Perverted, plagiarizing, p43d0p|-|i1i( Potter pornographer bastard!*

Something important

2007-08-22T18:24:03Z

Hey, folks! Sorry about the gap between postings - have been a tad bummed-out of late by various stuff (including, but not limited to, the whole LJ debacle - will post on that at some point, but not today.)

However, I thought that some of you UK folks (and others, for that matter) might like a heads-up on this. I just found out that tomorrow night the UK is planning to deport one Pegah Emambakhsh, a lesbian from Iran, back to Iran after denying her request for political asylum after escaping her home country. Her partner has been arrested, tortured and sentenced to death by stoning. Her father has also been arrested, interrogated and tortured for information about her whereabouts. I'm really not sure why on Earth they're declining her request for asylum, given that there appears to be excellent evidence that she faces imprisonment, torture and quite likely execution by stoning if returned to Iran. The case is documented here. Whilst the article says she's due to be deported next week, the editor of the UK Gay News service, Andy Thayer, said in an e-mail earlier this week that "I have just heard that Pegah Emambakhsh is to be deported by the British Government on Thursday August 23 on the British Airways flight to Tehran (BA 6633) which departs from London Heathrow at 21:35..."

I'm not really 100% on the procedure for contacting the government over this sort of thing, but some ways you may be able to make your voice heard may be by contacting one (or preferably more) of these places :Send an e-mail to the Prime Minister via this form
Send a fax to the Prime Minister : 02079250918
Send an e-mail to the Home Office at public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Phone the Home Office : 020 7035 4848
Send an e-mail to the minister of State for Borders and Immigration (I believe that this would be the correct minister to contact), Liam Byrne MP : byrnel@parliament.uk
If you're from outside the UK, you might want to try contacting the local British Consulate/Embassy - or for that matter, I suppose you could still just use the above info!

I know that this is very last-minute, but as I said, I only just found out about it, but I think that it's still very much worth the effort.

Post-DH Fic plot-bunny. Not good news. Not good news at all!

2007-07-23T21:51:09Z

Oh, dear GOD! How did this happen?

Right, so, somehow I’ve managed to get bitten by a post-DH bunny. Nothing too weird there, despite my not having had the urge to write anything for a couple of years now, right? Except that it involves a character I was never especially into back when I was properly in fandom.

Proof that living with starcrossedgirl is simply no good for one’s mental health, yes, the bunny concerns our dearly departed Deatheater/Dumbledore’s Dude, Severus Snape.

Okay, no-one’s run off screaming towards the “defriend” button yet, right? You may wish to reconsider.

So, what is this bunny, then? Well, it all started with Heike discussing how some Snape fans are talking about ways to resurrect Snape or how he didn’t die in the first place (which he so did, but hey, that’s what fanfic’s for, right?) Well, she mentioned that florahart had an idea involving a piece of Snape’s soul being blasted out by the trauma of what he had to do up on the Astronomy Tower in HBP, thus leading into unintentional Horcrux territory and my mind, slightly poisoned by bookshop’s recent embracing of Star Trek : TOS, immediately hit upon “Harry Potter and The Search For Snape.”

Seeing as how I’ve never been able to beat a bunny to death once it’s taken hold, even if I never end up actually writing the bugger, I’m pretty much unable to stop myself plotting it out.

So, thus far I’ve been thinking that, as I said, a piece, a very small piece, in fact, of Snape’s soul got ripped out of him up on the Astronomy tower. Plot point one being, where did it end up? Ie., what became a Horcrux? I’d need to re-read the scene in question more carefully to check exactly what and who was up on the tower at the time in question, but my preference at the moment for a few reasons is the Elder Wand.

So, at this point we have a tiny piece of Sevvie’s soul stuck in the wand. Indeed, such a tiny piece that the rest of his soul is only very tenuously tethered to our reality – not enough for him to, say, pop up and say to someone “excuse me, but I’ve got a bit of a problem here” or somesuch. Basically, he’s floating around partly in the ether, partly here and probably really rather pissed off with his lot.

This is a rather unfortunate predicament for dear Snapey, especially as everyone’s going to think that he’s ~~worm~~snake food and no-one’s going to come and help him either return or depart fully, as they’ve no idea what’s going on, nor any way of finding out, right?

Enter another Deathly Hallow, namely the Resurrection Stone. My idea is that Harry goes back on what he said to leave the stone alone, as he’s somewhat wracked with guilt over the way he treated Snape in life and that he died without anyone recognising his many heroic actions. Rather than waiting 9 years and giving one of his son’s the middle name “Severus”, he decides to use the stone, just this once, to briefly recall Snape and have a nice little chat. Of course, when he tries this it doesn’t work, on account of Snape being, well, undead, I guess. Either that or it draws the disembodied part of his soul into focus briefly, but long enough for Snape to explain that he’s not dead and kinda fucked. Personally, I think I prefer the former option, which would probably lead to Harry discussing it with Hermione, who’d get all “OMG, tut-tut, Harry, you said you’d leave the stone alone – I think you should, it’s dangerous to toy with those possibilities too much and I think… hold on, Snape didn’t appear? OMG, HE’S LIKE, NOT DED!11!!1” Cue much research and head-scratching and possibly Ron being rather “Harry, mate, I know he was on our side, but he’s still a git”, etc. before Hermione figures out the Horcrux thing. They figure out (cue convoluted plot point on why) that the Horcrux is the Elder Wand and go to get it so that they can work out a way of either releasing him into blessed true death (destroying the wand) or somehow recombining the parts and resurrecting him… but when they get to Dumbledore’s tomb, someone’s stolen the wand. Cue… “Harry Potter and The Search For Snape.”

Jesus, as I said, living with Heike is just plain bad for one’s sanity. I’m still not sure whether I want to have a go at writing it, particularly since I figure the premise rather predicates a somewhat lengthy fic (plus, y’know, I’ve only really had experience writing either H/D, cracky squick fic or brief vignettes to date, and all of those were long, long ago.) However, I think I’m going to at least consider it. Hell, if I decide not to follow up on it, perhaps I should throw the idea out into the ether to see whether anyone else would be interested in doing so (with the predicate, obviously, that florahart be credited for inspiration).

So, opinions?

Edit : This may well be an omen of some sort. Seemingly, huge packs of jumbo squid (Dosidicus gigas) appear to be invading the coastal waters off of California. Make of this what you will.

Reaction

2007-07-23T21:29:00Z

So, having posted about queuing for the book, it only seems appropriate to actually post about said book itself – not that I in any want to, you understand, it’s merely fulfilling an obligation... and if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything.

Right, so, overall impression – I adored it. Okay, in empirical terms it wasn’t the best novel in the world, I wasn’t entirely keen on the lengthly ~~dogging~~ hanging out in various woods and forests for large sections of the book, there were many things which were left unanswered and some which I felt should have been, but when it comes down to it, JKR has still very much got it when it comes to storytelling. I was lost in the story from the very first page, and who wouldn’t be captivated by Snape’s reaction to albino peacocks! The DE’s meeting was creepy and atmospheric, plus, Draco was suitably horrified by where he found himself – something of a plus for me!

Whilst I had expected the Dursleys to play a larger part than they did (come on, the ‘someone coming late to magic’ ~~being, rather randomly and entirely irrelevantly, Ted Tonks must have thrown everyone a bit~~ Okay, seems not.), but in a way I suppose it fit rather well – Dudley get a big hug for actually having some tiny piece of something worthwhile in him. The chase was excellent, even if I do think that Mad-Eye is a complete moron for not having the plan be, say, one or two of the order polyjuice into random muggles, book a taxi (or get a trusted wizard who can drive to come along) to pick them up somewhere not too far from Harry’s house, apparate into the neighbourhood, head to the pick up point, where Harry is waiting to meet them under his invisibility cloak, open the door to the car, get in with invisible!Harry and drive off to somewhere not being monitored by DEs. Seriously, Mad-Eye, it was your own damned fault what happened to you after coming up with such a terrible plan! I was amazed that I hadn’t figured out that Hedwig would kick it, as there’d be no way they could take her questing with them, leaving JKR with the choice of Harry leaving her with someone or killing her – pretty obvious which one carries more kick. Oh, and Voldie flying – very nice, though I rather wonder if he does it ala Superman/Neo or if he just kinda goes for whatever position/posture suits him?

Still, the wait at the Weasleys’ was terrific and tense-as-Hell. I shan’t say much on the Wedding, as I wasn’t entirely interested, though I’m sure that many people were squeeing like mad! Obviously I was rather happy with Tottenham Court Road randomly appearing, even if I do feel that JKR has obviously never wandered through London at night. Firstly, no-one would pay more than a second glance to a couple of people in dress-robes wandering down the street, and if she thinks that the revellers are “merry” in any other meaning of the word than ‘totally fucking pissed’ then she needs to do more research! Grimmauld Place was excellent, as was the Ministry scene.

As I’ve said, the questing and faffing around in the woods wasn’t entirely my cup of tea, and whilst I can see how Ron buggering off works in character development terms, the circumstances seemed rather forced to me. The exceptions to the questing thing, of course, being the scene at ~~Bathilda’s~~ Nagini’s, Dumbledore’s past, the doe patronus (which Heike immediately figured was Snape’s), though not the rest of the scene around it, the underground radio, Malfoy Manor *hyperventilates* and Gringotts.

As soon as we hit Hogwarts again, though, I was entranced. The DA waiting for them, Neville, the Order, Harry’s old team – Hell, I was tearing-up at that point (plus, steeling myself for a lot of carnage.) Oh, and McGonagall. You see, I love McGonagall – if you check my FA profile, which I haven’t updated for many years, you can see that she, along with Harry and Draco is my favourite. However, I was rather worried that, given JKR’s love of using traitors as a plot device and this being the final book said traitor would have to be a biggie and unexpected, I was figuring on her having McGonagall be the anti-Snape, so when she showed up and was described as speaking with a cold voice, I was steeling myself for a punch in the gut. THANK YOU, JKR! She was ‘effing marvellous! Seriously, every single scene she was in, she was simply wonderful, from lecturing Amycus to, upon hearing that they’re working for Dumbledore “We shall secure the school against He Who Must Not Be Named… we teachers are rather good at magic, you know.” To organising the evacuation, to leading the defence of Hogwarts to transfiguring the desks and her “CHARGE!” to her desperate scream at Harry’s “death” right through to duelling Voldemort – thank you, JKR, thank you.

Now, where was I, oh, yes, Hogwarts. I adored the battle – it was damned near perfect. I’ve never given much of a damn about Percy, so you know that JKR’s got the mood right when I give a little choked sob at his return and his quips, or even at what I thought was Hagrid’s death under the spiders. If that got to me, then you can just imagine what the Room of Requirement did. Oh, Draco - Wonderful, cowardly, mixed-up, slightly strangely loyal Draco. Again, THANK YOU, JKR! As was McGonagall, Draco was perfect – absolutely “my” Draco in the situation he found himself. Did I mention that, whilst I’d have liked to see more of him and for him to have more relevance, he was, for me, absolutely perfect in this book. From his obvious desperation and desolation and dispair and fear in the opening chapter, through his ambiguity and evasion at the manor later (and damn it, he had no reason not to gladly give Harry up – it’d have made him a hell of a lot safer, along with his family, etc. etc. No reason except that it’d have been a damned shitty thing to do, and he did his best to avoid it.) To protecting Goyle despite his having turned on him – conflicted, much? Plus, it never hurts to throw in a scene where Harry heroically rescues our fair-haired floozy with his snazzy broomstick prowess.

Oh, yeah, Hogwarts – bad Greg, getting distracted again. Fred’s death was sad, though I was never a fan of the twins. I actually rather liked how Remus and Tonks died offscreen – given that it was Harry’s PoV it makes a lot more sense for him not to have seen all of the deaths in person, though I’d loved to have known what happened – hope they (well, Remus mostly) took a good few of the bastards down with them. Snape’s death was rather gutting, even though until HBP I’d always liked the character, but never been too invested in him – that’s what living with Heike gets you, I suppose. His memories were wonderful and Heike says everything about him I could ever hope to and far better, to boot - go on, if you like Snape, it’s worth the read – I’ll be here when you get back!

Harry walking up to Voldemort was gut-wrenching. Absolutely gut-wrenching. I’d been up for something like 30-hours at this point, with intermittent drinking and smoking of, umm, stuff, at points, so this section absolutely floored me. I was half-expecting the last few chapters to switch PoVs and for that to be it for Harry. Sigh, I’m an overdramatic fool, ain’t I? The meeting with Dumbledore was great, IMHO – I’ve always seen Dumbledore as manipulative and scheming, but I’m not with the crowd who hate him for it or feel that he’s cold. I just think that he’s grown up being the smartest, most able person around, had a tough life in some respects and has felt for a long time that if anything’s going to be done, it’s down to him to do it. Aside from that, I think that he’s, at least once he’d grown up, a pretty good person and I liked that she left him as such, just with a good few more warts than we’d been led to believe until recently.

The very final battle was perfect. Seriously, Hagrid shaming the centaurs into action, McGonagall’s aforementioned actions, Neville, oh, Neville and your taking up the mantle of leader when it seemed Harry was dead, even though it all seemed hopeless – you wonderful bloody Gryffindor, you. And I loved almost every part of the magical world joining together either to kick the DE’s arses – the centaurs, buckbeak, thestrals, house elves (yup, the bit with Kreacher spurring them on in Regulus’ name had me bawling, though many things did at this stage). I loved the Malfoys sticking together and not giving a damn about anything but keeping themselves safe. Oh, and you know what? I’ve hated Molly Weasley since, I’m not sure, probably book 3, but seeing her go all Ellen Ripley and screaming ~~"Get away from her, you BITch!"~~ well, something like that? Well, suffice to say that when Bella taunted her about Fred I had a huge shit-eating grin on my face as I said “oh, you are so dead”. As for Voldie – oh, I loved his desperation, loved how you could tell he was trying to tell himself that all wasn’t lost, his getting further and further from reality and trying to maintain that everything would work out alright and that his plans re: the Elder Wand would see him through. Jesus, that man was an idiot – every single time his plans failed he found some excuse and never thought that maybe he just wasn’t very good at planning. Plus, he died just as he should – no huge battle, no massive fireworks, just another failed plan and a rebounded curse and that was it.

Oh, and as for the epilogue, well, I hardly need to say that I’m right there along with everyone else disowning that as canon. Jesus, JKR, what were you thinking? Though, I’ll give you, Draco nodding at Harry was nice.

So, that was my general, rambly impression of the book. Now onto a few specific points that hit me or thoughts I had :

So, everyone agrees that Remus was very... odd in this book. My take on it; I’m not sure, but I think that he was kinda playing the parts of all three of the true Marauders. His trying to run away from responsibility was Sirius, his somewhat unwilling acceptance of it and reaction to fatherhood was James and the rest was him. Not sure if I’m right, but if so, it seems to explain what was going on with him. Opinions?
As I said, Molly Weasley was so channelling Ellen Ripley at the end of Aliens in her fight with Bella. Also, dude, loved how JKR almost exactly mirrored Sirius’ death with Bella’s – nice touch, indeed!
I was rather disappointed at some things which were left hanging. What happened to Lily being good at charms being important? Or Harry's eyes (aside from setting off Snape)? At least the someone coming late to magic was in there, but utterly inconsequential. Will she ever release the original ending (the one whose last word was "scar") – I hope so, as I think we all want to know what it was. Also, Petunia was supposed to play a part, wasn’t she? Aside from the whole memory scene with Snape, and even there, it didn’t seem that she was particularly important in that. And dude, no explanation at all of the Veil, or for that matter the room with the super-powerful force in it (love, one assumes – the orgy room, perhaps)? Okay, the Sorting Hat played its part, but again, it’d be nice to know how the hell the thing with making swords appear inside it worked. There were lots more, but suffice to say that whilst I didn’t expect her to clear up every loose end, some seemed to be rather gaping in their absence. Oh, and whilst I’m at it, umm, how about how the fuck James and Lily actually got together!
You know, whilst reading HBP, the second I read about the crying boy I was going “OMG! OMG! DRACOOOOO!” This time around Heike had exactly the same reaction to the doe patronus showing up. Shows that we know our respective characters, I guess. Oh, and talking of Snape, one thing not mentioned in Heike post I linked to above, I fucking loved how JKR didn’t have some convoluted explanation of how he’d managed to be Dumbledore’s spy in the inner-circle and avoided Voldie breaking through his Occlumency or such - it was just that he was that good at it! Better than Voldie could ever credit someone else being at subterfuge!
THANK YOU, JKR! Thank you a million, billion time for Ginny not being SUPAPOWAS!Ginny or saving the day or doing anything more than just, fairly quietly, taking part. I'd have been rather pissed otherwise. The romance scenes were dreadful, as usual, but she managed to keep them to a bare minimum – I’d been steeling myself for a good 50-100 pages involving H/G, R/H and other such guff.
However, OTOH, the treatment of the Slytherins sucked monkey-balls. Seriously, way to repudiate your whole people are different but that doesn’t mean that those different to you are bad thing. Unless, of course, as I prefer to think, some of them did chose to be 'good' but did so in a cunning Slytherin way by going back to their families after leaving Hogwarts en-masse and sparking off that Graduation Day!Buffyesque clusterfuck of all the parents and assorting wizards showing up for the second part of the battle. Oh, well, that seems IC for the Slytherins and I sure prefer it to them all being cardboard-cutout evil types aside from ambiguous Snape & Draco.
As I said, the epilogue was made of pants, except for Draco & Harry's acknowledgement (in which 19 years of furtive sex is nodded to - oh yes) and Albus Severus, which I thought was kinda cute.
Talking of Albus Severus, anyone for Scorpius/Albus Severus? Also, I think we'd better make a point of referring to the pairing that way round, as S/AS kinda beats AS/S. Just sayin'...
WHAT happened to the Dementors? Seriously, they were utterly useless! I’d envisaged them being the muscle, the shock-troops if you will, of Voldie’s army, with the DE’s doing the stuff that required skill and finesse and the Dementors doing the heavy-lifting. As it was, they just floated around and got chased off. Quite a let-down, given that they were quite possibly the most disturbing, unpleasant not to mention most evocative evil thingies in the series for me (well, okay, maybe Fenrir…)
Oh, and am I correct in assuming that we never got confirmation of which house Dumbledore was in? If so, I assume that everyone agrees that he’s very, very much a Slytherin. Okay, one who’s decent at heart, but ambitious and cunning, dude yeah!
vinagrette had an interesting idea, namely that it was (and I completely agree) because of Snape asking Voldie to spare Lily that he tried to avoid killing her and thus allowing her to sacrifice herself for Harry as opposed to simply being intended collateral damage, thus leading to the protection and Horcrux!Harry. Well, taking that a step further, given that Snape asked this because of his love for Lily, that kinda means that, in true schmaltzy JKR fashion, love set up the punch as well as delivering the knockdown, it’s just that it was also Snape’s love in there as well.
And finally, I’d just like to reassure you all that, whilst I’ve been away from fandom for a good long time, it appears that I’ve stayed true to my place in it; namely pointing out the many, many double-entendres (of which I've now forgotten most!) during our group reading.
Oh, and on that point, of fandomy stuff, umm... I appear to have been bitten by a plot bunny. More to follow on this front.

Well, there we go. I’m sure that I’ll be posting more reactions in the coming days, but I think that’s enough to deal with in one post. Sorry about not posting sooner, but I’ve been a bit under the weather and it’s been a busy couple of days due to one thing and another, plus, my evil girlfriend has been hogging the internet connection much of the time (she’s out at the moment!) Really must get a router soon. Anyway, as I said, I’ll probably post about a plot-bunny in a bit, but that’s all for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed DH as much as I did!

Questing for books! No spoilers.

2007-07-23T19:12:30Z

So, I said to several people “see you on the other side” prior to DH – I guess this is indeed “the other side”!

So, starcrossedgirl, myself, kazzik, titanic_days, and vinagrette decided to meet up with aviss, duare and their friends (half the population of Spain!) to queue up outside the largest bookstore in Europe, the Waterstones at Piccadilly Circus, and get the book there. Along the way we also, most happily, picked up ewacat and hugsnkisses_.

Dear God, the queue was huge. Absolutely huge. By the time I got there (slightly later than most of the others), there must have been going on a thousand people – at 19:30! The queue snaked around the front of the shop, down a longish side-street, and then, at that point, about halfway down Jermyn St. Naturally, kazzik and I’s reaction to seeing this insanity was to dump our bags with the less-tardy t00bs and go ‘round the corner to a pub for beer and, umm, other substances. Upon rejoining the queue we promptly began squeeing and drinking the vodka and Southern Comfort I’d brought with me – it was going to be that sort of night. I’d no sooner completed the rather complicated task at this point of directing ewacat to our spot in the queue when hugsnkisses_ showed up and required the same. Upon locating her, we decided to pick up some booze and check out just how the Hell long the queue was at this point (sometime past 22:00). Silly of us. Very silly. We set off from where we were and soon encountered many strange and wonderful sights. About 2/3 of the crowd were in some sort of costume. There were people dressed as owls, girls with big signs saying “Bother Snape” (see: PotterPuppetPals), a couple of cross-dressed Rita Skeeters, some wonderful Dumbledores, Lupins, Mad-Eyes and many, many Tonks’. There were Death Eaters all over and more than a few members of the Trio. Hell, there was even someone dressed up as Hogwarts castle! However, that being said, as far as I can tell, I was the only bloody person dressed (somewhat) as Voldie! Anyway, things started getting a tad weird when we started encountering strange, 10ft tall... things on stilts. Seriously, I’ve no idea what they were. They looked like the result of a drunken coupling of a Chinese dragon with Yoda – pictures to follow shortly. Well, Hnk and I made our way to the end of Jermyn St. and still the queue stretched on, turning to the left and we followed it all the way from the beginning to the end of St. James’ St. and still people were arriving, from my impression in greater numbers at this point than at any point previously. I’m pretty sure that by midnight they must have sprawled down along Pall Mall as well.

The purple shows the queue as of about 23:00 – it was still growing rapidly…

Heike, Anna (I think), aviss and ewacat.

And again, minus aviss and with… someone else!

That’d be me threatening a very unconcerned kazzik and titanic_days.

And again.

One of the Yoda!Dragon things about to eat someone, whilst what appears to be a Wood Elf stands by.

Another of the weird dragon things.

Myself, appearing as some sort of terrible mixture between Bella, Snape and Voldemort doing… something to Alex!

Anyway, the witching hour (you’re allowed to kill me for that pun) was reached, with much cheering and screaming from the crowd and we gradually filed our way along the street towards Waterstones, after saying goodbye and good luck to Ewa and Hnk, who were picking up copies elsewhere. It took us a little over an hour to finally make it into the shop and, if you look at the map I posted above, I believe a little before the road which leads down to St. James’ Square. If it took us an hour to pick up the book, I’m almost frightened to guess how long it took the people at the end of the queue, wherever it was at that point, to get their copies. They may, in fact, still be waiting.

We then hopped on the (K)night bus, which was crowded to all buggery and back, with drunk people yelling at each other to stop crowding on so that the bus could depart again each time we stopped, etc. Needless to say, more than a few people were giving us very funny looks! Anyway, aviss, duare and the rest of the Spanish contingent of fandom departed at Stratford and kazzik, titanic_days, a friend of Kaz’s who I’ve never met before tonight and whose name I have rather pathetically forgotten, Heike and I went back to ours and watched Dr. Who ‘til we fell asleep… yeah, right. I think you can all guess very well what we did when we got back home, but I think that I shall end this post here and put my reactions to DH into their own post – watch this space!

Edit : Now spoilers in the comments, so be warned.

The second law of thermodynamics.... yeah, right.

2007-07-20T14:24:31Z

So, how’s everyone doing? No-one’s succumbed to the stress yet and holed themselves up inside a bell-tower demanding an early copy of the book or else? None of you have put any (major) organs up for sale on eBay in return for an early hardcopy of the book? No religious conversions as part of a cosmic deal to ensure that the characters you’re particularly attached to make it through the next 24 hours? Well, I’d say we’re in pretty good shape then!

Seriously, folks, it’s been quite a ride, hasn’t it? Okay, fandom’ll live on, one way or another. Hell, JKR could implement the “Rocks fall. Everybody dies” option, then have the Earth get knocked out of its orbit by a giant meteor and swallowed up by the sun, which itself then gets sucked into a black hole and fandom would still find a way to write stories. Still, standing on the eve of our last dose of canon is… a funny feeling indeed.

Heike and I managed to get to bed rather late last night, so we’re currently stumbling around dazedly trying to work out how on Earth we’re going to make it through pre-book drunken revelry, queueing for God-Knows how many hours, then a costumed trip across London on a (K)night bus back to Leytonstone before devouring our final dose of canon, but I’m sure we’ll manage somehow – rock’n’roll. So, as I started off by saying, how’re all of you lot holding up? Everyone know where and when they’ll be getting their grubby little hands on a copy? Suicide-pacts fully signed and notarised? Someone’s procured a thermonuclear warhead in the event that JKR cops-out on answering what that twinkle in Dumbledore’s eyes was or what’s up with Harry’s eyes for that matter or how Lily fits into things or visiting Godric’s Hollow or just plain loses what literary abilities she possesses (ala OotP) or worse, forgets how to tell a story? I guess I’m just asking, where’re y’all at.

Anyway, being the pretentious sod that I am (plus, having got a couple of months of paid time the other day so I’m fully armed when it comes to icons for the post-DH LJ meltdown - bad timing with LJ restarting their appeasement of "Concerned Parents"™ directly afterwards), I figure I should sign-off with a quotation poll. So, without further ado

View Poll: Pretentious, moi?

Whaddya Think?

2007-07-19T20:28:04Z

<lj-cur text=spoilers>
WOW – I can’t believe JKR made McGonagall/Grawp/Crookshanks canon in DH!!!111!!1!!
</lj-cut>

...

Okay, that was my little joke (from an appropriately little mind). Actually, you know, if that really were a spoiler then I’m not sure, ipso-facto, whether DH would be spoilable-for on account of the cracked-outness!

I’m rather surprised, truth be told, that I still haven’t been spoiled at this point, given that I’m a news & politics junkie and have been reading all sorts of sites like DailyKos which I’d expected would have a bunch of right-leaning types spamming the hell out of it given Bill O’Reilly calling it a “hate-site” (the irony abounds) recently and DH spoilers seem like the perfect weapon. Between that sort of thing and scanning Google-News, albeit flicking through the Entertainment section, I’d resigned myself to probable spoiling, but, *touches wood* it’s looking good so far. Pweeetttyyy please let me remain thus – no spoilers in the comments or I shall cry all over you or something!

So, how’s everyone holding up, then? What’s the prevailing mood? Anticipation? Restlesness? Apprehension? A mix of the three? Overpowering sexual excitement (or is that just me? … okay, just me then *gets ~~goat~~coat*)? Seriously, folks, what’re y’all doing to pass the time now that we’re entering the home-stretch – well, those of you not Sectusing it up, that is? Any of you who’re H/D shippers should have by now read monochromal’s ode to H/D-fic throughout the years, ‘tis rather nostalgia-inducing and generally evocative indeed (and non-spoilery, though I’ve no idea about the comments.) If you haven't, as bookshop says, do so, BIATCHES!

What’re you guys’ plans for picking up the treasured tome? starcrossedgirl, kazzik, titanic_days, vinaigrette & her mahn and I plan to meet up with aviss, duare and some of their friends from Spain sometime tomorrow afternoon/evening at the Piccadilly Circus Waterstones and consume large amounts of alcohol in the queue (possibly in whatever sad excuses for costumes we can put together at the last minute!) I’m not sure if they’re still taking pre-orders, but I believe so, so if anyone else in the area (or out of it, for that matter) doesn’t have anything planned and fancies tagging along for the queuing and/or reading back at our place, let us know! Dear Lord, we met up with siria, who’s in town for Sectus, in Central London today, which was very much with the lovely, and decided to pop by the bookstore to see how large the queues were already, as I’d seen a (close-up) photo of them in today’s Independent. Dear God, there must have been something like 40 people there 30+ hours before zero-hour! Honestly, okay, I’m not 100% keen on queuing for it at all, and if it were up to me, I’d probably just drop by the all-night Tesco near our place at 00:01, but I can live with a few hours with the aid of friends and alcohol, but seriously, a couple of days??? Oh, well, can’t fault them for their dedication!

Anyway, that’s all for now, folks, though I shall probably try and stay vaguely around from now onwards, and shall very likely join the great lj-cut spam frenzy of 21/07/2007! For now, I leave you with the mucho-nostalgic "We Didn't Start The Fandom" - sigh.

Queers, Who, Exploding Cars^2, Bush, Animal Cruelty and Friendly Floatees

2007-06-29T09:19:42Z

Been an eventful couple of weeks what with one thing and another, hence the not being around much - by far the best aspect of which being Heike’s results. If any of you were interested in them but don’t have her friended, sorry for leaving you on tenterhooks! As is only natural for someone as freakishly ~~freakish~~brilliant as her, she did indeed get awarded a first – the only one awarded on her program this year, no less! Who’s a clever little biomedical scientist, then? ;P

Obviously much celebrating went on as a result of the above (during which we were blessed with an appearance by vinagrette -an unfortunately rare honour-, amongst several others), hence not updating y’all sooner!

Oh, and talking of celebrations, I hope that folks in the ‘hood (read: Greater London) are aware that it’s London Pride tomorrow. Any of you likely to be there and if not, where should I be sending the threats of a kneecapping? Heike and I shall likely be around, assuming that it’s not absolutely pissing down, of course. This, however, was presenting us with a slight problem, as conclusion of the parade will likely clash with the season finale of Doctor Who. Now, this is where I say something self-deprecating about us obviously being geeks of the highest order to consider there to be a contest between marching through Central London surrounded by a plethora of hot guys’n’gals and seeing a cheesy sci-fi show. However, it appears that this is a widespread worry – so much so, in fact, that those organising pride have arranged a live screening of the episode on a big-screen thingy in Trafalgar Sq., along with discussion of the episode earlier in the day by John Barrowman and Freema Agyeman. Haha – one less excuse for you lot to not attend!

Oh, speaking of Doctor Who, given RTD’s almost unhealthy fondness for anagrams, I decided to have a go at “Toclafane” earlier in the week to see what insight that might afford. Whilst the results were, I sincerely hope, indicative of anything to come in tomorrow’s episode, I thought I’d mention a few of the results:

"Cola Fa Ten" – this appears the most Who-related of the answers, and given the state of The Doctor at the end of 3x12, he might appreciate a nice chilled drink.
"Locate Fan" – also seems vaguely plausible as a little joke by the production crew given the whole decimation thing, though if they think that there are 650 million-odd Whovians, at least on Earth, then they are a tad over-optimistic, methinks!
"Cane Float" - slightly worrying, given the implication that the little round flying robotic thingies in fact contain billions of clones of our dear Lucius!
"A Fat Clone" - kinda speaks for itself!
"Flea At Con" – obviously RTD has had a few… unsanitary experiences at Dr. Who conventions!
"Faecal Ton" – dear God, please let this not be a spoiler, PLEASE!

Oh, and whilst I’m under a Dr. Who spoiler-cut, I might as well stick with the subject. Just in case any of you aren’t aware of the original Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, you should probably click on that link before watching… The Doctor Who version:

Anyway, as this seems to be a rather media-based/cut-tag riddled post, I might as well just go with it. So, do you lot (those with Heike friended), remember that whole teenage twats crashing cars in a rather spectacular (read: upturned) manner outside our house thing from about a year ago? Well, summer seems to be the season for such things, as we had another rather dramatic car incident the other week. I was asleep at the time (around 4AM, I believe), though in a strange reversal of sleeping patterns, Heike wasn’t. Sitting in the lounge, minding her own business, probably looking up Harry/Snape porn which would cause my eyeballs to fall out in horror if I know her at all, she suddenly heard an almighty “boom”, rushed to the window and saw... yup, a car, this time right-way-up, but unfortunately rather, umm, pyre-y; sheets of flame, billowing black smoke, minor explosions – the works! The fire brigade (and police, as the odds are pretty good, given that there was no-one present at the scene 10 seconds after the big ‘boom’, that this was a case of beered-up rudeboys having some ‘fun’) arrived and put the fire out and Heike, being the t00by t00b that she is, chose this time, not when the fucker was still ablaze, to take some photos! I also popped out later in the morning and took a few of the… carcass! Probably worth a look -

Continuing the multimedia theme, as well as making sure that you don’t drop dead of shock at my not mentioning US politics in a post, I bring you

Oh, and whilst we’re at it, okay, I could go on at quite some considerable length on why I think that each and every declared or likely Republican candidate for ’08 is deeply, deeply flawed (and no, in case it needs to be said, I do not think that this can be inferred from the fact that they are Republicans; I may not agree with many Rupublican positions, but there are plenty of members of the party, both past and to a somewhat lesser but still significant degree present, who I simply disagree with but do not find flawed, crazy or just plain evil.) Indeed, I went through a bullet-point version of most of them with sexts a few weeks ago. However, I have to say that I really wasn’t expecting something like THIS (can't seem to get the direct link to the Boston Globe story to work from here, which is odd as it works perfectly well from the DailyKos page) For those who don’t fancy clicking, it’s an article on Mitt Romney (one of the four major Republican Candidates) going on a long (12 hours, I believe) drive to go on a holiday with his wife, five sons, their Irish Setter Seamus and a bunch of luggage. So, in case you haven’t figured out where this is going, it was obviously a tad cramped in their station wagon and something had to give. And by “give”, I mean be placed on the luggage rack on the roof of the car. So, three guesses on who/what got to spend 12 hours pelting down the highway strapped to the top of a fast-moving car; No, not one of the kids, he’s not quite that bad, but if you guessed Seamus the Setter, then you’d be right! Dear Fucking God! The twisted bastard strapped a dog-carrier to the roof rack and placed his dog in it. Okay, fair due to him, he did have the heart to construct a ‘wind-break’ to prevent the poor thing from being blinded by fast-moving stones and other debris from cars in front of him, but I’m not sure that that doesn’t in fact make the whole sordid affair even worse, as someone who can work out that this isn’t going to be very nice for the dog and rather than deciding, oh, I don’t know, to maybe strap the fucking luggage to the roof instead of the fucking dog is, well, not a very nice guy in my books. I’m not sure whether my books even have a term for someone whose reaction, an hour or two into the journey, to the poor thing having stress/fear-induced diarrhea all over itself and the roof of the car is to stop, hose the poor bugger down and then start off again (hint: wet fur and high winds make for an even less happy pooch, if that’s even possible at this point.) Just… holy fuck, people – this guy is a serious candidate. Urgh!

Anyway, I don’t want to leave you all with too much of a downer, so to finish off, here’s something rather more fun. Apparently, back in 1992 a crate of 29,000 “Friendly Floatees”, which would be brightly coloured Chinese-made rubber ducks, beavers, frogs and turtles (ie. bath toys), on a ship destined for Washington was washed overboard. The crate came apart and our intrepid bathtime friends were freed to swim across the seven seas. Oh, you think I’m exaggerating with the whole ‘seven seas’ thing, do you? Okay, I’m a geography nut, so I appreciate that the term is figurative, but taking it to mean ‘across the oceans of the world’, it’s entirely appropriate to use it! As you can see from the image in this article, two-thirds of them headed South and have visited all manner of places on the East Asian, Australian and South American coasts, whilst the other third went for broke and headed North. Yes, North, about as North as one can reasonably get via the sea, making their own version of the North-West Passage they went up North America, between Russia and Alaska, then across Northern Canada, Greenland and THE FRIGGIN’ ARCTIC, then back down past Iceland, across the USA’s Eastern Seaboard, before doing a U-Turn and making a beeline for the shores of these sceptred isles! Yup, the Friendly Floatees are heading for the beaches of the UK! I think that I love these things (though not in the ‘I wanna write Friendly Floatee slash’ – honest!) Anyway, those wishing for more info can find it here.

Right, now I really must fly, as I need to drop in at my doctor’s and then get into Central in time to get my hair cut. Seriously, folks, I believe that the last time I got my hair cut was going on for a year ago, and there’s no way in Hell that I’m going to be in the company of 10s of thousands of gay men in that state!

Edit : And oh-so-topically, given my talking both about exploding cars and heading into Central London later-on, it appears that a car-bomb was defused in Picadilly Circus earlier this morning. Le sigh!

A rather dichotomous post.

2007-06-07T09:24:43Z

So, the lovely starcrossedgirl, whom most of you know, should be getting her final results/degree-classification this afternoon – around 16:00ish, to be more precise.

If, as I very strongly assume, she’s in line to get either a 1st or a high 2:1 then sometime around nowish she’ll be reading off her name from a list of students asked to perform a viva, which’ll occur sometime in the afternoon before the results are finalised and posted. Edit : Okay, just after completing the draft of this post, Heike rang to inform me that she does indeed have one and that it’ll be at midday.

I just wanted to ask those of you who know her to keep your fingers crossed and send a quick good thought her way, as I can think of no-one more deserving, academically or personally, of doing well in this. Oh, and to be prepared to pop virtual bottles of e-champagne *knocks on wood* in her general direction when she posts with today’s results later on, as I expect she will. I, being the ~~alcoholic~~ romantic that I am, have the real thing waiting in the fridge!

Anyway, I was thinking last night about what else to pad this post with and had come up with a few ideas, but all were lighthearted and aside from the above Heike-related stuff, I’m really no longer feeling lighthearted in the least. Why? Well, on account of reading an Amnesty International Report[PDF] detailing 39 instances of ‘forced disappearance’ in the War on Terrah. Okay, that alone wouldn’t have floored me quite as much as is the case, had it not been for pages 18 and 19 of the report. Those are the pages which detail “Detention of family members of detainees, including children.” Most specifically, it’s the parts detailing the capture, detention and interrogation of the 7-year-old and 9-year-old sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They were picked up in September 2002 and detained and interrogated (I shan’t go into the sketchy details of how, as whilst I’m personally inclined to believe it, the source for this part of the information seems possibly unreliable) in Pakistan until their father was captured six months later. They were then transferred to the USA “for questioning about their father’s activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States” American authorities and the CIA have given conflicting accounts of whether they in fact did this – sometimes confirming it, sometimes denying it. Regardless, from what I can tell, they’re still, to use the parlance of South American state terrorism in the ‘70s & ‘80s, disappeared. Five years later. Edit : Indeed, according the article on this in The Guardian, The two boys have not been seen by family members since they were detained in Pakistan almost five years ago.

As I implied above, I’m somewhat inured to this sort of thing - heck, whilst I’m affected and angered by injustices and harm being done to people (bleeding-heart liberal and proud of it), I’m also, rather paradoxically, in other respects, a rather hard, pragmatic bastard at the same time. Hell, I remember seeing, in separate incidents, someone decapitated, another person crushed, a couple of people with their heads split open - and all of those occurred when I was still a teenager and none of them, unpleasant as they were, shook me too badly. I can sit through footage from Nazi concentration camps and, whilst horrified at what happened, rationally accept it. I’ve mildly freaked friends out by being able to casually sit down to dinner whilst a live autopsy is being performed on TV and, back in my more active days in fandom, used to, I believe, be known as rather ‘unsquickable’. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m neither squeamish, unrealistically idealistic nor do I tend to get floored by things easily and I’m so not one of the ‘won’t someone think of the children’ types, and whilst many things I’ve read in relation to recent goings on in America (and elsewhere) have angered, surprised and saddened me, the various details of this one have really, really shaken me.

God, I’m so sick, so bloody fucking sick of learning about shit like this and then wondering what’s next. Wondering when the ~~other~~ next shoe is going to drop and seeing little or nothing done about it.

Lemurs, tropical storms, cubism, dwarf-flinging, monkeys, nude pools, beatings, God & Sodomobiles

2007-06-05T09:07:45Z

So, as I’m still re-acclimatising to LJ and am somewhat fearful of sending everyone heading for the hills, for today’s post I shall return to one of my more listy offerings, as opposed to the marathonesque expositions I’ve made recently!

So, where to start? Well, personal stuff seems a good bet. It was my father’s birthday yesterday – yes, my father was born on the day before both primroseburrows and Draco Malfoy (both of whom get huge shout-outs, naturally!), just sayin’! I spoke with my parents on the phone and on MSN which was all kinds of fun. As per usual, strange stories from the Land of Smiles abound. Probably the most unusual was that a few weeks ago, our dogs went nuts and were barking at a tree. Nothing unusual there, but Mum went out to have a look, figuring that it was either a snake or the mongoose which hangs around our garden. Imagine her surprise when the branches parted and a Ring-Tailed Lemur emerged staring at her. It ambled down the tree, checked her out for a while and then headed back up again. Now, those of you inquisitive enough to click the link or unnaturally knowledgeable about zoology will be aware that they are an IUCN red-list endangered species, only found in Madagascar! How, then, did my Mum see one, given that she got a good look at it and was certain, upon seeing photos of them, that that was indeed what it was? Well, after some research it appears that a crate of them were on their way from Madagascar to Phuket Zoo on December 26th 2004 – yup, the date of the Tsunami. The Thai authorities said that all the lemurs were ‘accounted for’, but that’s the Thai authorities for you! Sadly there will be no more updates on this front, as they moved for the first time since 1995 shortly afterwards on account of an “aluminium factory” and a blacksmith opening up nearby – dealing with the noise from the karaoke bar and unregistered home-run laundry was bearable, these newer additions to the neighbourhood less so!

Talking of Asian affairs, Tropical Cylone Gonu, which would be a Cat. 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale if said scale were used in the area of the Arabian Sea, is on its way to Oman at the moment, due to make landfall in around 14 hours or so. Whilst it's likely to drop off in intensity somewhat prior to hitting the coast, it will still likely be a truly exceptional storm for the region.

Moving back closer to home, I assume that most of you have seen the London 2012 Olympics’ Logo - it honestly defies description, explanation or for that matter, sanity. About all I can say is that I’m in complete agreement with those saying that if we’re going down this path, we might as well go all the way and choose that goatse-inspired logo which was submitted to the BBC. Seriously, London2012, ‘but why has all the style gone?’

Moving swiftly on, I have a few offerings from syndicated feeds on my flist, of which I have a truly awesome selection. Seriously, folks, you know you're onto something good when you can read your flist and find post informing you that “Dwarf-flinging void is larger than thought”, that “Cogitating monkeys can calculate statistics” (seriously, better them than I), that “Spanish town votes in Elvis flares and nude pool” and finally that “Indian lawyers tie man to tree, beat him!” On that final front, does anyone know whether we can hire those guys and sic ‘em on SixApart?

On a, hopefully, unrelated front, I see that my reappearance on LJ has obviously prompted God to return to us. Verily, the_pantheon is back – happy day! Oh, and for anyone wondering about the timing, I am categorically not behind It – just a big fan!

In considerably more sombre news, though peripherally related to the above via the topic of divinity, today the US casualty count in Iraq will very likely reach and excced 3500. Within a week, judging by current trends, the UK will experience its 150th casualty. As for Iraqis, well, sadly there's simply no way to know, as the Iraqi government, at the urging of the US government, is refusing to publish their own civilian casualty figures, but if that report in the Lancet was accurate, the current figure has to be somewhere around the three-quarters of a million mark. Yeah, not really much more that can be said than that.

And in related news, I discovered a wonderful new word today. Ladies, Gentlemen and whatever the hell else is reading my posts, I present to you “Kakistocracy, “rule by the least-able or least-principled of citizens, is a form of government in which the people least qualified to control the government are the people who control the government.” Three guesses which particular government I thought of upon learning of the term, and the first two don’t count!

Righty-ho, that’s your lot for now. I’m off to try and tackle, at some point today, the 18-month backlog on friendings and unfriendings and such *suits-up and goes to user-info* However, before I do, I shall leave you with the complete and utter joy that is...

If you’ve ever wanted to see Fred Phelps (of the Westboro Baptist Church and godhatesfags.com infamy) and his cult confronted with and indeed routed by Michael Moore, a dozen queers and “sixteen thousand pounds of hot-pink steel and fibreglass straddling a chop-shop customised Ford slant six diesel engine – THE SODOMOBILE!”, this is the youtube clip for you!

A mixed bag... No, not in that sense, perverts! SixApart, torture, slavery & sexual brokenness!

2007-06-02T09:33:53Z

So, to start with fandomish matters, it appears that SixApart has addressed the issues I discussed in my last post (which itself was about their addressing the issues discussed in the post before it – what fun!) and stated that they’ll indeed be reviewing their procedures for suspending journals and dealing with reports of TOS-violations, etc. Okay, they haven’t explicitly stated that they’ll make their findings on that public so that we can weigh in on them ourselves, but from the way they’ve reacted thus far, I’d expect that they will in fact do so.

I shan’t say that the incident hasn’t left a rather bitter taste, nor that it hasn’t harmed my opinion of SA – or, more accurately, confirmed it, but their response to the brewing shitstorm seems to have been along the right lines. Indeed, with this latest post, if they indeed do what they say and imply in it, hopefully there will be some protection against this happening again, either to us, or perhaps at this point more importantly (as we’ve demonstrated that as a pan-fandom entity we can look after ourselves pretty well), to some smaller group. The time to pop those champagne corks is indeed upon us, but personally I’m still not going to offer SixApart any! On the other hand, I now don’t have any major qualms about renewing my paid-account status or the userpics add-on, so breath a sigh of relief, people, I may continue to spam you, but not with the same 6 damned icons at any rate!

Okay, onto non-fannish matters! I stall steer clear of personal stuff for fear of prompting either boredom, despair or just plain madness in whichever crazy hangers-on are still reading.

In fact, as I mentioned in my back-from-the-dead post a few days ago, whilst I haven’t been up to all that many interesting things of late, I have, however, been hanging around interesting places. Namely, American Progressive blogs. I figured that I might just get away with making the odd post about that sort of stuff over here without you lot lynching me, but I wasn’t really sure what, where nor even when (go on, make a joke on ‘how’ – should be easy enough!) However, I saw some people on starcrossedgirl’s flist posting about the ‘news’ that the US’ torture policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and wherever the hell else they’re doing it were indeed planned (read: reverse-engineered from the military SERE programs to prepare soldiers for the worst of the sort of stuff they expected the Russians/Chinese/Vietnamese/Koreans would use on them.) I put the apostrophes around “news”, as this information has been available for a while, IIRC, and I’d figured that it was public-knowledge, but I guess not. Anyway, I was thinking about expounding upon this, but hey, then something more interesting came up.

Indeed, you know that ~~embassy~~ fortress they’re building in Iraq? The fuck-off huge one that’s larger than the Vatican (and consequently can be described quite literally as the size of a small country)? Indeed, the largest and most expensive embassy complex in the world? This... thing best described by someone at DailyKos as “one part prison, one part crusader castle, one part communist era apartment block” and all parts ugly as sin – seriously, click the link to see a smallish section of the ugly bugger. Well, I noticed that it’s being discussed of late in stories similar to those reported a year ago. Namely, that the only reason that the ~$600m project is the only on-schedule and under-budget thing going on in Iraq (or seemingly in America, either – see : New Orleans et. al.) is that the fucker is being built using slave labour I was going to go on a screed about this and how, given that the last (okay, debatable) time you guys brought up the whole slavery thing it led to a civil war and divisions which still permeate your society – I was even going to reference our friend Sue, the Warrior™, with her confederate-flag-draped site – see, I had it all figured out.

But then an even better opportunity came along. Something which seemed so much more appropriate to mention over here. Yes, folks, the Dude In The Whitehouse is seemingly taking notice of us icky queers again! And not in the ‘does anyone know who exactly that gay prostitute who was visiting the White House a while back was actually seeing?’ sort of way, oh no! In the ‘Bush appointed a Witch Doctor to be US Surgeon General’ sort of way. Okay, he’s not a witch doctor per se, but he founded charming places like Hope Springs, which, amongst other things, “Offers an opportunity for men to heal from sexual brokenness and find strength to overcome unhealthy sexual behaviours” and has a history of making statements to this effect. That’s right, folks - George, just before the start of June, traditionally Gay Pride Month, installed one of those nutjobs who thinks many of those reading this and the person writing it are ‘sexually broken’ (which would be an amusing phrase in another context) and that homosexuality can be and should be “cured” as, to quote the White House’s own press-release, “America's chief health educator.” Of course, this just follows in the grand tradition of appointing a hardcore anti birth-control activist to head the family planning programme or any number of other examples, but, well, it’s kind of a pisser, eh?

I’m not sure quite what the reasoning is, from placating his evangelical voter base which has been giving him a kicking lately over the Immigration bill, to distracting the Democrats from going after Gonzalez, Rove, Cheney or himself with crap like this, to the frightening possibility that he really considers this nut the best person for the job or maybe it’s just that there are more than a few people in the administration who could use his ‘curative’ powers. Regardless, I think that we should consider putting our writing-hats on and come up with some Surgeon General slash to mail to the White House!

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

2007-05-31T12:22:03Z

My referencing the late Dr. King in the title of this post serves (at least in my addled and deluded brain) a dual purpose.

Firstly, to quote a slightly weirder source, namely Sweet from BtVS’s “Once More With Feeling”, “Big smiles, everyone. You beat the bad guy.” Yup, Barak Berkowitz, Chairman & CEO of SixApart (see image near end of post), has announced, albeit in a rather equivocatory manner, that SA has recognised that they screwed up in dealing with this and that they’re in the process of reviewing the suspended accounts. According to him “wherever appropriate we will restore these journals or communities before 12 noon PDT.” – the journals/comms in question are the “unfortunate number of cases these journals were suspended for easily correctable problems in their profiles.”

Whilst we should obviously hold back on popping the champagne until we actually see the journals come back online, this is also obviously good news.

However, at the risk of interjecting a cautionary note into proceedings (read: crapping in the punch bowl), I come to the other reason I quoted the good Dr. King. Namely that, whilst his and others’ actions in the sixties (and before) finally managed to get the ball rolling on civil rights, that was, as any of you in the USA today are aware, hardly the end of the story. Plenty of people will argue, rightly or wrongly, that even now minorities of all sorts in the USA, decades after the CRM and Kennedy and those who followed him's laws, are in fact still not really ‘free at last’. Symbols of victory are great and good and fun, but don’t necessarily mean that all is now hunky dory and perfect, or even acceptable.

Okay, this issues is very bloody obviously not even close to being in the same league as the CRM, so I shall switch metaphors to a more appropriate context; I think that, to quote yet another interesting sort, “constant vigilance” might well be the order of the day. Or at any rate, the order of tomorrow.

How come? Well, as has been noted elsewhere many times, this incident did not come out of the blue – it’s part of a trend. As you all know, I haven’t been around for an age and a day, but even from my distance (read: being told what’s going on by the lovely starcrossedgirl), I’ve heard snippets of stuff about LJ goings on. SixApart buying them out. The addition of those “plus” (read: advertising-sponsored) accounts. That whole Nipplegate thing about breastfeeding icons.

I’m quite sure, given that I’ve heard of all of those and more without even being on LJ much if at all, there are more than a few other examples of dodgy practise which have occurred since SixApart took over and I was last on LJ.

What’s more, for the most part we gave them the benefit of the doubt (be it because what they were doing seemed halfway justifiable/reasonable or be it because it didn’t directly affect us) in such cases. IMHO That Needs to Stop From Here on in! To my thinking, LJ/SA have used up all their outs at this point. This fiasco may well have been a “screw up” and barakb25 may well be “mortified”, but none of that particularly matters if this is in fact merely part of a trend.

Reading Barak’s post, I’m rather taken by both the tone and the content. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very (provisionally) happy with the outcome, but reading between the lines, the post seems to me to be rather “Oh, noes! Don’t blame poor little us. Just an innocent mistake! Never happen again! Pwoommiisse, cute little blog people.” More importantly, I see nothing about how they’ll avoid situations like this in the future. He does say “We are trying to walk a fine line between our love of free speech and our desire to protect children and others. The vast majority of these issues are clear but there will be time we make the wrong call, we will try hard to correct our mistakes faster and not make them on such a big scale but I’m sure we will make them.” However, for me, that really isn’t anywhere near good enough.

We may well have won this battle, but don't kid yourself that the war is over. SA has demonstrated, as I said, on multiple occasions now, that they're absolute wimps - appeasers of the worst kind (albeit in a context where such things aren't exactly life & death matters, but on principle, I stick to the point) - this will happen again. I don't know where, nor when, and the next time may very well not involve any of us, but it behoves us to take this experience onboard and be on the lookout for the next such incident and the ones after that. It probably won't be us next time, but after that? And after that?

What I would much prefer to hear from barakb25 is that SixApart is/will be looking into modifying their procedures for dealing with this sort of thing to avoid “screwups” like this from happening again, and more importantly, that they will report back to us on the results of these enquiries and their conclusions. Frankly, I’m not very satisfied with an ‘awww, shucks, that’s the way it goes, but we’ll try real good not to screw up this big again’ – I want to know how they’re going to do so. I want to know this so that I don’t feel like we’re being fobbed off and have no idea whether they will actually change anything or not. I want to know this so that we can come back with feedback on their proposals to actually ensure that things do change and this actually is less likely to happen in the future. I expect neither perfection, nor infallibility. However, I do expect competence and consideration, at least I do when I (well not currently due to not being around, but in the past and likely in the future) and others are paying people for it, and I don’t see either of those things in SixApart’s response, merely more CYAing.

As I said before folks, we’re dealing with a corporation here, and that means that all they care about (in fact, IIRC, if SA is publicly listed in the USA – not sure if it is - all they are legally allowed to care about) is getting a good return for their stockholders on their investment plus not breaking the law. That’s it. If in future they feel that they’re going to get bad PR due to some other nutty bunch, they’ll appease them. Perhaps, in light of this, not if it’ll affect very large portions of their user-base, but if it’s just a few or a few hundred disparate individuals involved, they’ll go all Neville Chamberlain on someone’s arse unless given a strong incentive not to and procedures are in place to moderate their actions. Frankly, a might-makes-~~right~~safety sorta’ place isn’t exactly where I’m comfortable hanging out.

In closing, what I guess I’m saying is that it’d be good if, before we disband this little bandwagon, we use its collective muscle to try and get SA to offer us some sort of explanation of what they’re going to do, what policies and procedures they will implement, to avoid this happening again, either to us or some other bunch of poor sods. Actually, for that matter, I’d say that it'd be a good idea to keep the journals and groups and thoughts we’ve cobbled together to respond to this mess in place, just in case we need them sometime in the future so that we can hit the ground running next time.

Anyway, as I hate to see a ~~good~~ decidedly dodgy photoshopping wasted (and as I said, I think that the reminder’s still valid), I shall put here the image I knocked up this morning shortly before the all-clear sirens went off. Playing the part of Neville Chamberlain’s face is our very own barakb25 - for those not up on their late 1930s international politics, an explanation of the context of the image can be found here

Any similarity between the appearance of Barak!Chamberlain and John Spenser, the West Wing actor who played Leo, is entirely accidental!

Fandom, can’t I leave you alone for 15 minut... umm... months?

2007-05-30T17:46:20Z

Ill met by wanklight, foul Fandomya!

Better stop with the misquotation there, as it appears that there are indeed quite a few ‘Fairies skipping hence’ and for that matter, forswearing the bed and company of LJ isn’t looking too extreme an idea right now.

For those strange, weird, unnatural and just plain freaky “normal” people reading this who have no idea what I’m on about (well, the subset who don’t automatically take that in their stride as par for the course), LJ’s lawyers are, to quote my newly tweaked bio, “moronic, incompetent, feckless wimps deserving of ridicule.” More specifically, the “Warriors for ~~Nonsense~~ Innocence” have descended upon LJ, asking them to please, pretty please protect the children. LJ (or should that be SixApart these days – seems so) has done precisely nada to protect anyone or anything except their bottom-line. How-so? Umm, folks, even deleting the few ‘real’ paedophile/incest/rape communities which got hit doesn’t do jack shit to help these peoples’ possible, potential or even real victims, as SixApart’s actions merely act as a tip-off that someone’s onto them and that hiding and going underground might be a good idea. A good idea for them, that is – probably not such a good thing for prospective victims, though.

Heck, they’re not even (so far, at any rate) making an effort to find communities related to this unless they list the activity as an interest – sounds like CYA, smells like CYA - well by God, it is just them Covering their Asses. Indeed, they’re CYAing so much that they’re talking about other interests besides incest, paedophilia and rape(third paragraph of post). Seriously, folks, think this doesn’t affect you? How about the fact that they’ve already suspended a community dedicated to analysis of Nabokov’s works? RPG journals not even expressing the views of real entities – gone too. How about that they talk of expanding their suspension criteria to other crimes/bad-behaviour? How about that there’s no guarantee (heck, as I’ll mention later, I very much suspect the opposite) that our Nonsense Warriors will be the last group to try something like this. Folks, I’m interested in, amongst far too many other things, sociopathic psychology and serial killers – it’s in my interest list and I’m somewhat concerned about that being a liability now. What have or might you have to be worried about, on your lists or off?

Indeed, what these actions do protect is SixApart. Specifically, it protects SixApart’s profits (albeit in an extremely myopic sense.)

No, it doesn’t (warning, IANAL but I can put two and two together) protect SixApart in any realistic legal sense, as “legal”, by my understanding, describes things which could be brought before a judicial system and, potentially, lead to a conviction. Okay, a court might give SixApart a rap on the knuckles over the ‘real’ paedophile, etc. communities but I’d think that any proceeding involving examining the use of “incest” or “chan” as an interest in a community where all other interests, the entire info page and indeed every single post in said community relate purely to specific fictional works would very quickly be laughed out of court, probably with a note along the lines of ‘please stop wasting our time with this – we have more than enough real criminals to deal with.’

SixApart, however, through their actions is protected. How? Well, by avoiding increasing their legal liabilities (and thus lawyers’ fees). Oh, and nipping in the bud a threat to their profits and PR by being called a hideout for Evil ~~Paediatricians~~ ~~Pedofiles~~... umm... MONSTERS and losing prospective/current users.

You see, folks, whilst I haven’t been around fandom much this past year and a half, I have been sating my inclinations for online weirdness by hanging out on politically-orientated sites – principally ones orientated towards American politics.

Why mention this? Well, because if there’s one thing, one single thing which I’ve learned from said sites (a dicey proposition, given the state of my brain these days), it’s that framing matters, indeed, in some respects, it’s sometimes the only thing which does – well, along with money. How is this pertinent? Well, IMHO, it seems that in responding to this, we should firstly, drop absolutely any pretence that these actions have any relation to protecting poor little kiddies. As I said above, they don’t – if anything, they have the potential to do quite the opposite. Fighting against a Moral ~~Majority~~ ~~Minority~~ Assortment of Batshit Crazy Loons is rather difficult if you, in your responses, in any way buy into the idea that their so-called morality is valid or viable. Particularly if you’re not protected by the majority of free-speech laws, as is the case here given that SixApart is a private company. Trying to argue whether it’s worth ditching the comms/users/reputation to save kiddies is a losing proposition – you’re unlikely to change anyone’s mind over that, it’s the sort of thing people don’t often budge from. Hence, you challenge, nay, change the premise of the discussion to something more advantageous to your side.

Secondly, talk with SixApart in their language. When SA bought LJ, people were worried that all this corporation would care about is their bottom-line – heads up folks, that is all they care about. Consequently, telling them that they’re making you an oppressed, sad little lonely internet-nerd isn’t likely to do jack shit. They’re in this to make money, in this case by avoiding losing money, more specifically through loss of actual and potential users through bad PR and legal fees. How does one get them to consider your views in this equation? Inform them that they’re going to lose more money by not taking your side - seriously, folks, I’ve no idea how many fandomers there are, nor how many are interested in topics possibly misconstrued as ‘deviant’, nor how many would be prepared to hurt SixApart (read: no more paying for accounts, prepared to leave completely, badmouth them to other bloggers etc., etc.) over this, but someone – make that a collective of someones, should be finding out, if they want to combat this and to wit, don’t rabbit-on about all the things about this which annoy you. Focus as much as possible on things which may be effective. No talking to SixApart or even the Warriors themselves about how annoying and self-righteous, etc., they are, unless it’ll be effective in getting us what we are out for. Also, I’d advise against relying on petitions and the like to get SixApart’s attention. All it takes to make a petition is to persuade people to spend 3 seconds signing, electronically, their name on a list with no indication how likely they/you are to follow-through on their/your displeasure/threats. That doesn’t show much commitment to this cause for SixApart to take notice of or be frightened of. Good old fashioned letter-writing campaigns do that, or likely somewhat less effective, fax-writing or even e-mailing if need be. Obviously the best thing we could do is picket their corporate HQ and invite the press, but I’m trying to at least somewhat limit myself to the realms of possibility, so letter-writing it is. Getting a letter that someone has themselves taken the time and expense to craft, write and post sends a better message of commitment to this than a name on a petition. Getting hundreds, or more to the point thousands of them, well, that usually gets attention. You can throw in a petition in addition to this, to add more weight, but it’s the letters which do the heavy-lifting!

Thirdly, Give ‘em an out. SixApart aren’t interested in being on anyone’s side here apart from their own, so, given that you’ve done the above reframing and let them know how and why they’re going to get hurt by their current course more than they’re ‘helped’, be prepared to enter into dialogue with them about how to come to an equitable solution for everyone.

As I said, SixApart don’t care about anything but their profits. Warriors for Nonsense don’t seem to care about our silly communities, only bashing actual paedophiles/rapists/incestyness, as publicly stated on their site and responses to us. Fandomers don’t care about anything except being allowed to pursue their harmless and fictional activities in peace. Now, if SixApart is forced to recognise a threat to their profits, they might be more inclined to spend the time and therefore money to manually look through the deleted journals and re-instate the ones relating to 100% purely fictional contents (which is all fandom’s really after) if, and only if, as our Warrior foes have in fact explicitly stated, the Innocence crew will not cause any waves, legal, PR or otherwise, over such communities – SixApart need only be persuaded that it’s as such in their interest to act in this way and that doing so will not open them up to any significant costs or potential costs greater than that of the manpower needed to check out the dozens of deleted communities.

What precise steps are required to do this? Well, I’m a lazy sod and out of practice at strategising and rabble-rousing these days – dear Lord, am I out of practice at that, but there are many, many fandomers who are wonderful at and very much inclined to do so – a few are even on my flist, hence my posting suggestions/calls-to-arms. bookshop, heidi8, malachan, anatsuno, from Heike's flist cordelia_v posted along some of the lines I talk about here, and there probably others on my flist and definitely many, many more off of it who are all talking about how to combat this (as opposed to just expressing annoyance at it), and you’re all very, very capable individuals from my experience/memories, each with very useful skills to bring to dealing with this – my only suggestion, aside from those listed above, would be to make sure that you co-ordinate your efforts behind an understood shared strategy and present a united front. Individually SixApart can deal with you, but collectively... well, okay, let’s not get carried away, collectively SixApart might still ignore us, but I’d say our chances are somewhat better!

Come on, folks, let’s not get our asses handed to us by a bunch of people like Sue (not going to link to a user-owned domain like www.warriorsforinnocence.org where they can check visitor stats from here right now so the ringleader's blog'll have to do), the person seemingly principally behind these Warriors, and her views - and more importantly, whoever follows her/them after this bunch of clowns has left. Seriously, folks, there are a lot of crazies out there, all with their own pet causes – you let one win and you pretty much set up a sign above your head saying “Free Eats Here” – do you really think that Sue, whose site is plastered with the following crap, and the hoards of her ilk are likely to, in their entirety, stop at what’s already been done? :

“ I am Patriotic to the core, fighting for those who can't defend themselves, and helping out wherever I can. Persistence, determination, never ending vigilance. This is what I am.”

All images & text from Sue, the Warrior for Innocence’s, site.
As I mentioned at the top of this gargantuan post, I’ve been hanging out on American progressive political sites and have consequently come across dealings with a fair cross-section of self-righteous nuts with causes along these lines, with sites like Sue’s and the Warriors’, and as for whether I think she, her group and all the other groups like it will stop at what they’ve already ‘achieved’, well, personally, I don’t! Time to act, folks, and act collectively, cohesively and purposefully – either that, or time to move.

Ps. As I said, I've not been on LJ for ages and am just getting back into the saddle and relearning the ropes, hence I've probably missed a bunch of your and others' posts on this. Plus, I typed this up this morning and had to go out before I could post it, hence, if all the bits in this have been mentioned elsewhere, sorry for the pain of slogging through it all again in my own inimitable (read : horribly verbose) style. Just wanted to add my voice to the baying hoards and maybe make a useful suggestion/pointer or two!

PPs. Though, as I said, I'm not current on what's being done and I'm not sure if the following are centralised efforts, I'll link anyway : begin to Stand Up And Be Counted and for that matter, Let your financial contributions to LJ be counted too - if these are co-ordinated, centralised efforts already then all the better, if not, well, the responses can always be collated into the 'official' ones if and when they are made! *Rushes off again*

Err...

2006-01-20T16:30:03Z

Yeah, haven't felt much like being around on LJ much recently - personal reasons, yadda, yadda, yadda.

However, I kinda felt that I should make a brief appearance to point out to those who are interested that there's a sodding whale swimming down the Thames at the moment. The BBC has streaming coverage here (top-right corner) - I'm seriously considering heading down there to check it out, as it's been aaaagggeeesss since I last saw one and I kinda like 'em.

Oh, and William Shatner's selling a kidney stone for charity...

Anyone looking for links between the two, well, Shatner's a tad overweight...

2006

2006-01-01T00:00:04Z

That's right, 2005, you lost the staring contest - you'd better fucking run, you sniveling, miserable, shitty excuse for a year.

Happy New Year, folks! Hope it's staring off rockin' for ya and that it brings you whatever you're wishing for - as long as it's ~~good~~ not fatal for you!

Blonde On Blonde by Bob Dylan and Get Yer Ya-Yas Out by The Rolling Stones.
♥

Ummm...

2005-12-30T21:49:42Z

Another episode of Heike and Greg's bedroom adventures.

starcrossedgirl : I hate my twat!
starcrossedgirl : *Puts ear to petulans' chest* I can hear your heart thumpa-thumpa! *Puts head on other side of chest* I can hear it there too! They're both working perfectly!
petulans : Timelord, bitch¹!
starcrossedgirl : Ooh, that turned me on!

¹ : I have informed Heike and maintain that (to try and remain spoiler-free) when the Doctor said "Timelord!" to the Sycorax leader near the end, he's so mentally adding ", bitch!" to it.

Also, WTF, people? In the past week or so I've read about like 10 of your computers which have upped and gone all weird on you *backs up system state in case is next*

Oohhh, the above paragraph reminds me that I forgot to post the opening paragraph of my last post. I tend to jot things down in notepad and then try and hack them into something vaguely resembling cohesion and often fail, however, not usually to the tune of forgetting to copy & paste the opening paragraph. However, as it was about Newtonian and Quantum Mechanics, changing values of the Fine Structures 'Constant, the specific gravity of Mercury (element, not planet!) viral epizoology and replacing corrupted XP registry hives, it was perhaps a blessing in disguise that I didn't post it!

Also, I've just watched two friends who are over attempt to crack a walnut using... their heads. For 5 minutes.

Anyway, today I'm in a Bob Marley kinda mood, so you're getting Kaya and Babylon By Bus! It's Bob Marley, man - what more do I need to say?

Umm... I'd say more about the albums, but I think that I just heard one of the friends who are over talking to their boyfriend about having sex in our bath, so I should probably go and... umm... sort that situation out before it devolves into, umm, something.

I'll be a rock 'n' rollin' bitch for you!

2005-12-29T20:53:25Z

So, what's been up? Well, whilst I was happy to find that Star Trek(TOS) beat out Buffy, Friends and Fawlty Towers in a recent poll over what series UK TV viewers would most like to see brought back, I wasn't impressed that The Guardian's online article on it began "Dr Spock, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise are the characters most people want to see return to their TV screens, according to a survey of most missed programmes." Answers regarding what's wrong with their fact-checking should be sent... oh, come on, surely everyone knows this one, right?

Watched that Great Big Quiz thingy last night. The result of this was my realising that I frankly know more than is good for me about current-affairs. I'm going to have to stop watching/reading news all the fucking time - it's making me bloody boring! However, I did find that I'd somehow missed the Spazz wheelchair - surely viral marketing taken to its logical conclusion, right? I simply can't see any other reason for calling it that.

I also rather want one of these for New Years...

Today brings us The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. It's a glammy, psychedelic, brilliant, gloomy exploration of, well, gloom, doom, hopelessness - oh, yeah, and of Ziggy himself, Bowie's androgynous, pansexual, romantic, drugged-up, peace'n'love alien rock star persona and his doomed attempts to enlighten humanity through Rock and Roll and avert the destruction of the world, at least partly through cross-dressing! Come on, this album led to Bob Marley's son renaming himself to Ziggy Marley - that's a pretty bloody strong endorsement. Plus, y'know, OMFG, Do. Me. Now., Ziggy (the Bowie persona, not Ziggy Marley, though thinking about it...)! This is the 1990 reissue with a few bonus tracks at the end - accordingly, I've put .m3u playlists for both the reissue and the original album in the .zip file.

*Wanders off to drink the fucking gorgeous raspberry, banana and orange juice smoothie Heike just made*

Ziggy plllaaaayyyeedddd Guuuiiiiiiiitaaaaaaaaaaaar!