So I've only been checking the local theater website for Avengers showtimes for about a month now, and until yesterday they only had the midnight show listed. (Which I really can't go to since I have to be at work at 8, and I really really can't take the day off).

But now they have showtimes for next weekend listed and they are all 3-D! [I am blind in one eye so I can't do 3-D at all]. I am very confused, though, since one of the 2 midnight shows is non-3D. So they're just doing one midnight show in 2-D, and no others? Why, why, why universe??! Am I really going to have to take a bus to [large California city] just to watch this movie?

That whole episode was pure fanservice (more geek quotes per minute than any episode ever) and I loved every minute of it.

I'm going to be on the east coast (ish--Pittsburgh isn't the east coast unless you're talking from a California perspective, I know) the week before con.txt for a family wedding, and I could theoretically stretch my stay out to go to the con, which is in Maryland June 15-17, but I know from experience I only enjoy cons when I already know (at least via LJ) several people who are there. Anyone going?

This entry is crossposted at http://norwich36.dreamwidth.org/237655.html, but feel free to reply at either place.

For those of you who have been following my dad's medical saga: it turned out he had blockage in several arteries (one 100%, one 80%), so he had stents put in today and the procedure went well enough that he'll probably be released from the hospital tomorrow. Now my mom just has to persuade him to wait until the weekend to drive home. Thanks again for all your good wishes.

Thanks to everyone sending good thoughts in my dad's direction. ( Cut for those who don't want medical details )

I just got back from the movies with rsadelle to a phone call from my sister saying my dad had to leave my niece's birthday party to go to the emergency room because he thought he was having a heart attack. He's been admitted to the ICU and is on some sort of IV medication; we don't know much more than that at the moment, except that his blood pressure was spiking over 240. I'd appreciate any good thoughts or prayers from those of you of the praying persuasion.

Also my internet has been up and down a lot for the past couple days, so if I'm slow i answering comments that's probably why.

Adrienne Rich has died . Her essays on feminism influenced me a lot when I was in college, but I also loved her poetry. One of my favorites, "Diving into the Wreck," behind the cut (as it is long):

( Read more... )

Let's see if I can actually get something to embed:



This really cracked me up: the perils of being a fannish parent. (I wish it weren't all dads, but it's still funny).

Many thanks to voldything for the heart! I hope you had a nice Valentine's Day!

And thanks so much to serenography and christrose for the lovely hearts! I hope you both have a fantastic V-day.

Between my trip home and fannish excursions with rsadelle and talitha78, I feel like I've seen a lot of movies lately, though I don't have much to say about most of them. Nonspoilery reactions: Sherlock Holmes had ALL THE SLASH (so much I'm surprised it didn't create a sort of vortex sucking all the slash out of every other existing source); Mission Impossible was not nearly as slashy as I had been told it was, though it was still a fun popcorn movie; and We Bought a Zoo was just as formula as you're expecting, though enlivened by a great cast (Colin Ford, aka young Sam Winchester; Elle Fanning, aka that great young actress from Super 8; Scarlett Johannsen, and Maggie Elizabeth Jones, who seriously may be the cutest child in world history). My only real complain about We Bought a Zoo is that Matt Damon has got to stop playing these bad-hair roles; it's kind of traumatizing.

What else? I mainlined Once Upon a Time a couple weekends ago, and now I am reading all the Emma/Regina I can find, because that's exactly the kind of enemy slash I live for. (I'm only about halfway through the Yuletide stories, though, since I'm making myself read alphabetically as an attempt at self-discipline.

My current total obsession, though, is Avengers, and I'm not really sure how that happened, though I'm sure talitha78 shares at least a bit of the blame credit. Possibly if I get more organized, Yuletide and Avengers recs will follow sometime in the near-ish future.

And that's pretty much everything I've been up to on my winter vacation. *Waves**

This entry is crossposted at http://norwich36.dreamwidth.org/237553.html, and I am probably more likely to reply on DW, since I hate the new commenting scheme on LJ--but feel free to reply at either place, since I will eventually respond to comments on LJ.

I think the new commenting system (which I believe is going to affect all users in a few months, not just those using S1 styles) is going to be the thing that drives me permanently to Dreamwidth, though it may take a bit of time before I can set things up over there since I'm travelling. But for the meantime I've turned on custom comment pages--sorry for the inconvenience, since I know many people don't like reading white on a blue background, but it's necessary for my sanity at the moment, and you can always add ?format=light or ?style=mine to get back to the default. (And in case it is not all over your flist at the moment, apparently account creation at DW is currently free until the end of December).

rsadelle and I had a marvellous time this afternoon watching "The Muppets." Without being spoilery, I would say that if you ever liked the Muppets at all, you will enjoy this movie. I loved it, personally. ( Only slight spoilers behind the cut, though the comments will probably be more spoilery )

Edited on Nov. 21 to add: I see this got linked to by the Smallville newsletter. Since the election is over now, I'd really prefer not to host discussions about this entry at this time, since it no longer seems productive to me. I thought about locking this entry, but I won't at the moment for archival purposes. However, if you want to discuss the issues raised in this entry please take it to your own journal. Thanks.

So I'm seeing a lot of posts in which people say they wish they had paid the OTW membership fee so they could have voted in this election. Frankly I wish I hadn't, because the more posts I read the less I feel like I know who to vote for.

First of all, since every single post I've seen talking about the OTW has at least one comment asking "what the heck is the OTW," ( here is a brief description of the OTW and what it does )

In the past couple months, there have been a lot of good posts about the candidates and their stands on various issues; this links to all the candidate statements; this links to all the chats; this is a very good roundup of links to discussions of the election from late October to about November 6, and this post rounds up some of the debate from Nov 6-12.

Then one of the candidates, Lucy Pearson, withdrew her candidacy; A03 had a new code push that changed the look of the archive and had some bugs that led to outrage from some users, and subsequently the resignation of one of the coders most involved in the new skins on AO3; and the board president made a public post discussing organizational problems facing her initiative to implement a strategic plan. This has led to an explosion of posts; some roundups of responses to these events can be found here, here, and here. I have some more links about these specific controversies ( behind the cut )
Another good place to find links about this is pinboard entries for OTW.

To be honest, though I skimmed through the candidate chats when they were posted, I wasn't that invested in the issues a lot of them seemed to be talking about--when I read "organizational transparency," for example, my first thought was "oh my god, like I don't already have to scroll past all those otw updates I don't actually care about." I support the overall goals of the organization--especially the legal defense of fandom--but I give them money for the Archive, so when I read a bunch of posts complaining that Naomi Novik only cares about the archive, my general response was "well, good, that should be the priority."

However, I had insomnia last night and stayed up until 5 a.m. following all sorts of links about volunteer burnout, volunteers feeling like their suggestions aren't taken seriously, people feeling that the organizational structure itself works against communication . These sorts of conversations have led a bunch of people to advocate for an "Everyone but Naomi" ticket because the general tenor of these volunteer complaints is that the culture created by certain powerful members of the board--Naomi Novik and Francesca Coppa being most frequently mentioned--has created an atmosphere where volunteers can't be heard, suggestions for change get overlooked, burnout is inevitable, and volunteers are likely to flee the organization en masse. And that suddenly makes organizational transparency and sustainability (a) comprehensible to me and (b) actually central to continuing the Archive, since the archive runs on volunteers.

But in spite of that, I feel like I'm only hearing one side of the story. I want more context! Are the complaints pretty much representative of all volunteers, or just a few committees? Is the board fundamentally divided, and we're only hearing one side? There have been a few attempts at rebutting the idea that volunteer burnout and resignations are the fault of Naomi or other founders and a couple general arguments for Naomi's importance to the organization , but I guess what I want to hear is more perspectives on the work culture of the OTW, or maybe statements from all the candidates addressing volunteer burnout in light of recent events. I have read some extremely informative posts on non-profits and volunteering and dysfunction and burnout, but I still think this is a problem the OTW needs to address.

Sigh. I really wish some of this stuff had been posted earlier, since the election is in two days. And I am still very conflicted, because a number of people I respect are supporting Naomi's candidacy, but the arguments about volunteer burnout and long-term organizational sustainability seem very persuasive, right now.

ETA: mollyamory's post defending Naomi on dreamwidth (the one I linked to above was on LJ) has some great discussion in the comments, both bookshop's specific arguments for why not to vote for Naomi and mollyamory's rebuttal and specific comments on Naomi's managerial style. Also, apparently right before I posted this svmadelyn posted another defense of Naomi.

My only comment: PLEASE tell me someone is writing Cary/Kalinda/Dana. Please!

Hi all. I've been radio silent lately because of massive tech fail--for about ten days my internet went out every day at sundown, and when it finally got fixed my VCR died, so I was way behind on watching everything, and though I've purchased a VCR/DVR combo it doesn't like my antique television, so I think I'm going to have to break down and buy a new TV. Bleah. And work has been more insane than normal and isn't likely to let up until after Thanksgiving.

Belated thanks to duskwillow for the cute little Halloween spider!

I have brief thoughts on much recent TV I have seen. I think I'll go in reverse chronological order just because it seems logical:

First, tonight's Revenge ( Read more... )

Next, my extremely brief and mainly negative thoughts on this week's H50 ( Read more... )

The Good Wife ( Read more... )

Supernatural: Slash Fiction ( Read more... )

Vampire Diaries: Ghost World ( Read more... )

I created an account on Linked In about a year or so ago mainly because people I used to work with kept inviting me to join their network, and since my job situation is always precarious I figured it couldn't hurt. I haven't done much more than upload my bare-bones resume and add people when they request to be on my network. Generally those folks are people I know from work, but I'm starting to get requests from people I don't know--colleagues of former colleagues and that sort of thing. Is there any reason to say no to these requests? I mean, if it were Facebook I would say no because I don't want my page cluttered with a lot of crap I won't read, and every so often I do post semi-private things on Facebook, but as far as I can tell the whole purpose of Linked In is to expand your network for job-hunting, right? Is there a reason I can't think of at the moment why I should not add anyone who requests it to my network?

Well, it was better than last week's episode, anyway? ( Read more... )

I don't have anything profound to say about last night's episode, just a couple of reactions. ( Read more... )

Wow, if this is where they're going with the Terry Quinn plots, I may have to bail on H50 until his guest arc is over. ( Read more... )

Meanwhile, The Good Wife continues to be awesome. ( Read more... )

And finally, Pan Am. ( Read more... )

Not related to tonight's ep at all, since it hasn't aired yet, but I was listening to the latest version of slash report by rageprufrock and mklutz, and the first part of it was all about how amazing the premiere of The Good Wife was (truefact) and how incindiary the sex on that show is (I don't have words to say how strongly I agree). Then rageprufrock said that her dream for that show was Alicia and Kalinda in a relationship, keeping Cary as their pet--and my brain kind of exploded. Seriously, why has no one written this yet? I would happily provide bribes.

Normally I would just bookmark these on delicious (insert a hollow laugh here), but I am collecting these links here mainly for my own convenience (largely stolen from blue_meridian and bookshop). Feel free to add any you find in the comments section.

Context: I assume pretty much everyone knows by now that Avos completely borked a lot of delicious's functionality when they took over today (e.g. no more tag clouds; incomplete tag lists; networks are gone; only ten entries display per tag; no tag that has a slash in it will display, etc). I'm willing to give them a week or two to respond to user feedback before I jump ship altogether, but lots of people are already migrating. Considering how hard this is hitting newsletter editors and kinkmeme folks, I am not surprised, really. rageprufrock and mklutz even did an emergency issue of the slash report about it. A fairly comprehensive rundown of the lost functionality--as well as one user's test of the new stack function--is available here.

Here is a spreadsheet for the "great migration" from delicious ; since it lists where people are migrating, it is also helpful in suggesting other sites to migrate TO (diigo, pinboard, Trunk,ly, zootool, etc).

Speaking of places to migrate to: I have accounts on diigo and pinboard that I created last year when the rumors of delicious closing started floating around. Since apparently diigo won't allow public links with "bad/inappropriate words such as sex,porn, sexy in title/description/tag/annotation", it doesn't seem like a good place for fandom to migrate to. (A great criticism of diigo's policy privatizing sex-related tags is here).

And here is another post talking about some reasons why diigo may not be a good fit for fandom .

Pinboard, on the other hand, has apparently added social networking functions since I last looked at it, and its leadership is fandom friendly. blue_meridian has some additional details here . Also,pinboard has some really cool features I didn't know about , such as the ability to see which of your links are currently dead, and also the ability to save all your open tabs without necessarily making them bookmarks. Pinboard does have a one-time fee that's around $10 (it increases a bit as its user base grows; I think I paid about $9 last December).

OTW has also responded to the debacle, talking about the various bookmarking options on AO3 and what it can and can't do at the moment . Some other fans are talking about the possibility of a fan-created analogue to delicious .

Meanwhile, for those who are sticking with delicious (or waiting to see what happens in the next couple weeks), these posts list some workarounds for getting all your tags to be visible or for searching for tags that have a slash in them .

The Good Wife just keeps getting better and better. ( Read more... )

So did anyone else watch this show? I thought it was pure soapy fun, and I'll probably keep watching it, especially since there's nothing else of interest to me on Wednesday nights and it's on late enough that I am usually home from work when it airs. (I'm already taping too many shows and don't want to add another).

I am SO easy, but then again I've always been honest about liking this show for the pretty, not for the plot.
( Read more... )