sundries

- Doing work, eating a chicken and cheese tamale, listening to Glenn Miller (yes, really. yes, I'm _that_ nerd. yes, I desperately want to update my swing dance skills now (although I'm not interested in that whole flashy trick thing, in part because I don't want to be the girl and in part because that is not even remotely a fashion in which I'm interested in becoming airborne)). For values of having to do work this would only be better if I could manage it with my feet up on the desk at the same time.

- Things I must do prior to Sicily: get sandals that hide my toes. Remember to pack shoes that aren't sandals for the climbing that fortress thing. Get Euros. Figure out about 800 gluten-related issues. Clean all my fencing gear.

- Watched the beginning of Doctor Who's second season last night.

The Christmas episode was really good in terms of moral issues and wow the new Prime Minister who was so cool so fucked that shit up. I thought the "six words" thing was about as chilling as anything I've ever seen on the show. This Doctor may seem more light-hearted but he also feels a lot more dangerous. That Christmas tree of death was about the stupidest shit I've ever seen though.

Question: Alex. I've seen a ton of fics where he and Jack had something going on briefly at one point. Is that later canon or did a whole bunch of people decide dark hair, good suits and efficiency was somehow Jack's type?

Meanwhile, New Earth upset me despite having the biggest world building hole ever (if these people were grown in vats and then immediately locked in these tanks to have diseases, how the hell did they have language?) Also the Face of Boe thing went nowhere, and if I was watching the episode without the knowledge I already have, I'd be like "what the hell?" and not in a good way. Cat nuns are creepy. And the scene at the end at the party where Cassandra gets told she is beautiful? That was amazing and made me cry. That said, having compassion for Cassandra wasn't really on my list of things to do last night.

- Question of the Day. If it can't kill you is it still a delicacy?. Personally, I think that goes way beyond fish.

stupid, STUPID HP fandom

I have by and large dealt with all the wank in the HP fandom with vague amusement, studious disinterest and occassionally outrage that was so convoluted it seemed best to keep it to myself.

However, there is this: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/asylum_promo/409406.html

(for those who missed it, the game was originally called Kristallnacht and that was the obvious and understandable subject of the uproar)

Which is just one more iteration of someone does something really anti-Semetic in this fandom and says it doesn't matter either because they don't know any Jewish people, don't know anything about 20th century history or just don't give a damn (and are proud of it).

I am the last person on earth to tell a person what they should and should not find hot, compelling, intersting or whatever. For one thing, I almost always write from the point of view of the people who are entirely in the wrong but with the perspective that their wrongness has reasons that seem justifiable to them (that is how these things happen, after all -- no one really wakes up in the morning and says "hey, let's be evil"). For another, the Nazi's had the best uniforms; yeah, I get it. But some shit, you need to keep to yourself.

And if you don't, you need to accept you're going to offend the fuck out of the majority of thinking people, often n very personal ways that cut deep, at which point you can either take the time to listen, get educated, apologize for your actions and fix what you can or you can keep running your mouth that somehow you're the wronged party while everyone else swiftly goes from labelling your ill-advised actions lazy and ignorant to just downright bigotted.

Also, seriously? I know I'm not the only Jew in this fandom, but the number of times I've had to actually explain totally remedial facts about WWII to people in this fandom is rather deeply upsetting.

Update: After a lot of ugly stubborness the people running the game got a clue and changed the damn name, but that still doesn't change the fact that this issue comes up in this fandom over and over and over again and that's a scary, bad thing.

PSA

Since this comes up a lot, usually in a surprisingly sincere manner, I will note that the person in the icon is me and this is one of my acting headshots.

It is not, in fact, a picture of:

Camille Paglia
Nana Visitor
or
Margaret Hamilton.

(people actually tell me I look like Hamilton and Visitor fairly often).