RivkaT

Helloooo, internets! I am back from four blissfully exhausting days in Vegas, where I hung out with three swingin' hot chicks. Ring a ding ding in a bucket of bling, baby. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, of course, but I must now share with you the two crucial things I've learned on my journey. (I have been to Vegas a dozen times or so, and every time I go, I learn new things. It's that kind of place.)

#1: If one wishes to avoid being expertly groped and kissed on the cheek by an extremely hot half-naked and tattooed male stripper at Chippendales (also known as the Home of Super Cheese Striptease), one must not sit in an aisle seat and never, ever look directly at them as they approach. Leaning away only encourages them. Just FYI.
#2: Friends don't let friends make impulse purchases involving sexy sparkly Beverly Feldman sandals. Except for the times that they not only let you, they talk you into it. Filthy enablers. Picture is below.

( impulse-purchased sandals on mah feets )

Meanwhile: I gather that there was rampant stupidity and bad behavior in fandom this past weekend and people are once again being hateful on the internet. I was offline for five days and didn't miss it at all. Sad but true. What I *did* miss, however, were some of you especially shiny and smart and level-headed people, and also, the new stories. I was jonesing for non-AU J2. So where are the good stories from the last 5-1/2 days, you guys? Any lovely new non-AU J2 out there? I hit skip 500 and I sort of gave up on catching up. *g*

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

First: Help! I'm currently on Picasa trying to post some pictures... is there any way to get it to post all the pictures in the album with captions instead of a link to the album and/or an embedded slideshow? At least without my getting the link to each individual picture and copy-pasting?

(On Picasa because my LJ photos are nearly at the storage limit and I'm not planning on renewing my paid account and because I set up Flickr a long, long time ago and now cannot remember my username or password and am too annoyed to create a new Yahoo ID.)

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. These were given to me by rachelmanija.

( Peas )

( Taiwan )

( Cracktastic )

( Food photography )

( Spiders )

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Last week I got an iPhone. Today I accidentally threw it away, in a public garbage can, and then drove around College Park for an hour trying to find it before thinking to check the garbage can and all but hurl myself in bodily to retrieve it.

I dropped my McDonald's cup on top of it, of course, so it's drying out now while I hold onto the very slimmest of hopes that it might work after that. I'm so pissed at myself. I "lose" stuff at home and in my car all the time - phones are slippery and this thing is thin enough that I was SURE it had slid under a seat somewhere - but I don't really LOSE lose stuff all that often, and I sure as hell don't destroy it myself.

Meanwhile: of course, one week is apparently not too short a time to completely addict oneself to something, and I NEEEEEEEED it. The sad fact is that I will be right back in there, buying another one, if this one is completely fried. I need a phone anyway, and this is not a situation that's like to repeat itself, so fuck it.

On dit que crème brulée est une invention qui venait de la France, où peut-être l'Angleterre. Si c'est la France, vive la France.

Les albums graphiques Asterix me donnent plaisir aussi. Et quoi d'autre? Angelique. Sophie Marceau. Juliette Binoche. Les scultures de Rodin. Chagal. Charles Baudelaire, surtout Fleurs du Mal. Le Chanson de Roland. Les Miserables - la musicale.

I may as well come right out and say it: this is NOT a post about Torchwood. (Heh.)

Though I have in fact seen it; I watched all five eps over a period of two days this weekend, and I really REALLY want to talk about it. But I have zero time to do so, because my parents and brother are coming to town tomorrow and I've been busting my ass trying to get my apartment into a semi-presentable state and I'm still not done and I'll probably be awake at 2am tonight scrubbing the bathtub, ugh. It's nobody's fault but mine. Well, mine and the cats'. Let's blame the damn cats.

( okay, very very brief - and vague - spoilers )

One non-spoilery thing I will say is that nobody on my flist posted anything remotely spoilery outside a cut-tag before I had the chance to finish Season 3, and for that I thank you. You guys are awesome. You know what's not awesome, though? When you love your LJ friends so much that you are tracking them via LJ, so that you get an email every time they post, because their posts make you happy, so one day you get a notification email and there's no subject line mentioned so you just go ahead and click on the link in the email that takes you straight to their post except now you've gone and bypassed the whole cut-tag system and suddenly there is a MASSIVE Torchwood spoiler that your friend was of course considerate enough to put behind a cut-tag for all the regular people who read their flist in the normal, non-stalkery way. Yeah, that's not awesome. Again, nobody's fault but mine and the cats'.

I am also very very close to finishing Sarah Connor Chronicles (holy shit that show got GOOD. Not that it wasn't good before. But, you know). Am waiting for sweetestdrain to have some free time so that she can watch me flail and jawdrop during the last two eps. That probably won't happen til next week, though, due to the parental interference. Drat. :(

Went hunting for icons last night and snagged a bunch of Glee ones, and now I've had "Don't Stop Believin'" in my head all day.

Also, this weekend I got my nose pierced. \o/ (Nothing says "Welcome to Chicago, Mom!" like purple hair and a nose stud.)

Now back to work.

A fascinating quote from Russell T Davies:

There's a fundamental difference between British and American television, it seems to me. This is a great generalization, but as a whole, American television is aspirational, where British television looks towards the working class. If you're on British television, you're more likely to have lead characters who are unemployed or shop workers. Maybe on American television, they're more likely to be running the shop. I admire American television for being aspirational. There's a slight guilt and complex and persecution culture in Britain about moving away from it. In British television, our evening soap operas are all entirely working class, and that's been the dominant voice for 40 years. We're stuck with it. We need to move on. It shouldn't be the only voice. There's a huge contingent of British writers who'll say you sold out and betrayed the whole profession of writing by not writing about the working class, which I find extraordinary and laughable. Nevertheless, perhaps that's where Torchwood's interest comes from. They're a strange little bunch of people living in a sewer.

It isn't how I'd describe the difference between UK and American television, but it's an interesting angle. I see American TV as being usually more about groups, British TV more about individuals; American TV being more about groups hanging together, British TV being more about groups falling apart, or trying not to.

And the very fact of talking about classes as all - as if it were something that is assumed to exist - is British, not American.

But like any generalizations, that doesn't mean much.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Oh, Rob. :(

When I get home I need to see if Pets Alive has an online donation option to post over at themadseason. Unless someone else would like to do it in the meantime?

Oh, Rob. :( I kind of suspected that was what was going on. I am going to go find my dog and hug him, despite the fact he pees everywhere.

Linzee

the new 10 things i hate about you tv show or the gymnastics-based teen show Make It or Break It? Are they recommended? I like the occasional teen angst-fest, but it depends on the characters involved. I still kind of like Gossip Girl, and I liked Kyle XY for the first couple seasons, but those involved either such ridiculously wealthy teens that it almost feels like fantasy or actual sff elements.

In semi-related news (but only because it involves a teenager), Gilmore Girls is repeating its run from the pilot and it took me about ten minutes to fall head-over-heels. It wasn't anything I was interested in when it originally ran, but now I get an episode every weekday, and I can tell it's going to be a Happy Place.

Other happy spots: New eps of Better Off Ted! First season The Big Bang Theory on dvd, third season reruns! And So You Think You Can Dance, which I'm enjoying and look forward to more than I thought possible. Yes, I've nabbed s1, although watching that is slow, as it's not exactly something I can watch while doing anything else. That, and the dance eps require rewatching most dances at least twice.

Dada is a state of mind. That is why it transforms itself according to races and events. Dada applies itself to everything, and yet it is nothing, it is the point where the yes and the no and all the opposites meet, not solemnly in the castles of human philosophies, but very simply at street corners, like dogs and grasshoppers.

Like everything in life, Dada is useless.

Dada is without pretension, as life should be. --tristan tzara

If I have to start my day sobbing into my perverbial cheerios, so should my friends list. Err, I mean I have a great Star Trek 2009 story to share to totally break everyone's heart!

http://spinalchord.livejournal.com/1944.html "The Flash of Life" by spinalchord. Gaila heard somewhere that when you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes. At the time it sounded kind of amazing, because fuck, if she's going to die then she'll have some fantastic memories to see her into the beyond. She's done a lot (of people, of things) in her life, and she's going to do a hell of a lot more.

It's five conversations that Gaila wished she had (and didn't since she was assigned the ill-fated Farragut). The author takes a small character from the movie, Uhura's green roommate (and Jim Kirk's sexy-time buddy) and gives her a layered background that I wish we'd had in the movie. No, I'm not going to rant about the one-dimensional female characterizations in the Trek movie, because I understand it was written as a Kirk & Spock movie and that's what it delivered. In the movie Gaila got a name, and if you were a trek fan, you understood she was an Orion, from a planetary system that practices slavery. If you were a devoted trek fan, you knew that Orions have pheromones that bewitch men. (I was a causal fan of TNG, DS9- so I didn't remember my Orion lore.)

In "The Flash of Life" Gaila comes to life at the moment of her death, and I've slotted this story in as my personal canon for the movie. I'm not a big crier- but this story had me crying big messy tears this morning. I mourned but I also rejoiced with the character.

Do I really need DVDs for a show I now refuse to watch?

Does anyone want the DVDs for seasons 1-4 (might have 5 somewhere, have to look) of Stargate SG-1? I figure everyone has 'em by now, but if you need higher quality for vidding or something. They're the large packs, and were $50 when I got them, but I'd be willing to sell them for $30.

*tilts head* I'm not even in any of the proper comms for this any more, so if anyone actually reads this and wants to forward, that's cool. I have paypal, and am willing to take personal checks, if someone will vouch for your solvency.


*grudgingly returns to packing*

Melissa Gregg linked to her post from last year that I hadn't seen, a critical response to Clay Shirky's Gin, Television, and Social Surplus talk that several people on my friendslist linked to. An excerpt:


Néojaponisme excerpts a passage from Azuma Hiroki's Otaku: Japan's Database Animals which "deconstructs this self-association with postmodernism in Japan, arguing that the idea of a 'postmodern Japan' has more to do with 1980s’ narcissism than proper theoretical conclusions":

I rarely do these, but what the heck. Say nice things about me? *huge eyes* And then put your own name in!

a whole lotta love meme // my thread here

So, say there's this version of the reboot 'verse where Leonard McCoy didn't meet Jim Kirk on the way to Starfleet.  Everything with Nero still happens(*handwaves*) except without Bones.

A year after Jim becomes captain of his ship, he's told that because the Enterprise is the fastest, they get to transport an extremely dangerous prisoner. No one can have contact with the prisoner(whose name Jim is never told) because he'd find some way to escape, and if that happens the Enterprise is lost.

Jim's like, "Dude, why are we transporting him, then?" And Starfleet says, "Minion, just do it!"

Jim's there when they bring the guy onboard.  Pretty much, his entire arms are immoblized and he's got some sort of covering over his eyes. Jim raises an eyebrow and smirks.

After his shift, he heads for his room and stretches out on his bed.  Mentally, he asks, So, how long's it been?

Down in the brig(or whatever), the prisoner laughs.  This is your ship, is it? He then answers, 'bout a hundred years, I think.

During the course of their conversation, they call each other Jack and WIll, and learn each other's current names: Captain Jim Kirk and Doctor Leonard McCoy.

At some point, Jim says, I was always meant for command.  No one ever said which side, though.

So, Jim lets Bones out(though he flipflops between various names that have been used over the course of the centuries) and together they take over the ship.  Jim tells the crew to choose: him, or they can be ejected to a nearby planet for pickup from Starfleet, no hard feelings. They choose Jim.

After the ship is secure, Jim and Bones go down the gym and start fencing.  Jim asks, "How long since you fought an equal?" Bones replies, "How long since you had actual rum?"

So, yeah.  Jim and Bones are the reincarnations of Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, reborn every couple hundred years.

Anyway. I have no idea how this could work out. I just think it might could be a lot of fun.

But David Letterman made a joke about Bristol Palin, a public figure and eighteen years old, so it's okay to attack an eleven-year-old girl. Shades of Rush Limbaugh calling twelve-year-old Chelsea Clinton the "White House dog."

An article that appeared in the Vancouver Sun on Sunday described a thread entitled "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds," in which a discussion arose surrounding a photo of 11-year-old Malia Obama wearing a t-shirt featuring the peace sign.

Among the comments on that thread, according to the Sun, were: "A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion."...

Some of the quotes in Free Republic's original thread, as reported by the Sun:

"Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?"

"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps."

It's beyond creepy to describe a tween a a street whore. This brings to mind all the old white guys who'd cruise for prostitutes in my old neighborhood, and every black girl on her way home from school had to run the gauntlet of these guys. Then, later on, the women coming home from work. It couldn't be clearer what the Freepers' attitude toward black women and girls and Democratic women and girls are: whores. That kind of hatred leads to other things.

Grown men attacking a pre-teen girl. Is it any wonder that people in authority are strip-searching girls for Tylenol or attacking a twelve-year-old black girl screaming for her Daddy when they were called to arrest an adult white women?

Watch your backs.

While the Freepers and their like often seem on the verge of physical attacks, the leftists seem to employ no end of sexist hostility toward rightwing Republican women, and that's unequivocally wrong. It's like guys look earnestly for an excuse to be sexist, and in someone like Sarah Palin---VILF, for example---they've found their ideal. Or Ann Coulter. Leftist men often times seem incapable of criticizing rightwing in non-sexist terms. Call Ann Coulter mendacious, sloppy, hatemongering, a plagiarist, a bigot, a user of hate speech, but call her Mann Coulter and you've just revealed yourself to be sexist. Her gender and her appearance---however much she may use them---do not reflect on her loathsomeness. Likewise Sarah Palin. It's not like she doesn't have a long list of ethical problems, dubious decisions, and flip flopping in her background, including her criticism of Hillary Clinton, which she promptly turned around and ignored when she faced a taste of what Clinton went through.

Criticizing rightwing women in sexist terms plays right into the hands of the rightwing. More than that, it's sexist, and it indicates that leftist men who do it cannot look beyond a woman's gender. It's eerily reminiscent of the so-called decent guys in Tim Beneke's men on rape, who self-righteously dreamed up excuses to punish evil women by raping them. And of course, you had to wonder just what other excuses they were turning over in their heads. When leftist men use sexism against rightwing women, they're showing that they're looking for a class of women they can use sexism on, that they're waiting, wanting to use it.

That is not progressive.

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

I rarely do love memes (because usually nobody loves me *sniffs fake emo tears*) but it's been that kind of a week, so my name is here.

In case you're following my Flickr account and wondering what's up... I've been uploading some of my best older photos, just so as to have them all collected in one place. So that explains the sudden appearance of Italy, New England and Liverpool as subjects.

Here are some of my more recent Oxford-and-environs photos:



( Read more... )

http://www.johnbarrowman.com/fanzone/stage/lacagepress.shtml

I must ask my mum about the legs, as she also said they were fabulous, when I showed her the pics I linked to yesterday.