Safe and sound at home again,
Let the waters roar, Jack.
Safe and sound at home again,
Let the waters roar, Jack.
Long we've tossed on the rolling main,
Now we're safe ashore, Jack;
Don't forget your old shipmates,
Folly-rolly-rolly-rolly-rye-o!

Or: it's the seventh anniversary of the release of Master & Commander (in some timezones, anyway), I finished my Module 1 essay more than twelve hours before the deadline (quality notwithstanding), and I am slightly more-than-tipsy while watching the greatest (b)romance of all time.

OF ALL TIME.

And I may or may not have an SFF-geek tea-party tomorrow, and a Museum Studies/Archaeology/History Societies mixer on Wednesday.

Life could be worse. Life could definitely be worse.

♥

Yes.

Yes they do.

And that's okay.

( Talk of body image, fatshion, tl;dr, and probably a couple of swear words below the cut. )

...and in case you were fortunate enough not to be subjected to my Twitter-based sniffle-fest/vicious victory stomp/frenzied copypasting of some of my favourite bits of the conclusion:

Proposition 8 has been ruled unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses by the US District Court (California), and Judge Vaughn Walker (BAMF).

There'll be appeals, but you know what?

Fuck 'em.

"The evidence shows that, by every available metric, opposite-sex couples are not better than their same-sex counterparts; instead, as partners, parents and citizens, opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples are equal."
- p.132

Read it and weep, bitches.

(I know I did.)

Things that make a good day despite an hour-long game of Phone Tag: ULTIMATE STRESSOR that probably gave you more than a few grey hairs:

• Screwing your courage to the sticking place and sending emails that need to be sent (sometimes, even the smallest molehill can be a mountain).


• People getting the joke. *lulzed in the computer lab*


• Treating yourself to a viewing of Inkheart, which is fairly diverting, despite some lol clunky script moments.


• PAUL BETTANY SO HOT SPINNING FIRE SHIRTLESS OH JESUS GOD IN HEAVEN if I had been standing, I would have had to sit down. suddenly. on the floor. and make someone fetch me water. FOR MY COMBUSTING PANTS. no words. so hot. that entire film. I can't even express.


• Scientists extract images directly from the brain. Holy shit, science. *_* Next on the list is a replicator that can do the same, guys. I want a Paul Bettany of my very own. Hop to it!


• Finding a cute shirt that fits!
  • FOR YOUR INTERNSHIP IN THE ANTIQUITIES DIVISION OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF IRELAND STARTING IN FEBRUARY oh god I will go insane balancing this and full-time study but I GUESS WE'LL SEE HOW IT GOES BECAUSE klsjdflkasjdflshdgkja
  
  
• Walking home in the rain, raindrops dotting your glasses and making the whole world look like it's been decked out in Christmas lights, and singing out loud as you go. Badly.


• Finding out that you might be getting a Christmas tree after all.

Sometimes science sort of makes me want to cry.

First Picture of Likely Planet around Sun-like Star

Astronomers have unveiled what is likely the first picture of a planet around a normal star similar to the Sun.

Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai‘i to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-Sun distance away from its star.

That's 3106 trillion miles from Earth.

This has been a weekend for introspection, huh? I've been thinking a little on religion and humanism - on the UU church, on how everything I hear or read about it seems to hit home, on how and where I might look in Dublin to find that kind of a forum, to... to help me guide myself. I've been thinking about the last issue of Alan Moore's Promethea. I've been thinking about how I keep meaning to update about certain parts of my trip to NYC, and the day-trip we took down to Philly, but how I don't think I can explain having to twice go and hide in the bathrooms until I could stop sobbing, at two different exhibits: the Holocaust Memorial at the Museum of Jewish Heritage - and the Liberty Bell.

I have been unconscionably sappy these past two weeks and more; it started with a vague, private semi-resolution, in the early days of February, to post either something good or something giving every day until Valentine's Day - and whilst I didn't quite succeed (I am an inveterate crank), the spirit of it has stayed with me. Admittedly, these-such heights are usually, as in this case, the flip-side of emotional downers, but there's a certain sublime sweetness to these moments of optimism such that I'm loath to question them. I keep wanting to compose a post - outside my head, and in words that other human beings will actually understand - about interconnectedness, and what we all owe each other as members of a species that has concepts like 'beauty' and 'poetry' and 'love', but I tend to find that Alan Moore has usually done it for me. And that's part of it, too:

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.
- The History Boys

See what I did there? (I haven't seen The History Boys, film or play; perhaps I should. History, too, holds my heart and tells me these things.)

A thought for the day: scientists, like Patrick O'Brian's esteemed Dr. Maturin, used to be known as 'philosophers'. Here is the double helix of DNA, the secret code of life itself; here is Hermes' caduceus and the rod of the healer-god Asklepios, set in stone before the birth of Christ, and symbols of alchemy and the medical profession since the middle of the last millennium. The Milky Way is twice the size we thought it was, and Oxford is taking three years to study whether belief in the divine is a basic part of man's make-up. I wonder why the two need be such different things.

Short transmission.

Sunshine in winter is good for the soul; so is 'Yes, We Can', and a beautiful book, Beethoven's 7th, and beaming 'Across The Universe' into space.

Hey baby. Come back to my place, and we can deny Discordia.

My Dad just finished watching Loose Change. I was in the room, tooling around with books and photocopies and my laptop; I ended up watching it too. If you haven't heard of it, it's an amateur film on the eternal question of who really was behind 9/11. It... has its faults, certainly, and its holes and flimsy spots, but it's certainly food for thought, as are all the many, many similar works out there. What lets it down harder and faster than anything else is a scene in the extra featurette - about a free screening the makers organised in New York, on 9/11/2005. They hawked the DVD and the screening at Ground Zero, and got into an argument with a fireman. I support the asking of questions, I will always support it, but it was appalling to watch.

And then my Dad left, when it was all over, to walk the dog, and on impulse, I fired up Winamp to play City Hall, by Vienna Teng, and that's when the tears started. This simple, pretty little song has moved me to weeping before, but not like this, not quite.

(I'm hesitating, as I write this; not my place, maybe, and what business have I making pseudo-thinky posts? But nevertheless.)

I cried - am crying - because we are... privileged is not the word I mean, but it's like it. We are responsible. We have seen, in the span of our days, how the face of the world can be changed, so vastly and so deeply by hate, by greed, by lust for power. In this unprecedented age of on-site reporting and instant media, we have seen the smoke and body trails they leave behind them. We were there, for that few hours that changed history, and left the scar of Ground Zero behind to prove it - that's what Loose Change reminded me of. We are responsible.

And we've risen out of the ashes. Not all the way, but I don't doubt we're trying. And we've shouldered our responsibility - or we're trying to do that, as well. All you have to do is look at the shape of the movements of the past years. Has there ever been such a united outcry for peace as when George Bush began his campaigns against the countries of the Middle East? Perhaps, but I was not alive to remember it, and this is our generation's cycle, as the protests against Vietnam were our parents'. And (though if we're getting there, we're going slowly) the struggle for gay rights, the right for anyone to marry the person they love, to have it recognised by the country they live in. This is our cycle too, as the struggle for racial equality, though not over, though far from over, was that which defined our parents'. These should be the things the opening years of the new millennium are marked by, remembered for.

Vienna Teng - City Hall

Because this is our chance to make a difference. Because I am a student of history, and I know its importance. Because I want them to remember us for such things. Because I don't want to sound like a goddamn hippie, but that's our responsibility. Love. To try and clear away a little of the smoke, and let some of the light back in.