Part of the vast unfathomable horror of the World Trade Center bombings was the helplessness of those trapped by the collision of plane and skyscraper. A plane is too big to battle. All people could do was die, or save themselves, or try to help others. There was no way to fight the catastrophe itself.

In comparison, the Mumbai assault feels intimate, personal, familiar. A small-scale nightmare: people (even unarmed wedding guests) against people (armed with guns and grenades, yes, but individuals who might be placated or tricked). Current news says that the attack was staged by just ten gunmen, nine of whom are now dead. (Other reports are saying 15.) Almost 300 people were wounded, almost 200 killed. These numbers are easily imagined. How many people attended your wedding? graduated in your class? work in your office?

We’ve seen so many elements of this attack before in other places, including the dead Jewish hostages in Munich. Every day people pull guns on strangers or friends or family members. Often they shoot. Sometimes they don’t miss. Every day someone is held hostage. Sometimes a child, drenched with blood, miraculously escapes.

But the small scale and the human face of the Mumbai terrorist attacks don’t make them less horrifying. In some ways it makes them worse, because we can grasp them.

My prayers go out to those who are grieving and those who will live with this horror to the end of their lives. My prayers go out for peace and healing. It’s a long road.

Rhinovirus spam. The funniest thing you’ll read all day. Read the comments, too.

Solar-powered sea slugs! Of doom, possibly. Or is it a gene vampire? Or a free-swimming female body part? (Link from comments, NSFW at all.)

Is it a candy bar or a cluster of stars? That sugary Milky Way.

trollprincess asks, WHAT IN THE CHEESY BATTER-DIPPED HELL IS THAT THING. And why does it have so many elbows?

An even more modest proposal. This is worse than the Lawrence Welk version of “One Toke Over the Line.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Angevin2 spotted it first.

And a survey: Five Things I Was Doing 10 Years Ago 1. Cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner for 25 — all by myself. That was wonderful. I loved entertaining, and I gathered my whole family and my then-husband’s in my home for a dinner that was fabulous. The next year I hosted again, but shared the cooking chores and had gramina there to help. 2. Running after a tiny fuzzy kitten named Gabriel, called Spawn of Satan for her miraculous ability to unroll toilet paper. 3. Watching my father and my marriage both die by inches. 4. Starting therapy with Jack, who is still my long-distance therapist. (He’s spent something like 17 years on my family, between my older sister and me.) 5. Loving Michele from 3000 miles away.

fives

Possible spoilers Christopher Moore, Lamb

Some people consider Twitter to be twitworthy. Others regard it as a useful tool. Some few are Tweeting geniuses, like Junglemonkey: Approach a baby as you would a heroin addict in withdrawal: slowly, quietly and keeping valuables well out of reach.

The ideal gift for your favorite zookeeper, hunter, or animal-lover, assuming the giftee has no taste whatsoever. Seriously. Thanks to loracs.

Stimulation vs. persuasion, or how talk radio killed the Republican Party. Fascinating analysis and perhaps the juiciest instance of poetic justice since the first engineer was hoist by his own petard. Do click through to the full David Foster Wallace interview with John Ziegler.

We all know Obama uses a Mac laptop. We can guess that he’s a dyed-in-the-wool geek because it has a Pac-Man sticker snapping at the Apple on the lid. And now the geekery is spreading: Obama’s FCC transition co-chair is a WoW player, and has played in two different endgame guilds, including Joi Ito’s famous We Know guild. Link from hotel_jewelweed.

Oh sweet Jesus. One toke over the line, indeed. Blame jrittenhouse.

Today is the tenth annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, where we mourn those who have suffered and died for their for their gender expression. These people who were murdered are only the ones we know about.

Look at the ages: the oldest was 45. The youngest was 15.

Look at the causes of death: Shot in the head. Head battered in with a brick. Repeatedly stabbed. Stoned to death. These are not just convenience murders — a shooting to go with a robbery. These are murders of annihilation.

Being transgendered in this culture is complicated and difficult. And potentially lethal. (A transwoman is almost ten times likelier to die of murder than in a car crash. Think about that for a minute. Then go read the link.)

There is something profoundly crazy about a culture that values traditional genders so highly that people feel justified in wiping out those who don’t conform.

Remember these men and women. And do something, anything you can, to promote acceptance as equals. To stop the violence.

Richard Stevenson’s gay detective in Death Vows:

We continue to be deprived of the well-known enduring features of legal marriage–adultery, divorce, excess kitchenware, perpetuating the patriarchy….

The New York Times just named this book one of the top five mystery/crime novels of the year. I am definitely adding Stevenson to my reading list. Since the book is ninth in a series, I’m looking forward to months of pleasure in hunting down its predecessors and reading them.

That’s something even a second-class citizen is permitted to enjoy.

(And that gets my mind started on education, libraries — you really don’t want to hear it right now, and I don’t have time to do the topic justice. As it is, I am avoiding work on a response to Set This House in Order I’ll probably post later tonight or tomorrow.)

Any other good novelists I’m missing? Tell me something to read, please. My main criterion is quality of writing. I love genre books, but they must be written in excellent prose. Beyond that, I’m flexible. Many of my favorite writers deal directly with death, violence, pain, and loss, but I also enjoy Georgette Heyer (who generally ignores such things) and Sarah Caudwell (who masks them in mannerism).

Also, nonfiction books. I read more of those these days than anything else.

tamnonlinear reminds us:

It’s not okay for someone to hit you. … If someone you love comes to you and says that a loved one has hit them, DO NOT START MAKING EXCUSES FOR THAT PERSON.

National Domestic Violence hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE / 1-800-799-7233 1-800-787-3224 TTY

What is abuse?

Not all abusive relationships are heterosexual.

Not all abusers are men.

Am I in an abusive relationship?

more useful links

Do you feel better or worse knowing that ancient Greeks joked about approximately the same things we do? The link to the news story is all over LJ, so I brought you the link to the actual multimedia book:

Philogelos: The Laugh Addict – The World’s Oldest Joke Book.

My husband’s avatar is cheating on me! Link from fastfwd.

Turning an apartment into a crystal cave. Conceptual art I actually like. From jaylake

The glass spinning wheel. Link from sogwife.

Geographilia: am I sick because I find this image sexually arousing? (Totally SFW.)

Other favorites: these blue melting ridges, this peak, this storm. And don’t even get me started on the Iceland pictures.

What’s wrong with the accents in Trading Places?

Duanna Johnson never had a chance. This nation prefers to weep over victims who are wealthy, nubile blonde girls or wide-eyed children. When you’re a poor, Black, middle-aged 6’5″ transwoman, your case is hopeless.

First the cops busted her, insulted her, beat her, and Maced her. One cop held her down in a chair, the other savagely rained punches on her, using handcuffs as brass knuckles. The police surveillance videotape was clear–and brutal. The cops were fired.

Five months later, she was shot execution-style in the head. Some witnesses saw three men running away.

Have you seen this on the national news?

Violence against women who are poor, Black, middle-aged, or transgendered is not news. But surely her community would speak for her. However, most of the LGBT news sources have ignored the story. There is no national outrage over the death of Duanna Johnson. Is it her poverty? her color? her age? Or do we truly not see transgendered people as part of our community and worthy of our protection?

Julie Bindel, feminist and lesbian, doesn’t. She wrote:

I for one do not wish to be lumped in with an ever-increasing list of folk defined by “odd” sexual habits or characteristics. Shall we just start with A and work our way through the alphabet? Shall we just start with A and work our way through the alphabet? A, androgynous, b, bisexual, c, cat-fancying d, devil worshipping. Where will it ever end?

Yes, she really compared us to Satanists and animal fuckers. And she’s not even a Republican.

rozk alerted me to the existence of Julie Bindel, as well as to some nasty anti-trans problems at the Pride march in London.