sundries

[rm]

Yesterday we had an awesome day in which Chicago and things in it presented us with more difficulties, namely:

1. The METRA is shit. We've ridden it four times; it has been on time once.

2. No matter what the PF Chang's tells you, the hot mustard IS NOT GLUTEN FREE. I had actually suspected this thanks to an incident in Ohio, but now I am 100% sure. If you are celiac, do not let them mix you up their special sauce with the gluten-free soy sauce, the hot peppers and the hot mustard. TRUST ME. I caught the reaction early this time and got through the day.

Luckily, other things, including the company, was good, and I got to wiggle my toes in my beloved Millennium Park and so I've figured out something I have to write tomorrow and maybe even my WIAD. Also, we saw bunnies and Patty gets why I like it, so awesome.

In case of image crisis, what not to do.

On sex and stoning.

Book batterers. When I was in private school we were given our texts every year as part of the fees in our tuition, and they often varied from year to year. When I went to public school and we were given these mauled history books that had been in use since 1960, I was a little shocked.

The Vows column in today's New York Times actually has a gay couple and a lesbian couple as prominent on the website. While the NYTimes has listed same-sex marriages for a while, they often wind up being the little blurbs. Not so today. Neat.

Oh for fuck's sake. True Blood is a lot of things, too gay isn't one of them. How it handles gay content, however, and why it's there and for whom, is a worthy discussion. Because there's a difference between gay content that's there because it's interesting and serves the story and gay content that's there because some character or other happen to be gay and gay content that's there to titillate. And all of those things are just fine in various proportions, it's when the proportions get all out of wack or are supposed to be out of wack that things start getting messy (see: discussions about m/m romance).

Federal judge rules against another anti-gay grad student. Jeez, no one said she had to change her beliefs, just that she had to do her homework.

On Angel: Connor is still a moron and Cordy has given birth to her demon baby. And wow, that's a whole lot of retcon going on -- "here, we came up with this ludicrous plot that we can make everything we've done in the show since halfway through the first season make sense to fit, but we totally weren't playing a long game with this." WOW.

We're back to New York tonight.

Comments

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

I never thought Connor was a moron, actually. I always saw him as someone who made choices based on his fucked up emotional issues rather than using his intellect, which is a big difference. The kid did have pretty good reason to be as screwed up as he was.

Of course, I'm the creator of the possibly the only Connor fansite on the web, so clearly my mileage varied.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Having first seen Vincent Kartheiser as Connor, I'm finding it very interesting watching him as Pete on Mad Men, such a very different character.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

He's definitely a good actor, to be sure.

[rhiannonstone.livejournal.com]

My household recently finished re-watching Angel and is now watching Mad Men, and we actually all agree that Connor and Pete are the same person. Pete reacts to the rest of the world the same way Connor does: with bitterness, whining, and manipulativeness, and faux bewilderment that everything isn't exactly the way he thinks it should be.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

I'm not as familiar with Mad Men (only saw a few episodes, couldn't get into it more than that), but that doesn't exactly surprise me. Though at least as far as Connor was concerned, I don't think his bewilderment was always faux.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I don't think Pete's bewilderment is that faux, though. He really DOES feel that entitled.

[rhiannonstone.livejournal.com]

You and chaos_by_design are both right, neither Pete nor Connor's bewilderment is faux. I think it just seems forced at times because the viewer can't believe the characters are really that dumb/pathetic. :)

[stephl.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. Connor was raised in a demon dimension by an obsessed psychopath. He was *never* equipped to react to things and make choices "normally" (for wide values of "normal" that still hinge on being raised on Earth by a more-or-less non-psycho parent).

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

True Blood has some gay characters. We knew Pam was a lesbian from the start. The King of Mississippi and his consort are walking stereotypes. And when you've lived a thousand years, or more, boredom conquers everything.

Some of it has been a little bit on the fanservice side: Sam's sexy and disquieting dream for one. But that is an exact parallel to Sookie's sexy and disquieting dreams.

[spiderine.livejournal.com]

My issue with True Blood is there isn't ENOUGH gay! Sookie and Bill have all these explicit sex scenes. Eric and the stripper pile driving in the basement. But Lafayette and Jesus? A chaste kiss here and there. The scene with Eric and Talbot (spoiler spoiler etc.)

It's not that I want more gratuitous titillation (although I appreciate shirtless Jason as much as anyone who's interested in guys WOOF!), it's that I want gay relationships to have equal time with straight relationships.

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

I'm laughing at this comment from the True Blood post... "They promised us jetpacks by the year 2000... trips to Mars, no unemployment, ENDA, worker input, etc. The LEAST this society can do is give us some damned gay vampires...."

I really enjoy True Blood, and complaints that it's too gay are just ridiculous (though sadly predictable). It's a ridiculous show in the first place, but it's ridiculous because of the inherent ridiculousness of vampires.

I think that one reason the "gay perception factor" is rising this season is because the central heterosexual pairing is so weak, and getting weaker the longer it continues. I'm not interested in Bill/Sookie. Hardly ANYONE is interested in Bill/Sookie.

[fireflygirl.livejournal.com]

Have you been to Naha? The best dinner I've had since the celiac diagnosis. We were there for some academic conference and found it online. Unbelievably good food (chef's a Beard award winner) and really knowledgeable waitstaff. They seemed very experienced with celiac and other allergy/intolerance issues and the chef even made gf flatbread for me and offered to customize various dishes so that they were gf. It was incredible. Especially after having so many nightmarish dining experiences.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to see the changes they are making with the show (for True Blood). Some of that is because the books are purely Sookie's POV, but something that was done in the books - Sookie slowly becoming more accepting of others and sounding less bigoted - isn't being approached the same way here.

I've been disappointed to see my favorite character from the books (Pam) sidelined so much, and I keep worrying that they're going to kill her even though that hasn't happened in the books I've read (I haven't read the most recent book). I also think they took a different approach with her, because in the books, she is more matter-of-fact and not smarmy about her orientation.

It will be interesting to see what they do with Hadley, and there is a bisexual character from the books that hasn't appeared on the show yet, too. Actually, there is another gay character we probably should have seen by now. But, again, they are really straying. Given an earlier heterosexual vampire sex scene this season, I sometimes feel like they're just trying to be shocking.

So, where I felt that the books might gradually take a reader from thinking like Sookie did in the beginning of the books to being more open-minded and kind, I don't feel like the show picked up on that aspect.

I do love watching the show, but part of the fun (for me) is to see what they are going to completely change and what will stay the same, and to see how they cast the characters from the books. (There is no Jesus or Jessica in the books)

[hoyland54.livejournal.com]

I feel compelled to try and defend Metra. It's usually not too bad. I used to ride the line that goes to Great Lakes Naval Station and only once was the train full of sailors freaking out that they'd be late after we stopped for ages for no apparent reason. They may be doing badly advertised summer construction, though, which usually results in 15-20 minute delays outside of rush hour.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about that book batterer article. Logically, I can see it makes perfect sense, but on a heart level, I used to quite like having mauled history books at school, it made me feel a sense of the heritage of learning, like I'm following well-trodden paths. I love books as physical objects, with histories and stories of their own. I collect interesting old books now, and I feel like the gnawed, damp and doodled on pieces in my collection have a certain something about them. I have this awesome water-damaged copy of The Great Orm of Loch Ness which is about the most appropriate thing ever. And whenever I find an old book with a page corner folded, I find myself scanning the page to try and work out what it was they wanted to remember. So yeah, I get her point about marinara sauce, but at the same time can't help thinking it would be a bigger shame if students were returning books they'd obviously never even cracked open.

[opheliastorn.livejournal.com]

I agree! Not the the extent of using a sandwich as a bookmark, or whatever (poor unloved sandwiches) but I really do love finding a book with margins full of scribbles and notes. Even if they're irrelevant, or snarky - noooo, especially if they're snarky - I love the sense of history and continuation, of people having read a book before me and reacted to it.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Same! I have this old KM Peyton pony story where - an obviously very young and earnest - someone has noted in the margin the struggling heroine should try her pony with a flash noseband and a running martingale. It charmed me into little pieces. And also an old book of dog breeds from the 50s where someone's drawn a big thought bubble above the beagle and written "Banana nose?!" :D

[stephl.livejournal.com]

In case of image crisis, what not to do.

It made me laugh that the article referenced the Tylenol-related deaths as an example of how to handle PR around a crisis, simply because it happened so long ago, which implies that in the interim, companies in crisis have not handled them well. Which is more or less true. Every step BP has taken has made me cringe and smite my forehead at their ignorance and arrogance. (Also Toyota, but especially BP. This is 2010. The world was able to watch the oil spill live, on streaming video from underwater cameras. The company's attempts to obfuscate and shift the blame was comical in its absurdity. It was like watching a kid break a vase in front of you and then tell you "I didn't do it. Wasn't me." ["I was on the moon! With Steve!"])

I haven't worked in PR in years, but I used to work in crisis communications, and every disaster like this makes me think that there surely must be an actual manual titled "For the Love of God, Do NOT Do This!" that companies have, but "Do NOT" must be covered by a Quality Assurance sticker or something.

[wednesday]

Sigh. The Metra was shite from '93-96; I am sad to hear that nothing has changed in such a long time.

[teleens-journal.livejournal.com]

Sex and stoning - I'm saddened that peaceful Muslims are lumped in with these and will be happy when the extremist culture dies out.

Book batterers - WTF? I was always taught that library books were made of tissue paper and that extreme care needed to be take of them. This saddens and sickens me, :(.

The anti-gay grad student obviously had no intention of ever being a real counselor, nor did she have any real understanding of what being a counselor means. Thank goodness there was a Christian school just waiting to snap her up. *headdesk*

Toyota

[newwaytowrite.livejournal.com]

Was it not determined that there was no flaws in the autos in question?

[stardust9121.livejournal.com]

I went to high school with that grad student. Back then she just seemed nice but...not very bright. She's probably extremely self-sheltered in her own little conservative Christian bubble, and getting most of her support from a lot of bigots, so I hope she does take those remediation classes and they do have an effect on her. :/

On no planet should she ever be allowed to counsel kids as she is now.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I have prepared an epic rant on the "too gay" of True Blood because I cannot believe that anyoen would for a second say that, I am rage, RAGE PERSONIFIED


And couldn't those grad students be kicked out for lacking such basic research skills?

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

I think the oldest textbook I had to use in my public school was from the 1950s (and I was in high school during the 90s). It claimed that William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings because he was the one that God most approved of. SRSLY.

Fortunately, most of our textbooks were more recent than that (ie, less than a decade old, often less than five years old), but there were a few from the 70s too.

RE: True Blood -- I think when a show gets homophobes saying stuff like "too gay", that's a sure sign that it's doing something right.

[silverkit.livejournal.com]

1. The METRA is shit. We've ridden it four times; it has been on time once.

Yeah. It really is. I can't tell you how many times we've taken the earlier train 'just in case'.

When I was in London my travel buds and I spent maybe the first 10 minutes of any train ride being flabbergasted by how punctual they were.

[laughingirl.livejournal.com]

When I was in 8th grade, I accidentally ripped the cover off my Algebra book. I knew I'd have to pay for it at the end of the year (we had to pay for any books that were not in acceptable condition to pass on to the next year), so for the rest of the year, I felt free to write in the margins... scribblings working out problems, notes to my friend David who sat next to me, countless copies of my name as he perfected his forgeries of mine and another girl's names (to this day, he still "writes like a girl"), etc.

I kept that book for years as a sort of diary of that year. And I still remember it (27 years later!) because writing in a book was *such* a forbidden and unusual thing.