The Monday Night Sitcoms, for those of you who don't live in the USA are as follows:

8:00 - How I Met Your Mother
8:30 - Accidentally On Purpose
9:00 - Two and a Half Men
9:30 - The Big Bang Theory

( How I Met Your Mother )
( Accidentally On Purpose )( 2.5 Men )
( The Big Bang Theory. )
Final grades for the night:

How I Met Your Mother: A-
Accidentally on Purpose: B-
Two and a Half Men: D
The Big Bang Theory: B+

Yay. Someone was kind enough to nominate Scorpius Malfoy Learns Quidditch for an award. I don't know who you are, but whoever you are, thank you :) And if you'd care to make yourself known, even thank you-er!

*checks out f-list* Yup. Nothing but women of the female persuasion there.

As many of you are probably bored of hearing, I'm not just involved in the Harry Potter fandom. I also subscribe to the Daria fandom - a fandom celebrating a cartoon on MTV that lasted five blissful seasons in the late-90s, before being relegated to a censored version on a made-for-teens network.

Anyway, the fandom is nearly all men. Yes, fandoms like that do exist! (for evidence of such influence within the Harry Potter fandom, I invite you to check out the Dark Lord Potter boards).

And just in case you've wondered what a nearly all-male fandom would talk about, seeing as 'ships don't tend to control the conversation, I give you the following thread:

http://www.thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=27796

Bleah.

As of about 3pm yesterday, I stopped seeing the NOM ad on ff.net. Didn't see it at home, either. But this morning at work, it's back.

It's apparently an AdSense ad, put out by Google. In the Google TOC under "Content Guidelines," Google says their ads may not contain or link to "Content related to racial intolerance or advocacy against any individual, group or organisation ". Obviously, any ad linking to the NOM site links to advocacy against a group. That has to go away and go away quickly.

From: Christopher
Subject: Offensive banner ads
To: support@fanfiction.com
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 10:31 AM
Dear fanfiction.net:

I love the service you offer, and I appreciate that it has to be paid for through advertising sales. However, nearly every banner ad currently in circulation is run by a hideously bigoted lobbying group: National Organization for Marriage. I'm afraid I simply can't use your service if it's paid for by peddling bigotry. And judging by the amount of homosexual themed fanfiction listed on your site, I doubt I'm the only one.
Please advise when these banner ads have been taken out of circulation so that I may return to your site.

Regards,
Christopher

Background: Anthony Bourdain was a chef in Manhattan for 23 years. These days though, he runs the snarkiest travel/foodie show on TV called "No Reservations". His insights are on-point, and his tastes tend to be mine, too. For an idea of the level of snark involved, here's his blog: http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelchannel.com/

Why do I care about this episode, instead of, say, last week's episode in Chile?

Because I have Australians on my f-list, and if the Australian equivalent of Tony Bourdain did a US show, I'd want to know his impressions of one of my country's fair cities. So, here it is: Tony Bourdain on Melbourne.

He digs the food scene.

Queen Victoria Market. He digs it. Loves that it's more supermarket than chef's hangout. Has a bratwurst for breakfast.

Buddy he's with runs a restaurant called "Half Moon" in a neighborhood called Brighton. Restaurant looks decadently good.

Now he's playing something called "Trugo". He seems to be the only person under 120 who's ever played. But he beats his host.

After Trugo, dinner's on his host. They go to Sydney Road, where they dig the Middle Eastern and North African fare. They nosh on Lebanese and Turkish kebab. In the monologue, though, he mistakes his host's talking about "Football" to mean "Association Football" instead of Australian Rules. I lolled.

Next place for food is what Tony calls "The best Lebanese food I've had outside Beirut". Name of the place is "Rumi's". Chef seems to be quite inventive with the Lebanese culinary canon. Tony's falling all over himself. Calls lamb ribs and quail: "best goddamned thing I've had to eat in Melbourne".

Chinatown's next. "Oldest continuous chinatown on the planet". Tony's Chinatown host talking about (okay, dancing around) the "White Australia" immigration policy, and how after that went away in '73, the food got so much better.

Tony and host are eating Szechuan, and his poor palate is getting its ass kicked by the heat. "Better than some I've had in China" is his reaction. Name of the place is Dae Ti Szechuan.

After Chinatown, Tony goes out to the sticks. Hasn't left Victoria, but he flew out of Melbourne. Name of the town in Dunkeld in southwest Victoria in the Grampiens, and he's at a restaurant called "Royal Mail". Okay, restaurant, farm, hotel, wine cellar... And as much as he's fallen all over himself at the other places, this might be his favorite. And from the look of the food (and the running commentary), I'd be on the next plane to Victoria just to eat there if I could afford it. Which I probably couldn't even if I lived next door.

(Commercial bump says he's going to thrown shrimps on a barbeque. *facepalm*)

Which, in fact, he does. But he doesn't make any cracks about it, except for the ironic commercial bump. This is the obligatory big communal meal party thing. Nothing much to see. And then it's over.

The United States men's national soccer team beat Spain's men's national soccer team in the knockout stages of a major FIFA tournament yesterday. Beat them convincingly and definitively. It wasn't luck, they weren't looking past us. We were the better team yesterday. The final score was 2-0. Or as we say in America, two-nothing.

Joy.

Just pure, unqualified, unambiguous joy. I haven't stopped smiling since 4:22 yesterday afternoon, when I saw the ESPN.com matchtracker mistakenly post "Full Time: ESP 0:3 USA" or something like that.

For me, watching the match was a pure US Soccer fan experience. Watch it live on TV in my native language? Well, unlike those who'd come before me, that option was available. But I couldn't skive off of work yesterday because I'm in a class, so I "watched" the match on the classroom computers, first following the surprisingly good fifa.com matchtracker (my favorite option, The Guardian.co.uk, wasn't covering this one), then when their servers became overloaded, the ESPN.com matchtracker.

My breath hitched a bit when I saw that Davies had nearly scored in the 8th minute. I nearly jumped out of my seat when Jozy put us ahead. I spent minutes 28-73 in absolute terror, watching "DAVID VILLA has shot blocked" and "XAVI swings in a corner kick" over and over again. Class was over by the time Deuce hit the clincher, and I was barely keeping my cool. When it hit me that the match was over and we had actually won, I jumped around the nearly empty classroom like a five-year-old.

After I got home, I turned on my DVRed recording of the game. I watched Jozy's goal, Clint's goal, the final whistle, and Alexi and Reese's recap. I haven't been off of Google News since, trying to find every available article on the match. I've read them in English, German (and even a couple in Spanish). It took me hours to get to sleep last night, and I sprung out of bed this morning to hunt down more articles (nearly missing my train!) before leaving for work.

In terms of importance, I guess this victory ranks right up there for our boys. It's not '89 vs. Trinidad, nor is it '02 vs. Portugal, but it's certainly a more important (if not more improbable) win than '50 vs. England, and while it's not as important as '02 vs. Mexico, anyone who's ever watched a sporting event knew that when we drew Mexico we were through to the quarterfinals.

I'm just incoherently happy. And as an American soccer fan (who gets to simultaneously hear "you guys can't play this game" from folks who live elsewhere and "why should we care" from fellow countrymen), I think I've earned that.

Okay, some of you on my list enjoy this show. I've just gotten into it recently, so I have a question for you longer-tenured fans.

Sara Gilbert: did you enjoy her character as much as I did or is it just me still digging her from Roseanne?

I really enjoyed that bit. Sara Gilbert makes everything better.

Yeah, we'll go with excited.

It's "Next Food Network Star". Now, it's Food Network, not Bravo or A&E or whatever, so you'd think it's about food, right? *facepalm*

No, it's about the personalities. And it seems to be even more about the personalities this season. They were dishing on each other in the intros. Hopefully it won't suck this year. The less they talk about food and the more they talk about each other, the worse it is.
( Spoilers Ahoy! )

And a beautiful day it is.

Couldn't get the England - Kazakhstan game here (except on PPV), but I did catch the score. 4-0 Eng-er-land.

Did manage to watch much of the second half of Australia v. Qatar. A scoreless tie, but it's enough to qualify Australia for South Africa. Congratulations to the Socceroos!

There are a couple of South American qualifiers going on right now, but I'm not really following any of those teams, and the announcers speak much too quickly for my poor Spanish. So instead it's Baseball. Yankees (excuse me: the First Place New York Yankees) vs. the defending AL champion Tampa Bay <strike>Devil</strike> Rays (and that still feels weird to type). Yanks are up 1-0, bottom of the fourth in the Bronx.

At 4 (it's quarter past two now) it's back to soccer. This time it's the Galaxy, hoping to get a win in Toronto. Tough match for my Gs, to be honest. Another tie wouldn't be the worst outcome, to tell the truth.

Then at 8 is the big show. USA v. Honduras. We just stunk up the joint in Costa Rica on Wednesday night, so we really, really need to nail down the three points on our own turf. They're a tough team, couple of EPL players. We've got a few key players hurt or out with yellow card accumulation. It'll be tough, but I think the kick in the ass we got Wednesday night will do wonders for us.

Enjoy the lulz.

Hooray for Honda. Great meme, and it allows us to pimp some of our favorite fanfiction from other-than-HP fandoms. Personally, I only ever read two: HP and Daria, but here goes.

In no particular order:

1. Harry Potter And The Summer Of Change » by lorddwar  

Harry returns to Privet Drive and Tonks helps him become the man and hero he must be to survive. The bestest Harry/Tonks in the action genre, ever. The first and best Lord-Baron Potter-Black. It kicks ass. It takes names. I know, it's my default rec. But there's a reason for that.

1a. Lizardlaugh: Birthday Boy »
and

1b. Undercover Discoveries: http://browneydweasley.livejournal.com/22524.html#cutid1
Harry needs to get out of what's become uncomfortably close quarters in the tent with R and Hr. Apparently someone's been keeping an eye on the trio.

What do these fics have in common? It's all about the pink-haired auror. Moving on...

2. India by Perspicacity 

The real hero of Deathly Hallows was Hedwig; this is her story. A canon-compliant, Deathly Hallows era, spy/military/action/thriller with Hedwig as protagonist. Hedwig/Phantom . I forget what the occasion was (think it was the last RL birthday thing), but this was my favorite.

3a. Bar Maid by

snegurochka_lee and 3b. Five Women who Hate Fleur Delacour, also by snegurochka_lee 

Do you hate the way women were reduced to trite, stock supporting roles in HP the way I do? So does the authoress, who has composed two of the most overtly feminist, brilliant and deliciously subversive fics ever to find their ways into the HP verse.


4. Girls Together Sarcastically » by Dennis
Time to leave the HP verse! In this series of post-canon vignettes, Daria Morgendorffer, her sister Quinn, best friend Jane and Quinn's old high-school nemesis Sandi form a band up in Boston. They rock the house.

We'll end it with another Daria rec.

5. An Overlooked Flaw by legendeld. Quinn devises the perfect system to rank potential dates. There's one fail-safe she forgot to program in, however.

Enjoy, and happy reading. If some are new to you, let me know how you like them. If they're not new, let me know that they're your favorites, too :-)

Yeah, so I spent an hour and a half trying to figure out where to eat tonight. It's the last of my nine nights in Washington (spread out over four weeks), and I had yet to really go foodie in this big foodie town. Tonight? Well, I'm always up for adventure, and there's a cuisine I have no familiarity with whatsoever, so here goes: Ethiopian. There's a Little Ethiopia section of town that the foodies here (thank you, Chowhound) fall all over themselves for. So I'm headed up there to see what I can dig.

The idea is to have a character assigned and then be asked several questions about that character. Suzanne rocks, so she gave me Tonks.

1. Do you like this character?

Adore this character. She's one of my favorite in canon. What's not to like about a mood-hair sporting, death-eater ass-kicking hottie, anyway?

2. What name/s do you call this character?

It's sure as hell not going to be "Nymphadora". No death wishes here. I'm also not a fan of "Dora," which is a fanon convention, especially in the Harry/Tonks community. Nope, I call her "Tonks". Even when I wrote a Lupin/Tonks and they were getting married, she was still "Tonks".

3. What image-color do you associate with this character?

Electric Hot Pink and Black.

4. What image-song do you associate with this character?

Image: she'd have to be a Roy Lichtenstein. Song: "Ray of Light" by Madonna.

5. What blood-type do you think this character is?

Metamorph - she can be whatever type she wants to be ;-)

6. Of all of the titles to that this character appears in, what character do you like to put this character with?

I've shipped Harry/Tonks since I first read Order of the Phoenix. Shocked the crap out of me when she got paired with Remus.

Now: you want your own character? Go for it. I can play in the Harry Potter, Daria and Xlormp fandoms.

Back in Cali, Champions League matches started at 11:30; right in time to take a nice long lunch. Here on the East Coast: 2:30. Just in time to surreptitiously put a lame-ass matchtracker underneath a spreadsheet every time you hear someone walking near your cubicle.

Okay, it's a bit overcast, and maybe a bit cool. But after wearing a winter coat for four months, followed by two weeks of freezing my ass off because I refused to wear the bloody thing again, I think it's safe to say that Spring has finally reached the Northeastern United States.

60 degrees F (um, high teens, maybe 20 C?), and just enough Sun to let you know there's no danger of rain. I've had a wonderful day so far - spent the whole day in Manhattan. I went to an AA meeting at the General Service Office (kinda like world headquarters, if there were such a thing), and rather informally celebrated 5000 consecutive days (which is nearly 14 years) without a drink. I had a tour of the office, which was just lovely, and then took care of a couple of errands. Then I took the subway downtown to Columbus Circle, and heard some rather swinging jazz in Central Park. Just four kids on the street blowing Central Park South pretty much away. Walked over to 5th Ave., stopped at the Lindt store (present for my wife) and H&M (for me), and now I'm sitting in Rockefeller Center waiting for DW to come downstairs(she works at 30 Rock), 'cause we're headed to the Museum of Modern Art, which is just a few blocks away.

So, yay. It's Spring, and I love New York in the Springtime. And I love my 4x10 workweek which gives me Friday off. And sorry if I just killed your F-page with my ramblings, but I'm on the blackberry, so I don't get the groovy "insert cut" button.

Yay Spring :)

He's Green, stubbly, and ready to beat some evildoer upside their evildoing head with his stick of whoopass. Hero maker rocks.

Well, would you look at that, Christopher's typing about sports again. Sports of the international variety.

This time, however, it's not soccer. Nor is is Basketball. It's Baseball. The only sport out there that even comes close to capturing my heart the way Soccer does. The tournament is called "World Baseball Classic". It's the tournament that answers the question "So, if an international sports competition takes place, and Europe is an afterthought, is it really an international championship?" Why yes, Europe. Yes it is.

16 teams; Four from Asia (Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea), two from Europe (the Netherlands is really a Caribbean team for these purposes, and to make up Team Italy, they pulled any major leaguer whose last name ends in a vowel), four from North America (USA, Canada, Mexico and Panama), three from the Caribbean (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba), plus South Africa and Australia.

Yup. Australia. I didn't really believe it either, until I saw it. Well, if the USA somehow keeps getting invites to international rugby tournaments, we can let Australia play a little ball, right? Right?

The game's going on right now. It's the top of the first inning, and Australia is beating Mexico, 3-0. Mexico. A country in which the game of baseball is played at a very high level. I don't know if this game is even available on television, but if it is - wow. That's a story. Not quite as big a story as, say, the Netherlands beating the Dominican Republic yesterday (which is rather like the Dominican Republic beating the Netherlands in soccer).

Meanwhile, my boys in Red, White and Blue are down to Venezuela, 3-2 after four innings. Honestly, not unexpected. We don't get to send our best players (no team does except Cuba), and the tournament is rather an afterthought to the pre-season. Baseball is very much a club-before-country sport.

Update: it's now 3-1 Australia, bottom of the first with two out.

EDIT: So, my boys wound up winning 15-6. And Australia wound up kicking the crap out of Mexico - invoking the mercy rule - 17-7 in 8 innings. Mexico is a very good team - knocked out the USA last time around. Most Australians would try to bounce the ball to the plate, 'cause it looks a lot like cricket, but it isn't quite. This was a colossal upset.

Title: Scorpius Malfoy Learns Quidditch
Dedicated to my friends at The Sober Universe. They inspired this.
Rating: R
Words: 2500, give or take
Couple(s): Scorpius/Rose
Summary: Fifth-year Scorpius doesn't know how to answer when his dorm mates ask him what hoops he's scored through with Rose. So they give him a little Quidditch lesson.
Warning(s): Boys and locker-room humor. Mom jokes. And you'll never read a Quidditch box score the same way again.
Authors Note(s): I'd left this one off of LJ for some reason. Apologies to my f-listers who are also on scorpius_rose for the cross-posting.

 

( Scorpius Malfoy Learns Quidditch. )