sundries

Tonight we do the paperwork for Claudette and we pick her up Monday.

Meanwhile, tomorrow we head to Cold Spring.

Google Buzz - less confusing than Wave but just as dumb? Certainly the various drama that's sure to arise when people start realizing who people know (either through the "how dare you talk to my ex" phenom or the "OMGOMGOMG you know Random Famous Person") because people couldn't figure out how to be discrete is going to be epic. Google, of course, auto adds contacts in a way that makes avoiding drama harder.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison 20 years ago today.

When he came to New York, after, there was a ticker tape parade for him. I had just met a young man through our mutual recent appointments to the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation National Youth Committee whose father was a judge, and he invited me down to one of the court house buildings where he said he could get us out on the roof. He did, and we were the only people up there and we watched the parade from there. It was terrifying, and I remember thinking he was supposed to kiss me; he didn't.

Tigers are on the verge of extinction in the wild.

What's on a $177 bagel?

What would you do with 178 sq. ft.?

Alexander McQueen has taken his own life.

Charlie Wilson has died.

A queer zombie anthology from a small horror press got canceled apparently because some of the other authors who write for that press expressed their homophobic complaints about sharing a publisher with queer content. When you surrender to bigots, even if you are not a bigot, you are still doing something bigoted. This goes for the press in this little drama and it goes for everyone who automatically gives a higher rather to fanfiction with gay content in it because otherwise someone on the Internet might yell at them.

Capitulation to bigotry causes real harm.

phaetonschariot explains why: Queer people people don't get to stop being queer. How fucking handy it is that you can duck out of the fight. Just because you can, doesn't mean it's right. You know, I don't like people yelling at me either.

jslorentz talks about desire, activism, quaint little categories and trying to do the right thing -- for oneself and for the community.

Designing a better gender menu, via supergee. I don't agree with all of the suggestions (I don't, for example, like "it's complicated" as the only choice beyond "male" or "female" and I'm not all that off-put by "other" because I feel it includes less judgment than other options which assign narrative that may not be relevant to me. Obviously YMMV), but it's a good, interesting, relevant read.

Is it terrible that my main reaction to this seems to be about my hatred of the double-breasted suit jacket?

Last night we watched that Buffy episode where everyone keeps reenacting that final fight between the teacher/student murder/suicide couple in 1955. It was like "here, watch the cast of Buffy demonstrate Practical Aesthetics." Seriously, it was WEIRD. I have no idea if any of the actors or the director were drawing on that technique for the episode, but every time the scene played out, it felt EXACTLY like a a Practical Aesthetics scene to me. EVERY TIME.

Also, wow, I feel way too much compassion for Spike.