sundries

Elena Kagan has been nominated to the Supreme Court. She's Jewish. She's also widely speculated to be a lesbian. Any bets on just how unpleasant this confirmation process is going to be?

ebonypearl informs us that all the hair your cats (and other beasties) shed finally has a purpose: it can help clean up the oil spill!

Lena Horne has died.

Cynthia Nixon talks about life in the public eye and coming out.

From the art about death department: Clothes and a Claw.

Ten days in a carry-on. This is awesome. This is also harder if you wear men's clothes. Suit jackets say no.

While it makes sense that certain employees of any service provided should be able, under certain circumstances, to access locked and filtered posts, it looks like staffers at LJ have abused this privilege/tool and then subsequently refused to take the issue seriously. I have outrage fatigue.

ETA: Whatever happened there is clearly more ambiguous. A test done by the folks at Dreamwidth (which uses the same base code) says that what the user says happened couldn't have happened, which means that the ratio of code glitch/bad behavior appears to be different than the user who had the negative interaction with LJ staff (reasonably, considering history) assumed.

Don't forget debsliverlovers. If you could boost the signal, that would be awesome.

We're back from Essex. And I no longer have the agonizing headache I woke up with on Sunday morning. Rule of the universe seems to be that no matter how comfortable seeming, if I'm not sleeping in my own bed, I'm in agonizing headache pain within 48 hours. It happened yesterday; it happened in London; it happened in LA. It really sucks, and I increasingly suspect it's whatever industrial cleaning stuff they use on hotel-room laundry. I may start packing my own pillows to see if that helps.

Essex, however, was awesome. ( and of course we looked awesome )

Essex, the town, was about what you'd expect - unbearably charming, ridiculously white; it has the most profitable Talbots in America. That should tell you everything you need to know. It was also a true experience in heteronormativity. Not once did I feel any hostility for being queer, but people not getting it (and being deeply puzzled by me in menswear at the ball, but too polite to inquire) was pretty high. But an excellent event, and we'd totally go again.

Over the weekend Patty and I managed to finish S2 of Angel and S5 of Buffy. For me, there's really no way to watch those without it being in dialogue with Torchwood: Children of Earth. And my, that's a clinical way to say "it made my hands itch and I felt like I had to get up and pace and NOT COMFORTABLE."

The Buffy side of that equation is particularly difficult to talk about without looking like an asshole. I mean, I get it, and you want Buffy to be a hero, and Buffy (unlike Jack) has her own life available to put on the line. But seriously, I've kinda got to be with Giles here -- everyone can die a horrible death, including Dawn OR Dawn can die. Of course, there was option C, which still involved a sacrifice, and I'm relieved we got through the episode without it being "everybody lives!" because there's a lot of value I think in showing that both options A and B fail.

As usual, it's sort of the Angel side of the equation where I live. Which is to say, Wesley being put in charge, and being incredibly solemn and grave about it. The episode kept hammering on that idea that if you try to get no one killed, you'll get everyone killed. And, because the performances are so good, instead of rewarding the audience with a sense of pride for agreeing with the pragmatism of it, it some how leaves you going "I really, really don't want that job, EVER."

Also in Buffy and Angel related news, I finished and submitted my essay on the subject, so hopefully that'll work out well. Now I've just got to focus on Bristol. Ugh.

news from the front

So, I was just in an elevator at the office with a few other people and there was a noise like a frigging gunshot and then the elevator sort of jerked a bit. Which, you know was unpleasant enough without the following exchange, between the other two people in the elevator.

1: Look's like this one is going to go too.
2: This building's elevators are terrible.
1: You know why the middle one is out, right?
2: No....?
1: The cable snapped.
2: Was there anyone in it?
1: Of course! I heard it was up on ten when it happened.
2: I hope she had shins of foam.
1: Well, she does now.