To the lighthouse, my friend

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Why, exactly, is it that the religion which comprises over 2/3rds of the people who are religious in the US has somehow had a major portion of its members get their heads stuck on the idea that they're somehow a persecuted minority? The religion whose tenets get printed on our damned currency, no less?
Hurry up and make your Conservative party, Sarah Palin. And take all the crazy religious nutjobs with you to it-- and show us all how badly you fare without associating yourselves with an organization that's not intrinsically religious. Do it quick, though, Jeebus is coming and you'll want to do this before the Rapture!

...but this news story is a bit past what I'd known. Bea, I wish I'd ever met you. What a lovely legacy you're leaving to the world- not just as a comedian, but as a person who chose that one of her final acts on the earth was bettering other people's lives.

'Golden Girls' star Bea Arthur leaves $300,000 in will to NY group that helps gay homeless youths

( Text of article behind cut, in case the NY Daily moves the story )

So I'm noticing that something has changed in the way my mind deals with the world, in the wake of the race!fail and sexism conversations I've participated in on LJ.

A good example of how happened a couple days back. I was discussing a person I know who is doing foolish things and I said 'I don't get it, because she's a smart woman'-- then paused, shook my head, and said 'I'm sorry. I don't get it because she's a smart person: her gender's irrelevant to the question'.
While it's not an example of me being perfectly proper about sexist use of language, it's at least a good example of me noticing the sexism implicit in the language I used, and navigating around it.

Hypothetical scenario:
Pretend you own a laptop computer. For argument's sake, let's call it a Smackmook Schmo.
Along with a computer, there are, of course, peripherals. Some more, and some less essential.

Apple has reduced the # of essential peripherals, laudably, to 1: the power adapter. Now, the power adapter is a fairly smallish piece of work- again, laudable.

Unfortunately, smaller things are easier to lose. But hey, if you're in my neck of the woods, there're something like a thousand Apple stores in driving distance...
...care to guess what they can't bother keeping in stock inb the county I live in? Hint: it's a computer peripheral.

Come the fuck on, people: this is a total no-brainer.

...I drove LA->SF in 5.5 hours.
Car redlined well below design spec.
Obviously, tune-up must happen.

I've been at the office since 9. It's now 6:30. I'm cutting out before we're done with the move.
I've had to do all sorts of weird little errands, and I'm not the type of person who cheerfully adapts to such things en masse.

Off to dinner with cheezdanish and del_the_psycho.

Minus side: did not manage to get a ticket to Gilliam's Graumann's Chinese premiere, despite much effort.

Plus side: did get to meet him after, wish him well with the new film, tell him friends in London are raving about how good it was, and tell him I hoped it continued to do well.

Overall grade? A+++.

...include adding a white cord looping in from the left and back out, on this icon. While I don't have a bigger version of this image anymore (thank you, hard drive crash), I could grab one off my Thunderball DVD.
Yes, I own Thunderball on DVD. I own ALL the Bond movies, in fact. Except for the latest one- haven't found it used yet. I may be a media addict but I'm not one who unremittingly must buy something THE DAY IT COMES OUT ZOMG.

Anyways, yeah, that has to happen.

So here I am, in beautiful chic Hollywood.
And my car is here in beautiful chic Hollywood, too.
Should I perhaps do something in greater LA since I can actually get there on my own steam now?

I know, now, to just SKIP getting over to the 5 before leaving the bay area, when the bridge is down.
Sweet christ, but scotch is called for.

Anybody local got one of those child-safe pumpkin-carving knives I can borrow for Friday early-eve?
My local pub's going to do some jack-o-lantern creation which sounds like fun- but I'm thinking in terms of alcohol, knives, and hand-eye coordination and coming to some unpleasant possibilities.

Jeez, what a crap question this is. 'Do you think that your feet define what shoes are most comfortable for you, or is it that the shoes that are most comfortable to you depends on the shape of your feet?'

Answering the question that IS a question: I do think people tend to follow nature and nurture in roughly equal percentages: I know I'd be a very different person if I'd been brought up by different parents and exposed to different stimuli by my parents. I frankly think I'd be worse off for it.

Gentle Reader, what's your favorite story of an awkward social situation? Especially one that was awkward at the time, but that with hindsight was really, really funny.

A vignette from non-fiction

OUR CAST:
colubra
Snarky-and-funny Coworker
Hot & Supposedly Straight Coworker.
THE SCENE: Thai restaurant across the street.

Hot & Supposedly Straight Coworker: I am so jazzed about this curry!
Snarky-and-funny Coworker: Could one even say you were pumped?
Hot & Supposedly Straight Coworker: *wistful sigh* Just that one time...
colubra: *silent, internalized facepalm*

...I have finally found a name for something on LJ that's been driving me nuts.
There's been all sorts of BAW WAAAAH DIRECTORS AND ACTORS SIGNED A PETITION COMPLAINING THAT ROMAN POLANSKI GOT ARRESTED IN SWITZERLAND AT A FILM FESTIVAL BECAUSE FILM FESTIVALS SHOULDN'T BE ABOVE THE LAW THEY ARE ALL HITLER AND EVIL AND CHILD MOLESTERS BY ASSOCIATION AND I WILL NEVER SEE ANOTHER MOVIE THEY TOUCH BAWWWWW noises on LJ of late. Now, personally, I can understand being disappointed if you don't read the petition; the wording very carefully emphasizes that these people found it unpleasant that a film festival was used for a situation of extradition of a criminal who's been on the lam for 31 years or so. There's no effort to defend the crime in question here: simply an expression of displeasure with the act undertaken by the US government and Swiss officials.
BTW, did you know Roman Polanski has been in and out of Switzerland for years? What, surely there wasn't any grandstanding by the governments involved at work here! This was the soonest they could've apprehended Polanski, and their first chance in, uh...
...well...
...looks like 20some years. Of having to hand over his passport at the border for most of them.

Anyways, I am also not looking forward to the cringing agony of watching people shriek 'throw the book at him' when the crime he pled guilty to carries a maximum sentence of, uhm... 1 year or so. So there's going to be a lot of shrieking about how he OBVIOUSLY WAS FAVORED BY THE SYSTEM when the max penalty- seriously, I looked it up and so can you, there's google and it's the california penal code- is 3 years. If he's charged with evading arrest, he'll likely serve more time for that crime than for the initial one.

And now, I have finally found a name for this debacle.
In the great tradition of Nipplegate, Harry Potter and the Underaged Depiction of Sexual Activity, race!fail, and fail!fail, I bring you...
...pedo!fail.
Use the term in good health, my friends.

There really isn't.
I just noticed the spot from last week's Dollhouse I'd recognized, walking into the office. And it's raining here. I didn't think LA had rain.

Weirdly, I didn't need the coat at all in SF on the way to the airport- and @ Burbank I needed it from airport to cab because rain.

My thoughts on one Barack Obama, addressing the Human Rights Campaign.

"Many of you don't believe progress is happening. I want to be honest about that because it's important to be honest among friends. I said this before, I'll repeat it again, it's not important for me to tell you to be patient."
Note how he used 32 words here, but didn't make a single definitive statement about anything he's in control of?
While this little chunk was cringingly double-speak, it does get better.

Here's the full transcript. Me poking at it with a blue pencil follows, behind the LJ cut.

( Here's a lot of analysis! )

So I did a bit of maundering on what bugs me about Objectivism, and I think that I can sum up my chief objection in one sentence: My hair was dark brown, and is now dark brown and gray. Yes, it's still hair, but it is not the hair that it was. If we consider the physical person as A, then A ceases to be what A was, as one grows older. If this was untrue, we all would still be small bald wrinkly persons wearing diapers, wouldn't we?
Alternately: Italy WAS the seat of the Roman Empire, but IS no longer. A ceased to be A, didn't it?

If you're someone who finds that Objectivism fits your worldview, please DO point out what you see as the logical fallacy here. I'm not seeing one, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.