Organization for Transformative Works News

Caught up on admin stuff for the Nuna Exchange, did my sign-up for Broken Toys over at jamponygifts (sign-ups are open until Wednesday, November 11th, if anybody wants to play), and re-redid my Yuletide sign-up. Third time is usually the charm, and after a period of due consideration, I narrowed my offered fandoms to 13. I know this is fewer than last year. I'm not worrying about how it measures up to previous years. The fandoms I cut do not appear likely to suffer a surfeit of offers to requests, but I'll check the final day of sign-ups, just to be certain. I could add something back in and be perfectly content, but the ones I have now are each cause for sekrit, hopeful squee, and it doesn't hurt that the final number equals the days into December that I was born. Also, at least one not-me person has offered each fandom I've requested, so there is joy that I may indeed get any of the four. I do love the suspense right up until I get the email informing me of my story (and treats! So it's possible to get more than one of the four, or variations of one of the four, or any number of possibilities sweeter than sugar plums).

Mmm, but the sugar plums thing reminds me I am hungry.

Also! I am pondering changing up my Dreamwidth layout! It's not as crazy as it sounds, since I plan to keep the same beachy theme and general color scheme, but I want to see if I can take advantage of some of the neat features DW offers, and maybe find an image for the header that looks less like ass when blown up eleventy billion times its original size. Maybe I'll do a boat instead of a chair, if it's near enough to shore to grab some beach in the image. Hmm.

Okay, so it's that time. I'm late! D:

If you'd like a card from me for Christmas drop your address here! (Those of you whose address I've had, I'm afraid I'll need it again. I've misplaced all of my addresses when I moved.)

I will have things in the mail by the 15th of next month.

:D


oh, yeah. all comments are screened.

musesfool has created jamponygifts and now sign-ups are open for a Dark Angel fic exchange! The FAQ includes format and deadlines. It's not going to be a huge exchange, we're capping participation at 50 people, but if you're a Dark Angel fan, check it out, and if you know a Dark Angel fan, feel free to pass on the link.

This poll is brought to you by that guy who still feels tired and grumpy and doesn't get much done but at least he tried out several new dishes this week and started a recipe collection in a card index box.

Poll #4568 Your Recipe Of Choice
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Which food recipe should I post next?

via randysmith: New Scientist on swine flu myths that could endanger your life.

I just knocked off work for an hour to go pick Geoff up at the airport. His being back means that I will almost certainly start cooking dinners again; I haven't been taking the time for it while I've been home alone, what with the working until 10:30 or 11 pm. Plus there will doubtless have to be pesky socializing and stuff. Dammit, I'm not even sure I'll feel able to go to church tomorrow, given my workload, and watching Supernatural is a vague fantasy. On the other hand, I think I sleep better with him than without him. Oh coffee, how I am loving you this week.

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I just got home from a family birthday celebration... this is late for me, LOL!

SO I'M GOING TO MEME NOW!

~ Music video for Vienna Teng's "Gravity."
~ Music video for Dave Matthews' "Gravedigger." (WARNING: Video may be triggery.)
~ Music video for Lamb's "Gorecki."
~ The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (?)
~ Moulin Rouge! (forevermore, possibly)
~ Anyband again (add soccerball soldiers and chair-dancing soldier to character list)
~ Ten Inch Hero (love, seriously)
~ Bride of the Water God (I thought someone else might cover it this year, but nope)
~ CSJH forever
~ I should perhaps add Chae Yeon to Asian solo artists, if she's not in there already. I'm sure BoA is, but I'll double-check.
~ If we can do music videos, does that mean I could nominate "Purple Line," in which DBSK are incubi high class rentboys in a futuristic world? Ooh! Bae Seul Gi's "Tomboy!"

via wintercreek:

Social networking working for you: copperbadge is running a job fair/"temp agency" in his comments. If you're looking for work (or will be soon), you can drop a screened comment there now. If you're looking to hire or have possible leads for others, you can respond to the comments when they open in 36 hours. [about 31 hours as I type this --t-s]

Anything's worth a shot in this economic climate, right?

As for me, I just knocked off work for the day at 11:05 pm. I must do as much tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, usw. Woot.

(I'm still not sorry I went. But I can see sorry from here.)

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I was looking for statistics* about same-sex marriage opposition when I ran across this precious article posted back in June. (Warning for extreme sexism and various other acts of privilege.)

The author--Sam Schulman--goes on at length about what he objects to about same sex marriage, and what he thinks marriage really is. Bolded sections are emphasis added.

The relationship between a same-sex couple, though it involves the enviable joy of living forever with one's soulmate, loyalty, fidelity, warmth, a happy home, shopping, and parenting, is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, though they enjoy exactly the same cozy virtues. These qualities are awfully nice, but they are emphatically not what marriage fosters, and, even when they do exist, are only a small part of why marriage evolved and what it does.

Got that? It's important. He's tackling the key issue of what is marriage, which is absolutely crucial to any non-religious discussion of and why same-sex couples can't have it. Brace yourself... 'cos he hits the same conclusion about "traditional marriage" that I got, only he thinks it's a good thing.

Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood--and sexual accessibility--is defined.

Marriage is not about raising children, or living together and sharing resources, or being a unit in the community. Marriage is about female sexuality--and the control thereof. In case that wasn't obvious from his earlier quotes, he makes sure you understand:

This most profound aspect of marriage--protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex--is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage.

He also points out that "A same-sex marriage fails utterly to create forbidden relationships." He seems to think they are important--nay, mandatory, because, "without social disapproval of unmarried sex--what kind of madman would seek marriage?" He then goes on to talk about the "kinship" that marriage creates:

Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband. There can, of course, be warm relations between families and their children's same-sex partners, but these come about because of liking, sympathy, and the inherent kindness of many people. A wedding between same-sex lovers does not create the fact (or even the feeling) of kinship between a man and his husband's family; a woman and her wife's kin.

This kinship is important to him--he says

In a world without kinship, women will lose their hard-earned status as sexual beings with personal autonomy and physical security. Children will lose their status as nonsexual beings.

That latter seems like a bit of a red herring, and he doesn't explain it well. But it does tie into some of his other points, about marriage and illicit sexuality and the importance of at least giving lip service to the idea of virginity.

Marriage, to him, is all about men getting access to women's sexuality, and since same-sex marriage turns that concept on its head, it is wrong.And he doesn't even spend much time grumbling about the "wrongness"--he's bitching about how the inevitible failure of same-sex marriage (because marriage can't survive without illicit sexuality and forced kinship) will destroy the last vestiges of men-owning-women marriage.

Umm.

Yay?



* Stats: Specifically, I was trying to find out if the opposition splits equally along gender lines, or if more men oppose same-sex marriage than women. Any relevant research info would be welcome.

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Wow, I haven't done this in ages!

For anyone who is new, let me explain what this is. I have a website called BrianJustinLove.com, and this is a little chart showing where in the world the most recent site visitors came from. Is your country there?

I noticed that I had quite a lot of QAF fic related to the holiday season, which I'm defining as Halloween through New Year's Day. I decided to create a master list to link to from my fic index page. Nothing new here. :)

This was my entry to the "Weather/Vacation" challenge at qaf_challenges. It was beta'd by testdog65, and it's about a very, very hot post-513 day in Pittsburgh.

If pool!sex offends you, definitely don't read it. And if you like it, I'd love to hear from you! I've had a long horrible year and getting back to writing has been a wonderful feeling... knowing you're reading makes it better!

Original post and comments here.

( Heat Wave, by Xie... )

MacHeist is giving away copies of ShoveBox (info organizer) WriteRoom (writing environment), Twitterific (Twitter app), TinyGrab (screencap & sharing), and Hordes of Orcs (game), plus MarinerWrite (word processor) if enough people download the package. This is legit, not a scam, though you do need to register with the site. Grab 'em if you want 'em!

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It's presciousssss.....

Elisem's opened the Shiny Clearance Sale!!

And the Beads of the Month listings are up for next year!!

YEA!!

I am working on the next couple of chapters of "Directions," and I was wondering if some lovely British fangirl could tell me -- is there a typical time that a university would be closed for the Christmas season? Or would it vary from school to school?

Thanks so much!

Pimping for HP Kinkfest. Look under the cut for a very pretty picture. (And many more sexy banners at the comm itself.)

( Read more... )

So, as some of you may have guessed by now, in the last couple of days I’ve turned into a total wave fangirl. I know, I know — hipster,ⁱ much — but it’s true. Thing is, though, it seems that a lot of people out there don’t share my squee; there’s a lot of “meh” going around re. wave right now, coupled with a dash of “this sucks”. I suppose I can kinda see why. Wave is in a fairly limited release, so people are feeling a bit lonely. You jump on wave, ready to be all like NEXT GEN COMMUNICATION YEAH! only to find you’ve got no-one to communicate with. So maybe you reach out to with:public, except now instead of feeling NEXT GEN YEAH! you’re starting to feel like you’ve suddenly been thrown back into Usenet after the first AOL invasion.

And it’s like, “Wait. This was supposed to be the Next Big Thing?”

Well, yes sort of. But mostly no. And here are the four main reasons why.

Hold onto your hats, kids, because this? This gets wordy.

( Wave is not Google (Wave) )

( Why Wave Makes My Inner Mail Admin Squee )

( How Wave Could Kill Facebook (but Probably Won’t… Yet) )

( Why Microsoft Wants Wave (but Might Not Admit It) )

The Shiny, Wavey Future

I guess I’ve gone kinda nutso on the predictions here, and I suppose I feel obliged to point out I haven’t really talked about either time-frames or probabilities. If I had to guess, I say we’ll see wave adopted as a social networking tool before it’s adopted as a business tool, but conversely I think it’s more likely in the long run to be adopted by business than it is to replace Facebook and Twitter’s databases. There are also a significant number of hurdles to overcome with wave’s deployment: Real-time communication models are hard to scale; The storage requirements sound like they could be terrifying; What about “offline mode”? People still really like email… All that sort of stuff.

Still, the thing I like about wave is that it’s full of potential and incredibly daring. I mean, re-writing email? People’ve been talking about doing that for years and no-one’s managed to pull it off. Re-writing email and completely changing the paradigm it’s based on? Margaret Thatcher’s balls, man! Wave is either going to change the way the internet works or be the biggest white elephant in IT history.

Personally? I’m hoping for the former. It’s just more exciting that way.

See you in the future.

1. The geeky kind, not the fixed-gear-bike kind. Geekster? ↩

Comment?

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but, looking at the deadline of the current job, I'm realizing that I had absolutely no business taking off to Mass. for five days.

I'm pretty sure I will be very sorry next week. Yikes.

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Eeee, my OTW travel mug arrived while I was traveling! And even though I am no longer traveling, I am drinking coffee out of it, because it is a) shiny; b) new; c) OTW; and d) bigger than my usual morning coffee mug. All of which make me happy (and functional) this morning.

I had a fabulous five days away. How wonderful to spend all that time in Mass. with friends (and newly met folks), and none of it in hospitals.

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I just read an addme-type post where someone said one of their hobbies was "raping [their] computer". As English is not their first language, I sincerely hope it's a misunderstanding of sorts and not a deliberate attempt to use the word rape in "edgy", "hip", "funny", or "un-pc" ways. Which I disapprove of. *

The world and the people in it are pissing me off in lots of other ways, too, but I'm too tired to even list these. Maybe I should just go back to bed.

* Eta: I've explained my issues with the usage of the word in casual contexts in this IJ comment.