Nec Hoc Nec Ilud

* I know I haven't mentioned the President singing that a capella Al Green cover, but dayumn that man can sing!

* American Airlines had plenty of money to give to lobbyists, consultants, and Republican presidential candidates, despite being bankrupt, but (Surprise!) didn't have enough money to pay the pension funds of employees, even though the first three cost significantly more than the pension payments.

* They successfully stripped union rights from all workers in Indiana, as part of the Republican program to lower wages for all workers in the state. Meanwhile, Arizona is planning to strip union rights from all state workers, including police and fire fighters. After all, why should people who risk their lives and health for a living need quality health benfits, pensions, or say in working conditions?

* The Susan G. Komen for the Cure put an anti-choice woman in charge, and (Surprise!) is now cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, the major provider of cancer screening to women in poverty. After all, making sure women in poverty don't get cancer screening and treatment of precancerous cells will help cure cancer, right?

* Neither I nor the cats got much in the way of sleep. It wasn't just the four unnecessary phone calls. No, they started banging and hammering outside my window at nine. To be fair, the support beams are cotton and need replacing. Unlike my previous landlord, the are fixing things before someone gets injured. Still, they ate six out of eight hours of my sleep cycle and terrified the cats. It wasn't just the hammering, they kept dropping the beams from great height onto the concrete, and banging things into things, yelling etc.. The cats ere freaked out. There would be pausing, during which they'd settle and we'd drift off, only to be awakened by another tremendous bang that made me jump a foot and sent Hector into a panicked scamper to the other side of the apartment. I hope the move to another apartment block soon, because OMG!!! I'm still in pain from all the gimping about Monday and Tuesday and not getting anything like real sleep means tomorrow, already challenging is going to be nightmarish painful and exhausting.

I broke out the goosh a day early on the grounds that they deserved something nice after all of that. They gobbled it down, then repaired en masse to my room for a long nap, poor things.

* So the second batch of season one Glees arrived from the library. I'm still not getting why Finn is the center of everything on the boy side both musically and plot wise when he's so booooring. I'm still finding the whole Finchel drama boring and cliche. It's like they have a check list og high school dating cliches and are working through it methodically. I know I have to slog through the boredom of season one to get to the interesting bits, but it's hard. On the upside they are letting Mercedes and Kurt sing more, and the music is making me less annoyed as result. On top of this, I don't like Mr. Shue. It's a teacher thing. A lot of it's small stuff that's hard to explain to someone who hasn't taught. In general, he so busy reliving his glory days and trying so hard to still be one of the kids that his boundaries suck. The best example of what's wrong with him from a teacher perspective comes from a fragment of the Cheesus episode I caught over Christmas. I never thought I'd side with sue Sylvester over anything, but I was infuriated by Mr. Shue pressuring and letting other students pressure Kurt with their Christianity when he already had so much to deal with. I'm also having an essential problem with the principle. I honestly don't understand why he would choose to allow things like the slushying or Sue assaulting students. No school I worked would allow things like that to go down. I'm surprised there have been no lawsuits or arrests (in the case of Sue and what I hear happened last night). why are their no teachers stationed in the hallways between classes, as is SOP everywhere I've worked? I'm still wanting the plot to be spread around more between characters instead of it being the Finchel show. I'm still wanting more... something that isn't there. Slog, slog, slog. I do think having read rm, I'm having a better time with it than I did during the first set I watched something like a year ago. I can entertain myself with analyzing Kurt's wardrobe and body language and thinking about construction of masculinity/femininity in the show.

* I had a hard time posting to BPAL board last night, and checking today, only one notice came through and the board was still down at 6:33 PM. I hope all is okay over there.

* * Mitt Romney wants you to know, "I don't care about the very poor." Rachel Maddow counts the ways: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

* This does a beautiful job of showing what's wrong with the tea Party demands we sanitize the history books to get rid of inconvenient truths: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/407490/january-31-2012/the-word---american-history-x-d

* Cake: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/07/im-guessing-they-didnt-have-matching.html

* (crotalus_atrox found): "God of the Cake: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/10/god-of-cake.html

* I managed to make it to the dentist, despite it being the sort of day where the phone kept ringing, robbing me of sleep.

* Bill Maher has a Tesla roadster, lucky bastard.

* John Legend was claiming the small percentage of teachers actually fired proves that we don't take our profession seriously. It's as if he was completely unaware of the high failure rate for first two years (they leave voluntarily, generally, or under polite pressure), and all the people that get selected out during student teaching, etc.. The weeding out process is pretty constant at the beginning. Generally, if you're still standing at the two years in the field mark, you are competent, and after five, you're good. It's not perfect, no, and burnout happens. It happens a lot in special ed, which is why the turnover is so high. They realize they can't do it any more, and they quit. This causes a chronic shortage. It's as if all the people who leave under their own power because it's incredibly hard, under paid, has a steep learning curve, emotionally exhausting, they aren't suited, they have some of the innate talents and learned skills one needs, but not all of them, etc. don't count somehow. just because they have the sense to figure that out themselves or are edged out politely by other staff who encourage them to look for other careers instead of out right firing, isn't a reason to hold it against the proffession. Yes, some people hang on a little longer than they should, usually at the end of a long career, but trust me, it's self correcting, if you have enough money to actually, you know, run a school. The schools have all kinds of internal processes to improve teaching one way or another.

* Comics: http://www.asofterworld.com/clean/burdenofproof.jpg http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/current/index-1.gif http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tech_support.png

* Supernatural: Yay, Bobby centric episode! It was kind of cool to see Rufus again too even if this was not a particularly competent day for him. Gavin McCleod? Really? Really? I think this is the first episode I've really enjoyed this season, like all the way through. Look, I like Bobby, okay? *hangs head*

* O.o http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/7458149.html?style=mine

* My mother had a "fashion book." I still have it, actually. It was one of those history of fashion through the ages things. It had colour illustrations based on artwork. I used to love to look at it as a kid, and when I got older, I'd draw paper dolls for my little sister using the outfits in there as basis for the outfits. I liked history things just generally, and me being interested in, say, how the advent of the button changed the way people dressed was an out growth of that. i liked imagining what people's lives were like in different time periods. It all sort of went together in my head. We didn't have much money, but my parents made sure we put aside money for trips to museums and historical sites and the like. This suited me just fine. My favorite was the Philadelphia Art Museum. They had rooms set up from different periods with real floors, and furniture and the like from those periods. I'd imagine the people that might have lived there, dressed in the outfits of the time and place, and tell myself stories about them in my head. I got so excited the time they had a fashion through the ages special exhibit planned. My Mom was pretty excited too, so the three of us (my dad was not a museum sort of guy) all went to see it. We were planning to play a game where we'd guess the decade they were from than look at the tags. I don't remember the exact year, but I'm thinking my sister was a toddler, which put me in Lower school or what most Americans call primary school. I am a little blown away by the costume geekery I exemplified, because at that age, I had a pretty good chance of guessing correctly. There are no words for my disappointment. It was nearly all twentieth century haute couture, which didn't interest me at all. We'd been hoping for whole bunch of 19th century things, hopefully some things ordinary people wore, and maybe some older heirloom textiles. We'd got ourselves all worked up for something like three or four Victorian-Roaring twenties pieces, and a whole lot of post war sequins. My Mom tried hard to hide her disappointment, but I was pretty sure she was let down too. In Paris in my teens, I actually got to see a medieval shoe they'd dug up somewhere. It was so cool to me that someone wore that hundred's of years ago, an ordinary person, who's story we'd never know, but there it was, long after that person was dust. Geeky, I know. Anyway, I just saw this thing on exhibiting historical clothing and I... well, I'm still that sort of geek. I wish I could go see this exhibit soooo bad.

http://lacma.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/fashioning-mannequins/

* I found my Aragorn pendant randomly when I was about to leave the house when I wasn't looking for it. Isn't that always the way? I am wearing it right now.

* "Literature’s 10 Best-Dressed Authors" http://flavorwire.com/123825/literatures-10-best-dressed-authors

They included my beloved George Sand!

* Signal boost: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1604890644/dogboy-and-justine-workshop-production

* Looks like Deus is postponing tomorrow, which is fine, because I've got a lot of things to do around the house.

* There's a thing in the extras on the Cavet Dvds where he's being interviewed by a friend. Cavet expresses his continuing astonishment that so many musicians came on his show and that they genuinely seemed to like him, inviting him out places and the like, when he knew next to nothing about popular music and was just generally rather square. His friend points out that when he had Janis Joplin on, he treated her like a lady, and that's not how most people treated her. I think he put his finger on something there. There is something old fashioned courtly about him no matter who the woman is. What fascinates me, is that this is a revelation to Cavet himself. All these little out of style polite gestures are so second nature to him, that it never occurs to him that he's doing something unusual. Things like the lighting of Bette Davis' cigarette for her are a contrast to the bits of 1970's sex and drug references in the shows, and it is part of his appeal. He's a little bit out of step with his time in a completely unselfconscious sort of way. No wonder he was able to lure in so many hard to get interviewees from the golden era of Hollywood.

* (RM found) how to fight DADT: http://keori.livejournal.com/366402.html

* (RM found): Help find this missing teenager: http://senseless.livejournal.com/378605.html

* Young Avengers is really growing on me. The art is still blowing me away.

* Now that il_volpe mentioned the gunslinger thing, I'm seriously considering wearing the vests for Orycon. My worry is, it'll be too warm, especially with the rifle coat.

* It's officially a pathogen. OMG. I do not need this.

* I had a long talk with Uncle John. He's in better spirits than he's been in a long time. she's taking good care of him and it's comforting to him to be helping someone out as sort of the last thing he's going to do in this world. I made sure he knew we supported him and that what mattered to us is that he's happy.

* Deusabscondum found, blood energy drink now has zombie products: http://www.livingwithbloodlust.com/

* DADT repeal petition: https://secure3.convio.net/hrc/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=936&autologin=true&utm_source=Convio&utm_medium=email&utm_term=callout-link&utm_campaign=DAD+vote+next+week+victory+is+NOT+certain&JServSessionIdr004=hrzbssoq84.app305a

* I got polled for the forth time in as many days today. This one appeared to be marketting research for several different ballot measures than last time. They asked me outright if I was a teabagger. I was well into the poll, when it dawned on me that while the voice i woke up with was familiar, it wasn't actually mine. By the time I'd finished, I'd realized whose it was: Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes. I have no idea what I was dreaming, what with the sudden wake up and political grilling, but it must have been interesting. I remember something about grey seas and spies....

* I could do without the throat randomly closing thing.

* (crotalus_atrox) Hungover owls: http://hungoverowls.tumblr.com/

* O.o http://cgi.ebay.com/VAMPIRE-TRANSFORMATION-SPELL-BECOME-AN-IMMORTAL-VAMPIRE_W0QQitemZ260654149233QQihZ016QQcategoryZ102517QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

* My mother is out of the hospital. They tried a new antibiotic and it's really helping. She's sounding stronger than she has in a year. It's a repreive, not a cure, but even a month of her feeling better is a good thing.

* I'm warn out from errands again, but things are mostly sorted.

* Why are people still paying money to see Andrew Dice Clay? I'd pay money Not to see him.

* A thing on the economics of what's happening to lj: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/902653.html

* "Bodice Rippers: 21 Of The Most Ridiculous Romance Novels…EVER." (Warning: zombies): http://evillibrariansupervillain.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/bodice-rippers-21-of-the-most-ridiculous-romance-novels-ever/

* "10 Strange and Wonderful Soaps:" http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/65385

* So I watched ( Citizen Kane: )

* And a comic: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/comics/schlock20100904.jpg