sundries

In all my "omg, Switzerland is so racist" rambling, everyone assured me the Swiss ban on minarets wouldn't pass that it was just their wacky far right mucking about with referendums to make noise. Maybe, I was just overreacting as an American in a country where I didn't speak the language and was on a trip that wasn't supposed to be fun anyway. I hoped, to be frank, that I was just being an ugly, uptight American, looking for the worst about the whole thing.

Yeah, apparently not. The Swiss ban on minarets passed. Thoughts relevant to this (and a lot of action from rightist parties in various countries) here. (thanks to ellen_kushner for that last link)

amberite brings us Daleks in Need.

Okay, the Daleks were just a distraction from the noise Kai Owen and John Barrowman are making at Collectormania. Apparently TW, S4 has been confirmed for 13 episodes. Or more accurately, in an actors making noise to make things happen way, S4 is about to be confirmed for 13 episodes.

Right, now, I know a lot of people are all "Torchwood is dead to me," and I'm perhaps even more "not ready yet" about this than I was about CoE (knowing what I knew going into it and trying to convince myself It Wasn't True), however, 13 episodes is REALLY EXCITING. If they'd just done another short series, it would have been very easy not to address the aftermath of CoE emotionally as it would be all action all the time. But with 13 episodes? Well, we're really going to have to see Gwen dealing with the risk to her life and her family that is Torchwood. We're really going to have to see Jack processing Ianto's and Steven's deaths and possibly dealing with Alice and/or a new romantic relationship (or avoiding same). We're going to have to see the organization re-staff and deal with a world in which Everyone Knows Terrible Things. This is EXCITING.

I have to say though, I will be really sad if filming considerations means the memorial for Ianto at Mermaid Quay comes down before I get to see it. This seems likely, and is seriously frustrating considering I am hopefully giving a paper related to said subject at a conference soon.

Also, once again, this is my first ever TV fandom where I got into the show before it got canceled. As per usual, I find this shit exhausting, but hey whatever. I suspect this means more TW novels too, which is nice, especially as the most recent batch were good as actual books, although I still need to finish up and write about The Undertaker's Gift, which I found problematic.

I guess I was listening to Abney Park's The Wrong Side a lot right around when CoE aired, as it just came on my shuffle of a giant list of songs in forever, and I had a weird little *bam! ouch* moment about it all.

Last night Patty and I got our tickets for the spring season at BAM. Because I'm stupid, we bought tickets to The Tempest for the weekend I'll be in LA, but at least she'll have something awesome to do while I'm gone. We also got a few that may well be when she's already left for a dig, but I'm sure we can each find people who want to accompanying us to ART.

We're planning to go to the bookstore to look at travel books about our cruise destinations on Thursday night to consider excursions and then book that at the end of this week too.

Abortion is now more personal than political this piece argues. Whether we like it or not, when the political intrudes into our personal lives, sometimes, we have to make the personal political once again. That's one of the aggravating lessons of being gay, and one that people who support the ability to choose abortion would do well to remember before it's a desperate issue.

Tiger Woods's car crash = not interesting.

A history of letter writing.

Torchwood fic rec

http://pocky-slash.livejournal.com/1391533.html

I don't even think I have anything useful to say about it. This is the Ianto that lives in my heart. This is also, perhaps, far too clear a window on Things I Like About Torchwood.