the best links ever:

I have stuff cooking in my head about the whole moving-to-another-continent topic; til then, these are the best links ever.


Proper srs links:

Daisy is asking if we can support the troops without supporting the war, and where classism fits with that.

Vii on interracial dating.

Brad Hicks on lynching as an economic crime.

The entire internets on those racist mid-Superbowl ads that put us right off our cookies.


Sillier links;

Deathboy on Chanology London - omg, read this, or at least look at the pictures.

Saint Gasoline has a comic strip on How To Be An Asshole With Mathematics.

Punkass on that bit where Mitt Romney said that voting Democrat is surrendering to terrorism.

Aishwarya on the suicidal, sex-obsessed Hobbits who sneaked into her house.

left, right, left, right, links, invite.

I was watching the snooker on BBC2 with my sister on Sunday night (boring, but Saturday's was good) and because of some comment from the teevee ppl about right-handed and left-handed play, plus a bit of questioning of my super-righty sister, I realised something I'd never known before; I play pool left-handed. I can't imagine doing it the other way, with my right hand behind and my left hand on the table. I didn't know that, but it wasn't a surprise - I instinctively do a lot of things left-handed.

hmm, list:

Writing - right-hand only. I've tried learning to use the left but can't catch the trick of it.
Mouse - right for preference, but I can easily use the left if the right is hurt. (Though I still really want a nice concave foot-mouse. <3 feet!)
Skating, netball, pool - left.
Hockey - left hand above right. I don't know which 'way' that is.
Cartwheels - preferably right hand first, but I can at least try to go with left, and I've heard most people can't bear to throw their heads at the floor in their non-dominant way.
Splits - right foot forward.
Fencing - both; initial preference for left, but often moving to right when tired because my right arm is stronger. I haven't done any LARP in forfeckingever (I way prefer P&P) but with nice light pretend metal, I was one of those aggravating ambi people.
Jilling - left. Right just doesn't feel the same.

I am not good at picking a side and sticking with it. ;_;


Links: Rumble in Gotham: Two Guys in an Asylum, or, The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, or, best. Batman. S_D. ever. I'm not a great Batman geek - I've read hardly any of his canon, just dipped in here or there, mostly on S_D or while browsing bookshops - but I love watching the fandom chatter about him, because a) he's one of we motherless freaks, b) he's a single father, and c) Bats/Supes OTP is, like, canon. These things are part of his iconography. So watching people talk about the dear boy and how crazy he is (or is not), and occasionally derailing such talk, is my win.

The Moonbat explains why Bali is made of fail, Al Gore is full of shit and everything sucks. Today is one of those days when Moonbattery is terrifying to contemplate; if he is right, we are all screwed, and the boy has sure done his sums. I don't know how he remains as optimistic as he is, given all the sums he has done. But doom-prophets are not a new phenomenon.


Invite: The Anti-Christmas Carol Service. I have been a muppet in recent years and never attended the previous version of this event, which was a blatantly illegal, unauthorised protest in favour of Christmas, peace and love that took place in Parliament Square in the week before Christmas. No arrests were ever made because the police seemed to think it was not a protest, so this year a near-identical event is being held, save only that it is a formally registered protest against Christmas.

This year's anti-Christmas protest will, therefore, provide legal clarity to the situation; if this demonstration format (candles, carols, etc) is granted a permit, and thus given the status of a legal protest, all subsequent events with the same format (candles, carols) but without authorisation will be proper illegal protests.

Gordy has promised to repeal the no-protest zone law. Well, he mentioned it a while ago but nothing else has been said since. Humbug.

Carnivals etc.

Just SFnal links today.

The 18th Carnival of Feminist Sci-Fi and Fantasy is up: Part I (Women, Gaming and You!); Part II (These Things We Love, And How We Interact With Them; Part III (Reviews, Reactions And Recommended Further Reading). It is a lovely carnival, in spite of the fact that I appear twice.

Helen Keeble is making a Weird writeup, which is way better than my Weird writeup. Here is part 1, which is about Lovecraft, Narnia and the tension between worlds - the discussion has veered towards Harry Freaking Potter. [addendum: part 2 and part 3.]


(Oh, and I think I never linked this before: the Alas thread about the whole sex-workers-in-sci-fi thing, which I briefly resuscitated t'other day with a link to my last post. It has been a fun conversation).

ye linkage

David Cameron wants to fix our broken rape laws. Please, please, let this become the bipartisan effort it should be. Some of it - like the idea that sex ed should be absolutely compulsory and should include lessons on consent (and I'd hope they'd do some on the effects of abuse too) - might even work. Read this too - terrifying stories about women who were let down by the police and/or the courts.

This bothers me in so many ways. It says it's a horrible crime to own a few books and to write a few poems. It says that crime is equivalent to those of Abu Hamza, or other hate preachers. It is all a bit bizarre and scary. I wonder what'll happen if/when she appeals.

I actually find this strangely reassuring - I like knowing I'm not the only one who can't look the bullshit in the eye.

Micah Is My Hero/a roundup of curiosities.

I'm just keeping up with Heroes on BBC2 - ie, only halfway through season 1, not nearly far enough to do a complete Heroes/gender lambast, but I do want to say that oh dear god do I love Micah this evening. Because he won't let single-daddy off the hook. Micah is a small boy who used to live with single-mummy, Niki, and now lives with single-daddy, DL (which I am still disappointed is not spelt properly, ie Dalziel, but hey). Transcript stolen from Shadow Anthology:

DL: It's not my fault you can't keep track of your own stuff.

MICAH: Mom always put my lunch in my backpack every single morning.

DL: Well, I'm not your mom.

MICAH: Yeah, that's for sure.

DL: Micah, this isn't easy.

MICAH: Well, it wasn't easy for Mom either.


Next, some extremely old news I only just stumbled across; an FAC complaint about the practically Aristotelian approach the BBFC has toward the female body. (Text-only, but NSFW). Censorship; it means that if you want to know something about a woman's sex life, you have to ask the BBFC, because women aren't allowed to make films about how it really is. It's a familar story.

I keep meaning to say a few words about a completely different thing that also has to do with governments not giving a shit about women's experiences; Form DS-157 (link is an evil, vile PDF). It should be familiar to anyone who's ever applied for a US work visa. It's included in every batch of paperwork the embassies send out for such ends; it asks if you've ever been in a combat zone, and if you've ever been a victim of war. It asks if you have specialised training in the use of firearms or explosives. This form is given to all applicants, but completed versions are only accepted from men. While I'm aware this is all weed-out-the-terrorists stuff, it's beyond odd to be asked such questions then, twice now, told 'nope, don't give a shit, you're a chick'; I'd imagine it would be odder if I had any 'yes' answers to offer, as many female applicants must.


If you didn't read The Monkeysphere the first time around, the Wong has relaunched it elsewhere. I've not a fucking clue how well it fits with Proper Primatology, but it's a concept I sometimes like to bear in mind; I think it does seem helpful to assume that one can only really be aware of 150 other human souls. Sendalin (the imaginary enemy/shadow side whatsit) says one should keep it to 149 at most, so there's always a clear place in your awareness for that someone you might meet on the highroad. (Sendalin also says that being sensible about love is like being turquoise about puppies, and that he likes his coffee desperate with two spoons of melodrama, so how much stock to put in his ideas is up to you.)


My last-but-one post lied, btw; the green person has told me she reads Marie Claire sometimes! I FAIL .__. But I can still find it creepy & misogynistic that Mr Moran says it's 'reassuring' that Suu Kyi reads it, right?


And the only thing worth reading that has ever been printed about Madeline McCann, ever.

small outbreaks of sanity

[I am sleep-deprived and waffling]

Related to the whole Livejournal malarkey; The New Witch Hunt. My sister and I wound up talking about this while watching the news earlier; we suspected the negative tone of said news was fuelled by pure DailyMaleitis. (Oh, and this is months old, but god, PA, +PA news). I can't help but wonder who benefits from the witch-hunt, and who suffers. It seems like another of those attempts to divide the entire world into 'trusted friends' and 'monstrous strangers'. Most child molesters are in the former group, so why pretend that crazy freaks on Livejournal are that scary? (There's no line there, just many overlapping waves; I first heard about the whole Strikethrough mess from a friend who's both an abuse survivor and a cheerful shipper of incest, twincest and jailbait-slash.)

On women-only spaces; I blogged about this on Deadjournal in relation to Ladyfest. My personal inclination is generally that there are good ethoses of communication and bad ethoses of communication, rather than good or bad gendered spaces. I loved this line and may come back to it later; "Important point to note, that one - feeling aggravated, annoyed, pissed off etc is not the same as feeling physically threatened."

Whole other questions about family structures. This is a family issue I have verry little experience of, as my relatives have this habit of dying young, but I think I feel its currents; vicious cycles of noncommunication, generations sitting in separate rooms, unsure how to interact. (I'm sure it's just me who's altogether confused about what blood ties mean anyway, so I'll avoid projecting that onto the world at large.)

Reading this was a great saving in time and effort, because if I hadn't, I would have had to write it myself. Like anorexia, it's a subject that warrants consideration in a way that doesn't assume all the victims are female.