avrelia

1) I am well willing to watch through ads on Hulu in the name of free legal TV. But, honestly, Scientology commercial? What's up with that? I felt literally sick. Wrong on so many levels... What's next, best brands of heroin ads?

2) Just realized that in Canada I paid twice the tax rate of Mitt Romney, while earning less in a year than he makes in a day without really working. ::is sad::
I don't begrudge him his earnings, or the low tax rate, just his insistence that everyone else should pay more while he should pay less.

3) I've got a letter from Google explaining their new Privacy Policy: ALL YOUR BASE IS BELONGS TO US. Well, not really, but I highly dislike that their aggregating all my information, even if their are not planning to share or sell it. I am already uncomfortable that they are saving it somewhere. And I don't want the personalized search results, either.

reposted from soundingsea

If you're reading this, chances are good that you're in transformative works fandom. Maybe you're into fanfic, or podfic, or meta. Maybe you are all about the fanart - icons and other graphics. Perhaps you're in vidding fandom or make fanmixes or you cosplay. Maybe you're an archivist or a beta or a roleplayer. Maybe you run landcomms or challenges or memes. Maybe your fandom is Jane Austen, and maybe it's figure skating, and maybe it's whatever TV show your friends wouldn't stop talking about and then you fell for the characters and needed MOAR.

You probably have websites you use for fandom - Livejournal, Dreamwidth, Archive of Our Own, deviantART, Fanfiction.net, Tumblr, Twitter, and more. And your fannish endeavors might very well involve playing in someone else's sandbox; corporations own Buffy Summers and Rodney McKay and Kurt Hummel and Olivia Dunham. We use them, we don't profit from the use, and we're pretty sure nobody's going to mistake an AU J2 big bang fic where they're Cowboys quarterbacks for an episode of Supernatural. But disclaimers aren't good enough for these companies. You know who hates our freedoms? Big media, that's who.

There's censorship a-brewin' in the US. Two bills currently under discussion (SOPA and PIPA) are designed to yank away any website ACCUSED of infringing content (without any kind of due process). We're not just talking about torrent sites; we're talking about anything anyone accuses of being infringement (like say, a vid). We're talking about any site with user-generated content (and therefore LINKS to other stuff) being at risk of being forced offline; like, no more livejournal.com because it might have a link somewhere to filefactory.com. This isn't some Snopes-debunkable chain mail, folks; the internet as we know it is in big trouble.

If you've gone to Google or the English Wikipedia or Boingboing or AO3 today, you'll see what I'm talking about. This is the real deal. We stand together, or we fall together.

If you're in the US, call your congresscritters; Wikipedia has a zip-code lookup to make it easy . If you're not, tell your USian peeps about this, so they can.

1)I had a dream. Probably because I was on painkillers – ear stuff, very annoying. But. The dream was amazing: I was reading the most gorgeous, smart and witty graphic novel based on Wilkie Collins' novel Moonstone. With some science fiction/steampunk elements in it. And now I really want to read it in real life. And the adventures of Marian Halcombe (from Collins' Woman in White). Why didn't anyone written them?

2)I and P. finally watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, both parts. I liked the first part better than the book (nicely suspenseful), and the second part less than the book (the awe and the heartbreak in the book were more immediate, and there was more of Harry-unrelated Hogwarts Resistance). Now I feel the need to re-read the book immediately, and P. went and bought all eight movies (we didn't have them before).

3)I started to watch second season of the Lost Girl, and I am enjoying it very much. Now I finished episode 2.04, and... I am happy. I didn't know I needed it that much – weird Russian stuff that is not Random Weird Evil Russian Stuff, but character-related Weird Russian Stuff. Kenzi summons Baba Yaga – because she used to be terrified of her, and because she knows how (and because she is drunk and angry at Dyson, for Bo's sake). Of course, she ends up in Baba Yaga's hut, and has to defeat her herself, even though Bo and Dyson both are trying to help. We heard Kenzi speaking perfect Russian in the first episode, but while she doesn't hide it particularly, she doesn't advertize it, either. It's not a big deal. We can assume that she was born and learned to talk outside Canada, somewhere in former USSR – hence the normal Russian, but attended school in Canada – hence the perfect English. She grew up with Russian fairytales and silly kids' games. Summoning Baba Yaga this way was invented for the show, but we, at school at about 10-12 years did like to summon some scary stuff. Like the Queen of Spades and such. Using mirrors is also a good traditional way to stir some mystical shit. It is recommended to do only in twelve days after Christmas, though. But if you look in the mirror in the candlelight long enough, you could see your future husband or the devil (or your husband, the devil). So the fantasy stuff, while invented, felt organic to me. It also was genuinely creepy. But Kenzi dealt with it the best way possible.

4)Finished N.K. Jemisin's The Kingdom of Gods, the last book of the Inheritance trilogy. Liked it a lot, but I still think the second one, The Broken Kingdoms is my favorite of the three. I need to do a proper review, but when did I manage it the last time? If any of my friends want it, btw, it can be arranged. ;)

5)Watched Captain America. Was underwhelmed. I liked it – Steve, Old New York, Tommy Lee Jones, Fantastic Low-Tech, Peggy Carter... Except Peggy Carter was there just to be Steve's love interest, the only woman with more that one line of text. Other women were nurses or dancers. No female soldiers? Pilots? Whomever? Besides, I do always get a weird feeling watching movies about WWII where it seems that the war was fought by USA with their little helpers. I don't really expect anything from Captain America movie, of course, but it still feels weird – given the world domination plans of Agent Smith, to completely disregard the existence of the Eastern front. But the main underwhelming moment for me was that in the second half of the movie all the action became boring and perfunctory. It's like all the cool stuff was done, and they just had to fill up the time.

6)Looking forward to the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I don't care whether it's going to be good or just silly, I want to see Robert Downy Jr. And Jude Law enjoying themselves as Holmes and Watson.

My reading now is hardly existing. I don't know why, my attention wanders from a book to book, and even when I read a book I like it's hard to finish it. And when I finish it, it's hard to get myself together to write a proper review. Same with movies. Let's try TV then.

My TV veiwing lately became kind of frenzied. I want to watch a lot, but I don't have time or opportunity to do it. So I watch in bits and pieces. And mostly some strange things.

Fringe. That's a winner, because we are watching together with P, and it is very enjoyable to watch stuff together. The problem is that we are watching it on Hulu and therefore have to wait for 8 days after the episode airs. Sad. I also don't feel very “fandomly” about it. I am very enjoying it, and love Olivia and the rest, but cannot quite got to the point of writing essays and reading fanfiction and stuff. I do need some Fringe icons though...

Ringer. Don't know what to say – I want it to succeed and stay, but I don't want to watch it.

Once Upon a Time. I started to watch it because I cannot resist fairy tales with cool female protagonist. It is not the best show, it is not a very good show, but I want to know want will happen next. And how the things will turn out. I like Emma Swan. I like Regina. I like even Snow White (especially after the last episode). I only hope they will bring more fairy-tales in – non-Grimm, non-European, non-white. I understand the need to start with most easily recognizable ones, they've been done to death by now. I am also ready for the boy to be sent away someplace evil, because I can take only so much of a kid who keeps telling everyone what to do.

Need to watch finally: Homeland, Lost Girl, Doctor Who.

Out of sitcoms I am watching now The Big Bang Theory. I know it's lost its luster by now, comparing to others, but I am enjoying their female cast so much! There was a good article on io9 about female characters there that are way cooler than the male ones, and I do agree. They are not very deep and multifaceted, but are smart and funny and more than hold their own with the males on the show. It was a great decision to make Bernadette and Amy Farrah Fowler regulars and hang with Penny on a regular basis. They are playing well off each other and can be hilarious without being ridiculous.

I also watch Raising Hope. Because Martha Plimpton.

Well, I've watched Ringer. And it was interesting enough to watch more. So I am quite happy about. I am not sure whether it has the staying power - what will happen when all the mysteries are played out. And I cannot say I am hooked. I am pretty sure I wouldn't watch if not for Sarah Michelle Gellar, but she is there, and I'll be watching.

I actually don't think I've watched SMG in anything but Buffy before, and so the first moments felt like it is Buffy got lost some place. Of course that was not Buffy but Bridget. When we met Siobhan, I felt no Buffy traces anymore. Will see how SMG will grow in her roles. (I felt in the similar way with Eliza Dushku in Dollhouse - I guess the more I see actors in different roles the less I associate them with one role only).

To sum up, the pilot wasn't brilliant but good enough. Pretty much the way I hoped. Now I am hoping the show will get its footing and stay there. :)

We were extremely lucky – both because we went on our long-planned trip to Canada before the hurricane, and that our (rented, but still) house was not damaged by winds or water. The electricity was out for some time, but it was back by the time were back (Monday morning). But the whole thing was pretty scary - how big, and how random the destruction (or disruption of regular life) was. Some households in our town didn't have the electricity until Friday next week, and in the neighbouring town – beyond Labor Day. The cleaning continues, and really the damage was pretty minor, comparing other natural disasters in other places. It is very... unsettling, how transient our world is. One certainly begins appreciate post-apocalyptic fiction like this - at least the can be nothing worse than an apocalypse, and after one the worst is supposed to be over. Was there ever good old times? When nothing changed and everyone lived quietly ever after? Maybe in the Neolithic era? (sure, not long, but quietly until being eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger). Or maybe we just don't know anything about it, and just suppose things didn't change as fast and randomly. They certainly didn't have electric power outages that would have left them without Internet for weeks... Or did they? See, we just don't really know.

Anyway. We are okay. Our stuff and the house is okay, and one always has to be prepared for a sabre-toothed tigers' attack.

There is a meme going around about 100 science fiction books, as selected by some people somewhere (NPR, I know). I am not going to do it. There are lots of of lists of 10, 50 or 100 THE BEST Books ever, and they all look very random to me. I don't dispute them – all the books in them are good and they must be special to the people who compiled those lists, but I feel no connection to them. I cannot judge my reading history and my reading plans by some random people's moods and ideas. The big part of this disconnect is, of course, that all those lists are English-language centric. Which is natural, since I read them in English-language media, but they are always presented as “world-wide”, and even have occasional non-English author brought in. Again, fine for those who only read in English, but it doesn't reflect my reading habits. I read some of the books, and I haven't read many more, but I read other great books instead, that people who made those lists have never heard about.

I did jumped on the eruthros' suggestion to make our own, fandom list of speculative fiction works, and nominated ten Russian-language books. Just so they would be there.

And if you want to nominate anything - run, the nominations are open until August 19th.

Moving on somewhat – I have the most ridiculous problem ever. I need to stop reading library books. Because there are too many book out there, and I want them, but I have entirely too many books at home that I have been planning to read forever and never got around to. I mean, I bought them, I carry them around - some for eleven years and across the globe, but I haven't read all of them yet. Or I bought them a year ago and planning to read them any day, but there is always a book from a library that I have to return, so I read it instead, and then I get another book from the library. It has to stop. And I read way too slowly these days. I mean, ok, I cannot spend a night finishing a book any longer, but a month for a regular... it is way too much.

Well, I've finally watched all three Toy Stories. Not at once, over the last month. Then I had nightmares.

Is it normal?

I liked them well enough, I see that they are good kids' stories, and D loves them, too. I think I liked the second one most of all, and it seems that D liked it the best, too. We got them from the library, so right now only the third is at home, and this is the one he carries around the house.

But the nightmare was real, too. I dreamed about a mother whose kids left for college, and she is home absolutely alone with nothing but alive toys.

Strangely, there was a female military toy unit, built out of random small dolls. It was kind of cool.

Then the mother turned into Alice (Carroll's one) and got lost in Buckingham Palace. It was no less terrifying.


And now I am sitting there and wondering whether it is totally crazy to be freaked out by Toy Story... I mean nothing makes the characters happier than to be owned and played with, and the perfect life is a short period of bliss followed by eternity of despair, and the daycare is hell. And their friends and loved ones are being sold on yard sales or thrown in the garbage... And I am the one who gets annoyed when fairy tales are judged by adult standards and the one who happily reads stories where characters are eaten or meet some other kind of gruesome death – or escape it. Why Toy Story made me sad?

Now I now what they are doing when they are not sleeping: they are eating my zucchinis!

Truefax.

The question to my friends: what do you consider a "must see" in Washington DC? For a day trip with a small kid?

We consider going there on Saturday if we decide on the amusement plan and the weather is not disgusting. We are not particularly excited about government buildings and president memorials (well, may be the Library of Congress, because I am VERY excited about that many books in one place).

Still, I know there are lots of museums and things to see over there. Which one would you advise?