First Draft

Susie

Give Susie's fundraiser a hand if you can. 

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Secret Santa REVEAL!

Santas, unmask yourselves. 

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The kids are alright: Star Witness

Because we could all use some inspiration:

These two high school students, Kate and Janelle, are seniors in the arts program at Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School (PCVS), located in downtown Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Earlier in the fall, district school board trustees voted to close the old (founded in 1827!) downtown fixture next year and move its highly-regarded Integrated Arts program to larger more modern Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School. The decision to close down the much-beloved PCVS sparked protest after protest in the community but it didn't seem much of anything was going to reverse the trustees' decision. A few weeks ago, just trying to draw more attention to efforts of their peers and the community at large to keep the school open, Kate and Janelle recorded their video, using the reverb in a PCVS stairwell to make Neko Case's already-atmospheric Star Witness sound even more haunting.

 

It worked. The video started getting forwarded around, someone tweeted it to Case, she re-tweeted, the video went viral, the story got blogged, re-blogged, and picked up in the media. To paraphrase Margaret Mead, thoughtful, concerned citizens (and teenage girls singing like angels) for the win!

On Monday, more progress: the Ontario Minister of Education appointed a special facilitator to review the policy and process behind the school trustees' decision to close PCVS.  Follow the PCVS story here.

 

Secret Santa Reminder

Tomorrow's the last day to get your SS gift into the e-mail. 

We'll do a thread on the 22nd where the Santas can reveal themselves! 

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Reminder: Santa Entries End Today!

It's the last day to get yourself on the Secret Santa list! 

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First Draft Secret Santa

You know what we need right now? Some fun. 

I'm serious. It's dark outside, it's getting cold, everyone is tired and it just never fucking ends. The Internet got really bitchy sometime in October and it hasn't stopped yet. So we are taking it upon ourselves to cheer everybody the fuck up. 

FIRST DRAFT SECRET SANTA, BITCHES. 

Here's how this is gonna work. You send me your e-mail address by December 10th. I match you up with somebody else who has sent in their address by December 15th, and by December 20th you send that person a small e-gift.

SMALL. $25 upper limit. We are not trying to break anybody's bank with this, and these days nobody has any goddamn money anyway. So send an e-mail gift certificate, or buy someone an e-book, or a membership to a group or magazine, or make a donation in someone's name to their favorite charity. 

Then on December 20th we will have a thread where everyone can say thank you and squee about their presents and reveal themselves. 

Send your email address to athenae25 at yahoo dot com by midnight on December 10th, and we will hook you up. 

You are all going to be in the holiday spirit if I have to beat it into you with a figgy pudding. 

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Weekend Question Thread

Tell me something nice that happened to you recently. I think we could all use a little sunshine.

Me, I had a bunch of really great people give my blog presents all week.

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First Draft Fundraising Ends: Thank You All

Bucky is so happy you all donated so that he could afford this fine, fuzzy sweater.

In all seriousness, thank you all for supporting the site. I know that this is the worst economy in the history of the world, and so it means a lot to know that you think what we do here is worth your time and your generosity. You've made it possible for us to keep the lights on another year, to keep doing what we're doing, and we couldn't be more proud of our community of readers. 

Onward to what looks to be the weirdest election of all time.

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First Draft Fundraising: Final Day!

All right, we're down to it. If you've appreciated a crack van or two over the past year, hit the tip jar. If you've laughed at a story, reacted with anger or sorrow or joy, if you've come away from this place having learned something (even if it's just how awesome Jude is) hit the tip jar. If you want to see a ferret wearing a wee turtleneck sweater tonight, hit the tip jar.

Yes. I'm pimping the pets. Come on, you knew what I was like before this, you had to.

Hit the tip jar!

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First Draft Fundraising: Almost There

We're getting close to our fundraising goal, which means it's time to pull out the big guns. I don't want to give away the surprise for tomorrow, but it involves Bucky. And knitwear. Hit the tip jar if you haven't yet. And thank you to all those who've contributed so far!

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First Draft Fundraising Drive: Origins

Shirtless Hugh Jackman. Whatever I have to do to make you hit that tip jar this week, I'mma do.

Trippy and fun

I watch a lot of television, less than I used to but still more than a lot of grown-up type people would consider seemly. I love great, meaty, meaningful groundbreaking TV, but I also have a weakness for the crap stuff. When I first read about Canadian scifi/fantasy series Lost Girl, I figured it would be crap but I thought I'd give the first episode a shot. Eight hours later, I'd watched the entire first season. 

Now, don't get me wrong, Lost Girl is no Masterpiece Theatre either. First and foremost, it's just fun. I'd go so far as to say delightful even, which is a good thing for series about a badass and snarky (Canadian) bisexual succubus named Bo.

In spite of its too-short first season, the show picked up a cult following, along with a 22-episode second season, which starts on Canadian TV this Sunday. The good news stateside is that Syfy has picked up both seasons. The bad news they still haven't announced a start date. That shouldn't be too much of a problem for anyone with an internet connection. The entire first season is on YouTube and I doubt it will take long for season 2 eps to show up. 

I don't think I've read an article about the show that didn't mention Buffy, so let's get that over with. Yeah, it definitely owes a debt in that direction, but in a good way, a very old-school S1-S3 monster-of-the-week way. Except with hardly any vampires, less moral philosophy, and a lot more grown up sex. Female-centric girl-power-yay! show? Check. Badass but vulnerable heroine trying to find her way? Check. Cheeky sidekick who gets all the good lines? Check. Broody non-human love interest? Check. Wise mentor with a mysterious past? Check. Love triangle? Check...sort of. There IS a love triangle with Bo in the center. The aforementioned broody dude, Dyson (a policeman who's also a shapeshifting wolf) is on one side. On the other is a woman, Lauren, a human doctor. 

The coolest thing about the Bo/Lauren (aka Doccubus) ship, aside from the fact of a canon same-sex relationship for a lead character in a hit show, is the total absence of anything remarkable. Bo's got a boyfriend and a girlfriend. No big. All the angst and drama, and there is plenty on all sides, is about other more important plots and monsters stuff. That said, there was a lot more Dyson/Bo in season 1 than Lauren/Bo. Not surprisingly, gay lady fans made their voices heard, and TPTB have already answered just as loudly, promising to balance things out with more Lauren/Bo this season. Go dyke geeks!

That response isn't surprising. Show creator Michelle Lovretta is a self-described fangirl, and it shows:

The amazing thing about genre fans is that they take ownership of a series, create their fanfics, their compilation vids, debate lore amongst themselves, come to panels etc. Genre fans tend to be a creative and inquisitive bunch, so in a pretty unique way — if you’re lucky enough to create a genre show that fans embrace, and we’ll have to wait and see if we fall in that category — your stuff will mutate and expand and be out there in the universe beyond the ways you yourself have created. It’s trippy and fun and what i love as a writer AND a viewer of this stuff. Yeah, I’m the starting point: I created something in my head. But it ceases to be a one man show the moment you’re in development: then there’s the writers, actors, producers, directors, crew, network, website/motion comic peeps etc, creating something new. …and now, it’s finally over to those fans who choose to feel some sort of ownership of the world and make it their own.

 

I know you are but what am I?

 

The Hunger Games: Trailer

Get More: 2011 VMA, Music

We'll be talking about this a bit. Because Katniss Everdeen is my motherfucking homegirl.

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Harry Potter Thread of Awesome Diversions

I was hoping someone had started this blog because goddamn.

Also, Molly Weasley: Feminist Mom.

Speaking of all things nerdly, do we need a Dance with Dragons thread? Has everyone else finished devouring it yet? Or should I give it another week or so?

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Light the Sky and Hold on Tight: Game of Thrones Thread

She's always been amazing.

It's just that she knows it, now.

Spoilers within.

Testing Your Vows: Game of Thrones Thread

Spoilers within.

Not Today: Game of Thrones Thread

Words cannot describe how much I get this kid.

Spoilers, as always, within.

Prisoner and Guest: Game of Thrones Thread

You tell me the difference.

Spoilers within.

Dear Republicans: Stop Poking Fandom

Especially Neil Gaiman fandom, which I chiefly know through his collaborations with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. They don't take kindly to being disturbed.

Now, of course, Minnesota Republicans want to make libraries fight it out over the grants that bring authors in, because ... "it removes the feeling of entitlement."

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Servants: Game of Thrones Thread

You know, it's these characters I don't think much of in the books, who are slamming into me in the show. Like Jorah Mormont here, who I would just like to hug.

Spoilers for tonight within.

I Don't Think We Can Call It Subtext Anymore: Game of Thrones Thread

In which we can see the flame from space.

Spoilers inside.

All in Darkness: Game of Thrones Thread

HODOR!

There's a t-shirt on the Internet somewhere, I'm sure, that reads "What Would Hodor Do?" and I think I need that t-shirt in my life.

Spoilers for the episode affectionately known as "here's where it all starts to go to shit" inside.

I Have No Choice: Game of Thrones Thread

It is a credit to this actress that I now understand what being Sansa Stark must be like, because at this point in the books I pretty much wanted to stab her eyeballs out with a fish fork.

Spoilers within.

Who By Fire: Game of Thrones Thread

That's just for Elspeth, that there. And, you know, for men, women, pets, semi-sentient sea life, anything else with EYES ..

Spoilers abound below the cut.

Game of Thrones: The Ladies Love The Sexytimes

Adrastos sends over this nice takedown of the recent negative reviews tonight's Game of Thrones (Galactica-style discussion threads to follow because HOMG) has gotten, in particular this assy one in the Times in which a woman lectures other women on what they like:

It says something about current American attitudes toward sex that with the exception of the lurid and awful “Californication,” nearly all eroticism on television is past tense. The imagined historical universe of “Game of Thrones” gives license for unhindered bed-jumping — here sibling intimacy is hardly confined to emotional exchange.

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

First of all, Lord knows women can't be interested in political intrigue and swords and stuff. Those are BOY things! Ms. Bellafante is sure those strange girl nerds exist, but she's never met one who'd actually go out in public! All normal girls have to have some hotties takin' they clothes off for our simple lady brains, because a plot, particularly a plot that involves MEN and POWER, is just so not interesting to us.

We can't relate to men as fellow people, or share any qualities or experiences with them through well-told stories! There are no universal human values men and women can share! Everybody knows women can only relate to other women, and our book clubs only include novels by ladies about lady things, like true love, and menstruating. 

You know, I started reading fantasy and sci-fi based on stuff my Dad would hand me, and my best female friend from childhood was obsessed with Tolkien, and never once did it occur to me that these stories were supposed to be inaccessible to me because of my inconvenient girl parts. I used to think of my childhood as conservative, but looking back it really was remarkably unburdened by the kind of patriarchal bullshit Ms. Bellafante is reinforcing here by saying that girls can't relate to courage, loyalty, feats of arms, and need some pining princesses to get us hooked.

Second of all, "bed-hopping?" In the first installment of the series? I'm straining to remember any gratuitous sluttery, male or female, and as I just re-devoured the first book last weekend, the fact that I can't think of any (people screw, sure, but it's for the usual reasons: because they're trying to get something from someone, or because they like each other) makes me wonder if the show is going to add a few more layers to people's relationships. Maybe Loras will be EVEN GAYER than he so completely already is.

I will say this, though: Nobody's innocent and pure in this story. People you will HATE this year, you'll adore in ways that will make you slightly ashamed of yourself later. I said "devour" with relationship to the books above; I am not kidding, the next one comes out in July and it will be all I can do not to EAT it, because it's a good story, and you don't have to check your sexual equipment to appreciate that.

Come back later tonight for more nerd-ness. Ladies more than welcome.

A.

 

Illinois Says On Wisconsin

Walking home from work last night, I spotted this in the window.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen to Scout and I talking Wisconsin on Susie's awesome radio show last night. Scout comes on about halfway through, so I suggest you start there.

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A Quick One For All The Nerds Out There

We've been aimin' to misbehave, too.

I'll have something on Walker's massive assault on the people of Wisconsin soon, but for now, I wanted to throw this out there.

Froomkin at the Huffington Post (which I normally avoid like Dick Cheney avoids sunlight and crosses) has this little tidbit from the Tea Party Shitshow:

"We feel Obamacare is an albatross around the neck of our country. It's going to sink us," Stefano said.

To quote Cap'n Mal Reynolds up there, "The way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck, 'til some idiot killed it."

That is all.

Saturday Blogwhoring Thread

Reader MH sent us this piece of awesome:

Post away.

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Chicago's Historic Irish Pubs Upcoming Book Events

Promised to keep you all posted, so here we are:

BOOK LAUNCH PARTY: March 11, 7 p.m. at the Irish American Heritage Center's Fifth Province Pub, 4626 North Knox Avenue, Chicago.

March 10, 7 p.m.: Signing at Shinnick's, 3758 S. Union, Chicago.

March 6, 2 p.m.: Signing at McNally's Irish Pub, 109 W. Main Street, St. Charles

March 6, 6:30 a.m.: Listen to us on The Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan, WGN Radio.

March 5, 2 p.m.: Signing at Barnes and Noble, 1141 W. Webster, Chicago.

More as we get them set up!

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Monday Night Gig

Hey, so on Monday nights I'll be posting over at FDL while Watertiger, who usually does Monday late nights over there, takes a well-deserved break. Come on over and say hi in the comments.

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Monday Let's Have a Big Fight Post

It's ONE SPACE after a period, dammit:

What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Some people admitted to slipping sometimes and using a single space—but when writing something formal, they were always careful to use two. Others explained they mostly used a single space but felt guilty for violating the two-space "rule." Still others said they used two spaces all the time, and they were thrilled to be so proper. When I pointed out that they were doing it wrong—that, in fact, the correct way to end a sentence is with a period followed by a single, proud, beautiful space—the table balked. "Who says two spaces is wrong?" they wanted to know.

Typographers, that's who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences.

I always understood this as a holdover from times when (ask your parents, kids) we all used typewriters, and it wasn't until college AP Style drilled it into me not to do this anymore that I started noticing how many people still did.

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The Iron Throne

HELL YEAH BABY THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.

(Is it April yet?)

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Okay, One Last Caprica Post

Because the Jacob recaps are all up, and as usual they're better than anything:

This is what Shakespeare has to say about it:

...[T]he fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other's watch.
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other's umbered face.

...But I think we can do better. How about Churchill?

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.

Who painted the sky? You did. Who brings the sun up over the horizon, every day? With a fresh breeze, just at the darkest time of all? It is only necessary that you see it. We spent every day of that flight praying for more light. The dawn is your responsibility, every single day: Your only duty is to wake up tomorrow.

This isn't going to make much sense, but I didn't know how much I needed to read that until I read it, you know?

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I AM GOD: Epic Caprica Finale Marathon Thread

Teenagers today. Aren't they frakking awesome?

Spoilers for the whole shebang, which I probably shouldn't have watched in one go as it kind of melted my brain, inside:

Trying to Not Judge

But yeah, basically:

Making a Buffy movie without Joss Whedon and calling it a "reboot" is up there in Worst Ideas In History along with "What does this button do?" and "YOU GUYS THE GREEKS GAVE US A PRESENT :D :D :D".

In other geeky news, I've started watching Dollhouse on Netflix and boy is it awesome.

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First Draft Warmth Project: We're From The Internet. We're Here to Help.

Or something along those lines is what I told the Evergreen Park folks this morning when I dropped off 30-plus coats, heavy sweaters, fleecy things, warm fuzzies and all, at the Evergreen Park Community Center, along with a check for $360 for the village food pantry. According to the folks doing intake, that'll be enough to buy food worth 16 times that. Their coat drive ended well, too, despite its rocky beginnings: 300-plus coats. The newspaper story that inspired us inspired a lot of other people to dig through their closets and find room to make others warm.

 
Coats. LOTS of coats. There were coats in the back seat, too. My house looked like the Burlington Coat Factory crossed with that Hoarders show. It was awesome.

One of the things I really admire about all of you is that faced with the opportunity to despair, you pick up and work. You find something to do. You hammer away on your part of the world and make it into a new shape. Don't ever think that's nothing. You gave a lot of people a warm holiday today. Thank you all.

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Game of Thrones: MOAR Nerd Joy

My fabulous friend Jennifer (whose awesome book you should all check out) alerted me to this last night. Hummina.

Catelyn and Dany look nothing like I thought they would, but that's just because in my head Dany was played by some incredibly hot baby Keira Knightley had in her King Arthur days (I love that movie so SHUT UP) with like Anne Hathaway or something, and I thought maybe Catelyn was younger in the beginning of the series, but holy shit, Jamie Lannister. Also the outfit.

There are, however, spoilers in the captions, so be careful if you care about that sort of thing.

I think my recaps for this show are just gonna be "UMF" and "SQUEE" and "HOLY GOD YOU GUYS."

FLAIL.

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I Will Not Be Alone Again: Caprica Thread

Jacob, from a recap I read once a week, no kidding:

... Guy gets on a train with a box, airholes in the side. The man he sits down next to asks him about it, and he admits that he's got a mongoose in there. Dude B is like, "Not something normal, like a bunny or a cat?" No, there's more to the story. "It's because of my older brother. He's a drunk, among other things, and at this point he's just completely out of his tree. He sees serpents, everywhere. Everywhere he looks, he's seeing these snakes and they make him terrified." And Dude B is like, "So they're imaginary?" Yeah. "So then why the mongoose?" And the first guy smiles and looks very meaningfully at the box, which is empty. "Imaginary mongoose."

WWTFUS: it's wonderful to be here, it's certainly a thrill

This is going to be an interactive WWTFUS:

Tell us - or let us actually listen to/see - the best LIVE concert/show you ever saw, or WISHED you saw. Tell us what made it great for you, why you still remember it, or why you'd love to have been there when. If you can find them, leave links to videos and I'll use them in future WWTFUS, okay? 

I wasn't at the Neko gig below but damn, from the sound of it, what a fantastic show. A sweltering hot February night in Melbourne, the iconic Prince of Wales pub packed to the gills with drunken Aussies jostling each other, slopping beer and belting out declarations of ardor and/or song requests. I once heard Case describe how awkward and scary the transition that came with success was, when the band started getting booked into actual seated venues where people sat and listened quietly, politely. Contrast with this scene below: sure, it's loud, the air quality problably sucks, the sound's all muzzy, but this was the first of four encores. That's what happens when the crowd and the muscians are both having a great time.

Oh, and bicycle messenger porn banter, FTW of course

 

Pray That I Won't Do a Better Job of It: Caprica Thread

Jacob:

Everybody's out of ideas, and in the little quiet Keon finally realizes that all these people are fucking crazy and it's embarrassing. Because surprise, cults and terrorists are not the stable dependable grownups you may have been led to believe. But also because: If the whole point of joining the OTG is because the adults can't be trusted, then why can't the STO adults be trusted? You want a cult within the cult, a cult that says, "Our grownups in this cult are corrupt and crazy and megalomaniacs" the same way the cult says about regular grownups. You want a revolution that doesn't eventually turn to the right, and nobody in human history has ever been brilliant enough to invent that.

Or, as I called it once upon a time, college.

Okay, that's reductive and mean, the kind of thing I smack on people for saying. Being enrolled in a liberal arts program doesn't make you self-indulgent any more than being in a garage makes you a car. This is actually a thing about movements generally, but college is where I first encountered them, college and Ken Loach movies which are pretty much all about this very thing.

It is always easier to fix the thing in front of you than the thing that is really wrong. It is always easier to argue about the color of the ribbons on the End Fascism brochure than it is to end fascism, and because we're human beings and we get tired, we end up fighting about the fucking ribbons. Because we know how to fight about the ribbons and win. We even know how to fight about the ribbons and lose and go on living. In a fight about the ribbons we know what winning and losing looks like, and if we don't mind being called names that fight costs us very little. What we don't know how to do is fight to end fascism because, World War II notwithstanding, fascists still exist and it's so very, very tiring to get nowhere after all these years of work.

Plus, plenty of everybody's fellow revolutionaries are assholes. There are people who believe everything I believe about everything, who I wouldn't swerve to avoid if they stepped in front of my car. And you say to yourself as hard and as often as you can that you can separate out if somebody's an irredeemable fuckhead and if somebody's good at his job and useful to the cause, but come on, you've never been in a meeting with somebody crucial and thought to yourself, it's a pity ammunition is so expensive because I could just, right now? You're really gonna tell me that's never happened to you even once?

Meanwhile somebody's over in the corner yelling that if we're all done being teenage girls, the earth is caving in so can we please get back to work? Everybody hates that guy, because he shames them with his purity of focus, and pretty soon you end up in this Clarice-Barnabas place where purging the insufficiently devout is what passes for progress. Usually the guy pointing out that this kind of infighting is a waste of time is the first to die.

Jacob's about full up of this show but to me it's just getting interesting.

Every TV Set That Has Them Lit: Caprica Thread

Jacob, as usual putting his finger on something that I could only vaguely smell in last week's premiere: 

So what Clarice is really saying is, the people of the Twelve Worlds have gone so far into Ravenclaw and Slytherin that Griffyndor isn't even a possibility anymore. And letting faith speak for itself isn't working, because sex and drugs -- as she well knows -- are way more awesome than self-denial. So how do you sell self-denial to people who can have everything in the real world, and double that in the Matrix? By building a disgusting highway interchange that substitutes Slytherin and Ravenclaw for Griffyndor, because they're too stupid to know the difference. They'll drink the sand. And if you scare them bad enough, the downsides of that -- the withering and eventual dropping-off of your leperous vestigial soul -- won't even matter anymore.

It's the most cynical, nasty, wrong-headed thing imaginable. It's also precisely the way we, as a country and a world, do tend to talk of religion: "I offer you a religion that removes the need for faith. A religion of certainty." That's the most hateful possible way to describe both sides of this fake, dumb IRL debate. It's also how Dawkins got rich, because that's what it looks like to a Ravenclaw: Like sheep, praying to Santa Claus. She's not wrong -- they're not wrong -- but she's right on such an adverse, horrific vector that I'd rather see the apocalypse come about. (Luckily...)

Which is sort of something my doctor told me a few weeks ago, during one of our periodic Is This Normal or Is This The Crazy conversations. Some things just suck, hard, and they'll suck until they don't. Death. Disappointment. Rejection. Breakups. Endings in general. They just suck, and you can't force them to not suck, and you can't make a secret reward where there isn't one for having gone through it, and you can't make the suck Virtuous and you can't make it Necessary and you sure as hell can't make it shorter.

It is exactly what it is. No matter how much you drink or work or run or think, it still sucks. You just have to keep walking upright. It sucks. It hurts. Sometimes you want to lie down and kick your feet and flail your fists like a two-year-old. Guess what? So does everybody else. Everybody else feels like this, at least a certain portion of the time. That's not much of a comfort, but it isn't The Crazy talking. The reason I say all the time that we get back up is seriously, tell me what else there is to do? What other choices do we have? This show is about what if we had other choices, and I think it's pretty clear how horribly wrong it's going to end up being.

Survival: Caprica Thread

Jacob:

After the first death, Amanda spent years screaming, building her bridge back to the world. It took nearly three years to complete. To rise up from the water again. These were the keystones: Her daughter, her home, her husband, their life, the Gods, her career. The righteous joy of stability and the place where medicine and art intersect. And then her daughter died, and her home went cold, and their life burned down, and the Gods abandoned her, and she gave up her career.

Survival is punishment, for leaving things unsaid. To live is to bear that punishment.

Game of Thrones: New. Hotness.

The threads for this are going to be epic.

Also even if you're not into this, Sean Bean is being hot in the videos, in leather, so go look.

A.

Not the only one

Yeah, yeah, posting out of turn and all but it's Friday, plus Athenae said I could do some extra RT5-related posting. Pretty sure she meant during, rather than after, the event but hey, in New Orleans, the party never really ends.

Credit/blame to racymind for the song. It was on her ipod, we did pass by Hammond, it became part of the trip soundtrack. But it does work here, too, because it's a song — a story really — about families, mostly about choice, about what and who you choose to stand for and with. About how sometimes what might seem a choice to someone else is, to you, an imperative. Crystalline, unavoidable despite the odds of success or failure. 

It works because this is actually a post about Rising Tide 5, at least a highly subjective take thereon, and all those things are part of what RT is about.  A community of like-minded citizen journalists choosing to continue to stand together, not because they can't stop looking backwards, or because they can't get over something that happened five years ago, but rather because they see the truth. In fact, they cannot help but do so: a lot of shit that started five years ago is still happening, is happening again, over and over, and more continues to start new every day.  Mac McClelland pretty much nailed it in her keynote. If you STILL haven't seen the video, just go, do it now.  

It was an awfully damn inspiring event to take part in. I'll be there next year for sure. Don't have a choice not to. 

The Fourth of July in my mind

Yeah, this one's a bit early but I only get the keys on Wednesdays.

The tiny little place where I live really goes all out on Fourth of July (and also on Halloween, but that's a different post). Everything shuts down and everyone goes down to the town square or as close as they can get to it. That is, everyone who isn't in the parade. It's a toss up whether there's more people marching or watching from the sidelines but the important thing is, everyone goes: the old people, the high school Shakespeare troupe, hippies young and old, ranchers and artists, yuppies and tourists, everyone shows up.

The video below is from a few years ago when I marched with my naturalist group — I was in the kazoo corps. We were behind a float carrying Mother Nature and a bunch of other folks sitting on bales of hay. Immediately after the parade, a huge rainstorm hit, so everyone in town was caught in it at the same time, which was almost as much fun as the parade. It was a good time and I get a catch in my throat watching this because there's something so uncomplicated about it, even though it's not without irony, or even absurdity.

It's not everyone's storybook ideal, but it's damn close to what I used to think Fourth of July should be. Even though it's completely impossible to forget a great many things that have torn that ideal all to hell for me, I can't help reflexively pledging allegiance to the whole crazy, raggedy, imperfect mess.

More kazoo awesomeness here.

HBO's Game of Thrones: OMG OMG OMG YOU GUYS

I saw this last night and spent about 20 minutes rewinding and watching and rewinding and watching.

I devoured all 9 million pages of the books in like a two-week period when Mr. A, who is like my pop-culture pimp, dragged them along on a trip and I ran out of stuff of my own to read. We will be having regular threads about this when it starts, oh yes, we will. Jane Espenson? Sean Bean? Leather and swords and killination and sexiness? How did I so please you, Ceiling Cat? 

A.

MOAR

For the next couple weeks, in addition to my mediocre performances here, I will be fucking up on a regular basis over at Tbogg's lair. Feel free to join the ongoing party thereabouts and tell me how I'm doing it wrong.

A.

Deep Smart Phone Thought

I have an iPhone and I really like it. I even know why they call it a smart phone, it does cool things and has swell apps but this smartness (izzat a word?) thing doesn't translate to its users. I saw a woman crossing Canal Street this morning so engrossed in her smart phone that she didn't notice the bus bearing down on her until the driver honked. I hate to use a cliche but she got that deer in the headlights look and dropped her phone, which was obviously smarter than her. Smash.

A brief apology for my fleeting appearances at First Draft this week. I am slammed at work and I've been obsessing out over Treme at Back Of Town. The show being set 3 months post-K has punched a lot of my buttons and engaged my interest. Speaking of which, I keep finding swell versions of Careless Love to post. Here's another one:

A Useful Guide

To the Internet.

Maybe we can send it to Kathleen Parker.

A.