reileen: (Default)
Y'know, it can be really hard to tag things appropriately. I'm finding this problem with both LJ and with trying to bookmark stuff on my Delicious account again. How specific should I get? Should I be general, or should I name as many specific details as possible? Do I tag by subject matter? Sub-subject matter? Source website? Do I tag with some witty phrase of my thoughts on the matter (i.e., "stupid things")? Should I do all of 'em? Would that be overkill? Am I overthinking this? (Probably.)

I think there's two generally different approaches to tagging that aren't necessarily exclusive to each other. One is to help yourself find things; one is to help other people find things. The difference is that with the former, you can tag things in a slightly obscurish manner, or in a haphazard manner, and most of the time (when you remember) you know why you tagged it the way you tagged it. When trying to tag things to help other people find those things, though, you have to be a little more objective/factual/whatever about it, and probably stick to the basics. Here on LJ, I waver between the first approach to tagging and the second approach. My Delicious account is private, though, so there's not too much of an issue there.

Still, one area where I'm personally running into tagging issues is when I'm trying to tag things about various kinds of Serious Business, i.e. politics, economics, racism, anti-oppression/anti-prejudice in general. I'll probably be able to work out some sort of personal system as I continue wading through these things and making sense of them, but at the moment it's pretty overwhelming. (I am also going cross-eyed at the thought of trying to tag all of my imported Firefox bookmarks, some of which were left untagged from the last time I substantially used Delicious about a year or so ago. Eep.)

***

"Moe: The Cult of the Child" is an evenhanded analysis of the moe phenomenon in otaku culture, where there is a lot of focus on the cutesy antics of young, adolescent girls who sometimes look like they've got girls' heads pasted onto women's bodies. The author discusses the appeal of the genre and what that appeal means for society as a whole.

This is an informative but depressing interview about the crap-covered state of the U.S. insurance industry by Bill Moyers with Wendell Potter, the former Head of Public Relations of Cigna, one of America's largest health insurers.

An A-to-Z Smorgasbord of Overused Graphic Concepts and Resources.

[livejournal.com profile] cupcake_goth, a.k.a. Jillian Venters, a.k.a. the Lady of the Manners, recently posted about plans for a book-promoting picnic at a large graveyard. She was apparently berated by a fan who thought she was disrespecting the dead in doing so. However, in the comments to the entry, one learns that the big public/non-churchyard cemeteries and graveyards were, to some extent, intended as large public parks, to be freely enjoyed by anyone who wanted to hang out there for whatever reason (whether it was just to sit down and read or to take a walk or even to have weddings). There's an interesting discussion about the intersection of life and death with regards to that particular context. Myself, I remember visiting this one pretty large cemetery up on the North Side (I think it was off the Addison Red Line stop?) back in my freshman year of college, and being both haunted and fascinated by the history in it. I've always wanted to go back and wander around some more, especially in nicer weather (since when I went it was cold and rainy; wouldn't mind the rain so much if it hadn't also been chilly).

Two instances of HELL FUCKING YES for the Reileen! First off, Dead Fantasy III has gone live, focusing on a one-on-one fight between Tifa from FF7 and Hitomi from DoA. I cannot tell you how much I love the Dead Fantasy series for its absolutely ri-cock-ulous Physics Does Not Work That Way fight scenes. It's absurdly beautiful and beautifully absurd. And as impossibly beautiful as all the women are, I'm glad that the creator seems to be focusing more on the amount of ass they can kick instead of the amount of ass they've got exposed. I can't wait for the next few installments, particularly in light of the ending scene for DF3.

Secondly, remember or not how I was blabbering about Jeeja Yanin starring in a new film? Raging Phoenix's trailer has also hopped onto the webz. It's short and with no indication of the plot, but the bits we see of the action scenes seem promising.

AvatarFail continues with four headshots of the four main characters. Leaving aside the obvious racial problems, what the fuck is up with Zuko's "scar"? It looks like the makeup artist smeared clay on the side of his face and then called it a day. And I know that this is only one headshot, but Aang just looks so RAWR and sulky and I'm like WHERE DID MY SEAL-SLEDDING AVATAR GO NOOOOO. As a bit of an antidote to this clusterfuck, here's a survey in three parts about the many ways that A:TLA subverts the status quo (and some of the ways that it doesn't!).

Cool nature thing of the day: watermelon snow, which is snow that is not only pink but also, indeed, smells faintly of watermelons! Look but don't taste.

While soldiering through the archives of The Straight Dope (I actually got through all 57 pages! Though I didn't read all the columns, obviously), I found that they had addressed how the word "gay" came to mean "homosexual". I'm particularly fascinated by the fact that "to gay it" once meant "to copulate", and am now imagining the word "gay" in place of another certain word that also means "to copulate." For example: "Well, gay you to hell and back!", or "GAY THIS GAYING SHIT!" or "That's gaying awesome." Certainly "mothergayer" would have interesting implications. In a situation where things have just gone to shit, I think the mood would be lightened considerably if someone uttered "We're totally gayed." (This totally puts Jade Curtiss' "A Definition of the Word 'Fuck'" in an entirely new light. WHY DON'T YOU PLAY HIDE AND GO GAY YOURSELF???)

Nine reasons the economy is not getting better.

From Lifehacker (that name is epic), how to bake cookies on your dashboard harnessing the heat accumulated inside your car on a steamy summer day. WIN.

Finally, this entry is one that I swear everyone needs to be smacked with at least once in their life: [livejournal.com profile] jimhines discusses why it's even more important to dissect pop culture for problematic themes and attitudes than it is to do the same for more "literary" works. The very accessibility of pop culture is exactly why problems with the culture need to be examined and brought out into the open. It sends a message to people, hey, look, these problems haven't gone away. They're not hiding under the dustbunnies of history and obfuscated academia; they're in the center of the room, flailing their hands and dancing. (IN UR ROOM, FLAILING THEIR HANDZ)

***

Also watched Police Story 4: First Strike recently. This is one of Jackie Chan's American/English films. Long story short, Chan plays an HK police officer who gets whored out by his superior to the CIA in order to track down a suitcase nuke. His job takes him first to Ukraine, then all the way down under to Australia. The version of the movie I was watching was all English-dubbed, but apparently in the original cut, there were instances where some of the characters were speaking either Cantonese, Ukrainian, Russian, etc. Anyway, plot is kind of silly, the fight scenes were slightly disappointing until the end, where not only did you have Jackie fighting for a couple of minutes while on stilts, but then you also had underwater kung-fu in a tank with a man-eating shark. I shit you not. I also liked this scene, set inside what looks like a large warehouse - among other things, Jackie performs some seriously amazing stunts with what looks like a 12-foot-tall ladder or thereabouts.

*looks back over this entry* ...RAWR, how am I going to tag this thing?

-Reileen
or am I just wasting time?
reileen: (gaming - Bomberman)

Visit [livejournal.com profile] foc_u for more details.


In light of the most recent instance of RaceFail in fandom (now called MammothFail to distinguish it from RaceFail '09, which happened earlier this year), I thought I should, at least, step up and say that, o hai, i r fan of color.

However...I am also a Clueless Fan of Color.

I have lived a life in which my numerous other privileges - class and education being the most obvious ones, but there are probably others that I'm not aware of - have allowed me to live a fairly colorblind existence up until recently. It wasn't that I never thought of myself as not being Filipino-American; it's that I never, never experienced something that made me attach negative connotations to that identity, and in fact I view it primarily as a badge of pride, as a mark of ~*~specialness~*~ (sometimes to the point of exoticness, I fear). There's a lot of layers of colored sand that's being shifted around here in my experience of racial identity as a second-gen Filipino-American, but I don't have the words or energy (...or courage) to put them out there for others to read just yet. But in short, I have never consciously experienced anything (yet) that made me hate being different. Being Other.

But I know that many, many other fen of color don't have that same privilege. So this short entry, this posting of a shiny banner and a link to a helpful community, is for those fen who are being silenced, who are being made to fade into the background, who are being ignored.

***

In more mundane news, I have been sick since Friday and it doesn't look like things are getting better. Mommykins wants me to stay home tomorrow if my fever gets any worse (it was hovering around 100*F for the past few days, then I took it today and I was at, like 101.4*F or something).

-Reileen
what would you go wild for?
reileen: (Default)
Common mistakes made in fiction about guns.

At Fandom Wank, we have an epic wank revolving around an AU Twilight fic in which Edward and Bella are both human and in which the word "orgasm" was massacred by the search-and-replace function, being instead substituted by the word "unicorn". This has to be one of the funniest things I've seen out of Twilight fandom so far! "CHAAAAARLIE! CHAAAARLIE! WE'RE HAVING SEX, CHARLIIIEEEEE!" The mental image of which is made worse considering that Bella's dad is named "Charlie". Man, I love wanks involving BNFs!

Remember this entry, where I asked whether cloaking technology would ever go mainstream? Well, here's my answer - apparently cloaking material can be used to kill static on cell phones and improve the overall quality of cell phone reception. I'm so down with that! Now I want to see invisibility bras and undies, to be used by strippers and poledancers to completely boggle everyone's minds as their clients wonder where their happy parts went.

The Smart Bitches ask their readers whether the Insta-Sex trope in fiction turns them off from a story. I'm going to echo a bunch of the comments over there and say that Insta-Sex (in which two romantic leads meet each other for the first time and then OMG HAVE TEH HAWT SEXXORZ) can be good or bad, depending on the situation. I judge it within the context of the story: if the rest of the story is well-written, I'll forgive the Insta-Sex. Also, is there any significance to the Insta-Sex, besides showing that the romantic leads are Totally Made For Each Other? If there is, that bumps it up a notch in my book.

What bothers me far more is Insta-Love. I'm not saying that Insta-Love doesn't happen in real life, but I'm personally far too cynical to give the trope much credit in my mind, especially if the relationship that spins out of the Insta-Love thing doesn't explore both the good sides and the bad sides of the relationship, or the wonder (...or possibly horror) of discovering something new about this person that you instantly fell in love with.

Check out this Obama action figure from Japan. It's awesome enough that he's got, like, interchangeable hands and all these awesome accesories like a stool, a microphone, and an American flag. But then! You get to the bottom of this web page and you see Obama doing his best James Bond impersonation, wielding dual katanas, napping under a kotatsu...and fighting Darth Vader

Also, apparently all of his clothes are removable, according to [livejournal.com profile] vyctori (who is the one who sent me this thing of beauty, thanks!).

[livejournal.com profile] vyctori: ...You know, all of Obama's clothes come off, apparently.
[livejournal.com profile] reileen: ...THIS CAN ONLY END IN TEARS.
[livejournal.com profile] reileen: OF LAUGHTER.
[livejournal.com profile] vyctori: Imagine what someone good at sewing could do!
[livejournal.com profile] reileen: And everyone knows that the best cosplay comes from Japan!
[livejournal.com profile] reileen: *is now imagining Obama in Jade's uniform and is dying of roffles*
[livejournal.com profile] vyctori: asldjhsaljdahjl!!
[livejournal.com profile] reileen: Actually, fuck that - OBAMA IS THE NEXT DOCTOR.
[livejournal.com profile] vyctori: FUCK YEAH.
[livejournal.com profile] reileen: THAT WOULD MEAN HE COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND FIX ALL OF OUR MISTAKES!
[livejournal.com profile] vyctori: SWEET
[livejournal.com profile] reileen: AND, LIKE, USE A SONIC SCREWDRIVER AND STUFF.
[livejournal.com profile] vyctori: THAT WOULD BE INSANE.
[livejournal.com profile] vyctori: BRITAIN GETS THE MASTER AS A PRIME MINISTER AND YOU GUYS GET THE DOCTOR.
[livejournal.com profile] reileen: XD!

ilu Vyc.

Here's a post about the idea of creating a universal attribution symbol, to be represented for the moment as (i). I love the idea, but have heard some concerns that the "i" looks too much like a Roman numeral to some people, and thus they expect to see (ii), (iii), and so forth. Still, this is something worth thinking about. (Thanks, Eridanus!)

A list of America's most mysterious places. WE'RE ROADTRIPPING, BABY!

John Scalzi features an article from the NYT on "easily misinterpreted place names in the UK." Gee, with names like "Crotch Crescent", "Titty Ho", and "Spanker Lane", I can't possibly see what the problem is, no, sir!

What wishful thinking - If Movie Posters Were Honest.

***

Finished my ART200 paper, but that wasn't so hard to do in the first place - it's the HON301 paper that'll kill me. Today, I'll probably quickly read through some assigned ART200 articles before watching Gattaca, reading one article for the group presentation on Tuesday, and taking preliminary notes for my HON301 paper.

Also, neither my A&D advisor nor the coordinator for the Japan CDM trip has gotten back to me, so it's time for me to bug the backups!

-Reileen
and I pick myself up like a champion

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Reileen van Kaile

April 2010

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