I know a lot of people were horrified at the oblivious teenies in the ICH comments, but man, OF COURSE there were going to be oblivious teenies. For all that the ICH commenting population has changed over the past couple years, that is still a community full of teenage girls, and no one can deny the existence of misogyny like teenage girls can deny the existence of misogyny. I can't even blame them that much. The more you can convince yourself that men don't hate women, the less horrible you'll have to feel about it.

The truth is, I'm just thrilled by how seriously smacked down they were. I love the ICH mods like nothing in this world, and I love everyone who commented in that post, and I ADORE every teenie who commented to be like "um jsyk gaskarth you should probably kill yourself~". HEARTS HEARTS HEARTS. There aren't that many places on the internet that aren't explicitly marked as feminist that would still have a conversation like that.

(Context is for people who don't stalk the shit out of Pete Wentz)

anyway, ATL are still assholes who make bad music.

So my life is really boring right now, to the point that this morning I literally wrote an LJ entry about my skin, and now I kind of can't believe I'm actually going to post it. ( NOT AN INTERESTING POST )

LOOK, EITHER I DON'T POST OR I POST ABOUT SHIT LIKE THIS.

Flist, I've... I've met someone. I think what we have is really special, and I'd like to tell you about our love. Let me introduce you to my new boyfriend, ( ♥Reza Aslan♥ )

I'm making the call from that poll that the best night for the majority of people to do dinner is two weeks from this coming Saturday, July 11! I'll email you with directions and so on when it gets closer. And start menu planning now. \o/

I was basically just angry and confrontational last night, and I don't think that I contributed anything useful to the conversation. So today, I will contribute some things that people apparently don't know that they may find very useful!

1. <lj-cut text="Spoilery warning under the cut"> or <a href="link to backdated post">Spoilery warning</a>

2. Grey text with a grey background, easily highlighted: <span style="color:#666;background-color:#666;">warning goes here</span> (ETA: this code is more considerate of people who use screenreaders.)

3. Rot13, a simple cypher which allows you to scramble text and provide a link back to descramble it: http://www.rot13.com/

There are other ways, but these are some of the best I know of.

I am so revolted by what I'm seeing going on in the warnings wank (specifically, here). I'm sorry, but I find it absolutely disgusting to turn a conversation about what we do as a largely female community to protect each other from making the trauma inflicted on rape survivors worse than it already is into a conversation about how mean it is to ask an author to do anything they didn't feel like doing in the first place. I wouldn't even bother commenting about this except that some people I have huge respect for, who have made brilliant, thoughtful, fascinating posts about racism and sexism, are coming off like fpb and I literally do not understand how this can be the case. HOW IS THIS HAPPENING.

You're offended that someone asked you to spoil your story by including a warning? Gee, I can't imagine how you could possibly work around that with cut text, white font, or a link. We're a community of women. We are a COMMUNITY of WOMEN. We have responsibilities to each other to not be as terrible to each other as the rest of the world invariably is. Making a conversation about how best to do that into a conversation about the delicate feelings of the person who crafted their fanfic into a perfect work of glorious art is flat-out offensive. Sure, talk about how to come up with a better spectrum of terms for dubcon, that's fine. But if you want to tell the person who wrote this post (Warning: Very explicit discussion of sexual assault and the nature, anatomy, cause & effect of triggers. Is itself triggery) that you just don't see how you're going to avoid having to warn for out-of-character consumption of apples in your next fic, I don't even want to know you.

If anyone comments to this post to tell me to watch my tone I am going to smack them in the face. Don't tell me this is the internet and that is impossible. I will find a way.

ETA: alternatively, here is a kitten!

ETA2: Feel free to comment on this post, but be aware that A) I am likely not to respond, and B) this post is an articulation of an emotional response to what I see as harm and injustice, and if you take it to a theory/logic place, I will find it insulting and dismissive.

So I kept Twittering about this because honestly what else is Twitter for, but I thought I should inform LJ about my day at the Philadelphia airport! And I use the term 'day' advisedly, because I got there at 12:11 and my flight left at 6:15. There kept being delays <----- Okay, LJ, I wrote this last night, saved the draft, and went off to do something else, and in the cold light of day I realize it would have been an incredibly boring post. Basically every sentence would end "and then I drank wine" so I think I'll skip it. FYI if you're ever stuck in PHL and want some delicious but expensive wine tastings and snacks, check out Vino Volo.

I started my course today (ughhh physics) and I have to say, as little as I like mornings, spending 9-12 drinking coffee in a classroom and then getting out for the day is so far making me crazy productive. Bills: PAID. Emails: SENT. Phone calls: MADE. Flights: BOOKED. (I'm coming to beach weekend at Wildwood, my darlings! I cannot wait!!!) On the other hand, I have peed three times since getting home, so maybe slightly less coffee tomorrow.

This week's fandom roulette has landed on: Babylon 5 (started watching from the beginning), Harry Potter (reading epic Harry/Draco with great nostalgia), classic literature (reading Waugh, Faulkner, and Dickens, and browsing all the way back through the archives of this site), and Chris Pine/Zach Quinto (they sure are cute when they talk about vocabulary).

I'm sitting in a room that hasn't been usable in almost a year that is finally cleaned out. It's like a whole new world right in my own apartment. *____*

Someone commented on Tuesday on my last post anonymously saying UPDATE YOUR JOURNAL YOU FOOL and then replied to themselves two seconds later saying "oh wait it's only been 3 days? nvm, sry fr th bthr." Which made me lol a lot and vow to update the next morning, which is why you get this post like five days later. Ummmm oh well. SORRY, ANONYMOUS LADY. :( YOU CAN YELL AT ME NOW.

Order of business: I completely forgot to follow up on the Chicago dinner party thing, but I still really want to do it! The way my schedule is shaking out, Saturday nights are the only viable option, so I'm just going to propose three, have my lovely Chicago ladies vote, and whichever date has the most people check the ticky will be the winner.

Poll #1419257
Open to: Friends, detailed results viewable to: Friends

I can come to your house for dinner on:

I had a whole lot more to say but instead I have to go to bed because I have to wake up at 8:00 tomorrow, which is not legitimately early, but which is early for me, especially when it involves a science class in the summer. Le sigh.

WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND JUST BEASTED HER FOUR FINALS. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Now that I'm no longer feeling kind of like my brain is making a break for it out both ears, I would like to ask what is up, livejournals??? I've actually been reading my flist intermittently, but my sanity was also intermittent, so, ummm, sorry about dropping off the face of the earth.

SOME THINGS I WOULD LIKE US ALL TO CONSIDER TOGETHER:

1) why aren't all vids in the world set to Alphabeat? And more generally, why isn't Danish pop as big a cliché as Evanescence* for vidding purposes? And more specifically, why don't I already hold in my hot little hands an SGA vid set to Fantastic 6? I have never met such international professionals in my life as the Atlantis mission. COME ON.

2) I don't have a two. Let's meme in my journal, guys! Anonymous commenting is on, IP logging is off! :D? :D?

They are the space troopers
super-dooper!

*ftr I first wrote "Everclear" here and corrected it. Guess what I would rather be doing.

P.S. ( OH HOLY SHIT I REMEMBERED WHAT I WANTED TO POST ABOUT. )

We've been watching Freaks and Geeks in this household, lately. ( I really love my living situation. )

I've also been exploring the exciting world of ( cooking! )

Between the cooking and the knitting (one sweater and one lace stole, both in progress), I'm going to make one lucky man or woman very happy someday, don't you think? *practices floor-waxing*

To end on a fannish note, I get really butthurt every time someone tells me they don't ship Kirk/Spock in the new movie, which, for the record, I HAVEN'T SEEN. Oh, self. But come on, have you no respect for your foremothers?! They walked uphill both ways in the snow to write intensely florid pornography about green peens! >:(

I brought up Number One in class today in a ( discussion of feminism. )

P.S. Every time I try to upload pictures to scrapbook, LJ logs me out. Is this just me?

P.P.S. ( DELIVERY: ONE CAT, SIGN PLS )

Can't we just agree as a society that evolutionary psychology should have the intellectual credibility of intelligent design?

I don't know if I'm super late on this, but has everyone heard Lupe Fiasco's side project? He's the producer (although the singer sounds suspiciously like him faking a British accent), and I really like Heirplanes. Also, thank fucking God he gave up on his next album being his last. \o/

I can't think of anything else to put in this post so here is a very short video of our cat. She is the best of all possible cats.

Also, my eyes are insanely itchy right now. UGHHH. I'm not sure why - allergies? constantly sleeping in my contacts like a moron? but I am sure it needs to end, especially since my glasses are from like 3 prescriptions ago and I can't wear my contacts until my eyes chill the fuck out.

Some news source suggested somewhere that Joe Biden may have been involved somehow in the process of convincing Arlen Specter to change parties, and that was all it took for me to construct an elaborate reality in my head where Joe Biden won Specter over singlehandedly with adorableness and big smiles and chatting his ear off about trains. I swear I'm not into political RPF at all, I just have this mental break where I cannot hear a thing about the real Joe Biden without merging him with in-my-head Joe Biden who is a train-loving human-shaped puppy. I am in no way as deluded about Obama as I am about Biden. Even when I hear of him being slimy I find it deeply charming. JOE BIDEN LET US CUDDLE FOREVER. ♥

Oh, and I think I forgot to post about this, but on Saturday night strobelighted and I went to an Empires show at a random college and that was cool and all until Ils locked the keys in the car for the whole show with the engine running who even does that thank God shoemaster was there to call AAA aaaaaaaaargh BUT I DIGRESS. What I really wanted to say was that this was the first time I've actually spoken to Sean and Tom since writing, you know, fic about them, and holy living fuck I WAS SO SQUICKED. I wasn't expecting it! I was only in Empires fandom for like five minutes and the reason I wrote that fic was because I had just met and spoken to them in real life. I thought that meant I didn't have a meeting-my-RPS-subjects squick! I WAS WRONG. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin and die, and then Sean hugged me augh augh augh I am shuddering just thinking of it. LJ IT WAS SO TERRIBLE I CANNOT EVEN HANDLE THINKING ABOUT IT AND I WILL NOW PAY ATTENTION TO MY BIOLOGY LECTURE IN DESPAIR.

My non-fandom bff, of all people, told me to update my LJ more last night, so here I am complying. The last class I have on Tuesdays and Thursday is biology and there is just no possible way that after being in two heavy discussion classes I'm going to pay actual attention once I get to the powerpoint lecture with notes posted online. YEAH, RIGHT.

School continues to go really fucking well. I mean, cross your fingers, knock on wood, but it's fourth week and smooth sailing so far.

My teacher just said getting tested for prostate cancer is "trendy" right now. (??)

Blah, the problem is that I just have nothing to talk about these days. I have been through, in quick succession, in the past few weeks:

( FATF, LOM, Merlin, HIMYM, 30 Rock )

Talk to me about one of these things or something from your own current lists, flist! I promise to actually reply to comments for once and not be an unmitigated scrub. Plus I'm going to go back and reply to some old comments so, uh, don't pass out from shock. /o\

ETA: DUE SOUTH/DISCWORLD FUSION. RUN, DO NOT WALK.

I had a really frustrating day, the kind where you're reminded over and over again that male = default and women's concerns are specialty concerns and there's a solid mainstream of scholarly opinion that says you should consider arguments objectively and not allow yourself to be at all affected by the flaming misogyny poking around every corner of nearly every text. A lack of concern, of course, which equates to you pretending (just one more time, just for this one text, just for this one class) that you're NOT a woman and shouldn't ever let yourself think like one. Fuck you, social theory teacher, fuck you, patriarchy, fuck you, dude in my class who got so horribly and vocally offended that I suggested he might have something called "privilege". And of course meanwhile I have not only a head cold, but also vicious menstrual cramps and PMS, because there's nothing like a sense of irony to get you through the day when you're a political minority. I mentioned the cold at the end of the argument to defuse tension; I didn't mention the time of month. I'm not a moron.

I could, if I chose, find some irony in the fact that I immediately came home and vented my rage by cleaning the entire kitchen in victory curls and a fluffy white skirt and mopping the floor twice, and am now about to start baking an apple pie in a frilly floral apron, but fuck you: I see no irony, APPLE PIE IS DELICIOUS, AND YOU COULD EAT OFF MY DAMN FLOOR.

*steams from the ears*

I got the Iowa news the day after it happened, and I was rushed and distracted and basically gave a mental cheer and moved on. But today I was walking back from class and Dar Williams's Iowa came on shuffle on my iPod, and I just started crying.

One of my daughters was in the workplace one day, and her particular workplace at that moment in time, there were a whole bunch of conservative, older men. And those guys were talking about gay marriage. They were talking about discussions going on across the country. And my daughter Kate, after listening for about 20 minutes, said to them: 'You guys don't understand. You've already lost. My generation doesn't care.' I think I learned something from my daughter that day, when she said that. And Ive talked with other people about it and that's what I see, Senator McKinley. I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other, and want state law to recognize that. Is that so wrong? I don't think that's so wrong. As a matter of fact, last Friday night, I hugged my wife. You know I've been married for 37 years. I hugged my wife. I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other. No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you.

- Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal

Jesus fucking Christ, I can't believe it. We are actually going to win.

I described MJ to someone the other day the way I usually describe it, which is "a Due South diaspora con," and it got me thinking. Obviously not everyone at muskratjamboree was in Due South fandom at one time, but most of them were, and nearly all of them have close friends who were. It's partly a side effect of it being brooklinegirl's brainchild, but it also says something kind of cool about the way fandom works, I think. All of these people, some of whom have been out of dS for five years or more, still have strong enough social ties to come together and have more than enough to talk about. Those interpersonal connections aren't totally destroyed by fandom drift - and yet fandom drift occurs.

This is, to me, what most people misunderstand when they first get the slash-fandom thing explained to them. They think it's something that you do because you're a fan of a particular thing, and that comes out of that - I was a Buffy fan and I liked Spike and Xander, so I looked for fic about them. And that's true, at first. But then slash fandom, if you get bitten by the bug, becomes something that draws you into interest in TV shows and so on instead of coming out of that interest. I'm a slash fandom member before I'm a bandom member or a Merlin fandom member and so on and so on. We always say that the friends are more important than the canon, but it's even more than that; it's a self-constituting activity we participate in, posting fic and making LJ entries which build a community from their own material. And the canon is like this trivial little hat we sit on top of the whole thing. At least, that's how it feels for me.

In other news, I'm trying to figure out how to reach through the internet with my bare hands and grab people's camera cords. >:(

Nothing like waking up later than you meant to only to discover that you're still on East Coast time. *relaxes*

By the way, this is my 500th post! The first post, for the record, says that I don't think I'll stick it out very long here. I made a new layout to celebrate/because I was sick to death of that orange bullshit.

ETA: P.S. If you have pictures of me from MJ PLEASE send them my way! I want to obsessively relive it!

Hello, flist! I am in DETROIT. My flight was oversold and this nice biology teacher next to me was frrrreaking out about being fired for not showing up tomorrow, and I have no classes on Monday, so I'm staying the night in a hotel. In DETROIT. And they're paying me $300 + room and board to do it.

If I said this wasn't a tiny bit motivated by my desire to spend more time with my beloved Detroit airport, I would be lying.

HMMMM WHAT DID I DO THIS WEEKEND I DON'T KNOW LET ME THINK HMM HMMM HMMMM

( muskrats )

so we just got the first mix of one of our new songs. We always referred to it as Smash it Up, because the chorus goes .... ... smash it up.... But then, one of the shelf kids said we should name our album "Pete Wentz is the only reason we're famous." And we said "Fuck you kid! We're also famous because of Patrick Stump." But we did like how that title rolled off our tongues. So we decided to name this song that. Because it talks about our cocks. See youon tour!

Love,
Gabanti

YOU KNOW WHO I LOVE ALMOST AS MUCH AS I LOVE PETE WENTZ?? PEOPLE WHO LOVE PETE WENTZ. Ashlee Simpson-Wentz is a headliner on this list. She thinks it's pretty sexy when Pete drinks his own pee. My favorite thing about this fandom will always be the way that we joke about stuff that turns out not to be the actual truth.