fannish stuff

twinkledru has a multifandom gay marriage drabble project


TNG:

“The Game” (5.06) ... Oh, it’s like crack. As a child of course i never made that analogy, but with S6 of BtVS and the fannish discussion thereof behind me, i kept saying during this viewing of “The Game,” “It’s crack,” and having to stop myself from saying, “It’s magic crack.”
That scene with Troi and the ice cream? Is one of my big memories of her. So it drove me crazy that it took them like 3 seasons to invent the fact that she loves chocolate. I forever think of her accent on the show as somehow connected with sensuously eating chocolate (ice cream).

Thinking about the little Romulan boy whose parents wanted him to learn Vulcan, it occurred to me that Hi, don’t we have Universal Translators? I mean, everyone always understands each other. Except lots of times Klingons and others will speak their native language. So how do Universal Translators work, exactly?

In “Disaster” (5.05) Troi got called “sir” consistently because she was the one in charge. Later i thought of the discussion about “actor” and suchlike in the Teen Voices non-biased language training.

Season 4 didn’t have many episodes i remembered from my childhood, but many of Season 5 so far (admittedly i’m only about a dozen episodes in) feel familiar.

political links, mostly Edwards/Kerry and Kerry vs. Bush

More evidence that Iraq was developing weapons. And even more.

Glenn Reynolds asks "Has France ever met a murderous regime it didn't like?" re: Darfur (Sudan) and discusses the politics of oil interests.


Instapundit.com/Glenn Reynolds has been posting tons of stuff about Kerry/Edwards since it was announced.

( Read more... )

Michael Moore's 9/11 film, Part 2

[Part 1 located here if you missed it the first time around.]

People keep saying everyone should see Michael Moore’s latest movie. Can i start saying everyone should read Ann Coulter? I learned a ton from her books, more than i bet i would learn from MM’s movie.

( I thought i was done ripping apart MM and his movie, but i'm not. People keep posting new and interesting things. )

Friday

Well, i got 5 hours in on Friday, which is better than the 3 and a half i did on Thursday. The Verizon guy finally came around lunchtime, so hopefully by the next time i’m in. I read Running With Scissors in its entirety over the course of my commutes. Neat that i was familiar with the setting, but so not my kinda book. (Reminded me a lot of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.)

One of the programs they get the girls from has insane criteria, so they only have 11 girls this session (they were expecting 13-15). So they had to eliminate one mentoring session. Because i’m gonna be in for extended chunks of time, she wondered if i would be willing to work on the creative writing sections, no mentoring, since that takes a lot of time but doesn’t require mentoring interaction with the teens. One of my first thoughts was that this past week i had been having anxiety about this whole mentoring thing and now i don’t have to worry.

The short story submissions i read on Friday were remarkably serious (and well-written).
“The Tin Can Diner” had lots of interesting stuff but was rather disconnected; about a woman who thinks about leaving her boring life but eventually returns to it. (I found myself thinking of Mrs. Dalloway.)
“Paths to Freedom” about a kid whose parents were killed for refusing to convert to Islam from Christianity and now he is fleeing with a group of Christians while not sure if he personally is a believer.
“Hush” told by a girl who befriends a boy and learns that he is being abused and discloses her own history of abuse thus giving him the strength to bring charges against his attackers.

One that’s already in process is about a girl recovering from a breakup and the characters’ names are: Bianca, Austin, Krista. Oh the days of giving one’s characters names like that.

One of the icebreaker kinda thinks Saun did with the girls during Friday’s orientation was to ask “If money were no object, what would you be doing right now?” One girl answered: “I would send my mom to college.”
That pretty much sums up the girls in the program. Not that they’re not totally into shopping and pop music and all that, too.

There were 9 of them at orientation on Friday. 7 black, 2 Asian. (Not that it matters, i was just thinking about how 8/9 of us interns are white and what that says.) 4 of them (one of whom was Asian) were wearing pink shirts.

While the girls were having lunch one was saying her mom didn’t want her to have soda and this evolved into a topic about alcohol (they’re all very much underage but have had sips of wine at weddings and such) and it was making Saun nervous and i was amused since one of our rules of conduct is that we’re not allowed to talk about sex/drugs/alcohol when the teens are around ‘cause we’re not supposed to be a bad influence or whatever.

While my dad and i were waiting at the train station that evening, a squirrel popped out of a trash container across the tracks with a whole waffle (about the size of the palm of my hand, one of those round microwavable waffles or whatever) in its mouth. It came down to the ground and was chomping away. A couple sparrows were hanging around, probably hoping for some crumbs but then one of them came near its face and it lashed out at it and then they were gone. By the time the squirrel started to move away (with the food still in its mouth; i think it was the vibrations of the oncoming train that made it leave) it had only the crust of maybe a third of the original waffle left to eat. Pretty impressive.

So i’ve been reading Bitch and rather liking it, despite/because of the fact that it lives up to its subtitle of “feminist response to pop culture.” I’m actually considering getting a subscription.

The issue i borrowed earlier in the week was #12. The one i took home this weekend was #14, the music issue, and i ended up reading pretty much every word even though music isn’t really my thing.

Highlights included:

• National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy versus Planned Parenthood public service announcement campaigns
  
• Bitch responds to uniform manufacturer Milliken’s ad wondering “Where else [besides cheerleading] can a teenage girl stand up in front of thousands of people and tell them what to do?” with a list of possibilities.
  
• Temptation Island as “big, long, lurid commercial for monogamy”
  
• The article on CosmoGirl! made me wanna make a Sassy redux. (Sidenote 1: It also brought back memories of when i e-mailed back-and-forth with Atoosa years ago.) (Sidenote 2: Online there’s also the list of gripes Bitch has with Jane -- from issue 3.3.)
  
• Representations of librarians in movies -- Desk Set (1957), The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag (1992), Party Girl (1995).

I haven’t really read magazines in ages, and i’ve obviously been spending more time doing so recently. I am reminded of how much of a straight-up text girl i am. Pull quotes distract me (on rare occasions they’ll pull me into a piece whose title/blurb didn’t grab me, but not enough to make it worth it) and i don’t care much about graphics. I want easy-to-read fonts. I want my text in symmetrical columns or straight across the page. Sidebars annoy me because i have to remember to come back to them after i’ve finished the article; i want to read everything in a linear fashion.

Couldn’t sleep again last night. Went through all my boxes again, this time pulled out scads of stuff and am currently psyched to actually finish this summer the zine project that’s been on hiatus for like my entire college career.

Sidenote: G*damn i have so much stuff.

And in sad news, YA author Paula Danziger dead at 59. She’s the author of The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and the Amber Brown books, among other YA novels. I’m not sure i’ve ever actually ready any of her stuff, but she was definitely a big name, and that is far too young to die.

and a lovely birthday it was

Thanks for the birthday wishes to everyone who sent some either in my LJ or in your own. *hugs you all*

From my mother:

Happy Birthday to you!
So now that we've successfully raised you to adulthood, we can quit ?
*smile*
I hope you have a lovely day :)

Ginny sent me a card:
“Remember Elizabeth, it’s not the birthday that counts ... it’s the happy!”

---

So now i’m legally a full adult. I don’t think i’ll think of myself as a full adult until i’m living on my own.

My parents took me to the Mint Café. I got Tofu Royal and a glass of Don Miguel Don Miguel Gascon Viognier... an Argentinan white wine with a hint of pear. (I wanted Riesling, but it only came in a bottle.)

I didn’t get carded, which actually made me feel like an adult. I mean, there is the excitement of getting carded and being able to say “Yes I am the correct age,” but as someone who looks younger than her age, there is something wonderful in being assumed to be one’s true age. (The fact that in front of the waitress i mentioned that it was my birthday and was examining the wine list and was clearly with people likely my parents i’m sure contributed to my not being asked for ID, but still. I just reveled in being assumed to be my actual age, not younger than my actual age.)

Then we went across the street to Ice Jack and i got a large waffle cone chocolate peanut butter. Wow that was a lot of ice cream.