yonmei

12:00 am: Stickytop post...


Create your own visitor map!


--
( needs a rewrite )

Insofar as I have a friending policy, it's this. I friend people whose journals I like to read, and I hope people friend me for the same reason. I think people should friend and unfriend without needing to ask or apologise.

( old friending policy )

All comments to this post are by default screened.

Abusive creep (5/8/07)'s IP address is: 72.195.181.227.
Abusive creep (1/4/08)'s IP address is: 76.247.137.153.

( Flashy slideshow of my photos- which doesn't work, I have no iea why )

12:17 am: Just In Time
I remembered I meant to vote in the Hugo awards.

Quite a lot of the categories, I voted for No Award in 1st place, but still, it's the principle of the thing. I can say I voted.

(I think the only category where I actually was sure I really wanted to give a "1" to one of the nominees, was Best Fan Artist, because it would be lovely if Sue Mason won it. She is ace. She is also a lovely person.)

It feels like tomorrow is a present, because I'm not going to Glasgow after all. There's an Orange march. Not the phone company or the fruits, the sectarians. Ugh. But, it means I'm not working tomorrow! And my favourite literary newspaper arrived, so I can have a leisurely breakfast tomorrow and read it over coffee. Also toast, possibly. I don't rule toast out.

This evening I watched a film where Harrison Ford didn't kill a woman who wasn't his wife. (I'd seen the first half of it yesterday, until it occurred to me that I was going to drop with exhaustion and I could just stick a tape in the recorder and watch the rest tomorrow. The wonders of modern technology.) He did suffering masculinity ever so well. But I liked it.




Tags: films, worldcon

12:28 pm: Looking at pictures of my newborn nephew...
My brother set up a password-locked account on a photosite which he's invited all his family to join, and he's uploaded 14 photos - of my wee nephew fast asleep, being fed, being bathed, having his nappy changed (by my brother - who looks happier than I've seen him in a long time) and of his mother, looking very tired but very happy. (Well, there's one of her looking at my brother with an expression that just says "Put that camera down NOW" but I'm sure he did. ;-)

I have two totally adorable nephews, I just think you should all know that and envy me.




Tags: family stuff

08:05 am: Still too hot
If you wonder where I was yesterday, I was in Glasgow, having a prolonged meeting for work purposes, and then as it was already 1pm I stayed on till 4pm to see Before Stonewall at the Gallery of Modern Art. Which was quite fascinating - the weeks leading up to Stonewall, as told by a drag queen who was one of the habituees of the Stonewall Inn.

I had been in two minds whether to stay on for the panel discussion afterwards or head back to Edinburgh and perhaps score a two for one, if I got there in time to see Jesus of Montreal at the MCC Church, but the film had brought so many ideas to mind that I thought I'd stay.

Which meant I got to chat with a young Muslim who's just starting an organisation for LGBT Muslims in Scotland, and with a South African called Paul with whom I had a very funny exchange "My family's more screwed up than yours!" over the "refreshments" (white wine, cheap juice, packets of crisps, a couple of plates of grapes and cherries - it looks like they had either no budget for this event or about £10 worth of budget and used the leftover wine and juice from the exhibition launch last week) between 5:30 and 6 - and then headed into a boring non-discussion in which three panellists and a.n.other explained to us why they were there, and what they thought about the issue of LGBT identity, and allowed 20 minutes or so at the end for the audience to ask questions. There wasn't really much time for ideas.

I also got to exchange greetings with the curator, who remembered me as the visitor last week who'd pointed out that the Mapplethorpe isn't the only picture of a sex act in the exhibition: there is also the picture of two women's hands making love to each other in almost Escherish closeness. He was very nice about it and thanked me - "you were quite right, I'll remember that for future tours". But oh dear, the discussion was pants.

Reminded me though, of how things are changing: that more and more younger LGBT people do not give a damn about identifying themselves at such, any more than the straight kids do. We really are working ourselves out of a job. There are kids growing up in Edinburgh and Glasgow today who have no notion, not only that it used to be against the law for two men to have sex, but that it used to be perfectly legal to fire someone from their job for being lesbian or gay. Not now but in fifteen to twenty years, when these kids are teachers and nurses and lawyers and construction workers and secretaries and doctors and parents - maybe it really won't be a big deal. At all.

I got online briefly yesterday in a tapas bar where I drank sangria and nibbled bread and worked a bit, but I had other things to do on my limited connectivity than journal. Sorry.

It's still way too hot. It's already 16 degrees and it's only twenty past eight: yesterday it was 22 degrees. It's Scotland. We're not built for this.




Tags: being queer, glasgow, weather

11:18 pm: I WIN!
The last time I tried to recredit my Vodafone Pay As You Go account, I was told my card had expired.

I checked with my bank, and discovered to my unsurprise that Vodafone had got it wrong; my card was still perfectly valid.

So I tried to check with Vodafone what the problem was. I found that Vodafone had no means to let me do that:

( for length )

So that was the end of Vodafone for me. Well, at least until next time. I mean, all phone companies are garbage. But oh, the joy of PAYGO: to be able to just decide "screw you!" and go. (I transferred all my contacts across on Sunday in an Orange shop, before I rang Orange to port my number.)

And then I had a problem. I got a Nokia 1600 with a Vodafone SIM card last year in the aftermath of the 3 thing. And the Nokia turned out to be locked to Vodafone only: which I found when I inserted my Orange SIM card and got "SIM CARD NOT VALID".

But, solo put me on to a site called www.moneysavingexpert.com, and there was a subsection for unlocking mobile phones for free, so I tried a couple of the websites from there (unlock.nokiafree.org and www.unlockitfree.com) and found the second one had the clearer explanation so I went with the number one code from that website...
...and WHEE. It worked. My phone was unlocked. My Orange SIM card works.

I am wizard of my own phone. :-D




Tags: *bounce*, 3 are bastards, cool things people do with software, evil phone company plots, mobile phone blues

04:53 pm: Why We Need Government
From Log of Smallship One - Passionate and Confused, via lexin:

We need some sort of central organisation whose job is to spend the money we pay to it on the things that we need. Not to make money, not to be profitable, not to be competitive in the fucking free market. We need a fucking government. And it needs to be responsible for the post office, and the maintenance of the water supply, and the same for gas, and electricity, and the fucking railways and the fucking roads and the provision of houses for people to fucking well live in. All the rest we can work out for ourselves. I'll even let them off the telephones, since that seems to be working all right at the moment, but for the things I have listed we need a body that will provide them because it has NO FUCKING CHOICE but to provide them. Because that is what it's FOR.

Yes.

I don't want an independent Scotland, as I said here, because basically I like being part of the union - but I am glad we have the Scottish Parliament to be a devolutionary bulwark against some of the madder floods of the bloody Thatcherite philosophy that's been bleeding acid over UK government since 1979.

Tags: evil british politics, powerful speech vs. powerless silence, scottish politics

07:54 am: New Scottish Parliament: 10 years old
I was working for Company of Bankrupt Evil between 1995 and 1999: when the first Labour government was elected after 18 years of Tory misrule, the day after 1st May 1997, I had a meeting to discuss something work-related, and I remember how three of us stepped outside after the meeting and admitted to each other we'd stayed up or when we'd gone to sleep, to see the Conservatives fall. Four months later, as promised, we got a referendum on the Scottish Parliament: I voted yes to the Parliament and yes to tax-raising powers.

Between May and September we had had a Pride festival in Edinburgh in the rain, and the logo of that Pride became the logo of the organisation for which I now work: the organisation itself came into being that year, a part of the new resurgence in Scottish politics. I knew one of the founders (as one does: we had both been involved in the anti-Clause 28 campaigning back in the 1980s).

Things went very wrong for me at work - for reasons there is no point going into here: almost all those concerned in it have since lost their jobs when the Company of Bankrupt Evil went bankrupt. I voted in the election for the new Scottish Parliament, of course, but in May 1999, when the first meeting of the Scottish Parliament was being held, I was off with my old job and on with my new - I had moved to Thames Valley and was working for Enormous Software Company.

In July, I was on a training course in London when the new Parliament opened: Friday was the day there were pics in all the papers. I said to a lot of people who asked what I thought of devolution that we should wait 10 years to judge.

Being in England that year I missed the worst of the campaign to "Keep Section 28", where a Scottish millionaire teamed up with a tabloid paper and a Catholic cardinal to campaign against the abolition of the law prohibiting "the promotion of homosexuality" by local authorities. There were billboards all over Scotland for a while letting all the LGBT people in Scotland know just what Brian Souter thought of us.(When the millionare briefly published a Freepost address, I sent him a very heavy box of telephone directories and junk with his Freepost address on it: he had to pay double for the postage of anything sent to him by Freepost, you see.)

Since then: things have changed. I think Scotland's become more left-wing/more liberal than England has: the Tories remain the least popular mainstream party in Scotland for tribal reasons, but they're meek enough that they even have an active gay branch which shows up at Pride. The First Minister sends messages apologising for his absence at Pride. (It's just up the road from where the Scottish Parliament stands, but it was raining quite hard.) Politically Scotland changed, and mostly in good ways. I still don't especially want an independent Scotland - wouldn't vote for one, at least. But I like having "parliament-men o' our ain" as Mrs Howden says in Heart of Midlothian (1818 - it's on the Canongate wall) "we could aye peeble them wi' stanes when they werena gude bairns - But naebody's nails can reach the length o' Lunnon". And that has proved remarkably true: not that MSPs do not vote according to party and whip, because they do, but because the voting system in Scotland is such that it is (though it broke down quite seriously at the last election) quite responsive to small groups of voters. It works - which is the main thing you can ask for in a government. (And Section 28 was repealed years earlier in Scotland than in England/Wales, despite Brian Souter.)

MSPs are required to take an oath of allegience to the Queen: from 1999 onwards, an increasing number of MSPs have rather preferred to take their oath "to the Scottish people" (the principle derived from the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 - I have to say rather loosely, given the original text, which includes promises to the Pope that the Scots lords will go on Crusade if only King Edward will leave them alone - but vested with over six hundred years of tradition). In 2003, Rosie Kane, a young Scottish Socialist MSP from 2003-2007, raised her hand to take the oath of allegience and had written on her palm "My oath is to the people" (BBC) but most MSPs choose the less-dramatic route of letting the senior MSP of their party say they're taking the oath to the monarch but affirming that "the people of Scotland are sovereign in this land" or some such, and then taking the oath with a "What s/he said".

As Doctor Winnie Ewing said on 12th May 1999, at the first meeting of the Scottish Parliament, which - in the absence then of any Speaker or First Minister or any other official bodies, she was asked to chair in accordance with UK Parliamentary tradition as the oldest person present: "I have the opportunity to make a short speech and I want to begin with the words that I have always wanted either to say or to hear someone else say: the Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on 25 March 1707, is hereby reconvened."

On 1st July 1999, the Parliament took up its full powers.



Sheena Wellington sang "A Man's A Man For A'That" at the opening ceremony: and, spontaneously, as she sang, most of her audience of MSPs joined in. (Reportedly, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the Queen, both of whom were accustomed to far more sedate State Openings of Parliament, looked absolutely grimly horrified.)

A man's a man for a' that
The verse where the MSPs joined in:

Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an' a' that,
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That man to man the world oe'r
Shall brithers be for a' that.

Tags: music videos, pride, scottish politics

10:14 pm: Zulu said Fred
1. What is your greatest ambition 1) for today, 2) for the month, 3) for the year?

1.1 For today: to compile the email bulletin. 1.2 For June or for July? I could be perverse and say June, which would be the same as for today, wouldn't it? For July: to launch my new website effectively, and to finish writing the latest fanfic. Or I'll get killed. 1.3 To get my photoblogging back on line and to cope with work without losing track of home.

2. You can change one law. What is it, and what does it become?

I would amend the 1975 Marriage Act so that same-sex couples could get married. Oh, that's awfully serious. I would change the Hollywood Law that makes it impossible to have two women talking to each other about plot stuff instead of teh menz, and so from now on all films and TV series would pass the Bechdel Test. Is that too frivolous? I think I want to repeal the law of gravity, so that we can all fly whenever we want to.

3. What's your favourite website to visit?

I wondered how to answer this one. xkcd because it always makes me smile? www.guardian.co.uk because I habitually turn to it for news? insanejournal.com or redbubble or feministsf - the blog for obvious reasons?

No, I think in all honesty it's much simpler than that: www.google.com. Sorry.

4. What's something you are or have been fannish about, and how would you pimp it?

Depends what it was. If Blake's 7, probably start with fanfic, and move on to episodes only when actually begged to do so. If Star Trek, probably begin and end with fanfic, plus maybe carefully selected bits of episodes that are genuinely OK, mostly because Spock and McCoy are gazing into each other's eyes. If ST:tng, I'd probably try to start off with "Chain of Command", because that's certainly what hooked me, or possibly just all the Picard/Q episodes. Especially the one where Q licks Picard's ear. Or the one where Q and Picard are tucked up naked in bed together. If The Professionals, same technique as for B7. If MacGyver, make them watch the Murdoc episodes until sufficiently convinced this is the primary pairing, then introduce them to the sincere yet limited M/M fanfic. If M*A*S*H... well, who could fail to melt at the thought of Hawkeye/Mulcahy? They're just too adorable.

5. Beanie caps: height of fashion, or accessory disaster?

Disaster. That was easy.

You know the rules: if you want to be interviewed, ask me!






Tags: bechdel, being queer, blake's 7, fanfic, fred, m*a*s*h, redbubble, star trek

09:41 am: G'morning. Photos.
I photographed the mould in the bottom of my manager's coffee mug (he'd left it on his desk for a week) and dewy spiderwebs in my garden. Also ducks sitting on a plank in the river.

It's foggy: the forecast says "Hot and humid", which is my least favourite weather.

Tell me things to photograph and post in my journal.

(Also On this day last year meme
2008: Heinz homophobia;
2007: gold floats on water;
2006: Mango mango mango and Christianity/unbelief;
2005: Extra user-pics competition (all comments and their icons now sadly lost)
2004: A horoscope;
2003: One word, one minute.)




Tags: meme meme meme, memories, non-photos, nonphotos

03:07 pm: Dopey little dragons
I just hatched a sunrise dragon: so now I want a sunset dragon:

My first summer egg!:

Hoping to hatch these in order to freeze them as just-winged fledglings:

Still wanting another stone dragon so I can breed geode dragons:

And I want another pink dragon so I can breed more pink dragons, because they're cute:

Tags: dragon eggs need clicky, dragons

09:01 am: EHRC whacks BNP
The British National Party is a racist organisation: membership is restricted to "indigenous white Britons", and to work for the BNP, you must show a membership number. There are other political parties with almost-as-dubious manifestos, but the BNP is frankly and openly the worst organisation with the most power: two members have been elected to seats in the European Parliament.

The EHRC wrote to Mr Griffin on June 23rd that it believed the BNP fell foul of the law in its race-based membership policy, its hiring (which appears to be restricted to party members) and what the EHRC interpreted as hints that the party would not provide an equal service to constituents of all races. Unless the BNP changes its ways by July 20th, the watchdog will seek a court order to force it to; if the party held that in contempt it could face fines, imprisonment—and publicity. cite

This article in the Guardian explains quite well why this hasn't happened earlier.

My mum said yesterday "but what about the people who elected them who now won't be represented?" and I said "I don't care!" and in fact I don't - if you vote for a criminally racist party and you waste your vote, tough cookies! - but also, regardless, they'll have six other MEPs in the European Parliament, even if the two they voted for have been jailed or made bankrupt.




Tags: evil british politics

06:28 pm: New nephew
Two weeks or so early, but none the worse for that: born 2am Friday. My brother went home and seems to have slept for 24 hours before phoning my parents: my mum called me Saturday just as I was walking down the Royal Mile clutching a banner and trying not to slip on wet cobbles, and I called her back just before I went into the play yesterday.

Which was great, by the way.

But not as good as having a 26th June 2009 nephew. Whee.




Tags: family stuff

06:04 pm: Pride and Judy Garland plays
I couldn't remember exactly when the play I am going to tonight begins, so I thought: I will stop off at the Internet art shop (it's an art shop, it also does Internet) and check. And it's at 7pm, so it really makes more sense to head up there and make sure I have my ticket and all than it does to go home.

All the default text on this computer is in Chinese: the shop belongs to a Chinese woman. (There isn't a very large Chinese community in Edinburgh, but as with most of the minority ethnic communities in Edinburgh, a large chunk of it lives on or near Leith Walk. So did I, once upon a time, but now I live a mile away in a much more white-bread area.)

But in the corner of the screen there is a small floating popup ... with a picture of Michael Jackson. Idealised Michael Jackson from 10 years ago, I think - not the beautiful young man he used to be, nor the creepily surgical beauty of his last years.




Tags: just my life really

08:13 am: Hooray camera!
See, I knew posting about it on IJ would work! Thanks for all the goodwill beamed at me to let me find it.

Now off to photograph Pride...




Tags: pride

12:03 am: Pride tomorrow
Wish for me that I should wake up bright, energised, and figuring out where I put my digital camera from the last time I used it...




Tags: being queer, pride, sheepish

08:34 am: Wine, art, and the Corinthian
I had a big glass of delicious Rioja at the Corinthian in Glasgow, which is easily one of the most beautiful rooms I have ever been in, and then viewed queer religious art and transgender art with solo. Also, drank very bad red wine that the gallery had bought. Not enough for a hangover, though *is smug*

It was fun: I was glad I went. I got to look round the sh[out] exhibition again.




Tags: glasgow

01:24 pm: Chocolate, art, cats, and warnings
Danish chocolate isn't particularly good. At least, not the box full of berry-flavoured marzipan chocolates Transamurai brought back from Oslo. I like marzipan, but these were dull.

I'm going to an art exhibition tonight in Glasgow, meeting up with solo. I think it's going to be fun, but I'm glad I'm going with solo.

Because I wasn't going to be back till late, I turned Bob back from eating grass in the garden this morning. She was not a happy kitty.

On warnings for fanfic: The distinction is not between people who have suffered a trauma and people who have not: it it is between people who like being warned of anything untoward in their reading before they take a look at it, and people who do not. The categories are not identical, and indeed I am not sure they even overlap in any significant way.




Tags: cats, chocolate, glasgow, imaginary friend meetup, meta

10:55 am: Last night the mist came down
Really, with darkness: it was like a bad fantasy novel. The sun set and the haar rose, and from a sunny shiny day it was a misty blurry night.

Things I wish writers warned for:

- "The writer intends to trash the female lead in order to justify the two male leads getting together with each other even though both had shown interest in her in canon."

- "Out-of-character misogynist or homophobic abusive comments."

- "For plot reasons, the writer intends to make both central characters refrain from talking to each other about something very important: out of writerly incapacity, no good reason will be given for why they don't just say something."

- One of the worst things I ever read was when RayK from Due South decided to "punish" his ex-wife (I think it was Stella - I read it just once, years ago) for making mildly homophobic remarks about his relationship with Fraser, by slipping very explicit and very identifiable shots of her naked into a presentation she was giving to a conference of her professional peers: the story closes on RayK and RayV in satisfied giggles at what they'd done, which (in direct discussion with the writer) I found she considered was a happy ending, because Stella had been so mean to RayK about his finding love with Fraser. Writer apparently did not follow why this was "excessive", though she said other people had said that to her as well. There were no warnings for it, but though I can't now remember the pseud she was using, I didn't read anything she'd written in DS fanfic again. There was no warning. The writer really didn't see that there was anything wrong with that.

- The writer is an idiot.

Nobody warns for Regency romances:

BABY SARAH: Whaa... oh I get it. Stockholm Syndrome! What an interesting book, examining Stockholm Syndrome and rape from the inside out. I am enthralled.
RAVEN-HAIRED MARQUIS: It is possible that, given your brave tolerance of all the rape, your virtuous defence of peasants and bunnies, and your occasional indignant foot stamps and fiery lock tossing, you may in fact not be a ho. Whoops. Sorry 'bout that. I love you. Let us be wed!
BABY SARAH: Now's your chance! This is his moment of weakness. Bop him over the head with a chamber pot and make a break for it across the tennis lawn!
FLAME-HAIRED SPIRITED INGENUE: Yay! Marriage and babies.
BABY SARAH: And then he got away with rape and she never recovered from Stockholm Syndrome the end? Oh my God, the chill unbelievable horror of it all.

Then Baby Sarah stayed up all night, stock still and terrified that a marquis would come and brainwash her. That book stayed with me a long time. I entirely refused to read romance because of it.

Tags: meta, weather

06:13 pm: In which I sulk about dragons
Sky M'Cloud became an adult after 12 clicks (and 1513 views / 252 unique views). Rose Knight Riveter became an adult after 14 clicks (and 1612 views / 266 unique views). Very Rattlefin became an adult after 12 clicks (and 1592 views / 242 unique views).

Then two of my hatchlings died after growing wings: 13 clicks/15 clicks: 242/243 unique views: 1592/1760 total views). So when Twinight Doubleheader had had 19 clicks, 254 unique views, and 1679 total views, I thought: better freeze this cute little two-headed dragonlet and have an example I can keep, than have a tombstone which will shortly disappear.

But I'm annoyed! *she whines* I want the dragon game to play faaaaiiiir.




Tags: dragons

03:34 pm: Coffee and toffee muffin
I just walked round to Rocksalt to enjoy the sun and to buy a very large coffee and a toffee muffin. It had actual toffee poured on top of it.

It's very, very sunny and I'm indoors and a bit frantic.




Tags: coffee, weather