(For some reason, even though I renewed my DW paid account a week ago, it still hasn't been processed. This means I have been left with no disapproving icons, and I feel like my expressiveness has been extremely limited. :\ )

OH HI THERE I HAVEN'T UPDATED IN A WHILE.

I finally gave in and watched Children of Earth in a five-hour sitting last night. I have a lot of complex thinky thoughts about it, so I'm going to see if I can get them all written down here before I have to go get ready to go camping (yay!).

( tl;dr with massive Torchwood (and Doctor Who) spoilers under the cut. Also, swearing. )

Boy, that felt good to get out of my system. I really need to have a good long tl;dr like this more often.

See y'all Tuesday. I'm going camping!

I have two more DW invite codes. Leave your email address if you want them, comments are screened for your privacy, etc. etc.

I will be more interesting in the near future, I promise!

So I ran across a random icon meme during a Google search and thought it would be fun to do because I love having paid icon space on DW. It's not like I need to, you know, sleep or anything.

( fairly image heavy )

❝who do you ship me with?❞

ETA:
HONESTY MEME

I kind of regret how srs bzns my last few posts have been, so have a meme:

1. Anyone who looks at this entry please post this meme and their current wallpaper.
2. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper.
3. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on.

( +1 pic behind the cut )

I kept waffling back and forth about whether or not I'd make a move involved link/rant post about the shooting of Dr. George Tiller, formerly one of only three-ish doctors in the entire country willing to provide late-term abortions for women who needed the procedure, but I'm not really ready right now to get emotionally involved in this issue all over again.

Anyway, all I wanted to say was that when I get my next paycheck in a couple of days, I'm going to be making a donation to the National Network of Abortion Funds and Medical Students for Choice in Dr. Tiller's name, and if you consider yourself pro-choice or are appalled by the fascism in the pro-life anti-choice movement trying to control women's reproductive choices with actionable threats upon the lives of abortion workers, and you have the money to spare, I would highly encourage you to do the same. Feministing has a list of other things you can do, if this horrible act has mobilized you in any way.

The anti-choice movement has spread a lot of deliberate misinformation about the subject of late-term abortions (are you surprised? I'm not) and I didn't really know anything whatsoever about the procedure before all this, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. If you're interested in learning more, I'll leave you with this comment thread from ontd_political. It has a lot of really good links and information. Please consider giving it a look.

...but I wanted to link this: Rob Thomas on gay marriage. It's truthful and absolutely beautiful.

I'm sure most people on my flist are aware of the California Supreme Court's ruling on prop 8 yesterday. The same-sex marriage ban was upheld, but existing marriages remain valid. For about a minute I thought this was terrible, but the Court really had their hands tied on this one, and by creating a very clear case of separate-but-equal-except-not-really (married gays vs unmarried gays could be seen as some as more substantial than gays vs straights), they left the path wide open for future lawsuit. Yeah, it's frustrating, but it could be way worse. HRC has a decent analysis of the ruling.

California can put another proposition on the ballot to reverse this bullshit in 2012 (and hopefully afterward amend the state constitution so it can no longer be amended by a simple majority vote, which is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard). Check out Courage Campaign.

What I hope for most in the campaign for the 2012 proposition is that organizers will be a lot less laid-back about this vote (since things clearly can and will go wrong) and will come up with some actually compelling organization, rhetoric, and commercials. The no on 8 commercials that showed last year were just absolutely terrible. Seeing those commercials didn't make me want to vote no on 8, and I already support that side. I can't imagine that they did anything but turn off the fence sitters in 08, if they even managed to have that much impact to begin with.

( You know you want videos )

Frustratingly! Today, the prop 8 ruling is being moved to federal court, and I think this is the first time in the past couple of days that I have been honestly worried about this issue. As the Supreme Court of the US stands right now, it has a very conservative bias, and while it will probably take a long time for this case to move all the way up to SCOTUS, I have no doubts it will eventually wind up there, and sooner rather than later. This is easily the biggest step for the gay marriage movement, as it could potentially get gay marriages recognized on a national scale. On the other hand, it could also be a huuuuuuge step backward and set a terrible precedent, especially considering the conservative nature of most of the justices, and I have no idea who thought this would be a good idea.

Gay marriage needs to be taken to the Supreme Court of the US eventually in order to ensure that it is granted universally, because if it is left as a state's rights issue, the forward progress will eventually stagnate. But this does not have to happen right now, and I would honestly prefer if we waited.

You know, sometimes I just wish America were sane.

I've got two more dreamwidth invite codes. Comment with your email address if you want one. Comments are screened. You know the drill.

Dudes guess what I just got B&N member coupons emailed to me including 40% off a children's book and 40% off a Disney Pixar DVD zomgz I am going to buy The Graveyard Book for super cheap I love being a legal adult!

Question: This is a totally awesome use of my legal ability to sign up for things y/y?
Also, should I buy Wall-E or Ratatouille (we already own all the rest)?

Meant to post this a while ago, but forgot. I have two Dreamwidth invite codes if anyone wants them. Just leave me your email address. Comments screened.

Those sure went fast. :D

Utah's Governor Huntsman was announced today as ambassador to China.

First of all: That's incredibly awesome for him.

Secondly: Obama, no! Give him back! We saw him first!

Yeah, he's Republican, but he's downright moderate-verging-on-liberal by Utah's standards (though not nearly anywhere else). He managed to get most of the ridiculous liquor laws changed, he's been really great about environmental policy, and he spoke publicly in favor of civil unions for gay people, in direct opposition to most of the legislature [that third point being a prime example of Utah's differing standards from the rest of the nation. WTF, I'm hailing a marriage traditionalist as progressive, but there you go] Did I mention he's moderate? He's without a doubt the best thing Utah could have right now.

And now he's going to leave and all that progress is going to grind to a sudden halt because most of our other elected officials are complete conservative fuckwits (case in point: Sen. Buttars). If we're lucky, it'll take them a while to reverse everything he's done. One can hope. Our last gubernatorial election was just last November, too, so when Lt. Gov Herbert takes over, he'll be here for a while. He's apparently much more socially conservative than Huntsman was. *sigh*

Edit: Oh wait I am stupid Herbert will only be interim governor and then we will have an election for next year okay then.

Mmyep, time to officially break this thing in. Testing out LJ crossposting, though I might have to turn it off later before it shoots my tags all to hell, because I've already got them set up significantly differently. Still dunno how exactly I'm going to end up using this dw, but hopefully it'll evolve as I get things set up. (If anyone on my flist wants an invite code, just let me know. I can always ask for some and they're supposed to be sending out more anyway. Or, try dw_codesharing)

Recs! (In chronological order, even, because I'm being kind of nostalgic)

The Care and Feeding of Hobbits (Lord of the Rings, gen, fic by Baylor)
Ah, 2004. Good times. Third fandom, right when I was getting into the swing of things, and back when I was obsessed enough to spend entire weeks at a time reading fanfic nonstop (I miss those times). Baylor is pretty much the hobbit writer, in my eyes. Excellently characterized, very sweet, and absolutely everything fits into a timeline somewhere. It's not fanfic, it's backstory. The Care and Feeding of Hobbits comes with bonus!Boromir, which makes it about as close to perfection as you're going to get.

Handlebars [Youtube for the lazy] (Doctor Who, vid by flummery, set to Handlebars by Flobots)
I love this song. It's very powerful. And taking this song and setting it to video of Ten? It just fits, and scarily well. The gradual progression in mood here is excellently (and subtly!) done. I found this on YouTube ages ago, loved it, forgot about it, and then rediscovered it on LJ again a few days ago. I take this as a sign that it was meant to be.

The Line
Don't let the big blocks of tl;dr scare you away from this one, please. I very nearly didn't read it because of that (while voluntarily going through the archives of a webcomic whose whole schtick seems to be tl;dr, at that!) but let me assure you, it's completely, completely worth it.

...I imagined this recs list being longer when I started it, but apparently this is it for now. Stay tuned. I'll probably get off my ass and rec more later, when I'm not "busy" reading more of Baylor's fic and/or EYDW (ah, nostalgia~) and poking at my dw icons.

ETA Wait wait wait. Do edits crosspost as well? If so: awesome.

I have one more final to write and email in to my professor, and then I'll be all done with my first year of college! :D Too bad this final is the stupidest paper I think I've ever had to write in my entire life.

( stupid stupid stupid )

It's both frustrating and ridiculously easy, which essentially equates to me procrastinating on doing it for as long as possible. (And I realized while I typed this up that I don't actually use my right pinky finger when I'm typing. Instead, my left hand migrates and I hit the keys with my ring finger. Weird. I type properly with my left hand.)

A whole lot of basically nothing has been happening lately. School ended Wednesday. Sunday we drove down and got all my stuff packed up and brought home, and I spent the better part of that evening trying to make everything fit in my room again. Tuesday was my mom's birthday. I got up while she was at work and decorated the house with vinyl cut-outs and balloons my dad bought in celebration of her 50th birthday, and then we went out to eat dinner together. Yesterday was my dad's birthday. I had to drive back down to school to take my theatre final (the only sit-down final I had, luckily. All the rest were take-home papers), checked out of my dorm, sold my books back for a pittance, and then drove back and we went to see X-Men Origins together. It was a lot better than I expected it to be, which is definitely because I wasn't actually expecting much of anything. I see no reason not to recommend seeing it. Maybe if I were a Marvel fangirl I would think otherwise, but their continuity scares me too much to get involved.

In other news, I have a Dreamwidth account. I'm still a bit unsure as to how completely I'll migrate over there (whether I'll just post my fandom stuff there, whether I'll set it to x-post here, whether I'll leave LJ completely in order to elope with DW and have its beautiful idealized babies, etc.) but I went ahead and set it up to import my fandom journal for shits and giggles.

I'm almost sad that my linguistics class (1069 - Bad Words and Taboo Terms) is over, because it means that probably never again will I have to deal with the conundrum of talking about the frequency with which men and women use slang words for the genitals without resulting in waaay too many double entendres such as "55% of men use dick frequently, as opposed to only 38% of women." XD Of course, it doesn't help that I wrote most of this after midnight last night. I'm immature when I'm tired.

( cut for more discussion of bad words )

Wait wait wait, what did I miss when I wasn't reading fandomsecrets? What is this new commenting system? I really like it. How long ago did this happen?

So because I'm a spaz, I saw late last night that DreamHost had a huge promotional discount (all gone now, sorry, but if anyone's looking for webspace I can send you a promo code and we can split the referral reward) and signed up for a year's worth of account. No, I'm not going to give you a link. There's nothing there. That's the problem. What do I doooo with it? It was cheap enough that I don't feel like I'm wasting money yet, but I'd like to make use of it. I need ideas~

IRL: Finals are happening. Nothing else. Finals consume your soul. They invade and take over until there is nothing left. =O

I think I have my class schedule set for next semester. I'm working under the assumption that I'm going to be a mass communication/international studies double major (tentative focus on new media and Middle Eastern studies). It's actually a pretty random decision, though much less random than I can get, so I don't know how well this is going to work out. XD

( class schedule +1 image under cut )

This is all just for my own information, to keep everything in one place where I can find it. Carry on. (Work in progress.... o.o)
( Read more... )

Things are fine. :)

It is 9:15. Work ended at 7:00. Tonight fucking sucked. I fucking hate public transportation. I fucking hate the university's meal plan. I fucking hate the school's wifi (which only allowed me to connect halfway through writing this post). I'm gonna buy a fucking motorcycle.

( Here, allow me to explain my misery. (If the times look oddly specific, it's because I'm a freak ...and have a train schedule) )

Tomorrow I'm going to get to wear shorts out, and I'm going to go to Jamba Juice. By then, all should be well.