Dear Yuletide writer,

Thank you so much for writing for me! I really appreciate it, and I will love whatever you produce. So - no pressure! I want you to be able to have creative freedom, so if there is something you feel moved to write, feel free. However, if you want to know a bit about my likes and dislikes, here are some thoughts.

In general, I really prefer a happy or at least contented ending, and I am totally ok with Yuleporn. If you are drawn to writing something sexy with these characters, I would love that. m/f, f/f, m/m, m/f/f - all the things! But if you are not into that, no worries - gen is totally acceptable too.

Yentl - This one calls out to me for a happy threesome. Alternatively, an epistolary piece after the end of the movie as they keep up with each other's lives would also be great.

Wire in the Blood - Oh, these poor characters! I love the way they come together by inches, but then the narrative always throws them apart again. I would really enjoy seeing how Tony could come to accept some love and peace in his life. That would be ideal. I'm up on both the book and TV universe, so if you want to draw details from both, that's fine with me.

Chocolat - I just love Vianne and want to spend more time hanging out with her. Also, *chocolate*! I love the richness and sensuality of the film, and the depth of Vianne's connection with Josephine, Armand, and Rue. It's just so wonderful - bring me back into Vianne's world :)

Miss Fisher - Another lady I would just love to be around for as long as possible. I love that she fights for social justice. I love that she does not deny herself anything. I love how fiercely protective she is of the people in her life. I love the teasing little dance she has going on with Jack - and I wish they would finally take a leap and make it work.

For the last year or more I've been working on a crazy article comparing Lady Gaga to the crash in the derivatives market. Thanks to many of you who read drafts and helped translate what makes sense in my brain to something that would make sense on the page, it's now been published in the peer-reviewed, but free and open academic journal NECSUS.

My article is available here: MP3s, Rebundled Debt, and Performative Economics: Deferral, derivatives, and digital commodity fetishism in Lady Gaga’s spectacle of excess

Here is the whole Autumn issue on Tangibility

I welcome and comments, questions and critiques here or by e-mail.

By way of heresluck:

Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of. (I also put *s around the ones I used to have, used all the time, miss, and couldn't bring with me to Amsterdam)

I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers, juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers, sandwich makers, *pastry brushes*, cheese knives, electric woks, miniature salad spinners, griddle pans, jam funnels, meat thermometers, filleting knives, egg poachers, cake stands, garlic crushers, margarita glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders, milk frothers, piping bags, banana stands, fluted pastry wheels, tagine dishes, conical strainers, rice cookers, steam cookers, pressure cookers, *slow cookers*, spaetzle makers, cookie presses, gravy strainers, double boilers (bains marie), sukiyaki stoves, ice cream makers, fondue sets, potato ricers, *creme brulee torches*, miniature food processors, bundt pans, *angel food cake pans*, *fluted tart pans*, mandolines, and waffle makers languish dustily at the back of the nation's cupboards.

Other kitchen oddities I love and use all the time: custard cups, tea pots, electric kettle, tea bag holders, mini spring-form pans

Sorry for the delay, Yuletide writer! First, let me just thank you for writing a story for me in one of these small fandoms. They need all the love they can get, and your story will brighten my day no matter what because it is such a gift to have something special to read in a fandom for which there is so little. Thank you!

However, if you would like some specific ideas and guidance, ( read onCollapse )

So, the main message here is that I am so very grateful to have someone writing for me! I appreciate all the time and effort you will put into this story, and I will love it no matter what :) Happy Yuletide!

I've been a little out of sorts with food since I got here, bouncing between the joy of discovering Dutch cheese and yoghurt, and the frustrations of new stores, new ingredients, new pans, and a teeny tiny oven. I've ended up in a bit of a rut, mostly eating a number of variations on pastas and sandwiches that involve eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and basil - which is delicious, but rapidly loosing its charm.

So tonight I made curried cauliflower with potatoes and pomegranate, and it was wonderful. There's just something whimsical and decadent about pomegranates. They feel like such a treat.

( Recipe HereCollapse )

Ok, I have purchased a smartphone running android. Any suggestions for must-have aps?

I didn't know Sandy well, but she touched me deeply and I will miss her.

All my love to those mourning her loss.

I have been enjoying summer back at home. Things are still quite busy as I'm trying to reconnect with all my family and friends here all at once, while also squaring away a million little details of the move. We've gone on a number of surprisingly fun and harmonious family trips up North and to the zoo, among other places, and I've gone to the farmers' market nearly every weekend, which has been lovely.

And, of course, I'm cooking quite a bit.

Because it's summer and it's unbelievably hot out at the moment, lets talk about ice cream.

I adore my ice cream maker, and some of my very favorite summer places around the cities (Grand Ole Creamery, Crema, Sebastian Joe's), and in France (l'Art Glacier) are ice cream shops.

So here are some of the ice cream recipes I've been making and enjoying lately :)

( Lavender Ice CreamCollapse )


( Salted Caramel Ice CreamCollapse )


( Sweet Corn Ice CreamCollapse )


( Bittersweet Chocolate-Cherry SorbetCollapse )


( Gazpacho with Basil SorbetCollapse )

Enjoy!!

Just saw the VividCon membership announcement and *Sadness* I will not be able to go this year! For the best of reasons as I will already be in Amsterdam by then, but It feels very strange and empty to not go for the first time in ... 7 years? 8 years? A *long* time! I will miss you all fiercely in August - please dance a little harder, squee a little longer, and smile a little wider for me.

Please rec me slashy or otherwise queer (broadly defined) vids to music in the top 40 of the last two years. I am particularly looking for Lady Gaga and/or Ke$ha (sp? Can you incorrectly spell something spelled so egregiously?). Also, I am looking for accessible source, but that's negotiable. However, I already have vids for the following fandoms, and I'm trying not to repeat: Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica, Merlin, Star Trek, Highlander, Xena, Smallville, White Collar, Stargate: Atlantis, Lord of the Rings, Sara Connor Chronicles, Harry Potter, Buffy, Hercules.

So, top 40 music to none of those fandoms - if anyone has an awesome Inception/Dark Knight slash vid to Bad Romance, that would be perfect.

So, nothing too difficult, then ;p

I am so very sorry for not putting this up earlier! And for continuing to cop out, really, because I'm not actually going to write a full letter this year.

First off, let me just assure you that if you've already started or finished a story for me, I will love and adore it no matter what because I am so excited to read a story in one of these underserved fandoms - that it's a present for me just makes it so much more special.

However, if you would still like some guidance, I'm going to refer you to Last Year's Yuletide Letter, my 2008 Yuletide Letter, as well as my 99 Kinks Meme because my tastes really haven't changed much and I've been waiting for the perfect moment to draft this year's letter, but finally accepted that there will be no time between now and the deadline when my life won't be completely crazy.

Thank you!

I am currently traveling and will post a letter as soon as possible.

Happy birthday and belated birthday to arallara, wickedwords, and sherrold!

So, many of you may remember the blow-up a few weeks ago about medical research which surgically intervened to "normalize" the shape and size of the clitoris/"micro-penis" in underage girls, followed by the use of vibrators to measure the girls' level of retained genital sensation. There was tremendous outcry and disgust, followed by a few posts by people with medical credentials or background claiming that this wasn't any big deal because the children involved in the study were intersex and this treatment is considered medical best practice.

The moment for this post may have passed, or this may be a better time now that a rest has cooled tempers a bit. Either way, I feel like these are useful resources, and a topic that deserves to be talked about more openly and often.

I'm going to start by saying that I am not an expert, but someone with a combination of relevant personal and professional experience. Most of the classes I teach include a unit on intersex studies and activism, but I don't consider myself a specialist and I am not an intersexed person. This post attempts to do two things: first, to summarize and share autobiographical and scholarly resources on intersexed lives and issues, outside of f-lock where I've posted such resources before, and secondly, to provide some personal context because it's often most useful to think about social issues when there are names and faces and lives attached, but no individual intersexed person should be responsible for laying their life under the microscope so that other people can poke and prod and judge, and hopefully learn and grow.

( So first, the story.Collapse )


Ok, so, resources. I'm not going to editorialize a lot because I think in this case the best course of action is to educate yourself by reading a variety of accounts. However, I would like to say ( a few things.Collapse )


So, the articles:

Intersex Scholarship and Activism - Just a few things I've used in class as a starter guide.

Third Gender Anthropology - This includes intersexed people as well as others who various cultures categorize as neither male nor female.

Some relevant queer theory as background and a philosophical foundation.

I am open to discussing these articles and interested if other people would like to share additional resources. I will happily further explain my thoughts and further talk through the issues I've raised here as long as the discussion remains respectful of the actual people involved. I hope that people find these articles useful.

Has anyone been to Andorra? We have three days free later this week and we're thinking of going. Suggestions?

So I've never been happy with my pasta sauces - there's always just something lacking. Then I tried this. It's apparently a more classically European version of pasta sauce? IDK, but it's wonderful :) I like it with whole wheat pasta because the robust flavor of the sauce needs a robust pasta to properly stand up to it.

( BolognaiseCollapse )

So I said I haven't been cooking new foods, and that's largely true since I got back from break. But before that, last term I was having a wonderful time experimenting with homemade stuffings which I totally fell in love with, so much so that for New Years I made a bounteous trio of stuffings in both gluten and gluten-free versions with homemade bread. My family kept looking at them saying "Are you sure that's not too much?" And I was all, "You can never have too much stuffing!" But apparently you can have too much stuffing b/c we ate it for two weeks straight and I couldn't even think about more stuffing again until this week.

So here are my trio of new homemade stuffing recipes. They are all amazing and heartwarming.

All the cooking temps and times are approximate and can be fudged to cook several types at once - and any of these can be stuffed into a chicken or turkey (or probably other fowl carcasses as well). I'm sure these could be modified for vegetarians, but I'll leave that to those of you who know better how to go about that.

( Sausage-Fennel-Apple Cornbread StuffingCollapse )



( Sourdough Stuffing with Pears and SausageCollapse )



( Artichoke Parmesan Sourdough StuffingCollapse )

I'm in New Mexico at the moment, just done with a conference and about to fly home tomorrow, so I'll update for real later, but OMG, thank you to whoever sent me the adorable v-gift! Things are pretty stressed and crazed right now, so I totally needed that hug. Thank you!

So, this is the first of what will be several installments of posts I've owed since last March. ( Cut for excusesCollapse )

First of all, ( enormous thanks to all the vidders who made this possible.Collapse )

The vidshow last Spring Semester at Prestigious Midwestern Liberal Arts College where I taught went so, *so* well!! I had 3 classes with a total of 18 students and they were all required to come, but we covered the campus in posters and cross-promoted at the Big 10 Midwestern University next door where I did my undergrad and still have contacts. Feeling enthusiastic, and always preferring to overproduce than let people go without, I printed up 70 programs. By the end of the night, not only had all 70 programs been taken, there were a number of people who didn't get one. So, major turnout!

The room was *gorgeous* with a giant, near-movie theater screen and wonderful projection. Thank goodness revolutionaryjo and I did a run through the previous day, because it was just too tempting to sing along and dance across the stage with the *larger than lifesized* characters. Good thing we got that out of our systems so I could be all professional and stuff on the actual day ;)

And then the next day all my classes talked through their reactions and wow - I am so proud of them and of us because ( they were super impressedCollapse )

Also, they couldn't believe that Merlin really is that gay, or that Starbuck really is that awesome. There are at least a handful of new BSG and Merlin fangirls in the world :)

Here's the set list. The structure I attempted starts with history, then violence against women, heterosexual vids, critiques of racial politics, then slash and queer vids. Thanks again to every vidder here - I'm overwhelmed by the helpfulness and generosity of everyone I contacted. It renews my faith in what we can do and the kind of community we've built. We are beautiful, creative, and mighty.

( Set ListCollapse )

I'm putting together next term's syllabi, and one of the new courses I'm offering is Queer Film and TV. I have a preliminary list of media I'd like to show, but I'd like to get some other ideas and I thought I might try tapping into my f-list's collective intelligence. So, what are your favorte, most influential, and/or most noteworthy GLBTQ films and television series (or episodes)? Any type - any country or language, indie or mainstream. Whatever touches you or makes you think or makes you smile.

Here is my preliminary list: The Celluloid Closet, Tongues Untied, Queer as Folk (US and UK), The L-Word, Fire, Boys Don’t Cry, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Velvet Goldmine, The Wedding Banquet, Antonia’s Line, Pricilla: Queen of the Desert, Big Eden, Bedrooms and Hallways, High Art, Stonewall, Philadelphia, Borstal Boy, It’s in the Water, Maurice, Wilde, Better than Chocolate, Tales of the City

Please let me know if you think anything on this list would work particularly well/would be a horrible idea for a class of fairly sheltered but interested undergrads.

Thank you, mighty LJ folk!

I will hopefully be asleep in about 5 minutes and tomorrow will be a rush of family obligations, possibly followed by Sherlock Holmes, so I probably won't get to read your wonderful gift until Saturday. I'll love it all the more because of the delay!

I just finished baking for tomorrow: pumpkin (actually butternut squash), pecan (actually walnut and pinenut), and double-crust apple. I'll also assemble the banoffee pie in the morning, but the filling is made, so that's just a matter of pouring everything together. Wow - I can't believe how early I finished :) The house smells glorious

I'm swamped, so someday there will be a post about the tip and moving and the new job and so on, but for the moment, just go watch this clip of a flash mob of 200 coming out of the crowd, dancing to the Sound of Music in a Belgian train station.

My e-mail was just flooded with a ton of delivery failure notices from spam supposedly sent from my account. None of it is listed in my sent mail, so I don't think anyone's hacked my account. Does anyone know what is going on? And more importantly what I can do to stop it?

( Dear Quantum of SolaceCollapse )

Allow me to reiterate mswyrr's recommendation of this Quantum of Solace trailer parody. Perfect! ITA!

On a related note, as I was leaving to get to the theater I was in a bit of a rush, and I backed my car out of the garage too fast, catching the top of my hatchback on the underside of the still rising garage door, causing a cascade of wood shards which rained down on my roof and twisting the little rear windshield fluid nozzle all out of whack (although, luckily, it pushed back in and still works just fine). So, I had a slightly skewed perspective, watching the film. As all manner of car parts flew every which way on the screen, I was thinking, "I'll just bet I have a scratch on my roof." And indeed, I do. Sadly, I did not get it by narrowly escaping capture in a heated cross-country chase. Instead, I lost a very daring and macho game of chicken with my garage.

ETA: If you have a post up about Quantum of Solace, please link me. I can read them now.

I found this interview with Maya Angelou about Obama's election particularly poignant. She is amazingly impressive to watch, and she has a knack for putting her finger directly on the emotional heart of the matter - the place that both hurts and rejoices.

After filing a formal complaint letter last week, we just received a letter in the mail from the county attorney which states that they have "declined prosecution" of my brother's charges, without admitting any wrongdoing on their behalf, and maintaining that my brother did violate the law. Over a month after the incident, this is the first formal acknowledgement we've received officially stating the charges - "presence at an unlawful assembly." The absurdity of the assertion that walking *alone* through St. Paul during the RNC amounted to an "unlawful assembly" of such seriousness that it warranted arrest still makes us all incredibly angry.

We are, of course, relieved that my brother won't actually have to face charges in court or be put through any kind of delinquency restitution, although we're concerned that there may still be a record which could affect his future employability (not to mention possible federal files with the FBI, since the secret service and FBI were involved in the RNC security). But thank goodness that this is no longer a criminal matter.

Now, it's a civil matter, and we are still exploring possibilities for legal redress. This will likely be a very long process, but how ever we choose to proceed, we all feel that there should be a public record of police wrongdoing. We feel a certain sense of responsibility to make sure that this can't be swept under the carpet.

My brother was released at 3:30am yesterday. He was home by 4am and in a haze of exhaustion I hugged him like he had returned from the dead. He woke up again at 7am to go to the first day of his senior year, because he didn't want to miss it.

He still had not been given a phone call. 8 other minors had been arrested with him and of them only one other was released because his father also made numerous calls. The police who answered that boy's phone then proceeded to impersonate him until the father demanded that they give the name of the boy's grandmother, and the police hung up. The rest of those minors have no way of contacting their parents or guardians. There are 7 families who may still think their child is dead or missing.

My brother was held in handcuffs in 88 degree heat for 3 hours without water. He asked for water several times and was refused.

He was patted down numerous times.

He asked to answer his cell, explained that his parents expected him home, and asked for his phone call over and over, and was refused.

They took his mug shots, fingerprints, and intake information twice because they "lost" the first set.

His paperwork says he was arrested at 5:30, but my brother says that it was actually 4:30 and they falsified the paperwork.

This is being reported as the arrest of 280 "violent anarchists." This is patently untrue. Yes, some people did smash windows and throw rocks yesterday, but the number of arrests is grossly inflated. My brother said that they surrounded a grassy area the size of a city block and arrested everyone who was there at the time. Everyone. I am furious. Not only is this an incredible infringement of basic rights, but it's horrendously lazy. We pay the police to find out which people committed the crime, not to arrest everyone in the vicinity and let the courts sort it out later. It's sloppy, authoritarian, and inhumane.

This was not the only mass arrest yesterday.

There is a picture of my brother in handcuffs attached to an article about the arrest of "violent anarchists."

Being an anarchist is not a crime. Neither is going to a concert.

When my parents arrived at juvenile detention they were turned away, supposedly because my brother wasn't there. They ended up scouring the city for hours, bounced from one police station or holding center to another, including one policeman who gave them directions to a station that closed ten years ago. In the end, they returned to juvenile detention and the clerk said that my brother was there.

When they finally found him, they were told that they couldn't see him, but the clerk said she would let him know that they were there. She did not tell him. My 17 year old brother was left to believe that no one knew what had happened to him, and that he was alone.

They never took a statement from him. This is both good and bad, because they didn't attempt to interrogate him coercively, but they also absolutely didn't care why those 280 people were on that hill at that time.

When he was finally released the clerk told my parents that they let him go because "he scored low on the test." My parents asked my brother what the test was and he said the only thing they asked him was whether or not he is Somali. We have one of the largest Somalian populations in the country. This was absolutely not an ok question to ask given the circumstances and sounds like the clerk using her discretionary powers to exercise her racism. But also, it was an incredibly weird question because my brother is a very pale Caucasian with hazel eyes and light brown hair, so the likelihood of him being from Somalia is slim. I wonder if he would still be there if he had dark skin or if he'd said yes.

My aunt is a very good corporate lawyer and she happened to be in town this weekend (she lives and practices in DC). We called her right after the police picked up my brother's cell at 11 last night and she's been helping us since. The other boy who was released because the police picked up his cell as well is the son of an extremely prominent lawyer here in the cities. My parents exchanged information with him as they all waited at the detention facility. The first thing my brother said to my parents was that they had arrested him illegally and that he wants to sue. I want justice for what they put our family through. I want this to be public because this isn't just about us and our hours of terror. This is fundamentally about our rights as citizens, and the kind of country we want to live in.

PS - Thanks to everyone who wrote with support and to everyone who has kept us in their thoughts. I'll aswer comments individually now that he's out and I've slept. I'll update as more information becoms available.

ETA: They're now refusing to provide us with a copy of the arrest record, or even to state what the charge was. They're saying that they can only give us that information in a week. A lot can happen in a week.

ETA 2: There's video of the arrests On this Page - click to launch "Delegates Harassed." It includes a few seconds of my brother's hat, but nothing of his face, so I feel comfortable circulating it.

ETA 3: My brother's picture has come down off the CNN article and they've revised to emphasize the police's over-aggression and continued brutality, so I'll link to it now. Police fire chemical agents, projectiles at RNC protesters
Unfortunately numerous aggregators are still using the original text and photo which make him seem like he was involved in violent crime - an implication which is so far off the mark as to be painful. There are several places where his picture is followed by some truly hateful diatribes against liberals (which is hugely ironic since he isn't old enough to vote and didn't have any particular political consciousness [until now}).

mecurtin's post about this and other similar events is up at DailyKos here: Young arrestee's story; pictures around town

And a first-hand account by another person unlawfully detained in the same enclosure as my brother, but released without charges, is also up on DailyKos. Unfortunately my brother was in the very first group handcuffed, so amnesty wasn't a possibility at that point. xxx-789-0443

ETA 4: nicocoer has an extensive compilation of related news coverage, as well as first-hand accounts and video, in a post here.

So, I live in the city unfortunate enough to be hosting the RNC, and the police and FBI's brutal intimidation tactics have been well documented by now. I was outraged as a proud resident of this state to see my police force behaving so outrageously. That was intellectual. This is personal.

My brother was just arrested.

Supposedly for "unlawful assembly" - in reality, he was walking back to his car after being turned away from a sold-out union-sponsored public concert.

He is 17 and he is being charged with a gross misdemeanor. He was arrested at 5:30 and he didn't have access to his phone call to let us know. We found out because we panicked when he wasn't home by 9 - his curfew on a school night since tomorrow is the first day of school. After frantically calling his cell over and over to no response we were left to wrack our brains to find some other way to track him down in a large city as we imagined him dead or disappeared forever. Finally, at 11 - fully 5 and a half hours after my *minor* brother had been arrested, a policeman answered the cell they had confiscated from him.

Outrage does not begin to cover it. He is not political. He is not involved in any organization. Even if he were, that is no excuse.

He was a kid walking to his car in broad daylight, and he has now been unlawfully detained for the last 5 and a half hours. He may not be released tonight. My god, he must be scared.

The Omnivore's Hundred is an eclectic and entirely subjective list of 100 items that Andrew Wheeler, co-author of the British food blog Very Good Taste, thinks every omnivore should try at least once in his life.

He offered this list as the starting point for a game, along the following rules:
1. Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2. Bold all the items you’ve eaten (add an asterisk for the items you're particularly fond of).
3. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4. Optional extra: post a comment on Very Good Taste, linking to your results.


( The Omnivore's Hundred - My ResultsCollapse )

Back late Monday

So I voted for Hillary in the primary, but I am first and foremost a Democrat (well, in MN it's actually the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party) and I always planned to support whoever we decided to run, so I am completely pleased to have been at the rally when Obama won the nomination. I went with revolutionaryjo and we waited for 3 hours in a line that went literally all across downtown St. Paul. So worth it. I'm still not terribly impressed by the essential nature of political rhetoric so I'm quite cynical about the sound bite-y nature of speeches, but I'm so thrilled to be a small part of the process of reclaiming the white house and electing a historic candidate. I made this icon at the start of the war and I trust him to do his best to end it. I trust him to work with congress to restore civil liberties, reform the tax system to repeal those horrendous cuts for the wealthy, and work on energy and the environment. Go us. Here comes November.

I'm leaving for Clearwater, Florida in the morning to visit my godmother and I'll be there until Monday evening, probably without internet. See y'all on Tuesday :)

So, I've been silently seething about the way that my church backed down on the use of inclusive language and reinstated the Nicene Creed in its original text. Now, I attend mass largely out of family unity and think of it as a seminar on ethics - one which will hopefully give me something to think about for the next week if I'm lucky, but often consists solely of problematic rhetoric that I filter out or actively deconstruct. So, I don't really get into the Nicene Creed either way - I stopped saying it many years ago in an attempt to no longer voice beliefs I don't hold - but I'm significantly less annoyed and alienated when the entire congregation around me pledges allegiance to the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier than to the Father Almighty and a nonsensically male-embodied Holy Spirit (I kind of thought the entire point of a spirit was incorporality - i.e. the inability to have a penis or ovaries).

So then today it comes out that the Vatican has officially outlawed the use of "so-called feminist theology" and gender neutral language, ordering that all baptisms using gender neutral phrases like "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier" are null and void, requiring that those people be rebaptized.

Oh, thank goodness - My baptism isn't official anyway - and possibly not my parents' marriage either. Because our priests didn't fully respect the Trinity's manhood, we're doomed to a fiery eternity. Really, you cannot even make up misogyny on this level.

See the full story Here at the F Word and Here at the Telegraph

"Very few of us look good or normal with absolutely no makeup on at all"

This little gem came from an article linked off of aol's opening page today. Let me draw your attention to the word "normal" ( more behind the cutCollapse )

I made a wonderful dinner last night that was just perfect for the slightly overcast sky and cool breeze rattling the leaves outside my windows. Everything turned out really well - I was impressed.

Shepherds Pie
This is a brilliant dinner for the day after making a roast, and it's such a lovely, bone-warming food. I just love how all different cultures across the world developed dishes that are specifically designed to make the most of leftovers :)

I'd like to try adding beer or Guinness to this sometime. Mmmm - that would be good.

( Shepherd's PieCollapse )


( Cranberry Marble CheesecakeCollapse )

So I don't post about this whole grandmother situation often, but something's come up and I could use the advice.

( Background - Alzheimer's and dog training don't mixCollapse )

So the dog has been evicted.

He's staying with us until we can find him a new home.

( The Biting SituationCollapse )

This would be fine - I'm not really a dog person and I'm not really hurt that he doesn't like me. Whatever. But. We need to find him a new family. If he bites anyone he doesn't know I'm really afraid that whoever we give him to will put him down as a dangerous dog. It's really not his fault that my *clinically insane* grandmother never taught him not to bite - he doesn't deserve to *die* because of that. He put up with a lot living with a crazy woman for the last several years and being her companion through thick and thin - he deserves to live a nice life.

Suggestions please?

So, there's another house elf storm brewing, and as usual I popped in to say - hey, what about elves resemblance to slaves and colonized people and women!? What's so wrong about wanting some legal protections for creatures in a position rife with the possibility for abuse? Or with ensuring that even if they do want to serve people, they have other meaningful, safe choices?

And this time I was actually banned for it.

The conversation is Here

Had I not been banned, this is ( what I was going to say:Collapse )

So, yes, I am super-mean.

So, I've said this a thousand times, but I despise evolutionary psychology. Not just because it promotes an intensely regressive social agenda (although that is reason enough!), but also because it's bad science. ( Why Evolutionary Psychology is Silly and Bad for You - And Why I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love GreenCollapse )

Tonight I'm bringing dinner over to copper_rose's place to re-watch Brotherhood of the Wolf in preparation for my choc_fic assignment. The menu includes:

Caprice salad with heirloom tomatoes (so pretty!) and fresh pesto, accompanied by gluten-free rosemary bread and red wine.

( Potato Leek GratinCollapse )

( Stuffed Chicken BreastsCollapse )

( Chocolate Crème BruleeCollapse )

Followed by tea, and a flask of pastis I've been saving since my last trip to Provence.

ETA: I still have the faint taste of pastis on my lips and I am so soooo satisfied: That was excellent. Edited to add the recipes for the gratin - which was a new recipe for me and WOW so fabulous!!! - and the stuffed chicken breasts which have become a staple for us.

So, I've been sitting back watching the race and Doctor Who discussion flow over the past few weeks, and for the most part I've wanted time to process before butting in. I still have very little desire to actually intercede in any one point of the on-going conversation, which is why I'm posting here rather than in comments or on a community LJ.

So, initially my feelings were a bit muddled - while I readily allowed the argument that racism operates within Doctor Who, I had trouble with the assertion that Martha specifically is a racial stereotype. As I generally support discussions of racism and do in fact see racism as a problem in Doctor Who, this resistance troubled me. As I thought it through, here's what I've come up with.

( Canon, Fanon, and Authorial IntentCollapse )

And now, I'm going to get back to class prep - a friend of mine is out of town so I'm filling in for her tomorrow night. I'm supposed to teach poetry. I may be in trouble.

I have another post stewing on the ethics of representing a stereotype in order to refute it, and how these attempts often go awry, but that is a post for another day.

I have been putting off my travelogue from Spring term for so long that I haven't posted about other things b/c I feel like I'm rather behind. But, like others, my CSA currently runnith over and my life for the moment mostly consists of short bursts of blinding panic about the future, and longer intervals of blissful summer contentment - yoga classes, lots of pop culture catching up, and cooking with nearly obscene amounts of produce.

So, out of those I've decided that I will post about food, because I've been having a wonderful time this summer figuring out what to do with my box of mystery ingredients each week.

( Summer Harvest CookingCollapse )

So for no reason I can discern my menu bar keeps disappearing from Internet Explorer, Version 7.0. Any idea why or how to fix it?

Based on this annoyance, I think I'm ready to switch to Firefox. Any advice on switching over from IE to Firefox?

Thanks!

ETA: Any idea how to get Firefox to automatically save LJ posts with the page header rather than the entry number?

I went and saw "Amazing Grace" at the dollar theatre tonight, and what a wonderfully slashy, socially responsible and relevant, beautiful gift of a movie that was!!

It did a very nice job of tying the fight against slavery into a much larger vision of a society opposed to all human cruelty and oppression, which made it a quite contemporary story in many ways. Excellent treatment of the way that economics are always a moral issue which makes people deliberately blind to obvious ethical truths. I love a good social justice story.

And the slash, goodness gracious, was jumping off the screen. I don't know if this is some special power that Ioan Gruffudd has as a holdover from his incredible boylove with Archie (and Lt. Bush) in Horatio Hornblower, or just further evidence that the basic narratives of Western lit are inherently queer, but wow - that was pretty clearly a bisexual love story, which basically ( Went Like ThisCollapse )

And if all that wasn't enough, it was gorgeously filmed. Really amazing framing, fantastic costumes, fabulously pretty people, and a brilliant juxtaposition between the English aristocracy/countryside and the horrors of poverty and slavery.

Excellent!!!

Very smooth - I just gave myself a virtual gift congratulating myself for my hard work - not that I don't deserve it, but Oooops. That wasn't meant for me.

Off to Boston for the Media in Transition conference at MIT

Back Monday night

Last trip of the year (thank goodness) - I'm pretty travel weary.

So I haven't posted my Mexico trip report yet, and I'm off to Boston for the International Popular Culture/American Culture Associations Conference early tomorrow morning. I'll be back on Sunday, and a full report of both trips as well as Kansas and Judith Halberstam will follow when I return.