incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

1.

Back when the news that Ben Affleck was going to play Batman broke, I said elsewhere,

The thing is, I don't really care about casting for Batman because Batman is fundamentally a boring character. All he is, is a vehicle for manpain and an opportunity for more interesting people to aggregate around him. (Usually people who deserve a better protagonist.)

Superman's boring too. So there.

*drops mic, walks offstage*

And I stand by that. But glvalentine's Strange Horizons column Ten Worlds About Ben Affleck's Batman is still awesome with awesomesauce on top. (Why aren't we in world #5?)

2.

Know anyone starting law school or thinking about it? Recommend to them A Student's Guide to Law School, freshly-published and written by a co-worker and one of the smarter people and better attorneys I know (and I know a lot of smart people and good attorneys).

3-4.

A writer at the A.V. Club is dismayed to revisit the first Xanth book (because it may not be obvious if you're not familiar with Piers Anthony's work: trigger warning for discussions of pedophilia):

Here’s how this article was supposed to go down: As a kid, I lived in Florida. Back then I loved the books of Piers Anthony . . . . For this installment of Memory Wipe, I was going to reread A Spell For Chameleon . . . . Then, in poignant prose, I would revisit the magic of my own Floridian childhood, even though that childhood was actually pretty fucked up, but maybe not quite as fucked up as it seemed at the time. The big takeaway: Thanks, Piers Anthony, for the swell book, not mention giving me a tidy epiphany about how fantasy, geography, and nostalgia overlap in the hazy mists of reminiscence.

Instead, this happened: I reread A Spell For Chameleon, and during those excruciating hours all I could think about was what a sad, misogynistic piece of shit it is.

It seems like realizing the awfulness of Piers Anthony is a rite of passage among people who read SFF when young, so I offer it to you all for the sympathetic wince/cathartic rant factor.

Also because of this:

Ultimately, Anthony is the worst kind of misogynist: one who defends his offensive views by saying, in essence, how could he possibly hate women if he’s drooling over them all the time?

I'm not convinced that that's the "worst" kind, but it is a particularly infuriating kind, and it strikes me as relevant to sexual harassment. And that is on my mind because of recent revelations of sexual harassment by Bora Zivkovic, a very prominent man in the science blogging community (context). The most recent report (with links back to others) is by Kathleen Raven. Among other things, this prompted a massive Twitter conversation of people sharing personal tales of self-doubt caused by even much milder forms of harassment (on Storify, or try #ripplesofdoubt if you hate Storify for long things the way I do). Difficult stuff, but worth reading if consistent with your well-being.

(To be clear: Bora is not, at present, using this defense, though I am morally certain that someone somewhere has offered it on his behalf. Reading these links in the same day merely made an association that seemed a useful transition.)

5.

Fallen London players, follow this link for a tiny gift from a Rubbery Man (one not generally available since 2010, can you believe this game has been around that long?), and check out your Lodgings for some seasonal content.

6.

I think about unfollowing Elementary's writers on Twitter every Thursday, when they live-tweet the show that I don't have time to watch. But it doesn't seem worth the effort, and they do things like last week's "feud" with the writers of Sleepy Hollow, which was adorable and hilarious. And then this afternoon they started in with the knock-knock jokes and I gave up and followed @sleepywriters too just so I didn't miss anything . . .

(I have not seen Sleepy Hollow; I appreciate the comparisons everyone's making between it and Elementary regarding the dynamics of the lead pairs, but I've given up trying to watch anything but Elementary and Face Off, and I'm also a little dubious about the mythological elements that abigail_n points out. As for SHIELD and Korra, I'm letting those scroll off the DVR, and if someone tells me they get to be worth watching, I will pick them up from that point.)

7.

A Dark Room is a really neat minimalist web game about discovery and exploration. I hesitate to say too much about it because of those themes, but it's not too long or demanding and has a definite end, and the minimalism works very well for it. (You should run it in a browser tab that can stay open while you're away from your computer.)

ETA: now some spoilers in comments.

ETA 2013-08: apparently there are some content differences in the iOS app which sound very much not my thing.

8.

‘12 Years a Slave,’ ‘Mother of George,’ and the aesthetic politics of filming black skin, a fascinating article at the Washington Post about the racism embedded in the very "technology and grammar of cinema and photography."

In the movie version of Chicago, the bandleader introduces "When You're Good to Mama" thusly: "And now, ladies and gentlemen—the Keeper of the Keys, the Countess of the Clink, the Mistress of Murderers' Row: Matron Mama Morton!"

Which almost scans to "The Watcher of the Seals. The Flame of Tar Valon. The Amyrlin Seat. Egwene al'Vere!"

I will leave the resulting filk to someone else, and let you all admire Queen Latifah's everything:

The only Internet-y thing I've managed tonight is cleaning out my booklog's spam folder, but that reminded me of a comment from yesterday that briefly made it through my filters, which read in part:

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

I just wanted to preserve that for posterity. And now, fall down go boom.

Because FutureBaby:

• will be perfectly average physically (since I am shorter than average and Chad is taller than average), and is thus going for the reported 41 weeks + 1 day average for first babies. Which would be Monday.
• is not quite finished developing his or her Theory of Everything. (Fortunately, FutureBaby's universe is really really small at the moment, so it doesn't have to be a very complicated theory.)
• overheard a co-worker tell me that you're not ready for labor until you're really, really uncomfortable, and knows I'm only somewhat uncomfortable right now.
• is holding out for a cool birthday like 8/8/08.
• wants a Miyazaki-inspired flying bison and knows we haven't actually purchased one yet, despite offering it as a bribe.
• is waiting for the timer to pop up. [*]
• is calibrating just how far Chad's patience can be pushed.
• wants Chinese or Indian food.
• was waiting for the air conditioning to be fixed. And hey, the repair guy just left, so . . .

[*] I have had this fancy for, oh, months, that when my navel goes completely "outie," it'll be like the pop-up timer on a turkey: *bing*! Fully cooked! And it's not quite there yet.

As usual, no unsolicited advice, no horror stories, thank you.

Have a music-inspired silly poll.

( cut for size )

But it has come to my attention that the phrase "bunnies made of cheese" needs to appear on the Internet.

(No, I'm not going to explain. Sorry.)

Before Chad posted about the problems with the new Star Wars movies, we talked about it over dinner and came up with a very silly idea (which I then forgot about until today, when the movie came out), to wit:

Chad: "—and the time scale is all wrong too, unless Luke is secretly a Dragaeran with a two-hundred-year adolesence."

Kate: " . . . I'm sorry, I think the idea of that crossover broke my brain."

From there, we determined in short order that if Luke (and Leia, and Anakin, etc.) are Dragaerans, then the Sith are Jenoine, Yoda is a Serioli, and the Ewoks—smaller and hairier than the Jedi—are Easterners. What's more, the movies are set as the Cycle turns to Teckla, since the Teckla have a Republic instead of an Empire!

I think we stopped before I tried to draw parallels between the conceptions of Anakin and Aliera, which is all for the best since they aren't actually that close and the idea really, really makes my head hurt.

As proof of how wonderful our dog Emmy is, last night they had a whole show just to give her awards!

( The awards: )

Oh dear. I take no responsibility for what follows.