VISIT GAYLE MADWIN'S JOURNAL
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| Gayle Madwin's Friends VISIT GAYLE MADWIN'S JOURNAL |
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| Sunday, 18 May 2008 | ||
blahflowers
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blahflowers 9:44pm | |
| A Series of Pipes. Brighton Beach by Old Pier Speak Your Mind | ||
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laurenhat
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laurenhat 3:28pm | |
| [local] boots? I am looking for some knee-high boots that lace up (probably black). I'd like something that could work for both costumey stuff (steampunky/Victorian/gothy/clubbing) and just for general boot-y awesomeness. I don't want much of a heel if possible (I am plenty tall enough already, and I tend to teeter and fall over rather comically when in heels). I'm clueless about where to find such things. Any recommendations about where to go shopping for boots that might fit my requirements in the Boston area? Thanks! 3 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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susanstinson
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susanstinson 2:38pm | |
| Austin Amtrak Station Two women, both very young. One fat and Latina, getting on the train; one skinny, butchish and white, with a hoop in her lip, bringing all the luggage. As we waited on the platform in the dark after the train was announced five minutes away (two hours late). The thin woman was all over her friend, whispering and hugging, while the other one, much more reserved, tried not to give anything away. I heard the thin woman say, "I couldn't have peed faster if I were a boy." There was a palpable thrill in her voice as she said "boy," and she grinned at me after she said it. Before they came, I was waiting outside on a bench in warm wind. Local cabdrivers seemed to hang out there having their supper inside the station with Jared from the ticket counter, watching tapes of old roasts of Bob Hope and Ronald Reagan on a tv high on the wall. I saw three people wait for the last minute to run across the tracks in front of a freight train. When I got up and walked around a little, I could see, down an abrupt hill, a lit window view from the backside of a building of people doing martial arts. In another window, a man piled up long foam tubes in a pool while a woman and a little girl swam in the water around him. I called my brother in Colorado, who was driving his children home, and told him about what I could see in the windows, and he said, "Edward Hopper for the twenty first century." I told him that the train had been due in at seven pm (it was almost nine), and that I wouldn't be to Alpine until 1:30 the next afternoon. He said, "Remember, this is the very same train that newlywed Elizabeth Taylor was on in Giant when she said to Rock Hudson, 'We've been traveling so long, when are we going to get to your ranch?' and he says, 'Honey, we've been on my ranch for the last two days!'" My brother said that every train ride was a narrative, and he wanted to hear the middle and the end of this one. 2 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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coffeeandink
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coffeeandink 2:20pm | |
| New fandoms are fun My EEE was so much faster and more satisfactory than my six-year-old laptop that I, um, went out and bought a new computer. The slowness I had blamed on my wireless connection was in fact mostly due to my aging and overworked processor. Who knew? ObPolitics: My only regret is that it will look like the "economic stimulus" checks are workable economic planning rather than a cynical grasp for short-term gain by evil oligarchs stripping funds from much-needed social services and physical infrastructure. Never fear: I still abominate you and all your works, BushII! Findings so far: Vista is evil. Thank goodness my office has been putting off switching to it. I managed to find a theme that mimicks the XP interface, but ironically find it much harder to customize the colors than it was in XP. I am sure I will discover how to fix this eventually, but in the meantime I have wasted many minutes cursing out the moron who thought that transparent title bars were a good idea. There must be a way to hook up my EEE and my new computer directly and/or my old laptop, so that each computer reads the other one or two as external hard drives, but nothing in my large and haphazard collection of cords and wires is suficient. Right now I am having to transfer files from one computer to the external backup drive to another computer. It is laborious, in this idiotically manual faux-Victorian sort of way. In other news, I am excited to see that other people are already plotting out their Wiscon program schedules. It makes me feel less silly about putting panel possibilities into a Google docs spreadsheet. This is only to bide my time until the actual program, of course, which I will mark up with hi-lighter pens if I remember to bring them. Does anyone know of a good open source database program? So far Microsoft Access is the sole survivor of the Office suite in my house. I have a book database to keep up. I don't know what to do with all this hard disk space, people! It's so luxurious! 4 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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orangebeaver
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orangebeaver 1:39pm | |
| The Seven Wonders of the Fortean World Last July a bunch of learned people came out with a new list of the Seven Wonders of the World. The original Seven Wonders of the World (all in the ancient world) are all gone, (places like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Alexandria Lighthouse) except for the Pyramids. I guess the Pyramids are grandfathered in, but would be considered the "eighth wonder". The more modern Seven Wonders of the World are, according to whomever the hell they were: (In no order) 1. Chichen Itza, Mexico 2. Christ Redeemer statue, Brazil 3. The Colosseum, Italy 4. Taj Mahal, India 5. Petra, Jordan 6. The Great Wall of China 7. Machu Picchu, Peru Meanwhile, in order to keep everything magical and Fortean, the Charles Fort Institute decided to pick the Seven Wonders of the Fortean World; starting with 79 nominations, they were able through voting and several ballots to get it down to seven Fortean enigmas or mysteries. Not making the cut were the Tunguska event in Siberia, Fatima, Area 51 and the whole Rennes-le-Chateau/Da Vinci Code/Mary Magdalene had a kid silly-goose nonsense. The final seven in no order: 1. BIGFOOT/YETI--Arthur C. Clarke once said if he had $100 to bet on the existence of undiscovered hominids in the world, he would put 25 bucks on the Yeti, five on Bigfoot and keep the rest for himself. 2. THE SHROUD OF TURIN 3. THE PIRI REIS MAP-A map dated 1513 in a museum in Istanbul by an Ottoman admiral, apparently copied from an earlier map; shows Antarctica before its discovery, and free of ice, something that hasn't occurred for the last 6,000 years. Prehistory is stranger than people think. 4. UFOS-Hey, what can I say? Larry King digs it. 5. OAK ISLAND-Off Nova Scotia. 6. CROP CIRCLES 7. THE NAZCA LINES, PERU-In my opinion, these should be on the non-Fortean list of the Seven Wonders of the World. Mood: awake 4 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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ra_sar
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ra_sar 10:47am | |
| Of course... I spent most of the past two weeks completely UN-bored doing nothing, when I was supposed to be doing really important things, and now that I have had nothing to do for the past (*checks watch*) hour and fifteen minutes I'm going a bit batty with boredom doing nothing. Can't tell you if it's just the fact that I'm home with the family in Toronto, or the fact that I'm psychotic, but... ::twitch:: Speak Your Mind | ||
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the_lj_herald
[ljnewsmod posting in the_lj_herald] |
the_lj_herald 5:47am | |
On hiatus for a week![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} the_lj_herald will be on hiatus from Sunday, May 18th to Sunday, May 25th.A reminder: The polls for the Advisory Board elections will be open from May 22nd to May 29th in lj_election_en and lj_election_ru.To get your news fix in the mean time: ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/newsinfo.gif){kind=small} news, lj_biz, lj_2008, lj_policy for general news.lj_releases for new releases.Support for new issues. lj_maintenance for maintenance events.Status and the LJ Refuge if LJ is slow or down. | ||
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orangebeaver
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orangebeaver 6:49am | |
| -Yawnnnn...- Ho-hum. Think I'll do something non-controversial, like make a joke about someone trying to shoot Barack Obama or maybe use the Koran as target practice... -Yawnnnn- Why are we stuck in the same country with the South? Mood:  confused6 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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doonesburyfeed
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doonesburyfeed 8:06am | |
| Doonesbury for 2008/05/18 Speak Your Mind | ||
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erdbeermund
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erdbeermund 5:02am | |
| Camille Pagllia's Top 10 Disco Tracks LIST #2: The World's Top 10 Disco Classics 1. Irene Cara, "Flashdance" (Giorgio Moroder) 2. Donna Summer, "Rumour Has It" (Giorgio Moroder) 3. Jackie Moore, "This Time, Baby" 4. Sylvester, "Stars" 5. Lime, "Angel Eyes" 6. Machine, "There But For the Grace of God" 7. Evelyn Champagne King, "Shame" 8. Pamala Stanley, "Coming Out of Hiding" 9. Gloria Estefan's cover of Vickie Sue Robinson's "Turn the Beat Around" 10. Madonna, "Deeper and Deeper from her website I've been reading Vamps & Tramps: New Essays from 1994. I've been kind of thinking that much of the controversial things she said in the early 90s may have just been before their time. I guess once I realized that much of the writing she does is her having fun, being funny or being provocative, I opened up a little to what she had to say. It's amazing to me that she hasn't published a book of essays since 1994. I mean, she must have published other articles than the Salon.com column or her book on poetry in the intervening 14 years. I should add the caveat that while much of what she's had to say has been before its time some of it remains kind of out there. :-) Which reminds me that after reading Political Fictions I was curious to see what Joan Didion had to say about the Bush administration, or even the current primary or state of the nation or what have you, but all I could find was an essay on Terri Schiavo and an essay on Dick Cheney which I did not cough up money to read online. I did however read her interview from 2006 or so from the Paris Review and that was all right. 1 Spoken Mind | Speak Your Mind | ||
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nikolasco
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nikolasco 4:06am | |
Tweets for Today
Speak Your Mind | ||
| Saturday, 17 May 2008 | ||
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jeremytblack
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jeremytblack 8:01pm | |
| Marriage, Gay or Otherwise Why can't I make myself care about this monumental ruling of the Supreme Court of the State of California? I mean care deeply? Care personally? ( Read more... ) Mood:  hopefulMusic: traffic from Huntington Drive 15 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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heron61
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heron61 10:56pm | |
| Rail journey and the last day Today was a trip on the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, it was impressively scenic, but I'm particularly interested in scenic vistas. Also, while Durango is a mildly interesting place, Silverton is a tiny ex mining town that has become an impoverished tourist horror. All in all, a long and very dull day - the train jostled enough that reading was impossible. However, tomorrow (far too early) we head for home. teaotter also made a very short post mostly consisting of a few of her better and odder photos.Mood:  exhausted1 Spoken Mind | Speak Your Mind | ||
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kk0isonlymyname
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kk0isonlymyname 11:05pm | |
| Some Kate Millett, it's been a while '...for on every hand, in the media and in the culture both high and low, men today have come to see the terrible specter of the “castrating female” all about them, their paranoiac delusions are taken for social fact. Having in a confused way associated his genitals with his power, the male now bellows in physical pain and true hysteria every time his social and political prerogatives are threatened. [...] The Story of O tells it like it is about masculine phantasy better than does Romeo and Juliet. So does the Playboy, chortling over the con-game he has played on that Rabbit; he dreams of screwing the Bunny, or woman reduced to a meek and docile animal toy. [...] The device of making her both virgin and mother not only excites admiration for its ingenuity but astonishment at its perfection of effect – here is divine or nearly divine woman completely relieved of that insidious sexuality by which woman herself has always been defined. [...] For so strong is the hold of the Christian assumption through Eve and other notable exempla that the “evil” of sex was introduced via the female alone – that today even Women think of Women when they think of sex, sexiness, sex objects, sexuality and sex symbols – a state of rather surprising paradox in a society which rigidly enforces heterosexuality for women.' From here. This last one is so astute I am in awe. Kate Millett has had an enormous impact on me. I read her book Sexual Politics when I was 16, and it illuminated my personal experience like nothing before it: it allowed me to see how history and context effect humor, myth, language and behavior; it was the first time I had really considered what structure meant, and the possibility that individual action is constrained in a systematic way by social structure. What some guy once referred to as the 'sociological imagination' has been possessed and conveyed by feminists since before sociology was a distinct discipline. I can't recall any other piece of writing that has been as illuminating and revolutionizing to me as Sexual Politics. An added advantage to the book is that it had excerpts from John Stuart Mill; and thus I discovered my favorite philosopher. I enjoyed the quotes so much I somehow stumbled about (I wasn't used to references, bibliographies or the internet in those days) and found The Subjection of Women online a couple of months later. The excitement was too much to bear. Needless to say I infinitely prefer John Stuart to Kate Millett, but the latter came first, and I will always see reading her book as my intellectual 'first time'. Mood:  feminist-y3 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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electronblue
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electronblue 10:57pm | |
| I think Skittles taste better in Canada. 1 Spoken Mind | Speak Your Mind | ||
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andyleggett
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andyleggett 7:38pm | |
| 446: Crazy Time... I've been sleeping most of my last days at Whittier away and lovin' it... But it's getting a bit more sweltering, and sleeping is a sweaty business when you're air-conditioning-less. But I know when I get back to Sac, it's gonna be even *hotter*... Did I mention yet? I'm ready to be home. I dove into doing all this stuff this semester, and did a good job of pushing it back down, but the homesickness is back in full force and I'm a girl with a plan... See, I'm planning on doing all this stuff, right? Getting out and into Sacramento culture, so I can soak it all up before I come back down here. Andy needs to get faaaabulous! And me and Laura got awful fabulous last night. We weren't even doing anything... We drove out to find something to eat, and it seems like everyone had turned off their icecream machines, but we still moving around to the beat and generally acting like we were drunk. It was *awesome*. ;D Oh, and then I had my AICH2 final today... At 8. A.M. It went a lot better than I was dreading (I mean, I don't think by 'moderate essay' they meant a big 10 page thing, in one of those little blue books, but anywho...) and I think I'll be studying for the other two tonight. I can't wait to get back home, though. I'm already gone mentally. I'll be sure to keep y'all up to date on everything I'll be doing. In the meantime, I'm counting down the 72 hours until I am *back*, baby, BACK. Mood:  excited2 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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quixotic
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quixotic 9:42pm | |
| graduation! today was my graduation! yay! things have been kind of crazy over here since my family came in on thursday, but good crazy. i've eaten entirely too much but that's okay. besides, i'm getting my wisdom teeth out on monday, so i should do that while i can.. hehe. ;) also, monica and staticvoidute got me a playstation 2 for my graduation (i know, i'm really behind the times), so hopefully i won't waste too much time playing guitar hero and mortal kombat. i think i might just go play guitar hero right now.14 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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iamsab
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iamsab 6:48pm | |
| dw: "the unicorn and the thingy" Hey, so, that Doctor Who show, huh? Yeah. ( spoilers for tonight's ep; do not read ) 2 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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ishidashipper
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ishidashipper 9:25pm | |
| Gender, happy-making videos, and sodden cats. ( Contrast and compare. ) I am kind of cranky today! This is a little weird, as I am not usually a cranky person- not the kind of cranky I am today, anyway, not the kind of cranky where I snap at people. I APOLOGIZE, WORLD, FOR BEING SNAPPISH. I BLAME IT ON GETTING WET AT THE BUS STOP. To pull myself out of my crankiness, I have been watching videos that make me feel better. My Chemical Romance plays D&D. "I swing it around to see if it's MAGICAL!" (The only thing that could possibly be better than this: actual video footage of Gerard and Patrick playing Warhammer.) A Pixar short called "Lifted"! This is pretty much exactly how my driving test is going to go, except I'm not an alien and I won't even get a helmet. Beluga whales! Blowin' bubbles and swimmin' upside down! If you don't smile when you see this you probably have no soul. Oh, Elisa Jordana. Your music is terrible, your dancing is worse, but at least I have the comfort of knowing I will always, always be more self-aware than you. And now I need to go fish my weeliest cat out of the toilet. Mood:  alien baby stomach cramps.Music: The Hush Sound- The Boys Are Too Refined 14 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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renenet
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renenet 6:58pm | |
| Hi. OMG! I worked hard to get here. Stopped off at the restaurant to pick up my carry-out order, arrived home to find a car parked in my space behind my building. Sigh. Drove around the block to park in front of my building. Got a spot right in front. Tossed a dime in the meter to carry me to 6pm when metered parking ends. Grabbed up all my shit and headed in through the battered main entrance (the firefighters busted through the door even though it was open when they responded to the fire last week) and into my apartment to find my phone ringing. It was the restaurant; they'd given me the wrong order. Oops! I could get back there within about ten minutes, I told the very nice man when he asked. Back out, dinner exchanged. Now I am sitting in front of the box fan in shorts and tank top, enjoying my declicious chicken tikka masala while I watch Wednesday night's Red Wings game! In short, me=HAPPY! :D 1 Spoken Mind | Speak Your Mind | ||
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renenet
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renenet 4:10pm | |
| Hello. Here's another exciting (for very loose values of the term) installment in the life of ME, your narrator. Fans are nice. I mean, really nice. Oh, not you guys! Although, yes, you guys, too. But I'm talking fans that blow air to cool you. It's not that warm here, but this big, old building (because, lo, I am at WORK because this is my life) is a transitional weather HVAC nightmare, so this little fan at my desk is currently my best friend on the planet. I did some cool work things today that I'm not going to take the time to tell you about. Then, on break, I ordered myself all three seasons of Arrested Development from Amazon for $46, along with several movies that I have been meaning to purchase, such as Hard Core Logo (What? I'm deficient! I've always gotten it from the library when I wanted to watch it in the past!) and Shaun of the Dead (OMG, I'm *so* deficient! I've never seen Shaun of the Dead and I want to SO BADLY!). You know, since I was buying stuff. I had to switch over to deepdiscount.com to purchase Hot Fuzz because it was a couple bucks cheaper over there. La la la, buying DVDs I never watch. I'm going to need to buy a DVD shelving unit soon. My built in shelves in the hallway are filling up! In other (actually exciting) news, I have made plans to meet up with heresluck to hear a band play this summer. Hey, h.l! I may be able to swing a five-day weekend (Friday to Tuesday) at that time. Want to do more than just the show? Like, um, I don't know...I could come all the way out to your place for that weekend? Or we could just take an extra day in the city to hang out doing I have NO IDEA what. Or we can just stick to the show. Let's talk.I'm thinking that there needs to be Indian food on my way home. Tomorrow (and possibly tonight) there should be catching up on hockey. (I am so deficient! I never make time to watch ANYTHING!) I also have miscellaneous other stuff to watch, like Supernatural and Doctor Who and massive amounts of Battlestar Galactica. Oh! And I have Vividcon things to do. OMFG! OK, no panicking until tomorrow. Chicken tikka masala will make it all better! 2 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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iamsab
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iamsab 1:30pm | |
| your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui In an altogether expected turn of events my reading of Harold Bloom on Hamlet has turned into, whoops, now Sab's writing Slings & Arrows fic. Actually, I think we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that it'll be Geoffrey Tennant's Hamlet I'm obsessing about for the foreseeable, and not that other Tennant. *whew* (Oh and I found two S&A ficlets I didn't even remember writing, when I was searching my gmail for "Tennant" and "Hamlet." I posted them to the Sabrary for posterity.) ETA: Was just stricken with the terrifying thought of David Tennant having a nervous breakdown after three and a half performances. My heart stopped in my chest for a second. ETA, again: No, seriously, though. Think about it. /palpitates // 3 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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iamsab
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iamsab 11:51am | |
| two LJ questions 1. Is there any way to browse only comments I've left in other journals and comms? Which is to say, I want to find a particular thing from about two years ago that got posted to an LJ comm; I know I commented on the entry so it would be much easier for me to browse my comments than to browse the entire LJ... yes? No? 2. If I use certain tags only on private/flocked posts, will those TAGS be visible in my tag cloud to people not on the filters that see the posts with those tags? // Thank you, and have a pleasant afternoon. 10 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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ariiadne
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ariiadne 11:43am | |
| wedding excitement Ha ha, we're totally renting purple tablecloths for the tables at the reception. This makes me unreasonably happy: I thought we'd only have white to choose from. YESSSS. Apparently we do have "wedding colors" after all!* This wedding is going to rock hardcore. OH OH OH, and also? With the whole amazingly wonderful gay marriage legalization last week? We read that there's a 30 day waiting period for new licenses after the change, and do you know where that puts the first legal day for same sex marriages? June 14th! What a fantastic wonderful beautiful day to share. Hopefully we read that information right. =D *When Colin was talking to his dad and his dad's wife Cindy a few weeks ago, her first question about the wedding was, "What are your colors?" To which we only had blank stares as an answer, at the time. I guess it was kind of inevitable that purple would end up getting involved! 4 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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cacahuate
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cacahuate 10:39am | |
Hey bloggers—photos have photographers This photo of a sign at the Olympic torch protests in San Francisco has been going around the blogosphere for a few weeks. It's hilarious, and I saw it the when it was first posted by LiveJournal's own deadro, here. But now it's been posted on a number of really huge blogs, and none of them, that I've seen, have credited the photographer or apparently made any effort to find him.When someone writes something brilliant or hilarious and it gets reposted all around the blogosphere, people credit the author, either by name or with a link back to the original post. The same should be done with photographs. The author of a bit of writing that gets posted on huge blogs gets an enormous amount of hits, contacts, and prestige from it. Look at (the very awesome) August Pollak, who basically had no audience until Tom Tomorrow linked approvingly to him in 2002. I don't know deadro or whether she wants all that, but he shouldn't be denied it just because no one felt like crediting a photo.That photo has now been saved and reuploaded countless times, but most of the people who see it won't know how to find deadro because no one gave him credit. That's just not polite, guys. Credit your images. If you can't figure out where the image came from, ask your audience. If someone tells you, go back and credit the image. It's not hard, and it can result in considerable reward for the photographer.And yes, I'm probably guilty of not crediting images myself. But I intend to be conscientious about it in the future. 5 Spoken Minds | Speak Your Mind | ||
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