My scrap of dirt

Aaaand a few links that have nothing to do with each other but they do have to do with what's on my mind these days! I'm a little frustrated that I'm not finding the time to comment on some of these really important things that are happening, but I'm still trying to balance everything in my life. :/

How to Be a Friend to Trans Folks Without Putting Your Foot in Your Mouth: A Short Guide for Cis People. These things are always good to go over, if only as a reminder, and I like the suggestions in this one. Which pronouns do you prefer? should be a much more common question :/

Vancouver's Insite drug injection clinic will stay open. This is a ridiculously important ruling for Canada, which ensures that harm reduction programs such as Insite have a chance to do their work, even with a Harper government.

by Lemony Snicket (at Occupy Writers). So much to say about the Occupy Mouvement, but for now, I'll keep it short with a few links. I like the Lemony one, and this one, which unpacks what's going on with one of the images against Occupy Wall Street: Don’t EVEN get me started, mythical bootstraps college student. Finally, I think this collection of photos of the 1% who stand with the 99% is full of very powerful acknowledgements of privilege and requests for more taxation, which I find overwhelming because it's so unlike anything we're used to hearing. Good for a lot of these young people to recognize they may have worked hard, but that's not all that got them where they are. I wish we would hear these people more, instead of politicians being afraid of even whispering about taxes.


On a TOTALLY DIFFERENT note, some fandom stuff because light-hearted is, occasionally, really great. :)

Out in every way, Sean Maher is happier than ever. So so happy to hear any article where Sean talks about how great the response to his coming out has been. This never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Jewel Staite talks Firefly, food, fun and Fillion. Just a very fun interview that reminded me of old times. :)

As it turns out, there's also now BIG NEWS, which is this website. Sean mentioned it yesterday and it was exciting enough but OMG Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Fran Kranz, Nathan Fillion?! This is going to be the best thing ever. I can't wait to find out what part Sean plays, and to see some of the footage. This is so wonderful, and as far as I'm concerned, FAR more interesting than the Avengers movie. Whedon Shakespeare movie FTW. :D :D

Anyway, back to work, I have a midterm review to prep for, as I expect students will be flailing!

EDIT: Apparently Sean is going to be Don John, which at this point means little to me, so I need to go back to the play and check it out. :) :)

Sun is finally out. Probably only for a couple of days, but considering we had hail yesterday, I'll take even temporary nice weather! It's basically been February here since, well, February, and we're all really, really tired of it.

I just wanted to post a few links quickly; it's going to be a little all over the place but bear with me.

First, a really excellent analysis of sexist discourse in the French media following the whole DSK scandal. Les informulés d’une rhétorique sexiste. It's in French and I wish there was a translation available, because it's fantastically insightful, and not just for French culture.

Some of you may have heard about the story of parents in Toronto raising a 'genderless' kid. You can read the original story (complete with douchy neighbors, friends and family members! I always love the whole 'your kid will get bullied' argument because, y'know, if a kid gets bullied, the problem is not the kids who bully and the parents who teach their kids things that could lead them to be jerks to other kids). But you can also read this reflection on the piece from the Raising My Boychick blog, which is excellent. I only want to point out that while I think it's cool to assume your baby's gender is aligned with their biological sex (assuming that's straightforward) until your kid is old enough to tell you otherwise, it's important that you tell the kid that, directly or at least indirectly. Otherwise you might be the most open-minded parent who'd be totally cool with a trans or gender nonconforming kid, your kid might never know.

While we're on the topic of gender/sexuality, the New York Times recently ran a beautiful series on gay teenagers. The stories are touching, but what really drew me in is the photography. Wonderful and quiet photos.

Now for the unrelated to gender and sexuality stuff:

Allie started a food blog with her friend Katie, The Dough Also Rises - and you should all check it out, because they make really, really delicious food. With simple recipes! Which is always nice (I don't like overly fancy things that I could never reproduce/require ingredients I couldn't find if my life depended on it). Keep an eye out for the yam burrito. SO GOOD.

I may have mentioned (or not) that we're rewatching every Harry Potter movie in expectation for Deathly Hallows Part 2, and it's been great. Harry in the first movie is just the most adorable kid on earth, but it's so great to see all of them grow up. :) And then today mieystrapurore posted this video, which is amazing. It's just beautifully made, with wonderful music, and it takes you through the whole journey that is the HP series. If you have any attachment to this story, you should watch it. Maybe several times.

And to finish on another pop culture note, I never even mentioned here that The Playboy Club has been picked up by NBC! SO EXCITED to see Sean in there; he's psyched about the storylines that writers have in mind for his character, which makes me even more excited to see it. Let's hope it doesn't get axed by like, episode 3, I'm going to be so upset if that happens. Unless they make a spinoff about Sean's storyline, I'd be down with that.

I think this metaquote is hilarious. I have a lot of things planned next week, so I'm not sure I'll be going to the Super Tuesday party after all. I really can't get any sort of excited about this primary

Most importantly, I wanted to show you something awesome I bought today:



In case you're wondering if you're seeing this right, yes, these are chocolate vaginas. Isn't that totally awesome? It's part of a campaign on campus to raise awareness about V-day (an event that wants to get people talking about issues of violence against women), and the upcoming show of the Vagina Monologues. The "Pussy Posse" on campus is also selling t-shirts that read "I <3 my vagina". It's kinda of a really cool thing. I will, of course, let you all know if I've enjoyed the vaginas once I've eaten them. *g*


Also, hmm the lines of Sean's body on that picture. And his cuteness on this one. Heee. I love the hair. (Also *points at icon* more Sean cuteness there.) Okay, so what, this was my shallow bit. I would talk very deeply about his projects if he would have any.

Je vous présente... wikiHow!

En fait j'avais surtout envie d'attirer votre attention sur l'avertissement de l'article sur "Comment faire des crêpes" qui rappelle à tous les têtes en l'air que "la poêle est chaude" et puis aussi sur l'article "Comment épargner" où j'aime beaucoup l'avertissement aussi.

And I love that the English version features Sean for their article "How to apply make-up as a man". See? It's manly to use moisturizer!

Okay, I swear I'm going to bed at some point, but I had to share this. There's a new Jewel Staite interview and she mentions Sean :

"SGPnet: What was your favorite scene in "Serenity" and which one was the hardest and can you also tell us why?
JS: Kissing Sean [Maher] was probably one of the hardest, ironically, since he's so gorgeous! Sean and I had gotten to know each other really well and had developed a brother/sister relationship ... so it was kind of like kissing my brother. We were giggling nervously and being silly, and Joss kept saying "I want romance! Make it romantic!" which just made us laugh harder.
My favorite scene, though, is probably when Mal gives the speech to the crew after we've seen the devastation on Miranda, and he says "I aim to misbehave". Nathan is such a brilliant actor!

SGPnet: What kind of message do you want the fans to pick up from "Serenity"?
JS: Stick to what you believe in, and don't let anybody tell you different.

SGPnet: Some female visitors of my site wanted me to ask you, how kissing Sean Maher was like?
JS: He's a great kisser. And he smells yummy."


BDH-induced happiness is so good. (I also just rewatched the Firefly DVD Bonus "The Making of Firefly" and... yeah. So much love for those guys.)

Would you like to be an awesome F-list today? I mean awesome-er than usual?

There's a poll on Sony to see what series they might release on DVD. Could you please all go and vote for The $treet? This is a TV series that was axed after only 6 episodes aired, and Sean Maher is one of its stars. There's also Jennifer Connelly in there and guys, I'm dying to see that show, so please please please, go to vote for it here :

http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/tvondvd/poll/

The current status is:

The $treet 15.4%
Bette! 13.73%
Michael Hayes 6.9%
What's Happening Now! 11.48%
The Rookies 12.16%
Police Story 15.07%
Cupid 25.23%

It'll take you five seconds and dude, I'd be so happy if it actually got released. Thank you awesome F-list! You can return to your usual, Sean-free activities!

So like I said, I capped Wedding Wars like crazy yesterday so I could make icon, and ely_jan pointed out I should post the screencaps and she was totally right, so here they are! It's really a Ted screencap orgy because I was looking to icon Sean... so don't try and use this to understand what happens in the movie. But there's a lot of Ted/Sean Maher cuteness underneath the cut!

( Click for massive cap fest! )

This is a miscellaneous entry of miscellaneousity!

- The Ikea Game. For all you crazy Sweden lovers out there. Can you beat my 4/10??

- Wedding Wars promos and premiere! (Sean's mentioned by John in the clip from the premiere at the very end.) 2 days, people. 2 DAYS. *needs her Sean fix like woah*

- Canada won't reopen the same-sex marriage debate. Because Canadians are TEH AWESOME. So cool that even some Conservatives voted against reopening the debate. *loves*

- Chris Buck takes photos of celebrities and I love what he does. Not all of it is excellent, but some shots are truly brilliant.

For those of you who might not know yet, clips from Wedding Wars (really, promotional material) have been put online at the A&E Club. There are four clips in total, and all of them have a bit of Sean in it and awwwww. There's even a kiss.

The direct link is this one. You have to register, but I could give you my login/password if you want to. Of course, the easier alternative is snagging the wmv version uploaded here by the wonderful liquidize!

And by the way - the crossed leg thing is such a cliché.

But dude I can't wait for that movie. It looks like it could be good entertainment, which is really all I'm asking for. (And it's really awesome when two of your interests collide. Seriously.)

Any chance it's possible for me to move out of this city tomorrow? No? Fuck, I didn't think so. There's something really wrong when you realize it'd be easier to take over the world than to have a fucking window changed in an apartment you own. ARGH.

*HEADDESK*

Perfect reason to rec this little video from Wizard World Con of Joss Whedon and a bunch of the Firefly guys & girls, because it'll bring a smile to your face no matter how bad your day's going :