"Obama was born in the darkest depths of Mordor. That's why I'm voting Tea Party."

Other shirts in the same vein.

So, I was looking at my well-worn copy of The Annotated Pride and Prejudice and thinking about how much I love Regency stories and how problematic that is. Basically, I grew up on Austen and romance novels, in which no one ever talks about where the money is coming from. No one ever says, "and then I slaughtered a hundred people in India so I could come home to you, my darling."

The hypocrisy of my position was really brought home to me when my sister-in-law told me that her favorite movie is Gone With the Wind. My initial reaction was, "Really? You live in a house full of black people, how does that work for you?" But then I thought about how I couldn't exactly be bothered by her love of a romanticized story of a society built on torture and oppression when one of my favorite hobbies is reading romanticized stories of a society built on torture and oppression. So I bought her the movie for Christmas and then went back to reading Julia Quinn and Jo Beverley.

I watch a lot of buddy cop shows. Lately I've been watching NCIS:LA and Hawaii Five-0. It's interesting because they're fundamentally not buddy cop shows. Buddy cop shows involve two guys who depend on each other to the exclusion of everyone, except possibly their surly boss. There's generally a love interest of the week, who disappears quickly after her single episode storyline is over.

The difference here is that the new buddy cop shows are ensembles. It creates a weird dynamic because there's a double focus between the relationship between the two leads and the Greek chorus of the rest of the cast.

The trend of putting the two buddy cops in an ensemble mitigates the homoeroticism to a large extent, but it's still there in joking form. It's interesting because early buddy cop shows had no real mitigation of the homoeroticism, since homosexuality couldn't be spoken about, leaving open a queer option. Now the queer option is more clearly closed off, with the understanding on the audience's part that if they were gay, the show would state it. It makes me sad, because I'm always up for homoeroticism. (I guess I could just go watch The Eagle again.)

I like to post this once very few years or so on whatever blog I'm currently using, because it's interesting and kind of hilarious.

Two artists conducted a multinational survey of what art people enjoyed and what kind they didn't, and then created paintings to reflect that.

Komar and Melamid: Most Wanted Paintings on the Web

They also did it with music. That's the link to the most unwanted, and there's a link in there to the most wanted.

I wish I had more commentary than that, but I don't.

Why, SFO? Why must you cancel three flights in a row when I have class tomorrow morning? At least I don't have any presentations or anything due.

And one day I will make a post about commuting and how weird it is and the things I've learned from it, but today is not that day because I'm just cranky now.

Long, long ago (like, a year and a half ago), two neuroscientists thought it would be a really good idea to study sex on the internet and write a book about it. They came up with some idea about subcortical modeling and how it could be measured by looking at Google searches, and, since they didn't have any affiliation with an IRB or any research institution, no one said, "hey, that's kind of pure crap."

But then they decided to study fandom. Specifically, livejournal-based, female-centered, fanfic fandom, which is full of feminists and humanities scholars, and thus not the place you want to take your evolutionary psychology research that takes gender essentialism for granted.

Fandom didn't realize that they were dealing with evo psych at first, but once they did, it was all cat macros, and calling universities to see if people had human research approval, and actual neuroscientists calling people phrenologists.

Beyond the amusement factor, this is interesting because they got paid a good deal of money to write this book (check out the tags!), and it's a fabulous example of how to make your research subjects mistrust and hate you.

Some relevant links:
From scientists -
Sex, Lies and IRB Tape: Netporn to SurveyFail
WEARING THE JUICE: A CASE STUDY IN RESEARCH IMPLOSION

From fandom -
SurveyFail

Whenever I'm sick, I watch the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. I understand how weird that is, but the combination of love of apocalypse movies and sympathy with massive fictional influenza suffering is really comforting.

Also, the continuing appeal of Rob Lowe.

I have a whole rant about my love for Stephen King and popular fiction and it dovetails with my rant about my hatred of a lot of the lauding of literary fiction and my specific thing about Ian McEwan, but I'm sick, so it will come later.