sundries

Homeless guy gets his cat back. Yay. via iamradar

Foods considered to be aphrodisiacs.

"Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland."

CBS Reports: The Homosexuals. A video of the entire program is available at the link. It's from 1967. 1967 is five years before I was born, but what's really critical about that is that it means in 1967 my father was 34. It's very easy for this stuff to sound like ancient history, to pretend that only "backwards" people and "religious extremists" are anti-gay, to think in a world where we increasingly know young adults who came out without much incident as teens that hey, things are so different now that video isn't even relevant.

It's pretty damn relevant. Because so many people in power were absolutely, positively sentient adults in 1967 or were raised by people who were, people who believed those things and taught their kids to believe those things. And while some people's views have changed, a lot of people's haven't.

Also folks? It's your history. Know it.

Speaking of 1967, I assume, perhaps erroneously, that you've all been following the "let's bring back literacy tests for voting" bullshit coming out of Tom Tancredo's mouth. On the off chance that you haven't and you don't know about the history of the "literacy test" for voting in America, this is not where you say, "why yes, a more informed electorate would be a good idea." Here, an incredulous Rachel Maddow explains it to you.

Torchwood rec time:

Truth is Seen Through Keyholes by tanarian. This is from the department of stories that shouldn't work -- team member meets his alternate universe self, life lessons are learned. In the alternative universe, there is facial hair. Romantic love. Tattoos of possessiveness. Totally shouldn't work, right? And yet, every word of the piece is delicate and well placed. The mood is so quiet and fragile, I had to remind myself to stop holding my breath while reading it. And wow, do I have a soft spot for languages that have not yet been invented. I've read this thing three times since I found it. And that was two days ago.

Meanwhile a post-CoE vid that doesn't fail to work for you because everyone's internal sentimentality is different: Above and Below by di0bor. Compares Jack and the Doctor and their circumstances. Uses CoE footage to graphic effect. Will probably annoy some Jack/Ianto fans because it's really, really, really not all about that. I thought it was a remarkable reminder of what the narrative arc of, if not Torchwood is about, than at least what Jack's narrative arc is about. The Doctor stuff is great too. OMG IT'S A VID WITH A B-PLOT.

Snowpocalypse has been bringing a series of epic snowball fights to DC's Dupont Circle. I hope someone has told William Gibson about this.

When Virtual Light came out, I was living in DC and some friends and I went to his reading at a small bookshop. He was struggling with a new Mac computer and going on about how he wrote all of Neuromancer listening to Steely Dan. I asked him some convoluted question about Molly that he was sort of too laconic to engage.

At the end of the reading my friends and I wound up at the very end of the autograph line, and after asking him to sign on the page of Virtual Light where a character is described as "sucking cock like it was going out of style" (oh god, I'm so, so sorry), we got chatting about DC for ages (so long his wife was glaring at us all and the bookstore had to eventually kick us out and we wound up walking him to his car).

For those of you who don't know, he'd spent time in the DC area in the 60s (when he also went to Canada to avoid the draft -- it's a long story, check out Wikipedia for the basics) but hadn't been back since.

So we asked if it had changed a lot. You know, small talk with super famous awkward guy when you're really awkward no boundary college kids.

"Dupont Circle!" he said. There was probably some cursing, but I don't remember (when did VL com out? 1992?). "I was over there early, and they put bubble bath in the fountains! There were bubbles. I don't know, but, we used to throw bombs into that fountain."

So yeah. I hope he knows about the snowballs.