sundries

[rm]

I'm back in NYC and back at my desk. Nothing has gone overwhelmingly haywire: Patty's pacing herself well on her comps and seems relatively sane; the cats are glad to see me; work hasn't blown up. And damn, it is always so nice to be back in NYC; most other cities seem like summer camp to me, and Dragon*Con is its own special brand of challenging.

luckyckljw is a photographer who has just had a number of images rejected from a gallery show in Texas because they feature nudes. The gallery has displayed other nude works before, but those works were smaller and featured more culturally acceptable bodies in terms of both size and gender binary-ness. luckyckljw is looking for suggestions of how to deal with the situation, as well as moral support.

Because Eid falls over September 11 this year (it runs from September 9 - 11), Muslims are toning down celebrations. Wow, do I get the pragmatism behind that. But it sucks, and I'm sorry.

At the end of Ramadan, Indonesians head home.

Dancing with the dead in Ambohimairary.

Unsurprisingly, a lot more suicides go for jumping off of tall buildings in NYC as opposed to elsewhere in the country. When I was a kid, during a patch of insider trading scandals, someone jumped off the roof of our building and we saw him go by the window.

On television, gender roles, and how a woman's best friend on television is often a gun. Executives were, predictably, surprised when women were okay with women on TV committing violence.

On the phrase man up.

Some of us are still die-hard pinball fans. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer people left who are capable of and willing to repair the things when they break. Did you know I used to be ADDICTED to the Doctor Who pinball machine they had in a suburban Maryland pizza parlor near where my boyfriend lived when I was 18, more than 15 years before I ever decided I like the TV show? Man, that machine was sweet.

The Brooklyn griffen.

Welcome to 1938.

IMDB revealed something sort of bizarre and totally interesting to me today. You know how there's a sequel to The Dark Crystal coming up? Yeah, did you know the current screenwriter on the project is Craig Pearce, the guy that co-wrote Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet with Baz Luhrmann?

Yeah, my jaw is still on the floor. Because that? Makes such perfect sense it's sort of ridiculous.

It also hits my fannish brain in a way that's too weird to describe to most of you, but those who know are laughing. Life's very funny.

Also, fuck, I miss Australia.