Dickson Film 1894

And an older, classier version, made for the late nineteenth-century kinetophone.

Torchwood Season One

Sigh.

OSI Book 3

Inhuman Resources, Book 3 in the OSI series, is now available for pre-order from Amazon

Private Practice.

Season 3? Why is it so good? How has it sucked me in for yet another year?

Madmen Season 3: Strong and getting stronger. I love Peggy Olson's narrative.

Glee: Last episode was underwhelming, but it is still going strong.

Cougartown: Why do I keep watching? Watching it is a perfectly neutral experience.

Inhuman Resources (forthcoming Spring 2010)

I should get a few ARCs for Inhuman Resources soon, Book 3 in the OSI Series. I am waiting to post the cover art until it appears properly on Amazon. Suffice it to say, it involves stained glass, wings (which may be on fire), and a pretty sweet lanyard badge hanging from Agent Corday's neck. Once again, Timothy Lantz has crafted something really beautiful, and I'm happy to have it grace the cover of my books.

blues

Hello Eve.

I miss you. I miss talking about our totem animals, and I am still very much a polar bear, as was decided earlier. I miss your beishung bear. Thank you for reading things that I wrote, and thank you for giving me new ideas. It was lovely to meet you when I did, and lovely to know you in some little way, and I am glad to have known you. I respected you and idolized you and were jealous of you for years, and getting to spend time with you was something that remains really precious to me. I was in Vancouver when I heard that you'd gone. I read it in an email while I was at Kinko's. I didn't know who to tell or what to do. I felt overwhelmingly pissed off, and then cheated, and then just sad, really sad.

I have been thinking of you a lot lately, since there have been several events held in your honor already, and more to come. And I have to adjust to the now distant, now slightly aslant, fact of you that is transmuted from the register of the physical to the memorial.

I will remember the sound of the ice cubes in your cup rattling slightly as you walked past the mailboxes and into the gray carpeted hallway of the grad center. The sound made me happy, and it still does.

Jes

Sunburst shortlist

Just a quick note as well to say that Night Child was shortlisted for the 2009 Sunburst Award in Canadian Science Fiction. You can see the full shortlist here.

Chris Colfer from Glee

Interview with Chris Colfer, out teen actor who plays Kurt in Glee. When asked if he was out in high school, Colfer replies: "Oh, no. People are killed for that in my hometown."

Full interview

NFL and queer rights

Scott Fujita, in a recent interview with Dave Zirin from The Nation, discusses homophobia in the NFL, as well as same-sex adoption rights. "They call me the Pinko Commie Fag from Berkeley," he says, since he earned a B.A. in Political Science from UC-Berkeley.

Read full article

Zizek: Love is Evil

Transgender teacher fired

EDMONTON - A transgendered substitute teacher fired by a Roman Catholic public school board has filed a human rights complaint demanding to be reinstated.

Jan Buterman is praised in a letter of dismissal for his teaching abilities, but told his gender change from woman to man is not aligned with the teachings of the Catholic church or its values.

Full article

Staffordshire hoard

Possibly the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon artifacts in history has been unearthed in Staffordshire:

Glee

Positive things so far about GLEE:

1. A gay boy with an Hermes bag.
2. Overachiever raised by gay parents.
3. Manipulative use of Journey and Grease
4. A first kiss scene that actually reminds me of high school
5. Critiques of the United States education system
6. Adolescent singing fantasies (I still have them)

You could really watch it just for Jane Lynch alone.

I blame this post on Facebook

Maddow and Jones

Cleve Jones talking on Rachel Maddow about Diane Pelosi's speech regarding political violence in the United States. Jones calls several arch-conservative protests "well orchestrated and well-funded by [Republican] consulting firms." Ouch.

Paula as Ellen

So, Paula Abdul impersonated Ellen Degeneres on the VH1 'Diva' Awards. I've included a link rather than embedded content because Yahoo is savvy and won't allow me to snag an embed-code. There's a version on Youtube that I recommend watching, because the Celebrity.com mise-en-scene is even more trashy.

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?rn=222561&cl=15627906&ch=224106

I'm wondering what Abdul's trying to accomplish here. At first I thought it was a kind of negative drag act, but if drag is deeply satirical--politically satirical--than the impression is dead-on. Abdul is almost a Drag King in her attempt to parody Ellen, and it's only more richly complicated given Abdul's pretty solid gay fanbase in the late-80s, as well as her current gay fanbase that re-coalesced after she took the American Idol job. Personally, I remember the video to "Opposites Attract," and I think it may have made me gay, or at least contributed.

The idea of media parody opens up so many interesting discussions about the place of queer celebrities. Is parody an in-road, a form of public acceptance? Or is there a more invidious under-current of homophobia, if that category in fact even has the power to contain every single act of resistance towards queer life. Which it probably doesn't.

Is Ellen being critiqued as a comedian, an actor, a host, a lesbian, or for all of these various spaces and affective networks within her life? Is she donning a form of drag whenever she steps in front of an audience of mostly-straight middle-aged women? The video that she did recently, interviewing her partner, Portia di Rossi, in the middle of their huge back yard, is like a fascinating cinematic docudrama. Queer women at home, interacting. Is this an exercise in the construction of homonormativity on television? *See, we play wacky games on the grass, just like straight couples* Or is it just all improvisational, like queer jazz?

Eiher way, there's something very Dietrich-esque about the way Abdul wears a pant-suit. She's trying to be cynical, but she can't help appearing very sexy as well. As a viewer, you're confused, but also a little aroused. And maybe that's her intention.

Bad Horse

A Single Man

Queer Canadian Hall of Fame

Sandra Thomas, Vancouver Courier

Published: Friday, September 11, 2009

In the past five decades West End resident Ted Northe has been recognized by federal, provincial, municipal and international governments for his charity work and fundraising efforts.

But Northe, who spells his name in lower case, told the Courier this week he was most honoured recently to find out he'd been named as an inductee to the first Canadian Queer Hall of Fame, which will be based in Vancouver. "I never expected this," said Northe. "This is a real thrill because it's Canadian and I am a very proud Canadian."

Northe and four other inductees will be recognized Sept. 19 for their significant contributions to human rights and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Canadians at an event organized by the CIBC Pride Network and Qmunity. Formerly known as The Centre, Qmunity is a resource centre for the queer community located on Bute Street. The hall of fame ceremony runs during an inaugural red carpet gala, Q-Ball, at the Westin Bayshore Hotel.

(Read full article)

Sabor de Soledad

I'm adjusting to living alone again. I haven't lived alone since the second year of my PhD, and in the intervening years, I got used to co-existing with people. I'm not saying I co-existed well. But I get used to the fact of living with others, and now it's very strange to be alone in an apartment again. The nice thing about having a cat, though, is that you can entirely justify talking to yourself. You're not crazy. You're just having an interspecies dialogue, like Donna Haraway is always encouraging us to do.

I've noticed that the quality of aloneness is different, though, when you have a partner and you're involved in a long-distance relationship. When I was single, being alone was something that I both accepted and invited. I enjoyed living by myself. Now I'm not so sure how I feel about it anymore. I used to think there were certain things--Secret Single Behavior--that you could only do if you lived alone. But then I discovered that there are people who will actually let you do these things in front of them, without judging or complaining. In that sense, living with a partner/loved one can become like an exchange of secret behavior, where each person tries to up the ante slightly over a period of time, until one finally discovers a limit. Now that I'm living alone again, I find that I have nobody to gross out or mystify with my OCD behavior. It's just not as fun, and the cat gives very little feedback.

As I get older, though, I am starting to notice subtle shifts in the way that I live alone. I clean more now, for instance. At 20, there's a certain perverse satisfaction in letting your own filth accumulate. At 30, it's just annoying to see dishes in the sink or a dirty carpet, so you clean it for aesthetic purposes. When I live with someone, I generally need to be prodded to clean, but once the suggestion's in my head, I'll clean anything. When I live alone, I find myself cleaning even more, simply because there's no possibility that the cat will actually clean anything herself.

I do hate carpet, though. I find it impossible to go from hardwood to carpet. Hardwood gets dirty, but all you have to do is wash it. Carpet gets gross, and there's always the fear that you might spill something on it. Hardwood makes a room appear lighter, more inviting, whereas carpet just reminds me of how many shades of beige there are in the world.

I'm also concerned about the strange fissures in my ceiling, but that's probably just paranoia.