Holy Serious Business, Batman!

Went to the video store the other day unsupervised. Usually, see, I go with a parent or possibly a parent and some number of siblings. The result is that I see a bunch of things I'd like to rent and go away with something completely different -- but not this time. This time, I came away with Hexed. I thought "boy, I will never be able to justify this. Claudia Christian as a sex-crazed killer + IMDB tag 'Female nudity' as my reasons for renting?" I'm not sorry, though, because it turned out to be really funny. Even distracted me from my depression over my presidential candidate dropping out of the race for a little while. I recommend, if only because Claudia Christian is hysterically funny. (The nudity's a little irritating, because it's obviously enough a body double that it actually broke my suspension of disbelief for a little bit, but even so.)

Hence this icon. Whee.

Wanted to crosspost something from my much-more-active InsaneJournal. (Same bat name, same batshit posts. Only more SRS.)

***

I think I can add to the list of people who've taken me for a pre-adolescent boy "the wife of a presidential candidate." What happened was I got an email sometime Sunday saying "oh, hey, Elizabeth Kucinich'll be in your town tomorrow at this bookstore" and so my dad and I hurriedly decided to go. Walked in, there wasn't a sign anything was happening. Browsed. They had a Lloyd Alexander book I'd never seen before, but I didn't get it. Started noticing more Kucinich pins, some people with yard signs. Yes, yard signs.

Door opens, flood of people. Reporter asking questions for local TV. Dad and I wandered closer, got our first real-life glimpse of her. Me being the teenager that I am, the first thing I thought was "damn, she's gorgeous." She spoke well -- seemed perfectly happy preaching to a crowd of thirty or forty people who mostly seemed to already be firm supporters, actually answered people's questions, and covered her points efficiently and intelligently. I thought it was slightly strange that the loudest applause was in response to her offhand mention of getting rid of No Child Left Behind (which is where she took me for a younger, probably-male person when she looked at me, laughed and observed, "You like that. Tired of the tests, eh?") which nobody's bothering to campaign on. Go figure.

Her most important point, in my opinion, was when she stressed that we shouldn't worry about winning the primary. That's not the point, for them, she said. She said that the primary is an opinion poll measured in votes, saying where the party stands. These're all people on the same side, it's not like the presidential itself, it's not a "we gotta win or they will" thing. She said in her view, the only way to waste a vote is to vote for someone who doesn't stand for you. Said if you don't vote for what you want, you can't complain later when you don't get it.

Today I had to go in and submit my passport application, and it wasn't until we'd left that they discovered that the photos I'd submitted with Just Wouldn't Do, so I had to go back in. Got photographed; forgot to take off my Kucinich For President pin, may not be allowed to return to the US once I leave it. Then I went by the video store. The owner is a very friendly, helpful kind of guy, so after browsing helplessly for a bit (so much I want to see, so little time, so little chance it'll be suited for my brothers) I asked him what shows would appeal to children who liked Star Trek and Babylon 5. I don't think children's movies are really my brothers' thing. Came home with the first DVD of Stargate SG-1 (his recommendation) and Hexed for myself. Hexed is, apparently, an erotic thriller parody, but I'm more interested in the fact that Claudia Christian is a sex-crazed serial killer in it and it's tagged "Female nudity" on IMDB. And it looks funny.

And I've been wanting to post this picture of myself to every possible website recently, because I've gotten good reactions.

( Shirt not included! Seriously, no shirt! )

Bisexual women exist! It's all scientific and shit! (If reading aloud, please note pronunciation: SKY-un-TIFF-ick.)

Now what the hell am I going to do with this icon?

Spent about half an hour earlier arguing with my mum and sister, who say that Susan Ivanova is actually a gay man. Strange bit? I lost.

We're still working out what the deal with Talia Winters is, but more or less everyone else on the show has been revealed to be a gay man during the course of the argument. Talia, I think, may be a transwoman, but where in the transition process she is and how this relates to Ivanova's gay maleness is unclear.

(And you probably don't want to hear the blasphemous part of the conversation.)

I was talking with my sister about Heroes and she had a question regarding Claire's ability:

( Which spoils the end of season two, rather )

Thoughts? Speculation? Are waffles involved?

Dear members of IJ's pornandkittens: I can't do it all! I set up the asylum, I made two posts -- either you need to start posting or commenting or the place will be useless.

*grumble, grumble, final season dammit need funny!*

P. S. school sucks.

Okay, I finally watched the last episode of Heroes today.

( Potential for spoileriness )

So I've been thinking about Babylon 5, and how humans generally can be divided into three groups in that universe: Anglophones (mostly American,) Russians, and... Japanese.

Seriously, go through all the Asian characters on the show. There's the mention of someone with a Korean surname, the mention of someone with an Indian surname, a few Asians with European surnames, and a lot of Japanese names. Now, Japan's a little island. And right next door to that little island is the biggest country in the world: China. And yet both Babylon 5 ans Star Trek, both of which start from the assumption that the human race is united and all working together -- Trek has had a good few African characters who are supposed to actually be from Africa -- are more likely to show Japanese characters than Chinese ones, when they show Asians at all (and the European majority is a sticky issue for American TV where, as near as I can tell, the idea of white men not outnumbering everyone else is too terrifying to contemplate.)

So I want to know: anyone know any good sci-fi books, TV shows, or films where China's represented decently? Or, better still, even one book where the whole world being united in space actually means that the whole world is represented in the cast? Nah, I don't expect you to come up with anything for that. I'm just looking for true diversity and not coming up with much.

...ex-gays. Ugh.

(Though the song "Ted Haggard Is Completely Heterosexual" is rather funny. YouTube it, you'll see.)

Woman leaves lipstick kiss on all-white painting. Highlights include: comparison of this egregious act of vandalism to nothing less than assault and/or rape; arguments in the comments (both in the Scotsman article I linked and on the San Francisco Chronicle; hoping to find more) about the artistic merit of an all-white painting, whether it was all white, and whether (depending on the artistic merit of the painting) what the woman did was worthy of the amount she's having to pay.

I think Babylon 5 may be ( having an effect on me... )

First Gay Asteroid.

Is it just me, or do a lot of bits of JF seem to have gotten messed up? I found out today I'd been logged out -- okay, saw the system post, not totally a surprise -- and when I logged in, I encountered a page with a bunch of links that were just URLs (no pretty text.) I also seem to have fewer icon spaces suddenly. And this is just what I've noticed.

(And why have I apparently got only three icon slots, but four options show up for posting and all ten are listed for commenting? Odd, that.)

Hey, how many Babylon 5 characters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

( I don't know, how many Babylon 5 characters does it take to screw in a light bulb? )

Star Trek New Voyages "World Enough And Time" is finally up for download... and the torrent's going nowhere because nobody's downloading it. WANT! It's got George Takei in! *flails*

InsaneJournal's down so they'll be spared my squeeing, but my mother -- may her praise be always sung -- bought the entirety of Babylon 5 on DVD. So we can abandon our current venture into Star Trek: Enterprise (which, so far, sucks enormously -- dear God, the intro music! The Vulcan who uses contractions all the time!) and watch something we're likely to enjoy instead.

This post on GJ has everything, I swear:

-Godwin's from the start.
-Based loosely on the whole strikethrough debacle.
-Breastfeeders with "it's natural and healthy and not sexual" vs. people who disagree with the nonsexual bit, with childfree derogatory slang for children popping up. Side of legality wrangling.
-Swastika: sacred symbol needing reclamation or forever owned by Nazis?
-Side of homophobic slang and argument about whether it is offensive.
-OP ends debate by freezing thread, sparking censorship debate which is quashed by further thread-freezing.

Then there's a mod post.

I hate this for not being funny enough or big enough for a wank comm.

(Sad thing is, since my mum has counseled women who were having difficulty breastfeeding their babies for as long as I can remember and since I was raised to view it as a good thing, I'd be on the OP's side if she weren't such an obvious wank factory.)

I was reading the comments on this post and I realized I was having distinct "lurk more, n00b!" reactions to... certain posters.  This is probably an indicator that I am becoming Absorbed into The Body Hive Vagina (that sounds really dirty,) and this is pleasing to me.  Now if I can just eliminate the fear of true oldbies and learn how to be funny, I might be able to become a proper Wanka someday.

Edit: I hate WYSIWYGs.

...is going to be on Heroes.  Repeatedly.  There's probably some way this could be made more awesome, but I can't think of one.

As an aside, I understand that the new Trek movie's supposed to have an Uhura who's "tom-boyish" -- what Trek were they watching?  I mean, yeah, we're used to the stereotype of strong women being masculine, but Nichelle Nichols?  Nuh-uh.  Very nuh-uh.

Because, er, I've got an hour to find this out:

My mum's decided that since the Babylon 5 movies are standalones, we can watch them without seeing the rest of the show and not have anything serious spoiled.  I am in agonies, B5 watchers -- is this true?  I want to watch in order!

I really must make myself an Ivanova icon.  I just have to decide whether I want a humorous quote or just something like "THIS IS A PICTURE OF A REALLY HOT PERSON WITH WRITING ON" on it....