also kicking up a stink over the company's donations policy. Granted, that seems to be more about, "why didn't you see this coming and not expose us to a boycott," but I'll take added pressure from wherever it comes. Target's response has been so bad, though, that I'm not sure what it would take to get the bad taste out of my mouth and convince me to go back.

It's also dismaying to hear that HRC apparently has no intention of lowering Target's Corporate Equality Index rating over this, which brings the usability of their whole CEI into question.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I've had so many problems with HRC for years I am not surprised. They don't get my money (Lambda Legal does), and I'm sick of telling them why on the phone.

[rhiannonstone.livejournal.com]

"Sex-positive" can definitely be a problematic phrase. In the campus sex ed work I've done, especially training other campus sex educators, I've tried to teach them to avoid using the phrase to those they're educating, and to be sex-neutral rather than sex-positive themselves, at least in their presentations and clinic sessions. In case you haven't seen it, my post here links to this great post from Charlie Glickman on this and related issues.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking to your post and to the Glickman piece. I relate to your small Southern experience and my own reactivity in a similar situation means I'm still finding my own balance.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

The treatment of the Roma in France is seriously disturbing for me to read about. And yet, I do.
I don't know why I'm so naive, but I expect I sorta expect the place that invented the notion of equality to behave better.

Yeah, I know.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

The equality in France depends somewhat, so far as I can tell, on people accepting the "Notre ancestres, les gaulois" attitude. There's a line somewhere that needs to be crossed, where you can keep eating Vietnamese food, or be a black person of American origin, but some kinds of "not becoming French enough" create deep disquiet.

Well, that, and Front National likes to stir up garbage.

[kaydeefalls.livejournal.com]

Ha! I went to UChicago and spent four years avoiding that Metra stop like the plague, apart from crossing underneath it. I think I heard rumors of someone actually deciding to take that train, but that was never confirmed...

[crimson-bride.livejournal.com]

Day 4 (transcript, part 3 (http://community.livejournal.com/tw_transcripts/19780.html#cutid1)): Jack and Ianto have abandoned the car and are walking the rest of the way to Thames House. Ianto phones Rhiannon. Johnson's Operative gets a fix on the call, but by the time she and her team arrive, Jack and Ianto are out of sight.

THE OPERATIVE: I’ve done a sweep of the surrounding area: two miles to the south there’s a warehouse area in Battersea.[This isn't quite what the transcript has, but I've checked the actual recording.] It used to be an old holding facility for Torchwood One, back in the nineties. Could be significant; Ianto Jones worked for Torchwood One.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Sex-positive

[gement.livejournal.com]

Ooh, goodie, can we talk about 'sex-positive' a bit since you raised it here?

As someone who does identify as sex-positive, but doesn't like the undertone of everyone must have more sex that can be loaded into that phrase, I was wondering if you had any alternate words that you like for encapsulating the concept of being clear about owning one's sexuality, being clear and honest about how much sex one wants and what kind, and respecting/defending everyone else's right to do the same? I know a number of people who find sex-positive problematic but haven't found anything better yet.

The people who think the correct answer is automatically more sex are people I don't want on my side, and don't represent the majority of sex-positive people I know, but I think that word really doesn't help.

Re: Sex-positive

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I use 'sex radical' but I am aware it's not necessarily suitable for other people's needs.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard that critique of the term "sex-positive" before. The one I'm familiar with is that "sex-positive" feminism sets itself up in opposition to anti-porn activists, and anti-porn doesn't necessarily equal "sex-negative."

[yarram.livejournal.com]

France deports its Roma populations on a regular basis. This is just the latest round of WTF-ery in their treatment of both Roma and immigrant populations. I really wish my fellow Europeans would understand that human rights are not the sole domain of sufficiently pale people speaking the right language. *sigh*

[othersideofthis]

There are some super creepy train stops here in Chicago and in the suburbs. I've definitely had my moments of "....is this REALLY a train stop?" on more than one occasion.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Your apocalypse shot did not surprise me too much because...well, Midwestern. I've encountered worse. Actually, I've been stuck waiting in worse for long stretches during cross-country trips. It's insane.

Re: Mosquito bites

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

Naw, they LOVE you. That's why they bit you. Mosquitoes always go for me, rather than my dad. Ergh... He never gets itchy from the bites the way I do. And the bites always get red and welt-y.

If you're not allergic to it, try Tea Tree oil on your bites. It stops the itching faster than Neosporin.(sp?)

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

Oh, god. I just read that article from FDL about the US Chamber's attitudes towards women. It's disgusting. I immediately posted it on my Facebook and will try to spread it even farther, trying to reach as many women-owned businesses as I can. The organisation seriously needs to lose (some more) membership over this (latest) example of idiocy.