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rm I am ill. I have not eaten enough things of unknown gluten variables for this to be gluten, I don't think. I think I actually have an intestinal thing. If the shivering and the pain and the almost throwing up last night are anything to go by.
Sherlock fanfic is very, very good. However, I think it's a terrible thing to read, especially when I'm ill, since Sherlock's run-on-sentence, bored/hates everything, static-in-his head, everything-goes-white panic attacks actually are pretty good textual representations of what it feels like when I have a nice pothos-filled attack of self-loathing. Reading someone else in that place, even if they are fictional and a bazillion times more fucked than me is not actually pleasant.
Speaking of pothos or at least generalized misery... So that screenplay writing contest? I came in last, LAST in my heat for the first round. Last. I should be very disappointed in myself. I should be worried you are very disappointed in me. Oddly, I'm finding myself hard-pressed to care. I was aware of the number flaws in the piece, and also aware of how likely male judges would be put off by the piece's overt (and admittedly student-workish) feminism. I have no further use for that script, but am glad I wrote it because it means I Learned How to Do a Thing and also figured out what I need to do better, and I might not have been otherwise motivated. But wow, does it make me reluctant to feel motivated to crank out another one this weekend. But dignity must.
I am quite a bit too sick and dizzy to be all Dogboy & Justine! at you right now. But I shall be. Soon. Although probably not until Monday as that is more useful to all. Fuck alliteration, it's time to do this thing.
Meanwhile it's down to me and one other person in a casting that isn't something I'm emotional about (so it's not that), but would be a nice check, super fun, and incredibly hilarious. No idea when I'll know anything.
Sometimes I think I'm supposed to tell you all how I get shit done and make shit happen, because I try to be a tornado of will and maybe that's useful to someone, and I believe in the Grand Motivating Speech. But sometimes I think I'm supposed to tell you all the shit that prevents me from getting shit done, or makes it hard, so that I seem like less of an asshole for insisting that all things are possible if you want to pay the toll (and yeah, some tolls aren't worth it). I don't know. I do know, however, that I hate that the idea of trying to be a motivating force is apparently offensive because it implies that there aren't obstacles. I can believe in the reality of both obstacles and possibility. I do. I am lucky my brain lets me, I know. But yes. Even when I feel like I do today, even when I fail, even when I'm terrible and insecure, all things are still possible.
I have seen a casting notice re: new Doctor Who promos for BBCA that is hilarious.
The best thing on the Internet today is #secretlyevilpaulcornell
Gally attendees: check the website now if you want to be a panelist.
A rash of must-see movies is hitting the theater, because it is the season. I should probably hold out for my screeners. But I feel so behind.
In news I didn't know, I've gotten onto two spam mailing lists: one of which thinks I'm five months pregnant, the other of which thinks I have a 14-month old child. In the abstract, both could be true. Neither are.
I have discovered what puts me (as an eclectic agnostic) off some pro-atheism campaigns (am totally okay with athiesm, just as I am totally okay with deism; I am just really not okay with how various people can work with both those things): The whole "It's just a stupid story" thing. STORIES AREN'T STUPID. STORIES ARE VERY IMPORTANT. I can't actually get down on the Bible changing someone's life anymore than I can get down on The Vampire Lestat, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Jane Eyre or House of Leaves (random list is random) doing the same. STORIES ARE IMPORTANT. And it's the crap you do with them that matters, how they change your life. But then, I am not a rationalist, God or no.
I'll try to add linkies at some point today, but right now both I and the Internet are uninspired, and I've scads of work to do.
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schpahky.livejournal.com - (no subject)
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Date: 2010-12-03 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 04:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 04:12 pm (UTC)I'm really not all that impressed with the fanfic coming out of Sherlock and I'm insanely easy to please. The stuff that is good is fucking excellent, the stuff that's average easily slides to bad stuff.
When you're feeling better would you mind reccing what you've liked?
I'm really not keen on the atheist movement (and I've become a pretty hard-core atheist due to stuff I'll not get into here) because it's so incredibly condescending, science-is-all-there-is-nothing-else-matters because I'm not science oriented, I'm text oriented and damn it's annoying to hear my craft being dissed as not-as-important. Also, I'm Jewish, I don't think proselytising is the way to go when it comes to convincing people what's the right way to live and a huge amount of atheism-movement rhetoric comes from anti-Christian thought.
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Date: 2010-12-03 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 04:34 pm (UTC)Re atheism: I'm betting this is due to the same story I saw a couple days ago, the billboard outside the Lincoln Tunnel? It rubbed me the wrong way, too. Myths are sacred stories and, as you say, important. They can be grounded in fact or not, it doesn't change their power. And you're certainly not going to change anyone's mind by sneering at what they hold sacred.
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Date: 2010-12-03 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 05:23 pm (UTC)And exactly on the importance of stories.
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Date: 2010-12-03 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 05:51 pm (UTC)This is how a lot of my last holiday with friends was spent with the two so-lapsed-as-to-be-technically-atheist Catholics smacking the Loud Atheist round the head for being obnoxious. Once while inside the Berliner Dom. I know for a fact he wasn't raised in a barn, but some days I wonder.
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Date: 2010-12-03 08:23 pm (UTC)I'm a poly-pantheonist agnostic, which is hard for some people to wrap their head around, because entirely too many people think agnostic == atheist. Sigh.
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Date: 2010-12-03 05:28 pm (UTC)Thank you for this. Really. Thank you.
I hope you feel better soon.
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Date: 2010-12-03 05:34 pm (UTC)Weird, red honey from Brooklyn
Sometimes, it's the learning that's important, not the grade or the critque. You've said you learned stuff writing the screenplay, so it's a good thing, no matter where you ended up amongst the others competing.
Even though I'm pagan, the reason I still celebrate Xmas is that I like the story of the First Nativity and my personal stories that surround the religious one that have nothing to do with religion. My daughter is looking forward to what weird fruit she's getting in her stocking this year, as in the past she's gotten oranges, bananas, apples, a mango, a pear, and who knows what else. I used to get oranges as a kid, as they were much more of a seasonal, rare thing but now, oranges are available year round and the kidlet doesn't like them. So I get her unusual fruit (or maybe unusual for an Xmas stocking) that I think she might eat. This year I'm leaning towards kiwi or star fruit.
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Date: 2010-12-03 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 06:06 pm (UTC)Thanks for the heads up on the panels. Perhaps against my better judgment, I've put my name in for the erotica and feminism panel. :D
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Date: 2010-12-03 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 08:06 pm (UTC)We are the stories we tell ourselves and each other. The need for story defines us as human beings.
I'm a non-deistic pantheist these days but my path is always a storytelling one.
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Date: 2010-12-03 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 08:21 pm (UTC)Not disappointed in you about the screenplay, after all, I came in zeroth because I didn't enter.
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Date: 2010-12-03 08:35 pm (UTC)As for 'just a story' Greta Christina says it better than I.
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Date: 2010-12-03 09:34 pm (UTC)I'm always interested to know what's on your must see list.
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Date: 2010-12-03 11:12 pm (UTC)I would really appreciate seeing *all* of this. I am extraordinarily bad at getting myself motivated or organized, so it's always nice to see sweet words from other people. And it's *always* nice to see the bad too, the idea that other people don't necessarily have it all together to the same degree as I think they do.
Soyeah.
~Sor
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Date: 2010-12-03 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 01:21 am (UTC)People read all kinds of things into the word "intelligent" that aren't the case, are inaccurate, and are straight up panic-inducing for the person labeled "intelligent". Intelligent people struggle with things, intelligent people have to try things several times before mastering a skill (just like everybody else, because THAT IS HOW THE HUMAN BRAIN WORKS), Intelligent =/= Omniscient, folks.
You know that bit where Watson is totally boggled that Sherlock didn't know the Earth went around the Sun? I dread those moments... And I totally get Sherlock's response about only having a finite amount of room in his head for stuff. That, and in that scene I got the feeling that he wasn't so much embarrassed as annoyed with Watson's inability to Get Over It.
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Date: 2010-12-04 09:41 pm (UTC)Honestly, I think saying STORIES ARE IMPORTANT and pushing that as a value would have the effect they want. People will recognize that even if the Bible isn't 100% really "real," it is still meaningful, and you are not stupid for thinking so -- you just need to stop looking at it with this absolutist bent, because rationality has its place too. That's a far more compelling argument, imho...
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Date: 2010-12-05 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-08 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 11:32 pm (UTC)What troubles me is evangelizing and absolutism. Human history, experience, and belief is so diverse that to claim that one view has primacy over all the others strikes me as one of the most dickish of dick moves.
(Which is to say, "Keep your hands off all of these stories, you jerks!")
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Date: 2010-12-08 12:15 am (UTC)Ritual is important too, and tradition, even if one chooses to engage in it for its intrinsic value, for what it brings to one's life, and not because it's divinely mandated. (I'm thinking of candle ceremonies, kneeling in prayer, giving thanks, sacred music). Intelligent people can have a lot of different valid reasons for choosing to live within a certain discipline, religious or otherwise (were you the person I read a long time ago about kneeling in churches?).
Reza Aslan's preface to "No god but God" is worth reading, for thinking about stories and mythology and religious versus secular truth. You can find it on Amazon's Look Inside. Some of the better parts (sorry it's long):
“…we must never forget that as indispensable and historically valuable as the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet may be, they are nevertheless grounded in mythology. It is a shame that this word, myth, which originally signified nothing more than stories of the supernatural, has come to be regarded as synonymous with falsehood, when in fact myths are always true. By their very nature, myths inhere both legitimacy and credibility. Whatever truths they convey have little to do with historical fact. To ask whether Moses actually parted the Red Sea, or whether Jesus truly raised Lazarus from the dead, or whether the word of God indeed poured through the lips of Muhammad, is to ask totally irrelevant questions. The only question that matters with regard to religion and its mythology is “What do these stories mean?” [emphasis mine]
The fact is that no evangelist in any of the world’s great religions would have been at all concerned with recording his or her objective observations of historical events. They would not have been recording observations at all! Rather, they were interpreting those events in order to give structure and meaning to the myths and rituals of their community, providing future generations with a common identity, a common inspiration, a common story....
Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith. It is an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors (read rituals and myths) that provides a common language with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence. Religion is concerned not with genuine history, but with sacred history, which does not course through time like a river. Rather, sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into primordial time and whose branches weave in and out of genuine history with little concern for the boundaries of space and time. Indeed, it is precisely at those moments when sacred and genuine history collide that religions are born. The clash of monotheisms occurs when faith, which is mysterious and ineffable and which eschews all categorizations, becomes entangled in the gnarled branches of religion."
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Date: 2010-12-08 12:26 am (UTC)