where his civilizations, including our own

I was about to post this on Twitter, but, uh...

Social media has lowered the bar for doing good

This has been going on a lot longer than Twitter and Facebook have existed. Remember when colorbars were sincere and not ironic? Thems were the days. I actually have always felt the same way about awareness ribbons (even though I used to wear one, it was for breast cancer... guess I was a hypocrite!) and bumper stickers and so on. It makes perfect sense that this stuff has migrated to social networking, which for many people is largely about looking good in front of their friends.

I don't think it's as consciously cynical as that makes it sound. I doubt anybody is thinking "Ha ha, by turning my icon green I'll make my political views apparent to my friends, thus earning their approval!" But it can come off that way, and it doesn't surprise me at all that most people stop at the symbolic part and don't do anything concrete.

I wish we had more of the "donate $10 to Haiti with a text" memes and less of the merely symbolic ones, is all I mean by this.

Now Twitter is loading, but I can't post or log in to Twitterfox. I cry.

There was a little wank on Twitter the other day, when someone made an inflammatory remark about Chaz Bono @BrentSpiner, who RT'd it to his 500,000 followers, with predictable results. (FWIW, I hardly think Brent was in the wrong -- she tweeted to him first, he often RT's, she should not have been surprised.)

Anyway, the original remark was that she thought Bono's gender transition was a "tragedy [...] for the God that made her" (sic). It is extremely troubling to me when people invoke God in such ways, but it is pretty difficult to successfully debate religious beliefs. However, there was something else she said later that can be refuted: "a closet issue is that many are disappointed by it [transitioning]".

This comment sounds relatively mild on the face of it, albeit extremely weasely (how many is "many", and what does "disappointed" mean, and in what way is the issue in the "closet" -- what a heftily ironic choice of word!). But at the heart of it I see a very alarming and insidious thought process.

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On Twitter femmequixotic lamented the lack of Viktor Krum slash, to which I responded that I had written Viktor/Cedric... I had actually forgotten why I wrote it, but it was for Smutmas 2005. And it was too long for Pornish, so probably some missed it the first time for that reason. I feel a bit bad looking back at the comments on the original anon posting; a lot of people left feedback and I really never answered. I probably meant to. If you left a comment back then, thank you! Really!

The little death by me. NC-17, Viktor/Cedric.

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Speaking of fic from way back, I saw this recced on crack_broom just the other day and couldn't believe I'd never read it. Besides just being amazingly good, it really brought me back to the time it was written. It was such a rich time in the fandom.

Fair Weather Friend by rexluscus. NC-17, Snape/Karkaroff.

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This one is only a year old! Really skilled and charming art. Yay unpretty slash!

The Jealous One by julian_black. NC-17 ART, NOT WORKSAFE, Snape/Filch.

I survived Mother's Day at work. I personally took down hundreds of unsold cards from the wall (this is a normal amount, we don't worry about not selling out because we get credit for what we don't sell), inventoried them by writing numbers down on a piece of paper, and put up hundreds of Father's Day cards in their place. Like, with my hands.

Father's Day is the last actual card holiday before I leave this job. Yay. I like my job, but I hope the next one USES A COMPUTER FOR INVENTORY. Jesus.


Also, I have gotten some people friending me on Dreamwidth and Twitter whose names I don't recognize. If I can't tell who you are, I probably won't add you back, so just tell me or something.

I may have figured out what I'm going to use Dreamwidth for, but more on that later.

After getting out of work, I have approximately two hours to interact with my girlfriend before she goes to bed. And my work hours are about to be extended. This utterly fails. /counting down days

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At the supermarket, the guy behind me was loudly complaining to his friend that they should open another checkout and wasn't it horrible that they had to wait, and he would probably never come back. The line was like three people long. The checkout guy was obviously annoyed, but caved to the passive-aggressive douchebaggery and called for another checker.

I looked back at him and hissed "Asshole", and was immediately awash with fear that I was about to have my ass kicked (oh the perils of bein' a dude!), but Passive-Agressive Douchebag merely gave a vapid smirk.

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So if a fandom develops around the show Kings, will the special hilarity of using the word "canon" in its usual fandom sense be recognized?

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Upon further investigation, I have discovered that Twitter is kind of like those RPGs that used to exist (maybe still do?) where people portray all kinds of different celebrities, so you get like Jon Stewart randomly interacting with Patrick Stewart and John Kerry and Daniel Radcliffe and whoever else you can imagine, and it's all very amusing. Except Twitter is real.

So I got this thing. Just by clicking around to different people's lists, it seems apparent that lots of people I know are on it. If you too are on it and want to maybe hear boring updates from me in a shorter format, you can... what's the verb for start following someone on twitter? Follow? that. me.