sundries

Despite Patty's epic cold, we did make it to dinner with my parents and my cousin last night. I feel I should say how not hard it is to cook gluten-free: chicken strips dipped in egg and sesame seeds and fried; a salad with tomatoes, beets and goat cheese; homemade guacamole with corn chips; cookies made from eggs, cornstarch and cocoa powder. Meanwhile, tonight the two of us are off to Rosa Mexicana.

Patty started packing last night, which always makes things real and a bit intense for me. But as much as this can ever seem routine, we're about there.

Hey, do any of you have input on cordless phones?

The admittedly sometimes problematic Dan Savage has started a great project called It Gets Better aimed at helping queer teens who are facing bullying. If you're a QUILTBAG adult, you can help. All you really need to do is make a video telling your story and put in on YouTube. If you are queer and out, please contribute material to this project. If you are bisexual, a PoC, or trans, please please please contribute to this project -- this is a good opportunity and a necessary opportunity for our community to demonstrate and recognize its own diversity. (Yes, I'll be doing a video too.).

Despite the Senate refusing to discuss DADT (and a host of other important things connected with that bill), gay rights continues to advance in the courts. We will, eventually, win. We will, eventually, be equal. Homophobia will, eventually, be far more risky than being gay ever way.

The MTA acknowledges that there's been little support for an "unlimited" metrocard with a 90 ride cap. NO SHIT?

I'm just 15 pages into Pam Cook's academic-ish book on Baz Luhrmann, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Now sure, it doesn't seem like she's going to look into some of the corners I'm really interested in (his writing collaborations, for example -- which were, on my end, the direct inspiration for why Kali and I started writing together), but her stuff on transnational and cosmopolitan cinema vs. nationally-identified cinema and how that plays out in Australia would have been ridiculously valuable reading back before I went to NIDA, because I wound up in that conversation about twice a day.

Additionally, she's giving way more focus to the construction of Luhrmann's persona than I would have imagined, which makes me jump up and down in an ex-marketing professional/miniature Internet personality way (also, you guys, it's a pretty good map of my own little routine in terms of the way I employ mythologization and nostalgia myself).

I'll be interested to see how she swims through all the material out there that has served to construct that image to examine it. She's already mentioned the contradictions in a lot of that material and how she seeks to set the record straight where possible, and that's really valuable, but perhaps particularly in a constructed life, there's no such thing as the truth -- just stories emanating from different source points. It's a nightmare for a researcher, even if it poses interesting questions for scholars and fans, and creates a situation in which satisfaction through said explorations is arguably never achieved. We'll see if she gets there. (It is also worth noting here that among the other filmmakers covered in this book series is Egoyan; it was from his Exotica I got a bit of dialogue I often quote to other people: "Why did you believe him?" "I made a choice." While I'm less fascinated with Egoyan's work, I may need to spend some time with that book as well if it engages truth and persona on any significant level).

Mostly though, I wish I had people around to discuss the book with, but those I know who care about Luhrmann's work don't necessarily have any interest in persona or taste for the academic approach and vice versa. So my brain is lonely on this, which means you all are going to have to hear it. Oh yeah, also? Travesty as an aesthetic concept seems likely to be a recurring theme -- you could point to the whole Internet with that, ne?

Have a day, folks. I've got a ton of work to do.

form the department of Fanfiction Made Me Do It

Ages ago I said to Patty that I have AMAZING hotel luck, and if for some weird reason I could find us completely cheap room for the St. Davids while I'm in Cardiff to visit her, that I was just going to book the hell out of it and it would be awesome regardless of her having a flat there.

Yeah, guess who just found us a completely cheap room at the St. David's?

So have any of you actually stayed there or have we all just chucked it into our Torchwood fic a bazillion times? Anyway, I hate to plan this far ahead, but on the other hand, this number is ridiculous.