Our iPod came up with "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner" as a wake-up song this morning (don't ask, it's... semirandom). But I never can quite parse one of the lyrics, and my brain fills in random words/names for Roland's killer.

For some reason this morning, I filled in that blank with, "That son-of-a-bitch, Edred Thorsson, blew off Roland's head."

...but I know not everybody reads news.

http://news.livejournal.com/117957.html outlines a security breach that happened for about an hour last night. I've already messaged several of you who were hit (it adds four little chunks of Flash to the bottom of the post, edits the post security to Public and may change icons/tags), but I may not have caught everybody. It looks like the only really malicious thing besides the viral editing is that you may see more spam, since it saw your email address during editing even if you normally keep it private.

Finally got around to starting up the No Coast Avengers group at nocoast - anybody is welcome(lacking a coast where you live is recommended), and please pass on the word. I've listed a few things going on in September already (most of which I won't be able to go to) and want to get a critical mass of people over there to centralize some of the do-gooding that goes on already. Everything's more fun in a group, right?

Might try to create a FaceBook auxilliary at some point, but let's see if this part takes off, first...

Rolled out of bed waylate this morning; of course, that probably has to do with not getting to sleep until waylate last night this morning. My brain is in full 'GOgoGogo!' mode with all the D*Con prep going on. I estimate that by the time we get done we'll have put in 100 hours or so on this year's costumes, between the two of us. Of course, they're gonna look awesome, but... dayum. Now I know what happened to August. Of course, a day and a half ago I thought I was nearly done with machine sewing, but there continue to be little edges of projects that pop up (and this isn't really a complaint, because it's a damn sight faster than hand-sewing those parts would have been, even when I do sew the edge of a sleeve to itself). Coats are almost done: pocket flaps on K's, both collars (hand-sew), general addition of trim, and the long cuffs on mine are left. The Agatha Heterodyne project is in good shape with the completion of the dingbot, and I had a brain-spasm the other night that completely rewrote the plan of attack for the waist cincher. Covering the Celtic World Wrestling Champion belt is out (those of you who have seen it will know what I mean), table saws and drill bits are in. Whee! It actually probably would have taken about the same amount of time, as the difficult part is sewing the trim edge and faux buttonholes on, but it's still a lot longer than we'd originally budgeted for. On the other hand, real buttonholes are Sooper Simple with the new machine; it has the Nimbus 3000 of buttonhole feet, which actually measures the button to see how big the hole should be.

Wrist-mounted LEDs may, nay probably will not be happening. Sadness ensues, but unless I get a similar Moment of Inspiration on Wednesday night, there's just not enough time left to do them. Maybe next year...

So, years ago when most of my visits to the Internet were done through the telnet protocol, there was a MUD called Valhalla that hosted an electronic version of the Highlander: The Card Game*. I was enamored of it beyond reason (okay, some reason... I enjoyed both the original film and the TV series a LOT), and got pretty good at the game, taking 9 or 10 heads as I recall in their ongoing tournament-style play. But the game died out due to being too narrow-focus, I guess, and I never got the chance to play in the real world...this was about 96-97, when Magic: The Gathering (no relation) was huge.

*( Cut to describe the basic game )

Fast forward to this week. A random Google search, or something, leads me to a small ProBoard website about the Highlander CCG. Turns out not ONLY has a new company started to put out a "2nd Edition", but they're essentially based at 31st Century Games in Olathe! I'm at ground-bloody zero of game development, and they play locally in at least two FLGSs, not including tournaments.

I am unreasonably, stupidly excited by this. Anybody else who might want to play?

Yesterday's massive, if localized, Shipment of Race-and-Sexuality-Fail by some speculative fiction writers (I'm not linking; they've already got more publicity attention and critique than they can handle, I'm sure) caused several things to click for me regarding the issues of prejudice, -isms, and privilege that have been circling the Internets lately. I kept thinking of writing a post about it, but my brain was too tired and I had too much to do, and I'm still really in the beginning stages of understanding this crap. So instead, today I came across some essays and explanations and attempts at education; for my own information as much as any of yours, I'm collecting them here:

• First and foremost, Mary Anne Mohanraj guest-posted on John Scalzi's blog in a really accessible and straightforward way; here's part two.
• The Angry Black Woman blog, which has a fair amount of guest-writers and a lot of content on recent events, including yesterday's. She also hammered the point home for me about why Persons of Color shouldn't be obligated to teach Clueless White Persons what they're doing wrong: it's exhausting.
• How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism - this one's key to understanding the difference between racism and prejudice, and when to Shut Up and not Defend Yourself. I really twigged to somebody's comment somewhere about the disservice many white liberals did to their kids in the 60s and 70s by telling them to be "colorblind" and All Would be Well. We also got a heaping huge dose of "Racists Are Equivalent to Nazis and Baby-Rapers" which tends to make everybody flip out when accused of doing or saying something racist, even inadvertently.
• Ursula K. LeGuin's comments on the "colorblind" idea, and the whitewashing of the Earthsea miniseries. In particular, "I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does." was instructive of a blindspot I had until fairly recently.
• I Didn't Dream of Dragons, a slightly different take on the idea of Writing the Other.
• deepad's "White People, it's not All About You, but for this post it is" (now crossposted to DreamWidth)
• A really good discussion on why 'tone' arguments are usually counterproductive, from Racism 101.
• Oyate's Books To Avoid (mostly books for kids, but still useful)
• ::edit:: Finally, Justine Larbalestier has good news about the cover of Liar, which was originally whitewashed but now is getting a full redo, even in hardcover. Sometimes, things work out.

Sorry if this got long.

"Living root" bridges being grown in one of the wettest places on Earth..

Courtesy of bipolypagangeek.

We went to go see G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra this weekend, and I can say without reservation that if you liked the comic/cartoon, you'll like the movie (which is, in fact, a live-action cartoon, for all intents and purposes). If you didn't like/get the original, your reaction may be more mixed.

( Was it a good film? )

( Was it a fun film? )

Overall it's an extremely fun, extremely goofy summer movie, which is exactly what I wanted. As featherynscale said, "I've never fist-pumped at a movie this many times before." If you liked the original, this is worth seeing, and definitely on the big-screen. Someone asked about seeing it at the drive-in; my only concern with that would be that much of the dialog is done through face masks, distortion, or intercom/radio gear, so understanding some of it may be difficult without SurroundSound.

Day Zero Flash/Adobe Reader exploit - note that it requires no direct action by the user, just visiting a malicious site (up to and including those ubiquitous Flash ads).

According to solarbird, who I got this from, all O/S's are susceptible until this is fixed. What your computer will allow the vulnerability to execute will vary, of course, but this affects Macs and Linux as well as Windows.