you caught me lingering

Reference: Here (spoilers for Batman and the Outsiders #1).

Dear Chuck Dixon,

I'm not going to comment on most of the issues, because you've constructed some kind of wacky constructed-reality in your head where apparently it's clever to make jokes about oppressed classes of people and try and paint queer folks as special breed of oversensitive precious-pants, and I'm quite comfortable here in actual reality where it obviously makes you an asshole. So I'm going to go with the other question.

What part of 'Batman is the world's greatest detective' do you not understand? Batman, who is obsessed with studying absolutely everyone, in the course of looking at who's going to be on the team, is magically cured of this obsession (and detective-level observation skills, apparently) when it is likely to allow him to tell the difference between a friendship and a relationship? Seriously, are you so fucking incompetent a writer that you have failed to understand such a key aspect of Batman's character? Or are you just projecting your own ignorant baggage onto Batman, which, well, still makes you an incompetent hack who doesn't understand Batman.

You seriously expect us to buy your shite?

no love,
me.

Reference: (from the linked post) "Was this scene calculated to get precisely the reaction it got here? You bet. Did DC run the page it ran in the previews to get a lather on the knee-jerk fans always ready to go to the hate bucket? OH yeah.
Was all of this discussed in advance interrupted with much giggling? Uh huh."

Dear DC,

Uh, did you forget that the point of preview pages wasn't to piss people off but, um, to make people want to buy your shite?
Or are you still, in your financial floundering as an industry, still trying to act as though you're too good for the money of people who expect a little more from you?
Still, feel free to plead with the demographics you're pissing off about how much you'd like us to give certain titles another chance.

me.

WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS Season 3 DVD Boxset Cover (mild spoiler, if you squint a bit)?

( definitely spoilers here )

ETA: Definitely spoilers in the comments.

They're not really drastic spoilers, but I'm feeling kind, so under the cut we go.

( Race & Gender Complaints Within )

On the whole, I enjoyed the film. I would've enjoyed it a lot more without those two issues.

From this interview:

"They are all people of a similar background, similar philosophy and similar take on Dr Who – that’s fandom." - RTD

What fucking tiny portion of fandom got your pants in a twist, Rusty? Jeebus, do we have to start talking about HiveFandom, now? I mean, it doesn't even make any sense. I mean, shit, if that were true of fandom, fandom-wank wouldn't exist. And that's just LJ, ffs.

Also, I'm kinda tired of pasty white geekboys who make television hatin' on the internet. IT DOESN'T MAKE YOU ANY COOLER, FOR SRS.

Also:
Who is your least favourite companion?
"Oh, I’m not going to say. I’ll be at some convention in the future and she'll run over and beat me up if I did. I love them all."

Nope. No issues with women at all.

I'll stop being crankypants about Who soon.

Since The Courier Mail is weird about comments, my response to this article from Prof. Stuart Cunningham:


"Professor Cunningham seems to like claiming that Creative Industries has some kind of ownership of the 'applied humanities'. He fails to mention that this bastion of the 'applied humanities' doesn't include applied ethics, which is part of the School of Humanities and Human Services. Though the recent issues that Drs. Hookham and MacLennan brought into the public eye suggest that perhaps Creative Industries needs a more solid injection of applied ethics, since they seem to be rather lacking.

Of course, the prime fallacy of Prof. Cunningham's article is that the humanities, which are a, and perhaps even the, foundation of what a university is, need to be 'marketable'. Prof. Cunningham's argument only has the possibility of being valid if we accept that assumption, and he presents no useful reasons as to why we should accept such an assumption. Anyone with the critical thinking skills taught in the humanities - pure or, presumably, otherwise - should understand the need for strong reasons to accept an assumption of such proportions."

An Arizona court has sentenced a man to 16 years in prison for killing a woman, 20 years for killing the up to 7 week old embryo she was carrying.

Women. 4/5ths as important as a 7 week old embryo. Thanks Arizona!

Sweet Lemur on a Unicycle.

In response to the comments thread for this guest colum at GRC, wherein Willow makes a good, minor, point about the fact that one can't subversively read even background comics characters as non-white (without redrawing the comic), the way that one can subversively read background or even foreground characters as queer.

This somehow means that Willow is hatin' on queer folks, but, more importantly, it means that folks have SOMETHING ELSE TO TALK ABOUT IN THE COMMENTS BESIDES RACE. Same old privilege-palooza old.

Bye, G-W forums. I'll be back when folks take their damn fingers out of their ears.

Edit after going back long enough to link the thread to someone: Okay, seriously? I'm fucking done. I'd been teetering for a while, because the forums have been a little male-privilege-tastic of late, but this shit is just enough. It's just not a place I feel comfortable.

The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.

What Ilyka said.

Shorter Alex Robson: Women are selfish for having abortions, which means we don't care about the environment.

I wish I was kidding.

This lecturer in economics seems to think that because women have abortions, and because TEH LEFT supports women's reproductive rights, including the right to have abortions, this means that TEH LEFT doesn't care about future generations, which means that no one will support anything on climate change.

... yeah.

Choice quotes:

"But do voters and politicians (particularly on the Left) really care so much about the welfare of future generations that they are willing to impose large costs on themselves and others?

Current attitudes and policies on abortion suggest not."

And also:

"But the abortion activists' propaganda (that it is all about a woman's individual freedom and private choices) is just that - propaganda.

Our politicians don't just tolerate or condone abortions. They actively encourage them by forcing taxpayers to subsidise them and voters happily put up with it."

Hear that, people? All that talk about women having freedom and bodily autonomy is just propaganda.

I mean, aside from the absurdity of basing your entire argument against environmental policy on abortion rates and abortion spending, Robson's got some glorious woman-hating forced-birther rhetoric going on there.

Stephen does some numbers-playing, comparing abortion costs to the costs related to born children (including the government's baby bonus, since Robson is so frantic about government funding for abortions) here, if you're interested in a counter to that point about politicians "actively encouraging" abortions. Though I'm fascinated as to exactly what rock Robson's been living under that he hasn't had to listen to Tony Abbott and John Howard bleat about OH NOES ABORTIONS for the last, oh, five years or more.

Dear David Gardiner,

I don't believe for a second that you care that I am sad about your cynicism towards education and the value of my degree.

I don't believe for a second that you actually listened to a word that was said, regardless of how many times you said "I'm listening" or "I'm here to listen".

I don't believe for a second that you were up to anything that even resembles 'consultation', and for all your jibe about my understanding of consultation, I'm not sure you understand what it means.

Don't think I didn't notice that you avoided my jibe at your inability to answer my questions without insulting me.

Don't think I didn't notice that you were laughing quietly at students' concerns.

Don't think I didn't notice you insult every single person who spoke up in that meeting.

Don't think that proclaiming that you have integrity makes it true.

Part of me feels ashamed that I let you get in deep enough to make me cry, but I'm not the only one, and for all your lauding of 'rationality', it doesn't make me weak.

You are a noxious, patronising, aggressive little man. I don't know if you sleep at night. Part of me hopes you don't. My cynical side suspects that you, and people like you, somehow manage it. And that frightens me.

But I can still pull 31/35 on an essay*, even with all this shit going on. So don't think for a moment that you can beat me down.

no love,
me.

*I got my Feminism & Ethics essay back after the meeting, and the mark was the high point of my day. In other good news, I got an extension on the essay that was supposed to be due tonight, and aforementioned good mark has lifted my spirits and confidence regarding the papers I still have to write.

What is this, 1953?

h/t A Tiny Revolution:
The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions.

Yeah, cos CIA interference in Iran's government worked so fucking well back then. Not like it's one of the key reasons Iran is kinda shitty about US interference and imperialism or anything.

*headdesk headdesk headdesk*

So, VC Coaldrake's banging on about how high attrition (dropout) rates are for the Arts degree. I shouldn't be surprised, but attrition rates include students who transfer to other degrees in the university. Which is fairly common for an Arts degree, since it's often used as an entry vector for those with lower entrance scores. Hell, I was originally going to be one of those, until I decided Arts was much more fun than Creative Industries. It's pretty much standard practice for other high-entrance-level-degrees like Law to advise prospective students with lower entrance scores to apply for entrance to the BA and transfer after a year (provided their GPA is acceptable). If you take out those students, the attrition rate for Arts sits pretty much on par with the University average.

WTF, Coaldrake.

Yes, I'm going to be talking about this QUT thing for a bit. If you have a problem with me caring about my future, feel free to let me know so I can tell you to shove it stop reading.

Mark at Larvatus Prodeo (who was actually a tutor of mine wayback in first year) has a much more coherent post about QUT closing down its Humanities school and degrees (Arts and Social Sciences, basically) than I can manage at this point. He covers well how this whole affair really contradicts the right-wing culture-warriors claim that humanities and universities are overrun with "brainwashing po-mo socialists".

Incidentally, I wasn't previously aware of UQ's vice-chancellor labelling those who want philosophy and classics to maintain their vibrancy as "sentimentalists". I mean, sure, I was never going to touch UQ with a ten foot pole, but when Griffith is your last bastion of humanities*, I really do start feeling like I'll need to move back to Sydney, or to Melbourne or Canberra, to actually get the education I want, and the kind of academic work I want. And aside from Canberra being an attractive option whilst $tephen is there, I don't want to leave Brisbane. I moved here for a reason, and I don't want to have to choose between my career and a city I love. Not to mention the sick feeling in my stomach that this shit's going to spread to the rest of the country, and what that will mean.

And honestly, I'm feeling really bad, at the moment. When there were just rumours of them selling Carseldine campus, and shifting everything to Kelvin Grove? Yeah, I was cranky, because I'm rather fond of my nice small campus where I know everyone even if the food is kinda shitty. But when they're shutting down the entire fucking school, and rendering my degree non-existent, it's like, this is the place in which I learned how I'm actually rather competent, and not stupid. And now the institution that gave me a place in which to learn and be encouraged to think and be challenged in ways I never had is basically saying "We don't want you, because you won't make lots of money when you graduate and make us look good, because we don't actually care what YOU want."** And maybe it's irrational for me to look at it like that, but that's honestly how it feels. I've spent the last four years having various academic staff hover around me and ask me about postgraduate study and want to know what I'd like to do and make me think about academia and make me realise that hey, I think I could love doing this. Whilst I know it's not the fault of those staff members, because I hardly think they're behind a plan that renders them jobless, I honestly feel rather betrayed more generally. It's like I've had this thing waved under my nose for four years until I really really want it, and it's been yanked out from under me when I'm just so fucking close. I mean, seriously, my last undergraduate class is in like 6 weeks, for fuck's sake.

I also feel bad for the students who have much longer to go than me, because I don't doubt a whole bunch of the teaching staff will start securing work elsewhere, which will likely result in the learning opportunities for those students diminishing considerably.

Incidentally, a bunch of us were sitting around campus being generally angry and sad and so on about the whole affair, and at one point those of us considering postgrad were talking about where we might go, and someone asked if I might consider going to Bond if I got a scholarship. And the thought hadn't actually occurred to me, but when I thought about it, I realised that I really don't think I could. Bond U is one of the few private universities in Australia (I think we've got two?), and whilst I've heard some good things about it, I just believe too much in public higher education for a scholarship to convince me that Bond U is a good idea. Honestly, as I said to the person who asked, I think I'd just feel kinda dirty.

I'm angry about the fact that it took The Courier Mail running articles about it for people to decide that letting students know directly might be a good idea. At four in the afternoon. It's telling that Coaldrake's happy to shoot his mouth off to The Courier Mail without considering that they might publish his comments before someone told the fucking students what was going on. And really, the staff don't know a whole lot either, given they're going on what happened at a meeting that occurred on Friday, which, from what I've heard today from folks who were there, wasn't particularly enlightening. But mostly I'm just feeling really sad and awful and betrayed.


Oh, in other news, I do have a linkspost coming. I was going to get it done tonight, but I just needed to get a lot of this off my chest. There'll probably be some more about this during the week as I get the chance to talk to some more of the academics and other students, but I promise a linkspost is coming.

*Because honestly, I know ACU has a Brisbane Campus that's Northside to boot, but I suspect that my interest in feminist, queer and critical race theory is hardly going to be nurtured as research output at Australian Catholic University. Maybe that's a little harsh, even aside from that, I'm far too lapsed a Catholic to feel comfortable there.
**This is actually one of the things that bugs me about this 'poor graduate outcomes' bollocks. I'm working on gut intuitions here, so anyone who has data is welcome to challenge this, but aside from the fact that humanities by nature is much less vocational-outcome-driven than other degrees it's being compared to, it seems plausible to me that there are more students in Humanities degrees that just aren't seeking the kinds of outcomes those in other degrees want.

This is the stench of an enraged soul.

The next person who tries to tell me Australian Universities are overrun by socialists gets a fucking cluebat to the skull.

More later when I'm less rage-y and more rant-y. This is gonna be a long-un.

In the meantime, anyone got suggestions for where I might want to do Honours in '08 (Zero points for anyone who suggests UQ)?

Please count this as a request for shiny distractions.

For the moment, I will go watch Alias.

Note: This is a rather milder version of what will go on the filter once I set it up. Some of the filtered stuff may well be used in longer and more focussed posts, either here or at Shrub (or both) later down the track, though the stuff relating to assessment items will have to wait until after semester.

It took ten minutes into the first Sex & Gender tutorial for someone to pull out the "feminists hate men" shite. Of course, this wasn't helped by the fact that the lecturer is characterising radical feminism as "aiming to control and constrain male sexuality". I mean, shit. There's problems I have with radical feminism, but that's just... To be fair, the first time I read MacKinnon I wanted to poke my eye out with a stick, but when you really read it, she's got a point in some respects.

( Wherein I babble about MacKinnon and female sexuality )

Damn you for making me love the other characters so much that I'm not sure if I can quit your damned show.

( spoiler and mass expletive warning here )

Okay, I know Federation was on Jan 1, so shifting it our national day to lose us a public holiday would suck, but even aside from the whole issue of Indigenous Australians (which is a pretty big 'aside', but bear with me), why the fuck do we celebrate some day the ENGLISH did something?

Seriously. If we want to be patriotic, surely we can at least do THAT without having to bring the English into it.

Also, fuck you, media. For making a "can you skinheads fuck off now kthnx?" from the BDO organisers into "OMGFLAGBANOHNOES". You're fucking asshats. And those who should know better who are buying this shit? Yeah, I'm not impressed with you either. Obviously I overestimated you. Because, y'know, stopping racist knuckledraggers from using MY flag as some kind of sick excuse to beat the crap out of people? THAT'S patriotic. So take your false patriotism and shove it up your arse.

Expect a more substantial post late this evening. In much more important news, it's Hottest 100 Day.

$ went home this morning. I was doing pretty well until I got home and decided to plug the iPod I got for Christmas into 'Kyrie. Into the USB ports in the front. No response. Into the USB port at the back. No response. Reset iPod. Try both again. Restart machine. Try both again. Reinstall software, restart machine. Try both again. Burst into tears because apparently my composure rests entirely on whether I can get technology to work. But, well, I think we all know it wasn't really about the tech not working. Though that's really annoying too.

After that, it was off to Liam's for the viewing of TNA Wrestling PPV. The good news? It seems they're heading towards a women's division (they didn't have one). The bad news? The sign of this was Christy Hemme (formerly of WWE) coming out and pulling the infantile, emotional, shrill angle of arguing for women to actually be acknowledged in wrestling.

And now, sleep.

Dear News,
Please stop telling me that Pauline Hanson wants to get back into politics. It makes me a sad panda, followed by a breaking-things panda.
I know ignoring someone until they go away doesn't usually work beyond the second grade (and it didn't really work for me anyway), but dagnabbit given the media has been talking about her and putting on my gorram television with alarming regularity for the last few years, I'm willing to try it again if you are.

Disappointed,
me.


Dear Pauline,
Just SHUT UP. Your dim-witted bile disgusts me, and I knew this whole celebrity angle would lead to this. Just fuck off already, xenophobic assberet.

No love,
me.


Dear ALP,
Okay. I know you hate WorkChoices. That's cool, I'm not fond of it myself. And the Ministry's tactic of "Look! It's lowering unemployment! That fixes everything lalalala we're going to ignore any other criticism lalalala unemploymentunemploymentunemployment" really fucking shits me.
Also, I'm actually pretty pleased you opted for Ruddley, because he's awesome and articulate and actually has a chance at boosting Queensland's numbers and stuff.
But seriously, if you start swapping preferences with Hanson because she's with you on the WorkChoices sucking thing, I'm going to start sending all of you lumps of fucking coal, and possibly copies of alarmist propaganda from the Yellow Peril Days and a reminder that you've already tried this combining Labourism with Racism thing, and how that didn't go so well.

Cautiously hopeful but not particularly optimistic,
me.


Dear Prime Minister,
I now know why the universe has cursed me with no ABC reception for the last 18 months - it's so that I can't watch Question Time unsupervised very often. So anyway, I was watching it in my hotel room the other day, and you were on the 'distract them about WorkChoices sucking by talking about unemployment' path when Rudd asked you about the effect of it on families. I don't remember the exact quote, and I can't be bothered combing through Hansard right now, but it was, I believe, along the lines of 'Under the last ALP government, over a million people were unemployed; that means over a million families were without a breadwinner.'
What. The. Fuck. Polarbear. Are you really in such a fucked up bubble-world that you believe a completely insignificant number of unemployed people in 1996 had an employed family member? Why the fuck do people still believe a word that comes out of your mouth?

Coal for you,
me.

I've been turning this over in my head today, and I finally feel like posting about it.

I had my final lecture for Colonialism and Independence in South East Asia yesterday. Carl's one of those fascinating lecturers where you just feel quite overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in his brain. But that's rather beside the point.

We were talking about Malaysia and Singapore, and the problems they've had with ethnic divisions, particularly between Malays, Chinese and Indians. With reference to Singapore, there was discussion of Lee Kuan Yew's enforcement of multiculturalism, where he decried Malay and Indian "ethnic enclaves" (point of note for those not aware; Singapore has a Chinese majority). His solution was to put everyone in lovely new public housing, but place restrictions on the number of each ethnic minority allowed to live in each housing block. The effect? A Chinese majority in each housing block, to keep those uppity Malays and Indians in check.

Whilst I doubt Western countries would go so far as to legislate that only so many of each ethnic minority is allowed to live in a particular area, the seemingly endless stream of complaints about minorities 'secluding themselves in their own communities' and 'enclaves' and 'ghettos' and such like seem, to me, to come from the same idea. An at least subconscious feeling of discomfort that there are places in our society where whites aren't a visible majority. A failure to understand that maybe people of colour need those spaces and communities sometimes, because all other spaces are dominated by whites. In a community that's 'integrated' the way most whites would consider 'integrated', whites still dominate. Because too many whites would likely perceive a truly integrated community as not integrated but 'overrun by minorities'.

In a related note, I'm tired of white people assuming that anyone speaking a different language in public is one of "those dirty migrants who won't learn English". Unless you look white, in which case everyone praises you for how learned and multicultural you are and how clever you must be for learning another language. No, I'm not bitter or anything. But seriously, more than half the people who've been all "Oh, I could never learn another language, you're so clever" back when my Cantonese skills weren't nearly as deteriorated as they are now, have also trotted out the "dirty migrants who won't learn English properly" trope. And it makes me want to scream and throw things. Because honestly, "Oh but I wouldn't move to another country" only goes so far. Because we don't tell migrants who've learned English that they're so clever. They just get derision when they haven't, or when they struggle. We expect them to do it like it's easy. Not to mention the fact that I've had way too many whites, after praising me for being so clever, withdraw that praise after I mention my mother is Chinese, because then apparently my language skills are because my mother won't integrate and is trying to brainwash me against my Australianness and what does my father think about all this? *beats head against wall*.