sundries

Patty's in the shower. Then it's time for breakfast and off to the city center to sit in a Starbucks and catch up on all the work we're both behind on. Yay. I'll also do some of the Thanksgiving grocery shopping today. Since it's not a holiday here, it's perfectly safe for me to wait until tomorrow to go to the market.

I go through this thing, wherein when people tell me yes (i.e., the DW/TW/SJA book chapter) I get very into submitting for more things so more people tell me yes. This isn't, at all, a bad thing, but it would be better if I was a) this driven towards submissions all the time and b) better at acknowledging the work to be done before I acquire even more of it. Anyway, I've got a a few CFP-like things I'm idly contemplating on now. The one that's the least relevant to my work is, of course, the one tantalizing me the most, and if I come up with something good, it will be awesome.

Around the time I wrote the proposal for the book chapter, I also wrote a pitch letter about something to a new publication, from whom I've not heard in any manner. It was the sort of note I would have at least expected a "thanks, but no thanks" from, and I wonder now if I will actually hear something soon, if only because I'd also written off the book think because I was originally supposed to hear in September. Life is strange.

intothenightx is trying to raise enough money so that she and her sister can see their grandfather before he is taken off life-support.

Hey, hate crimes statistics show that 18% of hate crimes happen because of perceived sexual orientation or gender non-conforming, when, as we know, at most, 10% of the population is queer. The piece at the link also notes that the SPLC reported that gay people are far more likely to be victims of hate crimes than any other group.

arjache made a great post about how the TSA's new tactics to see what's in your pants intersects with the risks trans folks face.

Also useful information for those flying while trans in light of the new TSA policies.

Hey, can anyone clarify this for me? Do I have to go through a security search after getting off my flight now? In addition to customs and immigration? What the hell? As a US citizen who was out of the country when all this shit started, I thought I wouldn't have to deal with scanner vs. grope until my next fight out from a US airport (presumably in December).

Also, if the new security machines just show what's in people's pockets or hidden under their clothes why can we see leg bones in these snaps?

kalichan wrote a thing about *fail and fandom and the way(s) that thought and speech orthodoxy in addressing some very real problems aren't helping, and are often missing the point. Also, stop abusing "freedom of speech!" in arguments, it's annoying. There's some good stuff in the comments too.

Further clarification from the Catholic church on AIDS and condoms. Statement now seems to be even more significant.

Since I've linked to it before, more on the Spiderman musical, which looks kind of awesome.

Central Park's ghost boots.

sometimes we really do get everything we dreamed of when we were 13

I am sitting in a cafe in the UK, with my boots rudely up on the extra chair and over the speakers is David Bowie's theme-song for Absolute Beginners.

Which, by the way, I still think is an utterly brilliant film that happened entirely at the wrong moment for anyone to care.

This message brought to you by I Am a Child of the 80s and I Love Musicals.

Seriously, are you actually going to try to argue against David Bowie tap dancing on a giant typewriter? Or a gossip columnist character named Dido Lament? Or choreographed scenes of street party/chaos that then later actually get visually referenced in the awesome Gigolo Joe portion of A.I. (another movie everyone hates that I think is pretty impressive and totally relevant to lots of stuff)?

I'm not saying the mere existence of this film isn't nearly inexplicable. Trust me, I know its existence boggles the mind (although, being about teen culture and race issues, it makes an interesting companion piece to the original Hairspray).

I'm just saying that despite/because of its oddness of genre and combination of themes that it is actually a COMPLETELY AWESOME movie musical that was released in a period in which the genre was pretty much non-existent despite the advent of the music video's vague (and unsuccessful) attempts to push it back into existence (Giorgio Moroder's re-assembly of Metropolis with modern music was also a part of this sort of thing (as was, arguably, Electric Dreams, which I'll admit still charms the crap outta me, even if it's still too 80s for you -- of course, I'm also a big fan of the piece of music used to illustrate the film's central conceit), which people also didn't really like, but which I still love like burning).