eruthros

"Monkey eludes dragnet at train station"

Me: "what? monkey? train station? where? who? huh?" Turns out the answer is wild monkey, Tokyo train station, thirty policemen. Right.

ETA: Okay, wait, maybe this is the best headline ever: "Britain's spy service seeking to hire gays." I particularly like the use of gay as a noun.

This has made me so very verklempt:

George Takei and his parter are getting married in California. With Walter Koenig (Chekov) as best man and Nichelle Nichols as matron of honor.

You GUYS, go read George Takei's statement, because ... whoah. Man. VERKLEMPT.

In short: they are adorable and I want to hug them. The end.

Video of the steps outside the CA Supreme Court as the decision was announced: here.

Video of Mayor Gavin Newsom's press conference here. It's hard to hear, but look at that crowd, look at the reaction, man. (You remember him; he was the one who told the city of San Francisco to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2004 -- the film crew that was around that day made a video called Pursuit of Equality, trailer available here; it also makes me sniffly.¹)

There's a neat slideshow at the San Jose Mercury News here; picture 15 is the SF City Hall, filled with people.

And I dunno if you remember this, but this past winter New York ruled that all out of state marriages must be recognized in New York. Which means, if you're a New York resident, and you get married in Massachusetts or California or Canada, your employer here in NY has to give you benefits.

Dear San Francisco City Attorney, dear Lambda Legal, dear ACLU, dear NCLR, dear Equality California: thanks. You guys are awesome.

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1. For maximum sniffles: Vienna Teng's City Hall (here), a narrative song about a couple getting married in San Francisco in 2004. And it's topical, because the 2004 marriage in SF led, over the last four years, to this: many of the couples who got married then brought the suit against the state that resulted in this overturn. Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, the very first couple to be married in San Francisco in 2004 (in the first picture under Thursday here), were part of the suit.

So I was reading a New Yorker article about Krystian Bala, a Polish author accused of murder, and I came across the following paragraph and was just -- boggled. One of these sentences is not like the others, guys:

Bala cast himself as an enfant terrible who sought out what Foucault had called a "limit-experience": he wanted to push the boundaries of language and human existence, to break free of what he deemed to be the hypocritical and oppressive "truths" of Western society, including taboos on sex and drugs. Foucault himself was drawn to homosexual sadomasochism. Bala devoured the work of Georges Bataille, who vowed to "brutally oppose all systems" and who once contemplated carrying out human sacrifices; and William Burroughs, who swore to use language to "rub out the word"; and the Marquis de Sade, who demanded, "O man! Is it for you to say what is good or what is evil?" Bala boasted about his drunken visits to brothels and his submission to temptations of the flesh. He told friends that he hated "conventions" and was "capable of anything," and he insisted, "I will not live long but I will live furiously!"

Now, okay, I'd like to smack the author of this article for other reasons, yes, but the sentence there that begins "Foucault himself?" Dude, what does that have to do with this paragraph, which is about things-Bala-read-that-he-liked? Did he READ about Foucault's sex life? No evidence of same here! What then does Foucault's sex life have to do with Bala reading about limit-experiences? Nothing, except that this is already an article about the ways Bala was influenced by postmodernism to ignore "truth" and "morality" and only do language games and thus kill people, and sadomasochism seems similarly edgey, dubious, and weird.

I just spent all day in the library reading a ridiculous number of articles, half of which were disgustingly boring. So that sucked. And then I came home at nine fucking pm on a fucking Sunday and ... watched the young David Hewlett play Mr Typo the Reporter on Shining Time Station.

My fannishness apparently knows no shame. WHATEVER. I refuse to be judged!

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Link list:

veejane tells us what to do when you can't win an argument in twenty fun and ridiculous rhetorical devices | Filk song, anyone? The Lurkers Support Me In Email. | What do you think the top ten most viewed pages are on Conservapedia? Check your guesses here. Hint: one of them is "gay bowel syndrome." | The first lengthy clips of Johnny Depp singing as Sweeney Todd in the Burton version. | Patricia Cornwell goes more than a little bit Anne Rice | America's most literate cities 2006, ranked by some dubious criteria -- but the criteria can all be looked at separately, which leads to some interesting results. | Over at blogstorm, take a look at the top ten worst websites, and they really mean worst. | We all knew David Hewlett will do ANYTHING for the show, but now we have proof: Doctor Rodney McKay's answering machine messages. No, really. With name options. | Article on the Literary Review's Bad Sex award. Winner to be announced November 27th. |

Aaaand probably other things that I've since forgotten.