From last night's Daily Show. Funny, yet maddening. Yet funny.

Home from Dragoncon just fine. Flights, aside from being long and arriving home at midnight my time and 3AM EST, were totally fine.

Gareth David Lloyd has very large hands and addressed me as "lovely". Twice. And shrift and I rode in an elevator with him.

My family is evacuated and fine, and the house is fine. I am predictably irritated with the media coverage of Gustav.

More on all these topics later.

This has not been a pleasing day, internet-wise. My Yahoo Mail is somehow stuck in the past. Seriously. I'm getting headlines from last week (did you know Obama's about to announce his VP pick?) and my mailbox doesn't actually show my most recent mail.

My work system, which I depend on to DO MY WORK, crapped out on me at a particularly annoying moment. Tech support says it's a known issue, in the sense of "they know about it" not "they have any idea how to fix it."

And our brand-new internet disappeared yesterday. After a series of calls to the cable company, we discovered we were given a nicer modem than we're paying for, which is great, except they won't actually support it unless we pay for the service. At the moment, we've figured out that the network name keeps resetting itself, which confuses the hell out of the computers trying to connect to the network. It's fixable, so far, but annoying as hell.

I am tempted to just plop down on the couch and watch vids, since trying to be productive is not getting me anywhere.

It's clearly been that kind of week for many people. It's been that kind of...two days for me, since I didn't have to leave shrift's until Tuesday, but then, you know. SGA got cancelled. Work is stupid. It's time for a love meme.

My entry is here.

A housing issue: McCain not sure how many they own

Oh, la, how could he possibly be expected to keep track of something like that?

You have to be rich to run for the Presidency these days. That is a fact. I would still like to drop a house on John McCain's head.

*sigh* My show.

Bastards.

So far, at this con, I have managed to:

1) Miss people knocking on my door last night, even though I was here.

2) Chase away people who came to be helpful to untrue_accounts because it was early and I could not process what they were saying.

3) Have a bizarre pantomime conversation with a guy at breakfast, where I tried to figure out if I'd stolen his paper, and he refused to look at me or speak, and instead made "go away" motions with his hands.

Time for more caffeine, I think.

VVC people, I will be leaving shrift and tzikeh's place around 7, I think, to avoid rush hour traffic. Public transport to the airport, and then the shuttle to the hotel. Hopefully everyone who needs my cellphone has it -- it hasn't changed since I first got it.

I'll be getting into the hotel later than I usually do, but I'd love to find my usual Thursday night crowd, if possible -- vonnie_k, katie_m? See you all tonight VVC YAY!!!

(Oh, right, I still have a panel to finish planning...)

OH MY GOD.

Jessica Hynes who used to go by Jessica Stevenson is the lead actress and co-writer of Spaced, one of the things that Simon Pegg did before Shaun of the Dead.

This same Jessica Hynes, nee Stevenson, was Joan the nurse in the Doctor Who episodes "Human Nature" and "Family of Blood."

I almost literally cannot believe this. She's fabulous in those eps of Doctor Who, and it's not that she's not good on Spaced, but she's so completely different.

I...just...who else knew this?

Ticket to Vividcon purchased. Wooooo! We will not talk about how much it cost, because I am still adjusting to 1) not living in a major hub any more and 2) the sad new reality of ticket prices.

But who cares? I will get to spend time with shrift (sadly not attending the con) and we will watch many episodes of TV and stuff!

I've signed up for the DVD Commentary challenge, if anyone's interested in commentarying on my stories.

(Also, hey, made it to Washington. Woot!)

In case you were wondering exactly how much Laura Hale wanted to make from her wiki, slwatson found some interesting links here.

(The answer being "OMG WTF FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS? ARE YOU HIGH?")

Laura Hale has posted a statement on FanHistory's blog. The license under which she's posted it allows users "to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work". I'm reproducing the whole thing here so we don't have to click over to her site to read it.

( A Statement from Fan History )

It probably goes without saying that I don't find her explanations and apologies credible. I know she's taken information from friends-locked posts. I know she's repeatedly reverted edits that outed fans even after being informed of the problem. In some of those cases, when she says that she never outed someone who wasn't already out, she's referring to OTW committee members who she believes put themselves in the public eye, even if they did not publicly link their real name and pseudonym.

I do believe that one of the great things about fandom is that we usually bend over backwards, as a whole, not to exclude people. Sometimes, however, a person proves themselves to be malicious, selfish, and utterly lacking in empathy, and when that happens, I also think it's our responsibility to make sure people have the facts, so they can at least judge for themselves.

It's going to be difficult to provide what most people would consider "proof" in the cases of the outings without furthering those outings, but hopefully, enough eyewitness accounts will add up. As for some of her other claims in the post above, I think those can also be disproved, and I invite anyone with screencaps to post them here.

ETA: Former Fanhistory admin slwatson shares her thoughts on Laura's apology here.

ETA2: It's been suggested over in slwatson's journal that a good way to aggregate all of the Laura Hale information is by using the tag "fanhistory:expose" on del.icio.us. I'd also suggest using it in your LJ for any posts on the issue, especially if you list tags in your sidebar.

And another thought I had, while running to get lunch: when I say that it's our "responsibility" to make sure people know about Laura, I don't mean to imply that everyone in fandom has to get involved with this. I always support people's rights to stay the hell out of things. If, however, you've sat back and fumed about Laura Hale and wished you could do something, I think this is the time to do it.

As always, most people will have seen this already, but I figure one more repetition can't hurt, especially if it helps the information get out there.

Here's my summation: Laura Hale is a bad person. (She goes by "partly_bouncy" and "purplepopple" on various other sites.) She used to be known as Michaela Ecks, and she's been riding the train of fannish history for a while. She used to have some fannish timelines posted on fanfiction.net, for example.

For details on the current problem, you can read here and here. And for some lovely damning quotes that illustrate how Laura wishes to ride fandom all the way to the bank, see Livia's post.

She's a bad person, y'all. Don't contribute to her wiki. Don't visit her site and make it look more marketable. Don't let her spread her poison in your journals, comms, or mailing lists. I know that this is fandom, and we usually don't want to exclude people like this, but believe me. This time, it's called for.

My house is now empty. It took two days -- one day (plus a little) for three people to pack us, and one day for the movers to take everything out. Aside from the general misery of moving, it really wasn't too bad. I managed to make the two biggest fuckups -- I dropped a plastic easel and broke it (no biggie), and I tripped on the stairs, spilling half of my last precious Cherry Coke Zero. Fortunately, the carpet was already going to be replaced, so the only real casualty was another bruise to add to my collection.

Current injury count: about seven or eight, I think, about half of which I know the origin of. There's the purple one from where I hit the stairs two days ago, the yellowish-brown one from moving the big chest of drawers outside to sell to the Craigslist guy, and the small one on my shin from stopping a rolling dolly with my leg. No idea what I did to my right thumb, or where the papercut on my left index finger came from, but I didn't hurt myself in any way requiring surgery, so we're going to call that a win.

Looks like I will be heading up to the new city in about two weeks. Hopefully at that point, I'll get my brain back and I can resume more of my fannish stuff. (semielliptical, I totally have not forgotten that I owe you a Sweet Charity story. Though I'm not entirely sure what computer the current draft is on. I think it's the laptop, and that's staying with me, so I will try to get back to it soon.)

People. People in my house packing my stuff. La la la la. I'm working on about six hours sleep, and husband on about four.

The ideal situation is that they finish early enough that we can take a nap before we have to go do stuff tonight.

People touching my stuff. Ack. God, I hope I didn't forget to pack anything I'm going to need.

What I am NOT doing: Watching the Doctor Who finale.

What I AM doing: Disassembling furniture. But people are coming to give me money for it, so that's nice.

Yes, the wall-vaccuumming was related to the moving. Walls get dusty too, apparently, especially if the wall is behind a large piece of furniture that you haven't moved in almost ten years.

But the money part is definitely good, as is the part where we get large pieces of furniture out of the house. Before today is done, though, Doctor Who for me.

What I am NOT doing right now: Watching Doctor Who.

What I AM doing right now: Vaccuuming my walls.

Big news! We are moving from Texas to southeast Washington State. Husband is being transferred. I have worked out a deal to telecommute for my current employer, and I am SO THRILLED that I get to keep my job. And work at home.

And speaking of home, we bought a house today! Now all we have to do is cull through all the junk we have here, prepare to move, figure out dates, arrange for contractors and realtors, and keep nine million receipts for tax purposes.

I was dubious about this, but keeping my job allayed a lot of my concerns. There's not much here I'll really be giving up, since my close friends all live in the internet box. I will be within driving distance of the Seattle and Portland fannish populations, and I look forward to meeting up with you guys at some point.

Now, back to cleaning and restrained panicking.

This morning, I saw a passing reference to the St. Crispin's Day speech, which always makes me think of Sports Night. Naturally.

Dan: Our anniversary. Today is our anniversary.
Casey: Gee, Dan, that night in Minnapolis with the Jaggermiester, we didn't do anything untoward, did we?
Dan: You mean did we get married?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: No.
Casey: Good.
Dan: You recited the St Crispin's Day speech from the lobby of the St Paul Radisson.
Casey: Well, was it untoward?
Dan: No, it was just embarassing.

I think Sports Night might be the fannish show I quote from most often (at least in my head, since I don't generally blurt out fannish quotes unless I'm at a con). Runners-up would include Buffy, Firefly, and SGA.

Some of the more useful Buffy quotes include "Note to self: religion freaky." and "Fire bad, tree pretty." and "Love makes you do the wacky." Firefly has the ubiquitous "I'll be in my bunk."

What about you? What shows do you quote? What lines?