(no subject)

Good morning, mine flist!

I appear to have nothing fandom-related to say today. Well, that's not true. I have stuff to say, but I'm not going to do so. *resolve!face*

I tried to work on the fic I mentioned yesterday, but the words refused to be moved from my brain to the keyboard. I can /see/ what I want to say, but can't seem to say it. At least I can see it, though, and that's an improvement.

Anyway, I'd really like to find new wallpaper for my work puter; can anyone point me towards some nice ones? Fandom ones probably won't work, unless they manage to be work-sanitary (not just safe).

(no subject)

And, of course, the moment I say I have nothing to say, someone comes along and says exactly what I think, far better than I could.

I hate that he uses that language. I was cheering when Ruby clocked him and I'm sorry she got caught in the devil's trap because I really wanted her to beat on him some more.

But I don't have to love everything about the characters on my show. I don't have to think that what happens on the show should happen in real life. And I do love SPN in spite of how cringe-worthy it often is. I love Sam and Dean's love for each other and how impossible it is for them to say it aloud, I love how much Bobby loves them and how much they love Bobby and I miss the hell out of Ellen and Jo, I love the fucked up family dynamics, I love the contradictions and hypocrisies, I love how fiercely, murderously devoted to each other Sam and Dean are, I love the monster-of-the-week episodes, I love how they're dancing around the edges of theology, I love the impending doom, I love the chance of apocalypse, I love the stellar performances that all the actors turn in, I love the look of the show --

But none of that means that the show isn't itself deeply, deeply flawed, and offensively sexist and racist. It is. I believe that putting those words into Dean's mouth is just one of the ways that the writers are betraying an egregious failure to see the sexism they're perpetuating or -- worse -- a shamefully opportunistic willingness to use it.

After all, Dean isn't the one setting up the camera to film a woman wearing nothing but a slip dying face-down on a glass table from underneath the table. Dean isn't the one choosing to show women in jeopardy, to show them helpless, to show them dying gruesomely or being saved while wearing little or nothing. Dean isn't the one choosing to use every horror-movie trope that Buffy The Vampire Slayer so gleefully and successfully overturned.

And I do think that Dean is messed up about women. But I don't for a moment think he hates them, despite his language.

[redacted my own rant.]

Free online classes?

Sorry for the spamminess, but can anyone point me towards one of those universities that have free online classes in all sorts of subjects? Found it! MIT OpenCourseWare

I was just sitting here, regretting that I'm so bad in math and science. Seriously, I've seen school systems in our area offering signing bonuses to math teachers, but elementary teachers are pretty much considered a dime a dozen. But more than that, I'm sick of not being able to help my 7th-grader with her math homework. I feel like I fail at math, and I DON'T WANT TO.

*ahem*

Anyway, if anyone can point me in that direction, I'd appreciate it. :)

Continuing my trend...

...of posting smart things that smart people are saying that I wish I had the smarts to say myself, I really like what blacklid says here.

My favorite part:

Here's a mind bender: this show has so much merit because it creates wank of epic proportions. The creators and writers are instructed to work in the metaphors and the concepts that some of us are seeing. If I was a writer on this show, I would take it as a compliment that a character I created and then killed off gets labeled as a trend (like "all black men die"... gee, I think I used that one recently...) and discussed intelligently until we are all blue in the face. I would be ecstatic, because this is the purpose of good entertainment that's taken seriously; it is supposed to make us think. How meaty plot and characterization gets analyzed and turned into a serious dialog about social behavior is THE WHOLE POINT.

Now, if we can just keep from hacking each other to pieces in the process.

Ooh, also, go here and DL philomel's season 3 Metallicar Mix. I still listen to the season 2 Metallicar Mix, and this one looks just as awesome. :D