Different request. Give me a song topic or lyrics to use and I'll write you a song.

Do it.

I'm serious.

Bored now. Someone reading A Song of Ice and Fire or any fandom you know I like (shoroko knows too well). Give me a story idea for a fanfic. This would be my first fanfic since I did Animorphs ones in ... 4th grade.

Yeah, I'm serious.

Can someone please, please, please explain this picture to me?



One conservative blog I've looked at calls it the "beginning of open mockery" against our president, but I don't know how well "open mockery" stacks up against, you know, logic, which seems to be the sworn enemy of the current state of the anti-health reform protesters.

shoroko and I were talking about it earlier after the image popped up on my Facebook feed from one of the four or five diehard conservative friends I have (so that I can say "My Republican friend" in the same way that they say "My black/Asian/hispanic friend" except not). While perhaps a neat Photoshop trick, the image itself doesn't really make all that much sense besides that.

Let us consider the Joker from the latest Batman film. The Joker had no ties to government, nor did he put forth a political agenda similar to any political philosophy minus the anarcho-fascism of Fight Club: he was a force of destruction for destruction's sake. And, you know, offered Gotham a better kind of criminal.

There's also the part of the movie where he tries to reform health care and ends up setting up death panels to decide how to kill everyone in Gotham, except for the part that it isn't in the movie. There's also a great scene where he's reading Karl Marx's Das Kapital and teaching a class in Gotham University about it except that doesn't happen either.

I think logic crawled up into a conservative graphic designer's brain and then curled up into a ball to die.

If anyone's got an explanation for what the picture means, I'd really like to hear it. Read it. Smell it.

Business first: what the hell.

"A North Texas legislator [Rep. Betty Brown (R-Terrell)] during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are 'easier for Americans to deal with.'"

Then, in her own words: "Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese—I understand it's a rather difficult language—do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?"

The first statement presupposes many things. First, that people of "Asian-descent" are not, themselves, Americans. Second, it assumes that most Americans find it difficult to say such names as "Liu" or "Yamamoto" or "Xiang." Third, it also assumes that all "white" names are easily pronounceable. And this would bring up another question: if an American were living in China, would it therefore be right for that person to change their surname to something more Asian-sounding?

What's disturbing about this statement is that Rep. Brown does not even recognize that it is a racial issue—her spokesman Jordan Brown stated that, as paraphrased by chron.com, "the Democrats are using racial rhetoric to inflame partisan feelings against the bill." And in his own words: "They want this to just be about race."

Which ... also assumes that all Asians and people representing Asians are Democrat, or identify with a particular party, and that none of them are Republican.

Asian names are inherently an issue regarding race—the names trace back to histories and ancestors not originally from America. The same is true for non-Asian names. As mundane a name as "Brown" appears to be, at one point, it originated somewhere that isn't America and has its own history, but we don't tend to think about that. Race is very much a relative construct. "White" being the norm in America, it passes off as the unmarked case—Asian is racialized, as much as Black or Hispanic, or anything else that isn't white. The elimination of our Asian names and replacing them with "white" names is also the elimination of identity and entire histories of families that stretch back to places that aren't America (God forbid). If the path to a more orderly and efficient society is through the rejection of racialized identity at the behest of the more hegemonic, non-racialized society? I think I'd rather keep being called "Leyco."

( Videos under the cut! Awesome, awesome videos! )

This American Life is broadcasting live from NYU in April. By the time I went to the box office to buy tickets, it had sold out. Then, listening to this week's podcast, they announced an additional guest who hadn't been in the announcements beforehand.

Joss fucking Whedon.

God damn it. I hate this world.

Yes, Barack Obama is our next president. And I'm very happy. The news networks right now are covering how much of a historic moment this is—we've finally come a little bit closer to realizing the promises of the forefathers saying that "All men are created equal." And it is. I finally feel like I'm less like a minority and more like an actual, equal citizen of the United States.

Of course, Fox News, the bastion of fairness and balanced...ness .. is completely ignoring the historical moment and instead continuing McCain's attacks questioning whether Obama is too liberal or too radical.

Whatever.

Well I've decided to do Black Hat Guy from xkcd for Halloween. Simple, effective, and understandable by a certain section of the population.

Anyway. Internet meme from kathynancygirl

Enter the answers to these items in urbandictionary.com, and write down the FIRST definition. Yes, the first. Yes, really.

1. Your name:
a fabulous name, anyone who has it should be proud, spontaneous (good in bed) ;) usually very sexy tall & thin (except for the few UNLUCKY Jeff's out there)

DAMN BITCH! Jeff is so fine

2. Your age:
A .22 Caliber hand gun. .22 is a measurement of inches, not millimeters you fucking retards.

3. One of your friends:
A fine and sexy female. It originated in Mexico from a group called "The Veronicas" that were beautiful women with lots of curves.

Jimmy: Man, there were some hot girls at the mall today
Josh: Yeah, I seen them there last week.
Jimmy: That one with the dark hair, now she's a Veronica!

4. What you should be doing:
Dancing:
Formal term meaning: to move with unhindered grace around an area with the presence of another enjoying the same activity.

Urban term: Humping someone in public

Sad world isn't it.

Cinderlla went (formal) dancing.
Jenny and I were (urban) dancing all night at the club, then more at her house.

5. Your favorite color:
The hue of the portion of the visible spectrum lying between green and indigo, evoked in a human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 420 to 490 nanometers.

The sky is blue.

6. Your birthplace:
The forgotten borough

Steve: Isn't Harlem a borough?
Justin: No, staten island is.
Steve: What's staten island?

7. Last person you talked to:
A woman defined by brains, beauty, class, and membership in the upper echelons of society. Can usually be found wearing pearls or sorority letters.

"Allison, jeeves is bringing around the polo pony. In the meantime, would you like a hot toddy?"

8. The last thing you drank:
Orange juice: any juice, generally of the color orange.

9. Your nickname:
Jitterbug. A 1940s dance form where a male and female dancer perform a series of moves not unlike the 1950s rock and roll dancing.
The skill and strength required to throw the female dancer about was considered too much for mainstream dancing couples though.
The jitterbug evolved into the rock and roll style dancing seen in the 1950s and 1960s.

Friends only. Comment is add. Maybe.