*bangs head on table*

By way of karnythia:

Gaiman had offers to make a film out of his 2005 best seller Anansi Boys, about the sons of an African god discovering their magical background while living in the corrupt modern world, but moviemakers wanted to change the lead black characters to white or drop the magical elements altogether.

"I don't need the money," Gaiman says. "Not needing the money puts me in a magical place because I can say no. I like the idea of having good movies made or having no movies made."

Seriously, moviemakers. Could you fail a little bit less hard?

(Props to Gaiman for saying, "No, thank you, I don't need the money that much," and standing by his principles, though.)

(no subject)

I was going to post a dinner poll, and then I decided that I knew what I was going to make: pesto.

I'm going to make a giant batch of pesto (I have a ton of fresh basil, plus some other nice tasty greens), using blanched almonds instead of pine nuts (because I'm cheap) and a nice-ish olive oil.

About half a cup of that will go towards dinner tonight -- I'll grill some chicken (probably while basting it with pesto when it's almost done), then make pizza with pesto dressing, fresh tomato, fresh mozzarella, and the chicken. (I have frozen pizza dough in the chest freezer from the last time I made pizza.) I think I might experiment with cooking the pizza on the grill (I mean, on a cast-iron pan on the grill, not straight on the grates, as that would be Asking For Disaster), because the grill can maintain even higher heat than the oven. Served with a green salad, probably.

The rest of the pesto, I'll freeze. Pesto freezes very nicely.

Pictures and recipe later, if it turns out well! (If it fails spectacularly, I will recount my tribulations instead. ;) )

awoooo

According to this video -- Against the "Alpha Male" -- natural wolfpacks rarely fit the commonly-understood stereotype of an 'alpha male,' particularly not an 'alpha male' that gets that position by fighting. Apparently that concept is somewhat outdated and doesn't seem to hold true for natural wolfpacks around the world.

If this is true, it begs for a different take on werewolf romance. Granted, I say that in part because I love werewolf stories, and do not care for romances where the male is pushy and violent and dominates the hell out of everyone including his love interest -- which is depressingly common in urban fantasy/supernatural romance that features werewolves. (Even if the woman is a werewolf, the man is almost always a stronger and pushier werewolf -- or some other kind of dominant supernatural critter, sometimes.) So of course a paradigm other than that for wolves would interest me. But still, it seems like there's some cool potential there.

Scary Church: Introduction

Something like two? three? years ago, at Thanksgiving at my boyfriend's father's house, the following conversation took place.

I don't remember how it came up, but I was talking about my scary school, associated with a scary church that my parents are still semi-associated with. I referred to it as "scary school." The person I was talking to (a friend of my boyfriend's father, a gay man) raised an eyebrow, and chuckled a little, in a way that I am familiar with.

"Scary?" he asked.

"Um," I said, and flailed a bit, and settled on, "...super-conservative Christian?"

"Ah," he said, but I could see that he was being, well, tolerant, in that way that people often are when they're talking to twentysomethings who are talking about their upbringings. "Scary?"

"Yeah," I said, and then fumbled, trying to figure out how to explain the environment I'd grown up in.

And then my semi-step-grandmother-in-law* stepped in. (She's from the same town I grew up in -- funny coincidences!) She's a woman in her... eighties? Something like that. With a very strong and also very likable personality. "She means it," she said. "They really are scary."

"Oh?" The raised brow lowers.

"They believe in slavery. I mean, they believe that slavery is just fine, and that the South should have continued as they were, without any Northern intervention of any kind."

The person I'd been talking to sat back in his chair. "Really?"

"Yes. And that women are inherently inferior to men. And a lot of other stuff."

"Oh," he said. "That is pretty scary."

"Yes," she said. "And if I hadn't said anything, you would have thought that she [me] was exaggerating, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," he admitted. "Probably."

"It really is that bad," she said.

And that's how I want to begin, talking about my junior high and high school. Some of the people I went to school with were lovely people. But it really is that bad. Slavery. Denial of any rights to women. Child abuse.

It really is that bad. And it's more common than you think. (And that's why I don't believe that the work of feminism -- or antiracism, or anticlassim, or wahatever -- is done. It's more common than you think, and it really is that bad.)

I'll post more, when I figure out where to go from here; I'm going to tag it all as 'scary church.' But when I say that I grew up with scary people, this is what I mean: slavery, denial of women's equality, right up front and on the table.

And it's more common than you think.

* - Semi-step-grandmother-in-law: My boyfriend's father's partner's mother. Funnily enough, she's actually a pretty conservative person -- but you can be 'pretty conservative' and still think that my adolescent school-slash-church is absolutely beyond the pale.

I am deliberately not mentioning the name of the school, the church, the pastor, or my hometown. They egosearch; I got away, and I do not want to be found again. But if you're really curious, e-mail me, and I'll give you more info on who I'm talking about.