sundries, item 0

This may be a little ranty today.

Item 1: I probably don't have a leg to stand on in asking people not to be all "let's talk shit about a celebrity," but I've run into a huge amount of it lately directed at people I either know or have good friends who are super close to the parties in question, and it makes me uncomfortable. FYI and do as you will, but way better in your journal than in mine.

Item 2: Yes, I've asked people to knock it off with the size-ism around here, and y'all have, and that's awesome. However there was a little thingy about it yesterday, that makes me need to say this: we can't always ask people to view themselves the same way we see them, so if someone makes a nasty comment about themselves please be gentle in asking them to watch their language. Yes, that stuff has a ripple effect, but as someone who has enough self-hating crap of their own, sometimes people need to do their stuff. I always appreciate it when you try to talk me out of it, but some days it's hard to be good to ourselves and near impossible to be good to other people. Also, we all define what's best for us differently. Complex situation has complex non-answer.

Item 3: And on that note, we're all mostly doing the best we can. We're all not going to agree on how we can do the best we can for ourselves and others. We're all going to prioritize different issues, and we're all going to come at things from multiple lenses. And we're all going to use tools - like hyperbole and metaphor - to tell stories, and sometimes those tools or those stories will get us in trouble. But that doesn't make stories or the tools or the reach for narrative inherently bad. Sometimes I wish all of us, myself included, could track a little harder on the babies in the bathwater (then again, I eat babies, so there may be issues in this whole theory). Still, don't be an asshole, apologize when you fuck up, listen when people talk, stand behind your words when it counts, say what you mean, mean what you say, grasp that everything has consequences and that some of those can even be quite good.

Item 4: Hey, stop ragging on people for being successful. Don't like someone's output? Go off on that! Are appalled at their racism? Just saw the YouTube video where they kick some puppies? Expose that shit! But this whole thing where success (or ambition) seems to inately imply crap work, crap attitudes, crap morals, crap everything in some circles and then we're all bullying little nastygrams about it? Not on. Like most things, success isn't the evil, it's the stuff that sometimes hitches a ride. But cutting down other people won't lift you up. Trust me, I know, I've tried it, early and often.

Item 5: I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner in the UK on Thursday. Because the UK, obviously, doesn't have Thanksgiving, and has different culinary habits than NYC, could anyone speak to me of the ease of finding: a whole chicken (not turkey, because I actually hate it), sweet potatoes, canned pumpkin, sliced ham steak, brown sugar, pecans, and pine nuts in Cardiff supermarkets?

And where I am with the TSA thing: ( Read more... )

Apartheid-era photos return to South Africa.

The NYC Subway may be about to slip the bonds of the city. If it does, EVERYTHING changes.

The chain store fate of many a New York movie palace.

DO YOU ALL WANT MORE PICTURES OF THE BABY CATHEDRAL DEER? You seemed to really like those is all I'm saying.

every word of this

More about the TSA mess: http://elusis.livejournal.com/2141915.html

(suggestion to opt out isn't, as previously discussed, workable for everyone, but the analysis of the problems and the reasons why you should if you can is smart stuff)

sundries

I just wrenched the hell out of my shoulder stopping myself from falling down a spiral staircase.

Dragon*Con app is in, although we really have no idea of our schedule for the next year. But yay me, getting it done.

Yay, TEDWomen contest app in.

Yay, another media contact re: Dogboy & Justine.

Yay, a contract I sent out TWO MONTHS AGO, was finally received, I got paid, announcement possible soon.

I'm going to get to see the new Harry Potter movie in the UK! THis is sort of weird and exciting, because it once would have been the biggest thing ever for me, and now less so, not because I don't still love Harry Potter (although my relationship has changed with it over time), but because so many big, weird symbolic things happen in my life all the time now.

Oh "these glittery, brittle bonds."

Latest set of arguments in Prop 8 case to be televised.

A tale of two salons.

Tomorrow: CARDIFF.

Writer's Block: What's under Snape's cape?

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ETA: See the question that box asks now? That's not what it used to say. The original question asked which Harry Potter character would you submit to a pat down and why if you were TSA for Hogwarts.

What LJ was thinking: two hot topics get exponentially hotter together.

What LJ actually did: trivialized a significant political and individual rights issue in the US and effectively asked people what fictional characters they'd like to sexually assault.

Sexual assualt: not hot or funny.

The erosion of personal freedom and the application of a whole lot of -isms in the name of security theater: also not hot or funny.

*sigh*