sundries

Looks like 4,800 people have entered America's Next Great Pundit. To me, the number sounds low. But then I'm also skeptical about how impressed the Washington Post is with the entries so far (oh, wait, I just reread that, they're impressed with the diversity of the entries. Okay then! Doesn't mean they are good). My gut says it has to be like the slush pile at literary agencies, just with less dragons. Maybe there are dragons too, I don't know.

Speaking of dragons, last night Patty and I watched S2.3 of Merlin. What is with this show? On one hand, actual drama for the first time, so that's something. And the Slash Dragon is always funny (for those of you not watching this AWFUL show, there's a dragon that lives under Camelot that keeps explaining to Merlin how Arthur is his destiny; fandom refers to this creature as the Slash Dragon, because it is!)

On the other hand, is the show's worldview amoral, immoral or just totally absent and the product of incoherent writing. It's like, with Torchwood one can usually tell what went wrong wit the script or the direction or the acting or whatever and what's supposed to be dark and horrible. With Merlin Patty and I just keep shouting at the TV, "what the hell was that?"

I also stumbled upon a Torchwood fic last night that was "Ianto rapes Jack because he's jealous of Gwen, then Jack and Ianto fall in love and have babies." DEPARTMENT OF NO. Not even because that's offensive (although it is), but because it's narratively ANNOYING. Thank you, this has been a public service announcement.

Last night we ate at the Tibetan restaurant we like. We noticed, for the first time (maybe they are new?) stuffed animal yaks along the staircase. Everyone loves a yak.

I also went down to Babycakes for gluten-free goodies before meeting up with Patty.

This morning as we left our apartment a tiny kitten appeared on the stairs. It came down to us, circled around us making tiny kitten noises and then went back upstairs. We are not sure if it belongs to someone, if it snuck in through the backdoor to the alley/garden, if it needs our help or what. We're going to keep an eye out. We didn't want to bring it inside our place because of FIV and other risks to our cats, but if we needed to we could keep them all separated while we got it to a vet and a no-kill shelter. Tiny kitten!

I have to write an article about gay bars for men in Baltimore tomorrow.

We are not Valentine's Day people. Not because we aren't schmoopy, but because it's one of those societally enforced things that makes us feel weird and awkward. But, I've been having this urge to visit Cold Spring which is the cutest little Hudson Valley town EVER and accessible by Metro North and I found us an awesome B&B that involves a wood-burning stove in the room and breakfast in bed, so we're booking it for a romantic weekend in February. Yeah, one month after the cruise and two weeks before Gallifrey and some random about of time before the unknown DC trip and Lunacon in March and two months before England, part 1. Wacky, huh?

Despite always feeling weird about these things, I did mail my publisher re: having a meeting about deadline things and also the royalty check he said he needed to mail. So er, yeah, we'll see.

I need to get on a bunch of other things, but the snow is lifting! With any luck I'll be able to announce some contracts or releases or appearances or something soon.

Spring season at BAM looks pretty good. If we can work it into our schedules, there's a couple of baroque opera things I want to go to and some dance worth checking out, as well as a play Alan Rickman is directing (and he's doing a Q&A one day, which on one hand, I'd love to go to, because I love listening to directors be thinky about directing. On the other hand, i still remember the stage door after Private Lives and it makes me want to never leave my house again.

I have found a photo reference for Vitya (and Evan, you know, except Evan's a slob and these are not slobby pics) and for my new haircut all at once. Now I just need time.

The Limelight to become a small-business marketplace thingy. As the article says, "I went to The Limelight, who didn't?"

Meanwhile, a very brief thing on Reszo Kasztner that's not particularly informative but intriguing nonetheless. The figure of the collaborator is one that interests me in narratives a lot.

because everyone loves the large hadron collider

I'll just link you to this gem from tanuki_green:
http://tanuki-green.livejournal.com/299259.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html (and hey, in the NYT)

Short version? Two camps of physicists hate each other. So one camp theorizes as a theoretical actual contribution to the academic work that the reason the LHC is broken is because the universe's powers that be hate the other camp of physicists and sent the particle the LHC is trying to discover into the future so that the project will fail.

Yeah, really.

Stuff this cracktacular makes me want to love physics.