athena25

Gakked from athenegenia 

The BBC have launched a public survey into the representation of LGB characters on its TV shows, and you can fill it in here

Yes. It is snowing.
Yes, the show is going on.

Come along and see us!

*poke*
*poke*
*poke*

To get all of our bloody money back.

In other news, snow.

But did anyway. This week is a quiet week before we gear up to the 33% London Festival next week, which  will have sundry goodies from a vairety of horribly young and horribly talented people. Come and see them.

It's quite funny - I woke up this morning with a strange excited / panicked butterfly sensation. A new year. New things to do. Both excited to do them and nervous about what it might contain and whether I could do it.

Today was, in fact the usual mixed bag.

• Attempting to make cold spaces hot and hot spaces cold. Some messing about on the roof trying to find the cause of various draughts
• Dealing with over a hundred applications for jobs advertised on our website. The theatre job market is very sparse at the moment, good for us, not good for unemployed theatre types
• Rota for January
• Planning staff training
• Helping someone buy potatoes

In the hiatus that is between Christmas and New Year. Had an awesome time in Brighton with erestania , invisible_al , ghostpaw , penguin_worship , flannelcat , plumsbitch , tyrell and sundry other marvellous people who I don't have LJ names for. Bad me.

Busy oscilating between doing very mundane things like laundry, going to the gym and having a bit of a sleep with less mundane things such as continuing to not-date, working on Winter in the Willows which will be awesome and my own projects.

Was Santa good to you all?

One wonders what the point of having world leaders is, if they cannot, in fact, lead the world?

So, we brief them all up, send them off to Copenhagan in their fancy-pants fuel guzzelling planes to try and sort out this whole climate change thing which everyone agrees is really rather important. All on our tax money, of course.

And what do they do? Bicker like school-children, leave in a huff, then point the fingers at the other countries for messing it up. Well done guys. That's exactly the sort of inspiring leadership that will galvinise the world to make much needed changes. don't worry though - it's not as if it's an actual emergency, after all, The Daily Express knows climate change is only a natural process and we shouldn't fuss.

If they were working for an actual business, they would be fired. And they should be fired. But sadly, they work for us, through some old-fashioned and totally un-monitored and unaccountable system, so I'm not sure how we go about doing that. We can protest until we are blue in the face, but it doesn't appear to make a jot of difference. We can sort through our litter into fourteen different piles which end up being shipped to China because the infrastructure isn't there. If we have the cash (because there aren't any real incentives to going green, just some posters printed about how we should do it ourselves because those in charge can't be arsed helping us out) we could install solar panels or double glazing. We could of course, vote them out at the next general election, but we'll just get an ever-so-slightly different bunch of uninterested tossers who only want to feather their nests with moats and ensure that other, wealthy people can have as many moats as they want too.

I'm all for grass-roots movements and individuals taking responsibility and doing their bit. But when it comes to literally world-changing events, I feel that perhaps those in charge should act like it.

Back from Berlin! Actually arrived on Sunday but have been running around trying to do the whole See People Before Christmas thing and still at work (though have done all my actual work, I just don't have any holiday, so will be abusing internet for the next day and a half) I shall bore people I see with my Holiday Snaps and whatnot, in the meantime a quick run down:

Gut!

The DDR museum, Which was the Most Fun Museum Ever, except for Eureka! I pushed loads of buttons and got to pretend to be a member of the Stasi at a mockup listening post, play around in a 1970s flat, drive a Trabi and go yuk at the "fashions" of the time. I'm sure I even learnt something...

The Fernsehturm. I could see this out of my hotel window. This isn't unusual, cos it's the biggest thing for miles and miles around and makes you feel like king of the world. One of the best bits is being able to see the contrast between the style of the buildings on what used to be the East side and the west.

Rammstein live featuring exciting metal music plus fire hoses, exploding baby dolls, firey angel wings, electrical sparks and ticker tape in the colours of the German flag. I danced like a bastard and grinned like a fool. I also attempted to learn the German for "encore" but promptly forgot it in the excitement.

Booze! I sampled gluhwein with amaretto shots and had champagne at the rather posh department store Ka De We with maleghast (thank you!)

Snow. Lots of fluffy white snow falling and making Freisdrichstrasse even prettier with its lit up trees against the dark.

Nicht gut!

The cold. Oh my lord the cold. It went into my bones and didn't come out. It also made it very difficult to do tourist things because I couldn't be outdoors for longer than about twenty mintutes. This meant I didn't manage to see a lot of things I had planned on seeing. On the other hand I ate a lot of cake in coffee shops.

There is something a little lonesome about being by oneself, in a strange city, where one doesn't speak the language. Naturally, I missed him. Which gave me the rather annoying realisation that I *still* miss him and will probably do so for a while yet. Pootles.

So, the lovely ladies in our Arts Ed department have been working with Highshore School on a joint project. I've just been into the auditorium to witness the results, along with some other school kids and parents. There was narry a Star of Bethlehem nor Baby Jesus in sight and I can't remember another school show that I have ever seen that actually made me grin, much less feel full of the joys of the season.

The show was The Great Dock Strike of 1889. Oh yes. Written by the performers themselves and based on their own research into the period from trips to museums it is one of the better bits of historical theatre I have seen, including shows by "grown-ups". And it had heart. Real heart. Not just cos mums and dads were in the audience (a few were, but actually only 3 or 4, most of the audience was their peers from the school) but because it was a real bit of theatre that they owned, a story that they told.

It's the Pied Piper of Hamlin with the little kids tomorrow...

So, I went home this weekend because I will be having Christmas in Brighton this year (woo! yay!) and needed to see the folks to drop off presents and to be generally festive in a non-festive way. The way things are going I might attempt to do things like this in the future. It's funny, I love seeing my folks. Except at Christmas. This is the one day of the year guaranteed to become a Voyage Up Stress Mountain, from arrangements of who will be where doing what, through to cooking times and arguments stemming from having both myself and my brother in the kitchen, attempting to cook the Tastiest Thing Ever. And add onto that the fact that Christmas is meant to be a time of peace, joy and goodwill to the world, meaning that the whole thing is a pressurised, crazy mad dash to making sure that everyone is having Fun With The Family.

All in all, best avoided, and substituted for this weekend's visit, which included a trip to a couple of foodie markets and a valuable lesson. Whilst there is only one true cheese in Lancashire, there are about 4,000 varieties of it, so those people who think that picking up "Lancashire Cheese" is a simple matter have not witnessed the amount of dairy products I sampled. In the end I got three different ones.* We watched Merlin, went out for dinner and generally had a lovely relaxing time. I opened some presents on Sunday morning (my mum wanted to check that things fit / were the right thing) and gave my folks some gifts to open on Christmas Day. No-one got annoyed about turkey.

The only one downside to the weekend was that we currently have a depressed cat. It was one of a pair (brother and sister) got from a rescue shelter around 12 years ago. The male cat died three weeks ago and since then the female has been following my parents around, howling. Practically continuously. From getting up to going to sleep. Aside from being very sad, it is also a little annoying. The suggested remedies include "buy a new cat" (mum's preferred option), waiting it out (dad's preferred option) and some sort of cat therapy (crazy internet option). Poor thing.


* This is much the same as the Lancashire Hot Pot. There is no one recipe, god-forbid, but instead as many as there are people who make it. Needless to say, each one is both genuine and The Correct One.

Something - Date two went well. Was home by 11pm. All very gentlemanly.

Nothing - I still have a rash on my face which has spread a little to other bits of my face.

This is getting strange. A second-in-a-row post that isn't handwringing or just generally blah. December appears to be treating me better than November. Good December, you shall have a biscuit. So, where to begin?

Friday - had an actual proper date. With dinner and drinks and everything. It was good, I did not embarras myself (overmuch) he seemed to take LARP in his stride with only a mildly raised eyebrow "So... you're an elf?". On the minus side, he's from Yorkshire. But my Mum said this is ok as long as he is taller than me and gainfully employed (check, check). I think she sizes every man I ever meet up in these terms. There are even plans for a second date. Which may even be tonight. Needless to say I have developed a Mysterious Rash on my face (thanks sensitive skin!) but hopefully some judicious application of antihistamines and savlon will get rid of the worst.

Spent the rest of the weekend in Brighton with invisible_al and erestania where there was curry, red wine, Brighton Below, gin, discussions about Christmas celebrations, Maelstrom musings and lots of other things. The game itself was a lot of fun, hurrah for penguin_worship joining me in House Roe (you can tell we are good and trustworthy, because we wear these masks all the time) for a variety of shenanigans, machiavellian manoeuvres and a hint of an unsuitable marriage and I managed to achieve two of my three IC goals. I am also, apparently, scary. I'm chalking that all up as a win.

Finally, there was the second bit of Changeling on Monday, which seemed to go well enough. I still don't know the mechanics, not everyone is up-to-speed with their character skills and abilities (including me...) so we are doing a lot of narration based play, which kind of works and kind of doesn't. It kind of works because it's a good way of creating a rich environment and it feels more like an inclusive, exploratory way of playing. It kind of doesn't because not all players are chipping in equally - maybe because people were a bit tired or aren't yet into the swing of things. Not rolling dice makes it feel less of a game and more like story-telling, which I generally like, but think that for tension and more adventure/mystery style play later on (this was a meet the characters type session) I'm going to have to put in more "roll wits plus badgers" type mechanics. That said, I have only gently introduced the merest whisper of plot and everyone is a new arrival IC so it's still perfectly within character for things to be a bit up in the air. I'm concerned about the level of balance between giving enough time for people to get into their characters and for their characters to understand their own skills, abilities and magic, whilst avoiding having games that are effectively IC therapy sessions / exposition.

Trying to get various bits of work out of the way before I go home this weekend (bearing gifts, returning with other gifts and Lancastrian delicacies) then Berlin a week tomorrow. I have yet to manage to do any Christmas shopping, so am going to make a bombing run at the shops tonight, pre-potential-date which should see me in a joy-to-the-world mood by the end of it all. Litmus test - if he's happy to see me with a rash on my face and post-shopping hatred, then he's one of the good guys.

In the meantime, another fun thing.

A Star Trek corset, pinged to me by kangeiko

So, yesterday it was officially announced that I will be promoted to Theatre Manager. I am very excited and very happy, it's exactly where I wanted to be career-wise at this point in time, plus it's a gamble that paid off - leaving the corporate world to go do something I really wanted to do. Work-wise I carry on doing the stuff I have been doing, but we with an actual title and proper responsibility. There will also be some evening work involved, but that's no biggy. I feel all feather-puffed up and proud.

Anyway, I was so excited and so happy that I got very drunk last night, ending up in Garlic and Shots with some sort of condensed Bloody Mary and a beer chaser contemplating (fairly incoherently by this stage) the fact that the last train home had well and truly departed. So I ended up in sleeping at someone else's house and am currently wearing the same clothes as yesterday with a hangover so violent that I still can't eat anything without throwing up. Which I have done. Three times now.

But I'm still grinning.

Three hours of my life I will not get back. Three hours. I could have baked a cake, had a nice nap or plotted the destruction of whoever wrote that ghastly script.

Anyhow... If I can stop other people going by writing this then I will feel a little better.

So. Let's be fair. What is good about this film? Um. Well, there are some good special effects of Things Getting Blown Up and The World Ending. That is basically it.

What is bad? Lots. Oodles. Many. I'm going to pick out the ones that really annoyed me.

Portrayal of female characters - one day, one day, Hollywood writers will leave Hollywood and meet some Real Women. They will be scared, confused and intimidated. They will learn that actual women are just as varied and complex as men. They will learn (shockingly) that there are at least as many women in the world as men, if not a little bit more. They will learn that women talk about things that aren't babies or the men in their lives. They will learn that women are just as capable of doing the following things: driving, flying planes, saving people's lives, making stirring speeches, swimming underwater. They will learn that women do not automatically just scream and look helpless when people are in danger. Especially when those people are their own children*. They will learn that "femininity" is an optional aspect of being a woman. They will learn many other options of "being a woman" that are not covered by having breasts and a pretty face. They will learn that women are not merely empty vessels serving only as metaphors for empathy, "the family", the milk of human kindness. Women do not exist to prove that men are attractive, heroic and heterosexual, in fact, women still exist even when the men around them are ugly, cowardly or gay. They will learn that women do not do things just because of their dead fathers. Until that day, we get pathetic pappy female characters like the ones in this film who make me want to punch things.

America as normative - I'm not calling the film "racist" but.... It's an American film and that means that Americans are presented as the bestest. They get to have personalities and interesting interactions. When characters from "Not America" as I shall term this small ethnic grouping are present they are grossly stereotyped according to nationality / culture. The token Brit is an old white male in thick bottle specs who is a science expert of some description (but not as cool or dynamic as our cool and dynamic hero) and calls everyone "dear boy". The Russian guy is an evil oligarch ex-boxer. The chinese are seperated into "good" (Tibetan monk and his grandparents) and "bad" (representatives of the army). It wasn't a film about the End of The World. It was a film about The End of America (with some other people in it too).

Also, and I curse myself for not realising this, but kudos to kangeiko who did - Avatar is basically just a fancy-pants overly expensive re-make of FernGully. It also looks like it has post-colonial health warnings all over it (white officers leading helpless natives to victory, anyone?) I may be being cruel, but I haven't forgiven that man for Titanic - my grandfather worked on A Night To Remember, which is vastly superior in all respects.

* I rarely like to pull the "maternal instinct" card because it makes me shudder, but, for those women who choose to have children, I doubt that they would stand stock still when that child was in danger.

Of course, after a weekend of it totally bucketing it down it is now blue skied and sunny of a Monday afternoon. Still bloody freezing. The office heating is left off over the weekend (very sensible financial and environmental precaution) and takes a good run up and a downhill dash to become even tepid before 4pm.

Went to a meet-up on Friday with tyrell which was good but odd because I was subjected to strange masculine behaviours (not tyrell he's a grown up) that I later realised were chat-up lines or, potentially, mating rituals from some semi-human sub-species which had me confused with one of his kind. I wasn't looking at him, he was in my eyeline, accidently. But he honed in on it anyway, despite my attempts at blank, shark eyes. If you could draw the exact opposite of things that I am attracted to, you'd end up with him. A fat-faced man with a curl of greased hair. In a bad suit. He was jabbering on in a wide-boy accent about iphones, having clocked the fact that I had one (and was actually talking to someone else about it) and because he had one therefore we must have stuff in common. "yeah, those apps are rubbish, I was on facebook but then people could contact me and they were fuckers and I thought what's the point..." Uh-huh. He keeps talking. I keep paying no attention. He looks at my pint, then looks at the chocolate on the table, then looks at me. Pause. "You won't be able to do more of that once you are past 30" I blink. It's possible he's just making noises, but he is looking at me, and gesturing at the items. He carries on: "You'll lose your figure." I think he is attempting to endear me to him on the grounds of making me so fearful for impending beer-and-chocolate waist exansion that he might look like a good option. I didn't really have anything to say. I could have tried to re-educate him, but I don't think I have enough time, or that the end result would be worth anything much.

Someone else bobs in to view, he's about twelve. With a long blond pony tail, an expression of intense earnestness and chipped teeth. He radiates untapped innocence. And keeness. The thing he is keen in, appears to be, well, everything that I am also keen on. How exciting. He spots my Ankh earrings. He has just been at witchfest. He is a shaman with a coven. And stuff. Oh yes. And did a ritual on Halloween (his word, not mine) that was so cool he then saw a figure in a black hood. On Halloween. How unexpected. Fortunately he was also a smoker and so needed to go for a cigarette in the wake of my total lack of response.

On the plus side, there were drinks, chocolate and people I hadn't seen in a while. On the downside, I completely wigged out on Saturday and had to spend most of the day in bed before being gently persuaded to leave the house by kangeiko then repeatedly assured (in the manner of an idiot) by both her and queenspanky that no, of course I was going to be ok, and that I will find someone who is right for me and not a total spanner and that I won't suddenly become the size of Mars this time next year and be forced into marriage to a rhino in badly fitting pinstripe.

Sunday was spent in a sugar haze roleplaying (badly) through alasdair 's Unknown Armies game (sorry) and watching Mad Men.

Right. Now everyone needs to sit down and take a big, deep breath. Because the Times (I blame Murdoch) has just made me want to go ballistic. It's a little article, calling for Men's Lib.

That's right. Men's Lib. Because men, you see, are second class citizens. Abused, under-rated, made fools of and generally in need of our help and support. Whilst, of course, earning more money and carrying around an invisible bag of privilige that is so big and so invisible that they appear to have forgotten about it.. The whole thing has left a massively bad taste in my mouth, reminding me of other such ridiculous comments such as how all "english" people are being pushed out by foreigners leaving the "indigenous population" as an underclass. Sure thing....

You see, as Penny Red aptly puts it. Just because bad stuff happens to privileged groups, doesn't stop them from being privileged. Additionally, the "man as second class citizen" whether as foolish foil in an advert or crumpet in a TV series is notable because of its exceptionalism. The vast majority of protrayals of men in the media is still as normative (i.e. the male is the norm, the female is the exception) sensible, fully clothed, serious and taken seriously. Just as a few court cases for sexism in the city will not overturn the lad's culture of the finance district, nor will a smattering of remarks in the office suddenly create an entire generation of men who work in typing pools and preen for the attention of dominant females. One male torso bared on a perfume ad does not suddenly make all the men in the world into consumables dedicated only for the delectation of women. Trust me on this..

But you cannot have your cake and eat it. And you certainly can't sit on top of a pile of hundreds of years of privilige and power, still alive and kicking in every aspect of society and also ask for my sympathy. Here's why. You cannot say that Page 3 is ok and an acceptable part of daily life and then complain that topless men on a poster are somehow unfair. You can't have the Pirelli calendar without Gucci underwear ads. You can't compliment a woman on her legs as you walk to work and then feel threatened when a woman says you have a nice bum. After all, she's only being "friendly"... The shoe is not so comfy on the other foot, is it? Especially with those high heels. But hey, they are meant to make you empowered! Yeah! That's it - see those boys on the billboard flashing their tight jeans - those jeans will make you empowered. Uh-huh.

Is turnabout fair play? No, because then we will be in a terrible eye-for-an-eye situation and we'll all be horribly messed up. But there is a balance to be struck. I am not saying that it's ok for men to be abused, to be made to feel powerless or unhappy because of thoughtless comments or actions. Of course it isn't. Neither am I saying that if a man feels he is subject to sexual harrassment he should have no legal (or social) recourse - of course he should. That's part of the programme. That no-one should feel hampered by their gender at all.

Right. So as an early Christmas present to me (and cos my laptop is going the way of the dinosaurs - slow, clunky and apt to freeze) I have bought one of these. Now, given that this isn't exactly the most powerful machine in the universe and because one of the reasons I got it was for speed + portability, I don't want to slow it down by installing photoshop. Also, I don't need photoshop (no, seriously, I don't). What I need is a programme that will crop, resize proportionally and do some basic level adjustments to photos I've taken with my iphone so I can upload them to the web from the notebook. Ideally I would like this programme to be free, but don't mind paying a little bit if it's easy, doesn't eat space on a computer or muck around endlessly updating when you are trying to do some work (Adobe, I'm looking at you here).

Thoughts?

gakked from raggedhalo

( Meme - all about me. )

I don't often praise the red tops. In fact, I think I've done it, um, never. But there's a first time for everything, so here goes. I saw the article over the shoulder of someone on the tube yesterday and it caught my eye as standing out from the "celeb" gossip and other associated nonsense. How to Buy No. 10. A good exercise in fact finding - where is that money going and what are the likely results for the general election. It was followed up by an article on how Tory policy is likely to benefit rich people (shock! horror! gasps of amazement!) So far so good - the Mirror is standing firm by its Labour principles and doing a decent bit of digging on the guys that almost every other newspaper has laid back and opened its legs to as the Next Big Thing.

Now here's the rub. When confronted with this by a Mirror reporter and asked for comment, our dear David (he of the rolled up shirt sleeves and rushed visits to irritate flooded folk in Cumbria) makes a rather telling remark, asking why she didn't go and work for an indepenent newspaper.

Right. Because political leanings in media publications are only fun if they are on your side. As Roy Greenslade points out, Mr Cameron has some nerve criticising the independence of a newspaper whilst lapping up the support of Murdoch's Evil Empire. So now the only "independent" opinion is one which supports the Tory party blindly?

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

The sky is bright blue, illuminated by the sun which yields a feeble warmth. A reminder that the light has a physical effect - that it can touch us, that it remembers us. Even in winter when summer is memory held deep in the earth and now, in the sky. It doesn't quite take the edge off the cold however - the wind is picking up now - the clear skies are mercifully clear of rain and the season is showing itself as clear, hard and sharp around the edges. I can feel it about my face and fingers - reminding me to wrap up warm, stay inside, wear a vest, eat my vitamins. Nagging wind.

Days are short, almost an afterthought. It's the evenings and nights that matter now. Deep blues fade to purple and into the black infinite. Cityscapes look like science fiction sets of other worlds - lit up and gleaming with neon pride. I like watching people navigate this curious, alien landscape: brave explorers wrapped up warm against the inhospitable environment. I lurk behind glass. Mission control in a coffee bar with large windows. They are lit up for me, as I sit indoors, tracking their movements with a watchful eye. Trying to work out what wonders they have discovered out there in the cold, what new, fleeting mysteries and messages have arrived with the changing weather.

Each season tells a story. Each day writes something different upon the urban landscape and we sail through it, mostly oblivious. Barely touching the surface of the city in winter. Only the very striking reaches out to us - a sudden frost or snowfall, perhaps. We miss the subtler signs. The last few leaves, brown and dead but still clinging to the trees, unable to let go. The scrape of cloud in the blue like chalky outlines. Hands in a glove, warm and safe.