jaina

Via clubjade.net, condescending jackass tells women we don't need more female superheroes because we'd rather watch Julia Roberts instead. I had a hard time deciding what to quote here, because it's all so horrifying, but this part is particularly relevant for us costumers:

Of course some women actually are interested in superheroes, just as there are guys out there who are really into touchy-feely musicals. Most of them are British, but even here in America you’ll occasionally run into a guy with a twisted love of Mamma Mia!. Sure you’ll see women at Comic Con dressed up as Wonder Woman. But you’ll see a lot more men dressed up as Batman. And unlike those women, none of the guys are being paid by booth owners just to stand around and slut it up. Nothing draws a nerd crowd quite like exposed female skin. There are exceptions to any rule.

Just. Just. RAGE. BLINDING RAGE. The comments are, if possible, even worse than the actual article; I particularly love the one where he condescends to “correct” the commenter who studies fan behavior for a living, asks her where she got her data, and then conveniently neglects to provide a source for his own other than “common sense wisdom." And the one where he says that Buffy, Sarah Connor, and Kim Possible "don't count" because they're just "a vampire show, a sci-fi show, and a kid's cartoon." A+ logic, sir!

Thankfully, there's a rebuttal at Jezebel where we can all rage together, because he is apparently deleting any comments of the "Wow, you're an ignorant jackass" variety. And really, that's all the reaction I can muster up at this point.

I just got the most amazing little flyer in the mail. It's from the Geocentric Bible Foundation, and it informs me that scientists have actually been wrong all these years, and in fact the sun (and all the other planets, I suppose) revolve around the Earth. Choice excerpts:

As R.G. Elmendorf wrote in the Biblical Astronomer pamphlet, "The philosophical consequences of the geocentric/heliocentric controversy are plain enough that if the earth is not fixed on center stage of the universe, then life on earth and man himself are essentially meaningless."

O NOES!

All phenomena-- including the stationary satellite thousands of miles above the earth-- are better explained by geocentricity.

You mean the moon? Er, I'm pretty sure that one's explained by gravity?

Really, this thing is astonishing. They even have a website. It's very special.

If tomorrow I get a flyer from the Flat-Earth Society, I'm not going to be in the least surprised.

...but do you ever have days when you just want to tell someone, or many someones, "Oh my god, you're an idiot, *please* shut up for the love of all that is holy"?

I kind of feel like that right now.

(But oooh, I look at my shiny new mood icons and am much less annoyed!)

(Also, I have been telling K-Joy about the good and the bad of Dark Angel, while she regales me with tales of Prison Break and Grey's Anatomy. It is excellent fun. Today I told her about how there is an eye in team. And about "X5-599, reporting for duty. I have a donor for you." AWESOME.)

(OH GOD ALSO. We watched an ep of S2 today and I discovered why Logan has permastubble. I take back everything I ever said. KEEP THE PERMASTUBBLE. NEVER SHAVE. GYAAAAAAH. I was like "who the fuck is that?" and Rogue's like "Michael Shanks?" and then we realized it was Logan and GYAAAAAAAAAAH.)

I can't stop reading Katrina coverage. It's heartbreaking that things just seem to be degenerating further and further, and I don't think we've seen the worst yet. More than anything, though, I'm furious with the sanctimonious, self-righteous asshats looking down on the chaos in NO and squawking, "Why didn't they leave? There was a mandatory evacuation order! It's their fault! It's their own fault that they're in this situation!"

OH MY FUCKING GOD, YOU MORONS. Can we please just leave aside all the reasons why people might not have left (like say, oh, HAVING NO MEANS TO LEAVE!?) and just focus on the fact that these are our fellow HUMAN BEINGS who are suffering *terribly*? Can the blame and recriminations maybe wait a little while, and we can all just focus on saving lives, getting these people out of the city, and making sure they have somewhere to go? It just sickens me how some people have reacted to this, that their own need to feel superior has asserted itself in this incredibly disgusting way.

Of all the weeks for the Daily Show to be on hiatus. (It kind of disturbs me how dependent I've grown on Jon Stewart, but it helps, so for now, I'm not going to question it.)

ETA: Everyone, if you haven't already, please go and read interdictor for a firsthand look at the situation in New Orleans. It should be required reading for everyone on the Internet.

Apparently the Universe, or God, or Fate, or Whoever has decided that we don't have enough on our plate. Because when Rogue went to drop some stuff off at the Post Office this afternoon, his car got broken into. And his laptop was stolen.

No, it won't be found. No, insurance won't cover it. It's a crappy old car that had only the most basic insurance California requires. Quite frankly, we would have preferred it had they stolen the car and left the laptop. All his data is gone. The filk CD? Probably never going to happen now. Yeah, we should have had backups. We didn't. We suck.

It's a damn good thing Jon got our training grant to buy us laptops, or we would be computerless. As it is, we leave for Boston in a little more than 24 hours. Because this is *so* exactly what we need to be dealing with right now on top of EVERYTHING ELSE. There was a copy of Quicken on that computer too, with financial data. I guess it's a good thing that we were going to have to switch bank accounts anyway?

So-- yeah. Mostly just feeling pretty numb right now. I just can't spare the brainpower to think about this.

People suck. And so does Whoever up there who apparently decided we needed to be humbled. Or something.

FUCK FUCK FUCK.

I *knew,* I just KNEW I shouldn't have read my flist before I read HBP. But I won't be done until at least Tuesday and I figured...well, it doesn't matter. I figured wrongly.

It wasn't a huge spoiler, but I'm still MAD. FUCK, people. Common sense and common courtesy.

Ugh.

Total time to get home today, from the moment I started waiting at the bus stop till the moment I walked in my door: 1 hour.
Distance travelled: 2.3 miles

I hate-- hate-- HATE-- San Diego public transportation.

So, er, I got an email today from the official savefarscape.com announcement list, which is very low-traffic and usually is reserved for telling us about a new major project or fundraiser. But this email...well...it was announcing some group chat or other, and it advised us thusly:

The FPK r holding a group chat session [...]
If there r server problems with MSN we may move the Chat to our yahoo
site[...]
Please try 2 test ur login a couple of days early so we can try 2
resolve any problems b4hand.
If u have any problems please post or email me directly

Oh yeah. That sounds like a chat I want to go to. *stabby stabby death to horrendous IM shorthand*

Oh also, new icon. Multiple new icons actually, from this great post. My fall to the SG-1 side is now complete.

Dear government and military officials,

The word you're looking for is NUCLEAR. NUKE-LEE-ER. Not, I repeat, NOT, nook-you-lar. Please learn to pronounce it properly, because you sound like a FUCKING MORON. The fact that you are in charge of anything remotely nuclear-weapon-related when you can't even say it right *terrifies* me.

Jeebus.

...the fact that Brad and John think the Opie and Anthony show is just the funniest thing ever, so in the afternoons in lab the radio is tuned to these two pathetic excuses for shock jocks. Today the morons were having a 'staple-gun contest' wherein they started with a full, folded newspaper over their legs, then shot a staple gun into the paper. Every round they took another sheet of paper away, so by the end they were down to 10 sheets of paper and were basically shooting staples straight into their legs. Their screams of pain as they tried to one-up each other were just....ew. And I *had* to finish what I was doing, so I couldn't leave the lab.

Anyway, I'm out now, thank heaven, and my office is quiet.