OIC

Thoughout this third season of Doctor Who, although I enjoyed many of the episodes and Martha was starting to grow on me as a character, there was one thing that absolutely drove me crazy. That was the way Martha pined after the doctor from day one, long before he'd shown himself to be deserving of it. With Rose it was different. She initially signed on with the Doctor not because of who he was, but because of where he could take her and what he could show her, and as they spent time together, their friendship grew stronger until they became inseparable. Martha, on the other hand, although she enjoys and participates fully in the adventures, seemed to initially be signing on so that she could be near the Doctor, and I just didn't see what was motivating that. But now I think I do. I was rewatching the beginning of the season because I had missed what this year's Bad Wolf/Torchwood equivalent was and now that it seemed to be coming to a head, I wanted to go back and find it. So I was watching the first episode and in the beginning Martha is kind of unsure of the Doctor, but thought he might know what he was doing, which was a sensible position given the evidence. Then, in order to save the world and for entirely non-romantic reasons (which he stresses), the Doctor kisses her, whereupon she gets all melty. Now with most people this wouldn't make sense, but since, as we all know, the Doctor is made of magic, I can see how being kissed by him might cause a person to fall immediately and completely in love with him and want to follow him to the end of the universe. It's still a cheap plot device that they could have done without, but it's better than no motivation at all.

Perfect

Everyone knows that the Sex Geek is a genius, right?

Well if you don't, this should convince you:

So I told my aunt that I never really figured out I was queer. I just figured out, over a period of many years starting in early childhood, that everyone else wasn't.

Damn, I missed it!

Sitemeter was down for a couple days, and by the time I got around to looking at it again, the milestone was passed. But sometime during the week before last, I got my 10,000th visitor. Cool beans, dudes!

Oh Noes! Teh Intartubes Are Danjerus!

Via Pharyngula, I found this news report about the companies DefamationAction.com and ComplaintRemover.com, which promise to remove unsavoury things posted about you or your company on the internet, for a fee. When I first read about this I figured they used legitimate legal threats against people who were committing libel, or at worst sent nastygrams. I was not expecting this:

This letter is being sent to you in the name of more than 500 businesses. No matter where you go, we will cause you a problem. Your life is in danger until you comply with our demands. This is your last warning.

Your neighbors already know about your criminal dealings and how you are making many people loose (sic) their business. You will soon be beaten to a pulp and pounced into the ground six feet under with a baseball bat and sleg (sic) hammer. You will soon be sorry not just from what I am capable of doing to you, but what other members will do as soon as they know exactly where you are. Its (sic) just a matter of time until I get to you.

Here is what you can do to save your life. But you must act imidiatly (sic). Make what ever deal it takes, you must comply.

I mean, what? No, seriously. *This* is what companies pay, apparently, hundreds of dollars a year for? Badly spelled extortion? I have to say, if it weren't for the sheer hilarity, I'd be sorely disappointed. I mean, this is the online equivalent of a guy showing up at your door with a baseball bat. Except he's two feet tall and it's a Nerf bat.

Fucking dumsnuts

You People Are Assholes

I was at someone's house this evening watching So You Think You Can Dance (aside: yes that show is every bit as stupid as you expect it to be) and the girl half of a couple that was supposed to perform collapsed in rehearsal and had to be rushed to hospital, so in order for the boy to nonetheless get to perform they partnered him at the last minute with the choreographer's assistant. She was a woman of well over 200lbs and, knowing that the people outside of my lovely Montreal bubble can be ignorant jerks about size, I expected some awkward silence and nervous giggles. I was not remotely prepared for what did happen. Immediate hoots and hollers, cries of "ooh, that poor guy!" "Ew, he's going to have to touch her again!" "Oh, he's way to hot for this!" And of course when the choreography was remotely sexy the screams doubled. As if, because she's fat, her mere presence was somehow damaging to him. I mean the raw hatred and disgust emenating from my fellow guests was soul-shattering. How people get filled with that much hate and manage to go on with their lives just baffles me*.
I was inclined to just bitch about how much I hate it here outside my bubble, but the fact is that the worst, most discouraging part of the whole experience was me. Because I said nothing. I sat in silence as this fountain of hate erupted around me and did nothing. How could I? How could I have failed myself so utterly? Because I was worried about my relationship with my host. Because I didn't want them to see my tears. Because I knew that if I did speak up they would look at me and dismiss my words, forgetting that I felt the same way when I was 30lbs lighter and still worthy of respect.
There's still a lot of distance between me and the sort of woman I want to become. The terrifying sort of woman in front of whom people are afraid to speak, lest they say something stupid.
In the mean time, this is what I can do in my cowardice. Too scared to speak aloud when it mattered, I can now sit at my keyboard and type.
You can find the details and sources here and here, but this is what I have to say:
1) Being fat is not bad. Fat people live longer, have lower incidence of cardiovascular disease, and (among women) reach menopause later than thin people.
2) Being fat is not something people can help. Fat people have the same diet and excersize habits as thin people. The only reliable way to acheive and maintain weight loss is to go on a lifelong starvation diet.
3) Losing weight is bad for you. Losing and gaining weight repeatedly is really fucking bad for you.
Someday I will have the courage of my convictions. For now I have a blog.

Update: Thanks to parodie in the comments for pointing me to this video:

---

*Just so's we're clear here, this woman was a trained dancer. She knew the steps and she moved well. She was strong and, in order to pull off some of those moves, in excellent shape. The ONLY thing people were laughing about was her size

A Crowded Institution

I like this post of Andrea's about polygamy, but I have to respectfully disagree with her on one point:

I firmly do not believe that multiple marriage has anything at all to do with same-sex marriage. The MacLean’s article says, “Marriage, already open to same-sex couples, could become a very crowded institution.” Oh, for Chrissakes. Did you really need to toss a sprinkling of homophobia into the mix? Because we queers are crowding the straights, is that it? Invading their personal space, perhaps? I didn’t realize that marriage was a room with a maximum capacity. Are we a frickin’ fire hazard now? Screw you. Get the fuck over it, people.

I agree that that was a homophobic and assholish comment on the part of the McLean's author, and that people do need to get the fuck over it, but I strongly disagree that same sex marriage has nothing to do with non-religious polygamy. Indeed, I think they are two aspects of the very same issue.

To me, the crux of the SSM debate was whether we wanted marriage to be a religiously defined institution, based on traditional ideas of relationships as necessary for social-group-mixing, transfer of property, etc., or an institution based on sense and legal expediency, providing humane and reasonable ways of dealing with such questions as health-benefit sharing and income tax on households that share expenses, child custody when households split up, etc. If we decide on the latter then the reasons for restricting the institution to groups of two evaporate along with the reasons for keeping it between opposite sex couples.

Like Andrea, I think that marriage is an out-moded, irrelevant, oppressive, and mysogynist institution (which is what I assume she means when she says "marriage kinda sucks"), and I think we need something new. If people want their religious institutions to bless their romantic/sexual relationships, that's their business, but I don't want to have to be involved in their fight to get the religious institutions to bless *this* particular pairing, or *that* particular set up. That is so resoundingly not my problem, and the best way to keep it that way is to make religious marriage an exclusively religious institution, carrying no legal weight whatsoever, and come up with something else on the legal side of things. I think what would work best (and Andrea touches on this as well) is a set of standard but tweakable contracts that have more to do with how a household is set up financially and in terms of child care, and don't worry about who's fucking whom. I agree that we need a system where two people in a romantic triad can sponsor the third for immigration based on their relationship, but I don't think that's enough. We need a system where a woman who stays home to care for her sister's or adult daughter's child will qualify for domestic partner benefits, and get consideration in terms of custody should the household split up. Households and families do not always consist of two (or more) adults who are sexual partners, plus kids. Adult siblings living together, groups of unrelated but not-sexually-involved women living together to share resources and raise their kids, grown children living with their parents or aunts/uncles, and all manner of other households are all completely normal, healthy and good ways to live, and the law needs to reflect that.


I think the conservatives who screamed that same-sex marriage was just a stepping stone towards allowing consenting adults to enter into whatever relationship they wanted, with full legal sanction, were absolutely right. I just don't see what the bad is.

It must be Pride

After all, that's the only time this happens to me. And it sucks because it means that tomorrow in the big parade I may have no choice but to wear a shirt. Stupid sunny dyke march.

The bra- and tank top-lines provide a nice contrast (although what you see in the picture is nothing compared to what it looks like in real life) but are also evidence of my not having gone completely topless. For the first time since my first Pride when I was 16, I covered my boobs (although I did lose the top and wear just a bra for most of the march). I must be getting old.

Torchwood

* * * * *SPOILER ALERT - If you haven't seen all of Torchwood yet and don't want to know, don't read this post* * * * *

For all its flaws (and they are legion), Torchwood will always hold a place in my heart as the first show I've seen to completely normalize same-sex relationships. Generally, when we think about shows that normalize queers we think of things like Queer as Folk or The L Word. But QAF and The L Word aren't really shows about anything. They're not mysteries, or medical shows, or sci fi, or cop shows, or anything. They're personal dramas, about relationships and sex and love and friendships and rivalries. They're shows about gay people being gay. And that's fine as far as it goes, but Torchwood takes it a step further. Torchwood is a science fiction show about a group of people who work for an alien-watching organization, and that is *really* what the show is about. They have adventures and fight aliens and screw around with advanced technologies they have no business touching and open tears in the fabric of space and time, and *that* is what drives the plot. But, like any remotely decent show, the primary characters have personal lives beyond the main focus of the show and we see depth and development in their interactions with each other. And not a single one of them is entirely monosexual.

The main character, Gwen, is primarily straight. She has a steady boyfriend and there are strong indications that this is not an exception for her, but there is one episode that has her making out with a girl under the influence of alien pheromones and, while this may not be something she does every day, there is nothing in her manner to suggest that she finds it shocking or disgusting after the fact.

Captain Jack, as many of us know from Doctor Who, is just a good old-fashioned slut. He'll sleep with anything pretty enough, it doesn't even have to be human, and he likes it that way. This fact seems totally fine with the rest of the Torchwood staff.

Owen is, for the most part, a womanizing jackass, but if the boyfriend of the woman he is currently, um, izing, kicks a fuss, Owen is more than happy to arrange to bring them both home with him in order to keep the peace.

We see many indications throughout the show that Toshiko is pining after Owen, but when the right woman comes along, Tosh falls head over heels. Although things don't work out for them (the woman ends up being a murdering alien in disguise, in love with Tosh but also using her to get inside Torchwood) and Tosh's colleagues suggest that maybe falling for a murdering alien isn't the best course of action, the fact that the murdering alien was also a woman doesn't enter into it. And in fact, Gwen specifically tells Tosh that she shouldn't let this put her off relationships, because "love suited [her]".

And finally, Ianto, who we know is Jack's at-least-occasional lover, we find out also has/had a girlfriend who he is madly in love with.

In addition to having all these wonderfully queer characters, another thing that the writers, etc. on Torchwood do right is how they write their same-sex relationships. It's done respectfully and realistically, with the relationships varying, depending on the situations and the personalities of the participants. There are no archetypal gay or lesbian couplings to be found. We are not banged over the head with any "look, this character is gay, GAY!!!" stereotyping, nor are we subjected to idiotic are-they-aren't-they? ambiguities a la early Willow and Tara or late Xena and Gabrielle. The same-sex sex scenes are shown every bit as explicitly as the opposite sex ones (which is to say not very) and the characters' interactions are as complex or superficial as one would expect from a straight couple in a similar situation.

I know that British television is a lot more willing to push the envelope with this sort of thing, but for those of us exposed mostly to North American media, this is downright revolutionary and, crappy writing and acting be damned, I want the show to continue and, if it hasn't already, air here.

Dix Ans.

I honestly never thought I'd make it this long. When I started I had planned for it to be temporary. I would never have been able to start if I'd thought I was committing myself for life, so I didn't. I just did it "for now". But how many "now"s are there in a decade?

At this point it's become automatic. In the moment, I don't even consider the alternative. In my more philosophical moods, I do sometimes wonder why I do it. Ask myself if it's still worth it. I always come back with 'yes'. Sometimes for strong environmental reasons, sometimes just so that I can say that I did it, so that I can have moments like this one, right now, where I can say it's been ten years, and good for me, even if no one else seems to think it's an accomplishment.

My first official meal as a vegetarian was at a Victoria Day barbeque (I brought veggie dogs, everyone else ate meat). Anyone want to barbeque some soy-and-liquid-smoke product with me tomorrow to celebrate? Does anyone I know in this city even have a barbeque? Let me know in the comments.

Hoppy

Hope everyone had a fun Dead Jew on a Stick Weekend. We had a moveable seder with my dad's family yesterday, and then a with-all-the-trimmings turkey dinner with my mom's family today (not traditional, I know, but I think my cousins would eat turkey 365 days a year if their parents would let them). I am pleased to report that, while I did do my share of dishes, I once more managed to get myself replaced at the sink before the turkey-cooking/serving dishes were to be washed. One of the very few personal practical advantages to being vegetarian is never having to clean dishes with congealed animal fat, and I refuse to give that up just because other people insist on their ritual sacrifices (thank you, Anya).

I so familied out. I think if I see another relative I will start pulling hair, and not likely my own. Fortunately, my sweetie wasn't able to come to turkey dinner today, so I can still stand the sight of him. Isn't he lucky?

Also, I am pleased to report that since changing jobs, I've been immeasureably happier.

Also, I want to be a good Net community member and plug Natives of the New Dawn, because their song "Good Day" rocks and they're being kind enough to provide it for free.

No Café for Me

Other than still being hoarse and coughing, I was finally feeling back to 100% yesterday, and the apartment basically hadn't seen a lick of cleaning since before I got sick, so I decided I was better off staying home and washing dishes (while feeding my latest addiction). I'm glad I did. Although the laundry still isn't done, and I haven't done this week's cooking yet, the place looks fantastic. There's hardly a dirty dish in the house.

For those who are interested, Dave has a post up about the Café Scientifique.

Just a reminder

Next Saturday is Toronto's March Café Scientifique. This month's topic is supposed to be "Nature vs Nurture Revisited: New research is changing the age-old debate". As with last month's topic, it could be good or it could be excrutiatingly post-modern.

Be there or be decidedly unsquare. DendriteJungle and Q. Pheevr, I'm looking at you.

Blearg and blech

This is supposed to be the first day of my last week at my soon-to-be-former job, but instead of going in and toughing it out just 4 more days!, I'm flat on my back with something upper-respiratory and hopefully viral. I didn't sleep for more than an hour at a go last night, and my chest hurts if I take deep breaths or cough too much (lothlyn, poof, got any advice?). Damn.

I can't decide if my peppermint tea tastes funny because I'm sick, or because it's old, or because I didn't wash the teapot before using it (it seemed clean). On the plus side, I was spending the week at my parents' house anyway (because it's closer to the office than my apartment is) so my dad can take care of me this morning before he goes to work.

Ugh.

Awesome Ember concert last night, though.

Pathetic, I tell you.

Via Pharyngula, the top 50 SF&F books of the past 50 years, with the ones I've read in bold (and the one I think I may have read but don't remember and am not sure in italics).

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Sigh. Looks like I've got a long summer reading list.

Eh, wha?

Via the Bronze Blog, one of the most surreal videos I've come across. I'm having a hard time believing I just saw that. I may have to watch it again.

Ah, Fuck It

I don't have time to be messing around with XML right now, and I couldn't get the commenting and ads working the way I wanted to quickly enough, so I'm just going back to a classic template for now.

There are things I like about the new template, though, so next time I have a week or so to spare I'll see about switching. For now, the main advantage to the classic template is that the XML is composed mostly of tags I recognize, whereas with the new template it's almost entirely custom blogger tags that I've never seen before and don't have time to spend learning.

So, yeah, back to the beginning for now.

Café Scientifique cet après-midi

The template upgrade isn't going as smoothly as I could have hoped, but it's going. TY to the Lingering Poof for all his advice.

In the mean time, however, I have an afternoon and evening of excitement planned. I will be going to my first ever Café Scientifique. Apparently they're once a month in Toronto. That's exciting. This month's topic is "Love in the time of science… Is romance just the right mix of genes and chemicals?" which could take a very Jared Diamond-like view and therefore be interesting, or could be all postmodern and dreadful. You can find the poster here(pdf). If I'm inspired, I might blog about it tomorrow, but in the mean time any Torontonians who are free this afternoon should come out. It's at the Rivoli Tavern at 334 Queen St. W in Toronto.

Something Smells Like...

As you may have noticed, there are some changes going on here. I've upgraded to the new template and chose a slightly different template, because I felt like there was too much wasted space on the left side of the page before.

Right now I'm in the process of putting back the various elements that were lost in the switch, so bear with me for a bit.

And So It Goes

When I was in middle school and highschool I had an English teacher named Mary Ann Duffy. She was an articulate, no-nonsense shit disturber. She was also the only English teacher I have met who had any brains at all.

I remember one of my first classes with her in grade 7. I was at a new school, hadn't really made friends yet and was nervous as hell, and she laughed at my joke when I answered her question "what kind of clauses are there other than a subordinate clause?" with, "an INsubordinate clause...?"

I remember laughing when we were reading Midsummernight's Dream and came to the line where Lysander says:

You have her father's love, Demetrius;
Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him

(This is when Hermia's father is trying to convince her to marry Demetrius, but she and Lysander want to marry each other). And I remember Mary Ann appreciating that I laughed, and agreeing that it was funny (to the bafflement of my classmates who, I think, all thought Lysander was asking a question).

Mary Ann fertilised the writing seed Mr. Eckler had planted in me in elementary school, and she encouraged me in all the things I needed to be encouraged in. She thought it was important that we all speak our minds, and I think she saw it as a part of her job as English teacher to give us the tools we needed to speak our minds as effectively as possible. She taught us that it was possible to be diplomatic without compromising our message. She also taught us that sometimes diplomacy was not what was called for.

Some years after she had left the school, I learned that she had died of a brain tumor. I was very sad, not so much for myself, since it had been years since I'd seen her, but because the world needs as many Mary Anns as possible.

Then, just recently, I discovered Molly Ivins. When I saw her speaking in the Dildo Diaries, I realised that she was channelling Mary Ann (or maybe Mary Ann had been channelling Ivins). Mary Ann was exactly the type of person who would have had zero patience with the "dipshit stuff" that Ivins talks about in the video. Reading Ivins' columns, I heard them in Mary Ann's voice.

The more I read Ivins' work, the more I realised that, while Mary Ann was gone, and that was sad, we still had Ivins, and that made it just a little more okay. Watching this video that P.Z. Myers is promoting, I realised just how much Molly Ivins was standing in for Mary Ann in my mind.

At this point, the only thing I can think of to do is to make sure that when I grow old I'm as crusty and witty and articulate and funny as Mary Ann and Ivins were. When I grow old I will say precisely what I think, and I will never be too afraid.

I just hope they can forgive me if I can't do it with a Texas accent.

Behind What?

When Parodie pointed me towards this series of posts by Slacktivist, I don't think she had any idea of the monster she was creating. The series, which is a blow-by-blow review of the worst book ever written was so deliciously sarcastic, and the book itself seemed so compellingly trainwreck-like, that I couldn't resist the temptation. (Parodie, you should have known.) I went to my local library and checked it out. And then I read it cover to cover.

This is not something that I would recommend most of my readers do. I can think of only two reasons to actually read the worst book ever written. The first, which is probably the most common, is that you've had all of your critical thinking faculties surgically excised, but your ability to read is (unfortunately, in your opinion) still intact and you need something to occupy it with, lest you read something that makes you think. I expect that the majority of people who actually spent money on the worst book ever written fall into that category.

The second reason is that you, like me, are nuttily masochistic, with a healthy dose of schadenfreude towards the stupid thrown in. Because I realized that reading this book is like experiencing the real-life, literary equivalent of very well-made slapstick. Two boneheaded gits make a sincere and heartfelt effort to do something that they truly believe in, but that is in fact completely asinine, and end up botching more completely and wetly then the audience ever dreamed possible. It's something beautiful to behold. That, of course, is the charitable interpretation, based on the assumption that the authors are merely stupid. There is also the possibility that the authors are simply aware that evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, as a class, will throw their money freely at anything that seems to support their worldview, and are taking advantage of that fact to fleece them for all they're worth. I wouldn't place odds either way.

Anyway, the reason this is coming up now (I read the worst book ever written in December) is that, although I had finished reading the worst book ever written, the Slacktivist still hasn't finished reviewing it, and in the comments of the latest post, Denizen says

Guys, I hate to break it to you. This first book is widely considered to be the best written, the most realistic, and the least flawed one in the series. It just goes downhill, becoming worse and worse with each book.

So what do you think happened? I mean, with a comment like that, what else could I do?

Now, with the first book I had promised myself that I would read the whole thing, no matter how bad. I make no such commitment about this second book. If it sucks so hard that even the trainwreck appeal is lost, I reserve the right to give up.