sundries

There is a new enemy, and it is the new upstairs neighbors.

They play their music loud, and you know, that should be hard to notice in our neighborhood where everyone is having some sort of outside shindig with Mexican or Puerto Rican pop at most hours of the day, even, it seems, in this weather.

But the new upstairs neighbors? They play their music even louder. And it's just thumpy thumpy club stuff. And at 2 AM, Patty was up because she couldn't sleep because of it (that takes some LOUD shit, especially after a week with the level of exhausting that we've have). Luckily, Patty hammering on the ceiling with a walking stick brought results, but I have a bad feeling this may be an ongoing battle.

Somehow, this all led to my having dreams in which Patty, me, and Captain Jack Harkness were being chased by zombies. And you want to know something? Jack was fucking useless. It was like herding fucking cats.

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So because Patty is awesome I am not dead of dream zombies. The end.

CNN article about coming out later in life.

Some Ugandan embassies are now the site of protests of their proposed anti-gay law that (there is some noise that this particular provision will be removed) calls for the death penalty in cases of "aggravated homosexuality" and for those found to be HIV positive. American pastors continue to be linked to this mess, although a lot of them are now doing the too-little too-late dance of "well, it wouldn't be Christian to execute them." Meanwhile, I feel that too many LGBTQ activist groups are ignoring this thing through some mix of incredulity and racism.

newsbean points us to the New York Times's Color Style Guide, which claims to be a gift-giving list for your PoC friends (seriously, the lead implies that you, The New York Times reader, are white and do not know how to shop for PoC you may know, but it's easier than you think!). Um... I'm really struggling to find words as to how this reads to me, but mostly like some random white person wants to show you how to ask for a cookie for trying (with bad results) just a little bit, but not too hard. Or something. Seriously, I don't know about you people, but my friends who are PoC already know how to apply makeup and don't need me giving them random inspirational books (some of which make some really offensive assumptions just by being on the list) about their PoC-ness. This is yucky! redstapler tells us Shapely Prose has ripped the NYT piece apart wonderfully. And Yahoo! News is also covering the negative reaction to this gift guide.

It may be more in the Gay Tragedy genre, but it's based on an Isherwood book, and so A Single Man does at least look interesting.

I sort of want to see The Lovely Bones but only because Saoirse Ronan is in it.

Saturn's moons always interest me because of Gattaca. A mystery of Iapetus has been solved.

As far as anyone can tell, SF/F fandom began 80 years ago today in Harlem. Really. So all that bullshit we've been hearing during RaceFail and before about how PoC don't care about SF/F and aren't part of the culture? Yeah, not so much.

i_am_schizo posted this really funny thing about being the pink sheep of her family

Last night I stumbled, entirely by accident, on a dissertation on Harry Potter that might have some useful stuff for my Bristol paper. I also made a quick list of things to investigate further off of some shit I Google Scholared (how do we verb that?) for half a second.

I'm having some mental aggravation about the apples and oranges problem of comparing TV shows to books. Do I equate episodes with chapters? Scenes with chapters? Do I just say hey, apples and oranges or do I do what I'm unfortunately starting to think makes the most sense, but my be utterly impossible, which is to do a full statement count for all the properties I'm discussing, thus allowing me to produce a percentage of death-related content. As horrifying as the thought of counting the number of statements in the entire Harry Potter series is, doing that work for TV programs is infinitely more annoying and time consuming.

Tonight, Patty and I are hoping to have an evening where we are both well-rested, not stressed and not ill. Man, we are so going to be ready for our trip!

help redux

dr_is_in's husband has been released from the hospital.

But, because of his prognosis, health insurance fuckery and some doctors who just can't manage to get around to it, his medication has not been approved for insurance-covered rates. It's $400 for a ten-day supply. dr_is_in doesn't have the money. Yesterday she was able to buy two pills for him which covered last night and this morning, but he needs another two pills today and this medication thrice daily going forward. That's right, she's having to buy her husband's medication, that's KEEPING HIM ALIVE, on a day-by-day basis.

Can you help?

ETA: Yes, apparently you can. You got it done, and dr_is_in will be passing the extra funds on to other folks in need.