Q-Pop, a gallery in Little Tokyo, is running a Kamen Rider vs Super Sentai show, and the art looks fantastic.

Some of the pieces are up for sale here: I'm this close to buying the Big One print.

Things That Are Horrifying Me Today: Clarence Thomas's dissent in Brown v. EMA. Scalia writes a very good majority opinion--when Scalia's on your side, he's great (it's just that he's never on my side*)--but the real "standout" is Thomas's valiant defense of Puritan Family Values:

"The historical evidence shows that the founding generation believed parents had absolute authority over their minor children and expected parents to use that authority to direct the proper development of their chil-dren. It would be absurd to suggest that such a society understood “the freedom of speech” to include a right to speak to minors (or a corresponding right of minors toaccess speech) without going through the minors’ parents. The founding generation would not have considered it an abridgment of “the freedom of speech” to support parental authority by restricting speech that bypasses minors’ parents."

Justice Clarence Thomas: Reverse Time Traveler!

*In this case, see the opening bit of Scalia's rebuttal of Thomas: "He cites no case, state or federal, supporting this view, and to our knowledge there is none. Most of his dissent is devoted to the proposition that parents have traditionally had the power to control what their children hear and say."

Shorter Scalia: Dude, that's bullshit and you know it.

I've been very lucky lately - things have been going incredibly well, all considered, and all emotional conundrums have been largely circumvented or avoided. So there will be photos and nerd stuff.

(To be fair, my mood was considerably brightened today after being told by a professor I really admire the first draft of a thesis-chunk is near-publishable for a peer-reviewed journal - an opinion strengthened by her being a journal editor herself.)

( Under cut: Cat! Bar! )

( Things I Have Been Watching: Gokaiger, Tiger & Bunny, Archer, MLP:FiM. )

Honestly, I play a lot more video games than watch video media lately. Because I can listen to podcasts in the background while I play, combining edification and relaxation.

( Things I Have Played: The Witcher 2, Dragon Age II, Fable 3, Far Cry 2. )

Shameless self-promotion: Trial run on mapping the "network" of trans vloggers on YouTube. I'm probably going to get as much use out of this data as I can - definitely going to present at least once on it as filtered through location and declared race/ethnicity/nationality - and what that says about the changing state of trans visibility online.

...don't see Becoming Chaz. Don't. If I were playing Trans Documentary Drinking Game, I'd be wasted. There's "being trapped in a female shell," there's baby pictures, there's testosterone shots, there's "courage." Oh and there's RuPaul. Randomly. It's the exact kind of documentary Still Black exists to not be.

Also, bonus use of "retarded" as a pejorative in the first three minutes of the documentary--by Bono!

I don't know how I missed her, but holy shit Esperanza Spalding is fantastic, even if she did de-throne His Bieberness at the Grammys.

Also, the new Adele album is up on First Listen. Totally worth it.

1.

Friday Night: I am going to suck, because you have come home with a 100° F fever and are now bedridden and hacking.
Me: Thanks, and fuck you.
Cat: *observes me prone in the bed* I want to be petted. Here, I will shove the furriest part of my body into your snotty nose and face.
Me: Feline, you are going to regret this in a couple minutes.
Minutes: We pass.
Me: *starts hacking and wheezing directly into feline fur*
Cat: *shocked and horrified, shoots off bed* Why, I never!
Me: Yeah, well I warned you.
Process: I repeat myself two more times. Cat begins to understand my workings the third time.

2.

Tuesday Morning: Normally, I would suck because you're still kind of sick and wheezy, but I am also the start of a snow day, which is pretty awesome.
Me: *burrows deeper into covers, ignores world*
Cat: *saunters over* I request to be petted.
My Arm: I'm going to reluctantly snake out from under the covers because my owner inadvisably thinks you're kind of cute, half-heartedly rub you several times, then hide back under the covers.
Cat: Such petting will not suffice--I know when I am being placated. I shall flop on your face until I receive my due.
Me: Feline, we have been over--
Cat: I shall flop with the utmost dignity. *promptly flops down, misjudges available flopping space, and slides off bed*
Cat: Clearly, this means you are not worthy to pet me. *saunters off*

3.

Tuesday Afternoon: Eh, I'm alright. There is hot cocoa and a blanket on the couch.
Me: *reads book for class*
Cat: You have the kneading blanket. I require it to knead on. Additionally, I require you to pay attention to me. *cautiously mounts my cramped stomach-to-knees space and begins kneading*
Me: This is unusual! You never want to sit on my lap. Is my snowbound existence softening your resistance? Does the kitty want pettings? Yes, the kitty does. (Ed. Note - Avery does in fact speak to The Feline in this manner. There may be a mildly embarrassing unintentional audio recording of him doing so.)
Cat: I require no more attention. *leaves stomach-to-knee area*
Me: Aww, why did the kitty leave?
Biological Processes: We announce it might be a good time to take a shit.
Me: *passes cat food bowl on the way to the bathroom, sees it is empty* Oh.
Cat: *walks past* Yeah, genius.

4.

Wednesday Morning: Snow Day #2! And you have been productive!
Me: Fuck, I need to put my bills in the mail. And take out the trash. Fuck. It's cold outside. *beings dressing to leave apartment* Feline, it's cold outside! And I have to put my boots on! (Ed. Note - The Boots wish it be made known that being both steel-toed and waterproof, they are actually pretty cool.)
Cat: Yeah, and? *returns to licking self*
Me: But. Cold. 10° F!
Cat: *sleeping*
Me: ...appreciate the vote of confidence there.

However, I have not yet crafted clothing for The Feline, so I'll consider this an accomplishment.

I am way too sick to be up, but whatever. Because it amuses me, a thing I made.

Hipster Char.

If you haven't yet read it, check out Greg Pak's Vision Machine mini. It's not jaw-dropping good, but it's an well-developed exercise in a futuristic rendering of what the future of media consumption might be like, without tools like OpenSource or Creative Commons. I think the end is 100% SF cop-out, but the rest is worth a look. Recommended followup reading is Cory Doctrow's Content.

And if you must remind yourself of our current internet, there is Dot Dot Dot.

You Know It. It follows you throughout Youtube. It violently assaults your understanding of English grammar, slaughters spelling. It appears to have been typed through the repeated bashing of one's head upon an innocent keyboard.

It is That Comment, now read aloud with epic typography.

- I now have a sizable 60 Bookmooch points, most of which I don't expect to use anytime soon. Thus, if anyone is after a book and wants me to look for it/add it to my wishlist, let me know. If it comes up, I'll e-mail you for a mailing address to have it sent to. If you're not in the continental US, I'll have it shipped here before sending it out.

- I have not yet decided if I can love Arrested Development yet, but it's trying very hard to win me over. I'll keep with it through Season 2 because I really enjoy me some Portia Degeneres, but I'm not sold on Will Arnett yet.

- Finished both Monster, 1959 and Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles this week. I'm not entirely sold on Monster, for though Maine knows his kaiji, his attempts to expand the metaphor (Humans are the real monsters) fell quite flat. His tone grows increasingly strident through the and the final "twist" bludgeons the reader so hard it could make them to launch the book across the room.

Weight balances its metaphor much better--it is Jeanette Winterson, after all. But there's still a bit of Monster's sermonizing laying about, the indirect lessons of the Atlas myth write so large as to be blinding. Winterson's language, though, is such a delight the reader can endure a few more blows for it alone.

- re_silvera and I are finally relaunching Queers With Beers! The first attempt putzed out due to lack of time, but we're giving it a second try. The full, one-hour show will be released monthly; the shorter “QWB: Happy Hour Edition,” wherein I explain the history behind and mix various different nerdy cocktails, will be on a bimonthly schedule (as time allows). (Also, I'm not going to edit episodes after this one, which should do wonders for getting stuff out on time.)

It's a basic “queer nerds + booze” format, half queer stuff, half nerdery. The nerd topic of the month is, unsurprisingly, a mutual love of ours: Kamen Rider Hibiki.

( Reviews of DC Direct movies 'Batman: Under the Red Hood,' 'Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam,' and other recent shorts )

Because I can:
- Things making me annoyed this week, as I learn from a cis guy that 2010 is apparently the "Year of the Transsexual."
- Why I Don't Care That You're Not An Asshole, on the most important takeaway of the Haley Barbour mess.