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

[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