Firstly, here's my tattoo (the angle's a bit off, so it looks a bit squashed, but it's the only pic I currently have).
OH YES, five hundred geek points please. Kthx.
More pensively:
Here's a murder trial ruling that has escaped the usual "disability panic" defence.
People are slowly, slowly starting to get the idea that murdering a disabled child is not a "mercy killing" or "for the best" - comments that have been everywhere after reports of similar murders; not just in the more fascist corners of the internet and in the more fascist newspapers, but everywhere.
However, the progress of this understanding that disability is not the end of the world has come too late for the little girl in question, Naomi Hill.
And over in the US, a "trans panic" defence has been (almost, this is a preliminary hearing) thrown out, ensuring that the killer of a young trans woman named Angie Zapata will be charged with first-degree murder (anyone who assumes that a murder charge for the murderer of a trans woman is normal needs to do some extensive reading on the thousands of similar cases).
Two signs of real progress, and two reasons to hope. Maybe the world, after all, is becoming a more humane place.
But, again, too late for Angie Zapata and Naomi Hill.
It would also be nice if they could decide what they wanted *before* they sent out the email telling us, supposedly, what they want...
Then everybody would get fewer indignant emails going "We're having to amend this and send it out again! We asked for 30-something men last week, and didn't get any 60-something women! Not one! Why not? The audition is in 6 minutes in Belgium, so you'd better jump to it!"
Today, somebody was casting a musical adaptation of His Dark Materials (incidentally, three of the Best Books In The World Ever, currently also being adapted into the Three Worst Films Ever, but that's a whole other opportunity to watch me spit with rage).
They're trying to cast Mrs Coulter, but have failed to mention that the character is physically attractive - no, make that stunningly beautiful. The whole point, at first, of the character is that her looks allow her to get away with pretty much anything, as she captivates powerful men; and even manages to con her cynical, monstrously intelligent 11-year-old daughter.
Now, I can tell from the rest of the breakdown that they're not altering the plot, or any of the characters - they want a pretty faithful adaptation, it's just that they're expecting the usual mind-reader on the other end of the Interwebs. And they'll actually lose faith in this mind-reader, and all connected with hir, if ze sends in a load of normal-looking people...
And now I have to tell a load of normal-looking people, those that want submitting for the part, that they're too ugly...
Now, away from casting directors' enlightened views of racial minorities, poor people and Northern people, and on to their similarly enlightened views of the LGBT community (yes, I'm aware that these sets of groups often contain the same people, who I'm sure are quadruply happy to know that those who control our media are portraying them so well).
My favourite today:
"However in our story, there is a possible slight sexual ambiguity towards the end of the piece (it is a comedy after all!!) so not too macho for this one."
Lollerskates, those comical gays.
I also like:
Male transsexual (MALE) (note: the only description).
EPICALLY UNBELIEVABLE LOGIC FAIL.
To be fair, some casting directors do not live in cloud cuckoo-land. One of them has just forwarded this quotation from Eve Ensler to DPM's inbox - presumably because she liked it, though it comes with no explanation...
"This is from Eve Ensler, who wrote The Vagina Monologues.
I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.
But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will s hould have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.
Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.
Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?"
Is true, no?
Though how we over here are supposed to influence the US elections I have no idea. Let's register our new kitteh as an American voter (what? That'd work if we were voting for McCain/Palin, methinks).
I have a very sore throat (and all the other symptoms of man-flu). It hurts to talk. If people could STOP TELEPHONING ME for five minutes, that would be lovely. Though I'm not working - I'm in my designated illness dressing gown, drinking hot water and watching Jeremy Kyle.
Thanks to Kim for cheering me up last night.
This morning -
Me: "I can be all beautiful and femme! Look... this is a gorgeous feminine pose!"
Hagrid: "No... that's a very masculine pose."
Me: "Oh. What about this one?"
Hagrid: "Masculine."
Me: "I know... this one is feminine! You can't say it isn't!"
Hagrid: "Ew. That one's just... disturbing."
Also, you know when you are talking to someone who is vaguely familiar, and they mention that you met them in a bar/club, and you slowly realise that that night was one of horrible drunkenness and behaviour that was so embarrassing that NO I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT I JUST WANT TO DISAPPEAR FOREVER, and you may have done anything from trying to seduce them to vomiting on their shoes, and you can't remember?
That happened to me on Wednesday. And has been happening all year. And I really, really wasn't a drunk fresher compared to the standards of most. By those standards, I was stone cold sober.
Here is my only piece of advice to my friend whom, after a foundation course, is off to uni now:
DON'T DRINK ALCOHOL DURING FRESHERS' WEEK.
This is no moralistic tirade or expression of excessive interest in another's liver...
You'll avoid every single one of those moments! Isn't that just lovely?
I'm 100% sure that my dad doesn't read this blog - he's a proper autistic person, who neither likes nor understands people communicating with other people, and prefers his one-sided communication with machines.
"Autism speaks" still wouldn't have him as a token (insert ablist slur), though, because his life isn't a tale of woe. He's supposed to be one of the best... whatever it is he does... in Europe, so... he probably doesn't spend enough time sitting around in his own poo.
Whenever I see him in the evenings after work, the bags under his eyes make me glad that I'm not good at anything at all, and inspire me to stay that way.
I specify one-sided communication because his goes "You are a machine. I have fixed you. Now you work" and mine goes "Right, you son of a bitch! Do what I say!" "No." "What in the name of Jesus' knickers do you mean, no? You're a computer! Compute!" "Only if you ask me nicely." "Please?" "No." I think the robot revolution is already here.
I think he tried to compliment me yesterday, is the point. We were in my parents' house, with Gareth in another room, and I was shouting through a list of the world's most beautiful women (that's not actually a regular pastime of mine - I'm not FHM or whatever, and besides, we have muchbetter taste).
Whereupon my dad said vaguely "No, my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world. And my daughter is the second."
I don't need to tell anyone that I'm an only child.
I think someone has given him suggested compliments for females. He meant that he was vaguely glad of my existence, no matter how much I puzzle him.
/daily trangst update
Reminds me of Venus Envy in which the dude is called "princess" by his parents... although I'm plenty more femme than he is... he exists mainly to beat stuff up...
Look, the world's going to hell anyway. This is my blog, so I'm going to write about something that, while it's unimportant in the grand scheme of things, annoys the crap out of me.
Whenever someone who doesn't belong to a very select group of my friends start talking about The Lord of the Rings, I have to stick my fingers in my ears and go LA LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING.
Why? Because they will always, always say "I never finished the books" and then they'll joke about the length of Tolkien's descriptions.
Our current GM did the same thing recently! It's like being an evangelical Christian who's never read the Bible... OK, many evangelical Christians ain't so good with the readin', but you know what I mean.
It's a thousand pages. Not a thousand pages of doctoral research into nuclear physics, a thousand pages of swords and monsters and poems and stuff. Tasty? Yes, tasty tasty.
Now, it's true that the books have one obvious flaw, which is pretty much rectified in the film versions. Tolkien... didn't find interesting anything that the average person might find interesting. So, all the crucial, dramatic moments in The Lord of the Rings get a grudging sentence of description, while everything else gets a decent chunk.
It's rather like when you're reading a Victorian novel, and you suddenly find that the plot has been set aside while the author gives a phrenological description of the newest character.
But that's a comparably minor issue, yes? It's worth dealing with an author's foibles to read a story of that magnitude.
Apparently not. People suddenly become so viciously anti-intellectual, they could be mistaken in a poor light for John McCain. "It's too loooong" they moan. "There are too many words". "Everyone has too many names" - try reading the Children of Hurin, sunshine! Or even, gosh, some real mythology!
Unless you're dyslexic, illiterate, or blind, reading a book is the most leisurely of leisure activities in existence. You have to turn the pages. That is the extent of the effort you have to make. You have to make sure that your eyes are open, so that you can see the words. Have I covered everything here?
Now, all these people that just "couldn't" finish the books are neither illiterate nor blind, and the vast majority are not dyslexic. In fact, I know several badly dyslexic people who love the books, and read them, slowly, often.
So, can we modify the "Tolkien-wrote-long-books" jokes from people who never finished them? Can't they just say "I have the shortest attention span known to humanity! Yay me - what? I say, a pony!"
Of course, the films aren't without their flaws. Some lines (either written for the film or needlessly modified) that enrage a pedantic sod like me:
"No parent should have to bury their child"
Excuse me? Why are we suddenly anti-sexist? The Lord of the Rings is innately sexist! You'd have to not make the films at all! Dispense with this horrible American quasi-anachronism at once, and try "father" and "his" so it doesn't sound shit.
"It makes the trees grow tall... and come alive... and even move." "Alive???"
Trees are already tall and alive. That's why they're TREES, and not, say, small flat rocks. And yes, they move. Being ALIVE - oh, we've been through that already. I believe the line ought to be "and walk about" - something that trees do not ordinarily do. I wouldn't employ a screenwriter unfamiliar with the concept of a tree.
There are dozens more, but I suppose they're minor quibbles *twitch*.
Finally, two people have made their best attempts to destroy The Lord of the Rings for me.
Firstly, there is another pseudonymous Bob. Because Bob is very handsome, I allowed my baser instincts to take over, and I... listened when he mentioned those five words.
Bob thinks that The Lord of the Rings is all about Frodo and Samwise's latent homosexuality, which they are man enough to throw into the appropriately named Crack of Doom. While Sam becomes a "real man" who breeds millions of small hobbits, Frodo is still consumed with lust, writes some poetry then goes off in a boat with a load of gay elves. He thinks the effect of Tolkien's Catholicism on his work should not be underestimated.
And absolutely finally, there is whoever made this:
