highlyeccentric | Entries tagged with link

you guys,

redsnake05 has started posting scans from fashion magazines, amply improved by her telling 100% true and reliable stories about the people pictured therein. Thus far, she has explained the fashion choices of A distractingly sexy railway engineer and two angsty lesbian sirens.

Draco grabbed Pansy's arm and pulled her behind the nearest tapestry. 'We've reached peak flag,' he said. 'It's on!'

It was the matter of moments to explain the situation to Crabbe. Most of them belonged to Malfoy: 'I feel our styles are divergent: you're all classic Death Eater, I'm more complex anti-hero with a possibility of later redemption. It's just not working for me. Also, I've been planning your public downfall since you rolled me four years ago and I can't think of a better time than four days before you meet the criteria for your Prime Ministerial pension supplement.'

Pansy's message was simpler: 'You're dumped, Crabbe. And you're taking Goyle with you.'

Even Rita Skeeter couldn't argue, epsecially when Malfoy fronted the media with his hair glinting perfectly in the afternoon sun and with no phalanx of flags to make his argument for him, but rather words, more than three, constructing an actual argument. Draco looked earnestly into the camera. 'We need advocacy,' he said. 'Not slogans. We need a different style of leadership, one that respects the people's intelligence."

Two hours later, Crabbe replied. 'We're not the Labor Party!' he declared. 'We are not the Labor Party! WE ARE NOT THE LABOR PARTY!

'Alas,' muttered the Australian Voting Public, remembering well that – mad as they may have been, and in all honesty they put cut snakes to shame – the Labor Party under both Harry and Hermione had provided stable government, passing legislation, negotiating intelligently with the opposition and cross benches and rarely embarrassing us on the international stage.

For hours they pretended there was still a decision to be made. Goyle announced: 'We cannot and we must not become a carbon copy of the Australian Labor Party.'

But it was all to no avail. Of the 99 votes, Draco received 54, Vince 44, and Kevin Andrews drew a picture of a penis.

Crabbe was out, having served less time than any Australian Prime Minister since the one who was eaten by a shark*.

*Probably

The full saga of Vincent Crabbe and the Goblet of Bile can be found at blamebrampton's LJ.

Things I have cooked today:

- toasted granola for 1x week's breakfast
- Epicurious Banana Coconut Muffins, homg, so good, do recommend
- basil-almond pesto (I've never made pesto before! And pine nuts are too expensive here! But eventually I had so damn much basil it became necessary to branch out)
- tuscan bean stew from the big red book

And I didn't even spend ALL day in the kitchen! Also got haircut, did grocery shopping, cleaned the bath, and washed the kitchen floor. Unprecedented productivity, wot.

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,

the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.

Meanwhile, I strongly recommend you read

liseuse's post about PIGEONS IN THE SECRET SERVICE.

This photo, by Rina Castelnuovo of the New York Times, won third place in the World Press Photo competition's 'General News' category. It shows an Israeli settler in Hebron taking time out from his Purim celebrations to throw wine at a passing Palestinian woman.

More striking images here. Many disturbing, some heartening, all artistically gorgeous.

Happy Chanukah to those who celebrate it. And, celebrating Chanukah or not, if you fancy some amusement, may I recommend

gillpolack's Very Special Retelling Of the Chanukah Story, reposted at the collective demand of six unsuspecting members of her flist. :D:D:D

Real women do not have curves. Real women do not look like just one thing.

Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are brown-skinned, and olive-skinned, and not. They have small breasts, and big ones, and no breasts whatsoever.

[...]

I’m going to say it again because it’s important: There is no wrong way to have a body.

And if your moral compass points in any way, shape, or form to equality, you need to get this through your thick skull and stop with the “real women are like such-and-so” crap.

You are not the authority on what “real” human beings are, and who qualifies as “real” and on what basis. All human beings are real.

Yes, I know you’re tired of feeling disenfranchised. It is a tiresome and loathsome thing to be and to feel. But the tit-for-tat disenfranchisement of others is not going to solve that problem. Solidarity has to start somewhere and it might as well be with you and me.

Hanne Blank

Warning for some (rather strange) transphobia in the comments, and a stray post of incomprehensible bile, and a few people Not Getting It.

1. The verger does cartwheels down the red carpet, post-ceremony.

and

2. Julia Gillard did Australia proud by wearing a respectably bizarre hat.

I have just discovered
a) the existence of the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
and
b) that they have a transcription and electronic facsimile of the 1914 edition of the 'Sure to Rise' Coookbook, issued by the Edmond's baking powder company.

It's not the earliest edition, but it's early enough to be deeply entertaining. What is the usual way to bake chelsea buns? I don't know, and they're not telling me. Does the custard love the cup? How much is a teacup of sugar? (I don't know, but a teacup of milk = 1 gill) And Was this stuff as unappealing as it sounds?

ABC Online's chief political writer offers apology to Kevin Rudd, apparently unprompted.

Of course, that's all part of the Annabel Crabb persona, the performance of an irreverent attitude to politics and political reporting both. It's not as if such an apology *costs* her, or the ABC, anything: rather, it shores up the 'real person' image she's got going, somewhere between a column and a blog.

And this article isn't precisely *nice* about the Ruddbot. Indeed, early on Crabb reiterates that evidence exists to support the contention that the Foreign Minister is a deeply, ornately strange human being - funny, and possibly true, and also evidence that this performance of contrition is about Crabb's readership, not Krudd at all.

Currently, Anthony Green, the leading Australian election commentator, is conducting a long internet conversation which can best be summed up as Preferential Voting for ~~Dummies~~ Britons. Scrolling back through the last couple of pages you can find detailed but plain-language explanations of all kinds of factors involved in Australian elections. Eg: how is a ballot paper counted?; No we don't use electronic voting machines; Are Australians tyrannised by the alternative vote?; and why it takes more than a week for election results to be finalised (hint: it's not the alternative vote).

If you read from the start of the kerfuffle forwards (instead of backwards, which is the order in which I linked you), Green's increasing tone of annoyance at having to explain the same basic things over and over again is deeply entertaining.

When we look at what the factors are that make life so miserable for young gays and lesbians, it’s tempting for progressives to point the finger at religious traditions that are hostile to sexual pluralism. But the young men in American high schools who are beating up other boys whom they suspect of being gay are rarely doing so in order to comply with a misunderstood dictate from the Torah or the Pauline epistles. It’s not faith that drives the hate as much as it is an overwhelming desire to establish masculine bona fides. “I torment faggots, therefore I can’t be one; I beat up queers, therefore I’m a man.” That toxic equation may be aided and abetted by conservative religion, but it isn’t rooted in it. Rather, the hateful behavior is rooted in the rigid rules of American masculinity, a masculinity predicated on a contempt for and a paranoia about even the slightest whiff of femininity among the be-penised.

Hugo Schwyzer, Homosociality and Homophobia

Carrier pigeons: faster than rural broadband!

Dreamwidth is now on the Map of Online Communities!

Which is to say, there's a new XKCD map, and DW is now a small island off the coast of Livejournal.

I like this map. It's *extremely* detailed.

The First Text Messages: on how telegraph operators made friends, learnt to recognise one another by Morse style, made jokes, and abbreviated words.

Abebooks just sent me an email to tell me about their Weird Book Room.

Where you can find such gems as Knitted Historical Figures, Exercises for Gentlemen, The Dictionary of Pipe Organ Stops, Cheese Rolling in Gloustershire, Love + Sex with Robots, The Manga Guide to Calculus, The Armpit of Desire, The Who's Who of British Beheadings, 50 Ways to Use Feminine Hygiene Produces in a Manly Manner (WTF???), and Castration, the advantages and disadvantages.

ALSO, in preparation for the 2012 Olympics, Visit Britain has a guide to mingling with other cultures. Do not be alarmed if South Africans say they were held up by robots!

Apparently there's only one black man studying at the National Institute for Dramatic Arts (note: the mini-headline says "only black man studying at NIDA"; the article gives the impression that his student days are over and that he was the only black man in his *classes*, which is not quite the same thing)

Apparently his current part, in Gwen in Purgatory, is only the second role he's ever played in which he hasn't been required to perform in a steroetype African or Jamaican accent.

Shira Erlichmann - How to tell a story
(Niamh, I think you'd like this one): There is a way of telling stories. A red pen. A teacher to move it. / Instead you have hands, and a Light inside you, and Bones.

Martin Espada - Who burns for the perfection of paper: Ten years later, in law school, / I knew that every legal pad / was glued with the sting of hidden cuts

Alastair Reed - Curiosity: may have killed the cat; more likely / the cat was just unlucky, or else curious / to see what death was like

A.E. Stallings - The Wife of the Man of Many Wiles: Believe what you want to. Believe that I wove, / If you wish, twenty years, and waited, while you / Were knee-deep in blood, hip-deep in goddesses.

Hafiz - We should talk about this problem (This one fascinates and disturbs me both): I have fallen in love with Someone / Who hides inside you.

Amy Fleury - At twenty-eight: It seems I get by on more luck than sense

Jack Gilbert - Falling and falling: Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew

Margaret Atwood - This is a photograph of me: but if you look long enough / eventually / you will see me.

Billy Collins - Marginalia: Sometimes the notes are ferocious, / skirmishes against the author / raging along the / borders of every page / in tiny black script.

exceptindreams_feed : feeds across from

exceptindreams at LJ. I'm currently its one and only follower on DW (because I created the feed), but some of you might appreciate it. The blogger posts a variety of interesting poems, monday to friday. I'm incredibly fond of At Twenty-Eight by Amy Fleury (it's a nice positive-if-wistful antidote to the hilarious but somewhat discouraging outlook of Hyperbole and a Half on adulthood).

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A++ would recommend
Everything you needed to know about Australian Politics 2013-15
Fooods
The Rider - Naomi Shihab Nye
(no subject)
Much amusement!
This bears saying (again, and again, and again if necessary)
You only need to know two things about the royal wedding
Bake as usual!
Now there's something you don't see every day
This is actually quite interesting!
Yes, THIS
TRUFAX
OOOH LOOKEE
Heee
Weird books!
... WTF, Australia?
Poetry rec-dump
Quick Follow Friday post!

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Resources: OpenClipart and Oceanside Twilight

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Strong Verbs Are Just Better

I shall wing it, I have wung it

Entries tagged with link

A++ would recommend

Everything you needed to know about Australian Politics 2013-15

Fooods

The Rider - Naomi Shihab Nye

(no subject)

Much amusement!

This bears saying (again, and again, and again if necessary)

You only need to know two things about the royal wedding

Bake as usual!

Now there's something you don't see every day

This is actually quite interesting!

Yes, THIS

TRUFAX

OOOH LOOKEE

Heee

Weird books!

... WTF, Australia?

Poetry rec-dump

Quick Follow Friday post!