| Link dump, y'all! I'm allowed to say y'all, since I'm one quarter Texan on my father's side. |
[04 Dec 2008|12:02pm] |
Via ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) debunkingwhite, the best thing since Stuff White People Like, Racism Is Over, celebrating all the ways racism is over, now that America has elected a Black president. Sample:The new America has way more holidays, and way more fun!
Instead of everyone in the country being forced to take off Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving, workers and students are now allowed to take 10 personal cultural holidays per year. This can be applied to whenever their holidays fall without any penalty, pleading or paperwork. This gives flexibility to holidays whose dates change every year because they don’t subscribe to the Gregorian calendar. At schools, instead of the absent kid coming back and having to explain where he was the day before, he now hears “happy holiday!” on his return, because teachers take fifteen minutes to explain to their classes the special reason that Jacob or Jagdish is out of school for the day. The same happens in the workplace. Offices have taken to the practice with great enthusiasm, except they tend to celebrate the holiday a day early so they can surprise the person with cake at the staff meeting. Offices love any reason to surprise people with cake (or flan, gulab jamun or the occasional gifelte fish). Happy Diwali everyone! I tried to verbally keyboard smush over this blog, which is harder than you might have thought.
Also via debunkingwhite, this article on Plimoth Plantation, a historical site, which makes an effort to educate its visitors in more than one way:It's a delicate balance between education and visitor relations, said Linda Coombs, associate director of the museum's Wampanoag Indigenous Program. Recently, she asked a 9-year-old girl who arrived in a homemade beaded costume to remove the garment before visiting the homesite, reducing the child to tears and upsetting her mother.
[...]
The awkward situation was salvaged by another cultural gesture, said Coombs. "I said to her, 'I understand you are giving up something that is important to you, so I'd like to give you a gift.' " She presented the girl with a beaded necklace from the gift shop to represent their coming to an understanding. The comments are full of how the museum staff are totally meany-pants, though.
Hey, remember when jamjar was part of the Amanda Palmer video-shoot? Palmer's label, Roadrunner, has refused to promote that video because she wouldn't let them cut or digitially re-sexify her belly. Which is, for all y'all's information, "fat." And while it's tempting to point out that if that's fat, I'm Abe Lincoln on a tricycle, the point is really more about the fact that women's bodies have to conform to be let out in public. If you want to support Palmer and not Roadrunner, buying music through her website gives her the largest cut. Shout-out to kphoebe who introduced me to Oasis, Amanda Palmer's viciously funny and heartbreaking song about, among other things, sexual assault and abortion.
Emily the Strange ripped off from antique children's books! Actually, I seem to dimly remember an earlier Emily the Strange plagiarism controversy, does anyone know what I'm thinking of?
List of phrases google does and does not know. Guess which list "passenger side bidet" is on?
I find design competitions endlessly fascinating, since the job of designer appears to be "I come up with ideas: implementing them is your problem!" That said, the first looks neat, if possibly a problem for celiacs, but I can't believe no one is already producing the last.
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| wip scars |
[04 Dec 2008|02:46pm] |
i have found a new way to torment myself with stories i'm not writing! wordle.net can turn sections of a draft into pretty pictures.
( for example.... )
what do YOUR unfinished stories look like?
eta: i couldn't resist doing more!
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| gah |
[04 Dec 2008|08:25pm] |
Coloring the yuletart thing is taking forever. I've started yesterday and been at it for hours today, and I'm still not even half finished. How can this take so long? Granted, I'm layering for livelier colors so I have to go over every area many, many times, but still.
Also, I need to learn to sit more ergonomically or something. I have this unhealthy tendency to hunch over when I do details, because I'm very shortsighted and somehow it works better to look at details without glasses, but with my eyes that means the paper being less than two centimeters away from my nose tip. Obviously my back does not thank me for that.
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| a milestone of a sort |
[04 Dec 2008|12:50am] |
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After years in fandom I finally got my very first anti-slash flame. It kind of feels like a milestone, because I've never before been flamed for artwork that I recall (only trolled in discussion posts). Though I guess it's not surprising, considering how non-prolific I am. Also not actually drawing slash all that often.
Anyway the flame is such classic too, all capslock and typos with profanity accusing me of disrespecting the characters (as far as I can gather amidst the typos and incoherency). Though I guess I can't actually take full credit, as it was for my illustration of Lucy's Nightwing/Superman story Secrets. *waves* I'm almost tempted to let it out of the moderation queue (it came via my wordpress fanart blog) to commemorate the occasion, but not quite.
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| argh |
[03 Dec 2008|11:45pm] |
My rats drive me crazy. You remember how two weeks ago Krümel broke his foot and I had to separate him into a small cage so he'd rest and not climb stuff? But for social contact I put the small cage inside the large one. He's still inside that small cage because the foot is still swollen as broken bones take some time to heal (especially as you can't stop him from walking on it completely). Of course Krümel is fairly unhappy in the small cage, and I only take him out briefly each day. And the other two don't quite get why he's behind bars either.
So now Ignatz has figured out how to open the wire door to the small cage, and broke into it. I heard suspicious squeaking and checked them. I know why my big cage has doors with actual locks rather than simple hooks.
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| yay, progress! |
[02 Dec 2008|08:45pm] |
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I just finished the pencils for my yuletart picture, and I think it turned out really nice so far too. Of course it still needs to be inked and colored, and who knows how it'll look then.
Now I'm going to take a break to watch the new Heroes, and then maybe start with the inking.
Not entirely unrelated, I really wish I had a nicer desktop lamp, because the light I have right now is crap. And this time of year you don't even have daylight hours. Like today I woke up a bit after seven, and of course it was dark, but later around half past nine it was still dark, because it was so overcast. And I don't mean just a bit gloomy, but seriously, it was barely bright enough to read without additional lights, and my night vision is good. And crappy lamp light sucks for coloring especially. *grumble*
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| *facepalm* |
[02 Dec 2008|03:55pm] |
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mood |
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 cold |
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It's December, so the gas furnace broke. It's dead. I'm cold and unwashed. *pout*
Fortunately my landlord's a really great guy (when you can get hold of him) and his reaction was "Of course it did - I was expecting it a year or two earlier... I'll have someone call you immediately." Here's for hoping that someone does and that it won't be a repeat of the kitchen window saga - at one point the guy who was supposed to do *that* told my landlord that it fell off the truck... it was supposed to be done when I moved in and arrived half a year later.
Well, no heat is a little more urgent (and I can cut the rent if it isn't done soon.)
ETA 5 minutes later: Someone'll be here to look at it in 30 minutes. Wow. O_O
ETA of awesomeness an hour later: IT WORKS AGAIN!
My landlord is the best and knows the best people.
*celebrates with a hot shower*
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| So, remember when I was all "lolcanada"? (Incidently, already taken as a com name, dammit) |
[01 Dec 2008|11:26pm] |
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Canada continues to bring the drama and lols! Making Light has a pretty concise summary for those who may not have been following Canadian politics for the last six months, but I'm camped out at blog.macleans.ca, for lack of any better idea, unless people know of good (by which I mean snarky and left-leaning) political blogs on Canadian politics? (Rick Mercer, dammit, has dropped his blog. I stop paying attention for eleven months, and look what happens!)
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[01 Dec 2008|07:17pm] |
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mood |
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 bouncy |
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from the Department of the really, really obvious: Don't visit the Bahlsen outlet while you're hungry.
... at least it was cheap! And I didn't get more than I could fit in my backpack.
*mmmmmmm*
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| doodle |
[30 Nov 2008|04:30pm] |
A doodle again instead of a proper post, but I made it through November and really posted every day. (Though November is over already? meeep!)
( teddy bears are less benign than they seem )
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| I've always admired the panache with which he delivered his 'Fuck you's. |
[29 Nov 2008|04:46pm] |
Canadian politics are threatening to become entertaining again, but for some of use, they're already entertaining:
Chretien was seen on his way to his downtown Ottawa office, but when asked about the coalition talks he feigned an inability to understand English.
"Je ne comprends pas anglais," he said. Source
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| Yuletart flailing |
[29 Nov 2008|07:05pm] |
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On the bright side, I've finally gotten past this annoying creative block wrt to my recipient's requests, and have an idea that could look cool rather than just being a random, boring character drawing. On the downside, the deadline is looming really close (*meeep*), and my idea is somewhat complicated, and I'm not sure my skills are up to realizing it. Though because I have participated last year, I have until the seventh to finish my art rather than until tomorrow night, so I might manage it, and won't have to hide from the internet in shame.
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| AU recs |
[28 Nov 2008|11:05pm] |
DCU
Shards of Night, by Marcelo. Het, Lois/Clark. (ca. 830 words)
Clark in this story is more alien than in canon. The story is on the scary side, but I actually felt sorry for Clark, because he's still one of the good guys.
The Call, by Marcelo. Gen, Bruce Wayne. (ca. 450 words)
Another short, yet scary DC AU. The author describes it as "DC Comics meets Lovecraft" and I really like the creepy premise for Batman here.
Supernatural
Dromoscope, by Emily Brunson. Gen, Dean Winchester. WIP
It's a fusion with the novel "Jumper". I haven't read that, but still enjoyed the story so far. The premise is that Dean is able to teleport, and keeps this secret from his family.
The Heist, by Starrylizard. Gen.
This last one isn't a fic rec, but an AU vid. It is really fun though. Sam and Dean are bankrobbers.
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| crossover rec |
[27 Nov 2008|09:30pm] |
For some reason I haven't read many good crossovers recently so this isn't a set of recs like usual, but this one was fun:
Redefinition, by bluflamingo. Slash, Colby Granger/Evan Lorne, Cadman/Simpson. (ca. 6,790 words)
Numb3rs/SGA
This is more angsty than happy, but I liked this take on how hard it must be to have a cross-galaxy relationship.
Unrelated, it seems like much of my f-list is working towards or already in a turkey-induced coma, it's so quiet.
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