Today I learned that pantsing, debagging, depantsing, drooping, shanking, skanking or dacking (in Australia), cacking, skegging, dekecking or just kecking (in the United Kingdom), scantying in Scotland and jocking in Ireland and, when in New Zealand, simply the down-trou all refer to the act of pranking someone by pulling down their pants.

Oh, Commonwealth countries. If the extra Eskimo words for snow reflects the abundance of the stuff in their lives*, what does this plethora of pantsing synonyms say about you?

I highly recommend the surprisingly informative wikipedia article List of School Pranks for further enlightenment/ideas.


*yes, yes, I know

Today I learned that this exists:
The Sleep No More Crossover Fanfiction Blog

Because Sleep No More is crossover fanfiction itself! Get it? Get it?

I think this is a tiny bit brilliant. Only a tiny bit, though.

How my brain works

Facebook: Richard is Alternate Juror #1

Me: Hah, I hope that means he's an understudy in a production of 12 Angry Men. I've never actually read 12 Angry Men. I wonder how the character names are formatted. Like is it :

JUROR #3
Hang him high!

JUROR #9
Chill out, dude

etc? That would get really hard on the eyes. Maybe they write out the numbers, so it's like:

TEN
He's totes guilty.

FOUR
You always say that!

Although then it just looks like the script for a multi-Doctor story. Ooh!


And this is how the words "all 12 Doctors perform 12 Angry Men" appeared in my google search bar.

Twitter

I have been talked into joining Twitter. Or rather, Jeana said "why aren't you on Twitter?" and I said "dunno."

http://twitter.com/LizWeinbloom

Facebook's jumped the shark anyways.

Photo linkage

This post is solely so I can link back to this photo in an io9 comment.


Nothing else to see here, moving on...

[well, actually, I suppose there's the photo to see. Which is of some excellent people wandering the streets of Cardiff dressed as 10 and Jack.]

[comments on this photo in its facebook album:
Reha - Captain Jack's heels are the best thing ever.
Me - Not quite authentic though - you know the real Jack's heels would be three inches taller and sparkly.
Reha - Haha, they surely would. Possibly the kind with fish swimming inside, except they'd be ALIEN fish out to destroy the world.
Me - ::goes off to write that story:: ]

"You're going to Cardiff? Why?"

The Doctor and Rose Tyler walk down a snowy Victorian street. Rose is gleeful, but the Doctor glances sullenly at a newspaper.

Doctor: I got the flight a bit wrong.
Rose: I don't care!
Doctor: It's not 1860, it's 1869.
Rose: I don't care!
Doctor: And we're not in Naples.
Rose: I don't care!
Doctor: We're in Cardiff.
Rose: ....right.

Caerdydd! Home of Doctor Who, the Millennium Centre, and, um, a castle. Rather lovely, rather dull. Perfect place for a day trip, if you do it right. Which I did not. I was in Cardiff for a total of 23 hours, but only eight of them were at all viable.

My train got in at 3 pm, and after checking in at the (really nice, highly recommended) NosDa hostel, I walked down the river to the bay. Predictably, I started at the Doctor Who exhibition, but... it was a bit unthrilling. Just costumes and flashing lights and the occasional panel with an episode summary - like anyone visiting a DW exhibit would need such a thing - and some animatronic Daleks. Even the gift shop was pretty lame. So the most obvious stage of my Doctor Who pilgrimage was a bust.

But outside was the Millennium Centre, which really is impressive in its own right. Welsh is a beautiful and absurd-looking language, so a massive carved wall of Welsh really does make for an interesting and worthy city icon. From there I started a walking tour I'd printed from the BBC website, which was theoretically supposed to take four hours. It actually took 20 minutes. There's just not all that much to see. Roald Dahl Pass is just some pass named after Roald Dahl. And there's, like, a church. Meh.

But I turned on the little boardwalk around the bay, and lo! There was the entrance to the Torchwood hub! I was very impressed to find that the geography of the hub's area, as shown both on Torchwood and the parent show, is consistent with the real world (ie, Jack was running from the right direction in LOTL, etc). The hub's door is covered by a rusty grille, with some old newspapers tacked up behind it. I took a closer look. "New Mayor, New Cardiff" announces a headline, under a photo of Margaret Blaine, nee Slitheen. Squee! Enormous squee! I guess it's just been chilling there since they filmed Boomtown in 2005. You can keep your animatronic Cybermen and life-size talking Daleks - this is the sort of thing that fills my heart with fannish glee. I was grinning like mad for a good ten minutes.

There was one other happy fan moment of note - spotting 10 and Captain Jack waiting for a bus. If you're gonna do cosplay, boy, wandering around Cardiff dressed like Jack Harkness is the way to do it. Plus there are few images more hilarious than the Doctor boarding a public bus.

Alas, after having exhausted all the outdoor sightseeing, I suddenly discovered that it was 5:30, and EVERYTHING had closed. The restaurants and bars were open, but that's of no use to a solo traveler. Also, everyone appeared to be in high school.

And so, at a loss for what else to do on a Tuesday night in Cardiff, I went to the movies. And by "went" I mean "accidentally snuck into." And by "accidentally snuck into," I really do mean "accidentally snuck into." I think they use an honor system or something? Whatever. I was on an escalator, and next thing I knew I was in a cinema, and a movie was about to start. So I sat down to watch it.

It was "Twilight."

Okay, so, I really enjoyed it! Which is to say, I really enjoyed it in the way that I didn't enjoy the Dirty Dancing musical. Here was some awfulness that you could really sink your teeth into! Fangs, rather. ::rimshot::

I'd sort of gathered from the zeitgeist of Twilight-hate that the most objectionable element was the pro-abstinence shilling, but that is so very much the least of its problems (and not at all present in the first movie). Rather, in the very established tradition of classic vampire stories (cf, Dracula), Twilight is a rape fantasy. And a stalking fantasy. That huge creeper in bio lab is not a huge creeper if he has dreamy eyebrows. Being stalked is not only okay, but desirable! As is ditching your friends, family, and life for a guy. And ignoring all warning signs, of the flashing neon variety as well as menacing folktales from your token Magic Red Man, that the guy is a huge creeper. Who watches you while you sleep. And follows you around town. Oh my god I feel dirty just thinking about it.

Twilight actually made me cry. I cried from frustration, and anger, and sadness that in 2009 I was watching this movie in a theater full of 10-year-olds and their mothers. It was the sexuality, gender, and genre issues that were tackled by Buffy, but with all the nuance, awareness, and problematizing thrown out the window. Poor, poor Joss. He tried, he really did.

After that exercise in frustration, I hung out at the hostel bar for a few hours with a sargeant in the American army who just finished a ten month tour in Afghanistan, and a street magician on his way to a magic convention in Blackpool who currently lives in Spain but migrates with the tourist season. I didn't tell them a thing about myself, because jeez did I lose on the interestingness count in this crowd.

In the morning I visited the Cardiff Castle, which despite being many centuries old was entirely gutted in the 1890s, so that was also a bit unimpressive. Mostly I liked the pen of falconry birds, who were there not to put on a show for the tourists, but to keep pigeons and squirrels out of the castle. I was particularly enthralled by the bold orange eyes of the eagle owl, though I don't know if I found him terrifying or wanted to give him a cuddle. And then I wandered through the very nice city center till my train back to London, and discovered that Cardiff has great shopping, if only you're there during daylight.


So for anyone planning a trip to Cardiff: Travel at night. Bring a friend for the bars. And dress like Captain Jack.

as Napoleon never said...

Jenny and I were having a very serious discussion about the class system in England and the USA… as relates to Bertie Wooster.

Jenny: I love that Bertie never has money problems. It just makes him so innocent and free to have relation-induced mishaps

Liz: I love that class of British people who just have income without doing anything, like the Darcys. We don't have that in America. Even the absurdly rich, their money comes from somewhere. Generally some scrappy great-grandfather who invested in trains or somesuch.

Jenny: Whereas in England, money coming from somewhere is a low-class idea.

Liz: Right.

Jenny: Money, like wine, gets better with age.

Well, that is a fine aphorism, is it not?

Liz: Did you just make that up?

Jenny: I think so

Liz: You should embroider it on something, or start using it as an aphorism and see if it gets picked up.

Jenny: You mean I should just drop it into conversations?

Liz: Yes.

Jenny: All those conversations I have about old versus new money?

Liz: No, just irrelevantly. And, introduce it with "as they say.”

Jenny: See if it gets picked up as conventional wisdom.

Liz: Or give a different citation every time! Like, “as the Good Book says, money like wine gets better with age.”

Jenny: Or "as the Bard tells us..."

And then we got a little carried away…

Liz: As we’ve seen with President Obama...

Jenny: As I learned from Sesame Street...

Liz: as my grand-pappy Old Reliable used to say...

Jenny: as the Eskimos teach us...

Liz: as can be inferred from a close reading of Durkheim...

Jenny: as it says on Mount Rushmore...

Liz: as Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and the Marquis de Sade all said at one point or another...

Jenny: as I learned on my first day at Hahvahd...

Liz: as my years in the circus taught me,

Jenny: according to the great clown himself...

Liz: as the prophet speaketh to me...

Jenny: as you yourself have noted...

Liz: as the ancient runes translate...

as is scribbled on this cocktail napkin that I'm waving in your face...

Jenny: as Dumbledore said to Harry on page 519 of the Half-Blood Prince, 12.2 lines from the top...

Liz: As Justice Brandeis noted in the fourth footnote of the Carolene decision...

Jenny: As Joan of Arc herself was about to say...

Liz: as Napoleon never said...

as was viciously mauled in the substandard translation of Hugo's Miserables...

Jenny: as Madame de Pompadour probably said, before everyone forgot why she was famous...

Liz: fanTAStic gardener.

(that will be funny after you watch Doctor Who)

as my alphabet soup spelled last night...

as Jim Marvin once said while demonstrating the proper distance between Mars and Spain...

Jenny: as it probably says in Doctor Who, but I couldn't tell you because I still haven't watched it even though I have this friend, see, who makes references to it all the time, and I think I'm going to have to watch it soon or she's going to come after me with a broadsword in my sleep, and maybe like cut off my ANKLES, or something, or possibly my entire lower half, and anyway, I think there was an aphorism in here somewhere...

Liz: as the negative infractions of the patient's pituitary gland suggest...

as it says on the manufacturer's label, which you really shouldn't have removed, really, that was a bad idea...

Jenny: as the surgeon general might warn you...

Liz: as she said....

You get the idea. And that’s right, folks - this is the duo that’s spending two weeks together in Europe. By the end of which we will either have begun speaking entirely in an incomprehensible invented language of inside jokes and Buffy references, or will have jumped off the train somewhere in Spain and run screaming in opposite directions across the plain. In the rain. Mainly.

Liz: Jenny, why are we SO AWESOME?

Jenny: I don't know, Liz, but I think we just can't help it. It is our burden to bear.

Follow-up: my response

Follow-up to people over thirty shouldn't be allowed on facebook:

I decided that I want to try to bait Eric into saying even more ridiculous things. I drafted a couple replies that were sarcastic "what a great suggestion!" things, and a few attempts to scam him out of money. But I have decided to go the "willful misunderstanding" route, and respond as an Angry Feminist... while getting completely wrong what type of plastic surgery he meant. Hopefully this will both thoroughly embarrass him and force him into awkwardly clarifying. Props to Ben for the concept.

Eric,

That was really out of line.

First of all, I have met you exactly once. You may have a reputation for extreme "honesty" among your friends, but I don't think you quite have the right to count me among them - we just don't know each other very well. And there is no way for a mere acquaintance to justify offering such drastic advice, completely unsolicited.

Secondly, you are a married man. A married man with a baby! I really find it unacceptable and more than a little bit creepy that you have been so closely examining my appearance in my facebook pictures. If you don't like what you see, don't look at it. In fact, just don't look. It's bad enough when men objectify women for their body - you take it to a whole new level by telling me I'm not good enough to be an object.

And the latent anti-Semitism of your remarks is horrifying. You are criticizing my appearance on the basis of it being too Jewish. You latched on to a single joke in my profile - yes, my religious views are listed as "look at me" because I know I have very traditionally Jewish features - and interpreted it as dissatisfaction with my body. What, exactly, makes you think that I'm not perfectly happy with my appearance the way it is? I assure you that most men are quite approving of my figure - and Ashkenazi Jews certainly do not have a monopoly on large busts!

You have issued an unsolicited and completely inappropriate recommendation for a cosmetic, elective version of a procedure that for some people is legitimately medical. You have no way of knowing if I have back pain and the assorted other health problems that sometimes accompany my body type. But your advice was based not on a concern for my health or comfort, but for some imaginary version of my social life. Oh yes, by all means, I should undergo elective surgery to conform with mainstream standards of beauty, within which a b-cup is a small chest and a c-cup is a large one and all other sizes are abnormal. Perhaps if I artificially manipulate my body to look like everyone else's - the way you made your wife and will no doubt make your daughter some day! - then perhaps I will have a chance at a life full of success, happiness, and multiple sexual partners.

I have a fantastic rack, and it ain't going nowhere.

-Liz-

Nerdy neckwear

This fine lady is knitting me a Doctor Who scarf! Okay, well, technically I suppose she is knitting my sister a Doctor Who scarf, to use in an act. My sister is the Mama Rose of Alpha Psi Ecdysia, the SUNY New Paltz burlesque troupe (yes.) and in her nascent fandom, she has latched on to the idea of developing a Doctor Who act. Which would be understood by approximately nine people in all of New Paltz, but, whatever. Maybe they can do a tour to Old Paltz - that's probably somewhere in England, right?

Anyway, Jess is knitting us a 4th Doctor scarf (season 12, for those who care about such things), which Jenny will use in an act, and which I will then get to wear.

I have decided that scarves are truly the way to go in terms of under-the-radar nerdiness displays. I already have a Gryffindor scarf (or at any rate, a red and yellow scarf that I declared a Gryffindor scarf long before "official" such things existed). And my sister has, yes, a RENT scarf. And when Madame Nostradamus is done, we will have a Doctor Who scarf. That is three nerdy-reference scarves. Three equals a collection.* So now we must accumulate other nerdy-reference scarves.

Problem is... we can't think of any other fictional characters with distinctive neck wear. Help?


*other things I have three of, and therefore constitute collections:

• times I have performed in public on instruments I do not know how to play
• recordings of great works of American literature that should not have been made into operas
• friends named Ben who play the ukulele

Another io9 post! Hot Flashes: Ten Uses For Lightning That Ben Franklin Never Guessed

Writing these things is so very bad for me. The instant gratification is like crack! I cannot stop myself from obsessively monitoring the progress of my articles. Thankfully, they've been doing quite well, so it's happy crack, but still crack.

"Do you think you could find a Godzilla menorah for me?" - my editor

JK Rowling's 2008 Harvard Commencement speech - The Drinking Game

[repost from Facebook, back-dated accordingly]

JK Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Address
DRINKING GAME
June 6, 2008

By the 2008 Commencement Choir


Single drink for each mention, unless otherwise noted:

About herself
- being a single mother
- writing on napkins in coffeeshops
- if she wrote her speech on a napkin
- if she claims to have still been thinking about what to say in the speech last night
- if she got the idea in Drew Faust’s bed last night
- Talks about what inspired her
- Talks about her kids
- Quotes directly from her own writing
- Denigrates herself in comparison to the other people on stage
- Talks about her own college days
- Talks about her shiny new Hahvahd degree
- People lining up at midnight for books
- How long it took to get the books published
- Number of books sold
- Richest woman in the world
- Her earnings vs Harvard endowment
- If she stutters, Liz gives Harker a dollar
- If she drinks, waterfall

Harry Potter
- If she reads us an original story
- If that story is in the Harry Potter universe, squeal happily
- Actual new info about Potterverse, two drinks
- Uses phrase “Potterverse,” three drinks

Harvard vs. Hogwarts (drink in general, and one for each specific)
- Annenberg
- Houses
- Academic regalia
- Compares Faust to McGonagall
- Compares Voldemort to George Bush
- Compares Yale to Durmstrang
- Whomping willow
- Quidditch
- Sorting hat as metaphor for college admissions/life


General
- ___ is the real magic
- Drink at every pun
- Imagination
- Creativity
- getting kids to read
- God, or the lack thereof
- Puritans, witch-burning, Salem
- Following your dreams
- Luck (felix felicis, two drinks)
- Women speaking at commencement
- Mentions that Drew Faust is, in fact, a girl
- if she talks about homosexuality
- if she talks about gay marriage
- If she outs any new characters
- If she outs Drew Faust
- If she outs herself
- If she has sex with Drew Faust on stage, drink till blind
- If she mentions Ted Kennedy, drink till your liver cries

British
- pronounces something funny
- attempts Boston accent
- Criticizes American politics
- Tony Blair
- British vs American education
- Other Cambridge
- The Queen
- Btdubs, Dumbledore is a Queen

Graduation speech cliches
- provides a dictionary definition
- asks a rhetorical question
- forgets to answer rhetorical question
- mentions The Facebook
- consulting sucks, Econ majors drink
- references Faust’s speech
- references what she did with Faust last night

Unlikely stuff (drink as much as you want)
- Potter Puppet Pals
- If it becomes Naked Time!!!
- Harry and the Potters back her up
- If the Happy Brigade are aurors
- Fan fiction, one drink. Slash fan fiction, three drinks
- If Larry Summers appears
- If Larry Summers appears in conjunction with the Avada Kedavra curse

Magic
- If she is wearing any Harry Potter paraphernalia
- If she utters any spells
- If she uses an Unforgivable Curse
- If she uses any fake Latin, sing the first verse of 10,000 Men
- If she performs a magic trick, finish your drink
- If she performs real magic, finish the bottle
- If she bursts into flames and rises from the ashes, pour drink on flames
- If the steps of Memorial Hall open up and a basilisk emerges, run like hell
- If the graduates have crossbows under their academic regalia, steal one from the nearest CS major

Music
- References the choir
- References the band
- If she says Glee Club needs women, RCS drinks
- Any editorial comment or look from Jim
- If the band plays the Harry Potter theme
- If she sings at all
- if she announces the release of her upcoming solo pop album, chug
- If she compares Fair Harvard to the Hoggy Hoggy Hogwarts, sing a round of “Weasley is Our King”
- If she says “baller,” finish all drinks on campus


If she never mentions Harry Potter, chug until tour

HP7 Drinking Game

[relocated from Facebook, and back-dated. composed prior to the release of the seventh book]

Weinbloom & Wolahan bring you:

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS
The Drinking Game

We recommend using M&Ms in lieu of actual alcohol for this game, unless you are particularly talented at reading while smashed.

Enjoy!


Take a drink every time:

Harry’s scar hurts

Someone shouts in ALL CAPS

Hermione encourages reference to “Hogwarts, A History”

Three drinks if someone other than Hermione mentions “Hogwarts, A History”

Malfoy insults someone’s parents

2 if someone actually manages to restrain their anger when Malfoy insults their parents.

Five drinks if we finally get a decent “your mom” joke in response

Drink if Ron and Hermione start bickering

2 if Ron and Hermione start snogging

Trelawney predicts someone’s imminent death

Rowling foreshadows someone’s imminent death

2 when someone actually dies who wasn’t foreshadowed at all

Aunt Petunia purses her lips

Bad pun in a proper noun (ie, Diagon Alley)

Two drinks for a good pun

There’s evidence that journalists and newspapers in the Wizarding world are corrupt

Two drinks if a journalist does something good

Hermione runs away to do something without any explanation

Drink every time you get furious about a character’s immense and stubborn stupidity

Snape sneers

Lupin looks shabby

Tonks trips over something

Neville trips over something

Peeves smashes something

Hagrid breeds something

Ron or Harry refer to S.P.E.W as “Spew”

Nearly Headless Nick adjusts his head

Someone new stops calling Voldemort “You-Know-Who”

2 if she explains the "triumphant look"

Dobby extolls Harry's greatness

Ron runs from spiders

Fleur kisses someone on the cheek

Someone says Harry has his mother's eyes

Harry tallies the remaining horcruxes

3 if RAB is NOT Regulus Black

Finish if Harry ends up being the only one who thinks Snape is good

If Snape really truly is evil, send JKR a Howler

Someone says something darkly

2 if Neville and Luna hook up

2 if Harry attempts to use an Unforgivable curse

Finish the drink if he succeeds

Have another entire drink if he is immediately filled with remorse

Harry returns to the curtain at the Department of Mysteries

2 if he finds Sirius there

Kreacher sulks

Harry complains about the unpleasantness of apparition

2 if Neville saves the day

Fawkes returns

Harry enrolls at Hogwarts for his seventh year after all

Harry pines for Ginny

Mrs. Weasley cooks

Hagrid is a poor cook

Any "sickening thud"

Harry enters a pensieve

Mrs. Weasley's clock is referenced

Hermione has exam anxiety

2 if Hermione has exam anxiety though not enrolled in school

3 if someone ends up going to college

4 if it's a Muggle college

Finish the bottle if it's Harvard

The first chapter starts outside Harry's point of view

The last chapter ends outside Harry's point of view

There's an epilogue summarizing the rest of everyone's lives

Any clearly slash-y line that slipped past the editors (ie, "Who's Cedric, your boyfriend?")

Ron and Hermione make each other jealous

Aberforth Dumbledore appears

Aberforth Dumbledore appears, with goats

Hogwarts has a drastically reduced student population

Hogwarts is under threat of being closed

Petunia displays more knowledge of wizarding world

2 if the Dursleys do something right for once

Muggles get involved in the war

Hermione mentions, talks to, or (gasp!) visits her parents

Hermione sneaks into the Hogwarts Library while not a student

The three don't fit under the invisibility cloak

This Lupin/Tonks thing turns out to be something else entirely

Harry has a monster in his stomach/chest/other awkward body part

2 if JKR writes a remotely legit romance subplot

Mutter grumpily if she completely screws up Ron/Hermione

Malfoy is shown sympathetically

Snape is shown sympathetically

There's a connection between Godric's Hollow and Godric Gryffindor

Any time someone we've heard of dies

Harry remembers that everyone he loves is dead

Ron gets in the way

Ron does something really great and important

Ron gloats about great and important thing for next three weeks

If it takes Ron more tries to pass his apparition test than it took you to pass your driving test (sulk in the corner if you still can't drive)

Harry doubts his father's integrity

2 if Harry manages to win the day without having destroyed all the horcruxes

3 if Harry is a horcrux

Finish if Harry kills himself

Voldemort is destroyed in an as-yet-unpredictable fashion that isn't avada kedavra

Finish if Voldemort is destroyed with love. And complain loudly.