I'M ON THE FRONT PAGE OF DIGG AAAAAH AAAAAAH AAAAAAH I'M ONLY LIKE THIRD DOWN OH MY GOD AAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAH AAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!

Dude, I totally win at like everything in life. And it feels great.

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Because it took a sleepless night, several cups of Canadian tea, and my trademark obsessive insanity.

IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN VERONICA MARS, a program Joss Whedon calls the "Best. Show. Ever.", NOW IS PROBABLY THE BEST TIME TO START. DO IT.

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New Digg URL for my post! Please, please digg! My editor advised me that the Digg crowd wouldn't like my cheeky reference to a Picard/Doctor romance in my original summary; they prefer mathy charts. So here we are. Over 11,000 views on io9; let's see if we can get them all Digging. BECAUSE THEN I COULD MAKE THE FRONT PAGE AND THAT WOULD MAKE ME TOTALLY AWESOME AND THEN YOU WOULD HAVE A TOTALLY AWESOME FRIEND.

It's not fun to get home from WisCon and find out that your friends are under attack. Apparently there are people in the world who are determined to be vicious, hateful, and harmful without any provocation at all. I am really upset that my friends have been hurt by this -- and are in fact still hurting.

Luckily Bitch Magazine did a feature on internet harassment last issue, which means I can direct you all to Take Back the Tech, which has a specific focus on blogging and violence against women but which does, I think, have resources that are applicable in other situations as well. The internet should be a productive, safe place. There are varied and confusing opinions on fanfiction, pornography, and web journalism, but I think we can all agree that posting people's personal information and threatening violence is never ever okay. Especially when it involves people's children, for fuck's sake -- how low can a person possibly stoop, and why do people have to keep stooping there and making me lose my faith in humanity?

I am using my Willow/Tara icon of acceptance and Awesome, courtesy of hjea, to remind myself that the world is full of lesbians and gays and bisexuals and transsexuals and people of every possible skin color and hair color and healthy people of every weight who are free to define their own beauty, and still more people with colors and sexualities and opinions I've missed or haven't even met yet, whether mean bigots have a say in it or not. There have been many, many, many attempts throughout history to shut down all kinds of specific groups of people, but as far as I know in the long run none of them have succeeded. Acceptance, understanding, civility, and progress will always win out over closed-minded bigotry and violence.

WisCon attendees? You are not anything any of those people have been saying about you, and I know you know it -- we all know it -- but when things seem overly negative it never hurts to add in a positive comment or two. You are gorgeous; you are intelligent; you are changing the world into a happier and more interesting place; and it was an honor to spend the weekend with you.

If you live in Pennsylvania and are eligible for voter registration -- and you are not registered to vote by the end of the day -- I will lose almost all of my respect for you.

More later.

Lately I've been rocking AlterNet, specifically this piece on why nobody should be able to make fun of Obama supporters. There's a sad piece about Samantha Power being forced to resign, and an even sadder piece about the effect the Clinton campaign's mudslinging is having on the Obama campaign.

In case anyone's still undecided, and has yet to vote (the only good thing about all this Democratic division is that PENNSYLVANIA MATTERS), I urge you to check out dailykos's recent 25 Reasons to Vote for Barack Obama and 25 Reasons I Cannot Support Hillary Clinton. Especially if you still believe that Obama is inexperienced, that Clinton is not divisive, or that we will see actual change from either McCain or Clinton. That just isn't true.

The Economist magazine said it best recently: "The best presidents are like magnets below a piece of paper, invisibly aligning iron filings into a new pattern of their making." Most of the presidents in American history who have been transformative have been charismatic figures with exceptional oratorical skills who persuaded Americans to share in their larger vision. I am not able to imagine a President Hillary Clinton or a President John McCain being similarly transformative, or being such a magnet. ...

There is no question Obama is an icon of hope. And despite ridicule to the contrary, hope does matter. When people join movements to realize raised hopes, our nation has a chance of changing for the better. When they damp their hopes, as Clinton suggests, the status quo is preserved. Hope and fear, future and past are the determining factors in this election. Not gender, not race. Will grouchy and divided Americans be driven primarily by their fears, or by their hopes? By their nostalgia for some "better" past, or by the courage to face a new future? The possibility of a new president named Barack Hussein Obama hangs on the answer.

I've seen a lot of people discuss voting for a president as though it were a race to reference the most media labels and nitpick the most idiotic, inconsequential details. For instance: a friend read one article on Obama's campaign taking away from his senatorial post, and suddenly was the authority on his "inexperience" and his "bad habit" of voting "not present." First of all, I don't recall this friend being a constitutional scholar. Second of all, Obama being "inexperienced" is a complete media fabrication -- how many years of experience has Clinton had as a senator? Is being a senator, in fact, anything like being a president? If Clinton wants to claim her time as First Lady as presidential experience, well, is Bill Clinton also going to be a Co-President First Gentleman?

Basically, I am sick and tired of people not bothering to look beyond empty stereotypes and think for themselves. The fact that Obama's middle name, for example, or a photo of him wearing a turban, can even begin to affect someone's vote shows that something is seriously wrong. If people are really that stupid, I honestly don't know what to do for them.

We all agree that the place our country is in right now sucks. And yet instead of jumping at a solid candidate with an incredibly impressive pedigree and an amazingly inspirational effect -- someone, mind you, who has pretty clearly been handed the mantle of John F. Kennedy -- so many voters are content to get caught up in useless mudslinging.

No, I don't agree completely with everything Barack Obama does. But it's obvious that he cares about the same core values that I do: Human rights (like affordable health care and equal opportunities for everyone). Environmental responsibility. Peace (the importance of negotiation as a FIRST RESORT and war as a LAST RESORT). Honesty, accountability, and truth. Obama is consistent -- and being consistent doesn't mean remaining glued to your initial beliefs even when new facts fly in the face of them. Being consistent means not changing your essential core values. Obama is compassionate; his diverse background and exceptional mind allow him to understand the position of every American he meets, and have a decent chance at making our lives better.

I'm not going to get caught up in whether or not Barack Obama sat on the floor of the Senate on February 11, 2005 at 3:04 p.m. (or whatever). I'm not going to reward other candidates for having Iraq exit strategies NOW, YEARS after the fact, when in the midst of all the initial fearmongering and panic, Barack Obama was the one who advised Americans to stop and think before deciding to waste precious lives in a misguided war. I'm not going to nitpick his (or his wife's) fashion decisions, I'm not going to instantly switch allegiances when his (admirable, educated, and capable) campaign advisors show signs of (perfectly righteous) frustration, and I'm not going to let people tell me that I support him just because I'm part of a "youthquake."

Barack Obama is the only candidate who both recognizes the gravity and the difficulty of the United States' current situation, and he is the only one with the judgment and education necessary to begin the complex job of turning it around.

And if you don't agree, I'd be really interested to hear how you back up your point.

There were many, many joyous things about tonight, and the camerapeople agreed with me on some of them (did you see how they kept flicking back to Jennifer Garner? "Let's see what HER reaction is even though she hasn't been nominated for anything! She's just so FUCKING BEAUTIFUL and a SWEETHEART and a BADASS and JENNIFER FUCKING GARNER WE CAN'T HELP OURSELVES"), but mostly, here is what the main ones are:

- Ellen and Diablo are out partying right now. And when Diablo cried, I was crying too. I love her. Her movie meant so much to me; I'm so glad to see her so happy and so honored. THANK YOU, DIABLO. YOU WIN. "Diablo Cody has gone from being an exotic dancer to an Academy Award-nominatedWINNING screenwriter! I hope you're enjoying the pay cut." Ellen said to fucking Regis on the fucking red carpet show that "it is sincere and honest and genuine and it also has a sense of optimism mixed with truth." Go Ellen Page. She was so the most beautiful person there tonight. I'M EVEN COUNTING JENNIFER. Ellen had better hair.

- Jon Stewart is the most wonderful person in the world. He let Markéta Irglová speak. I was JUST complaining about that and then we got back from commercial and he was gesturing to her to speak. EVEN IF IT WASN'T HIS DECISION, WHATEVER, I still just am going to bask forever in the glory of Jon Stewart's existence. I really, really think he is perfect. <3 And I love that Jon Stewart and Steve Carell have like taken over Hollywood. It shows that even if you don't take any of the bullshit seriously you can still be the darling of the whole show. And Steve Carell's performance in Little Miss Sunshine was INCANDESCENT.

I could get mad about things or have long opinions on dresses, but I'll just do that in conversations: for now, for this journal, that's it, that's what I'm taking from tonight. Maybe that and Tilda Swinton's acceptance speech. And now it's time to eat toast.

(ELLEN AND DIABLO HELD HANDS AND MADE VICTORY FISTS TOGETHER. IT WAS WONDERFUL. I WISH I WERE THEIR FRIEND.)

(P.S.: There should be an Oscar for Hottest Woman and Sydney Tamiia Poitier should have won it. Ahem.)

Two politics-related articles for you to mull over while you're drinking your coffee this fine morning (oh, IS it Super Tuesday? I hadn't noticed): Why I'm Supporting Barack Obama by Katha Pollitt and Why I Don't Like to Admit that I Support Obama, by Naamen Gobert Tilahun guest-posting on the Angry Black Woman.

Katha Pollitt writes for Bitch sometimes and therefore is high up in my good books, and even though her blog post is less well-crafted than a column I'm still just like "thank GOD someone wrote that." I'm a little sick of seeing an overabundance of pro-Clinton news and comments on feminist blogs lately, as though it's assumed that we all naturally support her because she's the best thing for women ... which in turn is only an assumption because she's a woman. You know, I think Barack Obama will do great things for women -- he will do great things for everybody. He believes in equality; you really only have to look at Michelle Obama's total badassness, and his incredible respect for it, to understand that.

I have always endeavoured not to be a one-issue voter. Yes, things like free and easy access to contraception and the legalization of marijuana, to pick a random two, get me riled up. But I never want to lose sight of the whole picture, and the whole picture includes the total mess that is education and health care in this country, and the way that foreign policy has taken a devastating turn from "war is a last resort" to "let's send a bunch of young kids to die and kill random civilians in a country that didn't attack us."

Barack Obama is inspiring. He is thoughtful; he is well-educated; and he has a plan for getting us out of this war and back on track toward the kind of country we want to be ... the kind of country where everyone has an equal opportunity to excel. He has three years of experience in the Senate to Clinton's five, so that's pretty much a wash in my book. He has many more years of community activism under his belt that prove he means what he says, and his commitment to getting the job done produces results.

What a president basically does, at least in my young West Wing-influenced mind, is choose advisors and make difficult decisions about the direction the country should take. So we want someone who is able to digest information very quickly in order to make an informed and productive decision, and we want someone who will surround himself with other very intelligent and well-informed people who will not misrepresent the situation at hand for their own ends.

With that in mind, I gotta say, it means a whole fuckin' lot to me that when the nation was half-crazy with fear and everyone wanted to point fingers at Iraq so that we could go have a random military conquest to make ourselves feel better, Obama said, "Stop. Think. How does this make sense? What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?"

That doesn't mean he's weak or that he will be unable to be decisive when the time comes. His recent involvement with peace talks in Kenya shows that he certainly has the stomach for difficult foreign policy. What this means is that we can count on Obama to weigh all of the facts even if everyone else around him is crying for knee-jerk reactions.

Obama is a leader, of a very rare quality. You've seen him give speeches, haven't you? Don't you like that hopeful, passionate feeling you get, that urge to stand up and do what you can to help the country and the world?

I do. And I want more of it. I want Obama comforting me when there's been a crisis in the country, I want Obama delivering the State of the Union addresses, and I want Obama making domestic and foreign policy decisions for the United States. He's ready. He's not doing it because it'll be fun to play with power. He's doing it because we need him, and he's brave enough to see that.

sastrugi made my day by pointing me to another fabulous Ellen Page interview in The Guardian:

It was precisely because Juno's screenwriter, former stripper Diablo Cody, had given Juno such sassy dialogue (think Buffy, think My So-Called Life, think Dawson's Creek before it got schmaltzy) that Page took the part. She doesn't accept the criticisms that Juno and her pals are too clever by half. "I don't speak the same way as Juno, but I definitely had my own language with my friends and in that sense I could relate to that," she says.

Page thinks everyone underestimates modern teens. "We are so used to seeing one idea of what a young man or woman is in the popular media," she says, adding that it is "suffocating" how homogeneously young people are represented on screen. She wants to know if we have Laguna Beach in the UK, the OC rip-off about beautiful young airheads in California. "If you like that, awesome. I don't want to sound like a judgmental piece of poop. But we need other options, you know?"

... Page is in no doubt that the pressure put on women in the media is unhealthy. "It's absolutely disgusting," she says. "It needs to stop because it's nothing but hurtful for everyone involved." She says she isn't too bothered at the prospect of being photographed buying a pint of milk without having brushed her hair - "Oh, that's just who I am, so they are always going to get that," she says, while admitting that "of course" she sometimes feels the pressure.

"People judge you left, right and centre, and you see people judging other people because they are a size four [an eight in the UK] and it is disgusting." She has no time for gossip magazines. "They just make you feel like crap and make you go out and buy things to fill that void. They propel the consuming machine," she says. "We all have our insecurities. I would like to say, 'Oh, I don't care what people say about me.' And to a certain extent, I don't, I reeeally don't. But as a young person it's like, come on. And it's not like guys don't get it at all, but women are sooooooo harshly judged."

Particularly, she believes, in the movie business. "I hate how box-office failures are blamed on an actress, yet I don't see a box-office failure blamed on men," she says. Such as? "Like when The Golden Compass came out. Daniel Craig was in it, and Nicole Kidman was in it, and people were just ragging on Nicole Kidman the whole time." She also bemoans the lack of meaty leading roles for women. "I think a lot of the time in films, men get roles where they create their own destiny and women are just tools, supporters for that," she says. "I guess it's because we live in a patriarchal society, where feminism is a dirty word."

Page, naturally, is happy to be described as a feminist, and is gobsmacked to have recently discovered that "40% of women in America or less" consider themselves feminists. "If it's about equality for the sexes, then who wouldn't be?" she asks. It is no surprise coming from the woman who, musing on how gender roles are imposed on children by society, says: "As a girl, you're supposed to love Sleeping Beauty. I mean who wants to love Sleeping Beauty when you can be Aladdin?"

*cries* I think I might actually have to marry her. ELLEN! YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL! YOU ARE SMART AND FUNNY! YOU UNDERSTAND THAT FEMINISM = EQUALITY! AND YOU PLAY SOCCER! AND GUITAR! LET'S RUN AWAY TOGETHER!

Clearly this is going to be an Ellen Page day. I keep thinking about her, so now I'm reading interviews, and ... EVERYTHING I READ JUST MAKES ME MORE AND MORE ADORING OF HER. She is ... unbelievable. She is so ... so much like Juno. And so badass. I LOVE it when you read more about a celebrity and find out that THEY are as invested in their projects as YOU are. She chose the script for Juno, because she LOVED it. Just like all of the Firefly cast loved Firefly.

( A survey of interviews I've read, i.e. Proof of Ellen Page's Utter Wonderfulness. )

She just makes me feel normal. She makes me feel okay. She's done for young women what it has always been my mission in life to do: Inspire them to be themselves.

And she's my age, too. Well, a few months older, but. OMG ELLEN MARRY ME. I'VE NEVER BEEN SKINNY-DIPPING YOU COULD TAKE ME. :DDD

And I have learned from lily_268 that when you love something you should picspam it. So here it is: An Ellen Page Picspam.

( I kept it manageable -- only five photos. Which means this might end up being a Part One, hee hee. )

ELLEN PAGE. If this didn't make you the tiniest bit happier about your day, I DON'T KNOW WHAT WILL.

My Doctor Who Christmas special reaction is here. Also, doesn't anyone in the UK not celebrate Christmas? How do they feel about all this? :P

(Note: I am unabashedly in love with Rose. ... AND SO IS THE DOCTOR. HA!)

( 13 minutes 13 seconds remaining! )

I totally rock the suspense vote. If there is a vote for suspense, I mean. I rock it.

Yeah.

Hey, Nina! Why are you so shrill about your feminism? Why can't you just laugh about it and accept that equality is a joke / already here / impossible? Why do you think it's okay to be open about reading Bitch Magazine? Why can't you give me a blowjob / dress like a serious engineering student / stop writing about sex / just accept that you can't go out alone after dark / blame yourself every time a boy can't control himself around you / watch movies and read books with only male characters / worship the history of a world that has been completely dominated by white men?

Oh, right. THAT'S why.

On Friday, this happened. This morning, over tea and my copy of The Economist, I read the following quote in a piece that was written before President Bush rejected the bill. I can't wait to see what exciting quotes they print next week.

America's Congress ... [is] voting for a bill calling the mass slaughter of up to 1m Ottoman Armenians in 1915 a genocide.

... This time officials fret that not only will a congressional committee approve the resolution but it may also pass on the House floor. Turkey says this would plunge relations with America into deep crisis. "Placing the Turks in the same category as the Nazis is intolerable for us," says one official.

THE TURKS ARE IN THE SAME CATEGORY AS THE NAZIS. The Nazis are "the Nazis" because they were EMULATING THE TURKS. "Who remembers the Armenians?" said Hitler¹, and his advisers said, "You're right! Let's go ahead and invade Poland! I bet no one will care! Because probably there will never be any consequences for Turkey, even almost a HUNDRED YEARS LATER! Isn't it great that we live in a world where you can commit mass murder and torture and get away with it?" And how right they were! Heartwarming.

Also, "up to 1m"? That would be nice, wouldn't it? Try TWO MILLION. 2 million. I can't believe they're using Turkey's suppression of records and the difficulty of getting data from 1915 to round down.

How about I spam my blog DAILY with accounts collected by an independent British journalist in the area²? Here's one for today that took place in the village of Moush³:

The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in the various camps was to burn them. Fire was set to large wooden sheds in Alidjan, Megrakom, Khaskegh, and other Armenian villages, and these absolutely helpless women and children were roasted to death. Many went mad and threw their children away ; some knelt down and prayed amid the flames in which their bodies were burning ; others shrieked and cried for help which came from nowhere. And the executioners, who seem to have been unmoved by this unparalleled savagery, grasped infants by one leg and hurled them into the fire, calling out to the burning mothers : "Here are your lions." Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after.

And if you want to see thousands more paragraphs just like that, you have only to click on the link I've provided.

I can't find the bill on thomas.loc.gov and I'm too busy to search any more right now, but the worst part of this is that I remember reading a very impassioned speech at whitehouse.gov given by Bush on April 24 a few years ago, marking the anniversary of THE GENOCIDE. So whether or not millions of people were brutally exterminated is a matter of political convenience, not fact. Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Vatican City, Venezuela, and Wales have all already recognized it (as well as Armenia, of course).⁴ For the US not to follow is just embarrassing, but I guess not surprising for a country that got its land by the mass slaughter of indigenous people. (Also: where is Germany? And the rest of the UK? Fuck you guys, too.)

Jon Stewart just made a high-profile national joke on The Daily Show about the Iranian president denying the Holocaust. Now, in his eagerness to invade that country, our bullshit president is denying the genocide that made the Holocaust possible. Could everyone maybe get enraged about that, please?

¹ "Recently, [ambassador Henry] Morgenthau recalled a chilling remark about the Armenians by Adolf Hitler, whose generals asked him what the world would think if they carried out his orders to kill every man, woman and child in Poland who stood in the way of a 1939 blitzkrieg. 'Who remembers the Armenians?' Hitler said." - The Armenian Genocide by Armen M. Vartanian
² The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, collected by Viscount Bryce
³ A German traveler in Moush had this to say: "The Mutessarif of Moush, who was a very intimate friend of [Turkish leader] Enver Pasha, declared quite openly that they would massacre the Armenians at the first opportune moment and exterminate the whole race." WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT?! I CALL IT A GENOCIDE.
⁴ Recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Wikipedia

I wrote these reflections on my recent poll a couple of days ago, and I have nothing to add to them and am just sleep-deprived enough to post them (read: 100% sleep-deprived), so here you go.

- Not nearly enough of you watch Top Gear. Here is a list of things they do in Top Gear: drive vintage cars into pools, play soccer with cars, drop flaming Winnebagos onto Porsche 911s, race Cessnas against Bugatti Veyrons, build seafaring cars, affix cars with rocket engines, do traffic reports where they yell at bad drivers, listen to Italian language tapes as they race Mercedes McLaren SLRs, force celebrities to withstand their racetrack ... LOOK, IT'S JUST. JEREMY CLARKSON, OKAY? Take a look at some YouTube videos and then you can leave your precious Mythbusters behind in the dust where it belongs.

- madkrazyghetto, I included Stargate especially for you and you were NOT the only one to choose it. womblette chose it also. She knows your pain. :)

- The Soup Nazi episode wins by a landslide. What about Yadda Yadda Yadda? Kenny Rogers chicken? Whatever, the Soup Nazi was totally amazing. I love you all.

- borgin and lily_268 should have a Hannah Montana marathon. With ice cream.

- There are people on my friends list BESIDES ME who like Sports Night. Here's how I feel about this: MADE OF FUCKING AWESOME.

- Some of you are under the impression that I have not, in fact, had a one-on-one conversation with Jon Stewart. Well, I'd love to burst your bubble here and go out on a limb and tell you that I TOTALLY MET JON STEWART AND HE TOTALLY DID TALK TO ME, AND IT WAS MAGICAL. And if you only know one thing about me, I think that is the thing I would like you to know. (MAGICAL.)

- The Office (UK) did a lot better against The Office (US) than I thought it would. In fact, I'd call that a tie. You are all so sophisticated with your British television! Go you! (And yet, take that back, because some of you seem to prefer Mythbusters to Top Gear. Philistines.)

- There is a dead tie between the yeas and the nays as far as Aaron Sorkin's recyclable storytelling goes. I love it when there are exact ties in my LiveJournal polls. I'm not sure why. ETA: It's no longer a dead tie. But that's okay, because the answer that involved a quote from State and Main is now winning. And everybody loves David Paymer. (And David Mamet. Duh.)

- Sam Troughton's brother plays in womblette's county cricket team! I think there should be more episodes of Doctor Who that involve cricket. And punting. Because technically, "Shada" never really aired. (As amusing as Tom Baker's linking narration was, there were like NO effects shots in episode 6. Although it was an eye-opening view of television production.)

- Robin is definitely the sexiest outlaw. I love 'em all (and I am glad that Much had a passable showing, so cheers, jazzfic and celbalrai), but you know, I'm okay with that. Dear Jonas: you won my poll. Now marry me.

- Speaking of Robin Hood, mrv3000, have you read any spoilers for Season 2? Because we might have to talk. No, that's all I'm at liberty to say right now.

- borgin, there is no such thing as watching too much TV. Not when the television you watch is good, and when you are learning something from it. And all of the television I watch is good. So.

( It's time for a TV Poll of Awesome. Because apparently I'm not good at working. HAHAHAHA. )

And because I didn't put in a good question about it and didn't use a quote from it and also because I am reeling from the victory of having converted goldy_dollar (did I have some small part in that? :D ), you should be watching Weeds.

I Robinified my fic journal and wrote a scene. Because I rule.

(Also: why do they always advertise Richard Armitage reading bedtime stories over at CBeebies? Richard Armitage plays Guy of Gisbourne. THE EVIL, TRAITOROUS KILLING MACHINE. There's someone you want tucking in your babies at night.)

Title: Heroes and Reality
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Fandom: BBC's Robin Hood, 2006
Word Count: 534.
Rating: PG.
Spoilers: Through 1x10, "Peace? Off!"
Characters: Robin/Marian.
Excerpt: If she pretended not to notice the way Robin's lips tightened when she said "Sir Guy," Robin could pretend not to notice that she had noticed.
Author's Note: For jazzfic, whose writing got me watching the show in the first place, and for lily_268, for being my Jonas buddy.

( She was standing just inside the window when Robin arrived. )

You know, fireworkfiasco and reallycorking make a damn good point.

Why didn't we find out if Harry prefers boxers or briefs?!