It seems like every time I meet someone on IM they're saying they didn't know I have a new journal, so here's a reminder.

If you missed it last time, I have a new journal on IJ, it is not much more interesting than this one was, but it is public, and contains far less ranting. My new journal is here. You are not obligated to read it (naturally) but if you comment anonymously, please sign your comments, or else use OpenID, which is super-easy. You just pick the OpenId radio button and put in the URL for your journal.

Dear Marvel...

Stop threatening to fuck up my favorite characters. The more "Marvel" you try to make the Runaways, the more you ruin them. Leave them out of your tacky, idiotic crossover event.

No love,

Someone who actually appreciates BKV's writing and characterization skill.

From everyone, ever:

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

Note: Posts of a personal nature will be f'locked, everything else will be public.

In other news, I have no internet at home. So yeah, I'm sitting at my favorite 7-days internet cafe, and yeah, I'm having a yummy toast for supper. But for the love of all that is good and pure in the world... why does my internet have to go down less than an hour after the ISP tech support center closes for the weekend? Unless they are shutting people's internet off for the weekend to prevent them from violating the Shabbat, which I'm trying not to be paranoid enough to believe.

The Sims 2: Elections '08 is seriously the best thing in the universe. Ever. Better than puppies, rainbows, chocolate and sex. With Johnny Depp.

A communist candidate apparently won the elections in Cyprus. What say you, f'list? Can we expect militant fundamentalists, mysteriously armed with M-16s, to stage a coup d'etat sometime in the next year or so?

Or perhaps Christofias and his talk of reuniting Greek and Turkish Cyprus are the Cypriot response to the Kosovar independence declaration last week. On the list of hypocritical fuckwits who believe that only their own nations deserve self-determination: Russian government (Chechnya), Serbian government, Spanish government (Basque Country), Chinese government (Taiwan), us, of course.

Well, actually, the Israeli government has remained totally silent on the subject of Kosovo. Of course, some citizens are clamoring in favor of recognition, on the same grounds as clamoring to accept as many Sudanese refugees as the economy can hold. News site talkbacks, however, don't provide a very reliable indicator of percentage.

It reminds me somewhat of Israeli governments' silence in regards to acknowledging the Armenian genocide of WWI. The United States, also, cannot afford to alienate Turkey by acknowledging it, but not entirely for the same reasons. Similarly, it goes against the instinct of many Israelis for Jewish empathy for the disenfranchised and persecuted.

World politics among terrified, paranoid Jews is a constant headache.

(PS: My favorite political icon is disabled; I wonder if the Russian overlords can be trusted with my money so I can occupy liberate it.)

Someone is wrong on the internet!

I spam you out of love. Really.

If you google Sanesha Stewart's name, most of the top results will be feminist or activist blogs. Somewhere low on the first page will be a couple of news stories. Pretty soon the top results will probably be transgender community remembrance sites. Maybe the results are different if you google her birth name, more news stories or anti-trans blogs. I don't know.

Dwell on this sentence, taken from the top-ranked news story I could find, though: "I called him 'her' out of respect."

What does that tell us?

Also, happy Valentine's Day, since quite a few of my f'list have valentines.

People are funny; dictionary_wotd has amative at the word of the day, and the same word was WotD for Valentine's Day 2006 on Wiktionary.

You know what's interesting? How in the average Sims 2 fan community you go in and immediately start hearing a buzz that Romance Aspiration sucks, and Romance Sims are all whores, and it should be called the Slut Aspiration, and a bunch of other wholesome terms of that sort. Then if you look very deliberately and closely, you find a little corner where people say it sucks that Romance Sims are jealous of their lovers, because it goes against the principles of polyamory.

Sometimes I forget how judgmental people's assumptions can be. Sometimes I even forget that I used to be one of those people. Sex politics give me a headache. The problem with that being: polyamory as a philosophy is designed to eliminate the politicking from sexual relationships, and what it ends up doing is becoming more politicized because of the need to interact with the sex politics of the external world. Then it becomes a Statement about how we should all Live Our Lives, rather than the much more simple, "This is how I am, and this is how you are."

Maxis got so close to getting it right, and then failed, epically.

I would like to take an instant to recommend Unlocker, a Windows freeware utility that finds and unlocks files that are locked for editing/deleting. It's a lifesaver.

Gay cowboys, circa 1987, courtesy of the indefatigable Alison Bechdel.

Just when you think you're being too paranoid, you realize you're not being paranoid enough.

( Image behind cut )

A quarter of a million people have been displaced in Kenya since the elections. As goldjadeocean posted about recently in the context of her African History class, until very recently Kenya was one of the most politically stable countries in Africa. Among other things, it had a flourishing tourism industry. I trust that's down the toilet for the next five to ten years (based on my experiences of politics, war and tourism, and how poorly they mix).

To make matters worse, Kenya's stability made it a prime base for the United Nations and other aid-giving organizations from which to send people and goods to other, more troubled regions. The political (and racial) violence naturally inhibits that aid, potentially putting thousands or millions more at increased risk.

More on the UN in Kenya on the UN News Centre. More news on Wikinews, CNN. Wikipedia has an article on what they have (most neutrally) termed the "civil unrest" and several articles on the results of the election. This should give some historical background -- I am gratified to see that the article is fairly well-edited, a reasonable indicator of media attention. Compare the Aurukun rape in Australia, which has barely been edited since the case surfaced.

ETA 12:25: You know what's a really good idea? Playing Russian roulette with blood transfusions. Way to go, British military.

You know what's awesome? Battleground God. It's a test for the internal logic and consistency of one's beliefs about God. I took one direct hit (inconsistency) and bit two bullets (bizarre and/or unpalatable beliefs) and overall I'm quite pleased with my results.

( Analysis of my results, plus responses. )

I got a Medal of Distinction. That was nice.

Wait, you all have that thing today, don't you? Or was that yesterday?

"I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race." - Russel, Education and the Social Order, via Wikiquote.

Hegemony depends for its success upon two things: that you should always have someone to oppress, and that you should be either oppressed by the more privileged or, if at the topmost rung, threatened constantly with losing status. In fact, even the lower rungs are threatened constantly with having their privilege revoked, because everyone has a measure of privilege. The more you have, the blinder you are (and the more hegemony can threaten to take away from you, to keep you inline).

This is why, for instance, some straight feminist women get extremely defensive in the presence of lesbianism; it represents a revocation of their hetero privilege, a constant threat for any straight woman who doesn't toe the line.

Happy Human Rights Day, everyone. State of human rights: really fucking awful. Things my country has done this year that erode or outright reject human rights: too plentiful (and depressing) to count. Things I have done this year to fight for human rights: almost nothing. Things I can do next year: list compilation ongoing.

It's a secular humanist holiday! That's better than greasy food and fire hazards. Unfortunately, it loses to religious holidays because the religious ones are about celebrating the battles we already won, and are therefore uplifting, not depressing. Funny fact: Hanukkah is about freedom from religious persecution, and has become the unofficial symbol of Jewish diaspora in Christendom, because of its proximity to Christmas. Watch (or re-watch, if you're awesome enough to have seen it in the first place) The Hebrew Hammer with that fact in mind. Then marvel over the fact that we have not yet received a Hebrew Hammer/Undercover Brother crossover.

Point to note: If you or someone you know are shopping for an MP3 player, avoid the SanDisk Sansa Express. I do not know about the company's other models, but this guy has apparently got a nasty habit of dying out weeks or days after purchase and having to be replaced by the manufacturer/retailer. It happened to me and to others. Google for more details; I can't be bothered hunting down the link to the message board I read this on. Next time, I will aim for a Creative product, since my MuVo/Nomad served me well for some three years.

Another google test: If you doubt that the word "homosexual" is a pejorative, google it, and then the word "gay," and take a good fucking look at the results. This is who you're associating yourselves with if you use that word; they would like to dehumanize us by associating our identity as closely as possible with sex and disassociating it with love, companionship, identity, community, humanity, dignity, basic human decency. They do this by invoking most people's basic discomfort with discussing sex closely, and by using a word that sounds more like a disease than anything else -- because, when it was invented, it was one. Never forget: we were removed from the DSM in 1973, and from the ICD in 1992.

Bitch is a word we use culturally to describe any woman who is strong, angry, uncompromising and, often, uninterested in pleasing men. We use the term for a woman on the street who doesn't respond to men's catcalls or smile when they say, "Cheer up, baby, it can't be that bad." We use it for the woman who has a better job than a man and doesn't apologize for it. We use it for the woman who doesn't back down from a confrontation.

So let's not be disingenuous. Is it a bad word? Of course it is. As a culture, we've done everything possible to make sure of that, starting with a constantly perpetuated mindset that deems powerful women to be scary, angry and, of course, unfeminine -- and sees uncompromising speech by women as anathema to a tidy, well-run world.

(From Andi Zeisler's op piece on the Washington Post. Hell, yeah.

First, Heroes:

( Spoilers for 2x09 Cautionary Tales )

Next, comics. We received the package yesterday morning, and while we are still somewhat behind, I do have a better grip on the bits of rumors that I can't quite avoid while online (although it's been easier since I stopped following links from WFA). The comics I read this month are as follows: Fables #66, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24, New Avengers #35, Supergirl #22, She-Hulk #22, Wonder Woman #13, X-Factor #24, Runaways #28 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer #7.

( Brief impressions )

Oh, this post is gratuitously long. Oh. And Rome is on in a couple of minutes, and who am I to snub a Roman orgy?

Still, I must tell you about my new Sims:

( I lost all my old ones when my laptop was stolen. )