sundries

The airports are now shut until at least 1am tomorrow. There was a brief window earlier when some flights were able to get into and out of Scotland, but their airports are closed again. Scuttlebutt is that this is likely to last through the weekend, so we're going to start making the phone calls to deal with the likelihood we're not getting out of the UK until Monday. Up in the air is whether they are going to try to move out the people who have been delayed for days first, or if flights on when the airports reopen will be immediately honored. Since we're not supposed to leave until Sunday, that decision may be what impacts us.

Yes, this is a complete clusterfuck. No, there's NOTHING we can do about it. There is NO UNIVERSE in which I want to be on a plane flying anywhere near volcanic ash, and to be frank, I'll be pretty freaked the whole flight because of this.

Ash is starting to fall to the ground here, although in minimal amounts.

ETA: KLM/Delta is starting to rebook some 4/18 flights. Patty and I will need to start making calls tonight. Additionally, the UN Health Agency says not to go outside if the ash begins to settle.

THIS IS SUCH A CLUSTERFUCK.

Let's take a moment to review: Doctor Who fan goes to the UK, sees Cardiff and dead!Ianto wall, then gets STRANDED IN ENGLAND due to a VOLCANO. And you wonder why I say my life is almost entirely fictional. VOLCANO.

There was a hilarious moment last night watching the news where we watched the anchor in quick succession do a story on the first priministerial debate ever, the volcano, followed by Obama announcing he expects a manned mission to Mars by 2030. The newscaster just had this look on his face that was like "IS THIS A JOKE? ARE YOU PEOPLE FUCKING WITH ME? THE NEWS IS SO WEIRD." It was great.

Obama widens medical rights for same-sex partners. This is huge. As angry as I am about his inaction (and what honestly seems like lies at this point) on DADT, this one matters and directly impacts my life. And it doesn't require me to buy into marriage, local registrations that aren't widely recognized or anything else. It's just human decency, for everyone. Great stuff.

You know, I haven't been talking much about the Vatican since the part where they blamed the Jews, because after that, they blamed the gays and there's little remarkable, I find, about the church being homophobic and blaming LGBTQ people for the sexual abuse scandal. But now they are asking their followers to repent for the Church's sin. And I'm just flabbergasted. We may all be sinners, but we're not all _that_ sinner.

Study reveals immigrants are in different segments of the work force than people generally believe.

CNN presents I am transgender and I want my voice to be heard. Link via raedbard.

Today is the Day of Silence against LGBTQ-related bullying. Thanks to sparkindarkness for reminding us.

OMG, WHY AM I NOT WATCHING FOYLE'S WAR?

Last night we finished S1 of Angel. Cordelia, Wesley and Angel are SO DOING IT. Also, I said this yesterday, but today I am even more increasingly convinced that the only rational explanation for Torchwood is that RTD is a Wesley/Angel shipper.

TW, virtual season, episode 9

Virtual Season, episode 9: The Remains of the Date
by lawsontl and lionessvalenti

the ghostkeepers of Kensington Palace

On Sunday, Patty and I went to an exhibition at Kensington Palace that I was keen on because it was environmental and seemed to speak to my various fascination with things passing out of the world.

Rooms of the palace have been transformed into a journey through the lives of seven princesses who lived there. When you enter, you're given a map with a dance card printed on it, and you're supposed to go through the rooms and figure out the names of each princess (if you don't already know). The entrance to the exhibit is up a flight of stairs covered in children's art drawn directly on the walls, while you hear sounds of adults arguing.

From there, you wind up in a room with a tree that points you off in different directions. One room is filled with medicine bottles, hundreds of them, covered with hundreds or more tags, each with a hand-written note on them -- notes about boredom or misery or hope or mother or dead babies, and it was hard not to sit on the floor and paw through all of them, like some sort of divination, wondering which my fingers would choose as a message just for me.

Another room had great bejeweled hats hanging from the ceiling. In a throne room, I made Patty pose for a picture. Next, we looked into a shattered mirror and then saw an empty dress perched midstride halfway down a staircase strewn with rose petals.

That was when we first saw the ghostkeepers, as I'm calling them. They were men and women in grey, steampunk looking outfits, marching through parts of the exhibit to resolve issues.

In this case, there was concern because they had a toad (a large, fake, foam toad) that had to be positioned correctly. They very carefully carried the toad in, telling us to keep out of its way (the female ghost-keeper muttering to herself "the toad is not handsome, I do not wish to marry a toad, do not kiss the toad").

After the toad was placed, they used forceps to rearrange the petals on the floor while speaking of the tragedy of this princess, and it was true, after all -- all the chandeliers on the level below were draped with black.

There was a room dedicated to Time, with a clock in the center and great avant garde metal armours made for women (princesses) hanging above us from chandeliers in this room filled with baroque music and a statue of Hermes.

And there was a room of war, where they had the military uniforms of young royal boys laid out on a floor amidst thousands of toy soldiers that visitng children were actually playing with while bugles played from speakers.

There was a room of the world, which featured a wax death mask of some ruler form the 1700s and a giant light up dress. Another room had baby things of royal children with creepy dollhouses and scrawlings on every surface of the drudgery and loneliness of their existences. We found ghostkeepers there again, trying to shush the sound of singing babies ("And when they were up they were up and when they were down they were down...") and we followed them to the room of the feral wolf boy as they asked patrons if they were wolves and I knelt by the case with the wolf boy's things, which included taxidermied rats.

There, they found wolf hair and they ran about trying to figure out which room it belonged in, from reading aloud from the diaries of the princesses. One woman in the crowd, who wasn't a plant, matched one description almost entirely, and they got very confused, but the wolf hair was eventually disposed of and then we went to other rooms, like a small ordinary dinner room where royalty ate in private, and another room where a princess had a terrible fight with her best friend, the argument coming on over loud speakers, and a room where a dress of origami cranes (again, again!) hung from the ceiling and prison bars were cast in shadow on the ceilings.

Finally, we made it into a long hall, where music from each of the eras of the princesses was played, and waltzing figures danced in shadows on the ceiling and you could see glass portraits of each of the princesses. There was no doubt really, no matter how formidable some of the women (including the girl who became Queen Victoria) were, they were all absolutely prisoners in the castle or at least in their position. The last of the portraits, which like the others had a light that flicked it on and off and so made the girl disappear from time to time, was of Princess Diana.

The whole thing really did made me tear up, not just for the girls, but for all of us who were raised to desire cages without consideration.

Incredibly powerful, funny, weird stuff. If you're in London, you should go.