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seananmcguire:

shoomlah:

beastlies:

So, a side note to anyone going to the San Diego Comic Con… I saw a post about this going around ages ago, but I can’t find it to reference or reblog, so I’ll just start fresh.

If you’re a woman at the con and you’re being harassed or feel uncomfortable in some way, my table is a safe place.  You can come by and hang out behind the table or whatever you need. We’ll back you up. 

I’m usually there with my husband, but even if it’s just him, he’ll help you out.  Bonus, he’s a big dude who can look scary if he needs to. This is him (and me):

I guarantee he’s 100% an ally and will do whatever you need. He’ll pretend to be your boyfriend or let you hide under the table or whatever. Or if you just want to chat about our cats until a creep wanders away, he’ll tell you all about our dumb kitties for as long as necessary. No worries at all. 

So you know. Hopefully no one will need that, but if shit gets unpleasant: Table N-08 in Small Press. Beastlies. 

This is a super great idea on Leslie’s part, and I’m totally going to jump on her bandwagon!  I don’t have a big burly husband like Leslie (DAMN), but I’ll be at Q-15 in Small Press – up against the back wall of the Exhibition Hall, not far from the Restrooms and the back stairs.

If you’re being followed, harassed, or just generally feeling uncomfortable with someone’s behavior towards you at the con, just swing by!  I’ll pretend we’re old high school friends or coworkers at the drop of a hat. :)

I’ve worn skimpy cosplay at cons and have had to deal with harassment from creeps on a number of occasions (one guy groaned and yelled at me for lightly brushing my hair out of my cleavage because he was “trying to be so good and then I had to go and do that”), but I’m usually lucky enough to have my friends with me to back me up – not everyone has that privilege.

And while I do not have a table, I have a bitey blue-haired fiddler, and if you are uncomfortable AT ALL and you see us, just say.  We will have been your best friends for twenty years (even if you’re fifteen we just befriended you through time travel IDK) and we will fight anyone who has a problem with that.

Now, before I start, I have a soft spot for the Wachowski’s. I loved the Matrix, I loved Jupiter Ascending, I even rather liked Cloud Atlas (despite having multiple issues with their blackface malarky). So when I’d heard about sense8 it’d gone on my calendar with an alert that popped up and said “Check if sense8’s been released”. Which I did. And it had. And I was quite excited.

Critically I note it’s not got a hugely positive response.

But I don’t give a f’kin monkeys about critics though. I just watched it, a 12 hour season, beginning to end in as little time as I possibly could. I watched 2 episodes the first day, time not being on my side. Then I watched 5 hours in a day…before my first night shift…instead of sleeping*. And then I came home from the night shift and polished the end of it off.

People say it’s a little slow to get started, but then I liked Blue Gate Crossing – an 85 minute Chinese film in which, essentially, nothing happens. But anyhow, although I have issues with the Californian interpretation of life outside of the US – which appears to be somewhat based on stereotypes *cough* just a little *cough* – I absolutely adored it. They need someone medically trained on their crew (handcuff / cannula (venflon) scene = picture me screaming; and f’kin non-bleeding cannulas when you remove them – that does not happen). They clearly got someone who knows at least a bit about hacking so why is it so frickin’ hard to get someone to make medical things a bit better**.

Aaaaanyhow. All of this didn’t significantly take away from the general awesomeness of it. It’s beautifully shot. I mean it’s just visually delightful. And they have actually shot outside the US. It’s not some craptastic faux England or Iceland. It’s actually England. It’s Seoul, it’s Nairobi. That is pretty damn cool.

The first episode is, I’ll grant, quite clunky – it’s trying to set up a lot of world building, and introducing a lot of characters, there’s some exposition in there that’s required but not beautifully positioned. But once it found its feet, I was totally sold. Even, to be honest, before then I was totally sold.

And perhaps that’s about representation. For a long time I’ve had what various people have called the great queer film collection. Back when I used to spend a lot more of my disposable income on film, a surprising proportion went on tracking down slightly obscure foreign and independent queer film. Most of it is quite depressing, but occasionally there are people like me on tv. When there are, it’s incredibly powerful. Years ago, before I came out, I used to read crappy poorly written fiction from a dubious website and some of it I’d laugh at because it was so bad, so clichéd, but I was desperate for stories even slightly like mine, so I’d read them anyhow.

So to finally see people like me on telly? It’s amazing. It reaches into some part of my hindbrain and makes me happy and pleased in a way that’s most unexpected. P’raps because it’s so rare… P’raps because it’s not depressing? P’raps because they’re rounded characters and their story isn’t just them being queer.

Anyhow. So, I loved it. I really rate it. Go watch it. Me being me if I can get a physical media edition of it, I will.

One other thought that occurred – and I wonder if this comes from Lana’s experience, and if so I’m sad for her. The medical staff in the show are pretty much invariably horrendous to Nomi. Back when I qualified, I initially wanted to do my dissertation on transgender experience of healthcare within the NHS – but rapidly realised there was essentially no research on that. I then tried ‘Lesbian experience of healthcare’. Nope. I ended up examining LGBTQ experience of healthcare. I didn’t really need to do the research, I’d experienced it myself. It was pretty fucking terrible. And it has really bad long term impacts on people’s healthcare – if you’re scared to go in to see medical professionals because they treat you like shit, you don’t get stuff checked out. If the health professionals are so busy treating you like shit they don’t actually pay attention to your problems? Stuff gets missed. It was a whole catastrophe of badness.

To summarise, healthcare for queer people in 2006:

Things are – at least IME – improving. I’ve not repeated the research because… well, others are better placed to do high quality research than me. Though actually it’s something that interests me. I still think things are shit; I still would expect some (but not all) medical staff to misgender or be in other ways homo/bi/non-binary/trans -phobic. I would say that in our department, I think the majority would use whatever pronouns you requested – or at least he/she as requested (I think they’d struggle with Xe or other non-binary terms) – at least, they’d use them to your face , and in your medical notes. I wouldn’t swear that they wouldn’t be unpleasant out of earshot – depending who was around they’d get called on it, or not. But perhaps I’m over generous? However we’ve had a fair few lgb people working in the department – and it’s such a non-issue – and the few times we’ve had out-trans people it’s been not great but not near as awful as I’ve seen elsewhere.

It’s not good enough, but it’s an improvement on where we were when I started nursing and I still remember some unpleasant nurse talking about ‘the fucking lesbians’ to the sound of much agreement.

But anyhow, it made me sad, because I think that Nomi’s experience is probably depressingly accurate. I’ve probably not done near enough to change that. So that’s something which has stuck with me.

But that’s by the by for everyone else. Everyone else, you should go watch sense8.

* I couldn’t actually sleep, but normally I’d just lie in the dark and pretend like I was sleeping.
** And intramuscular injections that work quicker than intravenous injections. Given the number of occasions in my ER career where we’ve had someone who’s drunk, high and has a significant head injury who needs sedation, I’d *love* some of the drugs to work the way they do on telly, it’d be awesome. They do not.

sweepywillow:

MY FAVOURITE PART OF SENSE8 IS THEY HAVE A MAN EXPERIENCE ANOTHER WOMANS PERIOD AND SHE’S DOING HER TRAINING AND BEING CALM AND IN CONTROL AND HE’S SCREAMING AND CRYING AND HE THINKS HIS STOMACH PAINS ARE SO BAD HE MUST HAVE A TUMOUR OR SOMETHING I LOVE THIS SHOW

seananmcguire:

jezi-belle:

skyliting:

almightybob:

starbucksfaster:

http://anniemurphypaul.com/2014/02/the-high-cost-of-acting-happy/

“Surface acting is when front line service employees, the ones who interact directly with customers, have to appear cheerful and happy even when they’re not feeling it. This kind of faking is hard work—sociologists call it “emotional labor”—and research shows that it’s often experienced as stressful. It’s psychologically and even physically draining; it can lead to lowered motivation and engagement with work, and ultimately to job burnout.”

RELEVANT. 

Welcome to mah realm

This is also true for customer service people.  So BE KIND. If kindness is too hard, at least don’t be an asshole.  If not being an asshole is too hard, use email so you don’t have to interact with anyone directly. 

This explains why I always felt so fucking drained when I came home from Target, even when I’d had a pretty good day and not stood up for all that long. Huh.

This also impacts people with disabilities, be they physical or mental, and people who are “performing” for a crowd.  By the end of a four-day con, I am so emotionally exhausted that I walk in a ring of handlers, because otherwise improper poking could lead to endless tears.

…while I joke about it with me, it also takes a serious toll on medical staff.

Watch doctors and nurses who’ve just cared for someone dying. Then watch them smile, laugh and joke with the sick child, the scared terminally ill person, watch them burn up their soul to make sure other patients don’t feel their pain.

It’s bloody hard work, and sometimes you just want to curl up in a ball, but there’s always someone who needs help, and you pledged to give it.

It’s why I work at making even the most stressful shifts as non-awful as I can for the team I work with; because they’re sacrificing so much for the privilege of looking after people, and often people forget that as they demand professionalism and smiling staff.

jellyfishjammin:

The “I am a piece of shit and nobody will ever love me” factoid is actually a statistical error. You are actually are fantastic and infinitely worthy of people’s company.  That person you used to care about, who taught you to hate yourself by abandoning you, is an outlier and should not have been counted

So, I think I’m going to blame it on the night shifts; that and the allergy season which appears to have kicked off in spectacular style this year. But whatever the reason I’m knackered today. Completely cream-crackered.

I had hoped to get *lots* done today, but have largely abandoned it in favour of watching Sense8 (difficult with the representation of minorities: YAY! for representation, boo for dear-god-stereotype-much?! Still loving lots of it though).

However – on the plus side I have put the final coat of paint on the boxing:

And I’ve also declared the stair rail done, and semi-attached the last of the three (butt ugly) brackets that hold it to the wall (at a different level to the one opposite. Why didn’t I just remove the damn thing? and the edge of the front door has met my ‘good enough’ criteria. It could do with another coat or two, but you don’t really see it, so I say it’s ‘good enough’.

We’ve also got a repair engineer coming to fix the Haier Washer-Drier (I just like the way that sounds). Fixed fee – covers call out, labour, all spares and a year’s warranty. It should be okay – so I’ve cleared the laundry room ready. Which involved moving all the tiling stuff for the floor that I’ve not yet tiled. I’ve also taken a photo of the poor sad object:

The string’s to hold the (broken) drawer shut – it tends to pop open when it’s spinning which has led to water on the floor syndrome (but not since the application of ‘string’. Oh no). The other thing you can just see is the peg sticking out which is doing the job of the missing foot. Hopefully the repair-bloke (it is a bloke, or at least the person is called Keith) will fix the ‘leaving nasty stains on things’ fault and maybe some of the other faults. I’m thinking, though, that I might make a false floor that’s actually level when I get to tiling the laundry room. That plus multiple screws to the walls, the existing floor, etc, might make the poor benighted object less inclined to shake itself to bits.

Finally, in my catalogue of activities for the day I took my poor bicycle down to a local place that hopes to be able to repair the broken brake linkage*. Failing that it may be a model-it and send it off to be milled. It’s actually just a bit of bent metal that’s snapped, but it’s beyond my making abilities. I’ve also been re-re-re-redirected to someone who might be able to repair the BSA three speed hub. Which is exciting. It’s probably advisable to get that repaired before leaving the UKland because whilst BSA hubs are rare here, they’re probably hens-teeth-rare in the US.

Mind you, having checked the status of my application for registration again it’s frustratingly still listed as ‘awaiting documents’. GET OVER THERE ALREADY, JEEZE.

* Did I mention this? No? On my last night shift I pulled out of the garage and started cycling, pulled the brake lever and discovered a complete absence of retardation. Now, lets be fair, my bike’s brakes are never highly effective, but this was a ‘oh, nothing is happening’ moment. Fortunately, the less-than-adequate front brake brought me to a stop – and doubly fortunately I’d not made it out onto the junction with the main road which would, I think, have been somewhat more exciting.