Miscellany

[loneraven]

It's really nice to be home. I didn't have the quietest of weekends, really; I was at Amicus training again on Saturday, and that was kind of sort of exhausting. Practical, not theory, so lots of running around with my hands in my pockets trying to make myself as good an investigator as possible, i.e., not very good. The funny thing is, I find, is

Comments

[biascut]

Yes yes yes to your brief unrelated rant! Someone elsewhere on my f'list just posted the following from the Daily Mail comments:

Its very natural to have a family (the most natural thing in the world except plants)

which leads me to want to construct a huge diagram ranking everything in the world in order of naturalness, with plants at the top and Wham bars at the bottom.

[marymac]

You can add the lecture apparently happening tomorrow in cognition and Culture, Why do intelligent people do unnatural things? to the list.

I am not going to go and heckle. I am not.

[biascut]

I really really think you should!

(Have I ever told you that it freaks me out whenever I see your name, because mary mac is actually my name? I am m@rykm@c everywhere but livejournal, and every time I see your name I have a moment where I think I've secretly created a livejournal account and am using it without telling myself!)

[marymac]

But, my supervisor would look very disappointed if I did. And then we'd get The Talk about us all being One Big Happy Department now again.

No, but its awesome! Mostly I end up being something else because someone else got in there first. I have no idea how I managed it on LJ.

Using an account without telling yourself would also be kind of cool, but I think mostly worrisome...

[hathy_col]

Please please please tell me that you're still hopefully going to be floating around the North-West at some juncture between the dates of 8th-12th April? Because I will be in the North-West by then (I can't make it down any earlier and can't leave any later) and it would be ever so good to actually meet up in the place we actually have in common. Yes.

'Natural' is a big pile of nonsense. I've not seen arguments about polyamory being natural, except in Hollyoaks. And, you know, smallpox is natural, I don't really want to catch it!

[loneraven]

YES. YES I AM. Can you believe it? We will be in the same place at the same time! Oh, hurrah.

[jacinthsong]

'Not natural, in my view, sah. Not in favor of unnatural things.'
Vetinari looked perplexed.
'You mean, you eat your meat raw and sleep in a tree?'
No, no I don't have anything intelligent to say.

[jacinthsong]

And you know what, you misspelt Siân's LJ name. Basically, Iona, you are a gigantic vortex of LJ-namechecking fail. I am glad you are an unnatural shortarse stripey-cardiganed freak with an enormous eunuch cat who freaks out at the possibility of kids, becuase the world needs NOTHING less than your misspelling genes being passed on to the next generation.

*hearts*

On serious note: christ, I somehow missed the bit about "mental retardation" when I initially read this post, and just...ow. Damn you for messing up my entirely unfair prejudices against lawyers as heartless mercenaries.

[loneraven]

<3! clearly, what the world needs even less is small yarmulkéd stripy-tights-wearing children trooping through the world two by two.

(Defence attorneys are paid less than minimum wage! I cannot even.)

[deathbyshinies]

I bet the boys end up wearing the stripy tights and the girls end up wearing the yarmulkes, and that they swap back and forth when nobody's looking.

I have decided that I am going to buy them terrible, terrible candy and toys that make a lot of noise. Yes.

[magic_doors]

As an only very tangentially related point: one of the things that pisses me off most about hippy culture generally and the pagan element in particular is its overwhelming desire to divide everything in the world into natural and unnatural. IT MAKES NO SENSE. And one day, I will write a long and whiny blog post about it.

[loneraven]

How are they defining "natural", though? That sounds problematic.

[magic_doors]

While not everyone does so, and I don't want to tar them all with the same brush, I read and hear a lot of people who seem at base to think that everything created by humans or involing their agency in any way after c.1000 CE is 'unnatural'. They're not really looking at how its defined, and it is problematic. It's not all like that; some, I particularly that to do with the treatment of farm animals. But I'm always bemused at those pagans who think there's somehow more immanent pantheistic deity in the middle of a wood than in central Oxford. But, apparently there is. Because cities and technology are evil and unnatural.