sundries: thinky thoughts and a chihuahua airlift

So in the Great Death Fetishization Re-Watch/Read, I'm thinking about sort of applying some mutated Agenda Setting theory, since I'm already pretty versed in it. It would be unusual and seriously not its originally intended application, but I think it might be a useful way to frame it, even if ultimately, only in my own head.

This mourning for fictional characters topic is really sort of bottomless, and I've become keenly aware that if I were Actually An Academic, that there's a book in this. Maybe there's a book in this anyway. Right, One Thing At a Time.

Meanwhile, I've started to come up with an idea for Infinitus, which right now is called "House Elves and Henchmen: Upstairs/Downstairs Narratives in Harry Potter." So yay. I may also try to come up with some panel discussion stuff about queer issues and/or the "when fans have fans" phenomena and how it effects fandom. We'll see.

I'm also pretty sure that for the academic sister con to Dragon*Con (I assume I'll see my D*C constract in January) I'll submit something on "Doctor Who and the De-Romanticization of Immortality."

I have thinky thoughts for another occasion on this whole independent scholar thing and the way that it actually meshes perfectly with the completely peculiar upbringing I had and how that's both a relief to me (I am doing what I am supposed to do) and completely horrifying to me (please, please tell me I don't look like a wealthy dilettante who occasionally thinks because it's amusing).

Liam Clancy died a few days ago. Weirdly, I've been listening to The Clancy Brothers a lot lately; I think I even posted about it last week. Funny that. "Courting in the Kitchen" is a great fucking song, if you like that sort of thing. Anyway, although I've written before about thinking I was Irish as a small kid, I haven't ever written about The Clancy Brothers, which I suspect were pretty ubiquitous in any 1970s American childhood.

Last night I went to ellen_kushner and deliasherman's NYRSF reading. Delia read a great story about historic and mythical New York, and Ellen finally told us all how Richard dies. The story hasn't been published (or purchased) yet, and the effect of it is so great I don't really want to go into the details of it, but so far all I've been able to muster as a review of it is that it felt "necessary." Certainly, it all felt very suitable in light of the Bristol paper and the sort of ends people tend to meet in fictions I love. So yeah. As I do, I ran into people I know there, including stakebait, mnemex and a woman who Ellen introduced me to that recognized me from LJ. Hi, if you're out there and want to continue that acafen discussion!

Then I came home, hugged Patty really tight (because Richard is dead), prattled on about various things and then composed a long email that I hope was gracious but requested, quite firmly, that some people look at some elephants.

ladypeculiar links me to Rachel Maddow shutting down a "gay cure" advocate. Among the many winning moments is when the "gay cure" guy says "counfounding" instead of "compounding."

The transphobic McDonalds manager was fired.

A giant iceberg twice the size of Manhattan is headed for Australia.

New York on the cheap. For definitions of cheap, but some of the tips aren't bad.

Bruce Springsteen weighs in on equal marriage rights.

Chihuahuas are overrunning shelters in California. So much so that a plane has been chartered to airlift them to a state with higher chihuahua demand.

Why were their broken eggs (like kitchen eggs) on the window sill this morning? Still, better than when someone threw a used diaper from a higher floor and it landed on our sill.